CHAPTER XXII—TRAVELING IN A CARAVAN—SIGHTS ON THE WAY.
Turning our faces eastward—The land of the Sun—Palmyra, Bagdad, and Babylon—The desert in summer and winter—A dangerous road—The Robbers of the Wilderness—Ruins in the Desert—A city of wonders—The haunts of the Bedouins—Engaging an escort—The start for Palmyra—On a Dromedary’s back—The environs of Damascus—A bed on the sand—“Everyone to his taste”—A knavish Governor—Winking at Robbery—In the Desert—On the great caravan track—Caravansaries, what are they?—The high road to India—An Arab fountain.
HOW I longed, when at Damascus, to push further into Asia. Before me lay the land of the Arabian nights—the valley of the Euphrates and of the Tigris; beyond the horizon my imagination pictured the battlemented walls of Bagdad, her white domes and arrowy minarets shining among the waving palms.
I walked her streets once trodden by the feet of Haroun-al-Raschid and made familiar in the stories that were written in his time and—if we may believe our tradition—for his entertainment.. I fancied myself upon the site of Babylon or of Nineveh, and amid the crumbled ruins of those once powerful cities that represented the grandeur and greatness of the ancient East.
I followed the story of Xenophon in the retreat of the Ten Thousand, and stood upon the ground where Alexander marched to the glory that made him The Great. I was upon the threshold—yes, I had passed the portals—of that part of the East which has suffered least from the progress and enterprise of the Occident. With longing eyes I looked beyond the rising sun and wished, oh, how I wished, that I might go on and on till I should tread the soil of Ormuz or of Ind, and feel upon my brow the spice-laden breezes of fair Cathay.
But fate was inexorable and many things conspired to prevent my further progress. We had arranged to keep together till we reached Egypt; the rest of the party were pressed for time and had determined upon Damascus as the Ultima Thule of their journey. The season was not favorable for an overland excursion as we might be caught in winter storms in the desert, and furthermore the robbers were more dangerous then than in the summer. From Damascus it is customary to travel with a caravan under a heavy escort, and there would be no caravan for several months. The authorities will sometimes give an escort and be responsible for the safety of the traveller, but such an outfit costs heavily and requires a very long purse. Arrangements can be made to ride with the fortnightly mail from Damascus to Bagdad, but there are various objections to this mode of journeying.
I thought over all the obstacles in my way and concluded that it was best to keep with our party and go on to Palestine and Egypt. Among the reasons which impelled me to this decision was the fact that I had neither time nor money enough to go farther East, and besides I should be cut off from the society of the “Doubter.” I might get along without money by setting up as a dervish and begging my way, but could existence be possible without our skeptic? Consequently I must go to Egypt.
Even Palmyra had to be given up, and, sighing, I turned my face to the west. But I fell in with a French traveller, who had come overland from Bagdad and spent a day at Palmyra, and I listened with boyish interest to his account of what he saw there.
It is no small matter to reach Palmyra, for the reason that it stands in the midst of desolate wastes, which are the possession or at all events the “backsheeshing” ground of the most lawless of the Bedouin Arabs They have no conscientious scruples about robbery; the only point in their favor is that they are averse to shedding blood, and unless he offers resistance, the traveller can feel as certain about saving his life as he is of losing his property. They may strip him of everything and leave him naked, on foot, and without food or drink in the middle of the desert, but they have qualms of conscience about murder, though quite willing their victim should starve or roast to death. Those who assert that the Bedouins are heartless and cruel, should take | note of the above fact, and make an ample apology if they have hitherto said anything uncomplimentary about these plundering blackguards.
It is absolutely necessary to have an escort in going to Palmyra, and one can be found among the Bedouin sheiks, loafing around Damascus. Under their convoy the traveller can consider himself secure; they are pretty honorable in this respect, and after getting a heavy “backsheesh” for safe conduct, they carry out their contracts, though they expect an additional “backsheesh” on their return and the delivery of the traveller to himself, in good order and condition. It is better to leave money and valuables in Damascus, taking only enough coin along to pay trifling expenses, and leaving the compensation of escort and dragoman at the banker’s or consulate. If you are going overland to Bagdad, carry your money in drafts and circular notes, and not in gold. The Bedouin has a sharp eye for money, and much coin is sure to attract it.
The Palmyra journey should be made with camels or dromedaries, for the reason that there are long stretches without water. Horses may be ridden, but there must be one or more camels at any rate to carry water for them. The sheiks always prefer to take no horses, as they can thereby make the journey more quickly, and consequently cheaper.
Well, let us suppose we are going to Palmyra. We have completed all our arrangements, agreed upon the price to be paid, and how to pay it, have arrayed ourselves in Oriental garments, mounted our dromedaries, and filed out of the city. There may be a difficulty in obtaining a sufficient number of dromedaries for the start, and in that case we ride horses to Kuryetien, about! two days’ journey from Damascus. There the sheik will have the necessary animals assembled and waiting our arrival.
We strike away to the northeastward, going at first along a paved road and among the groves and gardens for which the country around Damascus is famous. We meet crowds of people on their way to town, and accompanied by camels and donkeys: bearing the produce of the farms. In some seasons of the year we will meet long strings of camels, which have come from Bagdad, laden with dates, silks, leather goods, and other merchandise from that city; there may be dozens of these in a single party, and sometimes there may be hundreds of them. The drivers are brown, and not over clean; water has been a scarce article among them, and the rivers of Damascus are to their eyes a most welcome sight. One would think that the privations of the desert would inspire no great love for the arid waste, and yet these wild Arabs are so attached to it that they make their stay in the city as brief as possible, and the moment their business is ended they hasten back to their wanderings in the wilderness.
“Give me a pillow of snow,” said a Laplander, breathing his last in a Southern clime, “and I shall die happy.”
“Give me my bed of sand in the desert,” says the Bedouin Arab, “and I shall sleep in peace.”
Every man to his own liking. Tastes are different all the world over.
Ten or twelve miles from Damascus, we leave the groves and shady gardens, and emerge upon a plain irrigated by the waters of the Barada. The plain is cultivated, though generally destitute of arboreal productions, and here and there are the little clumps of trees where the houses of the farmers are embowered. We passed some villages in the groves; we see a little hamlet on the plain to our right, but evidently we were not likely to find a dense population. Now we leave the plain and ascend a some-what rugged path along a barren and rounded mountain which attains an elevation of nearly two thousand feet above the valley of the Barada. In an hour or so we reach the pass, and at the ruin of an old caravansary we look down upon a plain which stretches away like an ocean and fills the eastern horizon.
Five villages are in sight; they are the homes of the people that cultivate portions of this plain. Wheat and barley are the principal products of the plain, and they find a market in Damascus. The inhabitants are peaceable, but their frequent encounters with Bedouin plunderers have made them acquainted with the use of weapons, and give them a rather warlike appearance. They dress much like the Bedouins, and a stranger finds it difficult to distinguish one from the other. The first night of the journey is usually spent at Jerud, a large village, which is the capital of the province and the dwelling place of a Turkish agha or petty governor. He has a company of cavalry at his command to resist the Bedouin Arabs, and not unfrequently has occasion to use them. It is hinted that he sometimes shuts his eyes while a foray is in progress, and begins the pursuit when the plunderers have reached a secure distance. Of course the robbers are expected to do the square thing under such circumstances, and make an honorable division of the spoils. But we should not listen to such calumnies, as we expect to stop over night in the governor’s house, and as long as we are under his roof we receive every hospitality. The assemblage is a mixed one, as there are Arabs from half-a-dozen tribes spending the night there, and we are expected to show no haughtiness in any way. The man who goes around with his nose in the air will run the risk of a snub from some of his fellow-guests.
Out of Jerud we go in the morning at a pretty early hour, and very soon we are in the Desert. We have left the fertile country behind us, and before and around we have the treeless and desolate waste. We are in a wide valley bounded by bleak and barren hills whose sides present an unvarying panorama of grey rocks and earth. The ground is not sandy, but is covered with fragments of limestone and flint, and now and then we see a little tuft of coarse grass struggling to maintain an existence, and evidently doubtful about keeping it up.
Birds and beasts are rare; in fact there is no inducement for them to stay there. When speaking of birds in such a locality, I am reminded of the story of a traveller at an unpromising place somewhere in Utah of Nevada. He entered the diningroom of the only hotel and asked for breakfast.
“Can give you beefsteak, fried ham, and curlew,” said the landlord, whose beard resembled an inverted sage-bush, and whose belt revealed a bowie-knife and revolver. And he added, “The curlew is very good.”
“What is curlew?” said the wayfarer.
“It is a bird that we shoot round here.”
“Has it got any wings?”
“You bet it can fly!”
“Then bring me some beefsteak,” said the traveller, emphatically. “I want nothing to do with a bird that would stay in this miserable country when he could fly away from it. No curlew in mine, if you please.”
Three or four miles from Jerud we pass a village where there is a fountain, and then for nearly thirty miles the road follows the desert valley as before.
A hot sky above, bleak mountains on either hand, before us an undulating plain, shut in by these mountains, and beneath our feet the gravelly, flinty, verdureless soil, and our caravan slowly winding onward, form the scene presented to our eyes. Can we believe that this route has had an existence for centuries?
Thousands and thousands of years—history does not tell us for how long—this way has been trodden by the feet of patient camels and less patient men. It was the caravan route from Damascus to the opulent East. Ages and ages ago began and flourished a commerce now greatly decayed; as we look from the backs of our beasts of burden we see here and there the ruins of castles and caravansaries which once formed the halting places of the merchants when night overtook them, protected them against robbers, and in turn, perhaps, protected the robbers and sent out predatory bands for purposes of plunder. Once this was the great road to India and Far Cathay, long before the sea routes were known, and when navigation was in its most primitive state. Steam and sail and the mariner’s compass have laid a destroying hand on the caravan traffic, and in place of the myriad trains of camels that once moved along this mountain-girdled valley we find now but a comparatively thin thread of commerce. The world is a world of progress.
We reach Kuryetein, a large village occupied by Moslems and Christians in the proportion of two to one. It is in the same valley we have traversed all the way from Jerud, which continues to Palmyra, forty miles further on. Here is an oasis in the Desert; a fountain bursts from the end of a low spur which juts out of the mountain range and touches one end of the village.
It is quite possible that the man who declared it remarkable that great rivers run by large cities might insist that there is a fountain near Kuryetein and dispute our assertion that Kuryetein is near a large fountain; but we wont be particular about words, as we are to stop here over night and want to have a peaceful time of it, to prepare us for the fatigues of to-morrow.
The water from the fountain is carried in little canals by a very careful system of irrigation over a considerable extent of ground, and creates fertility in what would otherwise be a barren waste. Kuryetein is in the country of the Bedouins, and these Arabs frequently come and camp near the village on account of the water that constantly flows there. They bring their flocks j and herds and constitute themselves a general nuisance, as they are not particular about camping grounds and take the first place they can find, without much regard for the owner’s rights. If I were obliged to live in a village situated as this is, and under all its disadvantages, I would move away at once.
The broken columns and large stones, hewn and squared, lying around, indicate beyond a doubt that a city of importance once stood here, but the most diligent inquirer can learn nothing of the inhabitants concerning the place. It stood there as far back | as they can remember, and that is all they know about it.
CHAPTER XXIII—TENT-LIFE AMONG THE BEDOUINS.—THE WARRIORS OF THE DESERT.
Among the Bedouins—A Genuine Son of the Desert—High-toned Robbers—A Sample of Bedouin Hospitality—Etiquette in an Arab Encampment—A Cas-e of Insult—Tent-life and its Freedom—A Nation of Cavalry-Warriors—Bedouin Dress, Manners and Customs—Their Horses and Weapons—A Singular Custom—A Caricature Steed and his Rider—Arab Scare-Crows—On the Road to Palmyra—A Mountain of Ruins—The Grand Colonnade—The Temple of the Sun—A Building Half a Mile in Circumference—An Earthquake, and what it did—The City of the Caliphs.
WE are sure to see some of the real Bedouins of the Desert during our stay here, and this will be a good place to learn something about them.
The real, untamed Bedouin differs from the shabby counterfeit we see around Jerusalem and Beyrout as a five dollar gold piece differs from a bogus cent. The real Bedouin rides a fine horse (which is almost always a mare), and he gets himself up in a style sufficiently gorgeous to be a partial compensation to the traveller for being robbed by him. He is a dignified, high-toned thief, and transacts business on the square; he is never impolite, even when plundering you, and his hospitality is unbounded.
When you go to a Bedouin encampment you must stop at the first tent; if you pass it by for a better looking one you will offer the owner an affront he cannot easily forget, and ten to one he will come around and ask you to step out on the sidewalk and and have a little pugilism a la Bedouin. They wisely put the Sheik’s tent nearest the roadway, and consequently the stranger naturally comes into his hands and becomes his guest. They do all in their power to make the visitor comfortable, and treat him always to the best the place affords. He has the full and free run of the village, can go to the opera or circus without paying a cent, and can run up as large a bill as he chooses at any of the bars and restaurants. He pays nothing for carriages, morning papers, cocktails and cigars, and the street cars; hospitals and rat pits are always open to him. For a real free-and-easy to a stranger, nothing can beat a Bedouin encampment.
A gentleman who has seen much of the Bedouins between Damascus and Palmyra speaks of them as follows:
“The Amazeh are probably the most powerful of all the Arab tribes. They scour the Desert, from the Euphrates to the borders of Syria, and from Aleppo to the plain of Nejd—in winter emigrating to the Euphrates, and sometimes spreading over Mesopotamia; in spring they come up like “locusts for multitude” along the frontier of Syria. They can bring into the field ten thousand horsemen and nearly ninety thousand camel riders, and hair, having, usually, broad, vertical stripes of white and brown. On the head is the cafia or silk kerchief, held in place by a cord of camel’s hair. The sheiks are distinguished by a short scarlet pelisse lined with fur or sheepskin, and they wear large boots of red leather while the common people generally walk barefoot.
“The women are almost all handsome when young, and in form they are lords of a district forty thousand square miles in area. They are divided into four great tribes, which are not unfrequently at war, though they call themselves brothers.
“Their dress consists of an under garment of calico, gray or blue, reaching to the midleg, and fastened round the waist with a leathern girdle. The sleeves are wide and have very long, pendant points. Over this is thrown the abba or loose cloak of goat’s and feature many of them are models. But they have bad tempers, are oppressed with hard work from their youth, and soon lose all their freshness and beauty. Their dress is very simple, consisting of a wide loose robe of blue calico, fastened round the neck and sweeping the ground. On the head is a large black veil usually of silk but seldom used to cover the face. They are fond of ornaments; rings, ear-rings, bracelets and anklets of glass, copper, silver and gold are worn in great abundance. Five or six bracelets are often found on a single dark arm while rings of all shapes and sizes cover the fingers.
“The principal weapon of the Bedouin is a lance, about twelve feet long and steel pointed, and the opposite end contains an iron spike for fixing it in the ground. In a charge the lance is held above the head and just before striking it is shaken so as to make it quiver from end to end. All the horsemen carry swords and some of them carry pistols and daggers. The Bedouins have a novel mode of warfare with dromedaries each carrying two men. The foremost of these men has a short spear and a club or mace at his saddle bow and the other carries a matchlock.
“They seldom fight pitched battles. Guerrilla warfare is their forte. To fall upon the enemy suddenly, sweep off a large amount of booty and get back to their own territory again, ere rescue or reprisal can be effected, is the Arab style. Plundering parties often go a distance of eight or ten days’ journey. Every warrior rides his mare but has a companion mounted on a dromedary to carry provisions and water. The latter remain at a rendezvous while the horsemen make the attack. In their forays the Bedouins never kill an unresisting foe unless tempted by blood-revenge.”
The real Bedouin is not a large personage. He is rarely taller than five feet and seven or eight inches, and is not inclined to corpulence. He appears taller than he really is by reason of his erectness, and he has a light, elastic step and performs every movement with ease and grace. His features are sharp, his nose aquiline, his eyes dark, deep set and generally lustrous, his beard thin and short and his hair long and worn in greasy plaits down each side of the face. The complexion is a dark olive, but it varies considerably among different tribes. The Bedouins of Jerusalem and most other parts of Palestine are a burlesque upon the sons of the Desert. The “Doubter” called them sons of thieves, or something of the sort, and for once we agreed with him.
The first one that was pointed out to me was enough to make a chicken laugh or a mule sing. He was mounted on a horse that looked as if he had walked out of a bone-boiling factory by mistake and was waiting to go back again and take his turn. His (the horse’s) pet hold appeared to be in waiting, and certainly his general style indicated that he could put the time in that way better than in any other unless it were in dying.
As for speed he couldn’t pass any other horse, short of a dead one, except by going the other way, and I have a strong belief that a dead horse would have given him a reasonably lively trial.
He was all over knobs like an Irish blackthorn and the “Doubter” took him at first for a lot of oyster shells nailed against a garden gate. He drank through his left eye or rather the socket for it, and then his upper lip curled over in a sort of a hook that was very convenient in picking up anything; one ear hung forward and the other aft; his tail had been originally “set up” but it had broken and lopped half way so that it doubled back on itself in a manner remarkable to behold. The rider was as great a burlesque as the horse. He looked like a last year’s scarecrow, coming home from a drunk, and in gazing upon his looped and windowed raggedness you experienced a desire to move him to the nearest cornfield, run a bean pole through him, and set him up on a stump. As a work of art, he was worthy a place among the pictures and statuary in the capitol at Washington, and it was fortunate that none of our aesthetic Congressmen could have a chance at him. He carried a spear and tried to wave it at an imaginary foe, but before he got it in the air the point fell out and disconcerted him. We turned away to hide our tears—and smiles. A regiment of oil derricks would, be about as serviceable as one composed of these fellows, so far as fighting qualities are concerned. If I am ever robbed I hope it will not be by one of these cheap-John Bedouins. I should feel as badly as a man I once knew who was telling me of an accident from which he was limpingly recovering.
“To think,” said he, “that I should have been ten years at sea, and four years in the army in the field, with never a scratch, and then be run over by a swill-wagon and have my leg broken.”
In the forty miles and more from Kuryetein to Palmyra there is not a drop of water, and the journey is generally made in one day with a single brief halt. The valley is the same and varies from four to eight miles in width, and the features of the landscape are the same as before.
By and by the mountains shut in upon the valley and leave only a narrow and crooked pass. We enter this and suddenly the whole mass of ruins upon the site of Palmyra are spread before our wondering eyes.
The scene is wild, strange, grand, and gloomy. Ruins heaped on ruins, rows and rows of columns with great irregular gaps where Time and man have performed the work of destruction; huge pillars rising singly and in groups, scattered masses of enormous stones, broken arches and gateways and porticos, walls of immense strength encircling what was once the city, and in the back ground the great Temple of the Sun, these form the picture. Baalbek is humble in our minds as we look at Palmyra. No other ruin in Syria can compare with this. As we rode along the dreary stretch from Kuryetein to Palmyra we tried to imagine the spectacle that was to be revealed to us, but our imagination fell far short of the reality. We forget our fatigue and as our camel kneels we dismount and stand lost in admiration and amazement.
The greatest of all the ruins in Palmyra is that of the Temple of the Sun. The edifice was originally a square court, measuring seven hundred and forty feet on each of the four sides, and its walls were seventy feet high. Near the centre of this court was the temple, composed of Corinthian columns, which supported an entablature elaborately sculptured and revealing a high state of art. The work here is quite equal to that at Baalbek, and the resemblance in many points is remarkable. The temple is much defaced, as it has been used both as a fortress and a mosque, and in the latter instance the pious Moslems sought to remove as much as possible the indications of a pagan origin. Time has been more kind than man; the clear air of the Desert has preserved the sculptures wherever man left them untouched, and many of them are now as clear and sharp as when the architect pronounced his work complete, and stood in triumph at the entrance of the once magnificent portico. Remember that the columns of the temple were almost seventy feet high, and that inside the court nearly a hundred columns still remain standing!
About three hundred yards from the temple is the entrance to the grand colonnade, which originally consisted of four rows of columns, extending from one end of the city to the other, a dis tance of nearly an English mile. The columns were each nearly sixty feet high, including base and capital, and of the fifteen hundred that originally composed it, nine-tenths have fallen. It is thought that Palmyra has at some time suffered from an earthquake, as in some places whole ranges of columns are thrown down in such a way as to indicate that their fall was simultaneous. No one knows when this work was erected, but from certain marks on the stones, it is attributed to the time of the Emperor Hadrian.
The temple and the colonnade are the great wonders of Palmyra, and I will not detract from them by attempting a description of the other ruins inclosed within the walls or scattered among the hills that surround the site of this wonderful city. Let us fix our attention on the two objects I have named.
Palmyra, or Tadmor, owes its origin to Solomon, King of Israel. In his time the route of travel and commerce to and from the East lay in this direction, and he determined to found a city which should protect it. He, therefore, as recorded in I Kings ix. 18, built Tadmor in the wilderness.
For nearly a thousand years subsequent to the time of King Solomon, the name of Tadmor does not appear, but it became noticeable about the beginning of the Christian Era. After its submission to the Emperor Hadrian, its greatness increased rapidly; then it underwent a series of varying fortunes, until about the beginning of the fourth century, when the time of its grandeur came to an end, and its decline and fall were rapid. In the twelfth century it had a population of more than four thousand; now the only inhabitants of Palmyra are a few dozens of dirty and sullen Arabs, who live in hovels erected in the court yard of the Temple of the Sun.
We spend a day at Palmyra, wandering among its ruins and musing upon Solomon, and Hadrian, and Zenobia, whose very names are unknown to the people now dwelling there. Early the next morning we resume our seats in the saddle and return to Damascus.
From Palmyra one can travel to Bagdad by way of Mossool, and I met several gentlemen who had made the journey. It is a fatiguing one and must be made partly in the saddle and partly on a raft, unless the traveller is fortunate enough to find a boat at Mossool. The shores of the river are somewhat monotonous, and the principal incidents of the route are the danger of an upset.
Bagdad is well known to us from the recurrence of its name so frequently in the Arabian Nights. A British official who visited it a few years ago, says that it covers an enormous space for an Oriental city. Its population is estimated at about eighty thousand. The chief part of it consists of Arabs and Turks, but there is a large colony of Persians and other Orientals, as well as a fair number of Christians, and a few Jews.
The town proper is on one side of the Tigris, which is spanned by a bridge of boats, but the fine houses are scattered on both
banks. For a third of the year the climate of Bagdad is delightful, another third it is a trifle too warm for comfort, but can be endured, and for the remaining third it is so hot that it could give points to the inside of a smelting furnace and then beat it. At this time the inhabitants take shelter in their cellars, and anybody who has a refrigerator to sleep in is considered fortunate. They bake their bread by putting the dough on a platter and setting it in the sun, and when they want to roast a turkey or a joint of mutton, they put it on the housetop for a quarter of an hour about noon. I haven’t the documents for all the above statements, but know a man who will prepare them if paid in advance.
There is a curious disease in this part of the world, and its ravages extend through the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, and as far west as Aleppo. In Bagdad it is called the date-mark, and further west is known as the Aleppo button.
It is a sore, obstinate and annoying, but painless, and appears on any part of the body just as a boil does in Christian countries, It stays twelve months, and then heals of its own accord, leaving a scar which stays for life. At first this scar is the color of a date, but it fades out in a few years, and resembles the rest of the skin.
Everybody must have it once, and only once; the disease is impartial, as it shows no distinction between natives and foreigners who have not taken out their papers of naturalization. The gentleman who is my authority says he knew an officer in the British army, in whom the date-mark made its appearance while he was travelling from Bagdad to India. It remained untouched, and then an English doctor attempted to cure it.
He cauterized it every day for four weeks, and at the end of that time the sore dried up and healed. Everything went on well for a month, and then the sore reappeared—not in the old spot, but in four other places, where it remained five months and then vanished.
