We made always, except in the steep ascents, about ten miles an hour. The management of the route is the perfection of French system and bureaucracy. We travel with a way-bill of numbered details, as if we were a royal mail. At every station we change one horse, so that we always have a fresh animal. The way-bill is at every station signed by the agent, and the minute of arrival and departure exactly noted; each horse has its number, and the number of the one taken and the one left is entered. All is life and promptness at the stations; changes are quickly made. The way-bill would show the company the exact time between stations; but I noticed that our driver continually set his watch backwards and forwards, and I found that he and the dragoman had a private understanding to conceal our delays for lunch, for traffic with Jews, or for the enjoyment of scenery.
After we had crossed the summit of the first ridge we dashed down the gate of a magnificent canyon, the rocks heaved up in perpendicular strata, overhanging, craggy, crumbled, wild. We crossed then a dreary and nearly arid basin; climbed, by curves and zigzags, another ridge, and then went rapidly down until we struck the wild and narrow gorge of the sacred Abana. Immediately luxuriant vegetable life began. The air was sweet with the blossoms of the mish-mish (apricot), and splendid walnuts and poplars overshadowed us. The river, swollen and rushing amid the trees on its hanks, was frightfully rapid. The valley winds sharply, and gives room only for the river and the road, and sometimes only for one of them. Sometimes the river is taken out of its bed and carried along one bank or the other; sometimes the road crosses it, and again pursues its way between its divided streams. We were excited by its rush and volume, and by the rich vegetation along its sides. We came to fantastic Saracenic country-seats, to arcaded and latticed houses set high up over the river, to evidences of wealth and of proximity to a great city.
Suddenly, for we seemed to have become a part of the rushing torrent and to share its rapidity, we burst out of the gorge, and saw the river, overpassing its narrow banks, flowing straight on before us, and beyond, on a level, the minarets and domes of Damascus! All along the river, on both banks of it, and along the high wall by the roadside, were crowds of men in Turkish costume, of women in pure white, of Arabs sitting quietly by the stream smoking the narghileh, squatting in rows along the wall and along the water, all pulling at the water-pipe. There were tents and booths erected by the river. In a further reach of it men and boys were bathing. Hanks and groups of veiled women and children crouched on the damp soil close to the flood, or sat immovable on some sandy point. It is a delicious holiday for two or three women to sit the livelong day by water, running or stagnant, to sit there with their veils drawn over their heads, as rooted as water-plants, and as inanimate as bags of flour. It was a striking Oriental picture, played on by the sun, enlivened by the swift current, which dashes full into the city.
As we spun on, the crowd thickened,—soldiers, grave Turks on caparisoned horses or white donkeys, Jews, blacks, Persians. We crossed a trembling bridge, and rattled into town over stony pavements, forced our way with difficulty into streets narrow and broken by sharp turns, the carriage-wheels scarcely missing men and children stretched on the ground, who refused, on the theory of their occupation of the soil prior to the invention of wheels, to draw in even a leg; and, in a confused whirl of novel sights and discordant yells, barks, and objurgations, we came to Dimitri's hotel. The carriage stopped in the narrow street; a small door in the wall, a couple of feet above the pavement, opened, and we stepped through into a little court occupied by a fountain and an orange-tree loaded with golden fruit. Thence we passed into a large court, the centre of the hotel, where the Abana pours a generous supply into a vast marble basin, and trees and shrubs offer shelter to singing birds. About us was a wilderness of balconies, staircases, and corridors, the sun flooding it all; and Dimitri himself, sleek, hospitable, stood bowing, in a red fez, silk gown, and long gold chain.
XIII.—THE OLDEST OF CITIES.
IT is a popular opinion that there is nothing of man's work older than Damascus; there is certainly nothing newer. The city preserves its personal identity as a man keeps his from youth to age, through the constant change of substance. The man has in his body not an atom of the boy; but if the boy incurred scars, they are perpetuated in the man. Damascus has some scars. We say of other ancient cities, “This part is old, that part is new.” We say of Damascus, its life is that of a tree, decayed at heart, dropping branches, casting leaves, but always renewing itself.
How old is Damascus? Or, rather, how long has a city of that name existed here on the banks of the Abana? According to Jewish tradition, which we have no reason to doubt, it was founded by Uz, the son of Aram, the son of Shem. By the same tradition it was a great city when a remarkable man, of the tenth generation from the Deluge,—a person of great sagacity, not mistaken in his opinions, skilful in the celestial science, compelled to leave Chaldea when he was seventy-five years old, on account of his religious opinions, since he ventured to publish the notion that there was but one God, the Creator of the Universe,—came with an army of dependants and “reigned” in the city of Uz. After some time Abraham removed into Canaan, which was already occupied by the Canaanites, who had come from the Persian Gulf, established themselves in wall-towns in the hills, built Sidon on the coast, and carried their conquests into Egypt. It was doubtless during the reign of the Hittites, or Shepherd Kings, that Abraham visited Egypt. Those usurpers occupied the throne of the Pharaohs for something like five hundred years, and it was during their occupancy that the Jews settled in the Delta.
Now, if we can at all fix the date of the reign of the Shepherd Kings, we can approximate to the date of the foundation of Damascus, for Uz was the third generation from Noah, and Abraham was the tenth. We do not know how to reckon a generation in those days, when a life-lease was such a valuable estate, but if we should assume it to be a century, we should have about seven hundred years between the foundation of Damascus and the visit of Abraham to Egypt, a very liberal margin. But by the chronology of Mariette Bey, the approximate date of the Shepherds' invasion is 2300 B.C. to 2200 B. C., and somewhat later than that time Abraham was in Damascus. If Damascus was then seven hundred years old, the date of its foundation would be about 3000 B.C. to 2900 B.C.