Thursday, June 14.—I rode down to see Wellington, the black. His quarantine was to last in all forty days. He was alone in the building before described, called the Shemaôony, lying with his mattress on the stones, in the open air, and with an invalided soldier to attend on him, who of course was condemned to the same length of quarantine as himself. Wellington thanked me for the things which had been sent him. “Ah, sir,” said he, “this is not like my own country. At New York I should, even in a hospital, be attended by a good nurse; I should have my comfortable cup of tea, my bread pudding; and what the doctor ordered me would be properly administered: but that man” (pointing to the soldier) “wants to kill me. He is tired of being as it were in prison, and last night he beat me—yes, he beat me, ill as I am, because I woke him to assist me in my helplessness. My swelling is broken too; and it wants rags and plasters, and I have not strength to dress it myself; for I am so weak! look, see how my arms and legs are reduced in size. Tell that lady who is so kind to me, that, when I get well, I will bring her some of the beads and cockle-shells, and other curiosities I bought at Jerusalem; and I have got some fine cotton stockings that I brought from New York,”—“Oh! but Wellington,” said I, interrupting him, “the lady is not in need of such things, although your feelings are not the less creditable on that account. She is a great lady, like the wife of your President, and she loves to do good to everybody.” “God bless her!” cried the poor fellow; “and it was so thoughtful of her to send me this soft pillow to put under my back, when I only asked for one for my head; for, do you know, it was the very thing I wanted, I have got such sores down my backbone from lying so long in the same position! Will you be so good as to explain to that man that he must make a fire, and boil the water here, when I want tea? for Lufloofy brings the water from the town, and it is quite cold before he gets here. And do, sir, tell him he is not to beat me—but no! perhaps you had better not; for in the night he will be revenged on me, and who is to help me here? Oh, sir, if you knew what I suffer! I have not had a clean shirt, until those you sent me, since the day of our reaching this place.”
On leaving Wellington, I rode into Sayda, and going to Signor Lapi, where I found the governor’s secretary, I told them how the soldier maltreated the poor sick man. He immediately provided another attendant, an old Christian, named Anastasius, and, accompanying me to the Shemaôony himself, he menaced the soldier with a good bastinadoing, ordered him to the corner of the building farthest removed from Wellington’s bed, and threatened to have him shot if he dared molest either the black or Anastasius. Having settled this affair, I went to one of the city baths, called Hamàm el Gidýd, where I was obliged to hurry myself greatly to make way for the women, who, their time being come, were raising a clamour about the door. Baths are generally open for men until noon, and for women until sunset.
To-day news had come that the Druzes had advanced as far as Hasbéyah and Rashéyah about a day’s journey from Sayda; that they had killed the governor, and had spread consternation throughout the district. This news was confirmed by Khosrô Effendi and Selim Effendi, two gentlemen in the governor’s service.
On my return, I had occasion to witness the successful results of the Emir Beshýr’s measure for the destruction of the locusts. Immense swarms of these insects had come from the south-east, and settled for many leagues around during the month of ——, laying their eggs in holes in the ground, which they bore, as far as I could observe, with a sort of auger, which nature has sheathed in their tails. Their eggs form a small cylinder about as big as a maggot, and in minute appearance like an ear of Turkey corn, all the little eggs, as so many pins’ heads, lying in rows with that beautiful uniformity so constant in all the works of the Creator. How many of these conglomerate little masses each female locust lays I know not, but those I handled were enough to equal in size a hazel-nut, and, united by some glutinous matter, they are hatched about May. But no sooner had the swarms laid their eggs, than, to prevent their hatching, an order was enforced all through the district where the locusts had settled, obliging every member of a family above a certain age to bring for so many days (say) half a gallon of eggs to the village green, where, lighted faggots being thrown on them, they were consumed. The order was in full force for, probably, three weeks, until it was supposed that the greatest part of the eggs had been dug up and destroyed. The peasants know by certain signs where the females have laid their eggs: but the utmost vigilance may overlook some ovaries; and, as each clot of the size of a nut may produce 5,000 locusts (for the peasants told me that each separate cluster of the size of a maggot contained more than a hundred eggs), it may be easily imagined how they swarm as soon as they are hatched. What one first sees is a black heap, about the size of the brim of a coalheaver’s hat. A day or two after the heap spreads for some yards round, and consists of little black grasshopper-like things, all jumping here and there with such dazzling agility as to fatigue the eye. Soon afterwards they begin to march in one direction, and to eat; and then they spread so widely through a whole province that a person may ride for leagues and leagues, and his horse will never put a foot to the ground without crushing three or four at a step: it is then the peasants rush to their fields, if fortunate enough to meet the vanguard of this formidable and destructive army. With hoes, shovels, pickaxes and the like, they dig a trench as deep as time will permit across their march, and there, as the locusts, which never turn aside for anything, enter, they bury, burn, and crush them, until exhaustion compels them to desist, or until, as was the case this year, from previous destruction of the eggs, and from having only partial swarms to contend with, they succeed in nearly annihilating them. When they fly, the whole village population comes out with kettles, pots, and pans, and, by an incessant din, tries to prevent their settling. The greatest enemy to locusts is a high wind, which carries them to the sea and drowns them, or, opposing their course, drives them back to the desert, probably to perish for want of sustenance.
In the evening, Lady Hester was in very low spirits. She said many unpleasant things to me, calling it frankness. She made a long tirade on my obstinacy in not listening to her prophetic voice. She said—“Wherever you go, you will regret not having followed my counsels, whether in Syria or in Europe. I should not,” she added, “have bestowed so much time on you, but I wish you well, and am sorry you will not put yourself in my train. You can be of no use to me, for I shall want persons of determination, judgment, and courage—neither of which you possess: but I know from what cause all your errors come—from having given up your liberty to a woman.”—Such was her opinion of what she called the slavery of marriage.
Monday, June 18.—I was mounting my horse to go to Sayda, when a person on a sorry nag, dressed in the nizàm dress, passed my gate, followed by a servant. “Good morning,” said I, in Arabic (for it is a sin almost not to give a good day to friend or stranger in these countries), and, receiving a reply in the same language, I concluded he was some officer of the Pasha’s come on business, and I rode off. On arriving at Sayda, I was asked if I had met a Frank on the road, and replied no; until, by the description, I learned that the person in the nizàm dress was a European. “Of what nation he is,” said my informant, “I can’t tell; we spoke to him in three or four languages, but it was all the same to him—he answered fluently in all. There is his lodging” (and he pointed to a small tent pitched in the middle of the khan quadrangle); “for we told him we had not a room to give him, owing to the earthquake; but he said he preferred being near us to going into the town, and so there he slept. When he wanted a guide up to mylady’s house, we told him that he must first send to ask permission to visit her; but he maintained there was no occasion for that; so we left him to his own course.”
According to the news that I collected, the signs of the times were rather alarming. Whilst I was holding the above conversation, a peasant entered the khan gate with a brace of pistols in his girdle. “There they are,” whispered a Turk to me. “A fortnight ago, that peasant would have no more dared to come into town with his arms—but now they hang them on a peg in their cottages, especially in and about Nablôos, and set the soldiers and the pasha at defiance; and the garrison here is as mute as a mouse. God knows how things will turn out! In the mountain there is even a fanatic shaykh who goes about haranguing the people, advising them to pay no more miri to Ibrahim Pasha. A man, too, has been murdered on the Beyrout road.”
When I returned to the Dar in the evening, I saw Lady Hester. Nothing was said about the stranger’s arrival, although, by the stranger’s garden-door being open, I knew he was installed there; but, according to the etiquette observed in the house, I made no inquiries, judging that this was to be a mysterious visit, with which I had nothing to do; so I went home. It must appear very strange to the reader, that there should be a European so near to me, who would have to dine alone when I would willingly have had his company; yet, without seriously offending Lady Hester, I could neither invite him, nor even pay him a visit—but such was her character. With her everything must be secret, and everything exclusive; and if ever there was a being who would have appropriated all authority to herself, and have shouldered out the rest of mankind from the enjoyment of any privilege but such as she thought fit to concede, it was Lady Hester Stanhope.
Tuesday, June 19.—This morning the conversation turned on the Druze insurrection. Lady Hester now assumed the air of a person who, having made extraordinary prophecies, saw that the time of their accomplishment had arrived. “I foretold all this,” said she: “in a short time you will not be able to ride from here to Sayda; the country will be overrun with armed men; but I shall be as cool, from first to last, as at a fête. All the cowards may go: I want only those who can send a ball where I direct them. Why do I keep such men as Seyd Ahmed and some others? because I know they would mind no more killing a score of people than eating their dinner. You wanted me to get rid of them, and blamed my tubba [disposition] because I had such fellows about me, whose plots you are afraid of:—why, yes, they were uneasy and troublesome, because they had nothing to do: but I knew the time would come when they would be useful, as you will see.”
Finding that Lady Hester seemed, for some unknown reason, to wish for my absence, I took my leave of her until Wednesday evening.