1904] Damascus Improved Since 1881 91 



but there would be a difficulty about getting possession. The rent 

 they pay is only eleven pounds a year. 



" From there we went to the Maidan quarter and drank coffee with 

 Ahmed Ibn Jamil, a horse dealer, whom we had known in Egypt, but 

 he showed us no good horses. 



" I find very little change in the town since I was here last except 

 on the north-western side, where the railroad has caused some build- 

 ing, and a big barracks has been put up. The rest of the city is 

 much what I remember it in 1880, not at all Europeanized. The bazaars 

 which were burnt down in Midhat Pasha's time have been rebuilt and 

 are as busy as ever. There are no modern shops or Frank innova- 

 tions, or by-laws, or other Christian tomfooleries ; things are made too 

 uncomfortable for Europeans for there to be any resident foreign 

 merchants. Newspapers of all kinds are forbidden, the post is unsafe 

 and irregular, and at the Central telegraph office there are no printed 

 forms. We were given with difficulty a sheet of notepaper to write 

 a message on. 



" 24th March. — Visited the Ottoman Bank and reopened my ac- 

 count there, finding £12 still to my name, which had been lying there 

 for 23 years. The house has been all these years in the care of the 

 British Consul, who has been changed many times in the interval, 

 the consular dragoman having been put in charge of it who, through 

 lapse of time, had come to consider the property his own. There has 

 been a wonderful flight of storks over the city, travelling in front of a 

 storm from the south-west, many hundreds of them on their annual 

 migration. 



" 26th March. — A night of tempest and a day of rain, but in the 

 evening, the weather having cleared, I walked with Cockerell to Salahieh, 

 the new quarter of the town where houses are being built, we were 

 glad to see on good Turkish models with overhanging stories made 

 of wooden frames filled in with plaster, cheap, practical, and pretty. 

 Richards gives an excellent character of the present Turkish Waly 

 Nazim Pasha as honest, sensible, and pacific, but he is building a huge 

 Government house in European taste which must disfigure that quarter 

 of the town. The view from Salahieh is among the first half-dozen 

 great views of the world, the others being perhaps the view over Cairo 

 from the top of Mokattam, (2) the harbour of Rio Janeiro seen from 

 Corcovado, (3) the Lake of Geneva from the hills above Lausanne 

 (4) Constantinople, from the Tower of Galata and (5) the Red Sea 

 with Mount Sinai from the summit of Kalala. All these will stop 

 one's breath for wonder and bring tears to one's eyes. 



" 2jth March. — We spent the day in the bazaars, which are the 

 best and cheapest in the world. It is a pleasure buying in them 

 because the sellers are so amiable and do not worry travellers to 



