In the Levant / Twenty Fifth Impression

by Charles Dudley Warner

“I have become dis pferd for four days,” cries the Baron.

There seems to be no reason to doubt the Baron's word; he has ridden the horse to Bethlehem, and become accustomed to his jolts, and no doubt has the prior lien on the animal. The owner has let him to both parties, a thing that often happens when the second comer offers a piastre more. Another horse is sent for, and we mount and begin to disentangle ourselves from the crowd. It is no easy matter, especially for the ladies. Our own baggage-mules head in every direction. Donkeys laden with mountains of brushwood push through the throng, scraping right and left; camels shamble against us, their contemptuous noses in the air, stretching their long necks over our heads; market-women from Bethlehem scream at us; and greasy pilgrims block our way and curse our horses' hoofs.

One by one we emerge and get into a straggling line, and begin to comprehend the size of our expedition. Our dragoman has made as extensive preparations as if we were to be the first to occupy Gilgal and Jericho, and that portion of the Promised Land. We are equipped equally well for fighting and for famine. A party of Syrians, who desire to make the pilgrimage to the Jordan, have asked permission to join us, in order to share the protection of our sheykh, and they add both picturesqueness and strength to the grand cavalcade which clatters out of Jaffa Gate and sweeps round the city wall. Heaven keep us from undue pride in our noble appearance!

Perhaps our train would impress a spectator as somewhat mixed, and he would be unable to determine the order of its march. It is true that the horses and the donkeys and the mules all have different rates of speed, and that the Syrian horse has only two gaits,—a run and a slow walk. As soon as we gain the freedom of the open country, these differences develop. The ambitious dragomen and the warlike sheykh put their horses into a run and scour over the hills, and then come charging back upon us, like Don Quixote upon the flock of sheep. The Syrians imitate this madness. The other horses begin to agitate their stiff legs; the donkeys stand still and protest by braying; the pack-mules get temporarily crazy, charge into us with the protruding luggage, and suddenly wheel into the ditch and stop. This playfulness is repeated in various ways, and adds to the excitement without improving the dignity of our march.

We are of many nationalities. There are four Americans, two of them ladies. The Doctor, who is accustomed to ride the mustangs of New Mexico and the wild horses of the Western deserts, endeavors to excite a spirit of emulation in his stiff-kneed animal, but with little success. Our dragoman is Egyptian, a decidedly heavy weight, and sits his steed like a pyramid.

The sheykh is a young man, with the treacherous eye of an eagle; a handsome fellow, who rides a lean white horse, anything but a beauty, and yet of the famous Nedjed breed from Mecca. This desert warrior wears red boots, white trousers and skirt, blue jacket, a yellow kufia, confined about the head by a black cord and falling upon his shoulders, has a long rifle slung at his back, an immense Damascus sword at his side, and huge pistols, with carved and inlaid stocks, in his belt. He is a riding arsenal and a visible fraud, this Bedawee sheykh. We should no doubt be quite as safe without him, and perhaps less liable to various extortions. But on the road, and from the moment we set out, we meet Bedaween, single and in squads, savage-looking vagabonds, every one armed with a gun, a long knife, and pistols with blunderbuss barrels, flaring in such a manner as to scatter shot over an acre of ground. These scarecrows are apparently paraded on the highway to make travellers think it is insecure. But I am persuaded that none of them would dare molest any pilgrim to the Jordan.

Our allies, the Syrians, please us better. There is a Frenchified Syrian, with his wife, from Mansura, in the Delta of Egypt. The wife is a very pretty woman (would that her example were more generally followed in the East), with olive complexion, black eyes, and a low forehead-; a native of Sidon. She wears a dark green dress, and a yellow kufia on her head, and is mounted upon a mule, man-fashion, but upon a saddle as broad as a feather-bed. Her husband, in semi-Syrian costume, with top-boots, carries a gun at his back and a frightful knife in his belt. Her brother, who is from Sidon, bears also a gun, and wears an enormous sword. Very pleasant people these, who have armed themselves in the spirit of the hunter rather than of the warrior, and are as completely equipped for the chase as any Parisian who ventures in pursuit of game into any of the dangerous thickets outside of Paris.

The Sidon wife is accompanied by two servants, slaves from Soudan, a boy and a girl, each about ten years old,—two grinning, comical monkeys, who could not by any possibility be of the slightest service to anybody, unless it is a relief to their pretty mistress to vent her ill-humor upon their irresponsible persons. You could n't call them handsome, though their skins are of dazzling black, and their noses so flat that you cannot see them in profile. The girl wears a silk gown, which reaches to her feet and gives her the quaint appearance of an old woman, and a yellow vest; the boy is clad in motley European clothes, bought second-hand with reference to his growing up to them,—upon which event the trousers-legs and cuffs of his coat could be turned down,—and a red fez contrasting finely with his black face. They are both mounted on a decrepit old horse, whose legs are like sled-stakes, and they sit astride on top of a pile of baggage, beds, and furniture, with bottles and camp-kettles jingling about them. The girl sits behind the boy and clings fast to his waist with one hand, while with the other she holds over their heads a rent white parasol, to prevent any injury to their jet complexions. When the old baggage-horse starts occasionally into a hard trot, they both bob up and down, and strike first one side and then the other, but never together; when one goes up the other goes down, as if they were moved by different springs; but both show their ivory and seem to enjoy themselves. Heaven knows why they should make a pilgrimage to the Jordan.

Our Abyssinian servant, Abdallah, is mounted, also on a pack-horse, and sits high in the air amid bags and bundles; he guides his brute only by a halter, and when the animal takes a fancy to break into a gallop, there is a rattling of dishes and kettles that sets the whole train into commotion; the boy's fez falls farther than ever back on his head, his teeth shine, and his eyes dance as he jolts into the midst of the mules and excites a panic, which starts everything into friskiness, waking up even the Soudan party, which begins to bob about and grin. There are half a dozen mules loaded with tents and bed furniture; the cook, and the cook's assistants, and the servants of the kitchen and the camp are mounted on something, and the train is attended besides by drivers and ostlers, of what nations it pleases Heaven. But this is not all. We carry with us two hunting dogs, the property of the Syrian. The dogs are not for use; they are a piece of ostentation, like the other portion of the hunting outfit, and contribute, as do the Soudan babies, to our appearance of Oriental luxury.

We straggle down through the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and around the Mount of Olives to Bethany; and from that sightly slope our route is spread before us as if we were looking upon a map. It lies through the “wilderness of Judæa.” We are obliged to revise our Western notions of a wilderness as a region of gross vegetation. The Jews knew a wilderness when they saw it, and how to name it. You would be interested to know what a person who lived at Jerusalem, or anywhere along the backbone of Palestine, would call a wilderness. Nothing but the absolute nakedness of desolation could seem to him dreary. But this region must have satisfied even a person accustomed to deserts and pastures of rocks. It is a jumble of savage hills and jagged ravines, a land of limestone rocks and ledges, whitish gray in color, glaring in the sun, even the stones wasted by age, relieved nowhere by a tree, or rejoiced by a single blade of grass. Wild beasts would starve in it, the most industrious bird could n't collect in its length and breadth enough soft material to make a nest of; it is what a Jew of Hebron or Jerusalem or Hamah would call a “wilderness”! This exhausts the language of description. How vividly in this desolation stands out the figure of the prophet of God, clothed with camel's hair and with a girdle of skin about his loins, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”