Our word greeting comes from the mutual hailing of the sea-kings’ ships. “I greet with grith;” we translate “I greet with peace.” Greet has still preserved in the North its original meaning—of crying or hailing.
Two Greek lines have preserved to us a distinction between the forms of the Arabs and the Phœnicians, which throw light on their respective character. The latter had dropt the “Salam” as not requisite for their avocations and mode of life—
Ἀλλ’ εὶ μὲν Σύρος ἔσσὶ Σαλὰμ, εὶ δ’ οὔν σύγε Φοῖνιξ
Αὔδονες, εὶ δ’ Ἐλλην χαῖρε, τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ φράσον.[296]
Nothing is more dignified than the dumb show of a Mussulman in salutation. The right arm is raised and the open hand is laid upon the breast. Such a habit would make any people graceful and courtly. This is the common form; the more refined is called “Gemenas,”[297] and consists in carrying the hand to the mouth, touching the lips with the points of the fingers and then the forehead with a simultaneous inclination of the head and body—the meaning is vulgarly interpreted, “I kiss your words and treasure them up in my brain This is the salute to a superior. To an inferior, the hand is carried to the lips and then to the breast, or it is raised to the breast only—the shades are infinite.”
The visit ended by a discussion upon government. It was always the same question—does the sultan of the Christians seize the property of a man because he is rich? When answered in the negative, they smiled and remained satisfied (because they themselves know no other evil) that we enjoy the most perfect felicity. Then, after a pause the inquiry will come—if there be any chance of the English occupying their country? Such things are apt to lead Europeans into the mistake of fancying such a country easily conquered.
In the morning we started in a southerly direction to visit a spot from which the sheik had formerly brought a remarkable specimen. We found the block from which he had taken it lying in a field. I was giving directions to dig around that I might ascertain whether it was in situ; when they, fancying I desired to move it, despatched a messenger for a couple of camels. While I was at work, a sulam fell over me, and on clearing myself and looking up, I saw a stranger on horseback, and found myself bound to refuse no favour he should ask. Elisha and Elijah immediately came before me. Elisha, when the mantle is thrown on him, asks no questions, but leaves his twelve pair of oxen. The stranger said, “Cure me.” I answered, “God alone can cure.” He then took his sulam, and, throwing it over my shoulders, brought the collar part of it close round my neck, and kissed my head. If a criminal can throw a sulam on the Sultan, or on the ground before him, he has taken sanctuary and cannot be put to death.
Soon afterwards I observed some singular black rocks, which proved to be masses of iron: close by there was a hard limestone containing very fine and beautiful madrepores. Two thick layers of the metal stood up in fragments some feet above the ground. We traced it in one direction for about three miles, when it was again covered by the horizontal sand-stone. They told us that in the other direction the same black stone was found in great quantities; in fact, in the cultivated fields the stones were iron, realizing to the letter the description of the Promised Land—a land flowing with milk and honey where the stones are iron, and from the hills of which copper[298] is melted. We found a good deal of slag, but the working had been merely superficial. I afterwards obtained a specimen of lead from the same neighbourhood.
We returned to our home in another place. We had left the camp crowning a knoll. We found it in the evening settled on a plain. Two other douars along our route had also moved, and in the same direction, and we passed one of the migrating bodies. There were neither men nor horses, nor any cattle used in tillage. These were, as usual, employed in the fields. This business belonged to the women and children. The tents and utensils were laden on the spare cows and camels. Every creature that could carry, from the camel to the goat, was put in requisition, and you might see, as when flying before Pharaoh, “their kneading troughs in their clothes upon their backs.” The men returned from their work in the field, without the loss of an hour, to their new abode. By these removals the country for five miles was like a fair. The pasturing flocks, too, were falling in; and at our new pitching ground we had five douars within two miles. We counted them, as if they had been so many vessels that had taken shelter in the same creek with ourselves.
We diversified our geological pursuits by dragging a valley for boars, but were unsuccessful: they were, however, round us in thousands; their digging and rooting equalled the ploughing of the natives. We could not take ten steps in any direction without walking on the earth they had recently turned up, and their industry was prosecuted to within a hundred paces of the douar. It was with some difficulty that we regained our geological specimens, for the Arabs had entered into the spirit of the science, which consists in making collections. The expedition reminded me of Dr. Buckland’s equestrian lecture at Oxford. Hitherto a scrutinizing look at a stone had been supposed to endanger a man’s head.
I feel some compunction in obliterating what to my fellow-travellers are absurd prejudices; to me they are valuable records, like the disregarded fragments of some antediluvian creature, by which at the opposite sides of the globe the parts of a common stratum may be identified. This same prejudice guarded against Phœnician and Carthaginian the mineral wealth of Mauritania, while they were ravaging that of Spain. In the settlement of Mauritania made by Augustus, which was followed by four centuries of repose and prosperity, no traces of its mineral wealth appear, whilst the Roman world was supplied periodically with wheat from its fields. An ancient law forbade the working of gold and silver mines within the confines of Italy. There was reason in this. The facilities we have devised for centrating wealth have rendered of easy accomplishment things which men, had they been wise, would have surrounded with every obstruction. Until the funding system commenced, wars of aggression could be carried on only by a government which possessed a store of gold.[299] It was not, therefore, merely the depopulation of a district which was associated with the working of mines, but the loss of liberty; for the conqueror abroad became inevitably the tyrant at home.