THE ISRAELITE PATRIARCH.

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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 fatherthough 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. He had been a resident of Jerusalem for more than twenty-two years, and was of great service to me in directions and information.

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TURKISH NOBLEMAN.

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 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.

AN ACQUAINTANCE.

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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-lion-like caress, which, with other gleams of sunshine, quite moderated my impressions of the historically "dark and cruel Turkish heart."

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DEVOTIONS "PERFORMED."

But there was a sequel which afterward threw another 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 any thing to interrupt the indistinct mutterings of their devotions.1

In the view offered we have a combination of the 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." We present in the view a scene from actual life, as it frequently appears to the traveller upon the Mediterranean. The forms are essentially the same with all Mohammedans, on sea and on land, in the mosque and in the field. If altered

1

According to the Koran, "Pronounce not thy prayer aloud, neither pronounce it with too low a voice, but follow a middle way between these." --Chap. 17.

MOHAMMEDAN INDIFFERENCE.

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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 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