Early the next morning we saw a band of such Arab raiders passing across the plain a few miles west of us, and all day we proceeded with the greatest caution, for fear they might swoop down upon us. We afterwards learned that their last foray had been unsuccessful, and consequently they were returning to their encampment in an unamiable frame of mind which would have boded ill to us if we had happened to cross their path. Midway between Ain el-Beida and Palmyra, we made a détour to visit some mountains a little distance to the left of the trail. We found here two altars about six feet high, bearing bi-lingual inscriptions in Greek and Palmyrene, which related that they had been erected on March 21 of the year of Palmyra 425 (114 A. D.), and were dedicated to the “Most High God.” Near by could be seen the broken base of a third monument, but there were no other indications of human handiwork. We concluded that these altars must mark the course of the ancient highway, which the city was under obligation to maintain and protect. The hills on either side of the plain now drew very much nearer to us and, as we approached the narrow pass which leads to the desert city, we saw beside the road several strange mortuary towers. These are as characteristic a feature of the environs of Palmyra as are the tombs on the Appian Way of the approach to Rome. Several of the structures are in a fair state of preservation and show clearly the original form and use. They were each of three or four stories, the upper floors being reached by inside stairways. Each story consisted of one square room surrounded by _loculi_ for the reception of the dead, and before these, or standing within the room, were statues of the persons entombed in the niches. The statues either have been badly mutilated by the Arabs, who have a religious aversion to all such “idolatrous” representations, or have been destroyed by the vandalism of ignorant dealers in antiquities who, when they found it inconvenient to carry off whole figures, would break them and smuggle away the fragments. Many such heads, arms and feet have found their way to the coast cities of Syria, and some few have been sold to European palaces and museums. Our long journey down the pass ended at a low saddle between the hills, and we at last looked down upon Palmyra itself. Just below us stretched a vast, confused mass of broken, reddish stones, from which rose here and there a group of graceful columns or the massive wall of a ruined temple. Back of the city were the desert hills; before it lay the desert plain. Built by a spring at the crossroads of the wilderness—surely no other of the world’s great capitals had so strange a site as this one!