Zenobia | Page 9

the sandy desert, which
stretches from the Anti-Libanus almost to the very walls of Palmyra.
Upon this boundless desert we now soon entered. The scene which it
presented was more dismal than I can describe. A red moving sand--or
hard and baked by the heat of a sun such as Rome never knows--low
gray rocks just rising here and there above the level of the plain, with
now and then the dead and glittering trunk of a vast cedar, whose roots
seemed as if they had outlasted centuries--the bones of camels and
elephants, scattered on either hand, dazzling the sight by reason of their
excessive whiteness--at a distance occasionally an Arab of the desert,
for a moment surveying our long line, and then darting off to his
fastnesses--these were the objects which, with scarce any variation, met
our eyes during the four wearisome days that we dragged ourselves
over this wild and inhospitable region. A little after the noon of the
fourth day, as we started on our way, having refreshed ourselves and
our exhausted animals at a spring which here poured out its warm but

still grateful waters to the traveller, my ears received the agreeable
news that toward the east there could now be discerned the dark line,
which indicated our approach to the verdant tract that encompasses the
great city. Our own excited spirits were quickly imparted to our beasts,
and a more rapid movement soon revealed into distinctness the high
land and waving groves of palm trees which mark the site of Palmyra.
It was several miles before we reached the city, that we suddenly found
ourselves--landing as it were from a sea upon an island or continent--in
a rich and thickly peopled country. The roads indicated an approach to
a great capital, in the increasing numbers of those who thronged them,
meeting and passing us, overtaking us, or crossing our way. Elephants,
camels, and the dromedary, which I had before seen only in the
amphitheatres, I here beheld as the native inhabitants of the soil.
Frequent villas of the rich and luxurious Palmyrenes, to which they
retreat from the greater heats of the city, now threw a lovely charm
over the scene. Nothing can exceed the splendor of these sumptuous
palaces. Italy itself has nothing which surpasses them. The new and
brilliant costumes of the persons whom we met, together with the rich
housings of the animals they rode, served greatly to add to all this
beauty. I was still entranced, as it were, by the objects around me, and
buried in reflection, when I was roused by the shout of those who led
the caravan, and who had attained the summit of a little rising ground,
saying, 'Palmyra! Palmyra!' I urged forward my steed, and in a moment
the most wonderful prospect I ever beheld--no, I cannot except even
Rome--burst upon my sight. Flanked by hills of considerable elevation
on the East, the city filled the whole plain below as far as the eye could
reach, both toward the North and toward the South. This immense plain
was all one vast and boundless city. It seemed to me to be larger than
Rome. Yet I knew very well that it could not be--that it was not. And it
was some time before I understood the true character of the scene
before me, so as to separate the city from the country, and the country
from the city, which here wonderfully interpenetrate each other and so
confound and deceive the observer. For the city proper is so studded
with groups of lofty palm trees, shooting up among its temples and
palaces, and on the other hand, the plain in its immediate vicinity is so
thickly adorned with magnificent structures of the purest marble, that it

is not easy, nay it is impossible at the distance at which I contemplated
the whole, to distinguish the line which divided the one from the other.
It was all city and all country, all country and all city. Those which lay
before me I was ready to believe were the Elysian Fields. I imagined
that I saw under my feet the dwellings of purified men and of gods.
Certainly they were too glorious for the mere earth-born. There was a
central point, however, which chiefly fixed my attention, where the vast
Temple of the Sun stretched upward its thousand columns of polished
marble to the heavens, in its matchless beauty casting into the shade
every other work of art of which the world can boast. I have stood
before the Parthenon, and have almost worshipped that divine
achievement of the immortal Phidias. But it is a toy by the side of this
bright crown of the Eastern capital. I have been at Milan, at Ephesus, at
Alexandria, at Antioch; but in