"But what are you doing in Yemen?" he added quickly.
"Excellency," said I, "we English are a maritime people, and there are but two places that concern us in all Arabia."
"I know," he interpolated. "Mecca and Medina."
"No," said I. "Aden and Kweit."
"And you hold them both," he returned angrily—yes, I am bound to confess that the tones of his voice were not those of an Anglo-maniac.
Presently he began to tell me that he alone among pashas had grasped modern necessities. He meant to build a fine metalled road to Alexandretta—not that it will be of much use, thought I, if there are no camels to walk in it—like the road he had built from Samaria to Jerusalem. That was a road like none other in Turkey—did I know it? I had but lately travelled over it, and seized the opportunity of congratulating the maker of it; but I did not think it necessary to mention that it breaks off at the bottom of the only serious ascent and does not begin again till the summit of the Judæan plateau is reached.
This is all that need be said of Kiāzim Pasha's methods.
A far more sympathetic acquaintance was the Greek Catholic Archbishop, a Damascene educated in Paris and for some time cure of the Greek Catholic congregation in that city, though he is still comparatively young. I had been given a letter to him, on the presentation of which he received me with great affability in his own house. We sat in a room filled with books, the windows opening on to the silent courtyard of his palace, and talked of the paths into which thought had wandered in Europe; but I found to my pleasure that for all his learning and his long sojourn in the West, the Archbishop had remained an Oriental at heart.
"I rejoiced," said he, "when I was ordered to return from Paris to my own land. There is much knowledge, but little faith in France; while in Syria, though there is much ignorance, religion rests upon a sure foundation of belief."
The conclusion that may be drawn from this statement is not flattering to the Church, but I refrained from comment.