Not only is the Moslem saint not dead, in our acceptation of the term, but his tomb is his house in which he continues to live and in which he receives the petitions of those who have recourse to him in their difficulties. And yet more. According to the implicit belief of his devotees he can leave his tomb, go on long journeys and return again. Firmly believing in a great invisible organization of saints and in the picturesque al-Khader, who is reputed to wander continuously through the lands of Islam performing everywhere the will of Allah, and in the countless deceased but still very active and ubiquitous saints, the life of the pious Mussulman is indeed, as has truly been observed “hedged around everywhere by the Unseen.” Our journey from Tarsus to Aleppo was a rarely enjoyable one. At every turn of the road we saw something of unique historic or legendary interest. Everything--mountain crags, swirling rivers, foaming torrents, moss-covered castles, crumbling churches, that would have enraptured a Hobbema or a Ruysdael--held so much of glamour and romance that we seemed all the while to be traveling in a veritable fairyland. High above the dark gray crest of Amanus were motionless masses of bright, cumulus clouds which, under some magic influence seemingly, had grouped themselves into the forms of Norman donjons and Saracen strongholds. And hovering near these fantastic shapes, fashioned from the mountain vapor, was the figure of the giant rock of eastern fable. “Verily,” I said to my companion, “we are in the land of the jinn and they are here giving us an exhibition of their power over inanimate nature.” Having the authority of Mohammed for their belief in these supernatural beings of smokeless fire, is it surprising to find the untutored Mussulman ascribing to their agency what he cannot conceive as being done by human means? It is the jinn “riding in the whirlwind,” that cause, he firmly believes, the gyrating pillars of sand to sweep over the desert and the portentous waterspouts to rise from the troubled sea, as it is the jinn that transform clouds into countless forms of animate and inanimate nature, which oriental fancy so readily discerns in a cloud-dappled sky. Should one then be surprised at the exquisite pleasure which the wonder-loving followers of the Prophet find in the recital of the famous stories of “A Thousand Nights and a Night”--stories in which the marvelous is so conspicuous and in which the jinn play so important a rôle? While traveling this once densely populated region, we recalled a saying of the Arabs that in the triangle comprised between Hama, Antioch, and Aleppo are found the remains of no fewer than three hundred and sixty-five cities. This statement is, doubtless, an exaggeration but we were willing to accept the estimate of Reclus that there are within this area “over a hundred Christian towns dating from the fourth to the seventh century and still almost intact.”[268]