"The almost total absence of women, the dearth of wheeled carriages, and the packs of ownerless dogs were the three distinctive characteristics that first struck me in this extraordinary town. As nearly every one walks in papouches, as there is no noise of carriages and carts, as there are no bells and scarcely any hammering trades, the silence is continual. You see around you a voiceless crowd which seems to wish to pass unnoticed, and which always looks as though it were stealing away from its master's sight. You constantly come to a bazaar or a cemetery, as though the Turks were only there to buy, sell, or die. The cemeteries, unwalled and placed in the middle of the streets, are magnificent cypress-woods: the doves build their nests in the cypress-trees and share the peace of the dead. Here and there one discovers some ancient monuments which have no connection with the modern men, nor with the new monuments by which they are surrounded; it is as though they had been transported to this eastern town by the working of a talisman. No sign of joy, no appearance of happiness shows itself to your eyes; what you see is not a people but a herd whom an iman drives and a janissary slays. Amidst the prisons and the gaols rises a seraglio, the capitol of servitude: it is there that a sacred guardian carefully preserves the germs of pestilence and the primitive laws of tyranny." Julien does not soar so near the clouds[695]. MY ITINERARY. "We were about two hundred passengers on the ship, men, women, children and old people. As many mats lay ranged in rows on both sides of the steerage. In this kind of republic, each kept house as he pleased: the women looked after their children, the men smoked or prepared their dinners, the popes talked together. On every side was heard the sound of mandolines, fiddles and lyres. They sang, they danced, they laughed, they prayed. Every one was joyful. They said to me, 'Jerusalem!' pointing to the south; and I replied, 'Jerusalem!' In short, but for the fright, we should have been the happiest people in the world; but at the least wind the seamen furled the sails, the pilgrims cried, '_Christos, Kyrie eleison!_' When the storm had passed, we resumed our boldness." Here I am beaten by Julien. JULIEN'S ITINERARY. "We had to busy ourselves with our departure for Jaffa, which took place on Thursday the 18th of September. We embarked on board a Greek ship, where there were at least, men, women, and children, one hundred and fifty Greeks who were going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which caused much disturbance on board.