.1
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 University of Ca 
 
 TixAlNING SO 
 
 ia at Los 
 
 IBRARY.
 
 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY LIBRARY 
 OF TRAVEL 
 
 VI 
 IN THE LEVANT 
 
 BY 
 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
 
 x>. 
 
 1829-1900.
 
 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 
 
 LIBRARY OF TRAVEL 
 
 VOLUME SIX 
 
 IN THE LEVANT 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 " MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN," " BACK-LOG STUDIES," 
 
 ' SAUNTERINGS," " BADDECK, AND THAT SORT OF THING," 
 
 "MY WINTER ON THE NILE," ETC., ETC. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN & COMPANY 
 
 THE RIVERSIDE PRESS 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 1907 
 
 UnivBraity of California at Loa 
 TRAINING SCHOOL LIBRARY.
 
 Copyright, 1876, 
 BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 
 
 Copyright, tS92, 
 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO, 
 
 Copyright, 1904, 
 BY SUSAN LEE WARNER. 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 \AJ34 
 
 u 
 
 TO 
 
 WILLIAM D. HOWELLS 
 
 THESE NOTES OF ORIENTAL TRAVEL 
 ARE FRATERNALLY INSCRIBED 
 
 
 
 f vr*N ^ '1 *""" ^^ 
 
 97^. o?
 
 PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED 
 EDITION 
 
 IN turning over the pages of In the Levant 
 with a view to its revision for the present illustrated 
 edition, I am reminded that it was written seven- 
 teen years ago. That is a considerable portion out 
 of an individual life, and indeed in that of a West- 
 ern republic, but in the East it is scarcely the 
 space between a sleeping and a waking. Since it 
 was written, the Russo-Turkish war has been 
 fought ; philanthropy and fanaticism have again 
 and again attempted to modernize, or to restore 
 to the ancient ways, the hills and wildernesses 
 of Judea; the English flag has been planted in 
 Cyprus ; English law, arms, and manners have 
 encamped in Egypt ; the Sultan has been inur- 
 ilered, the Sultan has been deposed as imbecile, 
 the Sultan still sits in his seraglio, lazily watching 
 his iron-dads in the Golden Horn, in the midst of a 
 civilization that has been steadily decaying for five 
 hundred years, and in adding all the Occidental 
 vices to the Oriental immoralities, and assuming
 
 Via PREFACE 
 
 the weight of modern armaments and military ex- 
 pense, has exhibited the endurance that once made 
 the Turk the martial terror of Europe. That 
 Turkey as a political factor is only held for a coun- 
 ter in the game that jealous rivals are playing for 
 the possession of the East may be as true as it 
 was when Russia made her first movement on 
 Constantinople ; but so long as the head of the 
 Moslem faith is a Turk, so long must he be con- 
 sidered in the contact of modern life with that 
 still aggressive and growing religion, with its al- 
 most innumerable populations in Central Asia, 
 India, and Africa. 
 
 Changes there have been in Palestine, better 
 roads, better hotels, better organizations for con- 
 ducting the steps of irreverent sight-seers among 
 historic ruins the commercial value of which the 
 Orientals appreciate ; Constantinople itself has 
 taken new steps in the emancipation of its women 
 and the adoption of Frank ways ; last winter, in 
 Cairo, I found an enormous superimposition of Eu- 
 ropean life, and a wonderful change in the admin- 
 istration of justice, of finance, of the laying and 
 collection of taxes, of agricultural production, of 
 improved irrigation, in the physical well-being of 
 the Fellaheen, all and entirely due to the still un- 
 spent English sense of duty and love of order, and 
 the splendid, conquering, what shall I call it?
 
 PREFACE IX 
 
 moral egotism. But for all that, the Oriental life, 
 the essential current of an existence which is as 
 strange to us as it was to Herodotus, still holds on 
 its way, not much more changed in its character 
 than is the Mediterranean by the modern fleets of 
 war and commerce which vex its surface. 
 
 There is much that I might add to this record 
 of a little pilgrimage, but I see nothing that it is 
 worth while to change. In Cairo, I entered, in the 
 desolate cemetery, the little tomb-building where 
 lies that famous dragoman Mohammed Abd-el-Atti, 
 under a gorgeous cenotaph erected by his widow. 
 I wondered if he has found the sort of Paradise he 
 expected. Those who were his comrades speak of 
 him with serious respect, in a low voice, as having 
 been very rich. I trust he still is. The world he 
 delighted in is very much as he left it, and I am 
 sure that if we could again go over the scenes that 
 his shrewdness and sentiment made at once poetic 
 and comical, I should be as much disillusionized 
 
 and fascinated as I was before. 
 
 C. D. W. 
 
 HARTFORD, May, 1892.
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 
 
 38 
 
 69 
 
 94 
 
 129 
 
 174 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM . 
 
 II. JERUSALEM 
 
 III. HOLY PLACES OF THE HOLY CITY . 
 
 IV. NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM . 
 V. GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 VI. BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 VII. THE FAIR OF MOSES ; THE ARMENIAN PA- 
 TRIARCH 207 
 
 VIII. DEPARTURE FROM JERUSALEM . . . 218 
 
 IX. ALONG THE SYRIAN COAST .... 225 
 
 X. BEYROUT. OVER THE LEBANON . . 234 
 
 XI. BA'ALBEK 243 
 
 XII. ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS . . . 255 
 
 XIII. THE OLDEST OF CITIES 263 
 
 XIV. OTHER SIGHTS IN DAMASCUS . . . 282 
 XV. SOME PRIVATE HOUSES 291 
 
 XVI. SOME SPECIMEN TRAVELERS . . . 302 
 
 XVII. INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN. EPISODE OF TURKISH 
 
 JUSTICE 315 
 
 XVIII. CYPRUS 338 
 
 XIX. THROUGH SUMMER SEAS. RHODES . . 357 
 
 XX. AMONG THE .^GEAN ISLANDS . . . 367 
 
 XXI. SMYRNA AND EPHESUS . . . . . 375 
 
 XXII. THE ADVENTURERS 392 
 
 XXIII. THROUGH THE DARDANELLES .... 401 
 
 XXIV. CONSTANTINOPLE 406 
 
 XXV. THE SERAGLIO. ST. SOPHIA, HIPPODROME, ETC. 417 
 
 XXVI. SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE . . 434 
 
 XXVII. FROM THE GOLDEN HORN TO THE ACROPOLIS 472 
 
 XXVIII. ATHENS 494 
 
 XXIX. ELEUSIS. PLATO'S ACADEME. ETC. . . . 513 
 
 XXX. TBLBOUGH THE GULF OF CORINTH 535
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS 
 
 PAGK 
 
 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNEB Frontispiece 
 
 JERUSALEM 34 
 
 POOL OF SILOAM 46 
 
 VIA DOLOROSA 50 
 
 CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE 70 
 
 DAMASCUS GATE 102 
 
 OLIVE-TREE IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE . . . .116 
 
 BETHLEHF.M 176 
 
 CONVENT OF MAR SABA 194 
 
 NAZARETH 218 
 
 RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF BAAL 246 
 
 RUINS OF BA'AUBEK 252 
 
 A DAMASCUS HOUSE 296 
 
 AN EASTERN DERVISH 312 
 
 STATUE OF HERCULES AT CONSTANTINOPLE MUSEUM, EX- 
 HUMED AT CYPRUS BY DI CESNOLA 348 
 
 RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF DIANA 384 
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE 406 
 
 MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA 424 
 
 THE SULTAN GOING TO PRAY 440 
 
 A TURKISH LADY 468 
 
 THE ACROPOLIS AND TEMPLE OF JUPITER 498 
 
 THE ERECHTHEUM AND PARTHENON 506 
 
 CARYATID FROM THE ERECHTHEUM 510 
 
 FRIKZE FROM THE PARTHENON 520 
 
 FIGURES SUPPORTING THEATRE OF BACCHUS STAGE . , 534
 
 IN THE LEVANT 
 
 I 
 
 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 INCE Jonah made his short and igno- 
 minious voyage along the Syrian coast, 
 mariners have had the same difficulty 
 in getting ashore that the sailors ex- 
 perienced who attempted to land the prophet ; his 
 tedious though safe method of disembarking was 
 not followed by later navigators, and the landing 
 at Jaffa has remained a vexatious and half the 
 time an impossible achievement. 
 
 The town lies upon the open sea and has no 
 harbor. It is only in favorable weather that ves- 
 sels can anchor within a mile or so from shore, and 
 the Mediterranean steamboats often pass the port 
 without being able to land either freight or passen- 
 gers. In the usual condition of the sea the big fish 
 would have found it difficult to discharge Jonah 
 without stranding itself, and it seems that it waited 
 three days for the favorable moment. The best 
 chance for landing nowadays is in the early morn- 
 ing, in that calm period when the winds and the
 
 2 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 waves alike await the movements of the sun. It 
 was at that hour, on the 5th of April, 1875, that 
 we arrived from Port Said on the French steamboat 
 Erymanthe. The night had been pleasant and the 
 sea tolerably smooth, but not to the apprehensions 
 of some of the passengers, who always declare that 
 they prefer, now, a real tempest to a deceitful 
 groundswell. On a recent trip a party had been 
 prevented from landing, owing to the deliberation 
 of the ladies in making their toilet ; by the time 
 they had attired themselves in a proper manner 
 to appear in Southern Palestine, the golden hour 
 had slipped away, and they were able only to look 
 upon the land which their beauty and clothes would 
 have adorned. None of us were caught in a like de- 
 linquency. At the moment the anchor went down 
 we were bargaining with a villain to take us ashore, 
 a bargain in which the yeasty and waxingly uneasy 
 sea gave the boatman all the advantage. 
 
 Our little company of four is guided by the phi- 
 losopher and dragoman Mohammed Abd-el-Atti, 
 of Cairo, who has served us during the long voyage 
 of the Nile. He is assisted in his task by the 
 Abyssinian boy Ahman Abdallah, the brightest 
 and most faithful of servants. In making his first 
 appearance in the Holy Land he has donned over 
 his gay Oriental costume a blue Frank coat, and 
 set his fez back upon his head at an angle exceed- 
 ing the slope of his forehead. His black face has 
 an unusual lustre, and his eyes dance with more than 
 their ordinary merriment as he points excitedly to 
 the shore and cries, " Yafa ! Mist'r Dunham."
 
 THE JAFFA OF ANTIQUITY 3 
 
 The information is addressed to Madame, whom 
 \hman, utterly regardless of sex, invariably ad- 
 dresses by the name of one of our traveling com- 
 panions on the Nile. 
 
 "Yes, marm; you see him, Yafa," interposed 
 Abd-el-Atti, coming forward with the air of brush- 
 ing aside, as impertinent, the geographical infor- 
 mation of his subordinate; "not much, I tink, but 
 him bery old. Let us to go ashore." 
 
 Jaffa, or Yafa, or Joppa, must have been a 
 well-established city, since it had maritime deal- 
 ings with Tarshish, in that remote period in which 
 the quaint story of Jonah is set, a piece of He- 
 brew literature that bears internal evidence of 
 great antiquity in its extreme naivete. Although 
 the Canaanites did not come into Palestine till 
 about 2400 B. c., that is to say, about the time of 
 the twelfth dynasty in Egypt, yet there is a rea- 
 sonable tradition that Jaffa existed before the 
 Deluge. For ages it has been the chief Mediter- 
 ranean port of great Jerusalem. Here Solomon 
 landed his Lebanon timber for the Temple. The 
 town swarmed more than once with the Roman 
 legions on their way to crush a Jewish insurrection. 
 It displayed the banner of the Saracen host a few 
 years after the Hegira. And, later, when the 
 Crusaders erected the standard of the cross on its 
 walls, it was the depot of supplies which Venice 
 and Genoa and other rich cities contributed to the 
 holy war. Great kingdoms and conquerors have 
 possessed it in turn, and for thousands of years 
 merchants have trusted their fortunes to its peril-
 
 4 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 ous roadstead. And yet no one has ever thought 
 it worth while to give it a harbor by the construc- 
 tion of a mole, or a pier like that at Port Said. I 
 should say that the first requisite in the industrial, 
 to say nothing of the moral, regeneration of Pal- 
 estine is a harbor at Jaffa. 
 
 The city is a cluster of irregular, flat-roofed 
 houses, and looks from the sea like a brown bowl 
 turned bottom up; the roofs are terraces on which 
 the inhabitants can sleep on summer nights, and 
 to which they can ascend, out of the narrow, evil- 
 smelling streets, to get a whiff of sweet odor from 
 the orange gardens which surround the town. The 
 ordinary pictures of Jaffa do it ample justice. 
 The chief feature in the view is the hundreds of 
 clumsy feluccas tossing about in the aggravating 
 waves, diving endwise and dipping sidewise, 
 guided a little by the long sweeps of the sailors, 
 but apparently the sport of the most uncertain bil- 
 lows. A swarm of them, four or five deep, sur- 
 rounds our vessel ; they are rising and falling in 
 the most sickly motion, and dashing into each 
 other in the frantic efforts of their rowers to get 
 near the gangway ladder. One minute the boat 
 nearest the stairs rises as if it would mount into 
 the ship, and the next it sinks below the steps into 
 a frightful gulf. The passengers watch the pass- 
 ing opportunity to jump on board, as people dive 
 into the "lift" of a hotel. Freight is discharged 
 into lighters that are equally frisky; and it is 
 taken on and off splashed with salt water, and 
 liable to a thousand accidents in the violence of 
 the transit.
 
 A SHAKY STAIRWAY 5 
 
 Before the town stretches a line of rocks worn 
 for ages, upon which the surf is breaking and 
 sending white jets into the air. It is through a 
 narrow opening in this that our boat is borne on 
 the back of a great wave, and we come into a strip 
 of calmer water and approach the single landing- 
 stairs. These stairs are not so convenient as those 
 of the vessel we have just left, and two persons 
 can scarcely pass on them. But this is the only 
 sea entrance to Jaffa; if the Jews attempt to re- 
 turn and enter their ancient kingdom this way, it 
 will take them a long time to get in. A sea-wall 
 fronts the town, fortified by a couple of rusty can- 
 non at one end, and the passage is through the 
 one gate at the head of these stairs. 
 
 It seems forever that we are kept waiting at the 
 foot of this shaky stairway. Two opposing cur- 
 rents are struggling to get up and down it : excited 
 travelers, porters with trunks and knapsacks, and 
 dragomans who appear to be pushing their way 
 through simply to show their familiarity with the 
 country. It is a dangerous ascent for a delicate 
 woman. Somehow, as we wait at this gate where 
 so many men of note have waited, and look upon 
 this sea-wall upon which have stood so many of the 
 mighty from Solomon to Origen, from Tiglath- 
 Pileser to Richard Cosur de Lion, the historical 
 figure which most pervades Jaffa is that of the 
 whimsical Jonah, whose connection with it was the 
 slightest. There is no evidence that he ever re- 
 turned here. Josephus, who takes liberties with 
 the Hebrew Scriptures, says that a whale carried
 
 6 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 the fugitive into the Euxine Sea, and there dis- 
 charged him much nearer to Nineveh than he 
 would have been if he had kept with the convey- 
 ance in which he first took passage and landed at 
 Tarsus. Probably no one in Jaffa noticed the lit- 
 tle man as he slipped through this gate and took 
 ship, and yet his simple embarkation from the 
 town has given it more notoriety than any other 
 event. Thanks to an enduring piece of literature, 
 the unheroic Jonah and his whale are better known 
 than St. Jerome and his lion ; they are the earliest 
 associates and Oriental acquaintances of all well- 
 brought-up children in Christendom. For myself, 
 I confess that the strictness of many a New Eng- 
 land Sunday has been relieved by the perusal of 
 his unique adventure. He in a manner antici- 
 pated the use of the monitors and of cigar-shaped 
 submerged sea-vessels. 
 
 When we have struggled up the slippery stairs 
 and come through the gate, we wind about for 
 some time in a narrow passage on the side of the 
 sea, and then cross through the city, still on foot. 
 It is a rubbishy place ; the streets are steep and 
 crooked; we pass through archways, we ascend 
 steps, we make unexpected turns ; the shops are a 
 little like bazaars, but rather Italian than Orien- 
 tal ; we pass a pillared mosque and a Moslem foun- 
 tain ; we come upon an ancient square, in the cen- 
 tre of which is a round fountain with pillars and a 
 canopy of stone, and close about it are the bazaars 
 of merchants. This old fountain is profusely 
 sculptured with Arabic inscriptions ; the stones are
 
 HOTEL OF THE TWELVE TRIBES 7 
 
 worn and have taken the rich tint of age, and the 
 sunlight blends it into harmony with the gay stuffs 
 of the shops and the dark skins of the idlers on 
 the pavement. We come into the great market of 
 fruit and vegetables, where vast heaps of oranges, 
 like apples in a New England orchard, line the 
 way and fill the atmosphere with a golden tinge. 
 
 The Jaffa oranges are famous in the Orient; 
 they grow to the size of ostrich eggs, they have a 
 skin as thick as the hide of a rhinoceros, and, in 
 their season, the pulp is sweet, juicy, and tender. 
 It is a little late now, and we open one golden 
 globe after another before we find one that is not 
 dry and tasteless as a piece of punk. But one 
 cannot resist buying such magnificent fruit. 
 
 Outside the walls, through broad dusty high- 
 ways, by lanes of cactus hedges and in sight again 
 of the sea breaking on a rocky shore, we come to 
 the Hotel of the Twelve Tribes, occupied now prin- 
 cipally by Cook's tribes, most of whom appear to 
 be lost. In the adjacent lot are pitched the tents 
 of Syrian travelers, and one of Cook's expeditions 
 is in all the bustle of speedy departure. The 
 bony, nervous Syrian horses are assigned by lot to 
 the pilgrims, who are excellent people from Eng- 
 land and America, and most of them as unaccus- 
 tomed to the back of a horse as to that of an os- 
 trich. It is touching to see some of the pilgrims 
 walk around the animals which have fallen to them, 
 wondering how they are to get on, which side they 
 are to mount, and how they are to stay on. Some 
 have already mounted, and are walking the steeds
 
 8 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 carefully round the inclosure or timidly essaying 
 a trot. Nearly every one concludes, after a trial, 
 that he would like to change, something not 
 quite so much up and down, you know, an easier 
 saddle, a horse that more unites gentleness with 
 spirit. Some of the dragomans are equipped in a 
 manner to impress travelers with the perils of the 
 country. One, whom I remember on the Nile as 
 a mild though showy person, has bloomed here into 
 a Bedawee: he is fierce in aspect, an arsenal of 
 weapons, and gallops furiously about upon a horse 
 loaded down with accoutrements. This, however, 
 is only the beginning of our real danger. 
 
 After breakfast we sallied out to see the sights : 
 besides the house of Simon the tanner, they are 
 not many. The house of Simon is, as it was in 
 the time of St. Peter, by the seaside. We went 
 upon the roof (and it is more roof than anything 
 else) where the apostle lay down to sleep and saw 
 the vision, and looked around upon the other roofs 
 and upon the wide sweep of the tumbling sea. In 
 the court is a well, the stone curb of which is 
 deeply worn in several places by the rope, showing 
 long use. The water is brackish; Simon may 
 have tanned with it. The house has not probably 
 been destroyed and rebuilt more than four or five 
 times since St. Peter dwelt here ; the Romans once 
 built the entire city. The chief room is now a 
 mosque. We inquired for the house of Dorcas, 
 but that is not shown, although I understood that 
 we could see her grave outside the city. It is a 
 great oversight not to show the house of Dorcas,
 
 THE GOSPEL OP DEMOCRACY 
 
 and one that I cannot believe will long annoy pil- 
 grims in these days of multiplied discoveries of 
 sacred sites. 
 
 Whether this is the actual spot where the house 
 of Simon stood, I do not know, nor does it much 
 matter. Here, or hereabouts, the apostle saw that 
 marvelous vision which proclaimed to a weary 
 world the brotherhood of man. From this spot 
 issued the gospel of democracy: "Of a truth, I 
 perceive that God is no respecter of persons." 
 From this insignificant dwelling went forth the 
 edict that broke the power of tyrants, and loosed 
 the bonds of slaves, and ennobled the lot of wo- 
 man, and enfranchised the human mind. Of all 
 places on earth I think there is only one more 
 worthy of pilgrimage by all devout and liberty- 
 loving souls. 
 
 We were greatly interested, also, in a visit to 
 the well-known school of Miss Arnot, a mission 
 school for girls in the upper chambers of a house 
 in the most crowded part of Jaffa. With modest 
 courage and tact and self-devotion this lady has 
 sustained it here for twelve years, and the fruits 
 of it already begin to appear. We found twenty 
 or thirty pupils, nearly all quite young, and most 
 of them daughters of Christians ; they are taught 
 in Arabic the common branches, and some English, 
 and they learn to sing. They sang for us English 
 tunes like any Sunday-school ; a strange sound in 
 a Moslem town. There are one or two other 
 schools of a similar character in the Orient, con- 
 ducted as private enterprises by ladies of culture;
 
 10 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 and I think there is no work nobler, and none 
 more worthy of liberal support, or more likely to 
 result in giving women a decent position in East- 
 ern society. 
 
 On a little elevation a half - mile outside the 
 walls is a cluster of wooden houses, which were 
 manufactured in America. There we found the 
 remnants of the Adams colony, only half a dozen 
 families out of the original two hundred and fifty 
 persons; two or three men and some widows and 
 children. The colony built in the centre of their 
 settlement an ugly little church out of Maine tim- 
 ber ; it now stands empty and staring, with broken 
 windows. It is not difficult to make this adven- 
 ture appear romantic. Those who engaged in it 
 were plain New England people, many of them ig- 
 norant, but devout to fanaticism. They had heard 
 the prophets expounded, and the prophecies of the 
 latter days unraveled, until they came to believe 
 that the day of the Lord was nigh, and that they 
 had laid upon them a mission in the fulfillment of 
 the divine purposes. Most of them were from 
 Maine and New Hampshire, accustomed to bitter 
 winters and to wring their living from a niggardly 
 soil. I do not wonder that they were fascinated 
 by the pictures of a fair land of blue skies, a land 
 of vines and olives and palms, where they were 
 undoubtedly called by the Spirit to a life of greater 
 sanctity and considerable ease and abundance. 1 
 think I see their dismay when they first pitched 
 their tents amid this Moslem squalor, and at- 
 tempted to "squat," Western fashion, upon the
 
 THE ADVENT COLONY 11 
 
 skirts of the Plain of Sharon, which has been 
 for some ages preempted. They erected houses, 
 however, and joined the other inhabitants of the 
 region in a struggle for existence. But Adams, 
 the preacher and president, had not faith enough 
 to wait for the unfolding of prophecy ; he took to 
 strong drink, and with general bad management 
 the whole enterprise came to grief, and the deluded 
 people were rescued from starvation only by the 
 liberality of our government. 
 
 There was the germ of a good idea in the rash 
 undertaking. If Palestine is ever to be repeopled, 
 its coming inhabitants must have the means of sub- 
 sistence ; and if those now here are to be redeemed 
 to a better life, they must learn to work; before 
 all else there must come a revival of industry and 
 a development of the resources of the country. 
 To send here Jews or Gentiles, and to support 
 them by charity, only adds to the existing misery. 
 
 It was eight years ago that the Adams commu- 
 nity exploded. Its heirs and successors are Ger- 
 mans, a colony from Wiirtemberg, an Advent sect 
 akin to the American, but more single-minded 
 and devout. They own the ground upon which 
 they have settled, having acquired a title from the 
 Turkish government ; they have erected substantial 
 houses of stone and a large hotel, The Jerusalem, 
 and give many evidences of shrewdness and thrift 
 as well as piety. They have established a good 
 school, in which, with German thoroughness, 
 Latin, English, and the higher mathematics are 
 taught, and an excellent education may be ofc
 
 12 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 tained. More land the colony is not permitted to 
 own ; but they hire ground outside the walls, which 
 they farm to advantage. 
 
 I talked with one of the teachers, a thin young 
 ascetic in spectacles, whose severity of countenance 
 and demeanor was sufficient to rebuke all the 
 Oriental levity I had encountered during the win- 
 ter. There was in him and in the other leaders an 
 air of sincere fanaticism, and a sobriety and integ- 
 rity in the common laborers, which are the best 
 omens for the success of the colony. The leaders 
 told us that they thought the Americans came here 
 with the expectation of making money uppermost 
 in mind, and hardly in the right spirit. As to 
 themselves, they do not expect to make money; 
 they repelled the insinuation with some warmth; 
 they have had, in fact, a very hard struggle, and 
 are thankful for a fair measure of success. Their 
 sole present purpose is evidently to redeem and 
 reclaim the land, and make it fit for the expected 
 day of jubilee. The Jews from all parts of the 
 world, they say, are to return to Palestine, and 
 there is to issue out of the Holy Land a new divine 
 impulse which is to be the regeneration and salva- 
 tion of the world. I do not know that anybody but 
 the Jews themselves would oppose their migration 
 to Palestine, though their withdrawal from the 
 business of the world suddenly would create wide 
 disaster. With these doubts, however, we did not 
 trouble the youthful knight of severity. We only 
 asked him upon what the community founded its 
 creed and its mission. Largely, he replied, upon
 
 AN EARLY POLYGLOT 13 
 
 the prophets, and especially upon Isaiah; and he 
 referred us to Isaiah xxxii. 1; xlix. 12 et seq.; 
 and lii. 1. It is not every industrial community 
 that would flourish on a charter so vague as this. 
 
 A lad of twelve or fourteen was our guide to 
 the Advent settlement ; he was an early polyglot, 
 speaking, besides English, French, and German, 
 Arabic, and, I think, a little Greek ; a boy of un- 
 common gravity of deportment and of precocious 
 shrewdness. He is destined to be a guide and 
 dragoman. I could see that the whole Biblical 
 history was a little fade to him, but he does not 
 lose sight of the profit of a knowledge of it. I 
 could not but contrast him with a Sunday-school 
 scholar of his own age in America, whose imagi- 
 nation kindles at the Old Testament stories, and 
 whose enthusiasm for the Holy Land is awakened 
 by the wall maps and the pictures of Solomon's 
 Temple. Actual contact has destroyed the imagi- 
 nation of this boy; Jerusalem is not so much a 
 wonder to him as Boston; Samson lived just over 
 there beyond the Plain of Sharon, and is not so 
 much a hero as Old Put. 
 
 The boy's mother was a good New Hampshire 
 woman, whose downright Yankeeism of thought 
 and speech was an odd contrast to her Oriental sur- 
 roundings. I sat in a rocking-chair in the sitting- 
 room of her little wood cottage, and could scarcely 
 convince myself that I was not in a prim New 
 Hampshire parlor. To her mind there were no 
 more Oriental illusions, and perhaps she had never 
 indulged any ; certainly, in her presence Palestine 
 seemed to me as commonplace as New England.
 
 14 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 "I s'pose you 've seen the meetin' house? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Wai, it's goin' to rack and ruin like every- 
 thing else here. There is n't enough here to have 
 any service now. Sometimes I go to the German ; 
 I try to keep up a little feeling." 
 
 I have no doubt it is more difficult to keep up 
 a religious feeling in the Holy Land than it is in 
 New Hampshire, but we did not discuss that point. 
 I asked, "Do you have any society? " 
 
 "Precious little. The Germans are dreffle un- 
 social. The natives are all a low set. The Arabs 
 will all lie; I don't think much of any of 'em. 
 The Mohammedans are all shiftless; you can't 
 trust any of 'em." 
 
 "Why don't you go home? " 
 
 " Wai, sometimes I think I 'd like to see the 
 old place, but I reckon I could n't stand the win- 
 ters. This is a nice climate, that 's all there is 
 here ; and we have grapes and oranges, and loads 
 of flowers, you see my garden there ; I set great 
 store by that, and me and my daughter take solid 
 comfort in it, especially when he is away, and he 
 has to be off most of the time with parties, guidin' 
 'em round. No, I guess 1 sha'n't ever cross the 
 ocean again." 
 
 It appeared that the good woman had consoled 
 herself with a second husband, who bears a Jewish 
 name; so that the original object of her mission, 
 to gather in the chosen people, is not altogether 
 lost sight of. 
 
 There is a curious interest in these New England
 
 NEW ENGLAND IN THE ORIENT 15 
 
 transplantations. Climate is a great transformer. 
 The habits and customs of thousands of years will 
 insensibly conquer the most stubborn prejudices. 
 I wonder how long it will require to blend these 
 scions of our vigorous civilization with the motley 
 growth that makes up the present Syriac popu- 
 lation, people whose blood is streaked with a 
 dozen different strains, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Ara- 
 bian, Assyrian, Phosnician, Greek, Roman, Ca- 
 naanite, Jewish, Persian, Turkish, with all the races 
 that have in turn ravaged or occupied the land. 
 I do not, indeed, presume to say what the Syrians 
 are who have occupied Palestine for so many hun- 
 dreds of years, but I cannot see how it can be 
 otherwise than that their blood is as mixed as that 
 of the modern Egyptians. Perhaps these New 
 England offshoots will maintain their distinction 
 of race for a long time, but I should be still more 
 interested to know how long the New England 
 mind will keep its integrity in these surroundings, 
 and whether those ruggednesses of virtue and those 
 homely simplicities of character which we recog- 
 nize as belonging to the hilly portions of New Eng- 
 land will insensibly melt away in this relaxing air 
 that so much wants moral tone. These Oriental 
 countries have been conquered many times, but 
 they have always conquered their conquerors. I 
 am told that even our American consuls are not 
 always more successful in resisting the undermin- 
 ing seductions of the East than were the Roman 
 proconsuls. 
 
 These reflections, however, let it be confessed,
 
 16 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 did not come to me as I sat in the rocking-chair 
 of my countrywoman. I was rather thinking how 
 completely her presence and accent dispelled all 
 my Oriental illusions and cheapened the associa- 
 tions of Jaffa. There is I know not what in a real 
 living Yankee that puts all appearances to the test 
 and dissipates the colors of romance. It was not 
 until I came again into the highway, and found in 
 front of The Jerusalem hotel a company of Arab 
 acrobats and pyramid-builders, their swarthy bodies 
 shining in the white sunlight, and a lot of idlers 
 squatting about in enjoyment of the exertions of 
 others, that I recovered in any degree my delu- 
 sions. 
 
 With the return of these, it seemed not so im- 
 possible to believe even in the return of the Jews; 
 especially when we learned that preparations for 
 them multiply. A second German colony has 
 been established outside of the city. There is an- 
 other at Haifa; on the Jerusalem road the begin- 
 ning of one has been made by the Jews themselves. 
 It amounts to something like a "movement." 
 
 At three o'clock in the afternoon we set out for 
 Ramleh, ignominously, in a wagon. There is a 
 carriage -road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and our 
 dragoman had promised us a "private carriage." 
 We decided to take it, thinking; it would be more 
 
 o 
 
 comfortable than horseback for some of our party. 
 We made a mistake, which we have never ceased 
 to regret. The road I can confidently commend 
 as the worst in the world. The carriage into 
 which we climbed belonged to the German colony,
 
 THE PLAIN OF SHARON 17 
 
 and was a compromise between the ancient ark, a 
 modern dray, and a threshing-machine. It was 
 one of those contrivances that a German would 
 evolve out of his inner consciousness, and its ap- 
 pearance here gave me grave doubts as to the 
 adaptability of these honest Germans to the Orient. 
 It was, however, a great deal worse than it looked. 
 If it were driven over smooth ground it would soon 
 loosen all the teeth of the passengers, and shatter 
 their spinal columns. But over the Jerusalem 
 road the effect was indescribable. The noise of it 
 was intolerable, the jolting incredible. The little 
 solid Dutchman, who sat in front and drove, shook 
 like the charioteer of an artillery wagon; but I 
 suppose he had no feeling. We pounded along- 
 over the roughest stone pavement, with the sensa- 
 tion of victims drawn to execution in a cart, until 
 we emerged into the open country; but there we 
 found no improvement in the road. 
 
 Jaffa is surrounded by immense orange groves, 
 which are protected along the highways by hedges 
 of prickly-pear. We came out from a lane of 
 these upon the level and blooming Plain of Sharon, 
 and saw before us, on the left, the blue hills of 
 Judaea. It makes little difference what kind of 
 conveyance one has, it is impossible for him to ad- 
 vance upon this historic, if not sacred plain, and 
 catch the first glimpse of those pale hills which 
 stood to him for a celestial vision in his childhood, 
 without a great quickening of the pulse ; and it is 
 a most lovely view after Egypt, or after anything. 
 The elements of it are simple enough, merely a
 
 18 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 wide sweep of prairie and a line of graceful moun- 
 tains; but the forms are pleasing, and the color 
 is incomparable. The soil is warm and red, the 
 fields are a mass of wild -flowers of the most bril- 
 liant and variegated hues, and, alternately swept 
 by the shadows of clouds and bathed in the sun, 
 the scene takes on the animation of incessant 
 change. 
 
 It was somewhere here, outside the walls, I do 
 not know the spot, that the massacre of Jaffa oc- 
 curred. I purposely go out of my way to repeat 
 the well-known story of it, and I trust that it will 
 always be recalled whenever any mention is made 
 of the cruel little Corsican who so long imposed 
 the vulgarity and savageness of his selfish nature 
 upon Europe. It was in March, 1799, that Na- 
 poleon, toward the close of his humiliating and 
 disastrous campaign in Egypt, carried Jaffa by 
 storm. The town was given over to pillage. Dur- 
 ing its progress four thousand Albanians of the 
 garrison, taking refuge in some old khans, offered 
 to surrender on condition that their lives should 
 be spared ; otherwise they would fight to the bitter 
 end. Their terms were accepted, and two of Na- 
 poleon's aids-de-camp pledged their honor for their 
 safety. They were inarched out to the general's 
 headquarters and seated in front of the tents with 
 their arms bound behind them. The displeased 
 commander called a council of war and deliberated 
 two days upon their fate, and then signed the or- 
 der for the massacre of the entire body. The ex- 
 cuse was that the general could not be burdened
 
 SPRINGTIME IN THE HOLY LAND 19 
 
 with so many prisoners. Thus in one day were 
 murdered in cold blood about as many people as 
 Jaffa at present contains. Its inhabitants may be 
 said to have been accustomed to being massacred; 
 eight thousand of them were butchered in one Ro- 
 man assault; but I suppose all antiquity may be 
 searched in vain for an act of perfidy and cruelty 
 combined equal to that of the Grand Emperor. 
 
 The road over which we rattle is a causeway of 
 loose stones; the country is a plain of sand, but 
 clothed with a luxuriant vegetation. In the fields 
 the brown husbandmen are ploughing, turning up 
 the soft red earth with a rude plough drawn by 
 cattle yoked wide apart. Red-legged storks, on 
 their way, I suppose, from Egypt to their summer 
 residence further north, dot the meadows, and are 
 too busy picking up worms to notice our halloo. 
 Abd-el-Atti, who has a passion for shooting, begs 
 permission to "go for" these household birds with 
 the gun ; but we explain to him that we would no 
 more shoot a stork than one of the green birds of 
 Paradise. Quails are scudding about in the newly 
 turned furrows, and song birds salute us from the 
 tops of swinging cypresses. The Holy Land is 
 rejoicing in its one season of beauty, its spring- 
 time. 
 
 Trees are not wanting to the verdant meadows. 
 \Ve still encounter an occasional grove of oranges ; 
 alives also appear, and acacias, sycamores, cy- 
 presses, and tamarisks. The pods of the carob- 
 tree are, I believe, the husks upon which the prod- 
 igal son did not thrive. Large patches of barley
 
 20 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 are passed. But the fields not occupied with 
 grain are literally carpeted with wild-flowers of the 
 most brilliant hues, such a display as I never saw 
 elsewhere: scarlet and dark flaming poppies, the 
 scarlet anemone, marigolds, white daisies, the 
 lobelia, the lupin, the vetch, the gorse with its 
 delicate yellow blossom, the pea, something that 
 we agreed to call the white rose of Sharon, the 
 mallow, the asphodel; the leaves of a lily not yet 
 in bloom. About the rose of Sharon we no doubt 
 were mistaken. There is no reason to suppose it 
 was white; but we have somehow associated the 
 purity of that color with the song beginning, "I 
 am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys." 
 It was probably not even a rose. We finally de- 
 cided to cherish the red mallow as the rose of 
 Sharon; it is very abundant, and the botanist of 
 our company seemed satisfied to accept it. For 
 myself, the rose by the name of mallow does not 
 smell sweet. 
 
 We come in sight of Ramleh, which lies on the 
 swelling mounds of the green plain, encompassed 
 by emerald meadows and by groves of orange and 
 olive, and conspicuous from a great distance by 
 its elegant square tower, the most beautiful in form 
 that we have seen in the East. As the sun is sink- 
 ing, we defer our visit to it, and drive to the 
 Latin convent, where we are to lodge, permission 
 to that effect having been obtained from the sister 
 convent at Jaffa ; a mere form, since a part of the 
 convent was built expressly for the entertainment 
 of travelers, and the few monks who occupy it find
 
 THE CONVENT OF RAMLEH 21 
 
 keeping a hotel a very profitable kind of hospital- 
 ity. The stranger is the guest of the superior, no 
 charge is made, and the little fiction of gratuitous 
 hospitality so pleases the pilgrim that he will not 
 at his departure be outdone in liberality. It would 
 be much more agreeable if all our hotels were upon 
 this system. 
 
 While the dragoman is unpacking the luggage 
 in the court-yard and bustling about in a manner 
 to impress the establishment with the importance 
 of its accession, I climb up to the roofs to get the 
 sunset. The house is all roofs, it would seem, at 
 different levels. Steps lead here and there, and 
 one can wander about at will ; you could not desire 
 a pleasanter lounging-place in a summer evening. 
 The protecting walls, which are breast-high, are 
 built in with cylinders of tile, like the mud houses 
 in Egypt; the tiles make the walls lighter, and 
 furnish at the same time peep-holes through which 
 the monks can spy the world, themselves unseen. 
 I noticed that the tiles about the entrance court 
 were inclined downwards, so that a curious person 
 could study any new arrival at the convent without 
 being himself observed. The sun went down be- 
 hind the square tower which is called Saracenic 
 and is entirely Gothic in spirit, and the light lay 
 soft and rosy on the wide compass of green vege- 
 tation ; I heard on the distant fields the bells of 
 mules returning to the gates, and the sound substi- 
 tuted Italy in my mind for Palestine. 
 
 From this prospect I was summoned in haste; 
 the superior of the convent was waiting to receive
 
 22 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 me, and I had been sought in all directions. I had 
 no idea why I should be received, but I soon found 
 that the occasion was not a trivial one. In the 
 reception-room were seated in some state the su- 
 perior, attended by two or three brothers, and the 
 remainder of my suite already assembled. The 
 abbot, if he is an abbot, arose and cordially wel- 
 comed "the general " to his humble establishment, 
 hoped that he was not fatigued by the journey from 
 Jaffa, and gave him a seat beside himself. The 
 remainder of the party were ranged according to 
 their rank. I replied that the journey was on the 
 contrary delightful, and that any journey could be 
 considered fortunate which had the hospitable con- 
 vent of Ramleh as its end. The courteous monk 
 renewed his solicitous inquiries, and my astonish- 
 ment was increased by the botanist, who gravely 
 assured the worthy father that "the general" was 
 accustomed to fatigue, and that such a journey as 
 this was a recreation to him. 
 
 "What in the mischief is all this about?"I 
 seized a moment to whisper to the person next me. 
 
 "You are a distinguished American general, 
 traveling with his lady in pursuit of Heaven knows 
 what, and accompanied by his suite; don't make a 
 mess of it." 
 
 "Oh," I said, "if I am a distinguished Ameri- 
 can general, traveling with my lady in pursuit of 
 Heaven knows what, I am glad to know it." 
 
 Fortunately the peaceful father did not know 
 anything more of war than I did, and I suppose 
 my hastily assumed modesty of the soldier seemed
 
 A DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN GENERAL, 23 
 
 to him the real thing 1 . It was my first experience 
 of anything like real war, the first time I had ever 
 occupied any military position, and it did not seem 
 to be so arduous as has been represented. 
 
 Great regret was expressed by the superior that 
 they had not anticipated my arrival, in order to 
 have entertained me in a more worthy manner ; the 
 convent was uncommonly full of pilgrims, and it 
 would be difficult to lodge my suite as it deserved. 
 Then there followed a long discussion between the 
 father and one of the monks upon our disposition 
 for the night. 
 
 "If we give the general and his lady the south 
 room in the court, then the doctor " etc., etc. 
 
 "Or," urged the monk, "suppose the general 
 and his lady occupy the cell number four, then 
 mademoiselle can take " etc., etc. 
 
 The military commander and his lady were at 
 last shown into a cell opening out of the court, a 
 lofty but narrow vaulted room, with brick floor 
 and thick walls, and one small window near the 
 ceiling. Instead of candles we had antique Roman 
 lamps, which made a feeble glimmer in the cav- 
 ern ; the oddest water- jugs served for pitchers. 
 It may not have been damp, but it felt as if no 
 sun had ever penetrated the chill interior. 
 
 "What is all this nonsense of the general?'' I 
 asked Abd-el-Atti, as soon as I could get hold of 
 that managing factotum. 
 
 " Dunno, be sure ; these monk always pay more 
 attention to 'stinguish people." 
 
 "But what did you say at the convent in Jaffa 
 when you applied for a permit to lodge here ? "
 
 24 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 "Oh, I tell him my gentleman general Ameri- 
 can, but 'stinguish; mebbe he done gone wrote 
 'em that you 'stinguish American general. Very 
 nice man, the superior, speak Italian beautiful; 
 when I give him the letter, he say he do all he can 
 for the general and his suite; he sorry I not let 
 him know 'forehand." 
 
 The dinner was served in the long refectory, 
 and there were some twenty-five persons at table, 
 mostly pilgrims to Jerusalem, and most of them of 
 the poorer class. One bright Italian had traveled 
 alone with her little boy all the way from Verona, 
 only to see the Holy Sepulchre. The monks 
 waited at table and served a very good dinner. 
 Travelers are not permitted to enter the portion of 
 the large convent which contains the cells of the 
 monks, nor to visit any part of the old building 
 except the chapel. I fancied that the jolly bro- 
 thers who waited at table were rather glad to come 
 into contact with the world, even in this capacity. 
 
 In the dining-room hangs a notable picture. It 
 is the Virgin enthroned, with a crown and aureole, 
 holding the holy child, who is also crowned; in 
 the foreground is a choir of white boys or angels. 
 The Virgin and child are both black : it is the Vir- 
 gin of Ethiopia. I could not learn the origin of 
 this picture ; it was rude enough in execution to be 
 the work of a Greek artist of the present day ; but 
 it was said to come from Ethiopia, where it is ne- 
 cessary to a proper respect for the Virgin that she 
 should be represented black. She seems to bear 
 something the relation to the Virgin of Judaea that
 
 THE VIRGIN OF ETHIOPIA 2o 
 
 Astarte did to the Grecian Venus. And we are 
 again reminded that the East has no prejudice of 
 color : " I am black but comely, O ye daughters of 
 Jerusalem;" "Look not upon me because I am 
 black, because the sun hath looked upon me." 
 
 The convent bells are ringing at early dawn, 
 and though we are up at half past five, nearly all 
 the pilgrims have hastily departed for Jerusalem. 
 Upon the roof I find the morning fair. There are 
 more minarets than spires in sight, but they stand 
 together in this pretty little town without discord. 
 The bells are ringing in melodious persuasion, but 
 at the same time, in voices as musical, the muez- 
 zins are calling from their galleries ; each summon- 
 ing men to prayer in its own way. From these 
 walls spectators once looked down upon the battles 
 of cross and crescent raging in the lovely mead- 
 ows, battles of quite as much pride as piety. A 
 common interest always softens animosity, and I 
 fancy that monks and Moslems will not again re- 
 sort to the foolish practice of breaking each other's 
 heads so long as they enjoy the profitable stream 
 of pilgrims to the Holy Land. 
 
 After breakfast and a gift to the treasury of the 
 convent according to our rank, I think if I were 
 to stay there again it would be in the character of 
 a common soldier, we embarked again in the 
 ark, and jolted along behind the square-shouldered 
 driver, who seemed to enjoy the rattling and rum- 
 bling of his clumsy vehicle. But no minor infe- 
 licity could destroy for us the freshness of the 
 morning or the enjoyment of the lovely country.
 
 26 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 Although, in the jolting, one could not utter a re- 
 mark about the beauty of the way without danger 
 of biting his tongue in two, we feasted our eyes 
 and let our imaginations loose over the vast ranges 
 of the Old Testament story. 
 
 After passing through the fertile meadows of 
 Ramleh, we came into a more rolling country, 
 destitute of houses, but clothed on with a most 
 brilliant bloom of wild -flowers, among which the 
 papilionaceous flowers were conspicuous for color 
 and delicacy. I found by the roadside a black 
 calla (which I should no more have believed in 
 than in the black Virgin, if I had not seen it). Its 
 leaf is exactly that of our calla-lily ; its flower is 
 similar to, but not so open and flaring as the white 
 calla, and the pistil is large and very long, and of 
 the color of the interior of the flower. The corolla 
 is green on the outside, but the inside is incompar- 
 ably rich, like velvet, black in some lights and 
 dark maroon in others. Nothing could be finer in 
 color and texture than this superb flower. Be- 
 sides the blooms of yesterday we noticed butter- 
 cups, various sorts of the ranunculus, among them 
 the scarlet and the shooting-star, a light purple 
 flower with a dark purple centre, the Star of Beth- 
 lehem, and the purple wind-flower. Scarlet pop- 
 pies and the still more brilliant scarlet anemones, 
 dandelions, marguerites, filled all the fields with 
 masses of color. 
 
 Shortly we come into the hills, through which 
 the road winds upward, and the scenery is very 
 much like that of the Adirondacks, or would be if
 
 CONSECRATED GROUND 27 
 
 the rocky hills of the latter were denuded of trees. 
 The way begins to be lively with passengers, and 
 it becomes us to be circumspect, for almost every 
 foot of ground has been consecrated or desecrated, 
 or in some manner made memorable. This heap oi 
 rubbish is the remains of a fortress which the Sar- 
 acens captured, built by the Crusaders to guard 
 the entrance of the pass, upon the site of an older 
 fortification by the Maccabees, or founded upon 
 Roman substructions, and mentioned in Judges as 
 the spot whore some very ancient Jew stayed over 
 night. It is also, no doubt, one of the stations 
 that help us to determine with the accuracy of a 
 surveyor the boundary between the territory of 
 Benjamin and Judah. I try to ascertain all these 
 localities and to remember them all, but I some- 
 times get Richard Cffiur de Lion mixed with Jon- 
 athan Maccabseus, and I have no doubt I mistook 
 "Job's convent " for the Castellum boni Latronis, 
 a place we were specially desirous to see as the 
 birthplace of the "penitent thief." But whatever 
 we confounded, we are certain of one thing : we 
 looked over into the Valley of Ajalon. It was 
 over this valley that Joshua commanded the moon 
 to tarry while he smote the fugitive Amorites on 
 the heights of Gibeon, there to the east. 
 
 The road is thronged with pilgrims to Jerusalem, 
 and with travelers and their attendants, gay 
 cavalcades scattered all along the winding way 
 over the rolling plain, as in the picture of the Pil- 
 grims to Canterbury. All the transport of freight 
 as well as passengers is by the backs of beasts of
 
 28 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 burden. There are long files of horses and mules 
 staggering under enormous loads of trunks, tents, 
 and bags. Dragomans, some of them got up in 
 fierce style, with baggy yellow trousers, yellow 
 kuffias bound about the head with a twisted fillet, 
 armed with long Damascus swords, their belts 
 stuck full of pistols, and a rifle slung on the back, 
 gallop furiously along the line, the signs of danger 
 but the assurances of protection. Camp boys and 
 waiters dash along also, on the pack-horses, with 
 a great clatter of kitchen furniture ; even a scullion 
 has an air of adventure as he pounds his rack-a- 
 bone steed into a vicious gallop. And there are 
 the Cook's tourists, called by everybody "Cookies," 
 men and women struggling on according to the 
 pace of their horses, conspicuous in hats with white 
 muslin drapery hanging over the neck. Villainous- 
 looking fellows with or without long guns, coming 
 and going on the highway, have the air of being 
 neither pilgrims nor strangers. We meet women 
 returning from Jerusalem clad in white, seated 
 astride their horses, or upon beds which top their 
 multifarious baggage. 
 
 We are leaving behind us on the right the coun- 
 try of Samson, in which he passed his playful and 
 engaging boyhood, and we look wistfully towards it. 
 Of Zorah, where he was born, nothing is left but 
 a cistern, and there is only a wretched hamlet to 
 mark the site of Timnath, where he got his Phi- 
 listine wife. "Get her for me, for she pleaseth 
 me well," was his only reply to the entreaty of his 
 father that he would be content with a maid of 
 his own people.
 
 A WILD AND ROCKY COUNTRY 29 
 
 The country gets wilder and more rocky as 
 we ascend. Down the ragged side paths come 
 wretched women and girls, staggering under the 
 loads of brushwood which they have cut in the high 
 ravines ; loads borne upon the head that would tax 
 the strength of a strong man. I found it no easy 
 task to lift one of the bundles. The poor creatures 
 were scantily clad in a single garment of coarse 
 brown cloth, but most of them wore a profusion of 
 ornaments; strings of coins, Turkish and Arabic, 
 on the head and breast, and uncouth rings and 
 bracelets. Farther on a rabble of boys besets us, 
 begging for backsheesh in piteous and whining 
 tones, and throwing up their arms in theatrical 
 gestures of despair. 
 
 All the hills bear marks of having once been 
 terraced to the very tops, for vines and olives. 
 The natural ledges seem to have been humored into 
 terraces and occasionally built up and broadened 
 by stone walls; but where the hill was smooth, 
 traces of terraces are yet visible. The grape is 
 still cultivated low down the steeps, and the olives 
 straggle over some of the hills to the very top ; but 
 these feeble efforts of culture or of nature do little 
 to relieve the deserted aspect of the scene. 
 
 We lunch in a pretty olive grove, upon a slope 
 long ago terraced and now grass-grown and flower- 
 sown; lovely vistas open into cool glades, and 
 paths lead upward among the rocks to inviting re- 
 treats. From this high perch in the bosom of the 
 hills we look off upon Kamleli, Jaffa, the broad 
 Plain of Sharon, and the sea. A strip of sand be-
 
 30 
 
 tween the sea and the plain produces the effect of 
 a mirage, giving to the plain the appearance of the 
 sea. It would be a charming spot for a country- 
 seat for a resident of Jerusalem, although Jerusa- 
 lem itself is rural enough at present; and David 
 and Solomon may have had summer pavilions in 
 these cool shades in sight of the Mediterranean. 
 David himself, however, perhaps had enough of 
 this region when he dodged about in these fast- 
 nesses between Ramah and Gath, from the pursuit 
 of Saul to make him content with a city life. 
 There is nothing to hinder our believing that he 
 often enjoyed this prospect; and we do believe it, 
 for it is already evident that the imagination must 
 be called in to create an enjoyment of this deserted 
 land. David no doubt loved this spot. For 
 David was a poet, even at this early period when 
 his occupation was that of a successful guerilla ; and 
 he had all the true poet's adaptability, as witness 
 the exquisite ode he composed on the death of his 
 enemy Saul. I have no doubt that he enjoyed this 
 lovely prospect often, for he was a man who en- 
 joyed heartily everything lovely. He was in this 
 as in all he did a thorough man ; when he made a 
 raid on an Amorite city, he left neither man, 
 woman, nor child alive to spread the news. 
 
 We have already mounted over two thousand 
 feet. The rocks are silicious limestone, crumbling 
 and gray with ages of exposure; they give the 
 landscape an ashy appearance. But there is al- 
 ways a little verdure amid the rocks, and now 
 and then an olive-tree, perhaps a very old one,
 
 ABU GHAUSH 31 
 
 decrepit and twisted into the most fantastic form, 
 as if distorted by a vegetable rheumatism, casting 
 abroad its withered arms as if the tree writhed in 
 pain. On such ghostly trees I have no doubt the 
 five kings were hanged. Another tree or rather 
 shrub is abundant, the dwarf -oak; and the haw- 
 thorn, now in blossom, is frequently seen. The 
 rock-rose a delicate white single flower blooms 
 by the wayside and amid the ledges, and the scar- 
 let anemone flames out more brilliantly than ever. 
 Nothing indeed could be more beautiful than the 
 contrast of the clusters of scarlet anemones and 
 white roses with the gray rocks. 
 
 We soon descend into a valley and reach the site 
 of Kirjath-Jearim, which has not much ancient in- 
 terest for me, except that the name is pleasing; but 
 on the other side of the stream and opposite a Mos- 
 lem fountain are the gloomy stone habitations of 
 the family of the terrible Abu Ghaush, whose rob- 
 beries of travelers kept the whole country in a 
 panic a quarter of a century ago. He held the key 
 of this pass, and let no one go by without toll. 
 For fifty years he and his companions defied the 
 Turkish government, and even went to the extrem- 
 ity of murdering two pashas who attempted to pass 
 this way. He was disposed of in 184G, but his 
 descendants still live here, having the inclination 
 but not tli: 1 courage of the old chief. We did not 
 encounter any of them, but I have never seen any 
 buildings that have such a wicked physiognomy as 
 their grim houses. 
 
 Near by is the ruin of a low, thick-walled
 
 32 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 chapel, of a pure Gothic style, a remnant of the 
 Crusaders' occupation. The gloomy wady has 
 another association : a monkish tradition would 
 have us believe it was the birthplace of Jeremiah ; 
 if the prophet was born in such a hard country it 
 might account for his lamentations. As we pass 
 out of this wady, the German driver points to a 
 forlorn village clinging to the rocky slope of a hill 
 to the right, and says, 
 
 "That is where John Baptist was born." 
 
 The information is sudden and seems improb- 
 able, especially as there are other places where he 
 was born. 
 
 "How do you know?" we ask. 
 
 " Oh, I know ganz wohl ; I been five years in 
 dis land, and I ought to know." 
 
 Descending into a deep ravine we cross a brook, 
 which we are told is the one that flows into the 
 Valley of Elah, the valley of the "terebinth" or 
 button-trees ; and if so, it is the brook out of which 
 David took the stone that killed Goliath. It is a 
 bright, dashing stream. I stood upon the bridge, 
 watching it dancing down the ravine, and should 
 have none but agreeable recollections of it, but 
 that close to the bridge stood a vile grog-shop, and 
 in the doorway sat the most villainous -looking man 
 I ever saw in Juda?a, rapacity and murder in his 
 eyes. The present generation have much more to 
 fear from him and his drugged liquors than the 
 Israelite had from the giant of Gath. 
 
 While the wagon zigzags up the last long hill, 
 1 mount by a short path and come upon a rocky
 
 AN ATROCIOUS HIGHWAY 33 
 
 plateau, across which runs a broad way, on the 
 bed rock, worn smooth by many centuries of 
 travel : by the passing of caravans and armies to 
 Jerusalem, of innumerable generations of peasants, 
 of chariots, of horses, mules, and foot-soldiers; 
 here went the messengers of the king's pleasure, 
 and here came the heralds and legates of foreign 
 nations; this great highway the kings and pro- 
 phets themselves must have trodden when they 
 journeyed towards the sea; for I cannot learn that 
 the Jews ever had any decent roads, and perhaps 
 they never attained the civilization necessary to 
 build them. "We have certainly seen no traces of 
 anything like a practicable ancient highway on this 
 route. 
 
 Indeed, the greatest wonder to me in the whole 
 East is that there has not been a good road built 
 from Jaffa to Jerusalem ; that the city sacred to 
 more than half the world, to all the most powerful 
 nations, to Moslems, Jews, Greeks, Roman Catho- 
 lics, Protestants, the desire of all lands, and the 
 object of pilgrimage with the delicate and the fee- 
 ble as well as the strong, should not have a high- 
 way to it over which one can ride without being 
 jarred and stunned and pounded to a jelly; that 
 the Jews should never have made a road to their 
 seaport; that the Romans, the road-builders, do 
 not seem to have constructed one over this impor- 
 tant route. The Sultan began this one over which 
 we have been dragged, for the Empress Eugenie. 
 But he did not finish it; most of the way it is a 
 mere rubble of stones. The track is well engi-
 
 34 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 neered, and the road bed is well enough ; soft stone 
 is at hand tp form an excellent dressing, and it 
 might be, in a short time, as good a highway as 
 any in Switzerland, if the Sultan would set some 
 of his lazy subjects to work out their taxes on it. 
 Of course, it is now a great improvement over 
 the old path for mules; but as a carriage road it 
 is atrocious. Imagine thirty-six miles of cobble 
 pavement, with every other stone gone and the 
 remainder sharpened ! 
 
 Perhaps, however, it is best not to have a decent 
 road to the Holy City of the world. It would 
 make going there easy, even for delicate ladies and 
 invalid clergymen ; it would reduce the cost of the 
 trip from Jaffa by two thirds; it would take away 
 employment from a lot of vagabonds who harry the 
 traveler over the route ; it would make the pilgrim- 
 age too much a luxury, in these days of pilgrim- 
 ages by rail, and of little faith, or rather of a sort 
 of lacquer of faith which is only credulity. 
 
 Upon this plateau we begin to discern signs of 
 the neighborhood of the city, and we press forward 
 with the utmost eagerness, disappointed at every 
 turn that a sight of it is not disclosed. Scattered 
 settlements extend for some distance out on the 
 Jaffa road. We pass a school which the Germans 
 have established for Arab boys, an institution 
 which does not meet the approval of our restora- 
 tion driver ; the boys, when they come out, he says, 
 don't kn^w what they are; they are neither Mos- 
 lems nor Christians. We go rapidly on over the 
 swelling hill, but the city will not reveal itself.
 
 JERUSALEM 35 
 
 We expect it any moment to rise up before us, 
 conspicuous on its ancient hills, its walls shining 
 in the sun. We pass a guard-house, some towers, 
 and newly built private residences. Our pulses 
 are beating a hundred to the minute, but the city 
 refuses to ''burst" upon us as it does upon other 
 travelers. We have advanced far enough to see 
 that there is no elevation before us higher than 
 that we are on. The great sight of all our lives 
 is only a moment separated from us; in a few 
 rods more our hearts will be satisfied by that long- 
 dreamed-of prospect. How many millions of pil- 
 grims have hurried along this road, lifting up their 
 eyes in impatience for the vision! But it does 
 not come suddenly. We have already seen it, 
 when the driver stops, points with his whip, and 
 cries, 
 
 "JERUSALEM!" 
 
 "What, that?" 
 
 We are above it and nearly upon it. What we 
 see is chiefly this : the domes and long buildings 
 of the Russian Hospice, on higher ground than 
 the city and concealing a good part of it; a large 
 number of new houses, built of limestone prettily 
 streaked with the red oxide of iron ; the roofs of a 
 few of the city houses, and a little portion of the 
 wall that overlooks the Valley of Ilinnom. The 
 remainder of the City of David is visible to the 
 imagination. 
 
 The suburb through which we puss cannot be 
 called pleasing. Everything outside the walls 
 looks new and naked; the whitish glare of the
 
 36 FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 stone is Believed by little vegetation, and the effect 
 is that of barrenness. As we drive down along 
 the wall of the Russian convent, we begin to meet 
 pilgrims and strangers, with whom the city over- 
 flows at this season ; many Russian peasants, un- 
 kempt, unsavory fellows, with long hair and dirty 
 apparel, but most of them wearing a pelisse 
 trimmed with fur and a huge fur hat. There are 
 coffee-houses and all sorts of cheap booths and 
 shanty shops along the highway. The crowd is 
 motley and far from pleasant ; it is sordid, grimy, 
 hard, very different from the more homogeneous, 
 easy, flowing, graceful, and picturesque assemblage 
 of vagabonds at the gate of an Egyptian town. 
 There are Russians, Cossacks, Georgians, Jews, 
 Armenians, Syrians. The northern dirt and 
 squalor and fanaticism do not come gracefully into 
 the Orient. Besides, the rabble is importunate 
 and impudent. 
 
 We enter by the Jaffa and Hebron gate, a big 
 square tower, with the exterior entrance to the 
 north and the interior to the east, and the short 
 turn is choked with camels and horses and a clam- 
 orous crowd. Beside it stands the ruinous citadel 
 of Saladin and the Tower of David, a noble en- 
 trance to a mean street. Through the rush of 
 footmen and horsemen, beggars, venders of olive- 
 wood, Moslems, Jews, and Greeks, we make our 
 way to the Mediterranean Hotel, a rambling new 
 hostelry. In passing to our rooms we pause a 
 moment upon an open balcony to look down into 
 the green Pool of Hezekiah, and off over the roofs
 
 THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH 37 
 
 to the Mount of Olives. Having secured our 
 rooms, I hasten along narrow and abominably cob- 
 bled streets, mere ditches of stone, lined with mean 
 shops, to the Centre of the Earth, the Church of 
 the Holy Sepulchre.
 
 II 
 
 JERUSALEM 
 
 T was in obedience to a natural but 
 probably mistaken impulse, that 1 
 went straight to the Church of the 
 Holy Sepulchre during- my first hour 
 in the city. Perhaps it was a mistake to go there 
 at all ; certainly I should have waited until I had 
 become more accustomed to holy places. When 
 a person enters this memorable church, as I did, 
 expecting to see only two sacred sites, and is 
 brought immediately face to face with thirty - 
 seven, his mind is staggered, and his credulity 
 becomes so enfeebled that it is practically useless 
 to him thereafter in any part of the Holy City. 
 And this is a pity, for it is so much easier and 
 sweeter to believe than to doubt. 
 
 It would have been better, also, to have visited 
 Jerusalem many years ago; then there were fewer 
 sacred sites invented, and scholarly investigation 
 had not so sharply questioned the authenticity of 
 the fe\\ But I thought of none of these things as 
 I stumbled along the narrow and filthy streets, 
 which are stony channels of mud and water, rather
 
 IMPUDENT TRADERS 39 
 
 than footpaths, and peeped into the dirty little 
 shops that line the way. I thought only that I was 
 in Jerusalem ; and it was impossible, at first, for 
 its near appearance to empty the name of its tre- 
 mendous associations, or to drive out the image of 
 that holy city, "con jubilant with song." 
 
 I had seen the dome of the church from the 
 hotel balcony ; the building itself is so hemmed in 
 by houses that only its south side, in which is the 
 sole entrance, can be seen from the street. In 
 front of this entrance is a small square ; the de- 
 scent to this square is by a flight of steps down 
 Palmer Street, a lane given up to the traffic in 
 beads, olive-wood, ivory -carving, and the thousand 
 trinkets, most of them cheap and inartistic, which 
 absorb the industry of the Holy City. The little 
 square itself, surrounded by ancient buildings on 
 three sides and by the blackened walls of the 
 church on the north, might be set down in a medi- 
 aeval Italian town without incongruity. And at 
 the hour I first saw it, you would have said that 
 a market or fair was in progress there. This, 
 however, I found was its normal condition. It 
 is always occupied by a horde of more clamorous 
 and impudent merchants than you will find in any 
 other place in the Orient. 
 
 It is with some difficulty that the pilgrim can 
 get through the throng and approach the portal. 
 The pavement is covered with heaps of beads, 
 shells, and every species of holy fancy-work, by 
 which are seated the traders, men and women, in 
 wait for customers. The moment I stopped to
 
 40 JERUSALEM 
 
 look at the church, and it was discovered that I 
 was a new-comer, a rush was made at me from 
 every part of the square, and I was at once the 
 centre of the most eager and hungry crowd. 
 Sharp-faced Greeks, impudent Jews, fair-faced 
 women from Bethlehem, sleek Armenians, thrust 
 strings of rude olive beads and crosses into my 
 face, forced upon my notice trumpery carving in 
 ivory, in nuts, in seeds, and screamed prices and 
 entreaties in chorus, bidding against each other 
 and holding fast to me, as if I were the last man, 
 and this were the last opportunity they would ever 
 have of getting rid of their rubbish. Handfuls of 
 beads rapidly fell from five francs to half a franc, 
 and the dealers insisted upon my buying, with a 
 threatening air; I remember one hard-featured 
 and rapacious wretch who danced about and clung 
 to me, and looked into my eyes with an expression 
 that said plainly, "If you don't buy these beads 
 I '11 murder you." My recollection is that I 
 bought, for I never can resist a persuasion of this 
 sort. Whenever I saw the fellow in the square 
 afterwards, I always fancied that he regarded me 
 with a sort of contempt, but he made no further 
 attempt on my life. 
 
 This is the sort of preparation that one daily has 
 in approaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 
 The greed and noise of traffic around it are as fatal 
 to sentiment as they are to devotion. You may be 
 amused one day, you may be indignant the next; 
 at last you will be weary of the importunate crowd ; 
 and the only consolation you can get from these
 
 CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE 41 
 
 daily scenes of the desecration of the temple of 
 pilgrimage is the proof they afford that this is in- 
 deed Jerusalem, and that these are the legitimate 
 descendants of the thieves whom Christ scourged 
 from the precincts of the Temple. Alas that they 
 should thrive under the new dispensation as they 
 did under the old ! 
 
 A considerable part of the present Church of 
 the Holy Sepulchre is not more than sixty years 
 old; but the massive, carved, and dark south por- 
 tal, and the remains of the old towers and walls on 
 this side, may be eight hundred. There has been 
 sore, sort of a church here ever since the time of 
 Cor, stan tine (that is, three centuries after the cru- 
 cifixion of our Lord), which has marked the spot 
 chat was then determined to be the site of the Holy 
 Sepulchre. Many a time the buildings have been 
 swept away by fire or by the fanaticism of enemies, 
 but they have as often been renewed. There would 
 seem at first to have been a cluster of buildings 
 here, each of which arose to cover a newly dif cov- 
 ered sacred site. Happily, all the sacred places 
 are now included within the walls of this many- 
 roofed, heterogeneous mass of chapels, shrines, 
 tombs, and altars of worship of many warring 
 sects, called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 
 
 Happily also the exhaustive discussion of the 
 question of the true site of the sepulchre, conducted 
 by the most devout and accomplished biblical 
 scholars and the keenest antiquarians of the age, 
 relieves the ordinary tourist from anv obligation 
 to enter upon an investigation that would interest
 
 42 JERUSALEM 
 
 none but those who have been upon the spot. No 
 doubt the larger portion of the Christian world ac- 
 cepts this site as the true one. 
 
 I make with diffidence a suggestion that struck 
 me, although it may not be new. The Pool of 
 Hezekiah is not over four hundred feet, measured 
 on the map, from the dome of the sepulchre. Un- 
 der the church itself are several large excavations 
 in the rocks, which were once cisterns. Ancient 
 Jerusalem depended for its water upon these cis- 
 terns, which took the drainage from the roofs, and 
 upon a few pools, like that of Hezekiah, which 
 were fed from other reservoirs, such as Solomon's 
 Pool, at a considerable distance from the city. 
 These cisterns under the church may not date back 
 to the time of our Lord, but if they do, they were 
 doubtless at that time within the walls. And of 
 course the Pool of Hezekiah, so near to this alleged 
 site, cannot be supposed to have been beyond the 
 walls. 
 
 Within the door of the church, upon a raised 
 divan at one side, as if this were a bazaar and he 
 were the merchant, sat a fat Turk, in official dress, 
 the sneering warden of this Christian edifice, and 
 the perhaps necessary guardian of peace within. 
 His presence there, however, is at first a disagree- 
 able surprise to all those who rebel at owing an 
 approach to the holy place to the toleration of a 
 Moslem; but I was quite relieved of any sense of 
 obligation when, upon coming out, the Turk asked 
 me for backsheesh ! 
 
 Whatever one may think as to the site of Cal'
 
 THE HOLY SEPULCHRE 43 
 
 vary, no one can approach a spot which even claims 
 to be it, and which has been for centuries the 
 object of worship of millions, and is constantly 
 thronged by believing pilgrims, without profound 
 emotion. It was late in the afternoon when I en- 
 tered the church, and already the shades of evening 
 increased the artificial gloom of the interior. At 
 the very entrance lies an object that arrests one. 
 It is a long marble slab resting upon the pavement, 
 about which candles are burning. Every devout 
 pilgrim who comes in kneels and kisses it, and it 
 is sometimes difficult to see it for the crowds who 
 press about it. Underneath it is supposed to be 
 the Stone of Unction upon which the Lord's body 
 was laid, according to the Jewish fashion, for 
 anointing, after he was taken from the cross. 
 
 1 turned directly into the rotunda, under the 
 dome of which is the stone building inclosing the 
 Holy Sepulchre, a ruder structure than that which 
 rovers the hut and tomb of St. Francis in the 
 church at Assisi. I met in the way a procession 
 of Latin monks, bearing caudles, and chanting as 
 they walked. They were making the round of the 
 lioly places in the church, this being their hour for 
 the tour. The sects have agreed upon certain 
 hours for these little daily pilgrimages, so that 
 there shall be no collision. A rabble of pilgrims 
 followed the monks. They had just come from 
 incensing and adoring the sepulchre, and the crowd 
 of other pilgrims who had been waiting their turn 
 were now pressing in at the narrow door. As 
 manv times as I have been there, I have always
 
 44 JERUSALEM 
 
 seen pilgrims struggling to get in and struggling 
 to get out. The proud and the humble crowd 
 there together; the greasy boor from beyond the 
 Volga jostles my lady from Naples, and the dainty 
 pilgrim from America pushes her way through a 
 throng of stout Armenian peasants. But I have 
 never seen any disorder there, nor any rudeness, 
 except the thoughtless eagerness of zeal. 
 
 Taking my chance in the line, I passed into the 
 first apartment, called the Chapel of the Angel, a 
 narrow and gloomy ante-chamber, which takes its 
 name from the fragment of stone in the centre, the 
 stone upon which the angel sat after it had been 
 rolled away from the sepulchre. A stream of 
 light came through the low and narrow door of the 
 tomb. Through the passage to this vaidt only one 
 person can enter at a time, and the tomb will hold 
 no more than three or four. Stooping along the 
 passage, which is cased with marble like the tomb, 
 and may cover natural rock, I came into the sacred 
 place, and into a blaze of silver lamps and can- 
 dles. The vault is not more than six feet by seven, 
 and is covered by a low dome. The sepulchral 
 stone occupies all the right side, and is the object 
 of devotion. It is of marble, supposed to cover 
 natural stone, and is cracked and worn smooth on 
 the edge by the kisses of millions of people. The 
 attendant who stood at one end opened a little trap- 
 door, in which lamp-cloths were kept, and let me 
 see the naked rock, which is said to be that of the 
 tomb. While I stood there in that very centre of 
 the faith and longing of so many souls, which
 
 COMPLETE MISERY 45 
 
 seemed almost to palpitate with a consciousness of 
 its awful position, pilgrim after pilgrim, on bended 
 knees, entered the narrow way, kissed with fervor 
 or with coldness the unresponsive marble, and 
 withdrew in the same attitude. Some approached 
 it with streaming eyes and kissed it with trembling 
 rapture; some ladies threw themselves upon the 
 cold stone and sobbed aloud. Indeed, I did not 
 of my own will intrude upon these acts of devo- 
 tion, which have the right of secrecy, but it was 
 some time before I could escape, so completely 
 was the entrance blocked up. When I had strug- 
 gled out, I heard chanting from the hill of Gol- 
 gotha, and saw the gleaming of a hundred lights 
 from chapel and tomb and remote recesses, but I 
 cared to see no more of the Temple itself that day. 
 The next morning (it was the 7th of April) was 
 very cold, and the day continued so. Without, 
 the air was keen, and within, it was nearly impos- 
 sible to get warm or keep so, in the thick-walled 
 houses, which had gathered the damp and chill of 
 dungeons. You might suppose that the dirtiest 
 and most beggarly city in the world could not be 
 much deteriorated by the weather, but it is. In a 
 cheerful, sunny day you find that the desolation of 
 Jerusalem has a certain charm and attraction : 
 even a tattered Jew leaning against a ruined wall, 
 or a beggar on a dunghill, is picturesque in the 
 sunshine; but if you put a day of chill rain and 
 frosty wind into the city, none of the elements of 
 complete misery are wanting. There is nothing to 
 be done, day or night; indeed, there is nothing
 
 46 JERUSALEM 
 
 ever to be done in the evening, except to read your 
 guide-book, that is, the Bible, and go to bed. 
 You are obliged to act like a Christian here, what- 
 ever you are. 
 
 Speaking of the weather, a word about the time 
 for visiting Syria may not be amiss. In the last 
 part of March the snow was a foot deep in the 
 streets; parties who had started on their tour 
 northward were snowed in and forced to hide in 
 their tents three days from the howling winter. 
 There is pleasure for you ! We found friends in 
 the city who had been waiting two weeks after 
 they had exhausted its sights, for settled weather 
 that would permit them to travel northward. To 
 be sure, the inhabitants say that this last storm 
 ought to have been rain instead of snow, according 
 to the habit of the seasons; and it no doubt would 
 have been if this region were not twenty-five hun- 
 dred feet above the sea. The hardships of the 
 Syrian tour are enough in the best weather, and I 
 am convinced that our dragoman is right in saying 
 that most travelers begin it too early in the spring. 
 
 Jerusalem is not a formidable city to the ex- 
 plorer who is content to remain above ground, 
 and is not too curious about its substructions and 
 buried walls, and has no taste, as some have, for 
 crawling through its drains. I suppose it would 
 elucidate the history of the Jews if we could dig 
 all this hill away and lay bare all the old founda- 
 tions, and ascertain exactly how the city was wa- 
 tered. I, for one, am grateful to the excellent 
 man and great scholar who crawled on his hands
 
 POOL OF SI LOAM
 
 ANCIENT SITES 47 
 
 and knees through a subterranean conduit, and 
 established the fact of a connection between the 
 Fountain of the Virgin and the Pool of Siloam. 
 But I would rather contribute money to establish 
 a school for girls in the Holy City, than to aid in 
 laying bare all the aqueducts from Ophel to the 
 Tower of David. But this is probably because I 
 do not enough appreciate the importance of such 
 researches among Jewish remains to the progress 
 of Christian truth and morality in the world. The 
 discoveries hitherto made have done much to clear 
 up the topography of ancient Jerusalem ; I do not 
 know that they have yielded anything valuable to 
 art or to philology, any treasures illustrating the 
 habits, the social life, the culture, or the religion 
 of the past, such as are revealed beneath the soil 
 of Rome or in the ashes of Pompeii ; it is, however, 
 true that almost every tourist in Jerusalem be- 
 comes speedily involved in all these questions of 
 ancient sites, the identification of valleys that 
 once existed, of walls that are now sunk under the 
 accumulated rubbish of two thousand years, from 
 thirty feet to ninety feet deep, and of foundations 
 that are rough enough and massive enough to have 
 been laid by David and cemented by Solomon. 
 And the fascination of the pursuit would soon send 
 one underground, with a pickaxe and a shoveL 
 But of all the diggings I saw in the Holy City, 
 that which interested me most was the 'excavation 
 of the church and hospital of the chivalric Knights 
 of St. John ; concerning which I shall say a word 
 further on.
 
 48 JERUSALEM 
 
 The present walls were built by Sultan Suleiman 
 in the middle of the sixteenth century, upon foun- 
 dations much older, and here and there, as you 
 can see, upon big blocks of Jewish workmanship. 
 The wall is high enough and very picturesque in 
 its zigzag course and reentering angles, and, I 
 suppose, strong enough to hitch a horse to; but 
 cannon-balls would make short work of it. 
 
 Having said thus much of the topography, gra- 
 tuitously and probably unnecessarily, for every one 
 is supposed to know Jerusalem as well as he knows 
 his native town, we are free to look at anything 
 that may chance to interest us. I do not expect, 
 however, that any words of mine can convey to the 
 reader a just conception of the sterile and blasted 
 character of this promontory and the country 
 round about it, or of the squalor, shabbiness, and 
 unpicturesqueness of the city, always excepting a 
 few of its buildings and some fragments of anti- 
 quity built into modern structures here and there. 
 And it is difficult to feel that this spot was ever 
 the splendid capital of a powerful state, that this 
 arid and stricken country could ever have supplied 
 the necessities of such a capital, and, above all, 
 that so many Jews could ever have been crowded 
 within this cramped space as Josephus says per- 
 ished in the siege by Titus, when ninety-seven 
 thousand were carried into captivity and eleven 
 hundred thousand died by famine and the sword. 
 Almost the entire Jewish nation must have been 
 packed within this small area. 
 
 Our first walk through the city was in the Via
 
 THE VIA DOLOROSA 49 
 
 Dolorosa, as gloomy a thoroughfare as its name 
 implies. Its historical portion is that steep and 
 often angled part between the Holy Sepulchre and 
 the house of Pilate, but we traversed the whole 
 length of it to make our exit from St. Stephen's 
 Gate toward the Mount of Olives. It is only 
 about four hundred years ago that this street ob- 
 tained the name of the Via Dolorosa, and that the 
 sacred "stations" on it were marked out for the 
 benefit of the pilgrim. It is a narrow lane, steep 
 in places, having frequent sharp angles, running 
 under arches, and passing between gloomy build- 
 ings, enlivened by few shops. Along this way 
 Christ passed from the Judgment Hall of Pilate 
 to Calvary. I do not know how many times the 
 houses along it have been destroyed and rebuilt 
 since their conflagration by Titus, but this destruc- 
 tion is no obstacle to the existence intact of all 
 that are necessary to illustrate the Passion-pil- 
 grimage of our Lord. In this street I saw the 
 house of Simon the Cyrenian, who bore the cross 
 after Jesus ; I saw the house of St. Veronica, from 
 which that woman stepped forth and gave Jesus a 
 handkerchief to wipe his brow, the handkerchief, 
 with the Lord's features imprinted on it, which we 
 have all seen exhibited at St. Peter's in Rome; 
 and I looked for the house of the Wandering 
 Jew, or at least for the spot where he stood when 
 he received that awful mandate of fleshly immor- 
 tality. In this street are recognized the severai 
 "stations" that Christ made in bearing the cross: 
 
 o 
 
 we were shown the places where he fell, a stone
 
 50 JERUSALEM 
 
 having the impress of his hand, a pillar broken by 
 his fall, and also the stone upon which Mary sat 
 when he passed by. Nothing is wanting that the 
 narrative requires. We saw also in this street the 
 house of Dives, and the stone on which Lazarus 
 sat while the dogs ministered unto him. It seemed 
 to me that I must be in a dream, in thus beholding 
 the houses and places of resort of the characters in 
 a parable; and I carried my dilemma to a Cath- 
 olic friend. But a learned father assured him that 
 there was no doubt that this is the house of Dives, 
 for Christ often took his parables from real life. 
 After that I went again to look at the stone, in a 
 corner of a building amid a heap of refuse, upon 
 which the beggar sat, and to admire the pretty 
 stone tracery of the windows in the house of Dives. 
 At the end of the street, in a new Latin nun- 
 nery, are the remains of the house of Pilate, which 
 are supposed to be authentic. The present estab- 
 lishment is called the convent of St. Anne, and the 
 community is very fortunate, at this late day, in 
 obtaining such a historic site for itself. We had 
 the privilege of seeing here some of the original 
 rock that formed part of the foundations of Pilate's 
 house; and there are three stones built into the 
 altar that were taken from the pavement of Gab- 
 batha, upon which Christ walked. These are re- 
 cent discoveries ; it appears probable that the real 
 pavement of Gabbatha has been found, since 
 Pilate's house is so satisfactorily identified. Span- 
 ning the street in front of this convent is the Ecce 
 Homo arch, upon which Pilate showed Christ to
 
 VIA DO LORDS A
 
 THE TOWER OF DAVID 51 
 
 the populace. The ground of the new building 
 was until recently in possession of the Moslems, 
 who would not sell it for a less price than seventy 
 thousand francs ; the arch they would not sell at 
 all ; and there now dwells, in a small chamber on 
 top of it, a Moslem saint and hermit. The world 
 of pilgrims flows under his feet ; he looks from his 
 window upon a daily procession of Christians, who 
 traverse the Via Dolorosa, having first signified 
 their submission to the Moslem yoke in the Holy 
 City by passing under this arch of humiliation. 
 The hermit, however, has the grace not to show 
 himself, and few know that he sits there, in the 
 holy occupation of letting his hair and his nails 
 grow. 
 
 From the house of the Roman procurator we 
 went to the citadel of Sultan Suleiman. This 
 stands close by the Jaffa Gate, and is the most 
 picturesque object in all the circuit of the walls, 
 and, although the citadel is of modern origin, its 
 most characteristic portion lays claim to great an- 
 tiquity. The massive structure which impresses 
 all strangers who enter by the Jaffa Gate is called 
 the Tower of Hippicus, and also the Tower of 
 David. It is identified as the tower which Herod 
 built and Josephus describes, and there is as little 
 doubt that its foundations are the same that David 
 laid and Solomon strengthened. There are no 
 such stones in any other part of the walls as these 
 enormous beveled blocks; they surpass those in 
 the Harem wall, at what is called the Jews' Wail- 
 ing Place. The tower stands upon the northwest
 
 52 JERUSALEM 
 
 corner of the old wall of Zioii, and being the point 
 most open to attack it was most strongly built. 
 
 It seems also to have been connected with the 
 palace 011 Zion which David built, for it is the 
 tradition that it was from this tower that the king 
 first saw Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, when "it 
 came to pass in an eventide that David arose from 
 off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's 
 house : and from the roof he saw a woman washing 
 herself ; and the woman was very beautiful to look 
 upon." On the other side of the city gate we now 
 look down upon the Pool of Bathsheba, in which 
 there is no water, and we are informed that it was 
 by that pool that the lovely woman, who was des- 
 tined to be the mother of Solomon, sat when the 
 king took his evening walk. Others say that she 
 sat by the Pool of Gihon. It does not matter. 
 The subject was a very fruitful one for the artists 
 of the Renaissance, who delighted in a glowing 
 reproduction of the biblical stories, and found in 
 such incidents as this and the confusion of Susanna 
 themes in which the morality of the age could ex- 
 press itself without any conflict with the religion 
 of the age. It is a comment not so much upon the 
 character of David as upon the morality of the time 
 in which he lived, that although he repented, and 
 no doubt sincerely, of his sin when reproved for 
 it, his repentance did not take the direction of self- 
 denial ; he did not send away Bathsheba. 
 
 This square old tower is interiorly so much in 
 ruins that it is not easy to climb to its parapet, 
 and yet it still has a guard-house attached to it,
 
 THE ARMENIAN CONVENT 53 
 
 and is kept like a fortification; a few rusty old 
 cannon, under the charge of the soldiers, would 
 injure only those who attempted to fire them ; the 
 entire premises have a tumble-down, Turkish as- 
 pect. The view from the top is the best in the city 
 of the city itself ; we saw also from it the hills of 
 Moab and a bit of the Dead Sea. 
 
 Close by is the Armenian quarter, covering a 
 large part of what was once the hill of Zion. 1 
 wish it were the Christian quarter, for it is the 
 only part of the town that makes any pretension 
 to cleanliness, and it has more than any other the 
 aspect of an abode of peace and charity. This is 
 owing to its being under the government of one 
 corporation, for the Armenian convent covers 
 nearly the entire space of this extensive quarter. 
 The convent is a singular, irregular mass of houses, 
 courts, and streets, the latter apparently running 
 over and under and through the houses ; you come 
 unexpectedly upon stairways, you traverse roofs, 
 you enter rooms and houses on the roofs of other 
 houses, and it is difficult to say at any time 
 whether you are on the earth or in the air. The 
 convent, at this season, is filled with pilgrims, over 
 three thousand of whom, I was told, were lodged 
 here. We came upon families of them in the 
 little rooms in the courts and corridors, or upon 
 the roofs, pursuing their domestic avocations as if 
 they were at home, cooking, mending, sleeping, a 
 boorish but simple-minded lot of peasants. 
 
 The church is a large and very interesting 
 specimen of religious architecture and splendid,
 
 54 JERUSALEM 
 
 barbaric decoration. In the vestibule hang the 
 "bells." These are long planks of a sonorous 
 wood, which give forth a ringing sound when 
 struck with a club. As they are of different sizes, 
 you get some variation of tone, and they can be 
 heard far enough to call the inmates of the convent 
 to worship. The interior walls are lined with 
 ancient blue tiles to a considerable height, and 
 above them are rude and inartistic sacred pictures. 
 There is in the church much curious inlaid work of 
 mother-of-pearl and olive-wood, especially about 
 the doors of the chapels, and one side shines 
 with the pearl as if it were incr listed with silver. 
 Ostrich eggs are strung about in profusion, with 
 hooks attached for hanging lamps. 
 
 The first day of our visit to this church, in one 
 of the doorways of what seemed to be a side chapel, 
 and which was thickly incrusted with mother-of- 
 pearl, stood the venerable bishop, in a light rose- 
 colored robe and a pointed hood, with a cross in 
 his hand, preaching to the pilgrims, who knelt on 
 the pavement before him, talking in a familiar man- 
 ner, and, our guide said, with great plainness of 
 speech. The Armenian clergy are celebrated for 
 the splendor of their vestments, and I could not 
 but think that this rose-colored bishop, in his shin- 
 ing framework, must seem like a being of another 
 sphere to the boors before him. He almost im- 
 posed upon us. 
 
 These pilgrims appeared to be of the poorest 
 agricultural class of laborers, and their costume is 
 uncouth beyond description. In a side chapel,
 
 PILGRIMS' SHOES 55 
 
 where we saw tiles on the walls that excited our 
 envy, the quaintest figures and illustrations of 
 sacred subjects, the clerks were taking the 
 names of pilgrims just arrived, who kneeled before 
 them and paid a Napoleon each for their lodging 
 in the convent, as long as they should choose to 
 stay. In this chapel were the shoes of the pilgrims 
 who had gone into the church, a motley collection 
 of foot-gear, covering half the floor: leather and 
 straw, square shoes as broad as long, round shoes, 
 pointed shoes, old shoes, patched shoes, shoes with 
 the toes gone, a pathetic gathering that told of 
 poverty and weary travel and big feet. These 
 shoes were things to muse on, for each pair, made 
 may be in a different century, seemed to have a 
 character of its own, as it stood there awaiting the 
 owner. People often make reflections upon a pair 
 of shoes; literature is full of them. Poets have 
 celebrated many a pretty shoe, a queen's slipper, 
 it may be, or the hobnail brogan of a peasant, or, 
 of tener, the tiny shoes of a child ; but it is seldom 
 that one has an opportunity for such comprehen- 
 sive moralizing as was here given. If we ever 
 regretted the lack of a poet in our party, it was 
 now. 
 
 We walked along the Armenian walls, past the 
 lepers' quarter, and outside the walls, through the 
 Gate of Zion, or the Gate of the Prophet David 
 as it is also called, and came upon a continuation 
 of the plateau of the hill of Zion, which is now 
 covered with cemeteries, and is the site of the 
 house of Caiaphas, and of the tomb of David and
 
 56 JERUSALEM 
 
 those kings of Jerusalem who were considered by 
 the people worthy of sepulture here; for the Jews 
 seem to have brought from Egypt the notion of 
 refusing royal burial to their bad kings, and they 
 had very few respectable ones. 
 
 The house of Caiaphas the high-priest had suf- 
 fered a recent tumble-down, and was in such a 
 state of ruin that we could with difficulty enter 
 it or recognize any likeness of a house. On the 
 premises is an Armenian chapel; in it we were 
 shown the prison in which Christ was confined, 
 also the stone door of the sepulchre, which the 
 Latins say the Armenians stole. But the most 
 remarkable object here is the little marble column 
 (having carved on it a figure of Christ bound to a 
 pillar) upon which the cock stood and crowed when 
 Peter denied his Lord. There are some difficul- 
 ties in the way of believing this now, but they will 
 lessen as the column gets age. 
 
 Outside this gate lie the desolate fields strewn 
 witn the brown tombstones of the Greeks and 
 Armenians, a melancholy spectacle. Each sect 
 has its own cemetery, and the dead sleep peaceably 
 enough, but the living who bury them frequently 
 quarrel. I saw one day a funeral procession 
 halted outside the walls; for some reason the 
 Greek priest had refused the dead burial in the 
 grave dug for him in the cemetery ; the bier was 
 dumped on the slope beside the road, and half 
 overturned ; the friends were sitting on the ground, 
 wrangling. The man had been dead three days, 
 and the coffin had been by the roadside in this
 
 A PATHLESS NECROPOLIS 57 
 
 place since the day before. This was in the morn- 
 ing; towards night I saw the same crowd there, 
 but a Turkish official appeared and ordered the 
 Greeks to bury their dead somewhere, and that 
 without delay ; to bury it for the sake of the public 
 health, and quarrel about the grave afterwards if 
 they must. A crowd collected, joining with fiery 
 gesticulation and clamor in the dispute, the shrill 
 voices of women being heard above all ; but at last, 
 four men roughly shouldered the box, handling 
 it as if it contained merchandise, and trotted off 
 with it. 
 
 As we walked over this pathless, barren necrop- 
 olis, strewn, Imp-hazard as it were, with shapeless, 
 broken, and leaning headstones, it was impossible 
 to connect with it any sentiment of affection or 
 piety. It spoke, like everything else about here, 
 of mortality, and seemed only a part of that his- 
 torical Jerusalem which is dead and buried, in 
 which no living person can have anything more 
 than an archaeological interest. It was, then, with 
 something like a shock that we heard Demetrius, 
 our guide, say, pointing to a rude stone, 
 "That is the grave of my mother! " 
 Demetrius was a handsome Greek boy, of a 
 beautiful type which has almost disappeared from 
 Greece itself, and as clever a lad as ever spoke all 
 languages and accepted all religions, without yield- 
 ing too much to any one. lie had been well edu- 
 cated in the English school, and his education had 
 failed to put any faith in place of the superstition 
 it had destroyed. The boy seemed to be numer-
 
 58 JERUSALEM 
 
 ously if not well connected in the city; he was al- 
 ways exchanging a glance and a smile with some 
 pretty, dark-eyed Greek girl whom we met in the 
 way, and when I said, "Demetrius, who was 
 that? " he always answered, "That is my cousin." 
 
 The boy was so intelligent, so vivacious, and 
 full of the spirit of adventure, begging me a 
 dozen times a day to take him with me anywhere 
 in the world, and so modern, that he had not 
 till this moment seemed to belong to Jerusalem, 
 nor to have any part in its decay. This chance 
 discovery of his intimate relation to this necropolis 
 gave, if I may say so, a living interest to it, and 
 to all the old burying-grounds about the city, some 
 of which link the present with the remote past 
 by an uninterrupted succession of interments for 
 nearly three thousand years. 
 
 Just beyond this expanse, or rather in part of 
 it, is a small plot of ground surrounded by high 
 whitewashed walls, the entrance to which is secured 
 by a heavy door. This is the American cemetery ; 
 and the stout door and thick wall are, I suppose, 
 necessary to secure its graves from Moslem insult. 
 It seems not to be visited often, for it was with 
 difficulty that we could turn the huge key in the 
 rusty lock. There are some half-dozen graves 
 within; the graves are grass-grown and flower- 
 sprinkled, and the whole area is a tangle of unre- 
 strained weeds and grass. The high wall cuts off 
 all view, but we did not for the time miss it, 
 rather liking for the moment to be secured from the 
 sight of the awful desolation, and to muse upon
 
 THE TOMB OF DAVID 59 
 
 the strange fortune that had drawn to be buried 
 here upon Mount Zion, as a holy resting-place for 
 them, people alien in race, language, and customs 
 to the house of David, and removed from it by 
 such spaces of time and distance ; people to whom 
 the worship performed by David, if he could renew 
 it in person on Zion, would be as distasteful as is 
 that of the Jews in yonder synagogue. 
 
 Only a short distance from this we came to the 
 mosque which contains the tomb of David and 
 probably of Solomon and other kings of Judah. 
 No historical monument in or about Jerusalem is 
 better authenticated than this. Although now for 
 many centuries the Moslems have had possession 
 of it and forbidden access to it, there is a tolerably 
 connected tradition of its possession. It was twice 
 opened and relieved of the .enormous treasure in 
 gold and silver which Solomon deposited in it; 
 once by Hyrcanus Maccabseus, who took what he 
 needed, and again by Herod, who found very little. 
 There are all sorts of stories told about the splen- 
 dor of this tomb and the state with which the Mos- 
 lems surround it. But they envelop it in so much 
 mystery that no one can know the truth. It is 
 probable that the few who suppose they have seen 
 it have seen only a sort of cenotaph which is above 
 the real tomb in the rock below. The room which 
 has been seen is embellished with some display of 
 richness in shawls and hangings of gold embroi- 
 dery, and contains a sarcophagus of rough stone, 
 and lights are always burning there. If the royal 
 tombs are in this place, they are doubtless in the 
 cave below.
 
 60 JERUSALEM 
 
 Over this spot was built a church by the early 
 Christians ; and it is a tradition that in this build- 
 ing was the Ccenaculum. This site may very likely 
 be that of the building where the Last Supper was 
 laid, and it may be that St. Stephen suffered mar- 
 tyrdom here, and that the Virgin died here; the 
 building may be as old as the fourth century, but 
 the chances of any building standing so long in 
 this repeatedly destroyed city are not good. There 
 is a little house north of this mosque in which the 
 Virgin spent the last years of her life; if she did, 
 she must have lived to be over a thousand years 
 old. 
 
 On the very brow of the hill, and overlooking 
 the lower pool of Gihon, is the English school, 
 with its pretty garden and its cemetery. We saw 
 there some excavations, by which the bed-rock had 
 been laid bare, disclosing some stone steps cut in 
 it. Search is being made here for the Seat of Sol- 
 omon, but it does not seem to me a vital matter, 
 for I suppose he sat down all over this hill, which 
 was covered with his palaces and harems and other 
 buildings of pleasure, built of stones that "were of 
 great value, such as are dug out of the earth for 
 the ornaments of temples and to make fine pros- 
 pects in royal palaces, and which make the mines 
 whence they are dug famous." Solomon's palace 
 was constructed entirely of white stone, and cedar- 
 wood, and gold and silver; in it "were very long 
 cloisters, and those situate in an agreeable place 
 in the palace, and among them a most glorious 
 dining-room for f eastings and ccmpotations ; " in-
 
 THE MONTEFIORE TENEMENTS 61 
 
 deed, Josephus finds it difficult to reckon up the 
 variety and the magnitude of the royal apartments, 
 " how many that were subterraneous and invisi- 
 ble, the curiosity of those that enjoyed the fresh 
 air, and the groves for the most delightful pros- 
 pect, for avoiding the heat, and covering their 
 bodies." If this most luxurious of monarchs in- 
 troduced here all the styles of architecture which 
 would represent the nationality of his wives, as 
 he built temples to suit their different religions, 
 the hill of Zion must have resembled, on a small 
 scale, the Munich of King Ludwig I. 
 
 Opposite the English school, across the Valley 
 of Hinnom, is a long block of modern buildings 
 which is one of the most conspicuous objects out- 
 side the city. It was built by another rich Jew, 
 Sir Moses Montefiore, of London, and contains 
 tenements for poor Jews. Sir Moses is probably 
 as rich as Solomon was in his own right, and he 
 makes a most charitable use of his money; but I 
 do not suppose that if he had at his command the 
 public wealth that Solomon had, who made silver 
 as plentiful as stones in the streets of Jerusalem, 
 he could materially alleviate the lazy indigence of 
 the Jewish exiles here. The aged philanthropist 
 made a journey hither in the summer of 1875, to 
 ascertain for himself the condition of the Jews. 
 I believe he has a hope of establishing manufac- 
 tories in which they can support themselves ; but 
 the minds of the Jews who are already restored 
 are not set upon any sort of industry. It seems 
 to me that they could be maintained much more
 
 62 JERUSALEM 
 
 cheaply if they were transported to a less barren 
 land. 
 
 We made, one day, an exploration of the Jews' 
 quarter, which enjoys the reputation of being more 
 filthy than the Christian. The approach to it is 
 down a gutter which has the sounding name of the 
 Street of David ; it was bad enough, but when we 
 entered the Jews' part of the city we found our- 
 selves in lanes and gutters of incomparable un- 
 pleasantness, and almost impassable, with nothing 
 whatever in them interesting or picturesque, ex- 
 cept the inhabitants. We had a curiosity to see 
 if there were here any real Jews of the type that 
 inhabited the city in the time of our Lord, and 
 we saw many with fair skin and light hair, with 
 straight nose and regular features. The persons 
 whom we are accustomed to call Jews, and who 
 were found dispersed about Europe at a very early 
 period of modern history, have the Assyrian fea- 
 tures, the hook nose, dark hair and eyes, and not 
 at all the faces of the fair-haired race from which 
 our Saviour is supposed to have sprung. The king- 
 dom of Israel, which contained the ten tribes, was 
 gobbled up by the Assyrians about the time Rome 
 was founded, and from that date these tribes do 
 not appear historically. They may have entirely 
 amalgamated with their conquerors, and the modi- 
 fied race subsequently have passed into Europe; 
 for the Jews claim to have been in Europe before 
 the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, in which 
 nearly all the people of the kingdom of Judah 
 perished.
 
 THE TRIBE OP BENJAMIN 63 
 
 Some scholars, who have investigated the prob- 
 lem offered by the two types above mentioned, 
 think that the Jew as we know him in Europe and 
 America is not the direct descendant of the Jews 
 of Jerusalem of the time of Herod, and that the 
 true offspring of the latter is the person of the 
 light hair and straight nose who is occasionally to 
 be found in Jerusalem to-day. Until this ethno- 
 logical problem is settled, I shall most certainly 
 withhold my feeble contributions for the "restora- 
 tion " of the persons at present doing business un- 
 der the name of Jews among the Western nations. 
 
 But we saw another type of Jew, or rather an- 
 other variety, in this quarter. He called himself 
 of the tribe of Benjamin, and is, I think, the most 
 unpleasant human being I have ever encountered. 
 Every man who supposes himself of this tribe wears 
 a dark, corkscrew, stringy curl hanging down each 
 side of his face, and the appearance of nasty effem- 
 inacy which this gives cannot be described. The 
 tribe of Benjamin does not figure well in sacred 
 history, it was left-handed ; it was pretty much 
 exterminated by the other tribes once for an awful 
 crime; it was held from going into the settled 
 idolatry of the kingdom of Israel -only by its con- 
 tiguity to Judah, but it was better than its de- 
 scendants, if these are its descendants. 
 
 More than half of the eight thousand Jews in 
 Jerusalem speak Spanish as their native tongue, 
 and are the offspring of those expelled from Spain 
 by Ferdinand. Now and then, I do not know 
 whether it was Spanish or Arabic, we saw a good
 
 64 JERUSALEM 
 
 face, a noble countenance, a fine Oriental and ven- 
 erable type, and occasionally, looking from a win- 
 dow, a Jewish beauty ; but the most whom we met 
 were debased, misbegotten, the remnants of sin, 
 squalor, and bad living. 
 
 We went into two of the best synagogues, one 
 new, with a conspicuous green dome. They are 
 not fine ; on the contrary, they are slatternly places 
 and very ill-kept. On the benches near the win- 
 dows sat squalid men and boys reading, the latter, 
 no doubt, students of the law; all the passages, 
 stairs, and by-rooms were dirty and disorderly, as 
 if it were always Monday morning there, but never 
 washing-day; rags and heaps of ancient garments 
 were strewn about; and occasionally we nearly 
 stumbled over a Jew, indistinguishable from a bun- 
 dle of old clothes, and asleep on the floor. Even 
 the sanctuary is full of unkempt people, and of the 
 evidences of the squalor of the quarter. If this 
 is a specimen of the restoration of the Jews, they 
 had better not be restored any more. 
 
 The thing to do (if the worldliness of the expres- 
 sion will be pardoned) on Friday is to go and see 
 the Jews wail, as in Constantinople it is to see the 
 Sultan go to prayer, and in Cairo to hear the dar- 
 wishes howl. The performance, being an open-air 
 one, is sometimes prevented by rain or snow, but 
 otherwise it has not failed for many centuries. 
 This ancient practice is probably not what it once 
 was, having in our modern days, by becoming a 
 sort of fashion, lost its spontaneity; it will, how- 
 ever, doubtless be long kept up, as everything of
 
 A COMMUNITY OF LEPERS 65 
 
 this sort endures in the East, even if it should 
 become necessary to hire people to wail. 
 
 The Friday morning of the day chosen for our 
 visit to the wailing-place was rainy, following a 
 rainy night. The rough-paved open alleys were 
 gutters of mud, the streets under arches (for there 
 are shops in subterranean constructions and old 
 vaulted passages) were damper and darker than 
 usual; the whole city, with its narrow lanes, and 
 thick walls, and no sewers, was clammy and un- 
 comfortable. We loitered for a time in the dark 
 and grave-like gold bazaars, where there is but 
 a poor display of attractions. Pilgrims from all 
 lands were sopping about in the streets ; conspic- 
 uous among them were Persians wearing high, 
 conical frieze hats, and short-legged, big-calfed 
 Russian peasant women, animated meal-bags. 
 
 We walked across to the Zion Gate, and mount- 
 ing the city wall there an uneven and somewhat 
 broken, but sightly promenade followed it round 
 to its junction with the Temple wall, and to Rob- 
 inson's Arch. Underneath the wall by Zion Gate 
 dwell, in low stone huts and burrows, a consider- 
 able number of lepers, who form a horrid commu- 
 nity by themselves. These poor creatures, with 
 toeless feet and fingerless hands, came out of their 
 dens and assailed us with piteous cries for charity. 
 What could be done? It was impossible to give 
 to all. The little we threw them they fought 
 for, and the unsuccessful followed us with whetted 
 eagerness. We could do nothing but flee, and we 
 climbed the wall and ran down it, leaving Dome-
 
 66 JERUSALEM 
 
 trius behind as a rear guard. I should have had 
 more pity for them if they had not exhibited so 
 much maliciousness. They knew their power, and 
 brought all their loathsomeness after us, think- 
 ing that we would be forced to buy their retreat. 
 Two hideous old women followed us a long dis- 
 tance, and when they became convinced that fur- 
 ther howling and whining would be fruitless, they 
 suddenly changed tone and cursed us with health- 
 ful vigor; having cursed us, they hobbled home to 
 roost. 
 
 This part of the wall crosses what was once 
 the Tyrophrean Valley, which is now pretty much 
 filled up ; it ran between Mount Moriah, on which 
 the Temple stood, and Mount Zion. It was 
 spanned in ancient times by a bridge some three 
 hundred and fifty feet long, resting on stone arches 
 whose piers must have been from one hundred to 
 two hundred feet in height; this connected the 
 Temple platform with the top of the steep side of 
 Zion. It was on the Temple end of this bridge 
 that Titus stood and held parley with the Jews who 
 refused to surrender Zion after the loss of Moriah. 
 
 The exact locality of this interesting bridge was 
 discovered by Dr. Robinson. Just north of the 
 southwest corner of the Harem wall (that is, the 
 Temple or Mount Moriah wall) he noticed three 
 courses of huge projecting stones, which upon 
 careful inspection proved to be the segment of an 
 arch. The spring of the arch is so plainly to be 
 seen now that it is a wonder it remained so long 
 unknown.
 
 WEEPING AND WAILING 67 
 
 The Wailing-Place of the Jews is on the west 
 side of the Temple inclosure, a little to the north 
 of this arch ; it is in a long, narrow court formed 
 by the walls of modern houses and the huge blocks 
 of stone of this part of the original wall. These 
 stones are no doubt as old as Solomon's Temple, 
 and the Jews can here touch the very walls of the 
 platform of that sacred edifice. 
 
 Every Friday a remnant of the children of Israel 
 comes here to weep and wail. They bring their 
 Scriptures, and leaning against the honeycombed 
 stone, facing it, read the Lamentations and the 
 Psalms, in a wailing voice, and occasionally cry 
 aloud in a chorus of lamentation, weeping, blow- 
 ing their long noses with blue cotton handkerchiefs, 
 and kissing the stones. We were told that the 
 smoothness of the stones in spots was owing to 
 centuries of osculation. The men stand together 
 at one part of the wall, and the women at another. 
 There were not more than twenty Jews present as 
 actors in the solemn ceremony the day we visited 
 the spot, and they did not wail much, merely read- 
 ing the Scriptures in a mumbling voice and sway- 
 ing their bodies backward and forward. Still they 
 formed picturesque and even pathetic groups : ven- 
 erable old men with long white beards and hooked 
 noses, clad in rags and shreds and patches in all 
 degrees of decadence; lank creatures of the tribe 
 of Benjamin with the corkscrew curls ; and skinny 
 old women shaking with weeping, real or assumed. 
 
 Very likely these wailers were as poor and 
 wretched as they appeared to be, and their tears
 
 68 JERUSALEM 
 
 were the natural outcome of their grief over the 
 ruin of the Temple nearly two thousand years ago. 
 I should be the last one to doubt their enjoyment 
 of this weekly bitter misery. But the demonstra- 
 tion had somewhat the appearance of a set and 
 show performance ; while it was going on, a shrewd 
 Israelite went about with a box to collect mites 
 from the spectators. There were many more trav- 
 elers there to see the wailing than there were Jews 
 to wail. This also lent an unfavorable aspect to 
 the scene. I myself felt that if this were genuine, 
 I had no business to be there with my undisguised 
 curiosity ; and if it were not genuine, it was the 
 poorest spectacle that Jerusalem offers to the tour- 
 ist. Cook's party was there in force, this being 
 one of the things promised in the contract ; and I 
 soon found myself more interested in Cook's pil- 
 grims than in the others. 
 
 The Scripture read and wailed this day was the 
 fifty-first Psalm of David. If you turn to it (you 
 may have already discovered that the covert pur- 
 pose of these desultory notes is to compel you to 
 read your Bible), you will see that it expresses 
 David's penitence in the matter of Bathsheba.
 
 Ill 
 
 HOLY PLACES OF THE HOLY CITY 
 
 HE sojourner in Jerusalem falls into 
 the habit of dropping in at the Church 
 of the Holy Sepulchre nearly every af- 
 ternoon. It is the centre of attraction. 
 There the pilgrims all resort; there one sees, in a 
 day, many races, and the costumes of strange and 
 distant peoples ; there one sees the various worship 
 of the many Christian sects. There are always 
 processions making the round of the holy places, 
 sect following sect, with swinging censers, each 
 fumigating away the effect of its predecessor. 
 
 The central body of the church, answering to 
 the nave, as the rotunda, which contains the Holy 
 Sepulchre, answers to choir and apse, is the Greek 
 chapel, and the most magnificent in the building. 
 The portion of the church set apart to the Latins, 
 opening also out of the rotunda, is merely a small 
 chapel. The Armenians have still more contracted 
 accommodations, and the poor Copts enjoy a mere 
 closet, but it is in a sacred spot, being attached to 
 the west end of the sepulchre itself. 
 
 On the western side of the rotunda we passed 
 through the bare and apparently uncared-for chapel
 
 70 HOLY PLACES OF THE HOLY CITY 
 
 of the Syrians, and entered, through a low door, 
 into a small grotto hewn in the rock. Lighted 
 candles revealed to us some tombs, little pits cut 
 in the rock, two in the side-wall and two in the 
 floor. We had a guide who knew every sacred 
 spot in the city, a man who never failed to satisfy 
 the curiosity of the most credulous tourist. 
 
 "Whose tombs are these? " we asked. 
 
 "That is the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and 
 that beside it is the tomb of Nicodeinus." 
 
 "How do you know? " 
 
 "How do I know? You ask me how I know. 
 Have n't I always lived in Jerusalem? I was born 
 here." 
 
 "Then perhaps you can tell us, if this tomb 
 belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, and this to 
 Nicodemus, whose is this third one?" 
 
 "Oh yes, that other," replied the guide, with only 
 a moment's paralysis of his invention, "that is the 
 tomb of Arimathea himself." 
 
 One afternoon at four, service was going on in 
 the Greek chapel, which shone with silver and 
 blazed with tapers, and was crowded with pilgrims, 
 principally Russians of both sexes, many of whom 
 had made a painful pilgrimage of more than two 
 thousand miles on foot merely to prostrate them- 
 selves in this revered place. A Russian bishop 
 and a priest, in the resplendent robes of their 
 office, were intoning the service responsively. In 
 the very centre of this chapel is a round hole cov- 
 ered with a grating, and tapers are generally burn- 
 ing about it. All the pilgrims kneeled there, and
 
 CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE
 
 A BLITHE BEGGAR 71 
 
 kissed the grating and adored the hole. I had the 
 curiosity to push my way through the throng in 
 order to see the object of devotion, but I could 
 discover nothing. It is, however, an important 
 spot : it is the centre of the earth; though why 
 Christians should worship the centre of the earth 
 I do not know. The Armenians have in their 
 chapel also a spot that they say is the real centre; 
 that makes three that we know of, for everybody 
 understands that there is one in the Kaaba at 
 Mecca. 
 
 We sat down upon a stone bench near the en- 
 trance of the chapel, where we could observe the 
 passing streams of people, and were greatly di- 
 verted by a blithe and comical beggar who had 
 stationed himself on the pavement there to inter- 
 cept the Greek charity of the worshipers when 
 they passed into the rotunda. He was a diminu- 
 tive man with distorted limbs ; he wore a peaked 
 red cap, and dragged himself over the pavement, 
 or rather skipped and flopped about on it like a 
 devil-fish on land. Never was seen in a beggar 
 such vivacity and imperturbable good-humor, with 
 so much deviltry in his dancing eyes. 
 
 As we appeared to him to occupy a neutral posi- 
 tion as to him and his victims, he soon took us 
 into his confidence and let us see his mode of op- 
 erations. He said (to our guide) that he was a 
 Greek from Damascus, oh yes, a Christian, a 
 pilgrim, who always came down here at this sea- 
 son, which was his harvest-time. He hoped (with 
 a wicked wink) that his devotion would be re- 
 warded.
 
 72 HOLY PLACES OF THE HOLY CITY 
 
 It was very entertaining to see him watch the 
 people coming out, and select his victims, whom 
 he would indicate to us by a motion of his head as 
 he flopped towards them. He appeared to rely more 
 upon the poor and simple than upon the rich, and 
 he was more successful with the former. But 
 he rarely, such was his insight, made a mistake. 
 Whoever gave him anything he thanked with the 
 utmost empressement of manner ; then he crossed 
 himself, and turned around and winked at us, his 
 confederates. When an elegantly dressed lady 
 dropped the smallest of copper coins into his cap, 
 he let us know his opinion of her by a significant 
 gesture and a shrug of his shoulders. But no mat- 
 ter from whom he received it, whenever he added 
 a penny to his store the rascal chirped and laughed 
 and caressed himself. He was in the way of being 
 trodden under foot by the crowd; but his agility 
 was extraordinary, and I should not have been 
 surprised at any moment if he had vaulted over the 
 heads of the throng and disappeared. If he failed 
 to attract the attention of an eligible pilgrim, he 
 did not hesitate to give the skirt of his elect a jerk, 
 for which rudeness he would at once apologize with 
 an indescribable grimace and a joke. 
 
 When the crowd had passed, he slid himself into 
 a corner, by a motion such as that with which a 
 fish suddenly darts to one side, and set himself to 
 empty his pocket into his cap and count his plun- 
 der, tossing the pieces into the air and catching 
 them with a chuckle, crossing himself and hugging 
 himself by turns. He had four francs and a half.
 
 THE CHAPEL OF THE APPARITION 73 
 
 When he had finished counting his money he put 
 it in a bag, and for a moment his face assumed a 
 grave and business-like expression. We thought 
 he would depart without demanding anything of 
 us. But we were mistaken ; he had something in 
 view that he no doubt felt would insure him a 
 liberal backsheesh. Wriggling near to us, he set 
 his face into an expression of demure humility, 
 held out his cap, and said, in English, each word 
 falling from his lips as distinctly and unnaturally 
 as if he had been a wooden articulating machine, 
 
 " Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy 
 laden, and /will give you rest." 
 
 The rascal's impiety lessened the charity which 
 our intimacy with him had intended, but he ap- 
 peared entirely content, chirped, saluted with 
 gravity, and, with a flop, was gone from our sight. 
 
 At the moment, a procession of Franciscan 
 monks swept by, chanting in rich bass voices, and 
 followed, as usual, by Latin pilgrims, making the 
 daily round of the holy places ; after they had 
 disappeared we could still hear their voices and 
 catch now and again the glimmer of their tapers 
 in the vast dark spaces. 
 
 Opposite the place where we were sitting is the 
 Chapel of the Apparition, a room not much more 
 than twenty feet square; it is the Latin chapel, 
 and besides its contiguity to the sepulchre has 
 some specialties of its own. The chapel is prob- 
 ably eight hundred years old. In the centre of the 
 pavement is the spot upon which our Lord stood 
 when he appeared to the Virgin after the resur-
 
 74 HOLY PLACES OP THE HOLY CITY 
 
 rection ; near it a slab marks the place where the 
 three crosses were laid after they were dug up by 
 Helena, and where the one on which our Lord was 
 crucified was identified by the miracle that it 
 worked in healing a sick man. South of the altar 
 is a niche in the wall, now covered over, but a 
 round hole is left in the covering. I saw pilgrims 
 thrust a long stick into this hole, withdraw it, and 
 kiss the end. The stick had touched a fragment 
 of the porphyry column to which the Saviour was 
 bound when he was scourged. 
 
 In the semicircle at the east end of the nave are 
 several interesting places : the prison where Christ 
 was confined before his execution, a chapel dedi- 
 cated to the centurion who pierced the side of our 
 Lord, and the spot on which the vestments were 
 divided. From thence we descend, by a long flight 
 of steps partly hewn in the rock, to a rude, crypt- 
 like chapel, in the heavy early Byzantine style, a 
 damp, cheerless place, called the Chapel of Helena. 
 At the east end of it another flight of steps leads 
 down into what was formerly a cistern, but is now 
 called the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross. 
 Here the cross was found, and at one side of the 
 steps stands the marble chair in which the mother 
 of Constantine sat while she superintended the dig- 
 ging. Nothing is wanting that the most cred- 
 ulous pilgrim could wish to see ; that is, nothing 
 is wanting in spots where things were. This 
 chapel belongs to the Latins ; that of Helena to the 
 Greeks; the Abyssinian convent is above both of 
 them.
 
 GOLGOTHA 75 
 
 On the south side of the church, near the en- 
 trance, is a dark room called the Chapel of Adam, 
 in which there is never more light than a feeble 
 taper can give. I groped my way into it often, in 
 the hope of finding something ; perhaps it is pur- 
 posely involved in an obscurity typical of the ori- 
 gin of mankind. There is a tradition that Adam 
 was buried on Golgotha, but the only tomb in this 
 chapel is that of Melchizedek ! The chapel for- 
 merly contained that of Godfrey de Bouillon, 
 elected the first king of Jerusalem in 1099, and of 
 Baldwin, his brother. We were shown the two- 
 handed sword of Godfrey, with which he clove a 
 Saracen lengthwise into two equal parts, a gen- 
 uine relic of a heroic and barbarous age. At the 
 end of this chapel a glimmering light lets us see 
 through a grating a crack in the rock made by the 
 earthquake at the crucifixion. 
 
 The gloom of this mysterious chapel, which is 
 haunted by the spectre of that dim shadow of 
 unreality, Melchizedek, prepared us to ascend to 
 Golgotha, above it. The chapels of Golgotha are 
 supported partly upon a rock which rises fifteen 
 feet above the pavement of the church. The first 
 is that of the Elevation of the Cross, and belongs 
 to the Greeks. Under the altar at the east end is 
 a hole in the marble, which is over the hole in the 
 rock in which the cross stood; on either side of it 
 are the holes of the crosses of the two thieves. 
 The altar is rich with silver and gold and jewels. 
 The chamber, when we entered it, was blazing with 
 light, and Latin monks were performing their
 
 76 HOLY PLACES OF THE HOLY CITY 
 
 adorations, with chanting and swinging of incense, 
 before the altar. A Greek priest stood at one 
 side, watching them, and there was plain contempt 
 in his face. The Greek priests are not wanting in 
 fanaticism, but they never seem to me to possess 
 the faith of the Latin branch of the Catholic 
 Church. When the Latins had gone, the Greek 
 took us behind the altar, and showed us another 
 earthquake-rent in the rock. 
 
 Adjoining this chapel is the Latin Chapel of the 
 Crucifixion, marking the spot where Christ was 
 nailed to the cross ; from that we looked through a 
 window into an exterior room dedicated to the Sor- 
 rowing Virgin, where she stood and beheld the 
 crucifixion. Both these latter rooms do not rest 
 upon the rock, but upon artificial vaults, and of 
 course can mark the spots commemorated by them 
 only in space. 
 
 Perhaps this sensation of being in the air, and 
 of having no standing-place even for tradition, 
 added something to the strange feeling that took 
 possession of me; a mingled feeling that was no 
 more terror than is the apprehension that one 
 experiences at a theatre from the manufactured 
 thunder behind the scenes. I suppose it arose 
 from cross currents meeting in the mind, the 
 thought of the awful significance of the events here 
 represented and the sight of this theatrical represen- 
 tation. The dreadful name, Golgotha, the gloom 
 of this part of the building, a sort of mount of 
 darkness, with its rent rock and preternatural 
 shadow, the blazing contrast of the chapel where
 
 SINCERITY OF THE PILGRIMS 77 
 
 the cross stood with the dark passages about it, the 
 chanting and flashing lights of pilgrims ever com- 
 ing and going, the neighborhood of the sepulchre 
 itself, were well calculated to awaken an imagi- 
 nation the least sensitive. And, so susceptible is 
 the mind to the influence of that mental electricity 
 if there is no better name for it which pro- 
 ceeds from a mass of minds having one thought 
 (and is sometimes called public opinion), be it true 
 or false, that whatever one may believe about the 
 real location of the Holy Sepulchre, he cannot wit- 
 ness, unmoved, the vast throng of pilgrims to these 
 shrines, representing as they do every section of 
 the civilized and of the uncivilized world into 
 which a belief in the cross has penetrated. The 
 undoubted sincerity of the majority of the pilgrims 
 who worship here makes us for the time forget the 
 hundred inventions which so often allure and as 
 often misdirect that worship. 
 
 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre offers at all 
 times a great spectacle, and one always novel, in 
 the striking ceremonies and the people who assist 
 at them. One of the most extraordinary, that of 
 the Holy Fire, at the Greek Easter, which is three 
 weeks later than the Koman, and which has been 
 so often described, we did not see. I am not sure 
 that we saw even all the thirty-seven holy places 
 and objects in the church. It may not be unprofit- 
 able to set down those I can recall. They are, 
 
 The Stone of Unction. 
 
 The spot where the Virgin Mary stood when the 
 body of our Lord was anointed.
 
 78 HOLY PLACES OP THE HOLY CITY 
 
 The Holy Sepulchre. 
 
 The stone on which the angel sat. 
 
 The tombs of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicode- 
 mus. 
 
 The well of Helena. 
 
 The stone marking the spot where Christ in the 
 form of a gardener appeared to Mary Magdalene. 
 
 The spot where Mary Magdalene stood. 
 
 The spot where our Lord appeared to the Virgin 
 after his resurrection. 
 
 The place where the true cross, discovered by 
 Helena, was laid, and identified by a miracle. 
 
 The fragment of the Column of Flagellation. 
 
 The prison of our Lord. 
 
 The "Bonds of Christ," a stone with two holes 
 in it. 
 
 The place where the title on the cross was pre- 
 served. 
 
 The place of the division of the vestments. 
 
 The centre of the earth (Greek). 
 
 The centre of the earth (Armenian). 
 
 The altar of the centurion who pierced the body 
 of Christ. 
 
 The altar of the penitent thief. 
 
 The Chapel of Helena. 
 
 The chair in which Helena sat when the cross 
 was found. 
 
 The spot where the cross was found. 
 
 The Chapel of the Mocking, with a fragment of 
 the column upon which Jesus sat when they crowned 
 him with thorns. 
 
 The Chapel of the Elevation of the Cross.
 
 THE THIRTY-SEVEN HOLY OBJECTS 79 
 
 The spot where the cross stood. 
 
 The spots where the crosses of the thieves stood. 
 
 The rent rock near the cross. 
 
 The spot where Christ was nailed to the cross. 
 
 The spot where the Virgin stood during the cru- 
 cifixion. 
 
 The Chapel of Adam. 
 
 The tomb of Melchizedek. 
 
 The rent rock in the Chapel of Adam. 
 
 The spots where the tombs of Godfrey and Bald- 
 win stood. 
 
 No, we did not see them all. Besides, there 
 used to be a piece of the cross in the Latin chapel ; 
 but the Armenians are accused of purloining it. 
 All travelers, I suppose, have seen the celebrated 
 Iron Crown of Lombardy, which is kept in the 
 church at Monza, near Milan. It is all of gold 
 except the inner band, which is made of a nail of 
 the cross brought from Jerusalem by Helena. The 
 Church of the Holy Sepulchre has not all the relics 
 it might have, but it is as rich in them as any 
 church of its age. 
 
 A place in Jerusalem almost as interesting to 
 Christians as the Holy Sepulchre, and more inter- 
 esting to antiquarians, is the Harem, or Temple 
 area, with its ancient substructions and its re- 
 splendent Saracenic architecture. It is largely an 
 open place, green with grass ; it is clean and whole- 
 some, and the sun lies lovingly on it. There is no 
 part of the city where the traveler would so like 
 to wander at will, to sit and muse, to dream away 
 the day on the walls overhanging the valley of the
 
 80 HOLY PLACES OF THE HOLY CITY 
 
 Kidron, to recall at leisure all the wonderful story 
 of its splendor and its disaster. But admission to 
 the area is had only by special permit. There- 
 fore the ordinary tourist goes not so much as he 
 desires to the site of the Temple that Solomon 
 built, and of the porch where Jesus walked and 
 talked with his disciples. When he does go, he 
 feels that he treads upon firm historical ground. 
 
 We walked down the gutter (called street) of 
 David; we did not enter the Harem area by the 
 Bab es-Silsileh (Gate of the Chain), but turned 
 northward and went in by the Bab el-Katanin 
 (Gate of the Cotton-Merchants), which is identified 
 with the Beautiful Gate of the Temple. Both 
 these gates have twisted columns and are graceful 
 examples of Saracenic architecture. As soon as 
 we entered the gate, the splendor of the area burst 
 upon us ; we passed instantly out of the sordid city 
 into a green plain, out of which it could have 
 been by a magic wand only had sprung the most 
 charming creations in stone : minarets, domes, col- 
 onnades, cloisters, pavilions, columns of all orders, 
 horseshoe arches and pointed arches, every joyous 
 architectural thought expressed in shining marble 
 and brilliant color. 
 
 Our dragoman, Abd-el-Atti, did the honors of 
 the place with the air of proprietorship. For the 
 first time in the Holy City he felt quite at home, 
 and appeared to be on the same terms with the 
 Temple area that he is with the tombs of the Pha- 
 raohs. The Christian antiquities are too much 
 for him, but his elastic mind expands readily to
 
 THE TEMPLE AREA 81 
 
 all the marvels of the Moslem situation. The 
 Moslems, indeed, consider that they have a much 
 better right to the Temple than the Christians, 
 and Abd-el-Atti acted as our cicerone in the pre- 
 cincts with all the delight of a boy and with the 
 enthusiasm of faith. It was not unpleasant to 
 him, either, to have us see that he was treated 
 with consideration by the mosque attendants and 
 ulemas, and that he was well known and could 
 pass readily into the most reserved places. He 
 had said his prayers that morning, at twelve, in 
 this mosque, a privilege only second to that of 
 praying in the mosque at Mecca, and was in high 
 spirits, as one who had (if the expression is allow- 
 able) got a little ahead in the matter of devotion. 
 
 Let me give in a few words, without any quali- 
 fications of doubt, what seem to be the well-ascer- 
 tained facts about this area. It is at present a 
 level piece of ground (in the nature of a platform, 
 since it is sustained on all sides by walls), a quad- 
 rilateral with its sides not quite parallel, about 
 fifteen hundred feet long by one thousand feet 
 broad. The northern third of it was covered by 
 the Fortress of Antonia, an ancient palace and 
 fortress, rebuilt with great splendor by Herod. 
 The small remains of it in the northeast corner 
 are now barracks. 
 
 This level piece of ground is nearly all artificial, 
 either filled in or built up on arches. The original 
 ground (Mount Moriah) was a rocky hill, the sum- 
 mit of which was the rock about which there has 
 been so much controversy. Near the centre of this
 
 82 HOLY PLACES OF THE HOLY CITY 
 
 ground, and upon a broad raised platform, paved 
 with marble, stands the celebrated mosque Kubbet 
 es-Sukhrah, "The Dome of the Rock." It is 
 built over the Sacred Rock. 
 
 This rock marks the site of the threshing-floor 
 of Oman, the Jebusite, which David bought, 
 purchasing at the same time the whole of Mount 
 Moriah. Solomon built the Temple over this 
 rock, and it was probably the "stone of sacrifice." 
 At the time Solomon built the Temple, the level 
 place on Moriah was scarcely large enough for the 
 naos of that building, and Solomon extended the 
 ground to the east and south by erecting arches 
 and filling in on top of them, and constructing 
 a heavy retaining-wall outside. On the east side 
 also he built a porch, or magnificent colonnade, 
 which must have produced a fine effect of Oriental 
 grandeur when seen from the deep valley below or 
 from the Mount of Olives opposite. 
 
 To this roch the Jews used to come, in the 
 fourth century, and anoint it with oil, and wail 
 over it, as the site of the Temple. On it once 
 stood a statue of Hadrian. When the Moslems 
 captured Jerusalem, it became, what it has ever 
 since been, one of their most venerated places. 
 The Khalif Omar cleared away the rubbish from 
 it, and built over it a mosque. The Khalif Abd- 
 el-Melek began to rebuild it in A. D. 686. Dur- 
 ing the Crusades it was used as a Christian church. 
 Allowing for decay and repairs, the present mosque 
 is probably substantially that built by Abd-el- 
 Melek.
 
 FAIRY-LIKE BUILDINGS 83 
 
 At the extreme south of the area is the vast 
 Mosque of Aksa, a splendid basilica with seven 
 aisles, which may or may not be the Church of St. 
 Mary built by Justinian in the sixth century; 
 architects differ about it. This question it seems 
 to me very difficult to decide from the architecture 
 of the building, because of the habit that Chris- 
 tians and Moslems both had of appropriating col- 
 umns and capitals of ancient structures in their 
 buildings ; and because the Moslems at that time 
 used both the round and the pointed arch. 
 
 This platform is beyond all comparison the most 
 beautiful place in Jerusalem, and its fairy-like 
 buildings, when seen from the hill opposite, give 
 to the city its chief claim to Oriental picturesque- 
 ness. 
 
 The dome of the mosque Kubbet es-Sukhrah is 
 perhaps the most beautiful in the world; it seems 
 to float in the air like a blown bubble; this effect 
 is produced by a slight drawing in of the base. 
 This contraction of the dome is not sufficient to 
 give the spectator any feeling of insecurity, or to 
 belittle this architectural marvel to the likeness of 
 a big toy ; the builder hit the exact mean between 
 massiveness and expanding lightness. The mosque 
 is octagonal in form, and although its just propor- 
 tions make it appear small, it is a hundred and 
 fifty feet in diameter; outside and in, it is a blaze 
 of color in brilliant marbles, fine mosaics, stained 
 glass, and beautiful Saracenic tiles. The lower 
 part of the exterior wall is covered witlt colored 
 marbles in intricate patterns ; above are pointed
 
 84 
 
 windows with stained glass; and the spaces be- 
 tween the windows are covered by glazed tiles, 
 with arabesque designs and very rich in color. In 
 the interior, which has all the soft warmth and 
 richness of Persian needlework, are two corridors, 
 with rows of columns and pillars; within the in- 
 ner row is the Sacred Rock. 
 
 This rock, which is the most remarkable stone 
 in the world, if half we hear of it be true, and 
 which by a singular fortune is sacred to three re- 
 ligions, is an irregular boulder, standing some five 
 feet above ,the pavement, and is something like 
 sixty feet long. In places it has been chiseled, 
 steps are cut on one side, and various niches are 
 hewn in it; a round hole pierces it from top to 
 bottom. The rock is limestone, a little colored 
 with iron, and beautiful in spots where it has been 
 polished. One would think that by this time it 
 ought to be worn smooth all over. 
 
 If we may believe the Moslems and doubt our 
 own senses, this rock is suspended in the air, hav- 
 ing no support on any side. It was to this rock 
 that Mohammed made his midnight journey on El 
 Burak; it was from here that he ascended into 
 Paradise, an excursion that occupied him alto- 
 gether only forty minutes. It is, I am inclined to 
 think, the miraculous suspension of this stone that 
 is the basis of the Christian fable of the suspension 
 of Mohammed's coffin, a miracle unknown to 
 all Moslems of whom I have inquired concerning it. 
 
 "Abd-el-Atti," I said, "does this rock rest on 
 nothing?"
 
 THE NOBLE CAVE 85 
 
 "So I have hunderstood ; thira say so." 
 
 "But do you believe it?" 
 
 " When I read him, I believe ; when I come and 
 see him, I can't help what I see." 
 
 At the south end of the rock we descended a 
 flight of steps and stood under the rock in what is 
 called the Noble Cave, a small room about six feet 
 high, plastered and whitewashed. This is sup- 
 posed to be the sink into which the blood of the 
 Jewish sacrifices drained. The plaster and white- 
 wash hide the original rock, and give the Moslems 
 the opportunity to assert that there is no rock 
 foundation under the big stone. 
 
 "But," we said to Abd-ei-Atti, "if this rock 
 hangs in the air, why cannot we see all around it? 
 Why these plaster walls that seem to support it? " 
 
 "So him used to be. This done so, I hear, on 
 account of do women. Thim come here, see this 
 rock, thim berry much frightened. Der little 
 shild, what you call it, get born in de world before 
 him wanted. So thim make this wall under it." 
 
 There are four altars in this cave, one of them 
 dedicated to David; here the Moslem prophets, 
 Abraham, David, Solomon, and Jesus, used to 
 pray. In the rock is a round indentation made 
 by Mohammed's head when he first attempted to 
 rise to heaven ; near it is the hole through which 
 ho rose. On the upper southeast corner of the 
 rock is the print of the prophet's foot, and close 
 to it the print of the hand of the angel Michael, 
 who held the rock down from following Moham- 
 med into the skies.
 
 86 HOLT PLACES OF THE HOLY CITT 
 
 In the mosque above, Abd-el-Atti led us, with 
 much solemnity, to a small stone set in the pave- 
 ment near the north entrance. It was perforated 
 with holes, in some of which were brass nails. 
 
 "How many holes you make 'em there?" 
 
 "Thirteen." 
 
 "How many got nails?" 
 
 "Four." 
 
 "Not so many. Only three and a half nails. 
 Used to be thirteen nails. Now only three and a 
 half. When these gone, then the world come to 
 an end. I t'ink it not berry long." 
 
 "I should think the Moslems would watch this 
 stone very carefully." 
 
 "What difference? You not t'ink it come when 
 de time come? " 
 
 We noticed some pieces of money on the stone, 
 and asked why that was. 
 
 "Whoever he lay backsheesh on this stone, he 
 certain to go into Paradise, and be took by our 
 prophet in his bosom." 
 
 We wandered for some time about the green 
 esplanade, dotted with cypress-trees, and admired 
 the little domes: the Dome of the Spirits, the 
 dome that marks the spot where David sat in judg- 
 ment, etc. ; some of them cover cisterns and res- 
 ervoirs in the rock as old as the foundations of 
 the Temple. 
 
 In the corridor of the Mosque of Aksa are two 
 columns standing close together, and like those at 
 the Mosque of Omar, in Cairo, they are a test 
 of character; it is said that whoever can squeeze
 
 MOSLEM TESTS OF CHARACTER 87 
 
 between them is certain of Paradise, and must, of 
 course, be a good Moslem. I suppose that when 
 this test was established the Moslems were all lean. 
 A black stone is set in the wall of the porch ; who- 
 ever can walk, with closed eyes, across the porch 
 pavement and put his finger on this stone may be 
 sure of entering Paradise. According to this crit- 
 erion, the writer of this is one of the elect of the 
 Mohammedan Paradise and his dragoman is shut 
 out. We were shown in this mosque the print of 
 Christ's foot in a stone ; and it is said that with 
 faith one can feel in it, as he can in that of Mo- 
 hammed's in the rock, the real flesh. Opening 
 from this mosque is the small Mosque of Omar, on 
 the spot where that zealous khalif prayed. 
 
 The massive pillared substructions under Aksa 
 are supposed by Moslems to be of Solomon's time. 
 That wise monarch had dealings with the invisible, 
 and no doubt controlled the genii, who went and 
 came and built and delved at his bidding. Abd- 
 el-Atti, with haste and an air of mystery, drew 
 me along under the arches to the window in the 
 south end, and showed me the opening of a passage 
 under the wall, now half choked up with stones. 
 This is the beginning of a subterranean passage 
 made by the prophet Solomon, that extends all 
 the way to Hebron, and has an issue in the mosque 
 over the tomb of Abraham. This fact is known 
 only to Moslems, and to very few of them, and is 
 considered one of the great secrets. Before I was 
 admitted to share it, I am glad that I passed be- 
 tween the two columns, and touched, with my eyes 
 shut, the black stone.
 
 88 HOLY PLACES OF THE HOLY CITY 
 
 In the southeast corner of the Harem is a little 
 building called the Mosque of Jesus. We passed 
 through it, and descended the stairway into what 
 is called Solomon's Stables, being shown on our 
 way a stone trough which is said to be the cradle 
 of the infant Jesus. These so-called stables are 
 subterranean Vaults, built, 110 doubt, to sustain the 
 south end of the Temple platform. We saw fif- 
 teen rows of massive square pillars of unequal 
 sizes and at unequal distances apart (as if intended 
 for supports that would not be seen), and some 
 forty feet high, connected by round arches. We 
 were glad to reascend from this wet and unpleasant 
 cavern to the sunshine and the greensward. 
 
 I forgot to mention the Well of the Leaf, near 
 the entrance, in the Mosque of Aksa, and the pretty 
 Moslem legend that gave it a name, which Abd-el- 
 Atti relates, though not in the words of the hand- 
 book : 
 
 "This well berry old; call him Well of the Leaf; 
 water same as Pool of Solomon, healthy water ; I 
 like him very much. Not so deep as Bir el-Arwah ; 
 that small well, you see it under the rock; they 
 say it goes down into Gehenna." 
 
 "Why is this called the Well of the Leaf? " 
 
 " Once, time of Suleiman [it was Omar], a friend 
 of our prophet come here to pray, and when he 
 draw water to wash, he drop the bucket in the bot- 
 tom of the well. No way to get it up, but he must 
 go down. When he was on the bottom, there he 
 much surprised by a door open in the ground, and 
 him berry cur'ous to see what it is. Nobody there,
 
 THE WELL OF THE LEAF 89 
 
 so he look in, and then walk through berry fast, 
 and look over him shoulder to the bucket left in 
 the well. The place where he was come was the 
 most beautiful garden ever was, and he walk long 
 time and find no end, always more garden, so cool, 
 and water run in little streams, and sweet smell of 
 roses and jasmin, and little birds that sing, and 
 big trees and dates and oranges and palms, more 
 kind, I t'ink, than you see in the garden of his 
 vice-royal. When the man have been long time in 
 the garden he begin to have fright, and pick a 
 green leaf off a tree, and run back and come up 
 to his friends. He show 'em the green leaf, but 
 nobody have believe what he say. Then they tell 
 him story to the kadi, and the kadi send men to 
 see the garden in the bottom of the well. They 
 not find any, not find any door. Then the kadi 
 he make him a letter to the Sultan berry wise 
 man and he say (so I read it in our history), 
 'Our prophet say, One of my friends shall walk in 
 Paradise while he is alive. If this is come true, 
 you shall see the leaf, if it still keep green. ' Then 
 the kadi make examine of the leaf, and find him 
 green. So it is believe the man has been in 
 Paradise." 
 
 "And do you believe it?" 
 
 "I cannot say edzacly where him been. Where 
 you t'ink he done got that leaf? " 
 
 Along the east wall of the Harem there are no 
 remains of the long colonnade called Solomon's 
 Porch, not a column of that resplendent marble 
 pavilion which caught the first rays of the sun over
 
 90 HOLY PLACES OF THE HOLY CITY 
 
 the mountains of Moab, and which, with the shin- 
 ing temple towering behind it, must have presented 
 a more magnificent appearance than Babylon, and 
 have rivaled the architectural glories of Ba'albek. 
 The only thing in this wall worthy of note now is 
 the Golden Gate, an entrance no longer used. We 
 descended into its archways, and found some fine 
 columns with composite capitals, and other florid 
 stone-work of a rather tasteless and debased Ro- 
 man style. 
 
 We climbed the wall by means of the steps, a 
 series of which are placed at intervals, and sat a 
 long time looking upon a landscape, every foot of 
 which is historical. Merely to look upon it is to 
 recall a great portion of the Jewish history and 
 the momentous events in the brief life of the Sa- 
 viour, which, brief as it was, sufficed to newly create 
 the earth. There is the Mount of Olives, with its 
 commemorative chapels, heaps of stone, and scat- 
 tered trees ; there is the ancient foot-path up which 
 David fled as a fugitive by night from the conspir- 
 acy of Absalom, what time Shimei, the relative of 
 Saul, stoned him and cursed him ; and down that 
 Way of Triumph, the old road sweeping round its 
 base, came the procession of the Son of David, 
 in whose path the multitude cast their garments 
 and branches of trees, and cried, " Hosanna in the 
 highest." There on those hills, Mount Scopus 
 and Olivet, were once encamped the Assyrians, 
 and again the Persians; there shone the eagles of 
 Rome, borne by her conquering legions ; and there, 
 in turn, Crusaders and Saracens pitched their
 
 TOMBS AND TEMPLES 91 
 
 tents. How many times has the air been dark- 
 ened with missiles hurled thence upon this shining 
 prize, and how many armies have closed in about 
 this spot and swarmed to its destruction! There 
 the Valley of Jehoshaphat curves down until it 
 is merged in the Valley of the Brook Kidron. 
 There, at the junction of the roads that run over 
 and around Olivet, is a clump of trees surrounded 
 by a white wall; that is the Garden of Geth- 
 semaue. Near it is the tomb of Mary. Farther 
 down you see the tomb of Absalom, the tomb of 
 St. James, the monolith pyramid-tipped tomb of 
 Zacharias (none of them apparently as old as they 
 claim to be), and the remains of a little temple, the 
 model of which came from the banks of the Nile, 
 that Solomon built for his Egyptian wife, the 
 daughter of Pharaoh, wherein they worshiped the 
 gods of her country. It is tradition also that near 
 here were some of the temples he built for others 
 of his strange wives: a temple to Chemosh, the 
 Moabite god, and the image of Moloch, the de- 
 vourer of children. Solomon was wiser than all 
 men, wiser than Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, 
 the sons of Mahol; his friend Hiram of Tyre used 
 to send riddles to him which no one in the world 
 but Solomon could guess; but his wisdom failed 
 him with the other sex, and there probably never 
 was another Oriental court so completely ruled and 
 ruined by women as his. 
 
 This valley below us is perhaps the most mel- 
 ancholy on earth : nowhere else is death so visibly 
 master of the scene ; nature is worn out, man tired
 
 92 HOLY PLACES OF THE HOLY CITY 
 
 out; a gray despair has settled down upon the 
 landscape. Down there is the village of Siloam, 
 a village of huts and holes in the rocks, opposite 
 the cave of that name. If it were the abode of 
 wolves it would have a better character than it has 
 now. There is the grim cast of sin and exhaustion 
 upon the scene. I do not know exactly how much 
 of this is owing to the Jewish burying-ground, 
 which occupies so much of the opposite hill. The 
 slope is thickly shingled with gray stones, that lie 
 in a sort of regularity which suggests their pur- 
 pose. You fall to computing how many Jews there 
 may be in that hill, layer upon layer ; for the most 
 part they are dissolved away into the earth, but 
 you think that if they were to put on their mortal 
 bodies and come forth, the valley itself would be 
 filled with them almost to the height of the wall. 
 Out of these gates, giving upon this valley of 
 death, six hundred thousand bodies of those who 
 had starved were thrown during the siege, and long 
 before Titus stormed the city. I do not wonder 
 that the Moslems think of this frightful vale as 
 Gehenna itself. 
 
 From an orifice in the battlemented wall where 
 we sat projects a round column, mounted there 
 like a cannon and perhaps intended to deceive an 
 enemy into the belief that the wall is fortified. It 
 is astride this column, overhanging this dreadful 
 valley, that Mohammed will sit at the last, the 
 judgment day. A line finer than a hair and 
 sharper than a razor will reach from it to the tower 
 on the Mount of Olives, stretching over the valley
 
 ES-SERAT 93 
 
 of the dead. This is the line Es-Serat. Moham- 
 med will superintend the passage over it. For in 
 that day all who ever lived, risen to judgment, 
 must walk this razor-line; the good will cross in 
 safety; the bad will fall into hell, that is, into 
 Gehenna, this blasted gulf and side-hill below, 
 thickly sown with departed Jews. It is in view 
 of this perilous passage that the Moslem every day, 
 during the ablution of his feet, prays : " Oh, make 
 ray feet not to slip on Es-Serat. on that day when 
 feet shall slip."
 
 IV 
 
 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 HERE VER we come upon traces of the 
 Knights of St. John, there a door opens 
 for us into romance ; the very name sug- 
 gests valor and courtesy and charity. 
 Every town in the East that is so fortunate as to 
 have any memorials of them, whatever its other 
 historic associations, obtains an additional and 
 special fame from its connection with this heroic 
 order. The city of Acre recalls the memory of 
 their useless prowess in the last struggle of the 
 Christians to retain a foothold in Palestine; the 
 name of the Knights of Rhodes brings before every 
 traveler, who has seen it, the picturesque city in 
 which the armorial insignia of this order have for 
 him a more living interest than any antiquities of 
 the Grecian Rose ; the island fortress at the gate 
 of the Levant owes all the interest we feel in it 
 to the Knights of Malta; and even the city of 
 David and of the Messiah has an added lustre 
 &s the birthplace of the Knights of St. John of 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 From the eleventh century to the fifteenth, they 
 are the chief figures who in that whirlwind of war
 
 THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN 95 
 
 contested the possession of the Levant with the 
 Saracens and the Turks. In the forefront of every 
 battle was seen their burnished mail, in the gloomy 
 rear of every retreat were heard their voices of con- 
 stancy and of courage ; wherever there were crowns 
 to be cracked, or wounds to be bound up, or 
 broken hearts to be ministered to, there were the 
 Knights of St. John, soldiers, priests, servants, 
 laying aside the gown for the coat of mail if need 
 be, or exchanging the cuirass for the white cross 
 on the breast. Originally a charitable order, 
 dwelling in the Hospital of St. John to minister 
 to the pilgrims to Jerusalem, and composed of 
 young soldiers of Godfrey, who took the vows of 
 poverty, chastity, and obedience, they resumed 
 their arms upon the pressure of infidel hostility, 
 and subsequently divided the order into three 
 classes: soldiers, priests, and servants. They 
 speedily acquired great power and wealth; their 
 palaces, their fortifications, their churches, are even 
 in their ruins the admiration and wonder of our 
 age. The purity of the order was in time some- 
 what sullied by luxury, but their valor never suf- 
 fered the slightest eclipse ; whether the field they 
 contested was lost or won, their bravery always 
 got new honor from it. 
 
 Nearly opposite the court of the Church of the 
 Holy Sepulchre is the green field of Muristan, 
 the site of the palace, church, and hospital of the 
 Knights of St. John. The field was, on an aver- 
 age, twenty-five feet above the surrounding streets, 
 and a portion of it was known to rest upon vaults.
 
 96 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 This plot of ground was given to the Prussian gov- 
 ernment, and its agents have been making excava- 
 tions there ; these were going on at the time of our 
 visit. The disclosures are of great architectural 
 and historical interest. The entrance through a 
 peculiar Gothic gateway leads into a court. Here 
 the first excavations were made several years ago, 
 and disclosed some splendid remains : the apse of 
 the costly church, cloisters, fine windows and arches 
 of the best Gothic style. Beyond, the diggings 
 have brought to light some of the features of the 
 palace and hospital: an excavation of twenty-five 
 feet reaches down to the arches of the substructure, 
 which rest upon pillars from forty to fifty feet high. 
 This gives us some notion of the magnificent group 
 of buildings that once occupied this square, and 
 also of the industry of nature as an entomber, since 
 some four centuries have sufficed her to bury these 
 ruins so far beneath the soil, that peasants ploughed 
 over the palaces of the knights without a suspicion 
 of what lay beneath. 
 
 In one corner of this field stands a slender min- 
 aret, marking the spot where the great Omar once 
 said his prayers; four centuries after this, Saladin 
 is said to have made his military headquarters 
 in the then deserted palace of the Knights of St. 
 John. There is no spot in Jerusalem where one 
 touches more springs of romance than in this field 
 of Muristan. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting and doleful walk 
 one can take near Jerusalem is that into the Valley 
 of Kidron and through Aceldama, round to the
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OF THE VIRGIN 97 
 
 Jaffa Gate, traversing "the whole valley of the 
 dead bodies, and of the ashes," in the cheerful 
 words of Jeremiah. 
 
 We picked our way through the filthy streets 
 and on the slippery cobble-stones, over which it 
 seems dangerous to ride and is nearly impossible 
 to walk, out through St. Stephen's Gate. Xear 
 the gate, inside, we turned into an alley and 
 climbed a heap of rubbish to see a pool, which the 
 guide insisted upon calling Bethesda, although it 
 is Birket Israil. Having seen many of these pools, 
 I did not expect much, but I was still disappointed. 
 We saw merely a hole in the ground, which is void 
 of all appearance of ever having been even damp. 
 The fact is, we have come to Jerusalem too late ; 
 we ought to have been here about two thousand 
 years ago. 
 
 The slope of the hill outside the gate is covered 
 with the turbaned tombs of Moslems ; we passed 
 under the walls and through this cemetery into 
 the deep valley below, crossing the bed of the 
 brook near the tombs of Absalom, Jehoshaphat, 
 St. James, and Zacharias. These all seem to be of 
 Roman construction; but that called Absalom's is 
 so firmly believed to be his that for centuries every 
 Jew who has passed it has cast a stone at it, and 
 these pebbles of hate partially cover it. We also 
 added to the heap, but I do not know why, for it 
 is nearly impossible to hate any one who has been 
 dead so long. 
 
 The most interesting phenomenon in the valley 
 is the Fountain of the Virgin, or the Fountain of
 
 98 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 Accused Women, as it used to be called. The 
 Moslem tradition is that it was a test of the un- 
 faithfulness of women ; those who drank of it and 
 were guilty, died; those who were innocent re- 
 ceived no harm. The Virgin Mary herself, being 
 accused, accepted this test, drank of the water, and 
 proved her chastity. Since then the fountain has 
 borne her name. The fountain, or well, is in the 
 side-hill, under the rocks of Ophel, and the water 
 springs up in an artificial cave. We descended 
 some sixteen steps to a long chamber, arched with 
 ancient masonry ; we passed through that and de- 
 scended fourteen steps more into a grotto, where 
 we saw the water flowing in and escaping by a 
 subterranean passage. About this fountain were 
 lounging groups of Moslem idlers, mostly women 
 and children. Not far off a Moslem was saying 
 his prayers, prostrating himself before a prayer- 
 niche. We had difficulty in making our way down 
 the steps, so encumbered were they with women. 
 Several of them sat upon the lowest steps in the 
 damp cavern, gossiping, filling their water-skins, 
 or paddling about with naked feet. 
 
 The well, like many others in Syria, is intermit- 
 tent and irregular in its rising and falling; some- 
 times it is dry, and then suddenly it bubbles up 
 and is full again. Some scholars think this is the 
 Pool Bethesda of the New Testament, others think 
 that Bethesda was Siloam, which is below this well 
 and fed by it, and would exhibit the same irregu- 
 lar rising and falling. This intermittent character 
 St. John attributed to an angel who came down
 
 THE POOL OF 8ILOAM 99 
 
 and troubled the water; the Moslems, with the 
 same superstition, say that it is caused by a dragon 
 who sleeps therein and checks the stream when he 
 wakes. 
 
 On our way to the Pool of Siloam, we passed 
 the village of Siloam, which is inhabited by about 
 a thousand Moslems, a nest of stone huts and 
 caves clinging to the side-hill, and exactly the gray 
 color of its stones. The occupation of the inhab- 
 itants appears to be begging, and hunting for old 
 copper coins, mites, and other pieces of Jewish 
 money. These relics they pressed upon us with 
 the utmost urgency. It was easier to satisfy the 
 beggars than the traders, who sallied out upon us 
 like hungry wolves from their caves. There is a 
 great choice of disagreeable places in the East, but 
 1 cannot now think of any that 1 should not pre- 
 fer as a residence to Siloam. 
 
 The Pool of Siloam, magnified in my infant 
 mind as "Siloam's shady rill," is an unattractive 
 sink-hole of dirty water, surrounded by modern 
 masonry. The valley here is very stony. Just be- 
 low we came to Solomon's Garden, an arid spot, 
 with patches of stone-walls, struggling to be a veg- 
 etable-garden, and somewhat green with lettuce 
 and Jerusalem artichokes. I have no doubt it was 
 quite another thing when Solomon and some of 
 his wives used to walk here in the cool of the day, 
 and even when Shallum, the son of Col-hozeh, set 
 up "the wall of the Pool of Siloah by the king's 
 garden." 
 
 We continued on, down to Joab's Well, passing 
 
 of C*3ifornlat Loe
 
 100 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 on the way Isaiah's Tree, a decrepit sycamore 
 propped up by a stone pillar, where that prophet 
 was sawn asunder. There is no end to the cheer- 
 ful associations of the valley. The Well of Joab, 
 a hundred and twenty-five feet deep, and walled 
 and arched with fine masonry, has a great appear- 
 ance of antiquity. We plucked maiden-hair from 
 its crevices, and read the Old Testament refer- 
 ences. Near it is a square pool fed by its water. 
 Some little distance below this the waters of all 
 these wells, pools, drains, sinks, or whatever they 
 are, reappear, bursting up through a basin of sand 
 and pebbles, as clear as crystal, and run brawling 
 off down the valley under a grove of large olive- 
 trees, a scene rural and inviting. 
 
 I suppose it would be possible to trace the whole 
 system of underground water ways and cisterns, 
 from Solomon's Pool, which sends its water into 
 town by an aqueduct near the Jaffa Gate, to Hez- 
 ekiah's Pool, to the cisterns under the Harem, and 
 so out to the Virgin's Well, the Pool of Siloam, 
 and the final gush of sweet water below. This 
 valley drains, probably artificially as well as nat- 
 urally, the whole city, for no sewers exist in the 
 latter. 
 
 We turned back from this sparkling brook, 
 which speedily sinks into the ground again, ab- 
 sorbed by the thirsty part of the valley called 
 Tophet, and went up the Valley of Hinnom, pass- 
 ing under the dark and frowning ledges of Acel- 
 dama, honeycombed with tombs. In this "field of 
 blood " a grim stone structure forms the front of a
 
 THE VALLEY OF HINNOM 101 
 
 natural cave, which is the charnel-house where the 
 dead were cast pell-mell, in the belief that the salts 
 in the earth would speedily consume them. The 
 path we travel is rugged, steep, and incredibly 
 stony. The whole of this region is inexpressibly 
 desolate, worn-out, pale, uncanny. The height 
 above this rocky terrace, stuffed with the dead, is 
 the Hill of Evil Counsel, where the Jews took 
 counsel against Jesus; and to add the last touch 
 of an harmonious picture, just above this Potter's 
 Field stands the accursed tree upon which Judas 
 hanged himself, raising its gaunt branches against 
 the twilight sky, a very gallows-tree to the im- 
 agination. It has borne no fruit since Iscariot. 
 Towards dusk, sometimes, as you stand on the wall 
 by Zion Gate, you almost fancy you can see him 
 dangling there. It is of no use to tell me that the 
 seed that raised this tree could not have sprouted 
 till a thousand years after Judas was crumbled 
 into dust; one must have faith in something. 
 
 This savage gorge, for the Valley of Hinnom is 
 little more than that in its narrowest part, has few 
 associations that are not horrible. Here Solomon 
 set up the images ("the groves," or the graven 
 images), and the temples for the lascivious rites 
 of Ashtaroth or the human sacrifices to Moloch. 
 Here the Jews, the kings and successors of Solo- 
 mon, with a few exceptions, and save an occasional 
 spasmodic sacrifice to Jehovah when calamity made 
 them fear him, practiced all the abominations of 
 idolatry in use in that age. The Jews had always 
 been more or less addicted to the worship of the
 
 102 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 god of Ammon, but Solomon first formally estab- 
 lished it in Hinnom. Jeremiah writes of it histor- 
 ically, " They have built the high places of Tophet, 
 which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to 
 burn their sons and their daughters in the fire." 
 This Moloch was as ingenious a piece of cruelty as 
 ever tried the faith of heretics in later times, and, 
 since it was purely a means of human sacrifice, and 
 not a means of grace (as Inquisitorial tortures were 
 supposed to be), its use is conclusive proof of the 
 savage barbarity of the people who delighted in it. 
 Moloch was the monstrous brass image of a man 
 with the head of an ox. It was hollow, and the 
 interior contained a furnace by which the statue 
 was made red-hot. Children the offerings to the 
 god were then placed in its glowing arms, and 
 drums were beaten to drown their cries. It is 
 painful to recall these things, but the traveler 
 should always endeavor to obtain the historical 
 flavor of the place he visits. 
 
 Continuing our walks among the antiquities of 
 Jerusalem, we went out of the Damascus Gate, a 
 noble battlemented structure, through which runs 
 the great northern highway to Samaria and Damas- 
 cus. The road, however, is a mere path over 
 ledges and through loose stones, fit only for don- 
 keys. If Rehoboam went this way in his chariot 
 to visit Jeroboam in Samaria, there must have ex- 
 isted then a better road, or else the king endured 
 hard pounding for the sake of the dignity of his 
 conveyance. As soon as we left the gate we en- 
 countered hills of stones and paths of the roughest
 
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 THE TOMB OF HELENA 103 
 
 description. There are several rock tombs on this 
 side of the city, but we entered only one, that 
 called by some the Tombs of the Kings, and by 
 others, with more reason, the Tomb of Helena, a 
 heathen convert to Judaism, who built this sepul- 
 chre for herself early in the first century. The 
 tomb, excavated entirely in the solid rock, is a 
 spacious affair, having a large court and orna- 
 mented vestibule and many chambers, extending 
 far into the rock, and a singular network of narrow 
 passages and recesses for the deposit of the dead. 
 It had one device that is worthy of the ancient 
 Egyptians. The entrance was closed by a heavy 
 square stone, so hung that it would yield to pres- 
 sure from without, but would swing to its place by 
 its own weight, and fitted so closely that it could 
 not be moved from the inside. If any thief en- 
 tered the tomb and left this slab unsecured, he 
 would be instantly caught in the trap and become 
 a permanent occupant. Large as the tomb is, its 
 execution is mean compared with the rock tombs 
 of Egypt ; but the exterior stone of the court, from 
 its exposure in this damp and variable climate, 
 appears older than Egyptian work which has been 
 uncovered three times as long. 
 
 At the tomb we encountered a dozen students 
 from the Latin convent, fine-looking fellows in 
 long blue-black gowns, red caps, and red sashes. 
 They sat upon the grass, on the brink of the ex- 
 cavation, stringing rosaries and singing student 
 songs, with evident enjoyment of the hour's free- 
 dom from the school; they not only made a pic-
 
 104 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 ttiresque appearance, but they impressed us also as 
 a Jerusalem group which was neither sinful nor 
 dirty. Beyond this tomb we noticed a handsome 
 modern dwelling-house; you see others on various 
 eminences outside the city, and we noted them as 
 the most encouraging sign of prosperity about 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 We returned over the hill and by the city wall, 
 passing the Cave of Jeremiah and the door in the 
 wall that opens into the stone quarries of Solomon. 
 These quarries underlie a considerable portion of 
 the city, and furnished the stone for its ancient 
 buildings. I will not impose upon you a descrip- 
 tion of them; for it would be unfair to send you 
 into disagreeable places that I did not explore 
 myself. 
 
 The so-called Grotto of Jeremiah is a natural 
 cavern in the rocky hill, vast in extent, I think 
 thirty feet high and a hundred feet long by seventy 
 broad, as big as a church. The tradition is 
 that Jeremiah lived and lamented here. In front 
 of the cave are cut stones and pieces of polished 
 columns built into walls and seats ; these fragments 
 seem to indicate the former existence here of a 
 Roman temple. The cave is occupied by an old 
 dervish, who has a house in a rock near by, and 
 uses the cavern as a cool retreat and a stable for 
 his donkey. His rocky home is shared by his 
 wife and family. He said that it was better to 
 live alone, apart from the world and its snares. 
 He, however, finds the reputation of Jeremiah 
 profitable, selling admission to the cave at a franc
 
 PILGRIMS OF THE CROSS 105 
 
 a head, and, judging- by the women and children 
 about him, he seemed to have family enough not 
 to be lonely. 
 
 The sojourner in Jerusalem who does not care 
 for antiquities can always entertain himself by a 
 study of the pilgrims who throng the city at this 
 season. We hear more of the pilgrimage to 
 Mecca than of that to Jerusalem ; but I think the 
 latter is the more remarkable phenomenon of our 
 modern life ; I believe it equals the former, which 
 is usually overrated, in numbers, and it certainly 
 equals it in zeal and surpasses it in the variety of 
 nationalities represented. The pilgrims of the cross 
 increase yearly ; to supply their wants, to minister 
 to their credulity, to traffic on their faith, is the 
 great business of the Holy City. Few, I imagine, 
 who are not in Palestine in the spring, have any 
 idea of the 1 extent of this vast yearly movement of 
 Christian people upon the Holy Land, or of the 
 simple zeal which characterizes it. If it were in 
 any way obstructed or hindered, we should have a 
 repetition of the Crusades, on a vaster scale and 
 gathered from a broader area than the wildest pil- 
 grimage of the holy war. The driblets of travel 
 from America and from western Europe are as 
 nothing in the crowds thronging to Jerusalem from 
 Ethiopia to Siberia, from the Baltic to the Ural 
 Mountains. Already for a year before the Easter 
 season have they been on foot, slowly pushing their 
 way across great steppes, through snows and over 
 rivers, crossing deserts and traversing unfriendly 
 countries; the old, the infirm, women as well as
 
 106 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 men, their faces set towards Jerusalem. No com- 
 mon curiosity moves this mass, from Ethiopia, 
 from Egypt, from Russia, from European Turkey, 
 from Asia Minor, from the banks of the Tagus 
 and the Araxesj it is a true pilgrimage of faith, 
 the one event in a life of dull monotony and sordid 
 cares, the one ecstasy of poetry in an existence of 
 poverty and ignorance. 
 
 We spent a morning in the Russian Hospice, 
 which occupies the hill to the northwest of the 
 city. It is a fine pile of buildings, the most con- 
 spicuous of which, on account of its dome, is the 
 church, a large edifice with a showy exterior, but 
 of no great merit or interest. We were shown 
 some holy pictures which are set in frames in- 
 crusted with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and other 
 precious gems, the offerings of rich devotees, and 
 displaying their wealth rather than their taste. 
 
 The establishment has one building for the ac- 
 commodation of rich pilgrims, and a larger one 
 set apart for peasants. The hospice lodges, free 
 of charge, all the Russian pilgrims. The exterior 
 court was full of them. They were sunning them- 
 selves, but not inclined to lay aside their hot furs 
 and heavy woollens. We passed into the interior, 
 entering room after room occupied by the pilgrims, 
 who regarded our intrusion with good-natured 
 indifference, or frankly returned our curiosity. 
 Some of the rooms were large, furnished with 
 broad divans about the sides, which served for 
 beds and lounging-places, and were occupied by 
 both sexes. The women, rosy-cheeked, light-
 
 RUSSIAN PILGRIMS 107 
 
 haired, broad, honest - looking creatures, were 
 mending their clothes ; the men were snoozing on 
 the divans, flat on their backs, presenting to the 
 spectator the bottoms of their monstrous shoes, 
 which had soles eight inches broad; a side of 
 leather would be needed for a pair. In these not 
 very savory rooms they cook, eat, and sleep. Here 
 stood their stoves; here hung their pilgrim knap- 
 sacks; here were their kits of shoemaker's tools, 
 for mending their foot-gear, which they had tugged 
 thousands of miles; here were household effects 
 that made their march appear more like an emi- 
 gration than a pilgrimage; here were the staring 
 pictures of St. George and the Dragon, and of 
 other saints, the beads and the other relics, which 
 they had bought in Jerusalem. 
 
 Although, all these pilgrims owed allegiance to 
 the Czar, they represented a considerable variety 
 of races. They came from Archangel, from To- 
 bolsk, from the banks of the Ural, from Kurland ; 
 they had found their way along the Danube, the 
 Dnieper, the Don. I spoke with a group of men 
 and women who had walked over two thousand 
 miles before they reached Odessa and took ship for 
 Jaffa. There were among them Cossacks, wild 
 and untidy, light - haired barbarians from the 
 Caucasus, dark-skinned men and women from Mos- 
 cow, representatives from the remotest provinces 
 of great Russia; for the most part simple, rude, 
 clumsy, honest boors. In an interior court we 
 found men and women seated on the sunny flag- 
 ging, busily occupied in arranging and packing the
 
 108 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 souvenirs of their visit. There was rosemary 
 spread out to dry ; there were little round cakes of 
 blessed bre"ad stamped with the image of the Sa- 
 viour; there were branches of palm, crowns of 
 thorns, and stalks of cane cut at the Jordan ; there 
 were tin cases of Jordan water; there were long 
 strips of cotton cloth stamped in black with various 
 insignia of death, to serve at home for coffin cov- 
 ers; there were skull-caps in red, yellow, and 
 white, also stamped with holy images, to be put on 
 the heads of the dead. I could not but in mind 
 follow these people to their distant homes, and 
 think of the pride with which they would show 
 these trophies of their pilgrimage; how the rude 
 neighbors would handle with awe a stick cut on 
 the banks of the Jordan, or eat with faith a bit of 
 the holy bread. How sacred, in those homes of 
 frost and snow, will not these mementos of a land 
 of sun, of a land so sacred, become ! I can see the 
 wooden chest in the cabin where the rosemary will 
 be treasured, keeping sweet, against the day of 
 need, the caps and the shrouds. 
 
 These people will need to make a good many 
 more pilgrimages, and perhaps to quit their mo- 
 rose land altogether, before they can fairly rank 
 among the civilized of the earth. They were 
 thick-set, padded-legged, short-bodied, unintelli- 
 gent. The faces of many of them were worn, as 
 if storm-beaten, and some kept their eyes half 
 closed, as if they were long used to face the sleet 
 and blasts of winter; and I noticed that it gave 
 their faces a very different expression from that
 
 THE JERUSALEM DONKEY 
 
 produced by the habit the Egyptians have of draw- 
 ing the eyelids close together on account of the 
 glare of the sun. 
 
 We took donkeys one lovely morning, and rode 
 from the Jaffa Gate around the walls on our way 
 to the Mount of Olives. The Jerusalem donkey 
 is a good enough donkey, but he won't go. He is 
 ridden with a halter, and never so elegantly capar- 
 isoned as his more genteel brother in Cairo. In 
 order to get him along at all, it needs one man to 
 pull the halter and another to follow behind with 
 a stick ; the donkey then moves by inches if he 
 is in the humor. The animal that I rode stopped 
 at once, when he perceived that his driver was ab- 
 sent. No persuasions of mine, such as kicks and 
 whacks of a heavy stick, could move him on ; he 
 would turn out of the road, put his head against 
 the wall, and pretend to go to sleep. You would 
 not suppose it possible for a beast to exhibit so 
 much contempt for a man. 
 
 On the high ground outside the wall were 
 pitched the tents of travelers, making a very 
 pretty effect amid the olive-trees and the gray 
 rocks. Now and then an Arab horseman came 
 charging down the road, or a Tiirkish official can- 
 tered by; women, veiled, clad in white balloon 
 robes that covered them from head to foot, flitted 
 along in the sunshine, mere white appearances of 
 women, to whom it was impossible to attribute any 
 such errand as going to market; they seemed al- 
 ways to be going to or returning from the ceme- 
 tery.
 
 110 NEIGHBOKHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 Our way lay down the rough path and the wind- 
 ing road to the bottom of the Valley of Jehosha- 
 phat. Leaving the Garden of Gethsemane on our 
 right, we climbed up the rugged, stony, steep path 
 to the summit of the hill. There are a few olive- 
 trees on the way, enough to hinder the view where 
 the stone-walls would permit us to see anything; 
 importunate begging Moslems beset us; all along 
 the route we encountered shabbiness and squalor. 
 The rural sweetness and peace that we associate 
 with this dear mount appear to have been worn 
 away centuries ago. We did not expect too much, 
 but we were not prepared for such a shabby show- 
 place. If we could sweep away all the filthy hab- 
 itations and hideous buildings on the hill, and leave 
 it to nature, or indeed convert the surface into a 
 well ordered garden, the spot would be one of the 
 most attractive in the world. 
 
 We hoped that when we reached the summit we 
 should come into an open, green and shady place, 
 free from the disagreeable presence of human 
 greed and all the artificiality that interposed itself 
 between us and the sentiment of the place. But 
 the traveler need not expect that in Palestine. 
 Everything is staked out and made a show of. 
 Arrived at the summit, we could see little or no- 
 thing ; it is crowned with the dilapidated Chapel of 
 the Ascension. We entered a dirty court, where 
 the custodian and his family and his animals live, 
 and from thence were admitted to the church. In 
 the pavement is shown the footprint of our ascend- 
 ing Lord, although the Ascension was made at
 
 THE SCENE OF THE ASCENSION 111 
 
 Bethany. We paid the custodian for permission 
 to see this manufactured scene of the Ascension. 
 The best point of view to be had here is the old 
 tower of the deserted convent, or the narrow pas- 
 sage to it on the wall, or the top of the minaret 
 near the church. There is no place on wall or 
 tower where one can sit; there is no place any- 
 where here to sit down, and in peace and quiet 
 enjoy the magnificent prospect, and meditate on 
 the most momentous event in human history. We 
 snatched the view in the midst of annoyances. 
 The most minute features of it are known to every 
 one who reads. The portion of it I did not seem 
 to have been long familiar with is that to the east, 
 comprising the Jordan valley, the mountains of 
 Moab, and the Dead Sea. 
 
 Although this mount is consecrated by the fre- 
 quent presence of Christ, who so often crossed it 
 in going to and from Bethany, and retired here to 
 meditate and to commune with his loved followers, 
 everything that the traveler at present encounters 
 on its summit is out of sympathy with his mem- 
 ory. We escaped from the beggars and the show- 
 men, climbed some stone-walls, and in a rough 
 field near the brow of the hill, in a position neither 
 comfortable nor private, but the best that we found, 
 read the chief events in the life of Christ con- 
 nected with this mount, the triumphal entry, and 
 the last scenes transacted on yonder hill. And we 
 endeavored to make the divine man live again, who 
 so often and so sorrrowfully regarded the then 
 shining city of Zion from this height.
 
 112 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 To the south of the church and a little down the 
 hill is the so-called site of the giving of the Lord's 
 Prayer. I do not know on what authority it is 
 thus named. A chapel is built to mark the spot, 
 and a considerable space is inclosed before it, in 
 which are other objects of interest, and these were 
 shown to us by a pleasant-spoken lady, who is con- 
 nected with the convent, and has faith equal to the 
 demands of her position. We first entered a sub- 
 terranean vaulted room, with twelve rough half- 
 pillars on each side, called the room where the 
 Apostles composed the creed. We then passed 
 into the chapel. Upon the four walls of its arcade 
 is written, in great characters, the Lord's Prayer 
 in thirty-two languages ; among them the " Cana- 
 dian." 
 
 In a little side chapel is the tomb of Aurelia de 
 Bossa, Princesse de la Tour d'Auvergne, Duchesse 
 de Bouillon, the lady whose munificence estab- 
 lished this chapel and executed the prayer in so 
 many tongues. Upon the side of the tomb this 
 fact of her benevolence is announced, and the ex- 
 pectation is also expressed, in French, that "God 
 will overwhelm her with blessing for ever and ever 
 for her good deed." Stretched upon the sarco- 
 phagus is a beautiful marble efngy of the princess ; 
 the figure is lovely, the face is sweet and seraphic, 
 and it is a perfect likeness of her ladyship. 
 
 I do not speak at random. I happen to know 
 that it is a perfect likeness, for a few minutes after 
 I saw it, I met her in the corridor, in a semi-nun- 
 like costume, with a heavy cross hanging by a long
 
 THE MOST FORTUNATE OF WOMEN 113 
 
 gold chain at her side. About her forehead was 
 bound a barbarous frontlet composed of some two 
 hundred gold coins and ornaments, not unlike those 
 worn by the ladies of the ancient Egyptians. This 
 incongruity of costume made me hesitate whether 
 to recognize in this dazzling vision of womanhood 
 a priestess of Astarte or of Christ. At the far- 
 ther door, Aurelia de Bossa, Princesse de la Tour 
 d'Auvergne, Duchesse de Bouillon, stopped and 
 blew shrilly a silver whistle which hung at her 
 girdle, to call her straying poodle, or to summon 
 a servant. In the rear of the chapel this lady lives 
 in a very pretty house, and near it she was build- 
 ing a convent for Carmelite nuns. I cannot but 
 regard her as the most fortunate of her sex. She 
 enjoys not only this life, but, at the same time, all 
 the posthumous reputation that a lovely tomb and 
 a record of her munificence engraved thereon can 
 give. We sometimes hear of, but we seldom see, 
 a person, in these degenerate days, living in this 
 world as if already in the other. 
 
 We went on over the hill to Bethany ; we had 
 climbed up by the path on which David fled from 
 Absalom, and we were to return by the road of the 
 Triumphal Entry. All along the ridge we en- 
 joyed a magnificent panorama : a blue piece of the 
 Dead Sea, the Jordan plain extending far up to- 
 wards Ilermon with the green ribbon of the river 
 winding through it, and the long, even range of 
 the Moab hills, blue in the distance. The prospect 
 was almost Swiss in its character, but it is a mass 
 of bare hills, with scarcely a tree except in the im-
 
 114 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 mediate foreground, and so naked and desolate as 
 to make the heart ache ; it would be entirely deso- 
 late but for the deep blue of the sky and an at- 
 mosphere that bathes all the great sweep of peaks 
 and plains in color. 
 
 Bethany is a squalid hamlet clinging to the 
 rocky hillside, with only one redeeming feature 
 about it, the prospect. A few wretched one- 
 story huts of stone, and a miserable handful of 
 Moslems, occupy this favorite home and resting- 
 place of our Lord. Close at hand, by the road- 
 side, cut in the rock and reached by a steep descent 
 of twenty-six steps, is the damp and doubtful 
 tomb of Lazarus, down into which any one may 
 go for half a franc paid to the Moslem guardian. 
 The house of Mary and Martha is exhibited among 
 the big rocks and fragments of walls ; upon older 
 foundations loose walls are laid, rudely and re- 
 cently patched up with cut stones in fragments, 
 and pieces of Roman columns. The house of 
 Simon the leper, overlooking the whole, is a mere 
 heap of ruins. It does not matter, however, that 
 all these dwellings are modern; this is Bethany, 
 and when we get away from its present wretched- 
 ness we remember only that we have seen the very 
 place that Christ loved. 
 
 We returned along the highway of the Entry 
 slowly, pausing to identify the points of that mem- 
 orable progress, up to the crest where Jerusalem 
 broke upon the sight of the Lord, and whence the 
 procession, coming round the curve of the hill, 
 would have the full view of the city. He who rides
 
 THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE 115 
 
 that way to-day has a grand prospect. One finds 
 Jerusalem most poetic when seen from Olivet, and 
 Olivet most lovely when seen from the distance of 
 the city walls. 
 
 At the foot of the descent we turned and entered 
 the inclosure of the Garden of Gethsemane. Three 
 stone-wall inclosures here claim to be the real gar- 
 den ; one is owned by the Greeks, another by the 
 Armenians, the third by the Latins. We chose 
 the last, as it is the largest and pleasantest ; per- 
 haps the garden, which was certainly in this vicin- 
 ity, once included them all. After some delay we 
 were admitted by a small door in the wall, and 
 taken charge of by a Latin monk, whose young 
 and sweet face was not out of sympathy with the 
 place. The garden contains a few aged olive-trees, 
 and some small plots of earth, fenced about and 
 secured by locked gates, in which flowers grow. 
 The guardian gave us some falling roses, and did 
 what he could to relieve the scene of its artificial 
 appearance ; around the wall, inside, are the twelve 
 stations of the Passion, in the usual tawdry style. 
 
 But the birds sang sweetly in the garden, the 
 flowers of spring were blooming, and, hemmed in 
 by the high wall, we had some moments of solemn 
 peace, broken only by the sound of a Moslem da- 
 rabooka drum throbbing near at hand. Desecrated 
 as this spot is, and made cheap by the petty crea- 
 tions of superstition, one cannot but feel the awful 
 significance of the place, and the weight of history 
 crowding upon him, where battles raged for a 
 thousand years, and where the greatest victory of
 
 116 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 all was won when Christ commanded Peter to put 
 up his sword. Near here Titus formed his columns 
 which stormed the walls and captured the heroic 
 city, after its houses, and all this valley itself, were 
 filled with Jewish dead ; but all this is as nothing 
 to the event of that awful night when the servants 
 of the high-priest led away the unresisting Lord. 
 
 It is this event, and not any other, that puts an 
 immeasurable gulf between this and all other cities, 
 and perhaps this difference is more felt the farther 
 one is from Jerusalem. The visitor expects too 
 much ; he is unreasonably impatient of the contrast 
 between the mean appearance of the theatre and 
 the great events that have been enacted on it; 
 perhaps he is not prepared for the ignorance, the 
 cupidity, the credulity, the audacious impostures 
 under Christian names, on the spot where Chris- 
 tianity was born. 
 
 When one has exhausted the stock sights of 
 Jerusalem, it is probably the dullest, least enter- 
 taining city of the Orient; I mean, in itself, for 
 its pilgrims and its religious fetes, in the spring 
 of the year, offer always some novelties to the 
 sight-seer; and, besides, there is a certain melan- 
 choly pleasure to be derived from roaming about 
 outside the walls, enveloped in a historic illusion 
 that colors and clothes the nakedness of the land- 
 scape. 
 
 The chief business of the city and the region 
 seems to be the manufacture of religious playthings 
 for the large children who come here. If there is 
 any factory of relics here, I did not see it. Nor
 
 OLIVE TREE IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSE.MANE
 
 COUNTERFEIT ANTIQUITIES 117 
 
 do I know whether the true cross has still the power 
 'of growing, which it had in the fourth century, to 
 renew itself under the constant demand for pieces 
 of it. I dLl not go to see the place where the tree 
 grew of which it was made ; the exact spot is 
 shown in a Greek convent about a mile and a half 
 west of the city. The tree is said to have been 
 planted by Abraham and Noah. This is evidently 
 an error; it may have been planted by Adam and 
 watered by Noah. 
 
 There is not much trade in antiquities in the 
 city; the shops offer little to tempt the curiosity- 
 hunter. Copper coins of the Roman period abound, 
 and are constantly turned up in the fields outside 
 the city, most of them battered and defaced beyond 
 recognition. Jewish mites are plenty enough, but 
 the silver shekel would be rare if the ingenious Jews 
 did not keep counterfeits on hand. The tourist is 
 waited on at his hotel by a few patient and sleek 
 sharks with cases of cheap jewelry and doubtful 
 antiques, and if he seeks the shops of the gold and 
 silver bazaars he will find little more. I will not 
 say that he will not now and then pick up a piece 
 of old pottery that has made the journey from Cen- 
 tral Asia, or chance upon a singular stone with a 
 talismanic inscription. The hope that he may do 
 so carries the traveler through a great many East- 
 ern slums. The chief shops, however, are those 
 of trinkets manufactured for the pilgrims, of olive- 
 wood, ivory, bone, camels' teeth, and all manner 
 of nuts and seeds. There are more than fifty sorts 
 of beads, strung for profane use or arranged for
 
 118 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 rosaries, and some of them have pathetic names, 
 like "Job's tears." Jerusalem is entitled to be 
 called the City of Beads. 
 
 There is considerable activity in Jewish objects 
 that are old and rather unclean ; and I think I dis- 
 covered something like an attempt to make a "cor- 
 ner " in phylacteries, that is, in old ones, for the 
 new are made in excess of the demand. If a per- 
 son desires to carry home a phylactery to exhibit 
 to his Sunday-school, in illustration of the religion 
 of the Jews, he wants one that has been a long time 
 in use. I do not suppose it possible that the edu- 
 cation of any other person is as deficient as mine 
 was in the matter of these ornamental aids in wor- 
 ship. But if there is one, this description is for 
 him: the phylactery, common size, is a leathern 
 box about an inch and a half square, with two nar- 
 rcw straps of leather, about three feet long, sewed 
 to the bottom corners. The box contains a parch- 
 ment roll of sacred writing. When the worshiper 
 performs his devotions in the synagogue, he binds 
 one of the phylacteries about his left arm and the 
 other about his head, so that the little box has 
 something of the appearance of a leathern horn 
 sprouting out of his forehead. Phylacteries are 
 worn only in the synagogue, and in this respect 
 differ from the greasy leathern talismans of the 
 Nubians, which contain scraps from the Koran, 
 and are never taken off. Whatever significance 
 the phylactery once had to the Jew it seems now 
 to have lost, since he is willing to make it an ar- 
 ticle of merchandise. Perhaps it is poverty that
 
 THE SHCEPIRA COLLECTION 119 
 
 compels him also to sell his ancient scriptures; 
 parchment rolls of favorite books, such as Esther, 
 that are some centuries old, are occasionally to be 
 bought, and new rolls, deceitfully doctored into an 
 appearance of antiquity, are offered freely. 
 
 A few years ago the antiquarian world was put 
 into a ferment by what was called the " Shoepira 
 collection," a large quantity of clay pottery, 
 gods, votive offerings, images, jars, and other ves- 
 sels, with inscriptions in unknown characters, 
 which was said to have been dug up in the land of 
 Moab, beyond the Jordan, and was expected to 
 throw great light upon certain passages of Jewish 
 history, and especially upon the religion of the 
 heathen who occupied Palestine at the time of 
 the conquest. The collection was sent to Berlin ; 
 some eminent German savans pronounced it genu- 
 ine ; nearly all the English scholars branded it as 
 an impudent imposture. Two collections of the 
 articles have been sent to Berlin, where they are 
 stored out of sight of the public generally, and 
 Mr. Shospira has made a third collection, which he 
 still retains. 
 
 Mr. Shospira is a Hebrew antiquarian and book- 
 seller, of somewhat eccentric manners, but an en- 
 thusiast. He makes the impression of a man who 
 believes in his discoveries, and it is generally 
 thought in Jerusalem that if his collection is a 
 forgery, he himself is imposed on. The account 
 which he gives of the places where the images and 
 utensils were found is anything but clear or defi- 
 nite. We are required to believe that they have
 
 120 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 been dug up in caves at night and by stealth, and 
 at the peril of the lives of the discoverers, and that 
 it is not safe to visit these caves in the daytime on 
 account of the Bedaween. The fresh -baked ap- 
 pearance of some of the articles is admitted, and it 
 is said that it was necessary to roast them to pre- 
 vent their crumbling when exposed to the air. Our 
 theory in regard to these singular objects is that a 
 few of those first shown were actually discovered, 
 and that all the remainder have been made in imi- 
 tation of them. Of the characters (or alphabet) 
 of the inscriptions, Mr. Shoepira says he has deter- 
 mined twenty -three ; sixteen of these are Phoeni- 
 cian, and the others, his critics say, are meaning- 
 less. All the objects are exceedingly rude and 
 devoid of the slightest art ; the images are many of 
 them indecent; the jars are clumsy in shape, but 
 the inscriptions are put on with some skill. The 
 figures are supposed to have been votive offerings, 
 and the jars either memorial or sepulchral urns. 
 
 The hideous collection appeared to me sui ge- 
 neris, although some of the images resemble the 
 rudest of those called Phrenician which General di 
 Cesnola unearthed in Cyprus. Without merit, they 
 seem to belong to a rude age rather than to be the 
 inartistic product of this age. That is, supposing 
 them to be forgeries, I cannot see how these figures 
 could be conceived by a modern man, who was ca- 
 pable of inventing a fraud of this sort. He would 
 have devised something better, at least something 
 less simple, something that would have somewhere 
 betrayed a little modern knowledge and feeling.
 
 THE HEBREW NATION 121 
 
 All the objects have the same barbarous tone, a 
 kind of character that is distinct from their rude- 
 ness, and the same images and designs are repeated 
 over and over again. This gives color to the the- 
 ory that a few genuine pieces of Moabite pottery 
 were found, which gave the idea for a large man- 
 ufacture of them. And yet, there are people who 
 see these things, and visit all the holy places, and 
 then go away and lament that there are no manu- 
 factories in Jerusalem. 
 
 Jerusalem attracts while it repels; and both it 
 and all Palestine exercise a spell out of all propor- 
 tion to the consideration they had in the ancient 
 world. The student of the mere facts of history, 
 especially if his studies were made in Jerusalem 
 itself, would be at a loss to account for the place 
 that the Holy City occupies in the thought of the 
 modern world, and the importance attached to the 
 history of the handful of people who made them- 
 selves a home in this rocky country. The Hebrew 
 nation itself, during the little time it was a nation, 
 did not play a part in Oriental affairs at all com- 
 mensurate with its posthumous reputation. It was 
 not one of the great kingdoms of antiquity, and in 
 that theatre of war and conquest which spread from 
 Ethiopia to the Caspian Sea, it was scarcely an 
 appreciable force in the great drama. 
 
 The country the Hebrews occupied was small ; 
 they never conquered or occupied the whole of the 
 Promised Land, which extended from the Medi- 
 terranean Sea to the Arabian plain, from Hamath 
 to Sinai. Their territory in actual possession
 
 122 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 reached only from Dan to Beersheba. The coast 
 they never subdued; the Philistines, who came 
 from Crete and grew to be a great people in the 
 plain, held the lower portion of Palestine on the 
 sea, and the Pho3nicians the upper. Except dur- 
 ing a brief period in their history, the Jews were 
 confined to the hill-country. Only during the 
 latter part of the reign of David and two thirds of 
 that of Solomon did the Jewish kingdom take on 
 the proportions of a great state. David extended 
 the Israelitish power from the Gulf of Akaba 
 to the Euphrates ; Damascus paid him tribute ; he 
 occupied the cities of his old enemies, the Philis- 
 tines, but the kingdom of Tyre, still in possession 
 of Hiram, marked the limit of Jewish sway in that 
 direction. This period of territorial consequence 
 was indeed brief. Before Solomon was in his 
 grave, the conquests bequeathed to him by his 
 father began to slip from his hand. The life of 
 the Israelites as a united nation, as anything but 
 discordant and warring tribes, after the death of 
 Joshua, is all included in the reigns of David and 
 Solomon, perhaps sixty or seventy years. 
 
 The Israelites were essentially highlanders. 
 Some one has noticed their resemblance to the 
 Scotch Highlanders in modes of warfare. In 
 fighting they aimed to occupy the heights. They 
 descended into the plain reluctantly; they made 
 occasional forays into the lowlands, but their hills 
 were their strength, as the Psalmist said; and 
 they found security among their crags and se- 
 cluded glens from the agitations which shook the
 
 THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL 123 
 
 great empires of the Eastern world. Invasions, 
 retreats, pursuits, the advance of devouring hosts 
 or the flight of panic-stricken masses, for a long 
 time passed by their ridge of country on either 
 side, along the Mediterranean or through the land 
 of Moab. They were out of the track of Oriental 
 commerce as well as of war. So removed were 
 they from participation in the stirring affairs of 
 their era that they seem even to have escaped the 
 omnivorous Egyptian conquerors. For a long 
 period conquest passed them by, and it was not 
 till their accumulation of wealth tempted the ava- 
 rice of the great Asiatic powers that they were in- 
 volved in the conflicts which finally destroyed them. 
 The small kingdom of Judah, long after that of 
 Israel had been utterly swept away, owed its con- 
 tinuance of life to its very defensible position. 
 Solomon left Jerusalem a strong city, well sup- 
 plied with water, and capable of sustaining a long 
 siege, while the rugged country around it offered 
 little comfort to a besieging army. 
 
 For a short time David made the name of Israel 
 a power in the world, and Solomon, inheriting his 
 reputation, added the triumphs of commerce to 
 those of conquest. By a judicious heathen alliance 
 with Hiram of Tyre he was able to build vessels 
 on the Red Sea and man them with Phoenician sail- 
 ors, for voyages to India and Ceylon ; and he was 
 admitted by Hiram to a partnership in his trading 
 adventures to the Pillars of Hercules. But these 
 are only episodes in the Jewish career; the nation's 
 part in Oriental history is comparatively insignifi-
 
 124 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 cant until the days of their great calamities. How 
 much attention its heroism and suffering attracted 
 at that time we do not know. 
 
 Though the Israelites during their occupation 
 of the hill-country of Palestine were not concerned 
 in the great dynastic struggles of the Orient, they 
 were not, however, at peace. Either the tribes 
 were fighting among themselves, or they were in- 
 volved in sanguinary fights with the petty heathen 
 chiefs about them. We get a lively picture of the 
 habits of the time in a sentence in the second book 
 of Samuel: "And it came to pass, after the year 
 was expired, at the time when kings go forth to 
 battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with 
 him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the chil- 
 dren of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah." It was 
 a pretty custom. In that season when birds pair 
 and build their nests, when the sap mounts in the 
 trees and travelers long to go into far countries, 
 kings felt a noble impulse in their veins to go out 
 and fight other kings. But this primitive simpli- 
 city was mingled with shocking barbarity; David 
 once put his captives under the saw, and there is 
 nothing to show that the Israelites were more 
 moved by sentiments of pity and compassion than 
 their heathen neighbors. There was occasionally, 
 however, a grim humor in their cruelty. When 
 Judah captured King Adoni-bezek, in Bezek, he 
 cut off his great toes and his thumbs. Adoni- 
 bezek, who could appreciate a good thing, accepted 
 the mutilation in the spirit in which it was offered, 
 and said that he had himself served seventy kings
 
 IDOLATRY OF THE JEWS 125 
 
 in that fashion ; " threescore and ten kings, having 
 their thumbs and great toes cut off, gathered their 
 meat under my table." 
 
 From the death of Joshua to the fall of Samaria, 
 the history of the Jews is largely a history of civil 
 war. From about seven hundred years before 
 Christ, Palestine was essentially a satrapy of the 
 Assyrian kings, as it was later to become one of 
 the small provinces of the Roman empire. At the 
 time when Sennacherib was waiting before Jerusa- 
 lem for Hezekiah to purchase his withdrawal by 
 stripping the gold from the doors of the Temple, 
 the foundations of a city were laid on the banks of 
 the Tiber, which was to extend its sway over the 
 known world, to whose dominion the utmost power 
 of Jerusalem was only a petty sovereignty, and 
 which was destined to rival Jerusalem itself as the 
 spiritual capital of the earth. 
 
 If we do not find in the military power or terri- 
 torial consequence of the Jews an explanation of 
 their influence in the modern world, still less do 
 we find it in any faithfulness to a spiritual religion, 
 the knowledge of which was their chief distinction 
 among the tribes about them. Their lapses from 
 the worship of Jehovah were so frequent, and of 
 such long duration, that their returns to the wor- 
 ship of the true God seem little more than breaks 
 in their practice of idolatry. And these spasmodic 
 returns were due to calamities, and fears of worse 
 judgments. Solomon sanctioned by national au- 
 thority gross idolatries which had been long prac- 
 ticed. At his death, ten of the tribes seceded
 
 126 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 from the dominion of Judah and set up a kingdom 
 in which idolatry was made and remained the state 
 religion, until the ten tribes vanished from the 
 theatre of history. The kingdom of Israel, in or- 
 der to emphasize its separation from that of Judah, 
 set up the worship of Jehovah in the image of a 
 golden calf. Against this state religion of image- 
 worship the prophets seem to have thought it in 
 vain to protest; they contented themselves with 
 battling against the more gross and licentious idol- 
 atries of Baal and Ashtaroth; and Israel always 
 continued the idol-worship established by Jero- 
 boam. The worship of Jehovah was the state re- 
 ligion of the little kingdom of Judah, but during 
 the period of its existence, before the Captivity, I 
 think that only four of its kings were not idolaters. 
 The people were constantly falling away into the 
 heathenish practices of their neighbors. 
 
 If neither territorial consequence nor religious 
 steadfastness gave the Jews rank among the great 
 nations of antiquity, they would equally fail of the 
 consideration they now enjoy but for one thing, 
 and that is, after all, the chief and enduring pro- 
 duct of any nationality ; we mean, of course, its lit- 
 erature. It is by that, that the little kingdoms of 
 Judah and Israel hold their sway over the world. 
 It is that which invests ancient Jerusalem with its 
 charm and dignity. Not what the Jews did, but 
 the songs of their poets, the warnings and lamen- 
 tations of their prophets, the touching tales of their 
 story-tellers, draw us to Jerusalem by the most 
 powerful influences that affect the human mind.
 
 HEBREW LITERATURE 127 
 
 And most of this unequaled literature is the pro- 
 duct of seasons of turbulence, passion, and insecu- 
 rity. Except the Proverbs and Song of Solomon, 
 and such pieces as the poem of Job and the story 
 of Ruth, which seem to be the outcome of literary 
 leisure, the Hebrew writings were all the offspring 
 of exciting periods. David composed his Psalms 
 the most marvelous interpreters of every human 
 aspiration, exaltation, want, and passion with 
 his sword in his hand; and the prophets always 
 appear to ride upon a whirlwind. The power of 
 Jerusalem over the world is as truly a literary 
 one as that of Athens is one of art. That litera- 
 ture was unknown to the ancients, or unappreci- 
 ated: otherwise contemporary history would have 
 considered its creators of more consequence than 
 it did. 
 
 We speak, we have been speaking, of the Jeru- 
 salem before our era, and of the interest it has in- 
 dependent of the great event which is, after all, its 
 chief claim to immortal estimation. It becomes 
 sacred ground to us because there, in Bethlehem, 
 Christ was born; because here not in these 
 streets, but upon this soil he walked and talked 
 and taught and ministered ; because upon Olivet, 
 yonder, he often sat with his disciples, and here, 
 somewhere, it matters not where, he suffered 
 death and conquered death. 
 
 This is the scene of these transcendent events. 
 We say it to ourselves while we stand here. We 
 can clearly conceive it when we are at a distance. 
 But with the actual Jerusalem of to-day before our
 
 128 NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM 
 
 eyes, its naked desolation, its superstition, its 
 squalor, its vivid contrast to what we conceive 
 should be the City of our King, we find it easier 
 to feel that Christ was born in New England than 
 in Judaea.
 
 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 T is on a lovely spring morning that we 
 set out through the land of Benjamin 
 to go down among the thieves of Jeri- 
 cho, and to the Jordan and the Dead 
 Sea. For protection against the thieves we take 
 some of them with us, since you cannot in these 
 days rely upon finding any good Samaritans there. 
 For some 'days Abd-el-Atti has been in myste- 
 rious diplomatic relations with the robbers of the 
 wilderness, who live in Jerusalem, and farm out 
 their territory. "Thim is great rascals," says the 
 dragoman ; and it is solely on that account that we 
 seek their friendship: the real Bedawee is never 
 known to go back on his word to the traveler who 
 trusts him, so long as it is more profitable to keep 
 it than to break it. We are under the escort of 
 the second sheykh, who shares with the first sheykh 
 the rule of all the Bedaween who patrol the exten- 
 sive territory from Hebron to the fords of the Jor- 
 dan, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Mar Saba, 
 and the shores of the Dead Sea; these rulers would 
 have been called kings in the old time, and the 
 second sheykh bears the same relation to the first
 
 130 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 that the Caesar did to the Augustus in the Roman 
 Empire. 
 
 Our train is assembled in the little market-place 
 opposite the hotel, or rather it is assembling, for 
 horses and donkeys are slow to arrive, saddles are 
 wanting, the bridles are broken, and the unpunc- 
 tuality and shiftlessness of the East manifest them- 
 selves. Abd-el-Atti is in fierce altercation with 
 a Koorland nobleman about a horse, which you 
 would not say would be likely to be a bone of con- 
 tention with anybody. They are both endeavoring 
 to mount at once. Friends are backing each com- 
 batant, and the air is thick with curses in guttural 
 German and maledictions in shrill Arabic. Un- 
 fortunately I am appealed to. 
 
 "What for this Dutchman, he take my horse? " 
 
 "Perhaps he hired it first?" 
 
 "P'aps not. I make bargain for him with the 
 owner day before yesterday." 
 
 "I have become dis pferd for four days," cries 
 the Baron. 
 
 There seems to be no reason to doubt the Bar- 
 on's word; he has ridden the horse to Bethlehem, 
 and become accustomed to his jolts, and no doubt 
 has the prior lien on the animal. The owner has 
 let him to both parties, a thing that often happens 
 when the second comer offers a piastre more. 
 Another horse is sent for, and we mount and begin 
 to disentangle ourselves from the crowd. It is no 
 easy matter, especially for the ladies. Our own 
 baggage-mules head in every direction. Donkeys 
 laden with mountains of brushwood push through
 
 A MIXED TRAIN 131 
 
 the throng, scraping right and left ; camels shamble 
 against us, their contemptuous noses in the air, 
 stretching their long necks over our heads ; market- 
 women from Bethlehem scream at us; and greasy 
 pilgrims block our way and curse our horses' hoofs. 
 
 One by one we emerge and get into a straggling 
 line, and begin to comprehend the size of our ex- 
 pedition. Our dragoman has made as extensive 
 preparations as if we were to be the first to occupy 
 Gilgal and Jericho, and that portion of the Prom- 
 ised Land. We are equipped equally well for 
 fighting and for famine. A party of Syrians, who 
 desire to make the pilgrimage to the Jordan, have 
 asked permission to join us, in order to share the 
 protection of our sheykh, and they add both pic- 
 turesqueness and strength to the grand cavalcade 
 which clatters out of Jaffa Gate and sweeps round 
 the city wall. Heaven keep us from undue pride 
 in our noble appearance ! 
 
 Perhaps our train would impress a spectator as 
 somewhat mixed, and he would be unable to deter- 
 mine the order of its march. It is true that the 
 horses and the donkeys and the mules all have 
 different rates of speed, and that the Syrian horse 
 has only two gaits, a run and a slow walk. As 
 soon as we gain the freedom of the open country, 
 these differences develop. The ambitious dragomen 
 and the warlike sheykh put their horses into a run 
 and scour over the hills, and then come charging 
 back upon us, like Don Quixote upon the flock of 
 sheep. The Syrians imitate this madness. The 
 other horses begin to airitate their stiff legs ; the
 
 132 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 donkeys stand still and protest by braying; the 
 pack-mules get temporarily crazy, charge into us 
 with the protruding luggage, and suddenly wheel 
 into the ditch and stop. This playfulness is re- 
 peated in various ways, and adds to the excitement 
 without improving the dignity of our march. 
 
 We are of many nationalities. There are four 
 Americans, two of them ladies. The Doctor, who 
 is accustomed to ride the mustangs of New Mexico 
 and the wild horses of the Western deserts, en- 
 deavors to excite a spirit of emulation in his stiff- 
 kneed animal, but with little success. Our drag- 
 oman is Egyptian, a decidedly heavy weight, and 
 sits his steed like a pyramid. 
 
 The sheykh is a young man, with the treacher- 
 ous eye of an eagle ; a handsome fellow, who rides 
 a lean white horse, anything but a beauty, and yet 
 of the famous Nedjed breed from Mecca. This 
 desert warrior wears red boots, white trousers and 
 skirt, blue jacket, a yellow kufia, confined about 
 the head by a black cord and falling upon his 
 shoulders, has a long rifle slung at his back, an 
 immense Damascus sword at his side, and huge 
 pistols, with carved and inlaid stocks, in his belt. 
 He is a riding arsenal and a visible fraud, this 
 Bedawee sheykh. We should no doubt be quite 
 as safe without him, and perhaps less liable to va- 
 rious extortions. But on the road, and from the 
 moment we set out, we meet Bedaween, single and 
 in squads, savage-looking vagabonds, every one 
 armed with a gun, a long knife, and pistols with 
 blunderbuss barrels, flaring in such a manner as to
 
 SYRIAN PILGRIMS 133 
 
 scatter shot over an acre of ground. These scare- 
 crows are apparently paraded on the highway to 
 make travelers think it is insecure. But I am 
 persuaded that none of them would dare molest 
 any pilgrim to the Jordan. 
 
 Our allies, the Syrians, pleasa us better. There 
 is a Frenchified Syrian, with his wife, from Man- 
 sura, in the Delta of Egypt. The wife is a very 
 pretty woman (would that her example were more 
 generally followed in the East), with olive com- 
 plexion, black eyes, and a low forehead ; a native 
 of Sidon. She wears a dark green dress, and a 
 yellow kufia on her head, and is mounted upon a 
 nude, man -fashion, but upon a saddle as broad as 
 a feather-bed. Her husband, in semi-Syrian cos- 
 tume, with top-boots, carries a gun at his back and 
 a frightful knife in his belt. Her brother, who is 
 from Sidon, bears also a gun, and wears an enor- 
 mous sword. Very pleasant people these, who 
 have armed themselves in the spirit of the hunter 
 rather than of the warrior, and are as completely 
 equipped for the chase as any Parisian who ven- 
 tures in pursuit of game into any of the dangerous 
 thickets outside of Paris. 
 
 The Sidon wife is accompanied by two servants, 
 slaves from Soudan, a boy and a girl, each about 
 ten years old, two grinning, comical monkeys, 
 who could not by any possibility be of the slightest 
 service to anybody, unless it is a relief to their 
 pretty mistress to vent her ill-humor upon their 
 irresponsible persons. You couldn't call them 
 handsome, though their skins are of dazzling black,
 
 134 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 and their noses so flat that you cannot see them in 
 profile. The girl wears a silk gown, which reaches 
 to her feet and gives her the quaint appearance of 
 an old woman, and a yellow vest ; the boy is clad 
 in motley European clothes, bought second-hand 
 with reference to his growing up to them, upon 
 which event the trousers-legs and cuffs of his coat 
 could be turned down, and a red fez contrasting 
 finely with his black face. They are both mounted 
 on a decrepit old horse, whose legs are like sled- 
 stakes, and they sit astride on top of a pile of bag- 
 gage, beds, and furniture, with bottles and camp- 
 kettles jingling about them. The girl sits behind 
 the boy and clings fast to his waist with one hand, 
 while with the other she holds over their heads a 
 rent white parasol, to prevent any injury to their 
 jet complexions. When the old baggage -horse 
 starts occasionally into a hard tvot, they both bob 
 up and down, and strike first one side and then 
 the other, but never together; when one goes up 
 the other goes down, as if they were moved by 
 different springs ; but both show their ivory and 
 seem to enjoy themselves. Heaven knows why 
 they should make a pilgrimage to the Jordan. 
 
 Our Abyssinian servant, Abdallah, is mounted 
 also on a pack-horse, and sits high in the air amid 
 bags and bundles ; he guides his brute only by a 
 halter, and when the animal takes a fancy to break 
 into a gallop, there is a rattling of dishes and ket- 
 tles that sets the whole train into commotion ; the 
 boy's fez falls farther than ever back on his head, 
 his teeth shine, and his eyes dance as he jolts into
 
 THE WILBERNESS OF JUD^A 135 
 
 the midst of the mules and excites a panic, which 
 starts everything into friskiness, waking up even 
 the Soudan party, which begins to bob about and 
 grin. There are half a dozen mules loaded with 
 tents and bed furniture; the cook, and the cook's 
 assistants, and the servants of the kitchen and the 
 camp are mounted on something, and the train is 
 attended besides by drivers and ostlers, of what 
 nations it pleases Heaven. But this is not all. 
 We carry with us two hunting dogs, the property 
 of the Syrian. The dogs are not for use; they are 
 a piece of ostentation, like the other portion of the 
 hunting outfit, and contribute, as do the Soudan 
 babies, to our appearance of Oriental luxury. 
 
 We straggle down through the Valley of Jehosh- 
 aphat, and around the Mount of Olives to Beth- 
 any ; and from that sightly slope our route is spread 
 before us as if we were looking upon a map. It 
 lies through the "wilderness of Judaea." We are 
 obliged to revise our Western notions of a wilder- 
 ness as a region of gross vegetation. The Jews 
 knew a wilderness when they saw it, and how to 
 name it. You would be interested to know what 
 a person who lived at Jerusalem, or anywhere 
 along the backbone of Palestine, would call a wil- 
 derness. Nothing but the absolute nakedness of 
 desolation could seem to him dreary. But this 
 region must have satisfied even a person accustomed 
 to deserts and pastures of rocks. It is a jumble 
 of savage hills and jagged ravines, a land of lime- 
 stone rocks and ledges, whitish gray in color, glar- 
 ing in the sun, even the stones wasted by age,
 
 136 GOING DOWN TO ffERICHO 
 
 relieved nowhere by a tree, or rejoiced by a single 
 blade of grass. Wild beasts would starve in it, 
 the most industrious bird couldn't collect in its 
 length and breadth enough soft material to make a 
 nest of; it is what a Jew of Hebron or Jerusalem 
 or Raman would call a "wilderness" ! This ex- 
 hausts the language of description. How vividly 
 in this desolation stands out the figure of the pro- 
 phet of God, clothed with camel's hair and with 
 a girdle of skin about his loins, "the voice of one 
 crying in the wilderness." 
 
 The road is thronged with Jordan pilgrims. We 
 overtake them, they pass us, we meet them in an 
 almost continuous train. Most of them are peas- 
 ants from Armenia, from the borders of the Black 
 Sea, from the Caucasus, from Abyssinia. The 
 great mass are on foot, trudging wearily along with 
 their bedding and provisions, the thick -legged wo- 
 men carrying the heaviest loads ; occasionally you 
 see a pilgrim asleep by the roadside, his pillow 
 a stone. But the travelers are by no means all 
 poor or unable to hire means of conveyance, you 
 would say that Judaea had been exhausted of its 
 beasts of burden of all descriptions for this pil- 
 grimage, and that even the skeletons had been ex- 
 humed to assist in it. The pilgrims are mounted 
 on sorry donkeys, on wrecks of horses, on mules, 
 sometimes an entire family on one animal. Now 
 and then we encounter a "swell" outfit, a wealthy 
 Russian well mounted on a richly caparisoned 
 horse and attended by his servants; some ride in 
 palanquins, some in chairs. We overtake an Eng-
 
 STRANGE OUTFITS 137 
 
 lish party, the central figure of which is an elderly 
 lady, who rides in a sort of high cupboard slung on 
 poles, and borne by a mule before and a mule be- 
 hind; the awkward vehicle sways and tilts back- 
 wards and forwards, and the good woman looks 
 out of the window of her coop as if she were sea- 
 sick of the world. Some ladies, who are unaccus- 
 tomed to horses, have arm-chairs strapped upon 
 the horses' backs, in which they sit. Now and 
 then two chairs are strapped upon one horse, and 
 the riders sit back to back. Sometimes huge pan- 
 niers slung on the sides of the horse are used in- 
 stead of chairs, the passengers riding securely in 
 them without any danger of falling out. It is 
 rather a pretty sight when each basket happens to 
 be full of children. There is, indeed, no end to 
 the strange outfits and the odd costumes. Nearly 
 all the women who are mounted at all are perched 
 upon the top of all their household goods and 
 furniture, astride of a bed on the summit. There 
 approaches a horse which seems to have a sofa on 
 its back, upon which four persons are seated in a 
 row, as much at ease as if at home ; it is not, how- 
 ever, a sofa; four baskets have been ingeniously 
 fastened into a frame, so that four persons can ride 
 in them abreast. This is an admirable contrivance 
 for the riders, much better than riding in a row 
 lengthwise on the horse, when the one in front hides 
 the view from those behind. 
 
 Diverted by this changing spectacle, we descend 
 from Bethany. At first there are wild-flowers by 
 the wayside and in the fields, and there is a flush
 
 138 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 of verdure on the hills, all of which disappears 
 later. The sky is deep blue and cloudless, the air 
 is exhilarating; it is a day for enjoyment, and 
 everything and everybody we encounter are in a 
 joyous mood, and on good terms with the world. 
 The only unamiable exception is the horse with 
 which I have been favored. He is a stocky little 
 stallion, of good shape, but ignoble breed, and the 
 devil which is, I suppose, in the horse what the 
 old Adam is in man has never been cast out of 
 him. At first I am in love with his pleasant gait 
 and mincing ways, but I soon find that he has 
 eccentricities that require the closest attention on 
 my part, and leave me not a moment for the scen- 
 ery or for biblical reflections. The beast is neither 
 content to go in front of the caravan nor in the 
 rear; he wants society, but the instant he gets 
 into the crowd he lets his heels fly right and left. 
 After a few performances of this sort, and when 
 he has nearly broken the leg of the Syrian, my com- 
 pany is not desired any more by any one. No one 
 is willing to ride within speaking distance of me. 
 This sort of horse may please the giddy and 
 thoughtless, but he is not the animal for me. By 
 the time we reach the fountain 'Ain el-Huad, I 
 have quite enough of him, and exchange steeds 
 with the dragoman, much against the latter's fancy ; 
 he keeps the brute the remainder of the day can- 
 tering over stones and waste places along the road, 
 and confesses at night that his bridle-hand is so 
 swollen as to be useless. 
 
 We descend a steep hill to this fountain, which
 
 THE FOUNTAIN *AIN EL-HUAD 139 
 
 flows from a broken Saracenic arch, and waters a 
 valley that is altogether stony and unfertile except 
 in some patches of green. It is a general halting- 
 place for travelers, and presents a most animated 
 appearance when we arrive. Horses, mules, and 
 men are struggling together about the fountain to 
 slake their thirst ; but there is no trough nor any 
 pool, and the only mode to get the water is to catch 
 it in the mouth as it drizzles from the hole in the 
 arch. It is difficult for a horse to do this, and the 
 poor things are beside themselves with thirst. 
 Near by are some stone ruins in which a man and 
 woman have set up a damp coffee-shop, sherbet- 
 shop, and smoking station. From them I borrow 
 a shallow dish, and succeed in getting water for 
 my horse, an experiment which seems to surprise 
 all nations. The shop is an open stone shed with 
 a dirt floor, offering only stools to the customers ; 
 yet when the motley crowd are seated in and 
 around it, sipping coffee and smoking the nar- 
 ghilehs (water - pipes) with an air of leisure as 
 if to-day would last forever, you have a scene of 
 Oriental luxury. 
 
 Our way lies down a winding ravine. The 
 country is exceedingly rough, like the Wyoming 
 hills, but without trees or verdure. The bed of 
 the stream is a mass of rock in shelving ledges ; 
 all the rock in sight is a calcareous limestone. Af- 
 ter an hour of this sort of secluded travel we ascend 
 again and reach the Red Khan, and a scene still 
 more desolate because more extensive. The khan 
 takes its name from the color of the rocks : perched
 
 140 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 upon a high ledge are the ruins of this ancient 
 caravansary, little more now than naked walls. 
 We take shelter for lunch in a natural rock grotto 
 opposite, exactly the shadow of a rock longed for 
 in a weary land. Here we spread our gay rugs, 
 the servants unpack the provision hampers, and 
 we sit and enjoy the wide view of barrenness and 
 the picturesque groups of pilgrims. The spot is 
 famous for its excellent well of water. It is, be- 
 sides, the locality usually chosen for the scene of 
 the adventure of the man who went down to Jeri- 
 cho and fell among thieves, this being the khan at 
 which he was entertained for twopence. We take 
 our siesta here, reflecting upon the great advance 
 in hotel prices, and endeavoring to re-create some- 
 thing of that past when this was the highway be- 
 tween great Jerusalem and the teeming plain of 
 the Jordan. The Syro-Phoenician woman smoked 
 a narghileh, and, looking neither into the past nor 
 the future, seemed to enjoy the present. 
 
 From this elevation we see again the brown 
 Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea. Our road is 
 downward more precipitously than it lias been be- 
 fore. The rocks are tossed about tumultuously, 
 and the hills are rent, but there is no evidence of 
 any volcanic action. Some of the rock stratas are 
 bent, as you see the granite in the White Moun- 
 tains, but this peculiarity disappears as we ap- 
 proach nearer to the Jordan. The translator of 
 M. Francois Lenormant's "Ancient History of 
 the East" says that "the miracles which accompa- 
 nied the entrance of the Israelites into Palestine
 
 ELIJAH'S HIDING-PLACE 141 
 
 seem such as might have been produced by vol- 
 canic agency." No doubt they might have been; 
 but this whole region is absolutely without any 
 appearance of volcanic disturbance. 
 
 As we go on, we have on our left the most re- 
 markable ravine in Palestine ; it is in fact a canon 
 in the rocks, some five hundred feet deep, the sides 
 of which are nearly perpendicular. At the bottom 
 of it flows the brook Cherith, finding its way out 
 into the Jordan plain. We ride to the brink and 
 look over into the abyss. It was about two thou- 
 sand seven hundred and eighty -nine years ago, and 
 probably about this time of. the year (for the brook 
 went dry shortly after), that Elijah, having in- 
 curred the hostility of Ahab, who held his luxu- 
 rious court at Samaria, by prophesying against 
 him, came over from Gilead and hid himself in 
 this ravine. 
 
 "Down there," explains Abd-el-Atti, "the pro- 
 phet Elijah fed him the ravens forty days. Not 
 have that kind of ravens now." 
 
 Unattractive as this abyss is for any but a tem- 
 porary summer residence, the example of Elijah 
 recommended it to a great number of people in a 
 succeeding age. In the wall of the precipice are 
 cut grottos, some of them so high above the bed of 
 the stream that they are apparently inaccessible, 
 and not unlike the tombs in the high cliffs along 
 the Nile. In the fourth and fifth centuries monks 
 swarmed in all the desert places of Egypt and 
 Syria like rabbits; these holes, near the scene of 
 Elijah's miraculous support, were the abodes of
 
 142 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 Christian hermits, most of whom starved them- 
 selves down to mere skin and bones waiting for the 
 advent of the crows. On the ledge above are the 
 ruins of ancient chapels, which would seem to show 
 that this was a place of some resort, and that the 
 hermits had spectators of their self-denial. You 
 might as well be a woodchuck and sit in a hole as 
 a monk, unless somebody comes and looks at you. 
 
 As we advance, the Jordan valley opens more 
 broadly upon our sight. At this point, which is 
 the historical point, the scene of the passage of the 
 Jordan and the first appearance of the Israelitish 
 clans in the Promised Land, the valley is ten miles 
 broad. It is by 110 means a level plain ; from the 
 west range of mountains it slopes to the river, and 
 the surface is broken by hillocks, ravines, and 
 water-courses. The breadth is equal to that be- 
 tween the Connecticut River at Hartford and the 
 Talcott range of hills. To the north we have in 
 view the valley almost to the Sea of Galilee, and 
 can see the white and round summit of Hermon 
 beyond; on the east and on the west the barren 
 mountains stretch in level lines; and on the south 
 the blue waters of the Dead Sea continue the val- 
 ley between ranges of purple and poetic rocky 
 cliffs. 
 
 The view is magnificent in extent, and plain 
 and hills glow with color in this afternoon light. 
 Yonder, near the foot of the eastern hills, we trace 
 the winding course of the Jordan by a green belt 
 of trees and bushes. The river we cannot see, for 
 the "bottom" of the river, to use a Western
 
 THE JORDAN VALLEY 143 
 
 phrase, from six hundred to fifteen hundred feet 
 in breadth, is sunk below the valley a hundred feet 
 and more. This bottom is periodically over- 
 flowed. The general aspect of the plain is that of 
 a brown desert, the wild vegetation of which is 
 crisped by the scorching sun. There are, however, 
 threads of verdure in it, where the brook Cherith 
 and the waters from the fountain 'Am es-Sultan 
 wander through the neglected plain, and these 
 strips of green widen into the thickets about the 
 little village of Riha, the site of ancient Gilgal. 
 This valley is naturally fertile ; it may very likely 
 have been a Paradise of fruit - trees and grass 
 and sparkling water when the Jews looked down 
 upon it from the mountains of Moab ; it certainly 
 bloomed in the Roman occupation ; and the ruins 
 of sugar-mills still existing show that the crusad- 
 ing Christians made the cultivation of the sugar- 
 cane successful here ; it needs now only the waters 
 of the Jordan and the streams from the western 
 foot - hills directed by irrigating ditches over its 
 surface, moistening its ashy and nitrous soil, to 
 become again a fair and smiling land. 
 
 Descending down the stony and precipitous road, 
 \ve turn north, still on the slope of the valley. 
 The scant grass is already crisped by the heat, the 
 bushes are dry skeletons. A ride of a few minutes 
 brings us to some artitic ial mounds and ruins of 
 buildings upon the bank of the brook Cherith. 
 The brickwork is the fine reticulated masonry such 
 as you see in the remains of Roman villas at Tus- 
 culum. This is the site of Herod's Jericho, the
 
 144 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 Jericho of the New Testament. But the Jericho 
 which Joshua destroyed and the site of which he 
 cursed, the Jericho which Hiel rebuilt in the days 
 of the wicked Ahab, and where Elisha abode after 
 the translation of Elijah, was a half mile to the 
 north of this modern town. 
 
 We have some difficulty in fording the brook 
 Cherith, for the banks are precipitous and the 
 stream is deep and swift; those who are mounted 
 upon donkeys change them for horses, the Arab 
 attendants wade in, guiding the stumbling animals 
 which the ladies ride, the lumbering beast with the 
 Soudan babies comes splashing in at the wrong mo- 
 ment, to the peril of those already in the torrent, 
 and is nearly swept away ; the sheykh and the ser- 
 vants who have crossed block the narrow landing ; 
 but with infinite noise and floundering about we 
 all come safely over, and gallop along a sort of 
 plateau, interspersed with thorny nubk and scraggy 
 bushes. Going on for a quarter of an hour, and 
 encountering cultivated spots, we find our tents al- 
 ready pitched on the bushy bank of a little stream 
 that issues from the fountain of 'Ain es-Sultan a 
 few rods above. Near the camp is a high mound 
 of rubbish. This is the site of our favorite Jericho, 
 a name of no majesty like that of Rome, and en- 
 deared to us by no associations like Jerusalem, but 
 almost as widely known as either; probably even 
 its wickedness would not have preserved its repu- 
 tation, but for the singular incident that attended 
 its first destruction. Jericho must have been a 
 city of some consequence at the time of the arrival
 
 THE FALL OF JERICHO 145 
 
 of the Israelites ; we gain an idea of the civilization 
 of its inhabitants from the nature of the plunder 
 that Joshua secured ; there were vessels of silver 
 and of gold, and of brass and iron ; and this was 
 over fourteen hundred years before Christ. 
 
 Before we descend to our encampment, we pause 
 for a survey of this historic region. There, to- 
 wards Jordan, among the trees, is the site of Gil- 
 gal (another name that shares the half -whimsical 
 reputation of Jericho), where the Jews made their 
 first camp. The king of Jericho, like his royal 
 cousins round about, had "no more spirit in him" 
 when he saw the Israelitish host pass the Jordan. 
 He shut himself up in his insufficient walls, and 
 seems to have made no attempt at a defense. Over 
 this upland the Jews swarmed, and all the armed 
 host with seven priests and seven rams' horns 
 marched seven days round and round the doomed 
 city, and on the seventh day the people shouted the 
 walls down. Every living thing in the city was de- 
 stroyed except Rahab and her family, the town was 
 burned, and for five hundred years thereafter no 
 man dared to build upon its accursed foundations. 
 Why poor Jericho was specially marked out for 
 malediction we are not told. 
 
 When it was rebuilt in Ahab's time, the sons of 
 the prophets found it an agreeable place of resi- 
 dence ; large numbers of them were gathered here 
 while Elijah lived, and they conversed with that 
 prophet when he was on his last journey through 
 this valley, which he had so often traversed, com- 
 pelled by the Spirit of the Lord. No incident in
 
 146 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 the biblical story so strongly appeals to the ima- 
 gination, nor is there anything in the poetical con- 
 ception of any age so sublime as the last passage 
 of Elijah across this plain and his departure into 
 heaven beyond Jordan. When he came from 
 Bethel to Jericho, he begged Elisha, his atten- 
 dant, to tarry here ; but the latter would not yield 
 either to his entreaty or to that of the sons of the 
 prophets. We can see the way the two prophets 
 went hence to Jordan. Fifty men of the sons of 
 the prophets went and stood to view them afar off, 
 and they saw the two stand by Jordan. Already 
 it was known that Elijah was to disappear, and 
 the two figures, lessening in the distance, were fol- 
 lowed with a fearful curiosity. Did they pass on 
 swiftly, and was there some premonition, in the 
 wind that blew their flowing mantles, of the heav- 
 enly gale? Pjlijah smites the waters with his man- 
 tle, the two pass over dry-shod, and "as they still 
 went on and talked, behold there appeared a 
 chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them 
 both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind 
 into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, 
 My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and 
 the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more." 
 Elisha returned to Jerich;) and abode there while 
 the sons of the prophets sought for Elijah beyond 
 Jordan three days, but did not find him. And the 
 men of the city said to Elisha, "Behold, I pray 
 thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my 
 lord seeth, but the water is naught and the ground 
 barren." Then Elisha took salt and healed the
 
 A REGION OF MIRACLES 147 
 
 spring of water; and ever since, to this day, the 
 fountain, now called ' Ain es-Sultan, has sent forth 
 sweet water. 
 
 Turning towards the northwest, we see the pas- 
 sage through the mountain, by the fountain 'Ain 
 Duk, to Bethel. It was out of some woods there, 
 where the mountain is now bare, that Elisha called 
 the two she-bears which administered that dreadful 
 lesson to the children who derided his baldness. 
 All the region, indeed, recalls the miracles of 
 Elisha. It was probably here that Naaman the 
 Syrian came to be healed; there at Gilgal Elisha 
 took the deatli out of the great pot in which the 
 sons of the prophets were seething their pottage ; 
 and it was there in the Jordan that he made the 
 iron axe to swim. 
 
 Of all this celebrated and ill-fated Jericho, 
 nothing now remains but a hillock and Elisha's 
 spring. The wild beasts of the desert prowl about 
 it, and the night-bird hoots over its fall, a sort 
 of echo of the shouts that brought down its walls. 
 Our tents are pitched near the hillock, and the 
 animals are picketed on the open ground before 
 them by the stream. The Syrian tourist in these 
 days travels luxuriously. Our own party has four 
 tents, the kitchen tent, the dining tent, and two 
 for lodging. They are furnished with tables, 
 chairs, all the conveniences of the toilet, and car- 
 peted with bright rugs. The cook is an artist, and 
 our table is one that would have astonished the 
 sons of the prophets. The Syrian party have their 
 own tents; a family from Kentucky has camped
 
 148 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 near ^y ; and we give to Jericho a settled appear- 
 ance. The elder sheykh accompanies the other 
 party of Americans, so that we have now all the 
 protection possible. 
 
 The dragoman of the Kentuckians we have al- 
 ready encountered in Egypt and on the journey, 
 and been impressed by his respectable gravity. It 
 would perhaps be difficult for him to tell his nation- 
 ality or birthplace ; he wears the European dress, 
 and his gold spectacles and big stomach would 
 pass him anywhere for a German professor. He 
 seems out of place as a dragoman, but if any one 
 desired a savant as a companion in the East, he 
 would be the man. Indeed, his employers soon dis- 
 cover that his forte is information, and not work. 
 While the other servants are busy about the camps 
 Antonio comes over to our tent, and opens up the 
 richness of his mind, and illustrates his capacity 
 as a Syrian guide. 
 
 "You know that mountain, there, with the 
 chapel on top?" he asks. 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Well, that is Mt. Nebo, and that one next to 
 it is Pisgah, the mountain of the prophet Moses." 
 
 Both these mountains are of course on the other 
 side of the Jordan in the Moab range, but they 
 are not identified, except by Antonio.' The 
 sharp mountain behind us is Quarantania, the 
 Mount of Christ's Temptation. Its whole side to 
 the summit is honeycombed with the cells of her- 
 mits who once dwelt there, and it is still the resort 
 of many pilgrims.
 
 A MEMORABLE NIGHT 149 
 
 The evening is charming, warm but not depress- 
 ing; the atmosphere is even exhilarating, and this 
 surprises us, since we are so far below the sea 
 level. The Doctor says that it is exactly like 
 Colorado on a July night. We have never been 
 so low before, not even in a coal-mine. We are 
 not only about thirty-seven hundred feet below 
 Jerusalem, we are over twelve hundred below the 
 level of the sea. Sitting outside the tent under 
 the starlight, we enjoy the novelty and the mys- 
 teriousness of the scene. Tents, horses picketed 
 among the bushes, the firelight, the groups of ser- 
 vants and drivers taking their supper, the figure of 
 an Arab from Gilgal coming forward occasionally 
 out of the darkness, the Dinging, the occasional 
 violent outbreak of kicking and squealing among 
 the ill-assorted horses and mules, the running of 
 loose-robed attendants to the rescue of some poor 
 beast, the strong impression of the locality upon 
 us, and I know not what Old Testament flavor 
 about it all, conspire to make the night memorable. 
 
 "This place very dangerous," says Antonio, 
 who is standing round, bursting with information. 
 "Him berry wise," is Abd-el-Atti's opinion of 
 him. "Know a great deal; I t'ink him not live 
 
 "What is the danger? " we ask. 
 
 "Wild beasts, wild boars, hyenas, all these 
 b'ush full of them. It was three years now I was 
 camped here with Baron Kronkheit. 'Bout 
 twelve o'clock I heard a noise and came out. 
 Right there, not twenty feet from here, stood a
 
 150 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 hyena as big as a donkey, his two eyes like fire. 
 I did not shoot him for fear to wake up the 
 Baron." 
 
 "Did he kill any of your party?" 
 
 "Not any man. In the morning I find he has 
 carried off our only mutton." 
 
 Notwithstanding these dangers, the night passes 
 without alarm, except the barking of jackals about 
 the kitchen tent. In the morning I ask Antonio if 
 he heard the hyenas howling in the night. "Yes, 
 indeed, plenty of them; they came very near my 
 tent." 
 
 We are astir at sunrise, breakfast, and start for 
 the Jordan. It is the opinion of the dragoman 
 and the sheykh that we should go first to the Dead 
 Sea. It is the custom. Every tourist goes to the 
 Dead Sea first, bathes, and then washes off the 
 salt in the Jordan. No one ever thought of going 
 to the Jordan first. It is impossible. We must 
 visit the Dead Sea, and then lunch at the Jor- 
 dan. We wished, on the contrary, to lunch at the 
 Dead Sea, at which we should otherwise have only 
 a very brief time. We insisted upon our own 
 programme, to the great disgust of all our camp 
 attendants, who predicted disaster. 
 
 The Jordan is an hour and a half from Jericho ; 
 that is the distance to the bathing-place of the 
 Greek pilgrims. We descend all the way. Wild 
 vegetation is never wanting ; wild-flowers abound ; 
 we pass through thickets of thorns, bearing the 
 yellow "apples of the Dead Sea," which grow all 
 over this plain. At Gilgal (now called Riha) we
 
 MODERN GILGAL 151 
 
 find what is probably the nastiest village in the 
 world, and its miserable inhabitants are credited 
 with all the vices of Sodom. The wretched huts 
 are surrounded by a thicket of mibk as a protec- 
 tion against the plundering Bedaween. The 
 houses are rudely built of stone, with a covering 
 of cane or brush, and each one is inclosed in a 
 hedge of thorns. These thorns, which grow 
 rankly on the plain, are those of which the "crown 
 of thorns" was plaited, and all devout pilgrims 
 carry away some of them. The habitations within 
 these thorny inclosures are filthy beyond descrip- 
 tion, and poverty-stricken. And this is in a wa- 
 tered plain which would bloom with all manner of 
 fruits with the least care. Indeed, there are a few 
 tangled gardens of the rankest vegetation ; in them 
 we see the orange, the fig, the deceptive pome- 
 granate with its pink blossoms, and the olive. As 
 this is the time of pilgrimage, a company of Turk- 
 ish soldiers from Jerusalem is encamped at the 
 village, and the broken country about it is covered 
 with tents, booths, shops, kitchens, and presents 
 the appearance of a fair and a camp-meeting com- 
 bined. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of 
 pilgrims, who go every morning, as long as they 
 remain here, to dip in the Jordan. Near the vil- 
 lage rises the square tower of an old convent, prob- 
 ably, which is dignified with the name of the 
 "house of Zaechseus." This plain was once famed 
 for its fertility: it was covered with gardens and 
 palm-groves; the precious balsam, honey, and 
 henna were produced here; the balsam gardens
 
 152 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 were the royal gift of Antony to Cleopatra, who 
 transferred the balsam - trees to Heliopolis in 
 Egypt. 
 
 As we ride away from Gilgal and come upon a 
 more open and desert plain, I encounter an eagle 
 sitting on the top of a thorn-tree, not the noblest 
 of his species, but, for Palestine, a very fair eagle. 
 Here is a chance for the Syrian hunter; he is 
 armed with gun and pistols ; he has his dogs ; now, 
 if ever, is the time for him to hunt, and I fall back 
 and point out his opportunity. He does not em- 
 brace it. It is an easy shot; perhaps he is look- 
 ing for wild boars; perhaps he is a tender-minded 
 hunter. At any rate, he makes no effort to take 
 the eagle, and when I ride forward the bird grace- 
 fully rises in the air, sweeping upward in magnifi- 
 cent circles, now veering towards the Mount of 
 Temptation, and now towards Nebo, but always as 
 serene as the air in which he floats. 
 
 And now occurs one of those incidents which 
 are not rare to travelers in Syria, but which are 
 rare and scarcely believed elsewhere. As the 
 eagle hangs for a second motionless in the empy- 
 rean far before me, he drops a feather. I see the 
 gray plume glance in the sun and swirl slowly 
 down in the lucid air. In Judaea every object is 
 as distinct as in a photograph. You can see 
 things at a distance you can make no one believe 
 at home. The eagle plume, detached from the 
 noble bird, begins its leisurely descent. 
 
 I see in a moment my opportunity. I might 
 never have another. All travelers in Syria whose
 
 A STARTLING ADVENTURE 153 
 
 books I have ever read have one or more startling 
 adventures. Usually it is with a horse. I do not 
 remember any with a horse and an eagle. I deter- 
 mine at once to have one. Glancing a moment at 
 the company behind me, and then fixing my eye 
 on the falling feather, I speak a word to my steed, 
 and dart forward. 
 
 A word was enough. The noble animal seemed 
 to comprehend the situation. He was of the pur- 
 est Arab breed ; four legs, four white ankles, small 
 ears, slender pasterns, nostrils thin as tissue paper, 
 and dilating upon the fall of a leaf; an eye ter- 
 rible in rage, but melting in affection; a round 
 barrel; gentle as a kitten, but spirited as a game- 
 cock. His mother was a Nedjed mare from Me- 
 dina, who had been exchanged by a Bedawee chief 
 for nine beautiful Circassians, but only as a com- 
 promise after a war by the Pasha of Egypt for 
 her possession. Her father was one of the most 
 respectable horses in Yemen. Neither father, 
 mother, nor colt had ever eaten anything but se- 
 lected dates. 
 
 At the word, Abdallah springs forward, bound- 
 ing over the sand, skimming over the thorn bushes, 
 scattering the Jordan pilgrims right and left. lie 
 does not seem to be so much a horse as a creation 
 of the imagination, a Pegasus. At every leap 
 we gain upon the feather, but it is still far ahead 
 of us, and swirling down, down, as the air takes 
 the plume or the weight of gravity acts upon the 
 quill. Abdallah does not yet know the object of 
 our fearful pace, but his docility is such that every
 
 154 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 time I speak to him he seems to shoot out of him- , 
 self in sudden bursts of enthusiasm. The terrible 
 strain continues longer than I had supposed it 
 would, for I had undercalculated both the height 
 at which the feather was cast and my distance to 
 the spot upon which it must fall. None but a 
 horse fed on dates could keep up the awful gait. 
 We fly and the feather falls; and it falls with 
 increasing momentum. It is going, going to the 
 ground, and we are not there. At this instant, 
 when I am in despair, the feather twirls, and Ab- 
 dallah suddenly casts his eye up and catches the 
 glint of it. The glance suffices to put him com- 
 pletely in possession of the situation. He gives a 
 low neigh of joy; I plunge both spurs into his 
 flanks about six or seven inches ; he leaps into 
 the air, and sails like a bird, of course only for 
 a moment; but it is enough; I stretch out my 
 hand and catch the eagle's plume before it touches 
 the ground. We light on the other side of a clump 
 of thorns, and Abdallah walks on as quietly as 
 if nothing had happened ; he was not blown ; not 
 a hair of his glossy coat was turned. I have the 
 feather to show. 
 
 Pilgrims are plenty, returning from the river in 
 a continuous procession, in numbers rivaling the 
 children of Israel when they first camped at Gil- 
 gal. We descend into the river-bottom, wind 
 through the clumps of tangled bushes, and at 
 length reach an open place where the river for a 
 few rods is visible. The ground is trampled like a 
 watering-spot for cattle : the bushes are not large
 
 JORDAN'S STORMY BANKS 155 
 
 enough to give shade; there are no trees of size 
 except one or two at the water's edge; the banks 
 are slimy, there seems to be no comfortable place 
 to sit except on your horse on Jordan's stormy 
 banks I stand and cast a wistful eye ; the wistful 
 eye encounters nothing agreeable. 
 
 The Jordan here resembles the Arkansas above 
 Little Rock, says the Doctor; I think it is about 
 the size of the Concord where it flows through the 
 classic town of that name in Massachusetts; but 
 it is much swifter. Indeed, it is a rapid current, 
 which would sweep away the strongest swimmer. 
 The opposite bank is steep, and composed of sandy 
 loam or marl. The hither bank is low, but slip- 
 pery, and it is difficult to dip up water from it. 
 Close to the shore the water is shallow, and a rope 
 is stretched out for the protection of the bathers. 
 This is the Greek bathing-place, but we are too 
 late to see the pilgrims enter the stream; crowds 
 of them are still here, cutting canes to carry away, 
 and filling their tin cans with the holy water. We 
 taste the water, which is very muddy, and find it 
 warm but not unpleasant. We are glad that we 
 have decided to lunch at the Dead Sea, for a more 
 uninviting place than this could not be found; 
 above and below this spot are thickets and boggy 
 ground. It is beneath the historical and religious 
 dignity of the occasion to speak of lunch, but all 
 tourists know what importance it assumes on such 
 an excursion, and that their high reflections seldom 
 come to them on the historical spot. Indeed, one 
 must be removed some distance from the vulgar
 
 156 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 Jordan before he can glow at the thought of it. 
 In swiftness and volume it exceeds our expecta- 
 tions, but its beauty is entirely a creation of the 
 imagination. 
 
 We had the opportunity of seeing only a solitary 
 pilgrim bathe. This was a shock-headed Greek 
 young man, who reluctantly ventured into the dirty 
 water up to his knees and stood there shivering, 
 and whimpering over the orders of the priest on 
 the bank, who insisted upon his dipping. Perhaps 
 the boy lacked faith ; perhaps it was his first ex- 
 periment with water; at any rate, he stood there 
 until his spiritual father waded in and ducked the 
 blubbering and sputtering neophyte under. This 
 was not a baptism, but a meritorious bath. Some 
 seedy fellahs from Gilgal sat on the bank fishing. 
 When I asked them if they had anything, they 
 produced from the corners of their gowns some 
 Roman copper coins, picked up at Jericho, and 
 which they swore were dropped there by the Jews 
 when they assaulted the city with the rams' horns. 
 These idle fishermen caught now and then a rather 
 soft, light-colored perch, with large scales, a 
 sickly-looking fish, which the Greeks, however, 
 pronounced "tayeb." 
 
 We leave the river and ride for an hour and a 
 half across a nearly level plain, the earth of which 
 shows salts here and there, dotted with a low, fat- 
 leaved plant, something like the American sage- 
 bush. Wild-flowers enliven the way, and although 
 the country is not exactly cheerful, it has no ap- 
 pearance of desolation except such as comes from 
 lack of water.
 
 THE DEAD SEA 157 
 
 The Dead Sea is the least dead of any sheet of 
 water I know. When we first arrived the waters 
 were a lovely blue, which changed to green in the 
 shifting light, but they were always animated and 
 sparkling. It has a sloping sandy beach, strewn 
 with pebbles, up which the waves come with a 
 pleasant murmur. The plain is hot; here we find 
 a cool breeze. The lovely plain of water stretches 
 away to the south between blue and purple ranges 
 of mountains, which thrust occasionally bold prom- 
 ontories into it, and add a charm to the perspec- 
 tive. 
 
 The sea is not inimical to either vegetable or 
 animal life on its borders. Before we reach it I 
 hear bird-notes high in the air like the song of a 
 lark; birds are flitting about the shore and sing- 
 ing, and gulls are wheeling over the water; a rab- 
 bit runs into his hole close by the beach. Growing 
 close to the shore is a high woody stonewort, with 
 abundance of fleshy leaves and thousands of blos- 
 soms, delicate protruding stamens hanging over 
 the waters of the sea itself. The plant with the 
 small yellow fruit, which we take to be that of the 
 apples of Sodom, also grows here. It is the Sola- 
 num spinosa, closely allied to the potato, egg- 
 plant, and tomato ; it has a woody stem with sharp 
 recurved thorns, sometimes grows ten feet high, 
 and is now covered with round orange berries. 
 
 It is not the scene of desolation that we expected, 
 although some branches and trunks of trees, 
 gnarled and bleached, the drift-wood of the Jor- 
 dan, strewn along the beach, impart a dead aspect
 
 158 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 to the shore. These dry branches are, however, 
 useful; we build them up into a wigwam, over 
 which we spread our blankets ; under this we sit, 
 sheltered from the sun, enjoying the delightful 
 breeze and the cheering prospect of the sparkling 
 sea. The improvident Arabs, now that it is im- 
 possible to get fresh water, begin to want it; they 
 have exhausted their own jugs and ours, having 
 neglected to bring anything like an adequate sup- 
 ply. To see water and not be able to drink it is 
 too much for their philosophy. 
 
 The party separates along the shore, seeking for 
 places where bushes grow out upon tongues of land 
 and offer shelter from observation for the bather. 
 The first impression we have of the water is its 
 perfect clearness. It is the most innocent water 
 in appearance, and you would not suspect its salt- 
 ness and extreme bitterness. No fish live in it; 
 the water is too salt for anything but codfish. Its 
 buoyancy has not been exaggerated by travelers, 
 but I did not expect to find bathing in it so agree- 
 able as it is. The water is of a happy temperature, 
 soft, not exactly oily, but exceedingly agreeable to 
 the skin, and it left a delicious sensation after the 
 bath; but it is necessary to be careful not to get 
 any of it into the eyes. For myself, I found swim- 
 ming in it delightful, and I wish the Atlantic 
 Ocean were like it; nobody then would ever be 
 drowned. Floating is no effort; on the contrary, 
 sinking is impossible. The only annoyance in 
 swimming is the tendency of the feet to strike out 
 of water, and of the swimmer to go over on his
 
 BATHING IN THE DEAD SEA 159 
 
 head. When I stood upright in the water it came 
 about to my shoulders ; but it was difficult to stand, 
 from the constant desire of the feet to go to the 
 surface. I suppose that the different accounts of 
 travelers in regard to the buoyancy of the water 
 are due to the different specific gravity of the writ- 
 ers. We cannot all be doctors of divinity. I 
 found that the best way to float was to make a bow 
 of the body and rest with feet and head out of 
 water, which was something like being in a cush- 
 ioned chair. Even then it requires some care not 
 to turn over. The bather seems to himself to be 
 a cork, and has little control of his body. 
 
 About two hundred yards from the shore is an 
 artificial island of stone, upon which are remains 
 of regular masonry. Probably some crusader had 
 a castle there. We notice upon looking down into 
 the clear depths, some distance out, in the sun- 
 light, that the lake seems, as it flows, to have 
 translucent streaks, which are like a thick solution 
 of sugar, showing how completely saturated it is 
 with salts. It is, in fact, twelve hundred and 
 ninety-two feet below the Mediterranean, nothing 
 but a deep, half-dried-up sea ; the chloride of mag- 
 nesia, which gives it its extraordinarily bitter 
 taste, does not crystallize and precipitate itself so 
 readily as the chloride of sodium. 
 
 We look in vain for any evidence of volcanic 
 disturbance or action of fire. Whatever there may 
 be at the other end of the lake, there is none here. 
 We find no bitumen or any fire-stones, although 
 the black stones along the beach may have been
 
 160 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 supposed to be bituminous. All the pebbles and 
 all the stones of the beach are of chalk flint, and 
 tell no story of fire or volcanic fury. 
 
 Indeed, the lake has no apparent hostility to life. 
 An enterprising company could draw off the Jor- 
 dan thirty miles above here and make all this val- 
 ley a garden, producing fruits and sugar-cane and 
 cotton, and this lake one of the most lovely water- 
 ing-places in the world. I have no doubt mala- 
 dies could be discovered which its waters are ex- 
 actly calculated to cure. I confidently expect to 
 hear some day that great hotels are built upon this 
 shore, which are crowded with the pious, the fash- 
 ionable, and the diseased. I seem to see this blue 
 and sunny lake covered with a gay multitude of 
 bathers, floating about the livelong day on its sur- 
 face ; parties of them making a pleasure excursion 
 to the foot of Pisgah; groups of them chatting, 
 singing, amusing themselves as they would under 
 the shade of trees on land, having umbrellas and 
 floating awnings, and perhaps servants to bear 
 their parasols ; couples floating here and there at 
 will in the sweet dream of a love that seems to be 
 suspended between the heaven and the earth. No 
 one will be at any expense for boats, for every one 
 will be his own boat, and launch himself without 
 sail or oars whenever he pleases. How dainty will 
 be the little feminine barks that the tossing mar- 
 iner will hail on that peaceful sea ! No more wail- 
 ing of wives over husbands drowned in the waves, 
 no more rescuing of limp girls by courageous lov- 
 ers. People may be shipwrecked if there conies a
 
 A PERILOUS LUNCH 161 
 
 squall from Moab, but they cannot be drowned. 
 I confess that this picture is the most fascinating 
 that I have been able to conjure up in Syria. 
 
 We take our lunch under the wigwam, fanned 
 by a pleasant breeze. The persons who partake 
 it present a pleasing variety of nations and colors, 
 and the "spread" itself, though simple, was gath- 
 ered from many lands. Some one took the trouble 
 to note the variety : raisins from Damascus, bread, 
 chicken, and mutton from Jerusalem, white wine 
 from Bethlehem, figs from Smyrna, cheese from 
 America, dates from Nubia, walnuts from Ger- 
 many, water from Elisha's well, eggs from Hen. 
 
 We should like to linger till night in this en- 
 chanting place, but for an hour the sheykh and 
 dragoman have been urging our departure; men 
 and beasts are represented as suffering for water, 
 all because we have reversed the usual order of 
 travel. As soon as we leave the lake we lose its 
 breeze, the heat becomes severe ; the sandy plain 
 is rolling and a little broken, but it has no shade, 
 no water, and is indeed a weary way. The horses 
 feel the want of water sadly. The Arabs, whom 
 we had supposed patient in deprivation, are almost 
 crazy with thirst. After we have ridden for over 
 an hour the sheykh' s horse suddenly wheels off and 
 runs over the plain ; my nag follows him, appar- 
 ently without reason, and in spite of my efforts I 
 am run away with. The horses dash along, aiid 
 soon the whole cavalcade is racing after us. The 
 object is soon visible, a fringe of trees, which 
 denotes a brook ; the horses press on, dash down
 
 162 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 the steep bank, and plunge their heads into the 
 water up to the eyes. The Arabs follow suit. 
 The sheykh declares that in fifteen minutes more 
 both men and horses would have been dead. 
 Never before did anybody lunch at the Dead Sea. 
 
 When the train comes up, the patient donkey 
 that Madame rides is pushed through the brook 
 and not permitted to wet his muzzle. I am indig- 
 nant at such cruelty, and spring off my horse, push 
 the two donkey-boys aside, and lead the eager don- 
 key to the stream. At once there is a cry of pro- 
 test from dragomans, sheykh, and the whole crowd, 
 "No drink donkey, no drink donkey, no let don- 
 key, bad for donkey." There could not have been 
 a greater outcry among the Jews when the ark of 
 the covenant was likely to touch the water. I de- 
 sist from my charitable efforts. Why the poor 
 beast, whose whole body craved water as much as 
 that of the horse, was denied it, I know not. It 
 is said that if you give a donkey water on the road 
 he won't go thereafter. Certainly the donkey is 
 never permitted to drink when traveling. I think 
 the patient and chastened creature will get more in 
 the next world than his cruel masters. 
 
 Nearly all the way over the plain we have the 
 long snowy range of Mt. Hermon in sight, a noble 
 object, closing the long northern vista, and a re- 
 freshment to the eyes wearied by the parched vege- 
 tation of the valley and dazzled by the aerial shim- 
 mer. If we turn from the north to the south, we 
 have the entirely different but equally poetical 
 prospect of the blue sea inclosed in the receding
 
 THE FOUNTAIN OF ELISHA 163 
 
 hills, which fall away into the violet shade of the 
 horizon. The Jordan Valley is unique ; by a ge- 
 ologic fault it is dropped over a thousand feet 
 below the sea-level; it is guarded by mountain- 
 ranges which are from a thousand to two thousand 
 feet high ; at one end is a mountain ten thousand 
 feet high, from which the snow never disappears ; 
 at the other end is a lake forty miles long, of the 
 saltest and bitterest water in the world. All these 
 contrasts the eye embraces at one point. 
 
 We dismount at the camp of the Russian pil- 
 grims by Riha, and walk among the tents and 
 booths. The sharpers of Syria attend the stran- 
 gers, tempt them with various holy wares, and 
 entice them into their dirty coffee-shops. It is a 
 scene of mingled credulity and knavery, of devo- 
 tion and traffic. There are great booths for the 
 sale of vegetables, nuts, and dried fruit. The 
 whole may be sufficiently described as a camp- 
 meeting without any prayer-tent. 
 
 At sunset I have a quiet hour by the fountain 
 of Elisha. It is a remarkable pool. Under the 
 ledge of limestone rocks the water gushes out with 
 considerable force, and in such volume as to form 
 a large brook which flows out of the basin and 
 murmurs over a stony bed. You cannot recover 
 your surprise to see a river in this dry country 
 burst suddenly out of the ground. A group of na- 
 tive women have come to the pool with jars, and 
 they stay to gossip, sitting about the edge upon the 
 stones with their feet in the water. One of them 
 wears a red gown, and her cheeks are as red as her
 
 164 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 dress; indeed, 1 have met several women to-day 
 who had the complexion of a ripe Flemish Beauty 
 pear. As it seems to be the fashion, I also sit on 
 the bank of the stream with my feet in the warm 
 swift water, and enjoy the sunset and the strange 
 concourse of pilgrims who are gathering about the 
 well. They are worthy Greeks, very decent people, 
 men and women, who salute me pleasantly as they 
 arrive, and seem to take my participation in the 
 bath as an act of friendship. 
 
 Just below the large pool, by a smaller one, a 
 Greek boy, having bathed, is about to dress, and 
 I am interested to watch the process. The first 
 article to go on is a white shirt ; over this he puts 
 on two blue woolen shirts; he then draws on a 
 pair of large, loose trousers; into these the shirts 
 are tucked, and the trousers are tied at the waist, 
 he is bothered with neither pins nor buttons. 
 Then comes the turban, which is a soft gray and 
 yellow material; a red belt is next wound twice 
 about the waist; the vest is yellow and open in 
 front ; and the costume is completed by a jaunty 
 jacket of yellow, prettily embroidered. The heap 
 of clothes on the bank did not promise much, but 
 the result is a very handsome boy, dressed, I am 
 sure, most comfortably for this climate. While I 
 sit here the son of the sheykh rides his horse to 
 the pool. He is not more than ten years old, is 
 very smartly dressed in gay colors, and exceedingly 
 handsome, although he has somewhat the supercil- 
 ious manner of a lad born in the purple. The 
 little prince speaks French, and ostentatiously dis-
 
 A NATIVE DANCE 165 
 
 plays in his belt a big revolver. I am glad of the 
 opportunity of seeing one of the desert robbers in 
 embryo. 
 
 When it is dusk we have an invasion from the 
 neighboring Bedaween, an imposition to which all 
 tourists are subjected, it being taken for granted 
 that we desire to see a native dance. This is one 
 of the ways these honest people have of levying 
 tribute ; by the connivance of our protectors, the 
 head sheykhs, the entertainment is forced upon us, 
 and the performers will not depart without a lib- 
 eral backsheesh. We are already somewhat famil- 
 iar with the fascinating dances of the Orient, and 
 have only a languid curiosity about those of the 
 Jordan ; but before we are aware there is a crowd 
 before our tents, and the evening is disturbed by 
 doleful howling and drum-thumping. The scene 
 in the flickering firelight is sufficiently fantastic. 
 
 The men dance first. Some twenty or thirty of 
 them form in a half circle, standing close together ; 
 their gowns are in rags, their black hair is tossed 
 in tangled disorder, and their eyes shine with ani- 
 mal wildness. The only dancing they perform 
 consists in a violent swaying of the body from side 
 to side in concert, faster and faster as the excite- 
 ment rises, with an occasional stamping of the feet, 
 and a continual howling like darwishes. Two vag- 
 abonds step into the focus of the half circle and 
 hop about in the most stiff-legged manner, swing- 
 ing enormous swords over_their heads, and giving 
 from time to time a war-whoop, it seems to be 
 precisely the dance of the North American Indians.
 
 166 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 We are told, however, that the howling is a song, 
 and that the song relates to meeting the enemy 
 and demolishing him. The longer the perform- 
 ance goes on the less we like it, for the uncouthness 
 is not varied by a single graceful motion, and the 
 monotony becomes unendurable. We long for the 
 women to begin. 
 
 When the women begin, we wish we had the 
 men back again. Creatures uglier and dirtier than 
 these hags could not be found. Their dance is 
 much the same as that of the men, a semicircle, 
 with a couple of women to jump about and whirl 
 swords. But the women display more fierceness 
 and more passion as they warm to their work, and 
 their shrill cries, disheveled hair, loose robes, and 
 frantic gestures give us new ideas of the capacity 
 of the gentle sex; you think that they would not 
 only slay their enemies, but drink their blood and 
 dance upon their fragments. Indeed, one of their 
 songs is altogether belligerent; it taunts the men 
 with cowardice, it scoffs them for not daring to 
 fight, it declares that the women like the sword 
 and know how to use it, and thus, and thus, and 
 thus, lunging their swords into the air, would they 
 pierce the imaginary enemy. But these sweet 
 creatures do not sing altogether of war; they sing 
 of love in the same strident voices and fierce man- 
 ner : " My lover will meet me by the stream, he 
 will take me over the water." 
 
 When the performance is over they all clamor 
 for backsheesh; it is given in a lump to their 
 sheykh, and they retire into the bushes and
 
 ABYSSINIANS FROM GONDAR 167 
 
 wrangle over its distribution. The women return 
 to us and say, "Why you give our backsheesh 
 to sheykh? We no get any. Men get all." It 
 seems that women are animated nowadays by the 
 same spirit the world over, and make the same just 
 complaints of the injustice of men. 
 
 When we turn in, there is a light gleaming from 
 a cell high up on Mt. Temptation, where some 
 modern pilgrim is playing hermit for the night. 
 
 We are up early in the morning, and prepare 
 for the journey to Jerusalem. Near our camp 
 some Abyssinian pilgrims, Christians so called, 
 have encamped in the bushes, a priest and three 
 or four laymen, the cleverest and most decent 
 Abyssinians we have met with. They are from 
 Gondar, and have been a year and a half on their 
 pilgrimage from their country to the Jordan. 
 The priest is severely ill with a fever, and his con- 
 dition excites the compassion of Abd-el-Atti, who 
 procures for him a donkey to ride back to the city. 
 About the only luggage of the party consists of 
 sacred books, written on parchment and preserved 
 with great care, among them the Gospel of St. 
 John, the Psalms, the Pentateuch, and volumes 
 of prayers to the Virgin. They are willing to ex- 
 change some of these manuscripts for silver, and 
 we make up besides a little purse for the sick man."* 
 These Abyssinian Christians when at home live 
 under the old dispensation, rather than the new. 
 holding rather to the law of Moses than of Christ, 
 and practice generally all the vices of all ages; 
 the colony of them at Jerusalem is a disreputable
 
 168 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 lot of lewd beggars; so that we are glad to find 
 some of the race who have gentle manners and are 
 outwardly respectable. To be sure, we had come 
 a greater distance than they to the Jordan, but 
 they had been much longer on the way. 
 
 The day is very hot ; the intense sun beats upon 
 the white limestone rocks and is reflected into the 
 valleys. Our view in returning is better than it 
 was in coming; the plain and the foot of the pass 
 are covered with a bloom of lilac-colored flowers. 
 We meet and pass more pilgrims than before. 
 We overtake them resting or asleep by the road- 
 side, in the shade of the rocks. They all carry 
 bundles of sticks and canes cut on the banks of 
 the Jordan, and most of them Jordan water in 
 cans, bottles, and pitchers. There are motley 
 loads of baggage, kitchen utensils, beds, children. 
 We see again two, three, and four on one horse 
 or mule, and now and then a row, as if on a 
 bench, across the horse's back, taking up the whole 
 road. 
 
 We overtake one old woman, a Russian, who 
 cannot be less than seventy, with a round body, 
 and legs as short as ducks' and as big as the 
 "limbs" of a piano. Her big feet are incased in 
 straw shoes, the shape of a long vegetable-dish. 
 She wears a short calico gown, an old cotton hand- 
 kerchief inwraps her gray head, she carries on her 
 back a big bundle of clothing, an extra pair of 
 straw shoes, a coffee-pot, and a saucepan, and she 
 staggers under a great bundle of canes on her 
 shoulder. Poor old pilgrim! I should like tq
 
 A NOBLE SHEYKH 169 
 
 give the old mother my horse and ease her way to 
 the heavenly city ; but I reflect that this would de- 
 tract from the merit of her pilgrimage. There are 
 men also as old hobbling along, but usually not so 
 heavily laden. One ancient couple are riding in 
 the deep flaps of a pannier, hanging each side of 
 a mule; they can just see each other across the 
 mule's back, but the swaying, sickening motion of 
 the pannier evidently lessens their interest in life 
 and in each other. 
 
 Our Syrian allies are as brave as usual. The 
 Soudan babies did not go to the Jordan or the 
 Dead Sea, and are consequently fresh and full of 
 antics. The Syrian armament has not thus far 
 been used ; eagles, rabbits, small game of all sorts, 
 have been disregarded ; neither of the men has un- 
 slung his gun or drawn his revolvers. The hunt- 
 ing dogs have not once been called on to hunt any- 
 thing, and now they are so exhausted by the heat 
 that their master is obliged to carry them all the 
 way to Jerusalem ; one of the hounds he has in his 
 arms and the other is slung in a pannier under the 
 saddle, his master's foot resting in the other side 
 to balance the dog. The poor creature looks out 
 piteously from his swinging cradle. It is the 
 most inglorious hunting-expedition J have ever 
 been attached to. 
 
 Our sheykh becomes more and more friendly. 
 He rides up to me occasionally, and, nobly strik- 
 ing his breast, exclaims, "Me ! sheykh, Jordan, 
 Jerusalem, Mar Saba, Hebron, all round; me, 
 big." Sometimes he ends the interview with a
 
 170 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 demand for tobacco, and again with a hint of the 
 backsheesh he expects in Jerusalem. I want to 
 tell him that he is exactly like our stately red man 
 at home, with his "Me! Big Injun. Chaw-to- 
 bac?" 
 
 We are very glad to get out of the heat at noon 
 and take shelter in the rock grotto at the Red 
 Khan. We sit here as if in a box at the theatre, 
 and survey the passing show. The Syro-Phosni- 
 cian woman smokes her narghileh again, the dogs 
 crouching at her feet, and the Soudan babies are 
 pretending to wait on her, and tumbling over each 
 other and spilling everything they attempt to carry. 
 The woman says they are great plagues to her, and 
 cost thirty napoleons each in Soudan. As we sit 
 here after lunch, an endless procession passes be- 
 fore us, donkeys, horses, camels in long strings 
 tied together, and pilgrims of all grades; and as 
 they come up the hill one after the other, showing 
 their heads suddenly, it is just as if they appeared 
 on the stage ; and they all Bedaween, Negroes, 
 Russians, Copts, Circassians, Greeks, Soudan 
 slaves, and Arab masters seem struck with a 
 "glad siirprise " upon seeing us, and tarry long 
 enough for us to examine them. 
 
 Suddenly presents himself a tall, gayly dressed, 
 slim fellow from Soudan (the slave of the sheykh), 
 showing his white teeth, and his face beaming 
 with good-nature. lie is so peculiarly black that 
 we ask him to step forward for closer inspection. 
 Abd-el-Atti, who expresses great admiration for 
 him, gets a coal from the fire, and holds it up by
 
 A DIGNIFIED GALGAM 171 
 
 his cheek; the skin has the advantage of the coal, 
 not only in lustre but in depth of blackness. He 
 says that he is a Galgam, a tribe whose virtues 
 Abd-el- Atti indorses : " Thim very sincere, trusty, 
 thim good breed." 
 
 When we have made the acquaintance of the 
 Galgam in this thorough manner, he asks for back- 
 sheesh. The Doctor offers him a copper coin. 
 This, without any offense in his manner, and 
 with the utmost courtesy, he refuses, bows very 
 low, says "Thanks," with a little irony, and turns 
 away. In a few moments he comes back, opens 
 his wallet, takes out two silver franc pieces, hands 
 them to the Doctor, says with a proud politeness, 
 "Backsheesh, Bedawee!" bows, runs across the 
 hill, catches his horse, and rides gallantly away. 
 It is beautifully done. Once or twice during the 
 ride to Jerusalem we see him careering: over the 
 
 O 
 
 hills, and he approaches within hail at Bethany, 
 but he does not lower his dignity by joining us 
 again. 
 
 The heat is intense until we reach the well within 
 a mile of Bethany, where we find a great concourse 
 of exhausted pilgrims. On the way, wherever there 
 is an open field that admits of it, we have some dis- 
 play of Bedawee horsemanship. The white Arab 
 mare which the sheykh rides is of pure blood and 
 cost him 200, although I should select her as a 
 broken-down stage-horse. These people ride "all 
 abroad," so to say, arms, legs, accoutrements fly- 
 ing; but they stick on, which is the principal thing: 
 and the horses over the rough ground, soft fields,
 
 172 GOING DOWN TO JERICHO 
 
 and loose stones, run, stop short, wheel in a flash, 
 and exhibit wonderful training and bottom. 
 
 The high opinion we had formed of the proud 
 spirit and generosity of the Bedawee, by the inci- 
 dent at the Red Khan, was not to be maintained 
 after our return to Jerusalem. Another of our 
 Oriental illusions was to be destroyed forever. 
 The cool acceptance by the Doctor of the two 
 francs so loftily tendered, as a specimen of Beda- 
 wee backsheesh, was probably unexpected, and 
 perhaps unprovided for by adequate financial ar- 
 rangements on the part of the Galgam. At any 
 rate, that evening he was hovering about the hotel, 
 endeavoring to attract the attention of the Doctor, 
 and evidently unwilling to believe that there could 
 exist in the heart of the howadji the mean inten- 
 tion of retaining those francs. The next morning 
 he sent a friend to the Doctor to ask him for the 
 money. The Doctor replied that he should never 
 think of returning a gift, especially one made with 
 so much courtesy; that, indeed, the amount of the 
 money was naught, but that he should keep it as 
 a souvenir of the noble generosity of his Bedawee 
 friend. This sort of sentiment seemed inexplicable 
 to the Oriental mind. The son of the desert was 
 as much astonished that the Frank should retain 
 his gift, as the Spanish gentleman who presents his 
 horse to his guest would be if the guest should 
 take it. The offer of a present in the East is a 
 flowery expression of a sentiment that does not 
 exist, and its acceptance necessarily implies a re- 
 turn of something of greater value. After another
 
 BEDAWEE BACKSHEESH 173 
 
 day of anxiety the proud and handsome slave came 
 in person and begged for the francs until he re- 
 ceived them. He was no better than his master, 
 the noble sheykh, who waylaid us during the re- 
 mainder of our stay for additional sixpences in 
 backsheesh. O superb Bedawee, we did not be- 
 grudge the money, but our lost ideal!
 
 VI 
 
 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 ETHLEHEM lies about seven miles 
 south of Jerusalem. It is also a hill 
 village, reposing upon a stony promon- 
 tory that is thrust out eastward from 
 the central mountain-range ; the abrupt slopes below 
 three sides of it are terraced; on the north is a 
 valley which lies in a direct line between it and 
 .Jerusalem; on the east are the yawning ravines 
 and the "wilderness" leading to the Dead Sea; 
 on the south is the wild country towards Hebron, 
 and the sharp summit of the Frank mountain in 
 the distance. The village lies on the ridge; and 
 on the point at the east end of it, overlooking a 
 vast extent of seamed and rocky and jagged coun- 
 try, is the gloomy pile of convents, chapels, and 
 churches that mark the spot of the Nativity. 
 
 From its earliest mention till now the home of 
 shepherds and of hardy cultivators of its rocky 
 hillsides, it has been noted for the free spirit and 
 turbulence of its inhabitants. The primal charac- 
 ter of a place seems to have the power of perpetu- 
 ating itself in all changes. Bethlehem never seems 
 to have been afflicted with servility. During the
 
 BETHLEHEM 175 
 
 period of David's hiding in the Cave Adullam the 
 warlike Philistines occupied it, but David was a 
 fit representative of the pluck and steadfastness of 
 its people. Since the Christian era it has been a 
 Christian town, as it is to-day, and the few Mos- 
 lems who have settled there, from time to time, 
 have found it more prudent to withdraw than to 
 brave its hostility. Its women incline to be hand- 
 some, and have rather European than Oriental fea- 
 tures, and they enjoy the reputation of unusual 
 virtue ; the men are industrious, and seem to have 
 more self-respect than the Syrians generally. 
 
 Bethlehem is to all the world one of the sweet- 
 est of words. A tender and romantic interest is 
 thrown about it as the burial-place of Rachel, as 
 the scene of Ruth's primitive story, and of David's 
 boyhood and kingly consecration ; so that no other 
 place in Judaea, by its associations, was so fit to be 
 the gate through which the Divine Child should 
 come into the world. And the traveler to-day 
 can visit it with, perhaps, less shock to his feelings 
 of reverence, certainly with a purer and simpler 
 enjoyment, than any other place in Holy Land. 
 He finds its ruggedness and desolateness pictur- 
 esque, in the light of old song and story, and even 
 the puerile inventions of monkish credulity do not 
 affect him as elsewhere. 
 
 From Jerusalem we reach Bethlehem by follow- 
 ing a curving ridge, a lovely upland ride, on 
 account of the extensive prospect and the breeze, 
 and because it is always a relief to get out of the 
 city. The country is, however, as stony as the
 
 176 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 worst portions of New England, the mountain 
 sheep-pastures; thick, double stone-walls inclos- 
 ing small fields do not begin to exhaust the stones. 
 On both sides of the ridge are bare, unproductive 
 hills, but the sides of the valleys are terraced, and 
 covered with a good growth of olive-trees. These 
 hollows were no doubt once very fruitful by as- 
 siduous cultivation, in spite of the stones. Beth- 
 lehem, as we saw it across a deep ravine, was like 
 a castle on a hill; there is nowhere level ground 
 enough for a table to stand, off the ridges, and we 
 looked in vain for the "plains of Bethlehem " about 
 which we had tried, trustfully, to sing in youth. 
 
 Within a mile of Bethlehem gate we came to 
 the tomb of Rachel, standing close by the high- 
 way. "And Rachel died, and was buried in the 
 way to Ephrath, which is Beth-lehem. And Jacob 
 set a pillar upon her grave : that is the pillar of 
 Rachel's grave unto this day." This is the testi- 
 mony of the author of Genesis, who had not seen 
 the pillar which remained to his day, but repeated 
 the tradition of the sons of Jacob. What remained 
 of this pillar, after the absence of the Israelites for 
 some five centuries from Bethlehem, is uncertain ; 
 but it may be supposed that some spot near Beth- 
 lehem was identified as the tomb of Rachel upon 
 their return, and that the present site is the one 
 then selected. It is possible, of course, that the 
 tradition of the pagan Canaanites may have pre- 
 served the recollection of the precise spot. At any 
 rate, Christians seem to agree that this is one of 
 the few ancient sites in Judaea which are authentic,
 
 THE TOMB OF RACHEL 177 
 
 and the Moslems pay it equal veneration. The 
 square, unpretentious building erected over it is of 
 modern construction, and the pilgrim has to con- 
 tent himself with looking at a sort of Moslem tomb 
 inside, and reflecting, if he can, upon the pathetic 
 story of the death of the mother of Joseph. 
 
 There is, alas ! everywhere in Judaea something 
 to drive away sentiment as well as pious feeling. 
 The tomb of Rachel is now surrounded by a Mos- 
 lem cemetery, and as we happened to be there on 
 Thursday we found ourselves in the midst of a 
 great gathering of women, who had come there, 
 according to their weekly custom, to weep and to 
 wail. 
 
 You would not see in farthest Nubia a more bar- 
 barous assemblage, and not so fierce an one. In 
 the presence of these wild mourners the term "gen- 
 tler sex " has a ludicrous sound. Yet we ought 
 not to forget that we were intruders upon their 
 periodic grief, attracted to their religious demon- 
 stration merely by curiosity, and fairly entitled to 
 nothing but scowls and signs of aversion. I am 
 sure that we should give bold Moslem intruders 
 upon our hours of sorrow at home no better recep- 
 tion. The women were in the usual Syrian cos- 
 tume ; their loose gowns gaped open at the bosom, 
 and they were without veils, and made no pretense 
 of drawing a shawl before their faces; all wore 
 necklaces of coins, and many of them had circlets 
 of coins on the head, with strips depending from 
 them, also stiff with silver pieces. A woman's 
 worth was thus easily to be reckoned, for her entire
 
 178 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 fortune was on her head. A pretty face was here 
 and there to be seen, but most of them were flar- 
 ingly ugly, and to liken them to what they most 
 resembled physically and mentally the type of 
 the North American squaws. They were accom- 
 panied by all their children, and the little brats 
 were tumbling about the tombs, and learning the 
 language of woe. 
 
 Among the hundreds of women present, the ex- 
 pression of grief took two forms, one active, the 
 other more resigned. A group seated itself about 
 a tomb, and the members swayed their bodies to 
 and fro, howled at the top of their voices, and pre- 
 tended to weep. I had the infidel curiosity to go 
 from group to group in search of a tear, but I did 
 not see one. Occasionally some interruption, like 
 the arrival of a new mourner, would cause the 
 swaying and howling to cease for a moment, or it 
 would now and then be temporarily left to the 
 woman at the head of the grave, but presently all 
 would fall to again and abandon themselves to the 
 luxury of agony. It was perhaps unreasonable to 
 expect tears from creatures so withered as most 
 of these were; but they worked themselves into a 
 frenzy of excitement, they rolled up their blue 
 checked cotton handkerchiefs, drew them across 
 their eyes, and then wrung them out with gestures 
 of despair. It was the dryest grief I ever saw. 
 
 The more active mourners formed a ring in a 
 clear spot. Some thirty women standing with their 
 faces toward the centre, their hands on each other's 
 shoulders, circled round with unrhythmic steps,
 
 MOSLEM MOURNERS 179 
 
 crying and singing, and occasionally jumping up 
 and down with all their energy, like the dancers 
 of Horace, "striking the ground with equal feet," 
 coming down upon the earth with a heavy thud, at 
 the same time slapping their faces with their hands ; 
 then circling around again with faster steps, and 
 shriller cries, and more prolonged ululations, and 
 anon pausing to jump and beat the ground with a 
 violence sufficient to shatter their frames. The 
 loose flowing robes, the clinking of the silver orna- 
 ments, the wild gleam of their eyes, the Bacchaiitic 
 madness of their saltations, the shrill shrieking 
 and wailing, conspired to give their demonstration 
 an indescribable barbarity. This scene has re- 
 curred every Thursday for, I suppose, hundreds of 
 years, within a mile of the birthplace of Jesus. 
 
 Bethlehem at a little distance presents an ap- 
 pearance that its interior does not maintain; but 
 it is so much better than most Syrian villages of 
 its size (it has a population of about three thou- 
 sand), and is so much cleaner than Jerusalem, that 
 we are content with its ancient though common- 
 place aspect. But the atmosphere of the town is 
 thoroughly commercial, or perhaps I should say 
 industrial ; you do not find in it that rural and re- 
 poseful air which you associate with the birthplace 
 of our Lord. The people are sharp, to a woman, 
 and have a keen eye for the purse of the stranger. 
 Every other house is a shop for the manufacture 
 or sale of some of the Bethlehem specialties, 
 carvings in olive-wood and ivory and mother-of- 
 pearl, crosses and crucifixes, and models of the
 
 180 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 Holy Sepulchre, and every sort of sacred trinket, 
 and beads in endless variety; a little is done also 
 in silver-work, especially in rings. One may 
 chance upon a Mecca ring there ; but the ring pe- 
 culiar to Bethlehem is a silver wedding-ring; it is 
 a broad and cingular band of silver with pendants, 
 and is worn upon the thumb. As soon as we come 
 into the town, we are beset with sellers of various 
 wares, and we never escape them except when we 
 are in the convent. 
 
 The Latin convent opens its doors to tourists ; 
 it is a hospitable house, and the monks are very 
 civil; they let us sit in a salle-a-manger, while 
 waiting for dinner, that was as damp and chill as 
 a dungeon, and they gave us a well-intended but 
 uneatable meal, and the most peculiar wine, all at 
 a good price. The wine, white and red, was made 
 by the monks, they said with some pride ; we tried 
 both kinds, and I can recommend it to the Ameri- 
 can Temperance Union : if it can be introduced to 
 the public, the public will embrace total abstinence 
 with enthusiasm. 
 
 While we were waiting for the proper hour to 
 visit the crypt of the Nativity, we went out upon 
 the esplanade before the convent, and looked down 
 into the terraced ravines which are endeared to us 
 by so many associations. Somewhere down there 
 is the patch of ground that the mighty man of 
 wealth, Boaz, owned, in which sweet Ruth went 
 gleaning in the barley -harvest. What a picture 
 of a primitive time it is, - the noonday meal of 
 Boaz and his handmaidens, Ruth invited to join
 
 THE FIELD OF BOAZ 181 
 
 them, and dip her morsel in the vinegar with the 
 rest, and the hospitable Boaz handing her parched 
 corn. We can understand why Ruth had good 
 gleaning over this stony ground, after the rakes of 
 the handmaidens. We know that her dress did not 
 differ from that worn by Oriental women now ; for 
 her "veil," which Boaz filled with six measures of 
 barley, was the head-shawl still almost universally 
 worn, though not by the Bethlehemite women. 
 Their head-dress is peculiar; there seems to be on 
 top of the head a square frame, and over this is 
 thrown and folded a piece of white cloth. The 
 women are thus in a manner crowned, and the 
 dress is as becoming as the somewhat similar head- 
 covering of the Roman peasants. We learn also 
 in the story of Ruth that the mother-in-law in her 
 day was as wise in the ways of men as she is now. 
 "Sit still, my daughter," she counseled her after 
 she returned with the veil full of barley, "until 
 thou know how the matter will fall, for the man 
 will not be in rest until he have finished the thing 
 this day." 
 
 Down there, somewhere in that wilderness of 
 ravines, David, the great-grandson of Ruth, kept 
 his father's sheep before he went to the combat 
 with Goliath. It was there the grotto is shown 
 a little more than a mile from this convent that 
 the shepherds watched their flocks by night when 
 the angel appeared and announced the birth of 
 the Messiah, the Son of David. We have here 
 within the grasp of the eye almost the beginning 
 and the end of the old dispensation, from the bur-
 
 182 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 ial of Rachel to the birth of our Lord, from the 
 passing of the wandering sheykh, Jacob, with his 
 family, to the end put to the exclusive pretensions 
 of his descendants by the coming of a Saviour to 
 all the world. 
 
 The cave called the Grotto of the Nativity has 
 great antiquity. The hand-book says it had this 
 repute as early as the second century. In the year 
 327 the mother of Constantine built a church over 
 it, and this basilica still stands, and is the oldest 
 specimen of Christian architecture in existence, 
 except perhaps the lower church of St. Clement 
 at Rome. It is the oldest basilica above ground 
 retaining its perfect ancient form. The main part 
 of the church consists of a nave and four aisles, 
 separated by four rows of Corinthian marble col- 
 umns, tradition says, taken from the temple of Sol- 
 omon. The walls were once adorned with mosaics, 
 but only fragments of them remain ; the roof is 
 decayed and leaky, the pavement is broken. This 
 part of the church is wholly neglected, because it 
 belongs to the several sects in common, and is 
 merely the arena for an occasional fight. The 
 choir is separated from the nave by a wall, and is 
 divided into two chapels, one of the Greeks, the 
 other of the Armenians. The Grotto of the Nativ- 
 ity is underneath these chapels, and each sect has 
 a separate staircase of descent to it. The Latin 
 chapel is on the north side of this choir, and it 
 also has a stairway to the subterranean apartments. 
 
 Making an effort to believe that the stable of 
 the inn in which Christ was born was a small sub-
 
 THE GROTTO OF THE NATIVITY 183 
 
 terraneaii cave cut in the solid rock, we descended 
 a winding flight of stairs from the Latin chapel, 
 with a monk for our guide, and entered a labyrinth 
 from which we did not emerge until we reached the 
 place of the nativity, and ascended into the Greek 
 chapel above it. We walked between glistening 
 walls of rock, illuminated by oil-lamps here and 
 there, and in our exploration of the gloomy pas- 
 sages and chambers, encountered shrines, pictures, 
 and tombs of the sainted. We saw, or were told 
 that we saw, the spot to which St. Joseph retired 
 at the moment of the nativity, and also the place 
 where the twenty thousand children who were 
 murdered by the order of Herod a ghastly sub- 
 ject so well improved by the painters of the Re- 
 naissance are buried. But there was one cham- 
 ber, or rather vault, that we entered with genuine 
 emotion. This was the cell of Jerome, hermit 
 and scholar, whose writings have gained him the 
 title of Father of the Church. 
 
 At the close of the fourth century Bethlehem 
 was chiefly famous as the retreat of this holy stu- 
 dent, and the fame of his learning and sanctity 
 drew to it from distant lands many faithful 
 women, who renounced the world and its plea- 
 sures, and were content to sit at his feet and learn 
 the way of life. Among those who resigned, and, 
 for his sake and the cross, despised, the allure- 
 ments and honors of the Roman world, was the 
 devout Paula, a Roman matron who traced her 
 origin from Agamemnon, and numbered the Sci- 
 pios and Gracchi among her ancestors, while her
 
 184 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 husband, Joxotius, deduced a no less royal lineage 
 from ^Eneas. Her wealth was sufficient to sup- 
 port the dignity of such a descent ; among her pos- 
 sessions, an item in her rent-roll, was the city of 
 Nicopolis, which Augustus built as a monument 
 of the victory of Actium. By the advice and in 
 the company of Jerome, her spiritual guide, she 
 abandoned Rome and all her vast estates, and even 
 her infant son, and retired to the holy village of 
 Bethlehem. The great Jerome, who wrote her bi- 
 ography, and transmitted the story of her virtues 
 to the most distant ages, bestowed upon her the 
 singular title of the Mother-in-law of God! She 
 was buried here, and we look upon her tomb with 
 scarcely less interest than that of Jerome himself, 
 who also rests in this thrice holy ground. At the 
 beginning of the fifth century, when the Goths 
 sacked Rome, a crowd of the noble and the rich, 
 escaping with nothing saved from the wreck but 
 life and honor, attracted also by the reputation of 
 Jerome, appeared as beggars in the streets of this 
 humble village. No doubt they thronged to the 
 cell of the venerable father. 
 
 There is, I suppose, no doubt that this is the 
 study in which he composed many of his more im- 
 portant treatises. It is a vaulted chamber, about 
 twenty feet square by nine feet high. There is in 
 Venice a picture of the study of Jerome, painted 
 by Carpaccio, which represents a delightful apart- 
 ment; the saint is seen in his study, in a rich ne- 
 glige robe; at the side of his desk are musical in- 
 struments, music-stands, and sheets of music, as if
 
 THE PLACE OF PLACES 185 
 
 he were accustomed to give soirees ; on the chim- 
 ney-piece are Greek vases and other objects of 
 virtu, and in the middle of the room is a poodle- 
 dog of the most worldly and useless of the canine 
 breed. The artist should have seen the real study 
 of the hermit, a grim, unornamented vault, in 
 which he passed his days in mortifications of the 
 body, hearing always ringing in his ears, in his 
 disordered mental and physical condition, the last 
 trump of judgment. 
 
 We passed, groping our way along in this reli- 
 gious cellar, through a winding, narrow passage in 
 the rock, some twenty -five feet long, and came into 
 the place of places, the very Chapel of the Na- 
 tivity. In this low vault, thirty-eight feet long 
 and eleven feet wide, hewn in the rock, is an altar 
 at one end. Before this altar and we can see 
 everything with distinctness, for sixteen silver 
 lamps are burning about it there is a marble 
 slab in the pavement into which is let a silver star, 
 with this sentence round it : Hie de Viryine Maria 
 Jesus Christus natus est. The guardian of this 
 sacred spot was a Turkish soldier, who stood there 
 with his gun and fixed bayonet, an attitude which 
 experience has taught him is necessary to keep the 
 peace among the Christians who meet here. The 
 altar is without furniture, and is draped by each 
 sect which uses it in turn. Near by is the chapel 
 of the "manger," but the manger in which Christ 
 was laid is in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore 
 in Rome. 
 
 There is in Bethlehem another ancient cave
 
 186 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 which is almost as famous as that of the Nativity ; 
 it is called the Milk Grotto, and during all ages of 
 the Church a most marvelous virtue has attached 
 to it; fragments of the stone have been, and still 
 continue to be, broken off and sent into all Chris- 
 tian countries ; women also make pilgrimages to it 
 in faith. The grotto is on the edge of the town 
 overlooking the eastern ravines, and is arranged 
 as a show-place. In our walk thither a stately 
 Bedawee, as by accident, fell into our company, 
 and acted as our cicerone. He was desirous that 
 we should know that he also was a man of the 
 world and of travel, and rated at its proper value 
 this little corner of the earth. He had served in 
 the French army and taken part in many battles, 
 and had been in Paris and seen the tomb of the 
 great emperor, ah, there was a man! As to this 
 grotto, they say that the Virgin used to send to it 
 for milk, many think so. As for him, he was a 
 soldier, and did not much give his mind to such 
 things. 
 
 This grotto is an excavation in the chalky rock, 
 and might be a very good place to store milk, but 
 for the popular prejudice in cities against chalk 
 and water. We entered it through the court of a 
 private house, and the damsel who admitted us also 
 assured us that the Virgin procured milk from it. 
 The tradition is that the Virgin and Child were 
 concealed here for a time before the flight into 
 Egypt; and ever since then its stone has the mi- 
 raculous power of increasing the flow of the mater- 
 nal breast. The early fathers encouraged this and
 
 THE WELL OF BETHLEHEM 187 
 
 the like superstitions in the docile minds of their 
 fair converts, and themselves testified to the efficacy 
 of this remarkable stone. These superstitions be- 
 long rather to the Orient than to any form of reli- 
 gion. There is a famous spring at Assiout in 
 Egypt which was for centuries much resorted to by 
 ladies who desired offspring; and the Arabs on the 
 Upper Nile to-day, who wish for an heir male, re- 
 sort to a plant which grows in the remote desert, 
 rare and difficult to find, the leaves of which are 
 "good for boys." This grotto scarcely repays the 
 visit, except for the view one obtains of the wild 
 country below it. When we bade good-by to the 
 courtly Arab, we had too much delicacy to offer 
 money to such a gentleman and a soldier of the 
 empire; a delicacy not shared by him, however, 
 for he let no false modesty hinder a reediest for a 
 little backsheesh for tobacco. 
 
 On our return, and at some distance from the 
 gate, we diverged into a lane, and sought, in a 
 rocky field, the traditional well whose waters David 
 longed for when he was in the Cave of Adullam, 
 " O that one would give me drink of the water 
 of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate! " 
 Howbeit, when the three mighty men had broken 
 through the Philistine guards and procured him 
 the water, David would not drink that which was 
 brought at such a sacrifice. Two very comely 
 Bethlehem girls hastened at our approach to draw 
 water from the well and gave us to drink, with all 
 the freedom of Oriental hospitality, in which there 
 is always an expectation of backsheesh. The
 
 188 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 water is at any rate very good, and there is no 
 reason why these pretty girls should not turn an 
 honest penny upon the strength of David's thirst, 
 whether this be the well whose water he desired or 
 not. We were only too thankful that no miracu- 
 lous property is attributed to its waters. As we 
 returned, we had the evening light upon the gray 
 walls and towers of the city, and were able to in- 
 vest it with something of its historical dignity. 
 
 The next excursion that we made from Jerusa- 
 lem was so different from the one to Bethlehem, 
 that by way of contrast I put them together. It 
 was to the convent of Mar Saba, which lies in the 
 wilderness towards the Dead Sea, about two hours 
 and a half from the city. 
 
 In those good old days, when piety was mea- 
 sured by frugality in the use of the bath, when 
 the holy fathers praised most those hermits who 
 washed least, when it might perhaps be the boast 
 of more than one virgin, devoted to the ascetic 
 life, that she had lived fifty-eight years during 
 which water had touched neither her hands, her 
 face, her feet, nor any part of her body, Palestine 
 was, after Egypt, the favorite resort of the fanat- 
 ical, the unfortunate, and the lazy, who, gathered 
 into communities or dwelling in solitary caves, 
 offered to the barbarian world a spectacle of super- 
 stition and abasement under the name of Christian- 
 ity. But of the swarm of hermits and monks who 
 begged in the cities and burrowed in the caves of 
 the Holy Land in the fifth centiiry, no one may 
 perhaps be spoken of with more respect than St.
 
 THE CONVENT OF MAR SABA 189 
 
 Sabas, who, besides a reputation for sanctity, has 
 left that of manliness and a virile ability, which 
 his self-mortifications did not extirpate.. And of 
 all the monasteries of that period, that of Mar 
 Saba is the only one in Judaea which has preserved 
 almost unbroken the type of that time. St. Sabas 
 was a Cappadocian who came to Palestine in search 
 of a permanent retreat, savage enough to satisfy 
 his austere soul. He found it in a cave in one of 
 the wildest gorges in this most desolate of lands, a 
 ravine which opens into the mountains from the 
 brook Kidron. The fame of his zeal and piety at- 
 tracted thousands to his neighborhood, so that at 
 one time there were almost as many hermits roost- 
 ing about in the rocks near him as there are inhab- 
 itants in the city of Jerusalem now. He was once 
 enabled to lead an army of monks to that city and 
 chastise the Monophysite heretics. His cave in 
 the steep side of a rocky precipice became the nu- 
 cleus of his convent, which grew around it and at- 
 tached itself to the face of the rock as best it could. 
 For the convent of Mar Saba is not a building, 
 nor a collection of buildings, so much as it is a 
 group of nests attached to the side of a precipice. 
 
 It was a bright Saturday afternoon that a young- 
 divinity student and I, taking the volatile Deme- 
 trius with us for interpreter, rode out of St. Ste- 
 phen's gate, into Jehoshaphat, past the gray field 
 of Jewish graves, down through Tophet and the 
 wild ravine of the Kidron. 
 
 It is unpleasant to interrupt the prosperous start 
 of a pilgrimage by a trifling incident, but at our
 
 190 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 first descent and the slightest tension on the bridle- 
 reins of my horse, they parted from the bit. This 
 accident, which might be serious in other lands, is 
 of the sort that is anticipated here, and I may say 
 assured, by the forethought of the owners of sad- 
 dle-horses. Upon dismounting with as much haste 
 as dignity, I discovered that the reins had been 
 fastened to the bit by a single rotten string of cot- 
 ton. Luckily the horse I rode was not an animal 
 to take advantage of the weakness of his toggery. 
 He was a Syrian horse, a light sorrel, and had no 
 one of the good points of a horse except the name 
 and general shape. His walk was slow and re- 
 luctant, his trot a high and non-progressive jolt, 
 his gallop a large up-and-down agitation. To his 
 bridle of strings and shreds no martingale was at- 
 tached; no horse in Syria is subject to that re- 
 straint. When I pull the bit he sticks up his nose ; 
 when I switch him he kicks. When I hold him 
 in, he won't go; when I let him loose, he goes on 
 his nose. I dismount and look at him with curi- 
 osity; I wonder all the journey what his forte is, 
 but I never discover. I conclude that he is like 
 the emperor Honorius, whom Gibbon stigmatizes 
 as "without passions, and consequently without 
 talents." 
 
 Yet he was not so bad as the roads, and perhaps 
 no horse would do much better on these stony and 
 broken foot-paths. This horse is not a model (for 
 anything but a clothes-horse), but from my obser- 
 vation I think that great injustice has been done 
 to Syrian horses by travelers, who have only them-
 
 SYRIAN HORSES 191 
 
 selves to blame for accidents which bring the horses 
 into disrepute. Travelers are thrown from these 
 steeds ; it is a daily occurrence ; we heard contin- 
 ually that somebody had a fall from his horse 
 on his way to the Jordan, or to Mar Saba, or to 
 Nablous, and was laid up, and it was always in 
 consequence of a vicious brute. The fact is that 
 excellent ministers of the gospel and doctors of 
 divinity and students of the same, who have never 
 in their lives been on the back of a horse in any 
 other land, seem to think when they come here that 
 the holy air of Palestine will transform them into 
 accomplished horsemen ; or perhaps they are emu- 
 lous of Elisha, that they may go to heaven by 
 means of a fiery steed. 
 
 For a while we had the company of the singing 
 brook Kidron, flowing clear over the stones; then 
 we left the ravine and wound over rocky steeps, 
 which afforded us fine views of broken hills and 
 interlacing ridges, and when we again reached the 
 valley the brook had disappeared in the thirsty 
 ground. The road is strewn, not paved, with 
 stones, and in many places hardly practicable for 
 horses. Occasionally we encountered flocks of 
 goats and of long - wooled sheep feeding on the 
 scant grass of the hills, and tended by boys in the 
 coarse brown and striped garments of the country, 
 which give a state-prison aspect to most of the in- 
 habitants, but there was no other life, and no 
 trees offer relief to the hard landscape. But the 
 way was now and then bright with flowers, thickly 
 carpeted with scarlet anemones, the Star of Beth-
 
 192 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 lehem, and tiny dandelions. Two hours from the 
 city we passed several camps of Bedaween, their 
 brown low camel's-hair tents pitched among the 
 rocks and scarcely distinguishable in the sombre 
 landscape. About the tents were grouped camels 
 and donkeys, and from them issued and pursued 
 us begging boys and girls. A lazy Bedawee ap- 
 peared here and there with a long gun, and we 
 could imagine that this gloomy region might be 
 unsafe after nightfall; but no danger ever seems 
 possible in such bright sunshine and under a sky 
 so blue and friendly. 
 
 When a half hour from the convent, we turned 
 to the right from the road to the Dead Sea, and 
 ascending a steep hill found ourselves riding along 
 the edge of a deep winding gorge; a brook flows 
 at the bottom, and its sides are sheer precipices of 
 rock, generally parallel, but occasionally widening 
 into amphitheatres of the most fantastic rocky 
 formation. It is on one side of this narrow ravine 
 that the convent is built, partly excavated in the 
 rock, partly resting on jutting ledges, and partly 
 hung out in the form of balconies, buildings 
 clinging to the steep side like a comb of wild bees 
 or wasps to a rock. 
 
 Our first note of approach to it was the sight of 
 a square tower and of the roofs of buildings below 
 us. Descending from the road by several short 
 turns, and finally by two steep paved inclines, we 
 came .to a lofty wall in which is a small iron door. 
 As we could go no farther without aid from within, 
 Demetrius shouted, and soon we had a response
 
 INHOSPITABLE MONKS 193 
 
 from a slit in the wall fifty feet above us to the 
 left. We could see no one, but the voice de- 
 manded who we were, and whether we had a pass. 
 Above the slit from which the angelic voice pro- 
 ceeded a stone projected, and in this was an open- 
 ing for letting down or drawing up articles. This 
 habit of caution in regard to who or what shall 
 come into the convent is of course a relic of the 
 gone ages of tumult, but it is still necessaiy as a 
 safeguard against the wandering Bedaween, who 
 would no doubt find means to plunder the convent 
 of its great wealth of gold, silver, and jewels if 
 they were not at all times rigorously excluded. 
 The convent with its walls and towers is still a for- 
 tress strong enough to resist any irregular attempts 
 of the wandering tribes. It is also necessary to 
 strictly guard the convent against women, who in 
 these days of speculation, if not scientific curiosity, 
 often knock impatiently and angrily at its gates, 
 and who, if admitted, would in one gay and chatty 
 hour destroy the spell of holy seclusion which has 
 been imbroken for one thousand three hundred and 
 ninety-two years. I know that sometimes it seems 
 an unjust ordination of Providence that a woman 
 cannot be a man, but I cannot join those who up- 
 braid the monks of Mar Saba for inhospitality be- 
 cause they refuse to admit women under any cir- 
 cumstances into the precincts of the convent ; if I 
 do not sympathize with the brothers, I can under- 
 stand their adhesion to the last shred of man's 
 independence, which is only to be maintained by 
 absolute exclusion of the other sex. It is not neces-
 
 194 BETHLEHEM AND MAE SABA 
 
 sary to revive the defamation of the early Christian 
 ages, that the devil appeared oftener to the hermit 
 in the form of a beautiful woman than in any 
 other ; but we may not regret that there is still one 
 spot on the face of the earth, if it is no bigger than 
 the sod upon which Noah's pioneer dove alighted, 
 in which weak men may be safe from the tempta- 
 tion, the criticism, and the curiosity of the superior 
 being. There is an airy tower on the rocks out- 
 side the walls which women may occupy if they 
 cannot restrain their desire to lodge in this neigh- 
 borhood, or if night overtakes them here on their 
 way from the Dead Sea; there Madame Pfeiffer, 
 Miss Martineau, and other famous travelers of 
 their sex have found refuge, and I am sorry to say 
 abused their proximity to this retreat of shuddering 
 man by estimating the piety of its inmates accord- 
 ing to their hospitality to women. So far as I can 
 learn, this convent of Mar Saba is now the only 
 retreat left on this broad earth for MAN ; and it 
 seems to me only reasonable that it should be re- 
 spected by his generous and gentle, though inquis- 
 itive foe. 
 
 After further parley with Demetrius and a con- 
 siderable interval, we heard a bell ring, and in a 
 few moments the iron door opened, and we en- 
 tered, stepping our horses carefully over the stone 
 threshold, and showing our pass from the Jerusa- 
 lem Patriarch to an attendant, and came into a 
 sort of stable hewn in the rock. Here we aban- 
 doned our horses, and were taken in charge by a 
 monk whom the bell had summoned from below.
 
 FASTING IN MAR SABA 195 
 
 He conducted us down several long flights of zig- 
 zag stairs in the rock, amid hanging buildings and 
 cells, until we came to what appears to be a broad 
 ledge in the precipice, and found ourselves in the 
 central part of this singular hive, that is, in a 
 small court, with cells and rocks on one side and 
 the convent church, which overhangs the precipice, 
 on the other. Beside the church and also at an- 
 other side of the court are buildings in which pil- 
 grims are lodged, and in the centre of the court is 
 the tomb of St. Sabas himself. Here our passports 
 were examined, and we were assigned a cheerful 
 and airy room looking upon the court and tomb. 
 
 One of the brothers soon brought us coffee, and 
 the promptness of this hospitality augured well for 
 the remainder of our fare ; relying upon the repu- 
 tation of the convent for good cheer, we had 
 brought nothing with us, not so much as a biscuit. 
 Judge of our disgust, then, at hearing the follow- 
 ing dialogue between Demetrius and the Greek 
 monk. 
 
 "What time can the gentlemen dine? " 
 
 "Any time they like." 
 
 "What have you for dinner?" 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "You can give us no dinner? " 
 
 " To be sure not. It is fast." 
 
 "But we haven't a morsel, we shall starve." 
 
 "Perhaps I can find a little bread." 
 
 "Nothing else?" 
 
 "We have very good raisins." 
 
 "Well," we interposed, "kill us a chicken, give
 
 196 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 us a few oysters, stewed or broiled, we are not 
 particular." This levity, which was born of des- 
 peration, for the jolting ride from Jerusalem had 
 indisposed us to keep a fast, especially a fast estab- 
 lished by a church the orthodoxy of whose creed 
 we had strong reasons to doubt, did not affect the 
 monk. He replied, "Chicken! it is impossible." 
 We shrunk our requisition to eggs. 
 
 "If I can find an egg, I will see." And the 
 brother departed, with carte blanche from us to 
 squeeze his entire establishment. 
 
 Alas, fasting is not in Mar Saba what it is in 
 New England, where an appointed fast-day is 
 hailed as an opportunity to forego lunch in order 
 to have an extraordinary appetite for a better din- 
 ner than usual ! 
 
 The tomb of St. Sabas, the central worship of 
 this hive, is a little plastered hut in the middle of 
 the court; the interior is decorated with pictures 
 in the Byzantine style, and a lamp is always burn- 
 ing there. As we stood at the tomb we heard 
 voices chanting, and, turning towards the rock, we 
 saw a door from which the sound came. Pushing 
 it open, we were admitted into a large chapel, ex- 
 cavated in the rock. The service of vespers was 
 in progress, and a band of Russian pilgrims were 
 chanting in rich bass voices, producing more mel- 
 ody than I had ever heard in a Greek church. 
 The excavation extends some distance into the hill ; 
 we were shown the cells of St. John of Damascus 
 and other hermits, and at the end a charnel-house 
 piled full of the bones of men. In the dim light
 
 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS 197 
 
 their skulls grinned at us in a horrid familiarity; 
 in that ghastly jocularity which a skull always puts 
 on, with a kind of mocking commentary upon the 
 strong chant of the pilgrims, which reverberated in 
 all the recesses of the gloomy cave, fresh, hearty 
 voices, such as these skulls have heard (if they can 
 hear) for many centuries. The pilgrims come, and 
 chant, and depart, generation after generation ; the 
 bones and skulls of the fourteen thousand mar- 
 tyrs in this charnel-bin enjoy a sort of repulsive 
 immortality. The monk, who was our guide, ap- 
 peared to care no more for the remains of the mar- 
 tyrs than for the presence of the pilgrims. In vis- 
 iting such storehouses one cannot but be struck by 
 the light familiarity with the relics and insignia of 
 death which the monks have acquired. 
 
 This St. John of Damascus, whose remains re- 
 pose here, was a fiery character in his day, and 
 favored by a special miracle before he became a 
 saint. He so distinguished himself by his invec- 
 tives against Leo and Constantine and other icono- 
 clast emperors at Constantinople who, in the eighth 
 century, attempted to extirpate image - worship 
 from the Catholic Church, that he was sentenced 
 to lose his right hand. The story is that it was 
 instantly restored by the Virgin Mary. It is 
 worthy of note that the superstitious Orient more 
 readily gave up idolatry or image-worship under 
 the Moslems than under the Christians. 
 
 As the sun was setting we left the pilgrims 
 chanting to the martyrs, and hastened to explore 
 the premises a little, before the light should fade.
 
 198 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 We followed our guide up stairs and down stairs, 
 sometimes cut in the stone, sometimes wooden 
 stairways, along hanging galleries, through corri- 
 dors hewn in the rock, amid cells and little chap- 
 els, a most intricate labyrinth, in which the 
 uninitiated would soon lose his way. Here and 
 there we came suddenly upon a little garden spot 
 as big as a bed-blanket, a ledge upon which soil 
 had been deposited. We walked also under grape- 
 trellises, we saw orange-trees, and the single palm- 
 tree that the convent boasts, said to have been 
 planted by St. Sabas himself. The plan of this 
 establishment gradually developed itself to us. It 
 differs from an ordinary convent chiefly in this, 
 the latter is spread out flat on the earth, Mar 
 Saba is set up edgewise. Put Mar Saba on a 
 plain, and these little garden spots and graperies 
 would be courts and squares amid buildings, these 
 galleries would be bridges, these cells or horizon- 
 tal caves would be perpendicular tombs and reser- 
 voirs. 
 
 When we arrived, we supposed that we were 
 almost the only guests. But we found that the 
 place was full of Greek and Russian pilgrims ; we 
 encountered them on the terraces, on the flat roofs, 
 in the caves, and in all out-of-the-way nooks. Yet 
 these were not the most pleasing nor the most ani- 
 mated tenants of the place ; wherever we went the 
 old rookery was made cheerful by the twittering 
 notes of black birds with yellow wings, a species of 
 grakle, which the monks have domesticated, and 
 which breed in great numbers. Steeled as these
 
 AN ORIENTAL DINNER 199 
 
 good brothers are against the other sex, we were 
 glad to discover this streak of softness in their na- 
 ture. High up on the precipice there is a bell- 
 tower attached to a little chapel, and in it hang 
 twenty small bells, which are rung to call the in- 
 mates to prayer. Even at this height, and indeed 
 wherever we penetrated, we were followed by the 
 monotonous chant which issued from the charnel- 
 house. 
 
 We passed by a long row of cells occupied by 
 the monks, but were not permitted to look into 
 them; nor were we allowed to see the library, 
 which is said to be rich in illuminated manuscripts. 
 The convent belongs to the Greek Church; its 
 monks take the usual vows of poverty, chastity, 
 and obedience, and fortify themselves in their holi- 
 ness by opposing walls of adamant to all woman- 
 kind. There are about fifty monks here at present, 
 and uncommonly fine-looking fellows, not at all 
 the gross and greasy sort of monk that is sometimes 
 met. Their outward dress is very neat, consisting 
 of a simple black gown and a round, high, flat- 
 topped black cap. 
 
 Our dinner, when it was brought into our apart- 
 ment, answered very well one's idea of a dessert, 
 but it was a very good Oriental dinner. The chief 
 articles were a piece of hard black bread, and two 
 boiled eggs, cold, and probably brought by some 
 pilgrim from Jerusalem; but besides, there were 
 raisins, cheese, figs, oranges, a bottle of golden 
 wine, and tea. The wine was worthy to be cele- 
 brated in classic verse ; none so good is, I am sure,
 
 200 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 made elsewhere in Syria; it was liquid sunshine; 
 and as it was manufactured by the monks, it gave 
 us a new respect for their fastidious taste. 
 
 The vaulted chamber which we occupied was 
 furnished on three sides with a low divan, which 
 answered the double purpose of chairs and couch. 
 On one side, however, and elevated in the wall, 
 was a long niche, exactly like the recessed tombs 
 in cathedrals, upon which, toes turned up, lie the 
 bronze or wooden figures of the occupants. This 
 was the bed of honor. It was furnished with a 
 mattress and a thick counterpane having one sheet 
 sewed to it. With reluctance I accepted the dis- 
 tinction of climbing into it, and there I slept, laid 
 out, for all the world, like my own effigy. From 
 the ceiling hung a dim oil-lamp, which cast a 
 gloom rather than a light upon our sepulchral place 
 of repose. Our windows looked out towards the 
 west, upon the court, upon the stairs, upon the ter- 
 races, roofs, holes, caves, grottos, wooden balco- 
 nies, bird-cages, steps entering the rock and leading 
 to cells ; and, towards the south, along the jagged 
 precipice. The convent occupies the precipice 
 from the top nearly to the bottom of the ravine ; 
 the precipice opposite is nearly perpendicular, 
 close at hand, and permits no view in that direc- 
 tion. Heaven is the only object in sight from this 
 retreat. 
 
 Before the twilight fell the chanting was still 
 going on in the cavern, monks and pilgrims were 
 gliding about the court, and numbers of the latter 
 were clustered in the vestibule of the church, m
 
 NIGHT IN THE CONVENT 201 
 
 which they were settling down to lodge for the 
 night ; and high above us I saw three gaudily at- 
 tired Bedaween, who had accompanied some travel- 
 ers from the Dead Sea, leaning over the balustrade 
 of the stairs, and regarding the scene with Moslem 
 complacency. The hive settled slowly to rest. 
 
 But the place was by no means still at night. 
 There was in the court an old pilgrim who had 
 brought a cough from the heart of Russia, who 
 seemed to be trying to cough himself inside out. 
 There were other noises that could not be ex- 
 plained. There was a good deal of clattering 
 about in wooden shoes. Every sound was multi- 
 plied and reduplicated from the echoing rocks. 
 The strangeness of the situation did not conduce 
 to sleep, not even to an effigy-like repose; but 
 after looking from the window upon the march of 
 the quiet stars, after watching the new moon dis- 
 appear between the roofs, and after seeing that 
 the door of St. Sabas's tomb was closed, although 
 his light was still burning, I turned in ; and after 
 a time, during which I was conscious that not 
 even vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are 
 respected by fleas, I fell into a light sleep. 
 
 From this I was aroused by a noise that seemed 
 like the call to judgment, by the most clamorous 
 jangle of discordant bells, all the twenty were 
 ringing at once, and each in a different key. It 
 was not simply a din, it was an earthquake of 
 sound. The peals were echoed from the opposite 
 ledges, and reverberated among the rocks and 
 caves and sharp angles of the convent, until the
 
 202 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 crash was intolerable. It was worse than the 
 slam, bang, shriek, clang, clash, roar, dissonance, 
 thunder, and hurricane with which all musicians 
 think it absolutely necessary to close any overture, 
 symphony, or musical composition whatever, how- 
 ever decent and quiet it may be. It was enough 
 to rouse the deafest pilgrim, to wake the dead 
 martyrs and set the fourteen thousand skulls hunt- 
 ing for their bones, to call even St. Sabas himself 
 from his tomb. I arose. I saw in the starlight 
 figures moving about the court, monks in their 
 simple black gowns. It was, I comprehended 
 then, the call to midnight prayer in the chapel, 
 and, resolved not to be disturbed further by it, I 
 climbed back into my tomb. 
 
 But the clamor continued ; I heard such a clatter 
 of hobnailed shoes on the pavement, besides, that 
 I could bear it no longer, got up, slipped into some 
 of my clothes, opened the door, and descended by 
 our winding private stairway into the court. 
 
 The door of St. Sabas's tomb was wide open! 
 
 Were the graves opening, and the dead taking 
 the air? Did this tomb open of its own accord? 
 Out of its illuminated interior would the saint 
 stalk forth and join this great procession, the re- 
 veille of the quick and the slow? 
 
 From above and from below, up stairs and down 
 stairs, out of caves and grottos and all odd roost- 
 ing-places, the monks and pilgrims were pouring 
 and streaming into the court ; and the bells inces- 
 santly called more and more importunately as the 
 loiterers delayed.
 
 MIDNIGHT PRAYER 203 
 
 The church was open, and lighted at the altar 
 end. I glided in with the other ghostly, hastily 
 clad, and yawning pilgrims. The screen at the 
 apse before the holy place, a mass of silver and 
 gilding, sparkled in the candlelight ; the cross above 
 it gleamed like a revelation out of the gloom ; but 
 half of the church was in heavy shadow. From 
 the penetralia came the sound of priestly chant- 
 ing: in the wooden stalls along each side of the 
 church stood, facing the altar, the black and mo- 
 tionless figures of the brothers. The pilgrims 
 were crowding and jostling in at the door. A 
 brother gave me a stall near the door, and I stood 
 in it, as statue-like as I could, and became a 
 brother for the time being. 
 
 At the left of the door stood a monk with impas- 
 sive face; before him on a table were piles of wax 
 tapers and a solitary lighted candle. Every pil- 
 grim who entered bought a taper and paid two cop- 
 pers for it. If he had not the change the monk 
 gave him change, and the pilgrim carefully 
 counted what he received and objected to any piece 
 he thought not current. You may wake these 
 people up any time of night, and find their percep- 
 tions about money unobscured. The seller never 
 looked at the buyer, nor at anything except the 
 tapers and the money. 
 
 The pilgrims were of all ages and grades : very 
 old men, stout middle-aged men, and young ath- 
 letic fellows; there were Russians from all the 
 provinces; Greeks from the isles, with long black 
 locks and dark eyes, in fancy embroidered jackets
 
 204 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 and leggins, swarthy bandits and midnight pirates 
 in appearance. But it tends to make anybody 
 look like a pirate to wake him up at twelve o'clock 
 at night, and haul him into the light with no time 
 to comb his hair. I dare say that I may have ap- 
 peared to these honest people like a Western land- 
 pirate. And yet I should rather meet some of 
 those Greeks in a lighted church than outside the 
 walls at midnight. 
 
 Each pilgrim knelt and bowed himself, then 
 lighted his taper and placed it on one of the tripods 
 before the screen. In time the church was very 
 fairly illuminated, and nearly filled with standing 
 worshipers, bowing, crossing themselves, and re- 
 sponding to the reading and chanting in low mur- 
 murs. The chanting was a very nasal intoning, 
 usually slow, but now and then breaking into a 
 lively gallop. The assemblage, quiet and respect- 
 ful, but clad in all the vagaries of Oriental colors 
 and rags, contained some faces that appeared very 
 wild in the half light. When the service had 
 gone on half an hour, a priest came out with a 
 tinkling censer and incensed carefully every nook 
 and corner and person (even the vestibule, where 
 some of the pilgrims slept, which needed it), until 
 the church was filled with smoke and perfume. 
 The performance went on for an hour or more, but 
 I crept back to bed long before it was over, and 
 fell to sleep on the drone of the intoning. 
 
 We were up before sunrise on Sunday morning. 
 The pilgrims were already leaving for Jerusalem. 
 There was no trace of the last night's revelry;
 
 THE CELL OF ST. SABAS 205 
 
 everything was commonplace in the bright day- 
 light. We were served with coffee, and then 
 finished our exploration of the premises. 
 
 That which we had postponed as the most inter- 
 esting sight was the cell of St. Sabas. It is a nat- 
 ural grotto in the rock, somewhat enlarged either 
 by the saint or by his successors. When St. Sabas 
 first came to this spot, he found a lion in posses- 
 sion. It was not the worst kind of a lion, but a 
 sort of Judaean lion, one of tl\ose meek beasts over 
 whom the ancient hermits had so much control. 
 St. Sabas looked at the cave and at the lion, but 
 the cave suited him better than the lion. The lion 
 looked at the saint, and evidently knew what was 
 passing in his mind. For the lions in those days 
 were nearly as intelligent as anybody else. And 
 then St. Sabas told the lion to go away, that he 
 wanted that lodging for himself. And the lion, 
 without a growl, put his tail down, and immedi- 
 ately went away. There is a picture of this inter- 
 view still preserved at the convent, and any one 
 can see that it is probable that such a lion as the 
 artist has represented would move on when re- 
 quested to do so. 
 
 In the cave is a little recess, the entrance to 
 which is a small hole, a recess just large enough 
 to accommodate a person in a sitting posture. In 
 this place St. Sabas sat for seven years, without 
 once coming out. That was before the present 
 walls were built in front of the grotto, and he had 
 some light, he sat seven years on that hard 
 stone, as long as the present French Assembly in-
 
 206 BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA 
 
 tends to sit. It was with him also a provisional 
 sitting, in fact, a Septennate. 
 
 In the court-yard, as we were departing, were 
 displayed articles to sell to the pious pilgrims: 
 canes from the Jordan; crosses painted, and in- 
 laid with cedar or olive wood, or some sort of Jor- 
 dan timber ; rude paintings of the sign -board order 
 done by the monks, St. George and the Dragon 
 being the favorite subject; hyperbolical pictures 
 of the convent and the saint, stamped in black 
 upon cotton cloth; and holy olive-oil in tin cans. 
 
 Perhaps the most taking article of merchandise 
 offered was dates from the palm-tree that St. Sabas 
 planted. These dates have no seeds. There was 
 something appropriate about this ; childless monks, 
 seedless dates. One could understand that. But 
 these dates were bought by the pilgrims to carry 
 to their wives who desire but have not sons. By 
 what reasoning the monks have convinced them 
 that fruitless dates will be a cause of fruitfulness, 
 I do not know. 
 
 We paid our tribute, climbed up the stairways 
 and out the grim gate into the highway, and had 
 a glorious ride in the fresh morning air, the way 
 enlivened by wild - flowers, blue sky, Bedaween, 
 and troops of returning pilgrims, and finally en- 
 nobled by the sight of Jerusalem itself, conspicu- 
 ous on its hill.
 
 vn 
 
 THE FAIR OF MOSES ; THE ARMENIAN 
 PATRIARCH 
 
 HE Moslems believe that their religion 
 superseded Judaism and Christianity, 
 Mohammed closing- the culminating 
 series of six great prophets, Adam, 
 Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, 
 and that they have a right to administer on the ef- 
 fects of both. They appropriate our sacred history 
 and embellish it without the least scruple, assume 
 exclusive right to our sacred places, and enroll in 
 their own calendar all our notable heroes and 
 saints. 
 
 On the 16th of April was inaugurated in Jeru- 
 salem the/ e#e and fair of the Prophet Moses. The 
 fair is held yearly at Neby Miisa, a Moslem wely, 
 in the wilderness of Judaea, some three or four 
 hours from Jerusalem on a direct line to the Dead 
 Sea. There Moses, according to the Moslem tra- 
 dition, was buried, and thither the faithful resort 
 in great crowds at this anniversary, and hold a 
 four days' fair. 
 
 At midnight the air was humming with prepa- 
 rations ; the whole city buzzed like a hive about to
 
 208 THE FAIR OF MOSES 
 
 swarm. For many days pilgrims had been gather- 
 ing for this festival, coming in on all the moun- 
 tain roads, from Gath and Askalon, from Hebron, 
 from Nablous and Jaffa, pilgrims as zealous and 
 as ragged as those that gather to the Holy Sepul- 
 chre and on the banks of the Jordan. In the early 
 morning we heard the pounding of drums, the clash 
 of cymbals, the squeaking of fifes, and an occa- 
 sional gun, let off as it were by accident, very 
 much like the dawn of a Fourth of July at home. 
 Processions were straggling about the streets, ap- 
 parently lost, like ward-delegations in search of 
 the beginning of St. Patrick's Day; a disorderly 
 scramble of rags and color, a rabble hustling along 
 without step or order, preceded usually by half a 
 dozen enormous flags, green, red, yellow, and 
 blue, embroidered with various devices and texts 
 from the Koran, which hung lifeless on their 
 staves, but grouped in mass made as lively a study 
 of color as a bevy of sails of the Chioggia fishing- 
 boats flocking into the port of Venice at sunrise. 
 Before the banners walked the musicians, filling 
 the narrow streets with a fearful uproar of rude 
 drums and cymbals. These people seem to have 
 inherited the musical talent of the ancient Jews, 
 and to have the same passion for noise and discord. 
 As the procession would not move to the Tomb 
 of Moses until afternoon, we devoted the morning 
 to a visit to the Armenian Patriarch. Isaac, arch- 
 bishop, and by the grace of God Patriarch of the 
 Armenians of Jerusalem, occupant of the holy 
 apostolic seat of St. James (the Armenian convent
 
 THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCH 209 
 
 stands upon the traditional site of the martyrdom 
 of St. James), claims to be the spiritual head of 
 five millions of Armenians, in Turkey, Syria, Pal- 
 estine, India, and Persia. By firman from the 
 Sultan, the Copts and the Syrian and the Abys- 
 sinian Christians are in some sort under his juris- 
 diction, but the authority is merely nominal. 
 
 The reception-room of the convent is a handsome 
 hall (for Jerusalem), extending over an archway 
 of the street below and looking upon a garden. 
 The walls are hung with engravings and litho- 
 graphs, most of them portraits of contemporary 
 sovereigns and princes of Europe, in whose august 
 company the Patriarch seems to like to sun himself. 
 We had not to wait long before he appeared and 
 gave us a courteous and simple welcome. As soon 
 as he learned that we were Americans, he said that 
 he had something that he thought would interest 
 us, and going to his table took out of the drawer 
 an old number of an American periodical contain- 
 ing a portrait of an American publisher, which he 
 set great store by. We congratulated him upon 
 his possession of this treasure, and expressed our 
 passionate fondness for this sort of thing, for we 
 soon discovered the delight the Patriarch took in 
 pictures and especially in portraits, and not least 
 in photographs of himself in the full regalia of his 
 sacred office. And with reason, for he is probably 
 the handsomest potentate in the world. He is a 
 tall, finely proportioned man of fifty years, and 
 his deportment exhibits that happy courtesy which 
 is born of the love of approbation and a kindly
 
 210 THE FAIR OF MOSES 
 
 opinion of self. He was clad in the black cloak 
 with the pointed hood of the convent, which made 
 a fine contrast to his long, full beard, turning 
 white; his complexion is fair, white and red, and 
 his eyes are remarkably pleasant and benignant. 
 
 The languages at the command of the Patriarch 
 are two, the Armenian and the Turkish, and we 
 were obliged to communicate with him through the 
 medium of the latter, Abd-el-Atti acting as inter- 
 preter. How much Turkish our dragoman knew, 
 and how familiar his holiness is with it, we could 
 not tell, but the conversation went on briskly, as 
 it always does when Abd-el-Atti has control of it. 
 When we had exhausted what the Patriarch knew 
 about America and what we knew about Armenia, 
 which did not take long (it was astonishing how 
 few things in all this world of things we knew in 
 common), we directed the conversation upon what 
 we supposed would be congenial and common 
 ground, the dogma of the Trinity and the point of 
 difference between the Armenian and the Latin 
 Church. I cannot say that we acquired much light 
 on the subject, though probably we did better than 
 disputants usually do on this topic. We had some 
 signal advantages. The questions and answers, 
 strained through the Turkish language, were 
 robbed of all salient and noxious points, and solved 
 themselves without difficulty. Thus, the " Filio- 
 que clause " offered no subtle distinctions to the 
 Moslem mind of Abd-el-Atti, and he presented it 
 to the Patriarch, I have 110 doubt, with perfect 
 clarity. At any rate, the reply was satisfactory :
 
 STRAINED THEOLOGY 211 
 
 "His excellency, he much oblige, and him say 
 he t'ink so." 
 
 The elucidation of this point was rendered the 
 easier, probably, by the fact that neither Abd-el- 
 Atti nor the Patriarch nor ourselves knew much 
 about it. When I told his highness (if, through 
 Abd-el-Atti, I did tell him) that the great Arme- 
 nian convent at Venice, which holds with the Pope, 
 accepts the Latin construction of the clause, he 
 seemed never to have heard of the great Armenian 
 convent at Venice. At this point of the conver- 
 sation we thought it wise to finish the subject by 
 the trite remark that we believed a man's life was 
 after all more important than his creed. 
 
 "So am I," responded the dragoman, and the 
 Patriarch seemed to be of like mind. 
 
 A new turn was given to our interview by the 
 arrival of refreshments, a succession of sweetmeats, 
 cordials, candies, and coffee. The sweetmeats first 
 served were a delicate preserve of plums. This 
 was handed around in a jar, from which each guest 
 dipped a spoonful, and swallowed it, drinking from 
 a glass of water immediately, exactly as we used 
 to take medicine in childhood. The preserve was 
 taken away when each person had tasted it, and 
 shortly a delicious orange cordial was brought, and 
 handed around with candy. Coffee followed. The 
 Patriarch then led the way about his palace, and 
 with some pride showed us the gold and silver in- 
 signia of his office and his rich vestments. On 
 the wall of his study hung a curious map of the 
 world, printed at Amsterdam in 1092, in Arme-
 
 212 THE FAIR OF MOSES 
 
 man characters. He was so kind also as to give 
 us his photograph, enriched with his unreadable 
 autograph, and a book printed at the convent, en- 
 titled Deux Ans de Sejour en Abyssinie ; and we 
 had the pleasure of seeing also the heroes and the 
 author of the book, two Armenian monks, who 
 undertook, on an English suggestion, a mission to 
 King Theodore, to intercede for the release of the 
 English prisoners held by the tyrant of that land. 
 They were detained by its treacherous and bar- 
 barous chiefs, robbed by people and priests alike, 
 never reached the headquarters of the king, and 
 were released only after two years of miserable 
 captivity and suffering. This book is a faithful 
 record of their journey, and contains a complete 
 description of the religion and customs of the 
 Abyssinians, set down with the candor and verbal 
 nakedness of Herodotus. Whatever Christianity 
 the Abyssinians may once have had, their religion 
 now is an odd mixture of Judaism, fetichism, and 
 Christian dogmas, and their morals a perfect re- 
 production of those in vogue just before the flood ; 
 there is no vice or disease of barbarism or of civ- 
 ilization that is not with them of universal accept- 
 ance. And the priest Timotheus, the writer of 
 this narrative, gave the Abyssinians abiding in 
 Jerusalem a character no better than that of their 
 countrymen at home. 
 
 The Patriarch, with many expressions of civility, 
 gave us into the charge of a monk, who showed us 
 all the parts of the convent we had not seen on a 
 previous visit. The convent is not only a wealthy
 
 A MARVELOUS SPECTACLE 213 
 
 and clean, but also an enlightened establishment. 
 Within its precincts are nuns as well as monks, 
 and good schools are maintained for children of 
 both sexes. The school-house, with its commodi- 
 ous apartments, was not unlike one of our build- 
 ings for graded schools ; in the rooms we saw many 
 cases of antiquities and curiosities from various 
 countries, and specimens of minerals. A map 
 which hung on the wall, and was only one hundred 
 years old, showed the Red Sea flowing into the 
 Dead Sea, and the river Jordan emptying into the 
 Mediterranean. Perhaps the scholars learn an- 
 cient geography only. 
 
 At twelve the Moslems said prayers in the 
 Mosque of Omar, and at one o'clock the procession 
 was ready to move out of St. Stephen's Gate. We 
 rode around to that entrance. The spectacle spread 
 before us was marvelous. All the gray and ragged 
 slopes and ravines were gay with color and lively 
 with movement. The city walls on the side over- 
 looking the Valley of Jehoshaphat were covered 
 with masses of people, clinging to them like bees ; 
 so the defenses may have appeared to Titus when 
 he ordered the assault from the opposite hill. The 
 sunken road leading from St. Stephen's Gate, 
 down which the procession was to pass, was lined 
 with spectators, seated in ranks 011 ranks on the 
 stony slopes. These were mostly women, this 
 being one of the few days upon which the Moslem 
 women may freely come abroad, clad in pure 
 white, and with white veils drawn about their 
 heads. These clouds of white robes were relieved
 
 214 THE FAIR OF MOSES 
 
 here and there by flaming spots of color, for the 
 children and slaves accompanied the women, and 
 their dress added blue and red and yellow to the 
 picture. Men also mingled in the throng, display- 
 ing turbans of blue and black and green and white. 
 One could not say that any color or nationality was 
 wanting in the spectacle. Sprinkled in groups all 
 over the hillside, in the Moslem cemetery and be- 
 neath it, were like groups of color, and streaks of 
 it marked the descent of every winding path. The 
 Prince of Oldenburg, the only foreign dignitaiy 
 present, had his tents pitched upon a knoll outside 
 the gate, and other tents dotted the roadside and 
 the hill. 
 
 Crowds of people thronged both sides of the road 
 to the Mount of Olives and to Gethsemane, spread- 
 ing themselves in the valley and extending away 
 up the road of the Triumphal Entry; everywhere 
 were the most brilliant effects of white, red, yel- 
 low, gray, green, black, and striped raiment: no 
 matter what these Orientals put on, it becomes pic- 
 turesque, old coffee-bags, old rags and carpets, 
 anything. There could not be a finer place for a 
 display than these two opposing hillsides, the nar- 
 row valley, and the winding roads, which increased 
 the apparent length of the procession and set it off 
 to the best advantage. We were glad of the op- 
 portunity to see this ancient valley of bones revived 
 in a manner to recall the pageants and shows of 
 centuries ago, and as we rode down the sunken road 
 in advance of the procession, we imagined how we 
 might have felt if we had been mounted on horses
 
 AN ORIENTAL PROCESSION 215 
 
 or elephants instead of donkeys, and if we had 
 been conquerors leading a triumph, and these peo- 
 ple on either hand had been cheering us instead 
 of jeering us. Turkish soldiers, stationed every 
 thirty paces, kept the road clear for the expected 
 cavalcade. In order to see it and the spectators to 
 the best advantage, we took position on the oppo- 
 site side of the valley and below the road around 
 the Mount of Olives. 
 
 The procession was a good illustration of the 
 shallow splendor of the Orient; it had no order, 
 no uniformity, no organization; it dragged itself 
 along at the whim of its separate squads. First 
 came a guard of soldiers, then a little huddle of 
 men of all sorts of colors and apparel, bearing sev- 
 eral flags, among them the green Flag of Moses; 
 after an interval another squad, bearing large and 
 gorgeous flags, preceded by musicians beating 
 drums and cymbals. In front of the drums danced, 
 or rather hitched forward with stately steps, two 
 shabby fellows, throwing their bodies from side to 
 side and casting their arms about, clashing cym- 
 bals and smirking with infinite conceit. At long 
 intervals came other like bands, with flags and 
 music, in such disorder as scarcely to be told from 
 the spectators, except that they bore guns and pis- 
 tols, which they continually fired into the air and 
 close over the heads of the crowd, with a reckless 
 profusion of powder and the most murderous ap- 
 pearance. To these followed mounted soldiers in 
 white, witli a Turkish band of music, worse than 
 any military band in Italy; and after this the
 
 216 THE FAIR OF MOSES 
 
 pasha, the governor of the city, a number of civil 
 and military dignitaries and one or two high ule- 
 mas, and a green-clad representative of the Pro- 
 phet, a beggar on horseback, on fiery horses 
 which curveted about in the crowd, excited by the 
 guns, the music, and the discharge of a cannon 
 now and then, which was stationed at the gate of 
 St. Stephen. Among the insignia displayed were 
 two tall instruments of brass, which twirled and 
 glittered in the sun, not like the golden candlestick 
 of the Jews, nor the "host" of the Catholics, nor 
 the sistrum of the ancient Egyptians, but, per- 
 haps, as Moslemism is a reminiscence of all reli- 
 gions, a caricature of all three. 
 
 The crush in the narrow road round the hill and 
 the grouping of all the gorgeous banners there pro- 
 duced a momentary fine effect ; but generally, save 
 for the spectators, the display was cheap and child- 
 ish. Only once did we see either soldiers or civil- 
 ians marching in order; there were five fellows in 
 line carrying Nubian spears, and also five sappers 
 and miners in line, wearing leathern aprons and 
 bearing theatrical battle-axes. As to the arms, we 
 could discover no two guns of the same pattern in 
 all the multitude of guns ; like most things in the 
 East, the demonstration was one of show, color, 
 and noise, not to be examined too closely, but to 
 be taken with faith, as we eat dates. A company 
 of Sheridan's cavalry would have scattered the 
 entire army. 
 
 The procession, having halted on the brow of 
 the hill, countermarched and returned; but the
 
 A GORGEOUS DEMONSTRATION 217 
 
 Flag of Moses and its guard went on to the camp, 
 at his tomb, there to await the arrival of the pil- 
 grims on the Monday following. And the most 
 gorgeous Moslem demonstration of the year was 
 over.
 
 VIII 
 
 DEPARTURE FROM JERUSALEM 
 
 HE day came to leave Jerusalem. 
 Circumstances rendered it impossible 
 for us to make the overland trip to 
 Damascus or even to Haifa. Our 
 regret that we should not see Bethel, Shechem, 
 Samaria, Nazareth, and the Sea of Galilee was 
 somewhat lessened by the thought that we knew 
 the general character of the country and the vil- 
 lages, by what we had already seen, and that ex- 
 perience had taught us the inevitable disenchant- 
 ment of seeing the historical and the sacred places 
 of Judaea. It is not that one visits a desert and a 
 heap of ruins, that would be endurable and even 
 stimulating to the imagination; but every locality 
 which is dear to the reader by some divine visi- ' 
 tation, or wonderful by some achievement of hero 
 or prophet, is degraded by the presence of sordid 
 habitations, and a mixed, vicious, and unsavory 
 population, or incrusted with the most puerile 
 superstitions, so that the traveler is fain to con- 
 tent himself with a general view of the unchanged 
 features of the country. It must be with a certain 
 feeling of humiliation that at Nazareth, for in-
 
 THE TOURIST'S DISAPPOINTMENT 219 
 
 stance, the object of his pilgrimage is belittled to 
 the inspection of such inventions as the spot upon 
 which the Virgin stood when she received the an- 
 nunciation, and the carpenter-shop in which Joseph 
 worked. 
 
 At any rate, we let such thoughts predominate, 
 when we were obliged to relinquish the overland 
 journey. And whatever we missed, I flatter my- 
 self that the readers of these desultory sketches 
 will lose nothing. I should have indulged a cer- 
 tain curiosity in riding over a country as rich in 
 memories as it is poor in aspect, but I should have 
 been able to add nothing to the minute descrip- 
 tions and vivid pictures with which the Christian 
 world is familiar; and, if the reader will excuse 
 an additional personal remark, I have not had the 
 presumption to attempt a description of Palestine 
 and Syria (which the volumes of Robinson and 
 Thompson and Porter have abundantly given), but 
 only to make a record of limited travel and obser- 
 vation. What I most regretted was that we could 
 not see the green and fertile plain of Esdraelon, 
 the flower-spangled meadow of Jezreel, and the 
 forests of Tabor and Carmel, seats of beauty 
 and of verdure, and which, with the plain of 
 Sharon, might serve to mitigate the picture of grim 
 desolation which the tourist carries away from the 
 Holy Land. 
 
 Finally, it was with a feeling akin to regret that 
 we looked our last upon gray and melancholy Je- 
 rusalem. We had grown a little familiar with its 
 few objects of past or present grandeur, the Sara-
 
 220 DEPARTURE FROM JERUSALEM 
 
 cenic walls and towers, the Temple platform and 
 its resplendent mosque, the agglomeration called 
 the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the ruins of the 
 palace and hospice of the Knights of St. John, 
 the massive convents and hospices of various na- 
 tions and sects that rise amid the indistinguishable 
 huddle of wretched habitations, threaded by filthy 
 streets and noisome gutters. And yet we confessed 
 to the inevitable fascination which is always exer- 
 cised upon the mind by antiquity; the mysterious 
 attraction of association ; the undefinable influence 
 in decay and desolation which holds while it re- 
 pels ; the empire, one might say the tyranny, over 
 the imagination and the will which an ancient city 
 asserts, as if by force of an immortal personality, 
 compelling first curiosity, then endurance, then 
 sympathy, and finally love. Jerusalem has neither 
 the art, the climate, the antiquities, nor the society 
 which draw the world and hold it captive in Rome, 
 but its associations enable it to exercise, in a de- 
 gree, the same attraction. Its attraction is in its 
 historic spell and name, and in spite of the mod- 
 ern city. 
 
 Jerusalem, in fact, is incrusted with layer upon 
 layer of inventions, the product of credulity, cun- 
 ning, and superstition ; a monstrous growth, always 
 enlarging, so that already the simple facts of his- 
 tory are buried almost beyond recognition beneath 
 this mass of rubbish. Perhaps it would have been 
 better for. the growth of Christianity in the world 
 if Jerusalem had been abandoned, had become like 
 Carthage and Memphis and Tadmor in the wilder-
 
 CHRISTIANITY IN JERUSALEM 221 
 
 ness, and the modern pilgrim were free to choose 
 his seat upon a fallen wall or mossy rock, and 
 reconstruct for himself the pageant of the past, 
 and recall that Living Presence, undisturbed by 
 the impertinences which belittle the name of reli- 
 gion. It has always been held well that the place 
 of the burial of Moses was unknown. It would 
 perhaps have conduced to the purity of the Chris- 
 tian faith if no attempt had ever been made to 
 break through the obscurity which rests upon the 
 place of the sepulchre of Christ. Invention has 
 grown upon invention, and we have the Jerusalem 
 of to-day as a result of the exaggerated importance 
 attached to the localization of the Divine manifes- 
 tation. Whatever interest Jerusalem has for the 
 antiquarian, or for the devout mind, it is undeni- 
 able that one must seek in other lands and among 
 other peoples for the robust virtue, the hatred of 
 shams and useless forms, the sweet charity, the 
 invigorating principles, the high thinking, and the 
 simple worship inculcated by the Founder of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 The horses were ready. Jerusalem had just 
 begun to stir; an itinerant vender of coffee had 
 set up his tray on the street, and was lustily call- 
 ing to catch the attention of the early workmen, or 
 the vagrants who pick themselves up from the 
 doorsteps at dawn and begin to reconnoitre for the 
 necessary and cheap taste of coffee, with which the 
 Oriental day opens; the sky was overcast, and a 
 drop or two of rain fell as we were getting into 
 the saddle, but "It is nothing," said the stirrup-
 
 222 DEPARTURE FROM JERUSALEM 
 
 holder, "it goes to be a beautiful time; " and so it 
 proved. 
 
 Scarcely were we outside the city when it cleared 
 superbly, and we set forward on our long ride of 
 thirty-six miles, to the sea-coast, in high spirits. 
 We turned to catch the first sunlight upon the gray 
 Tower of David, and then went gayly on over the 
 cool free hills, inhaling the sparkling air and the 
 perfume of wild-flowers, and exchanging greetings 
 with the pilgrims, Moslem and Christian, who 
 must have broken up their camps in the hills at 
 the earliest light. There are all varieties of na- 
 tionality and costume, and many of the peaceful 
 pilgrims are armed as if going to a military ren- 
 dezvous; perhaps our cavalcade, which is also an 
 assorted one of horses, donkeys, and mules, is as 
 amusing as any we meet. I am certain that the 
 horse that one of the ladies rides is unique, a mere 
 framework of bones which rattle as he agitates 
 himself; a rear view of the animal, and his twist- 
 ing and interlacing legs, when he moves briskly, 
 suggest a Chinese puzzle. 
 
 We halted at the outlet of Wady 'Aly, where 
 there is an inn, which has the appearance of a 
 Den of Thieves, and took our lunch upon some 
 giant rocks under a fig-tree, the fruit of which was 
 already half grown. Here I discovered another 
 black calla, and borrowed a pick of the landlord to 
 endeavor to dig up its bulb. But it was impos- 
 sible to extract it from the rocks, and when I re- 
 turned the tool, the owner demanded pay for the 
 use of it; I told him that if he would come to
 
 THE SARACEN TOWER 223 
 
 America, I would lend him a pick, and let him dig 
 all day in the garden, a liberality which he was 
 unable to comprehend. 
 
 By four o'clock we were at Ramleh, and turned 
 aside to inspect the so-called Saracen tower; it 
 stands upon one side of a large iiiclosure of walls 
 and arches, an extensive ruin; under ground are 
 vaulted constructions apparently extending as far 
 as the ruins above, reminding one of the remains 
 of the hospice of St. John at Jerusalem. In its 
 form and treatment and feeling this noble tower is 
 Gothic, and, taking it in connection with the re- 
 mains about it, I should have said it was of Chris- 
 tian construction, in spite of the Arabic inscription 
 over one of the doorways, which might have been 
 added when the Saracens took possession of it; 
 but I believe that antiquarians have decided that 
 the tower was erected by Moslems. These are the 
 most "rural" ruins we had seen in the East; they 
 are time-stained and weather-colored, like the re- 
 mains of an English abbey, and stand in the midst 
 of a green and most lovely country; no sand, no 
 nakedness, no beggars. Grass fills all the iiiclo- 
 sure, and grain-fields press close about it. No 
 view could be more enchanting than that of the 
 tower and the rolling plain at that hour: the 
 bloom on the wheat-fields, flecked with flaming 
 poppies ; the silver of the olive groves ; the beds of 
 scarlet anemones and yellow buttercups, blotch- 
 ing the meadows \vith brilliant colors like a pic- 
 ture of Turner : the soft gray hills of Judtva; the 
 steeples and minarets of the city. All Kanileh is
 
 224 DEPARTURE FROM JERUSALEM 
 
 built on and amid ruins, half -covered arches and 
 vaults. 
 
 Twilight came upon us while we were yet in the 
 interminable plain, but Jaffa announced itself by 
 its orange-blossoms long before we entered its strag- 
 gling suburbs; indeed, when we were three miles 
 away, the odor of its gardens, weighted by the 
 night-air, was too heavy to be agreeable. At a 
 distance this odor was more perceptible than in 
 the town itself; but next day, in the full heat of 
 the sun, we found it so overpowering as to give a 
 tendency to headache.
 
 IX 
 
 ALONG THE SYRIAN COAST 
 
 UR only business in Jaffa being to get 
 away from it, we impatiently expected 
 the arrival of the Austrian Lloyd 
 steamer for Beyrout, the Venus, a fickle 
 and unsteady craft, as its name implies. In the 
 afternoon we got on board, taking note as we left 
 the land of the great stones that jut out into the 
 sea, " where the chains with which Andromeda was 
 bound have left their footsteps, which attest [says 
 Josephus] the antiquity of that fable." The Ve- 
 nus, which should have departed at three o'clock, 
 lay rolling about amid the tossing and bobbing and 
 crushing crowd of boats and barges till late in the 
 evening, taking in boxes of oranges and bags of 
 barley, by the slow process of hoisting up one or 
 two at a time. The ship was lightly loaded with 
 freight, but overrun with third-class passengers, 
 returning pilgrims from Mecca and from Jerusa- 
 lem (whom the waters of the Jordan seemed not 
 to have benefited), who invaded every part of deck, 
 cabin, and hold, and spreading their beds under 
 the windows of the cabins of the first-class pas- 
 sengers, reduced the whole company to a common
 
 226 ALONG THE SYRIAN COAST 
 
 disgust. The light load caused the vessel to roll 
 a little, and there was nothing agreeable in the 
 situation. 
 
 The next morning we were in the harbor of 
 Haifa, under the shadow of Mt. Carmel, and rose 
 ^arly to read about Elijah, and to bring as near to 
 ds as we could with an opera-glass the convent and 
 the scene of Elijah's victory over the priests of 
 Baal. The noble convent we saw, and the brow 
 of Carmel, which the prophet ascended to pray for 
 rain ; but the place of the miraculous sacrifice is 
 on the other side, in view of the plain of Esdrae- 
 lon, and so is the plain by the river Kishon where 
 Elijah slew the four hundred and fifty prophets of 
 Baal, whom he had already mocked and defeated. 
 The grotto of Elijah is shown in the hill, and the 
 monks who inhabit the convent regard themselves 
 as the successors of an unbroken succession of holy 
 occupants since the days of the great prophet. 
 Their sumptuous quarters would no doubt excite 
 the indignation of Elijah and Elisha, who would 
 not properly discriminate between the modern 
 reign of Mammon and the ancient rule of Baal. 
 Haifa itself is only a huddle of houses on the beach. 
 Ten miles across the curving bay we saw the bat- 
 tlements of Akka, on its triangle of land jutting 
 into the sea, above the mouth of Kishon, out of 
 the fertile and world-renowned plain. We see it 
 more distinctly as we pass; and if we were to land 
 we should see little more, for few fragments remain 
 to attest its many masters and strange vicissitudes. 
 A prosperous seat of the Phoenicians, it offered
 
 TYRE 227 
 
 hospitality to the fat-loving tribe of Asher ; it was 
 a Greek city of wealth and consequence ; it was 
 considered the key of Palestine during the Cru- 
 sades, and the headquarters of the Templars and 
 the Knights of St. John; and in more modern 
 times it had the credit of giving the checkmate to 
 the feeble imitation of Alexander in the East at- 
 tempted by Napoleon I. 
 
 The day was cloudy and a little cool, and not 
 unpleasant; but there existed all day a ground- 
 swell which is full of all nastiness, and a short sea 
 which aggravated the ground-swell; and although 
 we sailed by the Lebanon mountains and along an 
 historic coast, bristling with suggestions, and with 
 little but suggestions, of an heroic past, by Akka 
 and Tyre and Sidon, we were mostly indifferent 
 to it all. The Mediterranean, on occasion, takes 
 away one's appetite even for ruins and ancient 
 history. 
 
 We can distinguish, as we sail by it, the mean 
 modern town which wears still the royal purple 
 name of Tyre, and the peninsula, formerly the 
 island, upon which the old town stood and which 
 gave it its name. The Arabs still call it Tsur or 
 Sur, "the rock," and the ancients fancied that this 
 island of rock had the form of a ship and was typ- 
 ical of the maritime pursuits of its people. Some 
 have thought it more like the cradle of commerce 
 which Tyre is sometimes, though erroneously, said 
 to be; for she was only the daughter of Sidon, 
 and did but inherit from her mother the secret of 
 the mastery of the seas. There were two cities of
 
 228 ALONG THE SYRIAN COAST 
 
 Tyre, the one on the island, and another on the 
 shore. Tyre is not an old city in the Eastern 
 reckoning, the date of its foundation as a great 
 power only rising to about 1200 B. c., about the 
 time of the Trojan war, and after the fall of 
 Sidon, although there was a city there a couple of 
 centuries earlier, when Joshua and his followers 
 conquered the hill-countries of Palestine ; it could 
 never in its days of greatness have been large, 
 probably containing not more than 30,000 to 
 40,000 inhabitants, but its reputation was dispro- 
 portionate to its magnitude; Joshua calls it the 
 "strong city Tyre," and it had the entire respect 
 of Jerusalem in the most haughty days of the lat- 
 ter. Tyre seems to have been included in the " in- 
 heritance" allotted to Asher, but that luxurious 
 son of Jacob yielded to the Phoenicians and not 
 they to him ; indeed, the parceling of territory to 
 the Israelitish tribes, on condition that they would 
 conquer it, recalls the liberal dying bequest made 
 by a tender Virginian to his son, of one hundred 
 thousand dollars if he could make it. The sea- 
 coast portion of the Ganaanites, or the Phoenicians, 
 was never subdued by the Jews ; it preserved a 
 fortunate independence, in order that, under the 
 Providence that protected the Phoenicians, after 
 having given the world "letters " and the first im- 
 pulse of all the permanent civilization that written 
 language implies, they could still bless it by teach- 
 ing it commerce, and that wide exchange of pro- 
 ducts which is a practical brotherhood of man. 
 The world was spared the calamity of the descent
 
 ARTS OF THE PHOENICIANS 229 
 
 of the tribes of Israel upon the Phranician cities 
 of the coast, and art was permitted to grow with 
 industry; unfortunately the tribes who formed the 
 kingdom of Israel were capable of imitating only 
 the idolatrous worship and the sensuality of their 
 more polished neighbors. Such an ascendency did 
 Tyre obtain in Jewish affairs through the princess 
 Jezebel and the reception of the priests of Baal, 
 that for many years both Samaria and Jerusalem 
 might almost be called dependencies of the city of 
 the god, "the lord Melkarth, Baal of Tyre." 
 
 The arts of the Phoenicians the Jews were not 
 apt to learn; the beautiful bronze-work of their 
 temples was executed by Tyrians, and their curi- 
 ous work in wood also ; the secret of the famous 
 purple dye of the royal stuffs which the Jews cov- 
 eted was known only to the Tyrians, who extracted 
 from a sea-mussel this dark red violet ; when the 
 Jews built, Tyrian workmen were necessary ; when 
 Solomon undertook his commercial ventures into 
 the far Orient, it was Tyrians who built his ships 
 at Ezion-geber, and it was Tyrian sailors who 
 manned them; the Pho3nicians carried the manu- 
 facture of glass to a perfection unknown to the an- 
 cient Egyptians, producing that beautiful ware the 
 art of which was revived by the Venetians in the 
 sixteenth century; the Jews did not learn from 
 the Pho3iiicians, but the Greeks did, how to make 
 that graceful pottery and to paint the vases which 
 are the despair of modern imitators ; the Tyrian 
 mariners, following the Sidonian, supplied the 
 Mediterranean countries, including Egypt, with
 
 230 ALONG THE SYRIAN COAST 
 
 tin for the manufacture of bronze, by adventurous 
 voyages as far as Britain, and 110 people ever ex- 
 celled them in the working of bronze, as none in 
 their time equaled them in the carving of ivory, 
 the engraving of precious metals, and the cutting 
 and setting of jewels. 
 
 Unfortunately, scarcely anything remains of the 
 abundant literature of the Phrenicians, for the 
 Canaanites were a literary people before the inva- 
 sion of Joshua; their language was Semitic, and 
 almost identical with the Hebrew, although they 
 were descendants of Ham; not only their light 
 literature, but their historical records have dis- 
 appeared, and we have small knowledge of their 
 kings or their great men. The one we are most 
 familiar with is the shrewd and liberal Hiram (I 
 cannot tell why he always reminds me of General 
 Grant), who exchanged riddles with Solomon, and 
 shared with the mountain king the profits of his 
 maritime skill and experience. Hiram's tomb is 
 still pointed out to the curious, at Tyre; and the 
 mutations of religions and the freaks of fortune 
 are illustrated by the chance that has grouped so 
 closely together the graves of Hiram, of Fred- 
 erick Barbarossa, and of Origen. 
 
 Late in the afternoon we came in sight of Sidon, 
 that ancient city which the hand-book infers was 
 famous at the time of the appearance of Joshua, 
 since that skillful captain speaks of it as "Great 
 Zidon." Famous it doubtless had been long be- 
 fore his arrival, but the epithet " great " merely 
 distinguished the two cities ; for Sidon was divided
 
 SIDON 231 
 
 like Tyre, "Great Sidon" being on the shore and 
 "Little Sidon" at some distance inland. Tradi- 
 tion says it was built by Sidon, the great-grandson 
 of Noah ; but however this may be, it is doubtless 
 the oldest Phoenician city except Gebel, which is 
 on the coast north of Beyrout. It is now for the 
 antiquarian little more than a necropolis, and a 
 heap of stones, on which fishermen dry their nets, 
 although some nine to ten thousand people occupy 
 its squalid houses. What we see of it is the ridge 
 of rocks forming the shallow harbor, and the pic- 
 turesque arched bridge (with which engravings 
 have made us familiar) that connects a ruined for- 
 tress on a detached rock with the rocky peninsula. 
 
 Sidon carries us far back into antiquity. When 
 the Canaanitish tribes migrated from their seat on 
 the Persian Gulf, a part of them continued their 
 march as far as Egypt. It seems to be settled 
 that the Hittites (or Khitas) were the invaders who 
 overran the land of the Pharaohs, sweeping away 
 in their barbarous violence nearly all the monu- 
 ments of the civilization of preceding eras, and 
 placing upon the throne of that old empire the 
 race of Shepherd kings. It was doubtless during 
 the dynasty of the Shepherds that Abraham visited 
 Egypt, and it was a Pharaoh of Hittite origin who 
 made Joseph his minister. It was after the expul- 
 sion of the Shepherds and the establishment of a 
 dynasty "which knew not Joseph " that the Israel- 
 ites were oppressed. 
 
 But the Canaanites did not all pass beyond 
 Syria and Palestine; some among them, who af-
 
 232 ALONG THE SYRIAN COAST 
 
 terwards were distinctively known as Phoenicians, 
 established a maritime kingdom, and founded 
 among other cities that of Sidon. This maritime 
 branch no doubt kept up an intercourse with the 
 other portions of the Caananite family in Southern 
 Syria and in Egypt, before the one was driven out 
 of Egypt by the revolution which restored the rule 
 of the Egyptian Pharaohs, and the other expelled 
 by the advent of the Philistines. And it seems 
 altogether probable that the Phosnicians received 
 from Egypt many arts which they afterwards im- 
 proved and perfected. It is tolerably certain that 
 they borrowed from Egypt the hieratic writing, 
 or some of its characters, which taught them to 
 represent the sounds of their language by the 
 alphabet which they gave to the world. The 
 Sidonians were subjugated by Thotmes III., with 
 all Phoenicia, and were for centuries the useful al-* 
 lies of the Egyptians ; but their dominion was over 
 the sea, and they spread their colonies first to the 
 Grecian isles and then along the African coast; 
 and in the other direction sent their venturesome 
 barks as far as Colchis on the Black Sea. They 
 seem to have thrived most under the Egyptian 
 supremacy, for the Pharaohs had need of their 
 sailors and their ships. In the latter days of the 
 empire, in the reign of Necho, it was Phoenician 
 sailors who, at his command, circumnavigated 
 Africa, passing down the Red Sea and returning 
 through the Pillars of Hercules. 
 
 The few remains of Sidon which we see to-day 
 are only a few centuries old, six or seven ; there
 
 THE PALESTINE OF ANTIQUITY 233 
 
 are no monuments to carry us back to the city 
 famous in arts and arms, of which Homer sang; 
 and if there were, the antiquity of this hoary coast 
 would still elude us. Herodotus says that the 
 temple of Melkarth at Tyre (the "daughter of 
 Sidon") was built about 2300 B. c. Probably 
 he errs by a couple of centuries ; for it was only 
 something like twenty-three centuries before Christ 
 that the Canaanites came into Palestine, that is to 
 say, late in the thirteenth Egyptian dynasty, a 
 dynasty which, according to the list of Manetho 
 and Mariette Bey, is separated from the reign of 
 the first Egyptian king by an interval of twenty- 
 seven centuries. When Abraham wandered from 
 Mesopotamia into Palestine he found the Canaan- 
 ites in possession. But they were comparatively 
 new comers ; they had found the land already oc- 
 cupied by a numerous population who were so far 
 advanced in civilization as to have built many cit- 
 ies. Among the peoples holding the land before 
 them were the Rephaim, who had sixty strong 
 towns in what is now the wilderness of Bashan; 
 there were also the Emini, the Zamzummim, and 
 the Auakim, perhaps primitive races and per- 
 haps conquerors of a people farther back in the 
 twilight, remnants of whom still remained in Pal- 
 estine when the Jews began, in their turn, to level 
 its cities to the earth, and who lived in the Jewish 
 traditions as "giants."
 
 BEYROUT. OVER THE LEBANON 
 
 LL the afternoon we had the noble 
 range of Mt. Lebanon in view, and 
 towards five o'clock we saw the desert- 
 like promontory upon which Beyrout 
 stands. This bold headland, however, changed its 
 appearance when we had rounded it and came into 
 the harbor ; instead of sloping sand we had a rocky 
 coast, and rising from the bay a couple of hundred 
 feet, Beyrout, first the shabby old city, and then 
 the new portion higher up, with its villas, embow- 
 ered in trees. To the right, upon the cliffs over- 
 looking the sea, is the American college, an insti- 
 tution whose conspicuous position is only a fair 
 indication of its preeminent importance in the 
 East; and it is to be regretted that it does not 
 make a better architectural show. Behind Bey- 
 rout, in a vast circular sweep, rise the Lebanon 
 mountains, clothed with trees and vineyards, ter- 
 raced and studded with villas and villages. The 
 view is scarcely surpassed anywhere for luxuriance 
 and variety. It seems to us that if we had an im- 
 pulse to go on a mission anywhere it would be to 
 the wicked of this fertile laud.
 
 AT THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 235 
 
 At Beyrout also passengers must land in small 
 boats. We were at once boarded by the most 
 ruffianly gang of boatmen we had yet seen, who 
 poured through the gateways and climbed over the 
 sides of the vessel, like privileged pirates, tread- 
 ing down people in their way. It was only after 
 a severe struggle that we reached our boats and 
 landed at the custom-house, and fell into the hands 
 of the legalized plunderers, who made an attack 
 upon our baggage and demanded our passports, 
 simply to obtain backsheesh for themselves. 
 
 "Not to show 'em passport," says Abd-el-Atti, 
 who wastes no affection on the Turks; "tiefs, all 
 of clem ; you be six months, not so ? in him domin- 
 ion, come now from Jaffa; I tell him if the kin' of 
 Constantinople want us, he find us at the hotel." 
 
 The hotel Bellevue, which looks upon the sea 
 and hears always the waves dashing upon the worn 
 and jagged rocks, was overflowed by one of those 
 swarms, which are the nuisance of independent 
 travelers, known as a "Cook's Party," excellent 
 people individually no doubt, but monopolizing 
 hotels and steamboats, and driving everybody else 
 into obscurity by reason of their numbers and com- 
 pact organization. We passed yesterday one of 
 the places on the coast where Jonah is said to have 
 left the whale; it is suspected though without 
 any contemporary authority that he was in a 
 Cook's Party of his day, and left it in disgust for 
 this private conveyance. 
 
 Our first care in Beyront was to secure our pas- 
 sage to Damascus. There is a carriage-road over
 
 236 BEYROUT 
 
 the Lebanons, constructed, owned, and managed 
 by a French company ; it is the only road in Syria 
 practicable for wheels, but it is one of the best in 
 the world ; I suppose we shall celebrate our second 
 centennial before we have one to compare with it 
 in the United States. The company has the mo- 
 nopoly of all the traffic over it, forwarding freight 
 in its endless trains of wagons, and dispatching a 
 diligence each way daily, and a night mail. We 
 went to the office to secure seats in the diligence. 
 
 "They are all taken," said the official. 
 
 "Then we would like seats for the day after 
 to-morrow." 
 
 "They are taken, and for the day after that 
 for a week." 
 
 "Then we must go in a private carriage." 
 
 "At present we have none. The two belonging 
 to the company are at Damascus." 
 
 "Then we will hire 'one in the city." 
 
 "That is not permitted; no private carriage is 
 allowed to go over the road farther than five 
 kilometres outside of Beyrout." 
 
 " So you will neither take us yourselves nor let 
 any one else?" 
 
 " Pardon ; when the carriage comes from Damas- 
 cus, you shall have the first chance." 
 
 Fortunately one of the carriages arrived that 
 night, and the next morning at nine o'clock we 
 were en route. The diligence left at four A. M., 
 and makes the trip in thirteen hours ; we were to 
 break the journey at Stoura and diverge to Ba'al- 
 bek. The carriage was a short omnibus, with seats
 
 A SYRIAN SUMMER RESORT 237 
 
 inside for four, a broad seat in front, and a deck 
 for the baggage, painted a royal yellow; three 
 horses were harnessed to it abreast, one in the 
 shafts and one on each side. As the horses were 
 to be changed at short stages, we went forward at 
 a swinging pace, rattling out of the city and com- 
 manding as much respect as if we had been the 
 diligence itself with its six horses, three abreast, 
 and all its haughty passengers. 
 
 We leave the promontory of Beyrout, dip into 
 a long depression, and then begin to ascend the 
 Lebanon. The road is hard, smooth, white; the 
 soil on either side is red; the country is exceed- 
 ingly rich ; we pass villas, extensive plantations of 
 figs, and great forests of the mulberry ; for the silk 
 culture is the chief industry, and small factories 
 of the famous Syrian silks are scattered here and 
 there. As the road winds upward, we find the 
 hillsides are terraced and luxuriant with fig-trees 
 and grapevines, the latter flourishing, in fact, 
 to the very top of the mountains, say 5200 feet 
 above the blue Mediterranean, which sparkles 
 below us. Into these hills the people of Beyrout 
 come to pass the heated months of summer, living 
 in little villas which are embowered in foliage all 
 along these lovely slopes. We encounter a new 
 sort of house ; it is one story high, built of lime- 
 stone in square blocks and without mortar, having 
 a flat roof covered with stones and soil, a very 
 primitive construction, but universal here. Some- 
 times the building is in two parts, like a double 
 log-cabin, but the opening between the two is
 
 238 OVER THE LEBANON 
 
 always arched ; so much for art ; but otherwise the 
 house, without windows, or with slits only, looks 
 like a section of stone-wall. 
 
 As we rise, we begin to get glimpses of the 
 snowy peaks which make a sharp contrast with the 
 ravishing view behind us, the terraced gorges, 
 the profound ravines, the vineyards, gardens, and 
 orchards, the blue sea, and the white road winding 
 back through all like a ribbon. As we look down, 
 the limestone walls of the terraces are concealed, 
 and all the white cliffs are hidden by the ample 
 verdure. Entering farther into the mountains, and 
 ascending through the grim Wady Hammana, we 
 have the considerable village of that name below 
 us on the left, lying at the bottom of a vast and 
 ash-colored mountain basin, like a gray heap of 
 cinders on the edge of a crater broken away at one 
 side. We look at it with interest, for there La- 
 martine once lived for some months in as sentimen- 
 tal a seclusion as one could wish. A little higher 
 up we came to snow, great drifts of it by the road- 
 side, a phenomenon entirely beyond the com- 
 prehension of Abdallah, who has never seen sand 
 so cold as this, which, nevertheless, melts in his 
 hands. After encountering the snow, we drive 
 into a cold cloud, which seems much of the time to 
 hang on the top of Lebanon, and have a touch of 
 real winter, a disagreeable experience which we 
 had hoped to eliminate from this year; snow is 
 only tolerable when seen at a great distance, as the 
 background in a summer landscape ; near at hand 
 it congeals the human spirits.
 
 A GLOWING PICTURE 239 
 
 When we were over the summit and had 
 emerged from the thick cloud, suddenly a surprise 
 greeted us. Opposite was the range of Anti- 
 Lebanon ; two thousand feet below us, the broad 
 plain, which had not now the appearance of land, 
 but of some painted scene, a singularity which 
 is partially explained by the red color of the soil. 
 But, altogether, it presented the most bewilder- 
 ing mass of color; if the valley had been strewn 
 with watered silks over a carpet of Persian rugs, 
 the effect might have been the same. There were 
 patches and strips of green and of brown, dashes 
 of red, blotches of burnt-umber and sienna, alter- 
 nations of ploughed field and young grain, and the 
 whole, under the passing clouds, took the sheen of 
 the opal. The hard, shining road lay down the 
 mountain-side in long loops, in ox-bows, in curves 
 ever graceful, like a long piece of white tape flung 
 by chance from the summit to the valley. We 
 dashed down it at a great speed, winding back- 
 wards and forwards on the mountain-side, and 
 continually shifting our point of view of the glow- 
 ing picture. 
 
 At the little post-station of Stoura, we left the 
 Damascus road and struck north for an hour to- 
 wards Ba'albek, over a tolerable carriage-road. 
 But the road ceased at Mu'allakah; beyond that, 
 a horseback journey of six or seven hours, there is 
 a road-bed to Ba'albek, stoned a part of the way, 
 and intended to be passable some day. Mu'al- 
 lakah lies on the plain at the opening of the wild 
 gorge of the Berduuy, a lively torrent which dance!-
 
 240 OVER THE LEBANON 
 
 down to join the Litany, through the verdure of 
 fruit-trees and slender poplars. Over a mile up 
 the glen, in the bosom of the mountains, is the 
 town of Zahleh, the largest in the Lebanon ; and 
 there we purposed to pass the night, having been 
 commended to the hospitality of the missionaries 
 there by Dr. Jessup of Beyrout. 
 
 Our halted establishment drew a crowd of curi- 
 ous spectators about it, mostly women and chil- 
 dren, who had probably never seen a carriage be- 
 fore; they examined us and commented upon us 
 with perfect freedom, but that was the extent of 
 their hospitality, not one of them was willing to 
 earn a para by carrying our baggage to Zahleh; 
 and we started up the hill, leaving the dragoman 
 in an animated quarrel with the entire population, 
 who, in turn, resented his comments upon their 
 want of religion and good manners. 
 
 Climbing up a stony hill, threading gullies and 
 ravines, and finally rough streets, we came into 
 the amphitheatre in the hills which inclose Zahleh. 
 The town is unique in its construction. Imagine 
 innumerable small whitewashed wooden houses, 
 rising in concentric circles, one above the other, 
 on the slopes of the basin, like the chairs on the 
 terraces of a Roman circus. The town is mostly 
 new, for the Druses captured it and burned it in 
 1860, and reminds one of a New England factory 
 village. Its situation is a stony, ragged basin, 
 three thousand feet above the sea ; the tops of the 
 hills behind it were still covered with snow, and 
 we could easily fancy that we were in Switzerland.
 
 THE AMERICAN MISSIONARIES 241 
 
 The ten or twelve thousand inhabitants are nearly 
 all Maronites, a sect of Christians whom we should 
 call Greeks, but who are in communion with the 
 Latin Church ; a people ignorant and superstitious, 
 governed by their priests, occasionally turbulent, 
 and always on the point of open rupture with the 
 mysterious and subtle Druses. Having the name 
 of Christians and few of the qualities, they are 
 most unpromising subjects of missionary labor. 
 Yet the mission here makes progress and converts, 
 and we were glad to see that the American mis- 
 sionaries were universally respected. 
 
 Fortunately the American name and Christianity 
 are exceedingly well represented in Northern Syria 
 by gentlemen who unite a thorough and varied 
 scholarship with Christian simplicity, energy, and 
 enthusiasm. At first it seems hard that so much 
 talent and culture should be hidden away in such a 
 place as Zahleh, and we were inclined to lament a 
 lot so far removed from the living sympathies of 
 the world. It seems, indeed, almost hopeless to 
 make any impression on this antique and conceited 
 mass of superstition. But if Syria is to be regen- 
 erated, and to be ever the home of an industrious, 
 clean, and moral people, in sympathy with the 
 enlightened world, the change is to be made by 
 exhibiting to the people a higher type of Christian- 
 ity than they have known hitherto, a Christian- 
 ity that reforms manners, and betters the social 
 condition, and adds a new interest to life by lift- 
 ing it to a higher plane; physical conditions must 
 visibly improve under it. It is not enough in a
 
 242 OVER THE LEBANON 
 
 village like this of Zahleh, for instance, to set up 
 a new form of Christian worship, and let it drone 
 on in a sleepy fashion, however devout and cir- 
 cumspect. It needs men of talent, scientific at- 
 tainment, practical sagacity, who shall make the 
 Christian name respected by superior qualities, as 
 well as by devout lives. They must show a better 
 style of living, more thrift and comfort, than that 
 which prevails here. The people will by and by 
 see a logical connection between a well-ordered 
 house and garden, a farm scientifically cultivated, 
 a prosperous factory, the profitableness of hon- 
 esty and industry, and the superior civilization 
 of our Western Christianity. You can already 
 see the influence in Syria of the accomplished 
 scholars, skillful physicians and surgeons, men 
 versed in the sciences, in botany and geology, who 
 are able to understand the resources of the coun- 
 try, who are supported there, but not liberally 
 enough supported, by the Christians of America.
 
 XI 
 BA'ALBEK 
 
 E were entertained at the house of the 
 Rev. Mr. Wood, who accompanied us 
 the next day to Ba'albek, his mission 
 territory including that ancient seat of 
 splendid paganism. Some sort of religious fete in 
 the neighborhood had absorbed the best saddle- 
 beasts, and we were indifferently mounted on the 
 refuse of donkeys and horses, Abdallah, our most 
 shining possession, riding, as usual, on the top of 
 a pile of baggage. The inhabitants were very 
 civil as we passed along ; we did not know whether 
 to attribute it to the influence of the missionaries 
 or to the rarity of travelers, but the word "back- 
 sheesh'" we heard not once in Zahleh. 
 
 After we had emerged from Mu'allakah upon 
 the open plain, we passed on our left hand the 
 Moslem village of Kerah Nun, which is distin- 
 guished as the burial-place of the prophet Noah ; 
 but we contented ourselves with a sight of the 
 dome. The mariner lies there in a grave seventy 
 feet long, or seventy yards, some scoffers say ; but 
 this, whatever it is, is not the measure of the patri- 
 arch. The grave proved too short, and Noah is
 
 244 BA'ALBEK 
 
 buried with his knees bent, and his feet extending 
 downward in the ground. 
 
 The plain of Buka'a is some ninety miles long, 
 and in this portion of it about ten miles broad; it 
 is well watered, and though the red soil is stuffed 
 with small stones, it is very fertile, and would 
 yield abundantly if cultivated; but it is mostly 
 an abandoned waste of weeds. The ground rises 
 gradually all the way to Ba'albek, starting from an 
 elevation of three thousand feet; the plain is roll- 
 ing, and the streams which rush down from the 
 near mountains are very swift. Nothing could be 
 lovelier than the snowy ranges of mountains on 
 either hand, in contrast with the browns and reds 
 of the slopes, like our own autumn foliage, 
 and the green and brown plain, now sprinkled 
 with wild-flowers of many varieties. 
 
 The sky was covered with clouds, great masses 
 floating about; the wind from the hills was cold, 
 and at length drove us to our wraps ; then a fine 
 rain ensued, but it did not last long, for the rainy 
 season was over. We crossed the plain diago- 
 nally, and lunched at a little khan, half house and 
 half stable, raised above a stream, with a group 
 of young poplars in front. We sat on a raised 
 divan in the covered court, and looked out through 
 the arched doorway over a lovely expanse of plain 
 and hills. It was difficult to tell which part of 
 the house was devoted to the stable and which to 
 the family; from the door of the room which I 
 selected as the neatest came the braying of a don- 
 key. The landlord and his wife, a young woman
 
 THE METAWILEH 245 
 
 and rather pretty, who had a baby in her arms, 
 furnished pipes and tobacco, and the travelers or 
 idlers they are one sat on the ground smoking 
 narghilehs. A squad of ruffianly Metawileh, a 
 sect of Moslems who follow the Koran strictly, 
 and reject the traditions, perhaps like those who 
 call themselves Bible Christians in distinction from 
 theological Christians, came from the field, de- 
 posited their ploughs, which they carried on their 
 shoulders, on the platform outside, and, seating 
 themselves in a row in the khan, looked at us stol- 
 idly. And we, having the opportunity of saying 
 so, looked at them intelligently. 
 
 We went on obliquely across the plain, rising 
 a little through a region rich, but only half culti- 
 vated, crossing streams and floundering in mud- 
 holes for three hours, on a walk, the wind grow- 
 ing stronger from the snow mountains, and the 
 col.l becoming almost unendurable. It was in vain 
 tint Abd-el-Atti spun hour after hour an Arab 
 romance ; not even the warm colors of the Oriental 
 imagination could soften the piteous blast. At 
 length, when patience was nearly gone, in a 
 depression in the plain, close to the foot-hills of 
 Anti-Lebanon, behold the great Ba'albek, that is to 
 say, a Moslem village of three thousand to four 
 thousand inhabitants, fairly clean and sightly, and 
 the ruins just on the edge of it, the six well-known 
 gigantic Corinthian pillars standing out against the 
 gray sky. Never was sight more welcome. 
 
 Ba'albek, like Zahleh, has no inn, and we lodged 
 in a private house near the ruins. The house was
 
 246 BA'ALBEK 
 
 one story ; it consisted of four large rooms in a row, 
 looking upon the stone-wall inclosure, each with 
 its door, and with no communication between them. 
 The kitchen was in a separate building. These 
 rooms had high ceilings of beams supporting the 
 flat roof, windows with shutters but without glass, 
 divans along one side, and in one corner a fireplace 
 and chimney. Each room had a niche extending 
 from the floor almost to the ceiling, in which the 
 beds are piled in the daytime ; at night they are 
 made up on the divans or on the floor. This is 
 the common pattern of a Syrian house, and when 
 we got a fire blazing in the big chimney -place and 
 began to thaw out our stiff limbs, and Abd-el- 
 Atti brought in something from the kitchen that 
 was hot and red in color and may have had spice 
 on the top of it, we found this the most comfort- 
 able residence in the world. 
 
 It is the business of a dragoman to produce the 
 improbable in impossible places. Abd-el-Atti 
 rubbed his lamp and converted this establishment 
 into a tolerable inn, with a prolific kitchen and an 
 abundant table. While he was performing this 
 revolution we went to see the ruins, the most noble 
 portions of which have survived the religion and 
 almost the memory of the builders. 
 
 The remains of the temples of Ba'albek, or Hie- 
 ropolis, are only elevated as they stand upon an 
 artificial platform ; they are in the depression of 
 the valley, and in fact a considerable stream flows 
 all about the walls and penetrates the subterranean 
 passages. This water comes from a fountain which
 
 RUINS OK THE TEMPLE OF BAAL
 
 RELICS OF THE PIKENICIANS 247 
 
 bursts out of the Anti -Lebanon hills about half a 
 mile above Ba'albek, in an immeTise volume, falls 
 into a great basin, and flows away in a small river. 
 These instantaneously born rivers are a peculiarity 
 of Syria; and they often disappear as suddenly as 
 they come. The water of this Ba'albek fountain is 
 cold, pure, and sweet; it deserves to be called a 
 "beverage," and is, so far as nay experience goes, 
 the most agreeable water in the world. The Mos- 
 lems have a proverb which expresses its unique 
 worth: "The water of Ba'albek never leaves its 
 home." It rushes past the village almost a river 
 in size, and then disappears in the plain below as 
 suddenly as it came to the light above. 
 
 We made our way across the stream and along 
 aqueducts and over heaps of shattered walls and 
 columns to the west end of the group of ruins. 
 This end is defended by a battlemented wall some 
 fifty feet high, which was built by the Saracens 
 out of incongruous materials from older construc- 
 tions. The northeast corner of this new wall rests 
 upon the ancient Phoenician wall, which sustained 
 the original platform of the sacred buildings ; and 
 at this corner are found the three famous stones 
 which at one time gave a name, "The Three- 
 Stoned," to the great temple. As I do not intend 
 to enter into the details of these often described 
 ruins, I will say here, that this ancient Phoenician 
 wall appears on the north side of the platform 
 detached, showing that the most ancient temple 
 occupied a larger area than the Greek and Roman 
 buildings.
 
 248 BA'ALBEK 
 
 There are many stones in the old platform wall 
 which are thirty feet long; but the three large 
 ones, which are elevated twenty feet above the 
 ground, and are in a line, are respectively 64 feet 
 long, 63 feet 8 inches, and 63 feet, and about 13 
 feet in height and in depth. When I measured 
 the first stone, I made it 128 feet long, which I 
 knew was an error, but it was only by careful 
 inspection that I discovered the joint of the two 
 stones which I had taken for one. I thought this 
 a practical test of the close fit of these blocks, 
 which, laid without mortar, come together as if the 
 ends had been polished. A stone larger than 
 either of these lies in the neighboring quarry, hewn 
 out but not detached. 
 
 These massive constructions, when first rediscov- 
 ered, were the subject of a great deal of wonder 
 and speculation, and were referred to a remote and 
 misty if not fabulous period. I believe it is now 
 agreed that they were the work of the Phrenicians, 
 or Canaanites, and that they are to be referred to 
 a period subsequent to the conquest of Egypt, or at 
 least of the Delta of Egypt, by the Hittites, when 
 the Egyptian influence was felt in Syria; and that 
 this Temple of the Sun was at least suggested, as 
 well as the worship of the Sun god here, by the 
 Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis on the Nile. There 
 is, to be sure, no record of the great city of Ba'al- 
 bek, but it may safely be referred to the period of 
 the greatest prosperity of the Phrenician nation. 
 
 Much as we had read of the splendor of these 
 ruins, and familiar as we were with photographs of
 
 SPLENDOR OF THE RUINS 249 
 
 them, we were struck with surprise when we climbed 
 up into the great court, that is, to the platform 
 of the temples. The platform extends over eight 
 hundred feet from east to west, an elevated theatre 
 for the display of some of the richest architecture 
 in the world. The general view is broad, impres- 
 sive, inspiring beyond anything else in Egypt or 
 Syria ; and when we look at details, the ruins charm 
 us with their beauty. Round three sides of the 
 great court runs a wall, the interior of which, re- 
 cessed and niched, was once adorned with the most 
 elaborate carving in designs more graceful than 
 you would suppose stone could lend itself to, with 
 a frieze of garlands of vines, flowers, and fruits. 
 Of the so-called great Temple of Baal at the west 
 end of the platform, only six splendid Corinthian 
 columns remain. The so-called Temple of the Sun 
 or Jupiter, to the south of the other and on a lower 
 level, larger than the Parthenon, exists still in 
 nearly its original form, although some of the ex- 
 terior columns have fallen, and time and the art- 
 hating Moslems have defaced some of its finest 
 sculpture. The ceiling between the outer row of 
 columns and the wall of this temple is, or was, one 
 of the most exquisite pieces of stone -carving ever 
 executed; the figures carved in the medallions 
 seem to have anticipated the Gothic genius, and 
 the exquisite patterns in stone to have suggested 
 the subsequent Saracenic invention. The compos- 
 ite capitals of the columns offer an endless study : 
 stone roses stand out upon their stems, fruit and 
 flowers hang and bloom in the freedom of nature;
 
 250 BA'ALBEK 
 
 the carving is all bold and spirited, and the inven- 
 tion endless. This is no doubt work of the Roman 
 period after the Christian era, but it is pervaded 
 by Greek feeling, and would seem to have been 
 executed by Greek artists. 
 
 In the centre of the great court (there is a small 
 six-sided court to the east of the larger one, which 
 was once approached by a great flight of steps from 
 below) are remains of a Christian basilica, referred 
 to the reign of Theodosius. Underneath the plat- 
 form are enormous vaults, which may have served 
 the successive occupants for store-houses. The 
 Saracens converted this position into a fortress, 
 and this military impress the ruins still bear. We 
 have therefore four ages in these ruins : the Phoeni- 
 cian, the Greek and Roman, the Christian, and the 
 Saracenic. The remains of the first are most en- 
 during. The old builders had no other method 
 of perpetuating their memory except by these 
 cyclopean constructions. 
 
 We saw the sunset on Ba'albek. The clouds 
 broke away and lay in great rosy masses over Leb- 
 anon ; the white snow ridge for forty miles spar- 
 kled under them. The peak of Lebanon, over 
 ten thousand feet above us, was revealed in all its 
 purity. There was a red light on the columns 
 and on the walls, and the hills of Anti-Lebanon, 
 red as a dull garnet, were speckled with snow 
 patches. The imagination could conceive nothing 
 more beautiful than the rose-color of the ruins, 
 the flaming sky, and the immaculate snow peaks, 
 apparently so close to us.
 
 THE RUINS BY MOONLIGHT 251 
 
 On our return we stopped at the beautiful cir- 
 cular temple of Venus, which would be a wonder 
 in any other neighborhood. Dinner awaited us, 
 and was marked by only one novelty, what we 
 at first took to be brown napkins, fantastically 
 folded and laid at each plate, a touch of elegance 
 for which we were not prepared. But the napkins 
 proved to be bread. It is made of coarse dai'k 
 wheat, baked in circular cakes as thin as brown 
 paper, and when folded its resemblance to a nap- 
 kin is complete. We found it tolerably palatable, 
 if one could get rid of the notion that he was eat- 
 ing a limp rag. The people had been advertised 
 of our arrival, and men, women, and boys swarmed 
 about us to sell copper coins ; most of them Roman, 
 which they find in the ruins. Few are found of 
 the Greeks ; the Romans literally sowed the ground 
 with copper money wherever they went in the Ori- 
 ent. The inhabitants are Moslems, and rather 
 decent in appearance, and the women incline to 
 good looks, though not so modest in dress as Mos- 
 lem women usually are; they are all persistent 
 beggars, and bring babies in their arms, borrow- 
 ing for that purpose all the infants in the neigh- 
 borhood, to incite us to charity. 
 
 We yielded to the average sentiment of Christ- 
 endom, and sallied out in the cold night to see the 
 ruins under the light of a full moon; one of the 
 party going simply that he might avoid the re- 
 proach of other travelers, " It is a pity you did not 
 see Ba'albek by moonlight." And it must be con- 
 fessed that these ruins stand the dim lijjht of the
 
 252 BA'ALBEK 
 
 moon better than most ruins ; they are so broad and 
 distinct that they show themselves even in this dis- 
 advantage, which those of Karnak do not. The 
 
 t> 7 
 
 six isolated columns seemed to float in the sky; 
 between them, snowy Lebanon showed itself. 
 
 The next morning was clear and sparkling; the 
 sky was almost as blue as it is in Nubia. We 
 were awakened by the drumming of a Moslem 
 procession. It was the great annual fete day, 
 upon which was to be performed the miracle of 
 riding over the bodies of the devout. The cere- 
 mony took place a couple of miles away upon the 
 hill, and we saw on all the paths leading thither 
 files of men and women in white garments. The 
 sheykh, mounted on horseback, rides over the 
 prostrate bodies of all who throw themselves be- 
 fore him, and the number includes young men as 
 well as darwishes. As they lie packed close to- 
 gether and the horse treads upon their spinal col- 
 umns, their escape from death is called miracu- 
 lous. The Christians tried the experiment here a 
 year or two ago, several young fellows submitting 
 to let a horseman trample over them, in order to 
 show the Moslems that they also possessed a reli- 
 gion which could stand horses' hoofs. 
 
 The ruins, under the intense blue sky, and in 
 the splendid sunlight, were more impressive than 
 in the dull gray of the day before, or even in the 
 rosy sunset ; their imperial dignity is not impaired 
 by the excessive wealth of ornamentation. When 
 upon this platform there stood fifty-eight of these 
 noble columns, instead of six, conspicuous from
 
 A MARKED CONTRAST 253 
 
 afar, and the sunlight poured into this superb 
 court, adorned by the genius of Athens and the 
 wealth of Rome, this must have been one of the 
 most resplendent temples in existence, rivaling 
 the group upon the Acropolis itself. Nothing 
 more marks the contrast between the religions of 
 the Greeks and Romans and of the Egyptians, or 
 rather between the genius of the two civilizations, 
 than their treatment of sacred edifices. And it is 
 all the more to be noted, because the more modern 
 nations accepted without reserve any god or object 
 of veneration or mystery in the Egyptian pantheon. 
 The Roman occupants of the temple of Phil* sacri- 
 ficed without scruple upon the altars of Osiris, and 
 the voluptuous Graeco-Romans of Pompeii built a 
 temple to Isis.. Yet al.vays and everywhere the 
 Grecians and the Romans sought conspicuous situa- 
 tions for the temples of the gods; they felt, as did 
 our Pilgrim Fathers, who planted their meeting- 
 houses on the windiest hills of New England, that 
 the deity was most honored when the house of his 
 worship was most visible to men; but the Egyp- 
 tians, on the contrary, buried the magnificence of 
 their temples within wall around wall, and permit- 
 ted not a hint of their splendor to the world out- 
 side. It is worth while to notice also that the As- 
 syrians did not share the contemporary reticence 
 of the Egyptians, but built their altars and tem- 
 ples high above the plain in pyramidal stages; and 
 if we may judge by this platform at Ba'albek, the 
 Phoenicians did not imitate the exclusive spirit of 
 the Pharaouic worshipers.
 
 254 BA'ALBEK 
 
 We lingered, called again and again by the im- 
 patient dragoman, in this fascinating spot, amid 
 the visible monuments of so many great races, 
 bearing the marks of so many religious revolutions, 
 and turned away with slow and reluctant steps, as 
 those who abandon an illusion or have not yet 
 thought out some suggestion of the imagination. 
 We turned also with reluctance from a real illusion 
 of the senses. In the clear atmosphere the ridge 
 of Lebanon was startlingly near to us; the snow 
 summit appeared to overhang Ba'albek as Vesuvius 
 does Pompeii; and yet it is half a day's journey 
 across the plain to the base of the mountain, and 
 a whole day's journey from these ruins to the sum- 
 mit. But although this illusion of distance did 
 not continue as we rode down the valley, we had 
 on either hand the snow ranges all day, making by 
 contrast with the brilliant colors of the plain a 
 lovely picture.
 
 XII 
 
 HE station at Stoura is a big stable and 
 a dirty little inn, which has the kitchen 
 in one shanty, the dining-room in an- 
 other, and the beds in a third ; a swift 
 mountain stream runs behind it, and a grove of 
 poplars on the banks moans and rustles in the wind 
 that draws down the Lebanon gorge. It was 
 after dark when we arrived, but whether our com- 
 ing put the establishment into a fluster, I doubt ; 
 it seems to be in a chronic state of excitement. 
 The inn was kept by Italians, who have a genius 
 for this sort of hotel; the landlord was Andrea, 
 but I suspect the real authority resided in his 
 plump, bright, vivacious wife. They had an heir, 
 however, a boy of eight, who proved to be the ty- 
 rant of the house when he appeared upon the scene. 
 The servants were a tall, slender Syrian girl, an 
 active and irresponsible boy, and a dark-eyed little 
 maid, in the limp and dirty single garment which 
 orphans always wear on the stage, and who in 
 fact was an orphan, and appeared to take the full 
 benefit of her neglected and jolly life. The 
 whole establishment was on a lark, and in a per-
 
 256 ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS 
 
 petual giggle, and communicated its overflowing 
 good-humor even to tired travelers. The well- 
 favored little wife, who exhibited the extremes of 
 fortune in a diamond ring and a torn and drag- 
 gled calico gown, sputtered alternately French and 
 Italian like a magpie, laughed with a contagious 
 merriment, and actually made the cheerless accom- 
 modations she offered us appear desirable. The 
 whole family waited on us, or rather kept us wait- 
 ing on them, at table, bringing us a dish now and 
 then as if its production were a joke, talking all 
 the while among themselves in Arabic, and appar- 
 ently about us, and laughing at their own observa- 
 tions, until we, even, came to conceive ourselves 
 as a party in a most comical light ; and so amus- 
 ing did we grow that the slim girl and the sorry 
 orphan were forced to rush into a corner every few 
 minutes and laugh it out. 
 
 I spent a pleasant hour in the kitchen, an 
 isolated, smoke-dried room with an earth floor, 
 endeavoring to warm my feet at the little fires of 
 charcoal kindled in holes on top of a bank of earth 
 and stone, and watching the pranks of this merry 
 and industrious family. The little heir amused 
 himself by pounding the orphan, kicking the shins 
 of the boy,, and dashing water in the face of the 
 slim girl, treatment which the servants dared 
 not resent, since the father laughed over it as an 
 exhibition of bravery and vivacity. Fragrant 
 steam came from a pot, in which quail were stew- 
 ing for the passengers by the night mail, and each 
 person who appeared in the kitchen, in turn, gave
 
 AN ENCHANTING HOUSEHOLD 257 
 
 this pot a stir ; the lively boy pounded coffee in a 
 big mortar, put charcoal on the fire, had a tussle 
 with the heir, threw a handspring, doing nothing 
 a minute at a time ; the orphan slid in with a bucket 
 of water, slopping it in all directions ; the heir set 
 up a howl and kicked his father because he was not 
 allowed to kick the orphan any more ; the little wife 
 came in like a breeze, whisking everybody one side, 
 and sympathized with dear little Robby, whose 
 cruel and ugly papa was holding the love from 
 barking his father's shins. You do not often see 
 a family that enjoys itself so much as this. 
 
 It was late next morning when we tore ourselves 
 from this enchanting household, and went at a good 
 pace over the fertile plain, straight towards Anti- 
 Lebanon, having a glimpse of the snow of Mount 
 Hermon, a long ridge peering over the hills to 
 the southeast, and crossing in turn the Litany and 
 the deep Anjar, which bursts forth from a single 
 fountain about a mile to the north. On our left 
 we saw some remains of what was once a capital 
 city, Chalcis, of unknown origin, but an old city 
 before it was possessed by the Ptolemies, or by 
 Mark Antony, and once the luxurious residence of 
 the Herod family. At Medjel, a village scattered 
 at the foot of small tcllx rising in the plain, we 
 turned into the hills, leaving unvisited a conspicu- 
 ous Roman temple on a peak above the town . The 
 road winds gradually up a wady. As we left the 
 plain, and looked back across it to Lebanon, the 
 colors of Buka'a and the mountain gave us a new 
 surprise; they were brilliant and yet soft, as gay
 
 258 ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS 
 
 and splendid as the rocks of the Yellowstone, and 
 yet exquisitely blended as in a Persian rug. 
 
 The hill-country was almost uninhabited ; except 
 the stations and an occasional Bedaween camp 
 there was small sign of occupation; the ground 
 was uncultivated ; peasants in rags were grubbing 
 up the roots of cedars for fuel. We met Druses 
 with trains of mules, Moslems with camels and 
 mules, and long processions of white-topped wag- 
 ons, like the Western "prairie schooner," 
 drawn each by three mules tandem. Thirty and 
 forty of these freight vehicles travel in company, 
 and we were continually meeting or passing them ; 
 their number is an indication of the large trade 
 that Damascus has with Beyrout and the Mediter- 
 ranean. There is plenty of color in the people and 
 in their costume. We were told that we could dis- 
 tinguish the Druses by their furtive and bad coun- 
 tenances; but for this information I should not 
 have seen that they differed much from the Maro- 
 nites; but I endeavored to see the treacherous vil- 
 lain in them. I have noticed in Syria that the 
 Catholic travelers have a good opinion of the Ma- 
 ronites and hate the Druses, that the American 
 residents think little of the Maronites, and that 
 the English have a lenient side for the Druses. 
 The Moslems consistently despise all of them. The 
 Druse has been a puzzle. There are the same hor- 
 rible stories current about him that were believed 
 of the early Christians ; the Moslem believes that 
 infants are slain and eaten in his midnight assem- 
 blies, and that once a year the Druse community
 
 THE DRUSES 259 
 
 meets in a cavern at midnight, the lights are extin- 
 guished, and the sexes mingling by chance in the 
 license of darkness choose companions for the year. 
 But the Druse creed, long a secret, is now known; 
 they are the disciples of Hakim, a Khalif of the 
 Fatimite dynasty; they believe in the unity of God 
 and his latest manifestation in Hakim ; they are as 
 much a political as a religious society; they are 
 accomplished hypocrites, cunning in plotting and 
 bold in action; they profess to possess "the truth," 
 and having this, they are indifferent to externals, 
 and are willing to be Moslems with the Moslems 
 and Christians with the Christians, while inwardly 
 feeling a contempt for both. They are the most 
 supercilious of all the Eastern sects. What they 
 are about to do is always the subject of anxiety in 
 the Lebanon regions. 
 
 At the stations of the road we found usually a 
 wretched family or two dwelling in a shanty, half 
 stable and half cafe, always a woman with a baby 
 in her arms, and the superabundant fountains for 
 nourishing it displayed to all the world ; generally 
 some slatternly girls, and groups of rough mule- 
 teers and drivers smoking. At one, I remember a 
 Jew who sold antique gems, rings, and coins, with 
 a shocking face, which not only suggested the first 
 fall of his race, but all the advantages he has since 
 taken of his innocent fellows, by reason of his 
 preoccupation of his position of knowledge and 
 depravity. 
 
 We made always, except in the steep ascents, 
 about ten miles aii hour. The management of the
 
 260 ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS 
 
 route is the perfection of French system and bureau- 
 cracy. We travel with a way-bill of numbered 
 details, as if we were a royal mail. At every sta- 
 tion we change one horse, so that we always have 
 a fresh animal. The way-bill is at every station 
 signed by the agent, and the minute of arrival and 
 departure exactly noted; each horse has its num- 
 ber, and the number of the one taken and the one 
 left is entered. All is life and promptness at the 
 stations ; changes are quickly made. The way-bill 
 would show the company the exact time between 
 stations; but I noticed that our driver continually 
 set his watch backwards and forwards, and I found 
 that he and the dragoman had a private understand- 
 ing to conceal our delays for lunch, for traffic with 
 Jews, or for the enjoyment of scenery. 
 
 After we had crossed the summit of the first 
 ridge we dashed down the gate of a magnificent 
 canon, the rocks heaved up in perpendicular strata, 
 overhanging, craggy, crumbled, wild. We crossed 
 then a dreary and nearly arid basin ; climbed, by 
 curves and zigzags, another ridge, and then went 
 rapidly down until we struck the wild and narrow 
 gorge of the sacred Abana. Immediately luxuriant 
 vegetable life began. The air was sweet with the 
 blossoms of the mish-mish (apricot), and splendid 
 walnuts and poplars overshadowed us. The river, 
 swollen and rushing amid the trees on its banks, 
 was frightfully rapid. The valley winds sharply, 
 and gives room only for the river and the road, 
 and sometimes only for one of them. Sometimes 
 the river is taken out of its bed and carried
 
 THE APPROACH TO THE CITY 261 
 
 one bank or the other; sometimes the road crosses 
 it, and again pursues its way between its divided 
 streams. We were excited by its rush and vol- 
 ume, and by the rich vegetation along its sides. 
 We came to fantastic Saracenic country-seats, to 
 arcaded and latticed houses set high up over the 
 river, to evidences of wealth and of proximity to a 
 great city. 
 
 Suddenly, for we seemed to have become a part 
 of the rushing torrent and to share its rapidity, we 
 burst out of the gorge, and saw the river, overpass- 
 ing its narrow banks, flowing straight on before us, 
 and beyond, on a level, the minarets and domes of 
 Damascus ! All along the river, on both banks of 
 it, and along the high wall by the roadside, were 
 crowds of men in Turkish costume, of women in 
 pure white, of Arabs sitting quietly by the stream 
 smoking the narghileh, squatting in rows along the 
 wall and along the water, all pulling at the water- 
 pipe. There were tents and booths erected by the 
 river. In a further reach of it men and boys were 
 bathing. Ranks and groups of veiled women and 
 children crouched on the damp soil close to the 
 flood, or sat immovable on some sandy point. It 
 is a delicious holiday for two or three women to sit 
 the livelong day by water, running or stagnant, to 
 sit there with their veils drawn over their heads, 
 as rooted as water-plants, and as inanimate as bags 
 of flour. It was a striking Oriental picture, played 
 on by the sun, enlivened by the swift current, 
 which dashes full into the city. 
 
 As we spun on, the crowd thickened, soldiers,
 
 262 ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS 
 
 grave Turks on caparisoned horses or white don- 
 keys, Jews, blacks, Persians. We crossed a trem- 
 bling bridge, and rattled into town over stony 
 pavements, forced our way with difficulty into 
 streets narrow and broken by sharp turns, the car- 
 riage-wheels scarcely missing men and children 
 stretched on the ground, who refused, on the theory 
 of their occupation of the soil prior to the inven- 
 tion of wheels, to draw in even a leg; and, in a 
 confused whirl of novel sights and discordant yells, 
 barks, and objurgations, we came to Dimitri's ho- 
 tel. The carriage stopped in the narrow street; 
 a small door in the wall, a couple of feet above the 
 pavement, opened, and we stepped through into a 
 little court occupied by a fountain and an orange- 
 tree loaded with golden fruit. Thence we passed 
 into a large court, the centre of the hotel, where the 
 Abana pours a generous supply into a vast marble 
 basin, and trees and shrubs offer shelter to singing 
 birds. About us was a wilderness of balconies, 
 staircases, and corridors, the sun flooding it all; 
 and Dimitri himself, sleek, hospitable, stood bow- 
 ing, in a red fez, silk gown, and long gold chain.
 
 xin 
 
 THE OLDEST OF CITIES 
 
 T is a popular opinion that there is no- 
 thing' of man's work older than Damas- 
 cus ; there is certainly nothing newer. 
 The city preserves its personal identity 
 as a man keeps his from youth to age, through 
 the constant change of substance. The man has in 
 his body not an atom of the boy; but if the boy 
 incurred scars, they are perpetuated in the man. 
 Damascus has some scars. We say of other an- 
 cient cities, "This part is old, that part is new." 
 We say of Damascus, its life is that of a tree, de- 
 cayed at heart, dropping branches, casting leaves, 
 but always renewing itself. 
 
 */ 
 
 How old is Damascus? Or, rather, how long 
 has a city of that name existed here on the banks 
 of the Abana? According to Jewish tradition, 
 which we have no reason to doubt, it was founded 
 by Uz, the son of Aram, the son of Shem. By the 
 same tradition it was a great city when a remark- 
 able man, of the tenth generation from the Deluge, 
 a person of great sagacity, not mistaken in his 
 opinions, skillful in the celestial science, compelled 
 to leave Chaldea when he was seventy-five years
 
 264 THE OLDEST OF CITIES 
 
 old, on account of his religious opinions, since he 
 ventured to publish the notion that there was but 
 one God, the Creator of the Universe, came 
 with an army of dependents and "reigned" in the 
 city of Uz. After some time Abraham removed 
 into Canaan, which was already occupied by the 
 Canaanites, who had come from the Persian Gulf, 
 established themselves in wall-towns in the hills, 
 built Sidon on the coast, and carried their con- 
 quests into Egypt. It was doubtless during the 
 reign of the Hittites, or Shepherd Kings, that 
 Abraham visited Egypt. Those usurpers occupied 
 the throne of the Pharaohs for something like five 
 hundred years, and it was during their occupancy 
 that the Jews settled in the Delta. 
 
 Now, if we can at all fix the date of the reign of 
 the Shepherd Kings, we can approximate to the 
 date of the foundation of Damascus, for Uz was 
 the third generation from Noah, and Abraham was 
 the tenth. We do not know how to reckon a gen- 
 eration in those days, when a life-lease was such a 
 valuable estate, but if we should assume it to be a 
 century, we should have about seven hundred years 
 between the foundation of Damascus and the visit 
 of Abraham to Egypt, a very liberal margin. But 
 by the chronology of Mariette Bey, the approxi- 
 mate date of the Shepherds' invasion is 2300 B. c. 
 to 2200 B. c., and somewhat later than that time 
 Abraham was in Damascus. If Damascus was 
 then seven hundred years old, the date of its foun- 
 dation would be about 3000 B. c. to 2900 B. c. 
 
 Assuming that Damascus has this positive old
 
 ITS AGE 265 
 
 age, how old is it comparatively? When we re- 
 gard it in this light, we are obliged to confess that 
 it is a modern city. Wljen Uz and his friends 
 wandered out of the prolific East, and pitched 
 their tents by the Abana, there was already on the 
 banks of the Nile a civilized, polished race, which 
 had nearly completed a cycle of national existence 
 much longer than the duration of the Koaian Em- 
 pire. It was about the eleventh dynasty of the 
 Egyptian kingdom, the Great Pyramid had been 
 built more than a thousand years, and the already 
 degenerate Egyptians of the "Old Empire " had 
 forgotten the noble art which adorned and still 
 renders illustrious the reigns of the pyramid-build- 
 ers. 
 
 But if Damascus cannot claim the highest anti- 
 quity, it has outlived all its rivals on the earth, and 
 has flourished in a freshness as perennial as the 
 fountain to which it owes its life, through all the 
 revolutions of the Orient. As a necessary com- 
 mercial capital it has pursued a pretty uniform 
 tenor under all its various masters. Tiglath-Pile- 
 ser attempted to destroy it ; it was a Babylonian 
 and then a Persian satrapy for centuries; it was a 
 Greek city ; it was the capital of a Roman province 
 for seven hundred years; it was a Christian city 
 and reared a great temple to John the Baptist ; it 
 was the capital of the Saracenic Empire, in which 
 resided the ruler who gave laws to all the lands 
 from India to Spain; it was ravaged by Tamer- 
 lane; it now suffers the blight of Turkish imbecil- 
 ity. From of old it was a caravan station and a
 
 266 THE OLDEST OF CITIES 
 
 mart of exchange, a camp by a stream; it is to- 
 day a commercial hive, swarming with an hundred 
 and fifty thousand people, a city without monu- 
 ments of its past or ambition for its future. 
 
 If one could see Damascus, perhaps he could in- 
 vent a phrase that would describe it; but when 
 you have groped and stumbled about in it for a 
 couple of weeks, endeavoring in vain to get a view 
 of more than a few rods of it at a time, you are 
 utterly at a loss how to convey an impression of it 
 to others. 
 
 If Egypt is the gift of the Nile, the river Abana 
 is the life of Damascus; its water is carried into 
 the city on a dozen different levels, making it lit- 
 erally one of fountains and running water. Some- 
 times the town is flooded ; the water had only just 
 subsided from the hotel when we arrived. This 
 inundation makes the city damp for a long time. 
 Indeed, it is at all times rather soaked with water, 
 and is with all respect to Uz and Abraham and 
 the dynasty of the Omeiyades a sort of habitable 
 frog-pond on a grand scale. At night the noise of 
 frogs, even at our hotel, is the chief music, the 
 gentle twilight song, broken, it is true, by the in- 
 cessant howling and yelping of savage dogs, packs 
 of which roam the city like wolves all night. 
 They are mangy yellow curs, without a single good 
 quality, except that they sleep all the daytime. In 
 every quarter of the city you see ranks and rows 
 of them asleep in the sun, occupying half the street 
 and nestling in all the heaps of rubbish. But much 
 as has been said of the dogs here, I think the frogs
 
 THE NARGHILEH 267 
 
 are the feature of the town ; they are as numerous 
 as in the marshes of Ravenna. 
 
 Still the water could not be spared. It gives 
 sparkle, life, verdure. In walking you constantly 
 get glimpses through heavy doorways of fountains, 
 marble tanks of running water, of a blooming tree 
 or a rose-trellis in a marble court, of a garden of 
 flowers. The crooked, twisted, narrow streets, 
 mere lanes of mud-walls, would be scarcely endur- 
 able but for these occasional glimpses, and the 
 sight now and then of the paved, pillared court of 
 a gayly painted mosque. 
 
 One ought not to complain when the Arab bar- 
 ber who trims his hair gives him a narghileh to 
 smoke during the operation ; but Damascus is not 
 so Oriental as Cairo, the predominant Turkish 
 element is not so picturesque as the Egyptian. 
 And this must be said in the face of the universal 
 use of the narghileh, which more than any other 
 one thing imparts an Oriental, luxurious tone to 
 the city. The pipe of Egypt is the chibouk, a stem 
 of cherry five feet long with a small clay bowl ; 
 however richly it may be ornamented, furnished 
 with a costly amber mouthpiece, wound with wire 
 of gold, and studded, as it often is, with diamonds 
 and other stones of price, it is, at the best, a stiff 
 affair; and even this pipe is more and more dis- 
 placed by the cigar, just as in Germany the meer- 
 schaum has yielded to the cigar as the Germans 
 have become accessible to foreign influences. But 
 in Damascus the picturesque narghileh, encourager 
 of idleness, is still the universal medium of smoke.
 
 268 THE OLDEST OF CITIES 
 
 The management of the narghileh requires that 
 a person should give his undivided mind to it; in 
 return for that, it gives him peace. The simplest 
 narghileh is a cocoanut -shell, with a flexible stem 
 attached, and an open metal bowl on top for the 
 tobacco. The smoke is drawn through the water 
 which the shell contains. Other narghilehs have a 
 glass standard and water-bowl, and a flexible stem- 
 two or three yards in length. The smoker, seated 
 cross-legged before this graceful object, appears 
 to be worshiping his idol. The mild Persian to- 
 bacco is kept alight by a slowly burning piece of 
 dried refuse which is kindly furnished by the camel 
 for fuel ; and the smoke is inhaled into the lungs, 
 and slowly expelled from the nostrils and the 
 mouth. Although the hastily rolled cigarette is the 
 resort of the poor in Egypt, and is somewhat used 
 here, it must be a very abandoned wretch who 
 cannot afford a pull at a narghileh in Damascus. 
 Its universality must excuse the long paragraph I 
 have devoted to this pipe. You see men smoking 
 it in all the cafes, in all the shops, by the roadside, 
 seated in the streets, in every garden, and on the 
 ho\ise-tops. The visible occupation of Damascus 
 is sucking this pipe. 
 
 Our first walk in the city was on Sunday to the 
 church of the Presbyterian mission ; on our way 
 we threaded a wilderness of bazaars, nearly all of 
 them roofed over, most of them sombre and gloomy. 
 Only in the glaring heat of summer could they be 
 agreeable places of refuge. The roofing of these 
 tortuous streets and lanes is not so much to ex-
 
 A DISAPPOINTING PARADISE 269 
 
 elude the sun, I imagine, as to keep out the snow, 
 and the roofs are consequently substantial; for 
 Damascus has an experience of winter, being 
 twenty -two hundred feet above the sea-level, nearly 
 as high as Jerusalem. These bazaars, so much 
 vaunted all through the Orient, disappointed us 
 not in extent, for they are interminable, but in 
 wanting the picturesqueness, oddity, and richness 
 of those of Cairo. And this, like tiio general ap- 
 pearance of the city, is a disappointment hard to 
 be borne, for we have been taught to believe that 
 Damascus is a Paradise on earth, and that here, 
 if anywhere, we should come into that region of 
 enchantment which the poets of the Arabian 
 Nights' tales have imposed upon us as the actual 
 Orient. Should we have recognized, in the low 
 and partially flooded strip of grass-land through 
 which we drove from the mouth of the Abana 
 gorge to the western gate of the city, the green 
 Merj of the Arabian poets, that gem of the earth ? 
 The fame of it has gone abroad throughout the 
 world, as if it were a unique gift of Allah to his 
 favorites. Why, every Occidental land has a mil- 
 lion glades, watered, green-sodded, tree-embow- 
 ered, more lovely than this, that no poet has 
 thought it worth while to celebrate. 
 
 We found a little handful of worshipers at the 
 mission church, and among them Heaven forgive 
 us for looking at her on Sunday ! an eccentric 
 and somewhat notorious English lady of title, who 
 shares the bed and board of an Arab sheykh in his 
 harem outside the walls. It makes me blush for
 
 270 THE OLDEST OF CITIES 
 
 the attractiveness of my own country, and tho 
 slighted fascination of the noble red man in his 
 paint and shoddy blanket, when I see a lady, sated 
 with the tame civilization of England, throw her- 
 self into the arms of one of these coarse bigamists 
 of the desert. Has he no reputation in the mother 
 country, our noble, chivalrous Walk-Under-the- 
 Ground ? 
 
 We saw something of the missionaries of Da- 
 mascus, but as I was not of the established religion 
 at the court of Washington at the time of my de- 
 parture from home, and had no commission to re- 
 port to the government, either upon the condition 
 of consulates or of religion abroad, I am not pre- 
 pared to remark much upon the state of either in 
 this city. I should say, however, that not many 
 direct converts were made either from Moslemism 
 or from other Christian beliefs, but that incalcula- 
 ble good is accomplished by the schools which the 
 missionaries conduct. The influence of these, in 
 encouraging a disposition to read, and to inquire 
 into the truth and into the conditions of a better 
 civilization, is not to be overestimated. What im- 
 pressed me most, however, in the fortune of these 
 able, faithful servants of the propagandism of 
 Christian civilization, was their pathetic isolation. 
 A gentleman and his wife of this mission had been 
 thirty years absent from the United States. The 
 friends who cheered or regretted their departure, 
 who cried over them, and prayed over them, and 
 followed them with tender messages, had passed 
 away, or become so much absorbed in the ever-
 
 THE MISSIONARIES 271 
 
 exciting life at home as to have almost forgotten 
 those who had gone away to the heathen a gener- 
 ation ago. The Mission Board that personally 
 knew them and lovingly cared for them is now 
 composed of strangers to them. They were, in 
 fact, expatriated, lost sight of. And yet they had 
 gained no country nor any sympathies to supply 
 the place of those lost. They must always be, to 
 a great degree, strangers in this fierce, barbarous 
 city. 
 
 We wandered down through the Christian quar- 
 ter of the town : few shops are here ; we were most 
 of the time walking between mud-walls, which 
 have a door now and then. This quarter is new ; 
 it was entirely burned by the Moslems and Druses 
 in 1860, when no less than twenty-five hundred 
 adult male Christians, heads of families, were 
 slaughtered, and thousands more perished of 
 wounds and famine consequent upon the total de- 
 struction of their property. That the Druses were 
 incited to this persecution by the Turkish rulers is 
 generally believed. We went out of the city by 
 the eastern gate, called Bab Shurky, which name 
 profanely suggested the irrelevant colored image 
 of Bob Sharkey, and found ourselves in the pres- 
 ence of huge mounds of rubbish, the accumulations 
 of refuse carted out of the city during many cen- 
 turies, which entirely concealed from view the 
 country beyond. We skirted these for a while, 
 with the crumbling city wall on the left hand, 
 passed through the hard, gray, desolate Turkish 
 cemetery, and came at length into what might be
 
 272 THE OLDEST OF CITIES 
 
 called country. Not that we could see any coun- 
 try, however ; we were always between high mud- 
 walls, and could see nothing beyond them, except 
 the sky, unless we stepped through an open door 
 into a garden. 
 
 Into one of these gardens, a public one, and one 
 of the most celebrated in the rhapsodies of travel- 
 ers and by the inventive poets, we finally turned. 
 When you are walking for pleasure in your native 
 land, and indulging a rural feeling, would you vol- 
 untarily go into a damp swale, and sit on a moist 
 sod under a willow? This garden is low, consid- 
 erably lower than the city, which has gradually 
 elevated itself on its own decay, and is cut by little 
 canals or sluiceways fed by the Abana, which run 
 with a good current. The ground is well covered 
 with coarse grass, of the vivid green that one finds 
 usually in low ground, and is liberally sprinkled 
 with a growth of willows and poplars. In this gar- 
 den of the Hesperides, in which there are few if any 
 flowers, and no promise of fruit, there is a rough 
 wooden shed, rickety and decaying, having, if I re- 
 member rightly, a balcony, it must have a bal- 
 cony, and there pipes, poor lemonade, and poorer 
 ice-cream are served to customers. An Arab band 
 of four persons, one of them of course blind of an 
 eye, seated cross-legged on a sort of bedstead, was 
 picking and thumping a monotonous, never-ending 
 tune out of the usual instruments. You could not 
 deny that the vivid greenery, and the gayly ap- 
 pareled groups sitting about under the trees and on 
 the water's edge, made a lively scene. lu another
 
 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE GARDENS 273 
 
 garden, farther on around the wall, the shanty of 
 entertainment is a many-galleried shaky construc- 
 tion, or a series of platforms and terraces of wood, 
 overhanging the swift Abana. In the daytime it 
 is but a shabby sight; but at night, when a thou- 
 sand colored globes light it without revealing its 
 poverty, and the lights dance in the water, and 
 hundreds of turbaned, gowned narghileh-smokers 
 and coffee-drinkers lounge in the galleries, or grace- 
 fully take their ease by the sparkling current, and 
 the faint thump of the darabouka is heard, and 
 some gesticulating story-teller, mounted upon a 
 bench, is reeling off to an attentive audience an in- 
 terminable Arabian tale, you might fancy that the 
 romance of the Orient is not all invented. 
 
 Of other and private gardens and inclosures we 
 had glimpses, on our walk, through open gates, 
 and occasionally over the walls ; we could imagine 
 what a fragrance and color would greet the senses 
 when the apricots are in bloom, and the oranges 
 and lemons in flower, and how beautiful the view 
 might be if the ugly walls did not conceal it. We 
 returned by the saddlers' bazaar, and by a famous 
 plane-tree, which may be as old as the Moslem 
 religion; its gnarled limbs are like the stems of 
 ordinary trees, and its trunk is forty feet around. 
 
 The remark that Damascus is without monu- 
 ments of its past needs qualification ; it was made 
 with reference to its existence before the Christian 
 era, and in comparison with other capitals of anti- 
 quity. Remains may, indeed, be met in its exte- 
 rior walls, and in a broken column here and there
 
 274 THE OLDEST OF CITIES 
 
 built into a modern house, of Roman workman- 
 ship, and its Great Mosque is an historical monu- 
 ment of great interest, if not of the highest anti- 
 quity. In its structure it represents three religions 
 and three periods of art; like the mosque of St. 
 Sophia at Constantinople, it was for centuries a 
 Christian cathedral ; like the Dome of the Rock at 
 Jerusalem, it is built upon a spot consecrated by 
 the most ancient religious rites. Situated in the 
 midst of the most densely peopled part of the city, 
 and pressed on all sides by its most crowded ba- 
 zaars, occupying a quadrangle nearly five hundred 
 feet one way by over three hundred the other, the 
 wanderer among the shops is constantly coming to 
 one side or another of it, and getting glimpses 
 through the spacious portals of the colonnaded 
 court within. Hemmed in as it is, it is only by 
 diving into many alleys and pushing one's way 
 into the rear of dirty shops and climbing upon the 
 roofs of houses, that one can get any idea of the 
 exterior of the mosque. It is, indeed, only from 
 an eminence that you can see its three beautiful 
 minarets. 
 
 It does not appear that Chosroes, the Persian 
 who encamped his army in the delicious gardens 
 of Damascus, in the year 614, when he was on his 
 way to the destruction of Jerusalem and the mas- 
 sacre of its Christian inhabitants, disturbed the 
 church of John the Baptist in this city. But 
 twenty years later it fell into the hands of the Sar- 
 acens, who for a few years were content to share 
 it with the Christian worshipers. It is said that
 
 THE GREAT MOSQUE 275 
 
 when Khaled, the most redoubtable of the Friends 
 of the Prophet, whose deeds entitled him to the 
 sobriquet of The Sword of God, entered this old 
 church, he asked to be conducted into the sacred 
 vault (which is now beneath the kubbeh of the 
 mosque), and that he was there shown the head of 
 John the Baptist in a gold casket, which had in 
 Greek this inscription: "This casket contains the 
 head of John the Baptist, son of Zachariah." 
 
 The building had been then for over three cen- 
 turies a Christian church. And already, when 
 Constantino dedicated it to Christian use, it had 
 for over three hundred years witnessed the wor- 
 ship of pagan deities. The present edifice is much 
 shorn of its original splendor and proportions, but 
 sufficient remains to show that it was a worthy 
 rival of the temples of Ba'albek, Palmyra, and 
 Jerusalem. No part of the building is older than 
 the Roman occupation, but the antiquarians are 
 agreed to think that this was the site of the old 
 Syrian temple, in which Ahaz saw the beautiful 
 altar which he reproduced in the temple at Jeru- 
 salem. 
 
 Pieces of superb carving, recalling the temple of 
 the Sun at Ba'albek, may still be found in some 
 of the gateways, and the noble Corinthian columns 
 of the interior are to be referred to Roman or 
 Greek workmen. Christian art is represented in 
 the building in some part of the walls and in the 
 round-topped windows; and the Moslems have 
 superimposed upon all minarets, a dome, and the 
 gay decorations of colored marbles and flaring 
 inscriptions.
 
 276 THE OLDEST OF CITIES 
 
 The Moslems have been either too ignorant or 
 too careless to efface all the evidences of Christian 
 occupation. The doors of the eastern gate are em- 
 bossed with brass, and among the emblems is the 
 Christian sacramental cup. Over an arch, which 
 can be seen only from the roof of the silversmiths' 
 bazaar, is this inscription in Greek: "Thy king- 
 dom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and thy 
 dominion endureth throughout all generations." 
 
 It required a special permit to admit us to the 
 mosque, but when we were within the sacred pre- 
 cincts and shod with slippers, lest our infidel shoes 
 should touch the pavement, we were followed by a 
 crowd of attendants who for the moment overcame 
 their repugnance to our faith in expectation of our 
 backsheesh. The interior view is impressive by 
 reason of the elegant minarets and the fine col- 
 onnaded open court. Upon one of the minarets 
 Jesus will descend when he comes to judge the 
 world. The spacious mosque, occupying one side 
 of the court, and open on that side to its roof, is 
 divided in its length by two rows of Corinthian 
 columns, and has a certain cheerfulness and hos- 
 pitality. The tesselated marble pavement of the 
 interior is much worn, and is nearly all covered 
 with carpets of Persia and of Smyrna. The only 
 tomb in the mosque is that of St. John the Baptist, 
 which is draped in a richly embroidered cloth. 
 
 We were anew impressed by the homelike, dem- 
 ocratic character of the great mosques. This, 
 opening by its four gates into the busiest bazaars, 
 as we said, .s much frequented at all hours. At
 
 A PECULIAR VIEW ' 277 
 
 the seasons of prayer you may see great numbers 
 prostrating themselves in devotion, and at all other 
 times this cool retreat is a refuge for the poor and 
 the weary. The fountains of running water in the 
 court attract people, those who desire only to sit 
 there and rest, as well as those who wash and pray. 
 About the fountains and in the mosque were seated 
 groups of women, eating their noonday bread, or 
 resting in that dumb attitude under which Eastern 
 women disguise their discontent or their intrigues. 
 This is, at any rate, a h.wen of rest for all, and it 
 is a goodly sight to see all classes, rich and poor, 
 flocking in here, leaving their shoes at the door or 
 carrying them in their hands. 
 
 The view from the minaret which we ascended 
 is peculiar. On the horizon we saw the tops of 
 hills and mountains, snowy Hermon among them. 
 Far over the plain we could not look, for the city 
 is beset by a thicket of slender trees, which were 
 just then in fresh leafage. Withdrawing our gaze 
 from the environs, we looked down upon the wide- 
 spread oval-shaped city. Most conspicuous were 
 the minarets, then a few domes, and then thou- 
 sands of dome-shaped roofs. You see the top of 
 a covered city, but not the city. In fact, it 
 scarcely looks like a city ; you see no streets, and 
 few roofs proper, for we have to look twice to con- 
 vince ourselves that the flat spaces covered with 
 earth and often green with vegetation (gardens in 
 the air) are actually roofs of houses. The streets 
 are either roofed over or are so narrow that we 
 cannot see them from this height. Damascus is a 
 sort of rabbit-burrow.
 
 278 THE OLDEST OF CITIES 
 
 Not far from the Great Mosque is the tomb of 
 Saladin. We looked from the street through a 
 grated window, to the bars of which the faithful 
 have tied innumerable rags and strings (pious offer- 
 ings, which it is supposed will bring them good 
 luck), into a painted inclosure, and saw a large 
 catafalque, or sarcophagus, covered with a green 
 mantle. The tomb is near a mosque, and beside 
 a busy cotton-bazaar ; it is in the midst of traffic 
 and travel, among activities and the full rush of 
 life, just where a man would like to be buried 
 in order to be kept in remembrance. 
 
 In going about the streets we notice the preva- 
 lence of color in portals, in the interior courts of 
 houses, and in the baths ; there is a fondness for 
 decorating with broad gay stripes of red, yellow, 
 and white. Even the white pet sheep which are 
 led about by children have their wool stained with 
 dabs of brilliant color, perhaps in honor of the 
 Greek Easter. 
 
 The baths of Damascus are many and very good, 
 not so severe and violent as those of New York, 
 nor so thorough as those of Cairo, but, the best of 
 them, clean and agreeable. We push aside a gay 
 curtain from the street and descend by steps into 
 a square apartment. It has a dome like a mosque. 
 Under the dome is a large marble basin into which 
 water is running; the floor is tesselated with col- 
 ored marbles. Each side is a recess with a half 
 dome, and in the recesses are elevated divans piled 
 with cushions for reclining. The walls are painted 
 in stripes of blue, yellow, and red, and the room
 
 THE BATH 279 
 
 is bright with various Oriental stuffs. There are 
 turbaned and silken-attired attendants, whose gen- 
 tle faces might make them mistaken for ministers 
 of religion as well as of cleanliness, and upon the 
 divans recline those who have come from the bath, 
 enjoying kief, with pipes and coffee. There is an 
 atmosphere of perfect contentment in the place, 
 and I can imagine how an effeminate ruler might 
 see, almost without a sigh, the empire of the world 
 slip from his grasp while he surrendered himself to 
 this delicious influence. 
 
 We undressed, were toweled, shod with wooden 
 clogs, and led through marble paved passages and 
 several rooms into an inner, long chamber, which 
 has a domed roof pierced by bulls '-eyes of party- 
 colored glass. The floor, of colored marbles, was 
 slippery with water running from the overflowing 
 fountains, or dashed about by the attendants. Out 
 of this room open several smaller chambers, into 
 which an unsocial person might retire. We sat 
 down on the floor by a marble basin into which 
 both hot and cold water poured. After a little 
 time spent in contemplating the humidity of the 
 world, and reflecting on the equality of all men 
 before the law without clothes, an attendant ap- 
 proached, and began to deluge us with buckets of 
 hot water, dashing them over us with a jocular en- 
 joyment and as much indifference to our person- 
 ality as if we had been statues. I should like to 
 know how life looks to a man who passes his days 
 in this dimly illumined chamber of steam, and 
 is permitted to treat his fellow -men with every
 
 280 THE OLDEST OF CITIES 
 
 mark of disrespect. When we were sufficiently 
 drenched, the agile Arab who had selected me as 
 his mine of backsheesh, knelt down and began to 
 scrub me with hair mittens, with a great show of 
 energy, uttering jocose exclamations in his own 
 language, and practicing the half-dozen English 
 words he had mastered, one of them being "dam," 
 which he addressed to me both affirmatively and 
 interrogatively, as if under the impression that it 
 conveyed the same meaning as tyeb in his vocabu- 
 lary. I suppose he had often heard wicked Eng- 
 lishmen, who were under his hands, use it, and he 
 took it for an expression of profound satisfaction. 
 He continued this operation for some time, put- 
 ting me in a sitting position, turning me over, tell- 
 ing me to "sleep "when he desired me to lie down, 
 encouraging me by various barbarous cries, and 
 slapping his hand from time to time to make up 
 by noise for his economical expenditure of mus- 
 cular force. 
 
 After my hilarious bather had finished this pro- 
 cess, he lathered me thoroughly, drenched me from 
 head to heels in suds, and then let me put the 
 crowning touch to my happiness by entering one 
 of the little rooms, and sliding into a tank of water 
 hot enough to take the skin off. It is easy enough 
 to make all this process read like a martyrdom, 
 but it is, on the contrary, so delightful that you 
 do not wonder that the ancients spent so much 
 time in the bath, and that next to the amphithea- 
 tre the emperors and tyrants lavished most money 
 upon these establishments, of which the people 
 were so extravagantly fond.
 
 A PHYSICAL PARADISE 281 
 
 Fresh towels were wound around us, turbans 
 were put on our heads, and we were led back to 
 the room first entered, where we were reenveloped 
 in cloths and towels, and left to recline upon the 
 cushioned divans; pipes and coffee were brought, 
 and we enjoyed a delicious sense of repose and 
 bodily lightness, looking dimly at the grave fig- 
 ures about us, and recognizing in them not men 
 but dreamy images of a physical paradise. No 
 rude voices or sharp movements broke the repose 
 of the chamber. It was as in a dream that I 
 watched a handsome boy, who, with a long pole, 
 was handling the washed towels, and admired the 
 unerring skill that tossed the strips of cloth high 
 in the air and caused them to catch and hang 
 squarely upon the cords stretched across the re- 
 cesses. The mind was equal to the observation, 
 but not to the comprehension, of this feat. When 
 we were sufficiently cooled, we were assisted to 
 dress, the various articles of Frank apparel afford- 
 ing great amusement to the Orientals. The charge 
 for the whole entertainment was two francs each, 
 probably about four times what a native would 
 have paid.
 
 XIV 
 
 OTHER SIGHTS IN DAMASCUS 
 
 AY after day we continued, like the 
 mourners, to go about the streets, in 
 the tangle of the bazaars, under the 
 dark roofs, endeavoring to see Damas- 
 cus. When we emerged from the city gate, the 
 view was not much less limited. I made the cir- 
 cuit of the wall on the north, in lanes, by running 
 streams, canals, inclosed gardens, seeing every- 
 where hundreds of patient, summer - loving men 
 and women squatting on the brink of every rivulet, 
 by every damp spot, in idle and perfect repose. 
 
 We stumbled about also on the south side of 
 the town, and saw the reputed place of St. Paul's 
 escape, which has been lately changed. It is a 
 ruined Saracenic tower in the wall, under which 
 is Bab Kisan, a gate that has been walled up for 
 seven hundred years. The window does not any 
 more exist from which the apostle was let down in 
 a basket, but it used to be pointed out with confi- 
 dence, and I am told that the basket is still shown, 
 but we did not see it. There are still some houses 
 on this south wall, and a few of them have pro- 
 jecting windows from which a person might easily
 
 THE CEMETERIES 283 
 
 be lowered. It was in such a house that the har- 
 lot of Jericho lived, who contrived the escape of 
 the spies of Joshua. And we see how thick and 
 substantial the town walls of that city must have 
 been to support human habitations. But they 
 were blown down. 
 
 Turning southward into the country, we came 
 to the tomb of the porter who assisted Paul's es- 
 cape, and who now sleeps here under the weight 
 of the sobriquet of St. George. A little farther 
 out on the same road is located the spot of Saul's 
 conversion. Near it is the English cemetery, a 
 small high-walled inclosure, containing a domed 
 building surmounted by a cross ; and in this histor- 
 ical spot, whose mutations of race, religion, and 
 government would forbid the most superficial to 
 construct for it any cast-iron scheme of growth or 
 decay, amid these almost melancholy patches of 
 vegetation which still hover in the Oriental imag- 
 ination as the gardens of all delights, sleeps undis- 
 turbed by ambition or by criticism, having at 
 last, let us hope, solved the theory of "averages," 
 the brilliant Henry T. Buckle. 
 
 Not far off is the Christian cemetery. " Who 
 is buried here?" I asked our thick-witted guide. 
 
 "Oh, any body, "he replied, cheerfully, "Greeks, 
 French, Italians, anybody you like; " as if I could 
 please myself by interring here any one I chose. 
 
 Among the graves was a group of women, hair 
 disheveled and garments loosened in the nix in don 
 of mourning, seated about a rough coffin open its 
 entire length. In it lay the body of a young man
 
 284 OTHER SIGHTS IN DAMASCUS 
 
 who had been drowned, and recovered from the 
 water after three days. The women lifted up his 
 dead hands, let them drop heavily, and then wailed 
 and howled, throwing themselves into attitudes of 
 the most passionate grief. It was a piteous sight, 
 there under the open sky, in the presence of an 
 unsympathizing crowd of spectators. 
 
 Returning, we went round by the large Moslem 
 cemetery, situated at the southwest corner of the 
 city. It is, like all Moslem burying-grounds, a 
 melancholy spectacle, a mass of small white- 
 washed mounds of mud or brick, with an inscribed 
 headstone, but here rest some of the most fa- 
 mous men and women of Moslem history. Here is 
 the grave of Ibn' Asaker, the historian of Damas- 
 cus; here rests the fierce Moawyeh, the founder of 
 the dynasty of the Omeiyades ; and here are buried 
 three of the wives of Mohammed, and Fatimeh, his 
 granddaughter, the child of Ali, whose place of 
 sepulture no man knows. Upon nearly every tomb 
 is a hollow for water, and in it is a sprig of myrtle, 
 which is renewed every Friday by the women who 
 come here to mourn and to gossip. 
 
 Much of the traveler's time, and perhaps the 
 most enjoyable part of it, in Damascus, is spent 
 in the bazaars, cheapening scarfs and rugs and the 
 various silken products of Syrian and Persian 
 looms, picking over dishes of antique coins, taking 
 impressions of intaglios, hunting for curious amu- 
 lets, and searching for the quaintest and most bril- 
 liant Saracenic tiles. The quest of the antique is 
 always exciting, and the inexperienced is ever hope-
 
 THE BAZAARS 285 
 
 ful that he will find a gem of value in a heap of 
 rubbish ; this hope never abandons the most blase 
 tourist, though in time he comes to understand 
 that the sharp-nosed Jew, or the oily Armenian, 
 or the respectable Turk, who spreads his delusive 
 wares before him, knows quite as well as the seeker 
 the value of any bit of antiquity, not only in Da- 
 mascus, but in Constantinople, Paris, and London, 
 and is an adept in all the counterfeits and imposi- 
 tions of the Orient. 
 
 The bazaars of the antique, of old armor, an- 
 cient brasses, and of curiosities generally, and even 
 of the silver and gold smiths, are disappointing 
 after Cairo; they are generally full of rubbish from 
 which the choice things seem to have been culled ; 
 indeed, the rage for antiquities is now so great 
 that sharp buyers from Europe range all the Ori- 
 ent, and leave little for the innocent and hopeful 
 tourist, who is aghast at the prices demanded, and 
 usually finds himself a victim of his own cleverness 
 when he pays for any article only a fourth of the 
 price at first asked. 
 
 The silk bazaars of Damascus still preserve, 
 however, a sort of preeminence of opportunity, 
 although they are largely supplied by the fabrics 
 manufactured at Beyrout and in other Syrian 
 towns. Certainly no place is more tempting than 
 one of the silk khans, gloomy old courts, in the 
 galleries of which you find little apartments stuffed 
 full of the seductions of Eastern looms. For my- 
 self, I confess to the fascination of those stuffs of 
 brilliant dyes, shot with threads of gold and of
 
 286 OTHER SIGHTS IN DAMASCUS 
 
 silver. I know a tall, oily-tongued Armenian, 
 who has a little chamber full of shelves, from which 
 he takes down one rich scarf after another, unfolds 
 it, shakes out its shining hues, and throws it on 
 the heap, until the room is littered with gorgeous 
 stuffs. He himself is clad in silk attire ; he is tall, 
 suave, insinuating, grave, and overwhelmingly 
 condescending. I can see him now, when I ques- 
 tion the value put upon a certain article which I 
 hold in my hand and no doubt betray my admira- 
 tion of in my eyes, I can see him now throw back 
 his head, half close his Eastern eyes, and exclaim, 
 as if he had hot pudding in his mouth, "Thot is 
 ther larster price." 
 
 I can see Abd-el-Atti now, when we had made 
 up a package of scarfs, and offered a certain sum 
 for the lot, which the sleek and polite trader re- 
 fused, with his eternal, "Thot is ther larster price," 
 sling the articles about the room, and depart in 
 rage. And I can see the Armenian bow us into 
 the corridor with the same sweet courtesy, knowing 
 very well that the trade is only just begun; that 
 it is, in fact, under good headway ; that the Arab 
 will return, that he will yield a little from the 
 "larster price," and that we shall go away loaded 
 with his wares, leaving him ruined by the transac- 
 tion, but proud to be our friend. 
 
 Our experience in purchasing old Saracenic and 
 Persian tiles is perhaps worth relating as an illus- 
 :ration of the character of the traders of Damas- 
 ;us. Tiles were plenty enough, for several ancient 
 louses had recently been torn down and the dealers
 
 BARGAINING FOR TILES 287 
 
 continually acquire them from ruined mosques or 
 those that are undergoing repairs. The dragoman 
 found several lots in private houses, and made a 
 bargain for a certain number at two francs and a 
 half each ; and when the bargain was made, I spent 
 half a day in selecting the specimens we desired. 
 
 The next morning, before breakfast, we went to 
 make sure that the lots we had bought would be 
 at once packed and shipped. But a change had 
 taken place in twelve hours. There was an Eng- 
 lishman in town who was also buying tiles; this 
 produced a fever in the market; an impression 
 went abroad that there was a fortune to be made in 
 tiles, and we found that our bargain was entirely 
 ignored. The owners supposed that the tiles we 
 had selected must have some special value; and 
 they demanded for the thirty-eight which we had 
 chosen agreeing to pay for them two francs and 
 a half apiece thirty pounds. In the house where 
 we had laid aside seventy-three others at the same 
 price, not a tile was to be discovered; the old 
 woman who showed us the vacant chamber said 
 she knew not what had become of them, but she 
 believed they had been sold to an Englishman. 
 
 We returned to the house first mentioned, re- 
 solved to devote the day if necessary to the extrac- 
 tion of the desired tiles from the grip of their own- 
 ers. The contest began about eight o'clock in the 
 morning ; it was not finished till three in the after- 
 noon, and it was maintained on our side with some 
 disadvantage, the only nutriment that sustained us 
 being a cup of tea which we drank very early iu
 
 288 OTHER SIGHTS IN DAMASCUS 
 
 the morning. The scene of the bargain was the 
 paved court of the house, in which there was a 
 fountain and a lemon-tree, and some rose-trees 
 trained on espaliers along the walls. The tempt- 
 ing enameled tiles were piled up at one side of the 
 court and spread out in rows in the lewan, the 
 open recess where guests are usually received. 
 The owners were two Greeks, brothers-in-law, 
 polite, cunning, sharp, the one inflexible, the other 
 yielding, a combination against which it is al- 
 most impossible to trade with safety, for the yield- 
 ing one constantly allures you into the grip of the 
 inflexible. The women of the establishment, 
 comely Greeks, clattered about the court on their 
 high wooden pattens for a time, and at length set- 
 tled down, in an adjoining apartment, to their 
 regular work of embroidering silken purses and 
 tobacco-pouches, taking time, however, for an oc- 
 casional cigarette or a pull at a narghileh, and, in 
 a constant chatter, keeping a lively eye upon the 
 trade going on in the court. The handsome chil- 
 dren added not a little to the liveliness of the 
 scene, and their pranks served to soften the as- 
 perities of the encounter; although I could not 
 discover, after repeated experiments, that any af- 
 fection lavished upon the children lowered the price 
 of the tiles. The Greek does not let sentiment 
 interfere with business, and he is much more diffi- 
 cult to deal with than an Arab, who occasionally 
 has impulses. 
 
 Each tile was the subject of a separate bargain 
 and conflict. The dicker went on in Arabic,
 
 WILT GREEKS 289 
 
 Greek, broken English, and dislocated French, 
 and was participated in not only by the parties 
 most concerned, but by the young Greek guide 
 and by the donkey-boys. Abd-el-Atti exhibited 
 all the qualities of his generalship. He was hu 
 morous, engaging, astonished, indignant, serious, 
 playful, threatening, indifferent. Beaten on one 
 grouping of specimens, he made instantly a new 
 combination ; more than once the transaction was 
 abruptly broken off in mutual rage, obstinacy, and 
 recriminations; and it was set going again by a 
 timely jocularity or a seeming concession. I can 
 see now the soft Greek take up a tile which had 
 painted on it some quaint figure or some lovely 
 flower, dip it in the fountain to bring out its bril- 
 liant color, and then put it in the sun for our ad- 
 miration; and I can see the dragoman shake his 
 head in slow depreciation, and push it one side, 
 when that tile was the one we had resolved to pos- 
 sess of all others, and was the undeclared centre of 
 contest in all the combinations for an hour there- 
 after. 
 
 When the day was two thirds spent we had 
 purchased one hundred tiles, jealously watched 
 the packing of each one, and seen the boxes nailed 
 and corded. We could not have been more ex- 
 hausted if we had undergone an examination for a 
 doctorate of law in a German university. Two 
 boxes, weighing two hundred pounds each, were 
 hoisted upon the backs of mules and sent to the 
 French company's station ; there does not appear 
 to be a dray or a burden-cart in Damascus; all
 
 290 OTHER SIGHTS IN DAMASCUS 
 
 freight is carried upon the back of a mule or a 
 horse, even long logs and whole trunks of trees. 
 
 When this transaction was finished, our Greek 
 guide, who had heard me ask the master of the 
 house for brass trays, told me that a fellow whom 
 1 had noticed hanging about there all the morning 
 had some trays to show me ; in fact, he had at his 
 house "seventeen trays." I thought this a rich 
 find, for the beautiful antique brasses of Persia are 
 becoming rare even in Damascus; and, tired as 
 we were, we rode across the city for a mile to a 
 secluded private house, and were shown into an 
 upper chamber. What was our surprise to find 
 spread out there the same "seventy-three" tiles 
 that we had purchased the day before, and which 
 had been whisked away from us. By "seventeen 
 tray, "the guide meant "seventy-three." We told 
 the honest owner that he was too late ; we had al- 
 ready tiles enough to cover his tomb.
 
 IN THE LEVANT 
 
 XV 
 SOME PRIVATE HOUSES 
 
 HE private houses of Damascus are 
 a theme of wonder and admiration 
 throughout the Orient. In a land in 
 which a moist spot is called a garden, 
 and a canal bordered by willows a Paradise, the 
 fancy constructs a palace of the utmost splendor 
 and luxury out of materials which in a less glow- 
 ing country would scarcely satisfy moderate notions 
 of comfort or of ostentation. 
 
 But the East is a region of contrasts as well as 
 of luxury, and it is difficult to say how much of 
 their reputation the celebrated mansions of Damas- 
 cus owe to the wretchedness of the ordinary dwell- 
 ings, and also to the rasrjredness of their surround- 
 
 <~J ' OO 
 
 ings. We spent a day in visiting several of the 
 richest dwellings, and steeping ourselves in the 
 dazzling luxury they offer. 
 
 The exterior of a private house gives no idea of 
 its interior. Sometimes its plain mud-wall has a 
 solid handsome street-door, and if it is very old,
 
 292 SOME PRIVATE HOUSES 
 
 perhaps a rich Saracenic portal; but usually you 
 slip from the gutter, lined with mud-walls, called a 
 street, into an alley, crooked, probably dirty, pass 
 through a stable -yard and enter a small court, 
 which may be cheered by a tree and a basin of 
 water. Thence you wind through a narrow pas- 
 sage into a large court, a parallelogram of tessel- 
 lated marble, having a fountain in the centre and 
 about it orange and lemon trees, and roses and 
 vines. The house, two stories high, is built about 
 this court, upon which all the rooms open without 
 communicating with each other. Perhaps the 
 building is of marble, and carved, or it may be 
 highly ornamented with stucco, and painted in gay 
 colors. If the establishment belongs to a Moslem, 
 it will have beyond this court a second, larger 
 and finer, with more fountains, trees, and flowers, 
 and a house more highly decorated. This is the 
 harem, and the way to it is a crooked alley, so that 
 by no chance can the slaves or visitors of the mas- 
 ter get a glimpse into the apartments of the women. 
 The first house we visited was of this kind ; all the 
 portion the gentlemen of the party were admitted 
 into was in a state of shabby decay; its court in 
 disrepair, its rooms void of comfort, a condition 
 of things to which we had become well accustomed 
 in everything Moslem. But the ladies found the 
 court of the harem beautiful, and its apartments 
 old and very rich in wood-carving and in ara- 
 besques, something like the best old Saracenic 
 houses in Cairo. 
 
 The houses of the rich Jews which we saw are
 
 IN THE JEWS' QUARTERS 293 
 
 built like those of the Moslems, about a paved 
 court with a fountain, but totally different in archi- 
 tecture and decoration. 
 
 In speaking of a fountain, in or about Damas- 
 cus, I always mean a basin into which water is 
 discharged from a spout. If there are any jets or 
 upspringing fountains, I was not so fortunate as 
 to see them. 
 
 In passing through the streets of the Jews' 
 quarter we encountered at every step beautiful 
 children, not always clean Sunday-school chil- 
 dren, but ravishingly lovely, the handsomest, as 
 to exquisite complexions, grace of features, and 
 beauty of eyes, that I have ever seen. And look- 
 ing out from the open windows of the balconies 
 which hang over the street were lovely Jewish 
 women, the mothers of the beautiful children, and 
 the maidens to whom the humble Christian is 
 grateful that they tire themselves and look out of 
 windows now as they did in the days of the pro- 
 phets. 
 
 At the first Jewish house we entered, we were 
 received by the entire family, old and young, 
 newly married, betrothed, cousins, uncles, and 
 maiden aunts. They were evidently expecting com- 
 pany about these days, and not at all averse to 
 exhibiting their gorgeous house and their rich ap- 
 parel. Three dumpy, middle-aged women, who 
 would pass for ugly anywhere, welcomed us at 
 first in the raised recess, or lewan, at one end of 
 the coiirt; we were seated upon the divans, while 
 the women squatted upon cushions. Then the rest
 
 294 SOME PRIVATE HOUSES 
 
 of the family began to appear. There were the 
 handsome owner of the house, his younger brother 
 just married, and the wife of the latter, a tall and 
 pretty woman of the strictly wax-doll order of 
 beauty, with large, swimming eyes. She wore a 
 short-waisted gown of blue silk, and diamonds, 
 and, strange to say, a dark wig ; it is the fashion 
 at marriage to shave the head and put on a wig, 
 a most disenchanting performance for a bride. 
 The numerous children, very pretty and sweet- 
 mannered, came forward and kissed our hands. 
 The little girls were attired in white short-waisted 
 dresses, and all, except the very smallest, wore 
 diamonds. One was a bride of twelve years, 
 whose marriage was to be concluded the next year. 
 She wore an orange -wreath, her high corsage of 
 white silk sparkled with diamonds, and she was 
 sweet and engaging in manner, and spoke French 
 prettily. 
 
 The girls evidently had on the family diamonds, 
 and I could imagine that the bazaar of Moses in the 
 city had been stripped to make a holiday for his 
 daughters. Surely, we never saw such a display 
 out of the Sultan's treasure-chamber. The head- 
 dress of one of the cousins of the family, who was 
 recently married, was a pretty hat, the coronal 
 front of which was a mass of diamonds. We saw 
 this same style of dress in other houses afterwards, 
 and were permitted to admire other young women 
 who were literally plastered with these precious 
 stones, in wreaths on the head, in brooches, and 
 necklaces, masses of dazzling diamonds, which
 
 A JEWISH FAMILY AT HOME 295 
 
 after a time came to have no more value in our 
 eyes than glass, so common and cheap did they 
 seem. If a wicked person could persuade one of 
 these dazzling creatures to elope with him, he 
 would be in possession of treasure enough to found 
 a college for the conversion of the Jews. I could 
 not but be struck with the resemblance of one of 
 the plump, glowing-cheeked young girls, who was 
 set before us for worship, clad in white silk and 
 inestimable jewels, to the images of the Madonna, 
 decked with equal affection and lavish wealth, 
 which one sees in the Italian churches. 
 
 All the women and children of the family walked 
 about upon wooden pattens, ingeniously inlaid with 
 ivory or pearl, the two supports of which raise 
 them about three inches from the ground. They 
 are confined to the foot by a strap across the ball, 
 but being otherwise loose, they clatter at every 
 step; of course, graceful walking on these little 
 stilts is impossible, and the women go about like 
 hens whose toes have been frozen off. When they 
 step up into the lewan, they leave their pattens on 
 the marble floor, and sit in their stocking-feet. 
 Our conversation with this hospitable collection of 
 relations consisted chiefly in inquiries about their 
 connection with each other, and an effort on their 
 part to understand our relationship, and to know 
 why we had not brought our entire families. They 
 were also extremely curious to know about our 
 houses in America, chiefly, it would seem, to en- 
 force the contrast between our plainness and their 
 luxury. When we had been served with coffee
 
 296 SOME PRIVATE HOUSES 
 
 and cigarettes, they all rose and showed us about 
 the apartments. 
 
 The first one, the salon, will give an idea of the 
 others. It was a lofty, but not large room, with 
 a highly painted ceiling, and consisted of two 
 parts : the first, level with the court and paved 
 with marble, had a marble basin in the centre sup- 
 ported on carved lions ; the other two thirds of the 
 apartment was raised about a foot, carpeted, and 
 furnished with chairs of wood, inlaid with mother- 
 of-pearl, stiffly set against the walls. The chairs 
 were not comfortable to sit in, and they were the 
 sole furniture. The wainscoting was of marble, in 
 screen-work, and most elaborately carved. High 
 up, near the ceiling, were windows, double win- 
 dows in fact, with a space between like a gallery, 
 so that the lace-like screen work was exhibited to 
 the utmost advantage. There was much gilding 
 and color on the marble, and the whole was costly 
 and gaudy. The sleeping-rooms, in the second 
 story, were also handsome in this style, but they 
 were literally all windows, on all sides; the space 
 between the windows was never more than three or 
 four inches. They are admirable for light and 
 air, but to enter them is almost like stepping out 
 of doors. They are all en suite, so that it would 
 seem that the family must retire simultaneously, 
 exchanging the comparative privacy of the isolated 
 rooms below for the community of these glass 
 apartments. 
 
 The salons that we saw in other houses were of 
 the same general style of the first ; some had mar-
 
 PRE-ADAMITE ART 297 
 
 ble niches in the walls, the arch of which was sup- 
 ported by slender marble columns, and these re- 
 cesses, as well as the walls, were decorated with 
 painting, usually landscapes and cities. The 
 painting gives you a perfectly accurate idea of the 
 condition of art in the Orient; it was not only pre- 
 Raphaelite, it was pre-Adamite, worse than By- 
 zantine, and not so good as Chinese. Money had 
 been freely lavished in these dwellings, and what- 
 ever the Eastern chisel or brush could do to enrich 
 and ornament them had been done. I was much 
 pleased by the picture of a city, it may have 
 been Damascus, freely done upon the wall. The 
 artist had dotted the plaster with such houses as 
 children are accustomed to make on a slate, ar- 
 ranging some of them in rows, and inserting here 
 and there a minaret and a dome. There was not 
 the slightest attempt at shading or perspective. 
 Yet the owners contemplated the result with visi- 
 ble satisfaction, and took a simple and undisguised 
 pleasure in our admiration of the work of art. 
 
 "Alas," I said to the delighted Jew connoisseur 
 who had paid for this picture, "we have nothing 
 like that in our houses in America, not even in 
 the Capitol at Washington ! " 
 
 "But your country is new," he replied with 
 amiable consideration; "you will have of it one 
 day." 
 
 In none of these veneered and stuccoed palaces 
 did we find any comfort ; everywhere a profuse ex- 
 penditure of money in Italian marble, in carving, 
 in gilding, and glaring color, but no taste, except
 
 298 SOME PRIVATE HOUSES 
 
 in some of the wood-work, cut in arabesque, and 
 inlaid, a reminiscence of the almost extinct 
 Saracenic grace and invention. And the construc- 
 tion of all the buildings and the ornamentation 
 were shabby and cheap in appearance, in spite of 
 the rich materials ; the marbles in the pavement or 
 the walls were badly joined and raggedly cemented, 
 and by the side of the most costly work was sure 
 to be something mean and frail. 
 
 We supposed at first that we ought to feel a 
 little delicacy about intruding our barefaced curi- 
 osity into private houses, perhaps an unpardon- 
 able feeling in a traveler who has been long enough 
 in the Orient to lose the bloom of Occidental mod- 
 esty. But we need not have feared. Our hosts 
 were only too glad that we should see their state 
 and luxury. There was something almost comical 
 in these Jewish women arraying themselves in their 
 finest gowns, and loading themselves with dia- 
 monds, so early in the day (for they were ready to 
 receive us at ten o'clock), and in their nai've en- 
 joyment of our admiration. Surely we ought not 
 to have thought that comical which was so kindly 
 intended. I could not but wonder, however, what 
 resource for the rest of the day could remain to a 
 woman who had begun it by dressing in all her 
 ornaments, by crowning herself with coronets and 
 sprays of diamonds, by hanging her neck and arms 
 with glittering gems, as if she had been a statue 
 set up for idolatry. After this supreme effort of 
 the sex, the remainder of the day must be intol- 
 erably flat. For I think one of the pleasures of
 
 THE EMIR ABD-EL-KADER 299 
 
 life must be the gradual transformation, the bloom- 
 ing from the chrysalis of elegant morning desha- 
 bille into the perfect flower of the evening toilet. 
 
 These princesses of Turkish diamonds all wore 
 dresses with the classic short waist, which is the 
 most womanly and becoming, and perhaps their 
 apparel imparted a graciousness to their manner. 
 We were everywhere cordially received, and usu- 
 ally offered coffee, or sherbet and confections. 
 
 H. H. the JEmir Abd-el-Kader lives in a house 
 suitable to a wealthy Moslem who has a harem. 
 The old chieftain had expressed his willingness to 
 receive us, and N. Meshaka, the American consular 
 agent, sent his kawass to accompany us to his res- 
 idence at the appointed hour. The old gentleman 
 met us at the door of his reception-room, which is 
 at one end of the fountained court. He wore the 
 plain Arab costume, with a white turban. I had 
 heard so much of the striking, venerable, and even 
 magnificent appearance of this formidable desert 
 hero, that I experienced a little disappointment in 
 the reality, and learned anew that the hero should 
 be seen in action, or through the lenses of imagi- 
 native description which can clothe the body with 
 all the attributes of the soul. The demigods so 
 seldom come up to their reputation! Abd-el-Kader 
 may have appeared a gigantic man when on horse- 
 back in the smoke and whirl of an Algerine com- 
 bat ; but he is a man of medium size and scarcely 
 medium height; his head, if not large, is finely 
 shaped and intellectual, and his face is open and 
 pleasing. He wore a beard, trimmed, which I sus-
 
 300 SOME PRIVATE HOUSES 
 
 pect ought to be white, but which was black, and 
 I fear dyed. You would judge him to be, at least, 
 seventy -five, and his age begins to show by a little 
 pallor, by a visible want of bodily force, and by 
 a lack of lustre in those once fiery and untamable 
 eyes. 
 
 His manner was very gracious, and had a sim- 
 ple dignity, nor did our interview mainly consist 
 in the usual strained compliments of such occa- 
 sions. In reply to a question, he said that he had 
 lived over twenty years in Damascus ; but it was 
 evident that his long exile had not dulled his in- 
 terest in the progress of the world, and that he 
 watched with intense feeling all movements of peo- 
 ples in the direction of freedom. There is no such 
 teacher of democracy as misfortune, but I fancy 
 that Abd-el-Kader sincerely desires for others the 
 liberty he covets for himself. He certainly has the 
 courage of his opinions ; while he is a very strict 
 Moslem, he is neither bigoted nor intolerant, as 
 he showed by his conduct during the massacre of 
 the Christians here, in 1860. His face lighted up 
 with pleasure when I told him that Americans re- 
 membered with much gratitude his interference in 
 behalf of the Christians at that time. 
 
 The talk drifting to the state of France and 
 Italy, he expressed his full sympathy with the lib- 
 eral movement of the Italian government, but as 
 to France he had no hope of a republic at present ; 
 he did not think the people capable of it. 
 
 "But America,'' he said, with sudden enthusi- 
 asm, "that is the country, in all the world that is
 
 AN OLD HERO 301 
 
 the only country, that is the land of real freedom. 
 I hope," he added, "that you will have no more 
 trouble among yourselves." 
 
 We asked him what he thought of the probabil- 
 ity of another outburst of the Druses, which was 
 getting to be so loudly whispered. Nobody, he 
 said, could tell what the Druses were thinking or 
 doing; he had no doubt that in the former rising 
 and massacre they were abetted by the Turkish 
 government. This led him to speak of the con- 
 dition of Syria: the people were fearfully ground 
 down, and oppressed with taxation and exactions 
 of all sorts ; in comparison he did not think Egypt 
 was any better off, but much the same. 
 
 In all our conversation we were greatly impressed 
 by the calm and comprehensive views of the old 
 hero, his philosophical temper, and his serenity; 
 although it was easy to see that he chafed under 
 the banishment which kept so eager a soul from 
 participation in the great movements which he 
 weighed so well and so longed to aid. When re- 
 freshments had been served, we took our leave; 
 but the emir insisted upon accompanying us 
 through the court and the dirty alleys, even to the 
 public street where our donkeys awaited us, and 
 bade us farewell with a profusion of Oriental sal- 
 utations.
 
 XVI 
 
 SOME SPECIMEN TRAVELERS 
 
 T is to be regretted that some one has 
 not the leisure and the genius for it 
 would require both to study and to 
 sketch the more peculiar of the travel- 
 ers who journey during a season in the Orient, to 
 photograph their impressions, and to unravel the 
 motives that have set them wandering. There 
 was at our hotel a countryman whose observations 
 on the East pleased me mightily. I inferred, cor- 
 rectly, from his slow and deliberate manner of 
 speech, that he was from the great West. A gen- 
 tleman spare in figure and sallow in complexion, 
 you might have mistaken him for a "member" 
 from Tennessee or Illinois. What you specially 
 admired in him was his entire sincerity, and his 
 imperviousness to all the glamour, historical or 
 romantic, which interested parties, like poets and 
 historians, have sought to throw over the Orient. 
 A heap of refuse in the street or an improvident 
 dependant on Allah, in rags, was just as offensive 
 to him in Damascus as it would be in Big Lickop- 
 olis. He carried his scales with him; he put into 
 one balance his county-seat and into the other the 
 entire Eastern civilization, and the Orient kicked
 
 A WESTERN OBSERVER 303 
 
 the beam, and it was with a mighty, though 
 secret joy that you saw it. 
 
 It was not indeed for his own pleasure that he 
 had left the familiar cronies of his own town and 
 come into foreign and uncomfortable parts; you 
 could see that he would much prefer to be again 
 among the "directors" and "stockholders" and 
 operators, exchanging the dry chips of gossip 
 about stocks and rates; but, being a man of 
 "means," he had yielded to the imperious pres- 
 sure of our modern society which insists on travel, 
 and to the natural desire of his family to see the 
 world. Europe had not pleased him, although it 
 was interesting for an old country, and there were 
 a few places, the Grand Hotel in Paris for in- 
 stance, where one feels a little at home. Build- 
 ings, cathedrals ? Yes, some of them were very 
 fine, but there was nothing in Europe to equal or 
 approach the Capitol in Washington. And gal- 
 leries ; my wife likes them, and my daughter, I 
 suppose I have walked through miles and miles of 
 them. It may have been in the nature of a confi- 
 dential confession, that he was dragged into the 
 East, though he made no concealment of his re- 
 pugnance to being here. But when he had crossed 
 the Mediterranean, Europe had attractions for him 
 which he had never imagined while he was in it. 
 If he had been left to himself he would have fled 
 back from Cairo as if it were infested with plague ; 
 he had gone no farther up the Nile ; that miserable 
 hole, Cairo, was sufficient for him. 
 
 "They talk," he was saying, speaking with that
 
 304 SOME SPECIMEN TRAVELERS 
 
 deliberate pause and emphasis upon every word 
 which characterizes the conversation of his section 
 of the country, "they talk about the climate of 
 Egypt ; it is all a humbug. Cairo is the most dis- 
 agreeable city in the world, no sun, nothing but 
 dust and wind. I give you my word that we had 
 only one pleasant day in a week; cold, you can't 
 get warm in the hotel; the only decent day we 
 had in Egypt was at Suez. Fruit? What do you 
 get? Some pretend to like those dry dates. The 
 oranges are so sour you can't eat them, except the 
 Jaffa, which are all peel. Yes, the Pyramids are 
 big piles of stone, but when you come to architec- 
 ture, what is there in Cairo to compare to the 
 Tuileries? The mosque of Mohammed Ali is a 
 fine building; it suits me better than the mosque 
 at Jerusalem. But what a city to live in ! " 
 
 The farther our friend journeyed in the Orient, 
 the deeper became his disgust. It was extreme 
 in Jerusalem ; but it had a pathetic tone of resig- 
 nation in Damascus; hope was dead within him. 
 The day after we had visited the private houses, 
 some one asked him at table if he was not pleased 
 with Damascus. 
 
 "Damascus!" he repeated, "Damascus is the 
 most God-forsaken place I have ever been in. 
 There is nothing to eat, and nothing to see. I 
 had heard about the bazaars of Damascus; my 
 daughter must see the bazaars of Damascus. 
 There is nothing in them ; I have been from one 
 end of them to the other, it is a mess of rubbish. 
 I suppose you were hauled through what they call
 
 A GOOD HATER 305 
 
 the private houses? There is a good deal of 
 marble and a good deal of show, but there isn't 
 a house in Damascus that a respectable American 
 would live in; there isn't one he could be com- 
 fortable in. The old mosque is an interesting 
 place ; I like the mosque, and I have been there a 
 couple of times, and should n't mind going again ; 
 but I 've had enough of Damascus. I don't intend 
 to go out doors again until my family are ready to 
 leave." 
 
 All these intense dislikes of the Western ob- 
 server were warmly combated by the ladies present, 
 who found Damascus almost a paradise, and were 
 glowing with enthusiasm over every place and in- 
 cident of their journey. Having delivered his 
 opinion, our friend let the conversation run on 
 without interference, as it ranged all over Pales- 
 tine. He sat in silence, as if he were patiently 
 enduring anew the martyrdom of his pleasure-trip, 
 until at length, obeying a seeming necessity of 
 relieving his feelings, he leaned forward and ad- 
 dressed the lady next but one to him, measuring 
 every word with judicial slowness, 
 
 " Madame I - hate the name of Pal- 
 estine and Judaea and the Jordan and 
 Damascus and Jerusalem." 
 
 It is always refreshing in travel to meet a can- 
 did man who is not hindered by any weight of his- 
 toric consciousness from expressing his opinions ; 
 and without exactly knowing why, I felt under 
 great obligations to this gentleman, for gentle- 
 man he certainly was, even to an old-fashioned
 
 306 SOME SPECIMEN TRAVELERS 
 
 courtesy that shamed the best breeding of the 
 Arabs. And after this wholesale sweep of the 
 Oriental board, I experienced a new pleasure in 
 going about and picking up the fragments of ro- 
 mance and sentiment that one might still admire. 
 
 There was another pilgrim at Damascus to whom 
 Palestine was larger than all the world besides, 
 and who magnified its relation to the rest of the 
 earth as much as our more widely traveled friend 
 belittled it. In a waste but damp spot outside the 
 Bab-el-Hadid an incongruous Cook's Party had 
 pitched its tents, a camp which swarmed during 
 the day with itinerant merchants and beggars, and 
 at night was the favorite resort of the most dis- 
 solute dogs of Damascus. In knowing this party 
 one had an opportunity to observe the various 
 motives that bring people to the Holy Land ; there 
 were a divinity student, a college professor, a 
 well-known publisher, some indomitable English 
 ladies, some London cockneys, and a group of 
 young men who made a lark of the pilgrimage, 
 and saw no more significance in the tour than in a 
 jaunt to the Derby or a sail to Margate. I was 
 told that the guide-book most read and disputed 
 over by this party was the graphic itinerary of 
 Mark Twain. The pilgrim to whom I refer, how- 
 ever, scarcely needed any guide in the Holy Land. 
 He was, by his own representation, an illiterate 
 shoemaker from the South of England ; of school- 
 ing he had never enjoyed a day, nor of education, 
 except such as sprung from his "conversion," 
 which happened in his twentieth year. At that
 
 A PRIMITIVE METHODIST 307 
 
 age he joined the "Primitive Methodists," and be- 
 came, without abandoning his bench, an occasional 
 exhorter and field-preacher ; his study, to which he 
 gave every moment not demanded by his trade, 
 was the Bible. To exhorting he added the labor 
 on Sunday of teaching, and for nearly forty years, 
 without interruption, he had taken charge of a 
 Sunday-school class. He was very poor, and the 
 incessant labor of six days in the week hardly 
 sufficed to the support of himself and his wife, 
 and the family that began to fill his humble lodg- 
 ing. Nevertheless, at the very time of his conver- 
 sion he was seized with an intense longing to make 
 a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This desire 
 strengthened the more he read the Bible and be- 
 came interested in the scenes of its prophecies and 
 miracles. He resolved to go ; yet to undertake so 
 expensive a journey at the time was impossible, 
 nor could his family spare his daily labor. But 
 early in his married life, he came to a notable res- 
 olution, and that was to lay by something every 
 year, no matter how insignificant the sum, as a 
 fund for his pilgrimage. And he trusted if his 
 life were spared long enough he should be able to 
 see with his own eyes the Promised Land; if that 
 might be granted him, his object in life would be 
 attained, and he should be willing to depart in 
 peace. 
 
 Filled with this sole idea, he labored at his trade 
 without relaxation, and gave his Sundays and his 
 evenings to a most diligent study of the Bible : and 
 at length extended his reading to other books,
 
 308 SOME SPECIMEN TRAVELERS 
 
 commentaries and travels, which bore upon his 
 favorite object. Years passed by; his Palestine 
 fund accumulated more slowly than his information 
 about that land, but he was never discouraged ; he 
 lost at one time a considerable sum by misplaced 
 confidence in a comrade, but, nothing disheartened, 
 he set to work to hammer out what would replace 
 it. Of course such industry and singleness of 
 purpose were not without result; his business 
 prospered and his fund increased; but with his 
 success new duties opened; his children must be 
 educated, for he was determined that they should 
 have a better chance in England than their father 
 had been given. The expenses of their education 
 and his contributions to the maintenance of the 
 worship of his society interfered sadly with his pil- 
 grimage, and more than thirty years passed before 
 he saw himself in possession of the sum that he 
 could spare for the purchase of a Cook's ticket to 
 the Holy Land. It was with pardonable pride 
 that he told this story of his life, and added that 
 his business of shoemaking was now prosperous, 
 that he had now a shop of his own and men work- 
 ing under him, and that one of his sons, who 
 would have as good an education as any nobleman 
 in the kingdom, was a student at the college in 
 London. 
 
 Of all the party with whom he traveled, no one 
 knew the Bible as well as this shoemaker ; he did 
 not need to read it as they explored the histori- 
 cal places, he quoted chapter after chapter of it, 
 without hesitation or consciousness of any great
 
 THE SHOEMAKER PILGRIM 309 
 
 achievement, and he knew almost as well the books 
 of travel that relate to the country. Familiarity 
 with the English of the Bible had not, however, 
 caused him to abandon his primitive speech, and 
 he did not show his respect for the sacred book by 
 adopting its grammatical forms. Such phrases as, 
 "It does I good to see he eat," in respect to a con- 
 valescent comrade, exhibited this peculiarity. In- 
 deed, he preserved his independence, and vindi- 
 cated the reputation of his craft the world over for 
 a certain obstinacy of opinion, if not philosophic 
 habit of mind, which pounding upon leather seems 
 to promote. He surprised his comrades by a lib- 
 erality of view and an absence of narrowness which 
 were scarcely to be expected in a man of one idea. 
 I was pained to think that the reality of the Holy 
 Land might a little impair the celestial vision he 
 had cherished of it for forty years; but perhaps 
 it will be only a temporary obscuration ; for the 
 imagination is stronger than the memory, as we 
 see so often illustrated in the writings of Oriental 
 travelers; and I have no doubt that now he is 
 again seated on his bench, the kingdoms he beholds 
 are those of Israel and Judah, and not those that 
 Mr. Cook showed him for an hundred pounds. 
 
 We should, perhaps, add, that our shoemaker 
 cared for no part of the Orient except Palestine, 
 and for no history except that in the Bible. He 
 told me that he was forwarded from London to 
 Rome, on his way to join Cook's Pilgrims at Cairo, 
 in the company of a party of Select Baptists (so 
 they were styled in the prospectus of their journey),
 
 310 SOME SPECIMEN TRAVELERS 
 
 and that, unexpectedly to himself (for he was a 
 man who could surmount prejudices), he found 
 them very good fellows ; but that he was obliged 
 to spend a whole day in Rome greatly against 
 his will; it was an old and dilapidated city, and 
 he did n't see why so much fuss was made over it. 
 Egypt did not more appeal to his fancy; I think 
 he rather loathed it, both its past and its present, 
 as the seat of a vain heathenism. For ruins or 
 antiquities not mentioned in the Bible he cared 
 nothing, for profane architecture still less; Pales- 
 tine was his goal, and I doubt if since the first Cru- 
 sade any pilgrim has trod the streets of Jerusalem 
 with such fervor of enthusiasm as this illiterate, 
 Bible-grounded, and spiritual-minded shoemaker. 
 We rode one afternoon up through the suburb 
 of Salahiyeh to the sheykh's tomb on the naked 
 hill north of the city, and down along the scarred 
 side of it into the Abana gorge. This much- 
 vaunted ride is most of the way between mud-walls 
 so high that you have a sight of nothing but the 
 sky and the tops of trees, and an occasional peep, 
 through chinks in a rickety gate, into a damp and 
 neglected garden, or a ragged field of grain under 
 trees. But the view from the heights over the 
 vast plain of Damascus, with the city embowered 
 in its green, is superb, both for extent and color, 
 and quite excuses the enthusiasm expended on this 
 perennial city of waters. We had occasional 
 glimpses of the Abana after it leaves the city, and 
 we could trace afar off the course of the Pharpar 
 by its winding ribbon of green. The view was
 
 THE ABANA GORGE 311 
 
 best long before we reached the summit, at the 
 cemetery and the ruined mosque, when the mina- 
 rets showed against the green beyond. A city 
 needs to be seen from some distance, and from not 
 too high an elevation ; looking directly down upon 
 it is always uninteresting. 
 
 Somewhere in the side of the mountain, to the 
 right of our course, one of the Moslem legends has 
 located the cave of the Seven Sleepers. Knowing 
 that the cave is really at Ephesus, we did not care 
 to anticipate it. 
 
 The sheykh's tomb is simply a stucco dome on 
 the ridge, and exposed to the draft of air from a 
 valley behind it. The wind blew with such vio- 
 lence that we could scarely stand there, and we 
 made all our observations with great discomfort. 
 What we saw was the city of Damascus, shaped 
 like an oval dish with a long handle ; the handle 
 is the suburb on the street running from the Gate 
 of God that sees the annual procession of pilgrims 
 depart for Mecca. Many brown villages dot the 
 emerald, there are said to be forty in the whole 
 plain. Towards the east we saw the desert and 
 che gray sand fading into the gray sky of the ho- 
 rizon. That way lies Palmyra; by that route goes 
 the dromedary post to Bagdad. I should like to 
 send a letter by it. 
 
 The view of the Abana gorge from the height 
 before we descended was unique. The narrow pass 
 is filled with trees ; but through them we could see 
 the white French road, and the Abana divided into 
 five streams, carried at different levels along the
 
 312 SOME SPECIMEN TRAVELERS 
 
 sides, in order to convey water widely over the 
 plain. Along the meadow road, as we trotted to- 
 wards the city, as, indeed, everywhere about the 
 city at this season, we found the ground marshy 
 and vivacious with frogs. 
 
 The street called Straight runs the length of the 
 city from east to west, and is straight in its gen- 
 eral intention, although it appears to have been 
 laid out by a donkey, whose attention was con- 
 stantly diverted to one side or the other. It is a 
 totally uninteresting lane. There is no reason, 
 however, to suppose that St. Paul intended to be 
 facetious when he spoke of it. In his day it was 
 a magnificent straight avenue, one hundred feet 
 wide ; and two rows of Corinthian colonnades ex- 
 tending a mile from gate to gate divided it length- 
 wise. This was an architectural fashion of that 
 time; the colonnade at Palmyra, "which is seen 
 stalking in a purposeless manner across the desert, 
 was doubtless the ornament of such a street. 
 
 The street life of Damascus is that panorama of 
 the mean and the picturesque, the sordid and the 
 rich, of silk and rags, of many costumes and all 
 colors, which so astonishes the Oriental traveler at 
 first, but to which he speedily becomes so accus- 
 tomed that it passes almost unnoticed. The ma- 
 jority of the women are veiled, but not so scrupu- 
 lously as those of Cairo. Yet the more we see of 
 the women of the East, the more convinced we are 
 that they are exceedingly goo d -hearted ; it is out 
 of consideration for the feelings of the persons they 
 meet in the street that they go veiled. This theory
 
 AN EASTERN DKRVISH
 
 THE LIFE OF THE TOWN 313 
 
 is supported by the fact that the daughters of Beth- 
 lehem, who are all comely and many of them hand- 
 some, never wear veils. 
 
 In lounging through the streets the whole life 
 and traffic of the town is exposed to you : donkeys 
 loaded with panniers of oranges, or with sickly 
 watermelon cut up, stop the way (all the melons 
 of the East that I have tasted are flavorless); men 
 bearing trays of sliced boiled beets cry aloud their 
 deliciousness as if they were some fruit of para- 
 dise; boys and women seated on the ground, hav- 
 ing spread before them on a paper some sort of 
 uninviting candy; anybody planted by the road- 
 side ; dogs by the dozen snoozing in all the paths, 
 the dogs that wake at night and make Rome 
 howl; the various tradesmen hammering in their 
 open shops; the silk-weavers plying the shuttle; 
 the makers of "sweets" stirring the sticky com- 
 pounds in their shining copper pots and pans ; and 
 what never ceases to excite your admiration is the 
 good-nature of the surging crowd, the indifference 
 to being jostled and run over by horses, donkeys, 
 and camels. 
 
 Damascus may be we have abundant testi- 
 mony that it is a good city, if, as I said, one 
 could see it. Arriving, you dive into a hole, and 
 scarcely see daylight again; you never can look 
 many yards before you; you move in a sort of 
 twilight, which is deepened under the heavy tim- 
 ber roofs of the bazaars ; winding through endless 
 mazes of lanes with no view except of a slender 
 strip of sky, you occasionally may step through
 
 314 SOME SPECIMEN TRAVELERS 
 
 an opening in the wall into a court with a square 
 of sunshine, a tank of water, and a tree or two. 
 The city can be seen only from the hill or from 
 a minaret, and then you look only upon roofs. 
 After a few days the cooping up in this gorgeous 
 Oriental paradise became oppressive. 
 
 We drove out of the city very early one morn- 
 ing. I was obliged to the muezzin of the nearest 
 minaret for awakening me at four o'clock. From 
 our window we can see his aerial balcony, it al- 
 most overhangs us ; and day and night at his ap- 
 pointed hours we see the turbaned muezzin circling 
 his high pinnacle, and hear him projecting his long 
 call to prayer over the city roofs. When we came 
 out at the west gate, the sun was high enough to 
 color Hermon and the minarets of the west side 
 of the city, and to gleam on the Abana. As we 
 passed the diligence station, a tall Nubian, an em- 
 ploye of the company, stood there in the attitude 
 of seneschal of the city ; ugliness had marked him 
 for her own, giving him a large, damaged expanse 
 of face, from which exuded, however, an inexpun- 
 gible good-nature; he sent us a cheerful salam 
 aloylcem, "the peace of God be with you; " we 
 crossed the shaky bridge, and got away up the 
 swift stream at the rate of ten miles an hour. 
 
 Our last view, with the level sun coming over 
 the roofs and spires, and the foreground of rapid 
 water and verdure, gave us Damascus in its love- 
 liest aspect.
 
 XVII 
 
 INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN. EPISODE OF TURK- 
 ISH JUSTICE 
 
 T was an immense relief to emerge 
 from Damascus into Beyrout, into 
 a city open, cheerful; it was to ree'n- 
 ter the world. How brightly it lies 
 upon its sunny promontory, climbing up the slopes 
 and crowning every eminence with tree-embowered 
 villas! What a varied prospect it commands of 
 sparkling sea and curving shore ; of country broken 
 into the most pleasing diversity of hill and vale, 
 woodlands and pastures; of precipices that are 
 draped in foliage ; of glens that retain their primi- 
 tive wildness, strips of dark pine forest, groups of 
 cypresses and of palms, spreading mulberry or- 
 chards, and terraces draped by vines ; of villages 
 dotting the landscape ; of convents clinging to the 
 heights, and the snowy peaks of Lebanon ! Boun- 
 teous land of silk and wine! 
 
 Beyrout is the brightest spot in Syria or Pales- 
 tine, the only pleasant city that we saw, and the 
 centre of a moral and intellectual impulse the im- 
 portance of which we cannot overestimate. The 
 mart of the great silk industry of the region, and 
 the seaport of Damascus and of all Upper Syria,
 
 316 INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN 
 
 the fitful and unintelligent Turkish rule even can- 
 not stifle its exuberant prosperity; but above all 
 the advantages which nature has given it, I should 
 attribute its brightest prospects to the influence of 
 the American Mission, and to the establishment of 
 Beyrout College. For almost thirty years that 
 Mission has sustained here a band of erudite schol- 
 ars, whose investigations have made the world 
 more familiar with the physical character of Pales- 
 tine than the people of Connecticut are with the re- 
 sources of their own State, and of wise managers 
 whose prudence and foresight have laid deep and 
 broad the foundations of a Syrian civilization. 
 
 I do not know how many converts have been 
 made in thirty years, the East has had ample il- 
 lustration, from the Abyssinians to the Colchians, 
 of "conversion " without knowledge or civilization, 
 nor do I believe that any " reports " of the work- 
 men themselves to the "Board" can put in visible 
 array adequately the results of the American Mis- 
 sion in Syria. But the transient visitor can see 
 something of them, in the dawning of a better so- 
 cial life, in the beginning of an improvement in 
 the condition of women, in an unmistakable spirit 
 of inquiry, and a recognizable taste for intellectual 
 pursuits. It is not too much to say that the birth 
 of a desire for instruction, for the enjoyment of lit- 
 erature, and, to a certain extent, of science, is due 
 to their schools; and that their admirably con- 
 ducted press, which has sent out not only transla- 
 tions of the Scriptures, but periodicals of secular 
 literature and information, and elementary geog-
 
 THE AMERICAN MISSION 317 
 
 raphies, histories, and scientific treatises, has sat- 
 isfied the want which the schools created. And 
 this new leaven is not confined to a sect, nor limited 
 to a race; it is working, slowly it is true, in the 
 whole of Syrian society. 
 
 The press establishment is near the pretty and 
 substantial church of the Mission ; it is a busy and 
 well-ordered printing and publishing house; send- 
 ing out, besides its religious works and school- 
 books, a monthly and a weekly publication and a 
 child's paper, which has a large and paying circu- 
 lation, a great number of its subscribers being 
 Moslems. These regenerating agencies the 
 schools and the press are happily supplemented 
 by the college, which offers to the young men of 
 the Orient the chance of a high education, and at- 
 tracts students even from the banks of the Nile. 
 We were accompanied to the college by Dr. Jessup 
 and Dr. Post, and spent an interesting morning in 
 inspecting the buildings and in the enjoyment of 
 the lovely prospect they command. As it is not my 
 desire to enter into details regarding the Mission 
 or the college any further than is necessary to em- 
 phasize the supreme importance of this enterprise 
 to the civilization of the Orient, I will only add 
 that the college has already some interesting col- 
 lections in natural history, a particularly valuable 
 herbarium, and that the medical department is not 
 second in promise to the literary. 
 
 It is sometimes observed that a city is like a 
 man, in that it will preserve through all mutations 
 and disasters certain fundamental traits; the char-
 
 318 INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN 
 
 acter that it obtains at first is never wholly lost, 
 but reappears again and again, asserting its indi- 
 viduality after, it may be, centuries of obscurity. 
 Beyrout was early a seat of learning and a centre 
 of literary influence ; for nearly three hundred years 
 before its desolation by an earthquake in the mid- 
 dle of the sixth century, and its subsequent devas- 
 tation by the followers of the Arabian prophet, it 
 was thronged with students from all the East, and 
 its schools of philosophy and law enjoyed the high- 
 est renown. We believe that it is gradually re- 
 suming its ancient prestige. 
 
 While we were waiting day after day the arrival 
 of the Austrian steamboat for Constantinople, we 
 were drawn into a little drama which afforded us 
 alternate vexation and amusement; an outline of 
 it may not be out of place here as an illustration 
 of the vicissitudes of travel in the East, or for 
 other reasons which may appear. I should pre- 
 mise that the American consul who resided here 
 with his family was not in good repute with many 
 of the foreign residents ; that he was charged with 
 making personal contributions to himself the condi- 
 tion of the continuance in office of his sub-agents 
 in Syria; that the character of his dragomans, or 
 at least one of them named Ouardy, was exceedingly 
 bad, and brought the consular office and the Amer- 
 ican name into contempt; and that these charges 
 had been investigated by an agent sent from the 
 ministerial bureau in Constantinople. The drago- 
 mans of the consulate, who act as interpreters, and 
 are executors of the consul's authority, have no
 
 AMERICAN CONSULS 319 
 
 pay, but their position gives them a consideration 
 in the community, and a protection which they 
 turn to pecuniary account. It should be added 
 that the salary of the consul at Beyrout is two thou- 
 sand dollars, a sum, in this expensive city, which 
 is insufficient to support a consul, who has a fam- 
 ily, in the style of a respectable citizen, and is 
 wholly inadequate to the maintenance of any equal- 
 ity with the representatives of other nations; the 
 government allows no outfit, nor does it provide 
 for the return of its consul ; the cost of transport- 
 ing himself and family home would consume almost 
 half a year's salary, and the tenure of the office is 
 uncertain. To accept any of several of our Ori- 
 ental consulships, a man must either have a pri- 
 vate fortune or an unscrupulous knack of living by 
 his wits. The English name is almost universally 
 respected in the East, so far as my limited expe- 
 rience goes, in the character of its consuls; the 
 same cannot be said of the American. 
 
 The morning after our arrival, descending the 
 steps of the hotel, I found our dragoman in a vio- 
 lent altercation with another dragoman, a Jew, 
 and a resident of Beyrout. There is always a la- 
 tent enmity between the Egyptian and the Syrian 
 dragomans, a national hostility, as old perhaps as 
 the Shepherds' invasion, which it needs only an 
 occasion to blow into a flame. The disputants 
 were surrounded by a motley crowd, nearly all of 
 them the adherents of the Syrian. I had seen 
 Antoine Ouardy at Luxor, when he was the drag- 
 oman of an English traveler, lie was now in
 
 320 INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN 
 
 Frank dress, wearing a shining hat, and an enor- 
 mous cluster shirt-pin, and a big seal ring; and 
 with his aggressive nose and brazen face he had 
 the appearance of a leading mock-auctioneer in the 
 Bowery. On the Nile, where Abd-el-Atti enjoys 
 the distinction of Sultan among his class, the fellow 
 was his humble servant; but he had now caught 
 the Egyptian away from home, and was disposed 
 to make the most of his advantage. Chancing to 
 meet Ouardy this morning, Abd-el-Atti had asked 
 for the payment of two pounds lent at Luxor ; the 
 debt was promptly denied, and when his own due- 
 bill for the money was produced, he declared that 
 he had received the money from Abd-el-Atti in 
 payment for some cigars which he had long ago 
 purchased for him in Alexandria. Of course if 
 this had been true, he would not have given a note 
 for the money; and it happened that I had been 
 present when the sum was borrowed. 
 
 The brazen denial exasperated our dragoman, 
 and when I arrived the quarrel had come nearly 
 to blows, all the injurious Arabic epithets having 
 been exhausted. The lie direct had been given 
 back and forth, but the crowning insult was added, 
 in English, when Abd-el-Atti cried, 
 
 "You 're a humbug! " 
 
 This was more than Ouardy could stand. 
 Bursting with rage, he shook his fist in the Egyp- 
 tian's face: 
 
 "You call me humbug; you hum?;?/*/, yourself. 
 You pay for this, I shall have satisfaction by the 
 law."
 
 A DRAGOMAN'S QUARREL 321 
 
 We succeeded in separating and, I hoped, in 
 reducing them to reason, but Antoine went off 
 muttering vengeance, and Abd-el-Atti was deter- 
 mined to bring suit for his money. I represented 
 the hopelessness of a suit in a Turkish court, the 
 delay and the cost of lawyers, and the certainty 
 that Ouardy would produce witnesses to anything 
 he desired to prove. 
 
 "What I care for two pound!" exclaimed the 
 heated dragoman. "I go to spend a hundred 
 pound, but I have justice." 
 
 Shortly after, as Abd-el-Atti was walking 
 through the bazaars, with one of the ladies of our 
 party, he was set upon by a gang of Ouardy 's 
 friends and knocked down ; the old man recovered 
 himself and gave battle like a valiant friend of the 
 Prophet; Ouardy 's brother sallied out from his 
 shop to take a hand in the scrimmage, and hap- 
 pened to get a rough handling from Abd-el-Atti, 
 who was entirely ignorant of his relationship to 
 Antoine. The whole party were then carried off 
 to the seraglio, where Abd-el-Atti, as the party 
 attacked, was presumed to be in the wrong, and 
 was put into custody. In the inscrutable admin- 
 istration of Turkish justice, the man who is 
 knocked down in a quarrel is always arrested. 
 When news was brought to us at the hotel of this 
 mishap, I sent for the American consul, as our 
 dragoman was in the service of an American cit- 
 izen. The consul sent his son and his dragoman. 
 And the dragoman sent to assist an American, em- 
 barrassed by the loss of his servant in a strange
 
 322 INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN 
 
 city, turned out to be the brother of Antoine 
 Ouardy, and the very fellow that Abd-el-Atti had 
 just beaten. Here was a complication. Drago- 
 man Ouardy showed his wounds, and wanted com- 
 pensation for his injuries. At the very moment 
 we needed the protection of the American govern- 
 ment, its representative appeared as our chief pros- 
 ecutor. 
 
 However, we sent for Abd-el-Atti, and procured 
 his release from the seraglio; and after an hour of 
 conference, in which we had the assistance of some 
 of the most respectable foreign residents of the 
 city, we flattered ourselves that a compromise was 
 made. The injured Ouardy, who was a crafty 
 rogue, was persuaded not to insist upon a suit for 
 damages, which would greatly incommode an 
 American citizen, and Abd-el-Atti seemed willing 
 to drop his suit for the two pounds. Antoine, 
 however, was still menacing. 
 
 "You heard him," he appealed to me, "you 
 heard him call me humbug." 
 
 The injurious nature of this mysterious epithet 
 could not be erased from his mind. It was in vain 
 that I told him it had been freely applied to a 
 well-known American, until it had become a badge 
 of distinction. But at length a truce was patched 
 up; and, confident that there would be no more 
 trouble, I went into the country for a long walk 
 over the charming hills. 
 
 When I returned at six o'clock, the camp was 
 in commotion. Abd-el-Atti was in jail! There 
 was a suit against him for 20,000 francs for horri-
 
 ABD-EL-ATTI IN JAIL 323 
 
 ble and unprovoked injuries to the dragoman of 
 the American consul! The consul, upon written 
 application for assistance, made by the ladies at 
 the hotel, had curtly declined to give any aid, and 
 espoused the quarrel of his dragoman. It ap- 
 peared that Abd-el-Atti, attempting again to ac- 
 company a lady in a shopping expedition through 
 the bazaars, had been sent for by a messenger 
 from the seraglio. As he could not leave the lady 
 in the street, he carelessly answered that he would 
 come by and by. A few minutes after, he was ar- 
 rested by a squad of soldiers, and taken before the 
 military governor. Abd-el-Atti respectfully made 
 his excuse that he could not leave the lady alone 
 in the street, but the pasha said that he would 
 teach him not to insult his authority. Both the 
 Ouardy brothers were beside the pasha, whispering 
 in his ear, and as the result of their deliberations 
 Abd-el-Atti was put in prison. It was Saturday 
 afternoon, and the conspirators expected to humil- 
 iate the old man by keeping him locked up till 
 Monday. This was the state of the game when I 
 came to dinner; the faithful Abdullah, who had 
 reluctantly withdrawn from watching the outside 
 of the seraglio where his master was confined, was 
 divided in mind between grief and alarm 011 the 
 one side and his duty of habitual cheerfulness to 
 us on the other, and consequently announced, 
 "Abd-el-Atti, seraglio," as a piece of good news; 
 the affair had got wind among the cafes, where 
 there was a buzz of triumph over the Egyptians ; 
 and at the hotel everybody was drawn into the
 
 324 INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN 
 
 excitement, discussing the assault and the arrest 
 of the assaulted party, the American consul and the 
 character of his dragoman, and the general inability 
 of American consuls to help their countrymen in 
 time of need. 
 
 The principal champion of Abd-el-Atti was Mo- 
 hammed Achmed, the dragoman of two American 
 ladies who had been traveling in Egypt and Pal- 
 estine. Achmed was a character. He had the 
 pure Arab physiognomy, the vivacity of an Italian, 
 the restlessness of an American, the courtesy of the 
 most polished Oriental, and a unique use of the 
 English tongue. Copious in speech, at times 
 flighty in manner, gravely humorous, and more 
 sharp-witted than the "cutest" Yankee, he was an 
 exceedingly experienced and skillful dragoman, and 
 perfectly honest to his employers. Achmed was 
 clad in baggy trousers, a silk scarf about his waist, 
 short open jacket, and wore his tarboosh on the 
 back of his sloping head. He had a habit of 
 throwing back his head and half closing his wan- 
 dering, restless black eyes in speaking, and his 
 gestures and attitudes might have been called the- 
 atrical but for a certain simple sincerity ; yet any 
 extravagance of speech or action was always saved 
 from an appearance of absurdity by a humorous 
 twinkle in his eyes. Alexandria was his home, 
 while Abd-el-Atti lived in Cairo ; the natural ri- 
 valry between the dragomans of the two cities had 
 been imbittered by some personal disagreement, 
 and they were only on terms of the most distant 
 civility. But Abd-el-Atti 's misfortune not only
 
 ACHMED'S ZEAL 325 
 
 roused his national pride, but touched his quick 
 generosity, and he surprised his employers by the 
 enthusiasm with which he espoused the cause and 
 defended the character of the man he had so lately 
 regarded as anything but a friend. He went to 
 work with unselfish zeal to procure his release; 
 he would think of nothing else, talk of nothing 
 else. 
 
 "How is it, Achmed," they said, "that you and 
 Abd-el-Atti have suddenly become such good 
 friends?" 
 
 "Ah, my lady," answers Achmed, taking an 
 attitude, "you know not Abd-el-Atti, one of the 
 firste-class men in all Egypt. Not a common 
 dragoman like these in Beyrout, my lady; you 
 shall ask in Cairo what a man of esteem. To tell 
 it in Cairo that he is in jail! Abd-el-Atti is my 
 friend. What has been sometime, that is nothing. 
 It must not be that he is in jail. And he come 
 out in half an hour, 'if your consul say so." 
 
 "That is not so certain; but what can we do? " 
 
 " Write to the consul American that he shall let 
 Abd-el-Atti go. You, my lady," said Achmed, 
 throwing himself on his knees before the person 
 he was addressing, "make a letter, and say I want 
 my dragoman immediate. If he will not, I go to 
 the English consul, I know he will do it. Excuse 
 me, but will you make the letter? When it was 
 the English consul, he does something; when it 
 was the American, I pick your pargin, my lady, 
 he is not so much esteem here." 
 
 In compliance with Achmed 's entreaty a note
 
 326 INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN 
 
 was written to the consul, but it produced no 
 effect, except an uncivil reply that it was after 
 office hours. 
 
 When I returned, Achmed was in a high fever 
 of excitement. He believed that Abd - el - Atti 
 would be released if I would go personally to the 
 consul and insist upon it. 
 
 "The consul, I do not know what kind of man 
 this is for consul ; does he know what man is Abd- 
 el-Atti? Take my advice," continued Achmed, 
 half closing his eyes, throwing back his head and 
 moving it alertly on the axis of his neck, and mak- 
 ing at the same time a deprecatory gesture with 
 the back of his hands turned out, "take my ad- 
 vice, Mesr. Vahl, Abd-el-Atti is a man of respect; 
 he is a man very rich, God forgive me ! Firste- 
 class man. There is no better family in Egypt 
 than Abd-el-Atti Effendi. You have seen, he is 
 the friend of governors and pashas. There is no 
 man of more respect. In Cairo, to put Abd-el- 
 Atti in jail, they would not believe it! When he 
 is at home, no one could do it. The Khedive him- 
 self," he continued, warming with his theme, 
 "would not touch Abd-el-Atti. He has houses in 
 the city and farms and plantations in the country, 
 a man very well known. Who in Cairo is to put 
 him in jail? [This, with a smile of derision.] I 
 think he take out and put in prison almost any- 
 body else he like, Mohammed Effendi Abd-el-Atti. 
 See, when this Ouardy comes in Egypt! " 
 
 We hastened to the consul's. I told the consul 
 that I was deprived of the service of my dragoman,
 
 AT THE CONSULATE 327 
 
 that he was unjustly imprisoned, simply for defend- 
 ing himself when he was assailed by a lot of row- 
 dies, and that as the complaint against him was 
 supposed to issue from the consulate, I doubted not 
 that the consul's influence could release him. The 
 consul replied, with suavity, that he had nothing 
 to do with the quarrel of his dragoman, and was 
 not very well informed about it, only he knew that 
 Ouardy had been outrageously assaulted and beaten 
 by Abd-el- Atti ; that he could do nothing at any 
 rate with the pasha, even if that functionary had 
 not gone to his harem outside the city, where no- 
 body would disturb him. I ventured to say that 
 both the Ouardys had a very bad reputation in the 
 city, it was, in fact, infamous, and that the 
 consulate was brought into contempt by them. 
 The consul replied that the reputation of Antoine 
 might be bad, but that his dragoman was a respec- 
 table merchant; and then he complained of the 
 missionaries, who had persecuted him ever since 
 he had been in Beyrout. I said that I knew no- 
 thing of his grievances ; that my information about 
 his dragoman came from general report, and from 
 some of the bankers and most respectable citizens, 
 and that I knew that in this case my dragoman 
 had been set upon in the first instance, and that it 
 was believed that the Ouardys were now attempt- 
 ing to extort money from him, knowing him to be 
 rich, and having got him in their clutches away 
 from his friends. The consul still said that he 
 could do nothing that night; he was very sorry, 
 very sorry for my embarrassment, and he would
 
 328 INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN 
 
 send for Ouardy and advise him to relinquish his 
 prosecution on my account. "Very well," I said, 
 rising to go, "if you cannot help me, I must go 
 elsewhere. Will you give me a note of introduc- 
 tion to the pasha?" He would do that with plea- 
 sure, although he was certain that nothing would 
 come of it. 
 
 Achmed, who had been impatiently waiting on 
 the high piazza (it is a charming situation over- 
 looking the Mediterranean), saw that I had not 
 succeeded, and was for going at once to the Eng- 
 lish consul; for all dragomans have entire confi- 
 dence that English consuls are all-powerful. 
 
 "No," I said, "we will try the pasha, to whom 
 I have a letter, though the consul says the pasha 
 is a friend of Ouardy." 
 
 "I believe you. Ouardy has women in his 
 house ; the pasha goes often there ; so I hear. But 
 we will go. I will speak to the pasha also, and 
 tell him what for a man is Abd-el-Atti. A very 
 pleasant man, the pasha, and speak all languages, 
 very well English." 
 
 It was encouraging to know this, and I began 
 to feel that I could make some impression on him. 
 We took a carriage and drove into the suburbs, to 
 the house of the pasha. His Excellency was in 
 his harem, and dining, at that hour. I was shown 
 by a bare-footed servant into a barren parlor fur- 
 nished in the European style, and informed that 
 the pasha would see me presently. After a while 
 cigarettes and coffee a poor substitute for dinner 
 for a person who had had none were brought in ;
 
 INTERVIEW WITH THE PASHA 329 
 
 but no pasha. I waited there, I suppose, nearly 
 an hour for the governor to finish his dinner ; and 
 meantime composed a complimentary oration to 
 deliver upon his arrival. When his Excellency 
 at last appeared, I beheld a large, sleek Turk, 
 whose face showed good-nature and self-indulgence. 
 I had hopes of him, and, advancing to salute hirn, 
 began an apology for disturbing his repose at this 
 unseasonable hour, but his Excellency looked per- 
 fectly blank. He did not understand a word of 
 English. I gave him the letter of the consul, and 
 mentioned the name "American Consul." The 
 pasha took the letter and opened it; but as he 
 was diligently examining it upside down, I saw 
 that he did not read English. I must introduce 
 myself. 
 
 Opening the door, I called A chined. In coming 
 into the presence of this high rank, all his buoy- 
 ancy and bravado vanished; he obsequiously 
 waited. I told him to say to his Excellency how 
 extremely sorry I was to disturb his repose at such 
 an unseasonable hour, but that my dragoman, 
 whose services I needed, had been unfortunately 
 locked up ; that I was an American citizen, as he 
 would perceive by the letter from the consul, and 
 that I would detain him only a moment with my 
 business. Achmed put this into choice Arabic. 
 His Excellency looked more blank than before. 
 He did not understand a word of Arabic. The in- 
 terview was getting to be interesting. 
 
 The pasha then stepped to the door and called 
 in his dragoman, a bare-footed fellow in a tattered
 
 .330 INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN 
 
 gown. The two interpreters stood in line before 
 us, and the pasha nodded to me to begin. I opened, 
 perhaps, a little too elaborately ; Achmed put my 
 remarks into Arabic, and the second dragoman 
 translated that again into Turkish. What the 
 speech became by the time it reached the ear of 
 the pasha I could not tell, but his face darkened 
 at once, and he peremptorily shook his head. The 
 word came back to me that the pasha would n't let 
 him out; Abd-el-Atti must stay in jail till his 
 trial. I then began to argue the matter, to say 
 that there was no criminal suit against him, only 
 an action for damages, and that I would be re- 
 sponsible for his appearance when required. The 
 translations were made ; but I saw that I was every 
 moment losing ground ; no one could tell what my 
 solicitations became after being strained through 
 Arabic and Turkish. My case was lost, because 
 it could not be heard. 
 
 Suddenly it occurred to me that the pasha might 
 know some European language. I turned to him, 
 and asked him if he spoke German. Oh, yes ! The 
 prospect brightened, and if I also had spoken that 
 language, we should have had no further trouble. 
 However, desperation beat up my misty recollec- 
 tion, and I gave the pasha a torrent of broken 
 German that evidently astonished him. At any 
 rate, he became gracious as soon as he understood 
 me. He said that Abd-el-Atti was not confined 
 on account of the suit, he knew nothing and 
 cared nothing for his difficulty with Ouardy, 
 but for his contempt of the police and soldiers. 1
 
 DELIVERANCE 331 
 
 explained that, and added that Abd-el-Atti was 
 an old man, that I had been doctoring him for a 
 fever ever since we were in Damascus, that I feared 
 to have him stay in that damp jail over Sunday, 
 and that I would be responsible for his appear- 
 ance. 
 
 "Do you mean to say," he asked, "that you will 
 be personally responsible that he appears at the 
 seraglio Monday morning?" 
 
 "Certainly," I said, "for his appearance at any 
 time and place your Excellency may name." 
 
 "Then he may go." Pie gave the order to his 
 dragoman to accompany us and procure his release, 
 and we retired, with mutual protestations of the 
 highest consideration. Achmed was nearly beside 
 himself with joy. The horses seemed to him to 
 crawl; he could n't wait the moment to announce 
 to Abd-el-Atti his deliverance. " Ah, they thought 
 to keep Abd-el-Atti in jail all night, and sent 
 word to Caiyo, 'Abd-el-Atti is in jail.' Abd-el- 
 Atti Effendi! Take my ad vice, a man of respect." 
 
 The cobble - paved court of the old seraglio 
 prison, to which the guards admitted us without 
 question, was only dimly lighted by an oil-lamp 
 or two, and we could distinguish a few figures flit- 
 ting about, who looked like malefactors, but were 
 probably keepers. We were shown into a side 
 room, where sat upon the ground an official, per- 
 haps a judge, and two assistants. Abd-el-Atti 
 was sent for. The old man was brought in, swing- 
 ing his string of beads in his hand, looking some- 
 what crestfallen, but preserving a portentous grav-
 
 332 INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN 
 
 ity. I arose and shook hands with him, and told 
 him we had come to take him out. When we were 
 seated, a discussion of the case sprung up : the offi- 
 cial talked, his two assistants talked, and Abd-el- 
 Atti and Achmed talked, and there was evidently 
 a disposition to go over the affair from the begin- 
 ning. It was a pit} r to cut short so much elo- 
 quence, but I asked the pasha's dragoman to de- 
 liver his message, and told Achmed that we would 
 postpone the discussion till Monday, and depart 
 at once. The prisoner was released, and, declin- 
 ing coffee, we shook hands and got away with all 
 haste. As we drove to the hotel, Abd-el-Atti was 
 somewhat pensive, but declared that he would 
 rather give a hundred pounds than not be let out 
 that night; and when we reached home, Achmed, 
 whose spirits were exuberant, insisted on dragging 
 him to the cafe opposite, to exhibit him in tri- 
 umph. 
 
 When I came down in the morning, Achmed 
 was in the hall. 
 
 "Well, Achmed, how are you?" 
 
 "Firste-class," closing his eyes with a humorous 
 twinkle. "I 'm in it now." 
 
 "In what?" 
 
 "In the case with Mohammed Abd-el-Atti. 
 That Ouardy says I pay him damage twenty thou- 
 sand francs. Twenty thousand francs, I wish he 
 may get it! How much, I s'pose, for the consul? 
 Take my advice, the consul want money." 
 
 "Then the suit will keep you here with Abd-el- 
 Atti?"
 
 THRIFTY DRAGOMANS 333 
 
 "Keep, I don't know. I not pay him twenty 
 thousand francs, not one thousand, not one franc. 
 What my ladies do ? Who go to Constantinople 
 with my ladies? To-morrow morning come the 
 steamer. To leave the old man alone with these 
 thiefs, what would anybody say of Mohammed 
 Achmed for that? What for consul is this? I 
 want to go to Constantinople with my ladies, and 
 then to see my family in Alexandria. For one 
 day in five months have I see my wife and shild. 
 Oh yes, I have a very nice wife. Yes, one wife 
 quite plenty for me. And I have a fine house, 
 cost me twenty thousand dollars ; I am not rich, 
 but I have plenty, God forgive me. My shop is 
 in the silk bazaar. I am merchant. My father- 
 in-law say what for I go dragoman? I like to 
 see nice peoples and go in the world. W^hen I am 
 dragoman, I am servant. When I am merchant, 
 oh, I am very well in Alexandria. I think I not 
 go any more. Ah, here is Abd-el-Atti. Take my 
 advice, he not need to be dragoman ; he is pooty 
 off. Good morning, my friend. Have they told 
 you I am to be put in jail also?" 
 
 "So I hear; Ouardy sue you and Abdallah so 
 you cannot be witness." 
 
 " Oh, they think they get money from us. Mebbe 
 the pasha and the consul. I think so." 
 
 "So am I," responded Abd-el-Atti in his most 
 serious manner. The "Eastern question," with 
 these experienced dragomans, instantly resolves 
 itself into a question of money, whoever is con- 
 cerned and whatever is the tribunal. I said that
 
 334 INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN 
 
 I would see the consul in the morning, and that I 
 hoped to have all proceedings stopped, so that we 
 could get off in the steamer. Abd-el-Atti shook 
 his head. 
 
 "The consul not to do anything. Ouardy have 
 lent him money; so I hunder stood." 
 
 Beyrout had a Sunday appearance. The shops 
 were nearly all closed, and the churches, espe- 
 cially the Catholic, were crowded. It might have 
 been a peaceful day but for our imbroglio, which 
 began to be serious; we could not afford the time 
 to wait two weeks for the next Cyprus steamer, we 
 did not like to abandon our dragomans, and we 
 needed their services. The ladies who depended 
 upon Achmed were in a quandary. Notes went to 
 the consul, but produced no effect. The bankers 
 were called into the council, and one of them un- 
 dertook to get Achmed free. Travelers, citizens, 
 and all began to get interested or entangled in 
 the case. There was among respectable people 
 but one opinion about the consul's dragoman. At 
 night it was whispered about that the American 
 consul had already been removed and that his suc- 
 cessor was on his way to Beyrout. Achmed came 
 to us in the highest spirits with the news. 
 
 All day Monday we expected the steamer. The 
 day was frittered away in interviews with the con- 
 sul and the pasha, and in endeavoring to learn 
 something of the two cases, the suit for damage 
 and for the debt, supposed to be going on some- 
 where in the seraglio. After my interview with 
 the consul, who expressed considerable ignorance
 
 A TURKISH COUNT 335 
 
 of the case and the strongest desire to stop it, I 
 was surprised to find at the seraglio all the papers 
 in the consul's name, and all the documents written 
 on consular paper ; so that when I appeared as an 
 American citizen, to endeavor to get my dragoman 
 released, it appeared to the Turkish officials that 
 they would please the American government by 
 detaining and punishing him. 
 
 The court-room was a little upper chamber, with 
 no furniture except a long table and chairs ; three 
 Moslem judges sat at one end of the table, appar- 
 ently waiting to see what would turn up. The 
 scene was not unlike that in an office of a justice 
 of the peace in America. The parties to the case, 
 witnesses, attendants, spectators, came and went as 
 it pleased them, talked or whispered to the judges 
 or to each other. There seemed to be no rule for 
 the reception or rejection of evidence. The judges 
 smoked and gathered the facts as they drifted in, 
 and would by and by make up their minds. It is 
 truth to say, however, that they seemed to be en- 
 deavoring to get at the facts, ami that they ap- 
 peared to be above prejudice or interest. A new 
 complication developed itself, however; Antoine 
 Ouardy claimed to be a French citizen, and the 
 French consul was drawn into the fray. This was 
 a new device to delay proceedings. 
 
 \\ hen I had given my evidence to the judges, 
 which I was required to put in writing, I went 
 with Abd-el-Atti to the room of the pasha. This 
 official was gracious enough, but gave us no hopes 
 of release. lie took me one side and advised me.
 
 336 INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN 
 
 as a traveler, to look out for another dragoman ; 
 there was no prospect that Abd-el-Atti could get 
 away to accompany me on this steamer, in fact, 
 the process in court might detain him six months. 
 However, the best thing to do would be to go to 
 the American consul with Ouardy and settle it. 
 He thought Ouardy would settle it for a reasonable 
 amount. It was none of his business, but that 
 was his advice. We were obliged to his Excel- 
 lency for this glimpse behind the scenes of a Turk- 
 ish court, and thanked him for his advice; but 
 we did not follow it. Abd-el-Atti thought that 
 if he abandoned the attempt to collect a debt in a 
 Turkish city, he ought not, besides, to pay for the 
 privilege of doing so. 
 
 Tuesday morning the steamer came into the har- 
 bor. Although we had registered our names at 
 the office of the company for passage, nothing was 
 reserved for us. Detained at the seraglio and the 
 consul's, we could not go off to secure places, and 
 the consequence was that we were subject to the 
 blackmail of the steward when we did go. By noon 
 there were signs of the failure of the prosecution; 
 and we sent off our luggage. In an hour or two 
 Abd-el-Atti appeared with a troop of friends, tri- 
 umphant. Somewhere, I do not know how, he 
 and Achmed had raked up fourteen witnesses in 
 his favor; the judges wouldn't believe Ouardy 
 nor any one he produced, and his case had utterly 
 broken down. This mountain of a case, which had 
 annoyed us so many days and absorbed our time, 
 suddenly collapsed. We were not sorry to leave
 
 OFF FOB CYPRUS 337 
 
 even beautiful Beyrout, and would have liked to 
 see the last of Turkish rule as well. At sunset, 
 on the steamer Achille, swarming above and' be- 
 low with pilgrims from Jerusalem and Mecca, we 
 sailed for Cyprus.
 
 XVIII 
 
 CYPRUS 
 
 N the early morning we were off Cy- 
 prus, in the open harbor of Larnaka, 
 a row of white houses on the lew shore. 
 The town is not peculiar and not spe- 
 cially attractive, but the Marina lies prettily on 
 the blue sea, and the palms, the cypresses, the 
 minarets and church-towers, form an agreeable 
 picture behind it, backed by the lovely outline of 
 mountains, conspicuous among them Santa Croce. 
 The highest, Olympus, cannot be seen from this 
 point. 
 
 A night had sufficed to transport us into another 
 world, a world in which all outlines are softened 
 and colored, a world in which history appears like 
 romance. We might have imagined that we had 
 sailed into some tropical harbor, except that the 
 island before us was bare of foliage ; there was the 
 calm of perfect repose in the sky, on the sea, and 
 the land; Cyprus made no harsh contrast with the 
 azure water in which it seemed to be anchored for 
 the morning, as our ship was. You could be- 
 lieve that the calm of summer and of early morn- 
 ing always rested on the island, and that it slept 
 exhausted in the memory of its glorious past.
 
 THE LOCANDA 339 
 
 Taking a cup of coffee, we rowed ashore. It 
 yas the festival of St. George, and the flags of 
 various nations were hung out along the riva, or 
 displayed from the staffs of the consular residences. 
 It is one of the chief fete days of the year, and the 
 foreign representatives, who have not too much 
 excitement, celebrated it by formal visits to the 
 Greek consul. Larnaka does not keep a hotel, 
 and we wandered about for some time before we 
 could discover its sole locanda, where we purposed 
 to breakfast. This establishment would please an 
 artist, but it had few attractions for a person wish- 
 ing to break his fast, and our unusual demand 
 threw it into confusion. The locanda was nothing 
 but a kitchen in a tumble-down building, smoke- 
 dried, with an earth floor and a rickety table or 
 two. After long delay, the cheerful Greek pro- 
 prietor and his lively wife whose good-humored 
 willingness both to furnish us next to nothing, but 
 the best they had, from their scanty larder, and to 
 cipher up a long reckoning for the same, excited 
 our interest produced some fried veal, sour 
 bread, harsh wine, and tart oranges ; and we break- 
 fasted more sumptuously, I have no doubt, than 
 any natives of the island that morning. The scant 
 and hard fare of nearly all the common people in 
 the East would be unendurable to any American ; 
 but I think that the hardy peasantry of the Levant 
 would speedily fall into dyspeptic degeneracy upon 
 the introduction of American rural cooking. 
 
 After we had killed our appetites at the locanda, 
 we presented our letters to the American consul,
 
 340 CYPRUS 
 
 General di Cesnola, in whose spacious residence 
 we experienced a delightful mingling of Orien- 
 tal and Western hospitality. The kawass of the 
 General was sent to show us the town. This 
 kawass was a gorgeous official, a kind of glorified 
 being, in silk and gold-lace, who inarched before 
 us, huge in bulk, waving his truncheon of office, 
 and gave us the appearance, in spite of our humil- 
 ity, of a triumphal procession. Larnaka has not 
 many sights, although it was the residence of the 
 Lusignan dynasty, Richard Cceur de Lion hav- 
 ing, toward the close of the twelfth century, made 
 a gift of the island to Guy de Lusignan. It has, 
 however, some mosques and Greek churches. The 
 church of St. Lazarus, which contains the now va- 
 cant tomb of the Lazarus who was raised from the 
 dead at Bethany and afterwards became bishop of 
 Citium, is an interesting old Byzantine edifice, and 
 has attached to it an English burial-ground, with 
 tombs of the seventeenth century. The Greek 
 priest who showed us the church does not lose sight 
 of the gain of godliness in this life, while pursuing 
 in this remote station his heavenly journey. He 
 sold my friend some exquisite old crucifixes, carved 
 in wood, mounted in antique silver, which he took 
 from the altar, and he let the church part with 
 some of its quaint old pictures, commemorating 
 the impossible exploits of St. Demetrius and St. 
 George. But he was very careful that none of the 
 Greeks who were lounging about the church should 
 be witnesses of the transfer. He said that these 
 ignorant people had a prejudice about these sacred 
 objects, and might make trouble.
 
 CHITTIM 341 
 
 The excavations made at Larnaka have demon- 
 strated that this was the site of ancient Citium, 
 the birthplace of Zeno, the Stoic, and the Chittim 
 so often alluded to by the Hebrew prophets ; it was 
 a Phosnician colony, and when Ezekiel foretold the 
 unrecoverable fall of Tyre, among the luxuries of 
 wealth he enumerated were the "benches of ivory 
 brought out of the isles of Chittim." Paul does 
 not mention it, but he must have passed through 
 it when he made his journey over the island from 
 Salamis to Paphos, where he had his famous en- 
 counter with the sorcerer Bar-jesus. A few miles 
 out of town on the road to Citti is a Turkish 
 mosque, which shares the high veneration of Mos- 
 lems with those of Mecca and Jerusalem. In it is 
 interred the wet-nurse of Mohammed. 
 
 We walked on out of the town to the most con- 
 siderable church in the place, newly built by the 
 Roman Catholics. There is attached to it a Fran- 
 ciscan convent, a neat establishment with a gar- 
 den; and the hospitable monks, when they knew 
 we were Americans, insisted upon entertaining us ; 
 the contributions for their church had largely come 
 from America, they said, and they seemed to re- 
 gard us as among the number of their benefactors. 
 This Christian charity expressed itself also in some 
 bunches of roses, which the brothers plucked for 
 our ladies. One cannot but suspect and respect 
 that timid sentiment the monk retains for the sex 
 whose faces he flies from, which he expresses in the 
 care of flowers ; the blushing rose seems to be the 
 pure and only link between the monk and woman-
 
 342 CYPRUS 
 
 kind ; he may cultivate it without sin, and offer it 
 to the chance visitor without scandal. 
 
 The day was lovely, but the sun had intense 
 power, and in default of donkeys we took a private 
 carriage into the country to visit the church of St. 
 George, at which the fete day of that saint was 
 celebrated by a fair, and a concourse of peasants. 
 Our carriage was a four-wheeled cart, a sort of 
 hay -wagon, drawn by two steers, and driven by a 
 Greek boy in an embroidered jacket. The Fran- 
 ciscans lent us chairs for the cart; "the resplen- 
 dent kawass marched ahead ; Abd-el-Atti hung his 
 legs over the tail of the cart in an attitude of 
 dejection; and we moved on, but so slowly that 
 my English friend, Mr. Edward Rae, was able 
 to sketch us, and the Cyprians could enjoy the 
 spectacle. 
 
 The country lay bare and blinking under the 
 sun; save here and there a palm or a bunch of 
 cypresses, this part of the island has not a tree or 
 a large shrub. The view of the town and the sea 
 with its boats, as we went inland, was peculiar, 
 not anything real, but a skeleton picture ; the sky 
 and sea were indigo blue. We found a crowd of 
 peasants at the church of St. George, which has a 
 dirty interior, like all the Greek churches. The 
 Greeks, as well as the other Orientals, knew how 
 to mingle devotion with the profits of trade, and 
 while there were rows of booths outside, and traffic 
 went on briskly, the church was thronged with 
 men and women who bought tapers for offerings, 
 and kissed with fervor the holy relics which were
 
 THE PA PHI AN VENUS 343 
 
 exposed. The articles for sale at the booths and 
 stands were chiefly eatables and the coarsest sort of 
 merchandise. The only specialty of native man- 
 ufacture was rude but pleasant-sounding little 
 bells, which are sometimes strung upon the necks 
 of donkeys. But so fond are these simple people 
 of musical noise, that these bells are attached to 
 the handles of sickles also. The barley was al- 
 ready dead-ripe in the fields, and many of the 
 peasants at the fair brought their sickles with 
 them. They were, both men and women, a good- 
 humored, primitive sort of people, certainly not a 
 handsome race, but picturesque in appearance ; both 
 sexes affect high colors, and the bright petticoats 
 of the women matched the gay jackets of their 
 husbands and lovers. 
 
 We do not know what was the ancient stan- 
 dard of beauty in Cyprus ; it may have been no 
 higher than it is now, and perhaps the swains at 
 this fete of St. George would turn from any other 
 type of female charms as uninviting 1 . The Cy- 
 prian or Paphian Vemis could not have been a 
 beauty according to our notions. The images of 
 her which General di Cesnola found in her temple 
 all have a long and sharp nose. These images are 
 Phoenician, and were made six hundred to a thou- 
 sand years before the Christian era, at the time 
 that wonderful people occupied this fertile island. 
 It is an interesting fact, and an extraordinary in- 
 stance of the persistence of nature in perpetuating 
 a type, that all the women of Cyprus to-day who 
 are, with scarcely any exception, ugly have ex-
 
 344 CYPRUS 
 
 actly the nose of the ancient Paphian Venus, that 
 is to say, the nose of the Phoenician women whose 
 husbands and lovers sailed the Mediterranean as 
 long ago as the siege of Troy. 
 
 It was off the southern coast of this island, near 
 Paphos, that Venus Aphrodite, born of the foam, 
 is fabled to have risen from the sea. The anni- 
 versary of her birth is still perpetuated by an an- 
 nual fete on the llth of August, a rite having 
 its foundation in nature, that has proved to be 
 stronger than religious instruction or prejudice. 
 Originally, these fetes were the scenes of a too lit- 
 eral worship of Venus, and even now the Cyprian 
 maiden thinks that her chance of matrimony is 
 increased by her attendance at this annual fair. 
 Upon that day all the young people go upon the 
 sea in small boats, and, until recently, it used to 
 be the custom to dip a virgin into the water in 
 remembrance of the mystic birth of Venus. That 
 ceremony is still partially maintained; instead of 
 sousing the maiden in the sea, her companions 
 spatter the representative of the goddess with salt 
 water, immersion has given way here also to 
 sprinkling. 
 
 The lively curiosity of the world has been of late 
 years turned to Cyprus as the theatre of some of 
 the most important and extensive archaeological 
 discoveries of this century ; discoveries unique, and 
 illustrative of the manners and religion of a race, 
 once the most civilized in the Levant, of which 
 only the slightest monuments had hitherto been 
 discovered ; discoveries which supply the lost link
 
 A COVETED PRIZE 345 
 
 between Egyptian and Grecian art. These splen- 
 did results, which by a stroke of good fortune con- 
 fer some credit upon the American nation, are 
 wholly due to the scholarship, patient industry, 
 address, and enthusiasm of one man. To those 
 who are familiar with the magnificent Cesnola Col- 
 lection, which is the chief attraction of the Metro- 
 politan Museum of New York, I need make no 
 apology for devoting a few paragraphs to the an- 
 tiquities of Cyprus and their explorer. 
 
 Cyprus was the coveted prize of all the conquer- 
 ors of the Orient in turn. The fair island, with 
 an area not so large as the State of Connecticut, 
 owns in its unequal surface the extremes of the 
 temperate climate; snow lies during the greater 
 part of the year upon its mountains, which attain 
 an altitude of over seven thousand feet, and the 
 palm spreads its fan -leaves along the southern 
 coast and in the warm plains ; irregular in shape, 
 it -has an extreme length of over one hundred and 
 forty miles, and an average breadth of about forty 
 miles, and its deeply indented coast gives an ex- 
 traordinarily long shore-line and offers the facili- 
 ties of harbors for the most active commerce. 
 
 The maritime Pho3nicians early discovered its 
 advantages, and in the seventeenth century B. c., 
 or a little later, a colony from Sidon settled at 
 Citium; and in time these Yankees of the Levant 
 occupied all the southern portion of the island with 
 their busy ports and royal cities. There is a tra- 
 dition that Teucer, after the Trojan war, founded 
 the city of Salamis on the east coast. But how-
 
 346 CYPRUS 
 
 ever this may be, and whatever may be the exact 
 date of the advent of the Sidonians upon the 
 island, it is tolerably certain that they were in 
 possession about the year 1600 B. c., when the navy 
 of Thotmes III. , the greatest conqueror and states- 
 man in the long line of Pharaohs, visited Cyprus 
 and collected tribute. The Egyptians were never 
 sailors, and the fleet of Thotmes III. was no doubt 
 composed of Phoenician ships manned by Phoeni- 
 cian sailors. He was already in possession of the 
 whole of Syria, the Phoenicians were his tributa- 
 ries and allies, their ships alone sailed the Grecian 
 seas and carried the products of Egypt and of Asia 
 to the Pelasgic populations. The Phoenician 
 supremacy established by Sidon in Cyprus was 
 maintained by Tyre ; and it was not seriously sub- 
 verted until 708 B. c., when the Assyrian ravager 
 of Syria, Sargon, sent a fleet and conquered Cy- 
 prus. He set up a stele in Citium, commemorat- 
 ing his exploit, which has been preserved and is 
 now in the museum at Berlin. Two centuries later 
 the island owned the Persians as masters, and was 
 comprised in the fifth satrapy of Darius. It be- 
 came a part of the empire of the Macedonian 
 Alexander after his conquest of Asia Minor, and 
 was again an Egyptian province under the Ptole- 
 mies, until the lloman eagles swooped down upon 
 it. Coins are not seldom found that tell the story 
 of these occupations. Those bearing the head of 
 Ptolemy Physcon, Euergetes VII., found at Pa- 
 phos and undoubtedly struck there, witness the 
 residence on the island of that licentious and lit-
 
 ANTIQUITIES 347 
 
 erary tyrant, whom a popular outburst had ban- 
 ished from Alexandria. Another with the head 
 of Vespasian, and on the obverse an outline of the 
 temple of Venus at Paphos, attests the Roman 
 hospitality to the gods and religious rites of all 
 their conquered provinces. 
 
 Upon the breaking up of the Roman world, 
 Cyprus fell to the Greek Empire, and for centu- 
 ries maintained under its ducal governors a sort of 
 independent life, enjoying as much prosperity as 
 was possible under the almost uniform imbecility 
 and corruption of the Byzantine rule. We have 
 already spoken of its transfer to the Lusignans 
 by Richard Coeur de Lion ; and again a romantic 
 chapter was added to its history by the reign of 
 Queen Catharine Cornaro, who gave her kingdom 
 to the Venetian republic. Since its final conquest 
 by the Turks in 1571, Cyprus has interested the 
 world only by its sufferings; for Turkish history 
 here, as elsewhere, is little but a record of exac- 
 tions, rapine, and massacre. 
 
 From time to time during the present century 
 efforts have been made by individuals and by 
 learned societies to explore the antiquities of Cy- 
 prus; but although many interesting discoveries 
 were made, yet the field was comparatively virgin 
 when General di Cesnola was appointed American 
 consul in 1866. Here and there a stele, or some 
 fragments of pottery, or the remains of a temple, 
 had been unearthed by chance or by superficial 
 search, but the few objects discovered served only 
 to pique curiosity. For one reason or another, the
 
 348 CYPRUS 
 
 efforts made to establish the site of ancient cities 
 had been abandoned, the expeditions sent out by 
 France had been comparatively barren of results, 
 and it seemed as if the traces of the occupation 
 of the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, 
 the Persians, and the Romans were irrecoverably 
 concealed. 
 
 General L. P. di Cesnola, the explorer of Cy- 
 prus, is of a noble Piedmontese family ; he received 
 a military and classical education at Turin ; iden- 
 tified with the party of Italian unity, his sympa- 
 thies were naturally excited by the contest in 
 America; he offered his sword to our government, 
 and served with distinction in the war for the 
 Union. At its close he was appointed consul at 
 Cyprus, a position of no pecuniary attraction, but 
 I presume that the new consul had in view the 
 explorations which have given his name such hon- 
 orable celebrity in both hemispheres. 
 
 The difficulties of his undertaking were many. 
 He had to encounter at every step the jealousy of 
 the Turkish government, and the fanaticism and 
 superstition of the occupants of the soil. Archa> 
 ological researches are not easy in the East under 
 the most favorable circumstances, and in places 
 where the traces of ancient habitations are visible 
 above ground, and ancient sites are known ; but in 
 Cyprus no ruins exist in sight to aid the explorer, 
 and, with the exception of one or two localities, no 
 names of ancient places are known to the present 
 generation. But the consul was convinced that 
 the great powers which had from age to age held
 
 STATUE OF HERCULES AT CONSTANTINOPLE MUSEUM
 
 GENERAL DI CESNOLA 349 
 
 Cyprus must have left some traces of their occupa- 
 tion, and that intelligent search would discover the 
 ruins of the prosperous cities described by Strabo 
 and mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy. With- 
 out other guides than the descriptions of these and 
 other ancient writers, the consul began his search 
 in 1867, and up to 1875 he had ascertained the 
 exact sites of eleven ancient cities mentioned by 
 Strabo and Ptolemy, most of which had ceased to 
 exist before the Christian era, and none of which 
 has left vestiges above the soil. 
 
 In the time of David and of Solomon, the Phoa- 
 nicians formed the largest portion of the popula- 
 tion of the island; their royal cities of Paphos, 
 Amathus, Carpassa, Citium, and Ammochosto, 
 were in the most flourishing condition. Not a 
 stone remained of them above ground ; their sites 
 were unknown in 1867. 
 
 When General di Cesnola had satisfied himself 
 of the probable site of an ancient city or temple, 
 it was difficult to obtain permission to dig, even 
 with the authority of the Sultan's firman. He 
 was obliged to wait for harvests to be gathered, in 
 some cases, to take a lease of the ground ; some- 
 times the religious fanaticism of the occupants 
 could not be overcome, and his working parties 
 were frequently beaten and driven away in his ab- 
 sence. But the consul exhibited tact, patience, 
 energy, the qualities necessary, with knowledge, 
 to a successful explorer. He evaded or cast down 
 all obstacles. 
 
 In 1868 he discovered the uecropoli of Ledra,
 
 350 CYPRUS 
 
 Citium, and Idalium, and opened during three 
 years in these localities over ten thousand tombs, 
 bringing to light a mass of ancient objects of art 
 which enable us to understand the customs, reli- 
 gion, and civilization of the earlier inhabitants. 
 Idalium was famous of old as the place where Gre- 
 cian pottery was first made, and fragments of it 
 have been found from time to time on its site. 
 
 In 1869 and 1870 he surveyed Aphrodisium, 
 in the northeastern part of the island, and ascer- 
 tained, in the interior, the site of Golgos, a city 
 known to have been in existence before the Trojan 
 war. The disclosures at this place excited both 
 the wonder and the incredulity of the civilized 
 world, and it was not until the marvelous collec- 
 tion of the explorer was exhibited, partially in 
 London, but fully in New York, that the vast im- 
 portance of the labors of General di Cesnola began 
 to be comprehended. In exploring the necropolis 
 of Golgos, he came, a few feet below the soil, upon 
 the remains of the temple of Venus, strewn with 
 mutilated sculptures of the highest interest, supply- 
 ing the missing link between Egyptian and Greek 
 art, and indeed illustrating the artistic condition 
 of most of the Mediterranean nations during the 
 period from about 1200 to about 500 B. c. It 
 would require too much space to tell how the Brit- 
 ish Museum missed and the Metropolitan of New 
 York secured this first priceless u Cesnola Collec- 
 tion." Suffice it to say, that it was sold to a gen- 
 erous citizen of New York, Mr. John Taylor John- 
 son, for fifty thousand dollars, a smn which
 
 EXPLORATIONS 351 
 
 would not compensate the explorer for his time and 
 labor, and would little more than repay his pecu- 
 niary outlay, which reached the amount of over 
 sixty thousand dollars in 1875. But it was enough 
 that the treasure was secured by his adopted coun- 
 try; the loss of it to the Old World, which was 
 publicly called an "European misfortune," was a 
 piece of good fortune to the United States, which 
 time will magnify. 
 
 From 1870 to 1872 the general's attention was 
 directed to the southwestern portion of the island, 
 and he laid open the necropoli of Marium, Paphos, 
 Alamas, and Soli, and three ancient cities whose 
 names are yet unknown. In 1873 lie explored 
 and traced the cities of Throni, Leucolla, and Ar- 
 sinoe, and the necropoli of several towns still un- 
 known. In 1874 and 1875 he brought to light the 
 royal cities of Amathus and Curium, and located 
 the little town of Kury. 
 
 It would not be possible here to enumerate all 
 the objects of art or worship, and of domestic use, 
 which these excavations have yielded. The statu- 
 ary and the thousands of pieces of glass, some of 
 them rivaling the most perfect Grecian shapes in 
 form, and excelling the Venetian colors in the iri- 
 descence of age, perhaps attract most attention in 
 the Metropolitan Museum. From the tombs were 
 taken thousands of vases of earthenware, some in 
 alabaster and bronze, statuettes in terra-cotta, 
 arms, coins, scarabaei, cylinders, intaglios, cameos, 
 gold ornaments, and mortuary Ktde*. In the 
 temples were brought to light inscriptions, bas-
 
 352 CYPRUS 
 
 reliefs, architectural fragments, and statues of the 
 different nations who have conquered and occupied 
 the island. The inscriptions are in the Egyptian, 
 Assyrian, Phoenician, Greek, and Cypriote lan- 
 guages; the last-mentioned being, in the opinion 
 of the explorer, an ancient Greek dialect. 
 
 At Curium, nineteen feet below the surface of 
 the ground, were found the remains of the Temple 
 of Apollo Hylates; the sculptures contained in it 
 belong to the Greek period from 700 to 100 B. C. 
 At Amathus some royal tombs were opened, and 
 two marble sarcophagi of large dimensions, one of 
 them intact, were discovered, which are historically 
 important, and positive additions to the remains 
 of the best Greek art. 
 
 After Golgos, Paleo Paphos yielded the most in- 
 teresting treasures. Here existed a temple to the 
 Paphian Venus, whose birthplace was in sight of 
 its portals, famous throughout the East; devotees 
 and pilgrims constantly resorted to it, as they do 
 now to the shrines of Mecca and Jerusalem. Not 
 only the maritime adventurers and traders from 
 Asia Minor and the Grecian mainland crowded to 
 the temple of this pleasing and fortunate goddess, 
 and quitted their vows or propitiated her favor by 
 gifts, but the religious or the superstitious from 
 Persia and Assyria and farthest Egypt deposited 
 there their votive offerings. The collector of a 
 museum of antiquity that should illustrate the 
 manners and religion of the thousand years before 
 the Christian era could ask nothing better than 
 these deposits of many races during many centu- 
 ries in one place.
 
 INTERESTING TREASURES 353 
 
 The excavations at Paphos were attended with 
 considerable danger ; more than once the workmen 
 Were obliged to flee to save their lives from the 
 fanatic Moslems. The town, although it has lost 
 its physical form, and even its name (its site is 
 now called Baffo),- retains the character of super- 
 stition it had when St. Paul found it expedient to 
 darken the vision of Elymas there, as if a city, 
 like a man, possessed a soul that outlives the body. 
 We spent the afternoon in examining the new 
 collection of General di Cesnola, not so large as 
 that in the Metropolitan Museum, but perhaps 
 richer in some respects, particularly in iridescent 
 glass. 
 
 In the summer of 1875, however, the labors of 
 the indefatigable explorer were crowned with a 
 discovery the riches of which cast into the shade 
 the real or pretended treasures of the "House of 
 Priam," a discovery not certainly of more value 
 to art than those that preceded it, but well cal- 
 culated to excite popular wonder. The finding of 
 this subterranean hoard reads like an adventure 
 of Aladdin. 
 
 In pursuing his researches at Curium, on the 
 southwestern side of the island, General di Cesnola 
 came upon the site of an ancient temple, and un- 
 covered its broken mosaic pavement. Beneath 
 this, and at the depth of twenty -five feet, he broke 
 into a subterranean passage cut in the rock. This 
 passage led to a door ; no genie sat by it, but it 
 was securely closed by a stone slab. When this 
 was removed, a suite of four rooms was disclosed,
 
 354 CYPRUS 
 
 but they were not immediately accessible; earth 
 sifting through the roofs for ages had filled them, 
 and it required the labor of a month to clean out 
 the chambers. Imagine the feverish enthusiasm 
 of the explorer as he slowly penetrated -this trea- 
 sure-house, where every stroke of the pick disclosed 
 the gleam of buried treasure ! In the first room 
 were found only gold objects; in the second only 
 silver and silver-gilt ornaments and utensils; in 
 the third alabasters, terra-cottas, vases, and groups 
 of figures ; in the fourth bronzes, and nothing else. 
 It is the opinion of the discoverer that these four 
 rooms were the depositories where the crafty priests 
 and priestesses of the old temple used to hide their 
 treasures during times of war or sudden invasion. 
 1 cannot but think that the mysterious subterra- 
 nean passages and chambers in the ancient temples 
 of Egypt served a similar purpose. The treasure 
 found scattered in these rooms did not appear to 
 be the whole belonging to the temple, but only a 
 part, left perhaps in the confusion of a hasty flight. 
 Among the articles found in the first room, 
 dumped in a heap in the middle (as if .they had 
 been suddenly, in a panic, stripped from the altar 
 in the temple and cast into a place of concealment), 
 were a gold cup covered with Egyptian embossed 
 work, and two bracelets of pure gold weighing 
 over three pounds, inscribed with the name of 
 "Etevander, King of Paphos." This king lived 
 in 635 B. C., and in 620 B. c. paid tribute to 
 the Assyrian monarch Assurbanapal (Sardanapa- 
 lus), as is recorded on an Assyrian tablet now in
 
 VOTIVE OFFERINGS 355 
 
 the British Museum. There were also many 
 gold necklaces, bracelets, ear-rings, finger-rings, 
 brooches, seals, armlets, etc., in all four hundred 
 and eighty gold articles. 
 
 In the silver-room, arranged on the benches at 
 the sides, were vases, bottles, cups, bowls, brace- 
 lets, finger-rings, ear-rings, seals, etc. One of 
 the most curious and valuable objects is a silver- 
 gilt bowl, having upon it very fine embossed Egyp- 
 tian work, and evidently of high antiquity. 
 
 In the third room of vases and terra-cottas were 
 some most valuable and interesting specimens. 
 The bronze-room yielded several high candelabra, 
 lamp - holders, lamps, statuettes, bulls' - heads, 
 bowls, vases, jugs, patera, fibula, rings, brace- 
 lets, mirrors, etc. Nearly all the objects in the 
 four rooms seem to have been "votive offerings," 
 and testify a pagan devotion to the gods not ex- 
 celled by Christian generosity to the images and 
 shrines of modern worship. The inscriptions be- 
 token the votive character of these treasures ; that 
 upon the heavy gold armlets is in the genitive 
 case, and would be literally translated "Etevandri 
 Regis Paphi," the words "offering of" being un- 
 derstood to precede it. 
 
 I confess that the glitter of these treasures, and 
 the glamour of these associations with the inge- 
 nious people of antiquity, transformed the naked 
 island of Cyprus, as we lay off it in the golden 
 sunset, into a region of all possibilities, and I 
 longed to take my Strabo and my spade and 
 wander off prospecting for its sacred placers. It
 
 358 THROUGH SUMMER SEAS 
 
 sians heaped indiscriminately together, and it is 
 very difficult to distinguish a Russian woman from 
 a bundle of old clothes, when she is in repose. 
 These people travel with their bedding, their ba- 
 bies, and their cooking utensils, and make a home 
 wherever they sit down. 
 
 The forward passengers have overflowed their 
 limits and extend back upon our portion of the 
 deck, occupying all one side of it to the stern, leav- 
 ing the so-called privileged class only a narrow 
 promenade on the starboard side. These intruders 
 are, however, rather first-class second-class. Par- 
 ties of them are camped down in small squares, 
 which become at once miniature seraglios. One 
 square is occupied by wealthy Moslems from Da- 
 mascus, and in another is a stately person who is 
 rumored to be the Prince of Damascus. These 
 turbaned and silk-clad Orientals have spread their 
 bright rugs and cushions, and lounge here all day 
 and sleep here at night; some of them entertain 
 themselves with chess, but the most of them only 
 smoke and talk little. Why should they talk? 
 has not enough already been said in the world? 
 At intervals during the day, ascertaining, I do not 
 know how, the direction of Mecca, these grave 
 men arise, spread their prayer-carpets, and begin 
 in unison their kneelings and prostrations, ser- 
 vants and masters together, but the servants be- 
 hind their masters. Next to them, fenced off by 
 benches, is a harem square, occupied by veiled 
 women, perhaps the wives of these Moslems and 
 perhaps "some others." All the deck is a study 
 of brilliant costume.
 
 A MOTLEY BO AT- LOAD 359 
 
 A little later the Oriental prince turns out to be 
 only a Turkish pasha, who has a state-room below 
 for himself, and another for his harem; but in 
 another compartment of our flower-bed of a deck is 
 a merchant-prince of Damascus, whose gorgeous- 
 ness would impose upon people more sophisticated 
 than we. 
 
 "He no prince; merchant like me," explains 
 Achmed, "and very rich, God be merciful." 
 
 "But why don't you travel about like that, Ach- 
 med, and make a fine display?" 
 
 "For why? Anybody say Mohammed Achmed 
 any more respect? What for I show my rich? 
 Take my advice. When I am dragoman, I am 
 servant ; and dress [here a comico-sarcastic glance 
 at his plain but handsome dragoman apparel] not 
 in monkey shine, like Selim you remember him 
 at Jaffa, fierce like a Bedawee. I make busi- 
 ness. When I am by my house, that is another 
 thing." 
 
 The pasha has rooms below, and these contigu- 
 ous squares on deck are occupied, the one by his 
 suite and the other by their ladies and slaves, all 
 veiled and presumably beautiful, lolling on the 
 cushions in the ennui that appears to be their 
 normal condition. One of them is puffing a cig- 
 arette under her white veil at the risk of a confla- 
 gration. One of the slaves, with an olive com- 
 plexion and dark eyes, is very pretty, and rather 
 likes to casually leave her face uncovered for the 
 benefit of the infidels who are about; that her feet 
 and le<rs are bare she cares still less. This harem
 
 360 THROUGH SUMMER SEAS 
 
 is, however, encroached upon by Greek women, 
 who sprawl about with more freedom, and regard 
 the world without the hindrance of a veil. If they 
 are not handsome, they are at least not self-con- 
 scious, as you would think women would be in 
 baggy silk trousers and embroidered jackets. 
 
 In the afternoon we came in sight of the ancient 
 coasts of Pamphylia and Lycia and a lovely range 
 of what we took to be the Karamanian mountains, 
 snow-covered and half hid in clouds, all remote 
 and dim to our vision as the historical pageant of 
 Assyrian, Persian, and Roman armies on these 
 shores is to our memory. Eastward on that rug- 
 ged coast we know is Cilicia and the Tarsus of 
 Paul and Haroun al Raschid. The sunset on the 
 Lycian mountains was glorious; the foot by the 
 water was veiled in golden mist; the sea sank 
 from indigo to purple, and when the light waves 
 broke flecks of rose or blood flowed on the surface. 
 
 After dark, and before we were abreast of old 
 Xanthus, we descried the famous natural light 
 which is almost as mysterious to the moderns as it 
 was to the ancients. The Handbook says of it : 
 "About two miles from the coast, through a fertile 
 plain, and then ascending a woody glen, the trav- 
 eler arrives at the Zanar, or volcanic flame, which 
 issues perpetually from the mountain." Pliny 
 says: "Mount Chimcera, near Phaselis, emits an 
 unceasing flame that burns day and night." Cap- 
 tain Beaufort observed it from the ship during the 
 night as a small but steady light among the hills. 
 We at first mistook it for a lighthouse. But it
 
 THE CLASSIC COAST 361 
 
 was too high above the water for that, and the 
 flame was too large; it was rather a smoky radi- 
 ance than a point of light, and yet it had a dull 
 red centre and a duller luminous surrounding. 
 We regarded with curiosity and some awe a flame 
 that had been burning for over twenty centuries, 
 and perhaps was alight before the signal-fires were 
 kindled to announce the fall of Troy, Nature's 
 own Pharos to the ancient mariners who were with- 
 out compass on these treacherous seas. 
 
 Otherwise, this classic coast is dark; extin- 
 guished is the fire on the altar of Apollo at Patera, 
 silent is the winter oracle of this god, and desolate 
 is the once luxurious metropolis of Lycia. Even 
 Xanthus, the capital, a name disused by the pres- 
 ent inhabitants, has little to show of Greek culture 
 or Persian possession, and one must seek the frag- 
 ments of its antique art in the British Museum. 
 
 Coming on deck the next morning at the fresh 
 hour of sunrise, I found we were at Rhodes. We 
 lay just off the semicircular harbor, which is clasped 
 by walls partly shaken down by earthquakes 
 which have noble round towers at each embracing 
 end. Rhodes is, from the sea, one of the most 
 picturesque cities in the Mediterranean, although 
 it has little remains of that ancient splendor which 
 caused Strabo to prefer it to Rome or Alexandria. 
 The harbor wall, which is flanked on each side by 
 stout and round stone windmills, extends up the 
 hill, and, becoming double, surrounds the old town; 
 these massive fortifications of the Knights of St. 
 John have withstood the onsets of enemies and the
 
 362 RHODES 
 
 tremors of the earth, and, with the ancient moat, 
 excite the curiosity of this so-called, peaceful age 
 of iron-clads and monster cannon. The city as- 
 cends the slope of the hill and passes beyond the 
 wall. Outside and on the right towards the sea 
 are a picturesque group of a couple of dozen stone 
 windmills, and some minarets and a church-tower 
 or two. Higher up the hill is sprinkled a little 
 foliage, a few mulberry -trees, and an isolated palm 
 or two ; and, beyond, the island is only a mass of 
 broken, bold, rocky mountains. Of its forty -five 
 miles of length, running southwesterly from the 
 little point on which the city stands, we can see 
 but little. 
 
 Whether or not Rhodes emerged from the sea 
 at the command of Apollo, the Greeks expressed 
 by this tradition of its origin their appreciation 
 of its gracious climate, fertile soil, and exquisite 
 scenery. From remote antiquity it had fame as 
 a seat of arts and letters, and of a vigorous mari- 
 time power, and the romance of its early centuries 
 was equaled if not surpassed when it became the 
 residence of the Knights of St. John. I believe 
 that the first impress of its civilization was given 
 by the Phosnicians ; it was the home of the Dorian 
 race before the time of the Trojan war, and its 
 three cities were members of the Dorian Ilexapo- 
 lis ; it was in fact a flourishing maritime confed- 
 eracy, strong enough to send colonies to the dis- 
 tant Italian coast, and Sybaris and Parthenope 
 (modern Naples) perpetuated the luxurious refine- 
 ment of their founders. The city of Rhodes itself
 
 THE COLOSSUS 363 
 
 was founded about four hundred years before 
 Christ, and the splendor of its palaces, its statues 
 and paintings, gave it a preeminence among the 
 most magnificent cities of the ancient world. If 
 the earth of this island could be made to yield its 
 buried treasures as Cyprus has, we should doubt- 
 less have new proofs of the influence of Asiatic 
 civilization upon the Greeks, and be able to trace 
 in the early Doric arts and customs the superior 
 civilization of the Phoenicians, and of the masters 
 of the latter in science and art, the Egyptians. 
 
 Naturally, every traveler who enters the harbor 
 of Rhodes hopes to see the site of one of the seven 
 wonders of the wdrld, the Colossus. He is free 
 to place it on either mole at the entrance of the 
 harbor, but he comprehends at once that a statue 
 which was only one hundred and five feet high 
 could never have extended its legs across the port. 
 The fame of this colossal bronze statue of the sun 
 is disproportioned to the period of its existence ; it 
 stood only fifty -six years after its erection, being 
 shaken down by an earthquake in the year 224 
 B. C., and encumbering the ground with its frag- 
 ments till the advent of the Moslem conquerors. 
 
 When we landed, the town was not yet awake, 
 except the boatmen and the coffee-houses by the 
 landing-stairs. The Greek boatman, whom we 
 accepted as our guide, made an unsuccessful ex- 
 cursion for bread, finding only a black uneatable 
 mixture, sprinkled with aromatic seeds; but we 
 sat under the shelter of an old sycamore in a 
 lovely place by the shore, and sipped our coffee,
 
 364 RHODES 
 
 and saw the sun coining over Lycia, and shining 
 on the old towers and walls of the Knights. 
 
 Passing from the quay through a highly orna- 
 mented Gothic gateway, we ascended the farnOUS 
 historic street, still called the Street of the Knights, 
 the massive houses of which have withstood the 
 shocks of earthquakes and the devastation of Sar- 
 acenic and Turkish occupation. At this hour the 
 street was as deserted as it was three centuries and 
 a half ago, when the Knights sorrowfully sailed 
 out of the harbor in search of a new home. Their 
 four months' defense of the city, against the over- 
 whelming force of Suleiman the Magnificent, added 
 a new lustre to their valor, and extorted the admi- 
 ration of the victor and the most honorable terms 
 of surrender. With them departed the prosperity 
 of Rhodes. This street, of whose palaces we have 
 heard so much, is not imposing; it is not wide, its 
 solid stone houses are only two stories high, and 
 their fronts are now disfigured by cheap Arab bal- 
 conies, but the facades are gray with age. All 
 along are remains of carved windows. Gothic 
 sculptured doorways, and shields and coats of arms, 
 crosses and armorial legends, are set in the walls, 
 partially defaced by time and accident; for the 
 Moslems, apparently inheriting the respect of Su- 
 leiman for the Knights, have spared the mementos 
 of their faith and prowess. I saw no inscriptions 
 that are intact, but made out upon one shield the 
 words voluntas mei est. The carving is all beau- 
 tiful. 
 
 We went through the silent streets, waking only
 
 THE KNIGHTS OP ST. JOHN 365 
 
 echoes of the past, out to the ruins of the once ele- 
 gant church of St. John, which was shaken down 
 by a powder-explosion some thirty years ago, and 
 utterly flattened by an earthquake some years after- 
 wards. Outside the ramparts we met, and saluted 
 with the freedom of travelers, a gorgeous Turk who 
 was taking the morning air, and who, our guide 
 in bated breath said, was the governor. In this 
 part of the town is the Mosque of Suleiman; in 
 the portal are two lovely marble columns, rich 
 with age; the lintels are exquisitely carved with 
 flowers, arms, casques, musical instruments, the 
 crossed sword and the torch, and the mandolin, 
 perhaps the emblem of some troubadour knight. 
 Wherever we went we found bits of old carving, 
 remains of columns, sections of battlemented roofs. 
 The town is saturated with the old Knights. Near 
 the mosque is a foundation of charity, a public 
 kitchen, at which the poor were fed or were free 
 to come and cook their food ; it is in decay now, 
 and the rooks were sailing about its old round- 
 topped chimneys. 
 
 There are no Hellenic remains in the city, and 
 the only remembrance of that past which we 
 searched for was the antique coin, which has upon 
 one side the head of Medusa and upon the other 
 the rose (rJioda) which gave the town its name. 
 The town was quiet; but in pursuit of this coin in 
 the Jews' quarter we started up swarms of traders, 
 were sent from Isaac to Jacob, and invaded dark 
 shops and private houses where Jewish women and 
 children were just beginning to complain of the
 
 366 RHODES 
 
 morning light. Our guide was a jolly Greek, who 
 was willing to awaken the whole town in search of 
 a silver coin. The traders, when we had routed 
 them out, had little to show in the way of antiqui- 
 ties. Perhaps the best representative of the mod- 
 ern manufactures of Rhodes is the wooden shoe, 
 which is in form like the Damascus clog, but is 
 inlaid with more taste. The people whom we en- 
 countered in our morning walk were Greeks or 
 Jews. 
 
 The morning atmosphere was delicious, and we 
 could well believe that the climate of Rhodes is the 
 finest in the Mediterranean, and also that it is the 
 least exciting of cities. 
 
 "Is it always so peaceful here?" we asked the 
 guide. 
 
 "Nothing, if you please," said he, "has hap- 
 pened here since the powder-explosion, nothing in 
 the least." 
 
 "And is the town as healthy as they say?" 
 
 "Nobody dies." 
 
 The town is certainly clean, if it is in decay. 
 In one street we found a row of mulberry-trees 
 down the centre, but they were half decayed, like 
 the street. I shall always think of Rhodes as a 
 silent city ,- except in the Jews' quarter, where 
 the hope of selling an old coin set the whole hive 
 humming, and I suspect that is its normal con- 
 dition.
 
 XX 
 
 AMONG THE AEGEAN ISLANDS 
 
 UR sail all day among the ^Egean isl- 
 ands was surpassingly lovely ; our course 
 was constantly changing to wind among 
 them ; their beautiful outlines and the 
 soft atmosphere that enwrapped them disposed us 
 to regard them in the light of Homeric history, 
 and we did not struggle against the illusion. 
 They are all treeless, and for the most part have 
 scant traces of vegetation, except a thin green grass 
 which seems rather a color than a substance. Here 
 are the little islands of Chalce and Syme, once 
 seats of Grecian culture, now the abode of a few 
 thousand sponge -fishers. We pass Telos, and Ni- 
 syros, which was once ruled by Queen Artemisia, 
 and had its share in the fortunes of the wars of 
 Athens and Sparta. It is a small round mass 
 af rock, but it rises twenty -two hundred feet out 
 of the sea, and its volcanic soil is favorable to the 
 grape. Opposite is the site of the ruins of Cnidus, 
 a Dorian city of great renown, and famous for its 
 shrine of Venus, and her statue by Praxiteles. 
 We get an idea of the indentation of this coast of 
 Asia Minor (and its consequent accessibility to
 
 368 AMONG THE AEGEAN ISLANDS 
 
 early settlement and civilization) from the fact that 
 Cnidus is situated on a very narrow peninsula 
 ninety miles long. 
 
 Kos is celebrated not only for its size, loveli- 
 ness, and fertility, but as the birthplace of Apelles 
 and of Hippocrates; the inhabitants still venerate 
 an enormous plane-tree under which the good physi- 
 cian is said to have dispensed his knowledge of 
 healing. The city of Kos is on a fine plain, which 
 gradually slopes from the mountain to the sea and 
 is well covered with trees. The attractive town 
 lies prettily along the shore, and is distinguished 
 by a massive square mediaeval fortress, and by 
 round stone windmills with specially long arms. 
 
 As we came around the corner of Kos, we had a 
 view, distant but interesting, of the site of Hali- 
 carnassus, the modern town of Boudroum, with its 
 splendid fortress, which the Turks wrested from 
 the Knights of St. John. We sail by it with re- 
 gret, for the student and traveler in the East 
 comes to have a tender feeling for the simple na- 
 ture of the father of history, and would forego 
 some other pleasant experiences to make a pilgrim- 
 age to the birthplace of Herodotus. Here, also, 
 was born the historian Dionysius. And here, a 
 few years ago, were identified the exact site and 
 i-escued the remains of another of the Seven Won- 
 ders, the Tomb of Mausolus, built in honor of her 
 husband by the Carian Artemisia, who sustained 
 to him the double relation of sister and queen. 
 This monument, which exhibited the perfection of 
 Greek art, was four hundred and eleven feet in
 
 PATMOS 369 
 
 circumference and one hundred and forty feet high. 
 It consisted of a round building, surrounded by 
 thirty-six columns surmounted by a pyramid, and 
 upon the latter stood a colossal group of a chariot 
 and four horses. Some of the beautiful sculpture 
 of this mausoleum can be seen in the British 
 Museum. 
 
 We were all the afternoon endeavoring to get 
 sight of Patinos, which the intervening islands hid 
 from view. Every half hour some one was discov- 
 ering it, and announcing the fact. No doubt half 
 the passengers will go to their graves comforted by 
 the belief that they saw it. Some of them actually 
 did have a glimpse of it towards night, between the 
 islands of Lipso and Arid. It is a larger island 
 than we expected to see ; and as we had understood 
 that the Revelations were written on a small rocky 
 island, in fact a mere piece of rock, the feat seemed 
 less difficult on a good-sized island. Its height is 
 now crowned by the celebrated monastery of St. 
 John, but the island is as barren and uninviting 
 as it was when the Romans used it as a place of 
 banishment. 
 
 We passed Astypataea, Kalyminos, Leros, and 
 a sprinkling of islets (as if a giant -had sown this 
 sea with rocks), each of which has a history, or is 
 graced by a legend ; but their glory is of the past. 
 The chief support of their poor inhabitants is now 
 the sponge-fishery. At sunset we had before us 
 Icaria and Samos, and on the mainland the site 
 of Miletus, now a fever-smitten place, whose vast 
 theatre is almost the sole remains of the metropolis
 
 370 AMONG THE AEGEAN ISLANDS 
 
 of the Ionic confederacy. Perhaps the centre of 
 Ionic art and culture was, however, the island of 
 Samos, but I doubt not the fame of its Samian 
 wine has carried its name further than the exploits 
 of its warriors, the works of its artists, or the 
 thoughts of its philosophers. It was the birthplace 
 of Pythagoras; it was once governed by Poly- 
 crates; there for a time Antony and Cleopatra 
 established their court of love and luxury. In the 
 evening we sailed close under its high cliffs, and 
 saw dimly opposite Icaria, whose only merit or 
 interest lies in its association with the ill-judged 
 aerial voyage of Icarus, the son of Daedalus. 
 
 Although the voyager amid these islands and 
 along this historic; coast profoundly feels the influ- 
 ence of the past, and, as he reads and looks and 
 reflects, becomes saturated with its half -mysterious 
 and delicious romance, he is nevertheless scarcely 
 able to believe that these denuded shores and pur- 
 ple, rocky islets were the homes of heroes, the the- 
 atres of world-renowned exploits, the seats of wealth 
 and luxury and power ; that the marble of splendid 
 temples gleamed from every summit and headland ; 
 that rich cities clustered on every island and studded 
 the mainland ; and that this region, bounteous in 
 the fruits of the liberal earth, was not less prolific 
 in vigorous men and beautiful women, who planted 
 adventurous and remote colonies, and sowed around 
 the Mediterranean the seeds of our modern civili- 
 zation. In the present desolation and soft decay 
 it is difficult to recall the wealth, the diversified 
 industry, the martial spirit, the refinement of the
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF OUR ERA 371 
 
 races whose art and literature are still our emula- 
 tion and despair. Here, indeed, were the begin- 
 nings of our era, of our modern life, separated 
 by a great gulf from the ancient civilization of the 
 Nile, the life of the people, the attempts at self- 
 government, the individual adventure, the new 
 development of human relations consequent upon 
 commerce, and the freer exchange of products and 
 ideas. 
 
 What these islands and this variegated and 
 genial coast of Asia Minor might become under a 
 government that did not paralyze effort and rob 
 industry, it is impossible to say; but the impres- 
 sion is made upon the traveler that Nature herself 
 is exhausted in these regions, and that it will need 
 the rest or change of a geologic era to restore her 
 pristine vigor. The prodigality and avarice of 
 thousands of years have left the land now that 
 the flame of civilization has burned out like the 
 crater of an extinct volcano. But probably it is 
 society and not nature that is dead. The island of 
 Rhodes, for an example, might in a few years of 
 culture again produce the forests that once supplied 
 her hardy sons with fleets of vessels, and her genial 
 soil, under any intelligent agriculture, would yield 
 abundant harvests. The land is now divided into 
 petty holdings, and each poor proprietor scratches 
 it just enough to make it yield a scanty return. 
 
 During the night the steamer had come to Chios 
 (Scio), and I rose at dawn to see for we had no 
 opportunity to land the spot almost equally 
 famous as the birthplace of Homer and the land
 
 372 AMONG THE AEGEAN ISLANDS 
 
 of the Chian wine. The town lies along the water 
 for a mile or more around a shallow bay opening 
 to the east, a city of small white houses, relieved 
 by a minaret or two; close to the water's edge are 
 some three-story edifices, and in front is an ancient 
 square fort, which has a mole extending into the 
 water, terminated by a mediaeval bastion, behind 
 which small vessels find shelter. Low by the shore, 
 on the north, are some of the sturdy windmills 
 peculiar to these islands, and I can distinguish 
 with a glass a few fragments of Byzantine and 
 mediaeval architecture among the common build- 
 ings. Staring at us from the middle of the town 
 were two big signs, with the word "Hotel." 
 
 To the south of the town, amid a grove of trees, 
 are the white stones of the cemetery; the city of 
 the dead is nearly as large as that of the living. 
 Behind the city are orange orchards and many a 
 bright spot of verdure, but the space for it is not 
 broad. Sharp, bare, serrated, perpendicular ridges 
 of mountain rise behind the town, encircling it 
 like an amphitheatre. In the morning light these 
 mountains are tawny and rich in color, tinged with 
 purple and red. Chios is a pretty picture in the 
 shelter of these hills, which gather for it the rays 
 of the rising sun. 
 
 It is now half a century since the name of Scio 
 rang through the civilized world as the theatre of 
 a deed which Turkish history itself can scarcely 
 parallel, and the island is vigorously regaining its 
 prosperity. It only needs to recall the outlines of 
 the story. The fertile island, which is four times
 
 scio 373 
 
 the extent of the Isle of Wight, was the home oi 
 one hundred and ten thousand inhabitants, of 
 whom only six thousand were Turks. The Greeks 
 of Scio were said to differ physically and morally 
 from all their kindred; their merchants were 
 princes at home and abroad, art and literature 
 flourished, with grace and refinement of manner, 
 and there probably nowhere existed a society 
 more industrious, gay, contented, and intelligent. 
 Tempted by some adventurers from Samos to re- 
 bel, they drew down upon themselves the ven- 
 geance of the Turks, who retaliated the bloody 
 massacre of Turkish men, women, and children 
 by the insurrectionists, with a universal destruc- 
 tion. The city of Scio, with its thirty thousand 
 inhabitants, and seventy villages were reduced to 
 ashes ; twenty -five thousand of all ages and both 
 sexes were slain, forty-five thousand were carried 
 away as slaves, among them women and children 
 who had been reared in luxury, and most of the 
 remainder escaped, in a destitute state, into other 
 parts of Greece. At the end of the summer's 
 harvest of death, only two thousand Sciotes were 
 left on the island. An apologist for the Turks 
 could only urge that the Greeks would have been 
 as unmerciful under like circumstances. 
 
 None of the first-class passengers were up to see 
 Chios, not one for poor Homer's sake; but the 
 second-class were stirring for their own, crawling 
 out of their comfortables, giving the babies a turn, 
 and the vigilant flea a taste of the morning air. 
 When the Russian peasant, who sleeps in the high
 
 374 AMONG THE ^GEAN ISLANDS 
 
 truncated frieze cap, and in the coat which he wore 
 in Jerusalem, a garment short in the waist, 
 gathered in pleats underneath the shoulders, and 
 falling in stiff expanding folds below, when he 
 first gets up and rubs his eyes, he is an astonished 
 being. His short-legged wife is already astir, and 
 beginning to collect the materials of breakfast. 
 Some of the Greeks are making coffee ; there is a 
 smell of coffee, and there are various other unan- 
 alyzed odors. But for pilgrims, and pilgrims so 
 closely packed that no one can stir without moving 
 the entire mass, these are much cleaner than they 
 might be expected to be, and cleaner, indeed, than 
 they can continue to be, and keep up their repu- 
 tation. And yet, half an hour among them, look- 
 ing out from the bow for a comprehensive view of 
 Chios, is quite enough. I wished, then, that these 
 people would change either their religion or their 
 clothes. 
 
 Last night we had singing on deck by an extem- 
 porized quartette of young Americans, with har- 
 monious and well-blended voices, and it was a 
 most delightful contrast to the caterwauling, ac- 
 companied by the darabouka, which we constantly 
 hear on the forward deck, and which the Arabs 
 call singing. Even the fat, good-humored little 
 Moslem from Damascus, who lives in the pen with 
 the merchant-prince of that city, listened with de- 
 light and declared that it was tyclt katccr. Who 
 knows but these people, who are always singing, 
 have some appreciation of music after all?
 
 XXI 
 
 SMYRNA AND EPHESUS 
 
 HEN we left Chios we sailed at first 
 east, right into the sun, gradually 
 turned north and rounded the promon- 
 tory of the mainland, and then, east 
 by south, came into the beautiful land-locked bay 
 of Smyrna, in which the blue water changes into 
 a muddy green. At length we passed on the right 
 a Turkish fortress, which appeared as formidable 
 as a bathing establishment, and, Smyrna lay at the 
 bottom of the gulf, circling the shore, white 
 houses, fruit-trees, and hills beyond. 
 
 The wind was north, as it always is here in the 
 morning, and the landing was difficult. We had 
 the usual excitement of swarming boats and clam- 
 orous boatmen and lively waves. One passenger 
 went into the water instead of the boat, but was 
 easily fished out by his baggy trousers, and, as 
 he was a Greek pilgrim, it was thought that a lit- 
 tle water would n't injure him. Coming to the 
 shore we climbed with difficulty out of the bobbing 
 boat upon the sea-wall; the shiftless Turkish gov- 
 ernment will do nothing to improve the landing at 
 this great port, if the Sultan can borrow any
 
 376 SMYRNA AND EPHESUS 
 
 money he builds a new palace on the Bosphorus, 
 or an iron-clad to anchor in front of it. 
 
 Smyrna may be said to have a character of its 
 own in not having any character of its own. One 
 of the most ancient cities on the globe, it has no 
 appearance of antiquity; containing all nationali- 
 ties, it has no nationality; the second commercial 
 city of the East, it has no chamber of commerce, 
 no Bourse, no commercial unity; its citizens are 
 of no country and have no impulse of patriotism ; 
 it is an Asiatic city with a European face; it 
 produces nothing, it exchanges everything, the 
 fabrics of Europe, the luxuries of the Orient; the 
 children of the East are sent to its schools, but 
 it has no literary character nor any influence of 
 culture; it is hospitable to all religions, and con- 
 spicuous for none ; it is the paradise of the Turks, 
 the home of luxury and of beautiful women, but it 
 is also a favorite of the mosquito, and, until re- 
 cently, it has been the yearly camp of the plague; 
 it is not the most healthful city in the world, and 
 yet it is the metropolis of the drug-trade. 
 
 Smyrna can be compared to Damascus in its age 
 and in its perpetuity under all discouragements 
 and changes, the shocks of earthquakes, the con- 
 stant visitations of pestilence, and the rule of a 
 hundred masters. It was a great city before the 
 migration of the lonians into Asia Minor, it saw 
 the rise and fall of Sardis, it was restored from a 
 paralysis of four centuries by Alexander. Under 
 all vicissitudes it seems to have retained its char- 
 acter of a great mart of exchange, a necessity for
 
 AN EVER PROSPEROUS CITY 377 
 
 the trade of Asia; and perhaps the indifference of 
 its conglomerate inhabitants to freedom and to 
 creeds contributed to its safety. Certainly it 
 thrived as well under the Christians, when it was 
 the seat of one of the seven churches, as it did un- 
 der the Romans, when it was a seat of a great 
 school of sophists and rhetoricians, and it is equally 
 prosperous under the sway of the successor of Mo- 
 hammed. During the thousand years of the always 
 decaying Byzantine Empire it had its share of mis- 
 fortunes, and its walls alternately, at a later day, 
 displayed the star and crescent, and the equal arms 
 of the cross of St. John. Yet, in all its history, I 
 seem to see the trading, gay, free, but not disor- 
 derly Smyrna passing on its even way of traffic and 
 of pleasure. 
 
 Of its two hundred thousand and more inhab- 
 itants, about ninety thousand are Rayah Greeks, 
 and about eighty thousand are Turks. There is 
 a changing population of perhaps a thousand Eu- 
 ropeans, there are large bodies of Jews and Arme- 
 nians, and it was recently estimated to have as 
 many as fifteen thousand Levantines. These latter 
 are the descendants of the marriage of Europeans 
 with Greek and Jewish women; and whatever 
 moral reputation the Levantines enjoy in the Le- 
 vant, the women of this mixture are famous for 
 their beauty. But the race is said to be not self- 
 sustaining, and is yielding to the original types. 
 The languages spoken in Smyrna are Turkish, a 
 Greek dialect (the Romaic), Spanish, Italian, 
 French, English, and Arabic, probably prevailing
 
 378 SMYRNA AND EPHESUS 
 
 in the order named. Our own steamer was much 
 more Oriental than the city of Smyrna. As soon 
 as we stepped ashore we seemed to have come into 
 a European city ; the people almost all wear the 
 Frank dress, the shops offer little that is peculiar. 
 One who was unfamiliar with bazaars might won- 
 der at the tangle of various lanes, but we saw no- 
 thing calling for comment. A walk through the 
 Jewish quarter, here as everywhere else the dirtiest 
 and most picturesque in the city, will reward the 
 philosophic traveler with the sight of lovely women 
 lolling at every window. It is not the fashion for 
 Smyrniote ladies to promenade the streets, but they 
 mercifully array themselves in full toilet and stand 
 in their doorways. 
 
 The programme of the voyage of the Achille 
 promised us a day and a half in Smyrna, which 
 would give us time to visit Ephesus. We were 
 due Friday noon ; we did not arrive till Saturday 
 noon. This vexatious delay had caused much agi- 
 tation on board ; to be cheated out of Ephesus was 
 an outrage which the tourists could not submit to ; 
 they had come this way on purpose to see Ephesus. 
 They would rather give up anything else in the 
 East. The captain said he had no discretion, he 
 must sail at 4 r. M. The passengers then prepared 
 a handsome petition to the agent, begging him to 
 detain the steamer till eight o'clock, in order to 
 permit them to visit Ephesus by a special train. 
 There is a proclivity in all those who can write to 
 sign any and every thing except a subscription 
 paper, and this petition received fifty-six eager
 
 THE AIDIN RAILWAY 379 
 
 and first-class signatures. The agent at Smyrna 
 plumply refused our request, with unnecessary 
 surliness; but upon the arrival of the captain, and 
 a consultation which no doubt had more reference 
 to freight than to the petition, the official agreed, 
 as a special favor, to detain the steamer till eight 
 o'clock, but not a moment longer. 
 
 We hastened to the station of the Aidin Rail- 
 way, which runs eighty miles to Aidin, the ancient 
 Tralles, a rich Lydian metropolis of immemorial 
 foundation. The modern town has perhaps fifty 
 thousand inhabitants, and is a depot for cotton and 
 figs; that sweetmeat of Paradise, the Jtalva, is 
 manufactured there, and its great tanneries pro- 
 duce fine yellow Morocco leather. The town lies 
 only three miles from the famous tortuous Marau- 
 der, and all the region about it is a garden of vines 
 and fruit-trees. The railway company is under 
 English management, which signifies promptness, 
 and the special train was ready in ten minutes; 
 when lo! of the fifty-six devotees of Ephesus only 
 eleven appeared. We were off at once ; good en- 
 gine, solid track, clean, elegant, comfortable car- 
 riages. As we moved out of the city the air was 
 full of the odor of orange-blossoms ; we crossed the 
 Moles, and sped down a valley, very fertile, smil- 
 ing with grain-fields, green meadows, groves of 
 mulberry, oranges, figs, with blue hills, an an- 
 cient Mount Olympus, beyond which lay green 
 Sardis, in the distance, a country as lovely and 
 home-like as an English or American farm-land. 
 We had seen nothing so luxuriant and thriving in
 
 380 SMYRNA AND EPHESUS 
 
 the East before. The hills, indeed, were stripped 
 of trees, but clad 011 the tops with verdure, the re- 
 sult of plentiful rains. 
 
 We went "express." The usual time of trains 
 is three hours; we ran over the fifty miles in an 
 hour and a quarter. We could hardly believe our 
 senses, that we were in a luxurious carriage, flying 
 along at this rate in Asia, and going to Ephesus ! 
 While we were confessing that the lazy swing of 
 the carriage was more agreeable than that of the 
 donkey or the dromedary, the train pulled up at 
 station Ayasolook, once the residence of the Sul- 
 tans of Ayasolook, and the camp of Tamerlane, 
 now a cluster of coffee-houses and railway-offices, 
 with a few fever-stricken inhabitants, who prey 
 upon travelers, not with Oriental courtesy, but 
 with European insolence. 
 
 On our right was a round hill surmounted by a 
 Roman castle ; from the hills on the left, striding 
 across the railway towards Ephesus, were the tall 
 stone pillars of a Roman aqueduct, the brick arches 
 and conductor nearly all fallen away. On the 
 summit of nearly every pillar a white, red-legged 
 stork had built, from sticks and grass, a high round 
 nest, which covered the top; and the bird stood in 
 it motionless, a beautiful object at that height 
 against the sky. 
 
 The station people had not obeyed our telegram 
 to furnish enough horses, and those of us who wei'e 
 obliged to walk congratulated ourselves on the mis- 
 take, since the way was as rough as the steeds. 
 The path led over a ground full of stone debris.
 
 AYASOLOOK 381 
 
 This was the site of Ayasolook, which had been 
 built out of the ruins of the old city ; most pictur- 
 esque objects were the small mosque-tombs and 
 minarets, which revived here the most graceful 
 forms and fancies of Saracenic art. One, I no- 
 ticed, which had the ideal Persian arch and slen- 
 der columns, Nature herself had taken into loving 
 care and draped with clinging green and hanging 
 jvines. There were towers of brick, to which age 
 has given a rich tone, flaring at the top in a curve 
 that fascinated the eye. On each tomb, tower, 
 and minaret the storks had nested, and upon each 
 stood the mother looking down upon her brood. 
 About the crumbling sides of a tower, thus draped 
 and crowned, innumerable swallows had built their 
 nests, so that it was alive with birds, whose cheer- 
 ful occupation gave a kind of pathos to the human 
 desertion and decay. 
 
 Behind the Roman castle stands the great but 
 ruinous mosque of Sultan Selim, which was for- 
 merly the church of St. John. We did not turn 
 aside for its empty glory, but to the theologian or 
 the student of the formation of Christian dogmas, 
 and of the gladiatorial spectacles of an ancient 
 convocation, there are few arenas in the East more 
 interesting than this ; for in this church it is sup- 
 posed were held the two councils of A. I). 431 and 
 449. St. John, after his release from Patmos, 
 passed the remainder of his life here; the Virgin 
 Mary followed him to the city, so favored by the 
 presence of the first apostles, and here she died 
 and was buried. From her entombment, Ephesus
 
 382 SMYRNA AND EPHESUS 
 
 for a long time enjoyed the reputation of the City 
 of the Virgin, until that honor was transferred to 
 Jerusalem, where, however, her empty tomb soon 
 necessitated her resurrection and assumption, 
 the subject which inspired so many artists after 
 the revival of learning in P^urope. In the hill near 
 this church Mary Magdalene was buried ; in Ephe- 
 sus also reposed the body of St. Timothy, its first 
 bishop. 
 
 This church of St. John was at some distance 
 from the heart of the city, which lay in the plain 
 to the south and near the sea, but in the fifth cen- 
 tury Ephesus was a city of churches. The reader 
 needs to remember that in that century the Chris- 
 tian controversy had passed from the nature of the 
 Trinity to the incarnation, and that the first coun- 
 cil of Ephesus was called by the emperor Theodo- 
 sius in the hope of establishing the opinion of the 
 Syrian Nestorius, the primate of Constantinople, 
 who refused to give to the mother of Christ the 
 title, then come into use, of the Mother of God, 
 and discriminated nicely the two natures of the 
 Saviour. His views were anathematized by Cyril, 
 the patriarch of Alexandria, and the dispute in- 
 volved the entire East in a fierce contest. In the 
 council convened of Greek bishops, Nestorius had 
 no doubt but he would be sustained by the weight 
 of authority ; but the prompt Cyril, whose quali- 
 ties would have found a conspicuous and useful 
 theatre at the head of a Roman army against the 
 Scythians, was first on the ground, with an abun- 
 dance of spiritual and temporal arms. In reading
 
 A CHURCH COUNCIL 383 
 
 of this council, one recalls without effort the once 
 famous and now historical conventions of the Dem- 
 ocratic party of the State of New York, in the 
 days when political salvation, offered in the creeds 
 of the "Hard Shells" and of the "Soft Shells," 
 was enforced by the attendance of gangs of " Short 
 boys" and "Tammany boys," who understood the 
 use of sluiig-shot against heretical opinions. It is 
 true that Nestorius had in reserve behind his pre- 
 lates the stout slaves of the bath of Zeuxippus, but 
 Cyril had secured the alliance of the bishop of 
 Ephesus, and the support of the rabble of peasants 
 and slaves who were easily excited to jealousy for 
 the honor of the Virgin of their city ; and he landed 
 from Egypt, with his great retinue of bishops, a 
 band of merciless monks of the Nile, of fanatics, 
 mariners, and slaves, who took a ready interest 
 in the theological discussions of those days. The 
 council met in this church, surrounded by the fierce 
 if not martial array of Cyril; deliberations were 
 begun before the arrival of the most weighty sup- 
 porters of Nestorius, for Cyril anticipated the 
 slow approach of John of Antioch and his bishops, 
 and in one day the primate of Constantinople 
 was hastily deposed and cursed, together with his 
 heresy. Upon the arrival of John, he also formed 
 a council, which deposed and cursed the opposite 
 party and heresy, and for three months Ephesus 
 was a scene of clamor and bloodshed. The cathe- 
 dral was garrisoned, the churches were shut against 
 the Nestorians; the imperial troops assaulted them 
 and were repelled; the whole city was thrown into
 
 384 SMYRNA AND EPHESUS 
 
 a turmoil by the encounters of the rival factions, 
 each council hurled its anathemas at the other, and 
 peace was only restored by the dissolution of the 
 council by command of the emperor. The second 
 session, in the year 449, was shorter and more de- 
 cisive ; it made quick work of the heresy of Nesto- 
 rius. Africa added to its delegation of bullies and 
 fanatics a band of archers ; the heresy of the two 
 natures was condemned and anathematized, 
 "May those who divide Christ be divided with the 
 sword, may they be hewn in pieces, may they be 
 burned alive," and the scene in the cathedral 
 ended in a mob of monks and soldiers, who tram- 
 pled upon Flavian, the then primate of Constanti- 
 nople, so that in three days thereafter he died of 
 his wounds. 
 
 It is as difficult to make real now upon this spot 
 those fierce theologic wars of Ephesus, as it is the 
 fabled exploits of Bacchus and Hercules and the 
 Amazons in this valley ; to believe that here were 
 born Apollo and Diana, and that hither fled La- 
 tona, and that great Pan lurked in its groves. 
 
 We presently came upon the site of the great 
 Temple of Diana, recently identified by Mr. 
 Wood. We encountered on our way a cluster of 
 stone huts, wretched habitations of the only repre- 
 sentatives of the renowned capital. Before us was 
 a plain broken by small hillocks and mounds, and 
 strewn with cut and fractured stone. The site of 
 the temple can be briefly and accurately described 
 as a rectangular excavation, perhaps one hundred 
 and fifty feet wide by three hundred long and
 
 THE TEMPLE OF DIANA 385 
 
 twelve feet deep, with two feet of water in it, out 
 of which rises a stump of a column of granite and 
 another of marble, and two bases of marble. 
 Round this hole are heaps of fractured stone and 
 marble. In this excavation Mr. Wood found the 
 statue of Diana, which we may hope is the ancient 
 sacred image, guarded by the priests as the most 
 precious treasure of the temple, and imposed upon 
 the credulity of men as heaven-descended. This 
 is all that remains of one of the Seven Wonders 
 of the world, a temple whose fame is second to 
 none in antiquity; a temple seven times burned 
 and eight times built, and always with increased 
 magnificence; a temple whose origin, referable 
 doubtless to the Cyclopean builders of this coast, 
 cannot be less than fifteen hundred years before 
 our era ; a temple which still had its votaries and 
 its rites in the fourth century. We picked up a 
 bit of marble from its ruins, as a help both to 
 memory and imagination, but we went our way 
 utterly unable to conceive that there ever existed 
 any such person as great Diana of the Ephesians. 
 We directed our steps over the bramble-grown 
 plain to the hill Pion. I suppose Pion may have 
 been the acropolis of Ephesus, the spot of the ear- 
 liest settlement, and on it and around it clustered 
 many of the temples and public, buildings. The 
 reader will recall Argos, and Athens, and Corinth, 
 and a dozen other cities of antiquity, for which na- 
 ture furnished in the midst of a plain such a con- 
 venient and easily defended hill-fortress. On our 
 way thither we walked amid mounds that form a
 
 386 SMYRNA AND EPHESUS 
 
 street of tombs ; many of the sarcophagi are still 
 in place, and little injured; but we explore the 
 weed-hid ground with caution, for it is full of pit- 
 falls. 
 
 North of the hill Pion is a low green valley, en- 
 circled with hills, and in the face of one of its 
 ledges, accessible only by a ladder, we were pointed 
 out the cave of the Seven Sleepers. This favorite 
 myth, which our patriotism has transferred to the 
 highlands of the Hudson in a modified shape, took 
 its most popular form in the legend of the Seven 
 Sleepers, and this grotto at Ephesus was for many 
 centuries the object of Christian and Moslem pil- 
 grimage. The Christian legend, that in the time 
 of the persecution of Diocletian seven young men 
 escaped to this cave and slept there two centuries, 
 and awoke to find Christianity the religion of the 
 empire, was adopted and embellished by Moham- 
 med. In his version, the wise dog Ketmehr, or 
 Al Rakiin as the Koran names him, becomes an 
 important character. 
 
 "When the young men," says Abd-el-Atti, "go 
 along the side of the hill to the cave, the dog go to 
 follow them. They take up stones to make him 
 go back, for they 'fraid of him bark, and let the 
 people know where they hide. But the dog not to 
 go back, he sit down on him hind, and him look 
 berry wise. By and by he speak, he say the name 
 of God. 
 
 " ' How did you know that ? ' ask him the young 
 men. 
 
 "'I know it,' the dog say, 'before you born! '
 
 THE SEVEN SLEEPERS 387 
 
 "Then they see the dog he wise by Allah, and 
 know great deal, and let him to go with 'em. This 
 dog, Ketmehr, he is gone, so our Prophet say, to 
 be in Paradise; no other dog be there. So I 
 hope." 
 
 The names of the Seven Sleepers and Ketmehr 
 are in great talismanic repute throughout the East ; 
 they are engraved upon swords and upon gold and 
 precious stones, and in Smyrna you may buy these 
 charms against evil. 
 
 Keeping round the hill Pion, we reached the 
 ruins of the gymnasium, heaps of stone amid brick 
 arches, the remains of an enormous building ; near 
 it is the north gate of the city, a fine marble struc- 
 ture, now almost buried. Still circling Pion we 
 found ourselves in a narrow valley, on the other 
 side of which was the long ridge of Conessus, which 
 runs southward towards the sea. Conessus seems 
 to have been the burial-place of the old town. 
 This narrow valley is stuffed with remains of splen- 
 did buildings, of which nothing is now to be seen 
 but heaps of fine marble, walls, capitals, columns, 
 in prodigal waste. We stopped to admire a bit of 
 carving, or to notice a Greek inscription, and 
 passed on to the Stadium, to the Little Theatre, to 
 the tomb of St. Luke. On one of the lintels of the 
 entrance of this tomb, in white marble, as fresh as 
 if carved yesterday, is a cross, and under it the fig- 
 ure of an Egyptian ox, the emblem of that saint. 
 
 We emerged from this gorge to a wide view of 
 the plain, and a glimpse of an arm of the sea. On 
 this plain are the scattered ruins of the old city,
 
 388 SMYRNA AND EPHESUS 
 
 brick, stone, and marble, absolute desolation. 
 On the left, near the sea, is a conical hill, crowned 
 by one of the* towers of the ancient wall, and dig- 
 nified with the name of the "prison of St. Paul." 
 In this plain is neither life nor cultivation, but 
 vegetation riots over the crumbling remains of 
 Ephesus, and fever waits there its chance human 
 prey. We stood on the side of the hill Pion, amid 
 the fallen columns and heaped walls of its Great 
 Theatre. It was to this theatre that the multitude 
 rushed when excited against Paul by Demetrius, 
 the silversmith, who carried his religion into his 
 business ; and here the companions of Paul endeav-^ 
 ored to be heard and covdd not, for "all with one 
 voice about the space of two hours cried out, Great 
 is Diana of the Ephesians." This amphitheatre 
 for fifty thousand spectators is scooped out of the 
 side of the hill, and its tiers of seats are still indi- 
 cated. What a magnificent view they must have 
 enjoyed of the city and the sea beyond; for the 
 water then came much nearer; and the spectator 
 who may have wearied of the strutting of the busk- 
 ined heroes on the stage, or of the monotonous 
 chant of the chorus, could rest his eye upon the 
 purple slopes of Conessus, upon the colonnades 
 and domes of the opulent city, upon the blue waves 
 that bore the merchants' ships of Rome and Alex- 
 andria and Berytus. 
 
 The theatre is a mine of the most exquisite mar- 
 bles, and we left its treasures with reluctance; we 
 saw other ruins, bases of columns, the remains of 
 the vast city magazines for the storage of corn, and
 
 THE VAGARIES OF HUMAN PROGRESS 389 
 
 solid walls of huge stones once washed by the sea ; 
 we might have wandered for days amid the frag- 
 ments, but to what purpose? 
 
 At Ephesus we encountered no living thing. 
 Man has deserted it, silence reigns over the plain, 
 nature slowly effaces the evidence of his occupa- 
 tion, and the sea even slinks away from it. No 
 great city that I have seen is left to such absolute 
 desolation ; not Paestum in its marsh, not Thebes 
 in its sand, not Ba'albek, not even Memphis, swept 
 clean as it is of monuments, for its site is vocal 
 with labor and bounteous in harvests. Time was, 
 doubtless, when gold pieces piled two deep on this 
 ground could not have purchased it ; and the buy- 
 ers or sellers never imagined that the city lots of 
 Ephesus could become worth so little as they are 
 to-day. 
 
 If one were disposed to muse upon the vagaries 
 of human progress, this would be the spot. No 
 civilization, no religion, has been wanting to it. 
 Its vast Cyclopean foundations were laid by simple 
 pagans; it was in the polytheistic belief of the 
 Greeks that it attained the rank of one of the most 
 polished and wealthy cities of antiquity, famed for 
 its arts, its schools of poetry, of painting and sculp- 
 ture, of logic and magic, attracting to its oppor- 
 tunities the devout, the seekers of pleasure and of 
 wisdom, the poets, the men of the world, the con- 
 querors and the defeated ; here Artemisia sheltered 
 the children of Xerxes after the disaster of Sala- 
 mis ; here Alexander sat for his portrait to Apelles 
 (who was born in the city) when he was returning
 
 390 SMYRNA AND EPHESUS 
 
 from the capture of Sardis; Spartans and Atheni- 
 ans alike, Lysander and Alcibiades, sought Ephe- 
 sus, for it had something for all ; Hannibal here 
 conferred with Antiochus; Cicero was entertained 
 with games by the people when he was on his 
 way to his province of Cilicia; and Antony in the 
 character of inebriate Bacchus, accompanied by 
 Cleopatra, crowned with flowers and attended by 
 bands of effeminate musicians, made here one of 
 the pageants of his folly. In fact, scarcely any 
 famous name of antiquity is wanting to the adorn- 
 ment of this hospitable city. Under the religion 
 of Christ it has had the good fortune to acquire 
 equal celebrity, thanks to the residence of Paul, 
 the tent-maker, and to its conspicuous position at 
 the head of the seven churches of Asia. From 
 Ephesus went forth the news of the gospel, as for- 
 merly had spread the rites of Diana, and Chris- 
 tian churches and schools of philosophy succeeded 
 the temples and gymnasia of the polytheists. And, 
 in turn, the cross was supplanted by the crescent; 
 but it was in the day when Islamism was no longer 
 a vital faith, and except a few beautiful ruins the 
 Moslem occupation has contributed nothing to the 
 glory of Ephesus. And now paganism, Christian- 
 ity, and Moslemism seem alike to have forsaken 
 the weary theatre of so much brilliant history. 
 As we went out to the station, by the row of booths 
 and coffee-shops, a modern Greek, of I' do not 
 know what religion, offered to sell me an image of 
 I do not know what faith. There is great curios- 
 ity at present about the relics and idols of dead
 
 THE MANUFACTURE OF RELICS .391 
 
 religions, and a brisk manufacture of them has 
 sprung up ; it is in the hands of skeptics who in- 
 differently propagate the images of the Virgin 
 Mary or of the chaste huntress Diana. 
 
 The swift Asiatic train took us back to Smyrna 
 in a golden sunset. We had been warned by the 
 agent not to tarry a moment beyond eight o'clock, 
 and we hurried breathless to the boat. Fortunately 
 the steamer had not sailed ; we were in time, and 
 should have been if we had remained on shore till 
 eight the next morning. All night long we were 
 loading freight, with an intolerable rattling of 
 chains, puffing of the donkey-engine, and swearing 
 of boatmen ; after the novelty of swearing in an 
 Oriental tongue has worn off, it is no more enjoy- 
 able than any other kind of profanity.
 
 XXII 
 
 THE ADVENTURERS 
 
 E sailed away from Smyrna Sunday 
 morning, with the Achille more 
 crowded than when we entered that 
 port. The second-class passengers 
 still further encroached upon the first-class. The 
 Emir of Damascus, with all his rugs and beds, 
 had been pushed farther towards the stern, and 
 more harems occupied temporary pens on our deck, 
 and drew away our attention from the natural 
 scenery. 
 
 The venerable, white-bearded Greek bishop of 
 Smyrna was a passenger, also the tall, noble-look- 
 ing pasha of that city, just relieved and ordered to 
 Constantinople, as pashas are continually, at the 
 whim of the Sultan. We had three pashas on 
 board, one recalled from Haifa, who had been 
 only twenty days at his post. The pasha of 
 Smyrna was accompanied by his family, described 
 on the register as his wife and "four others," an 
 indefinite expression to define an indefinite condi- 
 tion. The wife had a room below; the "four oth- 
 ers " were penned up in a cushioned area on the 
 saloon deck, and there they squatted all day, veiled
 
 AT MITYLENE 393 
 
 and robed in white, poor things, without the least 
 occupation for hand or mind. Near them, other 
 harems of Greeks and Turks, women, babies, 
 slaves, all in an Oriental mess, ate curds and green 
 lettuce. 
 
 We coasted along the indented, picturesque shore 
 of Asia, having in view the mountains about an- 
 cient Pergamus, the seat of one of the seven 
 churches; and before noon came to Mitylene, the 
 ancient Lesbos, a large island which bears another 
 Mount Olympus, and cast anchor in the bay upon 
 which the city stands. By the bend of the bay 
 and the opposite coast, the town is charmingly 
 land-locked. The site of Mitylene, like so many 
 of these island cities, is an amphitheatre, and the 
 mountain-slopes, green and blooming with fruit- 
 trees, are dotted with white houses and villages. 
 The scene is Italian rather than Oriental, and gives 
 one the general impression of Castellamare or Sor- 
 rento; but the city is prettier to look at than to 
 explore, as its broad and clean streets, its ordinary 
 houses and European-dressed inhabitants, take us 
 out of our ideal voyaging, and into the regions 
 of the commonplace. The shops were closed, and 
 the country people, who in all countries appear to 
 derive an unexplained pleasure in wandering about 
 the streets of a city hand in hand, were seeking 
 this mild recreation. A youthful Jew, to whom 
 the Sunday was naught, under pretense of showing 
 us something antique, led us into the den of a 
 Greek, to whom it was also naught, and whose 
 treasures were bags of defaced copper coins of the 
 Roman period.
 
 394 THE ADVENTURERS 
 
 Upon the point above the city is a fine mediaeval 
 fortress, now a Turkish fort, where we encoun- 
 tered, in the sentinel at the gate, the only official 
 in the Orient who ever refused backsheesh; I do 
 not know what his idea is. From the walls we 
 looked upon the blue strait, the circling, purple 
 hills of Asia, upon islands, pretty villages, and 
 distant mountains, soft, hazy, serrated, in short, 
 upon a scene of poetry and peace, into which the 
 ancient stone bastion by the harbor, which told of 
 days of peril, and a ruined aqueduct struggling 
 down the hill back of the town, the remnant of 
 more vigorous days, brought no disturbance. 
 
 In Lesbos we are at the source of lyric poetry, 
 the ^Eolian spring of Greece; here Alcaeus was 
 born. Here we come upon the footsteps of Sap- 
 pho. We must go back to a period when this and 
 all the islands of these heavenly seas were bloom- 
 ing masses of vegetation, the hills hung with for- 
 ests, the slopes purple with the vine, the valleys 
 laughing with flowers and fruit, and everywhere 
 the primitive, joyful Greek life. No doubt, man- 
 ners were somewhat rude, and passions, love, and 
 hate, and revenge, were frankly exhibited ; but in 
 all the homely life ran a certain culture, which 
 seems to us beautiful even in the refinement of this 
 shamefaced age. The hardy youth of the islands 
 sailed into far seas, and in exchange for the bounty 
 of their soil brought back foreign fabrics of lux- 
 ury. We know that Lesbos was no stranger to 
 the Athenian influence, its scholars had heard 
 Plato and Aristotle, and the warriors of Athens
 
 THE HOME OF SAPPHO 395 
 
 respected it both as a foe and as an ally. Chara- 
 kos, a brother of Sappho, went to Egypt with a 
 ship full of wine, and returned with the beautiful 
 slave Doricha, as part at least of the reward of his 
 venture. 
 
 After the return of Sappho and her husband 
 from their flight into Sicily, the poet lived for 
 many years at Mitylene ; but she is supposed to 
 have been born in Eresso, on the southwestern 
 point of the island, where the ruins of the acropolis 
 and remains of a sea-wall still mark the site of the 
 famous town. At any rate, she lived there, with 
 her husband Kerkylas, a landed proprietor and a 
 person of consequence, like a dame of noble birth 
 and gentle breeding as she was ; and in her verse 
 we have a glimpse of her walking upon the sandy 
 shore, with her little daughter, the beautiful child 
 whom she would not give up for the kingdom of 
 Lydia, nor for heavenly Lesbos itself. That Sap- 
 pho was beautiful as her image on the ancient coins 
 represents her, and that she was consumed by pas- 
 sion for a handsome youth, the world likes to be- 
 lieve. But Maximus of Tyre says that she was 
 small and dark, graces are not so plenty, even 
 in heaven, that genius and beauty can be lavished 
 upon one person. We are prone to insist that the 
 poet who revels in imagination and sounds the 
 depth of passion is revealing his own heart, and 
 that the tale that seems so real must be a per- 
 sonal experience. The little glimpse we have of 
 Sappho's life does not warrant us to find in it the 
 passionate tempest of her burning lyrics, nor is it
 
 396 THE ADVENTURERS 
 
 consistent with her social position that she should 
 expose upon the market-place her passion for the 
 handsome Phaon, like a troubadour of the Middle 
 Ages or a Zingara of Bohemia. If that consuming 
 fire was only quenched in the sea at the foot of 
 "Leucadia's far -projecting rock of woe," at least 
 our emotion may be tempered by the soothing 
 knowledge that the leap must have been taken 
 when the enamored singer had passed her sixtieth 
 year. 
 
 We did not see them at Mitylene, but travelers 
 into the interior speak of the beautiful women, the 
 descendants of kings' daughters, the rewards of 
 Grecian heroes ; near old Eresso the women pre- 
 serve the type of that indestructible beauty, and 
 in the large brown eyes, voluptuous busts, and elas- 
 tic gait one may deem that he sees the originals of 
 the antique statues. 
 
 Another famous woman flits for a moment be- 
 fore us at Lesbos. It is the celebrated Empress 
 Irene, whose cruelty was hardly needed to preserve 
 a name that her -talent could have perpetuated. 
 An Athenian virgin and an orphan, at seventeen 
 she became the wife of Leo IV. (A. D. 780), and at 
 length the ruler of the Eastern Empire. Left the 
 guardian of the empire and her son Constantino 
 VI., she managed both, until the lad in his matu- 
 rity sent his mother into retirement. The restless 
 woman conspired against him; he fled, was cap- 
 tured and brought to the palace and lodged in the 
 porphyry chamber where he first had seen the 
 light, and where he last saw it ; for his eyes were
 
 A STUDY OF NATIONALITIES 397 
 
 put out by the order of Irene. His very existence 
 was forgotten in the depths of the palace, and for 
 several years the ambitious mother reigned with 
 brilliancy and the respect of distant potentates, 
 until a conspiracy of eunuchs overturned her power, 
 and she was banished to Lesbos. Here history, 
 which delights in these strokes of poetic justice, 
 represents the empress earning her bread by the 
 use of her distaff. 
 
 As we came from Mitylene into the open sea, 
 the view was surpassingly lovely, islands green and 
 poetic, a coast ever retreating and advancing, as if 
 in coquetry with the blue waves, purple robing the 
 hills, a voyage for poets and lotus-eaters. We 
 were coming at night to Tenedos, to which the 
 crafty Greeks withdrew their fleet when they pre- 
 tended to abandon the siege, and to old Troy, op- 
 posite ; we should be able to feel their presence in 
 the darkness. 
 
 Our steamer, as we have intimated, was a study 
 of nationalities and languages, as well as of man- 
 ners. We were English, American, Greek, Ital- 
 ian, Turkish, Arab, Russian, French, Armenian, 
 Egyptian, Jew, Georgian, Abyssinian, Nubian, 
 German, K norland, Persian, Kurd; one might talk 
 with a person just from Mecca or Medina, from 
 Bagdad, from Calcutta, from every Greek or Turk- 
 ish island, and from most of the capitals of Europe. 
 A couple of Capuchins, tonsured, in brown serge 
 ' with hanging crosses, walked up and down amid 
 the throng of Christians, Moslems, and pagans, 
 withdrawn from the world while in it, like beings
 
 398 THE ADVENTURERS 
 
 of a new sex. There was a couple opposite us at 
 table whom we could not make out, either re- 
 cently married or recently eloped, the man appar- 
 ently a Turkish officer, and his companion a tall, 
 showy woman, you might say a Frenchman's idea 
 of physical beauty, a little like a wax Madonna, 
 but with nothing holy about her ; said by some to 
 be a Circassian, by others to be a French grisette 
 on an Eastern tour; but she spoke Italian, and 
 might be one of the Continental countesses. 
 
 The square occupied by the emir and his suite 
 a sort of bazaar of rugs and narghilehs had 
 music all day long; a soloist, on three notes, sing- 
 ing, in the Arab drawl, an unending improvised 
 ballad, and accompanying himself on the mandolin. 
 When we go to look at and listen to him, the mu- 
 sician betrays neither self -consciousness nor pride, 
 unless you detect the latter in a superior smile that 
 plays about his lips, as he throws back his head 
 and lets his voice break into a falsetto. It proba- 
 bly does not even occur to his Oriental conceit that 
 he does well, that his race have taken for granted 
 a thousand years, and he could not be instructed 
 by the orchestra of Von Bulow, nor be astonished 
 by the Lohengrin of Wagner. 
 
 Among the adventurers on board we all had 
 more or less the appearance of experiments in that 
 odd assembly I particularly liked the French 
 prestidigitateur Caseneau, for his bold eye, utter 
 self-possession, and that indefinable varnish upon 
 him, which belonged as much to his dress as to 
 his manner, and suggested the gentleman without
 
 CASENEAU 399 
 
 concealing the adventurer. He had a taste for 
 antiquities, and wore some antique gems, which 
 had I know not what mysterious about them, as if 
 he had inherited them from an Ephesian magician 
 or a Saracenic doctor of the black art. At the 
 table after dinner, surrounded by French and Ital- 
 ians, the conjurer exhibited some tricks at cards. 
 I dare say they were not extraordinary, yet they 
 pleased me just as well as the manifestations of 
 the spiritists. One of them I noted. The trick- 
 ster was blindfolded. A gentleman counted out a 
 pack of cards, and while doing so mentally fixed 
 upon one of them by number. Caseneau took the 
 pack, still blinded, and threw out the card the 
 gentleman had thought of. The experiment was 
 repeated by skeptics, who suspected a confederate, 
 but the result was always the same. 
 
 The Circassian beauty turned out to be a Jewess 
 from Smyrna. I believe the Jewesses of that luxu- 
 rious city imitate all the kinds of beauty in the 
 world. 
 
 In the evening the Italians were grouped around 
 the tables in the saloon, upon which cards were cast 
 about, matched, sorted, and redistributed, and 
 there were little piles of silver at the corners, the 
 occasional chinking of which appeared to add to 
 the interest of the amusement. On deck the Kng- 
 lish and Americans were singing the hymns of the 
 Protestant fait]i ; and in the lull of the strains of 
 "O mother dear, Jerusalem," you might hear the 
 twang of strings and the whine of some Arab 
 improvisatore on the forward deck, and the chink
 
 400 THE ADVENTURERS 
 
 of changing silver below. We were making our 
 way through a superb night, a thousand people 
 packed so closely that you could not move without 
 stepping into a harem or a mass of Greek pilgrims, 
 singing hymns, gambling, listening to a recital 
 of the deeds of Antar, over silver waves, under a 
 flooding moon, and along the dim shores of Asia. 
 That mysterious continent lay in the obscurity of 
 the past ; here and there solitary lights, from some 
 shepherd's hut in the hills or fortress casemate by 
 the shore, were the rents in the veil through which 
 we saw antiquity.
 
 XXIII 
 
 THROUGH THE DARDANELLES 
 
 HE Achille, which has a nose for 
 freight, but none for poetry, did not 
 stop at Tenedos, puffed steadily past 
 the plain of Troy, turned into the 
 broad opening of the Dardanelles, and by daylight 
 was anchored midway between the Two Castles. 
 On such a night, if ever, one might see the evolu- 
 tion of shadowy armies upon the windy plain, if, 
 indeed, this conspicuous site was anything more 
 than the theatre of Homer's creations, the spec- 
 tators on the walls of Ilium, the Greeks hastily 
 embarking on their ships for Tenedos, the joyful 
 procession that drew the fatal gift into the impreg- 
 nable walls. 
 
 There is a strong current southward through the 
 Dardanelles, which swung the vessel round as we 
 came to anchor. The forts which, with their heavy 
 modern guns, completely command this strait, are 
 something less than a mile and a half apart, and 
 near each is a large and handsome town, Khilid- 
 bahri on the European shore and Chanak-Kalesi 
 on the Asiatic. The latter name signifies the pot- 
 tery-castle, and is derived from the chief inaimfac-
 
 402 THROUGH THE DARDANELLES 
 
 tory of the place ; the town of a couple of thou- 
 sand houses, gayly painted and decorated in lively 
 colors, lies upon a sandy flat and presents a very 
 cheerful appearance. It is a great Asiatic entre- 
 pot for European products, and consular flags at- 
 test its commercial importance. 
 
 When I came upon deck its enterprising traders 
 had already boarded the steamer, and encumbered 
 it with their pottery, which found a ready market 
 with the pilgrims, for it is both cheap and ugly. 
 Perhaps we should rather say fantastic than ugly. 
 You see specimens of it all over the East, and in 
 the bazaars of Cairo, Jerusalem, and Damascus it 
 may be offered you as something rare. Whatever 
 the vessel is, a pitcher, cup, vase, jar, or cream- 
 pot, its form is either that of some impossible 
 animal, some griffin, or dragon, or dog of the un- 
 der world, or its spout is the neck and head of some 
 fantastic monster. The ware is painted in the 
 most startling reds, greens, yellows, and blacks, 
 and sometimes gilt, and then glazed. It is alto- 
 gether hideous, and fascinating enough to drive 
 the majolica out of favor. 
 
 Above these two towns the strait expands into 
 a sort of bay, formed on the north by a promon- 
 tory jutting out from the Asiatic shore, and upon 
 this promontory it is now agreed stood old Aby- 
 dos ; it is occupied by a fort which grimly regards 
 a corresponding one on the opposite shore, not a 
 mile distant. Here Leander swam to Hero, Byron 
 to aquatic fame, and here Xerxes laid his bridge. 
 All this is plain to be seen ; this is the narrowest
 
 A BEAUTIFUL STREAM 403 
 
 part of the passage ; exactly opposite this sloping 
 site of Abydos is a depression between two high 
 cliffs, the only point where the Persian could have 
 rested the European extremity of his bridge; and 
 it surely requires no stretch of the imagination 
 to see Hero standing upon this projecting point 
 holding the torch for her lover. 
 
 The shore is very pretty each side, not bold, but 
 quiet river scenery ; yet there is a contrast ; on the 
 Asiatic horizon are mountains, rising behind each 
 other, while the narrow peninsula, the Thracian 
 Chersonesus of the ancients, which forms the west- 
 ern bank of the Dardanelles, offers only a range of 
 moderate hills. What a beautiful stream, indeed, 
 is this, and how fond history has been of enacting 
 its spectacles upon it ! How the civilizations of 
 the East and the West, in a continual flow and 
 reflow, push each other across it ! With a sort of 
 periodic regularity it is the scene of a great move- 
 ment, and from age to age the destinies of the race 
 have seemed to hang upon its possession ; and from 
 time to time the attention of the world is concen- 
 trated upon this water-street between two conti- 
 nents. Under whatever name, the Oriental civili- 
 zation has been a misfortune, and the Western a 
 blessing to the border-land; and how narrowly has 
 Europe, more than once, from Xerxes to Chosroes, 
 from Omar to the Osmanlis, seemed to escape the 
 torrent of Eastern slavery ! Once the culture of 
 Greece passed these limits, and annexed all Asia 
 Minor and the territory as far as the Euphrates 
 to the empire of intelligence. Who shall say that
 
 404 THROUGH THE DARDANELLES 
 
 the day is not at hand when the ancient movement 
 of free thought, if not of Grecian art and arms, is 
 about to be renewed, and Europe is not again- to 
 impose its laws and manners upon Little Asia? 
 The conquest, which one sees going on under his 
 eyes, is not indeed with the pomp of armies, but 
 by the more powerful and enduring might of com- 
 merce, intercourse, and the weight of a world's 
 opinion diffused by travel and literature. The 
 Osmanli sits supinely and watches the change; 
 the Greeks, the rajahs of all religions, establish 
 schools, and the new generation is getting ready 
 for the revolution; the Turk does not care for 
 schools. That it may be his fate to abandon Eu- 
 ropean Turkey and even Constantinople, he ad- 
 mits. But it is plain that if he goes thus far he 
 must go farther; and that he must surrender a 
 good part of the Roman Eastern Empire. For 
 any one can see that the Hellespont could not be 
 occupied by two powers, and that it is no more 
 possible to divide the control of the Bosphorus 
 than it is that of the Hudson or the Thames. 
 
 The morning was cold, and the temperature as 
 well as the sky admonished us that we were pass- 
 ing out of the warm latitude. Twenty-five miles 
 from the Chang and Eng forts we passed near biit 
 did not call at Gallipoli, an ancient city with few 
 antiquities, but of great strategic importance. 
 Whoever holds it has the key to Constantinople 
 and the Black Sea ; it was seized by the Moslems 
 in the thirteenth century, before they imposed the 
 religion of the Koran upon the city of Constaii-
 
 THE SEA OF MARMORA 405 
 
 tine, and it was early occupied by the English and 
 French, in 1854, in the war that secured that city 
 to the successor of the Prophet. 
 
 Entering upon the Sea of Marmora, the "vexed 
 Propontis," we had fortunately smooth water but 
 a cold north wind. The Propontis has enjoyed a 
 nauseous reputation with all mariners, ancient and 
 modern. I don't know that its form has anything 
 to do with it, but if the reader will take the trou- 
 ble to consult a map, he will see how nearly this 
 bag of water, with its two ducts, the Bosphorus 
 and the Hellespont, resembles a human stomach. 
 There is nothing to be seen in the voyage from 
 (iallipoli to Constantinople, except the island of 
 Marmora, famous for the quarries which furnish 
 marbles for the palaces of the Bosphorus and for 
 Eyoub and Scutarij the two great cities of the 
 dead. We passed near enough to distinguish 
 clearly its tine perpendicular cliffs. 
 
 It was dark before we saw the lights of Stam- 
 boul rise out of the water; it is impossible, at 
 night, to enter the Golden Horn through the mazes 
 of shipping, and we cast anchor outside. The 
 mile or two of gas-lights along the promontory of 
 the old city and the gleams upon the coast of an- 
 cient Chalcedon were impressive and exciting to 
 the imagination, but, owing to the lateness of our 
 arrival, we lost all the emotions which have struck 
 other travelers anything but dumb upon coming in 
 sight of the capital of the Moslem Empire.
 
 XXIV 
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 HE capital which we know as Con- 
 stantinople, lying in two continents, 
 presents itself as three cities. The 
 long, horn -shaped promontory, between 
 the Sea of Marmora and the Golden Horn, is the 
 site of ancient Byzantium, which Constantine 
 baptized with his own name, and which the Turks 
 call Stamboul. The ancient city was on the east- 
 ern extremity, now known as Seraglio Point; its 
 important position was always recognized, and it 
 was sharply contended for by the Spartans, the 
 Athenians, the Macedonians, and the Persians. 
 Like the city of Romulus, it occupies seven hills, 
 and its noble heights are conspicuous from afar by 
 sea or land. In the fourth century it was sur- 
 rounded by a wall, which followed the water on 
 three sides, and ran across the base of the promon- 
 tory, over four miles from the Seven Towers on the 
 Propontis to the Cemetery of Eyoub on the Golden 
 Horn. The land-wall, which so many times saved 
 the effeminate city from the barbarians of the north 
 and the Saracens of Arabia, stands yet with its 
 battered towers and score of crumbling gates.
 
 THE THREE CITIES 407 
 
 The second city, on a blunt promontory between 
 the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, overlooks 
 the ancient Byzantium, and is composed of three 
 districts, Galata and Tophanna, on the water 
 and climbing up the hill ; and Pera, which crowns 
 the summit. Galata was a commercial settlement 
 of the thirteenth century; Pera is altogether 
 modern. 
 
 The third city is Scutari, exactly opposite the 
 mouth of the Golden Horn, and a little north of 
 ancient Chalcedon, which was for over a thousand 
 years the camp of successive besieging armies, 
 Georgians, Persians, Saracens, and Turks. 
 
 The city of the Crescent, like a veiled beauty 
 of the harem, did not at once disclose to us its 
 charms. It was at six o'clock in the morning on 
 the eleventh day of blooming May, that we landed 
 on the dirty quay of Tophanna. The morning was 
 cloudy, cold, misty, getting its weather from the 
 Black Sea, and during the day rain fell in a very 
 Occidental dreariness. Through the mist loomed 
 the heights of Seraglio Point ; and a hundred min- 
 aret peaks and domes appeared to float in the air 
 above the veiled city. Along the floating lower 
 bridge, across the Golden Horn, poured an unceas- 
 ing procession of spectres; caVques were shooting 
 about in every direction, steamers for the Bospho- 
 rus, for Scutari, for the Islands, were momently 
 arriving and departing from their stations below 
 the bridge, and the huge bulk of the Turkish iron- 
 clads could be discerned at their anchorage before 
 the palace of Beshiktash. The scene was animated.
 
 408 CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 but there was not visible as much shipping as 1 
 had expected to see in this great port. 
 
 The customs' official on the quay was of a very 
 inquisitive turn of mind, but we could excuse him 
 on the ground of his age and ignorance, for he was 
 evidently endeavoring to repair the neglected op- 
 portunities of his youth. Our large luggage had 
 gone to the custom-house in charge of Abd-el-Atti, 
 who has a genius for free-trade, and only our small 
 parcels and hand-bags were at the mercy of the in- 
 spector 011 the quay. But he insisted upon open- 
 ing every bag and investigating every article of 
 the toilet and garment of the night ; he even ripped 
 open a feather pillow which one of the ladies car- 
 ried with her, and neither the rain on the open 
 dock nor our respectable appearance saved our 
 effects from his most searching attentions. The 
 discoveries of General di Cesnola and the interest 
 that Europeans take in antiquities have recently 
 convinced the Turks that these relics must have 
 some value, and an order had been issued to seize 
 and confiscate all curiosities of this sort. 1 trem- 
 bled, therefore, when the inspector got his hands 
 upon a baby's nursing-bottle, which I had brought 
 from Cyprus, where it had been used by some 
 Pho3iiician baby probably three thousand years 
 ago. The fellow turned it round and regarded it 
 with serious ignorance and doubt. 
 
 "What is that? " he asked Achmed. 
 
 "Oh, that's nothing but a piece of pottery, 
 something for a shild without his mother, 1 *Hnk, 
 it is nothing, not worth two paras."
 
 PORTERS IN PERA 409 
 
 The confiscator of antiquities evidently had not 
 the slightest knowledge of his business; he hesi- 
 tated, but Achmed's perfect indifference of man- 
 ner determined him, and he slowly put the precious 
 relic back into the box. The inspector parted 
 from us with regret, but we left him to the enjoy- 
 ment of a virtue unassailed by the least bribe, an 
 unusual, and, I imagine, an unwelcome possession 
 in this region. 
 
 Donkeys were not to be had, nor carriages, and 
 we climbed on foot the very steep hill to the hotel 
 in Pera; ascending roughly paved, crooked streets, 
 lined with rickety houses, and occasionally mount- 
 ing stairs for a mile through a quarter that has the 
 shabbiness but not the picturesqueness of the Ori- 
 ent. A squad of porters seized our luggage and 
 bore it before us. The porters are the beasts of 
 burden, and most of them wear heavy saddles, 
 upon which boxes and trunks can be strapped. 
 No drays were visible. Heavy burdens, hogs- 
 heads, barrels, and cases of goods were borne be- 
 tween two long stout poles carried by four athletic 
 men ; as they move along the street, staggering 
 under the heavy load, everybody is obliged, preci- 
 pitately, to make way for them, for their impetus 
 is such that they cannot check their career. We 
 see these gigantic fellows at every street-corner, 
 with their long poles, waiting for a job. Sedan- 
 chairs, which were formerly in much request, are 
 gradually disappearing, though there is nothing 
 at present to exactly take the place of these lum- 
 bering conveyances. Carriages increase every
 
 410 CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 year, but they are expensive, and they can only as- 
 cend the height of Pera by a long circuit. The 
 place of the sedan and the carriage is, however, 
 to some extent supplied by a railway in Galata, 
 the cars of which are drawn up by a stationary 
 engine. And on each side of the Golden Horn is 
 a horse-railway, running wherever the ground is 
 practicable. 
 
 To one coming from the West I suppose that 
 Constantinople would present a very mixed and 
 bizarre appearance, and that he would be im- 
 pressed by the silence of the busiest streets, in 
 which the noise of wheels and the hum of a West- 
 ern capital is wanting. But to one coming from 
 the East, Galata and Pera seem a rather vulgar- 
 ized European town. The Frank dress predomi- 
 nates, although it is relieved by the red fez, which 
 the Turks generally and many Europeans wear. 
 Variety enough there is in costumes, but the Gre- 
 cian, the Bulgarian, the Albanian, etc., have taken 
 the place of the purely Oriental; and the traveler 
 in the Turkish capital to-day beholds not only the 
 conflux of Asia and Europe, but the transition, 
 in buildings, in apparel, in manners, to modern 
 fashions. Few veiled women are seen, and they 
 wear a white strip of gauze which conceals noth- 
 ing. The street hawkers, the sellers of sweets, 
 of sponges, and of cakes, are not more peculiar in 
 their cries than those of London and Paris. 
 
 When we had climbed the hill, we came into 
 the long main street of Pera, the street of the chief 
 shops, the hotels and foreign embassies, a quarter
 
 THE FLOATING BRIDGE 411 
 
 of the city which has been burned over as often as 
 San Francisco, and is now built up substantially 
 with stone and brick, and contains very little to 
 interest the seeker of novelty. After we had se- 
 cured rooms, and breakfasted, at the hotel By- 
 zance, we descended the hill again to the water, 
 and crossed the long, floating bridge to Stamboul. 
 This bridge is a very good symbol of the Sultan's 
 Empire ; its wooden upper works are decayed, its 
 whole structure is rickety, the floats that support 
 it are unevenly sunken, so that the bridge is a 
 succession of swells and hollows; it is crowded by 
 opposing streams of the most incongruous people, 
 foot and horse jumbled together; it is encumbered 
 by venders of eatables and auctioneers of cheap 
 wares, and one has to pay toll to cross it. But it 
 is a microcosm of the world. In an hour one may 
 see pass there every nationality, adventurers from 
 every clime, traders, priests, sailors, soldiers, for- 
 tune-hunters of Europe, rude peasants of the pro- 
 vinces, sleek merchants of the Orient, darwishes, 
 furtive-eyed Jews; here is a Circassian beauty 
 seeking a lover through the carriage window; here 
 a Turkish grandee on a prancing, richly capari- 
 soned horse; here moves a squad of black soldiers, 
 and now the bridge shakes under the weight of a 
 train of Hying artillery. 
 
 The water is alive with the ticklish caiques. 
 The caique is a long narrow boat, on the model of 
 the Indian birch-bark canoe, and as thin and light 
 on the water; the passenger, if he accomplishes 
 the feat of getting into one without overturning it,
 
 412 CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 * 
 
 sits upon the bottom, careful not to wink and up- 
 set it ; the oars have a heavy swell near the handle, 
 to counterbalance the weight of the long blade, 
 and the craft skims the water with swiftness and a 
 most agreeable motion. The caiques are as nu- 
 merous on the water as the yellow, mangy dogs 
 on shore, and the two are the most characteristic 
 things in Constantinople. 
 
 We spent a good part of the day in wandering 
 about the bazaars of Stamboul, and we need not 
 repeat what has been heretofore said of these pecu- 
 liar shops. During our stay in the city we very 
 thoroughly explored them, and visited most of the 
 great khans, where are to be found the silks of 
 Broussa, of Beyrout and Damascus, the rugs of 
 Persia, the carpets of Asia Minor, the arms and 
 the cunning work in gold, silver, and jewels gath- 
 ered from every region between Ispahan and Dar- 
 four. We found the bazaars extensive, well filled, 
 and dear, at least the asking price was enormous, 
 and we wanted the time and patience which are 
 needed for the slow siege of reducing the mer- 
 chants to decent terms. The bazaars are solidly 
 roofed arcades, at once more cleanly and less pic- 
 turesque than those of Cairo, and not so Oriental 
 or attractive. Book-stalls, which are infrequent 
 in Cairo, abound here; and the long arcades lined 
 with cases of glittering gems, enormous pearls, 
 sparkling diamonds, emeralds fit for the Pope's 
 finger, and every gold and silver temptation, ex- 
 ceed anything else in the East in magnificence. 
 And yet they have a certain modern air, and you
 
 AN OLD MOSQUE 413 
 
 do not expect to find in them those quaint and 
 fascinating antique patterns of goldsmiths' work, 
 the inherited skill of the smiths of the Pharaohs, 
 which draw you into the dingy recesses of the 
 Copt artificers in the city of the Nile. 
 
 From the Valideh Khan we ascended to the pub- 
 lic square, where stands the Seraskier's Fire-tower; 
 a paved, open place, surrounded by government 
 buildings of considerable architectural pretensions, 
 and dedicated, I should say, to drumming, to the 
 shifting about of squads of soldiers, and the can- 
 tering hither and thither of Turkish beys. Near it 
 is the old mosque of Sultan Beyezid II., which, 
 with its magnificent arabesque gates, makes a fine 
 external impression. The outer court is surrounded 
 by a cloister with columns of verd-antique and por- 
 phyry, inclosing a fountain and three stately, ven- 
 erable trees. The trees and the arcades are alive 
 with doves, and, as we entered, more than a thou- 
 sand flew towards us in a cloud, with a great rus- 
 tling and cooing. They are protected as an almost 
 sacred appendage of the mosque, and are said to 
 be bred from a single pair which the Sultan bought 
 of a poor woman and presented to the house he 
 had built, three centuries and a half ago. This 
 mosque has also another claim to the gratitude of 
 animals; for all the dogs of Stamboul, none of 
 whom have any home but the street, nor any other 
 owner than the Prophet, resort here every Friday, 
 as regularly, if not as piously, as the Sultan goes 
 to pray, and receive their weekly bread. 
 
 Near this mosque are lines of booths and open-
 
 414 CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 air shops, which had a fascination for me as long 
 as I remained in the city. They extend from the 
 trees in the place of the mosque down through 
 lanes to the bazaars. The keepers of them were 
 typical Orientals, honest Jews, honest Moslems, 
 withered and one-eyed waiters on Providence and a 
 good bargain, suave, gracious, patient, gowned and 
 turbaned, sitting cross-legged behind their trays 
 and show-cases. These are the dealers in stones, 
 both precious and common, in old and new orna- 
 ments, and the thousand cheap adornments in glass 
 and metal which the humbler classes love. Here 
 are heaps of blood-stones, of carnelians, of agates, 
 of jasper, of onyx, dishes of turquoise, strings of 
 doubtful pearls, barbarous rings and brooches, 
 charms and amulets, a feast of color for the eye, 
 and a sight to kindle the imagination. For these 
 baubles came out of the recesses of the Orient, 
 were gathered by wild tribes in remote deserts, 
 and transported by caravan to this common mart. 
 These dealers buy of the Persian merchants, and 
 of adventurous Jew travelers who range all the 
 deserts from Teheran to Upper Nubia in search 
 of these shining stones. Some of the turquoises 
 are rudely set in silver rings, but most of them 
 are merely glued to the end of little sticks ; these 
 generally are the refuse of the trade, for the finer 
 stones go to the .great jewelers in the bazaar, or 
 to the Western markets. A large and perfect tur- 
 quoise of good color is very rare, and commands a 
 large price ; but the cunning workmen of Persia 
 have a method of at once concealing the defects of
 
 A MYSTERIOUS TRADER 415 
 
 a good-sized turquoise which has the true color, 
 and at the same time enhancing its value, by en- 
 graving upon it some sentence from the Koran, or 
 some word which is a charm against the evil eye ; 
 the skill of the engraver is shown in fitting his let- 
 ters and flourishes to the flaws in the surface of 
 the stone. To further hide any appearance of im- 
 perfection, the engraved lines are often gilded. 
 With a venerable Moslem, who sat day after day 
 under a sycamore -tree, I had great content, and 
 we both enjoyed the pleasure of endless bargain- 
 ing without cheating each other, for except in some 
 trifles we never came to an exact agreement. He 
 was always promising me the most wonderful things 
 for the next day, which he would procure from a 
 mysterious Jew friend who carried on a clandestine 
 commerce with some Bedawee in Arabia. When 
 I was seated, he would pull from his bosom a 
 knotted silk handkerchief, and, carefully untying 
 it, produce a talisman, presenting it between his 
 thumb and finger, with a lift of the eyebrows and 
 a cluck of the tongue that expressed the rapture I 
 woidd feel at the sight of it. To be sure, I found 
 it a turquoise set in rude silver, faded to a sickly 
 green, and not worth sixpence; but I handed it 
 back with a sigh that such a jewel was beyond my 
 means, and intimated that something less costly, 
 and of a blue color, would suit me as well. We 
 were neither of us deceived, while we maintained 
 the courtesies of commercial intercourse. Some- 
 times lie would produce from his bosom an emerald 
 of real value or an opal of lovely lines, and occa-
 
 416 CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 sionally a stone in some peculiar setting which ] 
 had admired the day before in the jewelry bazaar; 
 for these trinkets, upon which the eye of the trav- 
 eler has been seen longingly to rest, are shifted 
 about among this mysterious fraternity to meet 
 him again. I suppose it was known all over Stam- 
 boul that a Frank had been .looking for a Persian 
 amulet. As long as I sat with my friend, I never 
 saw him actually sell anything, but he seemed to 
 be the centre of mysterious transactions; furtive 
 traders continually came to him to borrow or return 
 a jewel, or to exchange a handful of trumpery. 
 Delusive old man! I had no confidence in you, 
 but I would go far to pass another day in your 
 tranquil society. How much more agreeable you 
 were than the young Nubian at an opposite stand, 
 who repelled purchasers by his supreme indiffer- 
 ence, and met all my feeble advances with the toss 
 of the head and the cluck in the left cheek, which 
 is the peremptory "no" in Nubia. 
 
 In this quarter are workers in shell and ivory, 
 the makers of spoons of tortoise-shell with han- 
 dles of ivory and coral, the fabricators of combs, 
 dealers in books, and a long street of little shops 
 devoted to the engraving of seals. To wander 
 about among these craftsmen is one of the chief 
 pleasures of the traveler. Vast as Stamboul is, 
 if you remove from it the mosques and nests of 
 bazaars, it would not be worth a visit.
 
 XXV 
 
 THE SERAGLIO AND ST. SOPHIA, HIPPO- 
 DROME, ETC. 
 
 AVING procured a firman, we de- 
 voted a day to the old Seraglio and 
 some of the principal mosques of 
 Stamboul. After an occupation of fif- 
 teen centuries as a royal residence, the Seraglio 
 has been disused for nearly forty years, and fire, 
 neglect, and decay have done their work on it, so 
 that it is but a melancholy reminiscence of its 
 former splendor. It occupies the ancient site of 
 Byzantium, upon the Point, and is inclosed by a 
 crumbling wall three miles in circuit. No royal 
 seat in the world has a more lovely situation. 
 Upon the summit of the promontory, half con- 
 cealed in cypresses, is the cluster of buildings, of 
 all ages and degrees of cheapness, in which are the 
 imperial apartments and offices ; on the slopes to- 
 wards the sea are gardens, terraces, kiosks, and 
 fountains. 
 
 We climbed up the hill on the side towards 
 Pera, through a shabby field, that had almost the 
 appearance of a city dumping-ground, and through 
 a neglected grove of cypresses, where some deer
 
 418 THE SERAGLIO 
 
 were feeding, and came round to the main en- 
 trance, a big, ugly pavilion with eight openings 
 over the arched porte, the gate which is known 
 the world over a,s the Sublime Porte. Through 
 this we passed into a large court, and thence to the 
 small one into which the Sultan only is permitted 
 to ride on horseback. In the centre of this is a 
 fountain where formerly pashas foreordained to 
 lose their heads lost them. On the right, a low 
 range of buildings covered with domes but no 
 chimneys, are the royal kitchens; there are nine 
 of them, one for the Sultan, one for the chief 
 sultanas, and so on down to the one devoted to the 
 cooking of the food for the servants. Hundreds 
 of beasts, hecatombs, were slaughtered daily and 
 cooked here to feed the vast household. From 
 this court open the doors into the halls and divans 
 and various apartments; one of them, leading into 
 the interior, is called the Gate of Felicity; in the 
 old times that could only be called a gate of feli- 
 city which let a person out of this spider's parlor. 
 In none of these rooms is there anything specially 
 attractive; cheap magnificence in decay is only 
 melancholy. 
 
 We were better pleased in the gardens, where 
 we looked upon. Galata and Pera, upon the Golden 
 Horn and the long bridges streaming with their 
 picturesque processions, upon the Bosphorus and 
 its palaces, and thousands of sails, steamers, and 
 caVques, and the .shining heights of Scutari. 
 Overhanging the slope is the kiosk or summer 
 palace of Sultan Moorad, a Saracenic octagonal
 
 THE TREASURE-ROOM 419 
 
 structure, the interior' walls lined with Persian 
 tiles, the ceilings painted in red arabesques and 
 gilded in mosaics, the gates of bronze inlaid with 
 mother-of-pearl; a most charming building, said 
 to be in imitation of a kiosk of Bagdad. In it we 
 saw the Sultan's private library, a hundred or two 
 volumes in a glass case, that had no appearance 
 of having been read by either the Sultan or his 
 wife. 
 
 The apartment in the Seraglio which is the ob- 
 ject of curiosity and desire is the treasure-room. 
 I suppose it is the richest in the world in gems; it 
 is certainly a most wearisome place, and gave me 
 a contempt for earthly treasure. In the centre 
 stands a Persian throne, a chair upon a board 
 platform, and both incrusted with rubies, pearls, 
 emeralds, diamonds; there are toilet-tables cov- 
 ered to the feet with diamonds, pipe-stems glisten- 
 ing with huge diamonds, old armor thickly set with 
 precious stones, saddle-cloths and stirrups stiff 
 with diamonds and emeralds, robes embroidered 
 with pearls. Nothing is so cheap as wealth lav- 
 ished in this manner ; at first we were dazzled by 
 the flashing display, but after a time these heaps 
 of gems seemed as common in our eyes as pebbles 
 in the street. I did not even covet an emerald as 
 large as my fist, nor a sword-hilt in which were 
 fifteen diamonds, each as large as the end of my 
 thumb, nor a carpet sown with pearls, some of 
 which were of the size of pigeon's eg<>'s, nor 
 
 1 O C5 ~ 
 
 aigrettes which were blazing with internal fires, 
 nor chairs of state, clocks and vases, the whole
 
 420 THE SERAGLIO 
 
 surfaces of which were on fire with jewels. I have 
 seen an old oaken table, carved in the fifteenth 
 century, which gave me more pleasure than one of 
 lapis lazuli, which is exhibited as the most costly 
 article in this collection ; though it is inlaid with 
 precious stones, and the pillars that support the 
 mirror are set with diamonds, and the legs and 
 claws are a mass of diamonds, rubies, carbuncles, 
 emeralds, topazes, etc. , and huge diamond pendants 
 ornament it, and the deep fringe in front is alto- 
 gether of diamonds. This is but a barbarous, os- 
 tentatious, and tasteless use of the beautiful, and I 
 suppose gives one an idea of the inartistic magni- 
 ficence of the Oriental courts in centuries gone by. 
 This treasure-house has, I presume, nothing 
 that belonged to the Byzantine emperors before 
 the Moslem conquest, some of whom exceeded in 
 their magnificence any of the Osmanli sultans. 
 Arcadius, the first Eastern emperor after the di- 
 vision of the Roman world, rivaled, in the ap- 
 pointments of his palace (which stood upon this 
 spot) and in his dress, the magnificence of the 
 Persian monarchs; and perhaps the luxurious 
 califs of Bagdad at a later day did not equal his 
 splendor. His robes were of purple, a color re- 
 served exclusively for his sacred person, and of 
 silk, embroidered with gold dragons; his diadem 
 was of gold set with gems of inestimable worth ; 
 his throne was massy gold, and when he went 
 abroad he rode in a chariot of solid, pure gold, 
 drawn by two milk-white mules shining in harness 
 and trappings of gold.
 
 A CHURCH MILITANT 421 
 
 No spot on earth has been the scene of such 
 luxury, cruelty, treachery, murder, infidelity of 
 women, and rapacity of men, as this site of the old 
 palace ; and the long record of the Christian em- 
 perors the occasionally interrupted anarchy and 
 usurpation of a thousand years loses nothing in 
 these respects in comparison with the Turkish oc- 
 cupation, although the world shudders at the un- 
 revealed secrets of the Seraglio. At least we may 
 suppose that nobody's conscience was violated if a 
 pretty woman was occasionally dropped into the 
 Bosphorus, and there was the authority of custom 
 for the strangling of all the children of the sisters 
 of the Sultan, so that the succession might not be 
 embarrassed. In this court is the c</e, a room 
 accessible only by a window, where the royal chil- 
 dren were shut up to keep them from conspiracy 
 against the throne ; and there Sultan Abdul Aziz 
 spent some years of his life. 
 
 We went from the treasure-room to the ancient 
 and large Church of St. Irene, which is now the 
 arsenal of the Seraglio, and become, one might 
 say, a church militant. The nave and aisles are 
 stacked with arms, the walls, the. holy apse, the 
 pillars, are cased in guns, swords, pistols, and ar- 
 mor, arranged in fanciful patterns, and with an in- 
 genuity. I have seen nowhere else. Here are pre- 
 served battle-flags and famous trophies, an armlet 
 of Tamerlane, a sword of Scanderbeg, and other 
 pieces of cold, pliant steel that have a reputation 
 for many murders. There is no way so sure to 
 universal celebrity as wholesale murder. Adjoin-
 
 422 ST. SOPHIA 
 
 ing the arsenal is a museum of Greek and Roman 
 antiquities of the city, all in Turkish disorder ; the 
 Cyprus Collections, sent by General di Cesnola, 
 are flung upon shelves or lie in heaps unarranged, 
 and most of the cases containing them had not 
 been opened. Near this is an interesting museum 
 of Turkish costumes for the past five hundred years, 
 rows on rows of ghastly wax figures clad in the 
 garments of the dead. All of them are ugly, many 
 of them are comical in their exaggeration. The 
 costumes of the Janizaries attract most attention, 
 perhaps from the dislike with which we regard 
 those cruel mercenaries, who deposed and decapi- 
 tated sultans at their will, and partly because many 
 of the dresses seem more fit for harlequins or 
 eunuchs of the harem than for soldiers. 
 
 When the Church of Santa Sophia, the House 
 of Divine Wisdom, was finished, and Justinian 
 entered it, accompanied only by the patriarch, and 
 ran from the porticos to the pulpit with out- 
 stretched arms, crying, "Solomon, I have sur- 
 passed thee !" it was doubtless the most magnifi- 
 cently decorated temple that had ever stood upon 
 the earth. The exterior was as far removed in 
 simple grandeur as it was in time from the still 
 matchless Doric temples of Athens and of Pajstum, 
 or from the ornate and lordly piles of Ba'albek ; 
 but the interior surpassed in splendor almost the . 
 conception of man. The pagan temples of anti- 
 quity had been despoiled, the quarries of the known 
 world had been ransacked for marbles of various 
 hues and textures to enrich it; and the gold, the
 
 A MAGNIFICENT BUILDING 423 
 
 silver, the precious stones, employed in its decora- 
 tion, surpassed in measure the barbaric ostentation 
 of the Temple at Jerusalem. Among its forest of 
 columns, one recognized the starred syenite from 
 the First Cataract of the Nile; the white marble 
 of Phrygia, striped with rose; the green of La- 
 conia, and the blue of Libya; the black Celtic, 
 white - veined, and the white Bosphorus, black- 
 veined; polished shafts which had supported the 
 roof of the Temple of the Deliaii Apollo, others 
 which had beheld the worship of Diana at Ephesus 
 and of Pallas Athene on the Acropolis, and, yet 
 more ancient, those that had served in the mys- 
 terious edifices of Osiris and Isis ; while, more con- 
 spicuous and beautiful than all, were the eight col- 
 umns of porphyry, which, transported by Aurelian 
 from the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis to Rome, 
 the pious Marina had received as her dowry and 
 dedicated to the most magnificent building ever 
 reared to the worship of the True God, and fitly 
 dominating the shores of Europe and Asia. 
 
 One reads of doors of cedar, amber, and ivory; 
 of hundreds of sacred vessels of pure gold, of ex- 
 quisitely wrought golden candelabra, and crosses 
 of an hundred pounds' weight each; of a score of 
 books of the Evangelists, the gold covers of which 
 weighed twenty pounds ; of golden lilies and golden 
 trumpets ; of forty-two thousand chalice-cloths em- 
 broidered with pearls and jewels ; and of the great 
 altar, for which gold was too cheap a material, a 
 mass of the most precious and costly stones im- 
 bedded in gold and silver. We may recall also
 
 424 ST. SOPHIA 
 
 the arches and the clear spaces of the walls inlaid 
 with marbles and covered with brilliant mosaics. 
 It was Justinian's wish to pave the floor with plates 
 of gold, but, restrained by the fear of the avarice 
 of his successors, he laid it in variegated marbles, 
 which run in waving lines, imitating the flowing 
 of rivers from the four corners to the vestibules. 
 But the wonder of the edifice was the dome, one 
 hundred and seven feet in span, hanging in the 
 air one hundred and eighty feet above the pave- 
 ment. The aerial lightness of its position is in- 
 creased by the two half domes of equal span and 
 the nine cupolas which surround it. 
 
 More than one volume has been exclusively de- 
 voted to a description of the Mosque of St. Sophia, 
 and less than a volume would not suffice. But the 
 traveler will not see the ancient glories. If he ex- 
 pects anything approaching the exterior richness 
 and grandeur of the cathedrals of Europe, or the 
 colossal proportions of St. Peter's at Rome, or the 
 inexhaustible wealth of the interior of St. Mark's 
 at Venice, he will be disappointed. The area of 
 St. Peter's exceeds that of the grand Piazza of St. 
 Mark, while St. Sophia is only two hundred and 
 thirty -five feet broad by three hundred and fifty 
 feet long; and while the Church of St. Mark has 
 been accumulating spoils of plunder and of piety 
 for centuries, the Church of the Divine Wisdom 
 has been ransacked by repeated pillages and reduced 
 to the puritan plainness of the Moslem worship. 
 
 Exceedingly impressive, however, is the first 
 view of the interior; we stood silent with wonder
 
 MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA
 
 AN IMPRESSIVE INTERIOR 425 
 
 and delight in the presence of the noble columns, 
 the bold soaring- arches, the dome in the sky. The 
 temple is flooded with light, perhaps it is too 
 bright ; the old mosaics and paintings must have 
 softened it ; and we found very offensive the Ara- 
 bic inscriptions on the four great arches, written 
 in characters ten yards long. They are the names 
 of companions of the Prophet, but they look like 
 sign-boards. Another disagreeable impression is 
 produced by the position of the J7 ihrab, or prayer- 
 niche ; as this must be in the direction of Mecca, 
 it is placed at one side of the apse, and everything 
 in the mosque is forced to conform to it. Thus 
 everything is askew ; the pulpits are set at hateful 
 angles, and the stripes of the rugs on the floor all 
 run diagonally across. When one attempts to 
 walk from the entrance, pulled one way by the 
 architectural plan, and the other by the religious 
 diversion of it, he has a sensation of being in- 
 toxicated. 
 
 Gone from this temple are the sacred relics 
 which edified the believers of former ages, such as 
 the trumpets that blew down Jericho and planks 
 from the Ark of Noah, but the Moslems have 
 prodigies to replace them. The most curious of 
 these is the sweating marble column, which emits 
 a dampness that cures diseases. 1 inserted nr\ 
 hand in a cavity which has been dug in it, and 
 certainly experienced a clammy sensation. It is 
 said to sweat most early in the morning. I had 
 the curiosity to ascend the gallery to see the seat 
 of the courtesan and Empress Theodora, daughter
 
 426 ST. SOPHIA 
 
 of the keeper of the bears of the circus, a public 
 and venal pantomimist, who, after satisfying the 
 immoral curiosity of her contemporaries in many 
 cities, illustrated the throne of the Caesars by her 
 talents, her intrigues, and her devotion. The fond- 
 ness of Justinian has preserved her initials in the 
 capitals of the columns, the imperial eagle marks 
 the screen that hid her seat, and the curious trav- 
 eler may see her name carved on the balustrade 
 where she sat. 
 
 To the ancient building* the Moslems have added 
 the minarets at the four corners and the enormous 
 crescent on the dome, the gilding of which cost 
 fifty thousand ducats, and the shining of which, a 
 golden moon in the day, is visible at the distance 
 of a hundred miles. The crescent, adopted by the 
 Osmanli upon the conquest of Jerusalem, was the 
 emblem of Byzantium before the Christian era. 
 There is no spot in Constantinople more flooded 
 with historical associations, or more interesting to 
 the student of the history of the Eastern Empire, 
 than the site of St. Sophia. Here arose the church 
 of the same name erected by Constantino ; it was 
 twice burned, once by the party of St. John Chry- 
 sostom, and once in a tumult of the factions of the 
 Hippodrome. 1 should like to have seen some of 
 the pageants that took place here. After repos- 
 ing in their graves for three centuries, the bodies 
 of St. Andrew, St. Luke, and St. Timothy were 
 transported hither. Fifty years after it was hon- 
 ored by a still more illustrious presence ; the ashes 
 of the prophet Samuel, deposited in a golden vase
 
 HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS 427 
 
 covered with a silken veil, left their resting-place 
 in Palestine for the banks of the Bosphorus. The 
 highways from the hills of Judaea to the gates of 
 Constantinople were filled by an uninterrupted 
 procession, who testified their enthusiasm and joy, 
 and the Emperor Arcadius himself, attended by 
 the most illustrious of the clergy and the Senate, 
 advanced to receive his illustrious guest, and con- 
 ducted the holy remains to this magnificent but 
 insecure place of repose. It was here that Greg- 
 ory Nazianzen was by force installed upon the 
 Episcopal throne by Theodosius. The city was 
 fanatically Arian. Theodosius proclaimed the 
 Nicene creed, and ordered the primate to deliver 
 the cathedral and all the churches to the orthodox, 
 who were few in number, but strong in the pres- 
 ence of Gregory. This extraordinary man had 
 set up an orthodox pulpit in a private house ; he 
 had been mobbed by a motley crowd which issued 
 from the Cathedral of St. Sophia, "common beg- 
 gars who had forfeited their claim to pity, monks 
 who had the appearance of goats or satyrs, and 
 women more horrible than so many Jezebels; " he 
 had his triumph when Theodosius led him by the 
 hand through the streets filled with a multitude 
 crowding pavement, roofs, and windows, and vent- 
 ing their rage, grief, astonishment, and despair 
 into the church, which was held by soldiers, though 
 the prelate confessed that the city had the appear- 
 rance of a town stormed by barbarians. It was 
 here that Eutropius, the eunuch, when his career 
 of rapacity exceeded even the toleration of Area-
 
 428 ST. SOPHIA 
 
 dins, sought sanctuary, and was protected by John 
 Chryso^tom, archbishop, who owed his ecclesiasti- 
 cal dignity to the late sexless favorite. And it 
 was up this very nave that Mohammed II., the 
 conqueror, spurred his horse through a crowd of 
 fugitives, dismounted at the foot of the altar, cried, 
 "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is 
 his prophet ! " and let loose his soldiery upon the 
 priests, virgins, and promiscuous multitude who 
 had sought shelter here. , 
 
 I should only weary you with unintelligible de- 
 tails in attempting a description of other mosques 
 which we visited. They are all somewhat alike, 
 though varying in degrees of splendor. There is 
 that of Sultan Ahmed, on the site of the Hippo- 
 drome, distinguished as the only one in the empire 
 that has six minarets, the state mosque of the 
 Sultan, whence the Mecca pilgrimages proceed and 
 where the great festivals are held. From a dis- 
 tance it is one of the most conspicuous and poeti- 
 cally beautiful objects in the city. And there is 
 the Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent, a copy 
 of St. Sophia and excelling it in harmonious gran- 
 deur, indeed, it is called the finest mosque in 
 the empire. Its forecourt measures a thousand 
 paces, and the inclosure contains, besides the 
 mosque and the tomb of the founder, many foun- 
 dations of charity and of learning, three schools 
 for the young, besides one for the reading of the 
 Koran and one of medicine, four academies for 
 the four Moslem sects, a hospital, a kitchen for the 
 poor, a library, a fountain, a resting-place for trav
 
 IMPERIAL TOMBS 429 
 
 elers, and a house of refuge for strangers. From 
 it one enjoys a magnificent view of the Golden 
 Horn, the Bosphorus, and the piled-up city oppo- 
 site. When we entered the mosque hundreds of 
 worshipers were at prayer, bowing their turbans 
 towards Mecca in silent unison. The throng soon 
 broke up into groups of from ten to forty, which 
 seated themselves in circles on the floor for the 
 reading of the Koran. The shoes were heaped in 
 the centre of each circle, the chief reader squatted 
 at a low desk on one side, and all read together in 
 a loud voice, creating an extraordinary vocal tu- 
 mult. It was like a Sunday-school in fancy dress. 
 Stamboul is a very interesting place to those 
 who have a taste for gorgeous sepulchres, and I do 
 not know any such pleasant residences of the dead 
 as the tnrbehs, or tombs of the imperial family. 
 Usually attached to the mosques, but sometimes 
 standing apart, they are elegant edifices, such as 
 might be suitable for the living; in their airy, 
 light, and stately chambers the occupants are de- 
 prived of no splendor to which they were accus- 
 tomed in life. One of the most beautiful of these 
 turbehs, that of Sultan Mahmood II., I mistook 
 for a fountain ; it is a domed, circular building of 
 white marble, with Corinthian pilasters, and 
 lighted by seven large windows with gilded grating. 
 Within, in a cheerful, carpeted apartment, are 
 the biers of the sultan, his valideh sultana, and 
 five daughters, covered with cloths of velvet, richly 
 embroidered, upon which are thrown the most su- 
 perb India shawls; the principal sarcophagi are
 
 430 THE HIPPODROME 
 
 surrounded by railings of mother-of-pearl; mas- 
 sive silver candlesticks and Koran-stands, upon 
 which are beautiful manuscripts of the Koran, are 
 disposed about the room, and at the head of the 
 Sultan's bier is a fez with a plume and aigrette of 
 diamonds. In the court of Santa Sophia you may 
 see the beautiful mausoleum of Selim II., who re- 
 poses beside the Lady of Light ; and not far from 
 it the turbeh containing the remains of Mohammed 
 III., surrounded by the.biers of seventeen brothers 
 whom he murdered. It is pleasant to see brothers 
 united and in peace at last. I found something 
 pathetic in other like apartments where families 
 were gathered together, sultans and sultanas in 
 the midst of little span -long biers of sons and 
 daughters, incipient sultans and sultanas, who 
 were never permitted by state policy, if I may be 
 allowed the expression, to hatch. Strangled in 
 their golden cradles, perhaps, these innocents ! 
 Worthless little bodies, mocked by the splendor of 
 their interments. One could not but feel a little 
 respect for what might have been a "Sublime 
 Porte " or a Light of the Seraglio. 
 
 Tbe Imperial Palace, the Church of Santa So- 
 phia, the Hippodrome, these are the triangle of 
 Byzantine history, the trinity of tyranny, religion, 
 and faction. The Circus of Constantinople, like 
 that on the banks of the Tiber, was the arena for 
 the exhibition of games, races, spectacles, and tri- 
 umphs ; like that, it was the arena of a licentious 
 democracy, but the most disorderly mob of Koine 
 never attained the power or equaled the vices of
 
 MURDEROUS FACTIONS 431 
 
 the murderous and incendiary factions of Byzan- 
 tium. The harmless colors that at first only dis- 
 tinguished the ignoble drivers in the chariot races 
 became the badges of parties, which claimed the 
 protection and enjoyed the favor of emperors and 
 prelates; and the blue and the green factions not 
 only more than once involved the city in confla- 
 gration and blood, but carried discord and frenzy 
 into all the provinces. Although they respected 
 no human or divine law, they affected religious 
 zeal for one or another Christian sect or dogma ; 
 the "blues " long espoused the orthodox cause, and 
 enjoyed the partiality of Justinian. The dissolute 
 youth of Constantinople, wearing the livery of the 
 factions, possessed the city at night, and abandoned 
 themselves to any deed of violence that fancy or 
 revenge suggested; neither the sanctity of the 
 church, nor the peace of the private house, nor 
 the innocence of youth, nor the chastity of matron 
 or maid, was safe from these assassins and ravish- 
 ers. It was in one of their seditious outbreaks 
 that the palace and Santa Sophia were delivered 
 to the flames. 
 
 The oblong ground of the Hippodrome is still 
 an open place, although a portion of the ground is 
 covered by the Mosque of Ahmed. But the trav- 
 eler will find there few relics of this historical 
 arena; nothing of the marble seats and galleries 
 that surrounded it. The curious may look at the 
 Egyptian obelisk of syenite, at the crumbling pyr- 
 amid which was the turning goal of the chariots ; 
 and he may find more food for reflection in the
 
 432 THE HIPPODROME 
 
 bronze spiral column, formed by the twinings of 
 three serpents whose heads have been knocked 
 off. It deserves to be housed and cared for. 
 There is no doubt of its venerable antiquity; it 
 was seen by Thucydides and Herodotus in the 
 Temple of Delphi, where its three branching heads 
 formed a tripod upon which rested the dish of 
 gold which the Greeks captured among the spoils 
 of the battle of Plataea. The column is not more 
 than fifteen feet high ; it has stood here since the 
 time of Constantine. 
 
 This is the most famous square of Constanti- 
 nople, yet in its present unromantic aspect it is 
 difficult to reanimate its interest. It is said that 
 its statues of marble and bronze once excelled the 
 living population of the city. In its arena em- 
 perors, whose vices have alone saved their names 
 to a conspicuous contempt, sought the popular ap- 
 plause by driving in the chariot races, or stripped 
 themselves for the sports with wild beasts, proud 
 to remind the spectators of the exploits of Calig- 
 ula and Heliogabalus. Here, in the reign of An- 
 astasius, the "green" faction, entering the place 
 with concealed daggers, interrupted a solemn fes- 
 tival and assassinated three thousand of the 
 "blues." This place was in the first quarter of 
 this century the exercise and parade ground of the 
 Janizaries, until they were destroyed. Let us do 
 justice to the Turks. In two memorable instances 
 they exhibited a nerve which the Roman emperors 
 lacked, who never had either the firmness or the 
 courage to extirpate the Praetorian Guards. The
 
 ANCIENT COLUMNS 433 
 
 Janizaries set up, deposed, murdered sultans, as 
 the Guards did Emperors ; and the Mamelukes of 
 Egypt imitated their predecessors at Rome. Mah- 
 mood II. in Constantinople, and Mohammed Ali 
 in Cairo, had the courage to extinguish these ene- 
 mies of Turkish sovereignty. 
 
 In this neighborhood are several ancient monu- 
 ments; the Burnt Column, a blackened shaft of 
 porphyry ; the column called Historical ; and that of 
 Theodosius, I shall not fatigue you with further 
 mention of them. Not far from the Hippodrome 
 we descended into the reservoir called A Thousand 
 and One Columns ; I suppose this number is made 
 up by counting one as three, for each column con- 
 sists of three superimposed shafts. It is only par- 
 tially excavated. We found a number of Jews 
 occupying these subterranean colonnades, engaged 
 in twisting silk, the even temperature of the cellar 
 being favorable to this work. 
 
 As if we had come out of a day in another age, 
 we walked down through the streets of the artifi- 
 cers of brass and ivory and leather, to the floating 
 bridge, and crossed in. a golden sunset, in which 
 the minarets and domes of the mosque of Mo- 
 hammed H. appeared like some aerial creation in 
 the yellow sky.
 
 XXVI 
 
 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 URING the day steamers leave the 
 Galata bridge every half hour for the 
 villages and palaces along the Bos. 
 phorus ; there is a large fleet of them, 
 probably thirty, but they are always crowded, like 
 the ferry-boats that ply the waters of New York 
 Bay. 
 
 ,We took our first sail on the Bosphorus one 
 afternoon toward sunset, ascending as far as 
 Bebek, where we had been invited to spend the 
 night by Dr. Washburne, the President of Rob- 
 erts College. I shall not soon forget the anima- 
 tion of the harbor, crowded with shipping, amid 
 which the steamers and ca'iques were darting about 
 like shuttles, the first impression made by the pal- 
 aces and ravishingly lovely shores of this winding 
 artery between two seas. Seven promontories 
 from Asia and seven promontories from Europe 
 project into the stream, creating as many corre- 
 sponding bays; but the villages are more numer- 
 ous than bays and promontories together, for there 
 are over forty in the fourteen miles from the Sea 
 of Marmora to the Black Sea; on the shores is an
 
 ROBERTS COLLEGE 435 
 
 almost unbroken line of buildings, many of them 
 palaces of marble; the heights are crowned with 
 cottages and luxurious villas, and abodes of taste 
 and wealth peep out along the slopes. If you say 
 that we seem to be sailing in the street of a city, 
 I can only answer that it is not so ; nature is still 
 supreme here, and the visible doweress of the 
 scene. These lovely hills rising on both sides, 
 these gracious curves are hers, as are these groves 
 and gardens of fruits and flowers, these vines and 
 the abundant green that sometimes conceals and 
 always softens the work of man. 
 
 Before we reached the Sultan's palace at Beshik- 
 tash, our steamer made a detour to the east bank, 
 outside of the grim iron-dads that lie before the 
 imperial residence. No steamers are permitted to 
 approach nearer, lest the smoke should soil the 
 sparkling white marble of the palace, or their 
 clamor and dangerous freight of men should dis- 
 turb the serenity of the harem. The palace, which 
 is a beautiful building, stretches for some distance 
 along the water, with its gardens and conserva- 
 tories, and seems to be a very comfortable home 
 for a man who has no more ready money than the 
 Sultan. 
 
 We landed at Bebek and climbed the steep hill, 
 on whose slope nightingales were singing in the 
 forest, just in time to see the sunset. Roberts 
 College occupies the most commanding situation 
 on the strait, and I do not know any view that 
 surpasses in varied beauty that to be enjoyed from 
 it. I shall make myself comprehended by many
 
 436 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 when I say that it strongly reminded me of the 
 Hudson at West Point; if nature could be sus- 
 pected of copying herself, I should say that she 
 had the one in mind when she made the other. 
 At that point the Hudson resembles the Bosphorus, 
 but it wants the palaces, the Vale of the Heavenly 
 Water into which we looked from this height, and 
 some charming medieval towers, walls, and castles. 
 
 The towers and walls belong to the fortress built 
 in 1451 by Mohammed II., and are now fallen 
 into that decrepitude in which I like best to see 
 all fortresses. But this was interesting before it 
 was a ruin. It stands just above the college, at 
 Koomeli Hissar, where the Bosphorus is narrow- 
 est, not more than half a mile broad, and 
 with the opposite fortress of Anatolia could per- 
 fectly close the stream. Two years before the cap- 
 ture of the city, Mohammed built this fort, and 
 gave it the most peculiar form of any fortress exist- 
 ing. His idea was that the towers and the circuit 
 of the walls should spell the name of the Prophet, 
 and consequently his own. As we looked down 
 upon it, my friend read for me this singular piece 
 of caligraphy, but I could understand it no fur- 
 ther than the tower which stands for the Arabic 
 ring in the first letter. It was at this place that 
 Darius threw a bridge across the Bosphorus, and 
 there is a tradition of a stone seat which he occu- 
 pied here while his Asiatics passed into Europe. 
 
 So far as I know, there is no other stream in 
 the world upon which the wealth of palaces and 
 the beauty of gardens may be so advantageously
 
 A NEW ERA 437 
 
 displayed. So far as I know, there is no other 
 place where nature and art have so combined to 
 produce an enchanting prospect. As the situation 
 and appearance of Constantinople are unequaled, 
 so the Bosphorus is unique. 
 
 Whatever may be the political changes of the 
 Turkish Empire, I do not believe that this pleas- 
 ing picture will be destroyed ; rather let us expect 
 to see it more lovely in the rapidly developing taste 
 of a new era of letters and refinement. It was a 
 wise forethought that planted the American Col- 
 lege just here. It is just where it should be to 
 mould the new order of things. I saw among its 
 two hundred pupils scholars of all creeds and races, 
 who will carry from here living ideas to every part 
 of the empire, and I learned to respect that thirst 
 for knowledge and ability to acquire it which exist 
 in the neighboring European provinces. If im- 
 patient men could wait the process of education, 
 the growth of schools, and the development of 
 capacity now already most promising, the Eastern 
 question might be solved by the appearance on the 
 st'ene, in less than a score of years, of a stalwart 
 and intelligent people, who would be able not only 
 to grasp Constantinople, but to administer upon 
 the decaying Turkish Empire as the Osmanli ad- 
 ministered upon the Greek. 
 
 On Friday the great business of everybody is to 
 see the Sultan go to pray ; and the eagerness with 
 which foreigners crowd to the spectacle must con- 
 vince the Turks that we enjoy few religious priv- 
 ileges at home. It is not known beforehand, even
 
 438 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 to the inmates of the palace, to what mosque the 
 Sultan will go, nor whether he will make a street 
 progress on horseback, or embark upon the water, 
 for the chosen place of prayer. Before twelve 
 o'clock we took carriage and drove down the hill, 
 past the parade-ground and the artillery barracks 
 to the rear of the palace of Beshiktash; crowds on 
 foot and in carriages were streaming in that direc- 
 tion ; regiments of troops were drifting down the 
 slopes and emptying into the avenue that leads be- 
 tween the palace and the plantation of gardens ; 
 colors were unfurled, drums beaten, trumpets called 
 from barrack and guard-house; gorgeous officers 
 on caparisoned horses, with equally gaudy attend- 
 ants, cantered to the rendezvous ; and all the air 
 was full of the expectation of a great event. At 
 the great square of the palace we waited amid an 
 intense throng; four or five lines of carriages 
 stretched for a mile along ; troops were in march- 
 ing rank along the avenue and disposed in hollow 
 square on the place ; the palace gates were closed, 
 and everybody looked anxiously toward the high 
 and gilded portal from which it was said the an- 
 nouncement of the Sultan's intention would be 
 made. From time to time our curiosity was fed 
 by the arrival of a splendid pasha, who dismounted 
 and walked about ; and at intervals a gilded per- 
 sonage emerged from the palace court and raised 
 our expectation on tiptoe. We send our dragoman 
 to interrogate the most awful dignities, especially 
 some superb beings in yellow silk and gold, but 
 they know nothing of the Sultan's mind. At the
 
 THE SULTAN GOING TO PRAY 439 
 
 last moment he might, on horseback, issue from 
 the gate with a brilliant throng, or he might de- 
 part in his caique by the water front. In either 
 case there would be a rush and a scramble to see 
 and to accompany him. More regiments were ar- 
 riving, bands were playing, superb officers gallop- 
 ing up and down ; carriages, gilded with the arms 
 of foreign embassies, or filled with Turkish ladies, 
 pressed forward to the great gate, which still gave 
 no sign. I have never seen such a religious excite- 
 ment. For myself, I found some compensation in 
 the usual Oriental crowd and unconscious pictur- 
 esqueness; swart Africans in garments of yellow, 
 sellers of sherbet clinking their glasses, venders of 
 faint sweetmeats walking about with trays and 
 tripods, and the shifting kaleidoscope of races, 
 colors, and graceful attitudes. 
 
 Suddenly, I do not know how, or from what 
 quarter, the feeling for I could not call it in- 
 formation was diffused that the successor of the 
 Prophet would pray at the mosque in Ortakeui, 
 and that he would go by caique; and we all scam- 
 pered up the road, a mile or two, racing carriages, 
 troops and footmen, in eager outset, in order to 
 arrive before the pious man. The mosque stands 
 upon the Bosphorus, where its broad marble steps 
 and pillared front and dome occurjy as conspicuous 
 a position as the Dogana at Venice. We secured 
 a standing-place on the dock close to the landing, 
 but outside the iron railing, and waited. A cordon 
 of troops in blue regimentals with red facings was 
 drawn around the streets in the rear of the mosque,
 
 440 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 and two companies of soldiers in white had stacked 
 their guns on the marble landing, and were loun- 
 ging about in front of the building. 
 
 The scene on the Bosphorus was as gay as a 
 flower-garden. The water was covered with grace- 
 ful caiques and painted barges and every sort of 
 craft, mean and splendid, that could be propelled 
 by oars or sails. A dozen men-of-war were decked 
 with flags from keel to maintop; on every yard, 
 and from bowsprit to stern, stood a line of sailors 
 sharply defined against the blue sky. At one 
 o'clock a cannon announced that the superior dev- 
 otee had entered his caique, and then from every 
 vessel of war in the harbor salute answered salute 
 in thunder that awoke the echoes of two continents ; 
 until on all the broad water lay a thick battle- 
 smoke, through which we could distinguish only 
 the tops of the masts, and the dim hulks spouting 
 fire. 
 
 In the midst of this earthquake of piety, there 
 was a cry, "He comes, he comes!" The soldiers 
 grasped their arms and drew a line each side of 
 the landing, and the officials of the mosque ar- 
 ranged themselves on the steps. Upon the water, 
 advancing with the speed of race-horses, we saw 
 two splendid gilded caiques, the one containing the 
 Sultan, the other his attendants. At the moment, 
 a light carriage with two bay horses, unattended, 
 dashed up to the side door, and there descended 
 from it and entered the mosque the imperial heir, 
 the son of the late Sultan and the nephew of the 
 present, a slender, pale youth of apparently twen-
 
 THE SULTAN GOING TO PRAY
 
 A SPLENDID CAIQUE 441 
 
 ty-five or thirty years. We turn (not knowing 
 how soon he is to become Sultan Murad V.) our 
 eyes to him only for a moment, for the b'ultan's 
 caique conies with imperious haste, with the rush 
 as it were of victory, an hundred feet long, nar- 
 row, rising at the stern like the Venetian Bucen- 
 taur, carved and gilded like the golden chariot in 
 which Alexander entered Babylon, propelled by 
 fifty -two long sweeps, rising and falling in unison 
 with the bending backs of twenty-six black rowers, 
 clad in white and with naked feet. The Sultan is 
 throned in the high stern, hung with silk, on silken 
 cushions, under a splendid canopy on the top of 
 which glisten his arms and a blazing sun. The 
 Sultan, who is clad in the uniform of a general, 
 steps quickly out, walks up the steps over a car- 
 pet spread for his royal feet, the soldiers salut- 
 ing, everybody with arms crossed bending the 
 body, and disappears in the mosque. The sec- 
 ond caique lands immediately, and the imperial 
 ministers step from it and follow their master. 
 
 At the side entrance an immense closed bag- 
 gage-wagon, drawn by four horses and said to con- 
 tain the sacred wardrobe, was then unlocked and 
 unloaded, and out of it came trunks, % boxes, car- 
 pet-bags, as if the imperial visitor had come to 
 stay a week. After a half hour of prayer he came 
 out, his uniform concealed under his overcoat, got 
 quickly into a plain carriage, drawn by four mag- 
 nificent gray horses, and drove rapidly away, at- 
 tended by a dozen outriders. His heir followed 
 in the carriage in which he came. We had a good
 
 442 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 view of the chief of Islam. He was a tall, stout 
 man, with a full gray beard, and on the whole a 
 good face and figure. All this parade is weekly 
 enacted over one man going to pray. It is, after 
 all, more simple than the pageantry that often 
 attends the public devotion of the vicegerent of 
 Christ in St. Peter's. 
 
 Upon our return we stopped at the tekkeb, in 
 Pera, to see the performance of the Turning Dar- 
 wishes. I do not know that I have anything to 
 add to the many animated descriptions which have 
 been written of it. It is not far from the Little 
 Field of the Dead, and all about the building are' 
 tombs of the faithful, in which were crowds of 
 people enjoying that peculiar Oriental pleasure, 
 graveyard festivity. The mosque is pleasant, and 
 has a polished dancing-floor, surrounded by a gal- 
 lery supported on columns. I thought it would be 
 a good place for a "hop." Everybody has seen 
 a picture of the darwishes, with closed eyes, out- 
 stretched arms, and long gowns inflated at the bot- 
 tom like an old-fashioned churn, turning smoothly 
 round upon their toes, a dozen or twenty of them 
 revolving without collision. The motion is cer- 
 tainly poetic and pleasing, and the plaintive fluting 
 of the Arab nay adds I know not what of pathos 
 to the exercise. I think this dance might advanta- 
 geously be substituted in Western salons for the 
 German, for it is graceful and perfectly moral. 
 
 Constantinople is a city of the dead as much as 
 of the living, and one encounters everywhere tombs 
 and cemeteries sentineled by the mournful dark-
 
 THE SWEET WATERS OF EUROPE 443 
 
 green cypress. On our way to take boat for the 
 Sweet Waters of Europe we descended through 
 the neglected Little Field of the Dead. It is on 
 a steep acclivity, and the stones stand and lean 
 thickly there, each surmounted by a turban in fash- 
 ion at the period of the occupant's death, and with 
 inscription neatly carved. That "every man has 
 his date" strikes Abd-el- A tti as a remarkable fact. 
 The ground is netted by Imp-hazard paths, and the 
 careless living tread the graves with thoughtless 
 feet, as if the rights of the dead to their scanty 
 bit of soil were no longer respected. We said to 
 the boatman that this did not seem well. There 
 was a weary touch of philosophy in his reply: 
 "Ah, master, the world grows old! " 
 
 It is the fashion for the world to go on Friday 
 to the Sweet Waters of Europe, the inlet of the 
 Golden Horn, flowing down between two ranges 
 of hills. This vale, which is almost as celebrated 
 in poetry as that of the Heavenly Water on the 
 Asiatic shore, is resorted to by thousands, in hun- 
 dreds of carriages from Pera, in thousands of 
 caiques and barges. On the water, the excursion 
 is a festival of the people, of strangers, of adven- 
 turers of both sexes ; the more fashionable though 
 not moral part of society, who have equipages to 
 display, go by land. We chose the water, and 
 selected a large four -oared caVque, in the bottom 
 of which we seated ourselves, after a dozen narrow 
 escapes from upsetting the tottlish craft, and rowed 
 away, with the grave Abd-el- Atti balanced behind 
 and under bonds to preserve his exact equilibrium.
 
 444 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 All the city seems to be upon the water; the 
 stream is alive with the slender, swift caiques; 
 family parties, rollicking midshipmen from some 
 foreign vessel, solitary beauties reclining in selfish 
 loveliness, grave fat Turks, in stupid enjoyment. 
 No voyage could be gayer than this through the 
 shipping, with the multitudinous houses of the city 
 rising on either hand. As we advance, the shore 
 is lined with people, mostly ladies in gay holiday 
 apparel, squatting along the stream ; as on a spring 
 day in Paris, those who cannot afford carriages 
 line the avenues to the Bois de Boulogne to watch 
 the passing pageant. The stream grows more nar- 
 row, at length winds in graceful turns, and finally 
 is only a few yards wide, and the banks are re- 
 tained by masonry. The vale narrows also, and 
 the hills draw near. The water-way is choked 
 with gayly painted caiques, full of laughing beau- 
 ties and reckless pleasure -seekers, and the reader 
 of Egyptian history might think himself in a sat- 
 urnalia of the revel-makers in the ancient fete of 
 Bubastis on the Nile. The women are clad in 
 soft silks, blue, red, pink, yellow, and gray, 
 some of them with their faces tied up as if they 
 were victims of toothache, others wearing the gauze 
 veils, which enhance without concealing charms; 
 and the color and beauty that nature has denied to 
 many are imitated by paint and enamel. 
 
 We land and walk on. Singers and players on 
 curious instruments sit along the bank and in 
 groups under the trees, and fill the festive air with 
 the plaintive and untrained Oriental music. The
 
 A BRILLIANT SCENE 445 
 
 variety of costumes is infinite; here we meet all 
 that is gay and fantastic in Europe and Asia. The 
 navigation ends at the white marble palace and 
 mosque which we now see shining amid the trees, 
 fresh with May foliage. Booths and tents, green 
 and white, are erected everywhere, and there are 
 many groups of gypsies and fortune-tellers. The 
 olive-complexioned, black-eyed, long-haired wo- 
 men, who trade in the secrets of the Orient and 
 the vices of the Occident, do a thriving business 
 with those curious of the future, or fascinated by 
 the mysterious beauty of the soothsayers. Besides 
 the bands of music, there are solitary bagpipers 
 whose instrument is a skin, with a pipe for a mouth- 
 piece and another at the opposite end having gradu- 
 ated holes for fingering ; and I noticed with plea- 
 sure that the fingering and the music continued 
 long after the musician had ceased to blow into the 
 inflated skin. Nothing was wanting to the most 
 brilliant scene ; ladies in bright groups on gay rugs 
 and mats, children weaving head-dresses from 
 leaves and rushes, crowds of carriages, fine horses 
 and gallant horsemen, sellers of refreshments bal- 
 ancing great trays on their heads, and bearing tri- 
 pod stools, and all degrees of the most cosmopolitan 
 capital enjoying the charming spring holiday. 
 
 In the palace grounds dozens of peacocks were 
 sunning themselves, and the Judas-trees were in 
 full pink bloom. Above the palace the river flows 
 in walled banks, and before it reaches it tumbles 
 over an artificial fall of rocks, and sweeps round 
 the garden in a graceful curve. Beyond the pal-
 
 446 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 ace, also on the bank of the stream, is a grove of 
 superb trees and a greensward; here a military 
 band plays, and this is the fashionable meeting- 
 place of carriages, where hundreds were circling 
 round and round in the imitated etiquette of Hyde 
 Park. 
 
 We came down at sunset, racing swiftly among 
 the returning caiques, passing and passed by laugh- 
 ing boatsful, whose gay hangings trailed in the 
 stream, as in a pageant on the Grand Canal of 
 Venice, and watching, with the interest of the phi- 
 losopher only, the light boat of beauty and frailty 
 pursued by the youthful caique of inexperience 
 and desire. The hour contributed to make the 
 scene one of magical beauty. To our right lay the 
 dark cypresses of the vast cemetery of Eyoub (or 
 Ayub) and the shining mosque where, at their in- 
 auguration, the Osmanli Sultans are still girt with 
 the sword of their founder. At this spot, in the 
 first siege of Constantinople by the Arabs, fell, 
 amid thirty thousand Moslems, slain outside the 
 Golden Gate, the Aboo Ayub, or Job, one of the 
 last companions of the Prophet. He was one of 
 the immortal auxiliaries; he had fought at Beder 
 and Obud side by side with Abubeker, and he had 
 the honor to be one of the first assailants of the 
 Christian capital, which Mohammed had predicted 
 that his followers should one day possess. The site 
 of his grave, forgotten for seven centuries, was re- 
 vealed to the conqueror of the city by a fortunate 
 vision, and the spot was commemorated by a 
 mosque and a gathering congregation of the dead.
 
 A CHASE OF PLEASURE 447 
 
 Clouds had collected in the west, and the heavy 
 smoke of innumerable steamers lay dark upon the 
 Bosphorus. But as we came down, the sun broke 
 out and gave us one of those effects of which na- 
 ture is sparing. On the heights of Stamboul, a 
 dozen minarets, only half distinct, were touched 
 by the gold rays ; the windows of both cities, piled 
 above each other, blazed in it; the smooth river 
 and the swift caiques were gilded by it ; and be- 
 hind us, domes and spires, and the tapering shafts 
 of the Muezzin, the bases hid by the mist, rose 
 into the heaven of the golden sunset and appeared 
 like mansions, and most unsubstantial ones, in the 
 sky. And ever the light caiques flew over the 
 rosy water in a chase of pleasure, in a motion that 
 satisfied the utmost longing for repose, while the 
 enchantment of heaven seemed to have dropped 
 upon the earth. 
 
 " The world has lost its gloss for us, 
 Since we went boating on the Bosphorus." 
 
 Constantinople enjoys or suffers the changeable 
 weather appropriate to its cosmopolitan inhabit- 
 ants and situation, and we waited for a day suit- 
 able to cross Scutari and obtain the view from 
 Boolgoorloo. We finally accepted one of alternate 
 clouds and sunshine. The connection between the 
 European city and its great suburb is maintained 
 by frequent ferry-steamers, and I believe that no 
 other mile-passage in the world can offer the trav- 
 eler a scene more animated or views so varied and 
 magnificent. Near the landing at Scutari stands 
 a beacon -tower ninety feet high, erected upon a
 
 448 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 rock; it has the name of the Maiden's Tower, but 
 I do not know why, unless by courtesy to one of 
 the mistresses of Sultan Mohammed, who is said 
 to have been shut up in it. Scutari, pro- 
 nounced with the accent on the first syllable, a 
 corruption of the Turkish name Uskudar, the 
 site of the old Greek and Persian Chrysopolis, is 
 a town sprawling over seven hills, has plenty of 
 mosques, baths, and cemeteries, the three Ori- 
 ental luxuries, but little to detain the traveler, 
 already familiar with Eastern towns of the sort. 
 The spot has been in all ages an arriving and 
 starting point for Asiatic couriers, caravans, and 
 armies ; here the earliest Greek sea-robbers hauled 
 up their venturous barks ; here Xenophon rested 
 after his campaign against Cyrus ; here the Roman 
 and then the Byzantine emperors had their hunt- 
 ing-palaces; here for a long time the Persians 
 menaced and wrung tribute from the city they 
 could not capture. 
 
 We took a carriage and ascended through the 
 city to the mountain of Boolgoorloo. On the 
 slopes above the town are orchards and vineyards 
 and pretty villas. The last ten minutes of the 
 climb was accomplished on foot, and when we 
 stood upon the summit the world was at our feet. 
 I do not know any other view that embraces so 
 much and such variety. The swelling top was 
 carpeted with grass, sprinkled with spring flowers, 
 and here and there a spreading pine offered a place 
 of shade and repose. Behind us continued range 
 on range the hills of the peninsula; to the south
 
 BOOLGOORLOO 449 
 
 the eye explored Asia Minor, the ancient Bithynia 
 and Mysia, until it rested on the monstrous snowy 
 summits of Olympus, which rears itself beyond 
 Broussa, the city famed for its gauzy silk, and the 
 first capital of the Osman dynasty. There stretches 
 the blue Sea of Marmora, bearing lightly on the 
 surface the nine enchanting Princes' Islands, whose 
 equable climate and fertile soil have obtained for 
 them the epithet of the Isles of the Blest. Oppo- 
 site, Stainboul rises out of the water on every side ; 
 in the distance a city of domes and pinnacles and 
 glass, the dark-green spires of cypress tempering 
 its brilliant lustre ; there the Golden Horn and its 
 thronged bridges and its countless masts and 
 steamers' funnels; Galata and Pera, also lifted up 
 into nobility, and all their shabby details lost, and 
 the Bosphorus, its hills, marble palaces, mosques, 
 and gardens, on either side. I do not know any 
 scene that approaches this in beauty except the 
 Bay of Naples, and the charm of that is so differ- 
 ent from this that no comparison is forced upon 
 the mind. The Bay of New York has many of 
 the elements of this charming prospect, on the 
 map. But Constantinople and its environs can be 
 seen from many points in one view, while one 
 would need to ascend in a balloon to comprehend 
 in like manner the capital of the Western world. 
 It is the situation of Constantinople, lifted up into 
 a conspicuousness that permits no one of its single 
 splendors to be lost in the general view, that makes 
 it in appearance the unrivaled empress of cities. 
 In the foreground lay Scutari, and in a broad
 
 450 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 sweep the heavy mass of cypress forest that covers 
 the great cemetery of the Turks, which they are 
 said to prefer to Eyoub, under the prophetic im- 
 pression that they will one day be driven out of 
 Europe. The precaution seems idle. If in the 
 loss of Constantinople the Osmanli Sultans still 
 maintain the supremacy of Islam, the Moslem cap- 
 ital could not be on these shores, and the caliphate 
 in its migrations might again be established on the 
 Nile, on the Euphrates, or in the plains of Guta 
 on the Abana. The iron-clads that lie in the Bos- 
 phorus, the long guns of a dozen fortresses that 
 command every foot of the city and shore, forbid 
 that these contiguous coasts should fly hostile flags. 
 We drove down to and through this famous cem- 
 etery in one direction and another. In its beauty 
 I was disappointed. It is a dense and gloomy 
 cypress forest ; as a place of sepulture, without the 
 architectural pretensions of Pere-la-Chaise, and 
 only less attractive than that. Its dark recesses 
 are crowded with gravestones, slender at the bot- 
 tom and swelling at the top, painted in lively col- 
 ors, green, red, and gray, a necessary relief to 
 the sombre woods, having inscriptions in gilt 
 and red letters, and leaning at all angles, as if 
 they had fallen out in a quarrel overnight. The 
 graves of the men are distinguished by stones 
 crowned with turbans, or with tarbooshes painted 
 red, an imitation, in short, of whatever head- 
 dress the owner wore when alive, so that perhaps 
 his acquaintances can recognize his tomb without 
 reading his name. Some of the more ancient have
 
 FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 451 
 
 the form of a mould of Charlotte Russe. I saw 
 more than one set jauntily on one side, which gave 
 the monument a rakish air, singularly debonnaire 
 for a tombstone. 
 
 In contrast to this vast assembly of the faithful 
 is the pretty English cemetery, dedicated to the 
 fallen in the Crimean war, a well-kept flower- 
 garden, which lies close to the Bosphorus on a 
 point opposite the old Seraglio. We sat down on 
 the sea-wall in this quiet spot, where the sun falls 
 lovingly and the undisturbed birds sing, and looked 
 long at the shifting, busy panorama of a world 
 that does not disturb this repose ; and then walked 
 about the garden, noting the headstones of soldiers, 
 this one killed at Alma, that at Inkermann, an- 
 other at Balaklava, and the tall, graceless granite 
 monument to eight thousand nameless dead ; name- 
 less here, but not in many a home and many a 
 heart, any more than the undistinguished thousands 
 who sleep at Gettysburg, or on a hundred other 
 patriot fields. 
 
 Near by is the great hospital which Florence 
 Nightingale controlled, and in her memory we 
 asked permission to enter its wards and visit its 
 garden. After some delay this was granted, but 
 the Turkish official said that the hospital was for 
 men, that there was no woman there, and as for 
 Miss Nightingale, he had never heard of her. But 
 we persevered and finally found an officer who led 
 us to the room she occupied, a large apartment 
 now filled with the beds of the sick, and, like every 
 other part of the establishment, neat and orderly.
 
 452 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 But our curiosity to see where the philanthropist 
 had labored was an enigma to the Turkish officials 
 to the last. They insisted at first that we must 
 be relations of Miss Nightingale, a supposition 
 which I saw that Abd-el-Atti, who always seeks 
 the advantage of distinction, was inclined to favor. 
 But we said no. Well, perhaps it was natural 
 that Englishmen should indulge in the sentiment 
 that moved us. But we were not Englishmen, we 
 were Americans, they gave it up entirely. The 
 superintendent of the hospital, a courtly and elderly 
 bey, who had fought in the Crimean war, and 
 whom our dragoman, dipping his hand to the 
 ground, saluted with the most profound Egyptian 
 obeisance, insisted upon serving us coffee in the 
 garden by the fountain of gold-fish, and we spent 
 an hour of quiet there. 
 
 On Sunday at about the hour that the good peo- 
 ple in America were beginning to think what they 
 should wear to church, we walked down to the ser- 
 vice in the English Memorial Church, on the brow 
 of the hill in Pera, a pointed Gothic building of 
 a rich and pleasing interior. Only once or twice 
 in many months had we been in a Christian church, 
 and it was at least interesting to contrast its sim- 
 ple forms with the elaborate Greek ritual and the 
 endless repetitions of the Moslem prayers. A 
 choir of boys intoned or chanted a portion of the 
 service with marked ability, and wholly relieved 
 the audience of the necessity of making responses. 
 -The clergymen executed the reading so successfully 
 that we could only now and then catch a word.
 
 THE ENGLISH MEMORIAL CHURCH 453 
 
 The service, so far as we were concerned, might as 
 well have been in Turkish ; and yet it was not al- 
 together lost 011 us. We could distinguish occa- 
 sionally the Lord's Prayer, and the name of Queen 
 Victoria, and we caught some of the Command- 
 ments as they whisked past us. We knew also 
 when we were in the Litany, from the regular 
 cadence of the boys' responses. But as the en- 
 tertainment seemed to be for the benefit of the cler- 
 gymen and boys, I did not feel like intruding be- 
 yond the office of a spectator, and I soon found 
 myself reflecting whether a machine could not be 
 invented that should produce the same effect of 
 sound, which was all that the congregation enjoyed. 
 
 Rome has been until recently less tolerant of 
 the Protestant faith than Constantinople; and it 
 was an inspiration of reciprocity to build here a 
 church in memory of the Christian soldiers who 
 fell in the crusade to establish the Moslem rule in 
 European Turkey. 
 
 Of the various views about Constantinople we 
 always pronounced that best which we saw last, 
 and at the time we said that those from Seraglio 
 Point, from Boolgoorloo, and from Roberts Col- 
 lege were crowned by that from Giant's Grave 
 Mountain, a noble height on the Asiatic side of 
 the Bosphorus near the Black Sea. 
 
 One charming morning, we ascended the strait 
 in a steamboat that calls at the landings on the 
 eastern shore. The Bosphorus, if you will have it 
 in a phrase, is a river of lapis lazuli lined with 
 marble palaces. As we saw it that morning, its
 
 454 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 sloping gardens, terraces, trees, and vines in the 
 tender bloom of spring, all the extravagance of the 
 Oriental poets in praise of it was justified, and it 
 was easy to believe the nature -romance with which 
 the earliest adventurers had clothed it. There, at 
 Beshiktash, Jason landed to rest his weary sailors 
 on the voyage to Colchis; and above there at 
 Koroo Chesmeh stood a laurel-tree which Medea 
 planted on the return of the Argonauts. Tradi- 
 tion has placed near it, on the point, the site of 
 a less attractive object, the pillar upon which 
 Simeon Stylites spent forty years of a life which 
 was just forty years too long; but I do not know 
 by what authority, for I believe that the perch of 
 the Syrian hermit was near Antioch, where his 
 noble position edified thousands of Christians, who 
 enjoyed their piety in contemplating his, and took 
 their pleasures in the groves of Daphne. 
 
 Our steamer was, at this moment, a craft more 
 dangerous to mankind than an iron -clad ; it was 
 a sort of floating harem; we sat upon the awning- 
 covered upper deck; the greater part of the lower 
 deck was jealously curtained off and filled with 
 Turkish ladies. Among them we recognized a 
 little flock of a couple of dozen, the harem of 
 Mustapha Pasha, the uncle of the Khedive of 
 Egypt. They left the boat at his palace in Chen- 
 guel Keuy, and we saw them, in silk gowns of 
 white, red, blue, and yellow, streaming across the 
 flower-garden into the marble portal, a pretty 
 picture. The pasha was transferring his house- 
 hold to the country for the summer, and we im-
 
 A FLOATING HAREM 455 
 
 agined that the imprisoned troop entered these 
 blooming May gardens with the elation of freedom, 
 which might, however, be more perfect if eunuchs 
 did not watch every gate and foot of the garden 
 wall. I suppose that few of them, however, would 
 be willing to exchange their lives of idle luxury 
 for the misery and chance of their former condi- 
 tion, and it is said that the maids of the so-called 
 Christian Georgia hear with envy of the good for- 
 tune of their sisters, who have brought good prices 
 in the Turkish capital. 
 
 When the harem disappeared, we found some 
 consolation in a tall Croat, who strutted up and 
 down the deck in front of us, that we might 
 sicken with envy of his splendid costume. He 
 wore tight trousers of blue cloth, baggy in the 
 rear but fitting the legs like a glove, and terminat- 
 ing over the shoes in a quilled inverted funnel; a 
 brilliant scarf of Syrian silk in loose folds about 
 his loins; a vest stiff with gold embroidery; a 
 scarlet jacket decked with gold -lace, and on his 
 head a red fez. This is the costly dress of a 
 Croatian gardener, who displays all his wealth to 
 make a holiday spectacle of himself. 
 
 We sailed close to the village of Kandili and the 
 promontory under which and upon which it lies, 
 a site which exhausts the capacity of the loveliness 
 of nature and the skill of art. From the villas on 
 its height one commands, by a shifted glance, the 
 Euxine and the Marmora, and whatever is most 
 lovely in the prospect of two continents ; the purity 
 of the air is said to equal the charm of the view.
 
 456 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 Above this promontory opens the valley down 
 which flows the river Geuksoo (sky-water), and at 
 the north of it stands a white marble kiosk of the 
 Sultan, the most beautiful architectural creation 
 on the strait. Near it, shaded by great trees, is a 
 handsome fountain; beyond the green turf in the 
 tree-decked vale which pierces the hill were groups 
 of holiday-makers in gay attire. I do not know 
 if this Valley of the Heavenly Water is the love- 
 liest in the East, but it is said that its charms of 
 meadow, shade, sweet water, and scented flowers 
 are a substantial foretaste of the paradise of the 
 true believer. But it is in vain to catalogue the 
 charming villages, the fresh beauties of nature and 
 art to which each revolution of the paddle-wheel 
 carried us. We thought we should be content 
 with a summer residence of the Khedive, on the 
 European side below the lovely bay of Terapea, 
 with its vast hillside of gardens and orchards and 
 the long line of palaces on the water. Fanned by 
 the invigorating breezes from the Black Sea, its 
 summer climate must be perfect. 
 
 We landed at Beicos, and, in default of any 
 conveyance, walked up through the straggling vil- 
 lage, along the shore, to a verdant, shady meadow, 
 sweet with clover and wild-flowers. This is in the 
 valley of Him-Kiar Iskelesi, a favorite residence 
 of the Sultans ; here on a projecting rocky point is 
 a reddish palace, built and given to the Sultan by 
 the Khedive. The meadow in which we were is 
 behind a palace of old Mohammed Ali, and it is 
 now used as a pasture for the Sultan's horses, doz-
 
 A TURKISH ARABA 457 
 
 ens of which were tethered and feeding in the lush 
 grass and clover. The tents of their attendants 
 were pitched on the plain, and groups of Turkish 
 ladies were picnicking under the large sycamores. 
 It was a charming rural scene. I made the silent 
 acquaintance of an old man, in a white turban and 
 flowing robes, who sat in the grass knitting and 
 watching his one white lamb feed; probably knit- 
 ting the fleece of his lamb of the year before. 
 
 We were in search of an araba and team to take 
 us up the mountain; one stood in the meadow 
 which we could hire, but oxen were wanting, and 
 we dispatched a Greek boy in search of the ani- 
 mals. The Turkish ladies of fashion delight in 
 the araba when they ride into the country, greatly 
 preferring it to the horse or donkey, or to any 
 other carriage. It is a long cart of four wheels, 
 without springs, but it is as stately in appearance 
 as the band-wagon of a circus ; its sloping side- 
 boards and even the platform in front are elabo- 
 rately carved and gilded. While we waited the 
 motions of the boy, who joined to himself two 
 others even more prone to go astray than himself, 
 an officer of the royal stables invited us to take 
 seats under the shade of his tent, and served us 
 with coffee. After an hour the boy returned with 
 two lean steers. The rude, hooped top of the 
 araba was spread with a purple cloth, a thick bed- 
 quilt covered the bottom, and by the aid of a lad- 
 der we climbed into the ark and sat or lay as we 
 could best stow ourselves. A boy led the steers 
 by a rope, another walked at the side gently goad-
 
 458 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 ing them with a stick, and we rumbled along slowly 
 through the brilliant meadows. It became evident 
 after a time that we were not ascending the moun- 
 tain, but going into the heart of the country; the 
 cart was stopped and the wild driver was inter- 
 rogated. I never saw a human being so totally 
 devoid of a conscience. We had hired him to 
 take us up to Giant's Grave Mountain. He was 
 deliberately cheating us out of it. At first he in- 
 sisted that he was going in the right direction, but 
 upon the application of the dragoman's fingers to 
 his ear, he pleaded that the mountain road was 
 bad and that it was just as well for us to visit the 
 Sultan's farm up the valley. We had come seven 
 thousand miles to see the view from the mountain, 
 but this boy had not the least scruple in depriving 
 us of it. We turned about and entered a charm- 
 ing glen, thoroughly New England in its character, 
 set with small trees and shrubs and carpeted with 
 a turf of short sweet grass. One needs to be some 
 months in the Orient to appreciate the delight ex- 
 perienced by the sight of genuine turf. 
 
 As we ascended, the road, gullied by the spring 
 torrents, at last became impassable for wheels, and 
 we were obliged to abandon the araba and perform 
 the last half mile of the journey on foot. The 
 sightly summit of the mountain is nearly six hun- 
 dred feet above the water. There, in a lovely 
 grove, we found a coffee-house and a mosque and 
 the Giant's Grave, which the Moslems call the 
 grave of Joshua. It is a flower-planted inclosure, 
 seventy feet long and seven wide, ample for any
 
 GIANT'S GRAVE MOUNTAIN 459 
 
 hero; the railing about it is tagged with bits of 
 cloth which pious devotees have tied there in the 
 expectation that their diseases, perhaps their sins, 
 will vanish with the airing of these shreds. From 
 the minaret is a wonderful view, the entire length 
 of the Bosphorus, with all its windings and lovely 
 bays enlivened with white sails, ships at anchor, 
 and darting steamers, rich in villages, ancient cas- 
 tles, and forts; a great portion of Asia Minor, 
 with the snow peaks of Olympus ; on the south, 
 the Islands of the Blest and the Sea of Marmora ; 
 on the north, the Cyanean rocks and the wide 
 sweep of the Euxine, blue as heaven and dotted 
 with a hundred white sails, overlooked by the ruin 
 of a Genoese castle, at the entrance of the Bos- 
 phorus, built on the site of a temple of Jupiter, 
 and the spot where the Argonauts halted before 
 they ventured among the Symplegades; and im- 
 mediately below, Terapea and the deep bay of 
 Buyukdereh, the summer resort of the foreign res- 
 idents of Constantinople, a paradise of palaces 
 and gardens, of vales and stately plane-trees, and 
 the entrance to the interior village of Belgrade, 
 with its sacred forest unprofaned as yet by the 
 axe. 
 
 The Cyanean rocks which Jason and his mari- 
 ners regarded as floating islands, or sentient mon- 
 sters, vanishing and reappearing, are harmlessly 
 anchored now, and do not appear at all formidable, 
 though they disappear now as of old when the 
 fierce Euxine rolls in its storm waves. For a long 
 time and with insatiable curiosity we followed with
 
 460 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 the eye the line of the coast of the Pontus Euxinus, 
 once as thickly set with towns as the Riviera of 
 Italy, cities of Ionian, Dorian, and Athenian 
 colonies, who followed the Phosnicians and perhaps 
 the Egyptians, in the vain hope of extending 
 our vision to Trebizond, to the sea fortress of 
 Petra, renowned for its defense by the soldiers of 
 Chosroes against the arms of Justinian, and, fur- 
 ther, to the banks of the Phasis, to Colchis, whose 
 fabulous wealth tempted Jason and his sea-robbers. 
 The waters of this land were so impregnated with 
 particles of gold that fleeces of sheep were used to 
 strain out the yellow metal. Its palaces shone 
 with gold and silver, and you might expect in its 
 gardens the fruit of the Hesperides. In the vales 
 of the Caucasus, we are taught, our race has at- 
 tained its most perfect form ; in other days its men 
 were as renowned for strength and valor as its 
 women were for beauty, the one could not be 
 permanently subdued, the others conquered, even 
 in their slavery. Early converts to the Christian 
 faith, they never adopted its morals nor compre- 
 hended its metaphysics ; and perhaps a more dis- 
 solute and venal society does not exist than that 
 whose business for centuries has been the raising 
 of maids for the Turkish harems. And the miser- 
 able, though willing, victims are said to possess 
 not even beauty, until after a training in luxury 
 by the slave-dealers. 
 
 We made our way, not without difficulty, down 
 the rough, bush-grown hillside, invaded a new 
 Turkish fortification, and at length found a place
 
 A PERILOUS VOYAGE 461 
 
 where we could descend the precipitous bank and 
 summon a boat to ferry us across to Buyukdereh. 
 This was not easy to obtain ; but finally an aged 
 Greek boatman appeared with a caique as aged 
 and decayed as himself. The chances seemed to 
 be that it could make the voyage, and we all packed 
 ourselves into it, sitting on the bottom and filling 
 it completely. There was little margin of boat 
 above the water, and any sudden motion would 
 have reduced that to nothing. We looked wise 
 and sat still, while the old Greek pulled feebly 
 and praised the excellence of his craft. On the 
 opposite slope our attention was called to a pretty 
 cottage, and a Constantinople lady, who was of 
 the party, began to tell us the story of its occu- 
 pant. So dramatic and exciting did it become 
 that we forgot entirely the peril of our frail and 
 overloaded boat. The story finished as we drew 
 up to the landing, which we instantly compre- 
 hended we had not reached a, moment too soon. 
 For when we arose our clothes were soaked ; we 
 were sitting in water, which was rapidly filling the 
 boat, and would have swamped it in five minutes. 
 The landing-place of Buyukdereh, the bay, the 
 hills and villas, reminded us of Lake Como, and 
 the quay and streets were rather Italian than Ori- 
 ental. The most soaked of the voyagers stood 
 outside the railing of the pretty garden of the cafe 
 to dry in the sun, while the others sat inside un- 
 der the vines, and passed out to the unfortunates, 
 through the iron bars, tiny cups of coffee, and fed 
 them with rahat-al-lacoont and other delicious
 
 462 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 sweetmeats, until the arrival of the steamer. The 
 ride down was lovely ; the sun made the barracks 
 and palaces on the east shore a blaze of diamonds ; 
 and the minarets seen through the steamer's 
 smoke, which, transfused with the rosy light, over- 
 hung the city, had a phantasmagorical aspect. 
 
 Constantinople shares with many other cities the 
 reputation of being the most dissolute in the world. 
 The traveler is not required to decide the rival 
 claims of this sort of preeminence, which are 
 eagerly put forward ; he may better, in each city, 
 acquiesce in the complaisant assumption of the 
 inhabitants. But when he is required to see in 
 the moral state of the Eastern capital signs of its 
 speedy decay, and the near extinction of the Oth- 
 man rule, he takes a leaf out of history and reflects. 
 It is true, no doubt, that the Turks are enfeebled 
 by luxury and sensuality, and have, to a great ex- 
 tent, lost those virile qualities which gave to their 
 ancestors the domiiiion of so many kingdoms in 
 Asia, Africa, and Europe; in short, that the race 
 is sinking into an incapacity to propagate itself 
 in the world. If one believes what he hears, the 
 morals of society could not be worse. The women, 
 so many of whom have been bought in the market, 
 or are daughters of slaves, are educated only for 
 pleasure ; and a great proportion of the male popu- 
 lation are adventurers from all lands, with few 
 domestic ties. The very relaxation of the surveil- 
 lance of the harem (the necessary prelude to the 
 emancipation of woman) opens the door to oppor- 
 tunity, and gives freer play to feminine intrigue.
 
 MORAL DECAY 463 
 
 One hears, indeed, that even the inmates of the 
 royal harem find means of clandestine intercourse 
 with the foreigners of Pera. The history of the 
 Northern and Western occupation of the East lias 
 been, for fifteen centuries, only a repetition of 
 yielding to the seductive influences of a luxurious 
 climate and to soft and pleasing invitation. 
 
 But, heighten as we may the true and immoral 
 picture of social life in Constantinople, I doubt if 
 it is so loose and unrestrained as it was for centu- 
 ries under the Greek Emperors; I doubt if the 
 imbecility, the luxurious effeminacy of the Turks, 
 has sunk to the level of the Byzantine Empire; 
 and when we are asked to expect in the decay of 
 to-day a speedy dissolution, we remember that for 
 a period of over a thousand years, from the parti- 
 tion of the Roman Empire between the two sons 
 of Theodosius to the capture of Constantinople by 
 Mohammed II., the empire subsisted in a state of 
 premature and perpetual decay. These Oriental 
 dynasties are a long time in dying, and we cannot 
 measure their decrepitude by the standards of Oc- 
 cidental morality. 
 
 The trade and the commerce of the city are 
 largely in the hands of foreigners ; but it has nearly 
 always been so, since the days of the merchants 
 and manufacturers of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. 
 We might draw an inference of Turkish insecurity 
 from the implacable hatred of the so-called Greek 
 subjects, if the latter were not in the discord of a 
 thousand years of anarchy and servitude. The 
 history of the islands of the Eastern Mediterra-
 
 464 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 nean has been a succession of Turkish avarice and 
 rapacity, horrible Greek revenge and Turkish 
 wholesale devastation and massacre, repeated over 
 and over again ; but there appears as yet no power 
 able either to expel the Turks or to unite the 
 Greeks. That the leaven of change is working in 
 the Levant is evident to the most superficial obser- 
 vation, and- one sees everywhere the introduction 
 of Western civilization, of business habits, and, 
 above all, of schools. However indifferent the 
 Osmanlis are to education, they are not insensible 
 to European opinion; and in reckoning up their 
 bad qualities, we ought not to forget that they 
 have set some portions of Christendom a lesson of 
 religious toleration, both in Constantinople and 
 in Jerusalem the Christians were allowed a free- 
 dom of worship in their own churches which was 
 not permitted to Protestants within the sacred 
 walls of Pontifical Rome. 
 
 One who would paint the manners or the morals 
 of Constantinople might adorn his theme with 
 many anecdotes, characteristic of a condition of 
 society which is foreign to our experience. I se- 
 lect one which has the merit of being literally true. 
 You who believe that modern romance exists only 
 in tales of fiction, listen to the story of a beauty 
 of Constantinople, the vicissitudes of whose life 
 equal in variety if not in importance those of The- 
 odora and Athenais. For obvious reasons, I shall 
 mention no names. 
 
 There lives now on the banks of the Bosphorus 
 an English physician, who, at the entreaty of
 
 A ROMANTIC STORY 465 
 
 Lord Byron, went to Greece in 1824 as a volunteer 
 surgeon in the war of independence; he arrived 
 only in time to see the poet expire at Missolonghi. 
 In the course of the war, he was taken prisoner 
 by the Egyptian troops, who in their great need 
 of surgeons kept him actively employed in his pro- 
 fession. He did not regain his freedom until after 
 the war, and then only on condition that he should 
 reside in Constantinople as one of the physicians 
 of the Sultan, Mohammed II. 
 
 We may suppose that the Oriental life was not 
 unpleasant, nor the position irksome to him, for 
 he soon so far yielded to the temptations of the 
 capital as to fall in love with a very pretty face 
 which he saw daily in a bay-window of the street he 
 traversed on the way to the Seraglio. Acquaint- 
 ance, which sometimes precedes love, in this case 
 followed it; the doctor declared his passion and 
 was accepted by the willing maid. But an Orien- 
 tal bay-window is the opportunity of the world, 
 and the doctor, becoming convinced that his affi- 
 anced was a desperate flirt, and yielding to the 
 entreaties of his friends, broke off the engagement 
 and left her free, in her eyrie, to continue her ob- 
 servations upon mankind. This, however, did not 
 suit the plans of the lovely and fickle girl. One 
 morning, shortly after, he was summoned to see 
 two Turkish ladies who awaited him in his office ; 
 when he appeared, the young girl (for it was she) 
 and her mother threw aside their disguise, and de- 
 clared that they would not leave the house until 
 the doctor married the daughter, for the rupture
 
 466 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 of the engagement had rendered it impossible to 
 procure any other husband. Whether her own 
 beauty or the terrible aspect of the mother pre- 
 vailed, I do not know, but the English chaplain 
 was sent for ; he refused to perform the ceremony, 
 and a Greek priest was found who married them. 
 
 This marriage, which took the appearance of 
 duress, might have been happy if the compelling 
 party to it had left her fondness of adventure and 
 variety at the wedding threshold; but her con- 
 stancy was only assumed, like the Turkish veil, for 
 an occasion; lovers were not wanting, and after 
 the birth of three children, two sons and a daugh- 
 ter, she deserted her husband and went to live with 
 a young Turk, who has since held high office in 
 the government of the Sultan. It was in her char- 
 acter of Madame Mehemet Pasha that she wrote 
 (or one of her sons wrote for her) a book well 
 known in the West, entitled "Thirty Years in a 
 Harem." But her intriguing spirit was not ex- 
 tinct even in a Turkish harem ; she attempted to 
 palm off upon the pasha, as her own, a child that 
 she had bought; her device was detected by one 
 of the palace eunuchs, and at the same time her 
 amour with a Greek of the city came to light. 
 The eunuch incurred her displeasure for his offi- 
 ciousness, and she had him strangled and thrown 
 into the Bosphorus. Some say that the resolute 
 woman even assisted with her own hands. For 
 these breaches of decorum, however, she paid dear ; 
 the pasha banished her to Kutayah, with orders 
 to the guard who attended her to poison her on the
 
 A BEAUTIFUL ADVENTURESS 467 
 
 way; but she so won upon the affection of the 
 officer that he let her escape at Broussa. There 
 her beauty, if not her piety, recommended her to 
 an Imam of one of the mosques, and she married 
 him and seems for a time to have led a quiet 
 life; at any rate, nothing further was heard of 
 her until just before the famous cholera season, 
 when news came of the death of her husband, the 
 Moslem priest, and that she was living in extreme 
 poverty, all her beauty gone forever, and conse- 
 quently her ability to procure another husband. 
 
 The pasha, Mehemet, lived in a beautiful pal- 
 ace on the eastern shore of the Bosphorus, near 
 Kandili. During the great cholera epidemic of 
 1865, the pasha was taken ill. One day there ap- 
 peared at the gate an unknown woman, who said 
 that she had come to cure the pasha; no one knew 
 her, but she spoke with authority, and was admit- 
 ted. It was our adventuress. She nursed the 
 pasha with the most tender care and watchful 
 skill, so that he recovered; and, in gratitude for 
 the preservation of his life, he permitted her and 
 her daughter to remain in the palace. For some 
 time they were contented with the luxury of such 
 a home, but one day it was the evening of 
 Wednesday neither mother nor daughter was to 
 be found ; and upon examination it was discovered 
 that a large collection of precious stones and some 
 ready money had disappeared with them. They 
 had departed on the French steamer, in order to 
 transfer their talents to the fields of Europe. The 
 fate of the daughter I do not know ; for some time
 
 468 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 she and her mother were conspicuous in the dissi- 
 pation of Paris life ; subsequently the mother lived 
 with a son in London, and, since I heard her story 
 in Constantinople, she has died in London in mis- 
 ery and want. 
 
 The further history of the doctor and his fam- 
 ily may detain our curiosity for a moment. When 
 his wife left him for the arms of the pasha, he ex- 
 perienced so much difficulty in finding any one in 
 Constantinople to take care of his children that he 
 determined to send them to Scotland to be edu- 
 cated, and intrusted them, for that purpose, to a 
 friend who was returning to England. They went 
 by way of Rome. It happened that the mother 
 and sister of the doctor had some time before that 
 come to Rome, for the sake of health, and had 
 there warmly embraced the Roman Catholic faith. 
 Of course the three children were .taken to see their 
 grandmother and aunt, and the latter, concerned 
 for their eternal welfare, diverted them from their 
 journey, and immured the boys in a monastery and 
 the girl in a convent. The father, when he heard 
 of this abduction, expressed indignation, but, hav- 
 ing at that time only such religious faith as may 
 be floating in the Oriental air and common to all, 
 he made no vigorous effort to recover his children. 
 Indeed, he consoled himself, in the fashion of the 
 country, by marrying again; this time a Greek 
 lady, who died, leaving two boys. The doctor 
 was successful in transporting the offspring of his 
 second marriage to Scotland, where they were ed- 
 ucated ; and they returned to do him honor, one
 
 A TURKISH LADY
 
 THE GRASP OF ROME 469 
 
 of them as the eloquent and devoted pastor of a 
 Protestant church in Pera, and the other as a phy- 
 sician in the employment of the government. 
 
 After the death of his second wife, the doctor 
 I can but tell the story as I heard it became 
 a changed man, and married again ; this time a 
 Swiss lady, of lovely Christian character. In his 
 changed condition, he began to feel anxious to re- 
 cover his children from the grasp of Rome. He 
 wrote for information, but his sister refused to tell 
 where they were, and his search could discover no 
 trace of them. At length the father obtained 
 leave of absence from the Seraglio, and armed with 
 an autograph letter from Abdul Aziz to Pius IX. 
 he went to Rome. The Pope gave him an order 
 for the restoration of his children. He drove first 
 to the convent to see his daughter. In place of 
 the little girl whom he had parted with years ago, 
 he found a young lady of extraordinary beauty, 
 and a devoted Romanist. At first she refused to 
 go with him, and it was only upon his promise to 
 allow her perfect liberty of conscience, and never 
 to interfere with any of the observances of her 
 church, that she consented. Not daring to lose 
 sight of her, he waited for her to pack her trunk, 
 and then, putting her into a carriage, drove to the 
 monastery whei-e he heard, after many inquiries, 
 that his boys were confined. The monk who ad- 
 mitted him denied that they were there, and en- 
 deavored to lock him into the waiting-room while 
 he went to call the superior. But the doctor an- 
 ticipated his movements, and as soon as the monk
 
 470 SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE 
 
 was out of sight, started to explore the house. By 
 good luck the first door he opened led into a cham- 
 ber where a sick boy was lying on a bed. The 
 doctor believed that he recognized one of his sons ; 
 a few questions satisfied him that he was right. 
 "I am your father," he said to the astonished lad, 
 "run quickly and call your brother and come with 
 me." Monastic discipline had not so many attrac- 
 tions for the boys as convent life for the girl, and 
 the child ran with alacrity and brought his brother, 
 just as the abbot and a score of monks appeared 
 upon the scene. As the celerity of the doctor had 
 given no opportunity to conceal the boys, opposi- 
 tion to the order of the Pope was useless, and the 
 father hastened to the gate where he had left the 
 carriage. Meantime the aunt had heard of the 
 rescue, and followed the girl from the convent; 
 she implored her, by tears and prayers, to reverse 
 her decision. The doctor cut short the scene by 
 shoving his sons into the carriage and driving rap- 
 idly away. Nor did he trust them long in Rome. 
 The subsequent career of the boys is not dwelt 
 on with pleasure. One of them enlisted in the 
 Turkish army, married a Turkish wife, and, after 
 some years, deserted her, and ran away to England. 
 His wife was taken into a pasha's family, who of- 
 fered to adopt her only child, a boy of four years ; 
 but the mother preferred to bring him to his grand- 
 father. None of the family had seen her, but she 
 established her identity, and begged that her child 
 might be adopted by a good man, which she knew 
 his grandfather to be, and receive a Christian train-
 
 A VENETIAN COUNTESS 471 
 
 ing. The doctor, therefore, adopted the grand- 
 child, which had come to him in such a strange 
 way, and the mother shortly after died. 
 
 The daughter, whose acquired accomplishments 
 matched her inherited beauty, married, in time, a 
 Venetian Count of wealth ; and the idler in Venice 
 may see on the Grand Canal, among those mouldy 
 edifices that could reveal so many romances, their 
 sumptuous palace, and learn, if he cares to learn, 
 that it is the home of a family happy in the enjoy- 
 ment of most felicitous fortune. In the gossip 
 with which the best Italian society sometimes 
 amuses itself, he might hear that the Countess was 
 the daughter of a slave of the Sultan's harem. I 
 have given, however, the true version of the ro- 
 mantic story; but I am ignorant of the social con- 
 dition or the race of the mother of the heroine of 
 so many adventures. She may have been born in 
 the Caucasus.
 
 XXVII 
 
 FROM THE GOLDEN HORN TO THE 
 ACROPOLIS 
 
 n UR last day in Constantinople was a 
 bright invitation for us to remain for- 
 ever. We could have departed with- 
 out regret in a rain-storm, but it was 
 not so easy to resolve to look our last upon this 
 shining city and marvelous landscape under the 
 blue sky of May. Early in the morning we climbed 
 up the Genoese Tower in Galata and saw the hun- 
 dred crescents of Stamboul sparkle in the sun, the 
 Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, shifting pano- 
 ramas of trade and pleasure, the Propontis with 
 its purple islands, and the azure and snowy moun- 
 tains of Asia. This massive tower is now a fire- 
 signal station, and night and day watchmen look 
 out from its battlemented gallery ; the Seraskier 
 Tower opposite in Stamboul, and another on the 
 heights of the Asiatic shore, keep the same watch 
 ov*er the inflammable city. The guard requested 
 us not to open our parasols upon the gallery for 
 fear they would be hailed as fire-signals. 
 
 The day was spent in last visits to the bazaars, 
 in packing and leave-takings, and the passage of
 
 LEAVE-TAKINGS 473 
 
 the custom-house, for the government encourages 
 trade by an export as well as an import duty. I 
 did not see any of the officials, but Abd-el-Atti, 
 who had charge of shipping our baggage, reported 
 that the eyes of the customs inspector were each 
 just the size of a five-franc piece. Chief among 
 our regrets at setting our faces toward Europe 
 was the necessity of parting with Abd-el-Atti and 
 Ahmed ; the former had been our faithful drago- 
 man and daily companion for five months, and we 
 had not yet exhausted his adventures nor his stores 
 of Oriental humor; and we could not expect to 
 find elsewhere a character like Ahmed, a person so 
 shrewd and obliging, and of such amusing viva- 
 city. At four o'clock we embarked upon an Italian 
 steamer for Salonica and Athens, a four days' voy- 
 age. At the last moment Abd-el-Atti would have 
 gone with us upon the least encouragement, but we 
 had no further need of dragoman or interpreter, 
 and the old man sadly descended the ladder to his 
 boat. I can see him yet, his red fez in the stern 
 of the cai'que, waving his large silk handkerchief, 
 and slowly rowing back to Pera, a melancholy 
 figure. 
 
 As we steamed out of the harbor we enjoyed the 
 view we had missed on entering: the Seraglio 
 Point where blind old Dandolo ran his galley 
 aground and leaped on .shore to the assault; the 
 shore of Chalcedoii; the seven towers and the old 
 wall behind Stamboul, which Persians, Arabs, 
 Scythians, and Latins have stormed; the long, 
 sweeping coast and its minarets; the Prince*'
 
 474 TO THE ACROPOLIS 
 
 Islands and Mt. Olympus, all this in a setting 
 sun was superb; and we said, "There is not its 
 equal in the world." And the evening was more 
 magnificent, a moon nearly full, a sweet and 
 rosy light on the smooth water, which was at first 
 azure blue, and then pearly gray and glowing like 
 an amethyst. 
 
 Smoothly sailing all night, we came at sunrise to 
 the entrance of the Dardanelles, and stopped for 
 a couple of hours at Chanak Kalessi, before the 
 guns of the Castle of Asia. The wide-awake trad- 
 ers immediately swarmed on board with their 
 barbarous pottery and with trays of cooked fish, 
 onions, and bread for the deck passengers. The 
 latter were mostly Greeks, and men in the costume 
 which one sees still in the islands and the Asiatic 
 coasts, but very seldom on the Grecian mainland; 
 it consists of baggy trousers, close at the ankles, 
 a shawl about the waist, an embroidered jacket 
 usually of sober color, and, the most prized part 
 of their possessions, an arsenal of pistols and 
 knives in. huge leathern holsters, with a heavy 
 leathern flap, worn in front. Most of them wore 
 a small red fez, the hair cut close in front and fall- 
 ing long behind the ears. They are light in com- 
 plexion, not tall, rather stout, and without beauty. 
 Though their dress is picturesque in plan, it is 
 usually very dirty, ragged, and, the last confession 
 of poverty, patched. They were all armed like 
 pirates ; and when we stopped, a cracking fusillade 
 along the deck suggested a mutiny; but -it was 
 only a precautionary measure of the captain, who
 
 THE WOMEN OF LEMNOS 475 
 
 compelled them to discharge their pistols into the 
 water and then took them from them. 
 
 Passing out of the strait we saw the Rabbit 
 Islands and Tenedos, and caught a glimpse of the 
 Plain of Troy about as misty as its mythic history ; 
 and then turned west between Imbros and Lemnos, 
 on whose bold eastern rock once blazed one of 
 the signal-fires which telegraphed the fall of Troy 
 to Clytemnestra. The first women of Lemnos 
 were altogether beautiful, but they had some pe- 
 culiarities which did not recommend them to their 
 contemporaries, and indeed their husbands were 
 accustomed occasionally to hoist sail and bask in 
 the smiles of the damsels of the Thracian coast. 
 The Lemnian women, to avoid any legal difficul- 
 ties, such as arise nowadays when a woman asserts 
 her right to slay her partner, killed all their hus- 
 bands, and set up an Amazonian state which they 
 maintained with pride and splendor, permitting no 
 man to set foot on the island. In time this abso- 
 lute freedom became a little tedious, and when the 
 Argonauts came that way, the women advanced to 
 meet the heroes with garlands, and brought them 
 wine and food. This conduct pleased the Argo- 
 nauts, who made Lemnos their headquarters and 
 celebrated there many a festive combat. Their 
 descendants, the Minyae, were afterwards over- 
 come by the Pelasgians, from Attica, who, remem- 
 bering with regret the beautiful girls of their 
 home, returned and brought back with them the 
 willing and the lovely- But the children of the 
 Attic women took on airs over their superior birth,
 
 476 TO THE ACROPOLIS 
 
 which the Pelasgian women resented, and the lat= 
 ter finally removed all cause of dispute by murder- 
 ing all the mothers of Attica and their offspring. 
 These events gave the ladies of Lemnos a formid- 
 able reputation in the ancient world, and furnish 
 an illustration of what society would be without 
 the refining and temperate influence of man. 
 
 To the northward lifted itself the bare back of 
 Samothrace, and beyond the dim outline of Thasos, 
 ancient gold-island, the home of the poet Archilo- 
 chus, one of the few Grecian islands which still 
 retain something of their pristine luxuriance of 
 vegetation, where the songs of innumerable night- 
 ingales invite to deep, flowery valleys. Beyond 
 Thasos is the Thracian coast and Mt. Pangaus, 
 and at the foot of it Philippi, the Macedonian town 
 where republican Rome fought its last battle, 
 where Cassius leaned upon his sword-point, be- 
 lieving everything lost. Brutus transported the 
 body of his comrade to Thasos and raised for him 
 a funeral pyre ; and twenty days later, on the same 
 field, met again that spectre of death which had 
 summoned him to Philippi. It was only eleven 
 years after this victory of the Imperial power that 
 a greater triumph was won at Philippi, when Paul 
 and Silas, cast into prison, sang praises unto God 
 at midnight, and an earthquake shook the house 
 and opened the prison doors. 
 
 In the afternoon we came in sight of snowy Mt. 
 Athos, an almost perpendicular limestone rock, 
 rising nearly six thousand four hundred feet out 
 of the sea. The slender promontory which this
 
 MT. ATHOS 477 
 
 magnificent mountain terminates is forty miles 
 long and has an average breadth of only four miles. 
 The ancient canal of Xerxes quite severed it from 
 the mainland. The peninsula, level at the canal, 
 is a jagged stretch of mountains (seamed by 
 chasms), which rise a thousand, two thousand, four 
 thousand feet, and at last front the sea with the 
 sublime peak of Athos, the site of the most con- 
 spicuous beacon-fire of Agamemnon. The entire 
 promontory is, and has been since the time of Con- 
 stantine, ecclesiastic ground ; every mountain and 
 valley has its convent; besides the twenty great 
 monasteries are many pious retreats. All the sects 
 of the Greek Church are here represented; the 
 communities pay a tribute to the Sultan, but the 
 government is in the hands of four presidents, 
 chosen by the synod, which holds weekly sessions 
 and takes the presidents, yearly, from the monas- 
 teries in rotation. Since their foundation these re- 
 ligious houses have maintained against Christians 
 and Saracens an almost complete independence, 
 and preserved in their primitive simplicity the 
 manners and usages of the earliest foundations. 
 Here, as nowhere else in Europe or Asia, can one 
 behold the architecture, the dress, the habits of the 
 Middle Agfcs. The good devotees have been able 
 to keep themselves thus in the darkness and sim- 
 plicity of the past by a rigorous exclusion of tho 
 sex always impatient of monotony, to which all the 
 changes of the world are due. No woman, from 
 the beginning till now, has ever been permitted to 
 set foot on the peninsula. Nor is this all; no
 
 478 TO THE ACROPOLIS 
 
 female animal is suffered on the holy mountain, 
 not even a hen. I suppose, though I do not know, 
 that the monks have an inspector of eggs, whose 
 inherited instincts of aversion to the feminine gen- 
 der enable him to detect and reject all those in 
 which lurk the dangerous sex. Few of the monks 
 eat meat, half the days of the year are fast days, 
 they practice occasionally abstinence from food for 
 two or three days, reducing their pulses to the fee- 
 blest beating, and subduing their bodies to a point 
 that destroys their value even as spiritual taberna- 
 cles. The united community is permitted to keep 
 a guard of fifty Christian soldiers, and the only 
 Moslem on the island is the solitary Turkish officer 
 who represents the Sultan; his position cannot 
 be one generally coveted by the Turks, since the 
 society of women is absolutely denied him. The 
 libraries of Mt. Athos are full of unarranged man- 
 uscripts, which are probably mainly filled with the 
 theologic rubbish of the controversial ages, and can 
 scarcely be expected to yield again anything so 
 valuable as the Tischendorf Scriptures. 
 
 At sunset we were close under Mt. Athos, and 
 could distinguish the buildings of the Laura Con- 
 vent, amid the woods beneath the frowning cliff. 
 And now was produced the apparition of a sunset, 
 with this towering mountain cone for a centre- 
 piece, that surpassed all our experience and im- 
 agination. The sea was like satin for smoothness, 
 absolutely v/aveless, and shone with the colors of 
 changeable silk, blue, green, pink, and amethyst. 
 Heavy clouds gathered about the sun, and from
 
 THESSALONICA 479 
 
 behind them he exhibited burning spectacles, mag- 
 nificent fireworks, vast shadow-pictures, scarlet 
 cities, and gigantic figures stalking across the sky. 
 From one crater of embers he shot up a fan-like 
 flame that spread to the zenith and was reflected 
 on the water. His rays lay along the sea in pink, 
 and the water had the sheen of iridescent glass. 
 The whole sea for leagues was like this ; even Lem- 
 nos and Samothrace lay in a dim pink and purple 
 light in the east. There were vast clouds in huge 
 walls, with towers and battlements, and in all fan- 
 tastic shapes, one a gigantic cat with a preter- 
 natural tail, a cat of doom four degrees long. All 
 this was piled about Mt. Athos, with its sharp 
 summit of snow, its dark sides of rock. 
 
 It is a pity that the sounding and somewhat 
 sacred name of Thessalonica has been abbreviated 
 to Salonica; it might better have reverted to its 
 ancient name of Therma, which distinguished the 
 Macedonian capital up to the time of Alexander. 
 In the early morning we were lying before the city, 
 and were told that we should stay till midnight, 
 waiting for the mail. From whence a mail was 
 expected I do not know; the traveler who sails 
 these seas with a cargo of ancient history resents 
 in these classic localities such attempts to imitate 
 modern fashions. Were the Dardanians or the 
 Mesians to send us letters in a leathern bag? We 
 were prepared for a summons from Calo-John, at 
 the head of his wild barbarians, to surrender the 
 city; and we should have liked to see Boniface, 
 Marquis of Montferrat and King of Thessalonica,
 
 480 TO THE ACROPOLIS 
 
 issue from the fortress above the town, the shields 
 and lances of his little band of knights shining in 
 the sun, and answer in person the insolent demand. 
 We were prepared to see the troop return, having 
 left the head of Boniface in the possession of Calo- 
 John; and if our captain had told us that the 
 steamer would wait to attend the funeral of the 
 Bulgarian chief himself, which occurred not long- 
 after the encounter with Boniface, we should have 
 thought it natural. 
 
 The city lies on a fine bay and presents an at- 
 tractive appearance from the harbor, rising up the 
 hill in the form of an amphitheatre. On all sides, 
 except the sea, ancient walls surround it, fortified 
 at the angles by large round towers and crowned in 
 the centre, on the hill, by a respectable citadel. I 
 suppose that portions of these walls are of Hellenic 
 and perhaps Pelasgic date, but the most are prob- 
 ably of the time of the Latin crusaders' occupation, 
 patched and repaired by Saracens and Turks. We 
 had come to Thessalonica on St. Paul's account, not 
 expecting to see much that would excite us, and we 
 were not disappointed. When we went ashore we 
 found ourselves in a city of perhaps sixty thousand 
 inhabitants, commonplace in aspect, although its 
 bazaars are well filled with European goods, and 
 a fair display of Oriental stuffs and antiquities, 
 and animated by considerable briskness of trade. 
 I presume there are more Jews here than there 
 were in Paul's time, but Turks and Greeks, in 
 nearly equal numbers, form the bulk of the popu- 
 lation.
 
 THE JEWS OF SALONICA 481 
 
 In modern Salonica there is not much respect 
 for pagan antiquities, and one sees only the usual 
 fragments of columns and sculptures worked into 
 walls or incorporated in Christian churches. But 
 those curious in early Byzantine architecture will 
 find more to interest them here than in any place 
 in the world except Constantinople. We spent 
 the day wandering about the city, under the guid- 
 ance of a young Jew, who was without either pre- 
 judices or information. On our way to the Mosque 
 of St. Sophia, we passed through the quarter of 
 the Jews, which is much cleaner than is usual with 
 them. These are the descendants of Spanish Jews, 
 who were expelled by Isabella, and they still re- 
 tain, in a corrupt form, the language of Spain. 
 In the doors and windows were many pretty Jew- 
 esses; banishment and vicissitude appear to agree 
 with this elastic race, for in all the countries of 
 Europe Jewish women develop more beauty in form 
 and feature than in Palestine. We saw here and 
 in other parts of the city a novel head-dress, which 
 may commend itself to America in the revolutions 
 of fashion. A great mass of hair, real or as- 
 sumed, was gathered into a long, slender green 
 bag, which hung down the back and was termi- 
 nated by a heavy fringe of silver. Otherwise, the 
 dress of the Jewish women does not differ much 
 from that of the men; the latter wear a fez or 
 turban, and a tunic which reaches to the ankles, 
 and is bound about the waist by a gay sash or 
 shawl. 
 
 The Mosque of St. Sophia, once a church, and
 
 482 TO THE ACROPOLIS 
 
 copied in its proportions and style from its name- 
 sake in Constantinople, is retired, in a delightful 
 court, shaded by gigantic trees and cheered by a 
 fountain. So peaceful a spot we had not seen in 
 many a day; birds sang in the trees without dis- 
 turbing the calm of the meditative pilgrim. In 
 the portico and also in the interior are noble col- 
 umns of marble and verd-antique, and in the dome 
 is a wonderfully quaint mosaic of the Transfigu- 
 ration. We were shown also a magnificent pulpit 
 of the latter beautiful stone, cut from a solid block, 
 in which it is said St. Paul preached. As the 
 Apostle, according to his custom, reasoned with 
 the people out of the Scriptures in a synagogue, 
 and this church was not built for centuries after 
 his visit, the statement needs confirmation;- but 
 pious ingenuity suggests that the pulpit stood in a 
 subterranean church underneath this. I should 
 like to believe that Paul sanctified this very spot 
 with his presence ; but there is little in its quiet 
 seclusion to remind one of him who had the repu- 
 tation, when he was in Thessalonica, of one of 
 those who turn the world upside down. Paul had 
 a great affection for the brethren of this city, in 
 spite of his rough usage here, for he mingles few 
 reproaches in his fervent commendations of their 
 faith, and comforts them with the assurance of a 
 speedy release from the troubles of this world, and 
 the certainty that while they are yet alive they will 
 be caught up into the clouds to meet the Lord in 
 the air. Happily the Apostle could not pierce the 
 future and see the dissensions, the schisinc, the
 
 PAUL'S PULPIT 483 
 
 corruptions and calamities of the church in the 
 succeeding centuries, nor know that near this spot, 
 in the Imperial Hippodrome, the sedition of the 
 citizens would one day be punished by the massa- 
 cre of ninety thousand, one of the few acts of 
 inhumanity which stains the clemency and the 
 great name of Theodosius. And it would have 
 passed even the belief of the Apostle to the Gen- 
 tiles could he have foreseen that, in eighteen cen- 
 turies, this pulpit would be exhibited to curious 
 strangers from a distant part of the globe, of 
 which he never heard, where the doctrines of Paul 
 are the bulwark of the church and the stamina of 
 the government, by a descendant of Abraham who 
 confessed that he did not know who Paiil was. 
 
 The oldest church in the city is now the Mosque 
 of St. George, built about the year 400, if indeed 
 it was not transformed from a heathen temple ; its 
 form is that of the Roman Pantheon. The dome 
 was once covered with splendid mosaics; enough 
 remains of the architectural designs, the brilliant 
 peacocks and bright blue birds, to show what the 
 ancient beauty was, but the walls of the mosque 
 are white and barn-like. Religions inherit each 
 other's edifices in the East without shame, and we 
 found in the Mosque of Eske Djuma the remains 
 of a temple of Venus, and columns of ancient 
 Grecian work worthy of the best days of Athens. 
 The most perfect basilica is now the Mosque of St. 
 Demetrius (a name sacred to the Greeks'), which 
 contains his tomb. It is a five-aisled basilica; 
 about the gallery, over the pillars of the centre
 
 484 TO THE ACROPOLIS 
 
 aisle, are some fine mosaics of marble, beautiful 
 in design and color. The Moslems have spoiled 
 the exquisite capitals of the pillars by painting 
 them, and have destroyed the effect of the aisles by 
 twisting the pulpit and prayer-niche away from 
 the apse, in the direction of Mecca. We noticed, 
 however, a relaxation of bigotry at all these 
 mosques : we were permitted to enter without tak- 
 ing off our shoes ; and, besides ' the figures of 
 Christian art left in the mosaics, we saw some 
 Moslem pictures, among them rude paintings of 
 the holy city Mecca. 
 
 On our way to the citadel we stopped to look at 
 the Arch of Constantino before the Gate of Cas- 
 sander, a shabby ruin, with four courses of de- 
 faced figures, carved in marble, and representing 
 the battles and triumphs of a Roman general. 
 Fortunately for the reader, we did not visit all the 
 thirty-seven churches of the city; but we made 
 the acquaintance in a Greek church, which is 
 adorned with quaint Byzantine paintings, of St. 
 Palema, who lies in public repose, in a coffin of 
 exquisite silver filigree-work, while his skull is in- 
 closed in solid silver and set with rubies and emer- 
 alds. This may please St. Palema, but death is 
 never so ghastly as when it is adorned with jewelry 
 that becomes cheap in its presence. 
 
 The view from the citadel, which embraces the 
 Gulf of Salonica and Mt. Olympus, the veritable 
 heaven of the Grecian pantheon, and Mt. Ossa 
 and Mt. Pelion, piercing the blue with their snow- 
 summits, is grand enough to repay the ascent ; and
 
 THE GREEK HEAVEN 485 
 
 there is a noble walk along the wall above the town. 
 In making my roundabout way through modern 
 streets back to the bazaars, I encountered a num- 
 ber of negro women, pure Africans, who had the 
 air and carriage of the aristocracy of the place ; 
 they rejoiced in the gay attire which the natives 
 of the South love, and their fine figures and inde- 
 pendent bearing did not speak of servitude. 
 
 This Thessalonica was doubtless a healthful and 
 attractive place at the time Cicero chose to pass a 
 portion of his exile here, but it has now a bad 
 reputation for malaria, which extends to all the 
 gulf, the malaria seems everywhere to have been 
 one of the consequences of the fall of the Roman 
 Empire. The handbook recommends the locality 
 for its good "shooting;" but if there is any part 
 of the Old World that needs rest from arms, I 
 think it is this highway of ancient and modern 
 conquerors and invaders. 
 
 In the evening, when the lights of the town and 
 the shore were reflected in the water, and a full 
 moon hung in the sky, we did not regret our delay. 
 The gay Thessalonians, ignorant of the Epistles, 
 were rowing about the harbor, circling round and 
 round the steamer, beating the darabouka drum, 
 and singing in that nasal whine which passes for 
 music all over the East. And, indeed, on such a 
 night it is not without its effect upon a sentimental 
 mind. 
 
 At early light of a cloudless morning we were 
 going easily down the Gulf of Thermae or Salonica, 
 having upon our right the Pierian plain; and I
 
 486 TO THE ACROPOLIS 
 
 tried to distinguish the two mounds which mark 
 the place of the great battle near Pydna, one hun- 
 dred and sixty-eight years before Christ, between 
 jEmilius Paulus and King Perseus, which gave 
 Macedonia to the Roman Empire. Beyond, almost 
 ten thousand feet in the air, towered Olympus, 
 upon whose "broad" summit Homer displays the 
 ethereal palaces and inaccessible abode of the Gre- 
 cian gods. Shaggy forests still clothe its sides, 
 but snow now, and for the greater part of the year, 
 covers the wide surface of the height, which is a 
 sterile, light-colored rock. The gods did not want 
 snow to cool the nectar at their banquets. This 
 is the very centre of the mythologic world ; there 
 between Olympus and Ossa is the Vale of Tempe, 
 where the Peneus, breaking through a narrow 
 gorge fringed with the sacred laurel, reaches the 
 gulf south of ancient Heracleum. Into this charm- 
 ing but secluded retreat the gods and goddesses, 
 weary of the icy air, or the Pumblechookian de- 
 portment of the court of Olympian Jove, descended 
 to pass the sunny hours with the youths and maid- 
 ens of mortal mould ; through this defile marks of 
 chariot-wheels still attest the passages of armies 
 which flowed either way, in invasion or retreat; 
 and here Pompey, after a ride of forty miles from 
 the fatal field of Pharsalia, quenched his thirst. 
 Did the Greeks really believe that the gods dwelt 
 on this mountain in clouds and snow? Did Bald- 
 win II. believe that he sold, and Louis IX. of 
 France that he bought, for ten thousand marks of 
 silver, at Constantinople, in the thirteenth cen-
 
 THE AEGEAN ISLANDS 487 
 
 tury, the veritable crown of thorns that the Saviour 
 wore in the judgment-hall of Pilate? 
 
 At six o'clock the Cape of Posilio was on our 
 left, we were sinking Olympus in the white haze 
 of morning, Ossa in its huge silver bulk was near 
 us, and Pelion stretched its long white back below. 
 The sharp cone of Ossa might well ride upon the 
 extended back of Pelion, and it seems a pity that 
 the Titans did not succeed in their attempt. We 
 were leaving, and looking our last on the Thracian 
 coasts, once rimmed from Mt. Athos to the Bos- 
 phorus with a wreath of prosperous cities. What 
 must once have been the splendor of the ^Egean 
 Sea and its islands, when every island was the seat 
 of a vigorous state, and every harbor the site of a 
 commercial town which sent forth adventurous gal- 
 leys upon any errand of trade or conquest I Since 
 the fall of Constantinople, these coasts and islands 
 have been stripped and neglected by Turkish ava- 
 rice and improvidence, and perhaps their naked 
 aspect is attributable more to the last owners than 
 to all the preceding possessors ; it remained for the 
 Turk to exhaust Nature herself, and to accomplish 
 that ruin, that destruction of peoples, which cer- 
 tainly not the Athenian, the Roman, or the Mace- 
 donian accomplished, to destroy that which sur- 
 vived the contemptible Byzantines and escaped 
 the net of the pillaging Christian crusaders. Yet 
 it needs only repose, the confidence of the protec- 
 tion of industry, and a spirit of toleration, which 
 the Greeks must learn as well as the Turks, that 
 the traveler in the beginning of the next century
 
 488 TO THE ACROPOLIS 
 
 may behold in the Archipelago the paradise of the 
 world. 
 
 We sailed along by the peninsula of Magnesia, 
 which separates the .ZEgean from the Bay of Pa- 
 gasseus, and hinders us from seeing the plains of 
 Thessaly, where were trained the famous cavalry, 
 the perfect union of horse and man that gave rise 
 to the fable of centaurs; the same conception of 
 double prowess which our own early settlers exag- 
 gerated in the notion that the Kentuckian was half 
 horse and half alligator. Just before we entered 
 the group of lovely Sporades, we looked down the 
 long narrow inlet to the Bay of Maliacus, and saw 
 the sharp snow-peaks of Mt. CEta, at the foot of 
 which are the marsh and hot springs of Thermo- 
 pylae. We passed between Skiathos and Skopelos, 
 steep, rocky islands, well wooded and enlivened 
 with villages perched on the hillsides, and both 
 draped in lovely color. In the strait between 
 Skiathos and Magnesia the Greek vessels made 
 a stand against the Persians, until the defeat 
 at Thermopylae compelled a retreat to Salamis. 
 The monks of the Middle Ages, who had an eye 
 for a fertile land, covered the little island with 
 monasteries, of which one only now remains. Its 
 few inhabitants are chiefly sailors, and to-day it 
 would be wholly without fame were it not for the 
 beauty of its women. Skopelos, which is larger, 
 has a population of over six thousand, indus- 
 trious people who cultivate the olive and produce 
 a good red wine, that they export in their own 
 vessels,
 
 EUBCEA AND THE SPORADES 489 
 
 Nearly all day we sailed outside and along Eu- 
 boea; and the snow dusting its high peaks and 
 lonely ravines was a not unwelcome sight, for the 
 day was warm, oppressively so even at sea. All 
 the elements lay in a languid truce. Before it 
 was hidden by Skopelos, Mt. Athos again as- 
 serted its lordship over these seas, more gigantic 
 than when we were close to it, the sun striking the 
 snow on its face (it might be the Whiteface of the 
 Adirondacks, except that it is piled up more like 
 the Matterhorn), while the base, bathed in a silver 
 light, was indistinguishable from the silver water 
 out of which it rose. The islands were all purple, 
 the shores silver, and the sea around us deeply 
 azure. What delicious color ! 
 
 Perhaps it was better to coast along the Eu- 
 boean land and among the Sporades, clothed in 
 our minds with the historic hues which the atmos- 
 phere reproduced to our senses, than to break the 
 dream by landing, to find only broken fragments 
 where cities once were, and a handful of fishermen 
 or shepherds the only inheritors of the homes of 
 heroes. We should find nothing on Ikos, except 
 rabbits and a hundred or two of fishers, perhaps 
 not even the grave .of Peleus, the father of 
 Achilles; and the dozen little rocky islets near, 
 which some giant in sportive mood may have tossed 
 into the waves, would altogether scarcely keep 
 from famine a small flock of industrious sheep. 
 Skyros, however, has not forgotten its ancient fer- 
 tility; the well-watered valleys, overlooked by bold 
 mountains and rocky peaks (upon one of which
 
 490 TO THE ACROPOLIS. 
 
 stood "the lofty Skyros" of Homer's song), still 
 bear corn and wine, tlie fig and the olive, the 
 orange and the lemon, as in the days when 
 Achilles, in woman's apparel, was hidden among 
 the maidens in the gardens of King Lycomedes. 
 The mountains are clothed with oaks, beeches, firs, 
 and plane-trees. Athens had a peculiar affection 
 for Skyros, for it was there that Cymon found the 
 bones of Theseus, and transported them thence to 
 the temple of the hero, where they were deposited 
 with splendid obsequies, ^Eschylus and Sophocles 
 adding to the festivities the friendly rivalry of a 
 dramatic contest. In those days everything was 
 for the state and nothing for the man ; and nat- 
 urally such is the fruit of self-abnegation 
 the state was made immortal by the genius of its 
 men. 
 
 Of the three proud flagstaffs erected in front of 
 St. Mark's, one, for a long time, bore the banner 
 of Eubosa, or Negropont, symbol of the Venetian 
 sovereignty for nearly three centuries over this 
 island, which for four centuries thereafter was to 
 be cursed by the ascendency of the crescent. 
 From the outer shore one "can form little notion of 
 the extraordinary fertility of this land, and we al- 
 most regretted that a rough sea had not driven us 
 to take the inner passage, by Boeotia and through 
 the narrow Euripus, where the Venetian -built town 
 and the Lion of St. Mark occupy and guard the 
 site of ancient Chalkis. The Turks made the 
 name of Negropont odious to the world, but with 
 the restoration of the Grecian nationality the an-
 
 THE CYCLADES 491 
 
 cient name is restored, and slowly, Euboea, spoiled 
 by the Persians, trampled by Macedonians and 
 Romans, neglected by Justinian (the depopulator 
 of the Eastern Empire), drained by the Venetians, 
 blighted by the Osmanlis, is beginning to attract 
 the attention of capital and travel, by its unequaled 
 fertility and its almost unequaled scenery. 
 
 Romance, mythology, and history start out of 
 the waves on either hand ; at twilight we were en- 
 tering the Cyclades, and beginning to feel the yet 
 enduring influence of a superstition which so min- 
 gled itself with the supremest art and culture, that 
 after two thousand years its unreal creations are 
 nearly as mighty as ever in the realms of poetry 
 and imagination. These islands are still under 
 the spell of genius, and we cannot, if we would, 
 view them except through the medium of poetic 
 history. I suppose that the island of Andros, 
 which is cultivated largely by Albanians, an Illy- 
 rian race, having nothing in common with the an- 
 cient lonians, would little interest us ; if we cared 
 to taste its wine, it would be because it was once 
 famous throughout Greece, and if we visited the 
 ruins of its chief city, it woidd be to recall an an- 
 ecdote of Herodotus: when Themistocles besieged 
 the town and demanded tribute, because the An- 
 drians had been compelled to join the fleet of 
 Xerxes at Salamis, and threatened them with the 
 two mighty deities of Athens, Persuasion and 
 Necessity, the spirited islanders replied that they 
 were protected by two churlish gods, Poverty and 
 Inability.
 
 492 TO THE ACROPOLIS 
 
 It was eleven o'clock at night when we sailed 
 between Keos and Helena, the latter a long barren 
 strip that seems never to have been inhabited at 
 all, except from the tradition that Helen once 
 landed there; but Keos, and its old town of lulis, 
 was the home of legends and poets, and famous for 
 its code of laws, one of which tended to banish 
 sickness and old age from its precincts, by a pro- 
 vision that every man above sixty should end his 
 life by poison. Its ancient people had a reputa- 
 tion for purity and sobriety, which was probably 
 due to the hegira of the nymphs, who were fright- 
 ened away to the mainland by a roaring lion. The 
 colossal image of the lion is still to be seen in mar- 
 ble near the ruins of the old city. The island of 
 the Cyclades which we should have liked most to 
 tread, but did not see, is Delos, the holy, the reli- 
 gious and political centre of the Greek confeder- 
 ation, the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, the 
 seat of the oracle, second only to that of Delphi, 
 the diminutive and now almost deserted rock, 
 shaken and sunken by repeated earthquakes, once 
 crowned with one of the most magnificent temples 
 of antiquity, the spot of pilgrimage, the arena of 
 games and mystic dances and poetic contests, and 
 of the joyous and solemn festivities of the Delian 
 Apollo. 
 
 We were too late to see, though we sat long on 
 deck and watched for it by the aid of a full moon, 
 the white Doric columns of the temple of Minerva 
 on Sunium, which are visible by daylight a long 
 distance at sea. The ancient mariners, who came
 
 THE TEMPLE OF MINERVA 493 
 
 from Delos or from a more adventurous voyage into 
 the .ZEgean, beheld here, at the portals of Attica, 
 the temple of its tutelary deity, a welcome and a 
 beacon; and as they shifted their sails to round 
 the cape, they might have seen the shining helmet 
 of the goddess herself, the lofty statue of Mi- 
 nerva Promachus on the Acropolis.
 
 XXVIII 
 
 ATHENS 
 
 N the thought of the least classical 
 reader, Attica occupies a space almost 
 as large as the rest of the world. He 
 hopes that it will broaden on his sight 
 as it does in his imagination, although he knows 
 that it is only two thirds as large as the little 
 State of Rhode Island. But however reason may 
 modify enthusiasm, the diminutive scale on which 
 everything is drawn is certain to disappoint the 
 first view of the reality. Who, he asks, has made 
 this little copy of the great Athenian picture ? 
 
 When we came upon deck early in the morning, 
 the steamer lay in the land-locked harbor of the 
 peninsula of Piraeus. It is a round, deep, pretty 
 harbor; several merchant and small vessels lay 
 there, a Greek and an Austrian steamer, and a 
 war-vessel, and the scene did not lack a look of 
 prosperous animation. About the port clusters 
 a well- to-do- village of some ten thousand inhab- 
 itants, many of whom dwell in handsome houses. 
 It might be an American town ; it is too new to be 
 European. There, at the entrance of the harbor, 
 on a low projecting rock, are some ruins of col-
 
 495 
 
 umns, said to mark the tomb of Themistocles ; 
 sometimes the water nearly covers the rock. There 
 could be no more fitting resting-place for the great 
 commander than this, in sight of the strait of Sa- 
 lamis, and washed by the waves that tossed the 
 broken and flying fleet of Xerxes. Beyond is the 
 Bay of Phalerum, the more ancient seaport of 
 the little state. And there how small it seems ! 
 is the plain of Athens, inclosed by Hymettus, 
 Pentelicns, and Panics. This rocky peninsula of 
 Piraeus, which embraced three small harbors, was 
 fortified by Themistocles with strong walls that 
 extended, in parallel lines, five miles to Athens. 
 Between them ran the great carriage-road, and I 
 suppose the whole distance was a street of gardens 
 and houses. 
 
 A grave commissionnaire, I do not know but 
 he would call himself an embassy, from one of 
 the hotels of Athens, came off and quietly took 
 charge of us. On our way to the shore with our 
 luggage, a customs officer joined us and took a seat 
 in the boat. For this polite attention on the part 
 of the government our plenipotentiary sent by the 
 officer (who did not open the trunks) three francs 
 to the treasury; but I do not know if it ever 
 reached its destination. We shunned the ignoble 
 opportunity of entering the classic city by rail, and 
 were soon whirling along the level and dusty road 
 which follows the course of the ancient Long Wall. 
 Even at this early hour the day had become very 
 warm, and the shade of the poplar-trees, which 
 line the road nearly all the way, was grateful.
 
 496 ATHENS 
 
 The fertile fields had yet the freshness of spring, 
 and were gay with scarlet poppies ; the vines were 
 thrifty. The near landscape was Italian in char- 
 acter : there was little peculiar in the costumes of 
 the people whom we met walking beside their mar- 
 ket-wagons or saw laboring in the gardens ; tur= 
 bans, fezzes, flowing garments of white and blue 
 and yellow, all had vanished, and we felt that we 
 were out of the Orient and about to enter a mod- 
 ern city. At a half-way inn, where we stopped 
 to water the horses, there was an hostler in the 
 Albanian, or, as it is called, the Grecian national 
 costume, wearing the fustanella and the short 
 jacket; but the stiff white petticoat was rumpled 
 and soiled, and I fancied he was somewhat ashamed 
 of the half-womanly attire, and shrank from in- 
 spection, like an actor in harlequin dress, surprised 
 by daylight outside the theatre. 
 
 This sheepish remnant of the picturesque could 
 not preserve for us any illusions ; the roses bloom- 
 ing by the wayside we knew ; the birds singing in 
 the fields we had heard before ; the commission- 
 naire persisted in pointing out the evidences of im- 
 provement. But we burned with a secret fever; 
 we were impatient even of the grateful avenue of 
 trees that hid what we at every moment expected 
 to see. I do not envy him who without agitation 
 approaches for the first time, and feels that he is 
 about to look upon the Acropolis ! There are three 
 supreme sensations, not twice to be experienced, 
 for the traveler : when he is about to behold the 
 ancient seats of art, of discipline, of religion,
 
 FIRST VIEW OF THE ACROPOLIS 497 
 
 Athens, Rome, Jerusalem. But it is not possible 
 for the reality to equal the expectation. "There!" 
 cried the commissionnaire, "is the Acropolis!" 
 A small oblong hill lifting itself some three hun- 
 dred and fifty feet above the city, its sides upheld 
 by walls, its top shining with marble, an isolated 
 fortress in appearance ! The bulk of the city lies 
 to the north of the Acropolis, and grows round to 
 the east of it along the valley of the Ilissus. 
 
 In five minutes more we had caught a glimpse 
 of the new excavations of the Keramicus, the an- 
 cient cemetery, and of the old walls on our left, 
 and were driving up the straight broad Hermes 
 Street towards the palace. Midway in the centre 
 of the street is an ancient Byzantine church, which 
 we pass round. Hermes Street is intersected by 
 ^olus Street; these two cut the city like a Greek 
 cross, and all other streets flow into them. The 
 shops along the way are European, the people in 
 the streets are European in dress; the cafes, the 
 tables in front of hotels and restaurants, with their 
 groups of loungers, suggest Paris by reminding 
 one of Brussels. Athens, built of white stone, 
 not yet mellowed by age, is new, bright, clean, 
 cheerful ; the broad streets are in the uninteresting 
 style of the new part of Munich, and due to the 
 same Bavarian influence. If Ludvvig I. did not 
 succeed in making Munich look like Athens, Otho 
 was more fortunate in giving Athens a resemblance 
 to Munich. And we were almost ashamed to 
 confess how pleasant it appeared, after our long 
 experience of the tumble-down Orient.
 
 498 ATHENS 
 
 We alighted at our hotel on the palace place, 
 ascended steps decked with flowering plants, and 
 entered cool apartments looking upon the square, 
 which is surrounded with handsome buildings, 
 planted with native and exotic trees, and laid out 
 in walks and beds of flowers. To the right rises 
 the plain facade of the royal residence, having be- 
 hind it a magnificent garden, where the pine rustles 
 to the palm, and a thousand statues revive the 
 dead mythology; beyond rises the singular cone 
 of Lycabettus. Commendable foresight is plant- 
 ing the principal streets with trees, the shade of 
 which is much needed in the long, dry, and parch- 
 ing summer. 
 
 From the side windows we looked also over the 
 roofs to the Acropolis, which we were impatient 
 and yet feared to approach. For myself, I felt 
 like deferring the decisive moment, playing with 
 my imagination, lingering about among things I 
 did not greatly care for, whetting impatience and 
 desire by restraining them, and postponing yet a 
 little the realization of the dream of so many years, 
 to stand at the centre of the world's thought, 
 at the spring of its ideal beauty. While my com- 
 panions rested from the fatigue of our sea voyage, 
 I went into the street and walked southward to- 
 wards the Ilissus. The air was bright and spar- 
 kling, the sky deep blue like that of Egypt, the 
 hills sharp and clear in every outline, and star- 
 tlingly near ; the long reach of Hymettus wears ever 
 a purple robe, which nature has given it in place 
 of its pine forests. Travelers from Constantinople
 
 THE QUADRENNIAL EXPOSITION 499 
 
 complained of the heat, but I found it inspiring; 
 the air had no languor in it; this was the very 
 joyous Athens I had hoped to see. 
 
 When you take up the favorite uncut periodical 
 of the month, you like to skirmish about the ad- 
 vertisements and tease yourself with dipping in 
 here and there before you plunge into the serial 
 novel. It was absurd, but my first visit in Athens 
 was to the building of the Quadrennial Exposition 
 of the Industry and Art of Greece, a long, 
 painted wooden structure, decked with flags, and 
 called, I need not say, the Olympium. To enter 
 this imitation of a country fair at home, was the 
 rudest shock one could give to the sentiment of 
 antiquity, and perhaps a dangerous experiment, 
 however strong in the mind might be the sub-tone 
 of Acropolis. The Greek gentleman who accom- 
 panied me said that the exhibition was a great 
 improvement over the one four years before. It 
 was, in fact, a very hopeful sign of the prosperity 
 of the new state ; there was a good display of ce- 
 reals and fruits, of silk and of jewelry, and various 
 work in gold and silver, the latter all from 
 Corfu ; but from the specimens of the fine arts, in 
 painting and sculpture, I think the ancient Greeks 
 have not much to fear or to hope from the mod- 
 ern; and the books, in printing and binding, were 
 rude enough. But the specimens from the mines 
 and quarries of Greece could not be excelled else- 
 where; the hundred varieties of exquisite marbles 
 detained us long; there were some polished blocks, 
 lovely in color, and you might almost say in
 
 500 ATHENS 
 
 design, that you would like to frame and hang as 
 pictures on the wall. Another sign of the deca- 
 dence of the national costume, perhaps more sig- 
 nificant than its disappearance in the streets, was 
 its exhibition here upon lay figures. I saw a coun- 
 tryman who wore it sneaking round one of these 
 figures, and regarding it with the curiosity of a 
 savage who for the first time sees himself in a mir- 
 ror. Since the revolution the Albanian has been 
 adopted as the Grecian costume, in default of any- 
 thing more characteristic, and perhaps because it 
 would puzzle one to say of what race the person 
 calling himself a modern Greek is. But the ri- 
 diculous fustanella is nearly discarded ; it is both 
 inconvenient and costly ; to make one of the proper 
 fullness requires forty yards of cotton cloth; this 
 is gathered at the waist, and hangs in broad pleats 
 to the knees, and it is starched so stiffly that it 
 stands out like a half -open Chinese umbrella. As 
 the garment cannot be worn when it is the least 
 soiled, and must be done up and starched two or 
 three times a week, the wearer finds it an expen- 
 sive habit ; and in the whole outfit the jacket and 
 sleeves may be a reminiscence of defensive armor 
 he has the appearance of a landsknecht above 
 and a ballet-girl below. 
 
 Nearly as rare in the streets as this dress are 
 the drooping red caps with tassels of blue. The 
 women of Athens whom we saw would not take 
 a premium anywhere for beauty ; but we noticed 
 here and there one who wore upon her dark locks 
 the long hanging red fez and gold tassel, who
 
 THE MODERN GREEKS 501 
 
 might have attracted the eye of a roving poet, and 
 been passed down to the next age as the Maid of 
 Athens. The Athenian men of the present are a 
 fine race ; we were constantly surprised by noble 
 forms and intelligent faces. That they are Greek 
 in feature or expression, as we know the Greek 
 from coins and statuary, we could not say. Per- 
 haps it was only the ancient Lacedemonian rivalry 
 that prompted the remark of a gentleman in 
 Athens, who was born in Sparta, that there is not 
 a drop of the ancient Athenian blood in Athens. 
 There are some patrician families in the city who 
 claim this honorable descent, but it is probable 
 that Athens is less Greek than any other town in 
 the kingdom; and that if there remain any Hel- 
 lenic descendants, they must be sought in remote 
 districts of the Morea. If we trusted ourselves to 
 decide by types of face, we should say that the 
 present inhabitants of Athens were of Northern 
 origin, and that their relation to the Greeks was 
 no stronger than that of Englishmen to the ancient 
 Britons. ' That the people who now inhabit Attica 
 and the Peloponnesus are descendants of the Greeks 
 whom the Romans conquered, I suppose no one 
 can successfully claim; that they are all from the 
 Slavonians, who so long held and almost exclu- 
 sively occupied the Greek mainland, it is equally 
 difficult to prove. All we know is, that the Greek 
 language has survived the Byzantine anarchy, the 
 Slavonic conquest, the Frank occupation ; and that 
 the nimble wit, the acquisitiveness and inquisitive- 
 ness, the cunning and craft of the modern Greek,
 
 502 ATHENS 
 
 seem to be the perversion of the nobler and yet not 
 altogether dissimilar qualities which made the an- 
 cient Greeks the leaders of the human race. And 
 those who ascribe the character of a people to cli- 
 mate and geographical position may expect to see 
 the mongrel inheritors of the ancient soil moulded, 
 by the enduring influences of nature, into homo- 
 geneity, and reproduce in a measure a copy of that 
 splendid civilization of whose ruins they are now 
 unappreciative possessors. 
 
 Beyond the temporary Olympium, the eye is 
 caught by the Arch of Hadrian, and fascinated by 
 the towering Corinthian columns of the Olym- 
 picum or Temple of Jupiter. Against the back- 
 ground of Hymettus and the blue sky stood four- 
 teen of these beautiful columns, all that remain 
 of the original one hundred and twenty-four, but 
 enough to give us an impression of what was one 
 of the most stately buildings of antiquity. This 
 temple, which was begun by Pisistratus, was not 
 finished till Hadrian's time, or until the worship 
 of Jupiter had become cold and skeptical. The 
 columns stand upon a terrace overlooking the bed 
 of the Ilissus ; there coffee is served, and there we 
 more than once sat at sundown, and saw the vast 
 columns turn from rose to gray in the fading light. 
 
 Athens, like every other city of Europe in this 
 age of science and Christianity, was full of sol- 
 diers; we saw squads of them drilling here and 
 there, their uniforms sprinkled the streets and the 
 cafes, and their regimental bands enlivened the 
 town. The Greeks, like all the rest of us, are beat-
 
 THE ANTIQUITY DEALERS 503 
 
 ing their priming-hooks into spears and preparing 
 for the millennium. If there was not much that 
 is peculiar to interest us in wandering about among 
 the shops, and the so-called, but unroofed and not 
 real bazaars, there was much to astonish us in the 
 size and growth of a city of over fifty thousand in- 
 habitants, in forty years, from the heap of ruins 
 and ashes which the Turks left it. When the 
 venerable American missionaries, Dr. Hill and 
 his wife, came to the city, they were obliged to 
 find shelter in a portion of a ruined tower, and 
 they began their labors literally in a field of smok- 
 ing desolation. The only attractive shops are 
 those of the antiquity dealers, the collectors of 
 coins, vases, statuettes, and figurines. Of course 
 the extraordinary demand for these most exquisite 
 mementos of a race of artists has created a host of 
 imitations, and set an extravagant and fictitious 
 price upon most of the articles, a price which the 
 professor who lets you have a specimen as a favor, 
 or the dealer who calmly assumes that he has gath- 
 ered the last relics of antiquity, mentions with 
 equal equanimity. I looked in the face of a hand- 
 some graybeard, who asked me two thousand francs 
 for a silver coin, which he said was a Solon, to see 
 if there was any guile in his eye ; but there was 
 not. I cannot but hope that this race which has 
 learned to look honest will some time become so. 
 
 Late in the afternoon we walked around the 
 south side of the Acropolis, past the ruins of the- 
 atres that strew its side, and ascended by the car- 
 riage-road to the only entrance, at the southwest
 
 504 ATHENS 
 
 end of the hill, towards the Piraeus. We pass 
 through a gate pierced in the side wall, and come 
 to the front of the Propylaea, the noblest gateway 
 ever built. At the risk of offending the traveled, 
 I shall try in a paragraph to put the untraveled 
 reader in possession of the main features of this 
 glorious spot. 
 
 The Acropolis is an irregular oblong hill, the 
 somewhat uneven summit of which is about eleven 
 hundred feet long by four hundred and fifty feet 
 broad at its widest. The hill is steep on all sides, 
 and its final spring is perpendicular rock, in places 
 a hundred and fifty feet high. It is lowest at the 
 southwest end, where it dips down, and, by a rocky 
 neck, joins the Areopagus, or Mars Hill. Across 
 this end is built the Propylaea, high with reference 
 to the surrounding country, and commanding the 
 view, but low enough not to hide from a little dis- 
 tance the buildings on the summit. This building, 
 which is of the Doric order, and of pure Pentelic 
 marble, was the pride of the Athenians. Its en- 
 tire front is about one hundred and seventy feet; 
 this includes the central portico (pierced with five 
 entrances, the centre one for carriages) and the 
 forward projecting north and south wings. In the 
 north wing was the picture-gallery ; the south wing 
 was never completed to correspond, but the balance 
 is preserved by the little Temple of the Wingless 
 Victory, which from its ruins has been restored to 
 its original form and beauty. The Propylaea is 
 approached by broad flights of marble steps, which 
 were defended by fortifications on the slope of the
 
 THE PROPYI^EA 50o 
 
 hill. The distant reader may form a little concep- 
 tion of the original splendor of this gateway from 
 its cost, which was nearly two and a half millions 
 of dollars, and by remembering that it was built 
 under the direction of Pericles at a time when the 
 cost of a building represented its real value, and 
 not the profits of city officials and contractors. 
 
 Passing slowly between the columns, and with 
 many a backward glance over the historic land- 
 scape, lingering yet lest we should abruptly break 
 the spell, we came into the area. Straight before 
 us, up the red rock, ran the carriage-road, seamed 
 across with chisel-marks to prevent the horses' 
 hoofs from slipping, and worn in deep ruts by 
 heavy chariot- wheels. In the field before us a 
 mass of broken marble; on the right the creamy 
 columns of the Parthenon ; on the left the irregu- 
 lar but beautiful Ionic Erechtheum. The reader 
 sees that the entrance was contrived so that the 
 beholder's first view of the Parthenon should be 
 at the angle which best exhibits its exquisite pro- 
 }x>rtions. 
 
 We were alone. The soldier detailed to watch 
 that we did not carry off any of the columns sat 
 down upon a broken fragment by the entrance, and 
 let us wander at our will. I am Jiot sure that 
 I would, if I could, have the temples restored. 
 There is an indescribable pathos in these fragments 
 of columns and architraves and walls, in these 
 broken sculptures and marred inscriptions, which 
 time has softened to the loveliest tints, and in 
 these tottering- buildings, which no human skill, if
 
 506 ATHENS 
 
 it could restore the pristine beauty, could reani- 
 mate with the Greek idealism. 
 
 And yet, as we sat upon the western steps of the 
 temple dedicated to Pallas Athene, I could imag- 
 ine what this area was, say in the August days of 
 the great Panathenaic festival, when the gorgeous 
 procession, which I saw filing along the Via Sacra, 
 returning from Eleusis, swept up these broad steps, 
 garlanded with flowers and singing the hymn to 
 the protecting goddess. This platform was not 
 then a desolate stone heap, but peopled with almost 
 living statues in bronze and marble, the creations 
 of the genius of Phidias, of Praxiteles, of Lycius, 
 of Cleoetas, of Myron; there, between the two 
 great, temples, but overtopping them both, stood 
 the bronze figure of Minerva Promachus, cast by 
 Phidias out of the spoils of Marathon, whose glit- 
 tering helmet and spear -point gladdened the re- 
 turning mariner when far at sea, and defied the 
 distant watcher on the Acropolis of Corinth. First 
 in the procession come the sacrificial oxen, and 
 then follow in order a band of virgins, the quad- 
 riga, each drawn by four noble steeds, the elite of 
 the Athenian youth on horseback, magistrates, 
 daughters of noble citizens bearing vases and pa- 
 terae, men carrying trays of offerings, flute-players, 
 and the chorus singers. They pass around to the 
 entrance of the Parthenon, which is toward the 
 east, and those who are permitted enter the naos 
 and come into the presence of the gold-ivory statue 
 of Minerva. The undraped portions of this statue 
 show the ivory; the drapery was of solid gold,
 
 HISTORIC ASSOCIATIONS 507 
 
 made so that it could be removed in time of 
 danger from a public enemy. The golden plates 
 weighed ten thousand pounds. This work of Phi- 
 dias, since it was celebrated as the perfection of 
 art by the best judges of art, must have been as 
 exquisite in its details as it was harmonious in its 
 proportions ; but no artist of our day would dare 
 to attempt to construct a statue in that manner. 
 In its right, outstretched hand it held a statue of 
 Victory, four cubits high; and although it was 
 erected nearly five hundred years before the Chris- 
 tian era, we are curious to notice the already de- 
 cided influence of Egyptian ideas in the figure of 
 the sphinx surmounting the helmet of the goddess. 
 The sun was setting behind the island of Sala- 
 mis. There was a rosy glow 011 the bay of Phale- 
 rum, on the sea to the south, on the side of Hy- 
 mettus, on the yellow columns of the Parthenon, 
 on the Temple of the Wingless Victory, and on 
 the faces of the ever-youthful Caryatides in the 
 portico of the Erechtheum, who stand reverently 
 facing the Parthenon, worshiping now only the 
 vacant pedestal of Athene the Protector. What 
 overpowering associations throng the mind as one 
 looks off upon the crooked strait of Salamis, down 
 upon the bare rock of the Areopagus; upon the 
 Pnyx and the bcma, where we know Demosthenes, 
 Solon, Themistocles, Pericles, Aristides, were 
 wont to address the populace who crowded up from 
 this valley, the Agora, the tumultuous market- 
 place, to listen; upon the Museum Hill, crowned 
 by the monument of Philopappus, pierced by grot-
 
 508 ATHENS 
 
 tos, one of which tradition calls the prison of Soc- 
 rates, the whole history of Athens is in a nut- 
 shell ! Yet if one were predetermined to despise 
 this mite of a republic in the compass of a quart 
 measure, he could not do it here. A little of Cae- 
 sar's dust outweighs the world. We are not im- 
 posed upon by names. It was, it could only have 
 been, in comparison with modern naval engage- 
 ments, a petty fight in the narrow limits of that 
 strait, and yet neither the Persian soldiers who 
 watched it from the Acropolis and in terror saw 
 the ships of Xerxes flying down the bay, nor the 
 Athenians, who had abandoned their citadel and 
 trusted their all to the " wooden walls " of their 
 ships, could have imagined that the result was 
 laden with such consequences. It gives us pause 
 to think what course all subsequent history would 
 have taken, what would be the present complexion 
 of the Christian system itself, if on that day Asi- 
 atic barbarism had rendered impossible the subse- 
 quent development of Grecian art and philosophy. 
 
 We waited on the Acropolis for the night and 
 the starlight and the thousand lights in the city 
 spread below, but we did not stay for the slow 
 coming of the midnight moon over Hymettus. 
 
 On Sunday morning we worshiped with the 
 Greeks in the beautiful Russian church; the inte- 
 rior is small but rich, and is like a private parlor; 
 there are no seats, and the worshipers stand or 
 kneel, while gilded and painted figures of saints 
 and angels encompass them. The ceremony is 
 simple, but impressive. The priests are in gor-
 
 AT THE RUSSIAN CHURCH 509 
 
 geous robes of blue and silver; choir-boys sing 
 soprano, and the bass, as it always is in Russian 
 churches, is magnificent. A lady, tall, elegant, 
 superb, in black faced and trimmed with a stuff of 
 gold, sweeps up to the desks, kisses the books and 
 the crucifix, and then stands one side crossing her- 
 self. We are most of us mortal, and all, however 
 rich in apparel, poor sinners one day in the week. 
 No one of the worshipers carries a prayer-book. 
 There is reading behind the screen, and presently 
 the priests bring out the elements of communion 
 and exhibit them, the one carrying the bread in a 
 silver vessel on his head, and the other the wine. 
 The central doors are then closed on the mysterious 
 consecration. At the end of the service the holy 
 elements are brought out, the communicants press 
 up, kiss the cross, take a piece of bread, and then 
 turn and salute their friends, and break up in a 
 cheerful clatter of talk. In contrast to this, we 
 attended afterwards the little meeting, in an upper 
 chamber, of the Greek converts of the American 
 Mission, and listened to a sermon in Greek which 
 inculcated the religion of New England, a gos- 
 pel which, with the aid of schools, makes slow but 
 hopeful progress in the city of the unknown God. 
 The longer one remains in Athens the more he 
 will be impressed with two things : the one is the 
 perfection of the old art and civilization, and what 
 must have been the vivacious, joyous life of the 
 ancient Athenians, in a climate so vital, when this 
 plain was a garden, and these beautiful hills were 
 clad with forests, and the whispers of the pine
 
 510 ATHENS 
 
 answered the murmurs of the sea; the other is the 
 revival of letters and architecture and culture, vis- 
 ible from day to day, in a progress as astonishing 
 as can be seen in any Occidental city. I cannot 
 undertake to describe, not even to mention, the 
 many noble buildings, either built or in construc- 
 tion, from the quarries of Pentelicus, the Uni- 
 versity, the Academy, the new Olympium, all 
 the voluntary contributions of wealthy Greeks, 
 most of them merchants in foreign cities, whose 
 highest ambition seems to be to restore Athens to 
 something of its former splendor. It is a point of 
 honor with every Greek, in whatever foreign city 
 he may live and die, to leave something in his last 
 will for the adornment or education of the city of 
 his patriotic devotion. In this, if in nothing else, 
 they resemble the ancient patriots who thought no 
 sacrifice too costly for the republic. Among the 
 ruins we find no palaces, no sign that the richest 
 citizen used his wealth in ostentatious private man- 
 sions. Although some of the Greek merchants 
 now build for themselves elegant villas, the next 
 generation will see the evidences of their wealth 
 rather in the public buildings they have erected. 
 In this little city the University has eighty pro- 
 fessors and over twelve hundred students, gathered 
 from all parts of Greece ; there are in the city forty 
 lady teachers with eight hundred female pupils; 
 and besides these there are two gymnasiums and 
 several graded schools. Professors and teachers 
 are well paid, and the schools are free, even to the 
 use of books. The means flow from the same lib-
 
 CARYATID FROM THE KRECHTHEUM
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 511 
 
 erality, that of the Greek merchants, who are con- 
 tinually leaving money for new educational foun- 
 dations. There is but one shadow upon this hope- 
 ful picture, and that is the bigotry of the Greek 
 church, to which the government yields. I do not 
 now speak of the former persecutions suffered by 
 the Protestant missionaries, but recently the schools 
 for girls opened by Protestants, and which have 
 been of the highest service in the education of 
 women, have been obliged to close or else "con- 
 form " to the Greek religion and admit priestly 
 teachers. At the time of our visit, one of the best 
 of them, that of Miss Kyle of New York, was only 
 tolerated from week to week under perpetual warn- 
 ings, and liable at any moment to be suppressed 
 by the police. This narrow policy is a disgrace to 
 the government, and if it is continued must incline 
 the world to hope that the Greeks will never dis- 
 place the Moslems in Constantinople. 
 
 In the front of the University stands a very 
 good statue of the scholar-patriot Korais, and in 
 the library we saw the busts of other distinguished 
 natives and foreigners. The library, which is 
 every day enriched by private gifts, boasts already 
 over one hundred and thirty thousand volumes. 
 As we walked throuffh the rooms, the director said 
 
 O 
 
 that the University had no bust of an American, 
 though it had often been promised one. I sug- 
 gested one of Lincoln. No, he wanted Washing- 
 ton; he said he cared to have no other. I did not 
 tell him that Washington was one of the heroes 
 of our mythic period, that we had filled up a toler-
 
 512 ATHENS 
 
 ably large pantheon since then, and that a century 
 in America was as good as a thousand years in 
 Byzantium. But I fell into something of a his- 
 toric revery over the apparent fact that America 
 is as yet to Greece nothing but the land of Wash- 
 ington, and I rather liked the old-fashioned no- 
 tion, and felt sure that there must be somewhere 
 in the United States an antiquated and rich patriot 
 who remembered Washington and would like to 
 send a marble portrait of our one great man to the 
 University of Athens.
 
 XXIX 
 
 ELEUSIS, PLATO'S ACADEME, ETC. 
 
 HERE was a nightingale who sang 
 and sobbed all night in the garden be- 
 fore the hotel, and only ceased her 
 plaintive reminiscence of Athenian 
 song and sorrow with the red dawn. But this is 
 a sad world of contrasts. Called upon the balcony 
 at midnight by her wild notes, I saw, how can 
 I ever say it? upon the balcony below, a white 
 figure advance, and with a tragic movement of 
 haste, if not of rage, draw his garment of the night 
 over his head and shake it out over the public 
 square ; and I knew for the kingdom of know- 
 ledge comes by experience as well as by observa- 
 tion that the lively flea was as wakeful in Greece 
 as the nightingale. 
 
 In the morning the north wind arose, it seems 
 to blow constantly from Boeotia at this time of the 
 year, but the day was bright and sparkling, and 
 we took carriage for Eleusis. It might have been 
 on such a morning, for the ancient Athenians al- 
 ways anticipated the dawn in their festivals, that 
 the Panathenaic processions moved along this very 
 Via Sacra to celebrate the Mysteries of Ceres at
 
 614 ELEUSIS 
 
 Eleusis. All the hills stood in clear outline, 
 long Pentelicus and the wavy lines of Parnes and 
 Corydallus; we drove over the lovely and fertile 
 plain, amid the olive-orchards of the Kephissus, 
 and up the stony slope to the narrowing Pass of 
 Daphne, a defile in Mt. ^Egaleos; but we sought 
 in vain the laurel grove, or a single specimen of 
 that tree whose twisted trunk and outstretched 
 arms express the struggle of vanishing humanity. 
 Passing on our right the Chapel of St. Elias, on 
 a commanding eminence, and traversing the level 
 plateau of the rocky gorge, we alighted at the 
 Monastery of Daphne, whose half -ruined cloister 
 and chapel occupy the site of a temple of Apollo. 
 We sat for half an hour in its quiet, walled church- 
 yard, carpeted with poppies and tender flowers of 
 spring, amid the remains of old columns and frag- 
 ments of white marble, sparkling amid the green 
 grass and blue violets, and looked upon the blue 
 bay of Eleusis and Salamis, and the heights of 
 Megara beyond. Surely nature has a tenderness 
 for such a spot; and I fancied that even the old 
 dame who unlocked for us the chapel and its cheap 
 treasures showed us with some interest, in a carv- 
 ing here and a capital there, the relics of a former 
 religion, and perhaps mingled with her adoration 
 of the Virgin and the bambino a lurking regard 
 for Venus and Apollo. A mile beyond, at the 
 foot of a rocky precipice, are pointed out the foun- 
 dations of a temple of Venus, where the handbook 
 assured us doves had been found carved in white 
 marble; none were left, however, for us, and we
 
 AN ENCHANTING VIEW 515 
 
 contented ourselves with reading on the rock 
 Aphrodite, and making a vain effort to recall life 
 to this sterile region. 
 
 Enchanting was the view as we drove down the 
 opening pass to the bay, which spreads out a broad 
 sheet, completely land-locked by the irregular bulk 
 of Salamis Island. When we emerged through 
 the defile we turned away from the narrow strait 
 where the battle was fought, and from the "rocky 
 brow " on which Xerxes sat, a crowned spectator 
 of his ruin, and swept around the circular shore, 
 past the Rheiti, or salt-springs, clear, greenish 
 pools, and over the level Thriasiaii Plain. The 
 bay of Eleusis, guarded by the lofty amphitheatre 
 of mountains, the curving sweep of JEgaleos and 
 Kithaeron, and by Salamis, is like a lovely lake, 
 and if anywhere on earth there could be peace, 
 you would say it would be on its sunny and se- 
 cluded shores. Salamis appears only a bare and 
 rocky island, but the vine still flourishes in the 
 scant soil, and from its wild-flowers the descendants 
 of the Attic bees make honey as famous as that of 
 two thousand years ago. 
 
 Across the bay, upon a jutting rocky point, 
 above which rises the crown of its Acropolis, lies the 
 straggling, miserable village of Eleusis. Our first 
 note of approach to it was an ancient pavement, 
 and a few indistinguishable fragments of walls 
 and columns. In a shallow stream which ran over 
 the stones, the women of the town were washing 
 clothes; and throngs of girls were filling their pails 
 of brass at an old well, as of old at the same place
 
 516 ELEUSIS 
 
 did the daughters of Keleos. Shriller tones and 
 laughter mingled with their incessant chatter as 
 we approached, and, we thought, perhaps it was 
 imagination, a little wild defiance and dislike. 
 I had noticed already in Athens, and again here, 
 the extraordinary rapidity with which the Greeks 
 in conversation exchange words; I think they are 
 the fastest talkers in the world. And the Greek 
 has a hard, sharp, ringing, metallic sound; it is 
 staccato. You can see how easily Aristophanes 
 imitated the brittle -brattle of frogs. I have heard 
 two women whose rapid, incessant cackle sounded 
 exactly like the conversation of hens. The sculp- 
 tor need not go further than these nut-brown 
 maids for classic forms; the rounded limbs, the 
 generous bust, the symmetrical waist, which fash- 
 ion has not made an hour-glass to mark the flight 
 of time and health. The mothers of heroes were 
 of this mould ; although I will not say that some of 
 them were not a trifle stout for grace, and that 
 their well-formed faces would not have been im- 
 proved by the interior light of a little culture. 
 Their simple dress was a white, short chemise, that 
 left the legs bare, a heavy and worked tunic, like 
 that worn by men, and a colored kerchief tied 
 about the head. Many of the men of the vil- 
 lage wore the fustanella and the full Albanian 
 costume. 
 
 The Temple of Ceres lies at the foot of the hill ; 
 only a little portion of its vast extent has been re- 
 lieved of the superincumbent, accumulated soil, 
 and in fact its excavation is difficult, because the
 
 THE TEMPLE OF CERES 517 
 
 village is built over the greater part of it. What 
 we saw was only a confused heap of marble, 
 some pieces finely carved, arches, capitals, and 
 shattered columns. The Greek government, which 
 is earnestly caring for the remains of antiquity 
 and diligently collecting everything for the Na- 
 tional Musuem, down to broken toes and fingers, 
 has stationed a keeper over the ruins; and he 
 showed us, in a wooden shanty, the interesting 
 fragments of statues which had been found in the 
 excavation. I coveted a little hand, plump, with 
 tapering fingers, which the conservator permitted 
 us to hold, a slight but a most suggestive me- 
 mento of the breeding and beauty of the lady who 
 was the sculptor's model; and it did not so much 
 seem a dead hand stretched out to us from the 
 past, as a living thing which returned our furtive 
 pressure. 
 
 We climbed up the hill where the fortress of the 
 Acropolis stood, and where there is now a little 
 chapel. Every Grecian city seems to have had its 
 Acropolis, the first nucleus of the rude tribe which 
 it fortified against incursion, and the subsequent 
 site of temples to the gods. The traveler will find 
 these steep hills, rising out of plains, everywhere 
 from Ephesus to Argos, and will almost conclude 
 that Nature had consciously adapted herself to the 
 wants of the aboriginal occupants. It is well 
 worth ascending this summit to get the fine view 
 of plain and bay, of Mt. Kerata and its double 
 peaks, and the road that pierces the pass of Ki- 
 than'on, and leads to the field of Plata?a and the 
 remains of Thebes.
 
 518 PLATO'S ACADEME 
 
 In a little wine-shop, near the ruins, protected 
 from the wind and the importunate swarms of 
 children, we ate our lunch, and tried to impress 
 ourselves with the knowledge that JEschylus was* 
 born in Eleusis ; and to imagine the nature of the 
 Eleusinian mysteries, the concealed representa- 
 tions by which the ancients attempted to symbo- 
 lize, in the myths of Ceres and Proserpine, the 
 primal forces of nature, perhaps the dim sugges- 
 tions of immortality, a secret not to be shared 
 by the vulgar, borrowed from the deep wisdom 
 of the Egyptians. 
 
 The children of Eleusis deserve more space than 
 I can afford them, since they devoted their entire 
 time to our annoyance. They are handsome ras- 
 cals, and there were enough of them, if they had 
 been sufficiently clothed, to form a large Sunday- 
 school. When we sat down in the ruins and tried 
 to meditate on Ceres, they swarmed about us, 
 capering and yelling incessantly, and when I made 
 a charge upon them they scattered over the rocks 
 and saluted us with stones. But I find that at this 
 distance I liave nothing against them ; I recall only 
 their beauty and vivacity, and if they were the 
 worst children that ever tormented travelers, I re- 
 flect, yes, but they were Greeks, and the gods loved 
 their grandmothers. One slender, liquid - eyed, 
 slim-shanked girl offered me a silver coin. I saw 
 that it was a beautiful Athenian piece of the time 
 of Pericles, and after some bargaining I bought it 
 of her for a reasonable price. But as we moved 
 away to our carriage, I was followed by the men
 
 SCATTERED REMAINS. ~>19 
 
 and women of the settlement, who demanded it 
 back. They looked murder and talked Greek. I 
 inquired how much they wanted. Fifty francs! 
 But that is twice as much as it is worth in Athens ; 
 and the coin was surrendered. All through the 
 country, the peasants have a most exaggerated 
 notion of the value of anything antique. 
 
 We returned through the pass of Daphne and 
 by the site of the academic grove of Plato, through 
 olive-groves and gardens of pomegranates in scar- 
 let bloom, quinces, roses, and jasmines, the air 
 sweet and delightful. Perhaps nowhere else can 
 the traveler so enter into the pure spirit of Attic 
 thought and feeling as among these scattered re- 
 mains that scholars have agreed to call the ruins of 
 Plato's Academe. We turned through a lane into 
 the garden of a farm-house, watered by a branch 
 rivulet of the Kephissus. What we saw was not 
 much, some marble columns under a lovely 
 cypress-grove, some fragments of antique carving 
 built into a wall; but we saw it as it were pri- 
 vately and with a feeling of the presence of the 
 mighty shade. And then, under a row of young 
 plane-trees, by the meagre stream, we reclined on 
 ripe wheat-straw, in full sight of the Acropolis, 
 perhaps the most poetic view of that magnetic 
 hill. So Plato saw it as he strolled along this bank 
 and listened to the wisdom of his master, Socrates, 
 or, pacing the colonnade of the Academe, medi- 
 tated the Republic. Here indeed Aristotle may 
 have lain and woven that subtle web of metaphys- 
 ics which no subsequent system of thought or reli-
 
 520 PLATO'S ACADEME 
 
 gion has been able to disregard. The centuries-old 
 wind blew strong and fresh through the trees, and 
 the scent of flowers and odorous shrubs, the mur- 
 mur of the leaves, the unchanged blue vault of 
 heaven, the near hill of the sacred Colonus, cele- 
 brated by Sophocles as the scene of the death of 
 QEdipus, all conspired to flood us with the poetic- 
 past. What intimations of immortality do we 
 need, since the spell of genius is so deathless ? 
 
 After dinner we laboriously, by a zigzag path, 
 climbed the sharp cone of Lycabettus, whose six 
 hundred and fifty feet of height commands the 
 whole region. The rock summit has just room 
 enough for a tiny chapel, called of St. George, 
 and a narrow platform in front, where we sat in 
 the shelter of the building and feasted upon the 
 prospect. At sunset it is a marvelous view, 
 all Athens and its plain, the bays, Salamis and 
 the strait of the battle, Aero-Corinth; Megara, 
 Hymettus, Pentelicus, KithaBi-on. 
 
 When, in descending, we had nearly reached 
 the foot on the west side, we heard the violent 
 ringing of a bell high above us, and, turning about, 
 saw what seemed to be a chapel under the north- 
 west edge of the rock upon which we had lately 
 stood. Bandits in laced leggings and embroidered 
 jackets, chattering girls in short skirts and gay 
 kerchiefs, were descending the wandering path, 
 and the clamor of the bell piqued our curiosity 
 to turn and ascend. When we reached our goal, 
 the affair seemed to be pretty much all bell, and
 
 , .
 
 A MOUNTAIN CHAPEL 521 
 
 nobody but a boy in the lusty exuberance of youth 
 could have made so much noise by the swinging 
 of a single clapper. In a niche or rather cleft in 
 the rock was a pent-roofed bell-tower, and a boy, 
 whose piety seemed inspired by the Devil, was haul- 
 ing the rope and sending the sonorous metal over 
 and over on its axis. In front of the bell is a nar- 
 row terrace, sufficient, however, to support three 
 fig-trees, under which were tables and benches, 
 and upon the low terrace-wall were planted half a 
 dozen large and differently colored national ban- 
 ners. A hole in the rock was utilized as a fire- 
 place, and from a pot over the coals came the fumes 
 of coffee. Upon this perch of a terrace people 
 sat sipping coffee and looking down upon the city, 
 whose evening lights were just beginning to twin- 
 kle here and there. Behind the belfry is a chapel, 
 perhaps ten feet by twelve, partly a natural grotto 
 and partly built of rough stones ; it was brilliantly 
 lighted with tapers, and hung with quaint pictures. 
 At the entrance, which is a door cut in the rock, 
 stood a Greek priest and an official in uniform 
 selling wax-tapers, and raking in the leptas of the 
 devout. We threw down some coppers, declined 
 the tapers, and walked in. The adytum of the 
 priest was wholly in the solid rock. There seemed 
 to be no service ; but the women and children stood 
 and crossed themselves, and passionately kissed 
 the poor pictures on the walls. Yet there was no- 
 thing exclusive or pharisaic in the worshipers,- for 
 priest and people showed us friendly faces, and 
 cordially returned our greetings. The whole rock
 
 522 MT. PENTELICUS 
 
 quivered with the clang of the bell, for the boy at 
 the rope leaped at his task, and with ever-increas- 
 ing fury summoned the sinful world below to 
 prayer. Young ladies with their gallants came 
 and went ; and whenever there was any slacking of 
 stragglers up the hillside the bell clamored more 
 importunately. 
 
 As dusk crept on, torches were set along the 
 wall of the terrace, and as we went down the hill 
 they shone on the red and blue flags and the white 
 belfry, and illuminated the black mass of over- 
 hanging rock with a red glow. There is time for 
 religion in out-of-the-way places here, and it is 
 rendered picturesque, and even easy and enjoy- 
 able, by the aid of coffee and charming scenery. 
 When we reached the level of the town, the lights 
 still glowed high up in the recess of the rocks, girls 
 were laughing and chattering as they stumbled 
 down the steep, and the wild bell still rang. How 
 easy it is to be good in Greece ! 
 
 One day we stole a march on Marathon, and 
 shared the glory of those who say they have seen 
 it, without incurring the fatigue of a journey there. 
 We ascended Mt. Pentelicus. Hymettus and Pen- 
 telicus are about the same height, thirty-five 
 hundred feet, but the latter, ten miles to the 
 northeast of Athens, commands every foot of the 
 Attic territory ; if one should sit on its summit and 
 read a history of the little state, he would need 
 no map. We were away at half past five in the 
 morning, in order to anticipate, if possible, the ris- 
 ing of the daily wind. As we ascended, we had
 
 A SUMMER RESORT 523 
 
 on our left, at the foot of the mountain, the village 
 of Kephisia, now, as in the days of Herocles Atti- 
 cus, the summer resort of wealthy Athenians, who 
 find in its fountains the sources of the Kephissus, 
 and in its groves relief from the heat and glare of 
 the scorched Athenian plain. Half-way we halted 
 at a monastery, left our carriage, and the ladies 
 mounted horses. There is a handsome church 
 here, and the situation is picturesque and com- 
 mands a wide view of the plain and the rugged 
 north slope of Hymettus, but I could not learn 
 that the monastery was in an active state; it is 
 only a hive of drones which consumes the honey 
 produced by the working-bees from the wild thyme 
 of the neighboring mountain. The place, how- 
 ever, is a great resort of parties of pleasure, who 
 picnic under the grove of magnificent forest-trees, 
 and once a year the king and queen come hither to 
 see the youths and maidens dance on the green- 
 sward. 
 
 Up to the highest quarries the road is steep and 
 strewn with broken marble, and after that there 
 is an hour's scramble through bushes and over a 
 rocky path. We rested in a large grotto near the 
 principal of the ancient quarries; it was the sleep- 
 ing-place of the workmen, subsequently a Chris- 
 tian church, and then, and not long ago, a haunt 
 and home of brigands. Here we found a party of 
 four fellows, half clad in sheep-skins, playing 
 cards, who seemed to be waiting our arrival; but 
 they were entirely civil, and I presume were only 
 shepherds, whatever they may have been formerly.
 
 524 PENTELIC MARBLE 
 
 From these quarries was hewn the marble for the 
 Temple of Theseus, the Parthenon, the Propylsea, 
 the theatres, and other public buildings, to which 
 age has now given a soft and creamy tone ; the 
 Pentelic marble must have been too brilliant for 
 the eye, and its dazzling lustre was no doubt soft- 
 ened by the judicious use of color. Fragments 
 which we broke off had the sparkle and crystal- 
 line grain of loaf-sugar, and if they were placed 
 upon the table one would unhesitatingly take them 
 to sweeten his tea. The whole mountain -side is 
 overgrown with laurel, and we found wild-flowers 
 all the way to the summit. Amid the rocks of the 
 higher slopes, little shepherd-boys, carrying the 
 traditional crooks, were guarding flocks of black 
 and white goats, and invariably, as we passed, 
 these animals scampered off and perched them- 
 selves upon sharp rocks in a photographic pose. 
 
 Early as we were, the wind had risen before us, 
 and when we reached the bare back of the summit 
 it blew so strongly that we could with difficulty 
 keep our feet, and gladly took refuge in a sort of 
 stone corral, which had been a camp and lookout 
 of brigands. From this commanding point they 
 spied both their victims and pursuers. Our guide 
 went into the details of the capture of the party of 
 Englishmen who spent a night here, and pointed 
 out to us the several hiding-places in the surround- 
 ing country to which they were successively 
 dragged. But my attention was not upon this ex- 
 ploit. We looked almost directly down upon Ma- 
 rathon. There is the bay and the curving sandy
 
 MARATHON 525 
 
 shore where the Persian galleys landed ; here upon 
 a spur, jutting out from the hill, the Athenians 
 formed before they encountered the host in the 
 plain, and there alas! it was hidden by a hill 
 is the mound where the one hundred and ninety - 
 two Athenian dead are buried. It is only a small 
 field, perhaps six miles along the shore and a mile 
 and a half deep, and there is a considerable marsh 
 on the north and a small one at the south end. The 
 victory at so little cost, of ten thousand over a 
 hundred thousand, is partially explained by the 
 nature of the ground ; the Persians had not room 
 enough to manoeuvre, and must have been thrown 
 into confusion on the skirts of the northern swamp, 
 and if over six thousand of them were slain, they 
 must have been killed on the shore in the panic of 
 their embarkation. But still the shore is broad, 
 level, and firm, and the Greeks must have been 
 convinced that the gods themselves terrified the 
 hearts of the barbarians, and enabled them to dis- 
 comfit a host which had chosen this plain as the 
 most feasible in all Attica for the action of cavalry. 
 A sea-haze lay upon the strait of Euripus and 
 upon Euboea, and nearly hid from our sight the 
 forms of the Cyclades; but away in the northwest 
 were snow peaks, which the guide said were the 
 heights of Parnassus above Delphi. In the world 
 there can be few prospects so magnificent as this, 
 and none more inspiring to the imagination. No 
 one can properly appreciate the Greek literature 
 or art who has not looked upon the Greek nature 
 which seems to have inspired both.
 
 526 THE TEMPLE OF THESEUS 
 
 Nothing now remains of the monuments and 
 temples which the pride and piety of the Athenians 
 erected upon the field of Marathon. The visitor 
 at the Arsenal of Venice remembers the clumsy 
 lion which is said to have stood 011 this plain, and 
 in the Temple of Theseus, at Athens, he may see 
 a slab which was found in this meadow ; on it is 
 cut in very low relief the figure of a soldier, but if 
 the work is Greek, the style of treatment is Assy- 
 rian. The Temple of Theseus, which occupies an 
 elevation above the city and west of the Areopagus, 
 is the best-preserved monument of Grecian anti- 
 quity, and if it were the only one, Athens would 
 still be worthy of a pilgrimage from the ends of 
 the earth. Behind it is a level esplanade, used as 
 a drill-ground, upon one side of which have been 
 gathered some relics of ancient buildings and sculp- 
 tures ; seated there in an ancient marble chair, we 
 never wearied of studying the beautiful proportions 
 of this temple, which scarcely suffers by compari- 
 son with the Parthenon or that at Paestum. In its 
 construction the same subtle secret of curved lines 
 and inclined verticals was known, a secret which 
 increases its apparent size and satisfies the eye witli 
 harmony. 
 
 While we were in Athens the antiquarians were 
 excited by the daily discoveries in the excavations 
 at the Keramicus (the field where the Athenian 
 potters worked). Through the portion of this dis- 
 trict otitside the gate Dipylum ran two streets, 
 which were lined with tombs; one ran to the Aca- 
 deme, the other was the sacred way to Eleusis.
 
 THE MUSEUM 527 
 
 The excavations have disclosed many tombs and 
 lovely groups of funereal sculpture, some of which 
 are in situ, but many have been removed to the 
 new Museum. The favorite device is the seated 
 figure of the one about to die, who in this position 
 of dignity takes leave of those most loved; per- 
 haps it is a wife, a husband, a lovely daughter, a 
 handsome boy, who calmly awaits the inevitable 
 moment, while the relatives fondly look or half 
 avert their sorrowful faces. In all sculpture I 
 know nothing so touching as these family farewells. 
 I obtained from them a new impression of the 
 Greek dignity and tenderness, of the simplicity 
 and nobility of their domestic life. 
 
 The Museum, which was unarranged, is chiefly 
 one of fragments, but what I saw there and else- 
 where scattered about the town gave me a finer 
 conception of the spirit of the ancient art than all 
 the more perfect remains in Europe put together; 
 and it seems to me that nowhere except in Athens 
 is it possible to attain a comprehension of its depth 
 and loveliness. Something, 1 know, is due to the 
 (jeniuK /or/, but you come to the knowledge that 
 the entire life, even the commonest, was pervaded 
 by something that has gone from modern art. In 
 the Museum we saw a lovely statue of Isis, a noble 
 one of Patroclus, fine ones of athletes, and also, 
 showing the intercourse with Egypt, several fig- 
 ures holding the sacred x!*tt'inn, and one of Ra- 
 meses II. But it is the humbler and funereal art 
 that gives one a new conception of the Greek grace, 
 tenderness, and sensibility. I have spoken of the
 
 528 GREEK SENTIMENT 
 
 sweet dignity, the high-born grace, that accepted 
 death with lofty resignation, and yet not with sto- 
 ical indifference, of some of the sepulchral groups. 
 There was even more poetry in some that are sim- 
 pler. Upon one slab was carved a figure, pen- 
 sive, alone, wrapping his drapery about him and 
 stepping into the silent land, on that awful journey 
 that admits of no companion. On another, which 
 was also without inscription, a solitary figure sat 
 in one corner; he had removed helmet and shield, 
 and placed them on the ground behind him ; a line 
 upon the stone indicated the boundary of the in- 
 visible world, and, with a sad contemplation, the 
 eyes of the soldier were fixed upon that unknown 
 region into which he was about to descend. 
 
 Scarcely a day passed that we did not ascend 
 the Acropolis; and again and again we traversed 
 the Areopagus, the Pnyx, the Museum hills. 
 From the valley of the Agora stone steps lead up 
 the Areopagus to a bench cut in the rock. Upon 
 this open summit the Areopagite Council held, in 
 the open air, its solemn sessions ; here it sat, it is 
 said, at night and in the dark, that no face of wit- 
 ness or criminal, or gesture of advocate, should in- 
 fluence the justice of its decisions. Dedicated to 
 divine justice, it was the most sacred and awful 
 place in Athens; in a cavern underneath it was the 
 sanctuary of the dread Erinnyes, the avenging 
 Furies, whom a later superstition represented with 
 snakes twisted in their hair; whatever the gay 
 frivolity of the city, this spot was silent, and re- 
 spected as the dread seat of judicature of the high-
 
 THE AREOPAGUS 529 
 
 est causes of religion or of politics. To us, Mars 
 Hill is chiefly associated with the name of St. 
 Paul; and I do not suppose it matters much 
 whether he spoke to the men of Athens in this 
 sacred place or, as is more probable, from a point 
 farther down the hill, now occupied by a little 
 chapel, where he would be nearer to the multitude 
 of the market-place. It does not matter; it was 
 on the Areopagus, and in the centre of temples and 
 a thousand statues that bespoke the highest civili- 
 zation of the pagan world, that Paul proclaimed 
 the truth, which man's egotism continually forgets, 
 that in temples made with hands the Deity does 
 not dwell. 
 
 From this height, on the side of the Museum 
 Hill, we see the grotto that has been dignified with 
 the title of the "prison of Socrates," but upon 
 slight grounds. When the philosopher was con- 
 demned, the annual sacred ship which was sent 
 with thank-offerings to Delos was still absent, and 
 until its return no execution was permitted in Ath- 
 ens. Every day the soldiers who guarded Socrates 
 ascended this hill, and went round the point to see 
 if the expected vessel was in sight; and it is for 
 their convenience that some antiquarian designated 
 this grotto as the prison. The delay of the ship 
 gave us his last immortal discourse. 
 
 We went one evening by the Temple of Jupiter, 
 along the Ilissus, to the old Stadium. This classic 
 stream, the Ilissus, is a gully, with steep banks and 
 a stony bottom, and apparently never wet except 
 immediately after a rain. You would think by the
 
 530 THE PANATHENAIC STADIUM 
 
 flattery it received from the ancient Athenians 
 that it was larger than the Mississippi. The Pan- 
 athenaic Stadium, as it is called, because its chief 
 use was in the celebration of the games of the great 
 quadrennial festival, was by nature and art exceed- 
 ingly well adapted to chariot races and other con- 
 tests. Open at the end, where a bridge crossed 
 the Ilissus, it extended, a hundred feet broad, six 
 hundred and fifty feet into the hill, upon the three 
 sloping sides of which, in seats of marble, could 
 be accommodated fifty thousand spectators. Here 
 the Greek youth contended for the prizes in the 
 chariot race, and the more barbarous Roman em- 
 perors amused a degenerate people with the sight 
 of a thousand wild beasts hunted and slain in a 
 single celebration. 
 
 The Stadium has been lately re-excavated, and 
 at the time of our visit the citizens were erecting 
 some cheap benches at one end, and preparing, in 
 a feeble way, for what it pleases them to call the 
 Olympic Games, which were to be inaugurated the 
 following Sunday. The place must inevitably 
 dwarf the performance, and comparison render it 
 ridiculous. The committee - men may seem to 
 themselves Olympic heroes, and they had the ear- 
 nest air of trying to make themselves believe that 
 they were really reviving the ancient glory of 
 Greece, or that they could bring it back by calling 
 a horse-race and the wrestling of some awkward 
 peasants an "Olympiad." The revival could be, 
 as we afterwards learned it was, only a sickly and 
 laughable affair. The life of a nation is only pre-
 
 A NEW GREEK STATE 531 
 
 served in progress, not in attempts to make dead 
 forms live again. It is difficult to have chariot 
 races or dramatic contests without chariots or 
 poets, and I suppose the modern imitation would 
 scarcely be saved from ludicrousness, even if the 
 herald should proclaim that now a Patroclus and 
 now an Aristophanes was about to enter the arena. 
 The modern occupants of Athens seem to be de- 
 ceiving themselves a little with names and shad- 
 ows. In the genuine effort to revive in its purity 
 the Greek language, and to inspire a love of art 
 and literature, the Western traveler will wholly 
 sympathize. In the growth of a liberal commercial 
 spirit he will see still more hope of a new and en- 
 during Greek state. But a puerile imitation of a 
 society and a religion which cannot possibly have a 
 resurrection excites only a sad smile. There is no 
 more pitiful sight than a man who has lost his 
 ideals, unless it be a nation which has lost its 
 ideals. So long as the body of the American peo- 
 ple hold fast to the simple and primitive concep- 
 tion of a republican society, to the ideals of a 
 century ago, the nation can survive, as England 
 did, a period of political corruption. There never 
 was, not under Themistocles nor under Scander- 
 beg, a more glorious struggle for independence 
 than that which the battle of Navarino virtually 
 terminated. The world had a right to expect 
 from the victors a new and vigorous national lit*-, 
 not a pale and sentimental copy of a splendid ori- 
 ginal, which is now as impossible of revival as the 
 Roman Empire. To do the practical and money-
 
 532 A MORNING EXCURSION 
 
 getting Greeks justice, I could not learn that they 
 took a deep interest in the " Olympiad ; " nor that 
 the inhabitants of ancient Sparta were jealous of 
 the reinstitution of the national games in Athens, 
 since, they say, there are no longer any Athenians 
 to be jealous of. 
 
 The ancient Athenians were an early people; 
 they liked the dewy freshness of the morning; they 
 gave the first hours of the day to the market and 
 to public affairs, and the rising sun often greeted 
 the orators on the 6em, and an audience on the 
 terrace below. We had seen the Acropolis in al- 
 most every aspect, but I thought that one might 
 perhaps catch more of its ancient spirit at sunrise 
 than at any other hour. 
 
 It is four o'clock when my companion and I de- 
 scend into the silent street and take our way to the 
 ancient citadel by the shortest and steepest path. 
 Dawn is just breaking in pink, and the half moon 
 is in the sky. The sleepy guard unbolts the gate 
 and admits us, but does not care to follow; and 
 we pass the Propyla3a and have the whole field to 
 ourselves. There is a great hush as we come into 
 the silent presence of the gray Parthenon; the 
 shades of night are still in its columns. We take 
 our station on a broken pillar, so that we can en- 
 joy a three quarters view of the east front. As 
 the light strengthens we have a pink sky for back- 
 ground to the temple, and the smooth bay of Pha- 
 lerum is like a piece of the sky dropped down. 
 Very gradually the light breaks on the Parthenon, 
 and in its glowing awakening it is like a sentient
 
 THE ACROPOLIS AT SUNRISE 533 
 
 thing, throwing shadows from its columns and 
 kindling more and more ; the lion gargoyles on the 
 corners of the pediment have a life which we had 
 not noticed before. There is now a pink tint on 
 the fragments of columns lying at the side; there 
 is a reddish hue on the plain about Piraeus; the 
 strait of Salamis is green, but growing blue; 
 Phalerum is taking an iridescent sheen; I can 
 see, beyond the Gulf of ^Egina, the distant height 
 of Aero-Corinth. 
 
 The city is still in heavy shadow ; even the Tem- 
 ple of Theseus does not relax from its sombreness. 
 But the light mounts; it catches the top of the 
 white columns of the Propylaea, it shines on the 
 cornice of the Erechtheum, and creeps down in 
 blushes upon the faces of the Caryatides, which 
 seem to bow yet in worship of the long-since-de- 
 parted Pallas Athene. The bugles of the soldiers 
 called to drill on the Thesean esplanade float up 
 to us; they are really bugle-notes summoning the 
 statues and the old Pauathenaic cavalcades on the 
 friezes to life and morning action. The day ad- 
 vances, the red sun commanding the hill and flood- 
 ing it with light, and the buildings glowing more 
 and more in it, but yet casting shadows. A hawk 
 sweeps around from the north and hangs poised on 
 motionless wings over the building just as the sun 
 touches it. We climb to the top of the western 
 pediment for the wide sweep of view. The world 
 has already got wind of day, and is putting off its 
 nightcaps and opening its doors. As we descend 
 we peer about for a bit of marble as a memento of
 
 534 THE AMPHITHEATRE 
 
 our visit ; but Lord Elgin has left little for the 
 kleptomaniac to carry away. 
 
 At this hour the Athenians ought to be assem- 
 bling on the Pnyx to hear Demosthenes, who 
 should be already on the bema; but the bema has 
 no orator, and the terrace is empty. We might 
 perhaps see an early representation at the theatre 
 of Dionysus, into which we can cast a stone from 
 this wall. We pass the gate, scramble along the 
 ragged hillside, the dumping -ground of the ex- 
 cavators on the Acropolis, and stand above the 
 highest seats of the Amphitheatre. No one has 
 come. The white marble chairs in the front row 
 carved with the names of the priests of Bacchus 
 and reserved for them wait, and even the seats 
 not reserved are empty. There is no white-clad 
 chorus manoeuvring on the paved orchestra about 
 the altar; the stage is broken in, and the crouch- 
 ing figures that supported it are the only sign of 
 life. One would like to have sat upon these 
 benches, that look on the sea, and listened to a 
 chorus from the Antigone this morning. One 
 would like to have witnessed that scene when Aris- 
 tophanes, on this stage, mimicked and ridiculed 
 Socrates, and the philosopher, rising from his 
 undistinguished seat high up among the people, 
 replied.
 
 XXX 
 
 THROUGH THE GULF OF CORINTH 
 
 ITH deep reluctance we tore ourselves 
 from the fascinations of Athens very 
 early one morning-. After these things, 
 says the Christian's guide, Paul de- 
 parted from Athens and came to Corinth. Our 
 departure was in the same direction. We had no 
 choice of time, for the only steamer leaves on Sun- 
 day morning, and, besides, our going then removed 
 us from the temptation of the Olympic; games. At 
 half past five we were on board the little Greek 
 steamer at the Pirseus. 
 
 We sailed along Salamis. It was a morning of 
 clouds; but vagina (once mistress of these seas, 
 and the hated rival of Athens) and the Pelopon- 
 nesus were robed in graceful garments that, like 
 the veils of the Circassian girls, did not conceal 
 their forms. In four hours we landed at Kala- 
 maki, which is merely a station for the transfer of 
 passengers across the Isthmus. Six miles south 
 on the coast we had a glimpse of Cenchreie, which 
 is famous as the place where Paul, still under the 
 bonds of Jewish superstition, having accomplished 
 his vow, shaved his head. The neck of limestone
 
 536 
 
 rock, which connects the Peloponnesus with the 
 mainland, is ten miles long, and not more than 
 four miles broad from Kalamaki to Lutraki on 
 the Gulf of Corinth, and as it is not, at its highest 
 elevation, over a hundred feet above the sea, the 
 project of piercing it with a canal, which was often 
 entertained and actually begun by Nero, does not 
 seem preposterous. The traveler over it to-day 
 will see some remains of the line of fortification, 
 the Isthmian Wall, which served in turn Greeks, 
 Macedonians, Saracens, Latin Crusaders, and 
 Slavonic settlers; and fragments of the ancient 
 buildings of the Isthmian Sanctuary, where the 
 Panhellenic festivals were celebrated. 
 
 The drive across was exceedingly pleasant. 
 The Isthmus is seamed with ravines and ridges, 
 picturesque with rocks which running vines drape 
 and age has colored, and variegated with corn- 
 fields. We enjoyed on either hand the splendid 
 mountain forms ; on the north white Helicon and 
 Parnassus ; on the south the nearly two-thousand- 
 feet wall-crowned height of Aero-Corinth and the 
 broken snowy hills of the Morea. 
 
 Familiar as we were with the atlas, we had not 
 until now any adequate conception how much in- 
 dented the Grecian mainland and islands are, nor 
 how broken into peaks, narrow valleys, and long 
 serrated summits are the contours. When we ap- 
 preciate, by actual sight, the multitude of islands 
 that compose Greece, how subject to tempests its 
 seas are, how difficult is communication between 
 the villages of the mainland, or even those on the
 
 OLD CORINTH 537 
 
 same island, we understand the naturalness of the 
 ancient divisions and strifes ; and we see the phy- 
 sical obstacles to the creation of a feeling of unity 
 in the present callow kingdom. And one hears 
 with no surprise that Corfu wishes herself back 
 under English protection. 
 
 We drove through the cluster of white houses 
 on the bay, which is now called Corinth, and saw 
 at three miles' distance the site of the old city and 
 the Acropolis beyond it. Earthquakes and ma- 
 laria have not been more lenient to the ancient 
 town than was Roman vengeance, and of the cap- 
 ital which was to Greece in luxury what Athens 
 was in wit, only a few columns and sinking walls 
 remain. Even the voluptuousness of Corinth is 
 a tale of two thousand years ago, and the name 
 might long ago have sunk with the fortunes of the 
 city, but for the long residence there of a poor 
 tent-maker, in whom no proud citizen of that day, 
 of all those who "sat down to eat and drink and 
 rose up to play," would have recognized the chief 
 creator of its fame. 
 
 Our little Greek steamer was crowded exces- 
 sively, and mainly with Greeks going to Patras 
 and Zante, who noisily talked politics and business 
 in a manner that savored more of Xew England 
 than of the land of Solon and Plato. For the tirst 
 time in a travel of many months we met families 
 together, gentlemen with their wives and children, 
 and saw the evidences of a happy home-life. It is 
 everything in favor of the Greeks that they have 
 preserved the idea of home, and cherish, as the 
 centre of all good and strength, domestic purity.
 
 538 THROUGH THE GULF OF CORINTH 
 
 At dinner there was an undisguised rush for 
 seats at the table, and the strongest men got them. 
 We looked down through the skylights and beheld 
 the valiant Greeks flourishing their knives, at- 
 tacking, while expecting soup, the caviare and 
 pickles, and thrusting the naked blades into their 
 mouths without fear. The knife seems seldom to 
 hurt the Greek, whose display of deadly weapons 
 is mainly for show. There are dozens of stout 
 swarthy fellows on board, in petticoats and quilted 
 leggings, with each a belly full of weapons, the 
 protruding leathern pouch contains a couple of 
 pistols, a cheese-knife, cartridges, and pipes and 
 tobacco. 
 
 The sail through the Gulf of Corinth is one to 
 be enjoyed and remembered, but the reader shall 
 not be wearied with a catalogue of names. What 
 is it to him that we felt the presence of Delphi; 
 that we had Parnassus on our right, and Mt. Pan- 
 achaicum, lifting itself higher than Mt. Washing- 
 ton, on our left; theLocrian coast on one side, and 
 the range of Arcadia on the other? The strait 
 narrowed as we came at evening near Patras, and 
 between the opposite forts of Rheum and Anti- 
 rheum it is no broader than the Bosphorus ; it was 
 already dusky when we peered into the Bay of 
 Lepaiito, which is not, however, the site of the 
 battle of that name in which the natural son of the 
 pretty innkeeper of Ratisbon rendered such a sig- 
 nal service to Christendom. Patras, a thriving 
 new city, which inherits the name but not the site 
 of the ancient, lies open in the narrow strait, sub
 
 PATRAS AND ZANTE 539 
 
 ject to the high wind which always blows through 
 the passage, and is usually a dangerous landing. 
 All the time that we lay there in the dark we 
 thought a tempest was prevailing, but the clamor 
 subsided when we moved into the open sea. Of 
 Patras we saw nothing except a circle of lights on 
 the shore a mile long, a procession of colored 
 torches which illumined for an instant the facade 
 of the city hall, and some rockets which went up 
 in honor of a local patriot who had returned on 
 our boat from Athens. And we had not even a 
 glimpse of Missolonghi, which we passed in the 
 night. 
 
 At daylight we are at Zante, anchored in its 
 eastward-looking harbor opposite the Peloponne- 
 sian coast. The town is most charmingly situ- 
 ated, and gives one an impression of wealth and 
 elegance. Old Zacynthus was renowned for its 
 hospitality before the days of the Athenian and 
 Spartan wars, and such is the tenacity with 
 which traits are perpetuated amid a thousand 
 changes its present wealthy and enterprising 
 merchant-farmers, whose villas are scattered about 
 the slopes, enjoy a reputation for the same delight- 
 ful gift. The gentlemen are distinguished among 
 the Ionian* for their fondness of country life and 
 convivial gayety. Early as it was, the town wel- 
 comed us with its most gracious offerings of How- 
 ers and fruit; for the peddlers who swarmed on 
 board brought nothing less poetical than handfuls 
 of dewy roses, carnations, heliotrope, freslily cut 
 mignonette, baskets of yellow oranges, and bottles
 
 540 THROUGH THE GULF OF CORINTH 
 
 of red wine. The wine, of which the Zante pas- 
 sengers had boasted, was very good, and the 
 oranges, solid, juicy, sweet, the best I have ever 
 eaten, except, perhaps, . some grown in a fortunate 
 year in Florida. Sharp hills rise behind the town, 
 and, beyond, a most fertile valley broadens out to 
 the sea. Almost all the land is given up to the 
 culture of the currant-vine, the grapes of Corinth, 
 for in the transfer of the chief cultivation of this 
 profitable fruit from Corinth to Zante, the name 
 went with the dwarf vines. On the hillsides, as 
 we sailed away, we observed innumerable terraces, 
 broad, flat, and hard like threshing-floors, and 
 learned that they were the drying-grounds of the 
 ripe currants. 
 
 We were all day among the Ionian Islands, and 
 were able to see all of them except Cythera, off 
 Cape Malea, esteemed for its honey and its mag- 
 nificent temple to the foarn-born Venus. They 
 lay in such a light as the reader of Homer likes 
 to think of them. We sailed past them as in a 
 dream, not caring to distinguish history from fable. 
 It was off the little Echinades, near the coast, by 
 the mouth of the Achelous, that Don John, three 
 hundred years ago, broke the. European onset of 
 the Ottoman arms; it was nearly a dear victory 
 for Christendom, for among the severely wounded 
 was Cervantes, and Don Quixote had not yet been 
 written. But this battle is not more real to us 
 than the story of Ulysses and Penelope which the 
 rocky surface of Ithaca recalls. And as we lin- 
 gered along the shores of Cephalonia and Leucadia,
 
 THE IONIAN ISLANDS 541 
 
 it was not of any Caesar or Byzantine emperor or 
 Norman chieftain that we thought, but of the poet 
 whose verses will outlast all their renown. Leu- 
 cadia still harbors, it is said, the breed of wolves 
 that, perhaps, of all the inhabitants of these isl- 
 ands preserve in purity the Hellenic blood. We 
 sailed close to the long promontory, "Leucadia's 
 far-projecting rock of woe," and saw, if any one 
 may see, the very precipice from which Sappho, 
 leaping, quenched in brine the amatory flames of 
 a heart that sixty years of song and trouble had 
 not cooled. 
 
 Through the strait of Actium we looked upon 
 the smooth inland sea of Ambracia, while our 
 steamer churned along the very waters that saw 
 the flight of the purple sails of Cleopatra, whom 
 the enamored Antony followed and left the world 
 to Augustus. The world was a small affair then, 
 when its possession could be decided on a bit of 
 water where, as Byron says, two frigates could 
 hardly manoeuvre. These historical empires were 
 fleeting shows at the best, not to be compared to 
 the permanent conquests and empire of the mind. 
 The voyager from the Bosphorus to Corfu feels 
 that it is not any Alexander or Ca i sar, Chagan or 
 Caliph, but Homer, who rules over the innumer- 
 able islands and sunny mainlands of Greece. 
 
 It was deep twilight when we passed the barren 
 rock of Antipaxos, and the mountain in the sea 
 called Paxos. There is no island in all these seas 
 that has not its legend; that connected with 
 Paxos, and recorded by Plutarch, I am tempted to
 
 542 THROUGH THE GULF OF CORINTH 
 
 transcribe from the handbook, in the quaint lan- 
 guage in which it is quoted, for it expresses not 
 only the spirit of this wild coast, but also our own 
 passage out of the domain of mythology into the 
 sunlight of Christian countries: "Here, about the 
 time that our Lord suffered his most bitter pas- 
 sion, certain persons sailing from Italy to Cyprus 
 at night heard a voice calling aloud, Thamus! 
 Thamus ! who giving ear to the cry was bidden (for 
 he was pilot of the ship), when he came near to 
 Pelodes to tell that the great god Pan was dead, 
 which he doubting to do, yet for that when he 
 came to Pelodes there was such a calm of wind 
 that the ship stood still in the sea unmoored, he 
 was forced to cry aloud that Pan was dead ; where- 
 withal there were such piteous outcries and dread- 
 ful shrieking as hath not been the like. By which 
 Pan, of some is understood the great Sathanas, 
 whose kingdom was at that time by Christ con- 
 quered, and the gates of hell broken up; for at 
 that time all oracles surceased, and enchanted spir- 
 its that were wont to delude the people henceforth 
 held their peace." 
 
 It was ten o'clock at night when we reached 
 Corfu, and sailed in under the starlight by the 
 frowning hill of the fortress, gliding spectrally 
 among the shipping, with steam shut off, and at a 
 signal given by the bowsman letting go the anchor 
 in front of the old battery. 
 
 Corfu, in the opinion of Napoleon, enjoys the 
 most beautiful situation in the world. Its loveli- 
 ness is in no danger of being overpraised. Shut
 
 CORFU 543 
 
 in by the Albanian coast opposite, the town ap- 
 pears to lie upon a lake, surrounded by the noblest 
 hills and decorated with a tropical vegetation. 
 Very picturesque in its moss-grown rock is the 
 half -dismantled old double fortress, which the 
 English, in surrendering to the weak Greek state, 
 endeavored to render as weak as possible. It 
 and a part of the town occupy a bold promontory ; 
 the remainder of the city lies around a little bay 
 formed by this promontory and Quarantine Island. 
 The more we see of the charming situation, and 
 become familiar witli the delicious mountain out- 
 lines, we regret that we can tarry but a day, and 
 almost envy those who make it a winter home. 
 The interior of the city itself, when we ascend the 
 height and walk in the palace square, appears 
 bright and cheerful, but retains something of the 
 dull and decorous aspect of an English garrison 
 town. In the shops the traveler does not find 
 much to interest him, except the high prices of all 
 antiquities. We drove five miles into the coun- 
 try, to the conical hill and garden of Gasturi, 
 whose mistress gathered for us flowers and let us 
 pluck from the trees the ripe and rather tasteless 
 nrxj)O?i. From this summit is an extraordinary 
 prospect of bine sea, mountains, snowy summits, 
 the town, and the island, broken into sharp peaks 
 and most luxuriant valleys and hillsides. An- 
 cient, gnarled olive-trees abound, thousands of 
 acres of grapevines were in sight, the hedges were 
 the prickly-pear cactus, and groves of walnuts and 
 most vigorous tig-trees interspersed the landscape.
 
 544 THROUGH THE GULF OF CORINTH 
 
 There was even here and there a palm. A lovely 
 land, most poetical in its contours. 
 
 The Italian steamer for Brindisi was crowded 
 with passengers. On the forward deck was a pic- 
 turesque horde of Albanian gypsies. The captain 
 said that he counted eighty, without the small 
 ones, which, to avoid the payment of fare, were 
 done up in handkerchiefs and carried in bags 
 like kittens. The men, in broad, short breeches 
 and the jackets of their country, were stout and 
 fine fellows physically. The women, wearing no 
 marked costume, but clad in any rags of dresses 
 that may have been begged or stolen, were strik- 
 ingly wild in appearance, and if it is true that the 
 women of a race best preserve the primeval traits, 
 these preserve, in their swarthy complexions, burn- 
 ing black eyes, and jet black hair, the characteris- 
 tics of some savage Oriental tribe. The hair in 
 front was woven into big braids, which were stiff 
 with coins and other barbarous ornaments in sil- 
 ver. A few among them might be called hand- 
 some, since their profiles were classic; but it was 
 a wild beauty which woman sometimes shares with 
 the panther. They slept about the deck amidst 
 their luggage, one family usually crawling into a 
 single sack. In the morning there were nests of 
 them all about, and, as they crawled forth, espe- 
 cially as the little ones swarmed out, it was difficult 
 to believe that the number of passengers had not 
 been miraculously increased in the night. The 
 women carry the fortune of the family on their 
 heads; certainly their raiment, which drapes but
 
 BRINDISI 545 
 
 does not conceal their forms, would scarcely have 
 a value in the rag-market of Naples. I bought 
 of one of them a silver ornament, cutting it from 
 the woman's hair, but I observed that her husband 
 appropriated the money. 
 
 It was like entering a new world of order and 
 civilization, next morning, to sail through the vast 
 outer harbor of Brindisi into the inner one, and 
 lie, for the first time in the Mediterranean, at a 
 dock. The gypsies made a more picturesque land- 
 ing than the other passengers, trudging away with 
 their bags, tags, rags, and tent-poles, the women 
 and children lugging their share. It was almost 
 touching to see their care for the heaps of rubbish 
 which constitute all their worldly possessions. 
 They come like locusts to plunder sunny Italy; on 
 a pretense of seeking work in the fields, they will 
 spend the summer in the open air, gaining health, 
 and living, as their betters like to live, upon the 
 labor of others. 
 
 Brindisi has a beautiful Roman column, near 
 it the house where Virgil is said to have died, and 
 an ancient fortress, which is half crumbling walls 
 and half dwelling-houses, and is surrounded, like 
 the city wall, by a moat, now converted into a vege- 
 table garden. As I was peacefully walking along 
 the rampart, intending to surround the town, a 
 soldier motioned me buck, as if it had been time 
 of war. I offered to stroll over the drawbridge into 
 the mouldy fortress. A soldier objected. As I 
 turned away, he changed his mind, and offered to 
 show me the interior. But it was now my turn
 
 546 THROUGH THE GULF OF CORINTH 
 
 to decline; and I told him that, the idle impulse 
 passed, I would rather not go in. Of all human 
 works I care the least for fortresses, except to look 
 at from the outside ; it is not worth while to enter 
 one except by storming it or strolling in, and when 
 one must ask permission the charm is gone. You 
 get sick to death almost of these soldier-folk who 
 start up and bar your way with a bayonet wher- 
 ever you seek to walk in Europe.. No, soldier ; I 
 like the view from the wall of the moat, and the 
 great fields of ripe wheat waving in the sweet 
 north wind, but I don't care for you or your for- 
 tress. 
 
 Brindisi is clean, but dull. Yet it was charac- 
 teristically Italian that I should encounter in the 
 Duomo square a smart, smooth-tongued charlatan, 
 who sold gold chains at a franc each, which did 
 not seem to be dear; and a jolly, almost hilarious 
 cripple, who, having no use of his shrunken legs, 
 had mounted himself on a wooden bottom, like a 
 cheese-box, and, by the aid of his hands, went 
 about as lively as a centipede. 
 
 I stepped into the cathedral; a service was 
 droning on, with few listeners. On one side of 
 the altar was a hideous, soiled wax image of the 
 dead Christ. Over the altar, in the central place 
 of worship, was a flaring figure of the Virgin, clad 
 in the latest mode of French millinery, and un- 
 derneath it was the legend, Viva Maria. This 
 was the salutation of oiir return to a Christian 
 land: Christ is dead; the Virgin lives!
 
 THE LAND OF THE IMAGINATION 547 
 
 Here our journey, which began on the other 
 coast of Italy in November, ends in June. In as- 
 cending the Nile to the Second Cataract, and mak- 
 ing the circuit of the Levant, we have seen a con- 
 siderable portion of the Moslem Empire and of the 
 nascent Greek kingdom, which aspires, at least in 
 Europe, to displace it. We have seen both in a 
 transition period, as marked as any since the Sar- 
 acens trampled out the last remnants of the always 
 sickly Greek Empire. The prospect is hopeful, 
 although the picture of social and political life is 
 far from agreeable. But for myself, now that we 
 are out of the Orient and away from all its squalor 
 and cheap magnificence, I turn again to it with a 
 longing which I cannot explain ; it is still the land 
 of the imagination.
 
 INDEX 
 
 ABAXA, the sacred, 263-273 ; fantastic 
 country-seata on. 2(>5 ; gorge of the. 
 310, 311. 
 
 Abd-el-Atti, our guide and dragoman, 
 2 ; in trouble, 320 ; unexpected 
 champion of, 324 ; imprisonment in 
 and release from the seraglio, 331 ; 
 parting with, 473. 
 
 Abd-el-Kader, visit to, 299; enlight- 
 . ened and democratic views of, 300 ; 
 true Oriental farewell of, .'501. 
 
 Abraham, tomb of, 87 ; visit of, to 
 Egypt, 231, 2("4; Palestine in pos- 
 session of Canaanites in time of, 
 233 ; a dweller in Damascus before 
 going to Canaan, 2 ( >4. 
 
 Absalom, David's flight from, 00 ; 
 tomb of, stones cast at the, 91, 97. 
 
 Abu Ghaush, the terrible robber, 31 ; 
 defied Turkish power for fifty years, 
 31. 
 
 Abydos, scene of Leander's and By- 
 ron's swimming feat, 402 ; laying of 
 Xerxes's bridge at, 402. 
 
 Abyssinians, camp of decent, 1G7 ; re- 
 pulsive character of, 212. 
 
 Academe, grove of, 519. 
 
 Aceldama, the " field of blood," 90 ; 
 an uncanny place, 100. 
 
 Achelous, battle between Ottomans 
 and Christians near mouth of the, 
 540. 
 
 Achilla, steamer, trip to Cyprus on, 
 337 ; passengers of, a mixture of all 
 nations, 358 ; through the Darda- 
 nelles in, 401. 
 
 Achilles, in woman's apparel, 490. 
 
 Achmed, champion of Abd-el-Atti, 
 324. 
 
 Acre, city of, last hold of the Chris- 
 tians in Palestine, 94. 
 
 Aero-Corinth, 520, 533, 53C.. 
 
 Acropolis, ancient temples at B-i al- 
 bek grainier than the, 253; Mt tint- 
 on the, 493 ; feelings on tir.it sight 
 of, 49T>; the centre of the world's 
 thought, 49S ; description of, 5<>4 ; 
 
 every Greek city had its, 517 ; seec 
 at sunrise, 532 : last view of, 534. 
 Actium, Nicopolis built to commemo- 
 rate the victory of, 1S4 ; through 
 the strait of, 541. 
 Adam, chapel of, 75. 
 Adams colony in Jaffa, remnants of, 
 10; its little church of Maine tim- 
 ber, 10 ; dismay of, amid Moslem 
 squalor, 10 ; its leader lacking faith 
 ti> wait, 11 ; its deluded victims res- 
 cued by government, 11 ; its German 
 successor prosperous, 11 ; hope of 
 making money cause of the Ameri- 
 can failure, 12; New Hampshire 
 woman's talk about, 13 ; odd con- 
 trast of Yankee dialect with Orien- 
 tal surroundings, 13; more difficult 
 to keep up a religious feeling here 
 than at home, 14. 
 
 Adirondacks, Whiteface resembles 
 Mt. Athos in Greece, 489. 
 
 Adnllain, cave of, David's hiding in, 
 175, 187. 
 
 .Kgaleos, Mt.. 514, 515. 
 
 .Kgenn islands, 3(i7 ; former splendor 
 of, 487; destroyed and stripped by 
 Turkish avarice, 4*7 ; still under 
 the spell of genius, 491. 
 
 .Egina, Gulf of, 533. 
 
 .Kmilius Patilus, battle between, and 
 King Perseus, 48t>. 
 
 .Esrhylus, 490 ; born in Kleusis, 51S. 
 
 Africa circumnavigated by Plui-nician 
 sailors, 232. 
 
 Africans in SalomVa, lofty tearing of, 
 485. 
 
 Agamemnon, Paula's descent from, 
 183. 
 
 Agora, valley of the. 5tl7, 52S. 
 
 Ahab, Jericho rebuilt in time of, 145. 
 
 Ahman, our Abyssinian servant, 2. 
 
 Ahmed, our faithful servant, 47:'-. 
 
 Ahmed, Sultan, m-n-m.- of, 42*. 4,".l. 
 
 Aidin. railway t>, 37'.'. 
 
 'Ain Dftk, fountain of, 147. 
 
 'Ain es-Siiltfin, fountain of, 144 147.
 
 550 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ajalon, valley of, 27. 
 
 Akka, battlements of, 226. 
 
 Aksa, mosque of, 86. 
 
 Aladdin, discoveries of Cesnola read 
 like the adventures of, 353. 
 
 Alamas, discoveries in, by Cesnola, 
 351. 
 
 Albanian coast, 543. 
 
 Albanians, Napoleon's cruel destruc- 
 tion of, 18 ; accustomed to being 
 massacred by the Romans and oth- 
 ers, 19 ; island of Andros cultivated 
 by, 491 ; costume of, 496, 516. 
 
 Alcneus, born at Lesbos, 394. 
 
 Alcibiades sought Ephesus for its 
 treasures of art and learning, 390. 
 
 Alexander, Smyrna restored by, 37G ; 
 sat to Apelles for his portrait, 389 ; 
 golden chariot of, 441. 
 
 Ali, Mohammed, mosque of, 304; old 
 palace of, 456. 
 
 Allah, the valley of the Abana the 
 gift of, 269. 
 
 "All for the state and nothing for the 
 man," the ancient motto, 490. 
 
 Amathus, ancient city of Cyprus, 
 349 ; ancient tombs opened at, 352. 
 
 Amazonian state set up by women of 
 Lernnos, 475 ; its formidable repu- 
 tation in the ancient world, 475. 
 
 Ambracia, inland sea of, 541. 
 
 America, the only land of real free- 
 dom, 300 ; Cesnola's discoveries a 
 credit to, 345 ; to be saved by pre- 
 serving its early ideals, 531. 
 
 American cemetery at Jerusalem, 58. 
 
 American consul at Beyrout, singular 
 conduct of, 322. 
 
 American mission in Syria, 316 ; in 
 Athens, 509. 
 
 Ammochosto, ancient city of, 349. 
 
 Ammon, worship of the god of, 102. 
 
 Amorites, spot where Joshua smote 
 the, 27 ; David's raid on, 30. 
 
 Amphitheatre, looking down upon 
 the, 534 ; Aristophanes and Socra- 
 tes antagonists in the, 534. 
 
 Anakim, giants of, 233. 
 
 Anastasius, horrible assassination in 
 reign of, 432. 
 
 Ancient builders, cyclopean struc- 
 tures of, 247. 
 
 Andrew, St., reburied in Church of 
 St. Sophia, 426. 
 
 Andromeda, stones she was chained 
 to, 225. 
 
 Andros, wine of, once famous through 
 all Greece, 491. 
 
 Angel, chapel of the, 44. 
 
 Anjar, the river, 257. 
 
 Antar, singers reciting the deeds of, 
 400. 
 
 Antigone, chorus from the, 534. 
 
 Anti-Lebanon, foot-hills of, 239, 250. 
 
 Antioch, John of, in the Council of 
 Ephesus, 381, 382 ; Simon Stylites 
 on his pillar at, 454. 
 
 Antipaxos, barren rock of, 541. 
 
 Antiques, exaggerated notion of the 
 value of, 526, 543. 
 
 Antiquities of the Syrian coast, 232. 
 
 Autirheum, fortress of, 538. 
 
 Antonia, fortress of, rebuilt by Herod, 
 81. 
 
 Antonio, a loquacious dragoman, 148. 
 
 Antony, lived with Cleopatra at Sa- 
 in os, 376 ; progress of, in Ephesus, 
 390. 
 
 Apelles, born in Kos, 368. 
 
 Aphrodisium, surveyed by Cesnola, 
 
 350. 
 
 I Aphrodite, fabled to have been born 
 off coast of Cyprus, 344. 
 
 Apollo, sacred fire of, extinguished in 
 Patera, 361 ; birthplace of, 492 ; 
 site of Temple of, 514. 
 
 Apollo Hylates, Temple of, discovered 
 by Cesnola at Curium, 352. 
 
 Apostles' Creed, place where com- 
 posed, 112. 
 
 Apples of the Dead Sea, 150. 
 
 Araba, a wagon like the band chariot 
 of a circus, 457 ; ascent of the Gi- 
 ant's Grave Mountain in, 458. 
 
 Arabian poets, Damascus celebrated 
 by, 269. 
 
 Arabs improvident, 158. 
 
 Araxes, pilgrims from the banks of, 
 106. 
 
 Arcadius, first Emperor of Byzantium, 
 rivaled in magnificence the Persian 
 monarchs and califs of Bagdad, 420 ; 
 reception of the ashes of the Prophet 
 Samuel by, 427. 
 
 Archilochus, home of the poet, 476. 
 
 Archipelago, toleration needed to re- 
 store its ancient glory, 487. 
 
 Areopagite council, awful solemnity 
 of, 528. 
 
 Areopagus, 504, 507, 528. 
 
 Argonauts, return of, to Koroo Ches- 
 meh, 454 ; halt at mouth of Bospho- 
 rus, 459 ; Lemnos made headquar- 
 ters of, 475. 
 
 Argos, 385, 517. 
 
 Arian controversy, 427. 
 
 Arimathea, tomb of Joseph of, 70. 
 
 Aristides, 507. 
 
 Aristophanes, the sharp, ringing tones 
 of the Greek language made his im- 
 itation of the frogs easy, 516. 
 
 Aristotle, his meditations in the groves 
 of Academe, 519 ; Lesbos visited by, 
 394. 
 
 Ark, planks from the, kept in the 
 Mosque of St. Sophia, 425.
 
 INDEX 
 
 551 
 
 Arkansas, the Jordan resembles the, 
 155. 
 
 Arki, island of, 369. 
 
 Armenian convent in Jerusalem, filled 
 with pilgrims, 53 ; bells of, made of 
 plank, 54 ; imposing appearance of 
 bishop of, 54 ; a Napoleon each, 
 price of lodging in, 55 ; an odd col- 
 lection of pilgrim shoes in, 55 ; 
 another visit to, '209 ; refreshments 
 at, 211. 
 
 Armenians, 36, 40. 
 
 Arnot, Miss, noble work of her mis- 
 sion school for girls in Jaffa, 9. 
 
 Arsinoe, old city of, found by Ces- 
 nola, 351. 
 
 Art must be seen where its great 
 works are produced to be fully un- 
 derstood, 527. 
 
 Art and culture, wonderful revival of, 
 in Athens, 510. 
 
 Artemis, birthplace of, 492. 
 
 Artemisia, Queen, ruler of Telos and 
 Nisyros, 3ti7 ; tomb of Mausolus 
 built by, 3(58 ; -sheltered the chil- 
 dren of Xerxes, 389. 
 
 Ascension, Chapel of the, on Mount 
 of Olives, 110. 
 
 Asher, residence of the tribe of, 227 ; 
 importance of, in time of the Cru- 
 sades, '227 ; Napoleon's discomfiture 
 at, 227. 
 
 Ashtaroth, lascivious rites of, 101, 
 126. 
 
 Asia Minor, government of, robs in- 
 dustry, 371 ; the ancient Bithynia 
 and Mysia, 449. 
 
 Asia, purple hills of, seen from the 
 walls of Mitylene, 394. 
 
 Askalon, pilgrims from, 208. 
 
 Assiout, spring of, resorted to by wo- 
 men desiring offspring, 187. 
 
 Assurbanapal, the Assyrian monarch 
 (Sardauapalus), 354. 
 
 Assyrians, kingdom of Israel gobbled 
 up by the, 02. 
 
 Astypatiea, isle of, 369. 
 
 Athenais, 404. 
 
 Athens, art of, a great power in the 
 world, 127 ; love of, for Skyros, 
 490 ; plain of. 495 ; ride to, by the 
 Long Wall of, 495; baggy garments 
 of the East not seen in, 4% ; com- 
 fort of its broad streets after the 
 narrow lanes of the Orient. 497 ; 
 women of, not beauties, 500 ; no 
 ancient Athenian found in, 501 ; 
 great growth of, in forty years, 5(13 ; 
 University of, 510 ; bigotry of Greek 
 Church in, 511 ; seen from the 
 Acropolis at sunrise, 532. 
 
 Athos, Mt., site of Agamemnon'H bea- 
 con-fire, 477 ; independence of the 
 
 Greek Church on, 477 ; architecture 
 and customs of the Middle Ages 
 preserved on, 477 ; no women al- 
 lowed to set foot on, or any female 
 animal, 477 ; glory of a sunset on, 
 478 ; its lordship over the Mgesai, 
 489. 
 
 Attic bees as busy as two thousand 
 years ago, 515. 
 
 Attica, portals of, 493 ; world-wide in- 
 fluence of its history belied by its 
 meagre territory, 494. 
 
 Augustus, empire left to, by Antony, 
 541. 
 
 Aurelia de Bossa, tomb of, 1 12. 
 
 Aurelian, 423. 
 
 Ayasolook, once a residence of sultans, 
 380; picturesque ruins of, 381. 
 
 Aziz, Sultan Abdul, kept in the cage 
 of the Seraglio of Stamboul, 421 ; 
 going to prayer, 437. 
 
 BAAL, scene of Elijah's victory over 
 the priests of, 22(i ; Mammon the 
 modern, 226; Temple of, at Ba'al- 
 bek, 249. 
 
 Ba'albek, road to, 239 ; journey to, 
 243 ; arrival at, 245 ; like the well- 
 known picture of, 245 ; sweetness of 
 waters of, 247 ; no record of, pre- 
 served, 24S ; ruins of, grainier than 
 represented, 249 ; anticipated Gothic 
 genius, 249 ; suggested Saracenic in- 
 vention, 249 ; splendid sunset from, 
 250 ; seen by moonlight, 251 ; brutal 
 Moslem procession at, 252 ; view of 
 Lebanon from, 254. 
 
 Bacchus and Hercules, fabled exploits 
 of, in Ephesus, 384. 
 
 Backsheesh, cry of, 29 ; to propitiate 
 the Prophet, 86 ; plot of slii-ykhs to 
 secure, 165; clamor for, 166; not 
 importuned for, in Zahleh, 24(1 ; ex- 
 pectation of, in I >amascus, 276 ; one 
 official who refused, 3!H. 
 
 Bagdad, way to, 311 ; magnificence of 
 the califs of, 420. 
 
 Baggage as well as passengers all car- 
 ried on backs of lieasts of burden in 
 the East, 27. 
 
 Balaklava, nameless dead of, buried 
 at Scutari, 451. 
 
 Bar-Jesus, place of Paul's encounter 
 with the sorcerer, 1541. 
 
 Barley, large patches of, 19. 
 
 Bathslit'lxi, wife of Uriah, first seen 
 by David, 52; Pool of, 52. 
 
 Bay of Naples, and Sea of Marmora, 
 449. 
 
 Bazaars at Jerusalem, dark and grave- 
 like, 65 ; at Stamlxtul, kccjicrs of, a 
 study, 414. 
 
 Bebek, visit to, 434, 435.
 
 552 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bedawee, sticks to his word when bet- 
 ter to keep than break it, 129 ; sav- 
 age appearance of, 132 ; intrusion 
 of, upon camp, 1G5 ; lofty conduct 
 of, 171 ; lost ideal of nobleness of, 
 172 ; camps of the, 192. 
 
 Beggars, Moslem, the worst, 110, 251. 
 
 Beginnings of our era, 371. 
 
 Beicos, straggling village of, 456. 
 
 Belgrade, sacred forest of, unprofaned 
 by an axe, 459. 
 
 Bells, fondness of Cyprians for, 343. 
 
 Benjamin and Judah, boundaries be- 
 tween territory of, 27. 
 
 Benjamin, tribe of, left-handed, C3; 
 ancient bad, but modern worse, 63. 
 
 BerdQny, gorge of the, 239. 
 
 Beshiktash, palace of, 407 ; visit to, 
 436 ; crowds at, to see Sultan go to 
 prayer, 437 ; a strange religious ex- 
 citement, 438 ; Jason landed at, 454. 
 
 Bethany, Christ's ascension from, 111; 
 a squalid hamlet, 114 : fine prospect 
 from, 114 ; tomb of Lazarus at, 114. 
 
 Bethesda, disputed location of Pool 
 of, 98 ; Pool of Siloam thought to be 
 the same as, 98. 
 
 Bethlehem, description of, 174 ; now, 
 as always, a Christian town, 175 ; 
 hostility of, to the Moslems, 175 ; 
 beauty and virtue of women of, 175 ; 
 industry and self-respect of men of, 
 175 ; name of, sweetest of all words, 
 175 ; scene of Ruth's story and Da- 
 vid's consecration, 175 ; mountain- 
 ous approaches to, 176; "plains" 
 of, a myth, 176 ; cleaner than Jeru- 
 salem, but more commercial, 179 ; 
 entertainment at, 180. 
 
 Beyezid II., mosque of Sultan, 413. 
 
 Beyrout, approach to, 234 ; American 
 mission and college at, 234, 316 ; re- 
 turn to, from Damascus, like coming 
 back to the world, 315 ; bounteous 
 land of silk and wine, 315 ; former as 
 well as present seat of learning, 318. 
 
 Bible, the best guide-book to the Holy 
 Land, 46. 
 
 Big Sheykh, like Big Injun, 170. 
 
 Bigotry, relaxation of, in the East, 
 
 484. 
 Boaz, sweet associations of the land 
 
 of, 180. 
 Bffiotia, sailing near, 490. 
 
 Bois de Boulogne of the Bosphorus, 
 
 444. 
 
 Boolgoorloo, ascent of the, 448. 
 BosphoniB, palaces of the, 418, 447 ; 
 first bewildering sail on the, 434 ; 
 sea and shore of, a scene of crowded 
 life, 434 ; gay scene on shore of, 
 444 ; scene of magical beauty on, 
 445 ; gorgeous sunset on, 44C ; a 
 
 river of lapis lazuli lined with mar- 
 ble palaces, 453. 
 
 Boudroum, view of, 368 ; its fortress 
 wrested from Knights of St. John, 
 368 ; birthplace of Herodotus and 
 Dionysius, 368. 
 
 Bouillon, Godfrey de, first king of 
 Jerusalem, sword of, 75 ; Duchesse 
 de, a fortunate woman who enjoys 
 the glory of the dead while receiv- 
 ing the homage of the living, 112. 
 
 Brigands, formerly infested Mt. Pep- 
 telicus, 523 ; capture of Englishmen 
 by, 524. 
 
 Brook Kidron, 91, 191. 
 
 Broussa, first capital of the Osman 
 dynasty, 449 ; famed for its gauzy 
 silk, 449. 
 
 Brushwood, women loaded with, but 
 covered with ornaments, 29. 
 
 Bubastis, scene on Bosphorus like an- 
 cient fete of, 444. 
 
 Buckle, Henry T., burial-place of, near 
 Damascus, 283. 
 
 BiikS'a, fertile plain of, 244 ; brilliant 
 view from, 244 ; gay colors of, 257. 
 
 Buyukdereh, summer resort of foreign 
 residents of Constantinople, 461 ; 
 ferried to, by an aged Greek boat- 
 man, 461 ; near being our last voy- 
 age, 461. 
 
 Byron's swim to fame, 402. 
 
 Byzantine architecture, 372 ; more re- 
 mains of, in Salonica than in any 
 other place except Constantinople, 
 481 ; paintings in Salonica, 484 ; 
 church in Athens, 508. 
 
 Byzantine Empire survived a thou- 
 sand years in effeminate luxury, 
 463 ; present dissoluteness of the 
 Turks no warrant for its speedy 
 dissolution, 463 ; a power strong 
 enough to expel the Turks and unite 
 the Greeks required for the refor- 
 mation, 464. 
 
 Byzantine rule, corruption of, 347 ; 
 cruelty and treachery of, 421. 
 
 Byzantium, factions of, more licen- 
 tious than those of Rome, 430. 
 
 CACKLING of hens, talk of some Greek 
 women like, 516. 
 
 Caiaphas, house of, 56. 
 
 Caique, a tottlish water-craft, 411 ; 
 Sultan going to prayer in his carved 
 and gilded, 440. 
 
 Cairo, a " miserable hole," 303 ; ba- 
 zaars of, have more antique trea- 
 sures than those of Constantinople, 
 413. 
 
 Caligula, exploits of, 432. 
 
 Calla-lily, black, 26, 222. 
 
 Calvary, site of, 43 ; Christ's passage
 
 INDEX 
 
 553 
 
 from Pilate's Hall of Judgment to, 
 49. 
 
 Canaanites, coast of the, never sub- 
 dued by the Jews, 228 ; a literary 
 people before Joshua's time, 230; 
 language nearly like the Hebrew, 
 230 ; ancient works of, at Ba'albek, 
 298. 
 
 Canterbury Pilgrims to, the way to 
 Jerusalem a vivid picture of, 27. 
 
 Carinel, Mt., regret at not visiting, 
 219 ; under shadow of, 226 : scene 
 of Elijah's prayer for rain, 226. 
 
 Carmelite nuns, convent for, 113. 
 
 Carob-tree, prodigal son supposed to 
 have fed upon its husks. 19. 
 
 Carpassa, ancient city of Cyprus, 349. 
 
 Caryatides in the Erechtheum, 507. 
 
 Caseneau, the French conjurer, his 
 tricks with cards, 399. 
 
 Cassius destroys himself at Philippi, 
 476. 
 
 Caucasus, our race has attained the 
 most perfect form in, 400 ; formerly 
 renowned for men of valor as well 
 as for women of beauty, 460 ; rais- t 
 ing inmates for Turkish harems, 
 460. 
 
 Cemeteries, of Jerusalem, barren and 
 strewn with broken stones, 56 ; used 
 for interments three thousand years, ' 
 58; our guide gives a living interest 
 to, 58 ; shut in by high walls, 58 ; 
 musings in, 58 ; of Damascus, burial 
 of celebrated persons in, 284. 
 
 Cemetery of Scutari, description of, 
 450 ; queer headstones of, 451. 
 
 Cenchre*, place where Paul shaved 
 his head, 535. 
 
 Centaurs, horsemanship of the Thes- 
 salians gave rise to tiie fable of the, 
 488. 
 
 Ceres, Temple of, still under the clod, 
 516 ; a delicate hand from the ruins 
 of, 517 ; myths of, 517. 
 
 Cesnola, General di, collection of an- 
 tiques by, 120. 345; presentation of 
 credentials to. :!) ; sketcli of, 34S ; 
 difficulty of his researches, 349. 
 
 Chalce, island of. 367. 
 
 Chalcedon, ancient, 405 ; repassing 
 shore of, 473. 
 
 Chalcis, an old city once occupied by 
 Herod, unknown origin of. 2.17. 
 
 Chalkis, site of ancient, 4!H1. 
 
 Chanak-Kalesi, on the Dardanelles 
 the great Asiatic entrepot, 4"! ; bar- 
 barous pottery of, seen all over the 
 East, 402 ; hideous designs on. 4<2 ; 
 Castle of Asia at, 474. 
 
 Changes of the world due to woman's 
 impatience of monotony, 477. 
 
 Chapel of the Nativity, 1S5. 
 
 Chemosh, temple to, 91. 
 
 Cherith, the Brook, flows through a 
 
 remarkable canon, 141 ; difficulty of 
 
 fording, 144. 
 
 Chersonesus, the ancient, 403. 
 Chibouk, the pipe of Egypt, 267. 
 Children, of Israel, first camp of. at 
 
 Gilgal, 145 ; beautiful, of Damascus, 
 
 288, 293. 
 
 Chios, birthplace of Homer, 371. 
 C'hittim, Paul's visit to isle of, .'541. 
 Christ, prison of, 56. 
 Christian Church, simple worship 
 
 of, contrasted with the elaborate 
 
 Greek ritual or repetitions of Mos- 
 lem prayers, 452. 
 Christianity, Western, missionaries of, 
 
 exerting a controlling influence in 
 
 Syria, 241. 
 Christians, slaughter of, in Damascus, 
 
 by Moslems and Druses, 271. 
 Chrysostom, Church of St. Sophia 
 
 burned by party of, 426. 
 Church edifices of the East used by 
 
 one sect after another, 483 ; interior 
 
 harmony of, destroyed by twisting 
 
 the altars round to face Mecca, 425, 
 
 484. 
 Cicero entertained with games at Eph- 
 
 esus, 390 ; exile of, passed in Salo- 
 
 nica, 485. 
 Circus of Constantinople, an arena 
 
 like that of Rome, 430. 
 Citium, Lazarus Bishop of, 340 ; an- 
 cient site of, 341 ; once a flourishing 
 
 city, 345. 
 Citti, Mosque of, old and venerated 
 
 like those of Mecca and Jerusalem, 
 
 341. 
 
 Civilizinc influence of man over wo- 
 man, 47(i. 
 Classic coast, 361. 
 Clett;is, 506. 
 Cleopatra, cleaving the writers 
 
 skimmed by her purple sails, 541. 
 Clytemnestra, fall of Troy telegraphed 
 
 to, 475. 
 
 Cnidus, Dorian city of. 367. 
 ('o'liaculitm. site of Last Supper, 60. 
 Colchis, Jason on his way from, lands 
 
 at Beshiktash, 4.14 ; fabulous wealth 
 
 of, tempted the sea-robbers, 4611. 
 Colonus, Sii-red hill of, 52(1. 
 Colorado, atmosphere of the valley of 
 
 the Jordan like, 14!. 
 Colossus of Rhodes shaken down '.y 
 
 an earthquake, IJ61. 
 Column on which the rook crew when 
 
 Peter denied his I^onl. 56. 
 Comfort, not a characteristic of the 
 
 East, 297. 
 Con.-ord River, Jordan width of the, 
 
 but f-vifter, 15.1.
 
 554 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Conessus, burial-place of Ephesus, 
 
 007 OOQ 
 OO I . OOO. 
 
 Constantino, Arch of, 484. 
 
 Constantinople covers the site of an- 
 cient Byzantium, 40C ; European 
 customs in, working out the Orien- 
 tal, 410 ; dogs an ugly characteris- 
 tic of, 413 ; unequaled situation of, 
 437 ; a city of the dead and living, 
 442 ; first siege of, by the Arabs, 
 446 ; unrivaled empress of cities, 
 449 ; its iron-clads and fortresses 
 forbid its fall, 450 ; one of the dis- 
 solute cities of the world, 462 ; con- 
 dition of society worse under Greek 
 rule, 463 ; commerce and trade of, 
 largely in hands of foreigners, 463 ; 
 story of a beauty of, 465-471 ; re- 
 gretful leaving of, 472. 
 
 Consul, American, at Beyrout, in bad 
 odor, 318, 325; hard scratching of, 
 to live at, 319; English more re- 
 spected, 319, 325. 
 
 Convent of Ramleh, picture of Mother 
 and Child in, both black, 24 ; East 
 has no prejudice against color, 25 ; 
 battles of cross and crescent once 
 seen from its walls, 25; the clash 
 of arms not likely to be heard here 
 again, so long as plundering pil- 
 grims is more profitable, 25. 
 
 Cook's pilgrims at Jaffa, 7 ; called 
 "Cookies," 28; at Jerusalem, 68; 
 at Beyrout, 235 ; at Damascus, 306. 
 
 Copper coin, Roman, found every- 
 where in the Orient, 251. 
 
 Corfu, work in gold and silver from, 
 499 ; would prefer English to Greek 
 rule, 537 ; has most beautiful situa- 
 tion in the world, 542. 
 
 Corinth, through the Gulf of, 538, 
 539 ; few ancient remains of, 537 ; a 
 poor tent-maker keeps its name 
 alive, 537. 
 
 Cornaro, Queen Catharine, reign of, 
 in Cyprus, 347. 
 
 Corsican, the cruel little, destroys the 
 Albanians at Jaffa, 18 ; an inexcusa- 
 ble and dastardly act, 18. 
 
 Corydallus, Mt., 514. 
 
 Costume of the Grecian islands, 474. 
 
 Court of justice, a Turkish, 335, 336. 
 
 Credulity catered to by finding sacred 
 spots and showing sacred relics, 74. 
 
 Crescent the emblem of Byzantium 
 before the Christian era, adopted 
 by the Osmanli, 426. 
 
 Crimean war, English cemetery dedi- 
 cated to those who fell in the, 
 451. 
 
 Croat, brilliant get-up of a. 455. 
 
 Cross, Chapel of the Elevation of the, 
 75. 
 
 "Crown of Thorns," shrubs from 
 which plaited, 151. 
 
 Crucifixion, place of, 75 ; rent made 
 in rock by earthquake at time of, 
 75 ; chapel of the, solemn impres- 
 sions at, 76. 
 
 Crusaders, fortifications built by, 27 ; 
 tents of the, on Mt. Olivet, 90. 
 
 Curium, brought to light by Cesnola, 
 351 ; researches at, 352 ; ancient 
 treasures of, 354. 
 
 Cyanean rocks Jason thought floating 
 islands or sea monsters, 459. 
 
 Cyclades, entering the, 491. 
 
 Cymon, bones of Theseus found by, 
 490. 
 
 Cyprians, fondness of, for bells, 
 343. 
 
 Cyprus, perfect repose of, 338 ; ad- 
 ventures in, 341 ; women of, 343 ; 
 discovery of Phoenician usages and 
 relics in, 343; sketch of, 344-356; 
 various rulers of, 345 ; savage rule 
 of Turks in, 347 ; magnificent trea- 
 sures found at, 354, 355. 
 
 Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, 382 ; 
 his participation in the Council of 
 Ephesus, 383. 
 
 DAMASCUS, Gate of, 102 ; highway to, 
 102 ; St. John of, a fiery character, 
 197 ; en route to, 236 ; trade of, be- 
 tween Beyrout and the Mediterra- 
 nean, 258 ; sudden appearance of 
 domes and minarets of, 261 ; Dimi- 
 tri's hotel at, 262; oldest of old 
 cities, 263 ; preserves its ancient 
 appearance, 263 ; founded by Uz, 
 263 ; dwelt in by Abraham, 263 ; has 
 outlived all the ancient cities of the 
 Orient, 265; possessed by Babylo- 
 nians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, 
 Saracens, Christians, and Turks, 
 265 ; mud-walls of, 267, 271 ; a city 
 of fountains and running water, 
 266 ; frogs and dogs a feature of, 
 266 ; smoking chief occupation of, 
 268 ; bazaars of, 268 ; not so rich as 
 those of Cairo, 268, 285 ; celebrated 
 gardens of, desolate by day, but 
 brilliant by night, 273 ; great plane- 
 tree of, 273 ; great mosque of, 274 ; 
 like a rabbit-burrow, 277 ; baths of, 
 278; no drays or carts in, 289; 
 splendid private houses of, 291, 
 built about paved courts, 292, visit 
 to, 293, hospitable reception at, 
 293, description of, 296, no respec- 
 table American would live in, 305 ; 
 shaped like an oval dish with a long 
 handle, 311 ; Straight street of, 
 crookeder than in time of Paul, 
 312 ; view of, at a distance most
 
 INDEX 
 
 555 
 
 interesting, 311 ; life in, 313; last 
 glimpse of, the loveliest, 314. 
 
 Dance of the Bedaweens by the Jor- 
 dan, 105 ; women worse than men 
 in, 160. 
 
 Dandolo, assault of, on Seraglio Point, 
 473. 
 
 Daphne, groves of, 454 ; Pass of, 514, 
 519 ; Monastery of, 514. 
 
 Darabouka, dull drone of the, 485. 
 
 Dardanelles, through the, 401 ; won- 
 derful historic water-street of fill 
 nations, 403 ; may yet lead the 
 way to European possession of Lit- 
 tle Asia, 404 ; return through the, 
 474. 
 
 Darius, satrapy of, 346 ; place of his 
 crossing the Bosphorus, 430. 
 
 Darwishes, performance of the Turn- 
 ing, 442 ; description of, 442. 
 
 David, a guerrilla, 30 ; his raid on the 
 Amorites, 'M. 
 
 David, Tower of, 36, 47, 51 ; tomb of, 
 59; place of consecration, 175. 
 
 Dead, Little Field of the, on the Bos- j 
 phorus, 442. 
 
 Dead Sea, seen from David's Tower, : 
 53 ; descent to, 150 ; not so dead as j 
 represented, 157 ; vegetation about 
 the, 157 ; not a scene of desolation, | 
 157 ; water salt and bitter, but 
 clear, 158 ; too salt for any fish but 
 codfish, 158 ; buoyancy not exag- 
 gerated, 158 ; delightful swimming 
 in, 158 ; depth of, below Mediterra- 
 nean, 159 ; no appearance of fire or 
 bitumen near, 159 ; no difficulty in 
 making the plain of, fertile, 10O ; 
 picture of future happiness at, 160 ; | 
 luxurious lunch at, 101 ; want of 
 fresh water makes travelers move 
 on, 161. 
 
 Death never so ghastly as when tricked ', 
 out with jewelry, 4*t. 
 
 Deity does not dwell in temples made ] 
 with hands, Paul's grand aiinuncia- j 
 l inn. 529. 
 
 Delicious azure of the -Egean, 4S9. 
 
 Delos, religious and political centre of 
 Greece, 492 ; birthplace of Apollo 
 and Artemis, 492. 
 
 Delphi, Temple of, site of, now a small 
 and almost deserted rock, 492. 
 
 Demetrius, St., exploits of, 340. 
 
 Democracy, misfortune a great teach- 
 er of, 300. 
 
 Demosthenes in the forum, 534. 
 
 Description of the Acropolis at Ath- 
 ens, 504. 
 
 Desert, young prince of the, 164. 
 
 Diamonds, Damascus women blazing 
 with, 294 ; pride of exhibiting 
 themselves in, 298. 
 
 Diana, sacred Temple of, at Ephesus, 
 3>vl ; statue of, discovered in, 385. 
 
 Differing religions inherit without 
 shame the churches of the East, 
 483. 
 
 Discovery of ancient treasures at Cy- 
 prus by Cesnola, 344-355. 
 
 Dives, house of, 50. 
 
 Divine Child, place of birth of, 174. 
 
 Dogs have freedom of city in Stam- 
 boul, as in Damascus, 413. 
 
 Dome of the Rock, 82 ; of the Spirits, 
 David's judgment-seat, 86. 
 
 Domes of Stamboul, splendor of, in 
 the sunset, 433, 447. 
 
 Donkey, the Jerusalem, more obsti- 
 nate than the Cairo, 109; contempt- 
 ible as well as contemptuous beast, 
 109 : their abuse here will be set to 
 their account hereafter, 102. 
 
 Don Quixote, world came near losing, 
 540. 
 
 Dorcas, house of, 8. 
 
 Doves, protected as almost sacred in 
 Stamboul, 413. 
 
 Dragoman, an arsenal of arms, 28 ; 
 fierce and important. 28 ; informa- 
 tion, not work, their forte, 148; lo- 
 quacity of, 148 ; quarrel of, in Bey- 
 rout, 320-334. 
 
 Druses, capture of town of Zahleh by, 
 240 ; horrible stories of the, 253 ; 
 all things to all men, 259. 
 
 EAGLE, race for a feather of, 152. 
 
 East, shiftlessness and unpunctuality 
 of the, 130. 
 
 Eastern Question to lie solved by edu- 
 cation, 437. 
 
 Eastern women, dumb attitude of, 
 277. 
 
 Easy to !>e good in Greece, 522. 
 
 Ecce Homo arch, where Christ stood 
 before the populace, 5O. 
 
 Echinades, Don John's repulse of the 
 Ottomans near. 540. 
 
 Education to work the transformation 
 of the East, 464. 
 
 Egyptian ox the emblem of St. Luke, 
 3S7. 
 
 Elali. valley of, 32 ; stone from brook 
 in, killed Goliath, 32; slings from 
 grog-shop near by have slain more 
 than David's, 32. 
 
 Eleusinian mysteries, 518. 
 
 Eleusis, 513; mysteries of Ceres at, 
 513 ; Bay of, like a lovely lake. 515 ; 
 village of, 515 ; mischievous chil- 
 dren of, 51S. 
 
 Elias, Chapel of St., in Athens, 514. 
 
 Elijah, place where fed by the ravens, 
 141 ; hist journey of, to the Jordan, 
 146; ascent of, into heaven, 140,
 
 556 
 
 INDEX 
 
 search for, after, 146 ; scene of his 
 victory over priests of Baal, 226 ; 
 grotto of, 226. 
 
 English school at Jerusalem, GO. 
 
 Kphesus, flying visit to, 379 ; beauty 
 and thrift of country about, 379 ; 
 .St. John came to, from Patmos, 
 381 ; Virgin Mary and Apostles lived 
 at, 381 ; Mary Magdalene and St. 
 Timothy buried at, 382 ; once a city 
 of churches, 382 ; famous Council 
 of, 383 ; carried like a Tammany 
 caucus, 383 ; turbulent encounter 
 of rival factions in, 383 ; Temple of 
 Diana at, oldest ou record, 385; 
 cave of the Seven Sleepers at, 386 ; 
 Little Theatre of, 387 ; Great Thea- 
 tre of, 388 ; desolation of, 388 ; the 
 gospel proclaimed from, 390. 
 
 Erechtheum, Ionic columns of the, 
 505. 
 
 Eresso, Greek women preserve the 
 type of beauty at, 396. 
 
 Erinnyes, the avenging Furies, 528. 
 
 Eryinanthe, steamer, passage to Jaffa 
 in, 2. 
 
 Esdraelon, plain of, 219. 
 
 Es-Serat, Mahomet's dead-line, peril- 
 ous passage of, by the faithful, 93. 
 
 Ethiopia, black Virgin and Child of, 
 24. 
 
 Euboea, peaks of, 489. 
 
 Euripus, 490. 
 
 Eutropius the eunuch protected by 
 Chrysostom, 427. 
 
 Euxine, view of, from Giant's Grave* 
 Mountain, 459. 
 
 Evangelists, gold covers of the books 
 of the, in Church of St. Sophia, 423. 
 
 Eyoub, cemetery of, 446 ; mosque of, 
 where the sultans are inaugurated, 
 446. 
 
 FAIR of Moses, 207 ; of St. George, 
 
 343. 
 Fasts, New England, not like Eastern, 
 
 196. 
 F&timeh, child of Ali Mohammed, 
 
 buried at Damascus, 284. 
 Ferdinand, Jews expelled from Spain 
 
 by, 03. 
 Flavian, primate of Constantinople, 
 
 trampled to death at Council of 
 
 Ephesus, 384. 
 
 Floating harem, our steamer a, 454. 
 Founder of Christianity, scenes of his 
 
 living presence desecrated by shams, 
 
 221. 
 Fountain of Elisha, a remarkable pool, 
 
 163 ; rest and gossip by, 103 ; cos- 
 tume of Greek bathers at, 1(54. 
 Fountains of Damascus are basins, not 
 
 jets of water, 293. 
 
 Franciscan convent in Cyprus, Amer- 
 ican benefactors of, 341. 
 
 Funeral, Armenian quarrel over a, 56. 
 
 Funeral art gives new conception of 
 Greek grace, tenderness, and sensi- 
 bility, 527. 
 
 Fustanella, a Greek in, looks like a 
 landsknecht above and a ballet-girl 
 below, 500. 
 
 GABBATHA, pavement on which Christ 
 
 walked, 50. 
 Galata, a part of Constantinople, 407, 
 
 449 ; glorious view from the Genoese 
 
 tower of, 472. 
 
 Galgam, a high-spirited, 171. 
 Gallipoli, 404. 
 
 Gardens in the air of Damascus, 277. 
 Gasturi, garden of, in Corfu, 543. 
 Gate of God in Damascus, pilgrims 
 
 pass through to Mecca, 311. 
 Gath, David and Saul skirmishing 
 
 about, 30. 
 
 Gehenna, the blasted gulf of, 93. 
 Genius, the deathless spell of, gives 
 
 us intimations of immortality, 520. 
 George, St., exploits of, 340 ; church 
 
 of, 340. 
 Georgian women long for the harem 
 
 as a piece of good fortune, 454. 
 Gethsemane, Garden of, 110, 115 ; 
 
 touching associations of, 115. 
 Gettysburg, nameless dead in the 
 
 cemetery of, like those sleeping at 
 
 Scutari, 451. 
 Geuksoo, the river, kiosk of the Sultan 
 
 on, the finest on the Bosphorus, 456. 
 Giant's Grave Mountain, view of the 
 
 entire length of the Bosphorus from, 
 
 458. 
 Gibeon, heights of, where Joshua 
 
 worsted the Amorites, 27. 
 Gihon, Pool of, 52, 60. 
 Gilgal, first camp of Jews at, 145 ; 
 
 nastiest place in the world, 151 ; 
 
 once fertile and flourishing, 151. 
 Glorious sunset on Mt. Athos, 478. 
 Glory of the sea and sky on leaving 
 
 Constantinople, 473. 
 Godfrey, soldiers of, 95 ; greatness of 
 
 their possessions and wonder of their 
 
 works, 95. 
 
 Golden Gate in Solomon's Porch, im- 
 pressive view from, 90. 
 Golden Horn, impossible navigation 
 
 of, at night, 405 ; Sweet Waters of 
 
 Europe the inlet to, 443 ; thronged 
 
 bridges and countless masts of the, 
 
 449. 
 Golgos, site of, discovered by Cesnola, 
 
 350. 
 Golgotha, hill of, 45 ; gloom of chapel 
 
 of, 75.
 
 IXDEX 
 
 557 
 
 Good-by to reader, 547. 
 
 Gospel first proclaimed f rom Ephesus, 
 390. 
 
 Grand Canal of Venice, pageants on, 
 like those of the Bosphorus, 44(i. 
 
 Graveyard festivals a peculiar enjoy- 
 ment of the Orientals, 442. 
 
 " Great God Pan is dead," 542. 
 
 Greece, rudeness of printing in, 499 ; 
 nnequaled mines and quarries of, 
 499; beating her pruning-hooka into 
 spears, 5(13 ; composed of a multi- 
 tude of islands, 53G. 
 
 Greek cross, main streets of Athens 
 cross each other like a, 497. 
 
 Greek language has survived the By- 
 zantine anarchy, Slavonic conquest, 
 and Frank occupation, 501 ; sharp 
 metallic sound of, 516. 
 
 Greeks, fastest talkers in the world, 
 516 ; simplicity and nobility of the 
 domestic life of, 527. 
 
 Gregory Nazianzen installed upon the 
 Episcopal throne by Theodosius, 
 427. 
 
 Grotto of the Nativity, early record 
 of, 182 ; basilica over, oldest re- 
 mains of Christian architecture, 
 182. 
 
 Gypsies, Albanian, description of, 
 544. 
 
 HADRIAN, statue of, once stood on Mt. 
 Moriah, 82 : Arch of, 502. 
 
 Haifa, German colony at, KJ ; arrival 
 in harbor of, 220 ; description of, 
 22G. 
 
 " Half horse, half alligator," the Ken- 
 tuckian phrase sprung from fable 
 of the Centaurs, 488. 
 
 Halicarnassus, view of city of, 308. 
 
 Hannibal conferred with Antiochus at 
 Ephesus, 390. 
 
 Harem, or Temple area, 79 ; delight- 
 ful place to dream of the glory of 
 the past in, 79 ; not open to the 
 general visitor. 79 ; an authentic 
 historical spot, 79 ; English woman 
 in a, 2t>9 ; visit to court of a, 293. 
 
 Head-dress of Jewish women in Salo- 
 nica a model for Americans, 4sl. 
 
 Heavenly Water, vale of the, 43G ; 
 great place of resort, 443 ; gay voy- 
 age to, 444 ; loveliest in the East, 
 and foretaste of Paradise, 4o<i. 
 
 Hebrew nation, its modern greater 
 than its ancient influence. 122. 
 
 Hebron Gate, 3G. 
 
 Helena, chapel of, 78 ; tomb of, 103 ; 
 island of, 492. 
 
 Helicon and Parnassus. 538. 
 
 Heliogabalus. exploits of. in arena of 
 Stamboul, 432. 
 
 Hellespont must be possessed by one 
 nation or all, 404. 
 
 Heracleuin, ancient, 48G. 
 
 Hermits, their holes in the rocks, 141. 
 
 Hermon, summit of, 142 ; pleasant 
 sight of, 102, 257. 
 
 Hero, scene of Leander's swimming 
 exploit to meet, 402. 
 
 Herodotus, birthplace of, 368. 
 , Hesperides, fruits of the, exacted in 
 Colchis, 4GO. 
 
 Hezekiah, Pool of, 3f., 42. 
 ! Hieropolis. visit to ancient ruins of, 
 24G. 
 
 Highways, no traces of ancient, 33 ; 
 the roads only mule-tracks the travel 
 of generations has made, 33 ; the 
 present road to Jerusalem laid out 
 by the Sultan for the Empress Eu- 
 genie, but left in the rough, 33 ; 
 not well to have a " way beautiful," 
 34 ; length of journey would be 
 lessened and plunder of the vaga- 
 lx>nds decreased, 34. 
 
 Hill, Dr.. missionary to Greece, 503. 
 
 Hill of Evil Counsel, 101. 
 
 Hiiinom, valley of, Gl, 1(11 : a savage 
 gorge of horrible associations, 101. 
 
 Hippicus, Tower of, 51. 
 
 Hippodrome, fai'tions of, burned 
 Church of St. Sophia, 42G ; mosque 
 of Sultan Ahmed on site of, 428 ; 
 arena of, still kept open, 431 ; most 
 famous square in Stamboul, 432 ; 
 pyramid in, erected in time of Con- 
 stant ine, 432. 
 
 Hiram of Tyre, 91 ; aid to Solomon, 
 123; shrewd bargainer, 230. 
 
 Historical places of Jud;ca, disenchant- 
 ment of seeing, 218. 
 
 Hittites, conquest of Egypt by, 231, 
 248. 
 
 Holy City not impressive for its sweet- 
 ness, 38 ; present squalor contrasted 
 with past grandeur. 3i>; lives on the 
 pilgrims to, 105 ; vast crowds to, 
 from Ethiopia, Siberia, ami Asia 
 Minor, 105. 
 
 Holy Lund rejoices in birds of beauty, 
 19; motives that bring jx-ople to 
 
 the, 302, 3oc. 
 
 Holy places in the Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre, list of. 77. 
 
 Holy Sepulchre, mother and boy lone 
 pilgrims to, 24 ; visits to the Church 
 of the, 38-45. 
 
 Home, idea of, preserved by the 
 Greeks, 5.T7. 
 
 Homer, birthplace of, 371 ; a day with, 
 among the Ionian islands, 540 ; the 
 ruler of the Grecian isle*. 541. 
 
 Honoring, my hor.se like CiblxMi's de- 
 scription of tli" Emperor, 190.
 
 558 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hope of civilization in the East, 547. 
 Horns that blew down the walls of 
 . Jericho, preservation of, 425. 
 Horse, points of my Arab, 153. 
 Horsemanship, display of Bedaween, 
 
 171; ecclesiastical, 191. 
 Hotel of the Twelve Tribes outside 
 
 Jaffa occupied by Cook's tribe, 7 ; 
 
 woful look of " Cookies " at the hard 
 
 Syrian horses given them to ride, 7 
 House of Priam, discovery of treasure; 
 
 of, 353. 
 Hudson at West Point resembles the 
 
 Bosphorus, 436. 
 Hun-Kiar Iskelesi, private residence 
 
 of the sultans in the valley of, 456. 
 Hyde Park of the Bosphorus, 446. 
 Hymettus, 495; purple robe of, 498, 
 
 502. 
 
 IBN' ASAKKR, historian of Damascus, 
 
 grave of, 284. 
 Icaria, scene of Daedalus's experiment 
 
 in aerial navigation, 370. 
 Idalium, tombs of, opened by Cesnola 
 
 and discovery of ancient pottery in, 
 
 350. 
 
 Ikos, now a rabbit-warren, 489. 
 Ilissus, valley of the, 497 ; Temple of 
 
 Jupiter overlooks the, 502 ; the 
 
 classic stream a dry gully, 529. 
 Ilium, picturing the glories of, 401. 
 Illyrian race, Albanians belong to the, 
 
 491. 
 Imbros and Lemnos, passage between, 
 
 475. 
 Indians, dance of the Bedaweens like 
 
 that of the, 165. 
 Iiikermaun, the fallen at, sleep in the 
 
 cemetery at Scutari, 451. 
 Ionian Islands, among the, 540. 
 lonians, ancient, 491, 539. 
 Irene, the Empress, account of her 
 
 cruelty and punishment, 396 ; church 
 
 of, an arsonal, 421. 
 Isaiah, Tree of, where the prophet was 
 
 sawn asunder, 100. 
 Iscariot, blasted tree of, 101. 
 Isis, statue of, in Museum at Athens, 
 
 527. 
 Islam, description of the chief of, 
 
 442. 
 Islands of the Eastern Mediterranean, 
 
 Turkish massacre and Greek revenge 
 
 the history of, 464. 
 
 Isles of the Blest, in the Sea of Mar- 
 mora, enchanting situation of, 449. 
 Israel, kingdom of, 62 ; children of, 
 
 67 ; extent of its power, 122. 
 Israelites, resemblance to Scotch High- 
 landers, 122 ; the hills their strength, 
 
 122 ; the acquisition of wealth their 
 
 destruction, 123 ; picture of their 
 
 habits in 2d Samuel, 124 ; barbarity 
 of, 124. 
 
 lulis, home of legends and poets, 492 ; 
 purity of its people ascribed to 
 flight of the nymphs frightened by 
 a roaring lion, 492. 
 
 JAFFA existed before the deluge, 3 ; 
 chief Mediterranean port of Jerusa- 
 lem, 3 ; dangerous approach to, in 
 bad weather, 4 ; Solomon landed his 
 Lebanon timber for the Temple at, 
 3 ; occupied by Saracen hosts and 
 Crusaders, 3 ; depot of supplies for 
 Venice, Genoa, and other rich cities, 
 during Holy War, 3 ; possessed by 
 great kingdoms and conquerors in 
 turn, 3 ; for thousands of years its 
 perilous roadstead trusted by mer- 
 chants, 3 ; better harbor needed be- 
 fore regeneration of Palestine can 
 be hoped for, 4 ; looks from the sea 
 like a brown bowl bottom up, 4; 
 streets narrow and evil smelling, 4 ; 
 pictures of it generally correct, 4 ; 
 would take Jews a long time to re- 
 turn by this difficult way, 5 ; gate 
 at which the mighty of the past 
 have waited, 5 ; embarkation of 
 Jonah from, has given it world-wide 
 notoriety, 6 ; bazaars and fruit mar- 
 ket of, 6, 7 ; Gate of, in Jerusalem, 
 51, 100, 109; return to, and depar- 
 ture from, 224. 
 
 Janizaries, costumes of the, 422 ; pa- 
 rade-ground of, 432 ; destruction of, 
 432. 
 
 Jason landed at Beshiktash on his voy- 
 age to Colchis, 454. 
 
 Jehoshaphat, valley of, 91,110; cheer- 
 ful associations of, 100; common 
 sewer of Jerusalem, 100 ; journey 
 through, 135. 
 
 Jeremiah, birthplace of, 32 ; hard 
 country cause of his doleful strain, 
 32 ; cheerful words of, 97 ; cave of, 
 104 ; grotto of, where he lived and 
 lamented, now a donkey stable, 104. 
 
 Jericho, going down to, 129 ; more 
 thieves than good Samaritans to be 
 found there, 129; grand cavalcade 
 for, 131 ; made up of men and ani- 
 mals of all kinds and countries, 135; 
 road to, thronged with pilgrims, 
 barefoot and in all sorts of outfits, 
 136 ; New Testament site of, not the 
 one cursed by Joshua, 143 ; walls 
 blown down by Joshua's horns, 145 ; 
 a hillock and Elisha's spring only 
 remains of, 147. 
 
 Jerome, cell of, visited with real emo- 
 tion, 183; Carpaccio's painting of. 
 184.
 
 INDEX 
 
 559 
 
 Jerusalem, rough way to, 17 ; every 
 foot of ground consecrated or dese- 
 crated, 27 ; hills terraced for vines 
 and olives, but few growing, 29 ; 
 does not " burst " on the view, 35 ; 
 rough rabble pressing through the 
 gates of, 36 ; streets of, filthy 
 ditches, 37 ; not formidable to the 
 explorer, 46 ; school for girls needed 
 in, 47.; squalor and shabbiness of, 
 48 ; present unchristian character 
 of, 116; a city of humbugs, 118; 
 songs and stories of its prophets and 
 poets draw the world to it, 12G ; re- 
 nowned for literature as Athens for 
 art, 127 ; not valued by the ancients 
 as by the moderns, 127 ; sacred for 
 its precious memories, 127 ; stirring 
 scenes outside the walls of, 215 ; 
 final leave of, 219 ; buried beneath 
 the rubbish of credulity and super- 
 stition, 220 ; would have been bet- 
 ter for living Christianity if it had 
 shared the fate of Carthage, Mem- 
 phis, and Tadmor, 220. 
 
 Jessup, Dr., of Beyrout, 240, 317. 
 
 Jesus expected to descend upon 
 Church of John the Baptist in Da- 
 mascus, 276. 
 
 Jews, movement of, towards repeo- 
 pliiig the Holy Land, 16 ; could be 
 better provided for away from Je- 
 rusalem, 61 ; filthy quarter of, 62 ; 
 fair skin and light hair the original 
 type of, 62 ; present debased ap- 
 pearance of, 64 ; wailing of, 64 ; ex- 
 tent of country of, 121 ; history of, 
 125; gross idolatries of, 125; their 
 literature their chief hold on the 
 world, 126; settled in the Delta of 
 the Nile, 265 ; wandering of, im- 
 proves the race, 481. 
 
 Jezebel, power of the Princess, 229. 
 
 Jezreel, 219. 
 
 Joab, well of, 99. 
 
 Johnston, John Taylor, Cesnola's first 
 collection sold to, 350. 
 
 John the Baptist, where born, 32; 
 Church of, in Damascus, flocked to 
 by all, 274 ; rivals temples of Ba'al- 
 bek and Palmyra, 275. 
 
 Jonah, place of the whale's casting 
 up, 235. 
 
 Jordan, place of passage of, by the Is- 
 raelites, 142 ; muddy banks, but 
 swift stream, 155; sacred to think 
 of, but dirty to look at, 155 ; a shiv- 
 ering bather in, 156. 
 
 Joseph of Arimathea, tomb of, 70. 
 
 Josephus, his account of Jonah, 5 ; ac- 
 count of the siege of Jerusalem, 48. 
 
 Joshua, spot where he commanded the 
 moon to stand still, 27 ; grave of, 458. 
 
 Journey over, its disagreeables forgot- 
 ten, and longing to go over it again, 
 547. 
 
 Jove, Olympian, 486. 
 
 Judeea, blue hills of, 17 ; thrilling 
 sensation of seeing, 17 ; clear at- 
 mosphere of, 152 ; Fair of Moses in 
 wilderness of, brings out a rough 
 rabble, 207, 208. 
 
 Judith, tomb of kings of, supposed to 
 shine with splendor and riches, 59 ; 
 no one permitted to enter, 59 ; king- 
 dom of, 121. 
 
 Judas, gallows-tree of, 101. 
 
 Jupiter, Temple of, at Ba'albek larger 
 than the Parthenon, 249 ; at en- 
 trance to the Bosphorus, 459; in 
 Athens, 502. 
 
 Justinian, Church of St. Mary built 
 by, 83. 
 
 KALAHARI, lauding at, 535. 
 
 Kalyminos, island of, 369. 
 
 Kandili, beautiful situation of, 455 ; 
 
 prospect of two continents from, 
 
 455. 
 Karnak, ruins of, not so grand as 
 
 those of Ba'albek, 252. 
 Kawass, taken about Cyprus by Gen- 
 eral Cesnola's, 342. 
 Keleos girls now, as of old, filling 
 
 their pails at the well, 515. 
 Kentucky, meeting with tourists from, 
 
 147. 
 Keos, famous for its decree that all 
 
 over sixty should die, 492. 
 Kephisia, a summer resort as of old, 
 
 523. 
 
 Kephissus, olive-orchards of, 514 ; riv- 
 ulet of, 519. 
 
 Kerah Nun, burial-place of Noah, 243. 
 Keramicus, the ancient cemetery of 
 
 Athens, new excavations at, 497 ; 
 
 touching position of figures found 
 
 in, 527. 
 
 Kerata, double peaks of Mt., 517. 
 Ketmehr, the wise dog of the Koran, 
 
 386. 
 
 Khfiled, the Sword of God, 27o. 
 Khan, lunch at a mountain, 244. 
 Khedive of Egypt, 456 ; palace given 
 
 to the Sultan by the, 456. 
 Khilid-bahri, on European shore of 
 
 the Dardanelles, 401. 
 Kidron, valley of, 96, 189. 
 Kings, Tombs of the, 103 ; ingenious 
 
 door of, 103; inferior to tombs of 
 
 Egypt, 103. 
 
 Kirjath-Jearim, pleasing name, 31. 
 Kishon, the river where Elijah slew 
 
 the prophets of Baal, 22t>. 
 Kissing, stones worn by, 44, C7. 
 Kithneou, pass of, 515, 517.
 
 560 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Korais, statue of, in Athens, 511. 
 
 Koroo Chesmeh, laurel-tree at, planted 
 by Medea, 454. 
 
 Kos, birthplace of Apelles and of Hip- 
 pocrates, 3G8. 
 
 Kury, located by Cesnola, 351. 
 
 Kyle, Miss, obliged by the bigots to 
 close her Protestant school in Ath- 
 ens, 511. 
 
 LAKE COMO, Bay of Buyukdereh like, 
 
 461. 
 
 Lamartine, his residence on Mt. Leb- 
 anon, 238. 
 Lamentations read at Jewish wailing- 
 
 place, 67. 
 Larnaka, harbor of, 338 ; excavations 
 
 at, 341. 
 Laurel-grove at Athens, no trace of, 
 
 514. 
 
 Lazarus, stone sat on by, 50 ; tomb of, 
 114 ; Church of St., in Cyprus, 340 ; 
 Bishop of Citium, 340. 
 Leander, scene of his swimming feat, 
 
 402. 
 
 Lebanon, mountains of, seen from the 
 coast, 227, 234 ; ascent of, 237 ; glo- 
 ries of, 239. 
 
 Ledra, necropolis of, found by Ces- 
 nola, 349. 
 
 Lemnos, beauty of first women of, 
 475 ; killed their husbands and set 
 up an Amazonian state, 475 ; sunset 
 view of, 479. 
 Lepanto, Bay of, 538. 
 Lepers, loathsome encounter with, 
 
 65. 
 
 Leros, isle of, 369. 
 Lesbos, source of lyric poetry, 394 ; 
 
 home of Alcaeus and Sappho, 394. 
 "Leucadia's far - projecting rock of 
 
 woe," 541. 
 Leucolla traced out by Cesnola, 
 
 351. 
 
 Levant, Gate of the, 94 ; hard fare of 
 the peasantry of the, 339 ; leaven of 
 change working in, 464. 
 Life more important than creed, 211. 
 Lion, colossal image of, at Keos, 492. 
 Lipso, island of, 369. 
 Lit3ny River, 240, 257. 
 Lombardy, iron crown of, has nail of 
 
 the cross in, 79. 
 
 Longing look back to the Kast, 547. 
 Lord Byron swimming the Helles- 
 pont, 402 ; death of, at Missolonghi, 
 465. 
 
 Lord Elgin has gathered every scrap 
 of antique marble, leaving none to 
 tourists, 534. 
 
 Lord's Prayer, chapel on the place 
 where Christ gave his disciples the, 
 112; in "Canadian" language, 112. 
 
 Luke, St., remains of, removed to 
 Church of St. Sophia, 426. 
 
 Lusignan dynasty, 340, 347. 
 
 Luxuries, mosques, baths, and ceme- 
 teries the three great Oriental, 448. 
 
 Luxury, not comfort, of Eastern 
 homes, 297. 
 
 Lycabettus, singular cone of, 498, 520 ; 
 marvelous view from, 520; sono- 
 rous call to prayer from, 521. 
 
 Lycia, coast of. 360 ; metropolis of, 
 361. 
 
 Lycian mountains, glorious sunset on, 
 360. 
 
 Lycius, Phidias, Praxiteles, Cleoatas, 
 Myron, contrast of their time with 
 our time, 506. 
 
 Lycomedes, Achilles hides in garden 
 of, 490. 
 
 Lysander, like all the notabilities of 
 his time, sought Ephesus for its va- 
 ried attractions, 390. 
 
 MACCABEES, old fortifications of, 27. 
 Madonnas, living, at Damascus, 295. 
 Mteaiider, the tortuous, region about 
 
 it a garden, 379. 
 Magnesia, peninsula of, 488. 
 Maids of Athens, few m the streets 
 whose beauty poets would celebrate, 
 501. 
 Malaria has followed the fall of the 
 
 Roman Empire, 485. 
 tfaliacus, Bay of, 488. 
 Malta, Knights of, give interest to the 
 
 Gate of the Levant, 94. 
 Manuscripts, purchase of ancient, from 
 
 Abyssinian pilgrims, 167. 
 Marcli too early for traveling in Syria, 
 
 46. 
 Mark Twain, his guide-book to the 
 
 Holy Land, 306. 
 
 Marathon, figure of Minerva Proma- 
 chuscast by Phidias out of the spoils 
 of, 506 ; the field of, only a small 
 field of a few miles square, 525 ; 
 want of room to manoeuvre explains 
 the defeat of the Persians, 525. 
 Marium, necropolis of, laid open by 
 
 Cesnola, 351. 
 
 Marmora, Sea of, the " vexed Propon- 
 tis," 405; island of, 405: like Bay 
 of Naples, 449 ; like New York Bay, 
 449 ; contains the Isles of the Blest, 
 449. 
 
 Maronites on Mt. Lebanon, 241, 258. 
 Mar Saba, convent of, 188 ; clinging 
 like wasps' nests to the rock, 192 ; 
 main tower of, like a fortress, 193 ; 
 guarded to keep Bedaweens and wo- 
 men out, 193 ; last retreat on earth 
 of men, 194 ; prospect of hard fare 
 at, 196; ghastly charnel-house of,
 
 INDEX 
 
 561 
 
 196 ; filled with birds and pilgrims, 
 198 ; tumult of niidiiight call to 
 prayer iu, -01 ; a revelry by night, 
 202 ; and hurrying to and fro, 203 ; 
 mementos from, 20C. 
 
 Mars Hill, 504 ; Paul's preaching at, 
 529. 
 
 Martiueau, Harriet, reason of exclu- 
 sion of, from convent of Mar Saba, 
 1D4. 
 
 Mary, tomb of, 91. 
 
 Mary and Martha, house of, at Beth- 
 any, 114. 
 
 Matterhorn, Mt. Athos resembles the, 
 489. 
 
 Mausolus, Tomb of, at Boudroum, 
 368. 
 
 Mecca, Kaaba at, 71 ; pilgrims to, 
 fewer than to Jerusalem, 105; rude 
 pictures of, 484. 
 
 Medea, laurel-tree planted by, 454. 
 
 Mediterranean Hotel, view from, 36. 
 
 Medjel, village of, 257. 
 
 Megara, heights of, 514, 520. 
 
 Mehemet Pasha, strange adventures 
 of the wife of the, 467, 468. 
 
 Melchizedek, tomb of, 75. 
 
 Meles, the river, 079. 
 
 Men of Athens noble in form and in- 
 telligent of face, 501. 
 
 Messiah, birthplace of the, 182. 
 
 MetSwileh, Moslem sect of, 245. 
 
 Methodist, a primitive, 306. 
 
 Metropolitan Museum of New York. 
 Cesnola's collection chief attraction 
 of, 350. 
 
 Michael, the angel, print of hand of, 
 in the Sacred Rock, 85. 
 
 Middle Ages, customs of, maintained 
 by the Greek clergy on Mt. Athos, 
 
 Miletus, remains of, 369. 
 
 Milk Grotto, mothers resort to, for 
 increase of milk, 186. 
 
 Minerva Promachus, figure of, 506 ; 
 gold-ivory statue of, 500. 
 
 Missionaries, respect for American, 
 at Bey rout, 241 ; great good accom- 
 plished by the schools of, 27') ; no- 
 ble self-exiles, 270 ; great influence 
 of, 316. 
 
 Mississippi, the Ilissus imagined as 
 large as, but only a dry gully, 
 529. 
 
 Missolonghi, no glimpse of, 539. 
 
 Mitylene, the ancient Lesbos, 393 ; 
 like Castellamare or Sorrento, 393. 
 
 Moab, view of mountains of, 53. 110. 
 
 Moawyeh, founder of dynasty of I 
 Omeiyades, 2.*4. 
 
 Mohammed, footprint of. in the Sa- 
 cred Rock, 85 ; religion of, the old- 
 est, 207. 
 
 Moloch, image of, 91 ; an ingenious 
 contrivance of cruelty, 102. 
 
 Monks, their love of flowerj an ex- 
 pression of tenderness for the sex, 
 341. 
 
 Montefiore, Sir Moses, the rich Jew, 
 buildings erected by, in Jerusalem, 
 61. 
 
 Moorad, Sultan, Saracenic kiosk of, 
 418 ; unread library of, 419. 
 
 Morea, descendants of the ancient 
 Greeks found in, 501 ; snowy hills 
 of, seen from Gulf of Corinth, 536. 
 
 Moses, Fair of, 207 ; preparation for, 
 like Fourth of July, 208. 
 
 Moslem wallers, dry grief of, 178; 
 ridden over by sheyklis, 252. 
 
 Moslems, pertinacious beggars, 110. 
 
 Mosque of Kubbet-es-Sukhrah most 
 beautiful in the world, 82 ; a blaze 
 of color, 83; of Aksa, 83; touch- 
 stone of the elect in, 87 ; print of 
 Christ's foot in, 87 ; oi Omar, 87 ; 
 of Jesus, stone cradle of the infant 
 Saviour in, 88 ; of St. Sophia in Sa- 
 lonica, mosaic of the Transfigura- 
 tion in, 481 ; verd-antique pulpit in, 
 from which St. Paul preached, 482. 
 
 Mother and Child, concealment of, in 
 the Milk Grotto, 186. 
 
 Mother-in-law, wisdom of Ruth's, 
 181. 
 
 Mothers of heroes well formed, 510. 
 
 Mount Chimsera, wonderful light of, 
 360. 
 
 Mount Moriah, 06 ; Scopus, 90 ; Oli- 
 vet, 90. 
 
 Mu'allakah, plain of, 239, 243. 
 
 Muezzin, call to prayer of, in Jaffa, 
 25 ; in Damascus, 314. 
 
 Muristim, a field of romance. 95 ; .-ito 
 of the hospital and church of the 
 Knights of St. John, 95. 
 
 Music of the Kant anything but music, 
 485. 
 
 NAAMAX the Syrian, place where 
 healed, 147. 
 
 Napoleon, selfish and small nature of, 
 18. 
 
 Narghileh, Arabs smoking, 201 ; uni- 
 versal use of, in Damascus, 207. 
 
 Nations, the life of, preserved by 
 progress, not by attempts to make 
 di-.ni forms live again, .V.I ; a piti- 
 ful sight without ideal, 531. 
 
 Nativity, place of the, 174; crypt of, 
 180 ; columns of Church of, taken 
 from Solomon's Temple, 182 ; place 
 of burial of twenty thousand chil- 
 dren massacred by Herod, 1S3. 
 
 Nature herself despoiled by the 
 Turks, 4.S7.
 
 562 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Navarino, battle of, the end of a glo- 
 rious struggle for independence, 
 531. 
 
 Nebo, Mt, 148. 
 
 Negropont, Venetian sovereignty 
 over, 490 ; name of, made odious by 
 the Turks, 490 ; gradually attract- 
 ing commerce and capital, 491. 
 
 Nero, his proposition to cut a canal 
 across the Peloponnesus feasible, 
 536. 
 
 Nestorius, his struggle with Cyril in 
 the Council of Ephesus, 382. 
 
 New England, rugged surroundings 
 of Bethlehem like, 176. 
 
 New York Bay like Sea of Marmora, 
 449. 
 
 Nicene Creed proclaimed by Theodo- 
 sius, 427. 
 
 Nicodemus, tomb of, 70. 
 
 Nightingale, Florence, visit to the 
 great hospital controlled by, 451 ; 
 Turkish wonder that America should 
 care for her, 452. 
 
 Nightingales singing on bank of the 
 Bosphorus, 435 ; in gardens of 
 Athens, 513. 
 
 Nile, Temple of the Sun on the, 248. 
 
 Nisyros, going by, 367. 
 
 Nubia, people of, not so barbarous as 
 Moslem waiters, 177 ; blue sky of, 
 252. 
 
 Nursing-bottle, fear for a, 408. 
 
 Nut-brown maids of Athens, sweet 
 classic models, 516. 
 
 OCCIDENT, trade in the vices of the, 
 445. 
 
 CEdipus, scene of death of, 520. 
 
 (Eta, Mt., Thermopylae at foot of, 488. 
 
 Olive grove, two thousand feet up, 
 lunch in, 29 ; David's enjoyment of 
 the view of the valley of the Medi- 
 terranean from, 30 ; ugly old trees 
 the five kings may have been hanged 
 on, 31. 
 
 Olives, Mount of, 37, 49, 82, 90; 
 wretched view of worn-out land 
 from, 91 ; its rural sweetness and 
 seclusion gone, 110 ; a shabby show- 
 place of filthy buildings and beg- 
 gars, 110; view of the Jordan val- 
 ley, Dead Sea, and mountains of 
 Moab from, 111 ; no spot for rest 
 or quiet, 111 ; reading life of the 
 Saviour on, 111 ; tender memories 
 of, 111. 
 
 Olive-trees, first appearance of, 19. 
 
 Olympicum in Athens, one of the 
 most stately buildings of the an- 
 cients, 502. 
 
 Olympus, snowy summit of, 449, 474, 
 484. 
 
 Omar, minaret to, 96. 
 
 Omeiyades, dynasty of the, 266. 
 
 Ophel, 47 ; rocks of, source of Foun- 
 tain of the Virgin, 98 ; an intermit- 
 tent spring, thought to be the real 
 Pool of Bethesda, 98. 
 
 Oranges at Jaffa big as ostrich eggs, 
 but all peel, 7, 304. 
 
 Orient, Damascus chief city of, 269 ; 
 art in the, 297 ; specimen of travel- 
 ers in, 302 ; music of the, plaintive 
 and untrained, 444 ; trade in the 
 secrets of the, 445 ; the land of the 
 imagination, 547. 
 
 Oriental travelers, their imaginations 
 stronger than their memories, 309. 
 
 Oman, threshing-floor of, site of the 
 Sacred Rock, 82. 
 
 Ortakeui, Sultan goes to pray in 
 mosque of, 439. 
 
 Osmanli adopt the Byzantine emblem 
 of the crescent, 426. 
 
 Ossa, Mt., 484; huge bulk of, 487. 
 
 Ottoman rule, belief in near extinc- 
 tion of, not warranted by the course 
 of history, 462. 
 
 Ouardy, Antoine, our guide's quarrel 
 with, 319-336. 
 
 PAGAS.SEUS, Bay of, 488. 
 
 Palema, St., silver coffin of, 484. 
 
 Palestine, the construction of a har- 
 bor at Jaffa the first step towards 
 its regeneration, 4 ; its people must 
 learn to work before it can be re- 
 deemed, 11 ; to support Jews or 
 Gentiles by charity only adds to 
 misery, 11 ; withdrawal of Jews 
 suddenly from business would cause 
 disaster, but none but Jews would 
 oppose their migration to the Holy 
 Land, 12 ; the actual boy here not 
 the Sunday-school boy's ideal at 
 home, 13 ; Old Put more to him 
 than Samson, 13 ; vast yearly move- 
 ment to, 105 ; to obstruct it would 
 bring on another Holy War, 105. 
 
 Pallas Athene, sitting in Temple of, 
 506. 
 
 Palmyra, way to, 311 ; colonnade at, 
 312. 
 
 Pamphylia, ancient coast of, 360. 
 
 Pan lurked in the groves about Ephe- 
 sus, 384. 
 
 Panachaicum, Mt., higher than Mt. 
 Washington, 538. 
 
 Panathenaic Stadium, chariot races 
 in, 530. 
 
 Pangaus, Mt., 476. 
 
 Panhellenic festivals held in the Isth- 
 mian Sanctuary, 536. 
 
 Paphos, ancient coins found at. 346, 
 351 ; danger of excavations at, 353 ;
 
 INDEX 
 
 563 
 
 Paul darkens the vision of Klymaa 
 at, 353. 
 
 Paradise, Damascus the earthly, 209 ; 
 Valley of the Heavenly Water a 
 foretaste of, 43(5. 
 
 Parchment rolls, few genuine ancient, 
 118. 
 
 Parnassus, heights of, seen from Pen- 
 telicus, 525. 
 
 Parnes, 495. 
 
 Parthenon, creamy columns of, 505. 
 
 t'asha, an interview witli a, 329. 
 
 Patched clothing the last confession 
 of poverty, 474. 
 
 Patmos, glimpse of, 309 ; monastery 
 of St. John at, 3(59. 
 
 Patras, arrival at, 538. 
 
 Patriarch of Armenia, visit to, '208 ; 
 kindliness of, 209. 
 
 Patroclus, statue of, in Museum at 
 Athens, 527. 
 
 Pattens, richly ornamented, 295 ; un- 
 graceful walking with, 295. 
 
 Paul, at Ephesus, 390 ; his preaching 
 at Thessalonica, 482. 
 
 Paula, disciple of Jerome, 183 ; mo- 
 ther-in-law of God, 184. 
 
 Pa.xos, legend of, recorded by Plu- 
 tarch, 541. 
 
 Pegasus, our Arab steed a, 153 ; race 
 for an eagle's feather with, 153. 
 
 ?eleus, father of Achilles, 489. 
 
 Pelion, Mt., 484 ; Ossa might well 
 ride on back of, 487. 
 
 Peloponnesus, people of, not descend- 
 ed from the ancient Greeks, 501 ; 
 passage by, 535. 
 
 'entelictis, 495, 514, 520 : plain of 
 Marathon seen from, 522; monas- 
 tery on, a hive of drones, 523 ; 
 yearly dance of youths and maidens 
 on, 523 ; marble for Temple of The- 
 seus, the Parthenon, the Propyhca, 
 and other public buildings taken 
 from, 524 ; whole mountain over- 
 grown with laurel, 524 ; shepherd- 
 boys with their crooks and flocks 
 of goats on. 524 ; brigands capture 
 a party of Englishmen on. 524. 
 
 Pera, no donkeys or drayd in, 409 : 
 men the beasts of burden, 409. 
 
 IVre-la-chaise, cemetery of Scutari 
 nearly as attractive as, 450. 
 
 Pericles, the Propyln>a built under 
 direction of, 505. 
 
 Perseus, battle of, with .Emilius 
 Paul us, 480. 
 
 P TsUns, camp of. on Mts. Scopus 
 and Olivet. 90. 
 
 IVrsuasiiin and Necessity two mighty 
 dMtiesof Athens, 491." 
 
 I'etra, renowned sea-fortress of. 
 100. 
 
 Pfeiffer, Madame, why not admitted 
 
 to convent of Mar Saba, 194. 
 Phalerum, Bay of, 495, 507. 
 Pharaoh, Solomon's wife daughter of, 
 
 91. 
 
 Pharpar, glimpse of, 310. 
 
 Pharsalia, Pompey's flight from the 
 battle of, 480. 
 
 Phidias, statue of Minerva Promachus 
 by, 5(H5. 
 
 Philippi, last battle of republican 
 Home fought at, 470 ; Paul's preach- 
 ing and imprisonment at, 470 ; an 
 earthquake opens his prison, 470. 
 
 Philistines, extent of their posses- 
 sions, 12*2. 
 
 Philopappus, monument of, 507. 
 
 Phoenician walls, remains of ancient, 
 at Ba'albek, 247 ; huge stones at, 248. 
 
 Phoenicians, country of, 122 ; first 
 gave the world letters, 228 ; provi- 
 dential protection of, from the Jews, 
 a blessing to the world, 228; arts 
 of, 229 ; manufactures of glass by, 
 more perfect than Egyptian, 229 ; 
 great navigators, 232 ; the Yankees 
 of the Levant, 345; allies of Thot- 
 mes III. in capture of Cyprus, 340. 
 
 Phylactery, description and use of, 
 118. 
 
 Pierian plain, 485. 
 
 Pilate, house of, 49, 50. 
 
 Pilgrims to Jerusalem an interesting 
 study, 105, 170 ; more numerous 
 than to Mecca, 105 ; camp of, a 
 scene of credulity and knavery, 
 103 ; motley ship-load of, 358. 
 
 Pillaging crusaders and contemptible 
 Byzantines, 487. 
 
 Pion, hill of, supposed acropolis of 
 Ephesus, 385, 380. 
 
 Pir;pus, peninsula of the, 494 ; much 
 like an American town, 494 ; forti- 
 fied by Themistocles. 495. 
 
 Pisgah, Mt., 148. 
 
 Pisistratus, Temple of Jupiter begun 
 by, 502. 
 
 Plain of Sharon, occupied by the New 
 England Israel, 11 ; massacre of 
 Jaffa occurred near here. IS. 
 
 Plattra, battle of, 432 ; field of, 517. 
 
 Plato's grove of Academe, 519. 
 
 Pleasure, chase of. 440. 
 
 Pnyx. association of great names with 
 the. 507, 528, 504. 
 
 Poetry, source of lyric, 394. 
 
 Poets. Oriental, have not and cannot 
 exonerate the glories of the R'>*. 
 pborus, 454. 
 
 Poison, the cure-all and end-all of the 
 Itilian*. 492. 
 
 Polvcrates, once governor of Samos, 
 370.
 
 564 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pompey, halt of, in the Vale of Tempo 
 alter Pharsalia, 486. 
 
 Pontifical Rome less tolerant of Pro- 
 testantism than Moslem Turkey, 
 464. 
 
 Pontus Euxiuus once set thick with 
 towns like the Riviera of Italy, 400. 
 
 Porch, Solomon's, more grand than 
 Babylon or Ba'albek, 89, 90. 
 
 Poi-t Said, arrival at, April 5th, 2. 
 
 Powilio, Cape of, 487. 
 
 Post, Dr., of Bey rout, 317. 
 
 Potter's Field, 101. 
 
 Poverty and Inability two churlish 
 gods of the Andrians, 491. 
 
 Prayer, rush of crowd to see Sultan 
 go to, 439 ; grand salvos of artillery 
 announce the beginning of his devo- 
 tions, 440. 
 
 Praxiteles, statue of Venus by, 367. 
 
 Precious stones, great traffic in, 
 throughout the East, 414'; bargaining 
 for, with an ancient Moslem, 415. 
 
 Press, good work of the, in Beyrout, 
 317. 
 
 Prince of Oldenburg, 214. 
 
 Printing in Greece, rude character of, 
 499. 
 
 Procession to the Fair of Moses, 214 ; 
 irregular order of, 215 ; cheap and 
 childish display, 216. 
 
 Prodigal son, fed on husks of the 
 carob-tree, 19. 
 
 Promised Land, extent of, 121 ; self- 
 denial of many to see, 306. 
 
 Prophet, last companions of the, fell 
 at Ayub, 446. 
 
 Propylwa, the noblest gateway ever 
 built, 504 ; pride of the ancients, 
 505. 
 
 Proserpine, myth of, 518. 
 
 Prussian government exploring neigh- 
 borhood of Jerusalem, 96 ; impor- 
 tance of its discoveries, 96. 
 
 Ptolemy, ancient cities of Cyprus de- 
 scribed by, 349. 
 
 Purity maintained by flight of nymphs 
 from Keos, 492. 
 
 Pydna, grand battle of, 486. 
 
 Pyramids, time of the building of, 265. 
 
 Pythagoras, birthplace of, 370. 
 
 QUADRENNIAL Exposition of Greece, 
 visit to, a rude shock to the senti- 
 ment of antiquity, 499. 
 
 Quails scudding along the surface, 19. 
 
 Quarantania, mount of Christ's temp- 
 tation, honeycombed with hermits' 
 cells, 148. 
 
 Quarrel of dragomen, 319-336. 
 
 RACHEL, burial-place of, 176 ; building 
 over, 177. 
 
 Rae. Ed wan!, our cart-ride in Cyprus 
 Lkctohed by, 342. 
 
 Ramah and Guth, David's lodging be- 
 tween, 30. 
 
 Rameses II., statue of, 527. 
 
 Rimleh, rough road to, 16; square 
 Saracenic tower at, 20 ; Latin con- 
 vent at, 20 ; its gratuitous hospital- 
 ity a pleasing delusion, 21 ; hour e 
 all roofs, 21 ; sunset from, 21 ; 
 sound of mule-bells brings Italy to 
 Palestine, 21 ; pompous reception 
 of our party at, 22 ; " General "-ized 
 by the father confessor, a " rank " 
 imposition, 22 ; lighted to bed by 
 antique Roman lamps, 23 ; room 
 like a tomb, 23 ; most rural ruins 
 seen in the East. 223 ; delightful 
 view from, 223. 
 
 I Red Khan, scene of the Jerichoian's 
 encounter with the thieves, 139. 
 
 Rehoboam, visit of, to Jeroboam a 
 rough chariot-ride, 102. 
 
 Relics, abundance of, to worship in 
 Jerusalem, 77. 
 
 Religious toleration in the Levant 
 granted by the Turks earlier than 
 by Rome, 453, 464. 
 
 Revelations, place of the writing of 
 the, 369. 
 
 Rheiti, the salt-springs, 515. 
 
 Rhode Island, Athens only two thirds 
 as large as, 494. 
 
 Rhodes, city of, made memorable by 
 the Knights of, 94 ; picturesque 
 site of, 363 ; ancient splendor of, 
 364 ; artistic remains of the Knights 
 in, 365 ; cleanly and healthy, 366 ; 
 possible restoration of, 371. 
 
 Richard Cceur de Lion in Cyprus, 340, 
 347. 
 
 Riha, on site of the ancient Gilgal, 
 143. 
 
 Road to Jerusalem a hard road to 
 travel, 19. 
 
 Roads in Palestine rough, stony mule- 
 paths, 190. 
 
 Roberts College, night spent with Dr. 
 Washburne at, 434 ; commanding 
 site of, like West Point, 436 ; wisely 
 planted here, 437. 
 
 Robinson's Arch, 65. 
 
 Rocks, silicious limestone, give the 
 country an ashy appearance, 30. 
 
 Roman Empire, 486. 
 
 Romance, mythology, history, start 
 up everywhere in Grecian waters, 
 491. 
 
 Rome, conquering eagles of, 90. 
 
 Rose of Sharon probably not a rose at 
 all, 20. 
 
 Russian church in Athens, no seats in, 
 508 ; form of worship in, 508.
 
 INDEX 
 
 565 
 
 Russian hospice, appearance of, 35 ; 
 description of, 106 ; great variety of 
 its pilgrim guests, 107 ; curious rel- 
 ics collected by, 108 ; awe and won- 
 der these will excite at home, 108. 
 
 Ruth, place of her meeting with Boaz, 
 175, 180. 
 
 SABAS, ST., a monk of Christian man- 
 liness as well as sanctity, 189 ; 
 tomb of, 195 ; cell of, a lion's den, 
 '205. 
 
 Sirred edifices, difference between 
 Greek, Roman, and Egyptian, '253. 
 
 Sacred Rock, Mahomet's ascent from, 
 84 ; its miraculous suspension, 84 ; 
 place 01 prayer of Jesus, Abraham, 
 David, and Solomon, 85. 
 
 s iil through summer seas, 357. 
 
 S iladin, citadel of, 36 ; military head- 
 quarters of, 96 ; tomb of, in business 
 part of Damascus, 278. 
 
 Silahiyeh, ride to, 310. 
 
 S ilamis, founded by Teucer, 345 ; re- 
 treat of Greek ships to, after Ther- 
 mopylae, 488 ; beauty of its women 
 keeps up its fame, 488 ; tomb of 
 Themistocles in sight of, 495 ; bleak 
 and rocky island of, 515. 
 
 Salonica, Gulf of, 484. 
 
 Samaria, highway to, 102. 
 
 Samos, isle of, 370 ; its wine more 
 noted than its arts or its heroes, 
 370 ; birthplace of Pythagoras, 370. 
 
 Samothrace, 476 ; sunset view of, 479. 
 
 Samson, country of, 28. 
 
 Samuel, ashes of the Prophet, depos- 
 ited in Church of St. Sophia, 426. 
 
 Santa Croce, mountain of, 338. 
 
 Sappho, lived at Lesbos, 394 ; descrip- 
 tion and death of, 395 ; precipice 
 leaped from by, 396. 
 
 Saracens, Olivet and Scopus trodden 
 by, 90 ; wall built by, 247. 
 
 Sardis, Smyrna older thuu,37r> ; beau- 
 tiful country around, 379. 
 
 Sargon conquers Cyprus, 346. 
 
 Saul, flight of, from David, 30. 
 
 Scanderbeg, sword of, kept as a relic, 
 421. 
 
 Scio ravaged by the Turks, 372. 
 
 S'utiri, on site of the Greek and 
 Persian Chrysopolis, 448 ; important 
 place from earliest times, 448 ; hunt- 
 ing-place of Roman and Byzantine 
 eni|>erors, 448 ; arrival and starting- 
 place of ancient Eastern travel, 448 ; 
 cemetery of, preferred to that of 
 Kyouh, 450 ; mumbled service of 
 English church at, 452. 
 
 Search for a silver coin in Rhodes, 365. 
 
 Sea-robbers, the Greek, hauled up their 
 barks at Scutari, 448. 
 
 Seat of Solomon in no particular spot, 
 60. 
 
 Selim, old mosque of the Sultan at 
 Ayasolook, 381 ; noted for the two 
 councils held in it, 381. 
 
 Sepulchral sleeping-place, 200. 
 
 Sepulchre, Church of the Holy, 37; 
 credulity shaken by seeing too many 
 sacred sites, 38 ; shut in by houses, 
 39 ; lane leading to it noisy with 
 petty trnmc, 39 ; made more a den 
 of thieves than a place of holy re- 
 sort, 39 ; so many times destroyed 
 and rebuilt, its site in doubt, 41 ; 
 a Turk warden of, 42 ; pilgrims 
 from all countries crowding in and 
 out of, 44 ; solemnity of scene with- 
 in, 44 ; rough sepulchral stone worn 
 smooth by kissing, 44 ; some ap- 
 proach it with streaming eyes, all 
 in awe of the sacred place, 45 ; de- 
 scription of, 69 ; centre of the earth 
 in, 71 ; impious specimen of beggars 
 at, 71 ; holy fire at, 77 ; holy places 
 of, 77. 
 
 Seraglio of Stamboul, visit to, 417 ; 
 lovely situation fora royal seat, 417 ; 
 hundreds of beasts slaughtered to 
 feed the household, 418 ; treasure- 
 room of, richest in the world, 419 ; 
 eye weary of seeing the barbarous 
 display, 419. 
 
 Seraglio Point, heights of, 407. 
 
 Seven Sleepers, cave of, at Ephesus, 
 38(5, 387. 
 
 Seven wonders of the world, Temple 
 of Diana one of the, 385. 
 
 Shade-trees in Athens, utility and en- 
 joyment of, 498. 
 
 Shepherd Kings, or Hittites, Abra- 
 ham's visit to Egypt in reign of, 
 264. 
 
 Shepherds, place of angel's appearing 
 to, 181. 
 
 Shimei, pursuit of David by, 90. 
 
 Shoemaker, a self-denying, spiritual- 
 minded, 306. 
 
 Slwepira collection of ancient pottery, 
 doubtful antiquity of, 119. 
 
 Sidon, sight of, 230 ; oldest Ph'vnicbn 
 city, a heap of ruins, 231 ; arts and 
 arms of, sung by Homer, 233. 
 
 Silk bazaars of Damascus, 285 ; great 
 traffic in, 2S5. 
 
 Siloam, Pool of, 47 ; not a sweet ' shady 
 rill," but a dirty sink-hole, 99 ; vil- 
 lage of, a nest of huts and caves, 92, 
 99; its traders hungrier than its 
 beggars, 99; most disgusting place 
 in the East, 99. 
 
 Simon, the tanner, house of, where 
 Peter saw the vision, 8 ; spot where 
 the brotherhood of man was first
 
 566 
 
 INDEX 
 
 proclaimed, 9 ; the Cyrenian, bearer 
 of the cross, 49 ; the leper, 114. 
 
 Singing, nasal whine of, in the East, 
 485. 
 
 Skiathos, island of, 488. 
 
 Skopelos, Mt., 488. 
 
 Skyros, Achilles hidden among the 
 maidens of, in woman's apparel, 490. 
 
 Smoking customs of different nations, 
 267. 
 
 Smyrna, 375 ; difficult landing at, 375 ; 
 a city which is nothing and every- 
 thing, 376 ; like Damascus, has en- 
 dured through all changes of rulers 
 and conditions, and continued pros- 
 perous under all, 376 ; language and 
 dress like that of European cities, 
 378 ; charms against evil sold in, 
 387 ; departure from, 392. 
 
 Socrates, prison of, 508, 529 ; walks 
 and talks of Plato with, 519; last 
 immortal discourse of, 529. 
 
 Soldiers seen everywhere in European 
 cities, 502 ; bar with bayonets the 
 way to objects of interest, 546. 
 
 Soli, Cesnola's discoveries in, 351. 
 
 Solomon, Pool of, source of all the 
 
 other "pools," 42; mother of, 52; 
 
 seat of, CO ; stables of, 88 ; Garden 
 
 of, an arid spot, 99 ; quarries of, 104. 
 
 Solon, Demosthenes, and his great 
 compeers, 507. 
 
 Sophia, Church of Santa, the House of 
 Divine Wisdom, 422 ; Justinian's 
 exclamation on entering, 422 ; 
 eclipsed the grandeur of the Tem- 
 ple of Jerusalem, 423 ; all the world 
 brought to contribute to its splen- 
 dor, 423 ; wonderful dome of, 424 ; 
 grand proportions of the interior, 
 424 ; site of, flooded with historical 
 associations, 425. 
 
 Sophocles, the sacred Colonus cele- 
 brated by, as the scene of the death 
 of (Edipus, 520. 
 
 Spanish spoken by Jews of Jerusalem, 
 63. 
 
 Sparta, not jealous of the attempt to 
 revive the ancient games in Athens. 
 530. 
 
 Spies, escape of, from Jericho, 283. 
 
 Sporades, group of the, 488. 
 
 Stables, Solomon's, a wet underground 
 cavern, 88 ; unpleasant visit to, 88. 
 
 Stadium at Ephesus, 387. 
 
 St. Anne, convent of, 50. 
 
 Stamboul, at night, 405 ; bridge at, 
 rotten like the Sultan's empire, 411; 
 bazaars of, more magnificent than 
 any other in the East, 412 ; its 
 mopques and bazaars its chief at- 
 traction, 41C ; Seraglio of, 417 ; fine 
 view from, 417 j world shudders at 
 
 unrevealed secrets of, 421 ; a place 
 of gorgeous sepulture, 429 ; splen- 
 did spectacle of blazing windows 
 and minarets at, 447. 
 
 Star of Bethlehem, and other flowers 
 of the East, 26. 
 
 Steamer to Corinth crowded with 
 noisy politicians, 537. 
 
 St. James, tomb of, 91 . 
 
 St. John, Knights of, 47 ; romance of, 
 95 ; their glory in the Levant, 96 ; 
 hospice of, 220, 223; headquarters 
 of, at Akka, 227 ; massive walls of, 
 at Rhodes, 361 ; Church of, in Eph- 
 esus, 381. 
 
 St. John the Baptist, birthplace of, 
 32 ; head of, kept in gold casket, 
 275 ; tomb of, in Damascus, 276. 
 
 St. Luke, tomb of, 387. 
 
 Stone of Unction, pilgrims kneeling 
 on, 43. 
 
 Stones, precious, extensive trade in, 
 414. 
 
 Storks, the sacred birds, feeding in the 
 meadows, 19 ; conspicuous perching 
 of, on tombs and towers, in ruins 
 of Ayasolook, 381. 
 
 Story of an English physician in the 
 East, 464. 
 
 Stoura, jolly inn at, 255. 
 
 St. Paul, place of his escape from Da- 
 mascus in a basket, 282 ; prison of, 
 at Ephesus, 388. 
 
 St. Peter's at Kome, colossal propor- 
 tions of, 424. 
 
 Strabo, ancient cities of Cyprus men- 
 tioned by, 349. 
 
 St. Stephen, place of martyrdom of, 
 60. 
 
 St. Stephen's Gate, 49, 189. 
 
 St. Veronica, house of, 49. 
 
 Stylites, Simeon, pillar of, said to be 
 near Beshiktash, 454. 
 
 Sublime Porte, world known gate of 
 the, 418. 
 
 Sugar-cane, evidence of former culti- 
 vation of, by the Crusaders, 143. 
 
 Suleiman the Magnificent, citadel of, 
 51 ; defense of Knights against, at 
 Rhodes, 364 ; mosque of, 428. 
 
 Sunium, Temple of Minerva on, 492. 
 
 Sunset on the Bosphorus, 447, 462 ; on 
 the Mgetm, 478 ; in the ruins of the 
 Temple of Jupiter at Athens, 502, 
 507. 
 
 Superstition clung to more persist- 
 ently by Christians than Moslems, 
 197. 
 
 Susanna, confusion of, 52. 
 
 Sweet Waters of Europe, 443. 
 
 Syme, island of, 367. 
 
 Symplegades, halt of the Argonauts 
 at, 459.
 
 IXDEX 
 
 567 
 
 Synagogues ill kept, 64. 
 
 Syria, only good road in, 236 ; needs 
 practical, working, living Christian- 
 ity for its reformation, 241 ; fearful 
 condition of people of, 301. 
 
 Syrian horses not reliable beasts, 190. 
 
 Syrian house, peculiar characteristics 
 of, 246. 
 
 Syrian rivers, sudden appearance and 
 disappearance of, 247. 
 
 TAKING a bath at Damascus, 278 ; de- 
 liciousness of, 279. 
 
 Tamerlane, Ayasolook once the camp 
 of, 380; armlet of, 421. 
 
 Tarshish, dealings of, with Jaffa, 3. 
 
 Telos, passing island of, 367. 
 
 Tempe, Vale of, 486. 
 
 Temple, Solomon's, 66 ; Beautiful Gate 
 of, 80 ; splendor of the area, 80. 
 
 Temple of the Sun, remains of, at Ba'- 
 albek, 248 ; splendor of, greater 
 than imagined, 249 ; defaced by Mos- 
 lems, 249. 
 
 Temptation, light on Mount of, 167. 
 
 Tenedos passed in the night, 397, 401 ; 
 seen on return, 475. 
 
 Ten Tribes, the extinction of, 126. 
 
 Tents, picturesque appearance of, 
 among the olive-trees of Mt. Olivet, 
 109. 
 
 Teucer, founder of Salamis, 345. 
 
 Thasos, home of the poet Archilochus, 
 476 ; pristine luxuriance of the ve- 
 getation of, 476. 
 
 Thebes, remains of, 517. 
 
 Themistocles, his siege of Andros, 
 491 ; tomb of, in the Pinpus, 495. 
 
 Theodora, seat of, in Mosque of St. 
 Sophia, 425. 
 
 Theodosius, basilica built in reign of, 
 250 ; atrocious brutality of, in Thes- 
 salonica, 483. 
 
 " There is no God but God, and Mo- 
 hammed is his Prophet," 428. 
 
 Thermae, ancient name of Thessalo- 
 nica, 479 ; Gulf of, 485. 
 
 Thermopylie, defeat at, 488. 
 
 Theseus, bones of, found by Cymon, 
 490 ; Temple of, the best preserved, 
 and if the only one would be worth 
 a pilgrimage to see, 526. 
 
 Thessalonians of the present day do 
 not read the Epistles to the, 485. 
 
 Thessalonica shortened to Salonica, 
 479 ; conjuring up the history of the 
 past in, 479 ; description of, 480 ; 
 Byzantine remains at, 481 ; Mosque 
 of St. Sophia in, 481 ; quarter of de- 
 scendants of Jews expelled by Isa- 
 bella, 481 ; barbarity of Theodosius 
 in, 483 ; Mosque of St. George the 
 oldest church in, 483. 
 
 Thessaly, plains of, 488 ; perfect horse- 
 
 manship of the people of, gave rise 
 to the fable of the Centaurs, 488. 
 
 " The world grows old," 443. 
 
 Thief, the penitent, birthplace of, 27. 
 
 " Thirty Years in a Harem," written 
 by the estranged wife of an English 
 physician, 466. 
 
 Thotmea III., greatest of the Pha- 
 raolis, possession of Syria and Cy- 
 prus by, 346. 
 
 Thracian coast, 476, 487. 
 
 Throni, ancient city of, traced out by 
 Cesnola, 351. 
 
 Tiglath-Pileser attempts destruction 
 of Damascus, 265. 
 
 Tiles, a bit of experience in buying, 
 286. 
 
 Timnath, where Zorah got his Philis- 
 tine wife, 28. 
 
 Timothy, St., reburied in Church of 
 St. Sophia, 426. 
 
 Titus, destruction of Jerusalem by, 
 48, 62. 
 
 Toleration will yet make the Archi- 
 pelago the Paradise of the world, 
 487, 488. 
 
 Tombs of the Sultans at Starnboul, 
 429. 
 
 Tombs of Hiram, Frederick Barba- 
 rosaa, and Origen near together, 
 230. 
 
 Tophanna, quay of, 407. 
 
 Tophet, valley of, 100, 189. 
 
 Tralles, ancient, 379 ; great tanneries 
 of, 379. 
 
 Transfiguration, mosaic of, in Mosque 
 of St. Sophia, in Salonica, 482. 
 
 Travelers, specimen of Eastern, 302. 
 
 Traveling in Palestine, difference be- 
 tween present and past, 147 : French 
 system of, peculiar and particular, 
 2<iO. 
 
 Tricks of trade in purchase of an- 
 tiques, 289. 
 
 Trinity of tyranny, religion, and fac- 
 tion at Stamboul, 430. 
 
 Triumphal Entry, road of the, 114; 
 grand pageant on, 214. 
 
 Trojan war, Tyre built about the time 
 of, 228. 
 
 Troy not seen, 397, 401 ; glimpse of 
 the plain of, 475. 
 
 Truth stranger than fiction in the life 
 of an Eastern beauty, 464. 
 
 Tsur or Sur, "the rock," Arab name 
 of Tyre, 227. 
 
 Tuileries " grander than the Pyra- 
 mids," 304. 
 
 Turf, delight at seeing in the East our 
 New England, 458. 
 
 Turkish women, intrigue of, 465. 
 
 Turks, Holy Sepulchre guarded by, 
 42 ; nerve of. in putting down the 
 Janizaries, 432 ; destructiveuesa of,
 
 568 
 
 INDEX 
 
 greater than that of all their prede- 
 cessors, 487. 
 
 Turquoise stones, rare and costly, 
 trade in, 414. 
 
 Tyre, passage past, 227 ; Hiram's tomb 
 at, 230. 
 
 Tyrophoean Valley, 66. 
 
 ULYSSES and Penelope, story of, 540. 
 
 Uncleanliuess in the East akin to god- 
 liness, 188. 
 
 University of Athens, progressive in- 
 fluence of, 510 ; library of, 511 ; por- 
 trait or bust of Washington wanted 
 for, 511. 
 
 Uriah, David smitten by wife of, 52. 
 
 VALE of the Heavenly Water, 436, 
 443. 
 
 Vale of Tempe, the sunny retreat of 
 the Gods, 486. 
 
 Valley of the Jordan, memorable night 
 in, 149 ; depth of, below the sea, 
 149 ; danger of camp in, 149 ; geo- 
 logical peculiarity of, 163. 
 
 Veils in the East not worn to conceal 
 beauty so much as ugliness, 312. 
 
 Venetians, ancient manufacture of 
 glass by the Phoenicians revived by, 
 229. 
 
 Venus, steamer, departure from Jaffa 
 in, 225 ; discomfort of the pilgrim 
 passengers on, 225 ; circular temple 
 of, at Ba'albek, 251 ; temple of, in 
 Golgos, discovered by Cesnola, 350 ; 
 shrine and statue of, in Cnidus, 367 ; 
 born of the sea-foam, 540. 
 
 Via Dolorosa, a narrow, gloomy thor- 
 oughfare, 49. 
 
 Via Sacra, ancient processions in, 506, 
 513. 
 
 Vice has saved the names of emperors, 
 432. 
 
 Virgin and Child, painted black, 24. 
 
 Virgin Mary, Fountain of the, 47, 97 ; 
 place of residence and death of, 60 ; 
 place of appearance of the Lord to, 
 73. 
 
 Viva Maria, our salutation on return- 
 ing to a Christian land, 546. 
 
 WADY 'ALY, inn at, 222. 
 
 Wady Hamm&na, 238. 
 
 Wailers of Damascus, 283. 
 
 Wailing-place of the Jews, 51 ; Lam- 
 entations and Psalms read at, 67 ; a 
 grotesque assemblage, 67. 
 
 Wandering Jew, house of the, 49. 
 
 Washburne, Dr., President of Roberts 
 College, 434. 
 
 Washington, "nothing can beat the 
 Capitol at," 303. 
 
 Way of Triumph, Christ's entry of 
 Jerusalem by, 90. 
 
 Well of the Leaf, entrance to Paradise 
 from, 88; of Bethlehem, David's 
 thirst for the waters of, 187. 
 
 Western civilization and business hab- 
 its will change the character of the 
 East, 464. 
 
 "Wilderness of Judaea," our wrong 
 notions of, 135 ; a scene of utter 
 desolation, 135. 
 
 Wild-flowers, fields carpeted with, 20 ; 
 brilliancy of, about Ramleh, 26. 
 
 Wine of Mar Saba liquid sunshine, 199. 
 
 Wingless Victory, Temple of the, 507. 
 
 Women, rule and ruin of Solomon by, 
 91 ; Fountain of Accused, 98 ; drink- 
 ing of, test of purity, 98 ; veiled 
 Turkish, like sheeted ghosts, 109; 
 by the Jordan, like women the world 
 over, complain of injustice of men, 
 167 ; Moslem, like Indian squaws, 
 178 ; form in which the Devil ap- 
 peared to the hermits of the early 
 ages, 194 ; of Cyprus, not beauties, 
 343 ; changes of the world due to 
 restlessness of, 477 ; best preserve 
 the primeval traits, 544. 
 
 Wood, Rev. Mr., entertained by, at 
 Zahleh, 243; Mr., of Ephesus, 384. 
 
 XANTHUS, mysterious light of, 360. 
 
 Xenophon rested at Scutari after his 
 campaign against Cyrus, 448. 
 
 Xerxes, children of, sheltered by Ar- 
 temisia after battle of Salamis, 389 ; 
 crossing of the Dardanelles at Aby- 
 dos by, 402 ; ancient canal of, near 
 Mt. Athos, 477 ; broken and flying 
 fleet of, 495 ; a petty fight in com- 
 parison witli modern naval battles, 
 but freighted with momentous con- 
 sequences, 508 ; " rocky brow " on 
 which he sat spectator of the fight, 
 515. 
 
 YANKEE, dialect of the, heard in Jaffa, 
 13 ; encounter with the, takes ro- 
 mance out of the East ; 16 ; Phoani- 
 cians like the, 345. 
 
 ZACHARIAS, tomb of, 91. 
 
 Zacyntlius renowned for its hospital- 
 ity, 539. 
 
 Zahleh, curious town of, 240; burnt 
 by the Druses in I860, 240. 
 
 Zamzummim, tribe of, 233. 
 
 Zante, welcomed to, with flowers and 
 fruit, 539. 
 
 Zeno, birthplace of, 341. 
 
 Zeuxippus, Nestorius looking for help 
 from, in the Council of Ephesus, 
 383. 
 
 Zion, palace on, built by David, 52; 
 Gate of, 55 ; Mount, 66. 
 
 Zorah, country of, 28.
 
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