SIGHTS AND SCENES IN DAMASCUS.
The party remained three days at Damascus, and found the time none too great for seeing this wonderful city. Frank devoted each evening to writing an account of what they had seen during the day, and we are at liberty to copy the greater part of his story:
GENERAL VIEW OF DAMASCUS.
"When we reached the city we went directly to Dmitri's Hotel, which is the only establishment of the kind in Damascus. Dmitri is a Greek, and was formerly a dragoman. He knows the country very well, and his house is quite as comfortable as one could expect to find in this far-off place. The building was once the property of a wealthy resident of Damascus, and is in the truly Oriental style. There is a large court-yard with a fountain in the centre, and the rooms of the house mostly open from this court. When we speak of a fountain, remember we are talking of an Oriental one, which is a large tank of stone with water flowing in at one side from a pipe and flowing out at the other.
INTERIOR OF A HOUSE IN DAMASCUS.
"On the right of the fountain there is an open recess, where it is pleasant to sit in a warm afternoon; it contains chairs and divans, and is altogether an attractive spot. On the opposite side of the court is the parlor, which we entered by an ordinary door. There is a marble floor about six feet wide, and as long as the room is broad, and on each side of this marble floor there are steps to the rest of the room, which is about two feet higher. The marble part is entirely bare, with a small fountain in the centre, but the rest is richly carpeted, and has plenty of divans and large chairs. The chairs do not properly belong here, as they are not Oriental, but are kept out of regard for the wants of European visitors.
"How high do you suppose the ceiling is in the centre of this parlor?
"We had a curiosity to know, and so we measured it. Dmitri supplied us with ladders and a cord, and after a good deal of trouble we ascertained that it lacked only a few inches of thirty feet!
"We have been much interested in the house, as it is one of the best types we have seen of the Oriental dwelling. There are finer houses than this in Damascus, but it is not easy for a foreigner to see more of them than the outside walls. Some of the houses have cost a great deal of money, even in this country where labor is very cheap.
"Having looked at the house, we will go into the streets and take a glance at the distinctive features of Damascus.
"To begin with, Damascus is supposed to have a population of one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty thousand. Nobody can tell exactly, as the census is never taken as we take it in America, and quite probably nobody cares very much to know what it is. Here is the most accurate statement of the subject that we can find:
"Eighty-nine thousand five hundred Moslems, twelve thousand Christians, five thousand Jews, and about five thousand Druses, Bedouins, and other miscellaneous classifications. About half the Christians belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, and the rest are Latins, Maronites, Syrians, and Armenians.
"As you are well aware, Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the world. It is mentioned in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, and very often in other books of the Bible, but the scriptural references do not tell us how old it is. The traditions of the Jews, Christians, and Moslems concerning the origin of Damascus do not agree, but by sifting them down, and harmonizing as much as possible, we may suppose it was founded by Uz, the son of Aram, and was a well-established city before the birth of Abraham. The kings of Syria lived here for more than three hundred years; one of them was conquered by King David, but the subjection did not last long. Afterward it was conquered by the Assyrians and added to their empire, and subsequently it was a possession of Persia.
"It would take several pages for me to tell you the history of Damascus, and as it might be tedious, and you can find it in any good encyclopædia, we will take a jump of three thousand years or less and come down to our own times. The most exciting event of modern days in Damascus was the massacre of the Christians in 1860, when five or six thousand people were killed for no other reason than their belief in the religion of Bethlehem. The whole of the Christian quarter was burnt, not a house being left uninjured. About half of it has been rebuilt, but some of the buildings are very frail, and it will be a long time before this portion of Damascus resumes its former appearance.
"Our guide through the streets was a Christian whose father was killed at the time of the massacre. The family managed to escape to the mountains, where they wandered for days, and were very near starvation. In addition to the thousands who were killed, there were many who died of wounds and starvation, while hundreds of women and children were sold into slavery.
"We asked Doctor Bronson how it all happened, and he said it was an affair of international politics growing out of the Crimean War, and the support that England gave to the Turkish Government against Russia. The Treaty of Paris, after the Crimean War, contained a clause which was intended to prevent foreign intervention in the affairs of Turkey, and allow the Sultan to control his Christian subjects. As a Moslem generally believes that the best thing to do with an adherent of any other religion than his own is to kill him, the result of this unhappy provision of the treaty was to cause the Moslems to slaughter the Christians among them.
"The massacres began in the mountains of Lebanon, and extended to Damascus and other places. It is thought that not far from twenty thousand Christians were butchered in Syria during the month of July, 1860. The Turkish Government permitted the inhuman work to go on, and in several cases its officers encouraged it, particularly at Damascus and Hasbeiyah. The news of the affair aroused the whole of Europe. France sent an army to occupy the Lebanon district, and protect the Christians, and since that time there have been no repetitions of the dreadful scenes, though there is no feeling of friendliness between the Christians and Moslems.
"So much for a bit of the history of Damascus. The massacre of 1860 was not by any means the only one of which this city has been the scene. There was a greater than this when the conqueror Tamerlane, in 1401, captured the city, and, after plundering it, caused large numbers of the inhabitants to be killed. Though many of the buildings were destroyed, they were soon rebuilt; and it is said to be a curious feature of Damascus that it has prospered under all rulers and all forms of government. It has changed comparatively little in appearance, and when any part has been destroyed, by accident or in warfare, it rises again almost the same as before, though the reconstruction sometimes requires many years.
"We followed the advice of our guide, who said that, as the weather was fine, we had best take advantage of it to go outside the city and see the walls and other curiosities. He went for donkeys, and, as soon as they came, off we started.
"We started off in more ways than one, as every member of the party had a tumble before he had gone a mile. The little animals are not so large as their brethren of Cairo, nor as sure of foot. They seemed to be fond of stumbling, and didn't care what the result was to their riders. Fortunately their size saved us from any injury, as we had very little distance to fall from their backs to the ground.
"We went first to Bab-Shurkey, or the Eastern Gate, which is one of the historic entrances of Damascus.
"It is not a very handsome piece of architecture, though it may have been so centuries ago. There was once a fine portal of Roman construction, but it was walled up more than eight centuries ago, and has remained closed ever since. The entrance now used was formerly one of the side arches of the Roman gate-way. We climbed to the top for a view of the city, and certainly the scene was a picturesque one, and amply repaid us for the trouble.
"We looked along the 'street called Straight,' by which St. Paul entered Damascus. It has the same name to-day as it had in Paul's time, but is not exactly the same street. Perhaps you wonder what I mean?
"Well, during the Roman period, and down to the time the Moslems took the city, this street was a hundred feet wide, and was divided by three rows of columns, corresponding to the three arches at the Eastern Gate. The two side arches have been built up, but not very regularly, and the street from being straight is crooked. It runs in a sort of wavy line from one side of the city to the other, and its houses are so close to each other in some places that you might shake hands from a window with your neighbor over the way.
"There are several places where the opposite windows are not a yard apart, and as they project over the street it is easy to sit concealed and see everything that goes on below you. We went into one of the houses, and were permitted to look from a window, and very funny it seemed to be thus suspended in mid-air.
"The most prominent objects in the view from the top of the gate were the desolate portions of the Christian quarter which I have already mentioned. They lay quite near where we stood, and our guide indicated the position of the Protestant and other churches that were burnt, and the mission schools and hospitals which met the same fate. Farther along were the roofs and domes of the city. The great mosque was an important feature in the view, together with the battlements of the castle just behind it.
"From the gate we went along the base of the walls, where we saw masonry of all ages from the Romans down to the Turks. The foundations are unmistakably Roman, so the Doctor says, and the highest part of the walls, which were built only a few years ago, are as unmistakably Turkish. The guide showed us the place where St. Paul escaped from Damascus, as described in Second Corinthians, 'and through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped.' The guide said there could be no doubt about the spot, as the window was there until a few years ago, when a Moslem owner of the property ordered it to be filled with brick and closed!
"Not far from this place is the tomb of George the Porter, who assisted Paul to escape, and was martyred and canonized in consequence. A little farther on is the Christian cemetery, and beyond it is the foreign cemetery, which contains several English and American graves. Looking from the cemetery toward the city we noticed that there were houses on the walls, as in the time of the Bible; it was easy to understand how Paul was lowered from the wall, and how Rahab, who dwelt on the town wall of Jericho, let down the spies that had been exploring the Promised Land.
"In several places the city has grown beyond the walls, and sometimes it is not easy to distinguish the interior from the exterior. This is particularly the case with the Meidan, which is just outside the walls, and is quite a mile long by half a mile in width. Compared with the rest of Damascus the paint is hardly dry on it, as it is not two hundred years old, and many of its buildings have actually been erected within the present century. The principal street is about a hundred feet wide, and nearly straight. When the annual caravan to Mecca sets out on its journey the scene is a magnificent one along this street, as there is a gay procession of thousands of people, preceded by the camel with the sacred canopy, and the officials and priests in their richest dress. Our guide says the procession diminishes every year, as the journey can be made far more easily by steamers from Beyroot than by land. It takes at least thirty days to go by land, and about a week or ten days by sea.
"We went to the Moslem cemetery, where we saw among other things the tombs of two of Mohammed's wives and his daughter Fatima. The cemetery reminded us of the burial-places of Cairo, but we missed the splendor of the tombs of the Mamelukes, and also of the tombs of the Caliphs.
BEDOUIN CAMP NEAR DAMASCUS.
"We timed our excursion so that we should be at the Salahiyeh hills, which overlook Damascus from the east, a little before sunset. It is a ride of about an hour through a village and up a gentle road to a point from which Damascus can be seen spread at the spectator's feet.
"There lay the city embowered in its gardens, and tinted by the rays of the setting sun that changed every moment. It was more like a vision of Paradise than anything we had seen in the country, and we realized the force of the remark attributed to Mohammed, as he gazed upon Damascus from these hills:
"'Man can enter Paradise but once; if I pass into Damascus I shall be excluded from the other Paradise reserved for the faithful.'
"According to the legend, he then turned away and never entered the city he had come so far to see.
"The Arabs regard Damascus with reverence, and often speak of it as enthusiastically as did Mohammed on the occasion I have mentioned. It is, indeed, a beautiful and an interesting city, and ranks next to Cairo, which it greatly resembles in many things. Something must be allowed for Oriental exaggeration or we shall make too much of Damascus; and Doctor Bronson says the city, from its position, is the cause of a great deal of the admiration bestowed upon it. We asked him how it was, and he explained it in this way:
"Bear in mind that Damascus is in a fertile plain watered by the Pharpar and Abana, flowing from the mountains and never failing in any season of the year. These rivers are carried through Damascus, and consequently the city has an abundance of water at all times.
"Now, bear again in mind that, though in a fertile plain, the city is on the edge of a desert, and the traveller who comes here from the east has traversed a region of barrenness. For days and days he has seen no trees or other green things, water has been scanty and poor, and he must take great precautions to save himself from perishing by thirst. Is it any wonder that when he comes to Damascus, in the midst of its luxuriant gardens, and sees the fountains flowing at every street-corner and sparkling in every dwelling, he must think he has entered Paradise, or will doubt whether he is awake or dreaming?
"As the sun went down behind the range of Anti-Lebanon we descended the hills and re-entered the city. There was nothing to be seen in the evening. Damascus goes early to bed, and so went we.
"Next morning we were out in good season, and off for our round of sight-seeing. We visited the historic places of Damascus, including the house of Ananias the high-priest, and other buildings connected with St. Paul's stay in the city; and we went outside of the eastern gate a short distance to the leper hospital, which is supposed to stand on the site of the house of Naaman the leper. Some of the patients were in front of the building, and were sad objects to look upon. Some were blind, others were much swollen about the face, hands, feet, or limbs, and there was one whose face was covered with scales. The guide said that the edges of these scales when lifted revealed raw and inflamed flesh, and many of the patients were masses of sores. We did not wish to go inside, although we were assured that there was no danger of contracting the disease.
A SCENE IN DAMASCUS.
"Doctor Bronson says this dreadful disease was once very common in Europe, and nearly every city and town had its leper hospitals. From the sixth to the thirteenth centuries it was spread from one end of Europe to the other, particularly after the wars of the Crusades. An order of chivalry, under the name of the Knights of St. Lazarus (named after Lazarus the beggar), had for its special mission the care of victims of leprosy, and after they were expelled from Jerusalem in the twelfth century they established a hospital at Paris. If you have been in Paris you will remember the Gare St. Lazare, the terminal station of the Western Railway, which is close by the Rue St. Lazare, and a walk of five or six minutes from the Grand Opera House. The leper hospital of Paris was in this neighborhood, and the name of the order of monks that founded it is preserved in the street and railway-station.
"Leprosy has almost entirely disappeared from Europe; it is seen occasionally in Scandinavia and Italy, and a few cases have been reported in Spain. It exists in the East, but is not so prevalent as it was a thousand years ago, and once in a while you will hear of a leper in America and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Doctor Bronson says he was once invited by Professor Pardee, Dean of the Medical College of New York, to see a case of leprosy from one of the mountain counties of Virginia. The patient was a negro, and, as far as the doctors could ascertain, he was suffering from leprosy of the same type as we find to-day in Damascus.
PORTRAIT OF ABD-EL-KADR.
"We passed the house of Abd-el-Kader, the Arab chief who fought the French in Algeria for a long time, but was finally conquered, and required to choose some place not in Africa for his residence. He selected Damascus, and has lived here ever since, with the exception of an occasional visit to Paris, where he is always treated with a great deal of respect. At the time of the massacre in 1860 he sheltered a great many Christians in his house, and did everything in his power to stop the bloodshed. When the war broke out between France and Germany he offered his military services to the country that had conquered him, but the government did not think it good policy to accept them.
"The bazaars of Damascus are so much like those of Cairo that it is unnecessary to describe them, as the picture of one will be almost identically that of the other. The mode of bargaining is the same; and if there is any difference at all in testing a stranger's patience it is in favor of Damascus.
"One of our party wanted to buy some of the silk handkerchiefs for which Syria is famous, and we stopped in the silk bazaar for that purpose. The merchant asked twenty francs, and the buyer offered six; after chaffering for a full hour they met at twelve francs, and the transaction was closed.
"The merchant then unrolled a piece of silk, which he assured us was of native manufacture. While he was praising it, and declaring he was offering it for half its value, he unrolled a little farther, when out dropped from the end of the roll a ticket with the name of a French manufacturer at Lyons!
"He took it in as hastily as he could, but was not quick enough to prevent our seeing and reading it. This confirmed what we had heard before, that a great deal of the silk sold in Constantinople, Cairo, Beyroot, Damascus, and other Oriental places as native manufacture, is made in Europe in imitation of the genuine article. The counterfeit is so well executed that it cannot be distinguished from the genuine except by an expert, and frequently the only difference is in favor of the finish of the European goods.
"We went through one bazaar after another, and were offered all sorts of articles we did not want, together with a few that we did. What we most wanted were the genuine Damascus blades, and we looked for them in the arms bazaar for quite a while.
SWORD-BLADES OF DAMASCUS.
"They offered us a good many swords, but none that came up to the stories of the ancient weapons, which could be tied in a knot or doubled up into a loop without the least injury. They asked a hundred dollars for one, but fell slowly to twenty, and as this seemed too cheap for an article once worth at least a thousand dollars, we declined to buy.
"While we were looking at these weapons Doctor Bronson told us of the original Damascus blades, about which so much has been written. He said they were made in the early centuries of the Christian era, and the art was lost when Tamerlane carried the artisans away after his capture of the city. It was said they could be bent into many shapes, would cut through wood and iron without being marred or indented, and the old warriors frequently divided their victims in two from head to foot with a single stroke of one of these famous weapons. A good deal must be allowed for Oriental exaggeration, but there is no doubt that the Damascus blade was the finest ever constructed. It all depended upon the steel and the process of making it.
"We asked the Doctor if anybody in modern times had been able to produce anything like the swords of Damascus.
"'A great many attempts have been made,' said he, 'but none have completely succeeded. The nearest approach to success was by General Anosoff, a Russian officer in charge of the steel and iron works at Zlatoust, in Siberia. After many years of experiments he managed to produce weapons with nearly all the qualities of the original Damascus blades; he succeeded in making Damascus steel by four different processes, the most practical being that of melting iron in crucibles, with one-twelfth its weight of graphite, and some other things you can learn about in any good book on steel manufacture. The blades of General Anosoff were superior to any other modern ones in toughness, elasticity, and keenness of edge, and they had those peculiar marks known as "watering," exactly like the ancient blades.'
DAMASK GOODS.
"From the arms bazaar we went to the great mosque, and then to the Citadel, passing on the way a shop devoted to the sale of those peculiar fabrics known as damask, which detained us a few minutes. Damascus for centuries had the monopoly of the manufacture of this article, but it is now all over Europe, and the city retains little more than the name. We asked to be shown the factory where it was made, but they said the workmen were out for a holiday, and the place was closed, but if we called around next week they could oblige us. Of course they knew we would be off in a day or two, as nobody remains long here, and so we could only smile and thank them for their politeness. But we didn't buy.
"The mosque occupies an area of five hundred feet by three hundred, and is an imposing building, on the whole, though inferior to some of the Moslem edifices we saw at Cairo. The central dome is a hundred and twenty feet high, and rests on four massive pillars; the shrine on the eastern side is elaborately carved, and there is a cave beneath it in which the head of John the Baptist is said to be preserved in a golden casket.
ATTACK ON THE CITADEL OF DAMASCUS BEFORE THE INVENTION OF GUNPOWDER.
"Back of the mosque is the Citadel, which was once a strong fortress, but is now little better than a ruined pile of brick and stone. Most of the rooms are unfit for occupation, and we were not allowed to go inside. The castle played a prominent part in the defence of Damascus before the invention of artillery, but it is of no consequence now that we have gunpowder and the weapons for using it."
PAUL LED INTO DAMASCUS.