Part 8

As I approached at that hour my expectations were excited by the reports of the discharge of pistols and guns, and the sounds of the discordant chorus-chanting which forms the usual accompaniment to the native dances. Passing under the archway and entering the large courtyard of the monastery, I found it nearly full of excited groups in large circles, their arms clasped around each other's necks, swaying their bodies to and fro, and keeping time with their feet to their songs, while they occasionally waved their arms aloft and fired in the air. This is the regular Syrian dance of the towns, and it is sufficiently monotonous. The Fellahin, however, have a far more picturesque performance, in which the girls, in bright-coloured garments, join, dancing singly, or in twos and threes. Of these, unfortunately, there were very few. No doubt it was in consequence of the small attendance that there had not been so much drinking as usual, and I only saw one man captured by half a dozen Turkish soldiers, who must have a curious idea of Christian devotions, for an improper use of his fist.

About this time the guest-chambers and corridors of the monastery—where families of the better class who had come from Acre, Tyre, Nazareth, Jaffa, and other towns had passed the night, in the lodging provided for them—began to disgorge, and the variety of costume displayed by the shouting, singing, and dancing multitude formed a scene sufficiently picturesque and animated. Sometimes processions are formed, where offerings are made to the miracle-working statue of Notre Dame de Mont Carmel, in return for a child that has been prayed for, or a sick person who has been healed, but on this occasion her protection did not seem to have been invoked, or, at all events, there was no public display of gratitude. There is a large terrace in front of the monastery, and here a dozen horsemen or so were throwing the djerrid and exhibiting their equestrian skill, much to the detriment of the unfortunate animals they bestrode, whose flanks were bleeding profusely from the pointed angles of the iron stirrups which serve as spurs, and from the cruel bits by which, when going at full speed, they were jerked back upon their haunches.

While all this was going on outside, mass was being performed in the church for those who wished to vary the entertainment. This is a spacious, vaulted building in the form of a Greek cross, with a fine-toned organ in one transept, and a statue of the miraculous Lady of Mount Carmel, between four Corinthian columns, seated on a sort of throne in a richly decorated dress of white satin, in the other. Both the Virgin and the Infant in her arms had golden crowns on their heads, the result of a miracle, for when the Frère Jean Baptiste undertook the reconstruction of the monastery fifty years ago, he intrusted the carving of the statue to Caraventa, a sculptor of Genoa, and, not having money enough to buy her a crown suitable to her position, procured her one of silver, and one of copper gilt for the Child, saying as he did so, “You will know how to procure yourself a better one;” and this she achieved shortly after at Naples, where a rich nobleman presented her with two in return for a miraculous cure of which he was the subject. There is a book sold in the monastery containing a list of the miracles that have been performed by this statue, which was gazed upon with the greatest awe and veneration by the country people. They prostrate themselves before her, touching the ground with their foreheads, and offering up their supplications after a fashion that would shock an enlightened Buddhist by the superstition and credulity thus suggested. On each side of the figure are two altars, one dedicated to St. Jean Baptiste, and the other to St. Simon Stock, an Englishman, who was made Prior-General of the Order of Carmelites in 1245, and who in his day did more than any other to increase their renown. On the right of this is the statue of Elijah slaying a prophet of Baal, which was sculptured at Barcelona by Dom Amédéo. The prophet has got his false rival on the ground between his feet, and, with uplifted sword, is in the act of cutting his head off. He is hung round with votive offerings, and worshippers crowd around to touch some part of the statue, and then kiss the finger that has touched it. On a table in front a monk was selling engravings to the worshippers. I bought one of these, representing Elijah sending Elisha to look for the sign of rain. In the distance is the small cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, and emerging from it is the figure of the Virgin and Child, for the Roman Catholic tradition has it that in this cloud was revealed to the prophet the dogma of the immaculate conception, in which he was a firm believer from that time forward.

Descending a few rock-cut steps close to this image, we find ourselves in the cave of Elijah, a small grotto about ten feet by fifteen, at one end of which is an altar, which the devotees firmly believe is the actual rock that he used as his bed. Here a priest was performing mass. The body of the church was full of devotees, for the most part women in white burnooses, who squatted on the ground, and seemed principally engaged in suckling their babies.

The monastery derives a considerable revenue from these celebrations, as in good seasons votive offerings to a large value are brought; but the chief source of its wealth is derived from the sale of indulgences, or at least what virtually amounts to this. By these means it exercises a very powerful moral as well as financial influence all through the country, and as the Christian population, which is subject to it, is very large in proportion to the Moslem in the neighbourhood, and as it is under the exclusive protectorate of France, this influence partakes also of a very distinct political character. In fact, the Christians of the whole of this district enjoy a far more efficient protection against the oppression of the Turkish government than do the Moslems themselves.

The monastery is a modern building, and if it only had a tall chimney instead of a cupola it would look more like a manufactory than a religious edifice. The top of the cupola is five hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea, which is immediately beneath, and commands a magnificent view. When Napoleon besieged Acre in 1799, and was compelled to raise the siege and retreat, the Turks fell upon the wounded French soldiers who were left in hospital here and massacred them to a man. The convent was, of course, deserted, and soon after fell into ruin. For twenty-seven years this much venerated spot was abandoned, but the order to which it had given its name never ceased to agitate for the restoration of its sanctuary, and the work of reconstruction was finally undertaken in 1826, by Jean Baptiste, and completed in 1853. So the present building is only thirty years old. In front of the main terrace is a flower-garden and some trellised vines, in the centre of which is a pyramid surmounted by a cross, with an inscription to the effect that it commemorates the resting-place of the bones of the French soldiers. It was not till five years after their massacre that Father Jules du St. Sauveur ventured back to the mountain, where he found these melancholy traces of the tragedy scattered among the ruins, and, collecting them, hid them in a cave until, under more auspicious circumstances, they could receive a Christian burial. There can be no doubt that the order is now increasing in wealth and influence, and expectation runs high that the day is not far distant when northern Palestine will become a French province, and when its prosperity will be still further secured.

A SUMMER CAMP ON CARMEL.

Esfia, Aug. 20.—The fact that the cholera was raging in Egypt, that in the ordinary course of events it was certain to visit Syria, that even if it did not, the months of July, August, and September are disagreeably hot at Haifa, determined me to make the experiment of camping out on the highest point of Carmel, and I am at this moment sitting under a Bedouin tent, arranged after a fashion of my own, at an altitude of eighteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, upon which I look down in two opposite directions.

On the northwest, distant six miles, curves the Bay of Acre, with the town itself glistening white in the distance; and on the southwest, distant seven miles, the Mediterranean breaks upon the beach that bounds the plain of Sharon, and with a good glass I can make out the outlines of the ruins of the old port of Cæsarea. Southward are the confused hills known as the mountains of Samaria; beyond them, in the blue haze, I can indistinctly see the highlands of Gilead; while nearer still, Mount Gilboa, Mount Tabor, the Nazareth range, with a house or two of that town visible, and Mount Hermon, rising behind the high ranges of northern Galilee, are all comprised in a prospect unrivalled in its panoramic extent and in the interest attached to the localities upon which the eye rests in every direction. I was some time picking out just the spot on which to camp, so many advantageous sites suggested themselves, but the paramount necessity of being near a village for security and supplies, and, above all, near a good spring, decided me in favour of my present location; and as the conditions under which I have brought a large party up to the top of this somewhat inaccessible mountain and planted them upon it are novel, I venture to think that an account of our experience may prove interesting.

In the first place, the village itself was out of the question, partly because Arab houses, as a rule, do not consist of more than one room, and even when one has turned out their human inhabitants, it still remains tenanted by so many others of a carnivorous character, though minute in size, that existence becomes a burden; and partly because they are pervaded with a singular odour of burnt manure, which the natives use as fuel for the ovens in which they bake their bread, and which is too pungent to be agreeable to unsophisticated nostrils. After inhaling it for a month I have got rather to like it than otherwise. As I suspected that such might be the case, and believed that a successful was might be waged against the insects, I decided on hiring one of these rooms as a guest-chamber and a place of resort from the midday sun, in case the camp did not prove a sufficient protection. This room was nothing more nor less than a vault like a cellar, with stone walls and a stone roof, supported by cross arches, about twenty feet by thirty; and I may here mention that the precaution turned out wise, for we got fairly rid of the fleas, and the temperature in the middle of the day, when we usually repair to it for our siesta, has never been over 80°. But how to make a camp which should accommodate three ladies and four gentlemen was a serious question. We had one European tent capable of holding two people, and a smaller one for a bachelor of modest requirements in the way of standing-room, and these we supplemented with a tent which we hired of some neighbouring Bedouins, which was thirty feet long, but which, when pitched according to their fashion, was an impossible habitation for civilized beings, as it had no walls. Indeed, the whole breadth of the black camel's-hair cloth of which it was composed was only ten feet. We therefore decided on using it merely as a roof, and sent down to Haifa for a camel load of light lumber in order to make a frame on which to stretch it. We also got up two dozen cheap mats, six feet square, at twenty-five cents apiece. With these we made front and back walls and partitions for sleeping cribs. Finally our erection, on which we proudly hoisted the national flag, was thirty-four feet long, ten feet wide, seven feet high in front and five feet in rear. These mats can be triced up in front and rear in the daytime so as to allow a free circulation of air. On the roof, in order to keep the sun from heating too fiercely upon us, we spread branches of the odorous bay-tree, with which the scrubby woods of the mountain abound, and of these same branches we erected a kitchen, and stable for the horse and three donkeys which composed our establishment. The thermometer usually fell to 70° at night, and there were heavy morning dews and fogs.

It was no slight task selecting the furniture, bedding, cooking-utensils, and comestibles for a party of seven, and it took eight camels, besides sundry donkeys, to carry all our necessaries. In order to understand the nature of the path over which we had to travel, the reader must get rid of the popular notion conveyed by the word “Mount,” which is usually applied to Carmel, that it is a solitary hill. So far from such being the case, it is a mountainous district about fourteen miles long and twelve wide at its base. It culminates in a promontory, which projects into the sea at its apex, but we are established ten miles from Haifa, the path ascending abruptly from that town, and following for nearly three hours' travel the backbone of the ridge, disclosing views of wondrous beauty down gorges on the right and left. It is “a rocky road to travel” for a delicate lady, involving steep, precipitous ascents, for which sure-footed donkeys are best; but we were obliged to resort to a chair and a litter, each carried by four bearers, who, as they stumbled and clambered up the narrow path, seemed bent upon capsizing their human burdens. Now, however, that we have safely endured the perils of the way, we are amply repaid for them.

The nights and mornings are of ideal beauty. The effects of sunrise and sunset, ever varying, over the vast landscape that stretches around and beneath us, are a constant source of wonder and delight. From the vine-covered terrace on which our camp is situated we look down a wild, rocky, precipitous gorge eighteen hundred feet upon the plain of the Kishon, scarce a mile distant, so steep is it. To the right this gorge widens into an amphitheatre, and the hillsides, sloping more gently, are terraced with vines, figs, and pomegranates, and at its head is the copious spring which supplies us with water, to which one of our donkeys makes several pilgrimages a day with a large earthen jar slung in a straw cradle on each side. Here, morning and evening, files of Druse women resort, and stand and gossip round the cistern into which the water gushes from the rock, their bright-coloured dresses forming a charming contrast with the dark-green foliage of the gardens and orchards that are irrigated in the immediate vicinity. Besides about five hundred Druses there are fifty Christians in the village, who do not harmonize with the Druses very well, and there is a hot rivalry for our favour, so that we have to exercise a considerable amount of diplomacy to keep on good terms with all.

We have hired the vault from a Christian, and his family next door consists of his stepmother and four half-sisters, strapping, good-looking wenches, who are not yet married, for lack of the necessary dowers. With them is staying a cousin from Acre, one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, quite Caucasian in type and complexion, which is white and transparent as that of any Western beauty. We have great difficulty in keeping this bevy of damsels out of our room, as Arabs have no idea of privacy, and they imagine that politeness consists in squatting round in a circle and asking silly questions. Excepting for the practice it gives one in Arabic, and for a certain insight which one thus gains into the manners and customs of the natives, these visits would be intolerable, and, indeed, we have found it necessary to take stringent measures to limit them. It is more interesting to go and sit in the cool veranda outside of the little Druse place of worship, and talk to the bright young man who is passing most of his time in studying the abstruse metaphysical system of his religion, and who is far more intelligent than the Syrian Catholic priest, who also comes and sits and smokes with us with the view of obtaining, which he has not yet succeeded in doing, some knowledge of our own religious belief. Now and then an episode occurs illustrating the conditions of native existence in these parts. One day I found the village excited at an outrage which a native mounted policeman had perpetrated. On learning that he had assaulted not merely one of the villagers, but my own servant, who had refused him access to our vault, I inflicted a little corporal punishment upon him, when his officer and the village notables interfered, and interceded in his behalf. I asked the latter why they were not glad to see a man punished who, like the rest of his class, was forever persecuting them; they said that when I was gone he would come back and take his revenge upon them. I finally made the man apologize to the Druse he had assaulted, and to my servant, all which he did very humbly, fearing that unless he did so I should insist upon his receiving a still severer punishment from the Caimacan, or local governor, at Haifa. The villagers were very grateful to see one of this arrogant and overbearing class humbled, but they say that unless one can stay and protect them their last state will be worse than their first.

THE DRUSES OF MOUNT CARMEL.

In Camp, Mount Carmel, Sept. 10.—It is not generally known that the Druse nation extends as far south as Carmel. The most southern village occupied by them in Syria is at Dalieh, about two miles from my present camp; their most northern home is at Aleppo. When, nine hundred years ago, Duruzi, the teacher from whom they take their name, came from Egypt to spread his new teaching, it was accepted by a tribe of people who lived in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, whither they had originally migrated from the province of Yemen, in Arabia. Adopting the new and mysterious faith, which, while it is a most interesting metaphysical and theological study, is too recondite to enter upon here, the body of the tribe migrated south, took possession of the valleys of the southern Lebanon, and made their headquarters at the foot of Mount Hermon. Spreading east from there, they crossed the tract known in ancient times as Iturea, and found a natural fortress in the volcanic region anciently called Trachonitis, the Biblical Argob, and in the mountains now called the Jebel Druse. Here they increased and multiplied, and in the early part of the seventeenth century produced that most remarkable warrior Fakr-Eddin, the only man of note of whom the Druses can boast. He conquered Beyrout and the southern coast towns, extending his sway as far south as Carmel, and as far east as Tiberias; and under his auspices the mountains of Galilee and Carmel became settled by Druses.

It is, therefore, not much more than two hundred and fifty years since the Druses first came to Carmel, and it is probable that when they did so they found the mountain wholly unoccupied, excepting by a few Christian hermits and devotees who lived in its caves—for the Carmelite monks had been driven away and their monastery destroyed three hundred years before; and, indeed, it was only at the time of the Druse occupation that the first attempt was made to restore it. For the two centuries during which the crusaders held the Holy Land prior to the end of the thirteenth century, Carmel was occupied by them, and the remains of their military posts are still to be found on many of the summits of the mountain; indeed, many of the old stones of which the village of Esfia is built, near which my camp is situated, bear their devices carved on them. Before the time of the crusaders there may have been Moslem villages on Carmel, but its glory departed when Palestine was conquered by the Saracens in the seventh century, and the last remains of Roman civilization, the traces of which still cover the mountain, were destroyed.

About the time of Christ, and for four or five centuries afterwards, it must have been in its full loveliness, its hillsides terraced with vineyards or clothed with magnificent forests, and its summits crowned with towns adorned with the grace and beauty of the architecture of the period. The discoveries I have made in proof of this I will postpone to another letter, as my intention now is to describe the present population by which the mountain is inhabited.

It is a curious fact that to this day there are no Moslems on Carmel proper. There are five or six Moslem villages at its base, on the various sides of the triangle which comprises the district, and they have lands running up into the mountain; but the actual population consists of two Druse villages, numbering together about eight hundred souls, and about fifty Christians, besides the twenty-five monks who inhabit the monastery. The mountain is nevertheless capable of containing a population of many thousands, as it evidently did in old times, and is a much larger district than is popularly supposed.

The eastern side, from the apex of the triangle, is thirteen miles in length, the western twelve, and the base nine, giving a total circumference to this highland region of thirty—four miles. The tract comprised in this area is beautifully diversified by wild gorges, grassy valleys, level or undulating plateaus covered with underwood, and rocky summits; and the scenery in places is as romantic as can well be imagined. The two Druse villages of Esfia and Dalieh are situated two miles apart, about three quarters of the way down the triangle from its apex (the projecting promontory on which the monastery is built), and occupy the most fertile part of the mountain.

When the Druses first settled here they founded no fewer than eight villages, but when, forty years ago, this country was conquered by Egypt and governed by Ibrahim Pacha, his rule was distasteful to the majority of Druses, and the inhabitants of six villages abandoned them, and migrated to the Jebel Druse. All these villages occupied the sites of ancient Roman towns, and were constructed of the ancient stones. In the course of my rambles I have visited them all. Of the two villages which remained, one, Dalieh, was occupied by some families which had migrated direct from Aleppo; the other, Esfia, is peopled by Druses from the Lebanon. There is a marked difference between the two, and the people of Dalieh are far superior to those of Esfia.

I went over there the other day, and spent the day and night as the guest of the sheik—or, I should rather say, of the sheiks, for there are two—one is the temporal and the other the spiritual head of the village—and I divided my attentions and my meals equally between them. They are very reluctant to talk about their religion, always turning the subject when any attempt is made to induce them to converse about it; but there is one question which they always ask, and that is whether there are any Druses in England. As it is an accepted fact among them that there are, any denial of it is considered a discreet reticence, and rather a proof than otherwise that one is somewhat of a Druse one's self. They also believe that the majority of Chinamen are, unconsciously to themselves, Druses; and they are firmly convinced that the world is drawing to a close, and that the appearance of Hakim, a divine incarnation, which was prophesied to take place nine hundred years after his last manifestation and translation, is now imminent, as the time is just about expiring.