"You khanzir, you Maronite, you Keram, out with you!" and the air rang with shouts mingled with squeals and grunts. I saw the crowd coming. It gathered strength as it approached Bab Yakoob, where the white turbaned faithful rose from their shops and stables to join in the persecution of the stampeding porkers. "May Allah cut off their days! Curses on their grandfather's beard! Curses on the father of their owner! Hub hub! Allah deliver us from their contamination!" were the cries of the crowd as they rushed along. The little boys were laughing and having a good time, and the men were breathing out wrath and tobacco smoke. Alas, for the poor swine! What became of them I could not tell, but the last I saw, was the infuriated crowd driving them into the Khan of Muhayeddin near by, where one knows not what may have happened to them. I hope they did not steal the pork and eat it "on the sly," as the Bedawin did at Mt. Sinai, who threw away the hams the travellers were carrying for provisions, and declared that their camels should not be defiled with the unclean beast! The travellers were _very_ indignant at such a loss, but thought it was too bad to injure the feelings of the devout Moslems, and said no more. What was their horror and wrath to hear the next night that the Bedawin were seen cooking and eating their hams at midnight, when they thought no one would see them! Do the Syrian people all smoke? Almost all of them. They speak of it as "drinking a pipe, drinking a cigar," and you would think that they look upon tobacco as being as necessary to them as water. Old and young men, women and even children smoke, smoke while they work or rest, while at home or journeying, and measure distances by their pipes. I was travelling, and asked a man how far it was to the next village. He said about two pipes of tobacco distant! I found it to be nearly an hour, or three miles. The Orientals spend so much time in smoking, that some one has said "the Moslems came into power with the Koran in one hand, and the sword in the other, but will go out with the Koran in one hand and the pipe in the other!"