Sketches and Travels in London Read online

shirts, who came towards the boat, straddling through the water

  with outstretched arms, grinning and yelling their Arab invitations

  to mount their shoulders. I think these fellows frightened the

  ladies still more than the rocks and the surf; but the poor

  creatures were obliged to submit; and, trembling, were accommodated

  somehow upon the mahogany backs of these ruffians, carried through

  the shallows, and flung up to a ledge before the city gate, where

  crowds more of dark people were swarming, howling after their

  fashion. The gentlemen, meanwhile, were having arguments about the

  eternal backsheesh with the roaring Arab boatmen; and I recall with

  wonder and delight especially, the curses and screams of one small

  and extremely loud-lunged fellow, who expressed discontent at

  receiving a five, instead of a six-piastre piece. But how is one

  to know, without possessing the language? Both coins are made of a

  greasy pewtery sort of tin; and I thought the biggest was the most

  valuable: but the fellow showed a sense of their value, and a

  disposition seemingly to cut any man's throat who did not

  understand it. Men's throats have been cut for a less difference

  before now.

  Being cast upon the ledge, the first care of our gallantry was to

  look after the ladies, who were scared and astonished by the naked

  savage brutes, who were shouldering the poor things to and fro; and

  bearing them through these and a dark archway, we came into a

  street crammed with donkeys and their packs and drivers, and

  towering camels with leering eyes looking into the second-floor

  rooms, and huge splay feet, through which mesdames et

  mesdemoiselles were to be conducted. We made a rush at the first

  open door, and passed comfortably under the heels of some horses

  gathered under the arched court, and up a stone staircase, which

  turned out to be that of the Russian consul's house. His people

  welcomed us most cordially to his abode, and the ladies and the

  luggage (objects of our solicitude) were led up many stairs and

  across several terraces to a most comfortable little room, under a

  dome of its own, where the representative of Russia sat. Women

  with brown faces and draggle-tailed coats and turbans, and

  wondering eyes, and no stays, and blue beads and gold coins hanging

  round their necks, came to gaze, as they passed, upon the fair neat

  Englishwomen. Blowsy black cooks puffing over fires and the

  strangest pots and pans on the terraces, children paddling about in

  long striped robes, interrupted their sports or labours to come and

  stare; and the consul, in his cool domed chamber, with a lattice

  overlooking the sea, with clean mats, and pictures of the Emperor,

  the Virgin, and St. George, received the strangers with smiling

  courtesies, regaling the ladies with pomegranates and sugar, the

  gentlemen with pipes of tobacco, whereof the fragrant tubes were

  three yards long.

  The Russian amenities concluded, we left the ladies still under the

  comfortable cool dome of the Russian consulate, and went to see our

  own representative. The streets of the little town are neither

  agreeable to horse nor foot travellers. Many of the streets are

  mere flights of rough steps, leading abruptly into private houses:

  you pass under archways and passages numberless; a steep dirty

  labyrinth of stone-vaulted stables and sheds occupies the ground-

  floor of the habitations; and you pass from flat to flat of the

  terraces; at various irregular corners of which, little chambers,

  with little private domes, are erected, and the people live

  seemingly as much upon the terrace as in the room.

  We found the English consul in a queer little arched chamber, with

  a strange old picture of the King's arms to decorate one side of

  it: and here the consul, a demure old man, dressed in red flowing

  robes, with a feeble janissary bearing a shabby tin-mounted staff,

  or mace, to denote his office, received such of our nation as came

  to him for hospitality. He distributed pipes and coffee to all and

  every one; he made us a present of his house and all his beds for

  the night, and went himself to lie quietly on the terrace; and for

  all this hospitality he declined to receive any reward from us, and

  said he was but doing his duty in taking us in. This worthy man, I

  thought, must doubtless be very well paid by our Government for

  making such sacrifices; but it appears that he does not get one

  single farthing, and that the greater number of our Levant consuls

  are paid at a similar rate of easy remuneration. If we have bad

  consular agents, have we a right to complain? If the worthy

  gentlemen cheat occasionally, can we reasonably be angry? But in

  travelling through these countries, English people, who don't take

  into consideration the miserable poverty and scanty resources of

  their country, and are apt to brag and be proud of it, have their

  vanity hurt by seeing the representatives of every nation but their

  own well and decently maintained, and feel ashamed at sitting down

  under the shabby protection of our mean consular flag.

  The active young men of our party had been on shore long before us,

  and seized upon all the available horses in the town; but we relied

  upon a letter from Halil Pasha, enjoining all governors and pashas

  to help us in all ways: and hearing we were the bearers of this

  document, the cadi and vice-governor of Jaffa came to wait upon the

  head of our party; declared that it was his delight and honour to

  set eyes upon us; that he would do everything in the world to serve

  us; that there were no horses, unluckily, but he would send and get

  some in three hours; and so left us with a world of grinning bows

  and many choice compliments from one side to the other, which came

  to each filtered through an obsequious interpreter. But hours

  passed, and the clatter of horses' hoofs was not heard. We had our

  dinner of eggs and flaps of bread, and the sunset gun fired: we

  had our pipes and coffee again, and the night fell. Is this man

  throwing dirt upon us? we began to think. Is he laughing at our

  beards, and are our mothers' graves ill-treated by this smiling

  swindling cadi? We determined to go and seek in his own den this

  shuffling dispenser of infidel justice. This time we would be no

  more bamboozled by compliments; but we would use the language of

  stern expostulation, and, being roused, would let the rascal hear

  the roar of the indignant British lion; so we rose up in our wrath.

  The poor consul got a lamp for us with a bit of wax-candle, such as

  I wonder his means could afford; the shabby janissary marched ahead

  with his tin mace; the two laquais-de-place, that two of our

  company had hired, stepped forward, each with an old sabre, and we

  went clattering and stumbling down the streets of the town, in

  order to seize upon this cadi in his own divan. I was glad, for my

  part (though outwardly majestic and indignant in demeanour), that

  the horses had not come, and that we had a chance of seeing this

  l
ittle queer glimpse of Oriental life, which the magistrate's

  faithlessness procured for us.

  As piety forbids the Turks to eat during the weary daylight hours

  of the Ramazan, they spend their time profitably in sleeping until

  the welcome sunset, when the town wakens: all the lanterns are

  lighted up; all the pipes begin to puff, and the narghiles to

  bubble; all the sour-milk-and-sherbet-men begin to yell out the

  excellence of their wares; all the frying-pans in the little dirty

  cookshops begin to friz, and the pots to send forth a steam: and

  through this dingy, ragged, bustling, beggarly, cheerful scene, we

  began now to march towards the Bow Street of Jaffa. We bustled

  through a crowded narrow archway which led to the cadi's police-

  office, entered the little room, atrociously perfumed with musk,

  and passing by the rail-board, where the common sort stood, mounted

  the stage upon which his worship and friends sat, and squatted down

  on the divans in stern and silent dignity. His honour ordered us

  coffee, his countenance evidently showing considerable alarm. A

  black slave, whose duty seemed to be to prepare this beverage in a

  side-room with a furnace, prepared for each of us about a

  teaspoonful of the liquor: his worship's clerk, I presume, a tall

  Turk of a noble aspect, presented it to us; and having lapped up

  the little modicum of drink, the British lion began to speak.

  All the other travellers (said the lion with perfect reason) have

  good horses and are gone; the Russians have got horses, the

  Spaniards have horses, the English have horses, but we, we vizirs

  in our country, coming with letters of Halil Pasha, are laughed at,

  spit upon! Are Halil Pasha's letters dirt, that you attend to them

  in this way? Are British lions dogs that you treat them so?--and

  so on. This speech with many variations was made on our side for a

  quarter of an hour; and we finally swore that unless the horses

  were forthcoming we would write to Halil Pasha the next morning,

  and to His Excellency the English Minister at the Sublime Porte.

  Then you should have heard the chorus of Turks in reply: a dozen

  voices rose up from the divan, shouting, screaming, ejaculating,

  expectorating (the Arabic spoken language seems to require a great

  employment of the two latter oratorical methods), and uttering what

  the meek interpreter did not translate to us, but what I dare say

  were by no means complimentary phrases towards us and our nation.

  Finally, the palaver concluded by the cadi declaring that by the

  will of Heaven horses should be forthcoming at three o'clock in the

  morning; and that if not, why, then, we might write to Halil Pasha.

  This posed us, and we rose up and haughtily took leave. I should

  like to know that fellow's real opinion of us lions very much: and

  especially to have had the translation of the speeches of a huge-

  breeched turbaned roaring infidel, who looked and spoke as if he

  would have liked to fling us all into the sea, which was hoarsely

  murmuring under our windows an accompaniment to the concert within.

  We then marched through the bazaars, that were lofty and grim, and

  pretty full of people. In a desolate broken building, some

  hundreds of children were playing and singing; in many corners sat

  parties over their water-pipes, one of whom every now and then

  would begin twanging out a most queer chant; others there were

  playing at casino--a crowd squatted around the squalling gamblers,

  and talking and looking on with eager interest. In one place of

  the bazaar we found a hundred people at least listening to a story-

  teller who delivered his tale with excellent action, voice, and

  volubility: in another they were playing a sort of thimble-rig

  with coffee-cups, all intent upon the game, and the player himself

  very wild lest one of our party, who had discovered where the pea

  lay, should tell the company. The devotion and energy with which

  all these pastimes were pursued, struck me as much as anything.

  These people have been playing thimble-rig and casino; that story-

  teller has been shouting his tale of Antar for forty years; and

  they are just as happy with this amusement now as when first they

  tried it. Is there no ennui in the Eastern countries, and are

  blue-devils not allowed to go abroad there?

  From the bazaars we went to see the house of Mustapha, said to be

  the best house and the greatest man of Jaffa. But the great man

  had absconded suddenly, and had fled into Egypt. The Sultan had

  made a demand upon him for sixteen thousand purses, 80,000l.--

  Mustapha retired--the Sultan pounced down upon his house, and his

  goods, his horses and his mules. His harem was desolate. Mr.

  Milnes could have written six affecting poems, had he been with us,

  on the dark loneliness of that violated sanctuary. We passed from

  hall to hall, terrace to terrace--a few fellows were slumbering on

  the naked floors, and scarce turned as we went by them. We entered

  Mustapha's particular divan--there was the raised floor, but no

  bearded friends squatting away the night of Ramazan; there was the

  little coffee furnace, but where was the slave and the coffee and

  the glowing embers of the pipes? Mustapha's favourite passages

  from the Koran were still painted up on the walls, but nobody was

  the wiser for them. We walked over a sleeping negro, and opened

  the windows which looked into his gardens. The horses and donkeys,

  the camels and mules were picketed there below, but where is the

  said Mustapha? From the frying-pan of the Porte, has he not fallen

  into the fire of Mehemet Ali? And which is best, to broil or to

  fry? If it be but to read the "Arabian Nights" again on getting

  home, it is good to have made this little voyage and seen these

  strange places and faces.

  Then we went out through the arched lowering gateway of the town

  into the plain beyond, and that was another famous and brilliant

  scene of the "Arabian Nights." The heaven shone with a marvellous

  brilliancy--the plain disappeared far in the haze--the towers and

  battlements of the town rose black against the sky--old outlandish

  trees rose up here and there--clumps of camels were couched in the

  rare herbage--dogs were baying about--groups of men lay sleeping

  under their haicks round about--round about the tall gates many

  lights were twinkling--and they brought us water-pipes and sherbet-

  -and we wondered to think that London was only three weeks off.

  Then came the night at the consul's. The poor demure old gentleman

  brought out his mattresses; and the ladies sleeping round on the

  divans, we lay down quite happy; and I for my part intended to make

  as delightful dreams as Alnaschar; but--lo, the delicate mosquito

  sounded his horn: the active flea jumped up, and came to feast on

  Christian flesh (the Eastern flea bites more bitterly than the most

  savage bug in Christendom), and the bug--oh, the accursed! Why was

  he made? What duty has that infamous ruffian to perform in the

  world, save to make people wretched? On
ly Bulwer in his most

  pathetic style could describe the miseries of that night--the

  moaning, the groaning, the cursing, the tumbling, the blistering,

  the infamous despair and degradation! I heard all the cocks in

  Jaffa crow; the children crying, and the mothers hushing them; the

  donkeys braying fitfully in the moonlight; at last I heard the

  clatter of hoofs below, and the hailing of men. It was three

  o'clock, the horses were actually come; nay, there were camels

  likewise; asses and mules, pack-saddles and drivers, all bustling

  together under the moonlight in the cheerful street--and the first

  night in Syria was over.

  CHAPTER XII: FROM JAFFA TO JERUSALEM

  It took an hour or more to get our little caravan into marching

  order, to accommodate all the packs to the horses, the horses to

  the riders; to see the ladies comfortably placed in their litter,

  with a sleek and large black mule fore and aft, a groom to each

  mule, and a tall and exceedingly good-natured and mahogany-coloured

  infidel to walk by the side of the carriage, to balance it as it

  swayed to and fro, and to offer his back as a step to the inmates

  whenever they were minded to ascend or alight. These three

  fellows, fasting through the Ramazan, and over as rough a road, for

  the greater part, as ever shook mortal bones, performed their

  fourteen hours' walk of near forty miles with the most admirable

  courage, alacrity, and good-humour. They once or twice drank water

  on the march, and so far infringed the rule; but they refused all

  bread or edible refreshment offered to them, and tugged on with an

  energy that the best camel, and I am sure the best Christian, might

  envy. What a lesson of good-humoured endurance it was to certain

  Pall Mall Sardanapaluses, who grumble if club sofa cushions are not

  soft enough!

  If I could write sonnets at leisure, I would like to chronicle in

  fourteen lines my sensations on finding myself on a high Turkish

  saddle, with a pair of fire-shovel stirrups and worsted reins, red

  padded saddle-cloth, and innumerable tags, fringes, glass-beads,

  ends of rope, to decorate the harness of the horse, the gallant

  steed on which I was about to gallop into Syrian life. What a

  figure we cut in the moonlight, and how they would have stared in

  the Strand! Ay, or in Leicestershire, where I warrant such a horse

  and rider are not often visible! The shovel stirrups are deucedly

  short; the clumsy leathers cut the shins of some equestrians

  abominably; you sit over your horse as it were on a tower, from

  which the descent would be very easy, but for the big peak of the

  saddle. A good way for the inexperienced is to put a stick or

  umbrella across the saddle peak again, so that it is next to

  impossible to go over your horse's neck. I found this a vast

  comfort in going down the hills, and recommend it conscientiously

  to other dear simple brethren of the city.

  Peaceful men, we did not ornament our girdles with pistols,

  yataghans, &c., such as some pilgrims appeared to bristle all over

  with; and as a lesson to such rash people, a story may be told

  which was narrated to us at Jerusalem, and carries a wholesome

  moral. The Honourable Hoggin Armer, who was lately travelling in

  the East, wore about his stomach two brace of pistols, of such

  exquisite finish and make, that a Sheikh, in the Jericho country,

  robbed him merely for the sake of the pistols. I don't know

  whether he has told the story to his friends at home.

  Another story about Sheikhs may here be told a propos. That

  celebrated Irish Peer, Lord Oldgent (who was distinguished in the

  Buckinghamshire Dragoons), having paid a sort of black mail to the

  Sheikh of Jericho country, was suddenly set upon by another Sheikh,

  who claimed to be the real Jerichonian governor; and these twins

  quarrelled over the body of Lord Oldgent, as the widows for the

  innocent baby before Solomon. There was enough for both--but these

  digressions are interminable.

  The party got under way at near four o'clock: the ladies in the