D A M G H 1 N —D A N A John, built by Arcadius (395-408), on a site previously occupied by Roman, Greek, and earlier temples. Traces of the church and of the two later temples are still visible, and recent research has shown that they, and their courts, stood near the centre of a great enclosure measuring 1300 feet from east to west and 1000 feet from north to south. The streets are still narrow, crooked, and in great part unpaved. The best is the Derb el-Mustakfm, which separates the Christian and Jewish quarters. The water of the Barada is led through every quarter; but the supply is not well regulated, and in autumn the water is often unwholesome. In the gardens which surround the city grow walnut, apricot, pomegranate, almond, &c.; and beyond them are fields of wheat, barley, and maize. The climate is good: in winter there is often hard frost and much snow, and even in summer, with a day temperature of 100° F., the nights are always cool. Fever, dysentery, and ophthalmia, chiefly due to exposure to heavy dews and cold nights, are prevalent. In 1894-95 the Damascus-Mezeirib and Damascus-Beirut Railways were opened, and they are now worked at a loss by a French company. Damascus appears to have been an important manufacturing, agricultural, and commercial centre from an early time. Its position in a fertile oasis on the edge of the desert, with roads leading to Northern Syria, the Euphrates and Persian Gulf, Arabia, Egypt, and Acre, its natural port, enabled it to recover after every disaster, and until the opening of the Suez Canal it retained its importance. It is still the market of the nomads, but the surer and cheaper sea route has almost destroyed the transit trade to which it owed its wealth, and has even diminished the importance of the annual pilgrim caravan (Haj) to Mecca. The Damascene, however, still retains his skill as a craftsman and tiller of the soil. The furniture of mosaic wood-work, the iron, copper, and brass work, and the woven goods in cotton, silk, and wool, show great artistic taste. The principal exports are silk and cotton fabrics, wool, apricot paste, wooden and brass goods, starch, rope, &c.; and the imports are cloths, prints, muslins, raw silk, sugar, rice, &c. The value of exports and imports in certain specified years is shown in the following table :—
Exports . Imports .
1890
1894.
1898.
£325,660 525,710
£400,830 614,490
£302,050 675,080
The. estimates of population vary from 154,000 (including Christians and Jews, 55,000) to 225,000 (including Christians and Jews, 35,000). Most of the Christians belong to the Orthodox and Roman Catholic (United) Greek Churches ; and there are also communities of Melchites, Jacobites, Maronites, Nestorians, Armenians, and Protestants. There are British and American Missions, and a British hospital. Authorities.—Lortet. La Syrie d'aujourd’hui, p. 567 f. Paris, 1884.—Von Oppenheim. Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf, i. 49 f. Berlin, 1899.—G. A. Smith. Historical Geography of the Holy Land. Encyclopaedia Biblica, art. “Damascus.” Consular Reports. —Baedeker-Socin. Handbook to Syria and Palestine.— For the Great Mosque see Dickie, Spiers, and Wilson in Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, October 1897. (c. w. w.) Damghan, a town in the province of Samnan va Damghan of Persia, situated 216 miles from Teheran, on the high-road thence to Khorasan, at an elevation of 3770 feet, and in 36 10, N. lat. and 54° 20/ E. long. It has a population of less than 10,000. There are post and telegraph offices, and a great export trade is done in pistachios and almonds. The Damghan almonds of the kind called “ Kaghazf ” (papery), with very thin shells, are famous throughout the country. Damghan was an important city in the Middle Ages, but only a ruined mosque, with a number of columns and some fine wood-carvings, and two minarets remain of that period. Near the city, a few miles south and south-west, are the remains of Hecatompylos, extending from Frat, 16 miles south of Damghan, to near Giisheh, 20 miles west.
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Damien [properly Yeuster, Joseph de] (18401889), Belgian missionary, was born at Tremeloo, near Louvain, on 3rd January 1840. He was educated for a business career, but in his eighteenth year entered the Church, joining the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary (also known as the Picpus Congregation), and taking Damien as his name in religion. In October 1863, while he was still in minor orders, he went out as a missionary to the Pacific Islands, taking the place of his brother, who had been prevented by an illness. Reaching Honolulu in March 1864 he was ordained priest in Whitsuntide of that year, and took up his duties as a missionary. Having observed the ravages of leprosy among the natives, and the painful scenes attending the departure of the lepers, whom it was the practice of the Hawaian Government to deport to the island of Molokai, he conceived an earnest desire to mitigate their lot, and in 1873 volunteered to take spiritual charge of the settlement at Molokai. Here he remained for the rest of his life, with occasional visits to Honolulu, until he became stricken with leprosy in 1885. Besides attending to the spiritual needs of the lepers, he managed, by the labour of his own hands and by appeals to the Hawaian Government, to improve materially the water-supply, the dwellings, and the victualling of the settlement. For five years he worked alone; subsequently other resident priests from time to time assisted him. He succumbed to leprosy on 15th April 1889. Some ill-considered imputations upon Father Damien by a Protestant clergyman produced a memorable tract by Robert Louis Stevenson, which has made Damien’s self - sacrifice famous throughout the world. (j. m‘f.) Damietta, a town of Lower Egypt, near the mouth of the eastern branch of the Delta, terminus of the railway from Cairo, from which it is distant 125 miles by the Tanta route. The population in 1900 was 43,000, showing an increase of 9000 since 1882. Damietta gives its name to dimity, a kind of striped cloth, for which the place was at one time famous. Now it is chiefly important for its rice and fisheries, with which it does a brisk trade with the interior. Dam oh, a town and district of British India, in the Jubbulpore division of the Central Provinces. The town is a railway station, 48 miles east of Saugor. The population in 1881 was 8665; in 1891 it was 11,753. The district of Damoh has an area of 2831 square miles. The population in 1881 was 312,957, and in 1891 was 325,613, giving an average density of 115 persons per square mile. In 1901 the population was 285,138, showing a decrease of 12 per cent., due to famine. The land revenue was Rs. 3,85,000, the incidence of assessment being R.0-5-3 per acre; the cultivated area in 1897—98 was 433,283 acres, of which 1858 were irrigated; the number of police was 326; the boys at school numbered 3394, being 13'6 per cent, of the male population of school-going age; the registered death-rate in 1897 was 60-84 per thousand. A branch of the Indian Midland Railway was opened throughout from Saugor to Katni (104 miles) in January 1899. Damoh suffered severely from the famine of 1896-97. Fortunately the famine of 1900 was little felt. Dana, Charles Anderson (1819-1897), American journalist, was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, 8th August 1819; studied at Harvard University, and became a member of the Brook Farm literary, philosophical, socialistic, and agricultural community, near West Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1842, where he had among his associates Hawthorne, George W. Curtis, George Ripley, and Margaret Fuller, the three last named being afterwards, like himself, editors in New York. As a young
