EOTHEN—A. W. KINGSLAKE

CHAPTER I—OVER THE BORDER

At Semlin I still was encompassed by the scenes and the sounds offamiliar life; the din of a busy world still vexed and cheered me; theunveiled faces of women still shone in the light of day. Yet, whenever Ichose to look southward, I saw the Ottoman’s fortress—austere, and darklyimpending high over the vale of the Danube—historic Belgrade. I hadcome, as it were, to the end of this wheel-going Europe, and now my eyeswould see the splendour and havoc of the East. 

The two frontier towns are less than a cannon-shot distant, and yet theirpeople hold no communion. The Hungarian on the north, and the Turk andServian on the southern side of the Save are as much asunder as thoughthere were fifty broad provinces that lay in the path between them. Ofthe men that bustled around me in the streets of Semlin there was not, perhaps, one who had ever gone down to look upon the stranger racedwelling under the walls of that opposite castle. It is the plague, andthe dread of the plague, that divide the one people from the other. Allcoming and going stands forbidden by the terrors of the yellow flag. Ifyou dare to break the laws of the quarantine, you will be tried withmilitary haste; the court will scream out your sentence to you from atribunal some fifty yards off; the priest, instead of gently whisperingto you the sweet hopes of religion, will console you at duellingdistance; and after that you will find yourself carefully shot, andcarelessly buried in the ground of the lazaretto. 

When all was in order for our departure we walked down to the precinctsof the quarantine establishment, and here awaited us a “compromised” {1}officer of the Austrian Government, who lives in a state of perpetualexcommunication. The boats, with their “compromised” rowers, were alsoin readiness. 

After coming in contact with any creature or thing belonging to theOttoman Empire it would be impossible for us to return to the Austrianterritory without undergoing an imprisonment of fourteen days in theodious lazaretto. We felt, therefore, that before we committed ourselvesit was important to take care that none of the arrangements necessary forthe journey had been forgotten; and in our anxiety to avoid such amisfortune, we managed the work of departure from Semlin with nearly asmuch solemnity as if we had been departing this life. Some obligingpersons, from whom we had received civilities during our short stay inthe place, came down to say their farewell at the river’s side; and now, as we stood with them at the distance of three or four yards from the“compromised” officer, they asked if we were perfectly certain that wehad wound up all our affairs in Christendom, and whether we had noparting requests to make. We repeated the caution to our servants, andtook anxious thought lest by any possibility we might be cut off fromsome cherished object of affection:—were they quite sure that nothing hadbeen forgotten—that there was no fragrant dressing-case with itsgold-compelling letters of credit from which we might be parting forever?—No; all our treasures lay safely stowed in the boat, and we wereready to follow them to the ends of the earth. Now, therefore, we shookhands with our Semlin friends, who immediately retreated for three orfour paces, so as to leave us in the centre of a space between them andthe “compromised” officer. The latter then advanced, and asking oncemore if we had done with the civilised world, held forth his hand. I metit with mine, and there was an end to Christendom for many a day to come. 

We soon neared the southern bank of the river, but no sounds came downfrom the blank walls above, and there was no living thing that we couldyet see, except one great hovering bird of the vulture race, flying low, and intent, and wheeling round and round over the pest-accursed city. 

But presently there issued from the postern a group of humanbeings—beings with immortal souls, and possibly some reasoning faculties;but to me the grand point was this, that they had real, substantial, andincontrovertible turbans. They made for the point towards which we weresteering, and when at last I sprang upon the shore, I heard, and sawmyself now first surrounded by men of Asiatic blood. I have since riddenthrough the land of the Osmanlees, from the Servian border to the GoldenHorn—from the Gulf of Satalieh to the tomb of Achilles; but never have Iseen such ultra-Turkish looking fellows as those who received me on thebanks of the Save. They were men in the humblest order of life, havingcome to meet our boat in the hope of earning something by carrying ourluggage up to the city; but poor though they were, it was plain that theywere Turks of the proud old school, and had not yet forgotten the fierce, careless bearing of their once victorious race. 

Though the province of Servia generally has obtained a kind ofindependence, yet Belgrade, as being a place of strength on the frontier, is still garrisoned by Turkish troops under the command of a Pasha. Whether the fellows who now surrounded us were soldiers, or peacefulinhabitants, I did not understand: they wore the old Turkish costume;vests and jackets of many and brilliant colours, divided from the loosepetticoat-trousers by heavy volumes of shawl, so thickly folded aroundtheir waists as to give the meagre wearers something of the dignity oftrue corpulence. This cincture enclosed a whole bundle of weapons; noman bore less than one brace of immensely long pistols, and a yataghan(or cutlass), with a dagger or two of various shapes and sizes; most ofthese arms were inlaid with silver, and highly burnished, so that theycontrasted shiningly with the decayed grandeur of the garments to whichthey were attached (this carefulness of his arms is a point of honourwith the Osmanlee, who never allows his bright yataghan to suffer fromhis own adversity); then the long drooping mustachios, and the amplefolds of the once white turbans, that lowered over the piercing eyes, andthe haggard features of the men, gave them an air of gloomy pride, andthat appearance of trying to be disdainful under difficulties, which Ihave since seen so often in those of the Ottoman people who live, andremember old times; they seemed as if they were thinking that they wouldhave been more usefully, more honourably, and more piously employed incutting our throats than in carrying our portmanteaus. The faithfulSteel (Methley’s Yorkshire servant) stood aghast for a moment at thesight of his master’s luggage upon the shoulders of these warlikeporters, and when at last we began to move up he could scarcely avoidturning round to cast one affectionate look towards Christendom, butquickly again he marched on with steps of a man, not frightened exactly, but sternly prepared for death, or the Koran, or even for plural wives. 

The Moslem quarter of a city is lonely and desolate. You go up and down, and on over shelving and hillocky paths through the narrow lanes walledin by blank, windowless dwellings; you come out upon an open spacestrewed with the black ruins that some late fire has left; you pass by amountain of castaway things, the rubbish of centuries, and on it you seenumbers of big, wolf-like dogs lying torpid under the sun, with limbsoutstretched to the full, as if they were dead; storks, or cranes, sitting fearless upon the low roofs, look gravely down upon you; thestill air that you breathe is loaded with the scent of citron, andpomegranate rinds scorched by the sun, or (as you approach the bazaar)with the dry, dead perfume of strange spices. You long for some signs oflife, and tread the ground more heavily, as though you would wake thesleepers with the heel of your boot; but the foot falls noiseless uponthe crumbling soil of an Eastern city, and silence follows you still. Again and again you meet turbans, and faces of men, but they have nothingfor you—no welcome—no wonder—no wrath—no scorn—they look upon you as wedo upon a December’s fall of snow—as a “seasonable, ” unaccountable, uncomfortable work of God, that may have been sent for some good purpose, to be revealed hereafter. 

Some people had come down to meet us with an invitation from the Pasha, and we wound our way up to the castle. At the gates there were groups ofsoldiers, some smoking, and some lying flat like corpses upon the coolstones. We went through courts, ascended steps, passed along a corridor, and walked into an airy, whitewashed room, with an European clock at oneend of it, and Moostapha Pasha at the other; the fine, old, beardedpotentate looked very like Jove—like Jove, too, in the midst of hisclouds, for the silvery fumes of the _narghile_ {2} hung lightly circlinground him. 

The Pasha received us with the smooth, kind, gentle manner that belongsto well-bred Osmanlees; then he lightly clapped his hands, and instantlythe sound filled all the lower end of the room with slaves; a syllabledropped from his lips which bowed all heads, and conjured away theattendants like ghosts (their coming and their going was thus swift andquiet, because their feet were bare, and they passed through no door, butonly by the yielding folds of a purder). Soon the coffee-bearersappeared, every man carrying separately his tiny cup in a small metalstand; and presently to each of us there came a pipe-bearer, who firstrested the bowl of the _tchibouque_ at a measured distance on the floor, and then, on this axis, wheeled round the long cheery stick, andgracefully presented it on half-bended knee; already the well-kindledfire was glowing secure in the bowl, and so, when I pressed the amber upto mine, there was no coyness to conquer; the willing fume came up, andanswered my slightest sigh, and followed softly every breath inspired, till it touched me with some faint sense and understanding of Asiaticcontentment. 

Asiatic contentment! Yet scarcely, perhaps, one hour before I had beenwanting my bill, and ringing for waiters, in a shrill and busy hotel. 

In the Ottoman dominions there is scarcely any hereditary influenceexcept that which belongs to the family of the Sultan, and wealth, too, is a highly volatile blessing, not easily transmitted to the descendantof the owner. From these causes it results that the people standing inthe place of nobles and gentry are official personages, and though many(indeed the greater number) of these potentates are humbly born and bred, you will seldom, I think, find them wanting in that polished smoothnessof manner, and those well-undulating tones which belong to the bestOsmanlees. The truth is, that most of the men in authority have risenfrom their humble station by the arts of the courtier, and they preservein their high estate those gentle powers of fascination to which they owetheir success. Yet unless you can contrive to learn a little of thelanguage, you will be rather bored by your visits of ceremony; theintervention of the interpreter, or dragoman as he is called, is fatal tothe spirit of conversation. I think I should mislead you if I were toattempt to give the substance of any particular conversation withOrientals. A traveller may write and say that “the Pasha of So-and-sowas particularly interested in the vast progress which has been made inthe application of steam, and appeared to understand the structure of ourmachinery—that he remarked upon the gigantic results of our manufacturingindustry—showed that he possessed considerable knowledge of our Indianaffairs, and of the constitution of the Company, and expressed a livelyadmiration of the many sterling qualities for which the people of Englandare distinguished. ” But the heap of commonplaces thus quietly attributedto the Pasha will have been founded perhaps on some such talking asthis:—

_Pasha_. —The Englishman is welcome; most blessed among hours is this, thehour of his coming. 

_Dragoman_ (to the traveller). —The Pasha pays you his compliments. 

_Traveller_. —Give him my best compliments in return, and say I’mdelighted to have the honour of seeing him. 

_Dragoman_ (to the Pasha). —His lordship, this Englishman, Lord of London, Scorner of Ireland, Suppressor of France, has quitted his governments, and left his enemies to breathe for a moment, and has crossed the broadwaters in strict disguise, with a small but eternally faithful retinue offollowers, in order that he might look upon the bright countenance of thePasha among Pashas—the Pasha of the everlasting Pashalik ofKaragholookoldour. 

_Traveller_ (to his dragoman). —What on earth have you been saying aboutLondon? The Pasha will be taking me for a mere cockney. Have not I toldyou _always_ to say that I am from a branch of the family of MudcombePark, and that I am to be a magistrate for the county of Bedfordshire, only I’ve not qualified, and that I should have been a deputy-lieutenantif it had not been for the extraordinary conduct of Lord Mountpromise, and that I was a candidate for Goldborough at the last election, and thatI should have won easy if my committee had not been bought. I wish toHeaven that if you _do_ say anything about me, you’d tell the simpletruth. 

_Dragoman_ [is silent]. 

_Pasha_. —What says the friendly Lord of London? is there aught that I cangrant him within the Pashalik of Karagholookoldour?

_Dragoman_ (growing, sulky and literal). —This friendly Englishman—thisbranch of Mudcombe—this head-purveyor of Goldborough—this possiblepoliceman of Bedfordshire, is recounting his achievements, and the numberof his titles. 

_Pasha_. —The end of his honours is more distant than the ends of theearth, and the catalogue of his glorious deeds is brighter than thefirmament of heaven!

_Dragoman_ (to the traveller). —The Pasha congratulates your Excellency. 

_Traveller_. —About Goldborough? The deuce he does!—but I want to get athis views in relation to the present state of the Ottoman Empire. Tellhim the Houses of Parliament have met, and that there has been a speechfrom the throne, pledging England to preserve the integrity of theSultan’s dominions. 

_Dragoman_ (to the Pasha). —This branch of Mudcombe, this possiblepoliceman of Bedfordshire, informs your Highness that in England thetalking houses have met, and that the integrity of the Sultan’s dominionshas been assured for ever and ever by a speech from the velvet chair. 

_Pasha_. —Wonderful chair! Wonderful houses!—whirr! whirr! all bywheels!—whiz! whiz! all by steam!—wonderful chair! wonderful houses!wonderful people!—whirr! whirr! all by wheels!—whiz! whiz! all by steam!

_Traveller_ (to the dragoman). —What does the Pasha mean by that whizzing?he does not mean to say, does he, that our Government will ever abandontheir pledges to the Sultan?

_Dragoman_. —No, your Excellency; but he says the English talk by wheels, and by steam. 

_Traveller_. —That’s an exaggeration; but say that the English really havecarried machinery to great perfection; tell the Pasha (he’ll be struckwith that) that whenever we have any disturbances to put down, even attwo or three hundred miles from London, we can send troops by thethousand to the scene of action in a few hours. 

_Dragoman_ (recovering his temper and freedom of speech). —His Excellency, this Lord of Mudcombe, observes to your Highness, that whenever theIrish, or the French, or the Indians rebel against the English, wholearmies of soldiers, and brigades of artillery, are dropped into a mightychasm called Euston Square, and in the biting of a cartridge they ariseup again in Manchester, or Dublin, or Paris, or Delhi, and utterlyexterminate the enemies of England from the face of the earth. 

_Pasha_. —I know it—I know all—the particulars have been faithfullyrelated to me, and my mind comprehends locomotives. The armies of theEnglish ride upon the vapours of boiling caldrons, and their horses areflaming coals!—whirr! whirr! all by wheels!—whiz! whiz! all by steam!

_Traveller_ (to his dragoman). —I wish to have the opinion of anunprejudiced Ottoman gentleman as to the prospects of our Englishcommerce and manufactures; just ask the Pasha to give me his views on thesubject. 

_Pasha_ (after having received the communication of the dragoman). —Theships of the English swarm like flies; their printed calicoes cover thewhole earth; and by the side of their swords the blades of Damascus areblades of grass. All India is but an item in the ledger-books of themerchants, whose lumber-rooms are filled with ancient thrones!—whirr!whirr! all by wheels!—whiz! whiz! all by steam. 

_Dragoman_. —The Pasha compliments the cutlery of England, and also theEast India Company. 

_Traveller_. —The Pasha’s right about the cutlery (I tried my scimitarwith the common officers’ swords belonging to our fellows at Malta, andthey cut it like the leaf of a novel). Well (to the dragoman), tell thePasha I am exceedingly gratified to find that he entertains such a highopinion of our manufacturing energy, but I should like him to know, though, that we have got something in England besides that. Theseforeigners are always fancying that we have nothing but ships, andrailways, and East India Companies; do just tell the Pasha that our ruraldistricts deserve his attention, and that even within the last twohundred years there has been an evident improvement in the culture of theturnip, and if he does not take any interest about that, at all eventsyou can explain that we have our virtues in the country—that we are atruth-telling people, and, like the Osmanlees, are faithful in theperformance of our promises. Oh! and, by-the-bye, whilst you are aboutit, you may as well just say at the end that the British yeoman is still, thank God! the British yeoman. 

_Pasha_ (after hearing the dragoman). —It is true, it is true:—through allFeringhistan the English are foremost and best; for the Russians aredrilled swine, and the Germans are sleeping babes, and the Italians arethe servants of songs, and the French are the sons of newspapers, and theGreeks they are weavers of lies, but the English and the Osmanlees arebrothers together in righteousness; for the Osmanlees believe in one onlyGod, and cleave to the Koran, and destroy idols, so do the Englishworship one God, and abominate graven images, and tell the truth, andbelieve in a book, and though they drink the juice of the grape, yet tosay that they worship their prophet as God, or to say that they areeaters of pork, these are lies—lies born of Greeks, and nursed by Jews!

_Dragoman_. —The Pasha compliments the English. 

_Traveller_ (rising). —Well, I’ve had enough of this. Tell the Pasha I amgreatly obliged to him for his hospitality, and still more for hiskindness in furnishing me with horses, and say that now I must be off. 

_Pasha_ (after hearing the dragoman, and standing up on his divan). {3}—Proud are the sires, and blessed are the dams of the horses thatshall carry his Excellency to the end of his prosperous journey. May thesaddle beneath him glide down to the gates of the happy city, like a boatswimming on the third river of Paradise. May he sleep the sleep of achild, when his friends are around him; and the while that his enemiesare abroad, may his eyes flame red through the darkness—more red than theeyes of ten tigers! Farewell!

_Dragoman_. —The Pasha wishes your Excellency a pleasant journey. 

So ends the visit. 

CHAPTER II—TURKISH TRAVELLING

In two or three hours our party was ready; the servants, the Tatar, themounted Suridgees, and the baggage-horses, altogether made up a strongcavalcade. The accomplished Mysseri, of whom you have heard me speak sooften, and who served me so faithfully throughout my Oriental journeys, acted as our interpreter, and was, in fact, the brain of our corps. TheTatar, you know, is a government courier properly employed in carryingdespatches, but also sent with travellers to speed them on their way, andanswer with his head for their safety. The man whose head was thuspledged for our precious lives was a glorious-looking fellow, with theregular and handsome cast of countenance which is now characteristic ofthe Ottoman race. {4} His features displayed a good deal of serenepride, self-respect, fortitude, a kind of ingenuous sensuality, andsomething of instinctive wisdom, without any sharpness of intellect. Hehad been a Janissary (as I afterwards found), and kept up the odd strutof his old corps, which used to affright the Christians in formertimes—that rolling gait so comically pompous, that a close imitation ofit, even in the broadest farce, would be looked upon as a very roughover-acting of the character. It is occasioned in part by dress andaccoutrements. The weighty bundle of weapons carried upon the chestthrows back the body so as to give it a wonderful portliness, andmoreover, the immense masses of clothes that swathe his limbs force thewearer in walking to swing himself heavily round from left to right, andfrom right to left. In truth, this great edifice of woollen, and cotton, and silk, and silver, and brass, and steel is not at all fitted formoving on foot; it cannot even walk without frightfully discomposing itsfair proportions; and as to running—our Tatar ran _once_ (it was in orderto pick up a partridge that Methley had winged with a pistol-shot), andreally the attempt was one of the funniest misdirections of human energythat wondering man ever saw. But put him in his stirrups, and then isthe Tatar himself again: there he lives at his pleasure, reposing in thetranquillity of that true home (the home of his ancestors) which thesaddle seems to afford him, and drawing from his pipe the calm pleasuresof his “own fireside, ” or else dashing sudden over the earth, as thoughfor a moment he felt the mouth of a Turcoman steed, and saw his ownScythian plains lying boundless and open before him. 

It was not till his subordinates had nearly completed their preparationsfor their march that our Tatar, “commanding the forces, ” arrived; he camesleek and fresh from the bath (for so is the custom of the Ottomans whenthey start upon a journey), and was carefully accoutred at every point. From his thigh to his throat he was loaded with arms and other implementsof a campaigning life. There is no scarcity of water along the wholeroad from Belgrade to Stamboul, but the habits of our Tatar were formedby his ancestors and not by himself, so he took good care to see that hisleathern water-flask was amply charged and properly strapped to thesaddle, along with his blessed _tchibouque_. And now at last he hascursed the Suridgees in all proper figures of speech, and is ready for aride of a thousand miles; but before he comforts his soul in the marblebaths of Stamboul he will be another and a lesser man; his sense ofresponsibility, his too strict abstemiousness, and his restless energy, disdainful of sleep, will have worn him down to a fraction of the sleekMoostapha that now leads out our party from the gates of Belgrade. 

The Suridgees are the men employed to lead the baggage-horses. They aremost of them gipsies. Their lot is a sad one: they are the last of thehuman race, and all the sins of their superiors (including the horses)can safely be visited on them. But the wretched look often morepicturesque than their betters; and though all the world despise thesepoor Suridgees, their tawny skins and their grisly beards will gain themhonourable standing in the foreground of a landscape. We had a couple ofthese fellows with us, each leading a baggage-horse, to the tail of whichlast another baggage-horse was attached. There was a world of trouble inpersuading the stiff angular portmanteaus of Europe to adapt themselvesto their new condition and sit quietly on pack-saddles, but all was rightat last, and it gladdened my eyes to see our little troop file offthrough the winding lanes of the city, and show down brightly in theplain beneath. The one of our party that seemed to be most out ofkeeping with the rest of the scene was Methley’s Yorkshire servant, whoalways rode doggedly on in his pantry jacket, looking out for“gentlemen’s seats. ”

Methley and I had English saddles, but I think we should have done justas well (I should certainly have seen more of the country) if we hadadopted saddles like that of our Tatar, who towered so loftily over thescraggy little beast that carried him. In taking thought for the East, whilst in England, I had made one capital hit which you must not forget—Ihad brought with me a pair of common spurs. These were a great comfortto me throughout my horseback travels, by keeping up the cheerfulness ofthe many unhappy nags that I had to bestride; the angle of the Orientalstirrup is a very poor substitute for spurs. 

The Ottoman horseman, raised by his saddle to a great height above thehumble level of the back that he bestrides, and using an awfully sharpbit, is able to lift the crest of his nag, and force him into a strangelyfast shuffling walk, the orthodox pace for the journey. My comrade andI, using English saddles, could not easily keep our beasts up to thispeculiar amble; besides, we thought it a bore to be _followed_ by ourattendants for a thousand miles, and we generally, therefore, did duty asthe rearguard of our “grand army”; we used to walk our horses till theparty in front had got into the distance, and then retrieve the lostground by a gallop. 

We had ridden on for some two or three hours; the stir and bustle of ourcommencing journey had ceased, the liveliness of our little troop hadworn off with the declining day, and the night closed in as we enteredthe great Servian forest. Through this our road was to last for morethan a hundred miles. Endless, and endless now on either side, the talloaks closed in their ranks and stood gloomily lowering over us, as grimas an army of giants with a thousand years’ pay in arrear. One strivedwith listening ear to catch some tidings of that forest world within—somestirring of beasts, some night-bird’s scream, but all was quite hushed, except the voice of the cicalas that peopled every bough, and filled thedepths of the forest through and through, with one same humeverlasting—more stifling than very silence. 

At first our way was in darkness, but after a while the moon got up, andtouched the glittering arms and tawny faces of our men with light so paleand mystic, that the watchful Tatar felt bound to look out for demons, and take proper means for keeping them off: forthwith he determined thatthe duty of frightening away our ghostly enemies (like every othertroublesome work) should fall upon the poor Suridgees, who accordinglylifted up their voices, and burst upon the dreadful stillness of theforest with shrieks and dismal howls. These precautions were kept upincessantly, and were followed by the most complete success, for not onedemon came near us. 

Long before midnight we reached the hamlet in which we were to rest forthe night; it was made up of about a dozen clay huts, standing upon asmall tract of ground hardly won from the forest. The peasants thatlived there spoke a Slavonic dialect, and Mysseri’s knowledge of theRussian tongue enabled him to talk with them freely. We took up ourquarters in a square room with white walls and an earthen floor, quitebare of furniture, and utterly void of women. They told us, however, that these Servian villagers lived in happy abundance, but that they werecareful to conceal their riches, as well as their wives. 

The burthens unstrapped from the pack-saddles very quickly furnished ourden: a couple of quilts spread upon the floor, with a carpet-bag at thehead of each, became capital sofas—portmanteaus, and hat-boxes, andwriting-cases, and books, and maps, and gleaming arms soon lay strewedaround us in pleasant confusion. Mysseri’s canteen too began to yield upits treasures, but we relied upon finding some provisions in the village. At first the natives declared that their hens were mere old maids and alltheir cows unmarried, but our Tatar swore such a grand sonorous oath, andfingered the hilt of his yataghan with such persuasive touch, that theland soon flowed with milk, and mountains of eggs arose. 

And soon there was tea before us, with all its unspeakable fragrance, andas we reclined on the floor, we found that a portmanteau was just theright height for a table; the duty of candlesticks was ably performed bya couple of intelligent natives; the rest of the villagers stood by theopen doorway at the lower end of the room, and watched our banquetingwith grave and devout attention. 

The first night of your first campaign (though you be but a mere peacefulcampaigner) is a glorious time in your life. It is so sweet to findone’s self free from the stale civilisation of Europe! Oh my dear ally, when first you spread your carpet in the midst of these Eastern scenes, do think for a moment of those your fellow-creatures, that dwell insquares, and streets, and even (for such is the fate of many!) in actualcountry houses; think of the people that are “presenting theircompliments, ” and “requesting the honour, ” and “much regretting, ”—ofthose that are pinioned at dinner-tables; or stuck up in ballrooms, orcruelly planted in pews—ay, think of these, and so remembering how manypoor devils are living in a state of utter respectability, you will glorythe more in your own delightful escape. 

I am bound to confess, however, that with all its charms a mud floor(like a mercenary match) does certainly promote early rising. Longbefore daybreak we were up, and had breakfasted; after this there wasnearly a whole tedious hour to endure whilst the horses were laden bytorch-light; but this had an end, and at last we went on once more. Cloaked, and sombre, at first we made our sullen way through thedarkness, with scarcely one barter of words, but soon the genial mornburst down from heaven, and stirred the blood so gladly through ourveins, that the very Suridgees, with all their troubles, could now lookup for an instant, and almost seem to believe in the temporary goodnessof God. 

The actual movement from one place to another, in Europeanised countries, is a process so temporary—it occupies, I mean, so small a proportion ofthe traveller’s entire time—that his mind remains unsettled, so long asthe wheels are going; he may be alive enough to external objects ofinterest, and to the crowding ideas which are often invited by theexcitement of a changing scene, but he is still conscious of being in aprovisional state, and his mind is constantly recurring to the expectedend of his journey; his ordinary ways of thought have been interrupted, and before any new mental habits can be formed he is quietly fixed in hishotel. It will be otherwise with you when you journey in the East. Dayafter day, perhaps week after week and month after month, your foot is inthe stirrup. To taste the cold breath of the earliest morn, and to lead, or follow, your bright cavalcade till sunset through forests and mountainpasses, through valleys and desolate plains, all this becomes your MODEOF LIFE, and you ride, eat, drink, and curse the mosquitoes assystematically as your friends in England eat, drink, and sleep. If youare wise, you will not look upon the long period of time thus occupied inactual movement as the mere gulf dividing you from the end of yourjourney, but rather as one of those rare and plastic seasons of your lifefrom which, perhaps, in after times you may love to date the moulding ofyour character—that is, your very identity. Once feel this, and you willsoon grow happy and contented in your saddle-home. As for me and mycomrade, however, in this part of our journey we often forgot Stamboul, forgot all the Ottoman Empire, and only remembered old times. We wentback, loitering on the banks of Thames—not grim old Thames of “afterlife, ” that washes the Parliament Houses, and drowns despairing girls—butThames, the “old Eton fellow, ” that wrestled with us in our boyhood tillhe taught us to be stronger than he. We bullied Keate, and scoffed atLarrey Miller, and Okes; we rode along loudly laughing, and talked to thegrave Servian forest as though it were the “Brocas clump. ”

Our pace was commonly very slow, for the baggage-horses served us for adrag, and kept us to a rate of little more than five miles in the hour, but now and then, and chiefly at night, a spirit of movement wouldsuddenly animate the whole party; the baggage-horses would be teased intoa gallop, and when once this was done, there would be such a banging ofportmanteaus, and such convulsions of carpet-bags upon their pantingsides, and the Suridgees would follow them up with such a hurricane ofblows, and screams, and curses, that stopping or relaxing was scarcelypossible; then the rest of us would put our horses into a gallop, and soall shouting cheerily, would hunt, and drive the sumpter beasts like aflock of goats, up hill and down dale, right on to the end of theirjourney. 

The distances at which we got relays of horses varied greatly; some werenot more than fifteen or twenty miles, but twice, I think, we performed awhole day’s journey of more than sixty miles with the same beasts. 

When at last we came out from the forest our road lay through scenes likethose of an English park. The green sward unfenced, and left to the freepasture of cattle, was dotted with groups of stately trees, and here andthere darkened over with larger masses of wood, that seemed gatheredtogether for bounding the domain, and shutting out some “infernal”fellow-creature in the shape of a newly made squire; in one or two spotsthe hanging copses looked down upon a lawn below with such shelteringmien, that seeing the like in England you would have been tempted almostto ask the name of the spend-thrift, or the madman who had dared to pulldown “the old hall. ”

There are few countries less infested by “lions” than the provinces onthis part of your route. You are not called upon to “drop a tear” overthe tomb of “the once brilliant” anybody, or to pay your “tribute ofrespect” to anything dead or alive. There are no Servian or Bulgarianlitterateurs with whom it would be positively disgraceful not to form anacquaintance; you have no staring, no praising to get through; the onlypublic building of any interest that lies on the road is of modern date, but is said to be a good specimen of Oriental architecture; it is of apyramidical shape, and is made up of thirty thousand skulls, contributedby the rebellious Servians in the early part (I believe) of this century:I am not at all sure of my date, but I fancy it was in the year 1806 thatthe first skull was laid. I am ashamed to say that in the darkness ofthe early morning we unknowingly went by the neighbourhood of thistriumph of art, and so basely got off from admiring “the simple grandeurof the architect’s conception, ” and “the exquisite beauty of thefretwork. ”

There being no “lions, ” we ought at least to have met with a few perils, but the only robbers we saw anything of had been long since dead andgone. The poor fellows had been impaled upon high poles, and so proppedup by the transverse spokes beneath them, that their skeletons, clothedwith some white, wax-like remains of flesh, still sat up lolling in thesunshine, and listlessly stared without eyes. 

One day it seemed to me that our path was a little more rugged thanusual, and I found that I was deserving for myself the title ofSabalkansky, or “Transcender of the Balcan. ” The truth is, that, as amilitary barrier, the Balcan is a fabulous mountain. Such seems to bethe view of Major Keppell, who looked on it towards the east with the eyeof a soldier, and certainly in the Sophia Pass, which I followed, thereis no narrow defile, and no ascent sufficiently difficult to stop, ordelay for long time, a train of siege artillery. 

Before we reached Adrianople, Methley had been seized with we knew notwhat ailment, and when we had taken up our quarters in the city he wascast to the very earth by sickness. Adrianople enjoyed an Englishconsul, and I felt sure that, in Eastern phrase, his house would cease tobe his house, and would become the house of my sick comrade. I shouldhave judged rightly under ordinary circumstances, but the levellingplague was abroad, and the dread of it had dominion over the consularmind. So now (whether dying or not, one could hardly tell), upon a quiltstretched out along the floor, there lay the best hope of an ancientline, without the material aids to comfort of even the humblest sort, and(sad to say) without the consolation of a friend, or even a comrade worthhaving. I have a notion that tenderness and pity are affectionsoccasioned in some measure by living within doors; certainly, at the timeI speak of, the open-air life which I have been leading, or the wayfaringhardships of the journey, had so strangely blunted me, that I feltintolerant of illness, and looked down upon my companion as if the poorfellow in falling ill had betrayed a want of spirit. I entertained too amost absurd idea—an idea that his illness was partly affected. You seethat I have made a confession: this I hope—that I may always hereafterlook charitably upon the hard, savage acts of peasants, and the crueltiesof a “brutal” soldiery. God knows that I strived to melt myself intocommon charity, and to put on a gentleness which I could not feel, butthis attempt did not cheat the keenness of the sufferer; he could nothave felt the less deserted because that I was with him. 

We called to aid a solemn Armenian (I think he was) half soothsayer, halfhakim, or doctor, who, all the while counting his beads, fixed his eyessteadily upon the patient, and then suddenly dealt him a violent blow onthe chest. Methley bravely dissembled his pain, for he fancied that theblow was meant to try whether or not the plague were on him. 

Here was really a sad embarrassment—no bed; nothing to offer the invalidin the shape of food save a piece of thin, tough, flexible, drab-colouredcloth, made of flour and mill-stones in equal proportions, and called bythe name of “bread”; then the patient, of course, had no “confidence inhis medical man, ” and on the whole, the best chance of saving my comradeseemed to lie in taking him out of the reach of his doctor, and bearinghim away to the neighbourhood of some more genial consul. But how wasthis to be done? Methley was much too ill to be kept in his saddle, andwheel carriages, as means of travelling, were unknown. There is, however, such a thing as an “araba, ” a vehicle drawn by oxen, in whichthe wives of a rich man are sometimes dragged four or five miles over thegrass by way of recreation. The carriage is rudely framed, but yourecognise in the simple grandeur of its design a likeness to thingsmajestic; in short, if your carpenter’s son were to make a “Lord Mayor’scoach” for little Amy, he would build a carriage very much in the styleof a Turkish araba. No one had ever heard of horses being used fordrawing a carriage in this part of the world, but necessity is the motherof innovation as well as of invention. I was fully justified, I think, in arguing that there were numerous instances of horses being used forthat purpose in our own country—that the laws of nature are uniform intheir operation over all the world (except Ireland)—that that which wastrue in Piccadilly, must be true in Adrianople—that the matter could notfairly be treated as an ecclesiastical question, for that thecircumstance of Methley’s going on to Stamboul in an araba drawn byhorses, when calmly and dispassionately considered, would appear to beperfectly consistent with the maintenance of the Mahometan religion as bylaw established. Thus poor, dear, patient Reason would have fought herslow battle against Asiatic prejudice, and I am convinced that she wouldhave established the possibility (and perhaps even the propriety) ofharnessing horses in a hundred and fifty years; but in the meantimeMysseri, well seconded by our Tatar, put a very quick end to thecontroversy by having the horses put to. 

It was a sore thing for me to see my poor comrade brought to this, foryoung though he was, he was a veteran in travel. When scarcely yet ofage he had invaded India from the frontiers of Russia, and that soswiftly, that measuring by the time of his flight the broad dominions ofthe king of kings were shrivelled up to a dukedom and now, poor fellow, he was to be poked into an araba: like a Georgian girl! He sufferedgreatly, for there were no springs for the carriage, and no road for thewheels; and so the concern jolted on over the open country with suchtwists, and jerks, and jumps, as might almost dislocate the supple tongueof Satan. 

All day the patient kept himself shut up within the lattice-work of thearaba, and I could hardly know how he was faring until the end of theday’s journey, when I found that he was not worse, and was buoyed up withthe hope of some day reaching Constantinople. 

I was always conning over my maps, and fancied that I knew pretty well myline, but after Adrianople I had made more southing than I knew for, andit was with unbelieving wonder, and delight, that I came suddenly uponthe shore of the sea. A little while, and its gentle billows wereflowing beneath the hoofs of my beast, but the hearing of the ripple wasnot enough communion, and the seeing of the blue Propontis was not toknow and possess it—I must needs plunge into its depth and quench mylonging love in the palpable waves; and so when old Moostapha (defenderagainst demons) looked round for his charge, he saw with horror anddismay that he for whose life his own life stood pledged was possessed ofsome devil who had driven him down into the sea—that the rider and thesteed had vanished from earth, and that out among the waves was thegasping crest of a post-horse, and the ghostly head of the Englishmanmoving upon the face of the waters. 

We started very early indeed on the last day of our journey, and from themoment of being off until we gained the shelter of the imperial walls wewere struggling face to face with an icy storm that swept right down fromthe steppes of Tartary, keen, fierce, and steady as a northern conqueror. Methley’s servant, who was the greatest sufferer, kept his saddle untilwe reached Stamboul, but was then found to be quite benumbed in limbs, and his brain was so much affected, that when he was lifted from hishorse he fell away in a state of unconsciousness, the first stage of adangerous fever. 

Our Tatar, worn down by care and toil, and carrying seven heavens full ofwater in his manifold jackets and shawls, was a mere weak and vapiddilution of the sleek Moostapha, who scarce more than one fortnightbefore came out like a bridegroom from his chamber to take the command ofour party. 

Mysseri seemed somewhat over-wearied, but he had lost none of hisstrangely quiet energy. He wore a grave look, however, for he now hadlearnt that the plague was prevailing at Constantinople, and he wasfearing that our two sick men, and the miserable looks of our wholeparty, might make us unwelcome at Pera. 

We crossed the Golden Horn in a caïque. As soon as we had landed, somewoebegone looking fellows were got together and laden with our baggage. Then on we went, dripping, and sloshing, and looking very like men thathad been turned back by the Royal Humane Society as being incurablydrowned. Supporting our sick, we climbed up shelving steps and threadedmany windings, and at last came up into the main street of Pera, humblyhoping that we might not be judged guilty of plague, and so be cast backwith horror from the doors of the shuddering Christians. 

Such was the condition of our party, which fifteen days before had filedaway so gaily from the gates of Belgrade. A couple of fevers and anorth-easterly storm had thoroughly spoiled our looks. 

The interest of Mysseri with the house of Giuseppini was too powerful tobe denied, and at once, though not without fear and trembling, we wereadmitted as guests. 

CHAPTER III—CONSTANTINOPLE

Even if we don’t take a part in the chant about “mosques and minarets, ”we can still yield praises to Stamboul. We can chant about the harbour;we can say, and sing, that nowhere else does the sea come so home to acity; there are no pebbly shores—no sand bars—no slimy river-beds—noblack canals—no locks nor docks to divide the very heart of the placefrom the deep waters. If being in the noisiest mart of Stamboul youwould stroll to the quiet side of the way amidst those cypressesopposite, you will cross the fathomless Bosphorus; if you would go fromyour hotel to the bazaars, you must go by the bright, blue pathway of theGolden Horn, that can carry a thousand sail of the line. You areaccustomed to the gondolas that glide among the palaces of St. Mark, buthere at Stamboul it is a 120 gun ship that meets you in the street. Venice strains out from the steadfast land, and in old times would sendforth the chief of the State to woo and wed the reluctant sea; but thestormy bride of the Doge is the bowing slave of the Sultan. She comes tohis feet with the treasures of the world—she bears him from palace topalace—by some unfailing witchcraft she entices the breezes to follow her{5} and fan the pale cheek of her lord—she lifts his armed navies to thevery gates of his garden—she watches the walls of his _serai_—she stiflesthe intrigues of his ministers—she quiets the scandals of his courts—sheextinguishes his rivals, and hushes his naughty wives all one by one. Sovast are the wonders of the deep!

All the while that I stayed at Constantinople the plague was prevailing, but not with any degree of violence. Its presence, however, lent amysterious and exciting, though not very pleasant, interest to my firstknowledge of a great Oriental city; it gave tone and colour to all I saw, and all I felt—a tone and a colour sombre enough, but true, and wellbefitting the dreary monuments of past power and splendour. With allthat is most truly Oriental in its character the plague is associated; itdwells with the faithful in the holiest quarters of their city. Thecoats and the hats of Pera are held to be nearly as innocent of infectionas they are ugly in shape and fashion; but the rich furs and the costlyshawls, the broidered slippers and the gold-laden saddle-cloths, thefragrance of burning aloes and the rich aroma of patchouli—these are thesigns that mark the familiar home of plague. You go out from yourqueenly London—the centre of the greatest and strongest amongst allearthly dominions—you go out thence, and travel on to the capital of anEastern Prince, you find but a waning power, and a faded splendour, thatinclines you to laugh and mock; but let the infernal Angel of Plague beat hand, and he, more mighty than armies, more terrible than Suleyman inhis glory, can restore such pomp and majesty to the weakness of theImperial city, that if, _when HE is there_, you must still go pryingamongst the shades of this dead empire, at least you will tread the pathwith seemly reverence and awe. 

It is the firm faith of almost all the Europeans living in the East thatPlague is conveyed by the touch of infected substances, and that thedeadly atoms especially lurk in all kinds of clothes and furs. It isheld safer to breathe the same air with a man sick of the plague, andeven to come in contact with his skin, than to be touched by the smallestparticle of woollen or of thread which may have been within the reach ofpossible infection. If this be a right notion, the spread of the maladymust be materially aided by the observance of a custom prevailing amongstthe people of Stamboul. It is this; when an Osmanlee dies, one of hisdresses is cut up, and a small piece of it is sent to each of his friendsas a memorial of the departed—a fatal present, according to the opinionof the Franks, for it too often forces the living not merely to rememberthe dead man, but to follow and bear him company. 

The Europeans during the prevalence of the plague, if they are forced toventure into the streets, will carefully avoid the touch of every humanbeing whom they pass. Their conduct in this respect shows them stronglyin contrast with the “true believers”: the Moslem stalks on serenely, asthough he were under the eye of his God, and were “equal to either fate”;the Franks go crouching and slinking from death, and some (those chieflyof French extraction) will fondly strive to fence out destiny withshining capes of oilskin!

For some time you may manage by great care to thread your way through thestreets of Stamboul without incurring contact, for the Turks, thoughscornful of the terrors felt by the Franks, are generally very courteousin yielding to that which they hold to be a useless and impiousprecaution, and will let you pass safe if they can. It is impossible, however, that your immunity can last for any length of time if you moveabout much through the narrow streets and lanes of a crowded city. 

As for me, I soon got “compromised. ” After one day of rest, the prayersof my hostess began to lose their power of keeping me from the pestilentside of the Golden Horn. Faithfully promising to shun the touch of allimaginable substances, however enticing, I set off very cautiously, andheld my way uncompromised till I reached the water’s edge; but before mycaïque was quite ready some rueful-looking fellows came rapidly shamblingdown the steps with a plague-stricken corpse, which they were going tobury amongst the faithful on the other side of the water. I contrived tobe so much in the way of this brisk funeral, that I was not only touchedby the men bearing the body, but also, I believe, by the foot of the deadman, as it hung lolling out of the bier. This accident gave me such astrong interest in denying the soundness of the contagion theory, that Idid in fact deny and repudiate it altogether; and from that time, actingupon my own convenient view of the matter, I went wherever I chose, without taking any serious pains to avoid a touch. It seems to me nowvery likely that the Europeans are right, and that the plague may bereally conveyed by contagion; but during the whole time of my remainingin the East, my views on this subject more nearly approached to those ofthe fatalists; and so, when afterwards the plague of Egypt came dealinghis blows around me, I was able to live amongst the dying without thatalarm and anxiety which would inevitably have pressed upon my mind if Ihad allowed myself to believe that every passing touch was really aprobable death-stroke. 

And perhaps as you make your difficult way through a steep and narrowalley, shut in between blank walls, and little frequented by passers, youmeet one of those coffin-shaped bundles of white linen that implies anOttoman lady. Painfully struggling against the obstacles to progressioninterposed by the many folds of her clumsy drapery, by her big mud-boots, and especially by her two pairs of slippers, she works her way on fullawkwardly enough, but yet there is something of womanly consciousness inthe very labour and effort with which she tugs and lifts the burthen ofher charms. She is closely followed by her women slaves. Of her veryself you see nothing except the dark, luminous eyes that stare againstyour face, and the tips of the painted fingers depending like rose-budsfrom out of the blank bastions of the fortress. She turns, and turnsagain, and carefully glances around her on all sides, to see that she issafe from the eyes of Mussulmans, and then suddenly withdrawing the_yashmak_, {6} she shines upon your heart and soul with all the pomp andmight of her beauty. And this, it is not the light, changeful grace thatleaves you to doubt whether you have fallen in love with a body, or onlya soul; it is the beauty that dwells secure in the perfectness of hard, downright outlines, and in the glow of generous colour. There is fire, though, too—high courage and fire enough in the untamed mind, or spirit, or whatever it is, which drives the breath of pride through thosescarcely parted lips. 

You smile at pretty women—you turn pale before the beauty that is greatenough to have dominion over you. She sees, and exults in yourgiddiness; she sees and smiles; then presently, with a sudden movement, she lays her blushing fingers upon your arm, and cries out, “Yumourdjak!”(Plague! meaning, “there is a present of the plague for you!”) This isher notion of a witticism. It is a very old piece of fun, no doubt—quitean Oriental Joe Miller; but the Turks are fondly attached, not only tothe institutions, but also to the jokes of their ancestors; so the lady’ssilvery laugh rings joyously in your ears, and the mirth of her women isboisterous and fresh, as though the bright idea of giving the plague to aChristian had newly lit upon the earth. 

Methley began to rally very soon after we had reached Constantinople; butthere seemed at first to be no chance of his regaining strength enoughfor travelling during the winter, and I determined to stay with mycomrade until he had quite recovered; so I bought me a horse, and a “pipeof tranquillity, ” {7} and took a Turkish phrase-master. I troubledmyself a great deal with the Turkish tongue, and gained at last someknowledge of its structure. It is enriched, perhaps overladen, withPersian and Arabic words, imported into the language chiefly for thepurpose of representing sentiments and religious dogmas, and terms of artand luxury, entirely unknown to the Tartar ancestors of the presentOsmanlees; but the body and the spirit of the old tongue are yet alive, and the smooth words of the shopkeeper at Constantinople can still carryunderstanding to the ears of the untamed millions who rove over theplains of Northern Asia. The structure of the language, especially inits more lengthy sentences, is very like to the Latin: the subjectmatters are slowly and patiently enumerated, without disclosing thepurpose of the speaker until he reaches the end of his sentence, and thenat last there comes the clenching word, which gives a meaning andconnection to all that has gone before. If you listen at all to speakingof this kind your attention, rather than be suffered to flag, must growmore and more lively as the phrase marches on. 

The Osmanlees speak well. In countries civilised according to theEuropean plan the work of trying to persuade tribunals is almost allperformed by a set of men, the great body of whom very seldom do anythingelse; but in Turkey this division of labour has never taken place, andevery man is his own advocate. The importance of the rhetorical art isimmense, for a bad speech may endanger the property of the speaker, aswell as the soles of his feet and the free enjoyment of his throat. Soit results that most of the Turks whom one sees have a lawyer-like habitof speaking connectedly, and at length. Even the treaties continuallygoing on at the bazaar for the buying and selling of the merest triflesare carried on by speechifying rather than by mere colloquies, and theeternal uncertainty as to the market value of things in constant salegives room enough for discussion. The seller is for ever demanding aprice immensely beyond that for which he sells at last, and so occasionsunspeakable disgust in many Englishmen, who cannot see why an honestdealer should ask more for his goods than he will really take! The truthis, however, that an ordinary tradesman of Constantinople has no otherway of finding out the fair market value of his property. The difficultyunder which he labours is easily shown by comparing the mechanism of thecommercial system in Turkey with that of our own country. In England, orin any other great mercantile country, the bulk of the things bought andsold goes through the hands of a wholesale dealer, and it is he whohiggles and bargains with an entire nation of purchasers by entering intotreaty with retail sellers. The labour of making a few large contractsis sufficient to give a clue for finding the fair market value of thegoods sold throughout the country; but in Turkey, from the primitivehabits of the people, and partly from the absence of great capital andgreat credit, the importing merchant, the warehouseman, the wholesaledealer, the retail dealer, and the shopman, are all one person. OldMoostapha, or Abdallah, or Hadgi Mohamed waddles up from the water’s edgewith a small packet of merchandise, which he has bought out of a Greekbrigantine, and when at last he has reached his nook in the bazaar heputs his goods _before_ the counter, and himself _upon_ it; then layingfire to his _tchibouque_ he “sits in permanence, ” and patiently waits toobtain “the best price that can be got in an open market. ” This is hisfair right as a seller, but he has no means of finding out what that bestprice is except by actual experiment. He cannot know the intensity ofthe demand, or the abundance of the supply, otherwise than by the offerswhich may be made for his little bundle of goods; so he begins by askinga perfectly hopeless price, and then descends the ladder until he meets apurchaser, for ever

 “Striving to attain By shadowing out the unattainable. ”

This is the struggle which creates the continual occasion for debate. The vendor, perceiving that the unfolded merchandise has caught the eyeof a possible purchaser, commences his opening speech. He covers hisbristling broadcloths and his meagre silks with the golden broidery ofOriental praises, and as he talks, along with the slow and gracefulwaving of his arms, he lifts his undulating periods, upholds and poisesthem well, till they have gathered their weight and their strength, andthen hurls them bodily forward with grave, momentous swing. The possiblepurchaser listens to the whole speech with deep and serious attention;but when it is over _his_ turn arrives. He elaborately endeavours toshow why he ought not to buy the things at a price twenty times largerthan their value. Bystanders attracted to the debate take a part in itas independent members; the vendor is heard in reply, and coming downwith his price, furnishes the materials for a new debate. Sometimes, however, the dealer, if he is a very pious Mussulman, and sufficientlyrich to hold back his ware, will take a more dignified part, maintaininga kind of judicial gravity, and receiving the applicants who come to hisstall as if they were rather suitors than customers. He will quietlyhear to the end some long speech that concludes with an offer, and willanswer it all with the one monosyllable “Yok, ” which means distinctly“No. ”

I caught one glimpse of the old heathen world. My habits for studyingmilitary subjects had been hardening my heart against poetry; for everstaring at the flames of battle, I had blinded myself to the lesser andfiner lights that are shed from the imaginations of men. In my readingat this time I delighted to follow from out of Arabian sands the feet ofthe armed believers, and to stand in the broad, manifest storm-track ofTartar devastation; and thus, though surrounded at Constantinople byscenes of much interest to the “classical scholar, ” I had cast asidetheir associations like an old Greek grammar, and turned my face to the“shining Orient, ” forgetful of old Greece and all the pure wealth sheleft to this matter-of-fact-ridden world. But it happened to me one dayto mount the high grounds overhanging the streets of Pera. I sated myeyes with the pomps of the city and its crowded waters, and then I lookedover where Scutari lay half veiled in her mournful cypresses. I lookedyet farther and higher, and saw in the heavens a silvery cloud that stoodfast and still against the breeze: it was pure and dazzling white, asmight be the veil of Cytherea, yet touched with such fire, as though frombeneath the loving eyes of an immortal were shining through and through. I knew the bearing, but had enormously misjudged its distance andunderrated its height, and so it was as a sign and a testimony, almost asa call from the neglected gods, and now I saw and acknowledged the snowycrown of the Mysian Olympus!

CHAPTER IV—THE TROAD

Methley recovered almost suddenly, and we determined to go through theTroad together. 

My comrade was a capital Grecian. It is true that his singular mind soordered and disposed his classic lore as to impress it with something ofan original and barbarous character—with an almost Gothic quaintness, more properly belonging to a rich native ballad than to the poetry ofHellas. There was a certain impropriety in his knowing so much Greek—anunfitness in the idea of marble fauns, and satyrs, and even Olympiangods, lugged in under the oaken roof and the painted light of an odd, oldNorman hall. But Methley, abounding in Homer, really loved him (as Ibelieve) in all truth, without whim or fancy; moreover, he had a gooddeal of the practical sagacity

 “Of a Yorkshireman hippodamoio, ”

and this enabled him to apply his knowledge with much more tact than isusually shown by people so learned as he. 

I, too, loved Homer, but not with a scholar’s love. The most humble andpious among women was yet so proud a mother that she could teach herfirstborn son no Watts’ hymns, no collects for the day; she could teachhim in earliest childhood no less than this, to find a home in hissaddle, and to love old Homer, and all that old Homer sung. True it is, that the Greek was ingeniously rendered into English, the English of Popeeven, but not even a mesh like that can screen an earnest child from thefire of Homer’s battles. 

I pored over the _Odyssey_ as over a story-book, hoping and fearing forthe hero whom yet I partly scorned. But the Iliad—line by line I claspedit to my brain with reverence as well as with love. As an old womandeeply trustful sits reading her Bible because of the world to come, so, as though it would fit me for the coming strife of this temporal world, Iread and read the _Iliad_. Even outwardly, it was not like other books;it was throned in towering folios. There was a preface or dissertationprinted in type still more majestic than the rest of the book; this Iread, but not till my enthusiasm for the _Iliad_ had already run high. The writer compiling the opinions of many men, and chiefly of theancients, set forth, I know not how quaintly, that the _Iliad_ was all inall to the human race—that it was history, poetry, revelation; that theworks of men’s hands were folly and vanity, and would pass away like thedreams of a child, but that the kingdom of Homer would endure for everand ever. 

I assented with all my soul. I read, and still read; I came to knowHomer. A learned commentator knows something of the Greeks, in the samesense as an oil-and-colour man may be said to know something of painting;but take an untamed child, and leave him alone for twelve months with anytranslation of Homer, and he will be nearer by twenty centuries to thespirit of old Greece; _he_ does not stop in the ninth year of the siegeto admire this or that group of words; _he_ has no books in his tent, buthe shares in vital counsels with the “king of men, ” and knows the inmostsouls of the impending gods; how profanely he exults over the powersdivine when they are taught to dread the prowess of mortals! and most ofall, how he rejoices when the God of War flies howling from the spear ofDiomed, and mounts into heaven for safety! Then the beautiful episode ofthe Sixth Book: the way to feel this is not to go casting about, andlearning from pastors and masters how best to admire it. The impatientchild is not grubbing for beauties, but pushing the siege; the women vexhim with their delays, and their talking; the mention of the nurse ispersonal, and little sympathy has he for the child that is young enoughto be frightened at the nodding plume of a helmet; but all the while thathe thus chafes at the pausing of the action, the strong vertical light ofHomer’s poetry is blazing so full upon the people and things of the_Iliad_, that soon to the eyes of the child they grow familiar as hismother’s shawl; yet of this great gain he is unconscious, and on he goes, vengefully thirsting for the best blood of Troy, and never remitting hisfierceness till almost suddenly it is changed for sorrow—the new andgenerous sorrow that he learns to feel when the noblest of all his foeslies sadly dying at the Scæan gate. 

Heroic days are these, but the dark ages of schoolboy life come closingover them. I suppose it is all right in the end, yet, by Jove, at firstsight it does seem a sad intellectual fall from your mother’sdressing-room to a buzzing school. You feel so keenly the delights ofearly knowledge; you form strange mystic friendships with the mere namesof mountains, and seas, and continents, and mighty rivers; you learn theways of the planets, and transcend their narrow limits, and ask for theend of space; you vex the electric cylinder till it yields you, for yourtoy to play with, that subtle fire in which our earth was forged; youknow of the nations that have towered high in the world, and the lives ofthe men who have saved whole empires from oblivion. What more will youever learn? Yet the dismal change is ordained, and then, thin meagreLatin (the same for everybody), with small shreds and patches of Greek, is thrown like a pauper’s pall over all your early lore. Instead ofsweet knowledge, vile, monkish, doggerel grammars and graduses, dictionaries and lexicons, and horrible odds and ends of dead languages, are given you for your portion, and down you fall, from Roman story to athree-inch scrap of “Scriptores Romani, ”—from Greek poetry down, down tothe cold rations of “Poetæ Græci, ” cut up by commentators, and served outby schoolmasters!

It was not the recollection of school nor college learning, but therapturous and earnest reading of my childhood, which made me bend forwardso longingly to the plains of Troy. 

Away from our people and our horses, Methley and I went loitering alongby the willow banks of a stream that crept in quietness through the low, even plain. There was no stir of weather overhead, no sound of rurallabour, no sign of life in the land; but all the earth was dead andstill, as though it had lain for thrice a thousand years under the leadengloom of one unbroken Sabbath. 

Softly and sadly the poor, dumb, patient stream went winding and windingalong through its shifting pathway; in some places its waters wereparted, and then again, lower down, they would meet once more. I couldsee that the stream from year to year was finding itself new channels, and flowed no longer in its ancient track, but I knew that the springswhich fed it were high on Ida—the springs of Simois and Scamander!

It was coldly and thanklessly, and with vacant, unsatisfied eyes that Iwatched the slow coming and the gliding away of the waters. I tellmyself now, as a profane fact, that I did stand by that river (Methleygathered some seeds from the bushes that grew there), but since that I amaway from his banks, “divine Scamander” has recovered the proper mysterybelonging to him as an unseen deity; a kind of indistinctness, like thatwhich belongs to far antiquity, has spread itself over my memory, of thewinding stream that I saw with these very eyes. One’s mind regains inabsence that dominion over earthly things which has been shaken by theirrude contact. You force yourself hardily into the material presence of amountain, or a river, whose name belongs to poetry and ancient religion, rather than to the external world; your feelings wound up and kept readyfor some sort of half-expected rapture are chilled, and borne down forthe time under all this load of real earth and water; but let these oncepass out of sight, and then again the old fanciful notions are restored, and the mere realities which you have just been looking at are thrownback so far into distance, that the very event of your intrusion uponsuch scenes begins to look dim and uncertain, as though it belonged tomythology. 

It is not over the plain before Troy that the river now flows; its watershave edged away far towards the north, since the day that “divineScamander” (whom the gods call Xanthus) went down to do battle for Ilion, “with Mars, and Phoebus, and Latona, and Diana glorying in her arrows, and Venus the lover of smiles. ”

And now, when I was vexed at the migration of Scamander, and the totalloss or absorption of poor dear Simois, how happily Methley reminded methat Homer himself had warned us of some such changes! The Greeks inbeginning their wall had neglected the hecatombs due to the gods, and soafter the fall of Troy Apollo turned the paths of the rivers that flowfrom Ida and sent them flooding over the wall, till all the beach wassmooth and free from the unhallowed works of the Greeks. It is true Isee now, on looking to the passage, that Neptune, when the work ofdestruction was done, turned back the rivers to their ancient ways:

 “ . . . ποταμους δ’ ετρεφε νεεσθαι Καρ’ ροον ηπερ προσθεν ιεν καλλιρροον υδωρ, ”

but their old channels passing through that light pervious soil wouldhave been lost in the nine days’ flood, and perhaps the god, when hewilled to bring back the rivers to their ancient beds, may have done hiswork but ill: it is easier, they say, to destroy than it is to restore. 

We took to our horses again, and went southward towards the very plainbetween Troy and the tents of the Greeks, but we rode by a line at somedistance from the shore. Whether it was that the lay of the groundhindered my view towards the sea, or that I was all intent upon Ida, orwhether my mind was in vacancy, or whether, as is most like, I hadstrayed from the Dardan plains all back to gentle England, there is nowno knowing, nor caring, but it was not quite suddenly indeed, but rather, as it were, in the swelling and falling of a single wave, that thereality of that very sea-view, which had bounded the sight of the Greeks, now visibly acceded to me, and rolled full in upon my brain. Conceivehow deeply that eternal coast-line, that fixed horizon, those islandrocks, must have graven their images upon the minds of the Grecianwarriors by the time that they had reached the ninth year of the siege!conceive the strength, and the fanciful beauty, of the speeches withwhich a whole army of imagining men must have told their weariness, andhow the sauntering chiefs must have whelmed that daily, daily scene withtheir deep Ionian curses!

And now it was that my eyes were greeted with a delightful surprise. Whilst we were at Constantinople, Methley and I had pored over the maptogether. We agreed that whatever may have been the exact site of Troy, the Grecian camp must have been nearly opposite to the space betwixt theislands of Imbros and Tenedos, “Μεσσηyυς Τενεδοιο και Ιμβρου παιπαλοεσσης, ”

but Methley reminded me of a passage in the _Iliad_ in which Neptune isrepresented as looking at the scene of action before Ilion from above theisland of Samothrace. Now Samothrace, according to the map, appeared tobe not only out of all seeing distance from the Troad, but to be entirelyshut out from it by the intervening Imbros, which is a larger island, stretching its length right athwart the line of sight from Samothrace toTroy. Piously allowing that the dread Commoter of our globe might haveseen all mortal doings, even from the depth of his own cerulean kingdom, I still felt that if a station were to be chosen from which to see thefight, old Homer, so material in his ways of thought, so averse from allhaziness and overreaching, would have _meant_ to give the god for hisstation some spot within reach of men’s eyes from the plains of Troy. Ithink that this testing of the poet’s words by map and compass may haveshaken a little of my faith in the completeness of his knowledge. Well, now I had come; there to the south was Tenedos, and here at my side wasImbros, all right, and according to the map, but aloft over Imbros, aloftin a far-away heaven, was Samothrace, the watch-tower of Neptune!

So Homer had appointed it, and so it was; the map was correct enough, butcould not, like Homer, convey _the whole truth_. Thus vain and false arethe mere human surmises and doubts which clash with Homeric writ!

Nobody whose mind had not been reduced to the most deplorable logicalcondition could look upon this beautiful congruity betwixt the _Iliad_and the material world and yet bear to suppose that the poet may havelearned the features of the coast from mere hearsay; now then, Ibelieved; now I knew that Homer had _passed along here_, that this visionof Samothrace over-towering the nearer island was common to him and tome. 

After a journey of some few days by the route of Adramiti and Pergamo wereached Smyrna. The letters which Methley here received obliged him toreturn to England. 

CHAPTER V—INFIDEL SMYRNA

Smyrna, or Giaour Izmir, “Infidel Smyrna, ” as the Mussulmans call it, isthe main point of commercial contact betwixt Europe and Asia. You arethere surrounded by the people, and the confused customs of many andvarious nations; you see the fussy European adopting the East, andcalming his restlessness with the long Turkish “pipe of tranquillity”;you see Jews offering services, and receiving blows; {8} on one side youhave a fellow whose dress and beard would give you a good idea of thetrue Oriental, if it were not for the _gobe-mouche_ expression ofcountenance with which he is swallowing an article in the _National_; andthere, just by, is a genuine Osmanlee, smoking away with all the majestyof a sultan, but before you have time to admire sufficiently his tranquildignity, and his soft Asiatic repose, the poor old fellow is ruthlessly“run down” by an English midshipman, who has set sail on a Smyrna hack. Such are the incongruities of the “infidel city” at ordinary times; butwhen I was there, our friend Carrigaholt had imported himself and hisoddities as an accession to the other and inferior wonders of Smyrna. 

I was sitting alone in my room one day at Constantinople, when I heardMethley approaching my door with shouts of laughter and welcome, andpresently I recognised that peculiar cry by which our friend Carrigaholtexpresses his emotions; he soon explained to us the final causes by whichthe fates had worked out their wonderful purpose of bringing him toConstantinople. He was always, you know, very fond of sailing, but hehad got into such sad scrapes (including, I think, a lawsuit) on accountof his last yacht, that he took it into his head to have a cruise in amerchant vessel, so he went to Liverpool, and looked through the craftlying ready to sail, till he found a smart schooner that perfectly suitedhis taste. The destination of the vessel was the last thing he thoughtof; and when he was told that she was bound for Constantinople, he merelyassented to that as a part of the arrangement to which he had noobjection. As soon as the vessel had sailed, the hapless passengerdiscovered that his skipper carried on board an enormous wife, with aninquiring mind and an irresistible tendency to impart her opinions. Shelooked upon her guest as upon a piece of waste intellect that ought to becarefully tilled. She tilled him accordingly. If the dons at Oxfordcould have seen poor Carrigaholt thus absolutely “attending lectures” inthe Bay of Biscay, they would surely have thought him sufficientlypunished for all the wrongs he did them whilst he was preparing himselfunder their care for the other and more boisterous University. Thevoyage did not last more than six or eight weeks, and the philosophyinflicted on Carrigaholt was not entirely fatal to him; certainly he wassomewhat emaciated, and for aught I know, he may have subscribed somewhattoo largely to the “Feminine-right-of-reason Society”; but it did notappear that his health had been seriously affected. There was a schemeon foot, it would seem, for taking the passenger back to England in thesame schooner—a scheme, in fact, for keeping him perpetually afloat, andperpetually saturated with arguments; but when Carrigaholt found himselfashore, and remembered that the skipperina (who had imprudently remainedon board) was not there to enforce her suggestions, he was open to thehints of his servant (a very sharp fellow), who arranged a plan forescaping, and finally brought off his master to Giuseppini’s Hotel. 

Our friend afterwards went by sea to Smyrna, and there he now was in hisglory. He had a good, or at all events a gentleman-like, judgment inmatters of taste, and as his great object was to surround himself withall that his fancy could dictate, he lived in a state of perpetualnegotiation. He was for ever on the point of purchasing, not only thematerial productions of the place, but all sorts of such fine ware as“intelligence, ” “fidelity, ” and so on. He was most curious, however, asthe purchaser of the “affections. ” Sometimes he would imagine that hehad a marital aptitude, and his fancy would sketch a graceful picture, inwhich he appeared reclining on a divan, with a beautiful Greek womanfondly couched at his feet, and soothing him with the witchery of herguitar. Having satisfied himself with the ideal picture thus created, hewould pass into action; the guitar he would buy instantly, and would givesuch intimations of his wish to be wedded to a Greek, as could not failto produce great excitement in the families, of the beautiful Smyrniotes. Then again (and just in time perhaps to save him from the yoke) his dreamwould pass away, and another would come in its stead; he would suddenlyfeel the yearnings of a father’s love, and willing by force of gold totranscend all natural preliminaries, he would issue instructions for thepurchase of some dutiful child that could be warranted to love him as aparent. Then at another time he would be convinced that the attachmentof menials might satisfy the longings of his affectionate heart, andthereupon he would give orders to his slave-merchant for something in theway of eternal fidelity. You may well imagine that this anxiety ofCarrigaholt to purchase not only the scenery, but the many _dramatispersonæ_ belonging to his dreams, with all their goodness and gracescomplete, necessarily gave an immense stimulus to the trade and intrigueof Smyrna, and created a demand for human virtues which the moralresources of the place were totally inadequate to supply. Every dayafter breakfast this lover of the good and the beautiful held a levee, which was often exceedingly amusing. In his anteroom there would be notonly the sellers of pipes and slippers and shawls, and such like Orientalmerchandise, not only embroiderers and cunning workmen patiently strivingto realise his visions of Albanian dresses, not only the servantsoffering for places, and the slave-dealer tendering his sable ware, butthere would be the Greek master, waiting to teach his pupil the grammarof the soft Ionian tongue, in which he was to delight the wife of hisimagination, and the music-master, who was to teach him some sweetreplies to the anticipated sounds of the fancied guitar; and then, aboveall, and proudly eminent with undisputed preference of _entrée_, andfraught with the mysterious tidings on which the realisation of the wholedream might depend, was the mysterious match-maker, {9} enticing andpostponing the suitor, yet ever keeping alive in his soul the love ofthat pictured virtue, whose beauty (unseen by eyes) was half revealed tothe imagination. 

You would have thought that this practical dreaming must have soonbrought Carrigaholt to a bad end, but he was in much less danger than youwould suppose; for besides that the new visions of happiness almostalways came in time to counteract the fatal completion of the precedingscheme, his high breeding and his delicately sensitive taste almostalways came to his aid at times when he was left without any otherprotection; and the efficacy of these qualities in keeping a man out ofharm’s way is really immense. In all baseness and imposture there is acoarse, vulgar spirit, which, however artfully concealed for a time, mustsooner or later show itself in some little circumstance sufficientlyplain to occasion an instant jar upon the minds of those whose taste islively and true. To such men a shock of this kind, disclosing the_ugliness_ of a cheat, is more effectively convincing than any mereproofs could be. 

Thus guarded from isle to isle, and through Greece, and through Albania, this practical Plato with a purse in his hand, carried on his mad chaseafter the good and the beautiful, and yet returned in safety to his home. But now, poor fellow! the lowly grave, that is the end of men’s romantichopes, has closed over all his rich fancies, and all his highaspirations; he is utterly married! No more hope, no more change forhim—no more relays—he must go on Vetturini-wise to the appointed end ofhis journey!

Smyrna, I think, may be called the chief town and capital of the Grecianrace, against which you will be cautioned so carefully as soon as youtouch the Levant. You will say that I ought not to confound as onepeople the Greeks living under a constitutional government with theunfortunate Rayahs who “groan under the Turkish yoke, ” but I can’t seethat political events have hitherto produced any strongly markeddifference of character. If I could venture to rely (which I feel that Icannot at all do) upon my own observation, I should tell you that therewas more heartiness and strength in the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire thanin those of the new kingdom. The truth is, that there is a greater fieldfor commercial enterprise, and even for Greek ambition, under the Ottomansceptre, than is to be found in the dominions of Otho. Indeed thepeople, by their frequent migrations from the limits of theconstitutional kingdom to the territories of the Porte, seem to showthat, on the whole, they prefer “groaning under the Turkish yoke” to thehonour of “being the only true source of legitimate power” in their ownland. 

For myself, I love the race; in spite of all their vices, and even inspite of all their meannesses, I remember the blood that is in them, andstill love the Greeks. The Osmanlees are, of course, by nature, byreligion, and by politics, the strong foes of the Hellenic people, and asthe Greeks, poor fellows! happen to be a little deficient in some of thevirtues which facilitate the transaction of commercial business (such asveracity, fidelity, &c. ), it naturally follows that they are highlyunpopular with the European merchants. Now these are the persons throughwhom, either directly or indirectly, is derived the greater part of theinformation which you gather in the Levant, and therefore you must makeup your mind to hear an almost universal and unbroken testimony againstthe character of the people whose ancestors invented virtue. And strangeto say, the Greeks themselves do not attempt to disturb this generalunanimity of opinion by an dissent on their part. Question a Greek onthe subject, and he will tell you at once that the people are_traditori_, and will then, perhaps, endeavour to shake off his fairshare of the imputation by asserting that his father had been dragoman tosome foreign embassy, and that he (the son), therefore, by the law ofnations, had ceased to be Greek. 

“E dunque no siete traditore?”

“Possibile, signor, ma almeno Io no sono Greco. ”

Not even the diplomatic representatives of the Hellenic kingdom are freefrom the habit of depreciating their brethren. I recollect that at oneof the ports in Syria a Greek vessel was rather unfairly kept inquarantine by order of the Board of Health, which consisted entirely ofEuropeans. A consular agent from the kingdom of Greece had latelyhoisted his flag in the town, and the captain of the vessel drew up aremonstrance, which he requested his consul to present to the Board. 

“Now, _is_ this reasonable?” said the consul; “is it reasonable that Ishould place myself in collision with all the principal Europeangentlemen of the place for the sake of you, a Greek?” The skipper wasgreatly vexed at the failure of his application, but he scarcely evenquestioned the justice of the ground which his consul had taken. Well, it happened some time afterwards that I found myself at the same port, having gone thither with the view of embarking for the port of Syra. Iwas anxious, of course, to elude as carefully as possible the quarantinedetentions which threatened me on my arrival, and hearing that the Greekconsul had a brother who was a man in authority at Syra, I got myselfpresented to the former, and took the liberty of asking him to give mesuch a letter of introduction to his relative at Syra as might possiblyhave the effect of shortening the term of my quarantine. He acceded tothis request with the utmost kindness and courtesy; but when he repliedto my thanks by saying that “in serving an Englishman he was doing nomore than his strict duty commanded, ” not even my gratitude could preventme from calling to mind his treatment of the poor captain who had themisfortune of _not_ being an alien in blood to his consul and appointedprotector. 

I think that the change which has taken place in the character of theGreeks has been occasioned, in great measure, by the doctrines andpractice of their religion. The Greek Church has animated the Muscovitepeasant, and inspired him with hopes and ideas which, however humble, arestill better than none at all; but the faith, and the forms, and thestrange ecclesiastical literature which act so advantageously upon themere clay of the Russian serf, seem to hang like lead upon the etherealspirit of the Greek. Never in any part of the world have I seenreligious performances so painful to witness as those of the Greeks. Thehorror, however, with which one shudders at their worship isattributable, in some measure, to the mere effect of costume. In all theOttoman dominions, and very frequently too in the kingdom of Otho, theGreeks wear turbans or other head-dresses, and shave their heads, leavingonly a rat’s-tail at the crown of the head; they of course keepthemselves covered within doors as well as abroad, and they never removetheir head-gear merely on account of being in a church; but when theGreek stops to worship at his proper shrine, then, and then only, healways uncovers; and as you see him thus with shaven skull and savagetail depending from his crown, kissing a thing of wood and glass, andcringing with base prostrations and apparent terror before a miserablepicture, you see superstition in a shape which, outwardly at least, issadly abject and repulsive. 

The fasts, too, of the Greek Church produce an ill effect upon thecharacter of the people, for they are not a mere farce, but are carriedto such an extent as to bring about a real mortification of the flesh;the febrile irritation of the frame operating in conjunction with thedepression of the spirits occasioned by abstinence, will so far answerthe objects of the rite, as to engender some religious excitement, butthis is of a morbid and gloomy character, and it seems to be certain, that along with the increase of sanctity, there comes a fiercer desirefor the perpetration of dark crimes. The number of murders committedduring Lent is greater, I am told, than at any other time of the year. Aman under the influence of a bean dietary (for this is the principal foodof the Greeks during their fasts) will be in an apt humour for enrichingthe shrine of his saint, and passing a knife through his next-doorneighbour. The moneys deposited upon the shrines are appropriated bypriests; the priests are married men, and have families to provide for;they “take the good with the bad, ” and continue to recommend fasts. 

Then, too, the Greek Church enjoins her followers to keep holy such avast number of saints’ days as practically to shorten the lives of thepeople very materially. I believe that one-third out of the number ofdays in the year are “kept holy, ” or rather, _kept stupid_, in honour ofthe saints; no great portion of the time thus set apart is spent inreligious exercises, and the people don’t betake themselves to any suchanimating pastimes as might serve to strengthen the frame, or invigoratethe mind, or exalt the taste. On the contrary, the saints’ days of theGreeks in Smyrna are passed in the same manner as the Sabbaths ofwell-behaved Protestant housemaids in London—that is to say, in a steadyand serious contemplation of street scenery. The men perform this duty_at the doors_ of their houses, the women _at the windows_, which thecustom of Greek towns has so decidedly appropriated to them as the properstation of their sex, that a man would be looked upon as utterlyeffeminate if he ventured to choose that situation for the keeping of thesaints’ days. I was present one day at a treaty for the hire of someapartments at Smyrna, which was carried on between Carrigaholt and theGreek woman to whom the rooms belonged. Carrigaholt objected that thewindows commanded no view of the street. Immediately the brow of themajestic matron was clouded, and with all the scorn of a Spartan mothershe coolly asked Carrigaholt, and said, “Art thou a tender damsel thatthou wouldst sit and gaze from windows?” The man whom she addressed, however, had not gone to Greece with any intention of placing himselfunder the laws of Lycurgus, and was not to be diverted from his views bya Spartan rebuke, so he took care to find himself windows after his ownheart, and there, I believe, for many a month, he kept the saints’ days, and all the days intervening, after the fashion of Grecian women. 

Oh! let me be charitable to all who write, and to all who lecture, and toall who preach, since even I, a layman not forced to write at all, canhardly avoid chiming in with some tuneful cant! I have had the heart totalk about the pernicious effects of the Greek holidays, to which I owesome of my most beautiful visions! I will let the words stand, as ahumbling proof that I am subject to that immutable law which compels aman with a pen in his hand to be uttering every now and then somesentiment not his own. It seems as though the power of expressingregrets and desires by written symbols were coupled with a condition thatthe writer should from time to time express the regrets and desires ofother people; as though, like a French peasant under the old régime, onewere bound to perform a certain amount of work _upon the publichighways_. I rebel as stoutly as I can against this horrible, _corvée_. I try not to deceive you—I try to set down the thoughts which are freshwithin me, and not to pretend any wishes, or griefs, which I do notreally feel; but no sooner do I cease from watchfulness in this regard, than my right hand is, as it were, seized by some false angel, and evennow, you see, I have been forced to put down such words and sentences asI ought to have written if really and truly I had wished to disturb thesaints’ days of the beautiful Smyrniotes!

Which, Heaven forbid! for as you move through the narrow streets of thecity at these times of festival, the transom-shaped windows suspendedover your head on either side are filled with the beautiful descendantsof the old Ionian race; all (even yonder empress that sits throned at thewindow of that humblest mud cottage) are attired with seemingmagnificence; their classic heads are crowned with scarlet, and loadedwith jewels or coins of gold, the whole wealth of the wearers; {10} theirfeatures are touched with a savage pencil, which hardens the outline ofeyes and eyebrows, and lends an unnatural fire to the stern, grave lookswith which they pierce your brain. Endure their fiery eyes as best youmay, and ride on slowly and reverently, for facing you from the side ofthe transom, that looks long-wise through the street, you see the oneglorious shape transcendant in its beauty; you see the massive braid ofhair as it catches a touch of light on its jetty surface, and the broad, calm, angry brow; the large black eyes, deep set, and self-relying likethe eyes of a conqueror, with their rich shadows of thought lying darklyaround them; you see the thin fiery nostril, and the bold line of thechin and throat disclosing all the fierceness, and all the pride, passion, and power that can live along with the rare womanly beauty ofthose sweetly turned lips. But then there is a terrible stillness inthis breathing image; it seems like the stillness of a savage that sitsintent and brooding, day by day, upon some one fearful scheme ofvengeance, but yet more like it seems to the stillness of an Immortal, whose will must be known, and obeyed without sign or speech. Bowdown!—Bow down and adore the young Persephonie, transcendent Queen ofShades!

CHAPTER VI—GREEK MARINERS

I sailed from Smyrna in the _Amphitrite_, a Greek brigantine, which wasconfidently said to be bound for the coast of Syria; but I knew that thisannouncement was not to be relied upon with positive certainty, for theGreek mariners are practically free from the stringency of ship’s papers, and where they will, there they go. However, I had the whole of thecabin for myself and my attendant, Mysseri, subject only to the societyof the captain at the hour of dinner. Being at ease in this respect, being furnished too with plenty of books, and finding an unfailing sourceof interest in the thorough Greekness of my captain and my crew, I feltless anxious than most people would have been about the probable lengthof the cruise. I knew enough of Greek navigation to be sure that ourvessel would cling to earth like a child to its mother’s knee, and that Ishould touch at many an isle before I set foot upon the Syrian coast; butI had no invidious preference for Europe, Asia, or Africa, and I feltthat I could defy the winds to blow me upon a coast that was blank andvoid of interest. My patience was extremely useful to me, for the cruisealtogether endured some forty days, and that in the midst of winter. 

According to me, the most interesting of all the Greeks (male Greeks) arethe mariners, because their pursuits and their social condition are sonearly the same as those of their famous ancestors. You will say, thatthe occupation of commerce must have smoothed down the salience of theirminds; and this would be so perhaps if their mercantile affairs wereconducted according to the fixed businesslike routine of Europeans; butthe ventures of the Greeks are surrounded by such a multitude of imagineddangers (and from the absence of regular marts, in which the true valueof merchandise can be ascertained), are so entirely speculative, andbesides, are conducted in a manner so wholly determined upon by thewayward fancies and wishes of the crew, that they belong to enterpriserather than to industry, and are very far indeed from tending to deadenany freshness of character. 

The vessels in which war and piracy were carried on during the years ofthe Greek Revolution became merchantmen at the end of the war; but thetactics of the Greeks, as naval warriors, were so exceedingly cautious, and their habits as commercial mariners are so wild, that the change hasbeen more slight than you might imagine. The first care of Greeks (GreekRayahs) when they undertake a shipping enterprise is to procure for theirvessel the protection of some European power. This is easily managed bya little intriguing with the dragoman of one of the embassies atConstantinople, and the craft soon glories in the ensign of Russia, orthe dazzling Tricolor, or the Union Jack. Thus, to the great delight ofher crew, she enters upon the ocean world with a flaring lie at her peak, but the appearance of the vessel does no discredit to the borrowed flag;she is frail indeed, but is gracefully built, and smartly rigged; shealways carries guns, and in short, gives good promise of mischief andspeed. 

The privileges attached to the vessel and her crew by virtue of theborrowed flag are so great, as to imply a liberty wider even than thatwhich is often enjoyed in our more strictly civilised countries, so thatthere is no pretence for saying that the development of the truecharacter belonging to Greek mariners is prevented by the dominion of theOttoman. These men are free, too, from the power of the greatcapitalist, whose sway is more withering than despotism itself to theenterprises of humble venturers. The capital employed is supplied bythose whose labour is to render it productive. The crew receive nowages, but have all a share in the venture, and in general, I believe, they are the owners of the whole freight. They choose a captain, to whomthey entrust just power enough to keep the vessel on her course in fineweather, but not quite enough for a gale of wind; they also elect a cookand a mate. The cook whom we had on board was particularly careful aboutthe ship’s reckoning, and when under the influence of the keensea-breezes we grew fondly expectant of an instant dinner, the greatauthor of _pilafs_ would be standing on deck with an ancient quadrant inhis hands, calmly affecting to take an observation. But then to make upfor this the captain would be exercising a controlling influence over thesoup, so that all in the end went well. Our mate was a Hydriot, a nativeof that island rock which grows nothing but mariners and mariners’ wives. His character seemed to be exactly that which is generally attributed tothe Hydriot race; he was fierce, and gloomy, and lonely in his ways. Oneof his principal duties seemed to be that of acting as counter-captain, or leader of the opposition, denouncing the first symptoms of tyranny, and protecting even the cabin-boy from oppression. Besides this, whenthings went smoothly he would begin to prognosticate evil, in order thathis more light-hearted comrades might not be puffed up with the seeminggood fortune of the moment. 

It seemed to me that the personal freedom of these sailors, who own nosuperiors except those of their own choice, is as like as may be to thatof their seafaring ancestors. And even in their mode of navigation theyhave admitted no such an entire change as you would suppose probable. Itis true that they have so far availed themselves of modern discoveries asto look to the compass instead of the stars, and that they havesuperseded the immortal gods of their forefathers by St. Nicholas in hisglass case, {11} but they are not yet so confident either in theirneedle, or their saint, as to love an open sea, and they still hug theirshores as fondly as the Argonauts of old. Indeed, they have a mostunsailor-like love for the land, and I really believe that in a gale ofwind they would rather have a rock-bound coast on their lee than no coastat all. According to the notions of an English seaman, this kind ofnavigation would soon bring the vessel on which it might be practised toan evil end. The Greek, however, is unaccountably successful in escapingthe consequences of being “jammed in, ” as it is called, upon a lee-shore. 

These seamen, like their forefathers, rely upon no winds unless they areright astern or on the quarter; they rarely go on a wind if it blows atall fresh, and if the adverse breeze approaches to a gale, they at oncefumigate St. Nicholas, and put up the helm. The consequence of course isthat under the ever-varying winds of the Ægean they are blown about inthe most whimsical manner. I used to think that Ulysses with his tenyears’ voyage had taken his time in making Ithaca, but my experience inGreek navigation soon made me understand that he had had, in point offact, a pretty good “average passage. ”

Such are now the mariners of the Ægean: free, equal amongst themselves, navigating the seas of their forefathers with the same heroic, and yetchild-like, spirit of venture, the same half-trustful reliance uponheavenly aid, they are the liveliest images of true old Greeks that timeand the new religions have spared to us. 

With one exception, our crew were “a solemn company, ” {12} and yet, sometimes, when all things went well, they would relax their austerity, and show a disposition to fun, or rather to quiet humour. When thishappened, they invariably had recourse to one of their number, who wentby the name of “Admiral Nicolou. ” He was an amusing fellow, the poorest, I believe, and the least thoughtful of the crew, but full of rich humour. His oft-told story of the events by which he had gained the sobriquet of“Admiral” never failed to delight his hearers, and when he was desired torepeat it for my benefit, the rest of the crew crowded round with as muchinterest as if they were listening to the tale for the first time. Anumber of Greek brigs and brigantines were at anchor in the bay ofBeyrout. A festival of some kind, particularly attractive to thesailors, was going on in the town, and whether with or without leave Iknow not, but the crews of all the craft, except that of Nicolou, hadgone ashore. On board his vessel, however, which carried dollars, therewas, it would seem, a more careful, or more influential captain, who wasable to enforce his determination that one man, at least, should be lefton board. Nicolou’s good nature was with him so powerful an impulse, that he could not resist the delight of volunteering to stay with thevessel whilst his comrades went ashore. His proposal was accepted, andthe crew and captain soon left him alone on the deck of his vessel. Thesailors, gathering together from their several ships, were amusingthemselves in the town, when suddenly there came down from betwixt themountains one of those sudden hurricanes which sometimes occur insouthern climes. Nicolou’s vessel, together with four of the craft whichhad been left unmanned, broke from her moorings, and all five of thevessels were carried out seaward. The town is on a salient point at thesouthern side of the bay, so that “that Admiral” was close under the eyesof the inhabitants and the shore-gone sailors when he gallantly driftedout at the head of his little fleet. If Nicolou could not entirelycontrol the manoeuvres of the squadron, there was at least no human powerto divide his authority, and thus it was that he took rank as “Admiral. ”Nicolou cut his cable, and thus for the time saved his vessel; for therest of the fleet under his command were quickly wrecked, whilst “theAdmiral” got away clear to the open sea. The violence of the squall soonpassed off, but Nicolou felt that his chance of one day resigning hishigh duties as an admiral for the enjoyments of private life on thesteadfast shore mainly depended upon his success in working the brig withhis own hands, so after calling on his namesake, the saint (not for thefirst time, I take it), he got up some canvas, and took the helm: hebecame equal, he told us, to a score of Nicolous, and the vessel, as hesaid, was “manned with his terrors. ” For two days, it seems, he cruisedat large, but at last, either by his seamanship, or by the naturalinstinct of the Greek mariners for finding land, he brought his craftclose to an unknown shore, that promised well for his purpose of runningin the vessel; and he was preparing to give her a good berth on thebeach, when he saw a gang of ferocious-looking fellows coming down to thepoint for which he was making. Poor Nicolou was a perfectly unletteredand untutored genius, and for that reason, perhaps, a keen listener totales of terror. His mind had been impressed with some horrible legendof cannibalism, and he now did not doubt for a moment that the menawaiting him on the beach were the monsters at whom he had shuddered inthe days of his childhood. The coast on which Nicolou was running hisvessel was somewhere, I fancy, at the foot of the Anzairie Mountains, andthe fellows who were preparing to give him a reception were probably veryrough specimens of humanity. It is likely enough that they might havegiven themselves the trouble of putting “the Admiral” to death, for thepurpose of simplifying their claim to the vessel and preventinglitigation, but the notion of their cannibalism was of course utterlyunfounded. Nicolou’s terror had, however, so graven the idea on hismind, that he could never afterwards dismiss it. Having once determinedthe character of his expectant hosts, the Admiral naturally thought thatit would he better to keep their dinner waiting any length of time thanto attend their feast in the character of a roasted Greek, so he putabout his vessel, and tempted the deep once more. After a further cruisethe lonely commander ran his vessel upon some rocks at another part ofthe coast, where she was lost with all her treasures, and Nicolou was buttoo glad to scramble ashore, though without one dollar in his girdle. These adventures seem flat enough as I repeat them, but the heroexpressed his terrors by such odd terms of speech, and such strangelyhumorous gestures, that the story came from his lips with an unfailingzest, so that the crew, who had heard the tale so often, could stillenjoy to their hearts’ content the rich fright of the Admiral, and stillshuddered with unabated horror when he came to the loss of the dollars. 

The power of listening to long stories (for which, by-the-bye, I amgiving you large credit) is common, I fancy, to most sailors, and theGreeks have it to a high degree, for they can be perfectly patient undera narrative of two or three hours’ duration. These long stories aremostly founded upon Oriental topics, and in one of them I recognised withsome alteration an old friend of the “Arabian Nights. ” I inquired as tothe source from which the story had been derived, and the crew all agreedthat it had been handed down unwritten from Greek to Greek. Theiraccount of the matter does not, perhaps, go very far towards showing thereal origin of the tale; but when I afterwards took up the “ArabianNights, ” I became strongly impressed with a notion that they must havesprung from the brain of a Greek. It seems to me that these stories, whilst they disclose a complete and habitual _knowledge_ of thingsAsiatic, have about them so much of freshness and life, so much of thestirring and volatile European character, that they cannot have owedtheir conception to a mere Oriental, who for creative purposes is a thingdead and dry—a mental mummy, that may have been a live king just afterthe Flood, but has since lain balmed in spice. At the time of theCaliphat the Greek race was familiar enough to Baghdad: they were themerchants, the pedlars, the barbers, and intriguers-general ofsouth-western Asia, and therefore the Oriental materials with which theArabian tales were wrought must have been completely at the command ofthe inventive people to whom I would attribute their origin. 

We were nearing the isle of Cyprus when there arose half a gale of wind, with a heavy chopping sea. My Greek seamen considered that the weatheramounted not to a half, but to an integral gale of wind at the veryleast, so they put up the helm, and scudded for twenty hours. When weneared the mainland of Anadoli the gale ceased, and a favourable breezesprung up, which brought us off Cyprus once more. Afterwards the windchanged again, but we were still able to lay our course by sailingclose-hauled. 

We were at length in such a position, that by holding on our course forabout half-an-hour we should get under the lee of the island and findourselves in smooth water, but the wind had been gradually freshening; itnow blew hard, and there was a heavy sea running. 

As the grounds for alarm arose, the crew gathered together in one closegroup; they stood pale and grim under their hooded capotes like monksawaiting a massacre, anxiously looking by turns along the pathway of thestorm and then upon each other, and then upon the eye of the captain whostood by the helmsman. Presently the Hydriot came aft, more moody thanever, the bearer of fierce remonstrance against the continuing of thestruggle; he received a resolute answer, and still we held our course. Soon there came a heavy sea, that caught the bow of the brigantine as shelay jammed in betwixt the waves; she bowed her head low under the waters, and shuddered through all her timbers, then gallantly stood up again overthe striving sea, with bowsprit entire. But where were the crew? It wasa crew no longer, but rather a gathering of Greek citizens; the shout ofthe seamen was changed for the murmuring of the people—the spirit of theold Demos was alive. The men came aft in a body, and loudly asked thatthe vessel should be put about, and that the storm be no longer tempted. Now, then, for speeches. The captain, his eyes flashing fire, his frameall quivering with emotion—wielding his every limb, like another and alouder voice, pours forth the eloquent torrent of his threats and hisreasons, his commands and his prayers; he promises, he vows, he swearsthat there is safety in holding on—safety, _if Greeks will be brave_!The men hear and are moved; but the gale rouses itself once more, andagain the raging sea comes trampling over the timbers that are the lifeof all. The fierce Hydriot advances one step nearer to the captain, andthe angry growl of the people goes floating down the wind, but theylisten; they waver once more, and once more resolve, then waver again, thus doubtfully hanging between the terrors of the storm and thepersuasion of glorious speech, as though it were the Athenian thattalked, and Philip of Macedon that thundered on the weather-bow. 

Brave thoughts winged on Grecian words gained their natural mastery overterror; the brigantine held on her course, and reached smooth water atlast. I landed at Limasol, the westernmost port of Cyprus, leaving thevessel to sail for Larnaka, where she was to remain for some days. 

CHAPTER VII—CYPRUS

There was a Greek at Limasol who hoisted his flag as an Englishvice-consul, and he insisted upon my accepting his hospitality. Withsome difficulty, and chiefly by assuring him that I could not delay mydeparture beyond an early hour in the afternoon, I induced him to allowmy dining with his family instead of banqueting all alone with therepresentative of my sovereign in consular state and dignity. The ladyof the house, it seemed, had never sat at table with an European. Shewas very shy about the matter, and tried hard to get out of the scrape, but the husband, I fancy, reminded her that she was theoretically anEnglishwoman, by virtue of the flag that waved over her roof, and thatshe was bound to show her nationality by sitting at meat with me. Finding herself inexorably condemned to bear with the dreaded gaze ofEuropean eyes, she tried to save her innocent children from the hard fateawaiting herself, but I obtained that all of them (and I think there werefour or five) should sit at the table. You will meet with abundance ofstately receptions and of generous hospitality, too, in the East, butrarely, very rarely in those regions (or even, so far as I know, in anypart of southern Europe) does one gain an opportunity of seeing thefamiliar and indoor life of the people. 

This family party of the good consul’s (or rather of mine, for Ioriginated the idea, though he furnished the materials) went off verywell. The mamma was shy at first, but she veiled the awkwardness whichshe felt by affecting to scold her children, who had all of them, Ithink, immortal names—names too which they owed to tradition, andcertainly not to any classical enthusiasm of their parents. Everyinstant I was delighted by some such phrases as these, “Themistocles, mylove, don’t fight. ”—“Alcibiades, can’t you sit still?”—“Socrates, putdown the cup. ”—“Oh, fie! Aspasia, don’t. Oh! don’t be naughty!” It istrue that the names were pronounced Socrahtie, Aspahsie—that is, according to accent, and not according to quantity—but I suppose it isscarcely now to be doubted that they were so sounded in ancient times. 

To me it seems, that of all the lands I know (you will see in a minutehow I connect this piece of prose’ with the isle of Cyprus), there isnone in which mere wealth, mere unaided wealth, is held half so cheaply;none in which a poor devil of a millionaire, without birth, or ability, occupies so humble a place as in England. My Greek host and I weresitting together, I think, upon the roof of the house (for that is thelounging-place in Eastern climes), when the former assumed a serious air, and intimated a wish to converse upon the subject of the BritishConstitution, with which he assured me that he was thoroughly acquainted. He presently, however, informed me that there was one anomalouscircumstance attended upon the practical working of our political systemwhich he had never been able to hear explained in a manner satisfactoryto himself. From the fact of his having found a difficulty in hissubject, I began to think that my host might really know rather more ofit than his announcement of a thorough knowledge had led me to expect. Ifelt interested at being about to hear from the lips of an intelligentGreek, quite remote from the influence of European opinions, what mightseem to him the most astonishing and incomprehensible of all thoseresults which have followed from the action of our politicalinstitutions. The anomaly, the only anomaly which had been detected bythe vice-consular wisdom, consisted in the fact that Rothschild (the latemoney-monger) had never been the Prime Minister of England! I gravelytried to throw some light upon the mysterious causes that had kept theworthy Israelite out of the Cabinet, but I think I could see that myexplanation was not satisfactory. Go and argue with the flies of summerthat there is a power divine, yet greater than the sun in the heavens, but never dare hope to convince the people of the south that there is anyother God than Gold. 

My intended journey was to the site of the Paphian temple. I take noantiquarian interest in ruins, and care little about them, unless theyare either striking in themselves, or else serve to mark some spot onwhich my fancy loves to dwell. I knew that the ruins of Paphos werescarcely, if at all, discernible, but there was a will and a longing moreimperious than mere curiosity that drove me thither. 

For this just then was my pagan soul’s desire—that (not forfeiting myinheritance for the life to come) it had yet been given me to livethrough this world—to live a favoured mortal under the old Olympiandispensation—to speak out my resolves to the listening Jove, and hear himanswer with approving thunder—to be blessed with divine counsels from thelips of Pallas Athenie—to believe—ay, only to believe—to believe for onerapturous moment that in the gloomy depths of the grove, by themountain’s side, there were some leafy pathway that crisped beneath theglowing sandal of Aphrodetie—Aphrodetie, not coldly disdainful of even amortal’s love! And this vain, heathenish longing of mine was father tothe thought of visiting the scene of the ancient worship. 

The isle is beautiful. From the edge of the rich, flowery fields onwhich I trod to the midway sides of the snowy Olympus, the ground couldonly here and there show an abrupt crag, or a high straggling ridge thatup-shouldered itself from out of the wilderness of myrtles, and of thethousand bright-leaved shrubs that twined their arms together in lovesometangles. The air that came to my lips was warm and fragrant as theambrosial breath of the goddess, infecting me, not (of course) with afaith in the old religion of the isle, but with a sense and apprehensionof its mystic power—a power that was still to be obeyed—obeyed by _me_, for why otherwise did I toil on with sorry horses to “where, for HER, thehundred altars glowed with Arabian incense, and breathed with thefragrance of garlands ever fresh”? {13}

I passed a sadly disenchanting night in the cabin of a Greek priest—not apriest of the goddess, but of the Greek Church; there was but one humbleroom, or rather shed, for man, and priest, and beast. The next morning Ireached Baffa (Paphos), a village not far distant from the site of thetemple. There was a Greek husbandman there who (not for emolument, butfor the sake of the protection and dignity which it afforded) had gotleave from the man at Limasol to hoist his flag as a sort ofdeputy-provisionary-sub-vice-pro-acting-consul of the British sovereign:the poor fellow instantly changed his Greek headgear for the cap ofconsular dignity, and insisted upon accompanying me to the ruins. Iwould not have stood this if I could have felt the faintest gleam of myyesterday’s pagan piety, but I had ceased to dream, and had nothing todread from any new disenchanters. 

The ruins (the fragments of one or two prostrate pillars) lie upon apromontory, bare and unmystified by the gloom of surrounding groves. MyGreek friend in his consular cap stood by, respectfully waiting to seewhat turn my madness would take, now that I had come at last into thepresence of the old stones. If you have no taste for research, and can’taffect to look for inscriptions, there is some awkwardness in coming tothe end of a merely sentimental pilgrimage; when the feeling whichimpelled you has gone, you have nothing to do but to laugh the thing offas well as you can, and, by-the-bye, it is not a bad plan to turn theconversation (or rather, allow the natives to turn it) towards thesubject of hidden treasures. This is a topic on which they will alwaysspeak with eagerness, and if they can fancy that you, too, take aninterest in such matters, they will not only think you perfectly sane, but will begin to give you credit for some more than human powers offorcing the obscure earth to show you its hoards of gold. 

When we returned to Baffa, the vice-consul seized a club with the quietlydetermined air of a brave man resolved to do some deed of note. He wentinto the yard adjoining his cottage, where there were some thin, thoughtful, canting cocks, and serious, low-church-looking hens, respectfully listening, and chickens of tender years so well brought up, as scarcely to betray in their conduct the careless levity of youth. Thevice-consul stood for a moment quite calm, collecting his strength; thensuddenly he rushed into the midst of the congregation, and began to dealdeath and destruction on all sides. He spared neither sex nor age; thedead and dying were immediately removed from the field of slaughter, andin less than an hour, I think, they were brought on the table, deeplyburied in mounds of snowy rice. 

My host was in all respects a fine, generous fellow. I could not bearthe idea of impoverishing him by my visit, and I consulted my faithfulMysseri, who not only assured me that I might safely offer money to thevice-consul, but recommended that I should give no more to him than to“the others, ” meaning any other peasant. I felt, however, that there wassomething about the man, besides the flag and the cap, which made meshrink from offering coin, and as I mounted my horse on departing I gavehim the only thing fit for a present that I happened to have with me, arather handsome clasp-dagger, brought from Vienna. The poor fellow wasineffably grateful, and I had some difficulty in tearing myself from outof the reach of his thanks. At last I gave him what I supposed to be thelast farewell, and rode on, but I had not gained more than about ahundred yards when my host came bounding and shouting after me, with agoat’s-milk cheese in his hand, which he implored me to accept. In oldtimes the shepherd of Theocritus, or (to speak less dishonestly) theshepherd of the “Poetæ Græci, ” sung his best song; I in this latter agepresented my best dagger, and both of us received the same rustic reward. 

It had been known that I should return to Limasol, and when I arrivedthere I found that a noble old Greek had been hospitably plotting to haveme for his guest. I willingly accepted his offer. The day of my arrivalhappened to be the birthday of my host, and in consequence of this therewas a constant influx of visitors, who came to offer theircongratulations. A few of these were men, but most of them were young, graceful girls. Almost all of them went through the ceremony with theutmost precision and formality; each in succession spoke her blessing, inthe tone of a person repeating a set formula, then deferentially acceptedthe invitation to sit, partook of the proffered sweetmeats and the cold, glittering water, remained for a few minutes either in silence or engagedin very thin conversation, then arose, delivered a second benediction, followed by an elaborate farewell, and departed. 

The bewitching power attributed at this day to the women of Cyprus iscurious in connection with the worship of the sweet goddess, who calledtheir isle her own. The Cypriote is not, I think, nearly so beautiful inface as the Ionian queens of Izmir, but she is tall, and slightly formed;there is a high-souled meaning and expression, a seeming consciousness ofgentle empire, that speaks in the wavy line of the shoulder, and windsitself like Cytherea’s own cestus around the slender waist; then therichly-abounding hair (not enviously gathered together under thehead-dress) descends the neck, and passes the waist in sumptuous braids. Of all other women with Grecian blood in their veins the costume isgraciously beautiful, but these, the maidens of Limasol—their robes aremore gently, more sweetly imagined, and fall like Julia’s cashmere insoft, luxurious folds. The common voice of the Levant allows that inface the women of Cyprus are less beautiful than their brilliant sistersof Smyrna; and yet, says the Greek, he may trust himself to one and allthe bright cities of the Ægean, and may yet weigh anchor with a heartentire, but that so surely as he ventures upon the enchanted isle ofCyprus, so surely will he know the rapture or the bitterness of love. The charm, they say, owes its power to that which the people call theastonishing “politics” (πολιτικη) of the women, meaning, I fancy, theirtact and their witching ways: the word, however, plainly fails to expressone-half of that which the speakers would say. I have smiled to hear theGreek, with all his plenteousness of fancy, and all the wealth of hisgenerous language, yet vainly struggling to describe the ineffable spellwhich the Parisians dispose of in their own smart way by a summary “Je nesçai quoi. ”

I went to Larnaca, the chief city of the isle, and over the water at lastto Beyrout. 

CHAPTER VIII—LADY HESTER STANHOPE {14}

Beyrout on its land side is hemmed in by the Druses, who occupy all theneighbouring highlands. 

Often enough I saw the ghostly images of the women with their exaltedhorns stalking through the streets, and I saw too in travelling theaffrighted groups of the mountaineers as they fled before me, under thefear that my party might be a company of income-tax commissioners, or apressgang enforcing the conscription for Mehemet Ali; but nearly all myknowledge of the people, except in regard of their mere costume andoutward appearance, is drawn from books and despatches, to which I havethe honour to refer you. 

I received hospitable welcome at Beyrout from the Europeans as well asfrom the Syrian Christians, and I soon discovered that their standingtopic of interest was the Lady Hester Stanhope, who lived in an oldconvent on the Lebanon range, at the distance of about a day’s journeyfrom the town. The lady’s habit of refusing to see Europeans added thecharm of mystery to a character which, even without that aid, wassufficiently distinguished to command attention. 

Many years of Lady Hester’s early womanhood had been passed with LadyChatham at Burton Pynsent, and during that inglorious period of theheroine’s life her commanding character, and (as they would have calledit in the language of those days) her “condescending kindness” towards mymother’s family, had increased in them those strong feelings of respectand attachment, which her rank and station alone would have easily wonfrom people of the middle class. You may suppose how deeply the quietwomen in Somersetshire must have been interested, when they slowlylearned by vague and uncertain tidings that the intrepid girl who hadbeen used to break their vicious horses for them was reigning insovereignty over the wandering tribes of Western Asia! I know that hername was made almost as familiar to me in my childhood as the name ofRobinson Crusoe—both were associated with the spirit of adventure; butwhilst the imagined life of the cast-away mariner never failed to seemglaringly real, the true story of the Englishwoman ruling over Arabsalways sounded to me like fable. I never had heard, nor indeed, Ibelieve, had the rest of the world ever heard, anything like a certainaccount of the heroine’s adventures; all I knew was, that in one of thedrawers which were the delight of my childhood, along with attar of rosesand fragrant wonders from Hindustan, there were letters carefullytreasured, and trifling presents which I was taught to think valuablebecause they had come from the queen of the desert, who dwelt in tents, and reigned over wandering Arabs. 

This subject, however, died away, and from the ending of my childhood upto the period of my arrival in the Levant, I had seldom even heard amentioning of the Lady Hester Stanhope, but now, wherever I went, I wasmet by the name so familiar in sound, and yet so full of mystery from thevague, fairy-tale sort of idea which it brought to my mind; I heard it, too, connected with fresh wonders, for it was said that the woman was nowacknowledged as an inspired being by the people of the mountains, and itwas even hinted with horror that she claimed to be _more than a prophet_. 

I felt at once that my mother would be sadly sorry to hear that I hadbeen within a day’s ride of her early friend without offering to see her, and I therefore despatched a letter to the recluse, mentioning the maidenname of my mother (whose marriage was subsequent to Lady Hester’sdeparture), and saying that if there existed on the part of her ladyshipany wish to hear of her old Somersetshire acquaintance, I should make apoint of visiting her. My letter was sent by a foot-messenger, who wasto take an unlimited time for his journey, so that it was not, I think, until either the third or the fourth day that the answer arrived. Acouple of horsemen covered with mud suddenly dashed into the little courtof the “locanda” in which I was staying, bearing themselves asostentatiously as though they were carrying a cartel from the Devil tothe Angel Michael: one of these (the other being his attendant) was anItalian by birth (though now completely orientalised), who lived in mylady’s establishment as doctor nominally, but practically as an upperservant; he presented me a very kind and appropriate letter ofinvitation. 

It happened that I was rather unwell at this time, so that I named a moredistant day for my visit than I should otherwise have done, and afterall, I did not start at the time fixed. Whilst still remaining atBeyrout I received this letter, which certainly betrays no symptom of thepretensions to divine power which were popularly attributed to thewriter:—

 “SIR, —I hope I shall be disappointed in seeing you on Wednesday, for the late rains have rendered the river Damoor if not dangerous, at least very unpleasant to pass for a person who has been lately indisposed, for if the animal swims, you would be immerged in the waters. The weather will probably change after the 21st of the moon, and after a couple of days the roads and the river will be passable, therefore I shall expect you either Saturday or Monday. 

 “It will be a great satisfaction to me to have an opportunity of inquiring after your mother, who was a sweet, lovely girl when I knew her. 

 “Believe me, sir, “Yours sincerely, “HESTER LUCY STANHOPE. ”

Early one morning I started from Beyrout. There are no regularlyestablished relays of horses in Syria, at least not in the line which Itook, and you therefore hire your cattle for the whole journey, or at allevents, for your journey to some large town. Under these circumstancesyou have no occasion for a Tatar (whose principal utility consists in hispower to compel the supply of horses). In other respects, the mode oftravelling through Syria differs very little from that which I havedescribed as prevailing in Turkey. I hired my horses and mules (for Ihad some of both) for the whole of the journey from Beyrout to Jerusalem. The owner of the beasts (who had a couple of fellows under him) was themost dignified member of my party; he was, indeed, a magnificent old man, and was called Shereef, or “holy”—a title of honour which, with theprivilege of wearing the green turban, he well deserved, not only fromthe blood of the Prophet that flowed in his veins, but from thewell-known sanctity of his life and the length of his blessed beard. 

Mysseri, of course, still travelled with me, but the Arabic was not oneof the seven languages which he spoke so perfectly, and I was thereforeobliged to hire another interpreter. I had no difficulty in finding aproper man for the purpose—one Demetrius, or, as he was always called, Dthemetri, a native of Zante, who had been tossed about by fortune in alldirections. He spoke the Arabic very well, and communicated with me inItalian. The man was a very zealous member of the Greek Church. He hadbeen a tailor. He was as ugly as the devil, having a thoroughly Tatarcountenance, which expressed the agony of his body or mind, as the casemight be, in the most ludicrous manner imaginable. He embellished thenatural caricature of his person by suspending about his neck andshoulders and waist quantities of little bundles and parcels, which hethought too valuable to be entrusted to the jerking of pack-saddles. Themule that fell to his lot on this journey every now and then, forgettingthat his rider was a saint, and remembering that he was a tailor, took aquiet roll upon the ground, and stretched his limbs calmly and lazily, like a good man awaiting a sermon. Dthemetri never got seriously hurt, but the subversion and dislocation of his bundles made him for the momenta sad spectacle of ruin, and when he regained his legs, his wrath withthe mule became very amusing. He always addressed the beast in languagewhich implied that he, as a Christian and saint, had been personallyinsulted and oppressed by a Mahometan mule. Dthemetri, however, on thewhole, proved to be a most able and capital servant. I suspected him ofnow and then leading me out of my way in order that he might have theopportunity of visiting the shrine of a saint, and on one occasion, asyou will see by-and-by, he was induced by religious motives to commit agross breach of duty; but putting these pious faults out of the question(and they were faults of the right side), he was always faithful and trueto me. 

I left Saide (the Sidon of ancient times) on my right, and about an hour, I think, before sunset began to ascend one of the many low hills ofLebanon. On the summit before me was a broad, grey mass of irregularbuilding, which from its position, as well as from the gloomy blanknessof its walls, gave the idea of a neglected fortress. It had, in fact, been a convent of great size, and like most of the religious houses inthis part of the world, had been made strong enough for opposing an inertresistance to any mere casual band of assailants who might be unprovidedwith regular means of attack: this was the dwelling-place of theChatham’s fiery granddaughter. 

The aspect of the first court which I entered was such as to keep one inthe idea of having to do with a fortress rather than a mere peaceabledwelling-place. A number of fierce-looking and ill-clad Albaniansoldiers were hanging about the place, and striving to bear the curse oftranquillity as well as they could: two or three of them, I think, weresmoking their _tchibouques_, but the rest of them were lying torpidlyupon the flat stones, like the bodies of departed brigands. I rode on toan inner part of the building, and at last, quitting my horses, wasconducted through a doorway that led me at once from an open court intoan apartment on the ground floor. As I entered, an Oriental figure inmale costume approached me from the farther end of the room with many andprofound bows, but the growing shades of evening prevented me fromdistinguishing the features of the personage who was receiving me withthis solemn welcome. I had always, however, understood that Lady HesterStanhope wore the male attire, and I began to utter in English the commoncivilities that seemed to be proper on the commencement of a visit by anuninspired mortal to a renowned prophetess; but the figure which Iaddressed only bowed so much the more, prostrating itself almost to theground, but speaking to me never a word. I feebly strived not to beoutdone in gestures of respect; but presently my bowing opponent saw theerror under which I was acting, and suddenly convinced me that, at allevents, I was not _yet_ in the presence of a superhuman being, bydeclaring that he was not “miladi, ” but was, in fact, nothing more orless god-like than the poor doctor, who had brought his mistress’s letterto Beyrout. 

Her ladyship, in the right spirit of hospitality, now sent and commandedme to repose for a while after the fatigues of my journey, and to dine. 

The cuisine was of the Oriental kind, which is highly artificial, and Ithought it very good. I rejoiced too in the wine of the Lebanon. 

Soon after the ending of the dinner the doctor arrived with miladi’scompliments, and an intimation that she would he happy to receive me if Iwere so disposed. It had now grown dark, and the rain was fallingheavily, so that I got rather wet in following my guide through the opencourts that I had to pass in order to reach the presence chamber. Atlast I was ushered into a small apartment, which was protected from thedraughts of air passing through the doorway by a folding screen; passingthis, I came alongside of a common European sofa, where sat the ladyprophetess. She rose from her seat very formally, spoke to me a fewwords of welcome, pointed to a chair which was placed exactly opposite toher sofa at a couple of yards’ distance, and remained standing up to thefull of her majestic height, perfectly still and motionless, until I hadtaken my appointed place; she then resumed her seat, not packing herselfup according to the mode of the Orientals, but allowing her feet to reston the floor or the footstool; at the moment of seating herself shecovered her lap with a mass of loose white drapery which she held in herhand. It occurred to me at the time that she did this in order to avoidthe awkwardness of sitting in manifest trousers under the eye of anEuropean, but I can hardly fancy now that with her wilful nature shewould have brooked such a compromise as this. 

The woman before me had exactly the person of a prophetess—not, indeed, of the divine sibyl imagined by Domenichino, so sweetly distractedbetwixt love and mystery, but of a good business-like, practicalprophetess, long used to the exercise of her sacred calling. I have beentold by those who knew Lady Hester Stanhope in her youth, that any notionof a resemblance betwixt her and the great Chatham must have beenfanciful; but at the time of my seeing her, the large commanding featuresof the gaunt woman, then sixty years old or more, certainly reminded meof the statesman that lay dying {15} in the House of Lords, according toCopley’s picture. Her face was of the most astonishing whiteness; {16}she wore a very large turban, which seemed to be of pale cashmere shawls, so disposed as to conceal the hair; her dress, from the chin down to thepoint at which it was concealed by the drapery which she held over herlap, was a mass of white linen loosely folding—an ecclesiastical sort ofaffair, more like a surplice than any of those blessed creations whichour souls love under the names of “dress” and “frock” and “boddice” and“collar” and “habit-shirt” and sweet “chemisette. ”

Such was the outward seeming of the personage that sat before me, andindeed she was almost bound by the fame of her actual achievements, aswell as by her sublime pretensions, to look a little differently from therest of womankind. There had been something of grandeur in her career. After the death of Lady Chatham, which happened in 1803, she lived underthe roof of her uncle, the second Pitt, and when he resumed theGovernment in 1804, she became the dispenser of much patronage, and solesecretary of state for the department of Treasury banquets. Not havingseen the lady until late in her life, when she was fired with spiritualambition, I can hardly fancy that she could have performed her politicalduties in the saloons of the Minister with much of feminine sweetness andpatience. I am told, however, that she managed matters very well indeed:perhaps it was better for the lofty-minded leader of the House to havehis reception-rooms guarded by this stately creature, than by a merelyclever and managing woman; it was fitting that the wholesome awe withwhich he filled the minds of the country gentlemen should be aggravatedby the presence of his majestic niece. But the end was approaching. Thesun of Austerlitz showed the Czar madly sliding his splendid army like aweaver’s shuttle from his right hand to his left, under the very eyes—thedeep, grey, watchful eyes of Napoleon; before night came, the coalitionwas a vain thing—meet for history, and the heart of its great author wascrushed with grief when the terrible tidings came to his ears. In thebitterness of his despair he cried out to his niece, and bid her, “ROLLUP THE MAP OF EUROPE”; there was a little more of suffering, and at last, with his swollen tongue (so they say) still muttering something forEngland, he died by the noblest of all sorrows. 

Lady Hester, meeting the calamity in her own fierce way, seems to havescorned the poor island that had not enough of God’s grace to keep the“heaven-sent” Minister alive. I can hardly tell why it should be, butthere is a longing for the East very commonly felt by proud-heartedpeople when goaded by sorrow. Lady Hester Stanhope obeyed this impulse. For some time, I believe, she was at Constantinople, where hermagnificence and near alliance to the late Minister gained her greatinfluence. Afterwards she passed into Syria. The people of thatcountry, excited by the achievements of Sir Sidney Smith, had begun toimagine the possibility of their land being occupied by the English, andmany of them looked upon Lady Hester as a princess who came to preparethe way for the expected conquest. I don’t know it from her own lips, orindeed from any certain authority, but I have been told that she beganher connection with the Bedouins by making a large present of money (£500it was said—immense in piastres) to the Sheik whose authority wasrecognised in that part of the desert which lies between Damascus andPalmyra. The prestige created by the rumours of her high and undefinedrank, as well as of her wealth and corresponding magnificence, was wellsustained by her imperious character and her dauntless bravery. Herinfluence increased. I never heard anything satisfactory as to the realextent or duration of her sway, but it seemed that for a time at leastshe certainly exercised something like sovereignty amongst the wanderingtribes. {17} And now that her earthly kingdom had passed away she strovefor spiritual power, and impiously dared, as it was said, to boast somemystic union with the very God of very God!

A couple of black slave girls came at a signal, and supplied theirmistress as well as myself with lighted _tchibouques_ and coffee. 

The custom of the East sanctions, and almost commands, some moments ofsilence whilst you are inhaling the first few breaths of the fragrantpipe. The pause was broken, I think, by my lady, who addressed to mesome inquiries respecting my mother, and particularly as to her marriage;but before I had communicated any great amount of family facts, thespirit of the prophetess kindled within her, and presently (though withall the skill of a woman of the world) she shuffled away the subject ofpoor, dear Somersetshire, and bounded onward into loftier spheres ofthought. 

My old acquaintance with some of “the twelve” enabled me to bear my part(of course a very humble one) in a conversation relative to occultscience. Milnes once spread a report, that every gang of gipsies wasfound upon inquiry to have come last from a place to the westward, and tobe about to make the next move in an eastern direction; either thereforethey where to be all gathered together towards the rising of the sun bythe mysterious finger of Providence, or else they were to revolve roundthe globe for ever and ever: both of these suppositions were highlygratifying, because they were both marvellous; and though the story onwhich they were founded plainly sprang from the inventive brain of apoet, no one had ever been so odiously statistical as to attempt acontradiction of it. I now mentioned the story as a report to LadyHester Stanhope, and asked her if it were true. I could not have touchedupon any imaginable subject more deeply interesting to my hearer, moreclosely akin to her habitual train of thinking. She immediately threwoff all the restraint belonging to an interview with a stranger; and whenshe had received a few more similar proofs of my aptness for themarvellous, she went so far as to say that she would adopt me as her_élève_ in occult science. 

For hours and hours this wondrous white woman poured forth her speech, for the most part concerning sacred and profane mysteries; but every nowand then she would stay her lofty flight and swoop down upon the worldagain. Whenever this happened I was interested in her conversation. 

She adverted more than once to the period of her lost sway amongst theArabs, and mentioned some of the circumstances that aided her inobtaining influence with the wandering tribes. The Bedouin, so oftenengaged in irregular warfare, strains his eyes to the horizon in searchof a coming enemy just as habitually as the sailor keeps his “brightlookout” for a strange sail. In the absence of telescopes a far-reachingsight is highly valued, and Lady Hester possessed this quality to anextraordinary degree. She told me that on one occasion, when there wasgood reason to expect a hostile attack, great excitement was felt in thecamp by the report of a far-seeing Arab, who declared that he could justdistinguish some moving objects upon the very farthest point within thereach of his eyes. Lady Hester was consulted, and she instantly assuredher comrades in arms that there were indeed a number of horses withinsight, but that they were without riders. The assertion proved to becorrect, and from that time forth her superiority over all others inrespect of far sight remained undisputed. 

Lady Hester related to me this other anecdote of her Arab life. It waswhen the heroic qualities of the Englishwoman were just beginning to befelt amongst the people of the desert, that she was marching one day, along with the forces of the tribe to which she had allied herself. Sheperceived that preparations for an engagement were going on, and upon hermaking inquiry as to the cause, the Sheik at first affected mystery andconcealment, but at last confessed that war had been declared against histribe on account of its alliance with the English princess, and that theywere now unfortunately about to be attacked by a very superior force. Hemade it appear that Lady Hester was the sole cause of hostility betwixthis tribe and the impending enemy, and that his sacred duty of protectingthe Englishwoman whom he had admitted as his guest was the only obstaclewhich prevented an amicable arrangement of the dispute. The Sheik hintedthat his tribe was likely to sustain an almost overwhelming blow, but atthe same time declared, that no fear of the consequences, howeverterrible to him and his whole people, should induce him to dream ofabandoning his illustrious guest. The heroine instantly took her part:it was not for her to be a source of danger to her friends, but rather toher enemies, so she resolved to turn away from the people, and trust forhelp to none save only her haughty self. The Sheiks affected to dissuadeher from so rash a course, and fairly told her that although they (havingbeen freed from her presence) would be able to make good terms forthemselves, yet that there were no means of allaying the hostility felttowards her, and that the whole face of the desert would be swept by thehorsemen of her enemies so carefully, as to make her escape into otherdistricts almost impossible. The brave woman was not to be moved byterrors of this kind, and bidding farewell to the tribe which hadhonoured and protected her, she turned her horse’s head and rode straightaway from them, without friend or follower. Hours had elapsed, and forsome time she had been alone in the centre of the round horizon, when herquick eye perceived some horsemen in the distance. The party came nearerand nearer; soon it was plain that they were making towards her, andpresently some hundreds of Bedouins, fully armed, galloped up to her, ferociously shouting, and apparently intending to take her life at theinstant with their pointed spears. Her face at the time was covered withthe _yashmak_, according to Eastern usage, but at the moment when theforemost of the horsemen had all but reached her with their spears, shestood up in her stirrups, withdrew the _yashmak_ that veiled the terrorsof her countenance, waved her arm slowly and disdainfully, and cried outwith a loud voice “Avaunt!” {18} The horsemen recoiled from her glance, but not in terror. The threatening yells of the assailants were suddenlychanged for loud shouts of joy and admiration at the bravery of thestately Englishwoman, and festive gunshots were fired on all sides aroundher honoured head. The truth was, that the party belonged to the tribewith which she had allied herself, and that the threatened attack as wellas the pretended apprehension of an engagement had been contrived for themere purpose of testing her courage. The day ended in a great feastprepared to do honour to the heroine, and from that time her power overthe minds of the people grew rapidly. Lady Hester related this storywith great spirit, and I recollect that she put up her _yashmak_ for amoment in order to give me a better idea of the effect which she producedby suddenly revealing the awfulness of her countenance. 

With respect to her then present mode of life, Lady Hester informed me, that for her sin she had subjected herself during many years to severepenance, and that her self-denial had not been without its reward. “Vainand false, ” said she, “is all the pretended knowledge of theEuropeans—their doctors will tell you that the drinking of milk givesyellowness to the complexion; milk is my only food, and you see if myface be not white. ” Her abstinence from food intellectual was carried asfar as her physical fasting. She never, she said, looked upon a book ora newspaper, but trusted alone to the stars for her sublime knowledge;she usually passed the nights in communing with these heavenly teachers, and lay at rest during the daytime. She spoke with great contempt of thefrivolity and benighted ignorance of the modern Europeans, and mentionedin proof of this, that they were not only untaught in astrology, but wereunacquainted with the common and every-day phenomena produced by magicart. She spoke as if she would make me understand that all sorcerousspells were completely at her command, but that the exercise of suchpowers would be derogatory to her high rank in the heavenly kingdom. Shesaid that the spell by which the face of an absent person is thrown upona mirror was within the reach of the humblest and most contemptiblemagicians, but that the practice of such-like arts was unholy as well asvulgar. 

We spoke of the bending twig by which, it is said, precious metals may bediscovered. In relation to this, the prophetess told me a story ratheragainst herself, and inconsistent with the notion of her being perfect inher science; but I think that she mentioned the facts as having happenedbefore the time at which she attained to the great spiritual authoritywhich she now arrogated. She told me that vast treasures were known toexist in a situation which she mentioned, if I rightly remember, as beingnear Suez; that Napoleon, profanely brave, thrust his arm into the cavecontaining the coveted gold, and that instantly his flesh became palsied, but the youthful hero (for she said he was great in his generation) wasnot to be thus daunted; he fell back characteristically upon his brazenresources, and ordered up his artillery; but man could not strive withdemons, and Napoleon was foiled. In after years came Ibrahim Pasha, withheavy guns, and wicked spells to boot, but the infernal guardians of thetreasure were too strong for him. It was after this that Lady Hesterpassed by the spot, and she described with animated gesture the force andenergy with which the divining twig had suddenly leaped in her hands. She ordered excavations, and no demons opposed her enterprise; the vastchest in which the treasure had been deposited was at length discovered, but lo and behold, it was full of pebbles! She said, however, that thetimes were approaching in which the hidden treasures of the earth wouldbecome available to those who had true knowledge. 

Speaking of Ibrahim Pasha, Lady Hester said that he was a bold, bad man, and was possessed of some of those common and wicked magical arts uponwhich she looked down with so much contempt. She said, for instance, that Ibrahim’s life was charmed against balls and steel, and that after abattle he loosened the folds of his shawl and shook out the bullets likedust. 

It seems that the St. Simonians once made overtures to Lady Hester. Shetold me that the Père Enfantin (the chief of the sect) had sent her aservice of plate, but that she had declined to receive it. She delivereda prediction as to the probability of the St. Simonians finding the“mystic mother, ” and this she did in a way which would amuse you. Unfortunately I am not at liberty to mention this part of the woman’sprophecies; why, I cannot tell, but so it is, that she bound me toeternal secrecy. 

Lady Hester told me that since her residence at Djoun she had beenattacked by a terrible illness, which rendered her for a long timeperfectly helpless; all her attendants fled, and left her to perish. Whilst she lay thus alone, and quite unable to rise, robbers came andcarried away her property. {19} She told me that they actually unroofeda great part of the building, and employed engines with pulleys, for thepurpose of hoisting out such of her valuables as were too bulky to passthrough doors. It would seem that before this catastrophe Lady Hesterhad been rich in the possession of Eastern luxuries; for she told me, that when the chiefs of the Ottoman force took refuge with her after thefall of Acre, they brought their wives also in great numbers. To all ofthese Lady Hester, as she said, presented magnificent dresses; but hergenerosity occasioned strife only instead of gratitude, for every womanwho fancied her present less splendid than that of another with equal orless pretension, became absolutely furious: all these audacious guestshad now been got rid of, but the Albanian soldiers, who had taken refugewith Lady Hester at the same time, still remained under her protection. 

In truth, this half-ruined convent, guarded by the proud heart of anEnglish gentlewoman, was the only spot throughout all Syria and Palestinein which the will of Mehemet Ali and his fierce lieutenant was not thelaw. More than once had the Pasha of Egypt commanded that Ibrahim shouldhave the Albanians delivered up to him, but this white woman of themountain (grown classical not by books, but by very pride) answered onlywith a disdainful invitation to “come and take them. ” Whether it wasthat Ibrahim was acted upon by any superstitious dread of interferingwith the prophetess (a notion not at all incompatible with his characteras an able Oriental commander), or that he feared the ridicule of puttinghimself in collision with a gentlewoman, he certainly never ventured toattack the sanctuary, and so long as the Chatham’s granddaughter breatheda breath of life there was always this one hillock, and that too in themidst of a most populous district, which stood out, and kept its freedom. Mehemet Ali used to say, I am told, that the Englishwoman had given himmore trouble than all the insurgent people of Syria and Palestine. 

The prophetess announced to me that we were upon the eve of a stupendousconvulsion, which would destroy the then recognised value of all propertyupon earth; and declaring that those only who should be in the East atthe time of the great change could hope for greatness in the new lifethat was now close at hand, she advised me, whilst there was yet time, todispose of my property in poor frail England, and gain a station in Asia. She told me that, after leaving her, I should go into Egypt, but that ina little while I should return into Syria. I secretly smiled at thislast prophecy as a “bad shot, ” for I had fully determined after visitingthe Pyramids to take ship from Alexandria for Greece. But men strugglevainly in the meshes of their destiny. The unbelieved Cassandra wasright after all; the plague came, and the necessity of avoiding thequarantine, to which I should have been subjected if I had sailed fromAlexandria, forced me to alter my route. I went down into Egypt, andstayed there for a time, and then crossed the desert once more, and cameback to the mountains of the Lebanon, exactly as the prophetess hadforetold. 

Lady Hester talked to me long and earnestly on the subject of religion, announcing that the Messiah was yet to come. She strived to impress mewith the vanity and the falseness of all European creeds, as well as witha sense of her own spiritual greatness: throughout her conversation uponthese high topics she carefully insinuated, without actually asserting, her heavenly rank. 

Amongst other much more marvellous powers, the lady claimed to have onewhich most women, I fancy, possess namely, that of reading men’scharacters in their faces. She examined the line of my features veryattentively, and told me the result, which, however, I mean to keephidden. 

One favoured subject of discourse was that of “race, ” upon which she wasvery diffuse, and yet rather mysterious. She set great value upon theancient French {20} (not Norman blood, for that she vilified), but didnot at all appreciate that which we call in this country “an old family. ”She had a vast idea of the Cornish miners on account of their race, andsaid, if she chose, she could give me the means of rousing them to themost tremendous enthusiasm. 

Such are the topics on which the lady mainly conversed, but very oftenshe would descend to more worldly chat, and then she was no longer theprophetess, but the sort of woman that you sometimes see, I am told, inLondon drawing-rooms—cool, decisive in manner, unsparing of enemies, fullof audacious fun, and saying the downright things that the sheepishsociety around her is afraid to utter. I am told that Lady Hester was inher youth a capital mimic, and she showed me that not all the queenlydulness to which she had condemned herself, not all her fasting andsolitude, had destroyed this terrible power. The first whom shecrucified in my presence was poor Lord Byron. She had seen him, itappeared, I know not where, soon after his arrival in the East, and wasvastly amused at his little affectations. He had picked up a fewsentences of the Romantic, with which he affected to give orders to hisGreek servant. I can’t tell whether Lady Hester’s mimicry of the bardwas at all close, but it was amusing; she attributed to him a curiouslycoxcombical lisp. 

Another person whose style of speaking the lady took off very amusinglywas one who would scarcely object to suffer by the side of Lord Byron—Imean Lamartine, who had visited her in the course of his travels. Thepeculiarity which attracted her ridicule was an over-refinement ofmanner: according to my lady’s imitation of Lamartine (I have never seenhim myself), he had none of the violent grimace of his countrymen, andnot even their usual way of talking, but rather bore himself mincingly, like the humbler sort of English dandy. {21}

Lady Hester seems to have heartily despised everything approaching toexquisiteness. She told me, by-the-bye (and her opinion upon thatsubject is worth having), that a downright manner, amounting even tobrusqueness, is more effective than any other with the Oriental; and thatamongst the English of all ranks and all classes there is no man soattractive to the Orientals, no man who can negotiate with them half soeffectively, as a good, honest, open-hearted, and positive naval officerof the old school. 

I have told you, I think, that Lady Hester could deal fiercely with thoseshe hated. One man above all others (he is now uprooted from society, and cast away for ever) she blasted with her wrath. You would havethought that in the scornfulness of her nature she must have sprung uponher foe with more of fierceness than of skill; but this was not so, forwith all the force and vehemence of her invective she displayed a sober, patient, and minute attention to the details of vituperation, whichcontributed to its success a thousand times more than mere violence. 

During the hours that this sort of conversation, or rather discourse, wasgoing on our _tchibouques_ were from time to time replenished, and thelady as well as I continued to smoke with little or no intermission tillthe interview ended. I think that the fragrant fumes of the latakiahmust have helped to keep me on my good behaviour as a patient disciple ofthe prophetess. 

It was not till after midnight that my visit for the evening came to anend. When I quitted my seat the lady rose and stood up in the sameformal attitude (almost that of a soldier in a state of “attention”)which she had assumed at my entrance; at the same time she let go thedrapery which she had held over her lap whilst sitting and allowed it tofall to the ground. 

The next morning after breakfast I was visited by my lady’s secretary—theonly European, except the doctor, whom she retained in her household. This secretary, like the doctor, was Italian, but he preserved more signsof European dress and European pretensions than his medical fellow-slave. He spoke little or no English, though he wrote it pretty well, havingbeen formerly employed in a mercantile house connected with England. Thepoor fellow was in an unhappy state of mind. In order to make youunderstand the extent of his spiritual anxieties, I ought to have toldyou that the doctor {22} (who had sunk into the complete Asiatic, and hadcondescended accordingly to the performance of even menial services) hadadopted the common faith of all the neighbouring people, and had become afirm and happy believer in the divine power of his mistress. Not so thesecretary. When I had strolled with him to a distance from the building, which rendered him safe from being overheard by human ears, he told me ina hollow voice, trembling with emotion, that there were times at which hedoubted the divinity of “milèdi. ” I said nothing to encourage the poorfellow in that frightful state of scepticism which, if indulged, mightend in positive infidelity. I found that her ladyship had ratherarbitrarily abridged the amusements of her secretary, forbidding him fromshooting small birds on the mountain-side. This oppression had arousesin him a spirit of inquiry that might end fatally, perhaps for himself, perhaps for the “religion of the place. ”

The secretary told me that his mistress was greatly disliked by thesurrounding people, whom she oppressed by her exactions, and the truth ofthis statement was borne out by the way in which my lady spoke to me ofher neighbours. But in Eastern countries hate and veneration are verycommonly felt for the same object, and the general belief in thesuperhuman power of this wonderful white lady, her resolute and imperiouscharacter, and above all, perhaps, her fierce Albanians (not backward toobey an order for the sacking of a village), inspired sincere respectamongst the surrounding inhabitants. Now the being “respected” amongstOrientals is not an empty or merely honorary distinction, but carrieswith it a clear right to take your neighbour’s corn, his cattle, hiseggs, and his honey, and almost anything that is his, except his wives. This law was acted upon by the princess of Djoun, and her establishmentwas supplied by contributions apportioned amongst the nearest of thevillages. 

I understood that the Albanians (restrained, I suppose, by the dread ofbeing delivered up to Ibrahim) had not given any very troublesome proofsof their unruly natures. The secretary told me that their rations, including a small allowance of coffee and tobacco, were served out tothem with tolerable regularity. 

I asked the secretary how Lady Hester was off for horses, and said that Iwould take a look at the stable. The man did not raise any opposition tomy proposal, and affected no mystery about the matter, but said that theonly two steeds which then belonged to her ladyship were of a very humblesort. This answer, and a storm of rain then beginning to descend, prevented me at the time from undertaking my journey to the stable, whichwas at some distance from the part of the building in which I wasquartered, and I don’t know that I ever thought of the matter afterwardsuntil my return to England, when I saw Lamartine’s eye-witnessing accountof the horse saddled by the hands of his Maker!

When I returned to my apartment (which, as my hostess told me, was theonly one in the whole building that kept out the rain) her ladyship sentto say that she would be glad to receive me again. I was rathersurprised at this, for I had understood that she reposed during the day, and it was now little later than noon. “Really, ” said she, when I hadtaken my seat and my pipe, “we were together for hours last night, andstill I have heard nothing at all of my old friends; now _do_ tell mesomething of your dear mother and her sister; I never knew your father—itwas after I left Burton Pynsent that your mother married. ” I began tomake slow answer, but my questioner soon went off again to topics moresublime, so that this second interview, which lasted two or three hours, was occupied by the same sort of varied discourse as that which I havebeen describing. 

In the course of the afternoon the captain of an English man-of-wararrived at Djoun, and her ladyship determined to receive him for the samereason as that which had induced her to allow my visit, namely, an earlyintimacy with his family. I and the new visitor, who was a pleasant, amusing person, dined together, and we were afterwards invited to thepresence of my lady, with whom we sat smoking and talking till midnight. The conversation turned chiefly, I think, upon magical science. I haddetermined to be off at an early hour the next morning, and so at the endof this interview I bade my lady farewell. With her parting words sheonce more advised me to abandon Europe and seek my reward in the East, and she urged me too to give the like counsels to my father, and tell himthat “_She had said it_. ”

Lady Hester’s unholy claim to supremacy in the spiritual kingdom was, nodoubt, the suggestion of fierce and inordinate pride most perilously akinto madness, but I am quite sure that the mind of the woman was too strongto be thoroughly overcome by even this potent feeling. I plainly sawthat she was not an unhesitating follower of her own system, and I evenfancied that I could distinguish the brief moments during which shecontrived to believe in herself, from those long and less happy intervalsin which her own reason was too strong for her. 

As for the lady’s faith in astrology and magic science, you are not for amoment to suppose that this implied any aberration of intellect. Shebelieved these things in common with those around her, for she seldomspoke to anybody except crazy old dervishes, who received her alms, andfostered her extravagancies, and even when (as on the occasion of myvisit) she was brought into contact with a person entertaining differentnotions, she still remained uncontradicted. This _entourage_ and thehabit of fasting from books and newspapers were quite enough to make hera facile recipient of any marvellous story. 

I think that in England we are scarcely sufficiently conscious of thegreat debt we owe to the wise and watchful press which presides over theformation of our opinions, and which brings about this splendid result, namely, that in matters of belief the humblest of us are lifted up to thelevel of the most sagacious, so that really a simple cornet in the Bluesis no more likely to entertain a foolish belief about ghosts orwitchcraft, or any other supernatural topic, than the Lord HighChancellor or the Leader of the House of Commons. How different is theintellectual regime of Eastern countries! In Syria and Palestine andEgypt you might as well dispute the efficacy of grass or grain as ofmagic. There is no controversy about the matter. The effect of this, the unanimous belief of an ignorant people upon the mind of a stranger, is extremely curious, and well worth noticing. A man coming freshly fromEurope is at first proof against the nonsense with which he is assailed, but often it happens that after a little while the social atmosphere inwhich he lives will begin to infect him, and if he has been unaccustomedto the cunning of fence by which Reason prepares the means of guardingherself against fallacy, he will yield himself at last to the faith ofthose around him, and this he will do by sympathy, it would seem, ratherthan from conviction. I have been much interested in observing that themere “practical man, ” however skilful and shrewd in his own way, has notthe kind of power that will enable him to resist the gradual impressionmade upon his mind by the common opinion of those whom he sees and hearsfrom day to day. Even amongst the English (whose good sense and soundreligious knowledge would be likely to guard them from error) I haveknown the calculating merchant, the inquisitive traveller, and thepost-captain, with his bright, wakeful eye of command—I have known allthese surrender themselves to the _really_ magic-like influence of otherpeople’s minds. Their language at first is that they are “staggered, ”leading you by that expression to suppose that they had been witnesses tosome phenomenon, which it was very difficult to account for otherwisethan by supernatural causes; but when I have questioned further, I havealways found that these “staggering” wonders were not even speciousenough to be looked upon as good “tricks. ” A man in England who gainedhis whole livelihood as a conjurer would soon be starved to death if hecould perform no better miracles than those which are wrought with somuch effect in Syria and Egypt; _sometimes_, no doubt, a magician willmake a good hit (Sir John once said a “good thing”), but all suchsuccesses range, of course, under the head of mere “tentative miracles, ”as distinguished by the strong-brained Paley. 

CHAPTER IX—THE SANCTUARY

I crossed the plain of Esdraelon and entered amongst the hills ofbeautiful Galilee. It was at sunset that my path brought me sharplyround into the gorge of a little valley, and close upon a grey mass ofdwellings that lay happily nestled in the lap of the mountain. There wasone only shining point still touched with the light of the sun, who hadset for all besides; a brave sign this to “holy” Shereef and the rest ofmy Moslem men, for the one glittering summit was the head of a minaret, and the rest of the seeming village that had veiled itself so meeklyunder the shades of evening was Christian Nazareth!

Within the precincts of the Latin convent in which I was quartered therestands the great Catholic church which encloses the sanctuary, thedwelling of the blessed Virgin. {23} This is a grotto of about ten feeteither way, forming a little chapel or recess, to which you descend bysteps. It is decorated with splendour. On the left hand a column ofgranite hangs from the top of the grotto to within a few feet of theground; immediately beneath it is another column of the same size, whichrises from the ground as if to meet the one above; but between this andthe suspended pillar there is an interval of more than a foot; thesefragments once formed a single column, against which the angel leant whenhe spoke and told to Mary the mystery of her awful blessedness. Hard by, near the altar, the holy Virgin was kneeling. 

I had been journeying (cheerily indeed, for the voices of my followerswere ever within my hearing, but yet), as it were, in solitude, for I hadno comrade to whet the edge of my reason, or wake me from my noondaydreams. I was left all alone to be taught and swayed by the beautifulcircumstances of Palestine travelling—by the clime, and the land, and thename of the land, with all its mighty import; by the glittering freshnessof the sward, and the abounding masses of flowers that furnished mysumptuous pathway; by the bracing and fragrant air that seemed to poiseme in my saddle, and to lift me along as a planet appointed to glidethrough space. 

And the end of my journey was Nazareth, the home of the blessed Virgin!In the first dawn of my manhood the old painters of Italy had taught metheir dangerous worship of the beauty that is more than mortal, but thoseimages all seemed shadowy now, and floated before me so dimly, the oneovercasting the other, that they left me no one sweet idol on which Icould look and look again and say, “Maria mia!” Yet they left me morethan an idol; they left me (for to them I am wont to trace it) a faintapprehension of beauty not compassed with lines and shadows; they touchedme (forgive, proud Marie of Anjou!)—they touched me with a faith inloveliness transcending mortal shapes. 

I came to Nazareth, and was led from the convent to the sanctuary. Longfasting will sometimes heat my brain and draw me away out of theworld—will disturb my judgment, confuse my notions of right and wrong, and weaken my power of choosing the right: I had fasted perhaps too long, for I was fevered with the zeal of an insane devotion to the heavenlyqueen of Christendom. But I knew the feebleness of this gentle malady, and knew how easily my watchful reason, if ever so slightly provoked, would drag me back to life. Let there but come one chilling breath ofthe outer world, and all this loving piety would cower and fly before thesound of my own bitter laugh. And so as I went I trod tenderly, notlooking to the right nor to the left, but bending my eyes to the ground. 

The attending friar served me well; he led me down quietly and all butsilently to the Virgin’s home. The mystic air was so burnt with theconsuming flames of the altar, and so laden with incense, that my chestlaboured strongly, and heaved with luscious pain. There—there withbeating heart the Virgin knelt and listened. I strived to grasp and holdwith my riveted eyes some one of the feigned Madonnas, but of all theheaven-lit faces imagined by men there was none that would abide with mein this the very sanctuary. Impatient of vacancy, I grew madly strongagainst Nature, and if by some awful spell, some impious rite, I could—Ohmost sweet Religion, that bid me fear God, and be pious, and yet notcease from loving! Religion and gracious custom commanded me that I falldown loyally and kiss the rock that blessed Mary pressed. With a halfconsciousness, with the semblance of a thrilling hope that I was plungingdeep, deep into my first knowledge of some most holy mystery, or of somenew rapturous and daring sin, I knelt, and bowed down my face till I metthe smooth rock with my lips. One moment—one moment my heart, or someold pagan demon within me, woke up, and fiercely bounded; my bosom waslifted, and swung, as though I had touched her warm robe. One moment, one more, and then the fever had left me. I rose from my knees. I felthopelessly sane. The mere world reappeared. My good old monk was there, dangling his key with listless patience, and as he guided me from thechurch, and talked of the refectory and the coming repast, I listened tohis words with some attention and pleasure. 

CHAPTER X—THE MONKS OF PALESTINE

Whenever you come back to me from Palestine we will find some “goldenwine” {24} of Lebanon, that we may celebrate with apt libations the monksof the Holy Land, and though the poor fellows be theoretically “dead tothe world, ” we will drink to every man of them a good long life, and amerry one! Graceless is the traveller who forgets his obligations tothese saints upon earth; little love has he for merry Christendom if hehas not rejoiced with great joy to find in the very midst ofwater-drinking infidels those lowly monasteries, in which the blessedjuice of the grape is quaffed in peace. Ay! ay! we will fill our glassestill they look like cups of amber, and drink profoundly to our gracioushosts in Palestine. 

Christianity permits, and sanctions, the drinking of wine, and of all theholy brethren in Palestine there are none who hold fast to this gladsomerite so strenuously as the monks of Damascus; not that they are morezealous Christians than the rest of their fellows in the Holy Land, butthat they have better wine. Whilst I was at Damascus I had my quartersat the Franciscan convent there, and very soon after my arrival I askedone of the monks to let me know something of the spots that deserved tobe seen. I made my inquiry in reference to the associations with whichthe city had been hallowed by the sojourn and adventures of St. Paul. “There is nothing in all Damascus, ” said the good man, “half so wellworth seeing as our cellars”; and forthwith he invited me to go, see, andadmire the long range of liquid treasure that he and his brethren hadlaid up for themselves on earth. And these I soon found were not as thetreasures of the miser, that lie in unprofitable disuse, for day by day, and hour by hour, the golden juice ascended from the dark recesses of thecellar to the uppermost brains of the friars. Dear old fellows! in themidst of that solemn land their Christian laughter rang loudly andmerrily, their eyes kept flashing with joyous bonfires, and their heavywoollen petticoats could no more weigh down the springiness of theirpaces, than the filmy gauze of a _danseuse_ can clog her bounding step. 

You would be likely enough to fancy that these monastics are men who haveretired to the sacred sites of Palestine from an enthusiastic longing todevote themselves to the exercise of religion in the midst of the veryland on which its first seeds were cast; and this is partially, at least, the case with the monks of the Greek Church, but it is not withenthusiasts that the Catholic establishments are filled. The monks ofthe Latin convents are chiefly persons of the peasant class from Italyand Spain, who have been handed over to these remote asylums by order oftheir ecclesiastical superiors, and can no more account for their beingin the Holy Land, than men of marching regiments can explain why they arein “stupid quarters. ” I believe that these monks are for the most partwell conducted men, punctual in their ceremonial duties, and altogetherhumble-minded Christians. Their humility is not at all misplaced, foryou see at a glance (poor fellows!) that they belong to the _lag remove_of the human race. If the taking of the cowl does not imply a completerenouncement of the world, it is at least (in these days) a thoroughfarewell to every kind of useful and entertaining knowledge, andaccordingly the low bestial brow and the animal caste of those almostBourbon features show plainly enough that all the intellectual vanitiesof life have been really and truly abandoned. But it is hard to quenchaltogether the spirit of inquiry that stirs in the human breast, andaccordingly these monks inquire—they are _always_ inquiring inquiring for“news”! Poor fellows! they could scarcely have yielded themselves to thesway of any passion more difficult of gratification, for they have nomeans of communicating with the busy world except through Europeantravellers; and these, in consequence I suppose of that restlessness andirritability that generally haunt their wanderings, seem to have alwaysavoided the bore of giving any information to their hosts. As for me, Iam more patient and good-natured, and when I found that the kind monkswho gathered round me at Nazareth were longing to know the real truthabout the General Bonaparte who had recoiled from the siege of Acre, Isoftened my heart down to the good humour of Herodotus, and calmly beganto “sing history, ” telling my eager hearers of the French Empire and thegreatness of its glory, and of Waterloo and the fall of Napoleon! Now mystory of this marvellous ignorance on the part of the poor monks is oneupon which (though depending on my own testimony) I look “withconsiderable suspicion. ” It is quite true (how silly it would be to_invent_ anything so witless!), and yet I think I could satisfy the mindof a “reasonable man” that it is false. Many of the older monks musthave been in Europe at the time when the Italy and the Spain from whichthey came were in act of taking their French lessons, or had parted solately with their teachers, that not to know of “the Emperor” wasimpossible, and these men could scarcely, therefore, have failed to bringwith them some tidings of Napoleon’s career. Yet I say that that which Ihave written is true—the one who believes because I have said it will beright (she always is), whilst poor Mr. “reasonable man, ” who is convincedby the weight of my argument, will be completely deceived. 

In Spanish politics, however, the monks are better instructed. Therevenues of the monasteries, which had been principally supplied by thebounty of their most Catholic majesties, have been withheld sinceFerdinand’s death, and the interests of these establishments being thusclosely involved in the destinies of Spain, it is not wonderful that thebrethren should be a little more knowing in Spanish affairs than in otherbranches of history. Besides, a large proportion of the monks werenatives of the Peninsula. To these, I remember, Mysseri’s familiaritywith the Spanish language and character was a source of immense delight;they were always gathering around him, and it seemed to me that theytreasured like gold the few Castilian words which he deigned to sparethem. 

The monks do a world of good in their way; and there can be no doubtingthat previously to the arrival of Bishop Alexander, with his numerousyoung family and his pretty English nursemaids, they were the chiefpropagandists of Christianity in Palestine. My old friends of theFranciscan convent at Jerusalem some time since gave proof of theirgoodness by delivering themselves up to the peril of death for the sakeof duty. When I was their guest they were forty I believe in number, andI don’t recollect that there was one of them whom I should have lookedupon as a desirable life-holder of any property to which I might beentitled in expectancy. Yet these forty were reduced in a few days tonineteen. The plague was the messenger that summoned them to a taste ofreal death; but the circumstances under which they perished are rathercurious; and though I have no authority for the story except an Italiannewspaper, I harbour no doubt of its truth, for the facts were detailedwith minuteness, and strictly corresponded with all that I knew of thepoor fellows to whom they related. 

It was about three months after the time of my leaving Jerusalem that theplague set his spotted foot on the Holy City. The monks felt greatalarm; they did not shrink from their duty, but for its performance theychose a plan most sadly well fitted for bringing down upon them the verydeath which they were striving to ward off. They imagined themselvesalmost safe so long as they remained within their walls; but then it wasquite needful that the Catholic Christians of the place, who had alwayslooked to the convent for the supply of their spiritual wants, shouldreceive the aids of religion in the hour of death. A single monktherefore was chosen, either by lot or by some other fair appeal todestiny. Being thus singled out, he was to go forth into theplague-stricken city, and to perform with exactness his priestly duties;then he was to return, not to the interior of the convent, for fear ofinfecting his brethren, but to a detached building (which I remember)belonging to the establishment, but at some little distance from theinhabited rooms. He was provided with a bell, and at a certain hour inthe morning he was ordered to ring it, _if he could_; but if no sound washeard at the appointed time, then knew his brethren that he was eitherdelirious or dead, and another martyr was sent forth to take his place. In this way twenty-one of the monks were carried off. One cannot wellfail to admire the steadiness with which the dismal scheme was carriedthrough; but if there be any truth in the notion that disease may beinvited by a frightening imagination, it is difficult to conceive a moredangerous plan than that which was chosen by these poor fellows. Theanxiety with which they must have expected each day the sound of thebell, the silence that reigned instead of it, and then the drawing of thelots (the odds against death being one point lower than yesterday), andthe going forth of the newly doomed man—all this must have widened thegulf that opens to the shades below. When his victim had alreadysuffered so much of mental torture, it was but easy work for big bullyingpestilence to follow a forlorn monk from the beds of the dying, andwrench away his life from him as he lay all alone in an outhouse. 

In most, I believe in all, of the Holy Land convents there are twopersonages so strangely raised above their brethren in all that dignifieshumanity, that their bearing the same habit, their dwelling under thesame roof, their worshipping the same God (consistent as all this is withthe spirit of their religion), yet strikes the mind with a sense ofwondrous incongruity; the men I speak of are the “Padre Superiore, ” andthe “Padre Missionario. ” The former is the supreme and absolute governorof the establishment over which he is appointed to rule, the latter isentrusted with the more active of the spiritual duties attaching to thePilgrim Church. He is the shepherd of the good Catholic flock, whosepasture is prepared in the midst of Mussulmans and schismatics; he keepsthe light of the true faith ever vividly before their eyes, reprovestheir vices, supports them in their good resolves, consoles them in theirafflictions, and teaches them to hate the Greek Church. Such are hislabours, and you may conceive that great tact must be needed forconducting with success the spiritual interests of the church undercircumstances so odd as those which surround it in Palestine. 

But the position of the Padre Superiore is still more delicate; he isalmost unceasingly in treaty with the powers that be, and the worldlyprosperity of the establishment over which he presides is in greatmeasure dependent upon the extent of diplomatic skill which he can employin its favour. I know not from what class of churchmen these personagesare chosen, for there is a mystery attending their origin and thecircumstance of their being stationed in these convents, which Rome doesnot suffer to be penetrated. I have heard it said that they are men ofgreat note, and, perhaps, of too high ambition in the Catholic Hierarchy, who having fallen under the grave censure of the Church, are banished forfixed periods to these distant monasteries. I believe that the termduring which they are condemned to remain in the Holy Land is from eightto twelve years. By the natives of the country, as well as by the restof the brethren, they are looked upon as superior beings; and rightlytoo, for Nature seems to have crowned them in her own true way. 

The chief of the Jerusalem convent was a noble creature; his worldly andspiritual authority seemed to have surrounded him, as it were, with akind of “court, ” and the manly gracefulness of his bearing did honour tothe throne which he filled. There were no lords of the bedchamber, andno gold sticks and stones in waiting, yet everybody who approached himlooked as though he were being “presented”; every interview which hegranted wore the air of an “audience”; the brethren as often as they camenear bowed low and kissed his hand; and if he went out, the Catholics ofthe place that hovered about the convent would crowd around him withdevout affection, and almost scramble for the blessing which his touchcould give. He bore his honours all serenely, as though calmly consciousof his power to “bind and to loose. ”

CHAPTER XI—GALILEE

Neither old “sacred” {25} himself, nor any of his helpers, knew the roadwhich I meant to take from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee and from thenceto Jerusalem, so I was forced to add another to my party by hiring aguide. The associations of Nazareth, as well as my kind feeling towardsthe hospitable monks, whose guest I had been, inclined me to set atnaught the advice which I had received against employing Christians. Iaccordingly engaged a lithe, active young Nazarene, who was recommendedto me by the monks, and who affected to be familiar with the line ofcountry through which I intended to pass. My disregard of the popularprejudices against Christians was not justified in this particularinstance by the result of my choice. This you will see by-and-by. 

I passed by Cana and the house in which the water had been turned intowine; I came to the field in which our Saviour had rebuked the ScotchSabbath-keepers of that period, by suffering His disciples to pluck cornon the Lord’s day; I rode over the ground on which the fainting multitudehad been fed, and they showed me some massive fragments—the relics, theysaid, of that wondrous banquet, now turned into stone. The petrifactionwas most complete. 

I ascended the height on which our Lord was standing when He wrought themiracle. The hill was lofty enough to show me the fairness of the landon all sides, but I have an ancient love for the mere features of a lake, and so forgetting all else when I reached the summit, I looked awayeagerly to the eastward. There she lay, the Sea of Galilee. Less sternthan Wast Water, less fair than gentle Windermere, she had still thewinning ways of an English lake; she caught from the smiling heavensunceasing light and changeful phases of beauty, and with all thisbrightness on her face, she yet clung so fondly to the dull he-lookingmountain at her side, as though she would

 “Soothe him with her finer fancies, Touch him with her lighter thought. ” {26}

If one might judge of men’s real thoughts by their writings, it wouldseem that there are people who can visit an interesting locality andfollow up continuously the exact train of thought that ought to besuggested by the historical associations of the place. A person of thissort can go to Athens and think of nothing later than the age ofPericles; can live with the Scipios as long as he stays in Rome; can goup in a balloon, and think how resplendently in former times the nowvacant and desolate air was peopled with angels, how prettily it wascrossed at intervals by the rounds of Jacob’s ladder! I don’t possessthis power at all; it is only by snatches, and for few moments together, that I can really associate a place with its proper history. 

“There at Tiberias, and along this western shore towards the north, andupon the bosom too of the lake, our Saviour and His disciples—” away flewthose recollections, and my mind strained eastward, because that thatfarthest shore was the end of the world that belongs to man the dweller, the beginning of the other and veiled world that is held by the strangerace, whose life (like the pastime of Satan) is a “going to and fro uponthe face of the earth. ” From those grey hills right away to the gates ofBagdad stretched forth the mysterious “desert”—not a pale, void, sandytract, but a land abounding in rich pastures, a land without cities ortowns, without any “respectable” people or any “respectable” things, yetyielding its eighty thousand cavalry to the beck of a few old men. Butonce more—“Tiberias—the plain of Gennesareth—the very earth on which Istood—that the deep low tones of the Saviour’s voice should have goneforth into eternity from out of the midst of these hills and thesevalleys!”—Ay, ay, but yet again the calm face of the lake was uplifted, and smiled upon my eyes with such familiar gaze, that the “deep lowtones” were hushed, the listening multitudes all passed away, and insteadthere came to me a dear old memory from over the seas in England, amemory sweeter than Gospel to that poor wilful mortal, me. 

I went to Tiberias, and soon got afloat upon the water. In the evening Itook up my quarters in the Catholic church, and the building being largeenough, the whole of my party were admitted to the benefit of the sameshelter. With portmanteaus and carpet bags, and books and maps, andfragrant tea, Mysseri soon made me a home on the southern side of thechurch. One of old Shereef’s helpers was an enthusiastic Catholic, andwas greatly delighted at having so sacred a lodging. He lit up the altarwith a number of tapers, and when his preparations were complete, hebegan to perform his orisons in the strangest manner imaginable. Hislips muttered the prayers of the Latin Church, but he bowed himself downand laid his forehead to the stones beneath him after the manner of aMussulman. The universal aptness of a religious system for all stages ofcivilisation, and for all sorts and conditions of men, well befits itsclaim of divine origin. She is of all nations, and of all times, thatwonderful Church of Rome!

Tiberias is one of the four holy cities, {27} according to the Talmud, and it is from this place, or the immediate neighbourhood of it, that theMessiah is to arise. 

Except at Jerusalem, never think of attempting to sleep in a “holy city. ”Old Jews from all parts of the world go to lay their bones upon thesacred soil, and as these people never return to their homes, it followsthat any domestic vermin which they may bring with them are likely tobecome permanently resident, so that the population is continuallyincreasing. No recent census had been taken when I was at Tiberias, butI know that the congregation of fleas which attended at my church alonemust have been something enormous. It was a carnal, self-seekingcongregation, wholly inattentive to the service which was going on, anddevoted to the one object of having my blood. The fleas of all nationswere there. The smug, steady, importunate flea from Holywell Street; thepert, jumping _puce_ from hungry France, the wary, watchful _pulce_ withhis poisoned stiletto; the vengeful _pulga_ of Castile with his uglyknife; the German _floh_ with his knife and fork, insatiate, not risingfrom table; whole swarms from all the Russias, and Asiatic hordesunnumbered—all these were there, and all rejoiced in one greatinternational feast. I could no more defend myself against my enemiesthan if I had been _pain à discretion_ in the hands of a French patriot, or English gold in the claws of a Pennsylvanian Quaker. After passing anight like this you are glad to pick up the wretched remains of your bodylong, long before morning dawns. Your skin is scorched, your templesthrob, your lips feel withered and dried, your burning eyeballs arescrewed inwards against the brain. You have no hope but only in thesaddle and the freshness of the morning air. 

CHAPTER XII—MY FIRST BIVOUAC

The course of the Jordan is from the north to the south, and in thatdirection, with very little of devious winding, it carries the shiningwaters of Galilee straight down into the solitudes of the Dead Sea. Speaking roughly, the river in that meridian is a boundary between thepeople living under roofs and the tented tribes that wander on thefarther side. And so, as I went down in my way from Tiberias towardsJerusalem, along the western bank of the stream, my thinking allpropended to the ancient world of herdsmen and warriors that lay so closeover my bridle arm. 

If a man, and an Englishman, be not born of his mother with a naturalChiffney-bit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for loathing thewearisome ways of society; a time for not liking tamed people; a time fornot dancing quadrilles, not sitting in pews; a time for pretending thatMilton and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people, were greater indeath than the first living Lord of the Treasury; a time, in short, forscoffing and railing, for speaking lightly of the very opera, and all ourmost cherished institutions. It is from nineteen to two or three andtwenty perhaps that this war of the man against men is like to be wagedmost sullenly. You are yet in this smiling England, but you findyourself wending away to the dark sides of her mountains, climbing thedizzy crags, exulting in the fellowship of mists and clouds, and watchingthe storms how they gather, or proving the mettle of your mare upon thebroad and dreary downs, because that you feel congenially with the yetunparcelled earth. A little while you are free and unlabelled, like theground that you compass; but civilisation is coming and coming; you andyour much-loved waste lands will be surely enclosed, and sooner or laterbrought down to a state of mere usefulness; the ground will be curiouslysliced into acres and roods and perches, and you, for all you sit sosmartly in your saddle, you will be caught, you will be taken up fromtravel as a colt from grass, to be trained and tried, and matched andrun. All this in time, but first came Continental tours and the moodylonging for Eastern travel. The downs and the moors of England can holdyou no longer; with large strides you burst away from these slips andpatches of free land; you thread your path through the crowds of Europe, and at last, on the banks of Jordan, you joyfully know that you are uponthe very frontier of all accustomed respectabilities. There, on theother side of the river (you can swim it with one arm), there reigns thepeople that will be like to put you to death for _not_ being a vagrant, for _not_ being a robber, for _not_ being armed and houseless. There iscomfort in that—health, comfort, and strength to one who is dying fromvery weariness of that poor, dear, middle-aged, deserving, accomplished, pedantic, and painstaking governess, Europe. 

I had ridden for some hours along the right bank of Jordan when I came tothe Djesr el Medjamé (an old Roman bridge, I believe), which crossed theriver. My Nazarene guide was riding ahead of the party, and now, to mysurprise and delight, he turned leftwards, and led on over the bridge. Iknew that the true road to Jerusalem must be mainly by the right bank ofJordan, but I supposed that my guide was crossing the bridge at this spotin order to avoid some bend in the river, and that he knew of a fordlower down by which we should regain the western bank. I made noquestion about the road, for I was but too glad to set my horse’s hoofsupon the land of the wandering tribes. None of my party except theNazarene knew the country. On we went through rich pastures upon theeastern side of the water. I looked for the expected bend of the river, but far as I could see it kept a straight southerly course; I still leftmy guide unquestioned. 

The Jordan is not a perfectly accurate boundary betwixt roofs and tents, for soon after passing the bridge I came upon a cluster of huts. Sometime afterwards the guide, upon being closely questioned by my servants, confessed that the village which we had left behind was the last that weshould see, but he declared that he knew a spot at which we should findan encampment of friendly Bedouins, who would receive me with allhospitality. I had long determined not to leave the East without seeingsomething of the wandering tribes, but I had looked forward to this as apleasure to be found in the desert between El Arish and Egypt; I had noidea that the Bedouins on the east of Jordan were accessible. My delightwas so great at the near prospect of bread and salt in the tent of anArab warrior, that I wilfully allowed my guide to go on and mislead me. I saw that he was taking me out of the straight route towards Jerusalem, and was drawing me into the midst of the Bedouins; but the idea of hisbetraying me seemed (I know not why) so utterly absurd, that I could notentertain it for a moment. I fancied it possible that the fellow hadtaken me out of my route in order to attempt some little mercantileenterprise with the tribe for which he was seeking, and I was glad of theopportunity which I might thus gain of coming in contact with thewanderers. 

Not long after passing the village a horseman met us. It appeared thatsome of the cavalry of Ibrahim Pasha had crossed the river for the sakeof the rich pastures on the eastern bank, and that this man was one ofthe troopers. He stopped and saluted; he was obviously surprised atmeeting an unarmed, or half-armed, cavalcade, and at last fairly told usthat we were on the wrong side of the river, and that if we proceeded wemust lay our account with falling amongst robbers. All this while, andthroughout the day, my Nazarene kept well ahead of the party, and wasconstantly up in his stirrups, straining forward and searching thedistance for some objects which still remained unseen. 

For the rest of the day we saw no human being; we pushed on eagerly inthe hope of coming up with the Bedouins before nightfall. Night came, and we still went on in our way till about ten o’clock. Then thethorough darkness of the night, and the weariness of our beasts (whichhad already done two good days’ journey in one), forced us to determineupon coming to a standstill. Upon the heights to the eastward we sawlights; these shone from caves on the mountain-side, inhabited, as theNazarene told us, by rascals of a low sort—not real Bedouins, men whom wemight frighten into harmlessness, but from whom there was no willinghospitality to be expected. 

We heard at a little distance the brawling of a rivulet, and on the banksof this it was determined to establish our bivouac. We soon found thestream, and following its course for a few yards, came to a spot whichwas thought to be fit for our purpose. It was a sharply cold night inFebruary, and when I dismounted I found myself standing upon some wetrank herbage that promised ill for the comfort of our resting-place. Ihad bad hopes of a fire, for the pitchy darkness of the night was a greatobstacle to any successful search for fuel, and besides, the boughs oftrees or bushes would be so full of sap in this early spring, that theywould not be easily persuaded to burn. However, we were not likely tosubmit to a dark and cold bivouac without an effort, and my fellowsgroped forward through the darkness, till after advancing a few pacesthey were happily stopped by a complete barrier of dead prickly bushes. Before our swords could be drawn to reap this welcome harvest it wasfound to our surprise that the fuel was already hewn and strewed alongthe ground in a thick mass. A spot for the fire was found with somedifficulty, for the earth was moist and the grass high and rank. At lastthere was a clicking of flint and steel, and presently there stood outfrom darkness one of the tawny faces of my muleteers, bent down to nearthe ground, and suddenly lit up by the glowing of the spark which hecourted with careful breath. Before long there was a particle of dryfibre or leaf that kindled to a tiny flame; then another was lit fromthat, and then another. Then small crisp twigs, little bigger thanbodkins, were laid athwart the glowing fire. The swelling cheeks of themuleteer, laid level with the earth, blew tenderly at first and then moreboldly upon the young flame, which was daintily nursed and fed, and fedmore plentifully when it gained good strength. At last a whole armful ofdry bushes was piled up over the fire, and presently, with a loud cheerycrackling and crackling, a royal tall blaze shot up from the earth andshowed me once more the shapes and faces of my men, and the dim outlinesof the horses and mules that stood grazing hard by. 

My servants busied themselves in unpacking the baggage as though we hadarrived at an hotel—Shereef and his helpers unsaddled their cattle. Wehad left Tiberias without the slightest idea that we were to make our wayto Jerusalem along the desolate side of the Jordan, and my servants(generally provident in those matters) had brought with them only, Ithink, some unleavened bread and a rocky fragment of goat’s milk cheese. These treasures were produced. Tea and the contrivances for making itwere always a standing part of my baggage. My men gathered in circleround the fire. The Nazarene was in a false position from having misledus so strangely, and he would have shrunk back, poor devil, into the coldand outer darkness, but I made him draw near and share the luxuries ofthe night. My quilt and my pelisse were spread, and the rest of my partyhad all their capotes or pelisses, or robes of some sort, which furnishedtheir couches. The men gathered in circle, some kneeling, some sitting, some lying reclined around our common hearth. Sometimes on one, sometimes on another, the flickering light would glare more fiercely. Sometimes it was the good Shereef that seemed the foremost, as he satwith venerable beard the image of manly piety—unknowing of all geography, unknowing where he was or whither he might go, but trusting in thegoodness of God and the clinching power of fate and the good star of theEnglishman. Sometimes, like marble, the classic face of the GreekMysseri would catch the sudden light, and then again by turns theever-perturbed Dthemetri, with his old Chinaman’s eye and bristling, terrier-like moustache, shone forth illustrious. 

I always liked the men who attended me on these Eastern travels, for theywere all of them brave, cheery-hearted fellows; and although theirfollowing my career brought upon them a pretty large share of those toilsand hardships which are so much more amusing to gentlemen than toservants, yet not one of them ever uttered or hinted a syllable ofcomplaint, or even affected to put on an air of resignation. I alwaysliked them, but never perhaps so much as when they were thus groupedtogether under the light of the bivouac fire. I felt towards them as mycomrades rather than as my servants, and took delight in breaking breadwith them, and merrily passing the cup. 

The love of tea is a glad source of fellow-feeling between the Englishmanand the Asiatic. In Persia it is drunk by all, and although it is aluxury that is rarely within the reach of the Osmanlees, there are few ofthem who do not know and love the blessed _tchäi_. Our camp-kettle, filled from the brook, hummed doubtfully for a while, then busily bubbledunder the sidelong glare of the flames; cups clinked and rattled; thefragrant steam ascended, and soon this little circlet in the wildernessgrew warm and genial as my lady’s drawing-room. 

And after this there came the _tchibouque_—great comforter of those thatare hungry and wayworn. And it has this virtue—it helps to destroy the_gêne_ and awkwardness which one sometimes feels at being in company withone’s dependents; for whilst the amber is at your lips, there is nothingungracious in your remaining silent, or speaking pithily in shortinter-whiff sentences. And for us that night there was pleasant andplentiful matter of talk; for the where we should be on the morrow, andthe wherewithal we should be fed, whether by some ford we should regainthe western bank of Jordan, or find bread and salt under the tents of awandering tribe, or whether we should fall into the hands of thePhilistines, and so come to see death—the last and greatest of all “thefine sights” that there be—these were questionings not dull nor wearisometo us, for we were all concerned in the answers. And it was not anall-imagined morrow that we probed with our sharp guesses, for the lightsof those low Philistines, the men of the caves, still hung over ourheads, and we knew by their yells that the fire of our bivouac had shownus. 

At length we thought it well to seek for sleep. Our plans were laid forkeeping up a good watch through the night. My quilt and my pelisse andmy cloak were spread out so that I might lie spokewise, with my feettowards the central fire. I wrapped my limbs daintily round, and gavemyself positive orders to sleep like a veteran soldier. But I found thatmy attempt to sleep upon the earth that God gave me was more new andstrange than I had fancied it. I had grown used to the scene which wasbefore me whilst I was sitting or reclining by the side of the fire, butnow that I laid myself down at length it was the deep black mystery ofthe heavens that hung over my eyes—not an earthly thing in the way frommy own very forehead right up to the end of all space. I grew proud ofmy boundless bedchamber. I might have “found sermons” in all thisgreatness (if I had I should surely have slept), but such was not then myway. If this cherished self of mine had built the universe, I shouldhave dwelt with delight on “the wonders of creation. ” As it was, I feltrather the vainglory of my promotion from out of mere rooms and housesinto the midst of that grand, dark, infinite palace. 

And then, too, my head, far from the fire, was in cold latitudes, and itseemed to me strange that I should be lying so still and passive, whilstthe sharp night breeze walked free over my cheek, and the cold damp clungto my hair, as though my face grew in the earth and must bear with thefootsteps of the wind and the falling of the dew as meekly as the grassof the field. Besides, I got puzzled and distracted by having to endureheat and cold at the same time, for I was always considering whether myfeet were not over-devilled and whether my face was not too well iced. And so when from time to time the watch quietly and gently kept up thelanguishing fire, he seldom, I think, was unseen to my restless eyes. Yet at last, when they called me and said that the morn would soon bedawning, I rose from a state of half-oblivion not much unlike to sleep, though sharply qualified by a sort of vegetable’s consciousness of havingbeen growing still colder and colder for many and many an hour. 

CHAPTER XIII—THE DEAD SEA

The grey light of the morning showed us for the first time the groundwhich we had chosen for our resting-place. We found that we hadbivouacked upon a little patch of barley plainly belonging to the men ofthe caves. The dead bushes which we found so happily placed in readinessfor our fire had been strewn as a fence for the protection of the littlecrop. This was the only cultivated spot of ground which we had seen formany a league, and I was rather sorry to find that our night fire and ourcattle had spread so much ruin upon this poor solitary slip of corn-land. 

The saddling and loading of our beasts was a work which generally tooknearly an hour, and before this was half over daylight came. We couldnow see the men of the caves. They collected in a body, amounting, Ishould think, to nearly fifty, and rushed down towards our quarters withfierce shouts and yells. But the nearer they got the slower they went;their shouts grew less resolute in tone, and soon ceased altogether. Thefellows, however, advanced to a thicket within thirty yards of us, andbehind this “took up their position. ” My men without premeditation didexactly that which was best; they kept steadily to their work of loadingthe beasts without fuss or hurry; and whether it was that theyinstinctively felt the wisdom of keeping quiet, or that they merelyobeyed the natural inclination to silence which one feels in the earlymorning, I cannot tell, but I know that, except when they exchanged asyllable or two relative to the work they were about, not a word wassaid. I now believe that this quietness of our party created anundefined terror in the minds of the cave-holders and scared them fromcoming on; it gave them a notion that we were relying on some resourceswhich they knew not of. Several times the fellows tried to lashthemselves into a state of excitement which might do instead of pluck. They would raise a great shout and sway forward in a dense body frombehind the thicket; but when they saw that their bravery thus gathered toa head did not even suspend the strapping of a portmanteau or the tyingof a hatbox, their shout lost its spirit, and the whole mass wasirresistibly drawn back like a wave receding from the shore. 

These attempts at an onset were repeated several times, but always withthe same result. I remained under the apprehension of an attack for morethan half-an-hour, and it seemed to me that the work of packing andloading had never been done so slowly. I felt inclined to tell myfellows to make their best speed, but just as I was going to speak Iobserved that every one was doing his duty already; I therefore held mypeace and said not a word, till at last Mysseri led up my horse and askedme if I were ready to mount. 

We all marched off without hindrance. 

After some time we came across a party of Ibrahim’s cavalry, which hadbivouacked at no great distance from us. The knowledge that such a forcewas in the neighbourhood may have conduced to the forbearance of thecave-holders. 

We saw a scraggy-looking fellow nearly black, and wearing nothing but acloth round the loins; he was tending flocks. Afterwards I came up withanother of these goatherds, whose helpmate was with him. They gave ussome goat’s milk, a welcome present. I pitied the poor devil of agoatherd for having such a very plain wife. I spend an enormous quantityof pity upon that particular form of human misery. 

About midday I began to examine my map and to question my guide, who atlast fell on his knees and confessed that he knew nothing of the countryin which we were. I was thus thrown upon my own resources, andcalculating that on the preceding day we had nearly performed a two days’journey, I concluded that the Dead Sea must be near. In this I wasright, for at about three or four o’clock in the afternoon I caught afirst sight of its dismal face. 

I went on and came near to those waters of death. They stretched deeplyinto the southern desert, and before me, and all around, as far away asthe eye could follow, blank hills piled high over hills, pale, yellow, and naked, walled up in her tomb for ever the dead and damned Gomorrah. There was no fly that hummed in the forbidden air, but instead a deepstillness; no grass grew from the earth, no weed peered through the voidsand; but in mockery of all life there were trees borne down by Jordan insome ancient flood, and these, grotesquely planted upon the forlornshore, spread out their grim skeleton arms, all scorched and charred toblackness by the heats of the long silent years. 

I now struck off towards the débouchure of the river; but I found thatthe country, though seemingly quite flat, was intersected by deepravines, which did not show themselves until nearly approached. For sometime my progress was much obstructed; but at last I came across a trackwhich led towards the river, and which might, as I hoped, bring me to aford. I found, in fact, when I came to the river’s side that the trackreappeared upon the opposite bank, plainly showing that the stream hadbeen fordable at this place. Now, however, in consequence of the laterains the river was quite impracticable for baggage-horses. A body ofwaters about equal to the Thames at Eton, but confined to a narrowerchannel, poured down in a current so swift and heavy, that the idea ofpassing with laden baggage-horses was utterly forbidden. I could haveswum across myself, and I might, perhaps, have succeeded in swimming ahorse over; but this would have been useless, because in such case I musthave abandoned not only my baggage, but all my attendants, for none ofthem were able to swim, and without that resource it would have beenmadness for them to rely upon the swimming of their beasts across such apowerful stream. I still hoped, however, that there might be a chance ofpassing the river at the point of its actual junction with the Dead Sea, and I therefore went on in that direction. 

Night came upon us whilst labouring across gullies and sandy mounds, andwe were obliged to come to a stand-still quite suddenly upon the veryedge of a precipitous descent. Every step towards the Dead Sea hadbrought us into a country more and more dreary; and this sand-hill, whichwe were forced to choose for our resting-place, was dismal enough. A fewslender blades of grass, which here and there singly pierced the sand, mocked bitterly the hunger of our jaded beasts, and with our smallremaining fragment of goat’s-milk rock by way of supper, we were not muchbetter off than our horses. We wanted, too, the great requisite of acheery bivouac—fire. Moreover, the spot on which we had been so suddenlybrought to a standstill was relatively high and unsheltered, and thenight wind blew swiftly and cold. 

The next morning I reached the débouchure of the Jordan, where I hadhoped to find a bar of sand that might render its passage possible. Theriver, however, rolled its eddying waters fast down to the “sea” in astrong, deep stream that shut out all hope of crossing. 

It now seemed necessary either to construct a raft of some kind, or elseto retrace my steps and remount the banks of the Jordan. I had oncehappened to give some attention to the subject of military bridges—abranch of military science which includes the construction of rafts andcontrivances of the like sort—and I should have been very proud indeed ifI could have carried my party and my baggage across by dint of any ideagathered from Sir Howard Douglas or Robinson Crusoe. But we were allfaint and languid from want of food, and besides, there were nomaterials. Higher up the river there were bushes and river plants, butnothing like timber; and the cord with which my baggage was tied to thepack-saddles amounted altogether to a very small quantity, not nearlyenough to haul any sort of craft across the stream. 

And now it was, if I remember rightly, that Dthemetri submitted to me aplan for putting to death the Nazarene, whose misguidance had been thecause of our difficulties. There was something fascinating in thissuggestion, for the slaying of the guide was of course easy enough, andwould look like an act of what politicians call “vigour. ” If it wereonly to become known to my friends in England that I had calmly killed afellow-creature for taking me out of my way, I might remain perfectlyquiet and tranquil for all the rest of my days, quite free from thedanger of being considered “slow”; I might ever after live on upon myreputation, like “single-speech Hamilton” in the last century, or “singlesin—” in this, without being obliged to take the trouble of doing anymore harm in the world. This was a great temptation to an indolentperson, but the motive was not strengthened by any sincere feeling ofanger with the Nazarene. Whilst the question of his life and death wasdebated he was riding in front of our party, and there was something inthe anxious writhing of his supple limbs that seemed to express a senseof his false position, and struck me as highly comic. I had no crotchetat that time against the punishment of death, but I was unused to blood, and the proposed victim looked so thoroughly capable of enjoying life (ifhe could only get to the other side of the river), that I thought itwould be hard for him to die merely in order to give me a character forenergy. Acting on the result of these considerations, and reserving tomyself a free and unfettered discretion to have the poor villain shot atany future moment, I magnanimously decided that for the present he shouldlive, and not die. 

I bathed in the Dead Sea. The ground covered by the water sloped sogradually, that I was not only forced to “sneak in, ” but to walk throughthe water nearly a quarter of a mile before I could get out of my depth. When at last I was able to attempt to dive, the salts held in solutionmade my eyes smart so sharply, that the pain which I thus suffered, together with the weakness occasioned by want of food, made me giddy andfaint for some moments, but I soon grew better. I knew beforehand theimpossibility of sinking in this buoyant water, but I was surprised tofind that I could not swim at my accustomed pace; my legs and feet werelifted so high and dry out of the lake, that my stroke was baffled, and Ifound myself kicking against the thin air instead of the dense fluid uponwhich I was swimming. The water is perfectly bright and clear; its tastedetestable. After finishing my attempts at swimming and diving, I tooksome time in regaining the shore, and before I began to dress I foundthat the sun had already evaporated the water which clung to me, and thatmy skin was thickly encrusted with salts. 

CHAPTER XIV—THE BLACK TENTS

My steps were reluctantly turned towards the north. I had ridden someway, and still it seemed that all life was fenced and barred out from thedesolate ground over which I was journeying. On the west there flowedthe impassable Jordan, on the east stood an endless range of barrenmountains, and on the south lay that desert sea that knew not theplashing of an oar; greatly therefore was I surprised when suddenly therebroke upon my ear the long, ludicrous, persevering bray of a donkey. Iwas riding at this time some few hundred yards ahead of all my partyexcept the Nazarene (who by a wise instinct kept closer to me than toDthemetri), and I instantly went forward in the direction of the sound, for I fancied that where there were donkeys, there too most surely wouldbe men. The ground on all sides of me seemed thoroughly void andlifeless, but at last I got down into a hollow, and presently a suddenturn brought me within thirty yards of an Arab encampment. The low blacktents which I had so long lusted to see were right before me, and theywere all teeming with live Arabs—men, women, and children. 

I wished to have let my party behind know where I was, but I recollectedthat they would be able to trace me by the prints of my horse’s hoofs inthe sand, and having to do with Asiatics, I felt the danger of theslightest movement which might be looked upon as a sign of irresolution. Therefore, without looking behind me, without looking to the right or tothe left, I rode straight up towards the foremost tent. Before this wasstrewed a semicircular fence of dead boughs, through which there was anopening opposite to the front of the tent. As I advanced, some twenty orthirty of the most uncouth-looking fellows imaginable came forward tomeet me. In their appearance they showed nothing of the Bedouin blood;they were of many colours, from dingy brown to jet black, and some ofthese last had much of the negro look about them. They were tall, powerful fellows, but awfully ugly. They wore nothing but the Arabshirts, confined at the waist by leathern belts. 

I advanced to the gap left in the fence, and at once alighted from myhorse. The chief greeted me after his fashion by alternately touchingfirst my hand and then his own forehead, as if he were conveying thevirtue of the touch like a spark of electricity. Presently I foundmyself seated upon a sheepskin, which was spread for me under the sacredshade of Arabian canvas. The tent was of a long, narrow, oblong form, and contained a quantity of men, women, and children so closely huddledtogether, that there was scarcely one of them who was not in actualcontact with his neighbour. The moment I had taken my seat the chiefrepeated his salutations in the most enthusiastic manner, and then thepeople having gathered densely about me, got hold of my unresisting handand passed it round like a claret jug for the benefit of every body. Thewomen soon brought me a wooden bowl full of buttermilk, and welcomeindeed came the gift to my hungry and thirsty soul. 

After some time my party, as I had expected, came up, and when poorDthemetri saw me on my sheepskin, “the life and soul” of this ragamuffinparty, he was so astounded, that he even failed to check his cry ofhorror; he plainly thought that now, at last, the Lord had delivered me(interpreter and all) into the hands of the lowest Philistines. 

Mysseri carried a tobacco-pouch slung at his belt, and as soon as itscontents were known the whole population of the tent began begging likespaniels for bits of the beloved weed. I concluded from the abjectmanner of these people that they could not possibly be thoroughbredBedouins, and I saw, too, that they must be in the very last stage ofmisery, for poor indeed is the man in these climes who cannot command apipeful of tobacco. I began to think that I had fallen amongst thoroughsavages, and it seemed likely enough that they would gain their veryfirst knowledge of civilisation by ravishing and studying the contents ofmy dearest portmanteaus, but still my impression was that they wouldhardly venture upon such an attempt. I observed, indeed, that they didnot offer me the bread and salt which I had understood to be the pledgesof peace amongst wandering tribes, but I fancied that they refrained fromthis act of hospitality, not in consequence of any hostile determination, but in order that the notion of robbing me might remain for the presentan “open question. ” I afterwards found that the poor fellows had nobread to offer. They were literally “out at grass. ” It is true thatthey had a scanty supply of milk from goats, but they were living almostentirely upon certain grass stems, which were just in season at that timeof the year. These, if not highly nourishing, are pleasant enough to thetaste, and their acid juices come gratefully to thirsty lips. 

CHAPTER XV—PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN

And now Dthemetri began to enter into a negotiation with my hosts for apassage over the river. I never interfered with my worthy dragoman uponthese occasions, because from my entire ignorance of the Arabic I shouldhave been quite unable to exercise any real control over his words, andit would have been silly to break the stream of his eloquence to nopurpose. I have reason to fear, however, that he lied transcendently, and especially in representing me as the bosom friend of Ibrahim Pasha. The mention of that name produced immense agitation and excitement, andthe Sheik explained to Dthemetri the grounds of the infinite respectwhich he and his tribe entertained for the Pasha. A few weeks beforeIbrahim had craftily sent a body of troops across the Jordan. The forcewent warily round to the foot of the mountains on the east, so as to cutoff the retreat of this tribe, and then surrounded them as they layencamped in the vale; their camels, and indeed all their possessionsworth taking, were carried off by the soldiery, and moreover the thenSheik, together with every tenth man of the tribe, was brought out andshot. You would think that this conduct on the part of the Pasha mightnot procure for his “friend” a very gracious reception amongst the peoplewhom he had thus despoiled and decimated; but the Asiatic seems to beanimated with a feeling of profound respect, almost bordering uponaffection, for all who have done him any bold and violent wrong, andthere is always, too, so much of vague and undefined apprehension mixedup with his really well-founded alarms, that I can see no limit to theyielding and bending of his mind when it is wrought upon by the idea ofpower. 

After some discussion the Arabs agreed, as I thought, to conduct me to aford, and we moved on towards the river, followed by seventeen of themost able-bodied of the tribe, under the guidance of several grey-beardedelders, and Sheik Ali Djoubran at the head of the whole detachment. Uponleaving the encampment a sort of ceremony was performed, for the purpose, it seemed, of ensuring, if possible, a happy result for the undertaking. There was an uplifting of arms, and a repeating of words that soundedlike formulæ, but there were no prostrations, and I did not understandthat the ceremony was of a religious character. The tented Arabs arelooked upon as very bad Mahometans. 

We arrived upon the banks of the river—not at a ford, but at a deep andrapid part of the stream, and I now understood that it was the plan ofthese men, if they helped me at all, to transport me across the river bysome species of raft. But a reaction had taken place in the opinions ofmany, and a violent dispute arose upon a motion which seemed to have beenmade by some honourable member with a view to robbery. The fellows allgathered together in circle, at a little distance from my party, andthere disputed with great vehemence and fury for nearly two hours. Ican’t give a correct report of the debate, for it was held in a barbarousdialect of the Arabic unknown to my dragoman. I recollect I sincerelyfelt at the time that the arguments in favour of robbing me must havebeen almost unanswerable, and I gave great credit to the speakers on myside for the ingenuity and sophistry which they must have shown inmaintaining the fight so well. 

During the discussion I remained lying in front of my baggage, which hadall been taken from the pack-saddles and placed upon the ground. I wasso languid from want of food, that I had scarcely animation enough tofeel as deeply interested as you would suppose in the result of thediscussion. I thought, however, that the pleasantest toys to play withduring this interval were my pistols, and now and then, when I listlesslyvisited my loaded barrels with the swivel ramrods, or drew a sweet, musical click from my English firelocks, it seemed to me that I exerciseda slight and gentle influence on the debate. Thanks to Ibrahim Pasha’sterrible visitation the men of the tribe were wholly unarmed, and myadvantage in this respect might have counterbalanced in some measure thesuperiority of numbers. 

Mysseri (not interpreting in Arabic) had no duty to perform, and heseemed to be faint and listless as myself. Shereef looked perfectlyresigned to any fate. But Dthemetri (faithful terrier!) was bristlingwith zeal and watchfulness. He could not understand the debate, whichindeed was carried on at a distance too great to be easily heard, even ifthe language had been familiar; but he was always on the alert, and nowand then conferring with men who had straggled out of the assembly. Atlast he found an opportunity of making a proposal, which at once producedimmense sensation; he offered, on my behalf, that if the tribe shouldbear themselves loyally towards me, and take my party and my baggage insafety to the other bank of the river, I should give them a _teskeri_, orwritten certificate of their good conduct, which might avail themhereafter in the hour of their direst need. This proposal was receivedand instantly accepted by all the men of the tribe there present with theutmost enthusiasm. I was to give the men, too, a _baksheish_, that is, apresent of money, which is usually made upon the conclusion of any sortof treaty; but although the people of the tribe were so miserably poor, they seemed to look upon the pecuniary part of the arrangement as amatter quite trivial in comparison with the _teskeri_. Indeed the sumwhich Dthemetri promised them was extremely small, and not the slightestattempt was made to extort any further reward. 

The council now broke up, and most of the men rushed madly towards me, and overwhelmed me with vehement gratulations; they caressed my bootswith much affection, and my hands were severely kissed. 

The Arabs now went to work in right earnest to effect the passage of theriver. They had brought with them a great number of the skins which theyuse for carrying water in the desert; these they filled with air, andfastened several of them to small boughs which they cut from the banks ofthe river. In this way they constructed a raft not more than about fouror five feet square, but rendered buoyant by the inflated skins whichsupported it. On this a portion of my baggage was placed, and was firmlytied to it by the cords used on my pack-saddles. The little raft withits weighty cargo was then gently lifted into the water, and I had thesatisfaction to see that it floated well. 

Twelve of the Arabs now stripped, and tied inflated skins to their loins;six of the men went down into the river, got in front of the little raft, and pulled it off a few feet from the bank. The other six then dashedinto the stream with loud shouts and swam along after the raft, pushingit from behind. Off went the craft in capital style at first, for thestream was easy on the eastern side; but I saw that the tug was to come, for the main torrent swept round in a bend near the western bank of theriver. 

The old men, with their long grey grisly beards, stood shouting andcheering, praying and commanding. At length the raft entered upon thedifficult part of its course; the whirling stream seized and twisted itabout, and then bore it rapidly downwards; the swimmers, flagged andseemed to be beaten in the struggle. But now the old men on the bank, with their rigid arms uplifted straight, sent forth a cry and a shoutthat tore the wide air into tatters, and then to make their urging yetmore strong they shrieked out the dreadful syllables, “’brahim Pasha!”The swimmers, one moment before so blown and so weary, found lungs toanswer the cry, and shouting back the name of their great destroyer, theydashed on through the torrent, and bore the raft in safety to the westernbank. 

Afterwards the swimmers returned with the raft, and attached to it therest of my baggage. I took my seat upon the top of the cargo, and theraft thus laden passed the river in the same way, and with the samestruggle as before. The skins, however, not being perfectly air-tight, had lost a great part of their buoyancy, so that I, as well as theluggage that passed on this last voyage, got wet in the waters of Jordan. The raft could not be trusted for another trip, and the rest of my partypassed the river in a different and (for them) much safer way. Inflatedskins were fastened to their loins, and thus supported, they were tuggedacross by Arabs swimming on either side of them. The horses and muleswere thrown into the water and forced to swim over. The poor beasts hada hard struggle for their lives in that swift stream; and I thought thatone of the horses would have been drowned, for he was too weak to gain afooting on the western bank, and the stream bore him down. At last, however, he swam back to the side from which he had come. Before darkall had passed the river except this one horse and old Shereef. He, poorfellow, was shivering on the eastern bank, for his dread of the passagewas so great, that he delayed it as long as he could, and at last itbecame so dark that he was obliged to wait till the morning. 

I lay that night on the banks of the river, and at a little distance fromme the Arabs kindled a fire, round which they sat in a circle. They weremade most savagely happy by the tobacco with which I supplied them, andthey soon determined that the whole night should be one smoking festival. The poor fellows had only a cracked bowl, without any tube at all, butthis morsel of a pipe they handed round from one to the other, allowingto each a fixed number of whiffs. In that way they passed the wholenight. 

The next morning old Shereef was brought across. It was a strange sightto see this solemn old Mussulman, with his shaven head and his sacredbeard, sprawling and puffing upon the surface of the water. When at lasthe reached the bank the people told him that by his baptism in Jordan hehad surely become a mere Christian. Poor Shereef!—the holy man! thedescendant of the Prophet!—he was sadly hurt by the taunt, and the moreso as he seemed to feel that there was some foundation for it, and thathe really might have absorbed some Christian errors. 

When all was ready for departure I wrote the _teskeri_ in French anddelivered it to Sheik Ali Djoubran, together with the promised_baksheish_; he was exceedingly grateful, and I parted in a very friendlyway from this ragged tribe. 

In two or three hours I gained Rihah, a village said to occupy the siteof ancient Jericho. There was one building there which I observed withsome emotion, for although it may not have been actually standing in thedays of Jericho, it contained at this day a most interesting collectionof—modern loaves. 

Some hours after sunset I reached the convent of Santa Saba, and thereremained for the night. 

CHAPTER XVI—TERRA SANTA

The enthusiasm that had glowed, or seemed to glow, within me for oneblessed moment when I knelt by the shrine of the Virgin at Nazareth, wasnot rekindled at Jerusalem. In the stead of the solemn gloom and thedeep stillness that of right belonged to the Holy City, there was the humand the bustle of active life. It was the “height of the season. ” TheEaster ceremonies drew near. The pilgrims were flocking in from allquarters; and although their objects were partly at least of a religiouscharacter, yet their “arrivals” brought as much stir and liveliness tothe city as if they had come up to marry their daughters. 

The votaries who every year crowd to the Holy Sepulchre are chiefly ofthe Greek and Armenian Churches. They are not drawn into Palestine by amere sentimental longing to stand upon the ground trodden by our Saviour, but rather they perform the pilgrimage as a plain duty stronglyinculcated by their religion. A very great proportion of those whobelong to the Greek Church contrive at some time or other in the courseof their lives to achieve the enterprise. Many in their infancy andchildhood are brought to the holy sites by their parents, but those whohave not had this advantage will often make it the main object of theirlives to save money enough for this holy undertaking. 

The pilgrims begin to arrive in Palestine some weeks before the Easterfestival of the Greek Church. They come from Egypt, from all parts ofSyria, from Armenia and Asia Minor, from Stamboul, from Roumelia, fromthe provinces of the Danube, and from all the Russias. Most of thesepeople bring with them some articles of merchandise, but I myself believe(notwithstanding the common taunt against pilgrims) that they do thisrather as a mode of paying the expenses of their journey, than from aspirit of mercenary speculation. They generally travel in families, forthe women are of course more ardent than their husbands in undertakingthese pious enterprises, and they take care to bring with them all theirchildren, however young; for the efficacy of the rites does not dependupon the age of the votary, so that people whose careful mothers haveobtained for them the benefit of the pilgrimage in early life, are savedfrom the expense and trouble of undertaking the journey at a later age. The superior veneration so often excited by objects that are distant andunknown shows not perhaps the wrongheadedness of a man, but rather thetranscendent power of his imagination. However this may be, and whetherit is by mere obstinacy that they poke their way through interveningdistance, or whether they come by the winged strength of fancy, quitecertainly the pilgrims who flock to Palestine from the most remote homesare the people most eager in the enterprise, and in number too they beara very high proportion to the whole mass. 

The great bulk of the pilgrims make their way by sea to the port ofJaffa. A number of families will charter a vessel amongst them, allbringing their own provisions, which are of the simplest and cheapestkind. On board every vessel thus freighted there is, I believe, apriest, who helps the people in their religious exercises, and tries (andfails) to maintain something like order and harmony. The vesselsemployed in this service are usually Greek brigs or brigantines andschooners, and the number of passengers stowed in them is almost alwayshorribly excessive. The voyages are sadly protracted, not only by theland-seeking, storm-flying habits of the Greek seamen, but also by theirendless schemes and speculations, which are for ever tempting them totouch at the nearest port. The voyage too must be made in winter, inorder that Jerusalem may be reached some weeks before the Greek Easter, and thus by the time they attain to the holy shrines the pilgrims havereally and truly undergone a very respectable quantity of suffering. Ionce saw one of these pious cargoes put ashore on the coast of Cyprus, where they had touched for the purpose of visiting (not Paphos, but) someChristian sanctuary. I never saw (no, never even in the most horridlystuffy ballroom) such a discomfortable collection of human beings. Longhuddled together in a pitching and rolling prison, fed on beans, exposedto some real danger and to terrors without end, they had been tumbledabout for many wintry weeks in the chopping seas of the Mediterranean. As soon as they landed they stood upon the beach and chanted a hymn ofthanks; the chant was morne and doleful, but really the poor people werelooking so miserable, that one could not fairly expect from them anylively outpouring of gratitude. 

When the pilgrims have landed at Jaffa they hire camels, horses, mules, or donkeys, and make their way as well as they can to the Holy City. Thespace fronting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre soon becomes a kind ofbazaar, or rather, perhaps, reminds you of an English fair. On this spotthe pilgrims display their merchandise, and there too the tradingresidents of the place offer their goods for sale. I have never, Ithink, seen elsewhere in Asia so much commercial animation as upon thissquare of ground by the church door; the “money-changers” seemed to bealmost as brisk and lively as if they had been _within_ the temple. 

When I entered the church I found a babel of worshippers. Greek, Roman, and Armenian priests were performing their different rites in variousnooks and corners, and crowds of disciples were rushing about in alldirections, some laughing and talking, some begging, but most of themgoing round in a regular and methodical way to kiss the sanctified spots, and speak the appointed syllables, and lay down the accustomed coin. Ifthis kissing of the shrines had seemed as though it were done at thebidding of enthusiasm, or of any poor sentiment even feebly approachingto it, the sight would have been less odd to English eyes; but as it was, I stared to see grown men thus steadily and carefully embracing thesticks and the stones, not from love or from zeal (else God forbid that Ishould have stared!), but from a calm sense of duty; they seemed to benot “working out, ” but _transacting_ the great business of salvation. 

Dthemetri, however, who generally came with me when I went out, in orderto do duty as interpreter, really had in him some enthusiasm. He was azealous and almost fanatical member of the Greek Church, and had longsince performed the pilgrimage, so now great indeed was the pride anddelight with which he guided me from one holy spot to another. Every nowand then, when he came to an unoccupied shrine, he fell down on his kneesand performed devotion; he was almost distracted by the temptations thatsurrounded him; there were so many stones absolutely requiring to bekissed, that he rushed about happily puzzled and sweetly teased, like“Jack among the maidens. ”

A Protestant, familiar with the Holy Scriptures, but ignorant oftradition and the geography of modern Jerusalem, finds himself a gooddeal “mazed” when he first looks for the sacred sites. The HolySepulchre is not in a field without the walls, but in the midst, and inthe best part of the town, under the roof of the great church which Ihave been talking about. It is a handsome tomb of oblong form, partlysubterranean and partly above ground, and closed in on all sides exceptthe one by which it is entered. You descend into the interior by a fewsteps, and there find an altar with burning tapers. This is the spotwhich is held in greater sanctity than any other at Jerusalem. When youhave seen enough of it you feel perhaps weary of the busy crowd, andinclined for a gallop; you ask your dragoman whether there will be timebefore sunset to procure horses and take a ride to Mount Calvary. MountCalvary, signor?—eccolo! it is _upstairs—on the first floor_. In effectyou ascend, if I remember rightly, just thirteen steps, and then you areshown the now golden sockets in which the crosses of our Lord and the twothieves were fixed. All this is startling, but the truth is, that thecity having gathered round the Sepulchre, which is the main point ofinterest, has crept northward, and thus in great measure are occasionedthe many geographical surprises that puzzle the “Bible Christian. ”

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre comprises very compendiously almost allthe spots associated with the closing career of our Lord. Just there, onyour right, He stood and wept; by the pillar, on your left, He wasscourged; on the spot, just before you, He was crowned with the crown ofthorns; up there He was crucified, and down here He was buried. Alocality is assigned to every, the minutest, event connected with therecorded history of our Saviour; even the spot where the cock crew whenPeter denied his Master is ascertained, and surrounded by the walls of anArmenian convent. Many Protestants are wont to treat these traditionscontemptuously, and those who distinguish themselves from their brethrenby the appellation of “Bible Christians” are almost fierce in theirdenunciation of these supposed errors. 

It is admitted, I believe, by everybody that the formal sanctification ofthese spots was the act of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, but I think it is fair to suppose that she was guided by a careful regardto the then prevailing traditions. Now the nature of the ground uponwhich Jerusalem stands is such, that the localities belonging to theevents there enacted might have been more easily, and permanently, ascertained by tradition than those of any city that I know of. Jerusalem, whether ancient or modern, was built upon and surrounded bysharp, salient rocks intersected by deep ravines. Up to the time of thesiege Mount Calvary of course must have been well enough known to thepeople of Jerusalem; the destruction of the mere buildings could not haveobliterated from any man’s memory the names of those steep rocks andnarrow ravines in the midst of which the city had stood. It seems to me, therefore, highly probable that in fixing the site of Calvary the Empresswas rightly guided. Recollect, too, that the voice of tradition atJerusalem is quite unanimous, and that Romans, Greeks, Armenians, andJews, all hating each other sincerely, concur in assigning the samelocalities to the events told in the Gospel. I concede, however, thatthe attempt of the Empress to ascertain the sites of the minor eventscannot be safely relied upon. With respect, for instance, to thecertainty of the spot where the cock crew, I am far from being convinced. 

Supposing that the Empress acted arbitrarily in fixing the holy sites, itwould seem that she followed the Gospel of St. John, and that thegeography sanctioned by her can be more easily reconciled with thathistory than with the accounts of the other Evangelists. 

The authority exercised by the Mussulman Government in relation to theholy sites is in one view somewhat humbling to the Christians, for it isalmost as an arbitrator between the contending sects (this always, ofcourse, for the sake of pecuniary advantage) that the Mussulman lends hiscontemptuous aid; he not only grants, but enforces toleration. Allpersons, of whatever religion, are allowed to go as they will into everypart of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but in order to preventindecent contests, and also from motives arising out of money payments, the Turkish Government assigns the peculiar care of each sacred spot toone of the ecclesiastic bodies. Since this guardianship carries with itthe receipt of the coins which the pilgrims leave upon the shrines, it isstrenuously fought for by all the rival Churches, and the artifices ofintrigue are busily exerted at Stamboul in order to procure the issue orrevocation of the firmans by which the coveted privilege is granted. Inthis strife the Greek Church has of late years signally triumphed, andthe most famous of the shrines are committed to the care of theirpriesthood. They possess the golden socket in which stood the cross ofour Lord whilst the Latins are obliged to content themselves with theapertures in which were inserted the crosses of the two thieves. Theyare naturally discontented with that poor privilege, and sorrowfully lookback to the days of their former glory—the days when Napoleon wasEmperor, and Sebastiani ambassador at the Porte. It seems that the“citizen” sultan, old Louis Philippe, has done very little indeed forHoly Church in Palestine. 

Although the pilgrims perform their devotions at the several shrines withso little apparent enthusiasm, they are driven to the verge of madness bythe miracle displayed before them on Easter Saturday. Then it is thatthe Heaven-sent fire issues from the Holy Sepulchre. The pilgrims allassemble in the great church, and already, long before the wonder isworked, they are wrought by anticipation of God’s sign, as well as bytheir struggles for room and breathing space, to a most frightful stateof excitement. At length the chief priest of the Greeks, accompanied (ofall people in the world) by the Turkish Governor, enters the tomb. Afterthis, there is a long pause, and then suddenly from out of the smallapertures on either side of the sepulchre there issue long, shiningflames. The pilgrims now rush forward, madly struggling to light theirtapers at the holy fire. This is the dangerous moment, and many livesare often lost. 

The year before that of my going to Jerusalem, Ibrahim Pasha, from somewhim, or motive of policy, chose to witness the miracle. The vast churchwas of course thronged, as it always is on that awful day. It seems thatthe appearance of the fire was delayed for a very long time, and that thegrowing frenzy of the people was heightened by suspense. Many, too, hadalready sunk under the effect of the heat and the stifling atmosphere, when at last the fire flashed from the sepulchre. Then a terriblestruggle ensued; many sunk and were crushed. Ibrahim had taken hisstation in one of the galleries, but now, feeling perhaps his brave bloodwarmed by the sight and sound of such strife, he took upon himself toquiet the people by his personal presence, and descended into the body ofthe church with only a few guards. He had forced his way into the midstof the dense crowd, when unhappily he fainted away; his guards shriekedout, and the event instantly became known. A body of soldiers recklesslyforced their way through the crowd, trampling over every obstacle thatthey might save the life of their general. Nearly two hundred peoplewere killed in the struggle. 

The following year, however, the Government took better measures for theprevention of these calamities. I was not present at the ceremony, having gone away from Jerusalem some time before, but I afterwardsreturned into Palestine, and I then learned that the day had passed offwithout any disturbance of a fatal kind. It is, however, almost too muchto expect that so many ministers of peace can assemble without findingsome occasion for strife, and in that year a tribe of wild Bedouinsbecame the subject of discord. These men, it seems, led an Arab life insome of the desert tracts bordering on the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, but were not connected with any of the great ruling tribes. Some whim ornotion of policy had induced them to embrace Christianity; but they weregrossly ignorant of the rudiments of their adopted faith, and having nopriest with them in their desert, they had as little knowledge ofreligious ceremonies as of religion itself. They were not even capableof conducting themselves in a place of worship with ordinary decorum, butwould interrupt the service with scandalous cries and warlike shouts. Such is the account the Latins give of them, but I have never heard theother side of the question. These wild fellows, notwithstanding theirentire ignorance of all religion, are yet claimed by the Greeks, not onlyas proselytes who have embraced Christianity generally, but as convertsto the particular doctrines and practice of their Church. The peoplethus alleged to have concurred in the great schism of the Eastern Empireare never, I believe, within the walls of a church, or even of anybuilding at all, except upon this occasion of Easter; and as they thennever fail to find a row of some kind going on by the side of thesepulchre, they fancy, it seems, that the ceremonies there enacted arefuneral games of a martial character, held in honour of a deceasedchieftain, and that a Christian festival is a peculiar kind of battle, fought between walls, and without cavalry. It does not appear, however, that these men are guilty of any ferocious acts, or that they attempt tocommit depredations. The charge against them is merely that by their wayof applauding the performance, by their horrible cries and frightfulgestures, they destroy the solemnity of divine service, and upon thisground the Franciscans obtained a firman for the exclusion of suchtumultuous worshippers. The Greeks, however, did not choose to lose theaid of their wild converts merely because they were a little backward intheir religious education, and they therefore persuaded them to defy thefirman by entering the city _en masse_ and overawing their enemies. TheFranciscans, as well as the Government authorities, were obliged to giveway, and the Arabs triumphantly marched into the church. The festival, however, must have seemed to them rather flat, for although there mayhave been some “casualties” in the way of eyes black and noses bloody, and women “missing, ” there was no return of “killed. ”

Formerly the Latin Catholics concurred in acknowledging (but not, I hope, in working) the annual miracle of the heavenly fire, but they have formany years withdrawn their countenance from this exhibition, and they nowrepudiate it as a trick of the Greek Church. Thus of course the violenceof feeling with which the rival Churches meet at the Holy Sepulchre onEaster Saturday is greatly increased, and a disturbance of some kind iscertain. In the year I speak of, though no lives were lost, there was, as it seems, a tough struggle in the church. I was amused at hearing ofa taunt that was thrown that day upon an English traveller. He had takenhis station in a convenient part of the church, and was no doubtdisplaying that peculiar air of serenity and gratification with which anEnglish gentleman usually looks on at a row, when one of the Franciscanscame by, all reeking from the fight, and was so disgusted at the coolnessand placid contentment of the Englishman (who was a guest at theconvent), that he forgot his monkish humility as well as the duties ofhospitality, and plainly said, “You sleep under our roof, you eat ourbread, you drink our wine, and then when Easter Saturday comes you don’tfight for us!”

Yet these rival Churches go on quietly enough till their blood is up. The terms on which they live remind one of the peculiar relationsubsisting at Cambridge between “town and gown. ”

These contests and disturbances certainly do not originate with thelay-pilgrims, the great body of whom are, as I believe, quiet andinoffensive people. It is true, however, that their pious enterprise isbelieved by them to operate as a counterpoise for a multitude of sins, whether past or future, and perhaps they exert themselves in after lifeto restore the balance of good and evil. The Turks have a maxim which, like most cynical apophthegms, carries with it the buzzing trumpet offalsehood as well as the small, fine “sting of truth. ” “If your friendhas made the pilgrimage once, distrust him; if he has made the pilgrimagetwice, cut him dead!” The caution is said to be as applicable to thevisitants of Jerusalem as to those of Mecca, but I cannot help believingthat the frailties of all the hadjis, {28} whether Christian orMahometan, are greatly exaggerated. I certainly regarded the pilgrims toPalestine as a well-disposed orderly body of people, not stronglyenthusiastic, but desirous to comply with the ordinances of theirreligion, and to attain the great end of salvation as quietly andeconomically as possible. 

When the solemnities of Easter are concluded the pilgrims move off in abody to complete their good work by visiting the sacred scenes in theneighbourhood of Jerusalem, including the wilderness of John the Baptist, Bethlehem, and above all, the Jordan, for to bathe in those sacred watersis one of the chief objects of the expedition. All the pilgrims—men, women, and children—are submerged _en chemise_, and the saturated linenis carefully wrapped up and preserved as a burial-dress that shall enurefor salvation in the realms of death. 

I saw the burial of a pilgrim. He was a Greek, miserably poor, and veryold; he had just crawled into the Holy City, and had reached at once thegoal of his pious journey and the end of his sufferings upon earth. There was no coffin nor wrapper, and as I looked full upon the face ofthe dead I saw how deeply it was rutted with the ruts of age and misery. The priest, strong and portly, fresh, fat, and alive with the life of theanimal kingdom, unpaid, or ill paid for his work, would scarcely deign tomutter out his forms, but hurried over the words with shocking haste. Presently he called out impatiently, “Yalla! Goor!” (Come! look sharp!), and then the dead Greek was seized. His limbs yielded inertly to therude men that handled them, and down he went into his grave, so roughlybundled in that his neck was twisted by the fall, so twisted, that if thesharp malady of life were still upon him the old man would have shriekedand groaned, and the lines of his face would have quivered with pain. The lines of his face were not moved, and the old man lay still andheedless, so well cured of that tedious life-ache, that nothing couldhurt him now. His clay was _itself again_—cool, firm, and tough. Thepilgrim had found great rest. I threw the accustomed handful of the holysoil upon his patient face, and then, and in less than a minute, theearth closed coldly round him. 

I did not say “alas!” (nobody ever does that I know of, though the wordis so frequently written). I thought the old man had got rather well outof the scrape of being alive, and poor. 

The destruction of the mere buildings in such a place as Jerusalem wouldnot involve the permanent dispersion of the inhabitants, for the rockyneighbourhood in which the town is situate abounds in caves, which wouldgive an easy refuge to the people until they gained an opportunity ofrebuilding their dwellings; therefore I could not help looking upon theJews of Jerusalem as being in some sort the representatives, if not theactual descendants, of the rascals who crucified our Saviour. Supposingthis to be the case, I felt that there would be some interest in knowinghow the events of the Gospel history were regarded by the Israelites ofmodern Jerusalem. The result of my inquiry upon this subject was, so faras it went, entirely favourable to the truth of Christianity. Iunderstood that _the performance of the miracles was not doubted by anyof the Jews in the place_. All of them concurred in attributing theworks of our Lord to the influence of magic, but they were divided as tothe species of enchantment from which the power proceeded. The greatmass of the Jewish people believe, I fancy, that the miracles had beenwrought by aid of the powers of darkness, but many, and those the moreenlightened, would call Jesus “the good Magician. ” To Europeansrepudiating the notion of all magic, good or bad, the opinion of the Jewsas to the agency by which the miracles were worked is a matter of noimportance; but the circumstance of their admitting that those miracles_were in fact performed_, is certainly curious, and perhaps not quiteimmaterial. 

If you stay in the Holy City long enough to fall into anything likeregular habits of amusement and occupation, and to become, in short, forthe time “a man about town” at Jerusalem, you will necessarily lose theenthusiasm which you may have felt when you trod the sacred soil for thefirst time, and it will then seem almost strange to you to find yourselfso entirely surrounded in all your daily pursuits by the designs andsounds of religion. Your hotel is a monastery, your rooms are cells, thelandlord is a stately abbot, and the waiters are hooded monks. If youwalk out of the town you find yourself on the Mount of Olives, or in theValley of Jehoshaphat, or on the Hill of Evil Counsel. If you mount yourhorse and extend your rambles you will be guided to the wilderness of St. John, or the birthplace of our Saviour. Your club is the great Church ofthe Holy Sepulchre, where everybody meets everybody every day. If youlounge through the town, your Bond Street is the Via Dolorosa, and theobject of your hopeless affections is some maid or matron all forlorn, and sadly shrouded in her pilgrim’s robe. If you would hear music, itmust be the chanting of friars; if you look at pictures, you see virginswith mis-fore-shortened arms, or devils out of drawing, or angelstumbling up the skies in impious perspective. If you would make anypurchases, you must go again to the church doors, and when you inquirefor the manufactures of the place, you find that they consist ofdouble-blessed beads and sanctified shells. These last are the favouritetokens which the pilgrims carry off with them. The shell is graven, orrather scratched, on the white side with a rude drawing of the BlessedVirgin or of the Crucifixion or some other scriptural subject. Havingpassed this stage it goes into the hands of a priest. By him it issubjected to some process for rendering it efficacious against theschemes of our ghostly enemy. The manufacture is then complete, and isdeemed to be fit for use. 

The village of Bethlehem lies prettily couched on the slope of a hill. The sanctuary is a subterranean grotto, and is committed to thejoint-guardianship of the Romans, Greeks, and Armenians, who vie witheach other in adorning it. Beneath an altar gorgeously decorated, andlit with everlasting fires, there stands the low slab of stone whichmarks the holy site of the Nativity; and near to this is a hollow scoopedout of the living rock. Here the infant Jesus was laid. Near the spotof the Nativity is the rock against which the Blessed Virgin was leaningwhen she presented her babe to the adoring shepherds. 

Many of those Protestants who are accustomed to despise traditionconsider that this sanctuary is altogether unscriptural, that a grotto isnot a stable, and that mangers are made of wood. It is perfectly true, however, that the many grottos and caves which are found among the rocksof Judea were formerly used for the reception of cattle. They are soused at this day. I have myself seen grottos appropriated to thispurpose. 

You know what a sad and sombre decorum it is that outwardly reignsthrough the lands oppressed by Moslem sway. The Mahometans make beautytheir prisoner, and enforce such a stern and gloomy morality, or at allevents, such a frightfully close semblance of it, that far and long thewearied traveller may go without catching one glimpse of outwardhappiness. By a strange chance in these latter days it happened that, alone of all the places in the land, this Bethlehem, the native villageof our Lord, escaped the moral yoke of the Mussulmans, and heard again, after ages of dull oppression, the cheering clatter of social freedom, and the voices of laughing girls. It was after an insurrection, whichhad been raised against the authority of Mehemet Ali, that Bethlehem wasfreed from the hateful laws of Asiatic decorum. The Mussulmans of thevillage had taken an active part in the movement, and when Ibrahim hadquelled it, his wrath was still so hot, that he put to death every one ofthe few Mahometans of Bethlehem who had not already fled. The effectproduced upon the Christian inhabitants by the sudden removal of thisrestraint was immense. The village smiled once more. It is true thatsuch sweet freedom could not long endure. Even if the population of theplace should continue to be entirely Christian, the sad decorum of theMussulmans, or rather of the Asiatics, would sooner or later be restoredby the force of opinion and custom. But for a while the sunshine wouldlast, and when I was at Bethlehem, though long after the flight of theMussulmans, the cloud of Moslem propriety had not yet come back to castits cold shadow upon life. When you reach that gladsome village, prayHeaven there still may be heard there the voice of free, innocent girls. It will sound so dearly welcome!

To a Christian, and thoroughbred Englishman, not even the licentiousnesswhich generally accompanies it can compensate for the oppressiveness ofthat horrible outward decorum, which turns the cities and the palaces ofAsia into deserts and gaols. So, I say, when you see and hear them, those romping girls of Bethlehem will gladden your very soul. Distant atfirst, and then nearer and nearer the timid flock will gather around you, with their large burning eyes gravely fixed against yours, so that theysee into your brain; and if you imagine evil against them, they will knowof your ill thought before it is yet well born, and will fly and be gonein the moment. But presently, if you will only look virtuous enough toprevent alarm, and vicious enough to avoid looking silly, the blithemaidens will draw nearer and nearer to you, and soon there will be one, the bravest of the sisters, who will venture right up to your side andtouch the hem of your coat, in playful defiance of the danger, and thenthe rest will follow the daring of their youthful leader, and gatherclose round you, and hold a shrill controversy on the wondrous formationthat you call a hat, and the cunning of the hands that clothed you withcloth so fine; and then growing more profound in their researches, theywill pass from the study of your mere dress to a serious contemplation ofyour stately height, and your nut-brown hair, and the ruddy glow of yourEnglish cheeks. And if they catch a glimpse of your ungloved fingers, then again will they make the air ring with their sweet screams of wonderand amazement, as they compare the fairness of your hand with theirwarmer tints, and even with the hues of your own sunburnt face. Instantly the ringleader of the gentle rioters imagines a new sin; withtremulous boldness she touches, then grasps your hand, and smoothes itgently betwixt her own, and pries curiously into its make and colour, asthough it were silk of Damascus, or shawl of Cashmere. And when they seeyou even then still sage and gentle, the joyous girls will suddenly andscreamingly, and all at once, explain to each other that you are surelyquite harmless and innocent, a lion that makes no spring, a bear thatnever hugs, and upon this faith, one after the other, they will take yourpassive hand, and strive to explain it, and make it a theme and acontroversy. But the one, the fairest and the sweetest of all, is yetthe most timid; she shrinks from the daring deeds of her play-mates, andseeks shelter behind their sleeves, and strives to screen her glowingconsciousness from the eyes that look upon her. But her laughing sisterswill have none of this cowardice; they vow that the fair one _shall_ betheir ’complice, _shall_ share their dangers, _shall_ touch the hand ofthe stranger; they seize her small wrist, and drag her forward by force, and at last, whilst yet she strives to turn away, and to cover up herwhole soul under the folds of downcast eyelids, they vanquish her utmoststrength, they vanquish your utmost modesty, and marry her hand to yours. The quick pulse springs from her fingers, and throbs like a whisper uponyour listening palm. For an instant her large timid eyes are upon you;in an instant they are shrouded again, and there comes a blush soburning, that the frightened girls stay their shrill laughter, as thoughthey had played too perilously, and harmed their gentle sister. Amoment, and all with a sudden intelligence turn away and fly like deer, yet soon again like deer they wheel round and return, and stand, and gazeupon the danger, until they grow brave once more. 

“I regret to observe, that the removal of the moral restraint imposed bythe presence of the Mahometan inhabitants has led to a certain degree ofboisterous, though innocent, levity in the bearing of the Christians, andmore especially in the demeanour of those who belong to the youngerportion of the female population; but I feel assured that a more thoroughknowledge of the principles of their own pure religion will speedilyrestore these young people to habits of propriety, even more strict thanthose which were imposed upon them by the authority of their Mahometanbrethren. ” Bah! thus you might chant, if you chose; but loving thetruth, you will not so disown sweet Bethlehem; you will not disown ordissemble your right good hearty delight when you find, as though in adesert, this gushing spring of fresh and joyous girlhood. 

CHAPTER XVII—THE DESERT

Gaza is upon the verge of the Desert, to which it stands in the samerelation as a seaport to the sea. It is there that you _charter_ yourcamels (“the ships of the Desert”), and lay in your stores for thevoyage. 

These preparations kept me in the town for some days. Dislikingrestraint, I declined making myself the guest of the Governor (as it isusual and proper to do), but took up my quarters at the caravanserai, or“khan, ” as they call it in that part of Asia. 

Dthemetri had to make the arrangements for my journey, and in order toarm himself with sufficient authority for doing all that was required, hefound it necessary to put himself in communication with the Governor. The result of this diplomatic intercourse was that the Governor, with histrain of attendants, came to me one day at my caravanserai, and formallycomplained that Dthemetri had grossly insulted him. I was shocked atthis, for the man was always attentive and civil to me, and I wasdisgusted at the idea of his having been rewarded with insult. Dthemetriwas present when the complaint was made, and I angrily asked him whetherit was true that he had really insulted the Governor, and what the deucehe meant by it. This I asked with the full certainty that Dthemetri, asa matter of course, would deny the charge, would swear that a “wrongconstruction had been put upon his words, and that nothing was furtherfrom his thoughts, ” &c. &c. , after the manner of the parliamentarypeople, but to my surprise he very plainly answered that he certainly_had_ insulted the Governor, and that rather grossly, but, he said, itwas quite necessary to do this in order to “strike terror and inspirerespect. ” “Terror and respect! What on earth do you mean by thatnonsense?”—“Yes, but without striking terror and inspiring respect, he(Dthemetri) would never be able to force on the arrangements for myjourney, and vossignoria would be kept at Gaza for a month!” This wouldhave been awkward, and certainly I could not deny that poor Dthemetri hadsucceeded in his odd plan of inspiring respect, for at the very time thatthis explanation was going on in Italian the Governor seemed more thanever, and more anxiously, disposed to overwhelm me with assurances ofgoodwill, and proffers of his best services. All this kindness, orpromise of kindness, I naturally received with courtesy—a courtesy thatgreatly perturbed Dthemetri, for he evidently feared that my civilitywould undo all the good that his insults had achieved. 

You will find, I think, that one of the greatest draw-backs to thepleasure of travelling in Asia is the being obliged, more or less, tomake your way by bullying. It is true that your own lips are not soiledby the utterance of all the mean words that are spoken for you, and thatyou don’t even know of the sham threats, and the false promises, and thevainglorious boasts, put forth by your dragoman; but now and then therehappens some incident of the sort which I have just been mentioning, which forces you to believe, or suspect, that your dragoman is habituallyfighting your battles for you in a way that you can hardly bear to thinkof. 

A caravanserai is not ill adapted to the purposes for which it is meant. It forms the four sides of a large quadrangular court. The ground flooris used for warehouses, the first floor for guests, and the open courtfor the temporary reception of the camels, as well as for the loading andunloading of their burthens, and the transaction of mercantile businessgenerally. The apartments used for the guests are small cells openinginto a corridor, which runs round the four sides of the court. 

Whilst I lay near the opening of my cell looking down into the courtbelow, there arrived from the Desert a caravan, that is, a largeassemblage of travellers. It consisted chiefly of Moldavian pilgrims, who to make their good work even more than complete had begun by visitingthe shrine of the Virgin in Egypt, and were now going on to Jerusalem. They had been overtaken in the Desert by a gale of wind, which so drovethe sand and raised up such mountains before them, that their journey hadbeen terribly perplexed and obstructed, and their provisions (includingwater, the most precious of all) had been exhausted long before theyreached the end of their toilsome march. They were sadly wayworn. Thearrival of the caravan drew many and various groups into the court. There was the Moldavian pilgrim with his sable dress and cap of fur andheavy masses of bushy hair; the Turk, with his various and brilliantgarments; the Arab, superbly stalking under his striped blanket, thathung like royalty upon his stately form; the jetty Ethiopian in hisslavish frock; the sleek, smooth-faced scribe with his comely pelisse, and his silver ink-box stuck in like a dagger at his girdle. And mingledwith these were the camels, some standing, some kneeling and beingunladen, some twisting round their long necks, and gently stealing thestraw from out of their own pack-saddles. 

In a couple of days I was ready to start. The way of providing for thepassage of the Desert is this: there is an agent in the town who keepshimself in communication with some of the desert Arabs that are hoveringwithin a day’s journey of the place. A party of these upon beingguaranteed against seizure or other ill-treatment at the hands of theGovernor come into the town, bringing with them the number of camelswhich you require, and then they stipulate for a certain sum to take youto the place of your destination in a given time. The agreement whichthey thus enter into includes a safe conduct through their country aswell as the hire of the camels. According to the contract made with me Iwas to reach Cairo within ten days from the commencement of the journey. I had four camels, one for my baggage, one for each of my servants, andone for myself. Four Arabs, the owners of the camels, came with me onfoot. My stores were a small soldier’s tent, two bags of dried breadbrought from the convent at Jerusalem, and a couple of bottles of winefrom the same source, two goat-skins filled with water, tea, sugar, acold tongue, and (of all things in the world) a jar of Irish butter whichMysseri had purchased from some merchant. There was also a small sack ofcharcoal, for the greater part of the Desert through which we were topass is destitute of fuel. 

The camel kneels to receive her load, and for a while she will allow thepacking to go on with silent resignation; but when she begins to suspectthat her master is putting more than a just burthen upon her poor humpshe turns round her supple neck and looks sadly upon the increasing load, and then gently remonstrates against the wrong with the sigh of a patientwife. If sighs will not move you, she can weep. You soon learn to pity, and soon to love, her for the sake of her gentle and womanish ways. 

You cannot, of course, put an English or any other riding saddle upon theback of the camel, but your quilt or carpet, or whatever you carry forthe purpose of lying on at night, is folded and fastened on to thepack-saddle upon the top of the hump, and on this you ride, or rathersit. You sit as a man sits on a chair when he sits astride and faces theback of it. I made an improvement on this plan. I had my Englishstirrups strapped on to the cross-bars of the pack-saddle, and thus bygaining rest for my dangling legs, and gaining too the power of varyingmy position more easily than I could otherwise have done, I added verymuch to my comfort. Don’t forget to do as I did. 

The camel, like the elephant, is one of the old-fashioned sort of animalsthat still walk along upon the (now nearly exploded) plan of the ancientbeasts that lived before the Flood. She moves forward both her near legsat the same time, and then awkwardly swings round her off shoulder andhaunch so as to repeat the manoeuvre on that side. Her pace, therefore, is an odd, disjointed and disjoining, sort of movement that is ratherdisagreeable at first, but you soon grow reconciled to it. The height towhich you are raised is of great advantage to you in passing the burningsands of the Desert, for the air at such a distance from the ground ismuch cooler and more lively than that which circulates beneath. 

For several miles beyond Gaza the land, which had been plentifullywatered by the rains of the last week, was covered with rich verdure, andthickly jewelled with meadow flowers so fresh and fragrant, that I beganto grow almost uneasy, to fancy that the very Desert was receding beforeme, and that the long-desired adventure of passing its “burning sands”was to end in a mere ride across a field. But as I advanced the truecharacter of the country began to display itself with sufficientclearness to dispel my apprehensions, and before the close of my firstday’s journey I had the gratification of finding that I was surrounded onall sides by a tract of real sand, and had nothing at all to complain ofexcept that there peeped forth at intervals a few isolated blades ofgrass, and many of those stunted shrubs which are the accustomed food ofthe camel. 

Before sunset I came up with an encampment of Arabs (the encampment fromwhich my camels had been brought), and my tent was pitched amongsttheirs. I was now amongst the true Bedouins. Almost every man of thisrace closely resembles his brethren. Almost every man has large andfinely-formed features; but his face is so thoroughly stripped of flesh, and the white folds from his headgear fall down by his haggard cheeks somuch in the burial fashion, that he looks quite sad and ghastly. Hislarge dark orbs roll slowly and solemnly over the white of his deep-seteyes; his countenance shows painful thought and long-suffering, thesuffering of one fallen from a high estate. His gait is strangelymajestic, and he marches along with his simple blanket as though he werewearing the purple. His common talk is a series of piercing screams andcries, {29} more painful to the ear than the most excruciating fine musicthat I ever endured. 

The Bedouin women are not treasured up like the wives and daughters ofother Orientals, and indeed they seemed almost entirely free from therestraints imposed by jealousy. The feint which they made of concealingtheir faces from me was always slight. They never, I think, wore the_yashmak_ properly fixed. When they first saw me they used to hold up apart of their drapery with one hand across their faces, but they seldompersevered very steadily in subjecting me to this privation. Unhappybeings! they were sadly plain. The awful haggardness that gave somethingof character to the faces of the men was sheer ugliness in the poorwomen. It is a great shame, but the truth is that, except when we referto the beautiful devotion of the mother to her child, all the fine thingswe say and think about woman apply only to those who are tolerablygood-looking or graceful. These Arab women were so plain and clumsy, that they seemed to me to be fit for nothing but another and a betterworld. They may have been good women enough so far as relates to theexercise of the minor virtues, but they had so grossly neglected theprime duty of looking pretty in this transitory life, that I could not atall forgive them. They seemed to feel the weight of their guilt, and tobe truly and humbly penitent. I had the complete command of theiraffections, for at any moment I could make their young hearts bound andtheir old hearts jump by offering a handful of tobacco, and yet, believeme, it was not in the first _soirée_ that my store of Latakia wasexhausted. 

The Bedouin women have no religion. This is partly the cause of theirclumsiness. Perhaps if from Christian girls they would learn how topray, their souls might become more gentle, and their limbs be clothedwith grace. You who are going into their country have a direct personalinterest in knowing something about “Arab hospitality”; but the deuce ofit is, that the poor fellows with whom I have happened to pitch my tentwere scarcely ever in a condition to exercise that magnanimous virtuewith much _éclat_. Indeed, Mysseri’s canteen generally enabled me tooutdo my hosts in the matter of entertainment. They were alwayscourteous, however, and were never backward in offering me the _youart_, a kind of whey, which is the principal delicacy to be found amongst thewandering tribes. 

Practically, I think, Childe Harold would have found it a dreadful boreto make “the Desert his dwelling-place, ” for at all events, if he adoptedthe life of the Arabs he would have tasted no solitude. The tents arepartitioned, not so as to divide the Childe and the “fair spirit” who ishis “minister” from the rest of the world, but so as to separate thetwenty or thirty brown men that sit screaming in the one compartment fromthe fifty or sixty brown women and children that scream and squeak in theother. If you adopt the Arab life for the sake of seclusion you will behorribly disappointed, for you will find yourself in perpetual contactwith a mass of hot fellow-creatures. It is true that all who are inmatesof the same tent are related to each other, but I am not quite sure thatthat circumstance adds much to the charm of such a life. At all events, before you finally determine to become an Arab try a gentle experiment. Take one of those small, shabby houses in May Fair, and shut yourself upin it with forty or fifty shrill cousins for a couple of weeks in July. 

In passing the Desert you will find your Arabs wanting to start and torest at all sorts of odd times. They like, for instance, to be off atone in the morning, and to rest during the whole of the afternoon. Youmust not give way to their wishes in this respect. I tried their planonce, and found it very harassing and unwholesome. An ordinary tent cangive you very little protection against heat, for the fire strikesfiercely through single canvas, and you soon find that whilst you liecrouching and striving to hide yourself from the blazing face of the sun, his power is harder to bear than it is where you boldly defy him from theairy heights of your camel. 

It had been arranged with my Arabs that they were to bring with them allthe food which they would want for themselves during the passage of theDesert, but as we rested at the end of the first day’s journey by theside of an Arab encampment, my camel men found all that they required forthat night in the tents of their own brethren. On the evening of thesecond day, however, just before we encamped for the night, my four Arabscame to Dthemetri, and formally announced that they had not brought withthem one atom of food, and that they looked entirely to my supplies fortheir daily bread. This was awkward intelligence. We were now just twodays deep in the Desert, and I had brought with me no more bread thanmight be reasonably required for myself and my European attendants. Ibelieved at the moment (for it seemed likely enough) that the men hadreally mistaken the terms of the arrangement, and feeling that the boreof being put upon half-rations would be a less evil (and even to myself aless inconvenience) than the starvation of my Arabs, I at once toldDthemetri to assure them that my bread should be equally shared with all. Dthemetri, however, did not approve of this concession; he assured mequite positively that the Arabs thoroughly understood the agreement, andthat if they were now without food they had wilfully brought themselvesinto this strait for the wretched purpose of bettering their bargain bythe value of a few paras’ worth of bread. This suggestion made me lookat the affair in a new light. I should have been glad enough to put upwith the slight privation to which my concession would subject me, andcould have borne to witness the semi-starvation of poor Dthemetri with afine, philosophical calm, but it seemed to me that the scheme, if schemeit were, had something of audacity in it, and was well enough calculatedto try the extent of my softness. I well knew the danger of allowingsuch a trial to result in a conclusion that I was one who might be easilymanaged; and therefore, after thoroughly satisfying myself fromDthemetri’s clear and repeated assertions that the Arabs had reallyunderstood the arrangement, I determined that they should not now violateit by taking advantage of my position in the midst of their big Desert, so I desired Dthemetri to tell them that they should touch no bread ofmine. We stopped, and the tent was pitched. The Arabs came to me, andprayed loudly for bread. I refused them. 

“Then we die!”

“God’s will be done!”

I gave the Arabs to understand that I regretted their perishing byhunger, but that I should bear this calmly, like any other misfortune notmy own, that, in short, I was happily resigned to _their_ fate. The menwould have talked a great deal, but they were under the disadvantage ofaddressing me through a hostile interpreter; they looked hard upon myface, but they found no hope there; so at last they retired as theypretended, to lay them down and die. 

In about ten minutes from this time I found that the Arabs were busilycooking their bread! Their pretence of having brought no food was false, and was only invented for the purpose of saving it. They had a good bagof meal, which they had contrived to stow away under the baggage upon oneof the camels in such a way as to escape notice. In Europe the detectionof a scheme like this would have occasioned a disagreeable feelingbetween the master and the delinquent, but you would no more recoil froman Oriental on account of a matter of this sort, than in England youwould reject a horse that had tried, and failed, to throw you. Indeed, Ifelt quite good-humouredly towards my Arabs, because they had so woefullyfailed in their wretched attempt, and because, as it turned out, I haddone what was right. They too, poor fellows, evidently began to like meimmensely, on account of the hard-heartedness which had enabled me tobaffle their scheme. 

The Arabs adhere to those ancestral principles of bread-baking which havebeen sanctioned by the experience of ages. The very first baker of breadthat ever lived must have done his work exactly as the Arab does at thisday. He takes some meal and holds it out in the hollow of his hands, whilst his comrade pours over it a few drops of water; he then mashes upthe moistened flour into a paste, which he pulls into small pieces, andthrusts into the embers. His way of baking exactly resembles the craftor mystery of roasting chestnuts as practised by children; there is thesame prudence and circumspection in choosing a good berth for the morsel, the same enterprise and self-sacrificing valour in pulling it out withthe fingers. 

The manner of my daily march was this. At about an hour before dawn Irose and made the most of about a pint of water, which I allowed myselffor washing. Then I breakfasted upon tea and bread. As soon as thebeasts were loaded I mounted my camel and pressed forward. My poorArabs, being on foot, would sometimes moan with fatigue and pray forrest; but I was anxious to enable them to perform their contract forbringing me to Cairo within the stipulated time, and I did not thereforeallow a halt until the evening came. About midday, or soon after, Mysseri used to bring up his camel alongside of mine, and supply me witha piece of bread softened in water (for it was dried hard like board), and also (as long as it lasted) with a piece of the tongue; after thisthere came into my hand (how well I remember it) the little tin cuphalf-filled with wine and water. 

As long as you are journeying in the interior of the Desert you have noparticular point to make for as your resting-place. The endless sandsyield nothing but small stunted shrubs; even these fail after the firsttwo or three days, and from that time you pass over broad plains, youpass over newly-reared hills, you pass through valleys that the storm ofthe last week has dug, and the hills and the valleys are sand, sand, sand, still sand, and only sand, and sand and sand again. The earth isso samely that your eyes turn towards heaven—towards heaven, I mean, inthe sense of sky. You look to the sun, for he is your task-master, andby him you know the measure of the work that you have done, and themeasure of the work that remains for you to do. He comes when you strikeyour tent in the early morning, and then, for the first hour of the dayas you move forward on your camel, he stands at your near side and makesyou know that the whole day’s toil is before you; then for a while, and along while, you see him no more, for you are veiled and shrouded, anddare not look upon the greatness of his glory, but you know where hestrides overhead by the touch of his flaming sword. No words are spoken, but your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, your skin glows, your shouldersache, and for sights you see the pattern and the web of the silk thatveils your eyes and the glare of the outer light. Time labours on; yourskin glows and your shoulders ache, your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, and you see the same pattern in the silk, and the same glare of lightbeyond, but conquering Time marches on, and by-and-by the descending sunhas compassed the heaven, and now softly touches your right arm, andthrows your lank shadow over the sand right along on the way to Persia. Then again you look upon his face, for his power is all veiled in hisbeauty, and the redness of flames has become the redness of roses; thefair, wavy cloud that fled in the morning now comes to his sight oncemore, comes blushing, yet still comes on, comes burning with blushes, yethastens and clings to his side. 

Then arrives your time for resting. The world about you is all your own, and there, where you will, you pitch your solitary tent; there is noliving thing to dispute your choice. When at last the spot had beenfixed upon and we came to a halt, one of the Arabs would touch the chestof my camel and utter at the same time a peculiar gurgling sound. Thebeast instantly understood and obeyed the sign, and slowly sunk under metill she brought her body to a level with the ground, then gladly enoughI alighted. The rest of the camels were unloaded and turned loose tobrowse upon the shrubs of the desert, where shrubs there were, or wherethese failed, to wait for the small quantity of food that was allowedthem out of our stores. 

My servants, helped by the Arabs, busied themselves in pitching the tentand kindling the fire. Whilst this was doing I used to walk away towardsthe east, confiding in the print of my foot as a guide for my return. Apart from the cheering voices of my attendants I could better know andfeel the loneliness of the Desert. The influence of such scenes, however, was not of a softening kind, but filled me rather with a sort ofchildish exultation in the self-sufficiency which enabled me to standthus alone in the wideness of Asia—a short-lived pride, for wherever manwanders he still remains tethered by the chain that links him to hiskind; and so when the night closed around me I began to return, toreturn, as it were, to my own gate. Reaching at last some high ground Icould see, and see with delight, the fire of our small encampment, andwhen at last I regained the spot it seemed to me a very home that hadsprung up for me in the midst of these solitudes. My Arabs were busywith their bread; Mysseri rattling tea-cups; the little kettle, with herodd old-maidish looks, sat humming away old songs about England; and twoor three yards from the fire my tent stood prim and tight, with openportal, and with welcoming look, like “the old arm-chair” of our lyrist’s“sweet Lady Anne. ”

At the beginning of my journey the night breeze blew coldly; when thathappened, the dry sand was heaped up outside round the skirts of thetent, and so the wind, that everywhere else could sweep as he listedalong those dreary plains, was forced to turn aside in his course andmake way, as he ought, for the Englishman. Then within my tent therewere heaps of luxuries—dining-rooms, dressing-rooms, libraries, bedrooms, drawing-rooms, oratories, all crowded into the space of a hearthrug. Thefirst night, I remember, with my books and maps about me, I wanted light;they brought me a taper, and immediately from out of the silent Desertthere rushed in a flood of life unseen before. Monsters of moths, of allshapes and hues, that never before perhaps had looked upon the shining ofa flame, now madly thronged into my tent, and dashed through the fire ofthe candle till they fairly extinguished it with their burning limbs. Those who had failed in attaining this martyrdom suddenly became serious, and clung despondingly to the canvas. 

By-and-by there was brought to me the fragrant tea and big masses ofscorched and scorching toast, and the butter that had come all the way tome in this Desert of Asia from out of that poor, dear, starving Ireland. I feasted like a king, like four kings, like a boy in the fourth form. 

When the cold, sullen morning dawned, and my people began to load thecamels, I always felt loth to give back to the waste this little spot ofground that had glowed for a while with the cheerfulness of a humandwelling. One by one the cloaks, the saddles, the baggage, the hundredthings that strewed the ground and made it look so familiar—all thesewere taken away and laid upon the camels. A speck in the broad tracts ofAsia remained still impressed with the mark of patent portmanteaus andthe heels of London boots; the embers of the fire lay black and cold uponthe sand, and these were the signs we left. 

My tent was spared to the last, but when all else was ready for the startthen came its fall; the pegs were drawn, the canvas shivered, and in lessthan a minute there was nothing that remained of my genial home but onlya pole and a bundle. The encroaching Englishman was off, and instantupon the fall of the canvas, like an owner who had waited and watched, the genius of the Desert stalked in. 

To servants, as I suppose of any other Europeans not much accustomed toamuse themselves by fancy or memory, it often happens that after a fewdays journeying the loneliness of the Desert will become frightfullyoppressive. Upon my poor fellows the access of melancholy came heavy, and all at once, as a blow from above; they bent their necks, and bore itas best they could, but their joy was great on the fifth day when we cameto an oasis called Gatieh, for here we found encamped a caravan (that is, an assemblage of travellers) from Cairo. The Orientals living in citiesnever pass the Desert except in this way; many will wait for weeks, andeven for months, until a sufficient number of persons can be found readyto undertake the journey at the same time—until the flock of sheep is bigenough to fancy itself a match for wolves. They could not, I think, really secure themselves against any serious danger by this contrivance, for though they have arms, they are so little accustomed to use them, andso utterly unorganised, that they never could make good their resistanceto robbers of the slightest respectability. It is not of the Bedouinsthat such travellers are afraid, for the safe conduct granted by thechief of the ruling tribe is never, I believe, violated, but it is saidthat there are deserters and scamps of various sorts who hover about theskirts of the Desert, particularly on the Cairo side, and are anxious tosucceed to the property of any poor devils whom they may find more weakand defenceless than themselves. 

These people from Cairo professed to be amazed at the ludicrousdisproportion between their numerical forces and mine. They could notunderstand, and they wanted to know, by what strange privilege it is thatan Englishman with a brace of pistols and a couple of servants ridessafely across the Desert, whilst they, the natives of the neighbouringcities, are forced to travel in troops, or rather in herds. One of themgot a few minutes of private conversation with Dthemetri, and ventured toask him anxiously whether the English did not travel under the protectionof evil demons. I had previously known (from Methley, I think, who hadtravelled in Persia) that this notion, so conducive to the safety of ourcountrymen, is generally prevalent amongst Orientals. It owes itsorigin, partly to the strong wilfulness of the English gentleman (whichnot being backed by any visible authority, either civil or military, seems perfectly superhuman to the soft Asiatic), but partly too to themagic of the banking system, by force of which the wealthy traveller willmake all his journeys without carrying a handful of coin, and yet when hearrives at a city will rain down showers of gold. The theory is, thatthe English traveller has committed some sin against God and hisconscience, and that for this the evil spirit has hold of him, and driveshim from his home like a victim of the old Grecian furies, and forces himto travel over countries far and strange, and most chiefly over desertsand desolate places, and to stand upon the sites of cities that once wereand are now no more, and to grope among the tombs of dead men. Oftenenough there is something of truth in this notion; often enough thewandering Englishman is guilty (if guilt it be) of some pride orambition, big or small, imperial or parochial, which being offended hasmade the lone place more tolerable than ballrooms to him, a sinner. 

I can understand the sort of amazement of the Orientals at the scantinessof the retinue with which an Englishman passes the Desert, for I wassomewhat struck myself when I saw one of my countrymen making his wayacross the wilderness in this simple style. At first there was a meremoving speck on the horizon. My party of course became all alive withexcitement, and there were many surmises. Soon it appeared that threeladen camels were approaching, and that two of them carried riders. In alittle while we saw that one of the riders wore the European dress, andat last the travellers were pronounced to be an English gentleman and hisservant. By their side there were a couple, I think, of Arabs on foot, and this was the whole party. 

You, you love sailing; in returning from a cruise to the English coastyou see often enough a fisherman’s humble boat far away from all shores, with an ugly black sky above and an angry sea beneath. You watch thegrizzly old man at the helm carrying his craft with strange skill throughthe turmoil of waters, and the boy, supple-limbed, yet weather-wornalready, and with steady eyes that look through the blast, you see himunderstanding commandments from the jerk of his father’s white eyebrow, now belaying and now letting go, now scrunching himself down into mereballast, or baling out death with a pipkin. Stale enough is the sight, and yet when I see it I always stare anew, and with a kind of Titanicexultation, because that a poor boat with the brain of a man and thehands of a boy on board can match herself so bravely against black heavenand ocean. Well, so when you have travelled for days and days over anEastern desert without meeting the likeness of a human being, and then atlast see an English shooting-jacket and his servant come listlesslyslouching along from out of the forward horizon, you stare at the wideunproportion between this slender company and the boundless plains ofsand through which they are keeping their way. 

This Englishman, as I afterwards found, was a military man returning tohis country from India, and crossing the Desert at this part in order togo through Palestine. As for me, I had come pretty straight fromEngland, and so here we met in the wilderness at about half-way from ourrespective starting-points. As we approached each other it became withme a question whether we should speak. I thought it likely that thestranger would accost me, and in the event of his doing so I was quiteready to be as sociable and chatty as I could be according to my nature;but still I could not think of anything particular that I had to say tohim. Of course, among civilised people the not having anything to say isno excuse at all for not speaking, but I was shy and indolent, and I feltno great wish to stop and talk like a morning visitor in the midst ofthose broad solitudes. The traveller perhaps felt as I did, for exceptthat we lifted our hands to our caps and waved our arms in courtesy, wepassed each other as if we had passed in Bond Street. Our attendants, however, were not to be cheated of the delight that they felt in speakingto new listeners and hearing fresh voices once more. The masters, therefore, had no sooner passed each other than their respective servantsquietly stopped and entered into conversation. As soon as my camel foundthat her companions were not following her she caught the social feelingand refused to go on. I felt the absurdity of the situation, anddetermined to accost the stranger if only to avoid the awkwardness ofremaining stuck fast in the Desert whilst our servants were amusingthemselves. When with this intent I turned round my camel I found thatthe gallant officer who had passed me by about thirty or forty yards wasexactly in the same predicament as myself. I put my now willing camel inmotion and rode up towards the stranger, who seeing this followed myexample and came forward to meet me. He was the first to speak. He wasmuch too courteous to address me as if he admitted the possibility of mywishing to accost him from any feeling of mere sociability orcivilian-like love of vain talk. On the contrary, he at once attributedmy advances to a laudable wish of acquiring statistical information, andaccordingly, when we got within speaking distance, he said, “I dare sayyou wish to know how the plague is going on at Cairo?” And then he wenton to say, he regretted that his information did not enable him to giveme in numbers a perfectly accurate statement of the daily deaths. Heafterwards talked pleasantly enough upon other and less ghastly subjects. I thought him manly and intelligent, a worthy one of the few thousandstrong Englishmen to whom the empire of India is committed. 

The night after the meeting with the people of the caravan, Dthemetri, alarmed by their warnings, took upon himself to keep watch all night inthe tent. No robbers came except a jackal, that poked his nose into mytent from some motive of rational curiosity. Dthemetri did not shoot himfor fear of waking me. These brutes swarm in every part of Syria, andthere were many of them even in the midst of the void sands, that wouldseem to give such poor promise of food. I can hardly tell what prey theycould be hoping for, unless it were that they might find now and then thecarcass of some camel that had died on the journey. They do not marshalthemselves into great packs like the wild dogs of Eastern cities, butfollow their prey in families, like the place-hunters of Europe. Theirvoices are frightfully like to the shouts and cries of human beings. Ifyou lie awake in your tent at night you are almost continually hearingsome hungry family as it sweeps along in full cry. You hear the exultingscream with which the sagacious dam first winds the carrion, and theshrill response of the unanimous cubs as they sniff the tainted air, “Wha! wha! wha! wha! wha! wha! Whose gift is it in, mamma?”

Once during this passage my Arabs lost their way among the hills of loosesand that surrounded us, but after a while we were lucky enough torecover our right line of march. The same day we fell in with a Sheik, the head of a family, that actually dwells at no great distance from thispart of the Desert during nine months of the year. The man carried amatchlock, of which he was very proud. We stopped and sat down andrested awhile for the sake of a little talk. There was much that Ishould have liked to ask this man, but he could not understandDthemetri’s language, and the process of getting at his knowledge bydouble interpretation through my Arabs was unsatisfactory. I discovered, however (and my Arabs knew of that fact), that this man and his familylived habitually for nine months of the year without touching or seeingeither bread or water. The stunted shrub growing at intervals throughthe sand in this part of the Desert enables the camel mares to yield alittle milk, which furnishes the sole food and drink of their owner andhis people. During the other three months (the hottest of the months, Isuppose) even this resource fails, and then the Sheik and his people areforced to pass into another district. You would ask me why the manshould not remain always in that district which supplies him with waterduring three months of the year, but I don’t know enough of Arab politicsto answer the question. The Sheik was not a good specimen of the effectproduced by the diet to which he is subjected. He was very small, veryspare, and sadly shrivelled, a poor, over-roasted snipe, a mere cinder ofa man. I made him sit down by my side, and gave him a piece of bread anda cup of water from out of my goat-skins. This was not very temptingdrink to look at, for it had become turbid, and was deeply reddened bysome colouring matter contained in the skins, but it kept its sweetness, and tasted like a strong decoction of russia leather. The Sheik sippedthis, drop by drop, with ineffable relish, and rolled his eyes solemnlyround between every draught, as though the drink were the drink of theProphet, and had come from the seventh heaven. 

An inquiry about distances led to the discovery that this Sheik had neverheard of the division of time into hours; my Arabs themselves, I think, were rather surprised at this. 

About this part of my journey I saw the likeness of a fresh-water lake. I saw, as it seemed, a broad sheet of calm water, that stretched far andfair towards the south, stretching deep into winding creeks, and hemmedin by jutting promontories, and shelving smooth off towards the shallowside. On its bosom the reflected fire of the sun lay playing, andseeming to float upon waters deep and still. 

Though I knew of the cheat, it was not till the spongy foot of my camelhad almost trodden in the seeming waters that I could undeceive my eyes, for the shore-line was quite true and natural. I soon saw the cause ofthe phantasm. A sheet of water heavily impregnated with salts had filledthis great hollow, and when dried up by evaporation had left a whitesaline deposit, that exactly marked the space which the waters hadcovered, and thus sketched a good shore-line. The minute crystals of thesalt sparkled in the sun, and so looked like the face of a lake that iscalm and smooth. 

The pace of the camel is irksome, and makes your shoulders and loins achefrom the peculiar way in which you are obliged to suit yourself to themovements of the beast, but you soon of course become inured to this, andafter the first two days this way of travelling became so familiar to me, that (poor sleeper as I am) I now and then slumbered for some momentstogether on the back of my camel. On the fifth day of my journey the airabove lay dead, and all the whole earth that I could reach with my utmostsight and keenest listening was still and lifeless as some dispeopled andforgotten world that rolls round and round in the heavens through wastedfloods of light. The sun growing fiercer and fiercer shone down moremightily now than ever on me he shone before, and as I dropped my headunder his fire, and closed my eyes against the glare that surrounded me, I slowly fell asleep, for how many minutes or moments I cannot tell, butafter a while I was gently awakened by a peal of church bells, my nativebells, the innocent bells of Marlen, that never before sent forth theirmusic beyond the Blaygon hills! My first idea naturally was, that Istill remained fast under the power of a dream. I roused myself and drewaside the silk that covered my eyes, and plunged my bare face into thelight. Then at least I was well enough wakened, but still those oldMarlen bells rung on, not ringing for joy, but properly, prosily, steadily, merrily ringing “for church. ” After a while the sound diedaway slowly. It happened that neither I nor any of my party had a watchby which to measure the exact time of its lasting, but it seemed to methat about ten minutes had passed before the bells ceased. I attributedthe effect to the great heat of the sun, the perfect dryness of the clearair through which I moved, and the deep stillness of all around me. Itseemed to me that these causes, by occasioning a great tension, andconsequent susceptibility, of the hearing organs had rendered them liableto tingle under the passing touch of some mere memory that must haveswept across my brain in a moment of sleep. Since my return to Englandit has been told me that like sounds have been heard at sea, and that thesailor becalmed under a vertical sun in the midst of the wide ocean haslistened in trembling wonder to the chime of his own village bells. 

At this time I kept a poor shabby pretence of a journal, which justenabled me to know the day of the month and the week according to theEuropean calendar, and when in my tent at night I got out my pocket-bookI found that the day was Sunday, and roughly allowing for the differenceof time in this longitude, I concluded that at the moment of my hearingthat strange peal the church-going bells of Marlen must have beenactually calling the prim congregation of the parish to morning prayer. The coincidence amused me faintly, but I could not pluck up the leasthope that the effect which I had experienced was anything other than anillusion, an illusion liable to be explained (as every illusion is inthese days) by some of the philosophers who guess at Nature’s riddles. It would have been sweeter to believe that my kneeling mother by somepious enchantment had asked, and found, this spell to rouse me from myscandalous forgetfulness of God’s holy day, but my fancy was too weak tocarry a faith like that. Indeed, the vale through which the bells ofMarlen send their song is a highly respectable vale, and its people (saveone, two, or three) are wholly unaddicted to the practice of magicalarts. 

After the fifth day of my journey I no longer travelled over shiftinghills, but came upon a dead level, a dead level bed of sand, quite hard, and studded with small shining pebbles. 

The heat grew fierce; there was no valley nor hollow, no hill, no mound, no shadow of hill nor of mound, by which I could mark the way I wasmaking. Hour by hour I advanced, and saw no change—I was still the verycentre of a round horizon; hour by hour I advanced, and still there wasthe same, and the same, and the same—the same circle of flaming sky—thesame circle of sand still glaring with light and fire. Over all theheaven above, over all the earth beneath, there was no visible power thatcould balk the fierce will of the sun: “he rejoiced as a strong man torun a race; his going forth was from the end of the heaven, and hiscircuit unto the ends of it; and there was nothing hid from the heatthereof. ” From pole to pole, and from the east to the west, hebrandished his fiery sceptre as though he had usurped all heaven andearth. As he bid the soft Persian in ancient times, so now, and fiercelytoo, he bid me bow down and worship him; so now in his pride he seemed tocommand me, and say, “Thou shalt have none other gods but me. ” I was allalone before him. There were these two pitted together, and face toface—the mighty sun for one, and for the other this poor, pale, solitaryself of mine, that I always carry about with me. 

But on the eighth day, and before I had yet turned away from Jehovah forthe glittering god of the Persians, there appeared a dark line upon theedge of the forward horizon, and soon the line deepened into a delicatefringe, that sparkled here and there as though it were sewn withdiamonds. There, then, before me were the gardens and the minarets ofEgypt and the mighty works of the Nile, and I (the eternal Ego that Iam!)—I had lived to see, and I saw them. 

When evening came I was still within the confines of the Desert, and mytent was pitched as usual; but one of my Arabs stalked away rapidlytowards the west, without telling me of the errand on which he was bent. After a while he returned; he had toiled on a graceful service; he hadtravelled all the way on to the border of the living world, and broughtme back for token an ear of rice, full, fresh, and green. 

The next day I entered upon Egypt, and floated along (for the delight wasas the delight of bathing) through green wavy fields of rice, andpastures fresh and plentiful, and dived into the cold verdure of grovesand gardens, and quenched my hot eyes in shade, as though in deep, rushing waters. 

CHAPTER XVIII—CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE {30}

Cairo and plague! During the whole time of my stay the plague was somaster of the city, and showed itself so staringly in every street andevery alley, that I can’t now affect to dissociate the two ideas. 

When coming from the Desert I rode through a village which lies near tothe city on the eastern side, there approached me with busy face andearnest gestures a personage in the Turkish dress. His long flowingbeard gave him rather a majestic look, but his briskness of manner, andhis visible anxiety to accost me, seemed strange in an Oriental. The manin fact was French, or of French origin, and his object was to warn me ofthe plague, and prevent me from entering the city. 

“Arrêtez-vous, monsieur, je vous en prie—arrêtez-vous; il ne faut pasentrer dans la ville; la peste y règne partout. ”

“Oui, je sais, {31} mais—”

“Mais monsieur, je dis la peste—la peste; c’est de LA PESTE, qu’il estquestion. ”

“Oui, je sais, mais—”

“Mais monsieur, je dis encore LA PESTE—LA PESTE. Je vous conjure de nepas entrer dans la ville—vous seriez dans une ville empestée. ”

“Oui, je sais, mais—”

“Mais monsieur, je dois donc vous avertir tout bonnement que si vousentrez dans la ville, vous serez—enfin vous serez COMPROMIS!” {32}

“Oui, je sais, mais—”

The Frenchman was at last convinced that it was vain to reason with amere Englishman, who could not understand what it was to be“compromised. ” I thanked him most sincerely for his kindly meantwarning; in hot countries it is very unusual indeed for a man to go outin the glare of the sun and give free advice to a stranger. 

When I arrived at Cairo I summoned Osman Effendi, who was, as I knew, theowner of several houses, and would be able to provide me with apartments. He had no difficulty in doing this, for there was not one Europeantraveller in Cairo besides myself. Poor Osman! he met me with asorrowful countenance, for the fear of the plague sat heavily on hissoul. He seemed as if he felt that he was doing wrong in lending me aresting-place, and he betrayed such a listlessness about temporalmatters, as one might look for in a man who believed that his days werenumbered. He caught me too soon after my arrival coming out from thepublic baths, {33} and from that time forward he was sadly afraid of me, for he shared the opinions of Europeans with respect to the effect ofcontagion. 

Osman’s history is a curious one. He was a Scotchman born, and when veryyoung, being then a drummer-boy, he landed in Egypt with Fraser’s force. He was taken prisoner, and according to Mahometan custom, the alternativeof death or the Koran was offered to him; he did not choose death, andtherefore went through the ceremonies which were necessary for turninghim into a good Mahometan. But what amused me most in his history wasthis, that very soon after having embraced Islam he was obliged inpractice to become curious and discriminating in his new faith, to makewar upon Mahometan dissenters, and follow the orthodox standard of theProphet in fierce campaigns against the Wahabees, who are the Unitariansof the Mussulman world. The Wahabees were crushed, and Osman returninghome in triumph from his holy wars, began to flourish in the world. Heacquired property, and became _effendi_, or gentleman. At the time of myvisit to Cairo he seemed to be much respected by his brother Mahometans, and gave pledge of his sincere alienation from Christianity by keeping acouple of wives. He affected the same sort of reserve in mentioning themas is generally shown by Orientals. He invited me, indeed, to see hisharem, but he made both his wives bundle out before I was admitted. Hefelt, as it seemed to me, that neither of them would bear criticism, andI think that this idea, rather than any motive of sincere jealousy, induced him to keep them out of sight. The rooms of the harem remindedme of an English nursery rather than of a Mahometan paradise. One is aptto judge of a woman before one sees her by the air of elegance orcoarseness with which she surrounds her home; I judged Osman’s wives bythis test, and condemned them both. But the strangest feature in Osman’scharacter was his inextinguishable nationality. In vain they had broughthim over the seas in early boyhood; in vain had he suffered captivity, conversion, circumcision; in vain they had passed him through fire intheir Arabian campaigns, they could not cut away or burn out poor Osman’sinborn love of all that was Scotch; in vain men called him Effendi; invain he swept along in eastern robes; in vain the rival wives adorned hisharem: the joy of his heart still plainly lay in this, that he had threeshelves of books, and that the books were thoroughbred Scotch—theEdinburgh this, the Edinburgh that, and above all, I recollect, he pridedhimself upon the “Edinburgh Cabinet Library. ”

The fear of the plague is its forerunner. It is likely enough that atthe time of my seeing poor Osman the deadly taint was beginning to creepthrough his veins, but it was not till after I had left Cairo that he wasvisibly stricken. He died. 

As soon as I had seen all that I wanted to see in Cairo and in theneighbourhood I wished to make my escape from a city that lay under theterrible curse of the plague, but Mysseri fell ill, in consequence, Ibelieve, of the hardships which he had been suffering in my service. After a while he recovered sufficiently to undertake a journey, but thenthere was some difficulty in procuring beasts of burthen, and it was nottill the nineteenth day of my sojourn that I quitted the city. 

During all this time the power of the plague was rapidly increasing. When I first arrived, it was said that the daily number of “accidents” byplague, out of a population of about two hundred thousand, did not exceedfour or five hundred, but before I went away the deaths were reckoned attwelve hundred a day. I had no means of knowing whether the numbers(given out, as I believe they were, by officials) were at all correct, but I could not help knowing that from day to day the number of the deadwas increasing. My quarters were in a street which was one of the chiefthoroughfares of the city. The funerals in Cairo take place betweendaybreak and noon, and as I was generally in my rooms during this part ofthe day, I could form some opinion as to the briskness of the plague. Idon’t mean this for a sly insinuation that I got up every morning withthe sun. It was not so; but the funerals of most people in decentcircumstances at Cairo are attended by singers and howlers, and theperformances of these people woke me in the early morning, and preventedme from remaining in ignorance of what was going on in the street below. 

These funerals were very simply conducted. The bier was a shallow woodentray, carried upon a light and weak wooden frame. The tray had, ingeneral, no lid, but the body was more or less hidden from view by ashawl or scarf. The whole was borne upon the shoulders of men, whocontrived to cut along with their burthen at a great pace. Two or threesingers generally preceded the bier; the howlers (who are paid for theirvocal labours) followed after, and last of all came such of the deadman’s friends and relations as could keep up with such a rapidprocession; these, especially the women, would get terribly blown, andwould straggle back into the rear; many were fairly “beaten off. ” Inever observed any appearance of mourning in the mourners: the pace wastoo severe for any solemn affectation of grief. 

When first I arrived at Cairo the funerals that daily passed under mywindows were many, but still there were frequent and long intervalswithout a single howl. Every day, however (except one, when I fanciedthat I observed a diminution of funerals), these intervals became lessfrequent and shorter, and at last, the passing of the howlers from morntill noon was almost incessant. I believe that about one-half of thewhole people was carried off by this visitation. The Orientals, however, have more quiet fortitude than Europeans under afflictions of this sort, and they never allow the plague to interfere with their religious usages. I rode one day round the great burial-ground. The tombs are strewed overa great expanse, among the vast mountains of rubbish (the accumulationsof many centuries) which surround the city. The ground, unlike theTurkish “cities of the dead, ” which are made so beautiful by their darkcypresses, has nothing to sweeten melancholy, nothing to mitigate theodiousness of death. Carnivorous beasts and birds possess the place bynight, and now in the fair morning it was all alive with freshcomers—alive with dead. Yet at this very time, when the plague wasraging so furiously, and on this very ground, which resounded somournfully with the howls of arriving funerals, preparations were goingon for the religious festival called the Kourban Bairam. Tents werepitched, and _swings hung for the amusement of children_—a ghastlyholiday; but the Mahometans take a pride, and a just pride, in followingtheir ancient customs undisturbed by the shadow of death. 

I did not hear, whilst I was at Cairo, that any prayer for a remission ofthe plague had been offered up in the mosques. I believe that howeverfrightful the ravages of the disease may be, the Mahometans refrain fromapproaching Heaven with their complaints until the plague has endured fora long space, and then at last they pray God, not that the plague maycease, but that it may go to another city!

A good Mussulman seems to take pride in repudiating the European notionthat the will of God can be eluded by eluding the touch of a sleeve. When I went to see the pyramids of Sakkara I was the guest of a noble oldfellow, an Osmanlee, whose soft rolling language it was a luxury to hearafter suffering, as I had suffered of late, from the shrieking tongue ofthe Arabs. This man was aware of the European ideas about contagion, andhis first care therefore was to assure me that not a single instance ofplague had occurred in his village. He then inquired as to the progressof the plague at Cairo. I had but a bad account to give. Up to thistime my host had carefully refrained from touching me out of respect tothe European theory of contagion, but as soon as it was made plain thathe, and not I, would be the person endangered by contact, he gently laidhis hand upon my arm, in order to make me feel sure that the circumstanceof my coming from an infected city did not occasion him the leastuneasiness. In that touch there was true hospitality. 

Very different is the faith and the practice of the Europeans, or rather, I mean of the Europeans settled in the East, and commonly calledLevantines. When I came to the end of my journey over the Desert I hadbeen so long alone, that the prospect of speaking to somebody at Cairoseemed almost a new excitement. I felt a sort of consciousness that Ihad a little of the wild beast about me, but I was quite in the humour tobe charmingly tame, and to be quite engaging in my manners, if I shouldhave an opportunity of holding communion with any of the human racewhilst at Cairo. I knew no one in the place, and had no letters ofintroduction, but I carried letters of credit, and it often happens inplaces remote from England that those “advices” operate as a sort ofintroduction, and obtain for the bearer (if disposed to receive them)such ordinary civilities as it may be in the power of the banker tooffer. 

Very soon after my arrival I went to the house of the Levantine to whommy credentials were addressed. At his door several persons (all Arabs)were hanging about and keeping guard. It was not till after some delay, and the passing of some communications with those in the interior of thecitadel, that I was admitted. At length, however, I was conductedthrough the court, and up a flight of stairs, and finally into theapartment where business was transacted. The room was divided by anexcellent, substantial fence of iron bars, and behind this grille thebanker had his station. The truth was, that from fear of the plague hehad adopted the course usually taken by European residents, and had shuthimself up “in strict quarantine”—that is to say, that he had, as hehoped, cut himself off from all communication with infecting substances. The Europeans long resident in the East, without any, or with scarcelyany, exception are firmly convinced that the plague is propagated bycontact, and by contact only; that if they can but avoid the touch of aninfecting substance they are safe, and that if they cannot, they die. This belief induces them to adopt the contrivance of putting themselvesin that state of siege which they call “quarantine. ” It is a part oftheir faith that metals, and hempen rope, and also, I fancy, one or twoother substances, will not carry the infection; and they likewise believethat the germ of pestilence, which lies in an infected substance, may bedestroyed by submersion in water, or by the action of smoke. Theytherefore guard the doors of their houses with the utmost care againstintrusion, and condemn themselves, with all the members of their family, including any European servants, to a strict imprisonment within thewalls of their dwelling. Their native attendants are not allowed toenter at all, but they make the necessary purchases of provisions, whichare hauled up through one of the windows by means of a rope, and are thensoaked in water. 

I knew nothing of these mysteries, and was not therefore prepared for thesort of reception which I met with. I advanced to the iron fence, andputting my letter between the bars, politely proffered it to Mr. Banker. Mr. Banker received me with a sad and dejected look, and not “with openarms, ” or with any arms at all, but with—a pair of tongs! I placed myletter between the iron fingers, which picked it up as if it were aviper, and conveyed it away to be scorched and purified by fire andsmoke. I was disgusted at this reception, and at the idea that anythingof mine could carry infection to the poor wretch who stood on the otherside of the grille, pale and trembling, and already meet for death. Ilooked with something of the Mahometan’s feeling upon these littlecontrivances for eluding fate; and in this instance, at least, they werevain. A few more days, and the poor money-changer, who had striven toguard the days of his life (as though they were coins) with bolts andbars of iron—he was seized by the plague, and he died. 

To people entertaining such opinions as these respecting the fatal effectof contact, the narrow and crowded streets of Cairo were terrible as theeasy slope that leads to Avernus. The roaring ocean and the beetlingcrags owe something of their sublimity to this—that if they be tempted, they can take the warm life of a man. To the contagionist, filled as heis with the dread of final causes, having no faith in destiny nor in thefixed will of God, and with none of the devil-may-care indifference whichmight stand him instead of creeds—to such one, every rag that shivers inthe breeze of a plague-stricken city has this sort of sublimity. If byany terrible ordinance he be forced to venture forth, he sees deathdangling from every sleeve, and as he creeps forward, he poises hisshuddering limbs between the imminent jacket that is stabbing at hisright elbow and the murderous pelisse that threatens to mow him cleandown as it sweeps along on his left. But most of all, he dreads thatwhich most of all he should love—the touch of a woman’s dress; formothers and wives, hurrying forth on kindly errands from the bedsides ofthe dying, go slouching along through the streets more wilfully and lesscourteously than the men. For a while it may be that the caution of thepoor Levantine may enable him to avoid contact, but sooner or laterperhaps the dreaded chance arrives; that bundle of linen, with the darktearful eyes at the top of it, that labours along with the voluptuousclumsiness of Grisi—she has touched the poor Levantine with the hem ofher sleeve! From that dread moment his peace is gone; his mind, for everhanging upon the fatal touch, invites the blow which he fears. Hewatches for the symptoms of plague so carefully, that sooner or laterthey come in truth. The parched mouth is a sign—his mouth is parched;the throbbing brain—his brain _does_ throb; the rapid pulse—he toucheshis own wrist (for he dares not ask counsel of any man lest he bedeserted), he touches his wrist, and feels how his frighted blood goesgalloping out of his heart; there is nothing but the fatal swelling thatis wanting to make his sad conviction complete; immediately he has an oddfeel under the arm—no pain, but a little straining of the skin; he wouldto God it were his fancy that were strong enough to give him thatsensation. This is the worst of all; it now seems to him that he couldbe happy and contented with his parched mouth and his throbbing brain andhis rapid pulse, if only he could know that there were no swelling underthe left arm; but dare he try?—In a moment of calmness and deliberationhe dares not, but when for a while he has writhed under the torture ofsuspense, a sudden strength of will drives him to seek and know his fate. He touches the gland, and finds the skin sane and sound, but under thecuticle there lies a small lump like a pistol-bullet, that moves as hepushes it. Oh! but is this for all certainty, is this the sentence ofdeath? Feel the gland of the other arm; there is not the same lumpexactly, yet something a little like it: have not some people glandsnaturally enlarged?—would to Heaven he were one! So he does for himselfthe work of the plague, and when the Angel of Death, thus courted, doesindeed and in truth come, he has only to finish that which has been sowell begun; he passes his fiery hand over the brain of the victim, andlets him rave for a season, but all chance-wise, of people and thingsonce dear, or of people and things indifferent. Once more the poorfellow is back at his home in fair Provence, and sees the sun-dial thatstood in his childhood’s garden; sees part of his mother, and thelong-since-forgotten face of that little dead sister (he sees her, hesays, on a Sunday morning, for all the church bells are ringing); helooks up and down through the universe, and owns it well piled with balesupon bales of cotton, and cotton eternal—so much so that he feels, heknows, he swears he could make that winning hazard, if the billiard tablewould not slant upwards, and if the cue were a cue worth playing with;but it is not—it’s a cue that won’t move—his own arm won’t move—in short, there’s the devil to pay in the brain of the poor Levantine, and perhapsthe next night but one he becomes the “life and the soul” of somesqualling jackal family who fish him out by the foot from his shallow andsandy grave. 

Better fate was mine. By some happy perverseness (occasioned perhaps bymy disgust at the notion of being received with a pair of tongs) I tookit into my pleasant head that all the European notions about contagionwere thoroughly unfounded; that the plague might be providential or“epidemic” (as they phrase it), but was not contagious; and that I couldnot be killed by the touch of a woman’s sleeve, nor yet by her blessedbreath. I therefore determined that the plague should not alter myhabits and amusements in any one respect. Though I came to this resolvefrom impulse, I think that I took the course which was in effect the mostprudent, for the cheerfulness of spirits which I was thus enabled toretain discouraged the yellow-winged angel, and prevented him from takinga shot at me. I, however, so far respected the opinion of the Europeans, that I avoided touching when I could do so without privation orinconvenience. This endeavour furnished me with a sort of amusement as Ipassed through the streets. The usual mode of moving from place to placein the city of Cairo is upon donkeys, of which great numbers are alwaysin readiness, with donkey-boys attached. I had two who constantly (untilone of them died of the plague) waited at my door upon the chance ofbeing wanted. I found this way of moving about exceedingly pleasant, andnever attempted any other. I had only to mount my beast, and tell mydonkey-boy the point for which I was bound, and instantly I began toglide on at a capital pace. The streets of Cairo are not paved in anyway, but strewed with a dry sandy soil, so deadening to sound, that thefootfall of my donkey could scarcely be heard. There is no _trottoir_, and as you ride through the streets you mingle with the people on foot. Those who are in your way, upon being warned by the shouts of thedonkey-boy, move very slightly aside, so as to leave you a narrow lane, through which you pass at a gallop. In this way you glide ondelightfully in the very midst of crowds, without being inconvenienced orstopped for a moment. It seems to you that it is not the donkey but thedonkey-boy who wafts you on with his shouts through pleasant groups, andair that feels thick with the fragrance of burial spice. “Eh! Sheik, Eh! Bint, —reggalek, —“shumalek, &c. &c. —O old man, O virgin, get out ofthe way on the right—O virgin, O old man, get out of the way on theleft—this Englishman comes, he comes, he comes!” The narrow alley whichthese shouts cleared for my passage made it possible, though difficult, to go on for a long way without touching a single person, and myendeavours to avoid such contact were a sort of game for me in myloneliness, which was not without interest. If I got through a streetwithout being touched, I won; if I was touched, I lost—lost a deuce ofstake, according to the theory of the Europeans; but that I deemed to beall nonsense—I only lost that game, and would certainly win the next. 

There is not much in the way of public buildings to admire at Cairo, butI saw one handsome mosque, to which an instructive history is attached. A Hindustanee merchant having amassed an immense fortune settled inCairo, and soon found that his riches in the then state of the politicalworld gave him vast power in the city—power, however, the exercise ofwhich was much restrained by the counteracting influence of other wealthymen. With a view to extinguish every attempt at rivalry the Hindustaneemerchant built this magnificent mosque at his own expense. When the workwas complete, he invited all the leading men of the city to join him inprayer within the walls of the newly built temple, and he then caused tobe massacred all those who were sufficiently influential to cause him anyjealousy or uneasiness—in short, all “the respectable men” of the place;after this he possessed undisputed power in the city and was greatlyrevered—he is revered to this day. It seemed to me that there was atouching simplicity in the mode which this man so successfully adoptedfor gaining the confidence and goodwill of his fellow-citizens. Thereseems to be some improbability in the story (though not nearly so grossas it might appear to an European ignorant of the East, for witnessMehemet Ali’s destruction of the Mamelukes, a closely similar act, andattended with the like brilliant success {34}), but even if the story befalse as a mere fact, it is perfectly true as an illustration—it is atrue exposition of the means by which the respect and affection ofOrientals may be conciliated. 

I ascended one day to the citadel, which commands a superb view of thetown. The fanciful and elaborate gilt-work of the many minarets gives alight and florid grace to the city as seen from this height, but beforeyou can look for many seconds at such things your eyes are drawnwestward—drawn westward and over the Nile, till they rest upon themassive enormities of the Ghizeh Pyramids. 

I saw within the fortress many yoke of men all haggard and woebegone, anda kennel of very fine lions well fed and flourishing: I say _yoke_ ofmen, for the poor fellows were working together in bonds; I say a_kennel_ of lions, for the beasts were not enclosed in cages, but simplychained up like dogs. 

I went round the bazaars: it seemed to me that pipes and arms werecheaper here than at Constantinople, and I should advise you therefore ifyou go to both places to prefer the market of Cairo. I had previouslybought several of such things at Constantinople, and did not choose toencumber myself, or to speak more honestly, I did not choose todisencumber my purse by making any more purchases. In the openslave-market I saw about fifty girls exposed for sale, but all of themblack, or “invisible” brown. A slave agent took me to some rooms in theupper storey of the building, and also into several obscure houses in theneighbourhood, with a view to show me some white women. The ownersraised various objections to the display of their ware, and well theymight, for I had not the least notion of purchasing; some refused onaccount of the illegality of the proceeding, {35} and others declaredthat all transactions of this sort were completely out of the question aslong as the plague was raging. I only succeeded in seeing one whiteslave who was for sale but on this one the owner affected to set animmense value, and raised my expectations to a high pitch by saying thatthe girl was Circassian, and was “fair as the full moon. ” After a gooddeal of delay I was at last led into a room, at the farther end of whichwas that mass of white linen which indicates an Eastern woman. She wasbid to uncover her face, and I presently saw that, though very far frombeing good looking, according to my notion of beauty, she had not beeninaptly described by the man who compared her to the full moon, for herlarge face was perfectly round and perfectly white. Though very young, she was nevertheless extremely fat. She gave me the idea of having beengot up for sale, of having been fattened and whitened by medicines or bysome peculiar diet. I was firmly determined not to see any more of herthan the face. She was perhaps disgusted at this my virtuous resolve, aswell as with my personal appearance; perhaps she saw my distaste anddisappointment; perhaps she wished to gain favour with her owner byshowing her attachment to his faith: at all events, she holloaed out verylustily and very decidedly that “she would not be bought by the infidel. ”

Whilst I remained at Cairo I thought it worth while to see something ofthe magicians, because I considered that these men were in some sort thedescendants of those who contended so stoutly against the superior powerof Aaron. I therefore sent for an old man who was held to be the chiefof the magicians, and desired him to show me the wonders of his art. Theold man looked and dressed his character exceedingly well; the vastturban, the flowing beard, and the ample robes were all that one couldwish in the way of appearance. The first experiment (a very stale one)which he attempted to perform for me was that of showing the forms andfaces of my absent friends, not to me, but to a boy brought in from thestreets for the purpose, and said to be chosen at random. A _mangale_(pan of burning charcoal) was brought into my room, and the magicianbending over it, sprinkled upon the fire some substances which must haveconsisted partly of spices or sweetly burning woods, for immediately afragrant smoke arose that curled around the bending form of the wizard, the while that he pronounced his first incantations. When these wereover the boy was made to sit down, and a common green shade was boundover his brow; then the wizard took ink, and still continuing hisincantations, wrote certain mysterious figures upon the boy’s palm, anddirected him to rivet his attention to these marks without looking asidefor an instant. Again the incantations proceeded, and after a while theboy, being seemingly a little agitated, was asked whether he saw anythingon the palm of his hand. He declared that he saw a kind of militaryprocession, with flags and banners, which he described rather minutely. I was then called upon to name the absent person whose form was to bemade visible. I named Keate. You were not at Eton, and I must tell you, therefore, what manner of man it was that I named, though I think youmust have some idea of him already, for wherever from utmost Canada toBundelcund—wherever there was the whitewashed wall of an officer’s room, or of any other apartment in which English gentlemen are forced to kicktheir heels, there likely enough (in the days of his reign) the head ofKeate would be seen scratched or drawn with those various degrees ofskill which one observes in the representations of saints. Anybodywithout the least notion of drawing could still draw a speaking, nayscolding, likeness of Keate. If you had no pencil, you could draw himwell enough with a poker, or the leg of a chair, or the smoke of acandle. He was little more (if more at all) than five feet in height, and was not very great in girth, but in this space was concentrated thepluck of ten battalions. He had a really noble voice, which he couldmodulate with great skill, but he had also the power of quacking like anangry duck, and he almost always adopted this mode of communication inorder to inspire respect. He was a capital scholar, but his ingenuouslearning had _not_ “softened his manners” and _had_ “permitted them to befierce”—tremendously fierce; he had the most complete command over histemper—I mean over his _good_ temper, which he scarcely ever allowed toappear: you could not put him out of humour—that is, out of the_ill_-humour which he thought to be fitting for a head-master. His redshaggy eyebrows were so prominent, that he habitually used them as armsand hands for the purpose of pointing out any object towards which hewished to direct attention; the rest of his features were equallystriking in their way, and were all and all his own; he wore a fancydress partly resembling the costume of Napoleon, and partly that of awidow-woman. I could not by any possibility have named anybody moredecidedly differing in appearance from the rest of the human race. 

“Whom do you name?”—“I name John Keate. ”—“Now, what do you see?” said thewizard to the boy. —“I see, ” answered the boy, “I see a fair girl withgolden hair, blue eyes, pallid face, rosy lips. ” _There_ was a shot! Ishouted out my laughter to the horror of the wizard, who perceiving thegrossness of his failure, declared that the boy must have known sin (fornone but the innocent can see truth), and accordingly kicked himdownstairs. 

One or two other boys were tried, but none could “see truth”; they allmade sadly “bad shots. ”

Notwithstanding the failure of these experiments, I wished to see whatsort of mummery my magician would practise if I called upon him to showme some performances of a higher order than those which had beenattempted. I therefore entered into a treaty with him, in virtue ofwhich he was to descend with me into the tombs near the Pyramids, andthere evoke the devil. The negotiation lasted some time, for Dthemetri, as in duty bound, tried to beat down the wizard as much as he could, andthe wizard, on his part, manfully stuck up for his price, declaring thatto raise the devil was really no joke, and insinuating that to do so wasan awesome crime. I let Dthemetri have his way in the negotiation, but Ifelt in reality very indifferent about the sum to be paid, and for thisreason, namely, that the payment (except a very small present which Imight make or not, as I chose) was to be _contingent on success_. Atlength the bargain was made, and it was arranged that after a few days, to be allowed for preparation, the wizard should raise the devil for twopounds ten, play or pay—no devil, no piastres. 

The wizard failed to keep his appointment. I sent to know why the deucehe had not come to raise the devil. The truth was, that my Mahomet hadgone to the mountain. The plague had seized him, and he died. 

Although the plague had now spread terrible havoc around me, I did notsee very plainly any corresponding change in the looks of the streetsuntil the seventh day after my arrival. I then first observed that thecity was _silenced_. There were no outward signs of despair nor ofviolent terror, but many of the voices that had swelled the busy hum ofmen were already hushed in death, and the survivors, so used to screamand screech in their earnestness whenever they bought or sold, now showedan unwonted indifference about the affairs of this world: it was lessworth while for men to haggle and haggle, and crack the sky with noisybargains, when the great commander was there, who could “pay all theirdebts with the roll of his drum. ”

At this time I was informed that of twenty-five thousand people atAlexandria, twelve thousand had died already; the destroyer had comerather later to Cairo, but there was nothing of weariness in his strides. The deaths came faster than ever they befell in the plague of London; butthe calmness of Orientals under such visitations, and the habit of usingbiers for interment, instead of burying coffins along with the bodies, rendered it practicable to dispose of the dead in the usual way, withoutshocking the people by any unaccustomed spectacle of horror. There wasno tumbling of bodies into carts, as in the plague of Florence and theplague of London. Every man, according to his station, was properlyburied, and that in the usual way, except that he went to his grave in amore hurried pace than might have been adopted under ordinarycircumstances. 

The funerals which poured through the streets were not the only publicevidence of deaths. In Cairo this custom prevails: At the instant of aman’s death (if his property is sufficient to justify the expense)professional howlers are employed. I believe that these persons arebrought near to the dying man when his end appears to be approaching, andthe moment that life is gone they lift up their voices and send forth aloud wail from the chamber of death. Thus I knew when my near neighboursdied; sometimes the howls were near, sometimes more distant. Once I wasawakened in the night by the wail of death in the next house, and anothertime by a like howl from the house opposite; and there were two or threeminutes, I recollect, during which the howl seemed to be actually runningalong the street. 

I happened to be rather teased at this time by a sore throat, and Ithought it would be well to get it cured if I could before I againstarted on my travels. I therefore inquired for a Frank doctor, and wasinformed that the only one then at Cairo was a young Bolognese refugee, who was so poor that he had not been able to take flight, as the othermedical men had done. At such a time as this it was out of the questionto send for an European physician; a person thus summoned would be sureto suppose that the patient was ill of the plague, and would decline tocome. I therefore rode to the young doctor’s residence. Afterexperiencing some little difficulty in finding where to look for him, Iascended a flight or two of stairs and knocked at his door. No one cameimmediately, but after some little delay the medico himself opened thedoor, and admitted me. I of course made him understand that I had cometo consult him, but before entering upon my throat grievance I accepted achair, and exchanged a sentence or two of commonplace conversation. Nowthe natural commonplace of the city at this season was of a gloomy sort, “Come va la peste?” (how goes the plague?) and this was precisely thequestion I put. A deep sigh, and the words, “Sette cento per giorno, signor” (seven hundred a day), pronounced in a tone of the deepestsadness and dejection, were the answer I received. The day was notoppressively hot, yet I saw that the doctor was perspiring profusely, andeven the outside surface of the thick shawl dressing-gown, in which hehad wrapped himself, appeared to be moist. He was a handsome, pleasant-looking young fellow, but the deep melancholy of his tone didnot tempt me to prolong the conversation, and without further delay Irequested that my throat might be looked at. The medico held my chin inthe usual way, and examined my throat. He then wrote me a prescription, and almost immediately afterwards I bade him farewell, but as heconducted me towards the door I observed an expression of strange andunhappy watchfulness in his rolling eyes. It was not the next day, butthe next day but one, if I rightly remember, that I sent to requestanother interview with my doctor. In due time Dthemetri, who was mymessenger, returned, looking sadly aghast—he had “_met_ the medico, ” forso he phrased it, “coming out from his house—in a bier!”

It was of course plain that when the poor Bolognese was looking at mythroat, and almost mingling his breath with mine, he was stricken of theplague. I suppose that the violent sweat in which I found him had beenproduced by some medicine, which he must have taken in the hope of curinghimself. The peculiar rolling of the eyes which I had remarked is, Ibelieve, to experienced observers, a pretty sure test of the plague. ARussian acquaintance, of mine, speaking from the information of men whohad made the Turkish campaigns of 1828 and 1829, told me that by thissign the officers of Sabalkansky’s force were able to make out theplague-stricken soldiers with a good deal of certainty. 

It so happened that most of the people with whom I had anything to doduring my stay at Cairo were seized with plague, and all these died. Since I had been for a long time _en route_ before I reached Egypt, andwas about to start again for another long journey over the Desert, therewere of course many little matters touching my wardrobe and my travellingequipments which required to be attended to whilst I remained in thecity. It happened so many times that Dthemetri’s orders in respect tothese matters were frustrated by the deaths of the tradespeople andothers whom he employed, that at last I became quite accustomed to thepeculiar manner which he assumed when he prepared to announce a new deathto me. The poor fellow naturally supposed that I should feel someuneasiness at hearing of the “accidents” which happened to personsemployed by me, and he therefore communicated their deaths as though theywere the deaths of friends. He would cast down his eyes and look like aman abashed, and then gently, and with a mournful gesture, allow thewords, “Morto, signor, ” to come through his lips. I don’t know how manyof such instances occurred, but they were several, and besides these (asI told you before), my banker, my doctor, my landlord, and my magicianall died of the plague. A lad who acted as a helper in the house which Ioccupied lost a brother and a sister within a few hours. Out of my twoestablished donkey-boys, one died. I did not hear of any instance inwhich a plague-stricken patient had recovered. 

Going out one morning I met unexpectedly the scorching breath of thekamsin wind, and fearing that I should faint under the horriblesensations which it caused, I returned to my rooms. Reflecting, however, that I might have to encounter this wind in the Desert, where there wouldbe no possibility of avoiding it, I thought it would be better to braveit once more in the city, and to try whether I could really bear it ornot. I therefore mounted my ass and rode to old Cairo, and along thegardens by the banks of the Nile. The wind was hot to the touch, asthough it came from a furnace. It blew strongly, but yet with suchperfect steadiness, that the trees bending under its force remained fixedin the same curves without perceptibly waving. The whole sky wasobscured by a veil of yellowish grey, that shut out the face of the sun. The streets were utterly silent, being indeed almost entirely deserted;and not without cause, for the scorching blast, whilst it fevers theblood, closes up the pores of the skin, and is terribly distressing, therefore, to every animal that encounters it. I returned to my roomsdreadfully ill. My head ached with a burning pain, and my pulse boundedquick and fitfully, but perhaps (as in the instance of the poorLevantine, whose death I was mentioning), the fear and excitement which Ifelt in trying my own wrist may have made my blood flutter the faster. 

It is a thoroughly well believed theory, that during the continuance ofthe plague you can’t be ill of any other febrile malady—an unpleasantprivilege that! for ill I was, and ill of fever, and I anxiously wishedthat the ailment might turn out to be anything rather than plague. I hadsome right to surmise that my illness may have been merely the effect ofthe hot wind; and this notion was encouraged by the elasticity of myspirits, and by a strong forefeeling that much of my destined life inthis world was yet to come, and yet to be fulfilled. That was myinstinctive belief, but when I carefully weighed the probabilities on theone side and on the other, I could not help seeing that the strength ofargument was all against me. There was a strong antecedent likelihood in_favour_ of my being struck by the same blow as the rest of the peoplewho had been dying around me. Besides, it occurred to me that, afterall, the universal opinion of the Europeans upon a medical question, suchas that of contagion, might probably be correct, and _if it were_, I wasso thoroughly “compromised, ” and especially by the touch and breath ofthe dying medico, that I had no right to expect any other fate than thatwhich now seemed to have overtaken me. Balancing as well as I could allthe considerations which hope and fear suggested, I slowly andreluctantly came to the conclusion that, according to all merelyreasonable probability, the plague had come upon me. 

You would suppose that this conviction would have induced me to write afew farewell lines to those who were dearest, and that having done that, I should have turned my thoughts towards the world to come. Such, however, was not the case. I believe that the prospect of death oftenbrings with it strong anxieties about matters of comparatively trivialimport, and certainly with me the whole energy of the mind was directedtowards the one petty object of concealing my illness until the latestpossible moment—until the delirious stage. I did not believe that eitherMysseri or Dthemetri, who had served me so faithfully in all trials, would have deserted me (as most Europeans are wont to do) when they knewthat I was stricken by plague, but I shrank from the idea of putting themto this test, and I dreaded the consternation which the knowledge of myillness would be sure to occasion. 

I was very ill indeed at the moment when my dinner was served, and mysoul sickened at the sight of the food; but I had luckily the habit ofdispensing with the attendance of servants during my meal, and as soon asI was left alone I made a melancholy calculation of the quantity of foodwhich I should have eaten if I had been in my usual health, and filled myplates accordingly, and gave myself salt, and so on, as though I weregoing to dine. I then transferred the viands to a piece of theomnipresent Times newspaper, and hid them away in a cupboard, for it wasnot yet night, and I dared not throw the food into the street untildarkness came. I did not at all relish this process of fictitiousdining, but at length the cloth was removed, and I gladly reclined on mydivan (I would not lie down) with the “Arabian Nights” in my hand. 

I had a feeling that tea would be a capital thing for me, but I would notorder it until the usual hour. When at last the time came, I drank deepdraughts from the fragrant cup. The effect was almost instantaneous. Aplenteous sweat burst through my skin, and watered my clothes through andthrough. I kept myself thickly covered. The hot tormenting weight whichhad been loading my brain was slowly heaved away. The fever wasextinguished. I felt a new buoyancy of spirits, and an unusual activityof mind. I went into my bed under a load of thick covering, and when themorning came, and I asked myself how I was, I found that I was thoroughlywell. 

I was very anxious to procure, if possible, some medical advice forMysseri, whose illness prevented my departure. Every one of the Europeanpractising doctors, of whom there had been many, had either died or fled. It was said, however, that there was an Englishman in the medical serviceof the Pasha who quietly remained at his post, but that he never engagedin private practice. I determined to try if I could obtain assistance inthis quarter. I did not venture at first, and at such a time as this, toask him to visit a servant who was prostrate on the bed of sickness, butthinking that I might thus gain an opportunity of persuading him toattend Mysseri, I wrote a note mentioning my own affair of the sorethroat, and asking for the benefit of his medical advice. He instantlyfollowed back my messenger, and was at once shown up into my room. Ientreated him to stand off, telling him fairly how deeply I was“compromised, ” and especially by my contact with a person actually illand since dead of plague. The generous fellow, with a good-humouredlaugh at the terrors of the contagionists, marched straight up to me, andforcibly seized my hand, and shook it with manly violence. I feltgrateful indeed, and swelled with fresh pride of race because that mycountryman could carry himself so nobly. He soon cured Mysseri as wellas me, and all this he did from no other motives than the pleasure ofdoing a kindness and the delight of braving a danger. 

At length the great difficulty {36} which I had had in procuring beastsfor my departure was overcome, and now, too, I was to have the newexcitement of travelling on dromedaries. With two of these beasts andthree camels I gladly wound my way from out of the pest-stricken city. As I passed through the streets I observed a fanatical-looking elder, whostretched forth his arms, and lifted up his voice in a speech whichseemed to have some reference to me. Requiring an interpretation, Ifound that the man had said, “The Pasha seeks camels, and he finds themnot; the Englishman says, ‘Let camels be brought, ’ and behold, there theyare!”

I no sooner breathed the free, wholesome air of the Desert than I feltthat a great burden which I had been scarcely conscious of bearing waslifted away from my mind. For nearly three weeks I had lived under perilof death; the peril ceased, and not till then did I know how much alarmand anxiety I had really been suffering. 

CHAPTER XIX—THE PYRAMIDS

I went to see and to explore the Pyramids. 

Familiar to one from the days of early childhood are the forms of theEgyptian Pyramids, and now, as I approached them from the banks of theNile, I had no print, no picture before me, and yet the old shapes werethere; there was no change; they were just as I had always known them. Istraightened myself in my stirrups, and strived to persuade myunderstanding that this was real Egypt, and that those angles which stoodup between me and the West were of harder stuff, and more ancient thanthe paper pyramids of the green portfolio. Yet it was not till I came tothe base of the great Pyramid that reality began to weigh upon my mind. Strange to say, the bigness of the distinct blocks of stones was thefirst sign by which I attained to feel the immensity of the whole pile. When I came, and trod, and touched with my hands, and climbed, in orderthat by climbing I might come to the top of one single stone, then, andalmost suddenly, a cold sense and understanding of the Pyramid’s enormitycame down, overcasting my brain. 

Now try to endure this homely, sick-nursish illustration of the effectproduced upon one’s mind by the mere vastness of the great Pyramid. WhenI was very young (between the ages, I believe, of three and five yearsold), being then of delicate health, I was often in time of night thevictim of a strange kind of mental oppression. I lay in my bed perfectlyconscious, and with open eyes, but without power to speak or to move, andall the while my brain was oppressed to distraction by the presence of asingle and abstract idea, the idea of solid immensity. It seemed to mein my agonies that the horror of this visitation arose from its comingupon me without form or shape, that the close presence of the direstmonster ever bred in hell would have been a thousand times more tolerablethan that simple idea of solid size. My aching mind was fixed andriveted down upon the mere quality of vastness, vastness, vastness, andwas not permitted to invest with it any particular object. If I couldhave done so, the torment would have ceased. When at last I was rousedfrom this state of suffering, I could not of course in those days(knowing no verbal metaphysics, and no metaphysics at all, except by thedreadful experience of an abstract idea)—I could not of course find wordsto describe the nature of my sensations, and even now I cannot explainwhy it is that the forced contemplation of a mere quality, distinct frommatter, should be so terrible. Well, now my eyes saw and knew, and myhands and my feet informed my understanding that there was nothing at allabstract about the great Pyramid—it was a big triangle, sufficientlyconcrete, easy to see, and rough to the touch; it could not, of course, affect me with the peculiar sensation which I have been talking of, butyet there was something akin to that old nightmare agony in the terriblecompleteness with which a mere mass of masonry could fill and load mymind. 

And Time too; the remoteness of its origin, no less than the enormity ofits proportions, screens an Egyptian Pyramid from the easy and familiarcontact of our modern minds; at its base the common earth ends, and allabove is a world—one not created of God, not seeming to be made by men’shands, but rather the sheer giant-work of some old dismal age weighingdown this younger planet. 

Fine sayings! but the truth seems to be after all, that the Pyramids arequite of this world; that they were piled up into the air for therealisation of some kingly crotchets about immortality, some priestlylonging for burial fees; and that as for the building, they were builtlike coral rocks by swarms of insects—by swarms of poor Egyptians, whowere not only the abject tools and slaves of power, but who also ateonions for the reward of their immortal labours! {37} The Pyramids arequite of this world. 

I of course ascended to the summit of the great Pyramid, and alsoexplored its chambers, but these I need not describe. The first timethat I went to the Pyramids of Ghizeh there were a number of Arabshanging about in its neighbourhood, and wanting to receive presents onvarious pretences; their Sheik was with them. There was also present anill-looking fellow in soldier’s uniform. This man on my departureclaimed a reward, on the ground that he had maintained order and decorumamongst the Arabs. His claim was not considered valid by my dragoman, and was rejected accordingly. My donkey-boys afterwards said they hadoverhead this fellow propose to the Sheik to put me to death whilst I wasin the interior of the great Pyramid, and to share with him the booty. Fancy a struggle for life in one of those burial chambers, with acres andacres of solid masonry between one’s self and the daylight! I feltexceedingly glad that I had not made the rascal a present. 

I visited the very ancient Pyramids of Aboukir and Sakkara. There aremany of these, and of various shapes and sizes, and it struck me that, taken together, they might be considered as showing the progress andperfection (such as it is) of pyramidical architecture. One of thePyramids at Sakkara is almost a rival for the full-grown monster atGhizeh; others are scarcely more than vast heaps of brick and stone:these last suggested to me the idea that after all the Pyramid is nothingmore nor less than a variety of the sepulchral mound so common in mostcountries (including, I believe, Hindustan, from whence the Egyptians aresupposed to have come). Men accustomed to raise these structures fortheir dead kings or conquerors would carry the usage with them in theirmigrations, but arriving in Egypt, and seeing the impossibility offinding earth sufficiently tenacious for a mound, they would approximateas nearly as might be to their ancient custom by raising up a round heapof stones—in short, conical pyramids. Of these there are several atSakkara, and the materials of some are thrown together without any orderor regularity. The transition from this simple form to that of thesquare angular pyramid was easy and natural, and it seemed to me that thegradations through which the style passed from infancy up to its matureenormity could plainly be traced at Sakkara. 

CHAPTER XX—THE SPHINX

And near the Pyramids more wondrous and more awful than all else in theland of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphinx. Comely the creature is, butthe comeliness is not of this world. The once worshipped beast is adeformity and a monster to this generation; and yet you can see thatthose lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some ancientmould of beauty—some mould of beauty now forgotten—forgotten because thatGreece drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the Ægean, and inher image created new forms of beauty, and made it a law among men thatthe short and proudly wreathed lip should stand for the sign and the maincondition of loveliness through all generations to come. Yet still therelives on the race of those who were beautiful in the fashion of the elderworld, and Christian girls of Coptic blood will look on you with the sad, serious gaze, and kiss you your charitable hand with the big pouting lipsof the very Sphinx. 

Laugh and mock if you will at the worship of stone idols, but mark yethis, ye breakers of images, that in one regard the stone idol bearsawful semblance of Deity—unchangefulness in the midst of change; the sameseeming will, and intent for ever, and ever inexorable! Upon ancientdynasties of Ethiopian and Egyptian kings; upon Greek, and Roman; uponArab and Ottoman conquerors; upon Napoleon dreaming of an Eastern Empire;upon battle and pestilence; upon the ceaseless misery of the Egyptianrace; upon keen-eyed travellers—Herodotus yesterday, and Warburtonto-day: upon all and more, this unworldly Sphinx has watched, and watchedlike a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquilmien. And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and theEnglishman, leaning far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firmfoot on the banks of the Nile, and sit in the seats of the Faithful, andstill that sleepless rock will lie watching, and watching the works ofthe new, busy race with those same sad, earnest eyes, and the sametranquil mien everlasting. You dare not mock at the Sphinx. 

CHAPTER XXI—CAIRO TO SUEZ

The “dromedary” of Egypt and Syria is not the two-humped animal describedby that name in books of natural history, but is, in fact, of the samefamily as the camel, to which it stands in about the same relation as aracer to a cart-horse. The fleetness and endurance of this creature areextraordinary. It is not usual to force him into a gallop, and I fancyfrom his make that it would be quite impossible for him to maintain thatpace for any length of time; but the animal is on so large a scale, thatthe jog-trot at which he is generally ridden implies a progress ofperhaps ten or twelve miles an hour, and this pace, it is said, he cankeep up incessantly, without food, or water, or rest, for three wholedays and nights. 

Of the two dromedaries which I had obtained for this journey, I mountedone myself, and put Dthemetri on the other. My plan was to ride on withDthemetri to Suez as rapidly as the fleetness of the beasts would allow, and to let Myserri (who was still weak from the effects of his lateillness) come quietly on with the camels and baggage. 

The trot of the dromedary is a pace terribly disagreeable to the rider, until he becomes a little accustomed to it; but after the first half-hourI so far schooled myself to this new exercise, that I felt capable ofkeeping it up (though not without aching limbs) for several hourstogether. Now, therefore, I was anxious to dart forward, and annihilateat once the whole space that divided me from the Red Sea. Dthemetri, however, could not get on at all. Every attempt which he made to trotseemed to threaten the utter dislocation of his whole frame, and indeed Idoubt whether any one of Dthemetri’s age (nearly forty, I think), andunaccustomed to such exercise, could have borne it at all easily;besides, the dromedary which fell to his lot was evidently a very badone; he every now and then came to a dead stop, and coolly knelt down, asthough suggesting that the rider had better get off at once and abandonthe attempt as one that was utterly hopeless. 

When for the third or fourth time I saw Dthemetri thus planted, I lost mypatience, and went on without him. For about two hours, I think, Iadvanced without once looking behind me. I then paused, and cast my eyesback to the western horizon. There was no sign of Dthemetri, nor of anyother living creature. This I expected, for I knew that I must have farout-distanced all my followers. I had ridden away from my party merelyby way of gratifying my impatience, and with the intention of stopping assoon as I felt tired, until I was overtaken. I now observed, however(this I had not been able to do whilst advancing so rapidly), that thetrack which I had been following was seemingly the track of only one ortwo camels. I did not fear that I had diverged very largely from thetrue route, but still I could not feel any reasonable certainty that myparty would follow any line of march within sight of me. 

I had to consider, therefore, whether I should remain where I was, uponthe chance of seeing my people come up, or whether I would push on alone, and find my way to Suez. I had now learned that I could not rely uponthe continued guidance of any track, but I knew that (if maps were right)the point for which I was bound bore just due east of Cairo, and Ithought that, although I might miss the line leading most directly toSuez, I could not well fail to find my way sooner or later to the RedSea. The worst of it was that I had no provision of food or water withme, and already I was beginning to feel thirst. I deliberated for aminute, and then determined that I would abandon all hope of seeing myparty again, in the Desert, and would push forward as rapidly as possibletowards Suez. 

It was not, I confess, without a sensation of awe that I swept with mysight the vacant round of the horizon, and remembered that I was allalone, and unprovisioned in the midst of the arid waste; but this veryawe gave tone and zest to the exultation with which I felt myselflaunched. Hitherto, in all my wandering, I had been under the care ofother people—sailors, Tatars, guides, and dragomen had watched over mywelfare, but now at last I was here in this African desert, and I_myself_, _and no other_, _had charge of my life_. I liked the officewell. I had the greasiest part of the day before me, a very fairdromedary, a fur pelisse, and a brace of pistols, but no bread and nowater; for that I must ride—and ride I did. 

For several hours I urged forward my beast at a rapid though steady pace, but now the pangs of thirst began to torment me. I did not relax mypace, however, and I had not suffered long when a moving object appearedin the distance before me. The intervening space was soon traversed, andI found myself approaching a Bedouin Arab mounted on a camel, attended byanother Bedouin on foot. They stopped. I saw that, as usual, there hungfrom the pack-saddle of the camel a large skin water-flask, which seemedto be well filled. I steered my dromedary close up alongside of themounted Bedouin, caused my beast to kneel down, then alighted, andkeeping the end of the halter in my hand, went up to the mounted Bedouinwithout speaking, took hold of his water-flask, opened it, and drank longand deep from its leathern lips. Both of the Bedouins stood fast inamazement and mute horror; and really, if they had never happened to seean European before, the apparition was enough to startle them. To seefor the first time a coat and a waistcoat, with the semblance of a whitehuman head at the top, and for this ghastly figure to come swiftly out ofthe horizon upon a fleet dromedary, approach them silently and with ademoniacal smile, and drink a deep draught from their water-flask—thiswas enough to make the Bedouins stare a little; they, in fact, stared agreat deal—not as Europeans stare, with a restless and puzzled expressionof countenance, but with features all fixed and rigid, and with still, glassy eyes. Before they had time to get decomposed from their state ofpetrifaction I had remounted my dromedary, and was darting away towardsthe east. 

Without pause or remission of pace I continued to press forward, butafter a while I found to my confusion that the slight track which hadhitherto guided me now failed altogether. I began to fear that I musthave been all along following the course of some wandering Bedouins, andI felt that if this were the case, my fate was a little uncertain. 

I had no compass with me, but I determined upon the eastern point of thehorizon as accurately as I could by reference to the sun, and so laiddown for myself a way over the pathless sands. 

But now my poor dromedary, by whose life and strength I held my own, began to show signs of distress: a thick, clammy, and glutinous kind offoam gathered about her lips, and piteous sobs burst from her bosom inthe tones of human misery. I doubted for a moment whether I would giveher a little rest, a relaxation of pace, but I decided that I would not, and continued to push forward as steadily as before. 

The character of the country became changed. I had ridden away from thelevel tracts, and before me now, and on either side, there were vasthills of sand and calcined rocks, that interrupted my progress andbaffled my doubtful road, but I did my best. With rapid steps I sweptround the base of the hills, threaded the winding hollows, and at last, as I rose in my swift course to the crest of a lofty ridge, Thalatta!Thalatta! by Jove! I saw the sea!

My tongue can tell where to find a clue to many an old pagan creed, because that (distinctly from all mere admiration of the beauty belongingto nature’s works) I acknowledge a sense of mystical reverence when firstI look, to see some illustrious feature of the globe—some coast-line ofocean, some mighty river or dreary mountain range, the ancient barrier ofkingdoms. But the Red Sea! It might well claim my earnest gaze by forceof the great Jewish migration which connects it with the history of ourown religion. From this very ridge, it is likely enough, the pantingIsraelites first saw that shining inlet of the sea. Ay! ay! butmoreover, and best of all, that beckoning sea assured my eyes, and provedhow well I had marked out the east for my path, and gave me good promisethat sooner or later the time would come for me to rest and drink. Itwas distant, the sea, but I felt my own strength, and I had _heard_ ofthe strength of dromedaries. I pushed forward as eagerly as though I hadspoiled the Egyptians and were flying from Pharaoh’s police. 

I had not yet been able to discover any symptoms of Suez, but after awhile I descried in the distance a large, blank, isolated building. Imade towards this, and in time got down to it. The building was a fort, and had been built there for the protection of a well which it containedwithin its precincts. A cluster of small huts adhered to the fort, andin a short time I was receiving the hospitality of the inhabitants, whowere grouped upon the sands near their hamlet. To quench the fires of mythroat with about a gallon of muddy water, and to swallow a little of thefood placed before me, was the work of few minutes, and before theastonishment of my hosts had even begun to subside, I was pursuing myonward journey. Suez, I found, was still three hours distant, and thesun going down in the west warned me that I must find some other guide tokeep me in the right direction. This guide I found in the most fickleand uncertain of the elements. For some hours the wind had beenfreshening, and it now blew a violent gale; it blew not fitfully and insqualls, but with such remarkable steadiness, that I felt convinced itwould blow from the same quarter for several hours. When the sun set, therefore, I carefully looked for the point from which the wind wasblowing, and found that it came from the very west, and was blowingexactly in the direction of my route. I had nothing to do therefore butto go straight to leeward; and this was not difficult, for the gale blewwith such immense force, that if I diverged at all from its line Iinstantly felt the pressure of the blast on the side towards which I wasdeviating. Very soon after sunset there came on complete darkness, butthe strong wind guided me well, and sped me, too, on my way. 

I had pushed on for about, I think, a couple of hours after nightfallwhen I saw the glimmer of a light in the distance, and this I ventured tohope must be Suez. Upon approaching it, however, I found that it wasonly a solitary fort, and I passed on without stopping. 

On I went, still riding down the wind, when an unlucky accident occurred, for which, if you like, you can have your laugh against me. I have toldyou already what sort of lodging it is that you have upon the back of acamel. You ride the dromedary in the same fashion; you are perchedrather than seated on a bunch of carpets or quilts upon the summit of thehump. It happened that my dromedary veered rather suddenly from heronward course. Meeting the movement, I mechanically turned my left wristas though I were holding a bridle rein, for the complete darknessprevented my eyes from reminding me that I had nothing but a halter in myhand. The expected resistance failed, for the halter was hanging uponthat side of the dromedary’s neck towards which I was slightly leaning. I toppled over, head foremost, and then went falling and falling throughair, till my crown came whang against the ground. And the ground too wasperfectly hard (compacted sand), but the thickly wadded headgear which Iwore for protection against the sun saved my life. The notion of mybeing able to get up again after falling head-foremost from such animmense height seemed to me at first too paradoxical to be acted upon, but I soon found that I was not a bit hurt. My dromedary utterlyvanished. I looked round me, and saw the glimmer of a light in the fortwhich I had lately passed, and I began to work my way back in thatdirection. The violence of the gale made it hard for me to force my waytowards the west, but I succeeded at last in regaining the fort. Tothis, as to the other fort which I had passed, there was attached acluster of huts, and I soon found myself surrounded by a group ofvillainous, gloomy-looking fellows. It was a horrid bore for me to haveto swagger and look big at a time when I felt so particularly small onaccount of my tumble and my lost dromedary; but there was no help for it;I had no Dthemetri now to “strike terror” for me. I knew hardly one wordof Arabic, but somehow or other I contrived to announce it as my absolutewill and pleasure that these fellows should find me the means of gainingSuez. They acceded, and having a donkey, they saddled it for me, andappointed one of their number to attend me on foot. 

I afterwards found that these fellows were not Arabs, but Algerinerefugees, and that they bore the character of being sad scoundrels. Theyjustified this imputation to some extent on the following day. Theyallowed Mysseri with my baggage and the camels to pass unmolested, but anArab lad belonging to the party happened to lag a little way in the rear, and him (if they were not maligned) these rascals stripped and robbed. Low indeed is the state of bandit morality when men will allow the sleektraveller with well-laden camels to pass in quiet, reserving their spiritof enterprise for the tattered turban of a miserable boy. 

I reached Suez at last. The British agent, though roused from hismidnight sleep, received me in his home with the utmost kindness andhospitality. Oh! by Jove, how delightful it was to lie on fair sheets, and to dally with sleep, and to wake, and to sleep, and to wake oncemore, for the sake of sleeping again!

CHAPTER XXII—SUEZ

I was hospitably entertained by the British consul, or agent, as he isthere styled. He is the _employé_ of the East India Company, and not ofthe Home Government. Napoleon during his stay of five days at Suez hadbeen the guest of the consul’s father, and I was told that the divan inmy apartment had been the bed of the great commander. 

There are two opinions as to the point at which the Israelites passed theRed Sea. One is, that they traversed only the very small creek at thenorthern extremity of the inlet, and that they entered the bed of thewater at the spot on which Suez now stands; the other, that they crossedthe sea from a point eighteen miles down the coast. The Oxfordtheologians, who, with Milman their professor, {38} believe that Jehovahconducted His chosen people without disturbing the order of nature, adoptthe first view, and suppose that the Israelites passed during anebb-tide, aided by a violent wind. One among many objections to thissupposition is, that the time of a single ebb would not have beensufficient for the passage of that vast multitude of men and beasts, oreven for a small fraction of it. Moreover, the creek to the north ofthis point can be compassed in an hour, and in two hours you can make thecircuit of the salt marsh over which the sea may have extended in formertimes. If, therefore, the Israelites crossed so high up as Suez, theEgyptians, unless infatuated by Divine interference, might easily haverecovered their stolen goods from the encumbered fugitives by making aslight detour. The opinion which fixes the point of passage at eighteenmiles’ distance, and from thence right across the ocean depths to theeastern side of the sea, is supported by the unanimous tradition of thepeople, whether Christians or Mussulmans, and is consistent with HolyWrit: “the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, _and ontheir left_. ” The Cambridge mathematicians seem to think that theIsraelites were enabled to pass over dry land by adopting a route notusually subjected to the influx of the sea. This notion is plausible ina merely hydrostatical point of view, and is supposed to have beenadopted by most of the Fellows of Trinity, but certainly not by Thorp, who is one of the most amiable of their number. It is difficult toreconcile this theory with the account given in Exodus, unless we cansuppose that the words “sea” and “waters” are there used in a senseimplying dry land. 

Napoleon when at Suez made an attempt to follow the supposed steps ofMoses by passing the creek at this point, but it seems, according to thetestimony of the people at Suez, that he and his horsemen managed thematter in a way more resembling the failure of the Egyptians than thesuccess of the Israelites. According to the French account, Napoleon gotout of the difficulty by that warrior-like presence of mind which servedhim so well when the fate of nations depended on the decision of amoment—he ordered his horsemen to disperse in all directions, in order tomultiply the chances of finding shallow water, and was thus enabled todiscover a line by which he and his people were extricated. The storytold by the people of Suez is very different: they declare that Napoleonparted from his horse, got thoroughly submerged, and was only fished outby the assistance of the people on shore. 

I bathed twice at the point assigned to the passage of the Israelites, and the second time that I did so I chose the time of low water and triedto walk across, but I soon found myself out of my depth, or at least inwater so deep, that I could only advance by swimming. 

The dromedary, which had bolted in the Desert, was brought into Suez theday after my arrival, but my pelisse and my pistols, which had beenattached to the saddle, had disappeared. These articles were treasuresof great importance to me at that time, and I moved the Governor of thetown to make all possible exertions for their recovery. He acceded to mywishes as well as he could, and very obligingly imprisoned the firstseven poor fellows he could lay his hands on. 

At first the Governor acted in the matter from no other motive than thatof courtesy to an English traveller, but afterwards, and when he saw thevalue which I set upon the lost property, he pushed his measures with adegree of alacrity and heat, which seemed to show that he felt a personalinterest in the matter. It was supposed either that he expected a largepresent in the event of succeeding, or that he was striving by all meansto trace the property, in order that he might lay his hands on it aftermy departure. 

I went out sailing for some hours, and when I returned I was horrified tofind that two men had been bastinadoed by order of the Governor, with aview to force them to a confession of their theft. It appeared, however, that there really was good ground for supposing them guilty, since one ofthe holsters was actually found in their possession. It was said too(but I could hardly believe it), that whilst one of the men wasundergoing the bastinado, his comrade was overheard encouraging him tobear the torment without peaching. Both men, if they had the secret, were resolute in keeping it, and were sent back to their dungeon. I ofcourse took care that there should be no repetition of the torture, atleast so long as I remained at Suez. 

The Governor was a thorough Oriental, and until a comparatively recentperiod had shared in the old Mahometan feeling of contempt for Europeans. It happened however, one day that an English gun-brig had appeared offSuez, and sent her boats ashore to take in fresh water. Now fresh waterat Suez is a somewhat scarce and precious commodity: it is kept in tanks, the chief of which is at some distance from the place. Under thesecircumstances the request for fresh water was refused, or at all events, was not complied with. The captain of the brig was a simple-minded manwith a strongish will, and he at once declared that if his casks were notfilled in three hours, he would destroy the whole place. “A great peopleindeed!” said the Governor; “a wonderful people, the English!” Heinstantly caused every cask to be filled to the brim from his own tank, and ever afterwards entertained for the English a degree of affection andrespect, for which I felt infinitely indebted to the gallant captain. 

The day after the abortive attempt to extract a confession from theprisoners, the Governor, the consul, and I sat in council, I know not howlong, with a view of prosecuting the search for the stolen goods. Thesitting, considered in the light of a criminal investigation, wascharacteristic of the East. The proceedings began as a matter of courseby the prosecutor’s smoking a pipe and drinking coffee with the Governor, who was judge, jury, and sheriff. I got on very well with him (this wasnot my first interview), and he gave me the pipe from his lips intestimony of his friendship. I recollect, however, that my primeadviser, thinking me, I suppose, a great deal too shy and retiring in mymanner, entreated me to put up my boots and to soil the Governor’s divan, in order to inspire respect and strike terror. I thought it would be aswell for me to retain the right of respecting myself, and that it was notquite necessary for a well-received guest to strike any terror at all. 

Our deliberations were assisted by the numerous attendants who lined thethree sides of the room not occupied by the divan. Any one of these whotook it into his head to offer a suggestion would stand forward andhumble himself before the Governor, and then state his views; every manthus giving counsel was listened to with some attention. 

After a great deal of fruitless planning the Governor directed that theprisoners should be brought in. I was shocked when they entered, for Iwas not prepared to see them come _carried_ into the room upon theshoulders of others. It had not occurred to me that their battered feetwould be too sore to bear the contact of the floor. They persisted inasserting their innocence. The Governor wanted to recur to the torture, but that I prevented, and the men were carried back to their dungeon. 

A scheme was now suggested by one of the attendants which seemed to mechildishly absurd, but it was nevertheless tried. The plan was to send aman to the prisoners, who was to make them believe that he had obtainedentrance into their dungeon upon some other pretence, but that he had inreality come to treat with them for the purchase of the stolen goods. This shallow expedient of course failed. 

The Governor himself had not nominally the power of life and death overthe people in his district, but he could if he chose send them to Cairo, and have them hanged there. I proposed, therefore, that the prisonersshould be threatened with this fate. The answer of the Governor made mefeel rather ashamed of my effeminate suggestion. He said that if Iwished it he would willingly threaten them with death, but he also saidthat if he threatened, _he should execute the threat_. 

Thinking at last that nothing was to be gained by keeping the prisonersany longer in confinement, I requested that they might be set free. Tothis the Governor acceded, though only, as he said, out of favour to me, for he had a strong impression that the men were guilty. I went down tosee the prisoners let out with my own eyes. They were very grateful, andfell down to the earth, kissing my boots. I gave them a present toconsole them for their wounds, and they seemed to be highly delighted. 

Although the matter terminated in a manner so satisfactory to theprincipal sufferers, there were symptoms of some angry excitement in theplace: it was said that public opinion was much shocked at the fact thatMahometans had been beaten on account of a loss sustained by a Christian. My journey was to recommence the next day, and it was hinted that if Ipreservered in my intention of proceeding, the people would have an easyand profitable opportunity of wreaking their vengeance on me. If everthey formed any scheme of the kind, they at all events refrained from anyattempt to carry it into effect. 

One of the evenings during my stay at Suez was enlivened by a triplewedding. There was a long and slow procession. Some carried torches, and others were thumping drums and firing pistols. The bridegrooms camelast, all walking abreast. My only reason for mentioning the ceremony(which was otherwise uninteresting) is, that I scarcely ever in all mylife saw any phenomena so ridiculous as the meekness and gravity of thosethree young men whilst being “led to the altar. ”

CHAPTER XXIII—SUEZ TO GAZA

The route over the Desert from Suez to Gaza is not frequented bymerchants, and is seldom passed by a traveller. This part of the countryis less uniformly barren than the tracts of shifting sand that lie on theEl Arish route. The shrubs on which the camel feeds are more frequent, and in many spots the sand is mingled with so much of productive soil, asto admit the growth of corn. The Bedouins are driven out of thisdistrict during the summer by the total want of water, but before thetime for their forced departure arrives they succeed in raising littlecrops of barley from these comparatively fertile patches of ground. Theybury the fruit of their labours, leaving marks by which, upon theirreturn, they may be able to recognise the spot. The warm, dry sandstands them for a safe granary. The country at the time I passed it (inthe month of April) was pretty thickly sprinkled with Bedouins expectingtheir harvest. Several times my tent was pitched alongside of theirencampments. I have told you already what the impressions were whichthese people produced upon my mind. 

I saw several creatures of the antelope kind in this part of the Desert, and one day my Arabs surprised in her sleep a young gazelle (for so Icalled her), and took the darling prisoner. I carried her before me onmy camel for the rest of the day, and kept her in my tent all night. Idid all I could to coax her, but the trembling beauty refused to touchfood, and would not be comforted. Whenever she had a seeming opportunityof escaping she struggled with a violence so painfully disproportioned toher fine, delicate limbs, that I could not continue the cruel attempt tomake her my own. In the morning, therefore, I set her free, anticipatingsome pleasure from seeing the joyous bound with which, as I thought, shewould return to her native freedom. She had been so stupefied, however, by the exciting events of the preceding day and night, and was so puzzledas to the road she should take, that she went off very deliberately, andwith an uncertain step. She went away quite sound in limb, but herintellect may have been upset. Never in all likelihood had she seen theform of a human being until the dreadful moment when she woke from hersleep and found herself in the grip of an Arab. Then her pitching andtossing journey on the back of a camel, and lastly, a _soireé_ with me bycandlelight! I should have been glad to know, if I could, that her heartwas not utterly broken. 

My Arabs were somewhat excited one day by discovering the fresh print ofa foot—the foot, as they said, of a lion. I had no conception that thelord of the forest (better known as a crest) ever stalked away from hisjungles to make inglorious war in these smooth plains against antelopesand gazelles. I supposed that there must have been some error ofinterpretation, and that the Arabs meant to speak of a tiger. Itappeared, however, that this was not the case. Either the Arabs weremistaken, or the noble brute, uncooped and unchained, had but latelycrossed my path. 

The camels with which I traversed this part of the Desert were verydifferent in their ways and habits from those that you get on afrequented route. They were never led. There was not the slightest signof a track in this part of the Desert, but the camels never failed tochoose the right line. By the direction taken at starting they knew, Isuppose, the point (some encampment) for which they were to make. Thereis always a leading camel (generally, I believe, the eldest), who marchesforemost, and determines the path for the whole party. If it happensthat no one of the camels has been accustomed to lead the others, thereis very great difficulty in making a start. If you force your beastforward for a moment, he will contrive to wheel and draw back, at thesame time looking at one of the other camels with an expression andgesture exactly equivalent to _après vous_. The responsibility offinding the way is evidently assumed very unwillingly. After some time, however, it becomes understood that one of the beasts has reluctantlyconsented to take the lead, and he accordingly advances for that purpose. For a minute or two he goes on with much indecision, taking first oneline and then another, but soon by the aid of some mysterious sense hediscovers the true direction, and follows it steadily from morning tonight. When once the leadership is established, you cannot by anypersuasion, and can scarcely by any force, induce a junior camel to walkone single step in advance of the chosen guide. 

On the fifth day I came to an oasis, called the Wady el Arish, a ravine, or rather a gully, through which during a part of the year there runs astream of water. On the sides of the gully there were a number of thosegraceful trees which the Arabs call _tarfa_. The channel of the streamwas quite dry in the part at which we arrived, but at about half a mileoff some water was found, which, though very muddy, was tolerably sweet. This was a happy discovery, for all the water that we had brought fromthe neighbourhood of Suez was rapidly putrefying. 

The want of foresight is an anomalous part of the Bedouin’s character, for it does not result either from recklessness or stupidity. I know ofno human being whose body is so thoroughly the slave of mind as that ofthe Arab. His mental anxieties seem to be for ever torturing every nerveand fibre of his body, and yet with all this exquisite sensitiveness tothe suggestions of the mind, he is grossly improvident. I recollect, forinstance, that when setting out upon this passage of the Desert my Arabs, in order to lighten the burthen of their camels, were most anxious thatwe should take with us only two days’ supply of water. They said that bythe time that supply was exhausted we should arrive at a spring whichwould furnish us for the rest of the journey. My servants very wisely, and with much pertinacity, resisted the adoption of this plan, and tookcare to have both the large skins well filled. We proceeded and found nowater at all, either at the expected spring or for many days afterwards, so that nothing but the precaution of my own people saved us from thevery severe suffering which we should have endured if we had entered uponthe Desert with only a two days’ supply. The Arabs themselves being onfoot would have suffered much more than I from the consequences of theirimprovidence. 

This unaccountable want of foresight prevents the Bedouin fromappreciating at a distance of eight or ten days the amount of the miserywhich he entails upon himself at the end of that period. His dread of acity is one of the most painful mental affections that I have everobserved, and yet when the whole breadth of the Desert lies between himand the town to which you are going, he will freely enter into anagreement to _land_ you in the city for which you are bound. When, however, after many a day of toil the distant minarets at length appear, the poor Bedouin relaxes the vigour of his pace, his steps becomefaltering and undecided, every moment his uneasiness increases, and atlength he fairly sobs aloud, and embracing your knees, implores with themost piteous cries and gestures that you will dispense with him and hiscamels, and find some other means of entering the city. This, of course, one can’t agree to, and the consequence is that one is obliged to witnessand resist the most moving expressions of grief and fond entreaty. I hadto go through a most painful scene of this kind when I entered Cairo, andnow the horror which these wilder Arabs felt at the notion of enteringGaza led to consequences still more distressing. The dread of citiesresults partly from a kind of wild instinct which has alwayscharacterised the descendants of Ishmael, but partly too from awell-founded apprehension of ill-treatment. So often it happens that thepoor Bedouin, when once jammed in between walls, is seized by theGovernment authorities for the sake of his camels, that his innate horrorof cities becomes really justified by results. 

The Bedouins with whom I performed this journey were wild fellows of theDesert, quite unaccustomed to let out themselves or their beasts forhire, and when they found that by the natural ascendency of Europeansthey were gradually brought down to a state of subserviency to me, orrather to my attendants, they bitterly repented, I believe, of havingplaced themselves under our control. They were rather difficult fellowsto manage, and gave Dthemetri a good deal of trouble, but I liked themall the better for that. 

Selim, the chief of the party, and the man to whom all our camelsbelonged, was a fine, savage, stately fellow. There were, I think, fiveother Arabs of the party, but when we approached the end of the journeythey one by one began to make off towards the neighbouring encampments, and by the time that the minarets of Gaza were in sight, Selim, the ownerof the camels, was the only one who remained. He, poor fellow, as weneared the town began to discover the same terrors that my Arabs hadshown when I entered Cairo. I could not possibly accede to hisentreaties and consent to let my baggage be laid down on the bare sands, without any means of having it brought on into the city. So at length, when poor Selim had exhausted all his rhetoric of voice and action andtears, he fixed his despairing eyes for a minute upon the cherishedbeasts that were his only wealth, and then suddenly and madly dashed awayinto the farther Desert. I continued my course and reached the city atlast, but it was not without immense difficulty that we could constrainthe poor camels to pass under the hated shadow of its walls. They werethe genuine beasts of the Desert, and it was sad and painful to witnessthe agony they suffered when thus they were forced to encounter the fixedhabitations of men. They shrank from the beginning of every high narrowstreet as though from the entrance of some horrible cave or bottomlesspit; they sighed and wept like women. When at last we got them withinthe courtyard of the khan they seemed to be quite broken-hearted, andlooked round piteously for their loving master; but no Selim came. I hadimagined that he would enter the town secretly by night in order to carryoff those five fine camels, his only wealth in this world, and seeminglythe main objects of his affection. But no; his dread of civilisation wastoo strong. During the whole of the three days that I remained at Gazahe failed to show himself, and thus sacrificed in all probability notonly his camels, but the money which I had stipulated to pay him for thepassage of the Desert. In order, however, to do all I could towardssaving him from this last misfortune I resorted to a contrivancefrequently adopted by the Asiatics: I assembled a group of grave andworthy Mussulmans in the courtyard of the khan, and in their presencepaid over the gold to a Sheik who was accustomed to communicate with theArabs of the Desert. All present solemnly promised that if ever Selimshould come to claim his rights, they would bear true witness in hisfavour. 

I saw a great deal of my old friend the Governor of Gaza. He hadreceived orders to send back all persons coming from Egypt, and forcethem to perform quarantine at El Arish. He knew so little of quarantineregulations, however, that his dress was actually in contact with minewhilst he insisted upon the stringency of the orders which he hadreceived. He was induced to make an exception in my favour, and Irewarded him with a musical snuffbox which I had bought at Smyrna for thepurpose of presenting it to any man in authority who might happen to dome an important service. The Governor was delighted with his toy, andtook it off to his harem with great exultation. He soon, however, returned with an altered countenance; his wives, he said, had got hold ofthe box and put it out of order. So short-lived is human happiness inthis frail world!

The Governor fancied that he should incur less risk if remained at Gazafor two or three days more, and he wanted me to become his guest. Ipersuaded him, however, that it would be better for him to let me departat once. He wanted to add to my baggage a roast lamb and a quantity ofother cumbrous viands, but I escaped with half a horse-load of leavenbread, which was very good of its kind, and proved a most useful present. The air with which the Governor’s slaves affected to be almost breakingdown under the weight of the gifts which they bore on their shoulders, reminded me of the figures one sees in some of the old pictures. 

CHAPTER XXIV—GAZA TO NABLUS

Passing now once again through Palestine and Syria I retained the tentwhich I had used in the Desert, and found that it added very much to mycomfort in travelling. Instead of turning out a family from somewretched dwelling, and depriving them of a repose which I was sure not tofind for myself, I now, when evening came, pitched my tent upon somesmiling spot within a few hundred yards of the village to which I lookedfor my supplies, that is, for milk and bread if I had it not with me, andsometimes also for eggs. The worst of it is, that the needful viands arenot to be obtained by coin, but only by intimidation. I at first triedthe usual agent, money. Dthemetri, with one or two of my Arabs, wentinto the village near which I was encamped and tried to buy the requiredprovisions, offering liberal payment, but he came back empty-handed. Isent him again, but this time he held different language. He required tosee the elders of the place, and threatening dreadful vengeance, directedthem upon their responsibility to take care that my tent should beimmediately and abundantly supplied. He was obeyed at once, and theprovisions refused to me as a purchaser soon arrived, trebled orquadrupled, when demanded by way of a forced contribution. I quicklyfound (I think it required two experiments to convince me) that thisperemptory method was the only one which could be adopted with success. It never failed. Of course, however, when the provisions have beenactually obtained you can, if you choose, give money exceeding the valueof the provisions to _somebody_. An English, a thoroughbred English, traveller will always do this (though it is contrary to the custom of thecountry) for the quiet (false quiet though it be) of his own conscience, but so to order the matter that the poor fellows who have been forced tocontribute should be the persons to receive the value of their supplies, is not possible. For a traveller to attempt anything so grossly just asthat would be too outrageous. The truth is, that the usage of the East, in old times, required the people of the village, at their own cost, tosupply the wants of travellers, and the ancient custom is now adhered to, not in favour of travellers generally, but in favour of those who aredeemed sufficiently powerful to enforce its observance. If the villagerstherefore find a man waiving this right to oppress them, and offeringcoin for that which he is entitled to take without payment, they supposeat once that he is actuated by fear (fear of _them_, poor fellows!), andit is so delightful to them to act upon this flattering assumption, thatthey will forego the advantage of a good price for their provisionsrather than the rare luxury of refusing for once in their lives to partwith their own possessions. 

The practice of intimidation thus rendered necessary is utterly hatefulto an Englishman. He finds himself forced to conquer his daily bread bythe pompous threats of the dragoman, his very subsistence, as well as hisdignity and personal safety, being made to depend upon his servant’sassuming a tone of authority which does not at all belong to him. Besides, he can scarcely fail to see that as he passes through thecountry he becomes the innocent cause of much extra injustice, manysupernumerary wrongs. This he feels to be especially the case when hetravels with relays. To be the owner of a horse or a mule within reachof an Asiatic potentate, is to lead the life of the hare and the rabbit, hunted down and ferreted out. Too often it happens that the works of thefield are stopped in the daytime, that the inmates of the cottage areroused from their midnight sleep, by the sudden coming of a Governmentofficer, and the poor husbandman, driven by threats and rewarded bycurses, if he would not lose sight for ever of his captured beasts, mustquit all and follow them. This is done that the Englishman may travel. He would make his way more harmless if he could, but horses or mules he_must_ have, and these are his ways and means. 

The town of Nablus is beautiful; it lies in a valley hemmed in with olivegroves, and its buildings are interspersed with frequent palm-trees. Itis said to occupy the site of the ancient Sychem. I know not whether itwas there indeed that the father of the Jews was accustomed to feed hisflocks, but the valley is green and smiling, and is held at this day by arace more brave and beautiful than Jacob’s unhappy descendants. 

Nablus is the very furnace of Mahometan bigotry; and I believe that onlya few months before the time of my going there it would have been quiteunsafe for a man, unless strongly guarded, to show himself to the peopleof the town in a Frank costume; but since their last insurrection theMahometans of the place had been so far subdued by the severity ofIbrahim Pasha, that they dared not now offer the slightest insult to anEuropean. It was quite plain, however, that the effort with which themen of the old school refrained from expressing their opinion of a hatand a coat was horribly painful to them. As I walked through the streetsand bazaars a dead silence prevailed; every man suspended his employment, and gazed on me with a fixed, glassy look, which seemed to say, “God isgood, but how marvellous and inscrutable are His ways that thus Hepermits this white-faced dog of a Christian to hunt through the paths ofthe faithful. ”

The insurrection of these people had been more formidable than any otherthat Ibrahim Pasha had to contend with. He was only able to crush themat last by the assistance of a fellow renowned for his resources in theway of stratagem and cunning, as well as for his knowledge of thecountry. This personage was no other than Aboo Goosh (“the father oflies” {39}), who was taken out of prison for the purpose. The “father oflies” enabled Ibrahim to hem in the insurrection and extinguish it. Hewas rewarded with the Governorship of Jerusalem, which he held when I wasthere. I recollect, by-the-bye, that he tried one of his stratagems uponme. I did not go to see him, as I ought in courtesy to have done, duringmy stay at Jerusalem; but I happened to be the owner of a rather handsomeamber _tchibouque_ piece, which the Governor heard of, and by some meanscontrived to see. He sent to me, and dressed up a statement that hewould give me a price immensely exceeding the sum which I had given forit. He did not add my _tchibouque_ to the rest of his trophies. 

There was a small number of Greek Christians resident in Nablus, and overthese the Mussulmans held a high hand, not even permitting them to speakto each other in the open streets; but if the Moslems thus set themselvesabove the poor Christians of the place, I, or rather my servants, soontook the ascendant over _them_. I recollect that just as we werestarting from the place, and at a time when a number of people hadgathered together in the main street to see our preparations, Mysseri, being provoked at some piece of perverseness on the part of a truebeliever, coolly thrashed him with his horsewhip before the assembledcrowd of fanatics. I was much annoyed at the time, for I thought thatthe people would probably rise against us. They turned rather pale, butstood still. 

The day of my arrival at Nablus was a fête—the new-year’s day of theMussulmans. {40} Most of the people were amusing themselves in thebeautiful lawns and shady groves without the city. The men (exceptmyself) were all remotely apart from the other sex. The women in groupswere diverting themselves and their children with swings. They were sohandsome, that they could not keep up their yashmaks. I believe thatthey had never before looked upon a man in the European dress, and whenthey now saw in me that strange phenomenon, and saw, too, how they couldplease the creature by showing him a glimpse of beauty, they seemed tothink it was better fun to do this than to go on playing with swings. Itwas always, however, with a sort of zoological expression of countenancethat they looked on the horrible monster from Europe, and whenever one ofthem gave me to see for one sweet instant the blushing of her unveiledface, it was with the same kind of air as that with which a young, timidgirl will edge her way up to an elephant and tremblingly give him a nutfrom the tips of her rosy fingers. 

CHAPTER XXV—MARIAM

There is no spirit of propagandism in the Mussulmans of the Ottomandominions. True it is that a prisoner of war, or a Christian condemnedto death, may on some occasions save his life by adopting the religion ofMahomet, but instances of this kind are now exceedingly rare, and arequite at variance with the general system. Many Europeans, I think, would be surprised to learn that which is nevertheless quite true, namely, that an attempt to disturb the religious repose of the empire bythe conversion of a Christian to the Mahometan faith is positivelyillegal. The event which now I am going to mention shows plainly enoughthat the unlawfulness of such interference is distinctly recognised evenin the most bigoted stronghold of Islam. 

During my stay at Nablus I took up my quarters at the house of the Greek“papa” as he is called, that is, the Greek priest. The priest himselfhad gone to Jerusalem upon the business I am going to tell you of, buthis wife remained at Nablus, and did the honours of her home. 

Soon after my arrival a deputation from the Greek Christians of the placecame to request my interference in a matter which had occasioned vastexcitement. 

And now I must tell you how it came to happen, as it did continually, that people thought it worth while to claim the assistance of a meretraveller, who was totally devoid of all just pretensions to authority orinfluence of even the humblest description, and especially I must explainto you how it was that the power thus attributed did really belong to me, or rather to my dragoman. Successive political convulsions had at lengthfairly loosed the people of Syria from their former rules of conduct, andfrom all their old habits of reliance. The violence and success withwhich Mehemet Ali crushed the insurrection of the Mahometan populationhad utterly beaten down the head of Islam, and extinguished, for the timeat least, those virtues and vices which had sprung from the Mahometanfaith. Success so complete as Mehemet Ali’s, if it had been attained byan ordinary Asiatic potentate, would have induced a notion of stability. The readily bowing mind of the Oriental would have bowed low and longunder the feet of a conqueror whom God had thus strengthened. But Syriawas no field for contests strictly Asiatic. Europe was involved, andthough the heavy masses of Egyptian troops, clinging with strong grip tothe land, might seem to hold it fast, yet every peasant practically felt, and knew, that in Vienna or Petersburg or London there were four or fivepale-looking men who could pull down the star of the Pasha with shreds ofpaper and ink. The people of the country knew, too, that Mehemet Ali wasstrong with the strength of the Europeans—strong by his French general, his French tactics, and his English engines. Moreover, they saw that theperson, the property, and even the dignity of the humblest European wasguarded with the most careful solicitude. The consequence of all thiswas, that the people of Syria looked vaguely, but confidently, to Europefor fresh changes. Many would fix upon some nation, France or England, and steadfastly regard it as the arriving sovereign of Syria. Thosewhose minds remained in doubt equally contributed to this new state ofpublic opinion, which no longer depended upon religion and ancienthabits, but upon bare hopes and fears. Every man wanted to know, not whowas his neighbour, but who was to be his ruler; whose feet he was tokiss, and by whom _his_ feet were to be ultimately beaten. Treat yourfriend, says the proverb, as though he were one day to become your enemy, and your enemy as though he were one day to become your friend. TheSyrians went further, and seemed inclined to treat every stranger asthough he might one day become their Pasha. Such was the state ofcircumstances and of feeling which now for the first time had thoroughlyopened the mind of Western Asia for the reception of Europeans andEuropean ideas. The credit of the English especially was so great, thata good Mussulman flying from the conscription, or any other persecution, would come to seek from the formerly despised hat that protection whichthe turban could no longer afford; and a man high in authority (as, forinstance, the Governor in command of Gaza) would think that he had won aprize, or at all events, a valuable lottery ticket, if he obtained awritten approval of his conduct from a simple traveller. 

Still, in order that any immediate result should follow from all thisunwonted readiness in the Asiatic to succumb to the European, it wasnecessary that some one should be at hand who could see and would pushthe advantage. I myself had neither the inclination nor the power to doso, but it happened that Dthemetri, who as my dragoman represented me onall occasions, was the very person of all others best fitted to availhimself with success of this yielding tendency in the Oriental mind. Ifthe chance of birth and fortune had made poor Dthemetri a tailor duringsome part of his life, yet religion and the literature of the Churchwhich he served had made him a man, and a brave man too. The lives ofsaints with which he was familiar were full of heroic actions provokingimitation, and since faith in a creed involves a faith in its ultimatetriumph, Dthemetri was bold from a sense of true strength. His educationtoo, though not very general in its character, had been carried quite farenough to justify him in pluming himself upon a very decided advantageover the great bulk of the Mahometan population, including the men inauthority. With all this consciousness of religious and intellectualsuperiority Dthemetri had lived for the most part in countries lyingunder Mussulman governments, and had witnessed (perhaps too had sufferedfrom) their revolting cruelties: the result was that he abhorred anddespised the Mahometan faith and all who clung to it. And this hate wasnot of the dry, dull, and inactive sort. Dthemetri was in his sphere atrue Crusader, and whenever there appeared a fair opening in the defencesof Islam, he was ready and eager to make the assault. These sentiments, backed by a consciousness of understanding the people with whom he had todo, made Dthemetri not only firm and resolute in his constant interviewswith men in authority, but sometimes also (as you may know already) veryviolent and even insulting. This tone, which I always disliked, though Iwas fain to profit by it, invariably succeeded. It swept away allresistance; there was nothing in the then depressed and succumbing mindof the Mussulman that could oppose a zeal so warm and fierce. 

As for me, I of course stood aloof from Dthemetri’s crusades, and did noteven render him any active assistance when he was striving (as he almostalways was, poor fellow) on my behalf; I was only the death’s head andwhite sheet with which he scared the enemy. I think, however, that Iplayed this spectral part exceedingly well, for I seldom appeared at allin any discussion, and whenever I did, I was sure to be white and calm. 

The event which induced the Christians of Nablus to seek for myassistance was this. A beautiful young Christian, between fifteen andsixteen years old, had lately been married to a man of her own creed. About the same time (probably on the occasion of her wedding) she wasaccidentally seen by a Mussulman Sheik of great wealth and localinfluence, who instantly became madly enamoured of her. The strictmorality which so generally prevails where the Mussulmans have completeascendency prevented the Sheik from entertaining any such sinful hopes asan European might have ventured to cherish under the like circumstances, and he saw no chance of gratifying his love except by inducing the girlto embrace his own creed. If he could induce her to take this step, hermarriage with the Christian would be dissolved, and then there would benothing to prevent him from making her the last and brightest of hiswives. The Sheik was a practical man, and quickly began his attack uponthe theological opinions of the bride. He did not assail her with theeloquence of any imaums or Mussulman saints; he did not press upon herthe eternal truths of the “Cow, ” {41} or the beautiful morality of “theTable”; {41} he sent her no tracts, not even a copy of the holy Koran. An old woman acted as missionary. She brought with her a whole basketfulof arguments—jewels and shawls and scarfs and all kinds of persuasivefinery. Poor Mariam! she put on the jewels and took a calm view of theMahometan religion in a little hand-mirror; she could not be deaf to sucheloquent earrings, and the great truths of Islam came home to her youngbosom in the delicate folds of the cashmere; she was ready to abandon herfaith. 

The Sheik knew very well that his attempt to convert an infidel wasillegal, and that his proceedings would not bear investigation, so hetook care to pay a large sum to the Governor of Nablus in order to obtainhis connivance. 

At length Mariam quitted her home and placed herself under the protectionof the Mahometan authorities, who, however, refrained from delivering herinto the arms of her lover, and detained her in a mosque until the factof her real conversion (which had been indignantly denied by herrelatives) should be established. For two or three days the mother ofthe young convert was prevented from communicating with her child byvarious evasive contrivances, but not, it would seem, by a flat refusal. At length it was announced that the young lady’s profession of faithmight be heard from her own lips. At an hour appointed the friends ofthe Sheik and the relatives of the damsel met in the mosque. The youngconvert addressed her mother in a loud voice, and said, “God is God, andMahomet is the Prophet of God, and thou, oh my mother, art an infidel, feminine dog!”

You would suppose that this declaration, so clearly enounced, and that, too, in a place where Mahometanism is perhaps more supreme than in anyother part of the empire, would have sufficed to have confirmed thepretensions of the lover. This, however, was not the case. The Greekpriest of the place was despatched on a mission to the Governor ofJerusalem (Aboo Goosh), in order to complain against the proceedings ofthe Sheik and obtain a restitution of the bride. Meanwhile the Mahometanauthorities at Nablus were so conscious of having acted unlawfully inconspiring to disturb the faith of the beautiful infidel, that theyhesitated to take any further steps, and the girl was still detained inthe mosque. 

Thus matters stood when the Christians of the place came and sought toobtain my assistance. 

I felt (with regret) that I had no personal interest in the matter, and Ialso thought that there was no pretence for my interfering with theconflicting claims of the Christian husband and the Mahometan lover, andI therefore declined to take any step. 

My speaking of the husband, by-the-bye, reminds me that he was extremelybackward about the great work of recovering his youthful bride. Therelations of the girl, who felt themselves disgraced by her conduct, werevehement and excited to a high pitch, but the Menelaus of Nablus wasexceedingly calm and composed. 

The fact that it was not technically my duty to interfere in a matter ofthis kind was a very sufficient, and yet a very unsatisfactory, reasonfor my refusal of all assistance. Until you are placed in situations ofthis kind you can hardly tell how painful it is to refrain fromintermeddling in other people’s affairs—to refrain from intermeddlingwhen you feel that you can do so with happy effect, and can remove a loadof distress by the use of a few small phrases. Upon this occasion, however, an expression fell from one of the girl’s kinsmen which not onlydetermined me against the idea of interfering, but made me hope that allattempts to recover the proselyte would fail. This person, speaking withthe most savage bitterness, and with the cordial approval of all theother relatives, said that the girl ought to be beaten to death. I couldnot fail to see that if the poor child were ever restored to her familyshe would be treated with the most frightful barbarity. I heartilywished, therefore, that the Mussulmans might be firm, and preserve theiryoung prize from any fate so dreadful as that of a return to her ownrelations. 

The next day the Greek priest returned from his mission to Aboo Goosh, but the “father of lies, ” it would seem, had been well plied with thegold of the enamoured Sheik, and contrived to put off the prayers of theChristians by cunning feints. Now, therefore, a second and more numerousdeputation than the first waited upon me, and implored my interventionwith the Governor. I informed the assembled Christians that since theirlast application I had carefully considered the matter. The religiousquestion I thought might be put aside at once, for the excessive levitywhich the girl had displayed proved clearly that in adopting Mahometanismshe was not quitting any other faith. Her mind must have been thoroughlyblank upon religious questions, and she was not, therefore, to be treatedas a Christian that had strayed from the flock, but rather as a childwithout any religion at all, who was willing to conform to the usages ofthose who would deck her with jewels, and clothe her with cashmereshawls. 

So much for the religious part of the question. Well, then, in a merelytemporal sense, it appeared to me that (looking merely to the interestsof the damsel, for I rather unjustly put poor Menelaus quite out of thequestion) the advantages were all on the side of the Mahometan match. The Sheik was in a much higher station of life than the supersededhusband, and had given the best possible proof of his ardent affection bythe sacrifices he had made, and the risks he had incurred, for the sakeof the beloved object. I, therefore, stated fairly, to the horror andamazement of all my hearers, that the Sheik, in my view, was likely tomake a most capital husband, and that I entirely “approved of the match. ”

I left Nablus under the impression that Mariam would soon be delivered toher Mussulman lover. I afterwards found, however, that the result wasvery different. Dthemetri’s religious zeal and hate had been so muchexcited by the account of these events, and by the grief andmortification of his co-religionists, that when he found me firmlydetermined to decline all interference in the matter, he secretlyappealed to the Governor in my name, and (using, I suppose, many violentthreats, and telling no doubt many lies about my station and influence)extorted a promise that the proselyte should be restored to herrelatives. I did not understand that the girl had been actually given upwhilst I remained at Nablus, but Dthemetri certainly did not desist fromhis instances until he had satisfied himself by some means or other (formere words amounted to nothing) that the promise would be actuallyperformed. It was not till I had quitted Syria, and when Dthemetri wasno longer in my service, that this villainous, though well-motived trick, of his came to my knowledge. Mysseri, who had informed me of the stepwhich had been taken, did not know it himself until some time after wehad quitted Nablus, when Dthemetri exultingly confessed his successfulenterprise. I know not whether the engagement which my zealous dragomanextorted from the Governor was ever complied with. I shudder to think ofthe fate which must have befallen poor Mariam if she fell into the handsof the Christians. 

CHAPTER XXVI—THE PROPHET DAMOOR

For some hours I passed along the shores of the fair lake of Galilee;then turning a little to the westward, I struck into a mountainous tract, and as I advanced thenceforward, the lie of the country kept growing moreand more bold. At length I drew near to the city of Safed. It sits asproud as a fortress upon the summit of a craggy height; yet because ofits minarets and stately trees, the place looks happy and beautiful. Itis one of the holy cities of the Talmud, and according to this authority, the Messiah will reign there for forty years before He takes possessionof Sion. The sanctity and historical importance thus attributed to thecity by anticipation render it a favourite place of retirement forIsraelites, of whom it contains, they say, about four thousand, a numbernearly balancing that of the Mahometan inhabitants. I knew by myexperience of Tabarieh that a “holy city” was sure to have a populationof vermin somewhat proportionate to the number of its Israelites, and Itherefore caused my tent to be pitched upon a green spot of ground at arespectful distance from the walls of the town. 

When it had become quite dark (for there was no moon that night) I wasinformed that several Jews had secretly come from the city in the hope ofobtaining some assistance from me in circumstances of imminent danger; Iwas also informed that they claimed my aid upon the ground that some oftheir number were British subjects. It was arranged that the twoprincipal men of the party should speak for the rest, and these wereaccordingly admitted into my tent. One of the two called himself theBritish vice-consul, and he had with him his consular cap, but he franklysaid that he could not have dared to assume this emblem of his dignity inthe daytime, and that nothing but the extreme darkness of the nightrendered it safe for him to put it on upon this occasion. The other ofthe spokesmen was a Jew of Gibraltar, a tolerably well-bred person, whospoke English very fluently. 

These men informed me that the Jews of the place, who were exceedinglywealthy, had lived peaceably in their retirement until the insurrectionwhich took place in 1834, but about the beginning of that year a highlyreligious Mussulman called Mohammed Damoor went forth into themarket-place, crying with a loud voice, and prophesying that on thefifteenth of the following June the true Believers would rise up in justwrath against the Jews, and despoil them of their gold and their silverand their jewels. The earnestness of the prophet produced someimpression at the time, but all went on as usual, until at last thefifteenth of June arrived. When that day dawned the whole Mussulmanpopulation of the place assembled in the streets that they might see theresult of the prophecy. Suddenly Mohammed Damoor rushed furious into thecrowd, and the fierce shout of the prophet soon ensured the fulfilment ofhis prophecy. Some of the Jews fled and some remained, but they who fledand they who remained, alike, and unresistingly, left their property tothe hands of the spoilers. The most odious of all outrages, that ofsearching the women for the base purpose of discovering such things asgold and silver concealed about their persons, was perpetrated withoutshame. The poor Jews were so stricken with terror, that they submittedto their fate even where resistance would have been easy. In severalinstances a young Mussulman boy, not more than ten or twelve years ofage, walked straight into the house of a Jew and stripped him of hisproperty before his face, and in the presence of his whole family. {43}When the insurrection was put down some of the Mussulmans (most probablythose who had got no spoil wherewith they might buy immunity) werepunished, but the greater part of them escaped. None of the booty wasrestored, and the pecuniary redress which the Pasha had undertaken toenforce for them had been hitherto so carefully delayed, that the hope ofever obtaining it had grown very faint. A new Governor had beenappointed to the command of the place, with stringent orders to ascertainthe real extent of the losses, and to discover the spoilers, with a viewof compelling them to make restitution. It was found that, notwithstanding the urgency of the instructions which the Governor hadreceived, he did not push on the affair with the vigour that had beenexpected. The Jews complained, and either by the protection of theBritish consul at Damascus, or by some other means, had influence enoughto induce the appointment of a special commissioner—they called him “theModeer”—whose duty it was to watch for and prevent anything likeconnivance on the part of the Governor, and to push on the investigationwith vigour and impartiality. 

Such were the instructions with which some few weeks since the Modeercame charged. The result was that the investigation had made nopractical advance, and that the Modeer as well as the Governor was livingupon terms of affectionate friendship with Mohammed Damoor and the restof the principal spoilers. 

Thus stood the chance of redress for the past, but the cause of theagonising excitement under which the Jews of the place now laboured wasrecent and justly alarming. Mohammed Damoor had again gone forth intothe market-place, and lifted up his voice and prophesied a secondspoliation of the Israelites. This was grave matter; the words of such apractical man as Mohammed Damoor were not to be despised. I fear I musthave smiled visibly, for I was greatly amused and even, I think, gratified at the account of this second prophecy. Nevertheless, my heartwarmed towards the poor oppressed Israelites, and I was flattered, too, in the point of my national vanity at the notion of the far-reaching linkby which a Jew in Syria, who had been born on the rock of Gibraltar, wasable to claim me as his fellow-countryman. If I hesitated at all betweenthe “impropriety” of interfering in a matter which was no business ofmine and the “infernal shame” of refusing my aid at such a conjecture, Isoon came to a very ungentlemanly decision, namely, that I would beguilty of the “impropriety, ” and not of the “infernal shame. ” It seemedto me that the immediate arrest of Mohammed Damoor was the one thingneedful to the safety of the Jews, and I felt confident (for reasonswhich I have already mentioned in speaking of the Nablus affair) that Ishould be able to obtain this result by making a formal application tothe Governor. I told my applicants that I would take this step on thefollowing morning. They were very grateful, and were, for a moment, muchpleased at the prospect of safety which might thus be opened to them, butthe deliberation of a minute entirely altered their views, and filledthem with new terror. They declared that any attempt, or pretendedattempt, on the part of the Governor to arrest Mohammed Damoor wouldcertainly produce an immediate movement of the whole Mussulmanpopulation, and a consequent massacre and robbery of the Israelites. Myvisitors went out, and remained I know not how long consulting with theirbrethren, but all at last agreed that their present perilous and painfulposition was better than a certain and immediate attack, and that ifMohammed Damoor was seized, their second estate would be worse than theirfirst. I myself did not think that this would be the case, but I couldnot of course force my aid upon the people against their will; and, moreover, the day fixed for the fulfilment of this second prophecy wasnot very close at hand. A little delay, therefore, in providing againstthe impending danger would not necessarily be fatal. The men nowconfessed that although they had come with so much mystery and, as theythought, at so great a risk to ask my assistance, they were unable tosuggest any mode in which I could aid them, except indeed by mentioningtheir grievances to the consul-general at Damascus. This I promised todo, and this I did. 

My visitors were very thankful to me for the readiness which I had shownto intermeddle in their affairs, and the grateful wives of the principalJews sent to me many compliments, with choice wines and elaboratesweetmeats. 

The course of my travels soon drew me so far from Safed, that I neverheard how the dreadful day passed off which had been fixed for theaccomplishment of the second prophecy. If the predicted spoliation wasprevented, poor Mohammed Damoor must have been forced, I suppose, to saythat he had prophesied in a metaphorical sense. This would be a sadfalling off from the brilliant and substantial success of the firstexperiment. 

CHAPTER XXVII—DAMASCUS

For a part of two days I wound under the base of the snow-crowned Djibelel Sheik, and then entered upon a vast and desolate plain, rarely piercedat intervals by some sort of withered stem. The earth in its length andits breadth and all the deep universe of sky was steeped in light andheat. On I rode through the fire, but long before evening came therewere straining eyes that saw, and joyful voices that announced, the sightof Shaum Shereef—the “holy, ” the “blessed” Damascus. 

But that which at last I reached with my longing eyes was not a speck inthe horizon, gradually expanding to a group of roofs and walls, but along, low line of blackest green, that ran right across in the distancefrom east to west. And this, as I approached, grew deeper, grew wavy inits outline. Soon forest trees shot up before my eyes, and robed theirbroad shoulders so freshly, that all the throngs of olives as they roseinto view looked sad in their proper dimness. There were even now nohouses to see, but only the minarets peered out from the midst of shadeinto the glowing sky, and bravely touched the sun. There seemed to behere no mere city, but rather a province wide and rich, that bounded thetorrid waste. 

Until about a year, or two years, before the time of my going thereDamascus had kept up so much of the old bigot zeal against Christians, orrather, against Europeans, that no one dressed as a Frank could havedared to show himself in the streets; but the firmness and temper of Mr. Farren, who hoisted his flag in the city as consul-general for thedistrict, had soon put an end to all intolerance of Englishmen. Damascuswas safer than Oxford. {44} When I entered the city in my usual dressthere was but one poor fellow that wagged his tongue, and him, in theopen streets, Dthemetri horsewhipped. During my stay I went wherever Ichose, and attended the public baths without molestation. Indeed, myrelations with the pleasanter portion of the Mahometan population wereupon a much better footing here than at most other places. 

In the principal streets of Damascus there is a path for foot-passengers, which is raised, I think, a foot or two above the bridle-road. Until thearrival of the British consul-general none but a Mussulman had beenpermitted to walk upon the upper way. Mr. Farren would not, of course, suffer that the humiliation of any such exclusion should be submitted toby an Englishman, and I always walked upon the raised path as free andunmolested as if I had been in Pall Mall. The old usage was, however, maintained with as much strictness as ever against the Christian Rayahsand Jews: not one of them could have set his foot upon the privilegedpath without endangering his life. 

I was lounging one day, I remember, along “the paths of the faithful, ”when a Christian Rayah from the bridle-road below saluted me with suchearnestness, and craved so anxiously to speak and be spoken to, that hesoon brought me to a halt. He had nothing to tell, except only the gloryand exultation with which he saw a fellow-Christian stand level with theimperious Mussulmans. Perhaps he had been absent from the place for sometime, for otherwise I hardly know how it could have happened that myexaltation was the first instance he had seen. His joy was great. Sostrong and strenuous was England (Lord Palmerston reigned in those days), that it was a pride and delight for a Syrian Christian to look up and saythat the Englishman’s faith was his too. If I was vexed at all that Icould not give the man a lift and shake hands with him on level ground, there was no alloy to his pleasure. He followed me on, not looking tohis own path, but keeping his eyes on me. He saw, as he thought, andsaid (for he came with me on to my quarters), the period of theMahometan’s absolute ascendency, the beginning of the Christian’s. Hehad so closely associated the insulting privilege of the path with actualdominion, that seeing it now in one instance abandoned, he looked for thequick coming of European troops. His lips only whispered, and thattremulously, but his fiery eyes spoke out their triumph in long and loudhurrahs: “I, too, am a Christian. My foes are the foes of the English. We are all one people, and Christ is our King. ”

If I poorly deserved, yet I liked this claim of brotherhood. Not all thewarnings which I heard against their rascality could hinder me fromfeeling kindly towards my fellow-Christians in the East. Englishtravellers, from a habit perhaps of depreciating sectarians in their owncountry, are apt to look down upon the Oriental Christians as being“dissenters” from the established religion of a Mahometan empire. Inever did thus. By a natural perversity of disposition, which mynursemaids called contrariness, I felt the more strongly for my creedwhen I saw it despised among men. I quite tolerated the Christianity ofMahometan countries, notwithstanding its humble aspect and the damagedcharacter of its followers. I went further and extended some sympathytowards those who, with all the claims of superior intellect, learning, and industry, were kept down under the heel of the Mussulmans by reasonof their having _our_ faith. I heard, as I fancied, the faint echo of anold crusader’s conscience, that whispered and said, “Common cause!” Theimpulse was, as you may suppose, much too feeble to bring me intotrouble; it merely influenced my actions in a way thoroughlycharacteristic of this poor sluggish century, that is, by making me speakalmost as civilly to the followers of Christ as I did to their Mahometanfoes. 

This “holy” Damascus, this “earthly paradise” of the Prophet, so fair tothe eyes that he dared not trust himself to tarry in her blissful shades, she is a city of hidden palaces, of copses and gardens, and fountains andbubbling streams. The juice of her life is the gushing and ice-coldtorrent that tumbles from the snowy sides of Anti-Lebanon. Close alongon the river’s edge, through seven sweet miles of rustling boughs anddeepest shade, the city spreads out her whole length. As a man fallsflat, face forward on the brook, that he may drink and drink again, soDamascus, thirsting for ever, lies down with her lips to the stream andclings to its rushing waters. 

The chief places of public amusement, or rather, of public relaxation, are the baths and the great café; this last, which is frequented at nightby most of the wealthy men, and by many of the humbler sort, consists ofa number of sheds, very simply framed and built in a labyrinth of runningstreams, which foam and roar on every side. The place is lit up in thesimplest manner by numbers of small pale lamps strung upon loose cords, and so suspended from branch to branch, that the light, though it looksso quiet amongst the darkening foliage, yet leaps and brightly flashes asit falls upon the troubled waters. All around, and chiefly upon the veryedge of the torrents, groups of people are tranquilly seated. They alldrink coffee, and inhale the cold fumes of the _narghile_; they talkrather gently the one to the other, or else are silent. A father willsometimes have two or three of his boys around him; but the joyousness ofan Oriental child is all of the sober sort, and never disturbs thereigning calm of the land. 

It has been generally understood, I believe, that the houses of Damascusare more sumptuous than those of any other city in the East. Some ofthese, said to be the most magnificent in the place, I had an opportunityof seeing. 

Every rich man’s house stands detached from its neighbours at the side ofa garden, and it is from this cause no doubt that the city (severelymenaced by prophecy) has hitherto escaped destruction. You know someparts of Spain, but you have never, I think, been in Andalusia: if youhad, I could easily show you the interior of a Damascene house byreferring you to the Alhambra or Alcanzar of Seville. The lofty roomsare adorned with a rich inlaying of many colours and illuminated writingon the walls. The floors are of marble. One side of any room intendedfor noonday retirement is generally laid open to a quadrangle, in thecentre of which there dances the jet of a fountain. There is nofurniture that can interfere with the cool, palace-like emptiness of theapartments. A divan (which is a low and doubly broad sofa) runs roundthe three walled sides of the room. A few Persian carpets (which oughtto be called Persian rugs, for that is the word which indicates theirshape and dimensions) are sometimes thrown about near the divan; they areplaced without order, the one partly lapping over the other, and thusdisposed, they give to the room an appearance of uncaring luxury; exceptthese (of which I saw few, for the time was summer, and fiercely hot), there is nothing to obstruct the welcome air, and the whole of the marblefloor from one divan to the other, and from the head of the chamberacross to the murmuring fountain, is thoroughly open and free. 

So simple as this is Asiatic luxury! The Oriental is not a contrivinganimal; there is nothing intricate in his magnificence. Theimpossibility of handing down property from father to son for any longperiod consecutively seems to prevent the existence of those traditionsby which, with us, the refined modes of applying wealth are made known toits inheritors. We know that in England a newly-made rich man cannot, bytaking thought and spending money, obtain even the same-looking furnitureas a gentleman. The complicated character of an English establishmentallows room for subtle distinctions between that which is _comme ilfaut_, and that which is not. All such refinements are unknown in theEast; the Pasha and the peasant have the same tastes. The broad coldmarble floor, the simple couch, the air freshly waving through a shadychamber, a verse of the Koran emblazoned on the wall, the sight and thesound of falling water, the cold fragrant smoke of the _narghile_, and asmall collection of wives and children in the inner apartments—these, theutmost enjoyments of the grandee, are yet such as to be appreciable bythe humblest Mussulman in the empire. 

But its gardens are the delight, the delight and the pride of Damascus. They are not the formal parterres which you might expect from theOriental taste; they rather bring back to your mind the memory of somedark old shrubbery in our northern isle, that has been charmingly_un_—“kept up” for many and many a day. When you see a rich wildernessof wood in decent England, it is like enough that you see it with somesoft regrets. The puzzled old woman at the lodge can give small accountof “the family. ” She thinks it is “Italy” that has made the whole circleof her world so gloomy and sad. You avoid the house in lively dread of alone housekeeper, but you make your way on by the stables; you rememberthat gable with all its neatly nailed trophies of fitchets and hawks andowls, now slowly falling to pieces; you remember that stable, andthat—but the doors are all fastened that used to be standing ajar, thepaint of things painted is blistered and cracked, grass grows in theyard; just there, in October mornings, the keeper would wait with thedogs and the guns—no keeper now; you hurry away, and gain the smallwicket that used to open to the touch of a lightsome hand—it is fastenedwith a padlock (the only new looking thing), and is stained with thick, green damp; you climb it, and bury yourself in the deep shade, and strivebut lazily with the tangling briars, and stop for long minutes to judgeand determine whether you will creep beneath the long boughs and makethem your archway, or whether perhaps you will lift your heel and treadthem down under foot. Long doubt, and scarcely to be ended till you wakefrom the memory of those days when the path was clear, and chase thatphantom of a muslin sleeve that once weighed warm upon your arm. 

Wild as that, the nighest woodland of a deserted home in England, butwithout its sweet sadness, is the sumptuous garden of Damascus. Foresttrees, tall and stately enough if you could see their lofty crests, yetlead a tussling life of it below, with their branches struggling againststrong numbers of bushes and wilful shrubs. The shade upon the earth isblack as night. High, high above your head, and on every side all downto the ground, the thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the interlacingboughs that droop with the weight of roses, and load the slow air withtheir damask breath. {45} There are no other flowers. Here and there, there are patches of ground made clear from the cover, and these areeither carelessly planted with some common and useful vegetable, or elseare left free to the wayward ways of Nature, and bear rank weeds, moist-looking and cool to the eyes, and freshening the sense with theirearthy and bitter fragrance. There is a lane opened through the thicket, so broad in some places that you can pass along side by side; in some sonarrow (the shrubs are for ever encroaching) that you ought, if you can, to go on the first and hold back the bough of the rose-tree. And throughthis wilderness there tumbles a loud rushing stream, which is halted atlast in the lowest corner of the garden, and there tossed up in afountain by the side of the simple alcove. This is all. 

Never for an instant will the people of Damascus attempt to separate theidea of bliss from these wild gardens and rushing waters. Even whereyour best affections are concerned, and you, prudent preachers, “holdhard” and turn aside when they come near the mysteries of the happystate, and we (prudent preachers too), we will hush our voices, and neverreveal to finite beings the joys of the “earthly paradise. ”

CHAPTER XXVIII—PASS OF THE LEBANON

“The ruins of Baalbec!” Shall I scatter the vague, solemn thoughts andall the airy phantasies which gather together when once those words arespoken, that I may give you instead tall columns and measurements true, and phrases built with ink? No, no; the glorious sounds shall stillfloat on as of yore, and still hold fast upon your brain with their owndim and infinite meaning. 

Come! Baalbec is over; I got “rather well” out of that. 

The path by which I crossed the Lebanon is like, I think, in its featuresto one which you must know, namely, that of the Foorca in the BerneseOberland. For a great part of the way I toiled rather painfully throughthe dazzling snow, but the labour of ascending added to the excitementwith which I looked for the summit of the pass. The time came. Therewas a minute in the which I saw nothing but the steep, white shoulder ofthe mountain, and there was another minute, and that the next, whichshowed me a nether heaven of fleecy clouds that floated along far down inthe air beneath me, and showed me beyond the breadth of all Syria west ofthe Lebanon. But chiefly I clung with my eyes to the dim, steadfast lineof the sea which closed my utmost view. I had grown well used of late tothe people and the scenes of forlorn Asia—well used to tombs and ruins, to silent cities and deserted plains, to tranquil men and women sadlyveiled; and now that I saw the even plain of the sea, I leapt with aneasy leap to its yonder shores, and saw all the kingdoms of the West inthat fair path that could lead me from out of this silent land straighton into shrill Marseilles, or round by the pillars of Hercules to thecrash and roar of London. My place upon this dividing barrier was as aman’s puzzling station in eternity, between the birthless past and thefuture that has no end. Behind me I left an old, decrepit world;religions dead and dying; calm tyrannies expiring in silence; womenhushed and swathed, and turned into waxen dolls; love flown, and in itsstead mere royal and “paradise” pleasures. Before me there waited gladbustle and strife; love itself, an emulous game; religion, a cause and acontroversy, well smitten and well defended; men governed by reasons andsuasion of speech; wheels going, steam buzzing—a mortal race, and aslashing pace, and the devil taking the hindmost—taking _me_, by Jove(for that was my inner care), if I lingered too long upon the difficultpass that leads from thought to action. 

I descended and went towards the west. 

The group of cedars remaining on this part of the Lebanon is held sacredby the Greek Church on account of a prevailing notion that the trees werestanding at a time when the temple of Jerusalem was built. They occupythree or four acres on the mountain’s side, and many of them are gnarledin a way that implies great age, but except these signs I saw nothing intheir appearance or conduct that tended to prove them contemporaries ofthe cedars employed in Solomon’s Temple. The final cause to which theseaged survivors owed their preservation was explained to me in the eveningby a glorious old fellow (a Christian chief), who made me welcome in thevalley of Eden. In ancient times the whole range of the Lebanon had beencovered with cedars, and as the fertile plains beneath became more andmore infested by government officers and tyrants of high and low degree, the people by degrees abandoned them and flocked to the rugged mountains, which were less accessible to their indolent oppressors. The cedarforests gradually shrank under the axe of the encroaching multitudes, andseemed at last to be on the point of disappearing entirely, when an agedchief who ruled in this district, and who had witnessed the great changeeffected even in his own lifetime, chose to say that some sign ormemorial should be left of the vast woods with which the mountains hadformerly been clad, and commanded accordingly that this group of trees(which was probably situated at the highest point to which the forest hadreached) should remain untouched. The chief, it seems, was not moved bythe notion I have mentioned as prevailing in the Greek Church, but ratherby some sentiment of veneration for a great natural feature—sentimentakin, perhaps, to that old and earthborn religion, which made men bowdown to creation before they had yet learnt how to know and worship theCreator. 

The chief of the valley in which I passed the night was a man of largepossessions, and he entertained me very sumptuously. He was highlyintelligent, and had had the sagacity to foresee that Europe wouldintervene authoritatively in the affairs of Syria. Bearing this idea inmind, and with a view to give his son an advantageous start in theambitious career for which he was destined, he had hired for him ateacher of the Italian language, the only accessible European tongue. The tutor, however, who was a native of Syria, either did not know or didnot choose to teach the European forms of address, but contented himselfwith instructing his pupil in the mere language of Italy. Thiscircumstance gave me an opportunity (the only one I ever had, or waslikely to have {46}) of hearing the phrases of Oriental courtesy in anEuropean tongue. The boy was about twelve or thirteen years old, andhaving the advantage of being able to speak to me without the aid of aninterpreter, he took a prominent part in doing the honours of hisfather’s house. He went through his duties with untiring assiduity, andwith a kind of gracefulness, which by mere description can scarcely bemade intelligible to those who are unacquainted with the manners of theAsiatics. The boy’s address resembled a little that of a highly polishedand insinuating Roman Catholic priest, but had more of girlishgentleness. It was strange to hear him gravely and slowly enunciatingthe common and extravagant compliments of the East in good Italian, andin soft, persuasive tones. I recollect that I was particularly amused atthe gracious obstinacy with which he maintained that the house in which Iwas so hospitably entertained belonged not to his father, but to me. Tosay this once was only to use the common form of speech, signifying nomore than our sweet word “welcome, ” but the amusing part of the matterwas that, whenever in the course of conversation I happened to speak ofhis father’s house or the surrounding domain, the boy invariablyinterfered to correct my pretended mistake, and to assure me once againwith a gentle decisiveness of manner that the whole property was reallyand exclusively mine, and that his father had not the most distantpretensions to its ownership. 

I received from my host much, and (as I now know) most true, informationrespecting the people of the mountains, and their power of resistingMehemet Ali. The chief gave me very plainly to understand that themountaineers, being dependent upon others for bread and gunpowder (thetwo great necessaries of martial life), could not long hold out against apower which occupied the plains and commanded the sea; but he alsoassured me, and that very significantly, that if this source of weaknesswere provided against, _the mountaineers were to be depended upon_; hetold me that in ten or fifteen days the chiefs could bring together somefifty thousand fighting men. 

CHAPTER XXIX—SURPRISE OF SATALIEH

Whilst I was remaining upon the coast of Syria I had the good fortune tobecome acquainted with the Russian Sataliefsky, {47} a general officer, who in his youth had fought and bled at Borodino, but was now betterknown among diplomats by the important trust committed to him at a periodhighly critical for the affairs of Eastern Europe. I must not tell youhis family name; my mention of his title can do him no harm, for it is I, and I only, who have conferred it, in consideration of the military anddiplomatic services performed under my own eyes. 

The General as well as I was bound for Smyrna, and we agreed to sailtogether in an Ionian brigantine. We did not charter the vessel, but wemade our arrangement with the captain upon such terms that we could beput ashore upon any part of the coast that we might choose. We sailed, and day after day the vessel lay dawdling on the sea with calms andfeeble breezes for her portion. I myself was well repaid for the painfulrestlessness which such weather occasions, because I gained from mycompanion a little of that vast fund of interesting knowledge with whichhe was stored, knowledge a thousand times the more highly to be prizedsince it was not of the sort that is to be gathered from books, but onlyfrom the lips of those who have acted a part in the world. 

When after nine days of sailing, or trying to sail, we found ourselvesstill hanging by the mainland to the north of the isle of Cyprus, wedetermined to disembark at Satalieh, and to go on thence by land. Alight breeze favoured our purpose, and it was with great delight that weneared the fragrant land, and saw our anchor go down in the bay ofSatalieh, within two or three hundred yards of the shore. 

The town of Satalieh {48} is the chief place of the Pashalic in which itis situate, and its citadel is the residence of the Pasha. We hadscarcely dropped our anchor when a boat from the shore came alongsidewith officers on board, who announced that the strictest orders had beenreceived for maintaining a quarantine of three weeks against all vesselscoming from Syria, and directed accordingly that no one from the vesselshould disembark. In reply we sent a message to the Pasha, setting forththe rank and titles of the General, and requiring permission to goashore. After a while the boat came again alongside, and the officersdeclaring that the orders received from Constantinople were imperativeand unexceptional, formally enjoined us in the name of the Pasha toabstain from any attempt to land. 

I had been hitherto much less impatient of our slow voyage than mygallant friend, but this opposition made the smooth sea seem to me like aprison, from which I must and would break out. I had an unbounded faithin the feebleness of Asiatic potentates, and I proposed that we shouldset the Pasha at defiance. The General had been worked up to a state ofmost painful agitation by the idea of being driven from the shore whichsmiled so pleasantly before his eyes, and he adopted my suggestion withrapture. 

We determined to land. 

To approach the sweet shore after a tedious voyage, and then to besuddenly and unexpectedly prohibited from landing—this is so maddening tothe temper, that no one who had ever experienced the trial would say thateven the most violent impatience of such restraint is wholly inexcusable. I am not going to pretend, however, that the course which we chose toadopt on the occasion can be perfectly justified. The impropriety of atraveller’s setting at naught the regulations of a foreign State is clearenough, and the bad taste of compassing such a purpose by meregasconading is still more glaringly plain. I knew perfectly well that ifthe Pasha understood his duty, and had energy enough to perform it, hewould order out a file of soldiers the moment we landed, and cause usboth to be shot upon the beach, without allowing more contact than mightbe absolutely necessary for the purpose of making us stand fire; but Ialso firmly believed that the Pasha would not see the befitting line ofconduct nearly so well as I did, and that even if he did know his duty, he would hardly succeed in finding resolution enough to perform it. 

We ordered the boat to be got in readiness, and the officers on shoreseeing these preparations, gathered together a number of guards, whoassembled upon the sands. We saw that great excitement prevailed, andthat messengers were continually going to and fro between the shore andthe citadel. Our captain, out of compliment to his Excellency, hadprovided the vessel with a Russian war-flag, which he had hoistedalternately with the Union Jack, and we agreed that we would attempt ourdisembarkation under this, the Russian standard! I was glad when we cameto that resolution, for I should have been sorry to engage the honouredflag of England in such an affair as that which we were undertaking. TheRussian ensign was therefore committed to one of the sailors, who tookhis station at the stern of the boat. We gave particular instructions tothe captain of the brigantine, and when all was ready, the General and I, with our respective servants, got into the boat, and were slowly rowedtowards the shore. The guards gathered together at the point for whichwe were making, but when they saw that our boat went on without alteringher course, _they ceased to stand very still_; none of them ran away, oreven shrank back, but they looked as if _the pack were being shuffled_, every man seeming desirous to change places with his neighbour. Theywere still at their post, however, when our oars went in, and the bow ofour boat ran up—well up upon the beach. 

The General was lame by an honourable wound received at Borodino, andcould not without some assistance get out of the boat; I, therefore, landed the first. My instructions to the captain were attended to withthe most perfect accuracy, for scarcely had my foot indented the sandwhen the four six-pounders of the brigantine quite gravely rolled outtheir brute thunder. Precisely as I had expected, the guards and all thepeople who had gathered about them gave way under the shock produced bythe mere sound of guns, and we were all allowed to disembark with theleast molestation. 

We immediately formed a little column, or rather, as I should have calledit, a procession, for we had no fighting aptitude in us, and were onlytrying, as it were, how far we could go in frightening full-grownchildren. First marched the sailor with the Russian flag of war bravelyflying in the breeze, then came the general and I, then our servants, andlastly, if I rightly recollect, two more of the brigantine’s crew. Ourflag-bearer so exulted in his honourable office, and bore the coloursaloft with so much of pomp and dignity, that I found it exceedingly hardto keep a grave countenance. We advanced towards the castle, but thepeople had now had time to recover from the effect of the six-pounders(only of course loaded with powder), and they could not help seeing notonly the numerical weakness of our party, but the very slight amount ofwealth and resource which it seemed to imply. They began to hang roundus more closely, and just as this reaction was beginning the General, whowas perfectly unacquainted with the Asiatic character, thoughtlesslyturned round in order to speak to one of the servants. The effect ofthis slight move was magical. The people thought we were going to giveway, and instantly closed round us. In two words, and with one touch, Ishowed my comrade the danger he was running, and in the next instant wewere both advancing more pompously than ever. Some minutes afterwardsthere was a second appearance of reaction, followed again by wavering andindecision on the part of the Pasha’s people, but at length it seemed tobe understood that we should go unmolested into the audience hall. 

Constant communication had been going on between the receding crowd andthe Pasha, and so when we reached the gates of the citadel we saw thatpreparations were made for giving us an awe-striking reception. Partingat once from the sailors and our servants, the General and I wereconducted into the audience hall; and there at least I suppose the Pashahoped that he would confound us by his greatness. The hall was nothingmore than a large whitewashed room. Oriental potentates have a pride inthat sort of simplicity, when they can contrast it with the exhibition ofpower, and this the Pasha was able to do, for the lower end of the hallwas filled with his officers. These men, of whom I thought there wereabout fifty or sixty, were all handsomely, though plainly, dressed in themilitary frockcoats of Europe; they stood in mass and so as to present ahollow semicircular front towards the upper end of the hall at which thePasha sat; they opened a narrow lane for us when we entered, and as soonas we had passed they again closed up their ranks. An attempt was madeto induce us to remain at a respectful distance from his mightiness. Tohave yielded in this point would have have been fatal to our success, perhaps to our lives; but the General and I had already determined uponthe place which we should take, and we rudely pushed on towards the upperend of the hall. 

Upon the divan, and close up against the right hand corner of the room, there sat the Pasha, his limbs gathered in, the whole creature coiled uplike an adder. His cheeks were deadly pale, and his lips perhaps hadturned white, for without moving a muscle the man impressed me with animmense idea of the wrath within him. He kept his eyes inexorably fixedas if upon vacancy, and with the look of a man accustomed to refuse theprayers of those who sue for life. We soon discomposed him, however, from this studied fixity of feature, for we marched straight up to thedivan and sat down, the Russian close to the Pasha, and I by the side ofthe Russian. This act astonished the attendants, and plainlydisconcerted the Pasha. He could no longer maintain the glassy stillnessof the eyes which he had affected, and evidently became much agitated. At the feet of the satrap there stood a trembling Italian. 

This man was a sort of medico in the potentate’s service, and now in theabsence of our attendants he was to act as interpreter. The Pasha causedhim to tell us that we had openly defied his authority, and had forcedour way on shore in the teeth of his own officers. 

Up to this time I had been the planner of the enterprise, but now thatthe moment had come when all would depend upon able and earnestspeechifying, I felt at once the immense superiority of my gallantfriend, and gladly left to him the whole conduct of this discussion. Indeed he had vast advantages over me, not only by his superior commandof language and his far more spirited style of address, but also in hisconsciousness of a good cause; for whilst I felt myself completely in thewrong, his Excellency had really worked himself up to believe that thePasha’s refusal to permit our landing was a gross outrage and insult. Therefore, without deigning to defend our conduct he at once commenced aspirited attack upon the Pasha. The poor Italian doctor translated oneor two sentences to the Pasha, but he evidently mitigated their import. The Russian, growing warm, insisted upon his attack with redoubled energyand spirit; but the medico, instead of translating, began to shakeviolently with terror, and at last he came out with his _non ardisco_, and fairly confessed that he dared not interpret fierce words to hismaster. 

Now then, at a time when everything seemed to depend upon the effect ofspeech, we were left without an interpreter. 

But this very circumstance, which at first appeared so unfavourable, turned out to be advantageous. The General, finding that he could nothave his words translated, ceased to speak in Italian, and recurred tohis accustomed French; he became eloquent. No one present except myselfunderstood one syllable of what he was saying, but he had drawn forth hispassport, and the energy and violence with which, as he spoke, he pointedto the graven Eagle of all the Russias, began to make an impression. ThePasha saw at his side a man not only free from every the least pang offear, but raging, as it seemed, with just indignation, and thenceforwardhe plainly began to think that, in some way or other (he could not tellhow) he must certainly have been in the wrong. In a little time he wasso much shaken that the Italian ventured to resume his interpretation, and my comrade had again the opportunity of pressing his attack upon thePasha. His argument, if I rightly recollect its import, was to thiseffect: “If the vilest Jews were to come into the harbour, you would butforbid them to land, and force them to perform quarantine; yet this isthe very course, O Pasha, which your rash officers dared to think ofadopting with _us_!—those mad and reckless men would have actually dealttowards a Russian general officer and an English gentleman as if they hadbeen wretched Israelites! Never—never will we submit to such anindignity. His Imperial Majesty knows how to protect his nobles frominsult, and would never endure that a General of his army should betreated in matter of quarantine as though he were a mere Eastern Jew!”This argument told with great effect. The Pasha fairly admitted that hefelt its weight, and he now only struggled to obtain such a compromise asmight partly save his dignity. He wanted us to perform a quarantine ofone day for form’s sake, and in order to show his people that he was notutterly defied; but finding that we were inexorable, he not onlyabandoned his attempt, but promised to supply us with horses. 

When the discussion had arrived at this happy conclusion _tchibouques_and coffee were brought, and we passed, I think, nearly an hour infriendly conversation. The Pasha, it now appeared, had once been aprisoner of war in Russia, and a conviction of the Emperor’s vast power, necessarily acquired during this captivity, made him perhaps more alivethan an untravelled Turk would have been to the force of my comrade’seloquence. 

The Pasha now gave us a generous feast. Our promised horses were broughtwithout much delay. I gained my loved saddle once more, and when themoon got up and touched the heights of Taurus, we were joyfully windingour way through the first of his rugged defiles. 

APPENDIX—THE HOME OF LADY HESTER STANHOPE

It was late when we came in sight of two high conical hills, on one ofwhich stands the village of Djouni, on the other a circular wall, overwhich dark trees were waving; and this was the place in which Lady HesterStanhope had finished her strange and eventful career. It had formerlybeen a convent, but the Pasha of Sidon had given it to the“prophet-lady, ” who converted its naked walls into a palace, and itswilderness into gardens. 

The sun was setting as we entered the enclosure, and we were soonscattered about the outer court, picketing our horses, rubbing down theirfoaming flanks, and washing out their wounds. The buildings thatconstituted the palace were of a very scattered and complicateddescription, covering a wide space, but only one storey in height: courtsand gardens, stables and sleeping-rooms, halls of audience and ladies’bowers, were strangely intermingled. Heavy weeds were growing everywhereamong the open portals, and we forced our way with difficulty through atangle of roses and jasmine to the inner court; here choice flowers oncebloomed, and fountains played in marble basins, but now was presented ascene of the most melancholy desolation. As the watchfire blazed up, itsgleam fell upon masses of honeysuckle and woodbine, on white, moulderingwalls beneath, and dark, waving trees above; while the group ofmountaineers who gathered round its light, with their long beards andvivid dresses, completed the strange picture. 

The clang of sword and spear resounded through the long galleries; horsesneighed among bowers and boudoirs; strange figures hurried to and froamong the colonnades, shouting in Arabic, English, and Italian; the firecrackled, the startled bats flapped their heavy wings, and the growl ofdistant thunder filled up the pauses in the rough symphony. 

Our dinner was spread on the floor in Lady Hester’s favourite apartment;her deathbed was our sideboard, her furniture our fuel, her name ourconversation. Almost before the meal was ended two of our party haddropped asleep over their trenchers from fatigue; the Druses had retiredfrom the haunted precincts to their village; and W-, L-, and I went outinto the garden to smoke our pipes by Lady Hester’s lonely tomb. Aboutmidnight we fell asleep upon the ground, wrapped in our capotes, anddreamed of ladies and tombs and prophets till the neighing of our horsesannounced the dawn. 

After a hurried breakfast on fragments of the last night’s repast westrolled out over the extensive gardens. Here many a broken arbour andtrellis, bending under masses of jasmine and honeysuckle, show the careand taste that were once lavished on this wild but beautiful hermitage: agarden-house, surrounded by an enclosure of roses run wild, lies in themidst of a grove of myrtle and bay trees. This was Lady Hester’sfavourite resort during her lifetime; and now, within its silentenclosure, “After life’s fitful fever she sleeps well. ”

The hand of ruin has dealt very sparingly with all these interestingrelics; the Pasha’s power by day, and the fear of spirits by night, keepoff marauders; and though we made free with broken benches and fallendoorposts for fuel, we reverently abstained from displacing anything inthe establishment except a few roses, which there was no living thing butbees and nightingales to regret. It was one of the most striking andinteresting spots I ever witnessed: its silence and beauty, its richnessand desolation, lent to it a touching and mysterious character, thatsuited well the memory of that strange hermit-lady who has made it aplace of pilgrimage, even in Palestine. {49}

The Pasha of Sidon presented Lady Hester with the deserted convent of MarElias on her arrival in his country, and this she soon converted into afortress, garrisoned by a band of Albanians: her only attendants besideswere her doctor, her secretary, and some female slaves. Public rumoursoon busied itself with such a personage, and exaggerated her influenceand power. It is even said that she was crowned Queen of the East atPalmyra by fifty thousand Arabs. She certainly exercised almost despoticpower in her neighbourhood on the mountain; and what was perhaps the mostremarkable proof of her talents, she prevailed on some Jews to advancelarge sums of money to her on her note of hand. She lived for manyyears, beset with difficulties and anxieties, but to the last she held ongallantly: even when confined to her bed and dying she sought for nocompanionship or comfort but such as she could find in her own powerful, though unmanageable, mind. 

Mr. Moore, our consul at Beyrout, hearing she was ill, rode over themountains to visit her, accompanied by Mr. Thomson, the Americanmissionary. It was evening when they arrived, and a profound silence wasover all the palace. No one met them; they lighted their own lamps inthe outer court, and passed unquestioned through court and gallery untilthey came to where _she_ lay. A corpse was the only inhabitant of thepalace, and the isolation from her kind which she had sought so long wasindeed complete. That morning thirty-seven servants had watched everymotion of her eye: its spell once darkened by death, every one fled withsuch plunder as they could secure. A little girl, adopted by her andmaintained for years, took her watch and some papers on which she had setpeculiar value. Neither the child nor the property were ever seen again. Not a single thing was left in the room where she lay dead, except theornaments upon her person. No one had ventured to touch these; even indeath she seemed able to protect herself. At midnight her countryman andthe missionary carried her out by torchlight to a spot in the garden thathad been formerly her favourite resort, and here they buried theself-exiled lady. —_From_ “THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS, ” _by EliotWarburton_. 

Footnotes:

{1} A “compromised” person is one who has been in contact with people orthings supposed to be capable of conveying infection. As a general rulethe whole Ottoman Empire lies constantly under this terrible ban. The“yellow flag” is the ensign of the quarantine establishment. 

{2} The narghile is a water-pipe upon the plan of the hookah, but moregracefully fashioned; the smoke is drawn by a very long flexible tube, that winds its snake-like way from the vase to the lips of the beatifiedsmoker. 

{3} That is, if he stands up at all. Oriental etiquette would notwarrant his rising, unless his visitor were supposed to be at least hisequal in point of rank and station. 

{4} The continual marriages of these people with the chosen beauties ofGeorgia and Circassia have overpowered the original ugliness of theirTatar ancestors. 

{5} There is almost always a breeze either from the Marmora or from theBlack Sea, that passes along the course of the Bosphorus. 

{6} The yashmak, you know, is not a mere semi-transparent veil, butrather a good substantial petticoat applied to the face; it thoroughlyconceals all the features, except the eyes; the way of withdrawing it isby pulling it down. 

{7} The “pipe of tranquillity” is a _tchibouque_ too long to beconveniently carried on a journey; the possession of it therefore impliesthat its owner is stationary, or at all events, that he is enjoying along repose from travel. 

{8} The Jews of Smyrna are poor, and having little merchandise of theirown to dispose of, they are sadly importunate in offering their servicesas intermediaries: their troublesome conduct has led to the custom ofbeating them in the open streets. It is usual for Europeans to carrylong sticks with them, for the express purpose of keeping off the chosenpeople. I always felt ashamed to strike the poor fellows myself, but Iconfess to the amusement with which I witnessed the observance of thiscustom by other people. The Jew seldom got hurt much, for he was alwaysexpecting the blow, and was ready to recede from it the moment it came:one could not help being rather gratified at seeing him bound away sonimbly, with his long robes floating out in the air, and then again wheelround, and return with fresh importunities. 

{9} Marriages in the East are arranged by professed match-makers; manyof these, I believe, are Jewesses. 

{10} A Greek woman wears her whole fortune upon her person in the shapeof jewels or gold coins; I believe that this mode of investment isadopted in great measure for safety’s sake. It has the advantage ofenabling a suitor to _reckon_ as well as to admire the objects of hisaffection. 

{11} St. Nicholas is the great patron of Greek sailors. A small pictureof him enclosed in a glass case is hung up like a barometer at one end ofthe cabin. 

{12} Hanmer. 

{13} “. . . Ubi templum illi, centumque SabæoThure calent aræ, sertisque recentibus halant. ”

 —Æneid, i, 415. 

{14} The writer advises that none should attempt to read the followingaccount of the late Lady Hester Stanhope except those who may alreadychance to feel an interest in the personage to whom it relates. Thechapter (which has been written and printed for the reasons mentioned inthe preface) is chiefly filled with the detailed conversation, or ratherdiscourse, of a highly eccentric gentlewoman. 

{15} Historically “_fainting_”; the death did not occur until longafterwards. 

{16} I am told that in youth she was exceedingly sallow. 

{17} This was my impression at the time of writing the above passage, animpression created by the popular and uncontradicted accounts of thematter, as well as by the tenor of Lady Hester’s conversation. I havenow some reason to think that I was deceived, and that her sway in thedesert was much more limited than I had supposed. She seems to have hadfrom the Bedouins a fair five hundred pounds’ worth of respect, and notmuch more. 

{18} She spoke it, I dare say, in English; the words would not be theless effective for being spoken in an unknown tongue. Lady Hester, Ibelieve, never learnt to speak the Arabic with a perfect accent. 

{19} The proceedings thus described to me by Lady Hester as having takenplace during her illness, were afterwards re-enacted at the time of herdeath. Since I wrote the words to which this note is appended, Ireceived from Warburton an interesting account of the heroine’s death, orrather the circumstances attending the discovery of the event; and Icaused it to be printed in the former editions of this work. I must nowgive up the borrowed ornament, and omit my extract from my friend’sletter, for the rightful owner has reprinted it in “The Crescent and theCross. ” I know what a sacrifice I am making, for in noticing the firstedition of this book reviewers turned aside from the text to the note, and remarked upon the interesting information which Warburton’s lettercontained. [This narrative is reproduced in an Appendix to the presentedition. ]

{20} In a letter which I afterwards received from Lady Hester, shementioned incidentally Lord Hardwicke, and said that he was “thekindest-hearted man existing—a most manly, firm character. He comes froma good breed—all the Yorkes excellent, with _ancient_ French blood intheir veins. ” The under scoring of the word “ancient” is by the writerof the letter, who had certainly no great love or veneration for theFrench of the present day: she did not consider them as descended fromher favourite stock. 

{21} It is said that deaf people can hear what is said concerningthemselves, and it would seem that those who live without books ornewspapers know all that is written about them. Lady Hester Stanhope, though not admitting a book or newspaper into her fortress, seems to haveknown the way in which M. Lamartine mentioned her in his book, for in aletter which she wrote to me after my return to England she says, “Although neglected, as Monsieur le M. ” (referring, as I believe, to M. Lamartine) “describes, and without books, yet my head is organised tosupply the want of them as well as acquired knowledge. ”

{22} I have been recently told that this Italian’s pretensions to thehealing art were thoroughly unfounded. My informant is a gentleman whoenjoyed during many years the esteem and confidence of Lady HesterStanhope: his adventures in the Levant were most curious and interesting. 

{23} The Greek Church does not recognise this as the true sanctuary, andmany Protestants look upon all the traditions by which it is attempted toascertain the holy places of Palestine as utterly fabulous. For myself, I do not mean either to affirm or deny the correctness of the opinionwhich has fixed upon this as the true site, but merely to mention it as abelief entertained without question by my brethren of the Latin Church, whose guest I was at the time. It would be a great aggravation of thetrouble of writing about these matters if I were to stop in the midst ofevery sentence for the purpose of saying “so called” or “so it is said, ”and would besides sound very ungraciously: yet I am anxious to beliterally true in all I write. Now, thus it is that I mean to get overmy difficulty. Whenever in this great bundle of papers or book (if bookit is to be) you see any words about matters of religion which would seemto involve the assertion of my own opinion, you are to understand me justas if one or other of the qualifying phrases above mentioned had beenactually inserted in every sentence. My general direction for you toconstrue me thus will render all that I write as strictly and actuallytrue as if I had every time lugged in a formal declaration of the factthat I was merely expressing the notions of other people. 

{24} “Vino d’oro. ”

{25} Shereef. 

{26} Tennyson. 

{27} The other three cities held holy by Jews are Jerusalem, Hebron, andSafet. 

{28} Hadj a pilgrim. 

{29} Milnes cleverly goes to the French for the exact word which conveysthe impression produced by the voice of the Arabs, and calls them “unpeuple _criard_. ”

{30} There is some semblance of bravado in my manner of talking aboutthe plague. I have been more careful to describe the terrors of otherpeople than my own. The truth is, that during the whole period of mystay at Cairo I remained thoroughly impressed with a sense of my danger. I may almost say, that I lived in perpetual apprehension, for even insleep, as I fancy, there remained with me some faint notion of the perilwith which I was encompassed. But fear does not necessarily damp thespirits; on the contrary, it will often operate as an excitement, givingrise to unusual animation, and thus it affected me. If I had not beensurrounded at this time by new faces, new scenes, and new sounds, theeffect produced upon my mind by one unceasing cause of alarm might havebeen very different. As it was, the eagerness with which I pursued myrambles among the wonders of Egypt was sharpened and increased by thesting of the fear of death. Thus my account of the matter plainlyconveys an impression that I remained at Cairo without losing mycheerfulness and buoyancy of spirits. And this is the truth, but it isalso true, as I have freely confessed, that my sense of danger during thewhole period was lively and continuous. 

{31} Anglicé for “je le sais. ” These answers of mine, as given above, are not meant as specimens of mere French, but of that fine, terse, nervous, _Continental English_ with which I and my compatriots make ourway through Europe. This language, by-the-bye, is one possessing greatforce and energy, and is not without its literature, a literature of thevery highest order. Where will you find more sturdy specimens ofdownright, honest, and noble English than in the Duke of Wellington’s“French” despatches?

{32} The import of the word “compromised, ” when used in reference tocontagion, is explained on page 18. 

{33} It is said, that when a Mussulman finds himself attacked by theplague he goes and takes a bath. The couches on which the bathersrecline would carry infection, according to the notions of the Europeans. Whenever, therefore, I took the bath at Cairo (except the first time ofmy doing so) I avoided that part of the luxury which consists in being“put up to dry” upon a kind of bed. 

{34} Mehemet Ali invited the Mamelukes to a feast, and murdered themwhilst preparing to enter the banquet hall. 

{35} It is not strictly lawful to sell _white_ slaves to a Christian. 

{36} The difficulty was occasioned by the immense exertions which thePasha was making to collect camels for military purposes. 

{37} Herodotus, in an after age, stood by with his note-book, and got, as he thought, the exact returns of all the rations served out. 

{38} See Milman’s “History of the Jews, ” first edition. 

{39} This is an appellation not implying blame, but merit; the “lies”which it purports to affiliate are feints and cunning stratagems, ratherthan the baser kind of falsehoods. The expression, in short, has nearlythe same meaning as the English word “Yorkshireman. ”

{40} The 29th of April. 

{41} These are the names given by the Prophet to certain chapters of theKoran. 

{43} It was after the interview which I am talking of, and not from theJews themselves, that I learnt this fact. 

{44} An enterprising American traveller, Mr. Everett, lately conceivedthe bold project of penetrating to the University of Oxford, and thisnotwithstanding that he had been in his infancy (they begin very youngthose Americans) an Unitarian preacher. Having a notion, it seems, thatthe ambassadorial character would protect him from insult, he adopted thestratagem of procuring credentials from his Government as MinisterPlenipotentiary at the Court of her Britannic Majesty; he also wore theexact costume of a Trinitarian. But all his contrivances were vain;Oxford disdained, and rejected, and insulted him (not because herepresented a swindling community, but) because that his infantinesermons were strictly remembered against him; the enterprise failed. 

{45} The rose-trees which I saw were all of the kind we call “damask”;they grow to an immense height and size. 

{46} A dragoman never interprets in terms the courteous language of theEast. 

{47} A title signifying transcender or conqueror of Satalieh. 

{48} Spelt “Attalia” and sometimes “Adalia” in English books and maps. 

{49} While Lady Hester Stanhope lived, although numbers visited theconvent, she almost invariably refused admittance to strangers. Sheassigned as a reason the use which M. De Lamartine had made of hisinterview. Mrs. T. , who passed some weeks at Djouni, told me, that whenLady Hester read his account of this interview, she exclaimed, “It is allfalse; we did not converse together for more than five minutes; but nomatter, no traveller hereafter shall betray or forge my conversation. ”The author of “Eothen, ” however, was her guest, and has given us aninteresting account of his visit in his brilliant volume.