"'Ach, Edward,' said she to her son, 'I expected they would persecute and murdher us, but I never thought to ride across a mule!'… Three times did her mule come down with her, poor lady, and all three in dangerous places.
"None of the rest suffered so many falls, nor, I think, any of the laden beasts. Her son was in terrible distress at every fall, for he was carrying his infant in his arms … and he could not put the child down in the mud without danger to it."
Indeed, it must have been a very distressful journey for all, and not least for the poor little infant missionary! People may wonder what was the necessity of taking this last at all. [Footnote: Dr. Cronin and his wife were both engaged to come out to Mr. Groves. Then she died, and as he felt bound to fulfil his promise and did not like to leave the baby, he brought it too.] An old clergyman, however, once said to me, "I would rather take an infant in arms with me, than go all by myself on a journey abroad."
At last Aleppo was reached. In his letter, on 10th February to his mother, Newman says how long their stay there would be is quite uncertain. He "is taking daily lessons in Arabic, and speaking French."
"I am afraid you will not think the better of me when I tell you that I am become a smoker; and this though I had so great a dislike to it in England. I do not mean that I am always smoking—certainly not; but I have bought two pipes and amber mouthpieces, and all the apparatus; which shows that I am in earnest. When a man in college smoked cigars in his room, and we (the Balliol fellows) generally condemned it, I remember, in reply to my remark that a man who smoked made himself a nuisance, one of them said, 'It would not do to generalize; for in Germany the man who objects to smoking is the nuisance.' … If anyone calls on me I must offer him a pipe and smoke one myself; and, conversely, when I call on anyone, I must not refuse the pipe…. The pipe fills up gaps of time, and 'breaks the ice' like an Englishman's remarks on the weather….
"Now I am in for it, I will make you perfect in the theory of smoking. We have here three sorts of pipes, of which I use but one, viz. the long straight pipe. It is generally a cherry stick, and reaches from the mouth to the ground as you sit on a low sofa. The bowl is supported in a tin frame on the ground to catch the ashes; and you smoke in it tôotôon, which means common dry tobacco…. Ladies, as far as I know, do not smoke the straight pipe, though I have seen Mussulman females, evidently of humble rank, with the long pipe and its smoking bowl protruding from under their long veil as they walked. The second sort is called Nargîli … some pronounce it Narjili…. Nargîli means a cocoa-nut, which is used in this apparatus to hold the water through which the smoke passes. Vertically out of the cocoa-nut rises a pipe which ends in a long bowl holding the Tambac, which is a second species of tobacco having broadish yellow leaves worked up with wet. It needs a piece of red-hot coal laid upon it, and left there, to kindle it. Slanting out of the cocoa-nut proceeds upwards a second tube, a mere cane, which ends in the smoker's mouth. He grasps the vertical tube in his left fist, and, if sitting, rests the cocoa-nut on his knee. This is the way my hostess smokes—an elegant Levantine lady…. I cannot smoke through water; I find it demands too much work for my lungs. The third sort is the Hooka, a word which, I believe, means the very long flexible tube which is here substituted for the cane, while a glass vessel, standing on the ground, does duty for the cocoa-nut. The principle of the smoking … are the same as in the Nargili…. Unless it be overdone, I think the exercise from early youth must enlarge the capacity and power of the lungs…. When people have not a second pipe to offer you, they hand the pipe from their own mouth, and to wipe the mouthpiece before you suck it would be an insult."
Newman says that the Turks are supposed to have a great tenderness for animals. There is a popular saying, which he quotes, "A Turk cares more for the life of a cat than of a man." The following curious scene was witnessed by him in a town on his way to Aleppo:—
"A goat was to be killed, and we had some chance of a bit if one of us would seize a part of the animal before it was dead. There stood the victim and its priest.
"In front was a row of cats, sitting up with all the gravity of Egyptian gods, or like the regiment of cats which were the van of Cambyses against Egypt. On the other side a regiment of dogs. When the scarlet flood spouted on to the ground the dogs took their portion of it. I know not what etiquette or what hint from the sacrificer suddenly dispersed them: then the cats came in due order and took their portion…. Peace was wonderfully kept between dogs and cats; but when it came to dividing the offal, the cats had plenty of screaming, and, I rather think, some fighting. The number of these wild cats here is a real nuisance."
In May we get another insight into the carrying out of Newman's precept to himself, always to "live in Rome as the Romans."