"In several places the city has grown beyond the walls, and sometimes it is not easy to distinguish the interior from the exterior. This is particularly the case with the Meidan, which is just outside the walls, and is quite a mile long by half a mile in width. Compared with the rest of Damascus the paint is hardly dry on it, as it is not two hundred years old, and many of its buildings have actually been erected within the present century. The principal street is about a hundred feet wide, and nearly straight. When the annual caravan to Mecca sets out on its journey the scene is a magnificent one along this street, as there is a gay procession of thousands of people, preceded by the camel with the sacred canopy, and the officials and priests in their richest dress. Our guide says the procession diminishes every year, as the journey can be made far more easily by steamers from Beyroot than by land. It takes at least thirty days to go by land, and about a week or ten days by sea. "We went to the Moslem cemetery, where we saw among other things the tombs of two of Mohammed's wives and his daughter Fatima. The cemetery reminded us of the burial-places of Cairo, but we missed the splendor of the tombs of the Mamelukes, and also of the tombs of the Caliphs. [Illustration: BEDOUIN CAMP NEAR DAMASCUS.] "We timed our excursion so that we should be at the Salahiyeh hills, which overlook Damascus from the east, a little before sunset. It is a ride of about an hour through a village and up a gentle road to a point from which Damascus can be seen spread at the spectator's feet. "There lay the city embowered in its gardens, and tinted by the rays of the setting sun that changed every moment. It was more like a vision of Paradise than anything we had seen in the country, and we realized the force of the remark attributed to Mohammed, as he gazed upon Damascus from these hills: "'Man can enter Paradise but once; if I pass into Damascus I shall be excluded from the other Paradise reserved for the faithful.' "According to the legend, he then turned away and never entered the city he had come so far to see. "The Arabs regard Damascus with reverence, and often speak of it as enthusiastically as did Mohammed on the occasion I have mentioned. It is, indeed, a beautiful and an interesting city, and ranks next to Cairo, which it greatly resembles in many things. Something must be allowed for Oriental exaggeration or we shall make too much of Damascus; and Doctor Bronson says the city, from its position, is the cause of a great deal of the admiration bestowed upon it. We asked him how it was, and he explained it in this way: "Bear in mind that Damascus is in a fertile plain watered by the Pharpar and Abana, flowing from the mountains and never failing in any season of the year. These rivers are carried through Damascus, and consequently the city has an abundance of water at all times.