It was early in the evening when the pointed turrets of the city of Mosul opened on our view, and communicated no very unpleasant sensations to my heart. I found myself on scripture ground; and could not help feeling some portion of the pride of the traveller, when I reflected that I was now within sight of Nineveh, renowned in holy writ.—The city is seated in a very barren sandy plain, on the banks of the river Tigris, embellishedwith the united gifts of Pomona, Ceres, and Flora. The external view of the town is much in its favour, being encompassed with stately walls of solid stone, over which the steeples or minarets of other lofty buildings are seen with increased effect. Here I first saw a large caravan encamped, halting on its march from the Gulph of Persia to Armenia; and it certainly made a most noble appearance, filling the eye with a multitude of grand objects, all uniting to form one magnificent whole.
But though the outside be so beautiful, the inside is most detestable: the heat is so intense, that in the middle of the day there is no stirring out; and even at night the walls of the houses are so heated by the day’s sun, as to produce a disagreeable heat to the body at a foot or even a yard distance from them. However, I entered it with spirits, because I considered it as the last stage of the worst part of my pilgrimage. But, alas! I was disappointed in my expectation; for the Tigris was dried up by the intensity of the heat, and an unusually long drought; and I was obliged to take the matter with a patient shrug, and accommodate my mind to a journey on horseback, which, though not so long as that I had already made, was likely to be equally dangerous, and which therefore demanded a full exertion of fortitude and resolution.—There are a thousand latent energies in every man, which only want the powerful voice of necessity to call them out: and now drawn to the top of my bent, I prepared my mind to set out in the morning, with as much cheerfulness as if thehopes of water carriage to Bagdad had never once occurred to my mind.
It was still the hot season of the year, and we were to travel through that country, over which the horrid wind I have before mentioned sweeps its consuming blasts: it is called by the Turks Samiel, is mentioned by holy Job under the name of the East Wind, and extends its ravages all the way from the extreme end of the Gulph of Cambaya up to Mosul; it carries along with it fleaks of fire, like threads of silk; instantly strikes dead those that breathe it, and consumes them inwardly to ashes; the flesh soon becoming black as a coal, and dropping off from the bones. Philosophers consider it as a kind of electric fire, proceeding from the sulphureous or nitrous exhalations which are kindled by the agitation of the winds. The only possible means of escape from its fatal effects, is to fall flat on the ground, and thereby prevent the drawing it in: to do this, however, it is necessary first to see it, which is not always practicable.
But besides this, the ordinary heat of the climate is extremely dangerous to the blood and lungs, and even to the skin, which it blisters and peels away from the flesh, affecting the eyes so much, that travellers are obliged to wear a transparent covering over them to keep the heat off.
That night, Hassan said, that as we must proceed to Bagdad on horseback, he would stay the next at Mosul to refresh us; whichI objected to: he then spoke of the succeeding part of the journey as a thing of nothing: we had already come near nine hundred miles, and had not above five to go: besides, as the weather was warmer, we would travel more in the night, and lie-by in the daytime, in places with which he was well acquainted.
In short, the poor fellow seemed to take an interest in my safety, and to wish to alleviate the pains of my mind; and he always concluded with a remonstrance against laughing, which from frequently hearing, I now understood even in his own language.—“Don’t laugh, Jimmel, don’t laugh,” he would say with great solemnity.—By the bye, I observed, that when he was well disposed to me, he always called me Jimmel (a name which I presume he constructed, with my servant’s assistance, from the resemblance of sound between Campbel and Camel, Jimmel being the Turkish for that animal); and when angry, he called me Frangi, with all its gradations of Turkish abuse, Dumus, Cucu, &c.
That evening, as we sat in the caravansera, a man entered and spoke to Hassan, who seemed to pay great attention to what he was saying. He was a well made man—below the middle size—and had that kind of countenance which bespeaks shrewdness, ingenuity, and mirth. At length he retired; and soon after Hassan bid us rise and follow him: he went into a sort of public room, where a number of people were collected, sitting as is the custom in coffee-houses on low stools. Hassan pointed to me to sit down, which I did:then placing the Interpreter near us, he sat himself: and straight I perceived the little man, who had just been speaking to him, step forth from the crowd and begin to pronounce a sort of prologue, which I neither understood nor wished to understand: it appeared from his cadences to be metrical, and seemed, by the little impression it made on his auditors, to have nothing particular to recommend it. At length, however, he paused, and, hemming several times to clear his pipes, began again to hold forth. “He is going to tell a story,” said the Interpreter. The attention of all was fixed upon him, and he proceeded with a modulation of tones, a variety of action, and an energy of expression, that I think I have never heard or seen excelled: his action indeed was singularly admirable; and I could perceive that he was occasionally speaking in the tones of a man and a woman; in which latter character he gave a picture of whining ludicrous distress, that moved the risible muscles of all the company. I looked at Hassan, and he was grinning as merrily as could any monkey or Frank in Asia. The Linguist occasionally interpreted what the story-teller was saying; and I soon began to suspect that it was a story I had more than once read in the Arabian Nights, though altered, and in some measure dramatized by the speaker. I looked several times archly at Hassan, and he returned my glance, as much as to say, You see I don’t laugh at all this. At length, however, the orator came to a part where he was to mimic a poor little hunch-back (for I now discovered it tobe the story of little Hunch-back) choking with a bone: he threw up his back; squeezed, till all the blood in his body seemed collected in his face, his eyes rolled in their sockets, his knees knocked, he twisted and folded his body, putting his fore-finger and thumb into his throat, and pulling with all his might, as if to pull something out: at length he grew weaker, stretched his arms down, and his fingers back, like those of a person strangling—kicked, fell, quivered, and died. It is impossible for any description to do justice to the perfection of his acting; and what rendered it the more extraordinary was, that though it was a scene of death; and well acted death, he continued to render it so ludicrous in circumstances, as to suspend the audience between a laugh and cry. They did not remain long so; for he suddenly bounced up, and began the most doleful lamentation, of a woman, and exhibited such a scene of burlesque distress as I never witnessed. All burst out in torrents of laughter, Hassan as well as the rest—I alone remained purposely serious; and the orator, according to custom, broke off in the middle of an interesting scene.
When we returned to the caravansera, I rallied the Tartar on the score of his laughter: he growled, and said, “Who could avoid it? Why did not you laugh as you were wont?”—“Because,” said I, “he did not act as comically as you.”—“No,” returned he, “but because Franks and monkies only laugh for mischief, and where they ought not. No, Jimmel, you will never see me laugh at mischief.”—“What,”said I, “not at a poor man’s being choked to death!”—“Nay,” said he, “I seldom laugh, yet I could not avoid it then.” That very hour, however, a puppet-show was exhibited in the same room, and my grave guide laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, and his voice sunk into a whining treble.Karaghusewas certainly extravagantly comical, though filthy; and frightened a Cadi with a whole troop of Janissaries, by letting fly at them a shot or two—a parte post——-
The next day we set out well mounted, and pushed on with renovated spirits towards Bagdad. Hassan could no more have the assurance to censure laughing; and, as I was little disposed to do it in time of danger, we were likely to agree well. In short, we began to like one another’s company; and if I brought him to be a greater laugher than he used to be, he gave himself the credit of having made me much more serious than I had been before—I profited by his instructions.
It would be an effort as idle and fruitless on my part, as unentertaining and uninteresting on yours, to attempt to give you a regular detail of our progress from Mosul to Bagdad; the same general cautions were observed, with the same occasional relaxations. Hassan still continued to treat me with a repetition of himself and his horse, his own feats and his horse’s feats; to be silent when ill-tempered, and loquacious when gay; to flog the attendants at the caravanseras; order the best horses, and eat the best victuals, and togive me the best of both; and finally, we had our fallings out and fallings in again: but I had not the mortification of seeing any more women tied in sacks on horses’ backs, and excoriated with a ride of fifty miles a day.
As we rode along we overtook several times straggling callenders, a kind of Mahomedan monks, who profess poverty and great sanctity; they were dressed all in rags, covered with filth, carried a gourd, by way of bottle, for water—I presume sometimes for wine too—and bore in their hands a long pole decorated with rags, and pieces of cloth of various colours. They are supposed by the vulgar to have supernatural powers: but Hassan, who seemed to have caught all his ideas from his betters, expressed no sort of opinion of them; hesalam’dto them, and gave them money, however. It was extraordinary enough, that they were all in one story—all were going on a pilgrimage to Mecca—or, as they call it,Hadje.
As soon as ever we got out of their sight and hearing, Hassan shook his head, and repeated “Hadje, Hadje!” several times doubtingly, and grinned, as he was accustomed to do when he was displeased, without being able to manifest anger. “Hadje!” he would cry, “Hadje, Hadje!” I asked him what he meant; and he said, that these fellows were no more going to Mecca than I was. “I have a thousand and a thousand times,” said he, “met callenders on the road, and always found them facing towards Mecca. If I am going southward, I always overtake them; if northward, I meet them; and all the time they aregoing wherever their business carries them. I overtook,” continued he, “one of them one day, and I gave him alms and passed him by; he was coming, he said, after me, towards Mecca: but I halted on purpose for a day, and he never passed; and a merchant arriving at the same caravansera informed me, he had met the very same fellow four leagues farther northward; who had answered him with the same story, and still had his face turned towards the south.”
Fifty years ago, no man in Turkey would have dared to hold this language; but every day’s experience evinces that the light of reason spreads its rays fast through the world—even through Turkey; and furnishes a well founded hope, that in another half century every monkish impostor (I mean real impostors), whether they be Mahomedan monks, or Christian monks, will be chased from society, and forced to apply to honest means for subsistence.
END OF PART II.
END OF PART II.
END OF PART II.
AJOURNEY TO INDIA, &c.
AJOURNEY TO INDIA, &c.
A
JOURNEY TO INDIA, &c.