"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.