We went to see the Persian merchants at their khan, and purchased
some silks there from a swarthy black-bearded man, with a conical
cap of lambswool. Is it not hard to think that silks bought of a
man in a lambswool cap, in a caravanserai, brought hither on the
backs of camels, should have been manufactured after all at Lyons?
Others of our party bought carpets, for which the town is famous;
and there was one who absolutely laid in a stock of real Smyrna
figs; and purchased three or four real Smyrna sponges for his
carriage; so strong was his passion for the genuine article.

I wonder that no painter has given us familiar views of the East:
not processions, grand sultans, or magnificent landscapes; but
faithful transcripts of everyday Oriental life, such as each street
will supply to him. The camels afford endless motives, couched in
the market-places, lying by thousands in the camel-square, snorting
and bubbling after their manner, the sun blazing down on their
backs, their slaves and keepers lying behind them in the shade:
and the Caravan Bridge, above all, would afford a painter subjects
for a dozen of pictures. Over this Roman arch, which crosses the
Meles river, all the caravans pass on their entrance to the town.
On one side, as we sat and looked at it, was a great row of plane-
trees; on the opposite bank, a deep wood of tall cypresses--in the
midst of which rose up innumerable grey tombs, surmounted with the
turbans of the defunct believers. Beside the stream, the view was
less gloomy. There was under the plane-trees a little coffee-
house, shaded by a trellis-work, covered over with a vine, and
ornamented with many rows of shining pots and water-pipes, for
which there was no use at noon-day now, in the time of Ramazan.
Hard by the coffee-house was a garden and a bubbling marble
fountain, and over the stream was a broken summer-house, to which