Note 135 — Chapter X · SYRIA AND THE LAND OF THE NABATAEANS.

The Austrian engineer, Joseph Tschernik (Petermann’s Geogr. Mittheil. 1875, Ergänzungsheft, xliv. p. 3, 9) found basalt-slabs of oil-presses not merely on the desert plateau at Kala’at el-Hossn between Hemesa and the sea, but also to the number of more than twenty eastward from Hemesa at el-Ferklûs, where the basalt itself does not occur, as well as numerous walled terraces and mounds of ruins at the same place; with terracings on the whole stretch of seventy miles between Hemesa and Palmyra. Sachau (Reise in Syrien und Mesopotamien, 1883, p. 23, 55) found remains of aqueducts at different places of the route from Damascus to Palmyra. The cisterns of Aradus cut in the rock, already mentioned by Strabo (xvi. 2, 13, p. 753), still perform their service at the present day (Renan, Phénicie, p. 40).