In The Levant 27

In The Levant 27

At any rate, we let such thoughts predominate, when we were obliged

to relinquish the overland journey. And whatever we missed, I flatter

myself that the readers of these desultory sketches will lose nothing.

I should have indulged a certain curiosity in riding over a country as

rich in memories as it is poor in aspect, but I should have been able to

add nothing to the minute descriptions and vivid pictures with which

the Christian world is familiar; and, if the reader will excuse an

additional personal remark, I have not had the presumption to attempt

a description of Palestine and Syria (which the volumes of Robinson and

Thompson and Porter have abundantly given), but only to make a record of

limited travel and observation. What I most regretted was that we could

not see the green and fertile plain of Esdraelon, the flower-spangled

meadow of Jezreel, and the forests of Tabor and Carmel,--seats of beauty

and of verdure, and which, with the Plain of Sharon, might serve to

mitigate the picture of grim desolation which the tourist cames away

from the Holy Land.

 

Finally, it was with a feeling akin to regret that we looked our last

upon gray and melancholy Jerusalem. We had grown a little familiar with

its few objects of past or present grandeur, the Saracenic walls

and towers, the Temple platform and its resplendent mosque, the

agglomeration called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the ruins of the

palace and hospice of the Knights of St. John, the massive convents

and hospices of various nations and sects that rise amid the

indistinguishable huddle of wretched habitations, threaded by filthy

streets and noisome gutters. And yet we confessed to the inevitable

fascination which is always exercised upon the mind by antiquity; the

mysterious attraction of association; the undefinable influence in decay

and desolation which holds while it repels; the empire, one might say

the tyranny, over the imagination and the will which an ancient city

asserts, as if by force of an immortal personality, compelling first

curiosity, then endurance, then sympathy, and finally love. Jerusalem

has neither the art, the climate, the antiquities, nor the society which

draw the world and hold it captive in Rome, but its associations enable

it to exercise, in a degree, the same attraction. Its attraction is in

its historic spell and name, and in spite of the modern city.

 

Jerusalem, in fact, is incrusted with layer upon layer of inventions,

the product of credulity, cunning, and superstition, a monstrous growth

always enlarging, so that already the simple facts of history are buried

almost beyond recognition beneath this mass of rubbish. Perhaps it

would have been better for the growth of Christianity in the world if

Jerusalem had been abandoned, had become like Carthage and Memphis and

Tadmor in the wilderness, and the modern pilgrim were free to choose his

seat upon a fallen wall or mossy rock, and reconstruct for himself the

pageant of the past, and recall that Living Presence, undisturbed by the

impertinences which belittle the name of religion. It has always been

held well that the place of the burial of Moses was unknown. It would

perhaps have conduced to the purity of the Christian faith if no attempt

had ever been made to break through the obscurity which rests upon the

place of the sepulchre of Christ. Invention has grown upon invention,

and we have the Jerusalem of to-day as a result of the exaggerated

importance attached to the localization of the Divine manifestation.

Whatever interest Jerusalem has for the antiquarian, or for the devout

mind, it is undeniable that one must seek in other lands and among other

peoples for the robust virtue, the hatred of shams and useless forms,

the sweet charity, the invigorating principles, the high thinking, and

the simple worship inculcated by the Founder of Christianity.

 

The horses were ready. Jerusalem had just begun to stir; an itinerant

vender of coffee had set up his tray on the street, and was lustily

calling to catch the attention of the early workmen, or the vagrants who

pick themselves up from the doorsteps at dawn, and begin to reconnoitre

for the necessary and cheap taste of coffee, with which the Oriental day

opens; the sky was overcast, and a drop or two of rain fell as we were

getting into the saddle, but "It is nothing," said the stirrup-holder,

"it goes to be a beautiful time"; and so it proved.

 

Scarcely were we outside the city when it cleared superbly, and we set

forward on our long ride of thirty-six miles, to the sea-coast, in high

spirits. We turned to catch the first sunlight upon the gray Tower of

David, and then went gayly on over the cool free hills, inhaling the

sparkling air and the perfume of wild-flowers, and exchanging greetings

with the pilgrims, Moslem and Christian, who must have broken up their

camps in the hills at the earliest light. There are all varieties of

nationality and costume, and many of the peaceful pilgrims are armed as

if going to a military rendezvous; perhaps our cavalcade, which is also

an assorted one of horses, donkeys, and mules, is as amusing as any

we meet. I am certain that the horse that one of the ladies rides is

unique, a mere framework of bones which rattle as he agitates himself; a

rear view of the animal, and his twisting and interlacing legs, when he

moves briskly, suggest a Chinese puzzle.

 

We halted at the outlet of Wady 'Aly, where there is an inn, which has

the appearance of a Den of Thieves, and took our lunch upon some giant

rocks under a fig-tree, the fruit of which was already half grown. Here

I discovered another black calla, and borrowed a pick of the landlord

to endeavor to dig up its bulb. But it was impossible to extract it from

the rocks, and when I returned the tool, the owner demanded pay for the

use of it; I told him that if he would come to America, I would lend him

a pick, and let him dig all day in the garden,--a liberality which he

was unable to comprehend.

 

By four o'clock we were at Bamleh, and turned aside to inspect the

so-called Saracen tower; it stands upon one side of a large enclosure

of walls and arches, an extensive ruin; under ground are vaulted

constructions apparently extending as far as the ruins above, reminding

one of the remains of the Hospice of St. John at Jerusalem. In its form

and treatment and feeling this noble tower is Gothic, and, taking it

in connection with the remains about it, I should have said it was of

Christian construction, in spite of the Arabic inscription over one

of the doorways, which might have been added when the Saracens took

possession of it; but I believe that antiquarians have decided that the

tower was erected by Moslems. These are the most "rural" ruins we had

seen in the East; they are time-stained and weather-colored, like the

remains of an English abbey, and stand in the midst of a green and most

lovely country; no sand, no nakedness, no beggars. Grass fills all the

enclosure, and grain-fields press close about it. No view could be more

enchanting than that of the tower and the rolling plain at that hour:

the bloom on the wheat-fields, flecked with flaming poppies; the silver

of the olive groves; the beds of scarlet anemones and yellow buttercups,

blotching the meadows with brilliant colors like a picture of Turner;

the soft gray hills of Judæa; the steeples and minarets of the city. All

Ramleh is built on and amid ruins, half-covered arches and vaults.

 

Twilight came upon us while we were yet in the interminable plain, but

Jaffa announced itself by its orange-blossoms long before we entered its

straggling suburbs; indeed, when we were three miles away, the odor of

its gardens, weighted by the night-air, was too heavy to be agreeable.

At a distance this odor was more perceptible than in the town itself;

but next day, in the full heat of the sun, we found it so overpowering

as to give a tendency to headache.

 

 

 

 

IX.--ALONG THE SYRIAN COAST.

 

|OUR only business in Jaffa being to get away from it, we impatiently

expected the arrival of the Austrian Lloyd steamer for Beyrout, the

_Venus_, a fickle and unsteady craft, as its name implies. In the

afternoon we got on board, taking note as we left the land of the great

stones that jut out into the sea, "where the chains with which Andromeda

was bound have left their footsteps, which attest [says Josephus] the

antiquity of that fable." The _Venus_, which should have departed

at three o'clock, lay rolling about amid the tossing and bobbing and

crushing crowd of boats and barges till late in the evening, taking in

boxes of oranges and bags of barley, by the slow process of hoisting

up one or two at a time. The ship was lightly loaded with freight, but

overrun with third-class passengers, returning pilgrims from Mecca

and from Jerusalem (whom the waters of the Jordan seemed not to have

benefited), who invaded every part of deck, cabin, and hold, and

spreading their beds under the windows of the cabins of the first-class

passengers, reduced the whole company to a common disgust. The light

load caused the vessel to roll a little, and there was nothing agreeable

in the situation.

 

The next morning we were in the harbor of Haifa, under the shadow of Mt.

Carmel, and rose early to read about Elijah, and to bring as near to us

as we could with an opera-glass the convent and the scene of Elijah's

victory over the priests of Baal. The noble convent we saw, and the brow

of Carmel, which the prophet ascended to pray for rain; but the place of

the miraculous sacrifice is on the other side, in view of the plain of

Esdraelon, and so is the plain by the river Kishon where Elijah slew the

four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal, whom he had already mocked and

defeated. The grotto of Elijah is shown in the hill, and the monks who

inhabit the convent regard themselves as the successors of an unbroken

succession of holy occupants since the days of the great prophet. Their

sumptuous quarters would no doubt excite the indignation of Elijah and

Elisha, who would not properly discriminate between the modern reign of

Mammon and the ancient rule of Baal. Haifa itself is only a huddle

of houses on the beach. Ten miles across the curving bay we saw the

battlements of Akka, on its triangle of land jutting into the sea, above

the mouth of Kishon, out of the fertile and world-renowned plain. We

see it more distinctly as we pass; and if we were to land we should see

little more, for few fragments remain to attest its many masters and

strange vicissitudes. A prosperous seat of the Phoenicians, it offered

hospitality to the fat-loving tribe of Asher; it was a Greek city of

wealth and consequence; it was considered the key of Palestine during

the Crusades, and the headquarters of the Templars and the Knights

of St. John; and in more modern times it had the credit of giving the

checkmate to the feeble imitation of Alexander in the East attempted by

Napoleon I.

 

The day was cloudy and a little cool, and not unpleasant; but there

existed all day a ground-swell which is full of all nastiness, and a

short sea which aggravated the ground-swell; and although we sailed

by the Lebanon mountains and along an historic coast, bristling with

suggestions, and with little but suggestions, of an heroic past, by

Akka and Tyre and Sidon, we were mostly indifferent to it all. The

Mediterranean, on occasion, takes away one's appetite even for ruins and

ancient history.

 

We can distinguish, as we sail by it, the mean modern town which wears

still the royal purple name of Tyre, and the peninsula, formerly the