Opposite the liwan is a large room paved with marble, with a handsome fountain in the centre.  It is the finest in the hotel, and now occupied by Lord Dalkeith and his friends.  Our own room is on the upper floor, and is so rich in decorations that I have not yet finished the study of them.  Along the side, looking down on the court, we have a mosaic floor of white, red, black and yellow marble.  Above this is raised a second floor, carpeted and furnished in European style.  The walls, for a height of ten feet, are covered with wooden panelling, painted with arabesque devices in the gayest colors, and along the top there is a series of Arabic inscriptions in gold.  There are a number of niches or open closets in the walls, whose arched tops are adorned with pendent wooden ornaments, resembling stalactites, and at the corners of the room the heavy gilded and painted cornice drops into similar grotesque incrustations.  A space of bare white wall intervenes between this cornice and the ceiling, which is formed of slim poplar logs, laid side by side, and so covered with paint and with scales and stripes and network devices in gold and silver, that one would take them to be clothed with the skins of the magic serpents that guard the Valley of Diamonds.  My most satisfactory remembrance of Damascus will be this room.

My walks through the city have been almost wholly confined to the bazaars, which are of immense extent.  One can walk for many miles, without going beyond the cover of their peaked wooden roofs, and in all this round will find no two precisely alike.  One is devoted entirely to soap; another to tobacco, through which you cough and sneeze your way to the bazaar of spices, and delightedly inhale its perfumed air.  Then there is the bazaar of sweetmeats; of vegetables; of red slippers; of shawls; of caftans; of bakers and ovens; of wooden ware; of jewelry—–­a great stone building, covered with vaulted passages; of Aleppo silks; of Baghdad carpets; of Indian stuffs; of coffee; and so on, through a seemingly endless variety.  As I have already remarked, along the line of the bazaars are many khans, the resort of merchants from all parts of Turkey and Persia, and even India.  They are large, stately buildings, and some of them have superb gateways of sculptured marble.  The interior courts are paved with stone, with fountains in the centre, and many of them are covered with domes resting on massive pillars.  The largest has a roof of nine domes, supported by four grand pillars, which inclose a fountain.  The mosques, into which no Christian is allowed to enter, are in general inferior to those of Cairo, but their outer courts are always paved with marble, adorned with fountains, and surrounded by light and elegant corridors.  The grand mosque is an imposing edifice, and is said to occupy the site of a former Christian church.