CHAPTER XIX—THE GROVES OF LEBANON.—A NIGHT AMONG THE ARABS.
The “Sights” of Beyrout—Excursion to Dog River—An Obstinate Carriage-Owner—How he was “Euchred”—Moral of this Incident—Off for Damascus—Ascending Mt. Lebanon—An Arab Driver—Cultivating “Kalil,” our Jehu—The Cedars of Lebanon—A Grove as Old as Solomon’s Temple—A Wonderful Old City—The Temple of the Sun—Mystery of Tadmor—Cyclopean Masonry—Monstrous Monoliths—Their Dimensions—The “Doubter’s” Doubts and their Solution—Sleeping in an Arab House—What We Saw There—Divans as Couches—A Dangerous Valley—The Robber’s Haunt.
AFTER we had lunched we went out to see the town, and then we hired carriages for a drive to Dog River, which we were told would require a couple of hours. We were to pay six francs each carriage “for two hours to Dog River,” and when we were seated the owner of the stable demanded the money in advance.
We wouldn’t pay.
He threatened to unharness the horses, and actually began.
We told him he must take us out of the carriages, and we lighted our cigars, and settled back for a comfortable rest.
A crowd collected to see the fun. The owner swore that it was always the rule to pay in advance, and we replied that there was no rule without one exception.
He said he must take the money, as he could not trust his drivers, and we invited him to occupy the box till the end of the excursion, and then take his pay. The upshot of the matter: was that he finally told the drivers to go ahead, and they went. Dog River was reached in twenty minutes, and then the joke
was apparent. We would have been there and back in an hour or less had we paid in advance, and there would have been no such thing as redress.
We kept the carriages two hours and took a drive of a couple of miles on the Damascus road to a pretty grove of pines. Then we returned to town just inside of the stipulated time and handed over the pay to the drivers only when we were deposited at the door of the hotel.
Moral: Be cautious about paying a hackman in advance.
We are told and believe that the horse is a noble animal—why is it that nearly every one who associates with him is a scoundrel? A horse jockey is never held up as a pattern of honesty; the race track is the scene of much that is wicked, and as for hackmen, their rascality is the next thing to an axiom—a selfevident proposition.
Our carriage was at the hotel door at nine in the morning of the day after our arrival at Beyrout, and as soon as we could stow ourselves away we were off.
There was a comfortable space for five, but rather close work for six, and it was absolutely necessary that one should ride outside with the driver. I undertook the task, and by a scientific arrangement of baggage built up a comfortable seat. We started, and I went to cultivating the acquaintance of the driver.
He spoke a little French, so that he could manage to understand me, but his strong point in the way of language was Arabic. He was as black as—-well, one of the blackest men I ever saw—as black as the character of a candidate for office, when his opponent takes a turn at him. His lips were curly and his hair was thick—you can read the other way if you like—and he couldn’t be excited into a smile by any ordinary means. The only thing I could do to induce him to grin was to attempt to sing. He thought my singing rather funny, but, as it frightened the horses, he begged me to desist. He was a skilful driver, and his name, Kalil, a name about as common in that country as George or Charles with us.
We rattled out of Beyrout past the forest of pines to which the European residents sometimes drive on a pleasant afternoon. A rain during the night had moistened the road, and at several places where the laborers were repairing it, the carriage was a heavy load for the horses. These, by the way, were three in number, strong, sleek, well kept horses, that knew their work and performed it. Hardly were we out of the city before we began ascending Mount Lebanon, and the ascent is by no means an easy matter. The summit of the mountain where the road crosses it is five thousand six hundred feet above the sea level; as the crow flies, it is not more than seven miles from this summit to Beyrout, but as you follow the road it is nearly twenty miles. We were not fitted with wings for flying, and consequently we stuck to the road which the company provided for us. It was slow work for the horses, and, to ease the load, the lightest and most enterprising of us left the carriage and walked.
The road is of excellent construction and reflects great credit upon the engineer who made the surveys and laid it out. The cost must have been something very great, and I was not surprised to learn that the investment had never paid well, in spite of the apparently good business of the company. In addition to the two diligences each way daily, the company sends a daily freight train of fifteen wagons; whether there is anything or nothing for them to carry, it is all the same—the wagons start at a fixed time, and are allowed three days for the journey, from one city to the other.
There is a large station for freight in each of the terminal cities, and at reasonably regular intervals along the road there are wayside stations with stables of good size, and with quarters for the station-keeper and attendants. The stables, stock, wagons, carriages, and all other property of the company, appeared to be well kept, and without any meanness of management, and the discipline of the men was very strict. I had reason to find it out in a practical way.
I have done a good deal of staging and posting in various parts of the world, and have learned that it is generally a good plan to get on friendly terms with drivers, no matter what their nationality, color, or previous condition of servitude may be. In pursuance of this plan, I cultivated Mr. Kalil, the gentleman of Nubian origin, who conducted our atelage. I gave him a cigar as soon as we started, and he thanked me by touching his hand to his breast, his lips, and his forehead—this is a l’Arabe—and when we pulled up at a wayside cabaret to tighten some of the straps, I “stood treat” with a glass of arrack, which he swallowed without a grimace. Then I intimated that if he would put us through lively, and never mind killing a horse or two, he could consider me good for a liberal “backsheesh.” He shook his head and showed me the way bill, and I saw the company knew its business.
The drivers are required to go between the stations at a certain speed, and they must not exceed it, neither must they fall short, unless from unavoidable reasons. If they go too fast they are corrected; I do not know exactly how, but from the customs of the country, I should imagine that for a slight offense a driver’s pay would be stopped, and he would be pounded a few days with a hammer, a scythe, or a trace chain, till he died. For a more serious offense he would be treated with severity proportionate to the enormity of his conduct.
The time of arrival and departure at each station is noted on the way bill by the station master, so that there is no chance to cut under in any way. I observed the station master examining the horses’ feet as soon as the animals were delivered to him and then making notes on his book. I thought this a strange proceeding until I learned that the horses were numbered on the hooves, the number being neatly cut with an engraving tool, or burned in with an iron.
The company allows none but its own teams on the road, except on payment of a heavy toll; the old bridle road or track is in sight most of the way, and we saw many pack trams of camels, mules, donkeys, and horses threading their way through the mud, while we were rolling on a macadamized track. In no instance did we see a pack train on the modern road.
Away to the north, over a rough and difficult road, are the famous Cedars of Lebanon.
They are in a valley which is dominated by the high peaks of the range, and stand on a little hill or knoll, so that they are visible from a considerable distance.
The grove is not large—one can walk quite around it in half an hour—and contains not far from four hundred trees of all sizes. The old and gnarled trees are in the centre, while the younger ones form the outside of the grove. Not more than a dozen can claim any great antiquity, but there are thirty or forty others that vary from three to five feet in diameter—the largest of the trees, and supposed to be one of the oldest, is more than forty feet in circumference.
The trees have been much defaced and broken by visitors, some of whom would no doubt carry away the whole of Mount Lebanon if it could be packed in a travelling trunk.
Though there are other cedar groves in Syria, the one here mentioned is the most important, for the reason that it is supposed to have furnished the timber for Solomon’s Temple, as recorded in the Old Testament. Cedar trees were doubtless very abundant in the palmy days of Jerusalem; at present they are very scarce, and if the natives and other barbarians continue to destroy their limbs and build fires in the grove, as they do in these days, these famous trees will soon live only in history.
Up, up we went along the sides of Mount Lebanon, the air growing cooler as we rose, and a violent hail-storm dropping upon us. It was warm when we left Beyrout, and I mounted my box without an overcoat. Soon it grew cool, and I donned a light one; an hour later, I abandoned the light for a heavy one; next I spread my shawl in front of me, and next I wrapped a silk kerchief around my neck.
We made our second change of horses after passing the summit, and then began the descent. Now we had speed; we wound down and down, as we had wound up and up, but we went three or four times as fast. Far away at our feet lay a plain—the plains of Buka. Two hours from the summit, we were at Stora, a wayside station, where we passed the night, and were most kindly treated by the keepers—a Greek man married to an Italian woman, once a danseuse at La Scala, Milan.
Next morning before day, we were up and off for Baalbek, which lies about twenty miles away to the left of the road.
It had rained in the night, and the soil was soft and sticky, making slow work for our horses. The mud clung to their feet and formed huge balls, and we could only advance at a walk. The saddles were unused to us and we to them, and we hurt them a good deal. When we dismounted at Baalbek, every one of the party walked like Falstaff’s recruits, wide between the legs, as though accustomed to the gyves, and some of us were inclined to stand while at meals. We had no time to waste, and after lunch proceeded to do the ruins.
We found them all that fancy and travellers have painted them. They are grander and loftier than anything at Rome or Athens, and the architecture is of a most beautiful and delicate pattern. The temple in its glory must have been something majestic, and I have seen few things among the ruins and edifices of Europe and Asia more striking to the eye or more beautiful in general effect than the court and colonnades of the Temple of the Sun.
But the wonder of Baalbek is in the stones used in its construction. Hewn stones, twelve, fifteen, and twenty feet long, and proportionately wide and high, are frequent in the walls and substructures. You grow weary of saying: “There’s one!” “Look at this!” “and this!” “and this!” You wander down in the underground passages, and the size of the stones, placed as precisely as bricks in a wall of a building of to-day, fairly astounds you; you come out, and look on the wall of the temple, and you find stones twenty-four, twenty-eight, and thirty feet long, and proportionally wide and high. You see stones of this sort away up in the air at the tip of the columns, and you wonder how they got there.
In the western wall are three great stones, one of them sixtyfour feet long, another sixty-three feet eight inches, and another sixty-three feet; they are thirteen feet high and thirteen feet thick. They are twenty feet above ground, properly placed in position, and they were brought from the quarries nearly a mile away.
And in the quarries, is another stone of the same sort sixty-eight feet long, but not quite detached from the rock below.
Don’t drop the subject now but pace off sixty-three feet in your garden or back yard or some other man’s yard or garden; then pace off thirteen feet and then look up thirteen feet on the side of the house and then imagine a hewn stone as large, and after you have done it you will just begin to imagine these stones as we saw them.
During our evening halt at Stora one of us read aloud from the guide book the description of Baalbek.
When we came to the measurement of the stones the “Doubter” explained: “Is anybody fool enough to believe such nonsense?”
We tried to argue with him that possibly the stones were of that size, but he closed the argument as he did most arguments by saying: “I know better.”
On our way to Baalbek we saw the stone in the quarry and asked what he thought of it. "That is nothing,” he replied, “they haven’t moved it.”
When we saw the three stones in the wall and measured their length and height he said they were joined together.
He could find no joint and finally insisted that they were only thin slabs fastened to the walls, and to this day he insists that he knows they are nothing like what they are represented to be. He vowed not to speak of them when he reached home for fear he would not be believed.
He always kept the hotel bills so that he could prove that he had been to the places we visited.
“The ‘Doubter’ must be a veree great, what you call in English, liar, at home,” said our fair German companion one day, “if he thinks people not believe him without his hotel bills.”
The “Doubter” after all was a source of amusement to us at odd times, in spite of his high rank as a nuisance, and we finally concluded that it was well to have him along on the same principle that the Romans used to receive a victorious general with shouts of applause and triumphal honors and at the same time kept a slave at his side to call him opprobrious names and continually remind him that he was mortal.
The ancient Egyptian also set our party an example in the same way as they used to put a skeleton in one of the chairs at a public or private festivity so that the guests might remember what they were coming to.
We slept that night in an Arab house at Baalbek. Our beds were on divans or couches. We were tended by Arab man-servants and maid-servants and were bitten by Arab fleas. The rooms of every Arab’s house contain divans that extend along the end furthest from the door and sometimes along one of the sides. They consist usually of benches or frames not quite as high as the seat of a chair and about three and a half feet wide and are covered with mattresses that render them agreeable to sit or recline upon We found them quite comfortable after our hard day’s travel, though perhaps a trifle too hard for American natives. In the poorer houses these divans are of the same material as the floor—solid earth—covered with a mat of straw.
Most of the Arab houses are extremely dirty and abound in vermin. The one we occupied was quite neat and well kept, and the dragoman who accompanied us from Stora expressed surprise at our discovery of fleas. But we did not mind them as we were too weary to be bothered about trifles, and fleas are familiar acquaintances to a person who has travelled in Italy, Russia, and Turkey. Travelling, like poverty, acquaints one with a great many varieties of bed-fellows.
We were up long before day; we breakfasted by candle light, and before the sun tipped the summits of the Lebanon range with golden color, we were on horseback and away. Through the gray dawn we took the last look at the tall columns of the Temple of the Sun standing as they have stood for centuries and may stand for centuries to come.
Shall the edifices which we erect ever become like those of Baalbek, shrouded in a veil of mystery well nigh impenetrable, and fill so little place in the page of history that future ages shall not know who built them and what was their purpose?
Little, very little, is known of Baalbek; her foundation and her founders are unrevealed mysteries, and of her glory and progress and decline we have only the most meagre information. That the city is very ancient there can be no doubt; that her edifices are among the wonders of the world we have the evidence before us.
We rode down the plain of Buka as we had ascended it the day before. A little after eleven o’clock we flung ourselves or rather dropped ungracefully from our saddles and greeted the swarthy Kalil who had come out a short distance with the carriage to meet us. Kalil and the horses soon took us to Stora where we dined and then packed ourselves in the carriage to continue our journey to Damascus. We crossed the flat plain at a gallop and then entered a long valley leading up the range which is over against Lebanon.
This valley is known as the Wady Harir; then we cross a plain and after leaving this we enter a narrow winding glen, the Wady il Kurn, or “Valley of the Horn.” This pass is one of the wildest in the Anti-Lebanon; it is three miles long and was once very dangerous on account of the robbers that infested it. The sides are rough and but slightly wooded and the bottom is evidently at certain seasons of the year the bed of a torrent.
Night came on and shrouded everything around us in blackness; there was an extra touch of darkness to it as there was no moon and there were thick clouds between us and the stars. We could see little more than what was revealed by our lamps and that little soon became monotonous. We crossed the plain of Dinas and entered the gorge of the Abana, the river which is the pride of Damascus, and has always occupied a prominent place in her history.
“Are not Pharpar and Abana,” said Naaman, the leper, “rivers of Damascus better than all the rivers of Syria?”
Following the Abana we at length beheld the lights of Damascus, and at nine o’clock entered the city and were deposited at the door of the only hotel it contains.
