The remorseless Jews were swept from the Promised Land, as their ancestor was from Eden, for the irreparable sin; and the sword of the Roman waved over the ruined walls of Jerusalem, forbidding all return. The Saracen and the Crusader succeeding, add another element of interest—an English association—to long-tried and suffering Judea. The Crusaders were rather a warlike emigration than invasion; they were the angry overflow of discontented Europe, which sought to vent its spleen and dogmas upon the Infidel. Their ebbing tide bore back to us the arts and sciences and chivalry of Arabia; and thus Palestine became the channel for all our best temporal acquirements, as it had long since furnished us with our eternal hope.
All this, and more—much more—invests Syria with undying and exhaustless interest to the student and the traveller; but we will not linger on such impressions now. We have a lighter task to fulfil, though we are about to visit the land of Nimrod, of Abraham's nativity, and of the empire of Semiramis. The pleasant company in which we travel will speed us on; and, in the old troubadour fashion, lay and legend will beguile the way. But before we enter fairly on our pilgrimage to "Ur of the Chaldees" and the tomb of Nineveh, we shall pause to make some practical observations on the route which, in its present aspect, may be new to some of our readers.
Egypt may soon be reached in ten days.[10] This is almost incredible; still more so, when we add that it may be accomplished without fatigue, hardship, or self-denial. The traveller even now embarks at Southampton in one of the Oriental Company's magnificent steamers, and finds himself landed at Alexandria in fifteen days, having visited Gibraltar and Malta, besides having travelled three thousand miles in as much comfort as he would have enjoyed at Brighton, with far more advantage to his health and spirits, and but trifling additional expense. For our own parts, we believe that, before long, sea voyages, instead of sea shores, will be resorted to, not only by the invalid, but by the epicurean and the idler. The floating hotels of our ocean steamers afford as comfortable quarters as any of their more stationary rivals, with the additional advantage of presenting a change of air and of scenery every morning that the "lodger" rises.
The autumn—the later the better—is the best period for visiting Egypt. October is, on the whole, the best month for beginning the ascent of the Nile. We will suppose the traveller landed at Alexandria: he achieves the lions of that suddenly-created city (except Aboukir Bay) in a few hours, and is ready to start for Cairo in the mail steamer, with the India-bound passengers who accompanied him from England. The country in which he now finds himself, by so sudden a transition, is full of apparent paradoxes; amongst others, he may be surprised to find that the canal on which he travels to Atfeh winds considerably, though no engineering obstacles whatever oppose themselves to a straight course. The reason of this sinuosity was thus explained to us by Mehemet Ali himself:—"You ask why my canal is not straight: Ya, Wallah! it is owing to a bit of bigotry. The dog who made it was a true Believer, and something more. He said to himself, 'Ya, Seedee, thou art about to make what Giaours call a canal, and Giaours in their impiety make such things straight. Now, a canal is made after the fashion of a river—(Allah pardon us for imitating his works!)—and all rivers wind: Allah forbid that my canal should be better than His river; it shall wind too.'"
And so it does.
Landed at Cairo, the traveller of the present day will find a steamer once a fortnight ready to take him up to the first cataract and back again, as fast as Young Rapid, or any other son of a tailor, could desire. But even the rational tourist will be tempted to send on his Kandjiah, (the old-fashioned Nile boat,) well found and provisioned, a fortnight or three weeks before him, and overtake her in the steamer. The Kandjiah voyage up stream is often wearisome, downward never—as in the descent you are borne softly along at from three to six miles an hour, even when you sleep. From the first cataract to the second is only about two hundred miles, and occupies about three weeks; but to those who can find pleasure in what is most wild and dreamy and unearthly in scenery and art, the desert view from Mount Abousir, the temples of Guerf, Hassan, and Ipsamboul, are worth all the rest of the Nile voyage, except Thebes and exquisite Philæ.[11] Returned to Alexandria, as we will suppose, in March, the traveller will be quite early enough for Syria, whose winter (considering the tented life he is compelled to lead) is not to be despised. A steamer transports him to Beyrout in thirty hours; and there our true travel begins.[12] 11 A: The mere physical pleasure of the upper voyage has been thus described—"No words can convey an idea of the beauty and delightfulness of tropical weather, at least while any breeze from the north is blowing. There is a pleasure in the very act of breathing—a voluptuous consciousness that existence is a blessed thing: the pulse beats high, but calmly; the eye feels expanded; the chest heaves pleasureably, as if air was a delicious draught to thirsty lungs; and the mind takes its colouring and character from sensation. No thought of melancholy ever darkens over us—no painful sense of isolation or of loneliness, as day after day we pass on through silent deserts, upon the silent and solemn river. One seems, as it were, removed into another state of existence; and all the strifes and struggles of that from which we have emerged seem to fade, softened into indistinctness. This is what Homer and Alfred Tennyson knew that the lotus-eaters felt when they tasted of the mysterious tree of this country, and became weary of their wanderings:—
'——To him the gushing of the wave
Far, far away, did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores: and, if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave!
And deep asleep he seemed, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.'
If the day, with all the tyranny of its sunshine and its innumerable insects, be enjoyable in the tropics, the night is still more so. The stars shine out with diamond brilliancy, and appear as large as if seen through a telescope. Their changing colours, the wake of light they cast upon the water, the distinctness of the milky way, and the splendour, above all, of the evening star, give one the impression of being under a different firmament from that to which we have been accustomed; then the cool delicious airs, with all the strange and stilly sounds they bear from the desert and the forest; the delicate scents they scatter, and the languid breathings with which they make our large white sails appear to pant, as they heave and languish softly over the water."—(The Crescent and the Cross, vol. i. p. 210.)]
Thus, (omitting the somewhat important episode of Egypt,) we find ourselves transported, in little more than a fortnight, from the murky fogs and leafless trees of England, to the delicious temperature and tropical verdure that surrounds the most beautiful town of the Levant. As every improvement in steam-navigation lessens its distance from Christendom, Beyrout increases and expands. Nor must we omit an honest tribute to the iron but even-handed justice of Ibrahim Pasha, which first rendered it safely accessible to Europeans. Before his conquest of Syria, the Frank was wont to skulk anxiously through the town, exposed to insult and unpunished violence: without the walls, the robber enjoyed as much impunity as the bigot did within; and, between both, Beyrout became, or continued to be, a miserable village. Its environs were wild wastes, where the gipsy alone ventured to pitch his tent, and the wild dog prowled. Now, pleasant gardens and picturesque kiosks, or summer-houses, replace the wilderness; the town expands, grows clean, doubles its population, and welcomes a crowd of shipping to its port. A more delightful residence, as a refuge from winter, can scarcely be conceived. An infinite variety of excursions may be made from hence; and every time the traveller mounts his horse, whether he be historically, picturesquely, controversially, botanically, or geologically given, he may return to his flat-roofed home with some valuable acquisition to his note-book. The views are everywhere magnificent, and the warm breezes from the bluest of oceans are tempered by the snowy neighbourhood of the loveliest of mountains.
Five roads of leading interest (besides many a cheering byway among the hills) branch out from the walls of Beyrout. Damascus is about eighteen hours off; Jerusalem six days; Djouni, the romantic residence and burial-place of Lady Hester Stanhope, ten hours; Baalbec, the flower of all Eastern ruins, eighteen hours, and Latakia, whither we are bound, five days. These distances may be accomplished in less time; they are here given at the calculation of a walking pace, as the roads, or rather paths, are for the most part steep and difficult; and the baggage-horses, at all events, can seldom advance more rapidly. One word more of dry detail, and we shall put ourselves en route for the mountains of the Ansayrii and the further East. Notwithstanding the advance of civilisation at Beyrout, where a European consulocracy has established a more than European equality of privileges between Turks and Christians, the interior of the country is daily becoming more dangerous to travel in. Eight years ago, when the stern rule of Ibrahim Pasha had still left its beneficent traces, the writer of this article wandered over the length and breadth of the land, attended by a single servant and a muleteer. Since our Government, for inscrutable reasons, has restored Syria to the embroilment of its native factions, all security for the traveller, and indeed for the native, has ceased. To reach Jerusalem, or even Damascus, in safety, a considerable escort is now necessary; though the Vale of Baalbec may still be reached in less warlike fashion from Latakia or Tripoli, if the traveller is endowed with liberality, courage, and courtesy—the leading virtues of his profession.