THE HILLS ROUND NAZARETH, FROM THE PLAIN OF ESDRAELON.

The village of Nazareth shows out white in the dip between the hills.

details. This the owner could not do, and when the thief gave the numbers correctly, the house was at once given to him as its obvious possessor. The tale at once recalls the Arab of our childhood who described the route of the strayed camel.

The Syrian character is nothing if not complex, a mass of paradox whose contradictory elements it seems hopeless to attempt to reconcile. The politest and the most ruffianly of men, the most effusively frank and the most impenetrably wary, the most silent and the most voluble, the gayest in laughter and the most melancholy in song, is the Syrian. He will bully you so long as he has the majority, and he will beg for the privilege of tying your shoe’s latchet if the majority is with you. He will row a boat or drive a donkey under a noonday sun with a violence which threatens apoplexy; he will suddenly subside into a repose which no surrounding bustle can disturb. The captain of the Rob Roy tells how in the Huleh region a native boy running alongside pointed his long gun at him at least twenty times with the cry of bakhshish, so close that he once knocked the barrel aside with his paddle; and yet in the tent that evening this same youngster “was my greatest favourite from his lively laugh and eyes like diamonds, and his quick perception of all I explained.” In a note on page 39 an adventure of our own is told which illustrates sufficiently the rapidity of change in the mood of the native. He is a civilised barbarian, a scrupulous fraud, an aged little child. No doubt so complex a character is traceable to many causes, but in the main it is the work of the desert. There the extreme conditions—the long hunger and the occasional surfeit, the great silence and the shrill speech in which that silence unburdens itself, the demand for desperate exertion and the long deep rest—these call forth the most opposite qualities, each in exaggerated degree.

Perhaps the most important contributions of the desert to the Syrian character have been two. There is a certain hardiness and strenuous carelessness of comfort, which produces a rather bleak impression on European travellers, but which nevertheless has counted for a great deal in national life. It has told in opposite ways. Judea’s success has been undoubtedly due to the fact that it had to be fought for against such bitter odds. On the other hand, this same independence of fate has led the nation to settle down in a too easy contentment. Defeat, and even oppression, sit more lightly on people who are indifferent to circumstances; and if the artificial demands for luxury have been the ruin of some nations, they have been the saving of others, keeping alive in them their vigour and whetting their ambition. The other contribution is the instinctive kindliness and hospitality which are well known as characteristic of the desert tribes. Where life is so precarious, it inevitably comes to be regarded as an inviolable trust by the man on whose mercy it is cast. Accordingly the wandering Arab has but to draw in the sand a circle round his laden camel in order to secure every scrap of his possessions from robbery; and the bitterest enemies are sure of safety so long as they abide in each other’s tents. A little incident which occurred to ourselves brought home to us vividly the real kindliness of the Eastern sense of guest-right. It was in Damascus, and after nightfall. Some of us, wishing to see how the city amused itself, set out for a ramble through the streets. It was only nine o’clock, yet everything was shut up and the bazaars and thoroughfares silent and deserted. At last we found a little café still doing business at the end of the high black vault of a bazaar. Seats were placed in the open air in front of it, while from within came the rattle of dice and the voices of one or two gamblers. Sitting down on the outside bench, we asked for coffee, which was immediately brought. A stylishly dressed Moslem, in an indescribable flow of robes, took his seat silently opposite us and sat smoking his nargileh. When we rose to go we found that he had paid for us all, and when we would have thanked him he would have none of it, satisfied with the consciousness of having shewn hospitality to strangers sojourning in his land. We could not help wondering how long our friend might have continued making the circuit of London restaurants before a similar experience would have fallen his way! There is a tale of a scoundrel who acts as guide to English travellers, and presents to each of them a certificate from a former victim, which invariably makes them laugh. The writing is, “I was a stranger and ye took me in.” It was pleasing to find that this testimony need not always be ironical.

EXTRACT FROM JOURNAL

One of the horses had been stolen in the night. It was the last on the line, and beyond it Harun was sleeping on the ground. At 11.30 all was right, but by 12.30 it had disappeared. By 1 A.M. the village had been roused, and the head men were coming in to the camp offering us one of their mares in compensation. The mares, which were wretched skeletons of beasts, were refused, and the horse demanded. Nothing could persuade them to bring him back, or to acknowledge any cognisance of him whatever. They said that passing robbers had taken him, and begged us not to report the affair. Our dragoman, however, took another view. He wrote a letter, long and circumstantial, describing us as “Hawajas” (merchants, gentlemen), travelling for information under tescera from the Sultan. The touch of genius in the letter was its insistence upon the seriousness of this affair on the ground that we were travelling under three flags, the Union Jack, the Turkish flag, and the Stars and Stripes. This letter was sent, by one of our men on horseback, to the Kaimakham, governor of the district, at a place some distance from where we were. The Kaimakham passed him on to the Mudir at another village, a person of terrible reputation, of whom everybody in the neighbourhood was afraid. The upshot of it all was that Mohammed, the messenger, returned to camp accompanied by two soldiers, powerful and intelligent young fellows, but savage-looking and rather ragged. The taller of the two, named Nimr (the leopard), was armed with bayonet, rifle, and revolver, while a double belt of cartridges added to the effect. His orders were to take the thirteen leading men of Banias in irons, and march them off “shoulder-tight” to prison at Mejdel. During the day a great meeting was held in the dragoman’s tent, the soldiers on one side, the “leading men” on the other. One of the latter protested that this was unfair—they had expected the dragoman to grow cooler, but although he had been hot at first, he was getting hotter instead of cooler. The reply was—(may it be forgiven!)—that he had meant to get cooler, but the Hawajas were getting hotter steadily, owing to the three flags aforesaid. After a long parley it was arranged that they should send to another village for a horse worth £20, the value of the stolen one. They stoutly maintained that a stranger, and none of themselves, had committed the robbery, and that it was a bitter day when the Hawajas had pitched their tents among them. Nimr the soldier sat frowning and beating the ground savagely with a stick between his wide open legs. He repeated several times, with gusto, the aphorism, “Better to touch fire and scorpions than the property of Hawajas,” to which the rueful answer of the Sheikh was that it would be better! All was gloom, and when at last a messenger was sent off to procure a horse worth £20, the grandees went to their houses with the air of men doomed. Next morning the horse was brought, and was to be seen at the end of the line kicking and biting viciously. Its worth was only £15, but the balance was condoned. We expected that this would draw forth gratitude and even some gladness; but instead it brought them all to tears, and drew from them many assurances of the miserable poverty of their condition, and the inevitable ruin that awaited them if we actually accepted this horse which they had brought. To these pleadings the dragoman was deaf, insisting that we must now at least let things take their course. When they saw that this was the final position of affairs, they ceased from wailing. Within five minutes our own original horse was led into the camp, and their new one removed! Their game had been played to its very last turn, and having failed was laid aside. During the rest of our sojourn there these same men lingered in the camp, manifesting neither regret nor shame, but smoking, chatting, and laughing with our company in the highest possible good-humour.