The morning was bright and the ride was inspiring, but very tame compared to the wild ride at Nazzip, for we ran steadily on over the sand-drifted desert, while the sweat on the horses' necks soon worked into a foam; and although the distance was nearer twenty-five than twenty miles, we reined up to the temple of the sun in about ninety minutes, when I gave two pieces of silver to each, for which they carried me in their arms through the ancient archway where there were once swinging gates nearly sixty feet in height, through which Solomon had many times passed. Then they lugged me to the market and coaxed me to buy them a camel bone for soup, which I did, on the promise that I was to have some of the soup, but I forgot to come around on time. [Illustration: RUINS OF TADMOR, WHERE I BADE FAREWELL TO JONA, HIS FAVORITE, AND THE GRATEFUL FATIMA.] THE ABANDONED CASTLE Jona, as I expected, found the castle, but no relative in Tadmor; nor anyone who had ever heard who built or occupied the Fort-Castle on the rocks overlooking the city. I then questioned him again as to whether there had ever been such a family tradition concerning Mary Magdalene as he had related, to which he stoutly maintained there had been, and that Mary Magdalene, the fair Galilean Goddess whose life was interwoven into the family of Jesus of Nazareth, had once been a bright feature in the traditional tree of the Rechabites, but when or by whom it was introduced he did not know. With Jona's plat of the ancient ruins, we passed up through the once beautiful city, where the immense granite columns from Egypt still stand single, in groups and in lines, retaining their caps, crowns and arches. As described by Jona, we found upon the hill which overlooks the city the once elegant rock castle, surrounded by a deep water channel quarried from the solid rock, as before described, but, apparently, no one had lived there for ages. Then, by following his plat west of the city proper, we found ancient family tombs as he had described, but the receptacles for the dead, four tiers high, were empty, save as a retreat for bats and owls. Still we found no documents concerning Jesus, and Jona's journey to Tadmor with his two wives was, as far as Jesus and the Goddess of Galilee were concerned, a complete failure. Unless his many evenings spent with me, relating the disjointed traditional reminiscences concerning Mary Magdalene, satisfies others as it does me of the heroic, unremitting zeal of woman when clouds of sorrow overshadow the day.