Just across the ravine, on the opposite hillside, is a rough stone house eight or ten feet high with a low, flat roof. This is a “Kahn,” or an inn—a kind of lodging house to accommodate caravans which are always passing between Egypt, Jerusalem, Damascus, Palmyra and Bagdad. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF A CARAVANSARY.] From an hour before the sun goes down, until eight o’clock at night, one can see caravan after caravan of camels—sometimes a string of them a half mile long—coming across the hills, laden with wines, carpets, dried fruits, hand-made silks, Persian carpets, and all manner of Oriental merchandise. Slowly, but patiently, these “ships of the desert” move on beneath their immense cargo of freight. One caravan after another comes in, until from 100 to 200 camels may be seen around one Kahn. The burdens are removed, the several merchants putting their goods in separate piles. The ships are anchored. The tired brutes lie down and are fed. The merchants and camel-drivers gather round the fire, seating themselves on the ground, folding their limbs up under them as though they had no bones in them. Beans, peas, dates, olives, mutton or kid—and sometimes both—are put into one pot and all boiled together. When it is done, as many of these hard-featured, grim-visaged, wrinkled-browed, shaggy-haired Arabs as can, huddle around one bowl. They have no knives or forks. Sometimes you see a wooden spoon, but usually they thrust their horny hands into the bowl, and then cram their fists into their countenances—they are the most open-countenanced people I ever saw. They are the most ravenous eaters I ever saw. My dragoman offered to bet ten dollars that one Arab could drink a quart of coffee, eat a roast turkey, two loaves of bread, and three pounds of rice at one meal! And I am quite sure that one who is acquainted with an Arab’s capacity for stuffing will never make a wager like that. The meal being over, a certain weed, used as tobacco, is brought out and smoking is indulged in. Now the shepherds across the branch, with their reed pipes strike up a plaintive tune which floats over the valley and echoes from the distant hills. It strikes also a responsive chord in the hearts of the merchants and camel-drivers. They now bring out their rude instruments of music, and play and sing, chant and dance, for hours, much after the order of wild Indians. In their ideas of dress and propriety, in their customs and habits of life generally, these children of the desert are as primitive, as rude and uncultivated, as were their fathers 4000 years ago.