IN THE LEVANT.
By Charles Dudley Warner,
Twenty Fifth Impression
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin And Company
1876
TO WILLIAM D. HOWELLS THESE NOTES OF ORIENTAL TRAVEL ARE FRATERNALLY
INSCRIBED.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
IN THE LEVANT.
I.—FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM.
II.—JERUSALEM.
III.—HOLY PLACES OP THE HOLY CITY.
IV.—NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM.
V.—GOING DOWN TO JERICHO.
VI.—BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA.
VII.—THE FAIR OF MOSES; THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCH.
VIII.—DEPARTURE FROM JERUSALEM.
IX.—ALONG THE SYRIAN COAST.
X.—BEYROUT.—OVER THE LEBANON.
XI.—BA'ALBEK.
XII.—ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS.
XIII.—THE OLDEST OF CITIES.
XIV.—OTHER SIGHTS IN DAMASCUS.
XV.—SOME PRIVATE HOUSES.
XVI.—SOME SPECIMEN TRAVELLERS.
XVII.—INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN.—AN EPISODE OF TURKISH JUSTICE.
XVIII.—CYPRUS.
XIX.—THROUGH SUMMER SEAS.—RHODES.
XX.—AMONG THE ÆGEAN ISLANDS.
XXI.—SMYRNA AND EPHESUS.
XII.—THE ADVENTURERS.
XXIII.—THROUGH THE DARDANELLES.
XIV.—CONSTANTINOPLE.
XXV.—THE SERAGLIO AND ST. SOPHIA, HIPPODROME, etc.
XXVI.—SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE.
XXVII.—FROM THE GOLDEN HORN TO THE ACROPOLIS.
XXVIII.—ATHENS.
XXIX.—ELEUSIS, PLATO'S ACADEME, ETC.
XXX.—THROUGH THE GULF OF CORINTH.
PREFACE
IN the winter and spring of 1875 the writer made the tour of Egypt and
the Levant. The first portion of the journey is described in a volume
published last summer, entitled “My Winter on the Nile, among Mummies
and Moslems”; the second in the following pages. The notes of the
journey were taken and the books were written before there were any
signs of the present Oriental disturbances, and the observations made
are therefore uncolored by any expectation of the existing state of
affairs. Signs enough were visible of a transition period, extraordinary
but hopeful; with the existence of poverty, oppression, superstition,
and ignorance were mingling Occidental and Christian influences, the
faint beginnings of a revival of learning and the stronger pulsations of
awakening commercial and industrial life. The best hope of this revival
was their, as it is now, in peace and not in war. C. D. W.
Hartford, November 10,1876.
IN THE LEVANT.
I.—FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM.
SINCE Jonah made his short and ignominious voyage along the Syrian
coast, mariners have had the same difficulty in getting ashore that
the sailors experienced who attempted to land the prophet; his tedious
though safe method of disembarking was not followed by later navigators,
and the landing at Jaffa has remained a vexatious and half the time an
impossible achievement.
The town lies upon the open sea and has no harbor. It is only in
favorable weather that vessels can anchor within a mile or so from
shore, and the Mediterranean steamboats often pass the port without
being able to land either freight or passengers, In the usual condition
of the sea the big fish would have found it difficult to discharge Jonah
without stranding itself, and it seems that it waited three days for the
favorable moment. The best chance for landing nowadays is in the early
morning, in that calm period when the winds and the waves alike await
the movements of the sun. It was at that hour, on the 5th of April,
1875, that we arrived from Port Said on the French steamboat Erymanthe.
The night had been pleasant and the sea tolerably smooth, but not to the
apprehensions of some of the passengers, who always declare that they
prefer, now, a real tempest to a deceitful groundswell. On a recent trip
a party had been prevented from landing, owing to the deliberation
of the ladies in making their toilet; by the time they had attired
themselves in a proper manner to appear in Southern Palestine, the
golden hour had slipped away, and they were able only to look upon the
land which their beauty and clothes would have adorned. None of us were
caught in a like delinquency. At the moment the anchor went down we
were bargaining with a villain to take us ashore, a bargain in which the
yeasty and waxingly uneasy sea gave the boatman all the advantage.
Our little company of four is guided by the philosopher and dragoman
Mohammed Abd-el-Atti, of Cairo, who has served us during the long voyage
of the Nile. He is assisted in his task by the Abyssinian boy Ahman
Abdallah, the brightest and most faithful of servants. In making his
first appearance in the Holy Land he has donned over his gay Oriental
costume a blue Frank coat, and set his fez back upon his head at an
angle exceeding the slope of his forehead. His black face has an unusual
lustre, and his eyes dance with more than their ordinary merriment as he
points excitedly to the shore and cries, “Yâfa! Mist'r Dunham.”
The information is addressed to Madame, whom Ahman, utterly regardless
of sex, invariably addresses by the name of one of our travelling
companions on the Nile.
“Yes, marm; you see him, Yâfa,” interposed Abd-el-Atti; coming
forward with the air of brushing aside, as impertinent, the geographical
information of his subordinate; “not much, I tink, but him bery old.
Let us to go ashore.”
Jaffa, or Yâfa, or Joppa, must have been a well-established city, since
it had maritime dealings with Tarshish, in that remote period in which
the quaint story of Jonah is set,—a piece of Hebrew literature that
bears internal evidence of great antiquity in its extreme naivete.
Although the Canaanites did not come into Palestine till about 2400 b.
c., that is to say, about the time of the twelfth dynasty in Egypt, yet
there is a reasonable tradition that Jaffa existed before the deluge.
For ages it has been the chief Mediterranean port of great Jerusalem.
Here Solomon landed his Lebanon timber for the temple. The town swarmed
more than once with the Roman legions on their way to crush a Jewish
insurrection. It displayed the banner of the Saracen host a few years
after the Hegira. And, later, when the Crusaders erected the standard of
the cross on its walls, it was the dépôt of supplies which Venice and
Genoa and other rich cities contributed to the holy war. Great kingdoms
and conquerors have possessed it in turn, and for thousands of years
merchants have trusted their fortunes to its perilous roadstead. And
yet no one has ever thought it worth while to give it a harbor by the
construction of a mole, or a pier like that at Port Said. I should say
that the first requisite in the industrial, to say nothing of the moral,
regeneration of Palestine is a harbor at Jaffa.
The city is a cluster of irregular, flat-roofed houses, and looks from
the sea like a brown bowl turned bottom up; the roofs are terraces on
which the inhabitants can sleep on summer nights, and to which they
can ascend, out of the narrow, evil-smelling streets, to get a whiff of
sweet odor from the orange gardens which surround the town. The ordinary
pictures of Jaffa do it ample justice. The chief feature in the view is
the hundreds of clumsy feluccas tossing about in the aggravating waves,
diving endwise and dipping sidewise, guided a little by the long sweeps
of the sailors, but apparently the sport of the most uncertain billows.
A swarm of them, four or five deep, surrounds our vessel; they are
rising and falling in the most sickly motion, and dashing into each
other in the frantic efforts of their rowers to get near the gangway
ladder. One minute the boat nearest the stairs rises as if it would
mount into the ship, and the next it sinks below the steps into a
frightful gulf. The passengers watch the passing opportunity to jump
on board, as people dive into the “lift” of a hotel. Freight is
discharged into lighters that are equally frisky; and it is taken on and
off splashed with salt water and liable to a thousand accidents in the
violence of the transit.
Before the town stretches a line of rocks worn for ages, upon which the
surf is breaking and sending white jets into the air. It is through a
narrow opening in this that our boat is borne on the back of a great
wave, and we come into a strip of calmer water and approach the single
landing-stairs. These stairs are not so convenient as those of the
vessel we have just left, and two persons can scarcely pass on them. But
this is the only sea entrance to Jaffa; if the Jews attempt to return
and enter their ancient kingdom this way, it will take them a long time
to get in. A sea-wall fronts the town, fortified by a couple of rusty
cannon at one end, and the passage is through the one gate at the head
of these stairs.
It seems forever that we are kept waiting at the foot of this shaky
stairway. Two opposing currents are struggling to get up and down it:
excited travellers, porters with trunks and knapsacks, and dragomans who
appear to be pushing their way through simply to show their familiarity
with the country. It is a dangerous ascent for a delicate woman.
Somehow, as we wait at this gate where so many men of note have waited,
and look upon this sea-wall upon which have stood so many of the mighty
from Solomon to Origen, from Tiglath-Pileser to Richard Cour de Lion,
the historical figure which most pervades Jaffa is that of the whimsical
Jonah, whose connection with it was the slightest. There is no evidence
that he ever returned here. Josephus, who takes liberties with the
Hebrew Scriptures, says that a whale carried the fugitive into the
Euxine Sea, and there discharged him much nearer to Nineveh than he
would have been if he had kept with the conveyance in which he first
took passage and landed at Tarsus. Probably no one in Jaffa noticed the
little man as he slipped through this gate and took ship, and yet his
simple embarkation from the town has given it more notoriety than any
other event. Thanks to an enduring piece of literature, the unheroic
Jonah and his whale are better known than St. Jerome and his lion;
they are the earliest associates and Oriental acquaintances of all
well-brought-up children in Christendom. For myself, I confess that the
strictness of many a New England Sunday has been relieved by the perusal
of his unique adventure. He in a manner anticipated the use of the
monitors and other cigar-shaped submerged sea-vessels.
When we have struggled up the slippery stairs and come through the gate,
we wind about for some time in a narrow passage on the side of the sea,
and then cross through the city, still on foot. It is a rubbishy place;
the streets are steep and crooked; we pass through archways, we ascend
steps, we make unexpected turns; the shops are a little like bazaars,
but rather Italian than Oriental; we pass a pillared mosque and a Moslem
fountain; we come upon an ancient square, in the centre of which is a
round fountain with pillars and a canopy of stone, and close about it
are the bazaars of merchants. This old fountain is profusely sculptured
with Arabic inscriptions; the stones are worn and have taken the rich
tint of age, and the sunlight blends it into harmony with the gay stuffs
of the shops and the dark skins of the idlers on the pavement. We come
into the great market of fruit and vegetables, where vast heaps of
oranges, like apples in a New England orchard, line the way and fill the
atmosphere with a golden tinge.
The Jaffa oranges are famous in the Orient; they grow to the size of
ostrich eggs, they have a skin as thick as the hide of a rhinoceros,
and, in their season, the pulp is sweet, juicy, and tender. It is a
little late now, and we open one golden globe after another before
we find one that is not dry and tasteless as a piece of punk. But one
cannot resist buying such magnificent fruit.
Outside the walls, through broad dusty highways, by lanes of cactus
hedges and in sight again of the sea breaking on a rocky shore, we come
to the Hotel of the Twelve Tribes, occupied now principally by Cook's
tribes, most of whom appear to be lost. In the adjacent lot are pitched
the tents of Syrian travellers, and one of Cook's expeditions is in
all the bustle of speedy departure. The bony, nervous Syrian horses are
assigned by lot to the pilgrims, who are excellent people from England
and America, and most of them as unaccustomed to the back of a horse as
to that of an ostrich. It is touching to see some of the pilgrims walk
around the animals which have fallen to them, wondering how they are to
get on, which side they are to mount, and how they are to stay on. Some
have already mounted, and are walking the steeds carefully round the
enclosure or timidly essaying a trot. Nearly every one concludes, after
a trial, that he would like to change,—something not quite so much
up and down, you know, an easier saddle, a horse that more unites
gentleness with spirit. Some of the dragomans are equipped in a manner
to impress travellers with the perils of the country. One, whom I
remember on the Nile as a mild though showy person, has bloomed here
into a Bedawee: he is fierce in aspect, an arsenal of weapons, and
gallops furiously about upon a horse loaded down with accoutrements.
This, however, is only the beginning of our real danger.
After breakfast we sallied out to see the sights: besides the house of
Simon the tanner, they are not many. The house of Simon is, as it was in
the time of St. Peter, by the seaside. We went upon the roof (and it is
more roof than anything else) where the apostle lay down to sleep and
saw the vision, and looked around upon the other roofs and upon the wide
sweep of the tumbling sea. In the court is a well, the stone curb of
which is deeply worn in several places by the rope, showing long use.
The water is brackish; Simon may have tanned with it. The house has not
probably been destroyed and rebuilt more than four or five times since
St. Peter dwelt here; the Romans once built the entire city. The chief
room is now a mosque. We inquired for the house of Dorcas, but that is
not shown, although I understood that we could see her grave outside the
city. It is a great oversight not to show the house of Dorcas, and
one that I cannot believe will long annoy pilgrims in these days of
multiplied discoveries of sacred sites.
Whether this is the actual spot where the house of Simon stood, I do not
know, nor does it much matter. Here, or hereabouts, the apostle saw that
marvellous vision which proclaimed to a weary world the brotherhood of
man. From this spot issued the gospel of democracy: “Of a truth, I
perceive that God is no respecter of persons.” From this insignificant
dwelling went forth the edict that broke the power of tyrants,
and loosed the bonds of slaves, and ennobled the lot of woman, and
enfranchised the human mind. Of all places on earth I think there is
only one more worthy of pilgrimage by all devout and liberty-loving
souls.
We were greatly interested, also, in a visit to the well-known school of
Miss Amot, a mission school for girls in the upper chambers of a house
in the most crowded part of Jaffa. With modest courage and tact and
self-devotion this lady has sustained it here for twelve years, and the
fruits of it already begin to appear. We found twenty or thirty pupils,
nearly all quite young, and most of them daughters of Christians; they
are taught in Arabic the common branches, and some English, and they
learn to sing. They sang for us English tunes like any Sunday school; a
strange sound in a Moslem town. There are one or two other schools of
a similar character in the Orient, conducted as private enterprises by
ladies of culture; and I think there is no work nobler, and none more
worthy of liberal support or more likely to result in giving women a
decent position in Eastern society.
On a little elevation a half-mile outside the walls is a cluster of
wooden houses, which were manufactured in America. There we found the
remnants of the Adams colony, only half a dozen families out of the
original two hundred and fifty persons; two or three men and some widows
and children. The colony built in the centre of their settlement an ugly
little church out of Maine timber; it now stands empty and staring,
with broken windows. It is not difficult to make this adventure appear
romantic. Those who engaged in it were plain New England people, many
of them ignorant, but devout to fanaticism. They had heard the prophets
expounded, and the prophecies of the latter days unravelled, until they
came to believe that the day of the Lord was nigh, and that they had
laid upon them a mission in the fulfilment of the divine purposes. Most
of them were from Maine and New Hampshire, accustomed to bitter winters
and to wring their living from a niggardly soil. I do not wonder that
they were fascinated by the pictures of a fair land of blue skies, a
land of vines and olives and palms, where they were undoubtedly called
by the Spirit to a life of greater sanctity and considerable ease and
abundance. I think I see their dismay when they first pitched their
tents amid this Moslem squalor, and attempted to “squat,” Western
fashion, upon the skirts of the Plain of Sharon, which has been for
some ages pre-empted. They erected houses, however, and joined the other
inhabitants of the region in a struggle for existence. But Adams, the
preacher and president, had not faith enough to wait for the unfolding
of prophecy; he took to strong drink, and with general bad management
the whole enterprise came to grief, and the deluded people were rescued
from starvation only by the liberality of our government.
There was the germ of a good idea in the rash undertaking. If Palestine
is ever to be repeopled, its coming inhabitants must have the means of
subsistence; and if those now here are to be redeemed to a better life,
they must learn to work; before all else there must come a revival of
industry and a development of the resources of the country. To send
here Jews or Gentiles, and to support them by charity, only adds to the
existing misery.
It was eight years ago that the Adams community exploded. Its heirs and
successors are Germans, a colony from Wurtemberg, an Advent sect akin
to the American, but more single-minded and devout. They own the ground
upon which they have settled, having acquired a title from the Turkish
government; they have erected substantial houses of stone and a large
hotel, The Jerusalem, and give many evidences of shrewdness and thrift
as well as piety. They have established a good school, in which, with
German thoroughness, Latin, English, and the higher mathematics are
taught, and an excellent education may be obtained. More land the colony
is not permitted to own; but they hire ground outside the walls which
they farm to advantage.
I talked with one of the teachers, a thin young ascetic in spectacles,
whose severity of countenance and demeanor was sufficient to rebuke all
the Oriental levity I had encountered during the winter. There was
in him and in the other leaders an air of sincere fanaticism, and a
sobriety and integrity in the common laborers, which are the best omens
for the success of the colony. The leaders told us that they thought the
Americans came here with the expectation of making money uppermost in
mind, and hardly in the right spirit. As to themselves, they do not
expect to make money; they repelled the insinuation with some warmth;
they have had, in fact, a very hard struggle, and are thankful for a
fair measure of success. Their sole present purpose is evidently to
redeem and reclaim the land, and make it fit for the expected day of
jubilee. The Jews from all parts of the world, they say, are to return
to Palestine, and there is to issue out of the Holy Land a new divine
impulse which is to be the regeneration and salvation of the world. I
do not know that anybody but the Jews themselves would oppose their
migration to Palestine, though their withdrawal from the business of the
world suddenly would create wide disaster. With these doubts, however,
we did not trouble the youthful knight of severity. We only asked him
upon what the community founded its creed and its mission. Largely, he
replied, upon the prophets, and especially upon Isaiah; and he referred
us to Isaiah xxxii. 1; xlix. 12 et seq.; and lii. 1. It is not every
industrial community that would flourish on a charter so vague as this.
A lad of twelve or fourteen was our guide to the Advent settlement; he
was an early polyglot, speaking, besides English, French, and German,
Arabic, and, I think, a little Greek; a boy of uncommon gravity of
deportment and of precocious shrewdness. He is destined to be a guide
and dragoman. I could see that the whole Biblical history was a little
fade to him, but he does not lose sight of the profit of a knowledge of
it. I could not but contrast him with a Sunday-school scholar of his own
age in America, whose imagination kindles at the Old Testament stories,
and whose enthusiasm for the Holy Land is awakened by the wall maps and
the pictures of Solomon's temple. Actual contact has destroyed the
imagination of this boy; Jerusalem is not so much a wonder to him as
Boston; Samson lived just over there beyond the Plain of Sharon, and is
not so much a hero as Old Put.
The boy's mother was a good New Hampshire woman, whose downright
Yankeeism of thought and speech was in odd contrast to her Oriental
surroundings. I sat in a rocking-chair in the sitting-room of her little
wood cottage, and could scarcely convince myself that I was not in
a prim New Hampshire parlor. To her mind there were no more Oriental
illusions, and perhaps she had never indulged any; certainly, in her
presence Palestine seemed to me as commonplace as New England.
“I s'pose you 've seen the meetin' house?”
“Yes.”
“Wal' it's goin' to rack and ruin like everything else here.
There is n't enough here to have any service now. Sometimes I go to
the German; I try to keep up a little feeling.”
I have no doubt it is more difficult to keep up a religious feeling in
the Holy Land than it is in New Hampshire, but we did not discuss that
point. I asked, “Do you have any society?”
“Precious little. The Germans are dreffle unsocial. The natives are
all a low set. The Arabs will all lie; I don't think much of any
of 'em. The Mohammedans are all shiftless; you can't trust any of
'em.”
“Why don't you go home?”
“Wal, sometimes I think I'd like to see the old place, but I reckon
I could n't stand the winters. This is a nice climate, that's
all there is here; and we have grapes and oranges, and loads of
flowers,—you see my garden there; I set great store by that and me and
my daughter take solid comfort in it, especially when he is away, and
he has to be off most of the time with parties, guidin' 'em. No, I
guess I sha'n'. ever cross the ocean again.”
It appeared that the good woman had consoled herself with a second
husband, who bears a Jewish name; so that the original object of her
mission, to gather in the chosen people, is not altogether lost sight
of.
There is a curious interest in these New England transplantations.
Climate is a great transformer. The habits and customs of thousands of
years will insensibly conquer the most stubborn prejudices. I wonder how
long it will require to blend these scions of our vigorous
civilization with the motley growth that makes up the present Syriac
population,—people whose blood is streaked with a dozen different
strains, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Arabian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Greek,
Roman, Canaanite, Jewish, Persian, Turkish, with all the races that have
in turn ravaged or occupied the land. I do not, indeed, presume to say
what the Syrians are who have occupied Palestine for so many hundreds of
years, but I cannot see how it can be otherwise than that their blood
is as mixed as that of the modern Egyptians. Perhaps these New England
offshoots will maintain their distinction of race for a long time, but
I should be still more interested to know how long the New England
mind will keep its integrity in these surroundings, and whether those
ruggednesses of virtue and those homely simplicities of character which
we recognize as belonging to the hilly portions of New England will
insensibly melt away in this relaxing air that so much wants moral tone.
These Oriental countries have been conquered many times, but they have
always conquered their conquerors. I am told that even our American
consuls are not always more successful in resisting the undermining
seductions of the East than were the Roman proconsuls.
These reflections, however, let it be confessed, did not come to me as
I sat in the rocking-chair of my countrywoman. I was rather thinking how
completely her presence and accent dispelled all my Oriental illusions
and cheapened the associations of Jaffa. There is I know not what in a
real living Yankee that puts all appearances to the test and dissipates
the colors of romance. It was not until I came again into the highway
and found in front of The Jerusalem hotel a company of Arab acrobats and
pyramid-builders, their swarthy bodies shining in the white sunlight,
and a lot of idlers squatting about in enjoyment of the exertions of
others, that I recovered in any degree my delusions.
With the return of these, it seemed not so impossible to believe even in
the return of the Jews; especially when we learned that preparations for
them multiply. A second German colony has been established outside of
the city. There is another at Haifa; on the Jerusalem road the beginning
of one has been made by the Jews themselves. It amounts to something
like a “movement.”
At three o'clock in the afternoon we set out for Ramleh,
ignominiously, in a wagon. There is a carriage-road from Jaffa to
Jerusalem, and our dragoman had promised us a “private carriage.” We
decided to take it, thinking it would be more comfortable than horseback
for some of our party. We made a mistake which we have never ceased to
regret. The road I can confidently commend as the worst in the world.
The carriage into which we climbed belonged to the German colony,
and was a compromise between the ancient ark, a modern dray, and a
threshing-machine. It was one of those contrivances that a German would
evolve out of his inner consciousness, and its appearance here gave
me grave doubts as to the adaptability of these honest Germans to the
Orient. It was, however, a great deal worse than it looked. If it were
driven over smooth ground it would soon loosen all the teeth of the
passengers, and shatter their spinal columns. But over the Jerusalem
road the effect was indescribable. The noise of it was intolerable,
the jolting incredible. The little solid Dutchman, who sat in front and
drove, shook like the charioteer of an artillery wagon; but I suppose he
had no feeling. We pounded along over the roughest stone pavement, with
the sensation of victims drawn to execution in a cart, until we emerged
into the open country; but there we found no improvement in the road.
Jaffa is surrounded by immense orange groves, which are protected along
the highways by hedges of prickly-pear. We came out from a lane of these
upon the level and blooming Plain of Sharon, and saw before us, on the
left, the blue hills of Judæa. It makes little difference what kind
of conveyance one has, it is impossible for him to advance upon this
historic, if not sacred plain, and catch the first glimpse of those
pale hills which stood to him for a celestial vision in his childhood,
without a great quickening of the pulse; and it is a most lovely
view after Egypt, or after anything. The elements of it are simple
enough,—merely a wide sweep of prairie and a line of graceful
mountains; but the forms are pleasing, and the color is incomparable.
The soil is warm and red, the fields are a mass of wild-flowers of
the most brilliant and variegated hues, and, alternately swept by
the shadows of clouds and bathed in the sun, the scene takes on the
animation of incessant change.
It was somewhere here, outside the walls, I do not know the spot, that
the massacre of Jaffa occurred. I purposely go out of my way to repeat
the well-known story of it, and I trust that it will always be recalled
whenever any mention is made of the cruel little Corsican who so long
imposed the vulgarity and savageness of his selfish nature upon
Europe. It was in March, 1799, that Napoleon, toward the close of his
humiliating and disastrous campaign in Egypt, carried Jaffa by storm.
The town was given over to pillage. During its progress four thousand
Albanians of the garrison, taking refuge in some old khans, offered to
surrender on condition that their lives should be spared; otherwise they
would fight to the bitter end. Their terms were accepted, and two of
Napoleon's aids-de-camp pledged their honor for their safety. They
were marched out to the general's headquarters and seated in front of
the tents with their arms bound behind them. The displeased commander
called a council of war and deliberated two days upon their fate, and
then signed the order for the massacre of the entire body. The excuse
was that the general could not be burdened with so many prisoners. Thus
in one day were murdered in cold blood about as many people as Jaffa at
present contains. Its inhabitants may be said to have been accustomed
to being massacred; eight thousand of them were butchered in one Roman
assault; but I suppose all antiquity may be searched in vain for an act
of perfidy and cruelty combined equal to that of the Grand Emperor.
The road over which we rattle is a causeway of loose stones; the country
is a plain of sand, but clothed with a luxuriant vegetation. In the
fields the brown husbandmen are plowing, turning up the soft red earth
with a rude plough drawn by cattle yoked wide apart. Red-legged storks,
on their way, I suppose, from Egypt to their summer residence further
north, dot the meadows, and are too busy picking up worms to notice our
halloo. Abd-el-Atti, who has a passion for shooting, begs permission to
“go for” these household birds with the gun; but we explain to
him that we would no more shoot a stork than one of the green birds of
Paradise. Quails are scudding about in the newly turned furrows, and
song birds salute us from the tops of swinging cypresses. The Holy Land
is rejoicing in its one season of beauty, its spring-time.
Trees are not wanting to the verdant meadows. We still encounter an
occasional grove of oranges; olives also appear, and acacias, sycamores,
cypresses, and tamarisks. The pods of the carob-tree are, I believe,
the husks upon which the prodigal son did not thrive. Large patches of
barley are passed. But the fields not occupied with grain are literally
carpeted with wild-flowers of the most brilliant hues, such a display
as I never saw elsewhere: scarlet and dark flaming poppies, the scarlet
anemone, marigolds, white daisies, the lobelia, the lupin, the vetch,
the gorse with its delicate yellow blossom, the pea, something that we
agreed to call the white rose of Sharon, the mallow, the asphodel; the
leaves of a lily not yet in bloom. About the rose of Sharon we no doubt
were mistaken. There is no reason to suppose it was white; but we have
somehow associated the purity of that color with the song beginning,
“I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys.” It was
probably not even a rose. We finally decided to cherish the red mallow
as the rose of Sharon; it is very abundant, and the botanist of our
company seemed satisfied to accept it. For myself, the rose by the name
of mallow does not smell sweet.
We come in sight of Rainleh, which lies on the swelling mounds of the
green plain, encompassed by emerald meadows and by groves of orange
and olive, and conspicuous from a great distance by its elegant square
tower, the most beautiful in form that we have seen in the East. As the
sun is sinking, we defer our visit to it and drive to the Latin convent,
where we are to lodge, permission to that effect having been obtained
from the sister convent at Jaffa; a mere form, since a part of the
convent was built expressly for the entertainment of travellers, and the
few monks who occupy it find keeping a hotel a very profitable kind of
hospitality. The stranger is the guest of the superior, no charge is
made, and the little fiction of gratuitous hospitality so pleases the
pilgrim that he will not at his departure be outdone in liberality. It
would be much more agreeable if all our hotels were upon this system.
While the dragoman is unpacking the luggage in the court-yard and
bustling about in a manner to impress the establishment with the
importance of its accession, I climb up to the roofs to get the sunset.
The house is all roofs, it would seem, at different levels. Steps lead
here and there, and one can wander about at will; you could not desire
a pleasanter lounging-place in a summer evening. The protecting walls,
which are breast-high, are built in with cylinders of tile, like the mud
houses in Egypt; the tiles make the walls lighter, and furnish at
the same time peep-holes through which the monks can spy the world,
themselves unseen. I noticed that the tiles about the entrance court
were inclined downwards, so that a curious person could study any new
arrival at the convent without being himself observed. The sun went down
behind the square tower which is called Saracenic and is entirely Gothic
in spirit, and the light lay soft and rosy on the wide compass of green
vegetation; I heard on the distant fields the bells of mules returning
to the gates, and the sound substituted Italy in my mind for Palestine.
From this prospect I was summoned in haste; the superior of the convent
was waiting to receive me, and I had been sought in all directions. I
had no idea why I should be received, but I soon found that the occasion
was not a trivial one. In the reception-room were seated in some state
the superior, attended by two or three brothers, and the remainder of
my suite already assembled. The abbot, if he is an abbot, arose and
cordially welcomed “the general” to his humble establishment, hoped
that he was not fatigued by the journey from Jaffa, and gave him a seat
beside himself. The remainder of the party were ranged according to
their rank. I replied that the journey was on the contrary delightful,
and that any journey could be considered fortunate which had the
hospitable convent of Ramleh as its end. The courteous monk renewed his
solicitous inquiries, and my astonishment was increased by the botanist,
who gravely assured the worthy father that “the general” was
accustomed to fatigue, and that such a journey as this was a recreation
to him.
“What in the mischief is all this about?” I seized a moment to
whisper to the person next me.
“You are a distinguished American general, travelling with his lady in
pursuit of Heaven knows what, and accompanied by his suite; don't make
a mess of it.”
“Oh,” I said, “if I am a distinguished American general,
travelling with my lady in pursuit of Heaven knows what, I am glad to
know it.”
Fortunately the peaceful father did not know anything more of war than
I did, and I suppose my hastily assumed modesty of the soldier seemed
to him the real thing. It was my first experience of anything like real
war, the first time I had ever occupied any military position, and it
did not seem to be so arduous as has been represented.
Great regret was expressed by the superior that they had not anticipated
my arrival, in order to have entertained me in a more worthy manner; the
convent was uncommonly full of pilgrims, and it would be difficult to
lodge my suite as it deserved. Then there followed a long discussion
between the father and one of the monks upon our disposition for the
night.
“If we give the general and his lady the south room in the court, then
the doctor”—etc., etc.
“Or,” urged the monk, “suppose the general and his lady occupy the
cell number four, then mademoiselle can take”—etc., etc.
The military commander and his lady were at last shown into a cell
opening out of the court, a lofty but narrow vaulted room, with brick
floor and thick walls, and one small window near the ceiling. Instead of
candles we had antique Roman lamps, which made a feeble glimmer in the
cavern; the oddest water-jugs served for pitchers. It may not have been
damp, but it felt as if no sun had ever penetrated the chill interior.
“What is all this nonsense of the general?” I asked Abd-el-Atti, as
soon as I could get hold of that managing factotum.
“Dunno, be sure; these monk always pay more attention to 'stinguish
people.”
“But what did you say at the convent in Jaffa when you applied for a
permit to lodge here?”
“Oh, I tell him my gentleman general American, but 'stinguish; mebbe
he done gone wrote 'em that you 'stinguish American general. Very
nice man, the superior, speak Italian beautiful; when I give him the
letter, he say he do all he can for the general and his suite; he sorry
I not let him know 'forehand.”
The dinner was served in the long refectory, and there were some
twenty-five persons at table, mostly pilgrims to Jerusalem, and most of
them of the poorer class. One bright Italian had travelled alone with
her little boy all the way from Verona, only to see the Holy Sepulchre.
The monks waited at table and served a very good dinner. Travellers are
not permitted to enter the portion of the large convent which contains
the cells of the monks, nor to visit any part of the old building except
the chapel. I fancied that the jolly brothers who waited at table were
rather glad to come into contact with the world, even in this capacity.
In the dining-room hangs a notable picture. It is the Virgin, enthroned,
with a crown and aureole, holding the holy child, who is also crowned;
in the foreground is a choir of white boys or angels. The Virgin and
child are both black; it is the Virgin of Ethiopia. I could not learn
the origin of this picture; it was rude enough in execution to be the
work of a Greek artist of the present day; but it was said to come from
Ethiopia, where it is necessary to a proper respect for the Virgin
that she should be represented black. She seems to bear something the
relation to the Virgin of Judæa that Astarte did to the Grecian Venus.
And we are again reminded that the East has no prejudice of color: “I
am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem”; “Look not upon me
because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me.”
The convent bells are ringing at early dawn, and though we are up
at half past five, nearly all the pilgrims have hastily departed
for Jerusalem. Upon the roof I find the morning fair. There are more
minarets than spires in sight, but they stand together in this pretty
little town without discord. The bells are ringing in melodious
persuasion, but at the same time, in voices as musical, the muezzins are
calling from their galleries; each summoning men to prayer in its own
way. From these walls spectators once looked down upon the battles of
cross and crescent raging in the lovely meadows,—battles of quite as
much pride as piety. A common interest always softens animosity, and
I fancy that monks and Moslems will not again resort to the foolish
practice of breaking each other's heads so long as they enjoy the
profitable stream of pilgrims to the Holy Land.
After breakfast and a gift to the treasury of the convent according
to our rank—I think if I were to stay there again it would be in the
character of a common soldier—we embarked again in the ark, and jolted
along behind the square-shouldered driver, who seemed to enjoy the
rattling and rumbling of his clumsy vehicle. But no minor infelicity
could destroy for us the freshness of the morning or the enjoyment of
the lovely country. Although, in the jolting, one could not utter a
remark about the beauty of the way without danger of biting his tongue
in two, we feasted our eyes and let our imaginations loose over the vast
ranges of the Old Testament story.
After passing through the fertile meadows of Ramleh, we came into a
more rolling country, destitute of houses, but clothed on with a most
brilliant bloom of wild-flowers, among which the papilionaceous flowers
were conspicuous for color and delicacy. I found by the roadside a black
calla (which I should no more have believed in than in the black Virgin,
if I had not seen it). Its leaf is exactly that of our calla-lily; its
flower is similar to, but not so open and flaring, as the white calla,
and the pistil is large and very long, and of the color of the interior
of the flower. The corolla is green on the outside, but the inside is
incomparably rich, like velvet, black in some lights and dark maroon
in others. Nothing could be finer in color and texture than this superb
flower. Besides the blooms of yesterday we noticed buttercups, various
sorts of the ranunculus, among them the scarlet and the shooting-star,
a light purple flower with a dark purple centre, the Star of Bethlehem,
and the purple wind-flower. Scarlet poppies and the still more brilliant
scarlet anemones, dandelions, marguerites, filled all the fields with
masses of color.
Shortly we come into the hills, through which the road winds upward, and
the scenery is very much like that of the Adirondacks, or would be if
the rocky hills of the latter were denuded of trees. The way begins
to be lively with passengers, and it becomes us to be circumspect, for
almost every foot of ground has been consecrated or desecrated, or in
some manner made memorable. This heap of rubbish is the remains of a
fortress which the Saracens captured, built by the Crusaders to guard
the entrance of the pass, upon the site of an older fortification by the
Maccabees, or founded upon Roman substructions, and mentioned in Judges
as the spot where some very ancient Jew stayed overnight. It is also, no
doubt, one of the stations that help us to determine with the accuracy
of a surveyor the boundary between the territory of Benjamin and Judah.
I try to ascertain all these localities and to remember them all, but I
sometimes get Richard Cour de Lion mixed with Jonathan Maccabæus, and
I have no doubt I mistook “Job's convent” for the Castellum boni
Latronis, a place we were specially desirous to see as the birthplace of
the “penitent thief.” But whatever we confounded, we are certain of
one thing: we looked over into the Valley of Ajalon. It was over this
valley that Joshua commanded the moon to tarry while he smote the
fugitive Amorites on the heights of Gibeon, there to the east.
The road is thronged with pilgrims to Jerusalem, and with travellers and
their attendants,—gay cavalcades scattered all along the winding way
over the rolling plain, as in the picture of the Pilgrims to Canterbury.
All the transport of freight as well as passengers is by the backs of
beasts of burden. There are long files of horses and mules staggering
under enormous loads of trunks, tents, and bags. Dragomans, some of them
got up in fierce style, with baggy yellow trousers, yellow kuffias bound
about the head with a twisted fillet, armed with long Damascus swords,
their belts stuck full of pistols, and a rifle slung on the back, gallop
furiously along the line, the signs of danger but the assurances of
protection. Camp boys and waiters dash along also, on the pack-horses,
with a great clatter of kitchen furniture; even a scullion has an air of
adventure as he pounds his rack-a-bone steed into a vicious gallop. And
there are the Cook's tourists, called by everybody “Cookies,”
men and women struggling on according to the pace of their horses,
conspicuous in hats with white muslin drapery hanging over the neck.
Villanous-looking fellows with or without long guns, coming and going
on the highway, have the air of being neither pilgrims nor strangers. We
meet women returning from Jerusalem clad in white, seated astride their
horses, or upon beds which top their multifarious baggage.
We are leaving behind us on the right the country of Samson, in which he
passed his playful and engaging boyhood, and we look wistfully towards
it. Of Zorah, where he was born, nothing is left but a cistern, and
there is only a wretched hamlet to mark the site of Timnath, where he
got his Philistine wife. “Get her for me, for she pleaseth me well,”
was his only reply to the entreaty of his father that he would be
content with a maid of his own people.
The country gets wilder and more rocky as we ascend. Down the ragged
side paths come wretched women and girls, staggering under the loads of
brushwood which they have cut in the high ravines; loads borne upon the
head that would tax the strength of a strong man. I found it no easy
task to lift one of the bundles. The poor creatures were scantily clad
in a single garment of coarse brown cloth, but most of them wore a
profusion of ornaments; strings of coins, Turkish and Arabic, on the
head and breast, and uncouth rings and bracelets. Farther on a rabble of
boys besets us, begging for backsheesh in piteous and whining tones, and
throwing up their arms in theatrical gestures of despair.
All the hills bear marks of having once been terraced to the very tops,
for vines and olives. The natural ledges seem to have been humored into
terraces and occasionally built up and broadened by stone walls; but
where the hill was smooth, traces of terraces are yet visible. The grape
is still cultivated low down the steeps, and the olives straggle over
some of the hills to the very top; but these feeble efforts of culture
or of nature do little to relieve the deserted aspect of the scene.
We lunch in a pretty olive grove, upon a slope long ago terraced and now
grass-grown and flower-sown; lovely vistas open into cool glades, and
paths lead upward among the rocks to inviting retreats. From this high
perch in the bosom of the hills we look off upon Ramleh, Jaffa, the
broad Plain of Sharon, and the sea. A strip of sand between the sea
and the plain produces the effect of a mirage, giving to the plain the
appearance of the sea. It would be a charming spot for a country-seat
for a resident of Jerusalem, although Jerusalem itself is rural enough
at present; and David and Solomon may have had summer pavilions in
these cool shades in sight of the Mediterranean. David himself, however,
perhaps had enough of this region—when he dodged about in these
fastnesses between Ramah and Gath, from the pursuit of Saul—to make
him content with a city life. There is nothing to hinder our believing
that he often enjoyed this prospect; and we do believe it, for it is
already evident that the imagination must be called in to create an
enjoyment of this deserted land. David no doubt loved this spot. For
David was a poet, even at this early period when his occupation was that
of a successful guerilla; and he had all the true poet's adaptability,
as witness the exquisite ode he composed on the death of his enemy Saul.
I have no doubt that he enjoyed this lovely prospect often, for he was a
man who enjoyed heartily everything lovely. He was in this as in all
he did a thorough man; when he made a raid on an Amorite city, he left
neither man, woman, nor child alive to spread the news.
We have already mounted over two thousand feet. The rocks are silicious
limestone, crumbling and gray with ages of exposure; they give the
landscape an ashy appearance. But there is always a little verdure
amid the rocks, and now and then an olive-tree, perhaps a very old one,
decrepit and twisted into the most fantastic form, as if distorted by
a vegetable rheumatism, casting abroad its withered arms as if the tree
writhed in pain. On such ghostly trees I have no doubt the five kings
were hanged. Another tree or rather shrub is abundant, the dwarf-oak;
and the hawthorn, now in blossom, is frequently seen. The rock-rose—a
delicate white single flower—blooms by the wayside and amid the
ledges, and the scarlet anemone flames out more brilliantly than ever.
Nothing indeed could be more beautiful than the contrast of the clusters
of scarlet anemones and white roses with the gray rocks.
We soon descend into a valley and reach the site of Kirjath-Jearim,
which has not much ancient interest for me, except that the name is
pleasing; but on the other side of the stream and opposite a Moslem
fountain are the gloomy stone habitations of the family of the terrible
Abu Ghaush, whose robberies of travellers kept the whole country in a
panic a quarter of a century ago. He held the key of this pass, and let
no one go by without toll. For fifty years he and his companions defied
the Turkish government, and even went to the extremity of murdering two
pashas who attempted to pass this way. He was disposed of in 1846, but
his descendants still live here, having the inclination but not the
courage of the old chief. We did not encounter any of them, but I have
never seen any buildings that have such a wicked physiognomy as their
grim houses.