Thomas Wallace Knox

“ For days and days he has seen no trees or other green things, water has been scanty and poor, and he must take great precautions to save himself from perishing by thirst. Is it any wonder that when he comes to Damascus, in the midst of its luxuriant gardens, and sees the fountains flowing at every street-corner and sparkling in every dwelling, he must think he has entered Paradise, or will doubt whether he is awake or dreaming? ”

“ On the land there were trains of stately camels, and on the water the boats of the natives ploughed slowly along, many of them laden till their gunwales were dangerously near the water. As the boat steamed onward, the Citadel of Cairo, with the slender minarets of the Mosque of Mohammed Ali, faded away in the distance, the broad valley became more and more enclosed, the hills seemed to shut in upon the river, and when the sun went down the great pyramids were little more than specks on the horizon, and just visible through the palm-trees. ”

“ DESERT SCENE IN EASTERN EGYPT.
After a brief halt at the station the train moved off in the direction of Cairo, and for an hour or more the views from the windows of the railway-carriage were remarkable in their character. On one side of the train the naked desert filled the picture, with its endless stretch of sand; on the other the gardens on the banks of the Fresh-Water Canal were marvels of luxuriance. The richest soil in the world lay side by side with the most desolate, and our friends agreed that they had never seen so marked a contrast during a ride on a railway train. ”

“ The air grows warmer, the clouds that were hovering about the mountain-top are breaking, and the sunlight comes pouring through the rifts, warming our shivering frames and gilding the rocks with a tint of gold. The spots of green on the ground below us grow every minute till they develop into villages and orchards, and one, clinging at the edge of the sea, is larger than any of the others. The driver waves his hand toward this spot and pronounces the word 'Beyroot.' There lies the city where our wanderings in Palestine and Syria will come to an end. ”

“ How it has suffered in the five thousand years it has looked out on the unchanging landscape of Egypt! Large portions of the rock have been hewn away, or have broken off by the action of the elements on the soft limestone; but, worse yet, the great solemn face has been wantonly ruined by the hand of man. An Arab fanatic tried to destroy it, then the Mamelukes used it for a target for rifle practice, several explorers have dug into it, and the Arabs of the present day have no hesitation in breaking off pieces of the head for any one who will pay for them. ”

“ We took our lunch in the great hall of the temple, and it was an odd sight to see a group of Americans, English, and other modern people seated among the columns of this ancient edifice, engaged in picking the flesh from the bones of chickens, or devouring sandwiches, or slices of cold beef. Doctor Bronson leaned against one of the columns, and his hunger made him quite forget that his shoulders pressed upon the feet of a sculptured king, who had been patient and chickenless for many hundred years, and was totally unmoved by the incidents of modern days. ”

“ No care is taken of the few cedars that remain; visitors cut and hack them as much as they please. The Arabs take the branches for fuel, and the goats nibble the young shoots so that no new trees can grow. In a hundred years, or perhaps less, the famous cedars of Lebanon will have ceased to exist.
"Now we are on the summit of Lebanon, five thousand six hundred feet above the level of the Mediterranean! The sea is far below us, its dark-blue surface filling the western horizon, and between us and the water is the slope of Lebanon and the belt of coast. ”

“ They met a few natives on their way to the city, with trains of donkeys laden with vegetables and grain for sale in the markets of Jerusalem, and in one place they were crowded against a rough wall by a line of camels that kept the road to themselves in the manner for which those animals are famous. The road, though used for centuries, is impassable for wheeled vehicles, and the beasts of burden that traverse it follow in the footsteps of those who preceded them ages and ages ago. ”

“ They were all, to judge from their dress, inhabitants of Jerusalem, and not, as often happens, pilgrims from distant lands. One of the gentlemen connected with the Palestine Exploration Fund told us that he had seen two or three hundred Jews at the Wailing-place on a single occasion, and that they came from all the countries of Europe. In some places the stones have been worn smooth by the kisses of devout lips, and there is no doubt that the majority of those who come here to mourn are earnest in the expression of their grief. ”

“ It is impossible to describe, and so we will not attempt a description; the play of light and the darkness of the shadows are surpassingly beautiful, and some of the columns and broken walls seem even more gigantic than at other times. There is an Arab village close to the ruins, but not within the temple itself; the only inhabitants are owls and jackals, who resent your intrusion with their peculiar cries, and seem to consider themselves the rightful heirs of the kings so long dead and gone. ”

“ When you think of an Oriental shop you must not picture to yourself an establishment like those on Broadway or other great streets in New York, where dozens or hundreds of clerks are employed to wait on customers, and where the population of a small town might all be attended to at once. A shop in Cairo or any other city of the East is generally about six feet square, and often not so large, and it requires only one man to tend it, for the simple reason that he can reach everything without moving from his place, and there would be no room for any one else. ”

“ A dozen half-naked children rushed from the tents, and shouted "hadji! hadji!" (pilgrims! pilgrims!) —several dogs barked, and there was a good deal of commotion in the camp. Some of the children came to the path in front of the travellers, and demanded backsheesh with an insolent air; nobody paid any attention (or money) to them, and as none of the party wished to stop among these ill-tempered nomads, the camp was soon left behind. The most dignified of the Bedouins was an old man, apparently the sheik or chief, who sat in front of the tents as immovable as a statue. ”

“ So ends our sight-seeing at Thebes, as we leave to-morrow morning to continue our journey up the Nile. We have had no accident beyond a few slight tumbles and bruises, and have obtained a store of information that will severely tax our memories to retain. Let us hope that we can remember it, and be able to impart our knowledge to others; if we can, we shall be rewarded a thousand times over for the trouble we have taken, and for the fatigues of our visits to the temples and tombs of this famous city of thirty centuries ago. ”

“ You may sit at the dividing line, and while you rest one hand on the dark green carpet of grass growing from the black alluvium, you can gather the gray sand with the other. It is the perfection of fertility on one side, and the perfection of desolation on the other. Probably there is not, nor can there be, anywhere else in the world a sharper contrast in a picture drawn by nature. ”

“ As a general thing a tradesman endeavors to set up his business in a block or street where there is no one in the same line, and it is only in rare instances that you see two establishments of the same kind side by side. But in the East all the men in a certain line of trade gather together, and out of this tendency we have the bazaars of Cairo and Constantinople. Suppose you go out in New York or Chicago in search of a book, a coat, a pair of shoes, a piece of silk, some perfumes, and an article of jewellery. ”

“ And what an expression about the eyes!"
"The eyes are unequalled in any modern statue," said the Doctor. "You observe that they are set in rims of bronze, which serve for eyelids; the eye itself is made of opaque quartz, like ground glass, and there is a piece of rock-crystal in the centre, which forms the pupil. If you look closely you see a glittering point below the crystal, which makes the eye sparkle as though its owner were about to smile. There is nothing of modern times that equals it." ”

“ A great deal of nonsense has been written about the noble character of the Bedouin Arabs, their bravery, scrupulous honor, and other commendable qualities. Of course there are exceptions, and it would be strange indeed if a people numbering many thousands should all be rascals. But, taken as a whole, the Bedouins are a race of thieves, and their few redeeming traits are not sufficient to offset their bad qualities. ”

“ The best point for the view was said to be Neby Ismail, and we certainly have seen nothing finer in all Palestine. The hills are less barren than in most other parts of the country that we have visited, and the plains and valleys present an appearance of fertility. Mounts Tabor, Hermon, and Carmel were in the picture, and beyond the latter we had a glimpse of the blue waters of the Mediterranean bounding the western horizon. Then we looked down on the Plain of Esdraelon and on the upper Valley of the Jordan, and lingered as long as time would permit. ”

“ The tombs are cut with pillars and vaulted roofs, in imitation of buildings; they belong to the eleventh and twelfth dynasties of ancient Egypt, and are therefore older than the tombs and temples of Thebes, but more modern than the Pyramids of Sakkara and Gizeh. They were made for the resting-places of kings and priests, but were rifled of their contents centuries ago; their chief value at present is in the sculptures, which represent many of the trades and occupations of the ancient Egyptians, and thus throw a vivid light on their daily life. ”

“ We gave a little backsheesh to the gate-keeper, and he allowed us to go to the top, where we had a view of the nearest part of the city, and of the heaps of rubbish lying outside the gates. There were several wolfish-looking dogs prowling among the dust-heaps, and they growled as they caught sight of us, and saw that we were not natives. The dogs of Cairo have a great hatred of foreigners, as we shall have occasion to say by-and-by. ”

“ All the space included within the walls is covered with ruins of a most magnificent architecture, and it is not difficult to imagine that you are in the heart of a great city of past ages, rather than in the ruins of a single building. ”

“ AN ANCIENT PLOUGH.
"That the plough is the same here to-day that it was three thousand years ago, we have proof in the pictures of agriculture on the walls of the tombs at Thebes. The ancient implement is identical with the modern one, the propelling force is the same, and the principal difference we can see is in the costume of the ploughman."
"The plough only scratches the earth," said Fred; "and if the soil was not very rich they would soon find out they needed something that would stir up the ground a little deeper." ”

“ It was some time before sunset when they reached the Convent of Mar Saba, and found their tents pitched a few hundred yards from the walls of the building. Seen from the outside the edifice is more like a fortress than a religious establishment, as it has a series of bastions and towers, and its walls are thick enough to stand a long siege from anything except artillery.
Doctor Bronson told the boys that the monastery was founded in the fifth century by St. Sabas, or Saba, and is therefore among the oldest buildings of the kind in the East. ”

“ Not one laborer in twenty has anything to show for his work on the sugar estates or in the factories except his thin cheeks, and the bones half protruding from his skin."
"It is no wonder," said Fred, "that they begged so hard for backsheesh, and that they seemed, unlike the Arabs of Cairo, to be very grateful when we gave them some small coins."
Frank thought it very strange that the sugar culture in Egypt should be unprofitable when the labor cost next to nothing. ”

“ It is very unpleasant to be soaked with rain and chilled with the cold, but somehow when you get dry and warm again you don't feel so badly. We shall forget all about the storm and its disagreeable features, but we'll remember the Dead Sea, the Valley of the Jordan, the site of Jericho, Bethany, the inn of the good Samaritan, and a dozen other historic things we have seen since we left our camp at Mar Saba and descended into the deepest valley in the world. ”

“ But we can console ourselves with the reflection that we have many things of which they were ignorant. We have steamships and railways, the telephone and telegraph, glass in our windows, umbrellas, oysters on the half shell, ice-cream, ready-made-clothing stores, pug-dogs, and I don't know what else. We are far more comfortable than they were, and if we could only satisfy our curiosity about their modes of moving these enormous blocks of stone there would be nothing to envy them for. ”