Part 9

If neither territorial consequence nor religious steadfastness gave the Jews rank among the great nations of antiquity, they would equally fail of the consideration they now enjoy but for one thing, and that is, after all, the chief and enduring product of any nationality; we mean, of course, its literature. It is by that, that the little kingdoms of Judah and Israel hold their sway over the world. It is that which invests ancient Jerusalem with its charm and dignity. Not what the Jews did, but the songs of their poets, the warnings and lamentations of their prophets, the touching tales of their story-tellers, draw us to Jerusalem by the most powerful influences that affect the human mind. And most of this unequalled literature is the product of seasons of turbulence, passion, and insecurity. Except the Proverbs and Song of Solomon, and such pieces as the poem of Job and the story of Ruth, which seem to be the outcome of literary leisure, the Hebrew writings were all the offspring of exciting periods. David composed his Psalms—the most marvellous interpreters of every human aspiration, exaltation, want, and passion—with his sword in his hand; and the prophets always appear to ride upon a whirlwind. The power of Jerusalem over the world is as truly a literary one as that of Athens is one of art. That literature was unknown to the ancients, or unappreciated: otherwise contemporary history would have considered its creators of more consequence than it did.

We speak, we have been speaking, of the Jerusalem before our era, and of the interest it has independent of the great event which is, after all, its chief claim to immortal estimation. It becomes sacred ground to us because there, in Bethlehem, Christ was born; because here—not in these streets, but upon this soil—he walked and talked and taught and ministered; because upon Olivet, yonder, he often sat with his disciples, and here, somewhere,—it matters not where,—he suffered death and conquered death.

This is the scene of these transcendent events. We say it to ourselves while we stand here. We can clearly conceive it when we are at a distance. But with the actual Jerusalem of to-day before our eyes, its naked desolation, its superstition, its squalor, its vivid contrast to what we conceive should be the City of our King, we find it easier to feel that Christ was born in New England than in Judæa.

V.—GOING DOWN TO JERICHO.

IT is on a lovely spring morning that we set out through the land of Benjamin to go down among the thieves of Jericho, and to the Jordan and the Dead Sea. For protection against the thieves we take some of them with us, since you cannot in these days rely upon finding any good Samaritans there.

For some days Abd-el-Atti has been in mysterious diplomatic relations with the robbers of the wilderness, who live in Jerusalem, and farm out their territory. “Thim is great rascals,” says the dragoman; and it is solely on that account that we seek their friendship: the real Bedawee is never known to go back on his word to the traveller who trusts him, so long as it is more profitable to keep it than to break it. We are under the escort of the second sheykh, who shares with the first sheykh the rule of all the Bedaween who patrol the extensive territory from Hebron to the fords of the Jordan, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Mar Saba, and the shores of the Dead Sea; these rulers would have been called kings in the old time, and the second sheykh bears the same relation to the first that the Cæsar did to the Augustus in the Roman Empire.

Our train is assembled in the little market-place opposite the hotel, or rather it is assembling, for horses and donkeys are slow to arrive, saddles are wanting, the bridles are broken, and the unpunctuality and shiftlessness of the East manifest themselves. Abd-el-Atti is in fierce altercation with a Koorland nobleman about a horse, which you would not say would be likely to be a bone of contention with anybody. They are both endeavoring to mount at once. Friends are backing each combatant, and the air is thick with curses in guttural German and maledictions in shrill Arabic. Unfortunately I am appealed to.

“What for this Dutchman, he take my horse?”

“Perhaps he hired it first?”

“P'aps not. I make bargain for him with the owner day before yesterday.”

“I have become dis pferd for four days,” cries the Baron.

There seems to be no reason to doubt the Baron's word; he has ridden the horse to Bethlehem, and become accustomed to his jolts, and no doubt has the prior lien on the animal. The owner has let him to both parties, a thing that often happens when the second comer offers a piastre more. Another horse is sent for, and we mount and begin to disentangle ourselves from the crowd. It is no easy matter, especially for the ladies. Our own baggage-mules head in every direction. Donkeys laden with mountains of brushwood push through the throng, scraping right and left; camels shamble against us, their contemptuous noses in the air, stretching their long necks over our heads; market-women from Bethlehem scream at us; and greasy pilgrims block our way and curse our horses' hoofs.

One by one we emerge and get into a straggling line, and begin to comprehend the size of our expedition. Our dragoman has made as extensive preparations as if we were to be the first to occupy Gilgal and Jericho, and that portion of the Promised Land. We are equipped equally well for fighting and for famine. A party of Syrians, who desire to make the pilgrimage to the Jordan, have asked permission to join us, in order to share the protection of our sheykh, and they add both picturesqueness and strength to the grand cavalcade which clatters out of Jaffa Gate and sweeps round the city wall. Heaven keep us from undue pride in our noble appearance!

Perhaps our train would impress a spectator as somewhat mixed, and he would be unable to determine the order of its march. It is true that the horses and the donkeys and the mules all have different rates of speed, and that the Syrian horse has only two gaits,—a run and a slow walk. As soon as we gain the freedom of the open country, these differences develop. The ambitious dragomen and the warlike sheykh put their horses into a run and scour over the hills, and then come charging back upon us, like Don Quixote upon the flock of sheep. The Syrians imitate this madness. The other horses begin to agitate their stiff legs; the donkeys stand still and protest by braying; the pack-mules get temporarily crazy, charge into us with the protruding luggage, and suddenly wheel into the ditch and stop. This playfulness is repeated in various ways, and adds to the excitement without improving the dignity of our march.

We are of many nationalities. There are four Americans, two of them ladies. The Doctor, who is accustomed to ride the mustangs of New Mexico and the wild horses of the Western deserts, endeavors to excite a spirit of emulation in his stiff-kneed animal, but with little success. Our dragoman is Egyptian, a decidedly heavy weight, and sits his steed like a pyramid.

The sheykh is a young man, with the treacherous eye of an eagle; a handsome fellow, who rides a lean white horse, anything but a beauty, and yet of the famous Nedjed breed from Mecca. This desert warrior wears red boots, white trousers and skirt, blue jacket, a yellow kufia, confined about the head by a black cord and falling upon his shoulders, has a long rifle slung at his back, an immense Damascus sword at his side, and huge pistols, with carved and inlaid stocks, in his belt. He is a riding arsenal and a visible fraud, this Bedawee sheykh. We should no doubt be quite as safe without him, and perhaps less liable to various extortions. But on the road, and from the moment we set out, we meet Bedaween, single and in squads, savage-looking vagabonds, every one armed with a gun, a long knife, and pistols with blunderbuss barrels, flaring in such a manner as to scatter shot over an acre of ground. These scarecrows are apparently paraded on the highway to make travellers think it is insecure. But I am persuaded that none of them would dare molest any pilgrim to the Jordan.

Our allies, the Syrians, please us better. There is a Frenchified Syrian, with his wife, from Mansura, in the Delta of Egypt. The wife is a very pretty woman (would that her example were more generally followed in the East), with olive complexion, black eyes, and a low forehead-; a native of Sidon. She wears a dark green dress, and a yellow kufia on her head, and is mounted upon a mule, man-fashion, but upon a saddle as broad as a feather-bed. Her husband, in semi-Syrian costume, with top-boots, carries a gun at his back and a frightful knife in his belt. Her brother, who is from Sidon, bears also a gun, and wears an enormous sword. Very pleasant people these, who have armed themselves in the spirit of the hunter rather than of the warrior, and are as completely equipped for the chase as any Parisian who ventures in pursuit of game into any of the dangerous thickets outside of Paris.

The Sidon wife is accompanied by two servants, slaves from Soudan, a boy and a girl, each about ten years old,—two grinning, comical monkeys, who could not by any possibility be of the slightest service to anybody, unless it is a relief to their pretty mistress to vent her ill-humor upon their irresponsible persons. You could n't call them handsome, though their skins are of dazzling black, and their noses so flat that you cannot see them in profile. The girl wears a silk gown, which reaches to her feet and gives her the quaint appearance of an old woman, and a yellow vest; the boy is clad in motley European clothes, bought second-hand with reference to his growing up to them,—upon which event the trousers-legs and cuffs of his coat could be turned down,—and a red fez contrasting finely with his black face. They are both mounted on a decrepit old horse, whose legs are like sled-stakes, and they sit astride on top of a pile of baggage, beds, and furniture, with bottles and camp-kettles jingling about them. The girl sits behind the boy and clings fast to his waist with one hand, while with the other she holds over their heads a rent white parasol, to prevent any injury to their jet complexions. When the old baggage-horse starts occasionally into a hard trot, they both bob up and down, and strike first one side and then the other, but never together; when one goes up the other goes down, as if they were moved by different springs; but both show their ivory and seem to enjoy themselves. Heaven knows why they should make a pilgrimage to the Jordan.

Our Abyssinian servant, Abdallah, is mounted, also on a pack-horse, and sits high in the air amid bags and bundles; he guides his brute only by a halter, and when the animal takes a fancy to break into a gallop, there is a rattling of dishes and kettles that sets the whole train into commotion; the boy's fez falls farther than ever back on his head, his teeth shine, and his eyes dance as he jolts into the midst of the mules and excites a panic, which starts everything into friskiness, waking up even the Soudan party, which begins to bob about and grin. There are half a dozen mules loaded with tents and bed furniture; the cook, and the cook's assistants, and the servants of the kitchen and the camp are mounted on something, and the train is attended besides by drivers and ostlers, of what nations it pleases Heaven. But this is not all. We carry with us two hunting dogs, the property of the Syrian. The dogs are not for use; they are a piece of ostentation, like the other portion of the hunting outfit, and contribute, as do the Soudan babies, to our appearance of Oriental luxury.

We straggle down through the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and around the Mount of Olives to Bethany; and from that sightly slope our route is spread before us as if we were looking upon a map. It lies through the “wilderness of Judæa.” We are obliged to revise our Western notions of a wilderness as a region of gross vegetation. The Jews knew a wilderness when they saw it, and how to name it. You would be interested to know what a person who lived at Jerusalem, or anywhere along the backbone of Palestine, would call a wilderness. Nothing but the absolute nakedness of desolation could seem to him dreary. But this region must have satisfied even a person accustomed to deserts and pastures of rocks. It is a jumble of savage hills and jagged ravines, a land of limestone rocks and ledges, whitish gray in color, glaring in the sun, even the stones wasted by age, relieved nowhere by a tree, or rejoiced by a single blade of grass. Wild beasts would starve in it, the most industrious bird could n't collect in its length and breadth enough soft material to make a nest of; it is what a Jew of Hebron or Jerusalem or Hamah would call a “wilderness”! This exhausts the language of description. How vividly in this desolation stands out the figure of the prophet of God, clothed with camel's hair and with a girdle of skin about his loins, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”

The road is thronged with Jordan pilgrims. We overtake them, they pass us, we meet them in an almost continuous train. Most of them are peasants from Armenia, from the borders of the Black Sea, from the Caucasus, from Abyssinia. The great mass are on foot, trudging wearily along with their bedding and provisions, the thick-legged women carrying the heaviest loads; occasionally you see a pilgrim asleep by the roadside, his pillow a stone. But the travellers are by no means all poor or unable to hire means of conveyance,—you would say that Judæa had been exhausted of its beasts of burden of all descriptions for this pilgrimage, and that even the skeletons had been exhumed to assist in it. The pilgrims are mounted on sorry donkeys, on wrecks of horses, on mules, sometimes an entire family on one animal. Now and then we encounter a “swell” outfit, a wealthy Russian well mounted on a richly caparisoned horse and attended by his servants; some ride in palanquins, some in chairs. We overtake an English party, the central figure of which is an elderly lady, who rides in a sort of high cupboard slung on poles, and borne by a mule before and a mule behind; the awkward vehicle sways and tilts backwards and forwards, and the good woman looks out of the window of her coop as if she were sea-sick of the world. Some ladies, who are unaccustomed to horses, have arm-chairs strapped upon the horses' backs, in which they sit. Now and then two chairs are strapped upon one horse, and the riders sit back to back. Sometimes huge panniers slung on the sides of the horse are used instead of chairs, the passengers riding securely in them without any danger of falling out. It is rather a pretty sight when each basket happens to be full of children. There is, indeed, no end to the strange outfits and the odd costumes. Nearly all the women who are mounted at all are perched upon the top of all their household goods and furniture, astride of a bed on the summit. There approaches a horse which seems to have a sofa on its back, upon which four persons are seated in a row, as much at ease as if at home; it is not, however, a sofa; four baskets have been ingeniously fastened into a frame, so that four persons can ride in them abreast. This is an admirable contrivance for the riders, much better than riding in a row lengthwise on the horse, when the one in front hides the view from those behind.

Diverted by this changing spectacle, we descend from Bethany. At first there are wild-flowers by the wayside and in the fields, and there is a flush of verdure on the hills, all of which disappears later. The sky is deep blue and cloudless, the air is exhilarating; it is a day for enjoyment, and everything and everybody we encounter are in a joyous mood, and on good terms with the world. The only unamiable exception is the horse with which I have been favored. He is a stocky little stallion, of good shape, but ignoble breed, and the devil—which is, I suppose, in the horse what the old Adam is in man—has never been cast out of him. At first I am in love with his pleasant gait and mincing ways, but I soon find that he has eccentricities that require the closest attention on my part, and leave me not a moment for the scenery or for biblical reflections. The beast is neither content to go in front of the caravan nor in the rear he wants society, but the instant he gets into the crowd he lets his heels fly right and left. After a few performances of this sort, and when he has nearly broken the leg of the Syrian, my company is not desired any more by any one. No one is willing to ride within speaking distance of me. This sort of horse may please the giddy and thoughtless, but he is not the animal for me. By the time we reach the fountain 'Ain el-Huad, I have quite enough of him, and exchange steeds with the dragoman, much against the latter's fancy; he keeps the brute the remainder of the day cantering over stones and waste places along the road, and confesses at night that his bridle-hand is so swollen as to be useless.

We descend a steep hill to this fountain, which flows from a broken Saracenic arch, and waters a valley that is altogether stony and unfertile except in some patches of green. It is a general halting-place for travellers, and presents a most animated appearance when we arrive. Horses, mules, and men are struggling together about the fountain to slake their thirst; but there is no trough nor any pool, and the only mode to get the water is to catch it in the mouth as it drizzles from the hole in the arch. It is difficult for a horse to do this, and the poor things are beside themselves with thirst. Near by are some stone ruins in which a man and woman have set up a damp coffee-shop, sherbet-shop, and smoking station. From them I borrow a shallow dish, and succeed in getting water for my horse, an experiment which seems to surprise all nations. The shop is an open stone shed with a dirt floor, offering only stools to the customers; yet when the motley crowd are seated in and around it, sipping coffee and smoking the narghilehs (water-pipes) with an air of leisure as if to-day would last forever, you have a scene of Oriental luxury.

Our way lies down a winding ravine. The country is exceedingly rough, like the Wyoming hills, but without trees or verdure. The bed of the stream is a mass of rock in shelving ledges; all the rock in sight is a calcareous limestone. After an hour of this sort of secluded travel we ascend again and reach the Red Khan, and a scene still more desolate because more extensive. The khan takes its name from the color of the rocks; perched upon a high ledge are the ruins of this ancient caravansary, little more now than naked walls. We take shelter for lunch in a natural rock grotto opposite, exactly the shadow of a rock longed for in a weary land. Here we spread our gay rugs, the servants unpack the provision hampers, and we sit and enjoy the wide view of barrenness and the picturesque groups of pilgrims. The spot is famous for its excellent well of water. It is, besides, the locality usually chosen for the scene of the adventure of the man who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves, this being the khan at which he was entertained for twopence. We take our siesta here, reflecting upon the great advance in hotel prices, and endeavoring to re-create something of that past when this was the highway between great Jerusalem and the teeming plain of the Jordan. The Syro-Phoenician woman smoked a narghileh, and, looking neither into the past nor the future, seemed to enjoy the present.

From this elevation we see again the brown Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea. Our road is downward more precipitously than it has been before. The rocks are tossed about tumultuously, and the hills are rent, but there is no evidence of any volcanic action. Some of the rock strata are bent, as you see the granite in the White Mountains, but this peculiarity disappears as we approach nearer to the Jordan. The translator of M. François Lenormant's “Ancient History of the East” says that “the miracles which accompanied the entrance of the Israelites into Palestine seem such as might have been produced by volcanic agency.” No doubt they might have been; but this whole region is absolutely without any appearance of volcanic disturbance.

As we go on, we have on our left the most remarkable ravine in Palestine; it is in fact a canon in the rocks, some five hundred feet deep, the sides of which are nearly perpendicular. At the bottom of it flows the brook Cherith, finding its way out into the Jordan plain. We ride to the brink and look over into the abyss. It was about two thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine years ago, and probably about this time of the year (for the brook went dry shortly after), that Elijah, having incurred the hostility of Ahab, who held his luxurious court at Samaria, by prophesying against him, came over from Gilead and hid himself in this ravine.

“Down there,” explains Abd-el-Atti, “the prophet Elijah fed him the ravens forty days. Not have that kind of ravens now.”

Unattractive as this abyss is for any but a temporary summer residence, the example of Elijah recommended it to a great number of people in a succeeding age. In the wall of the precipice are cut grottos, some of them so high above the bed of the stream that they are apparently inaccessible, and not unlike the tombs in the high cliffs along the Nile. In the fourth and fifth centuries monks swarmed in all the desert places of Egypt and Syria like rabbits; these holes, near the scene of Elijah's miraculous support, were the abodes of Christian hermits, most of whom starved themselves down to mere skin and bones waiting for the advent of the crows. On the ledge above are the ruins of ancient chapels, which would seem to show that this was a place of some resort, and that the hermits had spectators of their self-denial. You might as well be a woodchuck and sit in a hole as a monk, unless somebody comes and looks at you.

As we advance, the Jordan valley opens more broadly upon our sight. At this point, which is the historical point, the scene of the passage of the Jordan and the first appearance of the Israelitish clans in the Promised Land, the valley is ten miles broad. It is by no means a level plain; from the west range of mountains it slopes to the river, and the surface is broken by hillocks, ravines, and water-courses. The breadth is equal to that between the Connecticut River at Hartford and the Talcott range of hills. To the north we have in view the valley almost to the Sea of Galilee, and can see the white and round summit of Hermon beyond; on the east and on the west the barren mountains stretch in level lines; and on the south the blue waters of the Dead Sea continue the valley between ranges of purple and poetic rocky cliffs.