Still, it was borderland, and mainly Mohammedan; the sea route was common ground and frequented by Christians. But there was a compromise which was often in use—to travel by sea to Zante and thence through Greece, finishing the journey either by sea or land. It might seem that this direction would appeal to a considerable proportion of tourists during the period that is called "Renascence," but the extent to which the acquaintance with, and interest in, Greek thought, first-hand, at this time has been exaggerated may be accurately estimated by the fact that not a single one of these travellers visited Athens except by accident. It must be admitted, however, that things were not made easy for them; one of those who traversed Greece was Dallam, in company with seven others; part of the journey they were stalked by natives trying to arrange with their guide to cut their throats: and every time they slept but once it was in their clothes, either on the ground or on the floor. One of the most interesting places that might be visited on this route was Salonica, a Jew republic under the suzerainty of the Grand Signor, with a training-school for priests; here and Safed near Galilee were the only places where Hebrew was supposed to be spoken.
All these ways to Constantinople have been mentioned in the order into which they fall according to the extent to which they were used by European tourists, the least frequented first. Last comes the most usual, by sea all the way from Venice. And here, however different might be the experiences of this one and that one, two points of interest were invariable. First, they passed Abydos and Sestos, where out must come the note-book, and Leander must be dragged into it. Secondly, Troy. The learned say that these tourists located Troy on the south, instead of on the north, bank of the river, but the more important point is that what they did see stirred their feelings: it was no mere mild interest. The Trojan heroes were as real to them as Barbarossa and Don Juan, not only because no doubts had blurred their individuality, much less darkened their existence, but because there was less competition for the position of hero owing to the narrower range of their knowledge. Another characteristic of theirs, was that Virgil was clearer in their association of ideas, Homer dimmer, at the moment of seeing Troy's ruins, than would be the case with a modern tourist: the quotation that arises most naturally in the mind of the finest scholar of them all was
Hic Dolopum manus, hic sævus tendebat Achilles;
Classibus hic locus; hic acies certare solebant.
And so to Constantinople. But not the pilgrims' Constantinople of former days, as marvellous a centre, perhaps, of ecclesiastical civilisation and dignity, and of relics, as has been seen. St. Sophia was still there and its doors still of the wood of Noah's ark, but it was a mosque where the inquisitive Christian was allowed to look round on sufferance. Only two churches in the city were allowed to remain in Western Christian hands, St. Nicholas and Our Lady of Constantinople, the latter still a place of pilgrimage though served by one solitary Dominican friar. Gone was Moses' rod; gone from the neighbouring village of Is Pigas was the fresco of St. John from whose head, in the first week of each Lent, had blossomed a milk-white rose; gone was the trumpet that sounded at the fall of Jericho and the horn of Abraham's ram. But the last two must be safe somewhere, for they are to be used by the summoning angel on Judgment Day.
As a pilgrim, then, the tourist reached Constantinople only by the way. And setting out thence for Jerusalem, viâ Damascus, he might go by land in one of three ways, either by trading caravan, in which case he should contract with some one in it for all expenses and necessaries by the way, besides engaging a Janizary, necessary under every possible condition, who is to report his passenger's safe arrival to an ambassador or some merchant residing at the point of departure; or he might accompany a governor on his way to take up his duties (and changes were very frequent), in which case the governor had better be required to swear by his head to see the pilgrim safely through; or for the third, and quickest way, on the return journey, accompany the carriers of revenue to Constantinople. But it was far commoner to make a sea-journey of it, which meant taking ship to "Scanderoon" and thence by land, viâ Aleppo, to Damascus. Nobody ever went to Scanderoon except to get to Aleppo; sometimes not even then, for during this period the port of Aleppo was as often as not Tripoli. The objection to Scanderoon was its unhealthiness, lying, as it did, as Peter Mundy says, "in a great marsh full of boggs, foggs, and froggs"; of the English who went there as apprentices scarcely five per cent lived to go into business for themselves. Aleppo was worth seeing: a pleasant town with its approaches all gardens, like Damascus, and the medley of nations must have been marvellous to watch; a sign of its cosmopolitanism was that Christians were allowed to ride horses there, an unusual privilege in Mohammedan dominion; probably nowhere outside Venice were so many sects represented, whose churches were in what was called the new suburb; two Armenian, a Greek, and a Catholic Maronite were actually side by side, with a Syrian Jacobite church just near. It is not out of place to add that at the Jews' synagogue there was not the usual division of sexes, but that the only separation was that one side was reserved for the families who had been long resident there, the other for strangers: because although the repulsion felt for the Jews was greater at this time than at present, the interest in them was likewise greater, and any information concerning their customs was regarded by the tourist as matter for his readers—a surprising number of these tourists give eye-witness accounts of circumcisions of Jewish babies.
To return to Aleppo; it was equally remarkable for its trade. Dealings to the extent of 40,000 to 100,000 crowns were ordinary, and this implied frequency of caravans to take the pilgrim on to Damascus. On the way he would pass the district in which Job was supposed to have lived, which may well have been so, says Moryson, for no spot possessed such conveniences for getting robbed, even of 100,000 head of cattle, nor any better suited to develop patience.
It was here the pilgrim became acquainted with the Arabs. How far the latter were independent of the Turks was left an unsettled question, but it is fairly certain that on many, perhaps most, of the occasions when a European traveller of the time relates an encounter with the Arabs, the latter were not the robbers he thought them but keepers of the roads demanding not more than treble what they were entitled to. But it is equally clear that hostilities were perpetual. In 1601 a caravan guide told an Englishman at one defile that he had never passed by there without seeing bodies of murdered men; and from Damascus to Jacob's bridge—so called because just by was the spot where Jacob wrestled with the Angel—the caravan travelled by night for fear of the Arabs and no talking was allowed without the captain's special permission. But there was much to divert the attention of the faithful from their trials. At Damascus was Ananias' house, and soon after starting an ill-informed tourist would be surprised to see all his fellow travellers fall on their knees for prayers: it would be the spot where the conversion of St. Paul took place. Before reaching the Sea of Galilee they came upon a field with a little well in it, at which all dismounted for worship as well as for a drink; there had Joseph been hidden by his brethren. Between Cana and Mt. Tabor was a little chapel to call at, built on the spot where Christ had multiplied the loaves and fishes, and after this the road turned westwards to Nazareth and the church on the site where the Virgin Mary's house had stood before it had been spirited away to Loreto; two porphyry columns were standing on the places occupied respectively by the Archangel and by the Virgin at the moment of the Annunciation. For those who were not Roman Catholics there was the actual house there to be identified on its original site, so far as it had been left intact by previous pilgrims; Lithgow, the only Western Christian in the caravan he travelled with, asserts that his companies carried away above five thousand pounds' weight of the house in remembrance. Then southward, joining the road from Tripoli, more frequented, but not by pilgrims, who chose this Damascus road as passing through Galilee. And so to Rama, where they may await such as journey by route 3 from Constantinople viâ Cairo.
Reaching Alexandria it was found to be about the size of Paris; besides the ruins, the greatness of which was attested by the intolerable dust which was all that remained of much of the building materials of the past.