About six miles from Scutari, there is a fountain which bears the name of Iraluk Cheshmaysee, or the fountain of separation.
Thus far a number of friends and relations have accompanied the pilgrims; but, as in the journey of life, none can carry their loved ones with them into the celestial regions, so these travellers who are on an emblematic pilgrimage must now sunder strong ties, and loosen their hearts from earthly affections.
Fountain of parting! how are thy streams now accumulating, as the pearly drops of human woe trickle in among thy waters; how many days must pass ere those waters regain their crystal brightness, now all turbid with the crimson gushings of the heart blood of fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and children!
Sadly they part: some turn their faces homeward with bitter sighs, while the pilgrims pursue their course, every advancing step widening the distance, till their clouded eyes can discern no further traces of the severed.
Even as faith reveals to the dying the glory of a celestial world, and reconciles the most trembling to a passage from the dim scenes of Earth; so does superstition foreshadowing the hour of mortal dissolution, display an earthly temple as the vestibule to the heavenly.
With eager steps, the pilgrims now press onwards, till they reach the most ancient and beautiful city of Damascus; where they halt for the caravans from Bagdad, Aleppo, and the neighboring towns. Time-worn associations flit about this monument of the wealth of the earliest founders of cities, after the universal deluge.
As the descendants of the great survivor of the wreck of the antediluvian world sought out a portion of the wide expanse of uninhabited, and as yet uncultivated earth, this lovely valley of nature’s own handiwork seemed to invite their tarrying, as it lay in calm repose, all fresh and verdant from the great waste of waters. Perhaps they discovered the ruins of a great city, the remnants of ancestral wealth; or the relics of the luxury and degeneracy which brought about the awful destruction of the victims of the flood.
Rapidly rose the proud city, and was famed even at the time of the first battle of which there is any record, of the five kings against four, the great Chedorlaomar and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, when the patriarch Abram went to rescue his nephew Lot, who had been taken captive.
It was the birth-place, too, of Eliezer, the steward of Abram, who must have been a man of superior attainments, as he had the care of all his master’s possessions, and even of the betrothal of his beloved son Isaac.
This ancient capital of Syria did not escape the enthusiasm of Moslem conquest, and the great Saracen generals, Abu-Obeidah and Khaled, took possession of the famous city, after a slaughter of 50,000 infidels, during the reign of Abubekir, the successor of Mohammed, A. D. 633. Damascus now became the capital of the Ottoman dominions, and their pride and glory; for they boast Evvely sham, Akhery sham, or, that as they had their beginning in Sham or Damascus, so there also, they will have their end.