The Danes have given us a definition of their idea of education: "It is," they say, "what is left after everything that has been learnt is forgotten." So it is with any form of travel; the value of it to the traveller himself is what is left after lapse of time has effaced all recollection of minor incidents and softened the vividness of strong impressions. In very slow travelling through desert countries, where day after day the same trivial events occur in similar yet different settings, the essential facts of that country sink into you imperceptibly, until at the end they are so woven into the fibres of your nature that, even when removed from their influence, you will never quite lose them.
There are certain notes in the East which form part of a tune sung all the world over, but which give a clearer and more definite sound in the land which first gave them birth. The sketches given in the following pages are framed on them; they are what I have left, and what I would fain pass on to the reader.
If I have succeeded in striking these notes true, there is no need of an apology to those who have already heard them in the country whence they spring; for any one who has ever travelled in the East welcomes anything that will once more touch that particular chord, at whatever time or place. And if I have succeeded in striking them so that here and there amongst those to whom the East is still but a name, there are some who may hear a faint echo of the real thing, I shall feel that there has been some justification for this contribution to the literature of the desert.
PART I
BRUSA TO DIARBEKR
"It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;
Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh'd;