As I contemplated the sandy wilderness before me, it required a special effort of the imagination to believe that it was once the home of a powerful race which has long disappeared. It recalled, rather, scenes I had witnessed in the arid Sahara or in the barren wastes of northern Chile and southern Peru. The only traces now left here of their once mighty empire are the numerous tells which dot the wide expanse of the desert plain. Beneath the superincumbent earth of these frequent mounds, are all that remains of the homes of the people who inhabited these parts in the long, long ago. Some of these tells, which rise up everywhere in this region like islands in the sea, may some day, under the well-directed work of the archæologist, yield up long concealed monuments that will be of priceless value to the historian and add immensely to our rapidly increasing knowledge of the former inhabitants of this once famous land. Recent discoveries in so many other parts of Mesopotamia render such a conjecture eminently probable. We interrupted our journey between the Euphrates and the Tigris by making a short side trip to Urfa, formerly the great city of Edessa. It, like Tarsus, was once a celebrated literary center and for that reason, if for no other, it had, for at least one of our party, a very special attraction. Like all the old cities of the East, Urfa is rich in myths and legends as well as in historic memories both sacred and profane. According to a Jewish legend which identified it with the Arach of the Bible, it was founded by Nimrod, “the mighty hunter before the Lord.”[298] Another legend attributes the city’s foundation to Enoch, the Hermes Trismegistes of the Orientals. Equally fabulous was the tradition about the tent of the patriarch Jacob, which, it was averred, was preserved in Edessa until it was destroyed by a thunderbolt in the reign of Emperor Antoninus. But these and similar tales regarding the antiquity of Edessa are all based on myths and fables, for its history dates only from the beginning of the little Kingdom of Osrhoene, which was not founded until 132 B. C. There is, however, a legend--one of the most beautiful of the early Christian Church--which is connected with Edessa and which deserves more than a passing notice. It was supposed for a long time to explain why Edessa became, at an early date, not only the first Christian city of Mesopotamia but also its greatest religious center, and to account for its preponderating influence in the spread of the Gospel throughout the Orient. Humanly speaking, such good fortune could not have befallen so humble a community as that of Osrhoene, which was at first composed of but a small number of Christians, and which, in the natural course of events, would have made but slow progress in a pagan or Jewish environment which, if not openly hostile, was decidedly indifferent.