A CITY RUINED | AdventAI

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, January 29, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 5

A CITY RUINED.

DAMASCUS has been ruined by the opening of the Suez Canal. The overland trade, both Oriental and European, by caravan, with Bagdad and the Persian Gulf, has been diverted to the water-way. The competition of India and China in silk and sesame seed through the canal has sensibly affected the value of these products; the late discovery of alizarine has rendered valueless the cultivation of madder for export; and the diversion of large numbers of Moslem pilgrims from all parts of the East who had hitherto made Damascus their point of arrival and departure, with much profit to the city, to the sea-route by the canal, has contributed in no small degree to its downward progress. House rent has declined 30 and 50 per cent, and large numbers of empty houses in every part of the city indicate the general decline. The streets are filled with beggars, both Moslem and Christian, and that, too, in a city where eighteen months ago a beggar was a rarity. The more elevated districts of Lebanon, which formerly contributed the principal portion of mendicants during winter months, have this year sent double the number to swell the amount of local indigence. The far-famed eye of the East is now dull and lusterless.—Selected.