{44}
When I entered the city in my usual dress there was but one poor
fellow that wagged his tongue, and him, in the open streets,
Dthemetri horsewhipped.
During my stay I went wherever I chose,
and attended the public baths without molestation. Indeed, my
relations with the pleasanter portion of the Mahometan population
were upon a much better footing here than at most other places.
In the principal streets of Damascus there is a path for foot-
passengers, which is raised, I think, a foot or two above the
bridle-road. Until the arrival of the British consul-general none
but a Mussulman had been permitted to walk upon the upper way. Mr.
Farren would not, of course, suffer that the humiliation of any
such exclusion should be submitted to by an Englishman, and I
always walked upon the raised path as free and unmolested as if I
had been in Pall Mall. The old usage was, however, maintained with
as much strictness as ever against the Christian Rayahs and Jews:
not one of them could have set his foot upon the privileged path
without endangering his life.
I was lounging one day, I remember, along "the paths of the
faithful," when a Christian Rayah from the bridle-road below
saluted me with such earnestness, and craved so anxiously to speak
and be spoken to, that he soon brought me to a halt. He had
nothing to tell, except only the glory and exultation with which he
saw a fellow-Christian stand level with the imperious Mussulmans.
Perhaps he had been absent from the place for some time, for
otherwise I hardly know how it could have happened that my
exaltation was the first instance he had seen.
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