The flanks and crest of Jebel Sinjar, a picturesque mountain range on our right, exhibit the same riot of color, the same marvelous contrasts of light and shade. At the base there is the delicate violet of the iris, at the summit the glowing red of the poppy, and above all is the soft, turquoise blue of the deep, steady empyrean.
Then there appears the wonderful, mystic afterglow which completely transfigures everything on mountain and plain, and lights up the scene with a light that rarely shines in our cloudy, mist-enveloped clime. In the clear western sky, the evening star hangs like a solitaire. Presently there flash-out in rapid succession the stars and constellations which, in the long ago, were the wonder and the delight of the shepherds and the priest astronomers of Assyria and Chaldea.
Near our tent the camels, relieved of their burdens, are quietly browsing on the scanty broom and brushwood which in these parts constitute their chief sustenance. Their Bedouin masters, seated in a circle, around an odorous camp fire, entertain one another by recounting past experiences and adventures and by singing their favorite songs, most of which are in a minor key and characterized by the frequent occurrence of the terrible name of Allah, which gives to their doleful chant a note of sadness that once heard one can never forget. Amid such scenes of nomadic life, we welcome the hour of sweet repose, when, beguiled by gentle dreams, we, like the lotus-eaters of old, soon become quite unconscious of the fleeting passage of time and of all the world beside.[316]
On the last day of our journey between Djerabis and Mosul, while contemplating at times the prevailing “abomination of desolation” of a ruin-covered waste, we continually referred to the novel excitement which had been ours as we gazed on the hallowed land of the patriarchs about Haran and viewed in Nisibis the fate of a once splendid home of letters and culture. Traversing a region of hoar antiquity, whose annals and legends so captivate the fancy, where turbaned nomads, happy in their felt tents, enjoy the unrestricted freedom of the desert, ours was a sensation and a pleasure unknown in the rush and turmoil and savage energy of our high-pressure civilization of Europe and America. And while the eye delighted in the marvelous succession of contrasts in the landscapes—where rugged mountains alternate with endless plains and “spots of verdure lie strewn like islets amid shoreless seas of sand”—the mind ever pondered on the whirlpool of vicissitudes which has made Mesopotamia unique among the regions of the earth—where, during its long and eventful history, civilization has been succeeded by barbarism and grandeur by decay and death. But as one surveyed this land of former glory and present desolation, one loved to think that “before his eyes the sands of an expiring epoch were fast running out; and the hour-glass of destiny was once again being turned on its base.” It was with this reflection that we completed another lap of our journey and that, travel-worn, we finally arrived at Mosul, the once famous emporium on the arrow-swift Tigris.[317]
CHAPTER XIII
THE CHURCHES OF THE EAST
Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou hast given me; that they may be one, as we also are.
St. John, xvii: 11.
Nestorian, Monophysite and Other Eastern Churches
Our arrival at Mosul was to us a cause of gratification for many reasons. Not the least of these was the very cordial reception tendered us by the good Sons of St. Dominic whose hospitality to wayfarers like ourselves has always been as proverbial as that of the Franciscans. Indeed, the friars of both these venerable religious orders seem, particularly in the Orient, to have made their own, the beautiful Armenian saying “A guest comes from God.”
As for myself, I was specially glad to be in this famous old city, for it is located on the Tigris which I was almost as eager to see as the Euphrates. The names of both of these celebrated rivers had ever been associated in my mind from my earliest youth and, seeing their tawny waters for the first time, they evoked many pleasant memories of boyhood days when I loved to picture to myself the remarkable peoples who dwelt in the fertile land bounded by these two great waterways, peoples whose marvelous achievements impressed me more then than did, in maturer years, the matchless deeds of those incomparable men who dwelt on the banks of the Nile and the Tiber.