Letters From Baghdad Page 11

  To her family.

  DAMASCUS, May 14th, 1900.

  Beloved Family.

  To-day came your telegram which it was a great relief to receive.

  I'm Off to-morrow with an escort of 3 soldiers and all promises well. I expect to be back in a fortnight. I shall meet Charlotte here, spend another couple of days, and then with her, Over the hills to Baalbec and the Cedars. Beyrout (a week or so), from whence by boat to Jerusalem.

  KUREIFEH, May 15th.

  I got Off this morning at 9. After the usual difficulties attending the first day's start, an hour's vigorous activity found us all In the saddle. You never can get off the first day, so what's the good of bothering? I have three soldiers, Ali, Musa and Muhammad. Following Lattiche's excellent advice, I have arranged to give then half a medjideh a day each, and they keep themselves which is a great simplification for us. They seem pleased, and as I believe they levy food and barley on the inhabitants as they go along, it pays them amply! We left the town by the north east gate, and rode for three hours through gardens, orchards, vineyards, the road bordered by big shady walnuts and running water everywhere. We stopped once by a little stream where a gentleman was making coffee on a mud stove and some others were smoking narghilehs under a clump of poplars. We watered our horses and drank little cups of coffee and rested for a quarter of an hour and then rode on to a khan, where I lunched under the trees by the edge of the clearest water. From here the country began to change. An hour or so of corn fields and vineyards, and barrenness and waterlessness began. All the great rivers which flow down from the snows of Hermon seem to die off when they see the bare volcanic hills of the Saffa across the plain. In the map they just end. I don't know what becomes of them... At the top of the pass there was a well of rain water, very good, said Ali, and I made Hanna fetch me a cupful. It was, however, full of little red animals swimming cheerfully about, and one must draw the line somewhere, so I did not partake. I heard the story of Shibly Beg's capture from Lüttiche... There's a cuckoo here; let me quickly write and tell the Spectator.

  Wednesday, 16th. We were off at 5, Ali and I going ahead to see about camels for the desert. To Jarad at about 7:30. We went to the house of one Sheikh Ahmed and Ali went off to see about camels to carry our water for the night, while I lay on his cushions and ate white mulberries and drank coffee. They pressed a narghileh on me, but I firmly refused. Never again; it's too nasty. A boring delay now occurred, for we waited for the mules and they went straight on without calling for us and waited in Nasariyeh. The time was filled in by the good Sheikh's giving us an excellent meal, bread and olives, and dibbis and butter, laban and eggs. The worthies of the village came and talked to me, and very pleasant people they were. Lüttiche says the Arabs settled hereabout are the best people in all Syria, being descended straight from the original invaders. At 9:30 we went on again, muleless, depending on getting our corn for the night in Nasariyeh. We passed through a little village and then on through a desert plain.

  At 11:50 we reached Nasariyeh — may God destroy its houses! there was no corn in them. The camels had not come up and anyhow there was nothing to be done but to send back to the village, and accordingly Hanna and Jacoub rode off together. I lunched under a white umbrella, for there was no shade. Nasariyeh is a new place, the property of the Sultan. It lies in the middle of the wide, flat valley between bare hills that we have been following all day, and beyond it there is no water for twelve hours. There was an enormous caravan of camels grazing near their piled up saddles and a little tent in which were seated some merchants from Bagdad, the owners of the caravan. They had been two months on the way, said one of them, who came down to our canal to get water; he walked as slowly as a camel and was about as communicative, answering me in a sort of dazed way as if the desert had got into his brain, and turning slowly, heavily away with his water-skin. Hanna and I, after taking counsel together, had bought eight skins and four leather bottles in Damascus, which was lucky, for we found none here. When they came to fill them, however, they found that one had a big hole in it and came despairingly to tell me. For once I was equal to the occasion. Do you remember, Father, the Greek boy we met as we went over the hills from Sparta, whose skin of oil broke? I had seen him mend it cunningly with a stone and a bit of string and I mended mine with much skill in the same way. It has held, too. The sun was so hot it burnt one through one's boots. I have gone into linen and khaki. The latter consists of a man's ready-made coat, so big that there is room in it for every wind that blows, and most comfy; great deep pockets. The shopkeeper was very anxious that I should buy the trousers too but I haven't come to that yet. We got Oft at 1:30; having sent the three camels on, and rode till 5, When we just pitched down anywhere, in the desert it's all the same. The road was enlivened by Ali and Muhammad the soldiers, who are both extremely intelligent and who related to me many interesting tales. The soldiers are delighted that I can talk Arabic; they say it's so dull when they can't talk to the gentry. They talk Kurdish together, being of Kurdish parentage, but born in Damascus. Their Arabic is very good. Mine is really getting quite presentable. I think I talk Arabic as well as I talk German (which isn't saying much perhaps!), but I don't understand so well. It's so confoundingly — in the Bible sense! — rich in words. This is my first night in the desert — the first of I wonder how many dozens, scores — Heaven knows! There was a great stretch of shining salt to our right as we passed Nasariyeh, and while we rode I saw immense plaques of water on the horizon — always on the horizon, the farther we rode the further they went. We passed a ruined khan half an hour from here — I believe they occur at regular intervals all the way to Palmyra. I meant to be a couple of hours farther on, but the delays prevented it, and start under the moon to-morrow. The smooth, hard ground makes a beautiful floor to my tent. Shall I tell you my chief impression — the silence. It is like the silence of mountain tops, but more intense, for there you know the sound of wind and far away water and falling ice and stones; there is a sort of echo of sound there, you know it, Father. But here nothing.

  KARYATEIN, Thursday, 17th.

  I got up at 1:30 this morning and dressed quickly, but the packing up always takes rather longer by night, and we were not Off till 3:45. Such a night, with a bright moon and the vague, wide desert between the low hills! It was bitter cold; I should think there must be 50 difference between the night and the day. (This is not excessive. Dr. R. has registered up to 70 degrees difference.) My hands and feet were quite numb before the sun rose and for half an hour after. By 8 it was broiling and at mid-day my off foot was burnt through my boot. It was a pretty dull ride. The chief distraction was the catching of a jerboa. He was a darling, but I let him go again and he hopped off on his long hind legs in a futile manner. I am going to travel by night from here. I have two days of from 10 to 12 hours each, waterless both of them, and it's too hard on the beasts to go in the hot sun. It's also hard on me, though I read when I travel by day which I can't do at night.

  I can all but sleep in the saddle, however, which passes the time wonderfully. Yesterday I fell off. I was still sitting sideways in my saddle with a map in one hand and a parasol in the other when suddenly my horse began to trot. I hadn't even got the reins in my hands, so I jumped off, much to the amusement of my soldiers. They are a good lot, my soldiers, quite the best I have yet had. This journey is being made much more amusing than I expected. I thought it would be rather tame after my recent experiences, but I'm enjoying it very much. This sort of life grows upon one. The tedious things become less tedious and the amusing more amusing, especially as Arabic grows. It's a cloudy night, hot consequently, and I'm going to bed.

  Friday, 18th. And to sleep for nine hours, as it proved. I have made for myself an enormous muslin bag in which I sleep and which protects me from all biting animals down to sand flies. I'm very proud of this contrivance, but if we have a ghazu of Arabs I shall certainly be the last to fly, and my flight will be As one Who runs a sack race.

  Sunday
, 20th, Palmyra, for I've got here at last, though after such a ride! We left Karyatein on Friday evening at 5:30. At dusk we found ourselves in the desert region. The night closed in very dark, the west being thick with cloud. My rolling stone which gathers moss all the way had picked up another companion, One Ahmed, white robed and perched up on the top of a camel. The Agha had provided him as a guide. I was not on the ordinary road I must tell you, having decided to make a détour to the south in Order to avoid going and coming by the same route. No tourist ever goes this way. It leads to a spring called Ain el Wu'ul, the Spring of the Deer, in the S. hills, which is half way between Karyatein and Palmyra. This we had to make as soon as possible after sunrise for the sake of the beasts for whom we had no water. It was very strange pacing on in the silent dark behind my white robed guide, the three soldiers, black shadows, beside me and the mules tinkling behind. For the first few hours there was a sort of path which one could see white and clear through the scrubby desert plants; when it left off Ahmed turned off resolutely into the broken ground under the hills, guiding himself by the stars in the clear east and by a black hill which stood out in front of us, and from which, he said, the Spring was seven hours away. The ground was very rocky; the horses' hoofs rung out on the rough slabs of stone. We went on and on and I talked first with one of my men and then with another, and at intervals I half fell asleep and woke up to see Ahmed's swaying figure like a kind of beckoning Fate leading us into a grim waterless world. Across the range of hills there is a country that no one ever travels over-right away to Nejd there is not a spring — not a well; 44 waterless days, said Ahmed. He imparted me scraps of information at intervals; he knew the name of every hill and every bare furrow — I was surprised to find that they had names, but it seems they have. This was the sort of conversation. "Where is the Lady;?" "Here, oh, Ahmed." "Oh, Lady, this is the Valley of the Wild Boar." There didn't seem anything to say about it except that it was a horrid sandy little place, so I replied that God had made it. Ahmed accepted this doubtful statement with a "God the Exalted is merciful!" on which Ali, the five times hadgi, would break in with "Praise be to God who is Great! may he prolong the life of the Sultan!" Soon after 3, Ahmed said "Oh, Lady! the light rises." I looked and the east was beginning to pale. I felt as if I had been sitting in my saddle for a lifetime an my horse felt so too. He was so hungry that he began to snatch at the camel's food as he passed — now the names of these plants I know, but only in Arabic, so I think it best not to tell. I was also hungry, and I had a light refection of chocolate and an orange, and then I got off and walked for near an hour, Ahmed walking too to keep me company. The light came quickly across the stony ground in the furrows. We mounted and rode on till 5, when the sun was behind some clouds. We were now coasting along the foot of the hills and Ahmed began to look about and wonder where the spring was. He had only been there once in his life before. The hills consisted of a long range of little stony peaks with a valley running up between them every quarter of a mile or so; in one of these valleys, high up, was the spring; the question was which. Ahmed wasn't sure, so he left me with the camel and set off running into the hills to explore. The others came up, and I made Hanna give me a bit of bread and a cup of milk which had turned into butter and whey (but awfully good) and I fell asleep almost while I was eating it. I had been riding for 12 hours. Half an hour later I heard my men say that Ahmed was beckoning to us. We had gone a good bit too far. We rode back half an hour, entered one of the valleys and climbed up it nearly to the top, and there on a tiny platform between rocks, we found the spring. it was only a very small cup, 6 or 8 feet across, More perhaps, and about 10 feet deep of water the cup being barely half full. The water was clear and cold but covered with masses of weed and full of swimming things of all kinds. The soldiers and the beasts didn't seem to mind, however, and I shut my eyes and drank too. It was past 7 when we got to it. I had something to eat, climbed up to a shady cave, and slept till 1, indifferent to the fact that my bed was thistles and my bed fellows stinging flies. If we had missed this one spring hidden in the hills we should have been hard put to it. The good Hanna gave me an excellent lunch of fried croquettes and a partridge that he had killed, and tea. I had told him to cook nothing but his conscience was too much for him, and he had made a charcoal fire between some stones, and Prepared these masterpieces, bless him! At 3 we were off again. and down into the plain, and then straight east at the foot of the hills. It had never been really hot all day, fortunately; the sun set without a cloud and it began to be very cold. We rode till 7 and then stopped for the animals to eat and for us to eat too. I put on gaiters, a second pair of knickerbockers and a covert coat under my thick winter coat, rolled myself up in a blanket and a cape and went to sleep all the men following my example, rolled up in their long cloaks. The cold and the bright moon woke me at midnight and I roused all my people (with some difficulty!) and at one we were off. Again, you see, we had to reach our water as soon as possible after the sun, so that the animals might not suffer too much from thirst. We went on and on; the dawn came and the sun rose — the evening and the morning of the second day, but I seemed to have been riding since the beginning of time. At sunrise, far away in the distance, on top of one of a group of low hills, I saw the castle of Palmyra. We were still five hours away. They were long hours. Except Petra, Palmyra is the loveliest thing I have seen in this country, but five hours away. They were long hours. The wide plain gradually narrowed and we approached the W. belt of hills, rocky, broken and waterless. It's a fine approach, the hills forming a kind of gigantic avenue with a low range at the end behind which Palmyra stands, and the flat desert, very sandy here, running up to them. My horse was very tired and I was half dazed with sleep. As we drew near Palmyra, the hills were covered with the strangest buildings, great stone towers, four stories high, some more ruined and some less, standing together in groups or bordering the road. They are the famous Palmyrene tower tombs. At length we stood on the end of the col and looked over Palmyra. I wonder if the wide world presents a more singular landscape. It is a mass of columns, ranged into long avenues, grouped into temples, lying broken on the sand or pointing one long solitary finger to Heaven. Beyond them is the immense Temple of Baal; the modern town is built inside it and its rows of columns rise out of a mass of mud roofs. And beyond all is the desert, sand and white stretches of salt and sand again, with the dust clouds whirling over it and the Euphrates five days away. It looks like the white skeleton of a town, standing knee deep in the blown sand. We rode down to one of the two springs to which it owes its existence, a plentiful supply of the clearest water, but so much impregnated with sulphur that the whole world round it smells of sulphur. The horses drank eagerly, however, and we went on down a line of columns to the second spring which is much purer, though it, too, tastes strongly of sulphur. If you let it stand for 12 hours the taste almost goes away, but it remains flat and disagreeable, and I add some lemon juice to it before I drink it. It's very clean, which is a blessing. We pitched our tents by a charming temple in the very middle of the ruins — it was 10:30 before the mules came up, we having got in at 10. I was too sleepy to be very hungry, but someone brought a big bowl of milk and I ate sour bread and dibbis, while the brother of the Sheikh talked to me and the howling wind scattered the sand over us. There seems to be always a wind here; it was such a hurricane in the afternoon and evening that I thought my tent would go, but it held firm. What with one thing and another, it was 11:30 before I could retire and wash and go to bed, but I then slept most blissfully for a couple of hours; after which I had tea and received all the worthies of the town-the Mudir is an old Turk, who talks much less Arabic than I do — and when I had sent them away happy I walked Out and down the street of columns into the Temple of the Sun — the town, I should say, for it is nearly all included within its enormous outer walls. The stone used here is a beautiful white limestone that looks like marble and weathers a golden yellow, like the Acropolis.

  Monday, 21st. I got
up feeling extremely brisk, and spent the whole morning exploring Palmyra. Except Petra, Palmyra is the loveliest thing I have seen in this country. but Petra is hard to beat.