In a Syrian Saddle

by A. Goodrich-Freer

And stepping eastward seemed to be

A kind of heavenly destiny."

W. Wordsworth

The Jericho hotels were closed for the season, but with the connivance of the negro caretaker and of an Arab in charge of the adjoining orange-gardens we obtained entrance at one, and managed to provide ourselves with firing and an excellent supper, and, subsequently, with beds. The Lady, who alone of the party carried a watch, heard the negro awakening the Professor next morning with the information that it was three o'clock, and added greatly to her popularity by being in a position to call out an assurance that it was only one, and that two hours' further repose was permissible. The building, it should be mentioned, being constructed mainly of wood and of mud bricks was well adapted for distant conversation.

Three o'clock, however, duly arrived, all too soon, and by four o'clock we had breakfasted and were on our way across the sandy plain which stretches for about two hours between Jericho and the Jordan. A few faint streaks in the east promised the coming day, but it was still so dark that our horses required all our attention, as the plain is full of holes; twice over a silver gleam ahead warned us of fords to be crossed, and from time to time dark masses rose up before us, and those riding in advance called to the others to avoid the spreading branches of the jujube-tree, zizyphus lotus and zizyphus spina Christi, called by the Arabs nebk and sidr, which are the octopods of vegetable life, sending out long tentacles armed with fierce thorns, capable of subtracting your head-gear, entering your saddle, and imprisoning your horse.

The ride across the plain of Jordan, interesting at any time to persons of imagination, was unspeakably weird and suggestive in the morning twilight, but we differed as to whether the world in which we found ourselves was one in course of construction or of disintegration. Some of us were of opinion that the giant sand-hills—a labyrinth of marl and salt deposit, worn by winds and washed by winter torrents, an old sea bottom—which crumble at a touch, and which resemble castles, churches, towers, domes, minarets, whole towns of every variety of architecture, suggested an artist's dream of a world to be; while others maintained that they were the images, in the mind of a philosopher, dwelling upon the past. There was no limit to the tricks which fancy might play in such surroundings, a nearer fata morgana; a dream materialised as it created itself; a poem precipitated as it was sung: castles in Spain in which each of us saw some reminder of his personal aspirations: the land of By-and-by; the ruins of Yesterday; the house of Never, according to our individual temperament and faculty.

Riding was not very rapid during the first hour and more, so that it was nearly seven o'clock when we reached the Jordan bridge—the Rubicon between Palestine and Moab, an exceedingly rickety wooden structure, of which the only effective part is the door at either end, designed for the enforcement of backsheesh. The river is embowered in trees, a variety of willow known as the safsaf, various acacias, the farnesiana, not yet filling the air with its delicious scent, the tortilis, and seyal—with the long spines, which are found even on many plants innocent as lambs elsewhere, but fully armed in this land of thorns and thistles—the zakkum, resembling a large box-tree, also provided with strong thorns, the inevitable jujube zizyphus, the crimson-flowered oleander, which is as seldom out of blossom as is the gorse on our English moors, above all, the Jordan tamarisk, inseparable in one's memory from this river and its surroundings, green, graceful, and, in comparison with its many-armed and aggressive neighbours, gentle and friendly.

We had plenty of leisure to observe these details, for our arrangements with the guardians of the bridge involved not only inquiry, discussion, and the gratification of considerable curiosity but also consumption of coffee and distribution of backsheesh. The scene about us was animated and full of variety. The bridge may not be crossed before sunrise, and our arrival was timely, for types of the whole desert population seemed to have just arrived, and were pausing to reorganise their caravans. A group of fellahin, the agricultural labourers of the country, were bargaining with the Bedu, whose lands they are employed to cultivate at a wage of one-third of the profits, for the Bedu toil not neither do they spin. They are the sons of the desert, freedom is their birthright, and the fellah, compared with them, is as the "linnet born within the cage" to one who has always "known the summer woods." With his scanty white robe, his black head-cloth or keffeeye, his huge akal of camels' hair, he is probably not less ragged than the blue-robed fellah, but he has an air of indescribable dignity. Utterly independent of his surroundings, he is as unaffected by hunger or the absence of all the necessaries of life, as a Highland chief, and, like him, is proud not of the mere outside conditions of life but, literally, of the blood in his veins. "I suppose you are descended from Abraham?" someone remarked to an old Bedawin of this district.

"Oh no; Abraham was not at all of good family," he replied.

The Circassians, too, are there, with wide-skirted coats and astrachan caps; the Turcomans, with flashes of scarlet and yellow where Arabs would be wearing white or blue—to say nothing of certain Government officials, savouring of town life, in tarbush and European boots.