Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/936

 160 The Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal. [June, gredients are most intimately mixed, and that no foreign matter (especially vegetable) he suffered to intrude itself into the mass. The water, if hot, causes the mortar to set more rapidly, and onhy sufficient should be applied to give consistency to the mass. The exact quantity of water to be used in slaking must depend on the capacity of the lime to absorb it, for this and no more must it do." But the chief care in the making of good mortar must be had in the repeated beatings and turnings it is to have. And here let us say that our inventors would confer a great benefit on the building community, and indeed on the world at large by the construction of a suitable mill for working up and tamp- ing mortar in such a manner as to en- sure every particle of the mass receiving its due share of attention. In this way we would have good, tenacious, and most enduring mortar which would defy alike the destroying influences of time and the elements, fully as well as that of the ancients. Is not this a subject worthy of deliberation ? Is it not one to be reduced to practice in our boast- ful age of great advancement. THE BATHS OF DAMASCUS. THE season is upon us when the bath is not more a luxury than a neces- shy, and we of Philadelphia, as well as our neighboring cities throughout the Union, know it and feel it. At such a time then, there is something bordering on satis- faction even in reading of the luxuries which others enjoy not with a feeling of envy but with a philanthropic pleasure to think that all the world is not quite so sordid as to be entirely thoughtless of the comforts of their brethren of the vast human race. Addison, in his entertaining and highly instructive book of travels, in the second volume says : " Damascus is one of the most vener- able cities in the world, for its antiquity. It is supposed to have been founded by Uz, the son of Shem, the first son of Noah, and is known to have existed in the time of Abraham. For three cen- turies it was the abode of the Persian Kings. Here the houses have externally a very mean appearance, presenting only a dead wall of unburnt bricks, towards the street, with one or two windows, pos- sessing no glass, but filled with a thick lattice, formed of cross bars of wood. The cold air is excluded at night by a sliding shutter, fastened >y a wooden bolt of curious construction ; the in- habitants sleep on the tops of the houses in the summer season, with their clothes on, which they only take off when they go to the baths. " The baths at Damascus, and the man- ner of bathing being the same as in Persia, we shall give an interesting de- scription of one of those places in that ancient city, with the process of purifi- cation. " Here the delicious custom, so often mentioned in the Arabian Nights, univer- sally prevails, of going to the bath after a long journey through this parched country before he puts on clean linen, having previously laid down at every place of rest in his travelling habiliments. Having packed up our clean linen and sent them by slaves we proceeded to the principal bath of the city of Damas- cus, called the Bath of Musk, which we approached through a court in which was an ornamented fountain that threw up a stream of water seventy feet into the air, and again returning, produced a refreshing and pleasant coolness. Our entrance into the bath was by a small door, which opened into a vast circular saloon surmounted by a large dome, and paved with marble. In the centre of