In The Levant 38

In The Levant 38

Beyrout is the brightest spot in Syria or Palestine, the only pleasant

city that we saw, and the centre of a moral and intellectual impulse the

importance of which we cannot overestimate. The mart of the great silk

industry of the region, and the seaport of Damascus and of all Upper

Syria, the fitful and unintelligent Turkish rule even cannot stifle

its exuberant prosperity; but above all the advantages which nature has

given it, I should attribute its brightest prospects to the influence of

the American Mission, and to the establishment of Beyrout College. For

almost thirty years that Mission has sustained here a band of erudite

scholars, whose investigations have made the world more familiar with

the physical character of Palestine than the people of Connecticut

are with the resources of their own State, and of wise managers whose

prudence and foresight have laid deep and broad the foundations of a

Syrian civilization.

 

I do not know how many converts have been made in thirty years,--the

East has had ample illustration, from the Abyssinians to the Colchians,

of "conversion" without knowledge or civilization,--nor do I believe

that any "reports" of the workmen themselves to the "Board" can put in

visible array adequately the results of the American Mission in Syria.

But the transient visitor can see something of them, in the dawning of a

better social life, in the beginning of an improvement in the condition

of women, in an unmistakable spirit of inquiry, and a recognizable taste

for intellectual pursuits. It is not too much to say that the birth of

a desire for instruction, for the enjoyment of literature, and, to a

certain extent, of science, is due to their schools; and that their

admirably conducted press, which has sent out not only translations of

the scriptures, but periodicals of secular literature and information,

and elementary geographies, histories, and scientific treatises, has

satisfied the want which the schools created. And this new leaven is not

confined to a sect, nor limited to a race; it is working, slowly it is

true, in the whole of Syrian society.

 

The press establishment is near the pretty and substantial church of the

Mission; it is a busy and well-ordered printing and publishing house;

sending out, besides its religious works and school-books, a monthly and

a weekly publication and a child's paper, which has a large and paying

circulation, a great number of its subscribers being Moslems.

These regenerating agencies--the schools and the press--are happily

supplemented by the college, which offers to the young men of the Orient

the chance of a high education, and attracts students even from the

banks of the Nile. We were accompanied to the college by Dr. Jessup and

Dr. Post, and spent an interesting morning in inspecting the buildings

and in the enjoyment of the lovely prospect they command. As it is not

my desire to enter into details regarding the Mission or the college any

further than is necessary to emphasize the supreme importance of this

enterprise to the civilization of the Orient, I will only add that the

college has already some interesting collections in natural history, a

particularly valuable herbarium, and that the medical department is not

second in promise to the literary.

 

It is sometimes observed that a city is like a man, in that it will

preserve through all mutations and disasters certain fundamental

traits; the character that it obtains at first is never wholly lost, but

reappears again and again, asserting its individuality after, it may

be, centuries of obscurity. Beyrout was early a seat of learning and a

centre of literary influence for nearly three hundred years before its

desolation by an earthquake in the middle of the sixth century, and its

subsequent devastation by the followers of the Arabian prophet, it was

thronged with students from all the East, and its schools of philosophy

and law enjoyed the highest renown. We believe that it is gradually

resuming its ancient _prestige_.

 

While we were waiting day after day the arrival of the Austrian

steamboat for Constantinople, we were drawn into a little drama which

afforded us alternate vexation and amusement; an outline of it may not

be out of place here as an illustration of the vicissitudes of travel in

the East, or for other reasons which may appear. I should premise that

the American consul who resided here with his family was not in good

repute with many of the foreign residents; that he was charged

with making personal contributions to himself the condition of the

continuance in office of his subagents in Syria; that the character of

his dragomans, or at least one of them named Ouardy, was exceedingly

bad, and brought the consular office and the American name into

contempt; and that these charges had been investigated by an agent sent

from the ministerial bureau in Constantinople. The dragomans of the

consulate, who act as interpreters, and are executors of the consul's

authority, have no pay, but their position gives them a consideration in

the community, and a protection which they turn to pecuniary account. It

should be added that the salary of the consul at Beyrout is two thousand

dollars,--a sum, in this expensive city, which is insufficient to

support a consul, who has a family, in the style of a respectable

citizen, and is wholly inadequate to the maintenance of any equality

with the representatives of other nations; the government allows no

outfit, nor does it provide for the return of its consul; the cost of

transporting himself and family home would consume almost half a year's

salary, and the tenure of the office is uncertain. To accept any of

several of our Oriental consulships, a man must either have a private

fortune or an unscrupulous knack of living by his wits. The English

name is almost universally respected in the East, so far as my limited

experience goes, in the character of its consuls; the same cannot be

said of the American.

 

The morning after our arrival, descending the steps of the hotel, I

found our dragoman in a violent altercation with another dragoman, a

Jew, and a resident of Beyrout. There is always a latent enmity between

the Egyptian and the Syrian dragomans, a national hostility, as old

perhaps as the Shepherds' invasion, which it needs only an occasion to

blow into a flame. The disputants were surrounded by a motley crowd,

nearly all of them the adherents of the Syrian. I had seen Antoine

Ouardy at Luxor, when he was the dragoman of an English traveller.

He was now in Frank dress, wearing a shining hat, an enormous cluster

shirt-pin, and a big seal ring; and with his aggressive nose and brazen

face he had the appearance of a leading mock-auctioneer in the Bowery.

On the Nile, where Abd-el-Atti enjoys the distinction of Sultan among

his class, the fellow was his humble servant; but he had now caught

the Egyptian away from home, and was disposed to make the most of his

advantage. Chancing to meet Ouardy this morning, Abd-el-Atti had asked

for the payment of two pounds lent at Luxor; the debt was promptly

denied, and when his own due-bill for the money was produced, he

declared that he had received the money from Abd-el-Atti in payment for

some cigars which he had long ago purchased for him in Alexandria. Of

course if this had been true, he would not have given a note for

the money; and it happened that I had been present when the sum was

borrowed.

 

The brazen denial exasperated our dragoman, and when I arrived the

quarrel had come nearly to blows, all the injurious Arabic epithets

having been exhausted. The lie direct had been given back and forth, but

the crowning insult was added, in English, when Abd-el-Atti cried,--

 

"You 're a humbug!"

 

This was more than Ouardy could stand. Bursting with rage, he shook his

fist in the Egyptian's face:--

 

"You call _me_ humbug; you hum_bug_, yourself. You pay for this, I shall

have satisfaction by the law."

 

We succeeded in separating and, I hoped, in reducing them to reason, but

Antoine went off muttering vengeance, and Abd-el-Atti was determined to

bring suit for his money. I represented the hopelessness of a suit in a

Turkish court, the delay and the cost of lawyers, and the certainty that

Ouardy would produce witnesses to anything he desired to prove.

 

"What I care for two pound!" exclaimed the heated dragoman. "I go

to spend a hundred pound, but I have justice." Shortly after, as

Abd-el-Atti was walking through the bazaars, with one of the ladies of

our party, he was set upon by a gang of Ouardy's friends and knocked

down; the old man recovered himself and gave battle like a valiant

friend of the Prophet; Ouardy's brother sallied out from his shop to

take a hand in the scrimmage, and happened to get a rough handling from

Abd-el-Atti, who was entirely ignorant of his relationship to

Antoine. The whole party were then carried off to the seraglio, where

Abd-el-Atti, as the party attacked, was presumed to be in the wrong,

and was put into custody. In the inscrutable administration of Turkish

justice, the man who is knocked down in a quarrel is always arrested.

When news was brought to us at the hotel of this mishap, I sent for

the American consul, as our dragoman was in the service of an American

citizen. The consul sent his son and his dragoman. And the dragoman

sent to assist an American, embarrassed by the loss of his servant in

a strange city, turned out to be the brother of Antoine Ouardy, and the

very fellow that Abd-el-Atti had just beaten. Here was a complication.

Dragoman Ouardy showed his wounds, and wanted compensation for his

injuries. At the very moment we needed the protection of the American

government, its representative appeared as our chief prosecutor.

 

However, we sent for Abd-el-Atti, and procured his release from

the seraglio; and after an hour of conference, in which we had the

assistance of some of the most respectable foreign residents of the

city, we flattered ourselves that a compromise was made. The injured

Ouardy, who was a crafty rogue, was persuaded not to insist upon a suit

for damages, which would greatly incommode an American citizen, and

Abd-el-Atti seemed willing to drop his suit for the two pounds. Antoine,

however, was still menacing.

 

"You heard him," he appealed to me, "you heard him call me humbug."

 

The injurious nature of this mysterious epithet could not be erased from

his mind. It was in vain that I told him it had been freely applied to a

well-known American, until it had become a badge of distinction. But

at length a truce was patched up; and, confident that there would be no

more trouble, I went into the country for a long walk over the charming

hills.

 

When I returned at six o'clock, the camp was in commotion. Abd-el-Atti

was in jail! There was a suit against him for 20,000 francs for horrible

and unprovoked injuries to the dragoman of the American consul! The

consul, upon written application for assistance, made by the ladies at

the hotel, had curtly declined to give any aid, and espoused the quarrel

of his dragoman. It appeared that Abd-el-Atti, attempting again to

accompany a lady in a shopping expedition through the bazaars, had been

sent for by a messenger from the seraglio. As he could not leave the

lady in the street, he carelessly answered that he would come by and by.

A few minutes after he was arrested by a squad of soldiers, and taken