procession, which,
about midnight, conveyed the bride to the house of the bridegroom. The
house, it appeared, was too small to receive all the friends of the
family, and I joined a large number of them, who repaired to the terrace
of the English Consulate, to greet the procession as it passed. The first
persons who appeared were a company of buffoons; after them four
janissaries, carrying silver maces; then the male friends, bearing colored
lanterns and perfumed torches, raised on gilded poles; then the females,
among whom I saw some beautiful Madonna faces in the torchlight; and
finally the bride herself, covered from head to foot with a veil of cloth
of gold, and urged along by two maidens: for it is the etiquette of such
occasions that the bride should resist being taken, and must be forced
every step of the way, so that she is frequently three hours in going the
distance of a mile. We watched the procession a long time, winding away
through the streets--a line of torches, and songs, and incense, and noisy
jubilee--under the sweet starlit heaven.

The other evening, Signor di Picciotto mounted us from his fine Arabian
stud, and we rode around the city, outside of the suburbs. The sun was
low, and a pale yellow lustre touched the clusters of minarets that rose
out of the stately masses of buildings, and the bare, chalky hills to the
north. After leaving the gardens on the banks of the Koweik, we came upon
a dreary waste of ruins, among which the antiquarian finds traces of the
ancient Aleppo of the Greeks, the Mongolian conquerors of the Middle Ages,
and the Saracens who succeeded them. There are many mosques and tombs,
which were once imposing specimens of Saracenic art; but now, split and
shivered by wars and earthquakes, are slowly tumbling into utter decay. On
the south-eastern side of the city, its chalk foundations have been
hollowed into vast, arched caverns, which extend deep into the earth.
Pillars have been left at regular intervals, to support the masses above,
and their huge, dim labyrinths resemble the crypts of some great
cathedral. They are now used as rope-walks, and filled with cheerful
workmen.

Our last excursion was to a country-house of Signor di Picciotto, in the
Gardens of Babala, about four miles from Aleppo. We set out in the
afternoon on our Arabians, with our host's son on a large white donkey of
the Baghdad breed. Passing the Turkish cemetery, where we stopped to view
the tomb of General B