In passing between the gardens we also observed their method of scouring the channels. They put a great bough of a tree in the water, and fasten to it a yoke of oxen. Upon the bough there sits a good weighty fellow, to press it down to the bottom and to drive the oxen. In this equipage the bough is dragged all along the channel, and serves at once both to cleanse the bottom, and also to mud and fatten the water for the greater benefit of the gardens.
Entering at the east gate, we went immediately to the convent, and were very courteously received by the guardian, father Raphael, a Majorkine by birth, and a person who, though he has dedicated himself to the contemplative life, yet is not unfit for any affairs of the active.
April 28.—This morning we walked out to take a view of the city. The first place we went to visit was the house of an eminent Turk. The streets here are narrow, as is usual in hot countries, and the houses are all built, on the outside, of no better a material than either sun-burnt brick or Flemish wall, daubed over in as coarse a manner as can be seen in the vilest cottages. From this dirty way of building they have this amongst other inconveniences, that upon any violent rain the whole city becomes, by the washing of the houses, as it were a quagmire.
It may be wondered what should induce the people to build in this base manner when they have, in the adjacent mountains, such plenty of good stone for noble fabrics. I can give no reason for it, unless this may pass for such, that those who first planted here, finding so delicious a situation, were in haste to come to the enjoyment of it; and therefore nimbly set up those extemporary habitations, being unwilling to defer their pleasures so long as whilst they might erect more magnificent structures, which primitive example their successors have followed ever since.
But, however, in these mud walls you find the gates and doors adorned with marble portals, carved and inlaid with great beauty and variety. It is an object not a little surprising to see mud and marble, state and sordidness, so mingled together.
In the inside the houses discover a very different face from what you see without. Here you find generally a large square court, beautified with a variety of fragrant trees and marble fountains, and compassed round with splendid apartments and divans. The divans are floored and adorned on the sides with variety of marble, mixed in mosaic knots and mazes. The ceilings and traves are, after the Turkish manner, richly painted and gilded. They have generally artificial fountains springing up before them in marble basins; and, as for carpets and cushions, are furnished out to the height of luxury. Of these divans they have generally several on all sides of the court, being placed at such different points that, at one or other of them, you may always have either the shade or the sun, which you please.
Such as I have described was the house we went to see; and I was told the rest resemble the same description.
In the next place we went to see the church of St. John the Baptist, now converted into a mosque, and held too sacred for Christians to enter, or almost to look into. However we had three short views of it, looking in at three several gates. Its gates are vastly large, and covered with brass, stamped all over with Arab characters, and in several places with the figure of a chalice, supposed to be the ancient ensigns or arms of the Mamelukes. On the north side of the church is a spacious court, which I could not conjecture to be less than one hundred and fifty yards long and eighty or one hundred broad. The court is paved all over, and inclosed on the south side by the church, on the other three sides by a double cloister, supported by two rows of granite pillars of the Corinthian order, exceedingly lofty and beautiful.
On the south side the church joins to the bazaars; and there we had an opportunity just to peep into it. It is, within, spacious and lofty, built with three aisles, between which are rows of polished pillars of surpassing beauty, unless, perhaps, we were tempted to overvalue what was so sparingly permitted to our survey.
In this church are kept the head of St. John, and some other relics esteemed so holy that it is death even for a Turk to presume to go into the room where they are kept. We are told here, by a Turk of good fashion, that Christ was to descend into this mosque at the day of judgment, as Mohammed was to do into that of Jerusalem; but the ground and reason of this tradition I could not learn.