By this time most of the passengers in our coach have become very tired and irritable, though the loud breathing of some indicates that they have fallen into a restless slumber. Several are quite sick from the heat. At half-past five in the afternoon the sun has lost none of its midday glare, and the noisy wind from the desert still scorches with its furnace breath. On either side, the monotonous multitude of round black rocks strew the brown, burnt earth. The hills, which constantly draw in closer to us, seem as if they might have fair pasture-land on their lower slopes; but, save for the shining white dome of one Moslem tomb, they bear nothing higher than scattered grass and dusty thorn-bushes. We climb slowly over the watershed in the narrow neck of the plain, then speed swiftly down a steep incline; and, lo, we behold a veritable paradise of running water and heavily laden orchard trees, above which the glory of the setting sun gilds a forest of slender minarets. CHAPTER VII THE EARTHLY PARADISE According to the Moslem wise men, Jebel Kasyun is a very sacred mount; for upon it Abraham dwelt when there was revealed to him the supreme doctrine of the unity of God. Long before that, however, Adam lived here: some say that he was formed from the earth of this very mountain, and that the reddish streaks upon its sides are nothing less than the indelible bloodstains of murdered Abel. Yet as we stand by the little shrine known as the Dome of Victory, which crowns the summit, we are not thinking of ancient legends. Below us lies a scene of entrancing interest and of a peculiar beauty which is unlike that of any other beautiful prospect in the world. Back of us are the mighty, rock-buttressed Mountains of the East, from whose sterile heart is rent a deep, dark ravine which thunders with the cascades of the Abana. Then, issuing from its narrow defile, Abana is suddenly tamed. It spreads fan-like into seven quiet branches; and these in turn divide and subdivide into a myriad life-giving streams which sink at last in wilderness sands, but, ere they sink, make the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose.[24]