If Providence owed us any compensation for the discomforts of the day, it paid us, or at least it paid me, full measure and running over, by the enchanting evening that I spent in the sheikh's house. Muḥammad en Naṣṣār is a man full of years and wisdom who has lived to see a large family of sons and nephews grow up round him, and to train their quick wits by his own courteous and gracious example. All the Druzes are essentially gentlefolk; but the house of the sheikhs of Ṣāleh could not be outdone in good breeding, natural and acquired, by the noblest of the aristocratic races, Persian or Rajputs, or any others distinguished beyond their fellows. Milḥēm's letter was quite unnecessary to ensure me a welcome; it was enough that I was cold and hungry and an Englishwoman. The fire in the iron stove was kindled, my wet outer garments taken from me, cushions and carpets spread on the divans under the sheikh's directions, and all the band of his male relations, direct and collateral, dropped in to enliven the evening. We began well. I knew that Oppenheim had taken his escort from Ṣāleh when he went into the Ṣafa, and I happened to have his book with me—how often had I regretted that a wise instinct had not directed my choice towards Dussaud's two admirable volumes, rather than to Oppenheim's ponderous work, packed with information that was of little use on the present journey! The great merit of the book lies in the illustrations, and fortunately there was among them a portrait of Muḥammad en Naṣṣār with his two youngest children. Having abstracted Kiepert's maps, I was so generous as to present the tome to one of the family who had accompanied the learned German upon his expedition. It has remained at Ṣāleh to be a joy and a glory to the sheikhs, who will look at the pictures and make no attempt to grapple with the text, and the hole in my bookshelves is well filled by the memory of their pleasure.
A DRUZE MAḲ'AD, ḤABRĀN
We talked without ceasing during the whole evening, with a brief interval when an excellent dinner was brought in. The old sheikh, Yūsef the zaptieh, and I partook of it together, and the eldest of the nephews and cousins finished up the ample remains. The topic that interested them most at Ṣāleh was the Japanese War—indeed it was in that direction that conversation invariably turned in the Mountain, the reason being that the Druzes believe the Japanese to belong to their own race. The line of argument which has led them to this astonishing conclusion is simple. The secret doctrines of their faith hold out hopes that some day an army of Druzes will burst out of the furthest limits of Asia and conquer the world. The Japanese had shown indomitable courage, the Druzes also are brave; the Japanese had been victorious, the Druzes of prophecy will be unconquerable: therefore the two are one and the same. The sympathy of every one, whether in Syria or in Asia Minor, is on the side of the Japanese, with the single exception of the members of the Orthodox Church, who look on Russia as their protector. It seems natural that the Ottoman government should rejoice to witness the discomfiture of their secular foes, but it is more difficult to account for the pleasure of Arab, Druze (apart from the secret hope of the Druzes above mentioned), and Kurd, between whom and the Turk there is no love lost. These races are not wont to be gratified by the overthrow of the Sultan's enemies, a class to which they themselves generally belong. At bottom there is no doubt a certain Schadenfreude, and the natural impulse to favour the little man against the big bully, and behind all there is that curious link which is so difficult to classify except by the name of a continent, and the war appeals to the Asiatic because it is against the European. However eagerly you may protest that the Russians cannot be considered as a type of European civilisation, however profoundly you may be convinced that the Japanese show as few common characteristics with Turk or Druze as they show with South Sea Islander or Esquimaux, East calls to East, and the voice wakes echoes from the China Seas to the Mediterranean.
We talked also of the Turk. Muḥammad had been one of the many sheikhs who were sent into exile after the Druze war; he had visited Constantinople, and his experiences embraced Asia Minor also, so that he was competent to hold an opinion on Turkish characteristics. In a blind fashion, the fashion in which the Turk conducts most of his affairs, the wholesale carrying off of the Druze sheikhs and their enforced sojourn for two or three years in distant cities of the Empire, has attained an end for which far-sighted statesmanship might have laboured in vain. Men who would otherwise never have travelled fifty miles from their own village have been taught perforce some knowledge of the world; they have returned to exercise a semi-independence almost as they did before, but their minds have received, however reluctantly, the impression of the wide extent of the Sultan's dominions, the infinite number of his resources, and the comparative unimportance of Druze revolts in an empire which yet survives though it is familiar with every form of civil strife. Muḥammad had been so completely convinced that there was a world beyond the limits of the Mountain that he had attempted to push two of his six sons out into it by putting them into a Government office in Damascus. He had failed because, even with his maxims in their ears, the boys were too headstrong. Some youthful neglect of duty, followed by a sharp rebuke from their superior, had sent them hurrying back to the village where they could be independent sheikhs, idle and respected. Muḥammad took in a weekly sheet published in Damascus, and the whole family followed with the keenest interest such news of foreign politics, of English politics in particular, as escaped the censor's pencil. Important events sometimes eluded their notice—or that of the editor—for my hosts asked after Lord Salisbury and were deeply grieved to hear he had been dead some years. The other name they knew, besides Lord Cromer's, which is known always and everywhere, was that of Mr. Chamberlain, and thus there started in the maḳ'ad at Ṣāleh an animated debate on the fiscal question, lavishly illustrated on my part with examples drawn from the Turkish gumruk, the Custom House. It may be that my arguments were less exposed to contradiction than those which most free traders are in a position to use, for the whole of Ṣāleh rejected the doctrines of protection and retaliation (there was no half-way-house here) with unanimity.
There was only one point which was not settled with perfect satisfaction to all, and that was my journey to the Ṣafa. I have a shrewd suspicion that Milḥēm's letter, which had been handed to me sealed, so that I had not been able to read it, was of the nature of that given by Prætus to Bellerophon when he sent him to the King of Lycia, and that if Muḥammad was not commanded to execute the bearer on arrival, he was strongly recommended to discourage her project. At any rate, he was of opinion that the expedition could not be accomplished unless I would take at least twenty Druzes as escort, which would have involved so much preparation and expense that I was obliged to abandon the idea.
At ten o'clock I was asked at what hour I wished to sleep, and, to the evident chagrin of those members of the company who had not been riding all day in the snow, I replied that the time had come. The sons and nephews took their departure, wadded quilts were brought in and piled into three beds, one on each of the three sides of the immense divan, the sheikh, Yūsef and I tucked ourselves up, and I knew no more till I woke in the sharp frost of the early dawn. I got up and went out into the fresh air. Ṣāleh was fast asleep in the snow; even the little stream that tumbled in and out of a Roman fountain in the middle of the village was sleeping under a thick coat of ice. In the clear cold silence I watched the eastern sky redden and fade and the sun send a long shaft of light over the snow field through which we had toiled the day before. I put up a short thanksgiving appropriate to fine weather, roused the muleteers and the mules from their common resting place under the dark vaults of the khān, ate the breakfast which Muḥammad en Naṣṣār provided, and took a prolonged and most grateful farewell of my host and his family. No better night's rest and no more agreeable company can have fallen to the lot of any wanderer by plain and hill than were accorded to me at Ṣāleh.
