CHAPTER XXXII--AMONG THE BEDOUINS.--TRAVELLING UNDER ESCORT, AND LIVING IN TENTS.

_Sleeping under Tents--A Bedouin Encampment--A howl for “Backsheesh”--A Queer crowd--An illusion dispelled--An eccentric “rooster”--Our guard--A little bit of humbug--“Going for” the “Doubter”--A case of blackmail--On guard against Robbers--A protection from the Sheik--Thievery as a profession--Waters without life--A curious bath--A Flood of Gold--The “Doubter” in a rain storm--A dangerous Ford--A Nocturnal Mishap--An atrocious robbery--The “Doubter” once more in trouble--A Turkish escort--Falling among thieves--The Judge’s opinion on shrinkage--The “Doubter” in the role of a mummy._

WE slept in our tents pretty soundly, and when the dragoman roused us at six o’clock, we were not in a mood for getting up. We rose however, and took our breakfast without delay, and were off in good season. We went a short distance up the valley of the brook Kedron, and then crossed it, to turn away to the eastward.

Just as we left the valley, we passed a Bedouin encampment. It consisted of half a dozen black tents, the reverse of attractive, in appearance, and not more than four feet high. A couple of camels stood near the tents, a dozen or more dogs, of a wolfish look, came out and barked at us, and as many dirty and half naked children, saluted us with the cry “_Hadji, backsheesh,” “Hadji, backsheesh,_” “Pilgrims, present,” “Pilgrims, present.” All travellers in this country are considered pilgrims, and hence the appellation they gave us.

A single view of this encampment was enough to dispel any romantic notions we might have formed of the delights of a Be{414}douin life. There may be something very poetical in living with these dirty Arabs, but I beg to be excused. I had rather sleep in a comfortable bed, in a comfortable house, than in all the Bedouin tents in Syria. There is a great difference between romance and reality. You remember Moore’s lines:

“Will you come to the bower

I have shaded for you?

Your bed shall be roses

Bespangled with dew.”

Very nice aren’t they? Well, a fellow once took the starch out of them by adding a line of reply:

“Twould give me the rheumatiz and so it would you,”

which is about the size of it.

All parties making this journey require an escort. We had one, and it consisted of one man. He was a picturesque looking rooster, with a burnous or cloak, that may have been new once, though I doubt it, and he kept a handkerchief tied around his forehead. H e would have been of great service in a fight; his gun was of an antiquated pattern, and when he tested it in camp, he snapped it half a dozen times before it would go off. He was an inveterate beggar of tobacco for cigarettes, and kept two of us reasonably busy to supply him.

He took a great fancy to my tobacco pouch, and tried to intimate that I should give it to him, but I assumed an air of stupidity, and couldn’t understand him. Twenty times in the course {415}of the day he renewed the topic, but always with the same result, and in spite of all his signs, I would not comprehend. Probably he set me down as the stupidest idiot he had ever met, and my dullness may have served to enliven his subsequent stories to his friends. He got after the “Doubter,” but that worthy refused to talk with him as soon as he discovered that he couldn’t talk, and that the Bedouin wanted to beg something.

The region between Jerusalem and the Jordan and Dead Sea abounds in these rascals. They are shepherds and robbers, according to circumstances. We found them tending their flocks or loafing around their villages, and frequently they conversed with our escort. Had we been unaccompanied, one of the villages that we passed would have signaled to another, and we should have been plundered. We took the precaution to leave all our money, letters of credit, and everything of that sort, except our watches, with the keeper of our hotel in Jerusalem, so that we would not have been a very valuable prize, but at the same time it would have been inconvenient to be robbed.

The Sheik of the tribe lives in Jerusalem, and it is to him that travellers look for protection.

A party is going to the Dead Sea and Jordan, and is to start to-morrow by way of Bethlehem and Mar Saba. The dragoman notifies the Governor of Jerusalem, and the Governor notifies the Sheik, who sends an escort of one, two, or four, or it may be a dozen men. And, furthermore, the Sheik comes to the dragoman and receives from him five francs for each traveller, as a sort of insurance tax.

The Sheik is thus made responsible for any loss, and if we had been robbed while in the hands of the escort, the Governor would have made the Sheik shell out, to the extent of our loss. Not long before our visit, a traveller under escort was robbed of two thousand francs; his loss was promptly made good to him on his return to Jerusalem. All travellers in the Bedouin country require an escort from the tribe of each region they pass through, and to go without such escort would be madness.

Suddenly, while we were winding among the rough hills, we came out of a little gorge, and gazed upon a mass of rough, billowy hills, spread and scattered below us, and looking bare and {416}white in the slanting rays of a December sun. To the left lay a plain, somewhat broken, and with a line of trees winding through it; this was the valley of the Jordan, and the trees marked the course of the stream. To the right, shimmering and glistening in the sunlight, and broken at its edge into a fringe of foam, raised by the strong south wind, that was then blowing, lay the Dead Sea--that weird waste of water that buries the cities of the plain. Down, down, down, winding among the rocks and over little stretches of plain we made our way; the hills that had been below rose around, and we rapidly approached the level of the j plain, thirteen hundred feet below the waters of the Mediterranean. The distance was deceptive, and we were a long time in reaching the Dead Sea.

I had expected to find a scene of desolation, as some writers, have said that no fish live in the waters of the Dead Sea, and no, plant grows near it. It is true that there is no living thing in the Dead Sea; the fish brought into it by the Jordan are instantly killed by the salt water, but the reeds and bushes grow as near this sea as they are ordinarily found near the ocean or any of its arms. I found some within a hundred feet of it, and they seemed to be doing well. The vegetation is quite luxuriant in many places, notwithstanding the apparent lightness of the soil.

We took a hasty bath in the Dead Sea, just long enough to test its buoyant qualities. The human body cannot sink in the dense water; you float very much as a cork floats in ordinary water, and speedily lose all sense of danger from drowning. The water contains twenty-six per cent, of salt, and is clear as the purest spring water. There is a wonderful bitterness in it, and a few drops in the mouth makes you feel as if you were trying to gulp down a drug store.

After you have been a short time in the Dead Sea, you have a prickly sensation all over the body, and if you get some of the water in your eyes, you feel anything but cheerful.

When we came out, the water stuck to us with a feeling like molasses, and until we reached the Jordan and luxuriated in its fresh water, we felt as sticky as so many postage stamps.

An hour’s gallop across the Jordan plain took us from the Dead Sea to the Jordan, which we reached at the bathing place

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{419}of the pilgrims. The water was of a dirty yellow, and the river was not more than eighty or a hundred feet wide; the current is quite strong, and at the bathing place the bed is covered with rough stones, that made walking unpleasant to our bare and tender feet.

Willow, tamarisk, and balsam trees fringe the banks, and in a little grove of these our lunch was prepared, while those of us who wanted to wash off the salt of the Dead Sea went to take a bath in the Jordan. I got rid of the sticky sensation, and emerged from the Jordan without much delay. The water was altogether too cold for comfort.

In my younger days I thought the Jordan was something like the Mississippi, my impression being derived from the old hymn which says:

“On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand,

And cast a wistful eye.”

Elsewhere the same hymn records that:

“Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood

Stand dressed in living green.”

The stormy banks and swelling floods led me to imagine that the Jordan was a mile or two in width, and with waves like those of the ocean. What a difference between the imagination and the reality!

The Jordan is one of the most tortuous rivers in the world; a map of it looks like a line of Virginia fence, only more so, and I have heard somebody say that the Jordan river is so crooked that you can’t tell half the time which side you are on.

An hour and a half took us to Riha, better known as the site of Gilgal, and by some said to be the place where Jericho once stood. It is now a miserable village, one of the most forlorn in Palestine; and the principal objects that we saw were dirty children and dirtier adults, who all begged without distinction of age or sex, for “backsheesh.”

I attempted to take a sketch of a group of them, but they were evidently ashamed of themselves, and ran away.

We dined well and retired early; it rained nearly all night, and not only rained, but blew, and during the night I was wakened by the cold, wet canvas of the tent coming slap in my {420}face. I dreamed something about trying to swim up Niagara in winter, and then I woke.

We called the dragoman and servants, and set things to rights as well as we could,--but the ground was so soft, that the tent pegs wouldn’t hold well. We were a forlorn lot in the morning, and started off after breakfast, very much as if we were going to our own funerals.

The stream was so swollen that we couldn’t ford it with safety, and so we went up a mile or two and crossed by an ancient aqueduct, half full of water.

The horses were driven through the stream, while we walked or were carried on men’s backs along the aqueduct, which was a foot wide, with sides eighteen inches high, while the elevation was about fifty feet above the torrent.

I removed my boots and waded over, as I thought it rather ticklish to be carried. The “Doubter” was half way? over, when his bearer, who knew his burden’s views on the “backsheesh” question, I doubted his ability to carry him further. The “Doubter,” much to his disgust, was put down where the water of the aqueduct was deepest, and had to pass the rest of the day with wet feet.

We climbed the hills along the way to Jerusalem, and at several points saw the remains of the old Roman road. The route has the same condition of safety that it had when a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves. Robberies are not unfrequent, and the treatment of the victim is the same as it was eighteen hundred years ago. A couple of years ago, an English gentleman, on his way to the Jordan, fell into the hands of the Arabs, close to the ruined Khan, which is {421}said to be the site of the inn to which the good Samaritan carried the traveller whom he found by the wayside. The treatment of this Englishman is exactly described in these words: “They stripped him of his raiment and wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead.”

While in the valley of the Jordan, we saw no other traveller than ourselves. Had we happened there at Easter time, we might have witnessed an interesting spectacle.

On Monday of Passion Week occurs the ceremony of the bathing of the Pilgrims. The devotees gather in Jerusalem to the number of several thousand, some of them having come hundreds of leagues in order to be present on this occasion. In a disorderly array, they march out of the Holy City and down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. The Turkish governor of Jerusalem sends an escort, under command of an officer, to protect the pilgrims from robbers, and also to preserve a sort of discipline among them, and prevent overcrowding and loss of life, at the banks of the Jordan. A camp, or rather a bivouac, is formed on the Plain of Gilgal, and long before daybreak on the following morning, the whole party is roused.

The scene at this moment is said to be wildly picturesque, and strikingly similar to that which some authorities describe as presented at the “baptism of John.”

Tom-toms are beaten, with no attempt at harmony, and thousands of torches flash out and lighten up the wide space covered by the bivouac. In a few moments the noise is hushed, and the torches are extinguished; then the host moves in silence towards the river, to the spot where tradition has located the baptism of’ our Saviour.

The departure from the bivouac is timed, so that the party shall reach the bathing place about dawn. The eastern horizon displays a belt of light that reveals the sharp outlines of the mountain of the Land of Moab, and the ruddy tinge increases as the Pilgrims descend into the fringe of foliage that masks the banks of the river. At the broad opening that marks the bathing place, they congregate and prepare to wash in Jordan.

The whole river is speedily filled with people of both sexes and all ages; the bath is not conducted according to Occidental {422}notions of etiquette. Prayers and blessings are uttered, and all are too intent upon the observance of their religious duty to pay any heed to ideas of propriety.

The ceremony ended, the multitude returns to Jerusalem, and reaches the city about sunset. Many stragglers fall out by the way, and sometimes the Turkish escort is busy for two or three days, bringing in the last of them. The road, is dreary, and there is very little upon it to keep up the traveller’s interest. We found it especially so, as a drizzling rain came on when we were about half way.

We passed Bethany and wound around the Mount of Olives, then past Gethsemane, and entered Jerusalem by the Bab-el-Asbat, or Gate of the Tribes. We were thoroughly benumbed and wet, and ill-natured; and when our horses stopped at the door of the hotel, every one of us were so nearly frozen that we had to be assisted to dismount. We walked as so many mummies might walk, and with difficulty dragged ourselves to our rooms. We were cold and wet through, and not one of us had a change of clothes, all our heavy baggage being at Jaffa.

What should we do?

I proposed going to bed, although it was two P. M., and sending my clothes to the kitchen to dry, and I was not long in undressing.

Everybody else did the same; all except the Judge, who was afraid his clothes would shrink so much that he couldn’t get them on again. He didn’t relish the idea of going naked about Jerusalem in that weather and riding bareback in the saddle to Jaffa, so he sat on the stove in the parlor for the rest of the day.

Late in the afternoon we received our clothes from the kitchen, and were able to appear presentable at dinner time. But we all had a wrung out appearance, and were not over amiable.

The “Doubter” borrowed a pair of trowsers from one of the waiters. They were very tight and very short, and made the old fellow resemble an animated mummy or the materialized spirit of a blacksmith’s tongs. He had taken cold, and his teeth rattled so much that it was proposed to set him to music, and then sell him as a pair of castanets.

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