The bumboat man left me next morning just outside the city, and a bend in the road soon hid him from view. For an hour the highway was perfectly level. On each side were rich gardens and orange groves, thronged with dusky men and women clad in flowing sheets. Soon all this changed. The road wound upward, the delicate orange tree gave place to the sturdy olive, instead of fertile gardens there were now rocky hillsides all about, and the only persons to be seen were now and then an Arab, grim and scowling, leading or riding a swaying camel.
The way was lonely and silent. A rising wind sighed mournfully through the gullies and trees. The summer breeze of the sea-level turned chilly. I hunted until I found the sunny side of a large rock before attempting to eat the lunch in my knapsack. Farther up the cedar forests began. Here and there groups of peasants were digging on the wayside slopes. To the north and south I could see flat-roofed villages clinging to mountain-sides.
How strange and foreign seemed everything about me! The dress and tools of the peasants, the food in my knapsack, everything was so different from the world I had lived in. If I spoke to those I met, they answered back in a strange jumble of words, wound the folds of their queer garments about them, and hurried on. If I caught sight of a village clock, its hands pointed to six when the hour was noon. Even the familiar name of the famous city to which I was bound was meaningless to the natives, for they called it “Shaam.”
My pronunciation of the word must have been at fault; for, though I stood long at a fork in the road in the early forenoon, shouting “Shaam” at each passer-by, I took the wrong branch at last. I tramped for some hours along a rapidly disappearing highway before I suspected my mistake. Even then I kept on, for I was not certain that I was going in the wrong direction. At last the route led forth from a cutting in the hills, and the shimmering sea almost at my feet showed me that I was marching due southward.
Two peasants appeared above a rise of ground beyond. As they drew near I pointed off down the road and shouted, “Shaam?” The pair halted wonderingly in the center of the highway some distance from me. “Shaam! Shaam! Shaam!” I repeated, striving to give the word a pronunciation that they could understand. The peasants stared open-mouthed, drew back several paces, and peered down the road and back at me a dozen times, as if they were not sure whether I was calling their attention to some wonder of nature, or trying to get them to turn around long enough to pick their pockets. Then a slow, half-hearted smile broke out on the features of the quicker-witted. He stood first on one leg, then on the other, squinted along the highway once more, and began to repeat after me: “Shaam! Shaam! Shaam!”
“Aywa, Shaam!” I cried.
He turned to his companion. They talked together so long that I thought they had forgotten me. Then both began to shake their heads so forcibly that the muscles of their necks stood out like steel cords. Two broad grins wrinkled their leathery faces. They stretched out their arms to the southward and burst forth in unmusical duet: “La! la! la! la! la! Shaam! La! la! la! la! la!” The Arab says “la” when he means “no.” I turned around and hurried back the way I had come.
Dusk was falling when I came a second time to a two-row village facing the highway. As I expected, there was not an inn, or anything like one, in the place. I had seen enough of the Arabian, however, to know that he has his share of curiosity. So I sat down on a large rock at the end of the village.
In three minutes a small crowd had collected. In ten, half the population was swarming around me and roaring at my useless effort to make myself understood. They stood about me, grinning and chattering, for a good half hour before one of the band motioned to me to follow him, and turned back into the village. The crowd followed me, closely examining every part of my clothing, grinning, smirking, running from one side to the other, lest they lose some point in the make-up of so strange a creature, and babbling the while like an army of apes.
The leader turned off the highway toward the largest building in the village. Ten yards from the door, he halted. The crowd formed a half circle, leaving me in the center, and then one and all began to shout something at the top of their lungs.