It was a female servant, however, who, to our great amazement, made a profound salutation, and seemed delighted to see us.  “My master did not expect your Excellencies to-day; he has gone into the gardens, but will soon return.  Will your Excellencies take coffee after your dinner?” and coffee was forthwith served.  The old woman was unremitting in her attentions; and her son, a boy of eight years, and the most venerable child I ever saw, entertained us with the description of a horse which his master had just bought—­a horse which had cost two thousand piastres, and was ninety years old.  Well, this Aleppo is an extraordinary place, was my first impression, and the inhabitants are remarkable people; but I waited the master’s arrival, as the only means of solving the mystery.  About dusk, there was another rap at the door.  A lady dressed in white, with an Indian handkerchief bound over her black hair, arrived.  “Pray excuse us,” said she; “we thought you would not reach here before to-morrow; but my brother will come directly.”  In fact, the brother did come soon afterwards, and greeted us with a still warmer welcome.  “Before leaving the gardens,” he said, “I heard of your arrival, and have come in a full gallop the whole way.”  In order to put an end to this comedy of errors, I declared at once that he was mistaken; nobody in Aleppo could possibly know of our coming, and we were, perhaps, transgressing on his hospitality.  But no:  he would not be convinced.  He was a dragoman to the English Consulate; his master had told him we would be here the next day, and he must be prepared to receive us.  Besides, the janissary of the Consulate had showed us the way to his house.  We, therefore, let the matter rest until next morning, when we called on Mr. Very, the Consul, who informed us that the janissary had mistaken us for two gentlemen we had met in Damascus, the travelling companions of Lord Dalkeith.  As they had not arrived, he begged us to remain in the quarters which had been prepared for them.  We have every reason to be glad of this mistake, as it has made us acquainted with one of the most courteous and hospitable gentlemen in the East.

Aleppo lies so far out of the usual routes of travel, that it is rarely visited by Europeans.  One is not, therefore, as in the case of Damascus, prepared beforehand by volumes of description, which preclude all possibility of mistake or surprise.  For my part, I only knew that Aleppo had once been the greatest commercial city of the Orient, though its power had long since passed into other hands.  But there were certain stately associations lingering around the name, which drew me towards it, and obliged me to include it, at all hazards, in my Asiatic tour.  The scanty description of Captains Irby and Mangles, the only one I had read, gave me no distinct idea of its position or appearance; and when, the other day, I first saw it looming grand and gray among the gray hills, more like a vast natural crystallization than the product of human art, I revelled in the novelty of that startling first impression.