old,—six or seven; there are no monuments to carry us back to the city
famous in arts and arms, of which Homer sang; and if there were, the
antiquity of this hoary coast would still elude us. Herodotus says that
the temple of Melkarth at Tyre (the “daughter of Sidon”) was built
about 2300 B.C. Probably he errs by a couple of centuries; for it
was only something like twenty-three centuries before Christ that the
Canaanites came into Palestine, that is to say, late in the thirteenth
Egyptian dynasty,—a dynasty which, according to the list of Manetho
and Mariette Bey, is separated from the reign of the first Egyptian king
by an interval of twenty-seven centuries. When Abraham wandered from
Mesopotamia into Palestine he found the Canaanites in possession. But
they were comparatively new comers; they had found the land already
occupied by a numerous population who were so far advanced in
civilization as to have built many cities. Among the peoples holding the
land before them were the Rephaim, who had sixty strong towns in what is
now the wilderness of Bashan; there were also the Emim, the Zamzummim,
and the Anakim,—perhaps primitive races and perhaps conquerors of a
people farther back in the twilight, remnants of whom still remained in
Palestine when the Jews began, in their turn, to level its cities to the
earth, and who lived in the Jewish traditions as “giants.”
X.—BEYROUT.—OVER THE LEBANON.
ALL the afternoon we had the noble range of Mt. Lebanon in view, and
towards five o'clock we saw the desert-like promontory upon which
Beyrout stands. This bold headland, however, changed its appearance when
we had rounded it and came into the harbor; instead of sloping sand we
had a rocky coast, and rising from the bay a couple of hundred feet,
Beyrout, first the shabby old city, and then the new portion higher,
up, with its villas embowered in trees. To the right, upon the cliffs
overlooking the sea, is the American college, an institution whose
conspicuous position is only a fair indication of its pre-eminent
importance in the East; and it is to be regretted that it does not make
a better architectural show. Behind Beyrout, in a vast circular sweep,
rise the Lebanon mountains, clothed with trees and vineyards, terraced,
and studded with villas and villages. The view is scarcely surpassed
anywhere for luxuriance and variety. It seems to us that if we had an
impulse to go on a mission anywhere it would be to the wicked of this
fertile land.
At Beyrout also passengers must land in small boats. We were at once
boarded by the most ruffianly gang of boatmen we had yet seen, who
poured through the gangways and climbed over the sides of the vessel,
like privileged pirates, treading down people in their way. It was only
after a severe struggle that we reached our boats and landed at the
custom-house, and fell into the hands of the legalized plunderers, who
made an attack upon our baggage and demanded our passports, simply to
obtain backsheesh for themselves.
“Not to show 'em passport,” says Abd-el-Atti, who wastes no
affection on the Turks; “tiefs, all of dem; you he six months, not
so? in him dominion, come now from Jaffa; I tell him if the kin' of
Constantinople want us, he find us at the hotel.”
The hotel Bellevue, which looks upon the sea and hears always the waves
dashing upon the worn and jagged rocks, was overflowed by one of those
swarms, which are the nuisance of independent travellers, known as
a “Cook's Party,” excellent people individually no doubt, but
monopolizing hotels and steamboats, and driving everybody else into
obscurity by reason of their numbers and compact organization. We passed
yesterday one of the places on the coast where Jonah is said to have
left the whale; it is suspected—though without any contemporary
authority—that he was in a Cook's Party of his day, and left it in
disgust for this private conveyance.
Our first care in Beyrout was to secure our passage to Damascus. There
is a carriage-road over the Lebanons, constructed, owned, and managed by
a French company; it is the only road in Syria practicable for wheels,
but it is one of the best in the world; I suppose we shall celebrate our
second centennial before we have one to compare with it in the United
States. The company has the monopoly of all the traffic over it,
forwarding freight in its endless trains of wagons, and despatching a
diligence each way daily, and a night mail. We went to the office to
secure seats in the diligence.
“They are all taken,” said the official.
“Then we would like seats for the day after to-morrow.”
“They are taken, and for the day after that—for a week.”
“Then we must go in a private carriage.”
“At present we have none. The two belonging to the company are at
Damascus.”
“Then we will hire one in the city.”
“That is not permitted; no private carriage is allowed to go over the
road farther than five kilometres outside of Beyrout.”
“So you will neither take us yourselves nor let any one else?”
“Pardon; when the carriage comes from Damascus, you shall have the
first chance.”
Fortunately one of the carriages arrived that night, and the next
morning at nine o'clock we were en route. The diligence left at 4 a.
M., and makes the trip in thirteen hours; we were to break the journey
at Stoura and diverge to Ba'albek. The carriage was a short omnibus,
with seats inside for four, a broad seat in front, and a deck for the
baggage, painted a royal yellow; three horses were harnessed to it
abreast,—one in the shafts and one on each side. As the horses were to
be changed at short stages, we went forward at a swinging pace, rattling
out of the city and commanding as much respect as if we had been the
diligence itself with its six horses, three abreast, and all its haughty
passengers.
We leave the promontory of Beyrout, dip into a long depression, and then
begin to ascend the Lebanon. The road is hard, smooth, white; the soil
on either side is red; the country is exceedingly rich; we pass villas,
extensive plantations of figs, and great forests of the mulberry; for
the silk culture is the chief industry, and small factories of the
famous Syrian silks are scattered here and there. As the road winds
upward, we find the hillsides are terraced and luxuriant with fig-trees
and grapevines,—the latter flourishing, in fact, to the very top
of the mountains, say 5,200 feet above the blue Mediterranean, which
sparkles below us. Into these hills the people of Beyrout come to pass
the heated months of summer, living in little villas which are embowered
in foliage all along these lovely slopes. We encounter a new sort of
house; it is one story high, built of limestone in square blocks and
without mortar, having a flat roof covered with stones and soil,—a
very primitive construction, but universal here. Sometimes the building
is in two parts, like a double log-cabin, but the opening between the
two is always arched: so much for art; but otherwise the house, without
windows, or with slits only, looks like a section of stone-wall.
As we rise, we begin to get glimpses of the snowy peaks which make a
sharp contrast with the ravishing view behind us,—the terraced gorges,
the profound ravines, the vineyards, gardens, and orchards, the blue
sea, and the white road winding back through all like a ribbon. As we
look down, the limestone walls of the terraces are concealed, and all
the white cliffs are hidden by the ample verdure. Entering farther into
the mountains, and ascending through the grim Wady Hammâna, we have
the considerable village of that name below us on the left, lying at
the bottom of a vast and ash-colored mountain basin, like a gray heap of
cinders on the edge of a crater broken away at one side. We look at
it with interest, for there Lamartine once lived for some months in as
sentimental a seclusion as one could wish. A little higher up we come to
snow, great drifts of it by the roadside,—a phenomenon entirely beyond
the comprehension of Abdallah, who has never seen sand so cold as this,
which, nevertheless, melts in his hands. After encountering the snow, we
drive into a cold cloud, which seems much of the time to hang on the top
of Lebanon, and have a touch of real winter,—a disagreeable experience
which we had hoped to eliminate from this year; snow is only tolerable
when seen at a great distance, as the background in a summer landscape;
near at hand it congeals the human spirits.
When we were over the summit and had emerged from the thick cloud,
suddenly a surprise greeted us. Opposite was the range of Anti-Lebanon;
two thousand feet below us, the broad plain, which had not now the
appearance of land, but of some painted scene,—a singularity which is
partially explained by the red color of the soil. But, altogether, it
presented the most bewildering mass of color; if the valley had been
strewn with watered silts over a carpet of Persian rugs, the effect
might have been the same. There were patches and strips of green and of
brown, dashes of red, blotches of burnt-umber and sienna, alternations
of ploughed field and young grain, and the whole, under the passing
clouds, took the sheen of the opal. The hard, shining road lay down the
mountain-side in long loops, in ox-bows, in curves ever graceful, like a
long piece of white tape flung by chance from the summit to the valley.
We dashed down it at a great speed, winding backwards and forwards on
the mountain-side, and continually shifting our point of view of the
glowing picture.
At the little post-station of Stoura we left the Damascus road
and struck north for an hour towards Ba'albek, over a tolerable
carriage-road. But the road ceased at Mu'allakah; beyond that,
a horseback journey of six or seven hours, there is a road-bed to
Ba'albek, stoned a part of the way, and intended to be passable some
day. Mu'allakah lies on the plain at the opening of the wild gorge
of the Berduny, a lively torrent which dances down to join the Litany,
through the verdure of fruit-trees and slender poplars. Over a mile
up the glen, in the bosom of the mountains, is the town of Zahleh, the
largest in the Lebanon; and there we purposed to pass the night, having
been commended to the hospitality of the missionaries there by Dr.
Jessup of Beyrout.
Our halted establishment drew a crowd of curious spectators about
it, mostly women and children, who had probably never seen a carriage
before; they examined us and commented upon us with perfect freedom, but
that was the extent of their hospitality, not one of them was willing
to earn a para by carrying our baggage to Zahleh; and we started up
the hill, leaving the dragoman in an animated quarrel with the entire
population, who, in turn, resented his comments upon their want of
religion and good manners.
Climbing up a stony hill, threading gullies and ravines, and finally
rough streets, we came into the amphitheatre in the hills which enclose
Zahleh. The town is unique in its construction. Imagine innumerable
small whitewashed wooden houses, rising in concentric circles, one above
the other, on the slopes of the basin, like the chairs on the terraces
of a Roman circus. The town is mostly new, for the Druses captured it
and burned it in 1860, and reminds one of a New England factory village.
Its situation is a stony, ragged basin, three thousand feet above the
sea; the tops of the hills behind it were still covered with snow, and
we could easily fancy that we were in Switzerland. The ten or twelve
thousand inhabitants are nearly all Maroyites, a sect of Christians whom
we should call Greeks, but who are in communion with the Latin church;
a people ignorant and superstitious, governed by their priests,
occasionally turbulent, and always on the point of open rupture with the
mysterious and subtle Druses. Having the name of Christians and few of
the qualities, they are most unpromising subjects of missionary labor.
Yet the mission here makes progress and converts, and we were glad to
see that the American missionaries were universally respected.
Fortunately the American name and Christianity are exceedingly well
represented in Northern Syria by gentlemen who unite a thorough and
varied scholarship with Christian simplicity, energy, and enthusiasm.
At first it seems hard that so much talent and culture should be hidden
away in such a place as Zahleh, and we were inclined to lament a lot so
far removed from the living sympathies of the world. It seems, indeed,
almost hopeless to make any impression in this antique and conceited
mass of superstition. But if Syria is to be regenerated, and to be ever
the home of an industrious, clean, and moral people, in sympathy with
the enlightened world, the change is to be made by exhibiting to the
people a higher type of Christianity than they have known hitherto,—a
Christianity that reforms manners, and betters the social condition, and
adds a new interest to life by lifting it to a higher plane; physical
conditions must visibly improve under it. It is not enough in a village
like this of Zahleh, for instance, to set up a new form of Christian
worship, and let it drone on in a sleepy fashion, however devout and
circumspect. It needs men of talent, scientific attainment, practical
sagacity, who shall make the Christian name respected by superior
qualities, as well as by devout lives. They must show a better style
of living, more thrift and comfort, than that which prevails here. The
people will by and by see a logical connection between a well-ordered
house and garden, a farm scientifically cultivated, a prosperous
factory, and the profitableness of honesty and industry, with the
superior civilization of our Western Christianity. You can already see
the influence in Syria of the accomplished scholars, skilful physicians
and surgeons, men versed in the sciences, in botany and geology, who
are able to understand the resources of the country, who are supported
there, but not liberally enough supported, by the Christians of America.
XI.—BA'ALBEK.
WE were entertained at the house of the Rev. Mr. Wood, who accompanied
us the next day to Ba'albek, his mission territory including that
ancient seat of splendid paganism. Some sort of religious fête in
the neighborhood had absorbed the best saddle-beasts, and we were
indifferently mounted on the refuse of donkeys and horses, Abdallah,
our most shining possession, riding, as usual, on the top of a pile of
baggage. The inhabitants were very civil as we passed along; we did not
know whether to attribute it to the influence of the missionaries or
to the rarity of travellers, but the word “backsheesh” we heard not
once in Zahleh.
After we had emerged from Mu'allakah upon the open plain, we passed on
our left hand the Moslem village of Kerah Nun, which is distinguished as
the burial-place of the prophet Noah; but we contented ourselves with a
sight of the dome. The mariner lies there in a grave seventy feet long,
or seventy yards, some scoffers say; but this, whatever it is, is not
the measure of the patriarch. The grave proved too short, and Noah
is buried with his knees bent, and his feet extending downward in the
ground.
The plain of Bukâ'. is some ninety miles long, and in this portion of
it about ten miles broad; it is well watered, and though the red soil
is stuffed with small stones, it is very fertile, and would yield
abundantly if cultivated; but it is mostly an abandoned waste of weeds.
The ground rises gradually all the way to Ba'albek, starting from an
elevation of three thousand feet; the plain is rolling, and the streams
which rush down from the near mountains are very swift. Nothing could be
lovelier than the snowy ranges of mountains on either hand, in
contrast with the browns and reds of the slopes,—like our own
autumn foliage,—and the green and brown plain, now sprinkled with
wild-flowers of many varieties.
The sky was covered with clouds, great masses floating about; the wind
from the hills was cold, and at length drove us to our wraps; then a
fine rain ensued, but it did not last long, for the rainy season was
over. We crossed the plain diagonally, and lunched at a little khan,
half house and half stable, raised above a stream, with a group of young
poplars in front. We sat on a raised divan in the covered court, and
looked out through the arched doorway over a lovely expanse of plain and
hills. It was difficult to tell which part of the house was devoted to
the stable and which to the family; from the door of the room which I
selected as the neatest came the braying of a donkey. The landlord and
his wife, a young woman and rather pretty, who had a baby in her arms,
furnished pipes and tobacco, and the travellers or idlers—they are
one—sat on the ground smoking narghilelis. A squad of ruffianly
Metâwileh, a sect of Moslems who follow the Koran strictly, and
reject the traditions,—perhaps like those who call themselves Bible
Christians in distinction from theological Christians,—came from the
field, deposited their ploughs, which they carried on their shoulders,
on the platform outside, and, seating themselves in a row in the khan,
looked at us stolidly. And we, having the opportunity of saying so,
looked at them intelligently.
We went on obliquely across the plain, rising a little through a region
rich, but only half cultivated, crossing streams and floundering in
mud-holes for three hours, on a walk, the wind growing stronger from the
snow mountains, and the cold becoming almost unendurable. It was in vain
that Abd-el-Atti spun hour after hour an Arab romance; not even the warm
colors of the Oriental imagination could soften the piteous blast. At
length, when patience was nearly gone, in a depression in the plain,
close to the foot-hills of Anti-Lebanon, behold the great Ba'albek,
that is to say, a Moslem village of three thousand to four thousand
inhabitants, fairly clean and sightly, and the ruins just on the edge of
it, the six well-known gigantic Corinthian pillars standing out against
the gray sky. Never was sight more welcome.
Ba'albek, like Zahleh, has no inn, and we lodged in a private house
near the ruins. The house was one story; it consisted of four large
rooms in a row, looking upon the stone-wall enclosure, each with its
door, and with no communication between them. The kitchen was in a
separate building. These rooms had high ceilings of beams supporting
the flat roof, windows with shutters but without glass, divans along one
side, and in one corner a fireplace and chimney. Each room had a niche
extending from the floor almost to the ceiling, in which the beds are
piled in the daytime; at night they are made up on the divans or on the
floor. This is the common pattern of a Syrian house, and when we got a
fire blazing in the big chimney-place and began to thaw out our stiff
limbs, and Abd-el-Atti brought in something from the kitchen that was
hot and red in color and may have had spice on the top of it, we found
this the most comfortable residence in the world.
It is the business of a dragoman to produce the improbable in impossible
places. Abd-el-Atti rubbed his lamp and converted this establishment
into a tolerable inn, with a prolific kitchen and an abundant table.
While he was performing this revolution we went to see the ruins, the
most noble portions of which have survived the religion and almost the
memory of the builders.
The remains of the temples of Ba'albek, or Hieropolis, are only
elevated as they stand upon an artificial platform; they are in the
depression of the valley, and in fact a considerable stream flows all
about the walls and penetrates the subterranean passages. This water
comes from a fountain which bursts out of the Anti-Lebanon hills about
half a mile above Ba'albek, in an immense volume, falls into a great
basin, and flows away in a small river. These instantaneously born
rivers are a peculiarity of Syria; and they often disappear as suddenly
as they come. The water of this Ba'albek fountain is cold, pure, and
sweet; it deserves to be called a “beverage,” and is, so far as my
experience goes, the most agreeable water in the world. The Moslems have
a proverb which expresses its unique worth: “The water of Ba'albek
never leaves its home.” It rushes past the village almost a river in
size, and then disappears in the plain below as suddenly as it came to
the light above.
We made our way across the stream and along aqueducts and over heaps of
shattered walls and columns to the west end of the group of ruins. This
end is defended by a battlemented wall some fifty feet high, which
was built by the Saracens out of incongruous materials from older
constructions. The northeast corner of this new wall rests upon the
ancient Phoenician wall, which sustained the original platform of the
sacred buildings; and at this corner are found the three famous stones
which at one time gave a name, “The Three-Stoned,” to the great
temple. As I do not intend to enter into the details of these often
described ruins, I will say here, that this ancient Phoenician wall
appears on the north side of the platform detached, showing that the
most ancient temple occupied a larger area than the Greek and Roman
buildings.
There are many stones in the old platform wall which are thirty feet
long; but the three large ones, which are elevated twenty feet above
the ground, and are in a line, are respectively 64 feet long, 63 feet
8 inches, and 63 feet, and about 13 feet in height and in depth. When I
measured the first stone, I made it 128 feet long, which I knew was an
error, but it was only by careful inspection that I discovered the joint
of the two stones which I had taken for one. I thought this a practical
test of the close fit of these blocks, which, laid without mortar, come
together as if the ends had been polished. A stone larger than either of
these lies in the neighboring quarry, hewn out but not detached.
These massive constructions, when first rediscovered, were the subject
of a great deal of wonder and speculation, and were referred to a remote
and misty if not fabulous period. I believe it is now agreed that they
were the work of the Phoenicians, or Canaanites, and that they are to be
referred to a period subsequent to the conquest of Egypt, or at least
of the Delta of Egypt, by the Hittites, when the Egyptian influence was
felt in Syria; and that this Temple of the Sun was at least suggested,
as well as the worship of the Sun god here, by the Temple of the Sun
at Heliopolis on the Nile. There is, to be sure, no record of the great
city of Ba'albek, but it may safely be referred to the period of the
greatest prosperity of the Phoenician nation.