The town now contains only about nine thousand inhabitants, cooped up by the fortifications in the very limited area of about fifty acres; and it is more picturesque than agreeable to live in. There is no more characteristic bazaar in the East than that of Acre, with its motley crowd of wild Bedouins from the desert, Persian devotees gathering around a Persian holy man who has taken up his residence here, Turkish soldiers who form its garrison, Druses, with their white turbans and striped abeihs, or overcoats, Metawalis, who are wild and gipsy-looking Moslem schismatics, Syrian Christians, and Moslem peasantry; add to these veiled women, long strings of camels, with an occasional foreigner, or sailor from a merchant-ship in the harbour, and you get a population as varied as any town in the country can show. Acre, therefore, is a most interesting place to spend a day in, apart from any antiquarian attraction it may possess, or monuments of more modern architecture which are worthy of attention. There are few finer mosques in Syria than that of Jezzar Pacha, which stands within a large rectangular area, where there are vaulted galleries, supported by ancient columns ornamented by capitals brought from the ruins of Tyre and Cæsarea. Along these galleries have been built cells, destined for the people employed at the mosque, or the pilgrims who came to visit it. They surround a magnificent court, under which are cisterns, and upon which are palms, cypress, and other trees. Among them are white marble tombs, notably those of Jezzar and Suleiman Pacha. The town contains three other mosques, the columns in which and the pavement have certainly belonged to more ancient buildings. There are four Christian churches in the city, which belong to the Roman Catholics, the Schismatic Greeks, the Maronites, and the United Greeks respectively. Under the house of the Sisters of Nazareth and the neighbouring houses extend vast vaulted cellars which are now divided by walls of separation, and belong to different proprietors; they are doubtless of crusading origin. Deep cisterns also date from that period. Of the same date also are certain remains of walls and vaults near the convent, which are the ruins of a church almost completely destroyed. The most remarkable khan is near the port, called the Khan el Aurid on account of its columns, the galleries surrounding it being built on pillars of gray or red granite, covered by capitals of different orders, brought from more ancient monuments.