long bazaars are entirely occupied with shoe-shops, and there is nearly a quarter of a mile of confectionery, embracing more varieties than I ever saw, or imagined possible.  I saw yesterday the operation of weaving silk and gold, which is a very slow process.  The warp and the body of the woof were of purple silk.  The loom only differed from the old hand-looms in general use in having some thirty or forty contrivances for lifting the threads of the warp, so as to form, by variation, certain patterns.  The gold threads by which the pattern was worked were contained in twenty small shuttles, thrust by hand under the different parcels of the warp, as they were raised by a boy trained for that purpose, who sat on the top of the loom.  The fabric was very brilliant in its appearance, and sells, as the weavers informed me, at 100 piastres per pik—­about $7 per yard.

We had letters to Mr. Ford, an American Missionary established here, and Signor di Picciotto, who acts as American Vice-Consul.  Both gentlemen have been very cordial in their offers of service, and by their aid we have been enabled to see something of Aleppo life and society.  Mr. Ford, who has been here four years, has a pleasant residence at Jedaida, a Christian suburb of the city.  His congregation numbers some fifty or sixty proselytes, who are mostly from the schismatic sects of the Armenians.  Dr. Smith, who established the mission at Ain-tab (two days’ journey north of this), where he died last year, was very successful among these sects, and the congregation there amounts to nine hundred.  The Sultan, a year ago, issued a firman, permitting his Christian subjects to erect houses of worship; but, although this was proclaimed in Constantinople and much lauded in Europe as an act of great generosity and tolerance, there has been no official promulgation of it here.  So of the aid which the Turkish Government was said to have afforded to its destitute Christian subjects, whose houses were sacked during the fanatical rebellion of 1850.  The world praised the Sultan’s charity and love of justice, while the sufferers, to this day, lack the first experience of it.  But for the spontaneous relief contributed in Europe and among the Christian communities of the Levant, the amount of misery would have been frightful.

To Feridj Pasha, who is at present the commander of the forces here, is mainly due the credit of having put down the rebels with a strong hand.  There were but few troops in the city at the time of the outbreak, and as the insurgents, who were composed of the Turkish and Arab population, were in league with the Aneyzehs of the Desert, the least faltering or delay would have led to a universal massacre of the Christians.  Fortunately, the troops were divided into two portions, one occupying the barracks on a hill north of the city, and the other, a mere corporal’s guard of a dozen men, posted in the citadel.  The leaders of the outbreak went to the