Camel-riding is very pleasant, if it is a delúl with a long trot, but a slow walk is horribly tedious, a baggage animal is bone-breaking, and a gallop would be utter annihilation. A shugduf or takhtarawán shakes you till you are sore. The nicest mount is horse or mare—mare safer; but Richard did a very wise thing—he chose rahwáns. They run an American trot, and there is no more fatigue in riding them than sitting in an armchair. You have only to sit still and let them go, and they cover enormous spaces in the day; so he used to arrive perfectly fresh when we were all tired out. I possessed a couple of stallions. I was headstrong and foolish, and I would ride them, because I hated the rahwáns' paces; so I took a great deal more out of myself than I need have done, as they generally danced for a couple of hours before they settled down to their work. However much you may love the desert and camp life, when you have had your fill of it, I cannot tell how refreshing it is to see the first belt of green, like something dark lining the horizon, and to long to reach it. When you enter by degrees under the trees, the orchards, the gardens of Damascus, you smell the water from afar, and you hear its gurgling long before you come to the rills and fountains; you scent and then see the fruit—the limes, figs, citron, water-melon; you feel a madness to jump into the water, to eat your fill of fruit, to go to sleep under the delicious shade.
Such is entering Damascus. You forget the bitter wind, the scorching sun, the blistering sand; you wonder if it is true that you are going to have a bath, to change your clothes, to sleep in a real bed, without having to watch against Bedawi, or if your brain is hurt by the sun, or if your blinded eyes are seeing a mirage. Your tired, drooping horse tells you it is true; he pricks his ears, he wants to break out into a mild trot; done up as he is, he stops to drink at every rill, and, with a low whinny of joy, gathers a mouthful of grass at every crop. You who have never travelled in the desert do not know what water means. I have seen forty Bedawi race to a hole in a rock where as much rainwater had gathered as would fill a hand-basin, fling themselves off their horses, bend and put their lips to it, and then courteously make way for each other. You will see people in the East sitting, in what would appear to you a placid idiotcy of delight, by a little trickling stream not a foot wide, with a narghíleh, and calling it kayf, which means dolce far niente, or "sweet do-nothing."
Our House.
"Though old as history itself, thou art fresh as the breath of Spring, blooming as thine own rosebud, as fragrant as thine own orange flower, O Damascus, Pearl of the East!"
Our house in Damascus overhung the road and opposite gardens, with projecting lattice windows, was bounded on the right by a Mosque, on the left by a Hammám (Turkish bath), and front and back by gardens. On the other side of the road, among the apricot orchards, I had a capital stable for twelve horses, with a good room for saises (grooms), and a small garden with the river running through it. As soon as you got out of our village there was a bit of desert sand, and a background of tall yellow-coloured mountain, called Jebel Kaysún, or the Camomile Mountain, and that was what our village smelt of. When you entered our house, you came into a square courtyard, coarsely painted in broad stripes of red, white, and blue. All around were orange, lemon, and jessamine trees, a fountain playing in the middle, opposite the liwán, a raised room with one side taken out of it, open on to the court, spread with carpets and divans, and the niches filled with plants. Here, on hot days, one receives and offers coffee, lemonade, sherbet, chibouques, narghílehs, and cigarettes. On one side is a dining-room, on the other a cool sitting-room; all the rest is for servants and offices. Upstairs, six rooms run round two sides of the courtyard; a long terrace occupies the other two sides, joining and opening into the room at either end. There is a cool house-top with plants, to spread mats and divans, to sit amongst the flowers under the trees and by the Mosque-minaret, to look either towards our mountain, or over Damascus and the gardens, and inhale the desert-air from the other side of Damascus.
THE BURTONS HOUSE IN SALAHÍYYAH, DAMASCUS. By Sir Frederick Leighton.
We also made a beautiful arbour in the garden opposite, which contained chiefly roses and jessamine. By lifting up the overladen vines and citrons, and branches of the lemon and orange trees, and supporting them on a frame-work, so that no sun could penetrate their luxuriance; we had a divan made under them for the cool summer evenings near the rushing river, and many happy hours of kayf we passed there. The Mosque next door to us, seemed to be built round and clung to a huge vine tree, which spread up and down all over it and its terrace, and the Muezzin's Minaret and my study window were cheek by jowl. The village was charming—domes and minarets peeping out of trees, bubbling streams, the music of the water-wheel.