ABSTRACT
THOSE who would picture the journeys of caravan travellers must begin by visualizing the highways of which they made use. To do this, two things must be constandy borne in mind: available routes, and the original reasons for selecting them. Before the twentieth century there was only one method of crossing the Syrian Desert, and that was by camel caravan. Today, of course, "ships of the desert" can be understood to designate motor cars as well as camels; but in the history of desert transport this is the latest phase, and has no bearing whatever on the original problem. Until the twentieth century, only those parts of the desert might be crossed which could be negotiated by camels heavily laden; and water had, of necessity, to be within three or four calculable days of any large caravan. One might say here, parenthetically, that mail couriers, because they travelled alone and as fast as possible, were always less dependent upon formal routes than any other type of desert traveller. In accordance with that attribute of genius which is described as the capacity for taking infinite pains, those who crossed the desert by its various and arid ways not only took infinite pains, but endured the same for coundess monotonous days. The desert has ever and impartially imposed the same arduous conditions upon all those who thrust themselves into its inhospitable terrain: an inescapable routine of privation, repetition, and almost incredible slow deliberation.
