INTRODUCTION.
BY ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE.
We were encamped in the midst of the desert which extends from Tiberias to Nazareth, and were speaking of the Arab tribes we had met in the day, of their manners, and the connexions between them and with the great population by whom they are surrounded. We endeavoured to elucidate the mystery of their origin, their destiny, and that astonishing endurance of the spirit of race, which separates this people from all other human families, and keeps them, like the Jews, not without the pale of civilization, but within a civilization of their own, as unchangeable as granite.
The more I have travelled, the more I am convinced that races of men form the great secret of history and manners. Man is not so capable of education as philosophers imagine. The influence of governments and laws has less power, radically, than is supposed, over the manners and instincts of any people, while the primitive constitution and the blood of the race have always their influence, and manifest themselves, thousandsof years afterwards, in the physical formations and moral habits of a particular family or tribe. Human nature flows in rivers and streams into the vast ocean of humanity: but its waters mingle but slowly, sometimes never; and it emerges again, like the Rhone from the Lake of Geneva, with its own taste and colour. Here is indeed an abyss of thought and meditation, and at the same time a grand secret for legislators. As long as they keep the spirit of race in view, they succeed; but they fail when they strive against this natural predisposition: nature is stronger than they are. This sentiment is not that of the philosophers of the present time, but it is evident to the traveller; and there is more philosophy to be found in a caravan journey of a hundred leagues, than in ten years’ reading and meditation. I felt happy in thus wandering about among deserts and unknown countries, with no route before me but my caprice; and I told my friends, and M. Mazolier, my interpreter, that if I were alone and without family ties, I would lead this manner of life for years and years. I would never sleep where I had arisen: I would transport my tent from the shores of Egypt to the Persian Gulf, and wish no aim for the evening but evening itself. I would wander on foot, and dwell with eye and heart on these unknown lands, these races of men so different from my own, and contemplate humanity, this most beautiful work of God, under all its forms. To effect this, what would be requisite?—a few slaves or faithful servants, arms, a little gold, two or three tents, and some camels. The sky of these countries is almost always warm andpure, life easy and economical, and hospitality certain and picturesque. I should prefer, a hundred times, years passed under different skies, with hosts and friends ever new, to the barren and noisy monotony of the life of our capitals. It is undoubtedly more difficult to lead the life of a man of the world in Paris or London, than to visit the universe as a traveller. The results of two such lives are, however, very different. The traveller either dies, or he returns with a treasure of thoughts and wisdom. The domesticated inhabitant of our capitals grows old without knowledge, without experience, and dies as much entrammelled, as much immersed in false notions, as when he first begins to exercise his senses. I should like, said I to my dragoman, to cross those mountains, to descend into the great desert of Syria, accost some of the large unknown tribes that traverse it, receive their hospitality for months, pass on to others, study their resemblances and differences, follow them from the gardens of Damascus to the banks of the Euphrates and the confines of Persia, and raise the veil which still hangs over the civilization of the desert,—a civilization where our chivalry had its birth, and where it must still exist: but time presses, and we may see but the borders of that ocean whose whole no one has yet crossed. No traveller has penetrated amidst those innumerable tribes, whose tents and flocks cover the plains of the patriarchs; one only man attempted it, but he is no more, and the notes which he had collected during ten years’ residence amongst the people were lost with himself. I desired to introduceM. de Lascaris to my readers: the following is a sketch of his character.
M. de Lascaris was born in Piedmont, of one of those Greek families which settled in Italy after the conquest of Constantinople: he was a knight of Malta when Napoleon conquered the island. M. de Lascaris was then a very young man; he followed him to Egypt, attached himself to his fortunes, and was fascinated by his genius. Highly gifted himself, he was one of the first to perceive the lofty eminence reserved by Providence for the young man who was imbued with all the spirit of Plutarch, when the human character seemed worn out, shattered, or false. He perceived more: he perceived that the great work to be accomplished by his hero was not perhaps the restoration of power in Europe; an effect which the reaction of men’s minds rendered necessary, and therefore easy; he felt that Asia presented a far wider field for the renovating ambition of a hero; that that was the scene for conquering, for founding, and for renovating on a scale incomparably more gigantic; that despotism, brief in Europe, would be lasting, eternal, in Asia; that the great man who could there apply the principles of organization and unity would effect more than Alexander,—more than Bonaparte in France. It appears that the young warrior of Italy, whose imagination was luminous as the East, undefined as the desert, wide as the world, held some confidential conversations with M. de Lascaris on this subject; and directed one ray of thought towards that horizon which was opening to him his destiny. It was but a ray, and I lament it:it is evident that Bonaparte was the man for the East, not the man for Europe. This will provoke a smile; it will appear paradoxical to the world. But consult travellers. Bonaparte, who is looked upon as the man of the French revolution and of liberty, never understood liberty, and wrecked the French revolution. History will prove it in every page, when written under other impulses than those which at present dictate it. He was the incarnation of reaction against the liberty of Europe: glorious and brilliant, it is true; but no more. What proof shall I advance? Ask what remains of Bonaparte in the world, beyond a page of warfare, and a page to record an unskilful restoration. But as for a monument, a basis for expectation, a future, a something that may live after him besides his name—nothing exists but an immense reminiscence. In Asia he would have stirred men by millions; and, himself a man of simple ideas, he would with two or three facts have built up a monument of civilization which would have survived him a thousand years. But the mistake was made: Napoleon chose Europe; he only chose to leave behind him one explorer to examine what might be done, and to trace out the road to India, if ever fortune should lay it open to him. M. de Lascaris was the man; he set out with secret instructions from Bonaparte, received the necessary sums for his undertaking, and established himself at Aleppo, to complete his knowledge of Arabic. Being a man of merit, talent, and knowledge, he feigned a sort of enthusiasm to account for his continuance in Syria,and his unceasing intercourse with the Arabs of the desert who came to Aleppo. At length, after some years’ preparation, he commenced his grand and perilous enterprise; he passed with various risks, and under different disguises, through all the tribes of Mesopotamia and of the Euphrates; and returned to Aleppo, rich in the knowledge he had acquired, and in the political relations he had prepared for Napoleon. But whilst accomplishing the mission, fortune overthrew his hero; and he learned his downfall the very day on which he was about to bring him the fruits of seven years’ danger and devotion. This unforeseen stroke was fatal to M. de Lascaris; he went into Egypt, and died at Cairo, alone, unknown, abandoned, and leaving behind him his notes, his only bequest. It is said that the English consul obtained these valuable documents, which might have become injurious to his government, and that they were either destroyed or sent to London.
“What a pity,” said I to M. Mazolier, “that we should have lost the result of so many years’ labour and patience!” “There is something yet remaining,” said he; “I was attached at Latakia, my country, to a young Arab, who accompanied M. de Lascaris during all his travels. After his death, being without resources, and deprived even of the arrears of his small salary, which M. de Lascaris had promised him, he returned poor and plundered to his mother. He is now living in some small employ with a merchant of Latakia. I knew him there, and he has often spoken to me of a series of notes that hewrote at the instigation of his patron in the course of their wandering life.” “Do you think,” said I to M. Mazolier, “the young man would consent to sell them?” “I should think so,” he replied; “and the more so, as he has often expressed his desire to present them to the French government. But nothing is so easy as to know this; I will write to Fatalla Sayeghir, which is the name of the young Arab. Ibrahim Pacha’s Tartar will deliver him my letter, and we shall have an answer on his return to Said.” “I commission you,” said I, “to negotiate the affair, and to offer him two thousand piastres for his manuscript.”
Some months elapsed before the answer of Fatalla Sayeghir reached me. Returning to Byrauth, I sent my interpreter to negotiate directly for the MS. at Latakia. The terms were accepted, the sum was paid, and the Arabic MS. brought me by M. Mazolier. In the course of the winter, I got them translated with infinite difficulty into the Frank language, and thence translated them into French myself; the public are thus enabled to enjoy the fruits of a ten years’ journeying, which no other traveller has hitherto effected. The extreme difficulty of this triple translation must be an excuse for the style of the notes. The style indeed is of little importance in such works; facts and manners are everything. I am fully satisfied that the first translator has altered nothing; he has only suppressed some tedious details consisting of idle repetitions which availed nothing.
Should this recital possess any interest in a scientific, a geographical, or a political point of view, I have only one wish to form; it is that the French government, which such a period of peril and exile was intended to enlighten and serve, should show a tardy gratitude towards the unfortunate Fatalla Sayeghir, whose services might even still be useful. In this wish I include too the young and skilful interpreter, M. Mazolier, who has translated these notes from the Arabic, and who accompanied me for a year in my travels in Syria, Galilee, and Arabia. Versed in the knowledge of Arabic, the son of an Arab mother, nephew of one of the most powerful and revered sheiks of Lebanon, having already traversed all those countries with me, familiar with the manners of the tribes, a man of courage, intelligence and honour, heartily devoted to France, this young man might be of the utmost service to the government in our relations with Syria. French nationality terminates not with our frontiers. Our country has sons as attached upon shores whose name she scarcely knows. M. Mazolier is one of those sons. France should not forget him. No one could serve her better than he, in countries in which the effects of our activity of civilization, protection, and even of policy, must soon be necessarily felt. The following is the narrative of Fatalla Sayeghir, literally translated.