Letters from Palestine / Written during a residence there in the years 1836, 7 and 8

by J. D. Paxton

It will soon be two months since I reached Beyroot, and few things have struck me more than the uniformity of the weather. There has not been a drop of rain. There has been scarcely any weather that we should call cloudy. True, some clouds do at times collect over the sea, and at times they rest on the mountain, but they are clouds without rain. They very seldom spread over the face of the heavens, so as to withhold the light of the sun; they are mostly confined to one part, and leave the remainder in its usual clearness. I have, again and again, been reminded of the fact, that one day is almost precisely like all the others. We have no opportunity to say "this is a fine day,"—all are fine.

We may suppose that when there is for so long a period no rain, and when the sun, almost without exception, pours on the earth its full blaze of light and heat, the air would become very dry. It is so; but not to an unpleasant degree—at least I am not sensible of any unpleasant effects from it. Plants and vegetation do, it is true, feel it—they wither and droop; and those who wish to preserve them in their freshness and beauty, must resort to the means of watering them. But, as regards comfortable feeling from the air, I have found few places that were to be preferred to Mount Lebanon.

The clearness of the air is a most striking characteristic of these regions. It is most striking, and is manifested in many things. It is seen in looking at the starry heavens. The stars are numerous, and the face of the heavens has a clearness in it, that makes the impression on the mind that we can see further into the deep and pathless abyss by which our little earth is surrounded than we can in other countries. It agrees in this with the Italian sky, but is, I think, still more clear. This clearness of the air is also manifest in looking at distant objects. They appear much nearer than they really are. I am almost perpetually struck with this in looking from Bru-ma-nah down to Beyroot, and the long line of coast which lies to the north and south. When I stand on some one of the points of the ridge that runs out towards Beyroot, as I often do, especially in my evening walks, the town appears so near, and the bay at such a short distance below me, that I can hardly get clear of the impression that I could throw a finger-stone into the bay. The ascent and descent, three or four times repeated, has, however, given the matter-of-fact proof that it takes nearly four hours of hard travel to pass the space that lies between Bru-ma-nah and Beyroot. The air, it is true, is not always equally pure and transparent; a dulness and obscurity, like that which is often observable in other countries, at times exist here. The air here is, I think, at least in the dry season, less liable to it; how the rainy seasons may affect the air in all these respects, I am not as yet prepared to say; as I have had no opportunity of making observations.

But little dew falls at this place; and from all that I saw in Beyroot, there is but little there, at least in the dry season; I have not noticed it in the form of drops on the leaves, indeed I have at this place hardly observed it in the form of dampness; a slight degree of this is observable in the evening after sunset. This is our usual hour for walking, and I have observed that our clothes were a little damp on our return. I was struck, however, with the fact, that the nights we were encamped at the foot of the cone of Jebal Sun-neen, there was an abundance of dew. Our tents were wet; and the grass and vegetation, and even dust of the roads, bore witness to it. How it happened that there was so much of it up there, and so little of it down here, I leave for the wise to decide; possibly the cause may be in the neighbourhood of the fact, that the heat here and at Beyroot is remarkably uniform. It varies but few degrees in the twenty-four hours; at our place of encampment, referred to, the variation was much greater; we had great heat by day and almost frost at night.

The more usual and valuable produce of the mountains is the silk. Much of their best ground is planted with the mulberry-tree, the leaf of which is used for feeding the worms. Not much of the silk is manufactured here; most of it is exported to Italy, France, and England.

The principal grain grown here is the barley, and a kind of bearded wheat that looks much like it. I have not, however, travelled enough to make observation to much extent. They raise some tobacco—almost every one here, as you no doubt have heard, smokes—the pipe is everywhere one of the most common things seen; they have long handles, usually made of the cherry-tree; the finer kind are nearly as long as the owner is high, and are tipped with a mouth-piece of amber. They often use a kind of pipe called the nargely, in which the smoke is drawn through water. Much of their time is spent in smoking and taking coffee.

I am told that in the plains of the Bokar' or Celo-Syria, a good deal of Indian corn is grown. I have not seen any of it on the mountains, nor did I notice it on the plains of Beyroot as I passed and repassed. The mountains do not raise bread-stuff sufficient for its own consumption; grain is brought from the plains. They appear to me, indeed, to live on very little up here; and I have often, while looking on their simple fare, thought of the poet's lines:

"Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long."

Still a people may have too few wants, they may be too indifferent as to comforts and conveniences; and the absence of these excitements may lead to idleness and almost complete indifference towards all things. If it be not good for man to be alone, it is still worse for him to be idle; and he who in great kindness to man gave him the woman to be with him, in the same spirit of love gave him employment—to dress the garden and keep it. The devil, it is said, finds employment for idle people; and, even if that were not his peculiar business, the idleness of many must, I should think, put a sore temptation in the devil's way, to give them something to do. I have often heard the devil charged with tempting people, but I am inclined to think, that the temptation is not all on one side; I suspect that people often tempt the devil. Had our first mother Eve been attending to her domestic matters as she ought; or, in company with her goodman, been helping to take care of the garden, she would probably have escaped the evil into which she fell.

But to return from this digression. The people of these mountains are greatly given to idleness; it may result, in part, from the kind of culture they pursue. The silkworm can employ but little of their time, and much of the remainder is unemployed. It would be better for them were they employed more constantly. The pasha, it is true, gives many of them employment in connexion with working the coal-mines, and taking coal to Beyroot; and, while there may be hardship in the manner in which he presses them, with their mules and donkeys, into the service, I am not sure that in a more enlarged view of things it may not be to their advantage; were companies of the idlers kept at work constantly in making roads on the mountains, and keeping those made in good repair, the benefit to the whole region would be great indeed. But all improvements travel very slowly in these ends of the earth.