In The Levant 2

In The Levant 2

Outside the walls, through broad dusty highways, by lanes of cactus

hedges and in sight again of the sea breaking on a rocky shore, we come

to the Hotel of the Twelve Tribes, occupied now principally by Cook's

tribes, most of whom appear to be lost. In the adjacent lot are pitched

the tents of Syrian travellers, and one of Cook's expeditions is in

all the bustle of speedy departure. The bony, nervous Syrian horses are

assigned by lot to the pilgrims, who are excellent people from England

and America, and most of them as unaccustomed to the back of a horse as

to that of an ostrich. It is touching to see some of the pilgrims walk

around the animals which have fallen to them, wondering how they are to

get on, which side they are to mount, and how they are to stay on. Some

have already mounted, and are walking the steeds carefully round the

enclosure or timidly essaying a trot. Nearly every one concludes, after

a trial, that he would like to change,--something not quite so much

up and down, you know, an easier saddle, a horse that more unites

gentleness with spirit. Some of the dragomans are equipped in a manner

to impress travellers with the perils of the country. One, whom I

remember on the Nile as a mild though showy person, has bloomed here

into a Bedawee: he is fierce in aspect, an arsenal of weapons, and

gallops furiously about upon a horse loaded down with accoutrements.

This, however, is only the beginning of our real danger.

 

After breakfast we sallied out to see the sights: besides the house of

Simon the tanner, they are not many. The house of Simon is, as it was in

the time of St. Peter, by the seaside. We went upon the roof (and it is

more roof than anything else) where the apostle lay down to sleep and

saw the vision, and looked around upon the other roofs and upon the wide

sweep of the tumbling sea. In the court is a well, the stone curb of

which is deeply worn in several places by the rope, showing long use.

The water is brackish; Simon may have tanned with it. The house has not

probably been destroyed and rebuilt more than four or five times since

St. Peter dwelt here; the Romans once built the entire city. The chief

room is now a mosque. We inquired for the house of Dorcas, but that is

not shown, although I understood that we could see her grave outside the

city. It is a great oversight not to show the house of Dorcas, and

one that I cannot believe will long annoy pilgrims in these days of

multiplied discoveries of sacred sites.

 

Whether this is the actual spot where the house of Simon stood, I do not

know, nor does it much matter. Here, or hereabouts, the apostle saw that

marvellous vision which proclaimed to a weary world the brotherhood

of man. From this spot issued the gospel of democracy: "Of a truth, I

perceive that God is no respecter of persons." From this insignificant

dwelling went forth the edict that broke the power of tyrants,

and loosed the bonds of slaves, and ennobled the lot of woman, and

enfranchised the human mind. Of all places on earth I think there is

only one more worthy of pilgrimage by all devout and liberty-loving

souls.

 

We were greatly interested, also, in a visit to the well-known school of

Miss Amot, a mission school for girls in the upper chambers of a house

in the most crowded part of Jaffa. With modest courage and tact and

self-devotion this lady has sustained it here for twelve years, and the

fruits of it already begin to appear. We found twenty or thirty pupils,

nearly all quite young, and most of them daughters of Christians; they

are taught in Arabic the common branches, and some English, and they

learn to sing. They sang for us English tunes like any Sunday school; a

strange sound in a Moslem town. There are one or two other schools of

a similar character in the Orient, conducted as private enterprises by

ladies of culture; and I think there is no work nobler, and none more

worthy of liberal support or more likely to result in giving women a

decent position in Eastern society.

 

On a little elevation a half-mile outside the walls is a cluster of

wooden houses, which were manufactured in America. There we found the

remnants of the Adams colony, only half a dozen families out of the

original two hundred and fifty persons; two or three men and some widows

and children. The colony built in the centre of their settlement an ugly

little church out of Maine timber; it now stands empty and staring,

with broken windows. It is not difficult to make this adventure appear

romantic. Those who engaged in it were plain New England people, many

of them ignorant, but devout to fanaticism. They had heard the prophets

expounded, and the prophecies of the latter days unravelled, until they

came to believe that the day of the Lord was nigh, and that they had

laid upon them a mission in the fulfilment of the divine purposes. Most

of them were from Maine and New Hampshire, accustomed to bitter winters

and to wring their living from a niggardly soil. I do not wonder that

they were fascinated by the pictures of a fair land of blue skies, a

land of vines and olives and palms, where they were undoubtedly called

by the Spirit to a life of greater sanctity and considerable ease and

abundance. I think I see their dismay when they first pitched their

tents amid this Moslem squalor, and attempted to "squat," Western

fashion, upon the skirts of the Plain of Sharon, which has been for

some ages pre-empted. They erected houses, however, and joined the other

inhabitants of the region in a struggle for existence. But Adams, the

preacher and president, had not faith enough to wait for the unfolding

of prophecy; he took to strong drink, and with general bad management

the whole enterprise came to grief, and the deluded people were rescued

from starvation only by the liberality of our government.

 

There was the germ of a good idea in the rash undertaking. If Palestine

is ever to be repeopled, its coming inhabitants must have the means of

subsistence; and if those now here are to be redeemed to a better life,

they must learn to work; before all else there must come a revival of

industry and a development of the resources of the country. To send

here Jews or Gentiles, and to support them by charity, only adds to the

existing misery.

 

It was eight years ago that the Adams community exploded. Its heirs and

successors are Germans, a colony from Wurtemberg, an Advent sect akin

to the American, but more single-minded and devout. They own the ground

upon which they have settled, having acquired a title from the Turkish

government; they have erected substantial houses of stone and a large

hotel, The Jerusalem, and give many evidences of shrewdness and thrift

as well as piety. They have established a good school, in which, with

German thoroughness, Latin, English, and the higher mathematics are

taught, and an excellent education may be obtained. More land the colony

is not permitted to own; but they hire ground outside the walls which

they farm to advantage.

 

I talked with one of the teachers, a thin young ascetic in spectacles,

whose severity of countenance and demeanor was sufficient to rebuke all

the Oriental levity I had encountered during the winter. There was

in him and in the other leaders an air of sincere fanaticism, and a

sobriety and integrity in the common laborers, which are the best omens

for the success of the colony. The leaders told us that they thought the

Americans came here with the expectation of making money uppermost in

mind, and hardly in the right spirit. As to themselves, they do not

expect to make money; they repelled the insinuation with some warmth;

they have had, in fact, a very hard struggle, and are thankful for a

fair measure of success. Their sole present purpose is evidently to

redeem and reclaim the land, and make it fit for the expected day of

jubilee. The Jews from all parts of the world, they say, are to return

to Palestine, and there is to issue out of the Holy Land a new divine

impulse which is to be the regeneration and salvation of the world. I

do not know that anybody but the Jews themselves would oppose their

migration to Palestine, though their withdrawal from the business of the

world suddenly would create wide disaster. With these doubts, however,

we did not trouble the youthful knight of severity. We only asked him

upon what the community founded its creed and its mission. Largely, he

replied, upon the prophets, and especially upon Isaiah; and he referred

us to Isaiah xxxii. 1; xlix. 12 et seq.; and lii. 1. It is not every

industrial community that would flourish on a charter so vague as this.

 

A lad of twelve or fourteen was our guide to the Advent settlement; he

was an early polyglot, speaking, besides English, French, and German,

Arabic, and, I think, a little Greek; a boy of uncommon gravity of

deportment and of precocious shrewdness. He is destined to be a guide

and dragoman. I could see that the whole Biblical history was a little

_fade_ to him, but he does not lose sight of the profit of a knowledge

of it. I could not but contrast him with a Sunday-school scholar of

his own age in America, whose imagination kindles at the Old Testament

stories, and whose enthusiasm for the Holy Land is awakened by the wall

maps and the pictures of Solomon's temple. Actual contact has destroyed

the imagination of this boy; Jerusalem is not so much a wonder to him as

Boston; Samson lived just over there beyond the Plain of Sharon, and is

not so much a hero as Old Put.

 

The boy's mother was a good New Hampshire woman, whose downright

Yankeeism of thought and speech was in odd contrast to her Oriental

surroundings. I sat in a rocking-chair in the sitting-room of her little

wood cottage, and could scarcely convince myself that I was not in

a prim New Hampshire parlor. To her mind there were no more Oriental

illusions, and perhaps she had never indulged any; certainly, in her

presence Palestine seemed to me as commonplace as New England.

 

"I s'pose you 've seen the meetin' house?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Wal' it's goin' to rack and ruin like everything else here. There is

n't enough here to have any service now. Sometimes I go to the German; I

try to keep up a little feeling."

 

I have no doubt it is more difficult to keep up a religious feeling in

the Holy Land than it is in New Hampshire, but we did not discuss that

point. I asked, "Do you have any society?"

 

"Precious little. The Germans are dreffle unsocial. The natives are all

a low set. The Arabs will all lie; I don't think much of any of 'em. The

Mohammedans are all shiftless; you can't trust any of 'em."

 

"Why don't you go home?"

 

"Wal, sometimes I think I'd like to see the old place, but I reckon I

could n't stand the winters. This is a nice climate, that's all there is

here; and we have grapes and oranges, and loads of flowers,--you see

my garden there; I set great store by that and me and my daughter take

solid comfort in it, especially when _he_ is away, and he has to be off

most of the time with parties, guidin' 'em. No, I guess I sha'n't ever

cross the ocean again."

 

It appeared that the good woman had consoled herself with a second

husband, who bears a Jewish name; so that the original object of her

mission, to gather in the chosen people, is not altogether lost sight

of.