Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/232

 was but one poor fellow that wagged his tongue, and him, in the open streets, Dthemetri horse-whipped. 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 striding through Bond Street; 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. His joy was great; so strong and strenuous was England (Lord Palmerston reigned in those days) that it was a pride and de