it and make it seem rather a beautiful estray from the mysterious worlds we visit in dreams than a substantial tenant of our coarse, dull globe.  And when you think of the leagues of blighted, blasted, sandy, rocky, sun-burnt, ugly, dreary, infamous country you have ridden over to get here, you think it is the most beautiful, beautiful picture that ever human eyes rested upon in all the broad universe!  If I were to go to Damascus again, I would camp on Mahomet’s hill about a week, and then go away.  There is no need to go inside the walls.  The Prophet was wise without knowing it when he decided not to go down into the paradise of Damascus.

There is an honored old tradition that the immense garden which Damascus stands in was the Garden of Eden, and modern writers have gathered up many chapters of evidence tending to show that it really was the Garden of Eden, and that the rivers Pharpar and Abana are the “two rivers” that watered Adam’s Paradise.  It may be so, but it is not paradise now, and one would be as happy outside of it as he would be likely to be within.  It is so crooked and cramped and dirty that one can not realize that he is in the splendid city he saw from the hill-top.  The gardens are hidden by high mud-walls, and the paradise is become a very sink of pollution and uncomeliness.  Damascus has plenty of clear, pure water in it, though, and this is enough, of itself, to make an Arab think it beautiful and blessed.  Water is scarce in blistered Syria.  We run railways by our large cities in America; in Syria they curve the roads so as to make them run by the meagre little puddles they call “fountains,” and which are not found oftener on a journey than every four hours.  But the “rivers” of Pharpar and Abana of Scripture (mere creeks,) run through Damascus, and so every house and every garden have their sparkling fountains and rivulets of water.  With her forest of foliage and her abundance of water, Damascus must be a wonder of wonders to the Bedouin from the deserts.  Damascus is simply an oasis—­that is what it is.  For four thousand years its waters have not gone dry or its fertility failed.  Now we can understand why the city has existed so long.  It could not die.  So long as its waters remain to it away out there in the midst of that howling desert, so long will Damascus live to bless the sight of the tired and thirsty wayfarer.

     “Though old as history itself, thou art fresh as the breath of
     spring, blooming as thine own rose-bud, and fragrant as thine own
     orange flower, O Damascus, pearl of the East!”

Damascus dates back anterior to the days of Abraham, and is the oldest city in the world.  It was founded by Uz, the grandson of Noah.  “The early history of Damascus is shrouded in the mists of a hoary antiquity.”  Leave the matters written of in the first eleven chapters of the Old Testament out, and no recorded event has occurred in the world but Damascus was in existence to receive