brumous
atmosphere beams of golden sunlight slant vividly from holes in the
roof. An immense number of shops, small and great, shelter themselves in
these bazaars, for the most part opening, without any reserve of a front
wall or a door, in frank invitation to the street. On the earthen
pavement, beaten hard as cement, camels are kneeling, while the
merchants let down their corded bales and display their Persian carpets
or striped silks. The cook-shops show their wares and their processes,
and send up an appetising smell of lamb _kibabs_ and fried fish and
stuffed cucumbers and stewed beans and okra, and many other dainties
preparing on diminutive charcoal grills.

In the larger and richer shops, arranged in semi-European fashion, there
are splendid rugs, and embroideries old and new, and delicately
chiselled brasswork, and furniture of strange patterns lavishly inlaid
with mother-of-pearl; and there I go with the Lady to study the art of
bargaining as practised between the trained skill of the Levant and the
native genius of Walla Walla, Washington. In the smaller and poorer
bazaars the high, arched roofs give place to tattered awnings, and
sometimes to branches of trees; the brown air changes to an atmosphere
of brilliant stripes and patches; the tiny shops, (hardly more than open
booths), are packed and festooned with all kinds of goods, garments and
ornaments: the chafferers conduct their negotiations from the street,
(sidewalk there is none), or squat beside the proprietor on the little
platform of his stall.

[Illustration: A Small Bazaar in Damascus.]

The custom of massing the various trades and manufactures adds to the
picturesque joy of shopping or dawdling in Damascus. It is like passing
through rows of different kinds of strange fruits. There is a region of
dangling slippers, red and yellow, like cherries; a little farther on we
come to a long trellis of clothes, limp and pendulous, like bunches of
grapes; then we pass through a patch of saddles, plain and coloured,
decorated with all sorts of beads and tinsel, velvet and morocco, lying
on the ground or hung on wooden supports, like big, fantastic melons.

In the coppersmiths' bazaar there is an incessant clattering of little
hammers upon hollow metal. The goldsmiths sit silent in their pens
within a vast, dim building, or bend over their miniature furnaces
making gold and silver filigree. Here are the carpenters using their
bare feet in their work almos