Eothen, or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East Part 13

"The ruins of Baalbec!" Shall I scatter the vague, solemn thoughts and all the airy phantasies which gather together when once those words are spoken, that I may give you instead tall columns and measurements true, and phrases built with ink? No, no; the glorious sounds shall still float on as of yore, and still hold fast upon your brain with their own dim and infinite meaning.

Come! Baalbec is over; I got "rather well" out of that.

The path by which I crossed the Lebanon is like, I think, in its features to one which you must know, namely, that of the Foorca in the Bernese Oberland. For a great part of the way I toiled rather painfully through the dazzling snow, but the labour of ascending added to the excitement with which I looked for the summit of the pa.s.s. The time came. There was a minute in the which I saw nothing but the steep, white shoulder of the mountain, and there was another minute, and that the next, which showed me a nether heaven of fleecy clouds that floated along far down in the air beneath me, and showed me beyond the breadth of all Syria west of the Lebanon. But chiefly I clung with my eyes to the dim, steadfast line of the sea which closed my utmost view. I had grown well used of late to the people and the scenes of forlorn Asia-well used to tombs and ruins, to silent cities and deserted plains, to tranquil men and women sadly veiled; and now that I saw the even plain of the sea, I leapt with an easy leap to its yonder sh.o.r.es, and saw all the kingdoms of the West in that fair path that could lead me from out of this silent land straight on into shrill Ma.r.s.eilles, or round by the pillars of Hercules to the crash and roar of London. My place upon this dividing barrier was as a man's puzzling station in eternity, between the birthless past and the future that has no end. Behind me I left an old, decrepit world; religions dead and dying; calm tyrannies expiring in silence; women hushed and swathed, and turned into waxen dolls; love flown, and in its stead mere royal and "paradise" pleasures. Before me there waited glad bustle and strife; love itself, an emulous game; religion, a cause and a controversy, well smitten and well defended; men governed by reasons and suasion of speech; wheels going, steam buzzing-a mortal race, and a slas.h.i.+ng pace, and the devil taking the hindmost-taking _me_, by Jove (for that was my inner care), if I lingered too long upon the difficult pa.s.s that leads from thought to action.

I descended and went towards the west.

The group of cedars remaining on this part of the Lebanon is held sacred by the Greek Church on account of a prevailing notion that the trees were standing at a time when the temple of Jerusalem was built. They occupy three or four acres on the mountain's side, and many of them are gnarled in a way that implies great age, but except these signs I saw nothing in their appearance or conduct that tended to prove them contemporaries of the cedars employed in Solomon's Temple. The final cause to which these aged survivors owed their preservation was explained to me in the evening by a glorious old fellow (a Christian chief), who made me welcome in the valley of Eden. In ancient times the whole range of the Lebanon had been covered with cedars, and as the fertile plains beneath became more and more infested by government officers and tyrants of high and low degree, the people by degrees abandoned them and flocked to the rugged mountains, which were less accessible to their indolent oppressors. The cedar forests gradually shrank under the axe of the encroaching mult.i.tudes, and seemed at last to be on the point of disappearing entirely, when an aged chief who ruled in this district, and who had witnessed the great change effected even in his own lifetime, chose to say that some sign or memorial should be left of the vast woods with which the mountains had formerly been clad, and commanded accordingly that this group of trees (which was probably situated at the highest point to which the forest had reached) should remain untouched. The chief, it seems, was not moved by the notion I have mentioned as prevailing in the Greek Church, but rather by some sentiment of veneration for a great natural feature-sentiment akin, perhaps, to that old and earthborn religion, which made men bow down to creation before they had yet learnt how to know and wors.h.i.+p the Creator.

The chief of the valley in which I pa.s.sed the night was a man of large possessions, and he entertained me very sumptuously. He was highly intelligent, and had had the sagacity to foresee that Europe would intervene authoritatively in the affairs of Syria. Bearing this idea in mind, and with a view to give his son an advantageous start in the ambitious career for which he was destined, he had hired for him a teacher of the Italian language, the only accessible European tongue.

The tutor, however, who was a native of Syria, either did not know or did not choose to teach the European forms of address, but contented himself with instructing his pupil in the mere language of Italy. This circ.u.mstance gave me an opportunity (the only one I ever had, or was likely to have {46}) of hearing the phrases of Oriental courtesy in an European tongue. The boy was about twelve or thirteen years old, and having the advantage of being able to speak to me without the aid of an interpreter, he took a prominent part in doing the honours of his father's house. He went through his duties with untiring a.s.siduity, and with a kind of gracefulness, which by mere description can scarcely be made intelligible to those who are unacquainted with the manners of the Asiatics. The boy's address resembled a little that of a highly polished and insinuating Roman Catholic priest, but had more of girlish gentleness. It was strange to hear him gravely and slowly enunciating the common and extravagant compliments of the East in good Italian, and in soft, persuasive tones. I recollect that I was particularly amused at the gracious obstinacy with which he maintained that the house in which I was so hospitably entertained belonged not to his father, but to me. To say this once was only to use the common form of speech, signifying no more than our sweet word "welcome," but the amusing part of the matter was that, whenever in the course of conversation I happened to speak of his father's house or the surrounding domain, the boy invariably interfered to correct my pretended mistake, and to a.s.sure me once again with a gentle decisiveness of manner that the whole property was really and exclusively mine, and that his father had not the most distant pretensions to its owners.h.i.+p.

I received from my host much, and (as I now know) most true, information respecting the people of the mountains, and their power of resisting Mehemet Ali. The chief gave me very plainly to understand that the mountaineers, being dependent upon others for bread and gunpowder (the two great necessaries of martial life), could not long hold out against a power which occupied the plains and commanded the sea; but he also a.s.sured me, and that very significantly, that if this source of weakness were provided against, _the mountaineers were to be depended upon_; he told me that in ten or fifteen days the chiefs could bring together some fifty thousand fighting men.

CHAPTER XXIX-SURPRISE OF SATALIEH

Whilst I was remaining upon the coast of Syria I had the good fortune to become acquainted with the Russian Sataliefsky, {47} a general officer, who in his youth had fought and bled at Borodino, but was now better known among diplomats by the important trust committed to him at a period highly critical for the affairs of Eastern Europe. I must not tell you his family name; my mention of his t.i.tle can do him no harm, for it is I, and I only, who have conferred it, in consideration of the military and diplomatic services performed under my own eyes.

The General as well as I was bound for Smyrna, and we agreed to sail together in an Ionian brigantine. We did not charter the vessel, but we made our arrangement with the captain upon such terms that we could be put ash.o.r.e upon any part of the coast that we might choose. We sailed, and day after day the vessel lay dawdling on the sea with calms and feeble breezes for her portion. I myself was well repaid for the painful restlessness which such weather occasions, because I gained from my companion a little of that vast fund of interesting knowledge with which he was stored, knowledge a thousand times the more highly to be prized since it was not of the sort that is to be gathered from books, but only from the lips of those who have acted a part in the world.

When after nine days of sailing, or trying to sail, we found ourselves still hanging by the mainland to the north of the isle of Cyprus, we determined to disembark at Satalieh, and to go on thence by land. A light breeze favoured our purpose, and it was with great delight that we neared the fragrant land, and saw our anchor go down in the bay of Satalieh, within two or three hundred yards of the sh.o.r.e.

The town of Satalieh {48} is the chief place of the Pashalic in which it is situate, and its citadel is the residence of the Pasha. We had scarcely dropped our anchor when a boat from the sh.o.r.e came alongside with officers on board, who announced that the strictest orders had been received for maintaining a quarantine of three weeks against all vessels coming from Syria, and directed accordingly that no one from the vessel should disembark. In reply we sent a message to the Pasha, setting forth the rank and t.i.tles of the General, and requiring permission to go ash.o.r.e. After a while the boat came again alongside, and the officers declaring that the orders received from Constantinople were imperative and unexceptional, formally enjoined us in the name of the Pasha to abstain from any attempt to land.

I had been hitherto much less impatient of our slow voyage than my gallant friend, but this opposition made the smooth sea seem to me like a prison, from which I must and would break out. I had an unbounded faith in the feebleness of Asiatic potentates, and I proposed that we should set the Pasha at defiance. The General had been worked up to a state of most painful agitation by the idea of being driven from the sh.o.r.e which smiled so pleasantly before his eyes, and he adopted my suggestion with rapture.

We determined to land.

To approach the sweet sh.o.r.e after a tedious voyage, and then to be suddenly and unexpectedly prohibited from landing-this is so maddening to the temper, that no one who had ever experienced the trial would say that even the most violent impatience of such restraint is wholly inexcusable.

I am not going to pretend, however, that the course which we chose to adopt on the occasion can be perfectly justified. The impropriety of a traveller's setting at naught the regulations of a foreign State is clear enough, and the bad taste of compa.s.sing such a purpose by mere gasconading is still more glaringly plain. I knew perfectly well that if the Pasha understood his duty, and had energy enough to perform it, he would order out a file of soldiers the moment we landed, and cause us both to be shot upon the beach, without allowing more contact than might be absolutely necessary for the purpose of making us stand fire; but I also firmly believed that the Pasha would not see the befitting line of conduct nearly so well as I did, and that even if he did know his duty, he would hardly succeed in finding resolution enough to perform it.

We ordered the boat to be got in readiness, and the officers on sh.o.r.e seeing these preparations, gathered together a number of guards, who a.s.sembled upon the sands. We saw that great excitement prevailed, and that messengers were continually going to and fro between the sh.o.r.e and the citadel. Our captain, out of compliment to his Excellency, had provided the vessel with a Russian war-flag, which he had hoisted alternately with the Union Jack, and we agreed that we would attempt our disembarkation under this, the Russian standard! I was glad when we came to that resolution, for I should have been sorry to engage the honoured flag of England in such an affair as that which we were undertaking. The Russian ensign was therefore committed to one of the sailors, who took his station at the stern of the boat. We gave particular instructions to the captain of the brigantine, and when all was ready, the General and I, with our respective servants, got into the boat, and were slowly rowed towards the sh.o.r.e. The guards gathered together at the point for which we were making, but when they saw that our boat went on without altering her course, _they ceased to stand very still_; none of them ran away, or even shrank back, but they looked as if _the pack were being shuffled_, every man seeming desirous to change places with his neighbour. They were still at their post, however, when our oars went in, and the bow of our boat ran up-well up upon the beach.

The General was lame by an honourable wound received at Borodino, and could not without some a.s.sistance get out of the boat; I, therefore, landed the first. My instructions to the captain were attended to with the most perfect accuracy, for scarcely had my foot indented the sand when the four six-pounders of the brigantine quite gravely rolled out their brute thunder. Precisely as I had expected, the guards and all the people who had gathered about them gave way under the shock produced by the mere sound of guns, and we were all allowed to disembark with the least molestation.

We immediately formed a little column, or rather, as I should have called it, a procession, for we had no fighting apt.i.tude in us, and were only trying, as it were, how far we could go in frightening full-grown children. First marched the sailor with the Russian flag of war bravely flying in the breeze, then came the general and I, then our servants, and lastly, if I rightly recollect, two more of the brigantine's crew. Our flag-bearer so exulted in his honourable office, and bore the colours aloft with so much of pomp and dignity, that I found it exceedingly hard to keep a grave countenance. We advanced towards the castle, but the people had now had time to recover from the effect of the six-pounders (only of course loaded with powder), and they could not help seeing not only the numerical weakness of our party, but the very slight amount of wealth and resource which it seemed to imply. They began to hang round us more closely, and just as this reaction was beginning the General, who was perfectly unacquainted with the Asiatic character, thoughtlessly turned round in order to speak to one of the servants. The effect of this slight move was magical. The people thought we were going to give way, and instantly closed round us. In two words, and with one touch, I showed my comrade the danger he was running, and in the next instant we were both advancing more pompously than ever. Some minutes afterwards there was a second appearance of reaction, followed again by wavering and indecision on the part of the Pasha's people, but at length it seemed to be understood that we should go unmolested into the audience hall.

Constant communication had been going on between the receding crowd and the Pasha, and so when we reached the gates of the citadel we saw that preparations were made for giving us an awe-striking reception. Parting at once from the sailors and our servants, the General and I were conducted into the audience hall; and there at least I suppose the Pasha hoped that he would confound us by his greatness. The hall was nothing more than a large whitewashed room. Oriental potentates have a pride in that sort of simplicity, when they can contrast it with the exhibition of power, and this the Pasha was able to do, for the lower end of the hall was filled with his officers. These men, of whom I thought there were about fifty or sixty, were all handsomely, though plainly, dressed in the military frockcoats of Europe; they stood in ma.s.s and so as to present a hollow semicircular front towards the upper end of the hall at which the Pasha sat; they opened a narrow lane for us when we entered, and as soon as we had pa.s.sed they again closed up their ranks. An attempt was made to induce us to remain at a respectful distance from his mightiness. To have yielded in this point would have have been fatal to our success, perhaps to our lives; but the General and I had already determined upon the place which we should take, and we rudely pushed on towards the upper end of the hall.

Upon the divan, and close up against the right hand corner of the room, there sat the Pasha, his limbs gathered in, the whole creature coiled up like an adder. His cheeks were deadly pale, and his lips perhaps had turned white, for without moving a muscle the man impressed me with an immense idea of the wrath within him. He kept his eyes inexorably fixed as if upon vacancy, and with the look of a man accustomed to refuse the prayers of those who sue for life. We soon discomposed him, however, from this studied fixity of feature, for we marched straight up to the divan and sat down, the Russian close to the Pasha, and I by the side of the Russian. This act astonished the attendants, and plainly disconcerted the Pasha. He could no longer maintain the gla.s.sy stillness of the eyes which he had affected, and evidently became much agitated.

At the feet of the satrap there stood a trembling Italian.

This man was a sort of medico in the potentate's service, and now in the absence of our attendants he was to act as interpreter. The Pasha caused him to tell us that we had openly defied his authority, and had forced our way on sh.o.r.e in the teeth of his own officers.

Up to this time I had been the planner of the enterprise, but now that the moment had come when all would depend upon able and earnest speechifying, I felt at once the immense superiority of my gallant friend, and gladly left to him the whole conduct of this discussion.

Indeed he had vast advantages over me, not only by his superior command of language and his far more spirited style of address, but also in his consciousness of a good cause; for whilst I felt myself completely in the wrong, his Excellency had really worked himself up to believe that the Pasha's refusal to permit our landing was a gross outrage and insult.

Therefore, without deigning to defend our conduct he at once commenced a spirited attack upon the Pasha. The poor Italian doctor translated one or two sentences to the Pasha, but he evidently mitigated their import.

The Russian, growing warm, insisted upon his attack with redoubled energy and spirit; but the medico, instead of translating, began to shake violently with terror, and at last he came out with his _non ardisco_, and fairly confessed that he dared not interpret fierce words to his master.

Now then, at a time when everything seemed to depend upon the effect of speech, we were left without an interpreter.

But this very circ.u.mstance, which at first appeared so unfavourable, turned out to be advantageous. The General, finding that he could not have his words translated, ceased to speak in Italian, and recurred to his accustomed French; he became eloquent. No one present except myself understood one syllable of what he was saying, but he had drawn forth his pa.s.sport, and the energy and violence with which, as he spoke, he pointed to the graven Eagle of all the Russias, began to make an impression. The Pasha saw at his side a man not only free from every the least pang of fear, but raging, as it seemed, with just indignation, and thenceforward he plainly began to think that, in some way or other (he could not tell how) he must certainly have been in the wrong. In a little time he was so much shaken that the Italian ventured to resume his interpretation, and my comrade had again the opportunity of pressing his attack upon the Pasha. His argument, if I rightly recollect its import, was to this effect: "If the vilest Jews were to come into the harbour, you would but forbid them to land, and force them to perform quarantine; yet this is the very course, O Pasha, which your rash officers dared to think of adopting with _us_!-those mad and reckless men would have actually dealt towards a Russian general officer and an English gentleman as if they had been wretched Israelites! Never-never will we submit to such an indignity. His Imperial Majesty knows how to protect his n.o.bles from insult, and would never endure that a General of his army should be treated in matter of quarantine as though he were a mere Eastern Jew!"

This argument told with great effect. The Pasha fairly admitted that he felt its weight, and he now only struggled to obtain such a compromise as might partly save his dignity. He wanted us to perform a quarantine of one day for form's sake, and in order to show his people that he was not utterly defied; but finding that we were inexorable, he not only abandoned his attempt, but promised to supply us with horses.

When the discussion had arrived at this happy conclusion _tchibouques_ and coffee were brought, and we pa.s.sed, I think, nearly an hour in friendly conversation. The Pasha, it now appeared, had once been a prisoner of war in Russia, and a conviction of the Emperor's vast power, necessarily acquired during this captivity, made him perhaps more alive than an untravelled Turk would have been to the force of my comrade's eloquence.

The Pasha now gave us a generous feast. Our promised horses were brought without much delay. I gained my loved saddle once more, and when the moon got up and touched the heights of Taurus, we were joyfully winding our way through the first of his rugged defiles.

APPENDIX-THE HOME OF LADY HESTER STANHOPE

It was late when we came in sight of two high conical hills, on one of which stands the village of Djouni, on the other a circular wall, over which dark trees were waving; and this was the place in which Lady Hester Stanhope had finished her strange and eventful career. It had formerly been a convent, but the Pasha of Sidon had given it to the "prophet-lady," who converted its naked walls into a palace, and its wilderness into gardens.

The sun was setting as we entered the enclosure, and we were soon scattered about the outer court, picketing our horses, rubbing down their foaming flanks, and was.h.i.+ng out their wounds. The buildings that const.i.tuted the palace were of a very scattered and complicated description, covering a wide s.p.a.ce, but only one storey in height: courts and gardens, stables and sleeping-rooms, halls of audience and ladies'

bowers, were strangely intermingled. Heavy weeds were growing everywhere among the open portals, and we forced our way with difficulty through a tangle of roses and jasmine to the inner court; here choice flowers once bloomed, and fountains played in marble basins, but now was presented a scene of the most melancholy desolation. As the watchfire blazed up, its gleam fell upon ma.s.ses of honeysuckle and woodbine, on white, mouldering walls beneath, and dark, waving trees above; while the group of mountaineers who gathered round its light, with their long beards and vivid dresses, completed the strange picture.

The clang of sword and spear resounded through the long galleries; horses neighed among bowers and boudoirs; strange figures hurried to and fro among the colonnades, shouting in Arabic, English, and Italian; the fire crackled, the startled bats flapped their heavy wings, and the growl of distant thunder filled up the pauses in the rough symphony.

Our dinner was spread on the floor in Lady Hester's favourite apartment; her deathbed was our sideboard, her furniture our fuel, her name our conversation. Almost before the meal was ended two of our party had dropped asleep over their trenchers from fatigue; the Druses had retired from the haunted precincts to their village; and W-, L-, and I went out into the garden to smoke our pipes by Lady Hester's lonely tomb. About midnight we fell asleep upon the ground, wrapped in our capotes, and dreamed of ladies and tombs and prophets till the neighing of our horses announced the dawn.

After a hurried breakfast on fragments of the last night's repast we strolled out over the extensive gardens. Here many a broken arbour and trellis, bending under ma.s.ses of jasmine and honeysuckle, show the care and taste that were once lavished on this wild but beautiful hermitage: a garden-house, surrounded by an enclosure of roses run wild, lies in the midst of a grove of myrtle and bay trees. This was Lady Hester's favourite resort during her lifetime; and now, within its silent enclosure,

"After life's fitful fever she sleeps well."

The hand of ruin has dealt very sparingly with all these interesting relics; the Pasha's power by day, and the fear of spirits by night, keep off marauders; and though we made free with broken benches and fallen doorposts for fuel, we reverently abstained from displacing anything in the establishment except a few roses, which there was no living thing but bees and nightingales to regret. It was one of the most striking and interesting spots I ever witnessed: its silence and beauty, its richness and desolation, lent to it a touching and mysterious character, that suited well the memory of that strange hermit-lady who has made it a place of pilgrimage, even in Palestine. {49}

The Pasha of Sidon presented Lady Hester with the deserted convent of Mar Elias on her arrival in his country, and this she soon converted into a fortress, garrisoned by a band of Albanians: her only attendants besides were her doctor, her secretary, and some female slaves. Public rumour soon busied itself with such a personage, and exaggerated her influence and power. It is even said that she was crowned Queen of the East at Palmyra by fifty thousand Arabs. She certainly exercised almost despotic power in her neighbourhood on the mountain; and what was perhaps the most remarkable proof of her talents, she prevailed on some Jews to advance large sums of money to her on her note of hand. She lived for many years, beset with difficulties and anxieties, but to the last she held on gallantly: even when confined to her bed and dying she sought for no companions.h.i.+p or comfort but such as she could find in her own powerful, though unmanageable, mind.

Mr. Moore, our consul at Beyrout, hearing she was ill, rode over the mountains to visit her, accompanied by Mr. Thomson, the American missionary. It was evening when they arrived, and a profound silence was over all the palace. No one met them; they lighted their own lamps in the outer court, and pa.s.sed unquestioned through court and gallery until they came to where _she_ lay. A corpse was the only inhabitant of the palace, and the isolation from her kind which she had sought so long was indeed complete. That morning thirty-seven servants had watched every motion of her eye: its spell once darkened by death, every one fled with such plunder as they could secure. A little girl, adopted by her and maintained for years, took her watch and some papers on which she had set peculiar value. Neither the child nor the property were ever seen again.

Not a single thing was left in the room where she lay dead, except the ornaments upon her person. No one had ventured to touch these; even in death she seemed able to protect herself. At midnight her countryman and the missionary carried her out by torchlight to a spot in the garden that had been formerly her favourite resort, and here they buried the self-exiled lady.-_From_ "THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS," _by Eliot Warburton_.

Footnotes:

{1} A "compromised" person is one who has been in contact with people or things supposed to be capable of conveying infection. As a general rule the whole Ottoman Empire lies constantly under this terrible ban. The "yellow flag" is the ensign of the quarantine establishment.

{2} The narghile is a water-pipe upon the plan of the hookah, but more gracefully fas.h.i.+oned; the smoke is drawn by a very long flexible tube, that winds its snake-like way from the vase to the lips of the beatified smoker.

{3} That is, if he stands up at all. Oriental etiquette would not warrant his rising, unless his visitor were supposed to be at least his equal in point of rank and station.