As we came down into the plain and had a nearer view of the acropolis, we seemed to distinguish a multitude of houses beneath it; but the difficulty of getting a true perspective had deceived us. The city lay beyond and lower; what we now saw were not houses but graves. It was a great metropolis of the dead; thousands and tens of thousands of mounds were crowded close together at the foot of the fortress-hill. Some few were surmounted by stone canopies; but most of them were simple Moslem graves, ranged in long ranks looking toward the sacred city of Mecca, with one stone at the head and another at the foot, for the two angels to rest upon as they weigh the good and evil deeds of the dead. As one approaches nearly every great Syrian city, this is the order of interest and impressiveness; first the ruins of former power and grandeur, then the graves of those who trusted in that power and gloried in that grandeur, last the modern town with its poverty and squalor and ignorance. In Greek times “Emesa,” as it was then called, was a place of no little size and importance, and during the Roman era one of its sons wore the imperial purple[58] and one of its daughters became empress.[59] The modern city contains some sixty thousand inhabitants, the large majority of whom are Moslems. The Christians are nearly all Orthodox “Greeks,” but there is also a tiny Protestant community. We were guests of the native pastor, and later it lent a new impressiveness to our memories of Homs when we learned that our host was stabbed the very week after our visit. Fortunately, however, the wound was not a mortal one. The city is the market-place of _Ard Homs_, “the Land of Homs,” and its bazaars are crowded with _fellahîn_ from all the country round about. The chief industry is the weaving of silks. The citizens claim that there are five thousand looms, and it is easy to believe this statement; as we walked along the streets, which were well-paved and cleaner than those of most Syrian towns, there were whole blocks where every house resounded with the whirring of wheels and the clicking of shuttles. The home of our host, like almost every other residence in Homs, opened on a court which was separated from the street by a ten-foot wall. We rose at three o’clock the next morning to catch the diligence for Hama, said good-by all around in the lengthy Arabic fashion—and discovered that the key to the one gate was lost. Thereupon arose great bustle and confusion; the women rushed around looking everywhere for the missing key, while the worthy pastor brought a clumsy ladder to help us over the wall. But just as we were preparing to carry our heavy luggage up the ladder, the key was found, and a hard run brought us to the diligence with half a minute to spare.