THE "HE exterior of the houses in Damascus is poor, mud and straw seeming to enter largely into the bricks of which they are made; but the meanness of the exterior and even the squalidness of the entrance does not prevent a great elegance from appearing in the interior of very many. Those who have traveled in Spain will recall the Moorish style of the houses, and find a very close resemblance between them and the Oriental, and especially the Damascus houses. Abundance of marble, all brought from a distance, of gilding and of carpeting, in the form of rugs, decorate these houses, which have numerous apartments around the open court, and fine open galleries on the second story, all fronting inward. They have almost no external windows. The idea of a house is of something secluded and shut in from the public observation. The street is merely a lane to get to it; the outside, a shell to hide it; the front door, often an obscure hole to conceal the worth of what it leads to. "The street that is called Straight" still exists in Damascus, and runs quite through the city in its longest extension from east to west. It was formerly ornamented with columns, of which the foundations are sometimes found in excavating for new buildings. Near the gate Kisan, now closed, is shown a window in the wall of the city from which tradition has it that Paul was let down in the basket when he fled from Appearance of Ante-Lebanon. 381 Damascus (11. Corinthians xi. 33). In the middle of the Christian cemetery is a rock which marks the spot where the Damascenes place the conversion of the Apostle! But, until modern times, this great scene was placed outside of the city two or three miles, near the village of Kawkaba—on the road from Jerusalem-a spot which certainly agrees much better with the scriptural account. The tomb of the great Saladin is near the Grand Mosque, but is inaccessible on account of a crowd of surrounding buildings. It is, however, distinctly visible from the minarets of Djaml a el Amroi, the great mosque erected by the Ommiades. The ruins of a magnificent temple, dating from the Roman period, are mixed up with the walls and structures about this mosque. This temple was first changed into a Christian church at an early period, which was divided in the time of the Saracen conquest between the Christians and the Moslems, but ultimately fell into exclusive Moslem ownership. The Grand Mosque was a transformation of this church. Over a gate a little east of the transept is still to be seen a cross, and a Greek inscription to this effect, "Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and of thy dominion there shall be no end." It is a prophecy which Damascus does not believe, but which will one day prove to be the destruction of its own proud and obstinate faith. THE ANTE-LEBANON. March 27. We left Damascus at 3 P.M. yesterday, and rode by the route we had entered the city, eighteen miles out, to the point where we had struck the diligence macadamized way, en route to Beyrout. To-day we have crossed the Ante-Lebanon range and the plain of Cole-Syria, about twenty-five miles distance. There is little to interest in the mountain part of the route except the grotesqueness of the rocks, which sometimes crop out in what seem grave-stones, and then take the form of bears and other beasts, and sometimes of Hogarthian faces. A rushing torrent runs by the road all the way to the height of the land. There is no view into the valley at the top of the pass, nor, until near its mouth, within a half-mile of the bottom. Then the range of the Lebanon comes suddenly into sight. But the great Lebanon lies twenty miles to the north, and is obscurely seen-passing, indeed, for a cloud until we had attentively observed it. The range opposite the path of the diligence—the only road deserving the name in all Syria―is a dignified and solid ridge, with no salient summits, stretching thirty miles up and down the valley, covered with snow its whole length, and dwarfing the mountains on the east side by its massive character. It was streaked like a zebra, the ribs of the mountains being black, while all the valleys were white with snow. The land at its base was as red as tan, and then came a stripe of yellowish rock, above which the dark and white I have described arose-forming altogether a very rich mass of color. There is nothing impressive in the form of this range, which is too regular and wall-like to please. The valley is bordered on the east side by a succession of symmetrical hills, miniature mountains, which are seemingly as round as plates and shaped like a cymbal. Several of these follow each other in chains; others lie off like islands; and on one of them is an old castle, on two others villages, while many towns are seen clinging to the roots of the mountains at the very verge of the plain. It seems fertile and well-watered, and where we crossed it about eight miles broad. We met our old enemy, the Orontes, a vigorous stream, crossed at several points by stone bridges, one of which would have pleased us better had we found it a month earlier on the coast. Ten miles below our crossing, Crossing the Lebanon. 383 the ridge, once occupied by the “old man of the mountain," a dangerous sheik, extends partly across the plain, and seems to separate the sources of the Jordan from the valley of the Orontes. Another chain on the eastern side, divides the valley of the Leontes from this valley, its river emptying near Alexandretta. We found the road much traversed by loaded teams going to and from Damascus, all in the ownership of the French Company, which have a monopoly of the carriage transit. The diligence, which runs daily each way, is now crowded, and the seats engaged a week in advance. There is a considerable traffic in these seats, which those willing to wait sell out at a large premium to those who must go. We tried to get seats; but failing, were obliged to add three days more of horseback to our long tour. To-morrow we ride over the Lebanon range, about twenty-five miles, and hope to be in Beyrout by 2 P.M. THE LEBANON. BEYROUT, March 28, 6 P.M. We left camp a mile or two the other side of the snow at A.M., and soon found our horses overtaken by two different parties of travelers, one consisting of eleven Englishmen, another of as many or more Americans, all of whom were riding post-haste to Beyrout, to get money before the banks closed, it being Sunday to-morrow. Another object was to secure rooms in the two only hotels of reputation in the city, and a third, and the most important, to obtain accommodations on the steamer (Austrian Lloyds) which sails for Smyrna to-morrow afternoon. We had telegraphed to our Consul to secure ours, but were very uneasy about our chances in such a crowd; so one of our number rode ahead, accomplishing the distance, twenty-six miles, over a down-hill road, in four hours, and was able to get the eight last places to be had in the first cabin. We were equally fortunate in finding all the rooms gone in the two favorite hotels, for it drove us to a third, which not being in fashion, we found more roomy, and equally satisfactory. But I am hurrying ahead of events. The snow on our journey over this high pass of Lebanon— about 6000 feet it is-we found, if not equal to the reports, quite deep enough to startle even a New Hampshire or Green Mountain boy. The diligence track had been cleared of all snow, but banks of it had been left on either side not less than ten feet high, and they had clearly been much higher; it was said as high as the top of the diligence and luggage. The way is skillfully engineered, the grades being all moderate, but the road writhes like a wounded snake to get down the precipices. Many glorious views into deep, stony valleys, their sides plaited in countless terraces, with many villages visible at one moment, opened, before the Mediterranean burst upon the sight, with Beyrout whitening its lofty-looking though really quite humble hill. It was just in view of this, as we were concluding our lunch, ten miles before reaching the city, that our dragoman shocked us by announcing the sudden death of the horse he had just ridden in. This horse, sound when we left Beyrout, had suffered from a sore back, and been handed from one rider to another, until nobody but the dragoman would ride him. His owner, one of our Moukars, had been remonstrated with on the cruelty of pushing him further when we were at Jerusalem; but he had no mind to supply his place, and a gentleman who joined our party there had the horse put off upon him, as the last comer. He rode him till we were within one day of Damascus, and then rebelled and compelled the dragoman to change horses with him. The dragoman again remonstrated with the Moukar against bringing the poor beast from Damascus to Beyrout, but he insisted upon his ability |