388 TRAVELS IN AFRICA, 
The drefs of the people of Aleppo refembles that of Conftan- 
tlnople more than that of Egypt and fouthern Syria : both men 
and women, in rainy weather, wear a kind of wooden patten, 
which has no agreeable effed; either on the eye or the ear. 
The hire of a camel from Aleppo.to Ladakia or Scanderoon, 
about fixty miles, was a century ago four piafters, thirty years 
ago eight piafters, and is at this time nineteen. The price of 
commodities is much changed in the courfe of not many years. 
But fmce the year 17 16 it has increafed in a tenfold pro- 
portion. I faw an authentic document, that the ardeb of rice 
at that time fold for eleven piafters ; it now fetches one hun- 
dred and eighteen piafters. They at that time fold 185 rolls 
of bread, of a particular kind, for a piafter ; they now only fell 
forty of the fame kind for that fum. Meat is good and in 
plenty ; it is fold for fifty paras the rotal, 720 drams, or about 
4id. a pound. There are no fifh, fave a few fmall eels, found 
in the CoiL Wine is very dear, none being produced in the 
neighbourhood. On the other articles of provifion nothing re- 
markable occurs. 
At Aleppo I firft obferved the pradice of illuminating the 
mofques on Thurfday night, to uftier in the Mohammedan 
Sabbath ; this is unknown at Kahira, and other cities of the 
South. 
About this time, the beginning of June 1797, intelligence 
arrived, that the Palha of Bagdad had fent a ftrong detachment 
of 
