“The Sheik furnished me with horses, and we set out to go to Biban-el-Meluke, and went about a mile to the north, in a sort of street, on each side of which the rocky ground about ten feet high has rooms cut into it, some of them being supported with pillars; and, as there is not the least sign in the plain of private buildings, I thought that these in the very earliest times might serve as houses, and be the first invention after tents, and contrived as better shelter from wind, and cold of the nights. It is a sort of gravelly stone, and the doors are cut regularly to the street. We then turned to the north west, enter'd in between the high rocky hills, and went in a very narrow valley. We after turn'd towards the south, and then to the north west, going in all between the mountains about a mile or a mile and a half…. […]