Eothen; with an Introduction and Notes

CAIRO and plague! During the whole time of my stay the plague was so master of the city, and showed itself so staringly in every street and every alley, that I can’t now affect...

GAZA is upon the verge of the Desert, to which it stands in the same relation as a seaport to the sea. It is there that you _charter_ your camels (“the ships of the Desert”), an...

WHILST I was remaining upon the coast of Syria I had the good fortune to become acquainted with the Russian Sataliefsky, {298b} a general officer, who in his youth had fought an...

Often enough I saw the ghostly images of the women with their exalted horns stalking through the streets, and I saw too in travelling the affrighted groups of the mountaineers a...

THE enthusiasm that had glowed, or seemed to glow, within me for one blessed moment when I knelt by the shrine of the Virgin at Nazareth, was not rekindled at Jerusalem. In the...

IN two or three hours our party was ready; the servants, the Tatar, the mounted Suridgees, {14a} and the baggage-horses, altogether made up a strong cavalcade. The accomplished...

SMYRNA, or Giaour Izmir, “Infidel Smyrna,” as the Mussulmans call it, is the main point of commercial contact betwixt Europe and Asia. You are there surrounded by the people, an...

AT Semlin I still was encompassed by the scenes and the sounds of familiar life; the din of a busy world still vexed and cheered me; the unveiled faces of women still shone in t...

I sailed from Smyrna in the _Amphitrite_, a Greek brigantine, which was confidently said to be bound for the coast of Syria; but I knew that this announcement was not to be reli...

EVEN if we don’t take a part in the chant about “mosques and minarets,” we can still yield praises to Stamboul. We can chant about the harbour; we can say, and sing, that nowher...

THE course of the Jordan is from the north to the south, and in that direction, with very little of devious winding, it carries the shining waters of Galilee straight down into...

THERE is no spirit of propagandism in the Mussulmans of the Ottoman dominions. True it is that a prisoner of war, or a Christian condemned to death, may on some occasions save h...

THE “dromedary” of Egypt and Syria is not the two-humped animal described by that name in books of natural history, but is, in fact, of the same family as the camel, to which it...

FOR a part of two days I wound under the base of the snow-crowned Djibel el Sheik, and then entered upon a vast and desolate plain, rarely pierced at intervals by some sort of w...

THE route over the Desert from Suez to Gaza is not frequented by merchants, and is seldom passed by a traveller. This part of the country is less uniformly barren than the tract...

My comrade was a capital Grecian. It is true that his singular mind so ordered and disposed his classic lore as to impress it with something of an original and barbarous charact...

THERE was a Greek at Limasol who hoisted his flag as an English vice-consul, and he insisted upon my accepting his hospitality. With some difficulty, and chiefly by assuring him...

WHENEVER you come back to me from Palestine we will find some “golden wine” {115} of Lebanon, that we may celebrate with apt libations the monks of the Holy Land, and though the...

AND now Dthemetri began to enter into a negotiation with my hosts for a passage over the river. I never interfered with my worthy dragoman upon these occasions, because from my...

THE grey light of the morning showed us for the first time the ground which we had chosen for our resting-place. We found that we had bivouacked upon a little patch of barley pl...

I was hospitably entertained by the British consul, or agent, as he is there styled. He is the _employé_ of the East India Company, and not of the Home Government. Napoleon duri...

PASSING now once again through Palestine and Syria I retained the tent which I had used in the Desert, and found that it added very much to my comfort in travelling. Instead of...

FOR some hours I passed along the shores of the fair lake of Galilee; then turning a little to the westward, I struck into a mountainous tract, and as I advanced thenceforward,...

“THE ruins of Baalbec!” Shall I scatter the vague, solemn thoughts and all the airy phantasies which gather together when once those words are spoken, that I may give you instea...

NEITHER old “sacred” {123} himself, nor any of his helpers, knew the road which I meant to take from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee and from thence to Jerusalem, so I was forced...

Familiar to one from the days of early childhood are the forms of the Egyptian Pyramids, and now, as I approached them from the banks of the Nile, I had no print, no picture bef...

I crossed the plain of Esdraelon and entered amongst the hills of beautiful Galilee. It was at sunset that my path brought me sharply round into the gorge of a little valley, an...

MY steps were reluctantly turned towards the north. I had ridden some way, and still it seemed that all life was fenced and barred out from the desolate ground over which I was...

AND near the Pyramids, more wondrous and more awful than all else in the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphinx. Comely the creature is, but the comeliness is not of this w...