A work in any department of general literature rarely appears from the
pen of a clergyman in the Church of Scotland, and therefore that to
which we are about to refer, under the title noted beneath,[8] is in
some respects a curiosity. The writer, a minister settled in a
mountainous parish in Lanarkshire, may be said to have made a
remarkable escapade for one in his obscure situation and reverend
calling. With an immense and unclerical flow of animal spirits,
evidently as fond of travelling as old William Lithgow, and as
garrulous as Rae Wilson, of whose class he is a surviving type, Dr
Aiton is quite the man to take a journey to the Holy Land; for no
difficulty in the way of toil, heat, hunger, creeping or winged
insects, wild beasts, or still wilder savages, disturbs his
equanimity. He also never hesitates to use any expression that comes
uppermost. He explicitly observes, that 'no man with the capacity of a
hen,' should fail to contribute such information as he possesses on
the sacred regions he has traversed. Alluding to some circumstances in
the voyage of St Paul, he says he has 'no desire to cook the facts.'
He talks of a supposition being 'checkmated.' And in going along the
coast of Spain, he mentions that he took care to have 'a passing
squint at Cape St Vincent.' Many similar oddities break out in the
course of the narrative; not that we care much about them one way or
other; it is only to be regretted that the author has by this
looseness of expression, and his loquacious dragging in of passages
from Scripture on all occasions, also by his inveterate love of
anecdotic illustration, done what he could to keep down a really
clever book to an inferior standard of taste. We would hope, however,
that candid readers will have a kindly consideration of the author's
intentions, and pass over much that is prosy and ridiculous for the
sake of what is original and interesting. Traversing lands that have
been described a hundred times before, it might be supposed that
little was left for Dr Aiton to pick up; yet every traveller has his
own method of observation. In justice to the doctor, it must be
acknowledged that he made a judicious use of time during his travels
in the East, and has told us many amusing particulars of what he saw.
There is, at least, always a certain graphic painting in his off-hand
descriptions; as, for instance, his notice of an incident that
occurred on his arrival in Egypt.
'On landing at Alexandria I saw a ship unloading, and box by box were
being handed to the lighter, according to the number each respectively
bore. Some mistake, more or less important, had apparently been made
by one of the native operatives on the occasion. Instantly two sticks
were laid on his head with dreadful effect. The poor fellow seemed to
be stunned and stupified for a time. On this account it probably
happened, that he fell into a second similar blunder, when a stick was
thrown, not horizontally, but perpendicularly, and so aimed that it
struck the socket of the eye. In one moment he lost the sight of it,
and the ball hung by a ligament on his cheek. He uttered a hideous
yell, and staggered; notwithstanding of which other two cudgels were
applied to his arm while he had the power to hold it up in protection
of his head. Horror of horrors! I thought, verily in the fulfilment of
prophecy, God has been pleased to curse this garden and granary of the
world, and to permit foreigners terribly to tyrannise over its
degraded people.' Proceeding onward to Cairo: 'What a hurry-skurry
there was in the dark in getting into the vans at the hotel-door to
be conveyed to the Mahmoudie Canal! When I arrived, I found the barge
in which we were to be conveyed both very confined and dirty. But it
proceeded at tolerable speed, drawn by horses which were pursued by
well-mounted Arabs yelling, lashing, and cracking with their whips. We
all passed a fearful night of suffocation and jambing, fasting and
feasted on by millions. Some red-coated bedlamites, unfortunately
infatuated with wine, had to be held from jumping overboard. The
ramping and stamping, and roaring and scrambling for room to sit or
lie, was horrific. At last the day dawned, when matters were not quite
so bad; but we moved over our fifty miles of ditch-water to Atfeh in a
manner the most uncomfortable any poor sinners ever suffered.'
The account given of his entry to Cairo is also strikingly faithful.
'When I landed at Boulac, another Oriental scene of novelty was
presented. Crowds of men and women, all in their shirts only--lazy
looking-on watermen calling for employment, porters packing luggage on
the camels, donkey-boys, little active urchins, offering their asses,
crying: "Here him best donkey"--"you Englese no walk"--"him kick
highest"--"him fine jackass"--"me take you to Cairo." There were also
plenty of custom-house folks demanding fees to which they had no
right, and sturdy rascals seeking buckshish, and miserable beggars
imploring alms. Walking through this promiscuous crowd, with all the
dignity they could muster, there were venerable sheiks, or Egyptian
oolema, with white turbans, and long silvery beards, and tawny
sinister faces. And there were passengers not a few, with a carpet-bag
in the one hand and a lady hanging on the other arm, crowding from the
deck to the shore.
'The moment I mounted the stair at the pier of Boulac, I found myself
in the red dusky haze of an Egyptian atmosphere. It was near noon, and
the rays of the hot sun trembled over the boundless Valley of the Nile
on to the minarets of Cairo, and further still to the sombre Pyramids.
Now, indeed, the scene before me presented a superb illusion of
beauty. The bold range of the Mockattam Mountains, its craggy summits
cut clearly out in the sky, seemed to run like a promontory into a sea
of the richest verdure; here, wavy with breezy plantations of olives;
there, darkened with acacia groves. Just where the mountain sinks upon
the plain, the citadel stands on its last eminence, and widely spread
beneath lies the city--a forest of minarets, with palm-trees
intermingled, and the domes of innumerable mosques rising and
glittering over the sea of houses. Here and there, green gardens are
islanded within that ocean, 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. From Boulac I
was conveyed to the British Hotel at Cairo, the Englishman's home in
Egypt, conducted by Mr Shepherd, the Englishman's friend in the East.
The approach to Grand Cairo is charming and cheering, and altogether
as fanciful as if I had been carried with Aladin's lamp in my hand
through a fairy region to one of the palaces mentioned in the _Arabian
Nights of Entertainment_. I passed along a broad level path, full of
life and fancy, amid groves and gardens, and villas all glittering in
grandeur. At every turn, something more Oriental and magnificent than
anything I had yet seen presented itself. Along the level, broad
highway, a masquerading-looking crowd was swarming towards Cairo.
Ladies, wrapped closely in white veils, were carrying water on their
heads. Long rows of dromedaries loaded with luggage were moving
stately forward. Donkeys at full canter, one white man riding, and two
black men driving and thumping the poor brutes most unmercifully with
short thick sticks, were winding their way through the throng. Ladies
enveloped in flowing robes of black silk, and veiled up to the eyes,
were sitting stride-leg on richly-caparisoned asses, shewing off with
pomp a pair of yellow morocco slippers, which appeared on their feet
from under their flowing robes. And before these, clearing the way,
there were eunuch slaves crying: "Darak ya Khowaga-riglak! shemalak!"
which probably may mean: "Stand back, and let her ladyship pass!"
There were walkers and water-carriers, with goat-skins full on their
back; and fruit-sellers and orange-girls; and ourselves and others
driving at full gallop, regardless of all the Copts, Abyssinians,
Greeks, Turks, Parsees, Nubians, and Jews, which crowded the path. But
curiosity of this sort is soon satisfied, and these novelties are
passed, when I find myself in the midst of the city, more full of mud
and misery, dark, dirty twisting lanes, arched almost over by
verandas, and wretchedly paved or not paved at all, full of smells and
disgusting sights--such as lean, mangy dogs, and ragged beggars
quivering with lice, and poverty-stricken people; all this more than
the whole world can produce anywhere else, not excepting even the
Jewish city of Prague; which astonished me beyond comparison till I
saw the poorer portions of Cairo.'
During his stay in Cairo, the doctor visited the Great Pyramid of
Gizeh, the short journey being performed early in the morning, and
with a guide. The toils and pleasures of the excursion are fairly
described. 'I had read so much of the bulk of the Pyramids, and they
now appeared so positively insignificant in their dimensions, that I,
felt mortified; but I remembered that I had the same impression many
years ago when first approaching the Alps; and I began to consider,
that as the extreme clearness of the atmosphere gave them the
appearance of proximity in the far distance, so it would also partly
account for the diminutive aspect they persisted in presenting. I
dismounted, and scrambled up the bold ledge of rock, and found myself
already a hundred feet above the level of the Nile. Here my Arab guide
produced cold fowl, bread, wine, and Nile water in plenty at the foot
of this mountain of stone, which now began to indicate its colossal
magnitude. Standing beside the pyramid, and looking from the base to
the top, and especially examining the vast dimensions of each separate
stone, I thus obtained an adequate impression of the magnitude of its
dimensions, which produced a calm and speechless but elevated feeling
of awe. The Arabs, men, women, and children, came crowding around me;
but they seemed kind and inoffensive. I was advised to mount up to the
top before the sun gained strength; and, skipping like chamois on a
mountain, two Arabs took hold of me by each wrist, and a third lifted
me up from behind, and thus I began, with resolution and courage, to
ascend the countless layers of huge stones which tower and taper to
the top. Every step was three feet up at a bound; and, really, a
perpendicular hop-step-and-leap of this sort was no joke, move after
move continuing as if for ever. I found that the Arabs did not work so
smoothly as I expected, and that one seemed at a time to be holding
back, while another was dragging me up; and this soon became very
tiresome. Perceiving this, they changed their method, and I was
directed to put my foot on the knee of one Arab, and another pulled me
up by both hands, while a third pushed me behind; and thus I bounded
on in my tread-mill of tedious and very tiresome exertion. I paused
half-way to the top, and rested at the cave. I looked up and down with
a feeling of awe, and now I felt the force of Warburton's remark, when
he calls it the greatest wonder in the world. But in the midst of
these common-place reflections, a fit of sickness came over me.
Everything turned dark before me; and now for a moment my courage
failed me; and when looking at my three savage companions--for my
guide and his friend were sitting below finishing the fragments of my
breakfast, and the donkeys were munching beans--I felt myself alike
destitute of comfort and protection; and when they put forth their
hands to lift my body, I verily thought myself a murdered man. When I
came out of my faint, I found that they had gently turned me on my
belly, with my head flat upon the rock, and that they had been
sprinkling my face and breast with water. A profuse perspiration broke
out, and I felt myself relieved. I rested ten or fifteen minutes, and
hesitated for a moment whether to go up or down; but I had determined
that I should reach the top, if I should perish in the attempt. I
resumed, therefore, the ascent, but with more time and caution than
before; and fearing to look either up or down, or to any portion of
the frightful aspect around, I fixed my eye entirely on each
individual step before me, as if there had been no other object in the
world besides. To encourage me by diverting my attention, the Arabs
chanted their monotonous songs, mainly in their own language,
interspersed with expressions about buckshish, "Englese good to
Arabs," and making signs to me every now and then how near we were
getting to the top. After a second _dwam_, a rest and a draught of
water prepared me for another effort at ascending; and now, as I
advanced, my ideas began to expand to something commensurate with the
grandeur and novelty of the scene. When I reached the top, I found
myself on a broad area of about ten yards in every way of massive
stone-blocks broken and displaced. Exhausted and overheated, I laid me
down, panting like a greyhound after a severe chase. I bathed my
temples, and drank a deep, cool draught of Nile water. After inhaling
for a few minutes the fresh, elastic breeze blowing up the river, I
felt that I was myself again. I rose, and gazed with avidity in fixed
silence, north and south, east and west. And now I felt it very
exhilarating to the spirit, when thus standing on a small, unprotected
pavement so many hundred feet above the earth, and so many thousand
miles from home, to be alone, surrounded only by three wild and
ferocious-like savages. The Arabs knew as well as I did that my life
and property were in their power; but they were kind, and proud of the
confidence I had in them. They tapped me gently on the back, patted my
head, kissed my hand, and then with a low, laughing, sinister growl,
they asked me for buckshish, which I firmly refused; then they
laughed, and sang and chatted as before. In calmly looking around me,
one idea filled and fixed my mind, which I expressed at the time in
one word--magnificence!... I remained long at the top of the pyramid,
and naturally felt elevated by the sublimity of the scenery around,
and also by the thought, that I had conquered every difficulty, and
accomplished my every purpose. The breeze was still cool, although the
sun was now high in the sky. I laughed and talked with the Arabs; and
advanced with them holding my two hands, to the very edge, and looked
down the awful precipice. Here again, with a push, or a kick, or
probably by withdrawing their hands, my days would have been finished;
and I would have been buried in the Desert among the ancient kings, or
more likely worried up by hungry hyænas. I looked around at my
leisure, and began carefully to read the names cut out on the stones,
anxious to catch one from my own country, or of my acquaintance, but
in this I did not succeed. Seeing me thus occupied, one of the Arabs
drew from his pocket a large murderous-looking _gully_, and when he
advanced towards me with it in his hand, had I believed the tenth part
of what I had heard or read, I might have been afraid of my life. But
with a laughing squeal, he pointed to a stone, as if to intimate that
I should cut out my name upon it. Then very modestly he held out his
hand for buckshish, and I thought him entitled to two or three
piasters.... In coming down, I felt timid and giddy for awhile, and
was afraid that I might meet the fate of the poor officer from India,
who, on a similar occasion, happened to miss his foot, and went
bouncing from one ledge of stone to another, towards the bottom, like
a ball, and that long after life was beaten out of him. Seeing this,
the Arabs renewed their demand for buckshish, and with more
perseverance than ever; but I was equally firm in my determination
that more money they should not have till I reached the bottom. At
last they took me by both hands as before, and conducted me carefully
from step to step. By and by I jumped down from one ledge to another
without their assistance, till I reached the mouth of the entrance to
the interior. I descended this inlet somewhat after the manner of a
sweep going down a chimney, but not quite so comfortable, I believe.
In this narrow inclined plane, I not only had to encounter sand-flies,
and every variety of vermin in Egypt, but I was afraid of serpents.
The confined pass was filled, too, with warm dust, and the heat and
smoke of the lights we carried increased the stifling sensation. In
these circumstances, I felt anxious only to go as far as would enable
me to fire a pistol with effect in one of the vaults. This is well
worth while, inasmuch as the sound of the explosion was louder than
the roar of a cannon. In fact, it almost rent the drum of my ears, and
rolled on like thunder through the interior of the pyramid, multiplied
and magnified as it was by a thousand echoes. The sound seemed to
sink, and mount from cavity to cavity--to rebound and to divide--and
at length to die in a good old age. The flash and the smoke produced,
too, a momentary feeling of terror. Having performed this marvellous
feat, I was nowise ambitious to qualify myself further for giving a
description of the interior.'
After visiting Suez, the author returned to Cairo, descended to the
coast of the Levant, and took shipping for Jaffa, on the route to
Jerusalem. Every point of interest in the holy city is described as
minutely as could be desired. Next, there was a visit to the Dead Sea,
regarding which there occur some sagacious remarks. The doctor
repudiates the ordinary belief, that the waters of this famed lake are
carried off by exhalation. Six million tons of water are discharged
every day by the Jordan into the Dead Sea; and to suppose that this
vast increase is wholly exhaled, seems to him absurd. He deems it more
likely that the lake issues by subterranean passages into the Red Sea.
The only remark that occurs to us on this point is, that the saltness
of the lake must be held as a proof that there is at least a large
exhalation from the surface.
Dr Aiton also visited Bethlehem, where he saw much to interest him;
and had the satisfaction of being hospitably entertained by the
fathers of the Greek convent. 'I left the convent,' he says, 'soothed
and satisfied much with all that I had seen, and went round to take a
parting and more particular view of the plain where the shepherds
heard the angels proclaim: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace, good-will towards men!" The plain is still mainly under
pasture, fertile and well watered, and there I saw shepherds still
tending their flocks. These shepherds have great influence over their
sheep. Many of them have no dogs. Their flocks are docile and
domestic, and not as the black-faced breed of sheep in Scotland,
scouring the hills like cavalry. The shepherd's word spoken at any
time is sufficient to make them understand and obey him. He sleeps
among them at night, and in the morning he leadeth them forth to drink
by the still waters, and feedeth them by the green pastures. He walks
before them slow and stately; and so accustomed are the sheep to be
guided by him, that every few bites they take they look up with
earnestness to see that he is there. When he rests during the heat of
the day in a shady place, they lie around him chewing the cud. He has
generally two or three favourite lambs which don't mix with the flock,
but frisk and fondle at his heel. There is a tender intimacy between
the Ishmaelite and his flock. They know his voice, and follow him, and
he careth for the sheep. He gathereth his lambs, and seeketh out his
flock among the sheep, and gently leadeth them that are with young,
and carrieth the lambs in his bosom. In returning back to Jerusalem, I
halted on a rugged height to survey more particularly, and enjoy the
scene where Ruth went to glean the ears of corn in the field of her
kinsman Boaz. Hither she came for the beginning of barley harvest,
because she would not leave Naomi in her sorrow. "Entreat me not to
leave thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest,
I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where
thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to
me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me." How simple
and tender! Here, when looking around me, honoured I felt for ever be
her memory, not only for these touching sentiments, worthy of our race
even before the fall, and when the image of God was not yet effaced;
but also in respect that she who uttered these words was the
great-grandmother of David, and as of the generation of Jesus. Here
also I looked back to the city of Bethlehem with lingering regret,
uttering a common-place farewell to the scene, but never to its
hallowed recollections.'
We may conclude our extracts with a passage descriptive of the
doctor's departure from the Holy Land, from which it will be seen that
he was not indisposed to keep his part when necessity demanded. 'The
steamer _Levant_ was ordered to sail at midnight on the day it arrived
at Jaffa, and there was a vast crowd and great confusion at the
embarkation. All the villainy of the Arab watermen was in active
operation. With the assistance of Dr Kiat's Italian servant, an
arrangement had been made that I and my friend were to be taken out to
the steamer for a stipulated sum; but while all the boats of the
natives were going off; ours was still detained at the pier under a
variety of flimsy pretences. Then a proposal was made to carry the
luggage back to the shore, and to take away the boat somewhere else, a
promise being given by the Arabs that they would return with it in
plenty of time to take us on board before midnight. By this time, I
was too old a traveller amid ruffians of this sort to permit so simple
a fraud to be perpetrated. The crew insisted on taking hold of the
oars, and my friend and I persisted in preventing them. We soon saw
that nothing but determined courage would carry the day. I therefore
did not hesitate to grasp the skipper firmly by the throat till I
almost choked him, threatening to toss him headlong into the sea. We
also threatened loudly to go back to the English consul, and to have
them punished for their conduct. Awed a little, and seeing that we
were not to be so easily done as they expected, notwithstanding that
we had been so simple as to pay our fare before we started, they did
at last push off the boat; but it was only after a fashion of their
own. Every forty yards their oars struck work, and they demanded more
money. The sea was rough even beyond the breakers, and the gravestone
which I had seen in the garden at Jaffa was enough to convince me,
that the guiding of a boat by savages in the dark, through the neck of
such a harbour, with whirling currents and terrifying waves, was a
matter of considerable danger. There was no remedy for it, but
continuing to set the crew at defiance, knowing that they could not
upset the boat without endangering their own lives as well as ours.
They wetted us, however, purposely, with the spray, and did their best
to frighten us, by rocking the boat like a cradle. First one piaster
(about twopence-halfpenny) was given to the skipper, then the boat was
advanced about a hundred yards, when the oars were laid down once
more. Another row was the consequence, at the end of which another
piaster was doled out to him, and forward we moved till we were fairly
within cry of the ship, when I called out for assistance, and they
pushed us directly alongside, behind the paddle-box. Here again they
detained the luggage, and demanded more buckshish; but I laid hold of
the rope hanging down from the rails of the steamer, and crying to my
companion to sit still and watch our property, I ran up the side of
the ship and called for the master, knowing that the captain was on
shore. Looking down upon them, he threatened to sink them in the ocean
if they did not bring everything on deck in a minute. When I saw the
portmanteaus brought up, and my friend and I safely on board, I
thought that all was well enough, although we had got a ducking in the
surf; but in a little, my friend found that he had been robbed of his
purse, containing two sovereigns and some small money; but nobody
could tell whether this had been done in the crowd on the pier, or
when he was in the boat, or when helped up the side of the ship. The
anchor was weighed about midnight, and we steamed along the coast of
Samaria, towards the once famous city and seaport of Herod.'
Having taken the liberty to be jocular on the doctor's oddities of
expression, we beg to say, that notwithstanding these and other
eccentricities, the work he has produced is well worthy of perusal,
and of finding a place in all respectable libraries.