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Doctors and medicines were unobtainable, for all were requisitioned for the needs of the army, and in Damascus and Tripoli, in Hama and Homs, the epidemic spread like a forest fire. No help was sent from Constantinople, none was permitted to be brought by the charitable from abroad, for famine and pestilence among the Arabs were working for the policy of Jemal the Great.
It was, in fact, on the shores of the Lake of Homs, in the midst of the district over which the Amorites claimed rule. The Hittites were intruders from the north. The Egyptian monuments have shown us what they were like. Their skin was yellow, their eyes and hair were black, their faces were beardless.
But if the reader will glance at the map, he will see that by far the most direct communication with Bagdad would be to run the railway direct from there to Homs, thus making Homs rather than Aleppo the central junction of the system. From Homs lines would run northward to Aleppo, due west to Tripoli, and south-west to Beirut.
However, for the moment they contented themselves with occupying Homs, a town on the caravan route about a hundred miles north of Damascus. Then General Allenby ordered a further advance on Aleppo, the last stronghold of the Turks in the country; and on October 21st the 5th Cavalry Division with the armoured cars started on what was to be their last ride.
The health of the mission now called Dr. Dodge back to Beirût, and Mr. Smith completed the survey of Anti-Libanus alone; visited a village of Jacobite Syrians in the desert towards Palmyra; passed through Homs, and as far north as Hamah, or "Hamath the great;" then, bending his course homeward, he crossed Lebanon in the region of the Ansaireea, through Tripoli to Beirût.
The distance from the aviation field near Tripoli to Homs is 110 kilometers and is usually made in fifty minutes. It takes seven hours by steamer. The steamer follows no schedule and may return in a few days or sail on to Genoa or Syracuse or Bengasi. The plane route in general follows the shore line. The blue Mediterranean from two thousand meters above is not blue but black.
A well-known prediction to this effect, which has for ages exercised its influence on the vulgar and even the learned Mohammedan mind, gives the year 1883 of our era as the term within which these things are to be accomplished, and places the scene of the last struggle in Northern Syria, at Homs, on the Orontes. Islam is then finally to retire from the north, and the Turkish rule to cease.
Why an army Caproni and the Italian army, until the Fiume question arose, refused nothing to an American. So John went to the Governo della Tripolitania Stato Maggiore and was given a general permit to make his trips from Tripoli to Homs and Zuara in the Caproni mail plane. The mail to Homs is carried on Wednesday and that to Zuara on Saturday.
He was in fact one of the very many French officers, who were detached to the Egyptian army then lying in cantonments in Syria, after its victories over the Turks at Homs and Konieh. I had seen and greatly admired these troops all over Syria and at Acre.
On the 28th we effected a junction with them at Deraa, and Damascus fell on the 30th. On 6 October cavalry, advancing between Mts. Lebanon and Hermon, seized Zahleh and Rayak between Damascus and Beyrut, which the French occupied on the 7th, while the British took Sidon. On the 9th we were at Baalbek, on the 13th at Tripolis, and on the 15th at Homs.
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