You should see some of those state-rooms! Jars, costumes, baskets, rugs,
draperies, statuary--piled everywhere, hung everywhere, stowed
everywhere--why, we could combine the stuff on this ship and open a
floating bazaar that would be the wonder of the world.

The bazaars of Constantinople are crowded together and roofed over, and
there are narrow streets and labyrinthine lanes. One can buy anything
there--anything Eastern: ornaments, inlaid work, silks, curious weapons,
picture postals (what _did_ those _Quaker City_ pilgrims do without
them?), all the wares of the Orient--he can get a good deal for a little
if he is patient and unyielding--and he will be cheated every time he
makes change. Never mind; one's experience is always worth something,
and this particular tariff is not likely to be high.

We bought several things in Constantinople, but we did not buy any
confections. The atmosphere did not seem suited to bonbons, and the
places where such things were sold did not look inviting. Laura
inspected the assortment and decided that the best Turkish Delight is
made in America, and that Broadway is plenty far enough east for
nougat. In one bazaar they had a marvellous collection of royal jewels:
swords with incrusted handles; caskets "worth a king's ransom"--simply a
mass of rubies, emeralds, and diamonds--half a barrel of such things, at
least, but we didn't buy any of those goods, either. We would have done
so, of course, only they were not for sale.

We called at the bazaar of Far-away Moses, but he wasn't there. He died
only a little while ago, and has gone to that grand bazaar of delight
which the Mohammedans have selected as their heaven.

As usual, Laura and I were the last to leave. We were still pulling over
some things when our driver, whom we call Suleiman because he has such a
holy, villanous look, came suddenly to the entrance, waving frantically.
We started then and piled into our carriage. The rest of our party were
already off, and we set out helter-skelter after them, Suleiman probably
believing that the ship had its anchors up ready to sail.

We were doing very well when right in front of a great arch one of our
horses fell down. We had a crowd in a minute, and as it was getting dusk
I can't say that I liked the situation. But Suleiman got the horse on
his feet somehow, and we pushed along and once more entered that
diabolical Street of Smells. It had been bad day by day, but nothing to
what it was now. There were no lights, except an oil-lamp here and
there; the place was swarming with humanity and dogs, general vileness
permeating everything. The woman who thought she had died and gone to
hell could be certain of it here.

It seemed that we would never get out of that street. We had to go
slower, and the horrible gully was eternal in its length. How far ahead
our party was we did not know. We were entirely alone in that unholy
neighborhood with our faithful Suleiman, who looked like a cutthroat,
anyhow. I wished he didn't look like that, and Laura said quietly that
she never expected to see the light of another dawn.

Bumpety-bump--bark, howl, clatter, darkness, stench--rolling and
pitching through that mess, and then, heavenly sight--a vision of
lights, water, the end of the Galata bridge!

We made our way through the evening jam and the wild bedlam at the other
end, crossing a crimson tide of fezzes, to reach the one clean place we
have seen in Constantinople--that is, the ship. The ship is clean--too
clean, we think, when we hear them scrubbing and mopping and thumping
the decks at four o'clock in the morning, just about dog-howling time.
Which brings me to a specimen of our ship German--American
German--produced by a gentle soul named Fosdick, of Ohio. He used it on
the steward after being kept awake by the ship-cleaning. This is what he
said:

"Vas in damnation is das noise? How can I schlaff mit das hellgefired
donner-wetter going on oben mine head?"

That is the sort of thing we can do when we get really stirred up. It is
effective, too. There was no unseemly noise this morning.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Note--a year later.--The Selamlik here described was among the last
of such occasions. A few weeks later, in April, 1909, Abdul Hamid
regained a brief ascendancy, ordered the terrible massacres of Adana,
and on April 27th was permanently dethroned. He was succeeded by his
brother, Mehmed V., who attends mosque with little or no ceremony. Abdul
meantime has retired to Salonica, where he is living quietly--as quietly
as one may with seventeen favorite wives and the imminent prospect of
assassination.

XXI

LOOKING DOWN ON YILDIZ

Heretofore, during our stay here, whenever any one happened to mention
the less attractive aspects of Constantinople, I have said:

"Yes, the city is pretty bad, but I'll wager the country is a dream.
Remember Algiers and her suburban villas? It will be the same here."

I do not say that any more, now that we have been to the country. We
went over to Skutari (Asiatic Constantinople) this morning, and took
carriages to Bulgurlu Mountain, which overlooks all the city and a vast
stretch of country. It is a good view, but it should be, considering
what it costs to get there--in wear and tear, I mean.

Of all villanous roads, those outside Skutari are the most depraved.
They are not roads at all, but just washes and wallows and ditches and
stone gullies. I have seen bad roads in Virginia--roads surveyed by
George Washington, and never touched since--but they were a dream of
luxury as compared with these of Turkey. Our carriages billowed and
bobbed and pitched and humped themselves until I got out and walked to
keep from being lamed for life.

And then the houses--the villas I had expected to see; dear me, how can
I picture those cheap, ugly, unpainted, overdecorated architectural
crimes? They are wooden and belong to the jig-saw period gone mad. They
suggest an owner who has been too busy saving money for a home to
acquire any taste; who has spent his savings for lumber and trimmings
and has nothing left for paint. Still, he managed to reserve enough to
put iron bars on his windows--that is, on part of the house--the
harem--every man becoming his own jailer, as it were. I remarked:

"I suppose that is to keep the neighbors from stealing their wives."

But the Horse-Doctor--wiser and more observant--said:

"No, it is to keep a neighbor from breaking in and leaving another."

Standing on the top of Bulgurlu--looking down on the Bosporus and the
royal palaces--the wife of a foreign minister told us something of the
history that has been written there:

When Abdul Aziz, in 1876, became Abdul "as was"[4] (his veins were
opened with a penknife, I believe), one Murad, his nephew, an educated
and travelled prince, came into power. But Murad was for
progress--bridges and railroads--so Murad retired to Cheragan Palace,
where for thirty-two years he sat at a window and looked out on a world
in which he had no part, while Abdul Hamid II. reigned in his stead.
Murad was wise and gentle, and did not reproach Abdul, who came to him
now and again for advice concerning matters of state.

But Murad was fond of watching the people from his window--excursion
parties such as ours, and the like--and these in turn used to look up
at Murad's window; which things in time came to Abdul Hamid's ears. Then
Abdul decided that this indulgence was not good for Murad--nor for the
people. Thirty-two years was already too long for that sort of thing. So
Murad's face disappeared from the window, and it was given out that he
had died--the bulletin did not say what of, but merely mentioned that it
had been a "general death"--that is to say, a natural death, under the
circumstances--the kind of death a retired Sultan is likely to die. And
Abdul mourned for Murad many days, and gave him a costly funeral.

That was Abdul's way. He was always a good brother--always a generous
soul--according to a guide-book published in Constantinople during the
time when there were twenty thousand secret agents inspecting such
things. The author of that book wanted those twenty thousand secret
agents to tell Abdul how good and gentle the book said he was;
otherwise, the modest and humble Abdul might not remember. Besides, that
author did not wish to disappear from among his friends and be sewed up
in a sack and dropped into the Bosporus some quiet evening. But I
wander-- I always wander.

Abdul Hamid is said to be affectionate with his family--all his
family--and quick--very quick--that is to say, impulsive. He is a crack
shot, too, and keeps pistols on his dressing-table. One day he saw one
of his little sons--or it may have been one of his little daughters (it
isn't always easy to tell them apart, when they are so plentiful and
dress a good deal alike), but anyway this was a favorite of Abdul's--he
saw this child handling one of his pistols, perhaps playfully pointing
it in his direction.

Hamid didn't tell the child to put the weapon down, and then lecture
him. No, he couldn't scold the child, he was too impulsive for that--and
quick, as I have mentioned. He drew a revolver of his own and shot the
child dead. There were rumors of plots floating around the palace just
then, and Hamid wasn't taking any chances. It must have made his heart
bleed to have to punish the child in that sudden way.

But by-and-by the times were out of joint for sultans. A spirit of
discontent was spreading--there was a cry for freer government. Enver
Bey and Niazi Bey, those two young officers whose names are being
perpetuated by male babies in every Turkish household, disguised
themselves as newsboys or bootblacks, and going among the people of the
streets whispered the gospel of freedom. Then one day came the upheaval
of which all the world has read. Abdul Hamid one morning, looking out of
his window in Yildiz Palace, saw, lying in the Bosporus just below, the
men-of-war which all the years of his reign had been turning to rust and
wormwood in the Golden Horn.

Abdul did not believe it at first. He thought he was just having one of
those bad dreams that had pestered him now and then since spies and
massacres had become unpopular. He pinched himself and rubbed his eyes,
but the ships stayed there. Then he sent for the Grand Vizier. (At
least, I suppose it was the Grand Vizier--that is what a sultan
generally sends for in a case like that.) When he arrived the Sultan
was fingering his artillery and looking dangerous.

"What in h---- that is, Allah be praised, but why, sirrah, are those
ships lying down there?" he roared.

The G. V. was not full of vain knowledge.

"I--I really don't know, Your Majesty," he said, soothingly. "I will go
and see."

He was standing near the door and dodged as he went out. He did not come
back. When he had inquired about the ships he decided not to seek Abdul
himself, but to send a man--a cheap man--to tell him about it. This was
just a dull fellow with not much politeness and no imagination.

"The ships are there by the order of the Minister of Marine, Your
Majesty," he said.

Abdul was so astonished that he forgot to slay the fellow.

"Bring the Minister of Marine!" he gasped, when at last he could catch
his breath.

The Minister of Marine came--a new minister--one of the Young Turk
Party. He was polite, but not upset by the Sultan's emotion. When Abdul
demanded the reason why the old ships had been furbished up and brought
down into the Bosporus, he replied that they were there by his orders,
and added:

"We think they look better there, Your Majesty, as in the old days."

"But, by the beard of the Prophet, I will not have them there! Take them
away!"

"Your Majesty, it grieves me to seem discourteous, not to say rude, but
those ships are to remain at their present anchorage. It grieves me
still further to appear to be firm, not to say harsh, but if there is
any show of resistance in this neighborhood they have orders to open
fire on Your Majesty's palace."

Abdul took a chair and sat down. His jaw dropped, and he looked at the
Minister of Marine a good while without seeming to see him. Then he got
up and tottered over to the window and gazed out on those ships lying
just below, on the Bosporus. By-and-by, he went to a little ornamental
table and took a pen and some paper and wrote an order in this wise:

     Owing to my declining years and my great burdens of
     responsibility, it is my wish that in future all matters
     pertaining to the army and navy be under the supervision of
     the Secretary of War and the Minister of Marine.

  ABDUL HAMID, KAHN II.
  Son of the Prophet--Shadow of God, etc., etc.

At all events, that was the purport of it. In reality, it was a
succession of wriggly marks which only a Moslem could read. Never mind,
it was a graceful surrender.

There is a wonderful old Moslem cemetery near Bulgurlu--one of the
largest in the world and the most thickly planted. It is favored by
Moslems because it is on the side of the city nearest Mecca, and they
are lying there three deep and have overflowed into the roads and
byways. Their curiously shaped and elaborately carved headstones stand
as thick as grain--some of them crowned with fezzes--some with suns--all
of them covered with emblems and poetry and passages from the Koran.
They are tumbled this way and that; they are lying everywhere along the
road; they have been built into the wayside walls.

[Illustration: I WANTED TO CARRY AWAY ONE OF THOSE TOMBSTONES]

I wanted to carry away one of those tombstones--one of the old ones--and
I would have done it if I had known enough Moslem to corrupt the driver.
A thing like that would be worth it--adding to one's collection, I mean.
The palace was full of great cypresses, too--tall, funereal
trees--wonderfully impressive and beautiful.

We drove back to Skutari and there saw our driver Suleiman for the last
time. I had already tipped him at the end of each day, but I suppose he
expected something rather unusual as a farewell token. Unfortunately, I
was low in fractional currency. I scraped together all I had left--a few
piastres--and handed them to him and turned quickly away. There came a
sudden explosion as of a bomb. I did not look to see what it was--I
knew. It was the bursting of Suleiman's heart.

Up the Golden Horn in the afternoon, as far as the Sweet Waters of
Europe. It is a beautiful sail, and there is a mosque where the ceremony
of conferring the sword on a new Sultan is performed; also, a fine view
across the Sweet Waters, with Jewish graveyards whitening the distant
hills. But there was nothing of special remark--we being a little tired
of the place by this time--except the homecoming.

There were _caiques_ lying about the little steamer-landing when we were
ready to return, and Laura and I decided to take one of these down the
Horn to the ship. The _caique_ is a curiously shaped canoe-sort of a
craft, and you have to get in carefully and sit still. But once in and
seated, it moves as silently and smoothly as a gliding star.

It was sunset, and the Golden Horn was true to its name. Ships at
anchor, barges drifting up and down, were aglow with the sheen of
evening--the water a tawny, molten flood, the still atmosphere like an
impalpable dust of gold. _Caiques_ carrying merchants to their homes
somewhere along the upper shores were burnished with the aureate hue.
Domes and minarets caught and reflected the wonder of it--the Galata
bridge ahead of us had become such a span as might link the shores of
the River of Peace.

Once more Constantinople was a dream of Paradise--a vision of
enchantment--a city of illusion.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Ship-joke.

XXII

EPHESUS: THE CITY THAT WAS

Like Oriental harbors generally, Smyrna from the sea has a magic charm.
When we slowly sailed down a long reach of water between quiet hills and
saw the ancient city rising from the morning mist, we had somehow a
feeling that we had reached a hitherto undiscovered port--a mirage,
perhaps, of some necromancer's spell.

We landed, found our train, and went joggling away through the spring
landscape, following the old highway that from time immemorial has led
from Ephesus to Smyrna--the highway which long ago St. Paul travelled,
and St. John, too, no doubt, and the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen. For
all these journeyed between Ephesus and Smyrna in their time, and the
ancient road would be crowded with countless camel trains and laden
donkeys then; also with the wheeled vehicles of that period--cars and
chariots and cages of wild animals for the games--and there would be
elephants, too, gaudily caparisoned, carrying some rich potentate of the
East and his retinue--a governor, perhaps, or a king. It was a mighty
thoroughfare in those older days and may be still, though it is no
longer crowded, and we did not notice any kings.

We did notice some Reprobates--the ones we have always with us. They
sat just across the aisle, engaged in their usual edifying discussion as
to the identity of the historic sites we were supposed to be passing.
Finally they got into a particularly illuminating dispute as to the
period of St. Paul's life and ministrations. It began by the Apostle
(our Apostle) casually remarking that St. Paul had lived about
twenty-one hundred years ago.

It was a mild remark--innocent enough in its trifling inaccuracy of two
or three centuries--but it disturbed the Colonel, who has fallen into
the guide-book habit, and is set up with the knowledge thereof.

"Look here," he said, "if I knew as little as you do about such things
I'd restrain the desire to give out information before company."

The Apostle was undisturbed by this sarcasm. He folded his hands across
his comfortable forward elevation and smiled in his angel way.

"Oh, you think so," he said placidly. "Well, you think like a camel's
hump. You never heard of St. Paul till you started on this trip. I used
to study about him at Sunday-school when a mere child."

"Yes, you did! as a child! Why, you old lobscouse" (lobscouse is an
article on the _Kurfürst_ bill of fare) "you never saw the inside of a
Sunday-school. You heard somebody last night say something about
twenty-one hundred years ago, and with your genius for getting facts
mixed you saddled that date on St. Paul."

The Colonel turned for corroboration to the Horse-Doctor, who regarded
critically the outlines of the Apostle, which for convenience required
an entire seat; then, speaking thoughtfully:

"It isn't worth while to notice the remarks of a person who looks like
that. Why, he's all malformed. He'll probably explode before we reach
Ephesus."

I felt sorry for the Apostle, and was going over to sit with him, only
there wasn't room, and just then somebody noticed a camel train--the
first we have seen--huge creatures heavily loaded and plodding along on
the old highway. This made a diversion. Then there was another camel
train, and another. Then came a string of donkeys--all laden with the
wares of the East going to Smyrna. The lagging Oriental day was awake;
the old road was still alive, after all.

Like the first "Innocents," we had brought a carload or so of
donkeys--four-legged donkeys--from Smyrna, and I think they were the
same ones, from their looks. They were aged and patchy, and they filled
the bill in other ways. They wrung our hearts with their sad, patient
faces and their decrepitude, and they exasperated us with their
indifference to our desires.

I suppose excursion parties look pretty much alike, and that the _Quaker
City_ pilgrims forty-two years ago looked a good deal like ours as we
strung away down the valley toward the ancient city. I hope they did not
look any worse than ours. To see long-legged men and stout ladies
perched on the backs of those tiny asses, in rickety saddles that feel
as if they would slip (and do slip if one is not careful), may be
diverting enough, but it is not pretty. If the donkey stays in the
middle of the narrow, worn pathway, it is very well; but if he goes to
experimenting and wandering off over the rocks, then look out. You can't
steer him with the single remnant of rope on his halter (he has no
bridle), and he pitches a good deal when he gets off his course. Being a
tall person, I was closed up like a grasshopper, and felt fearfully
top-heavy. Laura, age fourteen, kept behind me--commenting on my
appearance and praying for my overthrow.

It was a good way to the ruins--the main ruins--though in reality there
were ruins everywhere: old mosques, gray with age and half-buried in the
soil--a thousand years old, but young compared with the more ancient
city; crumbling Roman aqueducts leading away to the mountains--old even
before the mosques were built, but still new when Ephesus was already
hoary with antiquity; broken columns sticking everywhere out of the
weeds and grass--scarred, crumbling, and moss-grown, though still not of
that first, far, unrecorded period.

But by-and-by we came to mighty walls of stone--huge abutments rising
from the marshy plain--and these were really old. The Phoenicians may
have laid them in some far-off time, but tradition goes still farther
back and declares they were laid by giants--the one-eyed kind, the
Cyclops--when all this marsh was sea. These huge abutments were piers in
that ancient day. A blue harbor washed them, and the merchant ships of
mighty Ephesus lay alongside and loaded for every port.

That was a long time ago. Nobody can say when these stone piers were
built, but Diana and Apollo were both born in Ephesus, and there was
probably a city here even then. What we know is that by the beginning of
the Christian era Ephesus was a metropolis with a temple so amazing, a
theatre so vast and a library so beautiful that we stand amid the
desolation to-day, helplessly trying to reconstruct the proportions of a
community which could require these things; could build them and then
vanish utterly, leaving not a living trace behind.

For nobody to-day lives in Ephesus--not a soul. A wandering shepherd may
build his camp-fire here, or an Arab who is tilling a bit of ground; but
his home will be in Ayasaluk, several miles away, not here. Once the
greatest port of trade in western Asia, Ephesus is voiceless and vacant
now, except when a party like ours comes to disturb its solitude and
trample among its forlorn glories.

There is no lack of knowledge concerning certain of the structures
here--the more recent ones, we may call them, though they were built two
thousand years ago. There are descriptions everywhere, and some of them
are as cleanly cut to-day as they were when the tool left them. This
library was built in honor of Augustus Cæsar and Livia, and it must have
been a veritable marble vision. Here in its corners the old students sat
and pored over books and precious documents that filled these crumbling
recesses and the long-vanished shelves. St. Paul doubtless came here to
study during the three years of his residence, and before him St. John,
for he wrote his gospel in Ephesus, and would be likely to seek out the
place of books. And Mary would walk with him to the door sometimes, I
think, and Mary of Magdala, for these three passed their final days in
Ephesus, and would be drawn close together by their sacred bond.

The great theatre where St. Paul battled with the wild beasts stands
just across the way. It seated twenty-five thousand, and its stone
benches stretch upward to the sky. The steep marble flight that carries
you from tier to tier is there to-day exactly as when troops of fair
ladies and handsome beaux climbed up and still up to find their places
from which to look down on the play or the gladiatorial combat or the
massacre of the Christians in the arena below.

These old theatres were built in a semicircle dug out of the
mountain-side, so that the seats were solid against the ground and rose
one above the other with the slope of the hill, which gave everybody a
good view. There were no columns to interfere with one's vision, for
there was no roof to be supported, except, perhaps, over the stage, but
the top seats were so remote from the arena and the proscenium that the
players must have seemed miniatures. Yet even above these there was
still mountain-side, and little boys who could not get money for an
entrance fee or carry water to the animals for a ticket sat up in that
far perch, no doubt, and looked down and shouted at the show.

Laura and I, who, as usual, had dropped behind the party, climbed far up
among the seats and tried to imagine we had come to the afternoon
performance--had come early, not to miss any of it. But it was
difficult, even when we shut our eyes. Weeds and grass grew everywhere
in the crevices; dandelions bloomed and briers tangled where sat the
beaux and belles of twenty centuries ago. Just here at our feet the mobs
of Demetrius the silversmith gathered, crying, "Great is Diana of the
Ephesians!" because the religion of St. Paul was spoiling their trade
for miniature temples. Down there in the arena Paul did battle with the
beasts, very likely as punishment. This is the spot--these are the very
benches--but we cannot see the picture: we cannot wake the tread of the
vanished years.

Behind the arena are the columns that support the stage, and back of
these are the dressing-rooms, their marble walls as solid and perfect
to-day as when the ancient players dallied and gossiped there. At one
end is a dark, cave-like place where we thought the wild beasts might
have been kept. I stood at the entrance and Laura made my picture, but
she complained that I did not look fierce enough for her purpose.

On another slope of the hill a smaller theatre, the Odeon, has recently
been uncovered. A gem of beauty it was, and much of its wonder is still
preserved. Here the singers of a forgotten time gave forth their melody
to a group of music-lovers, gathered in this close circle of seats that
not a note or shading might be lost.

[Illustration: ALL THE PLAINS AND SLOPES OF THE OLD CITY WITH ITS WHITE
FRAGMENTS AND POOR RUINED HARBOR LAY AT OUR FEET

NOTE.--In this picture the theatre where St. Paul fought is in the
foreground; the library just beyond, the market-place to the right. Bits
of water show where the harbor once lay.]

We passed around this dainty playhouse, across a little wheat-field that
some peasant has planted against its very walls, on up the hill,
scrambling along steep declivities over its brow, and, behold! we came
out high above the great theatre on the other side, and all the plain
and slopes of the old city, with its white fragments and its poor
ruined harbor, lay at our feet. Earthquakes shook the city down and
filled up the splendid harbor. If the harbor had been spared the city
would have been rebuilt. Instead, the harbor is a marsh, the city a
memory.

From where we stood we could survey the sweep of the vanished city. We
could look across into the library and the market-place and follow a
marble road--its white blocks worn smooth by a million treading
feet--where it stretched away toward the sea. And once more we tried to
conjure the vision of the past--to close our eyes and reproduce the
vanished day. And once more we failed. We could glimpse a picture, we
could construct a city, but it was never quite that city--never quite in
that place. Our harbor with its white sails and thronging wharves was
never quite that harbor--our crowded streets were never quite those
streets. Here were just ruins--always ruins--they could never have been
anything but ruins. Perhaps our imaginations were not in good working
order.

We descended again into the great theatre, for it fascinated us, nearly
breaking our necks where vines and briers tangled, pausing every other
minute to rest and consider and dream. Pawing over a heap of
rubbish--odd bits of carving, inscriptions, and the like--the place is a
treasure-trove of such things--I found a little marble torso of a female
figure. Head and arms and the lower part of the body all gone, but what
remained was exquisite beyond words--a gem, even though rubbish, in
Ephesus.

Now, of course, the reader is an honest person. He would have said, as
I did: "No, it does not matter, rubbish or no rubbish, it is not mine.
It belongs to the government-- I cannot steal. Besides, there is Laura,
age fourteen: I cannot set her a bad example. Also, there are the
police. No, my conscience is perfect; I cannot do it."

I know the reader would have reflected thus, and so did I, as stated.
Then I found I could crowd it into my inside coat-pocket, and that by
cramming my handkerchief carefully on top of it, it did not distress me
so much, especially when I gave it a little support with my forearm, to
make it swing in a natural way. But when I remembered that the _Quaker
City_ pilgrims had been searched on leaving Ephesus, my conscience began
to harass me again, though not enough as yet to make me disgorge.

Our party had all trailed back to the hotel when we got to our donkeys,
and it was beginning to sprinkle rain. The sky was overcast and a quiet
had settled among the ruins. When our donkey-driver gave me a sharp look
I began to suffer. I thought he was a spy, and had his eye on that
pocket. I recalled now that I had always had a tender conscience; it
seemed unwise to torture it in this way.

I began to think of ways to ease it. I thought five francs might do it,
so far as our donkey-boy was concerned. But then there was the official
search at the other end; that, of course, would be a public matter, and
the five francs would be wasted. I was almost persuaded to drop the
little torso quietly by the roadside--it discomforted me so.

We rode along rather quietly, and I spoke improvingly to Laura of how
St. Paul had travelled over this very road when he was making his good
fight, and of several other saints and their works, and how Ephesus had
probably been destroyed because of its sinfulness. Near a crumbling arch
a flock of sheep grazed, herded by a shepherd who had been there when
the apostles came--at least his cape had, and his hat--and everything
about him was Biblical and holylike, and so were the gentle rain and the
donkeys, and I said how sweet and soothing it all was; after which I
began to reflect on what would be proper to do if anything resembling an
emergency should conclude our peaceful ride. I decided that, as we had
just come from Smyrna, I had bought the bit of heathen marble on the way
to the station. That was simple and straightforward, and I felt a good
deal strengthened as I practised it over and tried it on Laura as we
rode along. The _Kurfürsters_ had been with me and would stand by the
statement--any _Kurfürster_ would do that whether he flocked with the
forward-cabin crowd or the unregenerates of the booze-bazaar. I felt
reassured and whistled a little, and then from the roadside a man rose
up and said something sharp to our donkey-driver. It was sudden, and I
suppose I did jump a little, but I was ready for him.

"No," I said, "I didn't steal it. I bought it in Smyrna on the way to
the train. I can prove it by Laura here, and the other passengers. We
are incorruptible. Go in peace."

But it was wasted. This creature had business only with our
donkey-driver and his tobacco. He didn't understand a word I said.

We rode amid a very garden of fragmentary ruins. Precious blocks of
fluted marble, rich with carving and inscriptions, lay everywhere. We
were confronted by gems of sculpture and graven history at every turn.
Yet here I was, suffering over a little scrap the size of one's fist. No
conscience should be as sensitive as that.

Suddenly a regular bundle of firearms--a human arsenal--stepped out of a
shed into the middle of the road and began a harangue. I could feel my
hair turning gray.

"You are wholly in error," I said. "I bought it in Smyrna. All the
passengers saw me. Still, I will give it up if you say so."

But that was wasted, too. He only took the rest of our driver's tobacco
and let us pass. We met a little puny calf next, standing shrunken and
forlorn in the drizzle, but not too shrunken and friendless to have a
string of blue beads around his neck to avert the evil eye. I was
inclined to take them away from him and put them on myself.

We were opposite the Temple of Diana by this time--all that is left of
what was once one of the seven wonders of the world. It is only some
broken stones sinking into a marsh now, but it was a marvel in its time,
and I remembered how one Herostratus, ages ago, had fired it to
perpetuate his name--also how the Ephesians had snuffed out Herostratus,
and issued a decree that his name should never again be mentioned on
pain of severe punishment; which was a mistake, of course, for it
advertised Herostratus into the coveted immortality. I wonder what kind
of a mistake the Ephesians would make when they found that bit of
marble on my person, and what kind of advertising I would get.

We were almost to the little hotel now, and, lo! right at the gates we
were confronted by a file of men with muskets. Here it was, then, at
last. My moral joints turned to water.

"I didn't do it, gentlemen," I said. "I am without a flaw. It was
Laura--you can see for yourself she looks guilty."

But they did not search Laura. They did not even search me. They merely
looked us over and talked about us in strange tongues. We reached the
shelter of the hotel and the comfort of food in safety. Neither did they
inspect us at the station, and as we glided back to Smyrna I impressed
upon Laura the value of keeping one's conscience clear, and how one is
always rewarded with torsos and things for pursuing a straightforward,
simple course through life.

I suppose a man could take away marble from Ephesus to-day by the
wagon-load if he had any place to take it to. Nobody is excavating
there--nobody seems to care for it, and never was such a mine of relics
under the sun. At Ayasaluk, the Arab village, priceless treasures of
carving and inscription look out at you from the wall of every peasant's
hut and stable--from the tumbling stone fences that divide their fields.
Wonderful columns stick out of every bank and heap of earth. Precious
marbles and porphyry mingle with the very macadam of the roads. Rare
pieces are sold around the hotel for a few piastres.

Remember, a mighty marble city perished here. Earthquakes shook it
down, shattered the walls of its temples, overthrew the statuary,
tumbled the inscriptions in the dust. The ages have spread a layer of
earth upon the ruin, but only partially covered it. Just beneath the
shallow plough of the peasant lie riches uncountable for the nation that
shall bring them to the light of day. Historical societies dig a little
here and there, and have done noble work. But their means run low before
they can make any real beginning on the mighty task. Ephesus is still a
buried city.

The day will come when Ephesus will be restored to her former greatness.
It will take an earthquake to do it, but the spirit of prophecy is upon
me and I foresee that earthquake. The future is very long--I am in no
hurry--fulfilment may take its time. I merely want to get my prophecy in
now and registered, so when the event comes along I shall get proper
credit. Some day an earthquake will strike Ephesus again; the bottom
will drop out of that swamp and make it a harbor once more; ships will
sail in as in the old days, and Ephesus, like Athens, will renew her
glory.

Back to Smyrna--a modern city and beautiful from any high vantage, with
its red-tiled roofs, its domes and minarets, its graceful cypress-trees,
its picture hillsides, and its cobalt sky. It is clean, too, compared
with Constantinople. To be sure, Smyrna has its ruins and its historic
interest, with the tomb of Polycarp the martyr, who was Bishop of Smyrna
in the second century, and died for his faith at the age of eighty-six.
He was burned on a hill just outside the city on the Ephesus road, and
his tomb, guarded by two noble cypresses, overlooks the sea.

But it is busy, bustling Smyrna that, after Ephesus, most attracted us.
It is more truly the Orient than anything we have seen. Fully as
picturesque as Constantinople in costume, it is brighter, fresher,
healthier-looking, and, more than all, its crowded streets are
perpetually full of mighty camel trains swinging in from the deeper
East, loaded with all the wares and fabrics of our dreams. Those camels
are monstrously large--twice the size of any circus camels that come to
America, and with their great panniers they fill an Oriental street from
side to side.

They move, too, and other things had better keep out of the way when a
camel train heaves in sight if they want to remain undamaged. I was
examining some things outside of a bazaar when suddenly I thought I had
been hit by a planet. I thought so because of the positive manner of my
disaster and the number of constellations I saw. But it was only one
side of a loaded camel that had annihilated me, and the camel was moving
straight ahead without the slightest notion that anything had interfered
with its progress.

It hadn't, as a matter of fact. Nothing short of a stone wall interrupts
a camel--a Smyrna camel--when he's out for business and under a full
head of steam. Vehicles and other things turn down another street when
there is a camel train coming. You may squat down, as these Orientals
do, and get below the danger line, for a camel is not likely to step on
you, but his load is another matter--you must look out for that
yourself.

I was fascinated by the camel trains; they are a part of the East I
hardly expected to find. I thought their day was about over. Nothing of
the sort. The camel trains, in fact, own Smyrna, and give it its
commercial importance. They bring the great bulk of merchandise--rugs,
mattings, nuts, dried fruits, spices, and all the rare native handiwork
from far dim interiors that railroads will not reach in a hundred years.
They come swinging out of Kurdistan--from Ispahan and from Khiva; they
cross the burning desert of Kara Koom.

A camel train can run cheaper than the railway kind. A railway requires
coal and wood for fuel. A camel would like those things also. But he is
not particular--he will accept whatever comes along. He will eat
anything a goat can, and he would eat the goat, too, if permitted--horns
and all. Consequently, he arrives at Smyrna fit and well fed, ready for
the thousand miles or so of return trip at a moment's notice.

They run these camel trains in sections--about six camels in each. An
Arab mounted on a donkey that wears a string of blue beads for luck
leads each section, and the forward camel wears against his shoulder a
bell. It is a musical compound affair--one bell inside the other with a
blue bead in the last one to keep off the evil eye. I had already
acquired some of the blue strings of donkey beads, and I made up my mind
now to have a camel bell.

By-and-by, at the entrance of a bazaar, I saw one. It was an old
one--worn with years of chafing against the shoulder muscle of many a
camel that had followed the long track from the heart of Asia over
swamp and steep and across burning sands. At the base of the outer bell
was a band of Arabic characters--prayers, no doubt, from the Koran, for
the safety of the caravan. I would never leave Smyrna without that bell.

However, one must be cautious. I gave it an indifferent jingle as I
passed in and began to examine other things. A murmuring, insinuating
Moslem was at my elbow pushing forward the gaudy bits of embroidery and
cheaply chased weapons in which I pretended an interest. I dallied and
priced, and he grew weary and discouraged. Finally, hesitating at the
doorway, I touched the bell again, scarcely noticing it.

"How much?"

"Sixtin franc--very chip."

My impulse was to fling the money at him and grab the treasure before he
changed his mind. But we do not do these things--not any more--we have
acquired education. Besides, we have grown professionally proud of our
bargains.

"Ho! Sixteen francs! You mean six francs-- I give you five."

"No--no--sixtin franc--sixtin! What you think? Here--fine!" He had the
precious thing down and was jingling it. Its music fairly enthralled me.
But I refused to take it in my hands--if I did I should surrender.
"See," he continued, pointing to the inscription. "Oh, be-eautiful.
Here, fiftin franc--three dollar!"

He pushed it toward me. I pretended to be interested in a wretchedly new
and cheaply woven rug. I had to, to keep steadfast. I waved him off.

"No--no; five francs--no more!"

He hung up the bell and I started to go. He seized it and ran after me.

"Here, mister--fourtin franc--give me!"

"Five francs!--no more."

"No, no, mister--twelve franc--las' price--ver' las' price. Here, see!"

He jingled the bell a little. If he did that once more I was gone at any
price.

"_Five francs_," I said, with heavy decision. "I'll give you five francs
for it--no more."

I faced resolutely around--as resolutely as I could--and pretended
really to start.

"Here, mister--_ten franc--ten_! Mister--mister!"

He followed me, but fortunately he had hung up the bell and couldn't
jingle it. I was at least two steps away.

"Eight franc, mister--please--I lose money--I make
nothing--mister--seven! seven franc!"

"Five--five francs." I called it back over my shoulder--indifferently.

"Mister! mister! Six! six franc!"

Confound him! He got hold of that bell again and gave it a jingle. I
handed him the six francs. If he had only left it alone, I think I could
have held out.

Still, as I look at it now, hanging here in my state-room, and think of
the long lonely nights and the days of sun and storm it has seen, of the
far journeys it has travelled in its weary way down the years to me, I
do not so much mind that final franc after all.

XXIII

INTO SYRIA

I picked up a cold that rainy day at Ephesus. Not an ordinary sniffling
cold, but a wrenching, racking cold that made every bone and every tooth
jump, and set my eyes to throbbing like the ship's engines. I felt sure
I was going to die when we arrived in the harbor of Beirut, and decided
that it would be better to die on deck; so I crawled out and dressed,
and crept into a steamer-chair, and tried to appreciate the beautiful
city that had arisen out of the sea--the upper gateway to Syria.

The Patriarch came along, highly elate. This was where he belonged; this
was home; this was Phoenicia itself! Fifteen hundred years B.C. Beirut
had been a great Phoenician seaport, he said, and most of the rare
handiwork mentioned in ancient history and mythology had been wrought in
this neighborhood. The silver vase of Achilles, the garment which Hecuba
gave to Minerva, and the gold-edged bowl of Telemachus were all
Phoenician, according to the Patriarch, who hinted that he rather
hoped to find some such things at Beirut; also some of the celebrated
Phoinus, or purple dye, which gave the tribe its name. I said no doubt
he would, and, being sick and suffering, added that he might dye himself
dead for all I cared, which was a poor joke--besides being an
afterthought, when the Patriarch was well out of range.

I had no idea of going ashore. I was miserably sorry, too, for I was
stuffed with guide-book knowledge about Baalbec and Damascus, and had
looked forward to that side-trip from the beginning. I knew how Moses
felt on Mount Pisgah now, and I was getting so sorry for myself I could
hardly stand it, when suddenly the bugle blew the sharp call, "All
ashore!" Laura, age fourteen, came racing down the deck, and before I
knew it I had my bag--packed the night before--and was going down the
ship's ladder into a boat, quarrelling meantime with one of the
Reprobates as to whether Beirut was the Berothai of the Old Testament,
where David smote Hadadezer and took "exceeding much brass," or the
Berytus of the Roman conquest. It was of no consequence, but it gave
life a new purpose, for I wanted to prove that he was wrong. Wherefore I
forgot I was going to die, and presently we were ashore and in a
railway-station where there was a contiguous little train ready to start
for Baalbec and Damascus, with a lot of men selling oranges, of which
Laura and I bought a basketful for a franc, climbed aboard, the bell
rang--and the funeral was postponed.

The road followed the sea for a distance, and led through fields of
flowers. I had never seen wildflowers like those. They were the crimson
anemone mingled riotously with a gorgeous yellow flower--I did not learn
its name. The ground was literally massed with them. Never was such a
prodigality of bloom.

From Beirut to Baalbec is only about sixty miles; but it takes pretty
much all day to get there, for the Lebanon Mountains lie between, and
this is a deliberate land. We did not mind. There was plenty to see all
along, and our leisurely train gave us ample time.

There were the little stations, where we stopped anywhere from five to
fifteen minutes, and got out and mingled with the curious rural life;
there were the hills, that had little soil on them, but were terraced
and fruitful--some of them to the very summit; there was the old
Damascus road, winding with us, or above us, or below us--the road over
which Abraham may have travelled, and Adam, too, for that matter, and
Eve, when they were sent out of their happy garden. Eden lay not far
from here, and the exiles would be likely to come this way, I think. We
saw plenty of groups that might have been Abraham and his household, or
any of the patriarchs. I did not notice any that suggested Adam and Eve.

The road had another interest for me. Forty-two years ago, before the
railroad came this way, the _Quaker City_ pilgrims toiled up through the
summer heat, setting out on the "long trip" through the full length of
Palestine. Nobody makes it in summer now. Few make it at all, except by
rail and in carriages, with good hostelries at the end of every stage.
Still, I am glad those first pilgrims made it, or we should not have had
that wonderful picture of Syrian summer-time, nor of "Jericho" and
"Baalbec." Those two horses are worth knowing--in literature--and I
tried to imagine that little early party of excursionists climbing the
steep path to Palestine on their sorry nags.

It is warm in Syria, even now, but we were not too warm, riding;
besides, we were going steadily uphill, and by-and-by somebody pointed
out a white streak along the mountain-top, and it was snow. Then, after
a long time, we got to a place where the vegetation was very scanty and
there were no more terraced hills, but only barren peaks and sand, where
the wind blew cold and colder, and presently the snow lay right along
our way. We had reached the highest point then--five thousand feet above
the sea. In five hours we had come thirty-six miles--thirty-five in
length and one straight up in the air. Somebody said:

"Look, there is Mount Hermon!"

And, sure enough, away to the south, though nigh upon us it seemed--so
close that one might put out his hand and touch it, almost--there rose a
stately, snow-clad elevation which, once seen, dominated the barren
landscape. It was so pure white against the blue--so impressive in its
massive dignity--the eye followed it across every vista, longed for it
when immediate peaks rose between, welcomed it when time after time it
rose grandly into view.

With an altitude of between nine and ten thousand feet, Mount Hermon is
the highest mountain in Syria, I believe--certainly the most important.
The Bible is full of it. The Amorites and the Hivites, and most of the
other tribes that Joshua buried or persuaded to go away, had their lands
under Mount Hermon (all of them in sight of it), and that grand old hill
looked down on Joshua's slaughter of men and women and little children,
and perhaps thought it a puny performance to be undertaken in the name,
and by the direction, of God.

Joshua established Mount Hermon as the northern boundary of Palestine,
and from whatever point the Israelite turned his face northward, he saw
its white summit against the blue. It became symbolic of grandeur,
stability, purity, and peace. It was to one of its three peaks that
Christ came when, with Peter, James, and John, He withdrew to "an high
mountain apart" for the Transfiguration. So it became sanctified as a
sort of holy judgment-seat.[5]

Down the Lebanon slope and across the valley to Reyak, a Syrian village
in the sand, at the foot of the Anti-Lebanon range. Reyak is the parting
of the ways--the railways--that lead to Damascus and Baalbec, and there
is a lunch-room there--a good one by Turkish standards. It was our first
complete introduction to Turkish food--that is a diet of nuts, dates,
oranges, and curious meat and vegetable preparations--and I ate a good
deal for a dying man. Then I went outside to look at the population, and
wonder what these people, who scratch a living out of the sand and stone
barrens, would do in a fertile country like America. They would consider
it heaven, I thought.

At the end of the station sat a drowsy, stoutish man in semi-European
dress, holding a few pairs of coarse home-knit socks, evidently for
sale. I stopped and talked to him. He spoke English very well, and when
he told me his story I marvelled.

He had been in America; in Brooklyn; had carried on business
there--something in Syrian merchandise--and had done very well. He had
married there--a Syrian woman; his children were born there--Americans.
Then one day he had sold out and brought them all to this flat-topped
mud village in the Syrian sand. Why had he done it? Well, he could
hardly tell; he had wanted to see Syria again--he could think of no
other reason. No, his wife did not like it, nor the children--not at
all.

He pointed out his mud hut a little way from the station, and I could
not blame them. He would go back some day--yes, certainly. Meantime, his
wife is earning money for the trip by knitting the coarse socks which he
sells around the station at Reyak at a few piastres a pair.

Our train was about ready to start for Baalbec, and I was lingering over
a little collection of relics which a blind pedler offered, when I felt
a hand on my shoulder and heard my name called. I turned and was face to
face with the artist Jules Gurin, of New York. I had known nothing of
his presence in Syria, he had known nothing of our coming. He was going
in one direction, I in another. In this remote waste our lines had
crossed. He was so glad to see me--he thought I had a supply of cigars.
I never saw a man's enthusiasm die so suddenly as his did when I told
him how I had been sick that morning and forgotten them.

Altogether that was a curious half hour. Reyak is the most uninteresting
place in Syria, but I shall always remember it.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] One tradition places the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, but Tabor
is fifty miles away whereas Cesarea Philippi, to which the little group
descended, lies at the foot of Hermon.

XXIV

THE HOUSE THAT CAIN BUILT

It was well along in the afternoon when we reached Baalbec, and drove
through a cloud of dust to a hotel which stands in a mud village near
the ruins. Long before we arrived we could make out massive remnants of
what was once a wonder of the world, and remains no less so to-day. We
could distinguish sections of the vast wall, and, towering high above
them, the six columns of the Temple of the Sun.

I knew those six columns. I had carried a picture of them in my mind
ever since that winter so long ago when the old first edition of the
_New Pilgrim's Progress_ became familiar in our household. I know they
were seventy-five feet high and eight feet through, and had blocks of
stone on the top of them as big as our old-fashioned parlor at home;
also, that they were probably erected by giants. Those items had made an
impression that had lasted. Now, here they were, outlined against the
sky, in full view and perfectly familiar, but never in the world could
they be as big as the book said. Why, these were as slender and graceful
as fairy architecture! I recalled that there were some big stones to
see, stones laid by Cain and his giants when the world was new. Perhaps
they would not be so very big, after all. I had a feeling that we ought
to hurry.

We did hurry--Laura and I. We did not wait for the party, but set out
straight for the ruins, through narrow streets and byways, with beggars
at our heels. By-and-by we came to a rushing brook, and just beyond it
were the temple walls.

I remembered now. There had been a wonderful garden outside the temples
in the old days, and this stream had made it richly verdant and
beautiful. There was no garden any more. Only some grass and bushes,
such as will gather about an oasis.

They would not let us into the temple enclosure until our party came, so
we wandered around the outer walls and gazed up at cornices and capitals
and entablatures as beautiful, we thought, as any we had seen at Athens.
Then the party arrived, and there was a gatekeeper to let us in.

It would take a man in perfect health to carry away even an approximate
impression of Baalbec. Trying to remember now, I seem to have spent the
afternoon in some amazing delirium of tumbling walls and ruined
colonnades; of heaped and piled fragments; of scarred and defaced
sculpture; of Titanic masonry flung about by the fury of angry gods.
Athens had been a mellowed and hallowed dream of the past; Ephesus a
vast suggestion of ancient greatness buried and overgrown; Baalbec was a
wild agony of destruction and desecration crying out to the sky.

[Illustration: FROM THE TIME OF ADAM BAALBEC BECAME A PLACE OF ALTARS]

It is a colossal object-lesson in what religions can do when they try.
Nobody really knows who began to build temples here, but from the time
of Adam Baalbec became a place of altars. Before history began it was
already a splendid Syrian city, associated with the names of Cain,
Nimrod, and Abraham, and it may have been Cain himself who raised the
first altar here when he made that offering for which the Lord "had not
respect." More likely, however--and this is the Arab belief--it was the
city of refuge built by Cain, whose fear must have been very large if
one may judge from the size of the materials used.

Cain could not fail to build a temple, however. He would try to ease the
punishment which he declared was greater than he could bear, and with
burnt offering and architecture would seek to propitiate an angry God.
How long the worship inaugurated by him lasted we can only surmise--to
the flood, maybe--but the Phoenicians came next, and set up temples to
their Gods, whoever they were, and after the Phoenicians came Solomon,
who built a temple to a sort of compromise god by the name of Baal--a
deity left over by the Phoenicians and adapted to Judean needs and
ceremonies--hence the name, Baalbec. Solomon built the temple to Baal to
satisfy certain of his heathen wives, and he made the place a strong
city to rival Damascus--the latter having refused to acknowledge his
reign.

After Solomon, the Romans. Two hundred years or so after Christ--in the
twilight of their glory and their gods--the Romans under Elagabalus
brought the glory of Grecian architecture to Baalbec, named the place
Heliopolis, and set up temples that were--and are--the wonder of the
world.

What satisfactory gods they must have been to deserve temples such as
these--each shrine a marvel of size and beauty--more splendid even than
those of the Acropolis of Athens in their lavish magnificence! This
carved doorway to the Temple of Jupiter; this frieze of the Temple of
Bacchus; these towering six columns of the Temple of the Sun; still
holding their matchless Corinthian capitals and amazing entablature to
the sky--where else will one find their equals, and what must they have
been in their prime, when these scarred remnants can still overpower the
world!

It was another religion that brought ruin here--early
Christianity--presently followed by early Mohammedanism--each burning
with vandalic zeal. It was the good Emperor Constantine that first upset
the Roman gods and their temples. Then Theodosius came along and pulled
down the great structures, and out of the pieces built a church that was
an architectural failure. Then all the early Christians in the
neighborhood took a hand in pulling down and overturning; hacking away
at the heathen sculpture and tracery--climbing high up the walls to scar
and disfigure--to obliterate anything resembling a face. Then pretty
soon the early Mohammedans came along and carried on the good work, and
now and then an earthquake took a hand, until by-and-by the place became
the ghastly storm of destruction it appears to-day.

I was ill when I saw Baalbec. My flesh was burning and my pulse
throbbing with fever. Perhaps my vision was distorted and the nightmare
seemed worse than it really is, but as I stood in that field of
mutilation and disorder, gazing along its wrecked and insulted glory,
and through tumbling arch and ruined door caught vistas of fertile and
snow-capped hill, I seemed to see a vision of what it had been in the
day of its perfection. Also, I felt an itch to meet one or two of those
early enthusiasts--some night in a back alley when they were not looking
for me and I had a piece of scantling--I felt a sick man's craving, as
it were, to undertake a little damage and disfiguration on my own
account. Oh, well, it's all in the eternal story. Religions established
these temples; religions pulled them down. The followers of one faith
have always regarded as heathen those which preceded them. There lies a
long time ahead. Will the next religion restore Baalbec or complete its
desolation?

Some little Syrian girls beset Laura on the way back to the hotel and
tried to sell her some bead embroidery which it seems they make in a
mission-school established here by the English. One of them--a little
brown madonna of about ten--could speak English quite well. Laura asked
her name.

"Name Mary," she said.

"But that's an English name."

She trotted along silently, thinking; then said:

"No, Syria--Mary Syria name."

Sure enough, we had forgotten. The first Mary had indeed been Syrian,
and I imagined her, now, a child--brown, barefoot and beautiful, like
this Mary, with the same pathetic eyes. Laura--young, fair-skinned and
pink-cheeked--was a marvel to these children. They followed her to the
door, and when she could not buy all their stock in trade they insisted
on making her presents, and one of them--little Mary--begged to be taken
to America.

We saw the celebrated "big stones" next morning. Several of them are
built into the lower tiers of the enclosing temple wall, and three of
these--the largest ones--measure each from sixty-two to sixty-four feet
long and are thirteen feet thick! They rest upon stones somewhat
thicker, but shorter--stones about the size of a two-story cottage--and
these in turn rest on masonry still less gigantic. Evidently it was the
intention of the builders to increase the size of their material as they
went higher, and the big block still in the quarry carries out that
idea.

Authorities differ as to when these big stones were laid, and how. Some
claim that they were put here by the Romans, because they find Greek
axe-marks on the ones below them. But then I found American jack-knife
marks on them too, and the names of certain of my countrymen, which
proves nothing except that these puny people had been there and left
their measurement. If these monster stones had been laid by the Romans
only two thousand years ago, we should have had some knowledge of the
means by which they were transported and lifted into place. There is no
such record, and nowhere else at least did the Romans ever attempt
structure of such gigantic proportions. That is precisely the word,
"gigantic," for there were giants in the days when these stones were
laid--stones that could have been there six thousand years as well as
two thousand, being of such material as forms the foundations of the
world.

If Cain did any building at Baalbec, he did it here. He did not finish
the work, it would seem, or at least not in these proportions. Perhaps
his giants deserted him--struck, as we say to-day. Perhaps the hands of
men were no longer against him and the need of this mighty bulwark about
his place of refuge ceased. At all events, the first stone hewn out for
the next layer stands in the quarry still.

We drove over there. It was half a mile away, at least--possibly a mile,
down hill and rather rough going. The stones we saw in the wall were
brought up that road. The one standing in the quarry had been lifted and
started a little, and would have been on its way presently, if the
strike, or the amnesty, had not interfered.

It is seventy-two feet long and seventeen feet thick. Try to think of a
plain box building, a barn or a store-house, say, of that size, then
mentally convert it into a solid block of stone. Mark Twain likens it to
two freight-cars placed end to end, but _it is also as high and as
wide_. _Eight freight-cars set four and four_ would just about express
it! Think of that! Think of moving a stone of that size!

It is squared and dressed and ready to be taken to the temple wall. It
will never be taken there. Perhaps that last item is gratuitous
information, but at least it is authentic. We have no means of moving
that stone half a mile up a rough hill in these puny times, and the
speculations as to how Cain did it have been mainly hazy and
random--quite random.

One writer suggests that such stones were "rolled up an inclined plane
of earth prepared for the purpose." I should love to see a stone like
that rolled. I'd travel all the way to Baalbec again for the sight, and
they could prepare the inclined plane any way they pleased. An Oriental
authority declares that these stones were moved and laid by the demon
Echmoudi, which is better than the rolling idea. I confess a weakness
for Echmoudi, but I fear hard cold science will frown him out of court.

It has taken an Englishman to lead the way to light. He says that Cain
employed mastodons to do his moving. Now we are on the way to truth, but
we must go further--a good deal further. Cain did employ mastodons, but
only for his light work. Even mastodons would balk at pulling stones
like these. Cain would use brontosaurs for such work as that. There were
plenty of them loafing about, and I can imagine nothing more impressive
than Cain standing on a handy elevation overlooking his force of giants
and a sixteen-span brontosaur team yanking a stone as big as a bonded
warehouse up Baalbec hill.

Truly, there is no reason why those monster stones should not have been
quarried a million or so years ago and moved by the vast animal
creatures of that period. We have biblical authority for the giants, and
I have seen a brontosaur in the New York Museum that seemed to go with
stones of about that size. Think of any force the Romans could summon
rolling a three-million-pound square stone up an inclined plane.
Preposterous! The brontosaur's the thing.

XXV

GOING DOWN TO DAMASCUS

There is a good deal of country, mainly desert, between Baalbec and
Damascus, and a good many barren hills. Crossing the Anti-Lebanon
mountains there is a little of water and soil and much red, rocky waste.
Here and there a guide pointed out a hill where Cain killed Abel--not
always the same hill, but no matter, it was a hill in this neighborhood;
any one of them would make a good place. Occasionally the train passed a
squalid village, perched on a lonely shelf--a single roof stretching
over most of the houses--the inhabitants scarcely visible. We wondered
where they got their sustenance. They were shepherds, perhaps, but where
did their flocks feed?

Across the divide, between snow-capped hills, and suddenly we are face
to face with green banks and the orchard bloom of spring. We have
reached the Abana, the river which all the ages has flowed down to
Damascus with its gift of eternal youth. For as the desert defends, so
the river sustains Damascus, and the banks of the Abana (they call it
the Barada now) are just a garden--the Garden of Eden, if old tales be
true.

It is not hard to believe that tradition here, at this season. Peach,
apricot, almond, and plum fairly sing with blossom; birch and sycamore
blend a cadence of tender green; the red earth from which Adam was
created (and which his name signifies) forms an abundant underchord. If
we could linger a little by these pleasant waters we might learn the
lilt of the tree of life--its whisper of the forbidden fruit.

We are among our older traditions here--the beginnings of the race. We
have returned after devious wanderings. These people whom we see leading
donkeys and riding camels, tending their flocks and bathing in the
Abana, they are our relatives--sons and daughters of Adam. Only, they
did not move away. They stayed on the old place, as it were, and
preserved the family traditions, and customs. I am moved to get out and
call them "cousin" and embrace them, and thank them for not trailing off
after the false gods and frivolities of the West.

[Illustration: SO THE PATRIARCHS JOURNEYED; SO, TWO THOUSAND YEARS
LATER, JOSEPH AND MARY TRAVELLED INTO EGYPT]

The road that winds by the Abana is full of pictures. The story of the
Old Testament--the New, too, for that matter--is dramatized here in a
manner and a setting that would discourage the artificial stage. Not a
group but might have stepped out of the Bible pages. This man leading a
little donkey--a woman riding it--their garb and circumstance the
immutable investment of the East: so the patriarchs journeyed; so, two
thousand years later, Joseph and Mary travelled into Egypt. No change,
you see, in all that time--no change in the two thousand years that have
followed--no change in the two thousand years that lie ahead. Wonderful,
changeless East! How frivolous we seem in comparison--always racing
after some new pattern of head-gear or drapery! How can we hope to
establish any individuality, any nationality, any artistic stability
when we have so little fixed foundation in what, more than any other one
thing, becomes a part of the man himself--his clothing?

These hills are interesting. Some of them have verdure on them, and I
can fancy Abraham pasturing his flocks on them, and with little Isaac
chasing calves through the dews of Hermon. It would not be the "dews of
Hermon," but I like the sound of that phrase. I believe history does not
mention that Abraham and Isaac chased calves. No matter; anybody that
keeps flocks has to chase calves now and then, and he has to get his
little boy to help him. So Abraham must sometimes have called Isaac
quite early in the morning to "go and head off that calf," just as my
father used to call me, and I can imagine how they raced up and down and
sweat and panted, and how they said uncomplimentary things about the
calf and his family, and declared that there was nothing on earth that
could make a person so mad as a fool calf, anyhow.

Travel on the highway has increased--more camels, more donkeys, more
patriarchs with their families and flocks. Merchandise trains follow
close, one behind the other. Dust rises in a fog and settles on the
wayside vegetation. Here and there on the hillsides are villas and
entertainment gardens.

A widening of the valley, an expanse of green and bloom, mingled with
domes and minarets; a slowing down of speed, a shouting of porters
through the sunlit dust, and behold, we have reached the heart and
wonder of the East, Damascus, the imperishable--older than history, yet
forever young.

XXVI

THE "PEARL OF THE EAST"

It is the oldest city in the world. It is the oldest locality mentioned
in the Bible, if the Garden of Eden theory be true. I suspect that
Noah's flood washed away the garden, and that his grandson, Uz, wanted
to commemorate the site by building a city there. At all events, Uz
built Damascus, according to Josephus, and he could not have picked a
better location than this wide, level plain, watered by these beautiful
living streams. That was about 2400 B.C., which means that Damascus was
already an old city--five hundred years old, or more--when Abraham
overtook Chedorlaomer, King of Elam--Tidal, King of Nations, and two
other kings--these four having captured Abraham's nephew, Lot, "who
dwelt in Sodom, and his goods, and departed."

A matter of four kings did not disturb Abraham. He had a better
combination than that. He armed his trained servants, three hundred and
eighteen in number, "born in his own house," and went after those kings
and "smote them and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand
of Damascus, rescued Lot and brought back the goods."

That is the first Bible mention of Damascus, and it was no doubt a
goodly city, even then. After that it appears, time and again, in both
the scriptures, and one never fails to feel its importance in the
world's story. Five hundred years after Abraham, Thothmes III. thought
it worth while to cross over from Egypt to conquer Damascus, and after
still another five hundred years King David ravaged the country round
about and set up a garrison here. Those were not frequent changes.
Damascus does not do things frequently or without reflection. I believe
the Medes came next, and after them the Romans, and then, quite
recently--recently for Damascus, I mean--only thirteen hundred years
ago--the Mohammedans took the place and have held it ever since.

And Damascus herself has remained unchanged. Other cities have risen and
prospered and perished even from memory. They did not matter to
Damascus. Nothing matters to Damascus. It may have altered its
appearance a trifle now and then, but not materially. It is the same
Damascus that Abraham knew and that David conquered. I can see both of
these old fellows any time I look out of my hotel window; also, the
three hundred and eighteen servants born in Abraham's household--all the
tableau of the ancient city that has remained forever young.

     "Though old as history itself, thou art as fresh as the
     breath of spring, blooming as thine own rosebud, and
     fragrant as thine own orange-flower, O Damascus, pearl of
     the East!"

We are at the Grande Hotel Victoria. All these hotels are "Grande"
something or other. A box shanty ten by fifteen is likely to be called
"Grande Hotel de France." However, the Victoria _is_ grand, rather, and
quite Oriental in its general atmosphere. The rooms are clean, too, and
the Turkish pictures amusing. Furthermore, our rooms look across the
river--the soul of Damascus--the water in which Eve first saw her sweet
reflected form, if tradition holds. Its banks are bordered by a great
thoroughfare now, where against a background of peach-bloom and minaret
an eternal panorama flows by. Camel trains from Bagdad and the far
depths of Persia; mule trains from the Holy Land; donkey trains from
nowhere in particular; soldiers with bands playing weird music; groups
of Arabs mounted on splendid horses--dark men with long guns, their
burnouses flying in the wind. One might sit here forever and drift out
of time, out of space, in the fabric of the never-ending story.

Being late in the afternoon, with no programme, Laura and I set out to
seek adventure, were immediately adopted by a guide, and steered toward
the bazaars. We crossed a public square near the hotel where there were
all sorts and conditions of jackasses--some of them mounted by men,
others loaded with every merchandise under the sun. We saw our first
unruly donkey just then--a very small donkey mounted by a very fat son
of the prophet with a vast turban and beard. It being the Mohammedan
Sunday (Friday), he had very likely been to the mosque and to market,
and was going home. He had a very large bush broom under his arm, and it
may have been this article thrashing up and down on the donkey's flank
that made him restive. At all events, he was cavorting about (the
donkey, I mean) in a most unseemly fashion for one bestridden by so
grave a burden, and Mustapha Mohammed--they are all named that--was
bent forward in a ball, uttering what Laura thought might be quotations
from the Koran. We did not see what happened. They were still gyrating
and spinning when we were caught up by the crowd and swept into the
bazaar.

The Grande Bazaar of Damascus excels anything we have seen. It is bigger
and better and cleaner than the bazaar of Constantinople, and a
hundred--no, a million--times more inviting. No Christian could eat
anything in a Constantinople market-place. The very thought of it gags
me now as I write, while here in Damascus, Laura and I were having
confections almost immediately--and lemonade cooled with snow brought on
the backs of camels from the Lebanon mountain-tops. Mark Twain speaks of
the place as being filthy. I think they must have cleaned up a good deal
since then; besides, that was midsummer. I would not like to say that
the place is speckless, but for the Orient it was clean, and the general
bouquet was not disturbing. Also, I had a safer feeling in Damascus. I
did not feel that if I stepped into a side-street I would immediately be
dragged down and robbed. I did not feel as if I were a lost soul in a
bedlam of demons.

We noticed other things. The little booths, one after another, were
filled with the most beautiful wares--such wares as we have seen nowhere
else--but the drowsy merchants sat cross-legged in meditation, smoking
their nargileh or reading their prayers, and did not ask us to buy. If
we stopped to look at their goods they hardly noticed us. If we priced
them they answered our guide in Arabic monosyllables. Here and there a
Jew with a more pretentious stock would solicit custom in the old way of
Israel, but the Arab was silent, indifferent, disinterested. Clearly it
was his preference that we pass by as quickly as possible. His goods
were not for such as us. I did manage to add to my collection of
donkey-beads, and would have bought more if Laura had not suggested that
they probably thought I was buying them to wear myself. At the
book-booth they even would not let us touch the volumes displayed for
sale.

Another thing I have noticed: there are no beggars here--none worth
while. Now and then, perhaps, somebody half extends a timid hand, but on
the whole there is a marked absence of begging. Damascus does not beg
from the Christian.

It is a weird, wonderful place, that bazaar. It covers an endless space,
if one may judge from its labyrinthine interior. Everywhere they stretch
away, the dim arcades, flimsily roofed with glass and matting and bark,
fading into vague Oriental vistas of flitting figures and magic
outlines. Here in the main thoroughfare a marvellous life goes on. The
space is wide, and there are masses of people moving to and fro, mingled
with donkeys and camels, and even carriages that dash recklessly
through; and there is a constant cry of this thing and that thing from
the donkey-boys and the pedlers of nuts and bread and insipid sweetened
drinks. Some of the pedling people clatter little brass cymbals as they
walk up and down, and repeat over and over some words which our guide
said were something between a prayer and a song, probably as old as the
language.[6] And the vendors of drinks carry their stock in trade in a
goat-skin, or maybe in a pigskin, which is not a pretty thing to look
at--all black and hairy and wet, with distended legs sticking out like
something drowned. We didn't buy any of those drinks. We thought they
might be clean enough, but we were no longer thirsty.

All sorts of things are incorporated in this bazaar: old
dwelling-houses; columns of old temples; stairways beginning anywhere,
leading nowhere; mosques--the limitless roof of merchandise has
stretched out and enveloped these things. To attempt a detailed
description of the place would be unwisdom. One may only generalize this
vast hive of tiny tradesmen and tiny trades. All the curious merchants
and wares we have seen pictured for a lifetime are gathered here. It is
indeed the Grande Bazaar--the emporium of the East.

The street we followed came to an end by-and-by at a great court open to
the sky. It was a magnificent enclosure, and I was quite willing to
enter it. I did not do so, however. I had my foot raised to step over
the low barrier, when there was a warning cry and a brown hand pushed me
back. Our guide had dropped a step behind. He came hurrying up now, and
explained that this was the court of the Great Mosque. We must have
special permission to enter. We would come with the party to-morrow.

The place impressed me more than any mosque we have seen--not for its
beauty, though it is beautiful, but because of its vastness, its open
sky, and its stone floor, polished like glass by the bare and stockinged
feet that have slipped over it for centuries. We could not enter, but we
were allowed to watch those who came as they removed their shoes and
stepped over into the court to pray. When you realize that the enclosure
is as big as two or three city squares, and that the stones, only fairly
smooth in the beginning, reflect like a mirror now, you will form some
idea of the feet and knees and hands that have pressed them, and realize
something of the fervor of the Damascus faith.

We left the bazaar by a different way, and our guide got lost getting us
back to the hotel. I didn't blame him, though--anybody could get lost in
those tangled streets. We were in a hopeless muddle, for it was getting
dark, when down at the far end of a narrow defile Laura got a glimpse of
a building which she said was like one opposite our hotel. So we went to
look for it, and it was the same building. Then our guide found the
hotel for us, and we paid him, and everything was all right. He didn't
know anything about the city, I believe, but was otherwise a perfect
guide.

Following, we put in a busy two days in Damascus--a marvellous two days,
I thought. Our carriages were at the hotel next morning, and I want to
say here that of all the carriages and horses we have seen, those of
Damascus are far and away the best. The horses are simply beautiful
creatures and in perfect condition. Even those kept for hire are superb
animals with skins of velvet. They are Arabian, of course, and I can
believe, now, that the Arab loves his horse, for I have never seen finer
animals, not even on Fifth Avenue. I can understand, too, why the
_Quaker City_ pilgrims--ambling into Damascus on those old, blind, halt
and spavined Beirut nags--made their entry by night.

And these Damascus horses go. Their drivers may love them, but they make
them hurry. They crack their whips, and we go racing through the streets
like mad. However deliberate the East may be in most things, it is swift
enough in the matter of driving.

I don't care for it. It keeps me watching all the time to see what kind
of an Arab we are going to kill, and I miss a good many sights. We went
through that crowded thoroughfare of the Grande Bazaar at a rate which
fairly was homicidal. Certainly if those drowsy shopkeepers did not hate
Christians enough before, they do now.

We drove to the Grande Mosque, and we had to put on slippers, of course,
to enter even the outer court. It is nearly a quarter of a mile long,
and we slid and straddled across that vast marble skating-rink, pausing
at a little pavilion--the Dome of the Treasury--where they keep some
venerable books--the oldest books in the world, I believe, and so sacred
that nobody ever sees them. Then we entered the Grande Mosque
itself--still known as the Church of St. John the Divine.

For, like the temples of Baalbec and otherwheres, the Grande Mosque of
Damascus has sheltered a variety of religious doctrines. It was the
Temple of Rimmon, first, god of the Syrians. The Romans, who conquered
and templed the world, came next, and built here, as they always built,
in magnificence and pride, with architecture stolen from the Greeks.
After the Romans, the early Christians under Constantine and Theodosius,
who for some reason did not destroy, as was their habit, but only
adapted the great temple to their needs. The son of Theodosius made some
improvements, and above the south door left a Christian inscription
which stands to this day.

When, in 634 A.D., Damascus fell, the church was at first divided
between Mohammedan and Christian worshippers--the two entering by the
same gate. They were not so far asunder in those days--not farther, I
think, than some of our present-day Christian sects--so called. Seventy
years later the strife became bitter, and the followers of Mohammed
claimed it all. The Caliph entered the church with guards, smashed the
Christian images, and set up emblems of the new faith. Then he lavished
quantities of money, making the place as splendid as possible, until it
was more beautiful even than St. Sophia's. Sixteen years ago it was
badly damaged by fire, but now it has been restored--by Christian
workmen, Habib said. Habib, I should add, is our party guide--a
Christian Syrian, educated in a college at Beirut--a quite wonderful
person of many languages.

The mosque interior is the most beautiful place we have seen. Its
ceiling, its windows, its mosaic walls, its rugs--all overwhelming in
exquisite workmanship and prodigality of design. The pictures I have
dreamed of Aladdin's palace grow dim in this enchanted place. No wonder
the faithful linger here on their way to and from Mecca; for after the
long desert stages it is like a vision of that lavish paradise which
their generous prophet has provided. They are all about--prostrating
themselves with many genuflections and murmurings--and we step on them
as little as possible, but they are a good deal in the way. The place
holds ten or twelve thousand of them every Friday, Habib said.

Habib, by-the-way, has small respect for the Moslem. Also, he does not
seem to fear consequences, which I confess I do, being in the very
stronghold of fanaticism, and remembering that some five thousand
Christians were suddenly and violently destroyed in Damascus not so many
years ago. We were in front of a very marvellous mosaic shrine, and
Habib beckoned us to come closer to admire its exquisite workmanship. A
devotee was prostrated in the little alcove, bowing and praying in the
usual rhythmic way. We surrounded him, but were inclined to hold a
little aloof.

"Closer, closer!" urged Habib. "You must see it!"

We crowded up and entangled the praying person, who became aware of our
presence and turned up his face helplessly. Then he pressed it again to
the floor, and tried to go on with his murmurings. It was no use. Habib
jostled him, waved his pointing stick over his head, tapped the
ornamentation within an inch of his nose. We were told to step up and
examine the work closely--to touch it, smell of it. Clearly Habib
regarded that devotee no more than if he had been a mile removed instead
of being actually against us. The poor pious pilgrim stole another look
at us, this way and that, slipped a notch in his prayers, gathered
himself and tried again, let go a whole distich, quavered in his attempt
to make himself heard, cast another appealing glance at the
_Kurfürsters_, broke through, and fled. This is not an exaggeration, but
an actual happening. In America there would have been trouble.

"He is nothing," said Habib, when I seemed disturbed. "He is only an
Arab." Still, he was praying to Habib's God.

Many persons do not realize, I believe, that Christianity and
Mohammedanism differ mainly in their Messiah. The Jew furnished the
Moslem as well as the Christian with a God, patriarchs, and
prophets--the Old Testament being common to all. The Moslem goes further
than the Jew, for he accepts parts of the New Testament. He recognizes
John the Baptist as a holy messenger, even claiming to have his head in
this very church, in a shrine which we saw, though I could see that
Habib thought the relic apocryphal. Furthermore, the Moslem accepts
Christ! To him, Christ is only a lesser prophet than Mohammed, but still
a great being--an emissary of God--and on this same mosque is the
Minaret of Jesus, where, one day, as they believe, he will stand to
judge the world. On the other hand, the average Christian believes that
Mohammed was merely a fraud, and it is this difference of opinion that
has reddened the East with blood. I am moved to set down this paragraph
of rather general information for the reason that it contains some
things which I suppose others to be as ignorant of as I was--things
which seem to me interesting.

We did see one old book, by-the-way--fifteen hundred years old, Habib
said, and a member of our party asked if it was printed on a press;
though that is nothing--I have done worse myself. Then we ascended the
Minaret of the Bride for the view. We climbed and climbed, and got hot,
and shaky in the knees, but the view repaid us. There was Damascus
spread out in its beauty; its marble courts, its domes and minarets and
painted houses--a magic city in the midst of a garden of bloom.
Certainly this is fairyland--a mirage whose fragile fabric may vanish in
a breath. Oh, our time is all too short! One must have long and long to
look upon the East--it has taken so long to build!

We went to Saladin's tomb, and that is authoritative, though I confess
that I could not realize, as we stood in that narrow building and viewed
the catafalque in the centre, that the mighty Saracen hero of romance
rested there. For me, he belongs only in tales of enchantment and fierce
deeds, and not in that quiet place. I remembered that his sword was so
sharp that a feather pillow dropped on its edge would fall on either
side. Perhaps they have the sword there, and possibly the pillow to
prove it, but I did not see them.

A Turkish school turned out to look at us and smile. We looked and
smiled back, and everybody was satisfied. It is certain that we look
more strange to them than they do to us, now. I know this, for when I
stop anywhere and look over our party, here amid the turbans and fezzes
and long flowing garments of the Orient, I can see for myself that it is
really our party that looks queer and fantastic and out of place--not
these people at all.

It is natural that one should realize this in Damascus, for Damascus is
the great reality--the unchanged and changeless. Algiers was a framed
picture; Constantinople was a world's Midway--a sort of masquerade,
prepared for our benefit. Here it is different. No longer the country
and the people constitute the show, but ourselves. One presently
discovers that he is artificial--an alien, a discord--that he has no
place here. These others are the eternal verities; their clothes are the
real clothes--not ours, that change fashion with every year and season.
One is tempted to abjure all the fanfare and flourish of his so-called
progress--to strip off his ridiculous garments and customs and fall in
with the long steady rhythm of the ages.

Only, you don't do it. You discover objections to such a course. I could
name some of them if I wanted to. Never mind; you couldn't do it anyway.
You have been hurrying and sweating and capering about and wearing your
funny clothes and singing in false keys too long. You cannot immediately
put on the garb of the ages, and lock step with the swing of a thousand
years.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The pedler of bread cries, "O Allah who sustaineth us, send trade!"
The pedler of beverages, "O cheer thine heart!"

XXVII

FOOTPRINTS OF PAUL

We entered the "street which is called Straight," and came to the house
of Judas, where St. Paul lodged when he was led blind into Damascus,
trembling and astonished of the Lord. His name was Saul, and he had been
on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians, by the authority of
Rome. The story is in the ninth chapter of Acts, and is too familiar to
repeat here. I believe, though, most of us thought the house of Judas
had some connection with the unfaithful disciple of that name, until
Habib enlightened us. Habib said that this was another Judas--a good
man--well-to-do for his time. The Street called Straight runs through
the Grande Bazaar, and the house of Judas is in the very midst of that
dim aggregation of trades. It is roofless and unoccupied, but it is kept
clean and whitewashed, and its stone walls will stand for another two
thousand years.

Next to the birth and crucifixion of the Saviour, the most important
event in the story of Christianity happened there. It seemed strange and
dream-like to be standing in the house of St. Paul's conversion--a place
which heretofore had seemed to exist only in the thin leaves and fine
print of our Sunday-school days--and I found myself wondering which
corner of the house St. Paul occupied, just where he sat at table, and a
number of such things. Then I noticed the drifting throngs outside,
passing and repassing or idling drowsily, who did not seem to know that
it was St. Paul's house, and paid no attention to it at all.

At the house of Ananias, which came next, Habib was slow in arriving,
and the Horse-Doctor gave us a preliminary lecture.

"This," he said, "is the house of Ananias, once fed by the ravens.
Later, through being a trifle careless with the truth, he became the
founder and charter member of a club which in the United States of
America still bears his name. Still later he was struck by lightning for
deceiving his mother-in-law, Saphira, who perished at the same time to
furnish a Scripture example that the innocent must suffer with the
guilty (see Deuteronomy xi. 16): This is the spot where Ananias fell.
That stone marks the spot where his mother-in-law stood. The hole in the
roof was made by the lightning when it came through. We will now pass on
to the next--"

That was good enough gospel for our party if Habib had only let it
alone. He came in just then and interrupted. He said:

"This is the house of Ananias--called St. Ananias, to distinguish him
from a liar by the same name. That Ananias and his wife, Saphira, fell
dead at the feet of St. Peter because of falsehood, a warning to those
who trifle with the truth to-day. St. Ananias was a good man, who
restored St. Paul's sight and instructed him in the Christian
doctrine."

We naturally avoided the Doctor for a time after that. His neighborhood
seemed dangerous.

The house of Ananias is below ground, and was probably used as a
hiding-place in a day when it was not safe for an active and busy
Christian to be at large. Such periods have not been unusual in
Damascus. St. Paul preached Christianity openly, but not for long; for
the Jews "took counsel to kill him," and watched the gate to see that he
did not get away.

"Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down the wall in a
basket."

We drove to the outer wall, and came to the place and the window where
Paul is said to have been let down. It _might_ have happened there; the
wall is Roman, and the window above it could have been there in St.
Paul's day. I prefer to believe it is the real window, though I have
reason to think they show another one sometimes.

Habib said we were to visit some of the handsome residences of Damascus.
We were eager for that. From the Minaret of the Bride we had looked down
upon those marble courts and gay façades, and had been fascinated. We
drove back into the city, through narrow mud-walled streets, forbidding
and not overclean. When these alleys had become so narrow and
disheartening that we could travel only with discomfort, we stopped at a
wretched entrance and were told to get out. Certainly this was never the
portal to any respectable residence. But we were mistaken. The Damascus
house is built from the inside out. It is mud and unseemly disrepute
without, but it is fairyland within. Every pretentious house is built
on the same plan, and has a marble court, with a fountain or pool, and
some peach or apricot or orange trees. On one side of the court is the
front of the house. It has a high entrance, and rooms to the right and
to the left--rooms that have a raised floor at one end (that is where
the rich rugs are) and very high ceilings--forty feet high, some of
them--decorated with elaborate designs. In the first house the round
writhing rafters were exposed, and the decoration on them made them look
exactly like snakes. The Apostle took one look and fled, and I confess I
did not care for them much myself. The rest of the house was divided
into rooms of many kinds, and there was running water, and a bath. We
visited another house, different only in details. Some of the occupants
were at home here--women-folks who seemed glad to see us, and showed us
about eagerly. A tourist party from far-off America is a diversion to
them, no doubt.

[Illustration: URGING US TO PARTAKE OF THE PRECIOUS STUFF, WITHOUT
STINT]

Then we went to still another house. We saw at once that it was a
grander place than the two already visited, and we were simply
bewildered at the abundance of the graven brass and inlaid furniture,
rich rugs and general bric-à-brac, that filled a great reception-room.
Suddenly servants in Turkish dress appeared with trays of liqueurs--two
kinds, orange and violet--urging us to partake of the precious stuff,
without stint. Also, there were trays of rare coffee and dainty
sweetmeats, and we were invited to sit in the priceless chairs and to
handle the wonderful things to our hearts' content. We were amazed,
stunned. Oriental hospitality could go no further. Then in some subtle
manner--I don't remember how the information was conveyed, but it must
have been delicately, Orientally done--we learned that all this brass,
all these marvellous things, were for sale!

Did we buy them? Did we! David did not take more brass from Hadadezer
than we carried out of that Damascus residence, which was simply an
annex to a great brass and mosaic factory, as we discovered later.
Perhaps those strange liqueurs got into our enthusiasm; certainly I have
never seen our party so liberal--so little inclined to haggle and hammer
down.

But the things themselves were worth while. The most beautiful brass in
the world is made in Damascus, and it is made in that factory.

They took us in where the work was going on. I expected to see
machinery. Nothing of the sort--not a single machine anywhere. Every
stage of the work is performed by hand--done in the most primitive way,
by workmen sitting on the ground, shaping some artistic form, or with a
simple graving-tool working out an intricate design. Many of the workers
were mere children--girls, most of them--some of them not over seven or
eight years old, yet even these were producing work which would cause
many an "arts and crafts" young lady in America to pale with envy. They
get a few cents a day. The skilled workers, whose deft fingers and
trained vision produce the exquisite silver inlay designs, get as much
as a shilling. No wonder our people did not haggle. The things were
cheap, and they knew it.

In a wareroom in the same factory I noticed that one of the walls was
stone, and looked like Roman masonry; also that in it were the outlines
of two high arches, walled up. I asked Habib about it.

"Those," he said, "are two of the entrances to the Street called
Straight. We are outside of the wall here; this house is built against
it. The Straight street had three entrances in the old days. Those two
have long been closed."

It always gives me a curious sensation to realize that actual people are
living and following their daily occupations in the midst of
associations like these. I can't get used to it at all.

To them, however, it is nothing. The fact that they sleep and wake and
pursue their drowsy round in places hallowed by tradition; that the
house which sheltered St. Paul stands in the midst of their murmuring
bazaar; that one side of this wareroom is the wall of the ancient city,
the actual end of the Street called Straight; that every step they take
is on historic ground, sacred to at least three religions--this to me
marvellous condition is to them not strange at all.

It is not that they do not realize the existence of these things: they
do--at least, most of them do--and honor and preserve their landmarks.
But that a column against which they dream and smoke may be one of the
very columns against which St. Paul leaned as he groped his blind way
down the Street called Straight is to them not a matter for wonder, or
even comment.

I am beginning to understand their point of view--even to envy it. I do
not envy some of the things they have--some of their customs--but their
serenity of habit, their security of place in the stately march of time,
their establishment of race and religion--one must envy these things
when he considers them here, apart from that environment which we call
civilized--the whirl which we call progress.

I do not think I shall turn Moslem. The doctrine has attractive
features, both here and hereafter; but I would not like to undertake the
Koran at my time of life. I can, however, and I do, pay the tribute of
respect to the sun-baked land and sun-browned race that have given birth
to three of the world's great religions, even though they have not
unnaturally claimed their last invention as their best and held it as
their own.

XXVIII

DISCONTENTED PILGRIMS

We entered the remaining portal of the Street called Straight and drove
to the Grand Bazaar. We were in a buying fever by this time, and plunged
into a regular debauch of bargain and purchase. We were all a little
weary when we reached the hotel. We came in carrying our brass and other
loot, and dropped down on the first divan, letting our bundles fall
where they listed.

I thought the Apostle looked particularly solemn. Being a weighty
person, jouncing all day in a carriage and walking through brass bazaars
and fez bazaars and silk bazaars and rug bazaars and silver bazaars and
leather bazaars and saddle bazaars, and at least two hundred and seven
other bazaars, had told on him. When I spoke cheeringly he merely
grunted and reached for something in a glass which, if it tasted as it
smelled, was not calculated to improve his temper. When I sat down
beside him he did not seem over cordial.

[Illustration: ASKED HIM IF HE WOULDN'T EXECUTE A LITTLE COMMISSION FOR
ME IN THE BAZAARS]

Then, quite casually, I asked him if he wouldn't execute a little
commission for me in the bazaars; there were a few trifles I had
overlooked: another coffee-set, for instance--something for a friend at
home; I had faith in his (the Apostle's) taste.

It seemed a reasonable request, and I made it politely enough, but the
Apostle became suddenly violent. He said:

"Damn the bazaars! I'm full of brass and Oriental rugs and bric-à-brac.
I never want to hear of a bazaar again. I want to give away the junk
I've already bought, and get back to the ship." Which we knew he didn't
mean, for he had put in weary hours acquiring those things, inspired
with a large generosity for loved ones at home.

The Colonel came drifting along just then--unruffled,
debonair--apparently unwearied by the day's round. Nothing disturbs the
Colonel. If he should outwear the century, he would still be as blithe
of speech and manner as he is to-day at--dear me, how old is the
Colonel? Is he thirty? Is he fifty? He might be either of those ages or
at any mile-post between.

He stood now, looking down at the Apostle and his cup of poison. Then,
with a coaxing smile:

"Match you, Joe--my plunder against yours--just once."

The Apostle looked up with a perfectly divine sneer.

"_Yes_, you will-- I think I see myself!"

The Colonel slapped a coin on the table briskly.

"Come on, Joe--we never matched for bric-à-brac before. Let's be
game--just this time."

What was the use? The Apostle resisted--at first violently, then
feebly--then he matched--and lost.

For a moment he could hardly realize the extent of his disaster. Then he
reached for the mixture in front of him, swallowed it, gagged, and
choked alarmingly. When he could get his voice, he said:

"I'm the hellfiredest fool in Syria. I walked four hundred miles to buy
those things."

The Horse-Doctor regarded him thoughtfully.

"You always interest me," he said. "I don't know whether it's your shape
or your mental habitudes. Both are so peculiar."

After which we left the Apostle--that is, we stood from under and went
in to dinner.

The Apostle is a good traveller, however--all the Reprobates are. They
take things as they find them, which cannot be said for all of our
people. One wonders what some of them expected in Damascus--probably
steamer fare and New York hotel accommodations. I judge this from their
remarks.

As a matter of fact, we are at the best hotel in Damascus, and the hotel
people are racking their bodies and risking their souls to give us the
best they know. A traveller cannot get better than the best--even in
heaven. Travelling alone in any strange land, he is more likely to get
the worst. Yet the real traveller will make the best of what he finds,
and do better when he finds he can. But these malcontents of ours have
been pampered and spoiled by that steamer until they expect nothing
short of perfection--_their_ kind of perfection--wherever they set foot.
They are so disturbed over the fact that the bill-of-fare is unusual and
not adjusted to their tastes that they are not enjoying the sights, and
want to clear out, forthwith. They have been in Damascus a little more
than a day; they want to go now. This old race has stood it five
thousand years or more. These ship-dwellers can't stand it two days
without complaint. I don't want to be severe, but such travellers tire
me. I suppose the bill-of-fare in heaven won't please them. I hope not,
if I'm invited to remain there--any length of time, I mean.

The rest of us are having great enjoyment. We like everything, and we
eat most of it. There are any number of dried fruits and nuts and fine
juicy oranges always on the table, strung down the centre--its full
length. And even if the meats are a bit queer, they are by no means bad.
We whoop up the bill-of-fare, and go through it forward and backward and
diagonally, working from both ends toward the centre, and back again if
we feel like it. We have fruit and nuts piled by our plates and on our
plates all through the meal. _We_ don't get tired of Damascus. We could
stay here and start a famine. What _will_ these grumblers do in heaven,
where very likely there isn't a single dish they ever heard of before?

In the matter of wines, however, I am conservative. You see, Mohammed
forbade the use of spirituous beverages by the faithful, and liquor
forms no part of their long, symphonic rhyme. They don't drink it
themselves; they only make it for visitors.

It would require no command of the Prophet to make me abstain from it. I
have tried their vintage. I tried one brand called the "Wine of
Ephesus." The name conjured visions; so did the wine, but they were not
the same visions. The name suggested banquets in marble halls, where
gentlemen and ladies of the old days reclined on rich divans and were
served by slaves on bended knee. The wine itself--the taste of it, I
mean--suggested a combination of hard cider and kerosene, with a hurry
call for the doctor.

I was coy about the wines of the East after that, but by-and-by I tried
another brand--a different color with a different name. This time it was
"Nectar of Heliopolis." They had curious ideas of nectar in Heliopolis.
Still, it was better than the Wine of Ephesus. Hair-oil is always better
than kerosene in a mixture like that--but not much better. The flavor
did not invite debauch.

This is Sunday (the Christian Sunday), and I have been out for an early
morning walk. I took the trolley that starts near the hotel. I did not
care for a trolley excursion, but I wanted to see what a Damascus
trolley is like and where it went. It isn't like anything in particular,
and it didn't go anywhere--not while I was on it.

I noticed that it was divided into three sections, and I climbed into
the front one. The conductor motioned to me, and I understood that I had
made a wrong selection, somehow. A woman, veiled and bangled, climbed
aboard just then, and I understood. I was in the women's section--a
thing not allowed in Damascus. So I got back into the rear section, but
that wouldn't do, either. The conductor was motioning again.

I comprehended at length. The rear compartment was second class. He
wanted me to go in style. So I got into the middle compartment and gave
him a tin medal, and got two or three similar ones in change, and sat
there waiting for the procession to move. I waited a good while. There
was an Arabic inscription on the back of the seats in front of me--in
the place where, in America, it says, "Wait for the car to stop." I
suppose it says, "Wait for the car to start" in Damascus. We did that.
The conductor dozed.

Now and then somebody climbed on, but the arrivals were infrequent. I
wondered if we were waiting for a load. It would take a week to fill up,
at that rate. I looked at my watch now and then. The others went to
sleep. That is about the difference between the East and the West. The
West counts the time; for the East it has no existence. Moments, hours,
months mean nothing to the East. The word hurry is not of her language.
She drives her horses fast, but merely for pleasure, not haste. She has
constructed this trolley, but merely for style. It doesn't really serve
any useful purpose.

We moved a little by-and-by, and I had hopes. They were premature. We
crawled up in front of a coffee-house where a lot of turbans and fezzes
were gathered outside, over tiny cups and hubble-bubble pipes; then we
stopped. Our conductor and motorman got off and leaned against an
almond-tree and began gossiping with friends. Finally coffee came out to
them, and pipes, and they squatted down to smoke.

I finished my ride then; I shall always wonder where those other
passengers thought they were going, and if they ever got there.

I followed down a narrow street, and came to a succession of tiny
work-shops. It was then I discovered what a man's feet are for--that
is, some uses I had not known before. They are to assist the hands in
performing mechanical labor. All mechanics work barefooted here. They
sit flat on the floor or ground, with their various appliances in
front of them, and there is scarcely any operation in which the feet
do not take part. I came to a turning-lathe--a whole row of
turning-lathes--tiny, crude affairs, down on the ground, of course,
driven back and forth with a bow and a string. The workman held the bow
in one hand, while the other hand, assisted by the foot, guided the
cutting tool. It would never occur to these workmen to put the lathe
higher in the air and attach a treadle, leaving both hands free to guide
the tool.

Their sawing is the crudest process imaginable. They have no trestles or
even saw-bucks. They have only a slanting stick stuck in the ground, and
against this, with their feet and one hand, they hold the piece to be
sawed, while the other hand runs the earliest saw ever made--the kind
Noah used when he built the Ark. Sometimes a sawyer has a helper--a boy
who pushes and pulls as the saw runs back and forth.

I bought a Sunday-morning paper. It does not resemble the
sixty-four-page New York Sunday dailies. It consists of four small
pages, printed in wriggly animalculæ and other aquaria, and contains
news four years old--or four hundred, it does not matter. Possibly it
denounces the sultan--it is proper to do that just now--but I think not.
That would be too current. I think it is still denouncing Constantine.

XXIX

DAMASCUS, THE GARDEN BEAUTIFUL

Later, we drove to the foot of Mohammed's Hill--the hill from which the
Prophet looked down on the Pearl of the East and decided that as he
could have only one paradise he would wait for the next. They have built
a little tower to mark the spot where he rested, and we thought we would
climb up there.

We didn't, however. The carriages could only go a little way beyond the
city outskirts, and when we started to climb that blistering, barren
hillside afoot we changed our minds rapidly. We had permission to go as
high as we pleased, but it is of no value. Anybody could give it. Laura
and I and a German newspaper man were the only ones who toiled up high
enough to look down through the mystical haze on the vision Mohammed
saw. Heavens! but it was hot up there! And this is March--early spring!
How those _Quaker City_ pilgrims stood it to travel across the Syrian
desert in August I cannot imagine. In the _Innocents_ I find this
observation:

     "The sun-flames shot down like shafts of fire that stream
     out of a blowpipe. The rays seemed to fall in a steady
     deluge on my head and pass downward like rain from a roof."

That is a white-hot description, but not too intense, I think, for
Syrian summer-time.

Another thing we noticed up there: Damascus is growing--in that
direction at least. Older than history, the place is actually having a
boom. All the houses out that way are new--mud-walled, but some of them
quite pretentious. They have pushed out far beyond the gardens, across
the barren plain, and they are climbing the still more barren slope.
They stand there in the baking sun, unshaded as yet by any living thing.
One pities the women shut up behind those tiny barred windows. These
places will have gardens about them some day. Already their owners are
scratching the earth with their crooked sticks, and they will plant and
water and make the desert bloom.

Being free in the afternoon, Laura and I engaged Habib and a carriage
and went adventuring on our own account. We let Habib manage the
excursion, and I shall always remember it as a sweet, restful
experience.

We visited a Moslem burying-ground first, and the tomb of Fatima--the
original Fatima--Mohammed's beautiful daughter, who married a rival
prophet, Ali, yet sleeps to-day with honor in a little mosque-like tomb.
We passed a tree said to have been planted by the Mohammedan conqueror
of Damascus nearly thirteen hundred years ago--an enormous tree, ten
feet through or more--on one side a hollow which would hold a dozen men,
standing.

Then at last we came to the gardens of Damascus, and got out and walked
among the olive-trees and the peach and almond and apricot--most of them
in riotous bloom. Summer cultivation had only just begun, and few
workmen were about. Later the gardens will swarm with them, and they
will be digging and irrigating, and afterward gathering the fruit,
preserving and drying it, and sending it to market. Habib showed us the
primitive methods of doing these things.

How sweet and quiet and fragrant it was there among the flowering trees!
In one place a little group of Syrian Christians were recreating (it
being Sunday), playing some curious dulcimer instrument and singing a
weird hymn.

We crossed the garden, and sat on the grass under the peach-bloom while
Habib went for the carriage. Sitting there, we realized that the
guide-book had been only fair to Damascus.

     "For miles around it is a wilderness of gardens--gardens
     with roses among the tangled shrubberies, and with fruit on
     the branches overhead. Everywhere among the trees the murmur
     of unseen rivulets is heard."

That sounds like fairyland, but it is only Damascus--Damascus in June,
when the fruit is ripening and the water-ways are full.

We drove out of Damascus altogether--far out across a fertile plain, to
the slopes of the West Lebanon hills. Then turning, we watched the sun
slip down the sky while Habib told us many things. Whatever there is to
know, Habib knows, and to localities and landmarks he fitted stories and
traditions which brought back all the old atmosphere and made this
Damascus the Damascus of fable and dreams.

Habib pointed out landmarks near and far--minarets of the great mosque,
the direction of Jerusalem, of Mecca; he showed us where the waters of
Damascus rise and where they waste into the desert sands. To the
westward was Mount Hermon; southward came the lands of Naphtali, and
Bashan where the giant Og once reigned. All below us lay Palestine;
Mount Hermon was the watch-tower, Damascus the capital of the North.

Damascus in the sunset, its domes and minarets lifting above the lacing
green! There is no more beautiful picture in the world than that. We
turned to it again and again when every other interest had waned--the
jewel, the "pearl set in emeralds," on the desert's edge. Laura and I
will always remember that Sunday evening vision of the old city, the
things that Habib told us, and the drive home.

Next to the city itself I think the desert interested us. It begins just
a little beyond Damascus, Habib said, and stretches the length of the
Red Sea and to the Persian Gulf. A thousand miles down its length lies
Mecca, to which pilgrims have journeyed for ages--a horde of them every
year. There is a railway, now, as far as Tebook, but Mecca is still six
hundred miles beyond. The great annual pilgrimages, made up of the
faithful from all over Asia and portions of Europe and Africa, depart
from Damascus, and those that survive it return after long months of
wasting desert travel. Habib said that a great pilgrimage was returning
now; the city was full of holy men.

Then he told us about the dromedary mail that crosses the desert from
Damascus to Bagdad, like a through express. It is about five hundred
miles across as the stork flies, but the dromedary is not disturbed by
distance. He destroys it at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and
capers in fresh and smiling at the other end. Habib did not advise
dromedary travel. It is very rough, he said. Nothing but an Arab trained
to the business could stand it. Once an Englishman wanted to go through
by the dromedary mail, and did go, though they implored him to travel in
the regular way. He got through all right, but his liver and his heart
had changed places, and it took three doctors seven days to rearrange
his works.

A multitude was pouring out of the city when we reached the
gates--dwellers in the lands about. We entered and turned aside into
quiet streets, the twilight gathering about mysterious doorways and in
dim shops and stalls, where were bowed, turbaned men who never seemed to
sell anything, or to want to sell anything--who barely noticed us as we
passed through the Grand Bazaar, where it was getting dark, and all the
drowsy merchants of all the drowsy merchandise were like still shadows
that only moved a little to let us pass. Out again into streets that
were full of dusk, and dim flitting figures and subdued sounds.

All at once I caught sight of a black stone jar hanging at the door of a
very small and dusky booth. It was such a jar as is used in Damascus
to-day for water--was used there in the time of Abraham.

"Habib!"

I had wanted one of the pots from the first. The carriage stops
instantly.

"Habib! That black water-jar--a small one!"

I had meant to bargain for it myself, but Habib is ahead of me. He
scorns to bargain for such a trifle, and with such a merchant. He merely
seizes the jar, says a guttural word or two in whatever tongue the man
knows, flings him a paltry coin, and is back in the carriage, directing
our course along the darkening, narrow way.

What a wonderful life the dark is bringing out! There, in front of that
coffee-house, that row of men smoking nargileh--surely they are
magicians, every one. "That silent group with shaven faces and snowy
beards: who are they, Habib?"

"Mongolians," he says. "Pilgrims returning from Mecca. They live far
over to the north of China, but still are followers of the Prophet." The
scope of Islamism is wide--oh yes, very wide, and increasing. That group
gathered at the fountain--their dress, their faces--

"Habib!"

The horses come up with a jerk.

"A copper water-jar, Habib! An old, old man is filling it--such a
strange pattern"--

Habib is down instantly, and amid the crowd. Cautiously I follow. The
old man is stooped, wrinkled, travel-worn. His robe and his turban are
full of dust. He is listening to Habib and replying briefly.

Habib explains. The pilgrim is returning with it from Mecca; it is very
old; he cannot part with it. My heart sinks; every word adds value to
the treasure. Habib tries again, while I touch the ancient, curiously
wrought jar lovingly. The pilgrim draws away. He will hardly allow me
even this comfort.

We return to the carriage sadly. The driver starts. Some one comes
running behind, calling. Again we stop; a boy calls something to Habib.

"He will sell," Habib laughs, "and why not? He demands a napoleon. Of
course you will not give it!"

Oh, coward heart! I cannot, after that. I have the napoleon and the
desire, but I cannot appear a fool before Habib.

"No, it is too much. Drive on."

We dash forward; the East closes behind us; the opportunity is forever
lost.

If one could only be brave at the instant! All my days shall I recall
the group at the fountain: that bent, travel-stained pilgrim; that
strangely fashioned water-pot which perhaps came down to him from
patriarchal days. How many journeys to Mecca had it made; how many times
had it moistened the parching lips of some way-worn pilgrim dragging
across the burning sand; how many times had it furnished water for
absolution before the prayer in the desert! And all this could have been
mine. For a paltry napoleon I could have had the talisman for my
own--all the wonder of the East, its music, its mystery, its
superstition; I could have fondled it and gazed on it and re-created
each picture at a touch.

Oh, Habib, Habib, may the Prophet forgive you; for, alas, I never can!

At the station next morning a great horde of pilgrims were waiting for
the train which would bear them to Beirut--Mongolians, many of them, who
had been on the long, long, pilgrimage over land and sea. At Beirut, we
were told, seven steamers were waiting to take them on the next stage of
their homeward journey. What a weary way they had yet to travel!

They were all loaded down with baggage. They had their bundles,
clothing, quilts, water-bottles: and I wandered about among them vainly
hoping to find my pilgrim of the copper pot. Hopeless, indeed. There
were pots in plenty, but they were all new or unsightly things.

All the pilgrims were old men, for the Moslem, like most of the rest of
us, puts off his spiritual climax until he has acquired his material
account. He _has_ to, in fact; for, even going the poorest way and
mainly afoot, a journey of ten or twelve thousand miles across mountain
and desert, wilderness and wave cannot be made without substance.

We took a goodly number of them on our train. Freight-cars crowded with
them were attached behind, and we crawled across the mountains with that
cargo of holy men, who poured out at every other station and prostrated
themselves, facing Mecca, to pray for our destruction. At least, I
suppose they did that. I know they made a most imposing spectacle at
their devotions, and the Moslem would hardly overlook an enemy in such
easy praying distance.

However, we crossed the steeps, skirted the precipices safely enough,
and by-and-by a blue harbor lay below, and in it, like a fair picture,
the ship--home. We had been gone less than a week--it seemed a year.

XXX

WHERE PILGRIMS GATHER IN

At some time last night we crossed over the spot where the Lord stirred
up a mighty tempest and a great fish to punish Jonah, and this morning
at daybreak we were in the harbor of Jaffa, "the beautiful," from which
port Jonah sailed on that remarkable cruise.

We were not the only ones there. Two other great excursion steamers lay
at anchor, the _Arabic_ and the _Moltke_, their decks filled with our
fellow-countrymen, and I think the several parties of ship-dwellers took
more interest in looking at one another, and in comparing the appearance
of their respective vessels, than in the rare vision of Jaffa aglow with
morning. Three ship-loads at once! It seemed like a good deal of an
invasion to land on these sacred shores. But then we remembered how many
invasions had landed at Jaffa--how Alexander and Titus had been there
before us, besides all the crusades--so a modest scourge like ours would
hardly matter. As for that military butcher, Napoleon, who a little more
than a century ago murdered his way through this inoffending land, he
shot four thousand Turkish prisoners here on the Jaffa sands, after
accepting their surrender under guarantee of protection. We promised
ourselves that we would do nothing like that. We might destroy a pedler
now and then, or a baksheesh fiend; but four thousand, even of that
breed, would be too heavy a contract.

[Illustration: THE PATRIARCH KNEW ALL ABOUT JAFFA]

The Patriarch knew all about Jaffa. It is one of his special landmarks,
being the chief seaport of the Phoenicians, the one place they never
really surrendered. A large share of the vast traffic that went in and
out of Palestine in the old days went by Jaffa, and a great deal goes
that way still. The cedarwood from Lebanon, used in Solomon's Temple,
was brought by water to this port; the treasure and rich goods that went
down to Jerusalem in the day of her ancient glory all came this way; her
conquerors landed here. The blade and brand prepared for Jerusalem were
tried experimentally on Jaffa. According to Josephus, eighty thousand of
her inhabitants perished at one time. Yet Jaffa has survived. Her
harbor, which is not really a harbor at all, but merely an anchorage,
with a landing dangerous and uncertain, has still been sufficient to
keep her the chief seaport of Judea.

There is another reason for Jaffa's survival. Beyond her hills lie the
sacred cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The fields that knew Ruth and
Benjamin and a man named Jesus lie also there. From Jaffa in every
direction stretch lands made memorable by stories and traditions in
which the God and the prophets of at least three religions are
intimately concerned. So during long centuries Jaffa has been a holy
gateway, and through its portals the tide of pilgrimage has never ceased
to flow.

Some of us who were to put in full time in Egypt would have only a few
days in the Holy Land, and we were off the ship presently, being pulled
through the turquoise water by boatmen who sang a barbaric chorus as
they bent over their huge, clumsy oars. Then we were ashore and in
carriages, and in another moment were "jumping through Jaffa," as one of
the party expressed it, in a way that made events and landmarks flit
together like the spokes of a wheel.

We visited the tomb of Dorcas, whom Peter raised from the dead, though
for some reason we did not feel a positive conviction that it was the
very tomb--perhaps because we did not have time to get up a
conviction--and we called at the house of Simon the Tanner. It was with
Simon, "whose house is by the seaside," that Peter lodged when he had
his "vision of tolerance," in which it was made known to him that "God
is no respecter of persons, but only of righteousness." It is truly by
the seaside, and there is an ancient tanner's vat in the court-yard. But
I hope the place was cleaner when Peter lodged there than it is now. One
had to step carefully, and, though it did not smell of a tanyard, it did
of several other things. Many travellers, including Dean Stanley, have
accepted this as the veritable house where Simon dwelt and St. Peter
lodged. Those people ought to get together and have it cleaned up. I
could believe in it then myself.

Jaffa, as a whole, could stand the scrub-brush and the hose. It is not
"the beautiful" from within. It is wretchedly unbeautiful, though just
as we were getting ready to leave it we did have one genuine vision.
From the enclosures of the Greek Church we looked across an interminable
orange-grove, in which the trees seemed mere shrubs, but were literally
massed with golden fruit--the whole blending away into tinted haze and
towering palms. No blight, no vileness, no inodorous breath, but only
the dreamlit mist and the laden trees--the Orient of our long ago.

One might reasonably suppose that, as often as parties like ours travel
over the railway that potters along from Jaffa to Jerusalem, there would
be no commotion, no controversy with the officials--that the guard would
only need to come in and check up our tickets and let us go.

Nothing of the kind; every such departure as ours is a function, an
occasion--an entirely new proposition, to be considered and threshed out
in a separate and distinct fashion. Before we were fairly seated in the
little coach provided, dark-skinned men came in one after another to
look us over and get wildly excited--over our beauty, perhaps; I could
discover nothing else unusual about us. They would wave their hands and
carry on, first inside and then on the platform, where they would seem
to settle it. When they had paid us several visits of this kind, they
locked us in and went away, and we expected to start.

Not at all; they came back presently and did it all over again, only
louder. Then our dragoman appeared, and bloodshed seemed imminent. When
they went away again he said it was nothing--just the usual business of
getting started.

By-and-by some of us discovered that our bags had not been put on the
train, so we drifted out to look for them. We found them here and there,
with from two to seven miscreants battling over each as to which should
have the piastre or two of baksheesh collectible for handing our things
from the carriage to the train. Such is the manner of graft in the Holy
Land. It lacks organization and does not command respect.

The station was a hot, thirsty place. We loaded up with baskets of
oranges, the great, sweet, juicy oranges of Jaffa--the finest oranges in
the world, I am sure--then we forgot all our delays and troubles, for we
were moving out through the groves and gardens of the suburbs, entering
the Plains of Sharon--"a fold for flocks, a fertile land, blossoming as
the rose."

That old phrase expresses it exactly. I have never seen a place that so
completely conveyed the idea of fertility as those teeming, haze-haunted
plains of Sharon. Level as a floor, the soil dark, loose, and loamy;
here green with young wheat, there populous with labor--men and women,
boys and girls, dressed in the old, old dress, tilling the fields in the
old, old manner; flocks and herds tended by such shepherds as saw the
Star rise over Bethlehem; girls carrying water-jars on their heads;
camel trains swinging across the horizon--a complete picture of primal
husbandry, it was--a vast allegory of increase. I have seen agricultural
and pastoral life on a large scale in America, where we do all of the
things with machinery and many of them with steam, and would find it
hard to plough with a camel and a crooked stick; but I have somehow
never felt such a sense of tillage and production--of communing with
mother earth and drawing life and sustenance from her bosom--as came to
me there crossing the Plains of Sharon, the garden of Syria.

It is a goodly tract for that country--about fifty miles long and from
six to fifteen wide. The tribes of Dan and Manasseh owned it in the old
days, and to look out of the car-window at their descendants is to see
those first families that Joshua settled there, for they have never
changed.

Our dragoman began to point out sites and landmarks. Here was the Plain
of Joshua, where Samson made firebrands of three hundred foxes and
destroyed the standing corn of the Philistines. The tower ahead is at
Ramleh, and was built by the crusaders nearly a thousand years
ago--Ramleh being the Arimathea where lived Joseph, who provided the