Pictures of Damascus.


Damascus from the Anti-Lebanon--Entering the City--A Diorama of
Bazaars--An Oriental Hotel--Our Chamber--The Bazaars--Pipes and
Coffee--The Rivers of Damascus--Palaces of the Jews--Jewish Ladies--A
Christian Gentleman--The Sacred Localities--Damascus Blades--The Sword
of Haroun Al-Raschid--An Arrival from Palmyra.

"Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the
waters of Israel?"--2 Kings, v. 12.


Damascus, _Wednesday, May_ 19, 1852.

Damascus is considered by many travellers as the best remaining type of an
Oriental city. Constantinople is semi-European; Cairo is fast becoming so;
but Damascus, away from the highways of commerce, seated alone between the
Lebanon and the Syrian Desert, still retains, in its outward aspect and in
the character of its inhabitants, all the pride and fancy and fanaticism
of the times of the Caliphs. With this judgment, in general terms, I
agree; but not to its ascendancy, in every respect, over Cairo. True, when
you behold Damascus from the Salahiyeh, the last slope of the
Anti-Lebanon, it is the realization of all that you have dreamed of
Oriental splendor; the world has no picture more dazzling. It is Beauty
carried to the Sublime, as I have felt when overlooking some boundless
forest of palms within the tropics. From the hill, whose ridges heave
behind you until in the south they rise to the snowy head of Mount Hermon,
the great Syrian plain stretches away to the Euphrates, broken at
distances of ten and fifteen miles, by two detached mountain chains. In a