THE PORT OF THE WILDERNESS
Straight," are enclosed by great cylindrical roofs of corrugated iron. You are indoors and yet out-of-doors. The light is dim; but it is daylight, and you feel that all the while the sun is shining very brightly overhead. Along the fronts of the shops and hanging on ropes which stretch across the street, are shining brasses and pieces of inlaid wood-work and cloths of the most gorgeous orient hues; but the rear of these same shops is usually wrapped in impenetrable gloom. Sometimes there is visible only a square black hole surrounded by a frame of gaudy silks. When you pass a blacksmith's forge, with shadowy figures moving among the sparks at the back of the inky darkness, it seems like a glimpse into inferno.
Most of the shops are tiny affairs only six or eight feet square, which open on the street for their entire width and have the floor raised to about the height of the customer's waist. The resemblance of a bazaar to a long double row of pigeon-holes is increased by the manner in which the box-like recesses follow continuously one after the other, with no doorways between, as the entrance to their upper stories is by ladders in the rear.
In the middle of his diminutive emporium, the typical Damascus merchant sits all day cross-legged, smoking his water-pipe, reading from a Koran placed before him on a little wooden book-rest, and eternally fondling his beard. Frequently he says his
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