Chapter IX (2)

Pringle and Tissot, two authors who recommend fruit in health and in sickness, had greatly weakened my belief in its supposed pernicious effects: and I was resolved to ascertain, on my own person, what the actual result might be in this hot climate. Accordingly, about the 1st of July, I entered upon a diet, almost entirely composed of fruit. I was enabled to adhere strictly to it; because, since our arrival at Latakia, I kept my own table, and was not, therefore, compelled, from the necessity of doing like others, and from deference to opinion and custom, to violate the rules I had laid down for myself; and the little communication which I had with the inhabitants of the place, owing to the danger of plague, prevented all interruption from invitations to the meals of other people.

It is to be premised that, although I consider the air of Latakia excellent, yet the constitution of the atmosphere this year was by no means healthy, and little favourable to dietetic experiments. The thermometer stood, upon an average at noon, at 84° F. This degree of heat rendered fruit highly agreeable. I slept during the night in the open air, with a mosquito net. I breakfasted on coffee and milk, with bread and honey. At noon, I generally ate an entire sweet melon, and drank a pint of cold well-water, the place affording no other. My dinner invariably consisted of about a dozen fresh figs, a portion of a sweet, or water melon, and a pint of cold water. At ten o’clock at night, I again ate part of a sweet or water-melon, drank another pint of water, and retired to sleep.

This regimen was continued for twenty days. My digestion experienced no alteration whatever; my sleep was delicious; and, during the whole time, I knew not what it was to have a foul mouth in the morning, dreams in the night, or the slightest symptom of disorder in my health. The exercise that I took was, with the exception of swimming, a brisk trot on horseback of a mile or two every day.

The same diet was renewed from the 4th of August to the 27th, and on the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th, I lived entirely on fruit and water, without even bread; grapes being added to what I have above enumerated.

I was walking one morning during Ramazán, which began this year on the 27th of August, to Mr. Barker’s house, when I stopped in my way at the bazàr to buy something, and lighted my pipe, as I sat dealing with the merchant, to beguile the time. After making my purchase, I walked on with my long pipe in my hand, smoking as I went, which is not very genteel, even in Turkey, where few above the trading classes smoke, except when seated. A Christian of the country, who was with me, told me with great trepidation that the Turks would not suffer me to smoke openly in the day time during Ramazán, and that I should get insulted if I continued to do so. He had scarcely said it (I sillily declaring that I would smoke if I chose) when I was addressed by several shopkeepers and people standing about, who called on their prophet to witness how the Ramazán was violated by a Nazarene. They told me to extinguish my pipe, and that if I were seen another time insulting their most sacred observances, they would break it about my head.[76] After much altercation, I walked on without extinguishing it; but my reflections afterwards told me I had done wrong, and I never, on any future occasion, wilfully opposed the minutest prejudice of their law.

During Ramazán, the Turks do not discontinue working: and in no religion with which I am acquainted are so many days in the year given to labour as in the Mahometan; for, if I may judge from what I heard in conversation, and from what I saw, they think that honest labour can have nothing unholy in it at any time, and they hold the same opinion as to innocent recreation. But, in the Greek church, the too frequent recurrence of holydays, and the strong injunctions of the priests not to work on those days, is destructive of industry, and serves to render the mechanic and artisan drunken and idle.[77]

The month of September passed over without any material accident, excepting the sickness of almost all the servants, which gave me much anxiety: for no sooner did one or two get well than others fell ill. The prevailing maladies were bilious remittent, terminating in intermittent fevers.

Madame Lascaris, shut up in Damascus, in the midst of a raging plague, lost her young companion. The Greek patriarch, a worthy prelate, known to almost all English travellers in this country, likewise fell a victim to it.

As Lady Hester had declared her intention of embarking here, I had disposed of my horses, as I have already related. About this time, the glanders appeared among hers, and carried off two in a short time: a third was led to the seashore and shot, which action was greatly blamed by the lower order of Turks: a fourth was made over to the town farrier, and died; and the disease bade fair to exterminate the whole stud.

In the mean time, amusements were not wanting to make the time pass very agreeably. To the north of Latakia is a bay formed by the receding of the land. Here vessels destined for Latakia can ride out severe gales from the south-west, the point from which they generally blow. Upon the shore of this bay stood a mosque and sanctuary, built over the tomb of a santon. The place is called Ebn Hani,[78] and Mr. Barker and his family used occasionally to go and spend three or four days there, at which times a ride by land, or a trip by sea, to visit them, was one source of recreation. In like manner, there was at all times wild boar hunting: with francolins, partridges, gazelles, and hares, to shoot at, as well as that delicious bird, the beccafico, when figs were in season. I never saw a place where a sportsman might have more diversion.

When we went to shoot beccaficos, the party separated in the gardens, about a mile from the town, and met at a given place, at eleven or twelve, to breakfast on what had been killed. It was on one of these occasions that we were sitting after this breakfast, (or dinner, as it is called there,) upon the brink of a garden-reservoir, into which, by a creaking Persian wheel, water was thrown from a well beneath; when, on observing a stramonium shrub close by, Mr. Barker remarked how amusing were the effects produced by putting the seeds of it into the pipe of a person smoking, whom it intoxicated, and caused to play various antics. A French gentleman, M. Narsiat, was of the party, and expressed a wish to observe these effects on some person: accordingly, a peasant, who, among others, had been looking on at our repast in the open air, was offered a sum of money if he would suffer himself to be made intoxicated; but he was not to receive it until such an effect had manifested itself. The fellow inquired what that effect would be, and it was described to him. He then allowed the quantity of seeds supposed necessary to be put, fresh from the plant, into his pipe, and began to smoke. Whether it was his knavery which made him sham the symptoms, or whether they were real, I cannot say; but he beat and knocked about some of his comrades, and then leaped into the reservoir of water: after which he came, in a perfectly sensible manner, up to us, and demanded the money.

Some of these peasants kept falcons for hawking, and would, for a trifle, go out and kill a partridge or two.

At the beginning of October, Mr. B. received letters which obliged him to return immediately to England. He, therefore, reluctantly prepared to quit a lady, in whose society he had so long travelled, and from whose conversation and experience of the world so much useful knowledge was to be acquired. He departed on the 7th of October for Aleppo, accompanied by his dragoman, M. Beaudin, with a cook, valet, and groom. I accompanied him a league or two on his road, and then returned to Latakia.

Lady Hester had now abandoned the idea of going to Europe. Sometimes she thought of taking a journey overland to Bussora, and to embark there in an English ship for India, but finally determined on remaining some months longer in Syria. She told me that she had bethought herself of a small retired building, a short distance from Sayda, which, as being only an occasional residence of the proprietor, the patriarch of the Greek catholics, could, for a trifling sum, be hired for her use. She had seen this when at Sayda the preceding year, and she now wrote to M. Bertrand, desiring him to secure it for her.[79] The patriarch Athanasius was at this time residing at the monastery of Mar Elias, so his house was called; but, on learning Lady Hester’s wishes, he sent a polite message to signify that she was welcome to occupy it whenever and as long as she chose.

Soon after the arrival of the answer, all the luggage that could be well spared was shipped off for Sayda under the care of Hanah, or as he was usually called Giovanni, formerly Mr. B.’s servant, but now returned from Aleppo and become mine. It was intended that we should follow in the course of a few days: when a series of melancholy events succeeded each other so rapidly, that the new year had begun before we departed!

Two young children of Mr. Barker’s, named Harissa and Zabetta, were taken ill of a malignant fever. I attended them, and, observing the symptoms to be highly virulent, I insisted on separating the parents from them. Mr. and Mrs. Barker in consequence left Besnáda for Latakia, and the sole care of nursing the little patients devolved on their grandmother, Mrs. Abbott. On the 31st both died within five hours of each other. Shortly before this the janissary in attendance on Lady Hester had been taken off very suddenly, and also the child of a merchant, the partner of Mâlem Mûsa Elias, the British agent: so that there was some doubt whether the plague had not again got footing in the town. We were aware that it still raged with unabated violence in Hems, Damascus, and at a village near Antioch, not very far from Latakia, and through which places caravans were continually coming to Latakia. The summer and autumn were considered by the natives as peculiarly fine: for the weather had remained so settled that, for five months, there had been only two showers of rain.

On the 15th of November, just as we were on the point of setting out for Sayda, Lady Hester was attacked with a fever, and on the evening of the same day I fell ill also.[80]

I continued to get out for an hour or two in the course of the day, till the 18th; but my debility had then become so great, and the symptoms of low fever so aggravated, that I took to my bed, where I became occasionally delirious; and it was not until the twelfth day that I was able to quit my chamber, when I was carried to attend on Lady Hester, whose situation was so dangerous, that, in addition to a French doctor, who happened to come to Latakia at this time, an Italian surgeon, settled in the place, had also been called in. But Mr. Barker urged the necessity of my seeing her, although I much feared that my weak state would wholly incapacitate me from yet resuming my professional duties. For fifteen days after this I did not quit her day or night, never undressing the whole of that time: and, during this period, for twelve hours, I despaired of her life, and a communication was made to her by Mr. Barker to that effect. At last it pleased God, by the aid of a constitution naturally vigorous, to relieve her so far that I could pronounce her out of danger; nevertheless she was not able to stand till the 1st of January, the day of our departure from Latakia.

It was Lady Hester’s firm persuasion that her disorder was the plague, and some reasons induced me to believe so. For if there be (as the native physicians say) a sporadic disease constantly remarked at the beginning and close of the first year in which plague appears, but which, alike in most of its symptoms, loses for a time its infectious powers, and is not equally disposed to affect the glandular system, then had Lady Hester indeed the plague. Besides, on the 15th of November, four persons had died; on the 16th three: and there might have been as many deaths on the subsequent days for aught I know: which are so many proofs of the occasional reappearance of a modified disease, dependent on the peculiar constitution of the year.

In consequence of this grievous sickness which befel Lady Hester and myself, as well as of the many melancholy events that we had witnessed here, we became so disgusted with Latakia as to feel very anxious to leave the place. We had experienced great inconvenience from the want of many articles of comfort which had been sent off to Sayda with the luggage: and hence it was that our privations were of a rather serious kind. The weather, which had remained tolerably warm up to December 10th, on a sudden became windy, boisterous, and exceedingly wet; so that it was necessary to hire and borrow bed-coverings: and, as the house happened not to be weather-proof, Lady Hester’s chamber was often inundated, and a cope of felt was suspended beneath the ceiling to carry off the water: nay, it will hardly be believed that, in mine, I was occasionally obliged to rise two or three times to shift my bed from place to place, in the ineffectual attempt to find a dry corner.

Captain Macdonald,[81] a gentleman in the service of the East India Company, arrived at Latakia a day or two after the commencement of Lady Hester’s illness. He remained in Mr. Barker’s house until the departure of that gentleman and his family (December the 5th) for Aleppo, and his presence was a pleasing addition to our small society. Invited by M. Guys, the French consul, he afterwards took up his abode with him for a few days; until, on the 10th of December, he sailed, on a most tempestuous night, and, in an open boat, for Cyprus; but the boat could not keep the sea, and returned on the 12th. A day or two afterwards he finally succeeded in getting across; but not without considerable risk.

To add to the serious inconveniencies under which Lady Hester laboured, her maid, Mrs. Fry, fell ill of a nervous fever, brought on by unremitting attendance on her mistress and excessive fatigue. There were, it is true, at this period, as servants in the house, two women of the place, both useful in their way, if Lady Hester had but been able to speak to them: one an old woman, called Hadjy[82] (for she had been to Jerusalem,) who proved an excellent nurse; and the other, named Mariam, a young and handsome creature, who officiated as bathwoman and laundress. Mariam was a widow, and had two daughters, twelve and fourteen years old, who for loveliness might have vied with the two beauties of Athens, so much spoken of by Lord Byron and travellers: but all three had been attacked with bilious remittent fevers, and required, rather than rendered, assistance in the family.

Mr. Pearce, of whom mention has been made in the former part of this Journal, had now, after a complete ramble through Syria, reached Aleppo. Hearing of Lady Hester’s illness, he politely wrote to offer her whatever assistance he could render to her, requesting that she would command his services, even at Latakia, if necessary.

December 15th, Lady Hester was seized with an ague, just at the time that she had regained strength enough to meditate anew her departure for Sayda, and when a vessel had been hired for the purpose. The voyage was of course deferred for some time longer. To add to the sufferings we had within doors, it was discovered, as winter advanced, that provisions were very scanty at Latakia, and that there was by no means the variety which is met with in the European markets. Beef and veal were never on sale--mutton rarely: goats’ flesh, which the majority of the inhabitants lived on, we could not fancy. Geese, turkeys, and ducks, were only to be had by sending to Cyprus; fowls were poor. Game, as has been observed, was plentiful; but to have it at table it was necessary to be a sportsman, or to have a neighbour like Mr. Barker, whose skill in shooting was remarkable: for the Turks seldom indulge in the sports of the field, and the Christians dare not carry firearms. Fresh butter was rare, and, when obtained, generally liquid, looking like melted hogs’ lard; so that we were almost deprived of all the dishes, and they are not a few, in which that article is introduced.

As our voyage was again deferred, M. Beaudin, the interpreter, who had remained some time at Tripoli, in expectation of Lady Hester’s arrival on her way to Sayda, was now recalled. He had joined us only a few days, when, one morning, he was suddenly attacked with symptoms of an inflammatory fever, and, in bleeding, he was seized with strong convulsions, which threw the house anew into disorder. He shortly afterwards recovered, but his convalescence was slow, and, when we departed for Sayda, he was sent by land by short journeys.

At length, on the 6th of January, 1814, Lady Hester was with difficulty placed on an ass, and, supported on either side by Stefano and Pierre, who had been recalled, she was conveyed to the water-side. As she had not been out of doors before for forty-eight days, a vast crowd collected to see her, and we were much annoyed by a buffoon, who, to gain money, played on a squeaking pipe, and danced before her on the way to the harbour. When assured that he would not be rewarded for the trouble he was giving himself, he went away. At the quay the secretary of the governor waited to see us on board. Presents were distributed to all such as had experienced trouble on Lady Hester’s account, or rendered services to her, and we quitted the place with the good wishes of the greater part of the inhabitants.

We embarked on board a shaktûr, a lateen-sailed, decked vessel like a lugger, very roomy and commodious. The vessel had been previously fitted up for our reception, and, by means of mats and boards, the whole of the hold was set apart for the occupation of Lady Hester and her three women. These vessels have but small cabins, where a person can creep out of the wet and sleep. I preferred sleeping on deck; and the weather was fortunately so mild, although it was the month of January, that I experienced no inconvenience from it; nay, at noon the sun was even troublesome.

We could observe, from the sea, that the mountains running from Gebel-el-Akerah, the ancient Cassius,[83] behind Latakia, are continued, in an even ridge, to where Mount Lebanon begins, at the back of Tripoli. They were covered with snow at this season of the year. We sailed along with a leading north wind, and passed, in our way, Gebala, twelve miles from Latakia, and Tortûsa, a small town, with a creek which serves to admit boats only. Opposite to it, at about the distance of a league, is the island of Aradus, now called Arad, a rock about a league in circumference, covered completely with houses. It has a well and cisterns for rain water. Most of the inhabitants lived by sailmaking, and there was no other place in Syria, we were told, where sail-cloth was manufactured. Their insulated and barren situation exempted them in a great measure from the visits of the Turks, a circumstance that proved favourable to their prosperity.

We put into Tripoli (Tarablus), and passed one night there, but did not go on shore. The road, for it is not a harbour, is formed by six or eight rocks, just above the water, which break the impetuosity of the sea: but it is by no means a safe haven.

Mount Lebanon begins a few miles to the north of Tripoli, to appearance in a gradual ascent, and arrives to its greatest height behind the town. It is there only, throughout its whole length, that the snow remains all the year. Two small mountains, standing separate, are interposed between the sea and the great chain. One is called Gebel Tarbal, the other El Kûry: and this latter produces some of the best tobacco in Syria. Handsome presents, in provisions, were sent off to Lady Hester, by the governor of Tripoli, Mustafa Aga Berber, and also by the English agent, Signor Catsiflitz, a Greek. Among them were baskets of Tripoli oranges, which are deservedly held in high esteem.

But it is not too much to assert that the heaviest tax on travellers of note in the East consists in the presents which they receive. It appears at first sight extremely hospitable to welcome the arrival of a stranger, by anticipating all his wants, and by sending him provisions of immediate necessity; and so it would be, were it not that those who deliver these presents beg for, or insinuate that they expect in return, as much or more than their value; whilst the giver can scarcely be forgotten on such occasions, if the stranger would not appear ungrateful.

We arrived at Sayda on the 11th, just in time to escape a storm, which came on in the evening of our landing; indeed, the swell of the sea had announced it some time before: and as the vessel rolled greatly in Sayda harbour, before we could prepare the things necessary for Lady Hester’s landing, she began to grow fearful, sickness having bent that courage which I had never yet seen yield to the commotions of the elements or to anything else.

At length an ass was brought to the water-edge; her ladyship landed in the same way that she had embarked. Signor Damiani, a person who had been employed by the English during Sir Sydney Smith’s expedition to Acre, let his house for our occupation, in consideration of a present to be left at her discretion; for, although the same French consul lived here that had lodged us in the year 1812, and this was the same Damiani who had then in vain solicited that honour, still Lady Hester considered she should enjoy more liberty in a hired house of her own than in that of another, only lent to her.

Before dismissing the subject of this voyage, it will not be amiss to note the remarks which we made concerning the crew. On their knowledge of navigation I cannot decide, knowing little of the matter myself; but they appear to be practical, although not theoretical, sailors. Nothing can exceed their activity in going aloft; although they pay little attention to nicety in trimming their sails and yards, and have no discipline. As to the vessel, her rigging was defective, her decks dirty. The crew lived well enough, on rice, cheese, onions, and good biscuit; with sometimes the addition of figs, raisins, &c.

How far animal food is necessary for the support of seamen, persons more experienced in these things must decide. But if an humble opinion may be ventured, I profess I cannot see why salt meat, juiceless, and saturated with brine even to loathing, should be made the main nourishment of a crew on a long voyage, to the great injury of their health, when farinaceous food of all sorts is so plentiful and so salutary, which would form, with the addition of dry fruits, and the many other articles now allowed in his Majesty’s navy, a species of sustenance much better adapted to long voyages, and diminishing not a jot the strength of a man, as is generally supposed. For whence is it that the Egyptian, so lusty and muscular, derives his great strength, but from rice and cold water; or the Irishman, but from potatoes and buttermilk? Oh! that this truth could be forcibly impressed on those persons who fancy that strength lies only in animal food, and in spirits, wine, and beer; for let them be assured that all fermented liquors are destructive of it.

In this trip I learned to box the compass in Arabic, which is less difficult than in English. The card is divided into sixteen rhumbs, not as with us into thirty-two; and the alternate rhumbs have no names, but are indifferently called joze or halves, with the addition of the point next adjoining. Thus it must necessarily be wanting in accuracy to designate the wind and the course.