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A
INCIDENTS OF TRAYEL
IN
EGYPT, ARABIA PETRJIA,
AND
THE HOLY LAND.
By JOHN LySTEPHENS KSFit!) a i^ap anti Hnijrabinfls.
ELEVENTH EDITION. IN TWO VOLUM E S.
VOL. XL
NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FEANKLIN SQUAEE.
1862.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1837, by
Harper & Brothers, In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York.-
a^-^T
C O N T E N 1' S
OP
THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAPTER I.
f he Caiavan. — A sudden Change of Purpose. — Perils of a Storm. — Com fortless Repentance. — Solitude. — A Woman and a Chase. — A Patriarchal Feast. — Condition of the Arab Women. — Hospitality. — No refusing a good Offer. — A Dilemma ...... Page 7
CHAPTER U.
Evening Amusements. — A Trial of the Feelings. — A Disappointment. — A Santon of rhe Desert. — An Arab Fisherman. — Turkish Costume. — A po- tent Official. — A Comfortless Sick-room. — A Visit from the Sheik. — In- terested Friendship. — Akaba. — The El Alouins. — Questionable Piety 17
CHAPTER HI.
Prophecy and Fulfilment. — Unpleasant Suggestions. — The Denounced Land. — Management. — A Rencounter. — An Arab's Cunning. — The Cam- el's Hump. — Adventure with a Lamb. — Mount Hor. — Delicate Negotia- tions.— Approach to Petra ... .... 34
CHAPTER IV.
Petra. — Arrival. — Entrance to the City. — The Temple of Petra. — A Rec- ord.— The Theatre. — Tombs of Petra. — Arab SimpUcity. — Departure from Petra. — A Night in a Tomb. — Daiigers of the Route - - 50
CHAPTER V.
\ bold Endeavour. — Unexpected Obstacles.— Disadvantage of a Dress. — The Dead Sea. — A New Project. — The Tomb of Aaron. — An Alarm — Descent of the Mountain. — An awkward Meeting. — Poetic License — All's Well that Ends Well. — Unexpected Dignities. — ^^Arab Notion* of Travel 67
IV CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VI.
Valley of El Ghor. — Prophecies agspin&t Edom.— The Sheik's Treachery, — An Explosion. — Personnel of the Arabs. — Amusing Retrospect. — Money Troubles, — Aspect of the Valley. — Death of a Camel. — The Desert Horses.— Native Salt - - Page 84
CHAPTER Vn.
The Road to Gaza. — Unknown Ruins. — A Misadventure. — Pastoral Bed- ouins.— A Flowrer of the Wilderness. — The Ravages of War. — Testimony of an Eyewitness 100
CHAPTER Vni.
Approach to Hebron. — A Sick Governor. — A Prescription at Random.-- Hospitality of the Jews. — Finale with the Bedouins. — A Storm. — A Calm after the Storm. — Venality of the Arabs. — Hebron. — A Coptic Christian. — Story of the Rabbi. — Professional Employment - - - 112
CHAPTER IX.
hn Amaout. — The Pools of Solomon. — Bethlehem. — The Empress Hel- ena.— A Clerical Exquisite. — Miraculous Localities. — A Boon Compan- ion.— The Soldier's Sleep. — The Birthplace of Christ. — Worship in the Grotto.— Moslem Fidelity - 132
CHAPTER X.
The Tomb of Rachel. — l^irst View of Jerusalem. — Falling among Thieves. — Potent Sway of the Pacha.— A Turkish Dignitary. — A Missionary. — Easter in Jerusalem. — A Little Congregation . - - . 149
CHAPTER XI.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. — An unexpected Discovery. — Mount Cal- vary.— The Sepulchre. — The Valley of Jehoshaphat. — The Garden of Gethsemane. — Place of the Temple. — The. four Great Tombs.— -Siloa's Brook - - 160
CHAPTER XIL
The Field of Blood.— A Traveller's Compliment. — Singular Ceremony.— A Ragged Rascal. — Ostentatious Humility. — Pride must have a Fall.-- 4.n Ancient Re^'r — Summary Legislation 173
C0NTBN1&
CHAPTER XIII.
The Synagogue.— Ideal Speculation. — A Ride in the Rain. — An Ex-oflicial. — Joppa. — A Moral Phenomenon. — Reverence for the Grave Page 184
CHAPTER XIV.
Desert of St. John. — A Midnight Procession. — Road to Jericho. — A Com munity of Women. — A Navigator of the Dead Sea. — A Dance by Moon- light.— A rude Lodging ... . . 195
CHAPTER XV.
The River Jordan. — The Dead Sea. — Force of Example. — Buoyancy ol the Dead Sea. — A Perilous Ascent.— A Navigator of the Dead Sea. — Story of the Voyage. — The Convent of Santa Saba - - 205
CHAPTER XVI.
Convent of Saint Saba. — A strange Picture.— Celebration of Good Rriday. — Palm Sunday. — A Struggle for Life. — The Grave of a Friend. — A Con vert, — Burial of a Missionary - - - 217
CHAPTER XVII.
Pilgrimage to the Jordan.— Pilgrim's Certificate. — The Tomb of Samuel. —Departure from Jerusalem. — Last View of the Dead Sea. — Village of Eiribroot. — Departure from Judea. — Mounts Gerizim and Ebal. — An Antique Manuscript. — Paas in Samaria 228
CHAPTER XVIII.
Sebaste. — Ruins of the Palace of Herod. — Mount Tabor. — Nazareth.- Scriptural Localities. — Tiberias. — An English Sportsman. — Bethsaida and Choraiin. — Capernaum. — Zaffad. — Arrival at Acre - - 244
CHAPTER XIX.
A Ride on Donkeyback. — Caipha. — Adventure with a Consul. — Mount Carmel. — The Plain of Jezreel. — Convent of Mount Carmel, — Kindness lit the Monks.— Curiosity Gratified 268
CHAPTER XX.
St. Jean d'Acre. — Extortions of the Pacha. — Tyre — Questionable Com. pany. — Lady Esther Stanhope. — Departure from the Hely Land — Con- clusion - 275
Note ...-.--»-- 283
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL
IN
EGYPT, ARABIA PETRiEA, &c.
CHAPTER I.
The Caravan. — A sudden Change of Purpose. — Perils of a Storm. — Com fortless Repentance. — Solitude. — A Woman and a CLase. — A Patriarcha» Feast. — Condition of the Arab Women. — Hospitably. — No refusing a good Offer. — A Dilemma.
My caravan consisted of five camels, four Arabs, Paul, and myself. We moved silently down the valley, and 1 tried hard to fasten my thoughts upon Gaza, the strong city of the Philistines, the city of Delilah and Samson, and to amuse my discontented spirit with imagining the gates which he carried away, and the temple which he pulled down ; but it would not do ; Petra, the rock of Edom, the excavated city, was uppermost in my mind. We had been marching in perfect silence about four hours, and I was sitting carelessly on my dromedary, thinkmg of everything but what I saw, when Toualeb pointed to a narrow opening in the mountain as the road to Akaba. I raised my head unconsciously, and it struck me, all of a sudden, that I was perfectly recovered, and fit for any journey. It was a day such as can only be seen in the mountainous desert of Arabia, presenting a clearness and purity in the atmosphere, and a gentle freshness in the air, which might almost brit«^
O INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
to life a dying man. I stretched myself and brandished ny Nubian club ; my arm seemed nerved with uncommon vigour ; I rose in my saddle strong as the slayer of the Philistines, and, turning the head of my dromedary towards the opening in the mountains, called out briefly and de- cidedly, to " Akaba and Petra." Paul was astonished ; he took the pipe from his mouth, and for a moment paused ; then knocking out the ashes, he slipped from his dromedary and ran up to the side of mine, looking up in my face with an expression of countenance that seemed to intimate strong suspicions of my sanity. After gazing at me as steadfastly as he could without being impertinent, he went away, still apparently in doubt, and I soon saw him follow- ing with Toualeb, in earnest conversation. Toualeb was even more astonished than Paul. The Arabs are not used to any of these mercurial changes of humour ; and, accord- ing to their notion, if a man sets out for Gaza he must go to Gaza ; they cannot conceive how one in his right reason can change his mind ; and Toualeb would have been very easily persuaded that an evil spirit was hurrying me on, particularly as, like Paul, from the beginning he had op- posed my going by Petra and Idumea. Finding me reso- lute, however, he soon began to run, and brought back the camels, which were some distance in advance, and for several hours we moved on in perfect silence through the wild and rugged defile.
The mountains on each side were high, broken, and rugged, and ever presenting the same appearance of ex- treme old age. The road, if road it might be called, was rougher than any I had yet travelled ; it was the only open- ing among the mountains by which we could pass at all, made by the hand of Nature, and so encumbered with fallen rocks that it was exceedingly difficult for our camels to advance. I did not intend to push far that day ; and a little before dark T proposed to encamp in a narrow pas?
STORM IN THE MOUNTAINS. 9
between the mountains, where there was barely room to pitch our tents ; but appearances threatened rain, and Toua- leb, pointing to the accumulation of stones and rocks which had fallen from the mountain and been washed through the pass, told me it would be a dangerous place to spend the night in. There was no earth to drink the falling rain, and, pouring down the hard and naked mountain sides, it formed a torrent in the pass, which hurried and dashed along, gathering force at every moment, and carrying wiih it bodies of sand and stones that would have crushed to atoms any obstruction they might meet in their resistless progress. I felt at once the force of the suggestion ; and as I had no idea of being disturbed in the night by such a knock at the door of my tent as one of these gigantic missiles would have made, we kept on our difficult way. At dark we were still in the ravine. Toualeb was right in his apprehensions ; for some time before we reached the end of the pass the rain was falling in torrents, the rocks and stones were wash- ing under our feet, and we heard the loud roar of thunder, and saw the forked lightning play among the mountain- tops. It was two hours after dark before we reached a place where it was prudent to encamp. We pitched our tent in the open valley ; the thunder was rumbling, and ever and anon bursting with a terrific crash among the riven mountains, and the red lightning was flashing around the hoary head of Sinai. It was a scene for a poet or painter ; but, under the circumstances, I would have given all its sublimity for a pair of dry pantaloons. Thunder and light- ning among mountains are exceedingly sublime, and ex- cellent things to talk about in a ballroom or by the fireside ; but, my word for it, a man travelling in the desert has other things to think of. Everything is wet and sloppy ; the wind catches under his tent before he can get it pinned down ; and when it is fastened, and he finds his tight can« vass turning the water like a cemented roof, and begins to
10 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
rub his hands and feel himself comfortable, he finds but the beginning of trouble in a wet mat and coverlet.
I was but poorly prepared for a change like this, for I had been so long used to a clear, unclouded sky, that 1 almost considered myself beyond the reach of the changing elements. It was the beauty of the weather more than anything else that had tempted me to turn off from the road to Gaza ; and, hardly equal to this change of scene, my heart almost sank within me. I reproached myself as if for a wilful and unjustifiable disregard of prudence, and no writer on moral duties could have written a better lecture than I inflicted upon myself that evening. In wet clothes I was literally sitting on the stool of repentance. Droop- ing and disheartened, I told Paul that I was already pun- ished for my temerity, and the next morning I would go back and resume the road to Gaza. For the night, how- ever, there was but one thing to be done, and that was to sleep if I could, and sleep I did. A man who rides all day upon a dromedary must sleep, come what may, and even thunder among the -mountains of Sinai cannot wake him. Daylight brought back my courage ; the storm was over ; the sun was shining brightly as I ever saw it even in the East ; and again there was the same clear and refreshing atmosphere that had beguiled me from my prudent resolu- tion. I too was changed again; and, in answer to the suggestion of Paul, that we should retrace our steps, I pointed towards Akaba, and gave the brief and emphatic order, " Forward !"
We continued for several hours along the valley, which was closely bounded on either side by mountains, not high, but bare, cracked, and crumbling into fragments. The tops had apparently once been lofty and pointed, but time, and the action of the elements, had changed their character. The summits had crumbled and fallen, so as to expose on every side a rounded surface, and the idea constantly pres-
SOLITUDE OF THE DESERT. IJ
en, to my mind was, that the whole range had been shaken by an Almighty hand ; shaken so as to break the rugged sur- face of the mountains, but not with sufficient force to dash them into pieces ; I could not help thinking that, with another shock, the whole mass would fall in ruins. 1 had often re- marked the silence and stillness of the desert ; but never had I been so forcibly impressed with this peculiarity as since I left the convent. The idea was constantly present to my mind, *' How still, how almost fearfully still !" The mount- ains were bare of verdure ; there were no shrubs or bushes, and no rustling of the wind, and the quiet was like that of the ocean in a perfect calm, when there is not a breath of air to curl a wave, or shake the smallest fold in the lazy sail that hangs useless from the yard. Occasionally we disturbed a hare or a partridge, but we had not met a human being since we left the convent. Once we saw the track of a solitary dromedary, the prints of his feet deeply bed- ded in the sand, as if urged by one hurrying with hot hast^; perhaps some Bedouin robber flying to his tent among the mountains with the plunder of some desert victim ; we followed it for more than an hour, and when we lost sight of it on the rocky road, I felt as if we were more lonely than before.
I was thinking what an incident it would be in the life of one used to the hurrying bustle of steamboats and rail- roads, to travel for days through this oldest of countries without meeting a living being ; and, as far as I could un- derstand, it might well be so ; there was no trade even for small caravans, and years passed by without any person, even an Arab, travelling this road. Toualeb had been over it but once, and that was ten years before, when he accom- panied M. Laborde on his way to Petra. I knew that there were Bedouin tents among the mountains, but, unless by accident, we might pass through without seeing any of them ; and I was speculating on the chances of our not
12 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL
meeting a single creature, when Paul cried out that he saw a woman ; and, soon after repeating the exclamation, dis- mounted and gave chase. Toualeb ran after him, and in another moment or two I caught a glimpse and followed.
I have before mentioned that, among these barren and desolate mountains, there was frequently a small space of ground, near some fountain or deposite of water, known only to the Arabs, capable of producing a scanty crop of grass to pasture a few camels and a small flock of sheep or goats. There the Bedouin pitches' his tent, and remains till the scanty product is consumed ; and then packs up his house- hold goods, and seeks another pasture-ground. The Bed- ouins are essentially a pastoral people ; their only riches are their flocks and herds, their home is in the wide desert, and they have no local attachments ; to-day they pitch their tent among the mountains, to-morrow in the plain ; and 'wherever they plant themselves for the time, all that they h?tve on earth, wife, children, and friends, are immediately around them. In fact, the life of the Bedouin, his appear- ance and habits, are precisely the same as those of the pa- triarchs of old. Abraham himself, the first of the patriarchs, was a Bedouin, and four thousand years have not made the slightest alteration in the character and habits of this ex- traordinary people. Read of the patriarchs in the Bible, and it is the best description you can have of pastoral life in the East at the present day.
The woman whom we had pursued belonged to the tent of a Bedouin not far from our road, but completely hidden from our view ; and, when overtaken by Toualeb, she recognised in him a friend of her tribe, and in the same spirit, and al- mo£u in the same words which would have been used by her ancestors four thousand years ago, she asked us to her tent> and promised us a lamb or a kid for supper. Her hus- band was stretched on the ground in front of his tent, and weh^omet* us with an air and manner that belonged to the
A PATRIARCHAL FEAST. 13
desert, but which a king on his throne could not have ex- celled. He was the imbodied personification of all my conceptions of a patriarch. A large loose frock, a striped handkerchief on his head, bare legs, sandals on his feet, and a long white beard, formed the outward man. Almost immediately after we were seated he toolc his shepherd's crook, and, assisted by his son, selected a lamb from the flock for the evening meal ; and now I would fain prolong the illusion of this pastoral scene. To stop atthe door of an Arab's tent, and partake with him of a lamb or kid prepared by his hospitable hands, all sitting together on the ground, and provided with no other implements than those which Na- ture gave us, is a picture of primitive and captivating simpli- city ; but the details were such as to destroy for ever all its poetry, and take away all relish for patriarchal feasts. While we were taking coffee the lamb lay bleating in our ears, as if conscious of its coming fate. The coffee drunk and the pipe smoked, our host arose and laid his hand upon the victim ; the long sword which he wore over his shoulder was quickly drawn ; one man held the head and another the hind legs ; and, with a rapidity almost inconceivable, it was killed and dressed, and its smoking entrails, yet curling with life, were broiling on the fire.
I was the guest of the evening, and had no reason to complain of the civility of my entertainer ; for, with the air of a well-bred host, and an epicure to boot, he drew from the burning coals one of the daintiest pieces, about a yard and a half in length, and rolling one end between the palms of his hands to a tapering point, broke off about a foot and handed it to me. Now I was by no means dainty. I could live upon the coarsest fare, and all the little luxuries of tables, knives and forks, were of very little moment m my estimation. 1 was prepared to go full length in this patri- archal feast. But my indifference was not proof against the convivial elegances of my Bedouin companions ; and
Vol. II.— B
14 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
as I saw yard after yard disappear, like long strings of mac- aroni, down their capacious throats, I was cured of all poet ical associations and my appetite together.
In the tent of the Arabian patriarch, woman, the pride, the ornament, and the charm of domestic life, is the mere household drudge. In vain may one listen for her light footstep, or look to find her by the side of her natural lord, giving a richer charm to the hospitality he is extending to a stranger. It would repay one for nmch of the toil and monotony of a journey in the desert, if, when by chance he found himself at a Bedouin tent, he could be greeted by her sunny smile. Dark and swarthy as she is, and poor and ignorant, it would pay the traveller for many a weary hour to receive his welcome from the lips of an Arabian girl. But this the customs of the tribes forbid. When the stran- ger approaches the woman retires ; and so completely is she accustomed to this seclusion, that, however closely he may watch, he can never catch her even peeping at him from behind a screen or partition of the tent ; curiosity, which in civilized life is so universally imputed to the daughters of Eve, seems entirely unknown to the sex in this wild region. Nor is this the worst of her lot. Even when alone the wife of the Bedouin is not regarded as his equal ; the holy companionship of wedded life has between them no existence. Even when no guest is present, she never eats with him. I have seen the father and sons sit down together, and when they had vvithdrawn from the tent, the mother and daughters came in to what was left. Away, then, with all dreams of superior happiness in this more primitive condition of society. Captivating as is the wild idea of roving abroad at will, unfettered by the re- straints of law or of conventional observances, the mean est tenant of a log hut in our western prairies has sources of happiness which the wandering Arab can never know. A spirit of perfect weariness and dissatisfaction with the, worlo
HOSPITALITY OF THE ARABS 15
might drive a man to the desert, and, after having fallen into the indolent and mere animal habits of savage life, he might find it difficult to return to the wholesome restraints and duties of society ; but I am satisfied that it is sheer affec- tation or ignorance, in which a member of the civilized family sighs, or pretends to sigh, for the imagined delights of an untried freedom. For my own part, I had long been satisfied of this truth, and did not need the cumulative evi- dence of my visit to the Bedouin's tent. He would have had me sleep under its shelter ; but I knew that in all the Bedouin, tents there were multitudes of enemies to rest ; creatures that murder sleep ; and I preferred the solitude of my own.
One word as to the hospitality of the Arabs. I had read beautiful descriptions of its manifestation, and in some way or other had gathered up the notion that the Bedouin would be offended by an ofier to reward his hospitality with a price ; but, feeling naturally anxious not to make a blunder on either side of a question so delicate, 1 applied to my guide Toualeb for information on the subject. His answer was brief and explicit. He said there was no obligation to give or pay, it being the custom of the Bedouins (among friendly tribes) to ask the wayfaring man into his tent, give him food and shelter, and send him on his way in the morn- ing ; that I could give or not, as I pleased ; but that, if 1 did not, the hospitable host would wish his lamb alive again ; and from the exceeding satisfaction with which that estima- ble person received my parting gift, I am very sure .hat in this instance, at least, I did better in taking Toualeb's knowledge of his people fOr my guide than I should have done by acting upon what I had read in books. It may be that, if I had gone among them poor and friendless, I should iiave been received in the same manner, and nothing would nave been expected or received from me ; but I am inclined to think, from what I saw afterward, that in such case the
lb INCIDENTS OF TRA EL.
lamb would have been spared for a longer term of existence; and the hospitality confined to a dip into the dish and a mat at the door of the tent.
Early in the morning we left the tent of our Bedouin landlord. We were still among mountains ; at every mo- ment a new view presented itself, wild, fanciful, and pic- turesque ; and in the distance was still visible the long range of dark mountains bordering the Red Sea. Our course was now directly for this sea, but the mountain range ap peared so contiguous and unbroken that there seemed no way of getting to it but by crossing their rugged summits. There was a way, however ; an opening which we could not distinguish at so great a distance, and for some time Toualeb was at a loss. He was so purblind that he could scarcely distinguish me from one of his dark companions, yet he could read the firmament like a book, and mark the proportion of the almost shapeless mountains ; but he was uncertain how to hit precisely the opening by which we must pass through. There was no danger of our losing ourselves, afid the only hazard was that of wasting a day in the search ; but, fortunately, at the commencement of our perplexity, we came upon a Bedouin whose ten.* was at the foot of the mountain ; and, under his instructions, we pushed on with confidence and ultimate success.
WILPERNESS OF SINAI. 17
CHAPTER II.
EvcEiiig Amusements. — A Trial of the Feelings. — A Disappointment. — a Santon of the Desert. — An Arab Fisherman. — Turkish Costume — A po- tent Official. — A Comfortless Sick-room.^TlL Visit from the Sheik. — In- terested Friendship. — Akaba. — The El Alouins.— Questionable Piety.
It was late in the afternoon when our little caravan en- tered the narrow opening, presenting itself like a natural door between precipitous rocks several hundred feet in height. Passing this, and continuing onward to a vast am- phitheatre, or hollow square of lofty rocks, through a larger opening on our left, we again saw the dark waters of the Red Sea. About midway across I dismounted from my dromedary to survey the scene around me ; and, among the many of high interest presented to the traveller in the wil- derness of Sinai, I remember none more striking and im- pressive. It was neither so dreary and desolate, nor so wild and terrible as others I had seen, but different from all. The door by which we entered was undistinguishable the rocks in the background completely closing it to the sight ; on all sides except towards the sea, and forming al- most a perfect square, were the naked faces of the rock, lofty, smooth, and regular, like the excavated sides of an ancient quarry, and quiet to that extraordinary and indescribable de- gree of which I have already spoken. Descending towards the opening that led to the sea, directly under us was an ex- tensive and sandy plain, reaching to its very margin ; and nearly opposite, rising abruptly from the clear waters, a long unbroken range of stern and rugged mountains, their
dark irregular outline finely contrasted with the level sur-
B 2
18 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
face at their feet, while the sea itself extended on the right and left as far as the eye could reach in that clear atmo- sphere ; but the first stage of my journey, the head of the ^ulf, and the little fortress of Akaba, were still invisible.
We rode about an hour along the shore, passing at a dis- tance the tents of some Bedouins ; and, about an hour be- fore dark, encamped in a grove of wild palm-trees, so near the sea that the waves almost reached the door of my tent. When the moon rose I walked for an hour along the shore, and, musing upon the new scenes which every day was presenting me, picked up some shells and bits of coral as memorials of the place. I am no star-gazer, but I had learned to look up at the stars ; and though I knew most of them merely by sight, I felt an attraction towards them as faces I had seen at home ; while the Great Bear with his pointers, and the North Star, seemed my particular friends.
Returning to my tent, I found my Bedouins, with some strangers from the tents which we had passed, sitting round a fire of the branches of palm-trees, smoking, and telling stories as extravagant as any in the Arabian Nights' Enter- tainments. I sat down wiih them a few moments, then en- tered my tent and lay down on my mat on the very shore of the sea, and was lulled to sleep by the gentle murmur of its waters.
In the morning Paul told me that there was a strange Arab outside, who wanted to see me. When we first came down from the mountain on the preceding day, a Bedouin had come out and requested me to turn aside and visit a sick man in his tent. In their perfect ignorance of the healing art, the Arabs believe every stranger to be a hakim ; and so great is their confidence in the virtue of medicine, and so great their indifference to the hands from which they receive it, that the path of the traveller is constantly beset with applications from the sick or their friends. I had been 60 often besought and entreated to cure blindness, deafness,
A TRIAL OF THE FEELINGS. 19
and other maiadies beyond even the reach of medical skiU, that now I paid little attention to such applications ; and when this last request was made, after inquiring into the symptoms of the case, I told the messenger that I could do the sick man no good, and passed on. This morning Paul told me that the patient himself had come over during the night, and was then at the door, begging me to cure him. Paul had told him of my utter inability, but he would not be satisfied ; and when I went out of my tent he was sitting directly before the door, a thin, ghastly figure ; and opening his mouth and attempting an inarticulate jabber, there fell out a tongue so festered to the very throat, that the sight of it made me sick. I told him that it was utterly out of my power to help him ; that I knew no more of the healing art than he did himself; and that the only advice I could give him was to endeavour to get to Cairo and put himself under the hands of a physician. I shall never forget the poor fellow's look, and almost blamed myself for not giving him some simple preparation, which might have cheated him, at least for a few days, with the hope that he might escape the tomb to which he was hurrying. His hands fell lifeless by his side, as if he had heard a sentence of death ; he gave me a look which seemed to say that it was all my fault, and fell senseless on the ground. His two companions lifted him up ; his faithful dromedary kneeled to receive him ; and, as he turned away, he cast a reproachful glance to- wards me, which made me almost imagine myself guilty of his death. I have no doubt that, long before this, the poor Arab is dead, and that in his dying moments, when strug- gling with the king of terrors, he has seen, in his distracted visions, the figure of the hard-hearted stranger, who, as he thought, might have saved him, but would not.
Anxious to escape an object so painful to my feelings, I walked on and was soon busily engaged in picking up shells and coral ; of the foriwer I never saw so many as at this
20 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL
place. Some were particularly beautiful, but exceedinglj^ delicate, and difficult to be carried. The first day I could have loaded a camel with them. The coral, too, such as it was, lay scattered about in lavish profusion. I remem- ber, the first piece Paul found, he rubbed his hands like the toiling and untiring alchymist, when he thinks he has dis- covered the philosopher's stone ; but when he came to a second he threw away the first, in the same spirit in which the Irishman, on his arrival in our country, the El Dorado of his dreams, threw down a sixpence which he had picked up in the street, assuring himself that there was more where that came from. Some of this coral was exceedingly beau- tiful ; we did not know its value, but I did not think very highly of it, merely from the circumstance of its lying there in such abundance. It was not the rock or branch coral, but a light porous substance, resembling very much the honeycomb. Paul gathered a large quantity of it, and con- trived to carry it to Jerusalem, though it got very much bro- ken on the way. He had the satisfaction of knowing, how- ever, that he had not sustained any great loss ; for, on our first visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, we found in the porch a green-turbaned Mussulman, who, return- ing from his pilgrimage to Mecca, had thought to indem- nify himself for the expense and fatigue of his long and dreary journey with this treasure of the sea. Paul took up a large piece and asked him the price, when the Mus- sulman, with an air as dejected in telling as was that of Paul in hearing it, told him two paras, a para being about one eighth of a cent ; and the next day I saw before the door of the convent at which we were staying a large heap of the coral which Paul had been so careful in carry- ing ; and after that he talked only of his shells, the value of which was not yet ascertained.
At about twelve o'clock, close by the shore, we came to ft stunted wild palm-tree, with a small stone fence around
A SANTON OF THE DESERT. 21
it ; and, looking down from my dromedary, I saw extend- ed on the ground the figure of an Arab. I at first thought he was dead ; but, at the noise of our approach, he raised his head from a stone which served him as a pillow, and the first greeting lie gave us was to ask for bread. Among all the habitations of hermits I had yet seen, in caves, among rocks or mountains, there was none which cou.d be compared with this by the shore of the sea ; a small fence, but little higher than his recumbent body, protected him from the wind; the withered branches of the palm-tree were his only covering ; his pillow a stone, and the bare earth his bed ; and when he crawled out and stood before us, erect as age and infirmity would allow, I thought I had never seen such a miserable figure. I could not have be- lieved, without seeing it, that anything so wretched, made in God's image, existed on the earth. He was more than sixty ; his face was dried, and seamed with the deep wrinkles of age and exposure ; his beard long and white ; and his body thin to emaciation. Over his shoulders and breast was a miserable covering of rags, but the rest of his body was perfectly naked ; his skin was dry, horny, and covered with blotches resembling large scales, which, on his legs, and particularly over his knees, stood out like the greaves of an ancient coat of mail ; and he looked like one who literally crawled on his belly and licked the dust ot the earth. He reminded me of the wild hermit of Engaddi, who came out upon the Saracen emir when he journeyed with the Knight of the Leopard on the shore of the Dead Sea. And this man was a saint, and my Arabs looked on him with respect and reverence ; and when he died a pub- lic tomb would be erected over him, and they upon whose charity he now lived would resort to it as a shrine ol prayer. We gave him some bread, and left him in his sol- itary den ; and, before we had got out of sight, he had crawled back under his palm-leaves, and was again resting
22 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL
upon his pillow of stone. In our busy and stirring world we cannot imagine the possibility of existing in such a dro- nish state ; but, in all probability, that man would lie there till the bread we gave him was exhausted, and, wlren he had taken his last morsel, again lie down in hope that moie would come.
About an hour afterward we came upon a fisherman stealing along the shore with his net in his hand, looking into the sea, and ready to throw it when he saw any fish. The process, like eve^vthing else that one sees here, is perfectly primitive, and carries the beholder back to the early days of this ancient country. Carrying the net on his left arm crooked, cleared and prepared for a throw, with the one end in his right hand, and taking advantage of ripples made by the wind, and the sun throwing his shadow behind him, he runs along the shore until he sees a school of fish, when, with a gentle jerk, and without any noise, he throws his net, which opens and spreads as it falls, so that a little thing, which could be put easily into a hat, expands suffi- ciently to cover a surface of twenty or thirty feet. While running along with us he threw several times ; and, as he managed his craft with skill, never throwing until he saw something, he was always successful. I could not make anything out of the Arabic name of the fish ; but I have the flavour of them still on my tongue ; a flavour at the mo- ment finer than that of the sole or turbot of Paris, or the trout of Long Island.
In the afternoon the weather changed. Since we first struck the sea, our road along its shore had been one of un- common beauty, and my time passed very pleasantly, some- times allowing my dromedary to cool his feet in the clear water, sometimes dismounting to pick up a shell, and all the time having a warm sun and a refreshing breeze ; but it was my fortune to see this ancient country under every huf of the changing elements. The sun was now obscured i
TURKISH COSTUMi:. 23
Strong wind came d)wn the sea directly in our teeth; the head of the gulf was cut off from our view ; the sea was troubled, and the white caps were dancing on its surface ; the dark mountains looked darker and more lonely ; while before us a rainbow was forming over the point of Akaba, which threw itself across the gulf to the east, marking in the firmament, with its rich and varied colours, the figure of the crescent. Soon after we were in the midst of a perfect hurricane. Sevei il times during the day I had wished to float upon the bosom of the tranquil sea, and had looked in vain for some boat or fisherman's skiff to carry me up the gulf; but I now shrank from the angry face of the deep, and, under the shelter of an impending rock, listened to the fierce whistling of the wind and the crashing of the thunder among the mountains.
In the morning the storm was over, and the atmosphere pure, clear, and refreshing as before ; but, as a set-off to the pleasure of returning sunshine, Toualeb told me that we had passed the boundaries of the friendly tribes, and that we must look to our weapons, for we were now among stran- gers, and perhaps enemies. Here, too, for the first time, 1 put on my Turkish dress, being that of a merchant of Cairo, with the addition of pistols and sabre ; but, fearful of taking cold, I cut down an old coat and tied up a pair of pantaloons, so as to have a complete suit under the large white trousers and red silk gown which formed the principal items of my dress. The red tarbouch I had worn ever since I had been in Egypt ; but I now rolled round it a green and yellow striped nandkerchief, to which Toualeb gave the proper twist ; and, with my yellow slippers and red shoes over them, sash, pistols, sword, and long beard, I received the congratula- tions and compliments of my friends upon my improved ap" pearance.
Indeed, I played the Turk well. Different from my notions of the appearance of the Turk, they have generally light and florid complexions ; and, if I could have talked
24 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
their language, dressed as a Turk, they could not have judged from my appearance that I had ever been outside the walls of old Stamboul. There is no exaggeration* in the unanimous reports of travellers of the effect which the cos- tumes of the East give to personal appearance ; and, having seen and known it even in my own person, I am inclined to believe that there is fallacy in the equally prevalent opinion of the personal beauty of the Turks. Their dress com- pletely hides all deformity of person, and the variety of colours, the arms and the long beard, divert the iattention of the observer from a close examination of features. The striking effect of costume is strongly perceptible in the sol- diers of the sultan, and the mongrel, half European uniform m which he has put them, and in which they are not by any means an uncommonly fine-lookir|^ set of men. These soldiers are taken wherever they c^re caught, and, conse- quently, are a fair specimen of the Turkish race ; and any English regiment will turn out finer men than the best in the sultan's army. Following my example, Paul also slipped into his Bedouin shirt, and could hardly be distinguished from the best Arab of them all.
Again our road lay along the shore, so near that some- times we had to dismount and pick our way over the rocks, and at others our dromedaries bathed their feet in the water. In one place the side of the mountain rose so directly and abruptly from the water's edge, that we had to turn aside and pass around it, coming again to the shore after about an hour's ride. Here we saw the gulf narrowing towards its extremity ; and on the opposite side a cluster of palm trees, within which, and completely hidden from view, was the end of our first stage, the fortress of Akaba. Never was the sight of one of the dearest objects on earth, home to the wanderer, land to the sailor, or a mistress to the lover^ more welcome than the sight of those palm-trees to me. The malady under which I had been labouring had grown
i
.s .<>,. s v;- S.\ .'. .(i-;
1/ ji-r-^"
A POTENT OFFICIAL. 25
upon me every day ; and, in spite of all that was rich and interesting, time after time I had regretted my rashness in throwing myself so far into the desert. The repose, there- fore, which awaited me at Akaba seemed the most precious thing on earth.
Towards evening we could see Akaba more distinctly, though still on the opposite side of the gulf, and still at a formidable distance to me. A brisk trot would have carried me there in an hour ; but this was more than I could bear, supported as I was by a mattress on each side of me, and barely able to sustain the slow and measured movement of a walk. Night was again coming on, and heavy clouds were gathering in the east. I was extremely anxious to sleep within the fortress that night ; and, fearful that a stran- ger would not be admitted after dark, I sent Paul on ahead with my compliments to the governor, and the modest re- quest that he would keep the gates open till I came.
A governor is a governor all the world over. Honour and respect attend him wherever he may be ; whether the almost regal governor-general of India, the untitled chief magistrate of our own democratic state, or the governor of a little fortress on the shores of the Red Sea. But there are some governors one may take a liberty with, and others not ; and of the former class was my friend of Akaba. His name was Suliman, his title aga, and therefore he was called Suliman Aga. He had his appointment by favour of the pacha, and permission to retain it by favour of the Bedouins around ; he had under him nominally a garrison of Mogreb- bin soldiers, but they were asrestiffas some of our own unbro- ken militia ; and, like many a worthy disciplinarian among us, he could do just as he pleased with them if he only let them have their own way. He was, in short, an excellent governor, and I gave him two dollars and a recommendation at parting.
But I am gomg too fast. I arrived before dark, and in
Vol. n— C
26 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL
such a state that I almost fell from my dromedary in dis« mounting at the gate of the fortress. The first glance told me that this was not the place of rest I had promised my- self. Half a dozen Mogrebbins from the shores of Morocco, the most tried and faithful of the hired troops of the pacha, were sitting on a mat within the gate, smoking their long pipes, with their long guns, swords, and pistols hanging above their heads. They rose and gave me a seat beside them, and the whole of the little population of the fortress, and the Bedouins living under the palm-trees outside, gath- ered around to gaze at the stranger. The great caravan of pilgrims for Mecca had left them only three days before ; and, except upon the passing and return of the caravan, years pass by without a stranger ever appearing at the for- tress. They had heard of my coming, for the sheik had waited two days after the departure of the caravan, and had only gone that morning, leaving directions with the governor to send for him as soon as I arrived. I was somewhat sur- prised at his confidence in my coming, for, when I saw him, I was very far from being decided ; but in the miserable condition in which I found myself, I hailed it as a favoura- ble omen. The governor soon came, and was profuse in his offers of service, beginning, of course, with coffee and a pipe, which 1 was forced to decline, apologizing on the ground of my extreme indisposition, and begged to be con- ducted to a room by myself. The governor rose and con- ducted me, and every Bedouin present followed after ; and when I came to the room by myself, I had at least forty of them around me. Once Paul prevailed on some of them to go out ; but they soon came back again, and I was too ill tc urge the matter.
The very aspect of the room into which I was shown prostrated the last remains of my physical strength. It was eighty or a hundred feet long, forty feet wide, and about as many high, having on one side a dead wall, being that o
A COMFORTLESS SICK-ROOM 2T
the fortress, and on the other two large windows without shutters and the door ; the naked floor was of mud, and so were the walls and ceiling. I looked for one spot less cheerless than the rest ; and finding at the upper end a place where the floor was elevated about a foot, with a feeling of despondency I have seldom known, I stretched my mattress in the extreme corner, and, too far gone to have any regard to the presence of the governor or his Arab soldiers, threw myself at full length upon it. I was sick in body and soul ; for, besides the actual and prostrating debility under which I was labouring, I had before me the horrible certainty that I was completely cut off from all medical aid, and from all the comforts which a sick man wants. I was ten days from Cairo ; to go there in person was impossible ; and, if I should send, I could not obtain the aid of a physician in less than twenty-five or thirty days, if at all ; and before that I might be past his help. When I left Cairo Dr. Walne had set me up, so that I held out tolerably well until I reached Mount Sinai ; and, moreover, had given me sundry medicines, with directions for their use under particular circumstances ; but my symptoms had so completely changed, that the di- rections, if not the medicines themselves, were entirely use- less. In a spirit of desperation, however, I took them out ; and, not knowing where to begin, resolved to go through the whole catalogue in such order as chance might direct. I began with a double dose of cathartic powders ; and, while lying on my mat, I was diverted from the misery of my own gloomy reflections by the pious conversation of the Mussul man governor. If God willed, he said, I would soon ge^ well ; himself and his wife had been ill three months, and had no physician, but God willed that they should recover, and they did ; and as I looked in his believing face and those of the Bedouins, I found myself gradually falling into the fatalism of their creed. I shall never forget the manner in which I passed that night, and the sombre fan
28 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
cies that chased each other through my brain. A single lamp threw a dim and feeble light through the large apart- ment, scarcely revealing the dusky forms of the sleeping Bedouins, with their weapons by their sides, and I was the only one awake. Busy memory called up all the consider- ations that ought to have prevented my taking such a jour- ney, and the warning voice of my friend at Cairo, "turn your steps westward," again rang in my ears. I saw the figure of the dead Tartar at Suez, like me, a wanderer from home, and buried by strangers in the sandy desert ; and so nervous and desponding had I become, that the words of the prophet in regard to the land of Idumea, " none shall pass through it for ever and ever," struck upon my heart like a funeral knell. I was now upon the borders of Edom ; and, in the despondency of sickness, I looked upon myself as rash and impious in undertaking what might be considered a defiance of the prophetic denunciations inspired by God himself.
In the morning I was worse ; and, following up my al- most desperate plan of treatment, commenced the day with a double emetic. The governor came in ; and though I tried to keep the door shut, another and another followed, till my room was as public as any part of the fortress. In deed, it was by far the most public, for all the rest was stripped of its bronzed figures to ornament my room. An- noyed to death by seeing twenty or thirty pairs of fiery black eyes constantly fixed upon me, I remembered, with feelings of envy, my tent in the desert. There I could at least be alone, and I resolved, at all hazards, not to pass another night in the fortress.
In the midst of my exceeding perplexities, the sheik oi Akaba, my friend of Cairo, made his appearance. I was in a pitiable condition when he entered, uuLer the immedi- ate operation of my emetic, with the whole of the Mogreb- bin guard and every beggarly Bedouin about the fortress
A VISIT FROM THE SHEIK. 29
Staring at me. He looked surprised and startled when he saw me ; but, with a glimmering of good sense, though, as I thought, with unnecessary harshness, told me that I would die if 1 stayed there, and that he was ready to set out with me at a moment's notice. By the advice of Mr. Gliddon, my plan had been to majie this my place of negotiation and arrangement, and not to proceed farther without havmg all things definitely explained and settled. But I was in no condition to negotiate, and was ready to do anything to get away from the fortress. He was exceedingly anxious to start immediately, and gave me a piece of information that almost lifted me from the ground ; namely, that he could provide me with a horse of the best blood of Arabia for the whole of the journey. He could not have given me more grateful intelligence, for the bare idea of again mounting my dromedary deprived me of all energy and strength. I had endeavoured to procure a sort of palanquin, to be swung between two camels ; but so destitute was the fortress of all kinds of material, that it was impossible to make it. When he spoke to me, then, of a horse, it made me a new man ; and, without a moment's hesitation, I told him that if he would give me till five o'clock in the afternoon, I would be ready to set out with him. One thing I did not like. I wished and designed to take with me my faithful Toualeb , but he had told me that ho did not believe that the E Alouins would allow it ; and, when he spoke to the sheik the latter had positively refused, pretending that all was arranged between us at Cairo. I was fain, therefore, to abandon the idea, not having energy to insist upon anything that was disputed, and to trust everything to fortune and the sheik. I told Paul to do all that was necessary ; and, begging to be left alone for a few hours, I laid myself down upon my mat, and, worn out with the watching of the last night, and the excitement of thmking and deciding on mv future movements, quickly fell asleep
C 2
30 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
At five o'clock the sheik returned, punctual to his appoint ment ; I had slept soundly, and awoke somewhat refreshed. The room was again filled with the Bedouins, and I was as ready to go as he was to take me. He had ordered what was necessary upon the journey for man and beast, and provisions for six camels and ten m©n for ten days. I gave Paul my purse, and told him to pay, and, walking to the gate of the fortress, a dozen Arabs helped me to my sad- dle ; they would have taken me up in their arms and carried me, and, when I had mounted, they would have taken up the horse and carried him too, so great a friendship had they already conceived for me. But the friendship was not for what I was, but for what I had. They had wel- comed me as they would have welcomed a bag of gold ; and I had scarcely mounted before they all, governor, Mo> grebbin soldiers, and Bedouins, began to clamour for buck sheesh. Ten years before, M. Laborde had passed along this route, and stopped at the fortress while waiting for the sheik who was to guide and protect him to Petra ; and hav- ing in view the purpose of preparing the great work which has since given him such merited reputation, he had scat- tertJL^ money and presents with a most liberal hand. M. Laborde himself was not personally known to any of those now at the fortress ; but his companion, Mr. Linant, of whom I have before spoken, was known to them all ; and they all had heard of the gold shower in which M Laborde appeared among them. They therefore expected the same from me ; and, when Paul had got through his distribution, I was startled at perceiving the dissatisfied air with which they received a bucksheesh that would have overwhelmed any other Arabs with joy and gratitude.
But I must not hurry the reader from Akaba with the same eagerness which I displayed in leaving it. This lit tie fortress is seldom visited by travellers, and it is worth a brief description. It stands at the extremity of the eastern
akaba. 31
or Elanitic branch of the Red Sea, at the foot of the sand- stone mouritains, near the shore, and almost buried in a grove of pahii-trees, the only living things in that region of barren sands. It is the last stopping-place of the caravan of pilgrims on its way to Mecca, being yet thirty days' journey from the tomb of the Prophet, and, of course, ths first at which they touch on their return. Except at the lime of these two visits, the place is desolate from the be- ginning of the year to its close ; the arrival of a traveller is of exceedmgly rare occurrence, and seldom does even the wandering Bedouin stop within Us walls ; no ship rides in Its harbour, and not even a solitary fishing-boat breaks the stillness of the water at its feet. But it was not always so desolate, for this was the Ezion-geber of the Bible, where, three thousand years ago. King Solomon made a navy of ships, which brought from Ophir gold and precious stones for the great temple at Jerusalem ; and again, at a later day, a great city existed here, through which, at this dis- tant point in the wilderness, the wealth of India was con- veyed to imperial Rome. But all these are gone, and there are no relics or monuments to tell of former greatness ; like the ships which once floated in the harbour, all have passed away. Still, ruined and desolate as it is, to the eye of feel- ing the little fortress is not without its interest ; for, as the governor told me, it was built by the heroic Saladin.
I had taken l6ave of my trusty Toualeb, and was a.gain in the hands of strangers ; and I do not deceive myself when [ say, that on the very borders of Edom I noticed a change for the worse in the appearance of the Bedouins. Accord- ing to the reports of travellers and writers, those with whom I now set out from Akaba belonged to one of the most law- less tribes of a lawless race ; and they were by far the wildest and fiercest-looking of all I had yet seen ; with complexions bronzed and burnt to blackness ; dark eyes, glowing with a fire approaching to ferocity ; figures thin and
32 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
shrunken, though sinewy ; chests standing out, and riba projecting from the skin, like those of a skeleton. The sheik, like myself, was on horseback, dressed in a red silk gown like my own, and over it a large cloak of scarlet cloth, both the gifts of Messieurs Linant and Laborde ) a red tarbouch with a shawl rolled round it, long red boots, and a sash ; and carried pistols^ a sword, and a spear about twelve feet long, pointed with steel at both ends ; his broth- er, too, wore a silk gown, and carried pistols and sword and the rest were armed with swords and matchlock guns and wore the common Bedouin dress ; some of them al most no dress at all. AVe had moved some distance from the fortress without a word being uttered, for they neither spoke to me nor with each other. I was in no humour for talking myself, but it was unpleasant to have more than a dozen men around, all bending their keen eyes upon me, and not one of them uttering a word. With a view to making some approach to acquaintance, and removing their jealousy of me as a stranger, I asked some casual question about the road ; but I might better have held my peace, for it seemed that I could not well have hit upon a subject more displeasmg. My amiable companions looked as black as midnight, and one of them, a particularly swarthy and trucu- lent-looking fellow, turned short round, and told me that I had too much curiosity, and that he did not understand what right a Christian had to come there and hunt up their vil- lages, take down their names, &lc. But the sheik came in as mediator, and told them that I was a good man ; that he had been to my house in Cairo, and that I was no spy ; and so this cloud passed off. I did not mean to go far that after- noon, for I had left the fortress merely to get rid of the crowd, and return to fresh air and quiet ; and in less than an hour I again pitched my tent in the desert. Finding plenty of brush, we kindled a large fire, and all sat down around it. It was a great object with me to establish myself on a
QUESTIONABLE PIETY. • 33
good footing with my companions at the outset ; and, more fortunate on my second attempt, before one round of coffee and pipes was over, the sheik turned to me, and, with all the extravagance of Eastern hyperbole, said he thanked God for having permitted us again to see each other's face, and that I had been recovering since I saw his face ; and, turning his eyes to heaven, with an expression of deep and confidmg piety, he added, " God grant that you may soon become a strong man ;'' and then the others all took their pipes from their mouths, and, turning up their eyes to heaven, the whole band of breechless desperadoes added, « Wiillah— Wullah," " God grant it."
34 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
CHAPTER III.
Prophecy aiid Fulfilment. — Unpleasant Suggestions. — The Denounced Land. — Management. — A Rencounter. — An Arab's Cunning. — The Cam- el's Hump. — Adventure with a Lamb. — Mount Hor. — Delicate Negotia- tions.— Approach to Petra.
I HAD now crossed the borders of Edom. Standing near the shore of the Elanitic branch of the Red Sea, the doomed and accursed land lay stretched out before me, the theatre of awful visitations and their more awful fulfilment ; given to Esau as being of the fatness of the earth, but now a bar- ren waste, a picture of death, an eternal monument of the wrath of an offended God, and a fearful witness to the truth of the words spoken by his prophets. " For my sword shall be bathed in heaven : behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment." " From generation to generation it shall lie waste ; none .shall pass through it for ever and ever. But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it ; the owl also and the raven shall dv/ell in it ; and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness. They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing. And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the for- tresses thereof: and it shall be a habitation of dragons, and a court for owls. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow : the screech-owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her
jfROPHECY AND FULFILMENT. 35
shadow : there shall the vultures also be gathered, every- one with her mate. Seek ye out the book of the Lord, and read : no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them. And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath divided it unto them by line: they shall possess it for ever; from generation to generation shall they dwell therein." — ^Isaiah xxxiv.
I read in the sacred book prophecy upon prophecy and curse upon curse against the very land on which I stood. I was about to journey through this land, and to see with my own eyes whether the Almighty had stayed his uplifted arm, or whether his sword had indeed come down " upon Idumea, and the people of his curse, to judgment." I have before referred to Keith on the Prophecies, where, in illus- trating the fulfilment of the prophecies against Idumea, " none shall pass through it for ever and ever," after refer- ring to the singular fact that the great caravan routes exist- ing in the days of David and Solomon, and under the Ro man empire, are now completely broken up, and that the great hadji routes to Mecca from Damascus and Cairo lie along the borders of Idumea, barely touching and not pass- ing through it, he proves by abundant references that to this day no traveller has ever passed through the land.
The Bedouins who roam over the land of Idumea have been described by travellers as the worst of their race. *' The Arabs about Akaba," says Pococke, " are a very bad people and notorious robbers, and are at war with all others." Mr. Joliffe alludes to it as one of the wildest and most dangerous divisions of Arabia ; and Burckhardt says, " that for the first time he had ever felt fear during his trav els in the desert, and his route was the most dangerous he had ever travelled," that he had " nothing with him that could attract the notice or excite the cupidity of the Bedouins," and was '* dven stripped of some rags that cov-
36 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
erea his wounded ankles." Messrs. Legh and Banks, and Captains Irby and Mangles, were told that the Arabs of Wady Moussa, the tribe that formed my escort, " were a most savage and treacherous race, and that they would use their Frank's blood for a medicine ;" and they learned on the spot that " upward of thirty pilgrims from Barbary had been murdered at Petra the preceding year by the men of Wady Moussa ;" and they speak of the opposition and ob- struction from the Bedouins as resembling the case of the Israelites under Moses, when Edom refused to give them passage through his country. None of these had passed through it, and unless the two Englishmen and Italian before referred to succeeded in their attempt, when I pitched my tent on the borders of Edom no traveller had ever done so. The ignorance and mystery that hung over it added to the interest with which I looked to the land of barrenness and desolation stretched out before me ; and I would have regarded all the difficulties and dangers of the road merely as materials for a not unpleasant excitement, if I had only felt a confidence in my physical strength to carry me through. But some idea may be formed of my uuhappy condition from the circumstance that, in the even- ing, my servant, an honest and faithful fellow, who, I be- lieve, was sincerely attached to me, while I was lying on my mat, with many apologies, and hoping I would not think hard of him, and praying that no accident might happen to me, told me that he was a poor man, and it would be very hard for him to lose his earnings, and that an English trav- eller had died in Syria the year before, and his consul nad taken possession of his effects, and to this day his poor servant had never received his wages. I at first thought it unkind of him to come upon me at that moment with such a suggestion ; but I soon changed my mind. I had not paid him a cent since he had been with me, and his . carn'ngs werp no trifle to him ; and, after all. what was 1
UNPLEASANT SUGGESTIONS. 37
to him except a debtor? In any event I should leave him in a few months, and, in all probability, should never see him again. I told him that he knew the circumstances under which we had left Cairo ; that I had brought with me barely enough to pay my expenses on the road ; nor could I give him what he wanted, an order upon my consu-. at Beyrout ; but, after he had gone out, with somewhat the same feelings that may be supposed to possess a man in extremis writing his own will, I wrote an order, including a gratuity which he richly deserved, upon a merchant in Beyrout, upon whom I had a letter of credit ; but the cheer- lessness and helplessness of my situation never struck me so forcibly as when I reflected that, in the uncertain posi- tion in which I was placed, it was not prudent to give it into his hands. At that moment I mistrusted everybody ; and, though I had not then, nor at any subsequent time, the slightest reason to doubt his faith, I did not dare to let him know that he could in any event be a gainer by my death. I considered it necessary to make him suppose that his in terest was identified with my safety, and therefore folded up the paper, enclosed it in the letter of credit directed to the merchant, and put it back in my trunk ; and I need not say that it was a great satisfaction to me that the valid- ity of the draught was never tested.
When I awoke in the morning, the first thing I thought of was my horse. It almost made me well to think of him and it was not long before I was on his back.
Standing near the shore of this northern extremity of the Red Sea, I saw before me an immense sandy valley, which, without the aid of geological science, to the eye of common observation and reason, had once been the bottom of a sea or the bed of a river. This dreary valley, extending far be- yond the reach of the eye, had been partly explored by Burckhardt ; sufficiently to ascertain and mention it in the latest geography of the co-untry, as the great valley of El
Vol. II.— D
39 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
Ghor, extending from the shores of the Elanitic gulf to the southern extremity of the Lake AsphaUites or the Dead Sea , and it was manifest, by landmarks of Nature's own providing, that over that sandy plain those seas had once mingled their waters, or, perhaps more probably, that be- fore the cities of the plain had been consumed by brimstone and fire, and Sodom and Gomorrah covered by a pestilential lake, the Jordan had here rolled its waters. The valley varied from four to eight miles in breadth, and on each side were high, dark, and barren mountains, bounding it like a wall. On the left were the mountains of Judea, and on the right those of Seir, the portion given to Esau as an in- heritance ; and among them, buried from the eyes of stran- gers, the approach to it known only to the wandering Bed- ouins, was the ancient capital of his kingdom, the excavated city of Petra, the cursed and blighted Edom of the Edom- ites. The land of Idumea lay before me, in barrenness and desolation ; no trees grew in the valley, and no verdure on the mountain-tops. All was bare, dreary, and desolate. But the beauty of the weather atoned for this barrenness of scene ; and, mounted on the back of my Arabian, I felt a lightness of frame and an elasticity of spirit that I could not have believed possible in my actual state of health. Pat- ting the neck of the noble animal, I talked with the sheik about his horse ; and, by warm and honest praises, was rap- idly gaining upon the affections of my wild companions. The sheik told me that the race of these horses had been in his family more than four hundred years, though I am in clined to think, from his not being able to tell his own age that he did not precisely know the pedigree of his beasts. If anything connected with my journey in the East could throw me into ecstasies, it would be the recollection of that horse. I felt lifted up when on his back, and snuffed the pure air of the desert with a zest not unworthy of a Bed ouin. Like all the Arabian horses, he was broken only to
MANAGEMENT. 39
the walk and gallop, the unnatural and ungraceful movement of a trot being deemed unworthy the free limbs of an Arab courser.
The sheik to-day was more communicative. Indeed, he became very fond of talking ; suspicious as I was, and on the watch for anything that might rouse my apprehensions, I observed that he regularly settled down upon the same topics, namely, the dangers of the road, the bad character of the Arabs, his great friendship for me the first moment he saw me, and his determination to protect me with his life against all dangers. This was well enough for once or twice, but he repeated it too often, and overshot the mark, as I did when I first began to recommend myself to them. I suspected him of exaggerating the dangers of the road to enhance the value of his services ; and, lest I should enter tain any doubt upon the subject, he betrayed himself by always winding up with a reference to the generosity of Monsieur Linant. The consequence was, that, instead of inspiring me with fear, he gave me confidence ; and, by the end of my first day's journey, I had lost nearly all appre- hensions of the dangers of the road, and acquired some dis- trust and contempt for my protector. We were all getting along very well, however. Paul had been playing a great game among the men, and, by his superior knowledge of mankind, easily circumvented these ignorant Bedouins ; and his Arabic name of " Osman" was constantly in some one's mouth. I forgot to mention that, very early in my journey in the desert, my companions, unable to twist my name to suit their Arabic intonations, had called me Abdel Hasis (literally, the slave of the good God), and Paul, Osman.
In the evening, while makii g a note in a little memoran- dum-book, and on the point of lying down to sleep, I heard a deep guttural voice at some distance outside, and approach- ing nearer, till the harsh sounds grated as if spoken in my very ears My Bedouins were sitting around a large fire
40 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL,
at the door of the tent, and through the flames I saw coming up two wild and ferocious-looking Arabs, their dark visages reddened by the blaze, and their keen eyes flashing ; and hardly had they reached my men, before all drew their swords, and began cutting away at each other with all their might. I did not feel much apprehension, and could not but admire the boldness of the fellows, two men walking up deliberately and drawing upon ten. One of the first charges Toualeb gave me on my entrance into the desert was, if the Arabs composing my escort got into any quarrel, to keep out of the way and let them fight it out by themselves ; and, in pursuance ol this advice, without making any attempt to in- terfere, I stood in the door watching the progress of the fray. The larger of the two was engaged with the sheik's brother, and their swords were clashing in a way that would soon have put an end to one of them, when.the sheik, who had been absent at the moment, sprang in among mem, and knocking up their swords with his long spear, while his scarlet cloak fell from his shoulders, his dark face reddened, and his black eyes glowed in the firelight, with a voice that drowned the clatter of the weapons, roared out a volley of Arabic gutturals which made them drop their points, and apparently silenced them with shame. What he said we did not know ; but the result was a general cessation of hostilities. The sheik's brother had received a cut in the arm, and his adversary helped to bind up the wound, and they all sat down together round the fire to pipes and cofi^ee, as good friends as a party of Irishmen with their heads broken after a Donnybrook fairing. I had noticed, in this flurry, the exceeding awkwardness with which they used their swords, by their overhand blows constantly laying them- selves open, so that any little Frenchman with his toothpick of a rapier would have run them through before they could have cried quarter. After the thing was all over, Paul went out and asked the cause ; but the sheik told him that it was
A RENCOUNTER. 41
SA affair of their own, and with this satisfactory answer we were obliged to rest content.
Though all was now quiet, the elements of discord were still existing. The new-comer was a ferocious fellow ; his voice was constantly heard, like the hoarse croaking* of some bird of evil omen, and sometimes it was raised to the pitch of high and deadly passion. Paul heard him ask if was a European, to winch the sheik answered no ; I was a Turk. He then got upon the railroad to Suez, and the poor benighted Bedouin, completely behind the age in the march of improvement, having never read Say's Political Economy or Smith's Wealth of Nations, denounced it as an invasion of the natural rights of the people, and a wicked breaking up of the business of the camel-drivers. He cursed every European that ever set foot in their country ; and, speaking of Mr. Galloway, the engineer of the proposed railroad, hoped that he might some day meet him, and swore he would strangle him with his own hands.
In the morning we were again under way. Our quarrel- some friend of the night before was by our side, perched on the bare back of a dromedary, and, if possible, looking more grim and savage by daylight. His companion was mounted behind him, and he kept near the sheik, occasionally cross- ing my path, looking back at me, and croaking in the sheik's ears as he had done the night before. Two or three times he crossed my path, as if with the intention of going into the mountains ; and then, as if he found it impossible to tear himself away, returned to the sheik. At length he did go, and with a most discontented and disconsolate air, and after he had gone, the sheik told us that, when they came up to the fire, they demanded tribute or bucksheesh from the stranger passing over the Bedouins' highway ; that his brother had refused to pay it, which had been the cause of the quarrel ; and that, when he himself came up, he had told the demanders of tribute that he had undertaken to protec
D2
42 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
me from injury through the desert ; that he had given hi6 head to Mohammed Aly for my safety, and would defend me with his life against every danger ; but th«it, finally, he had pacified them by giving them a couple of dollars apiece. I did not believe this. They looked too disconsolate when they went away ; for the four dollars would have made the hearts of two beggarly Bedouins leap for joy ; and I could not help asking him if we were obliged to buy our peace when only two came upon us, what we should do when a hundred should come ; to which he answered that they must all be paid, and that it was impossible to pass through the desert without it.
We got through the dayremarkably well, the scene bemg always precisely the same ; before us, the long, desolate, sandy valley, and on each side the still more desolate and dreary mountains. Towards evening we encamped ; aud, after sitting some time around a fire with my companions, 1 entered my tent. Soon after, the sheik, in pursuance of his pitiful plan of exciting my fears and raising his own value, sent in for my gun and pistols, telling me that there were Arabs near ; that he heard the barking of a dog, aud intended to keep watch all night. I had already seen so much of him, that I knew this was a mere piece of bragga- docio ; and I met it with another, by telling him that no man could use my pistols better than myself, and that all he had to do was, upon the first alarm, to give me notice, and I would be among them. About an hour afterward I went out and found them all asleep ; and I could not help making Paul rouse the sheik, and ask him if he did not want the pistols for his vigilant watch.
In the morning we started at half past six. The day was again beautiful and inspiriting ; *my horse and myself had become the best friends in the world ; and, though I was disgusted with the sheik's general conduct, I moved quietly along the valley, conversing with him or Paul, or with any
CAMEL VS. DROMEDARY. 43
of the meii; about anything that happened to suggest itself, [ remember I had a long discourse about the difference be- tween the camel and the dromedary. Buffon gives the camel two humps, and the dromedary one ; and this, I be- lieve, is the received opinion, as it had always been mine , but, since I had been in the East, I had remarked that it was exceedingly rare to meet a camel with two humps. I had seen together at one time, on the starting of the cara- van of pilgrims to Mecca, perhaps twenty thousand camels and dromedaries, and had not seen among them more than half a dozen with two humps. Not satisfied with any ex- olanation from European residents or travellers, I had in- quired among the Bedouins ; and Toualeb, my old guide, brought up among camels, had given such a strange account that I never paid any regard to it. Now, however, Oi^e sheik told me the same thing, namely, that they were of differ- ent races, the dromedary being to the camel as the blood- horse is to the cart-horse ; and that the two humps were pe- culiar neither to the dromedary nor the camel, or natural to either ; but that both are always born with only one hump, which, being a mere mass of flesh, and very tender, almost as soon as the young camel is born a piece is sometimes cut out of the middle for the convenience of better arranging the saddle ; and, being cut out of the centre, a hump is left on either side of the cavity ; and this, according to the ac- count given by Toualeb, is the only way in which two humps ever appear on the back of a camel or dromedary. I should not mention this story if I had heard it only once ; but, precisely as I had it from Toualeb, it was confirmed with a great deal of circumstantial detail by another Bed- ouin, who, like himself, had lived among camels and drom- edaries all his life ; and his statement was assented to by all his companions. I do not give this out as a discovery made at this late day in regard to an animal so well known as the camel ; indeed, I am told that the Arabs are not ig-
44 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
norant ot that elegance of civilized life called " quizzing •" I give it merely to show how I whiled away my time in the desert, and for what it is worth.
Towards midday the sheik dashed across the plain, with his long lance poised in his hand, and his scarlet dress streaming in the wind ; and about an hour afterward we came to his spear stuck in the sand, and a little Bedouin boy sitting by it to invite us to his father's tent. We turned aside, and, coming to the tent, found the sheik sitting on the ground refreshing himself with long draughts of goat's milk. He passed the skin to us ; but, as master of the ceremonies, he declined the regular Arab invitation to stay and eat a lamb. He could not, however, neglect the goods the gods provided, and told our host that we would take a lamb w^th us for our evening meal. The lamb was caught, and, with his legs tied, was thrown into a sack, where he made music for us for the rest of the day. To the Bedouin, next to the pleasure of eating a lamb is that of knowing he has one to eat ; and so the bleating of the doomed innocent was merely a whetter of appetite. After we had gone some distance from the tent, we set down the lamb on the ground, and I never saw a creature so perfectly the emblem of helplessness. At first he ran back a little way from us ; then stopped; and apparently feeling the loneliness of his condition, returned and followed us, and in a few momenta was under the feet of the camels, a part of our caravan un- wittingly moving to the slaughter. The tent was hardly pitched before he lay bleeding on the ground ; and the fire was no sooner kindled than his entrails, live' , &;c., were in the burning brush ; and in a few moments the Arabs were greedily devouring the meal into which he had been so speedily converted. The whole scene which I have before described was repeated ; and, as before, in the morning the skin was the only part of the lamb to be seen.
One thing in the sheik was particularly disagreeable
MOUNT HOR. 45
He was constantly talking with Paul about the sacrifice he made in accompanying me ; his confident expectation that I would pay him well for it. and the generosity of Mr. Lmant ; always winding up with asking what bucksheesh I intended to give him. Paul told me all that passed, and it was evi- dent that the sheik and his men were making extravagant calculations. I had estimated with Mr. Gliddon the prob- able expenses to Jerusalem, founded on the rate of hire for camels which the sheik had named at Cairo ; and as it was not beyond the range of possibilities that I should be stripped on the way, I had brought with me barely enough to cover my probable expenses ; and, consequently, I saw that my means were very likely to fal short of the sheik's expectations. I did not want any disappointment at the last, and that night I called him to my tent, resolved upon coming to an under- standing. I told him that, knowing it was a dangerous road, and that I was subject to the risk of being robbed, I had brought with me a specific sum of money, all of which 1 in- tended for him, and that all he scattered along the road would be so much taken from his own pocket in the end. He was evidently startled, and expressed his surprise that a howaga, or gentlfeman, should have any bottom to his pocket, but promised to economize in future.
The next day the general features of the scene were the same, eternal barrenness and desolation ; and, moving to the right, at one o'clock we were at the foot of the mountains of Seir ; and towering above all the rest, surmounted by a circular dome, like the tombs of the sheiks in Egypt, was the bare and rugged summit of Mount Hor, the burial-place of Aaron, visible in every direction at a great distance from below, and on both sides the great range of mountains, and forming one of the marks by which the Bedouin regulates liis wanderings in the desert. Soon after we turned in among the mountains, occasionally passing small spots of verdure, strangely contrasting with the surrounding and
46 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL,
general desolation. Towards evening, in a small mountain on our left, we saw an excavation in the rock, which the sheik said had been a fortress ; and, as of every other work of which the history is unknown, its construction was as- cribed to the early Christians. It was a beautiful afternoon gazelles were playing in the valleys, and partridges running wild up the sides of the mountains, and we pitched oui tent partly over a carpet of grass, with the door open tt the lofty tomb of the great high-priest of Israel.
In the evening the sheik came to my tent for money, having been very pertinacious on that tender subject all day with Paul, asking him how much he thought I had with me, and how much I intended to give him. He began by asking me for pay for the camels, at the price agreed upon in Cairo, If he had asked me before starting from Akaba, I should probably have paid him ; but, after what I had seen, and what had passed between him and Paul, I did not like his asking for it now. He told me, too, that we were now at the door of Petra, and that it would be necessary to pay a buck'sheesh or tribute on entering, but he could not tell how much would be required, as that would depend alto- gether on circumstances. There was always a guard sta- tioned at the entrance of the defile leading to Petra, and the amounf- tO be paid would depend upon the number we might .lappen to find when we entered. These were nevei less than thirty or forty ; and if there should not be more, the tribute exacted would not be more than thirty or forty dollars, but there might be two or three hundred ; and, at all events, I had better give him my purse, and he would return me what was left. I suspected that, as he could not find out from Paul either how much I had with me or what I intended to give him, this story of the tribute was merely a pretext to levy an immediate contribution. The* precise danger I had to fear was, that he would get my money from me piecemeal, and, when we came among Bed
DELICATE NEGOTIATIONS. 47
ouins where Jt would be necessary to buy my peace, go off and leave me to their mercy. 1 did not want to have any rupture with him, particularly at the moment when I was at the very door of Petra, and might lose all that 1 had been endeavouring with so much personal difficulty to accomplish ; and therefore told him, as to the bucksheesh for entering Petra, that I expected ; and, when we should arrive there and learn how much it was, would be ready to pay it ; but, in the mean time, for any little casual expense that might be incurred, I would give him a purse of five hundred piasters, or twenty-five dollars. Touching the hire of camels, I said that 1 did not expect to pay it until we should arrive at Hebron ; and, hurling back upon him one of his own flourishes, told him that it was distrusting my honour to ask it now. I reminded him of our conver- sation at Cairo, remarking that I had come into the desert upon the faith of his promise ; and he replied very imper- tinently, if not menacingly, that one word here was worth a Jiundred at Cairo. I was somewhat roused at this, and determined not to be dragooned into compliance, forgot for a moment my prudential plan, and told him that I would not be driven into that or anything else ; and that, sooner than submit to his demand, I would turn back here, at the very door of Petra, and return to Cairo. This had its effect, for he was no more disposed to proceed to extremi- ties than myself; and when I found him giving way a little, I threw in a powerful argument, which I had several times before hinted at, namely, that there were two parties on the Nile who were exceedingly anxious to make the same journey, and who would be governed altogether by the report I should make. I saw that his avarice and hope of future gain were rapidly getting the better of his eager- ness to touch his money before it was earned ; and, with- out inflicting upon the reader a full account of our long negotiation, made up principally of blustering and exaggera*
4:8 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
tion, with some diplomatic concessions on both sides, it is enough to say that at last, to my great relief, he withdrew his demand and took what I offered.
Before daybreak the next morning we had struck our tent, and sending it and the other baggage by another route, the sheik being afraid to take with us anything that might tempt the Bedouins, and leaving behind us several of our men, the sheik, his brother, three Arabs, Paul, and myself, with nothing but what we had on, and provisions for one day, started for Wady Moussa and the city of Petra. Our course w^as a continued ascent. I have found it throughout difficult to give any description which can impart to the reader a distinct idea of the wild and desolate scenes pre- sented among these mountainous deserts. I have been, too, in so many of the same general nature, that particular ones do not present themselves to my mind now with the force and distinctness of perfect recollection ; and, in the few rough and hurried notes which I made on the spot, I marked rather the effect than the causes which produced it. I remember, however, that the mountains were barren, solitary, and desolate, and that, as we ascended, their aspect became more and more wild and rugged, and rose to gran deur and sublimity. I remember, too, that among these arid wastes of crumbling rock there were beautiful streams gushing out from the sides of the mountains ; and some- times small valleys, where the green grass, and shrubs, and bushes were putting forth in early spring ; and that, alto- gether, I saw among the stony mountains of Arabia Petraea more verdure than I had observed since t left the banks of the Nile. I remember, moreover, that the ascent was diffi- cult ; that our camels toiled laboriously ; and that even our sure-footed Arabian horses often slipped upon the steep and rugged path. Once the sheik and myself, being in advance of the rest, sat down upon an eminence which overlooked, on one side, a range of wild and barren mountains, and, on
APPROACH TO PETRA 49
he other, iae dreary valley^of El Ghor ; above us was the venerable summit of Mount Hor ; and near us a stone black' encd with smoke, and surrounded by fragments of bones, showing the place where the Arabs had sacrificed sheep to the Prophet Aaron. From this point we wound along the base of Mount Hor, which, from this great height, seemed just beginning to rise into a mountain ; and I remember, that, in winding slowly along its base, as our companions had objected to our mounting to the tomb of Aaron, Paul and I were narrowly examining its s'des for a path, and making arrangements to slip out as soon as they should all be asleep, and ascend by moonlight. Not far from the base of Mount Hor we came to some tombs cut in the sides of the rocks, and standing at the threshold of the entrance to the excavated city. Before entering this extraordinary olace, it would not be amiss, in few word , to give its history Vol. II.— E
60 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEi.
CHAPTER IV.
Petra, — Arrival. — Entrance to the City. — The Temple of Petra. — A Rcc ord. — The Theatre. — Tombs of Petra. — Arab Simplicity. — Departure from Petra. — A Night in a Tomb. — Dangers of the Route.
Petra, the excavated city, the long-lost capital of Edom, in the Scriptures and profane writings, in every language in which its name occurs, signifies a rock ; and, through the shadows of its early history, we learn that its inhabi- tants lived in natural clefts or excavations made in the solid rock. Desolate as it now is, we have reason to believe that it goes back to the time of Esau, " the father of Edom ;'■ that princes and dukes, eight successive kings, and agaiK a long line of dukes, dwelt there before any king " reignoi. over Israel ;" and we recognise it from the earliest ages as the central point to which came the caravans from the interior of Arabia, Persia, and India, laden with all the precious commodities of the East, and from which these commodities were distributed through Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, and all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean even Tyre and Sidon deriving their purple and dies from Petra. Eight hundred years before Christ, Amaziah, the king of Judea, " slew of Edom in the Valley of Salt ten thousand, and took Selah (the Hebrew name of Petra) by war." Three hundred years after the last of the prophets and nearly a century before the Christian era, the " King of Arabia" issued from his palace at Petra, at the head of fifty thousand men, horse and foot, entered Jerusalem, and, uniting with the Jews, pressed the siege of the temple, which was only raised by the advance of the Romans ; and
t
PETRA. 51
in the beginning of the second century, though its independ- ence was lost, Petra was still the capital of a Roman province. After that time it rapidly declined ; its history became more and more obscure ; for more than a thousand years it was completely lost to the civilized world ; and, until its discovery by Burckhardt in 1812, except to the wandering Bedouins its very site was unknown.
And this was the city at whose door I now stood. In a few words, this ancient and extraordinary city is situated within a natural amphitheatre of two or three miles in cir- cumference, encompassed on all sides by rugged mountains five or six hundred feet in height. The whole of this area is now a waste of ruins, dwelling-houses, palaces, temples, and triumphal arches, all prostrate together in undistinguish able confusion. The sides of the mountains are cut smooth in a perpendicular direction, and filled with long and con tinned ranges of dwelling-houses, temples, and tombs, ex- cavated whh vast labour out of the solid rock ; and while their summits present Nature in her wildest and most sav- age form, their bases are adorned with all the beauty of architecture and art, with columns, and porticoes, and pedi- ments, and ranges of corridors, enduring as the mountains out of which they are hewn, and fresh as if the work of a generation scarcely yet gone by.
Nothing can be finer than the immense rocky rampart which encloses the city. Strong, firm, and immoveable as Nature itself, it seems to deride the walls of cities and the puny fortifications of skilful engineers. The only access IS by clambering over this wall of stone, practicable only m one place, or by an entrance the most extraordinary thai Nature, in her wildest freaks, has ever framed The loftiest portals ever raised by the hands of man, the proud- est monuments of architectural skill and daring, sink into insignificance by the comparison. It is, perhaps, the most wonderful object in the world, except the ruins of the city
52 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
to which it forms the entrance. Unfortunately, I did not enter by this door, but by clambering over the mountains at the other end ; and when I stood upon the summit of the mountain, though 1 looked down upon the vast area filled with ruined buildings and heaps of rubbish, and saw the mountain-sides cut away so as to form a level surface, and presenting long ranges of doors in successive tiers or stories, the dwelling and burial places of a people long since passed away ; and though immediately before me was the excava- ted front of a large and beautiful temple, I was disappointed. I had read the unpublished description of Captains Irby and Mangles. Several times the sheik had told me, in the most positive manner, that there was no other entrance ; and 1 was moved to indignation at the marvellous and exaggerated, not to say false representations, as I thought, of the only persons who had given any account of this wonderful en- trance. I was disappointed, too, in another (natter. Burck- hardt had been accosted, immediately upon his entry, by a large party of Bedouins, and been suffered to remain but a very short time. Messrs. Legh, Banks, Irby, and Mangles had been opposed by hundreds of Bedouins, who swore " that they should never enter their territory nor drink of their waters," and " that they would shoot them like dogs if they attempted it." And I expected some immediate opposition from at least the thirty or forty, fewer than whom, the sheik had told me, were never to be found in Wady Moussa. I expected a scene of some kind ; but at the entrance of the city there ^vas not a creature to dispute our passage ; its portals were wide open, and we passed along the stream down into the area, and still no man came to oppose us. We moved to the extreme end of the area ; and, when in the act of dismounting at the foot of the rock on which stood the temple that had constantly faced \;s, we saw ono solitary Arab, straggling along without any apparent object^ a mere wanderer among the ruins ; and it is a not iimnter*
ENTRANCE TO THE CITY. 53
estmg fact, that this poor Bedouin was the only living being we saw in the desolate city of Petra. After gazing at us for a few moments from a distance, he came towards us, and in a few moments was sitting down to pipes* and coffee with my companions. I again asked the sheik for the other entrance, and he again told me there was none ; but I could not believe him, and set out to look for it my- self; and although in my search I had already seen enough abundantly to repay me for all my difficulties in getting there, I could not be content without finding this desired avenue. In front of the great temple, the pride and beauty of Petra, of which more hereafter, I saw a narrow opening in the rocks, exactly corresponding with my conception of the object for which I was seeking. A full stream of water was gushing through it, and filling up the whole mouth of the passage. Mounted on the shoulders of one of my Bed- ouins, I got him to carry me through the swollen stream at the mouth of the opening, and set me down on a dry place a little above, whence I began to pick my way, occasionally taking to the shoulders of my follower, and continued to advance more than a mile. 1 was beyond all peradventure m the great entrance I was seeking. There could not be two such, and I should have gone on to the extreme end of the ravine, but my Bedouin suddenly refused me the fur- ther use of his shoulders. He had been some time object- ing and begging me to return, and now positively refused to go any farther ; and, in fact, turned about himself. I was anxious to proceed, but I did not like wading up to my knees in the water, nor did I feel very resolute to go where I might expose myself to danger, as he seemed to intimate. While I was hesitating, another of my men came running up the ravine, and shortly after him Paul and the sheik, breathless with haste, and crying in low gutturals, "El Arab ! el Arab ! ' — " The Arabs ! the Arabs !" This was enough for me. I had heard so much of El Arab that I
E 2
54 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
had become nervous. It was like the cry of Delilah in the ears of the sleeping Samson, " The Philistines be upon ihee." At the other end of the ravine was an encampment of the El Alouins ; and the sheik, having due regard to my communication about money matters, had shunned this en- trance to avoid bringing upon me this horde of tribute-gath- erers for a participation in the. spoils. Without any dispo- sition to explore farther, I turned towards the city ; and it was now that I began to feel the powerful and indelible im- pression that must be produced on entering, through this mountainous passage, the excavated city of Petra.
For about two miles it lies between high and precipitous ranges of rocks, from five hundred to a thousand feet in height, stanAng as if torn asunder by some great convulsion, and barely wide enough for two horsemen to pass abreast. A swelling stream rushes between them ; the summits are wild and broken ; in some places overhanging the opposite sides, casting the darkness of night upon the narrow^defile ; then receding and forming an opening above, through which a strong ray of light is thrown down, and illuminates with the blaze of day the frightful chasm below. Wild fig-trees, oleanders, and ivy were growing out of the rocky sides of the cliffs hundreds of feet above our heads ; the eagle was screaming above us ; all along were the open doors of tombs, forming the great Necropolis of the city ; and at the extreme end was a large open space, with a powerful body of light thrown down upon it, and exhibiting in one full view the facade of a beautiful temple, hewn out of the rock, with rows of Corinthian columns and ornaments, standing out fresh and clear as if but yesterday from the hands of the sculptor. Though coming directly from the banks of the Nile, where the preservation of the temples excites the admiration and astonishment of every traveller, we were roused and excited by the extraordinary beauty and excel- lent condition of thf^ great temple at Petra. Eve» in com-
THE TEMPLE OF PETRA. 55
ing upon it, as we did, at disadvantage, I remember that Paul, who was a passionate admirer of the arts, when he first obtained a glimpse of it, involuntarily cried out, and moving on to the front with a vivacity I never saw him exhibit before or afterward, clapped his hands, and shouted in ecstasy. To the last day of our being together he was m the habit of referring to his extraordinary fit of enthu- siasm when he first came upon that temple ; and I can well imagine that, entering by this narrow defile, with the feelings roused by its extraordinary and romantic wild- ness and beauty, the first view of that superb facade must produce an effect which could never pass away. Even now, that I have returned to the pursuits and thought-en- grossing incidents of a life in the busiest city in the world, often in situations as widely different as light from darkness, I see before me the fa9ade of that temple ; neither the Co- liseum at Rome, grand and interesting as it is, nor the ruins of the Acropolis at Athens, nor the Pyramids, nor the mighty temples of the Nile, are so often present to my memory.
The whole temple, its columns, ornaments, porticoes, and porches, are cut out from and form part of the solid rock ; and this rock, at the foot of which the temple stands like a mere print, towers several hundred feet above, its face cut smooth to the very summit, and the top remaining wild and misshapen as Nature made it. The whole area before the temple is perhaps an acre in extent, enclosed on all sides except at the narrow entrance, and an opening to the left of the temple, which leads into the area of the city by a pass through perpendicular rocks five or six hundred feet in height.
It is not my design to enter into the details of the many monuments in this extraordinary city ; but, to give a gen- eral idea of the character of all the excavations, I cannot do better than go within the temple. Ascending several broad steps, we entered under a colonnade of four Corin-
56 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
thian co.umns, about thirty -five feet high, into a large chain ber of son^e fifty feet square and twenty-five feet high. The outside of the temple is richly ornamented, but the interior is perfectly plain, there being no ornament of any kind upon the walls or ceiling ; on each of the three sides is a small chamber for the reception of the dead ; and on the back wall of the innermost chamber I saw the names of Messrs. Legh, Banks, Irby, and Mangles, the four English travellers who with so much difiiculty had effected their entrance to the city ; of Messieurs Laborde and Linant, and the two Englishmen and Italian of whom I have before spoken ; and two or three others, which, from the character of the writing, I supposed to be the names of attendants upon some of these gentlemen. These were the only names recorded in the temple ; and, besides Burckhardt, no other traveller had ever reached it. I was the first Ameri- can who had ever been there. Many of my countrj^men, probably, as was the case with me, have never known the existence of such a city ; and, independently of all personal considerations, I confess that I felt what, I trust, was not an inexcusable pride, in writing upon the innermost wall of that temple the name of an American citizen ; and under it, and flourishing on its own account in temples, and tombs, and all the most conspicuous places in Petra, is the illustri- ous name of Paulo Nuozzo, dragomano.
Leaving the temple and the open area on which it fronts, and following the stream, we entered another defile much broader than the first, on each side of which were ranges of tombs, with sculptured doors and columns ; and on the left, in the bosom of the mountain, hewn out of the solid rock, is a large theatre, circular in form, the pillars in fiont fallen, and containing thirty-three rows of seats, capable of containing more than three thousand persons. Above the corridor was a range of doors opening to chambers in the rocks, the seats of the princes and wealthiest inhabitants
ix'ii'.iuoK \ii".^v III- 'rill'. i:ii\s\i';
THF THEATRE. 57
of Petra, and not unlike a row of private boxes in a modern theatre.
The whole theatre is at this day in such a state of pres- ervation, that if the tenants of the tombs around could once more rise into life, they might take their old places on its seats, and listen to the declamation of their favourite player. To me the stillness of a ruined city is nowhere so impres- sive as when silting on the steps of its theatre ; once thronged with the gay and pleasure-seeking, but now given up to solitude and desolation. Day after day these seats had been filled, and the now silent rocks had echoed to the applauding shout of thousands ; and little could an ancient Edomite imagine that a solitary stranger, from a then un- known world, would one day be wandering among the ruins of his proud and wonderful city, meditating upon the fate of a race that has for ages passed away. Where are ye, in habitants of this desolate city? ye who once sat on the seats of this theatre, the young, the high-born, the beautiful, and brave ; who once rejoiced in your riches and power, and lived as if there was no grave? AVhere are ye now? Even the very tombs, whose open doors are stretching away in long ranges before the eyes of the wonderingi" trav- eller, cannot reveal the mystery of your doom ; your dry bones are gone ; the robber has invaded your graves, and your very ashes have been swept away to make room for the wandering Arab of the desert.
But we need not stop at the days when a gay population were crowding to this theatre. In the earliest periods of recorded time, long before this theatre was built, and long before the tragic muse was known, a great city stood here. When Esau, having sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, came to his portion among the mountains of Seir ; and Edom, growing in power and strength, became presumptu- ous and haughty, until, in her pride, when Israel prayed a passage through her country, Edom said uii to Israel, " Thou
58 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
shalt not pass by me, le«t I come out against thee with the sword."
Amid all the terrible denunciations against the land of Idumea, " her cities and the mhabitants thereof," this proud city among the rocks, doubtless for its extraordinary sins, was always marked as a subject of extraordinary vengeance. •' I have swoin by myself, saith the Lord, that Bozrah (the strong or fortified city) shall become a desolation, a re- proach, and a waste, and a curse, and all the cities thereof shall be perpetual waste. Lo, I will make thee small among the heathen, and despised among men. Thy terri- bleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thy heart, oh thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rocks, that boldest the height of the hill ; though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord."* " They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all hei princes shall be nothing ; and thorns shall come up in hei palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof, and it shall be a habitation for dragons, and a court for owls."t
I would that the skeptic could stand as I did among the ruins of this city among the rocks, and there open the sa cred book and read the words of the inspired penman, writ- ten when this desolate place was one of the greatest cities in the world. I see the scoff arrested, his cheek pale, his lip quivering, and his heart quaking with fear, as the ruined city cries out to him in a voice loud and powerful as that of one risen from the dead ; though he would not believe Moses and the prophets, he believes the handwriting of God him- self in the desolation and eternal ruin around him. We sat on the steps of the theatre, and made our noonday meal ; our drink was from the pure stream that rolled down at our feet. Paul and myself were alone. We scared the par
* Jeremiah xlix., 13, 16. t Isaiah xixiv., 14, !.'>
TOMBS OF PETRA. 69
ridge before us as we ascended, and I broke for a moment he stillness of the desolate city by the report of my gun.
All around the theatre, in the sides of the mountains, were ranges of tombs ; and directly opposite they rose in long tiers one above another. Having looked into those around the theatre, I crossed to those opposite ; and, carefully aa the brief time I had would allow, examined the whole range. Though I had no small experience in exploring catacombs and tombs, these were so different from any I had seen that I found it difficult to distinguish the habitations of the living Tom the chambers of the dead. The facades or architec- tural decorations of the front were everywhere handsome ; and in this they differed materially from the tombs in Egypt • m the latter the doors were simply an opening in the rock and all the grandeur and beauty of the work within ; while here the door was always imposing in its appearance, and the interior was generally a simple chamber, unpainted and unsculptured.
I say that I could not distinguish the dwellings from the tombs ; but this was not invariably the case ; some were clearly tombs, for there were pits in which the dead had been laid, and others were as clearly dwellings, being with- out a place for the deposite of the dead. One of these last particularly attracted my attention. It consisted of one large chamber, having on one side, at the foot of the wall, a stone bench about a foot high, and two or three broad, in form like the divans in the East at the present day ; at the other end were several small apartments, hewn out of the rock, with partition walls left between them, like stalls in a stable, and these had probably been the sleeping apart- ments of the different members of the family, the myste- ries of bars and bolts, of folding-doors and third stories, being unknown in the days of the ancient Edomites There were no paintings or decorations of any kind within the chamber ; but the rock out of which it was hewn, like
60 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL-
the whole stony rampart that encircled the city, was ci a peculiarity and beauty that I never saw elsewhere, being a dark ground, with veins of white, blue, red, purple and sometimes scarlet and light orange, running through it in rainbow streaks ; and within the chambers, where there had been no exposure to the action of the elements, the fresh- ness and beauty of the colours in which these waving lines were drawn gave an effect hardly inferior to that of the paintings in the tombs of the kings at Thebes. From its high and commanding position, and the unusual finish of the work, this house, if so it may be called, had no doubt been the residence of one who had strutted his hour of brief ex- istence among the wealthy citizens of Petra. In front was a large table of rock, forming a sort of court for the exca- vated dwelling, where probably, year after year, in this beautiful climate, the Edomite of old sat under the gather- ing shades of evening, sometimes looking down upon the congregated thousands and the stirring scenes in the theatre bfeneath, or beyond upon the palaces and dwellings in thp area of the then populous city.
Farther on in the same range, though, in consequence of the steps of the streets being broken, we were obliged to go down and ascend again before we could reach it, was an- other temple, like the first, cut out of the solid rock, and, like the first too, having for its principal ornament a large urn, shattered and bruised by musket balls ; for the ignorant Arab, believing that gold is concealed in it, day after day, as he passes, levels at it his murderous gun, in the vain hope to break the vessel and scatter a golden shower on the ground.
But it would be unprofitable to dwell upon details. In the exceeding interest of the scene around me, I hurried from place to place, utterly insensible to physical fatigue ; and being entirely alone, and having a full and undisturbed range of the ruijis, I clambered up broken staircases and
FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. 61
among the ruins of streets ; and, looking into one exca- v^ation, passed on to another and another, and made the whole circuit of the desolate city. There, on the spot, everything had an interest which I cannot give in descrip- tion ; and if the reader has followed me so far, I have too much regard for him to drag him about after me as I did Paul. I am warned of the consequences by what occurred with that excellent and patient follower ; for, before the day was over, he w\s completely worn out with fatigue.
The shades o." evening were gathering around us as we stood for the last time on the steps of the theatre. Perfect as has been the fulfilment of the prophecy in regard to this desolate city, in no one particular has its truth been more awfully verified than in the complete destruction of its in- habitants ; in the extermination of the race of the Edomites. In the same day, and by the voice of the same prophets, came the separate denunciations against the descendants of Israel and Edom, declaring against both a complete change of their temporal condition ; and while the Jews have been dispersed in every country under heaven, and are still, in every land, a separate and unmixed people, " the Edomites have been cut off for ever, and there is not any remaining of the house of Esau."
" Wisdom has departed from Teman, and understanding out of the mount of Esaii ;" and the miserable Arab who now roams over the land cannot appreciate or understand the works of its ancient inhabitants. In the summer he cultivates the few valleys in which seed will grow, and in the winter makes his habitation in the tombs ; and, stimula- ted by vague and exaggerated traditionary notions of the greatness and wealth of the people who have gone before him, his barbarous hand is raised against the remaining monuments of their arts ; and, as he breaks to atoms the sculptured stone, he expects to gather up their long-hidden treasures. I could have lingered for days on the steps ol
Vol. II.— F
62 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
that theatre, for I never was at a place where such a crowd of associations pressed upon the mind. But the sheik was hurrying me away. From the first he had told me that I must not pass a night within the city ; and begging me not to tempt my fortune too rashly, he was perpetually urging me to make my retreat while there was yet time. He said that, if the Arabs at the other end of the great entrance heard of a stranger being there, they would be down upon me to a man, and, not content with extorting money, would cer- tainly prevent my visiting the tomb of Aaron. He had touched the right chord ; and considering that weeks or months could not impress the scene more strongly on my mind, and that I was no artist, and could not carry away on paper the plans and models of ancient art, I mounted my horse from the very steps of the theatre, and followed the sheik in his progress up the valley. Turning back from the theatre, the whole area of the city burst upon the sight at once, filled with crumbling masses of rock and stone, the ruined habitations of a people long since perished from the face of the earth, and encompassed on every side by high ranges of mountains ; and the sides of these were cut smooth, even to the summit, hundreds of feet above my head as I rode past, and filled with long-continued ranges of open doors, the entrances to dwellings and tombs, of which the small connecting staircases were not visible at a dis- tance, and many of the tenements seemed utterly inacces- sible.
Every moment the sheik was becoming more and more impatient ; and, spurring my horse, I followed him on a gallop among the ruins. We ascended the valley, and rising eo the summit of the rocky rampart, it was almost dark when we found ourselves opposite a range of tombs in the suburbs of the city. Here we dismounted; and selecting from among them one which, from its finish and dimen- sions, must have been the last abode of some wealthy
Iy\\^ /4 "sN
A NIGHT IN A TOMB. 63
Ed9mite, we prepared to pass the night within its walls. I was completely worn out when I threw myself on the rocky floor of the tomb. I had just completed one of the most interesting days in my life ; for the singular character ol the city, and the uncommon beauty of its ruins, its great an- tiquity, the prophetic denunciations of whose truth it was the witness, its loss for more than a thousand years to the civilized world, its very existence being known only to the wandering Arab, the difficulty of reaching it, and the hur- ried and dangerous manner in which I had reached it, gave a thrilling and almost fearful interest to the time and place, of which I feel it utterly impossible to convey any idea.
In the morning Paul and I had determined, when our companions should be asleep, to ascend Mount Hor by moonlight ; but now we thought only of rest ; and seldom has the pampered tenant of a palace laid down with greater satisfaction upon his canopied bed than I did upon the stony floor of this tomb in Petra. In the front part ot it was a large chamber, about twenty-five feet square and ten feet high ; and behind this was another of smaller dimen- sions, furnished with receptacles for the dead, not arranged after the manner of shelves extending along the wall, as in the catacombs I had seen in Italy and Egypt, but cut length- wise in the rock, like ovens, so as to admit the insertion of the body with the feet foremost.
We built a fire in the outer chamber, thus lighting up the innermost recesses of the tombs ; and, after our evening meal, while sipping coff*ee and smoking pipes, the sheik congratulated me upon my extreme good fortune in having seen Petra without any annoyance from the Bedouins ; ad- ding, as usual, that it was a happy day for me when I saw his face at Cairo. He told mo that he had never been to Wady Moussa without seeing at least thirty or forty Arabs, and sometimes three or four hundred ; that when Abdel Plag (Mr. Linant) and Mr. Laborde visited Petra the first
(34 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
time, they were driven out by the Bedouins after remain- ing only five hours, and were chased down into the valley, Mr. Linant changing his dromedary every three hours on the way back to Akaba ; that there he remained, pretending to be sick, for twenty-four days, every day feasting half the tribe ; and during that time sending to Cairo for money, dresses, swords, guns, pistols, ammunition, &;c., which he distributed among them so lavishly that the whole tribe escorted him in triumph to Petra. This is so different from Mr. Laborde's account of his visit, that it cannot be true, I asked him about the visit of Messrs. Legh and Banks, and Captains Irby and Mangles ; and drawing close to me, so as not to be overheard by the rest, he told me that he re- membered their visit well ; that they came fromKerek with three sheiks and three or four hundred men, and that the Bedouins of Wady Moussa turned out against them more than two thousand strong. His uncle was then the sheik, and he himself a young man ; and, if his account is true, which cannot, however, be, as it is entirely different from theirs, he began the life of a knave so young, that, though he had no great field for exercise, he ought then to have been something of a proficient ; he said, that while they were negotiating and parleying, one of the strange Arabs slipped into his hands a purse with a hundred pieces of gold, which he showed to his uncle, and proposed to him that they should use their influence to procure the admis- sion of the strangers, and divide the money between them ; and so wrought upon the old man that he procured their entrance, telling the tribe that one of the strangers was sick, and, if they did not admit them into Wady Moussa, he would take them to his tent ; and, added the sheik, his eyes sparkling with low cunning, my uncle and I ate the whole of that gold without any one of the tribe ever knowing any- thing about it.
One piece of information he gave me, which I thought
DANGERS OF THE ROUTE. 6b
very likely to be true ; that the road to Petra, and thence through Idumea in any direction, never could be pursued with assurance of safety, or become a frequented route, be cause the Bedouins would always be lying in wait for trav- ellers, to exact tribute or presents ; and although a little might sometimes content them, at others their demands would be exorbitant, and quarrels and bad consequences to the traveller would be almost sure to follow ; and he added, m reference to our visit, that, as soon as the Arabs should hear of a stranger having been at Petra, they would be down in swarms; and perhaps even now would follow us into the valley. I was satisfied that I had made a fortu- nate escape, not, perhaps, from personal danger, but from grinding exactions, if not from robbery ; and, congratulating myself upon my good fortune so far, I began to feel my way for what I now regarded as important as before I had thought the journey to Petra, namely, a visit to the tomb of Aaron.
My companions opposed my going to it, saying that no Christian had ever done so ; and that none but Mussulmans went there, and they only to sacrifice a sheep upon the tomb.. I told them that I also designed to sacrifice ; and that, like them, we regarded Aaron as a prophet ; that my visit to Petra was nothing unless I made the sacrifice ; and that my conscience would not be at ease unless I performed it according to my vow. This notice of my pious purpose smoothed some of the difficulties, as the Arabs knew that after the sacrifice the sheep must be eaten. The sheik was much more liberal or more indifi*erent than the rest, and my desire was finally assented to ; although, in wind- mg up a long discussion about the pedigree of Aaron, one of them held out to the last that Aaron was a Mussulman, and would not believe that he lived before Mohammed. He had an indefinite idea that Mohammed was the greatest man that ever lived, and in his mind this was not consistent with the idea of any one having lived before him.
F 2
66 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
My plans for the morrow being all arranged, the Bed ouins stretched themselves out in the outer chamber, while I went within ; and seeking out a tomb as far back as I could find, I crawled in feet first, and found myself very much in the condition of a man buried alive. But never did a man go to his tomb with so much satisfaction as I felt. I was very tired ; the night was cold, and here I was completely sheltered. I had just room enough to turn round ; and the worthy old Edomite for wliom the tomb was made never slept in it more quietly than I did. Little did he imagine that his bones would one day be scattered o the winds, and a straggling American and a horde of Bedouins, born and living thousands of miles from each other, would be sleeping quietly in his tomb, alike ignorant and careless of him for whom it was built.
A. BOLD ENDEAVOUR 67
CHAPTER V.
4 tx)ld Endeavour. — Unezpected Obstacles. — Disadvantage of a Dress. — The Dead Sea, — A New Project. — The Tomb of Aaron. — An Alarm — Descent of the Mountain. — An awkward Meeting. — Poetic License. — All's Well that Ends Well.— Unexpected Dignities.— Arab Notions ol Travel.
X MAN rising from a tomb with all his clothes on does not require much time for the arrangement of his toilet. In less than half an hour we had breakfasted, and were again on our way. Forgetting all that had engrossed my thoughts and feelings the day before, I now fixed my eyes upon the tomb of Aaron, on the summit of Mount Hor. The mount ain was high, towering above all the rest, bare and rugged to its very summit, without a tree or even a bush growing on its steril side ; and our road lay directly along its base. The Bedouins again began to show an unwillingness to al- low my visit to the tomb ; and the sheik himself told me that it would take half the day, and pAhaps be the means of bringing upon me some of the horde I had escaped. 1 saw that they were disposed to prevent me from accom- plishing my object ; and I felt sure that, if we met any strange Arabs, my purpose would certainly be defeated. I suspected them of stratagem, and began to think of resort- ing to stratagem for myself. They remembered the sheep, however, and tDld me that the sacrifice could as well be performed at the base as on the summit of the mountam ; but this, of course, would not satisfy my conscience.
With my eyes constantly fixed on the top of the mount ain, I had thought for some time that it would not be im practicable to ascend from the side on which I was. Paul and I examined the localities as carefully as a couple o:
68 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
engineers seeking an assailable place to scale the wall ol a fortified city ; and afraid to wait till they had matured some plan of opposing me, I determined to take them by surprise ; and throwing myself frdm my horse, and telling Paul to say that we would climb the mountain here, and meet them on the other side, I was almost out of hearing before they had recovered from their astonishment. Paul followed me, and the sheik and his men stood for some time without moving, irresolute what to do ; and it was not until we had advanced considerably on the mountain that we saw the caravan again slowly moving along its base. None of them offered to accompany us, though we should have been glad to have one or two with us on our ex- pedition.
For some distance we found the ascent sufficiently smooth and easy — much more so than that of Mount Sinai — and, so far as we could see before us, it was likely to continue the same all the way up. We were railing at the sheik for wanting to carry us around to the other side, and congratulating ourselves upon having attempted it here, when we came to a yawning and precipitous chasm, opening its horrid jaws almost from the very base of the mountain. From the distance at which we had marked out our route, the inequalities of surface could not be distinguished, but here it was quite another thing. We stood on the brink of the chasm, and looked at each other in blank amazement; and at a long distance, as they wound along the base of the mountain, I thought I could see a quiet smile of derision lighting up the grim visages of my Bedouin companions. We stood upon the edge of the chasm, looking down into its deep abyss, like the spirits of the departed lingering on the shores of the Styx, vainly wishing for a ferryman to carry us over, and our case seemed perfectly hopeless without some such aid. But the days when genii and spirits lent their kind assistance to the sons of men are gone ; if a man finds
U^'
ASCENT OF MOUNT HOR. 69
himself in a ditch, he must get out of it as well as he can, and so it was with us on the brink of this chasm. Bad, how- ever, as was our prospect in looking forward, we had not yet begun to look back ; and as soon as we saw that there was no possibility of getting over it, we began to descend ; and groping, sliding, jumping, and holding on with hands and feet, we reached the bottom of the gully ; and, after another hard half hour's toil, were resting our wearied limbs upon the opposite brink, at about the same elevation as that of the place from which we had started.
This success encouraged us ; and, without caring or thmking how we should come down again, we felt only the spirit of the seaman's cry to the trembling sailor boy, "Look aloft, you lubber;" and looking aloft, we saw through a small opening before us, though still at a great distance, the white dome that covered the tomb of the first high-priest of Israel. Again with stout hearts w^e resumed our ascent ; but, as we might reasonably have supposed, that which we had passed was not the only chasm in the mountains. What had appeared to us slight inequalities oi surface we found great fissures and openings, presenting themselves before us in quick succession; not, indeed, as absolute and insurmountable barriers to farther progress, but affording us only the encouragement of a bare possibil- ity of crossing them. The whole mountain, from its base to its summit, was rocky and naked, affording not a tree or bush to assist us ; and all that we had to hold on by were the rough and broken corners of the porous sandstone rocks, which crumbled in our hands and under our feet, and more than once put us in danger of our lives. Several times, after desperate exertion, we sat down perfectly discouraged at seenig another and another chasm before us, and more than once we were on the point of giving up the attempt, thinking it impossible to advance any farther ; but we had come so far, and taken so little notice of our road, that h
TO INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
was almost as impossible to return ; and a distant and ac- cidental glimpse of the whitened dome would revive our courage, and stimulate us to another effort. Several times I mounted on Paul's shoulders, and with his helping reached the top of a precipitous or overhanging rock, where, lying down with my face over the brink, I took up the pistols, swords, (Sic, and then helped him up in turn ; sometimes, again, he was the climber, and my shoulders were the step- ping-stone ; and, in the rough grasps that we gave each other, neither thought of the relation of master and servant. On the sides of that rugged mountain, so desolate, so com- pletely removed from the world, whose difficult ascent had been attempted by few human footsteps since the days when "Moses and Aaron went up in sight of all the con- gregation," the master and the man lay on the same rock, encountering the same fatigues and dangers, and inspired by the same hopes and fears. My dress was particularly bad for the occasion ; for, besides the encumbrance of pistols and a sword, my long silk gown and large sleeves were a great annoyance, as 1 wanted every moment a long reach of the arm and full play of the legs ; even our light Turkish slippers were impediments in our desperate scramble, and we were obliged to pull them off, for the better hold that could be taken with the naked feet.
It will be remembered that we were ascending on the eastern side of the mountain ; and in one of our pauses to breathe, when about half way up, we looked back upon the high rampart of rocks that enclosed the city of Petra ; and on the outside of the rock we saw the fa9ade of a beautiful temple, resembling in its prominent features, but seeming larger and more beautiful than, the Khasne of Pharaoh op posite the principal entrance of the city, I have no doubt that a visit to that temple would have abundantly repaid me for the day I should have lost ; for, besides its archi tectural beauty, it would have been curious to examine, and.
A NEW PROJECT. 71
il possible, discover why it was constructed, standing alone witside of the city, and, as it appeared, apart from every- thing connected with the habitations of the Edomites But as yet we had work enough before us. Disencumbering our- selves of all our useless trappings, shoes, pistols, swords, to- bacco-pouch, and water-sack, which we tied together in a sash and the roll of a turban, by dint of climbing, pushing, and lifting each other, after the most arduous upward scramble I ever accomplished, we attained the bald and hoary summit of the mountain ; and, before we had time to look around, at the extreme end of the desolate valley ot El Ghor, our attention was instantly attracted and en- grossed by one of the most interesting objects in the world, and Paul and I exclaimed at the same moment, " The Dead Sea !" Lying between the barren mountains of Arabia and Judea, presenting to us from that height no more than a small, calm, and silvery surface, was that mysterious sea which rolled its dark waters over the guilty cities of Sodom and Gomorrah ; over whose surface, according to the su- perstition of the Arabs, no bird can fly, and in whose waters no fish can swim; constantly receiving in its greedy bosom the whole body of the Jordan, but, unlike all other waters, sending forth no tribute to the ocean. A new idea entered ray mind. I would follow the desert valley of El Ghor to the shores of the Dead Sea, along whose savage borders I would coast to the ruined Jericho and the hallowed Jordan^ and search in its deadly waters for the ruins of the doomed and blasted cities.
If I had never stood on the top of Mount Sinai, I should say that nothing could exceed the desolation of the view from the summit of Mount Hor, its most striking objects being the dreary and rugged mountains of Seir, bare and naked of trees and verdure, and heaving their lofty summits to the skies, as if in a vain and fruitless effort to excel the mighty pile, on the top of which the high-priest of Israel
72 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
was buried. Before me was a land of barrenness and nun a land accursed by God, and against which the prophets had set their faces ; the land of which it is thus written in the Book of Life : " Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against Mount Seir, and propliesy against it, and say unto it, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, oh Mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will stretch out mine hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate. I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate ; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord. Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end : therefore, as I live, saith the Lord God, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee : sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee. Thus will I make Mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that reiurneth. And I will fill his mountains with his slain men : in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and m all thy rivers shall they fall that are slain with the sword. I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return : and ye shall know that 1 am the Lord."*
The Bible account of the death of Aaron is — "And the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, journeyed from Kadesh, and came unto Mount Hor. And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in Mount Hor, by the coast of the land of Edom, saying, Aaron shall be gathered unto his people : for he shall not enter into the land .which I have given unto %e children of Israel, because ye rebelled against my word at the water of Meribah. Take Aaron and Eleazer his son, and bring them up. unto Mount Hor ; and strii") Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Elea-
♦ Ezekiel jucxv
THE TOMB OF AARON 73
ter his son : and Aaron shall be gathered unto his people, and shall die there. And Moses did as the Lord command- ed : and they went up into Mount Hor, in the sight of all the congregation. And Moses stripped Aaron of his gar- ments, and put them upon Eleazer his son ; and Aaron died there in the top of the mount : and Moses and Eleazer came down from the mount. And when all the congrega- tion saw that Aaron was dead, they mourned for Aaron thirty days, even all the house of Israel."*
On the very "top of the mount," reverenced alike by Mussulmans and Christians, is the tomb of Aaron. The Duilding is about thirty feet square, containing a single chamber ; in front of the door is a tombstone, in form like the oblong slabs in our churchyards, but larger and higher ; the top rather larger than the bottom, and covered- with a ragged pall of faded red cotton in shreds and patches. At its head stood a high round stone, on which the Mussul- man offers his sacrifices. The sione was blackened with smoke ; stains of blood and fragments of burnt brush were still about it ; all was ready but the victim ; and when I saw the reality of the preparations, I was very well satis- fied to have avoided the necessity of conforming to the Mussulman custom. A few ostrich eggs, the usual orna- ments of a mosque, were suspended from the ceiling, and the rest of the chamber was perfectly bare. After going out, and from the very top of the tomb survey ng again and again the desolate and dreary scene that presented itself on every side, always terminating with the distant view of the Dead Sea, I returned within ; and examining once more the tomb and the altar, walked carefully around the cham ber. There was no light except what came from the door ; and, in groping in the extreme corner on one side, my foot descended into an aperture in the floor. I put it down care-
* Numbers xx. Vol. IL—G
74 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL
fully, and found a step, then another, and another, evidently a staircase leading to a chamber below. I went down till my head wa^on the level of the floor, but could see nothing; all was dark, and I called to Paul to strike a light. Most provokingly, he had no materials with him. He generally carried a flint and steel for lighting his pipe with ; but now, when I most wanted it, he had none. I went back to the staircase, and, descending to the bottom of the steps, at- tempted to make out what the place might be ; but it was utterly impossible. I could not see even the steps on which I stood. I again came out, and made Paul search m all his pockets for the steel and flint. My curiosity in- creased with the difliculty of gratifying it ; and in a little while, when the thing seemed to be utterly impossible, with this hole unexplored, Petra, Mount Hor, and the Dead Sea appeared to lose half their interest. I ran up and down the steps, inside and out, abused Paul, and struck stones together in the hope of eliciting a spark; but all to no pur- pose. I was in an agony of despair, when I found myself grasping convulsively the handle of my pistol. A light broke suddenly upon me. A pile of dry brush and cotton rags lay at the foot of the sacrificial altar ; I fired my pistol into it, gave one pufl^, and the whole mass was in a blaze. Each seized a burning brand, and we descended. At the foot of the steps was a narrow chamber, at the other end an iron grating, opening in the middle, and behind the grating a tomb cut in the naked rock, guarded and reverenced as Jiie tomb of Aaron. I tore aside the rusty grating, and thrusting in my arm up to the shoulders, touched the hal- lowed spot. The rocks and mountains were echoing the discharge of my pistol, like peals of crashing thunder ; and while, with the burning brand in one hand, I was thrusting the other through the grating, the deafening reverberations seemed to rebuke me for an act of sacrilege, and I rushed up the steps like a guilty and fear-struck criminal. Sud-
DESCENT OF MOUNT HOR. 75
denly I heard from the foot of the mountain a quick and ir- regular discharge of firearms, which again resounded in loud echoes through the mountains. It was far from my do?ire that the bigoted Mussulmans should come upon me, and find me with my pistol still smoking in my hand, and the brush still burning in the tomb of the prophet ; and, ♦^earmg off a piece of the ragged pall, we hurried from the place and dashed down the mountain on the opposite side w^ith a speed and recklessness that only fear could give If there was room for question between a scramble or a jump, we gave the jump ; and, when we could not jump, our shoes were off in a moment, one leaned over the brow of the precipice, and gave the other his hand, and down we went, allowing nothing to stop us. Once for a moment we were at a loss ; but Paul, who, in the excitement of one successful leap after another, had become amazingly confi- dent, saw a stream of water, and made for it with the glori- ous boast that where water descended we could ; and the suggestion proved correct, although the water found much less difficulty in getting down than we did. Ij^ short, after an ascent the most toilsome, and a descent the most hair- brained and perilous it was ever my fortune to accomplish, in about half an hour we were at the base of the mountain, but still hurrying on to join our escort.
We had only to cross a little valley to reach the regular camel-track, when we saw from behind a slightly elevated range of rocks the head and long neck of a dromedary ; a Bedouin was on his back, but, riding sidewise, did not see us. Another came, and another, and another ; then two or three, and, finally, half a dozen at a time, the blackest, grimmest, and ugliest vagabonds I had ever yet seen. A mo- ment before Paul and I had both complained of fatigue, but it is astonishing how the sight of these honest men revived us ; any one seeing the manner in which we scoured along the side of the mountain would have thought that all our
76 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
consciousness was in our legs. The course we were pur- suing when we first saw them would have brought us on the regular camel-track a little in advance of them, but now our feet seemed to cling to the sides of the mountain. "We were in a humour for almost calling on the rocks to fall upon us and cover us ; and, if there had been a good dodging- place, I am afraid I should here have to say that we had taken advantage of it until the very unwelcome caravan passed by ; but the whole surface of the country, whether on mountam side or in valley's depth, was bare and naked as a floor ; there was not a bush to obstruct the view ; and soon we stood revealed to these unpleasant witnesses of our agility. They all shouted to us at once ; and we re- turned the salute, looking at them over our shoulders, but pushing on as fast as we could walk. In civilized society our course of proceeding would have been considered a de- cided cut ; but the unmannerly savages did not know when they received a civil cut, and were bent on cultivating our icquaintance. With a loud shout, slipping off their camels and whipping up their dromedaries, they left the track, and dashed across the valley to intercept us. I told Paul that it was all over, and now we must brazen it out ; and we had just time to turn around and reconnoitre for a moment, before we were almost trodden under foot by their drome- daries.
With the accounts that we had read and heard of these Bedouins, it was not a pleasant thing to fall into their hands alone ; and, without the protection of the sheik, we had rea- son to apprehend bad treatment. Vie were on a rising ground ; and, as they came bounding towards us, I had time to remark that there was not a gun or pistol among them ; but every one, old and young, big and little, carried an enormous sword slung over his back, the hilt coming up towards the left shoulder, and in his hand a large club, with a knot at the end as large as a doubled fist. Thaugh
AN AWKWARD MEETING. 77
I had no idea of making any resistance, it was a satisfaction to feel that they might have some respect for our firearms , as even a Bedouin's logic can teach him, that though a gun or pistol can kill but one, no man in a crowd can tell but that he may be that one. Our armory, however, was not in the best condition for immediate use. I had fired one of my pistols in the tomb of Aaron and lost the flint of the other ; and Paul had burst the priming cap on one of his barrels, and the other was charged with bird-shot.
It seemed that there was nothing hostile in their inten- tions ; for though they came upon us with a wild and clam- orous shout, their dark eyes appeared to sparkle with de- light as they shook us by the hand, and their tumultuous greeting, to compare small things with great, reminded me of the wild welcome which the Arabs of Saladin gave to the litter of the Queen of England, when approaching the Dia- mond of the Desert on the shores of the Dead Sea. Nev- ertheless, I looked suspiciously upon all their demonstra- tions of good-will ; and, though I returned all their greet- ings, even to the kiss on their black faces, I would rather have been looking at them through the bars of an iron gra- ting. But Paul behaved like a hero, although he was a supreme coward, and admitted it himself.* I knew that everything depended upon him ; but they had come upon us in such a hurry, and so few words had passed between us, that I had no idea how he stood affected. His first words reassured me ; and really, if he had passed all his life in taming Bedouins, he could not have conducted himself more gallantly or sensibly. He shook hands with one, took a
* Paul's explanation of his cowardice was somewhat remarkable, and perhaps veracious. He said that he was by nature brave enough, but that, when travelling in Syria, about three years before, with Mr. Wellesley — a natural son of the Duke of Wellington — their party was stopped by Arabs, and their two kervashes, without any parley, raised their muskets and shot two of the poor savages dead before his face ; which had such an eSe»t upon his nerres as to give him a horror of lead and cold steel ever since
G2
78 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
pipe from the mouth of another, kicked the dromedary of a third, and patted his owner on the back, smoking, laughing, and talking all the time, ringing the changes upon the Sheik El Alouin, Habeeb Effendi, and Abdel Hasis. I knew that he was lying from his remarkable amplitude of words, and from his constantly mixing up Abdel Hasis (myself) with the Habeeb Effendi, the prime minister of the pacha ; but he was going on so smoothly that I had not the heart to stop him ; and besides, I thought he was playing for him- self as well as for me, and I had no right to put him in danger by interfering. At length, all talking together, and Paul's voice rising above the rest, in force as well as fre- quency, we returned to the track, and proceeded forward in a body to find the sheik.
Not to be too heavy on Paul for the little wanderings of his tongue, I will barely mention such as he remembered himself. Beginning with a solemn assurance that we had not been in Wady Moussa or Petra (for this was his cardi- nal point), he affirmed that I was a Turk making a pilgrim- age to the tomb of Aaron under a vow ; and that, when Sheik El Alouin was at Cairo, the Habeeb Effendi had taken me to the sheik's tent, and had told him to conduct me to Djebel Haroun, or Mount Hor, and from thence to Hebron (Khalil), and that, if I arrived in safety, he, the Habeeb Effendi, would pay him well for it. We went on very well for a little while ; but by-and-by the Bedouins began talking earnestly among themselves, and a fine, wick- ed-looking boy, leaning down from the hump of his bare- backed dromedary, with sparkling eyes thrust out his hand and whispered bucksheesh ; an old dried-up man echoed it vn a hoarse voice directly in my ears ; and one after an- other joined in, till the whole party, with their deep-toned gutturals, were croaking the odious and ominous demand that grated harshly on my nerves. Their black eyes were turned upon me with a keen and eager brightness ; the
all's well that ends well. 79
harsh cry was growing louder every moment ; and I had already congratulated myself upon having very little about my person, and Paul was looking over his shoulders, and flourishing the Habeeb Effendi and the Sheik El Alouin with as loud a voice as ever, but evidently with a fainting heart ; bucksheesh, bucksheesh, bucksheesh was drowning every other noise, when a sudden turn in the road brought us upon the sheik and his attendants. The whole party were in confusion ; some were descending the bare sides of the mountains, others were coming down with their dromedaries upon a full run ; the sheik's brother, on my horse, was galloping along ^he base ; and the sheik himself with his long red dress streaming in the wind, and his spear poised in the air, was dashing full speed across the plain. All seemed to catch a glimpse of us at the same moment, and at the same moment all stopped. The sheik stood for a little space, as if astonished and confounded at seeing us attended by such an escort ; and then spurring again his fiery horse, moved a few paces towards us, and dismounting, struck his spear in the sand, and waited to re- ceive us. The men came in from all quarters ; and, almost at the same moment, all had gathered around the spear The sheik seemed more alarmed than any of us, and Paul said he turned perfectly green. He had heard the report of the pistol, which had given him much uneasiness ; the men had answered, and scattered themselves abroad in search of us : and now seeing us come up in the midst of such a horde of Bedouins, he supposed that we had opened an account which could only be settled with blood.
The spirit of lying seemed to have taken possession of us Thinking it would not be particularly acceptable to my pious friends to hear that I had been shooting in the tomb of Aaron, I told Paul to say that we had shot at a partridge. Even before saluting the strangers, with a hur- ried voice and quivering lip, the sheik asked the cause of
80 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
our firing ; and when Paul told him, according to my in- structions, that the cause was merely a simple bird, he was evidently relieved, although, unable to master his emotion, he muttered, " Cursed be the partridge, and cursed the gun, and cursed the hand that fired it." He then saluted our new companions, and all sat down around his long spear to smoke and drink coffee. I withdrew a little apart from them, and threw myself on the ground, and then began to suffer severely from a pain which, in my constant excite- ment since the cause of it occurred, I had not felt. The pistol which I fired in the tomb had been charged by Paul with two balls, and powder enqngh for a musket ; and in the firing it recoiled with such force as to lay open the back of my hand to the bone. While I was binding it up as well as I could, the sheik was takmg care that I should not suffer from my withdrawal. I have mentioned Paul's ly- ing humour, and my own tendency that way ; but the sheik cast all our doings in the shade ; and particularly, as if it had been concerted beforehand, he averred most solemnly, and with the most determined look of truth imaginable, that we had not been in Wady Moussa ; that I was a Turk or a pilgrimage to Mount Hor ; that when he was in Cairo waiting for the caravan of pilgrims, the pacha sent the Ha- beeb Effendi to conduct him to the citadel, whither he went, and found me sitting on the divan by the side of the pacha • that the pacha took me by the hand, told him that I was his (the pacha's) particular friend, and that he. Sheik El Alouin, must conduct me first to Mount Hor, and then to Khalil or Hebron, and that he had given his head to Mo- hammed Aly for my safety. Paul was constantly moving between me and the group around the spear, and advising me of the progress of affairs ; and when I heard who I was, and of my intimacy with the pacha, thinking that it w-a& not exactly the thing for the particular friend of the Viceroy of Egypt to be sprawling on the sand, I got up, and, for the
ARAB FATALISM. 8i
credit of my friend, put myself rather more upon my digni- ty. We remained here half an hour, when, seeing that matters became no worse, I took it for granted that they were better ; and, after moving about a little, I began to ar- range the saddle of my horse ; and, by-and-by, as a sort of declaration of independence, I told them that I would ride on slowly, and they could follow at their convenience. The sheik remained to settle with my new friends. They were a caravan belonging to the El Alouin tribe, from the tents at the mouth of the entrance to Petra, now on their way to Gaza ; and the sheik got rid of them by paying them something, and assuring them that we had not been in Petra.
Early in the afternoon a favourite camel was taken sick, stumbled, and fell ; and we turned aside among the mount- ains, where we were completely hidden from the view of any passing Bedouins. The camel belonged to a former female slave of the sheik, whom he had manumitted and married to " his black," and to whom he had given a tent and this camel as a dowry. He had been very anxious to get away as far as possible from Wady Moussa that night ; but, as soon as the accident happened, with the expression always uppermost in the mouth of the followers of the Prophet, " God wills it," he began to doctor the animal. It was strange to be brought into such immediate contact with the disciples of fatalism. If we did not reach the point we were aiming at, God willed it ; if it rained, God willed it ; and I suppose that, if they had happened to lay their black hands upon my throat, and stripped me of everything I pos- sessed, they would have piously raised their eyes to heav- en, and cried, " God willed it." I remember Mr. Wolff,*
* The Rev. Joseph Wolff is now in this country, and has taken orders ir. the Episcopal Church here. When I left Egypt he had set out on hi 3 long-projected journey to Timbuctoo. He was taken sick in Abyssinia, and, unable to continue his progress, under grea; personal hardship and
82 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
the converted Jew missionary, told me an anecdote illus trating most strikingly the operation of this fatalist creed. He was in Aleppo during an earthquake, and saw two Turk? smoking their pipes at the base of a house then tottering and ready to fall. He cried out to them and warned tliem of their peril ; but they turned their eyes to the impending danger, and crying, " Allah el Allah," " God is merciful," were buried under the ruins.
It was not more than four o'clock when we pitched oia i*nt. The Arabs all came under the shade to talk more at -Ase about our ascent of Mount Hor, and our adventure with *he Bedouins of Wady Moussa ; and wishing to show *hem that we Christians conceived ourselves to have some rights and interests in Aaron, I read to them, and Paul ex- plained, the verses in the Bible recording his death and burial on the mountain. They were astonished and con- founded at finding anything about him in a book ; records of travel being entirely unknown to them, and books, there- fore, regarded as of unquestionable veracity. The unbe- liever of the previous night, however, was now as obstinate as if he had come from the banks of the Zuyder Zee. He still contended that the great high-priest of the Jews was true follower of the Prophet ; and I at last accommodated the matter by allowing that he was not a Christian.
That evening Paul and the sheik had a long and curious conversation. After supper, and over their pipes and cof- fee, the sheik asked him, as a brother, why we had come
suffering, crossed the desert to the Red Sea, and went down to Bombay. It is greatly to be regretted that Mr. Wolff's health failed him. From his extensive travels in Asia and Africa, and his intimate knowledge of the languages and customs of the wild tribes that roam over their deserts, he was probably better qualified, and had a better chance of reaching that city, than any other man now living. It will probably be long before the attempt is made by another. Mr. Wolff has not, however, abandoned his purpose. As soon as his health will permit he intends to resume his journey, and, if the difficulties and dangers are not greater than man can overcome, w«* may 'et hear from him in the heart of Africa.
ARAB NOTIONS OF TRAVEL. 83
to that old city, Wady Moussa, so long a journey through the desert, spending so much money ; and when Paul told him it was to see the ruins, he took the pipe from his mouth, and said, " That will do very well before thd(pvorld; but, between ourselves, there is something else ;" and when Paul persisted in it, the sheik said to him, " Swear by your God that you do not come here to search for treas- ure ;" and when Paul had sworn by his God, the sheik rose, and, pointing to his brother as the very acme of honesty and truth, said, after a moment's hesitation, " Osman, I would not believe it if that brother had sworn it. No," he continued, " the Europeans are too cunning to spend their money in looking at old stones. I know there is treasure in Wady Moussa ; I have dug for it, and 1 mean to dig for it again ;" and then again he asked Paul whether he had discovered any, and where ; telling him that he would aid in removing it, without letting any of the rest of the tribe know anything of the matter
84 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
CHAPTER VI.
Valley oi El Ghor. — Prophecies against Edom.— The Sheik's Treathe/y— An Explosion. — Personnel of the Arabs. — Amusing Retrospect. — Money Troubles. — Aspect of the Valley. — Death of a Camel. — The Desert Horses. — Native Salt.
Early in the morning we continued our descent down tne mountain. Every turn was presenting us with a new view of wild, barren, and desolate scenery ; and yet fre- quently, in little spots watered by the mountain streams, we saw shrubs, and patches of green grass, and odoriferous bushes. At about nine o'clock we were again at the foot of the mountains of Seir, agam moving along the great desert valley of El Ghor ; and again I saw, in imagination, at the extreme end of the valley, that mysterious sea which I had first looked upon from the summit of Mount Hor. I had spoken to the sheik before, and again I tried to prevail upon him to follow the valley directly to its shores ; but he told me, as before, that he had never travelled that road, and the Bedouins (whom he had last night declared to be total strangers) were deadly enemies of his tribe ; in short, it was impossible to prevail upon him ; and, as I found afterward, It would have been physically impossible to proceed along the mountainous borders of the sea.
We pursued the route which I had originally contempla- ted, through the land of Idumea. In regard to this part of my journey I wish to be particularly understood. Three different parties, at different times and under different cir- cumstances, after an interval of twenty years from its dis- covery by Burckhardt, had entered the city of Petra, but
PROPHECIES AGAINST EDOM. 85
not one of them had passed through the land of Idumea. The route of the two Englishmen and Italian before referred to was not precisely known ; and, with the exception of these three, I was the first traveller who had ever attempted to pass through the doomed and blighted Edom. In very- truth, the prophecy of Isaiah, " None shall pass through it for ever and ever," seemed in a state of literal fulfilment. And now, without considering that I was perhaps braving the malediction of Heaven, but stimulated by the interest of associations connected with the denounced region, and the excitement of travelling over a new and unbeaten track, I was again moving along the desert valley of El Ghor.
In the present state of the world, it is an unusual thing to travel a road over which hundreds have not passed before. Europe, Asia, and even the sands of Africa, have been over- run and trodden down by the feet of travellers ; but in the laud of Idumea, the oldest country in the world, the aspect of everything is new and strange, and the very sands you tread on have never been trodden by the feet of civilized human beings. The Bedouin roams over them like the In- dian on our native prairies. The road along which tlie stranger journeys was far better known in the days of David and Solomon than it is now ; and when he tires with the contemplation of barrenness and ruin, he may take the Bible in his hand, and read what Edom was, and how God, by the mouth of his prophets, cursed it ; and see with his own eyes whether God's words be true. " Also Edom shall be a desolation ; every one that goeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues thereof. As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the neighbouring cities thereof, saith the Lord, no man shall abide there, neither shall a son of man dwell in it. Therefore, hear the counsel of the Lord that he hath taken against Edom ; and his purposes that he hath purposed against the inhabitants of Teman ; surely the least of the flock shall draw them ort ; surely he shall make
Vol. II.— H
86 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
their habitations desolate with them. The earth is moved at the noise of their fall, at the cry, the noise thereof was heard in the Red Sea."* And again. " Thus saith the Lord God : Because that Edom hath dealt against the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and hath greatly offended, and revenged himself upon them ; therefore, thus saith the Lord God, I will also stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut off man and beast from it ; and I will make it desolate from Teman."t " Edom shall be a desolate wil- derness."| " For three transgressions of Edom, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof."^ " Thus saith the Lord God concerning Edom : Behold, I have made thee small among the heathen : thou art greatly despised. The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwel- lest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high ; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground ? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord. Shall I not in that day, saith the Lord, even destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau ? And thy mighty men, oh Teman, shall be dismayed, to the end that every one of the mount of Esau may be cut off by slaughter."!
All that day the sheik was particularly disagreeable. He was constantly talking of the favourable circumstances under which I had seen Petra, the bad character of the Bedouins, his devotion to me, and the generosity of Mr. La- borde and Abdel Hag. Ever since we started, one of his standing subjects of conversation with Paul had been what he expected from me ; and to-day he pressed him particu- larly, to learn how much money 1 had brought with me. In the evenmg he came to my tent. He was in the habit of coming in every evening ; and, though I did not like him, I
* Jeremiah xlix. t Ezekiel xxv. % Joel iii., 19
<S Amos i., 11. II Obadiahi.
THE sheik's treachery. 87
was m the habit of talking with him ; and, according to the Arab custom, 1 always asked him to take a share of my meal. In general, appease the stomach, and you gain the heart of the Arab ; but the viscera of my sheik were of im- penetrable toughness. They produced none of that deli- cious repose, that " peace on earth, and good-will towards all men" spirit, which comes over an honest man after din- ner. " A child might play with me," said the good-hearted son of Erin, as he threw himself back in his chair after dinner ; but it was not so with my sheik. While he was eating my bread, he was plotting against me. I had smoked my pipe, and was lying on my mat reading, while a long conversation was going on between him and Paul, and my suspicions were aroused ; for, on the part of the sheik, it was carried on in a low whisper. Though he knew I could not understand a word, he had the indefinite fear that indi cates a guilty intention ; and, as I looked up occasionally from my book, I saw his keen and cunning eyes turned to- wards me, and withdrawn as soon as they met mme. He remained there more than an hour, conversing in the same low whisper ; I, meanwhile, watching his looks from time to time ; and when he had gone I asked what it all meant. At first Paul hesitated, but finally said that it was the old story about Abdel Hag's generosity, and what he expected from me ; for himself, the sheik expected at least two hun- dred and fifty dollars ; his brother would not expect so much ; but that he was on an entirely different footing from the men ; and he had concluded, by attempting to bribe Paul, to find out how much money I had with me, and how much I intended to give him ; and, in going out, had slipped a couple of pieces into Paul's hand as an earnest. I have not troubled the reader with the many petty difficulties I had with the sheik, nor the many little circumstances that were constantly occurring to irritate me against him. I had been several times worked up to such a pitch that it was
88 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
difficult to keep within the bounds of prudence ; and I now broke through all restraints. From the beginning he had been exaggerating the danger of the road, and making a pa- rade of devotion of the value of his services ; and only the last night I had been driven out of my tent by four enormous fires which he had built at the four corners, as he said, for the men to sleep by and keep guard. I could hardly re- strain myself then ; but merely telling him that I would rather be robbed than roasted, I reserved myself for a better moment. The fact is, from the beginning I had been com- pletely mistaken in my opinion touching the character of the chief of a powerful tribe of Bedouins. I had imagined him like the chief of a tribe of our own Indians, wild, sav age, and lawless, but generous and true when he had once offered his protection ; one who might rob or even mur- der, but who would never descend to the meanness of trickery and falsehood.
I had been smothering my feehngs of contempt through the whole journey ; but now I had seen Petra and Mount Hor, and it was a relief to have something to justify me in my own eyes in breaking through all restraint. I had caught him in the very act of baseness and villany, corrupt- mg the faith of my servant ; bribing under my own eyes, and while eating my bread, the only man on whom I could rely at all ; and the proof of his treason, the accursed gold, was before me. With a loud voice I called him back to the tent, and charged him with his baseness, reproaching him that I had come into the desert upon the faith of his promises, and he had endeavoured to corrupt my servant before my eyes ; I told him that he was false and faithless ; that I had before distrusted him, but that I now despised him, and would not give him a para till we got to Hebron, nor would I tell him how much I would give him then ; but that, if he would take himself off and leave me alone in the desert, I would pay him the price of his camels ; I assured
AN EXPLOSION 89
tiim that, bad as he represented them, i did not believe there was a worse Arab in all his tribe than himself; and finally, throwing open my trmik, I told him that I did not fear him or all his tribe ; that I had there a certain sum of money, which should belong to the man who should conduct me to Hebron, whoever he might be, and clothes which would not suit an Arab's back ; that I knew I was in his power ; but that, if they killed me, they could not get more than they could without it ; and added, turning my pistols in my belt, that they should not get it while I could defend it. All this, passing through an interpreter, had given me time to cool ; and, before coming to my grand climax, though still highly indignant, I was able to observe the effect of my words. At the first glance I saw that I had the vantage ground, and that the consciousness of be- ing detected in his baseness sealed his lips. I am inclined to think that he would have been disgraced in the eyes o^ his tribe if they had been acquainted with the circum- stances ; for, instead of resenting my passionate language, he earnestly begged me to lower my voice, and frequently looked out of the tent to see if any of his companions were near. Keep cool is a good maxim, generally, in a man's walk through life, and i4, is particularly useful with the Bed- ouins in the desert ; but there are times when it is good to be in a passion, and this was one of them. Without at- tempting to resent what I said, even by word or look, he came up to me, kissed my hand, and swore that he would never mention the subject of bucksheesh again until we got to Hebron, and he did not, I retained my command over him through the whole journey, while he was constantly at my side, taking my horse, holding my stirrup, and in every way trying to make himself useful. I am not sure, how- ever, but that, in his new character of a sycophant, he was worse than before. A sycophant in civilized life, where the usages of society admit, and perhaps demand, a certain
H2
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degree of unmeant civility, is the most contemptible thing that crawls ; but in a wild Arab it was intolerable. I really despised him, and made no secret of it; and sometimes rash and imprudent as was the bare thought, it was with the greatest difficulty that I could keep from giving him my foot. After he had gone out that night, Paul sewed twenty gold pieces in the collar of my jacket, and I left the rest of my money open in my trunk.
I have frequently been astonished at the entire absence of apprehension which accompanied me during the whole of this journey. I fortunately observed, at the very first, an intention of exaggerating its danger ; and this and other little things carried me into the other extreme to such a degree, that perhaps my eyes were closed against the real dangers. Among all the pictures and descriptions of rob- bers and bandits that I have seen, I have never met with anything so unprepossessing as a party of desert Arabs coming down upon the traveller on their dromedaries ; but one soon gets over the effect of their dark and scowling visages ; and, after becoming acquainted with their weap- ons and bodily strength, a man of ordinary vigour, well armed, feels no little confidence in himself among them. They are small in stature, under our middle size, and thin almost to emaciation. Indeed, the same degree of spare ness in Europeans would be deemed the effect of illness or starvation ; but with them it seems to be a mere drying up of the fluids, or, as it were, an attraction between skin and bone, which prevents flesh from insinuating itself between. Their breast-bones stand out very prominently ; their ribs are as distinctly perceptible as the bars of a gridiron, and their empty stomachs seem drawn up till they touch the back-bone ; and their weapons, though ugly enough, are far from being formidable. The sheik was the only one of our party who carried pistols, and I do not believe they could have been discharged without picking the flints once
AMUSING RETROSPECT. 91
or twice; the rest had swords and matchlock guns; tne latter, of course, not to be fired without first striking a light, which is not the work of a moment ; and although these inconvenient implements do well enough for contests with their brother Bedouins, the odds are very much against them when they have to do wdth a well-armed Frank ; two pairs of good pistols and a double-barrelled gun would have been a match for all our matchlock muskets. Besides all this, one naturally feels a confidence in himself after being some time left to his own resources ; a development of ca- pacities and energies which he is entirely unconscious of possessing, until he is placed in a situation to call them out. A man must have been in the desert alone, and beyond the reach of help, where his voice can never reach the ears of his distant friends, with a strong and overwhelming sense that everything depends upon himself, his own coolness and discretion ; and such is the elasticity of the human character, that his spirit, instead of sinking and quailing as it would once have done under difficulties and dangers in- comparably less, rises with the occasion ; and as he draws his sash or tightens his sword belt, he stretches himself to his full length, and is prepared and ready for any emergen- cy that may befall him. Indeed, now that I have returned to the peaceful occupations of civilized life, I often look back with a species of mirthful feeling upon my journey in the desert as a strange and amusing episode in my life ; and, when laying my head on my quiet pillow, I can hard- ly believe that, but a few months ago, I never slept without first placing my pistols carefully by my side, and never woke without putting forth my hand to ascertain that they were near and ready for ingtant use.
1 had scarcely mounted the next morning before one of the men came up to me, and, telling me that he intended to return home, asked for his bucksheesh. I looked at the
92 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
s^^eik, who was still sitting on the ground, enjoying a las< sip of coffee, and apparently taking no notice of us, and it immediately occurred to me that this was another scheme of his to find out how much I intended to give. The idea had no sooner occurred to me than I determined to sustain the tone I had assumed the night before ; and I therefore told the fellow that I should not pay any one a piaster until I arrived at Hebron. This occasioned a great clamour ; the sheik still remained silent, but all the others took up the matter, and I do not know how far it would have gone if I had persisted. I was the only one mounted ; and, having given my answer, I turned my horse's head, and moved on a few paces, looking over my shoulder, however to watch the effect ; and when I saw ihem still standing as if spellbound, in the unfinished act, one of mounting a dromedary, another of arranging the baggage, and all appa rently undecided what to do, I reflected that no good could come from the deliberations of such men, and began to re- pent somewhat of the high tone I had assumed. I only wanted a good excuse to retrace my steps ; and, after a moment's reflection, I laid hold of something plausible enough for immediate use. The man who wanted to re- turn was rather a favourite with me — the same who had carried me on his shoulders up the stream in the entrance of Petra — and, returning suddenly, as if the thing had just oc- curred to me, I called him to me, and told him that, although I would not pay him for accompanying me on my journey, as it was not yet ended, still, for his extra services in Pe- tra, I would not let him go home destitute ; that I loved him — by which I meant that I liked him, an expression that would have been entirely too cold for " the land of the East and the clime of the sun," or, as I should rather say, for the extravagant and inflated style of the Arabs — that it the same thing had happened with any of the others, 1 would not nave given him a para ; and now he must ud
MONEY TROUBLES. 93
derstand that I only paid him for his services in Petra. This seemed natural enough to the other Bedouins, for they all knew that this man and I had returned from the defile the best friends in the world, calling each other brother, &:,c. ; and, in the end, the whole affair turned out rather fortunately ; for, understanding me literally that I paid only for the day in Petra, although not understanding the rule of three as established in the books of arithmetic, they worked out the problem after their own fashion, " If one day gives so much, what will so many days give ?" and were exceed- ing satisfied with the result. Indeed, I believe I might at any time have stopped their mouths, and relieved myself from much annoyance, by promising them an extravagant sum on my arrival at Hebron ; but this I would not do. 1 had not, from the first, held out to them any extravagant expectations, nor would I do so then ; perhaps, after all, not so much from a stern sense of principle, as from having conceived a feeling of strong though smothered indignation and contempt for the sheik. Indeed, I should not have considered it safe to tell him what I intended to give him , for 1 soon saw that the amount estimated by Mr. Gliddon and myself was very far from being sufficient to satisfy his own and his men's extravagant expectations. My appa- rent indifference perplexed the sheik, and he was sorely confounded by my valiant declaration, "There is my trunk; all that is in it is yours when we arrive at Hebron ; rob me or kill me, and you get no more ;" and, though he could not conceal his eagerness and rapacity, he felt himself trammelled ; and my plan was to prolong his indecision, and postpone our denouement until our arrival at Hebron. Still, it was very unpleasant to be travelling upon these terms with my protectors, and I was exceedingly glad when the journey was over.
We were again journeying along the valley in an oblique direction. In the afternoon we fell in with a caravan for
94 INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
Gaza. It may be that I wronged the sheik ; but I had the idea that, whenever we saw strangers, his deep and hurried manner of pronouncing El Arab, his fixing himself in his saddle, poising his spear, and getting the caravan in order, frequently accompanying these movements with the cau- tioning words not to be afraid, that he would fight for me till death, were intended altogether for efiect upon me. Whether he had any influence or not with the caravan for Gaza, I cannot say ; but I know that I would have been glad to leave the wandering tribes of the land of Idumea, and go with my new companions to the ancient city of the Philistines. While we moved along together, Paul and myself got upon excellent terms with them, and consulted for a good while about asking them to take us under their escort. I have no doubt they would have done it willingly, for they were a fine, manly set of fellows ; but we were de- terred by the fear of involving them in a quarrel, if not a fight, with our own men.
The valley continued the same as before, presenting sandy hillocks, thorn-bushes, gullies, the dry beds of streams, and furnishing all the way incontestible evidence that it had once been covered with the waters of a river. To one travelling along that dreary road as a geologist, every step opens a new page in the great book of Nature ; carrying him back to the time M'hen all was chaos, and darkness covered the face of the earth *, the impressions it conveys are of a confused mass of matter settling into " form and sub- stance," the earth covered with a mighty deluge, the waters retiring, and leaving bare the mountains above him, and a rolling river at his feet ; and, by the regular operation of natural causes, the river contracting and disappearing, and for thousands of years leaving its channel-bed dry. And again, he who, in the wonders around him, seeks the evi- dences of events recorded in the sacred volume, here finds them in the abundant tokens that the shower of fire and
DEATH OF A CAMEL. 95
brimstone wliich descended upon the guilty cities of Sodom and Gomorrah stopped the course of the Jordan, and formed 11 into a pestilential lake, and left the dry bed of a river in the desolate valley in vi^hich he is journeying. This valley is part of the once populous land of Idumea ; in the days of Solomon, the great travelled highway by which he received the gold of Ophir for the temple ; and by which, in the days of imperial Rome, the wealth of India was brought to her doors.
About the middle of the day, as usual, the sheik rode ahead, and, striking his spear in the sand, he had coffee pre- pared before we came up. While we were sitting around the spear, two of our camels so far forgot the calm dignity of their nature, and their staid, quiet habits, as to get irto a fight ; and one of them, finding himself likely to come off second best, took to his heels, and the other after him ; they were baggage camels, one being charged with my boxes of provisions and housekeeping apparatus, and his movements indicated death to crockery. I will not go into particulars, for eggs, rice, macaroni, and lamp-oil make a bad mixture ; and though the race and fight between the loaded camels were rather ludicrous, the consequence was by no means a pleasant thing in the desert.
The next morning we had another camel scene ; for one of the combatants was stretched upon the sand, his bed of death. The Bedouins had examined him, and, satis- fied that the hand of death was upon him, they left him to breathe his last alone. The camel is to the Arab a treasure above all price. He is the only animal by nature and con stitution framed for the desert, for he alone can travel sev eral days without eating or drinking. Every part of him is useful ; his milk is their drink, his flesh their food, and his hair supplies materials for their rude garments and tents Besides this, the creature is domesticated with the Bedouin ; grows up in his tent, feeds from his hand, kneels down to
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receive his burden, and rises as if glad to carry his master and, in short, is so much a part of a Bedouin's family, thai often, i.i speaking of himself, the Bedouin will say that he has so many wives, so many children, and so many camels. All these thmgs considered, when this morning they knew that the camel must die, I expected, in a rough way, some- tliing like Sterne's picture of the old man and his ass. But I saw nothing of the kind ; they left him in the last stages of his struggle with the great enemy with as much indiffer- ence, I was going to say, as if he had been a brute ; and he was a brute ; but it was almost worth a passing tear to leave even a brute to die alone in the desert ; one that we knew, that had travelled with us, and formed part of our little world ; but the only lament the sheik made was, that they had lost twenty dollars, and we left him to die in the sand. I could almost have remained myself to close his eyes. The vultures were already hovering over him, and once I went back and drove them away ; but I have no doubt that, before the poor beast was dead, the horrid birds had picked out his eyes, and thrust their murderous beaks into his brain.
It was, as usual, a fine day. Since we left Akaba we had a continued succession of the most delightful weather I had ever experienced. I was, no doubt, peculiarly susceptible to the influence of weather. With a malady constantly hang- ing about me, if I drooped, a bright sun and an un clouded sky could at any time revive me ; and more than once, when I have risen flushed and feverish, and but Mttle refreshed with sleep, the clear, pure air of the morning has given me a new life. From dragging one leg slowly after the other, I have fairly jumped into the saddle, and my noble Arabian, in such cases, always completed what the fresh air of the morning had begim. Indeed, I felt then that 1 could not be too thankful for those two things, uncommonly fine weather and an uncommonly fine horse ; and I consid
THE DESERT HORSES. 97
eired that it was almost solely those two that sustained me on that journey. It is part of the historical account of the Bed ouins' horses, that the mares are never sold. My sheik would have sold his soul for a price ; and, as soon as he saw that f was pleased with my mare, he wanted to sell her to me ; and it was singular and amusing, in chaffering for this ani- mal, to mark how one of the habits of bargain-making, pe- culiar to the horse-jockey with us, existed in full force among the Arabs ; he said that he did not want to sell her ; that at Cairo he had been offered two hundred and fifty dollars, a new dress, and arms complete, and he would not sell her ; but if / wanted her, there being nothing he would not do for me, &;c., I might have her.
The sheik's was an extraordinary animal. The saddle had not been off her back for thirty days ; and the sheik, him- self a most restless creature, would dash off suddenly a dozen times a day, on a full run across the valley, up he sides of a mountain, round and round our caravan, with his long spear poised in the air, and his dress streaming in the wind ; and when he returned and brought her to a walk at my side, the beautiful animal would snort and paw the ground as if proud of what she had done, and anxious for another course. I could almost imagine I saw the ancient war- horse of Idumea, so finely described by Job — " His neck clothed with thunder. Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength ; he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is. not affrighted ; neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage \ neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trum- pet. He saith among the trumpets, ha, ha ; and he sniel- leth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting." Vol. H.— T
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Nothing showed the hardiness of these horses more than their drinking. Several times we came to deposites of rainwater left in the hollow of a rock, so foul and dirty that I would not have given it to a dog ; and while their sides were white with foam, the sheik would take the bits out of their mouths, and sit down with the bridle in his hands, and let them drink their fill ; and I could not help thinking that a regular-bred English groom, accustomed to insinuate a wet sponge in the mouth of a heated horse, would have been amazed and horrified at such a barbarian usage. These two horses were twelve and twenty years old re- spectively ; and the former was more like a colt in playful- ness and spirit, and the other like a horse of ten with us ; and the sheik told me that he could count upon the services of both until they were thirty-five. Among all the recom- mendations of the Arabian horse, I know none greater than this ; I have known a man, from long habit, conceive a li- king for a vicious jade that no one else would mount ; and one can imagine how warm must be the feeling, when, year after year, the best of his race is the companion of the wan- dering Arab, and the same animal may bear him from tho time when he can first poise a spear until his aged frame can scarcely sustain itself in the saddle.
Before leaving the valley, we found in one of the gullies a large stone veined in that peculiar manner which I had no- ticed at Petra ; it had been washed down from the mount- ains of Wady Moussa, and the Arab told me that stone ot the same kind was found nowhere else. Towards evening we had crossed the valley, and were at the foot of the mount- ains of Judea, in the direction of the southern extremity of the Dead Sea. That evening, I remember, I noticed a cir- cumstance which called to my mind the wonderful accounts handed down to us by Slrabo and other ancient historians, of large cities built of salt having stood at th^ southern ex tremity of the Dead Sea and the valley beyond. In the es
NATIVE SALT. 99
capade of our runaway camels, bringing about the catastro- phe which one of them had since expiated with his life, they had mingled together in horrible confusion, contrary to all the rules of art, so many discordant ingredients, that a great portion of my larder was spoiled ; and, among other things, salt, almost as necessary to man as bread, had com- pletely lost its savour. But the Bedouins, habituated to wanting almost everything, knew where to find all that their barren country could give ; and one of them leaving the tents for a few moments, returned with a small quantity that he had picked up for immediate use, being a cake or incrustation about as large as the head of a barrel ; and I afterward saw regular strata of 't, and in large quantities, m the sides of the mountains
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CHAPTER VII.
The Road 3 Gaza, — Unknown Ruins. — A Misadventure. — Pastoral Bea ouins. — A Flowe of the Wilderness. — The Ravages of War. — Testimonj of an Eyewitness.
We Started at six o'clock the next day, the morning ra- ther cool, though clear and bracing ; we were again among the mountains, and at about eleven a track scarcely distin guisnable to my eye turned off to Gaza. To a traveller from such a country as ours, few of the little every-day wonders he is constantly noticing strike him more forcibly than the character of the great public roads in the East. He makes allovv ance for the natural wildness of the country, the impossibility of using wheel-carriages on the mountains, or horses in the desert as beasts of burden, but still he is surprised and disappointed. Here, for instance, was a road leading to the ancient city of Gaza, a regular caravan route for four thousand years, and yet so perfect in the wildnesa of nature, so undistinguishable in its appearance from other portions of the wilderness around, that a stranger would have passed the little opening in the rocks probably with- out noticing it, and certainly without imagining that the wild track, of which it formed the entrance, would conduct him to the birthplace and ancient capital of David, and the holy city of Jerusalem. The solitary trail of the Indian over our prairies and forests is more perfectly marked as a road than either of the great routes to Gaza or Jerusalem and yet, near the spot where these two reads diverge are the ruins of an ancient city.
Little, if anything, has been known in modern days con-
1
UNKNOWN RUINS. 101
cerning the existence and distinguishing features of this road ; and it is completely a terra incognita to modern trav- ellers. All the knowledge possessed of it is that derived from the records of ancient history ; and from these we learn that in the time of David and Solomon, and the later days of the Roman empire, a great public road existed from Jerusalem to Akaba, the ancient Eloth or Ezion-geber ; that several cities existed upon it between these terminating points, and that their ruins should still be visible. Believ- ing that I am the first traveller who has ever seen those ruins, none can regret more than myself my inability to add to the scanty stock of knowledge already in possession of geographers. If my health had permitted, I might have in- vestigated and explored, noted observations, and treasured up facts and circumstances, to place them in the hands of wiser men for their conclusions ; but I was not equal to the task. The ruins which I saw were a confused and shape- less mass, and I rode among them without dismounting; there were no columns, no blocks of marble, or large stones which indicated any architectural greatness, and the ap- pearance of the ruins would answer the historical descrip- tion of a third or fourth rate city.
About three hours farther on, and half a mile from our path, on the right, was a quadrangular arch with a dome ; and near it was a low stone building, also arched, which might have been a small temple. The Bedouins, as usual, referred it to the times of the Christians. For about a mile, in different places on each side of us, were mounds of crumbling ruins ; and directly on the caravan-track we came to a little elevation, where were two remarkable wells, of the very best Roman workmanship, about fifty feet deep, lined with large hard stones, as firm and perfect as on the day in which they were laid. The uppermost layer, round the top of the well, which was on a level with the pavement^ was of marble, and had many grooves cut in it, apparentlv
12
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worn by the long-continued use of ropes in drawing water Around each of the wells were circular ranges of columns which, when the city existed, and the inhabitants came there to drink, might and probably did support a roof simi- lar to those now seen over the fountains in Constantinople. No remains of such roof, however, are existing ; and the columns are broken, several of them standing not more than three or four feet high, and the tops scooped out to serve as troughs for thirsty camels. On the other side, a little in the rear of the wells, is a hill overlooking the scattered ruins below, which may, some hundred years ago, have been the Acropolis of the city. A strong wall seems to have ex- tended around the whole summit level of the hill. I re- member that I rode up to the summit, winding around the hill, and leaped my horse over the broken wall ; but there was nothing to reward me for the exertion of the under- taking. The enclosure formed by the wall was filled with ruins, but I could give form or feature to none of them ; here, too, I rode among them without dismounting ; and from here I could see the whole extent of the ruins below. As in the ruined city I had just passed, there was not a solitary inhabitant, and not a living being was to be seen but my companions watering their camels at the ancient wells. This, no doubt, was another of the Roman cities ; and although it was probably never celebrated for architec- tural or monumental beauty, it must have contained a largo population.
We were now coming into another country, and leaving the desert behind us ; a scanty verdure was beginning to cover the mountains ; but the smiling prospect before me was for a moment overclouded by an unfortunate accident. Paul had lent his dromedary to one of the men ; and riding carelessly on a baggage-camol, in ascending a rough hill the girths of the saddle gave way, and Paul, boxes, and baggage, all came down together, the unlucky dragoman
A MISADVENTURE. 103
completely buried under the burden. I was the first at his side ; and when I raised him up he was senseless. I un- tied his sash and tore open his clothes. The Bedouins gathered around, all talking together, pulling, and hauling, and one of them drew his sword, and was bending over my prostrate interpreter, with its point but a few inches from his throat. Poor Paul ! with his mortal antipathy to cold steel, if he could have opened his eyes at that moment, and seen the fiery orbs of the BedDuins, and the point of a sharp sword apparently just ready to be plunged into his body, he would have uttered one groan and given up the ghost. It was a startling movement to me ; and for a moment I thought they were going to employ in his behalf that mercy which is sometimes shown to a dying brute, that of killing him to put him out of misery. I pressed forward to shield him with my own body ; and in the confusion of the moment, and my inability to understand what they meant, the selfish feeling came over me of the entire and absolute helpless- ness of my own condition if Paul should die. But Paul was too good a Catholic to die out of the pale of the church ; he could never have rested quietly in his grave, unless he had been laid there amid the wafting of incense and the chanting of priests. " The safety of the patient often con- sists in the quarrels of the physicians," says Sancho Panza, or some other equally great authority, and perhaps this saved Paul ; the Arabs wanted to cut open his clothes and bleed him ; but T, not liking the looks of their lancets, would not suffer it ; and, between us both, Paul was let alone and came to himself. But it was a trying moment, while I was kneeling on the sand supporting his senseless head upon my knee. No parent could have waited with more anxiety the return to life of an only child, or lover watched the beautiful face of his adored and swooning mistress with more earnestness than I did the ghastly and grizzled face of my faithful follower ; and when he first opened his eyes.
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and stared wildly at me, the brightest emanations from the face of beauty could not at that moment have kindled warm er emotions in my heart. I never thought I should look on his ugly face with so much pleasure. I put him on my horse, and took his dromedary ; and in half an hour we came to a Bedouin encampment in one of the most singu- lar and interesting spots I ever saw.
We should have gone on two hours longer, but Paul's ac cident made it necessary to stop as soon as we found a proper place ; and I should have regretted exceedingly to pass by this without a halt. There was something interest- ing even in our manner of approaching it. We were climbing up the side of a mountain, and saw on a little point on the very summit the figure of an Arab, with his face towards the tomb of the prophet, kneeling and prostrating himself in evening prayer. He had finished his devotions, and was sitting upon the rock when we approached, and found that he had literally been praying on his house-top, for his habitation was in the rock beneath. Like almost every old man one meets in the East, he looked exactly the patri- arch of the imagination, and precisely as we would paint Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. He rose as we approached, and gave us the usual Bedouin invitation to stop and pass the night with him ; and, leading us a few paces to the brink of the mountain, he showed us in the valley below the vil- lage of his tribe.
The valley began at the foot of the elevation on which we stood, and lay between ranges of broken and overhang- ing rocks, a smooth and beautiful table of green, for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and beyond that distance broke off and expanded into an extensive meadow. The whole of this valley, down to the meadow, was filled with flocks of sheep and goats ; and, for the first time since I left the banks of the Nile, I saw a herd of cows. I did not think I should ever be guilty of a sentiment at beholding a cow, but so it
PASTORAL BEDOUINS. 105
was ; after my long journey in the desert, mjrfeelings were actually excited to tenderness by the sight of these old ac- ' quaintances.
But where were the dwellings of the pastors, the tents in which dwelt the shepherds of these flocks and herds ? In Egypt I had seen the Arabs living in tombs, and among the ruins of temples ; in the desert I had seen them dwelling in tents ; but I had never yet seen them making their habi- tations in the rude crevices of the rocks. Such, however, were their habitations here. The rocks in many places were overhanging ; in others there were chasms or fissures ; and wherever there was anything that could afl!brd a partial protection from the weather on one side, a low, rough, circular wall of stone was built in front of it, and formed the abode of a large family. Within the small enclosure in front, the women were sitting winnowing or grinding grain, or rather pounding and rubbing it between two stones, in the same primitive manner practised of old, in the days of the patriarchs. We descended and pitched our tents in the middle of the valley ; and my first business was to make some hot tea for Paul, roll him up in blankets and coverlets, and thus repeat the sweating operation that had done him so much good before. He was badly hurt, and very much frightened. The boxes had fallen upon him, and the butt