But there is also another large class of emigrants, to
whose means and occupations Syria is even better suited than to all the foregoing. I mean persons of a certain fixed moderate income; those in receipt of an annual rent or interest, varying in amount from £50 to £300. A man in London, especially if he have a wife and family to support, is comparatively a pauper if he can earn no more than £50 per annum. Take that man to Syria; plant him in any part of Lebanon, or in any other district of that country, and he has no longer pounds and shillings to mete out carefully, so as to cover the annual outlay for household expenses; but he has now to deal with piastres and paras. For one piastre he can get four ordinary penny loaves; for half a piastre he can get five eggs; for another half, as much fresh butter and milk as will serve his purpose for the day, and unless he be an extraordinary eater, leave an abundant surplus. Thus for two piastres we have seen him provided with milk, butter, and bread—three staple commodities—and the additional luxury of fresh-laid eggs. An oak, or 2¾ lbs. of mutton, would cost him about two and a half piastres, and he spends a piastre in vegetables and fruit; thus the raw articles of consumption cost him daily five and a half piastres, or just one shilling sterling. With sixpence additional, he can have fish and wine and coffee, an ample supply of each, enough indeed to satisfy the cravings of three moderate men; so that his annual item for food, wine, and coffee, would amount to 547 shillings and sixpence, or £27 17s. 6d. Of his original income of £50 per annum, he would thus still have a surplus of £22 2s. 6d. His rent and the hire of three servants, their keep included, may consume £10 of this balance, and with the remaining £12 2s. 6d. he could buy and keep for the whole first year a very serviceable steed, whose
cost would be more than recompensed by the benefit and pleasure of horse-exercise every day in the week.
Having now mounted my comparatively English “beggar on horseback”—even if he be the most indolent of indolent men—he must go on thriving better and better. Most Englishmen, however, have too much good sense now-a-days to suffer precious hours to flit lazily by. It is evident also, that our emigrant will he put to less expense the second year of his sojourn, at least to the amount of the value of cost of his horse, which will then only become an item of keep, as grass is plentiful and barley (on which our horses are fed) cheap. His exchequer would thus be increased by £10 at the end of the second year. Now, even in England, a sharp-witted fellow might, by unremitting perseverance and indefatigable zeal, turn ten pounds into twenty; but in Syria, this sum is 1100 piastres, and for 1100 piastres there is many a bit of ground to be purchased equal in size to the largest square in London. This he could lay out, if he fancied, part in a kitchen-garden, part in a farm-yard, and part in a nursery for young mulberry shoots, to be transplanted the ensuing year, by which time also the extent of ground could be doubled by the purchase of a fresh lot for £10 more—both planted with mulberries, the proprietor supplying his own table with poultry and vegetables, making his own wine, and pressing his own oil. In five years after his first settlement, he would have a mulberry plantation five times as extensive as Eaton Square, with that portion of the property first planted already yielding a return; for the mulberry-tree, after three years, is ready to rear the worm upon, and the quantity reared goes on increasing as the trees become larger and yield a more abundant supply of
leaves. At the end of these five years our landed proprietor, whose greatest horror in London was quarter-day, and rent and taxes, now finds himself in receipt of about £80 per annum instead of £50, with every prospect of a rapid augmentation, for he may have been adding ground to ground each successive year, and every successive piece of land purchased may have been larger than the preceding, till about the seventh year of his residence, when he may have made an outlay of about £200, and have a promising plantation, yielding him, conjointly with his income, somewhere about £120 per annum, with every prospect of this income rapidly increasing. The best part of the pleasant tableau, too, would consist in the fact that there had been no pinching and screwing up of one’s means, no direful privations to meet the emergency, no sleepless nights, and worrying busy days, racking one’s brains and detracting from health and happiness; but on the contrary, the emigrant’s life will have been one perpetual scene of pleasurable and healthful occupation and diversion.
He will be an early riser, because he has had his little flower-garden to weed, or the planting out of his fruit-trees and vegetables to superintend: his farm-yard will then claim his attention; the cows milking and sending forth to grass; the sheep, the turkeys, the geese, ducks, fowls, guinea-hens, etc., all to be attended to; terminating by a pleasant ride round his own plantation (how his heart throbs at the thought, his own plantation!), and in seeing that his people are at their various labours for the day. This ride gives him a keen relish for his breakfast; and the forenoon is agreeably occupied in making notes of when such and such a hen first sat on her eggs, and when such a batch of chickens
were hatched, etc. At noon he has lunch, and takes his siesta; whilst the afternoon is devoted to study, or to correspondence; or, if the fancy take him, and the season be propitious, to a shooting party. There is no game-law to check his ambition, or to limit his range of ground: no preserves, no man-traps, no “All dogs found trespassing will be shot.” He may climb up one hill and go down another; spring a covey of partridges, knock over a couple or more, and then quietly re-load his gun for another shot. The only thing that seem inquisitive about, or will take any interest in, such proceedings are, not game-keepers, but game-destroyers—jackals and sparrowhawks; the one will track the blood of the wounded partridge more surely even than the dogs, the other soars high over head, and equally robs the sportsman of his game unless numbered amongst his victims.
In the cool of the evening, the emigrant will enjoy his wholesome, abundant, and luxurious dinner, and perhaps, entering into the spirit of Oriental life, take a fingan of coffee, and, may be, smoke a pipe of delicious Lattakia; and at ten, at the latest, he takes himself to bed, glad, after the many occupations of the day, to seek that healthful and refreshing sleep, which is sure to be the natural result of so regular a course of life.
Such is the picture of life I have drawn out for a man possessed at the outset of only £50 per annum. Many in the receipt of even more than this sum annually, are now on the threshold of the poorhouse. Surely, if such should peruse these pages, they cannot longer hesitate as to what to do or how to proceed.
Men with families who wish to luxuriate in the