EATHS OF DAMASCUS. 
267 
you’ll not mind it directly ; it’s quite stunning, I assure you, 
when you get used to it.” Now, I had a painful misgiving 
of absolute suffocation in the act of getting used to it, but it 
was too late to retreat. At some magic word in Arabic from 
the captain, who was not much pleased himself with the as¬ 
semblage here, we were seized again by the naked monsters 
before mentioned, and dragged into a room still further on, 
and of much smaller dimensions. There were only two or 
three victims in this branch of the establishment. It seemed 
to be the finishing-up place, where people who chose to go 
through the whole operation were subjected to the final and 
most exquisite ordeals ; but we, as a matter of favor, were 
permitted to suif ourselves by having the whole thing con¬ 
centrated. The fact is, in the rooms through which we had 
passed there was such an odor of impure flesh that we were 
both a little haunted by visions of plague and leprosy. Here, 
however, we were past all odors; there was no further use 
for the organs of scent. It was of such a fiery temperature 
that for a few minutes it was a sufficient labor to struggle 
against suffocation. Soon the big drops of sweat rolled 
down from my forehead ; I was covered with a flow of steam 
and sweat that quite blinded me. The captain vanished 
in a white mist, leaving a parting impression on my mind of 
a man gasping for life in a sea of soap-suds. I saw no more 
of him for a quarter of an hour. Meantime I was jerked out 
of my winding sheet by the one-eyed monster, and thrust 
down into a sitting posture, close by the vase of hot water. 
“ Hold, for God’s sake ! What—” It was too late. A per¬ 
fect deluge of foaming lather came pouring down over my 
head and face, running into my eyes, ears, and nostrils, and 
stopping up my mouth beyond all hope of speech. I have 
an indistinct recollection of a confusion of agonies through 
which I went for the next five minutes, but can not depict 
them with any thing like the force of reality. 
From the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, I was 
enveloped in a bank of hot lather, which the horrid wretch 
who had me down was rubbing into my flesh with a small 
rake, or some other instrument of torture. At last he reached 
