[p.132] of gardens in this valley, and describes different springs and wells that no longer exist, having probably been choked up by the violent torrents. El Fasy likewise affirms that in his days the town contained no less than fifty-eight wells. But, in the earliest times of Arabian history, this place was certainly barren; and the Koran styles it accordingly “the valley without seeds.” Azraky further says, that before houses were constructed here by the Kossay, this valley abounded with acacias and various thorny trees. Nothing is more difficult than to compute exactly the population of eastern towns, where registers are never kept, and where even the number of houses can scarcely be ascertained. To judge from appearances, and by comparison with European towns, in which the amount of population is well known, may be very fallacious. The private habitations in the East are generally (though the Hedjaz forms an exception to this rule) of one story only, and therefore contain fewer inmates in proportion than European dwellings. On the other hand, Eastern towns have very narrow streets, are without public squares or large market-places, and their miserable suburbs are in general more nurously peopled than their principal and best streets. Travellers, however, in passing rapidly through towns, may be easily deceived, for they see only the bazars and certain streets, in which the greater part of the male population is usually assembled during the day. Thus it happens that recent and respectable authorities have stated two hundred thousand souls as the population of Aleppo; four hundred thousand as that of Damascus; and three hundred thousand as that of Cairo. My estimate of the population of the three great Syrian towns is as follows:--Damascus two hundred and fifty thousand; Hamah (of which, however, I must speak with less confidence) from sixty to one hundred thousand; and Aleppo, daily dwindling into decay, between eighty and ninety thousand. To Cairo I would allow at most two hundred thousand. As to Mekka, which I have seen both before and after the Hadj, and know, perhaps, more thoroughly than any other town of the East, the result of my inquiries gives between twenty-five and thirty thousand stationary inhabitants, for the population of the city and suburbs; besides from three to four thousand Abyssinian and [p.133] black slaves: its habitations are capable of containing three times this number. In the time of Sultan Selym I. (according to Kotobeddyn, in A.H. 923) a census was taken of the inhabitants of Mekka, previous to a gratuitous distribution of corn among them, and the number was found to be twelve thousand, men, women, and children. The same author shows that, in earlier times, the population was much more considerable; for when Abou Dhaher, the chief of the Carmatis, (a heretic sect of Moslims) sacked Mekka, in A.H. 314, thirty thousand of the inhabitants were killed by his ferocious soldiers.