A desert route from Syria to Iraq is now in
regular use, by motor-car from Damascus. But in the eighteenth century a longer and more perilous way from Aleppo direct to Basra was taken by many hardy travellers going to or coming from the East. In the Hakluyt Society's new volume, The Desert Route to India (Quaritch, 25s.) Mr. Douglas Carruthers edits the journals—two unpublished hitherto—of four men who made the journey of 750 miles between 1745 and 1751. It was a serious adventure, taking at least a month, but the large caravans which the travellers joined were reasonably safe from Bedouin_ attack. The narratives--:especially that of John Carmichael, ex-gunner in the East India Company's service, who went froM Aleppo to Basfa in 1751—are of curious interest, for the route is seldom used nowadays, and even the late Miss Gertrude Bell only traversed part of it.
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