I had the honour of writing to you from Damascus on the 15th of August, 1810; soon after my arrival in that city from Palmyra. The unsettled state of the government of Damascus obliged me to prolong my stay there for upwards of six weeks. I again left it in the middle of September to visit Baalbec and the Libanus. My route lay through Zahle, a small but prosperous town on the western side of the valley Bekaa, the ancient Coelosyria, and from thence to Baalbec, where I remained three days; then to the top of the Libanus, the Cedars and Kannobin, from whence following the highest summits of the mountain, I returned to Zahle by the villages called Akoura and Afka. Descending the Bekaa I proceeded to the Druse territory of Hasbeya; this village is at the foot of Djebel el Shikh, or Mount Hermon, and is famous for its wells of bitumen judaicum and for the cinnabar found near it; from thence I went to Banias, the ancient Cæsarea Philippi, where I saw some ruins, and copied some inscriptions. At an hour’s distance from it is the source of the river El Dhan (Jordan), in the plain of the Houle, or lake Samachonitis. Three hours from it, upon the top of a mountain, are the ruins of the ancient city of Boustra, mentioned in the holy scriptures. I returned to Damascus over the chain of mountains called Djebel Heish, which under the different names of Djebel Adjoulan and Djebel Belkaa continues southerly along the eastern borders of the Dead Sea. I remained this time only a fortnight at Damascus; it was preparatory to an excursion into a region which till a few years ago had never been visited by European travellers; I mean the country called Haouran, the patrimony of Abraham, of which Dr. Seetzen, the German traveller, had seen a part four years ago, previous to his memorable tour round the Dead Sea. During a fatiguing journey of twenty-six days I explored this country as far as a five days journey to the south and south-east of Damascus; I went over the whole of the Djebel Haouran, or mountain of the Druses, who have in these parts a settlement of about twenty villages; I passed Bosz ra (بُصره), a place likewise mentioned in the books of Moses, and not to be confounded with Boustra, (بُستره); I then entered the desert to the south-east of it, and returned afterwards to Damascus through the rocky district on the foot of the Djebel Haouran, called El Ledja. At every step I found vestiges of ancient cities, saw the remains of many temples, public edifices, and Greek churches, met at Shohbe with a well-preserved amphitheatre, at other places with numbers of still standing columns, and had opportunities of copying many Greek inscriptions which may serve to throw some light upon the history of this almost forgotten corner. The inscriptions are for the greater part of the Lower Empire, but some of the most elegant ruins have their inscriptions dated from the reigns of Trajan and M. Aurelius. The Haouran with