CHAPTER XXX. 
DAMASCUS. 
In the midst of an extensive wooded valley lay the beauti¬ 
ful city of Damascus called by the Emperor Julian the true 
city of Jupiter, the eye of the whole East. What can I say 
of the first view of Damascus, the bright glowing paradise 
of the Orient, the famous city of the Caliphate, that from 
early youth had haunted us in our brightest dreams of East¬ 
ern travel! There it lay before us at last, outspread at the 
base of Jebel-el-Nazir, upon the broad plain embosomed in 
groves of olives and cypress; with its mosques and minarets 
and castles, its white domes and giant old gateways, rising 
from the mass of foliage, and glittering in the sunbeams like 
a fairy city of snow in a summer garden. It was enough to 
inspire even a practical man like myself, whose mission in 
the East is to rake up stern facts and expose all visionary 
fancies—enough, I say, to strike poetry into the unpoetical— 
even into a determined foe to romance. On this very spot, or 
close by, it is said that a famous Sheik, whose tomb we saw 
as we passed down, exclaimed on beholding Damascus : “ I 
will proceed no further ; I will die here, for if I go on I shall 
be unable to enjoy Paradise.” And sure enough he died, for 
there stands his tomb. Like the first sight of Constantinople, 
it is gorgeously Oriental; different indeed in position, but 
scarcely less beautiful. Surrounded by luxuriant groves, and 
embosomed in gardens, its white spires and domes stand out 
with wonderful distinctness and sumptuous profusion from 
amid the waving mass of green; and afar on every side from 
the base of Jebel-el-Nazir stretches the splendid valley of 
the Seven Rivers, variegated with green fields and woods and 
