and to Gethsemane, spreading themselves in the valley and extending away
up the road of the Triumphal Entry; everywhere were the most brilliant
effects of white, red, yellow, gray, green, black, and striped raiment:
no matter what these Orientals put on, it becomes picturesque,—old
coffee-bags, old rags and carpets, anything. There could not be a
finer place for a display than these two opposing hillsides, the narrow
valley, and the winding roads, which increased the apparent length of
the procession and set it off to the best advantage. We were glad of the
opportunity to see this ancient valley of bones revived in a manner to
recall the pageants and shows of centuries ago, and as we rode down the
sunken road in advance of the procession, we imagined how we might have
felt if we had been mounted on horses or elephants instead of donkeys,
and if we had been conquerors leading a triumph, and these people
on either hand had been cheering us instead of jeering us. Turkish
soldiers, stationed every thirty paces, kept the road clear for the
expected cavalcade. In order to see it and the spectators to the best
advantage, we took position on the opposite side of the valley and below
the road around the Mount of Olives.
The procession was a good illustration of the shallow splendor of the
Orient; it had no order, no uniformity, no organization; it dragged
itself along at the whim of its separate squads. First came a guard
of soldiers, then a little huddle of men of all sorts of colors and
apparel, bearing several flags, among them the green Flag of Moses;
after an interval another squad, bearing large and gorgeous flags,
preceded by musicians beating drums and cymbals. In front of the
drums danced, or rather hitched forward with stately steps, two shabby
fellows, throwing their bodies from side to side and casting their arms
about, clashing cymbals and smirking with infinite conceit. At long
intervals came other like bands with flags and music, in such disorder
as scarcely to be told from the spectators, except that they bore guns
and pistols, which they continually fired into the air and close over
the heads of the crowd, with a reckless profusion of powder and the most
murderous appearance. To these followed mounted soldiers in white, with
a Turkish band of music,—worse than any military band in Italy; and
after this the pasha, the governor of the city, a number of civil
and military dignitaries and one or two high ulemas, and a green-clad
representative of the Prophet,—a beggar on horseback,—on fiery
horses which curveted about in the crowd, excited by the guns, the
music, and the discharge of a cannon now and then, which was stationed
at the gate of St. Stephen. Among the insignia displayed were two tall
instruments of brass, which twirled and glittered in the sun, not like
the golden candlestick of the Jews, nor the “host” of the Catholics,
nor the sistrum of the ancient Egyptians, but, perhaps, as Moslemism is
a reminiscence of all religions, a caricature of all three.
The crush in the narrow road round the hill and the grouping of all the
gorgeous banners there produced a momentary fine effect; but generally,
save for the spectators, the display was cheap and childish. Only once
did we see either soldiers or civilians marching in order; there were
five fellows in line carrying Nubian spears, and also five sappers
and miners in line, wearing leathern aprons and bearing theatrical
battle-axes. As to the arms, we could discover no two guns of the same
pattern in all the multitude of guns; like most things in the East, the
demonstration was one of show, color, and noise, not to be examined
too closely, but to be taken with faith, as we eat dates. A company of
Sheridan's cavalry would have scattered the entire army.
The procession, having halted on the brow of the hill, countermarched
and returned; but the Flag of Moses and its guard went on to the camp,
at his tomb, there to await the arrival of the pilgrims on the Monday
following. And the most gorgeous Moslem demonstration of the year was
over.
VIII.—DEPARTURE FROM JERUSALEM.
THE day came to leave Jerusalem. Circumstances rendered it impossible
for us to make the overland trip to Damascus or even to Haifa. Our
regret that we should not see Bethel, Shechem, Samaria, Nazareth, and
the Sea of Galilee was somewhat lessened by the thought that we knew
the general character of the country and the villages, by what we
had already seen, and that experience had taught us the inevitable
disenchantment of seeing the historical and the sacred places of Judæa.
It is not that one visits a desert and a heap of ruins,—that would be
endurable and even stimulating to the imagination; but every locality
which is dear to the reader by some divine visitation, or wonderful
by some achievement of hero or prophet, is degraded by the presence of
sordid habitations, and a mixed, vicious, and unsavory population, or
incrusted with the most puerile superstitions, so that the traveller is
fain to content himself with a general view of the unchanged features
of the country. It must be with a certain feeling of humiliation that at
Nazareth, for instance, the object of his pilgrimage is belittled to the
inspection of such inventions as the spot upon which the Virgin stood
when she received the annunciation, and the carpenter-shop in which
Joseph worked.
At any rate, we let such thoughts predominate, when we were obliged
to relinquish the overland journey. And whatever we missed, I flatter
myself that the readers of these desultory sketches will lose nothing.
I should have indulged a certain curiosity in riding over a country as
rich in memories as it is poor in aspect, but I should have been able to
add nothing to the minute descriptions and vivid pictures with which
the Christian world is familiar; and, if the reader will excuse an
additional personal remark, I have not had the presumption to attempt
a description of Palestine and Syria (which the volumes of Robinson and
Thompson and Porter have abundantly given), but only to make a record of
limited travel and observation. What I most regretted was that we could
not see the green and fertile plain of Esdraelon, the flower-spangled
meadow of Jezreel, and the forests of Tabor and Carmel,—seats of
beauty and of verdure, and which, with the Plain of Sharon, might serve
to mitigate the picture of grim desolation which the tourist cames away
from the Holy Land.
Finally, it was with a feeling akin to regret that we looked our last
upon gray and melancholy Jerusalem. We had grown a little familiar with
its few objects of past or present grandeur, the Saracenic walls
and towers, the Temple platform and its resplendent mosque, the
agglomeration called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the ruins of the
palace and hospice of the Knights of St. John, the massive convents
and hospices of various nations and sects that rise amid the
indistinguishable huddle of wretched habitations, threaded by filthy
streets and noisome gutters. And yet we confessed to the inevitable
fascination which is always exercised upon the mind by antiquity; the
mysterious attraction of association; the undefinable influence in decay
and desolation which holds while it repels; the empire, one might say
the tyranny, over the imagination and the will which an ancient city
asserts, as if by force of an immortal personality, compelling first
curiosity, then endurance, then sympathy, and finally love. Jerusalem
has neither the art, the climate, the antiquities, nor the society which
draw the world and hold it captive in Rome, but its associations enable
it to exercise, in a degree, the same attraction. Its attraction is in
its historic spell and name, and in spite of the modern city.
Jerusalem, in fact, is incrusted with layer upon layer of inventions,
the product of credulity, cunning, and superstition, a monstrous growth
always enlarging, so that already the simple facts of history are buried
almost beyond recognition beneath this mass of rubbish. Perhaps it
would have been better for the growth of Christianity in the world if
Jerusalem had been abandoned, had become like Carthage and Memphis and
Tadmor in the wilderness, and the modern pilgrim were free to choose his
seat upon a fallen wall or mossy rock, and reconstruct for himself the
pageant of the past, and recall that Living Presence, undisturbed by the
impertinences which belittle the name of religion. It has always been
held well that the place of the burial of Moses was unknown. It would
perhaps have conduced to the purity of the Christian faith if no attempt
had ever been made to break through the obscurity which rests upon the
place of the sepulchre of Christ. Invention has grown upon invention,
and we have the Jerusalem of to-day as a result of the exaggerated
importance attached to the localization of the Divine manifestation.
Whatever interest Jerusalem has for the antiquarian, or for the devout
mind, it is undeniable that one must seek in other lands and among other
peoples for the robust virtue, the hatred of shams and useless forms,
the sweet charity, the invigorating principles, the high thinking, and
the simple worship inculcated by the Founder of Christianity.
The horses were ready. Jerusalem had just begun to stir; an itinerant
vender of coffee had set up his tray on the street, and was lustily
calling to catch the attention of the early workmen, or the vagrants who
pick themselves up from the doorsteps at dawn, and begin to reconnoitre
for the necessary and cheap taste of coffee, with which the Oriental day
opens; the sky was overcast, and a drop or two of rain fell as we
were getting into the saddle, but “It is nothing,” said the
stirrup-holder, “it goes to be a beautiful time”; and so it proved.
Scarcely were we outside the city when it cleared superbly, and we set
forward on our long ride of thirty-six miles, to the sea-coast, in high
spirits. We turned to catch the first sunlight upon the gray Tower of
David, and then went gayly on over the cool free hills, inhaling the
sparkling air and the perfume of wild-flowers, and exchanging greetings
with the pilgrims, Moslem and Christian, who must have broken up their
camps in the hills at the earliest light. There are all varieties of
nationality and costume, and many of the peaceful pilgrims are armed as
if going to a military rendezvous; perhaps our cavalcade, which is also
an assorted one of horses, donkeys, and mules, is as amusing as any
we meet. I am certain that the horse that one of the ladies rides is
unique, a mere framework of bones which rattle as he agitates himself; a
rear view of the animal, and his twisting and interlacing legs, when he
moves briskly, suggest a Chinese puzzle.
We halted at the outlet of Wady 'Aly, where there is an inn, which has
the appearance of a Den of Thieves, and took our lunch upon some giant
rocks under a fig-tree, the fruit of which was already half grown. Here
I discovered another black calla, and borrowed a pick of the landlord
to endeavor to dig up its bulb. But it was impossible to extract it from
the rocks, and when I returned the tool, the owner demanded pay for the
use of it; I told him that if he would come to America, I would lend him
a pick, and let him dig all day in the garden,—a liberality which he
was unable to comprehend.
By four o'clock we were at Bamleh, and turned aside to inspect the
so-called Saracen tower; it stands upon one side of a large enclosure
of walls and arches, an extensive ruin; under ground are vaulted
constructions apparently extending as far as the ruins above, reminding
one of the remains of the Hospice of St. John at Jerusalem. In its form
and treatment and feeling this noble tower is Gothic, and, taking it
in connection with the remains about it, I should have said it was of
Christian construction, in spite of the Arabic inscription over one
of the doorways, which might have been added when the Saracens took
possession of it; but I believe that antiquarians have decided that the
tower was erected by Moslems. These are the most “rural” ruins we
had seen in the East; they are time-stained and weather-colored, like
the remains of an English abbey, and stand in the midst of a green and
most lovely country; no sand, no nakedness, no beggars. Grass fills all
the enclosure, and grain-fields press close about it. No view could be
more enchanting than that of the tower and the rolling plain at that
hour: the bloom on the wheat-fields, flecked with flaming poppies; the
silver of the olive groves; the beds of scarlet anemones and yellow
buttercups, blotching the meadows with brilliant colors like a picture
of Turner; the soft gray hills of Judæa; the steeples and minarets of
the city. All Ramleh is built on and amid ruins, half-covered arches and
vaults.
Twilight came upon us while we were yet in the interminable plain, but
Jaffa announced itself by its orange-blossoms long before we entered its
straggling suburbs; indeed, when we were three miles away, the odor of
its gardens, weighted by the night-air, was too heavy to be agreeable.
At a distance this odor was more perceptible than in the town itself;
but next day, in the full heat of the sun, we found it so overpowering
as to give a tendency to headache.
IX.—ALONG THE SYRIAN COAST.
OUR only business in Jaffa being to get away from it, we impatiently
expected the arrival of the Austrian Lloyd steamer for Beyrout,
the Venus, a fickle and unsteady craft, as its name implies. In the
afternoon we got on board, taking note as we left the land of the
great stones that jut out into the sea, “where the chains with which
Andromeda was bound have left their footsteps, which attest [says
Josephus] the antiquity of that fable.” The Venus, which should have
departed at three o'clock, lay rolling about amid the tossing and
bobbing and crushing crowd of boats and barges till late in the evening,
taking in boxes of oranges and bags of barley, by the slow process
of hoisting up one or two at a time. The ship was lightly loaded with
freight, but overrun with third-class passengers, returning pilgrims
from Mecca and from Jerusalem (whom the waters of the Jordan seemed not
to have benefited), who invaded every part of deck, cabin, and hold, and
spreading their beds under the windows of the cabins of the first-class
passengers, reduced the whole company to a common disgust. The light
load caused the vessel to roll a little, and there was nothing agreeable
in the situation.
The next morning we were in the harbor of Haifa, under the shadow of Mt.
Carmel, and rose early to read about Elijah, and to bring as near to us
as we could with an opera-glass the convent and the scene of Elijah's
victory over the priests of Baal. The noble convent we saw, and the brow
of Carmel, which the prophet ascended to pray for rain; but the place of
the miraculous sacrifice is on the other side, in view of the plain of
Esdraelon, and so is the plain by the river Kishon where Elijah slew the
four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, whom he had already mocked and
defeated. The grotto of Elijah is shown in the hill, and the monks who
inhabit the convent regard themselves as the successors of an unbroken
succession of holy occupants since the days of the great prophet. Their
sumptuous quarters would no doubt excite the indignation of Elijah and
Elisha, who would not properly discriminate between the modern reign of
Mammon and the ancient rule of Baal. Haifa itself is only a huddle
of houses on the beach. Ten miles across the curving bay we saw the
battlements of Akka, on its triangle of land jutting into the sea, above
the mouth of Kishon, out of the fertile and world-renowned plain. We
see it more distinctly as we pass; and if we were to land we should see
little more, for few fragments remain to attest its many masters and
strange vicissitudes. A prosperous seat of the Phoenicians, it offered
hospitality to the fat-loving tribe of Asher; it was a Greek city of
wealth and consequence; it was considered the key of Palestine during
the Crusades, and the headquarters of the Templars and the Knights
of St. John; and in more modern times it had the credit of giving the
checkmate to the feeble imitation of Alexander in the East attempted by
Napoleon I.
The day was cloudy and a little cool, and not unpleasant; but there
existed all day a ground-swell which is full of all nastiness, and a
short sea which aggravated the ground-swell; and although we sailed
by the Lebanon mountains and along an historic coast, bristling with
suggestions, and with little but suggestions, of an heroic past, by
Akka and Tyre and Sidon, we were mostly indifferent to it all. The
Mediterranean, on occasion, takes away one's appetite even for ruins
and ancient history.
We can distinguish, as we sail by it, the mean modern town which wears
still the royal purple name of Tyre, and the peninsula, formerly the
island, upon which the old town stood and which gave it its name.
The Arabs still call it Tsur or Sur, “the rock,” and the ancients
fancied that this island of rock had the form of a ship and was typical
of the maritime pursuits of its people. Some have thought it more like
the cradle of commerce which Tyre is sometimes, though erroneously, said
to be; for she was only the daughter of Sidon, and did but inherit from
her mother the secret of the mastery of the seas. There were two cities
of Tyre,—the one on the island, and another on the shore. Tyre is not
an old city in the Eastern reckoning, the date of its foundation as
a great power only rising to about 1200 b. c., about the time of the
Trojan war, and after the fall of Sidon, although there was a city there
a couple of centuries earlier, when Joshua and his followers conquered
the hill-countries of Palestine; it could never in its days of greatness
have been large, probably containing not more than 30,000 to 40,000
inhabitants, but its reputation was disproportionate to its magnitude;
Joshua calls it the “strong city Tyre,” and it had the entire
respect of Jerusalem in the most haughty days of the latter. Tyre seems
to have been included in the “inheritance” allotted to Asher, but
that luxurious son of Jacob yielded to the Phoenicians and not they to
him; indeed, the parcelling of territory to the Israelitish tribes, on
condition that they would conquer it, recalls the liberal dying bequest
made by a tender Virginian to his son, of one hundred thousand dollars
if he could make it. The sea-coast portion of the Canaanites, or the
Phoenicians, was never subdued by the Jews; it preserved a fortunate
independence, in order that, under the Providence that protected the
Phoenicians, after having given the world “letters” and the first
impulse of all the permanent civilization that written language implies,
they could still bless it by teaching it commerce, and that wide
exchange of products which is a practical brotherhood of man. The world
was spared the calamity of the descent of the tribes of Israel upon
the Phoenician cities of the coast, and art was permitted to grow with
industry; unfortunately the tribes who formed the kingdom of Israel were
capable of imitating only the idolatrous worship and the sensuality of
their more polished neighbors. Such an ascendency did Tyre obtain in
Jewish affairs through the princess Jezebel and the reception of the
priests of Baal, that for many years both Samaria and Jerusalem might
almost be called dependencies of the city of the god, “the lord
Melkarth, Baal of Tyre.”
The arts of the Phoenicians the Jews were not apt to learn; the
beautiful bronze-work of their temples was executed by Tyrians, and
their curious work in wood also; the secret of the famous purple dye of
the royal stuffs which the Jews coveted was known only to the Tyrians,
who extracted from a sea-mussel this dark red violet; when the Jews
built, Tyrian workmen were necessary; when Solomon undertook his
commercial ventures into the far Orient, it was Tyrians who built his
ships at Ezion-geber, and it was Tyrian sailors who manned them; the
Phoenicians carried the manufacture of glass to a perfection unknown to
the ancient Egyptians, producing that beautiful ware the art of which
was revived by the Venetians in the sixteenth century; the Jews did
not learn from the Phoenicians, but the Greeks did, how to make that
graceful pottery and to paint the vases which are the despair of modern
imitators; the Tyrian mariners, following the Sidonian, supplied the
Mediterranean countries, including Egypt, with tin for the manufacture
of bronze, by adventurous voyages as far as Britain, and no people ever
excelled them in the working of bronze, as none in their time equalled
them in the carving of ivory, the engraving of precious metals, and the
cutting and setting of jewels.
Unfortunately scarcely anything remains of the abundant literature of
the Phoenicians,—for the Canaanites were a literary people before the
invasion of Joshua; their language was Semitic, and almost identical
with the Hebrew, although they were descendants of Ham; not only their
light literature but their historical records have disappeared, and we
have small knowledge of their kings or their great men. The one we are
most familiar with is the shrewd and liberal Hiram (I cannot tell why he
always reminds me of General Grant), who exchanged riddles with Solomon,
and shared with the mountain king the profits of his maritime skill and
experience. Hiram's tomb is still pointed out to the curious, at Tyre;
and the mutations of religions and the freaks of fortune are illustrated
by the chance that has grouped so closely together the graves of Hiram,
of Frederick Barbarossa, and of Origen.
Late in the afternoon we came in sight of Sidon, that ancient city which
the hand-book infers was famous at the time of the appearance of Joshua,
since that skilful captain speaks of it as “Great Zidon.” Famous it
doubtless had been long before his arrival, but the epithet “great”
merely distinguished the two cities; for Sidon was divided like Tyre,
“Great Sidon” being on the shore and “Little Sidon” at
some distance inland. Tradition says it was built by Sidon, the
great-grandson of Noah; but however this may be, it is doubtless the
oldest Phoenician city except Gebel, which is on the coast north of
Beyrout. It is now for the antiquarian little more than a necropolis,
and a heap of stones, on which fishermen dry their nets, although some
nine to ten thousand people occupy its squalid houses. What we see of
it is the ridge of rocks forming the shallow harbor, and the picturesque
arched bridge (with which engravings have made us familiar) that
connects a ruined fortress on a detached rock with the rocky peninsula.
Sidon cames us far back into antiquity. When the Canaanitish tribes
migrated from their seat on the Persian Gulf, a part of them continued
their march as far as Egypt. It seems to be settled that the Hittites
(or Khitas) were the invaders who overran the land of the Pharaohs,
sweeping away in their barbarous violence nearly all the monuments of
the civilization of preceding eras, and placing upon the throne of
that old empire the race of Shepherd kings. It was doubtless during
the dynasty of the Shepherds that Abraham visited Egypt, and it was a
Pharaoh of Hittite origin who made Joseph his minister. It was after the
expulsion of the Shepherds and the establishment of a dynasty “which
knew not Joseph” that the Israelites were oppressed.
But the Canaanites did not all pass beyond Syria and Palestine; some
among them, who afterwards were distinctively known as Phoenicians,
established a maritime kingdom, and founded among other cities that of
Sidon. This maritime branch no doubt kept up an intercourse with the
other portions of the Canaanite family in Southern Syria and in Egypt,
before the one was driven out of Egypt by the revolution which restored
the rule of the Egyptian Pharaohs, and the other expelled by the
advent of the Philistines. And it seems altogether probable that the
Phoenicians received from Egypt many arts which they afterwards improved
and perfected. It is tolerably certain that they borrowed from Egypt
the hieratic writing, or some of its characters, which taught them to
represent the sounds of their language by the alphabet which they gave
to the world. The Sidonians were subjugated by Thotmes III., with all
Phoenicia, and were for centuries the useful allies of the Egyptians;
but their dominion was over the sea, and they spread their colonies
first to the Grecian isles and then along the African coast; and in the
other direction sent their venturesome barks as far as Colchis on the
Black Sea. They seem to have thrived most under the Egyptian supremacy,
for the Pharaohs had need of their sailors and their ships. In the later
days of the empire, in the reign of Necho, it was Phoenician sailors
who, at his command, circumnavigated Africa, passing down the Red Sea
and returning through the Pillars of Hercules.