Baghdad, and then send them from Aleppo to Constantinople. I have known many of them who kept no clerk, but transacted the whole of their business themselves. At Cairo, the Syrian merchants trade in the stuffs of Damascus and Aleppo, and [p.39] are altogether unconnected with the Maggrebin, Syria, and Djidda merchants. Mercantile transactions are farther simplified by the traders employing chiefly their own capital, commission business being much less extensive than it is in Europe. When a merchant consigns a considerable quantity of goods to a place, he sends a partner with them, or perhaps a relative, if he have no partner resident in the place. Ranking concerns and bills of exchange are wholly unknown among the natives, which saves them much trouble. In those towns where European factories are established, bills may be found, but they are hardly current with the natives, among whom assignments only are customary. The practice followed equally by Mahomedan, Christian, and Jewish merchants, in the East, of never drawing an exact balance of the actual state of their capital, is another cause that renders the details of book-keeping less necessary here than in Europe. For the same reason that a Bedouin never counts the tents of his tribe, nor the exact number of his sheep, nor a military chief the exact number of his men, nor a governor the number of inhabitants of his town, a merchant never attempts to ascertain the exact amount of his property; an approximation only is all that be desires. This arises from a belief that counting is an ostentatious display of wealth, which heaven will punish by a speedy diminution. The Eastern merchant seldom enters into hazardous speculations, but limits his transactions to the extent of his capital. Credit to a great amount is obtained with difficulty, as affairs of individuals are in general much more publicly known than in Europe; failures are, therefore, of rare occurrence; and when a man becomes embarrassed either from an unsuccessful speculation or inevitable losses, his creditors forbear to press their demands, and are generally paid after a few years’ patience; [p.40] thereby saving the merchant’s credit, and preventing the consequences of bankruptcy. On the other hand, however, the Eastern merchants are liable to the imputation of uncertainty in their payments, which they often delay beyond the stipulated periods. Even the most respectable among them do not hesitate to put off the payment of a debt for months; and it may be stated as a general rule in Egypt and Syria, that assignments are never fully paid till after a lapse of nearly double the time named. But this, I was often assured by the best informed people here, has only become the practice within the last twenty or thirty years, and is a consequence of the universal decay of commerce and diminution of capital in the Levant. At Djidda, as I have already observed, almost all bargains are made for ready money.