The hotel Bellevue, which looks upon the sea and hears always the waves dashing upon the worn and jagged rocks, was overflowed by one of those swarms, which are the nuisance of independent travellers, known as a “Cook's Party,” excellent people individually no doubt, but monopolizing hotels and steamboats, and driving everybody else into obscurity by reason of their numbers and compact organization. We passed yesterday one of the places on the coast where Jonah is said to have left the whale; it is suspected—though without any contemporary authority—that he was in a Cook's Party of his day, and left it in disgust for this private conveyance.
Our first care in Beyrout was to secure our passage to Damascus. There is a carriage-road over the Lebanons, constructed, owned, and managed by a French company; it is the only road in Syria practicable for wheels, but it is one of the best in the world; I suppose we shall celebrate our second centennial before we have one to compare with it in the United States. The company has the monopoly of all the traffic over it, forwarding freight in its endless trains of wagons, and despatching a diligence each way daily, and a night mail. We went to the office to secure seats in the diligence.
“They are all taken,” said the official.
“Then we would like seats for the day after to-morrow.”
“They are taken, and for the day after that—for a week.”
“Then we must go in a private carriage.”
“At present we have none. The two belonging to the company are at Damascus.”
“Then we will hire one in the city.”
“That is not permitted; no private carriage is allowed to go over the road farther than five kilometres outside of Beyrout.”
“So you will neither take us yourselves nor let any one else?”