st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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6 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
miles of rustling boughs and deepest shade, the city
spreads out her whole length, as a man falls flat,
face-forward on the brook, that he may drink and
drink again
: so Damascus, thirsting for ever, lies
down with her lips to the stream, and clings to its
rushing waters." Standing, as it does, at the western
extremity of the great desert plain of El-Hauran,
which stretches away right to the Euphrates, no city
of any size could have existed here, unfed by such
living waters. "Without the Barada (the ancient
Abana), says Porter, 1 the plain would be a parched
desert; but now aqueducts intersect every quarter,
and fountains sparkle out in almost every dwelling,
while innumerable canals extend their ramifications
over the vast plain, clothing
it with verdure and
beauty."
To what a degree the city and its surrounding
orchards literally drink in the waters of its two
streams, may be gathered from the fact that after
they have escaped from its suburbs they flow with
greatly-diminished volume to a lake, or cluster of three
small lakes, a few miles east of Damascus, and there
1 "
Five Years in Damascus," 1855, i., p. 27. As a remark
able instance of the extent to which travellers may differ in
their estimate of the same scenery, it may be noted that while
Dr. Robinson, "Biblical Researches" (ii. 481), thought the
view inferior to that from the northern heights of London,
Porter considers that the "view that presents itself to the eye
of the traveller as he surmounts the last ridge of Antilibanus,
after passing the bleak and barren slopes beyond, is rich and
grand, almost surpassing conception."
But we are all familiar
with the way in which our impressions of a spot are modified
by our previous expectations.