 CHAPTER XXII I was hospitably entertained by the British consul or agent as he is there, styled. He is the employee of the East India Company and not of the home government. Napoleon, during his stay of five days at Suez, had been the guest of the consul's father, and I was told that the divan in my apartment had been the bed of the great commander. There are two opinions as to the point at which the Israelites passed the Red Sea. One is that they traversed only the very small creek at the northern extremity of the inlet, and that they entered the bed of the water at the spot on which Suez now stands. The other, that they crossed the sea from a point eighteen miles down the coast. The Oxford theologians, who, with Milman their professor, believed that Jehovah conducted his chosen people without disturbing the order of nature, adopt the first view, and suppose that the Israelites passed during an ebb tide, aided by a violent wind. One among many objections to this supposition is that the time of a single ebb would not have been sufficient for the passage of that vast multitude of men and beasts, or even for a small fraction of it. Moreover, the creek to the north of this point can be compassed in an hour, and in two hours you can make the circuit of the salt march over which the sea may have extended in former times. If therefore the Israelites crossed so high up as Suez, the Egyptians, unless infatuated by divine interference, might have easily recovered their stolen goods from the encumbered fugitives by making a slight detour. The opinion which fixes the point of passage at eighteen miles distance, and from thence right across the ocean depths to the eastern side of the sea, is supported by the unanimous tradition of the people, whether Christians or Muslims, and is consistent with holy writ. The waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. The Cambridge mathematicians seemed to think that the Israelites were unable to pass over dry land by adopting a route not usually subjected to the influx of the sea. This notion is plausible in a merely hydrostatical point of view, and is supposed to have been adopted by most of the Fellows of Trinity, but certainly not by Thorb, who is one of the most amiable of their number. It is difficult to reconcile this theory with the account given in Exodus, unless we can suppose that the words sea and waters are there used in a sense implying dry land. Napoleon, when at Suez, made an attempt to follow the supposed steps of Moses by passing the creek at this point, but it seems, according to the testimony of the people at Suez, that he and his horsemen managed the manner in a way more resembling the failure of the Egyptians than the success of the Israelites. According to the French account, Napoleon got out of the difficulty by that warrior-like presence of mind which served him so well when the fate of nations depended on the decision of a moment. He ordered his horsemen to disperse in all directions in order to multiply the chances of finding shallow water, and was thus unable to discover a line by which he and his people were extricated. The story told by the people of Suez is very different. They declare that Napoleon parted from his horse, got thoroughly submerged, and was only fished out by the assistance of the people on shore. I bathed twice at the point assigned to the passage of the Israelites, and the second time that I did so I chose the time of low water and tried to walk across, but I soon found myself out of my depth, or at least in water so deep that I could only advance by swimming. The dromedary, which had bolted in the desert, was brought into Suez the day after my arrival, but my pelice and my pistols, which had been attached to the saddle, had disappeared. These articles were treasures of great importance to me at that time, and I moved the Governor of the town to make all possible exertions for their recovery. He acceded to my wishes as well as he could, and very obligingly imprisoned the first seven poor fellows he could lay his hands on. At first the Governor acted in the matter from no other motive than that of courtesy to an English traveler, but afterwards, when he saw the value which I set upon the lost property, he pushed his measures with a degree of alacrity and heat, which seemed to show that he felt a personal interest in the matter. It was supposed either that he expected a large present in the inventive succeeding, or that he was striving by all means to trace the property in order that he might lay his hands on it after my departure. I went out sailing for some hours, and when I returned I was horrified to find that two men had been bastionadoed by order of the Governor, with a view to force them to a confession of their theft. It appeared, however, that there really was good ground for supposing them guilty, since one of the holsters was actually found in their possession. It was said, too, but I could hardly believe it, that whilst one of the men was undergoing the bastionado, his comrade was overheard encouraging him to bear the torment without peaching. Both men, if they had the secret, were resolute in keeping it, and were sent back to their dungeon. I, of course, took care that there should be no such repetition of the torture, at least so long as I remained at Suez. The Governor was a thorough oriental, and until a comparatively recent period had shared in the old mohammedan feeling of contempt for Europeans. It happened, however, one day that an English gun-brig had appeared off Suez, and had sent her boats ashore to take in fresh water. Now, fresh water at Suez is a somewhat scarce and precious commodity. It is kept in tanks, the chief of which is at some distance from the place. Under these circumstances the request for fresh water was refused, or at all events was not complied with. The captain of the brig was a simple-minded man with a strongish will, and he at once declared that if his casks were not filled in three hours he would destroy the whole place. A great people indeed, said the Governor, a wonderful people to English. He instantly caused every cask to be filled to the brim from his own tank, and ever afterwards entertained for the English a degree of affection and respect, for which I felt infinitely indebted to the gallant captain. The day after the abortive attempt to extract a confession from the prisoners, the Governor, the Council, and I said in Council, I know not how long, with a view of prosecuting the search for the stolen goods. The sitting, considered in the light of a criminal investigation, was a characteristic of the East. The proceedings began as a matter of course by the prosecutors smoking a pipe and drinking coffee with the Governor, who was Judge, Jury, and Sheriff. I got on very well with him, this was not my first interview, and he gave me the pipe from his lips in testimony of his friendship. I recollect, however, that my prime advisor, thinking me I suppose a great deal too shy and retiring in my manner, entreated me to put up my boots and to soil the Governor's devan in order to inspire respect and strike terror. I thought it would be as well for me to retain the right of respecting myself, and that it was not quite necessary for a well-received guest to strike any terror at all. Our deliberations were assisted by the numerous attendants who lined the three sides of the room not occupied by the devan. Any one of these, who took it into his head to offer a suggestion, would stand forward and humble himself before the Governor, and then state his views. Every man, thus giving counsel, was listened to with some attention. After a great deal of fruitless planning the Governor directed that the prisoners should be brought in. I was shocked when they entered, for I was not prepared to see them come carried into the room upon the shoulders of others. It had not occurred to me that their battered feet would be too sore to bear the contact of the floor. They persisted in asserting their innocence. The Governor wanted to recur to the torture, but that I prevented, and the men were carried back to their dungeon. A scheme was now suggested by one of the attendants, which seemed to me childishly absurd, but it was nevertheless tried. The plan was to send a man to the prisoners, who would make them believe that he had obtained entrance into their dungeon upon some other pretense, but that he had in reality come to treat with them for the purchase of the stolen goods. This shallow expedient, of course, failed. The Governor himself had not nominally the power of life and death over the people in his district, but he could, if he chose, send them to Cairo, and have them hanged there. I proposed, therefore, that the prisoners should be threatened with this fate. The answer of the Governor made me feel rather ashamed of my effeminate suggestion. He said that if I wished it he would willingly threaten them with death, but he also said that if he threatened he should execute the threat. Thinking at last that nothing was to be gained by keeping the prisoners any longer in confinement, I requested that they might be set free. To this the Governor acceded, though only, as he said, out of favour to me, for he had a strong impression that the men were guilty. I went down to see the prisoners let out with my own eyes. They were very grateful and fell down to the earth, kissing my boots. I gave them a present to console them for their wounds, and they seemed to be highly delighted. Although the matter terminated in a manner so satisfactory to the principal sufferers, there were some symptoms of angry excitement in the place. It was said that public opinion was much shocked at the fact that Mohammedans had been beaten on account of a loss sustained by a Christian. My journey was to recommend the next day, and it was hinted that if I persevered in my intention of proceeding, the people would have an easy and profitable opportunity of wreaking their vengeance on me. If ever they formed any scheme of the kind, they at all offence refrained from any attempt to carry it into effect. One of the evenings during my stay at Suez was enlivened by a triple wedding. There was a long and slow procession. One carried torches, and others were thumping drums and firing pistols. The bridegrooms came last, all walking abreast. My only reason for mentioning the ceremony, which was otherwise uninteresting, is that I scarcely ever in all my life saw any phenomena so ridiculous as the meekness and gravity of those three young men whilst being led to the altar. CHAPTER XXIII The route over the desert from Suez to Gaza is not frequented by merchants, and is seldom passed by a traveller. This part of the country is less uniformly barren than the tracks of shifting sand that lie on the El Arish route. The shrubs on which the camel feeds are more frequent, and in many spots the sand is mingled with so much of productive soil as to admit the growth of corn. The Bedouins are driven out of this district during the summer by the total want of water, but before the time for their forced departure arrives they succeed in raising little crops of barley from these comparatively fertile patches of ground. They bury the fruit of their labours, leaving marks by which upon their return they may be able to recognise the spot. The warm dry sand stays them for a safe grainery. The country at the time I passed it in the month of April was pretty thickly sprinkled with Bedouins expecting their harvest. Several times my tent was pitched alongside of their encampments. I have told you already what the impressions were which these people produced upon my mind. I saw several creatures of the antelope kind in this part of the desert, and one day my Arab surprised in her sleep a young gazelle, for so I called her and took the darling prisoner. I carried her before me on my camel for the rest of the day, and kept her in my tent all night. I did all I could to coax her, but the trembling beauty refused to touch food and would not be comforted. Whenever she had a seeming opportunity of escaping she struggled with a violence so painfully disproportionate to her fine, delicate limbs that I could not continue the cruel attempt to make her my own. In the morning therefore I set her free, anticipating some pleasure from seeing the joyous bound with which, as I thought, she would return to her native freedom. She had been so stupefied, however, by the exciting events of the preceding day and night, and was so puzzled as to the road she should take, that she went off very deliberately and with an uncertain step. She went away quite sound and limb, but her intellect may have been upset. Never in all likelihood had she seen the form of a human being until the dreadful moment when she woke from her sleep and found herself in the grip of an Arab. Then her pitching and tossing journey on the back of a camel, and lastly a soiree with me by candlelight. I should have been glad to know, if I could, that her heart was not utterly broken. My Arabs were somewhat excited one day by discovering the fresh print of a foot. The foot, as they said, of a lion. I had no conception that the Lord of the Forest, better known as a crest, ever stalked away from his jungles to make inglorious war in these smooth plains against antelopes and gazelles. I suppose that there must have been some error of interpretation, and that the Arabs meant to speak of a tiger. It appeared, however, that this was not the case. Either the Arabs were mistaken, or the noble brute, uncouped and unchained, had but lately crossed my path. The camels by which I traversed this part of the desert were very different in their ways and habits, from those that you get on a frequented route. They were never led. There was not the slightest sign of a track in this part of the desert, but the camels never failed to choose the right line. By the direction taken at starting they knew, I suppose, the point, some encampment for which they were to make. There is always a leading camel, generally I believe the eldest, who marches foremost, and determines the path for the whole party. If it happens that no one of the camels has been accustomed to lead the others, there is a very great difficulty in making a start. If you force your beast forward for a moment, he will contrive to wheel and draw back, at the same time looking at one of the other camels, with an expression and a gesture exactly equivalent to apres-vous. The responsibility of finding the way is evidently assumed very unwillingly. After some time, however, it becomes understood that one of the beasts has reluctantly consented to take the lead, and he accordingly advances for that purpose. For a minute or two he goes on with much indecision, taking first one line and then another, but soon, by the aid of some mysterious sense, he discovers the true direction and follows it steadily from morning to night. When once the leadership is established, you cannot, by any persuasion, and can scarcely by any force, induce a junior camel to walk one step in advance of the chosen guide. On the fifth day I came to an oasis, called the Wadi El-Arish, a ravine, or rather a gully, through which, during a part of the year, there runs a stream of water. On the sides of the gully there were a number of those graceful trees which the Arabs call Tarfa. The channel of the stream was quite dry in the part at which we arrived, but at about half a mile off some water was found, which, though very muddy, was tolerably sweet. This was a happy discovery, for all the water that we had brought from the neighborhood of Suez was rapidly putrefying. The want of foresight is an anomalous part of the Bedouin's character, for it does not result either from recklessness or stupidity. I know of no human being whose body is so thoroughly the slave of mind as that of the Arab. His mental anxieties seem to be forever torturing every nerve and fiber of his body, and yet with all this exquisite sensitiveness to the suggestions of the mind he is grossly improvident. I recollect, for instance, that when setting out upon this passage of the desert my Arabs, in order to lighten the burden of their camels, were most anxious that we should only take with us two days' supply of water. They said that by the time the supply was exhausted we should arrive at a spring which would furnish us for the rest of the journey. My servants very wisely and with much pertinacity resisted the adoption of this plan, and took care to have both the large skins well filled. We proceeded and found no water at all, either at the expected spring or for many days afterwards, so that nothing but the precaution of my own people saved us from the very severe suffering which we should have endured if we had entered upon the desert with only a two-day supply. The Arabs themselves being on foot would have suffered much more than I from the consequences of their improvidence. This unaccountable want of foresight prevents the Bedouin from appreciating at a distance of eight or ten days the amount of the misery which he entails upon himself at the end of that period. His dread of a city is one of the most painful mental afflictions that I have ever observed, and yet when the whole breadth of the desert lies between him and the town to which you are going he will freely enter into an agreement to land you in the city for which you are bound. When, however, after many a day of toil the distant minarets at length appear, the poor Bedouin relaxes the vigor of his pace, his steps become faltering and undecided, every moment his uneasiness increases, and at length he fairly sobs aloud, and embracing your knees implores with the most piteous cries and gestures that you will dispense with him in his camels and find some other means of entering the city. This, of course, one can't agree to, and the consequence is that one is obliged to witness and resist the most moving expressions of grief and fond entreaty. I had to go through a most painful scene of this kind when I entered Cairo, and now the horror which these wilder Arabs felt at the notion of entering Gaza led to consequences still more distressing. The dread of cities results partly from a kind of wild instinct which has always characterized the descendants of Ishmael, but partly too from a well-founded apprehension of ill-treatment. So often it happens that the poor Bedouin, when once jammed in between walls, is seized by the government authorities for the sake of his camels, that his innate horror of cities becomes really justified by results. The Bedouins with whom I performed this journey were wild fellows of the desert, quite unaccustomed to let themselves or their beasts for hire, and when they found that by the natural ascendancy of Europeans they were gradually brought down to a state of subserviency to me, or rather to my attendance, they bitterly repented, I believe, of having placed themselves under our control. They were a rather difficult fellows to manage and gave the symmetry of good deal of trouble, but I liked them all the better for that. Salim, the chief of the party, and the man to whom all our camels belonged, was a fine, savage, stately fellow. There were, I think, five other Arabs of the party, but when we approached the end of the journey they one by one began to make off towards the neighboring encampments, and by the time that the minarets of Gaza were in sight, Salim, the owner of the camels, was the only one who remained. He, poor fellow, as we neared the town, began to discover the same terrors that my Arabs had shown when I entered Cairo. I could not possibly accede to his entreaties and consent to let my baggage be laid down on the bare sands without having any means of having it brought on into the city. So at length, when poor Salim had exhausted all his rhetoric of voice and action and tears, he fixed his despairing eyes for a minute upon the cherished beast that were his only wealth, and then suddenly and madly dashed away into the farther desert. I continued my course and reached the city at last, but it was not without immense difficulty that we could constrain the poor camels to pass under the hated shadow of its walls. They were the genuine beasts of the desert, and it was sad and painful to witness the agony they suffered when thus they were forced to encounter the fixed habitations of men. They shrank from the beginning of every high narrow street as though from the entrance of some horrible cave or bottomless pit. They sighed and wept like women. When at last we got them within the courtyard of the Khan they seemed to be quite broken-hearted and looked round piteously for their loving master, but no Salim came. I had imagined that he would enter the town secretly by night in order to carry off those five fine camels, his only wealth in this world, and seemingly the main objects of his affection, but no, his dread of civilization was too strong. During the whole of the three days that I remained at Gaza he failed to show himself, and thus sacrificed in all probability not only his camels, but the money which I had stipulated to pay him for the passage of the desert. In order, however, to do all I could towards saving him from this last misfortune I resorted to a contrivance frequently adopted by the Asiatics. I assembled a group of grave and worthy Muslims in the courtyard of the Khan, and in their presence paid over the gold to a sheikh who was accustomed to communicate with the Arabs of the desert. All present solemnly promised that if ever Salim should come to claim his rights they would bear true witness in his favour. I saw a great deal of my old friend, the Governor of Gaza. He had received orders to send back all persons coming from Egypt and forced them to perform quarantine at El Ahrish. He knew so little of quarantine regulations, however, that his dress was actually in contact with mine whilst he insisted upon the stringency of the orders which he had received. He was induced to make an exception in my favour, and I rewarded him with the musical snuff box which I had brought at Smyrna for the purpose of presenting it to any man in authority who might happen to do me an important service. The Governor was delighted with his toy, and took it off to his harem with great exultation. He soon, however, returned with an altered countenance. His wives, he said, had got hold of the box and put it out of order. So short-lived is human happiness in this frail world. The Governor fancied that he should incur less risk if remained at Gaza for two or three days more, and he wanted me to become his guest. I persuaded him, however, that it would be better for him to let me depart at once. He wanted to add to my baggage a roast lamb and a quantity of other cumbrous viands, but I escaped with a half a horseload of leaven bread, which was very good of its kind, and proved a most useful present. The air with which the Governor's slaves affected to be almost breaking down under the weight of the gifts which they bore on their shoulders reminded me of the figures one sees in some of the old pictures. CHAPTER XXIV Gaza to Nablus During now once again through Palestine and Syria I retained the tent which I had used in the desert, and found that it added very much to my comfort in travelling. Instead of turning out a family from some wretched dwelling, and depriving them of a repose which I was sure not to find for myself, I now, when evening came, pitched my tent upon some smiling spot within a few hundred yards of the village to which I looked for my supplies, that is, for milk and bread, if I had it not with me, and sometimes also for eggs. The worst of it is that the needful vians are not to be obtained by coin but only by intimidation. I at first tried the usual agent, money. Demy III, with one or two of my Arabs, went into the village near which I was encamped, and tried to buy the required provisions, offering liberal payment, but he came back empty-handed. I sent him again, but this time he held different language. He required to see the elders of the place, and threatened dreadful vengeance, directed them upon their responsibility to take care that my tent should be immediately and abundantly supplied. He was abated once, and the provisions refused to me as a purchaser, soon arrived, troubled or quadrupled, when demanded by way of a forced contribution. I quickly found, I think it required two experiments to convince me, that this peremptory method was the only one which could be adopted with success. It never failed. Of course, however, when the provisions had been actually obtained, you can, if you choose, give money exceeding the value of the provisions to somebody. In English, a thoroughbred English traveller will always do this, though it is contrary to the custom of the country. For the quiet, false quiet though it be, of his own conscience. But so to order the matter that the poor fellows who have been forced to contribute should be the persons to receive the value of their supplies is not possible. For a traveller to attempt anything so grossly just as that would be too outrageous. The truth is that the usage of the East in old times required the people of the village, at their own cost, to supply the wants of travellers, and the ancient custom is now adhered to, not in favour of travellers generally, but in favour of those who are deemed sufficiently powerful to enforce its observance. If the villagers therefore find a man waving this right to oppress them, and offering coin for that which he is entitled to take without payment, they suppose at once that he is actuated by fear, fear of them, poor fellows, and it is so delightful to them to act upon this flattering assumption that they will forego the advantage of a good price for their provisions rather than the rare luxury of refusing for wants in their lives to part with their own possessions. The practice of intimidation thus rendered necessary is utterly hateful to an Englishman. He finds himself forced to conquer his daily bread by the pompous threats of the dregelmen, his very subsistence, as well as his dignity and personal safety, being made to depend upon his servants assuming a tone of authority which does not at all belong to him. Besides, he can scarcely fail to see that as he passes through the country he becomes the innocent cause of much extra injustice, many supernumerary wrongs. This he feels to be especially the case when he travels with relays. To be the owner of a horse or a mule within reach of an Asiatic potentate is to lead the life of the hare and the rabbit, hunted down and ferreted out. Too often it happens that the works of the field are stopped in the daytime, that the inmates of the cottages are roused from their midnight sleep by the sudden coming of a government officer, and the poor husbandmen, driven by threats and rewarded by curses, if he would not lose sight forever of his captured beasts, must quit all and follow them. This is done that the Englishman may travel. He would make his way more harmless if he could, but horses or mules he must have, and these are his ways and means. The town of Nublas is beautiful. It lies in a valley hemmed in with olive groves, and its buildings are interspersed with frequent palm-trees. It is said to occupy the side of the ancient Sikkim. I know not whether it was there indeed that the father of the Jews was accustomed to feed his flocks, but the valley is green and smiling, and is held at this day by a race more brave and beautiful than Jacob's unhappy descendants. Nublas is the very firmest of Mohammedan bigotry, and I believe that only a few months before the time of my going there it would have been quite unsafe for a man, unless strongly guarded, to show himself to the people of the town in a frank costume. But since their last insurrection the Mohammedans of the place had been so far subdued by the severity of Ibrahim Pasha that they dared not now offer the slightest insult to a European. It was quite plain, however, that the effort with which the men of the old school were feigned from expressing their opinion of a hat and coat was horribly painful to them. As I walked through the streets and bazaars a dead silence prevailed. Every man suspended his employment and gazed on me with a fixed, glassy look, which seemed to say, God is good, but how marvelous and inscrutable are his ways that he permits this white-faced dog of a Christian to hunt through the paths of the faithful. The insurrection of these people had been more formidable than any other that Ibrahim Pasha had to contend with. He was only able to crush them at last by the assistance of a fellow renowned for his resources in the way of stratagem and cunning, as well as for his knowledge of the country. This personage was no other than Abu Ghush, the father of lies, who was taken out of prison for the purpose. The father of lies enabled Ibrahim to hem the insurrection and extinguish it. He was rewarded with the governorship of Jerusalem which he held when I was there. I recollect, by the by, that he tried one of the stratagems upon me. I did not go to see him, as I ought in courtesy to have done, during my stay at Jerusalem, but I happened to be the owner of a rather handsome chaboot piece which the governor heard of and by some means contrived to see. He sent to me and dressed up a statement that he would give me a price immensely exceeding the sum which I had given for it. He did not add my chaboot to the rest of his trophies. There was a small number of Greek Christians resident in Nablus, and over these the Muslims held a high hand, not even permitting them to speak to each other in the open streets. But if the Muslims thus set themselves above the poor Christians of the place, I, or rather my servants, soon took the ascendant over them. I recollect that just as we were starting from the place, and at a time when a number of people had gathered together in the main street to see our preparations, Masiri, being provoked at some piece of perverseness on the part of a true believer, coolly thrashed him with his horse whip before the assembled crowd of fanatics. I was much annoyed at the time, for I thought that the people would probably rise against us. They turned rather pale but stood still. The day of my arrival at Nablus was afet, the New Year's Day of the Muslims. Most of the people were amusing themselves in the beautiful lawns and shady groves without the city. The men, except myself, were all remotely apart from the other sex. The women and groups were diverting themselves in their children with swings. They were so handsome that they could not keep up their yashmux. I believed that they had never before looked upon a man in the European dress, and when they now saw me in that strange phenomenon, and saw, too, how they could please the creature by showing him a glimpse of beauty, they seemed to think it was better fun to do this than to go on playing with swings. It was always, however, with a sort of zoological expression of countenance that they looked on the horrible monster from Europe, and whenever one of them gave me to see, for one sweet instance, the blushing of her unveiled face, it was with the same kind of air as that with which a young, timid girl will edge her way up to an elephant, and tremblingly give him a nut from the tips of her rosy fingers. CHAPTER XXV. There is no spirit of propagandism in the Muslims of the Ottoman dominions. True, it is that a prisoner of war, or a Christian condemned to death, may on some occasions save his life by adopting the religion of Muhammad, but instances of this kind are now exceedingly rare, and are quite at variance with the general system. Many Europeans, I think, would be surprised to learn that which is nevertheless quite true, namely, that an attempt to disturb the religious repose of the empire by the conversion of a Christian to the Muhammad in faith is positively illegal. The event which I am now going to mention shows plainly enough that the unlawfulness of such interference is distinctly recognized, even in the most bigoted stronghold of Islam. During my stay at Nablus I took up my quarters at the house of the Greek papa, as he is called, that is, the Greek priest. The priest himself had gone to Jerusalem upon the business I am going to tell you of, but his wife remained at Nablus and did the honors of her home. Soon after my arrival a deputation from the Greek Christians of the place came to request my interference in a matter which had occasioned vast excitement. And now I must tell you how it came to happen, as it did continually, that people thought it worthwhile to claim the assistance of a mere traveller, who was totally devoid of all just pretensions to authority or influence of even the humblest description, and especially I must explain to you how it was that the power thus attributed did really belong to me, or rather to my drago-man. Successive political convulsions had at length fairly loosed the people of Syria from their former rules of conduct, and free from all their old habits of reliance. The violence and success was which Mohammed Ali crushed the insurrection of the Mohammedan population had utterly beaten down the head of Islam, and extinguished, for the time at least, those virtues and vices which had sprung from the Mohammedan faith. Success so complete as Mohammed Ali's, if it had been attained by an ordinary Asiatic potentate, would have induced a notion of stability. The readily bowing mind of the Oriental would have bowed low and long under the feet of a conqueror whom God had thus strengthened. But Syria was no field for contests strictly Asiatic. Europe was involved, and though the heavy masses of Egyptian troops clinging with strong grip to the land might seem to hold it fast, yet every peasant practically felt and knew that in Vienna or Petersburg or London there were four or five pale looking men who could pull down the star of the Pasha with shreds of paper and ink. The people of the country knew, too, that Mohammed Ali was strong with the strength of the Europeans, strong by his French general, his French tactics, and his English engines. Moreover, they saw that the person, the property, and even the dignity of the humblest European was guarded with the most careful solicitude. The consequence of all this was that the people of Syria looked vaguely but confidently to Europe for fresh changes. Many would fix upon some nation, France or England, and steadfastly regarded as the arriving sovereign of Syria. Those whose minds remained in doubt equally contributed to this new state of public opinion, which no longer depended upon religion and ancient habits, but upon bare hopes and fears. Every man wanted to know, not who was his neighbor, but who was to be his new ruler, whose feet he was to kiss, and by whom his feet were to be ultimately beaten. Treat your friend, says the proverb, as though he were one day to become your enemy, and your enemy as though he were one day to become your friend. The Syrians went further, and seemed inclined to treat every stranger as though he might one day become their Pasha. Such was the state of circumstance and of feeling, which now, for the first time, had thoroughly opened the mind of Western Asia for the reception of Europeans and European ideas. The credit of the English especially was so great that a good Muslim, flying from the conscription or any other persecution, would come to seek from the formerly despised hat that protection which the turban could no longer afford, and a man in high authority, as for instance, the Governor-in-Command of Gaza, would think that he had won a prize, or at all events, a valuable lottery ticket, if he obtained a written approval of his conduct from a simple traveller. Still, in order that any immediate result should follow from all this unwanted readiness in the Asiatic to succumb to the European, it was necessary that someone should be at hand who could see and would push the advantage. I myself had neither the inclination nor the power to do so, but it happened that the epithymetry, who as my Dregoman represented me on all occasions, was the very person of all others best fitted to avail himself with success of this yielding tendency in the Oriental mind. If the chance of birth and fortune had made poor Demetri a tailor during some part of his life, yet religion and the literature of the Church which he served had made him a man and a brave man, too. The lives of saints with which he was familiar were full of heroic actions provoking imitation, and since faith in a creed involves a faith in its ultimate triumph, the epithymetry was bold from a sense of true strength. His education, too, though not very general in its character, had been carried quite far enough to justify him in pluming himself upon a very decided advantage over the great bulk of the Mohammedan population, including the men in authority. With all this consciousness of religious and intellectual superiority, the epithymetry had lived for the most part in countries lying under Muslim governments, and had witnessed, perhaps, too, had suffered from, the revolting cruelties. The result was that he abhorred and despised the Mohammedan faith and all who clung to it. And this hate was not of the dry, dull and inactive sort. The epithymetry was in his sphere a true crusader, and whenever there appeared a fair opening in the defences of Islam, he was ready and eager to make the assault. These sentiments, backed by a consciousness of understanding the people with whom he had to do, made Demetri not only firm and resolute in his constant interviews with men in authority, but sometimes also, as you may know already, very violent and even insulting. This tone, which I always disliked, though I was feigned to profit by it, invariably succeeded. It swept away all resistance, there was nothing in the then-depressed and succumbing mind of the Musselman that could oppose a zeal so warm and fierce. As for me, I, of course, stood aloof from Demetri's crusades, and did not even render him any active assistance when he was striving, as he almost always was, poor fellow, on my behalf. I was only the death's head and white sheet with which he scared the enemy. I think, however, that I played this spectral part exceedingly well, for I seldom appeared at all in any discussion, and whenever I did, I was sure to be white and calm. The event which induced the Christians of Nablus to seek for my assistance was this. A beautiful young Christian, between fifteen and sixteen years old, had lately been married to a man of her own creed. About the same time, probably on the occasion of her wedding, she was accidentally seen by a Musselman's shake of great wealth and local influence, who instantly became madly enamored of her. The strict morality which so generally prevails where the Musselmans have complete ascendancy prevented the shake from entertaining such sinful hopes, as an European might have ventured to cherish under the like circumstances, and he saw no chance of gratifying his love except by inducing the girl to embrace his own creed. If he could induce her to take this step, her marriage with the Christian would be dissolved, and then there would be nothing to prevent him from making her the last and brightest of his wives. The shake was a practical man, and quickly began his attack upon the theological opinions of the bride. He did not assail her with the eloquence of any imams or Musselman saints. He did not press upon her the eternal truce of the cow or the beautiful morality of the table. He sent her no tracks, not even a copy of the Holy Quran. An old woman acted as missionary. She brought with her a whole basket full of arguments, jewels and shawls and scarfs of all kinds of persuasive finery. Or Miriam. She put on the jewels and took a calm view of the Muhammaden religion in a little hand mirror. She could not be deft to such eloquent earrings, and the great truths of Islam came home to her young bosom on the delicate folds of the cashmere. She was ready to abandon her faith. The shake knew very well that his attempt to convert an infidel was illegal, and that his proceedings would not bear investigation, so he took care to pay a large sum to the governor of Nablus in order to obtain his convivance. At length Miriam quitted her home and placed herself under the protection of the Muhammaden authorities, who, however, refrained from delivering her into the arms of her lover, and attained her in a mosque until the fact of her real conversion, which had been indignantly denied by her relatives, should be established. For two or three days the mother of the young convert was prevented from communicating with her child by various evasive contrivances, but not it would seem by a flat refusal. At length it was announced that the young lady's profession of faith might be heard from her own lips. At an hour appointed the friends of the shake and the relatives of the damsel met in the mosque. The young convert addressed her mother in a loud voice and said, God is God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God, and thou, O my mother, art an infidel, a feminine dog. You would suppose that this declaration, so clearly announced, and that, too, in a place where Muhammadism is perhaps more supreme than in any other part of the empire, would have sufficed to confirm the pretensions of the lover. This, however, was not the case. The Greek priest of the place was dispatched on a mission to the governor of Jerusalem, Abu Ghosh, in order to complain against the proceedings of the shake and obtain a restitution of the bride. Meanwhile the Muhammaden authorities at Nablus were so conscious of having acted unlawfully in conspiring to disturb the faith of the beautiful infidel, that they hesitated to take any further steps, and the girl was still detained in the mosque. Thus matters stood when the Christians of the place came and sought to obtain my assistance. I felt, with regret, that I had no personal interest in the matter, and I also thought that there was no pretense for my interfering with the conflicting claims of the Christian husband and the Muhammaden lover, and I therefore declined to take any step. My speaking of the husband, by the by, reminds me that he was extremely backward about the great work of recovering his youthful bride. The relations of the girl, who felt themselves disgraced by her conduct, were vehement and excited to a high pitch, but the menelists of Nablus was exceedingly calm and composed. The fact that it was not technically my duty to interfere in a matter of this kind was a very sufficient, and yet a very unsatisfactory reason for my refusal of all assistance. Until you are placed in situations of this kind, you can hardly tell how painful it is to refrain from intermeddling in other people's affairs, to refrain from intermeddling when you feel that you can do so with happy effect, and can remove a load of distress by the use of a few small phrases. Upon this occasion, however, an expression fell from one of the girl's kinsmen which not only determined me against the idea of interfering, but made me hope that all attempts to recover the cross-light would fail. This person, speaking with the most savage bitterness and with the cordial approval of all the other relatives, said the girl ought to be beaten to death. I could not fail to see that if the poor child were ever restored to her family, she would be treated with the most frightful barbarity. I heartily wished, therefore, that the Muslims might be firm, and preserve their young cries from any fate so dreadful as that of a return to her own relations. The next day the Greek priest returned from his mission to Abu Ghosh, but the father of lies it would seem had been well-plied with the gold of the enamored sheikh, and contrived to put off the prayers of the Christians by cunning feints. Now, therefore, a second and more numerous deputation than the first waited upon me and implored my intervention with the Governor. I informed the assembled Christians that since their last application I had carefully considered the matter. The religious question I thought might be put aside at once, for the excessive levity which the girl had displayed, proved clearly that in adopting Mohammedism she was not quitting any other faith. Her mind must have been thoroughly blank upon religious questions, and she was not, therefore, to be treated as a Christian that had strayed from the flock, but rather as a child without any religion at all, who was willing to conform to the usages of those who would deck her with jewels and clothe her with cashmere shawls. So much for the religious part of the question. Well, then, in a merely temporal sense it appeared to me, looking merely to the interest of the Danzel, for I rather unjustly put poor mentalists quite out of the question, the advantages were all on the side of the Mohammedan match. The sheikh was in a much higher station of life than the superseded husband, and had given the best possible proof of his ardent affection by the sacrifices he had made, and the risks he had incurred for the sake of the beloved object. I, therefore, stated fairly, to the horror and amazement of all my hearers, that the sheikh, in my view, was likely to make a most capital husband, and that I entirely approved in the match. I left Nablus under the impression that Miriam would soon be delivered to her Muslim lover. I afterwards found, however, that the result was very different. Dithymetry's religious zeal and hate had been so much excited by the account of these events, and by the grief and mortification of his co-religionists, that when he found me firmly determined to decline all interference in the matter, he secretly appealed to the governor in my name, and, using, I suppose, many violent threats, and telling no doubt many lies about my station and influence, extorted a promise that the proselyte should be restored to her relatives. I did not understand that the girl had been actually given up whilst I remained at Nablus, but Dithymetry certainly did not desist from his instances until he had satisfied himself by some means or other, for mere words amounted to nothing, that the promise would be actually performed. It was not till I had quitted Syria, and when Dithymetry was no longer in my service, that this villainous, though well-motivated trick of his came to my knowledge. Miss Ciri, who had informed me of the step which had been taken, did not know it himself till some time after we had quitted Nablus, when Dithymetry exultingly confessed his successful enterprise. I know not whether the engagement which my zealous dregoman extorted from the Governor was ever complied with. I shudder to think of the fate which must have befallen poor Miriam if she fell into the hands of the Christians. CHAPTER XXVI. For some hours I passed along the shores of the Fair Lake of Galilee, then turning a little to the westward I struck into a mountainous tract, and as I advanced thus forward the lie of the country kept growing more and more bold. At length I grew near to the city of Safed. It sits as proud as a fortress upon the summit of a craggy height, yet because of its minarets and stately trees the place looks happy and beautiful. It is one of the holy cities of the Talmud, and according to this authority the Messiah will reign there for forty years before he takes possession of Zion. The sanctity and historical importance thus attributed to the city by anticipation render it a favorite place of retirement for Israelites, of whom it contains they say about four thousand, a number nearly balancing that of the Mohammedan inhabitants. I knew by my experience of Tabaria that a holy city was sure to have a population of vermin somewhat proportionate to the number of its Israelites, and I therefore caused my tent to be pitched upon the green spot of ground at a respectful distance from the walls of the town. When it had become quite dark, for there was no moon that night, I was informed that several Jews had secretly come from the city in the hope of obtaining some assistance from me in circumstances of imminent danger. I was also informed that they claimed my aid upon the ground that some of their number were British subjects. It was arranged that the two principal men of the party should speak for the rest, and these were accordingly admitted into my tent. One of these two called himself the British Vice-Council, and he had with him his consular cap, but he frankly said that he could not have dared to assume this emblem of his dignity in the daytime, and that nothing but the extreme darkness of the night rendered it safe for him to put it on upon this occasion. The other of the spokesman was a Jew of Gibraltar, a tolerably well-bred person, who spoke English very fluently. These men informed me that the Jews of the place, who were exceedingly wealthy, had lived peaceably in their retirement until the insurrection which took place in 1834, but about the beginning of that year a highly religious Muslim called Mohammed Damour went forth into the marketplace, crying with a loud voice and prophesying that on the fifteenth of the following June the true believers would rise up in just wrath against the Jews and to spoil them of their gold and their silver and their jewels. The earnestness of the Prophet produced some impression at the time, but all went on as usual until at last the fifteenth of June arrived. When that day dawned the whole Muslim population of the place assembled in the streets that they might see the result of the prophecy. Suddenly Mohammed Damour rushed furious into the crowd, and the fierce shout of the Prophet soon ensured the fulfillment of his prophecy. Some of the Jews fled and some remained, but they who fled and they who remained alike unresistingly left their property to the hands of the spoilers. The most odious of all outrages, that of searching the women for the base purpose of discovering such thing as gold and silver concealed about their persons, was perpetrated without shame. The poor Jews were so stricken with terror that they submitted to their fate even where resistance would have been easy. In several instances a young Muslim boy, not more than ten or twelve years of age, walked straight into the house of a Jew and stripped him of his property before his face and in the presence of his whole family. When the insurrection was put down some of the Muslims, most probably those who had got no spoil wherewith they might by immunity were punished, but the greater part of them escaped. None of the booty was restored, and the pecuniary redress which the Pasha had undertaken to enforce for them had been hitherto so carefully delayed that the hope of ever obtaining it had grown very faint. A new governor had been appointed to the command of the place with stringent orders to ascertain the real extent of the losses and to discover the spoilers with a view of compelling them to make restitution. It was found that, notwithstanding the urgency of the instructions which the governor had received, he did not push on the affair with the vigour that had been expected. The Jews complained, and either by the protection of the British consul at Damascus or by some other means, had influence enough to induce the appointment of a special commissioner. They called him the Maudier, whose duty it was to watch for and prevent anything like convivance on the part of the governor, and to push on the investigation with vigour and impartiality, such were the instructions with which some few weeks since the Maudier came charged. The result was that the investigation had made no practical advance, and that the Maudier as well as the governor was living upon terms of affectionate friendship with Mohammed Damour and the rest of the principal's spoilers. Thus stood the chance of redress for the past, but the cause of the agonizing excitement under which the Jews of the place now labored was recent and justly alarming. Mohammed Damour had again gone forth into the marketplace, and lifted up his voice and prophesied a second spoilation of the Israelites. This was a grave matter. The words of such a practical man as Mohammed Damour were not to be despised. I fear I must have smiled visibly, for I was greatly amused, and even, I think, gratified at the account of this second prophecy. Nevertheless, my heart warmed towards the poor oppressed Israelites, and I was flattered, too, in the point of my national vanity at the notion of the far-reaching link by which a Jew in Syria, who had been born on the Rock of Gibraltar, was able to claim me as his fellow countrymen. If I hesitated at all between the impropriety of interfering in a matter, which was no business of mine, and the infernal shame of refusing my aid at such a conjecture, I soon came to a very un-gentlemanly decision, namely, that I would be guilty of the impropriety and not of the infernal shame. It seemed to me that the immediate arrest of Mohammed Damour was the one thing needful to the safety of the Jews, and I felt confident, for reasons which I have already mentioned in speaking of the Nablus Affair, that I should be able to obtain this result by making a formal application to the Governor. I told my applicants that I would take this step on the following morning. They were very grateful, and were for a moment much pleased at the prospect of safety, which might thus be open to them, but the deliberation of a minute entirely altered their views, and filled them with new terror. They declared that any attempt, or pretended attempt, on the part of the Governor to arrest Mohammed Damour would certainly produce an immediate movement of the whole Muslim population, and a consequent massacre and robbery of the Israelites. My visitors went out, and remained I know not how long consulting with their brethren. But all at last agreed that their present perilous and painful position was better than a certain and immediate attack, and that if Mohammed Damour was seized, their second estate would be worse than their first. I myself did not think that this would be the case, but I could not, of course, force my aid upon the people against their will, and, moreover, the day fixed for the fulfillment of this second prophecy was not very close at hand. A little delay, therefore, in providing against the impending danger would not necessarily be fatal. The men now confessed that although they had come with so much mystery, and as they thought, at so great a risk to ask my assistance, they were unable to suggest any mode in which I could aid them, except, indeed, by mentioning their grievances to the Consul General at Damascus. This I promised to do, and this I did. My visitors were very thankful to me for the readiness which I had shown to intermedal in their affairs, and the grateful wives of the principal Jews sent to me many compliments, with choice wines and elaborate sweet-meats. The course of my travels soon drew me so far from Safed that I never heard how the dreadful day passed off which had been fixed for the accomplishment of the second prophecy. If the predicted spoilation was prevented, poor Mohammed Damour must have been forced, I suppose, to say that he had prophesied in a metaphorical sense. This would be a sad falling off from the brilliant and substantial success of the first experiment. For a part of two days I wound under the base of the snow-crowned jubil-el-sheik, and then entered upon a vast and desolate plain, rarely pierced at intervals by some sort of withered stem. The earth in its length and its breadth, and all the deep universe of sky was steeped in light and heat. On I rode through the fire, but long before evening came there were straining eyes that saw, and joyful voices that announced, the sight of Sham Sharif, the holy, the blessed Damascus. But that which at last I reached with my longing eyes was not a speck in the horizon, gradually expanding to a group of roofs and walls, but a long low line of blackest green that ran right across in the distance from east to west. And this, as I approached, grew deeper, grew wavy in its outline. Soon forest trees shot up before my eyes, and robed their broad shoulders so freshly that all the throngs of olives as they rose into view looked sad in their proper dimness. There were even now no houses to see, but only the minarets peered out from the midst of shade into the glowing sky, and bravely touched the sun. There seemed to be here no mere city, but rather a province wide and rich that bounded the torrid waste. Until about a year or two years before the time of my going there, Damascus had kept up so much of the old bigot zeal against Christians, or rather against Europeans, that no one dressed as a Frank could have dared to show himself in the streets, but the firmness and temper of Mr. Farron, who hoisted his flag in the city as Consul-General for the District, had soon put an end to all intolerance of Englishmen. Damascus was safer than Oxford. When I entered the city in my usual dress there was but one poor fellow that wagged his tongue, and him in the open streets that the metrie horse-whipped. During my stay I went to wherever I chose, and attended the public baths without molestation. Indeed, my relations with the pleasanter portion of the Mohammedan population were upon a much better footing here than at most other places. In the principal streets of Damascus there is a path for foot passengers, which is raised, I think, a foot or two above the bridal road. Until the arrival of the British Consul-General, none but a Muslim had been permitted to walk upon the upper way. Mr. Farron would not, of course, suffer that the humiliation of any such exclusion should be submitted to by an Englishman, and I always walked upon the raised path as free and un-molested as if I had been in Palma'al. The old usage was, however, maintained with as much strictness as ever against the Christian Rias and Jews. Not one of them could have set his foot upon the privileged path without endangering his life. I was lounging one day, I remember, along the paths of the faithful, when a Christian Raya from the bridal road below saluted me with such earnestness, and craved so anxiously to speak and to be spoken to, that he soon brought me to a halt. He had nothing to tell, except only the glory and exultation with which he saw a fellow Christian stand level with the imperious Muslims. Perhaps he had been absent from the place for some time, for otherwise I hardly know how it could have happened that my exaltion was the first instance he had seen. His joy was great. So strong and strenuous was England, Lord Palmerston reigned in those days, that it was a pride and delight for a Syrian Christian to look up and say that the Englishman's faith was his too. If I was vexed at all that I could not give the man a lift and shake hands with him on level ground, there was no alloy to his pleasure. He followed me on, not looking to his own path, but keeping his eyes on me. He saw as he thought and said, for he came with me on to my quarters, the period of the Mohammedan's absolute ascendancy, the beginning of the Christians. He had so closely associated the insulting privilege of the path with actual dominion, that seeing it now in one instance abandoned, he looked for the quick coming of European troops. His lips only whispered, and that tremulously, but his fiery eyes spoke out their triumph in long and loud hurrahs. I too am a Christian. My foes are the foes of the English. We are all one people, and Christ is our king. If I poorly deserved, yet I liked this claim of brotherhood. Not all the warnings which I heard against their rascality could hinder me from feeling kindly towards my fellow Christians in the East. English travelers, from a habit perhaps of deprecating sectarians in their own country, are apt to look down upon the Oriental Christians as being dissenters from the established religion of a Mohammedan empire. I never did thus. By a natural perversity of disposition, which my nursemaids called contrariness, I felt the more strongly for my creed when I saw it despised among men. I quite tolerated the Christianity of Mohammedan countries, notwithstanding its humble aspect and the damaged character of its followers. I went further and extended some sympathy towards those who, with all the claims of superior intellect, learning, and industry, were kept down under the heel of Muslims by reason of their having our faith. I heard as I fancied the faint echo of an old Crusader's conscience, that whispered and said, Common Cause. The impulse was, as you may suppose, much too feeble to bring me into trouble. It merely influenced my actions in a way thoroughly characteristic of this poor sluggish century, that is, by making me speak almost as civilly to the followers of Christ as I did to their Mohammedan foes. This holy Damascus, this earthly paradise of the prophet, so fair to the eyes that he dared not trust himself to tarry in her blissful shades, she is a city of hidden palaces, of copses and gardens, and fountains and bubbling streams. The juice of her life is the gushing and ice-cold torrent that tumbles from the snowy sides of anti-Lebanon. Close along the river's edge, through seven sweet miles of wrestling bowels and deepest shade, the city spreads out her whole length. As a man falls flat, face forward on the brook, that he may drink and drink again, so Damascus, thirsting for ever, lies down with her lips to the stream and clings to its rushing waters. The chief places of public amusement, or rather of public relaxation, are the baths and the great café. This last, which is frequented at night by most of the wealthy men, and by many of the humbler sort, consists of a number of sheds, very simply framed and built in a labyrinth of running streams, which foam and roar on every side. The place is lit up in the simplest manner by numbers of small, pale lamps strung upon loose cords, and so suspended from branch to branch, that the light, though it looks so quiet amongst the darkening foliage, yet leaps and brightly flashes as it falls upon the troubled waters. All around, and chiefly upon the very edge of the torrents, groups of people are tranquilly seated. They all drink coffee, and inhale the cold fumes of the narguile. They talk rather gently, the one to the other, or else are silent. A father will sometimes have two or three of his boys around him, but the joyousness of an oriental child is all of the sober sort, and never disturbs the reigning calm of the land. It has been generally understood, I believe, that the houses of Damascus are more sumptuous than those of any other city in the east. Some of these, said to be the most magnificent in the place, I had an opportunity of seeing. Every rich man's house stands detached from its neighbors at the side of a garden, and it is from this cause, no doubt, that the city, severely menaced by prophecy, has hitherto escaped destruction. You know some parts of Spain, but you have never, I think, been in Andalusia. If you had, I could easily show you the interior of a Damascene house by referring you to the Alhambra or Alcansar of Sevilla. The lofty rooms are adorned with a rich inlaying of many colors and illuminated writing on the walls. The floors are of marble. One side of any room intended for noonday retirement is generally laid open to a quadrangle, in the center of which there dances the jet of a fountain. There is no furniture that can interfere with the cool, palace-like emptiness of the apartments. A divan, which is a low and doubly broad sofa, runs around the three walled sides of the room. A few Persian carpets, which ought to be called Persian rugs, for that is the word which indicates their shape and dimensions, are sometimes thrown about near the divan. They are placed without order, the one partly lapping over the other, and thus disposed to give to the room an appearance of uncaring luxury, except these, of which I saw few, for the time was summer and fiercely hot. There is nothing to obstruct the welcome air, and the whole of the marble floor from one divan to the other, and from the head of the chamber across to the murmuring fountain, is thoroughly open and free. So simple as this is Asiatic luxury. The Oriental is not a contriving animal. There is nothing intricate in his magnificence. The impossibility of handing down property from father to son for any long period consecutively seems to prevent the existence of those traditions by which, with us, the refined modes of applying wealth are made known to its inheritors. We know that in England a newly made rich man cannot, by taking thought and spending money, obtain even the same looking furniture as a gentleman. The complicated character of an English establishment allows room for subtle distinctions between that which is comile foe, and that which is not. All such refinements are unknown in the East. The Pasha and the peasant have the same tastes. The broad, cold marble floor, the simple couch, the air freshly waving through a shady chamber, a verse of the Koran emblazoned on the wall, the sight and the sound of falling water, the cold fragrant smoke of the narkeel, and a small collection of wives and children in the inner apartments. These, the utmost enjoyments of the grandee, are yet such as to be appreciable by the humblest musselmen in the empire. But the gardens are the delight, the delight and the pride of Damascus. They are not the formal partiers which you might expect from the oriental taste. They rather bring back to your mind the memory of some dark old shrubbery in our northern isle that has been charmingly unkept up for many and many a day. When you see a rich wilderness of wood in decent England it is like enough that you see it with some soft regrets. The puzzled old woman at the lodge can give small account of the family. She thinks it is in Italy that has made the whole circle of her world so gloomy and sad. You avoid the house in lively dread of a lone housekeeper, but you make your way on by the stables. You remember that gable with all its neatly nailed trophies of fichets and hawks and owls, now slowly falling to pieces. You remember that stable, and that, but the doors are all fastened, that used to be standing a jar. The paint of things, painted, is blistered and cracked. Grass grows in the yard. Just there, in October mornings, the keeper would wait with the dogs and the guns. No keeper now. You hurry away and gain the small wicked that used to open to the touch of a lightsome hand. It is fastened with a padlock, the only new-looking thing, and is stained with thick, green damp. You climb it and bury yourself in the deep shade, and strive but lazily with the tangling briars, and stop for long minutes to judge and determine whether you will creep beneath the long boughs and make them your archway, or whether perhaps you will lift your heel and tread them down underfoot. Long doubt, and scarcely to be ended till you wake from the memory of those days when the path was clear, and chase that phantom of a Muslim sleeve that once weighed warm upon your arm. Wild as that, the niest woodland of a deserted home in England, but without its sweet sadness, is the sumptuous garden of Damascus. Forests, trees, tall and stately enough, if you could see their lofty crests, yet lead a tussled life of it below, with their branches struggling against strong numbers of bushes and wilful shrubs. The shade upon the earth is black as night. High, high above your head, and on every side all down to the ground, the thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the interlacing vows that droop with the weight of roses, and load the slow air with their damask breath. There are no other flowers. Here and there there are patches of ground made clear from the cover, and these are either carelessly planted with some common and useful vegetable, or else are left free to the wayward ways of nature, and bear rank weeds, moist looking and cool to the eyes, and freshening the scents with their earthy and bitter fragrance. There is a lane opened through the thicket, so broad in some places that you can pass along side by side, in some so narrow, the shrubs are forever encroaching, that you ought, if you can, to go on to the first and hold back the bow of the rose-tree. And through this wilderness there tumbles a loud rushing stream, which is halted at last in the lower corner of the garden, and there tossed up in a fountain by the side of the simple alcove. This is all. Never for an instant will the people of Damascus attempt to separate the idea of bliss from these wild gardens and rushing waters. Even where your best affections are concerned, and you, prudent preachers, hold hard and turn aside when they come near the mysteries of the happy state, we, prudent preachers, too, will hush our voices and never reveal to finite beings the joys of the earthly paradise. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PASS OF THE LEBANON. THE RUINS OF BALBEK. Shall I scatter the vague, solemn thoughts and all the airy fantasies which gather together when once those words are spoken, that I may give you instead tall columns and measurements true, and phrases built with ink? No, no. The glorious sound shall still float on as of your, and still hold fast upon your brain with their own dim and infinite meaning. Come, Balbeck is over. I got rather well out of that. The path by which I cross the Lebanon is like, I think, in its features, to one which you must know, namely, that of the Forca in the Bernese Oberland. For a great part of the way I toiled rather painfully through the dazzling snow, but the labor of ascending added to the excitement with which I looked for the summit of the pass. The time came. There was a minute in the which I saw nothing but the steep, white shoulder of the mountain, and there was another minute, and that the next, which showed me a nether heaven of fleecy clouds that floated along, far down in the air beneath me, and showed me beyond the breadth of all Syria west of the Lebanon. But chiefly I clung with my eyes to the dim, steadfast line of the sea which closed my utmost view. I had grown well used of late to the people and the scenes of Forlorn Asia, well used to the tombs and ruins, to silent cities and deserted planes, to tranquil men and women sadly veiled, and now that I saw the even plain of the sea I leapt with an easy leap to its yonder shores, and saw all the kingdoms of the west in that fair path that could lead me from out of this silent land straight on into shrill Marseille, or round by the pillars of Hercules to the crash and roar of London. My place upon this dividing barrier was as a man's puzzling station in eternity, between the birthless past and the future that has no end. Behind me I left an old decrepit world, religions dead and dying, from tyrannies expiring in silence, women hushed and swathed and turned into waxen dolls, love flown and in its stead mere royal and paradise pleasures. Before me there waded glad bustle and strife, love itself, an emulous game, religion, a cause and controversy, well smitten and well defended, men governed by reasons and suaisons of speech, wheels going, steam buzzing, a mortal race and a slashing pace, the devil taking the hindmost, taking me by jove, for that was my inner care, if I lingered too long upon the difficult past that leads from thought to action. I descended and went towards the west. The group of cedars remaining on this part of the Lebanon is held sacred by the Greek church, on account of a prevailing notion that the trees were standing at a time when the Temple of Jerusalem was built. They occupy three or four acres on the mountain's side, and many of them are gnarled in a way that implies great age, but accept these signs outside nothing in their appearance or conduct that tended to prove them contemporaries of the cedars employed in Solomon's Temple. The final cause to which these aged survivors owe their preservation was explained to me in the evening by a glorious old fellow, a Christian chief, who made me welcome in the Valley of Eden. In ancient times the whole range of the Lebanon had been covered with cedars, and as the fertile plains beneath became more and more infested by government officers and tyrants of high and low decree, the people by degrees abandoned them and flocked to the rugged mountains, which were less accessible to their indolent oppressors. The cedar forest gradually shrank under the acts of the encroaching multitudes, and seemed at last to be on the point of disappearing entirely, when an aged chief who ruled in this district and who had witnessed the great change affected even in his own lifetime, chose to say that some sign or memorial should be left of the vast woods with which the whole mountains had formerly been clad, and commanded accordingly that this group of trees, which was probably situated at the highest point to which the forest had reached, should remain untouched. The chief, it seems, was not moved by the notion that I have mentioned as prevailing in the Greek Church, but rather by some sentiment of veneration for a great natural feature, sentiment akin, perhaps, to that old and earth-born religion which made men bow down to creation before they had yet learnt how to know and worship the Creator. The chief of the valley in which I passed the night was a man of large possessions, and he entertained me very sumptuously. He was highly intelligent, and had had the sagacity to foresee that Europe would intervene authoritatively in the affairs of Syria. Bearing this idea in mind and with a view to give his son an advantageous start in the ambitious career for which he was destined, he had hired for him a teacher of the Italian language, the only accessible European tongue. The tutor, however, who was a native of Syria, either did not know or did not choose to teach the European forms of address, but contented himself with instructing his people in the mere language of Italy. This circumstance gave me an opportunity, the only one I ever had, or was likely to have, of hearing the phrases of Oriental courtesy in an European tongue. The boy was about twelve or thirteen years old, and having the advantage of being able to speak to me without the aid of an interpreter, he took a prominent part in doing the honours of his father's house. He went through his duties with untiring assiduity, and with a kind of gracefulness, which by mere description can scarcely be made intelligible to those who are unacquainted with the manners of the Asiatics. The boy's address resembled a little that of a highly polished and insinuating Roman Catholic priest, but had more of girlish gentleness. It was strange to hear him gravely and slowly enunciating the common and extravagant compliments of the East in good Italian and in soft, persuasive tones. I recollect that I was particularly amused at the gracious obstinacy with which he maintained that the house in which I was so hospitably entertained belonged not to his father, but to me. To say this once was only to use the common form of speech, signifying no more than our sweet word welcome. But the amusing part of the matter was that, whenever in the course of conversation I happened to speak of his father's house or the surrounding domain, the boy invariably interfered to correct my pretended mistake, and to assure me once again with a gentle decisiveness of manner that the whole property was really and exclusively mine, and that his father had not the most distant pretensions to its ownership. I received from my host much, and, as I know now, most true information respecting the people of the mountains and their power of resisting Mohammed Ali. The chief gave me very plainly to understand that the mountaineers, being dependent upon others for bread and gunpowder, the two great necessaries of martial life, could not long hold out against a power which occupied the planes and commanded the sea. But he also assured me, and that very significantly, that if this source of weakness were provided against, the mountaineers were to be dependent upon. He told me that in ten or fifteen days the chiefs could bring together some fifty thousand fighting men. CHAPTER XXIX SURPRISE OF SATALEA Whilst I was remaining upon the coast of Syria, I had the good fortune to become acquainted with the Russian Satalievsky, a general officer who in his youth had fought and bled at Borodino, but was now better known among diplomats by the important trust committed to him at a period highly critical for the affairs of Eastern Europe. I must not tell you his family name. My mention of his title can do him no harm, for it is I and I only who have conferred it, in consideration of the military and diplomatic services performed under my own eyes. The general as well as I was bound for Smyrna, and we agreed to sail together in an Ionian brigantine. We did not charter the vessel, but we made our arrangement with the captain upon such terms that we could be put ashore upon any part of the coast that we might choose. We sailed, and day after day the vessel lay dwindling on the sea with calms and feeble breezes for her portion. I myself was well repaid for the painful restlessness which such weather occasions, because I gained from my companion a little of that vast fun of interesting knowledge with which he was stored, knowledge a thousand times the more highly to be prized, since it was not of the sort that is to be gathered from books, but only from the lips of those who have acted apart in the world. When, after nine days of sailing or trying to sail, we found ourselves still hanging by the mainland to the north of the Isle of Cyprus, we determined to disembark at Satalia, and go on thence by land. A light breeze favored our purpose, and it was with great delight that we neared the fragrant land, and saw our anchor go down in the bay of Satalia, within two or three hundred yards of the shore. The town of Satalia is the chief place of the Paschalic in which it is situated, and its citadel is the residence of the Pascha. We had scarcely dropped our anchor when a boat from the shore came alongside with officers on board, who announced that the strictest orders had been recede for maintaining a quarantine of three weeks against all vessels coming from Syria, and directed accordingly that no one from the vessel should disembark. In reply we sent a message to the Pascha, setting forth the rank and titles of the general, and requiring permission to go ashore. After a while the boat came again alongside, and the officers declaring that the orders recede from Constantinople were imperative and unexceptional, formerly enjoined us in the name of the Pascha to abstain from any attempt to land. I had been hitherto much less impatient of our slow voyage than my gallant friend, but this opposition made the smooth sea seem to me like a prison, from which I must and would break out. I had an unbounded faith in the feebleness of Asiatic potentates, and I proposed that we should set the Pascha at defiance. The general had been worked up to a state of most painful agitation by the idea of being driven from the shore, which smiled so pleasantly before his eyes, and he adopted my suggestion with rapture. We determined to land. To approach the sweet shore after a tedious voyage, and then to be suddenly and unexpectedly prohibited from landing, this is so maddening to the temper that no one who had ever experienced the trial would say that even the most violent impatience of such restraint is wholly unexcusable. I am not going to pretend, however, that the course which we chose to adopt on the occasion can be perfectly justified. The impropriety of a traveller setting it not the regulations of a foreign state is clear enough, and the bad taste of compassing such a purpose by merely gaskinating is still more glaringly plain. I knew perfectly well that if the Pascha understood his duty, and had energy enough to perform it, he would order out a file of soldiers the moment we landed, and cause us both to be shot upon the beach, without allowing more conduct than might be absolutely necessary for the purpose of making a stand fire. But I also firmly believed that the Pascha would not see the befitting line of conduct nearly so well as I did, and that even if he did know his duty he would hardly succeed in finding resolution enough to perform it. We ordered the boat to be got in readiness, and the officers on shore, seeing these preparations, gathered together a number of guards, who assembled upon the sands. We saw that great excitement prevailed, and that messengers were continually going to and fro between the shore and the citadel. Our captain, out of compliment to his Excellency, had provided the vessel with a Russian war flag which he hoisted alternately with the Union Jack, and we agreed that we would attempt our disembarkation under this, the Russian standard. I was glad when we came to that resolution, for I should have been sorry to engage the honored flag of England in such an affair as that which we were undertaking. The Russian ensign was therefore committed to one of the sailors, who took his station at the stern of the boat. We gave particular instructions to the captain of the brigantine, and when all was ready the general and I, with our respective servants, got into the boat, and were slowly rode towards the shore. The guards gathered together at the point for which we were making, but when they saw that our boat went on without altering her course, they ceased to stand very still. None of them ran away, or even shrank back, but they looked as if the pack were being shuffled, every man seeming desirous to change places with his neighbor. They were still at their post, however, when our oars went in, the bower of our boat ran up, well up upon the beach. The general was lain by an honorable wound received at Borodino, and could not without some assistance get out of the boat. I, therefore, landed the first. My instructions to the captain were attended to with the most perfect accuracy, for scarcely had my foot indented the sand when the four six-pounders of the brigantine quite gravely rolled out their brute thunder. Precisely as I had expected, the guards and all the people who had gathered about them gave way under the shop produced by the mere sound of guns, and we were all allowed to disembark with the least molestation. We immediately formed a little column, or rather, as I should have called it, a procession, for we had no fighting aptitude in us, and were only trying, as it were, how far we could go in a frightening full-grown children. First marched the sailor with a Russian flag of war bravely flying in the breeze, then came the general and I, then our servants, and lastly, if I rightly recollect, two more of the brigantine's crew. Our flagbearer so exalted in his honorable office, and bore the colors aloft with so much of pomp and dignity, that I found it exceedingly hard to keep a grave countenance. We advanced towards the castle, but the people had now time to recover from the effect of the six pounders, only, of course, loaded with powder, and they could not help seeing not only the numerical weakness of our party, but the very slight amount of wealth and resource which it seemed to imply. They began to hang round us more closely, and just as this reaction was beginning the general, who was perfectly unacquainted with the Asiatic character, thoughtlessly turned round in order to speak to one of the servants. The effect of this move was magical. The people thought we were going to give way, and instantly closed round us. In two words, and with one touch, I showed my comrade the danger he was running, and in the next instant we were both advancing more pompously than ever. Some minutes afterward there was a second appearance of reaction, followed again by wavering and indecision on the part of the posh's people, but at length it seemed to be understood that we should go unmolested into the audience hall. Constant communication had been going on between the receding crowd and the posh, and so when we reached the gates of the citadel we saw that preparations were made for giving us an awe-striking reception. Parting at once from the sailors and our servants, the general and I were conducted into the audience hall, and there, at least, I suppose the posh hoped he would confound us by his greatness. The hall was nothing more than a large, whitewashed room. Oriental potentates have a pride in that sort of simplicity, when they can contrast it with the exhibition of power, and this the posh was able to do, for the lower end of the hall was filled with his officers. These men, of whom I thought there were about fifty or sixty, were all handsomely, though plainly dressed, in the military frot coats of Europe. They stood en masse, and so as to present a hollow, semi-circular front towards the upper end of the hall, at which the posh sat. They opened a narrow lane for us when we entered, and as soon as we had passed they again closed up their ranks. An attempt was made to induce us to remain at a respectful distance from his mightiness. To have yielded in this point would have been fatal to our success, perhaps to our lives, but the general and I had already determined upon the place which we should take, and we rudely pushed on towards the upper end of the hall. Upon the divan, and close up against the right-hand corner of the room, there sat the poshah. His limbs gathered in, the whole creature coiled up like an adder. His cheeks were deadly pale, and his lips perhaps had turned white, for without moving a muscle the man impressed me with an immense idea of the wrath in him. He kept his eyes inexorably fixed as if upon vacancy, and with the look of a man accustomed to refuse the prayers of those who sooth for life. We soon discomposed him, however, from this studied fixity of feature, for we marched straight up to the divan and sat down, the Russian close to the poshah, and I by the side of the Russian. This act astonished the attendants and plainly disconcerted the poshah. He could no longer maintain the glassy stillness of the eyes which he had affected, and evidently became much agitated. At the feet of the satrap there stood a trembling Italian. This man was a sort of medico in the potentate service, and now, in the absence of our attendants, he was to act as interpreter. The poshah caused him to tell us that we had openly defied his authority, and had forced our way on shore in the teeth of his own officers. Up to this time I had been the planner of the enterprise, but now that the moment had come when all would depend upon Abel and Ernest speechifying, I felt at once the immense superiority of my gallant friend, and gladly left him to the whole conduct of this discussion. Indeed, he had vast advantages over me, not only by his superior command of language, and his far more spirited style of address, but also in his consciousness of a good cause, for whilst I felt myself completely in the wrong, his excellency had really worked himself up to believe that the poshah's refusal to permit our landing was a gross outrage and insult. Therefore, without daining to defend our conduct, he at once commenced a spear to attack upon the poshah. The poor Italian doctor translated one or two sentences to the poshah, but he evidently mitigated their import. The Russian, growing warm, insisted upon his attack with redoubled energy and spirit, but the medico, instead of translating, began to shake violently with terror, and at last he came out with his non-ardisco, and fairly confessed that he dared not interpret fierce words to his master. Now then, at a time when everything seemed to depend upon the effect of speech, we were left without an interpreter. But this very circumstance, which at first appeared so unfavorable, turned out to be advantageous. The general, finding that he could not have his words translated, ceased to speak in Italian, and recurred to his accustomed French. He became eloquent. No one present except myself understood one syllable of what he was saying, but he had drawn forth his passport, and the energy and violence with which, as he spoke, he pointed to the graven eagle of all the Russians, began to make an impression. The poshah saw at his side a man not only free from every the least pang of fear, but raging, as it seemed, with just indignation, and thenceforward he plainly began to think that, in some way or other, he could not tell how, he must certainly have been in the wrong. In a little time he was so much shaken that the Italian ventured to resume his interpretation, and my comrade had again the opportunity of pressing his attack upon the poshah. His argument, if I rightly recollect its import, was to this effect. If the vilest youths were to come into the harbour, you would but forbid them to land, and force them to perform quarantine. Yet this is the very course, o poshah, which your rash officers dared to think of adopting with us. Those mad and reckless men would have actually dealt towards a Russian general officer and an English gentleman as if they had been wretched Israelites. Never, never will we submit to such an indignity. His Imperial Majesty knows how to protect his nobles from insult, and would never endure that a general of his army should be treated in a manner of quarantine as though he were a mere eastern Jew. This argument told with great effect. The poshah fairly admitted that he felt its weight, and he now only struggled to obtain such compromise as might partly save his dignity. He wanted us to perform a quarantine of one day for form's sake, and in order to show his people that he was not utterly defied, but finding that we were inexorable he not only abandoned his attempt, but promised to supply us with horses. When the discussion had arrived at this happy conclusion, shabooks and coffee were brought, and we passed, I think, nearly an hour in friendly conversation. The poshah, it now appeared, had once been a prisoner of war in Russia, and a conviction of the Emperor's vast power, necessarily acquired during this captivity, made him perhaps more alive than an untraveled Turk would have been to the force of my comrade's eloquence. The poshah now gave us a generous feast. Our promised horses were brought without much delay. I gained my loved saddle once more, and when the moon got up and touched the heights of Taurus, we were joyfully winding our way through the first of his rugged defiles. CHAPTER XXIX It was late when we came inside of two high conical hills, on one of which stands the village of Juni, on the other a circular wall over which dark trees were waving, and this was the place in which Lady Hester Stanhope had finished her strange and eventful career. It had formerly been a convent, but the poshah of Sidon had given it to the Prophet Lady, who converted its naked walls into a palace and its wilderness into gardens. The sun was setting as we entered the enclosure, and we were soon scattered about the outer court, picketing our horses, rubbing down their foaming flanks and washing out their wounds. The buildings that constituted the palace were of a very scattered and complicated description, covering a wide space but only one story in height. Courts and gardens, stables and sleeping rooms, halls of audience and ladies' bowers were strangely intermingled. Heavy weeds were growing everywhere among the open portals, and we forced our way with difficulty through a tangle of roses and jasmine to the inner court. Here, choice flowers once bloomed and fountains played in marble basins, but now was presented a scene of the most melancholy desolation. As the watch fire blazed up, its gleam fell upon masses of honeysuckle and woodmine, on white, moldering walls beneath, and dark, waving trees above, while the group of mountaineers who gathered round its light with their long beards and vivid dresses completed the strange picture. The clang of sword and spear resounded through the long galleries, horses nade among bowers and boudoirs, strange figures hurried to and fro among the colonnades, shouting in Arabic, English and Italian. The fire crackled, the startled bats flapped their heavy wings, and the growl of distant thunder filled up the pauses in the rough symphony. Our dinner was spread on the floor in Lady Hester's favorite apartment. Her deathbed was our sideboard, her furniture our fuel, her name our conversation. Almost before the meal was ended, two of our party had dropped asleep over their trenches from fatigue. The Druzes had retired from the haunted precincts to their village, and W, L, and I went out into the garden to smoke our pipes by Lady Hester's lonely tomb. About midnight we fell asleep upon the ground, wrapped in our capotes, and dreamed of ladies and tombs and profits till the naing of our horses announced the dawn. After a hurried breakfast on fragments of the last nights repast, we strolled out over the extensive gardens. Here many a broken arbor and trellis, bending under masses of jasmine and honeysuckle, show the care and taste that were once lavished on this wild but beautiful hermitage. A garden-house, surrounded by an enclosure of roses, run wild, lies in the midst of a grove of myrtle and bay-trees. This was Lady Hester's favorite resort during her lifetime, and now, within its silent enclosure, after life's fitful fever she sleeps well. The hand of ruin has dealt very sparingly with all these interesting relics. The Pasha's power by day, and the fear of spirits by night, keeps off marauders, and though we made free with broken benches and fallen door-posts for fuel, we reverently abstained from displacing anything in the establishment except a few roses, which there was no living thing but bees and nightingales to regret. It was one of the most striking and interesting spots I ever witnessed. Its silence and beauty, its richness and desolation, lent to it a touching and mysterious character that suited well the memory of that strange hermit-lady who has made it a place of pilgrimage, even in Palestine. The Pasha of Sidan presented Lady Hester with the deserted convent of Mar Elias on her arrival in his country, and this she soon converted into a fortress, garrisoned by a band of Albanians, her only attendants besides were her doctors, her secretary, and some female slaves. Public rumours soon busied itself with such a personage, and exaggerated her influence and power. It is even said that she was crowned Queen of the East at Palmyra by fifty thousand Arabs. She certainly exercised almost despotic power in her neighborhood on the mountain, and what was perhaps the most remarkable proof of her talents, she prevailed on some Jews to advance large sums of money to her on the note of her hand. She lived for many years, beset with difficulties and anxieties, but to the last she held on gallantly. Even when confined to her bed and dying, she sought for no companionship or comfort, but such as she could find in her own powerful, though unmanageable mind. Mr. Moore, our counsel at Beirut, hearing she was ill, rode over the mountains to visit her, accompanied by Mr. Thompson, the American missionary. It was evening when they arrived, and a profound silence was all over the palace. No one met them, they lighted their own lamps in the outer court, and passed unquestioned through court and gallery until they came to where she lay. A corpse was the only inhabitant of the palace, and the isolation from her kind which she had sought so long was indeed complete. That morning thirty-seven servants had watched every motion of her eye. Its spell once darkened by death, every one fled with such plunder as they could secure. A little girl, adopted by her and maintained for years, took her watch and some papers on which she had set peculiar value. Neither the child nor the property were ever seen again. Not a single thing was left in the room where she lay dead, except the ornaments upon her person. No one had ventured to touch these. Even in death she seemed able to protect herself. At midnight her countrymen in the missionary carried her out by torchlight to a spot in the garden that had been formerly her favorite resort, and here they buried the self-exiled lady. From The Crescent and the Cross by Elliot Warburton.