DAMASCENE TRADITIONS.
There is nothing in the way of safe tradition in Damascus. They will show you—yes, what will they not show you? I let them tell me everything, and have given no interdict to our dragoman. He is to tell me all the wildest traditions he pleases, and take me to every sacred spot, and I am to listen. No wonder he has brought me to the house of Ananias, the good friend of the blind Saul, before he became the far-seeing apostle to the Gentiles. We had to leave our carriage and go through several narrow and dirty streets, and got thoroughly wearied by the walk, and then had to wait for a key, and be surrounded by begging children, and be pounded between donkeys with heavily-burdened panniers, and be led down a damp stairway into the darkness, to find the way to the house of Ananias.
There is no harm in asking questions. So, to the question as to how they know this is where he lived, the answer came:
“Until lately, nobody knew where Ananias lived. But some years ago a learned man from the west came here and told us this was the place, and so it must be true.”
Now, I take this comfort: Ananias lived somewhere in Damascus, and there is as much probability that he lived here as anywhere else. That is enough for me. Why should we disturb things of such little moment?
But there is not much room for doubting the neighborhood of the place where Paul entered the city. It was the gate nearest the southern side of the city. The old Roman road northward terminated at the gate. It is probable that no change has taken place in the road, and that it follows just the general line, and even the curves, that it did in the remote period. On this southern side of Damascus there has been but little change in the wall from Paul’s day to ours. You can see at a glance that all the lower part of the wall is of Roman work. The blocks are large, clear cut, and brought into closest brotherhood without a grain of mortar. The joining is still perfect. It was the wall of Paul’s time, and only the upper part has been torn down and rebuilt. It is as easy to see the difference between Roman and Turkish workmanship as to trace the line between a Moslem mosque and the Theseum in Athens.
They will show you, in Damascus, the very place where Paul was let down from the wall in a basket. Let them enjoy their definite locality! But I did get, very near the alleged spot, an idea which I had never had before—that there was a mode of building which favored the letting down of any one from the top of the wall. One can see, in several places on this same southern side of Damascus, that people live in houses adjusted on the top of the wall itself. I saw one of these diminutive houses which projected over the wall so far that one might well wonder why it did not fall down to the earth. What more natural thing than that Paul was let down from just such a place. There was not a gate in the wall near by, and nothing was more natural and easy than to aid his escape in this way.
I lingered some time about the Roman gateway. It is an enchanting spot. The great blocks of stone, the pillars, the archway, the smooth stones, over which you walk to reach it, the general curve of the wall, tell of the Roman times, and bring you face to face with the little church in Damascus which was soon to set the whole eastern and western world ablaze by its leading of Paul to the light. Along all the ways, out by this Roman gate, the people were twisting silk, and getting it ready for the loom. It was of hard fiber, yellow, rich, and glistening in the afternoon shimmer of the sun, as it came back from the pink sides of the Anti-Libanus mountains. There was no available spot which was not utilized by long stretches of the silk cord. It was drawn off in all directions, and we had to walk carefully to keep from stumbling against the twister’s twist.