Part 15

It occurred to me upon this occasion, as I contrasted their chevelure with that of the Druses, to speculate on the custom of Druse hairdressing, which is nothing more nor less than that square cutting across the forehead of locks drawn over it which has been so much in vogue in England and America for the last fifteen years, popularly called “banging,” and which was supposed at first to be copied from the well-known picture of Raphael as a child. I have since inquired of some fashionable young Syrian ladies, and the younger ones assured me at first that the Druses must have copied this from the Parisian fashions lately introduced at Beyrout—an obvious impossibility. On applying to older ladies, however, they confirm the curious fact that this banging has always been a custom with the Druse people. The fine ladies of the present generation have little guessed whom they were imitating in setting saucers upon their own heads and those of their little ones, and snipping their hair around them just above their eyes. Nothing could exceed in vulgarity the tinsel ornamentation of the Jewish head-dresses, and, to increase the effect, various pigments were apparently used by many of the ladies to improve their complexions.

As this festival takes place in the height of the bathing season, the shore of the lake at this point presented an appearance of unwonted animation. There were some thirty or forty tents pitched round the bath-house, which an enterprising Syrian has leased this year from the government, and whitewashed; he even went so far as to offer to build a carriage-road at his own expense for the mile and a half which it is distant from the town, so as to accommodate patients who had no tents of their own; but this was the thin edge of a wedge of civilization at which the authorities took alarm, and he was sternly forbidden to spend any of his own money for the public convenience in the manner proposed. The result is that the bathers are all obliged to live in tents or mat huts, which are unbearably hot during the day, or ride from the town and back again for every bath.

Patients from all the neighbouring parts of Syria now mingled with the Jewish crowd, and streamed up the short ascent which leads to the tomb, the terrace of which was already thronged. Passing through an archway, I entered a courtyard where the usual circular dance was in progress, the performers being exclusively male. The bedizened females sat in groups, feasting on good things they had brought with them, and smoking narghiles. Their small children were tricked out gaudily, and by the light of numerous flaring lamps the general effect was quaint and gay enough.

Ascending from this scene of revelry up a massive stone stair, I entered a chamber where the tomb of the rabbi was surrounded by a wooden enclosure, inside of which were sundry rabbis and their neophytes praying, with the swaying motion of the body peculiar to that act of worship, the whole brilliantly lighted with lamps. There was in the centre of this chamber, which was crowded, an immense chandelier, of which only a few lamps were lighted, and beyond it I was ushered by a Jew, who volunteered to be my guide, into another room, stifling hot, in which sat the chief rabbi himself. Here a man was perpetually shouting in a stentorian voice something which I failed to understand. The chief rabbi, however, to whom I was introduced, explained to me that he was at that moment selling by auction the privilege of lighting the bonfires which were soon to blaze in honour of the deceased rabbi and Simon Ben Jochai, who, however, seems to be buried elsewhere. This privilege was put up at two napoleons each, and the first finally went for three, a fact which the rabbi announced to the audience in a sonorous Hebrew chant. Then the other lighting privilege was bought for a little less, the money, according to my informant, being given to the poor. After that a dozen more sales were made, simply for lamplighting, the amounts bid averaging half a napoleon.

Then a sort of procession was formed, and the crowd surged out down the steps to the courtyard, in the centre of which were two columns, each surmounted by a sort of large saucer. The excitement now became great, the dancing stopped, and men and women joined in noisy acclamations. A man bearing aloft an iron cradle full of flaming rags, which had been lighted by the highest bidder, placed them in the saucer at the top of the column and poured a bottle of kerosene oil upon it. People now came forward with offerings to be burned. These consisted, for the most part, so far as I could judge, of old handkerchiefs and scarfs. The theory is that they should be articles of value, covered with gold and silver embroidery, and that, after they have been committed to the flames, the residue of gold and silver which remains should be scraped up and given to the poor; but I doubt whether the residue of the rags which I saw would amount in value to ten cents. Then the second bonfire was lighted, and as both piles blazed up and shed their lurid glow over the eager faces of swarthy men, with their long ear-curls, and bedizened women, the scene was in the highest degree novel and picturesque. The proceedings were not, however, characterized by the gravity and harmony befitting the occasion.

As I looked down upon the crowd from the steps upon which I was standing, I observed suddenly a violent commotion, which soon culminated in blows and sharp cries, and the crowd began to surge violently to and fro. I failed to discover the cause of the disturbance, but it was speedily interrupted by a strong body of Turkish police, who rushed in brandishing their muskets and laying about them with the butt ends. The riot speedily subsided under this opportune display of energy, and the ringleaders were hustled off with commendable promptness.

Meantime a somewhat similar ceremony was taking place in the adjoining courtyard, where some wicker lamps were being lighted. The pilgrims who filled this court were Ashkenazim, and in their more European clothes they were by no means so picturesque a crowd. It is a singular fact that the Sephardim should be confined to one court and the Ashkenazim to another. There is, indeed, very little sympathy between the two great branches of the Jewish race in Palestine. They live for the most part in different cities, and have but little intercourse with each other. Thus, nearly all the Jews in Tiberias are Sephardim, while those at Safed are Ashkenazim.

The ceremonies which I have just described are a mild edition of what was to take place on a far larger and more important scale at Meron a week later, but as these latter differ in no important respect from those which I witnessed, I did not think it worth while to stay for them. Jews come from great distances to take part in the burnings at Meron, where a great number of bonfires are made in honour of the numerous celebrated rabbis who are buried in the neighbourhood; and here I was assured that articles of great value are consumed, and the festivities are of a much more noisy character, and last through the whole night instead of winding up before midnight, as was the case at Tiberias. I did not even prolong my stay till this hour, satisfied with having assisted at ceremonies which prove that the Jewish in not exempt from that tendency which characterizes all other religions, of pandering to the grosser tastes of the masses.

HOUSE-BUILDING ON CARMEL.

Daliet-el-Carmel, July 12.—Those readers who may have read my letters from Palestine, may remember that last year I took refuge from the summer heats at the village of Esfia, on the highest point of Mount Carmel, where I established a temporary camp. The disadvantage of living under canvas is that, though it may secure you cool nights, it affords but insufficient shelter from the noonday sun. I therefore determined to build myself something more substantial. My experiences of house-building on Carmel have been both characteristic and instructive.

When I announced my intention to the villagers of Esfia, they professed the greatest enthusiasm, and the owners of the land which I had chosen for a site expressed their desire to make me a present of it, so anxious did they pretend to be that I should settle among them. I absolutely refused, however, to receive anything as a gift, and told them to name their price. This they modestly put at $650. As the most trustworthy estimate I could obtain put its value at $50, I said I would reconsider my original decision and accept it as a gift. This seemed to afford them intense amusement. Offers of this sort were merely complimentary, they said, and meant nothing. I replied that the joke of offering me the land for nothing was only equalled by their asking me twelve times its value, which I should also consider meant nothing. They came down at a bound to $250, provided I would pay the costs of the transfer. This I found to mean procuring them a valid title to the land, which they admitted they had not got, and which it would cost $50, expended in bribes to the government, to obtain. I suggested that I might in that case expend the $50 in procuring a valid title from the government in my own name, and pay them nothing, seeing that, though theoretically, they were not practically, the owners of the land. This, though it might possibly have been accomplished, would have placed me in open warfare with the village. Rather than live there under such conditions, I declined to have anything more to do with people who had shown such dishonest and grasping propensities. I will say, however, that these were confined exclusively to the Christian section of the population, who claimed the ownership of the site, and that the Druses held themselves aloof and repudiated all participation in the negotiations, expressing great indignation at the conduct of the Christians, and offering me sites elsewhere.

I was too disgusted with these latter, however, to be tempted to live near them, and was casting about in despair for an alternative, when one day I received a visit from the Druse sheik of Dalieh, the only other village on Carmel, and distant about thirteen miles from Haifa, who arrived in great distress to tell me that his only son had just been drawn as a conscript for the army, and that the whole family, including his son's wife, whom I had remarked on the occasion of a former visit as one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen, were thrown into the greatest grief, as they were unable to pay the $250 which was required to buy a substitute. I rode up to the village to inquire into the matter, and, in return for the required sum, which I paid, received a vineyard and garden of fruit-trees, with a good title, and a site far surpassing in loveliness of situation that which I had failed to secure at Esfia. The whole village turned out _en masse_ to express their gratitude and make professions of service. As the village is exclusively Druse, and does not contain a single Christian inhabitant, I felt that these were to be relied upon; nor, so far, has this confidence turned out misplaced. The sheik to whom I had thus been able opportunely to render assistance, was the spiritual head of the village. Its temporal affairs are managed by another sheik. The site for my house was only divided by a terrace from the little Druse place of worship, where, however, the services are conducted under the strictest secrecy. The whole hillside here is terraced with vines, pomegranates, and wide-spreading fig-trees, at an altitude of thirteen hundred feet above the sea, which is distant as the crow flies about five miles. It commands a magnificent view of it and of the picturesque ruin of Athlit on its projecting promontory, while a smiling valley, the sloping hills of which are partially cultivated and partially covered with copse-wood, winds down to a wild gorge between whose precipitous cliffs one enters the plain of Sharon.

The difficulty in placing the house was to do so without having to cut down any of the fig-trees that formed a sort of bower in which we had to nestle, and which secures us abundant thick shade. No sooner did we begin to excavate for the foundations than we came upon huge, massive cut blocks of stone, which evidenced the existence of some previous building of great antiquity. Soon there turned up a beautifully carved cornice, then a coin of one of the Constantines of the period of the Byzantine Empire, then about a dozen iron rings about two and a half inches in diameter, attached to iron staples, and a quantity of nails about four inches long, all heavily encrusted with rust. These were dug up about two feet beneath the surface. Then came handles of jars and fragments of pottery, some pieces of old glass, one apparently the stem of a vase, and quantities of tesseræ, showing the existence of a tessellated pavement somewhere beneath. I was sorely tempted to diverge from building into excavating, but I should have destroyed my site, indefinitely postponed the erection of the house when time was of the utmost value, and forfeited my contract with the builder. So I have had to do the barbarous thing of building on the top of what may be a most interesting ruin, and of actually using the old foundations and some of the stone which composed this house of the ancients.

The most of the stones of which the house is built come, however, from the ruins of Dubil, the extensive remains of which are about a mile distant. Here is the finest collection of rock-cut tombs on Carmel; while the number and size of the cisterns, the huge circular stones of the old olive-presses, the basins carved in the solid rock as wine vats, the fragments of columns, and the area over which the solid foundations of the former town extend, prove that it contained, in the most ancient times, a larger population than any other spot on the mountain. I am able to say this with the more confidence as I have visited over twenty other sites of ancient towns on Carmel. From this almost inexhaustible quarry of old dwellings is my new one mainly constructed, and thus do I live and move and have my being amid the relics of a most remote past.

One of the most puzzling of these is an immense roller, which I came upon in making a terrace for the veranda, from which it now projects as a conspicuous ornament. It is eight feet long, but one end has been a good deal broken, and it may have been longer. It tapers very slightly at both extremities, and is nine feet in circumference around the centre, the ends being about two feet six in diameter. It has four parallel lines of slots a little over two feet apart, each slot about eight inches long and three deep, and two wide at the top. There are four of these slots in each line, and they are about eight inches apart. The whole mass weighs probably from three to four tons. We had quite a force of men to move it into its present position. I leave it to the wise in such matters to conjecture what its possible use may have been. I have seen others scattered about in some of the ruins on the mountain, generally near olive-presses. I think they had some reference to the crushing apparatus.

But by far the most important find—and this was not made until after the house was finished and we were clearing up the débris—was an ancient cistern; and, as luck would have it, it was just in the position in which I would have put a cistern had this not appeared ready to hand, thus saving me an expenditure of about $200. The aperture, cut in the solid rock, is two feet three inches square. It is then hollowed, demijohn shape, out of the rock to a depth of fourteen feet, with an average breadth at the bottom of twelve feet. In the bottom is a circular hole five feet in diameter by three deep. This is evidently for cleaning out the cistern, and is a good idea, which I should suggest be adopted by us moderns. It is plain that if, instead of having a flat bottom to a cistern, you have a hole in the bottom into which you can sweep all the dirt, the process of cleaning is simplified. It took four men several days to clean out this old cistern. It contained a great quantity of fine mould, some broken earthenware jars, a good many large stones, and a rather good fragment of a glass cup. The old cement is still visible, about half an inch thick.

Besides the cistern, I have found a cave, formerly a tomb, close to the house, which I shall use as a cellar, and store away my wine in the stone coffins, or loculi, in which the bones of some ancient characters have reposed. From all which it will appear that house-building in Palestine, if it is attended with the inconveniences arising from the backward state of civilization, may nevertheless possess a charm of its own.

If some of our appliances are rough-and-ready, they often possess the merit of cheapness. Plastering, for instance, is an expensive luxury; but the natives have a way of plastering the walls which is nearly as good, and by no means costly. This is entirely done by the women, who come and sift soil, which they mix with cut straw and water, and knead into a paste. When they have plastered the walls and floor with this, they make another with a peculiar, fine white clay, which they dig from certain places in the hillsides, and, mixing this also with finely chopped straw, lay it on as an outer covering. It makes a very pale yellow coating for the walls, which is by no means unsightly. It is not so good, however, for the floors, as it is said to give a better harbour for fleas than another and more expensive cement which is made with lime, and is called barbarica. This is better also for the flat roofs, as it is more impervious to water in the rainy season.

These roofs enable us to double our accommodations in a most economical fashion. For instance, we have a guest coming, and if the house is full, we build him a leaf hut on the roof at the extravagant rate of 75 cents. These charming little leaf huts, which can be made most snug and comfortable when lined with mats, can be multiplied at will over the whole roof, and the occupants have a cooler time and a more extensive view than the dwellers in the stone chambers beneath. As, however, in these climates air and room add materially to comfort, our principal living-room is thirty feet by twenty, and fifteen feet high, though I have not aspired to anything but a summer cottage, and the whole cost has not exceeded $800.

In the eyes of the natives, this modest erection has seemed something palatial. The people of Esfia have come over, green with envy of their Dalieh rivals, and bitterly reproaching themselves with the short-sighted cupidity which has deprived them of the prestige which now attaches to Dalieh, and filled with regret at the loss of the money which would otherwise have been spent among them, while to the Dalieh villagers it is a source of pride and delight. Whenever any Druse sheik comes from a neighbouring village, he is at once brought to see the sight. The consequence is that I have no lack of visitors, and, foreseeing this, took care to have a special apartment called a “liwan,” exclusively devoted to their reception. They are thus barricaded from the rest of the house. Otherwise, with the prying curiosity which characterizes the race, privacy would be impossible. As it is, from morning to night there is always a group round the kitchen, much to the detriment of culinary operations and the annoyance of the servants engaged in them. Still, in order to keep on good terms, we have to make concessions, to waste time over much drinking of coffee out of minute cups, to hear their gossip on local politics, and, what is still more difficult, to try and give them some larger ideas than the very narrow ones which they have acquired upon these wild hillsides.

Altogether, although their defects are of a somewhat trying kind, and their essential insincerity makes them arrant humbugs, they are rather pleasant humbugs, and, provided they do not test one's affection by too many invitations to dinner, which involves squatting on your heels and eating with your fingers, the Druses are, taking them altogether, by far the most agreeable class of people to live among in Palestine.

DOMESTIC LIFE AMONG THE DRUSES.

Daliet-el-Carmel, Aug. 1.—A residence in a Druse village upon the familiar terms which I have now established with the inhabitants of this one, opens up a phase of existence so utterly foreign to all Western notions of domestic life, and involves experiences so novel and characteristic, that I am constantly receiving illustrations of the truth of the saying that one half of the world has no idea how the other half lives.

Early the other morning, for instance, my native servant appeared in a state of no little excitement to tell me that there had been a row in the night in the village, from which my house is distant only a few hundred yards, and that a young man was being killed. This was modified a few minutes after by the arrival of some weeping females, who said that if the young man could not find a place of refuge somewhere he would be killed; and, as if to emphasize this statement, no great interval elapsed before, on going out into the kitchen, I found the young man in question clinging to the legs of the kitchen table as though they were the horns of the altar. He was a not very prepossessing-looking young man of two or three and twenty, and on my appearance he abandoned the legs of the table and rushed at my hand, which he seized and kissed effusively. It is astonishing how affectionate a man can become under the influence of panic. I told him to go back to the table-legs and hold on there, and consider himself perfectly safe. I felt I could say this with a feeling of proud satisfaction, for had I not the British government at my back, and is not the British government celebrated for the chivalrous promptitude with which it rushes to the rescue of those in bodily peril?

Meantime I sent for the spiritual sheik of the village, as the secular one, who is the real supreme authority in such matters, happened to be absent. Now, so far as I have been able to ascertain, the whole village, consisting of some five hundred souls, is related to the two sheiks, for the population has gone on marrying and intermarrying till the relationships are unfathomable. The young man in question was the youngest of four brothers, and he had one sister who had married the spiritual sheik's son. His mother, after having this numerous family, had married the secular sheik, who had himself had two sons by a former wife and who has one daughter by his present one. You will observe that the affair was already becoming mixed, and a strong suspicion was gradually stealing over me that there was a woman at the bottom of it. Such, indeed, proved to be the case; in fact, there turned out to be two.

Now it happened, and this is not peculiar to the domestic relations of the Druses, that the secular sheik's sons by his first wife were very jealous of the children of their stepmother, and hated that elderly lady herself with the cordial hatred not unknown to stepchildren. They had contrived so to embitter the family circle, that the secular sheik, partly for the sake of peace, and partly, as I afterwards discovered, for another reason, had banished her for two years past from the marital roof; indeed, it had often been a matter of surprise to me when calling on this sheik, or dining with him, that I was always waited on by his daughter and not by his wife.