There is an Arabic proverb which says: "Ḥayyeh rubda wa la ḍaif
muḍḥa"--neither ash-grey snake nor midday guest. We were careful
not to make a breach in our manners by outstaying our welcome, and our
camp was up before the sun. To wake in that desert dawn was like waking
in the heart of an opal. The mists lifting their heads out of the
hollows, the dews floating in ghostly wreaths from the black tents, were
shot through first with the faint glories of the eastern sky and then
with the strong yellow rays of the risen sun. I sent a silver and purple
kerchief to Fellāḥ ul 'Isa, "for the little son" who had played
solemnly about the hearth, took grateful leave of Namrūd, drank a
parting cup of coffee, and, the old sheikh holding my stirrup, mounted
and rode away with G̣ablān. We climbed the Jebel el 'Alya and crossed
the wide summit of the range; the landscape was akin to that of our own
English border country but bigger, the sweeping curves more generous,
the distances further away. The glorious cold air intoxicated every
sense and set the blood throbbing--to my mind the saying about the Bay
of Naples should run differently. See the desert on a fine morning and
die--if you can. Even the stolid mules felt the breath of it and raced
across the spongy ground ("Mad! the accursed ones!") till their packs
swung round and brought them down, and twice we stopped to head them off
and reload. The Little Heart, the highest peak of the Jebel Druze,
surveyed us cheerfully the while, glittering in its snow mantle far away
to the north.
[Illustration 38: ARABS RIDING MARDŪF]
At the foot of the northern slopes of the 'Alya hills we entered a great
rolling plain like that which we had left to the south. We passed many
of those mysterious rujm which start the fancy speculating on the past
history of the land, and presently we caught sight of the scattered
encampments of the Ḥassaniyyeh, who are good friends to the Da'ja and
belong to the same group of tribes. And here we spied two riders coming
across the plain and G̣ablān went out to greet them and remained some
time in talk, and then returned with a grave face. The day before, the
very day before, while we had been journeying peacefully from Ṭneib,
four hundred horsemen of the Ṣukhūr and the Ḥoweiṭāṭ, leagued
in evil, had swept these plains, surprised an outlying group of the Beni
Ḥassan and carried off the tents, together with two thousand head of
cattle. It was almost a pity, I thought, that we had come a day too
late, but G̣ablān looked graver still at the suggestion, and said that
he would have been forced to join in the fray, yes, he would even have
left me, though I had been committed to his charge, for the Da'ja were
bound to help the Beni Ḥassan against the Ṣukhūr. And perhaps
yesterday's work would be enough to break the new-born truce between
that powerful tribe and the allies of the 'Anazeh and set the whole
desert at war again. There was sorrow in the tents of the Children of
Ḥassan. We saw a man weeping by the tent pole, with his head bowed in
his hands, everything he possessed having been swept from him. As we
rode we talked much of ghazu (raid) and the rules that govern it. The
fortunes of the Arab are as varied as those of a gambler on the Stock
Exchange. One day he is the richest man in the desert, and next morning
he may not have a single camel foal to his name. He lives in a state of
war, and even if the surest pledges have been exchanged with the
neighbouring tribes there is no certainty that a band of raiders from
hundreds of miles away will not descend on his camp in the night, as a
tribe unknown to Syria, the Beni Awājeh, fell, two years ago, on the
lands south-east of Aleppo, crossing three hundred miles of desert,
Mardūf (two on a camel) from their seat above Baghdad, carrying off all
the cattle and killing scores of people. How many thousand years this
state of things has lasted, those who shall read the earliest records of
the inner desert will tell us, for it goes back to the first of them,
but in all the centuries the Arab has bought no wisdom from experience.
He is never safe, and yet he behaves as though security were his daily
bread. He pitches his feeble little camps, ten or fifteen tents
together, over a wide stretch of undefended and indefensible country. He
is too far from his fellows to call in their aid, too far as a rule to
gather the horsemen together and follow after the raiders whose retreat
must be sufficiently slow, burdened with the captured flocks, to
guarantee success to a swift pursuit. Having lost all his worldly goods,
he goes about the desert and makes his plaint, and one man gives him a
strip or two of goats' hair cloth, and another a coffee-pot, a third
presents him with a camel, and a fourth with a few sheep, till he has a
roof to cover him and enough animals to keep his family from hunger.
There are good customs among the Arabs, as Namrūd said. So he bides his
time for months, perhaps for years, till at length opportunity ripens,
and the horsemen of his tribe with their allies ride forth and recapture
all the flocks that had been carried off and more besides, and the feud
enters on another phase. The truth is that the ghazu is the only
industry the desert knows and the only game. As an industry it seems to
the commercial mind to be based on a false conception of the laws of
supply and demand, but as a game there is much to be said for it. The
spirit of adventure finds full scope in it--you can picture the
excitement of the night ride across the plain, the rush of the mares in
the attack, the glorious (and comparatively innocuous) popping of rifles
and the exhilaration of knowing yourself a fine fellow as you turn
homewards with the spoil. It is the best sort of fantasia, as they say
in the desert, with a spice of danger behind it. Not that the danger is
alarmingly great: a considerable amount of amusement can be got without
much bloodshed, and the raiding Arab is seldom bent on killing. He never
lifts his hand against women and children, and if here and there a man
falls it is almost by accident, since who can be sure of the ultimate
destination of a rifle bullet once it is embarked on its lawless course?
This is the Arab view of the ghazu; the Druzes look at it otherwise. For
them it is red war. They do not play the game as it should be played,
they go out to slay, and they spare no one. While they have a grain of
powder in their flasks and strength to pull the trigger, they kill every
man, woman and child that they encounter.
[Illustration 39: A TRAVELLING ENCAMPMENT OF THE 'AG̣ĒL]
Knowing the independence of Arab women and the freedom with which
marriages are contracted between different tribes of equal birth, I saw
many romantic possibilities of mingled love and hatred between the
Montagues and the Capulets. "Lo, on a sudden I loved her," says Antara,
"though I had slain her kin." G̣ablān replied that these difficult
situations did indeed occur, and ended sometimes in a tragedy, but if
the lovers would be content to wait, some compromise could be arrived
at, or they might be able to marry during one of the brief but
oft-recurring intervals of truce. The real danger begins when blood feud
is started within the tribe itself and a man having murdered one of his
own people is cast out a homeless, kinless exile to shelter with
strangers or with foes. Such was Imr ul Ḳais, the lonely outlaw,
crying to the night: "Oh long night, wilt thou not bring the dawn? yet
the day is no better than thou."
[Illustration 40: A DESERT WELL]
A few miles further north the Ḥassaniyyeh encampments had not yet
heard of yesterday's misfortune, and we had the pleasure of spreading
the ill-news. G̣ablān rode up to every group we passed and delivered
his mind of its burden; the men in buckram multiplied as we went, and
perhaps I had been wrong in accepting the four hundred of the original
statement, for they had had plenty of time to breed during the
twenty-four hours that had elapsed between their departure and our
arrival. All the tents were occupied with preparations not for war but
for feasting. On the morrow fell the great festival of the Mohammedan
year, the Feast of Sacrifice, when the pilgrims in Mecca slaughter their
offerings and True Believers at home follow their example. By every tent
there was a huge pile of thorns wherewith to roast the camel or sheep
next day, and the shirts of the tribe were spread out to dry in the sun
after a washing which, I have reason to believe, takes place but once a
year. Towards sunset we reached a big encampment of the Beni Ḥassan,
where G̣ablān decided to spend the night. There was water in a muddy
pool near at hand and a good site for our tents above the hollow in
which the Arabs lay. None of the great sheikhs were camped there and,
mindful of Namrūd's warnings, I refused all invitations and spent the
evening at home, watching the sunset and the kindling of the cooking
fires and the blue smoke that floated away into the twilight. The
sacrificial camel, in gorgeous trappings, grazed among my mules, and
after dark the festival was heralded by a prolonged letting off of
rifles. G̣ablān sat silent by the camp fire, his thoughts busy with
the merrymakings that were on foot at home. It went sorely against the
grain that he should be absent on such a day. "How many horsemen," said
he, "will alight to-morrow at my father's tent! and I shall not be there
to welcome them or to wish a good feast day to my little son!"
[Illustration 41: A DESERT WATER-COURSE]
We were off before the rejoicings had begun. I had no desire to assist
at the last moments of the camel, and moreover we had a long day before
us through country that was not particularly safe. As far as my caravan
was concerned, the risk was small. I had a letter in my pocket from
Fellāḥ ul 'Isa to Nasīb el Aṭrash, the Sheikh of Ṣalkhad in the
Jebel Druze. "To the renowned and honoured sheikh, Nasīb el Aṭrash,"
it ran (I had heard my host dictate it to Namrūd and seen him seal it
with his seal), "the venerated, may God prolong his existence! We send
you greetings, to you and to all the people of Ṣalkhad, and to your
brother Jada'llah, and to the son of your uncle Muḥammad el Aṭrash
in Umm er Rummān, and to our friends in Imtain. And further, there goes
to you from us a lady of the most noble among the English. And we greet
Muḥammada and our friends. . . . etc., (here followed another list of
names), and this is all that is needful, and peace be with you." And
beyond this letter I had the guarantee of my nationality, for the Druzes
have not yet forgotten our interference on their behalf in 1860;
moreover I was acquainted with several of the sheikhs of the Ṭurshān,
to which powerful family Nasīb belonged. But G̣ablān was in a
different case, and he was fully conscious of the ambiguity of his
position. In spite of his uncle's visit to the Mountain, he was not at
all certain how the Druzes would receive him; he was leaving the last
outposts of his allies, and entering a border land by tradition hostile
(he himself had no acquaintance with it but that which he had gathered
on raiding expeditions), and if he did not find enemies among the Druzes
he might well fall in with a scouring party of the bitter foes of the
Da'ja, the Ḥaseneh or their like, who camp east of the hills.
[Illustration 42: CAMELS OF THE ḤASENEH]
After an hour or two of travel, the character of the country changed
completely: the soft soil of the desert came to an end, and the volcanic
rocks of the Ḥaurān began. We rode for some time up a gulley of lava,
left the last of the Ḥassaniyyeh tents in a little open space between
some mounds, and found ourselves on the edge of a plain that, stretched
to the foot of the Jebel Druze in an unbroken expanse, completely
deserted, almost devoid of vegetation and strewn with black volcanic
stones. It has been said that the borders of the desert are like a rocky
shore on which the sailor who navigates deep waters with success may yet
be wrecked when he attempts to bring his ship to port. This was the
landing which we had to effect. Somewhere between us and the hills were
the ruins of Umm ej Jemāl, where I hoped to get into touch with the
Druzes, but for the life of us we could not tell where they lay, the
plain having just sufficient rise and fall to hide them. Now Umm ej
Jemāl has an evil name--I believe mine was the second European camp
that had ever been pitched in it, the first having been that of a party
of American archæologists who left a fortnight before I arrived--and
G̣ablān's evident anxiety enhanced its sinister reputation. Twice he
turned to me and asked whether it were necessary to camp there. I
answered that he had undertaken to guide me to Umm ej Jemāl, and that
there was no question but that I should go, and the second time I backed
my obstinacy by pointing out that we must have water that night for the
animals, and that there was little chance of finding it except in the
cisterns of the ruined village. Thereupon I had out my map, and after
trying to guess what point on the blank white paper we must have
reached, I turned my caravan a little to the west towards a low rise
from whence we should probably catch sight of our destination. G̣ablān
took the decision in good part and expressed regret that he could not be
of better service in directing us. He had been once in his life to Umm
ej Jemāl, but it was at dead of night when he was out raiding. He and
his party had stopped for half an hour to water their horses and had
passed on eastward, returning, by another route. Yes, it had been a
successful raid, praise be to God! and one of the first in which he had
engaged. Mikhāil listened with indifference to our deliberations, the
muleteers were not consulted, but as we set off again Ḥabīb tucked
his revolver more handily into his belt.
[Illustration 43: UMM EJ JEMĀL]
We rode on. I was engaged in looking for the rasīf, the paved Roman
road that runs from Ḳal'at ez Zerka straight to Boṣrā, and also in
wondering what I should do to protect if necessary the friend and guide
whose pleasant companionship had enlivened our hours of travel and who
should certainly come to no harm while he was with us. As we drew nearer
to the rising ground we observed that it was crowned with sheepfolds,
and presently we could see men gathering their flocks together and
driving them behind the black walls, their hurried movements betraying
their alarm. We noticed also some figures, whether mounted or on foot it
was impossible to determine, advancing on us from a hollow to the left,
and after a moment two puffs of smoke rose in front of them, and we
heard the crack of rifles.
G̣ablān turned to me with a quick gesture.
"Ḍarabūna!" he said. "They have fired on us."
I said aloud: "They are afraid," but to myself, "We're in for it."
G̣ablān rose in his stirrups, dragged his fur-lined cloak from his
shoulders, wound it round his left arm and waved it above his head, and
very slowly he and I paced forward together. Another couple of shots
were fired, and still we rode forward, G̣ablān waving his flag of
truce. The firing ceased; it was nothing after all but the accepted
greeting to strangers, conducted with the customary levity of the
barbarian. Our assailants turned out to be two Arabs, grinning from ear
to ear, quite ready to fraternise with us as soon as they had decided
that we were not bent on sheep stealing, and most willing to direct us
to Umm ej Jemāl. As soon as we had rounded the tell we saw it in front
of us, its black towers and walls standing so boldly out of the desert
that it was impossible to believe it had been ruined and deserted for
thirteen hundred years. It was not till we came close that the rents and
gashes in the tufa masonry and the breaches in the city wall were
visible. I pushed forward and would have ridden straight into the heart
of the town, but G̣ablān caught me up and laid his hand upon my
bridle.
"I go first," he said. "Oh lady, you were committed to my charge."
And since he was the only person who incurred any risk and was well
aware of the fact, his resolution did him credit.
[Illustration 44: WATERING CAMELS]
We clattered over the ruined wall, passed round the square monastery
tower which is the chief feature of the Mother of Camels (such is the
meaning of the Arabic name), and rode into an open place between empty
streets, and there was no one to fear and no sign of life save that
offered by two small black tents, the inhabitants of which greeted us
with enthusiasm, and proceeded to sell us milk and eggs in the most
amicable fashion. The Arabs who live at the foot of Ḥaurān mountains
are called the Jebeliyyeh, the Arabs of the Hills, and they are of no
consideration, being but servants and shepherds to the Druzes. In the
winter they herd the flocks that are sent down into the plain, and in
the summer they are allowed to occupy the uncultivated slopes with their
own cattle.
I spent the hour of daylight that remained in examining the wonderful
Nabatæan necropolis outside the walls. Monsieur Dussaud began the work
on it five years ago; Mr. Butler and Dr. Littmann, whose visit
immediately preceded mine, will be found to have continued it when their
next volumes are given to the world. Having seen what tombs they had
uncovered and noted several mounds that must conceal others, I sent away
my companions and wandered in the dusk through the ruined streets of the
town, into great rooms and up broken stairs, till G̣ablān came and
called me in, saying that if a man saw something in a fur coat exploring
those uncanny places after dark, he might easily take the apparition for
a ghoul and shoot at it. Moreover, he wished to ask me whether he might
not return to Ṭneib. One of the Arabs would guide us next day to the
first Druze village, and G̣ablān would as soon come no nearer to the
Mountain. I agreed readily, indeed it was a relief not to have his
safety on my conscience. He received three napoleons for his trouble and
a warm letter of thanks to deliver to Fellāḥ ul 'Isa, and we parted
with many assurances that if God willed we would travel together again.
[Illustration 45: STRIKING CAMP]
The stony foot of the Jebel Ḥaurān is strewn with villages deserted
since the Mohammedan invasion in the seventh century. I visited two that
lay not far from my path, Shabḥa and Shabḥīyyeh, and found them to
be both of the same character as Umm ej Jemāl. From afar they look like
well-built towns with square towers rising above streets of
three-storied houses. Where the walls have fallen they lie as they fell,
and no hand has troubled to clear away the ruins. Monsieur de Vogüé
was the first to describe the architecture of the Ḥaurān; his
splendid volumes are still the principal source of information. The
dwelling-houses are built round a court in which there is usually an
outer stair leading to the upper story. There is no wood used in their
construction, even the doors are of solid stone, turning on stone
hinges, and the windows of stone slabs pierced with open-work patterns.
Sometimes there are traces of a colonnaded portico, or the walls are
broken by a double window, the arches of which are supported by a small
column and a rough plain capital; frequently the lintels of the doors
are adorned with a cross or a Christian monogram, but otherwise there is
little decoration. The chambers are roofed with stone slabs resting on
the back of transverse arches. So far as can be said with any certainty,
Nabatæan inscriptions and tombs are the oldest monuments that have been
discovered in the district; they are followed by many important remains
of pagan Rome, but the really flourishing period seems to have been the
Christian. After the Mohammadan invasion, which put an end to the
prosperity of the Ḥaurān uplands, few of the villages were
re-inhabited, and when the Druzes came about a hundred and fifty years
ago, they found no settled population. They made the Mountain their own,
rebuilt and thereby destroyed the ancient towns, and extended their
lordship over the plains to the south, though they have not established
themselves in the villages of that debatable land which remains a happy
hunting ground for the archæologist. The American expedition will make
good use of the immense amount of material that exists there, and
knowing that the work had been done by better hands than mine, I rolled
up the measuring tape and folded the foot-rule. But I could not so far
overcome a natural instinct as to cease from copying inscriptions, and
the one or two (they were extremely few) that had escaped Dr. Littmann's
vigilant eye and come by chance to me were made over to him when we met
in Damascus.
To our new guide, Fendi, fell the congenial task of posting me up in the
gossip of the Mountain. Death had been busy among the great family of
the Turshān during the past five years. Fāiz el Aṭrash, Sheikh of
Kreyeh, was gone, poisoned said some, and a week or two before my
arrival the most renowned of all the leaders of the Druzes, Shibly Beg
el Aṭrash, had died of a mysterious and lingering illness--poison
again, it was whispered. There was this war and that on hand, a terrible
raid of the Arabs of the Wādy Sirḥān to be avenged, and a score with
the Ṣukhūr to be settled, but on the whole there was prosperity, and
as much peace as a Druze would wish to enjoy. The conversation was
interrupted by a little shooting at rabbits lying asleep in the sun, not
a gentlemanly sport perhaps, but one that helped to fill and to
diversify the pot. After a time I left the mules and Fendi to go their
own way, and taking Mikhāil with me, made a long circuit to visit the
ruined towns. We were just finishing lunch under a broken wall, well
separated from the rest of the party, when we saw two horsemen
approaching us across the plain. We swept up the remains of the lunch
and mounted hastily, feeling that any greeting they might accord us was
better met in the saddle. They stopped in front of us and gave us the
salute, following it with an abrupt question as to where we were going.
I answered: "To Ṣalkhād, to Nasīb el Aṭrash," and they let us pass
without further remark. They were not Druzes, for they did not wear the
Druze turban, but Christians from Ḳreyeh, where there is a large
Christian community, riding down to Umm ej Jemāl to visit the winter
quarters of their flocks, so said Fendi, whom they had passed a mile
ahead. Several hours before we reached the present limits of
cultivation, we saw the signs of ancient agriculture in the shape of
long parallel lines of stones heaped aside from earth that had once been
fruitful. They looked like the ridge and furrow of a gigantic meadow,
and like the ridge and furrow they are almost indelible, the mark of
labour that must have ceased with the Arab invasion. At the foot of the
first spur of the hills, Tell esh Shīḥ (it is called after the
grey white Shīḥ plant which is the best pasturage for sheep), we left
the unharvested desert and entered the region of ploughed fields--we
left, too, the long clean levels of the open wilderness and were caught
fetlock deep in the mud of a Syrian road. It led us up the hill to Umm
er Rummān, the Mother of Pomegranates, on the edge of the lowest
plateau of the Jebel Druze, as bleak a little muddy spot as you could
hope to see. I stopped at the entrance of the village, and asked a group
of Druzes where I should find a camping ground, and they directed me to
an extremely dirty place below the cemetery, saying there was no other
where I should not spoil the crops or the grass, though the crops.
Heaven save the mark! were as yet below ground, and the grass consisted
of a few brown spears half covered with melting snow. I could not
entertain the idea of pitching tents so near the graveyard, and demanded
to be directed to the house of Muḥammad el Aṭrash, Sheikh of Umm er
Rummān. This prince of the Ṭurshān was seated upon his roof, engaged
in directing certain agricultural operations that were being carried
forward in the slough below. Long years had made him shapeless of figure
and the effect was enhanced by the innumerable garments in which the
winter cold had forced him to wrap his fat old body. I came as near as
the mud would allow, and shouted:
[Illustration 46: MUḤAMMAD EL AṬRASH]
"Peace be upon you, oh Sheikh!"
"And upon you peace!" he bawled in answer.
"Where in your village is there a dry spot for a camp?"
The sheikh conferred at the top of his voice with his henchmen in the
mud, and finally replied that he did not know, by God! While I was
wondering where to turn, a Druze stepped forward and announced that he
could show me a place outside the town, and the sheikh, much relieved by
the shifting of responsibility, gave me a loud injunction to go in
peace, and resumed his occupations.
My guide was a young man with the clear cut features and the sharp
intelligent expression of his race. He was endowed, too, like all his
kin, with a lively curiosity, and as he hopped from side to side of the
road to avoid the pools of mud and slush, he had from me all my story,
whence I came and whither I was going, who were my friends in the Jebel
Druze and what my father's name--very different this from the custom of
the Arabs, with whom it is an essential point of good breeding never to
demand more than the stranger sees fit to impart. In Aṭ Ṭabari's
history there is a fine tale of a man who sought refuge with an Arab
sheikh. He stayed on, and the sheikh died, and his son who ruled in his
stead advanced in years, and at length the grandson of the original host
came to his father and said: "Who is the man who dwells with us" And the
father answered: "My son, in my father's time he came, and my father
grew old and died, and he stayed on under my protection, and I too have
grown old; but in all these years we have never asked him why he sought
us nor what is his name. Neither do thou ask." Yet I rejoiced to find
myself once more among the trenchant wits and the searching
koḥl-blackened eyes of the Mountain, where every question calls for a
quick retort or a brisk parry, and when my interlocutor grew too
inquisitive I had only to answer:
"Listen, oh you! I am not 'thou,' but 'Your Excellency,'" and he
laughed and understood and took the rebuke to heart.
There are many inscriptions in Umm er Rummān, a few Nabatæan and the
rest Cufic, proving that the town on the shelf of the hills was an early
settlement and that it was one of those the Arabs re-occupied for a time
after the invasion. A delighted crowd of little boys followed me from
house to house, tumbling over one another in their eagerness to point
out a written stone built into a wādi or laid in the flooring about the
hearth. In one house a woman caught me by the arm and implored me to
heal her husband. The man was lying in a dark corner of the windowless
room, with his face wrapped in filthy bandages, and when these had been
removed a horrible wound was revealed, the track of a bullet that had
passed through the cheek and shattered the jaw. I could do nothing but
give him an antiseptic, and adjure the woman to wash the wound and keep
the wrappings clean, and above all not to let him drink the medicine,
though I felt it would make small odds which way he used it, Death had
him so surely by the heel. This was the first of the long roll of
sufferers that must pass before the eyes and catch despairingly at the
sympathies of every traveller in wild places. Men and women afflicted
with ulcers and terrible sores, with fevers and rheumatisms, children
crippled from their birth, the blind and the old, there are none who do
not hope that the unmeasured wisdom of the West may find them a remedy.
You stand aghast at the depths of human misery and at your own
helplessness.
The path of archæology led me at last to the sheikh's door, and I went
in to pay him an official visit. He was most hospitably inclined now
that the business of the day was over; we sat together in the maḳ'ad,
the audience room, a dark and dirty sort of out-house, with an iron
stove in the centre of it, and discussed the Japanese War and desert
ghazus and other topics of the day, while Selmān, the sheikh's son, a
charming boy of sixteen, made us coffee. Muḥammad is brother-in-law to
Shibly and to Yahya Beg el Aṭrāsh, who had been my first host five
years before when I had escaped to his village of 'Areh from the Turkish
Mudir at Boṣrā, and Selmān is the only son of his father's old age
and the only, descendant of the famous 'Areh house of the Ṭurshān,
for Shibly died and Yahya lives childless. The boy walked back with me
to my camp, stepping lightly through the mud, a gay and eager figure
touched with the air of distinction that befits one who comes of a noble
stock. He had had no schooling, though there was a big Druze maktab at
Kreyeh, fifteen miles away, kept by a Christian of some learning.
"My father holds me so precious," he explained, "that he will not let me
leave his side."
"Oh Selmān," I began----
"Oh God!" he returned, using the ejaculation customary to one addressed
by name.
"The minds of the Druzes are like fine steel, but what is steel until it
is beaten into a sword blade?"
Selmān answered: "My uncle Shibly could neither read nor write."
I said: "The times are changed. The house of the Turshān will need
trained wits if it would lead the Mountain as it did before."
But that headship is a thing of the past. Shibly is dead and Yahya
childless, Muḥammad is old and Selmān undeveloped, Fāiz has left
four sons but they are of no repute, Nasīb is cunning but very
ignorant, there is Muṣṭafa at Imtain, who passes for a worthy man of
little intelligence, and Ḥamūd at Sweida, who is distinguished mainly
for his wealth. The ablest man among the Druzes is without doubt Abu
Tellāl of Shaḥba, and the most enlightened Sheikh Muḥammad en
Naṣṣār.
The night was bitterly cold. My thermometer had been broken, so that the
exact temperature could not be registered, but every morning until we
reached Damascus the water in the cup by my bedside was a solid piece of
ice, and one night a little tumbling stream outside the camp was frozen
hard and silent. The animals and the muleteers were usually housed in a
khān while the frost lasted. Muḥammad the Druze, who had returned to
his original name and faith, disappeared the moment camp was pitched,
and spent the night enjoying the hospitality of his relations. "For,"
said Mikhāil sarcastically, "every man who can give him a meal he
reckons to be the son of his uncle."
I was obliged to delay my start next morning in order to profit by the
sheikh's invitation to breakfast at a very elastic nine o'clock--two
hours after sunrise was what was said, and who knows exactly when it may
suit that luminary to appear? It was a pleasant party. We discussed the
war in Yemen in all its bearings--theoretically, for I was the only
person who had any news, and mine was derived from a _Weekly Times_ a
month old--and then Muḥammad questioned me as to why Europeans looked
for inscriptions.
"But I think I know," he added. "It is that they may restore the land to
the lords of it."
I assured him that the latest descendants of the former owners of the
Ḥaurān had been dead a thousand years, and he listened politely and
changed the subject with the baffled air of one who cannot get a true
answer.
The young man who had shown us our camping ground rode with us to
Ṣalkhad, saying he had business there and might as well have company
by the way. His name was Ṣāleh; he was of a clerkly family, a reader
and a scribe. I was so tactless as to ask him whether he were 'ākil,
initiated--the Druzes are divided into the initiated and the
uninitiated, but the line of demarcation does not follow that of social
pre-eminence, since most of the Ṭurshān are uninitiated. He gave me a
sharp look, and replied:
"What do you think?" and I saw my error and dropped the subject.
[Illustration 47: DESERT FLORA AND FAUNA]
But Ṣāleh was not one to let slip any opportunity of gaining
information. He questioned me acutely on our customs, down to the laws
of marriage and divorce. He was vastly entertained at the English rule
that the father should pay a man for marrying his daughter (so he
interpreted the habit of giving her a marriage portion), and we laughed
together over the absurdity of the arrangement. He was anxious to know
Western views as to the creation of the world and the origin of matter,
and I obliged him with certain heterodox opinions, on which he seized
with far greater lucidity than that with which they were offered. We
passed an agreeable morning, in spite of the mud and boulders of the
road. At the edge of the snow wreaths a little purple crocus had made
haste to bloom, and a starry white garlic--the Mountain is very rich in
Spring flowers. The views to the south over the great plain we had
crossed were enchanting; to the north the hills rose in unbroken slopes
of snow, Ḳuleib, the Little Heart, looking quite Alpine with its
frosty summit half veiled in mist. Two hours after noon we reached
Ṣalkhad, the first goal of our journey.