air of repose to spiritualize it and make it seem rather a beautiful

estray from the mysterious worlds we visit in dreams than a substantial

tenant of our coarse, dull globe. And when you think of the leagues of

blighted, blasted, sandy, rocky, sun-burnt, ugly, dreary, infamous

country you have ridden over to get here, you think it is the most

beautiful, beautiful picture that ever human eyes rested upon in all the

broad universe! If I were to go to Damascus again, I would camp on

Mahomet's hill about a week, and then go away. There is no need to go

inside the walls. The Prophet was wise without knowing it when he

decided not to go down into the paradise of Damascus.

There is an honored old tradition that the immense garden which Damascus

stands in was the Garden of Eden, and modern writers have gathered up

many chapters of evidence tending to show that it really was the Garden

of Eden, and that the rivers Pharpar and Abana are the "two rivers" that

watered Adam's Paradise. It may be so, but it is not paradise now, and

one would be as happy outside of it as he would be likely to be within.

It is so crooked and cramped and dirty that one can not realize that he

is in the splendid city he saw from the hill-top. The gardens are hidden

by high mud-walls, and the paradise is become a very sink of pollution

and uncomeliness. Damascus has plenty of clear, pure water in it,

though, and this is enough, of itself, to make an Arab think it beautiful

and blessed. Water is scarce in blistered Syria. We run railways by our

large cities in America; in Syria they curve the roads so as to make them

run by the meagre little puddles they call "fountains," and which are not

found oftener on a journey than every four hours. But the "rivers" of

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The Innocents Abroad