Upon several of the neighbouring hills are ruins of
towers, and as we proceeded down the valley for about three quarters of
an hour, I saw many small grottos in the rocks on both sides, hewn in
the rudest manner, and without any regularity or symmetry; the greater
part seemed to have been originally formed by nature, and afterwards
widened by human labour. Some of the largest which were near the ruined
city had, perhaps, once served as habitations, the others were evidently
sepulchres; but few of them were large enough to hold three corpses, and
they were not more than three or four feet high. I found no traces of
antiquity in any of them.
At half an hour from the last date-trees of Feiran, I saw, to the right
of the road, upon the side of the mountain, the ruins of a small town or
village, the valley in the front of which is at present quite barren. It
had been better built than the town above described, and contained one
very good building of hewn stone, with two stories, each having five
oblong windows in front. The roof
[p.617] has fallen in. The style of architecture of the whole strongly
resembles that seen in the ruins of St. Simon, to the north of Aleppo,
the mountains above which are also full of sepulchral grottos, like
those near Feiran.
