About noon, on a narrow plateau, we came upon an open well surrounded by a party of wicked-looking Bedouins. They scattered quickly at sight of the officer. My companions tied their animals near a patch of grass, and drew out their dinners. The officer knelt beside the well with a pot; but he was so stout that he couldn’t reach the water. The peasant was a Tom Thumb in size. So I reached down and dipped up the water for them. They were both grateful to me, and thrust food upon me from both sides so fast that I was unable to take it all.
The officer seemed to be a man of wide experience. He did not appear much astonished at the faranchee way of eating; but, more than that, he owned a strange machine at which the peasant gazed in speechless wonder. The strange thing was an alcohol lamp! The peasant seemed afraid of it, for he could not be coaxed within ten feet of it until the coffee was prepared. Then, after he had once become bold enough to touch the apparatus, he fell upon it like a child upon a strange toy, and examined its inner workings so thoroughly that the officer spent half an hour in fitting it together again.
In the afternoon the peasant turned aside to his village, and not far beyond the soldier lost his way. What a small chance I should have had alone on a route that puzzled even a native acquainted with the country! We had followed for some distance a wild cut between the mountains. Suddenly this ended against the wall of another cliff. On one side of us was an impassable jungle of rocks and trees, and on the other a slope leading upward almost as steep as the side of a house, and covered for hundreds of feet with loose slaty rock and rough stones.
The officer dismounted and squatted contentedly at the foot of the slope. For an hour at least he sat there without moving, except to roll several cigarettes. At last a native, spattered with mud, appeared. The officer asked him a question, and he replied by pointing up the wooded slope. Three times the horse tried to climb up, only to slide helplessly to the bottom. The officer handed me his gun: then, dismounting, he tried to lead the steed up by walking back and forth across the slope. Several times the animal fell on its haunches and tobogganed down the hill, dragging the cavalryman after him. The gun soon weighed me down like a cannon; but we reached the top at last, and were glad to stretch ourselves out on the solid rock surface of the wind-swept peak.
The officer spread out food before us. Far below, to the southward, lay a wonderful scene. Two ranges of sharp and broken mountain-peaks raced side by side to the southeast. Between these ranges lay a wild tangle of rocks and small forests, through which a swift stream fought its way to the Mediterranean Sea, bending far out of its course in its struggle to get around the base of the mountain on which we stood. The place was as silent and lonesome as if it were some undiscovered world.
For an hour we followed the run of the stream far below, for we knew it would finally lead us to lower, more level land. We rounded several peaks, climbing down little by little. The path became somewhat more plainly marked, but the scene remained wild and savage. Suddenly the cavalryman, who had just rounded a monstrous rock before me, reined in his horse with an excited jerk, grasped his sword, and pointed with it across the valley. “Nablous!” he shouted. I hastened to his side. On a small plateau far below us, backed by a rocky waste of mountains and surrounded by a rushing river, stood a city, a real city, with straight streets and closely packed stone buildings like those of the Western world!
We wound our way down the mountain path to an old stone bridge that led directly into the city. At the gate a company of ragged, half-starved Turkish soldiers tried to stop me; but my companion drove them off with a wave of the hand. We plunged at once into the noisy, crowded streets which were as narrow and as numerous as those of Damascus. They were covered with arch-shaped roofs almost their entire length, so that we seemed to be walking through a dark, cool tunnel. The shoes of the horse rang sharply against the cobblestones as the animal plowed its way through the jabbering crowd, and by keeping close at its heels I escaped being jostled and pushed about.
The shops looked very much alike. The cavalryman dismounted before one of them, handed the reins to the keeper who came forward to meet him, and, turning to me, earnestly invited me to spend the night in the inn above. But my Nazarene friends had given me letters to one Iskander Saaba, a Nazarene teacher, and I thought I ought to deliver them.
I had a hard time finding the home of the teacher. In the cities of western Asia the streets are not named, nor the houses numbered. Mr. Smith, you learn, lives near the house of Mr. Jones. If you inquire further you may be told that Mr. Jones lives not far from the house of Mr. Smith, and so on; and you gain nothing by getting impatient or angry.
A short distance from the inn, a water-carrier and a baker’s boy struck me in the ribs at the same time with the burdens they carried. A runaway donkey, bestrided by a mean-looking fellow, ran me down. A tradesman carrying a heavy beam turned the corner just in time to make me see a starry sky in the covered passage-way. These things, of course, were merely accidents. But when three stout rascals caught hold of the knapsack across my shoulders, and hung on to it until I had kicked one of them into a neighboring shop, and a corner street peddler went out of his way to step on my heels, I could not so easily excuse them. As long as I remained among the crowded shops these sneaking injuries continued. Whenever I stopped, a crowd quickly gathered about me to show their dislike by purposely jostling against me, by making insulting remarks about my race, and even by spitting on my clothes.