THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 BEQUEST 
 
 OF 
 ANITA D. S. BLAKE 
 

 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 

$? 
 
 Letters from the East. 12mo f original cloth. New York, 1869. 
 
ft 
 
 A STR E ET IN . CA I RO _ 
 
LETTERS FROM THE EAST. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM & SON. 
 1869. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, 
 BY WM. CULLEN BRYANT, 
 
 In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
 Stereotyped by LITTLE, RENNIE <fe CO., 
 645 & 647 Broadway, New York. 
 
TO THE EEADEE. 
 
 THE Letters which form the contents of this 
 volume were written in the course of a visit 
 made to the Old World in the closing months 
 of the year 1852, and the first six months of 
 the year following. The author has been in 
 duced to collect and present them in this form 
 by the encouragement of the Publisher, who 
 thought that the volume might be fortunate 
 enough to find readers. 
 
 YORK, September 1, 1869. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 Contraband books. Strictness of the Custom-house Officers. Captain 
 Lynch and his book. Poetry in the Custom-house. England del 
 uged with rain. Prosperity of England in 1852. Emigration to 
 Australia 9 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 Return of gayety and commercial activity in Paris. The Credit Mobilier. 
 The Empire succeeding a Republic which has lost its liberties. The 
 new Emperor conducted to the Tuileries. Absence of enthusiasm in 
 the people. Motives of those who voted for the Empire. Acqui 
 escence of all parties in the Empire. Huntington the artist 16 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 Nismes, its Roman remains. Amphitheatre, Maison Carree and Pont du 
 Gard. Amphitheatre at Aries. The Boulevards. Roman baths. 
 Public garden. Dryness of the climate. The fountain of the Espla 
 nade. Delaroche's picture of Cromwell contemplating Charles I. in 
 his coffin 24 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 Security from accident on board the Mediterranean steamers. Discom 
 forts of a small steamer. Fiue view of the Maritime Alps from the 
 water. A day in Genoa. Vexations of the passport system. Pses- 
 tnm Amalfl. Neapolitan boatmen. Beauty of the coast. Songs of 
 the boatmen. Peculiarities of Neapolitan pronunciation. Excur 
 sion to Prestum. Sickly inhabitants. Messina. Malta. La Val 
 letta. The Catholic church in Malta 34 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 Voyage from Malta to Cairo. A steamer crowded with passengers from 
 England to India. Ill-bred people. Fortune, the botanist. The 
 tea-plant in America and India. The grape in China and Japan. 
 A Chinese fruit for America. A hardy palm. Arrival at Alexan 
 dria. Confusion of the landing. Passage to Cairo. The canal. 
 the Nile. Arab devotions. Youth drowned in the Nile 55 
 
O CONTEXTS. 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 Sights and sounds of Cairo. Aspect of the crowd in the streets. 
 Women. The bazars. The barbers. Mosques. Noisy habit:? of the 
 Egyptians. Mosque of Mohammed AH. The pyramids of Ghizeh. 
 Arab boatmen. Bedouins. Purpose of the pyramids. Pyramids of 
 Sakkara. M. Mariette and his excavations. Temple and tomb of 
 Apis. The site of Memphis. Mounds of sun-dried brick. Vast 
 grove of palms. Saltpetre manufactured from the bricks 69 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 Passage in a steamer up the Nile to Thebes and the lower cataract of the 
 Nile. Arrangements for the voyage. Beauty of the weather. Upper- 
 Egypt, its aspect. Irrigation. Villages. Scarcity of fruit-trees. 
 Rocky hills overlooking the narrow valley of the Nile. The Tem 
 ples of Thebes and Karnac. A French excavator, M. Mounier. 
 Uncovering of old temples. Tyranny of the Egyptian authorities. 
 A Latin convent. Copts. Their church 89 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 Journey from Cairo to Jerusalem across the Little Desert. Gardens en 
 closed by the prickly pear. Olive-trees. Sycamore of the Virgin. 
 The Obelisk of Heliopolis. Village of Khankia. Lake of the Pil 
 grims. Brief twilight. Journey on camels. Hoopoes. Entrance 
 on the Desert, Our dragoman. The father of couriers. Furniture 
 of our caravan. Ground strewn with fragments of pottery. An Arab 
 burial-ground. Village of Belbays 102 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 Second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days of our journey. A visit from 
 two Arab women. Coquetry of the younger. Horsemanship of the 
 Arabs. A belt of cultivation in the Desert. Rassel Wady. Flocks 
 of birds. Irrigation. Arabs singing. A dragoman flogs an Arab. 
 A camel runs away. A mirage. Barook. Pilgrims from Mecca. 
 A sirocco. Dead camels. A monkey digging sorrel. Violence of 
 the wind. Our tents overturned at night. Gatieh. Personal ap 
 pearance of the Arabs. Vermin 113 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 Seventh, eighth, and ninth days of our journey. Bedouin huts. Women 
 at the hand-mills. A salt-plain. Ruins of a tower. A well in the 
 Desert. Brackish water. Arabs amusing themselves with our mon 
 key. Flocks of goats and sheep. Importunity of the flies. We 
 meet a merchants' caravan. Mosquitoes. Animal life in the 
 
CONTENTS. 7 
 
 Desert. Tracks of jackals and gazelles. Sight of the Mediterra 
 nean. Shrubs of the Desert. Minute flowers. Herd of camels feed 
 ing. Pools of water in the salt-plains. Springs of mineral oil. Cry 
 of the jackal. Town of El Areesh. Plantations of young palms. 
 Sand-hills and drifts. Fruit-trees 127 
 
 LETTER XI. 
 
 Tenth day of the journey. Picturesque costumes. Spirited horses and 
 horsemanship. Trouble with passports. Barley-fields. Women 
 cutting up juniper. Tributes to the Arabs. An Arab exquisite. 
 A pastoral region. Another tribute. A salt lake. Safayda. Tomb of 
 a Santon. Flocks of birds. Frightful scream of a jackal. Reading 
 the Scriptures. A troop of dervishes. An Arab cemetery 143 
 
 LETTER XII. 
 
 Cultivated fields between bare sand-hills. Euins of Rhaphia. The vir 
 gin's fountain. Khan Yoonas. Fruit-trees in bloom. Our party in 
 quarantine. We pass the night in a cemetery. A crowd of women in 
 white, among the graves. Oranges. Distinguished-looking visit 
 ors. Departure from Khan Yoonas. Pilgrims. The scarlet anem 
 one. Old sycamores. Men ploughing with camels. We enter the 
 lazaretto at Gaza. View of the country from our windows. Fool 
 ish look of the dervishes. Our monkey attacks one of the holy 
 men. An Arab virago. Show of tongues. Release from the laza 
 retto 157 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 
 Continuation of the journey to Jerusalem. The Gate of Gaza. A vast 
 olive-grove. Curious travelling cradle. Remains of a Christian 
 church. Askelon. Ancient walls. Sand drifting over the fields. 
 El Medjal. Little oxen. Rude ploughs. Ashdod. Ruins of a large 
 Khan. A chorus of frogs. Gazelles feeding. Village of Zebua. 
 Saracenic bridges. Women carrying burdens. Town of Ramleh. 
 An abandoned tower. Plain of Sharon. A convent, where we pass 
 the night. The mosquitoes from the cisterns 168 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 
 Journey to Jerusalem continued. We take our leave of the Arabs and 
 their camels. Journey on horseback. Queer bridles and saddles. 
 A janizary of the American Vice-Consul at Jerusalem. His long 
 staff. Entrance upon the hill-country. A lunch under evergreen 
 oaks. Steep ascent by a bridle-path. Sure-footed horses. Soil full 
 of loose stones. Its fertility. First sight of the Holy City. The 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 Jaffa gate of the city. People promenading in the country. Bearded 
 priests. Hotel kept by a Maltese. Visit to the Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre 179 
 
 LETTER XV. 
 
 The Lazaretto at Smyrna. Beautiful harbor. Fleet of American ships 
 of war in the Levant. Behavior of the Arabs to the Frank. Relaxa- 
 tion of bigotry. Mohammedan prejudices. No Christian converts 
 from Moslems. Power of the foreign consuls. Extravagant preroga 
 tives of the American consuls. Hasty appointments to consulships. 
 American missionaries at Beyroot. Dr. Eli Smith. Mr. Calhoun. 
 A Druse Emir. Dr. De Forrest. A girls' schqol. Demand for edu 
 cated wives 186 
 
 LETTER XVI. 
 
 Constantinople. Foreign relations of Turkey. Arrival of Lord Strat 
 ford. Feebleness of the Turkish government. Corruption and public 
 plunder. Banditti at Smyrna. Their robberies. Their cruelties. 
 The Chiefs of the Banditti. A Druse robber caught and caged. The 
 Druse population. The Sultan. His palace. His Pashas. Turkey 
 held together by pressure without 202 
 
 LETTER XVII. 
 
 Beautiful view from the hill of Bulgonlu, near Constantinople. 
 Athens. Corfu. Glorious view from the Goruno. Noble remains 
 of ancient architecture at Athens. Modern Greeks. Their schools. 
 Their readiness to learn. Syra. The American consul. Evange- 
 lides. Dr. Hill's school. Youug ladies reading Homer in the origi 
 nal. Dr. Jonas King, the orientalist. His controversy. His cour 
 age. Anecdote of the American flag. General dissatisfaction with 
 the Greek government. Corruption of public men 215 
 
 LETTER XVIII. 
 
 May at Rome. Abundance of flowers. Severity of the Roman govern 
 ment. The people kept quiet by the military. Improved appearance 
 of Rome. The city beautified. Copies of old pictures. American 
 artists at Rome. Sculptors. Painters. Gibson's Venus. Colored 
 statues. Powers at Florence. The monument of Titian at 
 Venice 231 
 
 LETTER XIX. 
 
 Fresnel lights. Their strength and brilliancy. Improvement in their 
 construction. Tomb of Napoleon. Its magnificence. Imperfect 
 civilization of mankind. Exhibition of the works of living artists. 
 Naked Venuses. Ugly head of Louis Napoleon. Duveau. Death of 
 Agrippina 243 
 
LETTEK I. 
 
 Contraband books. Strictness of the Custom-house Officers. Captain 
 Lynch and his book. Poetry in the Custom-house. England del 
 uged with rain. Prosperity of England in 1852. Emigration to 
 Australia. 
 
 LONDON, November 29th, 1852. 
 
 I DID not think of writing to you from Eng 
 land, but there are one or two things which occur 
 to me as worthy of mention. 
 
 One of the vexations which a traveller meets 
 on his arrival in this country is the search for 
 contraband books. The booksellers in England 
 have furnished the Custom-houses with a list of 
 American works of which they claim the copy 
 right. When a book is found among the bag 
 gage of the traveller, which is carefully over 
 hauled for the purpose, the examining officer 
 looks to see if it is printed in America ; and if it 
 be, he consults his manuscript list, to see whether 
 it be also published in England by a person 
 claiming the copyright. If its title appears on 
 the list, the book is seized. Considerable delay 
 
10 CAPTAIN LYNCH S BOOK. 
 
 is occasioned by the strictness with which the 
 examination is made. 
 
 Among my fellow-passengers who left New 
 York in the steamer Arctic, was Captain Lynch, 
 the enterprising and successful explorer of the 
 Dead Sea. He made, as you know, an official 
 report of his expedition to the government, 
 which has been printed by order of Congress. 
 Besides this, he prepared a personal narrative of 
 his expedition, a very interesting work, which 
 was published at Philadelphia by Lea & Blan- 
 chard. Bentley, the London publisher, imported 
 into England a number of copies of the work 
 in sheets, procuring them to be bound ; and to 
 secure himself from competition, took out a 
 copyright for the work, and sent the title to the 
 Liverpool Custom-house, that any other copies 
 introduced from America might be seized and 
 stopped. 
 
 When Captain Lynch's baggage was under 
 going examination, he asked the officer what dis 
 position would be made of a copy of his narra 
 tive printed in America, if it was found among 
 its effects. "Most certainly," answered the offi 
 cer, " it would be my duty to retain it. Not a 
 
CONTRABAND BOOKS. 11 
 
 single work patented in this country can be intro 
 duced from abroad, and I should be obliged to 
 seize it, even in the hands of its author." 
 
 One of our passengers had, in his portmanteau, 
 three works published in the United States, of two 
 of which he was the author, and to the third 
 of which he was a contributor. One of them, a, 
 volume of poetry, required no long examination ; 
 poetry is a drug in both countries, and the pub 
 lishers do not find it worth their while to mantain 
 a very fierce rivalry for so unsalable a com 
 modity. The volume which next engaged the 
 officer's attention was a prose work, and this led 
 to a long and close examination. The officer 
 went over the list, apparently more than once, 
 looking at the title of the book again and 
 again, and once or twice appeared to hesi 
 tate, while the assistant inspectors stood unem 
 ployed, waiting his decision. At length he hand 
 ed back the book. The third volume, a recent 
 publication of Putnam's, was also subjected to a 
 close scrutiny, which was, however, soon brought 
 to a close. 
 
 On my way to this city, it seemed to me that 
 I had never seen a country drenched like Eng- 
 
12 A NOVEMBER FLOOD. 
 
 land. Seven weeks of almost constant rain have 
 saturated the ground with water, swollen the 
 springs, turned the ditches into . streams, and 
 raised the rivers till they have in many places 
 swept away their bridges, and everywhere 
 drowned the low grounds. Such numbers of wet 
 women and children I never saw before ; wet 
 wagoners walking by the side of their drip 
 ping teams; wet laborers, male and female, 
 digging turnips in the muddy fields ; wet beggars 
 in the towns, their rags streaming with water ; 
 wet sheep staggering under their drenched 
 fleeces, nibbling the grass in the yellowish-green 
 fields for the pastures wear, at this season, a 
 sallow verdure or biting the turnips scattered 
 for them by the farmers in long rows. I saw, 
 frequently, mills standing, with their motionless 
 wheels deep in turbid currents of water ; fields 
 prepared for grain, which cannot be sown, and 
 others ready for the plough which cannot be 
 ploughed. In some places, houses and even ham 
 lets have been carried away and the inhabitants 
 drowned ; and drowned cattle, I am told, are seen 
 floating in the currents. It is said that the coun 
 try has not seen such floods since the year 1795. 
 
EMIGRATION TO AUSTRALIA. 13 
 
 Almost everybody in England speaks of the 
 present condition of the country as extremely 
 prosperous. The partisans of free trade insist 
 that there has been a gradual diminution of pau 
 perism, and an improvement in the condition of 
 the working-classes ever since the repeal of the 
 corn-laws. At present it is admitted that this 
 effect has been greatly heightened by the emi 
 gration to Australia and the United States. 
 " We have sent out," said an intelligent gentle 
 man to me, "great numbers of laborers to Aus 
 tralia, the very men by whom our soil was tilled 
 last year ; the paupers, having succeeded to those 
 places, receive the same and even better wages, 
 and are paupers no longer. Besides these, we 
 have sent out from other classes, particularly 
 from the class of merchants, numbers of intelli 
 gent, enterprising men, some of the best men of 
 England ; and next year we shall give Australia 
 a still larger host of colonists. They have gone 
 out for a purpose of which they themselves are 
 scarcely aware ; they have gone out to found the 
 structure of that new community on solid and 
 liberal foundations. "Within thirty years you will 
 see a populous, prosperous, powerful, and enlight- 
 2 
 
14 PAUPERS RELIEVED. 
 
 ened community in Australia ; and long before 
 that time it will be independent of the mother 
 country, for the men who have migrated to that 
 country will not endure that it should remain in 
 a state of dependence on a distant government 
 a moment beyond the time when dependence is a 
 necessity, or at least a convenience." 
 
 In the mean time I hear a good deal said of the 
 difficulty of procuring workmen for the ordinary 
 tasks of agriculture. During the season which 
 has just closed, the ordinary dependence upon 
 laborers from Ireland failed ; and when the grain 
 was to be cut, the soldiery, in order to save the 
 crops from destruction, were sent into the fields 
 with sickles in their hands, instead of muskets 
 and swords. Many kinds of work, which were 
 formerly cheaply executed, are now neglected; 
 the more necessary employments are filled, and 
 the others are postponed. I hear a great deal 
 said of the depopulation of Ireland. "Ireland," 
 said a gentleman to me, " is already half Prot 
 estant;" but this is, doubtless, an exaggera 
 tion. It is true, however, I believe, that English 
 proprietors and farmers are going over in some 
 numbers, and I heard of one case of an emigrant 
 
CHEAP LAND IN IBELAND. 15 
 
 to America, who returned because lie could buy 
 land in Ireland of the same quality and nearness 
 to the market, cheaper than in the United 
 States. 
 
16 KEVIVED BUSTLE OF PARIS. 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 Return of gayety and commercial activity in Paris. The Credit Mobilier. 
 The Empire succeeding a Eepublic which has lost its liberties. The 
 new Emperor conducted to the Tuileries. Absence of enthusiasm in 
 the people. Motives of those who voted for the Empire. Acqui 
 escence of all parties in the Empire. Huntington the artist. 
 
 PABIS, December 7th, 1852. 
 
 THREE years ago, when I was in Paris, the coun 
 try was suffering under that breaking up of reg 
 ular employments which necessarily attends a 
 revolution. Nobody seemed sure that another 
 revolution, or at least an attempt at a revolution, 
 was not close at hand ; the greater part of those 
 foreigners who make Paris their residence had 
 flown the place. I missed the usual bustle of 
 the streets, and saw here and there long rows of 
 shops untenanted, with the shutters closed. At 
 present these shops are again open, glittering 
 with showy wares, and thronged with customers ; 
 the city is full of foreigners, they count two 
 thousand Americans, birds of every feather, 
 and the concourse of English visitors and resi 
 dents seems more numerous than ever; solid 
 English carriages rumble along the streets, and 
 the English signs over the shop-doors seem to 
 
PARIS EMBELLISHED. 17 
 
 me nearly twice as frequent as I ever saw them 
 before. The gayeties of the place, never ex 
 tinct, are pursued with new spirit ; the theatres, 
 the public ball-rooms, and other places of enter 
 tainment, are crowded. A vehement desire of 
 magnificence has seized upon the government ; 
 the public buildings are beautified and enlarged ; 
 workmen are busy in places, scraping from them 
 the mould which, in this damp climate, darkens 
 the cream-colored stone of which they are built : 
 and all the ancient churches are undergoing ex 
 tensive repairs and restorations. Old frescoes 
 discovered on their walls under the whitewash of 
 centuries, have been cleaned, retouched, and 
 brightened ; and eminent artists have been em 
 ployed on new designs. Couture, for example, 
 who is placed by his disciples at the head of mod 
 ern French painters, is engaged on new frescoes 
 for the church of St. Eustache. The rue de Ei- 
 volij which faces the gardens of the Tuileries, is 
 to be extended so as to traverse the entire city ; 
 a track of ruins has been opened to the west for 
 its passage, where houses have been levelled. 
 The magnificent parallelogram of the Louvre is 
 to be completed, and workmen are pulling down 
 2* 
 
18 THE CREDIT MOBILIER. 
 
 a part of the structure not consistent with the 
 grander plan now contemplated. Everybody is 
 employed, and Paris, and as I am told, the whole 
 of France, now presents an appearance of great 
 material prosperity. 
 
 To stimulate the activity of trade the Emperor 
 has projected a great financial scheme, a bank 
 with an enormous capital, to be enlarged accord 
 ing to circumstances and the demands of bor 
 rowers, which is to lend money on mortgages of 
 property in the country. In this way, to use an 
 expression which I once heard from the lips of 
 an eminent speculator in the United States, real 
 estate is to be made fluid, a process as much 
 for the welfare of the body politic as it would be 
 healthful for the human body if its solid parts 
 were converted into a liquid state. This plan, 
 which is to be immediately carried into effect, 
 will stimulate speculation to a degree of which 
 France has had no experience since the time of 
 John Law and the South Sea bubble. 
 
 In the midst of the general activity and conse 
 quent contentment of the laboring-classes, France 
 ceases to be a republic and becomes an empire. 
 " I prefer the empire," said an intelligent lady to 
 
PROCLAMATION OF THE EMPIRE. 19 
 
 me the day after it was proclaimed, " because it 
 is just what it pretends to be ; when liberty is at 
 end it is time that the forms of liberty should be 
 abandoned." It was the evening before the 
 proclamation of the empire that I arrived in 
 Paris. The next morning the town was waked 
 by the firing of cannon, and as the day wore on, 
 the shops were shut, and notwithstanding the 
 rain, for it was one of the gloomiest and saddest 
 days of a Parisian winter, the population flocked 
 to the Boulevards and the broader streets where 
 detachments of the army and of the national 
 guards were marching to the sound of music. I 
 was present as the newly proclaimed emperor 
 was conducted to the palace of the Tuileries by 
 a military escort. The ceremony was rather im 
 posing. A party of cavalry, in plumed and glit 
 tering casques, first dashed briskly forward 
 through the space opened for them in the im 
 mense multitude which thronged the Champs 
 Elysees and the garden of the Tuileries, like the 
 gust which sweeps the streets before a tempest. 
 Then came the Emperor, on horseback, amidst 
 his generals and marshals. A few cries of Vive 
 VEmpereur arose, which he answered by taking 
 
20 NAPOLEON III. 
 
 off his hat and bowing to the people. He ap 
 peared of shorter stature than most of the offi 
 cers of his suite, but he sat his horse well, a spir 
 ited creature, which pranced and curvetted, and 
 seemed proud of bearing the sovereign of the 
 French Empire. The party entered the palace 
 gates, and not long afterward the emperor 
 showed himself at the balcony. The troops in 
 front of the palace greeted his appearance with 
 acclamations, but from the crowd which stood 
 around me, not a single cry was heard. They 
 were persons of all conditions and ages ; well- 
 dressed men and ladies, men in blouses and 
 women in caps, all looking on in silence, as on a 
 spectacle in which they had no part. There was 
 an utter absence not only of enthusiasm but even 
 of the least affectation of enthusiasm. 
 
 The city was illuminated in the evening mea- 
 gerly illuminated, except in a few instances. The 
 illumination was a part of the prescribed ceremo 
 nies of the occasion, and was commanded by the 
 government. Twice in the course of the day a 
 message from the police was brought to the 
 hotel where I lodge, intimating that it was 
 expected that the house would be illuminated 
 
OPINIONS CONCERNING THE EMPEROR. 21 
 
 in the evening. The order was obeyed, of 
 course. 
 
 It is admitted, however, I believe on all hands, 
 that a large, at least a considerable majority of 
 the people of France is in favor of the present 
 order of things. At the hotel where I passed 
 the night in Boulogne, I asked one of the attend 
 ants, a man of mature age and not unintelligent, 
 what he thought of the empire. "What the 
 people now want," he replied, " is the opportu 
 nity of earning their livelihood by their labor in 
 peace. That they now have, and they are not 
 ambitious of anything beyond it. I gave my 
 voice for Louis Napoleon and his plans, because 
 I believe he can and will maintain things in their 
 present state." Another man, of nearly the same 
 class in France, answered the same question thus : 
 " As long as Louis Napoleon remains at peace 
 with other nations, we shall have good times, and 
 the people will be with him. If he should get 
 us into a war, he will disappoint the people, and 
 we may have another change of government."- 
 
 I was in conversation the other day with an 
 intelligent and reflecting Frenchman, no friend 
 of the present order of things, who said : " The 
 
22 CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH. 
 
 character of the French race is unstable ; they 
 are swayed to and fro by the impulse of the day. 
 A little while since they shouted Vive la Repu- 
 blique ; now the same voices raise the cry of Vive 
 T Empereur ; what may be the next cry I cannot 
 tell ; but, if we are to judge by the past, the em 
 pire of Napoleon the Third cannot last long. I 
 do not see any elements of duration in it which 
 did not belong to the government of Charles X. 
 or Louis Philippe. Each of the governments 
 which has risen and fallen since the time of Louis 
 XYI. has promised itself eternal duration. I am 
 waiting to see what will come next." 
 
 I give these conversations because they are 
 more instructive than any speculations of mine 
 would be. On Sunday I attended worship in the 
 Oratoire, a French Protestant church, where I 
 listened to an exhortation from the preacher of 
 the day, M. Yermeuil, who dwelt on the duty of 
 a quiet and peaceable demeanor, and admon 
 ished his hearers with much earnestness to " pos 
 sess their souls in patience," evidently, as it 
 seemed to me, alluding to the political circum 
 stances of the time. Enough of French politics. 
 
 Huntington, the artist, is here, settled for the 
 
HtnS'TINGTON'S GOOD SAMARITAN. 23 
 
 winter. He is painting a picture of the Good 
 Samaritan, bringing to the view the man who 
 had fallen among thieves. He has made the 
 studies for it with great care, and it promises to 
 be one of his best and most interesting works. 
 
24 NISMES. 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 Nismes, its Roman remains, Amphitheatre, Maison Carree and Pont du 
 Gard. Amphitheatre at Aries. The Boulevards. Roman baths.^ 
 Public garden. Dryness of the climate. The fountain of the Espla 
 nade. Delaroche's picture of Cromwell contemplating Charles I. iu 
 his coffin. 
 
 MARSEILLES, December 14th, 1852. 
 To those who find themselves in France and 
 have not the time to make a journey to Rome, I 
 would recommend a visit to Nismes. In that 
 city and its neighborhood they will be able to ob 
 tain almost as good an idea of the remains of an 
 cient Eoinan architecture as they could at Rome 
 itself. The amphitheatre would entirely repre 
 sent the Colosseum, if we were to suppose it 
 somewhat more extensive, and somewhat more 
 magnificent in its external architecture. The 
 Maison Carree, or Square House, a building of 
 the Corinthian architecture, is one of the finest 
 remains of antiquity in the world, and gives as 
 perfect an idea as one can well have of the pub 
 lic edifices of the Romans. Besides these, there 
 are the ruins of the Temple of Diana ; the Gate 
 of Augustus, a sample of their city gates ; the 
 
ANCIENT KUINS. 25 
 
 Grand Tower, a fragment of what was probably 
 an immense mausoleum, and the Pont du Gard, 
 a magnificent portion of an aqueduct which once 
 conveyed water to the city. Not far from Nisrnes 
 is the city of Aries, where is another amphi 
 theatre and other interesting remains ; and at 
 nearly the same distance, in another direction, is 
 Orange, with its triumphal arch in almost as 
 good preservation as either of the triumphal 
 arches at Rome. The monuments of antiquity 
 at Nismes have been cleared of all encumbering 
 rubbish, and of ah 1 the buildings erected within 
 or against them in the course of centuries, 
 and are thus seen to the very best advantage. 
 
 Modern Nismes is a very beautiful city. By 
 the side of its boulevards, at the foot of the Tem 
 ple of Diana, a vast spring, ninety feet in depth, 
 pours forth a river of transparent water. Near 
 it we find some remains of Eoman baths, and 
 these have been restored according to what was 
 supposed to be their original plan, with recesses 
 and columns, and a broad stone floor, over which 
 the water hurries toward the town. They are 
 overlooked by groups of statues, and protected 
 by a massive stone balustrade. Bevond this the 
 3 
 
MODERN NISMES. 
 
 water is received into broad canals, bordered by 
 walls and parapets of hewn stone, which convey 
 it in different directions through an extensive 
 promenade planted with trees. At the extremity 
 of one of these, it is received into a broad circu 
 lar basin of stone, the sides of which slope by an 
 easy descent, and here the washerwomen of 
 Nismes ply their vocation, slapping and rubbing 
 the wet linen, and make the slow current froth with 
 soap. On the rocky hill which rises above the 
 fountain a public garden has been laid out. The 
 bare cliffs, about the middle of the last century, 
 were covered with soil brought up from the 
 plain, intersected with winding walks and plant 
 ed thickly with pines and cypresses, among 
 which are thickets of laurels, myrtle, the tree-box, 
 the lauratinus, with its clusters of white flowers, 
 now beginning to open, and a variety of other 
 shrubs and trees which never drop their leaves 
 in the season of winter. You might walk here 
 in one of the sunny winter days of this soft cli 
 mate and fancy it to be May. Above the garden 
 on its foundation of rock rises the lofty Roman 
 ruin, the Grand Tower. 
 
 Those parts of the town which lie near these 
 
THE DRY CLIMATE. 27 
 
 public grounds have an uncommonly agreeable 
 aspect. The streets are very broad and the 
 houses are in a pleasing style of architecture, built 
 of the cream-colored stone of the country, which 
 is easily wrought, and which in the dry climate 
 of this place long retains its original rich light 
 tint in the open air. It appears to me that the 
 aridity of the climate has much to do with the 
 preservation of the ancient buildings. At Lyons 
 and Avignon, on the Ehone, the exhalations from 
 the river darken the churches and houses almost 
 to a sooty hue, and here at Marseilles on the 
 Mediterranean, I perceive the same effect. The 
 frescoes of Deveria, in the Cathedral at Avignon, 
 painted twelve years since, and well worthy of a 
 longer date, are already peeling in flakes from 
 the walls and the ceiling, so damp is the atmos 
 phere there. Nismes is situated on a plain ele 
 vated considerably above the meadows of the 
 Ehone, and beyond the reach of its mists. I was 
 told that rain is sometimes known not to fall in 
 this region for ten months together. I inquired 
 what, in that case, became of the crops. " They 
 are gathered early," was the answer, " except our 
 principal harvests, grapes and olives, and these 
 
28 SCULPTURES OF PRADIER. 
 
 are best in a dry climate. We have our last 
 showers in April, and then we expect no more 
 rain till October." In such an atmosphere moss 
 and mould are slow in gathering upon walls and 
 sculptures in the open air, and the oldest remains 
 of these at Nismes, such, for example, as the rich 
 Corinthian columns of the Maison Garree, only 
 acquire a warm brown tint after the lapse of cen 
 turies. 
 
 One of the modern ornaments of Nismes is the 
 Fountain of the Esplanade, adorning the princi 
 pal public square, a work of the French sculptor 
 Pradier, who died about six months since by a 
 stroke of apoplexy. It is a group representing 
 Nismes with a crown of towers and palaces, copied 
 from the Roman remains, and the streams which 
 water the neighboring lands sitting at her feet, 
 among which is the little river gushing from the 
 ground in the public garden, a beautiful female 
 figure just emerging from girlhood, her fair brows 
 shaded with a chaplet of the leaves of the water- 
 lily. It is a work of considerable merit, but 
 there is a finer one of the same artist in the 
 cathedral at Avignon, a Yirgin of great beauty 
 of form and an ethereal sweetness of expression. 
 
DELAROCHE'S CROMWELL. 29 
 
 The liaison Carree is turned into a Museum, 
 that is to say, into a public gallery of pictures. 
 It has some fine portraits by Yanloo, several good 
 cabinet pictures of the Flemish school, and a few 
 larger ones by French painters; but the most 
 striking of them all, as it seemed to me, was De- 
 laroche's painting of Cromwell contemplating the 
 dead body of Charles the First in its coffin. 
 Delaroche is among painters what Crabbe is 
 among poets ; he confines himself to rugged, un- 
 idealized nature. One would hardly suppose it 
 possible for a French artist to renounce so com 
 pletely, not only all that is theatrical in the 
 French school, but all attempt at grace of any 
 sort, as he has done in this work. As I looked 
 at the rough old Roundhead uncovering, with 
 that sad expression which speaks so much of the 
 feelings within, the lifeless face of his king, I 
 could not help fancying myself with him in the 
 chamber of death. 
 
 It is impossible for me here in the south of 
 France, to help imagining myself in Italy. The 
 mild climate, the vast tracts covered with olive- 
 trees and intermingled vineyards, the Italian 
 character of the architecture, the women drawing 
 3* 
 
30 SOUTHERN FRANCE LIKE ITALY. 
 
 water from the fountains in jars of antique form; 
 the people showing in their features and physi 
 ognomy a certain kindred to the Italian race, and 
 speaking an accented language bequeathed to 
 them by the troubadours, almost as different 
 from the language of the northern provinces as 
 that of Spain or Portugal, make it hard for me to 
 convince myself that I am still within the boun 
 daries of France. Around me are the descend 
 ants of Roman and Greek colonists, who have 
 founded prosperous and flourishing communities ; 
 of those who came hither when the family of 
 Constantine fixed the seat of the Roman empire 
 at Aries, and of those of a later age, when the 
 Italian church migrated, for a time, to Avignon, 
 and made it an Italian city. 
 
 To judge by appearances, this part of the pop 
 ulation of France, as well as that of the north, is as 
 perfectly satisfied with the present government as 
 if they had lived under an empire from the days 
 of Constantine. No external indication, cer 
 tainly, bespeaks discontent ; there is nothing of 
 gravity or of gloom no silence, sulkiness, or 
 sadness. It is characteristic of the French race, 
 that it conforms itself easily to any change of 
 
PLACABILITY OF THE FRENCH. 31 
 
 circumstances, provided you do not interfere with 
 its amusements. " What a people !" said a Ger 
 man lady to me at Paris. " Three or four thou 
 sand unoffending and unresisting people men, 
 women, and children were shot in the streets, at 
 their doors, at their windows, or sitting in their 
 apartments, a year ago, when Louis Napoleon 
 abolished the French constitution. In a few 
 weeks all recollection of the dreadful event seemed 
 to have passed away. What a people, that such 
 things should have been done, and that, after a 
 few days, nothing should be said of them ; that 
 they should have been forgotten and pardoned !" 
 Yet there are some who speculate on political 
 events in this country, and who occupy them 
 selves in working out the problem by what sort 
 of process the present government will by and 
 by follow its predecessors to the place where they 
 are all to sleep together. One of them lately said 
 to me : " The Emperor is surrounded by able 
 men, very able and wholly unprincipled, whose 
 advice and assistance he has had in the well- 
 managed intrigue which has made him the abso 
 lute sovereign of France. Hitherto, while the 
 project was yet unconsummated, they all acted 
 
32 POLITICAL SPECULATIONS. 
 
 harmoniously together, for they had but one ob 
 ject. Now the time has arrived for rewarding 
 their services with honors and emoluments, and 
 from this time each will have a particular aim of 
 his own ; each will claim the highest reward for 
 himself. It will be impossible for the Emperor 
 to satisfy them. It is not that they will be dis 
 contented with what they receive, but that they 
 will be indignant to see others placed over them. 
 Then will be the time of feuds and factions, 
 which as yet under the new order of things have 
 been unknown ; then will secret intrigues be set 
 on foot to excite discontent against the govern 
 ment, which, after being adroitly kindled and in 
 flamed for a few years, may unseat Louis Napo 
 leon as easily as it unseated Charles the Tenth 
 or Louis Philippe !" 
 
 There may be much truth in this view, but it 
 seems to me that one of the greatest dangers 
 which the new Emperor has to dread will arise 
 from another cause. In the circumstances in 
 which he has hitherto been placed, audacity has 
 been the highest policy. He is now about to ap 
 ply the same policy to measures of finance, in 
 which it is madness. Everything indicates 'that 
 
DANGER FROM HARD TIMES. 33 
 
 the reign of speculation has begun in France, 
 under the auspices of the new bank, established 
 to increase the number of borrowers to an extent 
 hitherto unknown in the country. The unhealthy 
 prosperity of a period of speculation will be fol 
 lowed most certainly by a period of embarrass 
 ment, bankruptcy, and the want of employment 
 among the working-classes. Man, like all beasts 
 of prey, is fierce when famished. A hungry 
 Frenchman has something in him of the nature 
 of the wolves which in a severe winter descend 
 from the mountains of his own country and at 
 tack the peasants at their doors. It was the want 
 of employment, it was idleness and famine, which 
 gave rise to the several attempts to change the 
 government by violence that so soon followed 
 the revolution of 1848. 
 
 
34 SAFETY OF FRENCH STEAMERS. 
 
 LETTEE IV. 
 
 Security from accident on board the Mediterranean steamers. Discom 
 forts of a small steamer. Fine view of the Maritime Alps from the 
 water. A day in Genoa. Vexations of the passport system. Paes- 
 tum Amalfi. Neapolitan boatmen. Beauty of the coast. Songs of 
 the boatmen. Peculiarities of Neapolitan pronunciation. Excur 
 sion to Pfestum. Sickly inhabitants. Messina. Malta. La Val 
 letta. The Catholic church in Malta. 
 
 VALLETTA, ISLAND OF MALTA, Dec. 29, 1852. 
 AT Marseilles they told me that though there 
 are more than fifty steamers now on the Mediter 
 ranean, not a shipwreck or disastrous accident of 
 any kind has happened to any of them since 
 steamers were first introduced on these waters, 
 with the exception of a single instance, and that 
 happened some twenty years since. They all 
 have low-pressure engines, are carefully navi 
 gated, and the greater number of them merely 
 make coasting voyages, stopping at one port after 
 another, and never putting to sea when the 
 weather is tempestuous. It was in one of these 
 steamers that on the 14th of this month I took 
 passage for Naples a little Neapolitan boat, 
 short and broad, tumbling about with every im 
 pulse of the waves and wind, and working her 
 
THE MARITIME ALPS. 35 
 
 way as well as might be with a weak engine. 
 Tiie motion, as we proceeded out of the harbor, 
 soon drove all the passengers to their berths, ex 
 cept those who were proof against the causes of 
 sea-sickness. In passing between a rocky island 
 and the coast, our poor boat had her wheels en 
 tangled among the ropes of a net, and was an 
 hour or more getting clear of them. 
 
 I had, some years before, travelled the road 
 along what is called the Maritime Alps, from 
 Marseilles to Nice, and thought the scenery ex 
 tremely grand, but I am not quite sure that it is 
 not finer when viewed from the water. You take 
 broader views of it, at least, and see how its sev 
 eral parts add to each other's effect. As the 
 mountain summits, one by one, rise before you 
 the loftiest, at this season, glistening with snow 
 as the gulfs, and bays, and valleys, and ravines, 
 one by one, open upon you ; as town after town 
 shows itself, spread out upon the shelving shore, 
 or nestling in the lap of hills, or seated on the 
 craggy heights, the attention is kept ever awake 
 with ever-new images of sublimity and beauty. 
 A sea-voyage is a comfortless thing always, at 
 least I have found it so but a sea-voyage which 
 
GENOA. 
 
 shows such sights as these, brings some compen 
 sation for its discomfort. 
 
 In about thirty hours our steamer brought us 
 to Genoa, where the passengers were counted 
 like sheep, to see that their number was neither 
 too large nor too small ; and then, after an hour's 
 delay or more, we were permitted, by the police 
 of the place, to land, in a dark, rainy evening, 
 and proceeded to an hotel for these boats, while 
 in port at any of their stopping-places, do not 
 concern themselves with providing for their pas 
 sengers. "We had a day a bright, sunny, cheer 
 ful, winter-day of Italy to look at the palaces 
 and churches of Genoa, and all the glorious 
 views seen from its heights; and, leaving the 
 place in the evening, were early the next mom- 
 ing at Leghorn, where the examination of the 
 passports of those who wished to land occasioned 
 still longer delays. We received, however, at 
 last, permission to go on shore, and having break 
 fasted went by railway to Pisa, to get a hasty 
 look at its antiquities. Another night on the 
 water brought us to the port of Civita Vecchia, 
 where we thought we should be starved before 
 the police would allow us to land. At last an 
 
VEXATIONS FROM THE POLICE. 37 
 
 officer made his appearance on board with writ 
 ten permissions for all of us, between fifty and 
 sixty in number ; our names were called, and as 
 we answered to them we were permitted to step 
 down to the boats, waiting to convey us to the 
 shore. We had just time to breakfast, see the 
 greater number of our fellow-passengers depart 
 on their way to Rome, and make a rapid circuit 
 of the little town, to be convinced that it con 
 tained nothing worth seeing, when the time ar 
 rived for returning to our steamer. It had been 
 lightened of the greater part of its cargo, and 
 now in going out of port bobbed and danced like 
 a cork upon the waves. After a most unpleasant 
 passage, the early light of the fifth morning from 
 our embarking saw us rounding the coast of 
 Baise, and making our way slowly against a north 
 wind. At half-past nine we dropped anchor, but 
 nobody was permitted to go on shore till an hour 
 and a half afterward, when we stepped into 
 boats, were taken before the police authorities, 
 and received written permission to remain in the 
 capital of the kingdom for twenty-four hours, at 
 the end of which we were to make application 
 either for leave to remain still longer, or leave to 
 4 
 
38 PASSPORTS. 
 
 depart. We got to our hotel, and breakfasted 
 about twelve o'clock. I have been the more par 
 ticular in this recital because it illustrates the 
 beauty of the passport system, and shows what 
 a pleasant thing it is for the traveller. In France, 
 since the late revolution, this system has been 
 somewhat modified, and made more tolerable, 
 but in the other countries of Europe it prevails 
 at the present moment in its worst rigor. The 
 other day a party of dragoons came on board one 
 of the steamers touching at Messina, and took 
 the English passengers before the police, where 
 they underwent an examination. 
 
 During our stay at Naples we made an excur 
 sion to Psestum, of which, however, I should not 
 have said much, were it not for the episode of a 
 visit to Amalfi on our way a place remarkable 
 for the exceeding beauty of its scenery. 
 
 We left Naples by the earliest railway train 
 for Nocera, a little town ten miles, perhaps, be 
 yond Pompeii. It had been a cold night for Na 
 ples ; the tramontane winds had been blowing 
 for two days, a calm still night had succeeded, 
 and the hoar-frost was now glistening by the side 
 of the way. As we dismounted to take a look at 
 
ABSENCE OF GRASS. 39 
 
 Pompeii in passing, I found by touching the 
 earth with the end of my umbrella that the frost 
 had hardened to thin crust on the surface of the 
 soil, though the fields of lupines and broad-beans 
 around us, already half grown, seemed uninjured 
 by it. This was a Neapolitan winter in its great 
 est severity. Our cicerone, after a few minutes' 
 flourish with his hands, would stop to rub them 
 vehemently, and complain of the cold. As the 
 sun mounted the day became warm and genial. 
 We returned to the railway, reached Nocera in a 
 few minutes, and made a bargain with the most 
 respectable looking of the carriage-drivers who 
 crowded shouting around us, to convey us to Sa 
 lerno. 
 
 "We passed up among the mountains, through a 
 beautiful and fertile valley, among vineyards and 
 plantations of the fig-tree and rows of olive-trees, 
 and crops of every green thing the season could 
 produce, except grass but let no one look for 
 grass in Southern Italy. Every spot of earth 
 which will bear tillage is furrowed with the 
 plough and turned with the spade, and the only 
 places where grass is allowed to spring up are 
 the borders of the road and the narrow edges of 
 
40 SALERNO. 
 
 the fields. Of course you never see any broad 
 expanse of greensward, such as with us is so fresh 
 and grateful to the eye, and forms so pleasant a 
 carpet for the feet, unless in those tracts from 
 which the cultivator is driven by the malaria. 
 
 After a drive of four or five miles, we began to 
 descend toward the sea-shore. We Kad left on 
 our right the grand mountain promontory on 
 which stand the towns of Sorrento and Castella- 
 mare, and now the broad gulf of Salerno lay be 
 fore us, embraced by a semicircle of lofty moun 
 tains. Far to the southeast, on a level between 
 the base and the sea, our driver pointed out to us 
 the site of Paestum. About midday we were at 
 Salerno, a city of twenty thousand inhabitants, 
 dirty and noisy, and full of beggars, with olive 
 groves on the rocky slopes back of it, and the 
 finest orange orchards along the shore which I 
 have seen in Italy, loaded and bending with their 
 yellow but not fully ripened fruit. It was now 
 too late, they told us, to think of going to Paes- 
 tum and returning the same day ; we therefore 
 engaged a boat to take us to Amalfi. 
 
 It was a clumsy thing, manned with four row 
 ers, each of whom, standing upright, pushed in- 
 
BEAUTY OF THE COAST. 41 
 
 stead of pulling a huge oar, held to a pin in the 
 edge of the boat by a thong, or piece of rope. 
 The principal among them was a merry, fellow 
 from Amalfi, about five feet in height, wearing 
 a Phrygian cap, and a dress composed of a can 
 vas shirt and drawers. He and one of his 
 companions took us on their shoulders, and 
 carried us through the shallow water to the boat. 
 As the oarsmen struck out into the bay, he pulled 
 off his cap, threw it on the seat, and encour 
 aged them by calling out, "Allez, pull away, pull 
 away, ugh." The boatmen in this part of the 
 Mediterranean appear to have adopted the words 
 " pull away" from the English sailors, for I heard 
 them using it again at Messina. At every repe 
 tition of "Allez, pull away, pull away, ugh," the 
 boatmen would lean to their oars and redouble 
 the strokes. 
 
 As we passed along beside the rocks which 
 rise out of the transparent water of the Mediter 
 ranean, we were struck with the wonderful beau 
 ty of the region. 
 
 " Earth has not anything to show more fair." 
 
 In the recesses of the mountains, close to the 
 
42 SONGS OF THE BOATMEN. 
 
 sea, nestled the white villages of the fishermen , 
 the dwellings of those who tend the olive-tree 
 and the vine were clustered on the heights ; the 
 midway declivities were clothed with the gray- 
 green of olive groves, with thickets of the prickly 
 pear hanging from the cliffs in masses of uncouth 
 vegetation ; higher up grew trees of deeper ver 
 dure, the corob, which bears a sort of bean, im 
 bedded in a sweet pulp, the food of horses ; and 
 above them all, bare pinnacles of rock rose into 
 the clear blue sky. Here and there we descried 
 a convent, perched far up in a spot that seemed 
 inaccessible ; and on the precipices by the sea 
 rose old towers, built to protect the country from 
 the invasions of the Saracens, and long since 
 abandoned. The whole scene was bathed in a 
 mild golden sunshine, and the smooth waves rip 
 pled softly on the beaches, or rolled with gentle 
 dashes into the caverns of the rocks. Our boat 
 men sang as they rowed, keeping time to the 
 stroke of their oars. Their songs were some 
 times plaintive and sometimes comic, but as they 
 were in the Neapolitan dialect, I could not make 
 out their meaning. Our courier, however, who 
 was four years and a half dragoman to the Grand 
 
NEAPOLITAN PRONUNCIATION. 43 
 
 Turk at Constantinople, and who, besides Turk 
 ish, Arabic, and modern Greek, understands all 
 the dialects of Italy, explained them to us, and 
 made, what I dare say was sprightly enough in 
 the original, very tedious in the interpretation. 
 Besides other peculiarities, which are numerous 
 enough, the people of the Neapolitan dominions 
 have an odd way of pronouncing Italian, which 
 may be exemplified in English thus : 
 
 " Faindly as dolls the evening gime 
 Our voices geep dune and our oars geep dime." 
 
 And again, 
 
 " The rabids are near and the daylighd's bast." 
 
 Just before arriving at Amalfi, we passed the 
 village of Atrani, seated in a steep and narrow 
 gorge, where a little stream comes down from 
 the mountains, and high up among the preci 
 pices a small white house was pointed out, by 
 our merry friend the boatman, as the house of 
 Masaniello, the fisherman who became a poli 
 tician and a revolutionist. " And who was Ma 
 saniello ?" I asked. 
 
 " He was a great king of the country," an 
 swered the boatman. 
 
44 AMALFI. 
 
 This is all that the large majority of Masa- 
 niello's countrymen know about him. The pa 
 triot and republican is confounded by the people 
 with the common rabble of dead kings. 
 
 As we approached Amalfi, our little boatman 
 raising his cry of " Allez, pull away, pull away, 
 ugh," looked over his shoulder at us, nodded and 
 smiled, and our boat was soon upon the beach, 
 where a crowd of swarthy fellows, in woollen 
 caps and tattered pantaloons, were waiting to 
 carry us to the shore on their shoulders ; and as 
 soon as our boat touched the sand, they gath 
 ered round it, up to their knees in the water, 
 thrusting each other aside, and all shouting at 
 once. We tried to select the best only for our 
 bearers, and when at length we landed, the whole 
 crowd ran after -us, every man of them, as it 
 seemed to me, demanding to be paid. Our train 
 was further re-enforced by the beggars, blind and 
 lame, who always haunt the places where stran 
 gers are expected to pass. "We obtained a guide, 
 looked at the old cathedral, which contains little 
 of interest, and then proceeded to what is called 
 the Valley of the Mills, a deep ravine between 
 precipices of immense height at the mouth of 
 
VIEW FROM A GROTTO. 45 
 
 which this little town of seven thousand inhabit 
 ants is built. A stream a brook rather rushes 
 along at the bottom, and turns seventeen paper- 
 mills. Orange-trees, loaded with fruit, overhang 
 the path from the walls of narrow gardens, and 
 other fruit-trees of various kinds, not now in leaf, 
 and trailing plants in full verdure, nourished by 
 the perpetual moisture, mantle the rocks with 
 their luxuriant growth. High above rise the 
 crags, crowned with old dwellings, castles, and 
 convents ; and, seaward, through the chasm, you 
 have a glimpse of Salerno, and the mountains of 
 the opposite coast. It is a spot for the pencil, 
 and not for description. 
 
 "We climbed to the Franciscan convent over 
 looking the shore, and from a 'natural grotto ex 
 tending deep into the rock, had a magnificent 
 view of the shore, the sea, and the distant moun 
 tains. Part of the nearer crags were lying in 
 shadow, yet distinct, a sort of clear-obscure, and 
 part were crimson with the descending sun. We 
 returned to Salerno by moonlight, our boatmen 
 singing the popular ballads of the country, as 
 they passed under the rocks of the shore. 
 
 We set out the next morning for Psestum at 
 
46 JOURNEY TO P^ESTUM. 
 
 half-past four. For miles beyond Salerno, we 
 found the road, at that hour, full of men and 
 women trooping to the town, with donkeys bear 
 ing loads of vegetables and roots, and wagons 
 and carts drawn by white oxen, loaded with wine, 
 grain, and pulse, the productions of the country. 
 Herds of swine were driven by us, squealing as 
 they went, and several flocks of sheep. If early 
 rising be a sign of industry, the people of this 
 part of Italy well deserve to be called industri 
 ous. We could perceive that we were passing 
 through a highly cultivated region, though with 
 but few inhabitants ; but when at length the day 
 light came we found ourselves travelling alone in 
 a solitary level tract of pasturage, spotted with 
 luxuriant tufts of thistles, in which herds of 
 white cows and black buffaloes were grazing. 
 To our left were the mountains with villages and 
 towns on their sides, and the sea was moaning, 
 on our right. Further on, tracts of springing 
 wheat made their appearance, fields of turnips 
 and lupines luxuriantly green, with here and 
 there a building apparently intended as a store 
 house for the crops. 
 
 "There is Psestum," said one of our party. 
 
TEMPLES SPARED BY THE CLIMATE. 47 
 
 Looking before us, we saw at a little distance the 
 majestic columns of the temple of Ceres, and in 
 a few minutes passed through the opening made 
 by the road in the ruined walls of the ancient 
 town, and stopped at the door of a house which 
 answered, in some. respects, the purpose of a 
 hostelry. We found a cicerone y who carried a 
 bunch of keys and opened for us the iron gate of 
 the enclosure in which the Temple of Ceres stands. 
 I will not repeat for you what is said in the 
 guide-books of these fine remains of Greek ar 
 chitecture. The Temple of Neptune, as it is the 
 most ancient, is the noblest and most imposing 
 in aspect. It is wonderful how this atmosphere, 
 in which man sickens and dies, spares the work 
 of his hands. In many parts, the architectural 
 ornaments of the Temple of Neptune are as per 
 fect and as sharp in outline as if they were cut 
 yesterday, and nowhere is the stone incrusted 
 with moss, or darkened with mould ; time has 
 only given it a warmer tint. The ground, within 
 their grand colonnades, was spotted with Decem 
 ber daisies, in bloom, and the morning air was 
 scented with the sweet alyssum, which grows 
 here in profusion, its white flowers, at that time, 
 
48 BUSTLE IN THE ROADS. 
 
 looking at a little distance like hoar-frost. I 
 was surprised to see so much cultivation; the 
 fields were enclosed with stone walls and rude 
 hedges ; there was a vineyard near, and planta 
 tions of fig-trees ; and wheat had been sown and 
 was just springing up, close, to the foundation- 
 stones of the Temple of Ceres. Nor was the 
 place so solitary as I expected to find it. Trav 
 ellers were passing to and fro on the highway by 
 which we came ; a diligence full of passengers 
 went by ; a party of sportsmen, with their fowl 
 ing-pieces, stopped at the inn ; we saw several 
 soldiers in uniform in the road, and when we 
 w r ere not within the enclosures containing the 
 temples, we had a train of followers, some of 
 whom wanted to sell us old coins, which they 
 pretended to have found, and others importuned 
 us for alms. 
 
 I asked our guide if the soil of the place was 
 productive. " By no means," he replied ; " the 
 earth is full of salt, and there are no springs ; in 
 summer these fields are scorched by a severe 
 drought. Those who cultivate them live at Car- 
 paccio, yonder, where there is good air and good 
 water." Here he pointed to a village in sight, 
 
SICKLY INHABITANTS. 49 
 
 half-way up the mountain -side. "In summer," 
 he continued, "this place is so unhealthy that 
 nobody dares to sleep here ; those who look to 
 the crops come down in the daytime, and return 
 before night-fall. It swarms with snakes, too, 
 which in summer crawl out of the old walls, and 
 are very dangerous. There are some of the peo 
 ple who remain here during the summer." 
 
 As he said this, he pointed to a group of half 
 a dozen people, none of whom seemed to have 
 reached the middle term of life, emaciated, pale, 
 and ragged, most of them wearing a look of help 
 less debility. We were then about entering our 
 carriage, to take the luncheon which we had 
 brought with us. One of our party threw on the 
 ground the thigh-bone of a chicken, which had 
 been well picked. A boy stepped from the 
 sickly group, took it up, examined it narrowly, 
 and finding it perfectly bare, threw it back again. 
 It was evident that the poor creatures were hun 
 gry. We made a pretty liberal distribution of 
 bread and cheese, and bits of meat, among the 
 ghastly women and pallid children, and drove off 
 for Salerno, from which .we proceeded to Nocera, 
 and reached Naples by the last train for the day. 
 5 
 
50 SCYLLA AND CHARTBDIS. 
 
 To the island of Malta we came by a French 
 steamer the Hellespont, plying between Mar 
 seilles and Alexandria, a more powerful and 
 commodious boat than the Maria Antoinetta. 
 We shot over smooth water by the now harmless 
 rock of Scylla, with a little town behind it on the 
 Calabrian coast, and ran close by the inoffensive 
 eddy of Charybdis, near a village of fisher 
 men on the Sicilian side. " They make a great 
 deal of Scylla and Charybdis in romances," said 
 the second captain of our steamer, " but they are 
 nothing." Of Messina, where we touched, and 
 remained for two or three hours, I have only one 
 remark to make that the people, though slight 
 and short of stature, have incredibly powerful 
 voices ; they are noisier than even the Neapoli 
 tans. We passed through the market-place, 
 where they were screaming their wares at the 
 highest pitch of their voices, and I think I was 
 never in so deafening an uproar. In about forty- 
 two hours from the time of leaving Naples we 
 were in the port of Valletta, the principal city of 
 Malta. 
 
 To a New Yorker it is worth a voyage across the 
 Atlantic to see so clean a city as Valletta. It is 
 
CLEANLINESS OF VALLETTA. 51 
 
 admirably well built, of a cream-colored calcare 
 ous rock, which they hew with axes, and shape 
 with ease into any form that suits the architect. 
 The streets are paved with the same material, 
 which is almost as little soiled under the feet of 
 passengers, as the walls of the houses themselves. 
 Seaward and landward the town is protected by 
 fortification beyond fortification, rampart beyond 
 rampart, and several of its gates are cut through 
 the living rock. From the ramparts, or from the 
 flat housetops of the town, you have a view of 
 the interior of the island, which presents a very 
 uninviting aspect. High walls of stone divide it 
 into little enclosures, where the rock is covered 
 with soil, brought, for the most part, it is said, 
 from Sicily. At first sight one would say that 
 there are no trees on the island, but on looking 
 more closely, you perceive rows of sprawling fig- 
 trees planted by the walls, their boughs given off 
 close to the ground, and here and there a corob- 
 tree, an evergreen, larger but equally sprawling. 
 All the trees on this island, except those which 
 grow in the lower and moister situations, have 
 this tendency to put out their branches close to 
 the earth, and to creep rather than to rise. 
 
52 BIGOTRY OF THE MALTESE. 
 
 Whether it be the effect of the sea-winds which 
 sweep over the island from every point of the 
 compass, or of the want of depth of soil, I do 
 not profess to decide. 
 
 Just now a question of local politics has arisen 
 in .the island, which is not without general inter 
 est. When the English took possession of the 
 Island of Malta, they engaged to maintain the 
 Eoman Catholic church in all its existing rights. 
 This does not seem to have been understood to 
 imply that other modes of worship were not to 
 be tolerated, and, accordingly, other denomina 
 tions of Christians have established their wor 
 ship here. When, however, some years since, the 
 Methodists built a church in Valletta, they were 
 prohibited from giving it any of the external in 
 dications of a place for public devotions. Since 
 that time, and within a few years, a very fine 
 building, in which the service of the Anglican 
 church is performed, has been erected : the most 
 conspicuous in appearance of all the churches in 
 Valletta. This seems to have given some dis 
 pleasure to the Catholic priesthood, and to the 
 original Maltese population, who, to a man, are 
 devout Catholics. 
 
RELIGIOUS DISPUTES. 53 
 
 A new criminal code has lately been drawn up 
 for the island ; a code very judiciously framed, 
 in general, as I am told, and to which it is very 
 desirable that validity should be given as early 
 as possible. It has, however, been the subject 
 of long debate and consideration in the Council 
 of the island. Malta you know is ruled by a gov 
 ernor and a council the members of which are 
 partly appointed by the home government, and 
 partly elected by the people. In one of the arti 
 cles providing punishment for the disturbance of 
 public worship, the Roman Catholic church is 
 styled the dominant church of the country. This 
 expression, after a vehement struggle on the part 
 of the Catholics to retain it, has just been struck 
 out of the code. Those who desired to retain it 
 argued with some plausibility that the British 
 government found the Roman Catholic church 
 dominant in Malta, and by promising to main 
 tain it in the exercise of its rights, had engaged 
 to keep it so. Those who insisted on striking out 
 the expression, took the higher ground of liberty 
 of conscience, and argued that under a just gov 
 ernment all forms of religion should be placed on 
 a footing of equality in the eye of the law. 
 5* 
 
54 DEPARTURE FOR EGYPT. 
 
 The archbishop of Malta has written a letter 
 to the governor of the island, protesting against 
 the omission of the epithet " dominant," as ap 
 plied to the church of which he is a dignitary, and 
 declaring that if the word is not restored, he and 
 his clergy will petition the home government for 
 its restoration. The governor has answered that 
 there is no probability that the home government 
 will grant the petition. The petition has proba 
 bly by this time been forwarded. 
 
 To-morrow we shall probably leave this place in 
 an English steamer for Egypt. 
 
PASSENGERS TO INDIA. 55 
 
 LETTEK V. 
 
 Voyage from Malta to Cairo. A steamer crowded with passengers from 
 England to India. Ill-bred people. Fortune, the botanist. The 
 tea-plant in America and India. The grape in China and Japan. 
 A Chinese fruit for America. A hardy palm. Arrival at Alexan 
 dria. Confusion of the landing. Passage to Cairo. The canal. 
 the Nile. Arab devotions. Youth drowned in the Nile. 
 
 CAIRO, EGYPT, January 12th, 1853. 
 
 I LEFT Malta on the 30th December in the 
 British steamer Ripon, proceeding to Alexandria 
 in one of her monthly voyages from Southamp 
 ton. Her commander was Captain Moresby, a 
 veteran in the British naval service, known to 
 geographers by his chart of the Red Sea and the 
 Maldive Islands. We found a crowd of English 
 on board on their way to India, army-officers, 
 civilians, medical men, a score of ladies, a lord 
 or two, the Governor of Hong Kong, a Chief 
 Justice of the India bench, and a large number 
 of cadets, some of them scarcely full grown, sent 
 out to fill the civil and military employments, 
 which are kept for young men who must be pro 
 vided for. 
 
 " These youths," said a Major in the British 
 service, who had been my fellow-passenger on 
 
56 ILL-BRED PEOPLE. 
 
 board of the Arctic, and whom I was very glad 
 to meet again, " will find, in the climate of India, 
 a severe trial for their constitutions ; and yet it 
 is necessary that they should go out thus early, 
 in order to qualify them properly for the posts 
 they are to hold. A great many of them will 
 die, and leave their places vacant for other ad 
 venturers." I looked at their fresh and healthy 
 countenances, as he said this, and wished them 
 well through the trial ; but a fate was hanging 
 over one of them more sudden and disastrous 
 than any of us could possibly anticipate. 
 
 The cabins in the Ripon, called with us state 
 rooms, contain each generally four berths, and 
 when occupied by more than two persons, are 
 particularly inconvenient. As we found no one 
 of them vacant, our party was billeted in differ 
 ent chambers, among persons who doubtless 
 wished us back to America with all their hearts. 
 The proportion of ill-bred people on board was 
 greater than I expected to find. Passengers, 
 late at night, would come singing to their berths, 
 or whistle perseveringly as they turned over and 
 arranged the contents of their portmanteaus, or 
 bore you with their elbows, and commit various 
 
FORTUNE THE BOTAXIST. 57 
 
 other acts of petty rudeness. One day it was 
 the first of January the captain gave champagne 
 at dinner, and immediately a strife arose among 
 about a third part of the passengers, as it seemed 
 to me, to see who should get possession of the 
 bottles, and swallow the most of their contents. 
 The supply was liberal, and we had a noisy 
 night. 
 
 Among the passengers was Mr. Fortune, the 
 botanist and traveller, who had already made 
 two visits to China, with a view of ascertaining 
 which of the vegetable productions of that coun 
 try might be advantageously introduced into the 
 British dominions, and was now proceeding on 
 a third voyage to Shanghae, by way of India. 
 I sought an acquaintance with him, which he 
 did not decline, and I was much interested by 
 his conversation. " You are attempting the in 
 troduction of the tea-plant into America," he 
 said, "but I doubt whether you will succeed. 
 Your climate, with its warm summer, is well 
 adapted to its cultivation, and you will probably 
 have no difficulty in finding soils suitable for its 
 growth ; but labor is so dear in the United 
 States, and so cheap in China, that the Chinese 
 
58 THE TEA-CULTURE. 
 
 will send it to your doors at far less cost than 
 you can produce it at home. I am at present 
 engaged in the experiment of introducing the 
 tea-plant into India. On the slopes of the Him 
 alaya mountains are a soil and climate perfectly 
 adapted to its cultivation ; a country where land 
 can be had for almost nothing, and labor costs 
 very little. Here we are now forming gardens of 
 the tea-plant, and I have, for my part, no doubt 
 of the success of the undertaking." 
 
 "We talked of the culture of the grape in 
 America. "If, as you say," said Mr. Fortune, 
 " the European grape does not succeed well with 
 you, I should advise you to import stocks from 
 those varieties of it which are cultivated in 
 China, where the climate so much resembles 
 your own in its changes and extremes. In the 
 northern parts of China 'which I visited, I found 
 a table grape very common, though they make 
 no wine. You might easily have the plants 
 brought over, as you are now beginning to have 
 a pretty extensive commerce with the ports 
 north of Canton. We have better fruit of the 
 kind in Europe than I saw there, but you might 
 perhaps improve it. 
 
THE YANG-MAE. 59 
 
 " There is one kind of fruit," he continued, 
 "which I am introducing into Northern India, 
 and which, I am sure, would succeed in some 
 parts of your country. It is called in China the 
 yang-mae a fruit of the size of a plum, resem 
 bling that of the arbutus, but larger a crimson 
 berry, covered all over with small projecting 
 points, very agreeable to the palate, and with 
 just acidity enough in its flavor to make it re 
 freshing. You have in America some plants of 
 the genus to which it belongs, the myrica" 
 
 I instanced the myrica cerifera, or candleberry 
 myrtle, bearing large quantities of berries. 
 
 " The yang-mae also," proceeds Mr. Fortune, 
 " is an abundant bearer. It will not answer for 
 England, as our summers are not warm enough, 
 but in those parts of the United States, where 
 the mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer does 
 not fall in winter below twenty, or, at the utmost, 
 twelve degrees, and where you have a nice warm 
 summer" such was his phrase "to ripen it, the 
 fruit would be produced in perfection. It would 
 be well worth the while of some of your horticul 
 turists to take measures for introducing it from 
 the northern parts of China." 
 
A HARDY PALM. 
 
 In a subsequent conversation, Mr. Fortune 
 mentioned a hardy kind of palm, the only one 
 which will grow in cold climates, and very com 
 mon in some parts of China. " It requires," he 
 observed, " a warm summer, and will bear a se 
 vere winter, and is the very tree for the United 
 States. It is a chamcerops, a genus of the palm 
 family, of which there are several species, all of 
 them tropical plants but this. It looks strange, 
 in the depth of winter, to see this tree, apparently 
 a production of. the tropics, with its large ever 
 green leaves loaded with snow. The Chinese 
 obtain from the upper part of it a kind of net 
 work, the sheathing of the young leaves, knotted 
 with the most perfect regularity, which they ap 
 ply to many useful purposes." 
 
 On his way to China, Mr. Fortune was taking 
 out with him to Calcutta several cases contain 
 ing cinchona plants the tree which produces the 
 Peruvian bark brought from South America, 
 with the design of introducing it into India. 
 
 As we approached Egypt, the weather grew 
 rainy, and at length the pharos of Alexandria 
 appeared above a low, flat shore. A pilot of slen 
 der figure, a little stooping, with a dirty white 
 
ARRIVAL AT ALEXANDRIA. 61 
 
 turban on his head, and a loose blue bag cover 
 ing his legs from the waist to a little below the 
 knee, came on board. Our steamer made a sud 
 den turn, swept into the harbor, and dropped an 
 chor in a violent shower, under fortifications 
 bristling with guns placed in full sight. On land 
 ing we were at once surrounded by a mob of fel 
 lows in white turbans or fez caps, and blue cotton 
 shirts tied round the waist by a string, offering 
 us their donkeys with loud shouts, thrusting each 
 other aside to get at us, and blocking our way so 
 that we could not get forward a single step. As 
 there was apparently no alternative, I took the 
 one who stood immediately before me by the 
 throat, shoved him out of my way, and then at 
 tacked the next in like manner, till I made my 
 escape out of the crowd. The good-natured 
 Mussulmans smiled at finding themselves thus 
 unceremoniously handled by an infidel, and I 
 jumped upon one of the best looking of their an 
 imals, and trotted off through streets swimming 
 with white mud to the hotel, followed by a shout 
 ing donkey-driver, who brandished a long stick, 
 which he occasionally brought down on the quad 
 ruped's flanks to encourage his speed. 
 
62 THE TOWN. 
 
 Brief space was allowed us to look from oui 
 hotel windows at the strange spectacle of people 
 in oriental costumes, men and women, walking 
 the streets, or trotting gently by on asses, or urg 
 ing forward laden camels. We had a gallop on 
 donkeys, attended by a dragoman richly dressed 
 for the occasion, to attract custom, and three or 
 four donkey-drivers running on foot, to Cleopa 
 tra's Needle and Pompey's Pillar, which I will 
 not tire you with describing. I have scarcely 
 time to notice a spacious garden by which we 
 passed, full of lofty date-palms and large-leaved 
 bananas, or to observe the beauty of an avenue 
 through which we went, planted with cassia-trees 
 in full verdure. In a short time we were on 
 board the boat destined to take us to the Nile, 
 through the broad canal opened by the late 
 pacha, Mehemet Ali. Here forty or fifty passen 
 gers, who had come by the steamer Eipon to Alex 
 andria, passed the night, as well as they might, 
 on benches, tables, and camp-stools. I grew 
 tired of my hard couch, and went on deck before 
 the day dawned. The moon, in her wane, was 
 in the firmament, which seemed enlarged to an 
 immense depth ; and the deck, in the transparent 
 
THE CA2fAL. 63 
 
 atmosphere, was drenched with dew. A small 
 steamer was dragging us along the canal, and at 
 the helm of our boat stood an Egyptian, in a 
 shaggy brown capote, motionless as a statue, with 
 one or two in the same garb squatted on the deck 
 near him. To the right and left nothing was to 
 be seen but the heaps of mould formed in dig 
 ging the canal. 
 
 When the day broke we found ourselves glid 
 ing on between rows of large trees in luxuriant 
 leaf : the cassia, the thorny acacia, called by the 
 ancients the acanthus, and the sycamore, a tree 
 producing a kind of fig, which forms a consider 
 able part of the food of the Egyptians. From time 
 to time we passed villages on the bank, built of 
 unburnt brick, with low, flat roofs, looking like 
 the habitations of mud-wasps magnified. Each 
 had its mosque, with a minaret of hewn stone, 
 from which the hour of prayer is proclaimed. 
 Their inmates, in turbans and long blue or white 
 cotton shirts, were creeping out of them in the 
 early sunshine, and walking carefully on the wet 
 and slippery declivity. Among them were 
 women in blue cotton gowns, barefooted, with 
 infants perched on their shoulders. This is the 
 
64 ARAB AND COPTIC MOTHERS. 
 
 way in which the Arab mothers, of the laboring 
 class in Egypt, carry their children ; as soon as 
 the little creatures get the primary use of their 
 limbs, they are transferred from the arms to the 
 shoulders. I have seen instances of this cus 
 tom which would supply striking subjects for 
 the pencil. At Old Cairo, the other day, a 
 Coptic woman, in the loose blue dress of the 
 country, barefooted, her face unveiled, with dark 
 symmetrical features, silent and sad-looking, 
 opened to us the door of the old worm-eaten 
 church in which is the little grotto where the 
 Holy Virgin, with her child, is said to have eluded 
 the pursuit of Herod. On the woman's shoulder 
 sat an infant of seven or eight months, as silent 
 as the mother, with well-formed brown cheeks 
 and long dark eyelashes, its head bowed upon 
 hers, and one little hand pressed against her 
 forehead while the other arm was passed around 
 the back of the neck. The Egyptian mothers 
 treat their children with great tenderness, and 
 though I see infants everywhere, I do not know 
 that I have yet heard one of them cry. The ex 
 pression of quiet resignation in their faces is often 
 quite touching. The Egyptian, born to a lot of 
 
THE NILE. 65 
 
 dirt, poverty, and oppression, may well learn pa 
 tience early. 
 
 At eight o'clock in the morning we readied the 
 Nile, and were transferred to a steamer. About 
 half the passengers of the Ripon had been sent 
 on a little before us by another. We passed a 
 day on the Nile, and had ample opportunity to 
 observe the character of the great river and its 
 banks. It is a turbid stream, like the Missis 
 sippi, flowing rapidly toward the ocean, between 
 banks of fine mould, which are easily undermined, 
 and crumble into the current. The broad, level 
 tracts by which it is bordered have the same 
 dark rich soil as that which lies about our rivers 
 of the West. Along the bank where the current 
 has worn it away, you see distinctly the layers 
 of mould, which, year after year, have been de 
 posited by the successive inundations, and which 
 attest that the land of Egypt has been gradually 
 rising for ages. The bed of the river appears to 
 have been raised also in an equal degree, and I 
 have been told by those who have made the ex 
 amination for themselves, that, although in some 
 places the sands of the desert, blown by the 
 winds, have encroached upon the fertile grounds, 
 
66 THE DELTA EXTENDING. 
 
 in others the area of fertility has been extended. 
 Broad tracts of sand, which the waters never 
 reached before, have been overlaid by the slime 
 of the river, and, after one or two inundations, 
 covered with harvests. 
 
 The country on each side of the Nile was green 
 with tracts of clover, lentiles, barley, and other 
 grains and pulse. Groves of the date-palm ap 
 peared by the river-side, and showed their lofty 
 tops at a distance ; here and there were seen 
 clumps of the cassia and acanthus, or a huge 
 branching sycamore, overshadowing the tomb of 
 a Mahommedan saint. As the day wore on, we 
 saw men beginning their daily toil of raising wa 
 ter from the river by means of a wheel turned by 
 a donkey, and furnished with buckets, to irrigate 
 the surrounding fields. Women, some of them 
 carefully concealing their faces, and others leav 
 ing them exposed, came down to the stream, and 
 filled large earthen jars with the water, which 
 they bore off on their heads. People in turbans, 
 carrying long pipes, were seen walking, or riding 
 donkeys, sometimes with an attendant, or run 
 ning on foot, along the causeys built to form a 
 passage from place to place during the floods. 
 
ARAB DEVOTION. G? 
 
 Our captain and his crew were Egyptians, 
 though the engineer was an Englishman. They 
 set us an edifying example of Mahommedan devo 
 tion. As the Mussulman prays four times a day, 
 and not more than one of the hands could be 
 spared from his employment at any one time, 
 there was scarcely an hour of the day in which 
 some one of them was not in the act of prayer. 
 Each of them, as his turn came, mounted the 
 right wheel-house, and made his prostrations, 
 and murmured his devotions with closed eyes 
 and moving lips in the presence of all the passen 
 gers. 
 
 At length, after a second uncomfortable night 
 passed on benches and stools, we reached the 
 landing-place of the steamer Bulak, a mile or 
 thereabouts below Cairo. We were conveyed by 
 omnibuses through a fine avenue of trees with 
 dense foliage to our hotels, in the Frank quarter 
 of the city. Here we heard of the fate of one of 
 our fellow-passengers in the Eipon. He was a 
 fair-haired youth, scarcely grown to his full stat 
 ure, of the name of Frazer, who, with another of 
 the same age, was going out to his father in 
 India, leaving a mother in England. I had ob- 
 
68 A YOUNG MAN DROWNED. 
 
 served him always with his young friend, and 
 had been interested not a little by his ingenuous 
 physiognomy. In coming on from Alexandria 
 to Cairo the passengers by the Bipon had been 
 separated into two divisions, and sent on by dif 
 ferent steamers ; the one which had the young 
 Frazer on board, preceded by three or four hours 
 the one in which I was. In climbing some part 
 of the rigging, the evening before our arrival, he 
 missed his hold and fell into the river. The 
 steamer was immediately stopped, and everything 
 done to save him, but to no purpose. He strove 
 to swim toward the steamer against the strong 
 current ; he breasted it gallantly for a while, but 
 it carried him down, and he appeared no more. 
 He sleeps with the Pharaohs and the shepherd- 
 kings. His father and mother will hear of his 
 death almost at the same moment ; the one by 
 the caravan of adventurers who came on with us 
 on their way to India, and the other by the re 
 turn of the Eipon to England. 
 
ASPECT OP CAIRO. 69 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 Sights and sounds of Cairo. Aspect of the crowd in the streets. 
 Women. The bazars. The barbers. Mosques. Noisy habits of the 
 Egyptians. Mosque of Mohammed AH. The pyramids of Ghizeh. 
 Arab boatmen. Bedouins. Purpose of the pyramids. Pyramids of 
 Sakkara. M. Mariette and his excavations. Temple and tomb of. 
 Api?. The site of Memphis. Mounds of sun-dried brick. Vast 
 grove of palms. Saltpetre manufactured from the bricks. 
 
 CAIRO, EGYPT, January 29tli, 1853. 
 MY last letter closed with my arrival at Cairo. 
 As I left my hotel that morning, forcing my way 
 with some violence through the crowd of Mos 
 lems offering their donkeys, I found myself walk 
 ing in crooked, unpaved streets, on the ancient 
 mould of the Nile, trodden by human feet since 
 Cairo was first founded, and still almost as soft 
 and elastic as a Turkey carpet. About me were 
 flat-roofed houses, with projecting, covered bal 
 conies, a palm-tree here and there rising over 
 them, or a minaret with its encircling balconies. 
 It seemed as if I had been introduced at once 
 into a dirty masquerade. I was among swarthy- 
 bearded men, with glittering white teeth, passing 
 to and fro on foot or on asses men in turbans 
 or close caps of every color, their feet in red or 
 
70 THE STREETS. 
 
 yellow slippers, or bare ; their legs in loose blue 01 
 white bags, or concealed by a robe of striped silk, 
 reaching to their feet, or by a long white shirt, 
 over which was worn a black, brown, or green 
 robe, with wide, flowing sleeves. Sometimes a 
 Greek passed in his white petticoat, sometimes a 
 priest of the Greek church, or an Armenian, ec 
 clesiastic in his ample black robe. Barefooted 
 women in loose blue cotton gowns came in the 
 crowd, bearing water-jars on their heads, or bun 
 dles of green clover freshly cut, and holding 
 with one hand their coarse blue mantles closely 
 over the lower part of the face. These were of 
 the laboring class ; but here and there was seen 
 one of their more opulent sisters, moving along 
 the street, in wide slippers, with a waddling gait 
 a pile of glistening silks or of white muslin, with 
 a pair of eyes visible at the top, and on each side 
 the tips of her fingers, where they held the mantle 
 drawn closely over her forehead. Sometimes the 
 lady was mounted astride on a donkey, with a 
 domestic to hold her in her seat, and keep her 
 from being jolted ; her mantle, gathering the 
 wind as she went, made her look like an enor 
 mous sack, placed upright on the saddle. 
 
BAZARS. 71 
 
 Water-carriers, with their legs bare from the 
 middle of the thigh downward, were driving asses 
 laden with the water of the Nile in goat-skins. 
 Sometimes a large procession of asses, carrying 
 panniers filled with fresh masses of plaster of 
 Paris, would block the way. At other times, in 
 the narrower passages, we had to wait till half a 
 score of camels had gone by, bearing on each 
 side a block of stone just cut from the quarries, 
 or an enormous beam of wood. Now and then 
 the street was occupied with a train of carts 
 almost the only vehicle seen with wheels in Cairo. 
 The wheels were singularly loose on the axles, 
 and as they staggered along and wavered from 
 side to side, threatened to knock down the un 
 wary passenger. We passed through the bazars 
 as the streets occupied by the traders are 
 called over-canopied for the most part by mats 
 stretched across from the uppermost stories, or 
 by roofs of thin boards with openings for ventila 
 tion. Here sat the merchants of Cairo, cross- 
 legged, in the dark little recesses w r hich serve 
 them as shops, some smoking, some chaffering 
 volubly with their customers, some occupied in 
 marking the articles they sold, a few lying asleep 
 
72 THE BARBERS. 
 
 on their mats. In the open squares the barbers 
 had brought out their mats and begun their 
 work. Taking the head of a Mussulman between 
 his knees and pulling off the turban, the squat 
 ting operator would ply his razor with surprising 
 quickness of motion, and in a few minutes turn 
 out the skull of his patient as smooth as a turnip. 
 Here women were sitting in the dust, bare-legged, 
 with bosoms more than half exposed under their 
 loose garments, but with their faces concealed 
 under a dirty rag, selling oranges and dates from 
 broad, shallow baskets. Here squalid men, the 
 filthiest of their race, were sitting with their 
 backs against the walls, smoking, or sunning 
 themselves, and in the angles of the buildings 
 were young puppies huddling together where 
 they were littered, while the prick-eared mother 
 had left them to prowl for food or bark at the 
 Frank stranger. Our arrival in one of these 
 squares was sometimes the signal for a general 
 chorus from all the dogs of the neighborhood. 
 
 As we went on, we peeped into the doors and 
 windows of several of the mosques, of a venera 
 ble appearance without, but ill-built, ruinous, and 
 ill-patched within, the carved wooden portions 
 
NOISY POPULATION. 73 
 
 going to decay and dropping to the floor. In 
 them squatted groups of the faithful on their 
 mats, with rosaries in their hands, chanting their 
 morning prayers. Near the mosques we often 
 heard a clamorous chorus of shrill voices ; it was 
 from the schools, where the boys were commit 
 ting their lessons to memory, by repeating them 
 aloud. 
 
 From all the multitude engaged in these em 
 ployments arose a perpetual noise, not of the 
 clanking and humming of machinery, and the 
 rattling of carriages, and the striking of iron 
 hoofs on the pavement, as in our cities ; but of 
 human voices, greeting, arguing, jesting, laugh 
 ing, shouting, scolding, cursing, praying, and beg 
 ging, mingled with the bleating of camels, the 
 braying of asses, and the barking of innumera 
 ble dogs. It is a mistake to speak of the Ori 
 ental as grave, solemn, and quiet ; the Egyptian, 
 at least, is the liveliest and noisiest of slaves. 
 Everything in this country is done with noise. 
 Two rowers never pull their oars, even for five 
 minutes, without alternate chants and responses ; 
 not a stone is moved to its place in a building 
 without the same accompaniment ; the quarries 
 
 7 
 
74 A VIEW OF THE DELTA. 
 
 east of Cairo resound with a shrill and ceaseless 
 clamor of 'tongues. The most trivial affairs of 
 life are the subject of discussions that seem to 
 have no end. Every new object or new incident 
 is a signal for a volley of words from old and 
 young. The camel-driver sings all day to the 
 animals he leads ; and when he watches them by 
 night in the desert, keeps himself awake by the 
 exercise of his voice. 
 
 I was much struck with this chorus of sounds, 
 when the other day I visited the citadel, and from 
 the site of the magnificent mosque of Mohammed 
 Ali, beheld the city below me with its swarming 
 streets, and the fields and gardens of vivid green 
 surrounding it, intersected with thronged roads. 
 All around this scene of life and noise lay the 
 silence and desolation of the desert the vast 
 Lybian desert to the west, with the everlasting 
 pyramids at its edge, around which millions of 
 human beings of the elder world sleep in their 
 pits and caves ; and to the east, a desert as 
 broad and still, on the skirts of which stand the 
 tombs of the later sovereigns of Egypt among 
 the graves of their subjects. 
 
 The mosque of which I have spoken is one of 
 
MOSQUE OF MOHAMMED ALT. 75 
 
 the very finest works of Oriental architecture ; 
 but it is built under the superintendence of Euro 
 pean architects, though with Egyptian materials, 
 by the munificence of an Egyptian sovereign. 
 A vast colonnade of Egyptian alabaster, in the 
 Moorish style, surrounds the building and its 
 court. You are struck at first with the lightness 
 and airiness of its appearance, but you are some 
 what disappointed when you perceive that the 
 columns of this beautiful mosque are held in 
 their place by a horizontal bar of iron, passing 
 from capital to capital, and that each capital has 
 also a transverse iron bar connecting it with the 
 wall opposite. This expedient is a common one 
 in Egyptian architecture, but the older mosques 
 have bars of wood. No such disappointment 
 awaits you when you enter the mosque itself. 
 It is spacious and lofty, and the simplicity of its 
 design gives to its amplitude and height their 
 full effect. Four lofty half-domes rich with gild 
 ings, and resting on pilasters of polished alabas 
 ter, carry up the eye to a loftier and ampler 
 dome in the midst, where rays of gold stream 
 from a central point, and golden stars glitter on a 
 blue ground. You have above you what reminds 
 
76 TOMB OF MOHAMMED ALL 
 
 you of the glory and breadth of the firma 
 ment in a starlight night. The light from with 
 out comes through windows the glass of which 
 is stained with the richest colors. In one of the 
 corners is the tomb of Mohammed Ali, sepa 
 rated from the rest of the church by an en 
 closure, within which a group of Moslems were 
 seen in prayer. The tomb itself was covered 
 with a pile of Cashmere shawls. The mosque is 
 not yet quite finished, and artisans are still at 
 work within it. 
 
 It is almost the first business of travellers in 
 Egypt to visit the pyramids of Ghizeh, and we 
 made it ours ; but do not suppose that I am 
 going to weary you with a description of them. 
 "We set out on one of the glorious winter-days of 
 Egypt, with a one-eyed dragoman at the head of 
 our little train, brandishing a long stick, and 
 attired in a costume which, though considerably 
 the worse for wear, was very showy at a little 
 distance. Three brown Arab boys in blue shirts, 
 and close-fitting dirty white caps, came trotting 
 and screaming after us to urge on the donkeys 
 we rode. For two or three miles we kept along 
 the Nile, among trees and gardens, and then 
 
BEDOUIN ARABS. 77 
 
 crossed to the west bank in a boat manned by 
 three men, one of whom, a fine-looking Arab, in 
 a single garment of coarse white linen, handled 
 the sail, and his two companions the oars. As 
 they rowed, one sang, " God is great ;" to which 
 the other responded, " God give me strength." 
 Arriving on the other side, we rode through a 
 village, where the dogs barked at us fiercely 
 from the tops of the mud-cottages, and the dirty 
 inhabitants, squatting by the way, clamored for 
 bakhshish, as we appeared, the children running 
 after us. We passed through a palm-grove 
 where turtle-doves were flying about, and the 
 hoopoe, a bird of beautifully-speckled plumage, 
 descended in search of its food close to our path. 
 Then we struck out upon the fields where the 
 peasant women and children were watching their 
 camels and buffaloes, tethered and grazing 
 among the clover and crisp helva-grass. We 
 came at length to where an ancient canal, now a 
 broad hollow with a little water in it, wound 
 along not far from the western edge of the fertile 
 country. A score of Arabs, Bedouins from a 
 neighboring village, came about us, prepared to 
 carry us over on their shoulders. I could not 
 
 7* 
 
78 PYRAMIDS OF GHIZEH. 
 
 but admire the fine figures of these men, with 
 their muscular, shapely limbs, uniting strength 
 with agility, and their striking countenances. 
 A sculptor could not find a better model, as it 
 seemed to me, for the perfection of the human 
 form. Throwing off their upper garments, and 
 fastening their lower ones considerably above 
 the waist, two of these strapping fellows lifted 
 me up by the legs, while I supported myself by 
 the hands on their shoulders, and in this way 
 waded with me through the mud and water. The 
 others were carried over in the same manner, as 
 well as a French gentleman and lady who had 
 come up with us just as we were about to cross. 
 
 We were soon on the bare sands, ascending 
 gradually to the range of rocks skirting the 
 desert, on the brow of which the pyramids are 
 placed. Of course we climbed to the top of the 
 great pyramid. " If you no go up, what for you 
 come to pyramid ?" asked one of the Arabs, who 
 spoke a little English, and the question seeming 
 to me a very pertinent one. From the summit 
 of this vast pile of hewn stones, which would 
 cover all Washington Square with its base, we 
 looked over the green Delta, stretching north, 
 
PURPOSE OF THE PYRAMIDS. 
 
 with dark groves spotting it like broad shadows 
 of clouds. To the west of us was the Lybian des 
 ert, a waste of rocky hill-tops and sandy hollows ; 
 to the north rose the summits of pyramid after 
 pyramid, and eastward lay Cairo, below the pin 
 nacles of the mosque of Mohammed Ali, beyond 
 which gleamed the white edge of another desert. 
 
 As I stood amidst the pyramids, where, all 
 around, the skirts of the desert are one vast cem 
 etery, full of tombs and mummy-pits, and re 
 mains of pyramids of smaller size, I could not 
 but wonder that there should ever have arisen 
 any doubt as to the design of these immense 
 structures. They were meant as monuments of 
 the dead, and, in my opinion, nothing more. 
 They are the same in shape as some of the 
 smaller monuments, and no more exceed them 
 in size than the kings to whose memory they 
 were erected, excelled in power and riches the 
 most distinguished of their subjects. 
 
 A day or two afterward we visited the pyra 
 mids of Sakkara, lying to the north of those of 
 Ghizeh. "We had a letter to M. Mariette, who is 
 here, employed by the French government in 
 making excavations among the tombs and other 
 
80 PYRAMIDS OF SAKKARA. 
 
 remains of the ancient cemeteiy of Memphis. 
 He received us very politely, and ordered the 
 tomb of Apis to be lighted up for us. We de 
 scended into the rock by an inclined passage 
 leading from a portal graven with numerous 
 hieroglyphics. A gallery of about four hundred 
 feet in length lay before us, regularly arched 
 overhead, with chambers, at intervals on each 
 side, the floor of which was about five feet below 
 that of the gallery. Each of these chambers 
 contained its sarcophagus of black or gray gran 
 ite, exquisitely polished, about twelve feet in 
 length, ten in height, and seven in width. They 
 were covered with hieroglyphic characters. On 
 each lay a massive lid of the same material, weigh 
 ing tons, which, centuries since, had been shoved 
 a little aside by iron levers, the marks of which 
 are yet visible, giving us an opportunity of look 
 ing into the interior. It was empty. " This," 
 said M. Mariette, " was done by the Persians, by 
 order of their king, Cambyses, to show his con 
 tempt for the worship of the Egyptians." 
 
 One of the sarcophagi was found which had 
 escaped the general desecration. M. Mariette 
 had ordered it to be opened, and its contents 
 

THE TEMPLE OF SERAPIS. 81 
 
 were lying on the lid when I saw it. They were 
 the bones of the sacred bull of the ancient Egj-p- 
 tians, the Apis, for w T hich this tomb was destined. 
 Every one of these enormous chests of stone had 
 formerly contained similar remains, which, thou 
 sands of years since, had been dragged forth 
 and scattered, and trampled upon, by a foreign 
 soldiery from the north. 
 
 We slept that night in a chamber of M. Mari- 
 ette's house, a building which he said had cost 
 him eleven francs. Its walls were made of the 
 unburnt brick, part of the structures of earlier 
 ages, which his workmen had dug from the 
 sands, and it was roofed over with logs of the 
 palm-tree. In the morning we looked at the ex 
 cavations made by M. Mariette in front of the 
 tomb of Apis, revealing the remains of an exten 
 sive temple of white marble, which he has iden 
 tified as the Egyptian temple of Serapis. Here 
 are pedestals of columns, the lower part of walls, 
 and other remains of a sumptuous edifice long 
 covered up in sand. Strabo speaks of the sand 
 as drifting into the courts of this temple in his 
 time. " It must have been the same from the 
 first," said M. Mariette ; " the temple itself rests 
 on a base of sand." 
 
82 CHARACTER OF THE FELLAHS. 
 
 The excavations had been suspended for a day 
 or two when I visited Sakkara, but they were 
 soon to be resumed. Three or four hundred 
 workmen are generally employed ; and objects 
 of ancient workmanship are frequently found, of 
 an interesting character, which are immediately 
 packed up and sent to the museums of Paris. 
 " These men," said M. Marietta, " whom I have 
 with me, are the fellahs, the peasantry of the 
 neighborhood, not the Bedouins, for it is not 
 easy to make the Bedouin engage in any regular 
 employment. These fellahs work hard, receive 
 small wages, live on little, and are faithful, good- 
 tempered, and cheerful. They are the same 
 patient race which built the pyramids." 
 
 Not far from the tomb of Apis is a village in 
 habited by Bedouins. "I am obliged," said 
 M. Mariette, " to keep watch against the men of 
 that tribe. These fellahs, whom you heard sing 
 ing all last night to keep themselves awake, are 
 my watchmen. About eighteen months since the 
 Bedouins attacked the place in the night, armed 
 with their matchlocks, a clumsy weapon, with 
 which they did not succeed in doing any harm. 
 We disarmed them, took them prisoners, and 
 
CHARACTER OF THE BEDOUINS. 88 
 
 brought them before the authorities ; but they 
 were released on the ground that I had no right 
 to be here, and that they committed no crime in 
 attempting to drive me off. Since that time an 
 understanding has been had with the Egyptian 
 government, and this enterprise is now under its 
 protection." 
 
 " These Bedouins," pursued M. Mariette, " as 
 well as those fine-looking fellows whom you saw 
 at Ghizeh, were settled in these villages by 
 Mehemet Ali. It was his policy to allure them 
 to settle in regular communities, and to quit 
 their roving life. He assigned them these lands 
 which they now cultivate, and exempted them 
 from many of the burdens borne by the fellahs, 
 but which a Bedouin would not endure. For 
 merly these men would commit robberies and 
 assassinations, and then hide themselves in the 
 desert, where it was vain to pursue them. Now, 
 if any of them are guilty of crimes, the govern 
 ment has them in its power. They intermarry 
 with the fellahs, and their character is undergo 
 ing a gradual change." 
 
 We visited at Sakkara one of the repositories 
 of the mummies of the sacred bird Ibis. It was 
 
84 MUMMIES OF THE BIRD IBIS. 
 
 a long passage cut in the rock of the desert, with 
 branches in various directions, full of earthen 
 jars, about a foot and a half in length, in which 
 these mummies are contained. Every traveller, 
 as a matter of course, brings out and breaks one 
 of these jars, and we followed the general prac 
 tice. In some of them we found only a handful 
 of brown dust and two or three lumps of bitu 
 men, wrapped in folds of linen cloth, which looked 
 as if scorched by fire, and fell to pieces on being 
 touched ; in others the wrappings were tolerably 
 white, and on being unrolled showed the figure 
 of the bird tolerably perfect, with all its bones, 
 its beak, and even its feathers in tolerable preser 
 vation. The ground around the spot was strewn, 
 to a considerable distance, with fragments of 
 these jars and pieces of mummy-cloths, and 
 among them were here and there portions of hu 
 man mummies, a skull, a thigh-bone, blackened 
 with bitumen, or a torn part of the cloth in which 
 the corpse had been swathed. Hollows nearly 
 filled with sand, showed where recent excava 
 tions in search of tombs and mummy-pits had 
 been made ; but the government, I hear, has pro 
 hibited all such undertakings for the future. 
 
MEMPHIS. 85 
 
 After examining a toinb in the precipice over 
 hanging the plain of the Nile, the chambers of 
 which, cut in the living rock, are graven with col 
 ored hieroglyphics, we returned to Cairo by way 
 of Memphis. Descending the height, we followed 
 a high causey, built of the fine dark mould of the 
 region, through fields green with crops, to the 
 village of Mitrahenny. It stands in the midst 
 of an extensive circle of mounds, from three to 
 thirty feet in height, which are all that remain 
 of the renowned metropolis of Egypt in the time 
 of its early splendor. These mounds appear at 
 first to be of the dark earth which forms the soil 
 of the plain, but on looking more nearly you per 
 ceive that they are heaps of unburnt brick, among 
 which a few burnt bricks are scattered. A vast 
 grove of palms, with trenches leading to their 
 roots for the purpose of irrigation, overshadows 
 them, and extends to a considerable distance on 
 every side. In the midst is a shallow pool of 
 water, over which I saw the kingfisher hovering 
 and striking his prey, and beside it the women 
 of the village were filling their water-jars. The 
 branches of the palms were rustling pleasantly 
 in the morning breeze, and birds of various kinds 
 8 
 
80 EXCAVATIONS. 
 
 were flitting about with little fear of man, for the 
 people of this country are not allowed to carry 
 arms. Among them was the beautiful hoopoe, 
 seeking its food at the roots of trees, sometimes 
 erecting its brilliant crest into a semicircle, and 
 then laying it backward in a long slender pencil, 
 so as to seem almost another bird. 
 
 Beside the little lake, the ancient reservoir 
 doubtless of the city of Memphis, stood a tent, 
 the tent of Hakakyin Bey I hope I have the 
 right orthography of his name an Armenian, 
 formerly interpreter to Mohammed Ali, who pos 
 sesses a taste for antiquarian researches. He 
 has made several excavations in this spot, uncov 
 ering a colossal statue of granite lying on its 
 face, and several smaller figures, one or two of 
 them the most pleasing samples of ancient Egyp 
 tian statuary to be seen here, and that is not say 
 ing much in their praise. They stand ranged on 
 each side of the entrance to the tent, into which 
 we were permitted to enter and take our lunch, 
 the proprietor being absent. 
 
 Such is Memphis now, the once great city to 
 which Martial attributes the building of the pyra 
 mids, those miracles of barbaric art, barbara mi- 
 
THE MOUNDS. 87 
 
 racnla, as lie calls them. Seen from its site, they 
 appear to stand around it in a semicircle, from 
 those of Dashour on the south to those of Ghizeh 
 on the north. Its builders wrought for the present 
 age in a way they little dreamed of. I could not 
 imagine at first to what cause it was owing that 
 these mounds, apparently of the same rich mould 
 which composed the soil of the plain, were wholly 
 barren of herbage, even in those parts which 
 were irrigated by the trenches conveying water 
 to the palms. On examining their surface, I 
 found it covered in many parts with a nitrous 
 effervescence, looking at a little distance like 
 hoar-frost. The soil is everywhere highly im 
 pregnated with nitre so highly as to prevent the 
 growth of plants, except where it is washed by 
 the annual overflow of the Nile. How they con 
 trive to make the palm grow in places where no 
 other vegetable will take root, I am sure I can 
 not tell. In emerging from the forest of these 
 trees, in the midst of which lie the mounds of 
 Memphis, we come to a small circle of mounds 
 almost as high, through which our road lay. It 
 was a manufactory of saltpetre, conducted by the 
 government. The earth which forms the mounds 
 
88 THE MOUNDS OF MEMPHIS. 
 
 of Memphis is brought hither in panniers slung 
 on the backs of asses, and steeped in the waters 
 of the Nile ; the water in which it is infused is 
 evaporated in broad, shallow vats, and the resi 
 due is crude saltpetre. In one sense, therefore, 
 the ancient inhabitants of Memphis may be said 
 to have built for posterity. 
 
VOYAGE UP THE NILE. 89 
 
 LETTEE VII. 
 
 Passage in a steamer up the Nile to Thebes and the lower cataract of the 
 Nile. Arrangements for the voyage. Beauty of the weather. Upper 
 Egypt, its aspect. Irrigation. Villages. Scarcity of fruit-trees. 
 Rocky hills overlooking the narrow valley of the Nile. The Tem 
 ples of Thebes and Karnac. A French excavator, M. Mourner. 
 Uncovering of old temples. Tyranny of the Egyptian authorities. 
 A Latin convent. Copts. Their church. 
 
 CAIRO, EGYPT, January 30th, 1853. 
 WHEN we were just ready to set out for Sak- 
 kara, we learned that a party was making up to 
 visit Thebes and Philse in a government steamer, 
 which was to go and return in seventeen days. 
 The price for each passenger was two thousand 
 eight hundred piastres, or about one hundred and 
 fifty dollars of our money ; and as soon as twelve 
 passengers could be found, the steamer immedi 
 ately was to proceed up the Nile. We had already 
 concluded a bargain with a dragoman, as the 
 men who engage in these undertakings are called, 
 to convey us over the smaller Arabian desert to 
 Jerusalem, and thence to one of the seaports of 
 Syria. He was to provide us with the means of 
 seeing all the most interesting places and objects 
 
 on the journey, which was to begin on the 13th 
 
 8* 
 
90 A NILE STEAMER. 
 
 of January. But the temptation of seeing Uppei 
 Egypt, with its magnificent monuments of a re 
 mote antiquity, in less than three weeks, was too 
 strong to be resisted. We therefore added our 
 names to those of the passengers already en 
 gaged. The requisite number was soon com 
 pleted. We found means to induce our drago 
 man to wait for our return, and on the very day 
 when we should have started with him for Jeru 
 salem, we left Cairo in the steamer for Essuan, 
 just below the first cataract of the Nile, and 
 within a short distance of the island of Philae. 
 
 Hitherto the voyage up the Nile has generally 
 been performed in boats driven by sails. These 
 are well fitted up for the purpose with comforta 
 ble cabins, but with calms or contrary winds the 
 voyage becomes extremely tedious, and its dura 
 tion is always uncertain. We passed these boats 
 frequently on the river, overtaking or meeting 
 them, and sometimes found them moored to the 
 shore where w r e stopped. There were four or 
 five on the Nile bearing the American flag, and 
 as in our party of fifteen there were nine Ameri 
 cans to four Englishmen and one Frenchman, we 
 ran up, by common consent, the American flag 
 
AN ARAB CREW. 91 
 
 also. Our party was probably the first which had 
 made the voyage to Upper Egypt with a satis 
 factory degree of comfort. The steamer had just 
 been fitted up expressly for these voyages, with 
 a separate chamber for each passenger, which 
 had never been the case in any of the Nile steam 
 ers before ; the furniture was new and perfectly 
 clean; our larder was abundantly stored, though 
 the cookery was not the most skilful ; and the 
 waiters, Greeks and Smyrniotes, were attentive 
 and obliging. We had an ill-looking Bulgarian 
 for a captain, who seemed, however, to under 
 stand his duty pretty well ; a Scotch Highlander 
 for an engineer, and a crew of good-natured 
 Arabs, of whom it generally took four to manage 
 the helm. 
 
 We left Cairo on a beautiful evening, performed 
 our voyage to the lower cataract of the Nile in 
 sixteen instead of seventeen days for the steam 
 er outstripped the estimates which had been 
 made of her passage from place to place, and 
 here we are again at Cairo. We could not have 
 wished for finer weather, with the exception of 
 one sultry day, in which, however, the steamer 
 kept on her passage. The temperature was that 
 
92 BEAUTY OF THE WEATHER. 
 
 of an English summer ; the sky always clear, the 
 evenings like those of Italy at the finest season, 
 a blaze of orange-colored light brightening 
 every object and illuminating every recess ; the 
 nights refreshing and without mosquitoes, which 
 torment us so much at Cairo ; and the mornings 
 cool sometimes, I confess, quite unpleasantly so 
 for those who had, as was my case, their cabins 
 on deck. "We took our meals on deck, under an 
 awning, and before breakfast was ready the tem 
 perature had become quite genial, so quickly did 
 the rays of the sun warm that transparent atmos 
 phere. The temper of our party was as pleasant 
 and genial as the weather ; I doubt whether mere 
 chance ever threw together a better-natured and 
 more obliging set of men. 
 
 Upper Egypt is easily described. It is a nar 
 row belt of verdure, stretching from the Delta 
 far south into the desert. A river of turbid 
 water rushes swiftly through its whole length, on 
 the sand-banks of which stalk flocks of cormo 
 rants and pelicans, with here and there a croco 
 dile basking in the sun a timid monster which 
 slides into the water at the first notice he has of 
 the approach of man. On each shore, within a 
 

VILLAGES. 
 
 short distance of each other, wheels moved by 
 buffaloes and donkeys, or buckets suspended to 
 a pole which turns on a pivot, and lifted by peas 
 ants naked to the waist, shaded from the sun by 
 a screen of palm-leaves, distribute over the fields, 
 at all seasons except that of the annual flood, 
 the waters to which the country owes its three 
 crops a year. From time to time, a town or vil 
 lage, built of unburnt bricks, formed from the 
 mould of the fields, mixed with chopped straw, 
 rises on the banks of the river, resounding with 
 the shrill cries of children. The poorer and la 
 zier portion of the population are seen basking 
 and smoking by the walls of the dwellings, and 
 overhead are aviaries full of flocks of pigeons, 
 for the convenience of which, an additional story 
 is built on many of the housetops. The villages 
 are always near, and sometimes within, a lofty 
 grove of date-palms, which supplies the inhabit 
 ants with food, and the tending of which, in 
 conducting the water to their roots, forms part 
 of their occupation. Of other trees there are 
 few ; here and there, perhaps, a broad sycamore, 
 or a thick-leaved cassia, or a tamarind ; but in 
 Upper Egypt trees seem never to be planted for 
 
94 THE NEIGHBORING DESERT. 
 
 shade ; even fruit-trees, with the exception of 
 the palm, are rare, and a little distance south of 
 Cairo, the country most congenial to their growth, 
 the orange-gardens disappear, and the banana is 
 never seen. 
 
 On each side a range of rocky hills without a 
 shrub or plant, sometimes approaching close to 
 the river, and sometimes retreating to form a 
 plain of considerable extent on its border, over 
 looks this fertile tract. At their base is gener 
 ally a hard, gravelly level, or a sheet of loose 
 sand, a little elevated above the meadows, and 
 always bare of herbage, but at times they flank 
 the river, with a long wall of sandstone or gran 
 ite. Old sepulchres yawn in their sides, and 
 kites and eagles sail above them. One morning 
 on my excursion to Upper Egypt, I crossed the 
 gravelly waste near Beni Hassan, and climbed 
 what seemed to be the highest peak in the range 
 to the east of the river. All before me, as far as 
 the sight could extend to the eastward, the re 
 gion was broken into rough pinnacles of rock, 
 with narrow valleys and passes filled with loose 
 sand. 
 
 I will not tire you with describing what has 
 
KARNAC. 95 
 
 been so often described the ancient tombs and 
 temples of Upper Egypt. The grandest of them 
 all are the remains of Thebes, consisting of the 
 temples at Karnac and Luxor, and the tombs and 
 colossal statues on the other side of the river. 
 As I sat among the forest of gigantic columns in 
 the great court of the temple at Karnac, it ap 
 peared to me that after such a sight no building- 
 reared by human hands could affect me with a 
 sense of sublimity. Seen through the vista of 
 columns to the east was a small grove of palms 
 close to the ruins, and another to the west ; their 
 tall and massive trunks looked slender and low, 
 compared to the enormous shafts of stone around 
 me. I looked up to where the clouds, floating 
 slowly over, seemed almost to touch them with 
 their skirts, and perceived that two or three of 
 them, shaken perhaps by an earthquake from 
 their upright position, stood leaning against their 
 fellows, still bearing upon their capitals portions 
 of the enormous architrave which belonged to 
 them. Thus they have stood, and thus they 
 doubtless will stand for ages ; scarce anything, 
 but another earthquake, can bring them to the 
 ground. The spoilers of this vast temple, extend- 
 
96 M. MOUNIER. 
 
 ing over miles of surface, the annihilators of its 
 rows of sphinxes, and the destroyers of its mag 
 nificent colonnades, seem to have confined their 
 work of mischief to those parts of it less mas 
 sively built, and to have shrunk from attempting 
 to overthrow the columns of the great court. 
 
 At Thebes we found M. Mounier, a French 
 artist, who is employed by the Pacha to clear 
 away the rubbish from the temples of Upper 
 Egypt. I was walking along the shore, near to 
 his boat, with two gentlemen of our party, when 
 he perceived us from the cabin, and coming out 
 upon the deck, politely invited us to enter. Of 
 course we did not refuse. Many of the finest of 
 the ancient temples of Egypt, that for example 
 at Esneh, are half buried in heaps of earth, accu 
 mulated from age to age by the mud cottages 
 built within them by successive generations of 
 the peasantry. The larger portion of the mag 
 nificent temple at Esneh is actually filled by 
 them to the roof, and the fellahs are now build 
 ing on the roof itself. 
 
 " My business," said M. Mounier, " is to cause 
 these people to leave the temples, and then to 
 clear them entirely of rubbish, both within and 
 
, - - 
 
 -X 
 
MADAME MOUXIER. 97 
 
 without. The temple at Edfoo and that at Den- 
 derah were partly cleared, by order of Moham 
 med Ali, a few years since, but all that was re 
 moved from the interior was heaped about the 
 walls, so that no idea could be formed of the 
 effect of their exterior." 
 
 M. Mounier had already uncovered and exca 
 vated a very fine portion of the temple of Luxor, 
 to which he conducted us. He informed us that 
 he generally had about three hundred workmen 
 employed. "I have," he continued, "the au 
 thority of the government to make requisitions 
 on each of the villages in turn for a certain num 
 ber of laborers, who are bound to w 7 ork a certain 
 number of days. Such objects of curiosity, 
 works of art, domestic utensils, etc., as I find in 
 these excavations, I send immediately to Cairo, 
 where the Pasha is forming a museum. As fast 
 as the different temples are completely uncovered, 
 I make drawings of them, which are hereafter to 
 be engraved and published in a volume." 
 
 In the cabin of M. Mounier's boat we found 
 
 Madame Mounier, an elegant French lady, who 
 
 assists her husband by taking photographic 
 
 views of the temples, and copying them on draw- 
 
 9 
 
98 GOVERNMENT OPPRESSION. 
 
 ing paper, a pursuit by which she said she be 
 guiled the years of exile from her native country. 
 
 I inquired of M. Mounier if the workmen em 
 ployed by him on the ruins were paid. He re 
 plied that they were not. " I have made up my 
 mind, however," he added, " to advise the Pasha 
 to give them wages. The expense would not be 
 great, as the wages of a laborer are but thirty 
 paras a clay, and they would work much more 
 cheerfully and diligently if they were paid." 
 
 Thirty paras, you must understand, are about 
 four cents of our money. I shall be glad to 
 learn hereafter that M. Mounier has succeeded 
 in persuading the Egyptian government to treat 
 its subjects a little less like slaves. Its manner 
 of proceeding is extremely summary. As I have 
 mentioned, the steamer in which we w r ent up the 
 Nile belonged to the government. A little be 
 fore arriving at Siout, our captain had occasion 
 for a pilot. He pounced upon a boat and took 
 out three persons, whom he compelled to serve in 
 that capacity till he arrived at Siout, where he 
 procured from the local authorities an order 
 compelling the most expert of them to act as 
 pilot so long as he was wanted. At Ghizeh, 
 
A COPTIC COMMUNITY. 99 
 
 some miles further south, we stopped to take in 
 coal. Two men in red slippers, with long staves, 
 came driving on, like cattle, the barefooted peas 
 ants who were to weigh the coal lying in woollen 
 sacks on the shore, and carry it on their shoul 
 ders to our steamer. Our captain himself per 
 formed the functions of his office under fear of 
 the bastinado. It happened that Abbas Pasha, 
 the Viceroy of Egypt, was himself on a voyage 
 up the Nile in a steamer, for the purpose of col 
 lecting tribute at the time of an excursion to Es- 
 suan. On his way up the river, he found a gov 
 ernment steamer aground, an accident which 
 often happens on the Nile, and which had hap 
 pened two or three times to our own steamer. 
 The Pasha ordered the captain to be taken out 
 of his boat and soundly bastinadoed. 
 
 One of the most interesting incidents of our 
 voyage was a visit we paid to the Coptic commu 
 nity of Negadeh, on the west bank of the Nile, 
 about four hundred miles above Cairo. We 
 landed at their little town before breakfast, and 
 proceeded to the Latin convent, the superior of 
 which, in a red turban and Arab dress, received 
 us with great civility. He was a Neapolitan, 
 
100 A COPTIC SCHOOL. 
 
 who had resided in the country seventeen years. 
 He showed us the church of his convent, one of 
 those crazy edifices, with rude Moorish columns, 
 which are so common in Egypt, and the several 
 parts of which seem with difficulty to hang to 
 gether. He then passed us over to several re 
 spectable looking men in white turbans and 
 black gowns, who, we understood, were Coptic 
 priests. When they were told that we were 
 Christians, from the distant land of America, who 
 had called to pay them our respects, they ex 
 pressed their satisfaction at this mark of regard, 
 and seemed desirous to pay us every possible 
 attention. They took us to their place of wor 
 ship, through an open court, used as a school, in 
 which the boys, squatting on the dusty pave 
 ment, were learning to read and write from a les 
 son written with ink in Coptic and Arabic, on a 
 leaden tablet. The Copts are the clerks and 
 scribes of Egypt. The church was of the same 
 class of edifices with the Latin one. As we en 
 tered, the morning service was near its close, and 
 the priest, in reciting its last words, took the 
 hands of several of the worshippers between his 
 own. Both in this and the Latin church were 
 
THE COPTIC RACE. 101 
 
 screens of lattice-work, behind which the female 
 worshippers concealed themselves; for the cus 
 tom of seclusion among the women is national, and 
 is almost as strong among the Copts as among 
 the Mussulmans. From behind these lattices we 
 could observe female figures silently departing. 
 The priests showed us their books in the Coptic 
 language, and attended us to our steamer. I be 
 lieve the boys had been let out of the schools on 
 our account, for of a sudden the beach was 
 thronged with a great, but most quiet and well- 
 behaved multitude, as if the whole male popula 
 tion of the place, young and old, had been sud 
 denly assembled to do us honor. At our express 
 desire, three of the priests were allowed to come 
 onboard and look at the steamer, after which they 
 took their leave ; we moved from the shore, and 
 left the crowd gazing upon us in silence. Dur 
 ing the whole of our visit, not a single person of 
 our party was asked for money : it was the only 
 instance of this sort of reserve which we met 
 with in all Egypt. 
 
 We are now on the point of crossing what they 
 call here the Little Arabian Desert, on our way 
 to Palestine. 
 
 9* 
 
102 JOURNEY ACROSS THE DESERT. 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 Journey from Cairo to Jerusalem across the Little Desert. Gardens en 
 closed by the prickly pear. Olive-trees. Sycamore of the Virgin. 
 The Obelisk of Heliopolis. Village of Khankia. Lake of the Pil 
 grims. Brief twilight. Journey on camels. Hoopoes. Entrance 
 on the Desert. Our dragoman. The father of couriers. Furniture 
 of our caravan. Ground strewn with fragments of pottery. An Arab 
 burial-ground. Village of Belbays. 
 
 JERUSALEM, PALESTINE, Feb. 22d, 1853. 
 OUE arrangements being completed for the 
 journey from Cairo to Jerusalem, by way of what 
 is here called the Little Desert or the Shorter 
 Desert, our dragoman sent forward his camels 
 with the baggage in the morning, and in the 
 afternoon we set out on donkeys. On leaving 
 the town, we passed among gardens fenced by 
 rows of the prickly pear, which here grows to an 
 enormous size. You know its peculiar mode of 
 growth one broad oval leaf, bristling with 
 spines, proceeding from another ; but as the plant 
 becomes old the lower leaves take a rounded 
 form, run into each other, and form large crooked 
 trunks of a dark-brown color. They make a hedge 
 which neither man nor beast can penetrate. Be 
 yond the gardens we entered a country of green 
 
OLIVE-TREES IN EGYPT. 103 
 
 fields, where the road was planted on each side 
 with the sycamore, or Egyptian fig, the acacia, 
 and the tamarisk, all in full foliage. Sometimes 
 our way led us among the lofty stems of a palm- 
 grove, with its numerous trenches, dry at that 
 season, for conducting water to the roots of the 
 trees. The road was full of people men leading 
 loaded camels, women with water-jars on their 
 heads, or fagots of dry branches, and people of 
 both sexes on donkeys. One of these, kicking 
 his donkey's sides to make him keep pace with us, 
 would occasionally join our party and hold a con 
 versation with our dragoman and his companions. 
 It was only on this road that I saw the olive- 
 tree growing in Egypt. On a large estate be 
 longing to some distinguished Egyptian, who 
 wears the title of Pasha, and whose name I beg 
 his pardon for having forgotten, the culture of 
 the olive has been introduced or perhaps revived. 
 I have never seen finer orchards of the tree than 
 those which, at the distance of twelve or fifteen 
 miles from Cairo, shaded the soil to a great ex 
 tent, on both sides of the way ; they were young, 
 but not too young for an abundant fruitage, and 
 were growing luxuriantly. It was evident that 
 
104 SYCAMORE OF THE VIRGIN. 
 
 they were well watered, for in two or three places, 
 where irrigation had apparently been neglected, 
 I saw some plantations of the olive which had 
 not a very thriving appearance. 
 
 Our conductor turned aside from the main 
 road, and led us to a garden on the same estate, 
 full of orange, citron, and pomegranate trees, with 
 a few roses and other flowering plants. " In this 
 garden," said he, "is the sycamore tree under 
 which the Yirgin rested with her child, in her 
 flight to Egypt. It is much visited by pilgrims, 
 and a jar of sweet water is kept standing by it 
 for their sake." We were admitted to the garden 
 by the Arabs who tended it, and saw the tree, a 
 fine sample of the old sycamores of the country, 
 with an enormous leaning stem, and a scanty 
 circumference of boughs, looking as if it had sur 
 vived several centuries. By its side was a large 
 earthen jar, with water for the pilgrims. It is 
 one of the principal works of Mussulman piety 
 and charity to supply the traveller with water. 
 Jars of water are kept in little niches at the tombs 
 of the Santons, and charitable people when they 
 die, instead of endowing an hospital, leave a leg 
 acy to set up a fountain. 
 
OBELISK OF HELIOPOLIS. 105 
 
 In another garden we stopped to see the obe 
 lisk of Heliopolis, a beautiful shaft of polished 
 red granite, standing upright where it has stood 
 for thousands of years, while the temples by 
 which it was surrounded have long ago disap 
 peared. Only a few fragments of their cornices 
 and columns remain to attest that they once ex 
 isted. 
 
 Toward sunset we overtook our camels, and 
 pitched our tent just beyond the village of 
 Khankia, among some scattered palms. The 
 spot was full of wells, and the work of drawing 
 water for the thirsty fields was carried on with 
 great activity; the sdkkia or wheel, turned by 
 buffaloes, was creaking, and the shadoof, or pole 
 and bucket, was going up and down. Near us 
 was an old mosque, apparently just ready to fall 
 into ruins, as is the case with all the mosques in 
 Egypt. A few curious villagers gathered around 
 us to see our people set up their tents, and our 
 cook make his preparations for dinner. We 
 strolled to a little lake near the village, named 
 Birlcet el Hoj, or Lake of the Pilgrims. It is on 
 the way from Cairo to Mecca, and is probably so 
 called because the pilgrims here lay in their pro- 
 
106 AN EGYPTIAN SUNSET. 
 
 vision of water before crossing the desert. Yfe 
 found it a shallow sheet of water, with a gravelly 
 shore, where camels w r ere drinking, and women 
 washing their feet and filling their water-jars. 
 The day had been beautiful a genial summer 
 temperature, the sunshine tempered by clouds 
 and the sun now went down in a glow of orange- 
 colored light. A short twilight succeeded the 
 twilight is always short in Egypt the women 
 hastened away from the lake, the sakltia ceased 
 to creak, the shadoof was still, and darkness was 
 upon us before we returned to our tent. 
 
 Next morning we sent back our donkeys to 
 Cairo, and prepared for a journey on the backs 
 of camels. The villagers were again on the 
 ground to see us strike our tents, and several 
 hoopoes came down from the palms, and ran 
 about gleaning the scattered grains left where 
 the camels had been fed. This beautiful bird, 
 unfortunately for itself, is a game-bird, and our 
 dragoman shot two of them. The camels were 
 kneeling on the ground, the more impatient of 
 them having their fore-legs tied under them, to 
 prevent their rising, and were uttering a harsh, 
 angry bleat, as the loads were put on their backs. 
 
OUR CARAVAN. 107 
 
 i 
 
 At length we were ready ; I placed myself on the 
 back of the camel destined for me, and was 
 nearly thrown over his back, and then over his 
 head, as he lifted me by three different jerks to 
 the height of nine feet in the air. We left the 
 village, passing by the Lake of the Pilgrims, and 
 entered the desert, which here was a vast plain 
 of hard ground, strewn with pebbles. 
 
 Our caravan consisted of thirteen camels, 
 tethered to each other, and walking in a row. 
 By the side of one of them trotted a young don 
 key, and on the back of another, among some 
 baggage, sat a monkey from Nubia, not yet 
 quite tamed, and making a fearful grimace every 
 time he was approached. Four Arabs from El 
 Areesh, a little town in the desert, on the sea 
 shore, walked with the camels; they were the 
 owners of the animals, and one of them guided 
 the first of the troop by a halter. 
 
 At our head, armed with a long sabre and 
 carrying a rifle, rode Emanuel Balthas, our 
 dragoman, an Athenian by birth, speaking the 
 ancient Greek as well as the Eomaic, fluent in 
 Italian, Turkish and Arabic, intelligible in 
 French, and in a fair way to learn English, 
 
108 OUR DRAGOMAN. 
 
 whicli he was picking up very fast from those 
 with whom he travelled. If any of my country 
 men should have occasion for a dragoman in 
 Syria or Egypt, I can with a safe conscience refer 
 them to Emanuel Balthas, a little man, with the 
 manners of a nobleman, active, prompt, anxious 
 to satisfy his employers, as choleric and as gen 
 erous as a prince, a little too much given to flog 
 ging his Arabs, but always attaching them to him 
 by the liberality with which he treats them. 
 He engaged, for a Napoleon a day from each of 
 us, to provide us with conveyance, shelter, beds, 
 and food, in our journey across the desert and 
 through Syria, paying our expenses at Jerusa 
 lem, Damascus, and the other places we might 
 have occasion to visit, till we should reach Jaffa 
 or some other seaport on the Mediterranean. 
 
 The rest of our party consisted of four Ameri 
 can travellers, myself included ; John Muscat, 
 our courier, the father of couriers, as he called 
 himself, and the most honest of his tribe, a na 
 tive of the little island of Malta, fertile in men, 
 which has its representatives in every port of the 
 Mediterranean, from Gibraltar to Scanderoon; 
 Gianneco, the cousin of our dragoman, a Smyr- 
 
TRAVELLING FURNITURE. 100 
 
 niote Greek, with a brow like that of the bust of 
 Hippocrates ; and lastly, Yincenzo, our cook, a 
 Roman, whose whole soul was in his art, who 
 plucked his chickens as he sat on his camel, and 
 had no worldly ambition higher than that of 
 hearing his dinners praised. I doubt whether 
 such capital dinners as he gave us are often eaten 
 in the desert. Our camels carried two tents, one 
 for the travellers, the other for our dragoman 
 and his companions ; four camp bedsteads, with 
 mattresses, pillows, and bedclothes ; a table ; four 
 camp-stools ; mats and carpets for the floor of 
 our tent ; a water-cask ; a provision-chest, with 
 table-linen, tin plates, and knives and forks ; 
 three small furnaces, with a supply of charcoal 
 and kitchen utensils ; a hen-coop, crowded with 
 chickens, and a small crate filled with oranges. 
 Our Arabs had their blankets on their camels, 
 and passed the night with them in the open air. 
 I have mentioned the rifle and sabre carried by 
 our dragoman, but these were not his only weap 
 ons ; there was, besides, a pair of horse-pistols, 
 ready loaded, and the father of the couriers, on 
 the morning of our departure, had astonished us 
 
 by making his appearance equipped with a sword 
 10 
 
110 BIDING ON CAMEL-BACK. 
 
 of Persian manufacture, short and thick, like 
 himself, which he now wore, and was ready to 
 employ, as he assured us, against the brigands 
 with which the road to Syria was beset. With 
 such ample arrangements for our comfort and 
 security, we entered with stout hearts upon our 
 journey over the desert. 
 
 We dismounted from our camels at half -past 
 twelve, to take our lunch. Mats were spread for 
 us on the ground, and we shaded ourselves from 
 the sun by umbrellas, while we took a short re 
 past, sitting as well as we could in the oriental 
 manner, or reclining on the ground. My camel 
 was a vicious animal, bleating horribly whenever 
 he was made to kneel or to rise, and occasionally 
 offering to bite. I declined remounting him 
 again for the day, but went on foot till we halted 
 for the night. It was an easy matter to keep 
 pace with the camels ; they walk at the rate of 
 about three miles an hour, and eight hours, or 
 twenty-four miles, is the ordinary day's journey 
 of a caravan like ours. Our way was on the 
 skirt of the desert, with the palm-trees of the 
 cultivated land in sight on one hand, and the hills 
 of the desert on the other. All day, on looking 
 
THE CANAL OF ARSIS OE. Ill 
 
 back, the rocky heights immediately east of Cairo 
 were in full view, with the mosque of Mohammed 
 Ali and its tall minarets gleaming on their west 
 ern edge. 
 
 At every step we set our feet among small 
 fragments of pottery thickly strewn among the 
 gravel the only vestiges of the millions of hu 
 man beings by whom this barren waste had been 
 trodden since Egypt was first peopled. 
 
 In the course of the day we saw the glimmer 
 of water to the northwest of us. It was a part 
 of the ancient canal of Arsinoe, which reached 
 from the Nile to the Ked Sea. Toward sunset, 
 a village of dark-colored mud houses, with white 
 minarets of stone rising over them, appeared in 
 sight, surrounded by palms, and I found myself 
 in the midst of an Arab burial-ground ; for the 
 old practice of burying the dead in the desert is 
 still common throughout Egypt. They were 
 vaults of brick, underground, some of them fallen 
 in ; those which were entire were each surrounded 
 by a narrow piece of masonry, about six feet in 
 height, composed of bricks or stones laid in a 
 crumbling kind of cement, and none of them bore 
 inscriptions. Another hour's walk through loose 
 
112 BELBAYS. 
 
 sand brought me to a circle of mounds of dark 
 mould, wholly bare of herbage, among which 
 stands the little village of Belbays, on the site 
 of an ancient town. "Within this circle, under 
 some palm-trees, we set up our tents. A caravan 
 of Egyptians was already on the ground ; they 
 had unloaded their camels, spread their mats, 
 and disposing their bales of goods around 
 them, were preparing to pass the night in the 
 open air. I find it recorded in my notes that 
 this evening, in this wretched place, Yincenzo 
 gave us the very best dinner we had eaten in 
 Egypt. 
 
ARAB WOMEN. 113 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 Second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days of our journey. A visit from 
 two Arab women. Coquetry of the younger. Horsemanship of the 
 Arabs. A belt of cultivation in the Desert. Rasscl Wady. Flocks 
 of birds. Irrigation. Arabs singing. A dragoman flogs an Arab. 
 A camel runs away. A mirage. Barook. Pilgrims from Mecca. 
 A sirocco. Dead camels. A monkey digging sorrel. Violence of 
 the wind. Our tents overturned at night. Gatieh. Personal ap 
 pearance of the Arabs. Vermin. , 
 
 JERUSALEM, PALESTINE, Feb. 22d, 1853. 
 OUR tents were struck at sunrise, and we break 
 fasted in the open air, the wonder of several 
 spectators from the village, who came to see the 
 monkey and the Franks. As they approached a 
 little too near the provision chest and other goods 
 of the caravan, our dragoman drove them off 
 with a fierce shout, and a flourish of his long 
 cowskin. An old woman and a young one came 
 to gather the camels' dung, which is used here 
 for fuel, and the remains of barley and chopped 
 straw with which the camels had been fed. The 
 old woman asked alms ; her young companion 
 amused us by an exhibition of innocent coquetry. 
 On her tawny but plump right arm she wore a 
 bracelet of some cheap metal, and on her right 
 
 hand three rings of the same material. In the 
 10* 
 
114 ARAB CAVALRY. 
 
 intervals of her occupation, she covered the lower 
 part of her face, which was not an unpleasing 
 one, with her blue cotton mantle ; but was care 
 ful to keep that brown handsome arm with its 
 ornaments in full sight, resting it on her basket. 
 
 In the mean time, a muster of cavalry was 
 going on at the gate of a large enclosure opposite 
 our camping-ground. Now and then a horseman 
 would strike his spurs into the side of the ani 
 mal he rode, dash forward swiftly for a few rods t 
 stop suddenly, wheel and dash forward again as 
 swiftly, brandishing his carbine, while the horse's 
 niane and tail streamed in the air. " Those sol 
 diers," said the dragoman, " are going to El 
 Areesh ; their business is to keep the road of the 
 desert clear of robbers. Three hundred of them 
 are to be sent forward in the course of the day." 
 Several small parties of these horsemen left the 
 village before us, and when we at length mounted 
 our camels and entered the desert, we found the 
 road full of them. They soon, however, left us 
 behind. 
 
 I had a better camel to-day ; an exemplary an 
 imal in all respects save one he was not satis 
 fied to remain long in a kneeling position, and 
 
A BELT OF CULTIVATION. 115 
 
 was apt to rise before he was bid. The motion 
 of the camel, tossing its rider backward and for 
 ward, is at first extremely fatiguing ; and it is 
 customary to wear a belt, by which the mus 
 cles of the back are supported, while making 
 these journeys. Our party had all provided 
 themselves with these belts ; but as I found that 
 I could avoid the fatigue by varying my position 
 on the back of the animal, sitting sometimes 
 astride, sometimes with both legs on one side 
 and sometimes on the other, and occasionally dis 
 mounting to walk, I laid my belt aside after the 
 second day. 
 
 It was with no little delight that, toward the 
 end of a day's journey over the herbless plain, 
 we found ourselves again entering among green 
 fields. A narrow tract of cultivation stretched 
 far into the desert, a long cape of verdure putting 
 out from the Delta, and we were crossing it at a 
 place called Rassel Wady. Here were trenches 
 of transparent brackish water, rippled by the 
 wind ; marshy spots producing a luxuriant crop 
 of weeds ; cotton-fields with bolls ready to be 
 gathered, and a few trees. The reeds and trees 
 were bending with the weight of hundreds of 
 
116 BIRDS IN THE DESERT. 
 
 small birds perched upon them, keeping up a 
 chorus of twitterings ; and larger game-birds 
 were hovering about in great numbers. There 
 are two reasons why birds abound in Egypt : in 
 the first place, the people are not allowed to own 
 arms ; and secondly, the Mussulman is tender of 
 the lives of animals, never taking them wantonly. 
 Balthas could not resist the temptation of adding 
 to the stores of his larder, and getting down from 
 his camel, began a war upon the birds. He 
 shot several hoopoes and plovers, a pigeon, and 
 a beautiful black and white bird jetty black, 
 and glistening white which he called the Idn- 
 Tdnazo. 
 
 Beside our way stood a tower of stone, one of 
 a line of telegraphic stations established by 
 Mohammed Ali, between Syria and Egypt, but 
 now disused. Near it were the ruins of a village, 
 roofless walls of unburnt brick, among which our 
 road wound for awhile, and then emerging, 
 passed by orange-gardens richly loaded with 
 fruit. We were soon in the desert again, or 
 rather passing between barren ground on one 
 side, and luxuriant barley-fields on the other. 
 These fields were kept fresh by little rills of 
 
ARAB SINGING. 117 
 
 water raised by a wheel from a neighboring well, 
 one of which had overflowed its channel, and 
 softened the earth for a little way in our path. 
 One of our loaded camels was incautiously al 
 lowed to step into the moistened place ; as soon 
 as he touched it with his feet, he slipped and fell 
 heavily to the ground. The Arabs took off his 
 load, and after some floundering he was made to 
 rise. 
 
 We pitched our tents on the clean gravel, and 
 filled our cask with sweet but turbid water from 
 a canal which was said to come from the Nile. 
 Our Arabs sang, as they called it, all night, 
 making a monotonous quavering sound, both 
 guttural and nasal. They sang, I was told the 
 next morning, to keep themselves awake while 
 they watched the camels and the tents. Small 
 parties of cavalry occasionally passed us in the 
 night, on their way to El Areesh. " They keep 
 the road clear of robbers," said our courier, " and 
 are themselves the greatest robbers of all." 
 
 Next morning our road proceeded for several 
 miles along the northern border of the green 
 tract I have mentioned, which is a little lower 
 than the adjacent desert on both sides. One of 
 
118 A CAMEL RUNS AWAY. 
 
 our camels dropped a part of his load, which had 
 beed badly adjusted by the Arabs. Two of them 
 immediately ran to replace it; and Balthas, 
 jumping to the ground, flew at them with his 
 cowskin, with which he dealt them several vigor 
 ous blows. Meantime the camel shook the rest 
 of his load to the ground, and breaking into a 
 gallop, scoured away over the desert, and was 
 soon out of sight. The Arab who accompanied 
 him, a well-limbed man, and a good runner, took 
 after him, and was soon out of sight also. The 
 chests and bags which had fallen were distribu 
 ted among the other camels, and we went on, turn 
 ing away from the green fields, of which we now 
 took our last look. The day was somewhat 
 sultry ; a chain of arid hills rose to the southeast, 
 and before us, from time to time, appeared the 
 illusion so common in the desert, of lakes or 
 pools of water, with trees on their borders re 
 flected in the seeming fluid, where there was only 
 a waste of gravel and stunted shrubs. After 
 travelling for some miles, we overtook our runa 
 way camel, with his Arab, and compelled him, 
 notwithstanding his loud cries of remonstrance, 
 to take his proper load. We encamped that 
 
BAROOK. 11 
 
 night in the desert, at some distance from any 
 human habitation, but a fire which we saw in the 
 evening, at the distance of a mile or two, showed 
 that there was another encampment in our neigh 
 borhood. 
 
 An hour's journey the following day brought 
 us to a little hollow, in which were some remains 
 of dwellings, a well, a few stumps of palms, and 
 several young trees of the same kind. After we 
 had filled our water-vessels, I walked on, over a 
 tract of fine sand, among numerous little hillocks 
 tufted with shrubs. I amused myself with ob 
 serving the tracks of large and small birds, of 
 lizards and jackals, on the smooth surface. We 
 lunched in a place where we were attacked by a 
 swarm of sand-flies, indicating that the sands 
 had been steeped by a recent rain. The shrubs 
 grew more numerous as we went on, and finally 
 we halted for the night at a place called Barook 
 by the Arabs, who have a name for every place 
 in the desert, where there is water, or a palm-tree, 
 or an eminence, or a hollow. At Barook there is 
 a well of brackish water, and we saw the signs of 
 many previous encampments heaps of ashes 
 from fires made with shrubs growing around, and 
 
120 PILGRIMS. 
 
 innumerable foot-prints of camels and horses. 
 In my walk this day, I observed several small 
 plants in flower, feebly rooted in the sand, and I 
 gathered a peculiar species of sorrel, with thick, 
 juicy, brittle leaves. 
 
 The next day, as we were about to set out on 
 our journey, two men, a mulatto and a young 
 Arab, made their appearance and lighted a fire 
 near us. They were pilgrims, they said, return 
 ing from Mecca, and had yet two days to walk 
 before reaching their homes. They had eaten 
 nothing, they told us, for the last twenty-four 
 hours. Our provisions were all packed up and 
 on the backs of camels, but we found half a 
 chicken for them and an orange, which they 
 seemed to accept gladly. One of our Arabs be 
 came offended at the manner in which his camel 
 was loaded, took off its burden and rode forward 
 upon the animal by himself. We set out in the 
 midst of a strong wind, which had begun to blow 
 before sunrise, and shifted toward the south as 
 the day wore on, till it became a sirocco. Our 
 way was still over a region of fine sand, spotted 
 with shrubs, but all the traces of living things 
 which had been so numerous the day before were 
 
A SIKOCCO. 121 
 
 effaced by the wind. We lunched at a place 
 which seemed to promise a shelter, but even here 
 the gale blew the sand in showers over our plates. 
 A little beyond we passed a grove of palms in 
 a hollow, on which the sand-hills were gaining ; 
 the trees on its western side were buried half 
 way to their summits. Here were a few habita 
 tions of Bedouin Arabs, made of the long, stiff 
 leaves of the palm stuck into the ground ; and 
 here was a well from which we made an addition 
 to our supply of water. Further on, some enor 
 mous drifts of sand, loose, almost white, and bare 
 of vegetation, approached the way. A camel 
 lay dead in our path, and ravens were devouring 
 it ; they rose croaking as we came on, and flew 
 aside. A mile further on was another camel, the 
 bones of which were almost picked clean by the 
 jackals and birds of prey. The wind became 
 hotter and drier as we proceeded, keeping the 
 sand in motion like snow, though it did not often 
 raise it as high as our faces while we sat on our 
 camels. About half-past four we came to a kind 
 of shallow valley, where the shrubs and other 
 plants of the desert seemed most numerous, and 
 here, as the camels were fatigued with their day's 
 11 
 
122 OUR TENTS OVERTURNED. 
 
 march, it was judged best to pass the night. 
 The little donkey, too, seemed weary with walk 
 ing so long in the deep sand, and the monkey, as 
 soon as he was taken down from his perch, began 
 to dig up the juicy sorrel, which he ate greedily. 
 As the sun was going down, the wind abated 
 somewhat in violence, but our dragoman and his 
 assistants took the precaution of heaping the 
 sand about the canvas of our tents at its lower 
 edge, by way of confining the sheets in their 
 places and keeping out the air. As the darkness 
 came on the gale rose again, and at ten o'clock 
 blew with more strength than ever. We were all 
 in bed, but I could not sleep, and lay listening 
 to the perpetual flapping of our canvas, and the 
 sand striking against it in showers. At one 
 o'clock in the morning came a furious gust, and 
 wrenched up the stakes of our tent from the 
 sand, dragging its poles and sheets over us, 
 breaking down the bedstead on which I lay, over 
 turning one or two of the others, and carrying 
 away with the tent our clothes, watches, and 
 books. I felt the current of sand sweeping over 
 me, and was on my feet in an instant, shouting 
 to Balthas and his assistants, who immediately 
 
CENTIPEDES. 123 
 
 came with lanterns. While they were struggling 
 to raise our tent, their own was struck by a 
 second gust, and laid even with the ground. 
 After much effort the two tents were raised again 
 and firmly secured with stakes and ropes. "We 
 groped in the sand for our stray watches, pen 
 knives, and other articles of value, which we re 
 covered with little difficulty. My bed was made 
 up again, on the carpet which floored our tent, 
 and I had a nap of about three hours in sheets 
 powdered with sand. The accident I have re 
 lated happened on the morning of the fifth of 
 February, the windiest and the warmest morning 
 I had known in Egppt. 
 
 As we were taking down our tents the next 
 morning, a centipede was found under ours a 
 frightful insect, with a multitude of legs and feel 
 ers, which has the reputation of being venomous. 
 With considerable difficulty, our dragoman got it 
 into a bottle of spirits, for it curled itself back 
 from the mouth of the bottle again and again, 
 and made a thousand efforts to escape the fate 
 destined for it. A smaller one was found the 
 evening before, running on the bedstead o one 
 of our party. 
 
124 GATIEH. 
 
 The Arab who had taken away his camel on 
 the morning of the day before, had returned in 
 the evening, and assisted in raising our tents 
 when they were blown down. At our request he 
 was spared the flogging intended for him; his 
 camel was loaded with the rest, and we set for 
 ward, intending to stop at Gatieh, a kind of oasis 
 in the desert, once the seat of a considerable 
 town, but now abandoned to the Bedouins. After 
 a ride of two hours and a half, we saw its palms, 
 towering at a distance, and passing to it over a 
 plain thickly covered with shrubs, as it doubtless 
 had once been with harvests, we set up our tents, 
 at a little past mid-day, in a hollow shaded by a 
 fine little grove of palms. The wind, though it 
 was veering to a northerly direction, and had be 
 come cooler, still blew with considerable strength, 
 and we made our tent-ropes fast to the trunks of 
 the trees. The Arabs of the place came about us 
 from a larger grove hard by, bringing fresh 
 eggs and baskets for sale children attracted by 
 our monkey, which, tethered to a stake, was dan- 
 ' cing backward and forward, and occasionally 
 springing with his fiercest look toward the stran 
 gers who approached too near ; and men, some 
 
PERSONS OF THE BEDOUINS. 125 
 
 of whom made a formidable appearance, with 
 muskets slung on their shoulders. They com 
 plained, however, of the want of ammunition, 
 and one of them offered to shoot a wild pig for 
 us, if we would furnish him with powder. The 
 offer was declined, but to let the Arabs know 
 that we had powder enough for our own pur 
 poses, a gun was let off at a thievish-looking 
 dog which came skulking about our encamp 
 ment. 
 
 I could not but admire the grand looks of 
 these brown people of the desert, the perfection 
 of their forms, combining activity and strength, 
 their well-formed features, eyes full of life, and 
 white, even, undecayed teeth. The women wore 
 on their foreheads and cheeks, a row of little cir 
 cular plates of brass and coins, depending from a 
 kind of cap, and the corners of their blue cotton 
 mantles were sometimes neatly fastened together 
 with a shell of the size of a pigeon's egg. I 
 bought of them a little basket, handsomely 
 wrought of a kind of rush, but before putting it 
 into my travelling bag, I bethought me of a pas 
 sage in Lane's account of the modern Egyptians. 
 " Lice," says that minute and candid describer, 
 11* 
 
126 VERMIN. 
 
 "with the most scrupulous cleanliness, are not 
 always to be avoided." I struck the basket 
 lightly on a table, to see what might fall out of 
 it, when one of the crawling nuisances made its 
 appearance. I gave a smarter blow ; two or 
 three more followed, and I tossed the basket 
 from me into a thicket of young palms. 
 
WOMEN AT THE MILL. 127 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 Seventh, eighth, and ninth days of our journey. Bedouin huts. Women 
 at the hand-mills. A salt-plain. Ruins of a tower. A well in the 
 Desert. Brackish water. Arabs amusing themselves with our mon 
 key. Flocks of goats and sheep. Importunity of the flies. We 
 meet a merchants' caravan. Mosquitoes. Animal life in the 
 Desert. Tracks of jackals and gazelles. Sight of the Mediterra 
 nean. Shrubs of the Desert. Minute flowers. Herd of camels feed 
 ing. Pools of water in the salt-plains. Springs of mineral oil. Cry 
 of the jackal. Town of El Areesh. Plantations of young palms. 
 Sana-hills and drifts. Fruit-trees. 
 
 JERUSALEM, PALESTINE, February 22d, 1853. 
 WE went to look at the habitations of the 
 Bedouins in a larger grove near us ; they were 
 huts made of the leaves of the date-palm, within 
 little enclosures, formed by setting these leaves 
 upright in the ground. "We looked into one or 
 two of these enclosures, where hand-mills were 
 humming, and saw the women grinding millet. 
 The quern they used was composed of two circu 
 lar stones, with an iron handle on one side of the 
 upper stone, and a raised border of dry mud and 
 chopped straw on the lower, to prevent the escape 
 of the meal. There were none but women and 
 children about the dwellings. An old woman, 
 tall, gaunt, and shrivelled, came up to us scowl- 
 
128 TOMBS OF SANTONS. 
 
 ing, and accosted us in harsh, sharp tones, point 
 ing in the direction of our encampment, and 
 evidently ordering us away. A short old woman 
 enforced the command in a milder voice, with 
 the same gesture ; so we bowed to the two ladies, 
 and retired. 
 
 Close to this grove I saw the first instance 
 of what travellers in the desert call a salt-plain. 
 It was perfectly level, with a smooth, hard sur 
 face, bare of shrubs, except in a few hillocks, and 
 wherever it was fully dry, white with a thin 
 crust of salt. At the end next to the grove was 
 a shallow pool of crystalline water, intensely salt, 
 and near it several salt-wells, evidently deepened 
 by human hands, full to the surface. We crossed 
 the grove to the east side, where are the remains 
 of the town destroyed by the French in their in 
 vasion of Egypt, under Bonaparte. They consist 
 of mounds of earth, fragments of brick walls, and 
 the tombs of two Santons little Moslem chapels, 
 with whitewashed domes. Not far from one of 
 them grew an enormous tamarisk, with a thick 
 head of boughs and foliage. Some of the richer 
 portions of the ground were formed into little 
 enclosures, with palm-branches set in the centre, 
 
BRACKISH WATER. 129 
 
 where the Bedouins had cultivated their millet 
 last year, and the rank weeds had just been 
 plucked up to make room for another crop. 
 Another grove of palms stood to the east of the 
 ruins, and here in a little green hollow, where 
 asses were feeding, were the remains of a higher 
 antiquity portions of a marble column or two, 
 which had belonged to some temple of ancient 
 Egyptian or Greek architecture. 
 
 In the afternoon our people repaired such of 
 our furniture as had been broken by the accident 
 of the night, and filled our water-cask from a 
 broad, deep well lying in a hollow, to which we 
 saw the young Bedouin women going along a 
 well-beaten path, with jars on their heads. It 
 was dug and lined with stone, by Mohammed 
 AH, while he was master of Syria, and provided 
 with a spacious watering-trough of brick, covered 
 with cement, for the camels of his military cara 
 vans. The water was brackish and unpalatable, 
 but it was the best that could be had. "We 
 mounted our camels the next morning, amidst a 
 throng of male and female Arabs, old and young, 
 some diverting themselves with the monkey, and 
 others clamoring for bakhshish. They pressed 
 
130 CLAMORS FOR BAKHSHISH. 
 
 so near while the camels were loading, that our 
 dragoman thought proper to flourish his cowskin 
 over their heads. They scampered away to a 
 little distance, laughing, and came back almost 
 immediately. The clamors for bakhshish became 
 louder as we began to move off, men and women 
 lifted up their ragged children, and boys and 
 girls held out their hands to us till we were fairly 
 on our march. 
 
 We passed a shepherd of Gatieh driving a 
 flock of about fifty sheep and goats toward a 
 small palm-grove standing by itself, around 
 which the shrubs grew more luxuriantly than 
 elsewhere. The sheep were black, with coarse 
 long wool, from which the Bedouins weave their 
 cloaks and the sheets for their tents. Farther 
 on we entered a hollow formed by heaps of sand, 
 where were many shrubs and sometimes a little 
 water. A swarm of flies came buzzing about us, 
 insisting most perseveringly upon establishing 
 themselves at the corners of our eyes. Diseased 
 eyes are common among people of the poorer 
 class in Egypt, and I never saw any effort made 
 to drive away the flies that settle upon them. 
 Children with a circle of flies around each eye 
 
A MERCHANTS' CARAVAN. 131 
 
 are among the first things of which the traveller 
 takes notice, and the grown-up Egyptian, accus 
 tomed to them by long habit, never thinks of 
 brushing them off. It seems to me possible that 
 the contagion of the ophthalmia, so prevalent in 
 that country, may be propagated in this way. 
 
 Several camels appeared in sight. " It is a 
 caravan," said one of our party, and so it proved. 
 To meet a caravan in the desert, is an occasion 
 of as much interest as to speak a vessel in a 
 voyage from America to Europe. A train of ten 
 camels was coming toward us in our path, 
 loaded with large bales wrapped in coarse dark- 
 brown woollen cloth, and bound with strong cords. 
 On one of the camels sat the principal of the 
 caravan, in his turban and gown, with a long 
 gray beard and a long pipe, and a brace of pis 
 tols in his girdle. With him were seven other 
 persons, some of whom were armed, three on the 
 camels and four walking. Our dragoman 
 stopped and conferred with the principal for a 
 moment. "It is a merchants' caravan," said he, 
 when we resumed our journey. " They are from 
 Gaza, and are conveying silks and other merchan 
 dise of Syria to Cairo." 
 
132 ANIMAL LIFE OF THE DESERT. 
 
 We did not think of being exposed to the per 
 secutions of the mosquitoes in this arid region, 
 but this day, as we were taking our lunch near a 
 hollow where the sand had a moist appearance, 
 they came about us, hungry and sharp-bitten, 
 and with them a cloud of midges, or sand-flies, 
 extremely troublesome. There were other living 
 things of the desert with which we had now be 
 come familiar sand- colored lizards, one kind 
 slender and swift, which often shot across our 
 path ; another, clumsily shaped and slow, scarcely 
 able to get out of the way of our camels ; moths 
 fluttering about the flowers of the desert, and 
 here and there a butterfly ; snails clinging to 
 every shrub, and the surface for several feet 
 around strewn with their white shells, now 
 empty ; land-tortoises creeping beside the way ; 
 sluggish chameleons, of which we took several ; 
 black-beetles, rolling along fresh balls of camel's 
 dung ; and snakes, of which we killed a small, 
 spotted one, said by our Arabs to be venomous. 
 Now and then a heron would rise from a pool of 
 brackish water, where he sought his food, and 
 ravens, on their glistening black wings, were al 
 ways hovering near us. 
 
SKELETONS OF CAMELS. 133 
 
 Close to our path were the burrows of the 
 jackal in the hillocks, and the marks of their feet 
 
 in the sand, as well as those of the jerboa, or 
 
 
 
 leaping rat, which has numerous holes all over 
 the desert. Less frequently seen was the track 
 of the gazelle, a delicate triangular foot-print. 
 The skeletons of camels were scattered all along 
 the way, where they had fallen and perished, for 
 when the camel gives out under his load, his 
 owner knows that his end is come, and leaves 
 him to die. In a night or two, nothing is left of 
 him but the bones. 
 
 It was a fine, cool day, with a bracing north 
 westerly wind. The sky, which during the si 
 rocco that overturned our tent had been filled 
 with a thick, white haze, from the fine particles 
 of sand, blown up and suspended by the force 
 of the wind, had become perfectly transparent, 
 and the currents of air passing through it came 
 to us directly from the Mediterranean. In as 
 cending a bank, we had the sea before us the 
 solitary sea murmuring along a vast extent of 
 uninhabited shore. That night we pitched our 
 tent in a wide plain, with a steep, low bank on 
 the south, beside which the rain-water gathers in 
 12 
 
134 MOSQUITOES. 
 
 the winter, and forms a kind of marsh. The 
 mosquitoes came swarming into our tent, and 
 unlike any of their tribe we had seen before, 
 plunged into the flame of our candles. We 
 made the tent-door fast, and in a short time the 
 greater part of them had singed their wings, and 
 w r ere heaped about the foot of the candles, so 
 that we were little disturbed by them during 
 the night. 
 
 The morning of the 7th of February was chilly 
 with the air from the sea, and we were later than 
 usual in leaving our encampment. A journey of 
 an hour and a half over heavy sand brought us 
 to another of the salt-plains I have mentioned, 
 perfectly level, hard underfoot, with large patches 
 of a bare smooth surface. In other places it 
 was covered with a growth of bushes. Beyond, 
 we entered upon a winding hollow, looking al 
 most like a regular highway, with many shrubs 
 on the left hand, from which rose myriads of mos 
 quitoes and midges, bred by the recent rains. Of 
 the shrubs of the desert nearly all are ever 
 greens ; some are thorny, but the greater num 
 ber are of a jointed growth, somewhat like the 
 rush, in the younger or greener stems of which 
 
PLANTS OF THE DESERT. 135 
 
 the moisture imbibed from the soil during win 
 ter is secreted and preserved in store for the dry 
 season, supplying a juicy pasturage for the cam 
 els. Among these shrubs the retem, or broom of 
 the desert, is one of the most conspicuous as well 
 as the most beautiful, bearing a profusion of 
 white flowers veined with purple. The shrubs 
 send their roots far into the loose soil in search 
 of moisture, and the sand being heaped about 
 them by the winds, they form hillocks, held in 
 shape by a net-work of roots, in which the jackal 
 and jerboa have their habitations. The ground 
 in many places at this season was starred with a 
 multitude of little flowers a small pink phlox, a 
 plant of the geranium family, with a purple 
 bloom ; another of the mustard family, of a deli 
 cate white ; and several compound flowers, both 
 white and yellow, some of them fragrant, all 
 dwarfed by the meagre soil, but making the banks 
 gay under the shrubs. The scarlet poppy showed 
 itself to-day, in little groups on a declivity beside 
 our path. 
 
 In our journey this morning several camels ap 
 peared in sight, which at first we thought to be 
 a caravan. As we came nearer, camel after 
 
136 SALT-PLAINS. 
 
 camel was seen, a numerous troop, scattered over 
 a considerable space, browsing among the bushes 
 and herbage. They were the property of the 
 Bedouins, feeding in the broad pasture of their 
 owners, the desert. Further on we descended 
 into an oval salt-plain lying among drifts of sand, 
 with a surface as even as a mirror, and wholly 
 bare. of vegetation except at the edges to the 
 right and left of our way. A winding path among 
 sand-hills led us from this to another, and in 
 this manner we traversed, in the course of the 
 day, four salt-plains, one of which in the direc 
 tion we were travelling, we computed to be at 
 least a mile and a half across, and in two of 
 w r hich were shallow pools of water, intensely salt, 
 clear and colorless, and sparkling as they were 
 rippled by the wind. On coming to these plains 
 we immediately dismounted and walked ; it was 
 a luxury, after riding through drifts of sand, to 
 tread a surface so firm and even. We followed a 
 path made by the broad and heavy foot-prints of 
 the camel, but this was crossed by the tracks of 
 the gazelle and the jackal in all directions. 
 
 On climbing out of these plains we had 
 glimpses of the Mediterranean to the north of us, 
 
MINERALS OF THE MOUNTAINS. 137 
 
 and salt-pools in the hollows between us and the 
 sea. To the southeast rose the varied peaks of 
 a range of mountains lying along the shore of 
 the Eed Sea. When I was in Upper Egypt, I fell 
 in with an Italian who was employed to obtain 
 sulphur from a mine among these mountains. 
 " They are incredibly rich," said he, " in beds of 
 ore of various metals and other mineral produc 
 tions ; but these cannot be worked for want of 
 fuel. Egypt has no mines of coal; all that is 
 used in her steamers and her manufactures, 
 is brought from England. She has springs of 
 mineral oil, the indication of beds of coal, and 
 wherever they are to be found, the government 
 has made excavations to a great depth, and at 
 great cost, but without success. An Arab in 
 wandering among the mountains near the Ked 
 Sea, not long since, found a little pool of quick 
 silver, where it had flowed from the rocks. He 
 attempted to scoop it up with his hands, but it 
 slid through his fingers ; he then drew it up into 
 his mouth, filled with it the leathern bottle in 
 which he carried water, and brought it home. 
 He was taken ill immediately afterward and died, 
 probably from the effect of the quicksilver he 
 12* 
 
138 CRY OF THE JACKAL. 
 
 had swallowed, so that the* spot where he found 
 it is still unknown, though diligent search has 
 been made for it." 
 
 We stopped for the night as usual, in a hollow, 
 where we might be sheltered from the wind, and 
 toward morning I heard the cry of the jackals for 
 the first time, though for several nights they had 
 been our neighbors. They were answered by 
 our donkey with a gallant bray, after which I 
 heard them no more. This was succeeded, as 
 the day dawned, by a more welcome song, the 
 cheerful twittering of birds about our tent. The 
 morning was clear and cold ; the weak herbs of 
 the desert were flattened to the earth beneath a 
 load of dew ; and as we were taking our breakfast 
 in the open air at sunrise, a troop of small birds, 
 apparently of the sparrow family, were busy 
 about us, gathering their early meal on our 
 camping-ground. 
 
 This day, the 8th of February, was to bring 
 us to the lonely little town of El Areesh, on the 
 shore of the sea. As we approached it, we ob 
 served that our path became more like a beaten 
 highway, and the region better suited to pastur 
 age. We passed a large herd of young camels 
 
PASTURAGE OF THE DESERT. 139 
 
 belonging to the people of El Areesh, feeding 
 under a steep bank, at the foot of which the 
 shrubs were more numerous and the herbage 
 greener than elsewhere. We lunched in a little 
 salt-plain, in the neighborhood of which the de 
 clivities seemed on flame with scarlet poppies, 
 and a liliaceous flower on a long stalk made its 
 appearance among the shrubs. "Within about 
 three miles of El Areesh, we heard a chorus of 
 shrill cries, and saw grazing in a deep circular 
 basin of a few rods over, covered at the bottom 
 and sides with luxuriant herbage of the liveliest 
 green, a dozen or more camels, wearing the rude 
 wooden frames which serve as saddles, and 
 tended by boys. We now overtook women driv 
 ing home donkeys loaded with brushwood gath 
 ered in the desert, and camels almost hidden 
 under enormous piles of coarse hay, made of a 
 grass which grows in large solitary tufts. Here 
 and there stood a cluster of palms in a hollow, 
 and in some places little plantations of the 
 young tree were formed, with circular depres 
 sions about the stem, to receive the water neces 
 sary to keep them from perishing. 
 
 To the left of our path, on the side next to the 
 
140 ASPECT OF THE DESERT. 
 
 sea, were banks of freshly drifted sand, with 
 towering crests, and among these we at length 
 entered by a deep hollow path, within which the 
 rays of the sun beat upon us with sickening force. 
 Climbing out of it by a steep ascent, we came 
 upon a dreary waste utterly without vegetation, 
 where the arid wind sifted the sand and piled it 
 in broad hills all around us. In all my journey I 
 had seen no -aspect of nature so melancholy as 
 that on which I now looked. With every wind 
 from the west or the northwest, these enormous 
 drifts, elevated above the surrounding region, 
 must continue to extend themselves, burying all 
 vegetable growth far below their surface, and 
 carrying with them the desolation which every 
 where met my eyes. We followed a broad track, 
 like one made over fresh- fallen snow, and which 
 the next wind must efface, for nearly two miles, 
 amidst a crowd of people returning from the 
 desert. At length the walls of the fortress of 
 El Areesh, built by the French in the time of the 
 Directory, were before us. The drifts had 
 reached the foot of its western wall, covering 
 the site of former habitations, traces of which 
 were yet visible, and half burying one or two 
 
EL AHEESH. 141 
 
 structures of stone which had been abandoned. 
 The town is a little collection of huts, within the 
 walls of the fortress, and on its eastern side. 
 The inhabitants subsist by rearing camels, which 
 find a broad range and abundant pasturage in 
 the neighboring desert. 
 
 The Arabs of our party were all inhabitants of 
 El Areesh ; their friends came about us to help 
 them unload their camels, and our tents were 
 soon pitched on the edge of the loose sands, to 
 the south of the fortress. Meantime we strolled 
 into the town, which presented the usual aspect 
 of the Arab villages we had seen rows of low 
 flat-roofed houses built of mud, put into the 
 shape of brick narrow streets, filth, and people 
 asking alms. In that part of the town which lay 
 east of the fortress was a well, with a large wheel 
 for raising its brackish water, which the people 
 of the place, who had probably never tasted any 
 better, assured us was excellent. A little east 
 ward of the village stood a small building of 
 stone, with four open arches on the sides. It 
 covered a broad, deep well, regularly lined with 
 hewn stone, from which the neighboring fields 
 might have been irrigated a hundred years ago, 
 
143 INVASION OF THE SAND. 
 
 but it was now dry. At a little distance to the 
 southwest of our encampment was an enclosure 
 of fruit-trees, the fig and apricot, protected by a 
 wall ; the hills of sand were already peeping over 
 it, and had invaded one corner, threatening to 
 overwhelm the whole in a short time. 
 
TENTH DAY. 143 
 
 LETTEK XL 
 
 Tenth day of the journey. Picturesque costumes. Spirited horses and. 
 horsemanship. Trouble with passports. Barley-fields. Women 
 cutting up juniper. Tributes to the Arabs. An Arab exquisite. 
 A pastoral region. Another tribute. A salt lake. Safayda. Tomb of 
 a Santon. Flocks of birds. Frightful scream of a jackal. Reading 
 the Scriptures. A troop of dervishes. An Arab cemetery. 
 
 JERUSALEM, PALESTINE, February 22d, 1853. 
 NEXT morning, as we were striking our tents 
 and loading our camels, we were surrounded by 
 a large circle of admiring spectators, men, women, 
 and children, who came to see the Franks and 
 the monkey. " Thieves, all," said the father of 
 couriers I believe he slandered them " every 
 one of them thieves," and drawing his short 
 sword, the first time he had employed it in our 
 defence, he rushed among them with a terrific 
 shout and dispersed them. In the mean time, a 
 little party of cavalry belonging to the detach 
 ment which we had seen leaving Belbays, rode 
 up to the fortress, from their camp in a palm- 
 grove, north of the town, on the sea-shore. We 
 could not but admire their picturesque costume, 
 so gracefully worn ; that of each individual dif- 
 
144 ARAB HOE SEMAN SHIP. 
 
 fering in some respect of color or arrangement 
 from those of all the rest. Some had muskets 
 slung on their backs, one or two carried theirs 
 on their shoulders, with the butt behind them, 
 and one bore the black ensign of the Egyptian 
 cavalry. They rode spirited and well-trained 
 horses, which they managed with perfect ease, 
 galloping swiftly to and fro, and stopping or 
 wheeling them in mid-speed. I have seen noth 
 ing more showy and striking in all the East, and 
 scarce anywhere else, than the spectacle of one 
 of these horsemen, armed and arrayed in the 
 Oriental fashion, and managing his horse in the 
 Oriental manner. The government here is be 
 ginning to put its soldiers into a clumsy uniform 
 of jacket and pantaloons, in which they make an 
 insignificant appearance. 
 
 El Areesh is the frontier town of the dominions 
 of the Egyptian Viceroy. Two men came early 
 in the morning for our passports, telling us that 
 they would be examined, and returned in a few 
 minutes. We were ready to depart, and they 
 had not arrived ; we sent our dragoman to de 
 mand them. In the mean time we had leisure to 
 observe the people who gathered about us. The 
 
A CHURLISH OFFICIAL. 145 
 
 peculiarities of the Egyptian physiognomy, 
 which give it a resemblance to the faces sculp 
 tured in the old hieroglyphics, had entirely dis 
 appeared. Some of the men had fine persons 
 and majestic beards, and a few light hair and 
 gray or blue eyes. 
 
 Our dragoman returned with the passports in 
 about an hour. Ten minutes would have suf 
 ficed to examine and countersign them, but the 
 governor of the place, a lazy Turk, declared that 
 he would not look at them till he had his coffee. 
 When he had got his coffee, he declared that he 
 would not attend to any business till he had 
 finished his pipe. After smoking till he had 
 brought himself to a more complying humor, he 
 wrote two or three words in Arabic on each of 
 the passports, and handed them to our mes 
 senger. 
 
 We set forward about half-past nine o'clock, 
 amidst flocks of sheep and goats, with a few 
 camels and asses which the herdsmen of El 
 Areesh were driving afield. The region immedi 
 ately east of the town had the appearance of 
 being susceptible of cultivation, and here and 
 
 there we saw patches of barley which showed that 
 13 
 
146 ARAB WOMEN. 
 
 the soil was not naturally unfruitful. Crossing 
 a dry water-course, about a mile and a half from 
 the town, we entered a tract of pasturage and 
 bushes where women were cutting up with mat 
 tocks an evergreen shrub, apparently a sort of 
 heath, which they used to heat their ovens. In 
 an Arab household, it is the goodwife whose 
 business it is to provide the fuel. A troop of 
 women, barefoot, in the usual loose dress of blue 
 cotton, passed us, bearing bundles of this brush 
 wood on their heads, and looking at us shyly 
 from under the mantles which they drew over 
 the lower part of their faces. The country here 
 was full of flocks, each tended separately by its 
 keepers, men or women ; and in the more fertile 
 places were little fields of springing barley. 
 
 At a distance of three or four miles from El 
 Areesh, we entered upon a territory possessed by 
 the race of Arabs who dwell in tents. Here the 
 traveller pays a fixed tribute, which has the sanc 
 tion of the government, to the sheikhs, in consid 
 eration of which they engage to protect him 
 against robberies within their respective dis 
 tricts ; in other words, they accept the tribute as 
 a compensation for the robberies they would 
 
TRIBUTE TO THE SHEIKHS. 147 
 
 otherwise commit. Our dragoman was to pay 
 these tributes, among the other expenses of our 
 journey. 
 
 Two men, one on foot and the other on horse 
 back, were seen coming over an eminence to the 
 east of our path ; our dragoman stopped, held a 
 spirited parley in Arabic with the one on foot, 
 and ended by giving him money. I was much 
 struck with the showy costume of this chief, and 
 quite as much with a certain grim beauty in his 
 aspect. He wore a snowy white turban, a long 
 white shirt with a red tunic over it, a sabre by 
 his side, and thrown over one shoulder an Arab 
 cloak, with broad stripes of white and black. 
 His person was thin and sinewy, his features reg 
 ular, with a jetty beard, a keen restless eye, and 
 two rows of even, glittering teeth, that were visi 
 ble to the very corners of his mouth at the least 
 motion of his lips. His companion, who was 
 scarcely less showily arrayed, was an elder and 
 graver man ; he wore a sabre and carried a long 
 pipe, which he smoked during the conference. I 
 asked our dragoman what was the subject of the 
 dispute. 
 
 " The tribute allowed by the government," he 
 
148 A PASTORAL REGION. 
 
 replied, " is. three piastres for each traveller ; the 
 servants pay nothing. That sheikh insisted on 
 having three piastres from each of us, with the 
 exception of our four Arabs. I paid him twelve 
 piastres for our four travellers, and three more 
 for bakhshish. He knew he was not entitled to 
 any more, for he thanked me and wished us a 
 good journey." 
 
 The country now wore a pastoral look; on 
 each side of our way were flocks tended by 
 groups of men and women, whose voices are 
 often heard before they are in sight. The herb 
 age became more abundant as we went on, and 
 the flowers larger, but everywhere the verdure 
 was overlooked by a range of smooth hills of 
 sand on our left, threatening to overwhelm us. 
 We took our lunch in a salt-plain, from which we 
 entered on a long, narrow, green vale, fragrant 
 with a yellow flower of a plant called by our 
 dragoman the wild camomile. I was walking on 
 with two of my companions, when we saw be 
 fore us, sitting on a bank by the path, four men, 
 two of them armed with muskets, who were soon 
 joined by a fifth. They were the collectors of the 
 revenue for the sheikh of a new district. We 
 
BEAUTY OF TIIE FLOCKS. 149 
 
 saluted them and passed on, but they stopped 
 our caravan as it carne up ; another parley was 
 held, and another tribute of twelve piastres paid. 
 
 We walked on through a flock of sheep and 
 goats feeding on both sides of our way, tended 
 by women, who ran away at our approach ; all 
 but one slender brown maiden, who kept watch 
 of her charge and us from a neighboring bank. 
 We stopped to observe the beauty of the ani 
 mals, which had a well-fed appearance. The 
 goats were black, with long, wavy hair, which 
 glistened like silk in the sunshine. The sheep, 
 many of which were young, and had not yet 
 parted with their first fleece, were beautifully 
 marked; they had black feet, coal-black heads 
 for the most part, and fleeces of clean white, 
 with broad spots of raven black. As we stood 
 looking at them, the maiden stretched her little 
 brown neck above the shrubs, as if she were not 
 perfectly sure whether we were not making our 
 choice of the best of her flock. 
 
 After we had again mounted our camels, we 
 came to a sandy ridge crossing our path, close 
 by which stood a young Arab, of placid features, 
 who seemed to be waiting for us. We stopped, 
 
150 A NUBIAN. 
 
 and after a moment's conversation the young fel 
 low was joined by a tall, thin black man, a Nu 
 bian, as they call them here, wearing a white tur 
 ban, a long white shirt, and a sabre, who took up 
 the discourse and spoke with much energy and 
 gesticulation. Here was another demand for 
 tribute. Twelve piastres were put into the palm 
 of the negro, who handed them over to the Arab, 
 the sheikh of the district, or the sheikh's son. 
 
 As we went on, Arabs and their animals were 
 seen everywhere around us, but nowhere a trace 
 of human habitation. Larger tracts of land 
 under tillage appeared than we had before seen 
 in the desert, some green with barley, others just 
 ploughed, others lying fallow. At length our 
 road ran for a short distance along the banks of 
 a clear little lake. I dismounted and tasted its 
 waters ; they were as salt as the ocean. To the 
 north of this lake was a smooth round hill of 
 sand, evidently advancing into it, and there, half 
 buried by the drifts, stood a little grove of palms. 
 To the east of the lake was a salt-plain, into 
 which we passed, ending in smooth slopes, 
 clothed with short herbage, where cows, sheep, 
 and camels, tended by Arabs, were grazing. 
 
TOMB OF A SAIXT. 151 
 
 Here were the walls of a few ruined cottages, a 
 cemetery beyond them, in which stood a wely, or 
 tomb of a Mohammedan saint, with a white 
 washed dome, and near the cemetery a few palm- 
 trees. 
 
 " This place," said our dragoman, " is called 
 Safzayda, and here we stop for the night. A few 
 years ago there was a village on this spot, and in 
 former times, I am told, a considerable town." 
 Our people immediately began to unload the 
 camels and to pitch our tents in the midst of the 
 flocks, while I strolled toward the cemetery. 
 
 Within the tomb of the saint was a rude sar 
 cophagus of stone, plastered over with mortar, 
 and covered with a faded green cloth. Above it 
 was stretched a cord, on which were strung bits 
 of cloth, shells, and little frames of wood and 
 paper stained with various colors, which I after 
 ward learned were suspended there by persons 
 afflicted with diseases, in the belief that there 
 was a virtue in the tomb of a holy man which 
 would work a cure. A marble slab, at the door 
 of the tomb, bore a long Arabic inscription, the 
 only one in all that place. The tombs around 
 were numerous, formed of small stones covered 
 
152 SMALL BIHDS. 
 
 with coarse mortar, but the more recent graves 
 merely had loose stones piled over them, or were 
 heaped with earth. The Bedouins had made this 
 their burial-place. 
 
 The sun was now setting ; women, in blue 
 gowns, and shrill-voiced boys, were running 
 about, hastily gathering their herds and flocks, 
 and driving them over the hill to the south of us 
 till the last of them had disappeared ; thousands 
 of small birds, keeping up an incessant twitter 
 ing, were settling on the palms about us, their 
 perch for the night, till the rigid branches bent 
 with their weight. I returned to our tent, where 
 our Arabs had collected brushwood and had kin 
 dled a fire, by which they were to keep watch 
 during the night against the Bedouins and the 
 jackals. At El Areesh we had left behind our don 
 key, which had grown thin with wading through 
 the sand, and had re-enforced our caravan with 
 two more Arabs, one of whom, a young fellow, 
 rode one of the camels, and the other, a stout- 
 legged man, armed with a brace of pistols, which 
 he carried in his gay-colored sash, walked with 
 the rest. The young man had made a luxurious 
 bed on the ground with mats and quilts, but the 
 
READING THE SCRIPTURES. 153 
 
 other was preparing to pass the night with the 
 camel-drivers. 
 
 One of the entertainments of our journey 
 through the desert was reading books of travels 
 relating to the country through which we were 
 passing. Sometimes as we sat on our camels one 
 would read aloud for the benefit of the rest, and 
 in the evening, before we became drowsy, which 
 was early enough, a little time was generally em 
 ployed in this way. For these evening readings 
 we frequently took parts of the Scriptures, to 
 which the scenes around us gave a new interest 
 narratives of the journeys of the early He 
 brews to the land of Egypt. Their abode in the 
 country, their passage out of it, and wanderings 
 in the desert, which once brought them to the 
 very region in which we were travelling. This 
 evening, while we were thus engaged, we were 
 startled by loud cries, close to our tent, and al 
 most in our ears. The sounds had in them some 
 thing frightfully human. " It is a jackal," said 
 one of the attendants. The animal had come 
 prowling about our tent, but must have been 
 scared away immediately, for we afterward heard 
 the same cries from a distance. 
 
154 ARAB PILGRIMS. 
 
 Next morning, soon after sunrise, I went tc 
 the top of the hill which lay south of iis, but 
 nowhere could I descry the habitations of the 
 1 Arabs, though we had heard their dogs answering 
 the jackals all night. I returned to our encamp 
 ment, where, as we were at breakfast, we ob 
 served a troop of ten men on foot approaching 
 by the road we had travelled the day before. 
 About half their number wore high, shaggy 
 woollen caps, of a brown color, the costume of 
 the dervishes, and two of them carried on their 
 backs loads of dry brushwood. They halted at 
 a little distance from us, sat down in a circle on 
 the ground, 'and sent one of the wearers of the 
 shaggy caps to borrow a live coal or two from 
 our cook's fire. "We learned from him that this 
 was a troop of holy men, pilgrims from Persia 
 and Bokhara, who had been to Mecca, and were 
 now on their way to the holy places in Syria. 
 The dervish was a good-natured looking fellow, 
 with a pair of blinking eyes, ragged, barefooted, 
 and fat. He returned to his companions, and 
 probably made a report to them of what he saw 
 on our breakfast-table, for immediately another 
 deputation was sent, asking for something to eat. 
 
A BURIAL-PLACE. 155 
 
 Our dragoman, thrifty in his charity, gave them 
 two loaves of bread, brought from Cairo, which 
 had begun to be a little mouldy. 
 
 TTliile our camels were loading, I walked again 
 to the Arab burial-place. Even in this desert is 
 felt the instinct which prompts us to beautify the 
 resting-places of the dead. The region produces 
 a liliaceous plant, with a large bulb and large 
 thick leaves of a deep-green color. Bunches of 
 these were planted at the head and foot of many 
 of the graves. A singular custom, I perceived, 
 prevails here, of laying the garments of the dead 
 on the ground above them. At the head of one 
 of the graves lay a woman's blue cotton dress, as 
 fresh, almost, in appearance, as if it had just 
 come from the loom. I remarked several arti 
 cles of male attire, some of them much decayed 
 by the length of time they had remained on the 
 ground. On one poor fellow's grave lay only his 
 thrum-cap, probably the sole part of his raiment 
 which was thought in a fit condition to serve as 
 his monument. The grave of a child fixed my 
 attention, at each end of which a tuft of the 
 plant I have already mentioned was growing 
 freshly, and between them lay a little garment of 
 
156 DECORATIONS OF TIIE GRAVES. 
 
 blue cotton, and another of white, with a crim 
 son stripe running through it. Near by, and 
 probably dragged away by the jackals, was the 
 skin of a lamb, with a soft silky fleece, which 
 had formed the child's outer garment in winter. 
 I replaced it on the grave, and could not help 
 thinking how tenderly, to judge by these tokens, 
 that child must have been cherished, and that, 
 when it was carried out dead from the humble 
 abode of its parents, their low brown tent pitched 
 on the greensward, the heart of its mother must 
 have been pierced by a sorrow as sharp as is felt 
 at such a loss in the most civilized country. 
 
ASPECT OF THE REGION. 157 
 
 LETTER XII. 
 
 Cultivated fields between bare sand-hills. Kuins of Rhaphia. The vir 
 gin's fountain. Khan Yoonas. Fruit-trees in bloom. Our party in 
 quarantine. We pass the night in a cemetery. A crowd of women in 
 white, among the graves. Oranges. Distinguished-looking visit- 
 ore. Departure from Khan Yoonas. Pilgrims. The scarlet anem 
 one. Old sycamores. Men ploughing with camels. We enter the 
 lazaretto at Gaza. View of the country from our windows. Foolish, 
 look of the dervishes. Our monkey attacks one of the holy men. 
 An Arab virago. Show of tongues. Release from the lazaretto. 
 
 JERUSALEM, PALESTINE, February 22d, 1853. 
 IT was a cool morning, and on leaving Safzay- 
 da, I walked on before the caravan, with two of 
 my companions, in a long valley, between culti 
 vated fields on each side of the way for a con 
 siderable distance, in the midst of which a broad 
 irregular stripe of greensward and shrubs was 
 left for travellers. Arab men and women ap 
 peared from time to time on the heights with 
 their sheep and camels, and groups of women 
 were chattering in the road before us, who took 
 good care to be out of our way as we approached. 
 The long line of bare sand-hills which border the 
 sea continued in sight to the northwest, and once 
 we had a view of the Mediterranean over it. 
 Not long afterward we came to a region of pas 
 turage, where the ground was covered with short 
 14 
 
158 KHAPHIA. 
 
 herbage, consisting principally of a kind of tre 
 foil, with very minute leaves, and here, in a shal 
 low vale, sheltered on the east and north, and 
 opening to the southwest, lay the dark brown 
 tents of the Bedouins, made of a coarse cloth, 
 woven from the fleeces of their sheep. Cows, 
 sheep, goats, and camels were grazing about us, 
 and from the tents the whooping of children was 
 heard. 
 
 On the right of our path, at a little distance 
 before us, appeared a mound, on which stood 
 two columns, their pedestals buried in the earth, 
 which was full of bits of marble and fragments 
 of pottery. Here was the site of Ehaphia, once 
 a populous city. " These columns," said the 
 dragoman, "belonged to a Greek church, built 
 where the Virgin rested in her flight to Egypt, 
 and you will see more of them a little further on, 
 in a place where we shall take our lunch. There 
 is a fountain of sweet water there, which came 
 out of the ground by a miracle, to quench the 
 Yirgin's thirst." We descended from the mound 
 into a hollow, where this miraculous fountain 
 was. It was a deep well, with a very little water 
 in it, around which lay scattered several marble 
 
A^ YOOXAS. 159 
 
 columns, and broken pedestals of columns. The 
 herbage was here luxuriant, and our camels 
 cropped it eagerly. 
 
 At a little past two o'clock on that day, the 
 10 th of February, we found ourselves among 
 the gardens of Khan Yoonas, the frontier town 
 of Syria. They were hedged with rows of the 
 prickly pear, and full of almond, peach, and apri 
 cot trees, in full bloom, with here and there a 
 tamarisk and sycamore next to the way. Just 
 at the entrance of the town, which is a wretched 
 one, we were conducted into an enclosure serving 
 as a lazaretto, surrounded by a fence formed by 
 the branches of a thorny tree, called the nebek, 
 set upright in the ground and were informed 
 that we were in quarantine. Part of a Turkish 
 cemetery had been taken into the lazaretto, and 
 we pitched our tents and spread our carpets on 
 the old neglected graves. In that part of the 
 cemetery which lay without were more than fifty 
 women, nearly all in white, with long white man 
 tles covering the head and reaching nearly down 
 to the feet, sitting around the graves or moving 
 silently among them like ghosts. " They are 
 mourning for the dead," said Yincenzo. 
 
160 IN QUARANTINE. 
 
 Our new acquaintances, the pilgrims, two or 
 three of them bearing a load of brushwood, en 
 tered the enclosure along with us and squatted 
 down in one corner. In another part a company 
 of Arabs, men, women, and children, had estab 
 lished themselves ; the men, after taking their 
 midday meal, rolled themselves in their cloaks, 
 covering their heads from sight, and lay asleep 
 on the ground. The keepers of the quarantine 
 had a hut of dry reeds and boughs within the 
 lazaretto, before which they were posted with 
 clubs and boughs of trees, to keep the travellers 
 from going out, and from coming too near the 
 people of the place when they entered the laza 
 retto. One of our caravan bought some oranges 
 of one of the keepers. He threw a piastre 
 toward the keeper, who poured a pitcher of 
 water over it as it lay on the ground, to purify 
 it from the contagion we were supposed to bring 
 from Egypt, and then taking it up, tossed back 
 four oranges. 
 
 Next morning, before sunrise, the pilgrims 
 were heard chanting their prayers. While we 
 were breakfasting and loading our camels, three 
 men, of a remarkably striking appearance, entered 
 
DISTINGUISHED VISITORS. 161 
 
 the lazaretto, and after standing awhile to ob 
 serve us, sat down on a mat before the hut, and 
 watched our proceedings at their leisure. One 
 of them, in a snowy-white turban, had a beard 
 as white, and was wrapped in an ample black 
 gown ; another, of tall stature and lofty air, in a 
 costume of intermingled white, red, and yellow, 
 wore red morocco boots and a sabre with a glit 
 tering handle and scabbard ; the third, younger 
 than either, had on the amplest and whitest of 
 oriental petticoats. About eight o'clock, a man 
 on a spirited horse, and wearing a sabre, pre 
 sented himself at the entrance of the lazaretto ; 
 it was our guardian who was to accompany us to 
 Gaza. The term of quarantine performed by 
 travellers arriving in Syria from Egypt is five 
 days. The day on which they arrive at Khan 
 Yoonas, if they enter the lazaretto before sunset, 
 is counted as the first ; the day passed in travel 
 ling from Khan Yoonas to Gaza is the second ; 
 two days and three nights are then passed in the 
 lazaretto at Gaza, and the day on the morning 
 of which they leave the lazaretto completes the 
 five. 
 
 At half-past eight we left the lazaretto under 
 14* 
 
162 A TRAIN OF TRAVELLERS. 
 
 the conduct of our guardian a long train of 
 Franks, pilgrims, Arab men, women, and chil 
 dren, camels, and asses. Of the children, eight 
 or nine in number, some were put on the don 
 keys, others were carried by their parents, and 
 our good-natured Arabs gave a woman and her 
 baby a seat on one of their camels. One of the 
 donkeys trotted along under a cluster of three 
 children, clinging to each other, the eldest of 
 whom, not more than eight years old, guided the 
 animal. We had left the desert, and now en 
 tered on a grassy plain with a range of sand 
 hills on its western boundary, and verdant emi 
 nences to the east. It was gaudy with yellow 
 flowers, and in some places red with the scarlet 
 anemone, and over it were scattered, at consid 
 erable distances from each other, sycamores cen 
 turies old, with enormous gnarled and twisted 
 trunks. Our pilgrims, as they marched before 
 us, sang in chorus one of their hymns, the sound 
 of which canie to us on the wind. 
 
 Two or three miles north of Khan Yoonas ap 
 peared, far to the east, a cluster of the dark tents 
 of the Bedouins, with smoke rising from them. 
 They were probably inhabited by the keepers of 
 
GAZA THE LAZARETTO. 163 
 
 the flocks which were feeding near our path, and 
 which our guardian, with drawn sabre, chased 
 out of our way, lest peradventure we should give 
 them the plague. As the people of the country 
 met us, the cry of carantina, carantina! was 
 raised, and they turned to the right or the left, 
 allowing us a broad passage over the plain. 
 
 As we approached Gaza, the number of trees 
 diminished, and the tilled fields became more 
 numerous. We saw people ploughing with cam 
 els ; the ploughs were of wood, light, and with a 
 slender upright handle ; the wooden share merely 
 scratched the surface of the ground. At length 
 we came in sight of the minarets of Gaza, situ 
 ated amidst gardens and trees and gentle emi 
 nences. The guardian made our whole train 
 enter the lazaretto, an enclosure with high walls, 
 just at the entrance of the town, having a large 
 well in the midst, and a long low building near 
 the side, opposite to the entrance. At each end 
 of this building was a second story, consisting of 
 two small chambers, one set of which was as 
 signed to us, while our dragoman and his people 
 occupied a room below. 
 
 It was now one o'clock in the afternoon, and 
 
164 EMPLOYMENTS IN THE LAZARETTO. 
 
 we had the rest of the day and two days more to 
 pass in the lazaretto. We did not find our im 
 prisonment so tedious as we expected. We read, 
 we wrote, we paced the wall at our end of the 
 lazaretto ; we looked at the surrounding country 
 from our windows ; a green, treeless plain to the 
 south ; and to the north a region rising into 
 pleasant slopes, covered with trees, mostly the 
 olive, among which stood the flat-roofed build 
 ings of the town and its towering minarets. 
 Over this scene were sweeping the shadows of 
 clouds brought by a cool wind from the sea. 
 We observed the women of the place washing 
 clothes at a little sheet of water at the east of us, 
 almost under the walls of the lazaretto, or sitting 
 on the grass in their long white mantles, with 
 their children playing beside them. We 
 watched our friends, the dervishes and pilgrims, 
 at their devotions, prostrating themselves on 
 their faces from time to time, in their prayers, 
 which they uttered inaudibly, with moving lips. 
 These holy men had their time fully occupied 
 with prayers, sleeping in the sun, and picking 
 the vermin the lice, if you must have the word 
 from the inside of their garments, which they 
 
DERTISHES. 165 
 
 took off and carefully examined once a day at 
 least, during their stay in the lazaretto. Five of 
 the party, we now learned, were regular der 
 vishes ; the others, ordinary pilgrims. The der 
 vishes were particularly ragged, with patched 
 garments of many colors ; but they looked well- 
 fed, and had a foolish expression of face. The 
 only man among them who was not ragged was 
 one of the ordinary pilgrims, a lean fellow, with 
 an anxious look, who wore a sabre by his side. 
 The dervishes manifested a great desire to amuse 
 themselves with our monkey, after an example 
 which we had set them ; but the creature, though 
 tolerably well-behaved toward our party, would 
 endure no familiarities from strangers. He was 
 fastened by a long cord to the iron grate of our 
 dragoman's window, but whenever the dervishes 
 approached him, he sprung at them into the air, 
 with his fiercest grin, and tore their rags and 
 their sacred skins without mercy. We saw the 
 blood trickling down the plump, swarthy leg of 
 the principal dervish of the party, after a brief 
 interview with the monkey. 
 
 Among those who entered the lazaretto with 
 us was an Arab family with several children, the 
 
166 AN ARAB SCOLD. 
 
 mother of which was endowed with a shrill voice 
 and a most voluble tongue. She was in constant- 
 dispute with one of the keepers, who brought us 
 bread from the town, and who insisted upon 
 having his profit on every loaf. For this the 
 woman attacked him whenever he appeared, with 
 reproaches, uttered in the most rapid Arabic. 
 To do him justice, he stood his ground bravely, 
 and answered like one who was practised in 
 such quarrels, but after they had shouted and 
 gesticulated at each other for a quarter of an 
 hour, he generally gave in and retreated, the 
 woman screaming after him as he went. One of 
 our party hearing the cause of her complaint, 
 gave her a few Turkish coins to buy bread for 
 her children. This brought upon him a torrent 
 of thanks and blessings, and it was observed that 
 the disputes of the woman with the keeper were 
 carried on with less animation. 
 
 On the third day after we entered the laza 
 retto, a little before sunset, a message was 
 brought us from the physician, desiring that we 
 would do him the favor to come down stairs. 
 We descended to the court of the lazaretto, and 
 stood in a row before Dr. Eperon, a slender 
 
A SHOW OF TONGUES. 1C7 
 
 Frenchman of, perhaps, thirty years of age, who 
 planted himself at a safe distance from us, and 
 politely asked us in his native language if we 
 were quite well. 
 
 " Perfectly so," was our answer. 
 
 " I am glad of it," said the doctor ; " but you 
 must excuse me if I go through with certain 
 formalities. Will you be so kind as to let me see 
 your tongues?" 
 
 We all put out our tongues together. 
 
 " That will do," said he ; " to-morrow morning, 
 after sunrise, you are at liberty to leave the 
 lazaretto." We bowed and returned to our 
 rooms, whither we were followed by one of the 
 keepers, who brought a brazier full of live coals, 
 and throwing into it a small quantity of sulphur, 
 fumigated our persons and our clothes. 
 
168 THE GATE OF GAZA. 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 
 Continuation of the journey to Jerusalem. The Gate of Gaza. A vast 
 olive-grove. Curious travelling cradle. Remains of a Christian 
 church. Askelon. Ancient walls. Sand drifting over the fields. 
 El Medjal. Little oxen. Rude ploughs. Ashdod. Ruins of a large 
 Khan. A chorus of frogs. Gazelles feeding. Village of Zebua. 
 Saracenic bridges. Women carrying burdens. Town of Ramleh. 
 An abandoned tower. Plain of Sharon. A convent, where we pass 
 the night. The mosquitoes from the cisterns. 
 
 JERUSALEM, PALESTINE, February 22d, 1853. 
 ON leaving the lazaretto next morning, our 
 dragoman took us through a part of the dirty 
 town, to show us some things which, he said, 
 were always visited by travellers. He stopped 
 us at a remnant of an old wall, on the side of 
 which was seen the beginning of an arch that 
 had once, apparently, extended over the way. 
 " This," said he, " is the gate of Gaza, the doors 
 of which were carried away by Samson. There," 
 pointing to some granite columns lying on the 
 ground, " are part of the temple which Samson 
 pulled down upon the heads of the Philistines." 
 "We did not linger long to look at these apocry 
 phal antiquities, but went on through the vast 
 olive-grove lying north of the town, a monument 
 of past ages, concerning which there could be no 
 
AX OLD OLIVE-GROVE. 169 
 
 doubt. It fills the whole breadth of the 
 from east to west, and extends northward to the 
 distance of about four miles. The trees are old 
 and venerable, with enormous stems of an irreg 
 ular growth, and on that morning the sunshine 
 came down pleasantly among them upon the ver 
 dure, which was sprinkled with flowers. We met 
 many of the people of the neighborhood in their 
 picturesque oriental costume, coming into town ; 
 some of them driving asses loaded with green 
 crops, freshly gathered. On one of these ani 
 mals a cradle, made for carrying an infant, was 
 swinging, supported by two upright posts, fast 
 ened to the sides of the saddle, in which the lit 
 tle traveller might ride as much at his ease as in 
 the arms of his mother. 
 
 Our dragoman had promised to show us the 
 ruins of Askelon. He took us across a spur of 
 the sand-hills, that border the sea, a waste in 
 which, to judge from the huge sycamores still 
 scattered over it, harvests had once been gath 
 ered, and descending into a little green vale 
 planted with olive-trees, led us again up the 
 banks of sand, and finally brought us to the re 
 mains of a massive wall, with a broad arched 
 15 
 
170 ASKELON. 
 
 door, about a quarter of a mile from the sea 
 shore. " These," said he, " are the remains of a 
 Christian church of the City of Askelon. The 
 columns belonging to this church were dragged 
 to the sea and thrown into it, when the city was 
 destroyed, and its port filled up." The loose 
 sands had drifted about the spot where we stood. 
 Between us and the shore were other remains 
 portions of ancient walls and fortifications, 
 against which the sand was heaped, and the 
 waves of the sea were breaking on fragments of 
 old quays, now wholly deserted. Only in a little 
 valley to the northeast, green with herbage, and 
 planted with fruit-trees, stood a cluster of mud 
 cottages; all that is left of that great commer 
 cial city for which the east and the west con 
 tended so fiercely for so many centuries. 
 
 From this scene of desolation we turned away, 
 and descending the sand-hills where the wind 
 has piled them about the olive-trees almost to 
 their upper branches, we came to green mead 
 ows, with pools of rain-water lying among them, 
 overlooked by the little town of El Medjal. It 
 is pleasantly situated on a bank, with tall mina 
 rets rising above its trees. Fortunately, our road 
 
SYRIAN OXEN ASHDOD. 171 
 
 did not pass through it, so there was nothing to 
 mar the agreeable impression made by the 
 beauty of its aspect at a little distance. Beyond, 
 the peasants were ploughing their fields with 
 light ploughs, drawn by little oxen, of a size, 
 which in our country, would make them pass for 
 steers of two years old. One hand held the up 
 right handle of the plough, and the other guided 
 the oxen. The shares, as they traced a shallow 
 furrow, uprooted tufts of narcissus in bloom. 
 
 When at length we overtook our loaded cam 
 els, they had stopped for the night on a tract of 
 pasturage, where herds and flocks were feeding, 
 and a pool of fresh water lay beside the ridge of 
 sand-hills. At a little distance was the town of 
 Esdud, the Ashdod of the Philistines and the 
 Azotus of later times, seated on a little emi 
 nence, not far from which lay the ruins of a spa 
 cious khan or caravanserai. As the sun was go 
 ing down, the women and boys of the village 
 came about us, collecting the sheep and cattle, 
 and driving them to their folds for the night, and 
 laborers, one after another, passed us, returning 
 from the fields, with donkeys bearing their 
 ploughs, harrows, and mattocks for no vehicle 
 
172 A KHAN. 
 
 on wheels, even of the humblest kind, is ever seen 
 in any part of Syria. 
 
 It was a luxury to dine again in our tent, un 
 molested by flies, which swarmed in the lazaretto 
 we had left ; and, at a later hour, to stretch our 
 limbs on our beds, sure that our slumbers would 
 not be disturbed by fleas, with which the laza 
 retto was alive in every part. There was a 
 hoarse chorus of frogs from the pool, but this 
 mingling with the roar of the Mediterranean as 
 it broke on the sand-hills to the west of our en 
 campment, was really sleep-inspiring. In the 
 morning, while our camels were getting ready, 
 we visited the ruins of the khan. Massive piers 
 of hewn stone, six feet in diameter, uphold a row 
 of pointed Saracenic arches, surrounding a quad 
 rangle of a hundred and fifty feet square, the 
 pavement of which yet remains. Here are the 
 vaults, some of them yet entire, in which travel 
 lers and merchants once stabled camels, or had 
 their merchandise locked up for the night ; and 
 traces of the hinges are yet seen upon which the 
 huge gates of the place were turned. The khan 
 in these parts seems once to have served not 
 only as a place of shelter, but as a stronghold, 
 
GAZELLES FEEDING. 173 
 
 in which the caravans were safe against surprises 
 by night. 
 
 "We walked up to the town, from which we had a 
 view of the surrounding country. A broad, shallow 
 basin lay before us, green, treeless, fenceless, un 
 inhabited, like the prairies of the West. Along 
 the bottom of this vale we followed a path lead 
 ing almost due north, among extensive fields of 
 grain and wastes of pasturage. About noon, 
 one of our train pointed to the declivities on 
 the eastern side, and said : " There are gazelles 
 feeding." We looked, and saw twelve of these 
 beautiful creatures, quietly grazing on the green 
 slope, seven in one troop and five in another. 
 Immediately Balthas was on the ground, with 
 his rifle, in pursuit of them. They took the 
 alarm, and began to move off slowly ; he fired 
 while yet at too great a distance for any certain 
 aim, and the instant the smoke broke from the 
 muzzle, they were in full flight, bounding airily 
 away to the southeast, till they were out of sight. 
 I should have hardly thought it possible for fear 
 to manifest itself so gracefully. 
 
 Our caravan made its halt at noon, on a green 
 near the village of Zebna, where, as we sat on 
 15* 
 
174 A RUENED CHURCH. 
 
 the grass, we had before us a fine broad valley ; 
 the village, with a square tower in the midst, 
 seated on a little hill, and beyond it the dark 
 range of the mountains of Judea. Going up to 
 the village, we found the tower to belong to what 
 was once a Christian church, now used for a 
 school, built, as was manifest from its architec 
 ture, in the time of the Crusaders, who have left 
 the tokens of their occupation scattered through 
 the country. Part of the walls had fallen, leaving 
 the building open on one side, but the rest, with 
 its pointed arches, was in perfect preservation. 
 There was nobody in or about the building, but 
 the space within had been carefully and neatly 
 swept; perhaps it had served as a school that 
 morning. 
 
 Both beyond Zebna, and before arriving at it, 
 we crossed several Saracenic bridges over small 
 streams, vestiges of the dominion of a race as 
 energetic as the Crusaders, and in their day, per 
 haps, considerably more civilized. Many people 
 passed us, who greeted us kindly with the Arabic 
 word for "welcome," which sometimes broke 
 from their lips with an energy that startled me ; 
 but the good impression made by this civility 
 
RAMLEH A TOWER. 1 7rJ 
 
 was counteracted by the manner in which they 
 behaved to their women. It is women who carry 
 the burdens, when there is no donkey to carry 
 them ; and it is a frequent sight in Syria to see 
 a lazy Arab travelling along on a donkey, with 
 two or three women trotting on foot beside him. 
 Our journey brought us to the top of an emi 
 nence, on the slope of which, eastward of where 
 we stood, the town of Ramleh lay before us, the 
 centre of a vast circle of huge old olive-trees, 
 amidst which grew fields of luxuriant barley. A 
 little without the terrace, in the midst of a quad 
 rangle of ruined walls, arches, and vaults, two 
 hundred feet square, stands a lofty tower of 
 white marble with Saracenic arches. We en 
 tered the enclosure at its principal gate ; a row 
 of massive piers and vaults, partly entire and in 
 part fallen, stood on each side of a spacious 
 court, covered with fresh herbage. The ground 
 beneath was hollow with pits, the vaults of 
 which, in places, had fallen in. We descended 
 by one of these openings, and found ourselves in 
 a sort of crypt, spacious, and with lofty pillars 
 supporting pointed arches. The sides of this 
 subterraneous apartment are lined with a smooth 
 
176 GUARDIAN OF THE TOWEK. 
 
 stucco, and I have no doubt that it was once a 
 reservoir into which the winter rains were gath 
 ered. There were two of them, one on the south 
 and another on the north side of the quadrangle. 
 A man with a sabre by his side was sitting in 
 the shade of the wall, as we entered the court, 
 engaged in the usual oriental manner of passing 
 time, that is to say, smoking a long pipe. He 
 rose and followed us when we went into the vaults 
 below ; and when we came out, he kept near us : 
 he was probably the keeper of the place. We 
 ascended to the top of the tower by its narrow 
 staircase ; we heard his steps behind us, and 
 while we looked at the glorious view from the 
 summit, he seated himself near us and smoked 
 his pipe tranquilly till we were ready to go down 
 again. The atmosphere was beautifully trans 
 parent ; the sea was in sight to the west ; the 
 mighty range of rocks which forms the greater 
 part of the territory of Judea, bounded the view 
 on the east; between these was the plain of 
 Sharon green and fresh, but no longer famed for 
 its roses; still nearer lay the town of Ramleh, 
 with its multitude of little domes forming the 
 house-tops, and just under our feet was an Arab 
 
A LATIN CONVENT. 177 
 
 cemetery, crowded with tombs of a rude ma 
 sonry, plastered over with mortar and white 
 washed. 
 
 Our dragoman, in the mean time, had pro 
 ceeded with the camels and the baggage to the 
 Latin convent in Eamleh, which, on descending 
 from the tower, we had some difficulty in finding. 
 We wandered about in the outer streets of the 
 town looking for it, until our appearance began 
 to attract some attention. The boys shouted 
 after us, and two of our party, lingering behind 
 the others, were complimented with a volley of 
 small stones, for which, however, the young 
 rogues were rebuked by an elderly Arab. At 
 length, we discovered our camels in a little en 
 closure, hedged with the prickly pear. Close at 
 hand was the convent, to which we were admit 
 ted, and in which we found our rooms already 
 assigned us. "I hope you like them," said the 
 Superior, a Spaniard of prepossessing physiog 
 nomy and agreeable, courteous manners "I 
 hope you like them ; they are the best we have." 
 
 In fact we had no reason to be dissatisfied ; the 
 day had been hot, and the coolness of our cham 
 bers on the ground-floor, vaulted with masonry, 
 
178 MOSQUITOES. 
 
 was very agreeable. Our cook had his conve 
 nient kitchen near us, with a small dining-room 
 next it, and our attendants were provided with a 
 spacious dormitory. The Franciscan convent at 
 Ramleh, like most of the Latin convents in the 
 castle, had but few inmates there was but one 
 friar besides the Superior, a Spaniard also, and 
 with them was associated an Arab lay -brother, 
 who had lived with them so long that he spoke 
 Spanish fluently. The convent is a spacious 
 building, erected round three or four different 
 courts, all of them clean and silent. They told 
 me that the convent was poor, which I thought 
 not unlikely. While the bell was ringing for ves 
 pers, I happened to be in the main court, and 
 looking round the corner, saw the gentlemanly 
 Superior pulling the rope with great activity. 
 
 Our chambers swarmed with mosquitoes, bred 
 in the numerous cisterns of the convent, contain 
 ing rain-water, some of which were yet full to the 
 brim, and open to the air. We had not been an 
 hour in our beds before we wished ourselves 
 again in our tents. 
 
PARTING WITH OUR ARABS. 179 
 
 LETTEE XIV. 
 
 Journey 1o Jerusalem continued. We take our leave of the Arabs and. 
 their camels. Journey on horseback. Queer bridles and saddles. 
 A janizary of the American Vice-Consul at Jerusalem. His long 
 staff. Entrance upon the hill-country. A lunch under evergreen 
 oaks. Steep ascent by a bridle-path. Sure-footed horses. Soil full 
 of loose stones. Its fertility. First sight of the Holy City. The 
 JafiSa gate of the city. People promenading in the country. Bearded 
 priests. Hotel kept by a Maltese. Visit to the Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre. 
 
 JERUSALEM, PALESTINE, February 22d, 1853. 
 IN the morning when we left our rooms, we 
 found the Arab camel-drivers preparing to return 
 with their animals to their little town on the 
 desert. Their journey ended here, and for each 
 camel which they had led in their caravan from 
 Cairo to Ramleh, the compensation to the dri 
 vers was about four dollars, to say nothing of a 
 flogging or two thrown in, to sweeten the bar 
 gain, by , our free-handed dragoman. We had 
 been so long together in the solitude through 
 which our journey lay, that we had conceived a 
 sort of friendship for these people. We had 
 found them respectful, laborious, and always 
 ready with their services ; and we now took leave 
 of Mohammed and Mohammed AH and Achmed, 
 
180 JOURNEY ON HORSEBACK. 
 
 and the two others whose names T forget, with 
 something like regret. The poor fellows seemed 
 half-sorry to part with us, and Mohammed, the 
 oldest and most responsible man among them, 
 kissed the hands that were offered him to shake. 
 Meantime, a gigantic Syrian had brought to 
 the convent-gate a troop of fifteen horses and 
 mules, with which to perform the journey from 
 Eamleh to Jerusalem. The horses were equipped 
 with patched bridles, compounded of leather, 
 worsted, ribbon, and rope, ragged saddles, and 
 stirrups of various patterns, but principally of 
 the Turkish, with a broad plate for the foot to 
 rest upon. A janizary of the American Yice- 
 Consul at Jerusalem, on his way home from Jaffa, 
 had heard that there was a party of American 
 travellers at the convent, and had come to offer 
 us his company and protection during the rest of 
 our journey. He wore a sabre, with a pair of 
 pistols clumsily stuck in his sash, after the fash 
 ion of the country, and carried in his hand a 
 long staff with a large silver head, the symbol of 
 his office. We put into the hand of the Arab 
 lay-brother, who spoke Spanish, the expected 
 gratuity, and mounting our horses, proceeded 
 
HILL-COUNTRY OF JUDEA. 181 
 
 through the streets of the town. Before us rode 
 the janizary, resting his long staff on his Turkish 
 stirrup, and occasionally wielding it to poke the 
 people aside when they obstructed the way. 
 
 Crossing a rich plain, we entered upon a hilly 
 country with frequent villages on the heights, and 
 finally followed a road into a deep ravine, run 
 ning far up into the mountain-country of Judea. 
 At its bottom was a narrow bridle-path, choked 
 with loose stones, and its steep sides were tufted 
 with evergreen shrubs ; on the right hand were 
 olive-trees planted on terraces among the rocks, 
 and on the left were flocks of goats, under the 
 care of keepers, browsing among the cliffs. We 
 made our mid-day halt at a spot where the ra 
 vine, widening, left a little valley, and a clump of 
 evergreen oaks made a pleasant shade. Close at 
 hand were the ruins of an old building our 
 dragoman called it a mosque, but I had little 
 doubt it was once a khan, and that the spacious 
 subterranean chambers, which were the only re 
 markable part of its remains, had once been res 
 ervoirs of rain-water. 
 
 Out of this ravine, after following it for a great 
 distance, we climbed into an extensive plantation 
 16 
 
182 BKIDLE-PATHS. 
 
 of olive-trees, by a path among the rocks, so 
 steep, slippery, and obstructed with blocks of 
 stone, that the attempt to travel it on horseback 
 seemed to me scarcely less than an act of mad 
 ness. I soon, however, perceived that there was 
 no cause of fear. The horses of this country, 
 though not otherwise a fine race, are wonderfully 
 sure-footed, and pick their way in safety up and 
 down precipices over which one of our own would 
 infallibly break his neck. 
 
 We had a tedious journey up and down the 
 bare hills, and across the stony valleys. The soil 
 of Judea is everywhere full of loose stones, yet it 
 seemed to me, from such examination as I was 
 able to give, that the rocks of the country in dis 
 integrating, resolve themselves into a rich mould, 
 which, as soon as it is touched with moisture, 
 starts into fertility. The barrenness that pre 
 vails is owing to the want of water ; wherever 
 that flows, the herbage is luxuriant, rich grasses 
 spring up, and abundant harvests are reared. 
 
 At length, after crossing a bleak table-land, 
 where the soil seemed to have been washed away 
 by rains from the spaces between projecting 
 rocks, we came in sight of the walls, the towers, 
 
THE HOLY CITY. 183 
 
 and the domes of the Holy City. The ancient 
 metropolis of Palestine, the once imperial Salem, 
 had not lost all its majesty, but still sat like a 
 queen in her place among the mountains of Ju- 
 dea. To the north stretched a broad grove of 
 olive-trees, and under the western wall the green 
 vale of Hinnom wound, deepening as it extended 
 to the south, till it turned eastward to join the 
 deeper glen of the Kedron ; and eastward of the 
 city were the steeps of Mount Olivet. I will not 
 attempt the description of a place described so 
 often, nor dwell upon the reflections which arose 
 in my mind at the first sight of that spot from 
 which the light of that religion now professed by 
 all the civilized world, dawned upon mankind, 
 and to which the hearts of millions in every zone 
 of the globe yet turn with a certain reverence. 
 
 "We approached the city by the road leading to 
 the Yafa Gate, which at that hour it was now 
 nearly five o'clock was pouring out its men and 
 women to enjoy the last rays of a most pleasant 
 sunshine. Among those who were walking into 
 the country were small parties of young men in 
 the academical garb of the Colleges, Armenian 
 and Greek priests in their flowing black robes, 
 
184 THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 
 
 and Latin priests in their brown gowns. I 
 thought I had never seen so fine an assortment 
 of beards of different tinges of color, as those 
 which hung from those reverend chins. "We en 
 tered the gates without being asked for our pass 
 ports, and winding through narrow, dirty streets, 
 and vaulted passages under houses which were 
 built directly over the ways, we stopped at the 
 door of the Melita Hotel, close to the Church of 
 the Holy Sepulchre, kept by Antonio Zanieni, 
 one of that race which is found everywhere dis 
 persed through the East the Maltese. We were 
 shown into clean, comfortable rooms, after taking 
 possession of which, we went to the church, where 
 Greek mass was performing and the devout of 
 the Greek communion were pressing to the 
 place of the sepulchre, kneeling before it, and 
 kissing the sacred stone in which it is enclosed. 
 That evening, as the day was closing with great 
 splendor of light and color, we heard the muez 
 zin, from a minaret rising close to the church, 
 shouting and quavering his proclamation of the 
 hour of prayer, with extraordinary energy, as if 
 he protested against the Jewish and Christian 
 unbelief surrounding him on every side. Jeru 
 
RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASTS. 185 
 
 salem is the resort of enthusiasts of every creed 
 and clinie; Jews, who are here to lament the 
 destruction of their temple and wait for the com 
 ing of the Messiah ; pilgrims and devotees of 
 the Greek Church, the Latin and the Armenian, 
 and religious adventurers from America, of the 
 Protestant faith, who have crossed the Atlantic 
 to assist in preparing for the return of the Jews. 
 Since we have been here we have visited most 
 of the places within and without Jerusalem, as 
 sociated by history or tradition with important 
 events. We have just now returned from an ex 
 cursion to the valley of Jordan and the Dead 
 Sea, the narrative of which I thought to have 
 given you. This letter, however, is already so 
 long, that I have relinquished the design of 
 writing out, at present, my notes of that journey. 
 I have executed my principal purpose, which was 
 to give an account of our passage through the 
 desert and the southern part of Syria to Jeru 
 salem. 
 
 16* 
 
186 HARBOR OF SMYRNA. 
 
 LETTER XV. 
 
 The Lazaretto at Smyrna. Beautiful harbor. Fleet of American ships 
 of war in the Levant. Behavior of the Arabs to the Frank. Relaxa 
 tion of bigotry. Mohammedan prejudices. No Christian converts 
 from Moslems. Power of the foreign consuls. Extravagant preroga 
 tives of the American consuls. Hasty appointments to consulships. 
 American missionaries at Beyroot. Dr. Eli Smith. Mr. Calhoun. 
 A Druse Emir. Dr. De Forrest. A girls' school. Demand for edu 
 cated wives. 
 
 SMYRNA, ASIA MINOR, March 29th, 1853. 
 THIS letter is written from the lazaretto of 
 Smyrna, the great commercial city of the Turkish 
 empire, seated on the borders of one of the 
 finest harbors in the Levant. Before the long, 
 yellow building in which I have my chamber, 
 spreads a broad sheet of transparent water, re 
 mote from the agitations of the Mediterranean, 
 and apparently surrounded by land like a lake. 
 It is sheltered and overlooked in part by lofty 
 mountains, with masses of forest on their sides, 
 and summits of bare rock, and in part by green 
 hills, up one of which the city has been climbing, 
 of late years, from the low plain on the southern 
 shore. Here whole navies might ride in safety, 
 and never feel the storms that vex the open sea. 
 It is sometimes asked by Americans, why it is 
 
USE OF OUR NAVY. 187 
 
 that our squadron in the Mediterranean never 
 makes its appearance in the waters of this excel 
 lent harbor. The design of maintaining vessels 
 of war in this quarter of the world is, of course, 
 to inspire respect, by creating an impression of 
 our power to assert our rights against encroach 
 ment. A whole fleet of frigates anchored at 
 Port Mahon or at Spezzia, would not have this 
 effect in a much greater degree than if they were 
 stationed at Brooklyn or Norfolk. Nobody 
 makes a voyage to Port Mahon to admire the 
 strength of our men-of-war, their capacity for 
 speed, the excellence of their discipline, or the 
 terrible beauty and perfection of their arrange 
 ments for dealing death upon our enemies. At 
 Naples they are already so familiar a sight that 
 their appearance does nothing to strengthen the 
 impression already made. Our naval officers, at 
 these places, interchange civilities with the peo 
 ple of the country, give balls on board their 
 vessels, which are the admiration of the ladies, 
 and do their best to make their time pass agree 
 ably. But if the Navy Department would give a 
 little attention to this matter, they might be em 
 ployed to somewhat better purpose. 
 
188 BOMBARDMENT OF ACRE. 
 
 In a conversation on this subject, which I had 
 with the American consul at Beyroot, he said, 
 " In the event of any controversy arising between 
 me and the Pasha here, it would be far more 
 easily settled if there were an American vessel of 
 war in the harbor." These words fully express 
 the true use of the American squadron in the 
 Mediterranean. The authorities of a barbarous 
 country and an arbitrary government naturally 
 pay as little attention to the rights of foreigners 
 as to the rights of their own subjects, unless they 
 find themselves forced to do otherwise. Let a 
 nation bring the evidence of its strength and 
 greatness to their doors, and their sense of 
 justice is surprisingly quickened. A few years 
 since, the English poured a storm of rockets and 
 bombs upon Acre Akka, as they now generally 
 call it and battered the fortifications and the 
 town to fragments. Since that time the slightest 
 complaint of the representatives of the English 
 government has received immediate attention. 
 
 There is not a port of any consequence in the 
 Levant which the American squadron ought not 
 to visit in its turn. Here, at the principal centre 
 of Turkish commerce, it might find a shelter in 
 
THE AMERICAN CONSUL. 189 
 
 the most inclement season, and at Beyroot, the 
 great port of Syria, with which our commercial 
 relations are acquiring more and more impor 
 tance, though the north winds in winter some 
 times render the anchorage insecure, they would 
 find the water as calm as a lake from the first of 
 April to the first of November. The Turks will 
 never be convinced of our power to exact satis 
 faction for injuries by what they read, for they 
 never read; they must be convinced by what 
 they see ; and it is the proper business of our 
 navy to instruct them on this point. The sight 
 of our superb vessels, riding in their pride and 
 strength upon the Turkish waters, would make 
 the matter clear to their minds. 
 
 When our present consul first arrived at Bey- 
 root, the Pasha was disposed to treat him as he 
 treated the consuls of the minor powers, that of 
 Tuscany, for example : he neglected to return 
 his official call, a point of etiquette the strict ob 
 servance of which is reserved for powers of the 
 first and second rank. Our consul was not of a 
 temper to submit to this, and wrote to the 
 Pasha that if his call was not returned without 
 delay, he should report the matter to the govern- 
 
190 TURKISH PREJUDICES. 
 
 ment of the Sultan at Constantinople. This had 
 its due effect, the call was returned. A short 
 time afterward, the English consul at Beyroot 
 gave an official dinner, at which the Pasha and 
 the consuls of the foreign governments were 
 guests, and at which the American consul was 
 placed next to himself. A new light seemed to 
 break on the Pasha's mind, and he afterward 
 treated our consul with great consideration. 
 But it is- not fitting that the respect with which 
 our country is regarded, should be left to depend 
 on circumstances like these. 
 
 In the behavior of the people of this country 
 toward the Franks, a great change has taken 
 place within a few years. The ancient bigotry 
 of the Moslems is fast relaxing. Not only do the 
 Turks get drunk like Christians, of which I was 
 sorry to see some examples on board the Aus 
 trian steamer that brought me hither from Bey- 
 root, but they submit to contact with the 
 Christians, and do not think themselves, as once 
 they did, contaminated by it; and they suffer 
 our presence in their most holy places. We had 
 on board of our steamer a distinguished officer of 
 the Turkish empire, Mohammed Pasha, the mili- 
 
RELAXATION OF BIGOTRY. 191 
 
 it 
 
 tary governor of Damascus, a seraskier. There 
 are but five seraskiers in the empire, and the 
 office is equivalent to that of marshal in France. 
 He dined with us occasionally, and his son 
 always. 
 
 In Cairo, you may enter any of their mosques 
 with a janizary, when the faithful are not at 
 their devotions ; at Beyroot you may enter them, 
 if you will only take off your shoes. At Da 
 mascus, the idea that a mosque is profaned by the 
 entrance of a Christian is still entertained, but 
 even there the old fanaticism is giving way. 
 " Ibrahim Pasha did a great deal of good when 
 he was master of this country," said an old Jew 
 waiter at the Palmyra Hotel in Damascus. 
 "Before he came, no Frank, no Christian, no 
 Jew, could ride on horseback through the 
 streets ; the Moslems would have pulled him 
 down, and perhaps torn him in pieces. He was 
 obliged to dismount at the city gate, and lead 
 his horse through the streets. Ibrahim Pasha 
 decreed that men of all religions should have 
 equal privileges in the community. After Ibra 
 him Pasha was driven out, the English used 
 their influence to keep for the Franks and Chris- 
 
192 FATHER CHARLES. 
 
 t 
 
 tians the rights he had granted them, and we 
 are allowed to ride on horseback still." 
 
 This thaw of prejudices so strong and so long 
 cherished, this disregard of the precepts of the 
 Koran, encouraged as it is in high places, is very 
 likely to become far more general in the next 
 generation than it now is. There are some who 
 think they see in it a sign of the approaching 
 day, when the followers of Mohammed will have 
 become gradually weaned from their false revela 
 tion, and be prepared to embrace a purer re 
 ligion. There are others who imagine that this 
 day has been postponed by the interference of 
 the English in the controversy between Ibrahim 
 Pasha and the Sultan. I was, not long since, at 
 the Latin Convent on Mount Carmel, the pro 
 curator of which, Father Charles, an intelligent 
 and agreeable man, is well known to travellers 
 in Syria. "It was a great mistake of the 
 English government," said he, " that it took the 
 part of the Sultan against Ibrahim Pasha. The 
 English fear that Russia may obtain possession 
 of Constantinople. It was, without doubt, the 
 ultimate design of Ibrahim, to seize upon the 
 seat of the Turkish empire, and if it had once 
 
THE POLICY OF IBRAHIM PASHA. 193 
 
 fallen into the hands of so able a prince, would 
 have given England the barrier against the 
 further advances of Russia, which she so much 
 desires. But beyond all this, it was the policy 
 of Ibrahim Pasha, as it was that of Mohammed 
 Ali, his father, to break down the religious preju 
 dices of the Mohammedans, to put all religions 
 on a footing of perfect equality, to adopt Euro 
 pean institutions, and to cause the Franks to be 
 treated with courtesy and deference wherever 
 they went. In this way, the gates of the East 
 would have been opened to civilization and 
 Christianity." 
 
 Meantime, I would not have you suppose that 
 the old Mussulman hatred of the Franks, though 
 so much diminished, is extinct. A sense of de 
 cency, or the fear of the bastinado, often restrains 
 its expression in grown persons for the foreign 
 consuls, when an insult is offered to an indi 
 vidual of their nation, have the means of subject 
 ing the offender to exemplary punishment but 
 it breaks out in the behavior of children, who 
 feel no such restraints. I cannot say that I 
 observed anything of this in Egypt, but it was 
 apparent enough the moment we entered Syria. 
 17 
 
194 MUSSULMAN FANATICISM. 
 
 As we passed through Khan Yoonas, the frontier 
 town a train of eight persons in the Frank cos 
 tume, on camels we were saluted by the boys 
 and young girls from the open doors, the win 
 dows, and the house-tops, with shouts and 
 gestures of derision. At Eamleh, a village one 
 day's journey from Jerusalem, as our party were 
 walking through the streets, two of them, linger 
 ing behind the rest, were followed by boys who 
 threw stones at them, until they were stopped by 
 an Arab coming out of his house, accosting them 
 in an angry manner, and apparently command 
 ing them to desist. I was one day walking near 
 the Mohammedan cemetery, just without the 
 walls of Jerusalem. It was Thursday, the day 
 before the Mohammedan Sabbath ; the women 
 were praying at the graves of their friends. Two 
 children beautiful creatures they were a boy 
 and girl, with brilliant eyes, and gayly dressed, 
 came forward from one of the graves, where two 
 women were sitting, and sang, with great glee 
 and spirit, a song current in the country, com 
 posed in ridicule of the Franks. At the entrance 
 of the town of Nablous, in Samaria, where the 
 women and children were assembled in hun- 
 
INSULTS TO THE FRANKS. 195 
 
 dreds, in their holiday dresses, in a beautiful 
 olive-grove, the little stones thrown by juvenile 
 hands rattled about us like hail, and we were 
 pursued for a quarter of a mile by a chorus of 
 shouts and songs, till we were fairly within the 
 city gates. There are Protestant missionaries 
 from America at Smyrna, at Beyroot, at Damas 
 cus, and other places, but they depend very 
 much on the American consuls for protection. 
 " We could not remain in Damascus," said one 
 of them to me, " we could scarcely maintain our 
 selves here for a day, but for the support which 
 is given to our rights by the vice-consul." 
 
 It is remarkable, as it is a proof of the almost 
 ineradicable nature of Mohammedan prejudices 
 against the Christians, in Syria, that the mission 
 aries never attempt to make proselytes from 
 among the professors of Islamism ; they only 
 seek to persuade to their faith those that belong 
 to the Greek Church, or those who acknowledge 
 the supremacy of the Pope. It is well under 
 stood that if a Mohammedan were to abjure 
 his creed, and embrace Christianity, his life would 
 be forfeited. " If the criminal tribunals did not 
 meddle in the matter," said our vice-consul at 
 
196 POWER OF THE CONSULS. 
 
 Damascus, " the people would, and we should 
 have a tumult at once. There was, not long 
 since, in this city, a Mohammedan who professed 
 to believe the doctrines of Christianity, and who 
 went to India, promising the missionaries to 
 make a public profession of his faith in that 
 country, but I know not whether he did so." 
 The missionaries, it seems, do not insist upon the 
 Moslems becoming candidates for the crown of 
 martyrdom. 
 
 The foreign consuls in the Turkish empire 
 have great power, under the laws of the country, 
 and great weight with the government of the 
 Sultan. If a Pasha or Governor of a province 
 misbehaves himself, and gives them just cause of 
 complaint, an application from them addressed 
 to the Sultan is sure to procure his removal. " I 
 can commit any man to prison, within the dis 
 trict for which I am consul," said our consul at 
 Beyroot to me, " for any cause whatever ; and it is 
 only after he has been a prisoner for three days, 
 that the Pasha has a right to send to me inqui 
 ring the reason of his detention." 
 
 But this is not all. A law passed by the Con 
 gress of the United States, in August, 1848, makes 
 
LAW OF CONSULSHIPS. 197 
 
 the American consuls appointed for the Turkish 
 empire judges in all causes of a criminal nature, 
 in which a citizen of the United States is the ac 
 cused party. I pray you to look at the statute, 
 and see if it is not an extraordinary one. The 
 consul is both the judge and the jury, and from 
 his sentence there is no appeal. The usages of 
 the Turkish empire, and, if I ani not mistaken, 
 a special treaty with the Porte, sanction the ex 
 ercise of this power on the part of the consul. 
 Mr. Offley is the American consul at the port of 
 Smyrna. He may not only throw me and the 
 American friends who are with me, and the two 
 Smyrniotes who came on with us from Cairo, and 
 are now in this lazaretto, into prison and keep 
 us there for three days, on no accusation at all, 
 but he may hang all the Americans of our party 
 to-morrow morning, without allowing us a mo 
 ment's delay, or any opportunity of procuring 
 the revision of a hasty or capricious sentence. 
 If you should find the law to be as I have stated, 
 I hope you will inquire whether it ought not to 
 be immediately amended. 
 
 Powers like those which I have mentioned, 
 ought not to be intrusted to any but the most 
 17* 
 
198 TJNWOKTHY CONSULS. 
 
 able and upright men. An American consul in 
 a port of the Turkish empire is the sultan of all 
 the American citizens who are within his dis 
 trict; he holds their lives and liberties in his 
 hands. As much caution ought to be used in 
 selecting competent persons for the post, as for 
 that of the most important judicial office the 
 highest conscientiousness and the soundest judg 
 ment are not qualities too exalted for it. Yet it 
 is sometimes strangely misbestowed. 
 
 Not long since, a Prussian subject, who was 
 obliged to leave Constantinople for some misbe 
 havior, and who could not return to it in a pri 
 vate capacity, went to the United States, and 
 after an interview with Mr. "Webster, obtained 
 from Mr. Fillmore the appointment of American 
 consul at the port of Constantinople. He arrived 
 at Syra, in Greece, with the commission in his 
 pocket, and was waiting for an American vessel 
 of war to convey him to his place of destination, 
 where he expected to make a sort of triumphal 
 entry, when Mr. Marsh, our minister at Constan 
 tinople, hearing of his appointment, wrote in 
 stantly to Mr. Fillmore, assuring him of the man's 
 utter unworthiness, and advising that his com- 
 
MISSIONARIES AT BEYROOT. 199 
 
 mission should be immediately revoked. This 
 was done, and the Prussian received notice of 
 his dismissal as soon as it could be forwarded to 
 him. I do not give you his name, because I am 
 not quite sure that I remember it, and being in 
 the lazaretto, have no means of informing myself 
 by inquiry, but you may perhaps find it in the 
 list of recent appointments ; at all events you 
 shall have it in my next, after I am let out of this 
 prison. The case ought to be put on record as a 
 warning against hasty appointments to office. I 
 can hardly suppose that the office was bestowed, 
 in this case, with any distinct recollection of its 
 powers and responsibilities. 
 
 I have spoken of the American missionaries at 
 Beyroot. They are learned and laborious men. 
 One of them, Dr. Eli Smith, distinguished as an 
 orientalist, is preparing, with the help of a well- 
 educated native, a new Arabic translation of the 
 Scriptures from the original languages, the one 
 now used being from the Yulgate. Mr. Calhoun 
 has a school for young men, at Abeih, on the 
 western declivity of Lebanon, in which a regular 
 course of four years' instruction is given, ending 
 with some of the higher branches of mathemat- 
 
200 A GIRLS' SCHOOL. 
 
 ics and chemistry. All tlie pupils learn English, 
 and some of them Greek. They are twenty-two 
 in number, and one of them is a Druse Emir. 
 Dr. Deforest has at Beyroot a girls' school of 
 sixteen pupils, in which he is assisted by Mrs. 
 Deforest. I was present at a part of the annual 
 examination of this school. The girls acquitted 
 themselves well in English composition and the 
 specimens of their drawing exhibited, did them 
 great credit. They are clever geographers, I 
 hear. They are from families of different de 
 nominations of Christians, and their parents, 
 brothers, and sisters were present, their faces 
 shining with the delight they felt at seeing their 
 little friends becoming such accomplished schol 
 ars. The girls were neatly dressed ; a spencer, 
 or bodice, of printed calico, a skirt of the same 
 material, but of lighter color, and a tarboosh or 
 red cap, with a blue tassel, round the lower part 
 of which was wound a gay-colored handkerchief, 
 were the principal articles of their costume. 
 They had mostly a healthy look, fine large black 
 eyes, and large full lips. Some of them had a 
 decidedly Jewish cast of countenance, though 
 there were no Jewesses among them. 
 
EDUCATION AT BEYROOT. 201 
 
 Both these schools are successful, and on them 
 depend, I should suppose, the only hopes of the 
 mission in Syria. The school for girls is so much 
 in favor, that more persons apply for admission 
 than can be received. As soon as the education 
 of one of these girls is completed, her hand is 
 immediately sought in marriage by some wealthy 
 suitor. An impulse has been given to female 
 education which is likely to spread over the whole 
 country, and as mothers have, far more than 
 fathers, the forming of the minds and dispo 
 sitions of their children, may entirely change the 
 character of the population, almost before the 
 world is aware of the means by which the change 
 is effected. The demand for female education 
 has induced the Sisters of Charity, a Catholic 
 order, to found a rival school, which I hear is 
 largely attended. 
 
202 LORD STRATFORD. 
 
 LETTER XVI. 
 
 Constantinople. Foreign relations of Turkey. Arrival of Lord Strat 
 ford. Feebleness of the Turkish government. Corruption and public 
 plunder. Banditti at Smyrna. Their robberies. Their cruelties. 
 The Chiefs of the Banditti. A Druse robber caught and caged. The 
 Druse population. The Sultan. His palace. His Pashas. Turkey 
 held together by pressure without. 
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE, April llth, 1853. 
 
 THE echoes of the Bosphoras and the Golden 
 Horn and they are very fine echoes were 
 awakened on the morning after my arrival at 
 Constantinople, by a salute fired in honor of the 
 arrival of Lord Stratford, the British Ambassa 
 dor. It was quite time for him to be at his post, 
 for the Russian government seemed on the point 
 of bringing over the Sultan to its projects. 
 What they were, I have learned from good 
 authority, but perhaps before this letter reaches 
 your hands you may have the information from 
 some other quarter. Meantime, I give it to you, 
 as nearly as I can, in the words in which I 
 received it. 
 
 "The Russian government has pretended to 
 interest itself very much in the dispute between 
 the Greek and the Latin Church respecting the 
 
PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 203 
 
 possession of the Holy Sepulchre and other 
 sanctuaries in Palestine. It has also professed 
 a strong desire to be recognized by the Sultan 
 as a kind of protector of the Greek Christians 
 within his dominions. These, however, were the 
 public pretexts of a deeper design. Eussia was 
 in reality laboring to engage the Turkish govern 
 ment in a triple alliance, offensive and defensive, 
 in favor of the principle of absolutism, with 
 Austria for the third power. By means of this, 
 it was hoped to mould the policy of the Porte to 
 a perfect conformity with that of Eussia, and to 
 make it in effect a Eussian province. You know 
 that Turkey has been a place of refuge to the 
 liberals of Europe from the persecution of the 
 absolute governments; you know, too, that in 
 Turkey perfect freedom of opinion concerning 
 questions of European politics is allowed. This 
 was to be so no longer, if the scheme of Eussia 
 could be carried into effect. 
 
 "The Sultan was not much inclined to the 
 proposed alliance ; the Grand Vizier was deci 
 dedly against it; but the Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs, who had resided in western Europe, was 
 as strongly in its favor. Pressed by his minister 
 
204 INTERVENTION OF FRANCE. 
 
 on one side, and the Russian embassy on the 
 other, to make common cause with the two great 
 absolute powers of Europe against the enemies 
 of monarchy in its purity, there was danger that 
 the Sultan would give way. 
 
 " Since the arrival of Lord Stratford, affairs 
 wear a new face. The project of a triple alli 
 ance is now given up, and the negotiations on 
 the part of Eussia have fallen back upon minor 
 questions. In resisting this project, the French 
 government has been quite as decided and active 
 as that of Great Britain, inasmuch as Franco 
 has, or imagines she has, the same interest in 
 preventing Eussia from aggrandizing herself in 
 the East." 
 
 In this account of the matter we have an ex 
 planation of the ordering of the French fleet to 
 the waters of Turkey, the haste with which the 
 British government despatched Lord Stratford 
 to Constantinople, and the reported sailing I do 
 not yet know whether the report be true, but 
 suppose it must be of the British squadron at 
 Malta for the Levant. The history of the affair 
 illustrates in a remarkable manner both the 
 weakness of the Turkish empire and the skill of 
 
FEEBLENESS OF TURKEY. 205 
 
 Eussian diplomacy. The foreign policy of the 
 Porte does not depend upon its own views or 
 inclinations, but on the accidental influence 
 which any of the great powers of Europe obtain 
 over it. The Kussian negotiators arje the ablest 
 and wiliest of Europe. Now, when they are just 
 on the point of becoming by superior dexterity 
 winners in the Turkish question, England tosses 
 a sword upon the chess-board, and breaks up the 
 game. 
 
 The Turkish government is as feeble in its 
 administration at home, as it is in its dealings 
 with other powers feeble to enforce its own 
 authority, feeble to preserve order, feeble to ex 
 ecute any work of public importance. 
 
 " The people who surround the Pasha," said 
 an American, long a resident at Constantinople, 
 " are the most rapacious and shameless of plun 
 derers. No project on which money is to be 
 spent can be set on foot, which they will not con 
 trive the means of making an occasion of un 
 bounded pillage. Not long since a road was laid 
 out from this city to Adrianople and a large sum 
 of money was raised for the purpose, enough, as 
 was estimated, to complete it. Ten miles of the 
 18 
 
206 CORRUPTION BANDITTI. . 
 
 road was made, and the money was gone. It 
 was computed that if the rest of the road were 
 to be constructed at the same rate, it would 
 bring the empire to bankruptcy, and the project 
 was accordingly abandoned. Every public work 
 is as wastefully. man aged." 
 
 While at Smyrna, the other day, I heard many 
 accounts of robberies committed by banditti who 
 have their haunts in the neighboring mountains. 
 The city is fairly invested by them ; and no man 
 whose life is worth the ransom of a thousand 
 piastres, ventures to trust himself at any con 
 siderable distance from the city, or to inhabit 
 any of the neighboring villages, except that of 
 Boornabat, on the plain of Smyrna. Yet in 
 these villages many merchants still possess 
 country-houses and gardens, grateful and pleas 
 ant retreats, where they once lived with their 
 families a part of the year, when the heat made 
 Smyrna, a closely-built city with very narrow 
 and very dirty streets and not a single open 
 square or public promenade, disagreeable and 
 
 s 
 
 unwholesome. At present, they never visit 
 them. Smyrna is now a sort of prison watched 
 by a guard of robbers. About two years ago 
 
ROBBERIES. 207 
 
 they seized Mr. Van Lennep, a respectable 
 merchant of Smyrna, who was walking out with 
 two of his children. They demanded a hundred 
 thousand piastres for his ransom ; which was 
 negotiated down to fifty thousand about twenty 
 thousand dollars on the payment of which, he 
 was allowed to return home. One of the most 
 remarkable of their recent captures was that of 
 a Frenchman, the proprietor of a silk factory, 
 who a short time since was by some means de 
 coyed to a village not far from the city, seized, 
 and released on the payment of thirty thousand 
 piasters about twelve thousand dollars. "He 
 deserved his fate," said a Smyrniote, who acted 
 as our guide through the city. " He had 
 seduced several young women employed in his 
 factory, and the people of Smyrna all say that 
 the robbers served him right." 
 
 A lady, a native of the East, who had lived 
 many years in Smyrna, related to me an incident 
 which shows how little regard this community of 
 robbers have for human life. "A young man of 
 Smyrna, a Christian, had fallen in love with a 
 Turkish girl, and eloping with her, sought refuge 
 with the banditti, among the mountains. They 
 
208 ANECDOTES OF THE ROBBERS. 
 
 gave him shelter, and urged him to become one 
 of them, but he declined, hoping yet to escape to 
 Greece or some of its islands, where to have run 
 away with a Moslem would not be punishable as 
 a crime. One day the chief of the troop renewed 
 his instances, which were again firmly rejected. 
 The chief drew one of his pistols, aimed it at 
 the young woman, shot her dead on the spot, and 
 turning again to her lover, said to him, ' Now 
 you are ours.' Since that time the young man 
 has been a robber. He knew that if he returned 
 to society, the blood of the Turkish girl would be 
 required at his hands." 
 
 The present chief of the banditti is one who, 
 amidst the atrocities he is committing, has shown 
 himself capable of generous actions. On one oc 
 casion, hearing that a member of a family in 
 which he had been a servant was in some pecuni 
 ary embarrassment, he made his appearance and 
 offered him the means of extricating his affairs, 
 which, however, were not accepted. He resolutely 
 withheld his companions from committing any 
 robbery or act of wrong on Franks or Christians. 
 " The Turks," he said, " are our tyrants and op 
 pressors, and in plundering the Turks we perform 
 
A DRUSE ROBBER. 209 
 
 an act of justice; but let us spare the Christians, 
 who have never done us harm." 
 
 Some time since this man was taken and car 
 ried to Constantinople, where he was long de 
 tained a prisoner. During his confinement, the 
 troop broke through the rules he had laid down, 
 and robbed Franks, Christians, and Turks indis 
 criminately. " He is now at large," said the per 
 son who gave me this account, " and I hear that 
 in returning to his companions he manifested 
 great indignation at their conduct during his ab 
 sence." 
 
 I expressed my astonishment that the Turkish 
 government, having had him once in their hands, 
 should have allowed him to be again at liberty. 
 
 " He bribed high," was the reply ; " that is the 
 way we explain such things in 'this country." 
 
 When I was waiting at Beyroot, about four 
 weeks since, for the Austrian steamer to bring 
 me to Smyrna, I heard that a Druse chief, a pris 
 oner of the government, had been exposed at the 
 barracks, without the city, chained to a post, 
 with his hands tied behind him. On inquiry, I 
 learned it was a Mohammed Daoud, a noted rob 
 ber, who, for some time past, with a band of fol- 
 13* 
 
210 HIS AUDACITY. 
 
 lowers, has infested the road over Mount Leba 
 non, between Beyroot and Damascus, and com 
 mitted many robberies and murders. They relate 
 of him, that a man having a wife whom he 
 coveted, he entered his house by night, slew the 
 husband, and carried off the woman to his retreat 
 in the mountains. 
 
 Mohammed Daoud was one of the boldest -vil 
 lains of his class. He wrote to the Turkish au 
 thorities enumerating the robberies and assassi 
 nations of which he had been guilty, and added : 
 " You do not know by whom these things were 
 done. I am the man Mohammed Daoud ; they 
 were done by my hand or by my order. Take 
 me if you can." The government had made va 
 rious attempts to seize his person, but without 
 success, until at length a Druse family named 
 Joubelat, possessing high rank and great influ 
 ence among their people, engaged to apprehend 
 him and deliver him up. They watched his 
 movements, and rinding him at a convent, entered 
 the room where he was dining. He asked them 
 if they came in peace, and being told that they 
 did, allowed them to approach him, and found 
 himself their prisoner. He now complains that 
 
THE DKUSES. 211 
 
 he was taken by treachery. He is to be taken to 
 Constantinople, and if he has the means of pay 
 ing a heavy bribe, I shall not be surprised to hear 
 that he, like the robber-chief from Smyrna, is 
 again at liberty, hovering about the road from 
 Beyroot to Damascus. 
 
 "While I am speaking of the Druses, I will add 
 a word concerning those who inhabit the country 
 to the south of Damascus, and their quarrel with 
 the Turkish government. 
 
 These people possess a region, the passes to 
 which among the mountains are easily defended 
 by a few men. It is the rule of the Turkish em 
 pire to allow none to become soldiers in its ar 
 mies who are not Mussulmen. The Mohamme 
 dans are subject to a conscription ; the Chris 
 tians, instead of this, pay a tax. The Turkish 
 government says to the Druses, " We consider 
 you as Mohammedans, and require of you a cer 
 tain number of soldiers proportioned to your 
 population." The Druses of Lebanon and Anti- 
 Lebanon submit to the demand, but the Druses 
 to the south of Damascus say, " We will pay a 
 tax, but we will give you no soldiers." 
 
 For the present for this year at least the 
 
212 THE SULTAN. 
 
 quarrel has been compromised. In February the 
 Druses said to the Turkish government : " We 
 want time to attend to our crops : receive the 
 value of a thousand yoke of oxen, and withdraw 
 your troops the present year." The government, 
 thinking it better to take the tribute than to get 
 neither tribute nor conscripts, agreed to the post 
 ponement of the quarrel, accepted the conditions, 
 and recalled their troops. The dispute mean 
 time stands good for another season ; it will be 
 duly renewed, and the roads in that quarter will 
 again become unsafe. It is possible that if the 
 controversy is ever settled the Druses will make 
 their own terms. 
 
 Last Friday three days since I saw the man 
 who is the nominal head of that ill-compacted 
 and scarcely cohering empire, once held in rig 
 orous obedience by fierce and mighty monarchs, 
 whose names were the dread of Christendom. 
 From a wooden palace immediately on the Bos- 
 phorus a finer is building for him, of marble, and 
 of florid Palladian architecture he rode forth, 
 on a handsome black horse, a pale, slender man, 
 dressed in a blue frock and pantaloons, wearing 
 the tarboosh or red cap, which here, with the 
 
WEAKNESS OF THE EMPIRE. 213 
 
 French, has taken the place both of the hat and 
 the turban. Before him rode his Pashas, his 
 high officers of state and war, the men who dis 
 pose of the money that comes into his treasury 
 stout men, for the most part, with tolerably florid 
 complexions. They were dressed in the same 
 garb with himself. The enormous turbans and 
 barbaric robes which officers of this class wore 
 twenty-five or thirty years ago, are now only to 
 be found in the Museum of Ancient Costumes, 
 established by this Sultan's father in the Atmei- 
 dan or Hippodrome. As Sultan Abdool Mecljid 
 rode leisurely along, women who were standing 
 in groups beside the way reached forth petitions 
 wrapped in green silk, which were taken by some 
 person belonging to the Sultan's train, and 
 handed to an officer on horseback, carrying a 
 box, in which they were deposited. It is said 
 that the Sultan is always careful to read them. 
 He is represented as a man of mild, amiable dis 
 position, who would be glad to govern his em 
 pire better than he does, if he only knew how, 
 or if those who surround him would only let him. 
 The different parts of the Turkish empire are 
 now held together by the pressure applied to 
 
214 RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 
 
 them from without. There are many who think 
 it better that this should be so, than that its dif 
 ferent provinces should be distributed among 
 the powers of Christendom. For the interests 
 of religious liberty it is most certainly better. 
 The Mussulman government interferes less with 
 liberty of public worship than most of the gov 
 ernments of Christian empires. To what degree 
 civil and political liberty may yet be developed 
 from amidst the elements now in effervescence 
 in the Turkish empire, I will not undertake to 
 conjecture, but I would as soon take my chance 
 of freedom in Turkey as in most of the countries 
 east of the British Channel. 
 
VIEW FROM BULGOULU. 215 
 
 LETTEK XVII. 
 
 Beautiful view from the hill of Bulgoulu, near Constantinople. 
 Athens. Corfu. Glorious view from the Goruno. Noble remains 
 of ancient architecture at Athens. Modern Greeks. Their schools. 
 Their readiness to learn. Syra. The American consul. Evange- 
 lides. Dr. Hill's school. Young ladies reading Homer in the origi 
 nal. Dr. Jonas King, the orientalist. His controversy. His cour 
 age. Anecdote of the American flag.General dissatisfaction with 
 the Greek government. Corruption of public men. 
 
 Austrian steamer Imperative, on the ADRIATIC, 
 between CORFU and TRIESTE, April 26, 1853. 
 
 THOUGH my visit to Greece has been a short 
 one, I ought not to pass through so interesting 
 a country without giving you a few notes of what 
 I have seen and heard. 
 
 "Within a few days past I have seen three of 
 the most beautiful views in the world, all of them 
 of different character. Just before leaving Con 
 stantinople, I made, with my companions, an 
 excursion up the Bosphorus, the shores of which 
 were noisy with the beginning of the mackerel 
 fishery people dragging full nets to land, with 
 eager shouts, and men, women, and children, 
 from the interior, hastening to the shore that 
 they might secure their share. 
 
 In returning we stopped at Scutari, took 
 
2W ATHENS. 
 
 horses and galloped to the hill of Bulgoulu. As 
 we ascended, the prospect opened upon us with 
 new beauty at every step, until at last we stood 
 on the summit in the midst of a scene of incon 
 ceivable magnificence and splendor. All Con 
 stantinople was at our feet, with its domes and 
 sky-piercing minarets, dark masses of cypress, 
 bright green fields, and blooming gardens, its 
 shining waters sprinkled with sails, the winding 
 Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, and the Sea of 
 Marmora and its lofty islands ; to the eastward, 
 a country of cultivated fields and villages, and 
 scattered dwellings; and to the south, rising 
 above ranges of distant mountains, the summits 
 of the Asiatic Olympus, white with snow. It 
 was a scene, half the effect of which was owing 
 to the extraordinary brilliancy and variety of the 
 coloring. 
 
 In a few days afterward I was at Athens. I 
 could not but acknowledge the beauty of the 
 scenery which surrounds the city, but I missed 
 something at first, which seemed necessary to its 
 proper effect. The country, as some traveller 
 says, is of the color of withered herbage. The 
 soil, which is far from fertile, is almost white, 
 
CORFU. 217 
 
 and everywhere shows itself through the meager 
 vegetation. The more, however, I looked, the 
 more I admired so varied and so harmonious 
 were the outlines of the surrounding mountains. 
 " The beauty of the place grows upon you," said 
 one who had long lived at Athens, and I felt the 
 truth of the remark every time I went out. In 
 the aspect of nature here, there is that grand 
 and severe repose, which, whether observed in 
 the works of art or those of nature, makes the 
 deepest and most durable impression on the 
 mind. 
 
 We left Athens, crossed the Isthmus of Corinth, 
 and took a steamer for the island of Corfu, the 
 ancient Corcyra, a fertile and beautiful spot, its 
 valleys and declivities shaded with old olive-trees, 
 and gay, at this season, with innumerable 
 flowers. "You should see the view from 
 Goruno," said an English gentleman whom we 
 met at our hotel. "Stanfield, the landscape- 
 painter, declared it was the finest he had ever 
 seen in any part of the world." We drove to 
 Goruiio and saw what might almost deserve the 
 praise he gave it. Here was every element of 
 the picturesque, both in color and form moun- 
 19 
 
218 VIEW FROM GOEUNO. 
 
 tain peaks, precipices, transparent bays, woods, 
 valleys of the deepest verdure* and pinnacles of 
 rock rising near the shore from the pellucid blue 
 of the sea. 
 
 The remains of ancient art, which are to be 
 seen at Athens, have the character of the sur 
 rounding scenery repose and harmony. Of all 
 that antiquity has left us in the way of architec 
 ture, they are the only ones which fill and satisfy 
 the mind. Here is nothing too large or too 
 little, no subordination of the whole to the parts 
 all is noble, symmetrical, simple ; there is not 
 a grace that does not seem to arise naturally out 
 of the general design. It is wonderful how time 
 has spared them. They are mutilated, defaced, 
 and in great part overthrown, yet the marble, in 
 many places, is as white as when it was hewn 
 from the quarries of the Pentelicum Mount, and 
 the outlines as sharp and clear as when the 
 chisel had just finished its task. 
 
 All this destruction is the work of man, and 
 but for human wickedness and folly the temples 
 of the Acropolis would now be in almost as per 
 fect a state as when Paul, in passing by, beheld 
 the altar erected to the Unknown God. 
 
SCHOOLS OF GEEECE. 219 
 
 In looking at these remains, one can hardly 
 help asking himself whether the Greeks of that 
 early age, which produced works of art wearing 
 such a stamp of calm greatness and employing 
 such a fine harmony of the intellectual faculties, 
 were not of a different character from the Greeks 
 of the present day. The modern Greeks are not 
 wanting in capacity ; on the contrary, they are 
 exceedingly clever and ingenious, but they are 
 restless and mercurial beyond almost any other 
 family of mankind. 
 
 The schools of Greece are now flourishing, and 
 crowded with pupils, whose parents deny them 
 selves the necessaries of life that their children 
 may be educated. We shall see in the next gen 
 eration what are the influences of a general 
 diffusion of knowledge upon a national character 
 so volatile. 
 
 On our voyage from Constantinople to Athens, 
 the steamer stopped for some time in the port of 
 Syra, where we began a quarantine of twenty- 
 four hours. I wrote a note to the American 
 consul, Mr. Evangelides, a Macedonian by birth, 
 educated in America, who came alongside of our 
 steamer, and with whom we had a most interest- 
 
220 THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 ing conversation. "I am satisfied," said he, 
 " with regard to Greece. Her people are mak 
 ing the greatest sacrifices to acquire knowledge, 
 and when this is the case, I . expect everything. 
 You see our town : those houses on the conical 
 hill are Syra proper, those which cover the 
 shore at its base form another city called Her- 
 mopolis. The place was a little village in the 
 time of the Greek revolution ; it has now a popu 
 lation of twenty thousand. Of these, three 
 thousand are pupils in the different schools. In 
 my own school are thirty-one boarders, of whom 
 seventeen pay for their board and instruction ; 
 the rest are poor boys. In twenty years it will 
 be hardly possible to find a Greek who cannot 
 read." 
 
 Syra, you know, is but a little island on the 
 Greek coast, and the city which bears that name 
 owes its prosperity to its schools, which make it 
 a place of resort not only from Greece, but from 
 all parts of Europe and Asia, where the Greek 
 race is found. 
 
 While at Athens, we visited the school in Dr. 
 Hill's house, of which his lady was the founder, 
 and had the principal management. The num- 
 
APTNESS TO LEARN. 
 
 ber of pupils is about three hundred. We were 
 conducted through the different rooms by a Greek 
 lady, educated at the school, who spoke English 
 with great neatness, as well as fluency, and with 
 just enough of a foreign accent to remind us that 
 it was not her native language. The first de 
 partment, or infant school as it is called, con 
 tained, I should think, fifty or sixty children of 
 remarkably intelligent physiognomy. "These 
 little creatures," said the Greek lady, "sometimes 
 neglect their work, but never their lessons." 
 They were taught, as were all the other classes, 
 by assistants, who, with one exception, were edu 
 cated in the school. Another department was 
 called the ragged school, in which were one hun 
 dred and thirty girls distributed in different 
 rooms. They were all children of the very poor 
 est class, who were here taught reading, writing, 
 mental arithmetic, needlework, etc. They were all 
 of Greek families, with the exception of three 
 German children, whom I distinguished from the 
 rest at a glance by their fair complexions and 
 quiet physiognomies. 
 
 In another part of the school were the children 
 of persons in better circumstances, who were 
 19* 
 
222 GREEK YOUNG LADIES. 
 
 taught grammar, geography, English, and An 
 cient Greek. They rose as we entered, and, led 
 by their teacher, a young lady, a native of Greece, 
 sang a little hymn in English. In a yet higher 
 class of young ladies, numbering about twenty, 
 the studies are advanced to drawing, algebra, and. 
 other higher branches of education, and the 
 study of Ancient Greek is continued with more 
 critical exactness. I was now in a country where 
 the young ladies 
 
 Read in Greek the wrath of Peleus' son, 
 
 pass their graver hours with Plato, and, for light 
 reading, turn the pages of Xenophon. I was 
 shown a set of Greek classics, belonging to a 
 young lady who assisted as a teacher in the 
 school. 
 
 At this school, which is doing a vast deal of 
 good, and which is constantly pressed with ap 
 plications for the admission of pupils which it is 
 obliged to decline or postpone, I heard the same 
 account of the eager thirst of the Greeks for 
 knowledge. "Offer a Greek child," said Dr. 
 Hill, " a toy or a book, and he invariably chooses 
 the book. He prefers the book to anything else 
 
RELIGIOUS CHARACTER. 223 
 
 you could give him, sweetmeats or coins, no matter 
 what the value of the coin you offer may be. 
 The Greeks," continued Dr. Hill, " are suscepti 
 ble, in a high degree, of the influence of exam 
 ple, and with a proper system of education I 
 should hope everything from them. The danger 
 is, however, that in unlearning their superstitions, 
 as they are doing, they may lay aside with them 
 all reverence for religion, and all the restraints 
 which religion imposes. I fear that this is the 
 case with those who are educated at the govern 
 ment schools, and that these have made the 
 Greek character worse instead of better, so far 
 as their influence extends." 
 
 Notwithstanding this severe judgment, I can 
 not think that those whose desire of knowledge 
 makes them submit to privations and hardships 
 in order to acquire it are in a very bad way. 
 They acknowledge and act upon a higher motive 
 than the gratification of their appetites. They 
 are learners in the school of self-denial, which is 
 the basis of all virtue, and the only school in 
 which an elevated character is ever formed. 
 
 While at Athens, I was curious to inform my- 
 Belf of the controversy in which Dr. Jonas King, 
 
224 DR. JONAS KING. 
 
 the learned orientalist, has been engaged. He 
 is a schoolmaster to the Greeks in another way, 
 and, I believe, with equal success. You know he 
 resides at Athens in the quality of a missionary. 
 He preaches in Greek to a congregation of about 
 thirty persons. The Greek constitution secures 
 liberty of worship and speech on religioiis sub 
 jects, to persons of " all known religions." The 
 law at the same time directs that no person shall 
 revile the religion of another, and provides cer 
 tain penalties against those who transgress this 
 rule. Dr. King, in the exercise of the liberty 
 guaranteed by the constitution, freely discussed 
 the question of the adoration of the Yirgin. His 
 views were controverted, and he supported them 
 by a pamphlet expressing no opinion of his own, 
 but giving extracts, in the original Greek, from 
 the fathers of the Greek church Chrysostom, 
 Basil, and others in which they spoke of the 
 Virgin as not a proper object of adoration. 
 From this moment the controversy became a per 
 secution on the part of his adversaries. He was 
 arraigned on a charge of reviling the Greek 
 Church. He employed able counsel, who under 
 took his defence on the ground that he had re- 
 
PEKSECUTION OF DR. KING. 225 
 
 viled no man's religion, but had merely expressed 
 his own opinion on a religious question, with 
 that freedom which the constitution allows. He 
 was taken to Syra, in order to be tried, but t\e 
 popular fury against him had been inflamed to 
 such a pitch that it was feared that if he were 
 landed he might be torn in pieces, and he was 
 accordingly brought back to Athens. A princi 
 pal reason of the popular excitement was the 
 excommunication which had been fulminated 
 against him by the Greek priesthood, denouncing 
 him as a godless blasphemer, with whom all the 
 faithful were forbidden to hold any communica 
 tion, or to have the most indifferent transaction 
 in life. 
 
 At length he was tried at Athens by the Are 
 opagus. He was zealously defended by his coun 
 sel, but the court declared him guilty of reviling 
 the Greek Church, and sentenced him to impris 
 onment. He was put into a dungeon with com 
 mon malefactors a dungeon so crowded, filthy, 
 and damp, that, if arrangements had not after 
 ward been made, allowing him to pass the term 
 of his confinement, which was a short one, in the 
 house of his jailer, his friends believe that he 
 
226 A GREEK MOB. 
 
 could not Lave lived to the end of it. A sentence 
 of banishment was also pronounced against him, 
 to which he has paid no heed. " If they come to 
 carry me out of the country," said he, " I shall 
 not resist, but until that is done, I shall re 
 main." 
 
 It was during these proceedings that one Sun 
 day a large crowd of Greeks, led by a priest of 
 their Church, assembled in his house and garden 
 to hear one of his discourses. His subject was 
 the duty of religious toleration. At the close 
 the priest asked a question concerning some 
 things advanced in the discussion, to which Dr. 
 King gave a prudent answer. The priest then 
 demanded an explanation of certain positions 
 laid down in another discourse, which Dr. King 
 declined giving at that time, observing that he 
 would agree to appoint almost any other day for 
 the discussion. The multitude immediately 
 joined the priest in demanding that the discus 
 sion should go on at that moment, with such fury 
 and noise that his friends thought his life in dan 
 ger. It happened at the time that the American 
 consul was absent from Athens, and the functions 
 of the office were delegated to Dr. King. An 
 
THE AMERICAN FLAG. 227 
 
 American flag, a day or two previous, had been 
 received by Dr. King, from Washington. In the 
 midst of the tumult, at the very moment when 
 the multitude seemed ready to tear him in pieces, 
 he bethought himself of the flag, and hastily un 
 rolling it, let it stream from one of the windows. 
 As soon as the mob saw it, their clamors were 
 hushed, they began to disperse in the utmost 
 haste, and in five minutes not one of them was 
 left in the house or the garden. 
 
 At present the triumph seems to be on the side 
 of Dr. King. The Greeks are in a fair way to 
 learn from him the lesson of religious toleration. 
 He is under an ecclesiastical curse, as nobody 
 can even speak to him without incurring the cen 
 sure of the Church ; yet everybody now speaks 
 to him : he is exiled for his religious opinions, 
 yet he remains at Athens, and preaches every 
 Sunday without any reserve in the expression of 
 his religious views. He has behaved throughout 
 the whole affair with the greatest intrepidity, and, 
 if we may judge from appearances, has brought 
 his adversaries -at last to the conclusion that 
 their best policy is to let him alone. I admire his 
 courage, and rejoice in his success. 
 
228 GREEK POLITICS. 
 
 On the steamer which took me from Athens to 
 Calamaki, I had a conversation with one of those 
 who led the opposition to the Greek administra 
 tion, while an opposition existed. He spoke 
 without any reserve on the subject of Greek poli 
 tics. "The sovereign," he said, "has no sympa 
 thy with the Greek nation has no interest in 
 its welfare ; he is still a foreigner, and only thinks 
 of his equipages and his amusements. "While 
 there was an opposition in the Greek parliament 
 to the administration, the complaint was that it 
 prevented the enactment of measures for the 
 public welfare : the opposition exists no longer ; 
 and yet nothing is done. Greece should have a 
 respectable navy ; her natural situation, with so 
 many islands, peninsulas, gulfs, and harbors, 
 should make us a maritime nation ; yet we have 
 no navy. "We have but one vessel ; we send out 
 our young men to obtain a naval education in 
 England, and when they return we have no em 
 ployment for them. The Greek race throughout 
 Thessaly, Macedonia, and Epirus are eager to 
 break the chains of the Ottoman government, and 
 join themselves to us ; if we had a navy to show 
 
POLITICAL CORRUPTION, 229 
 
 the Greek flag in their harbors, they would make 
 the attempt, and the Porte would be compelled 
 to submit. Our laws are unfavorable to com 
 merce, yet commerce flourishes without them a 
 sign of what our trade and our commercial navy 
 would be, if the laws were friendly, or even just 
 to them. 
 
 " You see," he continued, pointing to a portly, 
 healthy-looking gentleman in black, " you see 
 there the king's confessor. That man has more 
 to do with public affairs than all the Greek peo 
 ple. It is he who makes up the cabinet and be 
 stows offices. Pay your court to him, and you 
 may have what place in the government you 
 please. It is by the conferring of offices that the 
 parliament is managed. As soon as an able man 
 appears, he is bought over from the people by 
 being made a minister, or appointed to some 
 other responsible post, in which he must give up 
 his independence of opinion. You know how 
 public men are corrupted. In Greece we are 
 all poor, and are therefore the more strongly 
 tempted." 
 
 Such are some of the topics of Greek politics 
 20 
 
230 OPPOSITION TO THE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 in the mouths of the opposition. What may be 
 said on the other side, I had no opportunity to 
 inform myself. I find myself at the end of my 
 sheet, and, as I have little more to say on the 
 subject of this letter, I will close. 
 
MAY AT HOME. 231 
 
 LETTER XVIII. 
 
 May at Rome. Abundance of flowers. Severity of the Roman govern 
 ment. The people kept quiet by the military. Improved appearance 
 of Rome. The city beautified. Copies of old pictures. American 
 artists at Rome. Sculptors. Painters. Gibson's Venus. Colored 
 statues. Powers at Florence. The monument of Titian at Venice. 
 
 ROME, May 17th, 1853. 
 
 THIS is the season when, in Italy, the earth 
 pours forth flowers with the same profusion as 
 she offers her fruits in September. The gar 
 dens are one blush of roses, and the stronger- 
 growing kinds of the rose-tree, both white and 
 red, hang themselves on the walls with a surpris 
 ing luxuriance of growth and bloom. The for 
 est-trees yet cast a thin shade, but in the mead 
 ows the grass stands as high as it does with us 
 in the middle of June, and is intermingled with 
 numberless flowering plants. I rode out the 
 other day to the lake of Nemi ; the woody banks 
 on each side of the road from Albano were col 
 ored with flowers, the apple-trees beside the 
 way along the heights which surround the lake, 
 showed their flower-buds just swelling with the 
 spring, but in the deep basin below they were 
 
232 MILITAKY COERCION. 
 
 already fully open, and the white images of the 
 trees were reflected in the tranquil water. 
 
 I wish there were no novelties to be observed 
 at Eome more unpleasant than these. Every 
 morning, at an early hour, the people of the city 
 are awakened by military music, and the tramp 
 of bodies of soldiery is heard as they march 
 through the street. You meet them defiling 
 through the public ways at other hours of the 
 day ; you see them performing their manoeuvres 
 and exercises in the public gardens ; you hear 
 the drum as often as the sound of bells ; soldiers 
 are more numerous in public than even priests. 
 Every pains seems to be taken to let the people 
 know that they live under a military government, 
 which can afford to dispense with their good 
 will. There are some circumstances, however, 
 which tend to show that the government rules in 
 as much fear as it seeks to inspire. Not a single 
 copy of a journal from France or England is de 
 livered from the post-office, till it is carefully ex 
 amined to see whether it contains any political 
 intelligence which the government chooses to 
 keep from the knowledge of its subjects, or any 
 political reflections of a nature which it disap- 
 
GROWTH OF THE POPULATION. 233 
 
 proves. If these are found in it, the journal is 
 withheld. A German, employed for the purpose, 
 reads the English journals, and whenever he re 
 ports in favor of suppressing them they are de 
 stroyed. If the people stand in awe of the gov 
 ernment, it is evident that the government dreads 
 the people. There is distrust on one side, and 
 hatred on the other a condition of things which 
 may last for years, but which, through a little 
 imprudence on the part of the government, or a 
 sudden exasperation on the part of the people, 
 may, at almost any time, be exchanged for a 
 state of open and bloody revolt. 
 
 In the midst of the evils of this false system 
 of political organization, there are some tokens 
 of prosperity to be seen at Borne. I have no 
 doubt that the population of the city has consid 
 erably increased within the last twenty years. 
 The proof of this is to be found in the rise of 
 rents, and the difficulty which now exists in find 
 ing commodious apartments. I am told that 
 rents have nearly doubled, and that the spacious 
 suites of rooms which a few } r ears since stood va 
 cant in the palaces and other large houses, have 
 now their inmates. This is owing, no doubt, in 
 20* 
 
234 THE CITY BEAUTIFIED. 
 
 part to the general growth of the population of 
 Italy during the late long interval of rest from 
 war, and in part to the new facilities for travel 
 ling, which bring many more strangers to Home 
 than formerly, as visitors or residents. The tide, 
 also, which in the ecclesiastical world is setting 
 back toward the usages and opinions of the mid 
 dle ages, no doubt floats many hither, and adds 
 something to this new growth of Rome. Those 
 who foretold that the Eternal City, in the un 
 healthy air of her Campagna, would at no dis 
 tant day become unpeopled, must be content to 
 look to a very remote and indefinite futurity for 
 the fulfilment of their prediction. 
 
 Meantime the city is somewhat beautified with 
 almost every succeeding year. Statues and col 
 umns are erected ; the old irregular pavement of 
 the streets, trodden with so much pain by those 
 who had corns on their feet, has been taken up, 
 and its place supplied by a smoother one, com 
 posed of small rectangular blocks of stone, like 
 those used in paving the streets of Paris ; a noble 
 causey, with parapets and a pavement of hewn 
 stone, has been lately made over the low grounds 
 just without the gate, as the new Appian wa} T ; 
 
COPIES OF PICTURES. 235 
 
 and the public garden on the Monte Pincio has 
 been embellished with rows of busts, in marble, 
 of the illustrious men of Italy, her sages, artists, 
 and authors. Workmen are now occupied in the 
 garden, forming its walks, and planting them 
 with trees, among which I perceive the evergreen 
 magnolia, the bayonet-leaved palmetto, the date- 
 palm, and other trees of the palm kind, which 
 do not find the climate here too rude for their 
 growth. 
 
 There is an occupation at Kome which, if I 
 may judge from what I have seen and learned 
 since I came here, meets with a very liberal en 
 couragement from strangers I mean the copying 
 of old pictures. A great part of this, performed 
 by native artists who make it their profession, is 
 the merest and easiest journey-work. An Amer 
 ican, the other day, bought a whole gallery of 
 these copies, so ill-executed, I was told, that 
 scarce anybody here would have allowed them 
 to remain in his sight. These people forget that 
 a good copy of a great picture is no common 
 thing, and that it requires in him who works it, 
 most of the requisites of a great painter. It is 
 frequently said that a good copy is better than a 
 
236 AMERICAN ARTISTS. 
 
 bad original, which is true enough ; but it should 
 be remembered that good originals are not so 
 very much more rare than good copies. 
 
 You may, perhaps, like some notices of what 
 the American artists are doing in Borne. Craw 
 ford is occupied with his equestrian statue of 
 Washington, designed for the city of Bichmond. 
 Around the principal figure, which is not yet 
 fully modelled, will be placed statues of the con 
 temporary great men of Virginia. Two of these, 
 the statues of Jefferson and Patrick Henry, are 
 already modelled, and plaster casts of them have 
 been obtained. They are of colossal size, and 
 are designed with a manly vigor and disdain of 
 minor graces which quite delights me. If the rest 
 of the monument shall be conceived in the same 
 spirit, it will greatly raise Crawford's reputation. 
 He has a small work under the chisel, the Babes 
 in the Wood, which I hear has been ordered by 
 a gentleman of New York. The children are 
 lying hand in hand, and the redbreast has just 
 began his pious office of covering them with, 
 leaves. The subject seemed to me beautifully 
 treated. 
 
 The other American sculptors at Borne Mo- 
 
SCULPTORS AND PAINTERS. 237 
 
 zier, Richard S. Greenough, Rogers, and Ives, 
 are all zealously pursuing their art, and occupied 
 with works which show that there is not one of 
 them who is not likely to surpass what he has 
 already done. Mozier has a statue of Silence, 
 which does him much credit ; it is a female fig 
 ure, standing in an attitude of command, with a 
 calm severity of aspect, the forefinger of the left 
 hand pointing to the lips. Greenough is model 
 ling the figure of a shepherd, attacked by an 
 eagle, which promises well. 
 
 Page is here, analyzing the manner in which 
 Titian produced his peculiar coloring, and repro 
 ducing some of his heads in excellent copies. 
 But he has done what is better than this ; he has 
 painted a portrait of Charlotte Cushman, a fine, 
 solid painting, richly colored, with which not only 
 his friends, but everybody who sees it, is charmed. 
 Terry, a universal favorite with his countrymen, 
 is occupied with a picture of " Samuel and his 
 Mother." G. C. Thompson, who arrived here not 
 long since, is looking at the works of the great 
 Italian painters, and now and then making a 
 clever copy of a head or a single figure. Nichols 
 has very successfully transferred the calm glow 
 
GIBSON S WORKS. 
 
 of Claude's landscapes into some fine copies 
 which he is making. "Wotherspoon is luxuriating 
 on the sylvan beauties of Nenri. For my part, I 
 can hardly understand what an American land 
 scape-painter, after satisfying a natural curiosity 
 to see the works of the great masters of his art, 
 should do in Italy. He can study nature to 
 quite as much advantage at home a fresh and 
 new nature, as beautiful as that of Italy, though 
 with a somewhat different aspect of beauty. 
 
 I was the other day in the studio of Gibson, 
 the English sculptor. He showed our party a 
 work in basso-relievo, representing Phaeton at 
 tempting to guide the chariot of the sun. It 
 equals in fire and spirit anything the imagination 
 could conceive of such a subject. The horses, 
 with distended nostrils, plunge madly forward 
 through space, seeming as if they would leap out 
 of their harness, and the young charioteer holds 
 the reins with an aspect of uncertainty and alarm. 
 In another part of Gibson's studio was placed a 
 statue, on which he had been trying an experi 
 ment that had long occupied his thoughts. The 
 ancients, you know, colored or painted their stat 
 ues, and this is supposed to have been done by 
 
A TINTED VENUS. 2C9 
 
 persons who made it their particular profession. 
 Gibson has a statue of Yenus, a very pleasing 
 figure, the hair of which he has colored of a 
 very light warm brown, binding it with a fillet of 
 the most delicate blue, stained the eye with a 
 dim azure, with a tint of a crimson vein or two 
 at the corners, laid the faintest possible bloom 
 on the cheeks, touched the lips slightly with scar 
 let, and suffused the skin, over the whole form, 
 with a carnation just perceptible, through which 
 the blue stains of the marble appear like wander 
 ing veins. The drapery of the figure is left in 
 the original color of the marble, except the bor 
 der, along which runs a double stripe of pale 
 blue, with another of pale crimson next to the 
 edge. The effect is agreeable far beyond what I 
 should have expected. The marble is deprived 
 of all its appearance of hardness, and the statue 
 has the look of a human figure seen through a 
 soft mist ; the outlines seem to blend with the 
 atmosphere. 
 
 On my way hither, stopping at Florence, I 
 visited the studio of our countryman, Powers. 
 He had several busts lately executed with his 
 usual skill in giving the expression of character 
 
240 WORKS OF POWERS. 
 
 and life, and was then occupied with a figure in 
 tended as a representative of our new state, Cal 
 ifornia. In her left hand she holds a divining- 
 rod pointing downward to the mines in her soil, 
 and in her right she conceals behind her back a 
 scourge, intended as an emblem of the calamities 
 which follow the eager search for gold. Powers 
 at present models his figures in a peculiar man 
 ner. He builds them up with fragments of dry 
 plaster, cemented by the same material in a 
 liquid state. When any part of the figure re 
 quires to be made rounder or fuller, he lays on 
 the plaster with a flexible gutta percha trowel ; 
 when it is to be reduced in size, he applies a 
 kind of file or rasp, of which he is the inventor, 
 which never becomes clogged, and is pierced 
 with holes, through which the plaster shoots in a 
 shower. In this manner he completes the model 
 in a shorter time than it could be moulded in 
 clay, and avoids the trouble of taking a cast. 
 
 While I am speaking of works of sculpture, let 
 me mention the monument of Titian, at Venice, in 
 the church of Santa Maria dei Frari, erected last 
 year, more than three hundred years after his 
 death. It stands among the monuments of the 
 
ALLEGORICAL FIGURES. 241 
 
 statesmen and warriors, the admirals and doges 
 of Yenice, as lofty and as splendid as any of 
 them, and in a taste less barbaric. Near the 
 base sit two colossal figures on the left a bald 
 old man, with eyes closed, representing Time 
 Past, holding a tablet, on which are inscribed 
 the words of the Emperor Charles V., uttered in 
 1506, commanding that Titian be made a knight 
 and count of the empire ; on the right a man in 
 the vigor of life, representing Time Present, with 
 a tablet, on which is engraved the command of 
 Ferdinand of Austria, in 1853, directing a monu 
 ment to be erected to Titian's memory. Titian 
 sits on the summit of the pedestal, unveiling 
 with his right hand the statue of Isis, or Nature, 
 and laying his left on a volume brought him by 
 a winged youth, intimating that he derives the 
 inspiration of his aid from the two sources of 
 nature and religion. On each side of him stand 
 two allegorical figures, one of which, the Muse 
 of Painting, looking forward with lifted eyes as 
 if into the distant future, brings him the wreath 
 of immortal fame. On the wall of the monu 
 ment, and under the arch over the head of 
 Titian, is beautifully sculptured, in basso-relievo 
 21 
 
243 TITIAN'S ASSUMPTION. 
 
 his noblest work, the Assumption of the Yirgin ; 
 and four other paintings of his are copied in the 
 same manner, on a smaller scale, in different 
 compartments. On the top of the arch, forty 
 feet from the floor, stands the winged Lion of 
 St. Mark, the emblem of that Yenice for whose 
 churches and halls his finest paintings were pro 
 duced. This monument is the work of Luigi 
 and Pietro Zandomeneghi, and strikes me as one 
 of the finest things of its kind in Yenice. 
 
FKESNEL LIGHTS. 243 
 
 LETTEE XIX. 
 
 Fresnel lights. Their strength and brilliancy. Improvement in their 
 contraction. Tomb of Napoleon. Its magnificence. Imperfect 
 civilization of mankind. Exhibition of the works of living artists. 
 Naked Venuses. Ugly head of Louis Napoleon. Duveau. Death of 
 Agrippina. 
 
 PAKIS, June 1st, 1853. 
 
 I HAVE just returned from a visit to one of the 
 government offices, in which the Fresnel lights, , 
 designed for the light-houses on the French 
 coast, are deposited. The invention of Fresnel 
 is one of the most beautiful examples we have of 
 that skill by which the apparently barren phe 
 nomena of science are forced into the service of 
 man. 
 
 Light, you know, radiates in all directions. 
 Place a lamp in a tower on a sea-coast, and part 
 of its rays are wasted on the clouds above it, 
 part on the earth below, and part stream to the 
 right and left, where they are not wanted. By a 
 most ingenious arrangement of prisms, Fresnel 
 Qollected these useless rays and sent them for 
 ward in a horizontal direction, parallel with the 
 surface of the ocean, where they must meet the 
 
244 AN INGENIOUS DEVICE. 
 
 eye of the mariner. An intense light, by this 
 concentration of its beams, is obtained from a 
 single lamp. I desired to see an example of the 
 effect produced, and a lamp was placed within 
 one of Fresnel's circles of prisms, while I stood 
 at the distance of twenty feet or more. It blazed 
 into my eyes like the rising sun, and I could not 
 bear to look at it. 
 
 Lieutenant Bartlett, of the United States Navy, 
 is now in Paris, superintending the purchase of 
 two or three of these lights, for which appropri 
 ations have fortunately been obtained from Con 
 gress. One of them is shortly to be sent out to 
 America, and will, it is expected, be exhibited for 
 a time at the Crystal Palace. I hope it will be 
 so placed that everybody may see it without cost ; 
 for I regard it as a matter of great importance 
 that the perfect manner in which the invention 
 fulfils its purpose should be generally known and 
 acknowledged. The want of good lights on our 
 coast is a scandal to our country. France, with 
 a much smaller marine commerce than ours, has 
 erected Fresnel lights at every part of her bor 
 ders on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean where 
 the seaman needs the least notice of danger. 
 
OUR BADLY-LIGHTED COAST. 245 
 
 These strong rays, piercing the fogs and storms, 
 give the necessary warning in any state of the 
 weather. England, with a commerce but little 
 larger than our own, has also adopted the Fres- 
 nel lights. We, on the other hand, content our 
 selves with putting up a few lamps, which glim 
 mer feebly when the air is clear, and are of no 
 use in thick and foggy weather that is to say, 
 when their light is wanted. We might nearly as 
 well let our light-houses fall to ruin, and imitate 
 the example of Turkey, which leaves its whole 
 coast in entire darkness. 
 
 One or two of the Fresnel lights have already 
 been set up in America, but they are of the origi 
 nal early pattern before Fresnel and his brother 
 had perfected the invention. I saw one of these 
 at the repository of which I am speaking, and 
 the difference between it and those which are at 
 present used in France, is very great. In that 
 model, Fresnel employed only prisms with 
 straight sides ; he had no apparatus for making 
 any other ; they were put together in small 
 pieces ; the light was obstructed by the cement 
 used to confine them in their places, and the 
 stray beams of light which escaped through the 
 21* 
 
246 FRESNEL'S WORKSHOP. 
 
 space between the prisms, were caught upon mir 
 rors and reflected in the desired direction. But 
 in the new Fresnel lights, the mirrors are laid 
 aside as no longer necessary; the prisms have 
 taken a curved shape ; they are larger and less 
 numerous, and the sphere of glass which they 
 form, enclosing the lamp, is of a far simpler and 
 more solid construction, and a more perfect trans 
 parency. 
 
 I was taken afterward to the workshop where 
 these prisms are made, and whence the western 
 coast of Europe is supplied with the apparatus 
 for its light-houses. Here large wheel-shaped 
 masses of glass, fixed upon tables revolving hori 
 zontally, were ground with sand to the proper 
 angle, and finally polished. In another part of 
 the building artisans were at work, framing the 
 turrets of metal and glass in which the apparatus 
 of Fresnel is enclosed. These are roofed with 
 copper, and the iron ribs in which the glass is 
 set are covered on the outside with thin copper 
 bars, so that no part of the iron is in danger 
 of corrosion by being exposed to the external 
 air. 
 
 The great advantage of Fresnel's apparatus 
 
ADVANTAGES OF FRESNEL LIGHTS. 247 
 
 lies in the strength of the light which it throws 
 in the direction where it is wanted, but it has 
 two other important recommendations its econ 
 omy, and the ease with which it is kept in order. 
 With a single lamp it does what in the old 
 method required thirty, and it dispenses alto 
 gether with the clumsy contrivance of reflectors, 
 which are constantly becoming tarnished and 
 wearing out. The supply of oil which is needed 
 is, of course, comparatively trifling. I hope, for 
 my part, that no time will be lost in lighting the 
 whole coast of the United States, through all its 
 degrees of latitude, both on the Atlantic and the 
 Pacific, with the apparatus of Fresnel. The 
 outlay at first would be considerable, but it would 
 be soon made up to the treasury in the dimin 
 ished expense of maintaining the lights. A lib 
 eral appropriation for the purpose made at once, 
 would be an act of the highest frugality for the 
 public treasury, to say nothing of the lives it 
 might preserve, and the cargoes it might save 
 from wreck. 
 
 I have been told that Captain Forbes, of Bos 
 ton, not long since took out with him to America 
 two ship-lanterns constructed on Fresnel's plan. 
 
248 NAPOLEON'S TOMB. 
 
 They were found to answer their purpose admi 
 rably, as I hear, but the Yankees, with their 
 usual dexterity in applying such resources as 
 they have at hand, immediately hit upon a sub 
 stitute for Fresnel's prisms of cut-glass, which is 
 a great deal cheaper and succeeds almost equally 
 well. They form the glass into prisms, with the 
 necessary curve, by pressure, and in this way 
 construct a lantern but very little inferior in the 
 strength of its light to those made in the French 
 way. 
 
 The other day I went to the church of the In- 
 valides, to see the tomb of Napoleon, which has 
 been several years erecting, at an immense cost, 
 and is just completed. There is not on earth so 
 magnificent a mausoleum as that which is des 
 tined for the remains of the former Emperor of 
 France. On entering the church I found myself 
 in the midst of a throng hastening in the same 
 direction, and saw before me, at the opposite end 
 of the building, a large altar, blazing with gold, 
 under a gilded canopy, which rested on twisted 
 pillars of black and white marble. In front of it, 
 immediately under the windows of the dome, 
 appeared a circular balustrade of white marble, 
 
THE SARCOPHAGUS. 249 
 
 around which the people were pressing. I joined 
 them, and saw that it enclosed a broad, open 
 space, sunk, perhaps, fifteen feet below the 
 church. There, on a pedestal of blue granite, 
 stood an enormous open sarcophagus of polished 
 porphyry, the lid of which lay near it, on a ma 
 chine, ready to be slid over it as soon as the cer 
 emony of sepulture shall be performed. On the 
 pavement below, around the pedestal, was a 
 wreath of laurel leaves and berries, wrought of 
 various-colored marbles among which a vivid 
 green marble, from the quarries of the United 
 States, was conspicuous. Surrounding the sar 
 cophagus, and standing against the pillars which 
 support the floor, was a circle of colossal figures 
 in marble, the meaning of which I did not at 
 tempt to study. One of them, a winged figure, 
 with a trumpet by his side, was perhaps the 
 angel of the resurrection, who is to summon the 
 great warrior from his grave on the day of ac 
 count, when he will be unpleasantly confronted 
 by the multitudes who were slain in his wars. 
 In the recesses behind these statues were sculp 
 tures in bas-relief, representing some of the most 
 important events of Bonaparte's history. 
 
250 NAPOLEON'S TITLE TO HOMAGE. 
 
 In that sarcophagus is soon to be placed the 
 handful of dust which is all that remains of one 
 who, for a few years, was the terror of the world. 
 In its material, its form, and its glittering polish, 
 this massive receptacle reminded me of the huge 
 chests of porphyry found in the newly-opened 
 tomb of Apis, at Sakkara, enclosing the bones of 
 the sacred ox of Egypt. It is thus that, in dif 
 ferent ages of the world, the same posthumous 
 honors are paid to a quadruped and a conqueror, 
 by two nations, each claiming in its day the palm 
 of civilization. The Egyptians were the nearer 
 right of the two ; they honored the representa 
 tive of a most useful tribe of animals ; the French 
 pay their homage to one whose title to it is, that 
 " with infinite manslaughter" he won an empire 
 which he was not able to keep. 
 
 I regretted that I could not look at the sculp 
 tures in relief below, except at a distance : they 
 will be accessible, it is said, as soon as the re 
 mains of Bonaparte are inurned. I inquired of 
 a friend residing in Paris, when this would be 
 done. "There is a controversy," he replied, 
 "about this matter among the Bonapartists. 
 One party insists that the heart of Napoleon 
 
THE DOORWAY OF THE TOMB. 251 
 
 shall be deposited by itself in the cliurcli of St. 
 Denys, among the monuments of the former 
 sovereigns of France ; but Jerome swears that he 
 will not allow his brother's body to be cut up in 
 that manner. The ceremony of removing his re 
 mains to the sarcophagus has, therefore, been 
 postponed for a year." 
 
 But we had not yet seen the whole of the mon 
 ument. Passing beside the glittering altar, we 
 descended a flight of steps to the level of the 
 great Court of the Invalides. Here, immediately 
 back of the altar, and under it, I saw the en 
 trance to the tomb, a massive doorway, over 
 which are engraved the words of Napoleon ex 
 pressing his desire to be buried among the 
 French people on the banks of the Seine. On 
 each side of this passage to the sarcophagus 
 stands a colossal figure, in bronze ; one of them 
 bearing, on a cushion, a globe and sceptre, the 
 symbols of dominion, and the other a sword and 
 gauntlet, emblematic of the violence by which 
 that dominion was gained, and, for a brief space, 
 upheld. As we were considering these figures, 
 the voices of priests and a choir, chanting at the 
 altar above, resounded up the lofty dome ; it was 
 
252 IMPERFECT CIVILIZATION. 
 
 a litany, nominally addressed to the God of 
 Peace. I looked about me, and saw only tlie 
 symbols of warlike glory, and encouragement to 
 the pursuit of renown in arms. On the walls 
 were the sumptuous monuments of men who had 
 distinguished themselves as the instruments of 
 warlike ambition and conquest Vauban, Mar 
 shal Bertrand, and others. This church itself 
 had been converted into the mausoleum of a con 
 queror ; it was the shrine of Napoleon ; this altar 
 formed a part of his monument, and this hymn, 
 whatever its words, was chanted in his honor. I 
 had before me one of the forms in which the 
 Power of Destruction is still worshipped. What 
 a groundless fancy, to suppose that the adoration 
 of a Great Spirit of Evil has become extinct with 
 the race of ancient Persians, or exists only 
 among a few savage tribes ! I left the place with 
 the throng, passing out to the street through the 
 Hospital of the Invalides for we were not per 
 mitted to retrace our steps to the principal en 
 trance. I left it with a strong impression of the 
 yet imperfect civilization of mankind. 
 
 An exhibition of the works of living artists is 
 now open in this city. It contains more than 
 
EXHIBITION OF WORKS OF ART. 253 
 
 twelve hundred paintings, three hundred and 
 twenty works of sculpture, and two hundred 
 and sixty engravings and architectural designs. 
 These are not half the number of works offered 
 by the artists ; about twenty-five hundred were 
 rejected by the committee employed to make the 
 selection, and among these were some which at 
 least deserved a place among the best which 
 were accepted. There was no artist on the com 
 mittee ; those who were named as members 
 declined to serve, and the politicians and public 
 men who finally composed it were probably not 
 the best judges in such matters. 
 
 I hope so at least, for the collection is far from 
 being as good as I expected to find it, and I 
 should be glad to believe that it would have been 
 better if the task of selection had been intrusted 
 to a better committee. In the department of 
 sculpture, the want of a high standard of art is 
 perhaps most observable. There are plenty of 
 naked Venuses and nymphs, simpering, leering, 
 and sprawling ; and these are oddly enough con 
 trasted with several figures of female saints, 
 wearing an air of theatrical and resolute pru 
 dery. An Egyptian maiden stooping with a look 
 22 
 
254 SMIKKING BUSTS. 
 
 of compassion and tenderness to take the infant 
 Moses from his ark of rushes, is one of the few 
 female statues not strictly ecclesiastical which is 
 not vulgar. Of the busts there are some good 
 ones, but many of them have a sort of smirk or 
 an affected attitude. There are several attempts 
 to make something of the head of Louis Napo 
 leon in sculpture, but the subject seems an in 
 tractable one, and none of them are successful. 
 
 There are many historical pictures some of 
 them very large, and scarce any of the large ones 
 tolerable. The largest is by Matout, represent 
 ing Ambrose Pare applying, for the first time in 
 the annals of surgery, the ligature to the arteries 
 of a lamb, after an amputation an immense 
 failure. The subject is coldly and confusedly 
 treated. The best of this class is the Death of 
 the Virgin, by Lazerges, a subject which the 
 painter has managed with dignity and feeling, 
 though the dignity, I must say, rather predomi 
 nates. The death-struggle is just past, the 
 household stand in sorrow around the couch of 
 the dead, whose countenance wears the tokens of 
 a happy departure, and a little child is advan 
 cing, encouraged by its mother, to lay a handful 
 
FRENCH LANDSCAPES. 255 
 
 of roses by the Virgin's calm cheek. You may 
 judge of the strange sort of things to be seen in 
 this gallery, by what I shall tell you of the Death 
 of Agrippina, by Duveau. A large, elderly wo 
 man, of a livid complexion, is sitting up naked 
 in her bed, and throwing her arms abroad in the 
 air, facing three half-clad ruffians, with com 
 plexions of reddish brown, who rush at her with 
 clubs and daggers, while a scowling maid-serv 
 ant, behind her mistress, is huddling on her gar 
 ments, which seem to refuse to cover her. I 
 must not omit to mention a picture by Winter- 
 halter, representing Florinda and her Maidens 
 beginning to disrobe her for the bath, which is 
 very beautiful. Of the landscapes, there are 
 none very remarkable ; the best are those which 
 are apparently studied from nature ; the larger 
 and more elaborate ones seemed to be painted 
 in forgetfulness of nature. There are portraits 
 in the collection, good, bad, and indifferent ; the 
 indifferent forming the largest number. 
 
 After all, I am making a criticism which must 
 be the universal one in regard to all miscellane 
 ous collections of the kind. The greater number 
 of the works produced by artists in all ages are 
 
256 
 
 FEW GREAT WORKS OF ART. 
 
 unsuccessful, or but partially successful, endeav 
 ors after excellence. The works which survive 
 to be the admiration of succeeding times are 
 few in any single year, and in the most prolific 
 years form an exception to the mass of works 
 produced. 
 
"