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IN THE LEVANT.

By Charles Dudley Warner,

Twenty Fifth Impression

Boston: Houghton, Mifflin And Company

1876


TO WILLIAM D. HOWELLS THESE NOTES OF ORIENTAL TRAVEL ARE FRATERNALLY
INSCRIBED.





CONTENTS

PREFACE

IN THE LEVANT.

I.—FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM.

II.—JERUSALEM.

III.—HOLY PLACES OP THE HOLY CITY.

IV.—NEIGHBORHOODS OF JERUSALEM.

V.—GOING DOWN TO JERICHO.

VI.—BETHLEHEM AND MAR SABA.

VII.—THE FAIR OF MOSES; THE ARMENIAN PATRIARCH.

VIII.—DEPARTURE FROM JERUSALEM.

IX.—ALONG THE SYRIAN COAST.

X.—BEYROUT.—OVER THE LEBANON.

XI.—BA'ALBEK.

XII.—ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS.

XIII.—THE OLDEST OF CITIES.

XIV.—OTHER SIGHTS IN DAMASCUS.

XV.—SOME PRIVATE HOUSES.

XVI.—SOME SPECIMEN TRAVELLERS.

XVII.—INTO DAYLIGHT AGAIN.—AN EPISODE OF TURKISH JUSTICE.

XVIII.—CYPRUS.

XIX.—THROUGH SUMMER SEAS.—RHODES.

XX.—AMONG THE ÆGEAN ISLANDS.

XXI.—SMYRNA AND EPHESUS.

XII.—THE ADVENTURERS.

XXIII.—THROUGH THE DARDANELLES.

XIV.—CONSTANTINOPLE.

XXV.—THE SERAGLIO AND ST. SOPHIA, HIPPODROME, etc.

XXVI.—SAUNTERINGS ABOUT CONSTANTINOPLE.

XXVII.—FROM THE GOLDEN HORN TO THE ACROPOLIS.

XXVIII.—ATHENS.

XXIX.—ELEUSIS, PLATO'S ACADEME, ETC.

XXX.—THROUGH THE GULF OF CORINTH.




PREFACE

IN the winter and spring of 1875 the writer made the tour of Egypt and
the Levant. The first portion of the journey is described in a volume
published last summer, entitled “My Winter on the Nile, among Mummies
and Moslems”; the second in the following pages. The notes of the
journey were taken and the books were written before there were any
signs of the present Oriental disturbances, and the observations made
are therefore uncolored by any expectation of the existing state of
affairs. Signs enough were visible of a transition period, extraordinary
but hopeful; with the existence of poverty, oppression, superstition,
and ignorance were mingling Occidental and Christian influences, the
faint beginnings of a revival of learning and the stronger pulsations of
awakening commercial and industrial life. The best hope of this revival
was their, as it is now, in peace and not in war. C. D. W.

Hartford, November 10,1876.




IN THE LEVANT.




I.—FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM.

SINCE Jonah made his short and ignominious voyage along the Syrian
coast, mariners have had the same difficulty in getting ashore that
the sailors experienced who attempted to land the prophet; his tedious
though safe method of disembarking was not followed by later navigators,
and the landing at Jaffa has remained a vexatious and half the time an
impossible achievement.

The town lies upon the open sea and has no harbor. It is only in
favorable weather that vessels can anchor within a mile or so from
shore, and the Mediterranean steamboats often pass the port without
being able to land either freight or passengers, In the usual condition
of the sea the big fish would have found it difficult to discharge Jonah
without stranding itself, and it seems that it waited three days for the
favorable moment. The best chance for landing nowadays is in the early
morning, in that calm period when the winds and the waves alike await
the movements of the sun. It was at that hour, on the 5th of April,
1875, that we arrived from Port Said on the French steamboat Erymanthe.
The night had been pleasant and the sea tolerably smooth, but not to the
apprehensions of some of the passengers, who always declare that they
prefer, now, a real tempest to a deceitful groundswell. On a recent trip
a party had been prevented from landing, owing to the deliberation
of the ladies in making their toilet; by the time they had attired
themselves in a proper manner to appear in Southern Palestine, the
golden hour had slipped away, and they were able only to look upon the
land which their beauty and clothes would have adorned. None of us were
caught in a like delinquency. At the moment the anchor went down we
were bargaining with a villain to take us ashore, a bargain in which the
yeasty and waxingly uneasy sea gave the boatman all the advantage.

Our little company of four is guided by the philosopher and dragoman
Mohammed Abd-el-Atti, of Cairo, who has served us during the long voyage
of the Nile. He is assisted in his task by the Abyssinian boy Ahman
Abdallah, the brightest and most faithful of servants. In making his
first appearance in the Holy Land he has donned over his gay Oriental
costume a blue Frank coat, and set his fez back upon his head at an
angle exceeding the <DW72> of his forehead. His black face has an unusual
lustre, and his eyes dance with more than their ordinary merriment as he
points excitedly to the shore and cries, “Yâfa! Mist'r Dunham.”

The information is addressed to Madame, whom Ahman, utterly regardless
of sex, invariably addresses by the name of one of our travelling
companions on the Nile.

“Yes, marm; you see him, Yâfa,” interposed Abd-el-Atti; coming
forward with the air of brushing aside, as impertinent, the geographical
information of his subordinate; “not much, I tink, but him bery old.
Let us to go ashore.”

Jaffa, or Yâfa, or Joppa, must have been a well-established city, since
it had maritime dealings with Tarshish, in that remote period in which
the quaint story of Jonah is set,—a piece of Hebrew literature that
bears internal evidence of great antiquity in its extreme naivete.
Although the Canaanites did not come into Palestine till about 2400 b.
c., that is to say, about the time of the twelfth dynasty in Egypt, yet
there is a reasonable tradition that Jaffa existed before the deluge.
For ages it has been the chief Mediterranean port of great Jerusalem.
Here Solomon landed his Lebanon timber for the temple. The town swarmed
more than once with the Roman legions on their way to crush a Jewish
insurrection. It displayed the banner of the Saracen host a few years
after the Hegira. And, later, when the Crusaders erected the standard of
the cross on its walls, it was the dépôt of supplies which Venice and
Genoa and other rich cities contributed to the holy war. Great kingdoms
and conquerors have possessed it in turn, and for thousands of years
merchants have trusted their fortunes to its perilous roadstead. And
yet no one has ever thought it worth while to give it a harbor by the
construction of a mole, or a pier like that at Port Said. I should say
that the first requisite in the industrial, to say nothing of the moral,
regeneration of Palestine is a harbor at Jaffa.

The city is a cluster of irregular, flat-roofed houses, and looks from
the sea like a brown bowl turned bottom up; the roofs are terraces on
which the inhabitants can sleep on summer nights, and to which they
can ascend, out of the narrow, evil-smelling streets, to get a whiff of
sweet odor from the orange gardens which surround the town. The ordinary
pictures of Jaffa do it ample justice. The chief feature in the view is
the hundreds of clumsy feluccas tossing about in the aggravating waves,
diving endwise and dipping sidewise, guided a little by the long sweeps
of the sailors, but apparently the sport of the most uncertain billows.
A swarm of them, four or five deep, surrounds our vessel; they are
rising and falling in the most sickly motion, and dashing into each
other in the frantic efforts of their rowers to get near the gangway
ladder. One minute the boat nearest the stairs rises as if it would
mount into the ship, and the next it sinks below the steps into a
frightful gulf. The passengers watch the passing opportunity to jump
on board, as people dive into the “lift” of a hotel. Freight is
discharged into lighters that are equally frisky; and it is taken on and
off splashed with salt water and liable to a thousand accidents in the
violence of the transit.

Before the town stretches a line of rocks worn for ages, upon which the
surf is breaking and sending white jets into the air. It is through a
narrow opening in this that our boat is borne on the back of a great
wave, and we come into a strip of calmer water and approach the single
landing-stairs. These stairs are not so convenient as those of the
vessel we have just left, and two persons can scarcely pass on them. But
this is the only sea entrance to Jaffa; if the Jews attempt to return
and enter their ancient kingdom this way, it will take them a long time
to get in. A sea-wall fronts the town, fortified by a couple of rusty
cannon at one end, and the passage is through the one gate at the head
of these stairs.

It seems forever that we are kept waiting at the foot of this shaky
stairway. Two opposing currents are struggling to get up and down it:
excited travellers, porters with trunks and knapsacks, and dragomans who
appear to be pushing their way through simply to show their familiarity
with the country. It is a dangerous ascent for a delicate woman.
Somehow, as we wait at this gate where so many men of note have waited,
and look upon this sea-wall upon which have stood so many of the mighty
from Solomon to Origen, from Tiglath-Pileser to Richard Cour de Lion,
the historical figure which most pervades Jaffa is that of the whimsical
Jonah, whose connection with it was the slightest. There is no evidence
that he ever returned here. Josephus, who takes liberties with the
Hebrew Scriptures, says that a whale carried the fugitive into the
Euxine Sea, and there discharged him much nearer to Nineveh than he
would have been if he had kept with the conveyance in which he first
took passage and landed at Tarsus. Probably no one in Jaffa noticed the
little man as he slipped through this gate and took ship, and yet his
simple embarkation from the town has given it more notoriety than any
other event. Thanks to an enduring piece of literature, the unheroic
Jonah and his whale are better known than St. Jerome and his lion;
they are the earliest associates and Oriental acquaintances of all
well-brought-up children in Christendom. For myself, I confess that the
strictness of many a New England Sunday has been relieved by the perusal
of his unique adventure. He in a manner anticipated the use of the
monitors and other cigar-shaped submerged sea-vessels.

When we have struggled up the slippery stairs and come through the gate,
we wind about for some time in a narrow passage on the side of the sea,
and then cross through the city, still on foot. It is a rubbishy place;
the streets are steep and crooked; we pass through archways, we ascend
steps, we make unexpected turns; the shops are a little like bazaars,
but rather Italian than Oriental; we pass a pillared mosque and a Moslem
fountain; we come upon an ancient square, in the centre of which is a
round fountain with pillars and a canopy of stone, and close about it
are the bazaars of merchants. This old fountain is profusely sculptured
with Arabic inscriptions; the stones are worn and have taken the rich
tint of age, and the sunlight blends it into harmony with the gay stuffs
of the shops and the dark skins of the idlers on the pavement. We come
into the great market of fruit and vegetables, where vast heaps of
oranges, like apples in a New England orchard, line the way and fill the
atmosphere with a golden tinge.

The Jaffa oranges are famous in the Orient; they grow to the size of
ostrich eggs, they have a skin as thick as the hide of a rhinoceros,
and, in their season, the pulp is sweet, juicy, and tender. It is a
little late now, and we open one golden globe after another before
we find one that is not dry and tasteless as a piece of punk. But one
cannot resist buying such magnificent fruit.

Outside the walls, through broad dusty highways, by lanes of cactus
hedges and in sight again of the sea breaking on a rocky shore, we come
to the Hotel of the Twelve Tribes, occupied now principally by Cook's
tribes, most of whom appear to be lost. In the adjacent lot are pitched
the tents of Syrian travellers, and one of Cook's expeditions is in
all the bustle of speedy departure. The bony, nervous Syrian horses are
assigned by lot to the pilgrims, who are excellent people from England
and America, and most of them as unaccustomed to the back of a horse as
to that of an ostrich. It is touching to see some of the pilgrims walk
around the animals which have fallen to them, wondering how they are to
get on, which side they are to mount, and how they are to stay on. Some
have already mounted, and are walking the steeds carefully round the
enclosure or timidly essaying a trot. Nearly every one concludes, after
a trial, that he would like to change,—something not quite so much
up and down, you know, an easier saddle, a horse that more unites
gentleness with spirit. Some of the dragomans are equipped in a manner
to impress travellers with the perils of the country. One, whom I
remember on the Nile as a mild though showy person, has bloomed here
into a Bedawee: he is fierce in aspect, an arsenal of weapons, and
gallops furiously about upon a horse loaded down with accoutrements.
This, however, is only the beginning of our real danger.

After breakfast we sallied out to see the sights: besides the house of
Simon the tanner, they are not many. The house of Simon is, as it was in
the time of St. Peter, by the seaside. We went upon the roof (and it is
more roof than anything else) where the apostle lay down to sleep and
saw the vision, and looked around upon the other roofs and upon the wide
sweep of the tumbling sea. In the court is a well, the stone curb of
which is deeply worn in several places by the rope, showing long use.
The water is brackish; Simon may have tanned with it. The house has not
probably been destroyed and rebuilt more than four or five times since
St. Peter dwelt here; the Romans once built the entire city. The chief
room is now a mosque. We inquired for the house of Dorcas, but that is
not shown, although I understood that we could see her grave outside the
city. It is a great oversight not to show the house of Dorcas, and
one that I cannot believe will long annoy pilgrims in these days of
multiplied discoveries of sacred sites.

Whether this is the actual spot where the house of Simon stood, I do not
know, nor does it much matter. Here, or hereabouts, the apostle saw that
marvellous vision which proclaimed to a weary world the brotherhood of
man. From this spot issued the gospel of democracy: “Of a truth, I
perceive that God is no respecter of persons.” From this insignificant
dwelling went forth the edict that broke the power of tyrants,
and loosed the bonds of slaves, and ennobled the lot of woman, and
enfranchised the human mind. Of all places on earth I think there is
only one more worthy of pilgrimage by all devout and liberty-loving
souls.

We were greatly interested, also, in a visit to the well-known school of
Miss Amot, a mission school for girls in the upper chambers of a house
in the most crowded part of Jaffa. With modest courage and tact and
self-devotion this lady has sustained it here for twelve years, and the
fruits of it already begin to appear. We found twenty or thirty pupils,
nearly all quite young, and most of them daughters of Christians; they
are taught in Arabic the common branches, and some English, and they
learn to sing. They sang for us English tunes like any Sunday school; a
strange sound in a Moslem town. There are one or two other schools of
a similar character in the Orient, conducted as private enterprises by
ladies of culture; and I think there is no work nobler, and none more
worthy of liberal support or more likely to result in giving women a
decent position in Eastern society.

On a little elevation a half-mile outside the walls is a cluster of
wooden houses, which were manufactured in America. There we found the
remnants of the Adams colony, only half a dozen families out of the
original two hundred and fifty persons; two or three men and some widows
and children. The colony built in the centre of their settlement an ugly
little church out of Maine timber; it now stands empty and staring,
with broken windows. It is not difficult to make this adventure appear
romantic. Those who engaged in it were plain New England people, many
of them ignorant, but devout to fanaticism. They had heard the prophets
expounded, and the prophecies of the latter days unravelled, until they
came to believe that the day of the Lord was nigh, and that they had
laid upon them a mission in the fulfilment of the divine purposes. Most
of them were from Maine and New Hampshire, accustomed to bitter winters
and to wring their living from a niggardly soil. I do not wonder that
they were fascinated by the pictures of a fair land of blue skies, a