Concerning the merchandizes: If one will see several sorts of goods they are to be found in the _Carvatscharas_ or _Champen_, whereof I have made mention before, but chiefly in the _Batzaren_ or houses where they buy and sell, or exchanges. These exchanges are wide and long, and partly arched, partly covered with timber, that you may walk and trade there without being wetted, they have shops on both sides, which are also kept by handicrafts and tradesmen, as Shoe-makers, Taylors, Sadlers, Silk-embroiderers, Turners, Copper-smiths, Cutlers, Woollen-drapers, Grocers, Fruiterers, Cooks, and many more, which are very orderly distributed and placed in their several streets and places. They also drive a great trade in silk, and there are a great many that deal in nothing else but silk, which is convey’d thither from the adjacent places; for mount _Libanus_ is inhabited by a numberless people, that live by spinning and working of silk, but chiefly they of _Damascus_, where is such plenty of silk, that a Merchant may quickly lay out in it many thousand ducats: Because of the great abundance of white Mulberry-trees (by the natives called _Tut_) which grow there so high and large, that they have plenty of leaves to feed their silk-worms: But the Mulberries thereof are white, and they carry them about in baskets to sell to ordinary people. So there is in the _Batzars_ many silk-workers, which make all sorts of embroidery, as purses, buttons, and girdles or sashes of several colours, which they tie about their loins; these are at work before their shops, that every one may see them. When they work, or tie two threads together, they hold their work oftener with their great toe, than pin it to any thing, and the same do the Turners, (which sitting to it) hold their turning irons as well with their toes as with their fingers. Further, at a certain time of the year there is brought from _Damascus_ and other adjacent places, to these _Batzars_, so great a quantity of large and well-tasted Cibebs, a kind of Raisins, having but one or no stone, that several ship loads are sent from thence to us. These and the like goods are daily brought and found in their _Batzars_, as rare tapestry and delicately wrought silks with flowers and roses of several colours, some of which look like pure gold. But of all the tradesmen there are not so many of one sort as of them that only deal in Soap and Pot-ashes, for of these ashes (besides Soap) several ship-loads are yearly sent from thence to _Venice_, which they use for making of Glase as well as Soap. These ashes are made chiefly of a herb, called by the _Arabians_, _Schivan_, whereof there are two sorts, which amongst others I have pasted upon paper, one whereof is not unlike to our little _Kali_; it is a thick and knotty plant, with several small sprigs growing out of it, which have several full buttons at the top, and underneath small pointed leaves, just like the lesser _Kali_, as I said before,