In a Syrian Saddle

by A. Goodrich-Freer

We knew better than to expect to find "Jericho roses" in the Jericho district, although this curious and interesting crucifer anastatica exists in considerable quantities about Masada, towards Engedi, some twenty hours south. It is an annual, and its curious blossoms are formed in the spring. We found, however, many specimens of the Dead Sea fruit, though still green and unripe. It is an asclepiad, calotropis procera, called by the Arabs oshr, and is strictly subtropical. The fruit, the "apple of Sodom" of Josephus, has an inflated, leathery skin, which, when crushed, leaves in the hand only fibres and bits of rind. The stalk has a strong milky juice. The name is also given to the solanum sanctum, of the family of the potato, which also resembles an apple, and is red, with black seeds.

Tristram has happily described the high lands above the Jordan valley as a "watershed ... the fruitful mother of many infant wadys," a wady being a river bed, and as we made our way along the Wady Heshban, almost due east, turning southward later in the day, we had glimpses of many of these glens, and we even forded a couple of streams on their way down to the Jordan before, towards noon, we found ourselves at the foot of the mountains. A clear running stream, a little grove of trees, were a temptation not to be resisted. In a moment we were off our horses, although, unfortunately, not in time to prevent the baggage animals—left for an instant by the mukaris, who hastened to receive our weary steeds—from refreshing themselves in their own fashion, by a roll in the cool water, oblivious of their encumbrances, or, possibly, possessed of some vague notion of debarrassing themselves of a superfluity. They had been travelling between seven and eight hours, and for the last two in intense heat, not only overhead but, from radiation of the light sandy soil, underfoot. We could not feel angry with them, and all cheerfully helped the Lady to hang her entire wardrobe and personal belongings upon the projecting branches of the jujube-trees, useful for once, as it was her saddle-bags which had suffered most, although a supply of cake, gingerbread, and chocolate was reduced to a condition uneatable by any but the mukaris, who considered the incident an acceptable dispensation of Providence, or, in their own phrase, maktoub—"it is decreed."

A few Bedu under the farther trees were the first human beings we had met since leaving Jericho except some camel-drivers who, silent and statuesque, their flocks of many scores of stately camels equally silent and pictorial, had seemed rather to be a part of the landscape than to have any human relation with ourselves. One of the group came forward, and greeted us in such fluent German that we at first took him for some agricultural speculator buying seed or seeking labourers from among the fellahin; for the agriculture—that is the organised, not to say scientific, agriculture of Palestine—is practically in the hands of Germans and Jews. However, he turned out to be a native, educated at one of the many German schools of Jerusalem, or elsewhere, at one time an employé of the Austrian post office, on his way, alone, with a dagger and a revolver for sole companions, to visit some property at Madaba. On hearing that this was our destination he begged permission to join our cavalcade, which the Professor readily granted, as the remaining journey, among the mountains, was especially solitary. We were very grateful for coffee and an excellent lunch of sausage, potted meat, and jam, with white bread, brought from Jerusalem, the last European bread we were likely to see. We ate our dainties with some sense of guilt, and a shamefaced sensation of geographical and historical anachronism, as the Professor, without waiting for our feast to be unpacked and spread, produced from some secret recess three parcels, one of which was laid aside for the moment, though with a promissory glance at the Lady, which she knew denoted instruction in view. The other two proved to be bags, one containing dates, the other figs, "Dates and figs," we were informed, "were the natural food of desert wanderers, sufficing to the body, stimulating to the mind; the wheat, the flesh, above all the alcohol, of civilisation, were mere irrelevancies." Here some of us sought to conceal our sandwiches and withdraw our anticipations from private flasks. "Was it not diet such as this," and he waved a pair of sensitive hands over his ascetic larder, "which had enabled him to reply to the inquiry of a Personage as to how many hours a day he could ride in the desert—'Twenty-four, your Majesty, since the day does not contain twenty-five, and a man will endure anything for the sake of his miserable life'? For was it not on a diet of figs and dates that he had ridden sixty hours without dismounting, resting only for two hours, when he dropped out of the saddle, just one hour's ride from friends and safety? Was it your meat-eater, your wine-drinker, who remained sound and wholesome when necessity obliged him to refrain from ablution for twenty-one days? 'If a man must be a pig or die of thirst, your Majesty,' he had submitted to the Personage in question, 'will he not rather be a pig?' a sentiment with which even royalty heartily concurred." At this point he carefully counted his date stones, observed that two more were yet due to his appetite, and, having finished his frugal luncheon, drew from the saddle-bag deposited beside him his native pipe, some eighteen inches long, of which the clay head and wooden stem were carefully and separately wrapped in paper, filled it with strong tobacco, and lighted it with a mysterious paper match, laid atop, which smouldered for a perceptible time, and set fire to the precious fuel. Someone, anxious, perhaps, for the just distribution of human praise and blame, unwisely murmured that "tobacco was a luxury." The Professor withdrew his pipe to describe the less costly "smokes" of desert life. The paths across the desert of Central Arabia have been the same, probably, since the earliest ages. Man, camel-mounted, with the same dress, food, purpose, habits, has crossed those golden sands for æons as, and where, he crosses them now. The living of to-day are treading the dust of yesterday, and amid that dust we may look not only for bleached bones and hypophosphates, but even for the decomposed dust of camel droppings. These, dried and purified, it may be, by centuries, are the substitute for tobacco of desert life. The Professor would not acknowledge any ability to give a personal opinion of its quality, but the Sportsmen, adventurous in this as in all else, were suspected later, when we reached the camel district, of making a personal experiment in the interests of science, with what results it was never revealed.

The Professor emptied his pipe, and, calling the attention of the Lady, opened his third parcel, which proved to contain a large square of white net. "Such a treasure as this," he admonished her, "you would do well to acquire. It is a luxury of travel. When I wish for repose I envelop myself. It averts flies and mosquitoes, and is a hint to my companions that I do not desire conversation." So saying, he modestly withdrew into its folds, and only a neat little pair of black boots emerging from—apparently—a bridal veil, remained to indicate his personality.

The rest of us drew our keffeeyes before our eyes, laid our heads upon any sloping substance that offered itself, and neither man nor beast needed further inducement to enter into the land of dreams.

At two o'clock we were again in the saddle, conscious of between 3000 and 4000 feet to climb. Our faces were set eastward, but we knew that we had to reach a point above and beyond Mount Nebo, which lay immediately south, "to climb where Moses stood, and view the landscape o'er." Very soon the shrubs, which had hitherto been at least our occasional companions, were left behind, and, perpetually climbing, we began to realise that we had entered a new world. The limestone, dolomite, and gravel limestone of Judæa had largely given place to a formation different alike in colour and outline—mainly red sand-stone, often of very fantastic features, and a certain amount of basalt—later, as we came still farther south, masses of green-stone and boulders of pudding-stone. The green-stone is embedded in and streaked with a deep olive grey, but in places is as green as malachite. Tristram points out that a dip in the strata brings the limestone again in places to the surface, which probably accounts for the varied colouring of the cliffs—black, red, and white—which, in the clear, brilliant sunshine, is dazzling in its effect. The great tableland of Moab lies about 4000 feet above the Dead Sea valley, and slopes gently eastward for some twenty-five miles, beyond which rises another range of hills (limestone), the watershed of Moab, and the frontier of Arabia, whose blue distances we afterwards came to feel as a new limitation, which we longed to cross, as formerly we had longed to cross the hills of Moab.

For miles we saw no sign of human life, no cultivation, no domestic animal, only wide stretches of bare rock and a scant vegetation, which seemed, although so burnt as to be difficult to distinguish, mainly sandwort and soapwort. Now and then a flash of shadow showed that a lizard had darted away, but even small birds were rare. When the wide zigzag, which always seemed to turn horizontally just as we had begun to make advance, allowed us, from time to time, to cast glimpses westward at the mountains of Judæa, we were much astonished at their height and grandeur. A prophet has no honour in his own country, and we had no conception that the familiar range would have so much dignity from afar. Finally, we reached a tableland, a wide terrace, before arriving at the foot of the farther range of mountains, which we must still pass.

We halted beneath a solitary tree, and were thankful for the contents of our water-bottles. Glass bottles cased with straw and packed in saddle-bags were almost hot enough to make tea from, whereas the German military flasks of the Sportsmen, with felt coverings damped before starting, and hooked to the saddle, provided a deliciously cool drink. Mount Nebo, which had all day dominated the landscape southwards to our right, had much dwindled in importance, and indeed the end of our journey would bring us to an elevation 600 feet its superior; and there are indeed many points from which Moses might have had a much finer panorama of the promised land than that conventionally pointed out.

Very soon we begin to climb the farther and final range, and to enter into a district in which the human interest again awoke, not the less strongly that it was connected with a past which, in England, we should consider remote, but which we describe here as "merely Roman"—that is to say, not quite two thousand years ago. The Roman road, which we followed for some distance, is in much better condition than, for example, the road between Jerusalem and Jaffa, or Jerusalem and Bethlehem, in spite of the heavy road tax which, theoretically, keeps them in order, and the milestones, though prostrate, are still of imperial dignity—massive columns some six or eight feet in height.

Other columns and great hewn stones are scattered here and there by the roadside, telling of a grandeur that is past, of a civilisation with which we have nothing to compare. Another chapter in human history had been recently suggested by a great dolmen, worthy of Stonehenge; some of us longed to turn aside to examine it more closely, as it was the first we had seen in this country, although they are very abundant east of Jordan, especially in the district lying between Heshbon and the hot springs of Callirhoe.