d in the skin of some animal, perhaps a goat. When I came out of
the postoffice, a camel was lying on the pavement, and in another part
of the city I saw a soldier riding his horse on the sidewalk. Down in
"the street which is called Straight" a full-grown man was going along
as naked as when he was born. Perhaps he was insane, but we do not even
allow insane men to walk the streets that way in this country. Carriages
are used for conveying passengers, but freight is usually moved on the
backs of horses, camels, donkeys, or men. Some wagons and carts are to
be seen, but they are not numerous. It is remarkable what loads are
piled upon the donkeys, probably the commonest beasts of burden in
Damascus. Sometimes the poor little creatures are almost hidden from
view by the heavy burdens they are required to bear, which may consist
of grapes to be sold, or rubbish to be carried out of the city.
Sometimes they are ridden by as many as three people at once. If the
gospel were to get a firm hold on these people, the donkeys would fare
better.

About 333 B.C., Damascus came under the control of Alexander the Great.
Antiochus Dionysius reigned there three years, but was succeeded by
Aretas of Arabia in 85 B.C. Under Trajan it became a Roman provincial
city. The Mongols took it in 1260, and the Tartars plundered it in 1300.
An enemy marched against it in 1399, but the citizens purchased immunity
from plunder by paying a "sum of a million pieces of gold." In 1516,
when Selim, the Turkish Sultan, marched in, it became one of the
provincial capitals of the Turkish Empire, and so continues. There was a
very serious massacre here in 1860. All the consulates, except the
British and Prussian, were burned, and the entire Christian quarter was
turned into ruins. In the two consulates that were spared many lives
were preserved, but it is said that "no fewer than six thousand
unoffending Christians ... were thus murdered in Damascus alone," and
"the whole number of the Christians who perished in these days of terror
is estimated at fourteen thousand." A number of the leaders were
afterward beheaded, and a French force, numbering ten thousand, was sent
into the country. The Mohammedans have about two hundred mosques and
colleges in this city, which was once far advanced in civilization.

I left Damascus and returned toward the coast to Rayak, where I took the
train on a branch line for Baalbec, the Syrian city of the sun, a place
having no B