When Heraclius beheld his armies, one after another, defeated, and his efforts to rally the Bedouin tribes end only in secession and hostile risings throughout Mesopotamia, he gave up Syria as lost, and fell back from Roha upon Samsât. But he was in peril even there. For, after reducing Membij and other fortresses within the Syrian frontier, Khâlid made a dash into Cilicia, and ravaged Marásh and the country lying to the west of Samsât.[313] The Emperor, alarmed at his line of retreat being thus threatened, retired altogether from the scene; and, relinquishing the fairest provinces of his realm--provinces sacred to the Christian faith--into the hands of his enemies, resolved to recross the Bosphorus. Wending his sad way westward, he reached (so the Arabian annalists tell us) an eminence from whence a last glimpse might be had of the wooded hills and sunny plains that were vanishing in the southern horizon. Heraclius turned to gaze, exclaiming, ‘Peace be with thee, holy and blessed land! Syria, fare thee well! There is for me no more returning unto thee; neither shall any Roman visit thee for ever, but in fear and trembling, until the accursed Antichrist shall come.’[314] It was but ten years before that the same Emperor, performing on foot a pilgrimage to Jerusalem through this same beautiful province, to commemorate the recovery of the ‘true Cross’ and his own signal victories in the East, had cast aside a rude missive from the Arabian Prophet demanding his submission to Islam. What seemed then the wild phantasy of a maniac was now an accomplished fact. [Sidenote: Story of Jabala, the Ghassanide Prince.]