The coast-line drew nearer. On the plain at the foot of the mountains I could see here and there well cultivated patches between dreary stretches of blood-red sand. A few minutes later we dropped anchor well out in the harbor of Beirut. Down the gangway tumbled a mighty landslide of Asiatics, men and women, large and small, dirty and half dirty, pushing, kicking, scratching and biting one another, hopelessly entangled with bundles of every thinkable shape. Shouting boatmen rowed us ashore. As we swung in against the rock, I caught a proud-looking Bedouin trying to separate me from my knapsack. A well directed push landed him in the laps of several heavily veiled women, and I sprang up a stairway cut in the face of the rock.
The city itself was miles away from the landing-place. One of the officials called an evil-looking native, clothed in a single garment that reached to his knees, and ordered him to guide me to the town. We set off through the night, heavy with the smell of oranges, along a narrow road six inches deep in the softest mud. On the outskirts of the city the native halted and began talking to me in Arabic. I shook my head. He seemed to think that I was unable to understand him because of some fault in my hearing. So he asked the question again and again, louder and more rapidly each time he repeated it. I let him shout until breath failed him and he gave up and splashed on. He halted once more, in a square reeking with mud in the center of the city, and burst forth excitedly in a jumble of words more difficult to understand than before.
“Ingleesee?” he shrieked, with his last gasp.
“No,” I answered, understanding this one word; “Americano.”
“Ha!” shouted the Arab. “Americano?” And once more he began his shouting. He seemed to be trying to explain something about my fellow countrymen, for he repeated the word “Americano” again and again. Once more he gave up trying to make me understand and struck off to the southward. I shouted “hotel” and “inn” in every language I could call to mind; but, after a few mumbles, he fell silent, and only the splash of our feet in the muddy roadway could be heard.
We left the city behind, but still the Arab plodded steadily and silently southward. Many a story of white men led into Arabic traps passed through my mind. Far out among the orange groves beyond the city, he turned into a small garden, and pointed to a lighted sign above the door of a building among the trees. It was the home of the American consul. Not knowing what else to do with a Frank who did not understand the loudest Arabic, the native had led me to the only man in Beirut whom he had heard called “Americano.”
When I had paid my bill next morning at the French inn to which I had been sent, I stepped into the office of that great tourist agency, Cook & Son, and exchanged a sovereign for so many iron and tin coins that I could hardly carry them. Then I ate a native breakfast, and, strolling down to the harbor, sat on a pier.
For a time the uproar made by shrieking Arabs, braying camels, and the rattle of ships discharging their freight, drowned all other sounds. Then suddenly I caught faintly a shout in English behind me, and turned around. A lean native in European dress and fez cap was beckoning to me from the opening of one of the narrow streets. I dropped from the pier and turned shoreward. The native ran toward me. “You speak Eengleesh?” he cried. “Yes? No? What countryman you?”
“American.”
“No? Not American?” shrieked the native, dancing up and down. “You not American? Ha! ha! ver’ fine. I American one time, too. I be one time sailor on American warsheep Brooklyn. You write Engleesh too? No? Yes? Ver’ fine! You like job? I got letters write in Engleesh! Come, you!”