Damascus lies like an oasis on the edge of a great desert. It is as much the gift of the river Abana as Egypt is of the Nile. Rising amid the snows of the Anti-Lebanon range, the Abana (the modern Barada) flows some fourteen miles through rocky wâdis, then flings its ice-born waters into the desert, giving life and prosperity to a great city. Its seven branches water a plain thirty by ten miles in extent, and their work done, lose themselves in the desert beyond. The river literally has no destination, no mouth.
The plain of Damascus is a forest of fruit trees, a most attractive setting for luxuriant plantations of vegetables and gardens of gay flowers. Looking down upon the city from the hills to the west, the appearance is of a thick wood studded with many houses, and pierced with shining minarets.
Damascus is the oldest of all cities, that is, it has longest been the continuous habitation of man. It antedates Nineveh, Babylon, and Memphis, all of which in turn conquered it; yet Damascus endures while they are crumbled into dust ....
