DAMASCUS is one of the greatest and most truly oriental cities in the world; let us, therefore, for our amusement and instruction, compare it in its general external features with London . In this way we may, perhaps, be able to get a clear idea of an oriental city.
From the dome of St. Paul"s you behold London lying around, like a wide, waving, endless sea of slates, tiles, houses, churches, spires and monuments of all kinds. The eye is relieved with the heights and the hollows, the great and the little, the lowly lanes and the heaven-pointing spires.
In Damascus the scene is very different: there is much lessvariety; no spires, but multitudes of domes upon the mosques,① and baths surmounted by little minarets.② The houses are all flat-roofed, and the hue of the whole is a dim ash colour. A stillness like that of the dead reigns over the whole scene; and the city, surrounded with its celebrated evergreen gardens, suggests the idea of a ship sailing away through an ocean of verdure. Dun walls, flat roofs, domes and minarets, the stillness of death and the verdure of paradise, make up the elements of this most charming oriental scene. Tradition tells that Moham"med refused to enter the city, saying, "As there is only one paradise allotted to man, I shall reserve mine for the future world."London and most large western cities are ver y often surmounted by clouds of smoke, owing to the coldness of the climate and the great consumption of coal. The sky over Damascus appears as bright and serene as elsewhere. For the greater part of the year the climate renders little or nofire necessary; and the little that is used is not from coal, but from wood or charcoal. The rooms have neither chimneys nor fire-places, and, except for the preparation of the supper, fire is rarely required during the course of the day. Hence the oriental city is not encircled with a graceful wreath of smoke, to remind you either of an ungenial clime or of the progress of mechanical genius.
But approach the city. All seems very still and quiet. Is it an enchanted capital, whose inhabitants have been turned into stone or brass? No; but the streets are not paved; there are no wheel-carriages of any kind; the shoes, more like foot-gloves than shoes, have no nails; no cotton-mills lift up their voice in the streets; -all those noisy triumphs of mechanical genius, in the way of forging, spinning, weaving, beetling, which are so frequent among us, are unknown in Damascus. The Easterns hold on their old course steadily, and yield to no seductions of novelty: the water-pump was invented in Alexandria, but the Alexandrians still prefer the ancient well and bucket.
But if the ear is not saluted with the roar and turbulence of mills, forges, and mechanical operations, Damascus has its own peculiar sounds, not less various and interesting in their way. The streets are filled with innumerable dogs, lean, lazy, and hungry- like; mules, donkeys, camels, dromedaries, meet and mingle in those narrow streets, and impress both the eye and the ear of the traveller with a pure and perfect idea of Orientalism.
British cities spread out, as it were indefinitely, into the country, in the way of parks, gardens, summer-houses, gentlemen"s seats, and smiling villages. It is not so in the East. The city is within the walls, and all without is garden as at Damascus, or desert as at Jerusalem. Single houses are, in any country, the proof of the supremacy of law as well as of the respectability and independence of labour. Life and property have not attained perfect security in the East: a pistol, or rather a musket, was presented at my breast, within half a mile of Damascus, in broad daylight!
These noble gardens have no inhabitants; nor do any fine cottages, tasteful houses, or princely palaces, adorn this fertile③region. Within the city you are safe; -without are dogs,insecurity of property, and the liability of being shot. The whole population, therefore, live either in cities or in villages, except in such regions as Beirout, where European influence and power prevail. There, you have gardens and single houses, much after the English fashion.
But place a Damascene④ at Charing Cross, or at Cheapside,and what do you think would amaze him most? The number of vehicles, undoubtedly. He would say, "When will this stream of cars, cabs, coaches, carriages, omnibuses of every shape and size, have an end? Are the people mad? Can they not take their time?"But had the oriental nations of antiquity no wheel-carriages? They had; the Jews and the Egyptians had them, the Greeks and the Romans had them, and perhaps they may exist in some parts of the East to the present time. Here in Damascus there are none. The streets are not formed for them. The horses are trained only for riding. There are no common, levelled,⑤and well-ordered public roads. Our fathers used no coaches;they preferred the more manly exercise of horsemanship, and yielded the soft, effeminate luxury of the coach to the ladies. But in London there are now about nine hundred omnibuses, each of which takes about ?1000 annually. Such is the present state of coaching with us. How different is Damascus! and how different must the aspect of the streets appear!
With us, the city is laid out in streets, squares, crescents, royal circuses, and similar devices of beauty and regularity. This is the case particularly in the "west-ends" and newer parts of our cities and towns. There is nothing of this in Damascus, or in any of the eastern cities that I have seen: squares, crescents, and circuses are unknown. The streets are extremely irregular, crooked, winding, and narrow; which seems to arise out of the anxiety to find a protection from the sun.
