IT was an immense relief to emerge from Damascus into Bey-rout,—into a city open, cheerful; it was to re-enter the world. How brightly it lies upon its sunny promontory, climbing up the slopes and crowning every eminence with tree-embowered villas! What a varied prospect it commands of sparkling sea and curving shore; of country broken into the most pleasing diversity of hill and vale, woodlands and pastures; of precipices that are draped in foliage; of glens that retain their primitive wildness, strips of dark pine forest, groups of cypresses and of palms, spreading mulberry orchards, and terraces draped by vines; of villages dotting the landscape; of convents clinging to the heights, and the snowy peaks of Lebanon! Bounteous land of silk and wine!
Beyrout is the brightest spot in Syria or Palestine, the only pleasant city that we saw, and the centre of a moral and intellectual impulse the importance of which we cannot overestimate. The mart of the great silk industry of the region, and the seaport of Damascus and of all Upper Syria, the fitful and unintelligent Turkish rule even cannot stifle its exuberant prosperity; but above all the advantages which nature has given it, I should attribute its brightest prospects to the influence of the American Mission, and to the establishment of Beyrout College. For almost thirty years that Mission has sustained here a band of erudite scholars, whose investigations have made the world more familiar with the physical character of Palestine than the people of Connecticut are with the resources of their own State, and of wise managers whose prudence and foresight have laid deep and broad the foundations of a Syrian civilization.
I do not know how many converts have been made in thirty years,—the East has had ample illustration, from the Abyssinians to the Colchians, of “conversion” without knowledge or civilization,—nor do I believe that any “reports” of the workmen themselves to the “Board” can put in visible array adequately the results of the American Mission in Syria. But the transient visitor can see something of them, in the dawning of a better social life, in the beginning of an improvement in the condition of women, in an unmistakable spirit of inquiry, and a recognizable taste for intellectual pursuits. It is not too much to say that the birth of a desire for instruction, for the enjoyment of literature, and, to a certain extent, of science, is due to their schools; and that their admirably conducted press, which has sent out not only translations of the Scriptures, but periodicals of secular literature and information, and elementary geographies, histories, and scientific treatises, has satisfied the want which the schools created. And this new leaven is not confined to a sect, nor limited to a race; it is working, slowly it is true, in the whole of Syrian society.
The press establishment is near the pretty and substantial church of the Mission; it is a busy and well-ordered printing and publishing house; sending out, besides its religious works and school-books, a monthly and a weekly publication and a child's paper, which has a large and paying circulation, a great number of its subscribers being Moslems. These regenerating agencies—the schools and the press—are happily supplemented by the college, which offers to the young men of the Orient the chance of a high education, and attracts students even from the banks of the Nile. We were accompanied to the college by Dr. Jessup and Dr. Post, and spent an interesting morning in inspecting the buildings and in the enjoyment of the lovely prospect they command. As it is not my desire to enter into details regarding the Mission or the college any further than is necessary to emphasize the supreme importance of this enterprise to the civilization of the Orient, I will only add that the college has already some interesting collections in natural history, a particularly valuable herbarium, and that the medical department is not second in promise to the literary.
It is sometimes observed that a city is like a man, in that it will preserve through all mutations and disasters certain fundamental traits; the character that it obtains at first is never wholly lost, but reappears again and again, asserting its individuality after, it may be, centuries of obscurity. Beyrout was early a seat of learning and a centre of literary influence for nearly three hundred years before its desolation by an earthquake in the middle of the sixth century, and its subsequent devastation by the followers of the Arabian prophet, it was thronged with students from all the East, and its schools of philosophy and law enjoyed the highest renown. We believe that it is gradually resuming its ancient prestige.
While we were waiting day after day the arrival of the Austrian steamboat for Constantinople, we were drawn into a little drama which afforded us alternate vexation and amusement; an outline of it may not be out of place here as an illustration of the vicissitudes of travel in the East, or for other reasons which may appear. I should premise that the American consul who resided here with his family was not in good repute with many of the foreign residents; that he was charged with making personal contributions to himself the condition of the continuance in office of his subagents in Syria; that the character of his dragomans, or at least one of them named Ouardy, was exceedingly bad, and brought the consular office and the American name into contempt; and that these charges had been investigated by an agent sent from the ministerial bureau in Constantinople. The dragomans of the consulate, who act as interpreters, and are executors of the consul's authority, have no pay, but their position gives them a consideration in the community, and a protection which they turn to pecuniary account. It should be added that the salary of the consul at Beyrout is two thousand dollars,—a sum, in this expensive city, which is insufficient to support a consul, who has a family, in the style of a respectable citizen, and is wholly inadequate to the maintenance of any equality with the representatives of other nations; the government allows no outfit, nor does it provide for the return of its consul; the cost of transporting himself and family home would consume almost half a year's salary, and the tenure of the office is uncertain. To accept any of several of our Oriental consulships, a man must either have a private fortune or an unscrupulous knack of living by his wits. The English name is almost universally respected in the East, so far as my limited experience goes, in the character of its consuls; the same cannot be said of the American.
The morning after our arrival, descending the steps of the hotel, I found our dragoman in a violent altercation with another dragoman, a Jew, and a resident of Beyrout. There is always a latent enmity between the Egyptian and the Syrian dragomans, a national hostility, as old perhaps as the Shepherds' invasion, which it needs only an occasion to blow into a flame. The disputants were surrounded by a motley crowd, nearly all of them the adherents of the Syrian. I had seen Antoine Ouardy at Luxor, when he was the dragoman of an English traveller. He was now in Frank dress, wearing a shining hat, an enormous cluster shirt-pin, and a big seal ring; and with his aggressive nose and brazen face he had the appearance of a leading mock-auctioneer in the Bowery. On the Nile, where Abd-el-Atti enjoys the distinction of Sultan among his class, the fellow was his humble servant; but he had now caught the Egyptian away from home, and was disposed to make the most of his advantage. Chancing to meet Ouardy this morning, Abd-el-Atti had asked for the payment of two pounds lent at Luxor; the debt was promptly denied, and when his own due-bill for the money was produced, he declared that he had received the money from Abd-el-Atti in payment for some cigars which he had long ago purchased for him in Alexandria. Of course if this had been true, he would not have given a note for the money; and it happened that I had been present when the sum was borrowed.
The brazen denial exasperated our dragoman, and when I arrived the quarrel had come nearly to blows, all the injurious Arabic epithets having been exhausted. The lie direct had been given back and forth, but the crowning insult was added, in English, when Abd-el-Atti cried,—
“You 're a humbug!”
This was more than Ouardy could stand. Bursting with rage, he shook his fist in the Egyptian's face:—
“You call me humbug; you humbug, yourself. You pay for this, I shall have satisfaction by the law.”
We succeeded in separating and, I hoped, in reducing them to reason, but Antoine went off muttering vengeance, and Abd-el-Atti was determined to bring suit for his money. I represented the hopelessness of a suit in a Turkish court, the delay and the cost of lawyers, and the certainty that Ouardy would produce witnesses to anything he desired to prove.
“What I care for two pound!” exclaimed the heated dragoman. “I go to spend a hundred pound, but I have justice.” Shortly after, as Abd-el-Atti was walking through the bazaars, with one of the ladies of our party, he was set upon by a gang of Ouardy's friends and knocked down; the old man recovered himself and gave battle like a valiant friend of the Prophet; Ouardy's brother sallied out from his shop to take a hand in the scrimmage, and happened to get a rough handling from Abd-el-Atti, who was entirely ignorant of his relationship to Antoine. The whole party were then carried off to the seraglio, where Abd-el-Atti, as the party attacked, was presumed to be in the wrong, and was put into custody. In the inscrutable administration of Turkish justice, the man who is knocked down in a quarrel is always arrested. When news was brought to us at the hotel of this mishap, I sent for the American consul, as our dragoman was in the service of an American citizen. The consul sent his son and his dragoman. And the dragoman sent to assist an American, embarrassed by the loss of his servant in a strange city, turned out to be the brother of Antoine Ouardy, and the very fellow that Abd-el-Atti had just beaten. Here was a complication. Dragoman Ouardy showed his wounds, and wanted compensation for his injuries. At the very moment we needed the protection of the American government, its representative appeared as our chief prosecutor.
However, we sent for Abd-el-Atti, and procured his release from the seraglio; and after an hour of conference, in which we had the assistance of some of the most respectable foreign residents of the city, we flattered ourselves that a compromise was made. The injured Ouardy, who was a crafty rogue, was persuaded not to insist upon a suit for damages, which would greatly incommode an American citizen, and Abd-el-Atti seemed willing to drop his suit for the two pounds. Antoine, however, was still menacing.
“You heard him,” he appealed to me, “you heard him call me humbug.”
The injurious nature of this mysterious epithet could not be erased from his mind. It was in vain that I told him it had been freely applied to a well-known American, until it had become a badge of distinction. But at length a truce was patched up; and, confident that there would be no more trouble, I went into the country for a long walk over the charming hills.
When I returned at six o'clock, the camp was in commotion. Abd-el-Atti was in jail! There was a suit against him for 20,000 francs for horrible and unprovoked injuries to the dragoman of the American consul! The consul, upon written application for assistance, made by the ladies at the hotel, had curtly declined to give any aid, and espoused the quarrel of his dragoman. It appeared that Abd-el-Atti, attempting again to accompany a lady in a shopping expedition through the bazaars, had been sent for by a messenger from the seraglio. As he could not leave the lady in the street, he carelessly answered that he would come by and by. A few minutes after he was arrested by a squad of soldiers, and taken before the military governor. Abd-el-Atti respectfully made his excuse that he could not leave the lady alone in the street, but the pasha said that he would teach him not to insult his authority. Both the Ouardy brothers were beside the pasha, whispering in his ear, and as the result of their deliberations Abd-el-Atti was put in prison. It was Saturday afternoon, and the conspirators expected to humiliate the old man by keeping him locked up till Monday. This was the state of the game when I came to dinner; the faithful Abdallah, who had reluctantly withdrawn from watching the outside of the seraglio where his master was confined, was divided in mind between grief and alarm on the one side and his duty of habitual cheerfulness to us on the other, and consequently announced, “Abd-el-Atti, seraglio,” as a piece of good news; the affair had got wind among the cafés, where there was a buzz of triumph over the Egyptians; and at the hotel everybody was drawn into the excitement, discussing the assault and the arrest of the assaulted party, the American consul and the character of his dragoman, and the general inability of American consuls to help their countrymen in time of need.
The principal champion of Abd-el-Atti was Mohammed Achmed, the dragoman of two American ladies who had been travelling in Egypt and Palestine. Achmed was a character. He had the pure Arab physiognomy, the vivacity of an Italian, the restlessness of an American, the courtesy of the most polished Oriental, and a unique use of the English tongue. Copious in speech, at times flighty in manner, gravely humorous, and more sharp-witted than the “cutest” Yankee, he was an exceedingly experienced and skilful dragoman, and perfectly honest to his employers. Achmed was clad in baggy trousers, a silk scarf about his waist, short open jacket, and wore his tarboosh on the back of his sloping head. He had a habit of throwing back his head and half closing his wandering, restless black eyes in speaking, and his gestures and attitudes might have been called theatrical but for a certain simple sincerity; yet any extravagance of speech or action was always saved from an appearance of absurdity by a humorous twinkle in his eyes. Alexandria was his home, while Abd-el-Atti lived in Cairo; the natural rivalry between the dragomans of the two cities had been imbittered by some personal disagreement, and they were only on terms of the most distant civility. But Abd-el-Atti's misfortune not only roused his national pride, but touched his quick generosity, and he surprised his employers by the enthusiasm with which he espoused the cause and defended the character of the man he had so lately regarded as anything but a friend. He went to work with unselfish zeal to procure his release; he would think of nothing else, talk of nothing else.
“How is it, Achmed,” they said, “that you and Abd-el-Atti have suddenly become such good friends?”
“Ah, my lady,” answers Achmed, taking an attitude, “you know not Abd-el-Atti, one of the first-class men in all Egypt. Not a common dragoman like these in Beyrout, my lady; you shall ask in Cairo what a man of esteem. To tell it in Cairo that he is in jail! Abd-el-Atti is my friend. What has been sometime, that is nothing. It must not be that he is in jail. And he come out in half an hour, if your consul say so.”
“That is not so certain; but what can we do?”
“Write to the consul American that he shall let Abd-el-Atti go. You, my lady,” said Achmed, throwing himself on his knees before the person he was addressing, “make a letter, and say I want my dragoman immediate. If he will not, I go to the English consul, I know he will do it. Excuse me, but will you make the letter? When it was the English consul, he does something; when it was the American, I pick your pargin, my lady, he is not so much esteem here.”
In compliance with Achmed's entreaty a note was written to the consul, but it produced no effect, except an uncivil reply that it was after office hours.
When I returned, Achmed was in a high fever of excitement. He believed that Abd-el-Atti would be released if I would go personally to the consul and insist upon it.
“The consul, I do not know what kind of man this is for consul; does he know what man is Abd-el-Atti? Take my advice,” continued Achmed, half closing his eyes, throwing back his head and moving it alertly on the axis of his neck, and making at the same time a deprecatory gesture with the back of his hands turned out,—“take my advice, Mesr. Vahl, Abd-el-Atti is a man of respect; he is a man very rich, God forgive me! Firste-class man. There is no better family in Egypt than Abd-el-Atti Effendi. You have seen, he is the friend of governors and pashas. There is no man of more respect. In Cairo, to put Abd-el-Atti in jail, they would not believe it! When he is at home, no one could do it. The Khedive himself,” he continued, warming with his theme, “would not touch Abd-el-Atti. He has houses in the city and farms and plantations in the country, a man very well known. Who in Cairo is to put him in jail? [This, with a smile of derision.] I think he take out and put in prison almost anybody else he like, Mohammed Effendi Abd-el-Atti. See, when this Ouardy comes in Egypt!”
We hastened to the consul's. I told the consul that I was deprived of the service of my dragoman, that he was unjustly imprisoned, simply for defending himself when he was assailed by a lot of rowdies, and that as the complaint against him was supposed to issue from the consulate, I doubted not that the consul's influence could release him. The consul replied, with suavity, that he had nothing to do with the quarrel of his dragoman, and was not very well informed about it, only he knew that Ouardy had been outrageously assaulted and beaten by Abd-el-Atti; that he could do nothing at any rate with the pasha, even if that functionary had not gone to his harem outside the city, where nobody would disturb him. I ventured to say that both the Ouardys had a very bad reputation in the city,—it was, in fact, infamous,—and that the consulate was brought into contempt by them. The consul replied that the reputation of Antoine might be bad, but that his dragoman was a respectable merchant; and then he complained of the missionaries, who had persecuted him ever since he had been in Beyrout. I said that I knew nothing of his grievances; that my information about his dragoman came from general report, and from some of the bankers and most respectable citizens, and that I knew that in this case my dragoman had been set upon in the first instance, and that it was believed that the Ouardys were now attempting to extort money from him, knowing him to be rich, and having got him in, their clutches away from his friends. The consul still said that he could do nothing that night; he was very sorry, very sorry for my embarrassment, and he would send for Ouardy and advise him to relinquish his prosecution on my account. “Very well,” I said, rising to go, “if you cannot help me I must go elsewhere. Will you give me a note of introduction to the pasha?” He would do that with pleasure, although he was certain that nothing would come of it.
Achmed, who had been impatiently waiting on the high piazza (it is a charming situation overlooking the Mediterranean), saw that I had not succeeded, and was for going at once to the English consul; for all dragomans have entire confidence that English consuls are all-powerful.
“No,” I said, “we will try the pasha, to whom I have a letter, though the consul says the pasha is a friend of Ouardy.”
“I believe you. Ouardy has women in his house; the pasha goes often there; so I hear. But we will go. I will speak to the pasha also, and tell him what for a man is Abd-el-Atti. A very pleasant man, the pasha, and speak all languages, very well English.”
It was encouraging to know this, and I began to feel that I could make some impression on him. We took a carriage and drove into the suburbs, to the house of the pasha. His Excellency was in his harem, and dining, at that hour. I was shown by a barefooted servant into a barren parlor furnished in the European style, and informed that the pasha would see me presently. After a while cigarettes and coffee—a poor substitute for dinner for a person who had had none—were brought in; but no pasha.
I waited there, I suppose, nearly an hour for the governor to finish his dinner; and meantime composed a complimentary oration to deliver upon his arrival. When his Excellency at last appeared, I beheld a large, sleek Turk, whose face showed good-nature and self-indulgence. I had hopes of him, and, advancing to salute him, began an apology for disturbing his repose at this unseasonable hour, but his Excellency looked perfectly blank. He did not understand a word of English. I gave him the letter of the consul, and mentioned the name “American Consul.” The pasha took the letter and opened it; but as he was diligently examining it upside down, I saw that he did not read English. I must introduce myself.
Opening the door, I called Achmed. In coming into the presence of this high rank, all his buoyancy and bravado vanished; he obsequiously waited. I told him to say to his Excellency how extremely sorry I was to disturb his repose at such an unseasonable hour, but that my dragoman, whose services I needed, had been unfortunately locked up; that I was an American citizen, as he would perceive by the letter from the consul, and that I would detain him only a moment with my business. Achmed put this into choice Arabic. His Excellency looked more blank than before. He did not understand a word of Arabic. The interview was getting to be interesting.
The pasha then stepped to the door and called in his dragoman, a barefooted fellow in a tattered gown. The two interpreters stood in line before us, and the pasha nodded to me to begin. I opened, perhaps, a little too elaborately; Achmed put my remarks into Arabic, and the second dragoman translated that again into Turkish. What the speech became by the time it reached the ear of the pasha I could not tell, but his face darkened at once, and he peremptorily shook his head. The word came back to me that the pasha would n't let him out; Abd-el-Atti must stay in jail till his trial. I then began to argue the matter,—to say that there was no criminal suit against him, only an action for damages, and that I would be responsible for his appearance when required. The translations were made; but I saw that I was every moment losing ground; no one could tell what my solicitations became after being strained through Arabic and Turkish. My case was lost, because it could not be heard.
Suddenly it occurred to me that the pasha might know some European language. I turned to him, and asked him if he spoke German. O, yes! The prospect brightened, and if I also had spoken that language, we should have had no further trouble. However, desperation beat up my misty recollection, and I gave the pasha a torrent of broken German that evidently astonished him. At any rate, he became gracious as soon as he understood me. He said that Abd-el-Atti was not confined on account of the suit,—he knew nothing and cared nothing for his difficulty with Ouardy,—but for his contempt of the police and soldiers. I explained that, and added that Abd-el-Atti was an old man, that I had been doctoring him for a fever ever since we were in Damascus, that I feared to have him stay in that damp jail over Sunday, and that I would be responsible for his appearance.
“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that you will be personally responsible that he appears at the seraglio Monday morning?”
“Certainly,” I said, “for his appearance at any time and place your Excellency may name.”
“Then he may go.” He gave the order to his dragoman to accompany us and procure his release, and we retired, with mutual protestations of the highest consideration. Achmed was nearly beside himself with joy. The horses seemed to him to crawl; he could n't wait the moment to announce to Abd-el-Atti his deliverance. “Ah, they thought to keep Abd-el-Atti in jail all night, and sent word to Cairo, 'Abd-el-Atti is in jail.' Abd-el-Atti Effendi! Take my advice, a man of respect.”
The cobble-paved court of the old seraglio prison, to which the guards admitted us without question, was only dimly lighted by an oil-lamp or two, and we could distinguish a few figures flitting about, who looked like malefactors, but were probably keepers. We were shown into a side room, where sat upon the ground an official, perhaps a judge, and two assistants. Abd-el-Atti was sent for. The old man was brought in, swinging his string of beads in his hand, looking somewhat crest-fallen, but preserving a portentous gravity. I arose and shook hands with him, and told him we had come to take him out. When we were seated, a discussion of the case sprung up, the official talked, his two assistants talked, and Abd-el-Atti and Achmed talked, and there was evidently a disposition to go over the affair from the beginning. It was a pity to cut short so much eloquence, but I asked the pasha's dragoman to deliver his message, and told Achmed that we would postpone the discussion till Monday, and depart at once. The prisoner was released, and, declining coffee, we shook hands and got away with all haste. As we drove to the hotel, Abd-el-Atti was somewhat pensive, but declared that he would rather give a hundred pounds than not be let out that night; and when we reached home, Achmed, whose spirits were exuberant, insisted on dragging him to the café opposite, to exhibit him in triumph.
When I came down in the morning, Achmed was in the hall.
“Well, Achmed, how are you?”
“Firste-class,” closing his eyes with a humorous twinkle. “I'm in it now.”
“In what?”
“In the case with Mohammed Abd-el-Atti. That Ouardy says I pay him damage twenty thousand francs. Twenty thousand francs, I wish he may get it! How much, I s'pose, for the consul? Take my advice, the consul want money.”
“Then the suit will keep you here with Abd-el-Atti?”
“Keep, I don't know. I not pay him twenty thousand francs, not one thousand, not one franc. What my ladies do? Who go to Constantinople with my ladies? To-morrow morning come the steamer. To leave the old man alone with these thiefs, what would anybody say of Mohammed Achmed for that? What for consul is this? I want to go to Constantinople with my ladies, and then to see my family in Alexandria. For one day in five months have I see my wife and shild. O yes, I have very nice wife. Yes, one wife quite plenty for me. And I have a fine house, cost me twenty thousand dollars; I am not rich, but I have plenty, God forgive me. My shop is in the silk bazaar. I am merchant. My father-in-law say what for I go dragoman? I like to see nice peoples and go in the world. When I am dragoman, I am servant. When I am merchant, O, I am very well in Alexandria. I think I not go any more. Ah, here is Abd-el-Atti. Take my advice, he not need to be dragoman; he is pooty off. Good morning, my friend. Have they told you I am to be put in jail also?”
“So I hear; Ouardy sue you and Abdallah so you cannot be witness.”
“O, they think they get money from us. Mebbe the pasha and the consul. I think so.”
“So am I,” responded Abd-el-Atti in his most serious manner. The “Eastern question,” with these experienced dragomans, instantly resolves itself into a question of money, whoever is concerned and whatever is the tribunal. I said that I would see the consul in the morning, and that I hoped to have all proceedings stopped, so that we could get off in the steamer. Abd-el-Atti shook his head.
“The consul not to do anything. Ouardy have lent him money; so I hunderstood.”
Beyrout had a Sunday appearance. The shops were nearly all closed, and the churches, especially the Catholic, were crowded. It might have been a peaceful day but for our imbroglio, which began to be serious; we could not afford the time to wait two weeks for the next Cyprus steamer, we did not like to abandon our dragomans, and we needed their services. The ladies who depended upon Achmed were in a quandary. Notes went to the consul, but produced no effect. The bankers were called into the council, and one of them undertook to get Achmed free. Travellers, citizens, and all began to get interested or entangled in the case. There was among respectable people but one opinion about the consul's dragoman. At night it was whispered about that the American consul had already been removed and that his successor was on his way to Beyrout. Achmed came to us in the highest spirits with the news.
All day Monday we expected the steamer. The day was frittered away in interviews with the consul and the pasha, and in endeavoring to learn something of the two cases, the suit for damages and for the debt, supposed to be going on somewhere in the seraglio. After my interview with the consul, who expressed considerable ignorance of the case and the strongest desire to stop it, I was surprised to find at the seraglio all the papers in the consul's name, and all the documents written on consular paper; so that when I appeared as an American citizen, to endeavor to get my dragoman released, it appeared to the Turkish officials that they would please the American government by detaining and punishing him.
The court-room was a little upper chamber, with no furniture except a long table and chairs; three Moslem judges sat at one end of the table, apparently waiting to see what would turn up. The scene was not unlike that in an office of a justice of the peace in America. The parties to the case, witnesses, attendants, spectators, came and went as it pleased them, talked or whispered to the judges or to each other. There seemed to be no rule for the reception or rejection of evidence. The judges smoked and gathered the facts as they drifted in, and would by and by make up their minds. It is truth to say, however, that they seemed to be endeavoring to get at the facts, and that they appeared to be above prejudice or interest. A new complication developed itself, however; Antoine Ouardy claimed to be a French citizen, and the French consul was drawn into the fray. This was a new device to delay proceedings.
When I had given my evidence to the judges, which I was required to put in writing, I went with Abd-el-Atti to the room of the pasha. This official was gracious enough, but gave us no hopes of release. He took me one side and advised me, as a traveller, to look out for another dragoman; there was no prospect that Abd-el-Atti could get away to accompany me on this steamer,—in fact, the process in court might detain him six months. However, the best thing to do would be to go to the American consul with Ouardy and settle it. He thought Ouardy would settle it for a reasonable amount. It was none of his business, but that was his advice. We were obliged to his Excellency for this glimpse behind the scenes of a Turkish court, and thanked him for his advice; but we did not follow it. Abd-el-Atti thought that if he abandoned the attempt to collect a debt in a Turkish city, he ought not, besides, to pay for the privilege of doing so.
Tuesday morning the steamer came into the harbor. Although we had registered our names at the office of the company for passage, nothing was reserved for us. Detained at the seraglio and the consul's, we could not go off to secure places, and the consequence was that we were subject to the black-mail of the steward when we did go. By noon there were signs of the failure of the prosecution; and we sent off our luggage. In an hour or two Abd-el-Atti appeared with a troop of friends, triumphant. Somewhere, I do not know how, he and Achmed had raked up fourteen witnesses in his favor; the judges would n't believe Ouardy nor any one he produced, and his case had utterly broken down. This mountain of a case, which had annoyed us so many days and absorbed our time, suddenly collapsed. We were not sorry to leave even beautiful Beyrout, and would have liked to see the last of Turkish rule as well. At sunset, on the steamer Achille, swarming above and below with pilgrims from Jerusalem and Mecca, we sailed for Cyprus.
IN the early morning we were off Cyprus, in the open harbor of Larnaka,—a row of white houses on the low shore. The town is not peculiar and not specially attractive, but the Marina lies prettily on the blue sea, and the palms, the cypresses, the minarets and church-towers, form an agreeable picture behind it, backed by the lovely outline of mountains, conspicuous among them Santa Croce. The highest, Olympus, cannot be seen from this point.
A night had sufficed to transport us into another world, a world in which all outlines are softened and colored, a world in which history appears like romance. We might have imagined that we had sailed into some tropical harbor, except that the island before us was bare of foliage; there was the calm of perfect repose in the sky, on the sea, and the land; Cyprus made no harsh contrast with the azure water in which it seemed to be anchored for the morning, as our ship was. You could believe that the calm of summer and of early morning always rested on the island, and that it slept exhausted in the memory of its glorious past.
Taking a cup of coffee, we rowed ashore. It was the festival of St. George, and the flags of various nations were hung out along the riva, or displayed from the staffs of the consular residences. It is one of the chief fête days of the year, and the foreign representatives, who have not too much excitement, celebrated it by formal visits to the Greek consul. Larnaka does not keep a hotel, and we wandered about for some time before we could discover its sole locanda, where we purposed to breakfast. This establishment would please an artist, but it had few attractions for a person wishing to break his fast, and our unusual demand threw it into confusion. The locanda was nothing but a kitchen in a tumble-down building, smoke-dried, with an earth floor and a rickety table or two. After long delay, the cheerful Greek proprietor and his lively wife—whose good-humored willingness both to furnish us next to nothing, but the best they had, from their scanty larder, and to cipher up a long reckoning for the same, excited our interest—produced some fried veal, sour bread, harsh wine, and tart oranges; and we breakfasted more sumptuously, I have no doubt, than any natives of the island that morning. The scant and hard fare of nearly all the common people in the East would be unendurable to any American; but I think that the hardy peasantry of the Levant would speedily fall into dyspeptic degeneracy upon the introduction of American rural cooking.
After we had killed our appetites at the locanda, we presented our letters to the American consul, General di Cesnola, in whose spacious residence we experienced a delightful mingling of Oriental and Western hospitality. The kawâss of the General was sent to show us the town. This kawâss was a gorgeous official, a kind of glorified being, in silk and gold-lace, who marched before us, huge in bulk, waving his truncheon of office, and gave us the appearance, in spite of our humility, of a triumphal procession. Larnaka has not many sights, although it was the residence of the Lusignan dynasty,—Richard Cour de Lion having, toward the close of the twelfth century, made a gift of the island to Guy de Lusignan. It has, however, some mosques and Greek churches. The church of St. Lazarus, which contains the now vacant tomb of the Lazarus who was raised from the dead at Bethany and afterwards became bishop of Citium, is an interesting old Byzantine edifice, and has attached to it an English burial-ground, with tombs of the seventeenth century. The Greek priest who showed us the church does not lose sight of the gain of godliness in this life while pursuing in this remote station his heavenly journey. He sold my friend some exquisite old crucifixes, carved in wood, mounted in antique silver, which he took from the altar, and he let the church part with some of its quaint old pictures, commemorating the impossible exploits of St. Demetrius and St. George. But he was very careful that none of the Greeks who were lounging about the church should be witnesses of the transfer. He said that these ignorant people had a prejudice about these sacred objects, and might make trouble.
The excavations made at Larnaka have demonstrated that this was the site of ancient Citium, the birthplace of Zeno, the Stoic, and the Chittim so often alluded to by the Hebrew prophets; it was a Phoenician colony, and when Ezekiel foretold the unrecoverable fall of Tyre, among the luxuries of wealth he enumerated were the “benches of ivory brought out of the isles of Chittim.” Paul does not mention it, but he must have passed through it when he made his journey over the island from Salamis to Paphos, where he had his famous encounter with the sorcerer Bar-jesus. A few miles out of town on the road to Citti is a Turkish mosque, which shares the high veneration of Moslems with those of Mecca and Jerusalem. In it is interred the wet-nurse of Mohammed.
We walked on out of the town to the most considerable church in the place, newly built by the Roman Catholics. There is attached to it a Franciscan convent, a neat establishment with a garden; and the hospitable monks, when they knew we were Americans, insisted upon entertaining us; the contributions for their church had largely come from America, they said, and they seemed to regard us as among the number of their benefactors. This Christian charity expressed itself also in some bunches of roses, which the brothers plucked for our ladies. One cannot but suspect and respect that timid sentiment the monk retains for the sex whose faces he flies from, which he expresses in the care of flowers; the blushing rose seems to be the pure and only link between the monk and womankind; he may cultivate it without sin, and offer it to the chance visitor without scandal.
The day was lovely, but the sun had intense power, and in default of donkeys we took a private carriage into the country to visit the church of St. George, at which the fête day of that saint was celebrated by a fair, and a concourse of peasants. Our carriage was a four-wheeled cart, a sort of hay-wagon, drawn by two steers, and driven by a Greek boy in an embroidered jacket. The Franciscans lent us chairs for the cart; the resplendent kawass marched ahead; Abd-el-Atti hung his legs over the tail of the cart in an attitude of dejection; and we moved on, but so slowly that my English friend, Mr. Edward Rae, was able to sketch us, and the Cyprians could enjoy the spectacle.
The country lay bare and blinking under the sun; save here and there a palm or a bunch of cypresses, this part of the island has not a tree or a large shrub. The view of the town and the sea with its boats, as we went inland, was peculiar, not anything real, but a skeleton picture; the sky and sea were indigo blue. We found a crowd of peasants at the church of St. George, which has a dirty interior, like all the Greek churches. The Greeks, as well as the other Orientals, know how to mingle devotion with the profits of trade, and while there were rows of booths outside, and traffic went on briskly, the church was thronged with men and women who bought tapers for offerings, and kissed with fervor the holy relics which were exposed. The articles for sale at the booths and stands were chiefly eatables and the coarsest sort of merchandise. The only specialty of native manufacture was rude but pleasant-sounding little bells, which are sometimes strung upon the necks of donkeys. But so fond are these simple people of musical noise, that these bells are attached to the handles of sickles also. The barley was already dead-ripe in the fields, and many of the peasants at the fair brought their sickles with them. They were, both men and women, a good-humored, primitive sort of people, certainly not a handsome race, but picturesque in appearance; both sexes affect high colors, and the bright petticoats of the women matched the gay jackets of their husbands and lovers.
We do not know what was the ancient standard of beauty in Cyprus; it may have been no higher than it is now, and perhaps the swains at this fête of St. George would turn from any other type of female charms as uninviting. The Cyprian or Paphian Venus could not have been a beauty according to our notions.
The images of her which General di Cesnola found in her temple all have a long and sharp nose. These images are Phoenician, and were made six hundred to a thousand years before the Christian era, at the time that wonderful people occupied this fertile island. It is an interesting fact, and an extraordinary instance of the persistence of nature in perpetuating a type, that all the women of Cyprus to-day—who are, with scarcely any exception, ugly—have exactly the nose of the ancient Paphian Venus, that is to say, the nose of the Phoenician women whose husbands and lovers sailed the Mediterranean as long ago as the siege of Troy.
It was off the southern coast of this island, near Paphos, that Venus Aphrodite, born of the foam, is fabled to have risen from the sea. The anniversary of her birth is still perpetuated by an annual fête on the 11th of August,—a rite having its foundation in nature, that has proved to be stronger than religious instruction or prejudice. Originally, these fêtes were the scenes of a too literal worship of Venus, and even now the Cyprian maiden thinks that her chance of matrimony is increased by her attendance at this annual fair. Upon that day all the young people go upon the sea in small boats, and, until recently, it used to be the custom to dip a virgin into the water in remembrance of the mystic birth of Venus. That ceremony is still partially maintained; instead of sousing the maiden in the sea, her companions spatter the representative of the goddess with salt water,—immersion has given way here also to sprinkling.
The lively curiosity of the world has been of late years turned to Cyprus as the theatre of some of the most important and extensive archaeological discoveries of this century; discoveries unique, and illustrative of the manners and religion of a race, once the most civilized in the Levant, of which only the slightest monuments had hitherto been discovered; discoveries which supply the lost link between Egyptian and Grecian art. These splendid results, which by a stroke of good fortune confer some credit upon the American nation, are wholly due to the scholarship, patient industry, address, and enthusiasm of one man. To those who are familiar with the magnificent Cesnola Collection, which is the chief attraction of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, I need make no apology for devoting a few paragraphs to the antiquities of Cyprus and their explorer.
Cyprus was the coveted prize of all the conquerors of the Orient in turn. The fair island, with an area not so large as the State of Connecticut, owns in its unequal surface the extremes of the temperate climate; snow lies during the greater part of the year upon its mountains, which attain an altitude of over seven thousand feet, and the palm spreads its fan-leaves along the southern coast and in the warm plains; irregular in shape, it has an extreme length of over one hundred and forty miles, and an average breadth of about forty miles, and its deeply indented coast gives an extraordinarily long shore-line and offers the facilities of harbors for the most active commerce.
The maritime Phoenicians early discovered its advantages, and in the seventeenth century b. c., or a little later, a colony from Sidon settled at Citium; and in time these Yankees of the Levant occupied all the southern portion of the island with their busy ports and royal cities. There is a tradition that Teucer, after the Trojan war, founded the city of Salamis on the east coast. But however this may be, and whatever may be the exact date of the advent of the Sidonians upon the island, it is tolerably certain that they were in possession about the year 1600 b.c., when the navy of Thotmes III., the greatest conqueror and statesman in the long line of Pharaohs, visited Cyprus and collected tribute. The Egyptians were never sailors, and the fleet of Thotmes III. was no doubt composed of Phoenician ships manned by Phoenician sailors. He was already in possession of the whole of Syria, the Phoenicians were his tributaries and allies, their ships alone sailed the Grecian seas and carried the products of Egypt and of Asia to the Pelasgic populations. The Phoenician supremacy, established by Sidon in Cyprus, was maintained by Tyre; and it was not seriously subverted until 708 b. c., when the Assyrian ravager of Syria, Sargon, sent a fleet and conquered Cyprus. He set up a stele in Citium, commemorating his exploit, which has been preserved and is now in the museum at Berlin. Two centuries later the island owned the Persians as masters, and was comprised in the fifth satrapy of Darius. It became a part of the empire of the Macedonian Alexander after his conquest of Asia Minor, and was again an Egyptian province under the Ptolemies, until the Roman eagles swooped down upon it. Coins are not seldom found that tell the story of these occupations. Those bearing the head of Ptolemy Physcon, Euergetes VII., found at Paphos and undoubtedly struck there, witness the residence on the island of that licentious and literary tyrant, whom a popular outburst had banished from Alexandria. Another with the head of Vespasian, and on the obverse an outline of the temple of Venus at Paphos, attests the Roman hospitality to the gods and religious rites of all their conquered provinces.
Upon the breaking up of the Roman world, Cyprus fell to the Greek Empire, and for centuries maintained under its ducal governors a sort of independent life, enjoying as much prosperity as was possible under the almost uniform imbecility and corruption of the Byzantine rule. We have already spoken of its transfer to the Lusignans by Richard Cour de Lion; and again a romantic chapter was added to its history by the reign of Queen Catharine Cornaro, who gave her kingdom to the Venetian republic. Since its final conquest by the Turks in 1571, Cyprus has interested the world only by its sufferings; for Turkish history here, as elsewhere, is little but a record of exactions, rapine, and massacre.
From time to time during the present century efforts have been made by individuals and by learned societies to explore the antiquities of Cyprus; but although many interesting discoveries were made, yet the field was comparatively virgin when General di Cesnola was appointed American consul in 1866. Here and there a stele, or some fragments of pottery, or the remains of a temple, had been unearthed by chance or by superficial search, but the few objects discovered served only to pique curiosity. For one reason or another, the efforts made to establish the site of ancient cities had been abandoned, the expeditions sent out by France had been comparatively barren of results, and it seemed as if the traces of the occupation of the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, and the Romans were irrecoverably concealed.
General L. P. di Cesnola, the explorer of Cyprus, is of a noble Piedmontese family; he received a military and classical education at Turin; identified with the party of Italian unity, his sympathies were naturally excited by the contest in America; he offered his sword to our government, and served with distinction in the war for the Union. At its close he was appointed consul at Cyprus, a position of no pecuniary attraction, but I presume that the new consul had in view the explorations which have given his name such honorable celebrity in both hemispheres.
The difficulties of his undertaking were many. He had to encounter at every step the jealousy of the Turkish government, and the fanaticism and superstition of the occupants of the soil. Archaeological researches are not easy in the East under the most favorable circumstances, and in places where the traces of ancient habitations are visible above ground, and ancient sites are known; but in Cyprus no ruins exist in sight to aid the explorer, and, with the exception of one or two localities, no names of ancient places are known to the present generation. But the consul was convinced that the great powers which had from age to age held Cyprus must have left some traces of their occupation, and that intelligent search would discover the ruins of the prosperous cities described by Strabo and mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy. Without other guides than the descriptions of these and other ancient writers, the consul began his search in 1867, and up to 1875 he had ascertained the exact sites of eleven ancient cities mentioned by Strabo and Ptolemy, most of which had ceased to exist before the Christian era, and none of which has left vestiges above the soil.
In the time of David and of Solomon the Phoenicians formed the largest portion of the population of the island; their royal cities of Paphos, Amathus, Carpassa, Citium, and Ammochosto, were in the most flourishing condition. Not a stone remained of them above ground; their sites were unknown in 1867.
When General di Cesnola had satisfied himself of the probable site of an ancient city or temple, it was difficult to obtain permission to dig, even with the authority of the Sultan's firman. He was obliged to wait for harvests to be gathered, in some cases, to take a lease of the ground; sometimes the religious fanaticism of the occupants could not be overcome, and his working parties were frequently beaten and driven away in his absence. But the consul exhibited tact, patience, energy, the qualities necessary, with knowledge, to a successful explorer. He evaded or cast down all obstacles.
In 1868 he discovered the necropoli of Ledra, Citium, and Idalium, and opened during three years in these localities over ten thousand tombs, bringing to light a mass of ancient objects of art which enable us to understand the customs, religion, and civilization of the earlier inhabitants. Idalium was famous of old as the place where Grecian pottery was first made, and fragments of it have been found from time to time on its site.
In 1869 and 1870 he surveyed Aphrodisium, in the northeastern part of the island, and ascertained, in the interior, the site of Golgos, a city known to have been in existence before the Trojan war. The disclosures at this place excited both the wonder and the incredulity of the civilized world, and it was not until the marvellous collection of the explorer was exhibited, partially in London, but fully in New York, that the vast importance of the labors of General di Cesnola began to be comprehended. In exploring the necropolis of Golgos, he came, a few feet below the soil, upon the remains of the temple of Venus, strewn with mutilated sculptures of the highest interest, supplying the missing link between Egyptian and Greek art, and indeed illustrating the artistic condition of most of the Mediterranean nations during the period from about 1200 to about 500 b. c. It would require too much space to tell how the British Museum missed and the Metropolitan of New York secured this first priceless “Cesnola Collection.” Suffice it to say, that it was sold to a generous citizen of New York, Mr. John Taylor Johnson, for fifty thousand dollars,—a sum which would not compensate the explorer for his time and labor, and would little more than repay his pecuniary outlay, which reached the amount of over sixty thousand dollars in 1875. But it was enough that the treasure was secured by his adopted country; the loss of it to the Old World, which was publicly called an “European misfortune,” was a piece of good fortune to the United States, which time will magnify.
From 1870 to 1872 the General's attention was directed to the southwestern portion of the island, and he laid open the necropoli of Marium, Paphos, Alamas, and Soli, and three ancient cities whose names are yet unknown. In 1873 he explored and traced the cities of Throni, Leucolla, and Arsinôe, and the necropoli of several towns still unknown. In 1874 and 1875 he brought to light the royal cities of Amathus and Curium, and located the little town of Kury.
It would not be possible here to enumerate all the objects of art or worship, and of domestic use, which these excavations have yielded. The statuary and the thousands of pieces of glass, some of them rivalling the most perfect Grecian shapes in form, and excelling the Venetian colors in the iridescence of age, perhaps attract most attention in the Metropolitan Museum. From the tombs were taken thousands of vases of earthenware, some in alabaster and bronze, statuettes in terra-cotta, arms, coins, scarabæi, cylinders, intaglios, cameos, gold ornaments, and mortuary steles. In the temples were brought to light inscriptions, bas-reliefs, architectural fragments, and statues of the different nations who have conquered and occupied the island. The inscriptions are in the Egyptian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Greek, and the Cypriote languages; the last-mentioned being, in the opinion of the explorer, an ancient Greek dialect.
At Curium, nineteen feet below the surface of the ground, were found the remains of the Temple of Apollo Hylates; the sculptures contained in it belong to the Greek period from 700 to 100 B.C. At Amathus some royal tombs were opened, and two marble sarcophagi of large dimensions, one of them intact, were discovered, which are historically important, and positive additions to the remains of the best Greek art.
After Golgos, Paleo Paphos yielded the most interesting treasures. Here existed a temple to the Paphian Venus, whose birthplace was in sight of its portals, famous throughout the East; devotees and pilgrims constantly resorted to it, as they do now to the shrines of Mecca and Jerusalem. Not only the maritime adventurers and traders from Asia Minor and the Grecian mainland crowded to the temple of this pleasing and fortunate goddess, and quitted their vows or propitiated her favor by gifts, but the religious or the superstitious from Persia and Assyria and farthest Egypt deposited there their votive offerings. The collector of a museum of antiquity that should illustrate the manners and religion of the thousand years before the Christian era could ask nothing better than these deposits of many races during many centuries in one place.
The excavations at Paphos were attended with considerable danger; more than once the workmen were obliged to flee to save their lives from the fanatic Moslems. The town, although it has lost its physical form, and even its name (its site is now called Baffo), retains the character of superstition it had when St. Paul found it expedient to darken the vision of Elymas there, as if a city, like a man, possessed a soul that outlives the body.
We spent the afternoon in examining the new collection of General di Cesnola, not so large as that in the Metropolitan Museum, but perhaps richer in some respects, particularly in iridescent glass.
In the summer of 1875, however, the labors of the indefatigable explorer were crowned with a discovery the riches of which cast into the shade the real or pretended treasures of the “House of Priam,”—a discovery not certainly of more value to art than those that preceded it, but well calculated to excite popular wonder. The finding of this subterranean hoard reads like an adventure of Aladdin.
In pursuing his researches at Curium, on the southwestern side of the island, General di Cesnola came upon the site of an ancient temple, and uncovered its broken mosaic pavement. Beneath this, and at the depth of twenty-five feet, he broke into a subterranean passage cut in the rock. This passage led to a door; no genie sat by it, but it was securely closed by a stone slab. When this was removed, a suite of four rooms was disclosed, but they were not immediately accessible; earth sifting through the roofs for ages had filled them, and it required the labor of a month to clean out the chambers. Imagine the feverish enthusiasm of the explorer as he slowly penetrated this treasure-house, where every stroke of the pick disclosed the gleam of buried treasure! In the first room were found only gold objects; in the second only silver and silver-gilt ornaments and utensils; in the third alabasters, terra-cottas, vases, and groups of figures; in the fourth bronzes, and nothing else. It is the opinion of the discoverer that these four rooms were the depositories where the crafty priests and priestesses of the old temple used to hide their treasures during times of war or sudden invasion. I cannot but think that the mysterious subterranean passages and chambers in the ancient temples of Egypt served a similar purpose. The treasure found scattered in these rooms did not appear to be the whole belonging to the temple, but only a part, left perhaps in the confusion of a hasty flight.
Among the articles found in the first room, dumped in a heap in the middle (as if they had been suddenly, in a panic, stripped from the altar in the temple and cast into a place of concealment), were a gold cup covered with Egyptian embossed work, and two bracelets of pure gold weighing over three pounds, inscribed with the name of “Etevander, King of Paphos.” This king lived in 635 B.C., and in 620 b. c. paid tribute to the Assyrian monarch Assurbanapal (Sardanapalus), as is recorded on an Assyrian tablet now in the British Museum. There were also many gold necklaces, bracelets, ear-rings, finger-rings, brooches, seals, armlets, etc., in all four hundred and eighty gold articles.
In the silver-room, arranged on the benches at the sides, were vases, bottles, cups, bowls, bracelets, finger-rings, ear-rings, seals, etc. One of the most curious and valuable objects is a silver-gilt bowl, having upon it very fine embossed Egyptian work, and evidently of high antiquity.
In the third room of vases and terra-cottas were some most valuable and interesting specimens. The bronze-room yielded several high candelabra, lamp-holders, lamps, statuettes, bulls'-heads, bowls, vases, jugs, patera, fibula, rings, bracelets, mirrors, etc. Nearly all the objects in the four rooms seem to have been “votive offerings,” and testify a pagan devotion to the gods not excelled by Christian generosity to the images and shrines of modern worship. The inscriptions betoken the votive character of these treasures; that upon the heavy gold armlets is in the genitive case, and would be literally translated “Etevandri Regis Paplii,” the words “offering of” being understood to precede it.
I confess that the glitter of these treasures, and the glamour of these associations with the ingenious people of antiquity, transformed the naked island of Cyprus, as we lay off it in the golden sunset, into a region of all possibilities, and I longed to take my Strabo and my spade and wander off prospecting for its sacred placers. It seemed to me, when we weighed anchor at seven o'clock, that we were sailing away from subterranean passages stuffed with the curious treasures of antiquity, from concealed chambers in which one, if he could only remove the stone slab of the door, would pick up the cunning work of the Phoenician jewellers, the barbarous ornaments of the Assyrians, the conceits in gold and silver of the most ancient of peoples, the Egyptians.