William Francis Lynch

“ Leaving the village on the left, the road led over a high ridge; the vegetation extremely luxuriant, and the hillsides terraced, with many vines and fig trees, and groves of olive on each side. The olive is only picturesque in clusters. Individually it is an ungainly tree. With the appearance of greater strength than the oak, its branches are less graceful, and its leaves are smaller and less vivid in colour. The old trunks, gnarled and twisted, present to the eye vast bodies with disproportioned limbs. Those which are partially decayed are protected by stones piled up in the hollows. ”

“ Beneath the frightful exterior of the North American savage, there are noble attributes. Such races are as necessary for the well-being of the human family as the whirlwind to the atmosphere when it sweeps through the forest and bears off the decaying and tainting vegetation. ”

“ Through the last, a stream of smoke is ever issuing, tainted with the foetid odour of the fuel, the sundried excrement of the camel; which is so offensive that the deaf and the blind would detect, with their nostrils, the impregnated atmosphere of a village. The habits of the people are as filthy as their dwellings are uncomfortable ”

“ Passing through lines of bazaars, and by a mosque with a large court, and handsome fountain on the right, and thence threading narrow, unpaved streets, cumbered with rubbish, which seemed to have no precise direction, and to lead to no particular place, and twice descending steps where Putnam might have hesitated, with a foe behind him, but down which our horses walked as carefully as we could have done ourselves, we at length reached the residence of our consul, immediately overlooking the harbour. ”

“ The son murders the father, to relieve him from the ennui of old age, and his wife destroys the fruit of his passion in her womb, to escape the duties of a nurse. He snatches the bleeding scalp from his yet living foe; he tears the flesh from his body; he roasts it and devours it amid songs of triumph; and if he can procure ardent spirits, he drinks to intoxication, to madness, to death, insensible alike to the reason which rescaravan s man by his fears, and the instinct which repels the animal by distaste. ”

“ These people followed Ibrahim Pasha from Egypt, but since the restoration of the country to Ottoman sway they have been driven from the town, and live in their poor mud village with the sea before and a graveyard behind them. Possessing no means of transportation over the first, along which they must often wistfully gaze towards their native country, the last remains as their only refuge from hunger, oppression, and unrewarded toil. Their complexions are dark, but the dress of the men differs in no respect from that of Arabs of the lowest class. ”

“ We learned from our Consul, that the Turks treat their wives very badly. In consequence of the power vested in the husband to divorce at will, there is no community of interest between man and wife. The latter, not knowing at what moment the dreadful word may be pronounced, is ever laying by something for such a contingency, of which her mother is usually the depository. Hence, the husband, in self-defence, rarely provides groceries or food in any quantity, of which the wife would certainly sell a portion, and retain the proceeds. ”

“ The Indian, without dreaming of recompense, will share his last morsel, and, with his life, protect the stranger who has sought the shelter of his wigwam. To the noisy children of the desert, intoxicating drink is unknown; and, in that respect, their condition is far superior to that of the more taciturn but intemperate hunters of the forest. But the greatest distinction of all is, that while the North American savage, except in war or the chase, evinces no forethought whatever, the Arabian is cautious to the extreme of timidity. ”

“ At length our vice-consul came out in state, and guided us round to the north side, where we struck into the Jaffa road. This is the only place in the interior of Palestine where the American flag is permitted to fly. There were fine olive-groves, and many cypresses, around the town; and beyond, a lovely plain, bounded by a range of mountains on one hand, and the Mediterranean on the other. Ramleh is supposed to have been the Rama-Ephraim of the Old Testament, where Samuel judged the people, and where the elders assembled to demand a king. ”

“ In his most repulsive aspect, the North American savage is a being lusty and ferocious, over whose countenance the light of intelligence casts but a feeble and lingering ray. He exhibits no trait whatever of that forethought which is the great characteristic of the grandeur of the human mind. ”

“ The wife can also obtain divorce; and in Constantinople there is a singular female court to which she may appeal, but its jurisdiction, like the edict with regard to slavery, is nominal, and the rights of woman and the slave are alike disregarded.
All over the world, civilized and savage, women are treated as inferior beings. In what is esteemed refined society, we hold them in mental thraldom, while we exempt them from bodily labour; and, paying a sensual worship to their persons, treat them as pretty play things. ”

“ England occupies the key-stone of the arch of civilization; France has long been proverbial for its refinement; and in Italy, the temple of the arts, the painter and the sculptor seek for the most beautiful models. The tide is now setting the other way, and civilization is overwhelming barbarism. Whether the Indian is to be swept away, or the red-man become merged with the white, time alone can determine.
ARAB CONTRASTED WITH THE INDIAN
The distinctive trait of the American savage is his vindictiveness towards an enemy. ”

“ The road continued over the almost level plain. Hundreds of villagers, men, women and children, with camels, mules, and donkeys, were employed getting in the harvest. The donkey is loaded in a singular manner: an immense heap of grain, in the straw, is trussed together, in the form of a parallelogram, and laid on one of its narrow sides; a donkey is made to stand close against it; and two of the fellahin, standing on the opposite side, place each a foot against the animal, and haul over on the bundle by a rope. ”

“ Eastern women are rarely seen to pray by travelers. Like the majority of their sex all over the world, they seem to shrink from public exhibition. Once before, in a Turkish burial-ground near St. Stephen’s gate, Jerusalem, I saw some black slaves making their prostrations before a tomb, but could not tell whether they were worshipping God, or paying homage to the shade of their master. ”

“ The law of inheritance, in the Turkish dominions, recognises no right whatever in the female. On the death of the father, if there be one son and one or more daughters, the son inherits all the property. If two or more sons, it is portioned equally among them; but, in either case, the daughters have no share.
A SYRIAN LADY
As illustrative of the seclusion of the female in the Christian as well as the Muslim, a circumstance was related to us by our Consul’s brother, which, from a less authentic source, we should have deemed incredible. ”

“ From the highest peak, we had anticipated another and a last view of Jerusalem, but it was concealed by intervening hills. Nebi Samwil towered above us to the north. The country bordering the ravine became more beautiful as we descended in the afternoon, and a little before sunset we encamped at ’Ain Dilbeh (Fountain of the Plane-tree) , near Beit Nakubeh (House of Nakubeh) . There were some old ruins about the spring. In the bed of the ravine there were fields of grain; on the lower slopes, vineyards and olive-groves ”

“ The nomadic mode of life, the colour of the skin, the prominent cheek-bones, and the black hair and eyes, present a similarity of appearance which, at first, misleads an observer. By slow degrees, however, traits of character are developed, and peculiarities of manner exhibited, which proclaim a marked and striking difference. ”

“ Attached to the garden is a well, a Persian wheel, and a reservoir. The wheel is worked day and night by mules; the water is collected in the reservoir, and thence conducted by small canals through the garden. There are two canals, built of cemented stone, with apertures in them at regular distances. They were this evening occupied two hours in irrigating one half of the garden, which is done on alternate days. A trench is dug in the loose soil from one of the canals to a tree, and the earth is raked aside from the roots and the stem, leaving a circular basin, according to the size of the tree ”

“ At the village of Yazur, turned to the left and followed the Frank road, the one on which Napoleon marched to and from Gaza. There were a number of people in the fields, but not many travelers on the road. Some wandering dervishes, bearing banners, and a few returning Christian pilgrims, passed us in the course of the morning. About three miles from the town, was a very handsome fountain, with a mosque beside it. Pursuing thence nearly a due-west course, we came out on the sandhills, and planted the level on the margin of the Mediterranean, about one and a half miles south of Jaffa. ”

“ We found the difference of level, in other words, the depression of the surface of the Dead Sea, below that of the Mediterranean, to be a little over 1,300 feet. The height of Jerusalem above the former sea, is very nearly three times that of this difference of level, while, at the same time, it is almost the exact multiple of the depth of that sea, of the height of its banks, and of the depression of its surface. ”

“ In the hollow of the hills near Jaffa, is a circular plain, where Ibrahim Pasha contemplated making a harbour, to be connected with the Mediterranean by a canal. At the request of our Vice-Consul, who had come to meet us early in the day, we examined it carefully, and felt satisfied that the work could be done at little cost, compared to the immense benefit that would be derived from it. The duties of the customs, 12 per cent., amount to 10,000 pounds sterling per annum ”

“ For the first time within many months, we felt the soothing and refining influence of the society of the other sex. Members of the family acted as waiters, it being the custom when it is intended to pay the highest honour to a guest. ”

“ It is true, that if the wife be divorced for any other cause than infidelity, she can claim her dower, — that is, the sum paid for her by her husband, if it had been returned to him, which is rarely the case. ”

“ We had been so long accustomed to camping in the open air, that we could not reconcile ourselves to sleeping in a room; moreover, we felt more secure from insects, away from apartments that had recently been inhabited. ”

“ From his civilized neighbour he seeks nothing but gunpowder, to destroy his brethren, and intoxicating spirits, to destroy himself; and, relying upon the undying avarice of the white man, he never dreams of manufacturing them. ”

“ But it is impossible, for a Christian at least, to obtain satisfactory information from a native on this subject. They never speak of their women to strangers, and consider any allusion to them as insulting. ”

“ When it is half over, they secure it; and there is nothing of the donkey to be seen but its little feet, far beneath the cumbrous load, in bulk six times larger than himself. The small, square houses of the village, like those of all we have seen, Aba Ghush’s excepted, are of uncut stones, cemented and plastered with mud, and with flat, mud roofs. The mud floors are usually several feet below the surface of the ground ”

“ A single horseman would leave his ranks, cross the intervening space, and ride leisurely along in front of the opposite line, when, selecting his opponent, he quickly threw his djerid, or short, blunted, wooden spear, directly at him. ”

“ The vegetation increased in luxuriance, and in vividness of colour, as we descended. The mountain-sides are cut in terraces, many of them but a few yards wide, bearing olive, fig, and apricot trees, and numerous extensive vineyards. ”

“ A widower, on marrying a second time, enjoined it upon his son, then about half-grown, never to enter the apartment occupied by his step-mother without knocking, in order that she might have time to conceal her face. ”