we discovered
toward evening the minarets of Mossul. This is the most easterly point
which I have visited, and my Turkish companions had to face west when
they offered their evening prayer, while in Constantinople the moslems
are looking for the _Kibla_ in the southeast.

Mossul is the important half-way station for the caravans from Bagdad
to Aleppo. Being situated in an oasis of the desert the city must at
all times be on the lookout against the Arabs. The walls which
completely surround the city are weak but high, and offer sufficient
protection against the irregular bands of mounted Bedouins. The
Bab-el-amadi gate, mentioned in the time of the crusaders, is still
standing, although it has been walled up. Most of the dwellings are
built of sun-dried bricks and a kind of mortar which hardens within a
few seconds. Following an Oriental custom great weight is attached to
beautiful and large entrance doors (_Bab_). You can see arched portals
of marble (which is quarried immediately outside the city gates) in
front of houses and mudhuts the roofs of which scarcely reach to the
points of the arches. The roofs are flat, made of stamped earth
(_Dam_), and are surrounded by low walls and parapets. In most of the
larger houses you can see traces of their having been hit by bullets,
and the fortress-like aspect of these dwellings reminds you of the
palaces of Florence, except that here everything is smaller, humbler
and less perfect.

The inhabitants of Mossul are a remarkable mixture of the original
Chaldean populace and the Arabs, Kurds, Persians and Turks who
successively have ruled over them. The common speech is Arabic.

Indshe-Bairaktar, the governor, received us with great courtesy and
had us quartered with the Armenian Patriarch. The Nestorian and
Jacobite Christians of Mossul have the most beautiful churches I have
seen in Turkey, but they are living in discord and hatred. One of
these churches happened to belong, I do not know why, to two
congregations, and since everything which the one did in these sacred
halls was an abomination in the eyes of the other, the beautiful vault
had been divided by a brick wall directly in the centre.

Our Jacobite Patriarch was greatly troubled about having to house
heretics, but he much preferred us to Nestorians or Greeks. Since no
Christians, moreover, had ever been received with so much honor by
the Pasha, and the most important Mussulmans came to pay us their
respects, he tr