I was never before so impressed with industry. Damascus is a great manufacturing centre. The people have no machinery—all work is done by hand, and nothing is done within walls or behind curtains. Caps and carpets, saddles and sabres, shoes and shawls, silks and safes, beds and baskets, and a hundred other things, are manufactured on the streets in the open air before our eyes. One entire street is given up to a single industry. For instance the street here to my right is called the shoe bazaar. It is probably a quarter of a mile long; and on either side of the street, from one end to the other, are men, women and children, seated on mats or flat down on the ground with their limbs folded under them. All are as busy as bees, sewing and stitching leather, making shoes. If one wants to buy a pair of shoes, he trades with the man who makes them. The merchant does not stop work, but talks without looking up.
Most of the manufacturers are eager to trade with Europeans and Americans, but some of them are so fanatical that they will not receive money from “Christian dogs.” Numerous poles are thrown across the streets, twelve or fourteen feet from the ground, from which strings are hanging. When the shoes are finished, they are tied to these strings and left suspended. Looking down the street, one sees hundreds and hundreds of shoes dangling in the air, about four feet from the ground.
Silk bazaars are numerous. Looking down these several streets, one sees many weavers seated on the ground, plying their shuttles. Above their uncombed heads is silk of every grade and color, suspended in the air and trembling in the wind. As with shoes and silks, so also with carpets, saddles, and other departments of industry.
The leading industry of Damascus is cabinet-making. The furniture made here is of the finest woods, and is inlaid with mother-of-pearl; hence it is perfectly exquisite and quite costly. Skilled artisans are to be found in these different departments of work. The best of them receive only from sixty to eighty cents per day, while craftsmen of equal skill, in our country, command four to five dollars per day.
Thursday of each week presents a busy scene at the donkey and camel markets. Hundreds of half-dressed and hard-looking camel raisers from the desert drive their patient beasts, old and young, into an open square in the midst of the city. Sellers, buyers and traders, wearing different costumes, representing different tribes and countries, meet. Going in among the camels, they catch, ride and drive them. The animals are priced, and trouble begins. The purchaser offers the seller one-third, or one-fourth of his price. This is taken as an insult. They quarrel, curse each other, and sometimes fight, the friends on either side taking part. Finally the difficulty is settled by an agreement to “split the difference;” so the camel is sold at half of the first price—frequently for less. Late in the evening they adjourn in much disorder. Turbaned Arabs now lead long trains of camels down different streets to the several gates of the city. To-morrow morning, at an early hour, these much abused “ships of the desert” will be loaded and started out on a long voyage across an ocean of sand.