THROUGH SYRIA TO PALMYRA1870

THROUGH SYRIA TO PALMYRA1870

THROUGH SYRIA TO PALMYRA1870I  AM “partant pour la Syrie,” and though it is comparatively near, we find the journey long. We take steamer to Alexandria, and there await the first vessel going northwards. We embark in a foreign steamer, much preferring the Russian, and after passing, perhaps without sighting, the base of the Nile Delta and the northern terminus of the Suez Canal, we run rapidly up the coast of the Holy Land. We are near enough to see certain of its features, and to feel a throbbing of the heart. Here is Ascalon, the “Bride of Syria,” still redolent of the days of the lion-hearted king and of the right royal Saláh-el-Din. There is Jaffa, the Joppa ever full of the memories ofSt.Peter. We touch there, but we may not land unless the sea is of the calmest. Now we steam along the site of Cæsarea, the busy city of Herod Agrippa, converted into the most silent waste of ruins that it has ever been our fate to look upon. There we cast anchor for a few days, at the second station, Hazfa, oppositeSt.Jean d’Acre, that “Key of Palestine” from the days of the Crusaders to the times of Bonaparte, Sir Sydney Smith, and Sir Charles Napier. From this point we swerverapidly past the brown headland of Carmel, type of excellent beauty to the Hebrew poet, past the white Scala Tyrivrum, whosepromontorium albummight be a fragment of the white cliffs of Albion, past the bright little town of Tyre, a phœnix rising a third time from its ashes, and past Sidon and Lebanon, memorial names engraved upon our childish hearts too deeply for time or change ever to erase them from the memory of the man. So memorial, indeed, are all these regions that the traveller must keep watch and ward upon himself, under penalty of suffering from what I may call “Holy Land on the brain.” The essence of it consists in seeing all things, not as they are, but as they ought to be; for instance, “hanging gardens” at Damascus, “Roman bridges” in Saracenic arches, and “beautiful blush marble” in limestone stained with oxide. It wrings the hearts of its friends when sighting the Plain of Esdraelon, and in gazing upon a certain mound it exclaims:What hill is like to Tabor’s hill in beauty and in grace?This clairvoyance, or idealism, which makes men babble of green fields where only dust meets the eye of sense is by no means an obscure disorder of the brain; on the contrary, it is rather aggressive and violent, whilst writers of guides and handbooks appear abnormally exposed to it. Hence those who prepare for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land must temper information and description with many a grain of salt, or they will undergo no little disappointment. Ideal pleasures ever excel those of reality;but in this case there is an extra and inordinate supply of ideality.We disembark at the hopeless, wind-lashed roadstead of Beyrut, within the limits of the Land of Promise, but never yet included in the Land of Possession. The trim little harbour-town, seated upon its sloping amphitheatre, converted into “Colossia Julia Augusta Felix Berytus” must have been a local Pompeii in the fourth and fifth centuries, and its feminine bust was found associated with the medallions of Alexandria and Halicarnassus. During those ages the Roman and Egyptian galleys jostled one another in the inner port, which now looks like a dock; their palaces and villas covered the slopes with pillars and colonnades; paradises and gardens contrasted with proud fanes rising upon well-wooded and well-watered peaks around—​fanes dedicated to gods and goddesses now remembered only by the classical dictionaries. In those days, students of philosophy and theology, of law and language, flocked to Berytus from the most distant lands. But the terrible earthquake ofA.D.551, which laid waste a pleasant site, seems to have been the turning-point of its destinies; the roadstead apparently became shallow, and, despite a noted miracle in the eighth century, Beyrut saw her glory depart for many a generation. At last, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had sunk to its lowest, and the petty port, placed under the unimportant Pashalate of Sidon, numbered barely five hundred souls.Sir Charles Napier, the sailor, changed all that. In the autumn of 1840 he made Beyrut his headquarters, whence he and his gallant crews ranged the hill country around and blockaded the ports, till the career of Ibrahim Pasha was unfortunately cut short. Thereupon the hat began at once to take precedence of the turban, even of the green turban. The headquarters of the Pashalate were transferred from Sidon to Beyrut; European merchants established country houses; missionaries opened schools for both sexes; the different consular corps contended for the construction of roads and the abatement of nuisances; whilst the port was regularly visited by four lines of steamers. Briefly, Beyrut became the only Europeanised place in Syria, and she will probably remain so for many years.The old part of the city still retains some marks of Orientalism; the old part, with its alleys, wynds, and closes, its wretched lanes, its narrow and slippery thoroughfares, resembling unroofed sewers, is peculiarly sombre and Syrian, full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanliness. Nothing can be meaner than the Customs House, where millions of piastres annually change hands. Of the stately buildings which once adorned it no traces remain but three granite monolithic columns, still towering above modern misery. But the new town which surrounds the ancient archery is Levantine—​that is to say, almost Italian; the points of difference being a scatter of minarets and a sprinkling of tropical vegetation, whichtells you that you are somewhat nearer the sun. There are houses and hospitals large enough each to lodge its battalions; piano and bugle sounds catch the ear; the carriage is taking the place of the horse and the mule—​here, as in South America, a sure sign of civilisation; and Orientalism is essentially at a discount. You must not think of Beyrut as an Eastern city.Life is easy and death is easier in these sub-tropical regions. Men do little during six days, and carefully rest on the seventh. For eight months they saunter through the tepid air of the Mediterranean seaboard; the other four are spent upon “the mountain” (i.e.Lebanon), whose pure, light air is a tonic. The little world of Beyrut rises rather late, and its business hours are but before the noontide breakfast, for here, as amongst the classics, the meals are two per diem. They would be called by our grandfathers dinner and supper; we say breakfast and dinner. Then a little more work precedes a drive or a ride: the stroll is not unknown, the constitutional is. The evenings are spent either in acaféor in visits, where whist at times puts in an appearance, and a profound stillness, like that of Lime Street, City, begins to reign about 10 p.m. The theatre has not been imported, although an enterprising Syrian Christian—​Moslems cannot originate such things—​has, after a visit to Italy, written several comedies in the classical style, unfortunately adopting the French rhymed couplet. The tea party, the littlemusic, and thesoirée dansante, flourish in what the Beyrutines are pleased to call the “Paris of Syria.” Thejeunesse dorée, in patent leather boots, “boiled shirts,” fold collars, white ties, and lemon-coloured gloves, loves to don the sables which the English gentleman affects. When he goes forth to make merry, he enters gloves in hand; he prefers round dances to square, and he imitates Europe very literally. But as the Romans kept up the time-honoured and homely eggs as the end of their richest banquets, so the “golden youth” of Beyrut prefers the ugly and unpleasant fez or tarbush. For the rest, young Syria’s ambition is to marry a European wife, and he does not always get the best ofthatbargain.In these lands Society still preserves the fragmentary nature which belonged to the ancient world. Beyrut, the port, at the time whereof I write, is distant a single day’s ride from Damascus, the capital of Syria, yet there is no trace of sympathy between the two, and the inland say of the seaboard city:Its sun cracks [wood or teak],And its water is salt,And its falls are cloud de Paris [dirty of lead].Again Damascus jeers:Perish Beyrut, for the reason that her heat resembles Sakar [the eighth hell].No flowing of milk is found in her, though her sons are [stupid as] cows.Whereto Beyrut retorts:At Aleppo man is a dandy and vain,At Shan [Damascus] he is niggard and mean,And the Nizri [Egyptian] is simply a rascal.Whilst “the lying of Damascus” is an illustration in the mouth of every Beyrutine. We have a rhyme of the kind touching one—​Sir Vicary Gibbs,The inventor of fibs.But Damascus says of herself, when describing a man who has became civilised: “He hath been Damascus’d.” These sharp sayings, indeed, are not confined to the capital and the port. As of old upon the Sorrentine Plains, to speak of no other place, every town had a nickname, a rhyme, or a tale attached to it, which “kinder ryled up” the inhabitants, so it is the case throughout modern Syria. Thus of Jerusalem men say, as of Meccah:Her soil is sacred, her sons are soiled.Of Tiberias, a town built of basalt:Her stones are black, and her people are Jews.Of the Naw’arinah, or people of the Auranitis (the great Hauran Valley), we are told that:They thrice bewildered the Apostle of Allah [Mohammed].The modern inhabitants of ancient Heliopolis, where Burckhardt found the handsomest woman in Syria, is dubbed:A Ba’albak bear.The Halbem village near Damascus is a standingjoke with the witty citizens on account of the huge woollen turbans, the loud voice, and the peculiar dispositions of the people. They make “kass,” or lamp-wicks, for Damascus, and it is said that on one occasion, when their shaykh was imprisoned, they threatened, by withholding the supply, to keep the city in total darkness. Also, as a bride was being led home, mounted on an ass, when the doorway was found too low, the popular voice said that her head should be cut off, till some local wise man of Gotham suggested that she might dismount.Beyrut in my day was connected with Damascus by the only carriageable road in the Holy Land, which was supposed to boast of two others, the Jaffa-Jerusalem and the Alexandretto-Aleppo. These two, however, are utterly unfit for wheels, the reason being that they were laid out by native engineers and administered by the Turks, a nation that has succeeded in nothing but destruction. The distance is forty-seven and a half geographical miles, prolonged to sixty by the old road and to seventy-two by the new one.[8]We could travel to Damascus by night coach orby day diligence, preferring the latter, which enables us to see the land. At 4 a.m. we leave the harbour-town, and we shall reach our destination at 6 p.m. The section between the Mediterranean and Damascus, the sea and the Euphrates Desert, is an epitome of Syria, which has been described to be an epitome of the whole world; a volume might be easily written upon what is seen during that day’s journey. After a couple of miles through suburbs, cemeteries, and scattered villas, orchards of mulberry and olive, lanes hedged with prickly pear and dense clumps of young stone-pines, the road begins to ascend the westward, or maritime, slope of the Lebanon. It works gradually towards the left bank of the great gorge called Wady Hammánah, in one of whose hamlets Lamartine lived and wrote. After some twelve miles from the Beyrut Plain, we reach the watershed of the Jurd, or Highlands of the Lebanon. Here we are about 5,500 feet above sea-level, and feel immensely relieved, in fine weather at least, from the damp heat of the malarious seaboard, which robs the stranger of appetite and rest. The view, too, is charming: a glimpse of sparkling sea, a well-wooded sandstone region, and a long perspective of blue and purple chain and peak, cut and torn by valley, gorge, and ravine, scarring both flanks of the prism. Looking eastward, we sight for the first time that peculiar basaltic bed which gives rise to the Jordan, the Orontes, and the Litani (a river of Tyre). It appears to be a volcanic depressionsunk in the once single range of secondary limestone, and splitting it into two parallel chains, the Libanus and the Anti-Libanus. Viewed from above it is a Spanish viga, a plain of wondrous wealth and fertility, whilst the surface appears smooth as a lake. It is, however, in places dangerously swampy, and though raised some 2,500 to 3,000 feet above sea-level, it is an unwholesome and aguish site, alternately very hot and very cold, curiously damp and distressingly dry. And the same may be said of Damascus, which has to the east the scorching desert, and to the west mountains, mostly snowy: it is no wonder that the old author called it the “windy.” But the climate of Damascus is complicated by perhaps the worst and hardest water in Syria, by the exceeding uncleanliness of the place, and by the habits of the population. To say that man can exist there at all speaks volumes in his favour.Rapidly we run down the eastern, or landward, counterslope of the Lebanon, remembering the anti-Jacobin couplet:And down thy slopes romantic Ashdown glidesThe Derby dilly carrying six insides.Before its lowest folds we find the fifth station, Shtóra; here, as it is now 10 a.m., we breakfast. We at once realise what will be the bill of fare in the interior. Bread? perhaps. Potatoes? possibly. Beef or veal? impossible. Pig? ridiculous. Little, in fact, but lean kid and lamb, mutton, and fowls whose breast-bones pierce their skins. Wine? yes—​dear and bad.Beer or porter, seltzer or soda? decidedly no. In the winter game is to be had, woodcock and wild duck, hares and gazelles; but the diet is held to be heating and bilious. Vegetables, however, are plentiful, and, during the season, fruit is abundant, with the usual drawback in half-civilised lands: wall fruit is all but unknown, and, with the exception of the excellent grapes and the unwholesome apricots, each kind lasts only a few days.After breakfast we spin by a straight road—​such as old Normandy knew and modern Canada still knows—​the breadth of the valley. It is laid out in little fields, copiously irrigated. The little villages which stud the plain are, like those of Egypt, not of Syria, built on mounds, and black with clay plastered over the wicker-work. Every mile or so has some classical ruin: on our right a Báal temple; to our left Chalcis ad Belum; whilst six hours of slow riding northwards, or up the valley, place you at immortal Báalbak, which the Greeks still call Heliopolis.A rising plane and a bend to the right land us at the first of the Anti-Libanus. Instead of ascending and descending this range, as we did with the Lebanon prism, we thread a ravine called by the Druzes the Valley of Silk, from their favourite article of plunder. An easy up-slope leads to Sahlat Judaydah, the dwarf plateau about 3,600 feet high, where the watershed changes from west to east; farther on to the wild gorge Wady el Karn (“of the Thorn”), so called from its rich ribbings and the wreathing and winding of thebed. We find a stiff climb or a long zigzag at the Akabat el Tin (the Steep of Lime).The descent of the steep ends with the Daurat el Billau (Zigzag of the Camel Thorn), and thence we fall into the Sahrat el Dimas, so called from a village which may have borrowed a name from the penitent thief. This Sahara has been described with prodigious exaggeration in order to set off by contrast the charms of the so-termed “sublime Gorge of Abana,” to which it leads. Measuring some ten kilometres, it is undoubtedly a rough bit of ground, dry as dust in the summer, and in winter swept by raving winds and piled with sleet and snow. At its eastern end the Sahara at once dips into a deep, lateral gorge, which feeds, after rains, the Barada Valley, and here we remark that curious contrast of intense fertility with utter, hopeless barrenness which characterises inner Spain. Life is in that thick line of the darkest and densest evergreen, which, smiling under the fierce and fiery sun-glare, threads the side of the valley, in the wholesome perfume of the wild plants, and in the gush and murmur of waters making endless music. Death is represented by the dull grey formation standing up in tombstones, by the sterile yellow lime-rock, and by the chalk, blinding white; and the proportion of good to bad is as one to twenty. This verdure is, the Arabs say, a cooling to the eye of the beholder; it is like the aspect of the celadon-coloured sea that beats upon the torrid West African shores. With the author of that charming book “Eothen,” “you floatalong (for the delight is as the delight of bathing) through green, wavy fields and down into the cool verdure of groves and gardens, and you quench hot eyes in shade as though in deep, rushing waters.”The beginning of the end is at the tenth and last station, El Hamah, meaning the Head of the Valley, and we halt here for a cup of coffee. The next place of note is Dummar; here we cross the Barada torrent. This place is, despite its low site and hot and cold air, a favourite for villas; and certain wealthy Damascus usurers have here built large piles, as remarkable for the barbarity of their outer frescoes as for the tawdry decoration of the interior. The witty Damasceines call them “traps,” because they are periodically let to high officials for other considerations than hire. And now, with its slate-coloured stream, garnished with weirs on our right, the valley becomes broader and more important; the upper cliff’s are tunnelled into cut caves, Troglodyte dwellings and sepulchres of the ancients; seven veins at high levels and at low levels branch off from the main artery; and, after passing a natural gateway formed by two shield-like masses of rock, we suspect that Damascus is before us.The first sight of Damascus was once famous in travel. But then men rode on horseback, and turned, a little beyond Damascus, sharply to the left of the present line. They took what was evidently the old Roman road, and which is still, on account of its being a short cut, affected by muleteers. Now it is nothing but an ugly climb up sheet-rock androlling stones, with bars and holes dug by the armed hoof of many a generation. They then passed through El Zaarub (the Spout); this is the old way, sunk some ten feet deep in the rock till it resembles an uncovered tunnel, and polished like glass by the traffic and transit of ages. At its mouth you suddenly turn a corner and see Damascus lying in panorama, a few hundred feet below you. “A flint set in emeralds” is the Damascus citizen’s description of what El Islam calls, and miscalls, the “smile of the Prophet” (Mohammed). Like Stambul, it is beautiful from afar, as it is foul and sore within, morally and physically. The eye at once distinguishes a long head, the northern suburb “El Salituzzah”; a central nucleus, crescent-shaped and fronting the bed of the Barada; and a long tail, or southern suburb, “El Maydan.” These three centres of whitewashed dwellings and skyline, fretted with dome and minaret, are surrounded and backed by a mass of evergreen orchard, whose outlines are sharply defined by irrigation, whilst beyond the scatter of outlying villages, glare the sunburnt yellow and the parched rich brown of the desert, whose light blue hillocks define the eastern horizon.The prosaic approach by the French road shows little beyond ruins and graveyards: Damascus outside is a mass of graveyards, the “Great” and “Little Camps” of Constantinople, only without their cypresses; whilst within it is all graveyards and ruins, mixed with crowded and steaming bazaars.This world of graves reminds one of Job’s forlorn man dwelling “in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth, which are ready to become heaps.” The Barada in olden times had its stone embankment; the walls are now in ruins. On our right is a ruined bridge once leading to a large coffee-house, both also in ruins. As we advance we pass other ruins. But though it was prophesied that Damascus should be a “ruinous heap,” her position forbids annihilation. The second of Biblical cities, she has been destroyed again and again; her houses have been levelled with the ground, and the Tartar has played hockey with the hearts of her sons. Still she sits upon the eastern folds of the Anti-Libanus and on her gold-rolling river, boldly overlooking the desert at her base. Damascus, not Rome, deserves, if any does, to be entitled the Eternal City.I passed twenty-three months (October 1st, 1869, to August 20th, 1871), on and off, at this most picturesque and unpleasant of residences. It was then in the transitional state, neither of Asia nor of Europe. To one who had long lived in the outer East, a return to such an ambiguous state of things was utterly disenchanting. Hassan, digging or delving in long beard and long clothes, looks more like an overgrown baby than the romantic being which your fancies paint him. Fatima, with a coloured kerchief (not a nose-bag) over her face, possibly spotted for greater hideousness, with Marseilles gloves and French bottines of yellow satin, trimmed with fringe andbugles, protruding from the white calico which might be her winding-sheet, is an absurdity: she reminded me of sundry “kings” on the West African shore, whose toilet consists of a bright bandanna and a chimney-pot hat, of the largest dimensions, coloured the liveliest sky-blue.The first steps to be taken at Damascus were to pay and receive visits, to find a house, to hire servants, to buy horses, and, in fact, to settle ourselves. It proved no easy matter. Certain persons had amused themselves with spreading a report that my pilgrimage to Meccah had aroused Moslem fanaticism, and perhaps might cost me my life. They, as well as I, knew far better, so I was not surprised at the kind and even friendly reception given to me by Emir Abdel Kadir, of Algerine fame, and by the Dean of the great Cathedral el Amahi, the late Shaykh Abdahah el Halati. And I remember with satisfaction that, to the hour of my quitting Damascus, the Moslems never showed for me any but the most cordial feeling.Other British consuls had been of a stay-at-home disposition, seeing nothing beyond the length of their noses. I was of a roving one, and determined to see all I could, and penetrate to the inner heart of Syria. To be shut up in Damascus was to be in prison; the breath of the desert was liberty. I soon wandered afield. One of my earliest excursions was to Palmyra. Until the spring of 1870 a traveller visiting Syria for the express purpose, perhaps, ofseeing Palmyra, “Tadmor in the Wilderness,” after being kept waiting for months at Damascus, had to return disappointed. Only the rich could afford the large Bedouin escort, for which even six thousand francs and more have been demanded. Add to this the difficulties, hardships, and dangers of the journey, the heat of the arid desert, want of water, chances of attack, the long forced marches by night and hiding by day, ending with a shabby halt of forty-eight hours at a place for which so many sacrifices had been made, and where a fortnight is the minimum required.Since the beginning of the last century the Porte has had in view a military occupation of the caravan route between Damascus and the Euphrates. “The Turk will catch up your best hare on the back of a lame donkey,” say the Arabs, little thinking what high praise they award to the conquering race. Thecordon militairewas to extend from Damascus,viâJayrud, Karyatayn, Palmyra, and Sukhnah, to Daye on the great rim. The wells were to be commanded by block houses, the roads to be cleared by movable columns, and thus the plundering Bedouin, who refuse all allegiance to the Sultan, would be kept, perforce, in the dan, or desert, between the easternmost offsets of the Anti-Libanus and the pitch uplands of Nijd. This project was apparently rescued from the fate of good intentions by Osman Bey, a Hungarian officer who had served the Porte since 1848. He moved from Hamah with a body of some 1,600 men—​enough to cut his way throughhalf the vermin in Araby the Unblest. Presently, after occupying Palmyra, building barracks, and restoring the old Druze Castle, he proceeded eastward to Sukhnah, whence he could communicate with the force expected to march westward from Baghdad. The welcome intelligence was hailed with joy: Palmyra, so long excluded from the Oriental tour, lay open to the European traveller; half a step had been taken towards a Euphrates Valley Railway; at Damascus men congratulated themselves upon the new line of frontier, which was naturally expected to strengthen and to extend the limits of Syria; and the merchant rejoiced to learn that his caravan would be no longer liable to wholesale plunder.A fair vision, doomed soon to fade! After six months or so of occupation, Osman Bey, whose men were half starving, became tired of Palmyra, and was recalled to Damascus. The garrison was reduced to two hundred men under a captain, whose only friend was the raki bottle, and the last I saw of the garrison was his orderly riding into Hauran, with the huge, empty demijohns dangling at his saddle-bow. The Bedouin waxed brave, and, in the spring of 1871, I was obliged to send travellers to Palmyra by a long circuit,viâthe north and the north-west.[9]A certain official business compelled me to visit Karyatayn, which is within jurisdiction of Damascus, and my wife resolved to accompany me. In this little enterprise I was warmly seconded by the Vicomte de Perrochel, a French traveller and author, who had twice visited Damascus in the hope of reaching Tadmor, and by M. Ionine, my Russian colleague. The Governor-General, the Field Marshal commanding the army of Syria, and other high officials, lent us their best aid. We engaged a pair of dragomen, six servants, a cook, and eight muleteers; twelve mules and eight baggage-asses to carry tents and canteen, baggage and provisions; and we rode our own horses, being wrongly persuaded not to take donkeys—​on long marches they would have been a pleasant change. We were peculiarly unfortunate in the choice of head dragoman, a certain Anton Wardi, who had Italianised his name to Riza. Originally a donkey-boy at Beyrut, he made, by “skinning” sundry travellers, some 80,000 francs in ten years. He was utterly spoiled by his French friends, M. de Sauley and M. de Perrochel; he had also dragomaned the then Princess Amadeo, who, in return for his mean conduct, had promised him, and afterwards sent him, greatly to the disgust of every Italian gentleman, the Order of the Rose. This “native gentleman,” the type of the ignoblepetit bourgeoisof Syria, had been trusted without any contract having been made. He charged us a hundred francs per diem, and the others each fiftyfrancs and forty francs. When the bill was produced for settlement, it proved to be a long list ofdes extras: everything wasun extra; two bottles of cognac, reported broken, appeared asdes extras; even the water-camels weredes extras. The fact was, he had allowed, when galloping about the country, some francs to fall from his pocket, and he resolved thatles extrasshould replace them.We altogether regretted the assistance of Mohammed, Shaykh of the Mezrab tribe, who had systematically fleeced travellers for a score of years. He demanded two napoleons a head for his wretched camels, sending a score when only one was wanted; like all other chiefs, he would not guarantee his protégés, either in purse or person, against enemies, but only against his own friends; he allowed them but two days at Palmyra; he made them march twenty, instead of fifteen, hours between Karyatayn and their destination; he concealed the fact that there are wells the whole way, in order to make them hire camels and buy water-skins; and, besides harassing them with night marches, he organised sham attacks, in order to make them duly appreciate his protection. I rejoice to say that Mohammed’s occupation has since gone; his miserable tribe was three times plundered within eighteen months, and, instead of fighting, he fell back upon the desert. May thus end all who oppose their petty interests to the general good—​all that would shut roads instead of opening them! With a view of keeping up his title to escort travellers,he sent with us a clansman upon a well-bred mare and armed with the honourable spear. But M. de Perrochel hired the mare; the crestfallen man was put upon a baggage-mare, and the poor spear was carried by a lame donkey.Armed to the teeth, we set out in a chorus of groans and with general prognostications of evil. Ours was the first party since M. Dubois d’Angus was dangerously wounded, stripped, and turned out to die of hunger, thirst, and cold, because he could not salary the inevitable Bedouin. It would, doubtless, have been the interest of many and the delight of more to see us return in the scantiest of costumes; consequently a false report generally flew abroad that we had been pursued and plundered by the Bedouin.The first night was passed under canvas near a ruined khan in the fifth valley plain east of the Syrian metropolis. The weather became unusually cold the next morning when we left the foggy lowland and turned to the north-east in order to cross the ridgy line of hills, which, offsetting from the Anti-Libanus, runs from Damascus toward the desert, and afterwards sweeps round to Palmyra. The line of travel was a break in the ridge. Then, gently descending, we fell into a northern depression, a section of that extensive valley in the Anti-Libanus, which, under a variety of names, runs nearly straight north-east (more exactly, 60°), to Palmyra. Nothing can be simpler than the geography of the country. The traveller cannot lose his way in the Palmyra Valleywithout crossing the high and rugged mountains which hem it in on both sides, and, if he is attacked by raiders, he can easily take refuge, and laugh at the Arab goatees. During the time of our journey the miserable little robber clans Shitai and Ghiyas had completely closed the country five hours’ riding to the east of Damascus, whilst the Sorbai and the Anergah bandits were making the Merj a battlefield and were threatening to burn down the peaceful villages. Even as we crossed the pass we were saddened by the report that a troop of Bedouin had the day before murdered a wretched peasant within easy sight of Damascus. This state of things was a national scandal to the Porte, which, of course, was never allowed to know the truth.We resolved to advance slowly, to examine every object, and to follow the most indirect paths. Hence our march to Palmyra occupied eight days; we returned, however, in four with horses that called loudly for a week’s rest. The regular stations are as follows:—​Hours.1. Damascus to Jayrud92. Jayrud to Karyatayn10-113. Karyatayn to Agu el Waah84. Agu el Waah to Palmyra9On the second day we dismissed our escort, one officer and two privates of irregular cavalry, who were worse than useless, and we slept at the house of Daas Agha, hereditary Chief of Jayrud. A noted sabre, and able to bring one hundred and fifty lances into the field,he was systematically neglected by the authorities, because supposed to be friendly with foreigners. Shortly after my departure he barbarously tortured two wretched Arabs, throwing them into a pit full of fire, and practising upon them with his revolver. Thereupon he was at once taken into prime favour, and received a command.Daas Agha escorted us from Jayrud with ten of his kinsmen mounted upon their best mares. In the upland valley we suffered severely from cold, and the sleety sou’wester which cut our faces on the return was a caution.At Karyatayn, which we reached on the fifth day, Osman Bey, who was waiting for rations, money, transport, in fact, everything, offered us the most friendly welcome, and I gave official protection to Shaykh Faris, in connection with the English post at Baghdad. The former detached with us eighty bayonets of regulars and twenty-five sabres of Irregulars, commanded by two officers. This body presently put to flight anything in the way of Bedouin; a war party of two thousand men would not have attacked us; and I really believe that a band of thirty Englishmen armed with carbines and revolvers could sweep clean the Desert of the Euphrates from end to end.At Karyatayn we hired seventeen camels to carry water. This would have been a complete waste of money had we gone, like other travellers, by the Darb el Sultain, or High Way. Some three hours’ ride to the right, or south, of the road amongst the hillsbounding the Palmyra Valley is a fine cistern (Ibex Fountain), where water is never wanting. There is, however, a still more direct roadviâthe remains of an aqueduct and a river in the desert. This short cut from Karyatayn to Palmyra may be covered in twenty-four hours of camel walking, fifteen of horse walking, and twelve by dromedary or hard gallop. Travellers would start at 6.30 or 7 a.m., and encamp after being out from twelve to thirteen hours; but this includes breakfast and sundry halts, sometimes to inspect figures, real or imaginary, in the distance, at other times to indulge in a “spurt” after a gazelle or a wild boar.We chose, however, the little-known Baghdad, or eastern, road. The next day we rested at a large deserted khan, and on the eighth we made our entrance into Palmyra, where we were hospitably received by Shaykh Faris. Our muleteers, for the convenience of their cattle, pitched their tents close to, and east of, the so-called Grand Colonnade, a malarious and unwholesome site. They should have encamped amongst the trees at a threshing-floor near three palms. Travellers may be strongly advised not to lodge in the native village, whose mud huts, like wasps’ nests, are all huddled within the ancient Temple of the Sun, or they may suffer from fever or ophthalmia. The water of Tadmor is sulphurous, like Harrogate, the climate is unhealthy, and the people are ragged and sickly. May there, as in most parts of the northern hemisphere, is the best travelling-season, and in any but aphenomenal year the traveller need not fear to encounter, as we did, ice and snow, siroccos and furious sou’westers.If asked whether Palmyra is worth all this trouble, I should reply “No” and “Yes.” No, if you merely go there, stay two days, and return, especially after sighting noble Báalbak. Certainly not for the Grand Colonnade of weather-beaten limestone, by a stretch of courtesy called marble, which, rain-washed and earthquake-shaken, looks like a system of galleries. Not for the Temple of the Sun, the building of a Roman emperor, a second-rate affair, an architectural evidence of Rome’s declining days. Yes, if you would study the site and the environs, which are interesting and only partially explored, make excavations, and collect coins and relics, which may be bought for a song.The site of Palmyra is very interesting; she stands between the mountains and the sea; like Damascus, she sits upon the eastern slope of the Anti-Libanus, facing the wilderness, but unhappily she has a dry torrent bed, the Wady el Sayl, instead of a rushing Barada. She is built upon the shore cape, where the sandy sea breaks upon its nearest headlands. This sea is the mysterious Wilderness of the Euphrates, whose ships are camels, whose yachts are high-bred mares, and whose cock-boats are mules and asses. She is on the very threshold of the mountains, which the wild cavalry cannot scour, as they do the level plain. And her position is such that we have not heard the last of the Tadmor, or, as the Arabs callher, Tudmur. Nor will it be difficult to revive her. A large tract can be placed under cultivation, where there shall be protection for life and property; old wells exist in the ruins; foresting the highlands to the north and west will cause rain; and the aqueducts in the old days may easily be repaired.I am unwilling to indulge in a description of the modern ruin of the great old depôt, which has employed so many pens. But very little has been said concerning the old tomb-towers, which have taken at Palmyra the place of Egyptian pyramids. Here, as elsewhere in ancient Syria, sepulture was extramural, and every settlement was approached by one or more Viâ Appia, much resembling that of ancient Rome. At Palmyra there are, or, rather, were, notably two: one (south-west) upon the high road to Damascus; the other, north-west of the official or monumental city, formed, doubtless, the main approach from Hauran and Hamah. The two are lined on both sides with those interesting monuments, whose squat, solid forms of gloomy and unsquared sandstone contrast remarkably with the bastard classical and Roman architecture, meretricious in all its details, and glittering from afar in white limestone. Inscriptions in the Palmyrian character prove that they date from aboutA.D.2 and 102; but they have evidently been restored, and this perhaps fixes the latest restoration. It is highly probable that the heathen method of burial declined under the Roman rule, especially afterA.D.130, when the Great Half-way Houseagain changed its name to Adrianopolis. Still, vestiges of the old custom are found in the Hauran and in the Druze Mountain west of the great valley, extending deep into the second century, when, it is believed, Gassanides of Damascus had abandoned their heathen faith for Christianity. I found in the tombs, or cells, fragments of mummies, and these, it is suspected, were the first ever brought to England. Almost all the skulls contained date-stones, more or less, and a peach stone and an apricot stone were found under similar circumstances. At Shathah we picked up in the mummy-towers almond shells with the sharp ends cut off and forming baby cups.There are three tomb-towers at Palmyra still standing, and perhaps likely to yield good results. The people call them Kasr el Zaynah (Pretty Palace), Kasr el Azin (Palace of the Maiden), and Kasr el Arus (Palace of the Bride). They number four and five stories, but the staircases, which run up the thickness of the walls, are broken, and so are the monolithic slabs which form the lower floors. Explorers, therefore, must take with them ropes and hooks, ladders which will reach to eighty feet, planks to act as bridges, and a short crowbar. We had none of these requirements, nor could the wretched village provide them. I have little doubt that the upper stories would be found to contain bones, coins, and pottery, perhaps entire mummies.The shortness of our visit allowed me only a day and a half to try the fortune of excavation at Palmyra.It was easy to hire a considerable number of labourers at two and a half piastres a head per diem—​say 6d.—​when in other places the wages would be at least double. Operations began (April 15th) at the group of tomb-towers bearing west-south-west from the great Temple of the Sun: I chose this group because it appeared the oldest of the series. The fellahs, or peasants, know it as Kusin Ahi Sayl (Palaces of the Father of a Torrent); and they stare when told that these massive buildings are not royal residences but tombs. Here the tombs in the several stages were easily cleared out by my forty-five coolies, who had nothing but diminutive picks and bars, grain-lugs and body-cloths, which they converted into buckets for removing sand and rubbish. But these cells and those of the adjoining ruins had before been ransacked, and they supplied nothing beyond skulls, bones, and shreds of mummy cloth, whose dyes were remarkably brilliant.The hands were then applied to an adjoining mound: it offered a tempting resemblance to the undulations of ground which cover the complicated chambered catacombs already laid open, and into one of which, some years ago, a camel fell, the roof having given way. After reaching a stratum of snow-white gypsum, which appeared to be artificial, though all hands agreed that it was not, we gave up the task, as time pressed so hard. The third attempt laid open the foundation of a house, and showed us the well, or rain-cistern, shaped, as such reservoirs are still in the Holy Land,like a soda-water bottle. The fourth trial was more successful; during our absence the workmen came upon two oval slabs of soft limestone, each with its kit-cat in high relief. One was a man with straight features, short, curly beard, and hair disposed, as appears to have been the fashion for both sexes, in three circular rolls. The other was a feminine bust, with features of a type so exaggerated as to resemble the negro. A third and similar work of art was brought up, but the head had been removed. It would be hard to explain the excitement caused by these wonderful discoveries; report flew abroad that gold images of life-size had been dug up, and the least disposed to exaggeration declared that chests full of gold coins and ingots had fallen to our lot.On the next morning we left Palmyra, and, after a hard gallop which lasted for the best part of four days, we found ourselves, not much the worse for wear, once more at Damascus.[8]Burton writes of Syria in 1870. The journey from Beyrut to Damascus has now been made easy by the opening of the railway. The line rises some four thousand feet, crosses two ranges of mountains on the Lebanon, and passes through some beautiful scenery. After traversing the Plain of Bakaa through the Anti-Lebanon, the railway enters the Yahfâfeh, continuing to Sûk Wady Barada, the ancient Abila, where is seen the rock-cut aqueducts made by Zenobia to convey the water of the Abana to Palmyra; then, passing the beautiful fountain of Fijeh and the remains of an old temple, the train follows the River Abana until it arrives at Damascus.—​W. H. W.[9]The journey from Damascus to Palmyra can now be made in five daysviâMareau Said and Niah—​the pleasantest route, passing by much water, and averaging six to seven hours riding a day. But Palmyra is still under the care of rapacious shayks, and great care has to be observed in arranging for a tour to that city of grand ruins. Things are a little better than they were in Burton’s day, but there is still danger.—​W. H. W.Printed by Hasell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

I  AM “partant pour la Syrie,” and though it is comparatively near, we find the journey long. We take steamer to Alexandria, and there await the first vessel going northwards. We embark in a foreign steamer, much preferring the Russian, and after passing, perhaps without sighting, the base of the Nile Delta and the northern terminus of the Suez Canal, we run rapidly up the coast of the Holy Land. We are near enough to see certain of its features, and to feel a throbbing of the heart. Here is Ascalon, the “Bride of Syria,” still redolent of the days of the lion-hearted king and of the right royal Saláh-el-Din. There is Jaffa, the Joppa ever full of the memories ofSt.Peter. We touch there, but we may not land unless the sea is of the calmest. Now we steam along the site of Cæsarea, the busy city of Herod Agrippa, converted into the most silent waste of ruins that it has ever been our fate to look upon. There we cast anchor for a few days, at the second station, Hazfa, oppositeSt.Jean d’Acre, that “Key of Palestine” from the days of the Crusaders to the times of Bonaparte, Sir Sydney Smith, and Sir Charles Napier. From this point we swerverapidly past the brown headland of Carmel, type of excellent beauty to the Hebrew poet, past the white Scala Tyrivrum, whosepromontorium albummight be a fragment of the white cliffs of Albion, past the bright little town of Tyre, a phœnix rising a third time from its ashes, and past Sidon and Lebanon, memorial names engraved upon our childish hearts too deeply for time or change ever to erase them from the memory of the man. So memorial, indeed, are all these regions that the traveller must keep watch and ward upon himself, under penalty of suffering from what I may call “Holy Land on the brain.” The essence of it consists in seeing all things, not as they are, but as they ought to be; for instance, “hanging gardens” at Damascus, “Roman bridges” in Saracenic arches, and “beautiful blush marble” in limestone stained with oxide. It wrings the hearts of its friends when sighting the Plain of Esdraelon, and in gazing upon a certain mound it exclaims:

What hill is like to Tabor’s hill in beauty and in grace?

This clairvoyance, or idealism, which makes men babble of green fields where only dust meets the eye of sense is by no means an obscure disorder of the brain; on the contrary, it is rather aggressive and violent, whilst writers of guides and handbooks appear abnormally exposed to it. Hence those who prepare for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land must temper information and description with many a grain of salt, or they will undergo no little disappointment. Ideal pleasures ever excel those of reality;but in this case there is an extra and inordinate supply of ideality.

We disembark at the hopeless, wind-lashed roadstead of Beyrut, within the limits of the Land of Promise, but never yet included in the Land of Possession. The trim little harbour-town, seated upon its sloping amphitheatre, converted into “Colossia Julia Augusta Felix Berytus” must have been a local Pompeii in the fourth and fifth centuries, and its feminine bust was found associated with the medallions of Alexandria and Halicarnassus. During those ages the Roman and Egyptian galleys jostled one another in the inner port, which now looks like a dock; their palaces and villas covered the slopes with pillars and colonnades; paradises and gardens contrasted with proud fanes rising upon well-wooded and well-watered peaks around—​fanes dedicated to gods and goddesses now remembered only by the classical dictionaries. In those days, students of philosophy and theology, of law and language, flocked to Berytus from the most distant lands. But the terrible earthquake ofA.D.551, which laid waste a pleasant site, seems to have been the turning-point of its destinies; the roadstead apparently became shallow, and, despite a noted miracle in the eighth century, Beyrut saw her glory depart for many a generation. At last, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had sunk to its lowest, and the petty port, placed under the unimportant Pashalate of Sidon, numbered barely five hundred souls.

Sir Charles Napier, the sailor, changed all that. In the autumn of 1840 he made Beyrut his headquarters, whence he and his gallant crews ranged the hill country around and blockaded the ports, till the career of Ibrahim Pasha was unfortunately cut short. Thereupon the hat began at once to take precedence of the turban, even of the green turban. The headquarters of the Pashalate were transferred from Sidon to Beyrut; European merchants established country houses; missionaries opened schools for both sexes; the different consular corps contended for the construction of roads and the abatement of nuisances; whilst the port was regularly visited by four lines of steamers. Briefly, Beyrut became the only Europeanised place in Syria, and she will probably remain so for many years.

The old part of the city still retains some marks of Orientalism; the old part, with its alleys, wynds, and closes, its wretched lanes, its narrow and slippery thoroughfares, resembling unroofed sewers, is peculiarly sombre and Syrian, full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanliness. Nothing can be meaner than the Customs House, where millions of piastres annually change hands. Of the stately buildings which once adorned it no traces remain but three granite monolithic columns, still towering above modern misery. But the new town which surrounds the ancient archery is Levantine—​that is to say, almost Italian; the points of difference being a scatter of minarets and a sprinkling of tropical vegetation, whichtells you that you are somewhat nearer the sun. There are houses and hospitals large enough each to lodge its battalions; piano and bugle sounds catch the ear; the carriage is taking the place of the horse and the mule—​here, as in South America, a sure sign of civilisation; and Orientalism is essentially at a discount. You must not think of Beyrut as an Eastern city.

Life is easy and death is easier in these sub-tropical regions. Men do little during six days, and carefully rest on the seventh. For eight months they saunter through the tepid air of the Mediterranean seaboard; the other four are spent upon “the mountain” (i.e.Lebanon), whose pure, light air is a tonic. The little world of Beyrut rises rather late, and its business hours are but before the noontide breakfast, for here, as amongst the classics, the meals are two per diem. They would be called by our grandfathers dinner and supper; we say breakfast and dinner. Then a little more work precedes a drive or a ride: the stroll is not unknown, the constitutional is. The evenings are spent either in acaféor in visits, where whist at times puts in an appearance, and a profound stillness, like that of Lime Street, City, begins to reign about 10 p.m. The theatre has not been imported, although an enterprising Syrian Christian—​Moslems cannot originate such things—​has, after a visit to Italy, written several comedies in the classical style, unfortunately adopting the French rhymed couplet. The tea party, the littlemusic, and thesoirée dansante, flourish in what the Beyrutines are pleased to call the “Paris of Syria.” Thejeunesse dorée, in patent leather boots, “boiled shirts,” fold collars, white ties, and lemon-coloured gloves, loves to don the sables which the English gentleman affects. When he goes forth to make merry, he enters gloves in hand; he prefers round dances to square, and he imitates Europe very literally. But as the Romans kept up the time-honoured and homely eggs as the end of their richest banquets, so the “golden youth” of Beyrut prefers the ugly and unpleasant fez or tarbush. For the rest, young Syria’s ambition is to marry a European wife, and he does not always get the best ofthatbargain.

In these lands Society still preserves the fragmentary nature which belonged to the ancient world. Beyrut, the port, at the time whereof I write, is distant a single day’s ride from Damascus, the capital of Syria, yet there is no trace of sympathy between the two, and the inland say of the seaboard city:

Its sun cracks [wood or teak],And its water is salt,And its falls are cloud de Paris [dirty of lead].

Its sun cracks [wood or teak],And its water is salt,And its falls are cloud de Paris [dirty of lead].

Its sun cracks [wood or teak],

And its water is salt,

And its falls are cloud de Paris [dirty of lead].

Again Damascus jeers:

Perish Beyrut, for the reason that her heat resembles Sakar [the eighth hell].No flowing of milk is found in her, though her sons are [stupid as] cows.

Perish Beyrut, for the reason that her heat resembles Sakar [the eighth hell].No flowing of milk is found in her, though her sons are [stupid as] cows.

Perish Beyrut, for the reason that her heat resembles Sakar [the eighth hell].

No flowing of milk is found in her, though her sons are [stupid as] cows.

Whereto Beyrut retorts:

At Aleppo man is a dandy and vain,At Shan [Damascus] he is niggard and mean,And the Nizri [Egyptian] is simply a rascal.

At Aleppo man is a dandy and vain,At Shan [Damascus] he is niggard and mean,And the Nizri [Egyptian] is simply a rascal.

At Aleppo man is a dandy and vain,

At Shan [Damascus] he is niggard and mean,

And the Nizri [Egyptian] is simply a rascal.

Whilst “the lying of Damascus” is an illustration in the mouth of every Beyrutine. We have a rhyme of the kind touching one—​

Sir Vicary Gibbs,The inventor of fibs.

Sir Vicary Gibbs,The inventor of fibs.

Sir Vicary Gibbs,

The inventor of fibs.

But Damascus says of herself, when describing a man who has became civilised: “He hath been Damascus’d.” These sharp sayings, indeed, are not confined to the capital and the port. As of old upon the Sorrentine Plains, to speak of no other place, every town had a nickname, a rhyme, or a tale attached to it, which “kinder ryled up” the inhabitants, so it is the case throughout modern Syria. Thus of Jerusalem men say, as of Meccah:

Her soil is sacred, her sons are soiled.

Of Tiberias, a town built of basalt:

Her stones are black, and her people are Jews.

Of the Naw’arinah, or people of the Auranitis (the great Hauran Valley), we are told that:

They thrice bewildered the Apostle of Allah [Mohammed].

The modern inhabitants of ancient Heliopolis, where Burckhardt found the handsomest woman in Syria, is dubbed:

A Ba’albak bear.

The Halbem village near Damascus is a standingjoke with the witty citizens on account of the huge woollen turbans, the loud voice, and the peculiar dispositions of the people. They make “kass,” or lamp-wicks, for Damascus, and it is said that on one occasion, when their shaykh was imprisoned, they threatened, by withholding the supply, to keep the city in total darkness. Also, as a bride was being led home, mounted on an ass, when the doorway was found too low, the popular voice said that her head should be cut off, till some local wise man of Gotham suggested that she might dismount.

Beyrut in my day was connected with Damascus by the only carriageable road in the Holy Land, which was supposed to boast of two others, the Jaffa-Jerusalem and the Alexandretto-Aleppo. These two, however, are utterly unfit for wheels, the reason being that they were laid out by native engineers and administered by the Turks, a nation that has succeeded in nothing but destruction. The distance is forty-seven and a half geographical miles, prolonged to sixty by the old road and to seventy-two by the new one.[8]

We could travel to Damascus by night coach orby day diligence, preferring the latter, which enables us to see the land. At 4 a.m. we leave the harbour-town, and we shall reach our destination at 6 p.m. The section between the Mediterranean and Damascus, the sea and the Euphrates Desert, is an epitome of Syria, which has been described to be an epitome of the whole world; a volume might be easily written upon what is seen during that day’s journey. After a couple of miles through suburbs, cemeteries, and scattered villas, orchards of mulberry and olive, lanes hedged with prickly pear and dense clumps of young stone-pines, the road begins to ascend the westward, or maritime, slope of the Lebanon. It works gradually towards the left bank of the great gorge called Wady Hammánah, in one of whose hamlets Lamartine lived and wrote. After some twelve miles from the Beyrut Plain, we reach the watershed of the Jurd, or Highlands of the Lebanon. Here we are about 5,500 feet above sea-level, and feel immensely relieved, in fine weather at least, from the damp heat of the malarious seaboard, which robs the stranger of appetite and rest. The view, too, is charming: a glimpse of sparkling sea, a well-wooded sandstone region, and a long perspective of blue and purple chain and peak, cut and torn by valley, gorge, and ravine, scarring both flanks of the prism. Looking eastward, we sight for the first time that peculiar basaltic bed which gives rise to the Jordan, the Orontes, and the Litani (a river of Tyre). It appears to be a volcanic depressionsunk in the once single range of secondary limestone, and splitting it into two parallel chains, the Libanus and the Anti-Libanus. Viewed from above it is a Spanish viga, a plain of wondrous wealth and fertility, whilst the surface appears smooth as a lake. It is, however, in places dangerously swampy, and though raised some 2,500 to 3,000 feet above sea-level, it is an unwholesome and aguish site, alternately very hot and very cold, curiously damp and distressingly dry. And the same may be said of Damascus, which has to the east the scorching desert, and to the west mountains, mostly snowy: it is no wonder that the old author called it the “windy.” But the climate of Damascus is complicated by perhaps the worst and hardest water in Syria, by the exceeding uncleanliness of the place, and by the habits of the population. To say that man can exist there at all speaks volumes in his favour.

Rapidly we run down the eastern, or landward, counterslope of the Lebanon, remembering the anti-Jacobin couplet:

And down thy slopes romantic Ashdown glidesThe Derby dilly carrying six insides.

And down thy slopes romantic Ashdown glidesThe Derby dilly carrying six insides.

And down thy slopes romantic Ashdown glides

The Derby dilly carrying six insides.

Before its lowest folds we find the fifth station, Shtóra; here, as it is now 10 a.m., we breakfast. We at once realise what will be the bill of fare in the interior. Bread? perhaps. Potatoes? possibly. Beef or veal? impossible. Pig? ridiculous. Little, in fact, but lean kid and lamb, mutton, and fowls whose breast-bones pierce their skins. Wine? yes—​dear and bad.Beer or porter, seltzer or soda? decidedly no. In the winter game is to be had, woodcock and wild duck, hares and gazelles; but the diet is held to be heating and bilious. Vegetables, however, are plentiful, and, during the season, fruit is abundant, with the usual drawback in half-civilised lands: wall fruit is all but unknown, and, with the exception of the excellent grapes and the unwholesome apricots, each kind lasts only a few days.

After breakfast we spin by a straight road—​such as old Normandy knew and modern Canada still knows—​the breadth of the valley. It is laid out in little fields, copiously irrigated. The little villages which stud the plain are, like those of Egypt, not of Syria, built on mounds, and black with clay plastered over the wicker-work. Every mile or so has some classical ruin: on our right a Báal temple; to our left Chalcis ad Belum; whilst six hours of slow riding northwards, or up the valley, place you at immortal Báalbak, which the Greeks still call Heliopolis.

A rising plane and a bend to the right land us at the first of the Anti-Libanus. Instead of ascending and descending this range, as we did with the Lebanon prism, we thread a ravine called by the Druzes the Valley of Silk, from their favourite article of plunder. An easy up-slope leads to Sahlat Judaydah, the dwarf plateau about 3,600 feet high, where the watershed changes from west to east; farther on to the wild gorge Wady el Karn (“of the Thorn”), so called from its rich ribbings and the wreathing and winding of thebed. We find a stiff climb or a long zigzag at the Akabat el Tin (the Steep of Lime).

The descent of the steep ends with the Daurat el Billau (Zigzag of the Camel Thorn), and thence we fall into the Sahrat el Dimas, so called from a village which may have borrowed a name from the penitent thief. This Sahara has been described with prodigious exaggeration in order to set off by contrast the charms of the so-termed “sublime Gorge of Abana,” to which it leads. Measuring some ten kilometres, it is undoubtedly a rough bit of ground, dry as dust in the summer, and in winter swept by raving winds and piled with sleet and snow. At its eastern end the Sahara at once dips into a deep, lateral gorge, which feeds, after rains, the Barada Valley, and here we remark that curious contrast of intense fertility with utter, hopeless barrenness which characterises inner Spain. Life is in that thick line of the darkest and densest evergreen, which, smiling under the fierce and fiery sun-glare, threads the side of the valley, in the wholesome perfume of the wild plants, and in the gush and murmur of waters making endless music. Death is represented by the dull grey formation standing up in tombstones, by the sterile yellow lime-rock, and by the chalk, blinding white; and the proportion of good to bad is as one to twenty. This verdure is, the Arabs say, a cooling to the eye of the beholder; it is like the aspect of the celadon-coloured sea that beats upon the torrid West African shores. With the author of that charming book “Eothen,” “you floatalong (for the delight is as the delight of bathing) through green, wavy fields and down into the cool verdure of groves and gardens, and you quench hot eyes in shade as though in deep, rushing waters.”

The beginning of the end is at the tenth and last station, El Hamah, meaning the Head of the Valley, and we halt here for a cup of coffee. The next place of note is Dummar; here we cross the Barada torrent. This place is, despite its low site and hot and cold air, a favourite for villas; and certain wealthy Damascus usurers have here built large piles, as remarkable for the barbarity of their outer frescoes as for the tawdry decoration of the interior. The witty Damasceines call them “traps,” because they are periodically let to high officials for other considerations than hire. And now, with its slate-coloured stream, garnished with weirs on our right, the valley becomes broader and more important; the upper cliff’s are tunnelled into cut caves, Troglodyte dwellings and sepulchres of the ancients; seven veins at high levels and at low levels branch off from the main artery; and, after passing a natural gateway formed by two shield-like masses of rock, we suspect that Damascus is before us.

The first sight of Damascus was once famous in travel. But then men rode on horseback, and turned, a little beyond Damascus, sharply to the left of the present line. They took what was evidently the old Roman road, and which is still, on account of its being a short cut, affected by muleteers. Now it is nothing but an ugly climb up sheet-rock androlling stones, with bars and holes dug by the armed hoof of many a generation. They then passed through El Zaarub (the Spout); this is the old way, sunk some ten feet deep in the rock till it resembles an uncovered tunnel, and polished like glass by the traffic and transit of ages. At its mouth you suddenly turn a corner and see Damascus lying in panorama, a few hundred feet below you. “A flint set in emeralds” is the Damascus citizen’s description of what El Islam calls, and miscalls, the “smile of the Prophet” (Mohammed). Like Stambul, it is beautiful from afar, as it is foul and sore within, morally and physically. The eye at once distinguishes a long head, the northern suburb “El Salituzzah”; a central nucleus, crescent-shaped and fronting the bed of the Barada; and a long tail, or southern suburb, “El Maydan.” These three centres of whitewashed dwellings and skyline, fretted with dome and minaret, are surrounded and backed by a mass of evergreen orchard, whose outlines are sharply defined by irrigation, whilst beyond the scatter of outlying villages, glare the sunburnt yellow and the parched rich brown of the desert, whose light blue hillocks define the eastern horizon.

The prosaic approach by the French road shows little beyond ruins and graveyards: Damascus outside is a mass of graveyards, the “Great” and “Little Camps” of Constantinople, only without their cypresses; whilst within it is all graveyards and ruins, mixed with crowded and steaming bazaars.This world of graves reminds one of Job’s forlorn man dwelling “in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth, which are ready to become heaps.” The Barada in olden times had its stone embankment; the walls are now in ruins. On our right is a ruined bridge once leading to a large coffee-house, both also in ruins. As we advance we pass other ruins. But though it was prophesied that Damascus should be a “ruinous heap,” her position forbids annihilation. The second of Biblical cities, she has been destroyed again and again; her houses have been levelled with the ground, and the Tartar has played hockey with the hearts of her sons. Still she sits upon the eastern folds of the Anti-Libanus and on her gold-rolling river, boldly overlooking the desert at her base. Damascus, not Rome, deserves, if any does, to be entitled the Eternal City.

I passed twenty-three months (October 1st, 1869, to August 20th, 1871), on and off, at this most picturesque and unpleasant of residences. It was then in the transitional state, neither of Asia nor of Europe. To one who had long lived in the outer East, a return to such an ambiguous state of things was utterly disenchanting. Hassan, digging or delving in long beard and long clothes, looks more like an overgrown baby than the romantic being which your fancies paint him. Fatima, with a coloured kerchief (not a nose-bag) over her face, possibly spotted for greater hideousness, with Marseilles gloves and French bottines of yellow satin, trimmed with fringe andbugles, protruding from the white calico which might be her winding-sheet, is an absurdity: she reminded me of sundry “kings” on the West African shore, whose toilet consists of a bright bandanna and a chimney-pot hat, of the largest dimensions, coloured the liveliest sky-blue.

The first steps to be taken at Damascus were to pay and receive visits, to find a house, to hire servants, to buy horses, and, in fact, to settle ourselves. It proved no easy matter. Certain persons had amused themselves with spreading a report that my pilgrimage to Meccah had aroused Moslem fanaticism, and perhaps might cost me my life. They, as well as I, knew far better, so I was not surprised at the kind and even friendly reception given to me by Emir Abdel Kadir, of Algerine fame, and by the Dean of the great Cathedral el Amahi, the late Shaykh Abdahah el Halati. And I remember with satisfaction that, to the hour of my quitting Damascus, the Moslems never showed for me any but the most cordial feeling.

Other British consuls had been of a stay-at-home disposition, seeing nothing beyond the length of their noses. I was of a roving one, and determined to see all I could, and penetrate to the inner heart of Syria. To be shut up in Damascus was to be in prison; the breath of the desert was liberty. I soon wandered afield. One of my earliest excursions was to Palmyra. Until the spring of 1870 a traveller visiting Syria for the express purpose, perhaps, ofseeing Palmyra, “Tadmor in the Wilderness,” after being kept waiting for months at Damascus, had to return disappointed. Only the rich could afford the large Bedouin escort, for which even six thousand francs and more have been demanded. Add to this the difficulties, hardships, and dangers of the journey, the heat of the arid desert, want of water, chances of attack, the long forced marches by night and hiding by day, ending with a shabby halt of forty-eight hours at a place for which so many sacrifices had been made, and where a fortnight is the minimum required.

Since the beginning of the last century the Porte has had in view a military occupation of the caravan route between Damascus and the Euphrates. “The Turk will catch up your best hare on the back of a lame donkey,” say the Arabs, little thinking what high praise they award to the conquering race. Thecordon militairewas to extend from Damascus,viâJayrud, Karyatayn, Palmyra, and Sukhnah, to Daye on the great rim. The wells were to be commanded by block houses, the roads to be cleared by movable columns, and thus the plundering Bedouin, who refuse all allegiance to the Sultan, would be kept, perforce, in the dan, or desert, between the easternmost offsets of the Anti-Libanus and the pitch uplands of Nijd. This project was apparently rescued from the fate of good intentions by Osman Bey, a Hungarian officer who had served the Porte since 1848. He moved from Hamah with a body of some 1,600 men—​enough to cut his way throughhalf the vermin in Araby the Unblest. Presently, after occupying Palmyra, building barracks, and restoring the old Druze Castle, he proceeded eastward to Sukhnah, whence he could communicate with the force expected to march westward from Baghdad. The welcome intelligence was hailed with joy: Palmyra, so long excluded from the Oriental tour, lay open to the European traveller; half a step had been taken towards a Euphrates Valley Railway; at Damascus men congratulated themselves upon the new line of frontier, which was naturally expected to strengthen and to extend the limits of Syria; and the merchant rejoiced to learn that his caravan would be no longer liable to wholesale plunder.

A fair vision, doomed soon to fade! After six months or so of occupation, Osman Bey, whose men were half starving, became tired of Palmyra, and was recalled to Damascus. The garrison was reduced to two hundred men under a captain, whose only friend was the raki bottle, and the last I saw of the garrison was his orderly riding into Hauran, with the huge, empty demijohns dangling at his saddle-bow. The Bedouin waxed brave, and, in the spring of 1871, I was obliged to send travellers to Palmyra by a long circuit,viâthe north and the north-west.[9]

A certain official business compelled me to visit Karyatayn, which is within jurisdiction of Damascus, and my wife resolved to accompany me. In this little enterprise I was warmly seconded by the Vicomte de Perrochel, a French traveller and author, who had twice visited Damascus in the hope of reaching Tadmor, and by M. Ionine, my Russian colleague. The Governor-General, the Field Marshal commanding the army of Syria, and other high officials, lent us their best aid. We engaged a pair of dragomen, six servants, a cook, and eight muleteers; twelve mules and eight baggage-asses to carry tents and canteen, baggage and provisions; and we rode our own horses, being wrongly persuaded not to take donkeys—​on long marches they would have been a pleasant change. We were peculiarly unfortunate in the choice of head dragoman, a certain Anton Wardi, who had Italianised his name to Riza. Originally a donkey-boy at Beyrut, he made, by “skinning” sundry travellers, some 80,000 francs in ten years. He was utterly spoiled by his French friends, M. de Sauley and M. de Perrochel; he had also dragomaned the then Princess Amadeo, who, in return for his mean conduct, had promised him, and afterwards sent him, greatly to the disgust of every Italian gentleman, the Order of the Rose. This “native gentleman,” the type of the ignoblepetit bourgeoisof Syria, had been trusted without any contract having been made. He charged us a hundred francs per diem, and the others each fiftyfrancs and forty francs. When the bill was produced for settlement, it proved to be a long list ofdes extras: everything wasun extra; two bottles of cognac, reported broken, appeared asdes extras; even the water-camels weredes extras. The fact was, he had allowed, when galloping about the country, some francs to fall from his pocket, and he resolved thatles extrasshould replace them.

We altogether regretted the assistance of Mohammed, Shaykh of the Mezrab tribe, who had systematically fleeced travellers for a score of years. He demanded two napoleons a head for his wretched camels, sending a score when only one was wanted; like all other chiefs, he would not guarantee his protégés, either in purse or person, against enemies, but only against his own friends; he allowed them but two days at Palmyra; he made them march twenty, instead of fifteen, hours between Karyatayn and their destination; he concealed the fact that there are wells the whole way, in order to make them hire camels and buy water-skins; and, besides harassing them with night marches, he organised sham attacks, in order to make them duly appreciate his protection. I rejoice to say that Mohammed’s occupation has since gone; his miserable tribe was three times plundered within eighteen months, and, instead of fighting, he fell back upon the desert. May thus end all who oppose their petty interests to the general good—​all that would shut roads instead of opening them! With a view of keeping up his title to escort travellers,he sent with us a clansman upon a well-bred mare and armed with the honourable spear. But M. de Perrochel hired the mare; the crestfallen man was put upon a baggage-mare, and the poor spear was carried by a lame donkey.

Armed to the teeth, we set out in a chorus of groans and with general prognostications of evil. Ours was the first party since M. Dubois d’Angus was dangerously wounded, stripped, and turned out to die of hunger, thirst, and cold, because he could not salary the inevitable Bedouin. It would, doubtless, have been the interest of many and the delight of more to see us return in the scantiest of costumes; consequently a false report generally flew abroad that we had been pursued and plundered by the Bedouin.

The first night was passed under canvas near a ruined khan in the fifth valley plain east of the Syrian metropolis. The weather became unusually cold the next morning when we left the foggy lowland and turned to the north-east in order to cross the ridgy line of hills, which, offsetting from the Anti-Libanus, runs from Damascus toward the desert, and afterwards sweeps round to Palmyra. The line of travel was a break in the ridge. Then, gently descending, we fell into a northern depression, a section of that extensive valley in the Anti-Libanus, which, under a variety of names, runs nearly straight north-east (more exactly, 60°), to Palmyra. Nothing can be simpler than the geography of the country. The traveller cannot lose his way in the Palmyra Valleywithout crossing the high and rugged mountains which hem it in on both sides, and, if he is attacked by raiders, he can easily take refuge, and laugh at the Arab goatees. During the time of our journey the miserable little robber clans Shitai and Ghiyas had completely closed the country five hours’ riding to the east of Damascus, whilst the Sorbai and the Anergah bandits were making the Merj a battlefield and were threatening to burn down the peaceful villages. Even as we crossed the pass we were saddened by the report that a troop of Bedouin had the day before murdered a wretched peasant within easy sight of Damascus. This state of things was a national scandal to the Porte, which, of course, was never allowed to know the truth.

We resolved to advance slowly, to examine every object, and to follow the most indirect paths. Hence our march to Palmyra occupied eight days; we returned, however, in four with horses that called loudly for a week’s rest. The regular stations are as follows:—​

On the second day we dismissed our escort, one officer and two privates of irregular cavalry, who were worse than useless, and we slept at the house of Daas Agha, hereditary Chief of Jayrud. A noted sabre, and able to bring one hundred and fifty lances into the field,he was systematically neglected by the authorities, because supposed to be friendly with foreigners. Shortly after my departure he barbarously tortured two wretched Arabs, throwing them into a pit full of fire, and practising upon them with his revolver. Thereupon he was at once taken into prime favour, and received a command.

Daas Agha escorted us from Jayrud with ten of his kinsmen mounted upon their best mares. In the upland valley we suffered severely from cold, and the sleety sou’wester which cut our faces on the return was a caution.

At Karyatayn, which we reached on the fifth day, Osman Bey, who was waiting for rations, money, transport, in fact, everything, offered us the most friendly welcome, and I gave official protection to Shaykh Faris, in connection with the English post at Baghdad. The former detached with us eighty bayonets of regulars and twenty-five sabres of Irregulars, commanded by two officers. This body presently put to flight anything in the way of Bedouin; a war party of two thousand men would not have attacked us; and I really believe that a band of thirty Englishmen armed with carbines and revolvers could sweep clean the Desert of the Euphrates from end to end.

At Karyatayn we hired seventeen camels to carry water. This would have been a complete waste of money had we gone, like other travellers, by the Darb el Sultain, or High Way. Some three hours’ ride to the right, or south, of the road amongst the hillsbounding the Palmyra Valley is a fine cistern (Ibex Fountain), where water is never wanting. There is, however, a still more direct roadviâthe remains of an aqueduct and a river in the desert. This short cut from Karyatayn to Palmyra may be covered in twenty-four hours of camel walking, fifteen of horse walking, and twelve by dromedary or hard gallop. Travellers would start at 6.30 or 7 a.m., and encamp after being out from twelve to thirteen hours; but this includes breakfast and sundry halts, sometimes to inspect figures, real or imaginary, in the distance, at other times to indulge in a “spurt” after a gazelle or a wild boar.

We chose, however, the little-known Baghdad, or eastern, road. The next day we rested at a large deserted khan, and on the eighth we made our entrance into Palmyra, where we were hospitably received by Shaykh Faris. Our muleteers, for the convenience of their cattle, pitched their tents close to, and east of, the so-called Grand Colonnade, a malarious and unwholesome site. They should have encamped amongst the trees at a threshing-floor near three palms. Travellers may be strongly advised not to lodge in the native village, whose mud huts, like wasps’ nests, are all huddled within the ancient Temple of the Sun, or they may suffer from fever or ophthalmia. The water of Tadmor is sulphurous, like Harrogate, the climate is unhealthy, and the people are ragged and sickly. May there, as in most parts of the northern hemisphere, is the best travelling-season, and in any but aphenomenal year the traveller need not fear to encounter, as we did, ice and snow, siroccos and furious sou’westers.

If asked whether Palmyra is worth all this trouble, I should reply “No” and “Yes.” No, if you merely go there, stay two days, and return, especially after sighting noble Báalbak. Certainly not for the Grand Colonnade of weather-beaten limestone, by a stretch of courtesy called marble, which, rain-washed and earthquake-shaken, looks like a system of galleries. Not for the Temple of the Sun, the building of a Roman emperor, a second-rate affair, an architectural evidence of Rome’s declining days. Yes, if you would study the site and the environs, which are interesting and only partially explored, make excavations, and collect coins and relics, which may be bought for a song.

The site of Palmyra is very interesting; she stands between the mountains and the sea; like Damascus, she sits upon the eastern slope of the Anti-Libanus, facing the wilderness, but unhappily she has a dry torrent bed, the Wady el Sayl, instead of a rushing Barada. She is built upon the shore cape, where the sandy sea breaks upon its nearest headlands. This sea is the mysterious Wilderness of the Euphrates, whose ships are camels, whose yachts are high-bred mares, and whose cock-boats are mules and asses. She is on the very threshold of the mountains, which the wild cavalry cannot scour, as they do the level plain. And her position is such that we have not heard the last of the Tadmor, or, as the Arabs callher, Tudmur. Nor will it be difficult to revive her. A large tract can be placed under cultivation, where there shall be protection for life and property; old wells exist in the ruins; foresting the highlands to the north and west will cause rain; and the aqueducts in the old days may easily be repaired.

I am unwilling to indulge in a description of the modern ruin of the great old depôt, which has employed so many pens. But very little has been said concerning the old tomb-towers, which have taken at Palmyra the place of Egyptian pyramids. Here, as elsewhere in ancient Syria, sepulture was extramural, and every settlement was approached by one or more Viâ Appia, much resembling that of ancient Rome. At Palmyra there are, or, rather, were, notably two: one (south-west) upon the high road to Damascus; the other, north-west of the official or monumental city, formed, doubtless, the main approach from Hauran and Hamah. The two are lined on both sides with those interesting monuments, whose squat, solid forms of gloomy and unsquared sandstone contrast remarkably with the bastard classical and Roman architecture, meretricious in all its details, and glittering from afar in white limestone. Inscriptions in the Palmyrian character prove that they date from aboutA.D.2 and 102; but they have evidently been restored, and this perhaps fixes the latest restoration. It is highly probable that the heathen method of burial declined under the Roman rule, especially afterA.D.130, when the Great Half-way Houseagain changed its name to Adrianopolis. Still, vestiges of the old custom are found in the Hauran and in the Druze Mountain west of the great valley, extending deep into the second century, when, it is believed, Gassanides of Damascus had abandoned their heathen faith for Christianity. I found in the tombs, or cells, fragments of mummies, and these, it is suspected, were the first ever brought to England. Almost all the skulls contained date-stones, more or less, and a peach stone and an apricot stone were found under similar circumstances. At Shathah we picked up in the mummy-towers almond shells with the sharp ends cut off and forming baby cups.

There are three tomb-towers at Palmyra still standing, and perhaps likely to yield good results. The people call them Kasr el Zaynah (Pretty Palace), Kasr el Azin (Palace of the Maiden), and Kasr el Arus (Palace of the Bride). They number four and five stories, but the staircases, which run up the thickness of the walls, are broken, and so are the monolithic slabs which form the lower floors. Explorers, therefore, must take with them ropes and hooks, ladders which will reach to eighty feet, planks to act as bridges, and a short crowbar. We had none of these requirements, nor could the wretched village provide them. I have little doubt that the upper stories would be found to contain bones, coins, and pottery, perhaps entire mummies.

The shortness of our visit allowed me only a day and a half to try the fortune of excavation at Palmyra.It was easy to hire a considerable number of labourers at two and a half piastres a head per diem—​say 6d.—​when in other places the wages would be at least double. Operations began (April 15th) at the group of tomb-towers bearing west-south-west from the great Temple of the Sun: I chose this group because it appeared the oldest of the series. The fellahs, or peasants, know it as Kusin Ahi Sayl (Palaces of the Father of a Torrent); and they stare when told that these massive buildings are not royal residences but tombs. Here the tombs in the several stages were easily cleared out by my forty-five coolies, who had nothing but diminutive picks and bars, grain-lugs and body-cloths, which they converted into buckets for removing sand and rubbish. But these cells and those of the adjoining ruins had before been ransacked, and they supplied nothing beyond skulls, bones, and shreds of mummy cloth, whose dyes were remarkably brilliant.

The hands were then applied to an adjoining mound: it offered a tempting resemblance to the undulations of ground which cover the complicated chambered catacombs already laid open, and into one of which, some years ago, a camel fell, the roof having given way. After reaching a stratum of snow-white gypsum, which appeared to be artificial, though all hands agreed that it was not, we gave up the task, as time pressed so hard. The third attempt laid open the foundation of a house, and showed us the well, or rain-cistern, shaped, as such reservoirs are still in the Holy Land,like a soda-water bottle. The fourth trial was more successful; during our absence the workmen came upon two oval slabs of soft limestone, each with its kit-cat in high relief. One was a man with straight features, short, curly beard, and hair disposed, as appears to have been the fashion for both sexes, in three circular rolls. The other was a feminine bust, with features of a type so exaggerated as to resemble the negro. A third and similar work of art was brought up, but the head had been removed. It would be hard to explain the excitement caused by these wonderful discoveries; report flew abroad that gold images of life-size had been dug up, and the least disposed to exaggeration declared that chests full of gold coins and ingots had fallen to our lot.

On the next morning we left Palmyra, and, after a hard gallop which lasted for the best part of four days, we found ourselves, not much the worse for wear, once more at Damascus.

[8]Burton writes of Syria in 1870. The journey from Beyrut to Damascus has now been made easy by the opening of the railway. The line rises some four thousand feet, crosses two ranges of mountains on the Lebanon, and passes through some beautiful scenery. After traversing the Plain of Bakaa through the Anti-Lebanon, the railway enters the Yahfâfeh, continuing to Sûk Wady Barada, the ancient Abila, where is seen the rock-cut aqueducts made by Zenobia to convey the water of the Abana to Palmyra; then, passing the beautiful fountain of Fijeh and the remains of an old temple, the train follows the River Abana until it arrives at Damascus.—​W. H. W.

[9]The journey from Damascus to Palmyra can now be made in five daysviâMareau Said and Niah—​the pleasantest route, passing by much water, and averaging six to seven hours riding a day. But Palmyra is still under the care of rapacious shayks, and great care has to be observed in arranging for a tour to that city of grand ruins. Things are a little better than they were in Burton’s day, but there is still danger.—​W. H. W.

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