Our cities are filled and ornamented with hotels, coffee-houses, hospitals, work-houses, prisons, and similar conspicuous buildings. Generally speaking, there are none of these in the East. Hospitals and institutions for the sick and the poor were the offspring of Christianity, and are, I am inclined to think, peculiar to Christian lands.

Hence in Damascus, and in the East generally, people are not liable to the reproach which is sometimes brought against us—that the best house in the county is the jail. Besides, in the East, punishment follows crime instantaneously. The judge, the mufti, the prisoner, and the executioner, are all in the court at the same time. As soon as the sentence is delivered, the back is made bare, the donkey is ready (for perjury, in Damascus, the man rides through the city with his face to the tail), or the head falls, according to the crime, in the presence of all the people. Awful severity, and the rapidity of lightning, are the principles of their laws; nor do they deem it necessary to make the exact and minute distinctions of crime that we do. The object is to prevent crime, and this is most effectually done by the principle of terror and the certainty of immediate punishment.