"I fervently pray that we may," I observed. We reached port in safety, but the next voyage the Neva went down, the passengers and crew escaping with difficulty in the boats. One more example to show a chief cause of the mysterious disappearance of vessels. In our younger days, when on board a small wine-laden schooner bound from Oporto to Dublin, we lay hove-to with hatches battened down in a heavy gale of wind far to the westward in the Bay of Biscay. On going on deck at night and making our way forward, with the dark mountain billows rising up on either side, we could find no one on the watch. No light was burning at the mast-head; the bows of a stranger might have come crushing down on the schooner before we could have been seen. Our heart sank with the dread that the watch had fallen overboard, but at length we discovered Pat, the cabin-boy, stowed away in a small round house aft sunk in the deck, the only "watch." Had a brace or sheet parted we might have been swamped before a soul on board would have awoke. Possibly a steamer striking the schooner, while she sent us to the bottom, would herself have suffered no small damage, or perhaps have foundered also. To return, however, to the main subject of our article. The following list of lost Atlantic steamships is as complete as the records within reach supply: 1811. President, mysteriously disappeared. 1843. Columbia, wrecked on coast of Nova Scotia. 1846. Great Britain, wrecked on coast of Ireland. Tweed, on Alacrames Reef, off Yucatan. 1848. Forth, wrecked on same reef. 1850. Helena Sloman, foundered. 1852. St. George, burned. Amazon, burned. Franklin, wrecked. Arctic, run down. City of Philadelphia, wrecked. 1856. Pacific, disappeared. Le Lyonnais, run down. 1857. Tempest, disappeared. Indian, 1858. New York, foundered. Austria, burned. 1859. Argo, wrecked on coast of Newfoundland. wrecked on coast of Nova Scotia. Hungarian, wrecked on coast of Nova Scotia. 1869. United Kingdom, disappeared. Germania and Cleopatra, both wrecked on coast of Newfoundland. 1870. City of Boston, disappeared. Cambria, wrecked on Irish coast. 1872. Dacian, wrecked on coast of Nova Scotia. wrecked on Irish coast. Tripoli, 1873. Britannia, wrecked in the Clyde. Atlantic, wrecked on coast of Nova Scotia. City of Washington, wrecked on coast of Nova Scotia. Ismalia, disappeared. Missouri, wrecked on the Bahamas. Ville du Havre, run down. We should indeed have undertaken a lugubrious task were we alone to chronicle the loss of the numerous magnificent steamers whose keels lie beneath the waves of the Atlantic, did we not attempt to show how the causes which brought about their destruction may in a great measure be avoided in future. It is a terrible fact, which may startle many of our readers, that in the space of thirty-three years since the unfortunate President left New York on the 11th March, 1841, never again to appear to mortal ken, leaving not a trace of her fate, nearly fifty fine steamers, including the West India mail-boats, have, while on their passage across the Atlantic, been utterly destroyed. Of these, seven, after leaving port, mysteriously disappeared and have never since been heard of; four were run down by or collided with other vessels; four were burned; one, the Canadian, ran on sunken ice in the Straits of Belle Isle on the 4th of June, 1861; one, the Helena Sloman, foundered in mid-ocean in November, 1850; and another, the Hibernia, met the same fate off the coast of Ireland in 1868. The remainder of the melancholy list, amounting to nearly thirty vessels, were wrecked either on the Irish or British coasts, on those of America, or on islands or rocks off them. Fully eight of these ran in foggy weather on the shores of either Nova Scotia or Newfoundland on their westward voyages, a sufficient warning, it might be supposed, to captains to give the land a wide berth in those latitudes. One only, the Iowa, an American vessel, was wrecked on the French coast, near Cherbourg, in 1864. It is generally supposed that shipwrecks are caused by the rage of the elements, but of the thirty vessels which went on shore only three or four appear to have directly suffered in consequence of heavy weather. Miscalculations as to distances run and courses steered, clouded skies, dark nights, `and more generally than all, dense fogs, were the primary causes of the destruction of all these vessels-if, as as in too many instances, a reckless desire to make a quick run should not rather be set down to the account. Comparatively few of these shipwrecks occurred without serious loss of life, at least four thousand persons having perished among the passengers and crews who were on board. When the Atlantic was wrecked on Meagher's Head, off Nova Scotia, in 1873, no less than 562 persons were drowned. With the City of Glasgow, in 1854, 480 people disappeared. When the Austria was burned in mid-ocean, A.D. 1858, 470 lives were lost; with the Arctic, 300; with the Anglo-Saxon, 372; and with the Ville du Havre, 226. The destruction of other vessels caused the loss of fewer lives than those named, as, several on the list from one to two hundred human happily, fewer passengers were on board; but with beings perished. On an average, upwards of three vessels have been lost every two years. The widest gap occurs between the wreck of the Great Britain in a storm on the coast of Ireland in 1846, and the foundering in mid-ocean of the Helena Sloman in 1850; while in 1873 no less than six large steamships were wrecked, run down, or disappeared, the most disastrous losses being those of the Atlantic and Ville du Havre. The most terrible beyond all description of those sad disasters was the loss of the Amazon, West India mail steamer, which left Southampton on the 2nd of January, 1852. She was the largest steamship ever then launched from an English dockyard, and was built of oak, teak, and Dantzic pine, the last being an exceedingly inflammable wood. Her officers and crew numbered 110 men, and she carried fifty passengers. From the first, doubts were entertained about the engine, which worked badly, and heated the surrounding wood. She had not been thirty-six hours at sea when, as she was entering the Bay of Biscay against a strong head-wind, flames suddenly burst forth from the engine-room, overcoming all the Her boats would;] child was saved, most of the hapless ones having been drowned in their berths below. It is evident that, whoever was to blame, there was error in judgment-faithless compasses or miscalculation as to course, or the fine ship would not have been cast away. By the careful training of officers for the mercantile marine, and by the selection only of such to responsible positions as have proved themselves to be steady and intelligent, can we hope that a similar accident will not again occur. efforts made to extinguish them. have carried all on board, but the last fatal act of one of the engineers had been to turn on the pipe of; the cistern which fed the boilers, so as to allow a continuous supply and prevent an explosion. Thus, no power could stop the blazing ship, and the captain not knowing what had occurred, in expectation that the boilers would exhaust themselves, waited till too late to lower the boats, several of which were on fire. The keels of others, to prevent them from swinging, were grasped in iron cradles, and when attempts were made to lower them by those ignorant of the fact, capsized with all on board. Two lifeboats, the pinnace, and dingy, ultimately got off with fifty-eight persons, the only ones saved out of the 162 who had left Southampton. Among those who perished was Eliot Warburton, author of the "Crescent and the Cross." The loss of the vessel was owing to her defective engines and the unprotected condition of the surrounding woodwork. The destruction of life, however, was entirely in consequence of the engineer's error in judgment and the way in which the boats were secured. Had they been lowered in time, all in the after-part of the ship might have been saved; but this would have been a most dangerous operation, from the speed at which the ship was tearing through the troubled waters. The President heads the list of mysterious disappearances. With what awful anxiety tidings of her were waited for can be remembered by many. None ever came. The last account we have of her is that she left New York on the 11th of March, 1841, having on board, among many passengers, a son of the Duke of Richmond, the Rev. B. Cookman, and poor Power, an author and the actor of Irish characters. Whether she caught fire, like the Amazon, or rushed headlong against an iceberg, or ran into, or was run down by, another vessel, like the Ville du Havre, will never be known. As icebergs are rarely met with in the course she would have taken, probably her fate was that of one or the other of those unhappy ships. More melancholy with regard to the number of lives sacrificed than even the loss of the President, was the destruction by fire of the Austria in mid-ocean on September 13, 1858, with 470 of her passengers and crew. No sooner did the flames appear than all discipline was overthrown, and in the mad rush to the boats many perished who, had order been maintained, might have been saved. Two of the most serious losses are still fresh in our memories, as they occurred only last year. Of the Ville du Havre, run down by the Lochearn, we have already spoken. One of the most frightful and sudden catastrophes in the annals of shipwreck was that of the Atlantic. She left Liverpool on the 20th of March, 1873, bound for New York, with about 1,000 persons on board, the greater number of whom were steerage passengers. Being short of coal, she was steering for Halifax on a dark night, when the officers of the watch, under the belief that the ship was much farther off the land than was the case, mistook one light for another, and she was run stem on to a ledge of rocks off Meagher's Head, twenty miles from the port. A frantic attempt was made to lower the boats, when, after striking several times, the ship rolled over into deep water and sunk, engulphing nearly six hundred human beings, the remainder having in the meantime sprung on to the rocks or climbed into the rigging. Not a woman or We repeat that there are few dangers in a passage across the Atlantic which may not by care, skill, and judgment be avoided. When we, however, consider the ordinary dangers of the sea in all regions, and remember that one steamer starts from a European or American port to cross the broad ferry every day in the year, we should be prepared to hear occasionally of accidents and disasters, though it must be granted that the loss of two per cent. in 1873 is painfully startling. All we can hope is that these losses may serve as a warning to others, and may induce that vigilance and caution and promptness of action which should be an officer's second nature, while a far stricter discipline than has hitherto generally prevailed is maintained over their crews. No accident occurs without a cause, and in rare instances is a tempest the real danger. THE LAND OF THE GIANT CITIES. BY THE REV. J. WRIGHT, DAMASCUS. NO. I. HAD made complete preparation for a thorough inspection of the ruins of Bashan and for becoming acquainted with their inhabitants. I had undertaken two preliminary visits, and had gained the confidence and friendship of most of the sheikhs and spiritual chiefs of the Druses. My colleague, the late Rev. J. O. Scott, and I had formed projects for occupying the whole of that interesting district with a network of schools which should receive our constant surveillance. Circumstances prevented this plan being carried out for the present. I resolved, however, to go and offer the Scriptures, and our other religious books and tracts, to every individual in all that region. An Australian student, who had completed his studies in Scotland for the ministry, and who was giving a few months to the study of Oriental languages in Damascus, previous to his return to his own land, eagerly entered into my project and zealously assisted me throughout. The British and Foreign Bible Society, whose readiness to do good is above all praise, placed a colporteur at our disposal, leaving me to choose the man. I chose Khalil Dawoud, a member of our church in Rasheiya, whom we had formerly employed as colporteur at the expense of the same society. When we were about to start we made the acquaintance of a pleasant party of Englishmen, who were travelling for the purpose of growing beards, and for other similarly cogent reasons. We all agreed to start on the following morning, and cross the field of forays" together, to Burak; but their master the dragoman determined otherwise, fearing the length and danger of the way. The next morning we waited for our new companions till an hour past the appointed time, and then started alone. As soon as the dragoman perceived that we were gone, he brought his party to my house to assure them of the fact also, and then taking them a few hours out of the city encamped them for the night. We left 21 Straight Street on the 4th April, about half-past ten o'clock A.M. As we passed along the street castward we encountered a string of camels entering the city laden with olive-wood for fuel. The husbandman during the fruit season marks the trees that are unfruitful, gives them special attention and cultivation, and if they still continue to "cumber the ground," they are cut down, and carried into the city on the backs of animals, and sold by weight for fuel. It is not pleasant meeting a row of camels with these crushing loads. Their cushioned feet make no noise on the pavement, and they swing so in the narrow streets that there is always some dexterity required to evade them. They are conducted along often without halter or bridle, and as they are exceedingly timorous they dart and jerk about in the most unexpected manner, like huge uncouth birds. Camels are very subject to panic. In the desert a whole caravan of them will sometimes scamper off over the plain in the wildest manner, like a flock of startled birds, and are only overtaken twenty or thirty miles off. A camel panic is a fearful event in the city. They rush along the narrow streets wildly, and nothing in their path need hope to live. The cry precedes them, "The camels are coming!" and the people rush into their shops and houses. The torrent of camels sweeps along till one slips and falls. The next in succession falls upon it, and so on till the last, when the street is one throbbing mass of living camel. Here and there on the right to see sides of columns peeping out of the mud walls. These are the remains or the north side of the double colonnade that stretched for a mile down the two sides of the Roman via recta, and made "the street called straight" in the days of Paul a splendid thoroughfare, unsurpassed in the magnificent capitals of modern Europe. We pass out of Bab Shurky (eastern gate) through one of the Roman side arches. The great central arch is broken down and filled up with bits of columns and blocks of Roman masonry. The other side arch is entire and filled up. Through this gate Khalid, "the sword of the Lord," entered by treachery in A.D. 634, and filled the adjoining streets with Christian blood; and near this, in 1148, the Crusaders, under Baldwin III, made their last feeble attempt to capture the city. As we look down the walls, in which we recognise pieces of the Roman period, we see houses on the ramparts, and windows overhanging the ditch. From such a place was Paul let down on the night of his memorable escape from Damascus. Our road lies through the native Christian cemetery. It is a horrible field of death. Many of the vaults are wide open, tainting the air for miles around and attracting the dogs and other wild animals from afar.* Among these vaults is an oblong building, arched over with a.slight curve at the top, and with a little air-hole in the end. Into this were gathered the fragments of the Christians murdered in 1860. When the order The people believe that the rapid decomposition of the body indicates a happy state of the soul, and it is a cause of great grief and scandal to the friends of any one should his body be found after the was given to stop the massacre, all the pieces of the Christians that the dogs had left were deposited in this mausoleum. There is an Arabic inscription on a soft limestone in the wall, now much defaced; but on my first visit to the place, eight years ago, I copied it. It is in rhyme, and runs thus, literally translated: us. "This is what the people of Shem (Damascus) have done unto "Avenge, O Lord thy slaughtered saints!" To that little cemetery the mission and consular families have made large contributions, giving sad proof of the unhealthy climate of Damascus. In one row, side by side, lie eight of the missionaries' children. Near them is the grave of the Rev. J. Orr Scott's beautiful young bride; but he, though due to Damascus, lies far from her he loved so well, in the bare red sand of Suez. The Rev. J. Frazer and wife in death are not divided. And there is here the grave of William Hamnets, an English mechanic and man of God, who was brought to Damascus by an Arab company to set up machinery, and kept in a feverish stye till he died. And here rests Buckle, who, with much pretentious scholarship, erected a literary pyramid with its base upwards, and received the last kind offices from the people whom he had laboured hard to misrepresent by means of his wondrous stores of second-hand learning, and by all the arts of a fascinating style. By the side of this man of letters, spoiled chiefly by the adulation of women, lies the unfortunate Countess Teleky, in accordance with a wish she had often expressed, even before her visit to Damascus. At a short distance from these rests one of a different type, William Broomfield, F.R.S., the kindly Christian gentleman and profound scientific scholar, whose memory is green in the love and esteem of all who knew him. We were now fairly on our way-colporteur, cook, and two muleteers-when the colporteur, seated lapse of a year not sufficiently decomposed. Probably it is to prevent between his two boxes on his little horse, dashed such a calamity that the cemetery is left unwashed, and the bodies uncoffined, a prey to wild beasts. past us like a bolt, disappearing in a cloud of dust THE LAND OF THE GIANT CITIES. which he left behind him like the smoke of a railway | train. "Bravo!" shouted the muleteers; but it was not a case for bravo, as it was entirely involuntary He soon appeared again, on the part of the rider. shooting off at a tangent in another direction, and presently, with a general clash, the horse disengaged himself from rider and boxes, and then turned round in the most gallant manner to learn the result. We rode up fearing the worst, but as Dawoud had only A fallen on his head there was no harm done. leathern water-bottle, however, had got crushed in the fall, and its precious contents, Scripture type of the evanescence of life, was spilled upon the ground and could not be gathered. The gardens and orchards through which we now pass are very beautiful. The light-green apricots, and dark-green walnuts, and silvery evergreen olives, interspersed here and there by red-brown pomegranates and white-stemmed poplars, quiver in the bright spring morning, each leaf catching from its neighbour sunbeams, and each flinging back to each burnished diamonds; and beneath the trees is the broad level carpet of green, fresh corn; and Hermon, in his glittering shroud, ever and anon shines like burnished silver through the vistas formed by the In front, at a distance of seven arching branches. or eight miles, the sombre wall of the black mountain seems to cross our path, each ravine flooded with wondrous tints, from roseate and pale violet to deepest indigo. In an hour we pass the Moslem village Babila, with its dome and minaret and saints' tomb. By the saints' tomb there is a tree with thousands of rags fastened to its branches. Every one who fastens a rag to a branch of this tree does a meritorious act, and some of these festoons are sometimes taken away to serve as charms. Passing the village, we are in the open level plain. Away to the left in front the mirage is playing fantastic tricks with the little conical tells of the Safa-elevating them into considerable mountains, mantled with groves and crowned with villages and fortresses, and girt around with seas, which reflect the shadows of the trees and towns, and give to the whole a wonderful appearance of reality. I have never passed here without seeing the mirage in one form or another. in an Passing the cultivated ground, we enter on a part of the plain where the grass grows deep and thick as Irish meadow. Largo flocks of cattle and camels are browsing about, and innumerable swarms of sheep and goats cover the face of the whole disAfter this the ground is thickly covered with trict. scented southernwood, the little shrubs being about a foot and a half high, through which our horses pick their steps. Here numerous storks, have to called by the Arabs "the father of luck," step out of our way in a stately, dignified manner, and eye us with curiosity as we pass from a distance of twenty We struck the basaltic formation at one yards. o'clock, and in half an hour more, having passed through a ruin on the eastern spur of Jebel el Aswad, we alight for lunch in a little grove of poplars at Nejha is the last village in the Damascus Nejha. plain on this road. It is built on a rising ground, and contains about eight houses and forty souls, all Moslems. A duct led off from the 'Awaj supplies it with a little dirty water. The men have an evil look, and two of them, with long guns and heavy bludgeons, are very anxious to take us in charge; but we dislike their looks and decline their escort, of course with great civility, explaining to them the nature of our guns, which blaze away at the rate of thirty shots a minute, rendering guard or escort unnecessary. The women have a gipsy appearance; one blue calico shirt, closely fitting at the neck, and extending to their toes, is their only garment. A sooty-looking cloth is wrapped round their heads, leaving the crown, that never felt a comb, bare, and permitting the hair to hang down their backs in coarse plaits. They wear an ornament stuck in their noses, and all have bracelets of glass or brass. Their tawny faces are horribly tattooed, from the lips down, and they have those sharp, quick, restless eyes, such as are seen in confirmed pickpockets; but they have the most lovely teeth, perfect in form, and white as the purest ivory. Unlike village women generally, they are as fanatical as their sisters in Damascus, and we could not get from them a pleasant look or word. The village has no ancient ruins, but it has two Latin inscriptions on an inverted column in the little mosque. They contain the names of Diocletianus and Maximianus, Constantinus, Constantius, and Constans. The column may have been brought from a distance. A few minutes after leaving Nejha we reach a broken bridge over the almost dry bed of the 'Awaj. This river has its origin in the springs of Hermon, passes Kefr Howar and Sasa, and flows into the Hejâny Marsh. It is very tortuous in its windings, and hence is called the "'Awaj," namely, the crooked. For several years this river has been called by travellers the Pharpar, and has found its way into modern maps under that name, without, as far as I can ascertain, a single claim to be so honoured. "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?" The language of Naaman, the Syrian captain, was no doubt a jealous burst of patriotic indignation; but the great general would not make himself ridiculous in the eyes of his followers by ranking the brook 'Awaj higher than the River Jordan, or by declaring that it was a river in which he could bathe at all. Nor would he have called it a river of Damascus, seeing that it is distant from the city a ride of three hours, and interposes, between itself and the plain of Damascus, other hand, the meanest follower in the Syrian's the whole range of the Jebel el Aswad. On the train would endorse his leader's boast, as would every Damascene in the city to-day, that the Abana and Pharpar were better than all the waters of Israel. On my In riding through this heated land, I am never one offers, but after two attempts to bathe in the able to resist the temptation of a cold bath when first attempt I lay down attractions for me. 'Awaj, I can safely say that its waters have now no on the pebbly bed of the river, held to the bottom by my nails, and let the water and sand run over me. I came out of the turgid stream as if I had been whitewashed. On my second attempt I plunged into what seemed to me a considerable pool, and found myself over the knees in mud, surrounded by tortoises and frogs and leeches. If Naaman meant the 'Awaj when he declared the Syrian waters superior to those of Palestine, he was certainly open to experience. The rivers of Damascus are its one great abiding charm, and every Damascene loves them passionately. The Barada is split up into different channels |