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 pretence for my interfering with the conflicting claims of the Christian husband and the Mahometan lover, and I therefore declined to take any step.
My speaking of the husband, by the bye, 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 Menelaus 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 proselyte would fail. This person, speaking with the most savage bitterness,and with the cordial approval of all the other relatives, said that 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 Mussulmans might be firm, and preserve their young prize 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 Aboo Goosh, but the “father of lies,” it would seem, had been well plied with the gold of the enamoured Sheik, 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 Mahometanism 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 mere temporal sense, it appeared to me that (looking merely to the interests of the damsel, for I rather unjustly put poor Menelaus quite out of the question) the advantages were all on theside of the Mahometan match. The Sheik 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 Sheik, in my view, was likely to make a most capital husband, and that I entirely “approved of the match.”
I left Nablus under the impression that Mariam would soon be delivered to her Mussulman lover. I afterwards found, however, that the result was very different. Dthemetri’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 Dthemetri 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 Dthemetri was no longer in my service, that this villainous, though well-motived trick, of his came to my knowledge. Mysseri, who had informed me of the step which had been taken, did not know it himself until some time after we had quitted Nablus, when Dthemetri exultingly confessed his successful enterprise. I know not whether theengagement which my zealous dragoman extorted from the Governor was ever complied with. I shudder to think of the fate which must have befallen Mariam if she fell into the hands of the Christians.
Forsome 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 thenceforward, the lie of the country kept growing more and more bold. At length I drew 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 Sion. The sanctity and historical importance thus attributed to the city by anticipation render it a favourite place of retirement for Israelites, of whom it contains, they say, about four thousand, a number nearly balancing that of the Mahometan inhabitants. I knew by my experience of Tabarieh 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 a 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 Jewshad 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 the two called himself the British vice-consul, 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 spokesmen 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 Mussulman called Mohammed Damoor went forth into the market-place, 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 despoil 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 Mussulman population of the place assembled in the streets that they might see the result of the prophecy. Suddenly Mohammed Damoor rushed furious into the crowd, and the fierce shout of the prophet soon ensured the fulfilment of his prophecy. Some of the Jews fled,and some remained, but they who fled and they who remained, alike, and 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 things 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 Mussulman 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.[280]When the insurrection was put down some of the Mussulmans (most probably those who had got no spoil wherewith they might buy 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 Modeer”—whose duty it was to watchfor and prevent anything like connivance 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 Modeer came charged. The result was that the investigation had made no practical advance, and that the Modeer as well as the Governor was living upon terms of affectionate friendship with Mohammed Damoor and the rest of the principal spoilers.
Thus stood the chance of redress for the past, but the cause of the agonising excitement under which the Jews of the place now laboured was recent and justly alarming. Mohammed Damoor had again gone forth into the market-place, and lifted up his voice and prophesied a second spoliation of the Israelites. This was grave matter; the words of such a practical man as Mohammed Damoor 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-countryman. 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 ungentlemanly 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 Damoor was the one thing needful to the safety of the Jews, and Ifelt 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 opened 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 Damoor would certainly produce an immediate movement of the whole Mussulman 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 Damoor 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 fulfilment 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 thereadiness which I had shown to intermeddle in their affairs, and the grateful wives of the principal Jews sent to me many compliments, with choice wines and elaborate sweetmeats.
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 spoliation was prevented, poor Mohammed Damoor 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.
Fora part of two days I wound under the base of the snow-crowned Djibel 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 Shaum Shereef—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 nomere 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. Farren, 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.[283]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, Dthemetri horsewhipped. During my stay I went wherever I chose, and attended the public baths without molestation. Indeed, my relations with the pleasanter portion of the Mahometan 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 bridle-road. Until the arrival of the British consul-general none but a Mussulmanhad been permitted to walk upon the upper way. Mr. Farren 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 unmolested as if I had been in Pall Mall. The old usage was, however, maintained with as much strictness as ever against the Christian Rayahs 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 Rayah from the bridle-road below saluted me with such earnestness, and craved so anxiously to speak and 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 Mussulmans. Perhaps he had been absent from the place for some time, for otherwise I hardly know how it could have happened that my exaltation 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 tohispleasure. 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 Mahometan’s absolute ascendency, the beginning of the Christian’s. He had so closely associated the insulting privilege of the path with actual dominion, that seeing it now in one instance abandoned, helooked 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 travellers, from a habit perhaps of depreciating sectarians in their own country, are apt to look down upon the Oriental Christians as being “dissenters” from the established religion of a Mahometan empire. I never did thus. By a natural perversity of disposition, which my nursemaids called contrairiness, I felt the more strongly for my creed when I saw it despised among men. I quite tolerated the Christianity of Mahometan 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 the Mussulmans by reason of their havingourfaith. 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 Mahometan 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 on the river’s edge, through seven sweet miles of rustling boughs 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 thenarghile; 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, thatthe 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 neighbours 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 Alcanzar of Seville. The lofty rooms are adorned with a rich inlaying of many colours 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 centre 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 round 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, they 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 Orientalis 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 iscomme il faut, 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 thenarghile, and a small collection of wives and children in the inner apartments—all these, the utmost enjoyments of the grandee, are yet such as to be appreciable by the humblest Mussulman in the empire.
But its gardens are the delight, the delight and the pride of Damascus. They are not the formal parterres 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 charminglyun-“kept 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 “Italy” that has made the whole circle of her world sogloomy 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 fitchets 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 ajar, 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 wicket 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 under foot. 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 muslin sleeve that once weighed warm upon your arm.
Wild as that, the nighest woodland of a deserted home in England, but without its sweet sadness, is the sumptuous garden of Damascus. Forest trees, tall and stately enough if you could see their lofty crests, yet lead a tussling 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 boughs that droop with the weight of roses, and load theslow air with their damask breath.[292]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 sense 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 for ever encroaching) that you ought, if you can, to go on the first and hold back the bough of the rose-tree. And through this wilderness there tumbles a loud rushing stream, which is halted at last in the lowest 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, and we (prudent preachers too), we will hush our voices, and never reveal to finite beings the joys of the “earthly paradise.”
“Theruins of Baalbec!” Shall I scatter the vague, solemn thoughts and all the airy phantasies 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 sounds shall still float on as of yore, and still hold fast upon your brain with their own dim and infinite meaning.
Come! Baalbec is over; I got “rather well” out of that.
The path by which I crossed the Lebanon is like, I think, in its features to one which you must know, namely, that of the Foorca in the Bernese Oberland. For a great part of the way I toiled rather painfully through the dazzling snow, but the labour 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, steadfastline 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 tombs and ruins, to silent cities and deserted plains, 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 Marseilles, 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; calm 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 waited glad bustle and strife; love itself, an emulous game; religion, a cause and a controversy, well smitten and well defended; men governed by reasons and suasion of speech; wheels going, steam buzzing—a mortal race, and a slashing pace, and the devil taking the hindmost—takingme, by Jove! (for that was my inner care), if I lingered too long upon the difficult pass 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 except these signs I saw nothing in their appearance or conduct thattended to prove them contemporaries of the cedars employed in Solomon’s Temple. The final cause to which these aged survivors owed 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 degree, the people by degrees abandoned them and flocked to the rugged mountains, which were less accessible to their indolent oppressors. The cedar forests gradually shrank under the axe 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 effected even in his own lifetime, chose to say that some sign or memorial should be left of the vast woods with which the 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 I have mentioned as prevailing in the Greek Church, but rather by some sentiment of veneration for a great natural feature—a sentiment akin, perhaps, to that old and earthborn 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 affairsof 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 pupil in the mere language of Italy. This circumstance gave me an opportunity (the only one I ever had, or was likely to have)[296]of hearing the phrases of Oriental courtesy in a 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 thecourse 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 now know) most true, information respecting the people of the mountains, and their power of resisting Mehemet 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 plains 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 depended upon; he told me that in ten or fifteen days the chiefs could bring together some fifty thousand fighting men.
WhilstI was remaining upon the coast of Syria I had the good fortune to become acquainted with the Russian Sataliefsky,[298b]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 themilitary 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 dawdling 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 fund 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 a part 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 Satalieh, and to go on thence by land. A light breeze favoured our purpose, and it was with great delight that we neared the fragrant land, and saw our anchor go down in the bay of Satalieh, within two or three hundred yards of the shore.
The town of Satalieh[299]is the chief place of the Pashalic in which it is situate, and its citadel is the residence of the Pasha. 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 received for maintaininga 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 Pasha, 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 received from Constantinople were imperative and unexceptional, formally enjoined us in the name of the Pasha 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 Pasha at defiance. The General had been worked up to a state of a 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 inexcusable. 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’s setting at naught the regulations of a foreign State is clear enough, and the bad taste of compassing such a purpose by mere gasconading is still more glaringly plain. I knew perfectly well that if thePasha 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 contact than might be absolutely necessary for the purpose of making us stand fire; but I also firmly believed that the Pasha 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 had 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 honoured 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 rowed 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 ifthe pack were being shuffled,every man seeming desirous to change places with his neighbour. They were still at their post, however, when our oars went in, and the bow of our boat ran up—well up upon the beach.
The General was lame by an honourable 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 shock 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 frightening full-grown children. First marched the sailor with the 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 flag-bearer so exulted in his honourable office, and bore the colours 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 had 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 wasbeginning, 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 slight 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 afterwards there was a second appearance of reaction, followed again by wavering and indecision on the part of the Pasha’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 Pasha, 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 Pasha hoped that 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 Pasha 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 frockcoats of Europe; they stood in mass, and so as to present a hollow semi-circular front towards the upper end of the hall at which the Pasha 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 arespectful 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 Pasha, 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 within 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 sue 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 Pasha, and I by the side of the Russian. This act astonished the attendants, and plainly disconcerted the Pasha. 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’s service, and now in the absence of our attendants he was to act as interpreter. The Pasha 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 able and earnest speechifying, I felt at once the immense superiority of my gallant friend, and gladly left to him the whole conduct ofthis 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 Pasha’s refusal to permit our landing was a gross outrage and insult. Therefore, without deigning to defend our conduct, he at once commenced a spirited attack upon the Pasha. The poor Italian doctor translated one or two sentences to the Pasha, 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 hisnon 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 unfavourable, 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 Russias, began to make an impression. The Pasha 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. Ina 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 Pasha. His argument, if I rightly recollect its import, was to this effect: “If the vilest Jews 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 Pasha, which your rash officers dared to think of adopting withus!—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 matter of quarantine as though he were a mere Eastern Jew!” This argument told with great effect. The Pasha fairly admitted that he felt its weight, and he now only struggled to obtain such a 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,tchibouquesand coffee were brought, and we passed, I think, nearly an hour in friendly conversation. The Pasha, 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 untravelled Turk would have been to the force of my comrade’s eloquence.
The Pasha 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.
Itwas late when we came in sight of two high conical hills, on one of which stands the village of Djouni, 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 Pasha 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 storey in height: courts and garden, 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 inmarble basins, but now was presented a scene of the most melancholy desolation. As the watchfire blazed up, its gleam fell upon masses of honeysuckle and woodbine, on white, mouldering 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 neighed 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 favourite 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 trenchers from fatigue; the Druses 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 prophets till the neighing of our horses announced the dawn.
After a hurried breakfast on fragments of the last night’s repast we strolled out over the extensive gardens. Here many a broken arbour 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 inthe midst of a grove of myrtle and bay trees. This was Lady Hester’s favourite resort during her lifetime; and now, within its silent enclosure,
“After life’s fitful fevers he sleeps well.”
“After life’s fitful fevers he 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, keep off marauders; and thoughwemade free with broken benches and fallen doorposts 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.[310]
The Pasha of Sidon 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 doctor, her secretary, and some female slaves. Public rumour soon busieditself 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 neighbourhood 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 her note of 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 consul at Beyrout, hearing she was ill, rode over the mountains to visit her, accompanied by Mr. Thomson, the American missionary. It was evening when they arrived, and a profound silence was over all 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 whereshelay. 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 hercountryman and the missionary carried her out by torchlight to a spot in the garden that had been formerly her favourite resort, and here they buried the self-exiled lady.—From“The Crescent and the Cross,”by Eliot Warburton.