present I am obliged to make a material change of route.
My farthest East is here at Aleppo. At Damascus, I was told by everybody
that it was too late in the season to visit either Baghdad or Mosul, and
that, on account of the terrible summer heats and the fevers which prevail
along the Tigris, it would be imprudent to undertake it. Notwithstanding
this, I should probably have gone (being now so thoroughly acclimated that
I have nothing to fear from the heat), had I not met with a friend of
Col. Rawlinson, the companion of Layard, and the sharer in his discoveries
at Nineveh. This gentleman, who met Col. R. not long since in
Constantinople, on his way to Baghdad (where he resides as British
Consul), informed me that since the departure of Mr. Layard from Mosul,
the most interesting excavations have been filled up, in order to preserve
the sculptures. Unless one was able to make a new exhumation, he would be
by no means repaid for so long and arduous a journey. The ruins of Nineveh
are all below the surface of the earth, and the little of them that is now
left exposed, is less complete and interesting than the specimens in the
British Museum.

There is a route from Damascus to Baghdad, across the Desert, by way of
Palmyra, but it is rarely travelled, even by the natives, except when the
caravans are sufficiently strong to withstand the attacks of the Bedouins.
The traveller is obliged to go in Arab costume, to leave his baggage
behind, except a meagre scrip for the journey, and to pay from $300 to
$500 for the camels and escort. The more usual route is to come northward
to this city, then cross to Mosul and descend the Tigris--a journey of
four or five weeks. After weighing all the advantages and disadvantages of
undertaking a tour of such length as it would be necessary to make before
reaching Constantinople, I decided at Beyrout to give up the fascinating
fields of travel in Media, Assyria and Armenia, and take a rather shorter
and-perhaps equally interesting route from Aleppo to Constantinople, by
way of Tarsus, Konia (Iconium), and the ancient countries of Phrygia,
Bithynia, and Mysia. The interior of Asia Minor is even less known to us
than the Persian side of Asiatic Turkey, which has of late received more
attention from travellers; and, as I shall traverse it in its whole
length, from Syria to the Bosphorus, I may find it replete with "green
fields and pastures new," which shall repay me for relinquishing the first