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Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmds i des taux de reduction diff^rents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clich6, il est filmd 6 partir de I'angle supdrieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 i0C«a^^'^ ',";i. -. irfr,' J EOTH EN ; OR, T RACES OF Travel BROUGHT HOME FROM THE EAST. BY ALEX. WM. KINGLAKE, AUTHOR OF "THE HISTORY OF THE CRIMEAN WAR.' New Edition. TORONTO : ADAM, STEVENSON & CO. 1871. HUNTSR, ROBB k Co., VMSTJOlB, BOOKBmDBRB, ELECTROTTPERB AND STER0TTPRR8. CONTENTS Preface . v Chap. I. Over the Border , II. Journey from Belgrade to Constantinople - lo III. . Constantinople ----.. ji IV. The Troad - .28 V. Infidel Smyrna -4 VI. Greek Mariners .^ VII. Cyprus -j VIII. Lady Hester Stanhope 57 IX. The Sanctuary y- X. The Monks of the Holy Land - - • - 80 XI. From Nazareth to Tiberias . - - 86 XII. My First Bivouac 00 XIIL The Dead Sea gj XIV. The Black Tents ------ 102 XV. Passage of the Jordan - - - . - 105 XVI. Terra Santa j,q XVIL The Desert XVin. Cairo and the Plague - . . . . ,43 XIX, The Pyramids ig. XX. The Sphynx ,g- XXI. Cairo to Suez - - 160 XXIL Suez - ^^^ XXIII. Suez to Gaza ,3^ XXIV. Gaza to Nablous --•--.. 186 XXV. Mariam -.-... ,^^ - - 190 XXVL The Prophet Damoor -■--•- 197 XXVII. Damascus --.... 201 XXVIII. Pass of the Lebanon 208 XXIX. Surprise of Sataheh 2,2 PREFACE ADDRESSED BY THE AUTHOR TO ONE OF HIS FRIENDS. jHEN you first entertained the idea of travelling in the East, you asked me to send you an outline of the tour which I had made, in order that you might the better be able to choose a route for yourself. In answer to this request, I gave you a French map, on which the course of my journeys had been carefully marked ; but I did not conceal from myself, that this was rather a dry mode for a man to adopt, when he wished to impart the results of his ex- perience to a dear and intimate friend. Now, long before the period of your planning an Oriental tour, I had inten- ded to write some account of my Eastern Travels. I had, indeed, begun the task, and had failed ; I had begun it a second time, and, failing again, had abandoned my attempt with a sen- sation of utter distaste. I was unable to speak out, and chiefly, I think, for this reason — that I knew not to whom I was speak- ing. It might be you, or, perhaps, our Lady of Bitterness, who would read my story ; or it might be some member of the Royal Statistical Society, and how oh earth was I to write in a way that wo. Id do for all three? Well — your request for a sketch of my tour suggested to me the idea of complying with your wish by a revival of my twice abandoned attempt. I tried, and the pleasure and confidence PREFACE. i ill 11 I' which I felt, in speaking to you, soon made my task so easy, and even amusing, that, after a while (though not in time for your tour), I completed the scrawl from which this book was originally printed. The very feeling, however, which enabled me to write thus freely, prevented me from robing my thoughts in that grave and decoro 's style which I should have maintained if I had pro- fessed to lecture the public. Whilst I feigned to myself that you, and you only, were listening, I could not by possibility speak very solemnly. Heaven forbid that I should talk to my own genial friend, as though he were a great and enlightened Community, or any other respectable Aggregate ! Yet I well understood that the mere fact of my professing to speak to you rather than to the public generally could not perfectly excuse me for printing a narrative too roughly worded, and accordingly, in revising the proof sheets, I have struck out those phrases which seemed to be less fit for a pub- lished volume than for intimate conversation. It is hardly to be expected, however, that correction of this kind should be perfectly complete, or that the almost boisterous tone in which many parts of the book were originally written should be thoroughly subdued. I venture, therefore, to ask, that the familiarity of language, still possibly apparent in the work, may be laid to the account of our delightful intimacy, rather than to any presumptuous motive ; I feel, as you know, much too timidly — too distantly, and too respectfully, towards the public to be capable of seeking to put myself on terms of easy fellow- ship with strange and casual readers. It is right to forewarn people (and I have tried to do this as well I can, by my studiously unpromising title-page*), that the * "Eothen" is, I hope, almost the only hard word to be found in the book ; it is written in Greek, ^ydcv (AtticS with an aspirated c instead of PREFACE- vu book is quite superficial in its character. I have endeavoured to discard from it all valuable matter derived from the works of others, and it appears to me that my efforts in this direction have been attended with great success ; I believe I may truly acknowledge, that from all details of geographical discovery, or antiquarian research — from all display of " sound learning, and religious knowledge" — from all historical and scientific illustrations — from all useful statistics — from all political dis- quisition — and from all good moral reflections, the volume is thoroughly free. My excuse for the book is its truth ; you and I know a man fond of hazarding elaborate jokes, who, whenever a story of his happens not to go down as wit, will evade the awkward- ness of the failure, by bravely maintaining that all he has said is pure fact. I can honestly take this decent, though humble, mode of escape. My narrative is not merely righteously exact in matters of fact (where fact is in question), but it is true in this larger sense — it conveys — not those impressions which ought to have been produced upon any " well constituted mind," but those which were really and truly received, at the time of his rambles, by a headstrong, and not very amiable traveller, whose prejudices in favour of other people's notions were then exceedingly slight. As I have felt, so I have written ; and the result is, that there will often be found in my narrative a jarring discord between the associations properly belonging to interest- ing sites, and the tone in which I speak of them. This seem- ingly perverse mode of treating the subject is forced upon me by my plan of adhering to sentimental truth, and really does not result from any impertinent wish to teaze or trifle with read- the t;,) — and signifies "from the early dawn," — "from the East." — Donn Lex., Ath Edition. m PREFACE. ers. I ought, for instance, to have felt as strongly in Jiidea, as in Galilee, but it was not so in fact : the religious sentiment (born in solitude) which had heatfid my brain in the Sanctuary of Naza- reth was rudely chilled at the foot of Zion, by disenchanting scenes, and this change is accordingly disclosed by the perfectly worldly tone in which I speak of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. My notion of dwelling precisely upon those matters which happened to interest me, and upon none other, would of course be intolerable in a regular book of travels. If I had been pas- sing through countries not previously explored, it would have been sadly perverse to withhold careful description of admir- able objects, merely because my own feelings of interest in them may have happened to flag ; but where the countries which one visits have been thoroughly and ably described, and even artistically illustrated by others, one is fully at liberty to say as little (though not quite so much) as one chooses. Now a traveller is a creature not always looking at sights — he re- members (how often !) the happy land of his birth — he has, too, his moments of humble enthusiasm about fire and food — about shade and drink ; and if he gives to these feelings anything like the prominence which really belonged to them at the time of his travelling, he will not seem a very good teacher ; once hav- ing determined to write the sheer truth concerning the things which chiefly have interested him, he must and he will sing a sadly long strain about Self ; he will talk for whole pages to- gether about his bivouac fire, and ruin the Ruins of Baalbec with eight or ten cold lines. But it seems to me that the egotism of a traveller, however incessant — however shameless and obstrusive, must still con- vey some true ideas of the country through which he has pas- sed. His very selfishness — his habit of referring the whole PREFACE. IX external world to his own sensations, compel him us it were, in his writings, to observe the laws of perspective ; he tells you of objects, not as he knows them to be, but as they seemed to him. The people and the things that most concern him per- sonally, however mean and insignificant, take large proportions in his picture, because they stand so near to him. He shows you his Dragomen, and the gaunt features of hi A.rabs — his tent — his kneeling camels — his baggage strewed upon the sand ; — but the proper wonders of the land — the cities — the mighty ruins and monuments of bygone ages he throws back faintly in the distance. It is thus that he felt, and thus he strives to repeat the scenes of the Elder World. You may listen to him for ever without learning nuch in the way of statistics ; but per- haps, if you bear with him long enough, you may find yourself slowly and slightly impressed with the realities of Er.stern Travel. My scheme of refusing to dwell upon matters which failed to interest my own feelings, has been departed from in one in- stance — namely, in my detail of the late Lady Hester Stan- hope's conversation on supernatural topics; the truth is, that I have been much questioned on this subject, and I though* that my best plan would be to write down at once all that I could ever have to say concerning the personage whose career has excited so much curiosity amongst Englishwomen. The result is that my account of the lady goes to a length which is not justified either by the importance of the subject, or by the ex- tent to which it interested the narrator. You will see that I constantly speak of " my People," " my Party," " my Arabs," and so on, using temis which might pos- sibly seem to imply that I moved about with a pompous retinue. This of course was not the case. I travelled with the simpli- PREFACE. li'i city proper to my station, as one of the industrious class, who was not flying from his country because of ennui, but was strengthening his will, and tempering the metal of his nature for that life of toil and conflict in which he is now engaged. But an Englishman journeying in th' East, must necessarily have with him Dragomen capable of interpreting the Oriental language ; the absence of wheeled-carriages obliges him to use several beasts of burthen for his luggage, as well as for himself and his attendants ; the owners of the horses or camels, with their slaves or servants, fall in as part of his train, and alto- gether the cavalcade becomes rather numerous, without, how- ever, occasioning any proportionate increase of expense. When a traveller speaks of all these followers in mass, he calls them his " people," or his "troop," or his "party," without intending to make you believe that he is therefore a Sovereign Prince. You will see that I sometimes follow the custom f ' the Scots in describing my fellow-countrymen by the names of their paternal homes. Of course all these explanations are meant for casual read- ers. To you, without one syllable of excuse or deprecation, and in all the confidence of a friendship that never yet was clouded, I give this long-promised volume, and add but one sudden *' Good-by !" for I dare not stand greeting you here. BOTH EN. CHAPTER I. OVER THE BORDER. (T Semlin I still was encompassed by the scenes, and the sounds of familiar life ; the din of a busy world still vexed and cheered me ; the unveiled faces of women still shone in the light of day. Yet, whenever I chose to look southward, I saw the Ottoman's fortress — aus- tere, and darkly impending over the vale of the Danube — ^his- toric Belgrade. I had come, as it were, to the end of this wheel-going Europe, and now my eyes would see the Splendor and Havoc of the East. The two frontier towns are less than a cannon-shot distant, and yet their people hold no communion. The Hungarian on the Nor*h, and the Turk and Servian on the southern side of the Save, are as much asunder as though there were fifty broad provinces that lay in the path between them. Of the men that bustled around me in the streets of Semlin, there was not, per- haps, one who had ever gone down to look upon the stranger race which dwells under the walls of that opposite castle. It is the Plague, and the dread of the Plague, which divide the one people from the other. All coming and going stands for- bidden by the terrors of the yellow flag. If you dare to break the laws of the quarantine, you will be tried with military haste ; the court will scream out your sentence to you from a tribunal some fifty yards off; the priest, instead of gently whispering to yQU.thQ sweet hopes of religion, wiU console you at duelling di{h EOTHEN. [CHAP. I. tance, and after that you will find yourself carefully shot, and carelessly buried in the ground of the Lazaretto. When all was in order for our departure, we walked down to the precincts of the Quarantine Establishment, and here awaited us a "compromised"* officer of the Austrian Government, who lives in a state of perpetual excommunication. The boats, with' their " compromised " rowers, were also in readiness. After coming in contact with any creature or thing belong- ing to the Ottoman Empire, it would be impossible for us to return to the Austrian territory without undergoing an imprison- ment of fourteen days in the odious Lazaretto ; we felt, there- fore, that before we committed ourselves, it was highly important to take care that none of the arrangements necessary for the journey had been forgotten, and in our anxiety to avoid such a misfortune, we managed the work of departure from Semlin with nearly as much solemnity as if we had been departing this life. Some obliging persons, from whom we had received civilities during our short stay in the place, came down to say their farewell at the river's side j and now, as we stood with them at the distance of three or four yards from the " com- promised " officer, they asked if we were perfectly certain that we had wound up all our affairs in Christendom, and whether we had no parting requests to make. We repeated the caution to our servants, and took anxious thought, lest by any possi- biUty we might be cut off from some cherished object of affec- tion : — were they quite sure that there was no faithful portman- teau — no patient and long-suffering carpet bag — no fragrant dressing-case, with its gold compelling letterb of credit, from which we might be parting for ever ? No — all these our loved ones lay safely stowed in the boat, and we were ready to follow them to the ends of the earth. Now, therefore, we shook hands with our Semlin friends, who immediately retreated for three or four paces, so as to leave us in the centre of a space between them and the "compromised " officer ; the latter then advanced, and asking once more if we had done with the civilized world, held forth his hand— I met it with mine, and there was an end to Christendom for many a day to come. * A " compromised " person is one who has been in contact with people or things supposed to be capable of conveying infection. As a general rule the whole Ottoman Empire lies constantly under this terrible ban. The « yellow flag " is th6 ensign of the Quarantine Establishment. CHAP. I.] OVER THE BORDER. possi- affec- trtman- ragrant from loved I follow hands three :tween inced, ^orld, In end We soon neared the southern bank of the river, but no sounds came down from the blank walls above, and there was no living thing that we could yet see, except one great hovering bird of the vulture race, flying low, and intent, and wheeling round and round over the Pest-accused city. But presently there issued from the postern, a group of human beings, — beings with immortal souls, and possibly some reasoning faculties, but to me the grand point was this, that they had real, substantial, and incontrovertible turbans ; they made for the point towards which we were steering, and when at last I sprang upon the shore, I heard, and saw myself now first surrounded by men of Asiatic race ; I have since ridden through the land of the Osmanlees, from the Servian Border to the Golden Horn, — from the gulph of Satalieh to the tomb of Achilles ; but never have I seen such ultra-Turkish looking fellows as those who received me on the banks of the Save ; they were men in the humblest order of life, having come to meet our boat in the hope of earning something by carrying our luggage up to the city, but poor though they were, it was plain that they were Turks of the proud old school, and had not yet forgotten the fierce, careless bearing of the once vic- torious Ottomans. Though the Province of Servia generally has obtained a kind of independence, 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 sur- rounded us were soldiers, or peaceful inhabitants, I did not understand ; they wore the old Turkish costume ; vests and jackets of many brilliant colours divided irom the loose petti- coat-trousers by masses of shawl, which were folded in heavy volumes around their waists, so as to give the meagre wearers something of the dignity of true corpulence. The shawl en- closed a whole bundle of weapons j no aaan bore less than one brace of immensely long pistols, and a y^^ghan (or cutlass), with a dagger or two, of various shapes and sizes ; most of these arms were inlaid with silver, and highly burnished, so that they contrasted shiningly with the decayed grandeur of the garments to which they were attached (this carefulness of his arms is a point of honour with the Osmanlee, who never allows his bright yataghan to suffer from his own adversity) ; then the long drooping mustuchios, and the ample folds of the EOTHEN. [chap. I. I i r once white turbans, that lowered over the piercing eyes, and the haggard features of the men, gave them an air of gloomy i pride, and that appearance of trying to be disdainful under \ difficulties, which I have since seen so often in those of the ' Ottoman people who live, and remember old times ; they seem I as if they were thinking that they would have been more use- fully, more honourably, and more piously employed in cutting I our throats, than in carrying our portmanteaux. The faithful I Steel (Methley's Yorkshire servant) stood aghast for a moment, at the sight of his master's luggage upon the shoulders of these warlike porters, and when at last we began to move up, he could scarcely avoid turning round to cast an affectionate look towards Christendom, but quickly again he marched on with the 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, a-v^ on over shelving and hillocky paths through I the narrow lane^ walled in by blank, windowless dwellings ; you come out upon an open space strewed with the black ruins j that some late fire has left ; you pass by a mountain of cast- away things, the rubbish of centuries, and on it you see num- bers of big, wolf-like dogs lying torpid under the sun, withf limbs outstret-^hed to the full, as if they were dead ; storks, or| cranes, sitting fearless upon the low roofs, look gravely down| upon you ; the still air that you breathe is loaded with the scentl of citron, and pomegranate rinds scorched by the sun, or (asf you approach the Bazaar) with the dry, dead perfume of strangef spices. You long for some signs of life, and tread the ground! more heavily, as though you would wake the sleepers with thef heel of your boot ; but the foot falls noiseless upon the crumb- ling soil of an eastern city, and Silence follows you still. Again! and again you meet turbans, and faces of men, but they havej nothing for you — no welcome — no wonder — no wrath — no sconi^ — they look upon you as we look upon a December's fall ofi| 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 invitationj from the Pasha, and we wound our way up to the castle, ^tl the gates there were groups of soldiess, some gmoking, and! iome l/in§ (kt like corpses upon the cool stonei j we weaf [CHAP. I. ■ CHAP. I.] OVER THE BORDER. eyes, and j f gloomy I 111 under se of the hey seem nore use- In cutting ' le faithful I moment, 5 of these j ve up, he nate look I on with prepared ; you go s through wellings ; .ack ruins a of cast- see num- sun, withP'!iiiM("ijff'«' still conscious of being in a provisional state, and his mind is con- staiitly recurring to the expected end of his journey ; his ordi- nary ways of thought have been interrupted, and before any new mental habits can be formed, he is quietly fixed in his hotel. CHAP. II.] JOURNEY— BELGRADE TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 15 It will be otherwise with you when you journey in the East. Day after day, perhaps week after week, and month after month, your foot is in the stirrup. To taste the cold breath of the ear- liest mom, and to lead or follow your bright cavalcade till sun- set through forests, and mountain passes, through valleys, and desolate plains, all this becomes your MODE OF LIFE, and you ride, eat, drink, and curse the musquitoes, as systemati- cally as your friends in England eat, drink, and sleep. If you are wise, you will not look upon the long period of time thus occupied by your journeys as the mere gulfs which divide you from the plnce to which you are going, but rather as most rare and beautiful portions of your life, from which may come tem- per and strength. Once feel this, and you will soon grow happy and contented in your saddle home. As for me and my com- rade, in this part of our journey, we often forgot Stamboul, forgot all the Ottoman Empire, and only remembered old times. We went back, loitering on the banks of Thames — ^not grim old Thames of *' after life," that washes the Parliament Houses, and drowns despairing girls, — ^but Thames, the " old Eton fellow," that wrestled with us in our boyhood, till he taught us to be stronger than he. We bullied Keate, and scoffed at Larrey Miller, and Okes ; we rode along, loudly laughing, and talked to the grave Servian forest, as though it were the " Brocas clump." Our pace was commonly very slow, for the baggage horses served us for a drag, 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 would suddenly animate the whole party ; the baggage horses would be teased into a gallop, and when once this was done, there would be such a banging of portmanteaux, and such convulsions of carpet bags upon their panting sides, and the Suridgees would follow them up with such a hurricane of blows and screams and curses, that stop- ping or relaxing was scarcely possible ; then the rest of us would put our horses into a gallop, and so all shouting cheerily, would hunt, and drive the sumpter beasts like a flock of goats, up hill and down dale, iight on to the end of their journey. The distances at which we got relays of horses varied greatly ; some were not more than fifteen or twenty miles, but twice, I think, we performed a whole day's journey of more than sixty miles with the same beasts. When, at last, we came out from the forest, our road lay |6 EOTHEN. [chap. II. I' ' i II i ' : I through scenes like those of an English park. The green sward unfenced, and left to the free pasture of cattle, was dot- ted with groups of stately trees, and here and there darkened over with large masses of wood, that seemed gathered together for bounding the domain, and shutting out some infernal fellow creature in the shape of a new-made squire ; in one or two spots the hanging copses looked down upon a lawn below with such sheltering mien, that seeing the like in England, you would have been tempted almost to ask the name of the spendthrift, or the madman, who had dared to pull down the old hall. There are few countries less infested by " lions" than the pro- vinces on this part of your route ; you are not called upon " to drop a tear" over the tomb of " the once brilliant" anybody, or to pay your " tribute of respect" to anything dead, or aUve ; there are no Servian, or Bulgarian Litterateurs, with whom it would be positively disgraceful not to form an acquaintance ; you have no staring, no praising to get through ; the only pub- lic building of any interest which lies on the road, is of modem date, but it is said to be a good specimen of oriental architec- ture ; it is of a pyramidical shape, and is made up of thirty thousand skulls, which were o~«tributed by the rebellious Ser- vians in the early part (I be ve) of this century; I am not at all sure of my date, but I farxy it was in the year of 1806, that the first skull was laid. I am ashamed to say, that in the darkness of the early morning, we unknowingly went by the neighbourhood of this triumph of art, and so basely got oflf fi-om admiring " the simple grandeur of the architect's concep- tion," and " the exquisite beauty of the fretwork*" There being no " lions," we ought at least to have met with a few perils, but there were no women to attack our peace (they were all wrapt up, or locked in), and as for robbers, the only robbers we saw anything of, had been long since dead and gone ; the poor fellows had been impaled upon high poles, and so propped up by the transverse spokes beneath them, that their skeletons, clothed with some white, wax-like remains of flesh, still sat up lolling in the sunshine, and listlessly stared without eyes. One day it seemed to me that our path was a little more rugged, and less level than usual, and I found that I was de- serving for myself the title of Sabalkansay, or " Transcender of the £{Ucan," The tru^ is^ t^9X, as a military barrier, the Balcaa CHAP, n.] TOURNEY— BELGRADE TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 17 is a fabulous mountain ; such seems to be the view of Major Keppell, who looked on it towards the East with the eye of a soldier, and certainly in the Sophia pass, which I followed, there is no narrow defile, and no ascent sufficiently difficult to stop, or delay for long time, a train of siege artillery. Before we reached Adrianople, Methley had been seized with we knew not what ailment, and when we had taken up our quarters in the city, he was cast to the very earth by sickness. Adrianople enjoyed an English Consul, and I felt sure that, in Eastern phrase, his house would cease to be his house, and would become the house of my sick comrade ; I should have judged rightly under ordinary circumstances, but the levelling plague was abroad, and the dread of it had dominion over the consular mind. So now (whether dying or not, one could hardly tell), upon a quilt stretched out along the floor, there lay the best hope of an ancient line, 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 worth having. I have a notion that tenderness and pity are affections occasioned in some measure jy living within doors ; certainly, at the time I speak of, the open air life which I had been leading, or the wayfaring hardships of the journey had so strangely blunted me, that I felt intolerant of illness, and looked down upon my companion, as if the poor fellow, in falling ill, had betrayed a decided want of spirit ! I entertained, too, a most absurd idea — an idea that his illness was partly affected. You see that I have made a confession : this I hope — that I may always here- after look charitably upon the hard, savage acts of peasants, and the cruelties of a " brutal" soldiery. God knows that I strived to melt myself into common charity, and to put on a gentleness which I could not feel, but this attempt did not cheat the keen- ness of the sufferer ; he could not have felt the less deserted, because that I was with him. We called to aid a solemn Armenian (I think he was), half soothsayer, half hakim, or doctor, who, all the while counting his beads, fixed his eyes steadily upon the patient, and then sud- denly dealt him a violent blow on the chest. Methley bravely dissembled his pain, for he fancied that the blow was meant to try whether or not the plague were on him. Here was really a sad embarrassment — no bed — nothing to ofifer the invalid in the shape of food, save a piece of thin, tough. B ' iS EOTHEN. [chap. n» flexible, dtab-coloured cloth, made of flour and tnill-stones in equal proportions, and called by the name of " bread ;" then the patient, of course, had no " confidence in his medical man," and on the whole, the best chance of saving my comrade seemed to be by taking him out of the reach of his doctor, and bearing him away to the neighbourhood of some more genial consul But how was this to be done ? Methley was much too ill to be kept in the saddle, and wheel carriages, as means of travelling, were unknown. There is, however, such a thing as an " Ara* ba," a vehicle drawn by oxen, in which the wives of a rich man are sometimes dragged four or five miles over the grass by way of recreation. The carriage is rudely framed, but you recog- nize in the simple grandeur of its design, a likeness to things majestic ; in short, if your carpenter's son were to make a " Lord Mayor's coach " for little Amy, he would build a carriage very much in the style of a Turkish Araba. No one had ever heard of horses being used for drawing a carriage in this part of the world, but necessity is the mother of Innovation, as well as of Invention. I was fully justified, I think, in arguing that there were numerous instances of horses being used for that purpose in our own country — that the laws of nature are uniform in their operation over all the world (except Ireland) — that that which was true in Piccadilly, must be true in Adrianople — that the matter could not fairly be treated as an ecclesiastical ques- tion, for that the circumstance of Methley's going on to Stam- boul in an Araba drawn by horses, when calmly and dispassion- ately considered, would appear to be perfectly consistent with the maintenance of the Mahometan religion, as by law esta- blished. Thus poor, dear, patient Reason would have fought her slow battle against Asiatic prejudice, and I am convinced that she would have established the possibility (and perhaps, even the propriety) of harnessing horses in a hundred and fifty year;* ; but in the meantime Mysseri, w jll seconded by our 'I atar, put a very quick end to the controversy, by having the horses put to. It was a sore thing for me to see my poor comrade brought to this, for young though he was, he was a veteran in travel j when scarcely yet of age, he had invaded India from the fron- tiers of Russia, and that so swiftly, that, measuring by the time of his flight, the broad dominions of the King of Kings were ghrivelled up to a Dukedom, and now, poor fellov/, he was to be CHAP. II.] JOURNEY— BELGRADE TO CONSTANTINOPLE, ig. poked into an Araba, like a Geoi'gian girl ! He suffered greatly, for there were no springs for the Catriage, and no road for the wheels, and so the concern jolted on over the open country, with such twists and jerks and jumps, as might almost dislocate the supple tongue of Satan. All day the patient kept himself shut up within the lattice- work of the Araba, and I could hardly know how he was faring until the end of the day's journey, when I found that he was npt worse, and was buoyed up with the hope of some day reaching Constantinople. I was always conning over my maps, and fancied that I knew pretty well my line, but after Adrianople, I had made more southing than I knew for, and it was with unbelieving wonder and delight, that I camt suddenly upon the shore of the sea; a little while, and its gentle billows were flowing beneath the hoofs of my beast, but the hearing of the ripple was not enough communion, — and the seeing of the blue Propontis was not to know and possess it — I must needs plunge into its depths, and quench my longing love in the palpable waves ; and so when old Moostapha (defender against demons) looked around for his charge, he saw with horror and dismay, that he, for whose life his own life stood pledged, was possessed of some devil who had driven him down into the sea — that the rider and the steed had vanished from earth, and that out among the waves was the gasping crest of a post horse, and the pale head of the Eng- lishman moving upon the face of the waters. We started very early indeed, on the last day of our journey, and from the moment of being off, until we gained the shelter of the imperial walls, we were straggling face to face with an icy storm that swept right down from the steppes of Tartary, keen, fierce, and steady as a northern conqueror. Methley's servant, who was the greatest sufferer, kept his saddle until we 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 his horse, he fell away in a state of unconsciousness, ' the first stage of a dangerous fever. " Methley, in his Araba, had been sheltered from the storm, but he was sadly ill. I myself bore up capitally for a delicate person, but I was so well watered, and the blood of my veins had shrunk away so utterly from the chilling touch of the blast, that I must have looked more fit for a watery grave, than ao EOTHEN. [chap. II. for the city of the Prince, whom men call " Brother of the Sun." Our Tatar, worn down by care and toil, and carrying seven heavens full of water, in his manifold jackets and shawls, was a mere weak and vapid dilution of the sleek Moostapha, who scarce more than one fortnight before came out like a bride- groom from his chamber, to take the command of our party. Mysseri seemed somewhat over-wearied, but he had lost none of his strangely quiet energy ; he wore a grave look, however, for he now had learned that the plague was prevailing at Con- stantinople, and he wps fearing that our two sick men, and the miserable looks of our whole party, might make us unwelcome at Pera. Our poor, dear portmanteaux, whose sharp, angular forms had rebelled so rudely against the pack-saddles, were now reduced to soft, pulpy substances, and the things which were in them could plainly be of no immediate use to anybody but a merman, or a river-god ; the carpet-bags seemed to contain nothing but mere solutions of coats and boots, escaping drop by drop. We crossed the Golden Horn in a caique ; as soon as we had landed, some wo-begone looking fellows were got together, and laden with our baggage. Then, on we went, dripping, and sloshing, and looking very like men that had been turned back by the Royal Humane Society, as being incurably drowned. Supporting our sick, we climbed up shelving steps, and threaded many windings, and at last came up into the main street of Pera, humbly hoping that we might not be judged guilty of plague, and so be cast back with horror from the doors of the shuddering Christians. Such was the condition of our party, which fifteen days be- fore had filed away so gaily from the gates of Belgrade. A couple of fevers, and a north-easterly storm, had thoroughly spoiled our looks. The interest of Mysseri with the house of Giuseppeni was too powerful to be denied, and at once, though not without fear and trembling, we were admitted as guests. CHAP. III.] CONSTANTINOPLE. 21 CHAPTER III. COKSTANTINOrLE. ^VEN if we don't take a part in the chaunt about "Mosques and Minarets," we can still yield praises to Stamboul. We can chaunt about the harbour ; we can say and sing, j^ that nowhere else does the sea Come so home to a city ; "^ there are no pebbly shores — no sand bars — no slimy river beds — no black canals — no locks nor docks to divide the very heart of the place from the deep waters ; if, being in the noisiest mart of Stamboul, you would stroll to the quiet side of the way amidst those Cypresses opposite, you will cross the fathomless Bosphorus ; if you would go from your hotel to the Bazaars, you must go by the bright, blue pathway of the Golden Horn, that can carry a thousand sail of the line. You are accustomed to the Gondolas that glide among the palaces of St. Mark, but here at Stamboul it is a hundred and twenty gun ship that meets you in the street. Venice strains out from the steadfast land, and in old times would send forth the Chief of the State to woo, and wed the reluctant sea j but the stormy bride of the Doge is the bowing slave of the Sultan — she comes to his feet with the treasures of the world — she bears him from palace to palace — by some unfailing witchcraft, she entices the breezes to follow her,* and fan the pale cheek of her lord — she lifts his armed navies to the very gates of his garden — she watches the walls of his Serail — she stifles the intreagues of his Ministers — she quiets the scandals of his Court — she extinguishes his rivals, and hushes his naughty wives all one by one. So vast 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, * There is almost always a breeze, either from the Marmora, or from th^ Black Sea, that pjisses alont^ through the Bosphorus. 33 EOTIIEN. [chap. III. however, lent a mysterious, and exciting, though not very plea- sant interest to my first knowledge 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 well befitting the dreary monuments of past power and splendour. With all that is most truly oriental in its character, the Plague is associated ; it dwells with the faithful in the holiest quarters of their city : the coats and the hats of Pera are held to be nearly as innocent of infec- tion, as they are ugly in shape and fashion ; but the rich furs, and the costly shawls, the broidered slippers, and the gold-laden saddle-cloths — the fragrance of burning aloes, and the rich aroma of patchouli — these are the signs which mark the familiar home of Plague. You go out from your living London — the centre of the greatest and strongest amongst all earthly dominions — you go out thence, and travel on to the capital of an Eastern Prince — you find but a waning power, and a faded splendour, that inclines you to laugh and mock ; but let the infernal Angel of Plague be at hand, and he, more mighty than armies — more terrible than Suleyman in his glory, can restore such pomp and majesty lo the weakness of the Imperial walls, that if, wAeu HE is there, you must still go prying amongst the shades of this dead Empire, at least you will tread the path with seemly reverence and awe. It is the firm faith of almost all the Europeans living in the East, that Plague is conveyed by the touch of infected sub- stances, and that the dead / atoms especially lurk in all kinds ot clothes and furs ; it is held safer to breathe the same air with a man sick of the Plague, and even to come in contact with his skin, than to be touched by the smallest particle of woollen, or of thread, which may have been within the reach of possible infection. If this notion be correct, the spread of the malady must be materially aided by the observance of a custom which prevails amongst the people of Stamboul ; when an Osmanlee dies, it is usual to cut up one of his dresses, and to send a small piece of it to each of his friends, as a memorial of the departed. A fatal present is this, according to the opinion of the Franks, for it too often forces the living not merely to re- member the dead man, but to follow and bear him company. The Europeans during the prevalence of the Plague, if they are forced to venture into the streets, will carefully avoid the touch of every human being whom they pass ; their conduct CHAP. III.] CONSTANTINOPLE. 23 in this respect shows them strongly in contrast with the " true believers ;" the Moslem stalks on serenely, as though 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 chiefly of French extraction) will fondly strive to fence out Des- tiny with shining capes of oilskin ! For some time you may manage by great care to thread your way through the streets of Stamboul, without incurring contact, for the Turks, though scornful of the terrors felt by the Franks, are generally very courteous in yielding to that which they hold to be a useless and impious precaution, and will let you pass safe, if they can. It is impossible, however, that your immu- nity can last for any length of time, if you move about much through the narrow streets and lanes of a crowded city. As for me, I soon got " compromised." After one day of rest, the prayers of my hostess began to lose their power of keeping me from the pestilent side of the Gold n Horn. Faith- fully promising to shun the touch of all imaginable substances, however enticing, I set off very cautiously, and held my way uncompromised, till I reached the water's edge ; but during the moment that I was waiting for my caique, some rueful-looking fellows came rapidly shambling down the steps with a plague- stricken corpse, which they were going to bury amongst the faithful on the other side of the water. I contrived to be so much in the way of this brisk funeral, that I was not only touched by the men bearing the body, but also, I believe, by the foot of the dead man, which was lolling out of the bier. This accident gave me such a strong interest in denying the sound- ness of the contagion theory, that I did in fact aeny, and re- pudiate, it altogether; and from that time, acting upon my own convenient view of the matter, I went wherever I chose, with- out taking any serious pains to avoid a touch. I have now some reason to think that the Europeans may be right, and that the Plague may be really conveyed by contagion ; but whilst I remained in the East, I happily entertained ideas more ap- proaching to those of the fatalist ; and so, when I afterwards encountered the Plague in full force, I was able to live amongst the dying with much less anxiety of mind, than I should have suffered, if I had believed that every touch, which I met with, was a possible death-stroke. And perhaps as you make your difficult way through a steep 24 EOTHEN. [chap. Hi. M and narrow alley, which winds between blank walls, and is little frequented by passers, you meet one of those coffin-shaped bundles of white linen which implies an Ottoman lady. Pain- fully struggling against the obstacles to progression which are interposed by the many folds of her clumsy drapery, by her big mud boots, and especially by her two pairs of slippers, she waddles along full awkwardly enough, but yet there is some- thing of womanly consciousness in the very labour and effort with which she tugs and lifts the burthen of her charms ; she is close followed by her women slaves. Of her very self you see nothing, except the dark, luminous eyes that stare against your face, and the tips of the painted fingers depending like rosebuds from out the blank bastions of the fortress. She turns, and turns again, and carefully glances around her on all sides, to see that she is safe from the eyes of Mussulmans, and then suddenly withdrawing the yashmak,* she shines upon your heart and soul with all the pomp and might of her beauty. And this, which so dizzies your brain, is not the light, changeful grace, which leaves you to doubt whether you have fallen in love with a body, or only a soul ; it is the beauty that dwells secure in the perfectnessof hard, downright outlines, and in the glow of generous colour. There is fire, though, too — high cour- age, and fire enough in the untamed mind, or spirit, or whatever it is, which drives the breath of pride through those scarcely parted lips. You smile at pretty woman — you turn pale before the beauty that is great enough to have dominion over you. She sees, and exults in your giddiness ; 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 is her notion of a witticism ; it is a very old piece of fun, no doubt — quite an oriental Joe Miller; but the Turks are fondly attached, not only to the institutions, but also to the jokes of their ancestors ; so, the lady's silvery laugh rings joyously in your ears, and the mirth of her women is boisterous and fresh, as though the * The Yashmak, you know, is not a mere semi-transparent veil, but rather a good substantial petticoat applied to the face ; it thoroughly con- ceals all the features, except the eyes j the way of withdrawing it is by pul- ling it down. CHAP. III.] CONSTANTINOPLE. 35 bright idea of giving the Plague to a Christian had newly lit upon the earth. Methley began to rally very soon after we had reached Con- stantinople, but there seemed at first to be no chance of his re- gaining strength enough for travelling during the winter ; and I determined to stay with my comrade, until he had quite recov- ered ; so I got a horse,*^and a pipe of tranquillity, and took a Turkish phrase-master. I troubled myself a great deal with the Turkish tongue, and gained at last some knowledge of its structure ; it is enriched, perhaps overladen, with Persian and Arabic words, which have been imported into the language, chiefly for the purpose of representing sentiments and religious dogmas, and terms of art and luxury, which were all unknown to the Tatar ancestors of the present Osmanlees ; but the body and spirit of the old tongue is yet alive, and the smooth words of the shop-keeper at Constantinople can still carry understand- ing to the ears of the untamed millions who rove over the plains of Northern Asia. The structure of the language, especially in its more lengthy sentences, is very like to the Latin ; the sub- ject matters are slowly and patiently enumerated, without dis- closing the purpose of the speaker until he reaches the end of his sentence, and then at last there comes the clenching word, which gives a meaning and connection to all that has gone be- fore. If you listen at all to speaking of this kind, your atten- tion, rather than be suffered to flag, must grow more and more lively, as the phrase marches on. The Osmanlees speak well. In countries civilized according to the European plan, the work of trying to persuade tribunals is almost all performed by a set of men, the great body of whom very seldom do anything else ; but in Turkey, this division of labour has never taken place, and every man is his own advocate. The importance of the rhetorical art is immense, for a bad speech may endanger the property of the speaker, as well as the soles of his feet, and the free enjoyment of his throat. So it results that most of the Turks, whom one sees, have a lawyer- like habit of speaking connectedly, and at length. The treaties, continually going on in the bazaar for the buymg and selling of the merest triflej, are carried on by speechifying, rather than by mere colloquies, and the eternal uncertainty as to the market value of things in constant sale gives room for endless discussion. The seller is for ever demanding a price immensely beyond 36 EOTIIEN. [CHAP. III. I B I i I : s. i; that for which he sells at last, and so occasions unspeakable disgust to many Englishmen, who cannot see why an honest dealer should ask more for his goods than he will really take : — the truth is, howevrr, that an ordinary tradesman of Constanti- nople has no other way of finding out the fair market value of his property. The difficulty under which he labours is easily shown by comparing the mechanism of the commercial system in Turkey with that of our own country. In England, or in any other great mercantile country, the bulk of the things, which are bought and sold, goes through the hands of a wholesale dealer, and it is he who higgles and bargains with an entire na- tion of purchasers, by entering into treaty with retail sellers. The labour of making a few large contracts is sufficient to give a clue for finding the fair market value of the things sold through- out the country ; but in Turkey, from the primitive habits of the people, and partly from the absence of great capital, and great credit, the importing merchant, the warehouseman, the wholesale dealer, the retail dealer, and the shopman, are all one person. Old Moostapha, or Abdallah, or Hadgi Mohamed, waddles up from the water's edge with a small packet of mer- chandize, which he has bought out of a Greek brigantine, and when at last he has reached his nook in the bazaar, he puts his goods fie/ore the counter, and himself i/pou it — then laying fire to his tchibouque he " sits in permanence," and patiently waits to obtain " the best price that can be got in an open market." This is his fair right as a seller, but he has no means of finding out what that best price is, except by actual experiment. He cannot know the intensity of the demand, or the abundance of the supply, otherwise than by the offers which may be made for his little bundle of goods ; so he begins by asking a perfectly hopeless price, and thence descends the ladder until he meets a purchaser, 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 merchanflize has caught the eye of a possible purchaser, commences his opening speech. He covers his bristling broadcloths, and his meagre silks, with the golden broidery of oriental praises, and as he talks, along with the slow and graceful waving of his grjns, he lifts his, undulating periods, upholds, and poises them CUM'. III.] CONSTANTINOPLK. 27 well, till they have gathered their weight, and their strength, and then hurls them bodily forward, with grave, momentous swing. The possible purchaser listens to the whole speech with deep and serious attention ; but when it is over, /its turn ar- rives ; he elaborately endeavours to show why he ought not to buy the things at a price twenty times more than their value ; bystanders, attracted to the debate, take a part in it as inde- pendent members — the vendor is heard in reply, and, coming down with his price, furnishes the materials for a new debate. Sometimes, however, the dealer, if he is a very pious Mussul- man, and sufficiently rich to hold back his ware, will take a more dignified part, maintaining a kind of judicial gravity, and receiv- ing the applicants who come to his stall, as if they were rather suitors than customers. He will quietly hear to the end, some long speech which concludes with an offer, and will answer it all with the one monosyllable " Yok," which means distinctly "No." I caught one glimpse of the old Heathen World. My habits of studying military subjects had been hardening my heart against Poetry. For ever staring ?.l the flames of battle, I had blinded myself to the lesser and finer lights that are shed from the imaginations of men. In my reading at this time, I de- lighted to follow, from out of Arabian sands, the feet of the armed believers, and to stand in the broad, manifest storm- track of Tartar devastation ; and thus, though surrounded at Constantinople, by scenes of much interest to the " classical scholar," I had cast aside their associations like an old Greek grammar, and turned my face to the " shining Orient," forgetful of old Greece, and all the pure wealth she has left to this mat- ter-of-fact-ridden world. But it happened to me one day to mount the high grounds overhanging the streets of Pera; I sated my eyes with the pomps of the city, and its crowded waters, and then I looked over where Scutari lay, half veiled in her mournful cypresses ; I looked yet farther and higher, and saw in the heavens a silvery cloud that stood fast, and still against the breeze ; it was pure, and dazzling white as might be the veil of Cytherea, yet touched with fire, as, though from beneath, the loving eyes of an immortal were shining through and through. I knew the bearing, but had enormously misjudged its distance, and underrated its height, and so it was as a sign and a testimony — ^almost as a call from the neglected gods, that now I saw and acknowledged the snowy crown of the Mysian Olympus ! 11 1 ll EOTHEN. [chap. IV, CHAPTER IV. THE TnOAD. lETHLEY recovered almost suddenly, and we deter- mined to go through the Troad together. My comrade was a capital Grecian ; it is true that his singular mind so ordered and disposed the classic lore which he had gained, as to impress it with some- thing of an original and barbarous character — with an almost gothic quaintness, more properly belonging to a rich native ballad, than to the poetry of Hellas ; there was a certain impro- priety in his knowing so much Greek — an unfitness in the idea of marble fauns, and satyrs, and even Olympian Gods, lugged in under the oaken roof, and the painted light of an odd old Norman hall. But Methley, abounding in Homer, really loved him (as I believe) in all truth, without whim or fancy ; more- over, he had a good deal of the practical sagacity, or sharpness, or whatever you call it, ** of a Yorkshireman hippodamoio,'* and this enabled him to apply his knowledge with much more tact than is usually shown by people so learned as he. I, too, loved Homer, but not with a scholar's love. The most humble and pious amongst women was yet so proud a mother that she could teach her first-born son, no Watts' hymns — no collects for the day ; she could teach him in earliest childhood, no less than this — to find a home in his saddle, and to love old Homer, and all that Homer sung. True it is, that the Greek was ingeniously rendered into English — the English of Pope even, but it is not such a mesh as that that can screen an earnest child from the fire of Homer's battles. I pored over the Odyssey as over a story-book, hoping and fearing for the hero whom yet I partly scorned. But the Iliad •—line by line, I clasped it to my brain with reverence as well CHAP. IV.] THE TROAD. 29 as with love. As an old woman deeply 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, I read, and read the Iliad. Even outwardly it was not like other books ; it was throned in towering folios. There was a preface or dis- sertation, printed in type still more majestic than the rest of the book ; this I read, but not till my enthusiasm for the Iliad had already nm high. The writer, compiling the opinions of many men, and chiefly of the ancients, set forth, I know not how quaintly, that the Iliad was all in all to the human race — that it was history — poetry— revelation — that the works of men's hands were folly and vanity, and would pass away like the dreams of a child, but that the kingdom of Homer would endure for ever and ever. T assented with all my soul. I read, and still read ; I came to know Homer. A learned commentator knows something of the Greeks, in the same sense 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 ^ii^rtbG with any translation of Homer, and he will be nearer, b_,' twenty centuries, to the spirit of old Greece ; he does not stop m the ninth year of the siege, to admire this or that group of words — he has no books in his tent, but he shares in vital counsels with the " King of men," and knows the inmost souls of the impending Gods ; how pro- fanely he exults over the powers divine, when they are taught to dread tue prowess of mortals ! and, most of all, how he rejoices when the God of War flies howling from the spear of Diomed, and mounts into Heaven for safety ! ^^en the beautiful episode of the 6th Book : the way to feel this is not to go casting about, and learning from pastors, and masters, how best to admire it ; the impatient child is not grubbing for beauties, but pushing the siege ; the women vex 1 :m with their delays, and their talking — the mention of the nui'^e is personal, and little sympathy has he for the child that i;j yonng enough to be frightened at the nodding plume of a htln:tt, but all the while that he thus chafes at the pausing of the action, the strong vertical light of Homer'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 his mother'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 his fiercemss, till almost suddenly it is changed w II ■i I 1 [1!; [hi 'il i i 30 EOT^IEN. [chap. IV. for sorrow — the new and generous sorrow that he learns to feel, when the noblest of all his foes lies sadly dying at the Scsean gate. Heroic days were these, but the dark ages of school-boy life came closing over them. I suppose it's all right in the end, yet, by Jove, at first sight, it does seem a sad intellectual fall from your mother's dressing-room to a buzzing school. You feel so keenly the delights of early knowledge ; you form strange mystic friendships, with the mere names of mountains, and seas, and continents, and mighty rivers ; you learn the ways of the planets, and transcend their narrow limits, and ask for the end of space ; you vex the electric cylinder till it yields you, for your toy to play with, that subtle fire in which our earth was forged ; you know of the nations that have towered high in the world, and the lives of the men who have saved whole Empires from oblivion. What more will you ever learn ? Yet the dis- mal change is ordained, and then, thin, meagre Latin (the same for everybody), with small shreds and patches of Greek, is thrown like a pauper's pall over all your early lore ; instead of sweet knowledge, vile, monkish doggerel grammars, and grad- uses. 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 a three inch scrap of " Scriptores Romani," — from Greek poetry, down, down to the cold rations of " Poetse Graeci," cut up by commentators, and served out by schoolmasters ! It was not the recollection of school, nor college learning, but the rapturous and earnest reading of my childhood, which made me bend forward so longingly to the plains of Troy. Away from our people and our horses, Methley and I went loitering along, by the willowy banks of a stream that crept in quietness through the low, even plain. There was no stir of weather over-head — no sound of rural labour — no sign of life in the land, but all the earth was dead, and still, as though it had lain for thrice a thousand years luider the leaden gloom of one unbroken sabbath. -. Softly and sadly the poor, dumb, patient stream went wind- ing, and winding along through its shifting pathway ; in some places its waters were parted, and then again, lower down, they would meet once more. I could see that the stream, from year ^0 year, was finding itself new channels, and flowed no longer IV. CHAP. IV.] THE TROAD. 3« gion, and in its ancient track, but I knew that the springs which fed it were high on Ida — the springs of Simois and Scamander ! It was coldly, and thanklessly, and with vacant unsatisfied eyes that I watched the slow coming, and the gliding away of the waters ; I tell myself now, as a profane fact, that I did indeed stand by that river (Methlcy gathered some seeds from the bushes that grew there), but, since that I am away from his banks, " divine Scamander " has recovered the proper m'^-tery belonging to him, as an unseen deity ; a kind of indistinctness, like that which belongs to far antiquity, has spread itself over my memory, of the winding streams that I saw with these very eyes. One's' mind regains, in absence, that dominion over earthly things which has been shaken by their rude contact ; you force yourself hardily into the material presence of a moun- tain, or a river, whose name belongs to poetry and ancient reli- rather than to the external world ; your feelings wound up kept ready for some sort of half-expected rapture are chilled, and borne down, for the time, under all this load of real earth and water ; but, let thej.e once pass out of sight, and then again the old fanciful notions are restored, and the mere realities, which you have just been looking at, are thrown back so far into distance, that the very event of your intrusion upon such scenes begins to look dim, and uncertain as though it belonged to mythology. It is not over the plain before Troy that the river now flows ; its waters have edged away far towards the north, since the day that " divine Scamander " (whom the gods call Xanthus) weht down to do battle for Ilion, with Mars, and Phabus, and Latona, and Diana, glorying in her aiTows, and Venus the lover of smiles. And now, when I was vexed at the migration of Scamander, and the total loss or absorption of poor dear Simois, how happily Methley reminded me that Homer himself had warned us of some such dangers ! The Greeks, in beginning their wall, had neglected the hecatombs due to the gods j and so, after the fall of Troy, Apollo turned the paths of the rivers that flow from Ida, and sent them flooding over the wall till all tlie beach was smooth, and free from the unhallowed works of the Greeks. It is true, I see now, on looking to the passage, that Neptune, when the work of destruction was done, turned back the rivers ^0 their ancient ways : > WW li > \ i \ V 32 EOTHEN. » . . poTa/JLovs jr6T^ewip,i,iiii "« "•'■if'T^iW^ir :!.* J 4« EOTHEN. [chap. VI. the Anzairie mountains, and the fellows who were preparing to give him a reception were probably very rough specimens of humanity ; it is likely enough that they may have given them- selves the trouble of putting " the Admiral " to death, for the purpose of simplifying their claim to the vessel, and preventing litigation, but the notion of their cannibalism was of course utterly unfounded ; Nicolou's terrors had, however, so graven the idea on his mind, that he could never afterwards dismiss it Having once determined the character of his expectant hosts, the Admiral thought that it would be better to keep their din- ner waiting any length of time, than to attend their feast in the character of a roasted Greek, so he put about his vessel, and tempted the deep once more. After a farther cruise the lonely commander ran his vessel upon some rocks at another part of the coast, where she was lost with all her treasure, and Nicolou was but too glad to scramble ashore, though without one dollar in his girdle. These adventures seem flat enough as I repeat them, but the hero expressed his terrors by such odd terms of speech, and such strangely humerous gestures, that the story came from his lips with an unfailing zest, so that the crew who had heard the tale so often, could still enjoy to their hearts the rich fright of the Admiral, and still shuddered with unabated horror, when he came to the loss of- the dollars. The power of listening to long stories (for which by-the-by I am giving you large credit) is common, I fancy, to most sai- lors, and the Greeks have it to a great degree, for they can be perfectly patient under a narrative of two or three hours' dura- tion. These long stories are mostly founded upon Oriental topics, and in one of them I recognized, with some alterations, an old friend of the " Arabian Nights ; " I inquired as to the source from which the b.ory had been derived, and the crew all agreed that it had been handed down, unwritten, from Greek to Greek ; their account of the matter does not, perhaps, go very far towards showing the real origin of the tale, but, when I afterwards took up the " Arabian Nights," I became strongly impressed with a notion that they must have sprung from the brain of a Greek. I seems to me that these stories, whilst they disclose a complete and habitual knowledge of things Asiatic, have about them so much of freshness and life, so much of the stirring and volatile European character, that they cannot have owed their conception to a mere Oriental, who, for creative CHAP. VI.] GREEK MARINERS. 49 go en the iey ic, he [ve Ive purposes, is a thing dead and dry — a mental mummy that may have been a live King just after the flood, but has since lain balmed in spice. At the time of the Caliphat the Greek race was familiar enough to Bagdad ; they were the merchantSj the pedlars, the barbers, and intriguers-general of South- wes.jrn Asia, and therefore the Oriental materials, with which the Ara- bian tales are wrought, must have been completely at the command of the 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 weather amounted not to a half, but to an integral gale of wind at the very least, so they put up the helm, and scudded for twenty hours ; when we neared the main land of Anadoli, the gale ceased, and a favourable breeze sprang up, which brought us off Cyprus once more. Afterwards th ": wind changed again, but we were still able to lay our course by sailing close-hauled. We wfre, at length, in such a position, that by holding on our course for about half an hour, we should get under the lee of the island, and find ourselves in smooth water, but the wind had been gradually freshening ; it now blew hard, and there was a heavy sea running. As the grounds for alarm arose, the crew gathered together in one close group ; they stood pale and grim under their hooded capotes like monks awaiting a massacre, anxiously looking by turns along the pathway of the storm, and then upon each other, and then upon the eye of the Captain who stood by the helms- man. Presently the Hydriot came aft, more moody than ever, the bearer of fierce remonstrance against the continuing of the struggle ; be received a resolute answer, and sill wi held our course. Soon there came a heavy sea, that caught the bow of the brigantine as she lay jammed in betwixt the waves j she bowed her head low under the waters, and shuddered through all her timbers — then gallantly stood up again over the striving sea, with bowsprit entire. But where were the crew? It was a crew no longer, but rather a gathering of Greek citizens ; — the shout of the seamen was changed for the murmuring of the people — the spirit of the old Demos was alive. The men came aft in a body, and loudly asked that the vessel should be put about, and that the storm be no longer tempted. Now, then, D ■ ii;jii 1 1 iHi i|iai|> SO EOTHEN. [chap. vr. for speeches : — the Captain, his eyes flashing fire, his fi-ame all quivering with emotion — wielding his every limb, like another, and a louder voice, pours forth the eloquent torrent of his threats, and his reasons, his commands, and his prayers ; he promises — he vows — he swears that 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, and again the rag- ing sea comes trampling over the timbers that are the life of all. The fierce Hydriot advances one step more near to the Captain, and the angry growl of the people goes floating down the wind, but they listen — they waver once more, and once more resolve, then waver again, thus doubtfully hanging between the terrors of the storm, and the persuasion of glorious speech, as though it were the Athenian that talked, and Philip of Macedon that thundered on the weather bow. Brave thoughts winged on Grecian words gained their natural mastery over Terror ; the brigantine held on her course, and reached smooth water at last. I landed at Limesol, the west- ernmost port of Cyprus, leaving the vessel to sail for Larnecca, where she was to remain for some days. CHAP. VII.] CYPRUS. S« CHAPTER VII. CYPRUS. ^HERE was a Greek at Limesol, who hoisted his flag as an English Vice-Consul, and he insisted upon my accept- ing his hospitality ; with some difficulty, and chiefly by assuring him that I could not delay my departure be- yond an early hour in the afternoon, I induced him to allow my dining with his family, instead of banqueting all alone with the representative of my sovereign, in consular state and dignity ; the lady of the house, it seemed, had never sat at table with an European ; she was 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 an Englishwoman by virtue of the flag which waved over her roof, and that she was bound to show her nationality by sitting at meat with me ; finding herself inexorably condemned to bear with the dreaded gaze of European eyes, she tried to save her innocent children from the hard fate which awaited herself, but I obtained that all of them (and I think there were four or five) should sit at the table. You will meet with abundance of stately receptions, and of generous hospitality, too, in the East, but rarely, very rarely in those regions (or even, so far as I know, in any part of southern Europe), does one gain an opportunity of seeing the familiar and indoor life of the people. This family party of the good consul (or rather of mine, for I originated the idea, though he furnished the materials) went off very well ; the mamma was shy at first, but she veiled the awkwardness which she felt by affecting to scold her children, who had all of them, I think, immortal names— names, too, which they owed to tradition, and certainly not to any classical enthusiasm of their parents ; every instant I was delighted by some such phrases as these — "Themistocles, my love, don't fight," — " Alcibiades, can't you sit still?" — "P">crates, put down the cup ! — "Oh, fie ! Aspasia, don't, Oh ! Qon't be naughty !" Sa EOTHEN. [chap. vii. m> !i: 1 i ! It is true that the names were pronounced, Socrahtie, Aspahsie — that is, according to accent, and not according to quantity, but I suppose it is scarcely 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 minute how I connect this piece of prose with the Isle of Cy- prus), there is none in which mere wealth — mere unaided wealth, is held half so cheaply — none in which a poor devil of a million- aire without birth, or ability, occupies so humble a place as in England. My Greek host and I were sitting together, I think upon the roof of the house (for that is the lounging place in Eastern climes), when the* former assumed a serious air, and in- timated a wish to converse upon the subject of the British Con- stitution, with which he assured me that he was thoroughly ac- quainted; he presently, however, informed me that there was one anomalous circumstance attendant upon the practical work- ing of our political system which he had never been able to hear explained in a manner satisfactory to himself. From the fact of his having found a difficulty in his subject, I began to think that my host might really know rather more of it than his an- nouncement of a thorough knowledge had led me to expect ; I felt interested at being about to hear from the lips of an intelligent Greek, quite remote from the influence of European opinions, what might seem to him the most astonishing and incompre- hensible of all those results which have followed from the action of our political institutions. The anomaly — the only anomaly which had been detected by the vice-consular wisdom, consisted in the fact, that Rothschild (the late money-monger) had never been the Prime Minister of England ! I gravely tried to throw some light upon the mysterious causes which had kept the worthy Israelite out of the Cabinet, but I think I could see that my ex- planation was not satisfactory. Go and argue, with the flies of summer, that 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 any other God than Gold. My intended journey was to the site of the Paphian temple. I take no antiquarian interest in ruins, and care little about them, unless they are either striking in themselves, or else serve to mark some spot on which my fancy loves to dwell. I knew that the ruins of Paphos were scarcely, if at all, discernible, but CHAP. VII.] CYPRUS. 53 there was a will, and a longing, more imperious than mere curi- osity, that drove me thither. For this, just then, was my Pagan soul's desire — that (not forfeiting my Christian's inheritance for the life to come) it were yet given me to live through this world — to live a favoured mortal under the old Olympian dispensation — to speak out my resolves to the listening Jove and hear him answer with approv- ing thunder — to be blessed with divine counsels from the lips of Pallas Athenie — to believe — aye, only to believe — to believe for one rapturous moment that in the gloomy depths of the grove, by the mountain's side, there were some leafy pathway that crisped beneath the glowing sandal of Aphrodetie — Aph- rodetie, not coldly disdainful of even a mortal's love ! And this vain, heathenish longing of miiie was father to the thought of visiting the scene of the ancient worship. The isle is beautiful ; from the edge of the rich, flowery fields on which I trod, to the midway sides of the snowy Olympus, the ground could only here and there show an abrupt crag, or a high, straggling ridge, that up-shouldered itself from out of the wilderness of myrtles, and of the thousand bright- leaved shrubs that twined their arms together in lovesome tangles. The air that came to my lips was warm, and fragrant as the ambrosial breath of the goddess, infecting me — ^not (of course) with a faith of the old religion of the isle, but with a sense, and apprehension of 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, the hundred altars glowed with Arabian incense, and breathed with the fragrance of garlands ever fresh ?"* * . iibi tcmplum illi, centumque Sakco Thure calent ara, sertisqtie reccntibus halant. JENEiDi., 415. I passed a sadly disenchanting night in the cabin of a Greek priest — not a priest of the Goddess but of the Greek Church — there was but one humble room, or rather shed, for man, and priest, and beast. The next morning I reached Baffa (Paphos), which is not far dis ant from the site of the temple ; there was a Greek husbandman there who (not for employment, but for the sake of the protection and dignity which it afforded) had got leave from the man at Limesol to hoist his flag as a sort of 54 EOTHEN. [chap. VII. ' ! w 11!^ li 11 Deputy-provisionary-sub-vice-pro-acting Pro-consul of the Brit- ish Sovereign ; the poor fellow instantly changed his Greek head-gear for the cap of consular dignity, and insisted upon accompanying me to the ruins ; I would not have stood this, if I could have felt the faintest gleam of my yesterday's pagan piety, but I had ceased to dream, and had nothing to dread from any new disenchanters. The ruins (the fragments of one or two prostrate pillars) stand upon a promontory, bare and unmystified by the gloom of surrounding groves ; my Greek friend in his consular-cap stood by, respectfully waiting to see what turn my madness would take, now that I had come at last into the presence of the old stones. If you have no taste for research, and can't affect to look for inscriptions, there is some awkwardness in coming to the end of a merely sentimental pilgrimage, when the feeling, which impelled you, has gone ; you have nothing to do but to laugh the thing off as well as you can, and by the by, it is not a bad plan to turn the conversation (or rather allow the natives to turn it) towards the subject of hidden treasures ; this is a topic on which they will always speak with eagerness, and if they can fancy that you, too, take an interest in such matters, they will not only think you perfectly sane, but will begin to give you credit for some more than human powers of forcing the obscure earth to show you its hoards of gold. When we returned to Baffa, the Pro-consul seized a club, with the quietly determined air of a brave man, resolved to do some deed of note ; he went into 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. The Pro- consul stood for a moment quite calm — collecting his strength ; then suddenly he rushed into the midst of the congregation, and began to deal death and destruction on all sides ; he spared neither sex nor age; the dead and dying were immediately removed from the field of slaughter, and in less than an hour, I think, they were brought to the table, deeply buried in mounds of snowy rice. My host was in all respects a fine, generous fellow ; I could not bear the idea of improverishing him by my visit, and I con- sulted my faithful Mysseri, who not only assured me that I CHAP. VII.] CYPRUS. 55 might safely offer money to the Pro-consul, but recommended that I should give no more to him than to " the others," mean- ing any other peasant ; I felt, however, that there was some- thing about the man, besides the flag and the cap, which made me shrink from offering coin, and as I mounted my horse on departing, I gave him the only thing fit for a present which I happened to have with me, a rather handsome clasp-dagger, which I had brought from Vienna ; the poor fellow was ineffa- bly grateful, and I had some difficulty in tearing myself from out of the reach of his thanks ; at last I gave him what I sup< posed to be the last farewell, and rode on, but I had not gained more than about a hundred yards, when my host came bounding and shouting after me, with a goat's milk cheese in his hand, which he implored me to accept. In old times the shepherd of Theocritus, or (to speak less dishonestly) the shepherd of the " Poetse Graeci," sung his best song ; I, in this latter age, pre- sented my best dagger, and both of us received the same rustic reward. It had been known that I should return to Limesol, and when I arrived there I found that a noble old Greek had been hospita- bly plotting to have me for his guest ; I willingly accepted his offer. The day of my arrival happened to be the birth-day of my host, and in consequence of this there was a constant influx of visitors who came to offer theii congratulations ; a few of these were men, but most of them were young, graceful girls ; almost all of them went through the ceremony with the utmost precision and formality ; each in succession spoke her blessing, in the tone of a person repeating a set formula — then deferen- tially accepted the invitation to sit — partook of the proffered sweetmeats, and the cold, glittering water — remained for a few minutes either in silence, or engaged in very thin conversation — then arose, delivered a second benediction followed by an elabo- rate farewell, and departed. The bewitching power attributed at this day to the women of Cyprus is curious in connection with the worship of the sweet goddess who called their isle her own ; the Cypriote is not, I think, nearly so beautiful in the face as the Ionian queens of Izmir, but she is tall, and slightly formed — there is a high-souled mean- ing and expression — a seeming consciousness of gentle empire that speaks in the wavy lines of the shoulder, and winds itself like Cytherea's own cestus around the slender waist— then the 1 1 i i 56 EOTHEN. [chap. vir. richly abounding hair (not enviously gathered together under the head-dress) descends the neck, and passes the waist in sump- tuous braids ; of all other women with Grecian blood in their veins, the costume is graciously beautiful, but these, the maidens of Limesol — their robes are more gently, more sweetly imagined, and fall like Julia's Cashmere in soft, luxurious folds. The common voice of the Levant allows that in the face the women of Cyprus are less beautiful than their brilliant sisters of Smyrna, and yet, says the Greek, he may trust himself to one and all of the brip^ht cities of the -^gean, and may yet weigh anchor with a he; ^ -tire, but that so surely as he ventures upon the enchanted Isle of Cyprus, 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 the astonishing "politics" (iro\tTtKri) of the women, meaning, I fancy, their tact, and their witching ways ; the word, however, plainly fails to express one half of that which the speakers would say ; I have smiled to hear the Greek, with all plenteousness of fancy, and all the wealth of his generous language, yet vainly struggling to describe the ineffable spell which the Parisians dispose of in their own smart waly, by a summary " Je ne sQai quoi." I went to Larnecca, the chief city of the isle, and over the water at last to Beyrout. The writer takes leaveto suggest that none should attempt to read the following account of the late Lady Hester Stanhope, except those who may already chance to feel an interest in the personage to whom it relates. The chapter (which has been written and printed for the reasons mentioned in the preface) is chiefly filled with the detailed conversation, or rather dis- course, of a highly eccentric gentlewoman. CHAP. VIII,] LADY HESTER STANHOPE. 57 CHAPTER VIII. LADY HESTER STANHOPE. |EYROUT on its land side is hemmed in by the Druses, who occupy all the neighbouring highlands. Often enough I saw the ghostly images of the women with their exalt d horns stalking through the streets, and I saw too, in travelling, the affrighted groups of the moun- taineers as they fled before me, under the fear that my party might be a company of Income-tax commissioners, or a press- gang enforcing the conscription for Mehemet Ali, but nearly all my knowledge of the people, except in regard to their mere costume, and outward appearance, is drawn from books, and despatches, to which I have the honour to refer you. I received hospitable welcome at Beyrout, from the Eur- opeans, as well as from the Syrian Christians, and I soon dis- covered that their standing topic of interest was the Lady Hester Stanhope, who lived in an old convent on the Lebanon range, at the distance of about a day's journey from the town. The lady's habit of refusing to see Europeans added the charm of mystery to a character, which, even without that aid, was suffi- ciently distinguished to command attention. Many years of Lady Hester's early womanhood had been passed with Lady Chatham at Burton Pynsent, and during that inglorious period of the heroine's life, her commanding charac- ter, and (as they would have called it, in the language of those days) her " condescending kindness " towards my mother's family, had increased in them those strong feelings of respect and attachment, which her rank and station alone would have easily won from people of the middle class. You may suppose how deeply the quiet women in Somersetshire must have been interested, when they slowly learned by vague and uncertain tidings that the intrepid girl, who had been used to break their vicious horses for them, was reigning in sovereignty over the 58 EOTHEN. [chap. VIII. :| wandering tribes of Western Asia ! I know that her name was made almost as familiar to tne in my childhood as the name of Robinson Crusoe ; both were associated with the spirit of adven- ture, but whilst the imagined life of the cast-away mariner never failed to seem glaringly real, the true story of the English- woman ruling over Arabs always sounded to me like fable. I never had heard, nor indeed, I believe, had the rest of the world ever heard anything like a certain account of the Heroine's adventures ; all I k'.iow was, that in one of the drawers which were the delight of my childhood, along with atta of ros ", and fragrant wonders from Hindostan, there were letters carefully treasured, and trifling presents which I was taught to think val- uable because they had come from the Queen c^ the Desert, who dwe^t in tents, and reigned over wandering Arabs. The subjecc, however, died away, and from the ending of my childhood up to the period of my arrival in the Levant, I had seldom even heard a mentioning of the Lady Hester Stanhope, but now wherever I went, I was met with the name so familiar in sound, and yet so full of mystery from the vague, fairy-tale sort of idea which it brought to my mind ; I heard it, too, con- nected with fresh wonder, for it was said that the woman was now acknowledged as an inspired being by the people of the Mountains, and it was 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 near that I had been 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 maiden name of my mother (whose marriage was subsequent to Lady Hester's departure), and say- ing that if there existed on the part of her Ladyship any wish to hear of her old Somersetshire acquaintance, I should make a point of visiting her. My letter was sent by a foot messenger who was to take a unlimited time for his journey, so that it was not, I think, until either the third or the fourth day that the answer arrived. A couple of horsemen covered with mud sud- denly dashed into the little court of the " Locanda," in which I was staying, bearing themselves as ostentatiously as though they were carrying a cartel from the Devil to the Angel Michael ; one of these (the other being his attendant) was an Italian by birth (though now completely orientalized), who lived in my Lady's est^bljghipent ^s 3, Doctor nopiinally, but practi- CHAP, viir.] LADY HESTER STANHOPE. 59 cally as an upper servant ; he presented me a very kind and appropriate letter of invitation. It happened that I was rat. er unwell at this time, so that I named a more distant day for my visit than I should otherwise have done, and after all, I did not start at the time fixed ; whilst still remaining at Beyrout I received this letter, which certainly betrays no symptom of the pretensions to Divine power, which were popularly attributed to the writer : — " 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 water. The weather will probably change after the 2ist 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 anopportunity of inquiring after your mother, who was a sweet, lovely girl when I knew her. " Believe me, Sir, "Yours sincerely, "Hestkr Lucy Stanhope." Early one morning I started from Beyrout. There are no regularly established relays of horses in Syria, at least not in the line which I took, and you there' ^ hire your cattle for the whole journey, or, at all events, for your journey to some large town. Under these circumstances you have no occasion for a Tatar (whose principal utility consists in his power to compel the supply of horses). In other respects, the mode of travelling through Syria differs very little from that which I have de- scribed as prevailing in Turkey. I hired my horses and mules (for I had some of both) for the whole of the journey from Bey- rout to Jerusalem ; the owner of the beasts (who had a couple of fellows under him) was the most dignified member of my party ; he was, indeed, a magnificent old man, and was called Shereef, or " holy," — a title of honour, which, with the privilege of bearing the green turban, he well deserved, not only from the blood of the Prophet which glowed in his veins, but from the well-known sanctity of his life, and the length of his blessed beard. Mysseri, of course, still travelled with me, but the Arabic was not one of the seven languages which he spoke so perfect- ly, and I was, therefore, obliged to hire another interpreter, I 6o EOTHEN. [chap. VIII. ; * s r I' J ■ had no difficulty in finding a proper 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 all directions. He spoke the Arabic very well, and communicated with me in Italian. The man was a very zealous member of the Greek Church. He had been a tailor. He was as ugly as the devil, having a thoroughly Tatar countenance, which expressed the agony of his body or mind, as the case might be, in the most ludicrous manner imaginable ; he embellished the natural cari- cature of his person, by suspending about his neck, and shoul- ders, and waist, quantities of little bundles and parcels, which he thought too valuable to be entrusted to the jerking of pack- saddles. The mule which fell to his lot on this journey, every now and then, forgetting that his rider was a saint, and remem- bering that he was a tailor, took a quiet roll upon the ground, and stretched his limbs calmly and lazily, as if he were prepar- ing to hear a long sermon. Dthemetri never got seriously hurt, but the subversion and dislocation of his bundles made him for the moment a sad spectacle of ruin, and when he regained his legs, his wrath with the mule became very amusing. He always addressed the beast in language which implied, that he, as a Christian and saint, had been personally insulted and oppres- sed by a Mahometan mule. Dthemetri, however, on the whole, proved to be a most able and capital servant ; I suspected him of now and then leading me out of my way, in order that he might have an opportunity of visiting the shrine of a Saint, and on one occasion, as you will see by and by, he was induced, by religious motives, to commit a gross breach of duty ; but, put- ting these pious faults out of the question (and they were faults of the right side), he was always faithful and true to me. I left Said (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 of Lebanon. On the summit before me, was a broad, grey mrs of irregular building, which, from its posi- tion, as well as ium the gloomy blankness of 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 in this part of world, had been made strong enough for opposing an inert re- sistance to any mere casual band of assailants who might be unprovided with regular means of attack ; this was the dwel- ling-place of the Chatham's fiery grand-daughter. p. VIII. CHAP. VIII.] LADY HESTER STANHOPE. 6i The aspect of the first court which I entered, was such as to keep one in the idea of having to do with a fortress, rather than a mere peaeeable dwelling-place. A number of fierce-looking and ill-clad Albanian soldiers were hanging about the place, and striving to bear the curse of tranquillity, as well as they could ; two or three of them, I think, were smoking their tchibouques, but the rest of them were lying torpidly upon the flat stones, like the bodies of departed brigands. I rode on to an inner part of the building, and at last, quitting my horses, was conducted through a door-way which led me at once from an open court into an apartment on the ground floor. As I entered, an oriental figure in male costume approached me from the farther end of the room with many and profound bows, but the growing shades of evening, as well as my near-sightedness, prevented me from distinguishing the features of the personage who was receiving me with this solemn welcome. I had always, however, under- stood that Lady Hester Stanhope, wore the male attire, and I began to utter in English the common civilities which seemed to be proper on the commencement of a visit by an unin- spired mortal to a renowned Prophetess, but the figure which I addressed, only bowed so much the more, prostrating itself almost to the ground, but speaking to me never a word ; I feebly strived not to be outdone in gestures of respect, but presently my bowing opponent saw the error under which I was acting, and suddenly convinced me, that at all events I was not yet in the presence of a superhuman being, by delaring that he was not " Miladi," but was, in fact, nothing more or less god- like than the poor Doctor, who had brought his mistress's letters to Beyrout. Her Ladyship, in the right spirit of hospitality, now sent, and commanded me to repose for a while after the fatigues of my journey, and to dine. The cuisine was of the Oriental kind, which is highly artifi- cial, and I thought it very good. I rejoiced, too, in the wine of the Lebanon. Soon after the ending of the dinner, the Doctor arrived with Miladi's compliments, and an intimation that she would be happy to receive me if I were so disposed. It had now grown dark, and the rain was falling heavily, so that I got rather wet in fol- lowing my guide through the open courts which I had to pass, in order to reach the presence chanfber. At last I was ushered i i:ft 6s EOTHEN [chap. VIII, u \ 1 1 into a small apartment, which was protected from the draughts of air through the door-way by a folding screen ; passing this, I came alongside of a common European sofa, where sat the Lady Prophetess. She rose from her seat very formally — spoke to me a few words of welcome, pointed to a chair which was placed exactly opposite to her sofa, at a couple of yards' distance, and remained standing up to the full of her majestic height, per- fectly still and motionless, until I had taken my appointed place; she then resumed her seat, not packing herself up according to the mode of the Orientals, but allowing her feet to rest on the floor, or the footstool ; at the moment of seating herself, she covered her lap with a mass of loose, wfiite drapery, which she held in her hand. It occurred to me at the time, that she did this, in order to avoid the awkwardness of sitting in manifest trowsers under the eye of an European, but I can hardly fancy now, that, with her wilful nature, she would have brooked such a compromise as this. The woman before me had exactly the person of a Prophet- ess — not, indeed, of the divine Sibyl imagined by Domenichino, so sweetly distracted betwixt Love and Mystery, but of a good, business-like, practical Prophetess, long used to the exercise of her sacred calling. I have been told by those who knew Lady Hester Stanhope in her youth, that any notion of a resemblance betwixt her and the great Chatham must have been fanciful, but at the time of my seeing her, the large commanding features of the gaunt woman, then sixty years old or more, certainly reminded me of the Statesman that lay dying* in the House of Lords, according to Copley's picture ; her face was of the most astonishing whiteness ; t 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 the point at which it was concealed by the drapery which she held over her lap, was a mass of white linen loosely folding — an ecclesiastical sort of affair — more like a surplice than any of those blessed creations which our souls love under the names of " dress," and "frock," and "boddice," and "collar," and "habit-shirt," and «weet "chemisette." Such was the outward seeming of the personage that sat be- * Historically '* faifttittg ;^^ tlie death did not occur till long afterwards. iM aim told that in youth she was exceedingly sallow. CHAP. VIII.] LADY HESTER STANHOPE. 63 fore me, and indeed she was almost bound by the fame of her actual achievements, as well as by her sublime pretensions, to look a little differently from the rest of woman-kind. There had been something of grandeur in her career : after the death of Lady Chatham, which happened in 1803, she lived under the roof of her uncle, the second Pitt, and when he resumed the Government in 1804, she became the dispenser of much patron- age, and sole Secretary of State for the department of Treasury banquets. Not having seen the Lady until late in her life, when she was fired with spiritual ambition, I can hardly fancy that she could have performed her political duties in the saloons of the Minister with much of feminine sweetness and patience ; I am told, however, that she managed matters very well indeed ; perhaps it was better for the lofty-minded leader of the House, to have his reception-rooms guarded by this stately creature, than by a merely clever and managing woman ; it was fitting that the wholesome awe with which he filled the minds of the country gentlemen, should be aggravated by the presence of his majestic niece. But the end was approaching ; the sun of Aus- terlitz showed the Czar madly sliding his splendid army like a weaver's shuttle, from his right hand to his left, under the very eyes — the deep, grey, watchful eyes of Napoleon ; before night came, the coalition was a vain thing — meet for History, and the heart of its great author was crushed with grief, when the terrible tidings came to his ears. In the bitterness of his despair, he cried out to his niece, and bid her " Roll up the Map of Europe ; " there was a little more of suffering, and at last, with his swollen tongue still muttering something for England, he died by the noblest of all sorrows. La ly Hester, meeting the calamity in her own fierce way, seems to have scorned 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, but there is a longing for the East, very commonly felt by proud-hearted people, when goaded by sorrow. Lady Hester Stanhope obeyed this impulse : for some time, I believe, she was at Constantinople, where her magnifi- cence, and near alliance to the late Minister, gained her great influence. Afterwards she passed into Syria. The people of that country, excited by the achievements of Sir Sydney Smith, had begun to imagine the possibility of their land being occu- pied by the English, and many of them looked upon Lady 64 EOTHEN. [chap. viir. : i if |:i Hester as a Princess who came to prepare the way for the expected conquest. I don't know it from her own lips, or indeed from any certain authority, but I have been told that she began her connection with the Bedouins by making a large present of money (;^5oo, it was said, immense in piastres) to the Sheik whose authority was recognized in that part of the Desert, which lies between Damascus and Palmyra. The prestige created by the rumours of her high and undefined rank, as well as of her wealth, and corresponding magnificence, was well sustained by her imperious character, and her daunt- less bravery. Her influence increased. I never heard anything satisfactory as to the real extent or duration of her sway, but it seemed that, for a time at least, she certainly exercised some- thing like sovereignty amongst the wandering tribes. And now that her earthly kingdom had passed away, she strove for spiritual power, and impiously dared, as it was said, to boast some mystic union with the very God of very God ! A couple of black slave girls came at a signal, and supplied their mistress, as well as myself, with lighted tchibouques, and coffee. The custom of the East sanctions, and almost commands, some moments of silence, whilst you are inhaling the first few breaths of the fragrant pipe ; the pause was broken, I think by my Lady, who addressed to me some inquiries respecting my mother, and particularly as to her marriage ; but before I had communicated any great amount of family facts, the spirit of the Prophetess kindled within her, and presently (though with all the skill of a woman of the world) she shuffled away the subject of poor dear Somersetshire, and bounded onward into loftier spheres of thought. My old acquaintance with some of " the twelve," enabled me to bear my part (of course a very humble one,) in a conversa- tion relative to occult science. Milnes once spread a report, that every gang of gipsies was found, upon inquiry, to have come last from a place to the westward, and to be about to make the next move in an eastern direction ; either, therefore, they were to be all gathered together towards the rising of the sun, by the mysterious finger of Providence, or else they were to revolve round the globe for ever, and ever, and ever ; both of these suppositions were highly gratifying, because they were both marvellous, and though the story on which they were founded CHAP. VIII.] LADY HESTER STANHOPE. «s plainly sprung from the inventive brain of a poet, no one had ever been so odiously statistical as to attempt a contradiction of it. I now mentioned the story as a report to Lady Hester Stanhope, and asked her if it were true ; I could not have touched upon any imaginable subject more deeply interesting to my hearer — more closely akin to her habitual train of think- ing ; she immediately threw off all the restraint belonging to an interview with a stranger ; and, when she had received a few more similar proofs of my aptness for the marvellous, she went so far as to say, that she would adopt me as her ^^ 4/he" in occult science. For hours and hours, this wondrous white woman poured forth her speech, for the most part concerning sacred and pro- fane mysteries ; but every now and then, she would stay her lofty flight, and swoop down upon the world again ; whenever this happened, I was interested in her conversation. She adverted more than once to the period of her lost sway amongst the Arabs, and mentioned some of the circumstances which aided her in obtaining influence with the wandering tribes. The Bedouin, so often engaged in irregular warfare, strains his eyes to the horizon in search of a coming enemy, just as habit- ually as the sailor keeps his " bright look out " for a strange sail. In the absence of telescopes, a far-reaching sight is highly valued, and Lady Hester possessed this quality to an extraor- dinary degree. She told me that, on one occasion, when there was good reason to expect a hostile attack, great excitement was felt in the camp by the report of a far-seeing Arab, who declared that he could just distinguish some moving objects upon the very furthest point within the reach of his eyes ; Lady Hester was consulted, and she instandy assured her comrades in arms, that there was indeed a number of horses within sight, but that they were without riders ; the assertion proved to be correct, and from that time forth her superiority over all others in respect of far sight remained undisputed. Lady Hester related to me this other anecdote of her Arab life; it was when the heroic qualities of the Englishwoman v/ere just beginning to be felt 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 She perceived that pre- parations for an engagement were going on, and upon her mak- E ;M.i 66 EOTHEN» [chap. VIII. 1 I ing inquiry as to the cause, the Sheik at first affected mystery and concealment, but at last confessed that war had been de- clared against his tribe, on account of its alliance with the English Princess, and that they were now unfortunately about to be attacked by a very superior force ; he made it appear that Lady Hester was the sole cause of hostility betwixt his tribe and the impending enemy, and that his sacred duty of protect- ing the Englishwoman, whom he had admitted as his guest, was the only obstacle which prevented an amicable arrangement of the dispute. The Sheik hinted that his tribe was likely to sustain an almost overwhelming blow, but, at the same time, declared that no fear of the consequences, however terrible to him and his whole people, should induce him to dream of aban- doning 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 to her enemies, so she resolved to turn away from the people, and trust for help to none, save only her haughty self The Sheiks affected to dissuade her from so rash a course, and fairly told her, that although they (having been freed from her presence) would be able to make good terms for themselves, yet that there were no means of allaying the hostility felt to- wards her, and that the whole face of the desert would be swept by the horsemen of her enemies so carefully, as to make her escape into other districts almost impossible. The brave woman was not to be moved by terrors of this kind, and bidding fare- well to the tribe, which had honoured and protected her, turned her horse's head, and rode straight away from them, without friend or follower. Hours had elapsed, and for some time she had been alone in the centre of a round horizon, when her quick eye perceived some horsemen in the distance. The party came nearer, and nearer ; soon it was plain that they were making towards her, and presently some hundreds of Bedouins, fully armed, galloped up to her, ferociously shouting, and apparently intending to take her life at the instant, with their pointed spears. Her face, at the time, was covered with the yashmack, according to Eastern usage, but at the moment when the foremost of the horsemen had all but reached her with their spears, she stood up in her stirrups — withdrew the yashmack, that veiled the terrors of her countenance — waved her arm slowly and disdainfully, and cried out with a loud voice, VIII. CHAP. VIII.] LADY HESTER STANHOPE. 67 " Avaunt !"* The horsemen recoiled from her glance, but not in terror. The threatening yells of the assailants were suddenly changed for loud shouts of joy and admiration, at the bravery of the stately Englishwoman, and festive gun-shots were fired on all sides around her honoured head. The truth was, that the party belonged to the tribe with which she had allied her- self, and that the threatened attack, as well as the pretended apprehension of an engagement, had been contrived for the mere purpose of testing her courage. The day ended in a great feast, prepared to do honour to the Heroine, and from that time, her power over the minds of the people grew rap- idly. Lady Hester related this story with great spirit, and I recollect that she put up her yashmack for a moment, in order to give a better idea of the effect which she produced, by sud- denly revealing the awfulnes| of her countenance. With respect to her then present mode of life. Lady Hester informed me, that, for her sins, she had subjected herself during many years to serve penance, and that her self-denial had not been without its reward. " Vain and false," said she, ** is all the pretended knowledge of the Europeans — their Doctors will tell you that the drinking of milk gives yellowness to the com- plexion ; milk is my only food, and you see if my face be not white." Her abstinence from food intellectual was carried as far as her physical fasting ; she never, she said, looked upon a book nor a newspaper, but trusted alone to the stars for her sub- lime knowledge ; she usually passed the night in communing with these heavenly teachers, and lay at rest during the day- time. She spoke with great contempt of the frivolity, and be- nighted ignorance of the modern Europeans, and mentioned in proof of this, that they were not only untaught in astrology, but were unacquainted with the common and every day phenomena produced by magic art ; she spoke as if she would make me understand that all sorcerous spells were completely at her com- mand, but that the exercise of such powers would be derogatory to her high rank in the heavenly kingdom. She said, that the spell, by which the face of an absent_ person is thrown upon a mirror, was within the reach of the humblest and most con- * She spoke it, I dare say, in English ; the words would not be the less effective for being spoken in an unknown tongue. Lady Hester, I believe, never learnt to speak the Arabic with a perfect accent. ll! 68 EOTHEN. [chap. VIII. l:\ H f i^ 1 II I temptibie magicians, but that the practice of such like arts was unholy, as well as vulgar. We spoke of the bending twig by which it is said that pre- cious metals may be discovered. In relation to this, the Pro- phetess told me a story rather against herself, and inconsistent with the notion of her being perfect in her science, but I think that she mentioned the facts as having happened before the time at which she attained to the great spiritual authority which she now arrogated ; she told me that vast treasures were known to exist in a situation which she mentioned, if I rightly remember, as being near Suez : that Napoleon, profanely brave, thrust his arm into the cave, containing the coveted gold, and that instantly his flesh became palsied, but the youthful hero (for she said he was great in his generation) was not to be thus daunted ; he fell back characteristically upoA his brazen resources, and ordered up his artillery ; but man could not strive with demons, and Napoleon was foiled. In years after came Ibrahim Pasha, with heavy guns, and wicked spells to boot, but the infernal guardians of the treasure were too strong for him. It was after this that Lady Hester passed by the spot, and she described, with animated gesture, the force and energy with which the divining twig had suddenly leaped in her hands ; she ordered excavations, and no demons opposed her enterprise ; the vast chest in which the treasure had been deposited was at length discovered, but lo ! and behold, it was full of pebbles ! She said, however, that the times were approaching, in which the hidden treasures of the earth would become 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 upon which she looked down with so much contempt ; she said, for instance, that Ibrahim's life was charmed against balls and steel, and that after a battle, he loosened the folds of his shawl, and shook out the bullets like dust. It seems that the St. Simonians once made overtures to Lady Hester ; she told me that the Pere Enfantin (the chief of the sect) had sent her a service of plate, but that she had declined to receive it ; she delivered a 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 IL CHAP. VIII.] LADY HESTER STANHOPE. 69 liberty to mention this part of the women's prophecies ; why, I cannot tell, but so it is, that she bound me to eternal secrecy. Lady Hester told me, that since her residence at Djoun, she had been attacked by a terrible illness, which rendered her for a long time perfectly helpless ; all her attendants fled, and left her to perish. Whilst she lay thus alone, and quite unable to rise, robbers came, and carried away her property ;* she told me, that they actually unroofed a great part of the building, and employed engines with pulleys for the purpose of hoisting out such of her valuables as were too bulky to pass through doors. It would seem that, before this catastrophe. Lady Hester had 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 the fall of Acre, they brought their wives also in great numbers ; to all of these Lady Hester, as she said, presented magnificent dresses, but her generosity occasioned strife only instead of gratitude, for every woman who fancied her present less splendid than that of another, with equal or less pretension, * The proceedings thus described to me b/Lady Hester, as having taken place during her illness, were afterwards re-enacted at the time of her death. Since I wrote the words to which this note is appended, I reciived from an English traveller this interesting account of the heroine's death, or rather of the circumstances attending the discovery of the event ; the letter is dated Djoun (Lady Hester's late residence) and contains the following passages : — I reached this strange hermitage last night, and though time and some naval officers are urging my departure I am too glad to find myself in a place whereof we have often discoursed, to allow the opportun- ity of writing to you to pass by. How beautiful must this convent-palace have been when you saw it, its strange mistress doing its hospitalities and exercising her self-won regal power ! A friend of has a letter from the Sultan, to her beginning 'Cousin.' She annihilated a village for dis- obedience, and burned a mountain chalet with all its inhabitants, for the murder of a traveller. * ♦ « gj^g j^gij q^ gallantly to the last. Moore, our Consul at Beyroot, heard she was ill, and rode over the moun- tains, accompanied by a missionary, to visit her. A profound silence was over all the palace — no one met them — they lighted their own lamps in the outer court, and passed unquestioned through court and gallery, till they came to where she lay : % corpse was the only inhabitant of Djoun, and the isolation from her kind which she so long sought, was indeed completed. That morning thirty-seven servants had watched every motion of her eye ; that spell once darkened by death, every one fled with the plunder ; not a single thing was left in the room where she lay dead, except upon her per- son ; no one had ventured to touch that, and even in death she seemed able to protect herself. At midnight the missionary carried her out to a favorite -esort of hers in the garden, and there they buried her ♦ * • The buildings are fast falling into decay." 7o EOTHEN [chap. VIII. ii became absolutely furious ; all these audacious guests had now been got rid of, but the Albanian soldiers, who had taken refuge with Lady Hester at the same time, still remained under her protection. In truth, this half ruined convent, guarded by the proud heart of an English gentlewoman, was the only spot throughout all Syria and Palestine in which the will of Mehemet Ali and his fierce Lieutenant was not the law. More than once had the Pasha of Egypt commanded that Ibrahim should have the Albanians delivered up to him, but this white woman of the mountain (grown classical, not by books, but by very pride) answered only with a disdainful invitation to " come and take them." Whether it was that Ibrahim was acted upon by any superstitious dread of interfering with the Prophetess (a notion not at all incompatible with his character as an able Oriental commander), or that he feared the ridicule of puttin • himself in collision with a gentlewoman, he certainly never ventured to attack the sanctuary, and so long as the Chatham's grand- daughter breathed a breath of life, there was always this one hillock, and that, too, in the midst of a most populous district, vv'hich stood out and kept its freedom. Mehemet Ali used to say, I am told, that the Englishwoman had given him more trouble than all the insurgent people of Syria and Palestine. The Prophetess announced to me that we were upon the eve of a stupendous convulsion, which would destroy the then recognized value of all property upon earth ; and, declaring that those only who should be in the East at the time of the great change could hope for greatness in the new life that was now close at hand, she advised me, w'^\lst there was yet time, to dispose of my property in fragile England, and gain a station in Asia ; she told me that, after leaving her, I should go into Egypt, but that in a little while I should return into Syria. I secretly smiled at this last prophecy as a " bad-shot," for I had fully determined, after visiting the pyramids, to take ship from Alexandria for Greece. But men struggle vr.inly in the meshes of their destiny ; the unbelieved Cassandra was right after all ; the Plague came, and the necessity of avoiding the Quarantine to which I should have been subjected, if I had sailed from Alexandria, forced me to alter my route : I went dovm into Egypt, and stayed there for a time, and then crossed the Desert CHAP. VIII.] LADY HESTER STANHOPE. 71 once more, and came back to the mountains of the Lebanon exactly as the Prophetess had foretold. 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 me with the vanity and the falseness of all European creeds, as well as with a sense of her own spiritual greatness ; throughout her conversation upon these high topics, she skilfully insinuated, without actually asserting, her heavenly rank. Amongst other much more marvellous powers, the Lady claimed to have one which most women I fancy possess, namely, that of reading men's characters in their faces ; she examined the line of my features very attentively, and told me the result, which, however, I mean to keep hidden. One great subject of discourse was that of "race," upon which she was very diffuse, and yet rather mysterious ; she set great value upon the ancient French (not Norman blood, for that she vilified), but did not 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, and said, if she chose, she could give me the means of rousing them to the most tremendous en- thusiasm. Such are the topics on which the Lady mainly conversed, but very often she would descend to more worldly chat, and then she was no longer the Prophetess, but the sort of woman that you sometimes see, I am told, in London drawing-rooms, — cool — un- sparing of enemies — full of audacious fun, and saying the down- right things that the sheepish society around her is afraid to utter. I am told that Lady Hester was in her youth a capital mimic, and she showed me that not all the queenly dullness to which she had condemned herself, — not all her fasting, and soli- tude, had destroyed this terrible power. The first whom she crucified in my presence, was poor Lord Byron ; she had seen him, it appea'ed, I know not where, soon after his arrival in the East, and was vastly ; lused at his little affectations ;* he had picked up a few sentences of the Romaic, with which he affect- ed to give orders to his Greek servant ; I can't tell whether *In a letter which I afterwards received from Lady Hestc. she mentioned incidentally Lord Hnrdwicke, and said that he was "'me kindest-hearted man existing — a most manlv, firm character. He comes from a good breed, — all the Yorke. excellence wi h ancient French blood in their veins." 72 EOTHEN. [chap. VIII. ill 111 III II Lady Hester's mimicry of the bard was not at all close, but it was amusing : she attributed to him a curiously coxcombical lisp. Another person whose style of speaking the Lady took off very amusingly was one who would scarcely object to suffer by the side of Lord Byron, — I mean Lamartine, who had visited her in the course of his travels ; the peculiarity which attracted her ridicule was an over-refinement of manner : according to my Lady's imitation of Lamartine (I have never seen him myself), he had none of the violent grimace of his countrymen, and not even their usual way of talking, but rather bore himself min- cingly, like the humbler sort of English Dandy.* Lady Hester seems to have heartily despised everything ap- proaching to exquisiteness ; she told me, by the by (and her opinion upon that subject is worth having), that a downright man- ner, amounting even to brusqueness, is more effective than any other with the Oriental ; and that amongst the English, of all ranks, and all classes, there is no man so attractive to the Orien- tals — no man who can negotiate with them half so effectively, as a good, honest, open-hearted, and positive naval officer of the old school. I have told you, I think, that Lady Hester could deal fiercely with those she hated ; one man above all others (he is now up- rooted from society, and cast away for ever) she blasted with her wrath ; you would have thought that in the scornfulness of her nature, she must have sprung upon her foe with more of fierceness than of skill, but this was not so, for with all the force and vehemence of he'- invective, she displayed a sober, patient and minute attention to the details of vituperation, which contributed to its success a thousand times more than mere vio- lence. During the hours that this sort of conversation, or rather discourse, was going on, our tchibouques were from time to time replenished, and the Lady, as well as I, continued to •It is said that deaf people car. hear what is said concerning themselves, and it would seem that those who live without books, or newspapers, know all that is written about them. Lady Hester Stanhope, though not admit- ting a book or newspaper into her fortress, seems to have known the way in which M. Lamartine mentioned her in his book, for in a letter 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 organized to supply the want of them, as well as acquired knowledge." CHAP. VIII.] LADY HESTER STANHOPE. 73 smoke with little or no intermission, till the interview en(^ed. I think that the fragrant fumes of the Latakiah must have helped to keep me on my good behaviour as a patient disciple of the Prophetess. It was not till after midnight that my visit for the evening came to an end ; when I quitted my seat the Lady rose, and stood up in the same formal attitude (almost that of a soldier in a state of " attention,") which she had assumed at my en- trance, at the same time she let go the drapery which she had held over her lap whilst sitting, and allowed it to fall to the ground. The next morning after breakfast I was visited by my Lady's Secretary — the only European, except the Doctor, whom she retained in her household. The Secretary, like the Doctor, was Italian, but he preserved more signs of European dress and European pretensions, than his medical fellow-slave. He spoke little or no English, though he wrote it pretty well, having been formerly employed in a mercantile house connected with png- land. The poor fellow was in an unhappy state of mind. In order to make you understand the extent of his spiritual an- xieties, I ought to have told you that the Doctor (who had sunk into the complete Asiatic, and had condescended accord- ingly to the performance of even menial services) had adopted the common faith of all the neighbouring people, and had become a firm and happy believer in the divine power of his mistress. Not so the Secretary ; 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 in a hollow voice, trembling with emotion, that there were times at which he doubted the divinity of " Miledi." I said nothing to encour- age the poor fellow in that frightful state of scepticism, which, if indulged, might end in positive infidelity. I found that her Ladyship had rather arbitrarily abridged the amusements of her Secretary, forbidding him from shooting small birds on the mountain side. This oppression had roused in him a spirit of enquiry 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 the surrounding people, whom she oppressed by her exac- tions, and the truth of this statement was borne out by the way in which my Lady spoke to me of her neighbours. But in 1 i ,1 i! !, 1 i; ' ' 74 EOTHEN. [chap. VIII, Eastern countries, hate and veneration are very commonly felt for the same object, and the general belief in the superhuman power of this wonderful white lady — her resolute and imperious char- acter, and above all, perhaps, her fierce Albanians (not back- ward to obey ajii order for the sacking of a village) inspired sincere respect amongst the surrounding inhabitants. Now the being "respected" amongst Orientals is not an empty, or merely honorary, distinction, for, on the contrary, it carries with it a clear right to take your neighbour's corn, his cattle, his eggs, and his honey, and almost anything that is his, except his wives. This law was acted upon by the Princess of Djoun, and her establishment was supplied by contributions apportioned a- mongst the nearest of the villages. I understood that the Albanians (restrained, I suppose, by their dread of being delivered up to Ibrahim) had not given any very troublesome proofs of their unruly natures. The Secre- tary told me that their rations, including a small allowance of coffee and tobacco, were served out to them with tolerable regularity. I asked the Secretary, how Lady Hester was off for horses, and said that I would take a look at the stable ; the man did not raise any opposition to my proposal, and affected no mys- tery about the matter, but said that the only two steeds which then belonged to her Ladyship were of a very humble sort ; this answer, and a storm of rain which began to descend, pre- vented me at the time from undertaking my journey to the stable, which was at some distance from the part of the building in which I was quartered, and I don't know that I ever thought of the matter afterwards, until my return to England, when I saw Lamartine's eye-witnessing account of the horse saddled by the hands of his Maker. When I returned to my apartment (which, as my hostess told me, was the only one in the whole building which kept out the rain,) her Ladyship sent to say that she wor' i be glad to receive me again ; I was rather surprised at this, lor I had understood that she reposed during the day, and it was now little later than noon. " Really," said she, when I had taken my seat and my pipe, " we were together for hours last night, and still I have heard nothing at all of my old friends : now do tell me some- thing of your dear mother and her sister ; I never knew your father — it was after I left Burton Pynsent that your mother mar- CHAP. VIII.] LADY HESTER STANHOPE. 75 ried." I began to make slow answer, but my questioner soon went off again to topics more sublime, so that this second inter- view, which lasted two or three hours, was occupied with the same sort of varied discourse as that which I have been describing. In the course of the afternoon the captain of an English man- of-war arrived at Djoun, and her Ladyship determined to re- ceive him for the same reason as that which had induced her to allow my visit — namely, an early intimacy with his family. I, and the new visitor, who was a pleasant, amusing person, dined together, and we were afterwards invited to the presence of my Lady, with whom we sat smoking and talking till midnight. The conversation turned chiefly, I think, upon magical science. I had determined to be off at an early hour the next morning, and so at the end of this interview I bade my Lady farewell. With her parting words she once 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 him that '* She had said it" Lady Hester's unholy claim to supremacy in the spiritual kingdom was, no doubt, the suggestion of fierce and inordinate pride, most perilously akin to madness, but I am quite sure that the mind of the woman was too strong to be thoroughly over- come by even this potent feeling. I plainly saw that she was not an unhesitating follower of her own system, and I even fancied that I could distinguish the brief moments during which she contrived to believe in Herself, from those long and less happy intervals in which her own reason was too strong for her. As for the Lady's faith in Astrology, and Magic Science, you are not for a moment to suppose that this implied any aberration of intellect. She believed these things in common with those around her, for she seldom spoke to anybody, except crazy old dervishes, who received her alms, and fostered her extravagances, and even when (as on the occasion of my visit) she v/as brought into contact with a person entertaining different notions, she still remained uncontradicted. This entourage and the habit of fast- ing from books and newspapers were quite enough to make her a facile recipient of any marvellous story. I think that in England we are scarcely sufficiently conscious of the great debt we owe to the wise and watchful press which presides over the formation of our opinions, and which brings about this splendid result, namely, that in n^atters of belief the 76 EOTHEN. [chap. VIII. ^i^;i I 1 1 ii 1 1 humblest of us are lifted up to the level of the most sagacious, so that really a simple Cornet in the Blues is no more likely to entertain a foolish belief about ghosts or witchcraft, or any other supernatural topic, than the Lord High Chancellor or the Leader of the House of Commons. How different is the intellectual regime of Eastern countries? In Syria, and Palestine, and Egypt, you might as well dispute the efficacy of grass or grain as of Magic. 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 from Europe is at first proof against the nonsense with which he is assailed, but often it hap- pens that after a little while the social atmosphere in which he lives will begin to infect him, and if he has been unaccustomed to the cunning offence Dy which Reason prepares the means of guarding herself against fallacy, he will yield himself at last to the faith of those around him, and this he will do by sympathy, it would seem, rather than from conviction. I have been nmch interested in observing that the mere " practical man," however skilful and shrewd in his own way, has not the kind of power which enables him to resist the gi-adual impression which is made upon his mind by the common opinion of those whom he sees and hears from day to day. Even amongst the English (whose good sense and sound religious knowledge would be likely to guard them from error), I have known the calculating merchant, the inquisitive traveller, and the post-captain, with his bright, wakeful eye of command — I have known all these sur- render themselves to ikio. really magic-like influence of other people's minds ; their language at first is, that they are '* stag- gered ;" leading you by that expression to suppose that they had been witnesses to some phenomenon, which it was very difficult to account for, otherwise than by supernatural causes, but when I have questioned further, I have always found that these '* stag- gering" wonders were not even specious enough to be looked upon as good " tricks." A man in England, who gained his whole livelihood as a conjuror, would soon be starved to death if he could perform no better miracles than those which are wrought with so much effect in Syria and Egypt ; sometimes, no doubt, a magician will make a good hit (Sir Robert once said " a good thing"), but all such successes range, of course, under the head of mere '* tentative miracles," as distinguished by the strong-brained Paley. CHAP. IX.] THE SANCTUARY. 77 CHAPTER IX. THE SANCTUARY. CROSSED the plain of Esdraelon, and entered amongst the hills of beautiful Galilee. It was at sunset that my path brought me sharply round into the gorge of a little ^^1 valley, and close upon a grey mass of dwellings that lay happily nestled in the lap of the mountain. There was one only shining point still touched with the light of the . sun, who had set for all besides ; a brave sign this to " holy" Shereef, and the rest of my 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 meekly under the shades of evening was Christian Nazareth ! Within the precincts of the Latin convent in which I was quartered, there stands the great Catholic church which encloses the Sanctuary — the dwelling of the Blessed Virgin.* This is a grotto of about ten feet either way, forming a little chapel or recess, to which you descend by steps. It is decorated with splendour : on the left hand a column of granite hangs from the . * The Greek Church does not recognize this as the true Sanctuary, and many Protestants look upon all the traditions, by which it is attempted to ascertain the holy places of Palestine, as utterly fabulous. For myself, I do not mean either to affirm or deny the correctness of the opinion which has fixed upon this as the true site, but merely to mention it as a belief enter- tained, without question, by my brethren of the Latin Church, whose guest I was at the time. It would be a great aggravation of the trouble of writing about these matters, if I were to stop in the midst of every sentence for the purpose of saying *' so-called" or "so it is said," and would, besides, sound very ungraciously ; yet I am anxious to be literally true in all I write. Now, thus it is that I mean to get over my difficulty. Whenever, in this great bundle of paper's, or book (if book it is to be), you see any words about mat- ters of religion which would seem to involve the assertion of my own opinion, you are to understand me just as if one or other of the qualifying phrases above mentioned, had been actually inserted in every sentence. My general direction for you to constnie me thus, will render all that I write as strictly and accurately true, as if I had every time lugged in a formal decla- ration of the fact, that I was merely expressing the notions of other people. 78 EOTHEN. [CHAr. IX. ! til I J 1 1 1li ! I i top of the grotto, to within a few feet of the ground ; imme- diately beneath it is another column of the same size, which rises from the ground as if to meet the one above ; but between this and the suspended pillar, there is an interval of more than a foot ; these fragments once formed a single column, against which the angel leant, when he 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 followers were ever within my hearing, but yet) as it were, in solitude, for I had no comrade to whet the edge of my reason, or wake me from my noon-day dreams. I was left all alone to be taught and swayed by the beautiful circumstances of Pales- tine travelling — by the clime, and tlie land, and the name of the land with all its mighty import — by the glittering freshness of the sward, and the abounding masses of flowers that furnished my sumptuous pathway — by the bracing and fragrant air, that seemed to poise me in my saddle, and to lift me along like a planet appointed to glide through 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 me their dangerous worship of the beauty that is more than mortal, but those images all seemed shadowy now, and floated before me so dimly, the one overcast- ing the other, that they left me no one sweet idol on which I could look, and look again, and say, " Maria mia !" Yet they left me more than idol — they left me (for to them I am wont to trace it) a faint apprehension of Beauty not compassed with lines and shadows — they touched me (forgive proud Marie of Anjou !) they touched me with a faith in loveliness transcending mortal shapes. I came to Nazareth, and was led from the convent to the Sanctuary. Long fasting will sometimes heat my brain, and draw me away out of the world — 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 Heavenly Queen of Christendom. But I knew the feebleness of this gentle malady, and I knew how easily my watchful reason, if ever so slightly provoked, would drag me back to life ; let there but come one chilling breath of the outer world, and all CHAP. IX.] THE SANCTUARY. 79 this loving piety would cower, and fly before the sound of my own bitter laugh. And so as I went, I trod tenderly, not look- ing 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 but silently, to the Virgin's home. The mystic air was so burnt with the consuming flames of the altar, and so laden with incense, that my chest laboured strongly, and heaved with luscious pain. There — there, with beating heart, the Virgin knelt, and listened ! I strived to grasp and hold with my riveted eyes some one of the feigned Madonnas, but of all the heaven-lit faces imagined by men, there was none that would abide with me in this the very Sanctuary. Impatient of va- cancy, I grew madly strong against Nature, and if by some awful spell — some impious rite, I could Oh ! most sweet Religion that bid me fear God, and be pious, and yet not cease from loving ! Religion and gracious custom commanded me that I fall down loyally, and kiss the rock that blessed Mary pressed. With a half consciousness — with the semblance of a thrilling hope that I was plunging deep, deep into my first knowledge of some most holy mystery, or of some new, rap- turous, and daring sin, I knelt, and bowed down my face till I met the smooth rock with my lips. One moment — one moment — my heart, or some old Pagan demon within me woke up, and fiercely bounded — my bosom was lifted, 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 felt hopelessly sane. The mere world re-appeared. My good old monk was there, dangling his key with listless patience, and as he guided me from the Church, and talked of the Refectory, and the coming repast, I listened to his words with some atten- tion and pleasure. 8o EOTHEN. ICHAP. X. ii CHAPTER X. THE MONKS OF THE HOLY LAND. ■4e ;.i i M i II « |H EN EVER you come back to me from Palestine, we will find some *' golden wine,"* of Lebanon, that we may celebrate with apt libations the monks of the Holy Land, and, though the poor fellows be theoret- ically " dead to the world," we will drink to every man of them a good, long life, and a merry one ! Graceless is the traveller who forgets his obligations to these saints up- on earth — little love has he for merry Christendom, if he has not rejoiced with great joy to find in the very midst of water-drink- ing infidels, those lowly monasteries, in which the blessed juice of the grape is quaffed in peace. Ay ! Ay ! We will fill our glasses till they look like cups ofamber, and drink profoundly to our gracious hosts in Palestine. You would be likely enough to fancy that these monastics are men who have retired to the sacred sites of Palestine, from an enthusiastic longing to devote themselves to the exercise of reli- gion in the midst of the very land 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 with enthusiasts that the Catholic establishments are filled. The monks of the Latin convents are chiefly persons of the peasant class, from Italy and Spain, who have been handed over to these remote asylums, by order of their ecclesiastical superiors, and can no more account for their being in the Holy Land, than men of marching regiments can explain why they are in " stupid quarters." I believe that these monks are for the most part well conducted men, — punctual in their ceremonial duties, and altogether humble-minded Christians ; their humility is not at all misplaced, for you see at a glance (poor fellows) that they belong to the " la^^ remove " of the hu- man race ; if the taking of the cowl does not imply a complete # (( Vifto d^oro." CHAP. X.] THE MONKS OF THE HOLY LAND. 8i renouncement of the world, it is at least (in these days) a bon^ fide farewell to every kind of useful and entertaining knowledge, and, accordingly, the low bestial brow and the animal caste of those almost Bourbon features show plainly enough that all the intellectual vanities of life have been really and truly abandon- ed. But it is hard to quench altogether the spirit of inquiry that stirs in the human breast, and accordingly these monks inquire, — they are ahvavs inquiring — inquiring for " news !" Poor fel- lows ! they could scarcely have yielded themselves to the sway of any passion more difficult of gratification, for they have no means of communicating with the journalized world, except through European travellers ; and these, in consequence, I sup- pose, of that restlessness and irritability which generally haunt their wanderings, seem to have always avoided the bore of giv- ing any information to their hosts ; for me, I am more patient and good-natured, and when I found that the kind monks who gathered round me at Nazareth were longing to know the real truth about the General Bonaparte, who had recoiled from the siege of Acre, I softened my heart down to the good humour of Herodotus, and calmly began to "sing History," telling my eager hearers of the French Empire, and the greatness of its glory, and of Waterloo, and the fall of Napoleon ! Now my story of this marvellous ignorance on the part of the poor monks is one upon which (though depending on my own testimony) I look ** with considerable suspicion ;" it is quite true (how silly it would be to invent anything so witless !) and yet I think I could satisfy the mind of a "reasonable man," that it is false. Many of the older monks must have been in Europeat the time when the Italy and the Spain, from which they came, were in the act of taking their French lessons, or had parted so lately with their teachers, that not to know of "the Emperor," was impossible, and these men could scarcely, therefore, have failed to bring with them some tidings of Napoleon's career. Yet I say that that which I have written is true, — the one who believes, because I have said it, will be right — (she always is), while poor Mr. " rea- sonable man," who is convinced by the weight of my argument, will be completely deceived. In Spanish politics, however, the monks are better instructed, the revenues of the monasteries, which had been principally supplied by the bounty of their most Catholic Majesties, have been mthheld since Ferdinand's death, and the interests of these IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I IIM 112.5 MM |||||2J^ •ti 2.0 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 < 6" ► ^i (^ /}. '<^. e: a. 'el ;^#^^<>; A °^f y 7 /A Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 8/2-4503 i 7/% 82 EOTHEN. [chap. X. .1 establishments being thus closely involved in the destinies of Spain, it is not wonderful that the brethren should be a little more knowing in Spanish affairs than in other branches of history. Besides, a large proportion of the monks were natives of the Peninsula ; to these, I remember, Mysseri's familiarity with the Spanish language and character was a source of immense de- light ; they were always gathering around him, and' it seemed to me that they treasured like gold the few Castilian words which he deigned to spare them. Christianity permits and sanctions the drinking of wine, and, of all the holy brethren of Palestine, there are none who hold fast to this gladsome rite so strenuously as the monks of Damascus; not that they are more zealous Christians than the rest of their fellows in the Holy Land, but that they have better wine. Whilst I was at Damascus, I had my quarters at the Franciscan convent there, and very soon after my arrival I asked one of the monks to let me know something of the spots which deserved to be seen ; I made my inquiry in reference to the associations with which the city had been hallowed by the sojourn and adven- tures of St. Paul. '* There is nothing in all I lascus," said the good man, " half so well worth seeing as our cellars," and forthwith he invited me to go, see, and admire the long ranges of liquid treasure which he and his brethren had laid up for themselves on earth. And these, I soon found, were not as the treasures 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 the cellar to the uppermost brains of the monks ; dear old fellows ! in the midst of that solemn land, their Christian laughter rang loudly and merrily — their eyes flashed with un- ceasing bonfires, and their heavy woollen petticoats could no more weigh down the springiness of their paces, than the nominal gauze of a danseuse can clog her bounding step. The monks do a world of good in their way, and there can be no doubting that previously to the arrival of Bishop Alexander with his numerous young family, and his pretty English nurse- maids, they were the chief Propagandists of Christianity in Pal- estine. My old friends of the Franciscan convent at Jerusalem, some time since, gave proof of their goodness by delivering themselves up to the peril of death for the sake of Duty. When I was their guest, they were forty, I believe, in number, and I don't recollect that there was one of them whom I should have CHAP. X.] THE MONKS OF THE HOLY LAND. «3 looked upon as a desirable life-holder of any property to which I might be entitled in expectancy. Yet these forty were reduced in a few days to nineteen ; the Plague was the messenger that summoned them to a taste of real death, but the circumstances under which they perished are rather curious, and though I have no authority for the story except an Italian newspaper, I harbour no doubt of its truth, for the facts were detailed with minuteness, and strictly correspond with all that I know of the poor felloWs to whom they related. It was about three months after the time of my leaving Jeru- salem, that the Plague set his spotted foot on the Holy City. The monks felt great alarm ; they did not shrink from their duty, but for its performance they chose a plan most sadly well fitted for bringing down upon them the very death which they were striving to ward off. They imagined themselves almost safe, so long as they remained within their walls ; but then it was quite needful that the Catholic Christians of the place, who had always looked to the convent for the supply of their spiritual wants, should receive the aids of religion in the hour of death. A single monk, therefore, was chosen either by lot, or by some other fair appeal to Destiny ; being thus singled out, he was to go forth into the plague-stricken city, and to perform with exact- ness his priestly duties ; then he was to return, not to the inte- rior of the convent, for fear of infecting his brethren, but to a de- tached building (which I remember) belonging to the establish- ment, but at some little distance from the inhabited rooms ; he was provided with a bell, and at a certain hour in the morning he was ordered to ring it, if he could ; but if no sound was heard at the appointed time, then knew his brethren that he was either delirious, 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 well fail to admire the steadiness with which the dis- mal scheme was carried through ; but if there be any truth in the notion, that disease may be invited by a fr'a:htening imagi- nation, it is difficult to conceive a more dangerous plan than that which was chosen by these poor fellows. The anxiety with which they must have expected each day the sound of the bell — the silence that reigned instead of it, and then the drawing of the lots (the odds against death being one point lower than yesterday) and the going forth of the newly doomed man — all this must have widened the gulf that opens to the shades below ; 84 EOTHEN (chap. X. I< I i I when his victim had already suffered so much of mental torture, it was but easy work for big, bullying Pestilence to follow a forlorn monk from the beds of the dying, and wrench 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 two personages so strangely raised above their brethren in all that dignifies humanity, that their bearing the same habit — thei r dwelling under the same roof—their worshipping the same God (consistent as all this is with the spirit of their religion) yet strikes the mind with a sense of wondrous incongruity ; the men I speak of are the Padre Superiore and the Padre Missionario. The former is the supreme and absolute governor of the establishment, over which he is appointed to rule ; the latter is entrusted with the more active of the spiritual duties which attach to the Pilgrim Church. He is the shepherd of the good Catholic flock whose pasture is prepared in the midst of Mussul- mans and schismatics — he keeps the light of the true faith ever vividly before their eyes — reproves their vices — supports them in their good resolves— -consoles them in their afflictions, and teaches them to hate the Greek Church. Such are his labours, and you may conceive that great tact must be needed for con- ducting with 'juccess the spiritual interests of the Church under circumstances so odd as those which surround it in Palestine. But the position of the Padre Superiore is still more delicate ; he is almost unceasingly in treaty with the powers that be, and the worldly prosperity of the establishment over which he pre- sides, is in great measure dependent upon the extent of diplo- matic skill which he can employ in its favour. I know not from what class of churchmen these personages are chosen, for there is a mystery attending their origin, and the circumstance of their being stationed in these convents, which Rome does not suffer to be penetrated : I have heard it said that they are men of great note, and, perhaps, of too high ambition in the Catholic Hierar- chy, who, having fallen under the grave censure of the Church are banished for fixed periods to these distant monasteries. I believe that the term during which they are condemned to re- main in the Holy Land, is from eight to twelve years, By the natives of the country, as well as by the rest of the brethren, they are looked up<^n as superior beings ; and rightly too, for nature seems to have crowned them in her own true way. The chief of the Jerusalem convent was a noble creature ; CHAP, x.l THE MONKS OF THE HOLY LAND. 85 his worldly and spiritual authority seemed to have surrounded him, as it were, with a kind of " Court," and the manly grace- fulness of his bearing did honour to the throne which he filled. There were no lords of the bedchamber, and no gold sticks and stones in waiting, yet everybody who approached him looked as though he were being " presented " — every interview which he granted wore the air of an " audience ;" the brethren, as often as they came near, bowed low, and kissed his hand, and if he went out, the Catholics of the place, that hovered about the convent, would crowd around him with devout affection, and almost scramble for the blessing which his touch could give. He bore his honours all serenely, as though calmly conscious of his power to " bind and to loose." usa I < 86 EOTHEN. [chap. XI. CHAPTER XL FROM NAZARETH TO TIBERIAS, lEITHER old "Sacred"* himself, nor any of his helpers, knew the road which I meant to take from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee, and from thence to Jerusalem, so I was forced to add another to my party, by hiring a guide. The associations of Nazareth, as well as my kind feeling towards the hospitable monks, whose guest I had been, inclined me to set at naught the advice which I had received against employing Christians. I accordingly engaged a lithe, active young Nazarene, who was recommended to me by the monks, and who affected to be familiar with the line of country through which I intended to pass. My dis- regard of the popular prejudice against Christians was not justified in this particular instance, 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 into wine — I came to the field in which our Saviour had rebuked the Scotch Sabbath-keepers of that period, by suf- fering his disciples to pluck com on the Lord's day ; I rode o^'sr the ground on which the fainting multitude had been fed, and they showed me some massive fragments — the relics, they said, of that wondrous banquet, now turned into stone. The petrifaction was most complete. I ascended the height on which our Lord was standing when he wrought the miracle. The hill was lofty enough to show me the fairness of the land on 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 away eagerly to the Eastward. There she lay, the Sea of Galilee. Less stem than Wastwater — less fair than gentle Windermere, she had still the winning ways of an English lake; she caught from the smiling heavens * 3hwef; CHAP. XL] FROM NAZARETH TO TIBERIAS. m unceasing light, and changeful phases of beauty, and with all this brightness on her face, she yet clung so fondly to the dull he looking mountain at her side as though she would " Soothe him with her finer fancies, V . Touch him with her lighter thought." * If one might judge of men's real thoughts by their writings, it would seem that there are people who can visit an interesting locality, and follow up continuously the exact train of thought which ought to be suggested by the historical associations of the place. A person of this sort can go to Athens, and think of nothing later than the age of Pericles— can live with the Scipios as long as he stays in Rome — can go up in a balloon, and think how resplendently in former times the now vacant and desolate air was peopled with angels— how prettily it was crossed at in- tervals by the rounds of Jacob's ladder ! I don't possess this 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, and upon the iDOsom too of the lake, our Saviour and his disciples — " away flew those recollections, and my mind strain- ed Eastward because that farthest shore was the end of the other and veiled world that is held by the strange race, whose life (like the pastime of Satan) is a "going to and fro upon the face of the earth." From those grey hills right away to the gates of Bagdad stretched forth the m.ysterious " Desert" — not a pale, void, sandy tract, but a land abounding in rich pastures — a land without cities or towns, without any " respectable " people, or any "respectable things," yet yielding its eighty thousand cavalry to the beck of a few old men. But once more — "Tiberias — the plain of Gennesareth — the very earth on which I stood — that the deep low tones of the Saviour's voice should have gone forth into eternity from out of th*^ midst of these hills, and these valleys !" — Ay, ay, but yet agai.. the calm face of the Lake was uplifted, and smiled upon my eyes with such familiar gaze, that the " deep low tones " were hushed — the listening multitudes all passed away, and instead there came to me a dear old memory from over the seas in England — a * Tennyson, 88 EOTHEN. [chap. XI memory sweeter than veriest Gospel to that poor, wilful mortal, me. I went to Tiberias, and soon got afloat upon the water. In the evening I took up my quarters in the Catholic church, and, the building being large enough, the whole of my party were admitted to the benefit of the same shelter. With portmanteaux, and carpet bags, and books, and maps, and fragrant tea, Mys- seri soon made me a home on the southern side of the church. One of old Shereef s helpers was an enthusiastic Catholic, and was greatly delighted at having so sacred a lodging. He lit up the altar with a number of tapers, and when his prepara- tions were complete, he began to perform his orisons in the strangest manner imaginable ; his lips muttered the prayers of the I-atin Church, but he bowed himself down, and laid his forehead to the stones beneath him, after the manner of a Mussulman. T}-e universal aptness of a religious system for all stages of civilization, and for all sorts and conditions of men, well befits its claim of divine origin. She is of all nations, and of all times, that wonderful Church of Rome ! Tiberias is one of the four holy cities,* according to the Talmud, and it is from this place or the immediate neighbour- hood of it, that the Messiah is to arise. Except at Jerusalem, ilever think of attempting to sleep in a " holy city." Old Jews from all parts of the world go to lay their bones upon the sacred soil, and as these people never return to their homes, it follows that any domestic vermin which they may bring with them are likely to become perman- ently resident, so that the population is continually increasing. No recent census had been taken when I was at Tiberias, but I know that the congregation of fleas, which attended at my church alone, must have been something enormous. It was a carnal self-seeking congregation, wholly inattentive to the service which was going on, and devoted to the one object of having my blood. The fleas of all nations were there. The smug, steady, importunate flea from Holywell street — the pert, jumping puce from hungry France — the wary, watchful puke with his poisoned stiletto — the vengeful pulga of Castile with hi* ugly knife — the German floh with his knife and fork — insatiate-;-not rising from table — whole swarms fro -n all the Russias, and * The other three cities held holy by Jews are Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safct. CHAP. XI.] FROM NAZARETH TO TIBERIAS. 89 Asiatic hordes unnumbered — all these were there, and all rejoiced in one great international feast. I could no more defend myself against my enemies, than if I had been pain it discretion in the hands of a French patriot, or English gold in the claws of a Pennsylvanian Quaker. After passing a night like this, you are glad to pick up the wretched remains of your body, long, long before morning dawns. Your skin is scorched — your temples throb — your lips feel withered and dried — your burning eye-balls are screwed inwards against the brain. You have no hope but only in the saddle, and the freshness of the morning air. EOTHEN. [chap. XII. CHAPTER XIi; MY FIRST BIVOUAC. |HE course of the Jordan is from the north to the south, and in that direction, with very little of devious winding, it carries the shining vraters of Galilee straight down into the solitudes of the Dead Sea. Speaking roughly, the river in that meridian is a boundary between the the people living under roofs, and the tented tribes that wander on the farther side. And so, as I went down in my way from Tiberias towards Jerusalem, along the western bank of the stream, my thinking all propended to the ancient world of herds- men, and warriors, that lay so close over my bridle arm. If a man, and an Englishman, be not bom of his mother with a natural Chiffney-bit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for loathing the wearisome ways of society — a time for not liking tamed people — a time for not dancing quadrilles — not sitting in pews — a time for pretending that Milton, and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people, were greater in death than the first living Lord of the Treasury — a time in short for scoffing and railing — for speaking lightly of the very opera, and all our most cherished institutions. It is from nineteen, to two or three and twenty perhaps, that this war of the man against men is like to be waged most sullenly. You are yet in this smiling England, but you find yourself wending away to the dark sides of her mountains, — climbing the dizzy crags, — exulting in the fellow- ship of mists and clouds, and watching the storms how they gather, or proving the mettle of your mare upon the broad and dreary downs, because that you feel congenially with the yet unparcelled earth. A little while you are free, and unlabelled, like the ground that you compass, but Civilisation is coming, and coming; you, and your much loved waste lands will be surely inclosed, and sooner, or later, you will be brought down to a state of utter usefulness — the ground will be curiously gliced into acres, and roods, and perches, and you, for all you CHAP. XII.] MY FIRST BIVOUAC. 91 sit so smartly in your saddle, you will be caught — you will be taken up from travel, as a colt from grass, to be trained, and tired, and matched, and run. All this in time, but first come continental tours, and the moody longing for Eastern travel ; the downs and the moors of England can hold you no longer ; with larger stride you burst away from these slips and patches 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 upon the very frontier of all accustomed re- spectabilities. There, on the other side of the river (you can swim it with one arm), there reigns the people that will be like to put you to death for not being a vagrant, for not being a rob- ber, for not being armed, and houseless. There is comfort in that — health, comfort, and strength to one who is dying from very weariness of that poor, dear, middle-aged, deserving, ac- complished, pedantic, and pains-taken governess Europe. I had ridden for some hours along the right bank of Jordan when I came to the Djesr el Medjam^ (an old Roman bridge, I believe), which crossed the river. My Nazarene guide was riding ahead of the party, and now, to my surprise and delight, he turned leftwards, and led on over the bridge. I knew that the true road to Jerusalem must be mainly by the right bank of Jordan, but I supposed that my guide was crossing the bridge at this spot in order to avoid some bend in the river, and that he knew of a ford lower down by which we should regain the west- ern bank. I made no question about the road, for I was but too glad to set my horse's hoofs upon the land of the wandering tribes. None of my party, except the Nazarene, knew the country. On we went through rich pastures upon the Eastern 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 left my guide unquestioned. The Jordan is not a perfectly accurate boundary betwixt roofs and tents, for soon after passing the bridge I came upon a clus- ter of huts. Some time afterwards the guide, upon being closely questioned by my servants, confessed that the village which we had left behind was the last that we should see, but he declared that he knew a spot at which we should find an encampment of friendly Bedouins, who would receive me with all hospitality. I had long determined not to leave the East without seeing fiomethin^ of the wandering tribes^ but I had looked forward to • 1 EOTHEN. [CHAP. XII. I I '! I N I this as a pleasure to be found in the Desert between El Arish and Egypt — I had no idea that the Bedouins on the East of Jordan were accessible. My delight was so great at the near prospect of bread and salt in the tent of an Arab 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 Jerusa- lem, and was drawing me into the midst of the Bedouins, but the idea of his betraying me seemed (I know not why) so utterly absurd, that I could not entertain it for a moment ; I fancied it possible that the fellow had taken me out of my route in order to attempt some little mercantile enterprise with the tribe for which he was seeking, and I was glad of the opportunity which I might thus gain of coming in contact with the wanderers. Not long after passing the village, a horseman met us ; it appeared that some of the cavalry of Ibrahim Pasha had crossed the river for the sake of the rich pastures on the eastern bank, and that this man was one of the troopers ; he stopped, and saluted ; he was obviously surprised at meeting an unarmed, or half-armed cavalcade, and at last fairly told us that we were on the wrong side of the river, and that if we proceeded, we must lay our account with falling amongst robbers. All this while, and throughout the day, my Nazarene kept well ahead of the party, and was constantly up in his stirrups, straining forward, and searching the distance for some objects which still remained unseen. . For the rest of the day we saw no human being ; we pushed on eagerly in the 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 the thorough darkness of the night and the weariness of our beasts (which had already done two good days' journey in one) forced us to determine upon coming to a stand still. Upon the heights to the eastward we saw lights ; these shone from caves on the mountain-side, inhabited, as the Nazarene told us, by rascals of a low sort — not real Bedouins — men whom we might frighten into harmlessness, but from whom there was no willing hospitality to be expected. We heard at a litde distance the brawling of a rivulet, and on the banks of this it was determined to establish our bivouac ; we soon found the stream, and following its course for a few yards, came to a spot which was thought to be fit for our pur- pose. It was a sharply cold night in February, and when I XII. CHAP. XII.] MY FIRST BIVOUAC. 93 .rish St of near that saw :rusa- 5, but tterly ied it order be for which s. us; it Tossed L bank, ;d, and ned, or vere on ire must 1 while, 1 of the brward, jmained pushed s before way till l\e night lone two coming we saw ihabited, •not real less, but ■cted. |t, and on jivouac } for a few our pur- ■ when I dismounted I found myself standing upon some wet, rank herbage, that promised ill for the comfort of our resting place. I had bad hopes of a fire, for the pitchy darkness of the night was a great obstacle to any successful search for fuel, and besides, the boughs of trees or bushes would be so full of sap in this early spring, that they would not be easily persuaded to burn. However, we were, not likely to submit to a dark and cold bivouac without an effort, and my fellows groped forward through the darkness, till *>er advancing a few paces, they were happily stopped by a complete barrier of dead prickly bushes. Before our swords could be drawn to reap this glorious harvest, it was found, to our surprise, that the precious fuel was already hewn, and strewed along the ground in a thick mass. A spot fit for the fire was found with some difficulty, for the earth was moist, and the grass high and rank. At last there was a clicking of flint and steel, and presently there stood out irom darkness one of the tawny faces of my muleteers, bent down to near the ground, and suddenly lit up by the glowing of the spark, which he courted v i*;h careful breath. Before long there was a particle of dry fibre, or leaf, that kindled to a tiny flame ; then another was lit from that, and then another. Then small, crisp twigs, little bigger than bodkins, were laid athwart the growing fire. The swelling cheeks of the muleteer laid level with the earth, blew tenderly at first, and then more boldly, upon the young flame, which was daintily nursed and fed, and fed more plentifully when it gained good strength. At last a whole arrnful of dry bushes was piled up over the fire, and presently with loud, cheery cracking and crackling, a royal tall blaze shot up from the earth, and showed me once more the shapes and faces of my men, and the dim outlines of the horses and mules that stood grazing hard by. My servants busied themselves in unpacking the baggage, as though we had arrived at an hotel — Shereef and his helpers un- saddled their cattle. We had left Tiberias without the slightest idea that we were to make our way to Jerusalem along the deso- late side of the Jordan, and my servants (generally provident in those matters) had brought with them only, I think, some un- leavened bread, and a rocky fragment of goat's-milk cheese. These treasures were produced. Tea and the contrivances for making it were always a standing part of my baggage. My men gathered in circle around the fire. The Nazarene was in 94 EOTHEN. [chap. xir. ;i li'i Ml il !• a false position, from having misled us so strangely, and he would have shrunk back, poor devil, into the cold and outer darkness, but I made him draw near, and share the luxuries of the night. My quilt and my pelisse were spread, and the rest of my party had all their capotes, or pelisses, or robes of some sort, which f lished their couches. The men gathered in cir- cle, 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 sat with venerable beard, the image of manly piety — unknowing of all geography, unknowing where he was, or whither he might go, but trusting in the goor'ness of God, and the clenching power of fate, and the good star of the Englishman. Sometimes like marble, the classic face of the Greek Mysseri would catch the sudden light, and then again by turns the ever-perturbed Dthe- metri, with his odd Chinaman's eyes, and bristling, terror-like moustache, shone forth illustrious. I always liked the men who attended me on these Eastern travels, for they were all c'" them brave, cheery-hearted fellows, and although their follow ,ng my career brought upon them a pretty large share of those toils and hardships which are so much more amusing to gentlemen than to servants, yet not one of them ever uttered or hinted a syllable of complaint, or even affected to put on an air of resignation ; I always liked them, but never perhaps so much as when they were thus grouped together under the light of the bivouac fire. I felt towards them as my comrades, rather than as my servants, and took delight in breaking bread with them, and merrily passing the cup. The love of tea is a glad source of fellow-feeling between the Englishman and the Asiatic ; in Persia it is drunk by all, and although it is a luxury that is rarely within the reach of the Osmanlees, there are few of them who do not know and iove the blessed UMi. Our camp-kettle, filled from the brook, hummed doubtfully for a while — then busily bubbled under the sidelong glare of the flames — cups clinked and rattled — the fragrant steam ascended, and soon ihis little circlet in the wil- derness grew warm and genial as my lady's drawing-room. And after this there came the tchibouque — great comforter of those that are hungry and way-worn. And it has this virtue — XII. CHAP. XII.] MY FIRST BIVOUAC. 95 id he ' 3uter es of e rest some n cir- round other, :nes it t with of all htgo, power es like tch the [ Dthe- •or-like !:astern fellows, them a o much ; one of or even d them, grouped towards nd took sing the jetween by all, of the ind love brook, nder the ed— the the wil- )m. forter of virtue — it helps to destroy the ^ne and awkwardness which one some- times feels at being in company with one's dependents ; for whilst the amber is at your lips, there is nothing ungracious in your remaining silent, or speaking pithily in short inter-whifF sentences. And for us that night there was pleasant and plen- tiful matter of talk ; for the where we should be on the morrow, and the wherewithal we should be fed — whether by some ford we should regain the western banks of Jordan, or find bread and salt under the tents of a wandering tribe, or whether we should fall into the hands of the Philistines, and so come to see Death — the last, and greatest of all *' the fine sights " that there be — these were questionings not dull nor wearisome to us, for we were all concerned in the answers. And it was not an ill- imagined morrow that we probed with our sharp guesses, for the lights of those low Philistines — the men of the caves still hung over our heads, and we knew by their yells that the fire of our bivouac had shown us. At length we thought it well to seek for sleep. Our plans were laid for keeping up a good watch through the night. My quilt, and my pelisse, and my cloak, were spread out, so that I might lie spokewise, with my feet towards the central fire. I wrapped my limbs daintily round, and gave myself positive orders to sleep like a veteran soldier. But I found that my attempt to sleep upon the earth that God gave me was more new and strange than I had fancied it. I had grown used to the scene which was before me whilst I was sitting, or reclining by the side of the fire, but now that I laid myself down at length, it was the deep black mystery of the heavens that hung over my eyes — not an earthly thing in the way from my own very forehead right up to the end of all space. I grew proud of my boundless bed-chamber. I might have " found sermons " in all this greatness (if I had I should surely have slept), but such was not then my way. If this cherished Self of mine had built the Universe, I should have dwelt with delight on the " won- ders of creation." As it was, I felt rather the vain-glory of my promotion from out of mere rooms and houses into the midst of that grand, dark, infinite palace. And then, too, my head, far from the fire, was in cold lati- tudes, and it seemed to me strange that 1 should be lying so still and passive, whilst the sharp night breeze walked free over my cheek, and the cold damp clung to my hair, as though my EOTHEN. fCHAP. XII. face grew in the earth, and must bear with the footsteps of the wind, and the falling of the dew, as meekly as the grass of the field. Besides, I got puzzled and distracted by having to endure heat and cold at the same time, for I was always con- sidering whether my feet 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 the languishing fire, he seldom, I think, was unseen to my restless eyes. Yet, at last, when they called me, and said that the mom would soon be dawning, I rose from a state of half-oblivion, not much unlike to sleep, though sharply qualified by a sort of vegetable's con- sciousness of having been growing still colder and colder, for many and many an hour. ''%L AP. XII. CHAP. XIII.] THE DEAD SEA. 97 of the of the ving to lys con- whether I to time fire, he at last, soon be h unlike le's con- )lder, for CHAPTER XIII. THE DEAD SEA. (HE grey light of the morning showed us for the first time, the ground which we had chosen for our resting- place. We found that we had bivouacked upon a little patch of barley, plainly belonging to the men of the caves. The dead bushes which we found so happily placed in readiness for our fire, had been strewn as a fence for the protection of the little crop. This was the only cultivated spot of ground which we had seen for many a league, and I was rather sorry to find that our night fire -^rd our cattle 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 took nearly an hour, and before this was half over, daylight came. We could now see the men of the caves. They collected in a body, amounting, I should think, to nearly fifty, and rushed down towards our quarters with fierce shouts and yells. But the nearer they came, the slower they went ; their shouts grew less resolute in tone, and soon ceased alto- gether. The fellows advanced to a thicket within thirty yards of us, and behind this " took up their position." My men with- out premeditation did exactly that which was best ; they kept steadily to their work of loading the beasts, without fuss or hurry, and whether it was that they instinctively felt the wisdom of keeping quiet, or that they merely obeyed the natural incli- nation to silence, which one feels in the early morning — I can- not tell, but I know that except when they exchanged a syllable or two relative to the work they were about, not a word was said. I now believe, that this quietness of our party created an undefined terror in the minds of the cave-holders, and scared them from coming on; it gave them a notion <-^ t we were relying on some resources which they knew not of. Several times the fellows tried to lash themselves into a state of excite- ment which might do instead of pluck. They would raise a a ■JT' 98 EOTHEN. [chap. XIII. I '. • I great shout, and sway forward in a dense body from behind the thicket ; but when they saw that their bravery, thus gathered to a head, did not even suspend the strapping of a portmanteau, or the tying of a hat box, their shout lost its spirit, and the whole mass was irresistibly drawn back like a wave receding from the shore. These attempts at an onset were repeated several times, but always with the same result ; I remained under the apprehen- sion of an attack for more than half an hour, and it seemed to me that the work of packing and loading had never been done so slowly. I felt inclined to tell my fellows to make their best speed, but just as I was going to speak, I observed that every one was doing his duty already ; I therefore held my peace, and said not a word, till at last Mysseri led up my horse, and asked me 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 had bivouacked at no great distance from us. The know- ledge that such a force was in the neighbourhood may have con- duced to the forbearance of the cave-holders. We saw a scraggy-looking fellow nearly black, and wearing nothing but a cloth round the loins ; he was tending flocks. Afterwards I came up with another of these goat-herds, whose helpmate was with him. They gave us some goat's-milk, a welcome present. I pitied the poor devil of a goat-herd for having such a very plain wife. I spend an enormous quantity of pity upon that particular form of human misery. About mid-day I began to examine my map, and to question my guide, who at last fell on his knees and confessed that he knew nothing of the country in which we were. I was thus thrown upon my own resources, and calculating 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 was right, for at about three or four o'clock in the afternoon, I caught a first sight of its dismal face. I went on, and came near to those waters of Death ; they stretched deeply into the southern desert, and before me, and all around, as far away as the 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 deep stillness — XIII. CHAP. XIII.] THE DEAD SEA. 9» I the lered teau, dthe sding 5, but ehen- led to I done ir best every :e, and . asked cavalry, 5 know- i,ve con- wearing flocks. whose milk, a erd for uantity question that he Ivas thus on the kirney, I Vas right, [caught a th; they jme, and lills piled ler tomb /as no fly Itillness — no grass grew from the earth — no weed peered through the void sand, but, in mockery of all life, there were trees borne down by Jordan in some ancient flood, and these, grotesquely planted upon the forlorn shore, spread out their grim skeleton arms all scorched and charred to blackness by the heats of the long, silent years. I now struck off" towards the dibouchure of the river ; but I fc -.nd that the country, though seemingly quite flat, was inter- sected by deep ravines, which die not show themselves until nearly approached. For some time my progress was much obstructed ; but at last I came across a track which led towards the river, and which might, as I hoped, bring me to a ford. I found, in fact, when I came to the river's side, that the track reappeared upon the opposite bank, plainly showing that the stream had been fordable at this place. Now, however, in con- sequence of the late rains, the river was quite impracticable for baggage horses. A body of waters, about equal to the Thames at Eton, but confined to a narrower channel, poured down in a current so swift and heavy, that the idea of passing with laden baggage horses was utterly forbidden. I could have swum across myself, and I might, perhaps, have succeeded in swim- ming a horse over. But this would have been useless, because in such case I must have abandoned, not only my baggage, but all my attendants, for none of them were able to swim, and, without that resource, it would have been madness for them to rely upon the swimming of their beasts across such a powerful stream. I still hoped, however, that there might be a chance of passing 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, and we were obliged to come to a stand-still quite sud- denly, upon the very edge of a precipitous descent. Every step towards the Dead Sea had brought us into a country more and more dreary ; and this sand-hill, which we were forced to choose for our resting-place, was dismal enough. A few slender blades of grass, which here and there singly pierced the sard, mocked bitterly the hunger of our jaded beasts, and with our small ' remaining fragment of goat's milk rock, by way of supper, we were not much better off than our horses ; we wanted, too, the great requisite of a cheery bivouac — fire. Moreover, the spot on which we had been so suddenly brought to a stand-still was rela- la 100 EOTHEN. [CHAP. XIII. tively high, and unsheltered, and the night wind blew swiftly and cold. The next morning I reached the debouchure of the Jordan, where I had hoped to find a bar of sand than might render its passage possible. The river, however, rolled its eddying waters fast down to the " sea," in a strong deep stream that shut out all hope of crossing. It was always said that no vegetation could live in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, but now I began to look upon my party and myself as forming a very fine " planta- tion ;" for never in the hunting sense of the term were men more thoroughly " planted." It now seemed necessary either to construct a raft of some kind, or else to retrace my steps, and remount the banks of the Jordan. I had once happened to give some attention to the sub- ject of military bridges — a branch of military science which includes the construction of rafts, and contrivances of the Hke sort, and I should have been very proud indeed, if I could have carried my party and my baggage across by dint of any idea gathered from Sir Howard Douglas, or Robinson Crusoe. But we were all faint and languid from want of food, and besides there were no materials. Higher up the river there were bushes, and river plants, but nothing like timber, and the cord with which my baggage was tied to the pack-saddles amounted alto- gether to a very small quantity — not nearly enough to haul any sort of craft across the stream. And now it was, if I remember rightly, that Dthemetri sub- mitted to me a plan for putting to death the Nazarene, whose misguidance had been the cause of our difficulties. There was something fascinating in this suggestion, for the slaying of the guide was of course easy enough, and would look like an act of what politicians call " vigour." If it were only to become known to my friends in England that I had calmly killed a fellow-crea- ture for taking me out of my way, I might remain perfectly quiet and tranquil for all the rest of my days, quite free from the dan- ger of being considered "slow;" I might ever after live on upon my reputation like " single-speech Hamilton" in the last century, or " single-sin " in this, without being obliged to take the trouble of doing any more harm in the world. This was a great temptation to an indolent person, but the motive was not strengthened by any sincere feeling of anger with the Nazarene : whilst the question of his life and death was debated, xiii. wiftly ►rdan, er its vaters DUt all could ;gan to [)lanta- 1 more f some ; of the he sub- ; which ;he like Id have ny idea e. But besides bushes, 3rd with ed alto- laul any etri sub- whose here was ,g of the an act of ,e known low-crea- ;tly quiet the dan- ■ live on 1 the last bliged to d. This .e motive with the debated, CHAP. XIII.] THE DEAD SEA. lOI he was riding Ixi front of our party, and there was something in the anxious v.-rithing of his supple limbs that seemed to express a sense of his false position, and struck me as highly comic ; I had no crotchet at that time against the punishment of the death, but I was unused to blood, and the proposed victim looked so thoroughly capable of enjoying life (if he could only get to the other side of the river), that I thought it would be hard for him to die, merely in order to give me a character for energy. Acting on the result of these considerations, and reserving to myself a free and unfettered discretion to have the poor villain shot at any future moment, I magnanimously decided that for the present he should live, and not die. I bathed in the Dead Sea. The ground covered by the water sloped so gradually, that I was not only forced to " sneak in," but to walk through the water nearly a quarter of a mile before I could get out of my depth. When at last I was able to attempt a dive, the salts held in solution made my eyes smart so sharply that the pain which I thus suffered acceding to the weakness occasioned by want of food, made me giddy and faint for some moments, but I soon grew better. I knew beforehand the impos- sibility of sinking in this buoyant water, but I was surprised to find that I could not swim at my accustomed pace ; my legs and feet were lifted so high and dry out of the lake, that my stroke was baffled, and I found myself kicking against the thin air, instead of the dense fluid upon which I was swimming. The water is perfectly bright and clear ; its taste detestable. After finishing my attempts at swimming and diving, I took some time in regaining the shore, and before I began to dress, I found that the sun had already evaporated the water which clung to me, and that my skin was thickly incrusted with sulphate of m?gnesia. rw ill .■[ * I I0» EOTHEN. [chap. XIV. CHAPTER XIV. THE DLACK TEN "S. |Y fteps were reluctantly turned towards the north. I had ridden some way and still it seemed that all life was fenced and barred out from the desolate ground over which I was journeying. On the west there flowed the impassable Jordan ; on the east stood an endless range of barren mountains, and on the south lay that ■ desert sea that knew not the plashing of an oar ; greatly there- fore was I surprised, when suddenly there broke upon my ear the long, ludicrous, persevering bray of a living donkey. I was riding at this time some few hundred yards a-head of all my party, except the Nazarene (w? > by some wise instinct kept closer to me than to Dthemetri), and I instantly went forward in the direction of the sound, for I fancied that where there were donkeys, there too most surely would be men. The ground on all sides of me seemed thoroughly void and lifeless, but at last I got down into a hollow, and presently a sudden turn brought me within thirty yards of an Arab encampment. The low black tents which I had so long lusted to see were right before me, and they were all teeming with live Arabs — men, women, and children. I wished to have let my party behind know where I was, but Ifrecollected that they would be able to trace me by the prints of my horse's hoofs in the sand, and, having to do with Asiatics, I felt the danger of the slightest movement which might be looked upon as a sign of irresolution. Therefore, without look- ing behind me — without looking to the right or to the left, I rode straight up towards the foremost tent. Before this was strewn a semicircular fence of dead boughs, through which there was an opening opposite to the front of the tent. As I advanced, some twenty or thirty of the most uncouth looking fellows imaginable came forward to meet me. In their appearance they showed nothing of the Bedouin blood ; they were of many colours, from XIV. CHAP. XIV.] THE BLA K TENTS. 103 th. I ill life [round there ►od an ly that there- ay ear I was all my ,ct kept "orward e there The ifeless, sudden ipment. were Vrabs — vas, but le prints /Asiatics, light be »ut look- t, I rode strewn a was an d, some aginable showed urs, from dingy brown to jet black, and some of these last had much of the negro look about them. They were tall, pov.crful fellows, but awfully ugly. They wore nothing but the Arab shirts, con- fined at the waist by leathern behs. I advanced to the gap left in the fence, and at once alighted from my horse. The chief greeted me after his fashion by alternately touching first my hand and then his own forehead, as if he were conveying the virtue of the touch like a spark of electricity. Presently I found myself seated upon a sneep-skin, which was spread for me under the sacred shade of Arabian canvass. The tent was of a long, narrow, oblong form, and contained a quantity of men, women and children, so closely huddled together, that there was scarcely one of them who was not in actual contact with his neighbour. The moment I had taken my seat, the chief repeated his salutations in the most en- thusiastic manner, and then the people, having gathered densely about me, got hold of my unresisting hand, and passed it round like a. claret jug for the benefit of everybody. The women soon brought me a wooden bowl full of butter-milk, and welcome indeed came the gift to my hungry and thirsty soul. After some time my party, as I had expected, came up, and when poor Dthemetri saw me on my sheep-skin, " the life and soul" of this ragamuffin party, he was so astounded that he even failed to check his cry of horror ; 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 its contents were known, the whole population of the tent began begging like spaniels lor bits of the beloved weed. I concluded from the abject manner of these people, that they could not possibly be thorough-bred Bedouins, and I saw too, that they must be in the very last stage of misery, for poor indeed is the man in these climes, who cannot command a pipeful of tobacco. I began to think that I had fallen amongst thorough savages, and it seemed likely enough that they would gain their very first knowledge of civilization by ravishing and studying the contents of my dearest portmanteaux, but still my impression was that they would hardly venture upon such an attempt ; I observed, indeed, that they did not offer me the bread and salt, which I had understood to be the pledges of peace amongst wandering tribes, but I fancied that they refrained from this act 104 EOTHEN. [chap. XIV. of hospitality, not in consequence of any hostile determination, but in order that the notion of robbing me might remain for the present an " open question." I afterwards found that the poor fellows had no bread to offer. They were literally " out at grass ;" it is true that they had a scanty supply of milk from goats, but they were living almost entirely upon certain grass stems, which were just in season at that time of the year. These, if not highly nourishing, are pleasant enough to the taste, and their acid juices came gratefully to thirsty lips. CHAP. XV.] PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN. 105 CHAPTER XV. PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN. f^ND now Dthemetri began to enter into a negotiation with my hosts for a passage over the river. I never interfered with my worthy Dragoman upon these occa- sions, because, from my entire ignorance of the Arabic, I should have been quite unable to exercise any real control over his words, and it would have been silly to break the stream of his eloquence to no purpose. 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 excite- ment, and the Sheik explained to Dthemetri the grounds of the infinite respect which he and his tribe entertained for the Pasha. A few weeks before Ibrahim had craftily sent a body of troops across the Jordan. The force went warily to the foot of the mountains on the east, so as to cut off the i etreat of this tribe, and then surrounded them as they lay encamped in the vale; their camels, and, indeed, all their possessions worth taking, were carried off by the soldiery, and moreover, the then Sheik, together with every tenth man of the tribe, was brought out and shot You would think that this conduct on the part of the Pasha might not procure for his " friend " a very gra- cious reception amongst the people whom he had thus despoiled and decimated, but the Asiatic seems to be animated with a feeling of profound respect, almost bordering upon affection, for all who have done him any bold and violent wrong, and there is always, too, so much of vague and undefined apprehen- sion mixed up with his really well-founded alarms, that I can see no limit to the yielding and bending of his mind when it is worked upon by the idea of power. After some discussion, the Arabs agreed, as I thought, to conduct me to a ford, and we moved on tow 'ds the river, fol- lowed by seventeen of the most able-bodied of the tribe, under !!■ mi i I io6 EOTHEN. [chap. XV. the guidance of several grey-bearded elders, and Sheik Ali Djoubran at the head of the whole detachment. Upon leaving 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 re- peating of words, that sounded like formulae, but there were no prostrations, and I did not understand that the ceremony was of a religious character. The tented Arabs are looked upon as very bad Mahometans. We arrived upon the banks of the river — not at a ford, but at a deep and rapid part of the stream, and I now understood that it was the plan of these men, if they helped me at all, to transport me across the river by some species of raft. But a reaction had taken place in the opinions of many, and a violent dispute arose, upon a motion which seemed to have been made by some honourable member, with a view to robbery. The fellows all gathered together in a circle, at a little distance from my party, and there disputed with great vehemence and fury, for nearly two hours. I can't give a correct report of the debate, for it was held in a barbarous dialect of the Arabic, unknown to my Dragoman. I recollect, I sincerely felt at the time that arguments in favour of robbing me must have been almost unanswerable, and I gave great credit to the speakers on my side for the ingenuity and sophistry which they must have shown in maintaining the fight so well. During the discussion, I remained lying in front of my bag- gage, which had all been taken from the pack-saddles, and placed upon the ground. I was so languid from want of food, that I had scarcely animation enough to feel as deeply inter- ested as you would suppose, in the result of the discussion. I thought, however, that the pleasantest toys to play with, during this interval, were my pistols, and now and then, when I list- lessly visited my loaded barrels with the swivel ramrods, or drew a sweet, musical click from my .English fire-locks, it seemed to me that I exercised a slight and gentle influence on the debate. Thanks to Ibrahim Pasha's terrible visitation, the men of the tribe were wholly unarmed, and my advantage in this respect might have counter-balanced, in some measure, the superiority of numbers. Mysseri (not interpreting in Arabic) had no duty to perform, and he seemed to be faint and listless as myself Shereef CHAP. XV.] PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN. 107 looked perfectly resigned to any fate. But Dthemetri (faithful terrier) was bristling with zeal and watchfulness ; he could not understand the debate, which, indeed, was carried on at a distance too great to be easily heard, even if the language had been familiar ; but he was always on the alert, and now and then conferring with men who had straggled out of the assem- bly ; at last he found an opportunity of making a proposal, which at once produced immense sensation ; he offered, on my behalf, that if the tribe should bear themselves loyally towards me, and take my parly and my baggage in safety to the other bank of the river, I should give them a " teskeri." or written certificate of their good conduct, which might avail them here- after in the hour of their direst need. This proposal was received, and instantly accepted by all the men of the tribe there present, with the utmost enthusiasm. I was to give the men, too, a " baksheesh," that is, a present of money, which is usually made upon the conclusion of any sort of treaty j but, although the people of this tribe were so miserably poor, they seemed to look upon the pecuniary part of the arrangement as matter quite trivial in comparison with the " teskeri." Indeed, the sum which Dthemetri promised them was extremely small, and not the slightest attempt 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 gratu- lations ; they caressed my boots with much affection, and my hands were severely kissed. The Arabs now went to work in right earnest to effect the passage of the river. They had brought with them a great number of the skins which they use for carrying water in the desert ; these they filled with air, and fastened several of them to small bQughs which they cut from the banks of the river. In this way they constructed a raft not more than about four feet square, but rendered buoyant by the inflated skins which supported it. On this a portion of my 'jaggage w?is placed, and was firmly tied to it by the cords used on my pack-saddles. The little raft, with its weighty cargo, was then gently lifted into the water, and I had the satisfaction 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 I f^ io8 EOTHEN. [chap. XV. front of the little raft, and pulled it off a few iieet from the bank. The other six men dashed into the stream with loud shouts, and swam along after the raft, pushing it from behind. Off went the craft in capital style at first, for the stream 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 banks of the river. The old men, with their long, grey grisly beards, stood shout- ing and cheering, praying and commanding. At length the raft entered upon the difficult part of its course ; the whirling stream seized and twisted it about, and then bore it rapidly downwards ; the swimmers flagged, and seemed to be beat in the struggle. But now the old men on the bank, with their rigid arms uplifted straight, sent forth a cry and shout that tore the wide air into tatters, and then to make their urging yet more strong, they shrieked out the dreadful syllables, " 'Brahim Pasha ! " The swimmers, one moment before so blown, and so weary, found lungs to answer the cry, and shouting back the name of their great destroyer, they dashed on through the tor- rent, and bore the raft in safety to the western bank. Afterwards the swimmers returned with the raft, and attached to it the rest of my baggage. I took my seat on the top of the cargo, and the raft hus laden, passed the river in the same way, and with thf; same struggle as before. The skins, however, not being perfectly air-tight, had lost a great part of their buoyancy, so that I, as well as the luggage that passed on this last voy- age, got wet in the waters of Jordan. The raft could not be trusted for another trip, and the rest of my party passed the river in a different, and (for them) much safer way. Inflated skins were fastened to their loins, and thus supported, they were tug- ged across by Arabs swimming on either side of them. The horses and mules were thrown into the water, and forced to swim over ; the poor beasts had a hard struggle for their lives in that swift stream, and I thought that one of the horses would have been drowned, for he was too weak to gain a footing on the western bank, and the stream bore him down. At last, how- ever, he swam back to the side from which he had come. Before dark all had passed the river except this one horse and old Shereef He, poor fellow, was shivering on the eastern bank, for his dread of the passage was so great that he delayed it as long as he could, and at last it became so dark that he was obliged to wait till the morning. CHAP. XV.] PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN. 109 I lay that night on the banks of the river, and at a little dis- tance from me the Arabs made a fire, round which they sat in a circle. They were made most savagely happy by the tobacco with which I supplied them, and they had determined to make the whole night one smoking festival. The poor fellows had only one broken bowl, without any tube at ill, but this morsel of a pipe they passed round from one to the other, allowing to each a fixed number of whiffs. In that way they passed the whole night. The next morning old Shereef was brought across. It was a strange sight to see this solemn old Mussulman with his shaven head, and his sacred beard, sprawling and puffing upon the surface of the water. When at last he reached the bank, the people told him that by his baptism in Jordan he had surely become a mere Christian. Poor Shereef! — the holy man! — the descendant of the Prophet ! — he was sadly hurt by the taunt, and the more so as he seemed to feel there was some foundation for it, and that he really may have absorbed some Christian errors. When all was ready for departure, I wrote the " Teskeri " in French, and delivered it to Sheik Ali Djoubran, together with the promised " baksheish;" he was exceedingly grateful, and I parted upon very good terms from this ragged tribe. In two or three hours I gained Rihah, a \ illage which is said to occupy the site of ancient Jericho. There was one building there which I observed with some emotion, for although it may not have been actually standing in the days of Jericho, it con- tained at this day a most interesting collection of — modem loaves. Some hours after sun-set I reached the Convent of Santa Saba, and there remained for the night. no EOTHEN. [chap. XVI. CHAPTER XVI. TERRA SANTA. ! I ! ' 4 IHE enthusiasm that had glowed, or seemed to glow, [| within me for one blessed moment when I knelt by the shrine of the Blessed Virgin at Nazareth, was not re- kindled at Jerusalem. In the stead of the solemn gloom, and the deep stillness that of right belonged to the Holy City, there was the hum and the bustle of active life. It was the " height of the season." The Easter ceremonies drew near ; the Pilgrims were flocking in from all quarters, and although their objects were partly at least of a religious charac- ter, yet their " arrivals " brought as much stir and liveliness to the city, as if they had come up to marry their daughters . The votaries who every year crowd to the Holy Sepulchre are chiefly of the Greek and Armenian Churches. They are not drawn into Palestine by a mere longing to stand upon the ground trodden by our Saviour, but rather they perform the pilgrimage as a plain duty, which is strongly inculcated by their religion. A very great proportion of those who belong to the Greek Church contrive, at some time or other in the course of their lives, to achieve the enterprise. Many, in their infancy and childhood, are brought to the holy sites by their parents, but those who have not had this advantage ^vill often make it the main object of their lives to save money enough for this holy undertaking. The pilgrims begin to arrive in Palestine some weeks before the Easter festival of the Greek Church ; they come from Egypt — from all parts of Syria — from Armenia and Asia Minor, from Stamboul, from Roumelia, from the provinces of the Danube, and from all the Russias. Most of these people bring with them some articles of merchandize, but I myself believe (notwithstanding the common taunt against pilgrims) that they do this rather as a mode of paying the expenses of their journey, than from a spirit of mercenary speculation ; they 'iwi'm»l«!«*»,ii;' KT. XVI. CHAP. XVI.] TERRA SANTA. Ill :o glow, t by the not re- solemn Dnged to :tive life, remonies ters, and 5 charac- :liness to ilchre are are not upon the :orm the by their ig to the course of : infancy parents, I make it for this ks before )me from ia Minor, ts of the e people I myself pilgrims) penses of ion; they generally travel in families, for the women are of course more ardent than their husbands in undertaking these pious enter- prises, and they take care to bring with them all their children, however young, for the efficacy of the rites does not depend upon the age of the votary, so that people, whose careful mothers have obtained for them the benefit of the pilgrimage in early life, are saved from the expense and trouble of undertaking the journey at a later age. The superior veneration, so often excited by objects that are distant and unknown, shows not perhaps the wrongheadedness of a man, but rather the transcendant power of his Imagination ; however this may be, and whether it is by mere obstinacy that they poke their way through intervening distance, or whether they come by the winged strength of Fancy, quite certainly the Pilgrims who flock to Palestine from the most remote homes are the people most eager in the enter- prise, and in number, too, they bear a very high proportion to the whole mass. The great bulk of the Pilgrims make their way by sea to the port of Jaffa. A number of families will charter a vessel amongst them, all bringing their own provisions, which are of the simplest and cheapest kind. On board every vessel thus freighted, there is, I believe, a priest, who helps the people in their religious exercises, and tries (and fails) to maintain some- thing like order and harmony. The vessels employed in this service are usually Greek brigs or brigantines, and schooners, and the number of passengers stowed in them is almost always horribly excessive. The voyages are sadly protracted, not only by the land-seeking, storm-flying habits of the Greek sea- men, but also by their endless schemes and speculations, which are for ever tempting them to touch at the nearest port. The voyage, too, must be made in winter, in order that Jerusalem may be reached some weeks before the Greek Easter, and thus by the time they attain to the holy shrines, the Pilgrims have really and truly undergone a very respectable quantity of suf- fering. I once 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) some Christian sanctuary. I never saw (no, never even in the most horribly stufiy ball-room) such a discomfortable collection of human beings. Long huddled together in a pitching and rolling prison — fed on beans — exposed to some real danger, and to terrors without end, they 112 EOTHEN [CHAP. XVI. 1 1 \i\\ had been tumbled about for many wintry weeks in the chopping seas of the Mediterranean ; as soon as they landed, they stood upon the beach and chaunted a hymn of thanks ; the chaunt was morne and doleful, but really the poor people were looking so miserable that one could not fairly expect from them any lively 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. The space fronting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre soon becomes a kind of Bazaar, or rather, perhaps, reminds you of an English Fair. On this spot the Pilgrims display their merchandize, and there, too, the trading residents of the place offer their goods for sale. I 1 lave never, I think, seen elsewhere in Asia, so much commercial animation as upon this square of ground by the Church door ; the "money changers" seemed to be almost 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 various nooks and corners, and crowds of disciples were rushing about in all directions, — some laughing and talking, — some begging, but most of them going about in a regular and methodical way to kiss the sanctified spots, and speak the appointed syllables, and lay down the accustomed coin. If this kissing of the shrines had seemed as though it were done at the bidding of Enthusiasm, or of any poor senti- ment, even feebly approaching to 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 the sticks and the stones — not from love or from zeal (else God forbid that I should have stared), but from a calm sense of duty ; they seemed to be not " working out," but transacting the great business of Salvation. Dthemetri, however, who generally came with me when I went out, in order to do duty as interpreter, really had in him some enthusiasm ; he was a zealous and almost fanatical mem- ber of the Greek Church, and had long since performed the pilgrimage, so now great indeed was the pride and delight with which he guided me from one holy spot to another. Every now and then, when he came to an unoccupied shrine, he fell down on his knees and performed devotion \ he was almost i i AP. XVI. lopping jr stood chaunt looking em any camels, as they I of the • rather, ipot the trading e never, limation "money 1 if they shippers, ng their owds of laughing )out in a )0ts, and ustomed hough it or senti- ave been le grown and the I should ;emed to siness of when I id in him cal mem- rmed the ight with . Every le, he fell Ls almost CHAP. XVI.] TERRA SANTA. "3 distracted by the temptations that surrounded him ; there were so many stones absolutely requiring to be kissed, that he rushed about happily puzzled and sweetly teased, like " Jack among the maidens." A ProtCstant, familiar with the Holy Scriptures, but ignorant of tradition and the geography of Modern Jerusalem, finds him- self a good deal " mazed" when he first looks for the sacred sites. The Holy Sepulchre is not in a field without the walls, but in the midst, and in the best part of the town under the roof of the great Church which I have been talking about ; it is a handsome tomb of oblong form, partly subterranean and partly above ground ; and closed in on all sides, except the one by which it is entered. You descend into the interior by a few steps, and there find an altar with burning tapers. This is the spot which is held in greater sanctity than any other ai Jerusa- lem. When you have seen enough of it, you feel perhaps weary of the busy crowd and inclined for a gallop ; you ask your Dragoman whether there will be time before sunset to procure horses and take a ride to Mount Calvary. Mount Cal- vary, Signor ? — eccolo ! — it is «/ s/airs — on the first floor. In effect you ascend, if I remember rightly, just thirteen steps, and then you are shown the now golden sockets in which the crosses of our Lord and the two thieves were fixed. All this is startling, but the truth is, that the city having gathered round the Sepul- chre, which is the main point of interest, has crept northward, and thus in great measure are occasioned the many geographi- cal surprises which puzzle the " Bible Christian." The Church of the Holy Sepulchre comprises very compen- diously almost all the spots associated with the closing career of our Lord. Just, there, on your right, he stood and wept ; by the pillar on your left he was scourged ; on the spot just be- fore you he was crowned with the crown of thorns ; up there he Was crucified, and down here he was buried. A locality is as- signed to every the minutest event connected with the recorded history of our Saviour ; even the spot where the cock crew, when Petei' denied his Master, is ascertained and surrounded by the walls of an Armenian convents Many Protestants are wont to treat these traditions contemptuously, and those who distinguish thetnselves from their brethren by the appellation of "Bible Christians" are almost fierce in their denunciation of these supposed errors. "4 EOTHEN. [chap. XVI. tt„ 'ill i'l It is admitted, I believe, by everybody, that the formal sanc- tification of these 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 regard to the then prevailing tra- ditions. Now the nature of the ground, u )on which Jerusalem stands, is such that the localities belonging ::o the events there enacted might have been more easily and p irmanently ascer- tained by tradition than those of any city that I know of. Jeru- salem, whether ancient or modern, was built upon and surroun- ded by sharp, salient rocks, intersected by deep ravines. Up to the time of the siege. Mount Calvary, of course, must have been well enough known to the people of Jerusalem ; the de- struction of the mere buildings could not have obliterated from any man's memory the names of those steep rocks and narrow ravines in the midst of which the city had stood. It seems to me, therefore, highly probable that in fixing the sight of Cal- vary, the Empress was rightly guided. Recollect, too, that the voice of tradition, at Jerusalem, is quite unanimous, and that Romans, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, all hating each other sincerely, concur in assigning the same localities to the events told in the Gospel. I concede, however, that the attempt of the Empress to ascertain the sites of the minor events cannot be safely relied upon. With respect, for instance, to the cer- tainty of the spot where the cock crew, I am far from being convinced. Supposing that the Empress acted arbitrarily in fixing the holy sites, it would seem that she followed the Gospel of St. John, and that the geography sanctioned by her can be more easily reconciled with that history than with the accounts of the other Evangelists. The authority exercised by the Mussulman Government, in relation to the holy sites, is in one view somewhat humbling to the Christians, for it is almost as an arbitrator between the contending sects (this always, of course, for the sake of pecu- niary advantage) that the Mussulman lends his contemptuous aid ; he not only grants but enforces toleration. All persons, of whatever religion, are allowed to go as they will into every part of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but in order to pre- vent indecent contests, and also from motives arising out of money payments, the Turkish Government assigns the peculiar care of each sacred spot to one of the ecclesiastical bodies. «Ki'i'PWJLWP»Jl»P"U> II TW»l^>W-«F. P. XVI. I sanc- [elena, se that ng tra- usalem s there f ascer- . Jeru- urroun- ;s. Up ist have the de- ed from [ narrow icems to : of Cal- that the and that ch other le events Ltempt of ;s cannot ) the cer- im being ixing the Del of St. be more nts of the nment, in humbling tween the ; of pecu- emptuous I persons, into every ier to pre- ing out of le peculiar cal bodies. CHAP, xvi.] TERRA SANTA. "5 Since this guardianship carries with it the receipt of the coins which the pilgrims leave upon the shrines, it is strenuously fought for by all the rival Churches, and the artifices of intrigue are busily exerted at Stamboul in order to procure the issue or revocation of the Firmans, by which the coveted privilege is granted. In this strife the Greek Church has of late years signally triumphed, and the most famous of the shrines are com- mitted to the care of their priesthood. They possess the golden socket in which stood the cross of our Lord, whilst the Latins are obliged to content them.selves with the apertures in which were inserted the crosses of the two thieves ; they are naturally discontented with that poor privilege, and sorrow- fully look back to the days of their former glory — the days when Napoleon was Emperor, and Sebastian! was minister at the Porte. It seems that the "citizen" Sultan, old Louis Phillippe, has done very little indeed for Holy Church in Palestine. Although the Pilgrims perform their devotions at the several shrines with so little apparent enthusiasm, they are driven to the verge of madness by the miracle which is displayed to them on Easter Sunday. Then it is that the heaven-sent fire issues from the Holy Sepulchre. The Pilgrims all assemble in the great Church, and already, long before the wonder is worked, they are wrought by anticipation of God's sign, as well as by their struggles for room and breathing space, to a most frightful state of excitement. At length the Chief Priest of the Greel's, accompanied (of all people in the world) by the Turkish Gov- ernor, enters the tomb. After this there is a long pause, and then, suddenly, from out of the small apertures on either side of the Sepulchre, there issue long, shining flames. The Pilgrims now rush forward, madly struggling to light their tapers at the holy fire. This is the dangerous moment, and many lives are often lost The year before that of my going to Jerusalem, Ibrahim Pa^ sha, from some whim or motive of policy, chose to witness the miracle. The vast Church was of course thronged, as it always is on that awful day. It seems that the appearance of the fire was delayed for a very long time, and that the growing frenzy of the people was heightened by suspense. Many, too, had already sunk under the effect of the heat and the stifling atmo- sphere, when at last the fire flashed from the Sepulchre. Then || ii6 EOTHEN. [chap. XVI. a terrible struggle ensued — many sunk and were crushed. Ibrahim had taken his station in one of the galleries, but now, feeling perhaps his brave blood warmed by the sight and sound of such strife, he took upon himself to quiet the people by his personal presence, and descended into the body of the Church with only a few guards ; he had forced his way into the midst of the dense crowd, when unhappily he fainted away; his guard shrieked out, and the event instantly became known. A body of soldiers recklessly forced their way through the crowd, trampling over every obstacle, that they might save the life of their general. Nearly two hundred people were killed in the struggle. The following year, however, the Government took better measures for the prevention of these calamities. I was not pre- sent at the ceremony, having gone away from Jerusalem some time before, but I afterwards returned into Palestine, and I then learned that the day had passed off without any disturbance of a fatal kind. It is, however, almost too much to expect that so many ministers of peace can assemble without finding some occasion for strife, and in that year a tribe of wild Bedouins became the subject of discord ; these men, it seems, led an Arab life in some of the desert tracts bordering on the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, but were not connected with any of the great ruling tribes. Some whim or notion of policy had induced them to embrace Christianity, but they were grossly ignorant of the rudi- ments of their adopted faith, and having no priest with them in their desert, they had as little knowledge of religious ceremonies as of Religion itself, they were not even capable of conducting themselves in a place of worship with ordinary decorum, but would interrupt the service with scandalous cries and warlike shouts. Such is the account the Latins give of them, but I have never heard the other side of the question. These wild fellows, notwithstanding their entire ignorance of all religion, are yet claimed by the Greeks, not only as proselytes who have embraced Christianity generally, but as converts to the particular doctrines and practice of their Church. The people, thus alleged to have concurred in the great schism of the Eastern Empire, are never, I believe, within the walls of a church, or even of any building at all, except upon this occasion of Easter, and as they then never fail to find a row of some kind going on by the side of the Sepulchre, they fancy, it seems, that the ceremonies LP. XVI. rushed, ut now, 1 sound ; by his Church e micist ly; his wn. A i crowd, e life of d in the k better not pre- :m some d I then bance of ct that so ng some Bedouins i an Arab urhoodof eat ruhng I them to ■ the rudi- 1 them in ^remonies 3nducting jrum, but id warhke em, but I hese wild ligion, are who have particular ms alleged n Empire, or even of ter, and as on by the eremonies CHAP. XVI.] TERRA SANTA. ny there enacted are funeral games, of a martial character, held in honour of a deceased chieftain, and that a Christian festival is a peculiar kind of battle fought between walls without cavalry. It does not appear, however, that these men are guilty of any ferocious acts, or that they attempt to commit depredations. The charge against them is merely, that, by their way of applauding the performance — by their horrible cries and frightful gestures, they destroy the solemnity of divine service, and upon this ground the Franciscans obtained a Firman for the exclusion of such tumultuous worshippers. The Greeks, however, did not choose to lose the aid of their wild converts, merely because they were a little backward in their religious education, and they therefore persuaded them to defy the Firman by entering ths city en masse, and overawing their enemies. The Francis- cans, as well as the Government authorities, were obliged to give way, an(' the Arabs triumphantly marched into the Church. The festival, however, must have seemed to them rather flat for although there may have 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 :n working) the annual miracle of the heavenly fire, but they have for many years withdrawn their countenance from this exhibition, and they now repudiate it as a trick of the Greek Church. Thus, of course, the violence of feeHng with which the rival Churches meet at the Holy Sepulchre, on Easter Saturday, is greatly increased, j i d a disturbance of some kind is certain. In tlu year I speak of, though no lives were lost, there was, as it seems, a tough struggle i^ the Church. I was amused at hearing of a taunt that was tLrc wn that day upon an English traveller : he had taken his statior in a convenient part of the Church, and was no doubt displaying that peculiar air of serenity and gratification with which an English gentleman usually looks on at a row, when one of the Franciscans can;e by, all reeking from the fight, and was so disgusted at the cool- ness and placid contentment of the Englishman (who was a guest at the convent) that he forgot his monkish humility as well as the duties of hospitality, and plainly said, " You sleep under our roof — you eat our bread — you drink our wine, and then when Easter Saturday comes you don't fight for us !" Yet these rival Churches go on quietly enough till their T lil ! P i I i ii8 EOTHEN. [chap. XVI, blood is up. The terms on which they live remind one of the peculiar relation subsisting at Cambridge between " town and gown." These contests and disturbances certainly do not originate with the lay pilgrims, the great body of whom are, as I believe, quiet and inoffensive people ; it is true, however, that their pious enterprise is believed by them to operate as a counterpoise for a multitude of sins, whether past or future, and perhaps they exert themselves in after life to restore the balance of good and evil. The Turks have a maxim, which, like most cynical apothegms, carries with it the buzzing trumpet of falsehood, as well as the small, fine " sting of truth." " If your friend has made the pilgrimage once, distrust him — if he has made the pilgrimage twice, cut him dead !" The caution is said to be as applicable to the visitants of Jerusalem as to those of Mecca but I cannot help believing that the frailties of all the Hadjis,* whether Christian or Mahometan, are greatly exaggerated. I certainly regarded the pilgrims to Palestine as a well-disposed, orderly body of people, not strongly enthusiastic, but desirous to comply with the ordinances of their religion, and to attain the great end of salvation as quietly and economically as possible. When the solemnities of Easter are concluded, the pilgrims move off in a body to complete their good work, by visiting the sacred scenes in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, including the Wilderness of John the Baptist, Bethlehem, and, above all, the Jordan, for to bathe in those sacred waters is one of the chief objects of the expedition. All the pilgrims — men, women, and children, are submerged, en chemise^ and the saturated linen is carefully wrapped up, and preserved as a burial dress that shall enure for salvation in the realms of death. I saw the burial of a pilgrim ; he was a Greek — miserably poor and very old — he had just crawled into the Holy City, and had reached at once the goal of his pious journey and the end of his sufferings upon earth ; there was no coffin nor wrap- per, and, as I looked full upon the face of the 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 the animal kingdom — unpaid, or ill paid for his work, would scarcely deign to mutter out his forms, but hurried over the * Hadji — ^ pilgrim. CHAP. XVI.] TERRA- SANTA. 119 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 the rude men that handled them, and down he went into his grave, so roughly bundled in that his neck was twisted by the fall, — so twisted, that if the sharp malady of life were still upon him, the old man would have shrieked and 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 and heedless — so well cured of that tedious life-ache, that nothing could hurt him now. His clay was itself again — cool, firm, and tough. The pilgrim had found great rest ; I threw the accustomed handful of the holy soil upon his patient face, and then, in less than a minute, the earth closed coldly round him. I did not say " Alas ! " — (nobody ever does, that I know of, though the word is so frequently written) I thought the old man had got rather well out of the scrape of being alive and poor. The destruction of the mere buildings in such a place as Jerusalem would not involve the permanent dispersion of the inhabitants, for the rocky neighbourhood in which the town is situate abounds in caves, which would give an easy refuge to the people until they gained an opportunity of rebuilding their dwellings. Therefore, I could not help looking upon the Jews of Jerusalem, as being in some sort the representatives, if not the actual descendants, of the rascals that crucified our Saviour. Supposing this to be the case, I felt that there would be some interest in knowing how the events of the Gospel History were regarded by the Israelites of modern Jerusalem. The result of my inquiry upon this subject was, so far as it went, entirely favourable to the truth of Christianity. I understood that the performance of the miracles was not doubted by any of the Jews in the place; and all of them concuiTed in attributing the works of our Lord to the influence of magic, but they were divided as to the species of enchantment from which the power proceeded ; the great mass of the Jewish people believed, I fancy, that the miracles had been wrought by aid of the powers of darknees, but many, and those the more enlightened, would call Jesus "the Good Magician." To Europeans, repuc'iating the notion of all magic, good or bad, the opinion of thi^ Jev/s as to the agency by which the miracles were worked is a mat- i 11 < 120 EOTHEN. [CHAf. XVI. ter of no importance, but the circumstance of their admitting that those miracles 7£>ere in fact performed is certainly curious, and, perhaps, not quite immaterial. If you stay in the Holy City long enough to fall into anything like regular habits of amusement and occupation, and to become in short, for the time^ a "man about town" at Jerusalem, you will necessarily lose the enthusiasm which you may have felt when you trod the sacred soil for the first time, and it will then seem almost strange to you to find yourself so thoroughly surrounded in all your daily pursuits by the signs and sounds of religion. Your hotel is a monastery — your roofs are cells — the landlord is a stately abbot and the waiters are hooded monks. If you walk out of the town you find yourself on the Mount of Olives, or in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, or on the Hill of Evil Counsel. If you mount your horse 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 of the Holy Sepulchre, where everybody meets everybody every day. If you lounge through the town, your Bond Street is the Via Dolorosa, and the object of your hopeless affections is some maid or matron all forlorn, and sadly shrouded in her pilgrim's robe. If you would hear music, it must be the chaunting of friars — if you look at pictures, you see Virgins with mis-foreshortened arms, or devils out of drawing, or angels tumbling up the skies in impious perspective. If you would make any purchases you must go again to the church doors, and when you inquire for the manufactures of the place, you find that they consist of double-blessed beads and sanctified shells. These last are the favorite tokens which the pilgrims carry off with them ; the shell is graven or rather scratched on the white side with a rude drawing of the Blessed Virgin, or of the Cruci- fixion, or some other scriptural subject ; and having passed this stage, it goes into the hands of a priest ; by him it is sub- jected to some process for rendering it efficacious against the schemes oi our ghostly enemy; the manufacture is then com- plete, and is deemed 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 com- mitted to the joint-guardianship of the Romans, Greeks and Armenians, who vie with each other in adorning it. Beneath an altar gorgeously decorated, and lit with everlasting fires, p. XVI. CHAP. XVI.] TERRA SANTA. 121 litting irious, ything ecome n, you .ve felt it will oughly inds of cells — looded on the on the extend :. John, Church y every t is the ions is in her be the Virgins angels would ors, and ^ou find shells, arry off le white 2 Cruci- passed is sub- inst the :n com- le slope is com- 2ks and Beneath ig fires, there stands the low slab of stone which marks the holy site of the Nativity ; and near to this is a hollow scooped out of the living rock. Here the infant Jesus was laid. Near the spot of the Nativity is the rock against which the Blessed Virgin was leaning when she presented her babe to the adoring shepherds. Many of those Protestants who are accustomed to despise tradition consider that this sanctuary is altogether unscriptural — that a grotto is not a stable, and that mangers are made of wood. It is perfectly true, however, that the many grottoes and caves which are found among the rocks of Judea were formerly used for the reception of cattle ; they are so used at this day ; I have myself seen grottoes appropriated to this pur- pose. You know what a sad and sombre decorum it is that out- wardly reigns through the lands oppressed by Moslem sway. The Mahometans make beauty their prisoner, and enforce such a stern and gloomy morality, or at all events such a frightfully close semblance of it, that far and long the wearied traveller iiiay go without catching one glimpse of outward happiness. By a strange chance in these latter days, it happened, that alone of all the places in the land, this Bethlehem, the native village of our Lord, escaped the moral yoke of the Mussulman, 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 which had been raised against the authority of Mehemet Ali, that Bethlehem was freed from the hateful laws of Asiatic decorum. The Mussulmen of the village had taken an active part in the movement, and when Ibrahim had quelled it, his wrath was still so hot that he put to death every one of the few Mahometans of Bethlehem who had not already fled. The effect produced upon the Christian inhabitants by the sudden removal of this restraint was immense. The village smiled once more. It is true that such sweet freedom could not long endure. Even if the population of the place should continue to be entirely Christian, the sad decorum of the Mussulmen, or rather of the Asiatics, would sooner or later be restored by the force of opinion and custom. But for a while the sunshine would last, and when I was at Bethlehem, though long after the flight of the Mussulmen, the cloud of Moslem propriety had not yet come back to cast its cold shadow upon life. When you reach that gladsome village, pray Heaven there Still maybe ■>■ n 122 EOTHEN. [chap. XVI. '!' t ! < heard there the voice of free, innocent girls. It will sound so dearly welcome ! To a Christian, and thorough-bred Englishman, not even the licentiousness, which generally accompanies it, can compensate for the oppressiveness of that horrible outward decorum, which turns the cities and the palaces of Asia into deserts and gaols. So, i say, when you see and hear them, those romping girls of Bethlehem will gladden your very soul. Distant at first, and then nearer and nearer, the timid flock will gather round you with their large, burning eyes gravely fixed against yours, so that they see into your brain, and, if you imagine evil against th~: \ they will know of your ill thought before it is yet well bom, and will fly, and be gone in a moment. But presently if you will only look virtuous enough to prevent alarm, and vicious enough to avoid looking silly, the blithe maidens will draw nearer and nearer to you, and soon there will be one, the bravest of the sisters, who will venture right up to youi side, and touch the hem of your coat, in playful defiance of the danger, and then the rest will follow the daring of their youth- ful leader, and gather close round you, and hold a shrill con- troversy on the wondrous formation that you call a hat, and the cunning of the hands that clothed you '"ith cloth so fine ; and then growing more profound in their researches, they will pass from the study of your mere dress to a serious contempla- tion of your stately height, and your nut-brown hair, and the ruddy glow of your English cheeks. And if they catch a glimpse of your ungloved fingers, then again will they make the air ring with their sweet screams of wonder and amazement, as they compare the fairness of your hand with their wanner tints, and even with the hues of your own sunburnt face ; in- stantly the ringleader of the gentle rioters imagines a new i,"n ; with tremulous boldness she touches — then grasps your hiA:jl, and smooths it gently betwixt her own, and pries curiously into its make and colour, as though it were silk of Damascus, or shawl of Cashmere. And when they see you even then, still sage and gentle, the joyous girls will suddenly, and screamingly, and all at once, explain to each other that you are surely quite harmless, and innocent — a lion that makes no spring — a be^r that never hugs, and upon this faith, one after the other, they will take your passive hand, and strive to explain it, and make it g, thepie ^n^ cpntroversjr. put the one—the fairest, and the XVI. CHAP. XVI.] TERRA SANTA. M3 ind so 'en the lensate which [ gaols, girls of St, and nd you )urs, so against yret well lently if m, and ens will Dne, the )ui side, ; of the ir youth- irill con- hat, and so fine ; they will ntempla- and the catch a nake the azement, r wanner face ; in- new >rilliant ilanket, Ethio- vith his gger at — some ; round out of of pro- agent in some of eyofthe seizure, ime into lich you :ake you rreement ugh their g to the ten days nels, one for my- 1 me on of dried :ouple of illed with ;s in the Lsed from fcoal, for pass is e she will when she 1 just bur- neck and ly remon- ; 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 the back of the camel, but your quilt, or carpet, or whatever you carry for the purpose of laying on at night, is fold- ed and fastened on the pack-saddle upon the top of the hump, and on this you ride, or rather sit. You sit as a man sits on a chair when he sits astride and faces the back of it. I made an improvement on this plan ; I had my English stirrups strapped on to the cross-bars of the pack-saddle, and thus by gaining rest for my dangling legs, and gaining, too, the po'^er of varying my position more easily than I could otherwise nave done, I added very much to my comfort. Don't forget to do as I did. The camel, like the elephant, is one of the old-fashioned sort of animals that still walk along upon the (now nearly exploded) plan of the ancient beasts that lived before the flood ; she moves forward both her near legs at the same time, and then awkwardly swings round her off-shoulder and haunch, so as to repeat the manoeuvre on that side ; her pace, therefore, is an odd, disjointed and disjointing sort of movement, that is rather disagreeable at first, but you soon grow reconciled to it ; the height to which you are raised is of great advantage to you in passing the burn- ing sands of the desert, for the air at such a distance from the ground is much cooler and more lively than that which circu- lates beneath. For several miles beyond Gaza, the land, which had been plentifully watered by the rains of the last week, was covered with rich verdure, and thickly jewelled with meadow flowers, so fresh and fragrant that I began to grow almost uneasy — to fancy that the very desert was recedingbeforeme, and that the long-desir- ed adventure of passing its "burning sands," was to end in a mere ride across a field. But as I advanced the true character of the country began to display itself with sufficient clearness to dispel my apprehensions, and before the close of my first day's jour- ney I had the gratification of finding that I was surrounded on •all sides by a tract of real sand, and had nothing at all to com- plain of, except that there peeped forth at intervals a few isolated blades of grass, and many of those stunted shrubs which are the accustomed food of the camel. Before sunset I came up with an encampment of Arabs (the •encampment from which my camels had been brought), and my Tf II N'l 11 •\ ! i i i 188 EOTHEN. [CHAP. XVIT. tent was pitched amongst theirs. I was now amongst the true Bedouins ; almost every man of this race closely resembles his brethren ; almost every man has large and finely formed fea- tures, but his face is so thoroughly stripped of flesh, and the white folds from his head-gear fall down by his haggard cheeks, so much in the burial fashion, that he looks quite sad and ghastly : his large dark orbs roll slowly and solemnly over the white of his deep-set eyes — his countenance shows painful thought and long-suffering — the suffering of one fallen from a high estate. His gait is strangely majestic, and he marches along with his simple blanket, as though he were wearing the purple. His common talk is a series of piercing screams and cries,* more painful to the ear than the most excruciating fine music that I ever endured. The Bedouin women are not treasured up like the wives and daughters of other Orientals, and indeed they seemed almost entirely free from the restraints imposed by jealousy ; the feint which they made of concealing their faces from me was always slight ; they never, I think, wore the yashmack properly fixed ; when they first saw me, they used to hold up a part of their drapery with one hand across their faces, but they seldom perse- vered very steadily in subjecting me to this privation. Unhappy being ! they were sadly plain. The awful haggardness, which gave something of character to the faces of the men, was sheer ughness in the poor women. It is a great shame, but the truth is that except when we refer to the beautiful devotion of the mother to her child, all the fine things we say and think about woman, apply only to those who are tolerably good-looking or graceful. These Arab women were so plain and clumsy that they seemed to me to be fit for nothing but another and abetter world. They may have been good women enough, so far as relates to the exercise of the minor virtues, but they had so grossly neglected the prime duty of looking pretty in this tran- sitory life that I could not at all forgive them ; they seemed to feel the weight of their guilt and to be truly and humbly peni- tent. I had the complete command of their affections, for at any moment I could make their young hearts bound, and their old hearts jump, by offering a handful of tobacco, and yet, believe * Milnes cleverly goes to the French for the exact word which conveys the impression produced by the voice of the Arabs, and calls thei un .peuple ctiard.''^ lP. xvit. the true bles his led fea- and the cheeks, sad and )ver the painful I from a marches iring the ■ams and ,ting fine vives and ;d almost the feint as always rly fixed ; rt of their .cm perse- Unhappy ess, which was sheer t the truth ion of the link about looking or umsy that ad a better ^ so far as ey had so n. this tran- seemed to imbly peni- 5, for at any d their old yet, believe irhich copveys Is th« un CHAP. XVII.] THE DESERT. 129 me, it was not in the first soiree that my store of Lataksea was exhausted ! The Bedouin women have no religion ; this is partly the cause of their clumsiness ; perhaps, if from Christian girls they would learn how to pray, their souls might become more gentle, and their limbs be clothed with grace. You who are going into their country, have a direct personal interest in knowing something about "Arab hospitality;" but the deuce of it is, that the poor fellows with whom I have hap- pened to pitch my tent were scarcely ever in a condition to exer- cise that magnanimous virtue with much dc/at ; indeed Mysseri's canteen generally enabled me to outdo my hosts in the matter of entertainment. They were always courteous, however, and were never backward in offering me the " youart," or curds and whey, which is the principal delicacy to be found amongst the wandering tribes. Practically, I think, Childe Harold would have found it a dreadful bore to make " the desert his dwelling-place," for at all events if he adopted the life of the Arabs, he would have tasted no solitude. The tents are partitioned, not so as to divide the Childe and the " fair spirit," who is his " minister," from the rest of the world, but so as to separate the twenty or thirty brown men that sit screaming in the one compartment, from the fifty or sixty brown women and children that scream and squeak in the other. If you adopt the Arab life for the sake of seclu- sion, you will be horribly disappointed, for you will find yourself in perpetual contact with a mass of hot fellow-creatures. It is true that all who are inmates of the same tent are related to each other, but I am not quite sure that that 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 up in 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 to rest at all sort of odd times ; they like, for instance, to be off at one in the morning, and to rest during the whole of the afternoon ; you must not give way to their wishes in this respect; I tried their plan once, and found it very harassing and unwholesome. An ordinary tent can give you very little protection against heat, for the fire strikes fiercely through I I ii ■Jl;l B'\ ¥m\\ II 130 EO' [chap. XVII. single canvas, and you soon . that whilst you lie crouching, 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 the airy heights of your camel. It had been arranged with my Arabs, that they were to bring with them all the food which they would want for themselves during the passage of the Desert, but as we rested at the end of the first day's journey, by the side of an Arab encampment, my camel-men found all that they required for that night in the tents of their own brethren. On the evening of the second day, however, just before we encamped for the night, my four Arabs came to Dthemetri, and formally announced that they had not brought with them one atom of food, and that they looked entirely to my supplies for their daily bread. This was awkward intelligence ; we were now just two days deep in the Desert, and I had brought with me no more bread than might be reasonably required for myself, and my European attendants : I believed at the moment (for it seemed likely enough) that the men had really mistaken the terms of the arrangement, and feeling that the bore of being put upon half rations would be a less evil (and even to myself a less inconvenience) than the starvation of my Arabs, I at once told Dthemetri to assure them that my bread should be equally shared with all. Dthemetri, however, did not approve of this concession ; he assured me quite positively that the Arabs thoroughly understood the agreement, and that if they were now without food, they had wilfully brought themselves into this strait, for the wretched purpose of bettering their bargain, by the value of a few paras' worth of bread. This suggestion made me look at the affair in a new light j I should have been glad enough to put up with the slight privation to which my concession would subject me, and could have borne to witness the semi-starvation of poor Dthemetri with a fine, philosophical calm, but it seemed to me that the scheme, if scheme it were, had something of audacity in it, and was well enough calculated to try the extent of my softness ; I well knew the danger of allowing such a trial to result in a conclusion that I was one who might be easily managed ; and therefore, after thoroughly satisfying myself from Dthemetri's clear and repeated assertions, that the Arabs had really understood the arrangement, I determined that they should not now violate it by taking advantage of my position in •. XVII. CHAP. XVII.] THE DESERT. 131 iching, le sun, :fy him 3 bring nselves I end of mt, my in the second my four lat they lat they ?his was p in the .n might jndants : I that the snt, and uld be a than the ^re them :hemetri, lUred me ood the they had ivretched jw paras' the affair t up with )ject me, of poor •d to me audacity nt of my trial to 3e easily self from rabs had hat they osition in the midst of their big desert, so I desired Dthemetri to tell them that they should touch no bread of mine. We stopped, and the tent was pitched ; the Arabs came to me, and prayed loudly for bread ; I refused them. "Then we die!" "Gods will be done." I gave the Arabs to understand, that I regretted their perish- ing by hunger, but that I should bear this calmly, like any other misfortune not my own — that in short I was happily resigned to M«> fate. The men would have talked a great deal, but they were under the disadvantage of addressing me through a hostile interpreter; they looked hard upon my face, but they found no hope there, so at last they retired, as they pre tended, to lay them down, and die. In about ten minutes from this time, I found that the Arabs were busily cooking their bread ! Their pretence of having brought no food was false, and was only invented for the pur- pose of saving it. They had a good bag of meal which they had contrived to stow away under the baggage, upon one of the camels, in such a way as to escape notice. In Europe the detection of a scheme like this vould have occasioned a dis- agreeable feeling between the niascer and the delinquent, but you would no more recoil from an Oriental, on account of a matter of this sort, than in England you would reject a horse that had tried, and failed, to throw you. Indeed I felt quite good- humoredly towards my Arabs, because they had so wofuUy failed in their wretched attempt, and because, as it turned out, I had done what was right ; they too, poor fellows, evidently began to like me immensely, on account of the hard-hearted- ness which had enabled me to baffle their scheme. The Arabs adhere to those ancestral principles of bread- baking which have been sanctioned by the experience of ages. The very first baker of bread that ever lived must have done his work exactly as the Arab does at this day. 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 up the moistened flour into a paste, which he pulls into small pieces, and thursts into the embers ; his way of baking exactly resembles the craft or mystery of roasting chestnuts, as practised by children ; there is the same prudence and circumspection in choosing a good berth for the morsel — the same enterprise, and self-sacrificing valour, in pulling it out with the fingers. ! i I 1 ^ i 1 1 j 132 EOTHEN. [chap. xyii. The manner of my daily march was this. At about an hour before dawn, I rose, and made the most of about a pint of water which I allowed myself for washing. Then I breakfasted upon tea and bread. As soon as the beasts were loaded, I mounted my camel, and pressed forward ; my poor Arabs being on foot would sometimes moan with fatigue, and pray for rest, but I was anxious to enable them to perform their contract for bringing me to Cairo within the stipulated time, and I did not therefore allow a halt until the evening came. About mid-day, or soon after, Mysseri used to bring up his camel alongside of mine, and supply me with a 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 this there came into my hand (how well I remember it !) the little tin cup half filled with wine and water. As long as you are journeying in the interior of the Desert you have no particular point to make for as your resting place. The endless sands yield nothing but small stunted shrubs — even these fail after the first two or three days, and from that time you pass over broad plains — you pass over newly reared hills — you pass through valleys that the storm of the 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 is so samely, that your eyes turn towards heaven — towards heaven, I mean, in the sense of sky. You look to the Sun, for he is your task-master, and by him you know the measure of the work that you have done, and the measure of the work that remains for you to do ; He comes when you strike your tent in the early morning, and then, for the first hour of the day, as you move forward on your camel, he stands at your near side, and makes you know that the whole day's toil is before you — then for a while and a long while you see him no more, for you are veiled, and shrouded, and dare not look upon the greatness of his glory, but you know where he strides over head, by the touch of his flaming sword. No words are spoken, but your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, your skin glows, your shoulders ache, and for sights you see the pattern and the web of the silk that veils yourjeyes, and the glare of the outer light. Time labours on — your skin glows, and your shoulders ache, your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, and you see the same pattern on the silk, and the same glare of light beyond, but conquering Time p. XYII. CHAP. XVII.] THE DESERT. J33 ,n hour pint of kfasted ided, I IS being or rest, ract for did not nid-day, yside of in water : lasted) ny hand ith wine e Desert ,g place, shrubs — rom that ly reared ast week and, still earth is s heaven, for he is the work remains the early ou move id makes len for a ire veiled, ss of his the touch »ur Arabs lers ache, silk that le labours )ur Arabs ;m on the ring Time marches on, and by and by the descending Sun has compassed the heaven, and now softly touches your right arm, and throws your lank shadow over the sand, right along on the way for Persia ; then again you look upon his face, for his power is all veiled in his beauty, and the redness of flames has become the redness of roses — the fair wavy, cloud that fled in the morning now comes to his sight once more — comes blushing, yet still comes on — comes burning with blushes, yet hastens, 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 no living thing to dispute your choice. AVhen at last the spot had been fixed upon, and we came to a halt, one of the Arabs would touch the chest of my camel, and utter at the same time a peculiar gurgling sound ; the beast instantly understood, and obeyed the sign, and slowly sunk under me till she brought her body to a level with the ground ; then gladly enough I alighted ; the rest of the camels were unloaded, and turned loose to browse upon the shrubs of the Desert, where shrubs there were, or where these failed, to wait for the small quantity of food which was allowed them out of our stores. My servants, helped by the Arabs, busied themselves in pitching the tent and kindling the fire. Whilst this was doing, I used to walk away towards the 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 and feel the lone- liness of the Desert. The influence of such scenes, however, was not of a softening kind, but filled me rather with a sort of childish exultation in the self-sufficiency which enabled me to stand thus alone in the wideness of Asia — a short-lived pride, for wherever man wanders, he still remains tethered by the chain that links him to his kind ; and so when the night closed round roe, I began to return — to return, as it were, to my own gate. Reaching at last some high ground, I could see, and see with delight, the fire of our small encampment, and when, at last, I regained the spot, it seemed to me a very home that had spruug up for me in the midst of these solitudes. My Arabs were busy with their bread, — Mysseri rattling tea-cups, — the little kettle, with her odd, old-maidish look, sat humming away old songs about England, and two or three yards from the fire ii In: M i' t- 134 EOTHEN [chap. XVII. my tent stood prim and tight with open portal, 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 that happened, the dry sand was heaped up out- side round the skirts of the tent, and so the Wind, that every- where could sweep as he listed along those dreary plains, was forced to turn aside in his course, and make way, as he ought, for the Englishman. Then within my tent, there were heaps of luxuries, — dining-rooms, dressing-rooms, libraries, bed-rooms, drawing-rooms, oratories, — all crowded into the space of a hearth rug. The first 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 Desert there rushed in «. flood of life, unseen before. Monsters of moths of all shapes and hues, that never before, perhaps, had looked upon the shining of a flame, now madly thronged my tent, and dashed through the fire of the candle, till they fairly extinguished it with their burning limbs. Those who had failed in attaining this martyrdom, suddenly became serious, and clung despond- ingly to the canvas. By and by there was brought to me the fragrant tea, and big masses of scorched and scorching toast, that minded me of old Eton days, and the butter that had come all the way to me 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 the camels, I always felt loath to give back to the waste this little spot of ground that had glowed for a while with the cheerfulness of a human dwelling. One by one the cloaks, the saddles, the baggage, the hundred things that strewed the ground, and made it look so tivmiliar — all these were taken away, and laid upon the camels. A speck in the broad tracks of Asia remained still impressed with the mark of patent port- manteaux, and the heels of London boots ; the embers of the fire lay black and cold upon the sand, and these were the signs we left. My tent was spared to the last, but when all else was ready for the start, then came its fall; the pegs were drawn, the canvas shivered, and in less than a minute there was nothing it. XVll. CHAP. XVII.] THE DESERT. 135 jd with Lyrist's le blew up out- t every- ns, was ; ought, heaps of i-rooms, ce of a oks and per, and led in «. I shapes ipon the I dashed uished it attaining despond- , and big le of old to me in Ireland, he fourth pie began the waste with the leaks, the ewed the ere taken ad tracks tent port- ers of the ; the signs was ready rawn, the as nothing that remained of my genial home but only a pole and a bundle. The encroaching Englishman was off, and instantly, upon 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 to any other Europeans not much accustomed to amuse themselves by fancy or memory, it often happens that, after a few days' journeying, the loneliness of the desert will become frightfully oppressive. 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 it as best the could ; but their joy was great on the fifth day, when we came to an Oasis called Gatieh, for here we found encamped a caravan (that is an assemblage of travellers) from Cairo. The Orientals living in cities, never pass the Desert, except in this way ; many will wait for weeks, and even for months, until a sufficient number of persons can be found ready to undertake the journey at the same time — until the flock of sheep is big enough 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, and so utterly unorganized, that they never could make good their resistance to robbers of the slight- est respectability. It is not of the Bedouins that such travellers are afraid, for the safe-conduct granted by the Chief of the ruling tribe is never, I believe, violated; but, it is said, there are deserters and scamps of various sorts who hover about the skirts of the Desert, particularly on the Cairo side, and are anxious to succeed to the property of any poor devils whom they may find more weak and defenceless than themselves. These people from Cairo professed to be amazed at the ludi- crous disproportion between their numerical forces and mine. They could not understand, and they wanted to know by what strange privilege it is that an Englishman with a brace of pistols and a couple of servants rides safely across the Desert, whilst they, the natives of the neighbouring cities, are forced to travel in troops, or rather in herds. One of them got a few minutes of private conversation with Dthemetri and ventured to ask him anxiously, whether the English did not travel under the protection of Evil Demons. I had previously known (from Methley I think, who travelled in Persia) that this notion, so conducive to the safety of our countrymen, is generally preva- i!i' ii 136 EOTHEN. [chap. XVII. lent amongst Orientals ; it owes its origin partly to the strong wilfulness of the English gentleman (which not being backed by any visible authority, either civil or military, seems perfectly superhuman to the soft Asiatic), but partly too to th? magic of the Banking system, by force of which the wealthy iiaveller will make all his journeys, without carrying a handful uf coin, and yet when he arrives at a city, will rain down showers of gold. The theory is that the English traveller has committed some sin against God and his conscience, and that, for this, the Evil Spirit has hold of him and drives him from his home, like a victim of the old Grecian Furies, and forces him to travel over countries far and strange, and most chiefly over deserts and desolate places, and to stand upon the sites of cities that once were, and are now no more, and to grope amohg the tombs of dead men. Often enough there is something of truth in this notion ; often enough the wandering Englishman is guilty (if guilty it be) of some pride, or ambition, big or small, imperial or parochial, which being offended has made the lone places more tolerable than ball rooms to him, a sinner. I can understand the sort of amazement of the Orientals at the scantiness of the retinue with which an Englishman passes the Desert, for I was somewhat struck myself when .t saw one of my countrymen making his way across the wilderness in this simple style. At first thfe was a mere moving speck in the horizon ; my party, of couioC, became all alive with excitement, and there were many surmises ; soon it appeared that three laden camels were approaching, and that two of them carried riders ; in a little while we saw that one of the riders wore the European dress, and at last the travellers were pronounced to be an English gentleman and his servant ; 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 coast, you 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 the grisly old man at the helm, carrying his craft with strange skill through the turmoil of waters, and the boy, supple-limbed, yet weather-worn, already, and with steady eyes that look through the blast, — you see him understanding the commandments from the jerk of his father's white eyebrow, — now belaying, and now letting go, — now A f ». XVII. CHAP. XVII.] THE DESERT. 137 strong backed srfectly lagic of laveller }f coin, wers of nmitted this, the ne, like o travel deserts ties that lOiig the of truth iman is )r small, the lone entals at n passes saw one is in this :k in the itement, lat three carried wore the unced to ide there was the to the ible boat and an he helm, rmoil of already, see him s father's o, — now scrunching himself down into mere ballast, or bailing 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 Titanic exulta- tion, because that a poor boat with the brain of a man, and the hands of a boy on board, can match herself so bravely against black heaven and ocean ; well, so when you have travelled for days and days, over an eastern desert, without meeting the likeness of a human being, and then at last see an English shooting-jacket and his servant come listlessly slouching along from out the forward horizon, you stare at the wide unpropor- tion between this slender company, and the boundless plains of sand through which they are keeping their way. This Englishman, as I afterwards found, was a military man, returning to his country from India, and crossing the Desert at this part in order to go through Palestine. As for me, I had come pretty straight from England, and so here we met in the wilderness, at about half way from our respective starting points. As we approached each other, it became with me a question whether we should speak ; I thought it likely that the stranger would accost me, and, in the event of his doing so, I was quite ready io be as sociable and as chatty as I could be, according to my nature, but still I could not think of anything in par- ticular that I had to say to him ; of course, among civilized people, the not having anything to say is no excuse at all for not speaking, but I was shy and indolent, and I felt no great wish to stop and talk like a morning visitor, in the midst of those broad solitudes. The traveller, perhaps, felt as I did, for, except that we lifted our hands to our caps and waved our our arms in courtesy, we passed 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 speaking to new listeners, and hearing fresh voices once more. The masters, therefore, had no sooner passed each other, than their respective servants quietly stopped arid entered into conversation. As soon as my camel found that her companions were not following her, she caught the social feeling and refused to go on. I felt the ab- surdity of the situation, and determined to accost the stranger, if only to avoid the awkwardness of remaining stuck fast in the Desert, whilst our servants were amusing themselves. When, with this intent, I turned round my camel, I found that the gallant officer who had passed me by about thirty or forty 138 EOTHEN. [CHAP. xvir. [:' iji It '1 yards, was exactly in the same predicament as myself. I put my now willing camel in motion and rode up towards the stranger, who, seeing this, followed my example, and came for- ward to meet me. He was the first to speak ; he was much too courteous to address me as if he admitted of the possibility of my wishing to accost him from any feeling of mere sociability, or civilian-like love of vain talk ; on the contrary, he at once attributed my advances to a laudable wish of acquiring statis- tical information, and accordingly, when we got within speaking distance, he said, " I dare say you wish to know how the Plague lis going on at Cairo ?" and then he went on to say, he regretted that his informotion did not enable him to give me in numbers a perfectly accurate statement of the daily deaths : he after- wards talked pleasantly enough upon other and less ghastly subjects. I thought him manly and intelligent ; a worthy on« of the few thousand strong 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 in the tent ; no robbers came except a jackal, that poked his nose into my tent from some motive of rational curiosity ; Dthemetri did not shoot him for fear of waking me. These brutes swarm in every part of Syria ; and there were many of them even in the midst of the void sands, that would seem to give such poor promise of food ; I can hardly tell what prey they could be hoping for, unless it were that they mip^ht find, now and then, the carcase of some camel that had died on the joui:ney. They do not marshal them- selves into great packs like the wild dogs of Eastern cities ; but follov their prey in families, like the place hunters of Eu- rope ; their voices are frightfully like to shouts and cries of human beings ; if you lie awake in your tent at night, you are almost continually hearing some hungry family, as it sweeps along in full cry ; you hear the exulting scream with which the sagacious dam first winds the carrion, and the shrill response of the unanimous cubs, as they snuff 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 loose sand that surround us, but after a while we were lucky enough to recover our right line of march. The same day we fell in with a Sheik, the head of a fa^ly, that CHAP. XVII.] THE DESERT. 139 actually dwells at no great distance from this part of the desert during nine months of the year. The man carried a match- lock, of which he was very proud ; we stopped and sat down, and rested awhile, for the sake of a little talk; there was much that I shonld have liked to ask this man, but he could not un- derstand Dthemetri's language, and the process of getting at his knowledge by double interpretation through my Arabs was unsatisfactory. I discovered, however (and my Arabs knew of that fact), that this man and his family lived habitually, for nine months of the year, without touching or seeing either bread or water. The stunted shrub growing at intervals through the sand in this part of the desert, is fed by the dews which fall at night, and enables the camel mares to yield a little milk, which furnishes the sole food and drink of their owner and his people. During the other three months (the hottest of the months, I suppose) even this resource fails, and then the Sheik and his people are forced to pass into another district. You would ask me why the man should not remain always in that district which supplies him with water during three months of the year, but I don't know enough of Arab politics to answer the question. The Sheik was not a good specimen of the effect prgdiiced by the diet to which he is subjected; Jb-e ¥ras very small, very spare, and sadly shrivelled — a poor, over-roasted snipe, a mere cinder of a man ; I made him sit down by my side, and gave him a piece of bread and a cup of water from out of my goat-skins. This was not very tempting drink to look at, for it had become turbid, and was deeply reddened by some colouring matter con- tained in the skins, but it kept its sweetness and tasted like a strong decoction of Russia leather. The Sheik sipped this, drop by drop, with ineffable relish, and rolled his eyes solemnly round between every draught, as though the drink were the drink of the Prophet, and had come from the seventh heaven. An inquiry about distances led to the discovery that this Sh»ik had never heard 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 and fair towards the south — stretching deep into winding creeks, and hemmed in by jutting promontories, and shelving smooth off towards the shallow side ; on its bosom the reflected fire of the sun lay playing and seeming to float upon waters deep and still. HM t Km ' 1»H 140 EOTHEN. [CHAP. XVII. Though I knew of the cheat, it was not till the spongy foot of my camel had 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 of the phantasm. A sheet ot water, heavily impregnated with salts, had filled this great hol- low ; and, when dried up by evaporation, had left a white saline deposit that exactly marked the space which the waters had covered, and thus sketched a true shore-Hne The minute crys- tals of the salt sparkled in the sun, and so looked like the face of a lake that is calm and smooth. The pace of the camel is irksome, and makes your shoulders and loins ache from the peculiar way in which you are obliged to suit yourself to the movements of the beast, but you soon of course become inured to this, and after 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 moments to- gether, on the back of my camel. On the fifth day of my jour- ney the air above lay dead, and all the whole earth that I could reach with my utmost sight and keenest listening, was still and lifeless as some dispeopled and forgotten world, that rolls round and round in the heavens, through wasted floods of light. The sun, growing fiercer and fiercer, shone down more mightily now than ever on me he shone before, and as I drooped my head under his fire, and closed my eyes against the glare that surroun- ded me, I slowly fell asleep, for how many minutes or moments, I cannot tell, but after a while I was gently awakened by a peal of church bells — my native bells — the innocent bells of Marlen, that never before sent forth their music beyond the Blaygon hills ! My first idea naturally was, that I still remained fast under the power of a dream. I roused myself, and drew aside the silk that covered my eyes, and plunged my bare face into the light. Then at least I was well enough wakened, but still those old Marlen bells rung on, not ringing for joy, but properly, prosily, steadily, merrily ringing " for church." After a while the sound died away slowly ; it happened that neither I nor any of my party had a watch by which to measure the exact time of its lasting, but it seemed to me that about ten minutes had passed before the bells ceased. I attributed the effect to the great heat of the sun, the perfect dryness of the clear air through which I moved, and the deep stillness of all around me ; it seemed to me that these causes, by occasioning a great tension, and con- XVII. CHAP, xvn.] THE DESERT. 141 ry foot that I Lie and heet ot :at hol- ; salir.e TS had :e crys- le face oulders obliged soon ot ays this sleeper ;nts to- ny jour- I could still and Is round It. The tily now ny head surroun- loments, y a peal Marlen, on hills ! ider the the silk he light, lose old prosily, le sound of my ne of its i passed reat heat which I lemed to ind con- sequent susceptibility of the hearing organs, had rendered them liable to tingle under the passing touch of some mere memory, that must have swept across my brain in a moment of sleep. Since my return to England, it has been told me that like sounds have been heard at sea, and that the sailor becalmed under a vertical sun in the midst of the wide ocean, has listened in trembling wonder to the chime of his own village bells. At this time I kept a poor, shabby pretence of a journal, which just enabled me to know the day of the month and the week, according to the European calendar, and, when in my tent at night, I got out my pocket-book, I found that the day was Sunday, and roughly allowing for the difference of time in this longitude, I concluded that, at the moment of my hearing that strange peal, the church-going" bells of Marlen must have been actually calling the prim congregation of the parish to morning prayer. The coincidence amused me faintly, but I could not pluck up the least hope that the effect which I had experienced was anything other than an illusion — an illusion liable to be explained (as every illusion is in these days) by some of the philosophers who guess at nature's riddles. It would have been sweeter to believe that my kneeling mother, by some pious enchantment, had asked and found this spell to rouse me from my scandalous forgetfulness of God's holy day, but my fancy was too weak to carry a faith like that. Indeed, the vale through which the bells of Marlen send their song is a highly respectable vale, and its people (save one, two, or three) are wholly unaddicted to the practice of magical arts. After the fifth day of my journey, I no longer travelled over shifting hills, 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 was making. Hour by hour I advanced, and saw no change — I was still the very centre of a round horizon; hour by hour I advanced, and still there was the same, and the same, and the same — the same circle of flaming sky — the same circle of sand still glaring with light and fire. Over all the heaven above — over all the earth beneath, there was no visible power that could balk the fierce will of the sun ; " he rejoiced as a strong man to run a race ; his going forth was from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it ; and 142 EOTHEN. [chap. XVII. there was nothing hid from the heat thereof." From pole to pole, and from the East to the West, he brandished his fiery sceptre as though he had usurped all Heaven and Earth. As he bid the soft Persian in ancient times, so now, and fiercely, too, he bid me bow down and worship him ; so now in his pride he seemed to command me and say, " Thou shalt have none other gods but me." I was all alone before him. There were these two pitted together, and face ^o face — the mighty sun for one, and for the other — this poor, pale, solitary self of mine, that I always carry about with me. But on the eighth day, and before I had yet turned away from Jehovah for the glittering god of the Persians, there ap- peared a dark line upon the edge of the fonvard horizon, and soon the line deepened into a delicate fringe that sparkled here and there, as though it were sown with diamonds. There, then, before me were the gardens and the minarets of Egypt, and the mighty works of the Nile, and I (the eternal Ego that I am !) — I had lived to see, and I saw them. When evening came I was still within the confines of the desert, and my tent was pitched as usual, but one of my Arabs stalked away rapidly towards the West without telling me of the errand on which he was bent. After a while he returned ; he had toiled on a grateful service ; he had travelled all the way on to the border of the living world, and brought me back for token, an ear of rice, full, fresh, and green. The next day I entered upon Egypt, and floated along (for the delight was as the delight of bathing) through green, wavy fields of rice, and pastures fresh and plentiful, and dived into the cold verdure of groves and gardens, and quenched my hot eyes in shade, as though in deep rushing waters. CHAP. XVIII.] CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE. 143 CHAPTER XVIII. , wavy ed into CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE.* SaIRO and Plague ! During the whole time of my stay» the Plague was so master of the city, and showed him-* self so staringly in every street and every alley that I S can't now effect to dissociate the two ideas. ■^ When coming from the Desert, I rode through a vil- lage which lies near to the city on the eastern side, there approached me with busy face and earnest gestures, a personage: in the Turkish dress ; his long flowing beard gave him rather a. majestic look, but his briskness of manner and his visible- anxiety to accost me, seemed strange in an Oriental. The man,, in fact, was French or of French origin, and his object was to. warn me of the Plague and prevent me from entering the city. ArrUez-vouSy Monsieur, je vous en prie — arHtez-vous : il ne faut pas aitrer dans la ville ; la Peste y rlgne partout. Qui, je sais,^ mais * There is some semblance of bravado in my manner of talking about the Plague. I have been more careful to describe the terrors of other people than my own. The truth is, that during the whole period of my stay at Cairo, I remained thoroughly impressed with a sense of my danger. I may almost say that I lived in perpetual apprehension, for even in sleep, as I fancy, there remained with me some faint notion of the peril with which I was encompassed. But Fear does not necessarily damp the spirits ; on the contrary, it will often operate as au excitement, giving rise to unusual animation, and thus it affected me. If I had not been surrounded at this time by new faces, new scenes, and new sounds, the effect produced upon my mind by one unceasing cause of alarm mi^ht have been very differ- ent. As it was, the eagerness with which I pursued m/ rambles among the wonders of Egypt was sharpened and increased by the sting of the fear of Death. Thus my account of the matter plainly conveys an impression that I remained at Cairo without losing my cheerfulness and buoyancy of spirits. And this is the tmth, but it is also true, us I have freely confessed, that my sense of danger during the whole period was lively and continuous. A Anglici for "/^ le sais.^^ These answers of mine as given above, are not meant for specimens of mere French, but of that fine, terse, nervous, Continental English, with which I and my compatriots make our way '!• 144 EOTHEN. [chap. XVIII. Mais, Monsieur, je dis la Peste — la Peste ; c'est de La Peste guHl est question. Ouif je sais, mais Mais, Monsieur, je dis encore la Peste — la Peste. *ye vous conjure de ne pas entrer dans la ville — vous serez dans une ville empest&e. Oui, je sais, mais Mais, Monsieur, je dois done vous avertir tout bonnement que si vous entrez dans la ville, vous serez — enjin vouz serez CoM- PROMIS !t Oui, je sais, mais The Frenchman was at last convinced that it was vain to reason with a mere Englishman who could not understand what it was to be " compromised." I thanked him most sincerely for his kindly meant warning ; in hot countries it is very unusual indeed for a man to go out in 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, the owner of several houses, and would be able to provide me with apartments ; he had no difficulty in doing this, for there was not one European traveller in Cairo besides myself. Poor Osman ! he met me with a sorrowful counte- nance, for the fear of the Plague sat heavily on his soul ; he seemed as if he felt that he was doing wrong in lending me a resting-place, and he betrayed such a listlessness about temporal matters, as one might look for in a man who believed that his days were numbered. He caught me, too, soon after my arri- val, coming out from the public baths, J and from that time for- ward he was sadly afraid of me, for he shared the opinions of Europeans with respect to the effect of contagion. Osman's history is a curious one. He was a Scotchman through Europe. The language, by the by, is one possessing great force and energy, and is not without its literature — a literature of the very highest order. Where will you find more sturdy specimens of downright, honest, and noble English, than in the Duke of Wellington's '* French" despatches ? *The import of the word "compromised" when used in reference to contagion, is explained in page 2. + It is said that when a Mussulman finds himself attacked by the Plague, he goes and takes a bath. The couches on which the bathers recline would carry infection, according to the notion of the Europeans. Whenever, therefore, I took the bath at Cairo (except the first time of my dcing so), I avoided that part of the luxury which consists in being "put up to dry," upon a kind of bed. . XVIII. Peste ^(f votis ne ville ent que Z COM- vain to id what ;rely for unusual jive free di, who be able in doing besides counte- oul ; he ig me a emporal that his my arri- ;ime for- lions of Dtchman reat force ry highest it, honest, spatches ? erence to le Plague, ine would Whenever, :ing so), I 3 to dry," CHAP. XVIII.] CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE. 145 born, and when very young, being then a drummer-boy, he landed in Egypt with Mackensie Eraser's force. He was taken prisoner, and according to Mahometan custom, the alter- native of Death or the Koran was offered to him ; he did not choose Death, and therefore went through the ceremonies which were necessary for turning him into a good Mahometan. But what amused me most in his history was this — that very soon after having embraced Islam, he was obliged in practice to be- come curious and discriminating in his new faith — to make war upon Mahometan dissenters, and follow the orthodox standard of the Prophet in fierce campaigns against the Wahabees, who are the Unitarians of the Mussulman world. The Wahabees were crushed, and Osman returning home in triumph from his holy wars, began to flourish in the world ; he acquired property and became effendi, or gentleman. At the time of my visit to Cairo he seemed to be much respected by his brother Mahome- tans, and gave pledge of his sincere alienation from Christianity by keeping a couple of wives. He affected the same sort of reserve in mentioning them as is generally shown by Orientals. He invited me, indeed, to see his harem, but he made both his wives bundle out before I was admitted ; he felt, as it seemed to me, that neither of them would bear criticism, and I think that this idea, rather than any motives of sincere jealousy, in- duced him to keep them out of sight. The rooms of the harem reminded me of an English nursery, rather than of a Mahometan paradise. One is apt to judge of a woman, before one sees her, by the air of elegance or coarseness with which she surrounds her home ; I judged Osman's wives by this test, and condemned them both. But the strangest feature in Os- man's character was his inextinguishable nationality. In vain they had brought him over the seas in early boyhood — in vain had he suffered captivity, conversion, circumcision — in vain they had passed him through fire in their Arabian campaigns — they could not cut away or burn out poor Osman's inborn love of all that was Scotch ; in vain men called him Effendi — in vain he swept along in Eastern robes — in vain the rival wives adorn- ed his harem ; the joy of his heart still plainly lay in this, that he had thrc shelves of books, and that the books were thorough- bred Scotch — the Edinburgh this — the Edinburgh that, and above all, I recollect, he prided himself upon the '= Edinburgh Cabinet Library." 146 EOTHEN. [chap. XVIII. The fear of the Plague is its forerunner. It is likely enough that, at the time of my seeing poor Osman, the deadly taint was beginning to creep through his veins, but it was not till after 1 left Cairo that he was visibly stricken. He died. As soon as I had seen all that I wanted to see in Cairo, and in the neighbourhood, I wished to make my escape from a city that lay under the terrible curse of the Plague, but Mysseri fell ill in consequence, i believe, of the hardships which he had been suffering in my service ; after a while he recovered suffi- ciently to undertake a journey, but then there was some diffi- culty in procuring beasts of burthen, and it was not till 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 " by plague, out of a population of about 200,000, did not exceed four or five hundred, but before I went away the deaths were reckoned at twelve hundred a day. I had no means of knowing whether the numbers (given out, a? 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 dead was increasing. My quarters were in a street which was one of the chief thoroughfares of the city. The funerals in Cairo take place between day-break and noon, and as I was generally in my rooms during this part of the day, I could form some opinion as to the briskness of the Plague. I don't mean this for a sly insinuation that I got up every morning with the sun. It was not so, but the funerals of most people in decent cir- cumstances at Cairo are attended by singers and howlers, and the performances of these people woke me in the early morn- ing, and prevented me from remaining in ignorance of what was going on in the street below. These funerals were very simply conducted. The bier was a shallow wooden tray, carried upon a light and weak wooden frame. The tray had, in general, no lid, but the body was more or less hidden from view by a shawl or scarf The whole was borne upon the shoulders of men who contrived to cut along with their burthens at a great pace. T>\o or three singers generally precede the bier ; the howlers (who are paid for their vocal labours) followed after, and last of all came such of the dead man's friends and relations as could keep up with ^uch a rapid procession ; these, especially the women, would CHAP. XVIII.] CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE. 147 get terribly blowi, and would straggle back into the rear j many were fairly " beaten off." I never observed any appearance of mourning in the mourners ; the pace was too severe for any solemn affectation of grief. When first I arrived at Cairo, the funerals that daily passed under my windows were many, but still there were frequent and long intervals without a single howl. Every day, however, (except one, when I fancied that I observed a diminution of funerals) these intervals became less frequent, and shorter, and at last the passing of the howlers, from morn to noon, was almost incessant. I believe that about one half of the whole people was carried off by this visitation. The Orientals, how- ever, have more quiet fortitude than Europeans, under afflic- tions 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 were strewed over a great expanse, among the vast mountains of rubbish (the accumulations of many centuries) which surround the city. The ground, unlike the Turkish " cities of the dead," which are made so beautiful by their dark cypresses, has nothing to sweeten melancholy — nothing to mitigate the odiousness of death. Carnivorous beasts and birds possess the place by night, and now in the fair morning it was all alive with fresh comers — alive with dead. Yet at this very time, when the Plague was raging so furiously, and on this very ground which resounded so mournfully with the howls of arriving funerals, preparations were going on for the religious festival called the Kourban Bairam. Tents were pitched and swings hung for the amusement of children — a ghastly holiday ! but the Mahometans take a pride, and a just pride, in following their ancient customs undisturbed by the shadow of death. I did not hear whilst I was at Cairo that any prayer for a remission of the Plague had been offered up in the mosques. I believe that, however frightful the ravages of the disease may be, the Mahometans refrain from approaching Heaven with their complaints until the Plague has endured for a long space, and then at last they pray God, not that the Plague may cease, but that it may go to another city! A good Mussulman seems to take pride in repudiating the European notion that the will of God can be eluded by eluding the touch of a sleeve. When I went to see the Pyramids of I i H fiOfHEN. [cHAr. xvtit. Sakhara, I was the guest of a noble old fellow — an Osmanlee, whose soft rolling language it was a luxury to hear, after suf- fering as I had suffered of late from the shrieking tongue of the Arabs ; this man was aware of the European ideas about con- tagion, and his first care, therefore, was to assure me that not a single instance of Plague had occurred in his village ; he then inquired as to the progress of the Plague at Cairo — I had but a bad account to give. Up to this time my host had carefully re^ frained from touching me, out of respect to the Eufopettn theory of contagion, but as soon as it was made plaih that he, and not I, would be the person endangered by contact, he gently laid his hand upon my arm, in order to make me feel sure that the circumstance of my coming from an infected city did not occa- sion him the least uneasiness. That touch was worthy of Jove. Very different is the faith and the practice of the Europeans, or rather I mean of the Europeans settled in the East, and com- monly called Levantines. When I came to the end of my journey over the Desert, I had been so long alone that the pros- pect of speaking to somebody at Cairo seemed almost a new excitement. I felt a sort of consciousness that I had a little ot the wild beast about me, but I was quite in the humour to be charmingly tame, and to be quite engaging in my manners if I should have an opportunity of holding communion with any of the human race whilst at Cairo. I knew no one in the place, and had no letters of introduction, but I carried letters of credit, and it often happens in places remote from England that those " advices" operate as a sort of introduction, and obtain for the bearer (if disposed to receive them) such ordinary civili- ties as it may be in the power of the banker to offer. Very soon after my arrival I went to the house of the Levan- tine, to whom my 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 the citadel, that I was admitted. At length, however, I was conducted through the court and up a flight of stairs, and finally into the apart- ment where business was transacted. The room was divided by An excellent, substantial fence of iron bars, and behind this ^/•///^ the banker had his station. The truth was, that from fear of the Plague he had adopted the course usually taken by European residents, and had shut himself up " in strict quaran- CHAP. XVIII.] CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE. M9 to be ers if I any of place, ters of ,nd that obtain civili- tine," — that is to say, that he had, as he hoped, cut himself oft from all communication with infecting substances. The Euro- peans long resident in the East, without any, or with scarcely any exception, are firmly convinced that the Plague is propa- gated by contact and by contact only — that, if they can but avoid the touch of an infecting substance, they are safe, and, it they cannot, they die. This belief induces them to adopt the contrivance of putting themselves in that state of siege which they call " Quarantine." It is a part of their faith that metals and hempen rope, and also, I fancy, one or two other sub- stances will not carry the infection ; and they likewise believe that the germ of pestilence which lies in an infected substance, may be destroyed by submersion in water, or by the action of smoke. They therefore guard the doors of their houses with the utmost care against intrusion, and condemn themselves and all the members of their family, including any European servants, to a strict imprisonment within the walls of their dwelling. Their native attendants are not allowed to enter at all, but they make the, necessary purchases of provisions, which are hauled up through one of the windows by means of a rope, and are then soaked in water. I knew nothing of these mysteries, and was not therefore prepared for the sort of reception which I met with. I ad- vanced to the iron fence, and putting my letter between the bars, politely proffered it to Mr. Banker. Mr. Banker received me with a sad and dejected look, and not " with open arms," or with any arms at all, but with — a pair of tongs ! — I placed my letter between the iron fingers which picked it up as if it were a viper, and conveyed it away to be scorched and purified by fire and smoke. I was disgusted at this reception, and at the idea that anything of mine could carry infection to the poor wretch, who stood on the other side of the grille — pale and trembling, and already meet for Death. I looked with some- thing of the Mahometan's feeling upon these little contrivances for eluding Fate ; and in this instance at least they were vain ; a few more days and the poor money-changer, who had strived to guard the days of his life (as though they were coins) with bolts and bars of iron — he was seized by the Plague and he died. To people entertaining such opinions as these respecting the fatal effect of contact, the narrow and crowded streets of Cairo ISO EOTHEN. [chap. XVIIl. were terrible as the easy slope that leads to Avernus. The roaring Ocean and the beetling crags 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 he is with the dread of final causes, having no faith in Destiny, nor in the fixed will of God, and with none of the devil-may-care indifference which might stand him instead of creeds — to such an one every rag that shivers in the breeze of a Plague-stricken city has this sort of sublimity. If by any terrible ordinance he be forced to venture forth, he sees Death danghng from every sleeve, and as he creeps forward he poises his shuddering limbs between the imminent jacket that is stabbing at his right elbow and the mur- derous pelisse that threatens to mow him clean down, as it sweeps along on his left. But most of all he dreads that which most of all he should love — the touch of a woman's dress, for mothers and wives, hurrying forth on kindly errands from the bedsides of the dying, go slouching along through the streets more wilfully and less courteously than the men. For a while it may be that the caution of the poor Levantine may enable him to avoid contact, but sooner or later, perhaps, the dreaded chance arrives ; that bundle of linen, with the dark tearful eyes at the top of it, that labours along with the voluptuous clumsiness of Grisi — she has touched the poor Levantine with the hem of her sleeve ! from that dread moment his peace is gone ; his mind, for ever hanging upon the fatal touch, invites the blow which he fears ; he watches for the symptoms of Plague so carefully, that sooner or later they come in truth. The parched mouth is a sign — his mouth is parched ; the throbbing brain — his brain do^s throb ; the rapid pulse — he touches his own wrist — (for he dares not ask counsel of any man lest he be deserted) he touches his wrist, and feels how his frighted blood goes galloping out of his heart ; there is nothing but the fatal swelling that is wanting to make his sad conviction complete ; immediately he has an odd feel under the arm — no pain, but a little straining of the skin ; he would to God it were his fancy that were strong enough to give him that sensation ; this is the worst of all ; it now seems to him that he could be happy and contented with his parched mouth, and his throbbing brain and his rapid pulse, if only he could know that there were no swelling under the left arm ; but dare he try ? — in a moment of calmness and deliberation he dares not, but when for a while he has writhed under the torture r. XVIII. CHAF. XVIII.] CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE. iSi s. The of their ;ake the with the the fixed ifference ne every has this breed to 2, and as veen the the mur- vn, as it lat which Iress, for from the le streets • a while lable him :d chance es at the isiness ot em of her lis mind, which he fully, that outh is a brain does r he dares niches his out of his vanting to as an odd ' the skin ; enough to low seems s parched if only he t arm ; but eration he the torture of suspense, 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 the cuticle there lies a small lump like a pistol bullet that moves as he pushes it. Oh ! but is this for all cer- tainty, is this the sentence of death? feel the gland of the other arm ; there is not the same lump exactly, yet something a little like it ; have not some people glands naturally enlarged ? — would to Heaven he were one ! So he does for himself the work of the Plague, and when the Angel'of Death, thus courted, does indeed and in truth come, he has only to finish that which has been so well begun ; he passes his fiery hand over the brain of the vie- tim, and lets him rave for a season, but all chance-wise, of people and things once dear, or of people and things indifferent. Once more the poor fellow is back at his home in fair Provence and sees the sun-dial that stood in his childhood's garden — sees part of his mother, and the long-since-forgotten face of that little dead sister — (he sees her, he says, on a Sunday mom^ ing, for all the church bells are ringing) he looks up and down through the universe, and owns it well piled with bales upon bales of cotton, and cotton eternal — so much so, that he feels — he knows — he swears he could make that winning hazard, if the billiard table would 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, perhaps, the next night but one he becomes the " life and the soul " of some squalling jackal family, who fish him out by the foot from his shallow and sandy grave. Better fate was mine ; by some happy perverseness (occa- sioned perhaps by my disgust at the notion of being received with a pair of tongs) I took it into my pleasant head that all the turopean notions about contagion were thoroughly un- founded — that the Plague might be providential or " epidemic " (as they phrase it), but was not contagious, and that I could not be killed by the touch of a woman's sleeve, nor yet by her blessed breath. I therefore determined that the Plague should not alter my habits and amusements in any one respect. Though I came to this resolve from impulse, I think that I took the course which was in effect the most prudent, for the cheerfulness of spirits, which I was thus enabled to retain, dis- couraged the yellow-winged Angel, and prevented him from I5» EOTHEN. [chap. XXllI, taking a shot at me. I however so far respected the opinior of the Europeans, that I avoided touching, when I could do so without privation or inconvenience. This endeavour fur- nished me with a sort of amusement as I passed through the streets. The usual mode of moving from place to place in the city of Cairo is upon donkeys, of which great numbers are always in readiness, with donkey-boys attached. I had two who constantly /until one of them died of the Plague) waited at my door upon tne chance of being wanted. I found this way of moving about exceedingly pleasant, and never attempted any other. I had only to mount my beast, and tell my donkey-boy the point for which I was bound, and instantly I began to glide on at a capital pace. The streets of Cairo are not paved in any way, but strewed with a dry sandy soil, so deadening to sound that the foot-fall 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 the donkey-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 on delight- fully in the very midst of crowds, without being inconvenienced or stopped for a moment ; it seems to you that it is not the donkey but the v' nkey-boy who wafts you on with his shouts through pleasant groups, and air that feels thick with the fra- grance of burial spice. '■^Eh! Sheik^ — Eh! Bmt, — raggalek — shumaiek, &c., &c. — O old man, O virgin, get out of the way on the right — O virgin, O old man, get out of the way on the left, — this Englishman comes, he comes, he comes !" The narrow alley which these shouts cleared for my passage made it possible, though difficult, to go on for a long way without touching a single person, and my endeavours to avoid such contact were a sort of game for me in my loneliness, which was not without interest. If I got through a street without being touched, I won ; if I was touched, I lost, — lost a deuce of a stake, according to the theory of the Europeans, but that I deemed to be all 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, but I saw one handsome mosque, to which an instruc- tive history is attached. A Hindostanee merchant having amassed an immense fortune, settled in Cairo, and soon found CHAP. XVIII.] CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE. J53 that his riches in the then state of the political world gave him vast power in the city — power, however, the exercise of which was much restrained by the counteracting influence of other wealthy men. With a view to extinguish every attempt at rivalry, the Hindostanee merchant built this magnificent mosque, at his own expense ; when the work was complete, he inyited all the leading men of the city to join him in prayer within the walls of the newly built temple, and he then caused to be mas- sacred all those who were sufficiently influential to cause him any jealousy or uneasiness — in short, all "the respectable men" of the place ; after this he possessed undisputed power in the city, and was greatly revered — he is revered to this day. It seemed to me that there was a touching simplicity in the mode which this man so successfully adopted for gaining the confi- dence and good-will of his fellow-citizens. There seems to be some improbability in the story (though not nearly so gross as it might appear to an European ignorant of the East, for wit- ness Mehemet Ali's destruction of the Mamelukes, a closely similar act and attended with the like brilliant success*), but even if the story be false, as a mere fact it is perfectly true as an illustration — it is a true exposition of the means by which the respect and affection of Orientals may be conciliated. I ascended one day to the citadel, which commands a superb view of the town. The fanciful and elaborate gilt-work of the many minarets gives a light and florid grace to the city as seen from this height, but before you can look for many seconds at such things, your eyes are drawn westward — drawn westward, and over the Nile, till they rest with a heavy stare upon the massive enormities of the Ghizeh pyramids. I saw within the fortress many yoke of men, all haggard and wo-begone, and a kennel of very fine lions well fed and flourishing ; I say yoke of men, for the poor fellows were working together in bonds ; I say a kenne/ of lions j for the beasts were not enclosed in cages, but simply chained up like dogs. I went round the Bazaars ; it seemed to me that pipes and arms were cheaper here than at Constantinople, and I should advise you therefore, if you go to both places, to prefer the market of Cairo. I had previously bought several of such things at Constantinople, and did not choose to encumber my- * Mehemet AH invited the Mamelukes to a feast, and murdered them in the Banquet Hall. 154 EOTHEN. [chap. xvhi. self, or, to speak more honestly, I did not choose to disencum- ber my purse by making any more purchases. In the open slave-market, I saw about fifty girls exposed for sale, but all of them black, or " invisible" brown. A slave agent took me to some rooms in the upper story of the building, and also into several obscure houses in the neighbourhood, with a view to show me some white women. The owners raised various ob- jections to the display of their ware, and well they might, for I had not the least notion of purchasing; some refused on account of the illegality of the proceeding,* and others declared that all transactions of this sort were completely out of the question as long as the Plague was raging. I only succeeded in seeing one white slave who was for sale, but on this one the owner affected to set an immense value, and raised my expectations to a high pitch, by saying that the girl was Circassian, and was " fair as the full moon." After a good deal of delay, I was at last led into a room, at the farther end of which was that mass of white linen which indicates an Eastern women ; she was bid to un- cover her face, and I presently saw that, though very far from being good-looking according to my notion of beauty, she had not been inaptly described by the man who compared her to the full moon, for her large face was perfectly round and perfectly white. Though very young, she was nevertheless extremely fat. She gave me the idea of having been got up for sale — of having been ft ttened and whitened by medicines, or by some peculiar diet. I was firmly determined not to see any more of her than the face ; she was perhaps disgusted at this my virtuous resolve, as well as with my personal appearance — perhaps she saw my distaste and disappointment ; perhaps she wished to gain favour with her owner, by showing her attachment to his faith ; at all events she hollooed out very lustily 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 of the Magicians, who may be considered as it were the descendants of those who contended so stoutly against the superior power of Aaron. I therefore sent for an old man who was held to be the chief of the Magicians, and desired him to show me the wonders of his art, The old man looked and dressed his character exceedingly well ; the vast turban, the flowing beard, and the ample robes, were all that one could wish ^ Jt is not strictly lawful to sell ivhi:e slaves to a Christian, CHAP. XVIII.] CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE. 155 in the way ot appearance. The first experiment (a very stale one), which he attempted to perform for me, was that of attempting to show the forms and faces of my absent friends, not to me, but to a boy brought i,. from the streets for the pur- pose, and said to be chosen at random. A mangale (pan ot burning charcoal) was brought into my room, and the Magician bending over it, sprinkled upon the fire some substances which must have consisted partly of spices, or sweetly burning woods, for immediately a fragrant smoke arose, which curled round the bending form of the Wizard the while that he pronounced his first incantation ; when these were over, the boy was made to sit down, and a common green shade was bound over his brow j then the Wizard took ink, and still continuing his incantations, wrote certain mysterious figures upon the boy's palm, and directed him to rivet his attention to these marks, without look- ing aside for an instant ; again the incantations proceeded, and after a while the boy being seemingly a little agitated was asked whether he saw anything on the palm of his hand ; he declared that he saw a kind of military procession with flags and banners, which he described rather minutely. 1 was then called upon to name the absent person whose form was to be made visible. I named Keate. You were not at Eaton, and I must tell you, therefore, what manner of man it was that I named, though I think you must have some idea of him already, for wherever from utmost Canada to Bundelcund — wherever there was the white-washed wall of an officer's room, or of any other apartment in which English gentlemen are forced to kick their heels, there, likely enough (in the days of his reign), the head of Keate would be seen scratched, or drawn with those various degrees of skill which one observes in the representa- tions of Saints. Anybody, without the least notion of drawing, could still draw a speaking, nay scolding likeness of Keate. If you had no pencil, you could draw him well enough with a poker, or the leg of a chair, or the smoke of a candle. 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 the pluck often battalions. He had a really roble voice, which he could modulate with great skill, but he had also the power of quack- ing like an angry duck, and he almost always adopted this mode of communication in order to inspire respect ; he was a capital scholar, but his ingenious learning had not " soXten^d hi$ man-i '•t^W:TV'J"»" 156 EOTHEN. -TTl-^frnnwrV^-, " ;,-,-v-T • [chap, xviii. WW ners," and /lad "permitted them to be fierce" — tremendously fierce ; he had the most complete command over his temper — I mean over his gooci temper, which he scarcely ever allowed to appear ; you could not put him out of humour — that is, out of the ///-humour which he thought to be fitting for a head master. His red, shaggy eye-brows were so prominent, that he habitu- ally used them as arms and hands, for the purpose of pointing out any object towards which he wished to direct attention ; the rest of his features were equally striking in their way, and were all and all his own ; he wore a fancy dress, partly resemb- ling the costume of Napoleon, and partly that of a widow woman. I could not by any possibility have named anybody more decidedly differing in appearance from the rest of the human race. "Whom do you name?" — "I name John Keate." — "Now, what do you see?" said the Wizard to the boy. — "I see," answered the boy, " I see a fair girl with golden hair, blue eyes, pallid face, rosy lips." T/iere was a shot ! I shouted out my laughter to the horror of the Wizard, who, perceiving the gross- ness of his failure, declared that the boy must have known sin (for none but the innocent can see truth), and accordingly kicked him down stairs. One or two other boys were tried, but' none could "see truth ;" they all made sadly " bad shots." Notwithstanding the failure of these experiments, I wished to see what sort of mummery my Magician would practise, if I called upon him to show me some performances of a higher order than those which had been attempted ; I therefore entered into a treaty with him, in virtue of which iie was to descend with me into the tombs near the Pyramids, and there 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, and the Wizard, on his part, manfully stuck up for his price, declaring that to raise the Devil was really no joke, and insinu- ating that to do so was an awesome crime. I let Dthemetri have his way in the negotiation, but I felt in reality very indiffer- ent about the sum to be paid, and for this reason, namely, that the payment (except a very small present, which I might make, or not, as I chose) was to be contingent on success. At length 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 two pounds ten, play or pay — no Devil, no piastres. CHAP. XVIII.] CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE. «S7 it see The Wizard failed to keep his appointment. I sent to know why the deuce he had not come to raise the Devil. The truth was, that my Mahomet had gone to the mountain. The Plague had seized him, and he died. Although the Plague had now spread terrible havoc around him, I did not see very plainly any corresponding change in the looks of the streets until the seventh day after my arrival ; I then first observed that the city was silenced. There were no outward signs of Despair, nor of violent terror, but many of the voices that had swelled the busy hum of men were already hushed in death, and the survivors, so used to scream and screech in their earnestness whenever they bought or sold, now showed an unwonted indifference about the affairs of this world ; it was less worth while for men to haggle, and haggle, and crack the sky with noisy bargains, when the Gr?at Commander was there, who could " pay all their debts with the roll of his drum." At this time (the year was 1835), I was informed that of twenty-five thousand people at Alexandria, twelve thousand had died already ; the Destroyer had come rather 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, but the calmness of Orientals under such visitations, and the habit ot using biers for interment instead of burying coffins along with the bodies, rendered it practicable to dispose of the Dead in the usual way, without shocking the people by any unaccustomed spectacle of horror. There was no tumbling of bodies into carts, as in the Plague of Florence and the Plague of London ; every man, according to his station was properly buried, and that in the usual way, except that he went to his grave at a more hurried pace than might have been adopted under ordi- nary circumstances. The funerals, which poured through the streets, were not the only public evidence of death. In Cairo this custom prevails ; at the instant of a man's death (if his property is sufficient to justify the expense), professional howlers are employed ; I be- lieve that these persons are brought near to the dying man, when his end appears to be approaching, and, the moment that life is gone, they lift up their voices, and send forth a loud wail from the chamber of Death. Thus I knew when my near neighbours died ; sometimes the howls were near ; sometimes more distant. Once I was awakened in the night by the wail 158 EOTHEN. [CHAP. XVI n. I «•!•■ of death in the next house, and another time by a like howl from the house opposite ; and there were two or three minutes, I recollect, during which the howl seemed to be actually run- ning along the street. I happened to be rather teazed at this time by a sore throat, and thought it would be well to get it cured, if I could, before I again started on my travels. I therefore inquired for a Frank doctor, and was informed that the only otie then at Cairo was a young Bolognese Refugee, who was so poor that he had not been able to take flight, as the other medical men had done. At such a time as this, it was out of the question to send for an European physician ; a person thus summoned would be sure to suppose that the patient was ill of the Plague, and would decline to come. I therefore rode to the young Doctor's residence : after experiencing some little difficulty in finding where to look for him, I ascended a flight or two of stairs, and knocked at his door. No one came immediately, but after some little delay the Medico himself opened the door and admitted me. I, of course, made him understand that I had come to consult him, but before enteung upon my throat grievance, I accepted a chair, and exchanged a sentence or two of common-place con- versation. Now, the natural common-place of the city at this season was of a gloomy sort — " Comment va la peste V^ (how goes the plague ?) and this was precisely the question I put. A deep sigh, and the words " Sette cento per giorno^ Signor" (seven hundred a day), pronounced in a tone of the deepest sadness and dejection, were the answer I received. The day was not oppressively hot, yet I saw that the Doctor was transpiring pro- fusely, and even the outside surface of the thick shawl dressing- igown, in which he had wrapped himself, appeared to be moist ; he was a handsome, pleasant looking young fellow, but the deep melancholy of his tone did not tempt me to prolong the con- versation, and without further delay I requested that my throat might be looked at The Medico held my chin in the usual "way, and examined my throat ; he then wrote me a prescription, and almost immediately afterwards I bid him farewell, but as he conducted me towards the door I observed an expression of strange and unhappy watchfulness in his rolling eyes. It was not the next day, but the next day but one, if I rightly remem- ber, that I sent to request another interview with my Doctor ; in due time Dthemetri, who was my messenger, returned, look- ^■TW -■n' CHAP. XVIII.] CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE. 159 ing sadly aghast — he had " mei the Medico," for so he phrased it, " coming out from his house — in a bier !" It was of course plain that when the poor Bolognese was look- ing at my throat, and almost mingling his breath with mine, he was stricken of the Plague. I suppose that the violent sweat in which I found him, had been produced by some medicine which he must have taken in the hope of curing himself. The pecu- liar rolling of the eyes which I had remarked, is, I believe, to experienced observers, a pretty sure tc?t of the Plague. A Russian acquaintance of mine, speaking from the information of men who had made the Turkish campaigns of 1828 and 1829, told me that by this sign the officers of Sabalkansky's force were able to make out the Plague-stricken soldiers with a good deal of certainty. It so happened that most of the people with whom I had anything to do, during 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, and was about to start again for another long journey over the Desert, there were of course many little matters touching my wardrobe, and my travelling equipments, which required to be attended to whilst I remained in the city. It happened so many times that Dthemetri's orders in respect to these matters were frustrated by the deaths of the tradespeople, and others whom he employed, that at last I became quite accustomed to the peculiar manner which he assumed when he prepared to announce a new death to me. The poor fellow naturally supposed that I should feel some un- easiness at hearing of the *' accidents" which happened to per- sons employed by me, and he therefore communicated their deaths, as though they were the deaths of friends ; he would cast down his eyes, and look like a man abashed, and then gently, and with a mournful gesture allow the words, " Morto, Signor" to come through his lips. I don't know how many of such instances occurred, but they were several, and besides these (as I told you before), my banker, my doctor, my land- lord, and my magician, all died of the Plague. A lad who acted as a helper in the house which I occupied, lost a brother and a sister within a few hours. , Out of my two established donkey- boys one died. I did not hear of any instance in which a plague-stricken patient had recovered. Going out one morning, I met unexpectedly the scorching i6o EOTHEN. [chap. XVIII. breath of the Khamseen wind, and fearing that I should faint under the horrible sensations which it caused, I returned to my rooms. Reflecting, however, that I might have to encounter this wind in the desert, where there would be no possibility of avoiding it, I thought it would be better to brave it once more in the city, and to try whether I could really bear it or not. I therefore mounted my ass, and rode to old Cairo, and along the gardens by the banks of the Nile. The wind was hot to the touch as though it came from a furnace ; it blew strongly, but yet with such perfect steadiness, that the trees bending under its force remained fixed in the same curves without perceptibly waving ; the whole sky was obscured by a veil of yellowish grey, which 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 the blood, closes up the pores of the skin, and is terribly distressing, therefore, to every animal that encounters it. I returned to my rooms dreadfully ill. My head ached with a burning pain, and my pulse bounded quick, and fitfully, but perhaps (as in the in- stance of the poor Levantine, whose death I was mentioning), the fear and excitement which I felt in trying my own wrist, may have made my blood flutter the faster. It is a thoroughly well believed theory, that during the con- tinuance of the Plague, you can't be ill of any other febrile malady ; an unpleasant privilege that ! for ill I was, and ill of fever, and I anxiously wished that the ailment might turn out to be anything rather than Plague. I had some right to sur- mise that my illness may have been merely the effect of the hot wind, and this notion was encouraged by the elasticity of my spirits, and by a strong forefeeling that much of my destined life in this world was yet to come, and yet to be fulfilled. That was my instinctive belief, but when I carefully weighed the pro- babilities on the one side, and on the other, I could not help seeing that the strength of argument 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 people who had been dying around me. Besides, it occurred to me that, after all, the universal opinion of the Europeans upon a medical ques- tion, such as that of contagion, might probably be correct ; and, if it wcre^ I was so thoroughly " compromised," and especially by the touch and breath of the dying Medico, that I had no CHAP, xvin.] CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE. i6i right to expect any other fate than that which now seemed to have overtaken me. Balancing, as well as I could, all the con siderations which hope and fear suggested, I slowly and reluc- tantly came to the conclusion that, according to all merely reasonable probability, the Plague had come upon me. You would suppose that this conviction would have induced me to write a few farewell lines to those who were dearest, and that, having done that, I should have turned my thoughts to^ wards the world to come. Such, however, was not the case ; I believe that the prospect of death often brings with it strong anxieties about matters of comparatively trivial import, and certainly with me the whole energy of the mind was directed towards the one petty object of concealing my illness until the latest possible moment — until the delirious stage. I did not believe that either Mysseri, or Dthemetri, who had served me so faithfully in all trials, would have deserted me (as most Eu- ropeans are wont to do) when they knew that I was stricken by the Plague, but I shrank from the idea of putting them to this test, and I dreaded the consternation which the knowledge of my illness would be sure to occasion. I was very ill indeed at the moment when my dinner was served, and my soul sickened at the sight of the food, but I had luckily the habit of dispensing with the attendance of ser- vants during my meal, and as soon as I was left alone, I made a melancholy calculation of the quantity of food which I should have eaten if I had been in my usual health, and filled my plates accordingly, and gave myself salt, and so on, as though I were going to dine ; I then transferred the viands to a piece of the omnipresent " Times " newspaper, and hid them away in a cupboard, for it was yet not night, and I dared not throw the food into the street until darkness came. I did not at all relish this process of fictitious dining, but at length the cloth was removed, and I gladly reclined on my divan (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 not order it until the usual hour. When at last the time came, I drank deep draughts from the fragrant cup. The effect was almost instantaneous. A plenteous sweat burst through my skin, and watered my clothes through and through, I kept myself thickly covered. The hot, tormenting weight which had been loading my brain was slowly heaved away. III l62 EOTHEN. ICHAP. XVllI. The fever was extinguished. I felt a new buoyancy of spirits, and an unusual activity of mind. I went into my bed under a load of thick covering, and when the morning came, and I asked myself how I was, I found that I was thoroughly well. I was ver}' anxious to procure, if possible, some medical ad- vice for Mysseri, whose illness prevented my departure. Every one of the European practising doctors, of whom there had been many, had either died or fled ; it was said, however, that there was an Englishman in the medical service of the Pasha, who quietly remained at his post, but that he never engaged in private practice. I determined to try if I could obtain assis- tance in this quarter. I did not venture at first, and at such a time as this, to ask him to visit a servant who was prostrate on the bed of sickness, but thinking that I might thus gain an op- portunity of persuading him to attend Mysseri, I wrote a note, mentioning my own affair of the sore throat, and asking for the benefit of his medical advice ; he instantly followed back my messenger, and was at once shown up into my room ; I entreated him to stand off", telling him fairly how deeply I was "com- promised," and especially by my contact with a person actually ill, and since dead of the Plague. The generous fellow, with a good-humoured laugh at the terrors of the contagionists, marched straight up to me, and forcibly seized my hand, and shook it with manly violence. I felt grateful indeed, and swelled with fresh pride of race, because that my countryman could carry himself so nobly. He soon cured Mysseri, as well as me, and all this he did from no other motives than the pleas- ure of doing a kindness, and the delight of braving a danger. At length the great difficulty* which I had had in procuring beasts for my departure was overcome, and now, too, I was to have the new excitement of travelling on dromedaries. With two of these beasts, and three 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, who stretched forth his arms, and lifted up his voice in a speech which seemed to have some reference to me ; requiring an interpretation, I found that the man had said, " The Pasha seeks camels, and he finds them not — the Englishman says, * let camels be brought,' and behold — there they are !" ♦ The difficulty was occasioned by the immense exertions which the Pasha was making to collect camels for military purposes. p. XVIII. CHAP. XVIII.] CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE. «63 spirits, d under 2, and I well, lical ad- Every ere had ver, that e Pasha, gaged in lin assis- it such a strate on in an op- e a note, Lg for the back my entreated as "com- 1 actually )W, with a ;agionists, land, and eed, and untryman ri, as well le pleas- danger, procuring I was to s. With d my way ough the stretched ;h seemed etation, I Is, and he brought,' I no sooner breathed thq free, wholesome air of the desert, than I felt that a great burthen, v/hich I had been scarcely con- scious of bearing, was lifted away from my mind. For nearly three weeks I had lived under peril of death ; the peril ceased, and not till then did I know how much alarm and anxiety I had really been suffering. [|i ;h the Pasha 104 EOTHEN [chap. X-IX. s ■«.; CHAPTER XIX. THE PYRAMIDS. WENT to see, and to explore the Pyramids. Familiar to one from the days of early childhood are the foims of the Egyptian Pyramids, and now, as I ^^ approached them from the banks of the Nile, I had no ^ print, no picture before me, and yet the old shapes were there ; there was no change ; they were just as I had always known then: I straightened myself in my stirrups, and strived to persuade my understanding that this was real Egypt, and that those angles which stood up between me and the West were of harder stuff, and more ancient than the paper pyramids of the green portfolio. Yet it was not till I came to the base of the great Pyramid, that reality began to weigh upon my mind. Strange to say, the bigness of the distinct blocks of stone was the first 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 order that by climbing I might come to the top of one single stone, then, and almost suddenly, a cold sense and understanding of the Pyramid's enormity came down overcasting my brain. Now try to endure this homely, sick-nursish illustration of the effect produced upon one's mind by the mere vastness of the great Pyramid : when I was very young (between the ages, I believe, of three and five years old), being then of delicate health, I was often in time of night the victim of a strange kind of mental oppression ; I lay in my bed perfectly conscious, and with open eyes, but without power to speak, or to move, nd all the while my brain was oppressed to distraction by the presence of a single and abstract idea, — the idea of solid Im- mensLy. It seemed to me in my agonies, thai the horror of this visitation arose from its coming upon me without fomi or shape — that the closf. presence of the direst monster ever bred in Hell would have been a thousand times more tolerable than that 'i T. XIX. CHAP. XIX.] THE PYRAMIDS. 165 ood are V, as I had no )es were i always d strived ^pt, and he West jyramids e base of ny mind, tone was y of the with my come to a cold ne down on of the ss of the le ages, I delicate nge kind ious, and love, nd n by the solid Im- or of this or shape d m Hell than that simple idea of solid size ; my aching mind was fixed, and riveted down upon the mere quality of vastness, vastness, vastness ; and was not permitted to invest with it any particular object. If I could have done so, the torment would have ceased. When at last I was roused from this state of suffering, I could not of course in those days (knowing no verbal metaphysics, and no metaphysics at all, except by the dreadful experience of an abstract idea), I could not of course find words to describe the nature of my sensations, and even now I cannot explain why it is that the forced contemplation of a mere quality, distinct from matter, should be so terrible. Well, now my eyes saw and knew, and my hands and my feet informed my understanding that there was nothing at all abstract about the great Pyramid, — it was a big triangle, sufficiently concrete, easy to see, and roMgh to the touch ; it could not, of course, affect me with the per:uliar sensation which I have been talking of, but yet there was something akin to that old night-mare agony in the terrible completeness with which a mere mass of masonry could fill and load my mind. ' And Time too ; the remoteness of its origin, no less than the enormity of its proportions, screens an Egyptian Pyramid from the easy and familiar contact of our modern minds ; at its base the common Earth ends, and all above is a world — one not created of God, — not seeming to be made by men's hands, but rather the sheer giant work of some old dismal age weighing down this younger planet Fine sayings ! but the truth seems to be, after r.ll, that the Pyramids are quiie of this world ; that they were piled up into the air for the realization of some kingly crotchets about immor- tality, — some priestly longing for burial fees ; and that as for the building — they were built like coral rocks by swarms of in- sects — by swarms of poor Egyptians, who were not only the abject tools and slaves of power, but who also eat onions for the reward of their immortal labours !* The Pyramids are quite of this world. I of course ascended to the sunjmit of the great Pyramid, and also explored its chambers, buL these I need not describe. The first time ♦;hat I went to the Pyramids of Ghizeh, there were a number of Arabs hanging about in its neighbourhood, * Herodotus, in an after age, stooc' by with his note book and |;ot, as he thought, the exact returns of all tiie rations served out. Jij 11 i66 EOTHEIS. [chap. XIX. and wanting to receive presents on various pretences ; their Sheik was with them. There was also present an ill looking fellow in soldier's uniform. This man, on my departure, claimed a reward, on the ground that he had maintained order and de- corum amongst the Arabs ; his claim was not considered valid by my Dragoman, and was rejected accordingly : my donkey- boys afterwards said they had overheard this fellow propose to the Sheik to put me to death whilst I was in the interior of the great Pyramid, and to share with him the booty ; fancy a strug- gle for life in one of those burial chambers, with acres and acres of solid masonry between oneself and the daylight ! I felt exceedingly glad that I had not made the rascal a present. I visited the very Ancient Pyramids of Abouckir and Sakha- ra ; there are many of these, and of various shapes and sizes, and it struck me that taken together they might be considered as showing the progress and perfection (such as it is) of Pyra- midical Architecture. One ot the Pyramids at Sakhara is al- most a rival for the full grown monster of Ghizeh ; others are scarcely more than vast heaps of brick and stone ; these last suggested to me the idea that after all the Pyramid is nothing more nor less than a variety of the sepulchral mound so com- mon in most countries (including I believe Hindostan, from whence the Egyptians are supposed to have come). Men ac- customed to raise these structures for their dead Kings, or con- querors, would carry the usage with them in their migrations, but arriving in Egypt, and seeing the impossibility of finding earth sufficiently tenacious for a mound, they would approxi- mate as nearly as might be to their ancient custom by raising up a round heap of these stones, — in short, conical pyramids ; of these there are several at Sakhara, and the materials of some are thrown together without any order or regularity. The transition from this simple form to that of the square angular pyramid was easy and natural, and it seemed to me that the gradations through which the style passed from infancy up to its mature enormity, could plainly be traced at Sakhara. [AP. XIX. s ; their looking claimed and de- ed valid donkey- Dpose to )r of the a strug- cres and ight ! I present, d Sakha- nd sizes, insidered of Pyra- ara is al- thers are hese last 3 nothing so com- an, from Men ac- or con- igrations, if finding approxi- )y raising yramids ; 5 of some The angular 2 that the y up to its CHAP. XX.] THE SPHYNX. CHAPTER XX. THE SPHYNX. )ND near the Pyramids, more wondrous, and more awful than all else in the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphynx. Comely the creature is, but the comeliness is not of this world ; the once worshipped beast is a deformity and a monster to this generation, and yet you can see that those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some ancient mould of beauty — some mould of beauty now forgotten — forgotten because that Greece drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the ^gean, and in her image created new forms of beauty, and made it a law among men that the short and proudly wreathed lip should stand for the sign and (he main condition of loveliness, through all genera- tions to come. Yet still there lives on the race of those who were beautiful in the fashion of the elder world, and Christian girls of Coptic blood will look on you with the sad, serious gaze, and kiss your charitable hand with the big, pouting lips of the very Sphynx. Laugh, and mock if you will at the worship of stone idols, but mark ye this, ye breakers of images, that in one regard, the stone idol bears awful semblance of Deity — unchangeful- ness in the midst of change — the same seeming will and intent for ever and ever inexorable ! Upon ancient dynasties of Ethiopian and Egyptian Kings, upon Greek and Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors — upon Napoleon dreaming of an Eastern Empire — upon battle and pestilence — upon the ceaseless misery of the Egyptian race — upon keen-eyed travel- lers — Herodotus yesterday, and Warburton * to-day — upon all, and more this unworldly Sphynx has wat :hed, and watched like * Eliot Warburton, who is known to be the author of those brilliantly sparkling papers, "Episodes of Eastern Travel," which lit up our last November, capital. His book ("The Crescent and the Cross ")^must, and will be I6S EOTHEN. [chap. XX. a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil mien. And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the Englishman, leaning far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile, and sit in the seats of the Faithful, and still that sleepless rock will lie watching and watching the works of the new, busy race, with those same sad, earnest eyes, and the same tranquil mien ever- lasting. You dare not mock at the Sphynx. CHAP. XXI.] CAIRO TO SUEZ. 169 CHAPTER XXI. CAIRO TO SUEZ. |HE "Dromedary" of Egypt and Syria is not the two- humped animal described by that name in books ot natural history, but is in fact of the same family as the camel, to which it stands in about the same relation as a racer to a cart-horse. The fleetness and endurance of this creature are extraordinary. It is not usual to force him into a gallop, and I fancy from his make that it would be quite impossible for him to maintain that pace for any length of time, but the animal is on so large a scale that the jog-trot at which he is generally ridden implies a progress of perhaps ten or twelve miles an hour, and this pace, it is said, he can keep up incessantly without food, or water, or rest, for three whole days and nights. Of the two dromedaries which I had obtained for this journey, I mounted one myself, and put Dthemetri on the other. My plan was to ride on with Dthemetri to Suez as rapidly as the fleetness of the beasts would allow, and to let Mysseri (who was still weak from the effects of his late illness) 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 t^e first half hour I so far schooled myself to this new exercise, that I felt cappble of keeping it up (though not without aching limbs) for sev'eral hours together. Now, therefore, I was anxi- ous to dart forward, and annihilate at 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 trot seemed to threaten the utter dislocation of his whole frame, and indeed I doubt whether any one of Dthemetri's age (nearly forty I think) and unaccustomed to such exercise, could have borne it at all easily ; besides, the dromedary which fell to his lot was evi- dently a very bad one ; he every now and then came to a dead stop, and coolly knelt down as though suggesting that the rider i Ml 170 EOTHEN, [CHAP, XXI. had better get off at once, and abandon the attempt as one that was utterly hopeless. When for the third or fourth time I saw Dthemetri thus planted, I lost my patience, and went on without him. For about two hours, I think, I advanced without once looking behind me. I then paused, and cast my eyes back to the western horizon. There was no sign of Dthemetri, nor of any other living creature. This I expected, for I knew that I must have far out-distanced all my followers. I had ridden away from my party merely by way of gratifying my impatience, and with the intention of stopping as soon as I felt tired, until I was overtaken. I now observed, however (which I had not been able to do whilst advancing so rapidly), that the track which I had been following was seemingly the track of only one or two camels. I did not fear that I had diverged very largely from the true route, but still I could not feel any real certainty that my party would follow any line of march within sight of me. I had to consider, therefore, whether I should remain where I was, upon the 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 upon the 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 I thought that, although I might miss the line leading most directly to Suez, I could not well fail to find my way sooner or later to the Red Sea. The worst of it was that I had no' provi- sion of food or water with me, and already I was beginning to feel thirst. I deliberated for a minute, and then determined that I would abandon all hope of seeing my party again in the desert, and would push forward as rapidly as possible towards Suez. It was not, I confess, without a sensation of awe that I swept with my sight the vacant round of the horizon, and remembered that I was all alone and unprovisioned in the midst of the arid waste ; but this very awe gave tone and zest to the exultation with which I felt myself launched. Hitherto, in all my wander- ings I had been under the care of other people — sailors, Tatars, guides and Dragomen had watched over my welfare, but now, at last, I was here in this African desert, and I myself, and no other, had charge of 7ny life; I liked the office well ; I had the great- est part of the day before me, a very fau: dromedary, fur pelisse, l\V. XXI. CHAP. XXI.] CAIRO TO SUEZ. 171 one that etri thus im. For looking ;k to the or of any at I must Lway from and with itil I was not been k which I )ne or two rgely from tainty that it of me. nain where Dine up, or o Suez. I continued e right) the lairo, and I iding most r sooner or d no- provi- eginning to determined igain in the ble towards that I swept emembered of the arid e exultation my wander- ilors, Tatars, but now, at '.nd no other, id the great- ', fur pelisse, and a brace of pistols, but no bread, and no water ; 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 tor- ment me. I did not relax my pace, however, and I had not suffered long, when a moving object appeared in the distance before me. The intervening space was soon traversed, and I found myself approaching a Bedouin Arab mounted on a camel attended by another Bedouin on foot. They stopped. I saw that, as usual, there hung from the pack-saddle of the camel, a large skin water-flask which seemed to be well filled ; I steered my dromedary close up alongside of the mounted Bedouin, caused my beast to kneel down, then alighted, and keeping the end of the halter in my hand, went up to the mounted Bedouin without speaking, took hold of his water-flask, opened it, and drank long and deep from its leathern lips. Both of the Be- douins stood fast in amazement and mute horror, and really if they had never happened to see an European before, the ap- parition was enough to startle them. To see for the first time a coat and a waistcoat with the pale semblance of a human head at the top, and for this ghastly figure to come swiftly out of the horizon, upon a fleet dromedary — approach them silently, and with a demoniacal smile, and drink a deep draught from their water-flask — this was enough to make the Bedouins stare a lit- tle : they, in fact, stared a great deal — not as Europeans stare, with a restless and puzzled expression of countenance, but with features all fixed, and rigid, and with still, glassy eyes ; before they had time to get decomposed from their state of petrifac- tion, I had remounted my dromedary, and was darting away towards the East. Without pause, or remission of pace, I continued to press for- ward, but after a while, I found to my confusion, that the slight track, which had hitherto guided me, now failed altogether: 1 be- gan to fear that I must have been all along following the course of some wandering Bedouins, and I felt that if this were the case, my fate was a little uncertain. To comfort myself, I be- gan to nurse up a theory that death by thirst was not so terri- ble as inexperienced people were apt to imagine. (Say what you will, there is comfort in theories ; some of the repudiating Americans of the United States entertain a theory that they are distinguishable from common swindlers, and the national pride li I' .11 172 EOTHEN. [chap. xxr. 13? r,i of the " young Republic" is wholly supported by the indul- gence of this singular fancy). I had no compass with me, but I determined upon the east- em point of the horizon as accurately as I could, by reference to the sun, and so laid down 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 of foam gathered about her lips, and piteous sobs burst from her bosom in the tones of human misery ; I doubted for a moment, whether I would give her a httle rest, or relaxatio'^ of pace, but I decided that I would not, and con- tinued to push forward as steadily as before. The character of the country became changed ; I had ridden away from the level tracts, and before me now, and on either side, there were vast hills of sand, and calcined rocks that in- terrupted my progress, and bafifled my doubtful road, but I did my best ; with rapid steps I swept round 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 I Ihalatta ! by Jove ! I saw the Sea ! My tongue can tell where to find the clue to many an old pa- gan creed, because that (distinctlyfrom all mere admiration of the beauty belonging to Nature's works) I acknowledge a sense of mystical reverence, when first I look to see some illustrious feature of the globe — some coast line of Ocean — some mighty river or dreary mountain range, the ancient barrier of kingdoms. But the Red Sea ! It might well claim my earnest gaze by force of the great Jewish migration which connects it with the history of our own Religion. From this very ridge, it is likely enough, the panting Israelites first saw that shining inlet of the sea. Ay 1 ay ! but moreover, and best of all, that beckoning Sea assured my eyes, and proved how well I had marked out the East for my path, and gave me good promise that sooner or later the time would come for me to rest and drink. It was distant, the Sea, but I felt my own strength, and I had heardoixkit strength of dromedaries. I pushed forward as eagerly as though I had spoiled the Egyptians, and were flying from Pharaoh's police. I had not yet been able to discover any symptoms of Suez, but after a while I descried in the distance a large, blank, iso- lated building ; I made toward this, and in time got down to it. The building was a fort, and had been built there for the pro- CHAP. XXI.] CAIRO TO SUEZ. 173 kV. XXI. e indul- the east- eference pathless xength I clammy, (1 piteous nisery ; I e rest, or and con- ad ridden on either iS that in- but I did f the hills, n my swift alam ! by an old pa- niration of gc a sense illustrious me mighty cingdoms. ze by force the history y enough, sea. Ayl lea assured le East for >r later the iistant, the le strength )ugh I had 's police. is of Suez, blank, iso- down to it. "or the pro- tection of a well, which it contained within its precincts. A cluster of small huts adhered to the fort, and in a short time I was receiving the hospitality of the inhabitants who were group- ed upon the sands near their hamlet. To quench the fires of my throat with about a gallon of muddy water, and to swallow a little of the food placed before me, was the work of few min- utes, and before the astonishment of my hosts had even begun to subside, I was pursuing my onward journey. Suez, I found, was still three hours distant, and the Sun going down in the West warned me that I must find some other guide to keep me in the right direction. This guide I found in the most fickle and uncertain of the elements. For some hours the wind had been freshening, and it now blew a violent gale ; it blew not fitfully, and in squalls, but with such remarkable steadiness that I felt convinced it would come from the same quarter for sev- eral hours. When the Sun set, therefore, I carefully looked for the point from which the wind was blowing, and found that it came from the very West, and was blowing exactly in the direc- tion of my route. I had nothing to do therefore but to go straight to leeward, and this was not difficult, for the gale blew with such immense force that if I diverged at all firom its line I instantly felt the pressure of the blast on the side towards which I was deviating. Very soon after sunset there came on com- plete darkness, but the 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 night-fall, when I saw the glimmer of a light in the distance, and this I ventured to hope must be Suez. Upon approaching it, however, I found that it was only a solitary fort, and I passed on without stopping. On I went, still riding down the wind, when an unlucky ac- cident occurred, for which, if you like, you can have your laugh against me. I have told you already what sort of lodging it is which you have upon the back of a camel. You ride the drome- dary in the same fashion ; you are perched rather than seated upon a bunch of carpets or quilts upon the summit of the hump. It happened that my dromedary veered rather suddenly from her onward course j meeting the movement, I mechanically turned my left wrist as though I were holding a bridle rein, for the complete: darkness prevented my eyes from reminding me that I had nothing but a halter in my hand ; the expected re- sistance failed, for the halter was hanging upon that side of the I i'! % 1 1 174 EOTHEN. [chap. XXI. 1 i dromedary's neck towards which I was slightly leaning; I toppled over, head foremost, and then went falling and falling through air till my crown came whang against the ground. And the ground too was perfectly hard (compacted sand), but the thickly wadded head-gear which I wore for protection against the sun saved my life. The notion of my being able to get up again after falling head-foremost from such an immense 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 utterly vanished ; I looked round me and saw the glimmer of a light in the fort which I had lately passed, and I began to work my way back in that direction. The violence of the gale made it hard for me to force my way towards the West, but I suc- ceeded at last in regaining the fort. To this, as to the other fort which I had passed, there was attached a cluster of huts, and I soon found myself surrounded by a group of villanous, gloomy-looking fellows. It was a horrid bore for me to have to swagger and look big at a time when I felt so particularly small on account 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 word of Arabic, but somehow or other I contrived to announce it as my absolute will and pleasure that these fellows should find me the means of gaining Suez. They acceded, and having a donkey, they saddled it for me, and appointed one of their number to attend me on foot. I afterwards found that these fellows were not Arabs, but Algerine refugees, and that they bore the character of being sad scoundrels. They justified this imputation to some extent on the following day. They allowed Mysseri with my baggage, and the camels to pass unmolested, but an Arab 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 sleek traveller with well laden camels to pass in quiet, reserving their spirit of enterprise for the tattered turban of a miserable boy. I reached Suez at last. The British Agent, though roused from his midnight sleep, received me in his home with the ut- most kindness and hospitality. 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 once more, for the sake of sleeping again ! AP. XXI. CHAP, xxn SUEZ. 175 ning ; I d falling ground, nd), but •otection ; able to immense id upon, omedary mer of a I to work ale made ut I suc- the other ■ of huts, villanous, to have to arly small but there ke terror" mehow or d pleasure ling Suez, it for me, bot. ^rabs, but being sad :ent on the gage, and onging to nd him (if d robbed, men will ss in quiet, urban of a igh roused nth. the ut- ielightful it id to wake, of sleeping 3 CHAPTER XXII. SUEZ. WAS hospitably entertained by the British Consul or Agent, as he is there styled ; he is the employ^ of the East India Company, and not of the Home Govern- ment. Napoleon, during his stay of five days at Suez, had been the guest of the Consul's father, and I was told that the divan in my apartment had been the bed of the great Commander. There are two opinions as to the point at which the Israelites passed the Red Sea ; one is that they traversed only the very small creek at the Northern extremity of the inlet, and that they entered the bed of the water at the spot on which Suez now stands — the other that they crossed the sea from a point eighteen miles down the coast. The Oxford theologians who, with Mil- man their Professor,* believe that Jehovah conducted his chosen people without disturbing the order of Nature, adopt the first view, and suppose that the Israelites passed during an ebb tide aided by a violent wind. One among many objections to this supposition is, that the time of a single ebb would not have been sufficient for the passage of that vast multitude of men and beasts, or e/en for a small fraction of it. Moreover the creek to the north of this point can be compassed in an hour, and in two hours you can make the circuit of the salt marsh over which the sea may have extended in former times ; if therefore the Israelites crossed so high up as Suez, the Egyptians, unless in- fatuated by divine interference, might easily have recovered their stolen goods from the encumbered fugitives, by making a slight ditour. The opinion which fixes the point of passage at eighteen miles distance, and from thence right across the Ocean depths to the Eastern side of the sea, is supported by the unanimous tra- dition of the people, whether Christians or Mussulmen, and is consistent with Holy Writ; "the waters were a wall unto * See Milman's History of the Jews, ist Edit. Family Library. \ \m IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // _<;. 1.0 I.I 1.25 1112 .1 1^ M 111= JA ill 1.6 V] <^ ■c^i /^ 0% 9. ^ J o \ 176 EOTHEN. [chap. XXII. them on their right hand, and on their left." The Cambridge Mathematicians seem to think that the Israelites were enabled to pass over dry land by adopting a route not usually subject to the influx of the Sea ; this notion is plausible in a merely hydrostatical point of view, and is supposed to have been adopted by most of the fellows of Trinity, but certainly no; by Thorp, who is one of the most amiable of their number : it is difficult to reconcile this theory with the account given in Exodus, unless we can suppose that the words " sea" and " waters" are there used in a sense implying dry land. Napoleon, when at Suez, made an attempt to follow the sup- posed steps of Moses by passing the creek at this point, but it seems, according to the testimony of the people at Suez, that he and his horsemen managed the matter in a way more resembling the failure of the Egyptians, than the success of the Israelites. According to the French account. Napoleon got out of the difficulty by that warrior-like presence of mind which served him so well when the fate of nations depended on the decision of a moment ; he ordered his horsemen to disperse in all direc- tions, in order to multiply the chances of finding shallow water, and was thus enabled to discover a line by which he d his people were extricated. The story told by the people ^»f Suez is very different ; they declare that Napoleon parted from his horse, ^ot thoroughly submerged, and was only fished out by 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 tried to walk across, but I soon found myself out of my depth, or at least in water so deep that I could only advance by swimming. The dromedary which had bolted in the Desert, was brought into Suez the day after my arrival, but my pelisse and my pis- tols, which had been attached to the saddle, had disappeared ; these articles were treasures of great importance to me at that time, and I moved the Governor of the town to make all pos- sible exertions for their recovery ; he acceded to my wishes aa well as he could, and very obligingly imprisoned the first seven poor fellows he could lay his hands on. At first the Governor acted in the matter from no other mo- tive than that of courtesy to an English traveller, but afterwards, and when he saw the value which I set upon the lost property. XXII. bridge labled ubject merely been nov by r: it is ven in a" and CHAP. XXII.] SUEZ. 177 he sup- , but it that he jmbling raelites. ; of the served lecision lU direc- V water, id his pf Suez rom his I out by i of the ; time of yselfout uld only J brought i my pis- )peared ; \t at that e all poD- vishes as rst seven >ther mo- terwards, property, he pushed his measures with a degree of alacrity and heat, which seemed to show that he felt a personal interest in the matter ; it was supposed either that he expected a large present in the event of succeeding, or that he was striving by all means to trace the property in order that he might lay his hands on it after my departure. I went out sailing for some hours, and when I returned I was horrified to find that two men had been bastinadoed by order of the Governor, with a view to force them to a confession of their theft. It appeared, however, that there really was good ground for supposing them guilty, since one of the holsters was actually found in their possession. It was said, too (but I could hardly believe it), that whilst one of the men was under- going the bastinado, his comrade was overheard encouraging him to bear the torment without peaching. Both men, if they had the secret, were resolute in keeping it, and were sent back to their dungeon. I, of course, took care that there should be no repetiticn of the torture, at least as long as I remained at Suez. The Governor was a thorough Oriental, and until a com- paratively recent period had shared in the old Mahometan feel- ing of contempt for Europeans. It happened, however, one day that an English gun-brig had appeared off Suez, and sent her boats ashore to take in fresh water. Now fresh water at 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 these circumstances the request for fresh water was re- fused, or at all events was not complied with. The Captain of the brig was a simple-minded man, with a strongish will, and he at once declared that if his casks were not filled in tl.ree hours, he would destroy the whole place. " A great people indeed 1" said the Governor — " a wonderful people, the English !" He instantly caused every cask to be filled to the brim from his own tank, and ever afterwards entertained for the English a degree of affection and respect for which I felt infinitely indebted to the gallant Captain. The day after the abortive attempt to extract a confession from the prisoners, the Governor, the Consul and I, sat in Council, I know not how long, with a view of prosecuting the search fbr the stolen goods. The sitting, considered in the light of A criminal investigation^ was characteristic of the East. I7« EOTHEN. [chap. XXII. The proceedings began as a matter of course by 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 was not my first interview), and he gave me the pipe from his lips in testimony of his friendship. 1 recollect, however, that my prime adviser, thinking me, I suppose, a great deal too shy and retiring in my manner, entreated me to put up my boots, and to soiJ the Governor's divan, in order to inspire respect, and strike terror. I thought it would be as well for me to retain the right of respecting myself, and that it was not quite neces- sary for a well received guest to strike any terror at all. Our deliberations were assisted by the numerous attendants who lined the three sides of the room not occupied by the divan. Any one of these who took it into his head to offer a suggestion, would stand forward, and humble himself before the Governor, and then state his views, which were always more or less attended to. After a great deal of fruitless planning, the Governor directed that the prisoners should be brought in. I was shocked when they entered, for I was not prepared to see them come carried into the room upon the shoulders of others. It had not occured to me that their battered feet would be too sore to bear the con- tact of the floor. 1'hey persisted in asserting their innocence. The Governor wanted to recur to the torture, but that I pre- vented, and the men were carried back to their dungeon. A scheme was now suggested by one of the attendants which seemed to me childishly absurd, but it was nevertheless tried. The plan was to send a man to the prisoners, who was to make them believe that he had obtained entrance into their dungeon upon some other pretence, but that he had in reality 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 over the people in his district, but he could if he chose send them to Cairo, and hav^ them hanged there. I pro- posed therefore that the prisoners should be threatened with this fate. The answer of the Governor made me feel rather ashamed of my effeminate si jgestion ; he «aid that, if I wished it, he would willingly threaten them with death, but he also said that if he threatened, he should execute the threat. Thinking at last that nothing was to be gained by keeping XXII. CHAP. XXII.] SUEZ. 179 iitor's , who (this mhis , that )0 shy boots, :spect, retain neces- ndants by the offer a ore the nore or Urected d when ; carried occured the con- locence. It I pre- 1. ;s which ss tried, to make iungeon come to 5. This ;r of life Id if he Ipro- ith this ihamed :d it, he laid that the prisoners any longer in confinement, I requested that they might be set free. To this 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 to see the prisoners let out with my own eyes. They were very grateful, and fell down to the earth, kissing my boots. I gave them a present to con- sole them for their wounds, and they seemed to be highly delighted. Although the matter terminated in a manner so satisfactory to the principal sufferers, there were symptoms of some angry excitement in the place ; it was said that public opinion was much shocked at the fact that Mahometans 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 I per- severed in my intention of proceeding, the people would have an easy and profitable opportunity of wreaking their vengeance on me. If ever they formed any scheme of the kind, they at all events refrained from any attempt to carry it into effect. One of the evenings during my stay at Suez was enlivened by a triple wedding. There was a long and slow procession. Some carried torches, and others were thumping drums, and firing pistols. The bridegrooms came last, all walking abreast ; my only reason for mentioning the ceremony (which was other- wise uninteresting) is that I scarcely ever in all my life saw any phenomena so ridiculous, as the meekness and gravity of those three young men, whilst being " led to the altar." keeping m EOTHEN. [chap. XXIII. CHAPTER XXIII. SUEZ TO GAZA. |HE route over the Desert from Suez to Gaza is not fre- quented by merchants, and is seldom passed by a travel- ler. This part of the country is less uniformly barren than the tracks of shifting sand which lie on the El Arish route. The shrubs on which the camels feed are more frequent, and there are many spots on which the sand is mingled with so much of productive soil as to admit the growth of com. The Bedouins are driven out of this district during the summer by the total want of water, but before the time for their forced departure arrives, they succeed in raising little crops of barley from these comparatively fertile patches of ground ; they bury the fruit of their labours, leaving marks by which, upon their return, they may be able to recognize the spot. The warm dry sand stands them for a safe granary. The country, at the time I passed it (in the month of April), was pretty thickly sprinkled with Bedouins expecting their harvest ; several times my tent was pitched along side of their encampments ; I have told you already what the impressions were which these 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 I call her), and took the darling prisoner. I carried her before me on my camel for the rest of the day, and kept her in my tent all night ; I did all I could to coax her, but the trembling beauty refused to touch food, and would not be comforted ; whenever she had a seeming opportunity of escap- ing, she struggled with a violence so painfully disproportioned to her fine, delicate limbs, that I could not continue the cruel attempt to make her my own. In the morning, therefore, I set her free, anticipating some pleasure from seeing the joyous bound with which, as I thought, she would return to her native freedom* She had been so stupified, however, by the exciting XXIII. CHAP. XXIII.] SUEZ TO GAZA. 18i ot fre- travel- barren ;i Arish e more ningled of corn, summer r forced f barley ey bury Dn their arm dry the time irinkled ly tent :old you iroduced events of the preceding day and night, and was so puzzled as to the road she should take, that she went off very deliberately, and with an uncertain step. She went away quite sound in limb, but her intellect may have been upset. Never, in all likelihood, had she seen the form of a human being, until the dreadful moment when she woke from her sleep, and found her- self in the gripe of an Arab. Then her pitching and tossing journey on the back of a camel, and lastly, a soirie with me by candlelight ! I should have been glad to know, if I could, that her heart was not utterly broken. My Arabs were somewhat excited one day by discovering the fresh print of a foot — the foot, as they said, of a lion. I had no conception that the Lord of the forest (better known as a crest) ever stalked away from his jimgles to make inglorious war in these smooth plains against antelopes and gazelles. I supposed that there must have been some error of interpreta- tion, and that the Arabs meant to speak of a tiger. It appear- ed, however, that this was not the case ; either the Arabs were mistaken, or the noble brute, uncooped and unchained, had but lately crossed my path. The camels, with which I traversed this part of the Desert, were very different in their ways and habits from those which you get on a frequented route. They were never led. There was not the slightest sign of a tmck in this part of the Desert, but the camels never failed to choose the right line. By the di- rection taken at starting, they knew, I suppose, the point (some encampment) for which they were to make. There is always a leading camel (generally, I believe, the eldest), who marches foremost and determines the path for the whole party. If it happens that no one of the camels has been accustomed to lead the others, there is very great difficulty in making a start j if you force your beast forward for a moment he will contrive to wheel and draw back, at the same time looking at one of the other camels with an expression and gesture exactly equivalent to "aprhs vous" The responsibility of finding the way is evi- dently assumed very unwillingly. After some time, however, it becomes understood that one of the beasts has reluctantly consented to take the lead, and he accordingly advances for that purpose. For a minute or two he goes on with much in- decision, taking first one line and then another, but soon, by the aid of some mysterious sense, he discovers the true direc- f l83 EOTHEN. [chap. XXIII. tion, and follows it steadily from morning to night. When once the leadership is established, you cannot, by any persuasion, and can scarcely by any force, induce a junior camel to walk one 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 a stream of water. On the sides of the gully there were a number of those graceful trees which the Arabs call Tarfa. The channel of the stream was quite dry in the part at which we arrived, but at about half a mile off some water was found, which, though very muddy, was tolerably sweet. This was a happy discovery, for the water which we had brought from the neighbourhood of Suez was rapidly putri- fying. The want of foresight is an anomalous part of the Bedouin's character, for it does not result either from recklessness or stu- pidity, I know of no human being whose body is so thoroughly the slave of mind as that of the Arab. His mental anxieties seem to be forever torturing every nerve and fibre of his body, and yet with all this exquisite sensitiveness to the suggestions of the mind, he is grossly improvident. I recollect, for instance, that when setting out upon this passage of the Desert, my Arabs, in order to lighten the burthen of their camels, were most anx- ious that we should take with us only two days' supply of water. They said that by the time that supply was exhausted, we should arrive at a spring which would furnish us for the rest of the journey. My servants very wisely, and with much pertinacity, resisted the adoption of this plan, and took care to have both the large skins well filled. We proceeded, and found no water at all, either at the expected spring, or for many days after- wards, so that nothing but the precaution of my own people saved us from the very severe suffering which we should have endured if we had entered upon the Desert with only a two days' supply. The Arabs themselves being on foot would have suffered much more than I from the consequences of their improvidence. This unaccountable want of foresight prevents the Bedouin from appreciating at a distance of eight or ten days the amount of the misery which he entails upon himself at the end of that period. The Bedouin's dread of a city is one of the most painful mental affections that I have ever observed, and yet CHAP. XXIII.] SUEZ TO GAZA. kdouin amount of that e most nd yet when the whole breadth of the Desert lies between him and the town to which you are going, he will freely enter into an agreement 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 step becomes faltering and undecided — every mo- ment his uneasiness increases, and at length he fairly sobs aloud, and, embracing your knees, implores with the most piteous cries and gestures, that you will dispense with him and his camels, 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 witness and resist the most moving expression of grief and fond entreaty. I had to go through a most painful scene of this kind when I entered Cairo, and now the horror which these wilder Arabs felt at the notion of entering Gaza, led to consequences still more distressing. The dread of cities results partly from a kind of wild instinct, which has always characterized the descendants of Ishmacl, but partly too, from a well-founded apprehension of ill-treatment. So often it hap- pens that the poor Bedouin, when once jammed in between walls, is seized by the Government authorities for the sake of his camels, that his innate horror of cities becomes really well justified by results. The Bedouins, with whom I performed this journey, were wild fellows of the Desert, quite unaccustomed to let out them- selves and their beasts for hire, and when they found that by the natural ascendency of Europeans, they were gradually brought down to 4 state of subserviency to me, or rather to my attendants, they bitterly repented, I believe, of having placed themselves under our control. They were rather diffi- cult fellows to manage, and gave Dthemetri a good deal of trouble, but I liked them all the better for that. Selim, the chief of the party and the man to whom all our camels belonged, was a fine, wild, stately fellow ; there were, I think, five other Arabs of the party, but when we approached the end of the journey, they, 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 owner of the camels, was the only one who remained ; he, poor fellow, as we neared the town, began to discover the same terrors that my Arabs had shown when I entered Cairo. I could not possibly 184 EOTKEN. [chap. XXIII, accede to his entreaties 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 and tears, he fixed his despairing eyes for a minute upon the cherished beasts that were his only wealth, and then wildly and suddenly dashed away into the farther Desert. I continued my course and reached the city at last, but it was not without immense difficulty that we could constrain the poor camels to pass under the hated shadow of its walls. They were the genuine beasts of the Desert, and it was sad and painful to witness the agony which they suffered when thus they were forced to encounter the fixed habitations of men ; they shrank from the beginning of every high narrow street, as though from the entrance of some horrible cave, or bottomless pit ; they sighed and wept like women. When at last we got them within the court-yard of the Khan, they seemed to be quite broken-hearted, and looked round piteously for their loving master, but no Selim came. I had imagined that he would enter the town secretly by night, in order to carry off those five fine camels, his only wealth in this world, and seem- ingly tHe main object of his affection. But no — his dread of civilization was too strong ; during the whole of the three days that I remained at Gaza, he failed to show himself, and thus sacrificed, in all probability, not only his camels but the money which I had stipulated to pay him for the passage of the Desert. In order, however, to do all I could towards saving him from this last misfortune, I resorted to a contrivance which is frequently adopted by the Asiatics. I assembled a group of grave and worthy Mussulmen in the court-yard of the Khan, and in their presence paid over the gold to a Sheik who was accustomed to communicate with the Arabs of the Desert. All present solemnly promised that if ever Selim should come to claim his rights they would bear true witness in his favour. I saw a great deal of my old friend the Governor of Gaza. He had received orders to send back all persons coming from Egypt, and force them to perform quarantine at El Arish ; he knew so little of quanantine regulations, however, that his dress was actually in contact with mine, whilst he insisted upon the stringency of the orders which he had received. He was induced to make an exception in my favour, and I rewarded him with a musical snuff-box which I had bought at Smyrna, for the purpose CHAP. XXIII.] SUEZ TO GAZA. 185 of presenting it to any man in authority who might happen to do me an important service. The Governor was immensely delighted with this toy, and took it off to his harem with great exultation : he soon, however, returned with an altered coun- tenance ; his wives, he said, had got hold of the box, and put it out of order. So short-lived is human happiness in this frail world ! The Governor fancied that he should incur less risk if I remained at Gaza for two or three days more, and he wanted me to become his guest ; I persuaded him, however, that it would be better for him to let me depart at once ; he wanted to add to my baggage a roast lamb, and a quantity of other cumbrous viands, but I escaped with half a horse-load of leaven bread, 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 breaking down under the weight of the gifts which they bore on their shoulders, reminded me of the Hgures one sees in some of the old pictures. i86 EOTHEN. [CHAP. XXIV. . I * CHAPTER XXIV. h ! I which came, GAZA TO NABLOVS. jASSING now once again through Palestine and Syria, I retained the tent which I had used in the Desert, and found that it added very much to my comfort in travel- ling. Instead of turning out a family from some wretched dwelling, and depriving them of a repose I was sure not to find for myself, I now, when evening pitched my tent upon some smiling spot within a few hundred yards of the village to which I looked for my supplies — that is, for milk and bread, if I had it not with me, and some- times also for eggs. The worst of it is, that the needful viands are not to be obtained by coin, but only by intimidation. I at first tried the usual agent — money ; Dthemetri, with one or two of my Arabs, went into the village near which I was encamped, and tried to buy the required provisions, offering liberal pay- ment, but he came back empty-handed. I sent him again, but this time he held different language ; he required to see the elders of the place, and, threatening dreadful vengeance, directed them upon their responsibility to take care that my tent should be immediately and abundantly supplied. He was obeyed at once, and the provisions, which had been refused to me as a purchaser, soon arrived, trebled, or quadrupled, when demanded by way of a forced contribution. I quickly found (I think it required two experiments to convince me) that this peremptory method was the only one which could be aoopted with success ; it never failed. Of course, however, when the provisions have been actually obtained, you can, if you choose, give money exceeding the value of the provisions to somebody ; an English — a thorough-bred English traveller will always do this (though it is contrary to the custom of the country) for the quiet (false quiet though it be) of his own conscience, l)ut so to order the matter that the poor fellows, who have been forced to contribute, should be the persons to receive the vjilue of their supplies is . XXIV. CHAP. XXIV.] GAZA TO NABLOUS. 187 Syria, I :rt, and I travel- n some repose evening in a few supplies id some- 1 viai\ds n. I at 2 or two camped, ral pay- ain, but see the directed should Deyed at me as a manded think it emptory success ; ins have ; money English (though iet (false rder the ntribute, pplies is not possible ; for a traveller to attempt anything so grossly just as that, would be too outrageous. The truth is, that the usage of the East, in old times, required the people of a village, at their own cost, to supply the wants of travellers, and the ancient custom is now adhered to, not in favour of travellers generally, but in favour of those who are deemed sufficiently powerful to enforce its observance j if the villagers, therefore, find a man waiving this right to oppress them, and offering coin for that which he is entitled to take without payment, they suppose at once that he is actuated by fear (fear of M«w, poor fellows !) and it is so delightful to them to act upon this flattering assump- tion, that they will forego the advantage of a good price for their provisions, rather than the rare luxury of refusing for once in their lives to part with their own property. The practice of intimidation, thus rendered necessary, is utterly hateful to an Englishman ; he finds himself forced to conquer his daily bread by the pompous threats of the Drago- man ; his very subsistence, as well as his dignity and personal safety, being made to depend upon his servants assuming a tone of authority which does not at all belong to him. Besides, he can scarcely fail to see, that, as he passe? through the country, he becomes the innocent cause of much extra injustice — many supernumerary wrongs. This he feels to be especially the case when he travels with relays. To be the owner of a horse or a mule, within reach of 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 the field are stopped in the day time, that the inmates of the cottage are roused from their midnight sleep by the sudden coming of a Government officer, and the poor husbandman, driven by threats and rewarded by curses if he would not lose sight for ever of his captured beasts, must quit all and follow them ; thisis done that the Englishman may travel; he would make his way more harmlessly if he could, but horses or mules he must have, and these are his ways and means. The town of Nablous is beautiful ; it lies in a valley hemmed in with olive groves, and its buildings are interspersed with fre- quent palm trees. It is said to occupy the site of the ancient Sychem. I know not whether i!: was there, indeed, that the father of the Jews was accustomed to feed his flocks ; but the valley is green and smiling, and is held at this day by a race more brave and beautiful than Jacob's unhappy descendants, i88 EOTHEN. fCHAP. XXIV. Nablous is the very furnace of Mahometan bigotry, and I be- lieve that, only a few months before the time of my going there, it would have been quite unsafe for a man, unless strongly guarded, to show himself to the people of the town in a Frank costume ; but since their last insurrection, the Mahometans of the place had been so far subdued by the severity of Ibrahim Pasha, that they darer^ not now offer the slightest insult to an European. It was q te plain, however, that the effort, with which the men of the old school refrained from expressing their opinion of a hat and a coat, was horribly painful to them ; as I walked through the streets and bazaars, a dead silence prevail- ed ; every man suspended his employment, and gazed on me with a fixed, glassy look, which seemed to say, " God is good, but how marvellous and inscrutable ?.ie his ways, that thus he permits this white-faced dog of a, Christian to hunt through the paths of the faithful !" The insurrection of these people had been more formidable than any other that Ibrahim Pasha had to contend with ; he was only able to crush them at last by the assistance of a fellow re- nowned for his resources in the way of stratagem and cunning, as well as for his knowledge of the country. This personage was no other than Aboo Goosh ("' .e father of lies")* who was taken out of prison for the purpose. The " father of lies" ena- bled Ibrahim to hem in the insurrection, and extinguish it ; he was rewarded with the Governorship of Jerusalem, which he held when I was there ; I recollect, by the by, that he tried one of his stratagems upon me. I did not go to see him as I ought in courtesy to have done, during my stay at Jerusalem, but I hap- pened to be the owner of a rather handsome amber tchibouque piece which the Governor heard of, and by some means con- trived to see ; he sent to me, and dressed up a statement that he would give me a price immensely exceeding the sum which I had given for it. He did not add my tchibouque to the rest of his trophies. There was a small number of Greek Christians resident in Nablous, and over these the Mussulmen held a high hand, not even permitting them to speak to each other in the open streets ; *This is an appellation, not implying blame, but merit ; the "lies" which it purports to affiliate are feints and cunning stratagems rather than the baser kind of falsehoods. The expression in short has nearly the same meaning as the English word " yorkshireman," CHAP. XXIV.] GAZA TO NABLOUS. 189 ena- but if the Moslems thus set themselves above the poor Chris- tians of the place, I, or rather my servants, soon took the as- cendant over tJiem. I recollect just as we were starting from the place, and at a time when a number of people had gathered together in the main street to see our preparations, Mysseri, being provoked at some piece of perverseness on the part of a true Believer, coolly thrashed him with his horsewhip before the assembled crowd of fanatics. I was much annoyed at the time, for I thought that the people would probably rise against us. They turned rather pale, but stood still. The day of my arriving at Nablous was a fSte — the new year's day of the Mussulmen.* Most of the people were amusing themselves in the beautiful lawns and shady groves without the city. The men (except myself) were all remotely apart from the other sex. The women in groups were diverting themselves and their children with swings. They were so hand- some that they could not keep up their yashmacks ; I believe that they had never before looked upon a man in the European dress, and when they now saw in me that strange phenomenon, and saw, too, how they could please the creature by showing him a glimpse of beauty, they seemed to think it was better fun to do this, than to go on playing with swings. It was always, however, with a sort of Zoological expression of countenance that they looked on the horrible monster from Europe, and whenever one of them gave me to see, for one sweet instant, the blushing of her unveiled face, it was with the same kind of air as that with which a young, timid girl will edge her way up to an elephant, and trembling give him a nut from the tips of her rosy fingers. ' The 29th of April. 190 EOTHEN [CHAP. XXV. CHAPTER XXV. k MARIAM. |HERE is no spirit of Propagandism in the Mussulman of the Ottoman dominions. True it is that a prisoner of War, or a Christian condemned to death, may on some occasions save his life by adopting the religion of Mahomet, but instances of this kind are now exceed- ingly rare, and are quite 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 by the conversion of a Christian to the Mahometan faith is positively illegal ; an inci- dent which occurred at Nablous, and which I am going to mention, showed plainly enough that the unlawfulness of such interference is recognized even in the most bigoted strong-hold of Islam. During my stay at this place, I took up my quarters at the house of the Greek Papa, as he is called, that is, the Greek Priest; the priest himself had gone to Jerusalem upon the business I am going to tell you of, but his wife remained at Nablous, and did the honours of her home. Soon after my arrival, a deputation from the Greek Christians of the place came to request my interference in a matter which had occasioned vast excitement. And now I must tell you how it came to happen, as it did continually, that people thought it worth while to claim the as- sistance of a mere traveller, who was totally devoid of all just pretensions to authority, or influence of even the humblest de- scription, and especially I must explain to you how it was that the power thus attributed did really belong to me, or rather to my Dragoman. Successive political convulsions had at length fairly loosed the people of Syria from their former rules of con- duct, and from all their old habits of reliance. The violence and success with which Mehemet Ali crushed the insurrections CHAP. XXV.] MARIAM. 191 Dnsoner of the Mahometan population had utterly beaten down the head of Islam, and extinguished, for the time at least, those virtues and vices which had sprung from the Mahometan faith. Success so complete as Mehemet Ali's, if it had been attained by an ordinary Asiatic potentate, would have induced a notion of stability. The readily bowing mind of the Oriental would have bowed low and long under the foot of a conqueror whom God had thus strengthened. But Syria was no field for contests strictly Asiatic — Europe was involved, and though the heavy masses of Egyptian troops, clinging down with strong gripe up- on the land, might seem to hold it fast, yet every peasant prac- tically felt and knew that in Vienna, or St. Petersburg, or London, there were four or five pale looking men who could pull down the star of the Pasha with shreds of paper and ink. The peo- ple of the country knew, too, that Mehemet Ali was strong with the strength of the Europeans, — strong by his French General, his French tactics, and his English engines. More- over, they saw that the person, the property, and even the dig- nity of the humblest European was guarded with the most care- ful solicitude. The consequence of all this was, that the peo- ple of Syria looked vaguely, but confidently, to Europe for fresh changes ; many would fix upon some nation, France or Eng- land, and steadfastly regard it as the arriving sovereign of Syria ; those whose minds remained in doubt, equally contributed to this new state of public opinion, which no longer depended up- on Religion and ancient habits, but upon bare hopes and fears. Every man wanted to know, — not who was his neighbour, but who was to be his ruler ; whose feet he was to kiss, and by whom his feet were to be ultimately beaten. Treat your friend, says the proverb, as though he were one day to become your enemy, and your enAny as though he were one day to become your friend. The Syrians went further, and seemed inclined to treat every stranger as though he might one day become their Pasha. Such was the state of circumstances and of feeling which now for the first time had thoroughly opened the mind of Western Asia for the reception of Europeans and European ideas. The credit of the English especially was so great that a good Mussulman flying from the conscription, or any other persecution, would come to seek, firom the formerly despised hp*^ that protection which the turban could no longer afford, arid j. man high in authority (as for instance the Governor in command i$st EOTHEN. [CHAP. XXV. & of Gaza) would think that he had won a prize, or at all events a valuable lottery ticket, if he obtained a written approval of his conduct from a simple traveller. Still, in order that any immediate result should follow from all this unwonted readiness in the Asiatic to succumb to the European, it was necessary that some one should be at hand, who could see, and would push the advantage ; I myself had neither the inclination nor the power to do so, but it happened that Dthemetri, who as my Dragoman reprer:ented me on all occasions, was the very person of all others best fitted to avail himself with success of this yielding tendency in the Oriental mind. If the chance of birth and fortune had made poor Dthe- metri a tailor during some part of his life, yet Religion and the literature of the Church which he served, had made him a Man, and a brave Man, too. The lives of Saints, with which he was familiar, were full of heroic actions, which invited imitation, and since faith in a creed involves a faith in its ultimate t jmph, Dthemetri was bold from a sense of true strength ; his education, too, though not very general in its character, had been carried quite far enough to justify him in pluming himself upon a very decided advantage over the great bulk of the Mahometan population, including the men of authority. "With all this consciousness of religious and intellectual superiority, Dthemetri had lived for the most part in countries lying under Mussulman Governments, and had witnessed (perhaps, too, had suffered from) their revolting cruelties ; the result was, that he abhorred and despised the Mahometan faith, and all who clung to it. And this hate was not of the dry, dull, and inactive sort ; Dthemetri was in his sphere a true Crusader, and whenever there appeared a fair opening in the defences of Islam, he was ready and eager to make the assault. These sentiments, backed by a consciousness of understanding the people with whom he had to do, made Dthemetri not only firm and resolute in his constant interviews with men in authority, but sometimes, also (as you may know already), very violent, and even insulting. This tone, which I always disliked, though I was fain to profit by it, invariably succeeded ; it swept away all resistance ; there was nothing in the then depressed and succumbing mind of the Mussulman that could oppose a zeal so warm and fierce. As for me, I of course stood aloof from Dthemetri's crusades, &nd did not even render him any active assistance when he was p. XXV. CHAP. XXV.] MARIAM. 193 ^ents a I of his V from to the hand, lelfhad ppened ; on all :o avail )riental r Dthe- and the a Man, he was litation, iltimate Jth; his ter, had ; himself ic of the I. With eriority, ig under too, had that he lO clung |ive sort ; whenever L he was 1, backed jhom he |e in his es, also isulting. |to profit there ^d of the frusades, he was striving (as he almost always was, poor fellow) on my behalf ; I was only the death's head and white sheet with which he scared the enemy ; I think, however, that I played this spectral part exceedingly well, for I seldom appeared at all in any dis- cussion, and, whenever I did, I was sure to be pale and calm. The events which induced the Christians of Nablous to seek for my assistance was this. A beautiful young Christiasi, be- tween fifteen and sixteen years old, had lately been married to a man of her >wn creed. About the same time (probably on the occasion of her wedding) she was accidentally seen by a Mussulman Sheik of great wealth and local influence, who instantly became madly enamoured of her. The strict morality, which so generally prevails where the Mussulmen have com- plete ascendency, prevented the Sheik from entertaining any such sinful hopes as an European might have ventured to cherish under the like circumstances, and he saw no chance of gratifying his love, except by inducing the girl to embrace his own creed ; if he could induce her to take this step, her marriage with the Christian would be dissolved, and then there would be nothing to prevent him from making her the last, and brightest of his wives. The Sheik was a practical man, and quickly began his attack upon the theological opinions of the bride ; he did not assail her with the eloquence of any Imaums of Mussulman Saints — he did not press upon her the eternal truths of the " Cow,"* or the beautiful morality of the " Table,"* — ^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 basket full of arguments — ^jewels, and shawls, and scarfs, and all kinds of persuasive finery. Poor Mariam ! she put on the jewels, and took a calm view of the Mahometan Religion in a little hand mirror — she could not be deaf to such eloquent ear- rings, and the great truths of Islam came home to her young bosom in in a merely temporal sense, it appeared to me that (looking merely to the interests of the damsel, for I rather unjustly put poor Menelaus quite out of the question) the advantages were all on the side of the Mahometan match. The Sheik was in a much higher station of life than the superseded husband, and 196 EOTHEN. [chap. XXV. had given the best possible proof of his ardent affection, by the sacrifices which he had made, and the risks which he had in- curred for the sake of the beloved object. I therefore stated fairly, to the horror and amazement of all my hearers, that the Sheik, in my \''^w, was likely to make a most capital husband, and that I entirely " approved of the match." I Lit Nablous under the impression that Mariam would soon be delivered to her Mussulman lover ; I afterwards found, how- ever, that the result was very different. Dthemetri's religious zeal and hate had been so much excited by the account of these events, and by the grief and mortification of his co-religionists, that, when he found me firmly determined to decline all interfer- ence in the matter, he secretly appealed to the Governor in my name and (using, 1 suppose, many violent threats, and telling, no doubt, many lies about my station and influence) extorted a promise that the proselyte should be restored to her relatives. I did not understand that the girl had been actually given up whilst I remained at Nablous, but Dthemetri certainly did not desist from his instances until he had satisfied himself by some means or other (for mere words amounted to nothing) that the promise would be actually performed. It was not till I had quitted Syria and when Dthemetri was no longer in my service, that this villanous though well-motived trick of his came to my knowledge ; Mysseri, who informed me of the step which had been taken, did not know it himself until some time after we had quitted Nablous, when Dthemetri exultingly confessed his suc- cessful enterprise. I know not whether the engagement which my zealous Dragoman extorted from the Governor was ever complied with. I shudder to think of the fate which must have befallen poor Mariam, if she fell into the hands of her husband. CHAP. XXVI.] THE PROPHET DAMOOP. 197 CHAPTER XXVI. no THE PROPHET DAMOOR, |0R some hours I passed along the shores of the fair Lake of GaUlee, and then turning a Httle to the west- ward, I struck into a mountainous country, the character of which became more bold and beautiful as I advanced. At length I drew near to Safet, which sits as proud as a fortress upon the summit of a craggy height, and yet because of its minarets, and stately trees, the place looks bright and beau- tiful. It is one of the holy cities of the Talmud, and, according to this authority, the Messiah will reign there forty years before he takes possession of Sion. The sanctity thus attributed to the city renders it a favorite place of retirement for Israelites, of whom it contains four thousand, a number nearly balancing that of the Mahometan inhabitants. I knew by my experience of Tabarieh that a " holy city " was sure to have a population of vermin somewhat proportionate to the number of its Israelites, and I therefore caused my tent to be pitched upon a green spot of ground at a respectable distance from the walls of the town. When it had become quite dark (for there was no moon that night) I was informed that several Jews had secretly come from the city, in the hope of obtaining some assistance from me in circumstances of imminent danger ; I was also informed that they claimed my aid upon the ground that some of their num- ber were British subjects. It was arranged that the two princi- pal men of the party should speak for the rest, and these were accordingly admitted into my tent. One of the two called himself the British Vice-Consul, and he had with him his con- sular cap, but he frankly said that be could not have dared to assume this emblem of his dignity in the day time, and that nothing but the extreme darkness of the night rendered it safe for him to put it on upon this occasion. The other of the spokesmen was a Jew of Gibraltar, a tolerably well-bred person, who spoke English very fluently. m EOTHEN. [ciiAr. XXVI. These men informed me that the Jews of the place, who were exceedingly wealthy, had lived peaceably in their retirement until the insurrection which took place in 1834, but about the beginning of that year a highly religious Mussulman, called Mohammed Damoor, went forth into the market-place, crying with a loud voice, and prophesying that, on the fifteenth of the following June, the true believers would rise up in just wrath against the Jews, and despoil them of their gold, and their silver, and their jewels. The earnestness of the prophet produced some impression at the time, but all went on as usual, until at last the fifteenth of June arrived. When that day dawned, the whole Mussulman population of the place assem- bled in the streets, that they might see the result of the prophecy. Suddenly Mohammed Damoor rushed furious into the crowd, and the fierce shout of the prophet soon ensured the fulfilment of his prophecy. Some of the Jews fled, and some remained, but they who fled, and they who remained, alike and unresistingly left their property to the hands of the spoilers. The most odious of all outrages, that of searching the women for the base purpose of discovering such things as gold and silver concealed about their persons, was perpetrated without shame. The poor Jews were so stricken with terror, that they submitted to their fate, even where resistance would have been easy. In several instances a young Mussulman boy, not more than ten or twelve years of age, walked straight into the house of a Jew, and stripped him of his property before his face, and in the presence of his whole family.* When the insurrection was put down, some of the Mussulmen (most probably those who had got no spoil wherewith they iright buy immunity) were punished, but the greater part of them escaped ; none of the booty was restored, and the pecuniary redress, which the Pasha had undertaken to enforce for them, had been hitherto so carefully delayed, that the hope of ever obtaining it had grown very faint. A new Governor had been appointed to the command of the place, with stringent orders to ascertain the real extent of the losses, and to discover the spoilers, with the view of compelling them to make restitution. It was found that, notwithstanding the urgency of the instructions which the Governor had received, he did not push on the affair with the * It was after the interview which I am talking of, and not from the Jews themselves, that I learat this fact. CHAP. XXVI.] THE PROPHET DAMOOR. 199 om the vigour which had been expected ; the Jews complained, and either by the protection of the British Consul at Damascus, or by some other means, had influence enough to induce the appointment of a special Commissioner — they called him " the Modeer " — whose duty it was to watch for, and prevent any- thing like connivance on the part of the Governor, and to push on the investigation with vigour and impartiality. Such were the instructions with which some few weeks since the Modeer came fraught ; the result was that the investigation had made no practical advance, and that the Modeer, as well as the Governor, was living upon terms of affectionate friendship with Mohammed Damoor, and the rest of the principal spoil- ers. Thus stood the chances of redress for the past, but the cause of the agonizing excitement under which the Jews of the place now laboured was recent, and justly alarming ; Mohammed Damoor had again gone forth into the market-place, and lifted up his voice, and prophesied a second spoliation of the Israel- ites. This was grave matter ; the words of such a practical man as Mohammed Damoor were not to be despised. I fear I must have smiled visibly, for I was greatly amused, and even, I think, gratified at the account of this second prophecy. Never- theless, my heart warmed towards the poor oppressed Israel- ites, and I was flattered too, in the point of my national vani'iy, at the notion of the far-reaching link, by which a Jew in Syria, who had been bom on the rock of Gibraltar, was able to claim me as his fellow-countryman. If I hesitated at all between the " impropriety" of interfering in a matter which was no business of mine, and the " horrid shame" of refusing my aid at such a conjuncture, I soon came to a very ungentlemanly decision — namely, that I would be guilty of the "impropriety," and not of the "horrid shame." It seemed to me that the immediate arrest of Mohammed Damoor was the one thing needful to the safety of the Jews, and I felt confident (for reasons which I have already mentioned in speaking of the Nablous affair) that I should be able to obtain this result by making a formal appli- cation to the Governor. I told my applicants that I would take this step on the following morning; they were very grateful, and were for a moment much pleased at the prospect of safety which might thus be opened to them, but the deliberation of a minute entirely altered their views, and filled them with new 30O EOTHEN. [chap. XXVI. terror ; they declared, that any attempt, or pretended attempt, on the part of the Governor to arrest Mohamed Damoor would certainly produce an immediate movement of the whole Mus- sulman population, and a consequent massacre and robbery of the Israelites. My visitors went out, and occupied considerable Hme, if I rightly remember, in consulting their brethren, but all agreed that their present perilous and painful position was bet- ter than the certain and immediate attack which would be made if Mohammed Damoor were seized — that their second estate would be worse than their first. I myself did not think that this would be the case, but I could not, of course, force my aid upon the people against their will, and moreover the day fixed for the fulfilment of this second prophecy was not very close at hand ; a little delay, therefore, in providing against the impen- ding danger, would not necessarily be fatal. The men now confessed that although they had come with so much mystery and, as they thought, at so great a risk, to ask my assistance, they were unable to suggest any mode in which I could aid them, except, indeed, by mentioning their grievances to the Consul-general at Damascus. This I promised to do, and this I did. My visitors were very thankful to me for the readiness which I had shown to intermeddle in their affairs, and the grateful wives of the principal Jews sent to me many compliments, with choice wines, and elaborate sweetmeats. The course of my travels soon drew me so far from Safet, that I never heard how the dreadful day passed off which had been fixed for the accomplishment of the second prophecy. If the predicted spoliation was prevented, poor Mohammed Damoor must have been forced, I suppose, to say that he had prophe- sied in a metaphorical sense. This would be a sad falling off from the brilliant and substantial success of the first experi- ment. •CHAP. XXVII.] DAMASCU.S. 201 CHAPTER XXVIT. DAMASCUS. ^OR a part of two days I wound under the base of the snow-crowned Djibel el Sheik, and then entered upon a I vast and desolate plain, rarely pierced at intervals by some sort of withered stem. The earth in its length and breadth, and all the deep universe of sky, was steeped in light and heat. On I rode through the fire, but long before evening came, there were straining eyes that saw and joyful voices that announced the sight — the Shaum Shereef — the " Holy," the " Blessed" Damascus. But that which at last I reached with my longing eyes, was not a speck in the horizon, gradually expanded to a group of roofs and walls, but a long line of blackest green that ran right across in the distance from East to West. And this, as I approached, grew deeper — grew wavy in its outline ; soon for- est trees shot up before my eyes and robed their broad shoulders so freshly that all the throngs of olives as they rose into view looked sad in their proper dimness. There were even now no houses to see, but only the minarets peered out from the midst of shade into the glowing sky and bravely touched the Sun. There seemed to be here no mere city, but rather a province, wide and rich, that bounded the torrid waste. Until within a year or two of the time at which I went there, Damascus had kept up so much of the old bigot zeal, against Christians, or rather against Europeans, that no one dressed as a Frank could have dared 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 the district, had soon put an end to all intolerance of Englishmen. Damascus was safer than Oxford.* When I entered the city, in my usual dress, there * An enterprising American traveller, Mr. Everett, lately conceived the bold project of penetrating to the University of Oxford, and this, nothwith- standuig that he had been in his infancy (they begin very young those 4 li 202 EOTHEN. [chap. XXVII. / ! - was but one poor fellow that wagged his tongue, and him, in the open streets, Dthemetri horse-whipped. During my stay I went wherever I chose, and attended the public baths without molestation. Indeed my relations with the pleasanter portion of the Mahometan population were upon 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 the arrival of the British Consul-general, none but a Mussulman had been permitted to walk upon the upper way ; Mr. Farren would not, of course, suffer that the humiliation of any such exclusion should be submitted to by an Englishman, and I always walked upon the raised path as free and unmolested as if I had been striding through Bond Street ; the old usage was, however, maintained with as much strictness as ever against the Christian Rayahs and Jews ; not one of them could have set his foot upon the privileged path 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 such earnestness, and craved so anxiously to speak, and be spoken to, that he soon brought me to a halt ; he had nothing to tell, except onl the glory and exultation with which he saw a fellow C iristian stand level with the imperious Mussulmen ; perhaps he had been absent from the place for some time, for otherwise I hardly know how it could have hap- pened that my exaltation was the first instance he had seen. His joy was great; so strong 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 say that the Eng- lishman's faith was his too ; if I was vexed at all that I could not give the man a lift, and shake hand with him on level ground, there was no alloy to /its pleasure ; he followed me on, not looking to his own path, but keeping his eyes on me ; he Americans) an Unitarian preacher. Having a notion, it seems, that the Ambassadorial character would protect him from insult, he adopted the stratagem of procuring credentials from his government as Minister Pleni- potentiary at the Court of her Britannic Majesty ; he also wore the exact costume of a Trinitarian, but all his contrivances were vain ; Oxford dis- dained and rejected him (not because he represented a swindling community, but) because that his infantine sermons were strictly remembered against him } his enterprise failed, m XXVII. ; CHAP. XXVII.] DAMASCUS. 203 im, in stay I without portion footing or foot )ve the eneral, )on the lat the oby an as free Street ; rictness one of without IS of the 1 below ausly to lalt; he on with iperious lace for Lve hap- n. His (Lord ide and be Eng- I could m level me on, me; he that the pted the ter Pleni- he exact cford dis- munity, against saw, as he thought and said (for he came with me on to my quar- ters^ the period of the Mahometan's absolute ascendancy — the beginning of the Christian's. He had so closely associated the insulting privilege of the path with actual dominion, that, seeing it now in one instance abandoned, he looked for the quick coming of European troops. His lips only whispered, and that tremulously, but his fiery eyes spoke out their triumph in long and loud hurrahs ! " 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 the warnings which 1 heard against their rascality could hinder me from feeling kindly towards my fellow-Christians in the East. English travellers, from a habit perhaps of depre- ciating sectarians in their own country, are apt to look down upon the Oriental Christians as being " dissenters " from the established religion of a Mahometan Empire. I never did thus. By a natural perversity of disposition, which my nurse- maids called contra/riness, I felt the more strongly for my creed when I saw it despised among men. I quite tolerated the Christianity of Mahometan countries, notwithstanding its humble aspect, and the damaged character of its followers ; I went further, and extended some sympathy towards those who, with all the claims of superior intellect, learning, and industry, were kept down under the heel of the Mussulmen by reason of their having our faith. I heard, as I fancied, the faint echo of an old Crusader's conscience, that whispered, and said, "Common cause !" The impulse was, as you may suppose, much too feeble to bring me into trouble — it merely influenced my actions in a way thoroughly characteristic of this poor slug- gish century — that is, by making me speak almost as civilly to the followers of Christ as I did to their Mahometan foes. This " Holy " Damascus, this " earthly paradise " of the Pro- phet, so fair to the eyes, that he dared not to trust himself to tarry in her blissful shades, she is a city of hidden palaces, of copses, and gardens, and fountains, and bubbling streams. The juice of her life is the gushing and ice-cold tonent that tumbles from the snowy sides of Anti-Lebanon. Close along on the river's edge through seven sweet miles of rustling boughs, and deepest shade, the city spreads out her whole length ; as a man falls flat, fage forward on the brook, that he may drink, and 204 EOTHEN. [chap, xxvii. .In ( ?,.^ !f^ drink again, so Damascus, thirsting for ever, lies down with her lips to the stream, and clings to its rushing waters. The chief places of public amusement, or rather, of public relaxation, are the baths, and the great cafi; this last, which is frequented at night by most of the wealthy men, and by many of the humbler sort, consists of a number of sheds very simply framed, and built in a labyrinth of running streams, which foam and roar on every side. The place is lit up in the simplest manner by numbers of small, pale lamps, strung upon loose cords, and so suspended branch to branch, that the light, though it looks so quiet amongst the darkening foliage, yet leaps and brightly flashes, as it falls upon the troubled waters. All around, and chiefly upon the very edge of the torrents, groups of people are tranquilly seated. They all drink coffee, and inhale the cold fumes of the narguile ; they talk rather gently the one to the other, or else are silent. A father will sometimes have two or three of his boys around him, but the joyousness of an Oriental child is all of the sober sort, and never disturbs the reigning calm of the land. It has been generally understood, I believe, that the houses of Dar. ' "".us are more sumptuous than those of any other city in the j >ast. Some of these — said to be the most magnificent in the place — I had an opportunity of seeing. Every rich man's house stands detached from its neighbours, at the side of a garden, and it is from this cause, no doubt, that the city has hitherto escaped destmction. You know some parts of Spain, but you have never, I think, been in Andalusia ; if you had, I could easily show you the interior of a Damascene house, by referring you to the Alhambra, or Alcanzar of Seville. The lofty rooms are adorned with a rich inlaying of many colours, and illuminated writing on the walls. The floors are of marble. One side of any room intended for noon-day retire- ment is generally laid open to a quadrangle, in the centre of which there dances the jet of a fountain. There is no furniture that can interfere with the cool, palace-like emptiness of the apartments. A divan (which is a low and doubly broad sofa) runs round the three walled sides of the room ; a few Persian carpets (which ought to be called Persian rugs, for that is the word which indicates their shape and dimension), are sometimes thrown about near the divan ; they are placed without order, the one partly lapping over the other, and thus disposed, they XXVII. CHAP. XXVII,] DAMASCUS. 205 nth her ■ public , which ymany simply ch foam implest n loose though aps and around, ■ people :he cold e to the two or Oriental reigning ; houses ;her city rnificent f hbours, doubt, )w some dalusia ; nascene Seville. many Dors are y retire- sntre of urniture 5 of the ad sofa) Persian tt is the mietimes order, ed, they give to the room an appearance of uncaring luxury ; except these (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 marble floor from one divan to the other, and from the head of the chamber across to the murmuring fountain, is thoroughly open and free. So simple as this is Asiatic luxury ! — The Oriental is not a contriving animal — there is nothing intricate in his magnificence. The impossibility of handing down property from father to son, for any long period consecutively, seems to prevent the existence of those traditions by which, with us, the refined modes of apply- ing wealth *are made known to its inheritors. We know that in England a newly-made rich man cannot, by taking thought and spending money, obtain even the same-looking furniture as a Gentleman. The complicated character of an English estab- lishment allows room for subtle distinctions between that which is comme ilfaut and that which is not. All such refinements are unknown in the East — the Pasha and the peasant have the same taste. The broad, cold marble floor — the simple couch — the air freshly waving through a shady chamber — a verse 'of the Koran emblazoned on the walls — the sight and the s^and of falling water — the cold, fragrant smoke of the narguile, and a small collection of wives and children in the inner apartments — all these, the utmost enjoyments of the grandee, are yet such as to be appreciable by the 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 the Oriental taste ; they rather bring back to your mind the memory of some dark old shrubbery in our northern isle, that has been charmingly " w«-kept up" for many and many a day. When you see a rich wilderness of wood in decent England, it is like enough that you see it with some soft regrets. The puzzled old woman at the lodge can give small account of "The family." She thinks it is "Italy" that has made the whole circle of her world so gloomy and sad. You avoid the house in lively dread of a lone housekeeper, but you make your way on by the stables ; you remember that gable with all its neatly nailed trophies of fitches, and hawks, and owls, now slowly falling to pieces — you remember that stable, and that, but the doors are all fastened that used to be standing 206 EOTHEN. [chap, xxvii. ajar — the paint of things painted is blistered and cracked — grass grows in the yard — ^just there, in October mornings, the keeper would wait with the dogs and the guns — no keeper now — you hurry away, and gain the small wicket that used to open to the touch of a lightsome hand — it is fastened with a padlock (the only new-looking thing), and it is stained with thick, green damp — you climb it, and bury yourself in the deep shade, and strive but lazily with the tangling briars, and stop for long minutes to judge and determine whether you will creep beneath the long boughs, and make them your archway, or whether perhaps you will lift your heel and tread them down under foot. Long doubt, and scarcely to be ended, till you wake from the memory of those days when the path was clear, and chase that phantom of a muslin sleeve that once weighed warm upon your arm. Wild as that the nighest woodland of a deserted home in England, but without its sweet sadness, is the sumptuous garden of l3amascus. Forest trees, tall and stately enough if you could see their lofty crests, yet leading a tustling life of it below with their branches struggling against strong numbers of bushes and wilful shrubs. The shade upon the earth is black as night. High, high above your head and on every side all down to the ground, the thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the inter- lacing boughs that droop with the weight of roses, and load the slow air with their damask breath.* There are no other flow- ers. Here and there, there are patches of ground made clear from the cover, and these are either carelessly planted with some common and useful vegetable, or else are left free to the wayward ways of Nature, and bear rank weeds, moist-looking and cool to your eyes, and freshening the sense with their earthy 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 so narrow (the shrubs are for ever encroach- ing) that you ought, if you can, to go on the first and hold back the bough of the rose tree. And through this wilderness there tumbles a loud rushing stream which is halted at last in the lowest comer of the garden, and there tossed up in a fountain by the side of the simple alcove. This is all. Never for an instant will the people of Damascus attempt to separate the idea of bliss from these wild gardens and rushing * The rose trees, which I saw> were all of the kind we call " damask ;" the^ grow to an immense height and site. CHAP. XXVII.] DAMASCUS. 207 waters. Even where your best affections are concerned, and you— prudent preachers " hold hard,'^ and turn aside when they come near the mysteries of the happy state, and we (pni- duent preachers too), we will hush our voices and never reveal to finite beings the joys of the " Earthly Paradise." 208 EOTHEN. [chap. XXVIII CHAPTER XXVIII. PASS OK THE LEBANON. 'he niins of Baalbec !" Shall I scatter the vague, solemn thoughts and all the airy phantasies which gather together when once those words are spoken, that ^ I may give you instead tall columns, and measure- ments true, and phrases built with ink ? — No, no ; the glorious sounds shall still float on as of yore, and still hold fast upon your brain with their own dim and infinite meaning. Come ! Baalbec is over ; I got " rather well" out of that. The pass by which I crossed the Lebanon is like, I think, in its features, to one which you must know, namely, that of the Foorca in the Bernese Oberland. For a great part of the way I toiled rather painfully through the dazzling snow, but the labour of ascending added to the excitement with which I looked for the summit of the pass. The time came. There was a minute in the which I saw nothing but the steep white shoulder of the mountain, and there was another minute, and that the next, which showed me a nether Heaven of fleecy clouds that floated along far down in the air beneath me, and showed me beyond the breadth of all Syria west of the Lebanon. But chiefly I clung with my eyes to the dim steadfast line of the sea which closed my utmost view ; I had grown well used of late to the people and the scenes of forlorn Asia — well used to tombs and ruins, to silent cities and deserted plains, to tranquil men and women sadly veiled ; and now that I saw the even plain of the sea, I leapt with an easy leap to its yonder shores, and saw all the kingdoms of the West in that fair path that could lead me from out of this silent land straight on into shrill Marseilles, or round by the pillars of Hercules, to the crash and roar of Lon- don. My place upon this dividing barrier was as a man's puzzling station in eternity, between the birthless Past and the Future that has no end. Behind me I left an old decrepid World — Religions dead and dying — calm tyrannies expiring in silence — women hushed and swathed, and turned into waxen CHAP. XXVIII.] PASS OF THE LEBANON. 209 dolls — Love flown, and in its stead mere Royal and " Paradise"' pleasures. — Before me there waited glad bustle and strife, — Love itself, an emulous game, — Religion a Cause and a Controversy, well smitten and well defended, — men governed by reasons and suasion of speech, — wheels going, — steam buzzing, — a mortal race and a slashing pace, and the Devil taking the hindmost, — taking me, by Jove (for that was my inner care), if I lingered too long upon the difficult Pass 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 Sacred by the Greek Church, on account of a prevailing notion that the trees were standing at the time when the Temple of Jerusalem was built. They occupy three or four acres on the mountain's side, and many of them are gnarled in a Avay that implies great age, but, except these signs, I saw nothing in their appearance or conduct that tended to prove them con- temporaries of the cedars employed in Solomon's Temple. The final cause to which these aged survivors owed their preserva- tion was explained to me in the evening by a glorious old fel- low (a Christian Chief), who made me welcome in the valley of Enen. In ancient times, the whole range of the Lebanon had been covered with cedars, but as the fertile plains beneath became more and more infested with Government officers and tyrants of high and low degree, the people by degrees aban- doned them, and flocked to the rugged mountains which were less accessible to their insolent oppressors. The cedar forests gradually shrank under the axe of the encroaching multitudes, and seemed at last to be on the point of disappearing entirely, when an aged Chief, who ruled in this district, and who had witnessed the great change effected, even in his own life-time, chose to say that some sign or memorial should be left of the vast woods with which the mountains had formerly been clad, and commanded accordingly that this group of trees (which was probably situate at the highest point to which the forest had reached) should remain untouched. The Chief, it seems, was not moved by the notion I have mentioned as prevailing in the Greek Church, but rather by some sentiment of venera- tion for a great natural feature, — a sentiment akin, perhaps, to that old and earthb'orn Religion, which jnade men bow d.ovm N 110 EOTHEN. [chap, xxviir. to Creation, before they had yet learnt how to know and wor- ship the Creator. The Chief of the valley in which I passed the night was a man of large possessions, and he entertained me very sumptu- ously ; he was highly intelligent, and had had the sagacity to foresee that Europe would intervene authoritatively in the affairs of Syria. Bearing this idea in mind, and with a view to give his son an advantageous start in the ambitious career for which he was destined, he had hired for him a teacher of the Italian language, the only accessible European tongue. The tutor, however, who was a native of Syria, either did not know, or did not choose to teach, the European forms of address, but contented himself with instructing his pupil in the mere lan- guage of Italy. This circumstance gave me an opportunity (the only one I ever had, or was likely to have)* of hearing the phrases of Oriental courtesy in an European tongue. The boy was about twelve or thirteen years old, and having the advan- tage of being able to speak to me without the aid of an inter- preter, he took a very prominent part in doing the honours of his father's house. He went through his duties with untiring assiduity, and with a kind of gracefulness which can scarcely be conveyed by mere description to those who are unacquainted with the manners of the Asiatics. The boy's address resembled a little that of a highly polished and insinuating Roman Catho- lic Priest, but had more of girlish gentleness. It was strange to hear him gravely and slowly enunciating the common and extravagant compliments of the East, in good Italian, and in soft, persuasive tones ; I recollect that I was particularly amused at the gracious obstinacy with which he maintained that the house in which I was so hospitably entertained, belonged not to his father, but to me ; to say this once, was only to use the common form of speech, signifying no more than our sweet word "welcome," but the amusing part of the matter was that, whenever in the course of conversation, I happened to speak of his father's house, or the surrounding domain, the boy in- variably interfered to correct my pretended mistake, and to assure me once again, with a gentle decisiveness of manner, that the whole property was really and exclusively mine, and * A Dragoman never interprets in terms the courteous language of the East. CHAP. xxviiL] PASS OF THE LEBANON. 211 that his father had not the most distant pretensions to its ownership. I received from my host much and (as I now know) most true information respecting the people of the mountains, and their power of resisting Mehemet Ali. The Chief gave me very plainly to understand that the Mountaineers, being depen- dent on others for bread and gunpowder (the two great neces- saries of martial life), could not long hold out against a power which occupied the plains and commanded the sea, but he also assured me, and that very significantly, that if this source of weakness • were provided against, the mountaineers were to be depended upon ; he told me that in ten or fifteen days the Chiefs could bring together some fifty thousand fighting men. 212 EOTHEN. [chap. XXIX. CHAPTER XXIX. SURPRISE OF SATALIEH, |HILST I was remaining upon the coast of Syria, I had the good fortune to become acquainted with the Russian Sataliefsky,* a General Officer, who, in his . , youth, had fought and bled at Borodino, but was now better known among diplomats by the important trust committed to him at a period highly critical for the affairs of Eastern Europe ; I must not tell you his 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 and diplo- matic services performed under my own eyes. The General, as well as I, was bound for Smyrna, and we agreed to sail together in an Ionian brigantine. We did not charter the vessel, but we made our arrangement with the captain upon such terms that we could be put ashore upon any part of the coast which we might think proper. We sailed, and day after day the vessel lay dawdling on the sea with calms and feeble breezes for her portion. I myself was well repaid for the painful restlessness which such weather occasions, because I gained from my companion a little of that vast fund of inter- esting knowledge with which he was stored — knowledge, a thousand times the more highly to be prized, since it was not of the sort that is to be gathered from books, but only from the lips of those who have acted a part in the world. When after nine days of sailing, or trying to sail, Ave found ourselves still hanging by the mainland to the north of the Isle of Cyprus, we determined to disembark at Satalieh and to proceed from thence by land. A light breeze favoured our purpose, and it was with great delight that we neared the fragrant land, and saw our anchor go down in the bay of Satalieh, within two or three hundred yards of the shore. The town of Satalieht is the chief place of the Pashalik in * A title signifying Transcender or Conqueror of Satalieh. + Spelt •* Attalia " and sometimes ** Adalia " in English books and maps. CHAP. XXIX. SURPRISE OF SATALIEH. 213 Ige, a bund Isle nd to d our d the ay of ilik in which it is situate, and its citadel is the residence of the Pasha. We had scarcely dropped our anchor when a boat from the shore came alongside, with officers on board, who announced that the strictest orders had been received for maintaining a quarantine of three weeks against all vessels coming from Syria, and directed accordingly that no one from the vessel should disembark. In reply we sent a message to the Pasha, setting forth the rank and titles of the General, and requiring permission to go ashore. After a while the boat came again alongside, and the officers declaring that the orders received from Constantinople were imperative and unexceptional, for- mally enjoined us in the name of the Pasha to abstain from any attempt to land. I had been hitherto much less impatient of our slow voyage than my gallant friend, but this opposition made the smooth sea seem to me like a prison from which I must and would break out. I had an unbounded faith in the feebleness of Asiatic potentates, and I proposed that we should set the Pasha at defiance. The General had been worked up to a state oT the most painful agitation by the idea of being driven from the shore which smiled so pleasantly before his eyes, and he adopted my suggestion with rapture. We determine to land. To approach the sweet shore after a tedious voyage, and then to be suddenly and unexpectedly prohibited from landing, — this is so maddening to the temper that no one who had ever experienced the trial would say that even the most violent impatience of such restraint is wholly inexcusable. I am not going to pretend, however, that the course which we chose to adopt on this occasion can be perfectly justified. The impro- priety of a traveller's setting at naught the regulations of a foreign State is clear enough ; and the bad taste of compassing such a purpose, by mere gasconading, is still more glaringly plain. I knew perfectly well that if the Pasha understood his duty, and had energy enough to perform it, he would order out a file of soldiers the moment we landed, and cause us both to be shot upon the beach, without allowing more contact than might be absolutely necessary for the purpose of making us stand fire, but I also firmly believed that the Pasha would not see the line of conduct which he ought to adopt nearly so well as I did, and that, even if he did know his duty, he would never be able to find resolution enough to perform it. 214 EOTHEN. [CHAP. XXIX. We ordered the boat to be got in readiness, and the officers on shore seeing these preparations, gathered together a number of guards who assembled upon the sands ; we saw that great excitement prevailed, and that messengers were continually going to and fro before the shore and the citadel. Our Captain, out of compliment to his Excellency, had provided the vessel with a Russian war-flag, which he had hoisted alternately with the Union Jack, and we agreed that we would attempt our dis- embarkation under this, the Russian standard ; I was glad when we came to that resolution, for I should have been very sorry to engage the honoured flag of England in such an afiair as that which we were undertaking. The Russian ensign was therefore committed to one of the sailors, who took his station at the stem of the boat. We gave particular instructions to the Cap- tain of the brigantine, and when all was ready, the General and I with our respective servants got into the boat, and were slowly rowed towards the shore. The guards gathered together at the point for which we were making, but when they saw that our boat went on without altering her course, they ceased to stand very still ; none of them ran away or even shrank back, but they looked as if the pack were being shuffled^ every man seeming desirous to change places with his neighbour. They were still at their post however when our oars went in, and the bow of our boat ran up — well up upon the beach. The General was lame by an honorable wound which he had gained at Borodino, and required some assistance in getting out of the boat ; I, therefore, landed the first. My instructions to the Captain were attended to with the most perfect accuracy, for scarcely had my foot indented the sand, when the four six- pounders of the Brigantine sublimely rolled out their brute thunder. Precisely as I had expected, the guards, and all the people who had gathered about them, gave way under the shock produced by the mere sound of guns, and we were all allowed to disembark without the least molestation. We immediately formed a little column, or rather, as I should have called it, a procession, for we had no fighting aptitude in us, and were only trying, as it were, how far we could go in frightening full-grown children. First marched the sailor with the Russian flag of war bravely flying in the breeze ; then came the General and I ; then our servants, and lastly, if I rightly recollect, two more of the brigantine's crew. Our flag-bearer CHAP. XXIX.] SURPRISE OF SATALIEH. 215 gom with came ghtly earer entered into the spirit of the enterprise, and bore the standard aloft with so much of pomp and dignity, that I found it exceed- ingly hard to keep a grave countenance. We advanced towards the castle, but the people had now had time to recover from the effect of the six-pounders (which where only, of course, loaded with powder), and they could not help seeing, not only the weak- ness of our party, but the very slight amount of pomp and power which it seemed to imply ; they began to hang around us more closely, and, just as this reaction was beginning, the General, who was perfectly unacquainted with the Asiatic character, thoughtlessly turned round in order to speak to one of the ser- vants ; the effect of this slight move was magical ; the people thought we were going to give way, and instantly closed round us. In two words, and with one touch, I showed my comrade the danger he was running, and in the next instant we were both advancing more pompously than ever. Some minutes afterwards there was a second appearance of reaction, followed again by wavering and indecision on the part of the Pasha's people, but at last it seemed to be understood that we should go unmolested into the audience hall. Constant communication had been going on between the re- ceding crowd and the Pasha, and so when we reached the gates of the citadel we saw that preparations were made for giving us an awe-striking reception. Parting at once from the sailors and our servants, the General and I were conducted into the audience hall ; and there at least I suppose the Pasha hoped that he would confound us by his greatness. The hall was nothing more than a large white-washed room ; Oriental poten- tates have a pride in that sort of simplicity when they can contrast it with the exhibition of power, and this the Pasha was able to do, for the lower end of the hall was filled with his offi- cers ; these men, of whom I thought there were about fifty or sixty, were all handsomely though plainly dressed in the mili- tary frock-coats of Europe ; they stood in mass and so as to present a hollow, semicircular front towards the upper end of the hall at which the Pasha sat ; they opened a narrow lane for us, when we entered, and, as soon as we had passed, they again closed up their ranks. An attempt was made to induce us to remain at a respectful distance from his Mightiness ; to have yielded in this point would have been fatal to our success, — perhaps to our lives ; but the General and I had already deter. .•'•- 2l6 EOTHEN. [chap, xxix. I I mined upon the place which we should take, and we rudely pushed on towards the upper end 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 up like an adder. His cheeks were deadly pale, and his lips perhaps had turned white, for without moving a muscle the man impressed me with an immense idea of wrath within him. He kept his eyes inexorably fixed, as if upon vacancy, and with the look of a man accustomed to refuse the prayers of those who sue for life. We soon discomposed him, however, from this studied fixity of feature, for we march- ed straight up to the divan and sat down, the Russian close to the Pasha, and I by the side of the Russian. This act as- tonished the at*-"" ''ants and plainly disconcerted the Pasha ; he could no longer maintain the glassy stillness of 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 the absence of our attendants, he was to act as interpreter. The Pasha caused him to tell us that we had openly defied his au- thority, and had forced our way upon shore in the teeth of his. own officers. Up to this time I had been the planner of the enternrise,, but now that the moment had come when all would depend upon able and earnest speechifying, I felt at once the immense supe- riority of my gallant friend, and gladly left to him the whole conduct of the discussion ; indeed he had vast advantages over me, not only by his superior command of language, and his far more spirited style of address, but also in his conscious- ness of a good cause, for whilst I felt myself completely in the wrong, his Excellency had really worked himself up to believe that the Pasha's refusal to permit our landing was a gross out- rage and insult. Therefore, without deigning to defend our conduct, he at once commenced a spirited attack upon the Pasha. The poor Italian doctor translated one or two sen- tences to the Pasha, but he evidently mitigated their import ; the Russian, growing warm, insisted upon his attack with re- doubled energy and spirit ; but the medico, instead of trans- lating, began to shake violently with terror, and at last he came out with his " non ardisco" and fairly confessed that he dared not interpret fierce words to his master. /<^ CHAP, XXIX.] SURPRISE OF SATALIEH. 217 ;ious- 1 the ;lieve ; out- our the sen- ort ; re- ans- ame ared Now then, at a time when everything seemed to depend upon the effect of speech, we were left without an interpreter. But this very circumstance, which at first appeared so un- favourable, turned out to be advantageous. The General find- ing that he could not have his words translated, ceased to speak in Italian, and recurred to his accustomed French ; he became eloquent ; no one present, except myself, understood one sylla_ ble of what he was saying, but he had drawn forth his pass port, and the energy and violence with which, as he spoke, he pointed to the graven Eagle of Russia, began to make an im- pression ; the Pasha saw at his side a man, who not only seem- ed to be entirely without fear, but to be raging with just indig- nation, and thenceforward he plainly began to think that, in some way or other (he could not tell how), he must certainly have been in the wrong. In a little time he was so much shak- en, that the Italian ventured to resume his interpretation, and my com*aci^. had again the opportunity of pressing his attack upon th.* Pasha ; his argument, if I rightly recollect its import, was tc ♦nis effect — " If the vilest Jews were to come into the harbour, you would but forbid them to land, and force them to peform quarantine, yet this is the very course, O Pasha, which your rash officers dared to think of adopting with us ! — those mad and reckless men would have actually dealt towards a Russian General Officer and an English Gentleman, as if they had been wretched Israelites ! Never, never, will we submit to such an indignity. His Imperial Majesty knows how to pro- tect his nobles from insult, and would never endure that a Gen- eral of his army should be treated in matter of quarantine, as though he were a mere Eastern Jew !". This argument told with great effect ; the Pasha fairly admitted that he felt its i--eight, and he now only struggled to obtain a compromise, wliu:b might seem to save his dignity ; he wanted us to perform a (juara,ntine of one day for form's sake, and in order to show his people that he was not utterly defied, but finding that ive were inexorable, he not only abandoned "his attempt, but pro- mised to supply us with horses. When the discussion had arrived at this happy conclusion, tchibouques and coffee were brought, and we passed, I think, n .arly an hour in friendly conversation. The Pasha, it now appeared, had once been a prisoner of war in Russia, and the conviction of the Emperor's power, which he must have ac- o 2l8 EOTHEN. [chap. xxix. quired during his captivity, probably rendered him more alive than an untravelled Turk would have been to the force of my comrade's eloquence. The Pasha now gave us a generous feast ; our promised hor- ses were brought without much delay ; I gained my loved sad- dle once more, and when the moon got up and touched the heights of Taurus,''We were joyfully winding our way through one of his rugged defiles. i . .