CHAPTER I

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Transcriber's Note.

Apparent typographical errors have been corrected. The use of hyphens has

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IN A SYRIAN SADDLE

BY

A. GOODRICH-FREER

AUTHOR OF

"INNER JERUSALEM," "OUTER ISLES," ETC.

METHUEN & CO

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

_First Published in 1905_

THIS RECORD IS DEDICATED

BY THE LADY

TO THE DOCTOR

ON THE EVE OF STARTING TOGETHER UPON A LONGER JOURNEY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

IN MOAB

I. GOING TO JERICHO 1

II. STEPPING EASTWARD 20

III. MADABA 51

IV. MSHATTA 64

V. AMMÂN 93

VI. JERASH, AND THE FORDS OF JABBOK 116

VII. ES-SALT 145

VIII. THE JORDAN VALLEY 161

IN GALILEE AND SAMARIA

I. TO NABLUS 178

II. TO SAMARIA 194

III. TO TAANAK AND MEGIDDO 217

IV. HAIFA AND CARMEL 244

V. NAZARETH AND TABOR 258

VI. THE SEA OF GALILEE 277

VII. TIBERIAS AND BESAN 302

VIII. WEST OF THE JORDAN 323

INDEX 347

IN A SYRIAN SADDLE

IN MOAB

CHAPTER I

GOING TO JERICHO

"A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho"

Life is, in many respects, made very easy in the Holy Land. You can

return home in the afternoon with no anxious forebodings as to how much

waste of time is awaiting you in the shape of cards and notes on the

hall table; you may wear clothes for covering, you may eat for

nourishment; without taking thought for fashion in the one case, or of

competition with your neighbour's cook or gardener in the other.

But—according to our Occidental standards—you cannot consistently

indulge any taste you may happen to have for being grand. Your attempts

at a London, or shall we say a suburban, drawing-room, your "At Home"

days, your Europeanised service, the dress of your womankind—distantly

reminiscent of the ladies' papers and of Answers to Correspondents—are

certain to be complicated by some _contretemps_ provocative only of

mirth. The Oriental himself makes no attempt at being consistent. When

you arrive at his house he spreads a priceless carpet, but omits to

remove last week's dust from off the furniture; he gives you perfumed

coffee, which is like a dream of Olympus, and his servant brings you a

piece of bread in his fingers.

These reflections, and many more, were suggested during the waiting

which accompanied our start in the early sunrise at half-past five on

Saturday, 3rd October 1903. No one could have guessed how grand we

really were, and there were moments then, and later, when the fact

escaped even our own notice. We four, the Lady, the Doctor (of various

forms of scholarship) and the two Sportsmen, were the chosen and proud

companions of the Professor; and the Professor, besides being the

greatest epigraphist in Europe, was the representative of a Royal

Personage, and armed with all the permits and safe-conducts and special

privileges useful in a land of cholera, quarantine, and backsheesh. Our

eight horses were innocent of grooming, and their equipment was fastened

together mainly with tin tacks, pieces of rope, and bits of string; but

it would have been difficult to find in England any animal to whom you

could have proposed, still less with whom you could have carried

through, one tithe of what our ragged regiment accomplished. Our two

grooms, _mukaris_, appealed to certain senses as vaguely horsey, though

they suggested nothing more distinguished than stable-helps; but their

management of eight animals, under conditions which seemed especially

designed for their destruction, when there was not a blade of grass,

perhaps for a whole day not a drop of water; when they were ridden for

ten, twelve, or even fourteen hours at a stretch with merely an hour's

rest—without forage—at noon, would have done credit to any groom at

Badminton or Berkeley. As we proposed to ourselves both pleasure and

profit we took no servants—still less a dragoman. Our portable food had

been very carefully selected, and was the best obtainable. Bread, eggs,

chickens, grapes, and lemons we could count upon getting as we went

along.

Each member of the party had clothing and a blanket in a pair of

saddle-bags—mostly of goats' hair or camels' hair, gaily decorated with

coloured tassels—and these, with an extra pair for the baskets of food,

spirit-lamps, plates, knives, and tin cups, were distributed among the

three baggage animals, who also carried, in turn, the two mukaris,

perched on the top of the pile, but capable of climbing up and down with

incredibly rapid agility.

At length the cavalcade was ready, and we turned our faces towards

Jericho. First came the Professor, on a tall, white Circassian horse,

with a tail which almost swept the ground, and was dyed with henna for

protection from the Evil One, who was further defied, by each of us, by

means of a large blue bead hanging round the neck of every horse on a

coloured worsted rope. The Professor himself exhibited five foot of

humanity, mostly brains; a personality which consisted, to the eye, of a

large scarlet and gold silk _keffeeye_ (head covering) with a goats'

hair _akal_ (rope to keep it in place) and an elaborate silk fringe,

below which emerged a pair of black leggings, into one of which a whip

was jauntily stuck. He was mounted on a peaked, military saddle, and he

alone of all the party refused to be separated from his saddle-bags,

which contained an assortment of cigars, cigarettes, tobacco, and the

long wooden pipe, for use in the saddle, such as is in favour with the

Bedu.

Next came the Lady, mounted on a long-legged Arab steed, several sizes

too large for her, but selected for her use mainly because he could do

the _rahwân_, the light canter special to the desert horses, and which

reduces fatigue to a minimum. It was discovered, later in the day, that

he was also capable, apparently, of running for the Derby, an incident

which may as well be recorded at once, as it resulted in his banishment

to the second class, and the society of the mukaris.

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho still retains the character recorded

some two thousand years ago, but the thieves among whom you inevitably

fall are now licensed by the Government. There is a whole village full

of them, called Abu-dis, and they have the privilege of protecting

travellers from Bethany to Jericho—that is, of enforcing payment for

preventing anyone else from robbing you. It is but some few years ago

that an Englishman, suspected of seeking to dispense with this

advantage, had his donkey shot under him. At Bethany, accordingly, we

were joined by our escort, but, as became our dignity, he was an

officer, picturesquely attired, and mounted, unfortunately, on a

beautiful Arab mare. The misfortune lay in the fact that all our horses,

with one exception, were stallions, most of whom became restless and

uneasy, that of the Professor so unmanageable that our escort was

compelled to leave us, and to take to bypaths from which he could, more

or less, keep us in sight. Nevertheless, even the temporary

companionship had somewhat excited the entire cavalcade. We were all in

good spirits, and it must be confessed that there was a certain amount

of what may be called "fooling"—of what we would not for worlds

describe as "showing off," but, rather, as trying the paces of our

steeds—an amusement which the Professor saw reason, later, to forbid

entirely.

The road to Jericho is a descent of over three thousand feet, but at a

point nearly half way, a long and steep climb brings you from the

transverse valley Sa'b-el-Meshak to the Khan of the Good Samaritan. At

this point it occurred to the Lady's horse to have a private exhibition

on his own account, and to set off at a truly breakneck gallop, with

which no other animal in the party could possibly compete, even had it

been wise to follow, except at a considerable distance. Her strength was

quite inadequate to check him, but in the length and steepness of the

hill lay promise of safety, and it was with infinite relief that he was

seen to pull up at last. He had no vice, but the occasion was not one

for a steeplechase, and it was decided that, on the morrow, there should

be a "general post" of horses, the mukari being made responsible for his

Derby winner, and the Professor arranging, by exchange with one of the

Sportsmen, to ride an animal which would admit of conversation with the

officer, for such attainments as our leader's have not been achieved by

sitting in a library, or by confinement to the professorial chair of his

university, but rather by personal intercourse with the Arabs in the

various dialects of their own clans, by life in the desert, and

association with wandering tribes in the unexplored districts of the

Peræa Haurân and of Central Arabia.

The Sportsmen carried guns, the Doctor a notebook—though he was more

than suspected of yearning for a rifle,—the revolver which he carried at

his belt being better adapted for the murder of man than of beast—not

that the murder of man, to judge from the experiences of earlier

travellers, was a wholly improbable contingency. Our road led us along

almost the entire length of the north and east wall of Jerusalem; we

then crossed the bridge over the Kedron valley—the brook, if any exist,

is now far below the surface; we passed the Garden of Gethsemane,

skirted the southern slope of the Mount of Olives, hastened past the

filthy hovels of the little village of Bethany, crowned by the so-called

Castle of Lazarus, probably the remains of a pre-crusading Benedictine

convent, and finally, about seven o'clock, pulled up at what is known as

the Inn of the Apostles' Fountain, just such a building as a child might

draw upon a slate. As this is the only well between Bethany and Jericho

it may be safely assumed that the apostles, coming up to Jerusalem,

would drink here, though it is to be hoped that it was less contaminated

than at present; for even the careless natives strain the water through

a sieve before allowing their animals to drink, though, nevertheless,

they still acquire leeches, as the bleeding mouths of the camels and

donkeys one meets along the road frequently betray. The spot has been

marked by a succession of buildings; a little white dome over the well,

and some hewn stones and the ruins of an aqueduct in the hill across the

road, being all that now remains of its old dignity.

Passing the Khan of the Good Samaritan—a modern inn and curiosity shop,

at which you can, at your leisure, renew "a certain man's"

experiences—we paused at the top of the last hill before descending

towards the Jordan valley. Here the entire neighbourhood was once

commanded by a strong mediæval castle, intended, like many all over the

country, for the defence of the district. The tribal marks of the Bedu

to be found on its walls are of extreme interest. The hill upon which it

stands is known as Tel'at ed-Dam, the hill of blood, probably from the

red colour of the rock, though some have sought to identify it, by

reason of the sound of the name, with the Adummim of Joshua xv. 7.

The view from this point is, in certain details, absolutely unique. You

look down at the lowest spot upon the earth's surface—the hollow of the

Dead Sea, blue as the sky in the morning sunshine, flecked with

cloudlike wavelets, beautiful, gay and smiling, but bitter, treacherous,

and the home only of mystery and death. The water contains about

twenty-five per cent. of solid substances; no organism higher than such

microbes as the bacilli of tetanus can live in it; even swimming is

almost impossible; neither shells nor coral testify to any happier past.

The water boils at 221 degrees Fahrenheit, but the presence of chloride

of magnesium makes it incredibly nauseous, while the oily quality, which

it derives from chloride of calcium, makes any accidental splash upon

the garments very destructive. We gratefully take in long breaths of air

which, hot and dry as it is, are, we are well aware, more fresh and

sweet than any we are likely to obtain during the next twenty-four

hours, for only personal experience of the stifling heat of that

unrivalled hollow can make it possible to realise that six and a half

million tons of water which fall into the Dead Sea—a basin about the

size of the Lake of Geneva, but with no outlet—have to be daily

evaporated. Far away southward is the great salt district, where the

salt deposit, coated with chalky limestone and clay, takes many weird

forms, among which the Arabs point out Bint Shech Luth—the woman of

Shech Lot.

"Of whose wickedness, even to this day, the waste land that smoketh is a

testimony, and plants bearing fruit that never come to ripeness, and a

standing pillar of salt is a monument of an unbelieving soul" (Wisdom

x. 7).

"The waste land that smoketh" is a touch of autopic description which

one remembers when, towards sunset, great wreaths of white mist lie low

in the mountain hollows, as nowhere else in Judæa. Eastward, the horizon

is bounded by the long chain of the mountains of Moab, which, ever since

our arrival in the country, have seemed a sort of mysterious dreamland,

a limit of knowledge, the gate of fairyland, the nightly stage of the

great pageant gilded and painted by the sunset. How often have we

longed, like the youngest brother of the fairy tale, to ride across the

wide plain, and to wander forth for a year and a day into that dim

Unknown! We could hardly realise that at last the time had come and we

were stepping eastward.

Below us, in the great plain, a meandering green track shows where the

banks of the Jordan are offering shade and refreshment. In the nearer

foreground the scanty hovels and many hotels of modern Jericho lie,

embowered in tropical vegetation, and we remember with an added interest

that, within even the next day or two, we shall pass through districts

of three distinct flora and fauna, and, leaving behind the oaks and

pines, the familiar sparrows and starlings of our Jerusalem environment,

we shall rest to-night among palms and bananas, we shall hear the cry of

the jackal, and smell the tracks of the hyæna, and again, in a couple of

days, find ourselves in desert surroundings, the nursery of the camel

and home of the gazelle, with the scanty herbage and stalkless flora of

an Alpine world.

Looking down upon the Jericho plain we note various points of interest.

We distinguish the sites of three Jerichos.

First we notice, to the south, the kraal-like village of to-day, on the

site of a castle and church of the Crusaders, afterwards a flourishing

Moslem town, plundered by Egyptian soldiers in 1840, and subsequently

destroyed by fire in 1871. It seems unlikely that it will ever recover

its former position; for, apart from apparent absence of all ability for

initiation on the part of the Arabs, the climate seems to have a

degenerating effect upon the inhabitants, Even German perseverance,

which has made habitable spots in the low maritime plains of Judæa where

all other colonists had failed, could not suffice to render life here

endurable, and an agricultural settlement organised within the last few

years has literally _died_ out. The Latins—or, as we say in England, the

Roman Catholics—have also failed to establish themselves, and the

Russian and Greek settlements find existence possible only under

conditions of frequent change, and the stimulus of the profits to be

made out of the thousands of Russian pilgrims who come, every year, at

Epiphany, for baptism in the Jordan. Last year, however, the Jordan was

held to have acquired so large a proportion of cholera bacilli on its

way from Tiberias, where there was a great outbreak of disease, that

approach was justly forbidden by the authorities. To the west lie the

remains of the Jericho of Bible history, of which, from earliest

childhood, most of us have had a mental picture—the great town enclosed

by walls enwreathed with vegetation, "that ancient city of palm-trees,"

few of which still remain, though they were abundant as late as the

seventh century; and in Jewish amulets, and marriage or divorce

documents, which are commonly decorated with allegorical pictures,

Jericho is still represented by a group of palms. South of the

Israelitish town, and west of modern Jericho, are the remains of the

Roman Jericho, which, it is interesting to remember, was presented by

Anthony to Cleopatra, who, characteristically, promptly sold it to Herod

for a winter home. He made of it a beautiful city, adorned with palms

and gardens, and scented with the balsams for which it was long famous

as an article of commerce, but which are no longer to be found in Syria,

and where, in the time of Christ, the roadsides were shaded with

sycamores—not the _pseudo-platanus_ with which we are familiar, and

which is not a syc_o_more at all, but the _ficus sycomorus_, the

mulberry fig, which, often attaining the proportions of a handsome

forest tree, still yields its wholesome and refreshing fruit among the

humbler surroundings of to-day. The remains of a pool, five hundred and

sixty-four feet long, part of an immense system of conduits still

visible, which was the immediate cause of the fertility and beauty of

the Roman Jericho, is said to indicate the whereabouts of Herod's palace.

The Jericho of crusading times was, probably, supplied with water from

what is now locally known as the Ain es-Sultan (the Sultan's Spring),

although its more suggestive name of Elijah's Fountain is still in use

among the Christian population. Pilgrims of the fourth and fifth

centuries record the tradition that it was here that the prophet healed

the bitter water with salt. Salt is still thrown into a pool or cistern

which, toward the end of the dry season, is found to be impregnated with

noxious matter, animal or vegetable. As, before the time of the Roman

water system, there was no other means of supply it is almost certain

that the ancient town must have stood near this, the only natural

spring, and the site of the house of Rahab, still shown, may quite well

have been in the neighbourhood indicated.

Rising almost perpendicularly a short distance beyond the Fountain of

Elijah, is the Quarantana Mountain, first so called by the Crusaders, in

memory of the forty days of the Temptation, although it seems to have

been held sacred from a much earlier period, as there are remains of

many hermitages, one of which is said to have been occupied by S.

Chariton about 400 A.D.

It is a panorama wonderful not only in extent but in the amount of

detail, which, in the cloudless air of the East, we are enabled to

distinguish, and we would willingly pause longer, but the sun is high in

the heavens, we have been six hours in the saddle, and, leaving our

horses to follow, we find a pleasant relief from the glare in descending

an almost perpendicular path into the Wady Kelt, the deep gorge of the

brook Cherith, where a monastery marks the site of the alleged

hiding-place of the prophet Elijah. It is perched on a narrow shelf,

high up on the perpendicular rock wall of the ravine, and can only have

acquired its present resemblance to domestic architecture by slow and

painful labour. The lower storey, of rough massive stones, apparently

designed for a fortress, is all that remains of an ancient monastery,

founded in 535, possibly upon the site of an earlier habitation of the

Essenes, an esoteric sect of Jews, whose life somewhat resembled that of

the religious Orders among Christians. The cave, high up in the face of

the rock, alleged to have been occupied by Elijah, is now an oratory for

the Greek monks, who, in 1880, returned to an old foundation of Koziba,

and built an upper storey, with projecting balconies, from which one has

a wonderful view of the gorge below.

We left our horses upon a little bridge, which spans the bed of the

brook—where they found welcome shelter, after their giddy descent, under

a vine-covered pergola—and then, following a zigzag path, we made our

way within the doors of one of the many hospitable monasteries which,

all over the Holy Land, are ready to offer at least shade and water, the

two great boons of a hot country, to the weary and thirsty traveller. No

question was made as to creed, even as to that of our officer, a Moslem,

and we were allowed to spread the meal we had with us, with kindly

additions of water for drink and ablution, coffee, liqueur, and fresh

green lemons.

Ignoring all question as to whether the prophet were fed by Arabs or by

orabs (ravens) it is at least a pleasing sight to watch the relations of

the wild birds of the gorge with his modern representatives. The old

superior of the convent, silent, calm, with an expression of infinite

resignation to the poverty, in every sense, of his ascetic life, seemed

to recover some faint and passing interest in the beautiful world about

him as, bidding us be silent within the window, he stepped out on to the

balcony, and produced from his pocket some dried figs. Scarcely raising

his voice, he called gently, _Idoo sudar! Idoo sudar!_—or such his cry

sounded—Russian, as we understood, for "Come along, sir!" The blue air

was flecked with gold, a morsel of the fruit was seized as it was thrown

into the air, there was another flash of golden wings, and on the head,

shoulders, and the extended arms of the old man there perched the

exquisite blackbirds of the district—the "Tristram's grakle" of the Dead

Sea. The sheen of the deep purple wing, with its orange lining, was

wonderfully rich, and the creatures themselves were, in every movement,

graceful as swallows. The dainties finished, there was an instant

flutter, and not a sign remained in all the clear, blue heaven of our

visitors of a moment ago; only a shimmer of silver on the opposite cliff

showed where a cloud of rock pigeons had descended to inquire into the

cause of excitement among their neighbours.

After a couple of hours' rest we went on our way, following the narrow

path which crept along the precipice, and looking with equal wonderment

at the rocky hermitages above our heads and at those beneath our feet;

some which seemed to be accessible only to birds, while others were so

deep down in the narrow gorge that the necessaries of life have to be

lowered to them from a roughly-formed crane upon a narrow shelf of level

ground above.

It was interesting to notice that, even among men of similar religious

impulses, and identical occupations and opportunities, individual

character nevertheless finds occasion for expression. While some dwelt

in holes in the rock, accessible only by a ladder, sometimes of rope,

and in one case, by a voluntary asceticism, only by a pole, others

showed a tendency to make the best of the situation—two or three had

constructed gardens, verandahs, or porticos; one dwelling at least would

have been described by an auctioneer as a _cottage orné_, and some had

even shown an æsthetic realisation of what was befitting the situation,

and had sought after effects of colour and form as well as of

convenience. Not a human being was to be seen, but we wondered how many

pairs of eyes were watching our movements; whether it were possible that

the sound of our cheery voices, and the sight of our enjoyment, may not

have touched some heart to sense of loss, have sounded some chord of

regret, or even of remorse, have recalled memories of other days, when

friendship and anticipation and sympathy and glad companionship were

theirs, and life was other than the awaiting of death, and the setting

sun brought a sense of something added to the days that were gone as

well as of something subtracted from such as might—in God's

providence—remain.

Our horses followed slowly down the glen, and the afterglow was

beautifying even the desolate village of Jericho as we finally remounted

and rode in among the groves of orange and banana.