Damascus is a great centre for the conveyance of merchandise to Bagdad and Persia by means of camel caravans--those fleets of the desert. They are accompanied by armed escorts, as their journey lies through a long stretch of desert, inhabited by numerous Bedouins or Arab tribes, ever ready to blackmail the caravan. These tribes inhabit the Hauran during the spring, and move to the desert in autumn. They own camels, asses, and sheep, and rear magnificent horses, which are justly considered the most beautiful in the world. The Bedouins live in tents made of black goat's-hair, and their camp looks from a distance like a number of grazing cattle. The tent of their _sheik_, or chief, is distinguished by its greater size, and round it are those of the members of the family. Before the tent-doors the horses are tethered. Family life among them is patriarchal, the sheik being priest, judge, and ruler. With some tribes women occupy a high social position, and menial work is done mostly by the men. The Arabs subsist chiefly on dates, which they gather and store in October, but when in the desert they live to some extent on the produce of the chase, which comprises an abundance of gazelles, hares, and quails. These they hunt with greyhounds or with trained hawks. The latter, when they see their quarry, swoop upon it, and pick at its eyes until the hunter arrives. The Bedouins live also on bread, which they bake in thin flat cakes, and on milk, specially in its fermented condition, which they call _leben_. Their butter they have to keep in summer in jars, as, owing to the heat, it is then as liquid as oil. The great province of Mesopotamia, where formerly stood Babylon and Nineveh, forms the south-eastern limit of the Turkish Empire. Watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris, it was once a magnificent agricultural district, but the incompetency of its rulers has allowed the network of canals, which distributed the waters of these rivers, to dry up, and the country is now largely a wilderness. Its population, the remnant of the Chaldeans, has also decreased, and is poor. The houses are made with sun-dried bricks, cemented with bitumen. The roofs are flat, and the lower rooms are underground, and are used during the summer months as bedrooms, owing to the excessive heat. The navigation of the upper reaches of the Euphrates is by means of rafts, underneath which are inflated skins of oxen. On this raft the traveller's tent is pitched, and he drifts leisurely down the river, while the boatmen help it along with long poles. CHAPTER IX TURKS Having summarized the customs of some of the people under Ottoman rule, I must say something of the Turks themselves.