The Ship Dwellers Part 17

He was burned on a hill just outside the city on the Ephesus road, and his tomb, guarded by two n.o.ble cypresses, overlooks the sea.

But it is busy, bustling Smyrna that, after Ephesus, most attracted us.

It is more truly the Orient than anything we have seen. Fully as picturesque as Constantinople in costume, it is brighter, fresher, healthier-looking, and, more than all, its crowded streets are perpetually full of mighty camel trains swinging in from the deeper East, loaded with all the wares and fabrics of our dreams. Those camels are monstrously large--twice the size of any circus camels that come to America, and with their great panniers they fill an Oriental street from side to side.

They move, too, and other things had better keep out of the way when a camel train heaves in sight if they want to remain undamaged. I was examining some things outside of a bazaar when suddenly I thought I had been hit by a planet. I thought so because of the positive manner of my disaster and the number of constellations I saw. But it was only one side of a loaded camel that had annihilated me, and the camel was moving straight ahead without the slightest notion that anything had interfered with its progress.

It hadn't, as a matter of fact. Nothing short of a stone wall interrupts a camel--a Smyrna camel--when he's out for business and under a full head of steam. Vehicles and other things turn down another street when there is a camel train coming. You may squat down, as these Orientals do, and get below the danger line, for a camel is not likely to step on you, but his load is another matter--you must look out for that yourself.

I was fascinated by the camel trains; they are a part of the East I hardly expected to find. I thought their day was about over. Nothing of the sort. The camel trains, in fact, own Smyrna, and give it its commercial importance. They bring the great bulk of merchandise--rugs, mattings, nuts, dried fruits, spices, and all the rare native handiwork from far dim interiors that railroads will not reach in a hundred years.

They come swinging out of Kurdistan--from Ispahan and from Khiva; they cross the burning desert of Kara Koom.

A camel train can run cheaper than the railway kind. A railway requires coal and wood for fuel. A camel would like those things also. But he is not particular--he will accept whatever comes along. He will eat anything a goat can, and he would eat the goat, too, if permitted--horns and all. Consequently, he arrives at Smyrna fit and well fed, ready for the thousand miles or so of return trip at a moment's notice.

They run these camel trains in sections--about six camels in each. An Arab mounted on a donkey that wears a string of blue beads for luck leads each section, and the forward camel wears against his shoulder a bell. It is a musical compound affair--one bell inside the other with a blue bead in the last one to keep off the evil eye. I had already acquired some of the blue strings of donkey beads, and I made up my mind now to have a camel bell.

By-and-by, at the entrance of a bazaar, I saw one. It was an old one--worn with years of chafing against the shoulder muscle of many a camel that had followed the long track from the heart of Asia over swamp and steep and across burning sands. At the base of the outer bell was a band of Arabic characters--prayers, no doubt, from the Koran, for the safety of the caravan. I would never leave Smyrna without that bell.

However, one must be cautious. I gave it an indifferent jingle as I pa.s.sed in and began to examine other things. A murmuring, insinuating Moslem was at my elbow pus.h.i.+ng forward the gaudy bits of embroidery and cheaply chased weapons in which I pretended an interest. I dallied and priced, and he grew weary and discouraged. Finally, hesitating at the doorway, I touched the bell again, scarcely noticing it.

"How much?"

"Sixtin franc--very chip."

My impulse was to fling the money at him and grab the treasure before he changed his mind. But we do not do these things--not any more--we have acquired education. Besides, we have grown professionally proud of our bargains.

"Ho! Sixteen francs! You mean six francs-- I give you five."

"No--no--sixtin franc--sixtin! What you think? Here--fine!" He had the precious thing down and was jingling it. Its music fairly enthralled me.

But I refused to take it in my hands--if I did I should surrender.

"See," he continued, pointing to the inscription. "Oh, be-eautiful.

Here, fiftin franc--three dollar!"

He pushed it toward me. I pretended to be interested in a wretchedly new and cheaply woven rug. I had to, to keep steadfast. I waved him off.

"No--no; five francs--no more!"

He hung up the bell and I started to go. He seized it and ran after me.

"Here, mister--fourtin franc--give me!"

"Five francs!--no more."

"No, no, mister--twelve franc--las' price--ver' las' price. Here, see!"

He jingled the bell a little. If he did that once more I was gone at any price.

"_Five francs_," I said, with heavy decision. "I'll give you five francs for it--no more."

I faced resolutely around--as resolutely as I could--and pretended really to start.

"Here, mister--_ten franc--ten_! Mister--mister!"

He followed me, but fortunately he had hung up the bell and couldn't jingle it. I was at least two steps away.

"Eight franc, mister--please--I lose money--I make nothing--mister--seven! seven franc!"

"Five--five francs." I called it back over my shoulder--indifferently.

"Mister! mister! Six! six franc!"

Confound him! He got hold of that bell again and gave it a jingle. I handed him the six francs. If he had only left it alone, I think I could have held out.

Still, as I look at it now, hanging here in my state-room, and think of the long lonely nights and the days of sun and storm it has seen, of the far journeys it has travelled in its weary way down the years to me, I do not so much mind that final franc after all.

XXIII

INTO SYRIA

I picked up a cold that rainy day at Ephesus. Not an ordinary sniffling cold, but a wrenching, racking cold that made every bone and every tooth jump, and set my eyes to throbbing like the s.h.i.+p's engines. I felt sure I was going to die when we arrived in the harbor of Beirut, and decided that it would be better to die on deck; so I crawled out and dressed, and crept into a steamer-chair, and tried to appreciate the beautiful city that had arisen out of the sea--the upper gateway to Syria.

The Patriarch came along, highly elate. This was where he belonged; this was home; this was Phoenicia itself! Fifteen hundred years B.C. Beirut had been a great Phoenician seaport, he said, and most of the rare handiwork mentioned in ancient history and mythology had been wrought in this neighborhood. The silver vase of Achilles, the garment which Hecuba gave to Minerva, and the gold-edged bowl of Telemachus were all Phoenician, according to the Patriarch, who hinted that he rather hoped to find some such things at Beirut; also some of the celebrated Phoinus, or purple dye, which gave the tribe its name. I said no doubt he would, and, being sick and suffering, added that he might dye himself dead for all I cared, which was a poor joke--besides being an afterthought, when the Patriarch was well out of range.

I had no idea of going ash.o.r.e. I was miserably sorry, too, for I was stuffed with guide-book knowledge about Baalbec and Damascus, and had looked forward to that side-trip from the beginning. I knew how Moses felt on Mount Pisgah now, and I was getting so sorry for myself I could hardly stand it, when suddenly the bugle blew the sharp call, "All ash.o.r.e!" Laura, age fourteen, came racing down the deck, and before I knew it I had my bag--packed the night before--and was going down the s.h.i.+p's ladder into a boat, quarrelling meantime with one of the Reprobates as to whether Beirut was the Berothai of the Old Testament, where David smote Hadadezer and took "exceeding much bra.s.s," or the Berytus of the Roman conquest. It was of no consequence, but it gave life a new purpose, for I wanted to prove that he was wrong. Wherefore I forgot I was going to die, and presently we were ash.o.r.e and in a railway-station where there was a contiguous little train ready to start for Baalbec and Damascus, with a lot of men selling oranges, of which Laura and I bought a basketful for a franc, climbed aboard, the bell rang--and the funeral was postponed.

The road followed the sea for a distance, and led through fields of flowers. I had never seen wildflowers like those. They were the crimson anemone mingled riotously with a gorgeous yellow flower--I did not learn its name. The ground was literally ma.s.sed with them. Never was such a prodigality of bloom.

From Beirut to Baalbec is only about sixty miles; but it takes pretty much all day to get there, for the Lebanon Mountains lie between, and this is a deliberate land. We did not mind. There was plenty to see all along, and our leisurely train gave us ample time.

There were the little stations, where we stopped anywhere from five to fifteen minutes, and got out and mingled with the curious rural life; there were the hills, that had little soil on them, but were terraced and fruitful--some of them to the very summit; there was the old Damascus road, winding with us, or above us, or below us--the road over which Abraham may have travelled, and Adam, too, for that matter, and Eve, when they were sent out of their happy garden. Eden lay not far from here, and the exiles would be likely to come this way, I think. We saw plenty of groups that might have been Abraham and his household, or any of the patriarchs. I did not notice any that suggested Adam and Eve.

The road had another interest for me. Forty-two years ago, before the railroad came this way, the _Quaker City_ pilgrims toiled up through the summer heat, setting out on the "long trip" through the full length of Palestine. n.o.body makes it in summer now. Few make it at all, except by rail and in carriages, with good hostelries at the end of every stage.

Still, I am glad those first pilgrims made it, or we should not have had that wonderful picture of Syrian summer-time, nor of "Jericho" and "Baalbec." Those two horses are worth knowing--in literature--and I tried to imagine that little early party of excursionists climbing the steep path to Palestine on their sorry nags.

It is warm in Syria, even now, but we were not too warm, riding; besides, we were going steadily uphill, and by-and-by somebody pointed out a white streak along the mountain-top, and it was snow. Then, after a long time, we got to a place where the vegetation was very scanty and there were no more terraced hills, but only barren peaks and sand, where the wind blew cold and colder, and presently the snow lay right along our way. We had reached the highest point then--five thousand feet above the sea. In five hours we had come thirty-six miles--thirty-five in length and one straight up in the air. Somebody said:

"Look, there is Mount Hermon!"

And, sure enough, away to the south, though nigh upon us it seemed--so close that one might put out his hand and touch it, almost--there rose a stately, snow-clad elevation which, once seen, dominated the barren landscape. It was so pure white against the blue--so impressive in its ma.s.sive dignity--the eye followed it across every vista, longed for it when immediate peaks rose between, welcomed it when time after time it rose grandly into view.

With an alt.i.tude of between nine and ten thousand feet, Mount Hermon is the highest mountain in Syria, I believe--certainly the most important.

The Bible is full of it. The Amorites and the Hivites, and most of the other tribes that Joshua buried or persuaded to go away, had their lands under Mount Hermon (all of them in sight of it), and that grand old hill looked down on Joshua's slaughter of men and women and little children, and perhaps thought it a puny performance to be undertaken in the name, and by the direction, of G.o.d.

Joshua established Mount Hermon as the northern boundary of Palestine, and from whatever point the Israelite turned his face northward, he saw its white summit against the blue. It became symbolic of grandeur, stability, purity, and peace. It was to one of its three peaks that Christ came when, with Peter, James, and John, He withdrew to "an high mountain apart" for the Transfiguration. So it became sanctified as a sort of holy judgment-seat.[5]

Down the Lebanon slope and across the valley to Reyak, a Syrian village in the sand, at the foot of the Anti-Lebanon range. Reyak is the parting of the ways--the railways--that lead to Damascus and Baalbec, and there is a lunch-room there--a good one by Turkish standards. It was our first complete introduction to Turkish food--that is a diet of nuts, dates, oranges, and curious meat and vegetable preparations--and I ate a good deal for a dying man. Then I went outside to look at the population, and wonder what these people, who scratch a living out of the sand and stone barrens, would do in a fertile country like America. They would consider it heaven, I thought.