_I.--Alexandria_
Bartholomew Eliot George Warburton, who wrote as Eliot
Warburton, was born in 1810 in Tullamore, Ireland, and
died in 1852. He graduated at Cambridge, where he was the
fellow student and intimate friend of Hallam, Monckton
Milnes, and Kinglake (of "Eothen" fame). He studied law
and was called to the bar, but instead of practising in
the legal profession took to a most adventurous career of
travel, and wrote of his experiences in a spirited and
romantic style which soon secured him a wide reputation.
His eight works include "The Crescent and the Cross,"
which appeared in 1845, after his wanderings in Egypt,
Syria, Turkey, and Greece; "Memoirs of Prince Rupert," and
"Darien, or the Merchant Prince." He was sailing for
Panama, as an agent of the Atlantic and Pacific Company,
when he was lost in the steamship Amazon, which was burnt
off Land's End on January 4, 1852. Warburton was beloved
for his generous, amiable, and chivalrous disposition. His
peculiar gift for embodying in graphic terms his
appreciation of striking scenery and his picturesque
delineation of foreign manners and customs give his works
a permanent place in the classics of travel.
We took leave of Old England and the Old Year together. On the first of
January we left Southampton; on the evening of the 2nd we took leave of
England at Falmouth. Towards evening, on the 18th day since leaving
England, the low land of Egypt was visible from the mast-head. The only
object visible from the decks was a faint speck on the horizon, but that
speck was Pompey's Pillar. This is the site Alexander selected from his
wide dominions, and which Napoleon pronounced to be unrivalled in
importance. Here stood the great library of antiquity, and here the
Hebrew Scriptures expanded into Greek under the hands of the Septuagint.
Here Cleopatra revelled with her Roman conquerors. Here St. Mark
preached the truth on which Origen attempted to refine, and here
Athanasius held warlike controversy.
The bay is crowded with merchant vessels of every nation. Men-of-war
barges shoot past you with crews dressed in what look like red nightcaps
and white petticoats. Here, an "ocean patriarch" (as the Arabs call
Noah), with white turban and flowing beard, is steering a little ark
filled with unclean-looking animals of every description; and there, a
crew of swarthy Egyptians, naked from the waist upwards, are pulling
some pale-faced strangers to a vessel with loosed top.
The crumbling quays are piled with bales of eastern merchandise,
islanded in a sea of white turbans wreathed over dark, melancholy faces.
High above the variegated crowds peer the long necks of hopeless-looking
camels. Passing through the Arab city, you emerge into the Frank
quarter, a handsome square of tall white houses, over which the flags of
every nation in Europe denote the residences of the various consuls. In
this square is an endless variety of races and costumes most
picturesquely grouped together, and lighted brilliantly by a glowing sun
in a cloudless sky. In one place, a procession of women waddles along,
wrapped in large shroud-like veils from head to foot. In another, a
group of Turks in long flowing drapery are seated in a circle smoking
their chiboukes in silence.
_II.--The Nile_
"Egypt is the gift of the Nile," said one who was bewildered by its
antiquity before our history was born (at least he, Herodotus, was
called the father of it). This is an exotic land. That river, winding
like a serpent through its paradise, has brought it from far regions.
Those quiet plains have tumbled down the cataracts; those demure gardens
have flirted with the Isle of Flowers (Elephantina), five hundred miles
away; and those very pyramids have floated down the waves of Nile. In
short, to speak chemically, that river is a solution of Ethiopia's
richest regions, and that vast country is merely a precipitate.
Arrived at Alexandria, the traveller is yet far distant from the Nile.
The Canopic mouth is long since closed up by the mud of Ethiopia, and
the Arab conquerors of Egypt were obliged to form a canal to connect
this seaport with the river. Under the Mamelukes, this canal had also
become choked up. When Mehemet Ali rose to power his clear intellect at
once comprehended the importance of the ancient emporium. Alexandria was
then become a mere harbour for pirates. The desert and the sea were
gradually encroaching on its boundaries, but the Pasha ordered the
desert to bring forth corn and the sea to retire. Up rose a stately city
of 60,000 inhabitants, and as suddenly yawned the canal which was to
connect the new city with the Nile.
In the greatness and cruelty of its accomplishment, this Mahmoudie canal
may vie with the gigantic labours of the Pharaohs. From the villages of
the delta were swept 250,000 men, women, and children, and heaped like a
ridge along the banks of the fatal canal. They had only provisions for a
month, and famine soon made its appearance. It was a fearful sight to
see the multitude convulsively working against time. As a dying horse
bites the ground in his agony, they tore up that great grave--25,000
people perished, but the grim contract was completed, and in six weeks
the waters of the Nile were led to Alexandria.
It was midnight when we arrived at Atfeh, the point of junction with the
Nile. We are now on the sacred river. In some hours we emerged from the
Rosetta branch and the prospect began to improve. Villages sheltered by
graceful groups of palm-trees, mosques, green plains, and at length the
desert--the most imposing sight in the world, except the sea. We felt
we were actually in Egypt and our spirits rose. By the time the evening
and the mist had rendered the country invisible, we had persuaded
ourselves that Egypt was indeed the lovely land that Moore has so
delightfully imagined in the pages of the "Epicurean."
_III--Cairo and Heliopolis_
Morning found us anchored off Boulak, the port of Cairo. Toward the
river it is faced by factories and storehouses; within, you find
yourself in a labyrinth of brown, narrow streets, that resemble rather
rifts in some mud mountain, than anything with which architecture has
had to do. Yet here and there the blankness of the walls is relieved and
broken by richly worked lattices, and specimens of arabesque masonry.
Gaudy bazaars strike the eye, and the picturesque population that swarms
everywhere keeps the interest awake. On emerging from the lanes of
Boulak, Cairo, Grand Cairo! opens on the view; and never did fancy flash
upon the poet's eye a more superb illusion of power and beauty than the
"city of Victory" presents from a distance. ("El Kahira," the Arabic
epithet of this city, means "the Victorious.") The bold range of the
Mokattam mountains is purpled by the rising sun, its craggy summits are
clearly cut against the glowing sky, it runs like a promontory into a
sea of verdure, here wavy with a breezy plantation of olives, there
darkened with accacia groves.
Just where the mountain sinks upon the plain, the citadel stands upon
its last eminence, and widely spread beneath it lies the city, a forest
of minarets with palm-trees intermingled, and the domes of innumerable
mosques rising, like enormous bubbles, over the sea of houses. Here and
there, richly green gardens are islanded within that sea, and the whole
is girt round with picturesque towers and ramparts, occasionally
revealed through vistas of the wood of sycamores and fig-trees that
surround it. It has been said that "God the first garden made, and the
first city Cain," but here they seem commingled with the happiest
effect.
The objects of interest in the neighbourhood of Cairo are very numerous.
Let us first canter off to Heliopolis, the On of Scripture. It is only
five miles of a pathway, shaded by sycamore and plane-trees, from which
we emerge occasionally into green savannahs or luxuriant cornfields,
over which the beautiful white ibis are hovering in flocks.
In Heliopolis, the Oxford of Old Egypt, stood the great Temple of the
Sun. Here the beautiful and the wise studied love and logic 4,000 years
ago. Here Joseph was married to the fair Asenath. Here Plato and
Herodotus studied and here the darkness which veiled the Great Sacrifice
was observed by a heathen astronomer, Dionysius the Areopagite. We found
nothing, however, on the site of this ancient city, except a small
garden of orange-trees, with a magnificent obelisk in the centre.
_IV.--The Market of Sorrow_
One day while in Cairo I went to visit the slave-markets, one of which
is held without the city, in the courtyard of a deserted mosque. I was
received by a mild-looking Nubian, who led me in silence to inspect his
stock. I found about thirty girls scattered in groups about an inner
court. The gate was open, but there seemed no thought of escape. Where
could they go, poor things? Some were grinding millet between two
stones; some were kneading flour into bread; some were chatting in the
sunshine; some sleeping in the shade.
One or two looked sad and lonely enough, until their gloomy countenances
were lit up with hope--the hope of being bought! Their faces for the
most part were woefully blank, and many wore an awfully animal
expression. Yet there were several figures of exquisite symmetry among
them, which, had they been indeed the bronze statues they resembled,
would have attracted the admiration of thousands, and would have been
valued at twenty times the price that was set on these immortal beings.
Their proprietor showed them off as a horse-dealer does his cattle,
examining their teeth, removing their body-clothes, and exhibiting their
paces.
It is like the change from night to morning, to pass from these dingy
crowds to the white slaves from Georgia and Circassia. The commodities
of this department of the human bazaars are only purchased by wealthy
and powerful Moslems; and, when purchased, are destined to form part of
the female aristocracy of Cairo. These fetch from one, two, three, or
even five hundred pounds, and being so much more valuable than the
Africans, are much more carefully tended. Some were smoking; some
chatting merrily together; some sitting in dreamy languor. All their
attitudes were very graceful.
They were for the most part exquisitely fair; but I was disappointed in
their beauty. The sunny hair and heaven-blue eyes, that in England
produce such an angel-like and intellectual effect, seemed to me here
mere flax and beads; and I left them to the "turbaned Turk" without a
sigh.
_V.--The Harem_
Difficult a study as woman presents in all countries, that difficulty
deepens almost into impossibility in a land where even to look upon her
is a matter of danger or of death. The seclusion of the hareem is
preserved in the very streets by means of an impenetrable veil; the
well-bred Egyptian averts his eyes as she passes by; she is ever to
remain an object of mystery; and the most intimate acquaintance never
inquires after the wife of his friend, or affects to know of her
existence.
An English lady, visiting an Odalisque, inquired what pleasure her
profusion of rich ornaments could afford, as no person except her
husband was ever to behold them. "And for whom do _you_ adorn yourself?
Is it for other men?" replied the fair barbarian.
I have conversed with several European ladies who had visited hareems,
and they have all confessed their inability to convince the Eastern
wives of the unhappiness or hardship of their state. It is true that the
inmate of the hareem knows nothing of the wild liberty (as it seems to
her) that the European woman enjoys. She has never witnessed the
domestic happiness that crowns a fashionable life, or the peace of mind
and purity of heart that reward the labours of a London season. And what
can _she_ know of the disinterested affection and changeless constancy
of ball-room belles, in the land where woman is all free?
Let them laugh on in their happy ignorance of a better lot, while round
them is gathered all that their lord can command of luxury and
pleasantness. His wealth is hoarded for them alone; he permits himself
no ostentation, except the respectable one of arms and horses; and the
time is weary that he passes apart from his home and hareem. The
sternest tyrants are gentle there; Mehemet Ali never refused a woman's
prayer; and even Ali Pasha was partly humanized by his love for Emineh.
In the time of the Mamelukes, criminals were always led to execution
blindfolded, as, if they had met a woman and could touch her garment,
they were saved, whatever was their crime.
Thus idolized, watched, and guarded, the Egyptian woman's life is,
nevertheless, entirely in the power of her lord, and her death is the
inevitable penalty of his dishonour. Poor Fatima! shrined as she was in
the palace of a tyrant, the fame of her beauty stole abroad through
Cairo. She was one among a hundred in the hareem of Abbas Pasha, a man
stained with every foul and loathsome vice; and who can wonder, though
many may condemn, if she listened to a daring young Albanian, who risked
his life to obtain but a sight of her. Whether she _did_ listen or not,
none can ever know, but the eunuchs saw the glitter of the Arnaut's
arms, as he leaped from her terrace into the Nile and vanished into the
darkness.
The following night a merry English party dined together on board Lord
E----'s boat, as it lay moored off the Isle of Rhoda; conversation had
sunk into silence as the calm night came on; a faint breeze floated
perfumes from the gardens over the star-lit Nile; a dreamy languor
seemed to pervade all nature, and even the city lay hushed in deep
repose, when suddenly a boat, crowded with dark figures, among which
arms gleamed, shot out from one of the arches of the palace.
It paused under the opposite bank, where the water rushed deep and
gloomily along, and for a moment a white figure glimmered among that
boat's dark crew; there was a slight movement and a faint splash, and
then the river flowed on as merrily as if poor Fatima still sang her
Georgian song to the murmur of its waters.
I was riding one evening along the water-side. There was no sound except
the ripple of the waves and the heavy flapping of a pelican's wing. As I
paused to contemplate the scene an Egyptian passed me hurriedly, with a
bloody knife in his hand. His dress was mean and ragged, but his
countenance was one that the father of Don Carlos might have worn. He
never raised his eyes as he passed by; and my groom, who just then came
up, told me he had slain his wife, and was going to her father's village
to denounce her.
_VI.--Djouni and Lady Hester Stanhope_
One morning we were already in motion as the sun rose over Lebanon. We
passed for some miles through mulberry gardens, and over a dangerous
rocky pass, where Antiochus the Great defeated the Egyptians, in 218
B.C. This pass would have required the best exertions and courage of a
European horse, yet a file of camels was ascending it with the same
patient look that they wear in their native deserts. Though forced
frequently to traverse mountains in a country whose commerce is
conducted by their means, these animals are only at their ease upon the
sandy plain. The Arabs say, that if you were to ask a camel which he
preferred--travelling up or down hill, his answer would be, "May the
curse of Allah light on both!"
The road was only a steep and rocky path, which, in England, a goat
would be considered active if he could traverse. Our horses,
nevertheless, went along it at a canter, though the precipice sometimes
yawned beneath our outside stirrup, while the inner one knocked fire out
of the rocky cliff. Rocks, tumbled from the mountain, lay strewn about
and nearly choked up the narrow river bed; over these we scrambled,
climbed, and leaped in a manner that only Arab horses would attempt or
could accomplish.
It was late when we came in sight of two conical hills, on one of which
stands the village of Djouni, on the other a circular wall over which
dark trees were waving, and this was the place in which Lady Hester
Stanhope had finished her strange and eventful career. It had been
formerly a convent, but the Pasha of Acre had given it to the "Prophet
Lady," and she had converted its naked walls into palaces, its
wilderness into gardens. The sun was setting as we entered the
enclosure. The buildings that constituted the palace were of a very
scattered and complicated description, covering a wide space, but only
one storey in height; courts and gardens, stables and sleeping-rooms,
halls of audience and ladies' bowers, were strangely intermingled.
Here fountains once played in marble basins, and choice flowers bloomed;
but now it presented a scene of melancholy desolation. Our dinner was
spread on the floor in Lady Hester's favourite apartment; her deathbed
was our sideboard, her furniture our fuel; her name our conversation.
Lady Hester Stanhope was niece to Mr. Pitt, and seems to have possessed
or acquired something of his indomitable energy and proud self-reliance
during the time that she presided over his household. Soon after his
death she left England. For some time she was at Constantinople, where
her magnificence and near alliance to the great minister gained her
considerable influence. Afterwards she passed into Syria.
Many of the people of that country, excited by the achievements of Sir
Sidney Smith, looked on her as a princess who had come to prepare the
way for the expected conquest of their land by the English. Her
influence increased through the prestige created by her wealth and
magnificence, as well as by her imperious character and dauntless
bravery. She believed in magic, astrology, and, incredible as it may
appear, in her own divine mission.
She had two mares which were held sacred by herself and her attendants.
One was singularly marked by a natural saddle. The animal was never
mounted, but reserved for some divinity whom she was to accompany on his
triumphant entry into Jerusalem. The other was retained for her own
"mount" on the same remarkable occasion.
It is said that she was crowned Queen of the East by 50,000 Arabs, at
Palmyra. Lady Hester certainly exercised despotic power in her
neighbourhood on the mountain. Mehemet Ali could make nothing of her.
She annihilated a village for disobedience, and burned a mountain
chalet, with all its inhabitants, on account of the murder of two
Frenchmen who were travelling under the protection of her firman.
_VII.--Mount Hermon_
One morning, before daylight, I set out for the summit of Hermon, called
in Arabic, Djebel Sheikh, the "Chief of the Mountains." This is the
highest point of Syria, the last of the Anti-Lebanon range. We rode
through some rugged valleys and tracts of vineyards, and, leaving our
horses at one of the sheds in the latter, began the steep and laborious
ascent. I have climbed Snowdon, Vesuvius, Epomeo, and many others, but
this was the heaviest work of all. After six hours of toil we stood on
the summit, and perhaps the world does not afford a more magnificent
view than we then beheld.
We looked down from the ancient Hill of Hermon over the land of Israel.
There gleamed the bright blue Sea of Galilee, and nearer was Lake Hooly,
with Banias, the ancient Dan, on its banks. The vast and varied plain,
on which lay mapped a thousand places familiar to the memory, was
bounded on the right by the Mediterranean, whose purple waters whitened
round Sidon, Tyre, and the distant Promontorium Album, over which just
appeared the summit of Mount Carmel. On the left of the plain a range of
hills divided the Hauran from Samaria. Further on, towards the Eastern
horizon, spread the plain of Damascus, and the desert towards Palmyra.
To the north, the wide and fertile valley of Bekaa lay between the two
great chains of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon; the latter of whose varied
hills and glens, speckled with forests and villages, lay beneath my
feet. Nothing but lakes were wanting to the valleys, nothing but heather
to the mountains. We caught some goats after a hard chase, and, milking
them on the snow, drank eagerly from this novel dairy.
Soon afterwards we discovered a little fountain gushing from a snowy
hill, and only those who have climbed a mountain 9,000 feet high, under
a Syrian sun, can appreciate the luxury of such a draught as that cool,
bubbling rill afforded.
_VIII.--Damascus: The World's Oldest City_
Emerging from the savage gorges of Anti-Lebanon, we entered a wide,
disheartening plain, bounded by an amphitheatre of dreary mountains. Our
horses had had no water for twenty-four hours, and we had had no
refreshment of any kind for twenty. After two hours of more hard riding
I came to another range of mountains, from beyond which opened the view
of Damascus, from which the Prophet abstained as too delicious for a
believer's gaze. It is said that after many days of toilsome travel,
when he beheld this city thus lying at his feet, he exclaimed, "But one
paradise is allowed to man; I will not take mine in this world;" and so
he turned his horse's head from Damascus and pitched his tent in the
desert.
For miles around us lay the dead desert, whose sands seemed to quiver
under the shower of sunbeams; far away to the south and east it spread
like a boundless ocean; but there, beneath our feet, lay such an island
of verdure as nowhere else perhaps exists. Mass upon mass of dark,
delicious foliage rolled like waves among garden tracts of brilliant
emerald green. Here and there the clustering blossoms of the orange or
the nectarine lay like foam upon that verdant sea. Minarets, white as
ivory, shot up their fairy towers among the groves; and purple
mosque-domes, tipped with the golden crescent, gave the only sign that a
city lay bowered beneath those rich plantations.
One hour's gallop brought me to the suburban gates of Mezzé, and
thenceforth I rode on through streets, or rather lanes, of pleasant
shadow. For many an hour we had seen no water; now it gushed and gleamed
and sparkled all around us; from aqueduct above, and rivulet below, and
marble fountain in the walls--everywhere it poured forth its rich
abundance; and my horse and I soon quenched our burning thirst in Abana
and Pharphar.
On we went, among gardens, fountains, odours, and cool shade, absorbed
in sensations of delight. Fruits of every delicate shape and hue bent
the boughs hospitably over our heads; flowers hung in canopy upon the
trees and lay in variegated carpet on the ground; the lanes through
which we went were long arcades of arching boughs; the walls were
composed of large square blocks of dried mud, which, in that bright,
dazzling light somewhat resembled Cyclopean architecture, and gave, I
know not what, of simplicity and primitiveness to the scene.
At length I entered the city, and thenceforth lost the sun while I
remained there. The luxurious people of Damascus exclude all sunshine
from their bazaars by awnings of thick mat, whenever vine-trellises or
vaulted roofs do not render this precaution unnecessary. The effects of
this pleasant gloom, the cool currents of air created by the narrow
streets, the vividness of the bazaars, the variety and beauty of the
Oriental dress, the fragrant smell of the spice-shops, the tinkle of the
brass cups of the sherbet seller--all this affords a pleasant but
bewildering change from the silent desert and the glare of sunshine.
And then the glimpse of places strange to your eye, yet familiar to your
imagination, that you catch as you pass along. Here is the portal of a
large khan, with a fountain and cistern in the midst. Camels and bales
of merchandise and turbaned negroes are scattered over its wide
quadrangle, and an arcade of shops or offices surrounds it, above and
below, like the streets of Chester. Another portal opens into a public
bath, with its fountains, its reservoirs, its gay carpets, and its
luxurious inmates clad in white linen and reclining on cushions as they
smoke their chibouques.
I lodged at the Franciscan Convent, of which the terrace commands the
best view, perhaps, of the city. The young Christian women of Damascus
come hither in numbers to confess, which, if their tongues be as candid
as their eloquent eyes, must be rather a protracted business. They are
passing fair; but the Jewess, with her aristocratic mien, her proud, yet
airy step, and her eagle eye, throws all others into the shade, and
vindicates her lineal descent from Eve, in this, Eve's native land.
I thought Damascus was a great improvement on Cairo in every respect. It
is much more thoroughly Oriental in appearance, in its mysteries, in the
look and character of its inhabitants. The spirit of the Arabian Nights
is quite alive in these, its native streets; and not only do you hear
their fantastic tales repeated to rapt audiences in the coffee-houses,
but you see them hourly exemplified in living scenes. This is probably
the most ancient city in the world. Eleazar, the trusty steward of
Abraham, was a citizen of it nearly 4,000 years ago, and the Arabs
maintain that Adam was created here out of the red clay that is now
fashioned by the potter into other forms.
The Christians for the most part belong to the Latin Church. There are
some Greeks, and a few Armenians. The Christians are as fanatical and
grossly ignorant as the Moslems; at least, those few, even of the
wealthier class, with whom I had the opportunity of conversing.