Widnes Examiner. — 1909-08-07 (Widnes, Cheshire, England)

DAMASCUS THE BEAUTIFUL.  It is a large white city lying in the centre of miles of thick green orchards and gardens, and watered as everybody knows, by the rushing, blue-green river Abana, now called Barada. I don't suppose anybody has ever been to Damascus without quoting "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the rivers of Israel." Indeed it is extraordinary how real all the old Biblical texts become to one as one sees the shepherd leading his flock instead of driving it, and carrying the rod and staff, one to guide the flock, and the other, shaped like a long wooden club to fend off evil beasts, the ploughman ploughing with a yoke of oxen and the strings of camels padding patiently along with their heavy loads. Outside the glorious miles of orchard-gardens spreads the dry brown plain east wards losing itself on the horizon in the direction of Palmyra, whilst to north and south rise hills. It was somewhere amongst these southern hills that St. Paul's conversion took place. High on the slopes of Anti-Lebanon which the train has just orossed, Mahomet is said, whilst still a camel driver, to have first perceived the city and to have declared it was so like paradise that whilst he had work to do on earth, he dare not go into it for fear of never caring to leave it again. Accordingly he turned his back on the city; a monument marks the spot. The Damascans love to comOare their city to a pearl set in emeralds, and minarets, domes, and flat terraces on the roofs rise white and gleaming from amongst the sea of foliage. But in 1860 a most terrible massacre of the native Christiq,ns by the Mahommedans must have turned the whole city red. Six thousand Christians were slaughtered, and dead and dying were burnt together for the whole Christian quarter was set on fire. Indeed that any escaped at all was due to the presence of a man whose name should never be forgotten. This hero was Abd-el-Kadr, an Algerian Moor, who, when finally captured by the French, was  allowed to live with some followers in Damascus. Hundreds of fugitives fled to his quarters and were sheltered by him and when thousands of Mahommedans, excited to ferocity, came storming and yelling to slay them, the old hero with only about 20 Moors at his back, rode out into the midst of the frenzied mass of murderers, and rising in his stirrups,bade them cease from their bloodthirsty work,for that they were fools if they thought Europe would not exact vengeance fQr such brutality. These words from a fellow Moslem and such a renowned leader, actually checked the frenzied thousands and saved the remnant of the Christians. But no due reparation was ever demanded, and it is little wonder if the Moslems to this day have remained insolent and overbearing. It makes one simply sicken to read of the wholesale slaughter and agony which .befel in that terrible .month of July 1860 ; and once again it was borne in upon one how right and necessary it was that those who are the guardians of civilization should be trained and disciplined men, able to defend it, and to -succour their brethren in' rough and dangerous lands. . . .  It was after this terrific massacre that Mrs. Bowen Thompson was moved to establish the B.S.M. (the British Syrian Mission) mainly to educate Syrian children in Damascus• and elsewhere. The good these mission schools have done must be untold. There are many societies at work, of which the best known are the C.M.S, (Church  Missionary Society) the London Jews Mission, the Irish Presbyterion and Edinburgh Medical Missions.