In The Levant

“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.

Much as we had read of the splendor of these ruins, and familiar as we were with photographs of them, we were struck with surprise when we climbed up into the great court, that is, to the platform of the temples. The platform extends over eight hundred feet from east to west, an elevated theatre for the display of some of the richest architecture in the world. The general view is broad, impressive, inspiring beyond anything else in Egypt or Syria; and when we look at details, the ruins charm us with their beauty. Round three sides of the great court runs a wall, the interior of which, recessed and niched, was once adorned with the most elaborate carving in designs more graceful than you would suppose stone could lend itself to, with a frieze of garlands of vines, flowers, and fruits. Of the so-called great Temple of Baal at the west end of the platform, only six splendid Corinthian columns remain. The so-called Temple of the Sun or Jupiter, to the south of the other and on a lower level, larger than the Parthenon, exists still in nearly its original form, although some of the exterior columns have fallen, and time and the art-hating Moslems have defaced some of its finest sculpture. The ceiling between the outer row of columns and the wall of this temple is, or was, one of the most exquisite pieces of stone-carving ever executed; the figures carved in the medallions seem to have anticipated the Gothic genius, and the exquisite patterns in stone to have suggested the subsequent Saracenic invention. The composite capitals of the columns offer an endless study; stone roses stand out upon their stems, fruit and flowers hang and bloom in the freedom of nature; the carving is all bold and spirited, and the invention endless. This is no doubt work of the Roman period after the Christian era, but it is pervaded by Greek feeling, and would seem to have been executed by Greek artists.

In the centre of the great court (there is a small six-sided court to the east of the larger one, which was once approached by a great flight of steps from below) are remains of a Christian basilica, referred to the reign of Theodosius. Underneath the platform are enormous vaults, which may have served the successive occupants for store-houses. The Saracens converted this position into a fortress, and this military impress the ruins still bear. We have therefore four ages in these ruins: the Phoenician, the Greek and Roman, the Christian, and the Saracenic. The remains of the first are most enduring. The old builders had no other method of perpetuating their memory except by these cyclopean constructions.

We saw the sunset on Ba’albek. The clouds broke away and lay in great rosy masses over Lebanon; the white snow ridge for forty miles sparkled under them. The peak of Lebanon, over ten thousand feet above us, was revealed in all its purity. There was a red light on the columns and on the walls, and the hills of Anti-Lebanon, red as a dull garnet, were speckled with snow patches. The imagination could conceive nothing more beautiful than the rose-color of the ruins, the flaming sky, and the immaculate snow peaks, apparently so close to us.

On our return we stopped at the beautiful circular temple of Venus, which would be a wonder in any other neighborhood. Dinner awaited us, and was marked by only one novelty,—what we at first took to be brown napkins, fantastically folded and laid at each plate, a touch of elegance for which we were not prepared. But the napkins proved to be bread. It is made of coarse dark wheat, baked in circular cakes as thin as brown paper, and when folded its resemblance to a napkin is complete. We found it tolerably palatable, if one could get rid of the notion that he was eating a limp rag. The people had been advertised of our arrival, and men, women, and boys swarmed about us to sell copper coins; most of them Roman, which they find in the ruins. Few are found of the Greeks’. the Romans literally sowed the ground with copper money wherever they went in the Orient. The inhabitants are Moslems, and rather decent in appearance, and the women incline to good looks, though not so modest in dress as Moslem women usually are; they are all persistent beggars, and bring babies in their arms, borrowing for that purpose all the infants in the neighborhood, to incite us to charity.

We yielded to the average sentiment of Christendom, and sallied out in the cold night to see the ruins under the light of a full moon; one of the party going simply that he might avoid the reproach of other travellers,—“It is a pity you did not see Ba’albek by moonlight.” And it must be confessed that these ruins stand the dim light of the moon better than most ruins; they are so broad and distinct that they show themselves even in this disadvantage, which those of Karnak do not. The six isolated columns seemed to float in the sky; between them snowy Lebanon showed itself.

The next morning was clear and sparkling; the sky was almost as blue as it is in Nubia. We were awakened by the drumming of a Moslem procession. It was the great annual fête day, upon which was to be performed the miracle of riding over the bodies of the devout. The ceremony took place a couple of miles away upon the hill, and we saw on all the paths leading thither files of men and women in white garments. The sheykh, mounted on horseback, rides over the prostrate bodies of all who throw themselves before him, and the number includes young men as well as darwishes. As they lie packed close together and the horse treads upon their spinal columns, their escape from death is called miraculous. The Christians tried the experiment here a year or two ago, several young fellows submitting to let a horseman trample over them, in order to show the Moslems that they also possessed a religion which could stand horses’ hoofs.

The ruins, under the intense blue sky, and in the splendid sunlight, were more impressive than in the dull gray of the day before, or even in the rosy sunset; their imperial dignity is not impaired by the excessive wealth of ornamentation. When upon this platform there stood fifty-eight of these noble columns, instead of six, conspicuous from afar, and the sunlight poured into this superb court, adorned by the genius of Athens and the wealth of Rome, this must have been one of the most resplendent temples in existence, rivalling the group upon the Acropolis itself!

Nothing more marks the contrast between the religions of the Greeks and Romans and of the Egyptians, or rather between the genius of the two civilizations, than their treatment of sacred edifices. And it is all the more to be noted, because the more modern nations accepted without reserve any god or object of veneration or mystery in the Egyptian pantheon. The Roman occupants of the temple of Philæ sacrificed without scruple upon the altars of Osiris, and the voluptuous Græco-Romans of Pompeii built a temple to Isis. Yet always and everywhere the Grecians and the Romans sought conspicuous situations for the temples of the gods; they felt, as did our Pilgrim Fathers, who planted their meeting-houses on the windiest hills of New England, that the deity was most honored when the house of his worship was most visible to men; but the Egyptians, on the contrary, buried the magnificence of their temples within wall around wall, and permitted not a hint of their splendor to the world outside. It is worth while to notice also that the Assyrians did not share the contemporary reticence of the Egyptians, but built their altars and temples high above the plain in pyramidal stages; and if we may judge by this platform at Ba’albek, the Phoenicians did not imitate the exclusive spirit of the Pharaonic worshippers.

We lingered, called again and again by the impatient dragoman, in this fascinating spot, amid the visible monuments of so many great races, bearing the marks of so many religious revolutions, and turned away with slow and reluctant steps, as those who abandon an illusion or have not yet thought out some suggestion of the imagination. We turned also with reluctance from a real illusion of the senses. In the clear atmosphere the ridge of Lebanon was startlingly near to us; the snow summit appeared to overhang Ba’albek as Vesuvius does Pompeii; and yet it is half a day’s journey across the plain to the base of the mountain, and a whole day’s journey from these ruins to the summit. But although this illusion of distance did not continue as we rode down the valley, we had on either hand the snow ranges all day, making by contrast with the brilliant colors of the plain a lovely picture.

XII.—ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS

THE station at Stoura is a big stable and a dirty little inn, which has the kitchen in one shanty, the dining-room in another, and the beds in a third; a swift mountain stream runs behind it, and a grove of poplars on the banks moans and rustles in the wind that draws down the Lebanon gorge. It was after dark when we arrived, but whether our coming put the establishment into a fluster, I doubt; it seems to be in a chronic state of excitement. The inn was kept by Italians, who have a genius for this sort of hotel; the landlord was Andrea, but I suspect the real authority resided in his plump, bright, vivacious wife. They had an heir, however, a boy of eight, who proved to be the tyrant of the house when he appeared upon the scene. The servants were a tall slender Syrian girl, an active and irresponsible boy, and a dark-eyed little maid, in the limp and dirty single garment which orphans always wear on the stage, and who in fact was an orphan, and appeared to take the full benefit of her neglected and jolly life. The whole establishment was on a lark, and in a perpetual giggle, and communicated its overflowing good-humor even to tired travellers. The well-favored little wife, who exhibited the extremes of fortune in a diamond ring and a torn and draggled calico gown, sputtered alternately French and Italian like a magpie, laughed with a contagious merriment, and actually made the cheerless accommodations she offered us appear desirable. The whole family waited on us, or rather kept us waiting on them, at table, bringing us a dish now and then as if its production were a joke, talking all the while among themselves in Arabic, and apparently about us, and laughing at their own observations, until we, even, came to conceive ourselves as a party in a most comical light; and so amusing did we grow that the slim girl and the sorry orphan were forced to rush into a corner every few minutes and laugh it out.

I spent a pleasant hour in the kitchen,—an isolated, smoke-dried room with an earth floor,—endeavoring to warm my feet at the little fires of charcoal kindled in holes on top of a bank of earth and stone, and watching the pranks of this merry and industrious family. The little heir amused himself by pounding the orphan, kicking the shins of the boy, and dashing water in the face of the slim girl,—treatment which the servants dared not resent, since the father laughed over it as an exhibition of bravery and vivacity. Fragrant steam came from a pot, in which quail were stewing for the passengers by the night mail, and each person who appeared in the kitchen, in turn, gave this pot a stir; the lively boy pounded coffee in a big mortar, put charcoal on the fire, had a tussle with the heir, threw a handspring, doing nothing a minute at a time; the orphan slid in with a bucket of water, slopping it in all directions; the heir set up a howl and kicked his father because he was not allowed to kick the orphan any more; the little wife came in like a breeze, whisking everybody one side, and sympathized with dear little Hobby, whose cruel and ugly papa was holding the love from barking his father’s shins. You do not often see a family that enjoys itself so much as this.

It was late next morning when we tore ourselves from this enchanting household, and went at a good pace over the fertile plain, straight towards Anti-Lebanon, having a glimpse of the snow of Mount Hermon,—a long ridge peering over the hills to the? southeast, and crossing in turn the Litany and the deep Anjar, which bursts forth from a single fountain about a mile to the north. On our left we saw some remains of what was once a capital city, Chalcis, of unknown origin, but an old city before it was possessed by the Ptolemies, or by Mark Antony, and once the luxurious residence of the Herod family. At Medjel, a village scattered at the foot of small tells rising in the plain, we turned into the hills, leaving unvisited a conspicuous Roman temple on a peak above the town. The road winds gradually up a wady. As we left the plain, and looked back across it to Lebanon, the colors of Bukâ’. and the mountain gave us a new surprise; they were brilliant and yet soft, as gay and splendid as the rocks of the Yellowstone, and yet exquisitely blended as in a Persian rug.

The hill-country was almost uninhabited; except the stations and an occasional Bedaween camp there was small sign of occupation; the ground was uncultivated; peasants in rags were grubbing up the roots of cedars for fuel. We met Druses with trains of mules, Moslems with camels and mules, and long processions of white-topped wagons,—like the Western “prairie schooner”—drawn each by three mules tandem. Thirty and forty of these freight vehicles travel in company, and we were continually meeting or passing them; their number is an indication of the large trade that Damascus has with Beyrout and the Mediterranean. There is plenty of color in the people and in their costume. We were told that we could distinguish the Druses by their furtive and bad countenances; but for this information I should not have seen that they differed much from the Maronites; but I endeavored to see the treacherous villain in them. I have noticed in Syria that the Catholic travellers have a good opinion of the Maronites and hate the Druses, that the American residents think little of the Maronites, and that the English have a lenient side for the Druses. The Moslems consistently despise all of them. The Druse has been a puzzle. There are the same horrible stories current about him that were believed of the early Christians; the Moslem believes that infants are slain and eaten in his midnight assemblies, and that once a year the Druse community meets in a cavern at midnight, the lights are extinguished, and the sexes mingling by chance in the license of darkness choose companions for the year. But the Druse creed, long a secret, is now known; they are the disciples of Hâkim, a Khalif of the Fatimite dynasty; they believe in the unity of God and his latest manifestation in Hakim; they are as much a political as a religious society; they are accomplished hypocrites, cunning in plotting and bold in action; they profess to possess “the truth,” and having this, they are indifferent to externals, and are willing to be Moslems with the Moslems and Christians with the Christians, while inwardly feeling a contempt for both. They are the most supercilious of all the Eastern sects. What they are about to do is always the subject of anxiety in the Lebanon regions.

At the stations of the road we found usually a wretched family or two dwelling in a shanty, half stable and half café, always a woman with a baby in her arms, and the superabundant fountains for nourishing it displayed to all the world; generally some slatternly girls, and groups of rough muleteers and drivers smoking. At one, I remember a Jew who sold antique gems, rings, and coins, with a shocking face, which not only suggested the first fall of his race, but all the advantages he has since taken of his innocent fellows, by reason of his preoccupation of his position of knowledge and depravity.

We made always, except in the steep ascents, about ten miles an hour. The management of the route is the perfection of French system and bureaucracy. We travel with a way-bill of numbered details, as if we were a royal mail. At every station we change one horse, so that we always have a fresh animal. The way-bill is at every station signed by the agent, and the minute of arrival and departure exactly noted; each horse has its number, and the number of the one taken and the one left is entered. All is life and promptness at the stations; changes are quickly made. The way-bill would show the company the exact time between stations; but I noticed that our driver continually set his watch backwards and forwards, and I found that he and the dragoman had a private understanding to conceal our delays for lunch, for traffic with Jews, or for the enjoyment of scenery.

After we had crossed the summit of the first ridge we dashed down the gate of a magnificent canyon, the rocks heaved up in perpendicular strata, overhanging, craggy, crumbled, wild. We crossed then a dreary and nearly arid basin; climbed, by curves and zigzags, another ridge, and then went rapidly down until we struck the wild and narrow gorge of the sacred Abana. Immediately luxuriant vegetable life began. The air was sweet with the blossoms of the mish-mish (apricot), and splendid walnuts and poplars overshadowed us. The river, swollen and rushing amid the trees on its hanks, was frightfully rapid. The valley winds sharply, and gives room only for the river and the road, and sometimes only for one of them. Sometimes the river is taken out of its bed and carried along one bank or the other; sometimes the road crosses it, and again pursues its way between its divided streams. We were excited by its rush and volume, and by the rich vegetation along its sides. We came to fantastic Saracenic country-seats, to arcaded and latticed houses set high up over the river, to evidences of wealth and of proximity to a great city.

Suddenly, for we seemed to have become a part of the rushing torrent and to share its rapidity, we burst out of the gorge, and saw the river, overpassing its narrow banks, flowing straight on before us, and beyond, on a level, the minarets and domes of Damascus! All along the river, on both banks of it, and along the high wall by the roadside, were crowds of men in Turkish costume, of women in pure white, of Arabs sitting quietly by the stream smoking the narghileh, squatting in rows along the wall and along the water, all pulling at the water-pipe. There were tents and booths erected by the river. In a further reach of it men and boys were bathing. Hanks and groups of veiled women and children crouched on the damp soil close to the flood, or sat immovable on some sandy point. It is a delicious holiday for two or three women to sit the livelong day by water, running or stagnant, to sit there with their veils drawn over their heads, as rooted as water-plants, and as inanimate as bags of flour. It was a striking Oriental picture, played on by the sun, enlivened by the swift current, which dashes full into the city.

As we spun on, the crowd thickened,—soldiers, grave Turks on caparisoned horses or white donkeys, Jews, blacks, Persians. We crossed a trembling bridge, and rattled into town over stony pavements, forced our way with difficulty into streets narrow and broken by sharp turns, the carriage-wheels scarcely missing men and children stretched on the ground, who refused, on the theory of their occupation of the soil prior to the invention of wheels, to draw in even a leg; and, in a confused whirl of novel sights and discordant yells, barks, and objurgations, we came to Dimitri’s hotel. The carriage stopped in the narrow street; a small door in the wall, a couple of feet above the pavement, opened, and we stepped through into a little court occupied by a fountain and an orange-tree loaded with golden fruit. Thence we passed into a large court, the centre of the hotel, where the Abana pours a generous supply into a vast marble basin, and trees and shrubs offer shelter to singing birds. About us was a wilderness of balconies, staircases, and corridors, the sun flooding it all; and Dimitri himself, sleek, hospitable, stood bowing, in a red fez, silk gown, and long gold chain.

XIII.—THE OLDEST OF CITIES

IT is a popular opinion that there is nothing of man’s work older than Damascus; there is certainly nothing newer. The city preserves its personal identity as a man keeps his from youth to age, through the constant change of substance. The man has in his body not an atom of the boy; but if the boy incurred scars, they are perpetuated in the man. Damascus has some scars. We say of other ancient cities, “This part is old, that part is new.” We say of Damascus, its life is that of a tree, decayed at heart, dropping branches, casting leaves, but always renewing itself.