Ap. 30. [30 April 1914] We rode through the hills, we saw the last
camel herds which we shall see, we passed through the meagre
outlying cultivation where the peasants were plucking the ripe
five-inch -high barley out of the ground, and so we came down onto
Dumair [Dumayr] and I took my last bearing on the pediment of its
temple. It was still so early as we rode through the village threshing
fields, where the barley crop was piled and ready to be trodden out,
that we decided to go on for an hour, and lo the earth played us the
same trick which it played yesterday - there was nothing whatever
growing on it. So we rode on wearily, on and on with the snows of Mt
Hermon [Sheikh, Jebel esh] shining far away before us, and a blazing
sun striking us in the face. And at last, after more than 11 hours' riding,
we came to the village of 'Adra ['Adhra] and camped there, some five
hours from Damascus [Dimashq (Esh Shams, Damas)]. It was here
that I picked up my camels on the first day's journey out of Damascus,
and climed into the Shidad with all Arabia before me. There is a
dramatic fitness in our having pitched our last camp on the very same
spot whence we set out. But if I had been as tired then as I am now, I
should have turned back and not gone forward in Arabia.