Nature in Syria seems always to have something of the supernatural about her. Not only in the petrifactions of the Lejja and the silent stone cities east of Jordan is this the case. The whole country offers you stones when you ask for trees, and that mere fact of its stoniness is enough to lend it the air of another world. As an indirect consequence trees, when they are found, assume a factitious importance, and a supernatural significance either for good or evil. Some of the fairest plants of Syria are treacherous as they are fair. One of our company, in gathering sprays of a peculiarly lovely creeper, somewhat resembling a white passion-flower, had his hand wounded with invisible but virulent needles which caused it to swell and gave great pain. The green spots, where grass and trees abound, tempt the unwary to drink and rest in them. But they are the most dangerous places in the land, and some of them are deadly from malaria. On the other hand, a tree in a treeless country is an object of preciousness inconceivable by any who have not come upon it from the wilderness. In the distance it beckons the traveller with the promise of shade and water. Arrived beneath its branches, life takes on a new aspect; kindly voices are heard in the rustle of its leaves, and gracious gifts seen in its shadow and its fruit. It is said that our fleur-de-lis pattern, often supposed to represent the flower of the lily or the iris, is really an Eastern symbol. The central stem is the sacred date-palm, while the side-lines and the horizontal band stand for ox-horns tied to the stem to avert the evil eye. It is no wonder if by the ancient Semites trees were regarded as demoniac beings, or as growing from the body of a buried god.[51] Such traditions are no longer to be found in their ancient forms, but they linger in a vague sense of the holiness of conspicuous trees, which may be seen covered with rags of clothing hung on them by natives. A like play of imagination has from time immemorial haunted the pools--especially those whose dark waters made them seem bottomless--with holy or unholy mystery. Still more terrible is the superstitious dread with which the natives regard undrained morasses. The Serbonian Bog on the south coast has from of old been regarded with special fear, owing to its treacherous appearance of sound earth. The marsh in which the Abana loses itself shares with the Serbonian Bog its grim distinction, chiefly on account of its deep black wells, which the natives take to be man-devouring whirlpools.