Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

Through ignorance which might have cost me dear but for my friend Larking's weight with the local authorities, I had neglected to provide myself with a passport in England; and it was not without difficulty, involving much unclean dressing and an unlimited expenditure of broken English, that I obtained from the consul at Alexandria a certificate declaring me to be an Indo-British subject named Abdullah, by profession a doctor, aged thirty, and not distinguished--at least so the frequent blanks seemed to denote--by any remarkable conformation of eyes, nose, or cheek. For this I disbursed a dollar. And here let me record the indignation with which I did it. That mighty Britain--the mistress of the seas--the ruler of one-sixth of mankind--should charge five shillings to pay for the shadow of her protecting wing! That I cannot speak my modernized "civis sum Romanus" without putting my hand into my pocket, in order that these officers of the Great Queen may not take too ruinously from a revenue of fifty-six millions! Oh the meanness of our magnificence! the littleness of our greatness!

My new passport would not carry me without the Zabit or Police Magistrate's counter-signature, said the consul. Next day I went to the Zabit, who referred me to the Muhafiz (Governor) of Alexandria, at whose gate I had the honor of squatting at least three hours, till a more compassionate clerk vouchsafed the information that the proper place to apply to was the Diwan Kharijiyeh (the Foreign Office). Thus a second day was utterly lost. On the morning of the third I started as directed for the place, which crowns the Headland of Figs. It is a huge and couthless shell of building in parallelogrammic form, containing all kinds of public offices in glorious confusion, looking with their glaring whitewashed faces upon a central court, where a few leafless wind-wrung trees seem struggling for the breath of life in an eternal atmosphere of clay, dust, and sun-blaze.

The first person I addressed was a Kawwas or police officer, who, coiled comfortably up in a bit of shade fitting his person like a robe, was in full enjoyment of the Asiatic "Kaif." Having presented the consular certificate and briefly stated the nature of my business, I ventured to inquire what was the right course to pursue for a visa.

They have little respect for Dervishes, it appears, at Alexandria! "M'adri" (Don't know), growled the man of authority, without moving anything but the quantity of tongue necessary for articulation.

Now there are three ways of treating Asiatic officials,--by bribe, by bullying, or by bothering them with a dogged perseverance into attending to you and your concerns. The latter is the peculiar province of the poor; moreover, this time I resolved for other reasons to be patient. I repeated my question in almost the same words. "Ruh!" (Be off) was what I obtained for all reply. By this time the questioned went so far as to open his eyes. Still I stood twirling the paper in my hands, and looking very humble and very persevering, till a loud "Ruh ya Kalb!" (Go, O dog!) converted into a responsive curse the little speech I was preparing about the brotherhood of El-Islam and the mutual duties obligatory on true believers. I then turned away slowly and fiercely, for the next thing might have been a cut with the Kurbaj [bastinado], and by the hammer of Thor! British flesh and blood could never have stood that.

After which satisfactory scene,--for satisfactory it was in one sense, proving the complete fitness of the Dervish's dress,--I tried a dozen other promiscuous sources of information,--policemen, grooms, scribes, donkey-boys, and idlers in general. At length, wearied of patience, I offered a soldier some pinches of tobacco and promised him an Oriental sixpence if he would manage the business for me. The man was interested by the tobacco and the pence; he took my hand, and inquiring the while he went along, led me from place to place till, mounting a grand staircase, I stood in the presence of Abbas Effendi, the governor's Naib or deputy.

It was a little whey-faced black-bearded Turk, coiled up in the usual conglomerate posture upon a calico-covered divan, at the end of a long bare large-windowed room. Without deigning even to nod the head which hung over his shoulder with transcendent listlessness and affectation of pride, in answer to my salams and benedictions, he eyed me with wicked eyes and faintly ejaculated "Minent?" Then hearing that I was a Dervish and doctor,--he must be an Osmanli Voltairian, that little Turk,--the official snorted a contemptuous snort. He condescendingly added, however, that the proper source to seek was "Taht," which, meaning simply "below," conveyed rather imperfect information in a topographical point of view to a stranger. At length however my soldier guide found out that a room in the custom-house bore the honorable appellation of "Foreign Office." Accordingly I went there, and after sitting at least a couple of hours at the bolted door in the noonday sun, was told, with a fury which made me think I had sinned, that the officer in whose charge the department was had been presented with an olive-branch in the morning, and consequently that business was not to be done that day. The angry-faced official communicated the intelligence to a large group of Anadolian, Caramanian, Bosniac, and Roumelian Turks,--sturdy, undersized, broad-shouldered, bare-legged, splay-footed, horny-fisted, dark-browed, honest-looking mountaineers, who were lounging about with long pistols and yataghans stuck in their broad sashes, head-gear composed of immense tarbooshes with proportionate turbans coiled round them, and two or three suits of substantial clothes--even at this season of the year--upon their shoulders.

Like myself they had waited some hours, but they were not patient under disappointment: they bluntly told the angry official that he and his master were a pair of idlers, and the curses that rumbled and gurgled in their hairy throats as they strode towards the door sounded like the growling of wild beasts.

Thus was another day truly Orientally lost. On the morrow however I obtained permission, in the character of Dr. Abdullah, to visit any part of Egypt I pleased, and to retain possession of my dagger and pistols.

And now I must explain what induced me to take so much trouble about a passport. The home reader naturally inquires, Why not travel under your English name?

For this reason. In the generality of barbarous countries you must either proceed, like Bruce, preserving the "dignity of manhood" and carrying matters with a high hand, or you must worm your way by timidity and subservience; in fact, by becoming an animal too contemptible for man to let or injure. But to pass through the Holy Land you must either be a born believer, or have become one; in the former case you may demean yourself as you please, in the latter a path is ready prepared for you. My spirit could not bend to own myself a Burma, a renegade--to be pointed at and shunned and catechized, an object of suspicion to the many and of contempt to all. Moreover, it would have obstructed the aim of my wanderings. The convert is always watched with Argus eyes, and men do not willingly give information to a "new Moslem," especially a Frank: they suspect his conversion to be a feigned or a forced one, look upon him as a spy, and let him see as little of life as possible. Firmly as was my heart set upon traveling in Arabia, by Heaven! I would have given up the dear project rather than purchase a doubtful and partial success at such a price. Consequently I had no choice but to appear as a born believer, and part of my birthright in that respectable character was toil and trouble in obtaining a tezkirah.

Then I had to provide myself with certain necessaries for the way. These were not numerous. The silver-mounted dressing-case is here supplied by a rag containing a miswak, a bit of soap, and a comb--wooden, for bone and tortoise-shell are not, religiously speaking, correct. Equally simple was my wardrobe: a change or two of clothing. The only article of canteen description was a zemzemiyah, a goatskin water-bag, which communicates to its contents, especially when new, a ferruginous aspect and a wholesome though hardly an attractive flavor of tanno-gelatine. This was a necessary; to drink out of a tumbler, possibly fresh from pig-eating lips, would have entailed a certain loss of reputation. For bedding and furniture I had a coarse Persian rug--which, besides being couch, acts as chair, table, and oratory,--a cotton-stuffed chintz-covered pillow, a blanket in case of cold, and a sheet, which does duty for tent and mosquito curtains in nights of heat. As shade is a convenience not always procurable, another necessary was a huge cotton umbrella of Eastern make, brightly yellow, suggesting the idea of an overgrown marigold. I had also a substantial housewife, the gift of a kind friend: it was a roll of canvas, carefully soiled, and garnished with needles and thread, cobblers' wax, buttons, and other such articles. These things were most useful in lands where tailors abound not; besides which, the sight of a man darning his coat or patching his slippers teems with pleasing ideas of humility. A dagger, a brass inkstand and penholder stuck in the belt, and a mighty rosary, which on occasion might have been converted into a weapon of offense, completed my equipment. I must not omit to mention the proper method of carrying money, which in these lands should never be intrusted to box or bag. A common cotton purse secured in a breast pocket (for Egypt now abounds in that civilized animal the pickpocket) contained silver pieces and small change. My gold, of which I carried twenty-five sovereigns, and papers, were committed to a substantial leathern belt of Maghrabi manufacture, made to be strapped round the waist under the dress. This is the Asiatic method of concealing valuables, and a more civilized one than ours in the last century, when Roderick Random and his companion "sewed their money between the lining and the waistband of their breeches, except some loose silver for immediate expense on the road." The great inconvenience of the belt is its weight, especially where dollars must be carried, as in Arabia, causing chafes and inconvenience at night. Moreover it can scarcely be called safe. In dangerous countries wary travelers will adopt surer precautions.

A pair of common native khurjin or saddle-bags contained my wardrobe, the "bed," readily rolled up into a bundle; and for a medicine chest I bought a pea-green box with red and yellow flowers, capable of standing falls from a camel twice a day.

The next step was to find out when the local steamer would start for Cairo, and accordingly I betook myself to the Transit Office. No vessel was advertised; I was directed to call every evening till satisfied. At last the fortunate event took place: a "weekly departure," which by-the-by had occurred once every fortnight or so, was in order for the next day. I hurried to the office, but did not reach it till past noon--the hour of idleness. A little dark gentleman, so formed and dressed as exactly to resemble a liver-and-tan bull-terrier, who with his heels on the table was dozing, cigar in mouth, over the last Galignani, positively refused after a time,--for at first he would not speak at all,--to let me take my passage till three in the afternoon. I inquired when the boat started, upon which he referred me, as I had spoken bad Italian, to the advertisement. I pleaded inability to read or write, whereupon he testily cried "Alle nove! alle nove!" (At nine! at nine!) Still appearing uncertain, I drove him out of his chair, when he rose with a curse and read "8 A.M." An unhappy Eastern, depending upon what he said, would have been precisely one hour too late.

Thus were we lapsing into the real good old Indian style of doing business. Thus Indicus orders his first clerk to execute some commission; the senior, having "work" upon his hands, sends a junior; the junior finds the sun hot, and passes on the word to a "peon"; the peon charges a porter with the errand; and the porter quietly sits or dozes in his place, trusting that fate will bring him out of the scrape, but firmly resolved, though the shattered globe fall, not to stir an inch.

The reader, I must again express a hope, will pardon the egotism of these descriptions: my object is to show him how business is carried on in these hot countries--business generally. For had I, instead of being Abdullah the Dervish, been a rich native merchant, it would have been the same. How many complaints of similar treatment have I heard in different parts of the Eastern world! and how little can one realize them without having actually experienced the evil! For the future I shall never see a "nigger" squatting away half a dozen mortal hours in a broiling sun, patiently waiting for something or for some one, without a lively remembrance of my own cooling of the _calces_ at the custom-house of Alexandria.

At length, about the end of May, all was ready. Not without a feeling of regret I left my little room among the white myrtle blossoms and the oleander flowers. I kissed with humble ostentation my kind host's hand in presence of his servants, bade adieu to my patients, who now amounted to about fifty, shaking hands with all meekly and with religious equality of attention, and, mounted in a "trap" which looked like a cross between a wheel-barrow and dog-cart, drawn by a kicking, jibbing, and biting mule, I set out for the steamer.

EN ROUTE

From 'A Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah'

At 3 P.M. we left El Zaribah, traveling towards the S.W., and a wondrously picturesque scene met the eye. Crowds hurried along, habited in the pilgrim garb, whose whiteness contrasted strangely with their black skins, their newly shaven heads glistening in the sun, and their long black hair streaming in the wind. The rocks rang with shouts of "Labbayk! Labbayk!" At a pass we fell in with the Wahhabis, accompanying the Baghdad caravan, screaming "Here am I"; and guided by a large loud kettle-drum, they followed in double file the camel of a standard-bearer, whose green flag bore in huge white letters the formula of the Moslem creed. They were wild-looking mountaineers, dark and fierce, with hair twisted into thin dalik or plaits: each was armed with a long spear, a matchlock, or a dagger. They were seated upon coarse wooden saddles, without cushions or stirrups, a fine saddle-cloth alone denoting a chief. The women emulated the men; they either guided their own dromedaries, or sitting in pillion, they clung to their husbands; veils they disdained, and their countenances certainly belonged not to a "soft sex." These Wahhabis were by no means pleasant companions. Most of them were followed by spare dromedaries, either unladen or carrying water-skins, fodder, fuel, and other necessaries for the march. The beasts delighted in dashing furiously through our file, which, being colligated, was thrown each time into the greatest confusion. And whenever we were observed smoking, we were cursed aloud for infidels and idolaters.

Looking back at El Zaribah, soon after our departure, I saw a heavy nimbus settle upon the hilltops, a sheet of rain being stretched between it and the plain. The low grumbling of thunder sounded joyfully in our ears. We hoped for a shower, but were disappointed by a dust-storm, which ended with a few heavy drops. There arose a report that the Bedouins had attacked a party of Meccans with stones,--classical Arabian missiles,--and the news caused men to look exceeding grave.

At 5 P.M. we entered the wide bed of the fiumara, down which we were to travel all night. Here the country falls rapidly towards the sea, as the increasing heat of the air, the direction of the water-courses, and signs of violence in the torrent-bed show. The fiumara varies in breadth from 150 feet to three-quarters of a mile; its course, I was told, is towards the southwest, and it enters the sea near Jeddah. The channel is a coarse sand, with here and there masses of sheet rock and patches of thin vegetation.

At about half-past 5 P.M. we entered a suspicious-looking place. On the right was a stony buttress, along whose base the stream, when there is one, flows; and to this depression was our road limited by the rocks and thorn-trees, which filled the other half of the channel. The left side was a precipice, grim and barren, but not so abrupt as its brother. Opposite us the way seemed barred by piles of hills, crest rising above crest into the far blue distance. Day still smiled upon the upper peaks, but the lower slopes and the fiumara bed were already curtained with gray sombre shade.

A damp seemed to fall upon our spirits as we approached this Valley Perilous. I remarked with wonder that the voices of the women and children sank into silence, and the loud Labbaykas of the pilgrims were gradually stilled. Whilst still speculating upon the cause of this phenomenon, it became apparent. A small curl of smoke, like a lady's ringlet, on the summit of the right-hand precipice, caught my eye, and simultaneous with the echoing crack of the matchlock a high-trotting dromedary in front of me rolled over upon the sands. A bullet had split his heart, throwing his rider a goodly somerset of five or six yards.

Ensued terrible confusion; women screamed, children shrieked, and men vociferated, each one striving with might and main to urge his animal out of the place of death. But the road being narrow, they only managed to jam the vehicles in a solid immovable mass. At every matchlock shot a shudder ran through the huge body, as when the surgeon's scalpel touches some more sensitive nerve. The irregular horsemen, perfectly useless, galloped up and down over the stones, shouting to and ordering one another. The Pacha of the army had his carpet spread at the foot of the left-hand precipice, and debated over his pipe with the officers what ought to be done. No good genius whispered "Crown the heights."

Then it was that the conduct of the Wahhabis found favor in my eyes. They came up, galloping their camels,--

"Torrents less rapid and less rash.--"

with their elf-locks tossing in the wind, and their flaring matches casting a strange lurid light over their features. Taking up a position, one body began to fire upon the Utaybah robbers, whilst two or three hundred, dismounting, swarmed up the hill under the guidance of the Sherif Zayd. I had remarked this nobleman at El Medinah as a model specimen of the pure Arab. Like all Sherifs, he is celebrated for bravery, and has killed many with his own hand. When urged at El Zaribah to ride into Meccah, he swore that he would not leave the caravan till in sight of the walls; and fortunately for the pilgrims, he kept his word. Presently the firing was heard far in our rear--the robbers having fled; the head of the column advanced, and the dense body of the pilgrims opened out. Our forced halt was now exchanged for a flight. It required much management to steer our desert-craft clear of danger; but Shaykh Masud was equal to the occasion. That many were lost was evident by the boxes and baggage that strewed the shingles. I had no means of ascertaining the number of men killed and wounded: reports were contradictory, and exaggeration unanimous. The robbers were said to be 150 in number; their object was plunder, and they would eat the shot camels. But their principal ambition was the boast "We, the Utaybah, on such and such a night stopped the Sultan's mahmal one whole hour in the pass."

At the beginning of the skirmish I had primed my pistols, and sat with them ready for use. But soon seeing that there was nothing to be done, and wishing to make an impression,--nowhere does Bobadil now "go down" but in the East,--I called aloud for my supper. Shaykh Nur, exanimate with fear, could not move. The boy Mohammed ejaculated only an "Oh, sir!" and the people around exclaimed in disgust, "By Allah! he eats!" Shaykh Abdullah, the Meccan, being a man of spirit, was amused by the spectacle. "Are these Afghan manners, Effendim?" he inquired from the shugduf behind me. "Yes," I replied aloud, "in my country we always dine before an attack of robbers, because that gentry is in the habit of sending men to bed supperless." The Shaykh laughed aloud, but those around him looked offended. I thought the bravado this time _mal place_; but a little event which took place on my way to Jeddah proved that it was not quite a failure.

As we advanced our escort took care to fire every large dry asclepias, to disperse the shades which buried us. Again the scene became wondrous wild:--

"Full many a waste I've wander'd o'er,
Clomb many a crag, cross'd many a shore,
But, by my halidome,
A scene so rude, so wild as this,
Yet so sublime in barrenness,
Ne'er did my wandering footsteps press,
Where'er I chanced to roam."

On either side were ribbed precipices, dark, angry, and towering above, till their summits mingled with the glooms of night; and between them formidable looked the chasm, down which our host hurried with shouts and discharges of matchlocks. The torch-smoke and the night-fires of flaming asclepias formed a canopy, sable above and livid red below, which hung over our heads like a sheet, and divided the cliffs into two equal parts. Here the fire flashed fiercely from a tall thorn, that crackled and shot up showers of sparks into the air; there it died away in lurid gleams, which lit up a truly Stygian scene. As usual, however, the picturesque had its inconveniences. There was no path. Rocks, stone-banks, and trees obstructed our passage. The camels, now blind in darkness, then dazzled by a flood of light, stumbled frequently; in some places slipping down a steep descent, in others sliding over a sheet of mud. There were furious quarrels and fierce language between camel-men and their hirers, and threats to fellow-travelers; in fact, we were united in discord. I passed that night crying "Hai! Hai!" switching the camel, and fruitlessly endeavoring to fustigate Masud's nephew, who resolutely slept upon the water-bags. During the hours of darkness we made four or five halts, when we boiled coffee and smoked pipes, but man and beasts were beginning to suffer from a deadly fatigue.

Dawn found us still traveling down the fiumara, which here is about one hundred yards broad. The granite hills on both sides were less precipitous, and the borders of the torrent-bed became natural quays of stiff clay, which showed a water-mark of from twelve to fifteen feet in height. In many parts the bed was muddy, and the moist places, as usual, caused accidents. I happened to be looking back at Shaykh Abdullah, who was then riding in old Ali bin Ya Sin's fine shugduf; suddenly the camel's four legs disappeared from under him, his right side flattening the ground, and the two riders were pitched severally out of the smashed vehicle. Abdullah started up furious, and abused the Bedouins, who were absent, with great zest. "Feed these Arabs," he exclaimed, quoting a Turkish proverb, "and they will fire at Heaven!" But I observed that, when Shaykh Masud came up, the citizen was only gruff.

We then turned northward, and sighted El Mazik, more generally known as Wady Laymun, the Valley of Limes. On the right bank of the fiumara stood the Meccan Sherif's state pavilion, green and gold: it was surrounded by his attendants, and prepared to receive the Pacha of the caravan. We advanced half a mile, and encamped temporarily in a hill-girt bulge of the fiumara bed. At 8 A.M. we had traveled about twenty-four miles from El Zaribah, and the direction of our present station was S. W. 50 deg..

Shaykh Masud allowed us only four hours' halt; he wished to precede the main body. After breaking our fast joyously upon limes, pomegranates, and fresh dates, we sallied forth to admire the beauties of the place. We are once more on classic ground, the ground of the ancient Arab poets:--

"Deserted is the village--waste the halting place and home
At Mina; o'er Rijam and Ghul wild beasts unheeded roam;
On Rayyan hill the channel lines have left a naked trace,
Time-worn, as _primal Writ that dints the mountains flinty face_;"--

and this wady, celebrated for the purity of its air, has from remote ages been a favorite resort of the Meccans. Nothing can be more soothing to the brain than the dark-green foliage of the limes and pomegranates; and from the base of the southern hill bursts a bubbling stream, whose

"Chiare, fresche e dolci acque"

flow through the garden, filling them with the most delicious of melodies, and the gladdest sound which nature in these regions knows.

Exactly at noon Masud seized the halter of the foremost camel, and we started down the fiumara. Troops of Bedouin girls looked over the orchard walls laughingly, and children came out to offer us fresh fruit and sweet water. At 2 P.M., traveling southwest, we arrived at a point where the torrent-bed turns to the right, and quitting it, we climbed with difficulty over a steep ridge of granite. Before three o'clock we entered a hill-girt plain, which my companions called "Sola." In some places were clumps of trees, and scattered villages warned us that we were approaching a city. Far to the left rose the blue peaks of Taif, and the mountain road, a white thread upon the nearer heights, was pointed out to me. Here I first saw the tree, or rather shrub, which bears the balm of Gilead, erst so celebrated for its tonic and stomachic properties. I told Shaykh to break off a twig, which he did heedlessly. The act was witnessed by our party with a roar of laughter, and the astounded Shaykh was warned that he had become subject to an atoning sacrifice. Of course he denounced me as the instigator, and I could not fairly refuse assistance. The tree has of late years been carefully described by many botanists; I will only say that the bark resembled in color a cherry-stick pipe, the inside was a light yellow, and the juice made my fingers stick together.

At 4 P.M. we came to a steep and rocky pass, up which we toiled with difficulty. The face of the country was rising once more, and again presented the aspect of numerous small basins divided and surrounded by hills. As we jogged on we were passed by the cavalcade of no less a personage than the Sherif of Meccah. Abd el Muttalib bin Ghalib is a dark, beardless old man with African features, derived from his mother. He was plainly dressed in white garments and a white muslin turban, which made him look jet-black; he rode an ambling mule, and the only emblem of his dignity was the large green satin umbrella borne by an attendant on foot. Scattered around him were about forty matchlock-men, mostly slaves. At long intervals, after their father, came his four sons, Riza Bey, Abdullah, Ali, and Ahmed, the latter still a child. The three elder brothers rode splendid dromedaries at speed; they were young men of light complexion, with the true Meccan cast of features, showily dressed in bright-colored silks, and armed, to denote their rank, with sword and gold-hilted dagger.

We halted as evening approached, and strained our eyes, but all in vain, to catch sight of Meccah, which lies in a winding valley. By Shaykh Abdullah's direction I recited, after the usual devotions, the following prayer. The reader is forewarned that it is difficult to preserve the flowers of Oriental rhetoric in a European tongue.

"O Allah! verily this is thy safeguard (Amn) and thy Sanctuary (Haram)! Into it whoso entereth becometh safe (Amin). So deny (Harrim) my flesh and blood, my bones and skin, to hell-fire. O Allah! Save me from thy wrath on the day when thy servants shall be raised from the dead. I conjure thee by this that thou art Allah, besides whom is none (thou only), the merciful, the compassionate. And have mercy upon our lord Mohammed, and upon the progeny of our lord Mohammed, and upon his followers, one and all!" This was concluded with the "Talbiyat," and with an especial prayer for myself.

We again mounted, and night completed our disappointment. About 1 A.M. I was aroused by general excitement. "Meccah! Meccah!" cried some voices. "The Sanctuary! O the Sanctuary!" exclaimed others; and all burst into loud "Labbayk," not unfrequently broken by sobs. I looked out from my litter, and saw by the light of the southern stars the dim outlines of a large city, a shade darker than the surrounding plain. We were passing over the last ridge by a "winding path" flanked on both sides by watch-towers, which command the "Darb el Maala," or road leading from the north into Meccah. Thence we passed into the Maabidah (northern suburb), where the Sherif's palace is built. After this, on the left hand, came the deserted abode of the Sherif bin Aun, now said to be a "haunted house."[106] Opposite to it lies the Jannat el Maala, the holy cemetery of Meccah. Thence, turning to the right, we entered the Sulaymaniyah or Afghan quarter. Here the boy Mohammed, being an inhabitant of the Shamiyah or Syrian ward, thought proper to display some apprehension. These two are on bad terms; children never meet without exchanging volleys of stones, and men fight furiously with quarter-staves. Sometimes, despite the terrors of religion, the knife and sabre are drawn. But these hostilities have their code. If a citizen be killed, there is a subscription for blood-money. An inhabitant of one quarter, passing singly through another, becomes a guest; once beyond the walls, he is likely to be beaten to insensibility by his hospitable foes.

At the Sulaymaniyah we turned off the main road into a by-way, and ascended by narrow lanes the rough heights of Jebel Hindi, upon which stands a small whitewashed and crenellated building called a "fort." Thence descending, we threaded dark streets, in places crowded with rude cots and dusky figures, and finally at 2 A.M. we found ourselves at the door of the boy Mohammed's house.

We arrived on the morning of Sunday the 7th Zu'l Hijjah (11th September, 1853), and had one day before the beginning of the pilgrimage to repose and visit the Haram. From El Medinah to Meccah the distance, according to my calculation, was 248 English miles, which was accomplished in eleven marches.

FOOTNOTES:

[106] I cannot conceive what made the accurate Niebuhr fall into the strange error that "apparitions are unknown in Arabia." Arabs fear to sleep alone, to enter the bath at night, to pass by cemeteries during dark, and to sit amongst ruins, simply for fear of apparitions. And Arabia, together with Persia, has supplied half the Western World--Southern Europe--with its ghost stories and tales of angels, demons, and fairies. To quote Milton, the land is struck "with superstition as with a planet."

ROBERT BURTON

(1577-1640)

There are some books of which every reader knows the names, but of whose contents few know anything, excepting as the same may have come to them filtered through the work of others. Of these, Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy' is one of the most marked instances. It is a vast storehouse from which subsequent authors have always drawn and continue to draw, even as Burton himself drew from others,--though without always giving the credit which with him was customary. Few would now have the courage to read it through, and probably fewer still could say with Dr. Johnson that it "was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise."

Of Robert Burton himself very little is known. He was born in 1577, a few years later than Shakespeare,--probably at Lindley, in Leicestershire; and died at Oxford in 1640. He had some schooling at Sutton Coldfield in Warwickshire, and was sent to Brasenose College at Oxford in 1593; was elected a student at Christ Church College in 1599, and took his degree of B.D. in 1614. He was then thirty-seven years of age. Why he should have been so long in reaching his degree, does not appear. Two years later he was presented by the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church to the vicarage of St. Thomas in the suburbs of Oxford. To this, about 1630, through presentation by George, Lord Berkeley, was added the rectory of Segrave in Leicestershire, and he retained both livings until his death. This is about the sum and substance of his known history. Various legends remain regarding him; as, that he was very good and jolly company, a most learned scholar, very ready in quotations from the poets and classical authors,--and indeed no reader of the 'Anatomy' could imagine otherwise. Yet was he of a melancholy disposition, and it is said that "he composed this book with a view of relieving his own melancholy, but increased it to such a degree that nothing could make him laugh but going to the foot-bridge and hearing the ribaldry of the bargemen, which rarely failed to throw him into a violent fit of laughter." He says himself, "I write of melancholy, by being busie, to avoid melancholy." He was expert in the calculation of nativities, and cast his own horoscope; having determined in which, the time at which his death should occur, it was afterward shrewdly believed that he took measures to insure the fulfillment of the prophecy.

His life was almost wholly spent in his study at Oxford. He was a wide and curious reader, and the book to the composition of which he devoted himself quotes authorities without end. All was fish which came to his net: divines, poets, astrologists, doctors, philosophers, men of science, travelers, romancers--he draws from the whole range of literature; and often page after page--scores and hundreds of pages,--is filled with quotations, sometimes of two or three words only, sometimes translated and sometimes not, an almost inextricable network of facts, of fancies, and of phrases. He says: "As those old Romans rob'd all the cities of the world, to set out their bad-sited Rome, we skim off the cream of other men's wits, pick the choice flowers of their till'd gardens to set out our own steril plots."

Yet when he sets about it, his handling is steady and assured, and he has distinctly the literary touch, as well as the marks of genius; having a very great quaintness withal. The title of his famous book is 'The Anatomy of Melancholy. What It Is, with All the Kinds, Causes, Symptoms, Prognostics, and several Cures of it. In three Partitions. With their several Sections, Members, and Sub-sections, Philosophically, Medically, Historically Opened and Cut Up. By Democritus Junior.' The first edition appears to have been issued in 1621. He continued to modify and enlarge it from time to time throughout his life; and for the sixth edition, which appeared some years after his death, he prepared a long address to the reader, describing his student life, accounting for his choice of subject, and full of quaint fancies and scathing criticisms of the ill habits and weaknesses of mankind.

"Melancholy" means with Burton _Melancholia_, but it means also all sorts of insanity, and apparently all affections of the mind or spirit, sane or insane. On the one hand he heaps up, in page after page and chapter after chapter, all the horrid ills to which flesh is heir, or which it cultivates for itself, and paints the world as a very pandemonium of evil and outrage. And anon the air blows soft and sweet, the birds sing, both brotherly love and domestic happiness are possible, and

"God's in his heaven, all's right with the world."

To the first volume is prefixed 'The Author's Abstract of Melancholy,' beginning:--

"When I go musing all alone,
Thinking of divers things foreknown,
When I build castles in the ayr,
Void of sorrow and void of feare
Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet,
Methinks the time runs very fleet.
All my joys to this are folly,
Naught so sweet as melancholy."

It does not need an expert to tell, after reading this, whence Milton drew the suggestion of 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso.'

CONCLUSIONS AS TO MELANCHOLY

Generally thus much we may conclude of melancholy: that it is most pleasant at first, I say, _mentis gratissimus error_, a most delightsome humor, to be alone, dwell alone, walk alone, meditate, lie in bed whole days, dreaming awake as it were, and frame a thousand phantastical imaginations unto themselves. They are never better pleased than when they are so doing; they are in Paradise for the time, and cannot well endure to be interrupt; with him in the Poet:--

"--pol! me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis, ait:"

you have undone him, he complains, if you trouble him: tell him what inconvenience will follow, what will be the event, all is one, _canis ad vomitum_, 'tis so pleasant he cannot refrain. He may thus continue peradventure many years by reason of a strong temperature, or some mixture of business, which may divert his cogitations: but at the last _laesa imaginatio_, his phantasy is crazed, & now habituated to such toys, cannot but work still like a fate; the Scene alters upon a sudden; Fear and Sorrow supplant those pleasing thoughts, suspicion, discontent, and perpetual anxiety succeed in their places; so little by little, by that shoeing-horn of idleness, and voluntary solitariness, Melancholy this feral fiend is drawn on, _et quantum vertice ad auras AEthereas, tantum radice in Tartara tendit_; "extending up, by its branches, so far towards Heaven, as, by its roots, it does down towards Tartarus;" it was not so delicious at first, as now it is bitter and harsh: a cankered soul macerated with cares and discontents, _taedium vitae_, impatience, agony, inconstancy, irresolution, precipitate them unto unspeakable miseries. They cannot endure company, light, or life itself, some unfit for action, and the like. Their bodies are lean and dried up, withered, ugly; their looks harsh, very dull, and their souls tormented, as they are more or less entangled, as the humor hath been intended, or according to the continuance of time they have been troubled.

To discern all which symptoms the better, _Rhasis_ the _Arabian_ makes three degrees of them. The first is _falsa cogitatio_, false conceits and idle thoughts: to misconstrue and amplify, aggravating everything they conceive or fear: the second is _falso cogitatio loqui_, to talk to themselves, or to use inarticulate incondite voices, speeches, obsolete gestures, and plainly to utter their minds and conceits of their hearts, by their words and actions, as to laugh, weep, to be silent, not to sleep, eat their meat, &c.; the third is to put in practice that which they think or speak. _Savanarola, Rub. II, Tract. 8, cap. 1, de aegritudine_, confirms as much: _when he begins to express that in words, which he conceives in his heart, or talks idly, or goes from one thing to another_, which _Gordonius_ calls _nec caput habentia nec caudam_ [having neither head nor tail], he is in the middle way: _but when he begins to act it likewise, and to put his fopperies in execution, he is then in the extent of melancholy, or madness itself._ This progress of melancholy you shall easily observe in them that have been so affected, they go smiling to themselves at first, at length they laugh out; at first solitary, at last they can endure no company, or if they do, they are now dizzards, past sense and shame, quite moped, they care not what they say or do; all their actions, words, gestures, are furious or ridiculous. At first his mind is troubled, he doth not attend what is said, if you tell him a tale, he cries at last, What said you? but in the end he mutters to himself, as old women do many times, or old men when they sit alone; upon a sudden they laugh, whoop, halloo, or run away, and swear they see or hear Players, Devils, Hobgoblins, Ghosts, strike, or strut, &c., grow humorous in the end: like him in the Poet, _saepe ducentos saepe decem servos_ [he often keeps two hundred slaves, often only ten], he will dress himself, and undress, careless at last, grows insensible, stupid or mad. He howls like a wolf, barks like a dog, and raves like _Ajax_ and _Orestes_, hears Music and outcries which no man else hears....

Who can sufficiently speak of these symptoms, or prescribe rules to comprehend them? As _Echo_ to the painter in _Ausonius_, _vane_, _quid affectas_, &c.--foolish fellow, what wilt? if you must needs paint me, paint a voice, _et similem si vis pingere, pinge sonum_; if you will describe melancholy, describe a phantastical conceit, a corrupt imagination, vain thoughts and different, which who can do? The four-and-twenty letters make no more variety of words in divers languages, than melancholy conceits produce diversity of symptoms in several persons. They are irregular, obscure, various, so infinite, _Proteus_ himself is not so diverse; you may as well make the Moon a new coat, as a true character of a melancholy man; as soon find the motion of a bird in the air, as the heart of man, a melancholy man. They are so confused, I say, diverse, intermixt with other diseases. As the species be confounded (which I have shewed) so are the symptoms; sometimes with headache, _cachexia_, dropsy, stone, (as you may perceive by those several examples and illustrations, collected by _Hildesheim, spicel. 2_,_ Mercurialis, consil. 118, cap. 6 et 11_), with headache, epilepsy, _priapismus_ (_Trincavellius, consil. 12, lib. I, consil. 49_), with gout, _caninus appetitus_ (_Montanus, consil. 26, &c., 23, 234, 249_), with falling-sickness, headache, _vertigo_, _lycanthropia_, _&c._ (_J. Caesar Claudinus, consult. 4, consult. 89 et 116_), with gout, agues, haemrods, stone, &c. Who can distinguish these melancholy symptoms so intermixt with others, or apply them to their several kinds, confine them into method? 'Tis hard I confess, yet I have disposed of them as I could, and will descend to particularize them according to their species. For hitherto I have expatiated in more general lists or terms, speaking promiscuously of such ordinary signs, which occur amongst writers. Not that they are all to be found in one man, for that were to paint a Monster or Chimaera, not a man; but some in one, some in another, and that successively, or at several times.

Which I have been the more curious to express and report, not to upbraid any miserable man, or by way of derision (I rather pity them), but the better to discern, to apply remedies unto them; and to shew that the best and soundest of us all is in great danger; how much we ought to fear our own fickle estates, remember our miseries and vanities, examine and humiliate ourselves, seek to God, and call to him for mercy, that needs not look for any rods to scourge ourselves, since we carry them in our bowels; and that our souls are in a miserable captivity, if the light of grace and heavenly truth doth not shine continually upon us; and by our discretion to moderate ourselves, to be more circumspect and wary in the midst of these dangers.

HORACE BUSHNELL

(1802-1876)

BY THEODORE T. MUNGER

Horace Bushnell was born in 1802 in Litchfield, Connecticut, and reared in New Preston, a hamlet near by. He was graduated at Yale College in 1827, and after a year of editorial service on the Journal of Commerce in New York he became tutor in Yale College, studied theology at the same time, and in 1833 was settled in the ministry over a Congregational church in Hartford, Connecticut. He resigned his charge in 1853 on account of ill health, but lived till 1876, filling the years to the last with arduous study and authorship. He published three volumes of sermons, two of essays and addresses, a treatise on Women's Suffrage, under the title 'A Reform against Nature,' and five treatises of a theological character. Each of the latter was a distinct challenge to the prevailing thought of his day, and involved him in suspicion and accusation that well-nigh cost him his ecclesiastical standing. It is now generally acknowledged that he led the way into the new world of theological thought which has since opened so widely, and thereby rendered great and enduring service to the Christian faith.

It is enough to say of his work in this respect that it was characterized by a mingling of the thought of the first three centuries, and of the modern spirit which had found its way from Germany into England through Coleridge. The two did not always agree well, and the latter is the predominating feature in all his writings. He was the first theologian in New England to admit fully into his thought the modern sense of Nature, as it is found in the literature of the early part of the century, and notably in Wordsworth and Coleridge. Dr. Bushnell was not a student of this literature beyond a thorough and sympathetic study of 'The Aids to Reflection,' but through this open door the whole spirit of that great thought movement entered his mind and found a congenial home. The secret of this movement was a spiritual interpretation of nature. It was a step in the evolution of human thought; and appearing first in literature, its natural point of entrance, it was sure to reach all forms of thought, as in time to come it will reach all forms of social life. The thing that the world is rapidly learning is, that not only is the world God's but that God is in his world. Bushnell was by nature immensely open to this thought, and its undertone can be heard in almost every page of his writings. It was this that gave value to his works and made them exceptional in his day and place. Each of his great treatises is, with more or less distinctness, an effort to put natural things and divine things into some sort of relevance and oneness.

He took the path by which superior minds have always found their way into new realms of truth. They do not pass from one school to another, but instead rise into some new or some larger conception of nature and start afresh. All gains in philosophy and religion and civilization have been made by further inroads into nature, and never in any other way. Dr. Bushnell, with the unerring instinct of a discoverer, struck this path and kept it to the end. At the bottom of all his work lies a profound sense of nature, of its meaning and force in the realm of the spirit. He did not deny a certain antithesis between nature and the supernatural, but he so defined the latter that the two could be embraced in the one category of nature when viewed as the ascertained order of God in creation. The supernatural is simply the realm of freedom, and it is as natural as the physical realm of necessity. Thus he not only got rid of the traditional antinomy between them, but led the way into that conception of the relation of God to his world which more and more is taking possession of modern thought. In his essay on Language he says (and the thought is always with him as a governing principle):--"The whole universe of nature is a perfect analogon of the whole universe of thought or spirit. Therefore, as nature becomes truly a universe only through science revealing its universal laws, the true universe of thought and spirit cannot sooner be conceived." Thus he actually makes the revelation of spiritual truth wait on the unfolding of the facts and laws of the world of nature. There is something pathetic in the attitude of this great thinker sitting in the dark, waiting for disclosures in nature that would substantiate what he felt was true in the realm of the spirit. A generation later he would have seen the light for which he longed--a light that justifies the central point of all his main contentions.

His first and most important work, 'Christian Nurture,' contended that the training of children should be according to nature,--not in the poor sense of Rousseau, but that it should be divinely natural. So 'Nature and the Supernatural,' whatever place may be accorded to the book to-day, was an effort to bring the two terms that were held as opposite and contradictory, into as close relation as God is to his laws in nature. So in 'The Vicarious Sacrifice' his main purpose was to take a doctrine that had been dwarfed out of its proper proportions, and give to it the measure of God's love and the manner of its action in human life. Dr. Bushnell may or may not have thought with absolute correctness on these themes, but he thought with consummate ability, he wrote with great eloquence and power, and he left many pages that are to be cherished as literature, while theologically they "point the way we are going."

One of the most characteristic and interesting things about Dr. Bushnell is the method he took to find his way between this spiritual view of things and that world of theological orthodoxy where he stood by virtue of his profession. It was a very hard and dry world,--a world chiefly of definitions,--but it covered vital realities, and so must have had some connection with the other world. Dr. Bushnell bridged the chasm by a theory of language which he regarded as original with himself. It was not new, but he elaborated it in an original way and with great ability. In its main feature it was simply a claim to use in theology the symbolism of poetry; it regarded language as something that attempts to make one feel the inexpressible truth, rather than a series of definitions which imply that it can be exactly stated in words; it held that truth is larger than any form which attempts to express it; it images and reflects truth instead of defining it.

This theory might be assumed without so long explication as he gave, but it was greatly needed in the theological world, which at that time was sunk in a sea of metaphysical definition, and consumed with a lust for explaining everything in heaven and earth in terms of alphabetic plainness. Dr. Bushnell was not only justified by the necessity of his situation in resorting to his theory, but he had the right which every man of genius may claim for himself. Any one whose thought is broader than that about him, whose feeling is deeper, whose imagination is loftier, is entitled to such a use of language as shall afford him fullest expression; for he alone knows just how much of thought, feeling, and imagination, how much of himself, he puts into his words; they are coin whose value he himself has a right to indicate by his own stamp. There is no pact with others to use language in any given way, except upon some very broad basis as to the main object of language. The first object is not to secure definite and comprehensive understanding, but to give expression, and to start thought which may lead to full understanding--as the parable hides the thought until you think it out.

Dr. Bushnell's theory did not blind the ordinary reader. No writer is more easily apprehended by the average mind if he has any sympathy with the subjects treated; but it was an inconvenient thing for his theological neighbors to manage. While they insisted on "the evident meaning of the words,"--a mischievous phrase,--he was breathing his meaning into attentive souls by the spirit which he had contrived to hide within his words. It is a way that genius has,--as Abt Vogler says:--

"But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear:
The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know."