WALL FROM WHICH ST. PAUL ESCAPED, DAMASCUS.
(Photo: Bonfils.)
This railway line is a new one, due to French enterprise, and was opened in August, 1895. The Lebanon district owes much to the French. We were a party of seventy, and had chartered a special train. The distance is only about ninety miles; it seemed almost impossible that the journey should take nine hours, as we were told; but there are more than a score of stations, and at each one the train (even a special) stops for several minutes—by order of the Government, we heard. And, more than that, the line passes right over Libanus and Anti-Libanus, reaching a point some 5,000 feet up, where the coast of Cyprus comes in sight over the blue waters of the Mediterranean; while, as one journeys east, the snowy top of Hermon stands out against the sky away to the south. A system of cogs and several reversings of the engine carried us high into the mountains in a very short time. Beirut was left far below, and we were among the snows, glad of the rugs and thick overcoats which wisdom (not our own) had advised us to bring; glad, too, by mid-day of the lunch we had brought with us. Even in the midst of the grandest scenery we were vulgarly hungry, and rather sleepy when we felt the rare atmosphere. After a time, the scene changed: we were in Cœle-Syria, among mulberries and vineyards, from which comes Lebanon wine. Here and there were mud villages, with picturesque groups of natives and cattle. We were the first large English party to pass over the line; and at one station a red-robed Syrian, who had served in a London milliner's years ago, asked eagerly for an English newspaper, to know what was going on in Constantinople! He got one from us about a fortnight old; we had none later. Elsewhere the natives were wondrously pleased to see some of our party playing at leapfrog during the stops.
DETAIL OF THE CARVED WORK IN A JEWISH HOUSE.
(Photo: Bonfils.)
Over the hills the diligence road runs for the most part near the railway, and here and there we saw strings of mules winding along above us. We passed Anti-Libanus at an altitude of 4,000 feet above the sea, and at Zebdany entered the valley of the Barada (the ancient Abana), which we followed the remaining twenty-four miles to Damascus. Here and there are short tunnels or cuttings, and almost everywhere splendid cliffs, sometimes cavernous, and rich valleys with orchards and olive-trees.
About nightfall we ran into Damascus, and were driven to the Hotel Besraoui: we were getting used by this time to the apparently reckless manners of the Oriental driver. There are large barracks close to the station: the Government put them up when the railway was made, as a measure of political prudence. At Zahleh, the half-way station, whence runs the road to Baalbek, we had seen trucks full of Turkish soldiers returning from the Haurân, where the Druses had been giving trouble; in fact, the first train chartered for our party at Beirut was taken for military purposes by the Government officials, so we understood, leaving us to wait till the next morning! And now we found troops bivouacked along the road by which we left the station for our hotel. They are good soldiers, these Turks, and not bad fellows, from what I have heard; but unpaid, unclad, unfed, many of them, we were told, had died under their hardships.
Arrived at the hotel, we passed through the entrance hall into an open central court, where a fountain was playing in the midst of leafy trees. By the stairs and balconies surrounding it we mounted to our bedrooms. The hotel was a new and a large one, but the almost unexpected incursion of a party of seventy taxed the resources of the kitchen somewhat heavily. It was not till breakfast-time, however, that this appeared: the Damascenes had evidently thought it a good opportunity to get rid of stores of eggs which had passed the first bloom of freshness. But there was no other ground of complaint. A large staff of native waiters had been drafted in to attend us in the large chilly dining saloon—for we were out of "the season." Before leaving the dinner-table we were warned that if anyone ventured into the streets he must, by law, carry a lantern; but that, as the city was full of soldiers, and a good deal of excitement prevailed—a number of Druse prisoners being expected—we had better stay indoors. There was not much temptation to do otherwise after a weary day's travel beyond stepping into the street to look up at the brilliant stars sparkling in the cold night, as they must have done to the eyes of patriarchs and perhaps of Magi, of Naaman and of Omar. And in the drawing-room there had actually been lighted a real fire—a rare luxury in Syria and Palestine. Of course, one must send some postcards to friends at home—it is not every day you can date a letter from Damascus—and there is always a diary waiting to be "written up"; but it was not long before we drifted bedwards, to sleep for the first time in perhaps the most ancient city in the world.
