I repeat that all goods manufactured in Damascus are made by hand, machinery being unknown. Probably three-fourths of the people here never saw or heard of a daily newspaper. They know nothing of the outside world. They never learn anything, never invent anything. They repudiate and scorn anything that is new. They regard an invention as an offspring of the devil. A Christian they hate as they do a serpent. Ignorance is the most prevalent thing in Damascus. It walks the streets; it sits in the shops; it drives camels; it stares the traveler in the face, go where he will. Here, too, as elsewhere, ignorance has borne her legitimate fruit—superstition and fanaticism. The people are, I believe, as fanatical as the devil wants them to be. Only a few years ago, their fanaticism arose to such a pitch that they, without the slightest provocation, pounced upon, and killed, five thousand Christians in the streets of Damascus! Men, women and children were butchered indiscriminately like sheep. Their mangled bodies were piled up in the streets, and scattered through the city, for days and days. The Mohammedans would not defile their pure (?) hands by putting them on “Christian dogs”—they had killed them—that was enough. From Damascus the thirst for blood spread throughout all Syria, and no less than 14,000 Christians perished. One would naturally suppose that the government would protect life better than that. But the Pasha, or governor, of Syria was the man who gave the signal for the massacre to begin. And it continued until the French government interfered. Napoleon III, whom the world is so fond of condemning, dispatched a body of ten thousand well-armed troops here to stop that human butchery. The Pasha and other officials were arrested and beheaded in the city. The French soldiers, following the custom of the old Romans, constructed a military road from Beyrout to Damascus. This road, which is still in good repair, is the only guarantee of safety Christians now have among these heathen people. My guide in Damascus is named Abraham. I have not met Isaac and Jacob, but have become somewhat intimate with Abraham. He tells me that his father and mother were victims of that horrible massacre; that when killed, their blood and brains spattered upon him; that his escape was little less than miraculous; that he, with a number of other Christians, was shut up in the citadel for three days; that for three days and nights the Mohammedans stood there with their battering rams, thundering against the walls and gates of the citadel, which were just ready to totter and fall when the French army came up and put a stop to the whole inhuman business.