A sad association belongs to my sojourn among the Maronites at Zachly; a large village on the further side of Lebanon, on the slopes of the Haraun. I slept there on my outward way in my tent pitched in an angle of grass outside one of the first houses, and on my return journey I obtained the use of the principal room of the same house from my kind hosts, as the cold outside was too considerable for tent life in comfort. Zachly was a very humble, simple place. The houses were all of mud, with flat roofs made of branches laid across and covered with more mud. A stem of a living tree usually stood in the middle of the house supporting the whole erection, which was divided into two or three chambers. A recess in the wall held piles of mats, and of the hard cushions made of raw cotton, which form both seats, beds, and pillows. The rough, unplaned door, with wooden lock, the window half stuffed up, the abundant population of cocks and hens, cats and dogs and rosy little boys and girls, strongly reminded me of Balisk! I was welcomed most kindly after a brief negotiation with Hassan; and the simple women and girls clustered round me with soft words and presents of carrots and daffodils. One old woman having kissed my hands as a beginning, proceeded to put her arms round my neck and embrace me in a most motherly way. To amuse the party, I showed them my travelling bag, luncheon and writing and drawing apparatus, and made them taste my biscuits and smell my toilet vinegar. Screams of “Taib, Taib! Katiyeh!” (good, very good) rewarded my small efforts, and then I made them tell me all their names, which I wrote in my note-book. They were very pretty: Helena, Mareen, Yasmeen, Myrrhi, Maroon, Georgi, Malachee, Yussef, and several others, the last being Salieh, the young village priest, a tall, grand-looking young man with high cylindrical black hat, black robe and flowing brown hair. I made him a respectful salutation at which he seemed pleased. On my second visit to Zachly I attended the vesper service in his little chapel as the sun went down over Lebanon. It was a plain quadrangle of mud walls, brown without and whitewashed within; a flat roof of branches and mortar; a post for support in the centre; a confessional at one side; a little lectern; an altar without crucifix and only decorated by two candlesticks; a jar of fresh daffodils; some poor prints; a blue tea-cup for sacramental plate, and a little cottage-window into which the setting sun was shining softly;—such was the chapel of Zachly. A few men knelt to the left, a few women to the right; in front of the altar was a group of children, also kneeling, and waiting to take their part in the service. At the lectern stood the noble figure of young Papas Salieh, leaning on one of the crutches which in all Eastern churches are provided to relieve the fatigue of the attendants, who, like Abraham, “worship, leaning on the top of a staff.” Beside the Papas stood a ragged but intelligent little acolyte, who chanted very well, and on the other side of the lectern an aged peasant, who also took his part. The prayers were, of course, unintelligible to me, being in Arabic; but I recognised in the Gospel the chapter of genealogies in Luke, over whose hard names the priest helped his friend quite unaffectedly. The reading over, Papas Salieh took off his black and red cap, and, kneeling before the altar, commenced another chanted prayer, while the women beside me bowed till they kissed the ground in Eastern prostration, beating their breasts with resounding blows. The group of children made the responses at intervals; and then the priest blessed us, and the simple service was over, having occupied about twenty minutes. While we were departing, the Papas seated himself in the confessional and a man went immediately into the penitents’ place beside him. There was something very affecting to me in this poor little church of clay, with its humble efforts at cleanliness and flowers and music; all built and adorned by the worshippers’ own hands, and served by the young peasant priest, doubtless the son and brother of some of his own flock.
As I have said there are sad associations connected with this visit of mine to Zachly. A very short time afterwards the Druses came down with irresistible force,—massacred the greater number of the unhappy Maronites and burned the village. The spot where I had been so kindly received was left a heap of blackened ruins, and what became of sweet, motherly Helena and her dear little children and good Papas Salieh and the rest, I have never been able to learn.
It took six hours of hard riding in a bitter wind to carry me from Zachly to Baalbec; but anticipation bore me on wings, and to beguile the way I repeated to myself as my good memory permitted, the whole of Moore’s poem of Paradise and the Peri, culminating in the scene which the Peri beheld “When o’er the vale of Baalbec winging.” In vain, however, I cross-questioned Hassan (we talked Italian tant bien que mal) about Peris. He had never heard of such beings. But of Djinns in general he knew only too much; and notably that they had built the vast ruins of Baalbec, which no mortal hands could have raised; and that to the present time they haunt them so constantly and in such terrific shape, that it is very perilous for anybody to go there alone and quite impossible to do so after nightfall. I had reason to bless this belief in the Djinns of Baalbec for it left me the undisturbed solitary enjoyment of the mighty enclosure within the Saracenic walls for the best part of two days, unvexed by the inquisitive presence or observation of the population of the Arab village outside.
To pitch my tent among the ruins, however, was more than I could bring Hassan to do by any cajoling, and I consented finally to sleep in a small cabin consisting of a single chamber of which I could lock the door inside. When I prepared for sleep on the hard cotton cushions laid over a stone bench, and with the two unglazed windows admitting volumes of cold air, I was frightened to find I had every symptom of approaching fever. Into what an awful position,—I reflected,—had I put myself, with no one but that old Turk Hassan, and the Arab from whom I had hired this little house for the night, to take care of me should I have a real bad fever, and be kept there between life and death for weeks! Reflecting what I could possibly do to avert the danger, brought on, of course, by cold and fatigue, I took from my bag the half-bottle of Raki (a very pure spirit made from rice) which my travelling friends had brought from the monastery at Mar Saba and had kindly shared with me; and to a large dose of this I was able to add some hot water from a sort of coffee-pot left, by good luck, in the yet warm brazier of charcoal in the middle of my room. I drank my Raki-toddy to the last drop, and then slept the sleep of the just,—to awaken quite well the next morning! And if any of my teetotal friends think I did wrong to take it, I beg entirely to differ from them on the subject.
The days which I spent in and around Baalbec were more than repayment for the fatigues and perils of the passage of “Sainted Lebanon;” whose famous Cedars, by the way, I was unable to visit; the region where they stand being at that season too deeply covered with snow. Here is a description I gave of Baalbec to Harriet St. Leger just after my visit:—
“I had two wonderful days indeed in Baalbec. The number of the vast solitary ruins exceeded all my anticipations, and their grandeur impresses one as no remains less completely isolated can do. Imagine a space about that of Newbridge garden surrounded by enormous Saracenic walls with a sweet, bright brook running round it, and then left to entire solitude. A few cattle browse on the short grass, and now and then, I suppose, some one enters by one or other of the different gaps in the wall to look after them; but in the Temple of Jupiter, shut in by its great walls, to which the displacement of a single stone makes now the sole entrance, no one ever enters. The fear of Djinns renders the place even doubly alarming! Among the most awful things in Baalbec are stupendous subterranean tunnels running in various directions under the ruined city. I groped through several of them, they opened out with great doorways into others which, having no light, I would not explore, but which seemed abysses of awe! The stones of all these works are enormous. Those 5 or 6 feet and 12 or 15 feet long are among the smallest. In the temple were some which I could not span with five extensions of my arms, i.e., something like 30 feet, but there are still larger elsewhere among the ruins.”
The shafts of the columns of the two Temples,—the six left standing of the great Temple of the Sun which
“Stand sublime
Casting their shadows from on high
Like Dials which the wizard Time