Since the beginning of the last century the Porte has had in view a military occupation of the caravan route between Damascus and the Euphrates. “The Turk will catch up your best hare on the back of a lame donkey,” say the Arabs, little thinking what high praise they award to the conquering race. The cordon militaire was to extend from Damascus, viâ Jayrud, Karyatayn, Palmyra, and Sukhnah, to Daye on the great rim. The wells were to be commanded by block houses, the roads to be cleared by movable columns, and thus the plundering Bedouin, who refuse all allegiance to the Sultan, would be kept, perforce, in the dan, or desert, between the easternmost offsets of the Anti-Libanus and the pitch uplands of Nijd. This project was apparently rescued from the fate of good intentions by Osman Bey, a Hungarian officer who had served the Porte since 1848. He moved from Hamah with a body of some 1,600 men—enough to cut his way through
half the vermin in Araby the Unblest. Presently, after occupying Palmyra, building barracks, and restoring the old Druze Castle, he proceeded eastward to Sukhnah, whence he could communicate with the force expected to march westward from Baghdad. The welcome intelligence was hailed with joy: Palmyra, so long excluded from the Oriental tour, lay open to the European traveller; half a step had been taken towards a Euphrates Valley Railway; at Damascus men congratulated themselves upon the new line of frontier, which was naturally expected to strengthen and to extend the limits of Syria; and the merchant rejoiced to learn that his caravan would be no longer liable to wholesale plunder.
A fair vision, doomed soon to fade! After six months or so of occupation, Osman Bey, whose men were half starving, became tired of Palmyra, and was recalled to Damascus. The garrison was reduced to two hundred men under a captain, whose only friend was the raki bottle, and the last I saw of the garrison was his orderly riding into Hauran, with the huge, empty demijohns dangling at his saddle-bow. The Bedouin waxed brave, and, in the spring of 1871, I was obliged to send travellers to Palmyra by a long circuit, viâ the north and the north-west.[9]
A certain official business compelled me to visit Karyatayn, which is within jurisdiction of Damascus, and my wife resolved to accompany me. In this little enterprise I was warmly seconded by the Vicomte de Perrochel, a French traveller and author, who had twice visited Damascus in the hope of reaching Tadmor, and by M. Ionine, my Russian colleague. The Governor-General, the Field Marshal commanding the army of Syria, and other high officials, lent us their best aid. We engaged a pair of dragomen, six servants, a cook, and eight muleteers; twelve mules and eight baggage-asses to carry tents and canteen, baggage and provisions; and we rode our own horses, being wrongly persuaded not to take donkeys—on long marches they would have been a pleasant change. We were peculiarly unfortunate in the choice of head dragoman, a certain Anton Wardi, who had Italianised his name to Riza. Originally a donkey-boy at Beyrut, he made, by “skinning” sundry travellers, some 80,000 francs in ten years. He was utterly spoiled by his French friends, M. de Sauley and M. de Perrochel; he had also dragomaned the then Princess Amadeo, who, in return for his mean conduct, had promised him, and afterwards sent him, greatly to the disgust of every Italian gentleman, the Order of the Rose. This “native gentleman,” the type of the ignoble petit bourgeois of Syria, had been trusted without any contract having been made. He charged us a hundred francs per diem, and the others each fifty
francs and forty francs. When the bill was produced for settlement, it proved to be a long list of des extras: everything was un extra; two bottles of cognac, reported broken, appeared as des extras; even the water-camels were des extras. The fact was, he had allowed, when galloping about the country, some francs to fall from his pocket, and he resolved that les extras should replace them.
We altogether regretted the assistance of Mohammed, Shaykh of the Mezrab tribe, who had systematically fleeced travellers for a score of years. He demanded two napoleons a head for his wretched camels, sending a score when only one was wanted; like all other chiefs, he would not guarantee his protégés, either in purse or person, against enemies, but only against his own friends; he allowed them but two days at Palmyra; he made them march twenty, instead of fifteen, hours between Karyatayn and their destination; he concealed the fact that there are wells the whole way, in order to make them hire camels and buy water-skins; and, besides harassing them with night marches, he organised sham attacks, in order to make them duly appreciate his protection. I rejoice to say that Mohammed’s occupation has since gone; his miserable tribe was three times plundered within eighteen months, and, instead of fighting, he fell back upon the desert. May thus end all who oppose their petty interests to the general good—all that would shut roads instead of opening them! With a view of keeping up his title to escort travellers,
he sent with us a clansman upon a well-bred mare and armed with the honourable spear. But M. de Perrochel hired the mare; the crestfallen man was put upon a baggage-mare, and the poor spear was carried by a lame donkey.
Armed to the teeth, we set out in a chorus of groans and with general prognostications of evil. Ours was the first party since M. Dubois d’Angus was dangerously wounded, stripped, and turned out to die of hunger, thirst, and cold, because he could not salary the inevitable Bedouin. It would, doubtless, have been the interest of many and the delight of more to see us return in the scantiest of costumes; consequently a false report generally flew abroad that we had been pursued and plundered by the Bedouin.
The first night was passed under canvas near a ruined khan in the fifth valley plain east of the Syrian metropolis. The weather became unusually cold the next morning when we left the foggy lowland and turned to the north-east in order to cross the ridgy line of hills, which, offsetting from the Anti-Libanus, runs from Damascus toward the desert, and afterwards sweeps round to Palmyra. The line of travel was a break in the ridge. Then, gently descending, we fell into a northern depression, a section of that extensive valley in the Anti-Libanus, which, under a variety of names, runs nearly straight north-east (more exactly, 60°), to Palmyra. Nothing can be simpler than the geography of the country. The traveller cannot lose his way in the Palmyra Valley
without crossing the high and rugged mountains which hem it in on both sides, and, if he is attacked by raiders, he can easily take refuge, and laugh at the Arab goatees. During the time of our journey the miserable little robber clans Shitai and Ghiyas had completely closed the country five hours’ riding to the east of Damascus, whilst the Sorbai and the Anergah bandits were making the Merj a battlefield and were threatening to burn down the peaceful villages. Even as we crossed the pass we were saddened by the report that a troop of Bedouin had the day before murdered a wretched peasant within easy sight of Damascus. This state of things was a national scandal to the Porte, which, of course, was never allowed to know the truth.