The Press.
London, England, 1856-03-29 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

facility in speaking their different dialects; but"
though favored with these marked advantages, he
adds but little to our knowledge of Syria and the
Syrians. Here and there his characteristic de-
scriptions are good. At Beyiout, although most
European commercial customs are in vogue, on all
important matters the Oriental habit is still su-
preme :

A shopkeeper comes to buy a bale of goods from the
merchant ; he is accompanied by a broker. The mer•
chant, understanding the object of their visit, invites them
with all the compliments of the East to be seated, and
despatches his servant to fetch them pipes and coffee from
a neighbouring cafe (these are found in every street). See
the broker now approach the merchant and whisper to
him—they whisper—their faces serving as an index to
what is going on between them. The broker now returns
to the shopkeeper, and whispers to him, as he (lid to the
merchant: he goes and conies between them till he has
brought them near to each other's mark. All this time
not an audible word is uttered, and looking upon the mer-
chant and the shopkeeper you would suppose they were
bent upon out smoking each other. Having come near to
the point, the broker drags the shopkeeper to the merchant,
and, nolens volens, links their hands in each other's grasp ;
he, at the same time, holding their hands within his own,
lest they should be separated, in which case the sale is
supposed not to be legal. He now calls upon the mer-
chant to make the sale, or, as in the Arabic, " to make the
sale a blessing to the purchaser, at twenty piastres the
piece." "No ! " grunts the merchant. He wants twenty-
one piastres, and draws his hand back in token that he
will not sell at that price. The ever ready broker joins
them again, whispers something to both, and finally
screams aloud, " Cut the difference, and let the price be
twenty piastres and a half." This being agreed to, the
broker again calls upon the merchant to make the sale.
This he does in this wise : while the hands of merchant
and shopkeeper are grasped the broker utters the finale,
" Ala una ;" here he stops to breathe. " Ala due ;" here
he coughs. " Ala tre ;" here he stops, and the sale is
made by a silent but hearty shake of the hand between
merchant and shopkeeper, which means, " 1 have sold,"
and " I have bought."

Mr. Wortabet, being the son of a missionary
disciple and a prosperous Beyrout merchant, who
when selling his goods " never failed to direct the
" attention of his customers to the only Mediator
" between God and man," makes, of course, frequent
allusion to the natural advantages of Beyrout. In
his rapture about Lebanon he has certainly forgotten
that old maxim, "11 n'y a qu'un pas de sublime
au ridicule." On the goodly mountains he tells us
not only are turkeys and fowls to be found for six-
pence a pair, but game is plentiful, with herds of deer
and wild boar ad libitum; while—

To the lover of the beautiful and the picturesque
Lebanon presents endless themes for an artist's pencil.
Everywhere its romantic grandeur and wild beauty ; its
sweet glens and gurgling streams, combined with the
balmiest of atmospheres, invite the wanderer to a picnic,
—and all this almost for nothing.

This is the first time that we ever heard the advant-
age of a cheap picnic hold out as an inducement to
emigration. But what follows is equally good, or
bad, as the reader pleases =-•

Speak of a watering-place at home, where on this earth
can you find a better watering•place than Lebanon ? Are
you in search of a cool and bracing atmosphere? Behold
it in Lebanon. Bost thou seek the lovely and the sweet?
See it here. Does your soul delight in the grand and in
the romantic? Feast your eyes on the many features of
this mount. Are you anything of a poet? Then sit you
down by yonder murmuring brook and invoke your muse.
Lovest thou to gaze on the sea? Behold the billows of
the rolling Mediterranean, that classic sea of Fhcenician
fame. float thou prefer the solitude of nature to the
charms of a cold and hollow-hearted society

Then—we are to go to Lebanon, with its glens and
ravines, and many advantages. But Mr. Wortabet
is not content with Lebanon, and its cheap and pri-
mitive picnics, its murmuring brooks and its natural
solitudes ; his soul yearns for something more. Let
us see what it is : _ .

I love to, hear the voice of mirth resounding from its
villages, and echoing through its hills and dales. I love
to see gathering on his springs the beautiful and the
lovely. And will this never be ? Shall Mount Lebanon—
this natural site for the most fashionable and the most ad.
mintageous of all watering places—be for ever forgotten?
Ah ! what is it I see in the distance, like the first peep of
a dawning star? Am I dreaming, or is real, that there
is a day of glory still in store for Mount Lebanon? I
think I see the time, and that ere long, when its attractions
will be better known, and its lovely glens and green pas•
tures appreciated. In one word, the time is not far
distant when Lebanon will be the fashionable watering-
place between India and England. Here on this Mount
friends long separated will Set meet—the mother will
clasp to her bosom her long absent boy; and here the
civilian and soldier brothers may greet each other after
a long separation. Such is my private opinion of the
destiny of Lebanon.
This private opinion reminds us of a certain Bond-
strt et auctioneer's adverti'.ements, and savours very
strongly of an eye to the benefit of that patrimonial
store where goods were sold, with a recommendation
of the right road to Heaven given in gratis to cus-
tomers.
Two-thirds of these volumes are made up of
similar raptural digressions, meagre descriptions of

307

the operations off the coast of Syria in 1840, and of
the usual incidents connected with Eastern travel.
One curious fact is related with reference to the war,
as evincing the remarkable interest taken in it by
distant Arab tribes :

Immediately after supper the sheikh of the village and
others came to see me. Even here the excitement of the
war is not without its due influence. A man from an ad-
joining village had gone as a soldier, and was then on the
banks of the Danube : he wrote home to say that he had
been in so many engagements, and bad been wounded, and
for which he was allowed to return home, and would 60011
be with them. He told them of the war and its progress.
Now, this letter made as much excitement in these villages
here as I have seen in England when a letter from an
absent one would reach his home. This letter had not
only been read by the parents and family of the soldier, but
to all the inhabitants of the village where he resided.
Every man, woman, and child heard it, and looked upon it
with interest, as if its news were common property. But
this was not all : the letter had been read in his village,
and now was going the round of other villages, and this
evening it had reached Azzoon, and as 1 was about the
only person able to read in that place, the letter was
brought to me to decipher—its caligraphy was not the
most legible; nevertheless I managed to get through it,
to the extreme pleasure of a score or more who heard me.
I had hardly finished when they announced their intention
to go down to Jaffa on the day the steamer would arrive,
and conduct him home with drums. I was amused at
the interest they took in him, and I do believe had he been
among them now, I should have been forgotten, and he
would have been received rejoicingly and feasted— in fact,
his reception would equal, if not surpass, that of any
European political agitator on landing on the shores of
the United States.

The description of the pilgrimage to the Jordan,
and of the bathing there, is well given :

I was up at two o'clock this morning, and partook of a
warm cup of coffee ; at three I was in my saddle, en route
to the Jordon. The pilgrims had gone ahead, and I rode
with a party of forty-one Europeans ; it was a pleasant
morning, and we enjoyed the ride. At a quarter after five
we reached the verdant banks of the Jordan. Here we
saw the pilgrims had arrived, and were bathing pell-mell.
The sight was now far more exciting than ever ; hundreds
of pilgrims, men, women, and children, dressed in long
white gowns, were being immersed in the river. This
white gown is afterwards reserved by them as their death•
shroud. On gaining the water's edge, a strong man re-
ceived the people and dashed them under the water two or
three times, till the poor creatures were quite suffocated ;
but not content with those three dips, which are generally
after the number of the Trinity, the pilgrim seeks again to
dip himself in the water. They dipped themselves and
rubbed themselves, as if they were enjoying a foretaste of
paradise. Some who could swim were floating on the cur-
rent, others holding by some bush. I stood entranced ;
the vociferations, the Babel of languages, and the pell-mell
scene, was one of the most exciting of its nature. On
coming out of the water, the pilgrims congratulated each
other with these words—" An acceptable dip !" " May it
be blest to you," which means, May God accept your pil-
grimage, and wash away your sins. Old and young, men
and women, clergy and laity, rushed into the water, and
buffetted with the rolling element.

In his political views Mr. Wortabet is somewhat
inconsistent. In his preface he tells us it is our
duty, if we wish to stop the aggressions of Russia
and preserve our Indian empire, to protect and sup
port Syria in order to save Turkey ; but at p. 87,
vol. ii., he brands this very protective system as
"infamous," and as only a vital struggle between the
European powers for political influence, at the
expense of the Porte.