[97] When Lady Hester was in the Desert, she entered into an arrangement with the emir and his son Nasar, that, whatever person applied to them for a passage to Palmyra, and made use of her name without being furnished with a letter from her, such a one was no friend of hers. Of those who produced letters from her she wished them to understand there might be two classes, who would be distinguished by a double seal or single seal. “If there comes to me,” said Lady Hester, “a great man, on whom I can rely, and whose word you may trust as my own, who wants to live among you, to see your mock fights or a camel killed and eaten, to ride on a dromedary in his housings, &c., I will send him with two seals: but if it be another sort of person, I will send him with one.”
Lady Hester had mentioned this conversation to Mr. Bankes. When therefore Mr. Bankes was furnished with a letter by her ladyship, curious to know under which denomination he was sent, he caused his letter to be read to him by a man at Hamah, a stranger whom he accidentally met; and, finding that there was but one seal, and that he was mentioned neither as a prince nor nobleman, he would not present it.
Some persons, who heard of this, went so far as to say that Lady Hester wanted to shut people out of the Desert; but it must be evident that all she wanted was not to compromise herself.
So much was Mr. Bankes’s pride hurt by this adventure that, when finally he had achieved his journey to Palmyra, he left Lady Hester’s letters with Mr. Barker, as a deposit,—to show (he said) that her influence had nothing to do with his getting thither.
Arrived at Hamah, he neither delivered the letters to Muly Ismael and to Nasr, nor suffered Pierre to remain with him; but, having met there the Pasha of Damascus, Hafiz Ali, who showed him great civility and wrote to the Bedouins to recommend him to their protection, he set off with his customary guard, the renegado Albanian. He was arrested in his progress, at the Belàz mountain, by Shaykh Nasar, who demanded of him who he was, and whither he was going. Mr. Bankes in vain said that the pasha would punish those who molested him. Nasar required of him a vast sum of money, as the price of his passage; and, on Mr. Bankes’s refusal, conducted him back to Hamah, without doing him any harm. Mr. Bankes afterwards made a second attempt, which also was not attended with complete success. Hearing that Sir William Chatterton and Mr. Leslie were on their way to Hamah, he waited some time for them; but, eager to effect his purpose, he at last departed alone, having agreed to pay 1,100 piasters (£45 sterling). On his arrival at Palmyra, Hamed, another son of Mahannah, insisted on having an additional present; and, on Mr. Bankes’s refusal, imprisoned him. It was also said that Mr. Bankes was forced to pay thirty ikliks to be permitted to copy an inscription over the gate of the Temple of the Sun: but Nasar restored the money to Mr. Bankes on his return to Hamah.
Some time before this, a rupture had taken place between Lady Hester and Mr. Bankes; and, on Mr. Bankes’s writing to me a request that, in case of going to England, I would take charge of a tin box containing some of his drawings and his fresco paintings, both which were still at Mar Elias, Lady Hester advised me to have nothing to do with them, but to transmit them to him, which I did, with an excuse on the score that the trust was too great.
[98] Lady Hester Stanhope, under precisely the same circumstances, contrived to effect her entry. These difficulties were never raised against common persons.
[99] These fish were afterwards shown to Monsieur Cuvier, but, as being common to all the Mediterranean, proved not to be curious. The traveller in those countries should be apprized that drawings of the fish of the Syrian rivers, and of the inland seas and lakes, would be esteemed a great curiosity. Dr. Clark says, “An Arab fisherman at Jaffa, as we were standing upon the beach, came running to us with a fish he had just taken out of the water; and, from his eagerness to show what he had caught, we supposed it could not be very common. It was like a small tench, but of a dark and exceedingly vivid green colour, such as we had never seen before nor since; neither is it described by any author we are acquainted with. We had no means of preserving it, and therefore would not deprive the poor man of an acquisition with which he seemed so delighted; but gave him a trifle for the gratification its very extraordinary appearance afforded us, and left it in his hands.”—Dr. Clark’s Travels: vol. ii., chap. xviii., p. 643: quarto edition.
Dr. Clark, on seeing a drawing I had made of the Aroos, in French Demoiseau, declared it to be the same fish that he speaks of in the above extract. He is, however, mistaken in supposing it to be rare on the coast of Syria. I have seen five at a time for sale, and his assertion is totally incorrect.
[100] The melinján is a vegetable of a pear shape and of a deep lilac colour, as large as a bon-chretien pear, called in French aubergine.