An accident, by which one of our party was seriously hurt, on our way back, damped the gratification of our visit and retarded our progress; but having left the invalid officer and Dr. B. at Ramla, we were able to reach the ship in good season the same evening. Some seamen were despatched during the night with a litter; and having thus got our companions on board, we weighed anchor on the afternoon of the 26th, and with a light breeze stood northwardly along the coast.
As we passed Cæsarea, about thirty-five miles distant from Jaffa, our glasses enabled us to distinguish a few masses of masonry, which is all that remains of that once large and magnificent city. A few hours after this we came opposite to the northern termination of Mount Carmel, on the summit of which the monastery of Elijah[73] was a very conspicuous object. The French ensign was flying on the top of it, probably in answer to our colors. The mountain was green, and had an agreeable appearance; it thrusts itself some distance into the sea, and forms the southern extremity of a large bay, at the northern end of which is St. Jean D’Acre, the ancient Ptolemais.
We dropped our anchor a few miles from this latter city on the evening of the 27th, and some boats, with parties, were despatched to the shore. I have seen no place exhibit so strikingly the ruthless and destructive character of war as did this city at the time of our visit. It was at this place that Mohammed Ali first began to put in execution his ambitious designs upon Syria. Under pretence of assisting the Sultan in putting down a refractory Pasha, he brought his army and navy against the place; but met what Bonaparte had here met before him, a fierce and determined resistance. It was subjected to a long bombardment, and at length, on the last of May, 1832, was taken by assault, when his soldiers are said to have been guilty of the greatest excesses.
The city is built upon a point of land running into the sea, and is surrounded by strong walls; those on the land side being assisted by ditches and by other lines of defence.
Scarcely a house was any where to be seen that had not suffered from the shot. We were particularly struck with a very high wall, the remains of some important edifice, that was completely riddled, and now stood between us and the setting sun, which was pouring a stream of light through every crevice, and making the ruin look still more desolate. We made the circuit of the walls, and walked through the city, but did not see more than thirty inhabitants in the whole place.
Leaving our anchorage early the next morning, we glided up towards Tyre, which lies about thirty miles distant from St. Jean D’Acre, being separated from it by a strip of low but sufficiently fertile land, beyond which the mountains of Samaria commence. Our visit to this country had put our Bibles in more than usual requisition; and I had been pointing out to some friends the prophecies concerning Tyre, and comparing these with the accounts given by travellers of the utter desolation of the place, had endeavored to strengthen the argument for the Scriptures. The spot is spoken of by Shaw as utterly abandoned, except “by a few poor wretches, harboring themselves in the vaults, and subsisting chiefly upon fishing, who seem to be preserved in this place by Divine Providence, as a visible argument how God hath fulfilled his word concerning Tyre.” Volney speaks of it as reduced to a miserable village, consisting of “fifty or sixty wretched huts, ready to crumble into ruins;” and Joliffe, a more recent traveller, says, that “some miserable cabins, ranged in irregular lines, dignified with the name of streets, and a few buildings of a rather better description, occupied by the officers of government, compose nearly the whole of the town.”
Approaching it with these impressions, I was surprised to see a walled town of tolerable dimensions, and with houses no worse looking than is ordinary in these countries, above which, in answer to our ensign, were waving the flags of most of the European nations, together with our own star-spangled banner. The ship was hove to, and we were thus enabled to make a hasty visit to the place. Our boats passed some ruins, probably remains of the times of the Crusaders, which help to guard the harbor from the wind and the sands. This looks as if it had once been spacious, but it was now so choked up with ruins of various kinds and with sand, as scarcely to admit even our boats.
Our consul, accompanied by some of the representatives of other nations, met us at the landing, and conducted us to his house, where we were welcomed with the usual forms of eastern hospitality. The present population of Tyre, or Tsour as it is called by the natives, I should judge to be about 3,000 persons; it occupies about half of the ancient island, which since the time of Alexander has been a peninsula. It is surrounded by a wall of no great strength, nor at present of any great utility, as the sands on the eastern side, after covering over the isthmus to a considerable depth, have reached the city and have been [filled] up nearly to the height of its battlements. The sand is the only enemy, therefore, from which the fortifications are protecting them, for any other would only have to walk up this inclined plane and let themselves down into the city.
In a corner of the wall, about the centre of the island, they showed us a large ruin, probably of a church belonging to the times of the Crusaders, who had possession of the place from the year 1124 to 1289. Near these ruins were some very large columns of Egyptian granite, which looked as if they might have been taken from some of the ancient temples.
I passed out of the gate, and made the circuit of the peninsula. The shore on the southern side is formed of masses of bare rock, much eaten by the waves, and in some places undermined. The foundations of buildings are to be traced all over the ground, and also extending out some distance into the sea. The isthmus has become very wide, and now presents nothing but hills of loose sand, driven about by every wind, and destined perhaps to cover the entire peninsula. The shore opposite, for an extent of miles, is now also nothing but a bed of sand, amid which, any traces of the ancient city that may have been left by Alexander, have entirely disappeared. It was of this old city, of sixteen miles in circumference, and whose walls were 120 feet in height, that the prophecy was uttered: “I will make thee a terror and thou shalt be no more; though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord God. All they that feared thee among the people shall be astonished at thee; thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more;” and in vain amid that plain of yellow drifting sand should we seek for any memorial of it, or expect to see it rise again. Of this great mistress of the sea, the mother of many colonies, some, as for instance Carthage, of prodigious wealth; of the city that distributed crowns, “whose merchants were princes, and whose traffickers were the honorable of the earth,” nought now remains, and its site would probably be unknown but for this island and the village that stands here, as if in mockery of the greatness of ancient Tyre. “Is this your joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days?”