The streets are exceedingly narrow, being not more than from nine to twelve feet wide. The stores or shops on either side of the street are little more than holes in the wall, usually about six feet wide and eight feet deep. The floor of this stall is twelve to eighteen inches above the ground. The end facing the street is open, while on the two sides and the back end, shelf rises above shelf. Goods are arranged on these, and also suspended from the ceiling. The customer, should one chance to come along, stands in the street and bargains with the merchant, who sits flat on the floor in the centre of the stall. With a hook in his hand, he, without rising, reaches to one shelf or another, and drags down such goods as may please the purchaser’s fancy. These people eat no idle bread. As soon as the customer is gone, the merchant continues to manufacture saddles, shoes, silks, or such goods as he may deal in. I was never before so impressed with industry. Damascus is a great manufacturing centre. The people have no machinery—all work is done by hand, and nothing is done within walls or behind curtains. Caps and carpets, saddles and sabres, shoes and shawls, silks and safes, beds and baskets, and a hundred other things, are manufactured on the streets in the open air before our eyes. One entire street is given up to a single industry. For instance the street here to my right is called the shoe bazaar. It is probably a quarter of a mile long; and on either side of the street, from one end to the other, are men, women and children, seated on mats or flat down on the ground with their limbs folded under them. All are as busy as bees, sewing and stitching leather, making shoes. If one wants to buy a pair of shoes, he trades with the man who makes them. The merchant does not stop work, but talks without looking up. Most of the manufacturers are eager to trade with Europeans and Americans, but some of them are so fanatical that they will not receive money from “Christian dogs.” Numerous poles are thrown across the streets, twelve or fourteen feet from the ground, from which strings are hanging. When the shoes are finished, they are tied to these strings and left suspended. Looking down the street, one sees hundreds and hundreds of shoes dangling in the air, about four feet from the ground. Silk bazaars are numerous. Looking down these several streets, one sees many weavers seated on the ground, plying their shuttles. Above their uncombed heads is silk of every grade and color, suspended in the air and trembling in the wind. As with shoes and silks, so also with carpets, saddles, and other departments of industry.