The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Mark Twain eBook

It is soothing to the heart to abuse England and France for interposing to save the Ottoman Empire from the destruction it has so richly deserved for a thousand years.  It hurts my vanity to see these pagans refuse to eat of food that has been cooked for us; or to eat from a dish we have eaten from; or to drink from a goatskin which we have polluted with our Christian lips, except by filtering the water through a rag which they put over the mouth of it or through a sponge!  I never disliked a Chinaman as I do these degraded Turks and Arabs, and when Russia is ready to war with them again, I hope England and France will not find it good breeding or good judgment to interfere.

In Damascus they think there are no such rivers in all the world as their little Abana and Pharpar.  The Damascenes have always thought that way.  In 2 Kings, chapter v., Naaman boasts extravagantly about them.  That was three thousand years ago.  He says:  “Are not Abana and Pharpar rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?  May I not wash in them and be clean?” But some of my readers have forgotten who Naaman was, long ago.  Naaman was the commander of the Syrian armies.  He was the favorite of the king and lived in great state.  “He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.”  Strangely enough, the house they point out to you now as his, has been turned into a leper hospital, and the inmates expose their horrid deformities and hold up their hands and beg for bucksheesh when a stranger enters.

One can not appreciate the horror of this disease until he looks upon it in all its ghastliness, in Naaman’s ancient dwelling in Damascus.  Bones all twisted out of shape, great knots protruding from face and body, joints decaying and dropping away—­horrible!

CHAPTER XLV.

The last twenty-four hours we staid in Damascus I lay prostrate with a violent attack of cholera, or cholera morbus, and therefore had a good chance and a good excuse to lie there on that wide divan and take an honest rest.  I had nothing to do but listen to the pattering of the fountains and take medicine and throw it up again.  It was dangerous recreation, but it was pleasanter than traveling in Syria.  I had plenty of snow from Mount Hermon, and as it would not stay on my stomach, there was nothing to interfere with my eating it—­there was always room for more.  I enjoyed myself very well.  Syrian travel has its interesting features, like travel in any other part of the world, and yet to break your leg or have the cholera adds a welcome variety to it.