Damascus, “the eye of the East,” as Julian the apostate called it, could never have looked more beautiful than it did on that day when Burton led me through the old city and took me to see one or two of its famous interiors. The great trees draped and garlanded with climbing roses, the perfumed groves of oranges and citrons and flowering shrubs, the sparkle of the sweet waters dancing in the rays of a delicious sunshine, banished the dreary memories of sleet and snow and biting winds. It was indeed a garden city. We went to call upon a friend of Burton’s, one Abdullah Bey, who lived in an ancient house which in its palmy days must have represented all the luxury of the Oriental magnate a set scene for a story like that of the three ladies of Bagdad. Haroun Al Raschid, with his Vizier Giafar, and Mesrour the chief of the Eunuchs, must have knocked at just such a door on that most famous of their nightly rounds. I half expected to find the one-eyed calenders seated in the court-yard with our host, recounting their strange adventures amid the orange and citron trees heavily scented and the oleanders not yet in bloom. The pavement was of marble, the finest Persian tiles set in mosaic decorated the walls, rugs, any one of which would be a treasure to a museum, were strewn under the arcade of pure white marble, and of course there was the gentle tinkling rhythm of a fountain. It was all lovely, luxurious; the almost too voluptuous atmosphere of Eastern magnificence—but alas! all decaying for the lack of a little care and a few piastres’ worth of cement! It seems to be against the nature of the Turk to repair or even to maintain. _Kismet_ explains all—where the Turk is there is decay. The fatalist says, “It is decreed,” and is content. Those were delightful days that I spent with Burton in Damascus; there never was such another cicerone. We used to wander through the city penetrating into all sorts of nooks and hidden places unexplored by tourists; sometimes he would take me to visit some Turkish or Arab friend of his, giving me a glimpse of that Oriental life to which only such men as himself, versed in all the mysteries of faith and manners, have access. In these he, the man who had accomplished the pilgrimage to Mecca, was of course past master, and the light that he could throw upon matters which are riddles to most men, even to old residents among Moslem peoples, was a revelation.