In spite of the naïve and often impossible localization of particular incidents of the story of Job, it is quite possible that the very old tradition is correct, and the mysterious Land of Uz across which roamed the herds and flocks of “the greatest of all the Children of the East” was this same free, fertile tableland along which we are now traveling. Before the Hauran was so largely given over to agriculture, it must have been an ideal grazing country; it has always been subject to forays by robber tribes from the desert;[19] and the “great wind from the wilderness” which smote the dwelling of Job’s eldest son[20] would perhaps nowhere else blow with such fury as on this high, open plateau. There was just such a great wind from the wilderness the last time I went to Damascus. The Hauran bears a deserved reputation for coolness and healthfulness; but that day, as happens two or three times each summer, there was a sirocco. The wind was indeed blowing—blowing a furious gale of perhaps thirty-five miles an hour; but it came straight from the eastern desert and scorched as if it had been a blast from an opened furnace door. I did not have a thermometer with me; but, from sirocco experiences elsewhere, I should judge that the temperature in the train was not under a hundred and five degrees. The drinking-water that we had brought for the journey became warm and nauseating; but we put it to good use in soaking the back of our necks, where it evaporated so quickly in the dry, burning wind that it stung like ice for a few seconds, and then was gone. Strange as it may seem, the only other way to mitigate the heat was to shut the car windows and _keep the breeze out_. There were fortunately some interesting incidents to enliven the long, hot ride over the monotonous plain. We did not see any of the renowned “strong bulls of Bashan,”[21] or any other cattle grazing on the plain, but we watched slow caravans bearing wheat to the coast, as they have been doing for millenniums past. They could never carry all the grain that this productive district might harvest, and the railways should prove a rich boon to the Hauran. We pondered curiously as to why the stations were never by any chance just at the towns and why the track should swing far to the right and left in great curves, as if it were ascending a difficult grade, when the only engineering problem involved in its construction could have been solved by laying a ruler on the map and drawing a straight line down the center of the level plain. A fellow-traveler explained to us that the course of the railway had not been determined by the usual considerations, such as economy of construction and the desirability of passing through the most densely populated districts, but by the amount of _bakhsheesh_ which wealthy landowners would pay the government in order to have the line pass through their estates.