that are with him, have a matter against any man, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls:  let them accuse one another.  But if ye seek anything about other matters, it shall be settled in the regular assembly.  For indeed we are in danger to be accused concerning this day’s riot, there being no cause for it:  and as touching it we shall not be able to give an account of this concourse.  And when he had thus spoken, he dismissed the assembly” (Acts 19:23-41).

As I was leaving the ruins, I stopped, sat down in sight of the spot where I supposed the temple stood, and read the speech of Demetrius, and thought his fears were well founded.  Their trade has come into disrepute, “the temple of the great goddess” has been “made of no account,” and “she whom Asia and all the world” worshiped has been “deposed from her magnificence.”  Portions of the temple are now on exhibition in the British Museum, in London, and portions have been carried to different other cities to adorn buildings inferior to the one in which they were originally used.  “From the temple to the more southern of the two eastern gates of the city,” says McGarvey, “are traces of a paved street nearly a mile in length, along the side of which was a continuous colonnade, with the marble coffins of the city’s illustrious dead occupying the spaces between the columns.  The processions of worshipers, as they marched out of the city to the temple, passed by this row of coffins, the inscriptions on which were constantly proclaiming the noble deeds of the mighty dead.”  The canal and artificial harbor, which enabled the ships of the world to reach the gates of the city, have disappeared under the weight of the hand of time.  In some places the ground is literally covered with small stones, and even in the theater, weeds, grass and bushes grow undisturbed.  How complete the desolation!

Before leaving Ayassalouk on the afternoon train, I bought some grapes of a man who weighed them to me with a pair of balances, putting the fruit on one pan and a stone on the other; but I didn’t object to his scales, for he gave me a good supply, and I went back and got some more.  I also bought some bread to eat with the grapes, and one of the numerous priests of these Eastern countries gave me some other fruit on the train.  I was abroad in the fruit season, and I enjoyed it very much.  I had several kinds, including the orange, lemon, grapes, pomegranates, figs, olives, and dates.  Perhaps I had nothing finer than the large, sweet grapes of Greece.  The next day after the trip to Ephesus, I boarded the Princess Eugenia, a Russian ship, for Beyrout, in Syria.  Soon after leaving Smyrna the ship stopped at a port of disinfection.  The small boats were lowered, and the third-class passengers were carried to the disinfecting establishment, where their clothes were heated in a steam oven, while they received a warm shower bath without expense to themselves.  A nicely dressed young German shook his head afterwards, as though he did not like such treatment; but it was not specially disagreeable, and there was no use to complain.