14

THE ISRAELITE PATRIARCH.

and of stirring, solemn thoughts, which quite cause him to forget that he is a stranger and alone. Our little French steamer Osiris, of about five hundred tons' burden, was sufficiently large to accommodate a strange variety of characters in the persons of Turks and Jews, Christians and Infidels. Here was a chance to form an acquaintance which might be available in discovering the motives bringing so many to these lands. A most accessible white-bearded patriarch was found in a Jewish father-though probably not a rabbi-on his way to Jerusalem. I had met with him before in my travels in the Mediterranean. He was on his return from Germany and America, whither he had gone to beg money for his brethren in the Holy Land. Speaking nothing but Arabic, German, some Spanish, and a little Italian, he had nevertheless visited many of the scattered Israelites in various nations, and gathered a large amount of money, which had been forwarded to Palestine, the immediate design of which I did not learn till I visited the Jews at Tiberias on the Lake of Galilee. This aged Israelite would have formed just such a treasurer and agent as the most anxious economist would have desired. He always boarded himself on the plainest vegetable fare, cooking his meals by an alcohol taper, and in perfect consistency with all the minutiae of ceremonial forms and cleanliness. When the wind or the rain put out the light of his little flame-heated kitchen, or when the rolling of the vessel prevented Turks or Christians from performing their devotions, this old gentleman took his meals cold, but in devotion appeared as warm as ever, and as observant of all the forms, making him certainly, so far as externals were concerned, worthy of his name,-Zadoc Levi, or Levi the Just. had been a resident of Jerusalem for more than twenty-two years, and was of great service to me in directions and information.

He

I frequently sat by his side, reading difficult passages of Hebrew with him, questioning, objecting, and listening to the novel and sometimes mysterious legends which are to

TURKISH NOBLEMAN.

15

this day so tenaciously held in the Land. The acquaintance which this old Israelite had with the law of Moses and with all the various commentaries of the Talmud, together with traditions, was truly marvellous. Many strange pointings and cabalistic letters in the Hebrew text, which I had been gathering for years and from various intricate sources, seemed, so far as I could remember, to be household words to the old Israelite. But we were to spend some time in quarantine; and I hoped to tax his resources again.

Our Turkish passengers of the respectable class preferred the parts of the vessel aft the wheel. One Mussulman particularly attracted attention. He was a genuine Turk, from turban to divan, of that class of which a definition is so hard to be had. Being an effendi (nobleman) and lately from Mecca, he travelled with servants, especially one little Nubian slave who waited on him constantly, or rather on his pipe, and who was as completely entangled in the mazes of his power, his frowns and smiles, as an insect in the threads of a spider's web. Here was an opportunity to learn something, personally and socially, of a Turk. But how to approach the man through the sullen haughtiness with which he enveloped himself we knew not. Seated on his richly-embroidered carpet, he seemed quite willing to encourage the distance with which every one treated him.

The Turks cherish some contempt for all languages, their own excepted; and the little Turkish which we could master was not sufficient for the necessities of life, much less for an appearance in court. Whether it was in condescension to my long-neglected beard, or from ennui or curiosity on his own part, yet after some slight advances I found myself in broken conversation with him. The little Nubian boy (his pipe-lighter) was weak from a severe sickness, and occasionally received a smile from his lord and a half-lionlike caress, which, with other gleams of sunshine, quite moderated my impressions of the historically "dark and cruel Turkish heart."

But there was a sequel which afterward threw another

16

DEVOTIONS

"PERFORMED.”

light upon this picture. Our Mohammedan passengers, from the proudest to the humblest, were faithful to the hour of prayer, if not to all the forms, and, turning their faces toward what they supposed to be the direction of Mecca, they very seldom permitted anything to interrupt the indistinct mutterings of their devotions.

In their Mohammedan postures, they seem to have passed unchanged through more than one thousand years; and to this day they are the same in Arabia as when they followed the Arabs issuing from Medina, under the wild impulse of Islamism, to wrest Palestine from the possession of the Greek Christians. I have often had occasion to notice the Turkish automaton go through his postures and his sentences, which form the devotion of daylight, sunrise, noon, sunset, and twilight, and which, though externally "done up" after the direction of rule, are evidently as exact, as heartless, as obstinately contemptuous of all around him, as though he were an image wound up and set a-going for the amusement of spectators and "dogs." The forms are essentially the same with all Mohammedans, on sea and on land, in the mosque and in the field. If altered at all, they are annually corrected in the pilgrimage to Mecca, where all dissimilarities are soon detected, permitting nothing materially wrong to exist for any length of time. One of the worshippers, with his head on the deck, holds in his hand a string of beads, professedly used for the purpose of enumerating the titles of Allah, as good, holy, just, true, Creator, Enlivener, &c. &c., some rehearsing as many as one hundred titles, many of which are exceedingly simple and absurd; but the most usual object of the beads is simply that of ornament, or that something may be had upon which to exercise the finger-ends during the sedentary idleness of a Turkish life. A Christian shrinks from making public the external form of his private moments of devotion; and often the heartless worship of a Mohammedan is placarded before Christian readers as an evidence of the moral courage of a heathen, and paraded for their

MOHAMMEDAN INDIFFERENCE.

17

benefit and pattern. There is thought to be an apparent reproof in the fact that we see nowhere among the Mohammedans the same timidity in religious profession which we find among believers of a Christian's hope and faith. Every Mohammedan, whether on land or water, stops his tale or work at the cry of the muezzin, recites his prayer, makes his bow or posture, then resumes his broken thread and finishes his fun or fancy. If on water, he drops his oar, lets the wind and tide frolic with the boat till his prayer is over, and then resumes his oar and brings the boat to its course. On ship-deck, with his little mat, if not too sea-sick, he turns his face somewhere toward Mecca, prays according to the Koran, "standing, bowing, kneeling," with as little regard to him who laughs or looks as though every biped was a quadruped and "Mohammed alone were great." As soon would I commend the stupid wag of a dog's gratitude to an intelligent man as a pattern of ethics, as to present a Mohammedan's arrogance to a Christian as a pattern of moral courage. What there is of moral courage is due to nothing but the most determined ignorance, compounded with the most abject contempt of the "infidel dogs," whom he considers as laying claims to the same respect from a Mohammedan which the parasite might claim from the dog on whom he lives. This is the moral shadow which throws itself across the land of promise. No one understands the history of the land who knows not the haughty spirit of Mohammedanism, with its hereditary and natural contempt for every person not of its faith-a contempt which is encouraged by its law. But the detention in the quarantine will afford time for further study of the Turkish character.

A very fat and timid Italian priest made his appearance on deck soon after casting anchor, and was the object of considerable merriment among the sailors and a few others for his fearfulness and clumsiness, which did not leave him until ashore. After anchoring and rolling lazily upon the waves for an hour and a half, a flat-boat with a few half

18

USES OF QUARANTINE.

clad Arabs came aside, and we understood that we were to leave for the quarantine grounds, about a mile off, where we were to remain five days under close confinement,nominally to prevent the introduction of disease into Syria, but really for the sin of coming from Alexandria. The Pasha of Egypt, still cherishing his differences with the Sultan under whose government Syria has been since 1840, takes all methods of preventing Turkish visits to Egypt; and the authorities under the Sultan quietly resent the insult by carrying their enmity into the quarantine-grounds. The state of health in Egypt at this time was better than that in Syria, and especially in Jerusalem; yet the quarantine was rigidly enforced. The first boat left for the shore without us, and the passengers received a drenching in the rain. At the next arrival we entered the boat with our baggage and a promiscuous pile of trunks and boxes, into the midst of which our fat priest was accidentally tumbled in attempting carefully to descend the side of the vessel. Amid the yelling of the Arabs, the wind and spray, the laughter of many, and the crying and crossing of our timid priest, whose dignity had received such a fall, we were towed, by a boat ahead of us, through the boisterous surf toward the shore.

Natives of Syria generally, when under the excitement of anger, distress, or vexation, seldom exercise their resentment on the offending party, but upon themselves. Here we noticed the first instance of this peculiarity; for when the rope which connected us with the rowed boat, through its rottenness and the clumsy management of the rowers, was broken, and we were in danger of being dashed against the two rocks, the Arab leader immediately commenced inflicting injuries upon himself, either by striking his breast or by beating the boat with his hands, and at the same time screaming at the crew with a violence proportionate to his idea of the danger. And now, amid the rain and the surge and the screeching of these pilots, we were aground, at the distance of about thirty feet from a muddy