my room. They poured hot and cold water alternately over my feet and hands, and did all they could to make me comfortable. After a few hours rest, I rose by the light of the moon, which streamed in at the wide, unglazed, arched window.
The hinges, locks, and door handles throughout the house were of beautiful design, somewhat resembling Italian work of the sixteenth century.
By the time the muleteers were roused, and our horses were in readiness for the journey, the sun had risen, and we hastened away. The market-places were already busy with buyers and sellers. The gardens of Ramleh are extensive and fertile; the date-palm, especially, flourishes there. The soil is sandy.[1]
Just outside the town, under a clump of tamarisk-trees, sat a group of dirty-looking Arabs, in picturesque rags. As we passed, they rose from their stony seats, and advanced toward us, holding out little tin cups for alms. I then perceived that the poor creatures were lepers! Their faces were so disfigured that they scarcely looked human; the eyelids and lips of some were quite destroyed, while the faces of others were swollen into frightful masses. It was the saddest sight I ever saw.
The families afflicted with this terrible and hereditary disease intermarry, and sometimes the immediate offspring are free from any appearance of it, but it is sure to revive in the succeeding generation; some of them appear quite healthy till they are nineteen or twenty, but they feel them selves to be a doomed race, and live quite apart from the rest of the world, subsisting almost entirely on charity—for often their fingers rot off and render their hands useless.[2]
In return for the few piasters we gave them, they cried, in hoarse whispers, "May it return to you tenfold!" "Peace
- ↑ "Ramleh" is the Arabic word for sandy; Arab names of places are very frequently descriptive.
- ↑ They live in special quarters in four towns in Syria; namely, Jerusalem, Damascus, Ramleh, and Nablûs, whither those born casually elsewhere are sent as soon as the disease has thoroughly shown itself. They are better off than
