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Title: The Ship Dwellers
A Story of a Happy Cruise
Author: Albert Bigelow Paine
Release Date: October 18, 2010 [eBook #34096]
Language: English
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[Illustration: WE CHANGED OUR MINDS ABOUT BEING WILLING TO SAIL
PAST--See page 31.]
THE SHIP-DWELLERS
A Story of a Happy Cruise
by
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
Author of
"From Van-Dweller to Commuter"
"The Tent-Dwellers" Etc.
With Illustrations from Drawings by Thomas Fogarty and from Photographs
[Illustration]
Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London
MCMX
* * * * *
BOOKS BY
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
THE SHIP-DWELLERS. Illustrated. 8vo _net_ $1.50
THE TENT-DWELLERS. Illustrated. Post 8vo 1.50
THE HOLLOW TREE AND DEEP WOODS BOOK. Illustrated. Post 8vo 1.50
FROM VAN-DWELLER TO COMMUTER. Ill'd. Post 8vo 1.50
LIFE OF THOMAS NAST. Ill'd. 8vo _net_ 5.00
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, N. Y.
* * * * *
Copyright, 1910, by HARPER & BROTHERS
TO
MARK TWAIN
HERO OF MY CHILDHOOD
INSPIRATION OF MY YOUTH
FRIEND OF THESE LATER YEARS
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE BOOK, AND THE DREAM 1
II IN THE TRACK OF THE INNOCENTS 9
III DAYS AT SEA 16
IV WE BECOME HISTORY 23
V INTRODUCING THE REPROBATES 26
VI A LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE 29
VII A DAY TO OURSELVES 41
VIII OUT OF THE SUNRISE 46
IX EARLY MEDITERRANEAN EXPERIENCES 57
X THE DIVERTING STORY OF ALGIERS 62
XI WE ENTER THE ORIENT 68
XII WE TOUCH AT GENOA 86
XIII MALTA, A LAND OF YESTERDAY 95
XIV A SUNDAY AT SEA 113
XV A PORT OF MISSING DREAMS 118
XVI ATHENS THAT IS 139
XVII INTO THE DARDANELLES 146
XVIII A CITY OF ILLUSION 150
XIX THE TURK AND SOME OF HIS PHASES 158
XX ABDUL HAMID GOES TO PRAYER 172
XXI LOOKING DOWN ON YILDIZ 182
XXII EPHESUS: THE CITY THAT WAS 191
XXIII INTO SYRIA 208
XXIV THE HOUSE THAT CAIN BUILT 214
XXV GOING DOWN TO DAMASCUS 222
XXVI THE "PEARL OF THE EAST" 226
XXVII FOOTPRINTS OF PAUL 239
XXVIII DISCONTENTED PILGRIMS 247
XXIX DAMASCUS, THE GARDEN BEAUTIFUL 255
XXX WHERE PILGRIMS GATHER IN 263
XXXI THE HOLY CITY 274
XXXII THE HOLY SEPULCHRE 278
XXXIII TWO HOLY MOUNTAINS 288
XXXIV THE LITTLE TOWN OF THE MANGER 297
XXXV THE SORROW OF THE CHOSEN--THE WAY OF THE CROSS 301
XXXVI AT THE MOUTH OF THE NILE 309
XXXVII THE SMILE OF THE SPHINX 315
XXXVIII WAYS THAT ARE EGYPTIAN 322
XXXIX WHERE HISTORY BEGAN 328
XL KARNAK AND LUXOR 335
XLI THE STILL VALLEY OF THE KINGS 346
XLII THE HIGHWAY OF EGYPT 359
XLIII OTHER WAYS THAT ARE EGYPTIAN 370
XLIV SAKKARA AND THE SACRED BULLS 377
XLV A VISIT WITH RAMESES II 382
XLVI THE LONG WAY HOME 391
ILLUSTRATIONS
WE CHANGED OUR MINDS ABOUT BEING WILLING TO SAIL PAST _Frontispiece_
TO ME IT WAS ALL TRUE, ALL ROMANCE--ALL POETRY 3
SOMEBODY SENT ME A BASKET OF FRUIT 13
THEY ARE AN ATTRACTIVE LOT--THE REPROBATES 17
GAVE HIM THE "ICY MITT" 21
THEY COULD DIVE LIKE SEALS 33
TWO MEN TAKE YOU IN HAND, AND AWAY YOU GO 38
DID A SORT OF FANDAROLE 41
THEN IT DAWNED UPON THE DIPLOMAT 43
BUT NOW GIBRALTAR, THE CROUCHING LION OF TRAFALGAR, HAD RISEN
FROM THE SEA 49
WE COULD HAVE LISTENED ALL NIGHT TO BEÑUNES 53
"THAT IS THE KASBA" 66
ONE DOES NOT HURRY THE ORIENT--ONE WAITS ON IT 68
MARVELLOUS BASKETS AND QUEER THINGS 72
WE DID NOT CARE MUCH FOR PARKS 74
ETERNALLY EAST WITH NO HINT OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD 76
TWO BENT, WRINKLED WOMEN WEAVING LACE OUTSIDE THE DOOR 109
WE LOOKED ACROSS THE ENTRANCE AND THERE ROSE THE ACROPOLIS,
HIGH AGAINST THE BLUE 122
HE WOULD SWING HIS ARMS AND BEGIN, "YOU SEE--!" THE REST
REQUIRED A MIND-READER 124
I WOULD HAVE APPLIED FOR THE POSITION IN THE CHORUS MYSELF 129
TOOK TURNS ADDRESSING THE MULTITUDE 131
ONE'S AGE, STATED ON OATH, GOES WITH A PASSPORT 148
KEYEFF 150
I WANTED TO CARRY AWAY ONE OF THOSE TOMBSTONES 189
ALL THE PLAINS AND SLOPES OF THE OLD CITY, WITH ITS WHITE
FRAGMENTS AND POOR RUINED HARBOR, LAY AT OUR FEET 198
FROM THE TIME OF ADAM, BAALBEC BECAME A PLACE OF ALTARS 216
SO THE PATRIARCHS JOURNEYED; SO, TWO THOUSAND YEARS LATER,
JOSEPH AND MARY TRAVELLED INTO EGYPT 225
URGING US TO PARTAKE OF THE PRECIOUS STUFF, WITHOUT STINT 243
ASKED HIM IF HE WOULDN'T EXECUTE A LITTLE COMMISSION FOR ME
IN THE BAZAARS 249
THE PATRIARCH KNEW ALL ABOUT JAFFA 264
JERUSALEM--ITS BUBBLE-ROOFED HOUSES AND DOMES, ITS CYPRESS
AND OLIVE TREES 294
A CAMEL TRAIN LED THE WAY THROUGH THE GATES 300
THE DEPTH OF THEIR FALL 302
THE WAY OF THE CROSS 304
THE TRUE GOLGOTHA--THE PLACE OF THE SKULL 306
A VAST INDIFFERENCE TO ALL PUNY THINGS 318
SANCTUARY IN KARNAK 332
GADDIS 332
I MADE A PICTURE OF THE FLY-BRUSH BRIGADE 338
ITS MAGNIFICENT PYLONS OR ENTRANCE WALLS ... AND THEN ONCE
MORE WE WERE ON THE DONKEYS 340
THE TEMPLE OF LUXOR ... ONCE MORE REFLECTING ITS COLUMNS IN
THE NILE 342
THINK OF WATERING A WHOLE WHEAT-FIELD WITH A WELL-SWEEP AND
A PAIL 360
GOT IT MADE CHEAP SOMEWHERE, WITH HER PICTURE CARVED ON THE
FRONT OF IT 386
SET OUT ON THE LONG, STEADY, ATLANTIC SWING 392
THE SHIP-DWELLERS
"The grand object of all travel is to see the shores of the
Mediterranean."
--DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
[Illustration]
I
THE BOOK, AND THE DREAM
It was a long time ago--far back in another century--that my father
brought home from the village, one evening, a brand-new book. There were
not so many books in those days, and this was a fine big one, with black
and gilt covers, and such a lot of pictures!
I was at an age to claim things. I said the book was _my_ book, and,
later, petitioned my father to establish that claim. (I remember we were
climbing through the bars at the time, having driven the cows to the
further pasture.)
My father was kindly disposed, but conservative; that was his habit. He
said that I might look at the book--that I might even read it, some day,
when I was old enough, and I think he added that privately I might call
it mine--a privilege which provided as well for any claim I might have
on the moon.
I don't think these permissions altogether satisfied me. I was already
in the second reader, and the lust of individual ownership was upon me.
Besides, this was a _New Pilgrim's Progress_. We had respect in our
house for the old _Pilgrim's Progress_, and I had been encouraged to
search its pages. I had read it, or read at it, for a good while, and my
claim of ownership in that direction had never been disputed. Now, here
was a brand-new one, and the pictures in it looked most attractive. I
was especially enamoured of the frontispiece, "The Pilgrim's Vision,"
showing the "Innocents" on their way "abroad," standing on the deck of
the _Quaker City_ and gazing at Bible pictures in the sky.
I do not remember how the question of ownership settled itself. I do
remember how the book that winter became the nucleus of our family
circle, and how night after night my mother read aloud from it while the
rest of us listened, and often the others laughed.
[Illustration: TO ME IT WAS ALL TRUE, ALL ROMANCE--ALL POETRY]
I did not laugh--not then. In the first place, I would not, in those
days, laugh at any _Pilgrim's Progress_, especially at a new one, and
then I had not arrived at the point of sophistication where a joke, a
literary joke, registers. To me it was all true, all romance--all
poetry--the story of those happy voyagers who sailed in a ship of dreams
to lands beyond the sunrise, where men with turbans, long flowing
garments and Bible whiskers rode on camels; where ruined columns rose in
a desert that was once a city; where the Sphinx and the Pyramids looked
out over the sands that had drifted about them long and long before the
Wise Men of the East had seen the Star rise over Bethlehem.
In the big, bleak farm-house on the wide, bleak Illinois prairie I
looked into the open fire and dreamed. Some day, somehow, I would see
those distant lands. I would sail away on that ship with "Dan" and
"Jack" and "The Doctor" to the Far East; I would visit Damascus and
Jerusalem, and pitch my camp on the borders of the Nile. Very likely I
should decide to remain there and live happy ever after.
How the dreams of youth stretch down the years, and fade, and change!
Only this one did not fade, and I thought it did not change. I learned
to laugh with the others, by-and-by, but the romance and the poetry of
the pilgrimage did not grow dim. The argonauts of the _Quaker City_
sailed always in a halo of romance to harbors of the forgotten days. As
often as I picked up the book the dream was fresh and new, though
realization seemed ever further and still further ahead.
Then all at once, there, just within reach, it lay. There was no reason
why, in some measure at least, I should not follow the track of those
old first "Innocents Abroad." Of course, I was dreaming again--only,
this time, perhaps, I could make the dream come true.
I began to read advertisements. I found that a good many ship-loads of
"Pilgrims" had followed that first little band to the Orient--that the
first "ocean picnic" steamer, which set sail in June forty-two years
before, had started a fashion in sea excursioning which had changed only
in details. Ocean picnics to the Mediterranean were made in winter now,
and the vessels used for them were fully eight times as big as the old
_Quaker City_, which had been a side-wheel steamer, and grand, no doubt,
for her period, with a register proudly advertised at eighteen hundred
tons! Itineraries, too, varied more or less, but Greece, Egypt, and the
Holy Land were still names to conjure with. Advertisements of cruises
were plentiful, and literature on the subject was luminous and exciting.
A small table by my bed became gorgeous with prospectuses in blue and
gold and crimson sunset dyes. The Sphinx, the Pyramids, and prows of
stately vessels looked out from many covers and became backgrounds for
lofty, dark-blue camels and dusky men of fantastic dress. Often I woke
in the night and lit my lamp and consulted these things. When I went to
the city I made the lives of various agents miserable with my inquiries.
It was hard--it was nerve-racking to decide. But on one of these
occasions I overheard the casual remark that the S. S. _Grosser
Kurfürst_ would set out on her cruise to the Orient with two tons of
dressed chicken and four thousand bottles of champagne.
I hesitated no longer. Dear me, my dream had changed, then, after all!
Such things had not in the least concerned the boy who had looked into
the open fire, and pictured a pilgrimage to Damascus and Jerusalem, and
a camp on the borders of the Nile.
My remembrance of the next few days is hazy--that is, it is
kaleidoscopic. I recall doing a good many things in a hurry and
receiving a good deal of advice. Also the impression that everybody in
the world except myself had been everywhere in the world, and that
presently they were all going again, and that I should find them, no
doubt, strewn all the way from Gibraltar to Jerusalem, when I had been
persuading myself that in the places I had intended to visit I should
meet only the fantastic stranger. Suddenly it was two days before
sailing. Then it was the day before sailing. Then it was sailing day!
Perhaps it was the hurry and stress of those last days; perhaps it is
the feeling natural to such a proximity. I do not know. But I do know
that during those final flying hours, when I was looking across the very
threshold of realization, the old fascination faded, and if somebody
had only suggested a good reason for my staying at home, I would have
stayed there, and I would have given that person something valuable,
besides. But nobody did it. Not a soul was thoughtful enough to hint
that I was either needed or desired in my native land, and I was too
modest to mention it myself.
There had been rain, but it was bright enough that February morning of
departure--just a bit squally along the west. What a gay crowd there was
at the pier and on the vessel! I thought all of New York must be going.
That was a mistake--they were mostly visitors, as I discovered later. It
would average three visitors to one passenger, I should think. I had
more than that--twice as many. I am not boasting--they came mainly to be
sure that I got aboard and stayed there, and to see that I didn't lose
most of my things. They knew me and what I would be likely to do, alone.
They wanted to steer me to the right state-room and distribute my traps.
Then they could put me in charge of Providence and the deck-steward, and
wash their hands of me, and feel that whatever happened they had done
their duty and were not to blame.
So I had six, as I say, and we worked our way through, among the
passengers and visitors, who seemed all to be talking and laughing at
once or pawing over mail and packages heaped upon the cabin table. I
didn't feel like laughing and talking, and I wasn't interested in the
mail. Almost everybody in the world that meant anything to me was in my
crowd, and they were going away, presently, to leave me on this big
ship, among strangers, bound for the strange lands. My long dream of the
Orient dwindled to a decrepit thing.
But presently we found my state-room, and it was gratifying. I was
impressed with its regal furnishings. After all, there were
compensations in a habitation like that. Besides, there were always the
two tons of dressed chicken and those thousands of champagne. I became
more cheerful.
Only, I wish the ship people wouldn't find it necessary to blow their
whistle so loud and suddenly to send one's friends ashore. There is no
chance to carry off somebody--somebody you would enjoy having along.
They blow that thing until it shivers the very marrow of one's soul.
How the visitors do crowd ashore! A word--a last kiss--a "God bless
you"--your own are gone presently--you are left merely standing there,
abandoned, marooned, deserted--feeling somehow that it's all wrong, and
that something ought to be done about it. Why don't those people hurry?
You want to get away now; you want it over with.
A familiar figure fights its way up the gang-plank, breasting the
shoreward tide. Your pulse jumps--they are going to take you home, after
all. But no, he only comes to tell you that _your_ six will be at a
certain place near the end of the dock, where you can see them, and wave
to them.
You push to the ship's side for a place at the rail. The last visitors
are straggling off now, even to the final official. Then somewhere
somebody does something that slackens the cables, the remaining
gang-plank is dragged away. That whistle again, and then a band--our
band--turns loose a perfect storm of music.
We are going! We are going! We have dropped away from the pier and are
gliding past the rows of upturned faces, the lines of frantic
handkerchiefs. Yes, oh yes, we are going--there is no turning back now,
no changing of one's mind again. All the cares of work, the claims of
home--they cannot reach us any more. Those waiting at the pier's end to
wave as we pass--whatever life holds for me is centred there, and I am
leaving it all behind. There they are, now! Wave! Wave! Oh, I did not
know it would be like this! I did not suppose that I might--need another
handkerchief!
The smoke of a tug drifts between-- I have lost them. No, there they are
again, still waving. That white spot--that is a little furry coat--such
a little furry coat and getting so far off, and so blurry. My glass--if
I can only get hold of myself enough to see through it. Yes, there they
are! Oh, those wretched boats to drift in and shut that baby figure
away! Now they are gone, but I cannot find her again. The smoke, the
mist, and a sudden drift of snow have swept between. I have lost the
direction-- I don't know where to look any more. It is all over--we are
off--we are going out to sea!
[Illustration]
II
IN THE TRACK OF THE INNOCENTS
We are through luncheon; we have left Sandy Hook, and the shores have
dropped behind the western horizon. It was a noble luncheon we sat down
to as we crossed the lower bay. One stopped at the serving-table to
admire an exhibition like that. Banked up in splendid pyramids as for a
World's Fair display, garnished and embroidered and fringed with every
inviting trick of decoration, it was a spectacle to take one's breath
and make him resolve to consume it all. One felt that he could recover a
good deal on a luncheon like that, but I think the most of us recovered
too much. I am sure, now, that I did--a good deal too much--and that my
selections were not the best--not for the beginning of a strange, new
life at sea.
Then there was Laura--Laura, age fourteen, whose place at the table is
next to mine, and a rather sturdy young person; I think she also
considered the bill of fare too casually. She ventured the information
that this was her second voyage, that the first had been a short trip on
a smaller vessel, and that she had been seasick. She did not intend to
be seasick on a fine, big steamer like this, and I could tell by the
liberality with which she stowed away the satisfying German provender
that she had enjoyed an early and light breakfast, followed by brisk
exercise in getting to the ship. The tables were gay with flowers; the
company looked happy, handsome, and well-dressed; the music was
inspiring. Friends left behind seemed suddenly very far away. We had
become a little world all to ourselves--most of us strangers to one
another, but thrown in a narrow compass here and likely to remain
associates for weeks, even months. What a big, jolly picnic it was,
after all!
Outside it was bleak and squally, but no matter. The air was fine and
salt and invigorating. The old _Quaker City_ had been held by storm at
anchor in the lower bay. We were already down the Narrows and heading
straight for the open sea. Land presently lost its detail and became a
dark outline. That, too, sank lower and became grayer and fell back into
the mist.
I remembered that certain travellers had displayed strong emotions on
seeing their native land disappear. I had none--none of any consequence.
I had symptoms, though, and I recognized them. Like Laura, aged
fourteen, I had taken a shorter voyage on a poorer ship, and I had
decided that this would be different. I had engaged a steamer-chair, and
soon after luncheon I thought I would take a cigar and a book on Italy
and come out here and sit in it--in the chair, of course--and smoke and
think and look out to sea. But when I got to the door of my state-room
and felt the great vessel take a slow, curious side-step and caught a
faint whiff of linoleum and varnish from the newly renovated cabin, I
decided to forego the cigar and guide-book and take a volume on mind
cure instead.
It seems a good ship, though, and I feel that we shall all learn to be
proud of her, in time. In a little prospectus pamphlet I have here I
find some of her measurements and capacities, and I have been comparing
them with those of the _Quaker City_, the first steamer to set out on
this Oriental cruise. If she were travelling along beside us to-day I
suppose she would look like a private yacht. She must have had trouble
with a sea like this. She was little more than two hundred feet long, I
believe, and, as already mentioned, her tonnage was registered at
eighteen hundred. The figures set down in the prospectus for this vessel
are a good deal bigger than those, but they are still too modest. The
figures quote her as being a trifle less than six hundred feet long, but
I can see in both directions from where I sit, and I am satisfied that
it would take me hours to get either to her bow or stern. I don't
believe I could do it in that time. I am convinced that it is at least
half a mile to my state-room.
The prospectus is correct, however, in one item. It says that the
_Kurfürst_ has a displacement of twenty-two thousand tons. That is
handsome, and it is not too much; I realized that some moments ago. When
I felt our noble vessel "sashay" in her slow majestic fashion toward
Cuba, and then pause to revolve the matter a little, and after
concluding to sink, suddenly set out in a long, slow, upward slide for
the moon, I knew that her displacement was all that is claimed for it,
and I prepared for the worst; so did Laura, and started for her
state-room suddenly....
Later: I don't know how many of our party went down to dinner. I know
one that did not go. The music is good, but I can hear it very well from
where I am. No doubt the dinner is good, too, but I am satisfied to give
it absent treatment.
There is a full-blown Scientist in the next room. She keeps saying "Mind
is all. Mind is all. This is nothing. This is--this is just--" after
which, the Earthquake.
What an amazing ocean it is to be able to toss this mighty ship about in
such a way! I suppose there is no hope of her sinking. No hope!
[Illustration: SOMEBODY SENT ME A BASKET OF FRUIT]
Somebody sent me a basket of fruit. I vaguely wonder what it is like,
and if I shall ever know? I suppose there are men who could untie that
paper and look at it. I could stand in awe of a man like that. I could--
However, it is no matter; there is no such man.
* * * * *
But it was bright next morning, though a heavy sea was still running. I
was by no means perfectly happy, but I struggled on deck quite early,
and found company. A stout youngish man was marching round and round
vigorously as if the number of laps he might achieve was vital. He
fetched up suddenly as I stepped on deck. He spoke with quick energy.
"Look here," he said, earnestly, "perhaps you can tell me; it's
important, and I want to know: is a seasick man better off if he walks
or sits still? I'm seasick. I confess it, fully. My interior economy is
all disqualified, and I want advice. Now tell me, _is_ a seasick man
better off when he walks or when he sits still?"
I gave it up, and the Diplomat (we learned later that he was connected
with the consular service) passed to the next possible source of
information. I heard him propounding his inquiries several times during
the morning as new arrivals appeared on deck.
He was the most honest man on the ship. The rest of us did not confess
that we were seasick. We had a bad cold or rheumatism or dyspepsia or
locomotorataxia or pleurisy--all sorts of things--but we were not
seasick. It was remarkable what a floating hospital of miscellaneous
complaints the ship had become, and how suddenly they all disappeared
that afternoon when the sea went down.
It was Lincoln's Birthday, and, inspired by the lively appearance of the
deck, a kindly promoter of entertainment went among the passengers
inviting them to take part in some sort of simple exercises for the
evening. Our pleasure excursion seemed really to have begun now, and
walking leisurely around the promenade-deck one could get a fair
impression of our company and cast the horoscope. They were a fair
average of Americans, on the whole, with a heavy percentage of foreign
faces, mostly German. Referring to the passenger-list, one discovered
that we hailed from many States; but when I drifted into the German
purlieus of that register and found such prefixes as Herr
Regierungs-präsident a. D., and Frau Regierungs-präsident a. D., and
looking further discovered Herr Kommerzienrat, Herr Oberpräsidialrat
von, and a few more high-power explosives like that, I said, "This is
not an excursion, after all; it is a court assembly." I did not know in
the least what these titles meant, but I was uneasy. I had the feeling
that the owner of any one of them could nod to the executioner and
dismiss me permanently from the ship. The interpreter came along just
then. He said:
"Do not excite yourself. They are not so dangerous as they look. It is
only as one would say, 'Mr. and Mrs. Councilmanofthethirdward Jones, or
Mr. MayorofOshkosh Smith, or Mrs. Commissionerofhighways Brown.' It is
pure decoration; nothing fatal will occur." I felt better then, and set
out to identify some of the owners of this furniture. It was as the
interpreter had said--there was no danger. A man with a six-story title
could hardly be distinguished from the rest of his countrymen except
when he tried to sign it. But a thing like that must be valuable in
Germany; otherwise he would not go to the trouble and expense of lugging
such a burden around on a trip like this, when one usually wants to
travel light.
The ship gave us a surprise that night, and it was worth while. When we
got to the dining-room we found it decorated with the interwoven colors
of two nations; the tables likewise radiant, and there were menus with
the picture of Abraham Lincoln outside. We were far out in the blackness
of the ocean now, but here was as brilliant a spot as you would find at
Sherry's or Delmonico's, and a little company gathered from the world's
end to do honor to the pioneer boy of Kentucky. I think many of us there
had never observed Lincoln's Birthday before, and it was fitting enough
that we should begin at such a time and place. I know we all rose and
joined in _America_ and the _Star-Spangled Banner_ at the close, and we
are not likely to forget that mid-ocean celebration of the birth of
America's greatest, gentlest hero.
III
DAYS AT SEA
We have settled down into a pleasant routine of lazy life. Most of us
are regularly on deck now, though one sees new faces daily.
[Illustration: THEY ARE AN ATTRACTIVE LOT--THE REPROBATES]
We have taken up such amusements as please us--reading, games, gossip,
diaries, picture-puzzles, and there are even one or two mild flirtations
discoverable. In the "booze-bazaar" (the Diplomat's name for the
smoking-room) the Reprobates find solace in pleasant mixtures and droll
stories, while they win one another's money at diverting games. They are
an attractive lot--the Reprobates. One can hardly tear himself away from
them. Only the odors of the smoking-room are not quite attractive, as
yet. I am no longer seasick--at least, not definitely so; but I still
say "Mind is all" as I pass through the smoking-room.
We are getting well acquainted, too, for the brief period of time we
have been together. It does not seem brief, however. That bleak day of
departure in North River is already far back in the past--as far back as
if it belonged to another period, which indeed it does. We are becoming
acquainted, as I say. We are rapidly finding out one another's names;
whether we are married, single, or divorced--and why; what, if anything,
we do when we are at home; how we happened to come on this trip; and a
great deal of useful information--useful on a ship like this, where the
voyage is to be a long one and associations more or less continuous. We
form into little groups and discuss these things--our own affairs
first--then presently we shift the personnel of our groups and discuss
each other, and are happy and satisfied, and feel that the cruise is a
success.
There are not many young people on the ship--a condition which would
seem to have prevailed on these long ocean excursions since the first
Oriental pilgrimage, forty-two years ago. I suppose the prospects of
several months on one ship, with sight-seeing in Egypt and the Holy
Land, do not look attractive enough to the average young person who is
thinking of gayer things. One can be gay enough on shipboard, however,
where there is a good band of music; a quarter-deck to dance on; nooks
on the sun-deck to flirt in; promenades and shuffleboard, with full
dress every night for dinner. No need to have an idle time on an
excursion like this if one doesn't want it; which most of us do,
however, because we are no longer entirely young, and just loaf around
and talk of unimportant things and pretend to read up on the places we
are going to see.
We need to do that. What we don't know about history and geography on
this ship would sink it. Most of us who have been to school, even if it
is a good while ago, keep sort of mental pictures of the hemispheres,
and preserve the sound of certain old familiar names. We live under the
impression that this is knowledge, and it passes well enough for that
until a time comes like this when particular places on the map are to be
visited and particular associations are to be recalled. Then, of course,
we start in to classify and distinguish, and suddenly find that there is
scarcely anything to classify and less still to distinguish. I am
morally certain that there are not ten of us on this vessel who could
tell with certainty the difference between Deucalion and Deuteronomy, or
between the Pillars of Hercules and the Golden Horn. The brightest man
on the ship this morning asked if Algiers was in Egypt or Spain, and a
dashing high-school girl wanted to know if Greece were not a part of
Asia Minor.
We shall all know better when we are through with this trip. We shall be
wonders in the matter of knowledge, and we shall get it from first
hands. We shall no longer confuse Upper and Lower Egypt, or a peristyle
with a stadium. We are going to know about these things. That is why we
are here.
In the matter of our amusements, picture-puzzles seem to be in the lead.
They are fascinating things, once one gets the habit. They sell them on
this ship, and nearly everybody has one or more. The tables in the
forward cabin are full of them, and after dinner there is a group around
each table pawing over the pieces in a rapt way or offering advice to
whoever happens to be setting them. Certain of our middle-aged ladies in
particular find comfort in the picture-puzzles, and sit all day in their
steamer-chairs with the pieces on a large pasteboard cover, shifting and
trying and fitting them into place. One wonders what blessing those old
_Quaker City_ pilgrims had that took the place of the fascinating
picture-puzzle.
We are getting south now, and the weather is much warmer. The sun is
bright, too, and a little rainbow travels with the ship, just over the
port screw. When the water is fairly quiet the decks are really gay. New
faces still appear, however. Every little while there is a fresh
arrival, as it were; a fluttering out from some inner tangle of sea
magic and darkness, just as a butterfly might emerge from a cocoon. Some
of them do not stay. We run into a cross-sea or a swell, or something,
and they disappear again, and their places at the table remain vacant.
The Diplomat continues his fight and his inquiries. Every little while
one may hear him ask: "Is it better for a seasick man to walk or to sit
down?" The Diplomat never denies his condition. "Oh, Lord, I'm seasick!"
he says. "I'd be sick on a duck-pond. I'd be sick if the ship were tied
to the dock. I'd be sick if anybody told me I was on a ship. Say, what
is a fellow like that to do, anyway? And here I am bound for Jerusalem!"
Down here the water is very blue. We might be sailing on a great tub of
indigo. One imagines that to take up a glass of it would be to dip up
pure ultra-marine. I mentioned this to the Diplomat.
"Yes," he said, "it is a cracker-jack of an ocean, but I don't care for
it just now."
But what a lonely ocean it is! Not a vessel, not a sail, not a column of
smoke on the horizon!
We are officially German on this ship, and the language prevails. Our
passenger-list shows that we are fully half German, I believe, and of
course all the officers and stewards are of that race. The consequence
is that everybody on the ship, almost, speaks or tries to speak the
language. Persons one would never suspect of such a thing do it, and
some of them pretty well, too. Even I got reckless and shameless, and
from a long-buried past produced a few German remarks of my own. They
were only about ten-carat assay, but they were accepted at par. I
remember an old and very dear German man in America who once said to me,
speaking of his crops, "Der early corn, he iss all right; aber der late
corn, she's bad!"
My German is not as good as his English, but you'd think it was better,
the serious way these stewards accept it. They recognize the
quality--they have many cargoes of the same brand.
We have two exceedingly pretty girls on this ship--one of them as
amiable, as gentle, as lovely in every way as she is pretty. The
other--well, she is pretty enough in all conscience, and she may be
amiable--I wouldn't want to be unfair in my estimate--but if she is, she
has a genius for concealing it from the rest of the passengers. Her
chief characteristic besides her comeliness seems to be a conviction
that she has made a mistake in coming with such a crowd.
[Illustration: GAVE HIM THE "ICY MITT"]
We can't domesticate that girl--she won't mix with us. The poor old
Promoter, one of the kindliest creatures alive, approached her with an
invitation to read aloud a small selection for the little Lincoln
memorial he was preparing. She declined chillily--gave him the "icy
mitt," the Diplomat said.
"I nevah do anything on shipboahd," she declared, and ignored his
apologies.
She spends most of her time disposed in a ravishing fashion in a
steamer-chair, reading a novel or letting the volume drop listlessly at
her side, with one of her dainty fingers between the pages to mark the
place, while her spirit lives in other worlds than ours. The Promoter
says she is cold and frigidly beautiful--a winter landscape. But then
the Promoter is a simple, forgiving soul. I think she is just flitter
and frosting--just a Christmas-card. A ship like this is democratic--it
has to be. We are all just people here.
It is also cosmopolitan--it has to be that, too, with a crowd like ours.
This Sunday evening affords an example of what I mean. In the
dining-room forward there are religious exercises--prayers and a song
service under the direction of the Promoter--a repetition, no doubt, of
the very excellent programme given this morning. Far aft, on the
quarter-deck, a dance is in progress, under the direction, I believe, of
our German contingent; while amidships, in the "booze-bazaar," the
Reprobates and their Godless friends are engaged in revelry, probably
under the direction of Satan. The ship is very long, and the
entertainments do not conflict or compete. One may select whatever best
accords with his taste and morals, or, if he likes variety, he may
divide his time. Everything is running wide open as this luminous speck
of life--a small, self-constituted world--goes throbbing through the
dark.
IV
WE BECOME HISTORY
We had been four days at sea, boring our way into the sunrise at the
rate of three hundred and sixty miles a day, when we met the "Great
Sight"--the American fleet of sixteen ships of war returning from its
cruise around the world.
It had been rumored among us when we left New York that there was a
possibility of such a meeting. It was only a possibility, of course, for
even a fleet is a mere speck on a wide waste of ocean, and with engines
on both sides driving at full speed the chances of intersection were
small.
So we went about figuring and speculating and worrying the officers, who
were more anxious over the matter than we were, but conservative,
nevertheless. We only learned, therefore, or rather we guessed, I think,
that our Marconi flash was travelling out beyond the horizon, and the
loneliest sea imaginable, trying to find an answering spark.
During the afternoon of the Sunday previously mentioned a sentence on
the blackboard, the first official word, announced, with a German
flavor, that it was "not quite impossible" that the meeting would occur
next morning, and this we took to mean that wireless communication had
been established, though we were not further informed.
There was a wild gale during the night and a heavy sea running at
daybreak, but the sky was clear. A few stragglers were at early
breakfast when, all at once, a roll of drums and a burst of martial
music brought us to our feet.
We did not need any one to tell us what it meant. "The fleet!" came to
every man's lips, and a moment later we were on deck. Not only those in
the dining-room came. Sick or well, bundled together somehow, from every
opening our excursionists staggered forth, and, climbing to the
sun-deck, looked out across the bridge to where the sunrise had just
filled the morning sky. There they were--far, faint, and blurred at
first, but presently outlined clear--stretched across the glowing east,
lifting and tossing out of the morning, our sixteen noble vessels on
their homeward way!
At that moment I think there was not one on our ship who did not feel
that whatever might come, now, the cruise was a success. Foreign lands
would bring us grand sights, no doubt, but nothing that could equal
this. We realized that, fully, and whispered our good-fortune to one
another as we gazed out upon that spectacle of a lifetime.
Viewed across our bow, the vessels appeared to form a continuous
straight line, but they divided into two sections as they came on, eight
vessels in each, and passed in column formation. In a little while we
were close to them--they were just under our starboard bow--their upper
decks black with men turned out in our honor. We waved to them and our
band played, but we did not cheer. We were too much impressed to be
noisy, nor could we have made our voices heard across that wild
shouting sea. So we only looked, and waved, and perhaps wiped our eyes,
and some of us tried to photograph them.
They passed in perfect formation. Heavy seas broke over them, and every
billow seemed to sweep their decks, but their lines varied not a point
and the separating distances remained unchanged. So perfect was the
alignment that each column became a single vessel when they had left us
behind.
It was over, all too soon. Straight as an arrow those two noble lines
pierced the western horizon, passed through it, and were gone. We went
below then, to find chairs flying, crockery smashing, and state-rooms in
a wreck. It was the rough day of the trip, but we declared that we did
not mind it at all. By wireless we thanked Admiral Sperry, and wished
him safe arrival home. Then presently he returned thanks, and good
wishes for our journey in distant lands.
We meant to vote resolutions of gratitude to our captain that night at
dinner for his skill in finding the fleet. But it was our rough day, as
I have mentioned, and nobody was there to do it--at least, there was not
enough for a real, first-class, able-bodied resolution. We did it next
evening--that is, to-night. Between the asparagus and the pheasant we
told him some of the nice things we thought of him, and ended up by
drinking his health, standing, and by giving a great "Hoch soil er
leben!" in real German fashion.
We were vain and set up, and why not? Had we not been the first
Americans to give our fleet welcome home? We felt that we had become
almost history.
V
INTRODUCING THE REPROBATES
We are a week at sea now, and have been making our courtesy to the
sunrise half an hour earlier every morning. That is to say, we have
gained three hours and a half, and when the first bugle blows for
half-past seven, and commands us to get up and muss around and be ready
for the next bugle half an hour later, it means in the well-regulated
civilized country we've left behind that it's just four o'clock, and
time to turn over and settle down and really enjoy life. The result is
you swear at the bugler, when you ought to love him for the trouble he
takes to get you up in time for breakfast.
After breakfast, the deck. It is good to walk around and around the
promenade these fine mornings down here, even though the sea keeps
billowy and the horizon line lifts and falls with its majestic swing.
You are no longer disturbed by it. Your body has adapted itself to the
motion, and sways like an inverted pendulum. You feel that you have your
sea-legs almost as well as the stewards, and this makes you proud and
showy before the other passengers. It is February, but it is not cold
down in this violet, semi-tropic sea. The air is fresh enough, but it is
soft and gratifying, and one almost imagines that he can smell flowers
in it. Perhaps it is a fact, too, for we are not far from land now; we
shall reach Madeira to-morrow morning.
Yet somehow the thought of land is not exciting. I do not believe any of
us are eager for it. We are quite restored now, even the Diplomat, and
the days on shipboard are serene and pleasantly satisfying.
So many happy things go to make up the day. It is refreshing to play
shuffleboard on the after deck with Laura, age fourteen, and her
companion, the only other girl of her age on board. It is inspiring to
hear the band play every morning at ten when one is not too close to the
strenuous music. I suppose beating a bass drum and cymbals makes muscle,
and the man does not realize how strong he is. It is diverting to drift
into the smoking-room--now that I do not mind its fragrance any
more--and watch the Apostle (so christened because of his name and
general build and inspired look) winning money from the Colonel at
piquet, while the Horse Doctor discusses the philosophies of life in a
manner at least pleasing to the unregenerates.
I should add, I suppose, that the Horse Doctor is not really that by
profession, but having been dubbed so one day by his fellow-Reprobates,
the Apostle and the Colonel, his cheerful reply: "Yes, I expect to be
taken for one--travelling, as I do, with a couple of asses," fixed the
title for him permanently. We enjoy the Reprobates. They are so
ingenuous in their morals, and are corrupting the smoking-room in such a
frank, unrestricted way. We enjoy their arguments too, they are so free
and personal. We disapprove of the Reprobates, but we love them because
we are human and born in sin, and they stand for all things we would
like to do--if we dared.
It is inviting and comfortable almost anywhere on the ship these days.
It is good just to sit in the sun and dream; to lean over the rail and
watch the little rainbow that travels with us, the white lace that the
ship makes in its majestic sweep, to wander back to the stern and follow
the interminable wake of the screw as it stretches back beyond the
horizon line. Then there is the sunset; it was wonderful to-night. The
air was perfectly clear, the sun a red disk going down cleanly cut into
the sea. Laura and I saw it from amidships, looking out across the high
stern of the vessel that sank now below the horizon, then lifted into
the sky. Even the chief engineer and the ship's doctor came out to look
at it, and told us to watch for the green sun which would appear the
instant after setting. Later--after dinner, I mean--we danced.
They have put a stout awning over the quarter-deck and strung a lot of
electric globes there so that when the music is going and the
illumination is turned on, the place is gay and pretty and cosey, and
those of us who have not danced for twenty years of more begin to sit up
straighter when the music starts, and presently we forget that all is
vanity and life a sorry mess at best, and look about for a partner, and
there on the wide, lifting, falling quarter-deck caper away the years.
It is not so much wonder, then, that the prospect of land does not
arouse any feverish interest. We are willing to go right on sailing for
a while and not bother about land at all.
[Illustration]
VI
A LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE
It was a mistake, however, to be indifferent to Madeira. We are no
longer so. Whatever enthusiasm we lacked beforehand we have acquired
now. Of all fair, jewelled islands of the sea, it is the particular gem.
Not one of us on this ship but has made up his mind to go to Madeira
again some day, and to stay there and live happy ever after; or, if not
during life, to try to exchange a corner of heaven for it when he dies.
We knew nothing about Madeira except what the little prospectus told us,
and the day before arrival we began to look up guide-book information on
the subject. There was not much of this on the ship; I suspect that
there is not much anywhere. Madeira was known to the Phoenicians, of
course, that race of people who knew everything, went everywhere, built
all the first cities, invented all the arts, named everything, and then
perished. I ought to be sorry that they perished, I suppose, but I'm
not. I've heard enough of that tribe on this ship.
The Patriarch is stuffed full of Phoenician statistics, and to touch
any line of historical discussion in his hearing is like tripping over a
cord attached to a spring gun. He is as fatal as an Irishman I once knew
who was perfectly adorable until some question of race came up. Then it
was time to stand from under. According to Malone there was originally
but one race--the Irish. All the early saints were Irish; so was
Abraham; so was Noah; so was Adam; so was--but that is far enough back.
I remember hearing him tell one night how, in a later day, when
Alexander the Great set out to conquer Asia, he first sent emissaries to
make peace with Ireland as a precaution against being attacked in the
rear.
But I am beginning to wander. There is no trace of the Phoenicians, I
believe, on Madeira to-day, and the early history of the island is
mainly mythical. When ancient Mediterranean sailors went exploring a
little into the Atlantic and saw its purple form rise on the horizon
they decided that it must be the mouth of hell, or at all events the
abode of evil creatures, and hastily turned back. One account says that
in the course of time a gentleman named Taxicab--probably the inventor
of the vehicle later known by that name--and his companion were
shipwrecked on Madeira and set up a monument in celebration of the
event. I don't know what became of Taxicab and his friend or the
monument, but about the same time it was discovered again by a
Portuguese named Zargo, who set it afire as a means of clearing the
land of its splendid forests and kept the fires going for seven
years.[1]
Zargo's devastation began about five hundred years ago, and the island
has required all those centuries for recovery. It may be added that he
believed Madeira to be the lost Atlantis, though a point of land thirty
miles long and fifteen miles wide could hardly be more than a splinter
of that vanished continent. More likely Madeira and the fragmentary
islets about it formed that mythical Ultima Thule referred to by
Ulysses, when, according to Tennyson, he said:
"My purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles whom we knew."
Perhaps Madeira was indeed a home of gods and favored spirits in the
olden days. It would have been a suitable place. When we drew near
enough to see its terraced hills--lofty hills they are, some of them in
the interior rising to a point six thousand feet above the sea--and to
make out the tiny houses nestling like white and tinted shells against
the green, we changed our minds about being willing to sail past without
stopping, and when at last we swung slowly into the Harbor of Funchal we
felt somehow that we had come upon an island enchantment in the middle
of the sea.
For everything was so marvellous in its beauty: the green hills,
terraced almost to the very top; the gorges between, the little fairy
city just where the hills flow into the sea. With glasses one could make
out flowering vines on many of the walls. Even with the naked eye,
somebody presently discovered a great purple mass, part way up the
hillside. The glass showed it to be a house almost covered with
bougainvillea--our first vision of this lavish and splendid flower of
the Mediterranean.
As we drew in and came to anchor, we saw descending upon us a fleet of
small, curious boats, filled with half-naked men. We prepared for the
worst, but they merely wanted us to throw coins over in the liquid azure
which they call water in this country, whereupon their divers would try
to intercept the said coins somewhere between the top and bottom of the
sea. We didn't believe they could do it, which was poor judgment on our
part.
[Illustration: THEY COULD DIVE LIKE SEALS]
If those amphibians did not always get the coins, they generally did.
They could see them perfectly in that amazing water, and they could dive
like seals. Some of the divers were mere children--poor, lean creatures
who stood up in their boats and shouted and implored and swung their
arms in a wild invitation to us to fling our money overboard. They did
not want small money--at least, not very small money--they declined to
dive for pennies. Perhaps they could only distinguish the gleam of the
white metal. Let a nickel or a dime be tossed over and two or three
were after it in a flash, while a vehement outbreak of Portuguese from
all the rest entreated still further largess. It was really a good show,
and being the first of its kind, we enjoyed it.
We had to go ashore in boats, and the water was not smooth. It was not
entirely easy to get into the landing-boats, and it was still less easy
to get out at the stairs which ascended to the stone piers. Every billow
would throw the little boats six or eight feet into the air, and one had
to be pretty careful to step just at the right instant or he would leave
one foot on a high step and the other in the boat, far below. Several of
our best passengers were dismembered in that way.
Once on shore, the enchantment took hold of us again. It was so sunny
and bright and the streets were so attractive--all paved with small
black cobbles, set in the neatest and most careful fashion. Our
conveyances were waiting just at the end of the pier, and they were, I
believe, the most curious conveyances in the world. They were not
carriages or carts or wheeled vehicles of any sort, but sleds--here in a
land of eternal summer--sleds with enclosed tops, and drawn by oxen.
Their drivers were grave, whiskered men who motioned us to get in; after
which we started, and they began greasing the runners as we went along.
They did this by putting a grease-soaked rag in front of a runner now
and then and driving over it.
I don't think an American would do it that way. He would take a barrel
of soft soap and a broom and lubricate the whole street. Their way is
neater, and about as effective, I suppose; besides, when they have been
doing it another three hundred years or so, they will have some grease
on these streets, too. Already one may see indications of it here and
there.
Our course was uphill, and we ascended along a panorama of sunny life
and tinted flower-hung walls to the outskirts of that neatest and most
charming of cities--continuously expressing our delight in the general
attractiveness of everything: the wonderfully laid streets; the really
beautiful sidewalks of very tiny vari-colored cobbles all set in perfect
mosaic patterns; the glow and bloom of summer everywhere. We admired
even the persistent little beggars who ran along on both sides of the
sleds, throwing camellias into our laps, crying out, "Penny! Penny!"
their one English word--hopping, dancing, beseeching, and refusing to be
comforted.
We gave to the first of these tormentors, but it was not a good way to
get rid of them. It was like putting out molasses to satisfy a few
flies. A dozen more were around us, going on in a most disturbing
manner. Our driver finally dispersed them by making some terrific
motions with his whip-handle.
We were at the outskirts at last, but only at the beginning of the real
climb. A funicular railway takes one up farther, and presently we are
ascending straight to Paradise, it seemed to us, by a way that led
through a perfect wilderness of beauty--flower, foliage, and waving
green, with tiny stucco houses set in tangled gardens and slopes of
cane--while below and beyond lay the city and the harbor and our ship at
anchor on the violet sea.
Would we be so enchanted with the magic of this Happy Isle if it were
not our first landing after a long winter voyage, which if not stormy
was at all events not entirely smooth? Perhaps not, yet I think there
are certain essentials of beauty and charm that are fundamental. The
things we dream of and do not believe exist; the things that an artist
will paint now and then when he forgets that the world is just a place
to live and toil and die in, and not really to be happy in at all. But
those things are all here in Madeira, and when we learned that nobody
ever gets sick here, and that everybody gets well of everything he
happens to have when he comes, we said: "Never mind going on; send the
ship home, or sink it; we will abide here and roam no more."
At the end of the funicular there was still more hill to climb, and one
could either do it afoot or be carried up in a hammock. Most of us young
people did it afoot, allowing enfeebled men of eighteen and twenty the
comfort of the hammocks. As they passed us we commented on their luxury,
and made it otherwise interesting for them. It was pleasant enough
walking and there was a good deal to see. The foliage was interesting,
ranging as it did from the palm of the tropics to the pine of the
northern forests. You can raise anything in Madeira, except money--there
is not much of that, and things are cheap accordingly. No doubt it is
the same in heaven, but I am getting ahead of my story.
We lunched at the top, in a hotel that was once a convent and still has
iron-barred windows, but before luncheon we walked out for the view to a
little platform which seems when you step out on it to be hanging in the
air, so that you involuntarily hesitate and reach for something firm.
All the distance you have climbed in the ox-sleds, by the funicular, and
afoot drops away perpendicularly at your feet, and you are looking down,
straight down, and still down, to what seem fairy tree-tops and a
wonderful picture valley through which a tumbling ribbon of water goes
foaming to the sea. It is the most sudden and dramatic bit of scenery I
know.
We had delicious strawberries at our luncheon--strawberries that
required no sugar--and a good many other kinds of fruit--some of which
we could identify and some of which the Reprobates discussed in their
usual unrestrained fashion, calling one another names that were at once
descriptive and suited to the subject in hand. There were pomegranates
and guavas and comquats and loquats; also there was Madeira wine, of
course, and hereafter I am going to know something about native wines in
the lands we visit before I begin business--that is, wholesale business.
But never mind--let it go; it is a good deal like sherry, only it tastes
better, and the Reprobates said--but as I mentioned before, let it
go--it really does not matter now.
[Illustration: TWO MEN TAKE YOU IN HAND AND AWAY YOU GO]
We descended that long, paved, greased hill in toboggans that are nice,
comfortable baskets on runners. They hold two and three, according to
size, and you get in and two men take you in hand, and away you go. You
go, too. A distance of two miles has been made in three minutes in those
things. I don't think we went as fast as that, but it was plenty fast
enough for the wild delight of it, and if I had money enough and time
enough I would go there and slide and slide away the eternal summer
days.
It was a swift panorama of flower and sunlit wall and distant sea--the
soft air rushing by. Now and then we would whirl past a carrier--a
brown, bent man with one of those great sleds on his shoulders, toiling
with it up the long, steep hill. They were marvellously picturesque,
those carriers, but I wish they wouldn't do it. It takes some of the joy
out of the slide to feel that somebody is going to carry your toboggan
up the hill on his back.
We shot out on the level at last, and started on a little tour of the
town. Laura and I wandered away alone, and stopped at little shops, and
tried to transact business, and finally bought a clay water-jug for a
hundred and twenty reis, which is to say sixpence, which is to say
twelve cents. Money in Madeira is calculated in reis, just as it is in
the Azores, and the sound of the word suddenly recalled the visit of the
_Quaker City_ "Pilgrims" to those islands, and the memory of Blucher's
disastrous dinner-party.
But they will take anything that looks like money in Madeira, rather
than miss a trade, and when a person who has been accustomed to
calculating dollars and cents is suddenly confronted with problems of
reis and pence and shillings and half-crowns and francs, he goes to
pieces on his money tables and wonders why a universal currency would
not be a good thing.
All the streets in Madeira have that dainty cobble paving, and all the
sidewalks are laid in the exquisite mosaic which makes it a joy to
follow them. The keynote of the island is invitation. Even a jail we saw
is of a sort to make crime attractive. I hasten to add that we examined
only the outside.
We were adopted by a guide presently--a boy whose only English was the
statement that he could speak it--and were directed quietly but firmly
toward places where things are sold. We tried to impress upon him in
such languages as we could think of that we did not want to buy
anything, and that we did not care much for a guide, anyway. We said we
wanted to see bougainvillea--a lot of bougainvillea, in a great mass
together, as we had seen it from the ship. He nodded excitedly and led
us away, but it was only to a place where they sold embroideries which
we did not care for, though they were cheap enough, dear knows, as
everything is cheap here--everything native at least.
When our guide grasped the fact at last that we did not want to do any
buying, he became sad, weakened gradually, dropped behind, accepted a
penny, and turned us over to another guide of the same sort. We wandered
about Funchal in that way until it was time to embark, adopted by one
guide after another, and abandoned to our fate when they realized that
we were not worth anything in the way of commissions from the merchants
and very little in any form. We did get a guide at last who knew where
the bougainvillea house was, but it was too late then to go to it. It
did not matter; there were flowers enough everywhere and bougainvillea
on many walls.
The place did not lose its charm with close acquaintance. It seemed
entirely unspoiled. We saw no suggestion of modern architecture or
European innovation--no blot anywhere, except a single motor-car--the
only one, I believe, in Funchal. There is but one fly in the ointment of
Madeira comfort--the beggars. They begin to beg before they can walk,
and they call, "Penny! Penny!" before they can lisp the sacred name of
"Mamma." However, one good thing has come of our experience with them.
They have prepared us for beggars elsewhere. We are hardened, now--at
least, we think we are. The savor of pity has gone out of us.
But I was speaking of architecture. Without knowing anything on the
subject, I should say that the architecture of Madeira is a mixture of
Spanish and Moorish, like that of Mexico. Only it is better than
anything in Mexico. From the ship, the stucco, tile-roofed city is
flawless; and as we steam away, and night comes down and lights break
out and become a jewelled necklace along the water's edge, our one
regret is that we are leaving it all behind.
Good-bye to Madeira--a gentle place, a lovely place--a place to live and
die in.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] By referring again to the German guide-book I find that the first
gentleman's name was not Taxicab, but as that is nearer to what it looks
like than anything that can be made out of the real name I will let it
stand.
[Illustration: DID A SORT OF FANDAROLE]
VII
A DAY TO OURSELVES
We had another full day at sea, after Madeira--a day of reflection and
reminiscence, for each of us had some special joy to recall. Perhaps
that of the Diplomat was as picturesque as any. He told it to me
privately, but a thing like that should not be allowed to remain
concealed forever; besides, the young lady is in darkest Germany now and
does not know English, anyway. That last-named fact was responsible for
the incident.
The Diplomat had just landed at the bottom of the slide, he said, when
two of our party--Americans--came along with a bright-faced and quite
stylish-looking German girl who was not having a very good time because
they knew no German and she no English. It was clearly a case for the
Diplomat, who is an unattached person, full of the joy of travel and
familiar with all languages, living and dead.
He had not been presented to the young German person on the ship, but he
had seen her now and again in company with an older, rather
plain-looking woman, very likely her maid. No doubt the young woman was
a countess, or a baroness, or at all events a person of station and
importance. Politely enough he proffered his services as escort, was
accepted, and the two set out gayly to enjoy the halcyon Madeira
afternoon.
She was a most sociable companion, the Diplomat said, ready for anything
that resembled a good time. They visited places of interest; they
dropped into little shops; he bought flowers for her; they had
refreshments here and there--dainty dishes and pleasant Madeira
wines--keeping up, meantime, their merry German clatter. They became
quite gay, in fact, and whenever they met any of the ship party, which
they did frequently enough, the Diplomat, as he confessed to me, became
rather vain and showy--set his hat on one side and did a sort of
fandarole, accompanying his step with operatic German airs. At such
moments she even took his hand and entered into the spirit of the
occasion.
[Illustration: THEN IT DAWNED UPON THE DIPLOMAT]
Altogether it was a charming experience, and they were both sorry when
it was time to return to the ship. Arriving there they were met by the
older, plain-looking woman, who greeted his companion with words that
were pleasant enough, gentle enough, but which partook of the nature of
a command. Then it dawned upon the Diplomat; it was not the older,
plain-looking woman who was the maid!
"I would have done it just the same," he explained to me in a dark
corner of the deck, after dinner, "just the same, of course, being a
gentleman, only under the circumstances I might have cut out the
cakewalk and the music."
A ship is a curious place altogether; a place of narrow limits and
close contact, yet full of subterranean depths from which surprises may
develop at any moment. The Chief Engineer, to whom I sit next at meals,
often quotes meditatively,
"A ship it is a funny thing,
It sails upon the sea--"
The Chief does not recall the rest of the stanza, but we all admit the
truth of what he does remember. Ship life on the whole is not like other
life; ship characteristics do not altogether resemble those on land.
Take the "Porpoise," for instance. I have no doubt that the Porpoise on
land is a most excellent and industrious business man, more or less
absorbed in the daily round of his ventures--a happy-hearted contented
Hebrew person, fairly quiet (it doesn't seem possible, but I am willing
to believe it), on the whole a good citizen, satisfied if his name
appears now and then in the local paper, when he gets in some new line
of goods or makes an improvement on his home.
But on shipboard the Porpoise is just--a porpoise. He is fat, as his
name implies, and describes revolutions of the ship, blowing constantly.
At no time of day and in no part of the ship will you be safe from the
Porpoise. He is from an interior town--an unimportant town, by its
census and location, but it has become important on this vessel.
He has instructed us upon other subjects, too. Nothing is too
complicated, or too deep, or too abstruse for the Porpoise. He will
attack any question at sight, and he will puff and spout and describe
circles and wallow in his oratory, and follow his audience about until
he has swept the deck clean. Yet we love that Porpoise, in spite of
everything. He is so happy and harmless and gentle. It is only because
he is on a ship that he is a bore.
Also, we love the "Mill." The Mill is a woman--a good woman--one of the
kindliest souls on earth, I suspect, and her mouth is her warrant for
her name. It goes all the time, but it does not deal with important
things. Indeed, nothing is too unimportant for her hopper, and she
grinds exceeding small. Just now, for an hour or so, she has been
explaining that she did not sleep very well last night, and minutely
cataloguing the reasons why. She will keep it up for another hour, and
then if somebody hasn't dropped her overboard she will dig up something
else of equal value and go right on, refreshed and rejoicing in the
consciousness of well-doing.
The Mill would not act this way at home--she would not have time. It is
only because she is on a ship where everybody is idle and irresponsible
and "different," and likely to be peculiar. As Laura, age fourteen, said
to me to-day--paraphrasing the words of the old Quaker spinster to her
sister, "I think everybody on this ship is peculiar except thee and me,
and sometimes I think _thee_ is a little peculiar." That expresses the
situation, and on the whole we enjoy it. We are like the little boy
whose reputation for being a strange child did not interfere with his
happiness. "Gee, ain't it great to be crazy!" was his favorite remark,
and whatever we may be on this ship, we are content with the conditions,
and would not change them, even if we could.
VIII
OUT OF THE SUNRISE
I have seen the shores of Africa and Spain! The bath steward came very
early, this morning--earlier than usual. He had his reasons, but I had
forgotten and was sleepy, so I said "No," and tried to doze again. Then
all at once from the deck there arose a swell of music--rich, triumphant
music--an orchestration of "Holy, Holy, Holy"--such a strain as one
might expect to hear if the eternal gates should swing ajar. I
remembered, then; it was Sunday morning--but there was something more.
Land! The land that lies on the other side of the ocean!
In a moment I was at my port-hole, which is on the starboard side. We
had changed our course and were bearing more to the north. Directly in
front of me the sun was rising. The east was a mass of glowing
outlines--golden clouds and hill-tops mingled. It was the Orient--that
is what it was--the Far East; the sun rising over Africa! Something got
hold of me then--I hardly know what. Certainly I was not unhappy; but
then it was all so sudden and spectacular, and I had waited for it so
long.
I do not remember how I got dressed; only for a moment at a time could I
drag myself away from that port-hole. The sun rose higher--the outlines
of Morocco became more distinct, but they did not lose their wonder of
color--their glory of purple and gold. I realized now that the
prospectuses had not exaggerated the splendor of the East, even on their
gorgeous covers--that they could not do so if they tried. By the time I
was on deck we were running close enough to the lofty shores to make out
villages here and there and hill-top towers--the habitation and the
watch-towers of the Moors. How eagerly and minutely one scanned these
with the glass to distinguish the first sign of Oriental life--to get a
glimpse of the reality of what had so long been but a romance and a
dream. It was those people who had conquered Spain and built the
Alhambra.
What was going on inside those curious flat-topped houses and those
towers? Marvellous matters, no doubt, that had to do with nargileh and
magic and scimiters and flying carpets and scarcely imperceptible nods
to the executioner who always hovered among the draperies in the
background. The Reprobates appeared and declared there was no romance
anywhere in sight and never had been in that direction; that Morocco was
just a place of wretched government and miserable people whose chief
industries were laziness and crime. There are moments when I would be
willing for this ship to sink to properly punish the Reprobates.
The Diplomat was better. He said there was as much romance and magic
over there as ever, and more executioners; and the Diplomat knows. We
would pass Ceuta, the African Pillar of Hercules, before long, he told
us. The other pillar was the Rock of Gibraltar, which lay still farther
ahead.
We went over to the other side of the ship presently, for we were
overlooking the Bay of Trafalgar, where a little more than a hundred
years ago Horatio Nelson died, after convincing the combined navies of
France and Spain that it required something besides numbers to win a
victory. Nelson went into that fight with thirty-two vessels, little and
big, against forty of the combined fleets. He hoisted the signal,
"England expects every man to do his duty," and every man did it. One
half of the combined fleets struck their colors, and the rest made off,
or sank, and with them went Napoleon Bonaparte's scheme for invading
England.
We looked out on the placid water, laughing in the Sunday morning
sunlight, and tried to imagine those vanished fleets--stately ships of
the line with their banks of guns; smart frigates and rakish
cutters--all that splendid concourse of black hull and towering canvas,
and then the boom and the flash of guns--the conflict and the glory of
that morning so long ago. This much was real, and it was romance; not
even the Reprobates could brush away the bloom.
The captain came by and pointed ahead to Tarifa, where the Barbary
pirates a long time ago levied tribute on the merchants and added the
word "tariff" to the dictionary. Their old castle has fallen into ruin,
but the old industry still thrives, under the same name. Then we went
back to starboard again for a look at Tangier, where, alas, we were not
to land, because Algiers had been provided for us instead.
[Illustration: BUT NOW GIBRALTAR, THE CROUCHING LION OF TRAFALGAR, HAD
RISEN FROM THE SEA]
But now Gibraltar, the crouching lion of Trafalgar, had risen from the
sea. The English call it "The Rock," and that is just what it looks
like--a big bowlder shaped like a sleeping lion--its head toward Spain,
its tail toward Africa. I think most persons have an idea that the Rock
lies lengthwise, east and west--I know I thought so. Instead it lies
north and south, and is really a stone finger pointed by Spain toward
the African coast. It is Great Britain's pride--it has cost enough for
her to be proud of it--and is her chief stronghold.
About it are gathered her warships of to-day--dark, low-browed fighters
like our own--any one of them able to send to the bottom a whole fleet
like Nelson's and the combined fleets besides. They look quiet enough,
ugly enough, and drowsy enough, now. So does Gibraltar, but it is just
as well, perhaps, not to twist the Lion's tail. We had no intention of
doing so, and I don't see why they were so afraid of us. They wouldn't
let us visit their shooting-galleries--the galleries where they keep
their big guns, I mean; they wouldn't let us climb the Rock on the
outside; they wouldn't even let us visit an old Moorish castle which
stands about half-way up. Perhaps they thought we would spike their
guns, or steal the castle, or blow up the Rock with infernal machines.
They did let us take carriages and drive along the main streets of the
city, through a park or two and out to Europa Point, I think that was
the place. We were interested, but not enthusiastic. After Madeira, one
does not go mad over the beauties of Gibraltar. The vehicles were funny
little affairs--Spanish, I suppose; the driver spoke the English of
Gibraltar--an English which nobody outside of Gibraltar, and only a few
people there, can understand; the road was good; the flowers--bluebells,
yellow daisies, dandelions and heliotrope--all wild--were profuse and
lavishly in bloom everywhere along the way. Had we come direct to
Gibraltar, we should have raved over these things like enough, and we
did rave a little, but it was a sort of placid ecstasy. Military
hospitals and barracks and officers' quarters are not the kind of
scenery to excite this crowd.
It was different, though, when we got to Europa Point. There, on one
side rose the great Rock abruptly from the sea, while before us
stretched the Mediterranean, all blue and emerald and iridescent, like
a great fire-opal in the sun. It was our first glimpse of the water
along whose shores began the history and the religions of more than half
the world. "The grand object of all travel is to see the shores of the
Mediterranean," said Dr. Johnson, and there were some of us who not
until that moment, I think, fully grasped the fact that this object,
this dream of a lifetime, was about to be accomplished.
The Patriarch forgot the Phoenicians for a little and began to talk
about Athens and of Mars Hill from which St. Paul had preached, though
he added presently that it was quite certain St. Paul's grandfather had
been a Phoenician; the Diplomat quoted something about his soul being
"far away sailing on the Vesuvian Bay"; the Porpoise began to meditate
audibly how far it was in a straight line to Jerusalem; the Mill ground
a quiet little grist about flannels she expected to wear in Egypt; even
the Reprobates were subdued and thoughtful in the face of this watery
theatre that had held the drama of the ancient world.
We drove back to the town, separated, and wandered about where fancy led
us. Laura and I had a little business with the American consul, who is
an example of what an American consul ought to be: a gentleman who is a
consul by profession and not by party favor, being the third Sprague in
line who has held the post. Through him we met a most interesting
person, one who brought us in direct contact, as it were, with that old
first party of Pilgrims to make the Oriental cruise. Michael Beñunes was
his name, guide and courier to Mark Twain and his party, forty-two years
ago.
Beñunes must have been a handsome creature in those days; he is a
handsome creature still--tall, finely featured, with flowing black
hair--carrying his sixty-five years as lightly as wind-flowers--gay,
voluble, enthusiastic--ready for the future, glorying in the past. He
took us to a coffee-house and entertained us, and held us enthralled for
an hour or more with his tide of eloquence and information. He told us
of the trip he had made through Spain with the "Innocents"; of many
other trips in lands near and far. He told us of the things in Gibraltar
we had not seen--of the galleries and the monkey-pit; also, of the
wonderful monkeys themselves who inhabit the Rock and are intelligent
almost beyond belief--who refrain from speaking English only because
they are afraid of having red coats and caps put on them and being made
into soldiers.
Gibraltar was once a part of Africa, according to tradition, and the
monkeys remained on the Rock when the separation took place. But guides
know that a subterranean passage from the bottomless monkey-pit connects
the Rock with Africa to this day; also that the monkeys travel back and
forth through it and keep posted on warfare and new inventions, in
preparation for a time when they shall be ready to regain their lost
empire, and that sometimes at dusk, if one lies hidden and remains very
quiet, he may overhear them discuss these things, as in the failing
twilight they "walk together, holding each other's tails."
[Illustration: WE COULD HAVE LISTENED ALL NIGHT TO BEÑUNES]
We could have listened all night to Beñunes, for he made the old time
and still older traditions real to us. And perhaps Beñunes would have
talked all night, for he declared--and we believed him--that he could
talk for five hours without a break. Naturally I expected to pay the
score in the coffee-house and to make some special acknowledgment to
Beñunes for his time. Not at all; he called the waiter with a flourish,
threw down more than enough money and told him to keep the change,
regretting volubly that we could not partake further of his hospitality.
We should have the freedom of the city--of everything--he said, when we
came again. Ah me! I suspect there is only one Beñunes, and that he
belongs to a time which will soon vanish away.
We went through the town--almost a closed town, because it was Sunday,
and not an inviting town, I think, at best. Here and there were narrow
streets that wound up or down, yet were only mildly seductive. But it is
a cosmopolitan town--the most cosmopolitan town on earth, perhaps. Every
kind of money is in use there--every language is spoken.
"Picture postals twelve for a quarter!" was the American cry that
greeted us at every turn. If we had been English it would have been
"twelve for a shilling," or if German "_zwölf für ein Mark_," no doubt.
They do not mistake nationalities in Gibraltar--they have all kinds to
study from. Moors we saw--black, barelegged, and gayly attired--a taste
of the Orient we were about to enter--and if there were any
nationalities we did not see in this motley-thronged Mediterranean
gateway I do not recall them now. We bought a few postal cards, and two
fans with bull-fights on them, but unlike the _Quaker City_ "Pilgrims"
we bought no gloves.
I did look at certain stylish young creatures who passed now and then,
and wondered if one of them might not be the bewitching saleslady who
had sold those gloves. And then I remembered: she would not be young and
bewitching any more; she would be carrying the burden and the record of
many years. Unlike the first "Pilgrims," too, we did not hear the story
of the "Queen's Chair." That was worn out, at last, and exists to-day
only in the guide-books. We drove over to Spanish Town by and by, but it
was still less inviting over there, so we drove back, passed out through
the great gates which close every evening at sunset, and waited at the
pier for the little tender, for it was near evening and we were through
with Gibraltar--ready for the comfort of the ship.
It is a curious place--a place of a day's interest for the traveller--of
enormous interest to the military world. For two hundred years it has
been maintained with English blood and treasure, until it has become the
most costly jewel of that lavish kingdom. There are those
to-day--Englishmen--who say it is not worth the price--that it is no
longer worth any price--and they advocate returning it to Spain. No army
could take it, and no army wants to take it--nothing could be gained by
taking it any more. But it is one of England's precious traditions, and
it will take another two hundred years of vast maintenance before
England will let that tradition go.
There were papers on the tender, London and Paris journals, but the only
American news was that Congress had been advised against tinkering with
the tariff. That did not interest us. Had we not been face to face with
the headquarters of tariff that very morning, and heard the story of how
that noble industry was born? This later item was mere detail.
Back on the ship, looking at the lion couchant while the twilight falls
and the lights come out along its base. There is no harshness now. The
lion's skin has become velvet--it is a veritable lion asleep among
fireflies. We lift anchor and steam slowly into the Mediterranean. The
lion loses its form, becomes a dark wedge, the thin edge toward Spain.
Night deepens as we creep farther around; the wedge shortens, contracts
to a cone, a pyramid--the level sea changes to a desert. The feeling
somehow grows that Africa has reclaimed its own--the Lion of England has
become a pyramid of the sands.
IX
EARLY MEDITERRANEAN EXPERIENCES
Our first day in the Mediterranean was without a flaw. It was a quiet,
sunlit day--just pleasantly warm--the ship steady as a rock on that
luminous, level sea. No wonder the ancients did not want to leave these
placid tides and venture out upon the dark tossing Atlantic which they
could see foaming just beyond the Pillars of Hercules. No wonder they
peopled those hungry wastes with monsters and evil spirits. Here, on
this tranquil sea, there were no unfamiliar dangers. The summer shores
that shut them in held all their world--a golden world of romance
wherein gods mingled with the affairs of men; where fauns and hamadryads
flitted through the groves; where nereids and tritons sported along the
waves.
We have all day and night to get to Algiers--now less than three hundred
miles away--so we are just loafing along making wide circles--"to test
the compass," one of the officers said a while ago. I did not know they
had to test compasses, and I'm rather doubtful about the matter, still.
I suspect that officer is enjoying himself quietly at our expense. I
suspect it, because he is the same officer who told the Credulous One
the other day when the ship was rolling heavily, that the jarring,
beating sound we heard every now and then was made by the ship running
over whales. The noise was really made by the screw lifting out of the
water, and pounding the surface with its blades, but the Credulous One,
who is a trusting soul--a stout lady of middle age and gentle
spirit--believed the whale story and repeated it around the ship. She
said how many whales there must be down here, and pitied them whenever
she heard that cruel sound.
That officer came along again, a moment ago, and told us that the
mountains nearest are called the Sierra de Gata, which sounds true.
Somewhere beyond them lies Grenada and the Alhambra, and there, too, is
the old, old city of Cordova, capital of the Moorish kings, and for
three hundred years one of the greatest centres of commerce in the
world. But these things are only history. What we care for on a day like
this is invention--romance--and remembering that somewhere beyond that
snowy rim Don Quixote and Sancho wandered through the fields of fancy
and the woods of dream makes us wish that we might anchor along those
shores and follow that vagrant quest.
I drifted into the smoking-room and mentioned these things to the
Reprobates, but they did not seem interested. They had the place all to
themselves and the Doctor was dozing in one corner--between naps
administering philosophy to the Colonel and the Apostle, who were
engaged in their everlasting game of piquet. He roused up when I came in
to deal out a few comforting remarks.
"What do they care for scenery, or romance," he said, "or anything else
except to gamble all day? All you've got to do is to look at them to get
an inventory of their characters. Just look at the Colonel for
instance; did you ever see a better picture of Captain Kidd? Made his
money out of publishing the Bible without reading it and thinks he must
go to the Holy Land now to square himself. And the Apostle, there--look
at him! Look at his shape--why, he's likely to blow up, any time. Some
people think these are patients of mine. Nice advertisement, a pair like
that!"
I thought the Doctor a trifle hard on his fellow-Reprobates. I thought
the Colonel rather handsome, and I had seen him studying his guide-book
more than once. As for the Apostle, I said that I never really felt that
he was about to blow up; that appearances were often deceitful and very
likely there was no immediate danger.
They were not inclined to be sociable--the Colonel and the Apostle. They
merely intimated that we might go away, preferably to a place not down
on the ship's itinerary, and kept on with their eternal game.
It is curious, the fascination of that game, piquet--still more curious
how anybody can ever learn to play it. In fact nobody ever does learn
it. There are no rules--no discoverable rules. It is purely an
inspirational game, if one may judge from this exhibition of it. After
the cards are dealt out, the Colonel picks up his hand, jerks his hat a
little lower over his eyes, skins through his assortment, and says
"Huh!" At the same time the Apostle puts on his holiest look--chin up,
eye drooped, bland and child-like--examines his collection, and says,
"Goddlemighty!"
Then they play--that is, they go through the motions. The Colonel puts
down a handful of cards and says "Eight." The Apostle never looks at
them, but puts down a bigger handful of his own and says "Eleven." Then
the Colonel puts down another lot and says "Fourteen." Then the Apostle
lays down the balance of his stock and the Colonel says, "Hell, Joe,"
and they set down some figures. When they are through, the Colonel owes
the Apostle seven dollars.
Yes, it is a curious game, and would make the Colonel a pauper in time,
if nature did not provide other means of adjustment. After the Apostle
has his winnings comfortably put away and settled into place, the
Colonel takes out a new five-dollar gold piece, regards it thoughtfully,
turns it over, reads the date, and comments on its beauty. Then suddenly
he slaps it down on the table under his hand.
"Match you, Joe," he says, "match you for five!"
But the Apostle is wary. He smiles benignly while he turns his face from
temptation.
"No you don't," he says, "never again."
The Colonel slaps the coin down again, quite smartly.
"Just once, Joe," he wheedles; "just once, for luck!"
The Apostle strokes his chubby, child-like countenance with the tips of
his fingers, still looking away--his eyes turned heavenward.
"I won't do it, I tell you. No, now go on away. I told you yesterday I
wouldn't match you again--ever."
"Just once, Joe--just this one time."
"I won't do it."
The Apostle's attitude is still resolute, but there is a note of
weakening in his voice and his hand is working almost imperceptibly
toward his pocket.
"Just once more, Joe, just for five dollars--one turn."
The Apostle's hand is in his pocket.
"Now, I tell you," he says, "I'll match you this one time, and never
again."
"All right, Joe, just this one time, for luck; come on, now."
The coins go down together, and when they are uncovered the Colonel
takes both, always. Then the Apostle jerks up his cap, jams it on, and
starts for the deck.
"Hold on, Joe; just once more--just for luck."
"You go to hell, will you?"
This is the programme daily with but slight variation. Sometimes the
Apostle wins less than seven dollars--sometimes he loses more than five;
but he always does win at piquet and he always does lose at matching.
Thus do the unseen forces preserve the balance of exchange.
We crossed over and came in sight of the mountains of Algeria during the
afternoon, and all the rest of this halcyon day we skirted the African
shore, while Laura and I and two other juveniles kept a game of
shuffleboard going on the after deck. To-night there is to be another
grand dinner and dance, in honor of Washington's Birthday. We shall
awake to-morrow in the harbor of Algiers.
X
THE DIVERTING STORY OF ALGIERS
This is a voyage of happy mornings. It was morning--just sunrise--when
we met the American fleet homeward bound; it was morning when we caught
the first glimpse of Madeira and steamed into the harbor of Funchal; the
shores of Morocco--our first glimpse of the Orient--came out of the
sunrise, and it was just sunrise this morning when I looked out of my
port-hole on the blue harbor and terraced architecture of Algiers. And
the harbor of Algiers _is_ blue, and the terraced architecture is white,
or creamy, and behind it are the hills of vivid green. And there are
palms and cypress-trees, and bougainvillea and other climbing vines.
Viewed from the ship it is a picture city, and framed in the port-hole
it became a landscape miniature of wondrous radiance and vivid hues.
One of our passengers, a happy-hearted, elderly Hebrew soul, came along
the promenade just outside my state-room and surveyed the vision through
his glass. Presently he was joined by his comfortable, good-natured
wife.
"Vat you get me up so early for, Sol?" she said.
He handed her his glass, his whole face alive with joy of the
moment--fairly radiant it was.
"I yust couldn't help it!" he said. "Dot sunrising and dot harbor and
dot city all make such a beautiful sight."
A beautiful sight it was, and it had the added charm of being our first
near approach to the Orient. For Algiers is still the Orient, though it
has been a French colony for nearly a hundred years. The Orient and the
Occident have met here, and the Occident has conquered, but the Orient
is the Orient still, and will be so long as a vestige of it remains.
The story of Algiers, like that of every Mediterranean country, has been
a motley one, and bloody enough, of course. The Romans held it for
nearly five hundred years; the Vandals followed them, and these in turn
were ousted by the Arabs, about the year 700 A.D. Blood flowed during
each of these changes, and betweentimes. There was always blood--rivers
of it--lakes of it--this harbor has been red with it time and again.
It did not stop flowing with the Arabian conquest--not by any means.
Those Arabs were barbarians and robbers--Bedouins on land and pirates on
the sea. They were the friends of no nation or people, and when business
was dull outside, they would break out among themselves and indulge in
pillage and slaughter at home for mere pastime. About the time Columbus
was discovering America they were joined by the Moors and Jews who were
being driven out of Spain and who decided to take up piracy as a regular
business.
Piratic industry, combined with slavery, flourished for a matter of four
centuries after that; then Commodore Decatur with a handful of little
vessels met the Algerian fleet off Carthagena on the 20th of June,
1815. Decatur was a good hand with pirates. He went to work on that
fleet and when he got through there wasn't enough of it left to capture
a banana-boat. Then he appeared before Algiers and sent a note to the
Dey demanding the immediate release of all Americans in slavery. The Dey
replied that as a mere matter of form he hoped the American commander
would agree to sending a small annual tribute of powder.
"If you take the powder you must take the balls with it," was Decatur's
reply, and thus the young American republic, then only about thirty
years old, was first to break down the monstrous institutions of piracy
and enslavement which for more than a thousand years had furnished
Algerian revenues.
One Hussein (history does not mention his other name, but it was
probably Ali Ben) was the last Dey of Algiers, and his memory is not a
credit to his country's story. He was cruel and insolent; also, careless
in his statements.
Piracy under A. B. Hussein flourished with a good deal of its old vigor,
though I believe he was rather careful about plundering American
vessels. Hussein was also a usurer and the principal creditor of some
Jewish merchants who had a claim against France. The claim was in
litigation, and Hussein, becoming impatient, demanded payment from the
French king. As France had been the principal sufferer from Hussein's
pirates, it was not likely that the king would notice this demand. Soon
after, in the Dey's palace, the Kasba, at a court function the Dey asked
of the French consul why his master had remained silent.
"The King of France does not correspond with the Dey of Algiers," was
the haughty reply, whereupon Hussein struck the consul on the cheek with
his fan, and said a lot of unpleasant things of both king and consul.
That was the downfall of Algiers. A blockade was established by the
French, and three years later the French army of invasion marched in.
Fifteen hundred guns, seventeen ships of war, and fifty million francs
fell into the hands of France, as spoil of war. Algiers was no longer
the terror of the seas. Over six hundred thousand Christian people had
suffered the horrors of Algerian bondage, but with that July day, 1830,
came the end of this barbarism, since which time Algiers has acquired a
new habit--the habit of jumping at the crack of the French whip.
I may say here in passing that we were to hear a good deal of that
incident of the Dey, the French consul, and the fan. It was in the
guide-books in various forms, and as soon as I got dressed and on deck
one of our conductors--himself a former resident of Algiers--approached
me with:
[Illustration: "THAT IS THE KASBA"]
"Do you see that tower up there on the hill-top? That is the Kasba. It
was in that tower that Hussein, the last Dey of Algiers, struck the
French consul three times on the cheek with his fan--an act which led to
the conquest of Algiers by France."
I looked at the tower with greatly renewed interest, and brought it up
close to me with my glass. Then he pointed out other features of the
city, fair and beautiful in the light of morning: the mosque; the
governor's palace; the Arab quarter; the villas of wealthy Algerines. He
drifted away, then, and the Diplomat approached. He also had been in
Algiers once before. He said:
"Do you see that tower there on the hill-top? That is the Kasba. It was
in that tower that Hussein, the last Dey of Algiers, struck the French
consul three times on the cheek with his fan--an act which led to the
conquest of Algiers by France."
He went away, and I looked over the ship's side at the piratical-looking
boatmen who were gathering to the attack. They were a picturesque
lot--their costumes purely Oriental--their bare feet encased in shoes
right out of the _Arabian Nights_ pictures. I was just turning to remark
these things to one of the Reprobates, the Colonel, when he said:
"Do you see that tower up there on the hill-top?"
"Colonel," I said, "you've been reading your guide-book, and I saw you
the other day with a book called _Innocents Abroad_."
He looked a little dazed.
"Well," he said, "what of it?"
"Nothing; only that tower seems to be another 'Queen's Chair.' I've been
to it several times in the guide-book myself, and I've already had it
twice served up by hand. Let's don't talk about it any more, until we've
been ashore and had a look at it."
[Illustration: ONE DOES NOT HURRY THE ORIENT--ONE WAITS ON IT]
XI
WE ENTER THE ORIENT
We went ashore, in boats to the dock, then we stepped over some things,
and under some things and walked through the custom-house (they don't
seem to bother us at these places) and there were our carriages (very
grand carriages--quite different from the little cramped jiggle-wagons
of Gibraltar) all drawn up and waiting. And forthwith we found ourselves
in the midst of the Orient and the Occident--a busy, multitudinous life,
pressing about us, crowding up to our carriages to sell us postal cards
and gaudy trinkets, babbling away in mongrel French and other motley and
confused tongues.
What a grand exhibition it was to us who had come up out of the Western
Ocean, only half believing that such scenes as this--throngs of
sun-baked people in fantastic dress--could still exist anywhere in the
world! We were willing to sit there and look at them, and I kept my
camera going feverishly, being filled with a sort of fear, I suppose,
that there were no other such pictures on earth and I must catch them
now or never.
We were willing to linger, but not too long. We got our first lesson in
Oriental deliberation right there. Guides had been arranged for and we
must wait for them before we could start the procession. They did not
come promptly. Nothing comes promptly in the Orient. _One does not hurry
the Orient--one waits on it._ That is a maxim I struck out on the anvil,
white-hot, that first hour in Algiers, and I am satisfied it is not
subject to change. The sun poured down on us; the turbaned, burnoused,
barefooted selling-men rallied more vociferously; the Reprobates
invented new forms of profanity to fit Eastern conditions, and still the
guides did not come.
We watched some workmen storing grain in warehouses built under the fine
esplanade that flanks the water-front, and the picture they made
consoled us for a time. They were Arabs of one tribe or another and they
wore a motley dress. All had some kind of what seemed cumbersome
head-gear--a turban or a folded shawl, or perhaps an old gunny-sack made
into a sort of hood with a long cape that draped down behind. A few of
them had on thick European coats over their other paraphernalia.
We wondered why they should dress in this voluminous fashion in such a
climate, and then we decided that the wisdom of the East had prompted
the protection of that head-gear and general assortment of wardrobe
against the blazing sun. Our guides came drifting in by and by, wholly
unexcited and only dreamily interested in our presence, and the
procession moved. Then we ascended to the streets above--beautiful
streets, and if it were not for the Oriental costumes and faces
everywhere we might have been in France.
French soldiers were discoverable all about; French groups were chatting
and drinking coffee and other beverages at open-air cafés; fine French
equipages rolled by with ladies and gentlemen in fashionable French
dress. Being carnival-time, the streets were decorated with banners and
festoons in the French colors. But for the intermixture of fezzes and
turbans and the long-flowing garments of the East we would have said,
"After all, this is not the Orient, it is France."
But French Algiers, "gay, beautiful, and modern as Paris itself" (the
guide-book expression), is, after all, only the outer bulwark, or rather
the ornate frame of the picture it encloses. That picture when you are
fairly in the heart of it is as purely Oriental I believe as anything in
the world to-day, and cannot have changed much since Mohammedanism came
into power there a thousand years ago. But I am getting ahead too fast.
We did not penetrate the heart of Algiers at once--only the outer edges.
We drove to our first mosque--a typical white-domed affair, plastered on
the outside, and we fought our way through the beggars who got in front
of us and behind us and about us, demanding "_sou-penny_" at least it
sounded like that--a sort of French-English combination, I suppose,
which probably has been found to work well enough to warrant its general
adoption.
We thought we had seen beggars at Madeira, and had become hardened to
them. We _had_ become hardened toward the beggars, but not to our own
offerings. One can only stand about so much punishment--then he
surrenders. It is easier and quicker to give a sou-penny, or a dozen of
them, than it is to be bedevilled and besmirched and bewildered by these
tatterdemalion Arabs who grab and cling and obstruct until one doesn't
know whether he is in Algiers or Altoona, and wishes only to find relief
and sanctuary. Evidently sight-seeing in the East has not become less
strenuous since the days when the "Innocents" made their pilgrimage in
these waters.
We found temporary sanctuary in the mosque, but it was not such as one
would wish to adopt permanently. It was a bare, unkempt place, and they
made us put on very objectionable slippers before we could step on their
sacred carpets. This is the first mosque we have seen, so of course I am
not a purist in the matter of mosques yet, but I am wondering if it
takes dirt and tatters to make a rug sacred, and if half a dozen mangy,
hungry-looking Arab priests inspire the regular attendants in a place
like that with religious fervor.
They inspired me only with a desire to get back to the beggars, where I
could pay sou-pennies for the privilege of looking at the variegated
humanity and of breathing the open air. The guide-book says this is a
poor mosque, but that is gratuitous information; I could have told that
myself as soon as I looked at it. Anybody could.
We went through some markets after that, and saw some new kinds of
flowers and fruit and fish, but they did not matter. I knew there were
better things than these in Algiers, and I was impatient to get to them.
I begrudged the time, too, that we put in on some public buildings,
though a down-town palace of Ali Ben Hussein, the final Dey of
Algiers--a gaudy wedding-cake affair, all fluting and frosting--was not
without interest, especially when we found that the late Hussein had
kept his seven wives there. It was a comparatively old building, built
in Barbarossa times, the guide said, and now used only on certain
official occasions. It is not in good taste, I imagine, even from the
Oriental standpoint.
[Illustration: MARVELLOUS BASKETS AND QUEER THINGS]
But what we wanted, some of us at least, was to get out of these
show-places and into the shops--the native shops that we could see
stretching down the little side-streets. We could discover perfectly
marvellous baskets and jugs and queer things of every sort fairly
stuffing these little native selling-places, and there were always
fascinating groups in those side-streets, besides men with big copper
water-jars on their shoulders that looked a thousand years old--the
jars, I mean--all battered and dented and polished by the mutations of
the passing years.
I wanted one of those jars. I would have given more for one of those
jars than for the mosque, including all the sacred rugs and the holy
men, or for the palace of A. B. Hussein, and Hussein himself, with his
seven wives thrown in for good measure. No, I withdraw that last item. I
would not make a quick decision like that in the matter of the wives. I
would like to look them over first. But, dear me, I forgot--they have
been dead a long, long time, so let the offer stand. That is to say, I
did want the jar and I was willing to do without the other things. There
was no good opportunity for investment just then, and when I discussed
the situation with Laura, who was in the carriage with me, she did not
encourage any side-adventures. She was right, I suppose, for we were
mostly on the move. We went clattering away through some pleasing parks,
presently, and our drivers, who were French, cracked their whips at the
Algerine rabble and would have run them down, I believe, with great
willingness, and could have done so, perhaps, without fear of penalty.
Certainly French soldiers are immune to retribution in Algiers. We saw
evidence of that, and I would have resented their conduct more, if I had
not remembered those days not so long ago of piracy and bondage, and
realized that these same people might be murdering and enslaving yet but
for the ever-ready whip of France.
[Illustration: WE DID NOT CARE MUCH FOR PARKS]
From one of the parks we saw above us an old, ruined, vine-covered
citadel. Could we go up there? we asked; we did not care much for parks.
Yes, we could go up there--all in good time. One does not hurry the
Orient--one waits on it. We did go up there, all in good time, and then
we found it was the Kasba, the same where had occurred the incident
which had brought about the fall of Algiers.
They did not show us the room where that historic spark had been
kindled, but they did tell us the story again, and they showed us a view
of the city and the harbor and the Atlas Mountains with snow on them,
and one of our party asked if those mountains were in Spain. I would
have been willing to watch that view for the rest of the day had we had
time. We did not have time. We were to lunch somewhere by and by, and
meantime we were to go through the very heart, the very heart of hearts,
of Algiers.
[Illustration: ETERNALLY EAST WITH NO HINT OF THE OUTSIDE WORLD]
That is to say, the Arab quarter--the inner circle of circles where, so
far as discoverable, French domination has not yet laid its hand. We
left the carriages at a point somewhere below the Kasba, passed through
an arch in a dead wall--an opening so low that the tallest of us had to
stoop (it was a "needle's eye," no doubt)--and there we were. At one
step we had come from a mingling of East and West to that which was
eternally East with no hint or suggestion of contact with any outside
world.
I should say the streets would average six to eight feet wide, all
leading down hill. They were winding streets, some of them dim, and each
a succession of stone steps and grades that meander down and down into a
stranger labyrinth of life than I had ever dreamed of.
How weak any attempt to tell of that life seems! The plastered,
blind-eyed houses with their mysterious entrances and narrow dusky
stairways leading to what dark and sinister occupancy; the narrow
streets bending off here and there that one might follow, who could say
whither; the silent, drowsing, strangely garbed humanity that regarded
us only with a vague scornful interest and did not even offer to beg;
the low dim coffee-houses before which men sat drinking and
contemplating--so inattentive to the moment's event that one might
believe they had sat always thus, sipping and contemplating, and would
so sit through time--how can I convey to the reader even a faint
reflection of that unreal, half-awake world or conjure again the spell
which, beholding it for the first time, one is bound to feel?
Everywhere was humanity which belonged only to the East--had always
belonged there--had remained unchanged in feature and dress and mode of
life since the beginning. The prophets looked and dressed just as these
people look and dress, and their cities were as this city, built into
steep hillsides, with streets a few feet wide, shops six feet square or
less, the dreaming shopkeeper in easy reach of every article of his
paltry trade.
I do not think it is a very clean place. Of course the matter of being
clean is more or less a comparative condition, and what one nation or
one family considers clean another nation or family might not be
satisfied with at all. But judged by any standards I have happened to
meet heretofore I should say the Arab quarter of Algiers was not
overclean.
But it was picturesque. In whatever direction you looked was a picture.
It was like nature untouched by civilization--it could not be
unpicturesque if it tried. It was, in fact, just that--nature unspoiled
by what we choose to call civilization because it means bustle,
responsibility, office hours, and, now and then, clean clothes. And
being nature, even the dirt was not unbeautiful.
Somebody has defined dirt as matter out of place. It was not out of
place here. Nor rags. Some of these creatures were literally a mass of
rags--rag upon rag--sewed on, tacked on, tied on, hung on--but they were
fascinating. What is the use trying to convey all the marvel of it in
words? One must see for himself to realize, and even then he will
believe he has been dreaming as soon as he turns away.
In a little recess, about half-way down the hill, heeding
nothing--wholly lost in reverie it would seem--sat two venerable,
turbaned men. They had long beards and their faces were fine and
dignified. These were holy men, the guides told us, and very sacred. I
did not understand just why they were holy--a mere trip to Mecca would
hardly have made them as holy as that, I should think--and nobody seemed
to know the answer when I asked about it. Then I asked if I might
photograph them, but I could see by the way our guide grabbed at
something firm to sustain himself that it would be just as well not to
press the suggestion.
I was not entirely subdued, however, and pretty soon hunted up further
trouble. A boy came along with one of the copper water-jars--a small
one--probably children's size. I made a dive for him and proposed buying
it; that is, I held out money and reached for the jar. He probably
thought I wanted a drink, and handed it to me, little suspecting my base
design. But when he saw me admiring the jar itself and discussing it
with Laura, who was waiting rather impatiently while our party was
drifting away, he reached for it himself, and my money did not seem to
impress him.
Now I suspect that those jars are not for sale. This one had a sort of
brass seal with a number and certain cryptic words on it which would
suggest some kind of record. As likely as not those jars are all
licensed, and for that boy to have parted with his would have landed us
both in a donjon keep. I don't know in the least what a donjon keep is,
but it sounds like a place to put people for a good while, and I had no
time then for experimental knowledge. Our friends had already turned a
corner when we started on and we hurried to catch up, not knowing
whether or not we should ever find them again.
We came upon them at last peering into an Arab school. The teacher, who
wore a turban, sat cross-legged on a raised dais, and the boys, who wore
fezzes--there were no girls--were grouped on either side--on a
rug--their pointed shoes standing in a row along the floor. They were
reciting in a chorus from some large cards--the Koran, according to the
guide--and it made a queer clatter.
It must have struck their dinner-hour, just then, for suddenly they all
rose, and each in turn made an obeisance to the teacher, kissed his
hand, slipped on a pair of little pointed shoes and swarmed out just as
any school-boy in any land might do. Only they were not so noisy or
impudent. They were rather grave, and their curiosity concerning us was
not of a frantic kind. They were training for the life of contemplation,
no doubt; perhaps even to be holy men.
We passed little recesses where artizans of all kinds were at work with
crude implements on what seemed unimportant things. We passed a
cubby-hole where a man was writing letters in the curious Arabic
characters for men who squatted about and waited their turn. We saw the
pettiest merchants in the world--men with half a dozen little heaps of
fruit and vegetables on the ground, not more than three or four
poor-looking items in each heap. In a land where fruit and vegetables
are the most plentiful of all products, a whole stock in trade like that
could not be worth above three or four cents. I wonder what sort of a
change they make when they sell only a part of one of those pitiful
heaps.
We were at the foot of the hill and out of that delightful Arab quarter
all too soon. But we could not stay. Our carriages were waiting there,
and we were in and off and going gaily through very beautiful streets to
reach the hotel where we were to lunch.
Neither shall I dwell on the governor's palace which we visited, though
it is set in a fair garden; nor on the museum, with the exception of
just one thing. That one item is, I believe, unique in the world's list
of curiosities. It is a plaster cast of the martyr Geronimo in the agony
of death. The Algerines put Geronimo alive into a soft mass of concrete
which presently hardened into a block, and was built into a fort. This
was in 1569, and about forty years later a Spanish writer described the
event and told exactly how that particular block could be located.
The fort stood for nearly three hundred years. Then in 1853 it was torn
down, the block was identified and broken open, and an almost perfect
mould of the dead martyr was found within. They filled the mould with
plaster, and the result--a wonderful cast--lies there in the museum
to-day, his face down as he died, hands and feet bound and straining,
head twisted to one side in the supreme torture of that terrible
martyrdom. It is a gruesome, fascinating thing, and you go back to look
at it more than once, and you slip out betweentimes for a breath of
fresh air.
Remembering the story and looking at that straining figure, you realize
a little of the need he must have known, and your lungs contract and you
smother and hurry out to the sky and sun and God-given oxygen of life.
He could not have lived long, but every second of consciousness must
have been an eternity of horror, for there is no such thing as time
except as to mode of measurement, and a measurement such as that would
compass ages unthinkable. If I lived in Algiers and at any time should
sprout a little bud of discontent with the present state of affairs--a
little sympathy with the subjugated population--I would go and take a
look at Geronimo, and forthwith all the discontent and the sympathy
would pass away, and I would come out gloating in the fact that France
can crack the whip and that we of the West can ride them down.
We drove through the suburbs, the most beautiful suburbs I have ever
seen in any country, and here and there beggars sprang up by the
roadside and pursued us up hill and down, though we were going
helter-skelter with fine horses over perfect roads. How these children
could keep up with us I shall never know, or how a girl of not more than
ten could carry a big baby and run full speed down hill, crying out
"_Sou-penny_" at every step, never stumbling or falling behind. Of
course, nobody could stand that. We flung her sou-pennies and she
gathered them up like lightning and was after the rear carriages,
unsatisfied and unabated in speed.
We passed a little lake with two frogs in it. They called to us, but
they spoke only French or Algerian, so we did not catch the point of
their remarks.
And now we drove home--that is, back to the fine streets near the
water-front where we were to leave the carriages and wander about for a
while, at will. That was a wild, splendid drive. We were all principals
in a gorgeous procession that went dashing down boulevards and through
villages, our drivers cracking their whips at the scattering people who
woke up long enough to make a fairly spry dash for safety.
Oh, but it was grand! The open barouches, the racing teams, the cracking
whips! Let the Arab horde have a care. They sank unoffending vessels;
they reddened the sea with blood; they enslaved thousands; they martyred
Geronimo. Let the whips crack--drive us fast over them!
Still, I wasn't quite so savage as I sound. I didn't really wish to
damage any of those Orientals. I only wanted to feel that I could do it
and not have to pay a fine--not a big fine--and I invented the idea of
taking a lot of those cheap Arabs to America for automobilists to use
up, and save money.
When we got back to town, while the others were nosing about the shops,
I slipped away and went up into the Arab quarter again, alone. It was
toward evening now, and it was twilight in there, and there was such a
lot of humanity among which I could not see a single European face or
dress. I realized that I was absolutely alone in that weird place and
that these people had no love for the "Christian Dog."
I do not think I was afraid, but I thought of these things, and wondered
how many years would be likely to pass before anybody would get a trace
of what had become of me, if anything did become of me, and what that
thing would be likely to be. Something free and handsome, no
doubt--something with hot skewers and boiling oil in it, or perhaps
soft concrete.
Still, I couldn't decide to turn back, not yet. If the place had been
interesting by daylight, it was doubly so, now, in the dusk, with the
noiseless, hooded figures slipping by; the silent coffee-drinkers in the
half gloom--leaning over now and then, to whisper a little gossip,
maybe, but usually abstracted, indifferent. What could they ever have to
gossip about anyway? They had no affairs. Their affairs all ended long
ago.
I came to an open place by and by, a tiny square which proved to be a
kind of second-hand market-place. I altered all my standards of economy
there in a few minutes. They were selling things that the poorest family
of the East Side of New York would pitch into the garbage-barrel. Broken
bottles, tin cans, wretched bits of clothing, cracked clay water-jars
that only cost a few cents new. I had bought a new one myself as I came
along for eight cents. I began to feel a deep regret that I had not
waited.
Adjoining the market was a gaming-place and coffee-house combined. Men
squatting on the ground in the dusk played dominoes and chess
wordlessly, never looking up, only sipping their coffee now and then,
wholly indifferent to time and change and death and the hereafter. I
could have watched them longer, but it would really be dark presently,
and one must reach the ship by a certain hour. One could hardly get lost
in the Arab quarter, for any downhill stair takes you toward the sea,
but I did not know by which I had come, so I took the first one and
started down.
I walked pretty rapidly, and I looked over my shoulder now and then,
because--well, never mind, I looked over my shoulder--and I would have
been glad to see anything that looked like a Christian. Presently I felt
that somebody was following me. I took a casual look and made up my mind
that it was true. There were quantities of smoking, drinking people all
about, but I didn't feel any safer for that. I stepped aside presently
and stood still to let him pass. He did pass--a sinister looking
Arab--but when I started on he stepped aside too, and got behind me
again.
So I stopped and let him pass once more, and then it wasn't necessary to
manoeuvre again, for a few yards ahead the narrow Arab defile flowed
into the lighter French thoroughfare. He was only a pick-pocket,
perhaps--there are said to be a good many in Algiers--but he was not a
pleasant-looking person, and I did not care to cultivate him at
nightfall in that dim, time-forgotten place.
I picked up some friends in the French quarter, and Laura and I drifted
toward the ship, pressed by a gay crowd of merry-makers. It was
carnival-time, as before mentioned, and the air was full of confetti,
and the open-air cafés were crowded with persons of both sexes and every
nation, drinking, smoking, and chattering, the air reeking with tobacco
and the fumes of absinthe. Everywhere were the red and blue soldiers of
France--Chasseurs d'Afrique and Zouaves--everywhere the fashionable
French costumes--everywhere the French tongue. And amid that fashion and
gayety of the West the fez and the turban and the long flowing robe of
the Orient mingled silently, while here and there little groups of
elderly, dignified sons of the desert stood in quiet corners, observing
and thinking long thoughts. And this is the Algiers of to-day--the West
dominant--the East a memory and a dream.
XII
WE TOUCH AT GENOA
We lost some of our passengers--the wrong ones--at Algiers. They wanted
to linger awhile in that lovely place, and no one could blame them. Only
I wish that next time we are to lose passengers I might make the
selection. I would pick, for instance--no, on the whole, I am not the
one to do it. I am fond of all of our people. They are peculiar, most of
them, as mentioned before--all of them, I believe, except me--but
thinking it over I cannot decide on a single one that I would be willing
to spare. Even the Porpoise-- But we have grown to love the Porpoise,
and the news that we are to lose him at Genoa saddens me.
We were pitched from Algiers to Genoa--not all at one pitch, though we
should have liked that better. A gale came up out of the north and,
great ship as the _Kurfürst_ is, we stood alternately on our hind feet
and our fore feet all the way over--two nights and a day--while the roar
and howl of the wind were appalling. We changed our minds about the
placid, dreamy disposition of the Mediterranean; also, about sunny
Italy.
When the second morning came we were still a good way outside the harbor
of Genoa, in the grip of such a norther and blizzard as tears through
the Texas Panhandle and leaves dead cattle in its wake. Sunny Italy
indeed! The hills back of Genoa, when we could make them out at last,
were white with snow. To go out on deck was to breast the penetrating,
stinging beat of the storm.
But I stood it awhile to get an impression of the harbor. It is no
harbor at all, but simply a little corner of open sea, partly enclosed
by breakwaters that measurably protect vessels from heavy seas, when one
can get through the entrance. With our mighty engines and powerful
machinery we were beating and wallowing around the entrance for as much
as two hours, I should think, before we could get inside. You could stow
that harbor of Genoa anywhere along the New York City water-front,
shipping and all, and then you would need to employ a tug-boat captain
to find it for you. It is hard to understand how Genoa obtained her
maritime importance in the old days.
(I have just referred to the guide-book. It says: "The magnificent
harbor of Genoa was the cause of the mediæval prosperity of the city,"
and adds that it is about two miles in diameter. Very well; I take it
all back. I was merely judging from observation. It has led me into
trouble before.)
We were only to touch at Genoa; some more of our passengers were to
leave us, and we were to take on the European contingent there. It was
not expected that there would be much sight-seeing, especially on such a
day, but some of us went ashore nevertheless. Laura, age fourteen, and I
were among those who went. We set out alone, were captured immediately
by a guide, repelled him, and temporarily escaped. It was a mistake,
however; we discovered soon that a guide would have been better on this
bitter, buffeting day.
We had no idea where to go, and when we spoke to people about it, they
replied in some dialect of Mulberry Street that ought not to be
permitted at large. Laura tried her French on them presently, but with
no visible effect, though it had worked pretty well in Algiers. Then I
discovered a German sign, over a restaurant or something, and I said I
would get information there.
I had faith in my German since my practice on the stewards, and I went
into the place hopefully. What I wanted to ask was "Where is Cook's?"
the first question that every tourist wants to ask when he finds himself
lost and cold and hungry in a strange land. But being lost and cold and
hungry confused me, I suppose, and I got mixed in my adverbs, and when
the sentence came out it somehow started with "_Warum_" instead of
"_Wo_" so instead of asking "Where is Cook's?" I had asked "Why is
Cook's?" a question which I could have answered myself if I had only
known I had asked it.
But I didn't realize, and kept on asking it, with a little more emphasis
each time, while the landlord and the groups about the tables began to
edge away and to reach for something handy and solid to use on a crazy
man. I backed out then, and by the time I was outside I realized my
slight error in the choice of words. I did not go back to correct my
inquiry. I merely told Laura that those people in there did not seem
very intelligent, and that was true, or they would have known that
anybody is likely to say "why" when he means "where," especially in
German.
There are too many languages in the world, anyway. There is nothing so
hopeless as to hunt for information in a place where not a soul
understands your language, and where you can't speak a word of his. The
first man at your very side may have all the information you need right
at his tongue's end, but it might as well be buried in a cellar so far
as you are concerned.
I am in deep sympathy with the people who invented Volapuk, and are
trying to invent Esperanto. I never thought much about it before, but
since I've been to Genoa I know I believe in those things. Only, I wish
they'd adopt English as the universal speech. I find it plenty good
enough.
Laura and I made our way uphill and climbed some stairways, met a
_gendarme_, got what seemed to be information, climbed down again, and
met a man with a fish-net full of bread--caught in some back alley, from
the looks of it. Then we followed a car-track a while along the deserted
street, past black, desolate-looking houses, and were cold and
discouraged and desperate, when suddenly, right out of heaven, came that
guide, who had been following us all the time, of course, and realized
that the psychological moment had come.
We could have fallen on his neck for pure joy. Everything became all
right, then. He could understand what we said, and we could understand
what he said; we tried him repeatedly and he could do it every time.
That was joy and occupation enough at first. Then we asked him "Where
was Cook's?" and he knew that too. It was wonderful.
We grew to love that guide like a brother. It's marvellous how soon and
fondly you can learn to love a rescuer like that when you are a stranger
in a strange land and have been sinking helplessly in a sea of unknown
words.
He was a good soul, too; attentive without being officious, anxious to
show us as much as possible in the brief space of our visit. He led us
through the narrow, cleft-like streets of the old city; he pointed out
the birthplace of Columbus and portions of the old city wall; he
conducted us to the Hotel de Ville (the old Fieschi Palace), where we
decided to have luncheon; he led us back to the ship at last, and
trusted me while I went aboard to get the five _lira_ of his charge.
Whatever the Genoese guides were in the old days, this one was a jewel.
If I had any voice in the matter Genoa would inscribe a tablet to a man
like that and put his bones in a silver box and label them "St. John the
Baptist" instead of the set of St. John bones they now have in the
Cathedral of St. Lorenzo, which he pointed out to us.
But the Cathedral itself was interesting enough. It was built in the
ninth century, and is the first church we have seen that has interested
us. In it Laura noticed again the absence of seats; for they kneel, on
this side of the water, and know not the comfort of pews.
We passed palaces galore in Genoa, but we had only time to glance in,
except at the Fieschi, where we lunched, and later were shown the rooms
where the famous conspiracy took place. I don't know what the conspiracy
was, but the guide-book speaks of it as "the famous conspiracy," so
everybody but me will know just which one is meant. It probably
concerned the Ghibellines and the Guelphs, and had strangling in it and
poison--three kinds, slow, medium, and swift--these features being
usually identified with the early Italian school.
The dim, mysterious streets of Genoa interested us--many of the houses
frescoed outside--and the old city gates, dating back to the crusade;
also some English signs, one of which said:
DINNER 3 LIRA, WINE ENCLOSED,
and another:
MILK FOR SALE, OR TO LET.
I am in favor of these people learning English, but not too well. The
picturesque standard of those signs is about right.
Our new passengers were crowding aboard the ship when we returned. They
were a polyglot assortment, English, German, French, Hungarian--a
happy-looking lot, certainly, and eager for the housing and comfort of
the ship. But one dear old soul, a German music-master--any one could
tell that at first glance--was in no hurry for the cabin. He had been
looking forward to that trip. Perhaps this was his first sight of the
sea and shipping and all the things he had wanted so long. He came to
where I was looking over the rail, his head bare, his white hair blowing
in the wind. He looked at me anxiously.
"Haben Sie Deutsch?" he asked.
I confessed that I still had a small broken assortment of German on
hand, such as it was. He pointed excitedly to a vessel lying near us--a
ship with an undecipherable name in the Greek character.
"Greek," he said, "it is Greek--a vessel from Greece!"
He was deeply moved. To him that vessel--a rather poor, grimy
affair--with its name in the characters of Homer and Æschylus was a
thing to make his blood leap and his eyes grow moist, because to him it
meant the marvel and story of a land made visible--the first breath of
realization of what before had just been a golden dream. I had been
thinking of those things, too. We did not mind the cold, and stood
looking down at the Greek vessel while we sailed away.
But a change has come over the spirit of our ship. It is a good ship
still, with a goodly company--only it is not the same. We lost some
worthy people in Genoa and we took on this European invasion. It is
educational, and here in the smoking-room I could pick up all the
languages I need so much if I were willing to listen and had an ear for
such things. I could pick up customs, too. It is after dinner, and the
smoking-room is crowded with mingled races of both sexes, who have come
in for their coffee and their cigarettes, their gossip and their games.
Over there in one corner is a French group--Parisian, without
doubt--the women are certainly that, otherwise they could not chatter
and handle their cigarettes in that dainty way--and they are going-on
and waving their hands and turning their eyes to heaven in the interest
and ecstasy of their enjoyment. Games do not interest them--they are in
themselves sufficient diversion to one another.
It is different with a group of Germans at the next table; they have
settled down to cards--pinochle, likely enough--and they are playing it
soberly--as soberly as that other group who are absorbed in chess. At
still another table a game of poker is being organized, and from that
direction comes the beloved American tongue, carrying such words as
"What's the blue chips worth?" "Shall we play jack-pots?" "Does the
dealer ante?" and in these familiar echoes I recognize the voices of
friends.
The centre of the smoking-room is different. The tables there are filled
with a variegated lot of men and women, all talking together, each
pursuing a different subject--each speaking a language of his own. Every
nation of Europe, I should think, is represented there--it is a sort of
lingual congress in open session.
The Reprobates no longer own the smoking-room. They are huddled off in a
corner over their game of piquet, and they have a sort of cowed,
helpless look. Only now and then I can see the Colonel jerk his hat a
bit lower and hear him say, "Hell, Joe!" as the Apostle lay down his
final cards. Then I recognize that we are still here and somewhat in
evidence, though our atmosphere is not the same.
That couldn't be expected. When you have set out with a crowd of
pleasure-seeking irresponsibles, gathered up at random, and have become
a bit of the amalgamation which takes place in two weeks' mixing, you
somehow feel that a certain unity has resulted from the process and you
are reluctant about seeing it disturbed. You feel a personal loss in
every face that goes--a personal grievance in every stranger that
intrudes.
The ship's family has become a sort of club. It has formed itself into
groups and has discussed its members individually and collectively. It
has found out their business and perhaps some of the hopes and
ambitions--even some of the sorrows--of each member. Then, suddenly,
here is a new group of people that breaks in. You know nothing about
them--they know nothing about you. They are good people, and you will
learn to like some of them--perhaps all of them--in time. Yet you regard
them doubtfully. Rearrangement is never easy, and amalgamation will be
slow.
Oh, well, it is ever thus, and it is the very evanescence of things that
makes them worth while. That old crowd of ours would have grown deadly
tired of one another if there hadn't been always the prospect and
imminence of change. And, anyhow, this is far more picturesque, and we
are sailing to-night before the wind, over a smooth sea, for Malta, and
it has grown warm outside and the lights of Corsica are on our starboard
bow.
[Illustration]
XIII
MALTA, A LAND OF YESTERDAY
We came a long way around from Algiers to "Malta and its dependencies,"
the little group of islands which lies between Sicily and the African
coast. We have spent two days at sea, meantime, but they were rather
profitable days, for when one goes capering among marvels, as we do
ashore, he needs these ship days to get his impressions sorted out and
filed for reference.
We were in the harbor of Valetta, Malta, when we woke this morning--a
rather dull morning--and a whole felucca of boats--flotilla, I mean--had
appeared in the offing to take us ashore. At least, I suppose they were
in the offing-- I'm going to look that word up, by and by, in the ship
dictionary, and see what it means. They have different boats in each of
the places we have visited--every country preserving its native pattern.
These at Malta are a sort of gondola with a piece sticking up at each
end--for ornament, probably--I have been unable to figure out any use
for the feature.
We leaned over the rail, watching them and admiring the boatmen while we
tried to recognize the native language. The Diplomat came along and
informed us that it was Arabic, mixed with Italian, the former heavily
predominating. The Arabs had once occupied the island for two hundred
and twenty years, he said, and left their language, their architecture,
and their customs. He had been trying his Arabic on some natives who had
come aboard and they could almost understand it.
The Patriarch, who had been early on deck, came up full of enthusiasm.
There was a Phoenician temple in Malta which he was dying to visit. It
was the first real footprint, thus far, of his favorite tribe, and
though we have learned to restrain the Patriarch when he unlimbers on
Phoenicians, we let him get off this time, softened, perhaps, by the
thought of the ruined temple.
The Phoenicians had, of course, been the first settlers of Malta, he
told us, thirty-five hundred years ago, when Rome had not been heard of
and Greece was mere mythology; after which preliminary the Patriarch
really got down to business.
"We are told by Sanchuniathon," he said, "in the Phoinikika, which was
not only a cosmogony but a necrological diptych, translated into Greek
by Philo of Byblus, with commentary by Porphyry and preserved by
Eusebius in fragmentary form, that the Phoenicians laid the
foundations of the world's arts, sciences, and religions, though the
real character of their own faith has been but imperfectly expiscated.
We are told--"
The Horse-Doctor laid his hand reverently but firmly on the Patriarch's
arm.
"General," he said (the Patriarch's ship title is General)--"General, we
all love you, and we all respect your years and your learning. We will
stand almost anything from you, even the Phoenicians; but don't crowd
us, General--don't take advantage of our good-nature. We'll try to put
up with Sanchuniathon and Porphyry and those other old dubs, but when
you turned loose that word 'expiscated' I nearly lost control of myself
and threw you overboard."
The bugle blew the summons to go ashore. Amidst a clatter of Maltese we
descended into the boats and started for the quay. Sitting thus low down
upon the water, one could get an idea of the little shut-in harbor, one
of the deepest and finest in the world. We could not see its outlet, or
the open water, for the place is like a jug, and the sides are high and
steep. They are all fortified, too, and looking up through the gloomy
morning at the grim bastions and things, the place loomed sombre enough
and did not invite enthusiasm. It was too much like Gibraltar in its
atmosphere, which was not surprising, for it is an English
stronghold--the second in importance in these waters. Gibraltar is the
gateway, Malta is the citadel of the Mediterranean, and England to-day
commands both.
But Malta has had a more picturesque history than Gibraltar. Its story
has been not unlike that of Algiers, and many nations have fought for it
and shed blood and romance along its shores, and on all the lands about.
We touched mythology, too, here, for the first time; and Bible history.
Long ago, even before the Phoenicians, the Cyclops--a race of one-eyed
giants--owned Malta, and here Calypso, daughter of Atlas, lived and
enchanted Ulysses when he happened along this way and was shipwrecked on
the "wooded island of Ogygia, far apart from men."
I am glad they do not call it that any more. It is hard to say Ogygia,
and it is no longer a wooded isle. It is little more than a rock, in
fact, covered with a thin, fertile soil, and there are hardly any trees
to be discovered anywhere. But there were bowers and groves in Ulysses'
time, and Calypso wooed him among the greenery and in a cave which is
pointed out to this day. She promised him immortality if he would forget
his wife and native land, and marry her, but Ulysses postponed his
decision, and after a seven-year sample of the matrimony concluded he
didn't care for perpetual existence on those terms.
Calypso bore him two sons, and when he sailed away died of grief.
Ulysses returned to Penelope, but he was disqualified for the simple
life of Ithaca, and after he had slain her insolent suitors and told
everybody about his travels he longed to go sailing away again to other
adventures and islands, and Calypsos, perhaps, "beyond the baths of all
the western stars." Such was life even then.
The Biblical interest of Malta concerns a shipwreck, too. St. Paul on
his way to Italy to preach the gospel was caught in a great tempest, the
Euroclydon, which continued for fourteen days. Acts xxvii, xxviii
contain the story, which is very interesting and beautiful.
Here is a brief summary.
"And when the ship was caught, and could not bear up in the
wind, we let her drive....
"And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and
no small tempest lay upon us, all hope that we should be
saved was taken away."
Paul comforted them and told how an angel had stood by him, assuring him
that he, Paul, would appear before Cæsar and that all with him would be
saved. "Howbeit, we must be cast upon a certain island."
The island was Melita (_i.e._, Malta), and "falling into a place where
two seas met, they ran the ship aground."
There were two hundred and sixteen souls in the vessel, and all got to
land somehow.
"And the barbarous people showed us no little kindness: for
they kindled a fire and received us every one, because of
the present rain, and because of the cold."
Paul remained three months in Malta and preached the gospel and
performed miracles there, which is a better record than Ulysses made. He
also banished the poison snakes, it is said. It was the Euroclydon that
swept the trees from Malta, and nineteen hundred years have not repaired
the ravage of that storm.
Gods, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans,
Germans, Spanish, Knights of Jerusalem, French, and English have all
battled for Malta because of its position as a stronghold, a watch-tower
between the eastern and western seas. All of them have fortified it more
or less, until to-day it is a sort of museum of military works,
occupied and abandoned.
After the Gods, the Phoenicians were the first occupants, and with all
due deference to the Patriarch, they were skedaddling out of Canaan at
the time, because Joshua was transacting a little business in warfare
which convinced them that it was time to grow up with new countries
farther west. The Knights of Jerusalem--also known as the Knights of St.
John and the Knights of Rhodes--were the last romantic inheritors. The
Knights were originally hospital nurses who looked after pilgrims that
went to visit the Holy Sepulchre, nearly a thousand years ago. They
became great soldiers in time: knightly crusaders with sacred vows of
chastity and service to the Lord. Charles V. of Spain gave them the
Island of Malta, and they became the Knights of Malta henceforth. They
did not maintain their vows by and by, but became profligates and even
pirates. Meantime they had rendered mighty service to the Mediterranean
and the world at large.
They prevented the terrible Turk from overrunning and possessing all
Europe. Under John de la Valette, the famous Grand Master, Malta stood a
Turkish siege that lasted four months, with continuous assault and heavy
bombardments. The Turks gave it up at last and sailed away, after a loss
of over twenty thousand men.
Only seven thousand Maltese and two hundred and sixty knights were
killed, and it is said that before he died each knight had anywhere from
fifty to a hundred dead Turks to his credit. It must have been hard to
kill a knight in those days. I suppose they wore consecrated armor and
talismans, and were strengthened by special benedictions. And this all
happened in 1565, after which La Valette decided to build a city, and on
the 28th of March, 1566, laid the corner-stone of Valetta, our
anchorage.
It is a curious place and interesting. When we landed at the quay our
vehicles were waiting for us, and these were our first entertainment.
They resembled the little affairs of Gibraltar, but were more absurd, I
think. They had funny canopy tops--square parasol things with fancy
edges--and there was no room inside for a tall man with knees. I was
only partly in my conveyance, and I would have been willing to have been
out of it altogether, only we were going up a steep hill and I couldn't
get out without damage to something or somebody. Then we passed through
some gates and entered the city.
I don't think any of us had any clear idea of what Malta was like. It is
another of those places that every one has heard of and nobody knows
about. We all knew about Maltese cats because we had cats more or less
Maltese at home, and we had heard of the Knights of Malta and of Maltese
lace. But some of us thought Malta was a city on the north shore of
Africa and the rest of us believed it to be an island in the Persian
Gulf.[2]
However, these slight inaccuracies do not disturb us any more. We have
learned to accept places where and as we find them, without undue
surprise. If we should awake some morning in a strange harbor and be
told that it was Sheol, we would merely say:
"Oh yes, certainly; we knew it was down here somewhere. When can we go
ashore?"
Then we would set out sight-seeing and shopping without further remark,
some of us still serene in the conviction that it was an African
seaport, the rest believing it to be an island in the Persian Gulf.
But there were no Maltese cats in Malta--not that I saw, and no knights,
I think. What did strike us first was a herd of goats, goatesses I mean,
being driven along from house to house and supplying milk. They were the
mildest-eyed, most inoffensive little creatures in the world, and can
carry more milk for their size than any other mammal, unless I am a poor
judge. They did not seem to be under any restraint, but they never
wandered far away from their master. They nibbled and loafed along, and
were ready for business at call. They seemed much more reliable than any
cows of my acquaintance.
But presently I forgot the goats, for a woman came along--several
women--and they wore a black head-gear of alpaca or silk, a cross
between a sunbonnet and a nun's veil--hooped out on one side and looped
in on the other--a curious head-gear, but not a bad setting for a
handsome face. And those ladies had handsome faces--rich, oval faces,
with lustrous eyes--and the faldette (they call it that) made a
background that melted into their wealth of atramentous hair.
We have not seen handsome native women before, but they are plentiful
enough here. None of them are really bad-looking, and every other one is
a beauty, by my standards.
We were well up into the city now, and could see what the place was
like. The streets were not over-wide, and the houses had an Oriental
look, with their stuccoed walls and their projecting Arab windows. They
were full of people and donkeys--very small donkeys with great pack
baskets of vegetables and other merchandise--but we could not well
observe these things because of the beggars and bootblacks and would-be
guides, besides all the sellers of postal cards and trinkets.
It was worse than Madeira, worse than Gibraltar, worse even than
Algiers. England ought to be ashamed of herself to permit, in one of her
possessions, such lavish and ostentatious poverty as exists in Malta.
When we got out of the carriages we were overwhelmed. They stormed
around us; they separated us; they fought over us; they were ready to
devour us piecemeal. Some of us escaped into shops--some into the
museum--some into St. John's Cathedral, which was across the way.
Laura and I were among the last named, and we drew a long breath as we
slipped into that magnificent place. We rejoiced a little too soon,
however, for a second later we were nabbed by a guide, and there was no
escape. We couldn't make a row in a church, especially as services were
going on; at least, we didn't think it safe to try.
It _is_ a magnificent church--the most elaborately decorated, I
believe, in all Europe. Grand Master John L'Eveque de la Cassar, at his
own expense, put up the building, and all Europe contributed to its
wealth and splendor. Its spacious floor is one vast mosaic of memorial
tablets to dead heroes. There are four hundred richly inlaid slabs, each
bearing a coat of arms and inscriptions in colors. They are wonderfully
beautiful; no other church in the world has such a floor. Napoleon
Bonaparte, who was a greater vandal than a soldier, allowed his troops
to rifle St. John's when he took possession of Malta in 1798. But there
are riches enough there now and apparently Napoleon did not deface the
edifice itself.
The upper part of the Cathedral can only be comprehended in the single
word "gorgeous." To attempt to put into sentences any impressions of its
lavish ceiling and decorations and furnishings would be to cheapen a
thing which, though ornate, is not cheap and does not look so. There are
paintings by Correggio and other Italian masters, and rare sacred
statuary, and there is a solid silver altar rail which Napoleon did not
carry off because a thoughtful priest quickly gave it a coat of
lampblack when he heard the soldiers coming.
The original keys of Jerusalem and several other holy places are said to
be in one of the chapels, and in another is a thorn from the Saviour's
crown, the stones with which St. Stephen was martyred, and some
apostolic bones. These things are as likely to be here as anywhere, and
one of the right hands of John the Baptist, encased in a gold glove, was
here when Napoleon came. Napoleon took up the hand and slipped off a
magnificent diamond ring from one of the fingers. Then he slipped the
ring on his own finger and tossed the hand aside.
"Keep the carrion," he said.
They hate the memory of Napoleon in Malta to this day.
The ceiling of the church is a mass of gold and color, and there are
chapels along the sides, each trying to outdo the next in splendor. I am
going to stop description right here, for I could do nothing with the
details.
I have mentioned that services were in progress, but it did not seem to
interfere with our sight-seeing. It would in America, but it doesn't in
Malta. There was chanting around the altar, and there were worshippers
kneeling all about, but our guide led us among them and over them as if
they had not existed. It seemed curious to us that he could do this,
that we could follow him unmolested. We tried to get up some feeling of
delicacy in the matter, and to make some show of reluctance, but he led
us and drove us along relentlessly, and did not seem to fear the
consequences.
We got outside at last and were nailed by a frowsy man who wanted to
sell one grimy postal card of the Chapel of Bones. We didn't want the
card, but we said he might take us to the chapel if he knew the way.
Nothing so good as that ever came into his life before. From a mendicant
seller of one wretched card, worth a penny at most, he had suddenly
blossomed into the guide of two American tourists. The card disappeared.
With head erect he led the way as one having received knighthood.
Our crowd was waiting admission outside the chapel and we did not need
our guide any more. But that didn't matter--he needed us. He accepted
his salary to date, but he did not accept his discharge. We went into
the Chapel of Bones, which is a rather grewsome place, with a lot of
decorations made out of bleached human remnants--not a pleasant spot in
which to linger--and when we came out again there was our guide, ready
to take us in hand. We resisted feebly, but surrendered. We didn't care
for the regular programme and wanted to wander away, anyhow. He
suggested that we go to the Governor's palace and armory, so we went
there.
The armory was worth while. It was full of armor of the departed knights
and of old arms of every sort. We think breech-loading guns are modern,
but we saw them there from the sixteenth century--long, deadly-looking
weapons--and there were rope guns; also little mortars not more than
three or four inches deep--mere toys--a stout man with a pile of rocks
would be more effective, I should think.
We saw the trumpet, too, that led La Valette to victory in 1565, and
some precious documents--among them the Grant of Malta made by Charles
V. to the knights, 1530. These were interesting things and we lingered
there until within a minute of noon, when we went out into the grounds
to see the great bronze clock on the Governor's palace strike twelve.
And all the rest of our party had collected in the grounds of the
Governor's palace, and pretty soon the Governor came out and made us a
little speech of welcome and invited us to luncheon on the lawn, with
cold chicken and ices and nice fizzy drinks. No, that was not what
happened--not exactly. Our crowd was not there, and we did not see the
Governor and we were not invited to picnic on the lawn. Otherwise the
statement is correct. We did go out into the grounds, and we did see the
clock strike. The other things are what we thought should happen, and
they would have happened if we had received our just deserts.
Well, then, those things did not materialize, but our guide did. He
would always materialize, so long as we stayed in Malta. So we
re-engaged him and signified that we wanted food. He led us away to what
seemed to be a hotel, but the clerk, who did not speak English, regarded
us doubtfully. Then the landlord came. He had a supply of English but no
food. No one is fed at a hotel in Malta who has not ordered in advance.
At least, that is what he said, and we went away, sorrowing.
We were not alone. A crowd had collected while we were inside--a crowd
of the would-be guides and already beggars, with sellers and torments of
various kinds. We were assailed as soon as we touched the street, and
our guide, who was not very robust, was not entirely able to protect us
from them. He did steer us to a restaurant, however, a decent enough
little place, and on the steps outside they disputed for us and wrangled
over us and divided us up while we ate. It was like the powers getting
ready to dismember China.
We laid out our programme for the afternoon. We wanted to get some
Maltese lace, and to make a little side trip by rail to Citta Vecchia
(the old city) which two native gentlemen at our table told us would
give us a good idea of the country. Then we paid our bill, had a battle
with a bootblack who had surreptitiously been polishing my shoes, fought
our way through the barbarians without, and finally escaped by sheer
flight, our guide at our heels.
We told him that we wanted lace. Ah, a smile that was like morning
overspread his face. He took us to a large shop, where we found some of
our friends already negotiating, but we did not linger. We said we
wanted to find a little shop--a place where it was made. He led us to
another bazaar. Again we said, "No, a little shop--a _very_ little shop,
on a back street."
[Illustration: TWO BENT, WRINKLED WOMEN WEAVING LACE OUTSIDE THE DOOR]
Clearly he was disappointed. He did find one for us, however, a tiny
place in an alley, with two bent, wrinkled women weaving lace outside
the door.
How their deft fingers made those little bobbins fly, and what beautiful
stuff it was, creamy white silk in the most wonderful patterns and
stitches. They showed us their stock eagerly, and they had masses of it.
Then we bargained and cheapened and haggled, in the approved fashion we
have picked up along the way, and went off at last with our purchases,
everybody happy--they because they would have taken less, we because we
would have given more. Only our guide was a bit solemn. I suppose his
commission was modest enough in a place like that.
He took us to the railway-station--the only railway in Malta. Then I
made a discovery: we had no current coin of the realm and the railway
would take only English money. No matter. We had discharged our guide
three times and paid him each separate time. He was a capitalist now,
and he promptly advanced the needed funds. We were grateful, and invited
him to go along. But he said "No," that he would remain at the station
until our return.
He was faithful, you see, and he trusted us. Besides, we couldn't
escape. There was only that one road and train. We took our seats in an
open car, on account of the scenery. We didn't know it was third-class
till later, but we didn't mind that. What we did mind was plunging into
a thick, black, choking tunnel as soon as we started; then another and
another. This was scenery with a vengeance.
We were out at last, and in a different world. Whatever was modern in
Malta had been left behind. This was wholly Eastern--Syrian--a piece out
of the Holy Land, if the pictures tell us the truth. Everywhere were the
one-story, flat-topped architecture and the olive-trees of the Holy Land
pictures; everywhere stony fields and myriads of stone walls.
At a bound we had come from what was only a few hundred years ago,
mingled with to-day, to what was a few thousand years ago, mingled with
nothing modern whatever. There is no touch of English dominion here, or
French, or Italian. This might be Syrian or Moorish; it might be, and
_is_ Maltese.
We saw men ploughing with a single cow and a crooked stick in a manner
that has prevailed here always. We mentioned the matter to our
railway-conductor, who was a sociable person and had not much to do.
"You are from America," he said.
"Yes, we are from America."
"And do they use different ploughs there?"
He spoke the English of the colonies, and it seemed incredible that he
should not know about these things. We broke it to him as gently as
possible that we did not plough with a crooked stick in America, but
with such ploughs as were used in England. However, that meant nothing
to him, as he had never been off the island of Malta in his life. His
name was Carina, he told us, and his parents and grandparents before him
had been born on the island. Still, I think he must have had English or
Irish pigment in that red hair of his. His English was perfect, though
he spoke the Maltese, too, of course.
He became our guide as we went along, willing and generous with his
information, though more interested, I thought, in the questions he
modestly asked us, now and then. His whole environment--all his
traditions--had been confined to that little sea-encircled space of old,
old town, and older, much older country.
He would like to come to America, he confessed, and I wondered, if some
day he should steam up New York harbor and look upon that piled
architecture, and then should step ashore and find himself amidst its
whirl of traffic, he would not be even more impressed by it than we were
with his tiny forgotten island here to the south of Sicily.
We passed little stations, now and then, with pretty stone and marble
station-houses, but with no villages of any consequence, and came to
Citta Vecchia, which the Arabs called Medina, formerly the capital of
the island. It is a very ancient place, set upon a hill and bastioned
round with walls that are too high to scale, and were once impregnable.
It has stood many an assault--many a long-protracted siege. To-day it is
a place of crumbling ruins and deserted streets--a mediæval dream.
It was raining when we got back to Valetta, and our faithful guide
hurried us toward the boat-landing by a short way, for we were anxious
to get home now. Every few yards we were assailed by hackmen and
beggars, and by boatmen as soon as we reached the pier. He kept us
intact, however, and got us into our own boat, received the rest of his
fortune--enough to set him up for life, by Maltese standards--waved us
good-bye, and we were being navigated across the wide, rainy waste
toward our steamer, which seemed to fill one side of that little harbor.
What a joy to be on deck again and in the cosey cabin, drinking hot tea
and talking over our adventures and purchases with our fellow-wanderers.
The ship is home, rest, comfort--a world apart. We are weighing anchor
now, and working our course out of the bottle-neck, to sea. It is a
narrow opening--a native pilot directs us through it and leaves the ship
only at the gateway. Then we sail through and out into the darkening sky
where a storm is gathering--the green billows catching the dusk purple
on their tips, the gulls white as they breast the rising wind.
We gather on the after deck to say good-bye to Malta. Wall upon wall,
terrace upon terrace it rises from the sea--heaped and piled back
against the hills--as old, as quaint, as unchanged as it was a thousand
years ago. Viewed in this spectral half-light it might be any one of the
ancient cities. Ephesus, Antioch, Tyre--it suggests all those names, and
we speak of these things in low voices, awed by the spectacle of
gathering night and storm.
Then, as the picture fades, we return to the lighted cabins, where it is
gay and cheerful and modern, while there in the dark behind, that old
curious island life still goes on; those curious shut-in people are
gathering in their houses; the day, with its cares, its worries, and its
hopes is closing in on that tiny speck, set in that dark and lonely
sea.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] There would seem to have been some sort of confusion of Malta with
the city of Muscat. Perhaps the reader can figure out just what it was.
It had something to do with domestic pets, I believe.
XIV
A SUNDAY AT SEA
We are in classic waters now. All this bleak Sunday we have been
steaming over the Ionian Sea, crossed so long ago by Ulysses when he
went exploring; crossed and recrossed a hundred times by the galleyed
fleets of Rome. We have followed the exact course, perhaps, of those old
triremes with their piled-up banks of oars, when they sailed away to
conquer the East, also when they returned loaded down with captives and
piled high with treasure.
A little while ago Cythera was on our port bow, the island where
Aphrodite was born of wind and wave, and presently set out to make
trouble among the human family. She and her son Cupid, who has always
been too busy to grow up, have a good deal to answer for, and they are
still at their mischief, and will be, no doubt, so long as men are brave
and women fair.
However, they seemed to have overlooked this ship. There is only one
love-affair discoverable, and even that is of such a mild academic
variety that it is doubtful whether that tricksy jade Venus and her
dimpled son had any concern in the matter. It is rather a case of
Diana's hunting, I suspect, and not a love-affair at all.
I have mentioned that this is Sunday, but I acquired this knowledge
from the calendar. One would never guess it from the aspect of this ship
and its company. We made a pretty good attempt at Sabbath observance the
first Sunday out, and we did something in that line a week later. But
then we struck Genoa, where we lost the Promoter and took on this
European influx of languages, and now Sunday is the same as Friday or
Tuesday or any other day, and it would take an expert to tell the
difference.
I do not blame it all to the Europeans. They are a good lot, I believe,
some of them I am sure are, and we have taken to them amazingly. They
did teach us a few new diversions, but we were ready for instruction and
the Reprobates would have corrupted us anyhow, so it is no matter. The
new-comers only stimulated our education and added variety to our
progress. But they did make it bad for Sunday--the old-fashioned Sunday,
such as we had the first week out.
Not that our "pilgrims" are a bad lot--not by any means. They do whoop
it up pretty lively in the booze-bazaar now and then, and even a number
of our American ladies have developed a weakness for that congenial
corner of the ship. But everything is p. p., which is _Kurfürst_ for
perfectly proper, and on this particular Sunday you could not scrape up
enough real sin on this ship to interest Satan five minutes.
Even the Reprobates are not entirely abandoned, and only three different
parties have been removed from their table in the dining-saloon by
request--request of the parties, that is--said parties being accustomed
to the simpler life--pleasant diversions of the home circle, as it
were--and not to the sparkle and the flow of good-fellowship on the high
seas, with the _bon mot_ of the Horse-Doctor, the repartee of the
Colonel, and the placid expletive of the Apostle which the rest of us
are depraved enough to adore.
The Apostle, by-the-way, is going to Jerusalem. He has been there
before, which he does not offer as a reason for going again, for he
found no comfort there, and he is unable to furnish the Doctor with a
sane reason why any one should ever want to go there, even once. I
suspect that when the sale of tickets for the side trips began the
Apostle, in his innocence, feared that there might not be enough to go
around, and thought that he had better secure one in case of accident. I
suspect this from his manner of urging the Doctor to secure one for
himself.
"You'll be too late, if you're not careful," he said. "You'd better go
right up and get your ticket now."
The Doctor was not alarmed. "Don't worry, Joe," he said. "You're booked
for Jerusalem, all right enough. I'll get mine when I decide to go."
"But suppose you decide to go after the party is made up?"
The Doctor stroked his chin. "Hell-of-a-note if I can't go ashore and
buy a ticket for Jerusalem," he said, which had not occurred to the
Apostle, who immediately remembered that he didn't want to go to
Jerusalem anyway, had never wanted to go, and had vowed, before, he
would never go again.
However, he will go, because the Colonel is going; and the Colonel is
going because, as the Doctor still insists, he made his money by
publishing Bibles without reading them, which I think doubtful--not
doubtful that he did not read them, but that he is going to the Holy
Land in consequence. I think he is going because he knows the Apostle is
going--and the Doctor, and the game of piquet. Those are reasons enough
for the Colonel. He is ready at a moment's notice to follow that
combination around the world.
But if we no longer have services on these sea Sundays we have other
features. The Music-Master plays for us, if encouraged, and he gave us a
lecture this afternoon. It was on ancient music, or art, or archæology,
I am not sure which. I listened attentively and I am pretty sure it was
one of those things. He is a delightful old soul and his German is the
best I ever heard. If I could have about ten years' steady practice,
twelve hours a day, I think I could understand some of it.
The "Widow" entertains us too. She belongs to the Genoa contingent, and
is one of those European polyglots who speak every continental language
and make a fair attempt at English. It is her naïveté and unfailing
good-nature that divert us. She approached one of our American ladies
who wears black.
"You a widow, not?" she said.
"Oh no, I am not a widow."
"Ah, then mebbe you yus' divorce, like me."
We get along well with the Europeans. Our captain tells us he has never
seen the nations mix more harmoniously, which means that we are a good
lot, altogether, which is fortunate enough.
But I am prone to run on about the ship and our travellers and forget
graver things; I ought to be writing about Greece, I suppose, and of the
wonders we are going to see, to-morrow, in Athens. I would do it, only I
haven't read the guide-book yet, and then I have a notion that Greece
has been done before. The old _Quaker City_ was quarantined and did not
land her people in Greece (except two parties who went by night), and
the "Innocents" furnishes only that fine description of the Acropolis by
moonlight.
But a good many other excursionists have landed there, and most of them
have told about it, in one way and another. Now it is my turn, but I
shall wait. I have already waited a long time for Athens-- I do not need
to begin the story just yet. Instead I have come out here on deck to
look across to Peloponnesus, which has risen out of the sea, a long gray
shore, our first sight of the mainland where heroes battled and
mythology was born.
I expected the shores of Greece would look like that--bleak, barren, and
forbidding. I don't know why, but that was my thought--perhaps because
the nation itself has lost the glory of its ancient days. The
Music-Master is looking at it too. It means more to him than to most of
us, I imagine. As he looks over to that gray shore he is seeing in his
vision a land where there was once a Golden Age, when the groves sang
with Orpheus and the reeds with Pan, while nymphs sported in hidden
pools or tripped lightly in the dappled shade.
To-morrow he will go mad, I think, for we shall anchor at Athens, in the
Bay of Phaleron.
XV
A PORT OF MISSING DREAMS
There were low voices on the deck, just outside my port-hole. I realized
that it was morning then; also that the light was coming in and that we
were lying at anchor. I was up by that time. It was just at the first
sunrising, and the stretch of water between the ship and the shore had
turned a pinkish hue. Beyond it were some buildings, and above the
buildings, catching the first glint of day on its structured heights,
rose a stately hill.
The Amiable Girl (I have mentioned her before, I believe) and a
companion were leaning over the ship's rail, trying to distinguish
outlines, blended in the vague morning light. The Amiable Girl was
peering through a binocular, and I caught the words "Parthenon" and
"Caryatides"; then to her companion, "Take the glass."
Which the other girl did, and, after gazing steadily for a moment, said:
"Yes! Oh yes, indeed-- I can see them now, quite distinctly!"
And then, even with my naked eye, I could make out certain details of
that historic summit we have travelled so far to see. Three miles away,
perhaps, the Acropolis arose directly in front of us--its columned crown
beginning to glow and burn in answer to the old, old friend that has
awakened it to glory, morning after morning, century after century, for
a full twenty-three hundred years.
The light came fast now, and with my glass I could bring the hill-top
near. I could make out the Parthenon--also the Temple of Victory, I
thought, and those marble women who have seen races pass and nations
crumble, and religions fade back into fable and the realm of shades. It
was all aglow, presently--a vision! So many wonderful mornings, we have
had, but none like this. Nor can there be so many lives that hold in
them a sunrise on the Acropolis from the Bay of Phaleron.
I lost no time in getting on deck, but it seemed that everybody was
there ahead of me. They were strung along the rail, and each one had his
glass, or his neighbor's, and was pointing and discoursing and argufying
and having a beautiful time. The Diplomat was holding forth on the
similarity of modern and ancient Greek, and was threatening to use the
latter on the first victim that came within range. The Patriarch, who is
religious when he happens to think about it, was trying to find Mars
Hill, where St. Paul preached; the Credulous One was pointing out to
everybody Lykabettos Hill as Mt. Ararat (information obtained from the
Horse-Doctor), while the Apostle and the Colonel were quarrelling
fiercely over a subject which neither of them knew anything about--the
rise of Christianity in Greece.
I got into a row myself, presently, with one of the boys, just because I
happened to make some little classical allusion-- I have forgotten what
it was now, and I didn't seem to know much about it then, from what he
said. We were all stirred up with knowledge, brought face to face with
history, as we were, and bound to unload it on somebody. Only the
Music-Master wasn't. A little apart from any group, he stood clutching
the rail, his face shining with a light that was not all of the morning,
gazing in silence at his hill of dreams.
We went ashore in boats that had pretty Greek rugs in them, and took a
little train on which all the cars were smoking-cars (there are no other
kind in Greece), and we looked out the windows trying to imagine we were
really in Greece where once the gods dwelt; where Homer sang and
Achilles fought; where the first Argonauts set sail for the Golden
Fleece. I wish we could have met those voyagers before they started.
They wouldn't have needed to go then. They could have taken the Golden
Fleece off of this crowd if they had anything to sell in that Argosy of
theirs, and their descendants are going to do it yet. I know from the
conversation that is going on behind me. The Mill and a lot of her boon
companions are doing the talking, and it is not of the classic ruins we
are about to see, but of the lace they bought in Malta and Gibraltar,
and of the embroidery they are going to buy in Greece.
Our chariots were waiting at the station--carriages, I mean, nice modern
ones--and we were started in a minute, and suddenly there was the
Theseum, the best preserved of Greek ruins, I believe, right in front of
us, though we did not stop for it then. But it was startling--that old,
discolored temple standing there unenclosed, unprotected, unregarded in
the busy midst of modern surroundings.
We went swinging away down a fine street, staring at Greek signs and new
types of faces; the occasional native costume; the little panniered
donkeys lost in their loads of fruit. I was in a carriage with Laura and
the Diplomat, and the Diplomat translated Greek signs, rejoicing to find
that he could make out some of the words; also that he could get a rise
out of the driver when he spoke to him, though it wasn't certain whether
the driver, who was a very large person in a big blue coat (we
christened him the Blue Elephant), was talking to him of the horse, and
we were all equally pleased, whichever it was.
The Acropolis was in sight from points here and there, but we did not
visit it yet. Instead, we turned into a fine boulevard, anchored for a
time at the corner of a park, waiting for guides, perhaps, then went
swinging down by the royal gardens and the white marble palace of the
king.
It is King George First now, a worthy successor to the rulers of that
elder day when Greek art and poetry and national prosperity set a
standard for the world. Athens was a pretty poor place when King George
came to the throne in 1863. He was only eighteen years old, then--the
country was bankrupt, the throne had gone begging. In _Innocents Abroad_
Mark Twain says:
"It was offered to one of Victoria's sons, and afterwards to
various other younger sons of royalty who had no thrones and
were out of business, but they all had the charity to
decline the dreary honor, and was laid out in a natural
hollow by Lycurgus, before Christ over three hundred years,
and was rebuilt something less than five hundred years later
by the Averof of that day, Herodes Atticus, whose body was
buried there. Then came the tumble and crumble of European
glory; the place fell into ruin, was covered with débris,
and lay forgotten or disregarded for a thousand years; after
which, King George took up the matter, and dug out the
remains as soon as he could get money for the job."
That was Averof's inspiration. Without it he would most likely have
spent his money in Alexandria, where he made it. Certainly without King
George to point the way the progress of Athens would have been a sorry
straggle instead of a stately march.
[Illustration: WE LOOKED ACROSS THE ENTRANCE AND THERE ROSE
THE ACROPOLIS, HIGH AGAINST THE BLUE]
The stadium seats fifty thousand, and has held half as many more when
crowded. In the revived Olympic games in 1896 the Greeks won twelve
prizes, the Americans followed with eleven, France carried off three,
and the English one. That was a good record for the Americans, and we
didn't fail to mention it, though I think most of us were thinking of
those older games, won and lost here under this placid sky, and of the
crowds that had sat here and shouted themselves hoarse as the victors
turned the goal. Then, standing high on the marble seats, we looked
across the entrance, and there rose the Acropolis, lifted high against
the blue, just as those old spectators had seen it so long ago. Through
half-closed lashes we re-created it in gleaming pentelican and so gazed
upon a vision, the vision they had seen.
[Illustration: HE WOULD SWING HIS ARMS AND BEGIN, "YOU SEE--!" THE REST
REQUIRED A MIND-READER]
It was hard to leave that place. It would have been harder, if it had
not been for the guide we had. He insisted on talking in some language
which nobody recognized, and which upon inquiry I was surprised to find
was English. He had learned it overnight, it having been discovered that
the guide engaged for our party had been detained--probably in jail--for
the same offence. Still our sample would have done better if he had sat
up later. As it was he knew just two words. He would swing his arms and
point to something and begin, "You see--!" The rest required a
mind-reader. The German guide was better--much better. I haven't a
perfect ear for German, but I concluded to join that party.
It was not far to the Temple of Jupiter--the group of fifteen
Corinthian columns which are all that remain of what Aristotle called "a
work of despotic grandeur." It must have been that. There were
originally one hundred and four of these columns, each nearly sixty feet
high and more than five and a half feet in diameter. Try to imagine
that, if you can!
Think of the largest elm-tree you know; its trunk will not be as thick
as that, nor as high, but it will give you a tangible idea. Then try to
imagine one hundred and four marble pillars of that size, the side
extending in double row the length of a city block, and the ends in
triple row a little less than half as far--pure-white and fluted,
crowned with capitals of acanthus leaves, and you will form some vague
idea of what Aristotle meant. We cramped our necks and strained our
eyes, gazing at the beautiful remnant of that vast structure, but we did
not realize the full magnitude of it until we came near a fallen column
and stood beside it and stepped its length. Even then it was hard to
believe that each of the graceful group still standing was of such size
as this.
Peisistratos the tyrant began this temple and picked the location, said
to be the spot where the last waters of the Deluge disappeared. It was
to be dedicated to Deucalion, the founder of the new race of mortals,
and the low ground was filled up and made level and bulwarked round with
a stone substructure, as good to-day as when it was finished,
twenty-five hundred years ago.
Peisistratos did not get the temple done. He died when it was only
fairly under way, and his sons did not remain in power long enough to
carry out his plans. He was a tyrant, though a gentle one, ambitious
and fond of all lovely things. He had his faults, but they were mainly
lovable ones, and he fostered a cultivation which within a century would
make Athens the architectural garden of the world.
The example of Peisistratos was followed lavishly during the next
hundred years, but his own splendid temple was overlooked. Perhaps
Pericles did not like the location and preferred to spend his money on
the Acropolis, where it would make a better showing. I don't know. I
know it was left untouched for nearly four hundred years, and then the
work was carried on by Antiochus of Syria, who constructed it on a grand
scale. But it killed Antiochus, too, and then it waited another three
hundred years for the Emperor Hadrian to come along, about 174 A.D., and
complete it, and renew it, and dedicate it to Jupiter Olympus, whose
reign by that time was nearly over.
Never mind who built it, now, or what creed was consecrated there. The
glory of the Golden Age rises on the hill above us, but I think one can
meet nothing more impressive than this in all Greece.
Hadrian's arch is just beyond the Temple of Jupiter, and we drove
through it on our way to the Acropolis. It is not a very big arch, nor
is it very impressive. I don't think Hadrian built it himself or it
wouldn't have been like that. It looks as if it had been built by an
economical successor.
However, it is complimentary enough. On the side toward what was then
the new part of Athens, called Hadrianople, is an inscription in Greek
which says "This is the City of Hadrian, and not of Theseus," and on
the side toward the Acropolis, "This is the old city of Theseus." And
old it was, for the newest temples on the Acropolis had been built six
hundred years even then.
It was only a little way to the foot of the Acropolis and the Theatre of
Dionysus. We have visited no place where I wished so much to linger.
This was the theatre of Greece in her Golden Age. Here Æschylus and
Euripides had their first nights--or days, perhaps, for I believe they
were mostly matinees--and Sophocles, too, and here it was that the
naughty Aristophanes burlesqued them with his biting parodies. Here it
was they competed for prizes, and tried to be friends though
playwrights, and abused the manager when they got into a corner
together, and abused the actors openly, and vowed that some day they
would build a theatre of their own where they could present their own
plays in their own way, and where their suppressed manuscripts could get
a hearing.
Perhaps history does not record these things, but it does not need to. I
know a good many playwrights and managers and actors, and I know that
human nature has not changed in twenty-four hundred years. I know that
the old, old war was going on then, just as it is now, and will continue
to go on so long as there are such things as proscenium and auditorium,
box-office, gallery, and reserved seats.
I took one of the last named--a beautiful marble chair in the front row,
just below the plinth where once the throne of Hadrian sat--a chair with
an inscription which told that in the old days it was reserved for a
priest or dignitary--and I looked across the marble floor where the
chorus did its rhythmic march, and beyond to the marble stage-front with
its classic reliefs and the figure of Silenus whose bowed shoulders have
so long been the support of dramatic art. The marble floor--they called
it the Orchestra then--is no longer perfect, and grass and flowers push
their way up between the slabs. The reliefs are headless and scarred,
but the slabs are still the same the chorus trod, the place is still a
theatre, and one has but to close his eyes a little to fill it with
forms vague and shadowy indeed, as ghosts are likely to be, but
realities none the less. Our party had moved along now to other things,
and Laura and I lingered for the play.
It was much better than our theatres at home. There was no dazzle of
lights, no close air or smell of gas, and there was plenty of room for
one to put his feet. However, the play I did not care for so much as the
chorus. The acting was heavy and stilted, I thought, and declamatory. I
was inclined to throw a piece of the theatre at the leading man.
[Illustration: I WOULD HAVE APPLIED FOR A POSITION IN THE CHORUS MYSELF]
But the chorus! Why, the very words "Greek Chorus" have something in
them that rouses and thrills, and I know, now, the reason why. In
movement, in voice, in costume it was pure poetry. I would have applied
for a position in the chorus myself, but Laura suddenly announced that
the show was over and that everybody but us had gone long ago.
If I had lived in that elder day I should have gone mainly to the plays
of Aristophanes. They were gay and full of good things, and they were
rare, too, and poetic, even though they were not always more than skin
deep. That was deep enough for some of his contemporaries. Deep enough
for the popocrat Cleon, who tried to deprive Aristophanes of his
citizenship, in revenge.
Aristophanes wrote a play that acted like a mustard-plaster on Cleon. It
made him howl and caper and sweat and bring libel suits. Whereupon
Aristophanes wrote another, and when he could get no actor to take the
leading part--that of Cleon--he took it himself, and Cleon went to see
it and wore out his teeth on tenpenny nails during the performance. Yes,
I should have had a weakness for Aristophanes in those days, though I
wish he might have omitted that tragic satire which twenty years later
was to send Socrates the hemlock cup.
We climbed the hill a little way to a grotto and drank of the spring of
Æsculapius and all our diseases passed away. It only cost a penny or
two, and was the cheapest doctor bill I ever paid. I never saw a
healthier lot than our party when they came out of the grotto and
started for the Odeon--the little theatre which Herodes Atticus built in
memory of his wife.
Two thousand years ago Cicero wrote home from Athens: "Wherever we walk
is history." We realize that here at the base of the Acropolis. From the
Theatre of Dionysus to the Spring of Æsculapius is only a step. From the
Spring to the Sanctuary of Isis is another step; from the Sanctuary to
the Odeon of Herodes is a moment's walk; the Pnyx--the people's
forum--is a stone's-throw away, and the Hill of Mars. All about, and
everywhere, great events have trod one upon the other; mighty mobs have
been aroused by oratory; mighty armies have rallied to the assault; a
hundred battles have drenched the place with blood. And above all this
rises the Acropolis, the crowning glory.
We postponed the Acropolis until after luncheon. There would have been
further riot and bloodshed on this consecrated ground had our conductor
proposed to attempt it then. Our Argonauts are a fairly well-behaved lot
and fond of antiquities, even though they giggle at the guide now and
then, but they are human, too, and have the best appetites I ever saw.
They would leave the Acropolis for luncheon, even though they knew an
earthquake would destroy it before they could get back.
We did stop briefly at the Pnyx hill--the gathering-place of the
Athenians--and stood on the rostrum cut from the living rock--the "Bema"
from which Demosthenes harangued the populace.
[Illustration: TOOK TURNS ADDRESSING THE MULTITUDE]
As usual Laura, age fourteen, and I got behind the party. We stood on
the Bema and took turns addressing the multitude, until we came near
being left altogether by the Diplomat and the Blue Elephant, who finally
whirled us away in a wild gallop to the hotel, which, thanks to Jupiter
and all the Olympian synod, we reached in time.
We made a new guide arrangement in the afternoon. It was discovered that
the guide for the German party could handle English, too, so we doubled
up and he talked to us first in one language, then in the other, and
those of us who knew a little of both caught it going and coming.
Perhaps his English was not the best, but I confess I adored it. He
lisped a little, and his voice--droning, plaintive, and pathetic--was
full of the sorrow that goes with a waning glory and a vanished day. We
named him Lykabettos because somehow he looked like that, and then, too,
he towered above us as he talked.
So long as I draw breath that afternoon on the Acropolis will live
before me as a sunlit dream. I shall see it always in the tranquil light
of an afternoon in spring when the distant hills are turning green and
forming pictures everywhere between mellowed columns and down ruined
aisles. Always I shall wander there with Laura, and resting on the steps
of the Parthenon I shall hear the sad and gentle voice of Lykabettos
recounting the tale of its glory and decline. I shall hear him say:
"Zen Pericles he gazzer all ze moany zat was collect for ze army and he
bring it here. But Pericles he use it to make all zese beautiful temple,
and by and by when ze war come zere was no moany for ze army, so zay
could not win."
Lykabettos' eyes wander mournfully in the direction of Sparta, whence
the desolation had come. Then a little later, pointing up to a rare
section of frieze--the rest missing--!
"Zat did not fall down, but stay zere, always ze same--ze honly piece
zat Lord Elgin could not take away," and so on and on, through that long
sweet afternoon.
I shall not attempt the story of the Acropolis here. The tale of that
old citadel which later became literally the pinnacle of Greek
architecture already fills volumes. I do not think Lykabettos was
altogether just to Pericles, however, or to Lord Elgin, for that matter.
True, Pericles did complete the Parthenon and otherwise beautify the
Acropolis, and in a general way he was for architecture rather than war.
But I do not find that he ever exhausted the public treasury on those
temples, and I do find where his war policy was disregarded when
disregard meant defeat. Still, if there had been more money and fewer
temples on the Acropolis, the result of any policy might have been
different, and there is something pathetically gratifying in the thought
that in the end Athens laid down military supremacy as the price of her
marble crown.
As for Lord Elgin, it may be, as is said, that he did carry off a
carload or so of the beautiful things when he had obtained from the
Government (it was Turkish then) permission to remove a few pieces. But
it may be added that the things he removed were wholly uncared for at
that time and were being mutilated and appropriated by vandals who, but
for Elgin, might have robbed the world of them altogether. As it is,
they are safe in the British Museum, though I think they should be
restored to Greece in this her day of reincarnation.
We stood before the Temple of Victory and gazed out on the Bay of
Salamis, where victory was won. We entered the Erechtheum, built on the
sacred spot where Athena victoriously battled with Poseidon for the
possession of Athens, and we stood in reverential awe before the marble
women that have upheld her portico so long. We crossed the relic-strewn
space and visited the Acropolis museum, but it was chilly and lifeless,
and I did not care for the classified, fragmentary things. Then we
entered the little enclosure known as Belvedere and gazed down on the
Athens of to-day.
If anybody doubts that modern Athens is beautiful, let him go to that
spot and look down through the evening light and behold a marble vision
such as the world nowhere else presents. Whatever ancient Athens may
have been, it would hardly surpass this in beauty, and if Pericles could
stand here to-day and gaze down upon the new city which has arisen to
preserve his treasures, I think he would be satisfied.
When the others had gone to visit the Hill of Mars, Laura and I wandered
back to the Parthenon, followed its silent corridors, and saw it all
again to our hearts' content. And when our eyes were tired, we rested
them by looking out between the columns to the hills, Hymettus and
Pentelicus, glorified in the evening light, wearing always their "violet
crown."
_They_ are unchanged. Races may come and go, temples may rise and totter
and crumble into dust. The old, old days that we so prize and
honor--they are only yesterdays to the hills. The last fragment of these
temples will be gone by and by--the last memory of their glory--but the
hills will be still young and wearing their violet crown, still turning
green in the breath of a Grecian spring.
Down through that splendid entrance, the Propylæa, at last, for it was
growing late. We had intended climbing the Hill of Mars, where St. Paul
preached, but we could see it plainly in the sunset light and there was
no need to labor up the stairs. I think it was about this time of the
day when St. Paul preached there. He had been wandering about Athens,
among the temples, on a sort of tour of observation, making a remark
occasionally--of criticism, perhaps--disputing with the Jews in the
synagogue, and now and again in the market-place. The story, told in the
seventeenth chapter of Acts, begins:
"Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the
Stoicks encountered him. And some said, 'What will this
babbler say?' Other some, 'He seemeth to be a setter forth
of strange gods,' because he preached unto them Jesus and
the resurrection."
They brought St. Paul here to the Areopagus, that is, to Mars Hill,
where in ancient days an open-air court was held, a court of supreme
jurisdiction in cases of life and death. But it would seem that the
court had degenerated in St. Paul's time to a place of gossip and
wrangle. "For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent
their time in nothing else, but either to tell or hear some new thing."
Paul rose up before the assembly and made his famous utterance
beginning, "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too
superstitious." It was a fearless, wonderful sermon he delivered, and I
like to think that it was just at the hour when we saw the hill; just at
the evening-time, with the sunset glory on his face. Paul closed his
remarks with a reference to the resurrection, a doctrine new to them:
"And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some
mocked: and others said, 'We will hear thee again of the
matter.'"
Which they did, for that was nineteen hundred years ago, and the
churches of Greece to-day still ring with St. Paul's doctrine. We
climbed into our waiting carriages, and turning saw the Acropolis in the
sunset, as we had seen it in the sunrise that now seemed ages ago--which
indeed it was, for we had been travelling backward and forward since
then through the long millennial years.
* * * * *
I wanted to see Athens by night, and after dinner I slipped away and
bribed a couple of boatmen who were hovering about the ship to take me
ashore. It was not so far, but the wind and tide had kicked up a heavy
sea and I confess I was sorry I started. Every time we slid down one
wave I was certain we were going straight through the next, and I think
the boatmen had some such idea, for they prayed steadily and crossed
themselves whenever safety permitted.
We arrived, however, and I took the little train for the Theseus
station. I wanted to get a near view of the temple and I thought night
would be a good time. I would have walked there but I did not quite know
the way. So I got into a carriage and said "Theseum," and the driver
took me to a beer-saloon. It was a cheerful enough temple, but it was
not classic. When I had seen it sufficiently, I got into the carriage
and said "Theseum" again, and he took me to a theatre. The theatre was
not classic, either, being of about the average Bowery type. So I got
into the carriage and said "Theseum" again, and he took me to a
graveyard. It didn't seem a good time to visit graveyards. I only looked
through the gate a little and got back into the carriage and said the
magic word once more and was hauled off to a blazing hotel.
That wouldn't do either. These might be, and doubtless were, all
Theseums, but they were that in name only. What I wanted was the
sure-enough, only original Theseum, set down in the guide-book as the
best-preserved temple of the ancient Greek world. I explained this to a
man in the hotel who explained it to my driver and we were off, down a
beautiful marble business street, all closed and shuttered, for Athens
being a capital is a quiet place after nightfall--as quiet as
Washington, almost.
We were in front of the old temple soon. It was fairly dark there and
nobody about. There was a dog barking somewhere, but I did not mind
that. Dogs are not especially modern, and this one might be the
three-headed Cerberus for all I knew or cared. What I wanted was to see
the old temple when other people had gone to bed and the shadows had
shut away the less-fortunate near-by architecture. They had done that
now; the old temple might be amidst its earliest surroundings so far as
I could see.
I walked up and down among its graceful Doric columns and stepped its
measurements, and found it over a hundred feet long and nearly fifty
wide; then I sat down on the step and listened to Cerberus bark--he had
all three heads going at once now--and tried to imagine the life that
had gathered there when this old fane was new. It is one of the temples
of that brief golden period when all Athens burst into architectural
flower. It was dedicated to Theseus and Hercules, and perhaps to a few
other heroes and demi-gods and goddesses that they happened to think of
when they laid the corner-stone.
One story has it that it was built on the spot where the Marathon runner
fell dead, after telling in a word his news of victory. I like to
believe that this is true. I like to reassemble the crowds here--the
anxious faces waiting for the earliest returns from that momentous
struggle which would decide the fate of Greece. I like to picture that
panting, white-faced runner as he dashes in among them and utters his
single glad cry as his soul goes out, and I like to believe that this
temple, dedicated to other heroes, was established here in his memory.
But for Marathon there would have been no Golden Age--no Pericles, no
Parthenon, no splendid constellation of names that need not be repeated
here. The victory of Marathon was the first great check to a Persian
invasion that would have Orientalized not only Greece, but all Europe.
So it is proper that a temple should be built on the spot where that
great news was told, and proper, too, that of all the temples of that
halcyon time this should remain the most perfect through the years.
XVI
ATHENS THAT IS
On the road that leads from the old market-place, up past the Theseum to
the Acropolis, there is a record of a humble but interesting sort. On
the lower corner block of an old stone house, facing the highway, are
three inscriptions. Two of them have been partly erased, but the third
is quite legible, and one who knows Greek can read plainly a description
of the property in metes and bounds and the original Greek word for
"hypothecated," followed by "1000 drachmas."
It is a "live" mortgage, that is what it is, and it has been clinging to
that property and piling up interest for more than two thousand years.
The two half-obliterated inscriptions above it were once mortgages, too,
but they were paid some time, and cancelled by erasure. The third one
has never been satisfied, and would hold, like enough, in a court of
law.
The owner of the property wrestled with that mortgage, I suppose, and
struggled along, and died at last without paying it. Or perhaps the
great war came, with upheaval and dissolution of things in general.
Anyway, it was never paid, but has stayed there century after century,
compounding interest, until to-day the increment of that original
thousand drachmas would redeem Greece.
I was half a mind to look up the heirs of that old money-lender and buy
their claim and begin their suit. Think of being involved in a tangle
that has been stringing along through twenty-three centuries, and would
tie up yesterday, to-day, and forever in a hard knot! I would have done
it, I think, only that it might take another twenty-three centuries to
settle it, and I was afraid the ship wouldn't wait.
If there is any one who still does not believe that modern Athens is
beautiful and a credit to her ancient name, let him visit as we did her
modern temples. We had passed the ancient market entrance, the Tower of
the Winds, and other of the old landmarks, when suddenly we turned into
a wonderful boulevard, and drove by or visited, one after another, the
New Academy, the University, the National Library, the Gallery of Fine
Arts, and the National Museum. If Pericles were alive to-day he would
approve of those buildings and add them to his collection.
All the old classic grace and beauty have been preserved in the same
pure-white pentelican marble, of which it is estimated that there is
enough to last any city five thousand years. Corinthian, Ionic, and
Doric columns that might have come from the Acropolis itself--and did,
in design--adorn and support these new edifices as they did the old, and
lend their ineffable glory to the rehabilitation of Greece.
We have learned, by-the-way, to distinguish the kinds of columns. They
were all just Greek to us at first, but we know them now. When we see a
column with acanthus leaves on the capital we know it is Corinthian,
because we remember the story of the girl of Corinth who planted
acanthus on her lover's grave and put a hollow tile around it for
protection. Some of the leaves came up outside of the tile by and by,
and a young architect came along and got his idea for the Corinthian
capital.
We know the Ionic, too, because it looks like its initial--a capital "I"
with a little curly top--and we say "I" is for Ionic; and we can tell
the Doric, because it's the only one that doesn't suggest anything
particular to remember it by. It's worth coming to Greece to learn these
things. We should never have learned them at home--never in the world.
We should not have had any reason for wanting to learn them.
We got tired of the Museum--Laura, age fourteen, and I--we were too
young and frivolous for such things, though they are wonderful enough, I
am sure. But then museums we have always with us, while a day in Athens
is a fleeting thing. We wanted to take one of our private
side-excursions, and we tried to communicate this fact to the Blue
Elephant, who was our driver to-day, as yesterday.
It was no light matter. He nodded and smiled when we indicated that we
wanted to leave the procession and go it on our own hook, but he did not
move. We had already made up our minds that he was subject to fits, or
was just plain crazy, for more than once he had suddenly broke away from
the party and whirled us around side-streets for a dozen blocks or so to
something not down on the programme, rejoining the procession in some
unexpected place.
But whatever may have induced his impulses then, nothing seemed to stir
his ambition for adventure now. I gesticulated and produced money; I
summoned the Diplomat to tackle him in his best Xenophan, but it was no
use. I got the guide at last, and then there was an exciting harangue
that looked as if it might end in blood. I suppose our man thought he
wouldn't get his full pay if he deserted the ship crowd. He must have
been convinced, finally, for he leaped upon the box, and away we went in
a wild race for the shops and by-streets where we had begged the guide
to let us go.
We had explained that we wanted some bags--some little embroidered bags,
such as we had seen earlier in the day when we could not stop. The Blue
Elephant understood now and took us to where there were bags--many bags.
The whole street was lined with bags and other embroideries, and the
Greeks turned out to give us a welcome.
It is said that one Greek is equal to three Turks, and I believe it. The
poorest Greek we saw was too much for two Americans, and we were beset
and besieged and literally borne down and swamped by a rising tide of
bags. We bought at many prices and in many places; we piled the carriage
full and fled away at last when they were going to dump upon us a
collection of costumes and firearms and draperies that would have
required a flat-car.
We were breathing easier when the Blue Elephant pulled us into another
narrow street, and behold! it was another street of bags. Dear me! how
could we explain that we had enough bags and wanted to see other things?
I would almost have given four hundred dollars to have been able to
tell him that I wanted to visit the old Byzantine structure we had
passed that morning--the one with all the little shoemakers
down-stairs--but the thing was impossible. I must buy some more bags,
there was no help for it. So I did buy some more, and I picked out a
place where a man spoke enough English to give the Blue Elephant a fresh
start, which brought us at last to the old Byzantine building and the
little shoemakers.
Then we saw the street of a hundred clanking sounds--anyway we called it
that, for they made all kinds of copper vessels in there--and we got out
and told the Blue Elephant to wait, for the place was very narrow; but
we couldn't lose him, seeing he was always on our heels, ready to whirl
us away somewhere, anywhere, in his crazy, fitty fashion. We had to let
him do it, now, for we had used up all the interpreters we could find;
besides, we didn't care, any more.
Still, when it got to be near luncheon-time we did begin to wonder where
the party had gone. It did not matter greatly, we could lunch anywhere,
but we were curious to know whether we should ever see them or the ship
again, and when we mentioned the matter to the Blue Elephant he merely
grinned and whipped up his horses and capered across another square. But
presently I realized that some sort of procession was passing and that
he had turned into it. Then it was all just like dreams I've had, for it
was our own procession, and we were calmly going along in it, and right
away were being personally conducted through a remarkable church where
the king and queen go, and sit in golden chairs. Alice in Wonderland
could hardly have had a more surprising adventure.
* * * * *
Our party being free after luncheon, Laura and I engaged Lykabettos on
our own account and drove out to the Bay of Salamis, where Xerxes made
his great mistake in the matter of fleets.
Perhaps Lykabettos had taken a fancy to us, for he engaged a carriage
that had been awarded a prize last year in the games, he said, and the
team with it. We believed Lykabettos--anybody would--and anyway it was a
beautiful outfit, and we cantered away over a fine road, past wayside
shrines, past little huts and houses, past a little memorial that marks
the place on a hill where Xerxes placed his silver-footed throne so that
he might sit comfortably and watch the enemy's ships go down. Only, the
programme didn't work out that way, Lykabettos said:
"Zen Xerxes he pretty soon see zat it was not ze Greek ship zat sink,
and he mus' run pretty quick or he will be capture; and hees ship zay
try to escape, and he not take away hees army from zat little island you
see over zere; zay stay zere and are all massacre by ze Greek--by ze men
and ze women, too, who have watch ze battle from here and go over and
kill zem."
The little island Lykabettos pointed out was Psyttalleia, and the flower
of Persia perished there. It was a tiny bit of barren land then, and it
is to-day. The hills around Salamis are barren, too, covered only with a
gray weed like the sage-brush of Nevada, and stunted groves of scrubby
pine and ground cedar--referred to by Lykabettos as "ze forest."
We came to the tiny hamlet on the water's side, a collection of two or
three huts, and Lykabettos engaged a lateen-sailed lugger (I should call
it that, though its name was probably something else), and with a fresh
wind half-ahead we billowed over the blue waters of Salamis, where
twenty-five hundred years ago the Persian ships went down. It was a
cloudy afternoon and there was a stormy feeling in the sky. It seemed
just the time to be there, and there was nothing to dispel the illusion
of imminent battle that was in the air.
I was perfectly sure, and so was Laura, that the Persian fleet was
likely at any moment to round the point and land troops on Pysttalleia;
also that the Greek fleet was hiding somewhere in the Bay of Eleusis,
and that there were going to be very disagreeable happenings there in a
few minutes. There was a hut where we landed on the Island of Salamis
and a girl making lace at the front door. She might have been there
twenty-five hundred years ago, as well as not--perhaps was--and saw the
great victory.
We sailed back then, crossing again the exact spot where the battle
raged, and drove home through the gathering evening, while Lykabettos
recounted in that sad voice of his the history of ancient days. We are
on the ship now, with anchor weighed, looking to the Farther East.
Athens with its temples and its traditions drops below the horizon.
Darkness and silence once more claim the birthplace of gods and heroes
as we slip out of these quiet waters and head for the Ægean Sea.
XVII
INTO THE DARDANELLES
We saw but little of the Isles of Greece. It was night and we were tired
after a hard day; most of us, I think, turned in early. Now and then a
light--a far tiny speck--appeared in one quarter or another--probably a
signal beacon; that was all.
But in the morning--it was soon after breakfast--a gray bank rose up out
of the sea, and the word went round that it was Asia. That was a strange
thing for a boy who had been brought up on the prairies of the Middle
West--to look across the bow and see Asia coming up out of the sea. It
brought back a small, one-room, white district schoolhouse, dropped down
on the bleak, level prairie, and geography-class of three, standing in a
row and singing to the tune of _Old Dan Tucker_ the rhymes of the
continents:
"Asia sixteen millions,
The largest of the five grand divisions."
It was not much of a rhyme, nor much of a tune, but there was a swing in
the way we did it which fixed those facts for life. They came back now,
and I had to get hold of myself a little to realize that this was the
same Asia with all those square miles--the land of the Arabian Nights,
of the apostles and the patriarchs--the wonderful country I had one day
hoped to see. And presently we were off the Plains of Troy, passing near
where the ships of the Greeks lay anchored, all of which seemed very
wonderful, too, I thought. We were in the Dardanelles, then, following
the path of those first Argonauts who set sail with Jason, and of that
later band who set out in the _Quaker City_, forty-two years ago. No
lack of history and tradition and old association here.
But how one's information does go to seed; all of us knew something, but
none of us knew much. Not one of us knew positively whether the
Hellespont was the same as the Dardanelles or as the Bosporus, and when,
with the help of the guide-book, we decided that it was the former, we
fell into other luminous debates as to where Leander swam it when he was
courting Hero and where Xerxes built his bridge. The captain said that
both these things took place at Abydos, which he pointed out to us, and
then we were in trouble right away again as to whether this was the
Abydos of Lord Byron's poem, or merely another town by the same name. At
all events it was not much of a place.
On the whole, the shores of the Dardanelles are mostly barren and
uninteresting, with small towns here and there and fortifications. At
one place some men came out in a boat and went through the formality of
letting us enter the country. It did not seem much of a permission; I
could have given it myself. But I suppose we had to have theirs;
otherwise they might have reached us with some kind of a gun.
We entered the Sea of Marmora, passed a barren island or two; then the
shores fell back beyond the horizon, and most of us put in the rest of
the day pretending to read up on Constantinople. It was dark when we
dropped anchor in the mouth of the Bosporus, and we were at dinner--a
gala dinner, after which we danced. A third of the way around the world
to the westward, in a country called America, a new President would be
inaugurated to-morrow, and in the quiet dusk of our anchorage, with the
scattered lights of Asia blinking across from one side and a shadowy,
mysterious grove and a fairy-lighted city on the other, we celebrated
that great occasion in the West and our arrival at the foremost mart of
the East by dancing before Stamboul.
That should have ended our day, but when we were about to break up, a
boat-load or two of uniformed officials with distinctly Oriental faces
and fezzes came aboard and opened business in the after cabin, going
through our passports. Then for an hour or so there was most
extraordinary medley of confused tongues. We had all our own kinds going
at once and several varieties of Constantinoplese besides. And what an
amazing performance it was, altogether--something not to be equalled
anywhere else on the earth, I imagine, unless in Russia--a sufficient
commentary on the progress and enlightenment of these two laggard
nations.
[Illustration: ONE'S AGE, STATED ON OATH, GOES WITH A PASSPORT]
Curious how some of our ladies hesitate about showing their passports.
One's age, stated on oath, goes with a passport.
XVIII
A CITY OF ILLUSION
I suppose there is no more beautiful city from the outside and no more
disheartening city from the inside than Constantinople. From the outside
it is all fairyland and enchantment; from the inside it is all grime and
wretchedness. Viewed from the entrance of the Bosporus, through the haze
of morning, it is a vision. Viewed from a carriage driven through the
streets it becomes a nightmare. If one only might see it as we did--at
sunrise, with the minarets and domes lifting from the foliage, all aglow
with the magic of morning--and then sail away from that dream spectacle,
his hunger unsatisfied, he would hold at least one supreme illusion in
his heart.
For that is what it is--just an illusion--the most superb fantasy in the
whole world. We left anchorage soon after sunrise and moved over
abreast of Galata a little below the bridge that crosses the Golden Horn
and connects this part of Constantinople with Stamboul. We are lying now
full length against the street, abreast of it, where all day long a
soiled, disordered life goes on. It is a perpetual show, but hardly a
pleasing one. It is besmirched and raucous; it is wretched.
Hawkers, guides, beggars, porters weave in and out and mingle
vociferously. To leave the ship is to be assailed on every side. Across
the street is a row of coffee-houses where unholy music and singing keep
up most of the time. Also, there are dogs, scores of them--a wolfish
breed--and they are seldom silent. This is the reverse of the picture.
As the outside is fairyland, so this is inferno.
We battled our way to our carriages and drove across the bridge to
Stamboul. Perhaps it would be better there. But that was a mistake--it
was worse. We entered some narrow, thronging streets--a sort of general
market, I should say--that fairly reeked with offal. We saw presently
that nearly everybody wore rubbers, or stilted shoes--wooden sandal
things, with two or three inches of heel and sole--and we understood
why; it was to lift them out of the filth. I have had dreams where,
whichever way I turned, lay ordure and corruption, with no way out on
any side. Such dreams were hardly worse than this. A passenger of our
party--a lady--said afterwards:
"When we drove through those streets I felt as if I had died and gone to
hell."
Yet on the whole, I think hell would be cleaner. I am sure it would not
smell so. I have no special preference for brimstone, but I would have
welcomed it as we drove through those Constantinople streets.
I know what they smell like; I can describe it exactly: they smell like
a garbage-can. Not the average garbage-can--fairly fresh and leading the
busy life--but an old, opulent, tired garbage-can--one that has been
filled up and overlooked, in August. Now and then at home a can like
that gets into the garbage-wagon, and when that wagon comes along the
street on a still summer morning it arrests attention. I have seen
strong men turn pale and lovely women totter when that can went by.
It would have no distinction in Constantinople. The whole city is just
one vast garbage-can, and old--so old--why, for a thousand years or more
they have been throwing stuff into the streets for the dogs to eat up,
and the dogs can't eat some things, and so--
Never mind; enough is enough; but if ever I get home, and if ever I want
to recall vividly this vision of the East, I shall close my eyes when
that garbage-wagon drives by, and once more the panaroma--panorama, I
mean--of these thronging streets will unfold; I shall be transported
once more to the heart of this busy city; I shall see again all the
outlandish dress, all the strange faces, all the mosques and minarets,
all the magic of the Orient, and I shall say, "This is it--this is the
spicy East--this is Constantinople--Allah is indeed good!"
It was at the entrance of the mosque of St. Sophia--a filthy entrance
through a sort of an alley--that we heard our first cry of
"Baksheesh!"--a plaintive cry from a pretty, pathetic little girl who
clung to us, and called it over and over like the cry of a soul being
dragged to perdition--"Bak-she-_e-e-sh_! Bak-_sh-e-e-e-sh_!" a
long-drawn-out wail. Not one of us who would not have given her freely
had we not known that to do so would be to touch off the cyclone--the
cloud of vultures hovering on the outskirts. One's heart grows hard in
the East; it has to.
At the door of the mosque there was a group of creatures who put
slippers on us and made a pretence of tying the wretched things. They
didn't do it, of course, and one had to slide and skate and straddle to
keep from losing them--which thing would be a fearful desecration--we
being "Christian dogs." The Apostle in those slippers, skating and
straddling and puffing his way through St. Sophia's was worth coming far
to see.
It is a mighty place, a grand place, but it has been described too often
for me to attempt the details here. It is very, very old, and they have
some candles there ten feet high and ten inches through (they look
exactly like smooth marble columns and make the place very holy), and
there are some good rugs on the floor. Several of our party who are
interested in such things agreed that the rugs are valuable, though they
are laid crooked, as they all point toward Mecca, whereas the mosque,
originally a Christian church, stands with the points of the compass.
It has been built and rebuilt a good many times. The Emperor Justinian
was its last great builder, and he robbed the ruins of Ephesus and
Baalbec of certain precious columns for his purpose. On Christmas Day,
537 A.D., he finished and dedicated his work. Altogether he had spent
five million dollars on the undertaking and had nearly bankrupted the
empire. Nine hundred years later the Turks captured Constantinople, and
Mohammed II., with drawn sword, rode into St. Sophia's and made the
bloody handprint which remains the Moslem ruler's sign-manual to this
day. They showed us the print, but I don't think it is the same one. It
may be, but I don't think so--unless Mohammed was riding a camel.
Some kind of ceremony was in progress when we arrived, but as usual in
such places, we did not mind. We went right in just the same, and our
guides, too, and we talked and pointed and did what we could to break up
the services. Old turbaned sons of the Prophet were kneeling and bowing
and praying here and there, and were a good deal in the way. Sometimes
we fell over them, but we were charitably disposed and did not kick
them--at least, I didn't, and I don't think any of the party did. We
might kick a dog--kick at him, I mean--if we tripped over one, but we do
not kick a Moslem--not a live one. We only take his picture and step on
him and muss him up, and make a few notes and go.
I have been wondering what would happen to a party of tourists--Moslems,
for instance--who broke into an American church during services, with
guides to point and explain, and stared at the people who were saying
their prayers, and talked them over as if they were wax figures. An
American congregation would be annoyed by a mob like that, and would
remove it and put it in the calaboose. But then such things wouldn't
happen in America. We have cowed our foreign visitors. Besides, there is
nothing in an American church that a foreigner would care to see.
We went to other mosques: to Suleiman, to Ahmed, to the "Pigeon" mosque
with its gentle birds that come in clouds to be fed, but there is a good
deal of sameness in these splendid edifices. Not that they are alike,
but they seem alike, with their mellow lights, their alcoves and sacred
sanctuaries; their gigantic wax candles; their little Turkeys--Turkish
boys, I mean--rocking and singing the Koran, learning to be priests. And
everywhere, whether it be prayer-time or not, there were old bearded men
prostrated in worship or bowed in contemplation. Quite frequently we sat
down on these praying men to rest a little, but they were too absorbed
to notice it.
There were no women in the mosques. The men supply the souls and the
religion for the Turkish household. A woman has no use for a soul in
Turkey. She wouldn't know what to do with it, and it would only make her
trouble. She is allowed to pretend she has one, however, and to go to
mosque now and then, just as we allow children to play "store" or
"keeping-house." But it's make believe. She really hasn't any
soul--everybody knows that.
Constantinople is full of landmarks that perpetuate some memory--usually
a bloody one--of the Janizaries. Every little while our guide would say,
"This is where the Janizaries conquered the forces of Abdullah VI."; or
"This is where the Janizaries overthrew and assassinated Mahmoud I."; or
"This is where the Janizaries attacked the forces of His Sacred Majesty
Bismillah II.," and everybody would say, "Oh, yes, of course," and we
would go on.
I said, "Oh yes, of course," with the others, which made it hard, later
on, when I had worked up some curiosity on the subject, to ask who in
the deuce the Janizaries were, anyway, and why they had been allowed to
do all these bloody things unreproved.
By and by we came to a place where the guide said that eight thousand of
them had perished in the flames, and added that fifteen thousand more
had been executed and twenty thousand banished. And we all said, "Oh
yes, of course," again, and this time I meant it, for I thought that was
about what would be likely to happen to persons with Janizary habits.
Then I made a memorandum to look up that tribe when I got back to the
ship.
I have done so, now. The Janizaries were a body of military police,
organized about 1330, originally of young Christians compelled to become
Moslems. They became a powerful and terrible body, by and by, and
conducted matters with a high hand. They were a wild, impetuous horde,
and five hundred years of their history is full of assassinations of
sultans and general ravage and bloodshed. In time they became a great
deal more dangerous to Turkey than her enemies, but it was not until
1826 that a sultan, Mahmoud II., managed to arouse other portions of his
army to that pitch of fanatical zeal which has made Janizaries
exceedingly scarce ever since. I think our guide is a Janizary--he has
the look--but I have decided not to mention the matter.
We skated through mosques and the tombs of sultans and their wives most
of the day, appraising the rugs and shawls and general _bric-à-brac_,
and dropped into a museum--the best one, so far, in my opinion. They
have a sarcophagus of Alexander there--that is, it was made for
Alexander, though it is said he never slept in it, which is too bad, if
true, for it is the most beautiful thing in the world--regarded by
experts as the finest existing specimen of Greek art. We lingered a long
time about that exquisite gem--long for us--and bought photographs of it
when we came away. Then we set out for the Long Street of Smells,
crossed the Galata bridge, and were at the ship--home.
We have only made a beginning of Constantinople, for we are to be here
several days. But if it is all like to-day I could do with less of it. I
have got enough of that smell to last a good while, and of the
pandemonium that reigns in this disordered aggregation of thoroughfares,
humanity and buildings--this weird phantasmagoria miscalled a city.
Through my port-hole, now--I am on the street side--there comes the most
devilish concatenation of sounds: dogs barking and yelping, barbaric
singing, wild mandolin music, all mingled with the cries of the hawkers
and street arabs, and when I reflect that this is the real inwardness of
that wonder dream we saw at sunrise, I am filled with a far regret that
we could not have satisfied ourselves with that vision of paradise and
sailed away.
XIX
THE TURK AND SOME OF HIS PHASES
If one wants to get a fair idea of the mixed population of
Constantinople, when the city's phantasmagoric life is in full swing, he
may walk slowly across the Galata bridge, or he may stand still and
watch the kaleidoscope revolve. Every costume, every color and kind of
fabric, every type of Oriental will be represented there. It is a wild
fancy-dress parade let loose--only that most of the bizarre costumes are
rather dingy and have the look of belonging to their wearers, which is
less likely to be so on an artificial occasion.
The red fez predominates as to head-gear, and sanguinary waves of them
go by. But there is every manner of turban, too, and the different kinds
are interesting. Some of them are bound with rope or cord; some with
twisted horsehair (those are Bedouins, I believe); some are wound with
white muslin--these are worn by priests--and some are wound or bound
with green, which indicates that the wearer is a descendant of Mohammed
himself--that is, a "Son of the Prophet." The Prophet seems to have a
good many descendants--not so many as Israel had in the same length of
time, but still an industrious showing.
One might suppose that these wearers of the green turban would be marked
for special honor, and perhaps they are, but by no means are they all
men of leisure. I saw one "wearer of the green" tooling a tram to the
Seven Towers, and another son of the Prophet--a venerable man--bowed
beneath a great box until his white beard and the rear elevation of his
trousers nearly dragged in the dust.
I think, by-the-way, I am more interested in the Turkish trousers than
in any other article of national dress. They are rather short as to leg,
but what they lack in length they make up in width and general
amplitude. There is enough goods in the average pair of Turkish trousers
to make a whole suit of clothes with material left for repairs. They are
ridiculous enough from the front and the rear, but I rather like a side
view best. The long after-part has such a drooping pendulous swing to
it, and one gets the full value of the outline in profile and can
calculate just what portion of it is occupied by the owner, and can lose
himself in speculation as to what the rest is for. I like freedom and
comfort well enough, too, in my clothes, but I would not be willing to
sacrifice in the length of my trousers for the sake of that laundry-bag
effect in the rear. I can admire it, though, and I do, often.
At the Stamboul end of the Galata bridge is the most picturesque group,
I believe, in the Orient. A coffee-house is there, and in front of it
all the picture types of the East are gathered, with not a single
Caucasian face or dress. When I used to look at the gorgeously
extravagant costumes and the flowing beards and patriarchal faces of the
paintings and illustrations of the East, I said: "No, they do not
really exist. They may have done so once, but not to-day. I have seen
the Indian of my own country in his native sage-brush. And he is no
longer the Indian of the pictures. His dress is adulterated with
ready-made trousers and a straw hat; his face is mixed in color and
feature; with the Orient it must be the same."
[Illustration: KEYEFF]
I was mistaken. All the picture people are collected here, and more than
picture ever saw. No sober imagination could conceive the scene at the
end of the Galata bridge. To present it a painter would have to
inebriate himself, spill his colors all about the place and wind up with
the jimjams. What do these people do there? They indulge in keyeff.
There is no English word for keyeff--no word in any language, probably,
except Turkish. It is not done in any other language. Keyeff is a
condition of pure enjoyment, unimpaired even by thought. Over his coffee
and nargileh the Turk will sit for hours in a thought-vacancy which the
Western mind can comprehend no more than it can grasp the fourth
dimension. It is not contemplation--that would require mental exercise.
It is absence of thought--utter absence of effort--oblivion--the
condition for which the Western mind requires chloroform.
From the end of the Galata bridge the thronged streets diverge, and into
these a motley procession flows. Men of every calling under the
sun--merchants, clerks, mechanics, laborers, peddlers, beggars,
bandits--all men--or nearly all, for the Mohammedan woman mostly bides
at home.
It is just as well that she does, if one may judge from the samples.
She is not interesting, I think. She may be, but my opinion is the other
way. She dresses in a sort of domino, usually of dingy goods, her feet
and ankles showing disreputable stockings and shoes. Even the richest
silk garments, when worn by women--those one sees on the street--have a
way of revealing disgusting foot-gear and hosiery. No, the Mohammedan
woman is not interesting and she has no soul. I believe the Prophet
decided that, and I agree with him. If she had one--a real feminine
soul--she would be more particular about these details.
The Turk is a dingy person altogether, and his city is unholy in its
squalor. Yet the religion of these people commands cleanliness. Only the
command was not clear enough as to terms. The Prophet bade his followers
to be as cleanly as possible. There was latitude in an order like that,
and they have been widening it ever since. I don't believe they are as
"clean as possible." They pray five times a day, and they wash before
prayer, but they wash too little and pray too much for the best results.
I mean so far as outward appearance is concerned. Very likely their
souls are perfect.
At all events they are sober. The Prophet commanded abstinence, and I
saw no drunkenness. There are no saloons in Constantinople. One may buy
"brandy-sticks"--canes with long glass phials concealed in them and a
tiny glass for tippling--though I suspect these are sold mostly to
visitors.
You are in the business part of Constantinople as soon as you leave the
bridge--in the markets and shops, and presently in the bazaars. The
streets are only a few feet wide, and are swarming with men and beasts
of burden, yet carriages dash through, and the population falls out of
the way, cursing the "Christian dogs," no doubt, in the case of
tourists. Yet let a carriage but stop and there is eager attention on
every hand--a lavish willingness to serve, to dance attendance, to
grovel, to do anything that will bring return.
The excursionist, in fact, presently gets an idea that these people are
conducting a sort of continuous entertainment for his benefit--a
permanent World's Fair Midway Plaisance, as it were, where curious wares
and sights are arranged for his special diversion. He is hardly to be
blamed for this notion. He sees every native ready to jump to serve
him--to leave everything else for his pleasure. The shopkeeper will let
a native customer wait and fume till doomsday as long as the tourist is
even a prospect. The native piastre is nothing to him when American gold
is in sight. That is what he lives for by day and dreams of by night. He
will sweat for it, lie for it, steal for it, die for it. It is his life,
his hope, his salvation. He will give everything but his immortal soul
for the gold of the West, and he would give that too, if it would bring
anything.
Most places along the Mediterranean deal in mixed moneys, but compared
with Constantinople the financial problem elsewhere is simple. Here the
traveller's pocket is a medley of francs, lire, crowns, piastres,
drachmas, marks, and American coins of various denominations. He tries
feebly to keep track of table values, but it is no use. The crafty
shopkeepers, who have all the world's monetary lore at their fingertips,
rob him every time they make change, and the more he tries to figure the
more muddled he gets, until he actually can't calculate the coin of his
own realm.
As for Turkish money, in my opinion it is worth nothing whatever. It is
mostly a lot of tinware and plated stuff, and the plating is worn off,
and the hieroglyphics, and it was never anything more than a lot of
silly medals in the beginning. Whenever I get any of it I work it off on
beggars as quickly as possible for baksheesh, and I always feel guilty,
and look the other way and sing a little to forget.
Nobody really knows what any of those Turkish metallic coins are
supposed to be worth. One of them will pay for a shine, but then the
shine isn't worth anything, either, so that is no basis of value. There
is actually no legal tender in Turkey. How could there be, with a
make-believe money like that?
Speaking of bootblacks, they all sit in a row at the other end of the
Galata bridge, and they go to sleep over your shoes and pretend to work
on them and take off the polish you gave them yourself in the morning.
They have curious-looking boxes, and their work is as nearly useless as
any effort, if it is that, I have ever known.
I have been trying for a page or two to say something more about the
streets of Constantinople, and now I've forgotten what it was I wanted
to say. Most of them are not streets at all, in fact, but alleys,
wretched alleys--some of them roofed over--and as you drive through
them your face gets all out of shape trying to fit itself to the sights
and smells. I remember now; I wanted to mention the donkeys--the poor,
patient little beasts of burden that plod through those thoroughfares,
weighed down with great loads of brick and dirt and wood and every sort
of heavy thing, enough to make a camel sway-backed, I should think. They
are the gentlest creatures alive, and the most imposed upon. If Mohammed
provided a heaven for the donkeys, I hope it isn't the one the Turks go
to.
Then there are the fountains--that is, the public watering-places. They
are nearly all carved in relief and belong to an earlier period, when
art here was worth something. Here and there is a modern one--gaudy,
tinsel, wretched.
But one has to stop a minute to remember that these old streets are not
always occupied by the turbans and fezzes of the unspeakable Turk.
Constantinople was Greek in the beginning, founded away back, six
hundred years or more B.C., and named Byzantium, after one Byzas, its
founder. The colony had started to settle several miles farther up the
Golden Horn, when a crow came along and carried off a piece of their
sacrificial meat. They were mad at first; but when they found he had
dropped it over on Bosporus Point they concluded to take his judgment
and settle there instead.
Then came a good many changes. Persians and Greeks held the place by
turns, and by and by it was allied to Rome. The Christian Emperor
Constantine made it his capital about 328 A.D. and called it New Rome.
But the people wouldn't have that title. Constantine had rebuilt the
city, and they insisted on giving it his name. So Constantinople it
became and remained--the names Galata, Pera, Stamboul, and Skutari
(accent on the "Sku") being merely divisions, the last-named on the
Asiatic side.
It was not until eleven hundred years after Constantine that the
Turkomans swarmed in and possessed themselves of what had become a
tottering empire. So the Turkish occupation is comparatively
recent--only since 1453.
Still, that is a good while ago, when one considers what has been done
elsewhere. Christopher Columbus was playing marbles in Genoa, or helping
his father comb wool, then. America was a place of wigwams--a habitation
of Indian tribes. We have done a good deal in the four and a half
centuries since--more than the Turk will do in four and a half million
years. The Turk is not an express train. He is not even a slow freight.
He is not a train at all, but an old caboose on the hind end of day
before yesterday. By the way, I know now why these old cities have still
older cities buried under them. They never clean the streets, and a city
gets entirely covered up at last with dirt.
* * * * *
I have been wanting to speak of the dogs of Constantinople ever since I
began this chapter. They have been always in my mind, but I wanted to
work off my ill-nature, first, on the Turk. For I have another feeling
for the dogs--a friendly feeling--a sympathetic feeling--an affectionate
feeling.
Every morning at four o'clock the dogs of Constantinople turn their
faces toward Mecca and howl their heartbreak to the sky. At least, I
suppose they turn toward Mecca--that being the general habit here when
one has anything official to give out. I know they howl and bark and
make such a disturbance as is heard nowhere else on earth. In America,
two or three dogs will keep a neighborhood awake, but imagine a vast
city of dogs all barking at once--forty or fifty dogs to the block,
counting the four sides! Do you think you could sleep during that
morning orison? If you could, then you are sound-proof.
I have said that I have an affection for the dogs, but not at that hour.
It develops later, when things have quieted down, and I have had
breakfast and am considering them over the ship's side. There is a band
of them owns this section of the water-front, and they are worth
studying.
They are not as unsightly and as wretched as I expected to find them.
Life for them is not a path of roses, but neither is it a trail of
absolute privation. They live on refuse, and there is plenty of refuse.
They are in fair condition, therefore, as to flesh, and they do not look
particularly unhappy, though they are dirty enough, and sometimes mangy
and moth-eaten and tufty; but then the Turks themselves are all of these
things, and why should the dogs be otherwise?
The type of these dogs impresses me. They have reverted to the original
pattern--they are wolf-dogs. They vary only in color--usually some tone
of grizzly gray--and not widely in that. They have returned to race--to
the old wild breed that made his bed in the grass and revolved three
times before he was ready to lie down. One might expect them to be ugly
and dangerous, but they are not. They are the kindest, gentlest members
of the dog family notwithstanding the harsh treatment they receive, and
the most intelligent. No one really human can study them without
sympathy and admiration.
I have watched these dogs a good deal since we came here, and a lady of
Constantinople, the wife of a foreign minister, has added largely to my
information on the subject.
They are quite wonderful in many ways. They have divided themselves into
groups or squads, and their territory into districts, with borders
exactly defined. They know just about how much substance each district
will supply and the squads are not allowed to grow. There is a captain
to each of these companies, and his rule is absolute. When the garbage
from each house is brought out and dumped into the street, he oversees
the distribution and keeps order. He keeps it, too. There is no fighting
and very little discord, unless some outlaw dog from a neighboring group
attempts to make an incursion. Then there is a wild outbreak, and if the
dog escapes undamaged he is lucky.
The captain of a group is a sultan with the power of life and death over
his subjects. When puppies come along he designates the few--the very
few--that are to live, and one mother nurses several of the reduced
litters--the different mothers taking turns. When a dog gets too old to
be useful in the strenuous round--when he is no longer valuable to the
band--he is systematically put out of the way by starvation. A day comes
when the captain issues some kind of an edict that he is no longer to
have food. From that moment, until his death, not a morsel passes his
lips. With longing eyes he looks at the others eating, but he makes no
attempt to join them. Now and again a bit of something falls his way.
The temptation is too strong--he reaches toward the morsel. The captain,
who overlooks nothing, gives a low growl. The dying creature shrinks
back without a murmur. He knows the law. Perhaps he, too, was once a
captain.
The minister's wife told me that she had tried to feed one of those
dying dogs, but that even when the food was placed in front of him he
would only look pleadingly at the captain and refuse to touch it. She
brought him inside, at last, where he was no longer under that deadly
surveillance. He ate then, but lived only a little while. Perhaps it was
too late; perhaps the decree was not to be disobeyed, even there.
As a rule, it is unwise to show kindness or the least attention to these
dogs, she said. The slightest word or notice unlocks such a store-house
of gratitude and heart-hunger in those poor creatures that one can never
venture near that neighborhood again without being fairly overwhelmed
with devotion. Speak a word to one of them and he will desert his
companions and follow you for miles.
The minister's wife told how once a male member of her household had
shown some mark of attention to one of the dogs of their neighborhood
group. A day or two later she set out for a walk, carrying her parasol,
holding it downward. Suddenly she felt it taken from her hand. Looking
down, she saw a dog walking by her side, carrying it. It was the favored
animal, trying to make return to any one who came out of that heavenly
house.
She told me how in the winter the dogs pile up in pyramids to keep warm,
and how those underneath, when they have smothered as long as they can,
will work out and get to the top of the heap and let the others have a
chance to get warm and smothered too.
Once, when some excavations were going on in her neighborhood the dogs
of several bands, made kin by a vigorous touch of nature, cold, had
packed themselves into a sort of tunnel which the workmen had made. One
dog who had come a little late was left outside. He made one or two
efforts to get a position, but it was no use. He reflected upon the
situation and presently set up a loud barking. That was too much for
those other dogs. They came tumbling out to see what had happened, but
before they had a chance to find out, the late arrival had slipped
quietly in and established himself in the warmest place.
Once a pasha visited a certain neighborhood in Pera, and the dogs kept
him awake. In his irritation he issued an order that the dogs of that
environment should be killed. The order was carried out, and for a day
and a night there was silence there. But then the word had gone forth
that a section of rich territory had been vacated, and there was a rush
for it that was like the occupation of the Oklahoma strip.
There was trouble, too, in establishing the claim and electing officers.
No such excitement and commotion and general riot had ever been known in
that street before. It lasted two days and nights. Then everything was
peaceable enough. Captains had fought their way to a scarred and limping
victory. Claims had been duly surveyed and distributed. The pasha had
retired permanently from the neighborhood.
It is against the law for the ordinary citizen to kill one of the dogs.
They are scavengers, and the law protects them. One may kick and beat
and scald and maim them, and the Turk has a habit of doing these things;
but he must not kill them--not unless he is a pasha. And, after all, the
dogs own Constantinople--the pariah dogs, I mean; there are few of the
other kind. One seldom sees a pet dog on the streets. The pariah dogs do
not care for him. They do not attack him, they merely set up a racket
which throws that pet dog into a fever and fills him with an abiding
love of home. But I am dwelling too long on this subject. I enjoy
writing about these wonderful dogs. They interest me.
Perhaps the "Young Turks" will improve Constantinople. Already they have
made the streets safer; perhaps they will make them cleaner. Also, they
may improve the Turkish postal service. That would be a good place to
begin, I should think. Constantinople has a native post-office, but it
isn't worth anything. Anybody who wants a letter to arrive sends it
through one of the foreign post-offices, of which each European nation
supports one on its own account. To trust a letter to the Turkish
post-office is to bid it a permanent good-bye. The officials will open
it for money first, and soak off the stamp afterward. If you inquire
about it, they will tell you it was probably seditionary and destroyed
by the sultan's orders. Perhaps that will not be so any more. The
sultan's late force of twenty thousand spies has been disbanded, and
things to-day are on a much more liberal basis. Two royal princes came
aboard our vessel to-day, unattended except by an old marshal--something
which has never happened here before.
These princes have been virtually in prison all their lives. Until very
recently they had never left the palace except under guard. They had
never been aboard a vessel until they came aboard the _Kurfürst_, and
though grown men, they were like children in their manner and their
curiosity. They had never seen a type-writer. They had never seen a
steam-engine. Our chief engineer took them down among the machinery and
they were delighted. They greeted everybody, saluted everybody, and
drove away at last in their open victoria drawn by two white horses,
with no outriders, no guards, no attendants of any kind except the old
marshal--a thing which only a little while ago would not have been
dreamed of as possible.
Perhaps there is hope for Turkey, after all.
XX
ABDUL HAMID GOES TO PRAYER
It was on our second day in Constantinople that we saw the
Selamlik--that is, the Sultan Abdul Hamid II. on his way to prayer. It
was Friday, which is the Mohammedan Sunday, and the sultan, according to
his custom, went to the mosque in state. The ceremony was, in fact, a
grand military review, with twenty-five thousand soldiers drawn up on
the hillside surrounding the royal mosque, and many bands of music; the
whole gay and resplendent with the varied uniforms of different
brigades, the trappings of high officials, the flutter of waving
banners, the splendor of royal cortége--all the fuss and fanfare of this
fallen king.[3]
For Abdul Hamid is no longer monarch except by sufferance. A tyrant who
in his time has ordered the massacre of thousands; has imprisoned and
slain members of his own family; has sent a multitude to the Bosporus
and into exile; has maintained in this enlightened day a court and a
rule of the Middle Ages--he is only a figurehead now, likely to be
removed at a moment's warning.
The Young Turk is in the saddle. Hamid's force of twenty thousand spies
has been disbanded. Men-of-war lie in the Bosporus just under Yildiz,
ready to open fire on that royal palace at the first sign of any
disturbance there. The tottering old man is still allowed his royal
guard, his harem, and this weekly ceremonial and display to keep up a
semblance of imperial power. But he is only a make-believe king; the
people know that, and he knows it, too, best of all.
We had special invitations from the palace and a special enclosure from
which to view the ceremony. We had cakes, too, and sherbet served while
we waited--by the sultan's orders, it was said--but I didn't take any. I
thought Abdul might have heard I didn't care for him and put poison in
mine. That would be like him.
I was tempted, though, for we had driven a long way through the blinding
dust. It was hot there, and we had to stand up and keep on standing up
while all that great review got together and arranged and rearranged
itself; while officials and black Nubian eunuchs, those sexless slaves
of the harem, ran up and down, and men sanded the track--that is, the
road over which his majesty was to drive--and did a hundred other things
to consume time.
One does not hurry the Orient--one waits on it. That is a useful
maxim--I'm glad I invented it. I said it over about a hundred times
while we stood there waiting for Abdul Hamid, who was dallying with
certain favorites, like as not, and remembering us not at all.
It was worth seeing, though. Brigade after brigade swung by to the weird
music of their bands--billow after billow of brown, red, and blue
uniforms. The hillside became a perfect storm of fezzes; the tide of
spectators rose till its waves touched the housetops.
Still we waited and watched the clock on the mosque. Nobody can tell
time by a Turkish clock, but there was some comfort in watching it.
Presently an informing person at my side explained that Turkish
chronology is run on an altogether different basis from ours. There are
only three hundred and fifty-four days in a Turkish year, he said, which
makes the seasons run out a good deal faster, so that it is usually
about year after next in Turkey; but as it is only about day before
yesterday by the clock, the balance is kept fairly even.
He was a very entertaining person. Referring to the music, he said that
once the sultan's special brass band had played before him so pleasingly
that he ordered all their instruments filled with gold, which was well
enough, except for the piccolo-player, who said: "Sire, I am left out of
this reward." "Never mind," said the sultan, "your turn will come." And
it did, next day, for the band played so badly that the sultan roared
out: "Ram all their instruments down their throats," which was
impossible, of course, except in the case of the piccolo-player.
My entertainer said that formerly cameras were allowed at the Selamlik,
but that an incident occurred which resulted in prohibiting cameras and
all suspicious articles. He said that a gentleman engaged a carriage
for the Selamlik, and explained to the driver that he had invented a
wonderful new camera--one that would take pictures in all the
colors--and instructed him just how to work the machine.
The gentleman had to make a train, he said, and couldn't wait for the
sultan to arrive, but if the driver would press the button when the
sultan reached a certain place the picture would take, after which the
driver could bring the camera to the Pera Palace Hotel on a certain day
and get a hundred piastres, a sum larger than the driver had ever owned
at one time. Then the gentleman left in a good deal of a hurry, and the
driver told all the other drivers about his good-fortune while they
waited; and by and by, when the sultan came, and got just to the place
where the gentleman had said, the driver pressed the button, and blew a
hole seventy-five feet wide and thirty feet deep right on that spot, and
it rained drivers and horses and fezzes and things for seven minutes. It
didn't damage the sultan any, but it gave him a permanent distaste for
cameras and other suspicious objects.
Laura, age fourteen, who had been listening to the story, said:
"Did they do anything to the driver who did it?"
"Yes; they gathered him up in a cigar box and gave him a funeral. No,
the man didn't call for the camera."
I am sorry I have kept the reader waiting for the Selamlik, but the
sultan is to blame. One may not hurry a sultan, and one must fill in the
time, somehow.
Some carriages go by at last, and enter the mosque enclosure, but they
do not contain the sultan, only some of his favorite wives, with those
long black eunuchs running behind. Then there is a carriage with a
little boy in it--the sultan's favorite son, it is said--the most
beautiful child I ever saw.
A blare of trumpets--all the bayonets straight up--a gleaming forest of
them. Oh, what a bad time to fall out of a balloon!
A shout from the troops--a huzzah, timed and perfunctory, but general.
Then men in uniform, walking ahead; a carriage with a splendid driver; a
pale, bearded, hook-nosed old man with a tired, rather vacant face. Here
and there he touches his forehead and his lips with his fingers, waving
the imperial salute. For a moment every eye of that vast concourse is
upon him--he is the one important bauble of that splendid setting. Then
he has passed between the gates and is gone.
Thus it was that Sultan Abdul Hamid attended mosque. It seemed a good
deal of fuss to make over an old man going to prayer.
* * * * *
We drove from the Selamlik to the Dancing Dervishes. I have always heard
of them and now I have seen them. I am not sorry to have it over.
Their headquarters are in a weather-beaten-frame-barn of a place, and we
stood outside for a long time before the doors were open. Inside it was
hot and close and crowded, and everybody twisted this way and that and
stood up on things to get a look. I held two women together on one
chair--they were standing up--and I expected to give out any minute and
turn loose a disaster that would break up the show. There wasn't
anything to see, either; not a thing, for hours.
We were in a sort of circular gallery and the dancing-floor was below.
We could see squatted there a ring of men--a dozen or so bowed, solemn,
abstracted high priests in gowns of different colors and tall fezzes.
These were the dervishes, no doubt, but they didn't do anything--not a
thing--and we didn't care to stare at them and at the dancing-floor and
the rest of the suffering audience forever.
Then we noticed in our gallery a little reserved section with some more
abstracted men in gowns and fezzes, and after a long time--as much as a
thousand years, I should think--there was an almost imperceptible
movement in this reserved compartment, and one of the elect produced
some kind of reed and began to blow a strain that must have been born
when the woods were temples and the winds were priests--it was so
weirdly, mournfully enthralling. I could have listened to that music and
forgotten all the world if I hadn't been busy holding those two women on
that chair.
The perspiration ran down and my joints petrified while that music
droned on and on. Then there was another diversion: a man got up and
began to sing. I don't know why they picked that particular
man--certainly not for his voice. It was Oriental singing--a sort of
chanting monotone in a nasal pitch. Yet there was something wild and
seductive about it--something mystical--and I liked it well enough.
Only I didn't want it to go on forever, situated as I was. I wanted the
dancing to begin, and pretty soon, too. It didn't, however. Nothing
begins soon in the Orient.
But by-and-by, when that songster had wailed for as much as a week,
those high priests on the dancing-floor began to show signs of life.
They moved a little; they got up; they went through some slow
evolutions--to limber themselves, perhaps--then they began to whirl.
The dance is a religious rite, and it is supposed to represent the
planets revolving about the sun. The dancers serve an apprenticeship of
one thousand and one days, and they can whirl and keep on whirling
forever without getting dizzy. The central figure, who represents the
sun, has had the most practice, no doubt, for he revolves just twice as
fast as the planets, who are ranged in two circles around him. His
performance is really wonderful. I did not think so much of the others,
except as to their ability to stand upright. I thought I could revolve
as fast as they did, myself, and I would have given four dollars for a
little freedom just then to try it.
Would that constellation never run down? The satellites whirled on and
on, and the high priest in the middle either got faster or I imagined
it. Then at last they stopped--just stopped--that was all; only I let go
of those two women then and clawed my way to fresh air.
We went to the bazaars after that. There is where the _Kurfürster_ finds
real bliss. He may talk learnedly of historic sites and rave over superb
ruins and mosques and such things, when you drag him in carriages to
see them. But only say the word bazaar to him and he will walk three
miles to find it. To price the curious things of the East; to barter and
beat down; to walk away and come back a dozen times; to buy at last at a
third of the asking price--such is the passion that presently gets hold
of the irresponsible tourist who lives on one ship and has a permanent
state-room for his things.
You should see some of those state-rooms! Jars, costumes, baskets, rugs,
draperies, statuary--piled everywhere, hung everywhere, stowed
everywhere--why, we could combine the stuff on this ship and open a
floating bazaar that would be the wonder of the world.
The bazaars of Constantinople are crowded together and roofed over, and
there are narrow streets and labyrinthine lanes. One can buy anything
there--anything Eastern: ornaments, inlaid work, silks, curious weapons,
picture postals (what _did_ those _Quaker City_ pilgrims do without
them?), all the wares of the Orient--he can get a good deal for a little
if he is patient and unyielding--and he will be cheated every time he
makes change. Never mind; one's experience is always worth something,
and this particular tariff is not likely to be high.
We bought several things in Constantinople, but we did not buy any
confections. The atmosphere did not seem suited to bonbons, and the
places where such things were sold did not look inviting. Laura
inspected the assortment and decided that the best Turkish Delight is
made in America, and that Broadway is plenty far enough east for
nougat. In one bazaar they had a marvellous collection of royal jewels:
swords with incrusted handles; caskets "worth a king's ransom"--simply a
mass of rubies, emeralds, and diamonds--half a barrel of such things, at
least, but we didn't buy any of those goods, either. We would have done
so, of course, only they were not for sale.
We called at the bazaar of Far-away Moses, but he wasn't there. He died
only a little while ago, and has gone to that grand bazaar of delight
which the Mohammedans have selected as their heaven.
As usual, Laura and I were the last to leave. We were still pulling over
some things when our driver, whom we call Suleiman because he has such a
holy, villanous look, came suddenly to the entrance, waving frantically.
We started then and piled into our carriage. The rest of our party were
already off, and we set out helter-skelter after them, Suleiman probably
believing that the ship had its anchors up ready to sail.
We were doing very well when right in front of a great arch one of our
horses fell down. We had a crowd in a minute, and as it was getting dusk
I can't say that I liked the situation. But Suleiman got the horse on
his feet somehow, and we pushed along and once more entered that
diabolical Street of Smells. It had been bad day by day, but nothing to
what it was now. There were no lights, except an oil-lamp here and
there; the place was swarming with humanity and dogs, general vileness
permeating everything. The woman who thought she had died and gone to
hell could be certain of it here.
It seemed that we would never get out of that street. We had to go
slower, and the horrible gully was eternal in its length. How far ahead
our party was we did not know. We were entirely alone in that unholy
neighborhood with our faithful Suleiman, who looked like a cutthroat,
anyhow. I wished he didn't look like that, and Laura said quietly that
she never expected to see the light of another dawn.
Bumpety-bump--bark, howl, clatter, darkness, stench--rolling and
pitching through that mess, and then, heavenly sight--a vision of
lights, water, the end of the Galata bridge!
We made our way through the evening jam and the wild bedlam at the other
end, crossing a crimson tide of fezzes, to reach the one clean place we
have seen in Constantinople--that is, the ship. The ship is clean--too
clean, we think, when we hear them scrubbing and mopping and thumping
the decks at four o'clock in the morning, just about dog-howling time.
Which brings me to a specimen of our ship German--American
German--produced by a gentle soul named Fosdick, of Ohio. He used it on
the steward after being kept awake by the ship-cleaning. This is what he
said:
"Vas in damnation is das noise? How can I schlaff mit das hellgefired
donner-wetter going on oben mine head?"
That is the sort of thing we can do when we get really stirred up. It is
effective, too. There was no unseemly noise this morning.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Note--a year later.--The Selamlik here described was among the last
of such occasions. A few weeks later, in April, 1909, Abdul Hamid
regained a brief ascendancy, ordered the terrible massacres of Adana,
and on April 27th was permanently dethroned. He was succeeded by his
brother, Mehmed V., who attends mosque with little or no ceremony. Abdul
meantime has retired to Salonica, where he is living quietly--as quietly
as one may with seventeen favorite wives and the imminent prospect of
assassination.
XXI
LOOKING DOWN ON YILDIZ
Heretofore, during our stay here, whenever any one happened to mention
the less attractive aspects of Constantinople, I have said:
"Yes, the city is pretty bad, but I'll wager the country is a dream.
Remember Algiers and her suburban villas? It will be the same here."
I do not say that any more, now that we have been to the country. We
went over to Skutari (Asiatic Constantinople) this morning, and took
carriages to Bulgurlu Mountain, which overlooks all the city and a vast
stretch of country. It is a good view, but it should be, considering
what it costs to get there--in wear and tear, I mean.
Of all villanous roads, those outside Skutari are the most depraved.
They are not roads at all, but just washes and wallows and ditches and
stone gullies. I have seen bad roads in Virginia--roads surveyed by
George Washington, and never touched since--but they were a dream of
luxury as compared with these of Turkey. Our carriages billowed and
bobbed and pitched and humped themselves until I got out and walked to
keep from being lamed for life.
And then the houses--the villas I had expected to see; dear me, how can
I picture those cheap, ugly, unpainted, overdecorated architectural
crimes? They are wooden and belong to the jig-saw period gone mad. They
suggest an owner who has been too busy saving money for a home to
acquire any taste; who has spent his savings for lumber and trimmings
and has nothing left for paint. Still, he managed to reserve enough to
put iron bars on his windows--that is, on part of the house--the
harem--every man becoming his own jailer, as it were. I remarked:
"I suppose that is to keep the neighbors from stealing their wives."
But the Horse-Doctor--wiser and more observant--said:
"No, it is to keep a neighbor from breaking in and leaving another."
Standing on the top of Bulgurlu--looking down on the Bosporus and the
royal palaces--the wife of a foreign minister told us something of the
history that has been written there:
When Abdul Aziz, in 1876, became Abdul "as was"[4] (his veins were
opened with a penknife, I believe), one Murad, his nephew, an educated
and travelled prince, came into power. But Murad was for
progress--bridges and railroads--so Murad retired to Cheragan Palace,
where for thirty-two years he sat at a window and looked out on a world
in which he had no part, while Abdul Hamid II. reigned in his stead.
Murad was wise and gentle, and did not reproach Abdul, who came to him
now and again for advice concerning matters of state.
But Murad was fond of watching the people from his window--excursion
parties such as ours, and the like--and these in turn used to look up
at Murad's window; which things in time came to Abdul Hamid's ears. Then
Abdul decided that this indulgence was not good for Murad--nor for the
people. Thirty-two years was already too long for that sort of thing. So
Murad's face disappeared from the window, and it was given out that he
had died--the bulletin did not say what of, but merely mentioned that it
had been a "general death"--that is to say, a natural death, under the
circumstances--the kind of death a retired Sultan is likely to die. And
Abdul mourned for Murad many days, and gave him a costly funeral.
That was Abdul's way. He was always a good brother--always a generous
soul--according to a guide-book published in Constantinople during the
time when there were twenty thousand secret agents inspecting such
things. The author of that book wanted those twenty thousand secret
agents to tell Abdul how good and gentle the book said he was;
otherwise, the modest and humble Abdul might not remember. Besides, that
author did not wish to disappear from among his friends and be sewed up
in a sack and dropped into the Bosporus some quiet evening. But I
wander-- I always wander.
Abdul Hamid is said to be affectionate with his family--all his
family--and quick--very quick--that is to say, impulsive. He is a crack
shot, too, and keeps pistols on his dressing-table. One day he saw one
of his little sons--or it may have been one of his little daughters (it
isn't always easy to tell them apart, when they are so plentiful and
dress a good deal alike), but anyway this was a favorite of Abdul's--he
saw this child handling one of his pistols, perhaps playfully pointing
it in his direction.
Hamid didn't tell the child to put the weapon down, and then lecture
him. No, he couldn't scold the child, he was too impulsive for that--and
quick, as I have mentioned. He drew a revolver of his own and shot the
child dead. There were rumors of plots floating around the palace just
then, and Hamid wasn't taking any chances. It must have made his heart
bleed to have to punish the child in that sudden way.
But by-and-by the times were out of joint for sultans. A spirit of
discontent was spreading--there was a cry for freer government. Enver
Bey and Niazi Bey, those two young officers whose names are being
perpetuated by male babies in every Turkish household, disguised
themselves as newsboys or bootblacks, and going among the people of the
streets whispered the gospel of freedom. Then one day came the upheaval
of which all the world has read. Abdul Hamid one morning, looking out of
his window in Yildiz Palace, saw, lying in the Bosporus just below, the
men-of-war which all the years of his reign had been turning to rust and
wormwood in the Golden Horn.
Abdul did not believe it at first. He thought he was just having one of
those bad dreams that had pestered him now and then since spies and
massacres had become unpopular. He pinched himself and rubbed his eyes,
but the ships stayed there. Then he sent for the Grand Vizier. (At
least, I suppose it was the Grand Vizier--that is what a sultan
generally sends for in a case like that.) When he arrived the Sultan
was fingering his artillery and looking dangerous.
"What in h---- that is, Allah be praised, but why, sirrah, are those
ships lying down there?" he roared.
The G. V. was not full of vain knowledge.
"I--I really don't know, Your Majesty," he said, soothingly. "I will go
and see."
He was standing near the door and dodged as he went out. He did not come
back. When he had inquired about the ships he decided not to seek Abdul
himself, but to send a man--a cheap man--to tell him about it. This was
just a dull fellow with not much politeness and no imagination.
"The ships are there by the order of the Minister of Marine, Your
Majesty," he said.
Abdul was so astonished that he forgot to slay the fellow.
"Bring the Minister of Marine!" he gasped, when at last he could catch
his breath.
The Minister of Marine came--a new minister--one of the Young Turk
Party. He was polite, but not upset by the Sultan's emotion. When Abdul
demanded the reason why the old ships had been furbished up and brought
down into the Bosporus, he replied that they were there by his orders,
and added:
"We think they look better there, Your Majesty, as in the old days."
"But, by the beard of the Prophet, I will not have them there! Take them
away!"
"Your Majesty, it grieves me to seem discourteous, not to say rude, but
those ships are to remain at their present anchorage. It grieves me
still further to appear to be firm, not to say harsh, but if there is
any show of resistance in this neighborhood they have orders to open
fire on Your Majesty's palace."
Abdul took a chair and sat down. His jaw dropped, and he looked at the
Minister of Marine a good while without seeming to see him. Then he got
up and tottered over to the window and gazed out on those ships lying
just below, on the Bosporus. By-and-by, he went to a little ornamental
table and took a pen and some paper and wrote an order in this wise:
Owing to my declining years and my great burdens of
responsibility, it is my wish that in future all matters
pertaining to the army and navy be under the supervision of
the Secretary of War and the Minister of Marine.
ABDUL HAMID, KAHN II.
Son of the Prophet--Shadow of God, etc., etc.
At all events, that was the purport of it. In reality, it was a
succession of wriggly marks which only a Moslem could read. Never mind,
it was a graceful surrender.
* * * * *
There is a wonderful old Moslem cemetery near Bulgurlu--one of the
largest in the world and the most thickly planted. It is favored by
Moslems because it is on the side of the city nearest Mecca, and they
are lying there three deep and have overflowed into the roads and
byways. Their curiously shaped and elaborately carved headstones stand
as thick as grain--some of them crowned with fezzes--some with suns--all
of them covered with emblems and poetry and passages from the Koran.
They are tumbled this way and that; they are lying everywhere along the
road; they have been built into the wayside walls.
[Illustration: I WANTED TO CARRY AWAY ONE OF THOSE TOMBSTONES]
I wanted to carry away one of those tombstones--one of the old ones--and
I would have done it if I had known enough Moslem to corrupt the driver.
A thing like that would be worth it--adding to one's collection, I mean.
The palace was full of great cypresses, too--tall, funereal
trees--wonderfully impressive and beautiful.
We drove back to Skutari and there saw our driver Suleiman for the last
time. I had already tipped him at the end of each day, but I suppose he
expected something rather unusual as a farewell token. Unfortunately, I
was low in fractional currency. I scraped together all I had left--a few
piastres--and handed them to him and turned quickly away. There came a
sudden explosion as of a bomb. I did not look to see what it was--I
knew. It was the bursting of Suleiman's heart.
Up the Golden Horn in the afternoon, as far as the Sweet Waters of
Europe. It is a beautiful sail, and there is a mosque where the ceremony
of conferring the sword on a new Sultan is performed; also, a fine view
across the Sweet Waters, with Jewish graveyards whitening the distant
hills. But there was nothing of special remark--we being a little tired
of the place by this time--except the homecoming.
There were _caiques_ lying about the little steamer-landing when we were
ready to return, and Laura and I decided to take one of these down the
Horn to the ship. The _caique_ is a curiously shaped canoe-sort of a
craft, and you have to get in carefully and sit still. But once in and
seated, it moves as silently and smoothly as a gliding star.
It was sunset, and the Golden Horn was true to its name. Ships at
anchor, barges drifting up and down, were aglow with the sheen of
evening--the water a tawny, molten flood, the still atmosphere like an
impalpable dust of gold. _Caiques_ carrying merchants to their homes
somewhere along the upper shores were burnished with the aureate hue.
Domes and minarets caught and reflected the wonder of it--the Galata
bridge ahead of us had become such a span as might link the shores of
the River of Peace.
Once more Constantinople was a dream of Paradise--a vision of
enchantment--a city of illusion.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Ship-joke.
XXII
EPHESUS: THE CITY THAT WAS
Like Oriental harbors generally, Smyrna from the sea has a magic charm.
When we slowly sailed down a long reach of water between quiet hills and
saw the ancient city rising from the morning mist, we had somehow a
feeling that we had reached a hitherto undiscovered port--a mirage,
perhaps, of some necromancer's spell.
We landed, found our train, and went joggling away through the spring
landscape, following the old highway that from time immemorial has led
from Ephesus to Smyrna--the highway which long ago St. Paul travelled,
and St. John, too, no doubt, and the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen. For
all these journeyed between Ephesus and Smyrna in their time, and the
ancient road would be crowded with countless camel trains and laden
donkeys then; also with the wheeled vehicles of that period--cars and
chariots and cages of wild animals for the games--and there would be
elephants, too, gaudily caparisoned, carrying some rich potentate of the
East and his retinue--a governor, perhaps, or a king. It was a mighty
thoroughfare in those older days and may be still, though it is no
longer crowded, and we did not notice any kings.
We did notice some Reprobates--the ones we have always with us. They
sat just across the aisle, engaged in their usual edifying discussion as
to the identity of the historic sites we were supposed to be passing.
Finally they got into a particularly illuminating dispute as to the
period of St. Paul's life and ministrations. It began by the Apostle
(our Apostle) casually remarking that St. Paul had lived about
twenty-one hundred years ago.
It was a mild remark--innocent enough in its trifling inaccuracy of two
or three centuries--but it disturbed the Colonel, who has fallen into
the guide-book habit, and is set up with the knowledge thereof.
"Look here," he said, "if I knew as little as you do about such things
I'd restrain the desire to give out information before company."
The Apostle was undisturbed by this sarcasm. He folded his hands across
his comfortable forward elevation and smiled in his angel way.
"Oh, you think so," he said placidly. "Well, you think like a camel's
hump. You never heard of St. Paul till you started on this trip. I used
to study about him at Sunday-school when a mere child."
"Yes, you did! as a child! Why, you old lobscouse" (lobscouse is an
article on the _Kurfürst_ bill of fare) "you never saw the inside of a
Sunday-school. You heard somebody last night say something about
twenty-one hundred years ago, and with your genius for getting facts
mixed you saddled that date on St. Paul."
The Colonel turned for corroboration to the Horse-Doctor, who regarded
critically the outlines of the Apostle, which for convenience required
an entire seat; then, speaking thoughtfully:
"It isn't worth while to notice the remarks of a person who looks like
that. Why, he's all malformed. He'll probably explode before we reach
Ephesus."
I felt sorry for the Apostle, and was going over to sit with him, only
there wasn't room, and just then somebody noticed a camel train--the
first we have seen--huge creatures heavily loaded and plodding along on
the old highway. This made a diversion. Then there was another camel
train, and another. Then came a string of donkeys--all laden with the
wares of the East going to Smyrna. The lagging Oriental day was awake;
the old road was still alive, after all.
Like the first "Innocents," we had brought a carload or so of
donkeys--four-legged donkeys--from Smyrna, and I think they were the
same ones, from their looks. They were aged and patchy, and they filled
the bill in other ways. They wrung our hearts with their sad, patient
faces and their decrepitude, and they exasperated us with their
indifference to our desires.
I suppose excursion parties look pretty much alike, and that the _Quaker
City_ pilgrims forty-two years ago looked a good deal like ours as we
strung away down the valley toward the ancient city. I hope they did not
look any worse than ours. To see long-legged men and stout ladies
perched on the backs of those tiny asses, in rickety saddles that feel
as if they would slip (and do slip if one is not careful), may be
diverting enough, but it is not pretty. If the donkey stays in the
middle of the narrow, worn pathway, it is very well; but if he goes to
experimenting and wandering off over the rocks, then look out. You can't
steer him with the single remnant of rope on his halter (he has no
bridle), and he pitches a good deal when he gets off his course. Being a
tall person, I was closed up like a grasshopper, and felt fearfully
top-heavy. Laura, age fourteen, kept behind me--commenting on my
appearance and praying for my overthrow.
It was a good way to the ruins--the main ruins--though in reality there
were ruins everywhere: old mosques, gray with age and half-buried in the
soil--a thousand years old, but young compared with the more ancient
city; crumbling Roman aqueducts leading away to the mountains--old even
before the mosques were built, but still new when Ephesus was already
hoary with antiquity; broken columns sticking everywhere out of the
weeds and grass--scarred, crumbling, and moss-grown, though still not of
that first, far, unrecorded period.
But by-and-by we came to mighty walls of stone--huge abutments rising
from the marshy plain--and these were really old. The Phoenicians may
have laid them in some far-off time, but tradition goes still farther
back and declares they were laid by giants--the one-eyed kind, the
Cyclops--when all this marsh was sea. These huge abutments were piers in
that ancient day. A blue harbor washed them, and the merchant ships of
mighty Ephesus lay alongside and loaded for every port.
That was a long time ago. Nobody can say when these stone piers were
built, but Diana and Apollo were both born in Ephesus, and there was
probably a city here even then. What we know is that by the beginning of
the Christian era Ephesus was a metropolis with a temple so amazing, a
theatre so vast and a library so beautiful that we stand amid the
desolation to-day, helplessly trying to reconstruct the proportions of a
community which could require these things; could build them and then
vanish utterly, leaving not a living trace behind.
For nobody to-day lives in Ephesus--not a soul. A wandering shepherd may
build his camp-fire here, or an Arab who is tilling a bit of ground; but
his home will be in Ayasaluk, several miles away, not here. Once the
greatest port of trade in western Asia, Ephesus is voiceless and vacant
now, except when a party like ours comes to disturb its solitude and
trample among its forlorn glories.
There is no lack of knowledge concerning certain of the structures
here--the more recent ones, we may call them, though they were built two
thousand years ago. There are descriptions everywhere, and some of them
are as cleanly cut to-day as they were when the tool left them. This
library was built in honor of Augustus Cæsar and Livia, and it must have
been a veritable marble vision. Here in its corners the old students sat
and pored over books and precious documents that filled these crumbling
recesses and the long-vanished shelves. St. Paul doubtless came here to
study during the three years of his residence, and before him St. John,
for he wrote his gospel in Ephesus, and would be likely to seek out the
place of books. And Mary would walk with him to the door sometimes, I
think, and Mary of Magdala, for these three passed their final days in
Ephesus, and would be drawn close together by their sacred bond.
The great theatre where St. Paul battled with the wild beasts stands
just across the way. It seated twenty-five thousand, and its stone
benches stretch upward to the sky. The steep marble flight that carries
you from tier to tier is there to-day exactly as when troops of fair
ladies and handsome beaux climbed up and still up to find their places
from which to look down on the play or the gladiatorial combat or the
massacre of the Christians in the arena below.
These old theatres were built in a semicircle dug out of the
mountain-side, so that the seats were solid against the ground and rose
one above the other with the slope of the hill, which gave everybody a
good view. There were no columns to interfere with one's vision, for
there was no roof to be supported, except, perhaps, over the stage, but
the top seats were so remote from the arena and the proscenium that the
players must have seemed miniatures. Yet even above these there was
still mountain-side, and little boys who could not get money for an
entrance fee or carry water to the animals for a ticket sat up in that
far perch, no doubt, and looked down and shouted at the show.
Laura and I, who, as usual, had dropped behind the party, climbed far up
among the seats and tried to imagine we had come to the afternoon
performance--had come early, not to miss any of it. But it was
difficult, even when we shut our eyes. Weeds and grass grew everywhere
in the crevices; dandelions bloomed and briers tangled where sat the
beaux and belles of twenty centuries ago. Just here at our feet the mobs
of Demetrius the silversmith gathered, crying, "Great is Diana of the
Ephesians!" because the religion of St. Paul was spoiling their trade
for miniature temples. Down there in the arena Paul did battle with the
beasts, very likely as punishment. This is the spot--these are the very
benches--but we cannot see the picture: we cannot wake the tread of the
vanished years.
Behind the arena are the columns that support the stage, and back of
these are the dressing-rooms, their marble walls as solid and perfect
to-day as when the ancient players dallied and gossiped there. At one
end is a dark, cave-like place where we thought the wild beasts might
have been kept. I stood at the entrance and Laura made my picture, but
she complained that I did not look fierce enough for her purpose.
On another slope of the hill a smaller theatre, the Odeon, has recently
been uncovered. A gem of beauty it was, and much of its wonder is still
preserved. Here the singers of a forgotten time gave forth their melody
to a group of music-lovers, gathered in this close circle of seats that
not a note or shading might be lost.
[Illustration: ALL THE PLAINS AND SLOPES OF THE OLD CITY WITH ITS WHITE
FRAGMENTS AND POOR RUINED HARBOR LAY AT OUR FEET
NOTE.--In this picture the theatre where St. Paul fought is in the
foreground; the library just beyond, the market-place to the right. Bits
of water show where the harbor once lay.]
We passed around this dainty playhouse, across a little wheat-field that
some peasant has planted against its very walls, on up the hill,
scrambling along steep declivities over its brow, and, behold! we came
out high above the great theatre on the other side, and all the plain
and slopes of the old city, with its white fragments and its poor
ruined harbor, lay at our feet. Earthquakes shook the city down and
filled up the splendid harbor. If the harbor had been spared the city
would have been rebuilt. Instead, the harbor is a marsh, the city a
memory.
From where we stood we could survey the sweep of the vanished city. We
could look across into the library and the market-place and follow a
marble road--its white blocks worn smooth by a million treading
feet--where it stretched away toward the sea. And once more we tried to
conjure the vision of the past--to close our eyes and reproduce the
vanished day. And once more we failed. We could glimpse a picture, we
could construct a city, but it was never quite that city--never quite in
that place. Our harbor with its white sails and thronging wharves was
never quite that harbor--our crowded streets were never quite those
streets. Here were just ruins--always ruins--they could never have been
anything but ruins. Perhaps our imaginations were not in good working
order.
We descended again into the great theatre, for it fascinated us, nearly
breaking our necks where vines and briers tangled, pausing every other
minute to rest and consider and dream. Pawing over a heap of
rubbish--odd bits of carving, inscriptions, and the like--the place is a
treasure-trove of such things--I found a little marble torso of a female
figure. Head and arms and the lower part of the body all gone, but what
remained was exquisite beyond words--a gem, even though rubbish, in
Ephesus.
Now, of course, the reader is an honest person. He would have said, as
I did: "No, it does not matter, rubbish or no rubbish, it is not mine.
It belongs to the government-- I cannot steal. Besides, there is Laura,
age fourteen: I cannot set her a bad example. Also, there are the
police. No, my conscience is perfect; I cannot do it."
I know the reader would have reflected thus, and so did I, as stated.
Then I found I could crowd it into my inside coat-pocket, and that by
cramming my handkerchief carefully on top of it, it did not distress me
so much, especially when I gave it a little support with my forearm, to
make it swing in a natural way. But when I remembered that the _Quaker
City_ pilgrims had been searched on leaving Ephesus, my conscience began
to harass me again, though not enough as yet to make me disgorge.
Our party had all trailed back to the hotel when we got to our donkeys,
and it was beginning to sprinkle rain. The sky was overcast and a quiet
had settled among the ruins. When our donkey-driver gave me a sharp look
I began to suffer. I thought he was a spy, and had his eye on that
pocket. I recalled now that I had always had a tender conscience; it
seemed unwise to torture it in this way.
I began to think of ways to ease it. I thought five francs might do it,
so far as our donkey-boy was concerned. But then there was the official
search at the other end; that, of course, would be a public matter, and
the five francs would be wasted. I was almost persuaded to drop the
little torso quietly by the roadside--it discomforted me so.
We rode along rather quietly, and I spoke improvingly to Laura of how
St. Paul had travelled over this very road when he was making his good
fight, and of several other saints and their works, and how Ephesus had
probably been destroyed because of its sinfulness. Near a crumbling arch
a flock of sheep grazed, herded by a shepherd who had been there when
the apostles came--at least his cape had, and his hat--and everything
about him was Biblical and holylike, and so were the gentle rain and the
donkeys, and I said how sweet and soothing it all was; after which I
began to reflect on what would be proper to do if anything resembling an
emergency should conclude our peaceful ride. I decided that, as we had
just come from Smyrna, I had bought the bit of heathen marble on the way
to the station. That was simple and straightforward, and I felt a good
deal strengthened as I practised it over and tried it on Laura as we
rode along. The _Kurfürsters_ had been with me and would stand by the
statement--any _Kurfürster_ would do that whether he flocked with the
forward-cabin crowd or the unregenerates of the booze-bazaar. I felt
reassured and whistled a little, and then from the roadside a man rose
up and said something sharp to our donkey-driver. It was sudden, and I
suppose I did jump a little, but I was ready for him.
"No," I said, "I didn't steal it. I bought it in Smyrna on the way to
the train. I can prove it by Laura here, and the other passengers. We
are incorruptible. Go in peace."
But it was wasted. This creature had business only with our
donkey-driver and his tobacco. He didn't understand a word I said.
We rode amid a very garden of fragmentary ruins. Precious blocks of
fluted marble, rich with carving and inscriptions, lay everywhere. We
were confronted by gems of sculpture and graven history at every turn.
Yet here I was, suffering over a little scrap the size of one's fist. No
conscience should be as sensitive as that.
Suddenly a regular bundle of firearms--a human arsenal--stepped out of a
shed into the middle of the road and began a harangue. I could feel my
hair turning gray.
"You are wholly in error," I said. "I bought it in Smyrna. All the
passengers saw me. Still, I will give it up if you say so."
But that was wasted, too. He only took the rest of our driver's tobacco
and let us pass. We met a little puny calf next, standing shrunken and
forlorn in the drizzle, but not too shrunken and friendless to have a
string of blue beads around his neck to avert the evil eye. I was
inclined to take them away from him and put them on myself.
We were opposite the Temple of Diana by this time--all that is left of
what was once one of the seven wonders of the world. It is only some
broken stones sinking into a marsh now, but it was a marvel in its time,
and I remembered how one Herostratus, ages ago, had fired it to
perpetuate his name--also how the Ephesians had snuffed out Herostratus,
and issued a decree that his name should never again be mentioned on
pain of severe punishment; which was a mistake, of course, for it
advertised Herostratus into the coveted immortality. I wonder what kind
of a mistake the Ephesians would make when they found that bit of
marble on my person, and what kind of advertising I would get.
We were almost to the little hotel now, and, lo! right at the gates we
were confronted by a file of men with muskets. Here it was, then, at
last. My moral joints turned to water.
"I didn't do it, gentlemen," I said. "I am without a flaw. It was
Laura--you can see for yourself she looks guilty."
But they did not search Laura. They did not even search me. They merely
looked us over and talked about us in strange tongues. We reached the
shelter of the hotel and the comfort of food in safety. Neither did they
inspect us at the station, and as we glided back to Smyrna I impressed
upon Laura the value of keeping one's conscience clear, and how one is
always rewarded with torsos and things for pursuing a straightforward,
simple course through life.
I suppose a man could take away marble from Ephesus to-day by the
wagon-load if he had any place to take it to. Nobody is excavating
there--nobody seems to care for it, and never was such a mine of relics
under the sun. At Ayasaluk, the Arab village, priceless treasures of
carving and inscription look out at you from the wall of every peasant's
hut and stable--from the tumbling stone fences that divide their fields.
Wonderful columns stick out of every bank and heap of earth. Precious
marbles and porphyry mingle with the very macadam of the roads. Rare
pieces are sold around the hotel for a few piastres.
Remember, a mighty marble city perished here. Earthquakes shook it
down, shattered the walls of its temples, overthrew the statuary,
tumbled the inscriptions in the dust. The ages have spread a layer of
earth upon the ruin, but only partially covered it. Just beneath the
shallow plough of the peasant lie riches uncountable for the nation that
shall bring them to the light of day. Historical societies dig a little
here and there, and have done noble work. But their means run low before
they can make any real beginning on the mighty task. Ephesus is still a
buried city.
The day will come when Ephesus will be restored to her former greatness.
It will take an earthquake to do it, but the spirit of prophecy is upon
me and I foresee that earthquake. The future is very long--I am in no
hurry--fulfilment may take its time. I merely want to get my prophecy in
now and registered, so when the event comes along I shall get proper
credit. Some day an earthquake will strike Ephesus again; the bottom
will drop out of that swamp and make it a harbor once more; ships will
sail in as in the old days, and Ephesus, like Athens, will renew her
glory.
* * * * *
Back to Smyrna--a modern city and beautiful from any high vantage, with
its red-tiled roofs, its domes and minarets, its graceful cypress-trees,
its picture hillsides, and its cobalt sky. It is clean, too, compared
with Constantinople. To be sure, Smyrna has its ruins and its historic
interest, with the tomb of Polycarp the martyr, who was Bishop of Smyrna
in the second century, and died for his faith at the age of eighty-six.
He was burned on a hill just outside the city on the Ephesus road, and
his tomb, guarded by two noble cypresses, overlooks the sea.
But it is busy, bustling Smyrna that, after Ephesus, most attracted us.
It is more truly the Orient than anything we have seen. Fully as
picturesque as Constantinople in costume, it is brighter, fresher,
healthier-looking, and, more than all, its crowded streets are
perpetually full of mighty camel trains swinging in from the deeper
East, loaded with all the wares and fabrics of our dreams. Those camels
are monstrously large--twice the size of any circus camels that come to
America, and with their great panniers they fill an Oriental street from
side to side.
They move, too, and other things had better keep out of the way when a
camel train heaves in sight if they want to remain undamaged. I was
examining some things outside of a bazaar when suddenly I thought I had
been hit by a planet. I thought so because of the positive manner of my
disaster and the number of constellations I saw. But it was only one
side of a loaded camel that had annihilated me, and the camel was moving
straight ahead without the slightest notion that anything had interfered
with its progress.
It hadn't, as a matter of fact. Nothing short of a stone wall interrupts
a camel--a Smyrna camel--when he's out for business and under a full
head of steam. Vehicles and other things turn down another street when
there is a camel train coming. You may squat down, as these Orientals
do, and get below the danger line, for a camel is not likely to step on
you, but his load is another matter--you must look out for that
yourself.
I was fascinated by the camel trains; they are a part of the East I
hardly expected to find. I thought their day was about over. Nothing of
the sort. The camel trains, in fact, own Smyrna, and give it its
commercial importance. They bring the great bulk of merchandise--rugs,
mattings, nuts, dried fruits, spices, and all the rare native handiwork
from far dim interiors that railroads will not reach in a hundred years.
They come swinging out of Kurdistan--from Ispahan and from Khiva; they
cross the burning desert of Kara Koom.
A camel train can run cheaper than the railway kind. A railway requires
coal and wood for fuel. A camel would like those things also. But he is
not particular--he will accept whatever comes along. He will eat
anything a goat can, and he would eat the goat, too, if permitted--horns
and all. Consequently, he arrives at Smyrna fit and well fed, ready for
the thousand miles or so of return trip at a moment's notice.
They run these camel trains in sections--about six camels in each. An
Arab mounted on a donkey that wears a string of blue beads for luck
leads each section, and the forward camel wears against his shoulder a
bell. It is a musical compound affair--one bell inside the other with a
blue bead in the last one to keep off the evil eye. I had already
acquired some of the blue strings of donkey beads, and I made up my mind
now to have a camel bell.
By-and-by, at the entrance of a bazaar, I saw one. It was an old
one--worn with years of chafing against the shoulder muscle of many a
camel that had followed the long track from the heart of Asia over
swamp and steep and across burning sands. At the base of the outer bell
was a band of Arabic characters--prayers, no doubt, from the Koran, for
the safety of the caravan. I would never leave Smyrna without that bell.
However, one must be cautious. I gave it an indifferent jingle as I
passed in and began to examine other things. A murmuring, insinuating
Moslem was at my elbow pushing forward the gaudy bits of embroidery and
cheaply chased weapons in which I pretended an interest. I dallied and
priced, and he grew weary and discouraged. Finally, hesitating at the
doorway, I touched the bell again, scarcely noticing it.
"How much?"
"Sixtin franc--very chip."
My impulse was to fling the money at him and grab the treasure before he
changed his mind. But we do not do these things--not any more--we have
acquired education. Besides, we have grown professionally proud of our
bargains.
"Ho! Sixteen francs! You mean six francs-- I give you five."
"No--no--sixtin franc--sixtin! What you think? Here--fine!" He had the
precious thing down and was jingling it. Its music fairly enthralled me.
But I refused to take it in my hands--if I did I should surrender.
"See," he continued, pointing to the inscription. "Oh, be-eautiful.
Here, fiftin franc--three dollar!"
He pushed it toward me. I pretended to be interested in a wretchedly new
and cheaply woven rug. I had to, to keep steadfast. I waved him off.
"No--no; five francs--no more!"
He hung up the bell and I started to go. He seized it and ran after me.
"Here, mister--fourtin franc--give me!"
"Five francs!--no more."
"No, no, mister--twelve franc--las' price--ver' las' price. Here, see!"
He jingled the bell a little. If he did that once more I was gone at any
price.
"_Five francs_," I said, with heavy decision. "I'll give you five francs
for it--no more."
I faced resolutely around--as resolutely as I could--and pretended
really to start.
"Here, mister--_ten franc--ten_! Mister--mister!"
He followed me, but fortunately he had hung up the bell and couldn't
jingle it. I was at least two steps away.
"Eight franc, mister--please--I lose money--I make
nothing--mister--seven! seven franc!"
"Five--five francs." I called it back over my shoulder--indifferently.
"Mister! mister! Six! six franc!"
Confound him! He got hold of that bell again and gave it a jingle. I
handed him the six francs. If he had only left it alone, I think I could
have held out.
Still, as I look at it now, hanging here in my state-room, and think of
the long lonely nights and the days of sun and storm it has seen, of the
far journeys it has travelled in its weary way down the years to me, I
do not so much mind that final franc after all.
XXIII
INTO SYRIA
I picked up a cold that rainy day at Ephesus. Not an ordinary sniffling
cold, but a wrenching, racking cold that made every bone and every tooth
jump, and set my eyes to throbbing like the ship's engines. I felt sure
I was going to die when we arrived in the harbor of Beirut, and decided
that it would be better to die on deck; so I crawled out and dressed,
and crept into a steamer-chair, and tried to appreciate the beautiful
city that had arisen out of the sea--the upper gateway to Syria.
The Patriarch came along, highly elate. This was where he belonged; this
was home; this was Phoenicia itself! Fifteen hundred years B.C. Beirut
had been a great Phoenician seaport, he said, and most of the rare
handiwork mentioned in ancient history and mythology had been wrought in
this neighborhood. The silver vase of Achilles, the garment which Hecuba
gave to Minerva, and the gold-edged bowl of Telemachus were all
Phoenician, according to the Patriarch, who hinted that he rather
hoped to find some such things at Beirut; also some of the celebrated
Phoinus, or purple dye, which gave the tribe its name. I said no doubt
he would, and, being sick and suffering, added that he might dye himself
dead for all I cared, which was a poor joke--besides being an
afterthought, when the Patriarch was well out of range.
I had no idea of going ashore. I was miserably sorry, too, for I was
stuffed with guide-book knowledge about Baalbec and Damascus, and had
looked forward to that side-trip from the beginning. I knew how Moses
felt on Mount Pisgah now, and I was getting so sorry for myself I could
hardly stand it, when suddenly the bugle blew the sharp call, "All
ashore!" Laura, age fourteen, came racing down the deck, and before I
knew it I had my bag--packed the night before--and was going down the
ship's ladder into a boat, quarrelling meantime with one of the
Reprobates as to whether Beirut was the Berothai of the Old Testament,
where David smote Hadadezer and took "exceeding much brass," or the
Berytus of the Roman conquest. It was of no consequence, but it gave
life a new purpose, for I wanted to prove that he was wrong. Wherefore I
forgot I was going to die, and presently we were ashore and in a
railway-station where there was a contiguous little train ready to start
for Baalbec and Damascus, with a lot of men selling oranges, of which
Laura and I bought a basketful for a franc, climbed aboard, the bell
rang--and the funeral was postponed.
The road followed the sea for a distance, and led through fields of
flowers. I had never seen wildflowers like those. They were the crimson
anemone mingled riotously with a gorgeous yellow flower--I did not learn
its name. The ground was literally massed with them. Never was such a
prodigality of bloom.
From Beirut to Baalbec is only about sixty miles; but it takes pretty
much all day to get there, for the Lebanon Mountains lie between, and
this is a deliberate land. We did not mind. There was plenty to see all
along, and our leisurely train gave us ample time.
There were the little stations, where we stopped anywhere from five to
fifteen minutes, and got out and mingled with the curious rural life;
there were the hills, that had little soil on them, but were terraced
and fruitful--some of them to the very summit; there was the old
Damascus road, winding with us, or above us, or below us--the road over
which Abraham may have travelled, and Adam, too, for that matter, and
Eve, when they were sent out of their happy garden. Eden lay not far
from here, and the exiles would be likely to come this way, I think. We
saw plenty of groups that might have been Abraham and his household, or
any of the patriarchs. I did not notice any that suggested Adam and Eve.
The road had another interest for me. Forty-two years ago, before the
railroad came this way, the _Quaker City_ pilgrims toiled up through the
summer heat, setting out on the "long trip" through the full length of
Palestine. Nobody makes it in summer now. Few make it at all, except by
rail and in carriages, with good hostelries at the end of every stage.
Still, I am glad those first pilgrims made it, or we should not have had
that wonderful picture of Syrian summer-time, nor of "Jericho" and
"Baalbec." Those two horses are worth knowing--in literature--and I
tried to imagine that little early party of excursionists climbing the
steep path to Palestine on their sorry nags.
It is warm in Syria, even now, but we were not too warm, riding;
besides, we were going steadily uphill, and by-and-by somebody pointed
out a white streak along the mountain-top, and it was snow. Then, after
a long time, we got to a place where the vegetation was very scanty and
there were no more terraced hills, but only barren peaks and sand, where
the wind blew cold and colder, and presently the snow lay right along
our way. We had reached the highest point then--five thousand feet above
the sea. In five hours we had come thirty-six miles--thirty-five in
length and one straight up in the air. Somebody said:
"Look, there is Mount Hermon!"
And, sure enough, away to the south, though nigh upon us it seemed--so
close that one might put out his hand and touch it, almost--there rose a
stately, snow-clad elevation which, once seen, dominated the barren
landscape. It was so pure white against the blue--so impressive in its
massive dignity--the eye followed it across every vista, longed for it
when immediate peaks rose between, welcomed it when time after time it
rose grandly into view.
With an altitude of between nine and ten thousand feet, Mount Hermon is
the highest mountain in Syria, I believe--certainly the most important.
The Bible is full of it. The Amorites and the Hivites, and most of the
other tribes that Joshua buried or persuaded to go away, had their lands
under Mount Hermon (all of them in sight of it), and that grand old hill
looked down on Joshua's slaughter of men and women and little children,
and perhaps thought it a puny performance to be undertaken in the name,
and by the direction, of God.
Joshua established Mount Hermon as the northern boundary of Palestine,
and from whatever point the Israelite turned his face northward, he saw
its white summit against the blue. It became symbolic of grandeur,
stability, purity, and peace. It was to one of its three peaks that
Christ came when, with Peter, James, and John, He withdrew to "an high
mountain apart" for the Transfiguration. So it became sanctified as a
sort of holy judgment-seat.[5]
Down the Lebanon slope and across the valley to Reyak, a Syrian village
in the sand, at the foot of the Anti-Lebanon range. Reyak is the parting
of the ways--the railways--that lead to Damascus and Baalbec, and there
is a lunch-room there--a good one by Turkish standards. It was our first
complete introduction to Turkish food--that is a diet of nuts, dates,
oranges, and curious meat and vegetable preparations--and I ate a good
deal for a dying man. Then I went outside to look at the population, and
wonder what these people, who scratch a living out of the sand and stone
barrens, would do in a fertile country like America. They would consider
it heaven, I thought.
At the end of the station sat a drowsy, stoutish man in semi-European
dress, holding a few pairs of coarse home-knit socks, evidently for
sale. I stopped and talked to him. He spoke English very well, and when
he told me his story I marvelled.
He had been in America; in Brooklyn; had carried on business
there--something in Syrian merchandise--and had done very well. He had
married there--a Syrian woman; his children were born there--Americans.
Then one day he had sold out and brought them all to this flat-topped
mud village in the Syrian sand. Why had he done it? Well, he could
hardly tell; he had wanted to see Syria again--he could think of no
other reason. No, his wife did not like it, nor the children--not at
all.
He pointed out his mud hut a little way from the station, and I could
not blame them. He would go back some day--yes, certainly. Meantime, his
wife is earning money for the trip by knitting the coarse socks which he
sells around the station at Reyak at a few piastres a pair.
Our train was about ready to start for Baalbec, and I was lingering over
a little collection of relics which a blind pedler offered, when I felt
a hand on my shoulder and heard my name called. I turned and was face to
face with the artist Jules Gurin, of New York. I had known nothing of
his presence in Syria, he had known nothing of our coming. He was going
in one direction, I in another. In this remote waste our lines had
crossed. He was so glad to see me--he thought I had a supply of cigars.
I never saw a man's enthusiasm die so suddenly as his did when I told
him how I had been sick that morning and forgotten them.
Altogether that was a curious half hour. Reyak is the most uninteresting
place in Syria, but I shall always remember it.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] One tradition places the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, but Tabor
is fifty miles away whereas Cesarea Philippi, to which the little group
descended, lies at the foot of Hermon.
XXIV
THE HOUSE THAT CAIN BUILT
It was well along in the afternoon when we reached Baalbec, and drove
through a cloud of dust to a hotel which stands in a mud village near
the ruins. Long before we arrived we could make out massive remnants of
what was once a wonder of the world, and remains no less so to-day. We
could distinguish sections of the vast wall, and, towering high above
them, the six columns of the Temple of the Sun.
I knew those six columns. I had carried a picture of them in my mind
ever since that winter so long ago when the old first edition of the
_New Pilgrim's Progress_ became familiar in our household. I know they
were seventy-five feet high and eight feet through, and had blocks of
stone on the top of them as big as our old-fashioned parlor at home;
also, that they were probably erected by giants. Those items had made an
impression that had lasted. Now, here they were, outlined against the
sky, in full view and perfectly familiar, but never in the world could
they be as big as the book said. Why, these were as slender and graceful
as fairy architecture! I recalled that there were some big stones to
see, stones laid by Cain and his giants when the world was new. Perhaps
they would not be so very big, after all. I had a feeling that we ought
to hurry.
We did hurry--Laura and I. We did not wait for the party, but set out
straight for the ruins, through narrow streets and byways, with beggars
at our heels. By-and-by we came to a rushing brook, and just beyond it
were the temple walls.
I remembered now. There had been a wonderful garden outside the temples
in the old days, and this stream had made it richly verdant and
beautiful. There was no garden any more. Only some grass and bushes,
such as will gather about an oasis.
They would not let us into the temple enclosure until our party came, so
we wandered around the outer walls and gazed up at cornices and capitals
and entablatures as beautiful, we thought, as any we had seen at Athens.
Then the party arrived, and there was a gatekeeper to let us in.
It would take a man in perfect health to carry away even an approximate
impression of Baalbec. Trying to remember now, I seem to have spent the
afternoon in some amazing delirium of tumbling walls and ruined
colonnades; of heaped and piled fragments; of scarred and defaced
sculpture; of Titanic masonry flung about by the fury of angry gods.
Athens had been a mellowed and hallowed dream of the past; Ephesus a
vast suggestion of ancient greatness buried and overgrown; Baalbec was a
wild agony of destruction and desecration crying out to the sky.
[Illustration: FROM THE TIME OF ADAM BAALBEC BECAME A PLACE OF ALTARS]
It is a colossal object-lesson in what religions can do when they try.
Nobody really knows who began to build temples here, but from the time
of Adam Baalbec became a place of altars. Before history began it was
already a splendid Syrian city, associated with the names of Cain,
Nimrod, and Abraham, and it may have been Cain himself who raised the
first altar here when he made that offering for which the Lord "had not
respect." More likely, however--and this is the Arab belief--it was the
city of refuge built by Cain, whose fear must have been very large if
one may judge from the size of the materials used.
Cain could not fail to build a temple, however. He would try to ease the
punishment which he declared was greater than he could bear, and with
burnt offering and architecture would seek to propitiate an angry God.
How long the worship inaugurated by him lasted we can only surmise--to
the flood, maybe--but the Phoenicians came next, and set up temples to
their Gods, whoever they were, and after the Phoenicians came Solomon,
who built a temple to a sort of compromise god by the name of Baal--a
deity left over by the Phoenicians and adapted to Judean needs and
ceremonies--hence the name, Baalbec. Solomon built the temple to Baal to
satisfy certain of his heathen wives, and he made the place a strong
city to rival Damascus--the latter having refused to acknowledge his
reign.
After Solomon, the Romans. Two hundred years or so after Christ--in the
twilight of their glory and their gods--the Romans under Elagabalus
brought the glory of Grecian architecture to Baalbec, named the place
Heliopolis, and set up temples that were--and are--the wonder of the
world.
What satisfactory gods they must have been to deserve temples such as
these--each shrine a marvel of size and beauty--more splendid even than
those of the Acropolis of Athens in their lavish magnificence! This
carved doorway to the Temple of Jupiter; this frieze of the Temple of
Bacchus; these towering six columns of the Temple of the Sun; still
holding their matchless Corinthian capitals and amazing entablature to
the sky--where else will one find their equals, and what must they have
been in their prime, when these scarred remnants can still overpower the
world!
It was another religion that brought ruin here--early
Christianity--presently followed by early Mohammedanism--each burning
with vandalic zeal. It was the good Emperor Constantine that first upset
the Roman gods and their temples. Then Theodosius came along and pulled
down the great structures, and out of the pieces built a church that was
an architectural failure. Then all the early Christians in the
neighborhood took a hand in pulling down and overturning; hacking away
at the heathen sculpture and tracery--climbing high up the walls to scar
and disfigure--to obliterate anything resembling a face. Then pretty
soon the early Mohammedans came along and carried on the good work, and
now and then an earthquake took a hand, until by-and-by the place became
the ghastly storm of destruction it appears to-day.
I was ill when I saw Baalbec. My flesh was burning and my pulse
throbbing with fever. Perhaps my vision was distorted and the nightmare
seemed worse than it really is, but as I stood in that field of
mutilation and disorder, gazing along its wrecked and insulted glory,
and through tumbling arch and ruined door caught vistas of fertile and
snow-capped hill, I seemed to see a vision of what it had been in the
day of its perfection. Also, I felt an itch to meet one or two of those
early enthusiasts--some night in a back alley when they were not looking
for me and I had a piece of scantling--I felt a sick man's craving, as
it were, to undertake a little damage and disfiguration on my own
account. Oh, well, it's all in the eternal story. Religions established
these temples; religions pulled them down. The followers of one faith
have always regarded as heathen those which preceded them. There lies a
long time ahead. Will the next religion restore Baalbec or complete its
desolation?
Some little Syrian girls beset Laura on the way back to the hotel and
tried to sell her some bead embroidery which it seems they make in a
mission-school established here by the English. One of them--a little
brown madonna of about ten--could speak English quite well. Laura asked
her name.
"Name Mary," she said.
"But that's an English name."
She trotted along silently, thinking; then said:
"No, Syria--Mary Syria name."
Sure enough, we had forgotten. The first Mary had indeed been Syrian,
and I imagined her, now, a child--brown, barefoot and beautiful, like
this Mary, with the same pathetic eyes. Laura--young, fair-skinned and
pink-cheeked--was a marvel to these children. They followed her to the
door, and when she could not buy all their stock in trade they insisted
on making her presents, and one of them--little Mary--begged to be taken
to America.
We saw the celebrated "big stones" next morning. Several of them are
built into the lower tiers of the enclosing temple wall, and three of
these--the largest ones--measure each from sixty-two to sixty-four feet
long and are thirteen feet thick! They rest upon stones somewhat
thicker, but shorter--stones about the size of a two-story cottage--and
these in turn rest on masonry still less gigantic. Evidently it was the
intention of the builders to increase the size of their material as they
went higher, and the big block still in the quarry carries out that
idea.
Authorities differ as to when these big stones were laid, and how. Some
claim that they were put here by the Romans, because they find Greek
axe-marks on the ones below them. But then I found American jack-knife
marks on them too, and the names of certain of my countrymen, which
proves nothing except that these puny people had been there and left
their measurement. If these monster stones had been laid by the Romans
only two thousand years ago, we should have had some knowledge of the
means by which they were transported and lifted into place. There is no
such record, and nowhere else at least did the Romans ever attempt
structure of such gigantic proportions. That is precisely the word,
"gigantic," for there were giants in the days when these stones were
laid--stones that could have been there six thousand years as well as
two thousand, being of such material as forms the foundations of the
world.
If Cain did any building at Baalbec, he did it here. He did not finish
the work, it would seem, or at least not in these proportions. Perhaps
his giants deserted him--struck, as we say to-day. Perhaps the hands of
men were no longer against him and the need of this mighty bulwark about
his place of refuge ceased. At all events, the first stone hewn out for
the next layer stands in the quarry still.
We drove over there. It was half a mile away, at least--possibly a mile,
down hill and rather rough going. The stones we saw in the wall were
brought up that road. The one standing in the quarry had been lifted and
started a little, and would have been on its way presently, if the
strike, or the amnesty, had not interfered.
It is seventy-two feet long and seventeen feet thick. Try to think of a
plain box building, a barn or a store-house, say, of that size, then
mentally convert it into a solid block of stone. Mark Twain likens it to
two freight-cars placed end to end, but _it is also as high and as
wide_. _Eight freight-cars set four and four_ would just about express
it! Think of that! Think of moving a stone of that size!
It is squared and dressed and ready to be taken to the temple wall. It
will never be taken there. Perhaps that last item is gratuitous
information, but at least it is authentic. We have no means of moving
that stone half a mile up a rough hill in these puny times, and the
speculations as to how Cain did it have been mainly hazy and
random--quite random.
One writer suggests that such stones were "rolled up an inclined plane
of earth prepared for the purpose." I should love to see a stone like
that rolled. I'd travel all the way to Baalbec again for the sight, and
they could prepare the inclined plane any way they pleased. An Oriental
authority declares that these stones were moved and laid by the demon
Echmoudi, which is better than the rolling idea. I confess a weakness
for Echmoudi, but I fear hard cold science will frown him out of court.
It has taken an Englishman to lead the way to light. He says that Cain
employed mastodons to do his moving. Now we are on the way to truth, but
we must go further--a good deal further. Cain did employ mastodons, but
only for his light work. Even mastodons would balk at pulling stones
like these. Cain would use brontosaurs for such work as that. There were
plenty of them loafing about, and I can imagine nothing more impressive
than Cain standing on a handy elevation overlooking his force of giants
and a sixteen-span brontosaur team yanking a stone as big as a bonded
warehouse up Baalbec hill.
Truly, there is no reason why those monster stones should not have been
quarried a million or so years ago and moved by the vast animal
creatures of that period. We have biblical authority for the giants, and
I have seen a brontosaur in the New York Museum that seemed to go with
stones of about that size. Think of any force the Romans could summon
rolling a three-million-pound square stone up an inclined plane.
Preposterous! The brontosaur's the thing.
XXV
GOING DOWN TO DAMASCUS
There is a good deal of country, mainly desert, between Baalbec and
Damascus, and a good many barren hills. Crossing the Anti-Lebanon
mountains there is a little of water and soil and much red, rocky waste.
Here and there a guide pointed out a hill where Cain killed Abel--not
always the same hill, but no matter, it was a hill in this neighborhood;
any one of them would make a good place. Occasionally the train passed a
squalid village, perched on a lonely shelf--a single roof stretching
over most of the houses--the inhabitants scarcely visible. We wondered
where they got their sustenance. They were shepherds, perhaps, but where
did their flocks feed?
Across the divide, between snow-capped hills, and suddenly we are face
to face with green banks and the orchard bloom of spring. We have
reached the Abana, the river which all the ages has flowed down to
Damascus with its gift of eternal youth. For as the desert defends, so
the river sustains Damascus, and the banks of the Abana (they call it
the Barada now) are just a garden--the Garden of Eden, if old tales be
true.
It is not hard to believe that tradition here, at this season. Peach,
apricot, almond, and plum fairly sing with blossom; birch and sycamore
blend a cadence of tender green; the red earth from which Adam was
created (and which his name signifies) forms an abundant underchord. If
we could linger a little by these pleasant waters we might learn the
lilt of the tree of life--its whisper of the forbidden fruit.
We are among our older traditions here--the beginnings of the race. We
have returned after devious wanderings. These people whom we see leading
donkeys and riding camels, tending their flocks and bathing in the
Abana, they are our relatives--sons and daughters of Adam. Only, they
did not move away. They stayed on the old place, as it were, and
preserved the family traditions, and customs. I am moved to get out and
call them "cousin" and embrace them, and thank them for not trailing off
after the false gods and frivolities of the West.
[Illustration: SO THE PATRIARCHS JOURNEYED; SO, TWO THOUSAND YEARS
LATER, JOSEPH AND MARY TRAVELLED INTO EGYPT]
The road that winds by the Abana is full of pictures. The story of the
Old Testament--the New, too, for that matter--is dramatized here in a
manner and a setting that would discourage the artificial stage. Not a
group but might have stepped out of the Bible pages. This man leading a
little donkey--a woman riding it--their garb and circumstance the
immutable investment of the East: so the patriarchs journeyed; so, two
thousand years later, Joseph and Mary travelled into Egypt. No change,
you see, in all that time--no change in the two thousand years that have
followed--no change in the two thousand years that lie ahead. Wonderful,
changeless East! How frivolous we seem in comparison--always racing
after some new pattern of head-gear or drapery! How can we hope to
establish any individuality, any nationality, any artistic stability
when we have so little fixed foundation in what, more than any other one
thing, becomes a part of the man himself--his clothing?
These hills are interesting. Some of them have verdure on them, and I
can fancy Abraham pasturing his flocks on them, and with little Isaac
chasing calves through the dews of Hermon. It would not be the "dews of
Hermon," but I like the sound of that phrase. I believe history does not
mention that Abraham and Isaac chased calves. No matter; anybody that
keeps flocks has to chase calves now and then, and he has to get his
little boy to help him. So Abraham must sometimes have called Isaac
quite early in the morning to "go and head off that calf," just as my
father used to call me, and I can imagine how they raced up and down and
sweat and panted, and how they said uncomplimentary things about the
calf and his family, and declared that there was nothing on earth that
could make a person so mad as a fool calf, anyhow.
Travel on the highway has increased--more camels, more donkeys, more
patriarchs with their families and flocks. Merchandise trains follow
close, one behind the other. Dust rises in a fog and settles on the
wayside vegetation. Here and there on the hillsides are villas and
entertainment gardens.
A widening of the valley, an expanse of green and bloom, mingled with
domes and minarets; a slowing down of speed, a shouting of porters
through the sunlit dust, and behold, we have reached the heart and
wonder of the East, Damascus, the imperishable--older than history, yet
forever young.
XXVI
THE "PEARL OF THE EAST"
It is the oldest city in the world. It is the oldest locality mentioned
in the Bible, if the Garden of Eden theory be true. I suspect that
Noah's flood washed away the garden, and that his grandson, Uz, wanted
to commemorate the site by building a city there. At all events, Uz
built Damascus, according to Josephus, and he could not have picked a
better location than this wide, level plain, watered by these beautiful
living streams. That was about 2400 B.C., which means that Damascus was
already an old city--five hundred years old, or more--when Abraham
overtook Chedorlaomer, King of Elam--Tidal, King of Nations, and two
other kings--these four having captured Abraham's nephew, Lot, "who
dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed."
A matter of four kings did not disturb Abraham. He had a better
combination than that. He armed his trained servants, three hundred and
eighteen in number, "born in his own house," and went after those kings
and "smote them and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand
of Damascus, rescued Lot and brought back the goods."
That is the first Bible mention of Damascus, and it was no doubt a
goodly city, even then. After that it appears, time and again, in both
the scriptures, and one never fails to feel its importance in the
world's story. Five hundred years after Abraham, Thothmes III. thought
it worth while to cross over from Egypt to conquer Damascus, and after
still another five hundred years King David ravaged the country round
about and set up a garrison here. Those were not frequent changes.
Damascus does not do things frequently or without reflection. I believe
the Medes came next, and after them the Romans, and then, quite
recently--recently for Damascus, I mean--only thirteen hundred years
ago--the Mohammedans took the place and have held it ever since.
And Damascus herself has remained unchanged. Other cities have risen and
prospered and perished even from memory. They did not matter to
Damascus. Nothing matters to Damascus. It may have altered its
appearance a trifle now and then, but not materially. It is the same
Damascus that Abraham knew and that David conquered. I can see both of
these old fellows any time I look out of my hotel window; also, the
three hundred and eighteen servants born in Abraham's household--all the
tableau of the ancient city that has remained forever young.
"Though old as history itself, thou art as fresh as the
breath of spring, blooming as thine own rosebud, and
fragrant as thine own orange-flower, O Damascus, pearl of
the East!"
We are at the Grande Hotel Victoria. All these hotels are "Grande"
something or other. A box shanty ten by fifteen is likely to be called
"Grande Hotel de France." However, the Victoria _is_ grand, rather, and
quite Oriental in its general atmosphere. The rooms are clean, too, and
the Turkish pictures amusing. Furthermore, our rooms look across the
river--the soul of Damascus--the water in which Eve first saw her sweet
reflected form, if tradition holds. Its banks are bordered by a great
thoroughfare now, where against a background of peach-bloom and minaret
an eternal panorama flows by. Camel trains from Bagdad and the far
depths of Persia; mule trains from the Holy Land; donkey trains from
nowhere in particular; soldiers with bands playing weird music; groups
of Arabs mounted on splendid horses--dark men with long guns, their
burnouses flying in the wind. One might sit here forever and drift out
of time, out of space, in the fabric of the never-ending story.
Being late in the afternoon, with no programme, Laura and I set out to
seek adventure, were immediately adopted by a guide, and steered toward
the bazaars. We crossed a public square near the hotel where there were
all sorts and conditions of jackasses--some of them mounted by men,
others loaded with every merchandise under the sun. We saw our first
unruly donkey just then--a very small donkey mounted by a very fat son
of the prophet with a vast turban and beard. It being the Mohammedan
Sunday (Friday), he had very likely been to the mosque and to market,
and was going home. He had a very large bush broom under his arm, and it
may have been this article thrashing up and down on the donkey's flank
that made him restive. At all events, he was cavorting about (the
donkey, I mean) in a most unseemly fashion for one bestridden by so
grave a burden, and Mustapha Mohammed--they are all named that--was
bent forward in a ball, uttering what Laura thought might be quotations
from the Koran. We did not see what happened. They were still gyrating
and spinning when we were caught up by the crowd and swept into the
bazaar.
The Grande Bazaar of Damascus excels anything we have seen. It is bigger
and better and cleaner than the bazaar of Constantinople, and a
hundred--no, a million--times more inviting. No Christian could eat
anything in a Constantinople market-place. The very thought of it gags
me now as I write, while here in Damascus, Laura and I were having
confections almost immediately--and lemonade cooled with snow brought on
the backs of camels from the Lebanon mountain-tops. Mark Twain speaks of
the place as being filthy. I think they must have cleaned up a good deal
since then; besides, that was midsummer. I would not like to say that
the place is speckless, but for the Orient it was clean, and the general
bouquet was not disturbing. Also, I had a safer feeling in Damascus. I
did not feel that if I stepped into a side-street I would immediately be
dragged down and robbed. I did not feel as if I were a lost soul in a
bedlam of demons.
We noticed other things. The little booths, one after another, were
filled with the most beautiful wares--such wares as we have seen nowhere
else--but the drowsy merchants sat cross-legged in meditation, smoking
their nargileh or reading their prayers, and did not ask us to buy. If
we stopped to look at their goods they hardly noticed us. If we priced
them they answered our guide in Arabic monosyllables. Here and there a
Jew with a more pretentious stock would solicit custom in the old way of
Israel, but the Arab was silent, indifferent, disinterested. Clearly it
was his preference that we pass by as quickly as possible. His goods
were not for such as us. I did manage to add to my collection of
donkey-beads, and would have bought more if Laura had not suggested that
they probably thought I was buying them to wear myself. At the
book-booth they even would not let us touch the volumes displayed for
sale.
Another thing I have noticed: there are no beggars here--none worth
while. Now and then, perhaps, somebody half extends a timid hand, but on
the whole there is a marked absence of begging. Damascus does not beg
from the Christian.
It is a weird, wonderful place, that bazaar. It covers an endless space,
if one may judge from its labyrinthine interior. Everywhere they stretch
away, the dim arcades, flimsily roofed with glass and matting and bark,
fading into vague Oriental vistas of flitting figures and magic
outlines. Here in the main thoroughfare a marvellous life goes on. The
space is wide, and there are masses of people moving to and fro, mingled
with donkeys and camels, and even carriages that dash recklessly
through; and there is a constant cry of this thing and that thing from
the donkey-boys and the pedlers of nuts and bread and insipid sweetened
drinks. Some of the pedling people clatter little brass cymbals as they
walk up and down, and repeat over and over some words which our guide
said were something between a prayer and a song, probably as old as the
language.[6] And the vendors of drinks carry their stock in trade in a
goat-skin, or maybe in a pigskin, which is not a pretty thing to look
at--all black and hairy and wet, with distended legs sticking out like
something drowned. We didn't buy any of those drinks. We thought they
might be clean enough, but we were no longer thirsty.
All sorts of things are incorporated in this bazaar: old
dwelling-houses; columns of old temples; stairways beginning anywhere,
leading nowhere; mosques--the limitless roof of merchandise has
stretched out and enveloped these things. To attempt a detailed
description of the place would be unwisdom. One may only generalize this
vast hive of tiny tradesmen and tiny trades. All the curious merchants
and wares we have seen pictured for a lifetime are gathered here. It is
indeed the Grande Bazaar--the emporium of the East.
The street we followed came to an end by-and-by at a great court open to
the sky. It was a magnificent enclosure, and I was quite willing to
enter it. I did not do so, however. I had my foot raised to step over
the low barrier, when there was a warning cry and a brown hand pushed me
back. Our guide had dropped a step behind. He came hurrying up now, and
explained that this was the court of the Great Mosque. We must have
special permission to enter. We would come with the party to-morrow.
The place impressed me more than any mosque we have seen--not for its
beauty, though it is beautiful, but because of its vastness, its open
sky, and its stone floor, polished like glass by the bare and stockinged
feet that have slipped over it for centuries. We could not enter, but we
were allowed to watch those who came as they removed their shoes and
stepped over into the court to pray. When you realize that the enclosure
is as big as two or three city squares, and that the stones, only fairly
smooth in the beginning, reflect like a mirror now, you will form some
idea of the feet and knees and hands that have pressed them, and realize
something of the fervor of the Damascus faith.
We left the bazaar by a different way, and our guide got lost getting us
back to the hotel. I didn't blame him, though--anybody could get lost in
those tangled streets. We were in a hopeless muddle, for it was getting
dark, when down at the far end of a narrow defile Laura got a glimpse of
a building which she said was like one opposite our hotel. So we went to
look for it, and it was the same building. Then our guide found the
hotel for us, and we paid him, and everything was all right. He didn't
know anything about the city, I believe, but was otherwise a perfect
guide.
Following, we put in a busy two days in Damascus--a marvellous two days,
I thought. Our carriages were at the hotel next morning, and I want to
say here that of all the carriages and horses we have seen, those of
Damascus are far and away the best. The horses are simply beautiful
creatures and in perfect condition. Even those kept for hire are superb
animals with skins of velvet. They are Arabian, of course, and I can
believe, now, that the Arab loves his horse, for I have never seen finer
animals, not even on Fifth Avenue. I can understand, too, why the
_Quaker City_ pilgrims--ambling into Damascus on those old, blind, halt
and spavined Beirut nags--made their entry by night.
And these Damascus horses go. Their drivers may love them, but they make
them hurry. They crack their whips, and we go racing through the streets
like mad. However deliberate the East may be in most things, it is swift
enough in the matter of driving.
I don't care for it. It keeps me watching all the time to see what kind
of an Arab we are going to kill, and I miss a good many sights. We went
through that crowded thoroughfare of the Grande Bazaar at a rate which
fairly was homicidal. Certainly if those drowsy shopkeepers did not hate
Christians enough before, they do now.
We drove to the Grande Mosque, and we had to put on slippers, of course,
to enter even the outer court. It is nearly a quarter of a mile long,
and we slid and straddled across that vast marble skating-rink, pausing
at a little pavilion--the Dome of the Treasury--where they keep some
venerable books--the oldest books in the world, I believe, and so sacred
that nobody ever sees them. Then we entered the Grande Mosque
itself--still known as the Church of St. John the Divine.
For, like the temples of Baalbec and otherwheres, the Grande Mosque of
Damascus has sheltered a variety of religious doctrines. It was the
Temple of Rimmon, first, god of the Syrians. The Romans, who conquered
and templed the world, came next, and built here, as they always built,
in magnificence and pride, with architecture stolen from the Greeks.
After the Romans, the early Christians under Constantine and Theodosius,
who for some reason did not destroy, as was their habit, but only
adapted the great temple to their needs. The son of Theodosius made some
improvements, and above the south door left a Christian inscription
which stands to this day.
When, in 634 A.D., Damascus fell, the church was at first divided
between Mohammedan and Christian worshippers--the two entering by the
same gate. They were not so far asunder in those days--not farther, I
think, than some of our present-day Christian sects--so called. Seventy
years later the strife became bitter, and the followers of Mohammed
claimed it all. The Caliph entered the church with guards, smashed the
Christian images, and set up emblems of the new faith. Then he lavished
quantities of money, making the place as splendid as possible, until it
was more beautiful even than St. Sophia's. Sixteen years ago it was
badly damaged by fire, but now it has been restored--by Christian
workmen, Habib said. Habib, I should add, is our party guide--a
Christian Syrian, educated in a college at Beirut--a quite wonderful
person of many languages.
The mosque interior is the most beautiful place we have seen. Its
ceiling, its windows, its mosaic walls, its rugs--all overwhelming in
exquisite workmanship and prodigality of design. The pictures I have
dreamed of Aladdin's palace grow dim in this enchanted place. No wonder
the faithful linger here on their way to and from Mecca; for after the
long desert stages it is like a vision of that lavish paradise which
their generous prophet has provided. They are all about--prostrating
themselves with many genuflections and murmurings--and we step on them
as little as possible, but they are a good deal in the way. The place
holds ten or twelve thousand of them every Friday, Habib said.
Habib, by-the-way, has small respect for the Moslem. Also, he does not
seem to fear consequences, which I confess I do, being in the very
stronghold of fanaticism, and remembering that some five thousand
Christians were suddenly and violently destroyed in Damascus not so many
years ago. We were in front of a very marvellous mosaic shrine, and
Habib beckoned us to come closer to admire its exquisite workmanship. A
devotee was prostrated in the little alcove, bowing and praying in the
usual rhythmic way. We surrounded him, but were inclined to hold a
little aloof.
"Closer, closer!" urged Habib. "You must see it!"
We crowded up and entangled the praying person, who became aware of our
presence and turned up his face helplessly. Then he pressed it again to
the floor, and tried to go on with his murmurings. It was no use. Habib
jostled him, waved his pointing stick over his head, tapped the
ornamentation within an inch of his nose. We were told to step up and
examine the work closely--to touch it, smell of it. Clearly Habib
regarded that devotee no more than if he had been a mile removed instead
of being actually against us. The poor pious pilgrim stole another look
at us, this way and that, slipped a notch in his prayers, gathered
himself and tried again, let go a whole distich, quavered in his attempt
to make himself heard, cast another appealing glance at the
_Kurfürsters_, broke through, and fled. This is not an exaggeration, but
an actual happening. In America there would have been trouble.
"He is nothing," said Habib, when I seemed disturbed. "He is only an
Arab." Still, he was praying to Habib's God.
Many persons do not realize, I believe, that Christianity and
Mohammedanism differ mainly in their Messiah. The Jew furnished the
Moslem as well as the Christian with a God, patriarchs, and
prophets--the Old Testament being common to all. The Moslem goes further
than the Jew, for he accepts parts of the New Testament. He recognizes
John the Baptist as a holy messenger, even claiming to have his head in
this very church, in a shrine which we saw, though I could see that
Habib thought the relic apocryphal. Furthermore, the Moslem accepts
Christ! To him, Christ is only a lesser prophet than Mohammed, but still
a great being--an emissary of God--and on this same mosque is the
Minaret of Jesus, where, one day, as they believe, he will stand to
judge the world. On the other hand, the average Christian believes that
Mohammed was merely a fraud, and it is this difference of opinion that
has reddened the East with blood. I am moved to set down this paragraph
of rather general information for the reason that it contains some
things which I suppose others to be as ignorant of as I was--things
which seem to me interesting.
We did see one old book, by-the-way--fifteen hundred years old, Habib
said, and a member of our party asked if it was printed on a press;
though that is nothing--I have done worse myself. Then we ascended the
Minaret of the Bride for the view. We climbed and climbed, and got hot,
and shaky in the knees, but the view repaid us. There was Damascus
spread out in its beauty; its marble courts, its domes and minarets and
painted houses--a magic city in the midst of a garden of bloom.
Certainly this is fairyland--a mirage whose fragile fabric may vanish in
a breath. Oh, our time is all too short! One must have long and long to
look upon the East--it has taken so long to build!
We went to Saladin's tomb, and that is authoritative, though I confess
that I could not realize, as we stood in that narrow building and viewed
the catafalque in the centre, that the mighty Saracen hero of romance
rested there. For me, he belongs only in tales of enchantment and fierce
deeds, and not in that quiet place. I remembered that his sword was so
sharp that a feather pillow dropped on its edge would fall on either
side. Perhaps they have the sword there, and possibly the pillow to
prove it, but I did not see them.
A Turkish school turned out to look at us and smile. We looked and
smiled back, and everybody was satisfied. It is certain that we look
more strange to them than they do to us, now. I know this, for when I
stop anywhere and look over our party, here amid the turbans and fezzes
and long flowing garments of the Orient, I can see for myself that it is
really our party that looks queer and fantastic and out of place--not
these people at all.
It is natural that one should realize this in Damascus, for Damascus is
the great reality--the unchanged and changeless. Algiers was a framed
picture; Constantinople was a world's Midway--a sort of masquerade,
prepared for our benefit. Here it is different. No longer the country
and the people constitute the show, but ourselves. One presently
discovers that he is artificial--an alien, a discord--that he has no
place here. These others are the eternal verities; their clothes are the
real clothes--not ours, that change fashion with every year and season.
One is tempted to abjure all the fanfare and flourish of his so-called
progress--to strip off his ridiculous garments and customs and fall in
with the long steady rhythm of the ages.
Only, you don't do it. You discover objections to such a course. I could
name some of them if I wanted to. Never mind; you couldn't do it anyway.
You have been hurrying and sweating and capering about and wearing your
funny clothes and singing in false keys too long. You cannot immediately
put on the garb of the ages, and lock step with the swing of a thousand
years.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The pedler of bread cries, "O Allah who sustaineth us, send trade!"
The pedler of beverages, "O cheer thine heart!"
XXVII
FOOTPRINTS OF PAUL
We entered the "street which is called Straight," and came to the house
of Judas, where St. Paul lodged when he was led blind into Damascus,
trembling and astonished of the Lord. His name was Saul, and he had been
on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians, by the authority of
Rome. The story is in the ninth chapter of Acts, and is too familiar to
repeat here. I believe, though, most of us thought the house of Judas
had some connection with the unfaithful disciple of that name, until
Habib enlightened us. Habib said that this was another Judas--a good
man--well-to-do for his time. The Street called Straight runs through
the Grande Bazaar, and the house of Judas is in the very midst of that
dim aggregation of trades. It is roofless and unoccupied, but it is kept
clean and whitewashed, and its stone walls will stand for another two
thousand years.
Next to the birth and crucifixion of the Saviour, the most important
event in the story of Christianity happened there. It seemed strange and
dream-like to be standing in the house of St. Paul's conversion--a place
which heretofore had seemed to exist only in the thin leaves and fine
print of our Sunday-school days--and I found myself wondering which
corner of the house St. Paul occupied, just where he sat at table, and a
number of such things. Then I noticed the drifting throngs outside,
passing and repassing or idling drowsily, who did not seem to know that
it was St. Paul's house, and paid no attention to it at all.
At the house of Ananias, which came next, Habib was slow in arriving,
and the Horse-Doctor gave us a preliminary lecture.
"This," he said, "is the house of Ananias, once fed by the ravens.
Later, through being a trifle careless with the truth, he became the
founder and charter member of a club which in the United States of
America still bears his name. Still later he was struck by lightning for
deceiving his mother-in-law, Saphira, who perished at the same time to
furnish a Scripture example that the innocent must suffer with the
guilty (see Deuteronomy xi. 16): This is the spot where Ananias fell.
That stone marks the spot where his mother-in-law stood. The hole in the
roof was made by the lightning when it came through. We will now pass on
to the next--"
That was good enough gospel for our party if Habib had only let it
alone. He came in just then and interrupted. He said:
"This is the house of Ananias--called St. Ananias, to distinguish him
from a liar by the same name. That Ananias and his wife, Saphira, fell
dead at the feet of St. Peter because of falsehood, a warning to those
who trifle with the truth to-day. St. Ananias was a good man, who
restored St. Paul's sight and instructed him in the Christian
doctrine."
We naturally avoided the Doctor for a time after that. His neighborhood
seemed dangerous.
The house of Ananias is below ground, and was probably used as a
hiding-place in a day when it was not safe for an active and busy
Christian to be at large. Such periods have not been unusual in
Damascus. St. Paul preached Christianity openly, but not for long; for
the Jews "took counsel to kill him," and watched the gate to see that he
did not get away.
"Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down the wall in a
basket."
We drove to the outer wall, and came to the place and the window where
Paul is said to have been let down. It _might_ have happened there; the
wall is Roman, and the window above it could have been there in St.
Paul's day. I prefer to believe it is the real window, though I have
reason to think they show another one sometimes.
Habib said we were to visit some of the handsome residences of Damascus.
We were eager for that. From the Minaret of the Bride we had looked down
upon those marble courts and gay façades, and had been fascinated. We
drove back into the city, through narrow mud-walled streets, forbidding
and not overclean. When these alleys had become so narrow and
disheartening that we could travel only with discomfort, we stopped at a
wretched entrance and were told to get out. Certainly this was never the
portal to any respectable residence. But we were mistaken. The Damascus
house is built from the inside out. It is mud and unseemly disrepute
without, but it is fairyland within. Every pretentious house is built
on the same plan, and has a marble court, with a fountain or pool, and
some peach or apricot or orange trees. On one side of the court is the
front of the house. It has a high entrance, and rooms to the right and
to the left--rooms that have a raised floor at one end (that is where
the rich rugs are) and very high ceilings--forty feet high, some of
them--decorated with elaborate designs. In the first house the round
writhing rafters were exposed, and the decoration on them made them look
exactly like snakes. The Apostle took one look and fled, and I confess I
did not care for them much myself. The rest of the house was divided
into rooms of many kinds, and there was running water, and a bath. We
visited another house, different only in details. Some of the occupants
were at home here--women-folks who seemed glad to see us, and showed us
about eagerly. A tourist party from far-off America is a diversion to
them, no doubt.
[Illustration: URGING US TO PARTAKE OF THE PRECIOUS STUFF, WITHOUT
STINT]
Then we went to still another house. We saw at once that it was a
grander place than the two already visited, and we were simply
bewildered at the abundance of the graven brass and inlaid furniture,
rich rugs and general bric-à-brac, that filled a great reception-room.
Suddenly servants in Turkish dress appeared with trays of liqueurs--two
kinds, orange and violet--urging us to partake of the precious stuff,
without stint. Also, there were trays of rare coffee and dainty
sweetmeats, and we were invited to sit in the priceless chairs and to
handle the wonderful things to our hearts' content. We were amazed,
stunned. Oriental hospitality could go no further. Then in some subtle
manner--I don't remember how the information was conveyed, but it must
have been delicately, Orientally done--we learned that all this brass,
all these marvellous things, were for sale!
Did we buy them? Did we! David did not take more brass from Hadadezer
than we carried out of that Damascus residence, which was simply an
annex to a great brass and mosaic factory, as we discovered later.
Perhaps those strange liqueurs got into our enthusiasm; certainly I have
never seen our party so liberal--so little inclined to haggle and hammer
down.
But the things themselves were worth while. The most beautiful brass in
the world is made in Damascus, and it is made in that factory.
They took us in where the work was going on. I expected to see
machinery. Nothing of the sort--not a single machine anywhere. Every
stage of the work is performed by hand--done in the most primitive way,
by workmen sitting on the ground, shaping some artistic form, or with a
simple graving-tool working out an intricate design. Many of the workers
were mere children--girls, most of them--some of them not over seven or
eight years old, yet even these were producing work which would cause
many an "arts and crafts" young lady in America to pale with envy. They
get a few cents a day. The skilled workers, whose deft fingers and
trained vision produce the exquisite silver inlay designs, get as much
as a shilling. No wonder our people did not haggle. The things were
cheap, and they knew it.
In a wareroom in the same factory I noticed that one of the walls was
stone, and looked like Roman masonry; also that in it were the outlines
of two high arches, walled up. I asked Habib about it.
"Those," he said, "are two of the entrances to the Street called
Straight. We are outside of the wall here; this house is built against
it. The Straight street had three entrances in the old days. Those two
have long been closed."
It always gives me a curious sensation to realize that actual people are
living and following their daily occupations in the midst of
associations like these. I can't get used to it at all.
To them, however, it is nothing. The fact that they sleep and wake and
pursue their drowsy round in places hallowed by tradition; that the
house which sheltered St. Paul stands in the midst of their murmuring
bazaar; that one side of this wareroom is the wall of the ancient city,
the actual end of the Street called Straight; that every step they take
is on historic ground, sacred to at least three religions--this to me
marvellous condition is to them not strange at all.
It is not that they do not realize the existence of these things: they
do--at least, most of them do--and honor and preserve their landmarks.
But that a column against which they dream and smoke may be one of the
very columns against which St. Paul leaned as he groped his blind way
down the Street called Straight is to them not a matter for wonder, or
even comment.
I am beginning to understand their point of view--even to envy it. I do
not envy some of the things they have--some of their customs--but their
serenity of habit, their security of place in the stately march of time,
their establishment of race and religion--one must envy these things
when he considers them here, apart from that environment which we call
civilized--the whirl which we call progress.
I do not think I shall turn Moslem. The doctrine has attractive
features, both here and hereafter; but I would not like to undertake the
Koran at my time of life. I can, however, and I do, pay the tribute of
respect to the sun-baked land and sun-browned race that have given birth
to three of the world's great religions, even though they have not
unnaturally claimed their last invention as their best and held it as
their own.
XXVIII
DISCONTENTED PILGRIMS
We entered the remaining portal of the Street called Straight and drove
to the Grand Bazaar. We were in a buying fever by this time, and plunged
into a regular debauch of bargain and purchase. We were all a little
weary when we reached the hotel. We came in carrying our brass and other
loot, and dropped down on the first divan, letting our bundles fall
where they listed.
I thought the Apostle looked particularly solemn. Being a weighty
person, jouncing all day in a carriage and walking through brass bazaars
and fez bazaars and silk bazaars and rug bazaars and silver bazaars and
leather bazaars and saddle bazaars, and at least two hundred and seven
other bazaars, had told on him. When I spoke cheeringly he merely
grunted and reached for something in a glass which, if it tasted as it
smelled, was not calculated to improve his temper. When I sat down
beside him he did not seem over cordial.
[Illustration: ASKED HIM IF HE WOULDN'T EXECUTE A LITTLE COMMISSION FOR
ME IN THE BAZAARS]
Then, quite casually, I asked him if he wouldn't execute a little
commission for me in the bazaars; there were a few trifles I had
overlooked: another coffee-set, for instance--something for a friend at
home; I had faith in his (the Apostle's) taste.
It seemed a reasonable request, and I made it politely enough, but the
Apostle became suddenly violent. He said:
"Damn the bazaars! I'm full of brass and Oriental rugs and bric-à-brac.
I never want to hear of a bazaar again. I want to give away the junk
I've already bought, and get back to the ship." Which we knew he didn't
mean, for he had put in weary hours acquiring those things, inspired
with a large generosity for loved ones at home.
The Colonel came drifting along just then--unruffled,
debonair--apparently unwearied by the day's round. Nothing disturbs the
Colonel. If he should outwear the century, he would still be as blithe
of speech and manner as he is to-day at--dear me, how old is the
Colonel? Is he thirty? Is he fifty? He might be either of those ages or
at any mile-post between.
He stood now, looking down at the Apostle and his cup of poison. Then,
with a coaxing smile:
"Match you, Joe--my plunder against yours--just once."
The Apostle looked up with a perfectly divine sneer.
"_Yes_, you will-- I think I see myself!"
The Colonel slapped a coin on the table briskly.
"Come on, Joe--we never matched for bric-à-brac before. Let's be
game--just this time."
What was the use? The Apostle resisted--at first violently, then
feebly--then he matched--and lost.
For a moment he could hardly realize the extent of his disaster. Then he
reached for the mixture in front of him, swallowed it, gagged, and
choked alarmingly. When he could get his voice, he said:
"I'm the hellfiredest fool in Syria. I walked four hundred miles to buy
those things."
The Horse-Doctor regarded him thoughtfully.
"You always interest me," he said. "I don't know whether it's your shape
or your mental habitudes. Both are so peculiar."
After which we left the Apostle--that is, we stood from under and went
in to dinner.
The Apostle is a good traveller, however--all the Reprobates are. They
take things as they find them, which cannot be said for all of our
people. One wonders what some of them expected in Damascus--probably
steamer fare and New York hotel accommodations. I judge this from their
remarks.
As a matter of fact, we are at the best hotel in Damascus, and the hotel
people are racking their bodies and risking their souls to give us the
best they know. A traveller cannot get better than the best--even in
heaven. Travelling alone in any strange land, he is more likely to get
the worst. Yet the real traveller will make the best of what he finds,
and do better when he finds he can. But these malcontents of ours have
been pampered and spoiled by that steamer until they expect nothing
short of perfection--_their_ kind of perfection--wherever they set foot.
They are so disturbed over the fact that the bill-of-fare is unusual and
not adjusted to their tastes that they are not enjoying the sights, and
want to clear out, forthwith. They have been in Damascus a little more
than a day; they want to go now. This old race has stood it five
thousand years or more. These ship-dwellers can't stand it two days
without complaint. I don't want to be severe, but such travellers tire
me. I suppose the bill-of-fare in heaven won't please them. I hope not,
if I'm invited to remain there--any length of time, I mean.
The rest of us are having great enjoyment. We like everything, and we
eat most of it. There are any number of dried fruits and nuts and fine
juicy oranges always on the table, strung down the centre--its full
length. And even if the meats are a bit queer, they are by no means bad.
We whoop up the bill-of-fare, and go through it forward and backward and
diagonally, working from both ends toward the centre, and back again if
we feel like it. We have fruit and nuts piled by our plates and on our
plates all through the meal. _We_ don't get tired of Damascus. We could
stay here and start a famine. What _will_ these grumblers do in heaven,
where very likely there isn't a single dish they ever heard of before?
In the matter of wines, however, I am conservative. You see, Mohammed
forbade the use of spirituous beverages by the faithful, and liquor
forms no part of their long, symphonic rhyme. They don't drink it
themselves; they only make it for visitors.
It would require no command of the Prophet to make me abstain from it. I
have tried their vintage. I tried one brand called the "Wine of
Ephesus." The name conjured visions; so did the wine, but they were not
the same visions. The name suggested banquets in marble halls, where
gentlemen and ladies of the old days reclined on rich divans and were
served by slaves on bended knee. The wine itself--the taste of it, I
mean--suggested a combination of hard cider and kerosene, with a hurry
call for the doctor.
I was coy about the wines of the East after that, but by-and-by I tried
another brand--a different color with a different name. This time it was
"Nectar of Heliopolis." They had curious ideas of nectar in Heliopolis.
Still, it was better than the Wine of Ephesus. Hair-oil is always better
than kerosene in a mixture like that--but not much better. The flavor
did not invite debauch.
* * * * *
This is Sunday (the Christian Sunday), and I have been out for an early
morning walk. I took the trolley that starts near the hotel. I did not
care for a trolley excursion, but I wanted to see what a Damascus
trolley is like and where it went. It isn't like anything in particular,
and it didn't go anywhere--not while I was on it.
I noticed that it was divided into three sections, and I climbed into
the front one. The conductor motioned to me, and I understood that I had
made a wrong selection, somehow. A woman, veiled and bangled, climbed
aboard just then, and I understood. I was in the women's section--a
thing not allowed in Damascus. So I got back into the rear section, but
that wouldn't do, either. The conductor was motioning again.
I comprehended at length. The rear compartment was second class. He
wanted me to go in style. So I got into the middle compartment and gave
him a tin medal, and got two or three similar ones in change, and sat
there waiting for the procession to move. I waited a good while. There
was an Arabic inscription on the back of the seats in front of me--in
the place where, in America, it says, "Wait for the car to stop." I
suppose it says, "Wait for the car to start" in Damascus. We did that.
The conductor dozed.
Now and then somebody climbed on, but the arrivals were infrequent. I
wondered if we were waiting for a load. It would take a week to fill up,
at that rate. I looked at my watch now and then. The others went to
sleep. That is about the difference between the East and the West. The
West counts the time; for the East it has no existence. Moments, hours,
months mean nothing to the East. The word hurry is not of her language.
She drives her horses fast, but merely for pleasure, not haste. She has
constructed this trolley, but merely for style. It doesn't really serve
any useful purpose.
We moved a little by-and-by, and I had hopes. They were premature. We
crawled up in front of a coffee-house where a lot of turbans and fezzes
were gathered outside, over tiny cups and hubble-bubble pipes; then we
stopped. Our conductor and motorman got off and leaned against an
almond-tree and began gossiping with friends. Finally coffee came out to
them, and pipes, and they squatted down to smoke.
I finished my ride then; I shall always wonder where those other
passengers thought they were going, and if they ever got there.
I followed down a narrow street, and came to a succession of tiny
work-shops. It was then I discovered what a man's feet are for--that
is, some uses I had not known before. They are to assist the hands in
performing mechanical labor. All mechanics work barefooted here. They
sit flat on the floor or ground, with their various appliances in
front of them, and there is scarcely any operation in which the feet
do not take part. I came to a turning-lathe--a whole row of
turning-lathes--tiny, crude affairs, down on the ground, of course,
driven back and forth with a bow and a string. The workman held the bow
in one hand, while the other hand, assisted by the foot, guided the
cutting tool. It would never occur to these workmen to put the lathe
higher in the air and attach a treadle, leaving both hands free to guide
the tool.
Their sawing is the crudest process imaginable. They have no trestles or
even saw-bucks. They have only a slanting stick stuck in the ground, and
against this, with their feet and one hand, they hold the piece to be
sawed, while the other hand runs the earliest saw ever made--the kind
Noah used when he built the Ark. Sometimes a sawyer has a helper--a boy
who pushes and pulls as the saw runs back and forth.
I bought a Sunday-morning paper. It does not resemble the
sixty-four-page New York Sunday dailies. It consists of four small
pages, printed in wriggly animalculæ and other aquaria, and contains
news four years old--or four hundred, it does not matter. Possibly it
denounces the sultan--it is proper to do that just now--but I think not.
That would be too current. I think it is still denouncing Constantine.
XXIX
DAMASCUS, THE GARDEN BEAUTIFUL
Later, we drove to the foot of Mohammed's Hill--the hill from which the
Prophet looked down on the Pearl of the East and decided that as he
could have only one paradise he would wait for the next. They have built
a little tower to mark the spot where he rested, and we thought we would
climb up there.
We didn't, however. The carriages could only go a little way beyond the
city outskirts, and when we started to climb that blistering, barren
hillside afoot we changed our minds rapidly. We had permission to go as
high as we pleased, but it is of no value. Anybody could give it. Laura
and I and a German newspaper man were the only ones who toiled up high
enough to look down through the mystical haze on the vision Mohammed
saw. Heavens! but it was hot up there! And this is March--early spring!
How those _Quaker City_ pilgrims stood it to travel across the Syrian
desert in August I cannot imagine. In the _Innocents_ I find this
observation:
"The sun-flames shot down like shafts of fire that stream
out of a blowpipe. The rays seemed to fall in a steady
deluge on my head and pass downward like rain from a roof."
That is a white-hot description, but not too intense, I think, for
Syrian summer-time.
Another thing we noticed up there: Damascus is growing--in that
direction at least. Older than history, the place is actually having a
boom. All the houses out that way are new--mud-walled, but some of them
quite pretentious. They have pushed out far beyond the gardens, across
the barren plain, and they are climbing the still more barren slope.
They stand there in the baking sun, unshaded as yet by any living thing.
One pities the women shut up behind those tiny barred windows. These
places will have gardens about them some day. Already their owners are
scratching the earth with their crooked sticks, and they will plant and
water and make the desert bloom.
Being free in the afternoon, Laura and I engaged Habib and a carriage
and went adventuring on our own account. We let Habib manage the
excursion, and I shall always remember it as a sweet, restful
experience.
We visited a Moslem burying-ground first, and the tomb of Fatima--the
original Fatima--Mohammed's beautiful daughter, who married a rival
prophet, Ali, yet sleeps to-day with honor in a little mosque-like tomb.
We passed a tree said to have been planted by the Mohammedan conqueror
of Damascus nearly thirteen hundred years ago--an enormous tree, ten
feet through or more--on one side a hollow which would hold a dozen men,
standing.
Then at last we came to the gardens of Damascus, and got out and walked
among the olive-trees and the peach and almond and apricot--most of them
in riotous bloom. Summer cultivation had only just begun, and few
workmen were about. Later the gardens will swarm with them, and they
will be digging and irrigating, and afterward gathering the fruit,
preserving and drying it, and sending it to market. Habib showed us the
primitive methods of doing these things.
How sweet and quiet and fragrant it was there among the flowering trees!
In one place a little group of Syrian Christians were recreating (it
being Sunday), playing some curious dulcimer instrument and singing a
weird hymn.
We crossed the garden, and sat on the grass under the peach-bloom while
Habib went for the carriage. Sitting there, we realized that the
guide-book had been only fair to Damascus.
"For miles around it is a wilderness of gardens--gardens
with roses among the tangled shrubberies, and with fruit on
the branches overhead. Everywhere among the trees the murmur
of unseen rivulets is heard."
That sounds like fairyland, but it is only Damascus--Damascus in June,
when the fruit is ripening and the water-ways are full.
We drove out of Damascus altogether--far out across a fertile plain, to
the slopes of the West Lebanon hills. Then turning, we watched the sun
slip down the sky while Habib told us many things. Whatever there is to
know, Habib knows, and to localities and landmarks he fitted stories and
traditions which brought back all the old atmosphere and made this
Damascus the Damascus of fable and dreams.
Habib pointed out landmarks near and far--minarets of the great mosque,
the direction of Jerusalem, of Mecca; he showed us where the waters of
Damascus rise and where they waste into the desert sands. To the
westward was Mount Hermon; southward came the lands of Naphtali, and
Bashan where the giant Og once reigned. All below us lay Palestine;
Mount Hermon was the watch-tower, Damascus the capital of the North.
Damascus in the sunset, its domes and minarets lifting above the lacing
green! There is no more beautiful picture in the world than that. We
turned to it again and again when every other interest had waned--the
jewel, the "pearl set in emeralds," on the desert's edge. Laura and I
will always remember that Sunday evening vision of the old city, the
things that Habib told us, and the drive home.
Next to the city itself I think the desert interested us. It begins just
a little beyond Damascus, Habib said, and stretches the length of the
Red Sea and to the Persian Gulf. A thousand miles down its length lies
Mecca, to which pilgrims have journeyed for ages--a horde of them every
year. There is a railway, now, as far as Tebook, but Mecca is still six
hundred miles beyond. The great annual pilgrimages, made up of the
faithful from all over Asia and portions of Europe and Africa, depart
from Damascus, and those that survive it return after long months of
wasting desert travel. Habib said that a great pilgrimage was returning
now; the city was full of holy men.
Then he told us about the dromedary mail that crosses the desert from
Damascus to Bagdad, like a through express. It is about five hundred
miles across as the stork flies, but the dromedary is not disturbed by
distance. He destroys it at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and
capers in fresh and smiling at the other end. Habib did not advise
dromedary travel. It is very rough, he said. Nothing but an Arab trained
to the business could stand it. Once an Englishman wanted to go through
by the dromedary mail, and did go, though they implored him to travel in
the regular way. He got through all right, but his liver and his heart
had changed places, and it took three doctors seven days to rearrange
his works.
A multitude was pouring out of the city when we reached the
gates--dwellers in the lands about. We entered and turned aside into
quiet streets, the twilight gathering about mysterious doorways and in
dim shops and stalls, where were bowed, turbaned men who never seemed to
sell anything, or to want to sell anything--who barely noticed us as we
passed through the Grand Bazaar, where it was getting dark, and all the
drowsy merchants of all the drowsy merchandise were like still shadows
that only moved a little to let us pass. Out again into streets that
were full of dusk, and dim flitting figures and subdued sounds.
All at once I caught sight of a black stone jar hanging at the door of a
very small and dusky booth. It was such a jar as is used in Damascus
to-day for water--was used there in the time of Abraham.
"Habib!"
I had wanted one of the pots from the first. The carriage stops
instantly.
"Habib! That black water-jar--a small one!"
I had meant to bargain for it myself, but Habib is ahead of me. He
scorns to bargain for such a trifle, and with such a merchant. He merely
seizes the jar, says a guttural word or two in whatever tongue the man
knows, flings him a paltry coin, and is back in the carriage, directing
our course along the darkening, narrow way.
What a wonderful life the dark is bringing out! There, in front of that
coffee-house, that row of men smoking nargileh--surely they are
magicians, every one. "That silent group with shaven faces and snowy
beards: who are they, Habib?"
"Mongolians," he says. "Pilgrims returning from Mecca. They live far
over to the north of China, but still are followers of the Prophet." The
scope of Islamism is wide--oh yes, very wide, and increasing. That group
gathered at the fountain--their dress, their faces--
"Habib!"
The horses come up with a jerk.
"A copper water-jar, Habib! An old, old man is filling it--such a
strange pattern"--
Habib is down instantly, and amid the crowd. Cautiously I follow. The
old man is stooped, wrinkled, travel-worn. His robe and his turban are
full of dust. He is listening to Habib and replying briefly.
Habib explains. The pilgrim is returning with it from Mecca; it is very
old; he cannot part with it. My heart sinks; every word adds value to
the treasure. Habib tries again, while I touch the ancient, curiously
wrought jar lovingly. The pilgrim draws away. He will hardly allow me
even this comfort.
We return to the carriage sadly. The driver starts. Some one comes
running behind, calling. Again we stop; a boy calls something to Habib.
"He will sell," Habib laughs, "and why not? He demands a napoleon. Of
course you will not give it!"
Oh, coward heart! I cannot, after that. I have the napoleon and the
desire, but I cannot appear a fool before Habib.
"No, it is too much. Drive on."
We dash forward; the East closes behind us; the opportunity is forever
lost.
If one could only be brave at the instant! All my days shall I recall
the group at the fountain: that bent, travel-stained pilgrim; that
strangely fashioned water-pot which perhaps came down to him from
patriarchal days. How many journeys to Mecca had it made; how many times
had it moistened the parching lips of some way-worn pilgrim dragging
across the burning sand; how many times had it furnished water for
absolution before the prayer in the desert! And all this could have been
mine. For a paltry napoleon I could have had the talisman for my
own--all the wonder of the East, its music, its mystery, its
superstition; I could have fondled it and gazed on it and re-created
each picture at a touch.
Oh, Habib, Habib, may the Prophet forgive you; for, alas, I never can!
At the station next morning a great horde of pilgrims were waiting for
the train which would bear them to Beirut--Mongolians, many of them, who
had been on the long, long, pilgrimage over land and sea. At Beirut, we
were told, seven steamers were waiting to take them on the next stage of
their homeward journey. What a weary way they had yet to travel!
They were all loaded down with baggage. They had their bundles,
clothing, quilts, water-bottles: and I wandered about among them vainly
hoping to find my pilgrim of the copper pot. Hopeless, indeed. There
were pots in plenty, but they were all new or unsightly things.
All the pilgrims were old men, for the Moslem, like most of the rest of
us, puts off his spiritual climax until he has acquired his material
account. He _has_ to, in fact; for, even going the poorest way and
mainly afoot, a journey of ten or twelve thousand miles across mountain
and desert, wilderness and wave cannot be made without substance.
We took a goodly number of them on our train. Freight-cars crowded with
them were attached behind, and we crawled across the mountains with that
cargo of holy men, who poured out at every other station and prostrated
themselves, facing Mecca, to pray for our destruction. At least, I
suppose they did that. I know they made a most imposing spectacle at
their devotions, and the Moslem would hardly overlook an enemy in such
easy praying distance.
However, we crossed the steeps, skirted the precipices safely enough,
and by-and-by a blue harbor lay below, and in it, like a fair picture,
the ship--home. We had been gone less than a week--it seemed a year.
XXX
WHERE PILGRIMS GATHER IN
At some time last night we crossed over the spot where the Lord stirred
up a mighty tempest and a great fish to punish Jonah, and this morning
at daybreak we were in the harbor of Jaffa, "the beautiful," from which
port Jonah sailed on that remarkable cruise.
We were not the only ones there. Two other great excursion steamers lay
at anchor, the _Arabic_ and the _Moltke_, their decks filled with our
fellow-countrymen, and I think the several parties of ship-dwellers took
more interest in looking at one another, and in comparing the appearance
of their respective vessels, than in the rare vision of Jaffa aglow with
morning. Three ship-loads at once! It seemed like a good deal of an
invasion to land on these sacred shores. But then we remembered how many
invasions had landed at Jaffa--how Alexander and Titus had been there
before us, besides all the crusades--so a modest scourge like ours would
hardly matter. As for that military butcher, Napoleon, who a little more
than a century ago murdered his way through this inoffending land, he
shot four thousand Turkish prisoners here on the Jaffa sands, after
accepting their surrender under guarantee of protection. We promised
ourselves that we would do nothing like that. We might destroy a pedler
now and then, or a baksheesh fiend; but four thousand, even of that
breed, would be too heavy a contract.
[Illustration: THE PATRIARCH KNEW ALL ABOUT JAFFA]
The Patriarch knew all about Jaffa. It is one of his special landmarks,
being the chief seaport of the Phoenicians, the one place they never
really surrendered. A large share of the vast traffic that went in and
out of Palestine in the old days went by Jaffa, and a great deal goes
that way still. The cedarwood from Lebanon, used in Solomon's Temple,
was brought by water to this port; the treasure and rich goods that went
down to Jerusalem in the day of her ancient glory all came this way; her
conquerors landed here. The blade and brand prepared for Jerusalem were
tried experimentally on Jaffa. According to Josephus, eighty thousand of
her inhabitants perished at one time. Yet Jaffa has survived. Her
harbor, which is not really a harbor at all, but merely an anchorage,
with a landing dangerous and uncertain, has still been sufficient to
keep her the chief seaport of Judea.
There is another reason for Jaffa's survival. Beyond her hills lie the
sacred cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The fields that knew Ruth and
Benjamin and a man named Jesus lie also there. From Jaffa in every
direction stretch lands made memorable by stories and traditions in
which the God and the prophets of at least three religions are
intimately concerned. So during long centuries Jaffa has been a holy
gateway, and through its portals the tide of pilgrimage has never ceased
to flow.
Some of us who were to put in full time in Egypt would have only a few
days in the Holy Land, and we were off the ship presently, being pulled
through the turquoise water by boatmen who sang a barbaric chorus as
they bent over their huge, clumsy oars. Then we were ashore and in
carriages, and in another moment were "jumping through Jaffa," as one of
the party expressed it, in a way that made events and landmarks flit
together like the spokes of a wheel.
We visited the tomb of Dorcas, whom Peter raised from the dead, though
for some reason we did not feel a positive conviction that it was the
very tomb--perhaps because we did not have time to get up a
conviction--and we called at the house of Simon the Tanner. It was with
Simon, "whose house is by the seaside," that Peter lodged when he had
his "vision of tolerance," in which it was made known to him that "God
is no respecter of persons, but only of righteousness." It is truly by
the seaside, and there is an ancient tanner's vat in the court-yard. But
I hope the place was cleaner when Peter lodged there than it is now. One
had to step carefully, and, though it did not smell of a tanyard, it did
of several other things. Many travellers, including Dean Stanley, have
accepted this as the veritable house where Simon dwelt and St. Peter
lodged. Those people ought to get together and have it cleaned up. I
could believe in it then myself.
Jaffa, as a whole, could stand the scrub-brush and the hose. It is not
"the beautiful" from within. It is wretchedly unbeautiful, though just
as we were getting ready to leave it we did have one genuine vision.
From the enclosures of the Greek Church we looked across an interminable
orange-grove, in which the trees seemed mere shrubs, but were literally
massed with golden fruit--the whole blending away into tinted haze and
towering palms. No blight, no vileness, no inodorous breath, but only
the dreamlit mist and the laden trees--the Orient of our long ago.
* * * * *
One might reasonably suppose that, as often as parties like ours travel
over the railway that potters along from Jaffa to Jerusalem, there would
be no commotion, no controversy with the officials--that the guard would
only need to come in and check up our tickets and let us go.
Nothing of the kind; every such departure as ours is a function, an
occasion--an entirely new proposition, to be considered and threshed out
in a separate and distinct fashion. Before we were fairly seated in the
little coach provided, dark-skinned men came in one after another to
look us over and get wildly excited--over our beauty, perhaps; I could
discover nothing else unusual about us. They would wave their hands and
carry on, first inside and then on the platform, where they would seem
to settle it. When they had paid us several visits of this kind, they
locked us in and went away, and we expected to start.
Not at all; they came back presently and did it all over again, only
louder. Then our dragoman appeared, and bloodshed seemed imminent. When
they went away again he said it was nothing--just the usual business of
getting started.
By-and-by some of us discovered that our bags had not been put on the
train, so we drifted out to look for them. We found them here and there,
with from two to seven miscreants battling over each as to which should
have the piastre or two of baksheesh collectible for handing our things
from the carriage to the train. Such is the manner of graft in the Holy
Land. It lacks organization and does not command respect.
The station was a hot, thirsty place. We loaded up with baskets of
oranges, the great, sweet, juicy oranges of Jaffa--the finest oranges in
the world, I am sure--then we forgot all our delays and troubles, for we
were moving out through the groves and gardens of the suburbs, entering
the Plains of Sharon--"a fold for flocks, a fertile land, blossoming as
the rose."
That old phrase expresses it exactly. I have never seen a place that so
completely conveyed the idea of fertility as those teeming, haze-haunted
plains of Sharon. Level as a floor, the soil dark, loose, and loamy;
here green with young wheat, there populous with labor--men and women,
boys and girls, dressed in the old, old dress, tilling the fields in the
old, old manner; flocks and herds tended by such shepherds as saw the
Star rise over Bethlehem; girls carrying water-jars on their heads;
camel trains swinging across the horizon--a complete picture of primal
husbandry, it was--a vast allegory of increase. I have seen agricultural
and pastoral life on a large scale in America, where we do all of the
things with machinery and many of them with steam, and would find it
hard to plough with a camel and a crooked stick; but I have somehow
never felt such a sense of tillage and production--of communing with
mother earth and drawing life and sustenance from her bosom--as came to
me there crossing the Plains of Sharon, the garden of Syria.
It is a goodly tract for that country--about fifty miles long and from
six to fifteen wide. The tribes of Dan and Manasseh owned it in the old
days, and to look out of the car-window at their descendants is to see
those first families that Joshua settled there, for they have never
changed.
Our dragoman began to point out sites and landmarks. Here was the Plain
of Joshua, where Samson made firebrands of three hundred foxes and
destroyed the standing corn of the Philistines. The tower ahead is at
Ramleh, and was built by the crusaders nearly a thousand years
ago--Ramleh being the Arimathea where lived Joseph, who provided the
Saviour with a sepulchre. Also, it is said to be the place where in the
days when Samuel judged Israel the Jews besought him for a king, and
acquired Saul and the line of David and Solomon as a result. To the
eastward lies the Valley of Ajalon, where Joshua stopped the
astronomical clock for the only time in a million ages, that he might
slaughter some remaining Amorites before dark.
We are out of the Plains of Sharon by this time, running through a
profitless-looking country, mostly rock and barren, hardly worth
fighting over, it would seem. Yet there were plenty of people to be
killed here in the old days, and as late as fifteen hundred years after
Joshua the Roman Emperor Hadrian slaughtered so many Jews at Bittir (a
place we shall pass presently) that the horses waded to their nostrils
in blood, and a stone weighing several pounds was swept along by the
ruby tide. The guide told us this, and said if we did not believe it he
could produce the stone.
Landmarks fairly overlap one another. Here, at Hill Gezer, are the ruins
of an ancient city presented to Solomon by one of his seven hundred
fathers-in-law. Yonder at Ekron so much history has been made that a
chapter would be required to record even a list of the events. Ekron was
one of the important cities which Joshua did not capture, perhaps
because he could not manage the solar system permanently. The whole
route fairly bristles with Bible names, and we are variously affected.
When we are shown the footprints of Joshua and Jacob and David and
Solomon we are full of interest. When we recall that this is also the
land of Phut and Cush and Buz and Jidlaph and Pildash we are moved
almost to tears.
For those last must have been worthy men. The Bible records nothing
against them, which is more than can be said of the others named. Take
Jacob, for instance. I have searched carefully, and I fail to find
anything to his credit beyond the fact that he procreated the Lord's
chosen people. I do find that he deceived his father, defrauded his
brother, outmanoeuvred his rascally father-in-law, and was a craven at
last before Esau, who had been rewarded for his manhood and forgiveness
and wrongs by being classed with the Ishmaelites, a name that carries
with it a reproach to this day.
Then there is Solomon. We need not go into the matter of his thousand
wives and pretty favorites. Long ago we condoned that trifling
irregularity as incident to the period--related in some occult but
perfectly reasonable way to great wisdom. No, the wives are all
right--also the near-wives, we have swallowed those, too; but then there
comes in his heresy, his idolatry--all those temples built to heathen
gods when he had become magnificent and mighty and full of years. There
was that altar which he set up to Moloch on the hill outside of
Jerusalem (called to this day the Hill of Offence), an altar for the
_sacrifice of children by fire_. Even Tiberius Cæsar and Nero did not go
as far as that. I'm sorry, and I shall be damned for it, no doubt, but
I think, on the whole, in the language of the Diplomat, I shall have to
"pass Solomon up." Never mind about the other two. Joshua's record is
good enough if one cares for a slayer of women and children, and David
was a poet--a supreme poet, a divine poet--which accounts for a good
deal. Still, he did not need to put the captured Moabites under saws and
harrows of iron and make them walk through brick-kilns, as described in
II. Samuel xii: 31, to be picturesque. Neither did he need to kill Uriah
the Hittite in order to take his wife away from him. Uriah would
probably have parted with her on easier terms.
It is sad enough to reflect that the Bible, in its good, old, relentless
way, found it necessary to record such things as these against our
otherwise Sunday-school heroes and models. Nothing of the sort is set
down against Buz and Cush and Phut and Pildash and Jidlaph. Very likely
they were about perfect. I wish I knew where they sleep.
The nearer one approaches Jerusalem the more barren and unproductive
becomes the country. There are olive-groves and there are cultivated
fields, but there are more of flinty hillsides and rocky steeps. The
habitations are no longer collected in villages, in the Syrian fashion,
but are scattered here and there, with wide sterile places between.
There would seem to be not enough good land in any one place to support
a village.
I suppose this is the very home of baksheesh. I know at every station
mendicants, crippled and blind--always blind--come swarming about,
holding up piteous hands and repeating endlessly the plaintive wail,
"Baksheesh! bak-sheesh!" One's heart grows sick and hard by turns. There
are moments when you long for the wealth of a Rockefeller to give all
these people a financial standing, and there are moments when you long
for a Gatling-gun to turn loose in their direction. We are only weak and
human. We may pity the hungry fly ever so much, but we destroy him.
I think, by-the-way, some of these beggars only cry baksheesh from
habit, and never expect to get anything. I think so, because here and
there groups of them stand along the railway between stations, and hold
out their hands, and voice the eternal refrain as we sweep by. It is
hardly likely that any one ever flings anything out of a car-window.
Pity becomes too sluggish in the East to get action as promptly as that.
It was toward evening when we ran into a rather modern little railway
station, and were told that we were "there." We got out of the train
then, and found ourselves in such a howling mob of humanity as I never
dreamed could gather in this drowsy land. We were about the last party
of the season, it seems, and the porters and beggars and cabmen and
general riffraff were going to make the most of us. We were seized and
dragged and torn and lifted--our dragoman could keep us together about
as well as one cowboy could handle a stampeded herd. I have no distinct
recollection of how we managed to reach the carriages, but the first
words I heard after regaining consciousness were:
"That pool down there is where Solomon was anointed king."
I began to take notice then. We were outside a range of lofty
battlemented walls, approaching a wide gate flanked by an imposing tower
that might belong to the Middle Ages. We looked down on the squalid pool
of Gihon, and I tried to visualize the scene of Solomon's coronation
there, which I confess I found difficult. Then we turned to the tower
and the entrance to the Holy City.
We were entering Jerusalem by the Jaffa gate, and the tower was the
Tower of David.
XXXI
THE HOLY CITY
Thirty-nine hundred years ago it was called merely Salem, and was ruled
over by Melchisedek, who feasted Abraham when he returned from punishing
the four kings who carried off his nephew, Lot. Five hundred years
later, when Joshua ravaged Canaan, the place was known as Jebusi, the
stronghold of the Jebusites, a citadel "enthroned on a mountain
fastness" which Joshua failed to conquer, in spite of the traditional
promise to Israel. Its old name had been not altogether dropped, and the
transition from Jebusi-salem to Jebu-salem and Jerusalem naturally
followed.
It was four hundred years after Joshua's time that David brought the
head of Goliath to Jerusalem, and fifteen years later, when he had
become king, he took the "stronghold of Zion," smote the difficult
Jebusite even to the blind and the lame, and named the place the City of
David.
"And David said on that day, whosoever getteth up to the
gutter and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the
blind, _that are_ hated of David's soul, he shall be chief
and captain."
That is not as cruel as it sounds. Those incapables had no doubt been
after David for baksheesh, and he felt just that way. I would like to
appoint a few chiefs and captains of Jerusalem on the same terms.
But I digress. The Bible calls it a "fort," and it was probably not much
more than that until David "built round about" and turned it into a
city, the fame of which extended to Hiram, King of Tyre, who sent
carpenters and masons and materials to David and built him a house.
After which "David took him some more concubines and wives out of
Jerusalem," brought up the Ark of the Covenant from Kirjath-jearim, and
prepared to live happy ever after. The Ark was, of course, very sacred,
and one Uzzah was struck dead on the way up from Kirjath for putting out
his hand to save it when it was about to roll into a ditch.
It was with David that the glory of Jerusalem as a city began. Then came
Solomon--David's second son by Uriah's wife--wise, masterful, and
merciless, and Jerusalem became one of the magnificent cities of the
world. Under Solomon the Hebrew race became more nearly a nation then
ever before or since. Solomon completed the Temple begun by David on
Mount Moriah; the Ark of the Covenant was duly installed. Judaism had
acquired headquarters--Israel, organization, and a capital.
The fame of the great philosopher-poet-king spread to the ends of the
earth. The mighty from many lands came to hear his wisdom and to gaze
upon the magnificence of his court. The Queen of Sheba drifted in from
her far sunlit kingdom with offerings of gold, spices, and precious
stones. And "she communed with him of all that was in her heart." That
was more than a thousand years before Christ. Greece had no history
then. Rome had not been even considered. Culture and splendor were at
high-tide in the Far East. It was the golden age of Jerusalem.
The full tide must ebb, and the waning in Jerusalem began early.
Solomon's reign was a failure at the end. Degenerating into a sensualist
and an idolater, his enemies prevailed against him. The Lord "stirred up
an adversary" in Hadad the Edomite, who had an old grudge. Also others,
and trouble followed. The nation was divided. Revolt, civil wars, and
abounding iniquities dragged the people down. That which would come to
Rome a thousand years later came now on a smaller scale to Israel.
Egyptian and Arabian ravaged it by turns, and the Assyrian came down
numerously. It became the habit of adjoining nations to go over and
plunder and destroy Jerusalem.
Four hundred years after Solomon, Josiah undertook to rehabilitate the
nation and restore its ancient faith. He pulled down the heathen altars
which Solomon had constructed, "that no man might make his son or
daughter pass through the fire to Moloch"; he drove out and destroyed
the iniquitous priests; he burned the high places of pollution and
stamped the powder in the dust.
It was too late. Josiah was presently slain in a battle with the
Egyptians, and his son dropped back into the evil practices of his
fathers. Nebuchadnezzar came then, and in one raid after another utterly
destroyed Jerusalem, including the Temple and the Ark, and carried the
inhabitants, to the last man, into a captivity which lasted seventy
years. Then Nehemiah was allowed to return with a large following and
rebuild the city. But its prosperity was never permanent. The Jews were
never a governing nation. Discontented and factional, they invited
conquest. Alexander came, and, later, Rome. Herod the Great renewed and
beautified the city, and to court favor with the Jews rebuilt the Temple
on a splendid scale. This was Jerusalem in its final glory. Seventy
years later the Jews rebelled, and Titus destroyed the city so
completely that it is said to have remained a barren waste without a
single inhabitant for fifty years.
To-day the city is divided into "quarters"--Christian, Jewish,
Mohammedan, and Armenian. All worships are permitted, and the sacred
relics--most of them--of whatever faith, are accessible to all. Such in
scanty outline is the story of the Holy City. It has been besieged and
burned and pulled down no less than sixteen times--totally destroyed and
rebuilt at least eight times, and the very topography of its site has
been changed by the accumulation of rubbish. Hillsides have disappeared.
Where once were hollows are now mere depressions or flats. Most of the
streets that Jesus and the prophets trod lie from thirty to a hundred
feet below the present surface, and bear little relation even in
direction to those of the present day. Yet certain sites and landmarks
have been identified, while others are interesting for later reasons.
Hence, both to sceptic and believer, Jerusalem is still a shrine.
XXXII
THE HOLY SEPULCHRE
We lost no time. Though it was twilight when we reached our hotel, we
set out at once to visit the spot which for centuries was the most
sacred in all Christendom--that holiest of holies which during two
hundred years summoned to its rescue tide after tide of knightly
crusaders, depleted the chivalry and changed the map of Europe--the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
This, at least, would be genuine in so far as it was the spot toward
which the flower of knighthood marched--Godfrey of Bouillon, Richard of
the Lion Heart, Ivanhoe, and all the rest--under the banner of the
Cross, with the cry "God wills it" on their lips. We are eager to see
that precious landmark.
It was only a little way--nothing is far in Jerusalem--and we walked. We
left the narrow street in front of the hotel and entered some still
narrower ones where there were tiny booths of the Oriental kind, and
flickering lights, and curious, bent figures, and donkeys; also steps
that we went up or down, generally down, which seemed strange when we
were going to Calvary, because we had always thought Calvary a hill.
It was impressive, though. We were in Jerusalem, and if these were not
the very streets that Jesus trod, surely they were not unlike them, for
the people have not changed, nor their habits, nor their
architecture--at least, not greatly--nor their needs. Whatever was their
cry for baksheesh then, He must often have heard it, and their blind
eyes and their withered limbs were such as He once paused to heal.
I think we continued to descend gradually to the very door of the
church. It did not seem quite like the entrance to a church, and, in
reality, it is not altogether that; it is more a repository, a
collection of sacred relics, a museum of scriptural history.
We paused a little outside while the guide--his name was something that
meant St. George--told us briefly the story. Constantine's mother, the
Empress Helena, he said, through a dream had located the site of the
crucifixion and burial of the Saviour, whereupon Constantine, in 335
A.D., had erected some buildings to mark the place. The Persians
destroyed these buildings by-and-by, but they were rebuilt. Then the
Moslems set fire to the place; but again some chapels were set up, and
these the conquering crusaders enclosed under one great roof. This was
about the beginning of the twelfth century, and portions of the
buildings still remain, though as late as 1808 there came a great fire
which necessitated a general rebuilding, with several enlargements
since, as the relics to be surrounded have increased.
We went inside then. The place is dimly lit--it is always lit, I
believe, for it can never be very light in there--and everywhere there
seemed to be flitting processions of tapers, and of chanting,
dark-robed priests. Just beyond the entrance we came to the first great
relic--the Stone of Unction--the slab upon which the body of Christ was
laid when it was taken down from the Cross. It is red, or looked red in
that light, like a piece of Tennessee marble, and, though it is not
smoothly cut, it is polished with the kisses of devout pilgrims who come
far to pay this tribute, and to measure it, that their winding-sheets
may be made the same size. Above it hang a number of lamps and
candelabra, and with the worshippers kneeling and kissing and measuring,
the spectacle was sufficiently impressive. Then, as we were about to go,
our guide remembered that this was not the true Stone of Unction, but
one like it, the real stone having been buried somewhere beneath it. The
pilgrims did not know the difference, he said, and they used up a stone
after a while, kissing and measuring it so much. Near to the stone is
the Station of Mary, where she stood while the body of Jesus was being
anointed, or perhaps where she stood watching the tomb--it is not
certain which. At all events, it has been revealed by a vision that she
stood there, and the place is marked and enclosed with a railing.
We followed our guide deeper into the twinkling darkness, where the
chanting processions were flickering to and fro, and presently stood
directly beneath a dome, facing an ornate marble or alabaster structure,
flanked and surrounded by elaborately wrought lamps and
candlesticks--the Holy Sepulchre itself.
But I had to be told. I should never have guessed this to be the shrine
of shrines, the receptacle of the gentle Nazarene who taught the
doctrine of humility to mankind. And it is the same within. If a
rock-hewn tomb is there, it is overlaid now with costly marbles;
polished with kisses; bedewed with tears.
We did not remain in the tomb long, Laura and I. Perhaps they would not
have let us; but, in any case, we did not wish to linger. At Damascus,
Laura had gone so far as to criticise the house of Judas, because it had
been whitewashed since St. Paul lodged there. So it was not likely that
a tomb which was not a tomb, but merely a fancy marble memorial, would
inspire much enthusiasm. To us it contained no suggestion of the gentle
Prince of Peace.
But at the entrance of the Sepulchre, facing us as we came out, there
was a genuine thing. It was a woman kneeling, a peasant woman--of
Russia, I suppose, from her dress. And she was not looking at us at all,
but beyond us, through us, into that little glowing interior which to
her was shining with the very light of the Lamb. I have never seen
another face with an expression like that. It was fairly luminous with
rapt adoration. Yes, she at least was genuine--an absolute embodiment of
the worship that had led her along footsore and weary miles to kneel at
last at the shrine of her faith.
I am not going to weary the reader with detailed description of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is a vast place, and contains most of
the sacred relics and many of the sacred sites that have been identified
since the zealous Queen Helena set the fashion of seeing visions and
dreaming dreams. We made the tour of a number of the chapels of
different religious denominations. They are not on good terms with one
another, by-the-way, and require Mohammedan guards to keep them from
fighting around the very Sepulchre itself. Then we descended some stairs
to the Chapel of St. Helena, where there is an altar to the penitent
thief, and another to Queen Helena, though I did not learn that she ever
repented, or even reformed.
They showed us where the Queen sat when, pursuing one of her visions,
they were digging for the true Cross and found all three of them; and
they told us how they identified the holy one by sending all three to
the bedside of a noble lady who lay at the point of death. The first
shown her made her a maniac; the second threw her into spasms; the third
cured her instantly. The commemoration of this event is called in the
calendar "The Invention of the Cross," which seems to convey the idea. I
think it was in the Chapel of the Finding of the Cross that I bought a
wax candle, and a prayer went with it, though whether it was for my soul
or Queen Helena's I am not certain. It does not matter. I am willing
Helena should have it, if she needs it, and I think she does.
We went on wandering around, and by-and-by we came to a chapel where the
Crown of Thorns was made, and presently to a short column marking the
Centre of the Earth, the spot from which the dust was taken that was
used in making Adam. You see, it is necessary to double up on some of
the landmarks or enlarge the church again.
You can climb a flight of stairs in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and
be told that you are on Calvary, and you are allowed to put your hand
through the floor into the sockets where the crosses stood. We did not
do it, however. We climbed the stairs, but a collection of priests were
holding some kind of ceremony with candles and chanting, and we were not
sufficiently impressed to wait.
We did pause, as we came away, to note in the vestibule of the Holy
Sepulchre the two holes through which on Easter Eve the Holy Fire is
distributed to Christian pilgrims who assemble from all parts of the
world. On this occasion the Fire Bishop enters the Sepulchre, and fire
from heaven lights the candles on the altar. Then the Bishop, who is all
alone in the Sepulchre, passes the Holy Fire out through these holes, in
the form of a bundle of burning tapers, to priests. The pilgrims with
unlighted tapers then rush and jam and scramble toward these dispensers
of the sacred flame and pay any price demanded to have their candles
speedily lighted. Usually a riot takes place, and the Mohammedan guards
are required to prevent bloodshed.
In 1834 there occurred a riot over the Holy Fire which piled the dead
five feet deep around the Sepulchre. Four or five hundred were killed,
and corpses lay thick even on the Stone of Unction. It seems a useless
sacrifice, when one thinks of it, but then the blood of five hundred is
only a drop as compared with what the centuries have contributed to this
revered shrine.
I want to be quite serious for a moment about the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre--here in Jerusalem--now, while I am in the spirit of the
thing.
It is the biggest humbug in all Christendom. Of the scores of sites and
relics enclosed within its walls, it is unlikely that a single one is
genuine. With all respect to Queen Helena's talent for dreams, her
knowledge of Scripture must have been sparing, or she would have located
Calvary outside the walls of Jerusalem. This place is in the heart of
the city--was always in the heart of the city, in spite of all
gerrymandering to prove it otherwise; and it was more of a flat or a
hollow in the time of Christ than it is now.
As for the other traditions and trumpery gathered in this ecclesiastical
side-show, they are unworthy of critical attention. Probably not one in
a million of the readers of _Innocents Abroad_ but thought the finding
of the Grave of Adam one of Mark Twain's jokes. Not at all; it is
located here under Calvary, and the place from which came Adam's dust
(the Centre of the World) is close by. Then there is that Stone of
Unction, which every one of intelligence knows to be a fraud, and there
is the stone which the angel rolled away, and Adam's skull--they have
that, too.
It would seem that the human animal had exhausted his simian inheritance
then. But no, he can never exhaust that--it is his one limitless gift.
He has gone right on adding to his heap of bones and crockery, enlarging
the museum from time to time to make room. And he will add more. The
future is long, and it is only a question of time and faith when he will
bring over the tombs of the patriarchs from Hebron, the Grotto of the
Nativity from Bethlehem, the House of Judas from Damascus, and the
Street that was called Straight. Oh, he can do it! A creature who can
locate the Holy Sepulchre, the Grave of Adam, the Centre of the World,
Mount Calvary, and fifty other historical sites all within the radius of
a few feet, and find enough of his own kind to accept them, can do
anything. As an insult to human intelligence and genuine Christian
faith, I suppose this institution stands alone.
Do the priests themselves, the beneficiaries, believe it? Perhaps--at
least some of them do. There is nothing so dense, so sodden, so
impenetrable as priestly superstition. Not a ray of reason can enter a
mind darkened for a lifetime by ceremonials in which candles, chantings,
swinging censers, and prostrations are regarded as worship. Could you
produce any evidence that would appeal to the minds of those figures
that march and countermarch, and carry tapers and chant among
these frauds and fripperies of their faith? Hardly--they would not
care for evidence. What they want is more superstition; more for
themselves--more, always more, for their followers; the more
superstition, the more power, the more baksheesh. They have no use for
facts and testimony. They can create both to fit the need. Let any
corner of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre become vacant, and
immediately some prelate will dream that it is the true place where
Balaam's Ass saw the angel with the flaming sword, and they will
promptly consecrate the spot; then they will excavate and find the sword
and a footprint of the angel, also a piece of the Ass, and they will
make a saint of Balaam, and very likely of the Ass, and they will set
up an altar and get a sign-painter to make a picture of the vision, and
the people will contribute prayers and piastres, and yell baksheesh at
every traveller to keep the high priests of Balaam in food and funds.
Strange that we who regard the Mohammedan pilgrim with disdain or
compassion, on his journey to Mecca and Medina, excuse or condone the
existence of a shrine like this. The Prophet's birthplace and tomb are
at least authentic, and it was his desire that his followers should
visit them. They are acknowledging a fact. These people are supporting a
fraud.
And then the pity of it! The remembering that it was for this trumpery
thing those mighty crusades swept like a flame across Europe, robbed her
of her chivalry, and desolated a million homes; for this that gallant
knights put on their armor and rode away under the banner of the Cross,
shouting, "God wills it!" For this that men have drenched more than one
nation with blood and changed the map and history of the world!
True, one may not altogether regret the crusades. They made romance and
the high achievement to be celebrated in picture and in song. It was
fine, indeed, to ride away in shining mail in a vast army in which all
were officers--splendid knights battling for glory in a cause. Aching
hearts and forsaken homes were plentiful behind, yet even they reflected
the glamour of romance, the fervor of a faith.
But there was one crusade in which there was neither romance nor
glory--nothing except heartbreak and anguish, and the long torture of
the years.
That was the Children's Crusade--the crusade in which fanaticism spelled
its last word--when a countless number of children of all ages, as young
as seven some of them, flocked to the standard of a boy of seventeen and
wandered off down through Europe, to faint and fall and die by hundreds
and by thousands from hunger and heat and thirst--moaning and grieving
unheeded among the stones and bushes--to reach the Mediterranean at
last, a scattered remnant, there to be taken on board some vessels and
sold into slavery in Algiers!
There was no glory, no triumph however imaginary, in that crusade; no
romance, no glamour after the first day's march. It was only weariness
and torture after that--only wretchedness and the fevered cry for the
comfort of a mother's arm. And all for the sake of this dime-museum of
faith, this huge ecclesiastical joke. The pity of it, indeed! Here
to-night, a stone's-throw away, my heart bleeds for those little weary
feet struggling on and on, for those little fainting souls, moaning,
grieving, trying to keep up, lying down at last to coax the blessed
release of death, and I would like to stand here on the housetops of
Jerusalem and cry out against this insult to the memory of One who, when
He said, "Suffer little children to come unto me," could hardly have
foreseen that His words would bear such bitter fruit.
I do not do it, however. I want to live to get home and print this
thing, and have it graven on my tomb.
XXXIII
TWO HOLY MOUNTAINS
We set out early next morning for Mount Moriah, the site of Solomon's
temple and those that followed it.
It was really David's temple in the beginning, undertaken to avert a
pestilence which he had selected from three punishments offered by the
Lord because he, David, had presumed to number his people. A Hebrew
census was a sin in those days, it would seem, and seventy thousand of
the enrolled had already died when David saw an angel with a drawn
sword--the usual armament of an angel--standing by the threshing-floor
of Oman the Jebusite. Through Gad, his Soothsayer, David was commanded
to set up an altar on that spot, to avert further calamity. Negotiations
with Oman were at once begun, to the end that Oman parted with the site
for "six hundred shekels of gold, by weight"; the threshing-floor was
quickly replaced by an altar, and here, on the top of Mount Moriah--on
the great bowlder reputed to have been the sacrificial stone of
Melchizedek--and of Abraham, who was said to have proffered Isaac
here--King David made offering to the Lord, and was answered by fire
from heaven on the newly erected altar. And the angel "put up his sword
again into the sheath thereof."
From that day the bowlder on the top of Mount Moriah became the place of
sacrifice--the great central shrine of the Jewish faith. David decided
to build a temple there, and prepared for it abundantly, as became his
high purpose. But because David had shed much blood, the Lord interfered
and commanded him to turn the enterprise over to Solomon, "a man of
rest." "He shall build an house for my name; and he shall be my son, and
I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom
over Israel forever."
In the light of thoughtful Bible reading, it is not easy to see that
Solomon was much of an improvement over David, in the long-run, and one
cannot but notice the fact that the promise to establish his throne over
Israel forever was not long maintained. But perhaps the Lord did not
foresee how Solomon was going to turn out; besides, forever is a long
time, and the Kingdom of Solomon may still prevail.
Solomon completed the temple in a manner that made it celebrated, even
to this day. The "oracle, or holy room, which held the Ark of the
Covenant, was overlaid within with pure gold," and the rest of the
temple was in keeping with this dazzling chamber.
The temple was often pillaged during the troublous times that followed
Solomon's reign, but it managed to stand till Nebuchadnezzar's conquest,
four centuries later. It was twice rebuilt, the last time by Herod, on a
scale of surpassing splendor. It was Herod's temple that Christ knew,
and the work of beautifying and adding to it was going on during his
entire lifetime. It was finished in 65 A.D., and five years later it
went down in the general destruction, though Titus himself tried to
preserve it.
Most of what exists to-day are the remains of Herod's temple. The vast
court, or temple area, occupies about one-sixth of all Jerusalem, and of
the genuineness of this site there is no question. In the centre of it,
where once the house of David and Solomon stood, stands the Dome of the
Rock--also called the Mosque of Omar, though it is not really a mosque,
and was not built by Omar. It is, in fact, a marvellous jewelled
casket--the most beautiful piece of architecture in the world, it has
been called--built for no other purpose than to hold the old sacrificial
stone of Melchizedek and Abraham--a landmark revered alike by Moslem,
Christian, and Jew.
One is bound to feel impressed in the presence of that old bowlder,
seamed and scarred by ages of sun and tempest; hacked for this purpose
and that; gray with antiquity--the very corner-stone of three religions,
upholding the traditions and the faith of four thousand years. There is
nothing sham or tawdry about that. The building is splendid enough, but
it is artistically beautiful, and the old rock itself--the genuine rock
of ages--is as bare and rugged as when Isaac lay upon it bound, and the
"chosen people" narrowly missed non-existence.
There is a railing around it; but you can look over or through as long
as you like, and if one is of a reflective temperament he can look a
long time. Among other things he will notice a number of small square
holes, cut long ago to receive the ends of slender supports that upheld
a royal canopy or screen, and he will see the conduits cut to carry off
the blood of the sacrifice. To his mental vision these things will
conjure pictures--a panorama of rites and ceremonials--of altar and
incense, with all the splendid costume and blazonry of the Judean king.
And, after these, sacrifices of another sort--the cry of battle and the
clash of arms across this hoary relic, its conduits filled with a
crimson tide that flowed without regard to ritual or priest.
Other pictures follow: the feast of the Passover, when Jerusalem was
crowded with strangers, when the great outer court of the temple was
filled with booths and pens of the sellers who offered sheep, goats,
cattle, and even doves for the sacrifice; when the temple itself was
crowded with throngs of eager worshippers who brought their sacrifices,
with tithes to the priests, and were made clean.
Amid one such throng there is a boy of twelve years, who with His
parents has come up to Jerusalem "after the custom of the feast." We
think of them as quiet, simple people, those three from Nazareth,
jostled by the crowds a good deal, and looking rather wonderingly on the
curious sights of that great yearly event. They would work their way
into the temple, by-and-by, and they would come here to the Rock, and
perhaps the sad, deep-seeing eyes of that boy of twelve would look down
the years to a day when in this same city it would be His blood that
would flow at the hands of men.
I hope He did not see that far. But we know that light for Him lay
somewhat on the path ahead, for when the feast was over, and His parents
had set out for Nazareth, He lingered to mingle with the learned men,
and He said to His parents when they came for Him, "Wist ye not that I
must be about my father's business?" Among all those who thronged about
this stone for a thousand years, somehow the gentle presence of that boy
of twelve alone remains, unvanishing and clear.
And what a mass of legends have heaped themselves upon this old
landmark!--a groundwork of Jewish tradition--a layer of Christian
imagery--an ever-thickening crust of Moslem whim and fantasy. A few of
them are perhaps worth repeating. The Talmud, for instance, is authority
for the belief that the Rock covers the mouth of an abyss wherein the
waters of the Flood may be heard roaring. Another belief of the Jews
held it as the centre and one of the foundations of the world. Of Jesus
it is said that He discovered upon the Rock the great and unspeakable
name of God (Shem), and was thereby enabled to work his miracles.
But the Moslem soars into fairyland when he comes in the neighborhood of
this ancient relic. To him the Rock hangs suspended in mid-air, and
would have followed Mohammed to heaven if the Angel Gabriel had not held
fast to it. We saw the prints of Gabriel's fingers, which were about the
size and formation of a two-inch auger. Another Moslem fancy is that the
rock rests on a palm watered by a river of Paradise.
In the hollow beneath the Rock (probably an artificial grotto) there is
believed to be a well, the Well of Souls, where spirits of the deceased
assemble twice a week to pray. They regard it as also the mouth of
hell, which I don't think can be true, or the souls would not come
there--not if they could help it--not as often as twice a week, I mean.
A print of Mohammed's head is also shown in the roof of the grotto, and
I believe in that, because, being a tall man, when I raised up suddenly
I made another just like it. But I am descending into trivialities, and
the Rock is not trivial by any means. It has been there since the
beginning, and it is likely to remain there until all religions are
forgotten, and the world is dead, and all the stars are dark.
* * * * *
[Illustration: JERUSALEM--ITS BUBBLE-ROOFED HOUSES AND DOMES, ITS
CYPRESS AND OLIVE TREES]
In front of the Dome of the Rock the sun was bright, and looking across
the approach one gets a characteristic view of Jerusalem--its
bubble-roofed houses and domes, its cypress and olive trees. I made a
photograph of Laura, age fourteen, and a friend of hers, against that
background, but they would have looked more "in the picture" in Syrian
dress. I am not sure, however; some of our party have had themselves
photographed in Syrian dress, which seemed to belong to most of them
about as much as a baseball uniform might belong to a Bedouin--or a
camel.
We crossed over to the ancient mosque El-Aksa, also within the temple
area, but it was only mildly interesting after the Dome of the Rock.
Still, there were things worth noting. There were the two pillars, for
instance, which stand so close together that only slender people could
squeeze between them. Yet in an earlier time every pilgrim had to try,
and those who succeeded were certain of Paradise. This made it
humiliating for the others, and the impulse to train down for the test
became so prevalent that stanchions were placed between the pillars a
few years ago. We could only estimate our chances and give ourselves the
benefit of the doubt.
Then there is the Well of the Leaf, which has a pretty story. It is a
cistern under the mosque, and the water is very clear. Once, during the
caliphate of Omar, a sheik came to this well for water, and his bucket
slipped from his hands. He went down after it, and came to a mysterious
door which, when he opened it, led into a beautiful garden. Enchanted,
he lingered there and finally plucked a leaf to bring back as a token of
what he had seen. The leaf never withered, and so a prophecy of
Mohammed's that one of his followers should enter Paradise alive had
been fulfilled.
I said I would go down and hunt for the door. But they said, "No"--that
a good many had tried it without success. The cistern used to collect
every year the pilgrims who went down to find that door; no one was
permitted to try, now.
In one of the windows of the old mosque we saw a curious sight: a very
aged and very black, withered man--Bedouin, I should say--reclining face
down in the wide sill, poring over an ancient parchment book, patiently
transcribing from it cabalistic passages on a black, charred board with
a sharpened stick. The guide said he was a magician from somewhere in
the dim interior; certainly he looked it.
From somewhere--it was probably from an opening in the wall near the
Golden Gate--we looked eastward across the valley of Kedron toward the
fair hillsides, which presently we were to visit.
Immediately we set out for the Mount of Olives. We drove, and perhaps no
party ever ascended that sacred hill on a fairer morning. The air was
still, and there was a quiet Sunday feeling in the sunshine. In the
distance there was a filmy, dreamy haze that gave just the touch of
ideality to the picture.
The road that leads up Olivet is bordered by traditional landmarks, but
we could not stop for them. It was enough to be on the road itself,
following the dusty way the Son of Man and His disciples once knew so
well. For this hill of fair olive-groves, overlooking Jerusalem, was
their favorite resort, and it was their habit to come here to look down
in contemplation on the holy city. It was here that the Master felt the
shadow of coming events: the destruction of the city; the persecution
and triumph of His followers; His own approaching tragedy. It was here
that He gave them the parable of the Virgins, and of the Talents, and it
was here that He came often at evening for rest and prayer, after the
buffet and labor of the day. This is the road His feet so often trod--a
well-kept road, with the olive-groves, now as then, sloping away on
either side.
Here and there we turned to look down on Jerusalem, lying there bathed
in the sunlit haze--a toy city, it seemed, with its little round-topped
houses, its domes and minarets, its battlemented walls. How very small
it was, indeed! Why, one could run its entire circuit without losing
breath. It is, in fact, little more than half a mile across in any
direction, and from a distance it becomes an exquisite jewel set amid
barren hills.
I am afraid I did not properly enjoy the summit of the Mount of
Olives--its landmarks, I mean. The Russian and Greek and Latin churches
have spoiled it with offensive architecture, and they have located and
labelled exact sites in a way that destroys the reality of the events.
They have framed in the precise spot where Jesus stood at the time of
His ascension. It is a mistake to leave it there. It should be
transferred to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
But the view eastward, looking down on the Jordan and the Dead Sea, with
the mountains of Moab lying beyond, they cannot spoil or change. Down
there on that spot, thirty-five hundred years ago, the chosen people
camped and prepared for the ravage and conquest of this valley, this
mountain, and the fair lands beyond, even to Mount Hermon and the
westward sea. Over there, on "Nebo's lonely mountain," Moses looked down
upon this land of vine and olive which he was never to enter, and being
weary with the harassings of his stiff-necked people, lay down by the
wayside and left them to work out their own turbulent future.
"And the angels of God upturned the sod
And laid the dead man there."
I have always loved those lines, and it was worth the voyage to remember
them here, looking down from the Mount of Olives toward the spot where
lies that unknown grave.
XXXIV
THE LITTLE TOWN OF THE MANGER
It was afternoon when we drove to Bethlehem--a pleasant drive, though
dusty withal. The road lies between grain-fields--fields where Ruth may
have gleaned, and where the Son of Man may have stopped to gather corn.
It gives one a curious feeling to remember that these fields are the
same, and that for them through all the centuries seed-time and harvest
have never failed. Nor have they changed--the walls, the laborers, the
methods, the crops belong to any period that this country has known.
The convent of Elijah was pointed out to us, but it did not matter.
Elijah never saw it--never heard of it. It is different, however, with a
stone across the way from the entrance. Elijah went to sleep on that
stone, and slept so heavily that he left his imprint there, which
remains to this day. We viewed that stone with interest; then we took
most of it and went on.
In a little while we came to the tomb of Rachel. The small, mosque-like
building that covers it is not very old, but the site is probably as
well authenticated as any of that period. Jacob was on his way from
Padan when she died, and he buried her by the roadside "when there was
but a little way to come into Ephrath" (which is Bethlehem). He marked
the grave with a pillar which the generations would not fail to point
out, one to another, as the last resting-place of this mother in Israel
who died that Benjamin might have life.
Poor Rachel! Supplanted in her husband's love; denied long the natural
heritage of woman; paying the supreme price at last, only to be left
here by the wayside alone, outside the family tomb. All the others are
gathered at Hebron in the Field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought from
the children of Heth for Sarah's burial-place. Jacob, at the very last,
made his sons swear that they would bury him at Hebron with the others.
He remembered Rachel in her lonely grave, and spoke of her there, but
did not ask that he be taken to lie by her side, or that she be laid
with the others. He died as he had lived--self-seeking, unsympathetic--a
commonplace old man.
Just outside of Bethlehem we were welcomed by a crowd of little
baksheesh girls, of a better look and distinctly of a better way than
the Jerusalem type. They ran along with the carriage and began a chant
which, behold, was German, at least Germanesque:
"Oh, du Fröliche!
Oh, du Heilege!
Baksheesh! Baksheesh!"
I suppose "Oh, thou happy one; Oh, thou holy one," would be about the
translation, with the wailing refrain at the end. I think we gave them
something. I hope so; they are after us always, and we either give them
or we don't, without much discrimination. You can't discriminate. They
are all wretched and miserably needy. You give to get rid of them, or
when pity clutches a little fiercer than usual at your heart.
[Illustration: A CAMEL TRAIN LED THE WAY THROUGH THE GATES]
So we were at the gates of Bethlehem--the little town whose name is
familiar at the firesides of more than half the world--a name that
always brings with it a feeling of bright stars and dim fields:
"Where shepherds watched their flocks by night
All seated on the ground,"
and of angel voices singing peace and goodwill. A camel-train led the
way through the gates.
I suppose the city itself is not unlike Jerusalem in its general
character, only somewhat cleaner, and less extensive. We went
immediately to the place of the nativity, but before we could get to it
we were seized and dragged and almost compelled to buy some of the
mother-of-pearl beads and fancy things that are made just across the
way. We escaped into the Church of the Nativity at last--an old, old
church, desolate and neglected in its aspect, though sufficiently
occupied with chanting and droning and candle-bearing acolytes. Yet it
is better--oh, much better--than the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and
it has a legitimate excuse. If Christ was born in a Bethlehem manger, as
the gospel records, it is probable that He was born here. There are many
reasons for believing that the grotto below this church was used as the
inn stables in that time, and that the brief life which has laid its
tender loveliness on so many lives had its beginning here.
We descended to the grotto and stood on the spot that is said to have
heard His first infant cry. There is a silver star in the floor polished
with kisses, and there are a lot of ornate lamps and other paltry things
hanging about. It does not matter, I suppose, but I wish these
professional religionists did not find such things necessary to
stimulate their faith. Still one could shut his eyes and realize, or try
to realize that he was standing in the place where the Light that has
illumined a world struck its first feeble spark; where the impulse that
for nineteen hundred years has swept across the nations in tides of war
and peace first trembled into life--a wave of love in a mother's heart.
As I say, the rest did not matter.
While the others were looking into the shops across the way, I wandered
about the streets a little, the side streets, which in character cannot
have changed much in nineteen hundred years. The people are poor, and
there are many idlers. There are beggars, too; some of them very
wretched--and leprous, I think. It seems a pity, here in the birthplace
of Him who healed with a word.
We bought some of the Bethlehem beads. They will sell you a string a
yard long for a franc, and they cut each bead separately from
mother-of-pearl with the most primitive tools, and they shape it and
polish it and bore a hole in it, all by hand, and link it on a gimp
wire. In America you could not get a single bead made in that way for
less than double what they ask for a whole string. But, as I have said,
they are very poor here--as poor as when they bestowed a Saviour on
mankind.
XXXV
THE SORROW OF THE CHOSEN--THE WAY OF THE CROSS
We had left Bethlehem and were back in Jerusalem, presently, on our way
to the Jews' Wailing-place. I did not believe in it before I went. I was
afraid it might be a sort of show-place, prepared for the occasion. I
have changed my mind now. If there is one thing in Jerusalem absolutely
genuine and directly linked with its ancient glories, it is the Jews'
Wailing-place.
You approach it through a narrow lane--a sickening gantlet of misery.
Near the entrance wretched crones, with the distaff and spindle of the
Fates, sat in the dust, spinning what might have been the thread of
sorrow. Along the way the beggars; not the ordinary vociferous beggars
of Constantinople, of Smyrna, of Ephesus, even of Jaffa, but beggars
such as the holy city alone can duplicate. Men and women who are only
the veriest shreds of humanity, crouched in the dirt, reeking with filth
and rags and vermin and sores, staring with blind and festering eyes,
mumbling, moaning, and wailing out their eternal cry of baksheesh,
often--if a woman--clutching some ghastly infant to a bare, scrawny
breast. There was no loud demand for alms; it was only a muted chorus of
pleading, the voice with which misery spells its last word. Some made no
sound, nor gesture, even. They saw nothing, heard nothing, knew
nothing--they were no longer alive--they had only not ceased to breathe
and suffer. The spectacle made us gasp and want to cry out with the very
horror of it.
We were through the fearful gantlet at last, and went directly into the
Jews' Wailing-place. There behold the most lamentable passage in the
most tragic epic of all history--the frayed remnant of a once mighty
race mourning for its fall. A few hours before, and but a few rods away,
we had looked upon the evidences of its former greatness, its splendor
and its glory--the place of King Solomon's temple when it sat as on the
pinnacle of the world. Indeed, we were looking at it now, for this wall
before which they bow in anguish is a portion of the mighty architecture
for which they mourn. In the general destruction of Titus this imposing
fragment remained, and to-day they bow before it and utter their sorrow
in the most doleful grieving that ever fell on human ear. Along the wall
they stand or kneel, and on rows of benches behind they gather thickly,
reading from faded and tattered Hebrew Scriptures the "Lamentations," or
chanting in chorus the saddest dirge the world has ever known.
"Because of the palace which is deserted--
We sit alone and weep.
Because of the temple which is destroyed,
Because of the walls which are broken down,
Because of our greatness which has departed,
Because of the precious stones of the temple ground to powder,
Because of our priests who have erred and gone astray,
Because of our kings who have contemned God--
We sit alone and weep!"
[Illustration: THE DEPTH OF THEIR FALL]
It is no mere ceremony--no mock sorrow; it is the mingled wail of a
fallen people. These Jews know as no others of their race can realize
the depth of their fall, and they gather here to give it voice--a tonal
and visual embodiment of despair. Even I, who am not of that race, felt
all at once the deadly clutch of that vast grieving, and knew something
of what a young Hebrew, a member of our party, felt when he turned sick
and hurried from the spot.
What other race has maintained an integrity of sorrow? What, for
instance, does the blood of Imperial Rome care for its departed
grandeur? It does not even recognize itself. What other nation has ever
maintained racial integrity of any kind? But, then, these were a _chosen
people_!
Chosen, why? Because they were a noble people? Hardly. Their own
chronicles record them as a murmuring, rebellious, unstable race.
Following the history of the chosen people from Jacob to Joshua, one is
in a constant state of wonder at the divine selection. We may admit that
God loved them, but we seek in vain for an excuse. In His last talk with
Moses He declared that they would forsake Him, and that He in turn would
forsake _them_ and hide His face because of the evils they should do.
Moses, who knew them even better, distrusted them even more. "For I know
that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves," he said, almost
with his latest breath. He told them that curses would befall them, and
gave them a few sample curses, any one of which would lift the bark off
of a tree. No wonder he was willing to lie down in Mount Nebo and be at
peace.
Yet they _are_ a chosen people--a people apart--a race that remains a
race, and does not perish. Chosen for what? To make a bitter example of
what a race can do when it remains a race--how high it can rise and how
low may become its estate of misery? Remember, I am not considering the
Jew as an individual; he is often noble as an individual; and it was a
Jew who brought light into the world. I am considering a race--a race no
worse than any other, and no better, but a _chosen_ race; a race that
without a ruler, without a nation, without a government--that outcast
and despised of many nations has yet remained a unit through three
thousand years. I am maintaining that only a chosen people could do
that, and, without being able even to surmise the purpose, it is my
humble opinion that the ages will show that purpose to have been good.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE WAY OF THE CROSS
(HOLY WEEK)]
I have already inferred that the landmarks and localities of Jerusalem
may be viewed with interest, but not too seriously. They have all
associations, but most of them not the particular and sacred
associations with which they are supposed to be identified. The majority
of them were not located until Christ had been dead for a thousand
years, and the means of locating them does not invite conviction.
Inspiration located most of them, dreams the rest. That is to say,
imagination. Whenever a priest or a dignitary wanted to distinguish
himself he discovered something. He first made up his mind what he
would like to discover, and then had an inspiration or a dream, and the
thing was done. The eight Stations of the Cross, for instance, were
never mentioned earlier than the twelfth century, and the Via Dolorosa,
the Way of the Cross, was not so known until the fourteenth. Still, it
must have been along some such street that the Man of Sorrow passed
between the Garden and the Cross.
We visited the Garden first. It was now late in the afternoon, and the
sunlight had become tender and still and dream-like, and as we passed
the traditional places--the house of Pilate, under the Ecce Homo arch,
and the others, we had the feeling that it might have been on an evening
like this that the Son of Man left the city, and with His disciples went
down to Gethsemane to pray.
We were a very small party now--there were only four of us and the
guide, for the others had become tired and were willing to let other
things go. But if we were tired, we did not know it, and I shall always
be glad of that fact.
At St. Stephen's gate (the tradition is that he was stoned there) we
stopped to look down on Gethsemane. Perhaps it is not the real site, and
perhaps the curious gilt-turreted church is not beautiful, but set there
on the hillside amid the cypresses and venerable olive-trees, all aglow
and agleam with the sunset, with the shadow of the dome of Omar creeping
down upon it, there was about it a beauty of unreality that was
positively supernatural. I was almost tempted not to go down there for
fear of spoiling the illusion.
We went, however, and the gnarled olive-trees, some of which are said to
have been there at the time of Christ--and look it--were worth while.
The garden as a whole, however, was less interesting than from above,
and it was only the feeling that somewhere near here the Man who would
die on Calvary asked that the cup of sorrow might pass from Him which
made us linger.
It was verging on twilight when we climbed to the city, and the others
were for going to the hotel. But there was one more place I wanted to
see. That was the hill outside of Jerusalem which the guide-books rather
charily mention as "Gordon's Calvary," because General Gordon once
visited it and accepted it as the true place of the Crucifixion. I knew
that other thoughtful men had accepted it, too, and had favored a tomb
not far away called the "Garden Tomb" as the true Sepulchre. I wanted to
see these things and judge for myself. But two of our party and the
guide spoke no English, and my Biblical German needed practice. There
seemed to be no German word for Calvary, and when I ventured into
details I floundered. Still, I must have struck a spark somewhere, for
presently a light illumined our guide's face:
"Golgota! Das richtige Golgota" (the true Golgotha), he said, excitedly,
and then I remembered that I should have said Golgotha, the "Place of
the Skull," in the beginning.
[Illustration: THE TRUE GOLGOTHA--THE PLACE OF THE SKULL
(Notice the large eyes and mouth of the skull formed by cavities in the
cliff. The place of execution is marked by the little heap of stones
above.)]
We were away immediately, all of us, hurrying for the Damascus gate,
beyond which it lay. It was not far--nothing is far in Jerusalem--and
presently we were outside, at the wicket of a tiny garden--a sweet,
orderly little place--where a pleasant German woman and a tall old
Englishman with a spiritual face were letting us in. Then they led us to
a little arbor, and directly--to a tomb, a real tomb, cut into the cliff
overhanging the garden.
I do not know whether Jesus was laid in that tomb or not, and it is not
likely that any one will ever know. But He _could_ have been laid there,
and it is not unlikely that He _was_ laid there, for Golgotha--the hill
that every unprejudiced visitor immediately accepts as the true
Golgotha--overlooks this garden.
We could not ascend the hill--the Mohammedans no longer permit that--but
we could go to the end of the garden and look up to the little heap of
stones which marks the old place of stoning and of crucifixion. It was
always the place of public execution. The Talmud refers to it, and the
Jews of Jerusalem spit toward it to this day. We could make out the
contour of the skull which gave it its name, and even the face, for in
its rocky side ancient tombs and clefts formed the clearly distinguished
features.
It is a hill; it is outside the walls; it is the traditional site of
executions; it is the one natural place to which Jesus would have been
taken for crucifixion. The Calvary in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
was _never_ a hill; it was _never_ outside the walls; it was _never_ a
traditional site for anything until Queen Helena began to dream.
Perhaps the reader may say, "With all the tales and traditions and
disputes and doubts, what does it matter?" Perhaps it does not matter.
Perhaps that old question of Pilate, "What is truth?" need not be
answered.
Yet somewhere amid the mass of confliction there follows a thread of
fact. Sifting the testimony, it is difficult to deny that there once
lived a man named Jesus--later, and perhaps then--known as the Christ;
that He was of humble birth, and grew up to teach a doctrine of
forgiveness and humility (a doctrine new to the Hebrew teachers of His
day, whose religion consisted mainly of ceremonial forms); that He was
able to heal the sick; that He had a following who, perhaps, hailed Him
as their king; that it was because of these things that He was crucified
on a hill outside of Jerusalem.
I think this is as far as general acknowledgment goes. The Scriptures
declare more, the sceptic allows less; but the majority of mankind unite
on the foregoing admissions. At all events, a great religion was founded
on this man's life and death--a doctrine of gentleness when creeds are
stripped away--and it is proper that such truth as can be established
concerning the ground He trod, especially on that last dark day, should
be recognized and made known. Of our little party of four there was not
one who--standing there as the stars came out, and looking up at that
hill outlined against the sky--did not feel a full and immediate
conviction that this was indeed the spot where that last, supreme
expiation was made, and that this sweet garden, guarded by these two
gentle people, was the truer site for the Sepulchre which was "nigh at
hand."
XXXVI
AT THE MOUTH OF THE NILE
I am not a gifted person; I cannot write about existing places and
things without seeing them, and I am afraid to steal from the
guide-book--unintelligently, I mean. I have sometimes found the
guide-book mistaken--not often, I admit, but too often to take chances.
I should be struck with remorse if I should steal from the guide-book
and then find that I had stolen a mistake. So I shall have to skip
Galilee, Tiberias, Nazareth, and Hebron, for the reason that I could not
visit those and include Egypt, too, by our schedule.
One _must_ go to Egypt. If the "grand object of all travel is to visit
the shores of the Mediterranean," then the grand climax of that tour is
Egypt. One _must_ take all the time there is for that amazing land, and
any time will be too short, even though it be a lifetime.
The guide-book says that the arrival at Alexandria is not very
impressive. I suppose a good deal depends on the day and the time of day
and one's mental attitude. As usual with our arrivals, it was early
morning, and everything was hazy and yellow-misty with sunrise. We were
moving slowly, and the water was glassy still. Here and there across the
yellow haze drifted a barge-like craft with a lateen-sail, or a slow
moving boat, pulled by men in native dress. Then out of the mist across
the port bow came the outline of a low-lying shore, and a shaft that
rose, a vague pencil against the morning glow. The Diplomat was leaning
on the rail at my side.
"Egypt," he said, quietly. "That is a lighthouse--they call it a pharos,
after the one that Ptolemy built; it must have stood about in the same
direction."
Certainly that was not very dramatic, not actively so at least, but to
me it was impressive; and stealing into that dream-like harbor, through
the mellow quiet of the morning, I had the feeling that we were creeping
up on the past--catching it asleep, as it were; that this was indeed the
pharos of the Ptolemies--the harbor they had known.
I shall always remember Alexandria, Egypt. I shall always remember the
railway station with its wild hallabaloo of Arab porters, who grab one's
hand-baggage, make off with it, and sit on it in a secluded place until
you race around and hunt it up and produce baksheesh for its return. You
do not check baggage in Egypt, by the way; you register it, which means
that you tell somebody about it, then try to convince yourself that it
is all right and that some day you will see it again.
But I shall remember that station for another reason. When we had
finally fought our way through to the train, and Laura and I had placed
our things here and there in our compartment--in the racks and about--we
realized that we were hot and thirsty, and I said I would slip back and
get some oranges, seeing we had plenty of time.
It was easy to do that--easy enough, I mean, for I no longer had
anything for the Bedouins to grab. I got the oranges and paid a piastre
apiece for them--about ten times what they were worth in Jaffa, and I
had the usual difficulty making change--a detachment of interested Arabs
looking on meanwhile. Then I started back, and was stopped by a guard
who wanted to see my ticket. I felt for the flat leather case which I
generally carry in my hip-pocket. It was gone!
If there had been anything resembling a chair there I should have sat
down. As it was I took hold of the little railing, for my knees had a
watery feeling which I felt was not to be trusted. That pocket-book
contained my letter of credit; all my money, except a little change; my
tickets, my character--everything that an unprotected stranger is likely
to need in a strange land! When I got my breath I dived into all my
pockets at once, then went through them categorically, as much as three
times apiece. I had never realized I owned so many pockets or that they
could be so empty, so useless.
Those Bedouins had done it, of course. I rushed back to the orange-man,
and in a mixture of three languages which nobody, not even myself, could
understand, explained my loss. He shrugged his shoulders in French,
elevated his hands in Egyptian, and said "No can tell" in English. I
glared around at the contiguous Bedouins, but they all looked
disinterestedly guilty. In a mixed daze I went back to the guard, and
crept through when he was attending to another passenger. I still held
the bag of oranges, and handed them to Laura, who was quietly waiting,
looking out the window at the passing show. Little did she guess my
condition, and how could I tell her?
It was quite by chance that I glanced up at the overhead rack where I
had stowed our smaller packages. Ah me! The gates of bliss open wide
will never be a more inspiring sight than what I saw there. There it
lay--that precious pocket-book! In the disordered mental state of our
arrival I had for some unguessed reason taken out my pocket-case and
laid it there with the other items. It was safe--safe in every detail.
The world suddenly became glorified. Those Bedouins were my brothers. I
would have gone back and embraced them if the train had not begun to
move.
Yes, I shall always remember Alexandria.
There is a continuous panorama between Alexandria and Cairo, absolutely
fascinating to one who has not seen it before, and I wonder how it can
ever grow old to any one. Almost immediately there was water--the Nile,
or one of its canals--and stretching away, a dead level of
green--lavish, luxurious, blossoming green--the delta-land of Lower
Egypt, the richest garden in all the world. A network of irrigation; mud
villages that might have been made by wasps; a low-dropping sky that met
the level green--these made a background, and against it, along the
raised road that follows the Nile, an endless procession passed.
A man riding a camel, leading another; a boy watering two buffaloes; an
Arab walking, followed by his wife and a string of loaded donkeys;
ditto camels; a cow grinding an old Egyptian water-mill that has been in
use since Pharaoh's time; two men turning an Archimedes screw to lift
the water to their fields--so the pictures whirl by. The Orient has
become familiar to us, yet for some reason the atmosphere, the
impression, is wholly different here, because--I cannot tell
why--because this is Egypt, I suppose, and there is only one Egypt, a
fact easier to realize than to explain.
The day was well along when we reached Cairo and, after the usual battle
with the Ishmaelites, drove to Shepheard's Hotel. As there is only one
Egypt, so there is only one Shepheard's Hotel. There are other hotels as
large and as lavish, with as fair gardens, perhaps, but I believe there
is no other hotel on the planet where you can sit on a vast balmy
terrace and look down on such a panorama of the nations--American,
European, Asiatic, African--such a universal congress of pleasure as
each winter assembles here. It would take a more riotous pen than mine
to achieve a description of that mixture. If the reader can imagine a
World's Fair Midway of every nationality and every costume and every
language and mode of locomotion under the sun, and can see mingled with
it all the dark-faced sellers of shawls and scarabs, and beads and
relics, the picture will serve, and we will let it go at that.
And perhaps I may as well say here that Cairo is the wildest, freest
place in Christendom. The confluence of Upper and Lower Egypt--the Delta
and the Nile--here on the edge of the desert, it is the veritable
jumping-off place where all conventions melt away. It is the neutral
ground where East and West meet--each to adopt the special privilege and
license of the other--madly to compete in lavishness of dress and the
reckless joy of living. In the language of the Reprobates, "One gets his
money's worth in Cairo, if he makes his headquarters at Shepheard's and
sits in the game." But he will require a certain capital to make good
his ante. If I hadn't found that pocket-book at Alexandria I should have
taken my meals with the Arabs in the back basement.
The Arab, by-the-way, is the general servitor in the Egyptian hotel. You
ring three times when you want him, and he is as picturesque and gentle
a Bedouin as ever held up a camel train or slew a Christian to glorify
his faith. He is naïve and noiseless, and whatever you ask him for he
says "Yes," and if you ask him if he understands he says "Yes," and you
will never know whether he does or not until you see what he brings. It
does not help matters to talk loudly to the Arab. Volume of sound does
not increase his lingual gifts, and spelling the article is likewise
wasted effort. Ladies sometimes try that method. The trunk of one of our
party had not reached her room--and she needed it.
"My trunk," she said to the Arab. "_You_ know, trunk--t-r-u-n-k,
trunk--yes, trunk, with my name on it--_you_ know--n-a-m-e--my initials,
I mean, _you_ know--T. D.--T. D. on both ends."
The Arab did know "trunk"; the rest was mere embroidery.
XXXVII
THE SMILE OF THE SPHINX
There was not much left of the afternoon when we reached Cairo, but some
of us wandered off here and there to get the habit of the place, as it
were. Laura and I came to a trolley-line presently, and found that it
ran out to the Pyramids and Sphinx. We were rather shocked at the
thought, but recovered and decided to steal a march on the others by
slipping out there and having those old wonders all to ourselves, at
sunset.
It is a long way. You pass through streets of many kinds and by houses
of many sorts, and you cross the Nile and glide down an avenue of palms
where there are glimpses of water--the infinite desert stretching away
into the evening. Long before we reached them we saw the outlines of the
three pyramids against the sky, and then we made out the Sphinx--that
old group which is perhaps the most familiar picture that children know.
Yet, somehow, it could not be true that this was the reality of the
pictures we had seen. The likeness was very great, certainly, but those
pictures had represented something in a realm of books and romance--the
unattainable land--while these were here; we were actually going to
them, and in a trolley-car! It required all the spell of Egypt
then--the palms, the desert, and the evening sky--to fit the reality
into its old place in the hall of dreams.
We had thought to have a quiet view, but this was a miscalculation.
There is no such thing as a quiet view of the Pyramids. At any hour of
the day or night you are immediately beset by beggars and
fortune-tellers and would-be guides, and you are pulled and dragged and
distracted by their importunities until you have lost all interest in
your original purpose in a general desire to start a plague or a
massacre that will wipe out the whole pestiferous crew. There is no
hope, except in the employment of one or two of the guides--the
strongest-looking ones, who will in a certain measure keep off the
others--and you will have to engage donkeys, and perhaps have your
fortune told. Otherwise these creatures will follow you and surround
you, insisting that they want no money; that they only love you; that it
makes them happy even to be near you; that they love all Americans;
that, in short, for a shilling, just a shilling, and a baksheesh (a
piastre), one little baksheesh, they will become your guide, your slave,
the dirt under your feet--"Ah, mister--ze Sphinkis, ze Pyramid,
aevry-zing!" It is a disgrace to Egypt, and to England who is in charge
here now, that such persecution is permitted in the shadow of one of the
world's most revered and imposing ruins.
We engaged donkeys, at last, after there had been several fights over
us, and set out up the road to the Great Pyramid, assailed every little
way by bandits lying in wait. The Great Pyramid does not improve with
close acquaintance. It has been too much damaged by time and criminal
assault. It loses its clean-cut outlines as you come near and becomes
little more than a stupendous heap of stones. I think we were a trifle
disappointed with a close inspection, to tell the truth, for even the
largest pictures do not give one quite the impression of the reality. It
was as if we had been gazing at some marvellous painting, and then had
walked up very near to see how the work was done.
The charm came back as we rode off a little and turned to view it now
and again in the evening light. The irregularities disappeared; the
outlines became clean against the sky; I was no longer disappointed in
that giant of architecture whose shadow (it lay now just at our feet)
began marking time at a period when the world had no recorded history.
Yet in one or two respects the reality differed from the dream. Usually
stone grows gray with age and takes on moss and lichen--the mould of
time. The Pyramids are entirely bare, and they are not gray. The stones
might have been laid up yesterday so far as any vegetable increment is
concerned, and their color is a tawny gold--luminous gold in the sunset,
like the barren hills beyond. The daily sandblast of the desert will
level these monuments in time, no doubt, but the last fragment in that
remote age will still be bare and in color unchanged.
As with the Pyramids, our first impression of the Sphinx was one of
disappointment. It seemed small to us. It is small compared with a
pyramid, while the photographs give one another idea. The photographs
are made with the Sphinkis (Sphinx, I mean--one falls so easily into
the native speech) in the foreground, looking fully as big as the
second-size pyramid and quite able to have the third-size pyramid for
breakfast. Figures mean nothing in the face of a picture like that; you
comprehend them, but you do not realize them--visualize them, perhaps I
ought to say.
So the Sphinx seemed small to us as we approached, and even when we were
on the immediate brink of sand, gazing down upon it, its sixty-five feet
of stature seemed reduced from the image in our minds.
[Illustration: A VAST INDIFFERENCE TO ALL PUNY THINGS]
But the Sphinx grows on one. As the light faded and the shadows softened
its scarred features there came also a dignity and with it a feeling of
immensity, of grandeur, a vast indifference to all puny things. And
then--perhaps it was the light, perhaps it was because I stood at a
particular angle, but certainly--standing just there, at that moment, I
saw, or fancied I saw, about its serene lips the suggestion or beginning
of a smile. The more I looked, the more certain of it I became, and when
I spoke of it to Laura, she saw it, too. Yes, undoubtedly we had caught
the Sphinx smiling--not outwardly, at least not openly, but quietly,
quizzically--smiling inside as one might say. I could not understand it
then, but later it came to me.
* * * * *
Back at the hotel, to-night, I thought it out. I remembered that the
Sphinx had been there a long time; nobody knows how long, but _a very
long time indeed_. I remembered that it had seen a number of
things--_a very great number of things_. I remembered that it had seen
one very curious thing, to wit:
A long time ago, when a certain Pharaoh--we can only guess which
Pharaoh--ruled over Egypt, it saw a young man who had been sold into
bondage from Syria rise in the king's favor through certain dreams and
become his chief counsellor, even "ruler over all the land of Egypt." It
saw him in the height of his power and glory bring his family, who were
Syrian shepherds, down from their barren hills and establish them in the
favor of the Egyptian king. The Sphinx was old--a thousand years old, at
least, even then--and, being wise, heard with certain curiosity their
claim that they were a "chosen people," and thoughtfully watched them
multiply through a few brief centuries into a band of servitors who,
because of this tradition, held themselves a race apart, repeating tales
of a land of promise which they would some day inherit. Then at last,
during a period of visitation, the Sphinx saw them escape, taking what
they could lay their hands on, straggling away, with their families and
their flocks, toward the Red Sea. The Sphinx heard nothing more of that
tribe for about three thousand years.
Then an amazing thing happened. Among those who came to wonder at the
Sphinx's age and mystery were some who repeated tales of that runaway
band--tales magnified and embroidered almost beyond recognition--and,
what was more curious, accepted them--not as such tales are usually
accepted, with a heavy basis of discount--but as gospel; inspired truth;
the foundation of a mighty religion; the word of God.
Nor was that all. The Sphinx realized presently that not only were those
old stories accepted as gospel by the descendants of the race
themselves, but by a considerable number of the human race at
large--accepted and debated in a most serious manner, even to the point
of bloodshed.
Some details of this inspired chronology were wholly new to the Sphinx.
It was interesting, for example, to hear that there had been three
million of those people, and that before they started there had been a
time when the Nile had been turned to blood--twice, in fact: once by the
grace of God and once by magicians. The Sphinx did not remember a time
when the Nile had turned to blood. In the five thousand years and more
of its existence it had never heard of a magician who could produce that
result. It was interesting, too, to learn that the Red Sea had opened a
way for those people to cross, and that the hosts of Egypt, trying to
follow them, had been swallowed up and drowned. This was wholly new. The
Sphinx had been there and seen all that had happened, but she had
somehow missed those things.
Not that the Sphinx was surprised at these embroideries. She had seen
several mythologies created, and knew the general scale of enlargement
and glorification. It was only when she saw strong, cultured, and
enlightened nations still accepting the old Hebrew poem--with all its
stately figures and exaggerations--as gospel; heard them actually trying
to prove that a multitude as big as the census of Australia had marched
out with its chattels and its flocks; heard them vow that the Red Sea
had parted long enough to let this population pass through; heard them
maintain that this vast assembly had found shade and refreshment on the
other side by twelve wells of water and under seventy palm-trees: heard
them tell how the sea behind them had suddenly rushed together and
swallowed up all the Egyptian army (including the king himself, some
said)--it was only when the Sphinx heard learned men argue these things
as facts that a smile--scarcely perceptible, yet still a smile--began to
grow behind the stone lips.
That is the smile we saw to-night--a quiet smile, a gracious smile, a
compassionate smile--and as it has grown so slowly, so it will not soon
depart. For by-and-by, when these ages have passed, and with them their
story and their gospels--when those old chronicles of the Jews have been
relegated to the realm of mythology for a thousand years--there may come
another band who will establish their traditions as God's holy word, and
the Sphinx--still remaining, still observing, still looking across the
encompassing sands to the sunrise--will smile, and dream old dreams.
XXXVIII
WAYS THAT ARE EGYPTIAN
I wonder why we are always taken first to the mosques, or why, when our
time is pretty limited, we are taken to them at all. Mosques are well
enough, but when you have seen a pretty exhaustive line of them in
Turkey and Syria, Egypt cannot furnish any very startling attractions in
this field. For mosques are modern (anything less than a thousand years
old is modern to us now), and Egypt is not a land of modern things.
Besides, here in Cairo there are such a number of fascinating
out-of-the-way corners which we are dying to see--unholy side-streets,
picturesquely hidden nooks, and mysterious, shut-in life; besides all
the bazaars--
Never mind; the mosques did have a certain interest, especially the
mosque of Al-Azhar, which is nine hundred years old and built about a
great court--an old mosque when America was still undiscovered--and the
mosque of Hassan, "whose prayer will nevair be accept," Abraham said
(Abraham being our guide), "because when ze architec' have finish, ze
Sultan Hassan have cut off hees han' so he cannot produce him again."
Napoleon's first gun in Egypt hit a minaret of Hassan's mosque, it is
said, and it has had bad luck generally, perhaps because of the cruel
act of its royal builder. We were not even required to put on slippers
to enter it, so it cannot be held in very great veneration. Then there
is the mosque of Mohammed Ali, built within the last century and modern
throughout, the only mosque in the world, I believe, to have electric
lights!
It was Mohammed Ali who settled the Mameluke problem in the conclusive
way which sultans adopt at times. The Mamelukes were the Janizaries of
Egypt, though fewer in number. Still, there were enough of them to make
trouble and keep matters stirred up, and Ali grew tired of them. So did
the public, according to our guide:
"Ali, he say to some people, 'You like get rid of zose Mameluke?' an'
all ze people say, 'Yez, of course.' So Ali he make big dinner, an' ze
Mameluke come an' eat, an' have fine, big time."
It was on the 1st of March, 1811, that Ali issued his general invitation
to the Mameluke leaders to attend a function at the Citadel; and, after
entertaining them hospitably, invited them to march through a narrow
passageway, which was suddenly closed at each end, while from above
opened a musket-fire that presently concluded those Mamelukes--470 of
them--with the exception of one man, who is said to have leaped his
horse through a window down a hundred feet or so, where he "Jump from
hees horse and run--run fas' to Jaffa!" which was natural enough.
There was only one trouble with that story. Abraham did not explain how
this particular Mameluke came to have his horse at luncheon, and why,
with or without horses, a number of those other Mamelukes did not follow
him. Every Mameluke of my acquaintance would have gone through that
window, mounted or otherwise, and without calculating the distance to
the ground. However, Abraham showed us the passage and the place of the
leap, and later the graves of the 470, all of which was certainly
convincing. Following the removal of the leaders, a general burial of
Mamelukes took place throughout Egypt, since which time members of that
organization have been extremely hard to catch. It must have been Ali's
neat solution of the Mameluke problem which fifteen years later was
copied in Constantinople by Mahmoud II., when he disposed of the
Janizaries.
It was at the tomb of a distinguished pasha--a fine, inviting
place--that we saw a small green piece of the robe of Abraham. It was
incorporated in a very sacred rug, one of the twelve which Cairo,
Constantinople, and Damascus contribute to Mecca each year. We asked how
Abraham's robe could hold out this way, and his namesake shrugged and
smiled:
"Oh, zay take little piece of ze real robe an' roll him 'roun' an'
'roun' wiz many piece of goods, an' zay become _all_ ze robe of
Abraham."
Thus does a thread leaven a whole wardrobe.
Laura and I escaped then. We did not care for any more tombs and
mosques, and we did care a great deal for a street we had noticed where,
squatted on the ground on both sides of it, their wares spread in the
dust, were sellers of certain trinkets and jars which, though not of the
past, had a fatal lure we could not all forget. Our driver was a black,
scarred semi-Nubian who looked as if he had been through a fire, and had
possibly five words of English. It does not matter--Menelek (so we
named him) served us well, and will retain a place in my affections.
We took the back track, and presently were in the street of small
sellers, driving carefully, for there was barely room to pass between
their displayed goods. Here and there we stooped to inspect, and we
bought a water-jar for a piastre--an Egyptian piastre, which is really
money and worth exactly five cents. Beyond the jars was a woman selling
glass bracelets, such as the Arab women wear. I had wanted some of those
from the beginning. I picked out a gay handful, and then discovered I
had only a gold twenty-franc piece to pay with. The woman had never
owned twenty francs, and no seller in the neighborhood could furnish the
change. So I handed it to Menelek, who grinned and disappeared while we
sat there in the carriage waiting.
I suppose he had to go miles in that neighborhood for as much change as
that. I know we sat there in the sun and looked at all the curious
things in all the assortments about us, over and over, and discussed
them and wondered if Menelek would ever return. It became necessary at
last that he should do so. No vehicle could pass us in that narrow
thoroughfare, and in a string behind there was collecting as motley an
assortment of curiosities as ever were gathered in a menagerie. There
was a curious two-wheeled cart or dray, drawn by water-buffaloes, upon
which a man had his collection of wives out for an airing; there was a
camel loaded with huge water-jars until they projected out over the
heads of the selling people; there was a load of hay drawn by a cow;
there was a donkey train that reached back to the end of the street, and
what lay beyond only Allah knew.
The East is patient, but even the East has its limits. Presently we
began to be interviewed by dark men--camel-drivers and the like--who had
a way of flinging up their hands, while from behind came a rising tide
of what I assumed to be imprecation.
We were calm--that is, we assured each other that we were calm--and we
told them quite pleasantly how matters stood. The result was not
encouraging. One Bedouin grabbed the bridle, and I was at the point of
slaying him with my water-jar when at the same moment appeared a member
of the Cairo police--one of those with a tall red fez--also Menelek, our
long-lost Menelek, with the change, out of which there was baksheesh for
the discontented drivers. Everything was all right then. We headed the
procession. Behind us came the buffalo-cart--the wives, sandwiched fore
and aft and smiling--the camel with his distended load of jars; the
heaped-up little hay-wagon; the string of donkeys all in blue beads,
with heaven knows what else trailing down the distance. All the curses
were removed; all the drivers singing; traffic congestion in the East
was over.
One of the first things we had noticed in Egypt was the curious brass
spool affair which Arab women wear, suspended perpendicularly across the
forehead, from the head-gear to the top of their veil. It extends from
the nose upward, and has sharp, saw-like ridges on it, which look as if
they would cut in. When we asked about these things, we were told that
they were worn to avert the evil eye, also as a handy means by which the
husband may correct any little indiscretion on the part of one of his
wives. He merely has to tap that brass spool with his cane or
broomstick, or whatever is handy, and it cuts in and neatly reminds the
wearer that she is a woman and had better behave. Family discipline has
matured in this ancient land.
I explained to Menelek now, in some fashion, that I wanted one of those
brass things; whereupon we entered the narrow and thronging thoroughfare
of commerce--a gay place, with all sorts of showy wares lavishly
displayed--and went weaving in and out among the crowd to find it. Every
other moment Menelek would shout something that sounded exactly like,
"Oh, I _mean_ it! Oh, I _mean_ it!" which made us wonder _what_ he meant
in that emphatic way.
Then all at once he changed to, "Oh, I _schmell_ it! Oh, I _schmell_
it!"
"That's all right," we said; "so do we," for, though Cairo is cleaner
than Constantinople, it was not over-sweet just there. But presently,
when he changed again to, "Oh, I eat it! Oh, I eat it!" we drew the
line. We said, "No, we do not go as far as that."
We have learned now that those calls are really "O-i-menuk,
o-i-schmeluk," etc., and indicate that some one is to turn to the right
or left, or simply get out of the way, as the case may be. We used them
ourselves after that, which gave Menelek great joy.
XXXIX
WHERE HISTORY BEGAN
When I glanced casually over the little heap of hand-bags that would
accompany our party up the Nile--we were then waiting on the terrace of
Shepheard's for the carriages--I noticed that my own did not appear to
be of the number. I mentioned this to the guides, to the head-porter, to
the clerk, to casual Bedouins in the hotel uniform, without arousing any
active interest. Finally, I went on a still hunt on my own account. I
found the missing bag out in the back area-way, with a Bedouin whom I
had not seen before sitting on it, smoking dreamily and murmuring a song
about lotus and moonlight and the spell of his lady's charms. Growing
familiar with the habits of the country, I dispossessed him with my foot
and marched back through the vast corridors carrying my bag myself.
Still, I am sorry now I didn't contribute the baksheesh he expected. He
was probably the cousin or brother or brother-in-law of one of my room
servitors. They all have a line of those relatives, and they must live,
I suppose, though it is difficult to imagine why.
There was a red glow in the sky when our train slipped out of the Cairo
station toward Luxor. The Nile was red, too, and against this tide of
evening were those curious sail-boats of Egypt that are like great
pointed-winged butterflies, and the tall palms of the farther shore.
By-and-by we began to run through mud villages that rose from the river
among the palms, wonderfully picturesque in the gathering dusk. This was
the Egypt of the pictures, the Egypt we have always known. No need to
strain one's imagination to accept this reality. You are possessed,
enveloped by it, and I cannot think that I enjoyed it any the less from
seeing it through the window of a comfortable diner, with the knowledge
that an equally comfortable, even if tiny, state-room was reserved in
the car ahead. The back of a camel or deck of a dahabiyah would be more
picturesque, certainly--more poetic--but those things require time, and
there are drawbacks, too. Railway travel in Egypt is both swift and
satisfactory. The accommodations differ somewhat from those of America,
but not unpleasantly.
We were a small party now. There were fewer than twenty of us--all
English-speaking, except a young man who shared my apartment and was
polite enough to pretend to understand my German.
It was a little after 5 A.M. when I heard him getting up. I inquired if
there was "_Etwas los?_" which is the ship idiom for asking if anything
had gone wrong. He said no, but that the sun would be upstanding
directly, which brought me into similar action. One does not miss
sunrises on the Nile, if one cares for sunrises anywhere. We hurried
through our dressing and were out on the platform when the train drew up
for water at Nag Hamadeh--a station like many others, surrounded by the
green luxury of the Nile's fertile strip, with yellow desert and
mountains pressing close on either hand. It was just before sunrise. The
eastward sky was all resonant with ruddy tones--a stately overture of
its coming. Uplifting palms, moveless in the morning air, broke the
horizon line, while nearer lay the low village--compact and flat of
roof--a vast, irregular hive built of that old material of Egypt, bricks
without straw. Below it the Nile repeated the palms, the village, the
swelling symphony of dawn. Only here and there was any sign of life. An
Arab woman with a water-jar drowsed toward the river-bank; a camp of
Bedouins with their camels and their tents were beginning to stir and
kindle their morning fires. The railroad crosses the river here, and
just as we were creeping out over the slow-moving flood the sun rose,
and the orchestra of the sky broke into a majestic crescendo, as rare
and radiant and splendid as it was when Memnon answered to its waking
thrill and sang welcome to the day.
The young man and I had forgotten each other, I think, for neither of us
had spoken for some moments. Then we both spoke at once--"_Wunderbar!_"
we said, "_Wunderschon!_" for I have trained myself to speak German even
when strongly moved. Then with one impulse we looked at our watches. It
was precisely six, and we remembered that it was the 22d of March--the
equinox.
We stayed out there and saw the land awake--that old land which has
awakened so many times and in so much the same fashion. Outside of its
cities and its temples it cannot have changed greatly since the days of
Rameses. It is still just a green, fertile thread of life, watered and
tilled in the manner of fifty centuries ago. They had to drag us in to
breakfast at last, for we would be at Luxor before long, four hundred
and fifty miles from Cairo; that is, at ancient Thebes, where--though
the place has lingered for our coming a good four thousand years--"ze
train he have not time to wait."
We are in Thebes now, the "city of a hundred gateways and twenty
thousand chariots of war." Homer called it that, though it was falling
to ruin even then. Homer was a poet, but his statistics are believed to
be correct enough in this instance, for Diodorus, who saw the ruins a
little before the Christian era, states that there were a hundred war
stables, each capable of holding two hundred horses, "the marks and
signs of which," he says, "are visible to this day." Of its glory in
general he adds: "There was no city under the sun so adorned with so
many and stately monuments of gold and silver and ivory, and multitudes
of colossi and obelisks cut out of entire stone." Still further along
Diodorus adds, "There, they say, are the wonderful sepulchres of the
ancient kings, which for state and grandeur far exceed all that
posterity can attain unto at this day."
Coming from a historian familiar with Athens and Rome in the height of
their splendor, this statement is worth considering. We have journeyed
to Thebes to see the ruin of the mighty temples which Diodorus saw, and
the colossi and the obelisks, and to visit the royal tombs of which he
heard--now open to the light of day.
We had glimpses of these things at the very moment of our arrival. The
Temple of Luxor (so called) is but a step from the hotel, and, waiting
on the terrace for our donkeys, we looked across the Nile to the Colossi
of Memnon, still rising from the wide plain where once a thronging city
stood--still warming to the sunrise that has never failed in their
thirty-five hundred years.
We were in no hurry to leave that prospect, but our donkeys were ready
presently, and a gallant lot indeed. The Luxor donkeys are the best in
Egypt, we are told, and we believe it. They are a mad, racing
breed--fat, unwearied, and strenuous--the pick of their species. They
can gallop all day in the blazing sun, and the naked rascal that races
behind, waving a stick and shouting, can keep up with them hour after
hour when an American would drop dead in five minutes.
They are appropriately named, those donkeys. Mine was "Whiskey
Straight," and he arrived accordingly. He was a gray, wild-headed
animal, made of spring steel. We headed the procession that led away for
the Temple of Karnak in a riotous stampede. Laura's donkey was "Whiskey
and Soda"--a slightly milder proposition, but sufficient unto the day. I
have never seen our ship-dwellers so unreserved in their general
behavior, so "let loose," as it were, from anything that resembled
convention, as when we went cavorting through that Arab settlement of
"El-Uksur," where had been ancient Thebes. Beset with a mad, enjoying
fear, our ladies--some of whom were no longer young and perhaps had
never ridden before--broke into frantic and screaming prophecies of
destruction, struggling to check their locomotion, their feet set
straight ahead, skirts, scarfs, hats, hair streaming down the wind. It
was no time for scenery--Egyptian scenery; we knew nothing, could attend
to nothing, till at the towering entrance of the great Temple of Karnak
we came to a sudden and confused halt.
We dismounted there, shook ourselves together, and stared wonderingly up
at those amazing walls whose relief carving and fresco tints the dry air
of this rainless land has so miraculously preserved. And then presently
we noticed that Gaddis, our guide for the Nile, had stepped quietly out
before us, and with that placid smile he always wears had lifted his
hand to the records of his ancestors.
[Illustration: SANCTUARY IN KARNAK]
[Illustration: GADDIS
YOUNG IN YEARS. GADDIS IS AS OLD AS THESE MONUMENTS IN REFLECTION AND
MENTAL HERITAGE--A PART WITH THEM OF A VANISHED DAY]
I want to speak a word just here of Gaddis. He is pure Copt, and the
name "Copt" is from "Gypt"--that is, "Egypt"--the Copts being the direct
descendants of the race that built ancient Thebes. His color is a clear,
rich brown; his profile might be a part of these wall decorations. Then
there are his eyes--mere dreamy slits, behind which he dwells in an age
far removed from ours, while his lips wear always that ineffable smile
which belongs only to Egypt, its sculpture and its people, the smile
that regards with gentle contemplation--and compassion--all trivial
things. Young in years, Gaddis is as old as these monuments in
reflection and mental heritage--a part with them of a vanished day. And
but for his fez and little European coat, which with the sash and
figured skirt complete the dress of the Egyptian guide, Gaddis might
truly have been plucked from these pictured walls. I should add that he
reads the hieroglyphics and has all languages on his tongue--English,
French, German--the Egyptian is born with these, I think; his voice is a
drowsy hum that is pure music; his temper is as sweet and changeless as
his smile.
So much for Gaddis. He stood now with his lifted hand directed to the
panoramic story of the past; then, in slow, measured voice:
"Zis is ze great temple of Karnak--ze work of many king. Here you will
see ze King Ram-e-ses II. wiz ze crown an' symbol of Upper an' Lower
Egypt, making sacrifice of fruit and fowl an' all good sings to ze gawd
Amm-Ra, in ze presence of Horus, ze hawk-headed sun-gawd, an' Anubis an'
Osiris, ze gawd of ze under-worlid."
Thus it was our sight-seeing in Upper Egypt began.
XL
KARNAK AND LUXOR
The temple of Karnak cannot be described. The guide-books attempt it,
but the result is only a maze of figures and detail for which the mind
cares little. All the Greek temples on the Acropolis combined would make
but a miniature showing by the side of Karnak. Most of the Egyptian
kings, beginning as far back as 3000 B.C., had a hand in its building,
and for above two thousand years it was in a state of construction,
restoration, or repair. The result is an amazing succession of halls and
columns, monoliths, and mighty walls--many of them tumbled and tumbling
now, but enough standing to show what a race once flourished here. Long
ago the road over which we came from Luxor was an avenue eighty feet
wide and a mile and a half long, connecting the two great temples. It
was faced on each side with ram-headed sphinxes only a few feet apart.
Most of them are gone now, but the few mutilated specimens left prompt
one's imagination of that mighty boulevard. The Karnak of that day, with
its various enclosures, is said to have covered a thousand acres. The
mind does not grasp that, any more than it comprehends the ages of its
construction, the history it has seen. It is like trying to grasp the
distance to the stars.
No one may say who began Karnak, but the Usertsens of the earliest
Theban Dynasty had a hand in its building, and after them the other
dynasties down to the Ptolemaic days. Thothmes III. and his aunt, the
wonderful Queen Hatasu--the ablest woman of her time--were among its
builders, and these two set up obelisks, erected pylons and vast
columned halls. This was about 1600 B.C., when the glory of Egypt was at
flood-tide. Two centuries later the mighty Seti I., whose mummied form
sleeps to-day in the Museum at Cairo, began what is known as the great
Hypostile Hall, finished by his still mightier son, Rameses II., whose
mummy likewise reposes in Cairo, father and son together. Rameses built
other additions to Karnak, and crowded most of them with pictures and
statues of himself and the sculptured glorification of his deeds. He
was, in fact, not only the greatest king, but the greatest egotist the
world has ever known, and in the end believed himself a god. It is said
that he built more than seventy temples altogether, chiefly to hold his
statues, and that he put his name on a number that had been built by his
predecessors. It has been hinted that to his title of "The Great" the
word "Advertiser" should have been added, and the fact that he is now on
exhibition in a glass case must be a crowning gratification to him, if
he knows it. It should be mentioned that Rameses II. is thought to be
one of the oppressors of the Israelites, which may tend to arrange his
period and personality in the Biblical mind.
I am wandering away from the subject in hand. I want to talk about
Karnak, and I find myself talking of kings. But, then, one _cannot_
talk about Karnak--not intelligently. One must _see_ Karnak, and he will
believe himself dreaming all the time, and he will come away silent. The
Romans came to Karnak when the Egyptians had finished with their
building, and by-and-by the early Christians, who could always be
depended upon to pull down and mutilate and destroy anything that was
particularly magnificent. Our old friend, the good Queen Helena,
arrived, and the temples of Egypt crumbled before the blight of her
fanaticism. But I must change cars again. I get a little rabid when I
take up Queen Helena and her tribe.
We followed Gaddis from arch to pylon, from enclosure to sanctuary--we
passed down colonnades that one must see to believe. There are two kinds
of columns in Egypt, by-the-way, the Lotus and the Papyrus--the former
with a capital that opens out like a flaring bowl, the cup of the
lotus-flower; the other with a capital that is more like an opening bud.
The lotus symbolizes the Delta country, Lower Egypt; the papyrus stands
for Upper Egypt, the country of the Nile, where we now are. Both are
used in these temples, and here in Karnak there is a hall of Lotus
columns--one hundred and thirty-four in number--twelve of them sixty
feet high and twelve feet through!
That is the great Hypostile Hall of Seti I., and I wish the English
language were big enough, and I on sufficiently good terms with it to
convey the overwhelming impression of that place. Try to conceive an
architectural forest of the size of a city block, planted with
sculptured and painted columns and filled with sunlight--the columns
towering till they seem to touch the sky, and of such thickness that six
men with extended arms, finger-tip to finger-tip, can barely span them
round. The twelve mightier columns form a central avenue that simply
dwarfs into insignificance any living thing that enters it. You suddenly
become an insect when you stand between those columns and look up, and
you have the feeling that you are likely to be stepped on. The rest of
that colossal assembly stretch away on either side and are only a degree
smaller. All are painted with the four colors of the Nile--mellow tones
of blue, red, green and yellow, signifying high and low Nile, green
fields and harvest--imperishable pigments as fresh and luminous under
this sunlit sky as when they were laid there by artists who finished and
put their brushes away more than three thousand years ago. How poor are
mere words in the presence of this mighty reality which has outlived so
many languages--will outlive all the puny languages that try to convey
it now!
Looking down the great central avenue of Seti's hall, we beheld at the
end--standing as true to-day as when she placed it there--the graceful
granite obelisk of Queen Hatasu.
"Set up in honor of father Amen," she relates in her inscription on the
base. She adds that she covered the tip with copper that it might be
seen at a great distance, and tells how the monolith and its mate (now
lying broken near it) were hewn from the Assuan quarries and brought
down the Nile to Thebes. I may say here that we did not read these
inscriptions ourselves. We could do it, of course, if we had time, but
Gaddis, who is at least five thousand years old, inside, is better at it
than we could be in a brief period like that, so we depend on him a good
deal. Gaddis can read anything. A bird without a head, followed by a
pair of legs walking, a row of sawteeth, a picked chicken, a gum-drop
and a comb, all done in careful outline, mean "Homage to the Horus of
the two horizons" to Gaddis, though I have been unable as yet to see
why.
We went into the Hall, or Temple, of Khonsu, the moon-god, and here was
a breath-taking collection of papyrus columns, short, thick, built to
stand through the ages on the uncertain foundation of this alluvial
plain. We passed into a sanctuary where the priests of Amen prepared the
sacrifice, and Gaddis read the story on the walls, and pointed out for
the twentieth time, perhaps, Horus, the hawk-headed god, and Hapi, his
son, who has a dog head and can hardly be called handsome; also Anubis,
the jackal-headed god of the Under World. We came to a temple with a
wall upon which Seti recorded his victories over the forces of Syria,
and pictured himself in the act of destroying an army single handed by
gathering their long hair into a single twist preparatory to smiting off
this combined multitude of heads at a blow. We follow Gaddis through
long tumbling avenues and corridors of decorated walls; we climbed over
fallen columns that prostrate were twice as high as our heads; we
studied the records which those old kings, in ages when all the rest of
the world was myth and fable set up to preserve the story of their
deeds. And remember, all these columns and walls were not only
completely covered with figures carved in relief, but tinted in those
unfading colors, subdued, harmonious, and more beautiful than I can
tell.
[Illustration: I MADE A PICTURE OF THE FLY-BRUSH BRIGADE]
How little and how feebly I seem to be writing about this stupendous
ruin, yet I must conclude presently for lack of room. We went into the
Ramesseum, a temple literally lined with heroic statues of Rameses,
where I made a picture of the fly-brush brigade, as we call ourselves
now, because in Upper Egypt a fly-brush is absolutely necessary not
alone to comfort, but to very existence. The fly here is not the
ordinary house variety, fairly coy and flirtatious if one has a
newspaper or other impromptu weapon, retiring now and again to a safe
place for contemplation; no, the Egyptian fly is different. He never
retires and he is not in the least coy. He makes for you in a cloud, and
it is only by continuous industry that you can beat him off at all.
Furthermore, he begins business the instant he touches, and he has
continuously the gift which our fly sometimes has on a sultry, muggy
day--the art of sticking with his feet, which drives you frantic. So you
buy a fly-brush the instant you land in Upper Egypt, and you keep it
going constantly from dawn to dark. The flies retire then, for needed
rest.
[Illustration: ITS MAGNIFICENT PYLONS OR ENTRANCE WALLS ... AND THEN
ONCE MORE WE WERE ON THE DONKEYS]
We passed through another avenue of ram-headed sphinxes (some of the
heads were gone) which Rameses built, and stood outside of the great
temple of Amen, once called the "Throne of the World." Its magnificent
pylons, or entrance walls, are one hundred and fifty feet high and
three hundred broad. We ascended one of these for a general view of the
vast field of ruin.
Piled and tumbled and flung about lay the mighty efforts of a mighty
race. At one place excavating was still going on, and a regiment of
little boys were running back and forth with baskets of dirt on their
heads, singing and sweating in the blazing sun, earning as much as two
piastres (ten cents) a day. Men were working, too; they receive quite
fancy sums--twenty cents a day, some of them.
Now that we were outside of the shaded temple and sanctuary enclosures
our party was not very game. It was our first day in Upper Egypt, and
the flies and the sun made a pretty deadly combination. We began to
complain, and to long for the cool corridors and fizzy drinks and
protecting screens of the hotel. We might have played golf or tennis in
that sun, but seeing ruins was different, and we began to pray for the
donkeys again. So Gaddis led us around by the Sacred Lake, where once
the splendid ceremonials were performed--it is only a shallow pool
now--and then once more we were on the donkeys, strung out in a crazy,
shrieking stampede for the hotel. Gaddis rode near me. His donkey was a
racer, too, but Gaddis did not laugh or cry out, or anything of the
sort. He only wore that gentle serene smile, the smile of Egypt,
observing trivial things.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF LUXOR ... ONCE MORE REFLECTING ITS COLUMNS
IN THE NILE]
In the afternoon we visited the Temple of Luxor, that beautiful
structure which Amenophis III. built on the banks of the Nile. Luxor is
Karnak on a smaller scale, though big enough in all conscience, and it
is not all excavated yet. Débris had covered this temple to the very
top, and it is not so long ago that a village was built on a level with
the capitals of these columns. When M. Maspero, in 1883, began his work
of excavation, the natives naturally protested against the uncovering of
the "heathen" ruins at the expense of their mud huts. The work went on,
however, and to-day a large part of the magnificent architecture stands
revealed, once more reflecting its columns in the Nile.
There is still a quantity of débris to be removed. One end of the Temple
is full of it, and may remain so a good while. On top of this mass, some
five hundred years ago, a Mohammedan mosque was built by the descendants
of a saint named Abu Haggag, and sufficient of his family are left to
this day to hold that mosque intact against all would-be excavators.
However, the mosque itself begins to look pretty old. If the diggers
keep encroaching, it may slide off into the Temple some day, saints and
all.
Luxor, as a whole, is better preserved than Karnak. I suppose the
heaped-up débris kept the columns in position during the last ten or a
dozen centuries. I wish it had been there when the early Christian came
along. Cambyses of Persia, who burned everything that would burn in
Egypt, about 527 B.C., blackened the walls of this temple with fire, the
marks of which show to this day, but he was nothing to the followers of
Queen Helena. Even the guide-book, which is likely to be conservative in
any comment that may touch upon the faith of its readers, says
concerning the followers of Helena: "Not content with turning certain
sections of it into churches, the more fanatical among them smashed
statues, and disfigured bas-reliefs and wrecked shrines with
characteristic savage and ignorant zeal."[7]
There ought to be a painting or a marble group somewhere entitled "Early
Christian at Work"--a lean-faced, stringy-haired maniac with sledge,
murdering a symbolized figure of Defenceless Art in the Far East. The
early Christian is said to have destroyed forty-five thousand statues in
Thebes in one day.
Still, those statues may not matter so much--they were probably all of
Rameses the Great, and there are enough of him left. The Luxor Temple
had them in all sizes, and of all materials, from granite to alabaster.
Also some of "Mrs. Rameses," as Gaddis called her--no particular Mrs.
Rameses--there having been several of her; just a sort of generic type
of connubial happiness, I suppose. Mrs. Rameses, by the way, does not
cut much figure in the statuary. She usually comes only about to the
knee of the King, though she is life-size even then, for his own statues
are colossal, ranging anywhere from fifteen to fifty feet high. That was
to represent their difference in importance, of course, an idea which
the women members of our party seemed to disapprove.[8]
One of the statues of Rameses was found in a curious manner. A guide
only a little while ago was lecturing to a party of tourists, while a
young lady not far away was sketching a corner of the ruin. The sketcher
stopped to listen to the guide's talk, and when he had finished said to
the boy who was keeping the flies from her:
"Go up on that heap of rubbish and see what that stone is."
It was the rubbish that slopes down from the old mosque. The boy climbed
up, pulled away the trash, and uncovered the head of one of the most
perfect Rameseses yet discovered.
Originally the Temple of Luxor was five hundred feet long, one hundred
and eighty feet wide, and, as before mentioned, was connected with
Karnak by a double row of ram-headed sphinxes. Amenophis III. built it
about 1500 B.C., and it was regarded as the most beautiful of Egyptian
temples. Then came his son, Amenophis IV., who, being a sun-worshipper
after the manner of his Mesopotamian mother, cut away the name of the
Egyptian god Amen and set up a new worship here. It was a brief
innovation. The priests made it too hot for the Heretic King. He gave up
the struggle after a time, went into the desert farther down the Nile,
and built there a city and temples of his own. Then this temple was
sacred to the old religion again. It remained so until Alexander came,
cut his name here and there, and probably worshipped his own assortment
of gods. Later came the Roman and the early Christian; still later the
Mohammedan established ceremonies and reconstructed shrines.
We had all the old sacrifices and processions and gods and victories
over again in Luxor, including the picture story of the birth of
Amenophis III., which depicts an immaculate conception; an annunciation;
a visitation of wise men with gifts, executed about 1500 B.C.
After which we returned to the hotel; but when the sun was low in the
west beyond the Nile and the air was getting balmy, I slipped back and
sat in the old Temple in the quiet, and thought of a number of things.
Then as the sun slipped below the verge, a figure stepped out on the
minaret just over my head and began that weird thrilling chant which
once heard will remain forever unforgotten, the cry of the East--"Allah
il Allah," the Muezzin's call to prayer.
So it is still a place of worship. The voice of faith has reached down
thirty-four centuries, and whatever the form, or the prophet, or the
priest, it is all embodied there at evening and at morning in the cry,
"There is no God but God."
FOOTNOTES:
[7] _Cook's Egypt_, page 562.
[8] At Abou Simbel there are sitting statues of Rameses the Great which,
if standing erect, would be eighty-three feet tall.
XLI
THE STILL VALLEY OF THE KINGS
It was early next morning when we crossed the Nile to the rhythm of a
weird chorus which the boatmen sang to the beat of the oars. It is
probably older than these temples, and the boatmen themselves do not
know the meaning of the words, Gaddis said. One intones and the others
answer, and it is in minor keys with a dying fall at the end, except now
and then when a curious lifting note drops in, like a flash of light on
the oars. Bound for the Valley of the Kings, the House of Hatasu, and
the Colossi of Memnon, it seemed a fitting overture.
The donkeys were waiting on the other bank--the same we had used
yesterday, fat and fresh as ever, and the same boys were there calling
and gesticulating to their special charges of the day before. There are
always a few more donkey-boys than is necessary, it seems, all of them
wildly eager for the privilege of racing all day in the perishing sun,
urging the donkeys and yelling for baksheesh at every jump--not that
they expect to get it until the end of the day, but as a traditional
part of the performance. The donkey-boy gets nothing, we are told, but
what one is pleased to give him--the donkey hire going to the Sheik, who
owns the donkeys and lets the boys get what they can. I would write a
good deal about those half-naked, half-savage, tireless donkey-boys if
permitted. They and their brothers, and their cousins even to the fourth
remove, who come in like a charging army in the wild baksheesh skirmish
at the end, interest me.
Mounted, we led away in the usual stampede along canals and by lush
green fields, across the fertile strip that borders the Nile. The green
is rather wide here--as much as a mile, I should think, and it was
pleasant going through the still morning if one kept well forward in the
procession--in front of the dust that rose mightily behind us. Every
little way where we slackened speed, detachments of sellers would charge
from the roadside with trinkets, imitation scarabs, and images, but more
notably with fragments (and these were genuine enough) of what long
ago--as much as three or four thousand years, perhaps--had been human
beings like ourselves. Remnants of mummies they were, quarried out of
the barren hills where lie not only the kings but the millions who in
the glory of Egypt lived and died in Thebes. The hills are full of them,
Gaddis said, and unearthing them has become an industry.
It was rather grewsome at first to be offered such things--to have a
head, or a hand, or a foot thrust up under your eyes, and with it an
outstretched palm for payment. The prices demanded were not very high,
and the owners, the present owners, would take less--a good deal less
than the first quotation. A physician in our party bought a head--hard
and black as old mahogany, with some bits of gold-leaf still sticking to
it--for five francs, and I was offered a baby's hand (it had been soft
and dimpled once--it was dark and withered now) for a shilling.
We crossed the line which "divides the desert from the sown"--a sharp,
perfectly distinguishable line in Egypt--and were in the sand, the sun
getting high and blazing down, fairly drenching us with its flame. We
thought it would be better when we entered the hills, but that was a
mistake. It was worse, for there was not a particle of growing shade,
not a blade of any green thing, and there seemed no breath of life in
that stirless air.
Remember it never rains here; these hills have never known water since
the Flood, but have been baking in this vast kiln for a million years.
You will realize that it must be hot, then, but you will never know how
hot until you go there. Here and there a rock leaned over a little and
made a skimpy blue shadow, which we sidled into as we passed for a
blessed instant of relief. We understood now the fuller meaning of that
Bible phrase, "As the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." This was
a weary land with shadows far between. Now and then those astonishing
donkeys broke into a gallop and stirred up a little scorching wind, the
unflagging boys capering and shouting behind.
It seemed an endless way, up into these calcined hills to the
Burial-place of Kings, but by-and-by there were traces of ruins and
excavation, and we heard the throb of a dynamo on the quivering air. We
dismounted then, and Gaddis led us up a burning little steep to what at
first seemed a great tunnel into the mountain-side. How deep and cool
and inviting it looked up there; we would go in, certainly. Was it
really a tomb? No wonder those old kings looked forward to such a place.
It was merely an entrance to a tomb--a tunnel, truly, and of such size
that I believe two railway trains could enter it side by side and two
more on top of them! I think most of us had the idea--I know I did--that
we would go down ladders into these tombs, and that they would be
earthy, cheerless places, more interesting than attractive.
They are the most beautiful places I ever saw. The entrances--vast, as I
have stated--go directly in from the hillside; the rock floors are dry
and clean, while the side-walls and the ceilings are simply a mass of
such carving and color as the world nowhere else contains. An electric
dynamo set up in a tomb that was never finished (that of Rameses XII., I
believe) supplies illumination for these homes of the kingly dead, and
as you follow deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain your
wonder grows at the inconceivable artistic effort and constructive labor
that have been expended on those walls. Deeper, and still deeper, along
a gradual decline that seems a veritable passage to the underworld. Here
and there, at the side, are antechambers or avenues that lead away--we
wonder whither.
Now and again Gaddis paused to explain the marvellous story of the
walls--the progress of the King to the underworld--his reception there,
his triumphs, his life in general in that long valley of spirits which
ran parallel with Egypt and was neither above nor below the level of the
earth. It was this form and idea of the underworld that the shape of
these tombs was intended to express, while their walls illustrate the
happy future life of the King. Chapters from the "Book of the
Underworld" (a sort of descriptive geography of the country) and from
the "Book of the Dead" (a manual of general instruction as to customs
and deportment in the new life) cover vast spaces. Here and there a
design was not entirely worked out, but the sketch was traced in
outline, which would indicate that perhaps the King died before his tomb
(always a life-work) was complete.
Now, realize: This gorgeous passage was nearly five hundred feet long,
cut into the living rock, and opened into a vast pillared and vaulted
chamber fully sixty feet long by forty wide and thirty high--the whole
covered with splendid decorations that the dry air and protection have
preserved as fresh and beautiful as the day they were finished so many
centuries ago. This was the royal chamber, empty now, where in silent
state King Seti I. once lay. We are a frivolous crowd, but we were awed
into low-voiced wonder at the magnitude of this work, the mightiness of
a people who could provide so overwhelmingly for their dead.
I do not remember how many such tombs we visited, but they were a good
many, including those of Rameses I. and II., the father and the mighty
son of Seti I., all three of whom now sleep in the Cairo Museum. Also
the tomb of Rameses IX., one of the finest of the lot.
In some of the tombs the sarcophagi were still in place, but all are
empty of occupants except one. This was the splendid tomb of Amenophis
II., of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who lived in the glory of Egypt, 1600
B.C., a warrior who slew seven Syrian chiefs with his own hand. Gaddis
had not told us what to expect in that tomb, and when we had followed
through the long declining way to the royal chamber and beheld there,
not an empty sarcophagus but a king asleep, we were struck to silence
with that three thousand five hundred years of visible rest.
The top of the sarcophagus is removed, and is replaced by heavy plate
glass. Just over the sleeper's face there is a tiny electric globe, and
I believe one could never tire of standing there and looking at that
quiet visage, darkened by age, but beautiful in its dignity; unmoved,
undisturbed by the storm and stress of the fretful years.
How long he has been asleep! The Israelites were still in bondage when
he fell into that quiet doze, and for their exodus, a century or two
later, he did not care. Hector and Achilles and Paris and the rest had
not battled on the Plains of Troy; the gods still assembled on Mt.
Olympus; Rome was not yet dreamed. He had been asleep nigh a thousand
years when Romulus quit nursing the she-wolf to build the walls of a
city which would one day rule the world. The rise, the conquest, the
decline of that vast empire he never knew. When her armies swept the
nations of the East and landed upon his own shores he did not stir in
his sleep. The glory of Egypt ebbed away, but he did not care. Old
religions perished; new gods and new prophets replaced the gods and
prophets he had known--it mattered not to him, here in this quiet
underworld. Through every change he lay here in peace, just as he lies
to-day, so still, so fine in his kingly majesty--upon his face that soft
electric glow which seems in no wise out of place, because it has come
as all things come at last to him who waits.
In a sort of anteroom near the royal chamber lie the mummies of three
adherents of the King, each with a large hole in the skull and a large
gash in the breast--royal slaves, no doubt, sent to bear their liege
company. I remember one of them as having very long thick curly hair--a
handsome fellow, I suppose; a favorite who could not, or would not, be
left behind.
A number of other royal mummies were found in the Tomb of Amenophis II.,
so that at some period of upheaval it must have been used as a
hiding-place for the regal dead, as was a cave across the mountains at
Der al-Bahari. Perhaps those who secreted them here thought that a king
who in life had slain seven chiefs with his own hand would make a potent
guard. They were not mistaken. Through all the centuries the guests of
that still house lay undisturbed.
We paused, though briefly--for it was fairly roasting outside--at the
excavations of our countryman, Mr. Theodore M. Davis, who has brought to
light so many priceless relics in this place; after which we bought an
entire stock of oranges from an Arab who suddenly appeared from nowhere,
sucked them ravenously, and set out, leading our donkeys up a broiling
precipitous path over the mountains, for the house of Queen Hatasu,
which lies at the base of the cliffs on the other side.
It was not very far, I suppose, but it was strenuous and seemed miles.
We were rewarded, however, when we reached the plateau of the mountain
top. From the brink of the great cliff we could look out over the whole
plain of Thebes, its villages and its ruins, its green cultivation and
its blazing sands. Once it was a vast city--"the city of a hundred gates
and twenty thousand chariots of war." Through its centre flowed the
Nile, a very fountain of life, its one outlet to the world. To the east
and the west lay Nature's surest fortifications, the dead hills and the
encompassing sands. It is estimated that the city of Paris could stand
on this level sweep and that Thebes overspread it all. As at Ephesus, we
tried to re-create that vanished city, but we did not try long, for the
mid-day sun was too frying hot.
So we descended to the rest-house of Der al-Bahari, where we created a
famine in everything resembling refreshments, liquid or otherwise, in
that wayside shelter. Then out on the piazza we swung our fly-brushes,
beat off the sellers of things, and tried to assimilate our half-baked
knowledge.
We were in a mixed state of temples and tombs and dynasties and
localities--of sacrificial processions, and gods of the "Underworld."
The sun had got into our heads, too, and some of the refreshments had
been of strange color and curious brands. It is no wonder that we
drifted into deliriums of verse. I have forgotten who had the first
seizure, but from internal evidence it was probably Fosdick--Fosdick of
Ohio. This is it:
Queen Hatasu, of Timbuctoo,
She lived a busy life;
She fell in love with King Khufu,
And she became his wife.
She put him in a pyramid--
He put her in another,
And now four thousand years have gone
You can't tell one from tother.
I do remember how we tried to reason with the author; how we explained
to him carefully that Hatasu, who was also called Hatshepset and certain
other names, did not hail from Timbuctoo; also that King Khufu, alias
Cheops, had been in his pyramid at least two thousand years, with
fourteen dynasties on top of him, when that lady of the Nile was born.
It was no use; he turned a glazed eye on us and said all periods looked
alike to him, that art was long and life fleeting, that a trifle of two
thousand years was as a few grains on the Egyptian sands of time. We
saw, then, he was hopeless, but later he improved and seemed sorry. It
did not matter; another member of the party had been taken with the
poetic madness, and we gave room for his attack. It was of milder form,
and mercifully short:
King Rameses, he strove to please,
And put his foes to flight;
To celebrate his victories
He toiled both day and night.
He filled full threescore temples with
His statues vast and grim,
And some of Mrs. Rameses
Who wa'n't knee-high to him.
I don't know why a malady of this sort should fall upon our party. Such
things never happened on the ship, but then Egypt is different, as I
have said. There was one more outbreak before we got the germ destroyed:
Behold the halls of Seti I.,
And also Seti II.;
Likewise of old Amenhetep
And haughty Hatasu.
They lived in state, their days were great
And glided gayly by;
Sometimes they used to rail at fate,
The same as you and I.
Oh, Seti I., your race is run,
And also Seti II.,
And lizards sleep where ages creep
In the house of Hatasu.
It was time to check the tendency; it was getting serious.
We went up to the "House of Hatasu"--all that is left of it--a beautiful
fragment of what was built by the great Queen as her Holy of Holies. It
is unlike other temples we have seen, with its square columns; its
beautiful open portico; its fine ceiling, still perfect in workmanship
and coloring. Queen Hatasu had ideas of her own about building; also,
her own architect. His name was Senmut, and his tomb, a mile from the
temple, commands a view of it to this day.
Hatasu once made a notable expedition to the lower east coast of
Africa--to Punt, as it was called then, and she has recorded it on these
walls. It shows the natives bringing valuable presents--woods, spices,
gold, and the like--in exchange for glass beads and tin whistles, after
the customary manner of such barter. A part of the relief shows the
Prince of Punt and "Mrs. Punt," whose figure was certainly remarkable,
followed by their family, all with hands raised in deference to the
Egyptian Queen.
It was near here, in 1881, that the cave or pit was found containing the
mummies of many kings, including Seti I., Rameses II., and others who
had been stored here for safety. Arabs had been selling royal scarabs
for some time, and the archæologists finally discovered the secret of
their supply. It was a priceless find, and with the treasures of the
tomb of Amenophis II., made the museum of Cairo the richest
archæological depository in the world.
We put in the afternoon visiting temples, mostly of Rameses the Great,
and looking at statues which he had caused to be erected of himself
wherever there was room. I remember one colossal granite figure of that
self-sufficient king, lying prostrate on the sand now, estimated to
weigh a thousand tons--which is to say two million pounds. That statue
was sixty feet high when it stood upright, and it is cut like a gem. It
was brought down from Assuan in one piece, by barge, as was the enormous
granite base, which is thirty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and eight
feet thick.
I remember, too, some sun-dried brick--brick made by the Israelites,
maybe--with the imprint of Rameses still on them, uneffaced after
thirty-three centuries. The sun bakes hard in Egypt; no other kiln is
needed. I remember a temple of Rameses III. and a pictorial record of
one of his victories. His soldiers had reported a killing of twelve
thousand of the enemy; he said:
"Go bring the evidence. If you have those dead men anywhere you can
bring something to prove it."
So the army returned and got the right hands of their victims. The story
is all cut there on the walls, and the hands are there too.
Rameses III. knew the custom inaugurated by his ancestor "The Great," of
eliminating old names with new ones, and he took measures accordingly by
cutting his own inscriptions deep. Some of them sink ten inches into the
walls and will stay there a good while.
I had noticed one curious thing along the outer walls of all these old
temples, to wit: row after row of smooth egg-shaped holes, ranging
irregularly, one above the other, from the base upward--sometimes to the
very top. It was as if they had been dug out by some animal or insect. I
asked Gaddis, at last, what they were, and he told me this curious
thing.
The childless Arab woman, he said, for ages had believed that some magic
in these walls could make them fruitful, so had come and rubbed
patiently with their fingers until they worked a few grains of the
sandstone into a cup of water, which they drank with a prayer of hope.
They had begun, he said, in that far-off time when the temples stood as
clear of rubbish as they do to-day; and, as the years heaped up the
débris, these anxious women had rubbed higher and higher up the walls
until, with the drift of the ages, they had reached the very top. So
there the record stands to-day, and when one realizes how little of that
stone can be rubbed away with the finger-end; how comparatively few must
have been the childless mothers, and then sees how innumerable and deep
those holes are, he gets a sudden and comprehensive grasp of the vast
stretch of time these walls stood tenantless, vanishing, and unregarded,
save by those generations of barren women.
We raced away for the Colossi of Memnon, where, I fear, we did not
linger as long as was proper. It was growing late--we were very tired
and were overfull of undigested story and tangled chronology. Also the
scarab men and flies were especially bad just there. We were willing to
take a bare look at that majestic pair who have watched the sun rise
morning after morning while a great city vanished away from around them,
and then go steaming away across the sands for the Nile and the cool
rest of the hotel.
Such a time as we had settling with those donkey-boys--the old
white-turbaned sheik, owner of the donkeys, squatting and smoking
indifferently while the storm raged about him. But it was over at last,
and the boatmen sang again--a quiet afterlude of that extraordinary
day--and collected baksheesh on the farther shore.
XLII
THE HIGHWAY OF EGYPT
There could hardly be a daintier boat than the _Memnon_. It just holds
our party; it is as clean and speckless as possible, and there is an
open deck the full width of the tiny steamer, with pretty rugs and lazy
chairs, where we may lounge and drowse and dream and look out on the
gently passing panorama of the Nile.
For we have left Luxor, and are floating in this peaceful fashion down
to Cairo, resting in the delight of it, after those fierce
temple-hunting, tomb-visiting days. Not that we are entirely through
with temples and the like. Here and there we tie up to the bank, and go
ashore and scamper away on donkeys to some tumbled ruin, but it is a
diversion now, not a business, and we find such stops welcome. For the
most part we spend our days just idling, and submitting to the spell of
Egypt, which has encompassed us and possessed us as it will encompass
and possess any one who has a trace of the old human tendency to drift
and dream.
It has been said of Boston that it is less a locality than a state of
mind. I wish _I_ had said that--of Egypt. I will say it now, and without
humor, for of this land it is so eminently true. A mere river-bank; a
filament of green; a long slender lotus-stem, of which the Delta is the
flower--_that_ is Egypt. Remote--shut in by the desert and the dead
hills--it is far less a country and a habitation than a psychological
condition which all the mummied ages have been preparing--which the
traveller from the earliest moment is bound to feel. It has lived so
long! It had made and recorded its history when the rest of the world
was dealing in nursery-tales! The glamour of that stately past has
become the spell, the enchantment of to-day. The magic of the lotus
grows more potent with the years.
It is such a narrow land! Sometimes the lifeless hills close in on one
side or the other to the water's edge. Nowhere is the fertile strip
wide, for its fertility depends wholly on the water it receives from the
Nile, and when that water is drawn up by hand with a goat-skin pail and
a well-sweep--a _shaduf_, as they call it--it means that fields cannot
be very extensive, even if there were room, which as a rule there is
not.
[Illustration: THINK OF WATERING A WHOLE WHEAT-FIELD WITH A WELL-SWEEP
AND A PAIL]
Think of watering a whole wheat-field with a well-sweep and a pail!
Furthermore, where the banks are high the water is sometimes lifted
three times between the Nile and the surface, and much of it is wasted
in transit. It is the oldest form of irrigation; the hieroglyphics show
that it was in use in Egypt five thousand years ago. It is also still
the most popular form in Upper Egypt. We saw a good many of the
_sakkieh_--primitive and wasteful water-wheels propelled by a buffalo or
a camel or a cow--and at rare intervals a windmill, where some
Englishman has established a plantation, but it is the _shaduf_ that
largely predominates.
The mud villages among the date-palms are unfailingly picturesque; the
sail-boats of the Nile--_markab_ they call them--drifting down upon us
like great butterflies, have a charm not to be put in words; the life
along the shores never loses its interest; the sun sets and the sun
rises round the dreamy days with a marvel of color that seems each time
more wonderful. Then there is the moonlight. But I must not speak of
Egyptian moonlight or I shall lose my sense of proportion altogether,
for it is like no other light that ever lay on sea or land.
We do not travel through the night, but anchor at dusk until daybreak.
It is curious to reflect that one sees the entire country on a trip like
this, if he rises early. We do rise early, most of us--though the cool
nights (nights are always cool in Egypt) and the stillness are an
inducement to sleep--and we are usually very hungry before breakfast
comes along. One may have coffee on the deck if he likes--the
picturesque Arab will bring it joyfully, especially where there is a
baksheesh at the end. It is good coffee, too, and the food is good;
everything is good on the _Memnon_ except the beverages and the cigars.
The wine could be improved and the cigars could be thrown away. I paid a
shilling for one that was as hard as a stick and crumbled to dust when I
bit it. Never mind the flavor. That brand was called "The Scarab." It
should have been named "The Mummy"--it had all the characteristics.
The pilot commands this boat--the captain merely conducts the excursion.
The captain wears European dress and speaks English, but the pilot is
Arab throughout--dark-faced, heavily turbaned, silent--watching the
water like a sphinx. Now and then he makes a motion and says a word to
the steersman at his side. Whenever we lie up or strike safe water he
locates Mecca, prostrates himself, and prays. I should think his
emotions would be conflicting at times. Doctrinally, of course, it is
his duty to pray for the boat to sink and exterminate this crowd.
Professionally, it is his duty to take us safely to Cairo. Poor old
Abbas! how are you going to explain to the prophet by-and-by?
We may not reach Cairo, however. The Nile is shallow at this season, and
already we have scraped the sand more than once. It is a curious
river--full of currents and shifting sand--the water getting scantier as
you descend. That seemed strange to us until we realize that its entire
flow comes from the far interior; that it has no feeding tributaries,
while the steady evaporation, the irrigation, and the absorption of
these burning sands constitute a heavy drain. It is hard to grasp a
condition like that, or what this river means--has always meant--to the
dwellers along its shores. Not alone an artery of life, it is life
itself--water, food, clothing, cleanliness.
They don't take as much advantage of that last blessing as they
should--nor of the next to the last. It is true that most of them have
some semblance of clothing, but not all of them. In this interior Nile,
as we may call the district between Luxor and Cairo, early principles to
some extent still prevail. At first we saw boys--donkey-boys and the
like--without any perceivable clothing, and more lately we have seen
men--brown-skinned muscular creatures loading boats--utterly destitute
of wardrobe. Yet, somehow, these things did not shock us--not greatly.
They seemed to go with the sun, and the dead blue sky and the other
scenery. A good deal depends on surroundings.
* * * * *
Our stops were not all brief. We put in a full day at Abydos, where
there is a splendid temple built by Seti I., and Rameses the Great (of
course), and where the donkeys are as poor as they are good in Luxor.
Not that they were wretched in appearance, or ill-cared for, but they
were a stiff-necked, unwilling breed. Mine had a way of stopping
suddenly and facing about toward home. Twice I went over his head during
these manoeuvres, which the others thought entertaining.
But they had their troubles, too. The distance to the temple was
long--eight miles, I should think--and part of the way the road was an
embankment several feet high. Some of the donkeys seemed to think it
amusing to suddenly decide to go down this embankment and make off over
the desert. We were a scattering, disordered cavalcade, and what with
the flies and distracting donkey-boys who were perpetually at one's side
with "Mister, good donkey--fine donkey--baksheesh, mister," the trip was
a memorable one. Once when my donkey, whose name was "Straight Flush"
and should have been "Two-spot" got behind the party, I caught my
attendant, not only twisting his tail, but biting it.
It was a good excursion, on the whole. We had luncheon in the great hall
of the temple, and I could not help wondering who had held the first
feast in that mighty place where we were holding the last, to date.
We feel at home now in a temple, especially when we see the relief of
our faithful Rameses, and of Osiris, king of the underworld, and his
kind. We have become familiar and even disrespectful toward these great
guardians of the past. This makes it hard on Gaddis at times; especially
after luncheon, when we are in a sportive mood.
"Zis is ze temple of Rameses ze Great"--he begins.
"Ah, so it is--we suspected it all along."
"Here you will see hees seventy-two son--"
"Sure enough--our old friends."
"And hees fourteen wive."
"Happy man, but why a king and so few?"
"An' here all zose seventy-two son carry gift to Osiris--"
"King of the underworld--so they do, we would recognize that gang
anywhere."
Truly, it is time we were giving up temples; we are no longer serious.
But in this temple of Seti I., at Abydos, we sometimes forgot to jest.
Frivolous and riotous as we have become, we were silent in the presence
of one splendid decoration of Seti offering sacrifice before the sacred
boat, and again where we confronted in a corridor that precious and
beautiful relief carving, the Tablet of Egypt's Kings. The cartouche of
every king down to Seti I. is there--with one exception: the name of
Amenophis IV., the king who abandoned his faith and worshipped his
mother's gods, has no place in that royal company. Otherwise the story
is as complete as it is impressive, and I recognized something of what
that document means to those of Egypt who know (like Gaddis), when I put
out a finger to touch the exquisite work and he whispered, "No, please."
What record will there be of our history thirty-five centuries from now?
Not a book of all those printed to-day will last any considerable
fraction of that period. A tablet like this sets one to wondering if we
should not get an appropriation to preserve at least the skeleton of our
chronology on plates of bronze to be stored in some deep vault safe from
the ravages of fire and flood and earthquake.
We also stopped at Assuit, or Asyut, or Suit--I like these Egyptian
names--you can spell them any way you please. Every one of them has all
the spellings you can think of; you could not invent a new one if you
tried. It is at Assuit they make the spangled shawls, and the natives
flock down to the boat-landing to sell them. Gaddis had probably
telegraphed ahead that a floating asylum of Americans was on the way and
they had assembled accordingly. Long before we were in trading distance
they began to dance about and gesticulate--the sheen of their fabrics
blazing in the sun--crying the prices which they did not expect to get.
Some of our ladies were quite eager, and began to make offers when we
were still many yards from shore. I suppose they thought the supply was
limited. By the time we touched the landing the wildest trading was
already going on. Shawls rolled in a ball were being flung aboard for
examination, and flung back wildly with preposterous under-bids, only
to come hurtling back again with a fierce protest of refusal. For a time
it was a regular game of snowball and fireworks. There were canes to
sell, too, and fly-whips--beautiful ivory-handled things. Commerce
swelled to high tide. In the midst of the melée somebody happened to
notice, what we had not seen before, another steamer lying a little way
ahead--an English party, we were told--the ladies and gentlemen quietly
reading or pityingly regarding our exhibition. I know, now, that the
English have no sense of humor. Another American boat would have been in
spasms of delight at our antics. Also, the Englishman's Egypt is not as
ours, and he does not enjoy it as much. How could he, without loading
up, as we did, with those wonderful Assuit shawls?
Only one more stop along the Nile will I record. This was at Tell
al-Amarna, where, in the desert a little beyond the green, lies all that
is left of the city built by the heretic king, Amenophis IV., who
abandoned Amen-Ra for the sun-worship of his Mesopotamia mother, Queen
Thi.
It was a splendid granite city once, but it is all gone now. Only a
little of the floor of the palace is left, Queen Thi's apartment, Gaddis
said, but it held for us a curious interest. For it is painted, or
perhaps enamelled, in colors, and the decorations, still in a good state
of preservation, are not Egyptian in design, but Syrian or Persian! The
Princess who had left her land to marry an Egyptian king could not
forsake her gods and her traditions, and that old floor remains to-day
after thirty-five centuries to tell the story of her loyalty and her
love.
* * * * *
We should have made other stops, perhaps, but we met disaster. The Nile
was low, as I have said, and a hundred miles below Cairo we awoke one
morning to find our boat hard and fast aground. We had, in fact,
grounded the evening before, and Abbas and his men had been working all
night, putting out anchors and pulling on ropes, a picturesque group, to
the chorus "Ali sah--ali ya seni--ali hoop!" which is an appeal to the
god of the Nile, Gaddis said, in this case unavailing. We were there to
stay for the summer, unless we took train to Cairo, so after breakfast
Gaddis and I went ashore with Abraham, still semi-officially attached to
our party, and walked three miles to the nearest railway station to see
what might be done. It was a fine walk, even though a warm one, across
the Egyptian fields, and I saw some papyrus plant and bought a distaff
and spindle from a man who was sitting by the road spinning after the
fashion of the earliest race of men.
It was Fachen that we reached, an Arab town to which tourists never
come, and the donkeys we arranged for there, to carry our party from the
shore landing to the station, were a nondescript lot without saddle or
bridle--with no gear, in fact, except a remnant of rope tied around the
neck. Then we walked back opposite the boat, another three miles, and
sat on the bank, and sweat and waved our hands and called to those
people, half a mile away in mid-stream, who for some reason could not
see our signals.
It was not uninteresting, though. The natives came to inspect us--an
unusual opportunity for them--and some women came down to the Nile with
great stone jars for water. Those jars must hold eight or ten gallons,
and are heavy enough empty, yet those women will balance them on their
heads and go stepping away chatting lightly, indifferent to their great
burdens. They were barefooted and wore anklets which I wanted to buy,
but Gaddis did not seem interested, and I could not transact a delicate
business like that without careful interpretation.
Our people saw us at last and came for us in a boat. Then there was a
bustle of preparation; a loading into the markab which we had engaged to
take us ashore; a good-bye to our pretty, unfortunate little _Memnon_; a
drifting down to the donkey landing, and a sorry-looking procession to
the railway.
Our guides had difficulty settling with donkey-men, who, never having
had tourists before, had engaged, no doubt, at their usual rates; then
suddenly they had awakened to the idea that they were missing the chance
of a fortune. The baksheesh we gave them must have opened their eyes.
Probably they had never received so much at one time before. At all
events, they came back for a new settlement, surrounded Gaddis and
Abraham, and for a while we thought inferno had broken loose. Gaddis
finally resorted to a stick, but Abraham, who is as big as a camel,
first delivered an admonition, and then ran bodily upon the whole crowd
and swept them like chaff from the platform.
The wait at Fachen was not overlong, but it became a trifle tedious
after the novelty of the place had passed. We telegraphed Cairo of our
coming, and Abraham entertained us with a few marvels to while away the
time. He said that the stone used in building the pyramids had been
brought across the Nile; that such stone was light like pumice-stone
when quarried; that it floated across, and that the water it soaked up
solidified and turned it into hard, heavy stone on the other side. The
Credulous One believed this statement. He said the _Memnon_ had grounded
on a reef of crocodiles, at this season asleep, tucked up in the bed of
the Nile. The Credulous One believed that, too. Several of the party
did. He said that all telegrams in Egypt are sent in English, for the
reason that the Arabic characters get tangled up in the wires. I
believed that myself. He would have enlightened us further, only the
train came just then.
We had to change at Wasta, where it was night, and I shall never forget
that fevered scene of Arab faces and flaring lamps, and heat, and
thirst--the one hot night in Egypt--as we wandered about that Egyptian
station waiting for the Cairo express. Suddenly we came upon another
party of our ship-dwellers, whose boat, ahead of ours, had grounded too.
Finding them there in that weird place was all like something in a
fever. Then we were on the express at last, roaring away through the
dust and dark and heat to Cairo--a flight out of Egypt so modern that
one could imagine the gates of the dead centuries behind us rushing
together with a bang.
XLIII
OTHER WAYS THAT ARE EGYPTIAN
The Reprobates were at Shepheard's when we returned, enjoying Egypt
thoroughly. Shepheard's is a good place in which to enjoy Egypt. Some of
the sights there are quite wonderful, and American refreshments are
connected with an electric bell.
The Reprobates had done Upper Egypt, however. They had done it in one
day. They had left Cairo in the evening, telegraphing ahead for
carriages to meet the train at Luxor, where they had arrived next
morning. They had driven directly from the train to Karnak, from Karnak
to the temple of Luxor, from Luxor to the hotel for luncheon. In the
afternoon they had soared over to the Valley of the Kings; from the
Kings they had dropped down on the House of Hatasu, the temples of
Rameses and others; they had come coursing back by the Colossi of Memnon
in time to catch the Cairo express, which landed them at Shepheard's
about daybreak. The Reprobates had enjoyed Upper Egypt very much, though
I could see they regretted the necessity of devoting all that time to it
when Shepheard's still remained partially unexplored.
I had hardly landed in my room when a call-boy from the office came up
to say that a police-officer was below, asking for me. For a moment I
wondered a little feverishly what particular thing it was he wanted me
for. Then the boy said, "Pyramid police," which brought a gleam of
light. "Oh, why--yes, of course--show him up!"
And now, while we are waiting for him, I am going to record a
circumstance which I suppose a good many readers--especially those
familiar with the East--may find it difficult to believe. Nevertheless,
it is authentic and provable.
In Egypt, baksheesh is a national institution. Everybody takes it--every
Egyptian, I mean; if I should begin by saying I had met an exception to
this rule I could not expect any one who knows Cairo to read any
further. This by-the-way.
It was during our first stop in Cairo, and we had been there a day or
two before we made our official visit to the Pyramids and Sphinx. We
went in carriages then, attended by two guides. For some reason,
however, our protectors left us to shift pretty much for ourselves when
we got there, and it was a pretty poor shift. The fortune-tellers and
scarab-sellers and donkey-men and would-be guides swarmed about us and
overran us and would not be appeased. When we repulsed them temporarily
they rallied and broke over us in waves, and swept us here and there,
until we became mere human flotsam and jetsam on that tossing Egyptian
tide.
It was all like a curiously confused dream. Members of our party would
suddenly turn up, and as suddenly disappear again: there would be
moments of lull when we seemed about to collect, then, presto! without
any apparent cause there would occur wild confusion and despair.
It was no use. Laura and I wanted to go inside the Great Pyramid, and we
did not want to climb it. It was impossible to do one, and it was about
equally impossible not to do the other. Out of the confusion of things
at last I remembered a young officer of the police, whom I had met
riding home that first night on the trolley--a mere lad of nineteen or
twenty, but a big fellow, who spoke excellent English and said he was
Superintendent of the Pyramid Police. I decided now to see if this was
true, and, if so, to ask his advice in our present difficulties.
I remembered that the police station was near the trolley terminus, and
we gradually fought our way back there. Yes, there he was, at his desk,
a handsome Soldierly figure in a tall red fez. He rose and bowed,
remembering us immediately.
We would like to look about a little, I said, and to go inside the big
Pyramid, but we preferred to be alive when we got through; also fairly
decent as to appearance. Couldn't he pick us out a guard or two, who
would keep the enemy in check, and see us through?
He bowed with easy grace.
"I will accompany you myself," he said.
Now, I already knew the custom of Egypt, and I began to make a hasty
estimate of my ready money, wondering if I had sufficient for a
baksheesh of this rank. It was by no means certain. However, there would
be ship-dwellers about: I could borrow, perhaps.
I decided presently that whatever the duty imposed, it was worth it.
With that big uniformed fellow at our side we were immune to all that
hungry horde of Arab vultures. We walked through unscathed. Our
protector procured the entrance tickets for us; he selected two strong
men to push and pull us up the long, dark, glassy-slick passage that
leads to the sepulchre of Khufu in the very heart of the Pyramid; he
went with us himself into that still mysterious place, explaining in
perfect English how five or six thousand years ago the sarcophagus of
the great king was pushed up that incline; he showed us the mortises in
the stone where uprights were set to hold the great granite coffin when
the laborers stopped to rest. It was a weird experience in the cool,
quiet darkness of that mightiest of tombs with the flaring candles and
eager sure-footed Arabs; it seemed to belong in Rider Haggard's story of
_She_. Then, after we had seen the old black sarcophagus, which is empty
now, and had remained a little in that removed place, trying to imagine
that we were really in the very centre of the big Pyramid, we made our
way out again to light and the burning desert heat. I settled with our
Arabs with little or no difficulty, which is worth something in itself,
and when we had found a quiet place I thanked our guardian and tendered
him what I thought a liberal honorarium--fairly liberal, even for
America.
He drew back a little.
"Oh no," he said, "I beg your pardon."
I had not made it large enough then. I glanced about for some of the
party who would have funds.
"I am sorry," I began, "it is not more. I will--"
"I beg your pardon," he repeated, "but I could not accept anything for
what is but my duty. I am only very glad to do what I may for you. I
will do something more, if you wish."
Then, of course, I knew it _must_ be a dream, and that I would wake up
presently in Shepheard's Hotel to find that we hadn't started for the
Pyramids yet. Still, I would keep up the blessed trance a moment longer.
"You mean that you will not allow me to acknowledge your great favor to
us?" I said in that polite manner for which our ship is justly famous.
"Not in money," he said. "The Government pays me a salary for my work
and this is only part of my work. It has also given me pleasure."
I surreptitiously pinched myself in certain tender places to see if I
couldn't wake up. It was no use. He persisted in his refusal, and
presently produced an ancient corroded coin, Greek or Roman, such as is
sometimes found among the débris.
"I should like to offer you this," he said. "I found it myself, so I am
sure it is genuine."
Ah, this was the delicate opportunity.
"You will let me buy it, of course."
But no, he declined that, too. He wished us only to remember him, he
insisted. He added:
"I have two scarabs at home; I should like to bring them to your hotel."
It was rather dazing. The seller of scarabs--genuine or imitation--will
not let a prospective purchaser get out of sight. I wondered why we
should be trusted in this unheard-of way; I also wondered what those two
scarabs were likely to be worth. Could he come to-night? I asked; we
should be sight-seeing to-morrow and leaving for Upper Egypt in the
afternoon.
But no, he would not be home in time. He would wait until we returned
from Upper Egypt.
So it was we had parted, and in the tumult of sight-seeing up the Nile I
had forgotten the matter altogether. Now, here he was. I counted up my
spare currency, and waited.
He had on his best smile as he entered, also a brand-new uniform, and he
certainly made a handsome figure. He inquired as to our sight-seeing up
the Nile, then rather timidly he produced two of those little Egyptian
gems--a scarab and an amulet, such as men and women of old Egypt wore,
and took with them to their tombs.
"I got them from a man who took them from a mummy. They are genuine. I
want to give them to you and the little lady," he said.
"But you must not _give_ them to us--they are too valuable," I began.
He flushed and straightened up a little.
"But that is why I wish you to have them."
* * * * *
Now, of course, no one who knows Cairo can ever believe that story. Yet
it all truly happened, precisely as I have set it down. He was just a
young Egyptian who had attended school in Alexandria, and he spoke and
wrote English, French, Italian, and the dialects of Arabic. The Egyptian
acquires the lore of languages naturally, it would seem, but that this
youth should acquire all those things, and such a standard of honor and
generosity, here in a land where baksheesh is the native god, did seem
amazing. When we left, he wrote down our address in the neatest possible
hand, requesting permission to send us something more.
NOTE.--As my reputation for truth is already gone I may as
well add, a year later, that he has since sent two
presents--some little funerary figures, and a beautiful
ivory-handled fly-whip.
XLIV
SAKKARA AND THE SACRED BULLS
One begins and finishes Egypt with Cairo. Starting with the Sphinx and
Pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty, you work down through the Theban periods
of the Upper Nile and then once more at Cairo, leap far back into the
First period in a trip to Memphis, the earliest capital of Egypt, the
beginning of all Egyptian things. After which, follows the Museum, for
only after visiting localities and landmarks can that great climax be
properly approached.
I think we were no longer very enthusiastic about ruins, but every one
said we must go to Sakkara. There was yet another very wonderful statue
of Rameses there, they said, also the oldest pyramids ever built, and
the Mausoleum of the Sacred Bulls. It would never do to miss them.
I am glad now that I did not miss them, but I remember the Memphis
donkeys with unkindness. The farther down the Nile the worse the
donkeys. We thought they had been bad at Abydos, but the Abydos donkeys
were without sin compared with those of Sakkara. Mine was named
"Sunrise," and I picked him for his beauty, always a dangerous asset. He
was thoroughly depraved and had a gait like a steam-drill. The boat
landed us at Bedrashen and I managed to survive as far as the colossal
statue of Rameses, a prostrate marvel, and the site of the ancient city
of Menes--capital of Egypt a good deal more than six thousand years
ago--that is, before the world began, by gospel calculation. I was
perfectly willing to stay there among the cooling palms and watch the
little children gather camel-dung and pat it into cakes to dry for fuel,
and I would have done it if I had known what was going to happen to me.
It is a weary way across the desert to the pyramids and the tombs of
those sacred bulls, but I was not informed of that. When I realized, it
was too late. The rest of the party were far ahead of me beyond some
hills, and I was alone in the desert with that long-eared disaster and a
donkey-boy who stopped to talk with the children, beset by a plague of
flies that would have brought Pharaoh to terms. It was useless to kick
and hammer that donkey or to denounce the donkey-boy. Sunrise had long
ago formulated his notions of speed, and the donkey-boy was simply a
criminal in disguise. When we passed a mud village, at last, and a new
brigade of flies joined those I had with me, I would have given any
reasonable sum to have been at Cairo with the Reprobates, in the cool
quiet of Shepheard's marble halls.
Beyond the village was just the sand waste, and not a soul of the party
in sight. I didn't have the courage to go back, and hardly the courage
to go on. I said I would lie down by the trail and die, and let them
find me there and be sorry they had forsaken me in that pitiless way.
Then for the sake of speed I got off and walked. It was heavy walking
through the loose sand, with the sun blazing down.
Presently I looked around for my escort. He was close at my heels--on
the donkey's back. I said the most crushing things I could think of and
displaced him. Then we settled down into the speed of a ram-headed
sphinx again. Everything seemed utterly hopeless. It was useless to
swear; I was too old to cry.
I don't know when we reached the first pyramid, but the party had been
there and gone. I did not care for it much. It might be the oldest
pyramid in the world, but it was rather a poor specimen, I thought, and
could not make me forget my sorrow. I went on, and after a weary time
came to the Tomb of Thi, who lived in the Fifth Dynasty and was in no
way related to Queen Thi of Tell al-Amarna, who came along some two
thousand years later. There was an Englishman and his guide there who
told me about it, and it was worth seeing, certainly, with its relief
frescoes over five thousand years old, though it is not such a tomb as
those of the Upper Nile.
I overtook the party at the Tomb of the Sacred Bulls. By that time I had
little enthusiasm for bulls; or for tombs, unless it was one I could use
for Sunrise. The party had done the bulls, but when I got hold of Gaddis
and laid my case before him, he said he would find me a new donkey and
that the others would wait while we inspected the bulls. So everything
was better then, and I was glad of the bulls, though I was still warm
and resentful at Sunrise and his keeper, and even at Gaddis, who was
innocent enough, Heaven knows.
In the tomb of the bulls everything unpleasant passed away. It was cool
and dark in there, and we carried lights and wandered along those vast
still corridors, which are simply astounding when one remembers their
purpose.
This Serapeum or Apis mausoleum is a vast succession of huge underground
vaults and elaborate granite sarcophagi, which once contained all the
Apis or Sacred Bulls of Memphis. The Apis was the product of an
immaculate conception. Lightning descended from heaven upon a cow--any
cow--and the Apis was the result. He was recognized by being black, with
a triangular spot of white on his forehead and a figure of an eagle on
his back. Furthermore, he had double hairs in his tail and a beetle on
his tongue. It was recognized that only lightning could produce a bull
like that, and no others were genuine, regardless of watchful
circumstance.
Apis was about the most sacred of the whole synod of Egyptian beasts.
Even the Hawk of Horus and the Jackal of Anubis had to retire to
obscurity when Apis came along, mumbling and pawing up the dust. When he
died there were very solemn ceremonies, and he was put into one of those
polished granite sarcophagi, with a tablet on the walls relating the
story of his life, and mentioning the King whose reign had been honored
by this bellowing bovine aristocrat. Also they set up a special chapel
over his tomb, and this series of chapels and tombs eventually
solidified into a great temple with pylons approached by an avenue of
sphinxes.
The Serapeum dates from about 1500 B.C. and continued in active use down
to the time of the Ptolomies. The Egyptian Pantheon was breaking up
then, and Apis was probably one of the first deities to go. A nation's
gods fall into disrepute when they can no longer bring victory to a
nation's arms, and a sacred bull who could not beat off Julius Cæsar
would very likely be asked to resign.
There are sixty-four vaults in the part of the Serapeum we visited, and
twenty-four of them contain the granite sarcophagi. The sarcophagi are
about thirteen feet long by eleven feet wide, and eight high--that is to
say, the size of an ordinary bedroom--and in each of these, mummified
and in state, an Apis slept.
He is not there now. Only two of him were found when these galleries
were opened in modern times. But I have seen Apis, for one of him sleeps
now in a glass case in the Historical Library in New York City. I shall
visit him again on my return, and view him with deeper interest and more
respect since I have seen his tomb.
XLV
A VISIT WITH RAMESES II.
I have never quite known just how it was I happened to be overlooked and
deserted that next evening at the Museum. I remember walking miles
through its wonderful galleries; I recollect standing before the rare
group of Rameses and his queen--recently discovered and put in
place--the most beautiful sculpture in Egypt; I recall that we visited
the room of Mr. Theodore Davis and looked on all the curiously modern
chairs and couches and the perfectly preserved chariot taken from the
tombs opened in the Valley of the Kings; also the room where all the
royal jewels are kept, marvellous necklaces and amulets, and every
ornament that would delight a king or queen in any age; I have a
confused impression of hundreds of bronze and thousands of clay figures
taken from tombs; I know that, as a grand climax, we came at last to the
gem of the vast collection, the room where Seti I., Rameses the Great,
and the rest of the royal dead, found at Der al-Bahari, lie asleep. I
remember, too, that I was tired then, monumentally tired in the thought
that this was the last word in Egypt; that we were done; that there was
no need of keeping up and alive for further endeavor--that only before
us lay the sweet anticipation of rest.
The others were tired, too, but they wanted to buy some things in the
little salesroom down-stairs, and were going, presently. They would come
back and see the kings again, later. I said I would stay there and
commune a little alone with the great Seti, and his royal son, who, in
that dim long ago, had remembered himself so numerously along the Nile.
They meant to come back, no doubt, the party, I mean; they claim now
that the main museum was already closed when they had finished their
purchases, and they supposed I had gone. It does not matter, I have
forgiven them, whatever their sin.
It was pleasant and restful there, when they had left me. I dropped down
on a little seat against the wall and looked at those still figures,
father and son, kings, mighty warriors and temple-builders when the
glory of Egypt was at full flood.
It was an impressive thought that those stately temples up the Nile,
which men travel across the world to see, were built by these two; that
the statues are their statues; that the battles and sacrifices depicted
on a thousand walls were _their_ battles and _their_ sacrifices; that
they loved and fought and conquered, and set up monuments in those
far-off centuries when history was in its sunrise, yet lie here before
us in person to-day, frail drift on the long tide of years.
And it was a solemn thought that their life story is forever done--that
any life story can last but a little while. Tossed up out of the
unexplored, one's feet some day touch the earth--the ancient earth that
had been going on so long before we came. Then, for a few years, we
bustle importantly up and down--fight battles and build temples,
maybe--and all at once slip back into the uncharted waste, while the
world--the ancient world--fights new battles, builds new temples, sends
new ships across the sea, though we have part in it no more, no
more--forever, and forever.
Looking at those two, who in their brief sojourn had made and recorded
some of the most ancient history we know, I recalled portions of their
pictured story on the temple walls and tried to build a human semblance
of their daily lives. Of course they were never troubled with petty
things, I thought; economies, frivolities, small vanities, domestic
irritations--these were modern. _They_ had been as gods in the full
panoply of a race divinely new. They had been--
But it was too much of an effort. I was too worn. I could only look at
them, and envy the long nap they were having there under the glass in
that still, pleasant room.
I was a good deal surprised, then, when I fancied I saw Rameses stir and
appear a little restless in his sleep. It was even more interesting to
see him presently slide away the glass and sit up. I thought there must
be some mistake, and I was going to get an attendant, when he noticed me
and seemed to guess my thought.
"It's all right," he said, "you needn't call any one. The place closed
an hour ago and there is only a guard down-stairs, who is asleep by this
time. It happens to be my night to reincarnate and I am glad you are
here to keep me company. You can tell me a good deal, no doubt. These
people here don't know anything." He waved a hand to the sleepers about
him. "They are allowed only one night in a thousand years. The gods
allow me a night in every century. I was always a favorite of the gods.
It is fortunate you happened to stop with us to-night."
"It _is_ fortunate," I said. "I shall be envied by my race. I have just
been trying to imagine something of your life and period. That is far
more interesting than to-day. Tell me something about it."
Rameses rested comfortably on the side of his case.
"Oh, well," he said, reflectively, "of course mine was a great period--a
very great period. Egypt was never so great as it was under my rule. It
was my rule that made it great--my policy, of course, and my vigorous
action. I was always for progress and war. The histories you have of my
period are poor things. They never did me justice, but it was my own
fault, of course. I did not leave enough records of my work. I was
always a modest man--too modest for my own good, everybody said that.
"I was religious, too, and built temples wherever there was room. It is
said that I claimed temples that I did not build. Nonsense!--I built all
the temples. I built Karnak; I built Luxor; I built Abou-Simbel; I built
Abydos; I built the Pyramids; I built the Sphinx; I invented the sacred
bulls; I was all there was to religion, in Egypt. I was all there was to
_Egypt_. I was the whole thing. It is a pity I did not make a record of
these things somewhere."
"There _are_ a few statues of you," I suggested, "and inscriptions--they
seem to imply--"
"Ah yes," he said, "but not many. It was slow work carving those things.
I could have had many more, if the workmen had been more industrious.
But everything was slow, and very costly--very costly indeed--why, I
spent a fortune on that temple of Karnak alone. You saw what I did
there; those ram-headed sphinxes nearly bankrupted me. I had to cut down
household expenses to finish them.
"Yes, my wife objected a good deal-- I speak collectively, of course,
signifying my domestic companionship--there were fourteen of her.
[Illustration: GOT IT MADE CHEAP SOMEWHERE WITH HER PICTURE CARVED ON
THE FRONT OF IT]
"She wanted jewelry--collectively--individually, too, for that
matter--and it took such a lot to go around. You saw all those things in
the next room. They were for her; they were for that matrimonial
collection; I could never satisfy the female craving for such things.
Why, I bought one round of necklaces that cost as much as a ram-headed
sphinx. Still she was not satisfied. Then she was sorry
afterward--collectively--and bought me a sphinx as a present--got it
made cheap somewhere with her picture carved on the front of it. You may
have noticed it--third on the right as you come out. I used it--I had
to--but it was a joke. When wives buy things for their husbands it is
quite often so.
"Oh yes, I was a great king, of course, and the greatest warrior the
world has ever seen; but my path was not all roses. My wife--my
household collection--wanted their statues placed by the side of mine.
Individually! Think of what a figure I would have cut! It was a silly
notion. What had they done to deserve statues? I did it, though--that
is collectively--here and there. I embodied her in a single figure at my
knee, as became her position. But she wasn't satisfied--collectively and
individually she declared she amounted to as much as I did, and pointed
at our seventy-two sons.
"No, I was never understood by that lot. I was never a hero in my own
house. So I had to order another statue, putting her at my side. You saw
it down-stairs. It is very beautiful, of course, and is a good likeness
of her, collectively. She always made a good composite picture, but is
it fair to me? She was never regarded in that important way, except by
herself.
"Yes, it is very pleasant here--very indeed. The last time I was allowed
to reincarnate, I was still in the cave at Der al-Bahari, where they
stored us when Cambyses came along and raided Thebes. Cambyses burned a
number of my temples. It was too bad. The cave was a poor place, but
safe. My tomb was much pleasanter, though it was not as grand as I had
intended it to be. I meant to have the finest tomb in the valley, but my
contractor cheated me.
"The men who furnished the materials paid him large sums and gave me
very poor returns. His name was Baksheesh, which is how the word
originated, though it means several things now, I believe."
"How interesting!" I interrupted. "We would call that grafting in our
country."
"Very likely; I didn't find out that he was grafting, as you say, until
quite late, then I put him into a block of concrete and built him into a
temple. He made a very good block; he is there yet. After that there
was no trouble for a while."
"I saw something of the kind at Algiers--one Geronimo," I began--
"Later, three thousand years later. I originated the idea--it has been
often adopted since. Those people along the Coast adopted a good many of
my ideas, but they never get the value out of them. It put an end to
baksheesh--graft as you call it--in Thebes, and it would be valuable
to-day in Cairo, I should think. A wall around Cairo could be built in
that way--there is enough material."
The King rested a little on his other arm, then continued:
"Speaking of my tomb. I am glad I am not there. I attract much more
attention here than if I were on exhibition in that remote place.
There's Amenophis II. I understand that he's very proud of the fact that
he's the only king left in his tomb. I don't envy him at all. I have a
hundred visitors where he has one. They are passing by me here in a
string all day, and when they are your countrymen I can hear a good deal
even through the thick glass. I find it more interesting to stay here in
my case through the day, than to be stalking about the underworld,
attending sacrifices to Anubis and those other gods. I was always fond
of activity and progress."
"You keep up with your doings, then?"
"Well, not altogether. You see, I cannot go about in the upper world. I
catch only a word of things from the tourists. I hear they have a new
kind of boat on the Nile."
"Yes, indeed," I said. "A boat that is run by steam--a mixture of fire
and water--and is lit by electricity--a form of lightning."
I thought he would be excited over these things, and full of questions;
but he only reflected a little and asked,
"What is the name of that boat?"
"Oh, there are many of them. The one I came down on was called the
_Memnon_."
He sighed.
"There it is," he said, sadly. "I am discredited, you see. I suppose
they couldn't name it 'Rameses the Great.'"
"Ah, but there is one of that name, too."
He brightened a little, but grew sad again.
"Only one?" he said.
"Do you think there should be more of that name?" I asked.
He sat up quite straight.
"In my time they would all have borne that great name," he said.
"And--ah, wouldn't that be a bit confusing?"
"Not at all. I have set up as many as a hundred statues in one
temple--_all_ of Rameses the Great. They were not at all confusing. You
knew _all_ of them immediately."
"True enough; and now I think of it, perhaps you have not heard that
they have made your portrait as you lie here, and, by a magic process of
ours, have placed it on a sort of papyrus tablet--a postal card we call
it--and by another process have sent thousands of them over the world."
He looked at me with eyes that penetrated my conscience.
"Is that statement true?" he asked, tremulously.
"It is--every word. Your portrait is as familiar to the world to-day as
it was here in Egypt three thousand years ago."
The great peace that had rested on the king's face came back to it. The
piercing eyes closed restfully, and he slipped back on his pillow.
"Then, after all, I am vindicated," he murmured. "I have not lived and
died in vain."
A hand was resting on my shoulder. The sun was shining in, and a
threatening guard was standing over me.
It was nothing. Five francs allayed his indignation. Five francs is a
large baksheesh in Cairo, but I did not begrudge it, as matters stood.
XLVI
THE LONG WAY HOME
We bade good-bye to Egypt that morning, and to Gaddis--whose name and
memory will always mean Egypt to me--and were off for Alexandria, where
the ship was waiting. That long-ago dream of a visit to Damascus and
Jerusalem, and of a camp on the Nile had been realized. Now it was over.
We were ready to go home--at least some of us were. There would be a
stop at Naples, with Pompeii and Rome for those who cared for it, but
even these great places would be tame after Egypt. They must be
approached from another direction for that eager interest which properly
belongs to an expedition of this kind. A number of our ship-dwellers had
an eager interest--a large and growing interest--but it was for home, an
interest that was multiplied each day by the square of the distance
travelled.
[Illustration: SET OUT ON THE LONG, STEADY, ATLANTIC SWING]
Not many of us were left when we had made our last touch on the Riviera,
rounded the Rock, and set out on the long, steady, Atlantic swing. The
Reprobates had gone _viâ_ Monte Carlo to Paris. Others had drifted up
through Europe to sail from Cherbourg. The Diplomat was still with us;
also Fosdick of Ohio, and Laura, age fourteen, but only a score or two
of the original muster could gather at the long table in the dining-room
on the last night out of port, for a final look at one another, and to
exchange the greetings and god-speeds for which there would be little
time during the bustle of arrival. It was hardly an occasion; just a
pleasant little meeting that even with jollification was not without
sadness. One of the ship's poets offered some verses of good-bye, of
which I recall these lines:
"To-night, we are here who have stayed by the ship;
To-morrow, the harbor and anchor and slip--
The word of command for the gang-plank to fall--
The word that shall suddenly scatter us all--
Then all the King's horses and all the King's men
Could never collect us together again."
* * * * *
That was a good while ago, nearly a year now, and already it seems as
far back in the past as the days of Rameses; for, as I have said
somewhere before, we have but a meagre conception of time. Indeed, I
suspect there is no such thing as time. How can there be when one period
is as long as another compared with eternity?
However, I do not compare with eternity, now. I compare with Egypt. I
shall _always_ compare with Egypt--everything else in the world. Other
interests and other memories may fade and change, but Egypt, the real
Egypt, the enchantment of that land, which is not a land, but a vast
processional epic, will never change, and it will not grow dim. I may
never visit it again, but I shall see it many times. I shall see the
sunrise above the palms, flooding the mountains with amethyst and
turning the sky to crimson gold. Again at sunset I shall sit in the vast
temple of Luxor and hear once more the Muezzin's call to prayer. I shall
race with Laura across the hot desert; I shall hear the cry of the
donkey-boys and the scarab-sellers and the wail for baksheesh; I shall
see our cavalcade scattering through the dust across the Libyan sands.
And I shall wander once more among the tombs of the kings, and follow
down the splendid passage where Amenophis lies with the repose of the
ages on his benignant face. I shall recall other lands and other ages,
too, but it is to Egypt that I shall turn after all the others have
drifted by; to her temples and her tombs--her glories of the past made
visible. Beyond the sands and the centuries they lie, but they are mine
now, and neither thief nor beggar, nor importunate creditor, can ever
take them away.
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