The approach to cities and villages is as characteristic as any other aspect of them. There is a look from afar peculiar to the settlements of different countries. As seen from a distance American settlements are chiefly noticeable for the chimneys, the sharp spires of churches, the long, monotonous lines of factory buildings and mills and often the pointed shape of house roofs. Add to these enormous bridges, miles of railroad yards and cars, a nimbus of smoke and you have the elements from which to make a view of any good-sized town. For the smaller, sweeter, country places you must subtract some of the above features and substitute some woodsy and meadowy effects. In Syria the contrasts with our more familiar scenes are plain to us in the distant view of its cities and villages. Instead of the triangular shape is the square look of the buildings. Instead of chimneys and spires are the huge domes resting on square substructures, and the pencil-like minarets rising up among them. The distant view of Jerusalem is one of the most pleasing in the entire country. It has been one of the standard charms of Palestine, delighting warrior, poet and pilgrim, and more lately student, missionary and tourist. There she sits with her feet in deep valleys, her royal waist girdled with the crenelated wall and her head crowned with the altar sites of ancient time. There are about her the things that charm the poetic sense,—age, chivalry, religion. Not even eternal Rome can be so rich in these and so equally possessed of them all. Though it is not always the case, yet the greater number of Syrian cities and villages seek hilly sites.[33] The ports cannot always do this, though Jaffa does. Damascus spreads out over a low flat area. Ramleh and Ludd, being plain dwellers, must live in lowlands. But defense is very commonly sought by settling on the sides or top of a hill and building the houses close together, if not one above another, as if in steps. ----- ----- Garden plots and vineyards are fenced in with hastily-constructed walls of the loose stone picked up on the inside.[34] Between these curving walls run sinuous lanes[35] into the villages from the paths and roads outside. ----- -----