OPTHi uNivERsmr ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE; f ttters fxssm ^pir BY J. w.Ide forest. NEW YOKE: DIX, EDWARDS & CO., 321 BROADWAY, 18o(i. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by DIX, EDWARDS & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. Mn.LER A IIOLMAN, Printers & Sterootypers, N. Y. CONTENTS. LETTER I. Harbor of Smyrna Go Ashore Passport-ofBce Smyrniote Othello Threadbare Delusions and Jackets A Kind Host- Donkey Locomotion Undiscoverable Houris Disappointment in Love A Dose of Ba?Jc An Escaped Shipwreck The Doc- tor Leave Smyrna. LETTER II. The Steamer Voyaging Qualities of Fleas Hungry Pilgrims Conversation under Difficulties A Eussian Pilgrimess Piety in Sheepskin Thoughts on Pilgrimism Scotch Engineer A Discovered Houri Harbor of Khodes A Worn-out City A Disrespectable Guide Scenery around Rhodes Cyprus Thoughts on Beaiity Harbor of Beirut Squabbling Boatmen Old Friends. LETTER III. A Beirut House Charley JiJ'apier's Cannon-balls S}Tian Calls- Beirut Upper-Ten Female Magnificence Druse Visitors Raheel, Khazma, and Lulu A Ride An Arab Dinner Call on a Syrian Family An Arab Poet A Specimen of his Verses The Bait Susa Sultana of the Bait Susa. LETTER lY. To Jerusalem Our Party-Clamorous Departure Scene of Jonah's Disembarkation A Troublesome Elder Concerning Fleas Tented Slumber Jackal Melodies Arab Ditto Humiliation of Habeeb Jacob's Well Our Russian Friend again Exterior of Jerusalem Quarters for Om-selves, and no Quarters to the Fleas. M811432 IV CONTENTS. LETTER V. Holy and Unholy Places The Church Militant, or a Row in the Holy Sepulchre The LepersStart for the JordanThe Pilgrim Host_Ugly and Pretty Women Handsome Armenian- .Beda- ween Opinion of a Revolver Turkish Soldiers Encampment at Jericho An Abused John Bull A Ballet of Sodom Night at Jericho. LETTER VI. To the Jordan View of the River The Ablutions A Death and a Bii-th The Frankness of Modesty The Dead Sea ;Involun- tary Swimming Arab Mirth at Prank Wrath Redboots Night at Mar Saba The Holy Fire That Blessed Baby- Concerning Oriental Infancy Anakims Jaffa To Beirut How the Yorkshireman took Suez How he saw the Mosque of Omar IT(nv ho toasted the Flea How he bagged the Crab. LETTER VII. Invitation to iMt. Lebanon- Our Party A Small Desert Moun- taineers Benedictions Lebanon Scenery Bhamdun The Hakeem's House A Cat's Mistake A Schoolmaster's Mistake Knowing Swallows Uncle Khalil His Speculations in Grain^ Sheep, and Silk Business Offers An American Plow Vint- age and its Fruits Mercantile Character of the Syrians Manu- factures. LETTER VIII. Character of the Syrians. -Conversational SubjectsPoliteness A Jump over a Mule- -A Sample of Syrian Talk Commentaries thereonDelicacy concerning Hogs, Jews, and Women The Syrians as Linguists A-ids to Conversation A Tax-gatherer in Trouble Unmentionable Enormities Fatal Dandyism East- ern Contempt of Western Breeches Head-shaving Syrian Opinion of Hats Thin Dressing Matrimonial Ornaments Wives and Marriages Family Government _. The Neuralgic Pasha's Hatred of Noise His Persecutions of Babies, Butchers, liirds, Donkeys, and Frogs. LETTER IX. Population and Position of the Druses Their Religious Ideas Druse Manifest Destiny.-.The Abd cl-MeleksRcspect for the CONTENTS. V Sheikhs Visit to Druse Palaces Blood Horses Tlie Old and Young Sheikhs The " Sick Man' The Hareera Druse Hypo crisy Adventures of Sheikh Ali A Four-legged Medical Fee Howaja Sharley Sensation caused by Geese Escape of HoAvaja Sharley Sheep Seventy-pounder Tails Innocent Wonder concerning Sheep's Tails American Wheat on Leba- non. LETTER X. A Moral whereby hangs a Tale, or the JNIulo of Abu-Hamood Start for the Cedars Cold Fountains Natural Bridge Grand Scenery The Cedai-s The Hermit Getting Holy by Degrees of Latitude The Hakeem's Observations on Solomon's Temple A Pastoral Luncheon- ..The Summit of Lebanon Lebanon Bears. LETTER XI. Eeligious Phraseology of the East "To the Door of God" The Fated Hawk A Curative Stone Cutting off a Disease Breaking a Malign Influence The Evil Eye_ Syrian Lying. _ The Wooden Mule The Lie of the Devout Trooper Lying to Sick People Excuses for Lying Precautions against Poison Dislike of saying No A Sulky Fellah Gay Beggar Girl A Bargaining Sheikh The Damascus Customs Officer _ A Moslem Family. LETTER XII. Vakeel Aasa_His Style of Pumping_His Arithmetical Problem His Pretty Daughter Abu Nasr of Nazareth His Office Seeking Philanthropy " The Smallest Favors thankfully re- ceived" The Learned Saada_Her Fancy for our Chaplain A Desert Wanderer A Howaly's Plans and Fancies Syrian Ideas on Frank Customs Buried Treasures Troglodytes A Palace of Damascus. LETTER XIII. Ruins in Syria Temples in Lebanon The Cavern City_Lake and Temple of Yemmoneh_Other TemplesTemples in Anti- LebanonTemple of Medjel_Site of ApameaImmense Colon- nadesRuins of Barah_Their Resemblance to PompeiiTombs and Church Present Inhabitants. ORIENTAL ACiHUmTANCE. ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. I. LANDING AT SMYRNA. The trim Boston bark which had brought me safely, though tediously tempest-beaten, from the low green shores of Massachusetts, at last lay at anchor in the Bay of Smyrna. Before my western eyes were spread out, in oriental strangeness, the shabby wharves, the fragile minarets, and the rough, red-tiled roofs of the Queen of Ionia. A huge, ruinous, glum- visaged castle sat on the lofty hill behind the city, and vainly strove to wrap its brown nakedness in a dilapidated robe of winter misrt* High J bare, sombre mounteins looked 1 2 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. down from the opposite side of the bay with a solemn stillness, which made one think of icy fingers on granite lips, forbidding them to reveal the secrets of ages. To the east^ opened a long gentle valley, verdurous with gardens and cypresses, and populous here and there with the roofs of Turkish villages. Straggling orientals, evidently for the most part porters, sailors, and loafers, were moving about the quays in gay-colored raiment, which distance divested of its real tatters and thread- bareness. A negro, who had tastefully reheved the intense jet of his skin by setting it in a frame-work of white robes and turban, shone on me like an eclipsed sun with a halo of glory around its edge. A downcast donkey marched by with a long procession of loaded camels attached to his tail, reminding me of an insignificant president at the head of a mighty confederation. Our vessel, wMch until then I had seldom Keen except in a state of hysterical agitation, now reposed as tranquilly as the air, the moun- tains, and the city. The black steward, no longer perturbed lest some mischievous sea LANDING AT SMYRNA. should "Upset his person and his tureen into the scuppers, and bring upon his woolly head the wrath of the " old man," was muttering and chuckling to himself, probably about some by-gone flirtation in the colored circles of Boston. The mulatto cook, having spent his leisure hours on the voyage in making a fiddle, had taken out his pieces of maple, and was hopefully whittling at his unfinished task. The Greek boy sailor, an unfortunate mortal, who had been kicked and cuffed all the way across the ocean for not intuitively understand- ing English, now leaned his greasy face upon the bulwarks and stared with joyous black eyes at his native city. The boat was let down from the side, and, in my solitary dignity as only passenger, I descended the ladder with the captain, and was rowed ashore. The failing timbers of a ruinous wooden quay. S3Tiibolical, in their rot- tenness, of the people and government of the country, gave me footing on the shore of Tur- key. A tottering shed-like building served as passport office ; and there the captain intro- duced me as a true-blue, home-spun American 4 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. citizen. I had left home in a hurry ; my pass- port had been sent on by mail, and it was then reposing obscurely in the drawers of our resi- dent consul. But police regulations are not enforced with troublesome strictness in the East ; and I was allowed to pass without a word of grumbling, or the expense of a piastre in bribes. I wondered at several sleepy offi- cials, who sat cross-legged on tables, holding papers awkwardly in one hand, whilst they leisurely wrote with the other. But what most struck me, was a negro, who, dressed handsomely in the Turkish style, lounged qui- etly on a bench near the door, 'and occupied himself with smoking a meditative pipe. " Do you see that fellow?" said the captain. "He is as good as any of them here." Coming from a country where individuals of this color bear all the marks of a depressed and despised peo- ple, I saw in this man the first of a species. No sneaking, no grinning, no small imperti- nences ; but self-possession, self-respect in every feature, dignity and ease in every mo- tion. No Turk in the room had more calm- ness, gravity, and intelligence in his air; or LANDING AT SMYRNA. looked more like the gentleman, Hamlet, than he did like the gentleman, Othello. I saw at once that he had been treated like a man all his life, and that not the least suspicion had ever entered his brain that he was not a man. He gave me new ideas of the possibilities of the African race, and made me look forward to a supposable time when negroes shall have a chance with the rest of us. Since then, I have seen in Constantinople a black captain drilling a company of white soldiers, and black officials on horseback, grandly attended by gorgeously dressed and blood-mounted white servants. Before reaching Turkey, my imagination was possessed by an idea which I knew to be ab- surd, but which I could not shake out of it. The fat Turk in the geography, and the wealth of the Arabian Nights, formed the warp and Woof of my Eastern expectations. I fancied that each oriental possessed an independent fortune, and smoked interminable pipes, seat- ed on luxurious cushions, and attired magnifi- cently in purple and fine linen. I was ex- tremely shocked, therefore, to find the greatest part of the population at work, and dressed in 6 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. very ancient and seedy clothing. The age of gold has run its sands in the East ; and, with their ancestral character, the Turks have worn out their ancestral jackets. I had a letter of introduction to a South Carolinian resident at Smyrna. He met me at the landing with a hospitable invitation to his roof. I never yet saw a, South Carolinian who vvas not a gentleman, and a most intelli- gent and well-informed one. I could fill a page or two with the good qualities and the civilities of my host and his charming wife; but I do not choose to introduce the public to their courteous and amiable privacy. We had rides to the old Genoese castle on the hill ; rides to the schools of the American missiona- ries ; rides to the country-seats of some of their wealthy Smymiote friends. Never shall I for- get my shame and indignation, when, at the tall age of twenty years, I found myself mali- ciously obliged to cross, for the first time, the back of a donkey. The biggest biped in the party, they had provided me with the smallest Quadruped. It was a creature that the king of Lilliput might have ridden without much LANDING AT SMYRNA. danger to his Serene Littleness from too lofty a fall. His legs associated themselves in my mind with pipe-stems ; and I should have been agonized with a fear of their breaking, had I not discovered that my own toes were within reaching distance of the ground. I felt like a big ass mounted on a little one ; like a moun- tain taking a ride on a molehill. How I en- vied my companions in the dignity of horse- back ! and how they laughed as they surv^5i^ my absurd appearance from the rear, or can- tered ahead until I was almost hopelessly out of sight ! A bare-legged Greek ran behind me and administered moving persuasions to my sluggish beast, in the form of maniac grunts and yells, and innumerable punches from a sharp-pointed stick. At every fresh poke came a whisk of the bare tail, a discon- tented shake of those ignominious ears, a spasmodic scramble of the hind legs ; and then everything went on as before. The donkey was evidently used to his master's troublesome ways, and had learned to treat these impertinent personalities with proper contempt. 8 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. While at Smyrna, I kept a sharp look-out for houris and odalisques ; but if I saw any, I never knew it. The Turkish women con- founded my inquisitive eyes with their vexa- tious veils and swaddlings, and left a great deal more to my imagination than was satis- factory. They seemed to be absurdly con- tented with their ghostly way of life ; not a soul of them ever solicited me to carry her off from the harem of a tyrannical husband or father. Accordingly, I consoled myself by looking at the bare-faced Greek girls, who stood all day in the door-ways, watching the passers-by, and gossiping vociferously with each other across the street. I found more than my match here, for they beat me hollow at staring, and looked me out of countenance so often that I got positively ashamed of my- self. Right opposite my entertainer's house lived a remarkably pretty one a girl, in fact, whose face would be considered attractive in any country. We soon struck up a sort of intimacy of eyes, and carried it on for some time without any results that I ever heard of. Whenever I came home, or went out, I usually LANDING AT SMYRNA. 9 found her standing in her own door, as if Ijmg in wait for an3rthing that could divert her idle brain. Accordingly, like a very young tra- veler, I would saunter up and down, staring and stared at, until her audacious black eyes would get the victory and send me off, ad- miring, but exceedingly discomfited. She very often had a little girl by the hand, steadying its uneasy and captious diminutiveness on the threshold. There was likewise a certain sal- low young Greek who haunted the house, walking independently in and out at plea- sure, and, to all appearance, making himself comfortably at home. After much jealous cogitation, I began to be afraid that my Ionian enchantress was the wife of said Greek, if not also the mother of said baby. I accordingly became somewhat cautious in my advances ; not on account of any particular aversion to babies, but because I felt a singular respect for those long knives which nearly all the Smymiote Greeks carry in their girdles. In short, not a word ever came of it; not so much as an action for a breach of promise. The only other natives of the place whose 10 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. faces strongly impressed themselves upon my memory, were three rascally Smyrniote dogs. Having been on a v^alk up the hill with one of the American missionaries, we were returning at a killing pace with the intention of getting home in time for dinner. My friend took what he supposed to be a short cut through a mass of Turkish houses ; and we drove on rejoicing, until we found ourselves in a little court, sur- rounded by the back doors of various respecta- ble Moslem dwellings. Out rushed the three dogs aforesaid, from as many gateways, and, with masterly generalship, seized the narrow pass by which we had entered, and thus cut off our retreat. I verily expected to be bitten to death ; for we had not an arm of any kind, not a cane, not so much as an umbrella. The dogs yelled, and leaped, and snapped at us, very much after the fashion of our Indians, who enjoy themselves gymnastically around a prisoner before disemboweling him or knock- ing out his brains. " There you are," they seemed to observe in their snarling way. " You're in for it now. How are you going to get out again ? Don't you wish you were LANDING AT SMYRNA. 11 in some other country?" May all the dei- ties and demi-deities and demi-semi-deities of chance be praised for having strewed some loose pebbles, of two or three pounds weight each, about that detestable little inclosure! Seizing these munitions, we commenced a disorganizing cannonade upon our enemies, and routed them from their position so far as to enable ns to make a rapid exit from our trap. They chased us into the street, where we rallied by the side of a pile of rubbish, and gave them such another volley as sent them back in a hurry to their ambush. I pause to make an observation, drawn from this ad- venture and divers others similar, that dogs are much more afraid of stones than of sticks, knowing by personal experience, or perhaps by currish tradition, that they hit harder, and at a greater distance. Without being aware of it at the time, I escaped one other danger, not exactly during my stay at Smyrna, but previous to it. A few days before my arrival, an American steamer, the first in these waters, had sailed out of the bay on its maiden trip down the coast towards 12 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. Eg3rpt. That very night, the watchful captain ran his vessel stern on to the island of Scio, and gave his bewildered passengers an un- pleasant and unexpected opportunity of visit- ing that famous island. Head winds and a long voyage had prevented me from sharing in this adventure. My detention also secured me a pleasant traveling companion to Beirut, and, indeed, through much of Palestine. An American Doctor of Divinity, recruiting in the Old World a body which had been somewhat fatigued in the New, arrived from Athens at Smyrna. A man whose kindly countenance was the window of his genial spirit, and whose well-rounded frame was a symbol of his capa- cious intellect and largely-stored conversation. A man of easy and sincere friendliness ; of quick sympathies with every human mood, from a joke to a tear ; of natural ingenuity for extracting happiness from every chance wayside flower, and for discovering the sub- stance of every shadow which darkened the path. II. SMYRNA TO BEIRUT. Together the Doctor and I bade farewell to our kind friends at Smyrna, and together, in sudden comradeship, we marched away to the embarking place of the Austrian steamer. Laden with three solid trunks and a fat carpet- bag, a Turkish porter preceded us at a fast walk. Kewarding this man with the reasonable sum of ten cents, we got into a low, gondola- like boat, and reached the black sides of the Austrian packet. A fine vessel one of the best in the Mediterranean with handsome cabins fore and aft, and a spacious quarter-deck. Everything about her was on a large scale, even to the fleas, which were Brobdignagian. These animals were chiefly smuggled on board, I suspect, by a devout-minded rabble which was going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As the said rabble was furnished by many differ- ent nations, so the fleas probably came from 14 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. many different countries. There were Greek- ish, Turkish, Persian, Armenian, Maltese, He- brew, and Kussian ; and all of them seemed to be vivaciously happy, and to enjoy an ex- cellent appetite, in spite of the motion of the vessel. In fact, wherever I met these animals, they appeared to me remarkably fitted as travelers, possessing uncommon cheerfulness and toughness, great powers of insinuation, and extraordinary tact in securing board and .lodging. All about the main-deck, and even over one- half of the quarter-deck, lay the pilgrims men, women, and children, folded in a name- less variety of costumes, picking out the soft planks, chatting and smoking. There were also two or three families of Turks, who pre- tended to a higher position in life, and had a little pen of boards and spars around them to keep out the unbelievers. Here and there, individuals were engaged in preparing frugal meals from family stocks of provisions ; and, in an hour or two after our departure, all these modern crusa-ders were gravely eating their dinners. I was struck with the meagre econo- SMYRNA TO BEIRUT. 15 my of one poor wretch, who had wandered thus far, from I know not what portion of earth, on his pilgrimage to the Holy City. He was a man, ghastly and beggarly, dressed in ragged cotton, the chilliness of which was somewhat relieved by an old shaggy capote. He took from his pocket a wooden bowl, a wooden spoon, and a lump of coarse, black, hard bread. He broke half the bread into the bowl, mingled it with water, and, when it was somewhat softened, ate it to the last crumb with a famished eagerness. Then, wiping the bowl, he replaced it in his pocket, with the rest of the bread, and gazed around with a stolid contentedness, rather like hopelessness, as if he had nothing more to ask of bountiful nature. Unused, in our abundant land, to human want, it was shocking to me to behold such poverty and such hunger ; but it was still more painful to look in the man's white face, and read there that he hoped for nothing more, and that he had felt and knew he might still feel a yet keener misery. It may be, indeed, that I was mistaken in his case, and that he was simply an ascetic, qualifying 16 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. himself for joy in heaven by wretchedness on earth ; or perhaps only an invalid putting his stomach on short allowance as a remedy for colic or dyspepsia. The Doctor and I walked up and down among the sprawling groups of pilgrims. Puff- ing thin wreaths of smoke through their mus- tachios, they answered our earnest eyes with grave looks of languid curiosity. " Oh, the curse of Babel!" said the Doctor. "How I want to talk to these men, and how I can't!" Stopping before an aquiline-visaged Oriental, who was lighting his interminable pipe for the twentieth time, he gave vent to his social long- ings. *'How you smoke!" said the Doctor, in undisguised English. The man shook his head indolently, and from his odorous seventh heaven replied, for aught I know, in the lan- guage of the Milky Way or the lost Pleiad. The Doctor pointed to the well-used pipe, and then to the funnels of the steamer, now sending out clouds of dusky vapor. The lounger answered with a delighted grin of comprehension, and passed the joke on among his appreciating eomrades. After that, my SMYRNA TO BEIRUT. 17 friend had an interesting interview with a vivacious, good-looking, well-dressed young fellow, whom we found to be a Syrian. As mj friend spoke not a word of Arabic, and the Syrian spoke nothing else, it took a long time to execute a very short conversation. The Doctor, however, imagined he had discovered that the man was from Tripoli, and not from Beirut; and that he was a merchant, and did not own any camels. Nothing could exceed the good humor of these people, nor the de- lighted eagerness with which they would say a thing twenty times over, and surround the dim idea with a halo of dumb show. But our most intimate and favorite acquaint- ances were a couple of curious beings from Russia. One of them was a woman, fat, fair, and fifty; rosy, respectable, and wonderfully communicative. That is to say, she would have been communicative, had we possessed so much as the tatter of a language in common. She used to treat us to long and valuable obser- vations, in Russian, on some unknown topic, gesturing earnestly, smiling in the right place, I have no doubt, and seeming to think that 18 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. we understood and appreciated every word. Then the Doctor or I would make a reply in English; no matter on what subject; holding forth just as long as we pleased, and always certain of a patient and attentive hearing. She would listen eagerly to the end, smile with a perplexed air, shake her head, and recommence with as much vivacity and hopefulness as be- fore. Whether she were talking religion, or matrimony, or politics, or scandal, I never had the slightest idea. Day after day, we com- muned in this style ; and, in the course of a thousand years, should, I suppose, have formed a language of our own. Stephens speaks of a similar incident which occurred to him, I believe, on his journey from Moscow to St. Petersburgh. I related my own and Ste- phens's experiences to a Russian nobleman whom I met in France. " Yes," he said, laugh ing, "it is very natural. It is just like our common people. They never understand why a foreigner does not speak Russian. They say : this man has a mouth like a Christian ; he has a nose like a Christian ; a throat like a Chris- tian; why can he not talk like a Christian?" SMYRNA TO BEIRUT. 19 Once, and, I believe, only once, our garru- lous companion succeeded in puncturing our brains with an idea. She had been talking to me with her customary earnestness, but with an air much more serious than usual. A non- descript man, who sat by us, understood most of what she said, and translated it to the Doc- tor in French. '' This woman tells your friend that she left a son in her country, about as old as he, who looks something like him ; and, whenever she looks at your friend, she thinks of her son." I thought of my own mother at home, and turned silently to this simple- hearted Russian mother. She saw that I un- derstood her meaning and her emotion; the tears burst out on her jolly cheeks, and, for a few moments, her voice trembled with sobs. The other Russian was a male individual, standing four feet two,'*or thereabouts, in his sheepskin boots, and seeming, to my eye, like a fair-complexioned mummy. He had a with- ered and wizened physiognomy; little, piggish eyes, set very far back in his head, as if they were of no particular use to him; and, alto- 20 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. gether, a most dried-up and undersized corpo- ration. Of his age I could form no precise idea; he might have been fifty, or he might have been a hundred and fifty. He wore a high cap of untanned sheepskin, with the wool inwards ; a long overcoat of the same, and pantaloons and boots ditto. I tried to imagine what would be the perplexity of a sheep in his society, as to how he should address him, whether as man or mutton. I took him for a Laplander or a Samojede, or some other of those polar bipeds, imperfectly related to the human race. His politeness was immense, and of a character solemnly ludicrous. If we spoke to him he never replied in words, but took off his monument of a cap, and bowed nearly to the deck, with a stupendous gravity like that of an iceberg. To every observation he would return the same mute answer; and we could obtain a dozen of these laborious salutes from him in succession. He evidently respected us vehemently for the quality of our broadcloth, but considered our society hopeless as far as re- garded a satisfactory interchange of ideas. He, too, was going to Jerusalem, and carried with SMYRNA TO BEIRUT. 21 him, I verily believe, something of the true pilgrim spirit, and, I am quite certain, many of the true pilgrim fleas. We used to find him, in the morning, stationed on the bow of the boat, his face towards the Holy City, and his eyes devoutly bent on an old prayer-book, worn, thumbed, greasy, and, like himself, bound in sheepskin. We four, two Russians and two Americans, often repeated the word Jerusalem together, and, by the sound of that name, mag- netized ourselves into a momentary comrade- ship of sympathies and object. Our woolly friend seemed to be veiy inti- mate with the lady, and to march in and out of her state room in the forward cabin at pleasure. The Doctor thought that he might be her uncle, or, more probably, her husband. I maintained that he was some kind of a head shepherd, or chief wool-gatherer, who was per- mitted to clothe himself out of the perquisites of his office. The Doctor determined to solve the mystery by questioning the lady directly on this delicate subject. Pointing at Sheep- skins, he nodded in a knowing way, and said: "Is that your husband?" The good-humored 22 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. creature stared, laughed, and shook her head doubtfully, as much as to observe that she did not catch the full force of his observation. "Is that your old man?" persisted the Doctor, pointing first at her, then at her friend, and imitating the motion of putting a ring on the finger. She fairly cackled with laughter when she had caught his idea, and imme- diately entered into a long explanation in Russian, which put the matter so much in the dark that we never tried to understand it after- wards. The Doctor and I disagreed to the last, as to whether Sheepskins had a connubial or only a pastoral connection with her house- hold. As I stared at the generally dirty equip- ments of our fellow-travelers to Jerusalem, I thought of their probably no less dirty prede- cessors, who performed the same pilgrimage seven hundred years ago. I thought of the innumerable hosts who' then crossed these seas in slow galiots and fragile shallops, and I tried to calculate how many more would have made the voyage had they possessed such steam-boats as tlie Iraperatrice. I looked at SMYRNA TO BEIRUT. 23 our venerable wool-gatherer and imagined him Peter the Hermit, silent from asceticism, dirty from pious scorn of the world, burning with zeal until his very sheepskins were likely to be scorched by the inward fervor. I trans- formed the fat Russian female into the Em- press Helena, on her way to the Holy Land, to locate devout humbugs and discover the five feet of the blessed ass. My fancy breathed upon the skeletons of the vast armies of the cross, and restored them to life, glorious with arms, courage, and nobility, ardent with hatred of the unbelievers, inflexible under difficulties and misery, longing only that their mortal eyes might close upon the freed sepulchre of Christ, I thought of Barbarossa with his diademed blonde hair ; of Philip the beautiful with his wily smile and French courtesy ; of English Richard with his bloody battle-axe, his lute, and his troubadour verses. I saw that pilgrimism had dwindled to a very small dwarfage of its giant youthfulness, and that religion had withdrawn greatly from exterior life to carry on its con- flicts in the unseen world of the soul. I con- sidered that the existence of humanity had 24 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. grown more intellectual and less ecstatic ; more like a treatise of philosophy and less like a ballad. I concluded that the tide of enthusi- asm had been subsiding for some centuries, and would continue to subside until some new divine idea, some new revelation, should draw it up again, but with a different splendor on its surface, to the old height. It w^ould be hard now to find three hundred thousand fools who would go through suffering and death to reach a fabled shrine ; but, a century hence, humanity may be mad again. It would be hard now to find three hundred thousand spirits winged with a living poesy which should bear them passionately over flood and through flame ; but, a century hence, the whole world may be lyric again. The enthusiasm, self-devotion, and energy of the old crusaders soar loftily through my admiration, while the insignificant end of such a mighty endeavor reposes in the quiet little slough of my contempt. I was recalled from my comparisons be- tween ancient and modern pilgrimism, by the rich brogue of the Scotch engineer. A most indubitable Sawney, lean as a New Englander, SMYRNA TO BEIRUT. 25 fair and freckled, he shone upon me in raiment of white linen : not flowing and spotless, like the vestments of angels and Millerites ; but a tight-fitting and somewhat grimy suit of round jacket and trowsers. The Doctor held him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge ; but instead of telling his own story, after the fashion of that interesting old gentle- man, he simply made his captive relate his. I have forgotten it now, and only mention the man because he was one of a class of wander- ing Britons, who direct the splashing existence of Austrian and Levantine steam-boats. *' The officers are often Germans," said he ; *' but the sailors are a'most aw Italians, sir ; an' I find it hard work to mak mysel understood. I canna learn their lingo, sir ; an' when I try to talk it, they only laugh, an' dinna understand me." Another person attracted more of my atten- tion, although her presence only floated a moment on my vision, and then, like a soap- bubble, vanished. A houri ! an odalisque ! the wife of a pasha ! nothing less, envious reader, nothing less, by the beard of the prophet ! A 26 ORIENTAL ACQUAINTANCE. new pasha of Cyprus had lately sailed for the island of his government in a Turkish man-of- war. For some unknown reason, he did not take his harem with him, but confided it to the quicker and easier locomotion of an infidel steam-boat. During five days we had this pre- cious cargo on board, for the most part of the time sepulchred in one of the state-rooms, under the very feet of us pacing, uneasy giaours. There was but one wife ; from which I concluded that the pasha was a parvenu not yet arrived at the dignity of polygamy ; or else that he had taken his favorite with him in the ship-of-war. Once only I saw this " secret jewel, this hidden treasure," come on deck, and pay a gossiping visit to the Turkish families there, who were probably a part of her following. Folded from head to foot in white, she swept noiselessly athwart our vision, like a passenger of that ghostly bark, the Flying Dutchman. For a moment, as she bent to sit on the proffered cushions, she flung the veil back, and exposed, perhaps intention- ally, her face to the gaze of us dogs of infidels. The next moment she retired again SMYRNA TO BEIRUT. 27 into its spectral secrecy, and left us to our wonder. So earnestly did my curious eyes fix upon those features, that I have them before me still. O pasha of Cyprus ! I saw your wife's face, and I remember it now, and there is no revenge nor help for you. It was the countenance of a woman who would have been handsome, but for her wax-like pallor. The features were regular, something between Greek and Roman ; the eyebrows delicately arched, and the eyes wondrously dark and lustrous in contrast with the pale skin. I have caught glimpses of other Turk- ish women since, and have always remarked the same colorless, almost cadaverous com- plexion. After two days of calmest, sunniest sailing, we found ourselves one pleasant morning at anchor off the mouldy city of Rhodes. The famous harbor of this old mistress of the seas was so small that our boat could hardly have entered it if the Colossus had been there to push her in. A few fishing and coasting shal- lops, with high, sharp bows and lateen yards, were idling away their time inside of a diminu- 28 ORIENTAL ACQUANTANCE. tive mole, like a company of seedy Turks in a coftee-house. High blank walls of the olden days looked down upon a marina, or quay, to which a few lounging Greeks and Turks gave some lazy appearance of life. Traversing the marina and passing under an elderly archway, we found ourselves in the most mournful, low- spirited, forsaken, slouching, tatterdemalion, old city in creation. I never saw anywhere such a total absence of life in a place which called itself inhabited. We halted in one spot commanding a view up and down the principal street for at least a quarter of a mile, and counted all the citizens within range of our vision. They amounted to just three : a don- key, a man who was driving it, and a woman ; and it is extremely possible that the two per- sons first mentioned were from the country. Now and then, a lonesome individual would bear down a side-street, or heave in sight around a distant corner ; but it was like meet- ing ships on the ocean. You felt inclined to speak a man when he came near you, and ask him his latitude, or when he left port. As this street was lined with old palaces of the SilYRNA TO BEIRUT. 29 knights of St. John, its solitude looked doubly- desponding and woeful, by contrast with the populous splendor that on