IT was an immense relief to emerge from Damascus into Bey-rout,—into a city open, cheerful; it was to re-enter the world. How brightly it lies upon its sunny promontory, climbing up the slopes and crowning every eminence with tree-embowered villas! What a varied prospect it commands of sparkling sea and curving shore; of country broken into the most pleasing diversity of hill and vale, woodlands and pastures; of precipices that are draped in foliage; of glens that retain their primitive wildness, strips of dark pine forest, groups of cypresses and of palms, spreading mulberry orchards, and terraces draped by vines; of villages dotting the landscape; of convents clinging to the heights, and the snowy peaks of Lebanon! Bounteous land of silk and wine!
Beyrout is the brightest spot in Syria or Palestine, the only pleasant city that we saw, and the centre of a moral and intellectual impulse the importance of which we cannot overestimate. The mart of the great silk industry of the region, and the seaport of Damascus and of all Upper Syria, the fitful and unintelligent Turkish rule even cannot stifle its exuberant prosperity; but above all the advantages which nature has given it, I should attribute its brightest prospects to the influence of the American Mission, and to the establishment of Beyrout College. For almost thirty years that Mission has sustained here a band of erudite scholars, whose investigations have made the world more familiar with the physical character of Palestine than the people of Connecticut are with the resources of their own State, and of wise managers whose prudence and foresight have laid deep and broad the foundations of a Syrian civilization.
I do not know how many converts have been made in thirty years,—the East has had ample illustration, from the Abyssinians to the Colchians, of "conversion" without knowledge or civilization,—nor do I believe that any "reports" of the workmen themselves to the "Board" can put in visible array adequately the results of the American Mission in Syria. But the transient visitor can see something of them, in the dawning of a better social life, in the beginning of an improvement in the condition of women, in an unmistakable spirit of inquiry, and a recognizable taste for intellectual pursuits. It is not too much to say that the birth of a desire for instruction, for the enjoyment of literature, and, to a certain extent, of science, is due to their schools; and that their admirably conducted press, which has sent out not only translations of the Scriptures, but periodicals of secular literature and information, and elementary geographies, histories, and scientific treatises, has satisfied the want which the schools created. And this new leaven is not confined to a sect, nor limited to a race; it is working, slowly it is true, in the whole of Syrian society.
The press establishment is near the pretty and substantial church of the Mission; it is a busy and well-ordered printing and publishing house; sending out, besides its religious works and school-books, a monthly and a weekly publication and a child's paper, which has a large and paying circulation, a great number of its subscribers being Moslems. These regenerating agencies—the schools and the press—are happily supplemented by the college, which offers to the young men of the Orient the chance of a high education, and attracts students even from the banks of the Nile. We were accompanied to the college by Dr. Jessup and Dr. Post, and spent an interesting morning in inspecting the buildings and in the enjoyment of the lovely prospect they command. As it is not my desire to enter into details regarding the Mission or the college any further than is necessary to emphasize the supreme importance of this enterprise to the civilization of the Orient, I will only add that the college has already some interesting collections in natural history, a particularly valuable herbarium, and that the medical department is not second in promise to the literary.
It is sometimes observed that a city is like a man, in that it will preserve through all mutations and disasters certain fundamental traits; the character that it obtains at first is never wholly lost, but reappears again and again, asserting its individuality after, it may be, centuries of obscurity. Beyrout was early a seat of learning and a centre of literary influence for nearly three hundred years before its desolation by an earthquake in the middle of the sixth century, and its subsequent devastation by the followers of the Arabian prophet, it was thronged with students from all the East, and its schools of philosophy and law enjoyed the highest renown. We believe that it is gradually resuming its ancient prestige.
While we were waiting day after day the arrival of the Austrian steamboat for Constantinople, we were drawn into a little drama which afforded us alternate vexation and amusement; an outline of it may not be out of place here as an illustration of the vicissitudes of travel in the East, or for other reasons which may appear. I should premise that the American consul who resided here with his family was not in good repute with many of the foreign residents; that he was charged with making personal contributions to himself the condition of the continuance in office of his subagents in Syria; that the character of his dragomans, or at least one of them named Ouardy, was exceedingly bad, and brought the consular office and the American name into contempt; and that these charges had been investigated by an agent sent from the ministerial bureau in Constantinople. The dragomans of the consulate, who act as interpreters, and are executors of the consul's authority, have no pay, but their position gives them a consideration in the community, and a protection which they turn to pecuniary account. It should be added that the salary of the consul at Beyrout is two thousand dollars,—a sum, in this expensive city, which is insufficient to support a consul, who has a family, in the style of a respectable citizen, and is wholly inadequate to the maintenance of any equality with the representatives of other nations; the government allows no outfit, nor does it provide for the return of its consul; the cost of transporting himself and family home would consume almost half a year's salary, and the tenure of the office is uncertain. To accept any of several of our Oriental consulships, a man must either have a private fortune or an unscrupulous knack of living by his wits. The English name is almost universally respected in the East, so far as my limited experience goes, in the character of its consuls; the same cannot be said of the American.
The morning after our arrival, descending the steps of the hotel, I found our dragoman in a violent altercation with another dragoman, a Jew, and a resident of Beyrout. There is always a latent enmity between the Egyptian and the Syrian dragomans, a national hostility, as old perhaps as the Shepherds' invasion, which it needs only an occasion to blow into a flame. The disputants were surrounded by a motley crowd, nearly all of them the adherents of the Syrian. I had seen Antoine Ouardy at Luxor, when he was the dragoman of an English traveller. He was now in Frank dress, wearing a shining hat, an enormous cluster shirt-pin, and a big seal ring; and with his aggressive nose and brazen face he had the appearance of a leading mock-auctioneer in the Bowery. On the Nile, where Abd-el-Atti enjoys the distinction of Sultan among his class, the fellow was his humble servant; but he had now caught the Egyptian away from home, and was disposed to make the most of his advantage. Chancing to meet Ouardy this morning, Abd-el-Atti had asked for the payment of two pounds lent at Luxor; the debt was promptly denied, and when his own due-bill for the money was produced, he declared that he had received the money from Abd-el-Atti in payment for some cigars which he had long ago purchased for him in Alexandria. Of course if this had been true, he would not have given a note for the money; and it happened that I had been present when the sum was borrowed.
The brazen denial exasperated our dragoman, and when I arrived the quarrel had come nearly to blows, all the injurious Arabic epithets having been exhausted. The lie direct had been given back and forth, but the crowning insult was added, in English, when Abd-el-Atti cried,—
"You 're a humbug!"
This was more than Ouardy could stand. Bursting with rage, he shook his fist in the Egyptian's face:—
"You call me humbug; you humbug, yourself. You pay for this, I shall have satisfaction by the law."
We succeeded in separating and, I hoped, in reducing them to reason, but Antoine went off muttering vengeance, and Abd-el-Atti was determined to bring suit for his money. I represented the hopelessness of a suit in a Turkish court, the delay and the cost of lawyers, and the certainty that Ouardy would produce witnesses to anything he desired to prove.
"What I care for two pound!" exclaimed the heated dragoman. "I go to spend a hundred pound, but I have justice." Shortly after, as Abd-el-Atti was walking through the bazaars, with one of the ladies of our party, he was set upon by a gang of Ouardy's friends and knocked down; the old man recovered himself and gave battle like a valiant friend of the Prophet; Ouardy's brother sallied out from his shop to take a hand in the scrimmage, and happened to get a rough handling from Abd-el-Atti, who was entirely ignorant of his relationship to Antoine. The whole party were then carried off to the seraglio, where Abd-el-Atti, as the party attacked, was presumed to be in the wrong, and was put into custody. In the inscrutable administration of Turkish justice, the man who is knocked down in a quarrel is always arrested. When news was brought to us at the hotel of this mishap, I sent for the American consul, as our dragoman was in the service of an American citizen. The consul sent his son and his dragoman. And the dragoman sent to assist an American, embarrassed by the loss of his servant in a strange city, turned out to be the brother of Antoine Ouardy, and the very fellow that Abd-el-Atti had just beaten. Here was a complication. Dragoman Ouardy showed his wounds, and wanted compensation for his injuries. At the very moment we needed the protection of the American government, its representative appeared as our chief prosecutor.
However, we sent for Abd-el-Atti, and procured his release from the seraglio; and after an hour of conference, in which we had the assistance of some of the most respectable foreign residents of the city, we flattered ourselves that a compromise was made. The injured Ouardy, who was a crafty rogue, was persuaded not to insist upon a suit for damages, which would greatly incommode an American citizen, and Abd-el-Atti seemed willing to drop his suit for the two pounds. Antoine, however, was still menacing.
"You heard him," he appealed to me, "you heard him call me humbug."
The injurious nature of this mysterious epithet could not be erased from his mind. It was in vain that I told him it had been freely applied to a well-known American, until it had become a badge of distinction. But at length a truce was patched up; and, confident that there would be no more trouble, I went into the country for a long walk over the charming hills.
When I returned at six o'clock, the camp was in commotion. Abd-el-Atti was in jail! There was a suit against him for 20,000 francs for horrible and unprovoked injuries to the dragoman of the American consul! The consul, upon written application for assistance, made by the ladies at the hotel, had curtly declined to give any aid, and espoused the quarrel of his dragoman. It appeared that Abd-el-Atti, attempting again to accompany a lady in a shopping expedition through the bazaars, had been sent for by a messenger from the seraglio. As he could not leave the lady in the street, he carelessly answered that he would come by and by. A few minutes after he was arrested by a squad of soldiers, and taken before the military governor. Abd-el-Atti respectfully made his excuse that he could not leave the lady alone in the street, but the pasha said that he would teach him not to insult his authority. Both the Ouardy brothers were beside the pasha, whispering in his ear, and as the result of their deliberations Abd-el-Atti was put in prison. It was Saturday afternoon, and the conspirators expected to humiliate the old man by keeping him locked up till Monday. This was the state of the game when I came to dinner; the faithful Abdallah, who had reluctantly withdrawn from watching the outside of the seraglio where his master was confined, was divided in mind between grief and alarm on the one side and his duty of habitual cheerfulness to us on the other, and consequently announced, "Abd-el-Atti, seraglio," as a piece of good news; the affair had got wind among the caf閟, where there was a buzz of triumph over the Egyptians; and at the hotel everybody was drawn into the excitement, discussing the assault and the arrest of the assaulted party, the American consul and the character of his dragoman, and the general inability of American consuls to help their countrymen in time of need.
The principal champion of Abd-el-Atti was Mohammed Achmed, the dragoman of two American ladies who had been travelling in Egypt and Palestine. Achmed was a character. He had the pure Arab physiognomy, the vivacity of an Italian, the restlessness of an American, the courtesy of the most polished Oriental, and a unique use of the English tongue. Copious in speech, at times flighty in manner, gravely humorous, and more sharp-witted than the "cutest" Yankee, he was an exceedingly experienced and skilful dragoman, and perfectly honest to his employers. Achmed was clad in baggy trousers, a silk scarf about his waist, short open jacket, and wore his tarboosh on the back of his sloping head. He had a habit of throwing back his head and half closing his wandering, restless black eyes in speaking, and his gestures and attitudes might have been called theatrical but for a certain simple sincerity; yet any extravagance of speech or action was always saved from an appearance of absurdity by a humorous twinkle in his eyes. Alexandria was his home, while Abd-el-Atti lived in Cairo; the natural rivalry between the dragomans of the two cities had been imbittered by some personal disagreement, and they were only on terms of the most distant civility. But Abd-el-Atti's misfortune not only roused his national pride, but touched his quick generosity, and he surprised his employers by the enthusiasm with which he espoused the cause and defended the character of the man he had so lately regarded as anything but a friend. He went to work with unselfish zeal to procure his release; he would think of nothing else, talk of nothing else.
"How is it, Achmed," they said, "that you and Abd-el-Atti have suddenly become such good friends?"
"Ah, my lady," answers Achmed, taking an attitude, "you know not Abd-el-Atti, one of the first-class men in all Egypt. Not a common dragoman like these in Beyrout, my lady; you shall ask in Cairo what a man of esteem. To tell it in Cairo that he is in jail! Abd-el-Atti is my friend. What has been sometime, that is nothing. It must not be that he is in jail. And he come out in half an hour, if your consul say so."
"That is not so certain; but what can we do?"
"Write to the consul American that he shall let Abd-el-Atti go. You, my lady," said Achmed, throwing himself on his knees before the person he was addressing, "make a letter, and say I want my dragoman immediate. If he will not, I go to the English consul, I know he will do it. Excuse me, but will you make the letter? When it was the English consul, he does something; when it was the American, I pick your pargin, my lady, he is not so much esteem here."
In compliance with Achmed's entreaty a note was written to the consul, but it produced no effect, except an uncivil reply that it was after office hours.
When I returned, Achmed was in a high fever of excitement. He believed that Abd-el-Atti would be released if I would go personally to the consul and insist upon it............