Silver Chimes in Syria: Glimpses of a Missionary's Experiences

by William S. Nelson

In preparing for the active service of a missionary, it was necessary to have a horse and a touring outfit. Our servant was told that we wanted to buy a horse, and if he heard of any good chance, to let us know. In a few days a man came to the house with a large gray mare for me to try. I rode on her a little and examined her so far as I was capable of doing, and was greatly pleased with her. I knew enough, however, of oriental methods, to show no particular zeal over the matter, and left the owner without any indication of my pleasure. In my own mind, I decided that I should like to own that mare, and that I would be willing to pay as much as twenty pounds for her, though I hoped to secure a horse for half that amount. As I came in I told the servant to make inquiry about the price of the mare. He returned soon, saying the owner would sacrifice his own interests so far as to let me have her for seventy-five pounds. I did not buy that mare, but waited several months until I found a sturdy gray horse, which I bought for less than ten pounds. He served me well for five years, when I sold him for little less than the original cost.

Tripoli field was rejoicing and congratulating itself in those days over the macadamized road recently opened between Tripoli at the coast and Homs and Hamath in the interior. It was sixty-five miles to Homs and thirty-five more to Hamath. A cumbersome diligence made the trip to Homs in eleven hours, going one day and returning the next, and a lighter vehicle made the round trip between Homs and Hamath every day. This was a great advance in rapid transit and a great convenience in all lines of work.

In all Syria there was not a mile of railroad, and in northern Syria there was no carriage road besides the one line just mentioned. All traveling had to be done on horseback or afoot. Horses, donkeys, mules and camels were the universal means of travel and transportation. Every day caravans of camels came into Tripoli by the hundred, bringing grain, olive oil and Syrian butter from the interior. They returned loaded with sugar, rice, kerosene oil, and English yarn and cloth. The first railroad was built in the early nineties from Jaffa to Jerusalem. Later came the line from Beirut to Damascus; then the line from Haifa through Galilee to Damascus, the line from Damascus to the south, and the line from Damascus to Medina. Then came the branch line, from the Beirut-Damascus line, to Homs, Hamath and Aleppo, and finally the Tripoli Homs line and the German Bagdad line, passing through Aleppo from east to west. With many other lines and extensions under consideration, it is evident that railroad communication is fairly started in Syria and that this part of the East has begun to feel the influence of steam.

During our first year in Tripoli, before I was at all familiar with the various places, I overheard a conversation between two of our associates about a recent trip to Beirut by land. The remark was made, "I suppose you took a carriage from Junieh to Beirut." This is about one fourth of the distance and was considered a great gain in the facilities of transportation. The answer came, with even greater evidence of satisfaction, "No, I rode in a carriage from Jebail." This meant a doubling of the advantage, as Jebail is halfway between Tripoli and Beirut. That was in 1889 and it was not until 1912 that this carriage road was completed, so that one could make the whole distance on wheels.

The tramway connecting Tripoli City and the Mina, or harbor, was the only tramway in Syria and was an object of great pride. It had a single track about two miles long, with a switch in the middle for the passing of cars from the opposite ends. A car started from each terminus about once in twenty minutes and made the trip in about the same length of time, the fare being four cents and the motor power horses or mules. The cars were originally imported from Birmingham, of the double-decker type. They are still in daily service, receiving a fresh coat of paint and necessary repairs every year. This line continues to run, though with somewhat more frequent service and with a reduced fare of two cents, since public carriages now run on a road alongside the tram. Carriage roads now extend in several directions from Tripoli, and there are many public carriages to hire; even an automobile is occasionally seen and several bicycles have made their appearance.

The postal system is a curiosity to those who are accustomed to free delivery several times a day. It would be supposed that the Turkish post would carry all letters for people in Turkey, since Turkey is a member of the International Postal Union. At all the seaports, however, one finds foreign post offices, which do a large business in receiving and forwarding mail by all the steamers. To points in the interior they cannot deliver mail. In Tripoli we had the French, and later the Austrian service. In 1890 cholera appeared in Tripoli and all steamers stopped calling at the port, to avoid quarantine. We were confined to the use of the Turkish mail. Two messengers brought the mail by land from Beirut each week. It was Tripoli which was infected with cholera, and yet the incoming mail was stopped outside the city and drenched with carbolic acid, while the outgoing mail was not touched. The mail distributor in Tripoli could not read any language, not even Arabic, and so he used to bring the bag directly to our house and empty it on the floor, in order to get my help in assorting the letters for him. We were glad to have the first pick of the mail, as it assured our receiving all our own mail, and that promptly.

At the last conference of the International Postal Union there was a general reduction of postage and an increase in the unit of weight. Turkey has given her adherence to this international arrangement, but maintains her old internal rates so that we have the present absurd condition, that a piaster stamp will carry twenty grams to any place abroad, while it will carry only fifteen grams from one town to its next neighbor. Additional weight abroad requires three quarters of a piaster for each additional twenty grams, while for internal use every additional fifteen grams requires a full piaster. Thus a letter weighing sixty grams will go from an interior town like Homs to San Francisco for two piasters and a half, while the same letter, if sent from Homs to Tripoli, would cost four piasters.

It might be supposed that there would be good caravan roads, at least, in a country where all produce must be carried on quadrupeds, and all travelers must ride or walk. The reverse was true, and though the past twenty-five years have witnessed great improvement in this respect, there is still much to be desired in most localities. Many of the roads cannot be described as anything but trails through the rocky ground. The chief consideration in locating a road seems to be to have it run through ground which is fit for nothing else, for it would be a pity to waste arable ground, and so a road must go around, no matter what the distance. Whatever stones are gathered from the fields are thrown into the highway, making it rougher than ever. In some parts of the mountains, the road will lie along the top of a solid stone dike, ten to fifteen feet wide, from which the traveler looks down to a depth of eight or ten feet upon the fields and mulberry patches on each side. It has been said that a road, in Syria, is that part of the country to be avoided in traveling, so far as possible. This inference is easy to understand when you notice that all the trodden paths are in the fields at either side, and that people travel in the rough roads, only when there is no escape. While the grain is growing the farmers will do their best, by building up stone walls, to keep the animals out of their fields, but just as soon as the harvest is gathered these obstructions go down and the current of traffic resumes the easier course until the winter rains make the mud a worse enemy than the rough stones.

In other places it is often an interesting study to try to decide whether the water flows in the road, or whether people travel in the watercourses. It is something like the insolvable question as to which came first, the hen or the egg. The fact remains that, as a rule, in wet weather and rough country, the traveler will find his horse splashing through a stream of water flowing down the road. The explanation is simple. There is nowhere any system of drainage, and every man's purpose is to turn the streams of rain water away from his own land. Useful land cannot be wasted for watercourses any more than for roads, and hence the waste lands are devoted to the double purpose, with the resulting confusion as to which is the intruder.