massive square portal, rebuilt by some Arab ruler, and go out on the
old Roman bridge which spans the ravine. The aqueduct carried by the
bridge is still full of flowing water, and the drops which fall from it
in a fine mist make a little rainbow as the afternoon sun shines through
the archway draped with maidenhair fern. On the stone pavement of the
bridge we trace the ruts worn two thousand years ago by the chariots of
the men who conquered the world. The chariots have all rolled by. On the
broken edge of the tower above the gateway sits a ragged Bedouin boy,
making shrill, plaintive music with his pipe of reeds.
* * * * *
We repose in front of our tents among the olive-trees at the close of
the day. The cool sound of running streams and rustling poplars is on
the moving air, and the orange-golden sunset enchants the orchard with
mystical light. All the swift visions of striving Saracens and
Crusaders, of conquering Greeks and Romans, fade away from us, and we
see the figure of the Man of Nazareth with His little company of friends
and disciples coming up from Galilee.
It was here that Jesus retreated with His few faithful followers from
the opposition of the Scribes and Pharisees. This was the northernmost
spot of earth ever trodden by His feet, the longest distance from
Jerusalem that He ever travelled. Here in this exquisite garden of
Nature, in a region of the Gentiles, within sight of the shrines devoted
to those Greek and Roman rites which were so luxurious and so tolerant,
four of the most beautiful and significant events of His life and
ministry took place.
He asked His disciples plainly to tell their secret thought of Him--whom
they believed their Master to be. And when Peter answered simply: "Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God," Jesus blessed him for the
answer, and declared that He would build His church upon that rock.
Then He took Peter and James and John with Him and climbed one of the
high and lonely slopes of Hermon. There He was transfigured before them,
His face shining like the sun and His garments glistening like the snow
on the mountain-peaks. But when they begged to stay there with Him, He
led them down to the valley again, among the sinning and suffering
children of men.
At the foot of the mount of transfiguration He healed the demoniac boy
whom his father had brought to the other disciples, but for whom they
had been unable to do anything; and He taught them that the power to
help men comes from faith and prayer.
And then, at last, He turned His steps from this safe and lovely refuge,
(where He might surely have lived in peace, or from which He might have
gone out unmolested into the wide Gentile world), backward to His own
country, His own people, the great, turbulent, hard-hearted Jewish city,
and the fate which was not to be evaded by One who loved sinners and
came to save them. He went down into Galilee, down through Samaria and
Perea, down to Jerusalem, down to Gethsemane and to Golgotha,--fearless,
calm,--sustained and nourished by that secret food which satisfied His
heart in doing the will of God.
* * * * *
It was in the quest of this Jesus, in the hope of somehow drawing nearer
to Him, that we made our pilgrimage to the Holy Land. And now, in the
cool of the evening at Caesarea Philippi, we ask ourselves whether our
desire has been granted, our hope fulfilled?
Yes, more richly, more wonderfully than we dared to dream. For we have
found a new vision of Christ, simpler, clearer, more satisfying, in the
freedom and reality of God's out-of-doors.
Not through the mists and shadows of an infinite regret, the sadness of
sweet, faded dreams and hopes that must be resigned, as Pierre Loti saw
the phantom of a Christ whose irrevocable disappearance has left the
world darker than ever!
Not amid strange portents and mysterious rites, crowned with I know not
what aureole of traditionary splendours, founder of elaborate ceremonies
and centre of lamplit shrines, as Matilde Serao saw the image of that
Christ whom the legends of men have honoured and obscured!
The Jesus whom we have found is the Child of Nazareth playing among the
flowers; the Man of Galilee walking beside the lake, healing the sick,
comforting the sorrowful, cheering the lonely and despondent; the
well-beloved Son of God transfigured in the sunset glow of snowy Hermon,
weeping by the sepulchre in Bethany, agonizing in the moonlit garden of
Gethsemane, giving His life for those who did not understand Him, though
they loved Him, and for those who did not love Him because they did not
understand Him, and rising at last triumphant over death,--such a
Saviour as all men need and as no man could ever have imagined if He had
not been real.
His message has not died away, nor will it ever die. For confidence and
calm joy He tells us to turn to Nature. For love and sacrifice He bids
us live close to our fellowmen. For comfort and immortal hope He asks us
to believe in Him and in our Father, God.
That is all.
But the bringing of that heavenly message made the country to which it
came the Holy Land. And the believing of that message, to-day, will lead
any child of man into the kingdom of heaven. And the keeping of that
faith, the following of that Life, will transfigure any country beneath
the blue sky into a holy land.
_THE PSALM OF A SOJOURNER_
_Thou hast taken me into the tent of the world, O God:
Beneath thy blue canopy I have found shelter:
Therefore thou wilt not deny me the right of a guest._
_Naked and poor I arrived at the door before sunset:
Thou hast refreshed me with beautiful bowls of milk:
As a great chief thou hast set forth food in abundance._
_I have loved the daily delights of thy dwelling:
Thy moon and thy stars have lighted me to my bed:
In the morning I have found joy with thy servants._
_Surely thou wilt not send me away in the darkness?
There the enemy Death is lying in wait for my soul:
Thou art the host of my life and I claim thy protection._
_Then the Lord of the tent of the world made answer:
The right of a guest endureth but for an appointed time:
After three days and three nights cometh the day of departure._
_Yet hearken to me since thou fearest the foe in the dark:
I will make with thee a new covenant of everlasting hospitality:
Behold I will come unto thee as a stranger and be thy guest._
_Poor and needy will I come that thou mayest entertain me:
Meek and lowly will I come that thou mayest find a friend:
With mercy and with truth will I come to give thee comfort._
_Therefore open the door of thy heart and bid me welcome:
In this tent of the world I will be thy brother of the bread:
And when thou farest forth I will be thy companion forever._
_Then my soul rested in the word of the Lord:
And I saw that the curtains of the world were shaken,
But I looked beyond them to the eternal camp-fires of my friend._
XII
THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS
I
THROUGH THE LAND OF THE DRUSES
You may go to Damascus now by rail, if you like, and have a choice
between two rival routes, one under government ownership, the other
built and managed by a corporation. But to us encamped among the silvery
olives at Baniyas, beside the springs of Jordan, it seemed a happy
circumstance that both railways were so far away that it would have
taken longer to reach them than to ride our horses straight into the
city. We were delivered from the modern folly of trying to save time by
travelling in a conveyance more speedy than picturesque, and left free
to pursue our journey in a leisurely, independent fashion and by the
road that would give us most pleasure. So we chose the longer way, the
northern path around Mount Hermon, through the country of the Druses,
instead of the more frequented road to the east by Kafr Hawar.
How delightful is the morning of such a journey! The fresh face of the
world bathed in sparkling dew; the greetings from tent to tent as we
four friends make our rendezvous from the far countries of sleep; the
relish of breakfast in the open air; the stir of the camp in preparation
for a flitting; canvas sinking to the ground, bales and boxes heaped
together, mule-bells tinkling through the grove, horses refreshed by
their long rest whinnying and nipping at each other in play--all these
are charming variations and accompaniments to the old tune of "Boots and
Saddles."
The immediate effect of such a setting out for a day's ride is to renew
in the heart those "vital feelings of delight" which make one simply and
inexplicably glad to be alive. We are delivered from those morbid
questionings and exorbitant demands by which we are so often possessed
and plagued as by some strange inward malady. We feel a sense of health
and harmony diffused through body and mind as we ride over the beautiful
terrace which slopes down from Baniyas to Tel-el Kadi.
We are glad of the green valonia oaks that spread their shade over us,
and of the blossoming hawthorns that scatter their flower-snow on the
hillside. We are glad of the crested larks that rise warbling from the
grass, and of the buntings and chaffinches that make their small merry
music in every thicket, and of the black and white chats that shift
their burden of song from stone to stone beside the path, and of the
cuckoo that tells his name to us from far away, and of the splendid
bee-eaters that glitter over us like a flock of winged emeralds as we
climb the rocky hill toward the north. We are glad of the broom in
golden flower, and of the pink and white rock-roses, and of the spicy
fragrance of mint and pennyroyal that our horses trample out as they
splash through the spring holes and little brooks. We are glad of the
long, wide views westward over the treeless mountains of Naphtali and
the southern ridges of the Lebanon, and of the glimpses of the ruined
castles of the Crusaders, Kal'at esh-Shakif and Hunin, perched like
dilapidated eagles on their distant crags. Everything seems to us like a
personal gift. We have the feeling of ownership for this day of all the
world's beauty. We could not explain or justify it to any sad
philosopher who might reproach us for unreasoning felicity. We should be
defenceless before his arguments and indifferent to his scorn. We should
simply ride on into the morning, reflecting in our hearts something of
the brightness of the birds' plumage, the cheerfulness of the brooks'
song, the undimmed hyaline of the sky, and so, perhaps, fulfilling the
Divine Intention of Nature as well as if we chose to becloud our mirror
with melancholy thoughts.
* * * * *
We are following up the valley of the longest and highest, but not the
largest, of the sources of the Jordan: the little River Hasbani, a
strong and lovely stream, which rises somewhere in the northern end of
the Wadi et-Teim, and flows along the western base of Mount Hermon,
receiving the tribute of torrents which burst out in foaming springs far
up the ravines, and are fed underground by the melting of the perpetual
snow of the great mountain. Now and then we have to cross one of these
torrents, by a rude stone bridge or by wading. All along the way Hermon
looks down upon us from his throne, nine thousand feet in air. His head
is wrapped in a turban of spotless white, like a Druse chieftain, and
his snowy winter cloak still hangs down over his shoulders, though its
lower edges are already fringed and its seams opened by the warm suns of
April.
Presently we cross a bridge to the west bank of the Hasbani, and ride up
the delightful vale where poplars and mulberries, olives, almonds, vines
and figs, grow abundantly along the course of the river. There are low
weirs across the stream for purposes of irrigation, and a larger dam
supplies a mill with power. To the left is the sharp barren ridge of the
Jebel ez-Zohr separating us from the gorge of the River Litani. Groups
of labourers are at work on the watercourses among the groves and
gardens. Vine-dressers are busy in the vineyards. Ploughmen are driving
their shallow furrows through the stony fields on the hillside. The
little river, here in its friendliest mood, winds merrily among the
plantations and orchards which it nourishes, making a cheerful noise
over beds of pebbles, and humming a deeper note where the clear green
water plunges over a weir.
We have now been in the saddle five hours; the sun is ardent; the
temperature is above eighty-five degrees in the shade, and along the
bridle-path there is no shade. We are hungry, thirsty, and tired. As we
cross the river again, splashing through a ford, our horses drink
eagerly and attempt to lie down in the cool water. We have to use strong
persuasion not only with them, but also with our own spirits, to pass by
the green grass and the sheltering olive-trees on the east bank and push
on up the narrow, rocky defile in which Hasbeiya is hidden. The
bridle-path is partly paved with rough cobblestones, hard and slippery,
which make the going weariful. The heat presses on us like a burden.
Things that would have delighted us in the morning now give us no
pleasure. We have made the greedy traveller's mistake of measuring our
march by the extent of our endurance instead of by the limit of our
enjoyment.
Hasbeiya proves to be a rather thriving and picturesque town built
around the steep sides of a bay or opening in the valley. The
amphitheatre of hills is terraced with olive-orchards and vineyards.
There are also many mulberry-trees cultivated for the silkworms, and the
ever-present figs and almonds are not wanting. The stone houses of the
town rise, on winding paths, one above the other, many of them having
arched porticoes, red-tiled roofs, and green-latticed windows. It is a
place of about five thousand population, now more than half Christian,
but formerly one of the strongholds and capitals of the mysterious Druse
religion.
Our tents are pitched at the western end of the town, on a low terrace
where olive-trees are growing. When we arrive we find the camp
surrounded and filled with curious, laughing children. The boys are a
little troublesome at first, but a word from an old man who seems to be
in charge brings them to order, and at least fifty of them, big and
little, squat in a semicircle on the grass below the terrace, watching
us with their lustrous brown eyes.
They look full of fun, those young Druses and Maronites and Greeks and
Mohammedans, so I try a mild joke on them, by pretending that they are
a class and that I am teaching them a lesson. "A, B, C," I chant, and
wait for them to repeat after me. They promptly take the lesson out of
my hands and recite the entire English alphabet in chorus, winding up
with shouts of "Goot mornin'! How you do?" and merry laughter. They are
all pupils from the mission schools which have been established since
the great Massacre of 1860, and which are helping, I hope, to make
another forever impossible.
One of our objects in coming to Hasbeiya was to ascend Mount Hermon. We
send for the Druse guide and the Christian guide; both of them assure us
that the adventure is impossible on account of the deep snow, which has
increased during the last fortnight. We can not get within a mile of the
summit. The snow will be waist-deep in the hollows. The mountain is
inaccessible until June. So, after exchanging visits with the
missionaries and seeing something of their good work, we ride on our way
the next morning.
II
RASHEIYA AND ITS AMERICANISM
The journey to Rasheiya is like that of the preceding day, except that
the bridle-paths are rougher and more precipitous, and the views wider
and more splendid. We have crossed the Hasbani again, and leaving the
Druses' valley, the Wadi et-Teim, behind us, have climbed the high
table-land to the west. We did not know why George Cavalcanty led us
away from the path marked in our Baedeker, but we took it for granted
that he had some good reason. It is well not to ask a wise dragoman all
the questions that you can think of. Tell him where you want to go, and
let him show you how to get there. Certainly we are not inclined to
complain of the longer and steeper route by which he has brought us,
when we sit down at lunch-time among the limestone crags and pinnacles
of the wild upland and look abroad upon a landscape which offers the
grandeur of immense outlines and vast distances, the beauty of a crystal
clearness in all its infinitely varied forms, and the enchantment of
gemlike colours, delicate, translucent, vivid, shifting and playing in
hues of rose and violet and azure and purple and golden brown and bright
green, as if the bosom of Mother Earth were the breast of a dove,
breathing softly in the sunlight.
As we climb toward Rasheiya we find ourselves going back a month or more
into early spring. Here are the flowers that we saw in the Plain of
Sharon on the first of April, gorgeous red anemones, fragrant purple and
white cyclamens, delicate blue irises. The fig-tree is putting forth her
tender leaf. The vines, lying flat on the ground, are bare and dormant.
The springing grain, a few inches long, is in its first flush of almost
dazzling green.
The town, built in terraces on three sides of a rocky hill, 4,100 feet
above the sea, commands an extensive view. Hermon is in full sight;
snow-capped Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon face each other for forty miles;
and the little lake of Kafr Kuk makes a spot of blue light in the
foreground.
We are camped on the threshing-floor, a level meadow beyond and below
the town; and there the Rasheiyan gilded youth come riding their
blooded horses in the afternoon, running races over the smooth turf and
showing off their horsemanship for our benefit.
There is something very attractive about these Arabian horses as you see
them in their own country. They are spirited, fearless, sure-footed, and
yet, as a rule, so docile that they may be ridden with a halter. They
are good for a long journey, or a swift run, or a _fantasia_. The
prevailing colour among them is gray, but you see many bays and sorrels
and a few splendid blacks. An Arabian stallion satisfies the romantic
ideal of how a horse ought to look. His arched neck, small head, large
eyes wide apart, short body, round flanks, delicate pasterns, and little
feet; the way he tosses his mane and cocks his flowing tail when he is
on parade; the swiftness and spring of his gallop, the dainty grace of
his walk--when you see these things you recognise at once the real,
original horse which the painters used to depict in their "Portraits of
General X on his Favourite Charger."
I asked Calvalcanty what one of these fine creatures would cost. "A good
horse, two or three hundred dollars; an extra-good one, four hundred; a
fancy one, who knows?"
We find Rasheiya full of Americanism. We walk out to take photographs,
and at almost every street corner some young man who has been in the
United States or Canada salutes us with: "How are you to-day? You
fellows come from America? What's the news there? Is Bryan elected yet?
I voted for McKinley. I got a store in Kankakee. I got one in Jackson,
Miss." A beautiful dark-eyed girl, in a dreadful department-store dress,
smiles at us from an open door and says: "Take my picture? I been at
America."
One talkative and friendly fellow joins us in our walk; in fact he takes
possession of us, guiding us up the crooked alleys and out on the
housetops which command the best views, and showing us off to his
friends,--an old gentleman who is spinning goats' hair for the coarse
black tents (St. Paul's trade), and two ladies who are grinding corn in
a hand-mill, one pushing and the other pulling. Our self-elected guide
has spent seven years in Illinois and Indiana, peddling and
store-keeping. He has returned to Rasheiya as a successful adventurer
and built a stone house with a red roof and an arched portico. Is he
going to settle down there for life? "I not know," says he. "Guess I
want sell my house now. This country beautiful; I like look at her. But
America free--good government--good place to live. Gee whiz! I go back
quick, you bet."
III
ANTI-LEBANON AND THE RIVER ABANA
Our path the next day leads up to the east over the ridges of the slight
depression which lies between Mount Hermon and the rest of the
Anti-Lebanon range. We pass the disconsolate village and lake of Kafr
Kuk. The water which shone so blue in the distance now confesses itself
a turbid, stagnant pool, locked in among the hills, and breeding fevers
for those who live beside it. The landscape grows wild and sullen as we
ascend; the hills are strewn with shattered fragments of rock, or worn
into battered and fantastic crags; the bottoms of the ravines are
soaked and barren as if the winter floods had just left them. Presently
we are riding among great snowdrifts. It is the first day of May. We
walk on the snow, and pack a basketful on one of the mules, and pelt
each other with snowballs.
We have gone back another month in the calendar and are now at the place
where "winter lingers in the lap of spring." Snowdrops, crocuses, and
little purple grape-hyacinths are blooming at the edge of the drifts.
The thorny shrubs and bushes, and spiny herbs like astragalus and
cousinia, are green-stemmed but leafless, and the birds that flutter
among them are still in the first rapture of vernal bliss, the gay music
that follows mating and precedes nesting. Big dove-coloured partridges,
beautifully marked with black and red, are running among the rocks. We
are at the turn of the year, the surprising season when the tide of
light and life and love swiftly begins to rise.
From this Alpine region we descend through two months in half a day. It
is mid-March on a beautiful green plain where herds of horses were
feeding around an encampment of black Bedouin tents; the beginning of
April at Khan Meithelun, on the post-road, where there are springs, and
poplar-groves, in one of which we eat our lunch, with lemonade cooled by
the snows of Hermon; the end of April at Dimas, where we find our tents
pitched upon the threshing-floor, a levelled terrace of clay looking
down upon the flat roofs of the village.
Our camp is 3,600 feet above sea-level, and our morning path follows the
telegraph-poles steeply down to the post-road, and so by a more gradual
descent along the hard and dusty turnpike toward Damascus. The
landscape, at first, is bare and arid: rounded reddish mountains, gray
hillsides, yellowish plains faintly tinged with a thin green. But at
El-Hami the road drops into the valley of the Barada, the far-famed
River Abana, and we find ourselves in a verdant paradise.
Tall trees arch above the road; white balconies gleam through the
foliage; the murmur and the laughter of flowing streams surround us. The
railroad and the carriage-road meet and cross each other down the vale.
Country houses and cafes, some dingy and dilapidated, others new and
trim, are half hidden among the groves or perched close beside the
highway. Poplars and willows, plane-trees and lindens, walnuts and
mulberries, apricots and almonds, twisted fig-trees and climbing roses,
grow joyfully wherever the parcelled water flows in its many channels.
Above this line, on the sides of the vale, everything is bare and brown
and dry. But the depth of the valley is an embroidered sash of bloom
laid across the sackcloth of the desert. And in the centre of this long
verdure runs the parent river, a flood of clear green; rushing, leaping,
curling into white foam; filling its channel of thirty or forty feet
from bank to bank, and making the silver-leafed willows and poplars,
that stand with their feet in the stream, tremble with the swiftness of
its cool, strong current. Truly Naaman the Syrian was right in his
boasting to the prophet Elisha: Abana, the river of Damascus, is better
than all the waters of Israel.
The vale narrows as we descend along the stream, until suddenly we pass
through a gateway of steep cliffs and emerge upon an open plain beset
with mountains on three sides. The river, parting into seven branches,
goes out to water a hundred and fifty square miles of groves and
gardens, and we follow the road through the labyrinth of rich and
luscious green. There are orchards of apricots enclosed with high mud
walls; and open gates through which we catch glimpses of crimson
rose-trees and scarlet pomegranates and little fields of wheat glowing
with blood-red poppies; and hedges of white hawthorn and wild brier; and
trees, trees, trees, everywhere embowering us and shutting us in.