¦;

EX LIBRIS

A

It*-'. '^

FREDERICK WELLS WILLIAMS.

N^.F.hOPSDIM.IdSB

ULYSSES

SCENES AND STUDIES IN MANY LANDS

s-

ULYSSES

SCENES AND STUDIES IN MANY LANDS

W. GIFFOED IfALGRAA^B
H. M. MINISTER KESIDENT IN IIEL'GDAY
Author of '^Central Arabia,^' ttc.

"Qui multorum hominum mores et vidit et urbee." — Hokace.

HouDon
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AKD NEW YORK
1887

LONljQN :
PTIINTED EY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFOnn STIIEKT AND CHARING 0B03S.

CONTENTS.

Byzantine Anatolia.
The Monastery op Sumelas
Anatolian Spectre Stories
Turkish G-eorgua ....
A Visit to Upper Egypt and Thebes
West Indian Memories : The Leeward Islands and the " Boilinq
Lake " . . . .
Malay Life in the Philippines
Phka-Bat .....
The Three Cities
Kioto .....
From Montevideo to Paraguay.
Alkamah's Cave : A Story of Nejd

PAGE 1
24
45 67
92
112
138 169200
217 246303

ULYSSES

SCENES AND STUDIES IN MANY LANDS

ULYSSES;

SCENES AND STUDIES IN MANY LANDS.

BYZANTINE ANATOLIA.
The title of the following Essay, first published in the ' CornhiU Magazine '
for April 1873 is, to a certain extent, inaccurate, because covering a much
wider territorial extent than that surveyed, however superficially, in the Essay
itself, which deals almost exclusively with the district immediately adjacent
to Trebizond, better styled, perhaps, " Comnenian " than absolutely " Byzan
tine." Further away, south and west, Sivas (Sebaste), Kaisereeyah (CaBsarea),
Koniyeh (Iconium), Kastemouri, Angora, and many other towns of less
general note, are even yet, in population and relics, more genuinely " Byzan
tine " than Trebizond. But here " inopem me copia fecit," since not an essay
but a volume, several volumes, would be needed to set forth aright the yet
imchronicled memorials, Byzantine, Boman, or more ancient yet, of those
storied lands. Hence I thought it best to restrict my description of men and
things within a narrower compass. But whoever following in the footsteps of
Curzon, — no second name worthy to be placed alongside of his occurs to me, —
shall give us, not an account of his own personal adventures, or misadventures,
quarrels with muleteers, bad food, uncomfortable lodgings, and the like, but a
true and inteUigent view of the hfe, the monuments, the relics, the survivals of
"Byzantine Anatolia" coextensive with its real Umits, wiU set before us a
panorama of far greater variety than Central Africa, of deeper interest than
- even Central Asia, can afford. But the work wiU be one of years.
Somebody once said, and probably thought himself uncommonly
clever for saying it, that broken bottles — empty soda-water
bottles is a popular, but I do not know if a correct, version-
will one day be the only abiding memorial of British rule in
India., Like most of these extremely smart epigrams, the
B

ULYSSES.

remark combiaed a smaU amount of superficial truth with a
much larger quantity of real misstatement. But when the
long-predicted day arrives for the Osmanlee to strike the tent he
has for so many centm-ies pitched over some of the very fairest
portions of God's earth, I wonder what except broken bottles
wiU remain behind to denote the spot of his protracted encamp
ment. Not literal bottles, but metaphorical, of course, for
neither beer nor wine nor even soda-water are — the more's the
pity — common enough articles of consumption in the lands of
the Crescent to furnish any large amount of vitreous relics ;
when Osmanlees do violate the anti-alcoholic precepts of their
law, it is ordinarily with the vilest "rakee"; and that un
wholesome fluid is wont to be dispensed, not in bottles, but in
misshapen jars of congenial ugliness and coarseness. No ;
breakages in plenty he will leave, only they will not be of
glass, but of far more precious things; and not of what he
imported with him, like the English ware in the hypothesis, but
of what he found more or less entire when he came, and after
wards broke on his own account.
This, where I am now writing, is the Osmanlee's own proper
or quasi-proper land, this his camping-ground of predilection —
Anatolia, the birthplace of his wide-extended empire, its cradle,
its stronghold, its reserve hope. And here all around me I
see Pontine breakages, Greek breakages, Eoman breakages,
Byzantine breakages, Armenian breakages, Seljook breakages,
not to mention some minor breakages of less world-spread fame,
such as Turcoman, Mingrelian, and Georgian ; all these there
are, and will mostly be still extant too, no doubt, when
reckoning-day comes. Nor do I say that they may not, each in
its kind, be regarded as Osmanlee breakages after a sort ; since
they are of things which either he found whole and broke them,
or found them broken, and broke them stiU more. Only of
what he has himself brought, himself made, there wUl be left
after the first ten years next to nothing, and after fifty
absolutely nothing at aU. Eelics of genuine Osmanlee labour,
of Osmanlee magnificence, of Osmanlee science, art, skill,
learning, industry, there wUl be hardly any, or none — for the

BYZANTINE ANATOLIA.

•simple reason that he wiU leave none which can, even at the most
liberal computation, outlast half a century. True; the lively
author of 'Morning Land' clauns an exception in favour of
" heaps of broken gravestones." But even this, if we embrace
half a century in our prospective view, cannot be admitted ; for
the tombstones are scratched rather than carved ; the feeble and
exceptional attempts at a mausoleum are as flimsy as the other
constructions; and the vestiges of the dead Osmanlee are
evidently fated to not less speedy obliteration than those of the
living. Even at the capital, where the Osmanlee has concentrated his
whole energy in an effort not over-successful there, and most
ruinous to his dominions elsewhere, at the expense of which
that capital has been patched up, these remarks are correct in
the main ; in the provinces they are absolutely so. And
certainly in the frontier corner of the empire, east of Trebizond,
where the ' Classic Atlas ' marks the uncertain limits of Pontus
and Colchis, and where myself and my companions — the usual
Eastern medley of colour and race— have now been for ten
weeks wandering — zig-zagging I might call it, were not the
word inadmissible from its affected uncouthness — among the
mountains, dolomitic or otherwise, of that wild region, we have
seen, broadly speaking, only one clear and strongly marked sign
of Osmanlee rule — that is, ruin.
Needless to say, our journeylngs have been all on horseback,
except indeed where the unmanageable steepness or dangerous
narrowness of the path compeUed us to dismount even from
those sm-est-footed of aU known quadrupeds, Anatolian nags;
for in these favoured regions of countless railroad concessions
and projected lines, the most primitive waggon-road that ever
led from an English "-ham" to a "-bro" is an unknown
luxury. That highways wUl be constructed by a paternal
government throughout the Ottoman dominions, are constructed,
are daUy traversed by whole processions of wheeled convey
ances, are delusions which Mr. Farley of Bristol and his
disciples may possibly entertain, but in which a traveller
through his Sultanic Majesty's dominions wiU hardly share.
B 2

UL YSSES.

Horses, mules, camels, asses, even the classical caravan itself,
is stiU, as in the days of Mahomet II. or Marco Polo, the
picturesque but clumsy and costly means of transport for the
merchandise of the gorgeous East. Here they come — now
hidden, now re-appearing between the deep-wooded windings of
the mountain side ; one can hear their jangling beUs at a mile's
distance. An endless file of raw-boned sinewy beasts, each
with its crimson tassel, or gUttering brass star, or some other
gewgaw charm against the evil eye, at its collar, and a couple
of more or less evenly-balanced packages, secured by a more
complicated tackle of rope than ever my Homeric prototype
tied round Ms sea-chest, dangling at its sides; aU crowding,
pushing, jostUng, stumbling along the rock steps of the narrow
pathway; not unfrequently, too, hustUng each other right off
the edge to a fall of many hundred feet into the ravine below,
where, with a crash or two on the stones, the wicked — i.e., the
muleteer in quadrupedal opinion at least — cease from troubUng,
and the weary are at rest — that is, so far as the mule's future is
concemed; unless some lucky shrub intervenes to stay the
over-rapid descent. Alongside, behind them, trudge on foot the
grey-coated, sheep-skin-capped, heavy-Umbed, heavy-featured,
pale-eyed Turcoman drivers, who with thong and cry have
brought their charges from the great plains across the Persian
frontier. Or it is a string of huge wooUy camels, most
powerful and ungainliest of their kind, swaying along beneath
their loads as they thrust out their shaggy snaky necks in an
aimless fashion from side to side, and frightening our na^^s into
a desperate scramble to get out of the way up the mountain
slope ; for the secular terror of the horse at sight or even at
smeU of the camel is not in the least diminished since the days
of Herodotus ; though how it originated, or why it is kept up,
seeing that the camel on his side manifests no disposition
except that of the most absolute indifference towards the horse
is a problem which might tax the ingenuity of a Darwin
himseK to solve. Grazing and loitering as it goes, accom
plishing barely twelve or fourteen mUes a day, and taking a
month to get over ground which, with decent roads and proper

BYZANTINE ANATOLIA. %
conveyances, might easily be traversed, and at one-fourth of
the cost too, in a week, the caravan, Uke the Ten Thousand of
old, salutes the sea at Trebizond. There, hard by the appro
priate resting-place of " GiaOur Meidan," or " UnbeUevers'
Square," a large open space at the entry of the town, in the
Perso-European or " unbeUeving " quarter — for in Turkish
opinion a Persian's creed is hardly more orthodox than a
Christian's, if at aU — it deposits the products of Central Asia ;
and then, laden in exchange with European merchandise, winds
slowly back, to whence it came from, Persia.
But whoever would witness at Trebizond this not uninterest
ing spectacle, not less characteristic of the Ottoman East than
the stage coach and the lumbering van once were of England,
must hasten his visit to these shores, whence caravans and
caravan-drivers are fast passing away. Not, however, owing to
any more expeditious substitute introduced by the Osmanlee,
who, content with levying excessive transit-dues, and harassing
merchants and muleteers alike by custom-house vexations and
frontier annoyances, leaves the rest to circumstance and chance ;
but by the competitive energy of the Eussians, masters of the
long-disused but rival Caucasian route. Caravans are soon
distanced by steam-engines ; and the raUroad that has this very
year connected Tiflis with the Black Sea coast, and promises
soon to reach the frontiers of Persia itself, has already appro
priated to itseK more than haK the traffic that formerly
cumbered the " Unbelievers' Square," or crammed the massive
warehouses — the largest of which is Byzantine in construction
and date — of Trebizond.
However, the seriousness of the impending loss — for Trebizond,
in spite of its almost pre-historical memories and high-sounding
name, would, K deprived of its intercourse with Persia, soon
sink into a mere coast vUlage, remarkable for nothing but its
ruined Comnenian castle — roused at last even Ottoman apathy
into something of an effort. A real road, a carriage road, from
Trebizond to Persia, was resolved on, was begun, and even, after
a fashion, was completed.
Now, so it is that Turks — modern Turks, I mean— very slow

ULYSSES.

hands at commencing any work, pubUc or private, of real utiUty,
are slower stUl at finishing it ; whUe as to keeping it up, or
repairing it, that is what they never think of at aU. Erom a
mosque to a sentry-box, from a palace to a policeman's jacket,
so soon as the object — no matter how costly at first or how
necessary — has once begun to go to wrack, it may follow on in
the same direction as long as it pleases, even to the " bitter end."
A new article of the same sort may perhaps, regardless of
expense, be provided ; but as to the old one, not a brick will be
replaced, not a tile re-arranged, not a board naUed up, not a
stitch bestowed in time or out of it. Were I general family
tutor, or governess, or something of the kind to the " young
idea " of the Turkish generation, " Por want of a nail," with
the rest of that rhythmical nursery wisdom, should be the Alpha
and the Omega of my daily lessons. Unfortunately, the lesson,
so far as the Osmanlee is concerned, is still to learn; and
experience, say what the wise ones may, is for human beings in
general, not for Stuarts or Bourbons alone, the least effective of
teachers. Let us judge for ourselves. So we leave behind the brown
Byzantine walls of volcanic stOne, tower and battlement, and
the card-paper lath-and-plaster houses clustered beneath their
shadow, among black cypress-spears, and glistening orchard
foliage — in a word, Trebizond generaUy, ancient and modern,
lazily basking in the hot mid-day July sun ; and winding our
way past the harbour cliff's, enter on the broad Pyxites vaUey,
the Persian winter route, which it is our programme to follow
for some distance. And behold, our horses canter side by side
with tolerable ease and freedom along a macadamised road.
But, alas ! not for long. This fair portion of the highway, which
is only five or six miles in length, is that completed some years
since by some French engineers, who, after laying down the
general line of route, and getting through with the more serious
difficulties of the work, were rather unceremoniously dismissed
to make room for a fat Osmanlee head-engineer with a Turkish
staff. Forced labour — that curse of the East — was now brought
into play ; and after the road had been patched up in an incom-

BYZANTINE ANATOLIA.

plete fashion, it was pronounced finished, and has since then
been left to take care of itself, amid the rains, storms, snows,
and other vagaries of the Pontic climate.
It is now, of course, in fuU progress through the three phases
common to everything at the mercy of Osmanlee administration
— slovenUness, dilapidation, and, lastly, disappearance. The
macadam is broken up into pits and hoUows that would upset a
Devonshire cart ; the side-cuttings slip down in huge shell-Uke
masses wliich already encroach on half the breadth of the way,
and threaten soon to bury it altogether ; embankments, in
obedience to the laws of gravity, are fast enticing the entire road
to join them company at the bottom of the ravines below;
watercourses, disdaiiung restraint, wander fancy-free over the
path, and furnish the unexpected variety of quagmires in the
driest weather ; in short, I fear that for the few mUes that we
availed ourselves of this master-specimen of Ottoman industry,
it hardly conveyed either to the hoofs of the horses, or the minds
of their riders, those impressions of unquaUfied admiration with
which the constructors themselves regard the result of their
engineering skiU.
" Have you any such roads in Europe ? " enquires of me, in a
tone of conscious triumph, a red-capped, black-coated, shirt-
CoUarless official, who has ridden thus far, honoris causa, at my
side. "With becoming gravity I reply, that for Europe in general
I could not adequately answer, but that in England, to the best
of my recollections, we certainly had not.
Such, however, as the road is, our, or rather our horses',
enjoyment of it is brief ; for our route soon ceases to coincide
with its direction, and strikes off by a narrow transverse horse-
track, that is generally adopted by summer travellers ; for in
winter the Khazeklee Pass, as it is caUed, 8,600 feet above the
sea, and up which we have to scramble, is a hopeless waste of
deep snow. So turning up a wild wooded gorge we begin the
ascent ; and from henceforth tUl we reach the town of Beyboort,
in what was once Armenia, after a ride of about eighty mUes
across the entire mountain tract intervening between the Black
Sea and the central highlands of Anatolia, we bid farewell, not

8 ULYSSES.

to Osmanlee public works only, but also to almost every trace
of Osmanlee rule and nationaUty whatever.
" Government extends as far as the town gates," says an Arab
proverb, relative to Turkish rule in Syria ; and no one who has
dwelt some time in that country can have failed to remark that,
once beyond city Umits, impoverishment and ruin are in fact
almost the only indications that the Osmanlee is lord of the
land. It is the same here, with this difference only, that instead
of being Arab, the population, customs, bmldings, all things,
whether of the present or the past, are in the main Greek.
Not " Greek " in the " Hellene " sense of the word, for, search
as I might, I could discover no facts to warrant the pleasing
belief entertained by some, that genuine unchanged reUcs of the
classic colonies once planted along these shores may stUl be
found here, guarded from foreign admixture by the triple defence
of precipitous mountain, dense forest, and stormy sea. Such
vestiges may indeed possibly have lingered long, but they have
now entirely disappeared under two thousand years of cUmatic
influence, intermarriage, and the many wars and changes that
have passed over the region. The " Greek " here does not bear
the title of " Hellenos," but " Eoom," i.e. Byzantine ; and it is
to Byzantine colonization, settled here during the first ages of
the empire, and afterwards largely reinforced by the immigrants
who fled from the barbarism of the Latin captors of Constanti
nople to the refuge offered by the Comnenian sceptre, that the
inhabitants of these mountains, whether Christian or Mahometan,
alike owe their language and their descent.
From the sea-shore up to a height of about five thousand feet,
these Greek, or Byzantine, viUages are tolerably numerous, and
have all much the same character. We clamber up by what
would elsewhere be called a mere goat track, but here is dignified
by the title of a road, amid the incomparably lovely scenery of
these mountain sides, beneath the green lights and green shades
of beech, alder, walnut, maple, chestnut, and ash overhead, by
fantastic jutting masses of volcanic rock ; while deep below the
foaming torrent of the Aschyros, or the Kalopotamos, or the
Saleros, — for to each and all of these, and of their kindred

BYZANTINE ANATOLIA.

streams, — Turkish domination continued during four centuries
has not yet given a single Turkish name, — rushes and raves with
ceaseless roar through the black gorge ; then suddenly we emerge
bn patches of luxuriant maize and hemp, clinging at what one
might have thought an impossible angle to the mountain side ;
then the ledge broadens out somewhat, and we find ourselves at
the little Greek-named viUage Stauros, or Aghalos, or the Uke,
where we intend to draw bridle for a noonday halt. Along the
wayside are half-a-dozen open shops, where muleteers' gear,
straps, nosebags, saddlebags, and similar articles, all of the
gayest colours and the clumsiest forms, along with horse-shoes —
if the rough iron plates with a small hole in the middle that are
here fastened on the hoof deserve the name — coarse tobacco,
cigarette paper, sour apples — aU fruit here is eaten sour — a few
dirty eggs, soapy-looking clots of cheese, and so forth, are set
forth to purchase. Not far off is a little building : if it happens
to be oblong in form and points eastward, you recognise it for a
church ; K square, and with its entrance to the north, it is a
mosque — in either case it is totaUy devoid of outside ornament,
except the invariable whitewash of the country. As to the
peasants' houses, wooden frameworks fiUed up with rubble,
scattered as at random up and down the slopes, each in its own
field, with its own little gourd-growing garden, suggesting the
idea — a not improbable one, in fact — that everybody has
quarreUed with his neighbour, and wishes to live as far away
from him as possible ; the inmates may be indifferently Christian
or Mahometan for anything that the external architecture
declares. Poverty is a great leveUer of creeds as of everything
else ; and a separate harem accommodation supposes an amount
of wealth and ease which is far from being reaUsed by any
Pontic peasant of our day. Besides, the whole of the house
work, and a good half of the field-work too, is performed by the
women ; a state of things which naturally renders impossible
that absolute seclusion— or, one might more justly say, eUmina-
tion — of the fair sex in which the town-living Mahometan
delights. Nor does the unwelcome fact that every female form in view.

IO ULYSSES.
after stopping an instant to get a preliminary peep at the
traveUers, draws her blue vsorapper close over her lovely face,
and even with discourteous shyness turns her broad back upon
you, do much to decide in what religion the hamlet delights ;
for, in the semi-barbarism of Anatolia, Greek and Armenian
ladies hardly enjoy wider freedom of seeing and being seen than
Mahometan. But in the present instance I remark that every
male head is invested with a turban, or with something that
does duty for one, from the yellow flowered rag, bound wisplike
round the cap of the lad who holds my horse as I dismount, to
the more voluminous white foldings that give a sort of dignity
to the hard, weather-worn faces of the elders of the village, who
have come up to welcome and to stare at the new arrival.
Hence I know them to be Mahometans, for the Christian head,
if adorned by anything in addition to the universal red skull
cap of the East, would have a dark-coloured handkerchief tied
round it ; nor would its fold imitate the distinctive turban, but
rather resemble that adopted by an invalid sufi'ering from facial
neuralgia. Another indication of the Mahometan is the gene
rally clipped and shorn look ; the hair cut close, the beard and
moustachios trimmed — this was a special recommendation of the
Prophet's — -while the Christian peasant revels in a profusion of
lank, depending hair, and side-locks that might do honour to a
Lithuanian Jew ; and his beard, if not shaved about a fortnight
ago — I have never had the good luck of meeting one whose
toilet day could have been much within that period — is, like his
moustachios, left to the irregular luxuriance of nature. Not
only in person, too, but in clothes, the Mahometan is generally
the cleaner of the two. What, however, most distinguishes him
from his Christian fellow-peasant is his hospitality.
Two classes are in general emiiiently hospitable throughout
the -East : one, the old-established — not the modern — Levantine,
the other, the Mahometan. Of the former I have not here room
to speak; their proper habitat is not within my present beat,
nor, indeed — the .lEgean coast excepted — in, any part of Asia
Minor. But the Mahometan, whatever his nationaUty, is in
this respect much the same everywhere; it is a part of the

BYZANTINE ANATOLIA.

primal Arab tradition of his code; and even extreme poverty
and a far-distant latitude do not render the peasants of Pontus
an exception to the rule. Hence I should strongly advise
traveUers in Anatolia to avail themselves of the creature
comforts which Mahometan lodgings provide, rather than of the
religious sympathies, if such there be, which make up the staple
of Greek or Armenian hospitaUty. In other respects there is
little diff'erence. Whatever its creed, each viUage manages its
own aff'airs, chooses, by an irregular sort of election, its own
" Mukhtar," or headman ; repairs or neglects its own paths and
watercourses, builds or decorates its own church or mosque,
supports its own Imam, or priest, as the case may be, and
sometimes manages to keep up a kind of primary school, in
which reading and writing are sufficiently taught to be, in
nineteen cases out of twenty, wholly forgotten as life goes on.
With Government they rarely have anything to do, except when
reminded of its existence by a visit from the tax-collector, or a
summons to supply forced and unpaid labour for some object in
which they have about as much interest as the inhabitants of
Japan. On these occasions the headman is considered a respon
sible party, and is often made the scapegoat for the shortcomings
of the community ; for everything else he is left to exercise over
his neighbours an authority of which the more or the less is
chiefly determined by his own personal aptness for the position
which he holds.
Greek is the language spoken by all, exclusively indeed by
.some, though in the Mahometan day schools, where they exist,
a little Turkish is sometimes taught ; and those among the men
who more frequently go down to the coast for the sale of their
viUage produce, and the like, pick up the latter idiom. The
women, more stay-at-home than the men, know only Greek ;
but such as Pericles or Xenophon himself, though he did once
visit these mountains, would have considerable difficulty in
understanding, so mixed is it with Sclavonian and other dialects,
including, I suspect, the aboriginal Pontic. Still the ground
work is Greek — Trora/Ao? is a river, ^aXa, milk, Arpea?, meat,
(^w9, fire, and so on. The features of both sexes too, in spite

12 ULYSSES.

of a certain serious and independent air which Mahometanism
appears generaUy to confer on its foUowers, are distinctly
Byzantine : long, saUow, high-nosed faces, with hair and eyes
mostly of a dark brown, occasionaUy Ughter, and even auburn ;
the mouth is usually weU shaped, the expression by no means
unintelUgent, but often cunning, even sinister. Their stature is
middUng, their limbs slender, but active and strong.
Here and there, however, especiaUy among the Mahometans,
a different type crops up, taU, well buUt, with Ught grey eyes,
auburn hair, and a certain clearness of complexion aUen from
the muddy skins of Byzantine Greek, Turkish, Turcoman, or
Armenian heritage, fairer, too, than the Kurde, or any of the
southern races. I am inclined to think that the individuals
of this description represent the aboriginal Pontic stock, which
seems to have been akin to the neighbouring Caucasian famiUes
— Georgian, Mingrelian, Abaze, and the rest. Lastly, the reUcs
of the old autocratic " Dereh-Begs," or hereditary landowners,
stUl linger here, but shorn of their semi-feudal power and state.
Their title and parentage derive in most instances from some
p'anissary or " Sipahi " of the sixteenth or seventeenth century :
Greek, Albanian, Servian, Croat. Who can now tell which of
the " tribute chUdren," or who of the many renegades of those
times, was their father ? These Japhets are not much in the
habit of searching after theirs.
But the " trail of the serpent," the Byzantine character, is over
all ; and it remains unfortunately much the same as it appears
to have been in the days of the Comneiu and Palseologi ; it has
not perhaps deteriorated ; indeed of that there was hardly a
possibiUty, but it certainly has not improved. Perhaps, under
the circumstances, that was not much to be expected. Certainly
as we now know them, they are versatUe rather than clever,
cunning rather than intelligent, and quarrelsome rather than
brave. Each village has at least one feud on hand ; the ordinary
cause being either " lovely woman," or the disputed Umits of
some pasture range in the grazing grounds that extend upward
from the forest belt almost to the summit of the granite
mountain crest. These feuds are often bloody; but there is

BYZANTINE ANATOLIA. 13
Uttle fair fighting. A long shot from the shelter of a boulder,
or a hatchet-cut from behind in a narrow path, exemplKy the
ordinary procedures. Sometimes a field of standing harvest is
hacked and wasted in the night, or ricks and cowsheds burned,
or a well choked up — aU cowardly doings, that have a strong
flavour of the lower Greek empire, or the Irish Home-Euler, in
them. Domestic virtue, too, is at a low ebb. The hamlet of
these regions is in this respect scarcely better off than the town.
Of reUgions, at least prteter-human beUef, the indications are
many. The " Greeks " perch a Uttle ceU-Uke chapel on the top
of every hiU, with most uncouth saints of genuine Byzantine
stiffness daubed on its waUs, and at its farther end a rough altar
stone, black with oil from the lamp beside it, where mass is said
once or twice a year. Their Mahometan brethsen, not to be
behindhand with them, hang up some equivocal relic — a hair of
the Prophet's beard, it may be, or a rag which has touched some
Uke holy thing — alongside of the prayer-niche of the mosque,
and cover the waU with unartistic drawings, highly coloured, of
the Meccan Kaabah or other shrines. In narrowness of mind
there is Uttle to choose between them : the monks of the many
mountain convents hereabouts, and the " MoUas " and " Imams "
of the neighbourhood, enjoy an equal reputation in this respect.
But, besides what may be considered as the special property of
either symbol, the Crescent and the Cross have here many obser
vances in common. Among these the means taken to avert the
influence of the evU eye are frequent and curious enough. I
had often noticed in the fields a taU pole, with a wicker circle
balanced atop, the circumference being hung round with bones,
feathers, and gaudy rags. At first I supposed it to be a scare
crow against the innumerable birds of the country, but was
informed that it was there for the more practical purpose of
guarding against the evU eye. An ox's or buffalo's skull is yet
more generaUy employed ; and the withered chaplets suspended
from the horns remind one of a favourite ornament of the usual
Greek metope, with which this very ancient fancy may perhaps
be indirectly connected.
Or it is a Uttle dome-Uke construction, roughly put together

14 ULYSSES.
and often in ruins, which bears the name of some legendary
half-hero, haK-saint, claimed aUke by Islam and Christianity,
and visited by turbaned and nnturbaned pUgrims on the same
anniversary. If a bush happen to be near at hand, it is sure
to be decorated aU over with Uttle rags knotted on to the twigs.
Each rag mysticaUy contains some evU, from which the person
Avho tied it desires to be freed by this act and by the intercession
of the saint. To untie it would be the extreme of rashness, as
it would infaUibly bring the unloosened evU on the intruder's
head. Even touching it might, I am informed, have the same
effect. These sanctuaries are almost invariably situated either near
some spring-head, particularly should it be a mineral one, or on
the top of an isolated height. The idea which placed them there
is probably in many instances much older than that embodied
in any creed now professed in the land. One such buUding,
conspicuous on a conical peak nearly three thousand feet above
the sea, and dedicated to the mythical EUas of the East,
attracted my special notice ; and after a climb which led me
to admire rather than to envy the devout up-hiU labours of the
yearly pUgrims, I reached the summit — a weather-beaten
pinnacle of black volcaiuc rock. There by the side of a ruined
Byzantine chapel, open to the sky, I found something of much
greater interest ; namely, the distinct remains of a smaU pagan
shrine, not that of HeUenic, but seemingly of much more ancient
date : the lower part made up of four basement waUs, inclosing
a square of about twelve feet each way, was cut out of the rock
itself to a height of nearly five feet. This had been originally
raised further by rows of huge oblong blocks, each several feet
in length. On two sides they still retained their places ; on the
other two they, like the roof, K there ever was one, had dis
appeared. In the southern waU — for the buUding faced the
compass — was a smaU square peep-hole of a window cut in the
rock. The whole reminded me nearly of some idol shrines I
have seen in the Tamil villages of Southern India. Besides
this, hewn out in the foundation rock of the temple, on its
southerly aspect, I found two smaU sepulchral caves, containing

BYZANTINE ANATOLIA. 15
each a recess for a single corpse. In either niche the place for
the head and the feet were indicated by corresponding depres
sions in the hollowed stone itseK ; the length was in each much
the same, a Uttle under six feet. The heads of the corpses must
have lain to the west, their feet to the east, and their right sides
to the south. The face of the cliff bore traces too of other
tombs, but now almost shapeless from the crumbUng of the tuff
beneath the storms and winters of more than two thousand
years. Not far from Trebizond is another of these sepulchral caves.
I visited it, and found it about eleven feet from the floor to the
highest part of the vault-Uke roof, and sixteen feet broad by
twelve deep, thus much resembUng in form a huge oven;
the rock here too was volcanic tuff', and stiU bore marks of the
chisel. At the further end, and on either side, were deep coffin
like recesses for the dead, who must here, as in the tombs
described above, have been laid recumbent at fuU length, but
in diff'erent directions. The Avide entrance of the cave had
originally been closed by a door, as appeared by the holes for
the door-gonds bored in the rock above and below ; and in the
inner right-hand waU was a smaU niche, apparently for a
lamp. The cavern had at a later period been converted into
a Greek chapel, and vestiges of uncouth Byzantine daubings
stUl appeared on the waUs. But at present it is visited by
Mahometans and Christians aUke, under the ambiguous title
of the prophet EUas.
There are countless caves of this sort along the coast slope of
the mountain range, but I have never found any far inland,
except at Amasia and Kastemouni. This last belongs to
Paphlagonia, however, not to Pontus, and is situated some way
up the valley of the Halys, or Kizil-Irmak, as it is now called.
But in that region the rock monuments bear traces of much
greater skiU and workmanship than appears to have been
bestowed on the rough-hewn memorials about Trebizond. In
no case, however, have I been able to discover either inscription
or date.
The other " breakages" of this district are either Byzantine

1 6 ULYSSES.

or purely local. To the former class belong the numerous
bridges, of coarse but very massive construction, which once
spanned and now haK choke with their ruins the many torrent
rivers. The traveUer hereabouts in vsdnter and spring finds
good reason to regret their loss. Byzantine, too, are the
picturesque reUcs of battlemented waUs and towers " bosomed
high" in the madly-luxmiant vegetation of the coast, which
give some of the small towns hereabouts a diminutive resem
blance to old Constantinople. One town in particular, Eizeh —
the EhizcEum of Strabo, and where, by the way, almost aU the
inhabitants are Greek-speaking Mahometans, and are simply
the most disagreeable, quarrelsome, bigoted, narrow-minded set
I have ever had to deal with — stUl retains about haK of a mural
circtdt, which, when complete, cannot have been much under
two miles in extent. The towers are about forty feet high,
round, and placed at close intervals along the waU : one only
has its upper part shaped into a not ungraceful octagon. The
thickness of the walls is everywhere enormous ; the materials
rough-hewn, or mere irregular stones, copiously cemented with
indifferent plaster. A couple of small vaulted chapels, each
with its three lancet windows looking east — a favomite Nicene
symbol — would alone suffice to determine the architects, were
they not otherwise clearly indicated by the style of the fortifi
cations themselves. As I clambered about them I might almost
have fancied myself at Constantinople, near the Seven Towers.
But here, too, was neither inscription or date, though archi
tectural comparison would seem to indicate the eighth or ninth
century as the epoch of buUding.
Lastly, to the same class belong the numerous monasteries
and nunneries of the land, some of them growino- out Uke
excrescences at the mouth of an old Pontic cave, now modified
into a chapel. There are five large ones, all Greek, within
a thirty mUes' radius from Trebizond, and smaUer ones are
scattered elsewhere ; but they would require a separate descrip
tion to themselves.
The latter, or local, class of ruins includes those from the
sixteenth to the close of the eighteenth century. To this period

BYZANTINE ANATOLIA. 17
belong the numerous paved horse- ways, solidly constructed, and
extending in a complicated network for scores and scores of
mUes up valleys, across mountains, through forests,' from the
sea-shore to the upper range. They were the work of the
much-maUgned Dereh-Begs, the landed proprietors swept away
by the pseudo-reforms of Sultan Mahmood and Abd-el-Mejeed ;
and were kept in order by village labour, freely given, because
profitable. In the present poverty of the country, these roads
are left unrepaired and untended, till many are now absolutely
impassable ; nor are new ones ever provided, or old ones mended
by a Government which has taken to itself the resources,
but omitted the responsibilities of the land it governs. So
too the many road-side fountains, each with its pretty little
ogee arch, and arabesque inscription commemorating the muni
ficence of the builder, some wealthy villager or Beg ; these,
too, are now abandoned, choked, and fallen into ruin. So also
the dreary waUs, and long ranges of windows open to the sky,
that once were the abodes of the " Begs " or " Aghas," semi-
feudal landlords, turbulent enough in their day, but good
masters, hospitable, and spending in the land itself what they
took from it ; not, Uke the modern Stamboolee leeches, dis
gorging elsewhere the IKe-blood they have sucked from the
province. That the epochs. Pontic, Eoman, Byzantine, and, so to speak,
seK-governing, were one and all " better times " than the
present, the reUcs I have described or alluded to, with many
other indications of bygone populousness and prosperity, seem
sufficiently to estabUsh; and the peasants with one voice
declare that their condition was much more favourable, not
only in the centuries preceding the Turkish conquest, of which
they have long since lost every memory, but even after that
event, under the almost independent rule of their own land
owners and headmen, when the Osmanlee Government was
hardly more to them than a distant and respected name ; not,
as now, a daUy and burdensome interference. Certainly a
serious diminution in the number of the inhabitants is attested
by the frequency of shrunk or deserted villages ; and the dimi-
c

1 8 ULYSSES.
nution of life indicates a corresponding diminution in the
means of Ufe.
The inhabitants are, with hardly an exception, wretchedly
poor. The plot of ground on which each man cultivates his
maize, hemp, and garden stuff, yields little more than enough
for liis own personal uses and those of his family ; the maize-
field and garden supply their staple food, and the hemp their
clothing : this last coarse and ragged beyond belief And no
wonder, where a single suit has to do duty aUke for summer and
winter, day and night. Whatever truth there may be in the
phUosophical " man wants but little here below " — an assertion
I hold more than questionable for man, and utterly false for
woman — he certainly gets uncommonly little in this region.
For anything like gain, he has to depend on a scanty allowance
of eggs furnished by a few diminutive hens, or the butter
derived from a meagre cow or two ; perhaps a few basketsful of
orchard fruit ; or, the best resource, a dozen loads of charcoal,
which he has prepared in the forest. These he takes down on a
donkey, or not rarely on his own or his wife's back, to the
nearest market-town, say. Trebizond, and there sells for what
they may fetch. But here the Government, which never pro
vided him directly or indirectly with a path to go by, or a
plank to cross a torrent, wluch affords him no security against
violence, no education in youth, no assistance or refuge in
difficulty, sickness, or old age, is beforehand with him ; and
under title of road-dues, town-dues, market-dues, etc., secures
from five to ten per cent, of whatever profit his wares may
realise. Out of the remainder he has to pay agricultural tithes,
property-tax — a very heavy one — sheep or cattle-tax, and
yearly recurring requisitions for nominal pubUc works, seldom
executed, and, if executed, of no good to him, and very little to
any one else. What is left goes to buy whatever household
articles or agricultural implements the produce of his own
ground cannot furnish. As to the maize, it is so tmremunera-
tive a crop, and the quantity which each individual peasant can
obtain, owing to the infinitesimal subdivision of property, so
small that it is practically of no account for gain* When to all

BYZANTINE ANATOLIA. 19
this we add frequent requisitions of unpaid labour, military
service, and the Uke, can M-e A\'onder that the Pontic peasant
lives, or rather starves, in debt, dies in debt, and leaves debt
and starvation as the only heritage to his children ?
The fact is that the Osmanlee Government uever considers,
or wishes to consider, that it has any duty towards those it
governs, except that of getting as much money as possible out
of them. Moreover, the quantity of what it squeezes, or tries
to squeeze, out of any given district is proportioned, not on the
means and wealth of those squeezed, but on their moral or
physical compressibility and yieldingness. Hence, as a rule.
Christian populations, which have, so to speak, a court of appeal
in European opinion, not to mention European representatives,
Consular Courts, and the like, are much less hard pressed now-
a-days than Mahometan ; while the heaviest burden of all, the
conscription, falls wholly on the latter, and equals in theory
about one-fifth, in practice fortunately not more than one-eighth
or so, of the adult male census. It is true that the Christians
pay in money for their exemption from this " blood-tax ; " but
they have, on the whole, a cheap bargain.
Unhappily, the spirit of servile, unconditional obedience, which
from an early date characterised the subjects of the Byzantine
Empire, has rested in a double portion on their descendants.
" We are born to be fleeced, and fleeced we will be, and take it
quietly," is their view of the matter. This spirit of miscalled
loyalty, and real slavishness, is strongest among the Mahometan
population, whom the adoption of Islam has, thus far at least,
not benefited but injured. Man must have an idol of some
kind — figure, picture, book, or idea — to bow down to and
worship; and as figures and pictures are forbidden to the
Muslim, while of the book, the Koran, the idol of his Arab
brethren, he, for ignorance of its language, cannot make much,
the once Byzantine Mahometan has set up for his idol the idea
of Islam, and worships it with a devotion which the " Though
He slay me yet will I trust in Him " of Job could scarcely
parallel. But Islam is, moreover, in his mind identified with
what is for him its visible and chiefest avatar, the EmpUe of the
c 2

ULYSSES.

house of Othman, the waning crescent of the crimson flag. And
thus, in spite of the new and hated regulations of latter-day
Sultans, of Janissaries butchered, grants revoked, institutions
destroyed, and burdens bound on by a bureaucracy the Uttle
finger of which is thicker than the loins of a Suleyman or a
Murad ; in spite of the still deeper and more searching change
that has come over the spirit of the Ottoman dream, transforming
the terror of the nations into a feeble parody of that most
portentous of all failures, the Second French Empire — the
Mahometan of Anatolia continues, passively at least, true to his
old love, invests it with the inviolabUity of the creed he
worships ; and while acknowledging it in detail to be an ogre,
reveres it in the whole as a God.
Still, the field of patience has not only extent but Umits ; and
from time to time even the Mahometan " Koilee," or " Fellah,"
or peasant of Pontus is fairly driven beyond them. He then
takes to the mountains : and as law, in the only sense he knows
it, has been his enemy, he becomes in his turn an enemy to law.
Band after band of such haK fugitives, half outlaws, has sprung
up within the last few years among these forests ; and did a
provincial newspaper exist, its "sensation" columns would
seldom need a topic. To-day it is a house broken into, and one
or more of the inmates mangled by a hatchet ; to-morrow some
corn-stacks burnt, or the standing crops wantonly cut, trampled
down, and destroyed in the dark ; or a wayfarer has been found
robbed and murdered, or a woman brutally ravished, or what not !
It would be a painful, often a revolting, task to chronicle
the crimes committed in these lovely glens.
And the Government ?
Well, the Government, so long as individuals only, especiaUy
if they chance to be of the poorer sort, are concerned, does
simply nothing. But at last some person of consequence has,
perhaps, been the sufferer ; or a whole village or district has been
injured ; and a formal complaint and demand of redress, backed,
of course, by a pre-payment of costs and good-wiU, not less
necessary in a criminal than in a civil case before an Osmanlee
tribunal, has been lodged at the ofiicial residence, where money

BYZANTINE ANATOLIA.

received may have created a reasonable hope that more may bo
obtained from the same sources. A party of armed police, or,
in extreme instances, of soldiers, are then sent at once to in
vestigate and to punish ; on whose approach, announced several
days beforehand, the real criminals prudently make off. In
their place, however, a few ready-to-hand persons are easily
apprehended, and triumphantly carried off to be shut up in a
jail, the like of which Mrs. Fry's worst nightmare never imaged,
there to remain two, three, or more months, even years, their
guilt or innocence being never examined into, till either .death,
or the presents thrown by their friends into the insatiate jaws of
authority, procures them release. I have known as many as
eighty thus dragged off to prison in a batch : by the end of four
months several of them were dead and others like to die of jail-
fever ; and during aU that time not a single man or lad of the
number had been brought before any kind of tribunal whatever,
whether for investigation or trial. Meanwhile, God help their
famiUes. These were one and all Mahometans, from a once
Byzantine village about fifty miles distant from Trebizond.
Others again — and their number is large, much larger than
the Osmanlee Government suspects — quit the country ; some
for the Eussian Caucasus or Georgia, some for Constantinople,
some for the larger towns of Syria or Egypt, there to pick up
what living they may. Few of them ever return. The emigra
tion is secret, for a reason little known, I believe, beyond the
limits of the Ottoman Empire, but which ought to be taken into
account in forming an estimate of the vaunted " progress " of its
rulers. The Turkish peasant is — on a principle which, so far as I
can discover, dates its origin from the semi-feudal times of
military tenure, but which has assumed its actual and much
more galUng form in the present century— considered as serf of
the soU he tills, or ascriphts glehce in old phrase: and this
principle is at once exemplified and enforced by a regulation
forbidding Mm to quit Ms native village and district, except for
a stated time, and then only after procuring an official " pass,"
for wMch a high fee has to be paid. The place too whither he
intends going must be specified in the " pass ; " and on any

UL YSSES.

change of destination, a fresh one must lie taken. For a " pass "
to quit the country altogether, or for life, it would be vain to ask,
as it would certainly be refused. Indeed, the bare appearance
of a peasant at the " pass " office, asking for leave to emigrate
to Eussia, would be enough to make the clerk faint from the
very impudence of the demand. But where a reasonable and
advantageous thing is refused by authority, it is tolerably sure
to be taken without authority ; and every year the underhand
emigration draws off large and stiU larger numbers from tMs
region. Much more, however, is this the case with the " Greek "
peasants ; that is, with those who, in addition to their Byzantine
descent, have maintained after a fashion the Byzantine reUgion
and social system. Sheltered under the protection liberally
afforded by the Eussian consulates, they emigrate, not by
individuals, or even famUies, but by whole bands. I have
known as many as a hundred Pontic " Greeks " at a time, after
receiving in the morning a flat refusal of the " passes " requested
from the Ottoman authorities, together with a threat that if they
did not at once abandon their migratory intentions and return
to their mountain viUages, they should be packed off not to
Eussia, but to prison, embark comfortably the same evening
after dark on board the Eussian steamer lying at their service in
the harbour, and transfer themselves and theirs to the Muscovite
allegiance. By a curious coincidence, the Turkish Pasha, or
Governor-General of the town and district, was dining that
evening in full state at the Eussian Consulate, whence he did
not return to his own official residence tUl the " small hours,"
long after the saiUng of the emigrant-laden boat. It would be
hard to blame either the emigrants or those who helped them.
It might be harder to defend those who maintain the status quo
of Osmanlee rule.
Euins of nations, ruins of empires, uncemented fragments,
built up into an empire itself already a crumbling ruin. Yet
the land is still the same as when the Argonauts flrst gazed on
it from the sea, and the Ten Thousand from the over-topping
mountains ; the same snow-flecked heights, green pastures.

BYZANTINE ANATOLIA.

luxuriant forests, full torrents, fertile soil ; the very yellow
blaze of wUd flowers whence the bees in Xenophon's time drew
their intoxicating honey, unchanged to this day, is still the
same ; — it is the old sad story of the East —
"Art, glory, freedom fail; but Nature still is fair."
But if better days be yet in store for Pontus, they certainly
will not dawn tiU the last rays of the Crescent have set from the
verge of her western origin, the seven lulls of Stambool.
MeanwhUe we have emerged from the forest-gorge, left
beneath us the wavelike biUows of rolling mist, traversed the
wide pasture slopes, crossed the bare jagged crest, whence from
a height of nearly nine thousand feet we have given a last
backward look at the far-off dream-like stretch of bay, headland,
and sea ; and have now by long windings descended into the
great inland vaUey of the Chorok, the Harpasus of Xenophon,
where, with the Umits of AnatoUan Gurgistan, begins another
region and a different and better race.

24 ULYSSES.

THE MONASTEEY OF SUMELAS.
Published in ' Eraser's Magazine ' for February 1871, the Essay now
revised in some not unimportant respects was written during the preceding
year, immediately after my return from Sumelas itself. Since then I have
visited many monastic sanctuaries, some of them Greek Orthodox, some Eoman
Catholic, in Europe as in Asia : in all the essential or family resemblance is
strongly marked; the differences of detail, arising from locality, dogma, or
observance, merely superficial. All alike have, though not all in precisely the
same degree, the one great merit of witnessing to earth's plebeians, the mob of
science, business, commerce, progress, and pleasure, the truth uttered, though in
il somewhat different sense, by Shakespeare's typical nobleman, him of Corioli,
" There is a world elsewhere."
"In concluding the history of this Greek State, we enquire
in vain for any benefit that it conferred on the human race,"
says Finlay, as he winds up the crime-stained scroll of the later
Byzantine empire, or, rather. Principality of Trebizond. A
severer sentence could hardly have been passed; yet few
perhaps have been ever more thoroughly borne out by facts and
memorials, in annal or in monument. Originated, to borrow
the same able historian's phrase once more, in accident,
continued in meanness, and extinguished in dishonour, the
Comnenian dynasty has left on the Pontic coast but little
abiding record, and that little unmistakably stamped with the
leading characteristics of the empire itself. The straggling,
loose-built walls of the ill-constructed citadel of Trebizond ; the
dwarfish proportions and tasteless ornamentation of the over-
vaunted church of St. Sophia by the sea-shore, the still feebler
architecture of the churches of St. Eugenius, St. John, and
others, now doing duty as mosques in different quarters of the
town, belong to and attest the type of those who reared them ;

THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS:

and their defects are rendered only the more glaring by their
servile attempt to copy the great though over-ponderous models
of earlier Byzantine date. If this be true, as, begging the
German Fallmereyer's pardon, true it is, of the quondam
capital, what can we expect in the less important and outly
ing points of the ephemeral empire, where the littleness of art
is stiU more disadvantageously contrasted with the gigantic
proportions of nature ?
Yet even here, among these relics of a debased age, we
occasionally come across some grand constructional outline
indicative of others than the Comnenes ; of nobler races, or
at least of superior organisation. Such are the Cyclopean
fragments at Kerasunt or Cherasond, the broken columns of
Kyrelee on the eastern coast, and the solid though shattered walls
of " Eski-Trabezoon," or " Old Trebizond," situated some sixty
miles east of the present town. In the same class may rank
the rock-buUt monasteries scattered throughout the mountains
that line the coast ; and which, though bearing the traces of
later modification and, too often, defacement, are yet not wholly
unworthy relics of the days when Chrysostom preached and
Pulcheria reigned. And of these is the monastery of the
Virgin, the Panagia or Immaculate of Sumelas.
High-perched among the upper ranges of the Kolat mountain
chain, south-east of Trebizond, from which it is distant about
thirty mUes inland, Sumelas is the pilgrim-bourne of innumer
able " Greeks," (to use a customary misnomer for the mixed
population of Byzantine, Slavonian, and Lazic origin that here
professes the " orthodox " faith,) who flock to the shrine of the
Panagia on the yearly recurrence of Her great festival day, the
27th of August in our calendar, the 15th in theirs. At other
seasons Her visitors are comparatively few : indeed, snow, rain
and mist render the convent almost inaccessible for full eight
months out of the twelve; nor can the road be called easy
travelling at any time. Hence the convent, in spite of its
widespread nor undeserved reputation, is visited by Europeans
seldom, by the inert and careless Europeo-Levantines hardly
ever. For myself, however, Ovid's fellow-convict in my Pontine

2-6 ULYSSES.

Sydney, a trip to Sumelas, so managed as to coincide with one
of the rare intervals of clear weather on tMs murky coast, and
yet to avoid the crowd and other inconveniences of the festival
epoch, was too desirable a break in the sameness of Turko-
Levantine life not to be undertaken ; and a fine week towards
the beginning of August at last afforded the wished-for oppor
tunity. So in the early dawn, while the waning moon yet glittered
above the morning star in the calm slaty sky, we started, a
band of five horsemen in all, two negro servants included,
bound for the celebrated " Mariamana," as the convent is here
popularly called ; and rode out of Trebizond with the huge bare
mass of Boz-Tepeh, or the " Brown Hill," once Mount Mithrios,
on our right, and the black and brackish Euxine pool entitled
by geographical courtesy a sea, on our left. We followed the
new road, that, when TurMsh engineers shall have learnt the
first rudiments of their art, which will not be till they have
ceased to be Turkish engineers, is to render the route between
Trebizond and Erzeroom amenable to wheeled carriages instead
of the classic caravans that now, as for centuries bygone, alone
thread the long mountain pass. For at present the roughest
waggon that ever lumbered along a Devonshire lane could not
venture on four miles of the Erzeroom track without the un
pleasant certainty of being either upset or jolted to shivers on
the way. To us, however, on the present occasion this matters
Uttle, for Turkish horses are sure-footed as Spanish mUles ; so
on we ride; and after rounding the great corner cliff that,
jutting right out on the water's edge, retains the classic-
sounding name of Eleusa, we enter on the sandy delta of the
Pixytes river, now degraded into the " Deyermend-Dereh," or
" MiU-course " of Turkish nomenclature. Its vaUey, penetrating
south-east far into the mountains, has at all times served as
directing line to the great commercial track that, bending
eastwards to Erzeroom, brings' Koordistan and Persia into
communication with the basin of the Black Sea and Constanti
nople. Up tMs valley we now turn, and soon cross a huge
barrier-ridge of rolled stones, the joint work of sea and river in

&

THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 27
glacial times, when the now shrunken torrent was full fed by
vast tracts of snow and ice in its parent mountains. And here
I may add parenthetically that over all the highland of inner
Anatolia, from the Lazistan coast range up to the watershed of
the EupM'ates, I have met with numerous traces of the cold
Post-Pliocene epoch, well known to geologists, such as furrowed
rocks, erratic boulders, rounded prominences, and huge moraines,
stretching far down into the plains from the mountain summits
that even now, though long since bared of their icy caps by a
mUder climate, maintain patches of snow all the year tMough.
Next we thread a pass of remarkable beauty, where pic
turesque rocks jut out among thick brushwood, or steep slopes,
aU grass and wUd flowers, run Mgh up against the sky; at
times the gorge narrows into a ravine, where black volcanic
crags barely leave room for the pathway along the left bank of
the brawling torrent ; wMle the old traffic-route, despairing of a
footing below, passes by the heights several hundred feet over
head. The general type of scenery recalls North Wales, or the
Eothen-Thurm pass of the Carpathian district in South Hungary.
At last, just as the eastern sun bursts out in fuU light and heat
over the fir-crowned mountain tops on our left, we reach a point
where the vaUey expands into a wide marshy plain, thick-
planted with maize, whUe the roadside is lined with rows of
.^Aans, or halting places — long low sheds, with no accommoda
tion to offer beyond shelter from the weather, and the possibility
of fire-Ughting : some are in good repair, others in various stages
of broken roof and crumbling wall, others mere traces of
mouldered brickwork. For in Z7ians, as in every other kind of
buUding, Eastern custom or prejudice forbids repair, and prefers
to supplement the injuries of time or accident by a new con
struction in toto alongside, rather than to attempt the restoration
of the old one once decayed. Hence, among other causes, the
frequent vestiges of deserted houses, mosques, and the lilie, that
cumber the lines of traffic everywhere in Eastern Turkey, and
convey to the traveller's mind the idea of even more ruin and
decay than is really the case ; being in fact as often the symbols
of transportation as of desertion.

28 ULYSSES.

Little shops, mixed up with the Z7ians, offer eggs, sour apples,
coarse tobacco, cigarette paper, matches, nuts, cheese, and such
like articles of cheap consumption to the caravan-drivers and
other passers-by. All around the hillsides, here more moderate
in their slope, and patched with corn, maize and tobacco, are
studded ¦with rubble-built cottages, each one at a neighbourly
distance from the other; these, taken collectively, form the
village of " Khosh-Oghlan," or the " Pleasing-Boy," such being
the name of the hamlet ; though who was the individual boy, '
and in what respect he made himself so particularly agreeable,
were vain now to enquire. It is the first halting-stage of the
inland journey ; so, obedient to the usage of which our
attendants have not failed with a broad African grin to remind
us, we alight at one of the booths for a cup of coffee, over
roasted and over-boiled as all Turkish coffee is, yet refreshing in
its sort, and then go on our way. Seven or eight miles more
lead us still up the same "Deyermend" valley, past some
pretty Swiss-like wooden bridges, and many fine points of
mountain view, past the straggling hamlet of " Yeseer-Oghlou,"
or the " Son of the Prisoner " — a Prisoner and a Son now no
less forgotten by history and tradition than the " Pleasing-Boy "
before mentioned — where, not long since, two Frenchmen,
hacked and slashed, paid with their life-blood the penalty of
the meddlesome domineering usual to their tribe among
strangers ; till we reached the high stone arched bridge called of
" Maturajik," and, crossing by it to the other or right side of
the valley, climb aloft above the torrent as it forces its way
through huge clusters of columnar basalt, piled up tier over tier
of rusty brown ; then descend to the little plain known, as are
also the many scattered houses that jot the green or brown
mountain sides all round, by the title of "Jevezlik," or the
" Place of Walnut-trees : " these last stand before us, green and
spreading, beside the water's edge. Here again the road runs
the gauntlet between shops and Kh&ns, for we have now done
eighteen mUes, the ordinary day's inarch of a caravan from
Trebizond. Besides, Jevezlik is a place of some note, partly as
the residence now of a district sub-governor, formerly of a

THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS.

dreaded " Dereh-Bey," or " Lord of the Valley ; " a euphemism
for Lord of Eobberies — but more so from its central position,
which renders it the meeting-point of three great tracks, and
Avhich would in classic Italy have insured its dedication to
" Diana Trivia : " these are the winter road to Erzeroom, the
summer ditto, and the road of Sumelas or Mariamana. Of
these routes, the first follows the main valley south-west up to
where it culminates in the far-off snow-flecked summits of
Ziganeh, in the direction of Beiburt and Erzeroom ; the second,
or summer road, scrambles rather than cUmbs due south across
the dreary heights of " Kara-Kapan," or " Black-Covering," so
called, I conjecture, from its almost perpetual veil of cloud and
mist, whence — but it must have been on an unusually clear
day — Mr. Layard, if memory serves me right, makes Xenophon
and his Greeks shout their OdXaTTa, OaXarra ; the third path,
ours now, and which leads to Sumelas, goes off south-east by a
side gorge that here falls into the Deyermend valley. The sun is
now Mgh and hot ; so we halt for a noon-tide bait in the spare
room of a rickety Turkish coffee-house overhanging the torrent ;
receive the visits of some land-farmers, conservative and dis
contented as farmers are by prescriptive right all the world
over ; feast on brown bread and eggs fried in grease, vice any-
tMng else, unattainable in tMs corner of the gorgeous East ; and
would fain have crowned our midday rest with a nap on the
floor, had not the immemorial fleas of Asia Minor pronounced
their absolute veto on any such proceeding.
Well ; Sumelas, not Jevezlik, is our goal. So, noon over, we
remount and turn south-east, following over rock and grass the
rise of the noble mountain cleft, hemmed in here and there by
great basaltic masses, suddenly protruding through the limestone
rocks of an older formation. Next to the cape of Hieros, or
Yoros, with its fan-spread columns, the basalt pillars of Melas,
as tMs spot is called, are the grandest — I have never visited
either Skye or the Giant's Causeway — that it has been my
fortune to witness anywhere. Next we cross the fierce but now
shaUow torrent on a covered wooden bridge that might have been
imported from Zug or Luzern ; and begin the final Sumelas ascent.

ULYSSES.

It follows for several miles the upward course of a deep and
precipitous ravine, where huge rocks and cliffs, many hundred
feet in height, are interspersed among or overhang forests of
walnut, oak, beech, and pine, that might do honour to the
mountain sides of Savoy itself. Under the shade, now of the
branching trees, now of the waU-like crags, winds the path,
bordered by a dense fringe of laurel, dwarf fir, azalea, rhododen
dron, and countless other tangled shrubs ; it is kept in fairly
good order, propped up by stone counterforts, and protected by
trenches and dykes against the descending watercourses by the
care of the monks, whose convent we are now approaching. On
either side and in front glimpses of bare and lonely heights,
herbless granite, and jagged ridges far up in the blue sky, show
that we are penetrating the broad barrier of the Kolat-Dagh,
the great Anatolian coast chain, that even here averages ten
thousand feet in elevation, and ultimately yields only to the
still more lofty Caucasus, its northern rival and paraUel. At
last a turn of the way brings us half-round at the foot of a
monstrous rock that has for some wMle barred our direct view
along the ravine in front ; and there, suspended Uke a bird's
nest in atr far overhead, we see glimmering through black pine-
shade the white walls of the convent, the object of our journey.
One last corkscrew ascent, of almost Matterhorn steep
ness, brings us up through the dense forest that somehow
manages to cling to and girdle the cliff half-way ; till, just on
the edge of the leafy belt, we reach the narrow ledge, almost
imperceptible from below, on which the convent is niched
rather than built. Two-thirds in length of this ledge are
occupied every inch, from precipice above to precipice below, by
the monastic buildings ; the remaining third partly forms a kind
of landing-place, where visitors may wait admittance within the
claustral precincts, partly is occupied by large stables and out
houses for horses and cattle. From this sheK sixty-six stone
steps, of recent construction, conduct to a little iron-bound door
in the convent wall, conveniently commanded by some grated
windows above. Till witMn the last few years a long wooden
ladder, let down as circumstances required, then drawn up again

THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 31
from within, afforded the sole and occasional link between the
monastery and the outer world ; while simster arrivals might, if
they tried entrance by other means of their own, receive from
the flanking windows a warmer welcome than they expected or
desired. Our coming has already been espied by the monks ; and as
we slowly cUmb the steps, the iron door ahead haK opens for
a moment, in sign of recognition, then closes again, wMle
consultation goes on within as to our admittance. After a
short interval the portal reopens, and displays an old monk, in
the blue dress, somewhat dirty, I regret to say, and black
head-gear of Ms order, that of St. Basil, — I may as well remark
here that the orthodox Greek Church recognises this one
order only; a sUent protest against the multiplicity of more
modern Latin discipline, — standing in the entry, wMle other
bretMen group beMnd Mm in the dim perspective of the
narrow vaulted passage. Glancing at us, he notices the dagger
' and silver-mounted pistol of our principal negro attendant, and
requests him to consign his portable arsenal to monastic
keeping before crossing the threshold. To this preUminary
ceremony the Darfooree objects; nor does the argument that
such is the rule of St. Basil, with which the Sultan Mmself,
were he present in person, must, under penalty of non-admit
tance, comply, produce any effect on African obstinacy. So,
armed as he is, he turns back to look after the horses ; while
the monks obligingly assm-e us that neither animals nor groom
shaU want for anything during our stay here.
We enter the passage. The " Economos " or Accountant of
the monastery, an elderly man, long-bearded and long-vested,
with, at Ms side, a stout, jovial, gray-haired, red-cheeked old
monk, apparently verging on the seventies, but hale and active,
our destined "bear-leader," and several other bretMen, all
blue-dressed, bearded, and dirty, come forward to greet us ; and
conduct us up and do'wn by a labyrinth of Uttle corridors,
ruinous flights of stairs, dingy cells, and unsavoury well-Uke
courtyards, all squeezed up close between the rock on one side
and the precipice on the other ; till, having thus traversed the

32 ULYSSES.

" old buUdings," wMch form an irregular parallelogram about
two hundred feet in length by forty in breadth, we emerge
on a little flagged space, neater kept than the rest ; and find
ourselves in presence of the famous shrine of the Panagia
herself. The body of the church, a cavern natural in its origin, but
probably enlarged by art, is hollowed out in the rock, which
here faces due east. The sanctuary, wMch in accordance with
the prescription of ecclesiastical tradition also points eastwards,
is here represented by a small construction, double staged,
about fourteen feet in total height, and sixteen in length ; its
general appearance from without brings to mind the conven
tional ark of BibUcal pictures and cMldren's toy-shops. It
projects at right angles from the stone wall ¦with wMch the
entrance of the cavern all round it has been closed ; and, like
that wall, is covered 'with the most appalUng specimens of
modern Greek mural painting; impossible saints 'wLth plate
like halos ; crowded days of judgment where naked but sexless
souls are being dragged by diaboUcal hooks into the jaws of a
huge dragon, which is heU ; Scriptural scenes from the stories
of Moses, Elijah, etc., where large heads, no perspective, and a
stiffness unrivalled by any board are the chief artistic speci-
aUties ; red, yellow, and brown are the favourite colours ; the
whole delicately touched up with the names of innumerable
pilgrims, mostly terminating, Greek fashion, in " aki " or
"ides," scratched, with no respect of persons, across saints,
souls, demons, and deities aUke. The entrance door is close
alongside of the sanctuary; and three square grated windows
admit the light above. The roofing of the sanctuary is sheet
copper, thick encrusted with dirt ; so thick, indeed, as to enable
the monks to assure you, without too violent a contradiction of
your own ocular evidence, that it is not copper, but silver ; the
costly gift — so continue the same chroniclers — of the famous,
or infamous. Sultan Murad IV. himself; who, when on Ms
way from Constantinople to Bagdad to fight the Persians, seems
to have led his army — Heaven only knows how or why — across
the Kolat mountains, and to have encamped, horse, foot, and

THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 33
artillery, on the goat's perch of the ravine here opposite. That
Sumelas lies hundreds of miles away from the route which the
said SlUtan must really have taken, ¦and that Hannibal or
Napoleon I. himself would have been puzzled to drag the
smallest field-piece among these precipices, are considerations
which matter nothing in legend. Accordingly, so continues
the tale, when the ferocious Murad first turned his bloodshot
eyes on the convent, he enquired of his Begs and Pashas what
that building might be ; and, on their answer that it was the
abode of Christian monks, gave immediate orders to his artil
lerymen to batter it down. But lo ! no sooner were the cannon
pointed at the consecrated edifice than they spun round seK-
moved, and began firing among the Sultan's own troops.
Hereon Imperial amazement and further enquiry ; met by the
information that all this was the doing of the miraculous Virgin,
the Panagia, who, or whose picture — for in popular Orthodox
as in Eoman, and in every other yet living devotion the
distinction between the symbol and the original is inappreciable
to any but a controversialist — tenanted the monastery. Murad,
deeply impressed, and no wonder, by the miracle and its
explanation, at once abandoned Ms destructive intentions, did
due honour to the Panagia and her ministers, and, amongst
other offerings, presented the silver roof in question — only he
never did anytMng of the sort, and it is really copper.
Looking up, we now perceive that the rock above, which here
overhangs sanctuary and court in an almost threatening manner,
supports in one of its darkest recesses a Uttle Byzantine picture,
the Theotokos or Mother of God Herself. Dingy and faded,
so much so, indeed, as to be at first sight hardly discernible
from the damp stone against which it rests, this painting
occupies the exact spot — we have the monks' word for it—
where in the fifth century some goatherds discovered the
original Panagia, the work of St. Luke, here placed by angelic
agency seemingly in order to keep it out of the way. Now,
however, it is deposited for more convenient veneration in the
sanctuary below, where we will visit it a little later ; but the
copy has itself, like iron near a magnet, acquired a fair share
D

34 ULYSSES.

of miraculous efficacy by juxtaposition. From the rocky brow
abo^'e, in front of the picture, distil, without ceasing, drops of
water, which to the eyes of faith are always three at a time,
neither more nor less ; but for all I looked I could not detect
any special numerical system in their fall; these drops, care
fully coUected in a little cistern below, possess remedial virtues
equal to any recorded of the same element in the episcopal
pages of Monseigneur Gaume.
While we have been thus gazing and listening, the four
church beUs, hung outside in a pretty Uttle belfry of four Ught
columns and graceful arching — the work and its costs having
been alike furnished by the devotion of a wealthy Eussian
pilgrim — have been ringing a very hospitable, though untune-
able, peal in honour of our arrival ; and the monks invite us to
enter the sanctuary without further delay. But it is near
sunset; and the monotonous chanting of the priests inside
warns us that vespers are even now going on, and the church
full of worshippers. UnwilUng to disturb the congregation, we
defer our visit ; and, adding that we are somewhat tired by our
day's journey, we are considerately conducted by our hosts
across the courtyard, and up a neat stone staircase to our
evening quarters, namely, the chief apartment in the " new
buildings." These, completed only three years since, rise seven stages in
total height, A'aults included, from the precipice below to the
beetUng crag above ; the front faces east ; and its wMte-
painted masonry, its four tiers of large square windows, and
its handsome open gallery supported on slender stone pillarets
that run along the whole length of the topmost story, are
what first attract the admiration of the traveller as he reaches
the opposite point of the ravine. The edifice is eight rooms in
length and only one in thickness throughout; but the great
solidity of the stonework, and the shelter of the overhanging rock
against which it nestles, neutraUse the danger of over-height.
From foundation to roof a narrow space, protected from the
weather by the A\'ide eaves abo\-e, is left between the building and
the crag l.)ehiud ; and here winds an ingenious zigzao- of galleries

THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 35
and staircases, all stone, that afford entrance to the several
chambers of each story. Beneath, and partly hollowed out in
the U\dng rock, are cellars and store-caverns to which the
monks alone have access ; besides a large reservoir of excellent
water, filled from the oozings of the inner mountain. The
entire work, whether considered in itself or in the difficulties
of scaffolding and construction where not a spare inch is left
of the narrow shelf on wluch the building stands balanced as it
were hundreds of feet in mid-air, is one of no small skill ; and
its well-considered proportion of wall, window, and gallery,
¦with the just adaptation of every part to the practical exigencies
of domestic use, claim high constructive praise, and evince
a degree of good taste not always to be found among the
house-arcMtects of Western Europe. Yet the builders of
" Mariamana " were from no European, not even from the
Constantinopolitan school ; they were mere indigenous stone
cutters, " Greek " the most, from the adjoining villages of
Koroom, Mejid, and Stavros.
We stroU along the top story corridor, the openings of which
are guarded by high iron raUings, and look across the dizzy
depths below, whence rises the ceaseless roar of the Melas
torrent, and beyond the dense masses of beech and pine that
cluster on the ravine side opposite, to the lonely peaks of
Kolat-Dagh, seemingly close in front, and rose-tinted with the
last rays of the setting sun. Soon the evening air blows cool ;
at this elevation — 4,100 feet above the sea, as my aneroid
informs me — the night temperature is rarely such as to allow of
loitering long out of doors. Five months of the year on an
average the convent snow lies unmelted, and for five more of
the remaining seven mist and rain are the rule, not the
exceptions. - The very cats of the establishment, large, tame,
and well fed, bear witness by their long fur and their bushy
fox-like taUs to the general coldness of the atmosphere in
which they live. Still the site is healthy, and in proof of tMs
an old centagenarian monk presents himself to view hale and
hearty among his comrades, who, to judge by appearances, are
mostly themselves in a fair way to rival hir; longevity. But
u 2

36 ULYSSES.

besides, absence of care, and indeed of brain-work in general,
has perhaps sometMng to do with this prolonged and vigorous
vitality. Nor have they many privations to endure, except
what the numerous fasts and abstinences of their antique
ritual impose ; the convent is wealthy to a degree that would
have long since moved the greed of any but a Turkish Govern
ment, while the monks in residence are not over numerous —
fifteen indeed is their average total. However, besides its
regular inmates, this convent harbours also several members
of distant monasteries from different parts of Anatolia,
Eoumelia, and even Syria, sent hither to a quiet retreat, or
mitigated prison, or both, thus to expiate some past breach of
discipline or to prevent some menaced scandal. Lastly, a
large number of the monks — though how many my grizzled
informant could not, or perhaps would not, say — are scattered
on longer or shorter leave of absence without the walls, in quest
of the temporal welfare of the community, or superintending
the numerous farms belonging to' it, some by purchase, more
by legacy. For in the Orthodox, no less than in any other
Church, the passports of the rich to a better world are seldom
countersigned " gratis." As a natural consequence, the fields
and havings of the Sumelas Panagia lie thick scattered along
the entire South Euxine coast from Trebizond to Constantinople,
and bring in revenues sufficient for a moderate-sized duchy.
Nor is all this wealth consumed in selfish indulgence, or
hoarded up by miserly precaution. While the monks still,
as before, content themselves with the narrow and cranky
buildings of the original convent, the handsome and commo
dious lodgings of newer construction, the cost of which cannot
have fallen short of 4,000^. at least, are freely abandoned to the
eight thousand pilgrims or guests who, on a rough calculation,
pass from twenty-four hours to fifteen days, some more, some
less, year by year within these walls, free of board as of shelter.
Nor should we forget the neat pathway, solidly constructed and
sedulously repaired by the sole care and cost of the monks,
along many difficult miles of mountain ravine, which else
would be not only dangerous but almost inaccessible; a patli,

THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 37
thanks to the self-taught workmen of Mariamana, now safe,
and even, comparatively speaking, commodious — qualities
estimable in roads and creditable to the road makers anywhere ;
most creditable, because most rare, in AnatoUa.
Escorted by our hosts we re-enter our night's lodging. The
large and handsome room — neat still, because new — is gar-
mshed with divans, carpets, and a supplementary stove for cold
weather in the centre; over the fireplace hangs conspicuously
a photographic print of Eussian manufacture, representing an
apocryphal act of Cretan heroism, wherein a priest is enacting,
torch in hand, an imitation of " Old Minotti's " suicidal exploit
in Byron's Sic(jc of Corinth. Perhaps it is meant as a hint on
occasion for the " Economos " of Sumelas : if so, let us hope
that he will never be necessitated to take it. The period of
strict abstinence, which among the " orthodox " precedes the
great festival of the Virgin, has already commenced ; and as
the hour for supper draws on, we own to a horrible anticipation
of finding ourselves included among the eaters of olives and
unseasoned vegetables — poor restoratives after a long day's
ride. But such treatment of their guests forms no part of our
hospitable entertainers' programme. Soup, flesh, fowl, eggs,
caviare, butter, and so forth, soon cover the table; and the
wine, produce of conventual vineyards, is good enough to show
how exceUent a liquor might be afforded by the AnatoUan
grape did it but receive more skUful culture. Coffee and tea
foUow, and when time comes for the mght's rest we recUne
on weU-stuffed mattresses beneath quUted coverings of sUk,
embroidered with gold and silver thread, not unworthy of
the state-bed of Elizabeth at KenUworth, or of James I. at
Hatfield. Next morning we pay our promised visit to the church, and
entering by the narrow door in the angle of the sanctuary, find
ourselves in a cavern about forty feet in length and breadth, by
fifteen or sixteen in height, lighted up by the customary three
east windows in the outer wall. Sides and roof are decorated
¦with paintings in the style already described, where to disjoin
art from devotion, and to throw ridicule on both, seems the

38 UL YSSES.

principal aim of the artist; damp and incense smoke have,
however, charitably done much to cover the multitude of picto
rial sins. WitMn the church are many other objects wortMer
of observation, and some even of real interest. At the entrance
of the sanctuary hang, one over the other, two smaU sUk
curtains, ricMy worked ; wMch being -svithdrawn disclose to our
view the identical Panagia, the likeness, or rather, to put it
more correctly, the .emblem of the Virgin, by St. Luke — of equal
merit in all respects, natural and supernatural, as of equal
antiquity, it would seem, and very possibly of equal authen
ticity, ¦with the better known portrait venerated at Santa Maria
Maggiore in Eome. A blackish outUne, cMefly defined by the
gold-leaf ground that Umits head and shoulders, indicates the
figure. Close beside it hang, obUquely from the ceiling, like
masts in slings, two huge wax tapers, -wrapped in some
material, costly, but now undistingmshable tMough its dingy
encrustments ; these form a part of the prffiter-Mstorical peace-
offering of Sultan Murad IV., mentioned farther back. Near
the tapers is also suspended an enormous circular chandelier of
sUver gUt, -with a quantity of Uttle ex-votos, sUver boats, gold
filagree ornaments, coins, and the like, dangling from its rim :
tMs too, K we credit the monks, is the memorial of the re
pentance of another Sultan, SeUm II. — on ¦v\-hat occasion shall
be related in its place. Meanwhile we deposit the offering that
courtesy requUes in the aU-receiving platter before the Panagia ;
and are next called on to revere the special object of devout
pilgrimage, a small silver rocking-cradle, of pretty but not
ancient workmanship, consecrated to the goddess of the sMine.
Into this cradle a piece of money (the more precious the metal,
the greater its efficacy) is to be laid ; after wMch the pilgrim,
having thrice raised and lowered the toy and its contents on the
palm of Ms or her hand, before the unveiled Panagia, deposits
it on the plate of offerings. Should the cradle when thus set
do-wn continue to rock, the happy votary will infallibly become
before long a father or a mother, as the case may be ; its immo-
iDiUty on the contrary is a sad but conclusive presage of married
sterUity. Now iDarrenness is at the present day no less an

THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS.

.39

opprobrium in the East than it wa.^ in tho age of Hannah and
Pheninnah ; and its prevention or cure is the motive of far tlie
greater number of pilgrimages to Mariamana; even newly-
married Mahometans, not to mention Armenians, Latins, and
other unorthodox Cliristians of either sex, prove by their
frequent visits to the cradle of Sumelas how catching a thing
is popular belief The residue of the pilgrims are mostly
petitioners for the recovery of a sick child, or relative, or self,
and to them also the cradle obUgingly extends the subject
matter of its oracles. The origin of this particular observance
probably does not go back farther than Comnenian times ;
though the monks refer it, like the foundation of the convent
itself, to the fifth century.
Passing rapidly over the inspection of a copious store of
ecclesiastical vestments and paraphernalia, that miglit call forth
the raptures of an antiquary or a ritualist, we come in front of
a small wooden cabinet, placed in a recess of the cavern, and
carefuUy locked. This the monks now open, and draw forth
from its nook the famous Golden Bull of Alexios III., Emperor
of Trebizond, who in 1365 confirmed by this document the
pri-vUeges and exemptions of the Sumelas convent and its pos
sessions ; and, amongst other precious tokens of Imperial
liberality, bestowed on them the right of defending themselves
as best they could against the Turkoman inroads, which the
pretentious empire was unable to check, even at but a day's
distance from the capital. At the head of the " Bull," a long
narrow strip of rolled paper, appear the portraits of Alexios and
his -wife, the Empress Theodora, holding between them on their
joined hands a small model church, much as ecclesiastical
donors love to appear in Western monuments of a corresponding
age : the characters of the writing are large and fine drawn ;
the Imperial autograph, in huge red ink letters, sprawls below ;
but the gold seals originally appended have long since dis^
appeared from the foot of the scroll. The most remarkable
feature in this memorial of later Byzantine times (given at full
length by Fallmereyer in his publication of 1843) is the inflated
verbosity of the style ; a verbosity subsequently adopted with

40 ULYSSES.
many other vices of the degraded empire by the victorious
Ottomans. Of more real importance, though inferior in antiquity, is the
paper next unrolled before our eyes, namely, the firman of
the Sultan SeUm IL, also confirmatory, but this time to good
purpose, of aU the old monastic rights, privUeges, and exemp
tions. It is remarkable that in tMs document the hand^writing
conforms to the stiff and old-fasMoned Naskhee of Arab origin,
instead of the elegant semi-Persian Divanee of later official
use. The quotations from the Koran that garnish it from first to
last exemplify a tone frequently adopted by the Osmanlee
rulers in their day of power. Certainly no miracle is needed to
account for the concession of this favour, one in entire accord
ance with Turkish and even with Mahometan usage every
where. The Sumelas monks have, however, a legend ready to
hand, and thus it runs : Once on a time Sultan SeUm came on
a hunting-party to tMs neighbourhood, and whUe pursuing his
chase up the Melas ravine beheld for the first time the great
monastery. To become aware of its existence and to resolve its
destruction were one and the same tMng in the mind of the
tjTant. But before he could so much as frame Ms guUty
thought into words of command, he was stricken ¦with paralysis,
and laid up a helpless sufferer in a vUlage close by. There he
might have remained to the end of Ms -wicked life, had not the
Panagia graciously appeared to him in a vision, and suggested
the expiation of his crime and the simultaneous recovery of Ms
health by means of the document in question, further ¦ accom
panied by the douceur of the great circular chandeUer that
we have already seen suspended before the sanctuary ; and as,
to borrow Smith the weaver's logic, the firman and the chande
Uer are both aUve at tMs day to testKy the prodigy : " therefore
deny it not." Anyhow, the firman of SeUm II. proved a more
efficacious protection to the monastery and its land than the
"BuU" issued by the Comnenian emperor; and its repeated
renewals by succeeding Sultans, from SeUm II. to Abd-el-
Mejeed, form a complete and not munstructive series in the

THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 41
Mariamana arcluA'es, to which we refer the indiscriminating
denouncers of Turkish intolerance and Islamitic oppression.
Here were also many other curious documents and manu
scripts laid up, say the monks ; but a fire which some years
since consumed a part of the convent, and pilfering archteo-
logical pUgrims, are assigned as the causes of their disajj-
pearance. A Greek Testament, supposed to be of great antiquity,
was shown us; but the paper on which it is written, and the
form of the characters, bring its date down to the fourteenth
or thirteenth century at earliest.
We go the round of what else remains for notice in the
cavern : a fine carved reading-desk, eagle-supported, for the
lessons of the day ; three or four more Panagias, all miraculous ;
more church-plate ; a painted screen, and the like ; but these
objects have no exceptional interest, and we soon find ourselves
again in the dazzling sunlight of the paved court outside. Next
we roam about the " old buildings,'' timber the most, with huge
overhanging eaves, and something of a Swiss cottage appearance.
But nowhere does any inscription, carving, or the like indicate
date or circumstance of construction, nor has any diary or " log
book" of domestic or conventual occurrences ever been kept
witMn these walls. The memories of the monks, mere un
educated peasants they, form the only chronicle ; and memory,
like other mental faculties, has but a narrow range when
deadened by the sameness of a life that unites agricultural -with
monastic monotony. Little is here known of the past, and that
little is uncertain in epoch and apocryphal in detaU, if not in
substance. Nor has the establishment ever undergone what,
had it taken place, would have been of all other things a sign-
mark in its annals — the profanation of the spoiler. Eoving
bands, Kurde or Tm-koman, have indeed been often tempted by
the report of hoarded treasures to prowl about the woods
of Sumelas, and have cast wistful eyes at the Panagia's rock-
perched eyiie ; but the narrow path that winds up the precipice
is available only at the good--wUl and permission of the convent
inhabitants themselves ; and from aU other sides, around, above,
the birds that flap their wings against the sheer crag of a

42 ULYSSES.

thousand fedt and more could alone find access to Mariamana ;
while a blockade, if attempted, would be indefinitely baffled by
the capacious store-rooms and cisterns of the fabric. From the
Ottoman Government itself the monks, like most of their kind
in other parts of the empire, have experienced nothing but
protection, or, better still, non-interference ; and the freedom of
their hospitality, wMle it does credit to the convent, bears also
good witness to its inviolate security. TMs hospitality is
indeed proportioned in some degree to the rank and social
position of visitors or pilgrims, but no one is wholly excluded
from it, nor is any direct recompense exacted or rjceived from
rich or poor, " Greek " or stranger. Of course the shrine gets
its offerings — small ones, as a rule, from Greeks ; larger from
Eussians and Georgians; most munificent in any case when
prayers are believed to have been heard. The birth or con
valescence of a cMld contributes to the wealth no less than to
the fame of the Panagia. But payment for board and lodging
is unknown, however numerous the guests, and however long
their stay. Indeed, so scrupulous are the monks regarding the
gratuitousness of their welcome, that when, after having
deposited our offerings in the church, we wished before leaving
the convent, some hours later, to make an additional and more
general donation, it was at first absolutely refused, and was
at last only accepted under the assurance that it had been
originally meant for the sanctuary, where its presentation at the
foot of some shrine or other had been, said we, unintentionally
omitted. Yet hospitality is after all, it may be said, a virtue that has
no necessary connection either -vrith present civiUsation or -with
future progress ; one that to fail in is reproach, but to possess
no very high praise. Besides, it is, -with comparatively rare
exceptions, a quality too common in the East for special com
mendation ; Kurdes, Turkomans, Arabs, Armenians and the
rest are all hospitable after their kind, some profusely so.
What particular merit then shall we assign to the monks of
Sumelas to justify the existence of a not inconsiderable number
of men, and of widely extended demesnes, wthdrawn from the

THE MONASTERY OF SUMELAS. 43

natural current of Ufe, and the " ringing grooves " of the onward
world ? Learning these monks certainly neither store up in
themselves, nor promote in others ; of dogmatic or moral lore
they are lamentably ignorant ; in agricultural craft they do not
excel the average or tend to improve the practice ; from a
religious point of view they represent and aid to maintain what,
from a historical point of view, can hardly appear other than a
pious fraud, a myth, edifying, but unsubstantial. Individually
benevolent, hospitable, industrious even, they belong to a system
essentially narrow, stationary, unproductive. If this be the
" Cross " of the East, what advantage has it over the " Crescent ? "
And is it from night like this we are to look for the dawn of a
better day in the regions of the Levant ? If there is little to
commend in the^ Turkish government symbolised by the Mosque
at Trebizond, was the rule of Alexios IIL, the feeble and
ostentatious patron of Sumelas, a whit better ? nay, was it not
on the whole the more sterile, the more corrupt, the more
worthless of the two ?
This and more might be, and, under "various forms of vitu
perative scoff, has already often been said ; and a very plausible
half-truth it is; a very misleading one too. Under the
traditionary legend, under the prEeter-Mstorical myth, under
the uncouth and seemingly meaningless disguise of monastic
dress, seclusion, torpor if you -will, is veiled the " Power
from the Unknown God," the " Promethean Conqueror," whose
triumph over the Meccan Titan crowns the prophecy of the
latest of England's true bards and demigods, the Pythian
SheUey : " The moon of Mahomet
Arose ; and it shall set ;
While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon
The Cross leads generations on : ''
and even the wonder-working pictures and rocking cradles of
Sumelas do not obliterate, they only travesty or obscure the
absolute and unchangeable sentence.
It is now mid-day ; and before we redescend into the valley,
in purpose thence to attempt some sketch of the picturesque

44 ULYSSES.

buUding from the opposite side, we stand a few minutes in the
gaUery, and take a last look at the lovely scene before us, now
bathed in the sUent splendour of an AnatoUan noon. Far aloft
in air stretch the bare snow-streaked heights where passes the
summer track to Beyboort and Erzeroom ; below the dense
tree-tops are pierced here and there by fantastic rock pinnacles,
spUnters detached centuries ago from the precipice on either
side ; ten of these grey islets in the leafy depth are cro-wned by
as many Uttle wMte chapels ; they also belong to the Mariamana
jurisdiction, and in each of them, when the appropriate anni
versary comes round, the festival of its pecuUar saint, Eugenius,
John, or some one else of the ten spiritual guardians of
Trebizond, is duly celebrated by the BasUian monks of Sumelas.
Beneath rushes and foams the Alpine torrent, the waters of
wMch we have thus traced backwards from their marshy exit at
Trebizond almost to thek fountain-head.
The monks -with undimimshed hospitaUty press us to stay ;
and when we insist on the necessity of setting out, lest night
should overtake us before regaining JevezUk, are warm in their
fareweU. "You vtlU make your EngUsh friends acquainted
-with us and our convent," says, with an accent of request, the
old monk who has been our cMef attendant. I promise ; and
thus I keep my word.

( 45 )

ANATOLIAN SPECTEE-STOEIES.
The Essay " Anatolian Spectre-stories " first appeared in the January
number of the ' CornhiU Magazine ' for 1873 ; it had been written during the
preceding year. I mention these dates, as by them such casual allusions as
e. g. the one to Mr. DisraeU and the " melancholy " Atlantic — Mr. DisraeU,
or Lord Beaconsfield, was always good at characterizing, but never better than
in the instance alluded to, may be more readily understood.
As to the stories themselves —
"I cannot tell how the truth may be;
I tell the tale as 'twas told to me ; "
but a longer acquaintance with Trebizond and the Pontic region went far in my
own personal feeling (which where others are concerned counts, and ought to
count in matters of this kind, for nothing) to give countless tales and occur
rences of the sort a much deeper significance than I have chosen to assign or
even hint at in the Essay itself.
Apaet from any consideration as to their intrinsic or objective
significance, the spectral tales which constitute no inconsiderable
portion of the " folk-lore " of every country have a very real
subjective interest, by the insight they not rarely afford into the
national character and cUcumstances of narrators and believers.
From this point of -riew, stories, which at first sight appear no
more than the useless and fragmentary caprices of idle fancy,
prove — I apologise for the accidental paronomasia — skeleton
keys wherewith we may at times unlock much that refuses to
open to the regular instruments of evidential investigation, and
thus gain access to treasures else not only hidden but unat
tainable. Or, as stars, veUed from view by the nearer splendour
of the day, come out distinct by night, so that the same dark
ness which conceals from us whatever is close at hand, extends
our ran "'S of vision to that which was before lost to it in the dis-

46 ULYSSES.

tance ; so far off affinities of race, the buried substratum of real
national character, traces of pre-Mstoric events, and much else
that the fuUer light of recent times effaces from the paUmpsest
of history, become apparent to sight in the shadow of the night-
side of human nature. And even where this is not the case,
these fancKul tales have their worth, as sho-wing how Uke
are workings of men's minds under like circumstances and
conditions. Meanwhile, the better to avoid all danger of entanglement in
a very profitless and moreover endless discussion, I may as
weU from the outset remark that, in thus considering spectral
stories merely from their human or subjective side, I have no
intention of impugning, any more than of asserting, their
objective or prseter-human character: I simply prescind from
it. For, in fact, the correspondence, or, more correctly speak
ing, the identity of external and of mental phenomena, the
impossibility of separating, except in abstract classification,
between the " ego " that perceives, and the " non-ego " that is
perceived, are not less certain axioms of philosophical truth
than the unity and permanence of force, the convertibUity of
so-called mind and matter, and the ultimate identity of the
phenomenal and complex, of which they are the necessary
coroUaries. But, in the particular instance of the subject before
us, the external or " non-ego " side may be safely left out of
question, since its isolated and seemingly capricious phenomena
supply no clue to useful research. " A good MusUm wUl not
occupy himself with that which does not concern Mm," said, or
is reported to have said, Mahomet one day, in answer to an
impertinent and meddlesome questioner; and a sound mind,
whether MusUm or other, will decline to waste time and trouble
on a subject of mere curiosity, unUkely to be gratified, and,
were it even gratified, utterly sterile in regard of this field
assigned us " to dress it and to keep it," the questionable Eden
of our present existence.
Eestricting ourselves accordingly to the purely subjective
import of these uncanny stories, it is curious to observe the
wide extent of their geographical area, and how not unfrequently

ANATOLIAN SPECTRE-STORIES. 47
phantasms supposed to be the exclusive and undesirable pro
perty of some particular country or race, sho-\v theu unwelcome
forms in other and far-distant regions, and among races of no
apparent community, even the most remote, of origin. I have
myseK had a story, first told me by a Norfolk fireside, repeated
to me under a Hindoo thatch in Guzerat ; and have found the
native of the shores of the Persian Gulf subject to the same
ghostly terrors as the fisherman of the Scottish coast. But the
strangest coincidence is when the specific and distinctive form
assumed by the superstition is one independent, so far as can be
discerned at least, not only of popular creed, education, tradition,
or custom, but even of the circumstantial surroundings and
adjuncts which might else with some show of probability be
assigned as explanatory of the particular idea or phantom. And
it is exactly to tMs class that some of the spectre-tales current
in this Pontic region — the same wMch supplied Ovid with his
" Tristia," Chrysostom with a tomb, Offenbach with an opera-
title, and myseK with a consulate — belong.
Asia Minor, with its wild variety of scenery, its many Ms-
torical memories, its vigorous and semi-civilized, or rather,
according to the latter-day European standard, semi-barbarous,
races, each of wMch develops itself much after its own fashion
under the eff'ete rule of the effete Osmanlee, has, it might easily
be anticipated, an unusually large share in these equivocal
treasures of the imagination, some of them resembUng, even in
their supplementary details, those existing elsewhere, others
again more distinctive in their local colouring and shape. The
banshee of Ireland, the haunted house of England, the Scan-
dinarian fetch, the Arab ghowl, the Teutonic witch, the Celtic
sorcerer, even the universal " revenant," or, if I may be allowed
the expression, commonplace ghost, have each and all their
counterpart, sometimes their identity, in what was once the
Empire of Trebizond. How much of them is exotic, how much
indio-enous, would not always be easy to decide. But a couple
of specimens, selected out of the countless wonder-tales of the
land, may suffice us, whether for conjecture or amusement.
We have, aU of us, I should tliink, listened with awe, perhaps,

UL YSSES.

in our childhood, though probably with a very opposite feeling
in later years, to legendary stories of the " spirits of the mine,"
the " little folk," " cobolds," " mountain dwarfs," and whatever
other descriptive name the prseter-human personalities may
rejoice in, who, in Germany especially, were or still are said
to frequent mines and mining districts, and to keep watch,
occasionally with beneficent, more often with maUcious purpose,
over the treasures of hidden metal. Who has not heard
how jealously these " little men " guard the veins of precious
ore ? What cunning devices they employ to baffle human
research ? How, if surprised by some unforeseen accident or
superior skill, they go about to ransom their secret by pre
senting the intruder with a piece — or, perhaps, the more ortho
dox number of three pieces — of what seems at first mere
rubbish, lighted charcoal it may be, or refuse slag, but which,
if not over-hastily cast away, discovers itself by the morning
light to be pure silver or red gold ? Though, indeed, in all the
tales I can call to mind, the gift proves always of evil omen,
and one way or other brings misfortune on the receiver — beliefs
of which the Harz mountains are, if I remember right, the head
quarters, although not unknown to German miners elsewhere,
in Saxony, for instance. Certainly, these mountain-dwarfs bear
an especially Teutonic, though not an Aryan stamp ; in Europe
itself the Cluricane, and the Celtic " good-folk " in general, are
of a different type ; while in the Asiatic lands tenanted by the
so-called " Semitic " races the entire genus is unknown ; though,
perhaps, the scarcity of mines in that part of the East may
sufficiently account for the absence of their guardian sprites.
Even in India, where mines are of ancient date, and phantom-
tales of almost every description plentKul enough, I never
heard or read of this particular kind.
It was not, therefore, without considerable surprise, that here,
in the Pontic angle of the Euxine coast, and in this most un-
European and un-Teutonie corner of God's earth, and among a
population of mixed origin certainly, but in which Turanian
blood and institutions have long predominated, I lately came—
iu hearsay, of course— on the identical diminutive objects of

ANATOLIAN SPECTRE-STORIES. 49
my childhood's wonderment, and found them, moreover, in full
possession of the popular beUef But I must, if the impatience
of my readers for a "ghost-story" will permit, preface my
tale with enough of circumstance and description to render it
intelUgible to those — -probably the greater number — for whom
Trebizond and Pontus are hardly more than unsuggestive
names. About fifty mUes inland to the south of Trebizond, among the
lofty mountain ranges which knit the backbone of Anatolia, and
divide those great tributaries of the Persian Gulf, the Tigris,
and the Euphrates, from the many but less celebrated waters
that flow into the Black Sea pool, is situated the small town of
" Silverborough," such being the Uteral translation of its Turkish
name, Gumesh-khaneh. It is the centre of a rich and extensive
metaUiferous district, silver, copper, iron, lead; the last being
the most abundant, as the first is the most precious of its ores.
The town itseK is perched high up on a precipitous mountain
side of shaly rock, some 5,000 feet above the sea; and im
mediately overhead frowns a black cliff, pierced by a large
cavernous entrance, which once led to the principal shaft of the
sUver mines whence the place has its name. These mines are
said to have been worked in the times of the Byzantine
emperors, of the Eoman colonists, of the Pontic kings, it may be ;
but of these last all popular memory has long since perished off
from the birth-land of Mithridates. Certainly as late as the
beginning of the present century they yielded a very respectable
income to their possessors, the Begs, or hereditary land-owners
of the neighbourhood, who extracted the ore, and smelted it on
the spot, after the rough, but not wholly unskUled, fashion of
the country workmen.
But when, in an evU hour for the Ottoman Empire, Sultan
Mahmoud the Second ascended the throne of Stambool, and iu
s^wift sequence of events the Begs of Gumesh-khaneh had to
descend from theirs ; when the Turkish autocrat inaugurated
those measures which time-serving and short-sighted flattery
caUed the reform, but wMch were, in the instinctively sounder
judgment of the East itseK, the first and decisive steps towards
E

so ULYSSES.

the final decadence and disintegration of the great empire by
the resumption of the old miUtary and semi-feudal land tenm'es,
and the aboUtion of all hereditary privUeges, whether enjoyed by
Aghas, Begs, or Pashas, except those of the now isolated throne ;
then — was it chance ? was it design ? it is hard to find out the
truth in a matter like this — but scarcely had the recently-
appointed officials of the new Government system taken the
mines of Gumesh-khaneh into their hands, than a flood of water,
poured forth from a hitherto barred-up spring deep in the heart
ofthe mountain itself, burst into the central shaft, and spreading,
fiUed every chamber and gaUery. In a country destitute alike of
capital and of engineering means suflficient to drain the sub
merged excavations, the mischief once done was irreparable ; and
from that day to the present the mine has remained unworked
and unproductive. But the cavernous entry is stUl half open ;
and the neglected heaps of slag, mixed with fragments of rich
sUver ore piled up near its mouth, bear witness to the copious
ness of the mineral veins ¦within. Some time ago I visited the
spot, and remarked with a Uttle surprise that the townsfolk, who
in these districts are usuaUy eager enough to perform duty as
guides to a European explorer, in the vague hope that Ms supe
rior knowledge may discover " sometMng to their advantage,"
manifested on this occasion an unwUUngness to accompany
me which I could not at the time account for; it was not
till several months later that I learnt the reason.
A thousand feet below the crag, in the deep valley where the
tapid Charshoot river rushes by on its way to the Black Sea,
there Ues on either side of the stream a lovely expanse of
garden and orchard, the bright green foUage contrasting with
the black and spUntered rocks around. These orchards, now
that the mines are no longer worked, are the principal occupation
and resource of the town of Gumesh-khaneh, and are celebrated
throughout the land for the excellence of their produce, pears
especiaUy ; but the prolonged winter-cold, for snow Ues here ou
the ground three months at a stretch — does not aUow of the
more delicate fruits of Smyrna and the South.
Along the margin of this orchard strip, between it and the

ANATOLIAN SPECTRE-STORIES. 5'
steep ascent leading up to the town itself and the deserted
mines, passes the high road of Erzeroom and Trebizond ; a road
no longer, it is true, thronged by the Persian caravans, of wMch
it had almost the monopoly before Eussia had forced and flung
open the gates of the Caucasus, that secular barrier between
East and West, but still a busy highway by day, and even, in
the warmer season of the year, by night ; and not much better
adapted for a haunt of soUtude-lo'ring spectres than would be,
say, the road of Hammersmith or of Putney.
It was precisely here, however, that the mountain dwarfs, or
Uttle men of the mine, took a fancy to show themselves after
the fasMon wMch I will now relate, as one summer afternoon I
myseK heard the tale from a person who had been, or at any
rate professed to have been, an eye-witness of the event. A
quiet, prosaic, saUow-faced, shop-keeping Mahometan of Trebi
zond, with no " speculation in Ms orbs " beyond that of retail
buying and selUng ; his parentage of that mixed breed here
caUed Turk or Osmanlee, and in which the aboriginal Tiberene
stock seems to have been crossed with Byzantine, Turkoman,
and Turkish graftings in about equal proportions. I was seated
with him. Eastern manner, in his shop, talking, as the phrase
goes, of " everything and nothing," when, the conversation
happening to turn on mines and metals, he volunteered the
following story, which I give, as nearly as I can remember, in his
own words.
" In the summer of the year before last," said he, " I went to
Gumesh-khaneh on business, and remained there a few days.
The heat was excessive ; so when I set out to return, I waited
tUl near sunset, intending to go no further that evening than a
vUlage some two hours' distant on the Mgh-road, and there to
pass the night. A Greek friend of mine from the town " — (I
should here remark that the name " Greek " has in this neigh
bourhood notiiing synonymous with "HeUene," but simply
means one belonging to the Greek or "orthodox" form of
Christianity : this class comprises about a third of the natives
in the Gumesh-khaneh mountains, those probably in whom the
later Byzantine element predominates) — "joined me as I w^s
E 2

52 ULYSSES.

leaving the place; he was going in the same direction as
myseK. It was now late summer, and mght soon overtook
us, but the moon was up and bright, so that the road lay
before us as clear as by day. We had left the last straggUng
houses of the to^wn behind us, but the gardens, as you know,
continue for a good way further alongside the Mghway : every
thing was sUent and stUl, not a Uving creature in sight.
" Suddenly from under the black shadow of an orchard close
on our right hand, a number of figures issued forth, and placed
themselves fuU in our path. They resembled human beings in
everytMng except size ; for their height, wMch was the same,
or nearly the same, of all, did not exceed an arshine " (that is,
in EngUsh measure, a foot and a haK) "at most. But, tMs
pecuUarity apart, they were perfectly well-formed men and aU
dressed alike, tn a sort of dark green cloth, richly ornamented
with sUver; every one of them wore, too, a sUver-mounted
dagger at his girdle. One after another, in long procession,
they emerged from the low ground and tMck-planted trees by
the roadside, and ranged themselves in the white moonUght
across the way : then coming forward they made a circle round
us, and bade us by signs leave the road and come along ¦with
them. I looked' towards the Greek, my companion, and he to
me; but surprise or something else had taken from us aU
power of speech, and we obeyed in sUence. The Uttle figures,
which seemed aU to act in concert, and without any particular
leader, now led' us off the highway, and conducted us by a side-
path winding among the orchards lower down, but without our
coming near the river; though in what direction I could not
make out. But as we went on threadmg our -way between the
trees, my courage began to return, so I wMspered to my Greek
friend, and asked Mm what he thought these strange Uttle
creatui-es might be, and whether we had not best get away from
them. " In a hurried voice he answered that he knew them weU for
what they were, the spirits of the Gumesh-khaneh mine : that
K we did not resist them they would do us no harm, but that
any attempt at escape would be unwise and dangerous.

ANATOLIAN SPECTRE-STORIES. 53
" So we continued walking on and on in silence, like captives
to this curious band, till we found ourselves in a half-open
space, almost clear of trees, and brightly lighted up by the
moon overhead : around were thick-planted gardens and deep
shadow. Here the dwarfs made signs to. us — they seemed chary
of words — to stop and sit down ; we did so, taking our places
among the dry leaves on the grass, while the queer little figures,
¦with their dark dresses and high-peaked silver-edged hoods,
posted themselves on every side, some sitting, some standing as
if on guard.
" My companion was the first to break the silence, by asking
them why they had detained us, and what they wanted of us ?
They answered, but in a hollow distant-sounding voice, that
seemed to come from no one amongst them in particular, and to
be more like an echo than spoken words, that we had no right
to be traveUing the road at that hour, and that having once
captured us they did not intend letting us go. The moon was
near the full ; but at the voice her Ught faded, though there was
no cloud in the sky, as though from an eclipse; and in the
gloom the forms around us appeared to increase in number and
in size, with threatening looks and gestures. I was terrified,
and hesitated whether to remain or fly, but my companion
whispered to me, ' Keep quiet, and never mind them ; all we
have to do is to remain still as w^e are ; they must let us go
before the morning.'
"Again -the moonlight returned, bright as before. But the
night seemed endless to us as we sat watching there ; figures
came and figures went, all dwarfs, and all exactly like the one
to the other, tUl the whole grove and place seemed alive with
them. Their numbers, too, went on growing till they were a
multitude past counting, and one could no longer see between
them, so dense was the crowd. Then they brought out musical
instruments, drums, fifes, and bagpipes, and, joining in a circle
round us, began to caper and dance, every now and then
inviting or urging us by signs to join in with them ; but we
gave no sign of noticing them, and remained seated -without
moving or speaking. Then their dance grew madder, and their

54 ULYSSES.
invitations to us more urgent, tMeatening with signs if we did
not comply ; they even made as though they would lay hands
on us and compel us by force, but they always stopped short
when near us, and we continued where we were, and made them
no answer. But the moon was fast sinking, the light around
grew dusky red, the air blew chUl ; and now the crowd of little
figures began to decrease, and thinned off rapidly, though how
or whither they went I could not see; they seemed rather to
melt away, and became fewer and fewer, tUl, after a short time,
only two remained, one of them, as I now observed for the first
time, with something like a plume in his head-dress, and
another ¦without. These two came up to us, and by gestures
commanded us to rise and follow them — they would put us on
our road again.
" Very glad was I to get up : the dwarfs led the way, and we
followed. It was now nearly dark, for the moon had dis
appeared behind the mountains, and the dawn had not yet
broken ; our path too was closely overshadowed by the orchard-
trees ; there was barely light enough for us to pick our way.
As we went one of the phantoms, he with the plume, came up
to my side ; but his height was now equal to my own, or more.
He put into my hand three good-sized pebbles, and said, ' Take
care of these, I give them you as a remembrance ; ' then adding,
' you can now go straight on, the high-road is before you,'
suddenly he disappeared. The other vanished also ; there was
no one on the path but my companion and myself, and we two
walked on in silence through the orchards. The stones in my
hand felt heavy ; and not caring to carry them, I chucked away
first one then a second; when my friend, hearing the noise,
turned round and stopped me, saying, 'Do not throw them
away, they are most likely of value.' However two were
already gone, but I kept the third, though it was so dark that I
could not make out what it was. A few minutes after we got
fairly out of the gardens and on to the high-road, but at a
considerable distance from the place where we had left it.
"Puzzled and tired out we sat down by the wayside and
waited for the daylight. It was not long in coming ; I then

ANATOLIAN SPECTRE-STORIES. 55
looked at the stone ui my hand and found that it had the
appearance of silver, as indeed silver it was. We went back
into the gardens, trying to retrace our steps as nearly as
possible, and hunted about for the other two lumps, but could
not find them anywhere. The Greek, my companion, was by
trade a silversmith, so I gave him the strangely acquired piece
of metal for his use; its weight was about one hundred
dirhems " {i.e., three-fourths of an English pound avoirdupois),
" it was pure silver."
Such was his story. I asked him what he thought of the
whole affair. He replied that there could be no doubt of the
dwarfs being the spirits of the mine, for they had often been
seen by others, and always much in the same way ; though he
had never heard of their doing any serious harm to anybody.
But why they had interfered ¦with him in particular, who had
absolutely notiiing to do with the Gumesh-khaneh mines, he
coiUd not tell ; but fancied it might have all taken place on
account of his Greek friend, who, as a native of the town, and a
workman in sUver too, might have had some designs of utiUzing
the old excavations, some plan for draining the submerged
shaft ; who could teU ? As for himself, he had evidently never
indidged in any theorizings about the affair ; it was for him a
plain fact, Uke any other that might have happened ; it did not
even seem to have much aroused his curiosity ; a queer apathy
wMch I have often observed among uneducated people, and
much resembUng, I should tMnk, the way in which the yet less
developed minds of animals receive the impressions of what
though around them, is not in their own line.
I asked him, with a view to further enquiry, what had
become of his friend of that night ; and whether he were stUl at
Gumesh-khaneh. He answered, "No ; that after this adventure,
and ha-ring appropriated and made use of the silver, everything
went wrong with him ; his chUdren sickened, and two died, Ms
house fell out of repair, his business did not prosper, and that
before a twelvemonth had passed, he emigrated with some other
Greeks to the Eussian territory in the Caucasus, whence he had
not returned."

56 ULYSSES.

No one can faU to observe how marked, feature for feature, is
the family resemblance in this story between the mountain-folk or
subterranean dwarfs of the Asiatic neighbourhood of Trebizond
and their kindred in the Thuringian Harzberg. The idea does
not look Uke a Turkish one ; nor, I believe, does it exist in
Georgia across the frontier ; it has no place either in Arab or
Mahometan legends as such. The very slight and occasional
intercourse between the natives of this country and Germans in
particular, whether of the working class or otherwise, does not
seem ground enough to warrant the theory that a belief of
this kind could have been imported by European visitors ;
besides, such have in general far other occupations than that of
adding one fancy more to the large stock in hand already
existing among the people. When we are shown at Jerusalem
the window out of which Mary Magdalene gazed as the Saviour
went by to Calvary, or when in Egypt the sycamore-tree is
pointed out to us under which the Virgin and Child rested
when fleeing from Bethlehem to Cairo, we have but to look
round, and the explanation is ready in the neighbouring
Franciscan convent or the missionary priest. But the goblins
of the mines have in their service, so far as I am aware, no
similar apostles, for the best of all possible reasons, that it
would be no one's interest to undertake the task. Nor, again,
do the special landscape features of bare rocks and leafy
gardens, even on a shiny night in the summer season of the
year, announce any intrinsic or even plausible connection with
this peculiar vagary of the human imagination. It may be,
however, that the notion is simply an inherited one, either from
the aboriginal Tiberenes and Chalybes of the coast, or from
their Byzantine colonisers : most probably, I should think —
though I cannot call to mind anything definite as corroborative of
my conjecture — from the latter. Mr. Tylor, perhaps, of aU men
living, might best be able to hazard a solution of the question.
There are, however, phantoms of another cast, common, I
believe, though with some differences of local shaping and
colouring, to all countries, and by no means unfrequent in
these, which may more readily be accounted for, whether by

ANATOLIAN SPECTRE-STORIES. 57
transmitted belief, or even by the simpler hypothesis of excited
imagination, suggestive surroundings, and the like ; I allude to
the popular stories according to which, in some evil hour or
uncanny spot, the semblance of a well-known form or voice is
assumed by a malicious spirit that seeks by this disguise to lure
its intended victim into deadly terror or bodily hurt. From
that land of legends, the Scottish Border, where the White
Lady of Avenel entices Father Philip down the stream into the
dangerous weir-pool, to the lone southern desert where the
Arabian ghoul by not dissimilar artifices leads the wayfarer
astray to his death amid the pathless sands ; sometimes half in
malice, not unalloyed by sport, as a Eobin Goodfellow or Puck ;
sometimes in fiendish earnest, as the ghastly Poludniza of the
Eussian harvest fields, or the hollow half-man of the Brazilian
forests ; however various the modifications, the idea is every
where essentially the same. Generally, too, it is to be found —
and tMs may render the explanation easier to those who are
careful to answer in such a matter — in connection with that
other equally widespread superstition, which associates special
spiritual powers and manifestations with special spots ; and not
unfrequently even with special times and seasons of the common
year. For fancies of this kind, few apter places could be found than
Trebizond. An old half-ruined city, a wide extent of crumbUng
walls and desolate towers, a confused relic-heap of successive
histories and creeds. Pontine, Greek, Eoman, Byzantine, and
Turk; within, accumulated memories of violence, crime, and
bloodshed; without, wild surroundings of dark mountain glen,
trackless forest, and melancholy sea, — for melancholy the leaden
mist-covered Black Sea is, even more than the Irish Channel or
the Atlantic, as Mr. Disraeli himself, were he here, would allow
— it is but natural if the semi-barbarous and totally uneducated
inhabitants of such a site should have their share of belief in the
phantom " mocker," and should surround him with that atmo
sphere of mingled gloom and degradation which especially
characterizes the memorials of the ignoble Comnenian dynasty,
which more than any other has impressed its mark on town and

58 ULYSSES.

people. And so in fact it is : and I might easily compose a
volume — and a very useless one it would be — of the spectral
tales of my own next-door neighbours. One such may, however,
suffice ; I have selected it out of the heap, partly because it is
more than usually illustrative both of the localities themselves,
and of the customs hereabouts prevalent ; partly on account of
its curious distinctness of detaU, and the facts connected with it.
The parallelogram of precipitous rock, whence Trebizond
derives its name, is separated on its western side from the
continuity of the coast by a deep valley, or rather ravine, called
Xenos. On its eastern margin rise the lofty, though half-ruined
walls of the old fortress, the work of the Comnenian Emperors ;
wMle its western brink is overshadowed by the gigantic cypress-
trees of a large Turkish burial-ground, where, amid countless
tombs of every date, reposes under a heavy cupola the ambitious
mother of Sultan Seleem, conqueror of Syria and Egypt. Just
without the cemetery enclosure, between it and the Xenos
ravine, stands a smaU "hammam," or warm bath, of the
description so common in the East, for the use of the adjoining
to-wn-quarter. The suburb, further on, exchanges its name of
Xenos for that of Pharos ; probably a reminiscence of some old
lighthouse which may once have stood on the rocky spur of cUff
here jutting out into the sea, and sheltering the shallow harbour
once of Hadrian, but now disused ; but of such a building no
vestige now remains except the name. Immediately behind the
bath rises a confused mass of shattered walls and towers, the
relics of a Byzantine out-work that formerly guarded the
eastern extremity of the bridge by which access is given across
the deep ravine to the castle of Trebizond ; and all along up the
rapid slope and down to the rocky beach, a wilderness of quaint
houses and huts, mostly dilapidated, scattered irregularly amidst
unpruned orchard-gardens and taU plane trees, with narrow
winding paths here and there between high stone walls,
neglected fountains, fallen tombstones, among rank hemlock
grass, and brier ; — such is this very picturesque, but not very
lively or enlivening suburb.
Every nook of it is haunted, say the inhabitants, and if their

ANATOLIAN SPECTRE-STORIES. 59
accounts be worthy of the least credit, the statistics of the dis
embodied spirits must at least equal those of the flesh-clad ones ;
but the goblin resort of predilection is, aU agree, the " hammam,"
or bath. TMs is just as it should be, since the normal condition
of public baths in the East is to be haunted : one, for instance,
by a black cat of prEeter-feline proportions — my own groom saw
it; another by innumerable long snakes, that wriggle up and
down the walls — a young Government clerk is my authority for
these; a third by a grim and shadowy negro — the policeman
who told me of it had nearly been frightened out of his senses ;
and so on to the end of the goblin list. In plain fact, the
interior of an Asiatic bath, especially at night, and when few
people are in it, is eerie enough. There is the large, stone-
flagged, Mgh-roofed entrance hall, surrounded by deep recesses
and -wide galleries; then the vaulted chamber within, dimly
Ughted from above, and opening out from it the yet gloomier
retiring-nooks for secluded bathers ; the hea-vy, steamy air,
the damp-mottled walls, the ceaseless plash of the large drops
that condense and fall from the vault overhead : everything
concurs to produce a feeling of loneliness and depression, and to
encourage the fancies consequent on such a state. Then, too, a
pubUc bath-house is, even in Mahometan ideas, somewhat of
what a theatre or an opera-house may be even now in these
latitudinarian days to a strict evangelical, hardly a "proper"
place; and tMs notion, which is unfortunately only too often
justified in these regions by corroborative fact, creates a half-
anticipation of meeting evU influences there — a dread which
chance, soUtude, or any other terrifying cause, may occasionally
heighten into vision.
How many goblins, and of what precise sort, have been seen
in the Xenos hammam, I do not know — the census is yet in its
infancy in Turkey — but in the Pharos suburb adjoining, not ten
minutes' distance from the ill-famed bath, there yet lives, or at
least lived at the time of my writing this, a man of respectable
family and condition, married, well-off for means, and under
forty years of age; but smitten with premature decrepitude,
haK-palsied in body, and from time to time wandering also

6o ULYSSES.

in mind, incapable alike of business and enjoyment. This
wretched condition dates from a night in the bath-house of
Xenos six years back, Under the circumstances which I -will now
relate as they were told me by a member of the sufferer's own
famUy : the matter was one of general notoriety in the town.
It was in the Mahometan or lunar month of Sha'aban, which
that year corresponded pretty nearly with our December, and
which, as preceding the thirty-days' yearly fast of Eamadhan,
is in some measure a festive time for the followers of the
Prophet, a sort of Carnival before their severe Lent. Osman
Kaleeb-Zadeh, to give Mm Ms name in full, had sat up one
night till rather late in one of the coffee-houses — here the
ordinary social resorts — of the quarter, amusing himself, after
the fashion of the country, by playing backgammon with a
friend of his own age and position, and chatting on the ordinary
topics of the time. When the coffee-house had to be closed, a
Uttle before midnight, they were the last to leave it ; and before
parting for the night, they agreed to meet early by the first
dawn at the public bath close by, and afterwards to go together
into town upon some business which they had arranged in
common. Then they separated.
Osman went home and to bed, intending to be up before
daybreak and join his friend at the bath. But in the middle of
his sleep he was suddenly awakened by a sharp knocking at the
door. Getting quickly up and opening it to see what was the
matter, he beheld standing outside what he supposed to be his
companion of the evening before, with a lantern in his hand.
The night was still, warm, and overcast with low misty clouds,
as nights often are here during the winter solstice, severe cold
and storm rarely setting in before mid-January. " What has
brought you here so early?" he asked. "It is not yet near
morning." " How so ? " repUed the other ; " the dawn has
already broken, only 'tis cloudy and dark. If we do not make
haste we shaU find the bath crowded with people, and have
ever so long to wait for our turn. Besides, the sooner the
better : get your things on and come." Hearing aU this, Osman
supposed that he must have overslept himself, and was really

ANATOLIAN SPECTRE-STORIES. 6i
behind time. So he slipped quietly back into the house,
dressed MmseK, and came out. His friend was still waiting for
him, lantern in hand, at the door.
No one else was up and stirring as they passed along the
narrow lanes, now doubly dark with overshadowing trees,
talking familiarly as they went, till they came out on the little
open space close by the coffee-house where Osman had spent
the evening, where stands a noble plane-tree, and opposite,
beyond, is the low dark entrance of the bath they were going
to. But on one side the view opens out across the Xenos
ravine to the battlemented walls of the castle opposite ; and
beyond these again rises high in air the tall stone minaret of a
mosque, once a Byzantine church, and now the principal place
of Mahometan worship within the limits of the old fortified
town. Here they stopped to breathe the fresh air a moment after
the close stifling lanes. It was a murky night. Osman looked
east, but there was no hint of dawn there ; only the tapering
outline of the minaret was traced faintly white against the
blackness of the sky. " How far off it looks in the dusk, and
how high ! " he exclauned. " Not so very far off, nor so very
high neither," said the other, in a strange altered voice, that
made Ms companion start. " Suppose we just Ught it up—
shall I ? " And without waiting for an answer, he stretched
out Ms arm, wMch suddenly lengthened right across the valley
before them, the city waUs, and the houses beyond, till it
reached the minaret, and hung the lantern on the pointed
summit, where it remained suspended, glittering like a star in
the gloom.
Terrified at the sight, Osman turned to ask — but Ms com
panion had vanished, and he was all alone under the plane-tree
in the sUent night. Without waiting for more, he hurried back
as best he might to his own house, entered, and threw himself
dressed as he was upon the bed. His wife woke up, and
inquired what had happened to him— where he had been. He
gave some evasive answer, and .then lay quiet, pretending to go
to sleep, and wishing for the morning.

62 ULYSSES.

Only a few minutes, however, had thus passed, when rap it
eame at the door again. Osman turned a deaf ear at first ; but
when the noise was repeated his wKe awoke, and, hot suspecting
what had occurred before, begged her husband to get up and see
who was outside. Ashamed to own either his fears or their
cause, Osman reluctantly rose, left the room, and opened the
house-door. There, sure enough, stood his friend — or the
semblance of his friend — lantern in hand, waiting. "Who are
you ? " asked Osman. The other stared. " Why, do you not know
me ? " said he. " Were we not playing backgammon together last
evening ? and did we not agree to go together to the bath this
mornuig ? Come along, or we shall be late ; the day is breaking."
Form, voice, manner, aU were those of his friend. Osman
felt again ashamed to Mnt his suspicions; so he determined
to put a bold_ face on it, and accompanied the other into the
street. Before they had gone far he himself learnt to despise Ms own
fears ; so thoroughly did the easy and straightforward talk of
the one at his side assure him that this time it was no tricky
phantom, but a real living " man and brother " beyond a doubt.
StUl, he refrained from mentioning the incident of an hour
before, lest he should be laughed at or disbelieved.
They passed the open place, the plane-tree, and reached the bath.
To their surprise — Osman's, at least — its door stood wide open,
and the entrance-haU was fuUy lighted up ; yet no one appeared
to be moving withm ; the head bath-keeper's accustomed place
was empty ; nor did any attendants come forward to meet them.
But the bathing-wrappers, towels, and other requisites were
all ready put out ; some hung up, some lying folded in their
proper places ; everything was neatly arranged and fit for use,
" They must have got the bath in order, and then, finding that
nobody came, have turned in again for a nap," said Osman's com^
panion. " Well, tiU some one awakes, -we had best change our
dress, and make om-selves comfortable, for the meantime, in the
heating-room." Osman agreed, and the two exchanged their out-of-door dresS
for the costume ordinary in an Eastern bath, consisting of very

ANATOLIAN SPECTRE-STORIES. 63
toga-like wrappers, and went into the large vaulted inner room,
which was also lighted up and ready warmed. Here they lay
do^«Ti on the raised stone dais against the wall, with the dome
like roof some twenty or twenty-five feet overhead, and the
lamp hanging down from it in the centre.
While they thus reclined at ease, waiting till either a servant
or some other bather like themselves should enter, Osman, ¦who
had no doubts left in his mind as to the real and bodUy identity
of his companion, could not resist the temptation of recounting
to him the previous adventure of the night. So he told how he
had been awakened and beguiled out of doors by a phantom
exactly resembUng in shape and voice the friend now beside
Mm, and how they had almost arrived at the bath, when the
spectre betrayed itself for what it really was by the portentous
feat already described. The other Ustened without interrupting
the story, with apparent interest, till, when all had been told :
" So," he subjoined, " it hung the lantern it was carrying on the
top of the big minaret, did it ? But do you think it could have
managed this ? " and, with the words, he Ufted a leg and a foot,
which suddenly lengthened out just as the arm had done before,
and with a kick struck the very highest point of the central
vault above them, shattering to pieces the lamp where it
hung. Osman leapt up terrified, as well he inight be, and found Mm
self alone in pitch darkness, for every light in the bath had
been simultaneously extinguished. However, as he had often
been in the buUding before, and was thoroughly well acquainted
with it, he managed, in spite of Ms trepidation, to find his way
to the door, and rushed out, in bathing costume as he was, into
the open air, leaving Ms own clothes, wMch he did not venture
to search after, behind him in the entrance-room. But as he
crossed the open space between the coffee-hoUse and the bath
he looked back, and, to his horror, saw the dim and distant
top of the minaret witMn the fortress once more Ughted Up by
the spectral lantern hanging there. ChUl and trembUng, he at
last got back to Ms own house. There he found his -wife fast
asleep ; and much was she surprised when he woke her to see

64 UL YSSES.

Mm so quickly returned, and in such strange attire. He no-n'
made a clean breast of it, telling her of all that had happened
to Mm that night from first to last, and adding, that when the
day was up he would return to the bath and fetch his clothes
from where he had left them.
But hardly had he finished his narration when, to the alarm
of both, the same rap that had twice been heard before was
repeated outside. Osman's wKe, naturaUy enough, entreated
her husband to pay no attention to it. But, like Tam-o'-Shanter
in a similar case, he would not take advice : —
Ah, gentle dames ! it gaes me greet.
To think how monie counsels sweet,
How monie lengthen'd sage advices.
The husband frae tbe wife despises!
" But to our tale." Osman, who was by no means a coward,
and whose mettle was now fairly up, swore that he would see
the matter out to the end ; besides, added he, the dawn must
now be near, and it could hardly be a phantom again this time.
So he got up, went, in bathing apparel as he stiU was, to the
house-door, and opened it. Sure enough, there stood Ms friend,
or what seemed his friend, waiting. " What is the matter with
you," asked the figure, " that you stare so wildly at me ? and
how come you to be in such a dress ? " " My own wearing-
clothes are at the bath," repUed Osman; and forth-with pro
ceeded to give an account of all that he had seen that night,
and how he had been twice spectre-tricked, thinking to himself,
" if this time it be a phantom, too, like the others, I may as
well provoke it to show its true character at once, before we go
further." But his friend, on hearing all this, expressed the
utmost astonishment. " Me ! " he said ; " why I have only
this minute left my house, and I was going quietly by my
self to the bath, -wdien it occurred to me that I might as well
pass by your door, and take the chance of calling you up, in case
you might not be awake already. You must have been dreaming
somehow. Any way, let us now go at once, and look for your
clothes where you have left them, lest anybody else should

ANATOLIAN SPECTRE-STORIES. 65
come in the meanwhile and take a fancy to them." Once more
Osman felt sure that the speaker was his own live neighbour,
and no other. So, after a little more parley, they went together,
and soon stood before the bath. As before, the outer door was
wide open, and the interior of the building brightly lighted up,
but neither bath-keeper at the entrance, nor any other living
creature. Osman went to the corner where he had first un
dressed, and there found his clothes lying, untouched and folded,
exactly as he had left them. His first impulse was to put them
on -vrithout delay ; but his friend suggested that, as the bath
was heated, they might as well make use of it; so the two
entered the inner room, there to wait tiU the ordinary atten
dants should enter on service.
They sat awMle and talked : no one came. But suddenly a
confused noise, like that of a crowd, was heard j)roceeding from
one of the dim corner recesses of the hall. Osman looked that
way, but saw nothing ; then turning his head back a moment
towards his seeming friend, perceived that Ms face was changed
and horrible, and Ms stature gigantic.
And now from the dark niche whence the sound had been
heard, issued a long procession of countless figures — men,
women, chUdren, on foot, on horseback, armed, unarmed, soldiers,
peasants, townsfolk, with spears, lances, swords, drums, fifes ; a
mixed multitude, large, small, grotesque, fearful, hideous. They
fiUed the entire place ; they swarmed round Osman ; they
pointed at Mm, they laughed, they danced, they clamoured, they
sung, they played the strangest antics, till in a moment, as the
first sharp cry that summons to wakefulness and morning
prayer sounded from the minaret gallery of the old mosque out
side, they all vanished into notMng ; the lights went suddenly
out ; and Osman, left alone and in darkness, fell fainting on the
stone pavement of the floor.
There he remained till he was thus found by the bath-keeper
who entered at daylight, and was carried home, stUl insensible.
But before long he recovered consciousness, and told his story ;
for some hours, even, he seemed none the worse for Ms spectral
adventure. As evening approached, however, fever came on,
E

66 ULYSSES.

and he for several days was Uke to die : when the crisis had
past, it left him paralytic, hopelessly impaired in mind and
body, a mere wreck. Such he now continues. His friend,
whose semblance the " mocker " had thrice assumed, had never,
as they afterwards found, left Ms house during that fatal mght,
nor even till late the foUowing morning.

( 67 )

TUEKISH GEOEGIA.
The foUo-wing Essay sums up the impressions of not one but several visits,
in which duty, so far as I was concerned, coincided -nath pleasure, made during
the years 1867-71 to a land not unjustly designated as the Savoy of the
Caucasus. Since then the treaty of 1878 has made over the half in extent,
and much more than the half in population and importance, to Russia ; with
what miUtary or political results for the future I care not here to surmise ; but
¦with positive and immediate advantage in the meantime to the inhabitants
themselves as individuals, hardly so, it may be, as a nation or race. And
here again, gentle reader, " speer nae questions ;" you know the rest of the
Scottish proverb.
"A HANDSOME but Worthless nation." And ¦vrith these words
Gibbon summarUy dismisses the Georgians from his pages.
Poor Georgians ! With all due respect for the great historian,
I cannot but feel inclined to dispute the propriety of the latter
epithet he bestows on them, were it even for nothing else than
the correctness of the former. Beauty and goodness had once
but a single name, common to both in the most copious of all
languages, the expression of the noblest of all minds; and
Greek phUology, like Greek philosophy, however high fan
tastical at times, had the most often a true foundation deep
in the nature of things. Is indeed fair ¦vrithout so often foul
witMn ? Or is not the outside form rather more generaUy a
representation, a reproduction indeed, and a consequence of the
inner being ? There are, I am well aware, many -wise adages to
imply the contrary; but we may remember that personal
beauty, rare, in aU truth, even among women, is yet rarer by
far among men, the makers of these -vrise adages ; and it is not
foxes alone that have called unattainable grapes sour before
now. F 2

ULYSSES.

But to leave generalizations, and return to our Georgians,
such as they are this day. Business, whether of the State or
not, has made me more than once a looker-on among them, and
given me ample opportunity for judging both how far they still
deserve their hereditary reputation for physical beauty, and also
how far they merit the uncomplimentary adjectives bestowed on
them, not only by Gibbon — who from the very vastness of his
scope may easUy have been obliged to content Mmself occasion
ally -vrith comparatively scanty or superficial information on
some points- — but even by other more special writers.
Large aUowance should be made when we sit in judgment on
races which, o-vring more than anything else to a misfortune of
geographical position, and the dangerous contiguity of more
numerous and more powerful neighbours, have for many ages
received and borne a foreign yoke, tiU its impress, for good or
evil, has been fairly stamped into their shoulders. Bad luck
may have more to do with the fact and its consequences than
bad deserving. It is no blame to Croatia that it is ruled by
Austrian administration ; nor, if guarantees fail them, could
Luxembourg or Belgium be held responsible were they swal
lowed up by one or other of their conterminal giants. What
can a Uttle fish do in the presence of a big one but be eaten
by it, and, according to Sydney Smith's wise recommendation,
try not to disagree with it ?
Now Georgia has for centuries past been that Uttle fish ; or,
to use a comelier metaphor, an unarmed, fallen, and wounded
man, over whose prostrate body Turk and Persian have
generation after generation fought their fierce frontier strife,
till Eussia coming in gave the duel a Midshipman Easy or
triangular character. Not, however, an equUateral one, but
iUustrative rather of the old axiom which sends the weakest to
the waU; Persia, undoubtedly the feeblest of the three com
batants, having to give up her hold on Georgia altogether,
whUe Turkey, a Uttle— but only a Uttie— stronger, managed to
retain a curtailed portion of her prey, of which, however, the
lion's share naturaUy feU to the lion of the partitioners, namely.

Eussia.

TURKISH GEORGIA. 69
With that larger share, now known as Eussian Georgia, I
have for the moment nothing to do. It is indeed to its
inhabitants that Gibbon's antithetical notice chiefiy refers ; but
they, since the historian's time, have undergone a great change,
that of Eussification — a process Ukely in many ways to render
them at once less worthless and less handsome, bodily, of
course. It is rather of the smaUer section I now would speak,
that yet included — though for how long to come may well be
questioned — witMn Turkish Umits, and hardly at aU changed
by the lapse of the last century. This is " Gurjistan," or
TurMsh Georgia, a country rarely visited, and more rarely
described ; even for the Osmanlees themselves, its present
masters, it is all but a " terra incognita," and to that very
circumstance it chiefly owes what interest it possesses.
In a misgoverned and declimng Empire like that of Turkey,
where admimstration is only another name for fiscal exaction,
and where the presence of the ruler is chiefly made known by
the diminution and decay of those he rules, the thoughts and
investigations of the traveller are apt to be directed to the
past rather than to the present, to historical relics rather than
to actual Ufe. Palestine explorations, Assyrian excavations,
Ephesus diggings, and the like, while they bring to view the
splendours of former ages, discover no less the nakedness of the
modern land. It is among the dwellings of the dead, not of the
Uring, that men go in quest of monuments and bones. Indeed,
of all the vast territories which by the ordinance of fate, and
the forbearance of neighbours, own the Sultan's rule, Egypt is
perhaps the only one of any importance that has a present to
speak of — ^just because only indirectly weighed on by that
rule — and a ' ViUage Life: on the Nile,' or the Uke, can be read,
if not with the same eagerness as a description of the Theban
marvels, or the graceful reUcs of PMlEe, yet with tolerable
interest. But when we come to Syria, and even more to
Anatolia, our view is fixed wholly on the past; and the
Ottoman tent, pitched amid the ruins of a score of shattered
civUizations, only attracts our eye by its incongruousness with
the memories around.

70 UL YSSES.

Yet here again some local exceptions may be found : in spots
where the Stamboolee footstep has not been deep enough
impressed to stamp aU life and vigour out of the land ; where
something stiU remains of national energy and type to arouse
sympathy for the present, and aUow hope for the future. One
of these is Turkish Georgia, or Gurjistan.
Eeference to any atlas wiU show that the extreme north
eastern horn of the Ottoman Crescent half embraces the Black
Sea on its inner edge ; while its outer curve rests partly on the
newly-defined Eussian frontier, partly on the great inland tract
that once was Armenia.
The angle thus formed is occupied by Gurjistan — a name
expressing the long-maintained nationality of its inhabitants.
It is a noble region : few more so. Lofty mountains, granite
the most, intersected by deep and well- watered valleys; vast
and virgin forests of oaks, beech, chestnut, ash, pine, and fir, all
of luxuriant, often colossal growth; great sweeps of rich
pasture-land; flower-enamelled meadows, jotted with great
trees, and overhung by peaks and precipices beyond the
imaginings of a Salvator Eosa; whUe the thunder of the
waterfaU mixes with the ceaseless roar of the fuU torrent from
below; the beauty of Savoy and the grandeur of the Alps in
one. Wherever the soil is cultivated— scratched, I might say —
there springs up from it a half-wUd abundance of crops and
fruit, corn, barley, maize, vines, orchard-growth; whUe the
frequent traces of ancient but abandoned mines — what is not
abandoned under Ottoman rule ? — bear -vritness to the wealth of
metal, copper, zinc, Uon, lead, and sUver, beneath the surface.
Snow lies on the towering peaks of Karkhal Dagh, near the
sea, and of Kel Dagh, close to the Eussian frontier, each of
them above twelve thousand feet in height, all the year round ;
whUe in the garden-Uke valleys of Liwaneh and Showshet,
immediately below them, the apricot and the peach ripen, and
the clustering vines only need a more skUful care to rival those
of Burgundy or Central Italy. Eice-fields and mulberry groves,
\\'here silk is reared, line the river-courses.
Such is the country through which I wandered for several

TURKISH GEORGIA. yi
summer weeks, unrestrained in the liberty of my way by the
prescription of roads, for the best of all reasons, that not a
single road exists here ; and the tracks, even where undeservedly
dignified by the name of horse-paths, are all as nearly as pos
sible Uke each other in roughness, steepness, narrowness, and
every other unroadUke quaUty. Indeed, for about half our
rambles we had to lead our horses by the bridle : as keeping on
their backs while at such angles and along such razor-edges as
we continuaUy had to traverse was out of the question.
But before we lose ourselves in the mountain labyrinth, let us
halt a Uttle under these green spreading walnut trees by the
rusMng waterfall among the rocks, and do introductory honour
to the Muse of our time. Her of statistics, or at least of precision
and detail.
Of the three districts which compose the main of Gurjistan,
one, that of Liwaneh, lies along the lower vaUey of the Great
Chorok stream, the Harpasus of Arrian ; it is the only one
which enjoys the honour of possessing a town, the town of
Artween, which, -vrith its eleven hundred houses, besides baths
and mosques, but no schools, clings to the rapid hiU-side slope
leading do-wn to the river, exactly at the point where it first
becomes navigable for boats, some fifty miles distant from the
sea. The other two districts, Showshet and Ajarah, lie further
east, the former inland, the latter approacMng the coast. Two
smaller tracts, Keskeem by name and Chorok-Soo, belonging,
the one to Liwaneh, the other to Ajarah, complete Gurjistan
proper, wMch numbers in all about four hundred villages, and
two hundred thousand inhabitants, male and female. Whoso
ever desireth more information of the kind, is it not written in
the Book, the Blue Book of Consular Eeports ? Seek, and it
vrill be found.
" A race of men " — I quote once more from Gibbon — " whom
nature has cast in her most perfect mould, is degraded by
poverty, ignorance, and vice." For the inhabitants of Turkish
Georgia this is only too true ; yet, situated as they are, it could
hardly be otherwise.
Poor, ignorant, vicious, handsome Georgians ! I am fond of

72 ULYSSES.

them, and cannot help being so; good-looking, that they
certainly are, men, women, and cMldren, in no ordinary degree ;
a fafr, bright-complexioned, light-haUed, long-haired race, taU,
Utile, and with all the mountaineer grace of bearing ; cheerful,
too, conversible, sociable, though wUd, careless, out-of-elbows,
lawless, scapegrace ; yet such as have evidently in them the
making of much better tMngs, had they only a chance. But
of all the hundred and one nationalities under the Ottoman
incubus which has a chance ? The best off are those who are
the most left to themselves ; and who in consequence, if they
do not grow richer, do not at any rate grow much poorer : K
they do not get better, do not either get considerably worse.
Their dress is very characteristic. It is a mountain dress,
admirably adapted to the country they live in ; trowsers loose
above, but tight-fitting as garters below the knee to the ankle ;
and Ught open jackets, fancifully embroidered and braided ; the
ordinary colour Vandyke brown ; the stuff itself home-made,
warm, and strong. Their linen, too, is home-made ; every
cottage has a small patch of flax belonging to it. Turbans are
unknown : the head is covered by a cloth hood, of the same
material as the jacket, with two long pendant strips on either
side, which at need are folded across the chest and round the
neck, forming an excellent " comforter " in cold weather ; in
warm, they are wrapped round the hood itself, so as to give
additiona-l protection against the heat of the sun. Hood and
strips are decorated with simple braid, sUver, or gold, as the age,
or circumstances, or vanity of the wearer may direct. Eound
Ms waist every Georgian wears a leather belt, often curiously
worked -vrith brass or silver, from wMch hang a gourd-shaped
powder-flask, silver mounted, a little brass bottle, containing
oil for the gun-lock, a complicated cord or thong, said to be for
binding possible captives, but as useful in many other ways as
a schoolboy's baU of tvrine ; and in the girdle are invariably
stuck a long double-edged knife or dagger, and one or two huge
sUver-adorned pistols. In the hand or over the shoulder is a
single-barrelled gun, long, bright, brass-mounted, with a flint
lock ; this the Georgian never fails to carry with Mm, and to

TURKISH GEORGIA. 73
make good use of, for he is an excellent shot, and hares, wild
goats, and other game, are plenty in the mountains.
Very picturesque, too, and curious are the Georgian dwellings.
Nominally classed in villages, but in fact a loose aggregate of
detached cottages, the existence of a hamlet can only be surmised
from a greater frequency of patches of cultivation amid the
predominant scrub, two or three springs and running channels
of crystal-clear water, and, somewhere or other within a circuit
of a few miles, a group of walnut trees, and under its shelter a
large square wooden buUding, the sides resembling an exagge
rated bird-cage, the eaves and porticos outpassing in their
exuberance those of any Chinese temple ; the whole being a
mosque, but reduced to its most simple expression, -vrithout
minaret, apse, or adjunct, except a few wooden benches or
trunks of trees laid horizontaUy near the entrance, the ordinary
meeting-place of council or gossip. The houses, too, are like
the mosque in their copiousness of porches, open galleries, and
overhanging roof-eaves, a style of architecture suggested by the
only buUding material now used, wood, from the foundation
posts in the ground, to the wooden shingles that do duty for
tiles on the roof
This was not, however, always the case ; for the whole district
is jotted over high and low -vrith the ruins of stone-built churches
and castles, belonging to former times. Not Byzantine in
character, the Georgian arcMtecture, whether ecclesiastical or
secular, comes much nearer to the later Eoman, as we see it in
Southern Europe, and looks as if it had been first borrowed
directly from those models, and afterwards developed itself with
certain peculiarities of its own.
Thus, for instance, one of the Georgian castles, that which
guards the passage of the Chorok river at a place called Gonieh,
is absolutely Eoman in outline ; so much so that the best idea
I can give of it is, by comparing it with the camp-ruins of
Gariononnon, now caUed Borough Castle, in Suffolk. Like it,
the long Unes of wall, some twenty feet in height, and from
five to six in thickness, enclose an open square of about a
hundred yards each way ; only the materials, instead of being

74 ULYSSES.

alternate layers of rough stone and brick, are here stone only,
but united by a cement Uttle or not at aU inferior to that of
Italo-Eoman use. The towers, too, squat and almost soUd, four
on each side, besides those, somewhat larger and higher, at the
angles, are square instead of round, and in height slightly over
top the wall. Four gates ; and over the principal one, to the
west, a Georgian inscription, which my ignorance disqualified me
from deciphering ; though for this the villagers consoled me by
saying that it was not the original one, which had been defaced
by Sultan Seleem, when he conquered country and castle near
four centuries ago, but of recent date, and put tliare by some
private hand not long since. But a more palpable imitation of
a Eoman fortified camp than this stronghold I never saw.
Much more mediseval in appearance, with its broken battle
ments, narrow loopholes, bartizans, and fragments of Mgh
towers, is the important fortress of Chikanzir, to give it the
Georgian name wMch has superseded the more euphonious Iris
of Arrian's time, where it frowns from its lofty storm-beaten
cliff on the same line of defence further east. Tradition
ascribes it, as it does the majority of the many castles in the
neighbourhood, to Queen Tamar, a legendary heroine, said to
have ruled over Georgia in the twelfth century, and who here,
we are told, took refuge when flying from the Byzantine arms,
and made a brave and successful stand. History does not, I
believe, confirm these details ; but, wluch is much more to the
point in popular estimation, the foot-print of Queen Tamar
herself does. In fact, at the base of the coast-cUff, and occa
sionally washed by the sea when a strong westerly gale drives
up its heaped waters on the shore, I was shown, on a huge
granite slab, deep imbedded in the sand, the impress, clearly
defined, of a naked human foot, long and deUcate like that of a
woman, but deeply indented, and of darker colour than the rest
of the stone. A curious freak of nature. Others wiU have it
that it is the miraculous memorial of a Greek or Georgian
priest fleeing from Mahometan persecution; while zealous
Mahometans, not to be so outdone, claim it a relic of some
nameless saint of their creed, who by the efficacy of his

TURKISH GEORGIA. 75
preacMngs converted the neighbourhood to Islam. So all unite
in venerating it ; and I myself, who have seen the impress of
imagined footsteps on the Mount of Ascension, on the Sakhrah
of the Mosque-transformed Temple, on the pavement of the
Eoman " Domine quo vadis " near the gate of San Sebastiano,
and others, can bear witness that this one of Queen Tamar,
though by no means the most celebrated, is by far the best of
its kind among them aU, and certainly not the least authentic. ¦
Between those two constructional styles, the earlier or Eoman,
and the later or medifeval Georgian, are here found several, so
to speak, transition castles, not unlike in general plan to those
called Lombard in Northern Italy. Here the principal feature
is a huge square, or slightly oblong tower, fifty or sixty feet in
height ; the waUs are massive, and pierced with small square
holes, and a window or two ; the summit crowned with large
battlements. The materials are stone, partly hewn and partly
rough, -vrith cement of a quality inferior to that used in the
earUer buildings. Wherever the tower is not rendered inacces
sible by the steepness of the rock on wMch it is built, out- works,
divided into com-ts inner and outer, are added; the walls are
low and tMck. The castle entrance is always near an angle,
and double, leading by a winding passage into the courts, but
the keep itself has often no door; the only admittance being
a window from wluch a ladder, ten or more feet in length,
could be let do-wm or drawn up at -wiU. Indeed, in one of the
finest specimens of this Mnd, which I visited among the wild
mountains of Hamsheen, where the Georgian frontier touches
that of the kindred, but hostile, MingreUan prorince of Lazistan,
1 found that the entire castle, keep, out-works and all, coidd
only be approached by a break-neck scramble over a couple of
fir-trunks, cast by the peasants across a chasm in the rock where
once a drawbridge, now long since vanished, had probably been.
The donjon tower was in this instance about seventy feet Mgh,
and eighteen square ; its position on a giant pinnacle of rock,
piercing from among the dense woods around, whUe the torrent
river foamed and roared hundreds of feet below, was grand
beyond description. But no tradition attaches to the castle, nor

76 ULYSSES.

could I discover any commemorative inscription; its date is
attested by the style alone.
SmaUer castles, too, of what may loosely be caUed the feudal
type, abound in Gurjistan, built at different periods by the
semi-independent Emeers, or Princes, as it is the fasMon to
translate a title much better rendered by "baron," and some
of comparatively recent date. These haK dweUing-places, half
fortresses, which in general appearance bear a certain family
resemblance to the ruined strongholds of the EMne, are to be
found everywhere perched each on its abrupt or isolated height
at the entrance of some valley, or overhanging a narrow defile ;
their form is picturesquely irregular ; their battlemented walls,
turret and tower, more remarkable for massiveness of con
struction than for architectural or engineering skiU. Strange
apocryphal legends are attached to most, and " Kiz-kaleh," or the
" Maiden's Tower," is a common appellation. One such, which
attracted my notice by the unusuaUy elegant proportions of its
lofty keep, had long, I was told, been occupied by an Amazonian
princess — women figure conspicuously in Georgian stories — ^who,
finding herself hard pressed by savage besiegers, and having lost
the greater part of her garrison, stipulated for the Uves of the
remainder ; and then ordering the gates of the castle to be fiung
open, cast herself headlong from the battlements into the abyss
below, rather than incur the dangers pecuUar to a captive of her
sex. Name and date, of course, not given. More ferocious, but
unfortunately more historical, are the tales told of the grim
ruins where the round watch-tower of Artween castle looks
down over a sheer precipice of nine hundred feet perpendicular
to the rushing waters of the Chorok below. Here, scarce a
century back, a savage cMef established Mmself, whose delight
it was to force his prisoners to leap from the topmost turret into
the abyss. Poetical justice — let us hope justified in tMs instance
by fact — represents tMs Georgian Adretz as receiving in turn a
similar treatment from the vengeance of his Turkish captors.
But rich as Gurjistan is in arcMtectural monuments of this
class, it is singularly poor in reUcs of ecclesiastical buildings.
Most of the churches hereabouts seem to have been, Uke the

TURKISH GEORGIA. 77

mosques of the present day, either constructed wholly of wood
or at least roofed -wdth that material, and thus to have disappeared
almost simultaneously vrith the reUgion that they represented.
Here and there a colony of Armenian monks — for of Georgian
monks and ascetics we find no trace, probably they were as rare
under the old symbol as Georgian MoUahs and Muftis are under
the new ; nations change their creed more readUy than their
character — had estabUshed themselves, and have left some
specimens of theu- not ungraceful nor undignified art ; but of
Georgian churches proper, I do not think that more than a dozen
ruins are to be seen tMoughout the entire region. Four or five of
these I explored, and in each the apse, or east end, alone stUl
was or had been vaulted rougMy enough ; the nave or body of the
buUding had evidently been covered -vrith timber. The arch,
where it occurs, is generally pointed ; the scant ornamentation
on the door-posts or round the windows consists of shaUow-
carved Eumc knots, or a conventional vine-pattern. What,
however, distingmshes these Georgian churches, such as they
are, from any others -vrith wMch I am acquainted in the East,
is a square beKry tower, forty or fifty feet Mgh, placed at, and
umted -vrith, the west end, wMle the principal entry, contrary to
Greek usage, is on one side of the edifice, so that the whole bears
a strong likeness to an old viUage Norfolk or Suffolk church.
Belfry-towers are rare tMngs tMoughout the East, but when
they do occur they are always, except in Gurjistan, separated
altogether from the main buUding, Uke the famous Campanile
of Florence. A fine example of the kind is afforded by the
Byzantine church, now a Mosque, of St. Sophia, at Trebizond,
the work of the Emperor Manuel I. in the thirteenth century,
where the square tower, -vrith its open lantern a-top, is fuU
seventy feet in height, and stands at a distance of forty paces
from the western porch.
Of the process by wMch tMs numerous, amiable, and fairly
inteUigent population was severed from Christendom and incor
porated into Islam, no record remains. This much is certain ;
that a hundred and fifty years ago, according to their o-wm
statement, and even later, I should think, judging by the com-

78 ULYSSES.

parative freshness of the church ruins in a cUmate where damp,
heavy rains and snow, and a vegetation rivaUing the luxuriance
of Yucatan conspire to hasten the work of disintegration and
decay, they were aU CMistians. It is equaUy certain that at
the present day they are aU without exception Mahometans.
No compulsion, no invasion even, is either mentioned in Mstory,
or aUuded to by tradition ; and what is stranger stiU, no
extension of the Turkish Empire was then taking place east
ward ; on the contrary, it was rather losing ground. Could the
dread of Eussian encroachment, first felt along the northern
Georgian frontier about that time, have driven these tribes to
seek closer aUiance and protection with the Turks by means of
religious union ? Possibly their Christianity sat as lightly on
them then as their Mahometanism does now. They themselves
have a story that a very eloquent preacher and holy man came
among them, and converted them aU to Islam by his sermons.
" Nonsense," said I to a young Georgian beg, who had told me
the tale with a very creditable amount of gravity, " that can
never have been the cause. You know as weU as I do that no
CMistian becomes a Mahometan, or vice versa, except it be
from fear of imminent danger, or hope of material advantage.
In the absence of these, the finest sermons would convert
nobody ; and as to proofs and miracles, you are aware that they
are as copious in Christian as in Mahometan story, or more."
He laughed, and answered, " Of course there was some motive
of the other kind, but of what it was we have no record left."
In fact, for about fourteen centuries, from the days of
Chosrces and Justinian, down to our own time, tMs mountain
group has resembled an island, round which the eddying waves
of frontier war have raged almost without ceasing, but which
they have never wholly overflowed. Byzantines and Persians,
Turcomans and Byzantines, Turks and Persians again, Eussians
and Turks, have all fought around them, retreated, or con^
quered ; while they, secure in their almost inaccessible labyrinth
of ravine and crag, have taken no more share in the strife
around, than by making or repelling an occasional foray ; and,
when victory had declared itself for the one or the other of their

TURKISH GEORGIA. 79

belUgerent neighbours, paying as little tribute and obedience as
possible to their new suzerain, whoever he might be.
To the Osmanlee Sultan, the " Padishah " of the Mahometan
world, so long as he was content to rule them after their o-wn
fasMon, that is, through the medium of their own born chiefs and
begs, the Georgian MusUms were at first attached -vrith proper
neophytic fervour. Of tMs they gave repeated proof during
the many wars, or, one might almost say, the one long war,
which from the close of the last century to the middle of this,
burned or smouldered along the land-line, and ended by giving
the entfre Southern Caucasus, with its fair plains adjoining, to
Eussian dominion. All tMs time the Mahometan Georgians
further on the south and west kept up a guerUla warfare, less
ferocious, but hardly less persistent, than that maintained by
the Cfrcassian tribes on the east and north. But when the
Ottoman Government changed its type from semi-feudal to
bureaucratic, and adminstration merged in mere organised fiscal
extortion, with the governing Pashas and other Stamboolee
officials for its agents, the old spell of loyalty was broken, and
Georgian eyes are now more often and more longingly turned
to Tiflis than to Constantinople.
Indeed, -vrithout a degree of pro-rincial tact wMch a pseudo-
centralised government can hardly be expected to possess, this
state of tMngs was, sooner or latter, inevitable. From the
noblest beg to the meanest peasant there is hardly a Georgian
who has not relations, or at least clansmen, under Eussian rule
across the frontier, with whom he is in constant correspondence
of -risits made and returned, and from whom he learns the
transterminal existence of a state of prosperity and progress
wMch he cannot but feel contrasts bitterly -vrith the poverty
and ignorance to which he Mmself, the Osmanlee subject, is
condemned. For, in spite of frontier-guards, passport regu
lations, and mUitary " cordon," mutual intercourse between
Eussian Georgia and TurMsh Gurjistan is constant and inti
mate ; nor does difference of creed, or, officiaUy speaMng, of
nationaUty, much impair the sympathy of a common origin.
" Blood is tMcker than water " -vrith the clansmen of Asia

8o ULYSSES.

Minor as with the clansmen of the Scottish HigMands. It is
amusing enough to see, as I often have, a Eussianised Georgian,
in big clumsy boots, long-skirted coat, and dfrty forage-cap,
enter the rickety but carpeted divan'iof a Mahometan Mnsman,
who in the much more picturesque, but less ci-vdUsed-looking
dress of Asiatic fashion, rises to embrace Mm. It is Burns's
Csesar and Luath over again ; and there is no want of cordiaUty
or respect on either side.
MeanwhUe the attachment of the peasantry — the devotion
would be an exacter word — to thefr own hereditary cMefs or
begs, though shorn of thefr- feudal rank and mulcted of thefr
ancestral lands, is strong as ever ; indeed, the measures taken
by the Ottoman Government to weaken it, have had a contrary
effect, by supplying a new tie between nobles and people — that
of common dissatisfaction. Both classes have certainly a suffi
ciently long. Ust of grievances against their black-coated Stam
boolee masters, whose conduct is such that it can often be only
explained by a settled determination to aUenate the affections
of these frontier tribes, and to drive them straight into the arms
of Eussia, who, for her part, is ready enough to receive them.
A Georgian beg, one of the most influential in the land, and
cMef of an important border clan, had, after much brave guerUla
fighting against the Eussians in '55, at last tMown Mmself, -vrith
several of Ms foUowers, into the besieged fortress of Kars, and
did his duty manfully in its defence. When, after the events
with wMch aU are familiar, the place surrendered to famine, the
beg — I purposely abstain from names — and Ms men became, of
course, prisoners of war vrith the rest. Thus they remained
four or five days; but when the time came for marching the
captured garrison off to Tiflis, or other secure places in the
Caucasus, the Georgians were simply and unconditionaUy set
free ; the Eussian general declaring, with a poUte generosity that
might have been a useful lesson to some other generals nearer
home, in a more recent war, that Ms hostiUties regarded the
regular troops only ; and that the beg and Ms clansmen being
irregular, he held them non-combatants, Uke any other peaceable
inhabitants of the TurMsh Empire, and consequently not Uable

TURKISH GEORGIA.

to the penalties of war. With this he dismissed them, disarmed
of course, but not even under parole, to go home, or wherever
else they might tMnk best.
The policy, as well as the humanity of this conduct is evident
enough; but it is difficult to perceive either the humanity or
the policy of the Turkish Government, which, as soon as the
war was over, rewarded the beg's services by a fine and im
prisonment, on the ground that he must have been in treason
able correspondence with the Eussians, othervrise he would not
have met with such lenient treatment at their hands.
" Upon my word," said the beg to me, " had I been minded to
betray the country to the Eussians, I should have had no need
of underhand doings : for there was not a man among the
villagers who did not wish it, and I do not think the Turks
could have done much to Mnder us just then. But after all,"
he continued, "I have reason to be more satisfied with the
Turks than with the Eussians ; for the former, at least, by
shutting me up in prison, paid me the compliment of sho-vring
that they considered me a person of some consequence ; whereas,
I never felt so small in my life as when the Eussian general
told me to go free, without doing me the honour of sending me
under guard to Tifiis, and evidently implied that he did not
care either for my having fought against him, or whether I
might not fight again in the future."
Let us pay tMs very same gentleman — nobleman I mean —
a visit, and see how he Uves in the meanwhile.
It is mild summer, and the beg has left Ms winter residence
in the thick woods, some twelve mUes distant from the Eussian
frontier, and has gone, as Ms wont is, to pass the hotter months .
of the year under canvas amid the mountain pastures beyond
the pine range, where at the height of between eight and nine
thousand feet above the sea — his -winter house is at the moderate
elevation of four thousand— he looks after his numerous herds,
and holds a kind of open com-t, much frequented by all the
cMefs from the districts around, far and near. We, his visfrors,
are a large party, begs, aghas, and " delikans," or " wUd-bloods,"
i.e. dashing young bachelors, some pure Georgian, others half-
G

ULYSSES.

Georgian, half-Turcoman, by race. As we ride up the steep
grassy slopes I notice, at a height of more than seven thousand
feet, where even the July air blows keenly, and where no
peasant now would venture to winter it from October to April,
the ruins, or traces rather, of two large villages, and a stone
church, an indication amongst, I regret to say, many simUar,
that the climate of these regions — as, I believe, of some other
longitudes — has gradually but notably cooled during the last
few centuries ; though whether from a general diminution of
solar heat, according to Professor Thomson's alarming theory,
to culminate in the reaUzation of Byron's ghastly dream, or
whether owing to some transpositions of land and sea in our
Northern hemisphere, to take Lyell's more consolatory view of
the matter, I do not pretend to decide.
At last we have reached the top ; the brisk air, so different
from that of the heated valleys below, has in a manner intoxi
cated our horses, who, instead of showing weariness after so hard
a climb, are squealing, neighing, rearing, bounding ; it is all the
riders can do to hold them in. Before us spreads a wide undu
lating table-land ; it reaches for miles and miles away, till it
slopes off eastward into Eussian Georgia, and westward sinks
in the hollow of Showshet, where dwell the loveliest but not the
austerest women, and the handsomest but not the most virtuous
men of Georgian race. Far north, its downward dip is clothed
with forest to the fever-stricken coast of the Black Sea. But
right in front of us is a tent, large and black, ¦vrith three or
fom- smaUer tents on a row beMnd ; these are evidently for
women, attendants, and domestic life, while the large one is the
" salamlik," or general parlour, of the beg himseK. Close by a
little granite ridge cuts knife-like through the turf; and from
under it wells out a spring of water, crystal clear and icy cold.
The beg, whose ancestral possessions equal in extent Lincoln-
sMre at least, and whose word even now, let who may be the
official governor, is law over the whole frontier land, rises and
comes forward to greet his guests. What a splendid head he
has. I have seen something of the kind among the demigods of
fJreco-Eoman sculpture. Advancing age has deprived his form

TURKISH GEORGIA. 83
of the supple activity wluch gave it a grace remarkable even
among Georgians in youth, but has hardly diminished his
passion for horsemansMp and every form of bodily exercise.
To tMs he adds a degree of mechanical skill that a trained
workman might en\j. For one friend he Mmself, unassisted,
manufactures a beautKully- wrought sabre, blade, and hUt ; for
another a pair of pistols ; for a third a silver-mounted clarionet.
Then he sets to vv^ork on the construction of a sailing-boat, and
when it is finished, sails it on a cruise of discovery all over the
great mountain lake of CMlder, close by, sounding everywhere
to determine what the real depth of the water, commonly said
to be unfathomable (but he found it, as he told me, twenty-
seven fathoms at most), may be; and whether the traditional
city, said to be submerged beneath, is really there. Besides
these amusements come farming, building, planting, sheep-
breeding, cattle-tending, horse-rearing, and even — in which he
has done wonders — road-making : and yet, various as these
occupations are, the result falsifies the common saying about
such attempts, iby proving him master, not of none, but of aU.
Lastly, he is — be the nominal Governor of Osmanlee creation
who he may — the ultimate tribunal of appeal tMoughout the
whole eastern haK of Gurjistan ; the arbiter of disputes, director
of councUs, social and political head of the Uttle nation.
Begs and not- begs, noble, gentle, or simple, we are seated in
the tent ; its hangings are of silk, beautifully embroidered, and
stiU bright in colour, the youthful labour of the cMef s aunt,
who died a few years since at the respectable age of ninety, or
thereabouts. Coffee is served round for form's sake; then
wine, spirits, and a sort of frmt-luncheon appear ; and with a
remark that "a tent is Uberty-hall, and there is nothing to
Mnder our enjoying ourselves as we choose," the beg sets the
example of joUity in word and deed. In rush half-a-dozen
chUdren, four boys and two girls, one of the latter a real beauty,
their ages between fifteen and five ; these are the younger ones
of the beg's numerous family ; the elder sons are looking after
the farms elsew^here. The biggest of the boys here present, a
fair curly-headed lad, takes up at his father's orders a booic of
G 2

84 ULYSSES.
Persian poetry, and begms translating it off into fluent Turkish :
I hope the version is a correct one ; K not, I caimot rectUy it.
Two other pretty boys perform a clarionet duet, on instruments
of thefr father's making, selecting an English afr — at least they
teU me it is one — ^in my honour ; whUe the smaUest imp turns
somersets, stands on his head, and goes tMough other gymnastic
feats. The gfrls sit on thefr father's knees, or tease such of the
guests as they are familiar ¦vrith. Other -visitors drop in, some
on business, some on amusement ; the day goes merrUy by.
But before the last slant sunbeams have died off the height, a
huge wood fire is Ughted before the entrance of the tent, a
necessary precaution against the keen cold outside ; a plentiful
supper is served, and di-inking, -vrith talk and music, resumed
tUl midnight. Georgian Mahometanism is not very deep in the
grain; besides, the event, coming sooner or later, of Eussian
annexation, has afready cast its shadow before.
Yet our host, and several others now under the same canvas
fought bravely, and adventured freely the Uves wMch many of
thefr kinsmen lost, on the Turkish side, fifteen years ago. Now
not one of them would draw a sword. " We mean to look on
and enjoy the fun," say they, when questioned as to the part
they would take were another war to break out between the
empfres. Perhaps this might not reaUy prove thefr Une of
conduct, K put to the test, for men do not always keep to what
they have forecast when the crisis actuaUy comes ; but there is
no doubt that these words do very correctly sum up thefr present
feeling. Indeed, it would be hard to say why they shoiUd think or feel
differently. The Ottoman Government haa taken away thefr-
past, and offers them no hopeful future. Besides, how abstain
fr-om comparing thefr own condition -vrith that of thefr kinsmen
on the other side of the frontier close at hand ? The contrast is
suggestive and seductive in one.
" WeU, about myseK I do not care so much," says the beg, as
after long talk we sat, surrounded by horizontal sleeping figures
in the red glare of the heaped wood embers by the door ; " my
career has prett}- well wound itself up ; but what ou earth am I

TURKISH GEORGIA. 85
to do -with these boys of mine ? The estate is not much, hardly
enough as matters go for the elder ones ; the rest would become
mere peasants, no better than those around them. Trade ?
That is not in our line; -vfe know nothing about it; besides,
there is none here of any kind. The army ? The navy ? You
know what the average run of officers is in the Ottoman service;
besides, my children, because they are mine, would be iU looked
on, suspected, kept back in every way. How even am I to give
them a decent education ? Where put them to school ? At
Constantinople ? I would rather see them dead than exposed to
the chance, the certainty, of the taint of Osmanlee vice in that
city. And if not at Constantinople, where ? Yon will allow,"
he concluded, -with a kind of laugh, "that the position of a
Georgian noble in the Turkish Empire is a pleasant one, very."
As -vrith the cMefs, so with the people, in their degree. And
it is for this reason that I have dwelt somewhat at length
on the fortunes, ways, and words of an individual ; because,
-with no great modification, they are not merely personal, but
general ; and one may, to a certain extent, be taken as sample
of aU.
The Georgians are fond of agricultural labour of every kind,
and skiKul at it ; and with a temperate cUmate, averaging that
of central Italy, and a fertile soil, there is notMng — except the
fatal administrative blight, that renders all landed property in
Turkey unproductive and almost valueless — to hinder Gurjistan
from rivalUng or even excelling the corn-bearing frmtfulness of
Imeritia and the gardens of Kutais. But what most distin
guishes them is their skill in handicraft. Guns, pistols, swords,
daggers, embroidery, silver-work, the staple articles of manu
facture among a semi-barbarous people — for aU these Georgia
holds the first rank in the Anatolian market ; and the primitive
simplicity of the tools employed enhances the cunning of the
worker's hand. Pity that it should not oftener occupy itself
with more useful objects ; but tMs defect, rightly understood, is
not so much attributable to the artificers as to their surroundings.
On the other hand, for trade and commerce the Georgians show
no aptitude, not even for shopkeeping ; and the few shops — I

86 UL YSSES.

do not tMnk there are two hundred, aU told, throughout the
-viUages — ^in Gurjistan are invariably kept by strangers, mostly
Armenians, who come for a few summer months of speculative
profit, and then go away again.
Nor have they — and tMs is of good augury for their
prospects of civiUsation — any turn for a pastoral Ufe; their
fiocks and herds are indeed numerous enough on the grassy
mountain slopes, but they are inviariably tended by hfred
Koordes. The Georgians have many of the instincts of a
settled, none of those proper to a nomad race.
Social, fond of dress and show, of song and dance, of
gatherings and merry-makings, of drink, too, and, I regret to
say, of gambUng, they are but indifferent, though proselyte
Mahometans, and the Islamitic "revival," so marked in its
increasing intensity among the Arab, the Indian, and, to a
certain extent, among the TurMsh and Turcoman races, has
Uttle or no existence in Gurjistan. Perhaps too they feel the
eventuality of reunion under Eussian sway to their Christian
kinsmen across the border, too near a probabiUty to aUow of
much zeal for, so far as they in particular are concerned,
the decaying fortunes of Islam. " We ourselves shaU Uve and
die Mahometans, but our chUdren may become whatever smts
them best," is a common saying among them. It is also, so far
as I know, pecuUar to them among Muslims ; certainly, I never
heard the like of it elsewhere. The few MoUas, Muftis, and
the Uke in Gm-jistan viUages are, Uke the shopkeepers from
¦vrithout, generaUy from the more serious sea-coast of Lazistan,
or the bigoted neighbourhood of Trebizond.
Of Georgian moraUty, in the strict sense of the word,
" Least said " is, I fear, " soonest mended." Little indeed,
among a people so situated, could be looked for, and Uttle is to
be found. WhUe the men are habituaUy out in the fields, or
clambering the tall beech-trees to look after thefr favom-ite
bee-hives — the honey of Gurjistan is first-rate — mched high up
in some forked branch among the pale green shades, the women
at home have it aU thefr own way, and it is too often the broad
one. Not rarely, too, these what we may charitably term faults.

TURKISH GEORGIA. 87

coining in collision with justly aroused jealousy, result in tragic
crime. Many instances, needless to repeat here, were told me.
In one ¦rillage an entire family had been exterminated : in
another, the brothers of the faithless vrife, after fatally avenging
the family disgrace, had tm-ned Ijrigands. This feature of
Georgian character has, however, not only its black, but, such is
human nature, its brighter side; a rank weed crop may give
hope of a fruitful soil beneath ; a polished marble slab more
often covers dry bones only.
Besides, law there is none to speak of, and every man, every
man-child even, is armed. Schools, too, except a very few — a
dozen at most throughout the whole breadth of the land — of the
most primary kind, do not here exist, and there are no teachers
in Gurjistan but Need and Passion, no lessons taught but the
spade, the sickle, the loom, the forge, the knife, and the ever-
loaded gun. As for Government — the official or Ottoman
Government, I mean — it recognises no obUgation towards its
Georgian subjects, except that of taxing them, and collecting
their taxes ; a diflficult task the last, it must be aUowed, in
mountains Uke these, where armed collectors have generaUy to
be sent for the work, a work from which they do not always
return. It is easier to pull down than to build up, to destroy than to
restore. Latter-day Sultans have broken the links, clumsy ones
it must be admitted, yet effective, which bound society together
under the semi-feudal authority of the local begs, and have
substituted nothing but tax-gatherers and tithe- collectors in
thefr stead. Only in out-of-the-way frontier districts like
Gurjistan, far from Constantinople, and almost inaccessible to
the official Effendee tribe, something of the old administration
yet Ungers on, powerless for good, powerful for evil. Shorn of
lands, wealth, title, and except what the habitual respect of the
peasants may stUl secure Mm, position, a Georgian beg is much
too weak to compel order, though often strong enough to excite
disturbance ; enforce the law he cannot, break it he can, and
does. Hereditary rivalries, village feuds, robberies, kidnapping,
murders, all have here, as chance or circumstance may direct.

88 UL YSSES.

almost unrestrained scope ; the Ottoman or Stambool Govern
ment cannot put them down, and there is no other authorised
power left to do it. In fact, when one wanders through these
tMcket-tangled paths, deep glens, lonely defiles, and dark forests,
one wonders, not that deeds of violence and blood are sometimes
done, but that they are not more frequent ; not that Gurjistan
travelling is considered venturesome, but that it is possible.
This is, however, chiefly among the natives themselves ; a
stranger has little to fear, a European least of all. The hospi
tality given — and it is always to be had for the asking — in one
hamlet usually impUes a kind of safe-conduct as far as the next,
and so on to the end of the journey ; and European wayfarers
in particular are covered with the tegis of a salutary fear of
after-inquiries, and penalties all the more dreaded because
unknown. In fact, during my long rovings in Gurjistan proper, my own
personal experience only records one adventure of the robber or
brigand class ; I mean, in which I fell in with such. It was in
the Ajarah region, the wUdest corner of tMs wild land ; and
if I record it, I do so because the situation, though it was not
exactly pleasant at the moment, was intensely 'picturesque ; so
picturesque, indeed, as almost to neutralise any disagreeable
sensations that the incident might otherwise have caused.
The valley was such a lovely one ; high mountain walls
towering up to the sky in a mass of fir and beech above, and
thick undergrowth below, all in the fuUest, brightest leafage of
summer, but now darkening -with the first transparent shadows
of a calm summer evening, and the rapid twilight of the South.
The path, narrow and rough, led alongside of a torrent, tUl it
came to a corner round a jutting mass of rock, where another
large and deep mountain stream crossed it from the right, while
between precipice and water a clump of huge walnut trees
spread out their wide branches, and deepened the gloom of
the glen. A spot of exquisite beauty; but one in which it
would be awkward to fight, and impossible to try running away.
We had yet half an hour or so to go before we could reach
the rillage where we intended halting for the night; but.

TURKISH GEORGIA. 89
enchanted with the seene around, I was riding slowly, vrith an
armed attendant, a TrebizoncUan, in front, and a couple of
negroes, -with a native peasant, to brmg up the rear. Just as
we turned the rock, the thought struck me, " What a splendid
post for an ambush!" and at the same instant my horse — a
Turcoman bay — started, snuff'ed uneasUy about Mm, and would
have stopped ; I urged Mm forward, but -vrith difificulty. Sud
denly two men, dressed in country cloth of that vandyke-brown
colour wMch of aU others is the least distinguishable at a
distance aniong open-air objects, started up right in front, each
presenting a sMMng long-barreUed gun, wlule two others simul
taneously appeared, Uke toy figm-es set loose by a spring, from
among the bushes along.side, and a third pair as promptly took
post on the further bank of the torrent opposite, thus making
six long guns, and all leveUed, not to mention knives and
pistols, of wMch each man had a pretty Uttle arsenal in his
gfrdle. One of the men, a fine taU young feUow, as indeed they all
seemed, came up to my Trebizondian guard in advance, and
took hold of his bridle ; another approached me, but observing
that I put my hand on a knKe in my belt, feU back ; perhaps
he thought I was going to draw a pistol, wMch would certainly
hav e been the better weapon, but in fact I had none about me.
However, the Trebizondian had, only he was too much frightened
to use it, and, like a fool and a coward as he was, began to
parley. This of course encouraged the would-be robbers, who
now closed in, and matters began to look serious, when my two
negroes, who now came up from behind the rock, perceiring
that sometMng was wrong, spiured forward, one vrith a pistol in
hand, the other vrith a large drawn knife, and shouted out so
savagely, that the Georgians, taken by surprise, feU back. We
were now four — five indeed, reckoning our peasant gmde, but he,
though armed, seemed incUned to keep out of the way, a friendly
neutral, of aU characters the most provoMng to combatants.
However, tMee of us had arms ready, and appeared to be in
cUned to use them ; the Trebizondian, too, began to pluck up
heart, and gro-w fierce. Hereon our assaUants gave it up, and

90 ULYSSES.

retired into the thicket, leaving the ford open. That they might
better see how little account we made of them, I caUed to them
to stop, and asked how far it was yet to such and such a village,
and whether we were on the right way. Two of them turned
round, ¦with villainously sulky faces, then thought better of it,
and saying, "All right, not far on," hurried off after their
companions. By tMs time night was setting in, and in a few
minutes more it was quite dark. Fortunately some peasants of
the hamlet having heard somehow or other of our approach,
came to meet us with flaring pine-torches, and piloted us to our
lodgings, which else we might have had som. 3 difficulty in
finding. " It was all a mistake ; if the lads had known who you were
they would never have meddled -with you," was the apologetic
remark of our host that night. I think he was right : anyhow,
though I remained a fortnight more scrambling up and down
the Ajarah glens, and feU in with plenty of armed peasant
bands, none of them again formed themselves into so scenic a
group as that which gave such a peculiarly Georgian character
to that -vrild valley in the still summer t-wiUght.
Too much stress, however, should not be laid on defects wMcli
are accidental in a people, and the result rather of circumstances
than of inherent disposition. An Ul-governed frontier will
seldom be found free from brigandage ; nor can much respect to
law be expected where law is, in a general way, equally un
promulgated and unenforced. To revert, not for proof's sake,
but illustration, to a simUe already employed, the very abund
ance of the weed-growth in the Georgian character seems to
warrant the hope of a fruitful and better crop, were the soil
properly tUled and guarded. SometMng of the kind — much,
indeed, by comparison — has already taken place in the neigh
bouring and kindred Eusso-Georgian provinces of Imeritia and
Gourul. And could the great and kindly historian of the
' DecUne and Fall ' have added personal acquaintance -with the
inhabitants of Turkish Gurjistan to historical research, he would,
I think, while confirming the epithet of " handsome," have, with
me, effaced, or at least qualified, that of " worthless."

TURKISH GEORGIA. 9'

Indeed, though certainly Uttle lUsposed to close \vith the
inritation — one so often made in haK-savage countries, and to
me always most melancholy, because Uke the vague clutch of
the dro-wning man at less than a straws — to remain and take up
my abode among them, yet when I qmtted the Georgians and
thefr land it was -with something of regret, and more of pity.
Fortune has used them hardly in the past, and thefr- future is at
best doubtful. In ' Prometheus Unbound ' SheUey's Asia is
hopeful as fafr- ; and the fafrest of her chUdren ought, were the
noble day-dream of the poet anything but a dream, to be of
right the most hopeful also. But truer, I fear, though sadder is
the Spfrit that speaks by the same voice in a later dream that
has, for the Ottoman Empfre in Asia as in Europe, a much -vrider
appUcation than the " HeUas " of wMch it bears the name.
Oh cease ! must hate and death retum ?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease ! drain not to the dregs the um
Of bitter prophecy!
The world is weary of the past —
Oh might it die or rest at last.

92 ULYSSES.

A VISIT TO UPPEE EGYPT AND THEBES.
Though the Egypt of our day, as recent events have more than sufficiently
shown, has no great interest for the general English, or indeed, bondholders
and professional politicians excepted, for any European mind, and though the
Egypt of the past has been vulgarised, — I use the word in its wider as well as
in its more restricted sense, — almost to wearisomeness by tourists, photo
graphers, professors, and the myriad yearly visitants of the Nile, I yet think
the present Essay, written in the year 1866, and pubUshed in ' Macmillan's
Magazine ' for the January ensuing, ought not to be omitted from among the
memorials of my wanderings. Giving, as it does, the impressions of a time
when Ismail Pasha was undisputed Viceroy, and neither Dual Commission nor
Arabi Beg were yet thought of, it has required, for reproduction in this year
of grace, careful revision and no Uttle alteration ; perhaps the writer's own
opinions on certain topics have been somewhat modified by the lapse of
twenty-two suns. But a better panoramic view of what yet remains to us
• of Thebes of the Hundred Gates, I have found given nowhere else ; and the
notices of the much-preconized "feUahs" and their ways towards tbe con
clusion of the Essay may attract notice from their unlikeness to the pretty
tableaux de genre of more sentimental artists in this field. Tet for truthful
likeness, I hold by my sketch.
A WHOLE preface of delays, unavoidable in any part of the
Levantine East, most unavoidable in Egypt, is at last concluded,
and I am on board his Eoyal Highness the Viceroy of Egypt's
Nile steamer, the Sey'yidecyah, with  Beg for companion.
He is Commissioner for the Egyptian, I for the British and
American governments; we are on our way to examine the
complaints brought by a Gerent of the Powers I have the
honour to represent against a foreigner employed under the
former rule. Of the voyage itself, its sights and its events, I
have here no space to write ; let my narration begin -with the
hour when our steam was let off' under the waUs of Luxor.
Spite of business, spite of Khamseen winds, and a more than

A VISIT TO UPPER EGYPT AND THEBES. 93
Indian heat, we managed during the days we passed here to
visit aU the wide-spread wonders of this most ancient capital.
In some respects it fell short of, in others much exceeded, my
expectations. To give a clearer riew of so extensive a field,
let me put into one visits made at diff'erent times, and group
interrupted fragments into a united w^hole.
Anchored close under a sandy shelf nearly thirty feet in
height, notMng of Luxor and the eastern view was visible to us
from the deck of our steamer where she lay. To the west the
scene was somewhat more open ; fields of brown or yellow grain
for miles away, -with the lofty rock of Kornah, whence the name
of a large -vUlage close underneath, towering beyond; but the
ruins themselves were shut out from sight by the low water-
level. We scrambled up the eastern bank as best we might.
Landing-places in the European sense of the term are unknovvm
in Egypt, save where the Viceroy Mmself occasionaUy dis
embarks. Thebes is hardly a likely place to attract the Pharaoh,
or Joseph, of our day; there are no factories or Frankfort
money-lenders here. Once arrived at the top of the ascent,
Luxor, with its monuments, stood before us, only a few yards
distant. Their castle-like appearance has given the place its
Arab name of El-Aksar, or " the Castles," abbreviated into
Luxor by European pronunciation.
A huge temple — for such in the main it seems to have been — •
has left a series of rmns which form a kind of backbone to half
the modern hovel-built viUage, much as the skeleton of an
elephant might be over-crusted with antMUs. Eight opposite
where we had landed were some fourteen huge columns, with
heavy umbreUa-like capitals, the whole surmounted by an
arcMtrave of proportionate blocks of stone ; half buried in sand,
these pillars stUl rise to about tMrty feet high ; mud cottages of
the modern "lesser man" nestle between their shafts. The
capitals yet bear traces of painting ; the shafts are smooth, and
of that rich yellow-tinted stone which harmonises so weU -with
the Eo-yptian light and sky. Further on to the south are four
ranges more or less shivered, of smaller but more graceful

94 ULYSSES.

pUlars ; they belong to that early style in wMch alone, amid the
monuments of Egypt; the mmd is gratified by an idea of beauty
independent of dimension. The entablature of each column is
nearly square ; below this is a lotus-bud capital inverted, then a
smooth shaft ; further down a ribbed undershaft, resembUng
many stems coalesced into one. Here, too, the ugly mud waUs
of modern denizens have filled up most of the intervenmg
spaces. Still further to the south are the remains of large
chambers, with waUs of Cyclopean architecture ; these seemingly
represent what once was a sanctuary with inner apartments,
perhaps for the priests; above, and overlooMng these, stands a
straggling brick house, once tenanted by a French Vice-Consul,
now the residence of Lady Duff- Gordon. Its court-yard is full
of statues coUected among the adjoinmg ruins on either side the
river and brought hither ; some are of hard gramte, rose or
black, and remarkable for the polish of their execution, dog and
cat-headed figures, or sleepy human shapes.
The entire collection has since, I am told, been housed in the
National Museum at Boulac.
Eeturning to the north, a space equal about to that which we
have just traversed is crowded with small peasant buildings,
mounds of decomposed brick, a mosque, an Arab school, and
other like constructions, all mixed up with, and in great measure
concealing, stone walls, pillars, MeroglypMcs, and even entire
rooms belonging to the old building. Fully to make out and
understand their original plan, half a vUlage would have to be
cleared away. But on an open piece of ground in front rise the
two thick and slanting piles of masonry that form the
Propylseum ; and what was once the main temple entrance lies
between them. At a little distance aside, towers the one
remaining decorative obelisk ; the other less happy in fate, is
degraded to a gewgaw ornament of the " Place de Concorde " at
Paris. Eight before the Propylseum three gigantic statues,
breast-deep in sand and vUlage dust, with faces brutally
mutilated, still keep watch; their fourth brother has dis
appeared. Such are the principal ruins of Luxor, in proportion and style

A VISIT TO UPPER EGYPT AND THEBES. 95
one of the most favourable specimens left us of old, prse-Ptolemaic
Egyptian arcMtecture. But it is also one of those in most
imminent danger of total destruction ; for the Nile, whose strange
vagaries are here absolutely uncontrolled, is daily and hourly
eating away the eastern bank, on which it stands. Its date and
Mstory are weU luiown ; they reach back to the dim, almost
prse-Mstoric glories of a memorable past. But even now its
stately colonnades, its massive walls, its pyramidical Propylseum
and lonely obelisk, standing out all black above the Nile shore
against the shining morning sky, or reddened into fire by the
western sun, have a strange dead beauty, belonging not to other
ages only, but almost to another world.
From Luxor to Karnak our cavalcade — for we are all of us on
horseback, learing donkeys to Cofts, effendis, and travellers — ¦
leads a short mUe northwards through fields and stunted
vegetation, for here the ground is too high to be fully reached
by the vivKying waters of the Nile, that only life of Egypt.
Now we are close under the most colossal structures of man's
world, the Pyramids themselves scarcely excepted. Let us
approach them in succession. First to the south, and leaving
just on one side the miserable hovels of the modern half Bedouin
¦rillage, we traverse a thick-set avenue of SpMnxes ; each holds
a small human figure between its mutUated fore-paws ; monsters
and men are all aUke decapitated. Passing these we come on
the southern portal, a structure fuU seventy feet in height, and
belonging, I am informed, to the dwindling epoch of the
Ptolemies, when the primal Egyptian idea of beauty and eff'ect
had in great measm-e been lost, and that of colossal size alone
remained. Like most Nile monuments, whether of the earlier
or later dynasties, it is covered with huge insculptured figures
of kings and gods, gods and kings, besides smaller hieroglyphics
ad infinitum ; but every semblance of a face whether human or
bestial has in almost every instance been carefully erased, a
barbarism by some ascribed to Christian, by others to Mahometan
rio-orism, and not improbably due to both. Of the outer wall,
connecting this gate ¦with the others, little is left ; but what still
remains consists of huge stone blocks, without clamps, cement,

ULYSSES.

or other assurance of stability than their own perfect adjustment
and great weight.
At some distance further on, and witMn what once was an
inclosure, stands the first temple : its courts and chambers are
disposed on the one unvarying plan, common to all such
structures in conservative, prse-Eoman Egypt ; its sculptures
indicate various gods, kings too, amongst whom the ever-
recurring Eameses, First, Second, or Third, is conspicuous ; by
good fortune, one of Eameses II.'s best bas-relief portraits, a
delicately-featured, almost feminine face, has remained un
scathed. The style of the building, earlier in date by far than
that of the subsequently affixed portal, is massive and imposing,
though with little attempt at ornament or grace.
• But the wonder of Karnak is the so-called Palace^ — it may
have been, and indeed, I incline to think, was in fact a tribunal
haU, or some kind of public meeting-place — next beyond. The
entrance, looking west, passes between gigantic wedge-shaped
walls of solid masonry, each even now, when half buried in Nile
deposit, rising to some forty to fifty feet above the ground level.
Their thickness is truly enormous ; on one side of the inner
entrance the savans of the French republican armies of 1798
have carved, high up, names, dates, and astronomical observa
tions ; a sUght intellectual scratch, the lesser man, on the massive
features of a giant ancestry. Passing on, we come on a vast
open court, traversed by a double range of columns proportioned
to the space they occupy, but most broken ; shivered statues,
granite hewn, guard the second gate, whence we enter the
wondrous hall, a forest of huge pillars, for an approximate idea
of which I must refer to pictures, photographs, and, but in
second rank, ex-prof esso descriptions ; yet, after aU, it must be
seen to be rightly appreciated, if even thus. Once this hall was
roofed in, and several of its stone rafters still lie athwart,
connecting the cumbrous capitals ; the centre and -wider passage
was surmounted by a second or upper story, and must have
attained full a hundred feet in height from floor to roof. Walls
and pillars are covered with hieroglyphics and figures, some of
tolerably good finish ; but their general effect is detrimental.

A VISIT TO UPPER EGYPT AND THEBES. 97
because they are without order or arrangement. Each succeeding
monarch or high priest cut his emblem or likeness, Ms dog-
headed or hawk-headed god, as fancy took him ; some even
carved their symbols over the work of their predecessors, Uke
Ul-bred travellers scratcMng names and commonplaces on an
edifice, or advertising placards, over-plastering each other on a
waU. Every outlme, every stone, every sculpture bears witness
to vast despotic power, excessive superstition, and defective
taste. The one redeeming feature is the idea of strength — never,
perhaps, carried further by man as buUders — and of its correlative
quaUty, abidance. They bmlt for eternity, and they obtained
what they built for.
Beyond the hall, and continuous with the great central
avenue, wMch traverses it from west to east, we come on a
chaos of rmns, tumbled blocks, and fragments of statues, from
amid wMch emerge, fresh and upright as on thefr first day,
two noble granite obelisks; the loftier of the two monoliths,
itself indeed the loftiest of its Mnd in the whole world,
measures, base and aU, some ninety feet in height. A strange
contrast, close at its foot, lies the wreck of a colossal effigy
hewn out of similar material ; its destruction, wMch must have
been a work of labour and time, was doubtless provoked by
its human form. These, and their duplicates now gone — for
obeUsks and everythmg else in the Palace seem to have been
symmetrically double — formed the centrepiece of the great
edifice. Follows to the east a wilderness of tumbled walls and
columns ; among them, and better preserved than the rest, is a
smaU nor inelegant temple, once used or abused as a Coftic
church, where uncouth saints are daubed over, and haK conceal
uncouth gods ; further on stand some pseudo-caryatid pUlars of
a kind not uncommon in Egyptian architectm-e. Last and
alone, for the side-waUs have fallen into mere heaps, a gigantic
Q-ate the eastern, marks the outer circmt ; through and on either
side of its span glitters a fair extent of fields and villages, tall
palms and tufted acacias; and far off the jagged mountain
range that Mdes from view Koseyr and the Eed Sea. Three
almost simUar hUl-peaks here seen in close conjunction earned
H

98 ULYSSES.

of old for the town at their base a dedication to the Egyptian
Trinity, or quasi-Trinity, in whose honour it still retains the
name of Thot.
WitMn the ruins of Karnak are many objects of great, but
rather of antiquarian, than of artistic interest. Yet even this
latter is claimed by the portrait, for such it is, of Cleopatra ;
her full-lipped voluptuous face may be seen any day reproduced
among the too famous danciag-gfrls and prostitutes of Upper
Egypt. Around one of the inner courts also bas-relief sculpture
images, not unsuccessfully, fruits, flowers, plants, birds and
beasts. Amid these last, a bull vrith three horns, doubtless a
very sacred personage in his day, makes a conspicuous figure.
But, after all, the great wonder of Karnak is Karnak itself,
taken as a whole. Eightly to appreciate it, one should climb,
as I did, on one of its lofty though ruinous walls, and look
down and around on its wilderness of columns, standing,
leaning, or prostrate, on its shattered masonry in huge riven
masses, its dark vaults, lofty gates, and Propylsea, its still
towering obelisks, and vast extent of ruin. The sight reminded
me most of some published views of old Yucatan ; only Karnak
is on a vaster scale. Egyptian antiqmty differs, too, from
Mexican in the total absence of vegetation, whether independent
or parasitic, amongst its stones ; no creepers, no ivy, not so
much as a moss or Uchen, clothes the dry bones of the dead past.
We -wiU now return to Luxor and the steamer, take the jolly
boat, and cross the river. Long before we reach the western
bank, our boat sticks fast in the mud, and the soldier-saUor
crew have to carry us on shore as best they may ; we reach thus
a low shelving beach, lately left dry by the diminished stream,
and planted with melons. We mount our horses, cross what
will be four months hence, when old NUe is at the fuU, a large
island, and redescend to traverse the now waterless bed of a
second branch of the river. Here a large buU buffalo charges
our party full tilt ; then bounds away, tossing Ms ugly head, as
a negro of om- crew gaUops fiercely against him, and gives him
the contents of a double-barreUed fowling-piece, only loaded,!
regret to say, wfrh small shot. Half an hour's ride more to the

A VISIT TO UPPER EGYPT AND THEBES. 99
north-west, through rich fields, mostly unreaped for want of
hands — a want too often felt in Upper Egypt, whence conscrip
tion, Vice-Eegal factories, and the other many claims of a
modernised, centralised, and unsympathetic government have
drained off no insignificant portion of the population — brings us
to a grove of the once famUiar friend of my wandering days,
the Arabian tamarisk or " Ithel," here called " Athel." Through
its feathery branches we descry the fapade of the Temple of
Kornah, so named from the neighbouring village, which in turn
derives its appellation from the precipice under which it stands.
Kornah means " horn," a word expressive of the bold and
precipitous character of the rock itseK. The temple resembles
in arcMtectural detaUs that of Luxor, but surpasses it m an
almost Doric dignity of proportion united with simplicity ; it
seemed to me almost the most favourable specimen bequeathed
us by the buUders of ancient Egypt. Its date refers it to one of
the earUer dynasties.
We could now see far off in the plain on our left, and against
the background of the yellow mountain-side, the dark outUnes
of Medinat-Haboo, of the Eamesseum, of Deyr and its vaults,
and the great twin statues of Greek-named Memnon. But
beMnd the mountain of Kornah, at a distance of tMee miles, or
rather more, lie the famous " Abwab-el-Molook," — ^UteraUy,
" Gates of the Kings," and, in fact, their tombs. Now, in the
torrid May season of Upper Egypt, it was a matter of some
importance for us to -risit this spot, the most distant of all,
and to return thence, before noon-day, the more so that the
road tMther lies amid bare rocks, wMch reflect the sun's rays
like a reverberating furnace. Eemounting— for I had aUghted
to sketch the temple, and my companions to rest-^we tmned
our horses' heads towards the western mountain, and soon
entered on the winding gorge.
This valley, or rather cleft, is mdeed natm-al m the main,
but Egyptian art has done much to render it what it now is ;
projecting rocks have been cut away, the slope has been
levelled, and in some places the entire face of the mountain
shaved off, — partly, it would seem, for appearance sake, partly
H 2

foo ULYSSES.

to -widen the passage. Here was doubtless of old time a
fashionable promenade for the inhabitants of the neighbouring
capital, a favourite lounge or drive when some anniversary
suggested a general -risit to the cemetery, or when the Turanian
propensities of the native races, K Mr. Ferguson's mgenious
generalisations have weight, might lead them in accordance
-with the prevaUing ancestor-worsMp of their kin, to make the
tombs of their dead a customary resort. The dry monotony of
desert rocks Uke these, the sUence and the bare sterUity of ages,
better set forth the grandeur of death than all the mean, often
absurd and degrading paraphernaUa of undertakers, funeral
trappings, and mortuary rites. For whatever the cause, here
ditary or other, it is certain that the awesome image of Death,
beautified though it was by the trutMulness of the almost con
temporary Hellenic mind into the Ukeness of repose, or veiled
under that of a passing nor whoUy unhopeful separation, or
hidden away amid the slight ashes of the funeral pyre, or even
boldly transformed into the exuberance of ever-renovate Ufe,
stood forth in all the repulsive horror of its strictly phenomenal
aspect before the deep but narrow Egyptian mind; a ghastly
ending to this life; a terrible portal to a retributive future.
Hence the continual endeavour to keep in prominent view that
which Nature herself, wiser than her over-wise cMldren, so
promptly, in some instances so absolutely, removes from actual
sight; and hence the death - memorials of the Upper NUe,
rivalUng almost in massiveness and size, wMle surpassing in
pertinence of character, the pyramid pUes and labyrinthine
catacombs of Lower and lesser Egypt. For to the Egyptian of
Thebes, even more than to him of Memphis or Bubaste, death
was not merely the end of life, it was its purposed goal, nor its
goal merely but its retribution ; an ideal too faithfully trans
mitted, not transmuted, from the Thebais to Western asceticism,
and destined for a time to rule with tyrannic sway over the
European and more especially over the Teutonic mind, not less
absolutely than once over the Egyptian ; and to give to the noon
of Christianity itself a tinge of gloom alien the most part from
the cheerful promise of its brighter and healthier dawn.

A VISIT TO UPPER EGYPT AND THEBES. loi

Such were, at least in substance, my reflections as we rode
up the valley of Tombs, to where opens out the Mghway that
leads on by four days of westerly track to the Great Oasis, a
region now seldom visited, and itself the portal to further and
still less explored regions, Darfoor and Central African. The
route is, I am assured, safe from any danger unless what
tropical Natme herself occasions to the African traveller; the
scarcity of water hereabouts ridding the wayfarer from the
apprehension of Bedouins, whUe the black races further on, if
unprovoked into hostUity, are of aU unciviUsed men the least
unfriendly to the stranger.
But an expedition of this kind had no place vritMn our more
Umited programme; so, leaving the open road aside, we con
tinued to thread the rock-avenue of "Abwab-el-Molook," to
where it termmates in a mountain-hewn cul-de-sac, the cemetery
itseK. Piles of rubbish, the tokens of recent excavation, and
the sure though slow processes of time, have rendered the
original rock-disposition of the space round and mto which the
tombs are hewn but half- discernible. It is a -wide amphi
theatre, formed by a depression in the mountain, partly natural,
partly artificial. One after another small square entrances show
themselves in the rock; each leads do-wn to inner chambers
hewn out for a great distance, where the dead once reposed;
once only, alas ! for Persian fury, Greek curiosity, Coftic bigotry,
Arab fanaticism or greed, and last, but not least, on the muster-
roll of unbidden guests, the European tourist or antiquary, have
left but few undisturbed tenants ; a sad result of so much pains
to remain in hidden quiet.
The tomb of Ehameses II. is a fair sample of what one meets
-with, more or less, in all the rest. It offers a square-hewn
passage of ten or twelve feet each way, gradually descending
into the mountain, with on either side small apartments com
municating -with the central gaUery ; then foUows a large hall,
or divan, supported on pUlars; after this comes a second and
more rapid descent, with another hall, more apartments, and
passages, blocked up at the further end. The waUs are every
where painted with emblems, the interest of which can scarcely

102 ULYSSES.

be overrated. These paintings, for the exclusion of outer-air
infiuences rendered the labour of carving here unnecessary,
have, with scarce an exception, reference to one of three tilings
— namely, either to the land of Egypt itself, its river and
produce, or the Dirine protection afforded to its kings and
rulers, or to the state of souls after death. These tMee
topics are handled in illustrations which bear in every line,
every shape, the impress of tMee corresponding principles,
namely, serfdom, absolute • monarchy, and retribution to come.
The cowed attitudes of the labourers, their groupage, in bands,
each presided over by an official twice the ordinary human size,
a feature of frequent occurrence in mediseval, though, I think,
rarely or never in classic Greek or Eoman art, thefr very
uniformity of dress and feature, aU indicate, if not slavery, at
least forced labour and serfish dependence. MeanwMle the
kings, huge m stature and portrayed in the most gorgeous
colours, are never -without some equally gay and prseter-human
genius at thefr side ; while a caressing attitude, and an out
stretched hand, imply patronage, while yet admitting a certain
fraternity of relation between the kmg and the god. Louis
XIV. or James I. might have directed the artist of such groups,
perhaps rewarded.
But the most frequent topic here is "that undiscovered
country from whose bourn no traveUer," at least in the ordinary
course of things, returns; no undiscovered country, however,
to Egyptian imagination. There the God of Justice presides,
the soul is presented, weighed in scales wMch the Michael of
Gothic imagery not rarely borrowed in after times; then
received in Elysian seats and divine society, or transformed into
a swine, and handed over to tormentors, orthodox devils -with
hooks and crooks, fit ministers of the wrath to come. Even the
descent of the corpse into the tomb, painted along the sides of
the very gallery by wMch it actually passed, is opposed by
black serpents and wicked things : a not wholly unsMKul hmt
of death-bed terrors anticipative of a final, though for a king
at least, we may hope a favourable judgment. Further
analogies -vrith not a few dogmatic accessories of Christianity

A VISIT TO UPPER EGYPT AND THEBES. 103
are possibly traceable ; nor is it. periiaps, unworthy of notice,
that the conventional sign of divine and regal power — the two
are synonvmious m the Egyptian, as m the Stuart school — is
everywhere a cross.
The colours are generaUy fresh, and m thefr shades and
combinations alone does good taste aUen else from the subjects
themselves and thefr pictorial outlines aUke, find a refuge. In
these tombs, among other reUcs of old Thebes, I saw the traces
of those famous mutUations wMch have occasioned so ^iolent
an outcry against the German Professor Lepsius and Ms
associates; an unjust outcry; for the occasional removal of a
piece of pamting or sculptiue for transfer to a national iluseum
is a proceeding blamed by no nation where thefr- own museums
or professors are concerned. And K, in com-se of the removal,
more damage has chanced than might seem in exact proportion
vrith the object attained, -we in particular shoidd not forget to
look at home, and at the Elgin Marbles. The forgery of new
MeroglypMcs and inscriptions is a much more serious charge,
and one from wMch I know not whether the learned Doctor has
ever obtained a satisfactory acqmttal.
Emerging from sepulcMal gloom into the universal glare of
the nud-day sun on yeUow rocks, we rode back by the way on
wMch we had come, and then turmng to the right kept under
the immediate slope of the mountain, between it and the Nile-
plain, passed the hovels of modern Kornah and countless
sepulcMal excavations in the rocks above, tUl we reached the
Ehamesseum where it stands near the cUff, -with about two
mUes of level between itseK and the river. Luxor is almost
exactly opposite, on the east ; and the two seated colossi, well
known to fame and photograpMsts, are on a Une between.
TMs Ehameseeum, or rather what remams of it — for it is a mere
frat^ment — is a temple commemorative, it would seem, of great
victories acMeved by Egyptian arms m Palestine and Syria. It
faces the east, and is stUl guarded by its soUd and slantmg
Propylseum, much of wMch is faUen into shapeless heaps, but
more is yet standing. Westward some fifty yards begins the
temple, its portico supported on pUlars of Egyptian massiveness,

104 ULYSSES.

their almost disproportionate bulk being yet further enhanced
by hea-vy caryatides affixed to thefr outer side. On the wall of
the portico is outlined rather than sculptured Ehameses Mmself,
colossal in a colossal war-chariot, and -with an equaUy colossal
bow in his hand ; before Mm, figure above figure in a defiance of
perspective that a Chinese might en-vy, are his victorious troops
and their conquered enemies, the latter tumbled head over heels, .
some into the quasi-hieroglyphical wa-vy Une that in monuments
of this kind invariably does duty for water, some under the
horses' hoofs. On either side of the battle chariots are the order
of the day ; one Syrian figure only is mounted on horseback. The
temple stands just beyond ; its sculptures are decidedly superior
in workmanship to those of the portico : one elaborate bas-reUef,
in wMch a god feeds Ehameses from the tree of immortaUty,
displays a design and execution not unworthy of the subject.
All the numerous portraits of Ehameses show us the same
handsome and beardless youth, with features almost feminine,
and of a much more delicate type than belongs to the average
Egyptian countenance, whether past or present. I have, how
ever, rarely observed faces of the sort, both as to outUne and
expression, among the Berbers, — that curious race, now-a-days
denizens of the Nile Valley between Upper Egypt and Nubia
Proper, and dissimilar equally from Coft and from negro in
lineaments as in character ; men of marked character, harsh and
proud, narrow-minded but firm, unsympathetic in the main,
but from among whom rulers might arise — rulers at least of
whom some tyrant-dynasties of the Italian renaissance may
afford the lowest, as a Ehameses or a Sesostris the highest type ;
barren lords, good for conquerors and task-masters, useless for
all else. Eight m front of the temple, amid fragments of its
lesser black-porphyry brethren, Ues the wreck of that unparal
leled granite colossus, once Ehameses, now a well-nigh disper-
sonified mass. I measured its mutUated toes; they were five
feet and a half across ; judge, then, of the entire statue ; and
this, throne and all, cut of one solid block, polished too. How
the monarch who caused it to be put up to Ms honour and glory
Uved long enough to have this monster effigy of Ms he-wn out of

A VISIT TO UPPER EGYPT AND THEBES. 105
the iron quarries of Assouan, brought hither, carved, perfectioned,
furbished and set up, or, dying first, found successors able or
careful to complete it, is a difficult problem. Scarce less a
problem is it who can have tMown it down, who broken it up ;
a thousand steam sledge-hammers would seem insufficient to the
task. There it lies, retaining just shape enough to show what it
was, and where man's spite has faUed to deface, perfect in finish
as thousands of years ago ; the ground far away is over-strewn
-with its boulder fragments.
We sat under the black shadows of the portico — Egyptian
shadows, doubtless from the contrast of the dazzling sunlight
around, seem darker than any I have seen elsewhere, — and made
om- noonday meal, Arab fashion. I leave my companions to
talk or sleep, and roam for two good hours of intense sun among
the rmns, sketcMng and earning melancholy thoughts and a bad
head- ache. At last day declines westward, and we remount our
horses, on our way to -risit the remaining great group of ruins
kno-wn by the name of " Medinat-Haboo."
This Ues at no great distance from the Ehamesasum south
wards, but is almost Mdden from view by ugly black masses of
earth and mouldering brick, the reUcs of what was once a
viUage of evU fame, a haunt of river-thieves and outlaws, till
Mohammed- Alee destroyed it and scattered its cut-throat inhabi
tants. A long curved ridge in the plain further down towards
the river marks the site of the ancient Theban hippodrome,
where Ehameses himself in his days of pride may have guided
his own triumphal car ; but the construction, though evidently
m great part remaining, has not yet been cleared out.
" Palace of the Ptolemies ; " such at least is the name given to
the vast mass of buUding before us, which is really in the main
a temple belonging with its adjuncts to the same order of things
as Karnak, and which in any other neighbourhood might well
rank as colossal. But to the Ptolemies, or their age, it owes
only some paltry additions, such as a very meagre Propylseum
and entrance, -with some colonnades and chambers, dwarfish in
proportion and mean in material, recaUing to mind the~ sham
Egyptian Hall of PiccadUly, or Eegent's Park frontages, were

io6 ULYSSES.

they on an Egyptian, not a Greek model. For here, no less
than there, an ill-advised imitation has given the failure, not the
success, of what it professes to represent. But beyond these we
find, upright yet in the eternity of their strength, courts,
chambers, piUars, and statues, aU of almost exaggerated massive
ness, and affording much for admiration, though not, it may be,
for sesthetic pleasure. The sculptures engraved on the waUs are
especially curious. Amongst these a lion-hunt reminds one of
similar representations at Nineveh ; the Uons are very fierce,
and the Pharaohic monarch transfixes them -with arrows at the
unsportsman-like distance of a yard or so ; then ccnies a com
pUcated sea-fight, in which the sMps are the only inteUigible
indication that the affair is not on dry land. Much more
remains to be dug out at Medinat-Haboo, and probably wUl so
remain tUl a better age confers on Egypt that desired of aU
lands, but attained by few, a good government, perhaps a nation
ality vigorous enough in its present to take pride m and care
for its past. Utinam !
Last we visited the double statue of Ehameses, called, or
miscaUed, of Memnon ; it belongs to the great central avenue
which once traversed the capital from Luxor to the Ehamesseum,
due east to due west. Karnak must have formed the north
eastern angle of the great square, and Medinat-Haboo the south
western : a diagonal line connecting them would pass through
the double colossus, which seems to have occupied the central
point of the city. At the north-western angle the Temple of
Kornah marks where the high-road to the royal cemetery quitted
the city and entered the mountains.
Luxor, Karnak, Kornah, Ehamesseum, Medinat-Haboo, and
the intervening ruins, all belong to one and the same mighty
city, the Thebes of Egypt. WitMn historical memory the
ground on which they stand was yet one, not bisected as now ;
for the Nile, instead of flowing west of Luxor and Karnak, thus
separating one half of ancient Thebes from the other, followed a
much more easterly course, nearer to the mountains on the Eed
Sea side, leaving the western Libyan plain wide and unbroken.
Indeed, it is said, though I think the chronology must be

A VISIT TO UPPER EGYPT AND THEBES. 107
somewhat at fault, to have adopted its present direction only
two centuries since. Now plougMng up as it does the mid-level,
and wandering at random among the ruins, it undermines some,
silts up others, and will probably sweep not a few clean away ;
Luxor, it is to be feared, among the first. Yet though old NUe
MmseK, forgetful of Ms trust, take part with the destroyers, and
Saturn-Uke, devour his own offspring, ages incalculable to man
must pass before Ehameses and his brethren forfeit the eternity
they have conquered from time by Titanic labour, and fore
thought wortMer of demigods than of men.
The situation of Thebes, as the river formerly ran, was
admirably adapted for a capital of the time ; a noble plain, than
wMch is no vrider or richer in Upper Egypt, constantly refreshed
by the free play of the -winds from north, east, and west, closed
in southwards only ; while direct land communications lead on
the one side to Koseyr, that ancient harbour and deposit of
Arab commerce, and on the other to the great oasis of the
" Wah," once called of Jupiter Ammon, and thence right on to
Central Africa : north and south passes the great ever-open road
of the mighty Nile. We should remember that in the days,
those ancient days, when Thebes fiourished, the staple trade of
Egypt lay almost exclusively with Africa and Arabia ; nor was
it tiU a much later date that Greek influence and the growing
importance of the Mediterranean coast, brought the capital down
towards the Delta, and ultimately fixed it at Alexandria on the
northern shore. But Greece only entered Egypt to degenerate
herseK, and to hurry on the degeneration of Egypt in turn ; the
earliest days of the NUe valley were undoubtedly the best.
We, that is the Commission of which I made a part,
remained at Luxor about a fortnight, cross-examining -witnesses,
verifying documents, and the like. Hard work, and rendered
stiU harder by the character of those with whom we had to
deal — that most shuffling, mean-spirited, and unsatisfactory race
of men, the " fellahs " of Egypt. True, they have in past time
if indeed that time be wholly past so far as they are concerned,
been sorely misused and oppressed; true also that they have
in common -with most Asiatics, of whom they are the half-

io8 ULYSSES.

cousins, after a fashion, though near, aU too near akin to
African coarseness and savagery, a certain superficies of good
qualities wMch renders thefr- intercourse tolerable whUe,"from
outside to outside," in Arab pM-ase, — that is, so long as no
business is concerned, and within the mere interchange of social
or conventional poUteness. But no sooner does an interest
enter, a hope, a fear, than adieu to aU shadow of truth, fair-
deaUng, or manUness of any sort soever. Great, too, I regret to
say, is their stupidity — not for notMng is the ass the archseo-
tjqDical animal of Egypt ; in obstinacy, too, the " fellah " much
resembles the above-named quadruped, or surpasses. On such
materials had we to labour from morning to night ; happy
when, out of an entire day's investigation, we had extracted,
unvrittingly or unwillingly, so far as our informants were
concerned, a single grain of truth.
While at Luxor we celebrated — ^I say " we," identKying
myself for the nonce -vrith my Arabo-Turkish companionsMp —
the " Korban-Beyram," that great annual festival commemo
rative of Abraham's well-known offering, or rather non-offering
—that Islamitic tradition substitutes Ishmael for the BibUcal
Isaac, my readers are aU, doubtless, aware — a festival the
celebration of wMch images over the entfre Mahometan world
what is passmg at Mecca at that very hour. It is the being
present at Mecca and there joining in this festivity, called in
Arabic " 'Eyd-ed-Doheyya," or " Feast of the Victims," or better,
" ofthe forenoon sacrifices," that, in conjunction -with its preceding
vigU of " Wakfat-' Arafat," i.e. station of 'Arafat, confers on the
visitant of the sacred city the authentic title of " Hajjee " or
pilgrim. If he perform his Mecca-ward journey at other
times of the year, it is no longer " Hajj," i.e. " pilgrimage," but
simply " Zee' arah," or " visit."
In company with Lady Duff Gordon I attended the festival
celebration, there to -vritness a scene very imposmg when well
gone through, wMch in this case it unfortunately was not.
The worshippers were drawn up in two long Unes on an open
plot of ground, where every Tuesday a fair used to be held,
according to the custom generally adopted from Diar-Bekir to

A VISIT TO UPPER EGYPT AND THEBES. 109
Yemen, by wMch each several riUage becomes, in weekly,
monthly, or yearly rotation, the centre of traffic for a con
siderable circumference. Behind was the common cemetery,
unwaUed, irregular, and shamefully neglected — this customary
state of things in rural Egypt, where the "feUahs" are over
brutaUsed in Ufe to feel the indecency of dishonour in death,
though indeed of quasi-reUgious veneration regarding their dead
they have enough and to spare. Eight in our faces glittered the
mormng sun ; for the relative position of Luxor and Mecca
brings the Kibleh, or compass-point of prayer, for the former
Uttle south of due east.
We posted ourselves to the rear of the assembly, as to take up
position in front of the prayer-Unes might put the congregation
in danger of seeming to worship you instead of God, a serious
mistake, — and waited Uke everyone else the arrival of the
Hejjajees, a MgMy-respectable Luxor family, claiming descent
from a certain viUage-saint surnamed the Hejjaj ; his famUy
name and date I have forgotten ; indeed the entire individual,
no less than Ms pedigree, seemed to my mmd scarcely less
apocryphal than many a saint or hero of the popular opinion
elsewhere, whom, Heaven forefend, I should be so iU-mannered
as to mention. However, his tomb — that of the Luxor-Hejjaj I
mean — -with the sempiternal cupola over it, adjoins the mosque,
and to the saintly tenant prayers are made and vows offered
just as to any local hamlet-patron in any other viUage of any
other land. East or West, and with, I hope, equally satisfactory
results. His progeny, real or supposed, occupy a very high
place in Luxor veneration; from them Muftees, Khateebs,
Imams, Saints, &c., are selected at need; they take precedence
in pubUc solemnities, and, Uke all their tribe, receive presents.
Now, "ily a de la dignite d se faire attendre," — and our friends,
well knowing that they were sure to be waited for, took care not
to lose their privilege of arrivmg late. At last a howling sort
of chant, the identical tune, as I am informed on the best
authority, wMch the old cow died of, and which does duty on
all occasions from a marriage to a funeral, announced their
approach, Sheykh and all; they advanced procession-wise.

IIO ULYSSES.

bearing banners, red and green, embroidered -with the ine-ritable
"La Ilah Ula Allah," and took their place in the foremost
ranks. One of them, the " Khateeb," or Preacher of the day,
occupied the mid van ; and a canopy was extemporised for his
dignity from the clustered banners lately borne before him. A
large black stone, just retaining form enough to announce it for
the fragment of some old Egyptian Iring or god, had been
selected to serve as pulpit; and on this, after previously
shaMng it to test the stability of its equilibrium, the Khateeb
mounted, staff in hand, and began his say.
Now, in the discourse appropriate to the 'Eyd or feast, it is
customary for the preacher to arrange Ms sermon into a
recurrence of measured periods, each concluding -with the well-
known formula " AUaho Akbar," intoned in a sonorous voice :
whereon the whole assembly, like one man, are to take up the
burden, repeating in half chant, " AUaho Akbar, AUaho Akbar,
AUaho Akbar, w' la Hah Ula Allah ; AUaho Akbar, AUaho
Akbar, w' I'lUah el hamd." This recitative, breaking out at
frequent intervals from a great multitude, is imposing in the
extreme ; I have heard it often in crowded mosques, and never
without a thrill at the deep, united, concentrated belief it
impUes. But here at Luxor the effect was lamentably reversed,
neither Khateeb, though a born saint, nor congregation, kno-vring
how to go tMough it properly ; only an irregular buzz was to be
heard, -without time or measure ; whUe the words of the
preacher and the responses of the people were alike dro-wned in
the chattering, scolding, quarrellmg, and screecMng of the
women and cMldren, who, excluded by custom from direct
participation in the pubUc prayers, now grouped themselves
around with utter contempt of stUlness, reverence, or order;
whUe the men were some too qmck at thefr prayers and
prostrations, others too slow; an Irish scene altogether. At
last discourse and ceremonies came to an end, wMch the sun in
our faces, the dust in our eyes, and the cackUng in our ears had
made us long since desfre, and everybody jumped up, to wish
the Sheykh many happy returns of the day, and to obtain his
special benediction by kissing his hand. TMs manoeuvre our

A VISIT TO UPPER EGYPT AND THEBES. in
rillagers executed with such vehemence as to undo his turban,
discompose his robes, and still more his temper ; till the holy
man set about blessing them in right good earnest, but with his
stick, and returned each kiss of devotion by a loving cudgel-
thwack over the head. Not a whit did tMs proceeding shake
their faith, however, or diminish their reverence; the idol of
the "fellah" is as tough as Mmself; and beating is a divinely-
ordered law of the universe for either. To which conclusion
rightly drawn my readers may, if they care, add a second,
that wherever in course of the recent Mahometan "revival,"
Wahhabee doctrines and practices, or rather non-practices,
may prevail, they are not to be sought for among the peasants
of Upper Egypt.
The rest of the day passed in slaughtering the victims — each
household ought, in strict observance, to offer one, a sheep if
possible, but the poorer sort occasionaUy compromise with a
fowl — and next in eating them. A Bedouin kind of dish,
compounded of boUed meat and sopped bread, is first of all
served up on this day ; its fashion commemorates the habits of
those who first founded this solemnity, the Arabs of Arabia
proper, where boUing is the exclusive cuUnary preparation.

112 ULYSSES.

WEST INDIAN MEMOEIES:.
THB LEEWARD ISLANDS AND THE "BOILING LAKE."
This Essay, written during the time that I held the position of Her
Majesty's Consul at St. Thomas, "West Indies, in the year 1876, though
published at a somewhat later date, requires for its better understanding
a few preliminary remarks.
The allusions, explicit or other-wise, to the Philippine Islands, which find
place at the outset of the Essay and recur in its course, were due to my
having received, almost immediately after my visit to Dominica, the news of
my prospective appointment to Her Majesty's Consulate at Manila, whither
indeed I proceeded shortly afterwards.
Secondly : I would assure my readers that the " Napoleonic " procUvities
manifested in my notices of Martinique and the French AntUles have no
political significance whatever ; the respective merits of French forms of
government or partizanships never having been brought within the scope
either of my observation or opinion. Of what is best for Prance, a Frenchman
can alone be judge ; the verdict, however dogmatically enounced, of a foreigner
in this regard is not merely of no account, it is an impertinence. My own
attachment, a purely sentimental one, to the Imperial memory is simply due
, to much kindness and great favours received by myself from Napoleon III. at
a time when circumstances, wholly unconnected with the present writings,
allowed of his making and of my receiving such. Hence, whatever may have
been the errors of the Emperor, I have always cherished, with affectionate
gratitude, the memory of the Man, and, for his sake, of the Family ; and
always shall. But this is a merely personal consideration, a debt of private
gratitude, and has nothing whatever to do with poUtios or parties, whether
French or other.
Thirdly : subsequent to my visit to Dominica, two or three exploring parties,
as I have been informed, visited the " BoUing Lake " ; and a description of it,
confirmatory in every respect of my o-wn, appeared, I am told, in the Field.
But in 1880, that is only four years after the date of my original publication,
an earthquake, no rare occurrence among the Leeward AntiUes, is said to have
opened a rift in the basin of the lake, through which its waters escaped;
putting an end, and, it may weU be feared, an absolute one, to a truly

J VEST INDIAN MEMORIES. 1 13

wonderful and, so far as I know, unique phenomenon of Nature. I am aU
the more glad that I visited it in time.
The crescent-like series of West Indian Islands, somewhat
capriciously divided in official parlance, which here has followed
nautical designation, into "Windward" and "Leeward," or
more appropriately summed up together by the well-sounding
title of the " Lesser AntUles," is, after a fashion, antipodal to
the PhUippine group of the eastern hemisphere ; or, to put it
more geograpMcally, the two ArcMpelagos, Hispano-Malayan
and Caribbean, occupy opposite points of the chart on a lesser
circle of the globe, drawn some fifteen or sixteen degrees north
of the equator. Being now, so destiny has willed it, on my
long way from the one to the other, I cannot refrain from
speculating on what further circuinstances of opposition may
possibly exist between them, or from hoping that such circum
stances may be neither many in number nor essential in kind.
The PhiUppines are, by aU accounts, pleasant places, isles of
Eden, lotus-lands; but pleasanter, more lotus-bearing, more
Eden-like than are the West Indies, taken as a whole from
Jamaica to Trinidad, they can hardly be, or afford in their turn
brighter and better memories than those which three years of
the Caribbean Archipelago have, with few and insignificant
exceptions, stored away in my mind. True, indeed, that some
of the Lesser Antilles, our present topic, are in a manner less
desirable than others, because less favoured by nature or the
course of human events. Thus, for instance, Barbados, though
well peopled and highly cultivated, has no pretensions to
picturesque scenery of coast or inland ; wMle the Uttle Virgin
Islands, barren, abandoned, and hopeless, as they now unfor
tunately are, might not unsuitably exchange their original
denomination for that of the " Lone Spinster Islands," or the
" Old Maids " downright. Nor they only, but the entire north
ward lying group, formed by the adjacent Leeward Islands,
namely, Saba, Eustatius, St. Kitt's, Nevis, Antigua, and the rest,
may, with scarce an exception, be included in the same cata
logue of unproductive aridity.
Want of rain, a want now protracted over the space of nearly
I

114 ULYSSES.

twenty years, has, more than any other cause, -wrought among
them tMs desolation ; though to what adverse infiuence tMs
very want is to be attributed would be hard to determine. By
some the too reckless clearing of the original forests is incul
pated as the cause of drought, some ascribe it to a gradual
sliKting of the magnetic poles, and a corresponding declination,
north or south, of the tropical rain-belt itseK; others, again,
bring in a verdict of guUty against the frrepressible Gulf
Stream ; wMle others, with about as much plausibiUty, accuse
the sins of the people, the Colonial Office ; perhaps Sir
Benjamin Pine himseK and the Confederation. But -w^hatever
may be the cause, the effect is not less evident than disastrous ;
nor has any modern EUjah as yet appeared to dispel by prayer
or science the aU-too-stubborn drought of tMs Samaria of the
West. Poor grey islands, noble outUnes of mountain and vale,
stately blanks, unfilled by the varied detaUs of prosperity and
life ! Waist-deep they stand, thirsty and forlorn in the midst
of the unprofitable salt sea waters, vainly baring their parched-
up bosoms to the pitiless sky ; vviiUe far overhead the white
clouds, borne along hour after hour on the strong -wings of the
trade--winds, mock their want with an ever-renewed, ever-un-
fiUfiUed promise of rain, tUl, day by day, what was once green
pasture land parches up into brown, burnt-up stubble, gaunt
trees stretch out their once leafy boughs in the grey nakedness
of premature decrepitude, aud the valleys that in bygone years
waved with the golden green of the ripening harvest, now stretch
do-wn the lull slopes in pale yellow streaks of juiceless cane.
A melancholy sight ; let us leave it behind as we pass on
southward to better prospects and more cheerful lands.
The turning-point, so to express it, of the West Indian
climate, the Une that distingmshes the well-watered tropical
region from the arid sub-tropical gone, is for the present situated
about the latitude of Guadaloupe, a large and fertile, but in
more respects than one an ambiguous, island ; French in title,
liut Uttle visited by foreigners, and hardly better known to
the generality of Frenchmen themselves. Yet Guadaloupe, Uke

WEST INDIAN MEMORIES. nS
Martinique, has the advantage, if advantage it be, of a spokes
man in the person of a " Depute," sent by universal suffrage, or
what does duty for it, to tiie Eepresentative Chamber of VersaiUes,
where the West Indian members take their place, as I am told,
somewhere in the caudal portion of the Extreme Left. Nor, I
regret to say it, are the sentiments of the insular majority
wMch the Deputies represent a wMt more favourable to stability
or order, under whatever rule, than those of A'"ictor Hugo him
self ; a strange instance of what one of our deepest tlunkers has
justly caUed the " baffling " element in human nature. Here
are islands, fertile indeed, but diminutive as fertUe, on whose
behaK and for whose ad\-antage the great mother country has
lavished rather than spent, and still, even at the time of her
own greatest need, continues to lavish, sums that our own more
frugal government would find by much too costly, or rather
would never dream of finding at all, for the benefit of giant
Australia, New Zealand, or the Cape, -with all their dominions,
aU thefr- provinces. And yet, in return for its unbounded
UberaUty, the French Administration meets with little from its
subjects whether in Martinique or Guadaloupe, whether black
or coloured, but an unpopularity so decided that not all the
macMnery of French prefectures and " maiiies " can in election
time determine so much as a vote, much less a retm-n.
Some excuse for this wide-spread spirit of opposition may
indeed be found in the curious fact that the white lords of the
soil are, in spite of Frohsdorf manifestoes and the persistent
imbecility of the " UUes " and Henri V. even now (risum tenea-
tis amici), Legitimists almost to a man ; though a few, con
descending somewhat to the dictates of common sense, apolo
getically confess Imperialist propensities. On the other hand,
the coloured folks are -with equal or greater unammity, and
certainly more logic, EepubUcans, not to say Communists ;
¦whilp. the blacks, so far as their pMlosopMcal " live-and-let-
live " temperament permits their taking part on either side,
follow the lead of their more restless haK-brothers. Another
cause is to be found in the too general adoption, throughout two-
tlurds of the island, of the " Central Factory " system, the very
I 2

ii6 ULYSSES.

system so preconized by theorizing economists as the one great
panacea of aU West Indian ills. These factories have, however,
in their practical working not cured but rather intensified every
existing evU of the land, financial, poUtical, and social. It is
impossible in the limited space of the present Essay to enter
into the numerous and compUcated details of so vast a topic ;
enough to say, summarily, that these factories have deeply
disturbed the social balance of Martinique by degrading the
independent planter-proprietor, the typical monarch of the land,
into the relative inferiority of .a mere head farmer ; that they
have even more dangerously disarranged the political equili
brium by disconnecting the agricultural population and the
labourers at large from thefr traditional lords and leaders, and
massing them together instead into turbulent crowds of mere
factory workmen ; whUe the financial evUs of thefr causing,
amounting latterly to a real crisis, are due to a combination of
circumstances and results the investigation of which would be
better smted to the pages of a blue-book or a poUtical economy
treatise than to those of a pubUcation Uke tMs.
Nature, anyhow, is not here to blame. Martinique, with its
rich soil, its gentle slopes, its superabundant irrigation, its noble
harbours, is of all the Lesser Antilles the most natm-e-favoured,
a very emerald among inferior gems ; and when my French
hosts laugMngly asked me, as they often did, "What can
possibly have induced you to give tMs territory back to us, after
having once held it for your own ? " " Our inconceivable
ignorance, I suppose, and our blundering unvrisdom," was the
only plausible answer that I could make for om'selv^es. I should
also add, lest my preceding remarks on the political condition of
the island shoidd be taken in too absolutely and accordingly in
too depreciatory a sense, that the Martinique Creoles, coloured
or black, bear no unfavourable comparison -with the native-born
population of other West Indian colonies, either for energy,
capacity, or inteUigence ; and that the urbanity and general
refinement of taste and bearing wMch are, or, at least, till quite
recently were, admittedly the distingmsMng characteristics of
French society, on whatever side of the Atlantic, are by no

IVEST INDIAN MEMORIES. J 17
means wanting among the nationalized Frenchmen of the lovely
Josephine. The mention of this name reminds me how, during the tlu-ee
weeks that the courtesy of my French hosts detained me a
-wilUng Ungerer in their pleasant companionship, I enjoyed the
long-vrished-for opportunity of visiting the birthplace of the bride
of the First Napoleon, and the ancestress of our talented though
unfortunate friend and aUy, the late French Emperor. On the
southerly side of the noble " Fort de France " bay, and witMn
the Umits of the " La Pagerie " estate, stands, or rather stood, at
no great distance from the coast, the pretty Uttle dweUing-house
of " L'Hermitage," where the Taschere famUy long resided,
preferring, it seems, the picturesque seclusion of the spot to the
UveUer but more exposed neighbourhood of " La Pagerie " and
the " Trois Islets." The dwelUng-house itself, the home of the
\ autKul Creole's chUdhood, has, alas, disappeared ; and a few
foundation traces yet risible among the mango-grove that
nestles in the slope of the green vaUey just where it rises up
wards to the abrupt volcamc heights of " Montagne la Plaine "
beyond, are all that remains to tell where it once has been. But
the future empress herself was not born there. Somewhat lower
do-wn in the ravine, close by the torrent that of old times
supplied water to the sugar-mUl, stood and yet stands the old-
fasMoned factory or boiling-house, strongly buUt, and sheltered
from the chances of weather by steep banks on either side.
Hither JosepMne's mother, then afready in labour, was carried
for safety when the hurricane of 1761 threatened every less
solidly constructed tenement with ruin ; and here, in an upper
room, now floorless, and open to the outer air on ev^ery side,
Napoleon's good star rose on the world. To me, not being a
French poUtician, and accordingly not incapable of appreciating
the splendours, however blurred by faults and failures, of the
most brilliant dynasty of our age, it was a marvel to see a spot
possessed of such interest, and worthy of such veneration, one
might have thought, to whoever had shared in some degree (and
what Frenchman did not ?) the glories and the gains of the
great empfre, abandoned as it now is to the neglect of absolute

1,8 ULYSSES.

forgetfulness, if not contempt. To keep the homely vault — it
is nothing more — in decent repair would not, I shoidd think,
have been too hea-vy an expense for the national treasury ; and
among the many monuments that throughout the dominions of
the Tricolor commemorate events or persons of far less impor
tance, surely a slab of marble might have been found to mark
the birthplace of Josephine, the ornament of the first, the parent
of the second empire.
Fortunately for herself, Martimque has, however, atoned in
some measure for her remissness at L'Hermitage by the
handsome statue of her imperial daughter that now occupies a
central position in the -vride tree-shaded " savannah " of Fort de
France. To what particular hand the workmansMp of the
statue is due, I know not ; but the execution is decidedly good,
and the beautKul features of the young general's bride are said
to have been faitMuUy reproduced in aU that art can transfer
from flesh to marble. Curiously enough, those features seem,
in the fulness of the lips, the gentleness of the eyes, and the
general outline of the face, to belong to that pecuUarly attrac
tive type in wMch a slight admixture of African blood gives to
its possessor that rounded voluptuousness of contour, no less
than that warmth of colour so often wanting in the purely
European Creole. Whether, as island tradition affirms, such
a umon was reaUy traceable in the Taschere famUy, or
whether, as European prejudice has anxiously proclaimed, the
ancestral origin always remained French, and French alone,
is a question difficult, if not impossible, to decide on merely
annalistic evidence. But if the statue at Fort de France bears
a trutM'ul resemblance to its original, there can, I tMnk, be
little doubt that to her other imperial titles the great empress
added that of consanguinity, however remote, -with the Nile-
Queens of old time, whose granite effigies still smUe in calm
serenity of power in the dim twiUght of the British museum, or
among the lone colonnades of Luxor and the Egyptian palms.
Midway between Martinique and Guadaloupe lies Dominica,
won, like the sister islands, from its former masters by the
sword, but, unUke them, retained beneath the conqueror's flag.

WEST INDIAN MEMORIES. 119

&

Little inferior in size to Martinique itself, it as much surpasses
it in its amazing picturesqueness of scenery as it falls short of it
in adaptability for general cultivation. Indeed, in the wild
grandem- of its to-wering mountains, some of which rise to five
thousand feet above the level of the sea ; in the majesty of it
almost impenetrable forests ; in the gorgeousness of its vegeta
tion ; the abruptness of its precipices, the calm of its lakes, the
violence of its torrents, the sublimity of its waterfalls, it stands
without a rival not in the West Indies only, but, I should think,
throughout the whole island catalogue of the Atlantic and Pacific
combined. But waterfalls and precipices are objects more
welcome to the artist than to the planter ; and the angles of
landscape beauty are not generally coincident with those of
agricultural productiveness: And so it comes to pass that of
the two hundred thousand acres that form the surface of Do
minica, scarcely one-tenth part, if even so much, is actually
under cultivation. The capital town, Eoseau, though a cheerful
and thriving place in its way, with its neatly-paved streets,
pretty cottages, gay gardens, and handsome CathoUc cathedral,
numbers less than five thousand inhabitants ; and the pleasant
orchard-embowered negro villages sprinkled here and there along
the coast have comparatively few counterparts amid the laby
rinth of rock and wood that forms the bulk of the island.
Yet human life, the one true meaning and summary of all
other sublunary life, the tongue and purport of this our earth,
and vrithout which rocks, trees, waters, skies, suns, however
" sweet and pleasant tilings," as the old temple-building monarch
of Jerusalem called them long ago, are, for all that, feeUngless
and dumb, is not absolutely wanting even in the inmost recesses
of the Dominican mountain-maze. Deep in emerald valleys,
hemmed in by ravine and precipice, overhung -with towering
tree-ferns and the glossy giant leaf of the wild plantain, moist
vrith the daily showers that suddenly sweep down like white
curtains from the dark and jagged heights overhead, to be as
suddenly followed by the hot sunshine of the cloudless blue
till every form of vegetable life springs up and flomishes in a
confused plenitude of beauty — even here in these seemingly

ULYSSES.

inaccessible Edens, glisten between rock and forest the scattered
huts, each with its little garden of half -reclaimed wilderness of
flower and leaf, wdiere live the wood-cutter, the charcoal-burner,
the negro cultivator, each with his sw^arming family, part and
parcel of the wild yet gentle nature around. Scenes where rises
the thought so old and yet so new, old as Hesiod, as Horace, as
Ebn Toghrai, recent as Goldsmith, as Cowper, as Wordsworth —
the thought disclosed in sudden gleams amid the fitful stormi-
ness of Byron, nor wholly unknown even to the artificial
existence of our own day, and its j^rophet, the bard of ' Locksley
Hall.' It is the thought that always abides, though it may not
be always perceptible, in the depth of every human heart that
has a depth, in every mind that is not mere surface and show ;
" were it not better -with me here than in the turmoil of events
and politics, in the restlessness of science and progress, in the
artificialities and conventionalities of civiUsed life ? Were there.
not here for me, in this wood-cutter's hut, in tMs garden shed,
" More enjoyment than in all this march of mind.
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind ? "
Vain thought ! Better it might be, perhaps, in itself ; but,
.better or not, it is not for thee. The same all-governing law, the
same absolute and ever-present decree which made that peasant,
that wood-cutter, what he is, and placed them one and all where
they are, that gave form and being to the rocks and forests
around them — the great eternal existence of which their indi
vidualized existences and thine are but the manifested temporal
expressions, admits no modification, no reversal of its ordinance,
allows no barter or exchange of the conditions it has determined.
Thou art what thou art, as they are what they are ; the sympathy,
be it never so deep, that draws thee from thy appointed place
may refer to a past or foreshadow a future mode of exist
ence : in tire present it is mere ineffectual longing, utterly vain.
Back, then, to the civiUsed and sociable life, with all its
kindnesses, all its littlenesses, that awaits us in Eoseau ; the
quiet island haven, where the daily ripples of pains and
pleasures, of ambitions and interests, of parochial victories and

WEST INDIAN MEMORIES.

district defeats, may well, e\-en when most agitated, pass for
absolute calm if contrasted with the great waves of the mighty
human oceans, called Continents, States, Kingdoms, Empires.
To one fresh, I will not say from Europe, but from Demerara,
Jamaica, or even Barbados, Dominica may stand for a symbol
of absolute quiet, of repose, of stillness, almost of sleep.
Yet when that clear-sighted observer of the surface of things,
A. Trollope, on his visit to Eoseau, describes the place as
dreamy, declining, nay, dead, he falls into an error which those
who take Mm for their guide — and in the majority of cases he
is a tolerably safe one — would do well to avoid. Neither
Dominica nor its capital can justly be described as unthriving,
or devoid of hope for the coming years. With a climate of
singular healthfulness, a rich volcanic soil, a copious rainfall,
an industrious and intelUgent population, and a surplus in the
insular treasury, the fortunes of the colony are already on the
rise ; and the cultivation of coffee, in which it formerly excelled,
and now has fortunately resumed, is a surer staff to lean on
along the road of success than the bruised, if not broken reed of
sugar. It was in Dominica, and Dominica alone of all West
Indian Islands, that my eye was gladdened by the sight of the
genuine, undegenerate coffee-plant of Yemen, a very diff'erent
shrub in leaf and general appearance, as in quaUty of produce,
from the ordinary growth. West or South African in its origin, I
believe, that constitutes the usual plantations of the West
Indies and Brazil. Every one knows how superior the Arabian
is in every respect to the South American berry ; and the
cultivation of the former, if rightly and intelligently carried
out, cannot fail to prove for Dominica a mine of prosperity and
wealth. Cocoa too flourishes here, or rather, were proper care
bestowed upon it, would flourish, scarce less vigorously than in
Trinidad itself ; the lime-groves of Dominica already rival those
of Montserrat ; vanilla finds nowhere else a more congenial
temperature or soil. Few, indeed, are the sources of well-being
common to the western tropics, sugar to a certain extent
excepted, that are -wanting to Dominica, or rather in which she
does not of herself abound and excel.

UL YSSES.

But it is not precisely vvith these topics that I have at
present to do, nor is there any great need for dilating on them
liere. The British West Indies, like the negroes who form
the bulk of their population, have no lack of panegyrists, or
of calumniators either, judicious or injudicious, truthful or
exaggerated, as the case may be ; and whoever lists may amuse
himself by balancing the ecstasies of Kingsley against the
cynicism of Trollope, and the Jamaica of the ' Quarterly Eeview '
against that of Dr. Greig and ' Eraser's Magazine.' To each man
his own opinion ; mine, after a tolerable amount of observation
and experience, is that, taking into account the many defects and
shortcomings to wMch everytMng under the moon, flesh or non-
flesh, is the natural and well-endowed heir, not least so perhaps
witMn the tropics, the British West Indies yet remain a pleasant
home to the colonist, a good investment to the capitalist, a
happy land (or lands, if you -vrill) to the native; that their
white population is, as a rule, right-minded and energetic, their
coloured classes clever and progressive, their blacks industrious,
orderly, and the very reverse of barbarous or Ul-disposed in any
respect. And Dominica, the first among the Lesser Antilles
for picturesque beauty, is by no means the last in the catalogue
of industry, productiveness, and prosperous hope.
And having said this much of the island in general, and
what it has in common with others of the Lesser AntiUes, I
-vrill now describe, or at least endeavour to describe, sometMng
it possesses, the like of wMch is certainly not to be found
elsewhere throughout the whole West Indian region, nor, so
far as I know, in any other region of the New World or the
Old ; I mean its " Boiling Lake."
Hot springs and boUing pools, some of tolerably large
dimensions, do indeed exist, and plenty of them in these as in
other latitudes. All down the range of the Antilles, from Saba
to Tobago, there is hardly an island but owns its " Soufriere,"
or solfatera ; the crater, it would seem, of some volcano whose
eruptive energy has by degrees dwindled into that milder form,
a specimen of which is famUar to the easy tourist of the
European continent at PozzuoU in the neighbourhood of

IVEST INDIAN MEMORIES. 123
Naples. Some of these soufrieres are wholly or almost extinct,
and have subsided into mere yellow-tinged ashpits, where
perhaps a scanty thread of light vapour, or a tepid spring, finds
its way through the surface, and witnesses to the expiring
embers of a slowdy dying fire below ; others again are still
active, and make a very creditable display after their fashion.
Thus, in the soufriere of St. Lucia, for instance, not far from the
celebrated " Pitous " of that island, the floor of the steep crater
is pierced by a dozen large hoUows, circular in form, and
varying from four to sixteen feet in diameter ; each over-boiling
furiously, one -vrith coal-black water, another with miU^y white,
a tMrd -with grey mud, a fourth with a mixture of all these;
while countless Uttle apertures, some barely an inch across,
send up steam or hot water in noisy jets, and have done so
vrithout material diminution or increase ever since the first
memories of the earliest colonists, full two centuries ago. In
Martimque, on the contrary, the only soufriere on duty — it is
situated among the slopes of the great extinct volcano, Mont
Pele — has of late years faUen half-asleep. But none throughout
the Caribbean Archipelago can riv^al either for extent or activity
the " Grande Soufriere " of Dominica ; and certainly none other
rewards its visitors with the wondrous spectacle of a " BoiUng
Lake." However, not the lake only, but the Soufriere itself, within
the cfrcuit of wMch it is situated, had remained aUke unvisited
and unseen though their existence was vaguely rumoured, for a
hundred years past or more. Several smaller and more accessible
soufrieres are scattered throughout this MgMy volcanic island ;
and they had often been explored, either out of mere curiosity,
or for hopes of such profit as the sulphur they contain might
afford ; a profit that but for the difficulties of transport might
in some instances be not inconsiderable.
But towards the south-east of the island there rises a mass of
abrupt forest-clad ridges, over wMch a w^Mte cloud ever hovers
night and day; or, if blown asunder for a few hours by the
strong trade-wind, soon reunites to brood as before over its
native haunt. The ascent of these summits, though more than

134 ULYSSES.

once attempted, had for seventy years at least remained unac
complished ; tradition only, speaking through an old French
description of the island, told of a large and activ^e " soufriere,"
nestled amid the highest ranges of the south side ; and added
that the hot and steaming " Sulphur river," whose milky waters
rush down crag and precipice to the Eastern Sea, close to what
was then called " Point Mulatre," or, now, Mulatto Point, took
its origin in a boiling lake, situated in the same mountain
region. But for a centui-y past, at least, not only had no
European succeeded in penetrating to this reported wonder ; no
negro charcoal-burner, however familiar with the " bush," had
pushed his rovings to the brink of the soufriere ; the Caribs
even — of whom a few families, with the instinctive shrinking
from civilisation and organised labour peculiar to their kind,
yet lead a secluded and savage life on the south-eastern coast,
not far from the banks of the Sulphur river itself — knew
nothing, or, at any rate, had notMng to say, of the lonely
region that towered above their abodes. A strong smell of
sulphur, that when the wind happened to be from the south-east,
reached the town of Eoseau itself, though at a distance of
fourteen or fifteen mUes in a straight line, alone gave witness
how huge must be the dimensions, how constant the activity of
the furnace whence it proceeded.
So matters stood when, on a January morning in 1875, an
exploring party, headed by two young and enterprising English
colonists — the one a district magistrate, the other a medical
practitioner — took on themselves the long-abandoned task of
verification or discovery. Abandoning the shorter, but imprac
ticable line of track that led up from the eastern coast, and
which had been already, but unavailingly tried, they \risely
determined to assail this stronghold of nature's wonders from
the easier slopes of the west, on vviiich side the distance was
greater, but the obstacles, as they judged, less insurmountable.
Their surmise was correct, and their safe return to Eoseau, after
three days' absence in the forest, brought with it the confirma
tion of the existence alike of the " Grande Soufriere " and the
" Boiling Lake," both of vv^hich they described as by far sur-

WEST INDIAN MEMORIES. 125
passing in extent and grandeur anything yet known in the West
Indies, though difficult and even dangerous of access, nor avail
able to any ends except those of curiosity, perhaps of science.
During a second visit, wiuch was effected some months later
than the first, the explorers discovered a somewhat more cir-
cmtous but easier line of approach, following which the most
dangerous and break-neck pass of the former route could be
evaded. On this, as on the former occasion too, the adventm-ers,
bivouacked in the depth of the forest, close to the soufriere
itseK, where they constructed an " ajoupa," or improvised wood-
hut, for shelter during the nights that had unavoidably to be
passed in tMs wild region.
The tMrd, and up to the present date the latest, expedition to
the " BoiUng Lake " w^as on the occasion of my own visit to the
island in the spring of the present year, when Dr. NichoUs, the
same young and energetic medical officer who had taken a
leading part in the two former expeditions, again proposed the
attempt, and undertook the organisation of the party. It in
cluded besides ourselves two other Englishmen — the one a
member of the " Colomal Bank " establishment, the other a son
of Mr. Eldridge, the deservedly popular administrator or pre
sident of the island, whose guest I had the good fortune to be at
the time. Both these companions were young, active, and
possessed of every quaUty, bodily and mental, that could be
requfred for an enterprise such as ours ; but they, like myself,
were unacquainted with the soufriere district, and the leadership
of the band was therefore gladly entrusted to Dr. NichoUs, who
showed Mmself entirely equal to the duties of the undertaking.
So one spring morning early, mounted on sure-footed island
pomes, we rode out of Eoseau, and set our horses' heads and our
own eastward, in quest of the " Boiling Lake." Our way led
first up the beautiful Eoseau valley, -with its steep cliffs and
overshadowing woods, mingled with the bright yellow of ripemng
cane-fields and the darker foUage of cocoa or coffee plantations,
•with smaU European residences or negro huts peeping out here
and there, till we came in sight of the great waterfalls, each a
hundred feet in height, by wMch the waters of the Eoseau river

126 ULYSSES.

cast themselves headlong from the central range. Higher and
higher we climbed the mountain side, amid that scenery which
description has so often attempted, but can never realize for
those who have not themselves witnessed it, the scenery of the
West Indian tropics ; where the noblest forest growih that
fancy can picture, mixed with tree-fern and palm, over-canopies
bank and dell, thick matted with fern, golden, silver maiden
hair, every lovely variety of leaf and tint, amid red-flowered
balisiers, white-blossomed arums, and a thousand other gems of
Flora's crown, the whole lit up by the purest sunlight, and
glittering as it waved in the glad morning breeze. Stopping a
moment to drink from a mineral spring of some note, we rode
on till a narrow horse-path led us across a broken plateau to the
little hamlet of Laudat, about 1,500 feet abov^ the sea. Here
our guides, or rather the carriers of our provisions, hammocks,
and so forth, awaited us, to perform with us the remainder of
the proposed route on foot, as neither horse-track, nor indeed
any other track, except what we might make for ourselves,
existed further on.
Laudat is the furthest vUlage inland in this direction, and its
neat little wood cottages, about twenty in aU, each one apart,
and at some distance from the others, are inhabited by a hardy,
chocolate-coloured race, in which French, Carib, and negro blood
seems, by the indications of feature and limb, to have been
mixed in tolerably ecj^ual proportions. In front of Laudat the
view is open, and reaches down the Eoseau valley to the blue
Western sea. Behind the village-plateau rises a dense wall of
forest, and further back, height above height, the central moun
tain range. The peasants' " gardens," to give them their
estabUshed West Indian name, or, as we should call them, fields
of yam, banana, sweet potatoes, badinjan, and the like; reach
in frregular fasMon a mUe or so upwards into the woods. Our
provisions, a couple of hammocks, a few blankets, and such
like gear, were here divided among six of the negroes, or quasi-
negroes of the place ; two of whom also carried large cutlasses,
in order to fray the way through the innumerable " lianes " or
creepers that weave the forest together with a network that.

IVEST INDIAN MEMORIES. 127

like the Gordian knot, may be severed by force, but not
disentangled by skill.
Other and doughtier uses might iiave been anticipated for
these formidable-looking weapons, but there were none such in
truth. Wild beasts of dangerous kinds, and indeed any wild
beasts at all, except harmless little agoutis, are rare in the
forest ; venomous serpents are unknown ; the number of insects
even — scorpions, centipedes, ants, and the like — is remarkably
small, possibly owing to the large proportions of sulphur and
iron -with wMch the soil is everywhere imbued ; and " perils of
robbers " St. Paul MmseK, were lie Apostle of Dominica, or, I
believe, of any other British West Indian island, would liaN'e none
to record. Our preparations had only in view a rough march,
and a day and night, or, indeed, possibly two days and two
nights, amid the mountain solitudes, at a height where the cold
was sure to make itself almost unpleasantly felt, though we
counted on sheltering ourselves under at least the relics of the
" ajoupa," erected and repaired on previous occasions.
It was now noon, and if we wished to reach the ajoupa before
nightfall, there was no time to be lost ; so without delay w^e
marshalled our file, the cutlass-bearers in front, the heavier-
laden baggage-bearers in the rear, and off we started on foot, to
toil onwards as we best might until the evening. A walk of
this kind, tMough a pathless wilderness of mountain and
forest, offers much to interest and much to amuse, though at the
same time much to weary, those who undertake it ; but a
detailed description would, I fear, tend rather to produce the
latter than either of the former feelings in the reader. A mere
sketch may therefore suffice.
For some mUes our ascent lay under a green canopy of
glistening leaves, sixty, eighty, or a hundred feet above our
heads, and between giant tree trunks, smooth and stately,
ornamented, or rather garlanded, each one with lovely creepers,
parasitical ferns and mosses, and strange t-wining growths tiiat
mio-ht in form and colour have furnished hints or models for the
most exquisite patterns that ever decorated china or glass.
During this part of the journey our chief, indeed our only

128 ULYSSES.

annoyance, the inevitable fatigue of cUmbing excepted, a^ose
from the multitudinous snare-work of roots that twined and
twisted like snakes in every direction along and across the way
to entangle and trip up whoever did not take care to direct Ms
eye before his foot. Once past the Laudat gardens no trace of
man or man's work was visible for the rest of our journey. As
the ground continued to rise the forest trees diminished in
height and size, while, on tlie contrary, the undergrowth of
bush, often troublesome from its thorns and prickles, continued
to grow denser and denser, till we reached the margin of a
deep ravine, down wMch a rapid stream rushed on its way to
join the Eoseau river.
Here the character of our marcii changed, the continuous
slope up wMch we had thus far climbed giving place to a
succession of the abruptest gullies that it has ever been my lot
to traverse. Hands and feet were alike in requisition as we
toiled onwards, now clinging for help to the small tree trunks
amid which we forced our passage, at the continual risk of
laying hold of some deceptive bough, rotten in all but its
outward bark ; or, worse still, catching for support at a prickly
stem that pierced fingers and hand vrith its sharp needles ; till
when, after several hundred feet of a climb that might have
done honour to the most dare-devil of Marryat's midshipmen,
we found ourselves at the top of the ridge, it was only to begin
over again, after an interval of hardly a yard's breadth, a
descent, steeper, if possible, and more venturesome than the
preUminary ascent had been. This manoeuvre we repeated
some half a dozen times, every ridge being somewhat higher
than the one passed, with the occasional unpleasant variation of
having to follow up some torrent, pent in between perpendicular
crags on either side, where we made our way by jumping,
gracefully or otherwise, from one slippery boulder of volcanic
rock to another, at a tolerable risk of dislocated or broken
limbs, and frequently sliding off knee deep into the water that
foamed and roared around. " What idiots we should look were
there anyone by to see us ! " was the thought that occurred to
me again and again as we performed fantastic capers in the

WEST INDIAN MEMORIES. I29
grasshopper style, or rivalled the postures of a band of
clambering spider - monkeys, minus their prehensile tails.
Possibly the same thought may have crossed the minds of my
companions also ; but except an occasional English mono
syllable, the same, it might be, that Byron declares to
have no Uke for emphasis in any other language, and Blake
considers to have a very bracing and beneficial effect, when
any small misadventure, such as a slip, a fall, a wounded
hand or foot, or the like bad hap befell one or other of the
climbers, I think nothing but what was heroic and befitting
lieroic deeds was said or sung by any indi'ridual of our party — -
at least, among its European contingent. The blacks and
half-blacks laughed at everything and nothing ; but that was
with them a matter rather of habit, I fear, than of heroism ;
while ever and anon a mocking bird from behind its leafy
screen laughed securely at us all.
The sun's rays, visible at rare intervals through the dense
wood, were fast slanting to a level, when, after a long and
weary struggle up the highermost gully, we stood at last on the
central ridge of the island, looking down on either side to west
and east : to west, where the low sun brightened into one
dazzUng glass the now distant Caribbean sea; to the east,
where steep mountain tops sunk rapidly down one below
another to the restless, white-waved Atlantic. A little further
on we plunged again into a labyrinth of small trees thickly
planted in a deep layer of decaying vegetable matter, inter
mixed with slender bamboo tufts, where we were hardly able to
make out the right direction of our path amid the maze of
green young trunks ; till from in front a light suddenly broke
in on us, as though there was notMng but open sky before, and so
in fact it was. AU at once, with hardly a warning, we stepped
out of the continuous forest, right upon the edge of a sheer
precipice several hundred feet in height ; -while below us lay a
huge vaUey, or rather gulf, reeking in every part with tMck
wMte sulphur vapours that rose from the depths and curled up
the bares sides of the abyss. Holding on to each other's hands,
or to the shrubs that grew nearest the edge, we leaned over as
K

I30 ULYSSES.

far as we dared, gazing down into the steamy chasm below,
and resembUng in a general way the Dantes and Virgils
of Flaxman's statuesque outlines, where they bend over the
margin of Malebolge, it may be, or of the awful bridge that
spans the infernal gulf
Now, indeed, we had before us the Grande Soufriere; but
how were we to descend and explore its depths ? In front was
a sheer precipice of volcanic rock and hardened ash intermixed,
a naked crag suggestive of almost certain falls and broken
bones on the rocks below, and down the face of which the
Antiquary's Lovel himself would hardly have ventured, though
the rescue of an Isabel Wardour had depended on the trial.
TMs very descent, however, such is the ardour of first discovery,
Dr. NichoUs and his companions had once hazarded, but only
once, glad on a second visit to have discovered a longer but less
dangerous track, that, winding half-way round the crater, leads
to a slope, sufficiently abrupt in all conscience, but conveniently
clad with vegetation down to the immediate neighbourhood of
the sulphur sources.
This path we unanimously resolved to try once more ; and
after much cutlass work among the tangled bush growth, and
many involuntary gymnastic feats of the kind described already,
we finally reached the lower ledge, on which we had fore-
determined to pass the night. Great was our joy to find, just
as darkness was closing in, the identical ajoupa erected so long
ago, sheltered from the chances of storm by overarching trees,
and strengthened by the indestructible vitality of its own
materials ; ev^ery stake, every support, having taken root in the
rich soil, and now throwing out foliage and branches enough to
form a living roof in place of the dead thatch and dried leaves
which still partly covered it. Here we lighted our fires, and
while our supper of cabbage-palm, salt fish, and other West
Indian delicacies, was preparing, listened to the bubbUng roar
and frequent explosions of the sulphur-sources, now not a
hundred yards below, watched the large fire-flies as they
glanced between the trees, and inhaled, along with the more
congenial smoke of tobacco, frequent whiffs of sulphur vapour ;

IVEST INDIAN MEMORIES. 131
wMle every article of sUver on our persons, watch, chain, stud,
coin, or whatever it might be, turned black in the fuming
atmosphere of the gulf which now shut us in among its depths.
To say we had a merry evening and a sound sleep afterwards in
spite of vocal tree-frogs, huge crickets, and other wood insects,
probably of the beetle famUy, whose hard toil did not, it
seemed, divide the night from the day, or rather rendered the
former the noisier of the two, would be unnecessary for those
who know what is meant by a long day's march and a camping
out in the forest. As for those vviio do not know, let them try ;
they will be all the better for it.
Next morning we were up betimes, and partly by our owu
efforts, partly by sheer compliance with the laws of gravitation,
descended the lower bank, and soon found ourselves on the soft
ash-bed that paves the half-extinct crater. From innumerable
sources, large and small, some sulphur- encrusted with bright
yellow, others blood red with iron oxide, or wiiite with insoluble
salt, magnesium principally, I believe, there gushed up a mix
ture of boiUng water and steam, amid a constant tumult of
noises, hissings, bubblings, explodings — ^liere more, there less —
throughout the whole extent of the guK. The waters, white,
black, and red, mingling at the lower end of the valley, rushed
out in a strong torrent, scalding hot, and steaming as they
went ; in many places the v^apour-cloud formed a thick impene
trable veil ; no plant but an ugly bluish-coloured broad-leaved
Clusia grew^ for some distance around the blighting fumes.
We did all that is customary for travellers to do ; tested the
heat of some sources, irritated others by attempts at choking
.them up vrith stones ; thrust sticks into the yellow paste of ash
and sulphur, over which, in many places, the foot cannot safely
tread ; gathered specimens of the various deposits ; and, above
all, admired the lonely, demoniacal grandeur of this semi-
infernal lioUow ; till, remembering that the " Boiling Lake " was
yet unvisited, we renewed our way, picking our steps carefully
among scalding pools and over the treacherous sulphur crust
that rang hollow to the tread ; till we reached the main exit of
the soufriere waters at the lower end of the crater. K 2

132 ULYSSES.

For a little distance we then followed the torrent's comse,
that struggled seawards through a narrow gully, rendered
unpleasantly warm by the vapour of the particoloured water
reeking from its source, and yet further heated by a steaming
mUk-wMte cascade that leapt do-wn in a giant curve, not unlike
the outline of the Swiss Giessbach, from the cliff on our right ;
while to the left an isolated but noisy sulphur vent smoked Uke
a dozen united UmekUns. The " Black Country," of Wolver
hampton notoriety, is a weird place, and suggests weird ideas
enough, whether traversed by night or by day ; but it is " mild-
domestic " compared to Nature's own " White country," the
sulphur region of Dominica. A world like this abandoned to
volcanic agencies, as e.g., the moon is supposed to have been at
some uMucky epoch of her existence, would be a more fitting
abode than even the biblical Babylon for the sktyrs, dragons, and
other doleful creatures of the prophet, a tMone for Arimanes
MmseK. Turning north-east we clambered for an hour or so, first across
a knife-like dividing ridge, and then among the broken hollows
of a second crater or soufriere, considerably larger in dimensions
than the first, but coinparatively quiescent ; a silent bUrnt-out
region of ash and sulphur, surrounded by high bare walls of
pumice and volcanic crag. Little steam was here visible, nor
were any explosions to be heard from underneath ; but the many
springs of white, yellow, red or black water that pierced and
furrowed the spongy crust in every direction were aU hot, and
told of fires stUl smouldering at no great distance below. In
front of us rose a bare ridge of heaped-up pumice and ash,
shutting off the southerly segment of the great crater as though
with a partition wall ; and from beMnd its range, vast columns
of steam whitened against the dazzling blue of the cloudless
sky. We took the intervening barrier at a run ; and checked
ourselves short at the top ; a few steps more would have sent
us head foremost into the BoUing Lake.
A strange sight to see, and not less awful than strange.
Fenced in by steep, mostly indeed perpendicular banks, varying
from sixty to a hundred feet high, cut out in ash and pumice.

IVEST INDIAN MEMORIES. 133
the lake rages and roars like a vrild beast in its cage ; the sur
face, to wMch such measm-ements as we could make assigned
about two hundred yards in length by more than half the same
amount in breadth, is that of a gigantic seething cauldron covered
vrith rapid steam, through wMch, when the veil is for a moment
blown apart by the mountain breeze, appears a confused mass
of tossing waves, crossing and clasMng in every dfrection — a
chaos of boiling waters. Towards the centre, where the ebuUi-
tion is at its fiercest, geyser-Uke masses are being constantly
thro-wn up to the height of several feet, not on one exact spot,
but sMfting from side to side, each fresh burst being preceded
by a noise Uke that of cannon fired off at some great depth
below ; wMle lesser jets often suddenly make their appearance
nearer the sides of the lake. What the general depth of the
water may be would be difficult to ascertain ; but a Une stretched
out over the edge from the end of a pole indicates a sheer
descent of fifty or sixty feet -vritMn a couple of yards distance
from the shore. The heat of the water, where it beats in seething
restlessness on the cUff, is 185° F. ; we tied a thermometer to a
stick and found the surface temperature at the distance of a few
feet further on to be almost 200° F. The height of the lake
above the sea is a Uttle over 2400 feet ; an elevation wMch, at
an average atmosphere temperature of 64°, gives the boiUng
point for water at 207° F., or near it.
The lake is eridently suppUed for the most part from springs
that weU up vrithin its own circuit ; but a Uttle stream, formed
by the union of two mountain ri-vulets, runs down from the
heights to the north ; the water of the brook is cold, and may
contribute somewhat, especiaUy in the ramy season, to the volume
of the lake. The addition must, however, be sUght ; for the Mghest
water-Une along the cliffs, marked partly by erosion, partly by
a bright yeUow band of sulphur deposit, was at the epoch of our
visit, that is, at the conclusion of the dry season in Domimca,
only a few inches above the actual water-level ; an additional
proof that the lake is almost wholly suppUed from below. In
fact the only appreciable effect of a hea-vy rain shower or an
augmented infiow is said to be a sudden increase in the riolence

134 ULYSSES.

of the sm-face action, the result doubtless of the shock produced
by the meeting of such very opposite temperatures.
TMs torrent, by the stones and earth brought down -with it in
its descent, has formed a slope wMch, though steep, permits of a
cautious approach to the water's edge ; everywhere else the cUffs
are absolutely perpendicular; but gradually lessen in height
towards the southern extremity, where a gate-like rent has been
formed, through wMch the waters rush out in a scalding torrent,
and bear their heat with them far down the mountain sides, as
they seek the Eastern Sea at Mulatto Point. No vegetation,
except the dreary Clusia before spoken of, -with a dingy kind of
moss, and a not more cheerful-looking growth of Pitcafrnia, exists
within the immediate range of the heated sulphureous vapours ;
but on looking round we see the further background closed in
by noble forests, like those we had traversed on our way hither.
To the south-east the prospect offers a rapid descent from height
to height, each clothed in woods. The island shore itself is
hidden from sight by the steep perspective Une ; but beyond it
the calm sea mirror comes in view, and further yet the northern
extremity of Martinique, its yellovring cane-fields distinctly
risible, though more than tMrty mUes distant, through the pure
transparent atmosphere. Above us was the deep azure of the
sky, veiled ever and anon by massive wreaths bf steam, that
ceaselessly rose in capricious svrirls, to be caught up and
scattered by the trade-vrinds, then to reunite in one dense
canopy overhead. Seen from a distance these steam-wreaths
form the cloud so often noticed by seafarers as they coast along
the southerly shore of Dominica, and look Mgh up to the rugged
crest of the Grande Soufriere.
Here we remained, as long as prudence and the mindfulness
of the long and difficult route that lay behind us permitted, in
wondering delight ; tried to walk round the lake along the cUffs,
but could not manage it ; took measurements ; tested the heat
of the water ; irritated the geyser-like action, where not too far
from the margin, by tMo-wing down stones, which were followed,
after nearly a minute's interval, by the usual result of a more
violent ebulUtion than customary ; and lastly, attempted sketches

WEST INDIAN MEMORIES. 135
from several points of view; but found the attempt to be a
pursuit of art under difficulties, amid the bUnding steam and
pungent vapour.
I -vrish that I had some interesting legend to recount con
nected -with the spot ; and for such we curiously inquired, but
in vain, from our dusky attendants. No negro, no Carib
tradition adds the wonders of imagination to those of fact ; no
story of past demi-god or devil, of nymph or neckar, assigns an
origin or a Mstory to the lake. Yet superstitious beliefs and
tales of all kinds abound among the negroes of Dominica no
less than of every other West Indian island; and stories of the
kind are often attached to localities and surroundings of much
less extraordinary or rather of the most ordinary and prosaic
character. A highway corner, a tree on the village green, a
piece of ruined waU, has its "jumby," its "duppy," its appari
tion, its haunting power ; while the deep forest, the mountain
cave, the wild ravine, the gloomy hollow, remain untenanted by
the creations of preternatural belief But thus it often is, not
in the West Indies nor among negroes only, but under other
skies and among other races. Whether the seeming anomaly
teUs against the Buckle theory of man's passivity to natural
law, or whether it can be accounted for by that very law^, and so
brought into accordance with the general system of the experi
mental school, I cannot say ; indeed to investigate a question
of so indefimte a character would be not less laborious than
unprofitable. But certainly the amount and the quality of
local superstition have, in countless instances, notMng to do
-with the very cfrcumstances to which the philosophers of that
school would most readily ascribe their origin and shape. The
Egyptian, on his level, uniform strip of plain, beside a river
regular as clock-work in its annual variations, and under a sky
unvaried by cloud or storm, is briinful of the beliefs we term
superstitions ; " Afreets," " Ghouls," " Kotrobs," and a hundred
other chimeras dire, of names to make even a German orientalist
stare, and gasp, these are to the natives of the NUe valley
tMngs of every-day occurrence, realities of common Ufe, not so
much credited as experienced, witnessed, known. MeanwMle

136 ULYSSES.

the Svriss peasant, amid the wildest scenery of mountain and
forest, the most varied and startling phenomena of climate and
season, has scarcely — except perhaps in a manufactured^noveP
a story ofthe Mnd to recount. EussianJblklore, that demoniacal
menagerie of strange shapes and preternatural existences, has
been elaborated amid the most undiversified, the dreariest
monotony of scenery that Europe or Asia can afford ; whUe
unimaginative legends of saints and virgins, pale transcripts at
most, equaUy devoid of feeUng and of originaUty, are aU that
the romantic and awe-inspiring scenery of Spain has giv^en to
the world. Just so, to adduce an oft-noted iUustration, the most
exqmsitely carved and choicely painted images are rarely the
objects of popular devotion, or accredited -vrith supernatural
power; whUe the mfracles of some discoloured daub, or very
commonplace doU, are reckoned by thousands. Either, then, it
would seem, the source, the origin, of these strange imagings is
whoUy -witMn us ourselves, or K -without us, it is sometMng not
to be analysed or explained by actual sense.
Be tMs as it may, the BoiUng Lake has, for aught that we
could discover, remained a mere natural phenomenon for Indians
and Creoles no less than for Europeans, up to the present day ;
and when we were about, however reluctantly, to take our leave
of this wonder-abounding spot, and one of om- attendant negroes,
turning back, addressed the vaporous guK -with a cabaUstic
" Salaam-Aleykum " picked up from some African cousin of
Mohammedan origin, he gave the first and only expression of
preternatural awe awakened by the -riew.
For ourselves a more prosaic consideration suggested itseK to
our minds, as, tired -vrith rambUng and scrambling (there is
Mgh authority just now for duaUstic pMases of the sort, and my
readers may pass me this one), we rested ourselves by a Uttle
spring, not far from our ajoupa, in a narrow Mil-shaded glen,
and drank the chalybeate waters, sparkUng -with carbomc gas,
that weUed up at our feet, amid a matted gro-wth of golden fern,
•wild flowers, and giant moss. What a magmficent sanatorium
might not be erected here, beside the waters, sulphmeous or
ferruginous, of every temperature, every quaUty, for bath or

WEST INDIAN MEMORIES. 137
drink, here, amid the pure cool atmosphere of the heights, an
atmosphere that might alone seem a sufficient restorative for
impaired health, and strength exhausted by the lowland heats.
By the margin of sources absolutely unimportant and inefficient
compared to these, the French colonists of Martinique have
erected the baths and sanatoriums of the Eaux du Precheur, the
Eaux Didier, and the Eaux St. Michel ; and yet are they not
in this respect almost outstripped by the Anatolian Turk, who
has constructed cupolas and lodging apartments by the side of
every "Ilijeh," or "Healing," as he names the hot mineral
springs of his nature-favoured land ? Have we then yet to take
sanitary lessons from the Turk ? or to learn from the French
the right use to be made of the goods the gods provide us ?
\. '¦ But it is not man only, it is Nature herself that is principally
here in faidt. She has, in the Grande Soufriere and Boiling
Lake of Dominica, fenced in her treasures with such rugged
barriers, interposed so many obstacles to access, that all the
financial resources of the Leeward Confederation, and of the
Windward too — if our Barbadian friends ever permit its forma
tion — would fail to make, not a carriage-road, but even a
tolerable bridle-path from the coast up to these heights. " Once
in a tw^elvemonth is enough for an expedition like this," was
the unanimous verdict of our party when, in the dusk of
evening, we at last reached Laudat, and found ourselves with
just enough strength remaining to mount our horses and ride
slowly down the Eoseau valley, partly illuminated by a crescent
moon, and more so by innumerable fire-flies, each a living
burning lamp, and so re-entered Eoseau late on the second
night after our departure. Many others than ourselves will, I
hope, in the course of time visit what we visited, and admire
what we admired; but none wUl, I think, enjoy themselves
more, or carry away pleasanter recollections, not of scenery and
Soufriere only, but of cheerful companions and good fellowship,
that it was our fortune to do.

138 ULYSSES.

MALAY LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES.
I have sincere pleasure in repubUshing, and trust that my readers may have
as much in reperusing, the foUowing Essay. It recalls to 1.10 a land and a
people who both come nearer to what, in my idea, this woild of ours and its
inhabitants ought to be than perhaps any others that I am acquainted vvith.
To cUmate, position, geological formation and the Uke circumstances the land
owes its exceUence ; the inhabitants .theirs more than anything else, I think,
to a healthy Conservatism, and a happy immunity from the virus inoculation
of improvement and progress. Good in themselves and their surroundings,
they have vrisely kept aloof from that worst enemy of Good and Well-being,
the Better. Perhaps they too wUl, at no distant date, be drawn into the
general vortex, and learn, with and from European or North-American
teachers the desire to be better, or, in the accepted phrase, to " better them
selves," with the inevitable result that they wiU be worse and worse off.
Indeed, I am told that since 1876, the year when this Essay was first pub
lished, some " improvement " has already taken place in the PhiUppines : the
introduotion in some measure of railroads, machinery, foreign capital, etc.
being meant. If so, I can only regret it, and hope that there is as little of it
as possible. But even Acrasia's guarded garden must sooner or later be
wasted by its inevitable Guion, and that yet more odious prig, his Palmer
companion. I A word more is here necessary. EeUgion, that is the phenomenal form of
the metaphysical Ufe, takes so prominent a position in the Malayo-Philippine
landscape that occasional mention of one or other of its special manifestations
was inevitable in a descriptive essay. I have accepted it accordingly as a fact
among other facts, a surface tint of a surface view. With the underlying
depths of this or any other phenomenon my Essay has nothing to do ; the
reader is as free to suppose his own groundwork as I mine. But this is precisely
what all sensible people, as our banker-poet of " Italy " so justly remarked,
always keep to themselves.
Impatient to be already at the term of his voyage, the home
ward-bound passenger is generally, nor least so at the hurried
moment of final parting, under a spell that blots out from the
scroll of his " Pleasures of Memory " the records of whole years,

MALAY LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. 139

it may be, of happy residence in the lands that he is learing ;
and all by the fresh contrast of Uvely anticipation of what, too
often in fancy only, awaits Mm in the land, his native home,
that Ues before. True it is also that some shores there are —
though to specKy such would be invidious — which the longer
one has sojourned on them, the keener the satisfaction one feels
on leaving them without thought of return. Not so the " Isles
of the East," the PhiUppines. Dull indeed must be Ms soul,
unsympathetic his nature, who, whatever the hopes that may
smile on him from the rista of his journey's further end, can
stand as I do now on the deck of the Singapore- ward steamer,
the little Leite, and see the forests and mountains of Luzon,
Queen of the Eastern Isles, fade away into dim violet outUnes
on the fast receding horizon, without some vrisMul remembrance
some pang of longing regret.
It is not only that Nature — or shall we say " Hertha ? " — so
mggard often of her gifts, has here larished them rather than
bestowed ; though indeed not the .^gsean, not the West-Indian,
not the Samoan, not any other of the fair island-clusters
by wMch our terraqueous planet half atones for her dreary
expanses of grey ocean and monotonous desert elsewhere, can
rival in manifold beauties of earth, sea, sky, the Philippine
Archipelago from the extreme northern verge of the Formosan
channel to where the tepid equatorial wave- sinks faint on the
coral-reefs of Borneo ; nor in all that ArcMpelago, lovely as it
is tMough its entire extent, can any island vie with the glories
of Luzon. Set out eastwards from Manila, the tropical Venice
amid her labyrinth of estuaries and canals, daily ebbing and
flovring to the tides of the vast harbour-gulf, the secure vestibule
of the typhoon-swept China seas; thence pass inland between
the broad shades of clustered bamboo and palm up the eddying
Pasig river to where, apt starting-point of its romantic course,
it issues from the wide freshwater lake of Bai, girdled by a
hundred mUes and more of varied, ever-fertUe shore-Une, and
the cloud-capped peaks of the giant Mahahai range beyond ;
traverse the yeUow cane-fields of the wealthy Laguna district to
where, Md among the hills and coffee-groves of Batangas lies

I40 ULYSSES.

deep the blue cUff-encircled lake of Taal, and amid its waters
the fafry islet where, from the miniature central volcano, a
sMfting pennon of restless smoke and fire ever rises and spreads
high over greensward and glossy tree ; then across the rusMng
rivers, sounding waterfaUs, and dark woods of Tayabas and the
mid-chain, tiU, between sUm tree-fern, and over forest-clad
descent, the boundless Pacific opens out its sparkling blue ; and
right from the very breakers on the shore towers eight thousand
feet in air the perfect volcano-cone of Albay, the fire-breathing
marvel of these islands, as the classical Fusihama of Japan.
I have taken, almost at chance, the first route that offered ;
Luzon has a hundred more, each different, and each as fair.
Nor inferior in intrinsic beauty, though on a smaller scale, are
the scenes that the comparatively lesser islands, such as Panay,
Cebu, Samar, Negros, Leite, and others of names strange to the
generality of European ears, have to show. More fortunate than
thefr- West-Indian sisters, no flat and chalky Barbados, no
drought-stricken Antigua, no barren Virgin Island mars the
perfection of the Philippine group ; while Jamaica and Santa
Lucia themselves, those loveliest of the AntiUes, must yield the
palm of beauty to the mere average of the "Eastern Isles."
Volcanic formation and soil, an abundant yearly rainfall, an
equable cUmate, and the life-giving influences of the oceanic
tropics have all combined here to do this, and it is marvellous
in our, the beholders', eyes.
Marvellous in our eyes, impossible, not to be imaged, in the
eyes of those who have only word-painting and imagination out
of which to construct the view. Tropical scenery, be it of
mountain or plain, forest or coast-line, lake or river, can no
more be realised by those who have never seen it than colours
by the bUnd, music by the deaf A Kingsley attempts the
picture, and behold a confused description of a Kew palm-house ;
a Michael Scott, and lo ! the side-scenes of a theatre. The
scientific accuracy of a Wallace, and of his compeers, if there be
any worthy of the name, may supply a correct outline ; but even
this must be fiUed up by remembrance, or supplemented by
engraving. Pity that for the Philippines themselves no word-

MALA Y LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. 141

limner of note exists, to my knowledge at least, except the
coarse, narrow-souled Jagor, of whose book, or libel rather, it is
enough to say that the letter-press and the sketches are worthy
of each other, and each not likenesses but caricatures. The
want however is one that, for the time at least, must remain
unfulfilled; the subject, even were it accessible to my grasp,
does not come vrithin the scope of a writing like the present.
For, when all is said and done, the prime history of a country
lies not in the land itself but in the inhabitants of the land ;
where they are unworthy of the beauties around them, the fairest
scenery faUs to charm ; as, on the contrary, a noble people can
cast a glamour of attractiveness over the dullest landscape.
The barren rocks of Attica, the dreary plains of Eome, nay, the
unsightly marshes of Holland are loved for their hero-children,
whUe the gorgeous panoramas of Eio and Valparaiso, Yosemite
gorges and Niagara cMefiy suggest a feeling of dissatisfaction
-with the unequal inferiority of their vanished autochthones, or
their present occupants. The chiefest, the almost exceptional
spell of the Philippines is situate, not in lake or volcano, forest
or plain, but in the races that form the bulk of the island
population, the " Indians " as Spanish gmlelessness of ethno
graphy persists in misnaming them, the Malays of descent and
fact. I said " almost exceptional," because rarely is an intra-
tropical people a satisfactory one to eye or mind ; -witness the
average negro of Western Africa, the Carib of Central America,
the Sinhalee of Ceylon. Extreme heat, as extreme cold, are
both, though in different ways, generally unfavourable to a
successful development, physical or intellectual, of the human
species. But tMs cannot be said of the Philippine Malays, who
in bodily formation and mental characteristics alike may fairly
claim a place not among the middUng ones merely but almost
among the higher names inscribed on the world's national scale ;
and though not exactly a superior are eminently an estimable,
pre-eminently an amiable race.
Of the Spaniards, the conquerors and administrators of this
great Archipelago, in which however not ten thousand of their

142 ULYSSES.

number have even a passing residence tMoughout its whole
extent, of the English, an honourable, and in numbers as in
wealth a not inconsiderable amount, of the more numerous nor
unimportant CMnese settlers domicUed here, and of that curious
aboriginal remnant, the " Negritos," savages akin, it would seem,
to the natives of Andaman, and Uke them shrinking, perhaps
-with prudential self-preserring instinct, from the contact of the
" nobler," at any rate the stronger, races, no direct notice shall
be taken here. Indeed of the eight millions, so runs the
admitted though only approximate census, that inhabit the
Philippines, Europeans, CMnese, all foreigners whosoever taken
together, do not make up a hundredth part ; nor do the thinly
scattered and unprolific Negritos add much to the extra-
Malayan muster. Nor again, in a general sketch like tMs, do
the varieties offered by the PhUippino-Malayan population
within itself require more than a passing indication. The chief
are three, wMch correspond -with tolerable geographical exact
ness to a triple division of the Archipelago into Northern, Central,
and Southern. Thus, the Ilocan Malays occupy the North, the
Tagals the centre, and the Visaians the south. Of these three
sub-races, the first-named are the largest and sturdiest in physi
cal build, but of lower mental average and less general adapt-
abiUty than the two others ; the second, a smaller-statured,
darker-complexioned, and sinewy race, are distinguished above
all others for energy of character, intelUgence, and perseverance ;
the Visaians, graceful even to beauty in form and gentle in
manner, differ little in natural capacity and endowments from
the better sort of their congeners in Borneo. Derived from or
ingrafted on these three main branches are many lesser sprays.
Some, especially in North and Central Luzon, owe their
differentiation, if reliance can be placed on the testimony of
bodily lineaments and historical evidence combined, to a strong
infusion of Chinese, Formosan, and even Japanese blood ; others,
the Bicols for instance, on the eastern shores of the island,
display an evidently Polynesian or Papuan admixture ; while in
the huge southerly island of Mindanao, scarcely inferior to
Luzon itself in dimensions, a population closely resembling the

MALA Y LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. 143
Dyaks of Borneo is reported to exist. But the persistent,
strongly-marked Malay type, whether absolutely pure as among
the Visaians, or dashed -with foreign strain, here more, here less,
as is the case among the Tagals, Ilocans, and their sub-branches,
predominates in all.
Once recognised, that type can never be mistaken ; and it
alone would, even in the absence of other testimony, suffice to
assert the Mongolian clanship of the Malay. The rounded head,
the small but expressive black eye, with its slight upward and
outward turn, the straight dark hair, smooth skin, and small
extremities, hands and feet, are not less distinctly the physical
countersigns of Turanian origin than are the tenacious purpose,
the organising and yet more the cohesive power, the limited
inventiveness, and the more than conservative immutability, its
mental characteristics. Add to these a concentrated, never-
absent self-respect, -with— its natural result — a habitual self-
restraint in word and deed, then only, and that very rarely,
broken tMough when extreme provocation induces the transitory
but fatal frenzy known as " amok," and in one deadly hom- the
Malay casts to the winds every feeling, every thought except
that of bloody, indiscriminating revenge ; add an inbred courtesy,
equably diff'used tMough all classes low or high, unfaiUng
decorum, prudence, caution, quiet cheerfulness, ready hospitaUty,
a correct though not an inventive taste, and a marked tendency
to ancestral worship : such are, as described by the keenest of
observers and most truthful of narrators, in his Malay Archi
pelago, the general attributes of the Malay race ; and such are
abundantly shared in by the inhabitants of the PhiUppines,
thouo-h here they have undergone certain modifications, some
favourable, some the reverse.
These modifications are, as might be anticipated, due prin
cipally to two important circumstances: the one, that the
Philippine Malays have for now three full centuries been
subject to European, i.e. Spanish rule; the second, that they
have for an equal length of time foUowed the religion of their
conquerors, the Eoman Catholic form of Christianity. Other
tMngs, climate, trade, wars, immigrations, and the like have no

144 ULYSSES.

doubt had their effect, but in subordinate measure ; the climate
differing little from that of the not distant Equatorial islands
and peninsula, while the isolated and isolating character of
Spanish colonial policy has left comparatively Uttle play to
the action of trade or war ; immigration has been considered
already. How far then has Malay nationality submitted to be modified
by Spanish influence and institutions, how far has it, instinctively
or deUberately, declined them ? A visit to any one of the large
villages or " pueblos " in the populous provinces of Pampangas,
Laguna, or Batangas, all of them -within easy reach of the
Government centre, Manila, will best help us to decide.
It is the morning — needless to say in a climate like tMs a
clear and bright one — of the vUlage patronal " Fiesta ; " each
village from Taal, -with its sixty thousand inhabitants, down to
the smallest hamlej; of half a dozen famUies, has its " Fiesta,"
one at least, not rarely two, in the course of the year, over and
above the stated hoUday-making of Sundays and the many
other days marked for idleness and pleasure in the PhiUppine
calendar. The open space, corresponding to our own viUage
green, and here always in front of the church, is tM-onged with
people, men, women, and children ; wMle a number of the light
native-constructed jaunting-cars, or " caramatas," not unlike our
own market carts, but canopied, and of slighter build, that have
brought hither the more distant sharers in the day's festivity,
are waiting beside by scores, jumbled up with wickerwork
waggons, wheelless bamboo trucks, and two or three shabby
open carriages of European construction, in wMch some wealthier
native, or " mestizo," i.e. half-caste, family has arrived, in
careless confusion.
A word about these " mestizos." Not often the result of
Spanish intermarriage, they are very commonly of semi-Chinese
origin ; a complexion fairer than the average, a greater breadth
of forehead and feature, and a marked tendency to obesity, are
their most ordinary distinctive marks. InteUectuaUy they are
generally somewhat the superiors of the unmixed natives around
them. Their number, taken in comparison vrith that of the

MALA Y LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. 145
entire population, is not great ; but their wealth and influence
go far to make up tMs deficiency. I return to the Malays
proper. TMckly grouped before the church porch and around the
buUding, the men, lithe, middle-sized, and ruddy-brown of
various shades, are dressed, if of the better sort, in loose shirts or
blouses, home-manufactured from the finest fibre of the " abaca,"
or Mamla hemp, as the plant (really a sterile variety of the
ordinary frmt-bearing banana) is called ; or, more delicate yet
from "pina," the pine-apple leaf texture, airy as the choicest
lace, the peculiar workmanship of the PhiUppines. White, or
light yeUow, and interwoven sometimes with flower-patterns,
more generally vrith brilliant stripes of Chinese silk, red, yellow,
green, or blue, the " baro," or blouse, is an essentially national
dress, though in the neighbourhood of Manila modified too often
into an uncouth resemblance of a European shirt. Beneath it a
pair of white or light-coloured trousers are belted round the
waist ; the feet, usually bare, or protected by sandals at most,
are on occasions Uke tMs not seldom encased in patent-leather
boots of Spanish fasMon ; the head is protected by the " salacot,"
a round, musMoom-Uke hat, of about a foot in diameter, close
plaited in grey and black intersecting patterns of tough " mto "
or liana fibre ; the circumference tastefully ornamented -vrith
silver bands and flowerets, an excellent and picturesque sun
shade, ill exchanged, though, happUy, but seldom, for the
European hat of silk or straw. The poorer classes wear a Uke
dress, but of coarser materials, in wMch red or orange commonly
predominate, and on the head a " salacot " devoid of ornaments.
But wMle the men's attfre, though national in the main, shows
occasional tokens of European influence, the women, -with wise
conservatism, retain their graceful Malay costume unaltered as
of old. Wrapped in the many-coloured folds of the silken
" saya," or " sarong,'' and over it a second, but narrower, waist-
cloth, also of silk, reacMng down to the knees, and dark in hue ;
her breast and shoulders covered with delicate " pina " texture,
whilp. the matcMess abundance of her raven hair ripples from
under a wMte snooded kercMef far down her back, not seldom
L

146 ULYSSES.

to her very heels, a Malay woman could hardly, even did she
vrish it, improve on the toilette bequeathed by her ancestors.
SUver or gold ornaments are not much in feminine use. It is
true that the Malay type of face is generaUy too flat for regular
beauty, and the eye, though larger than the Chinese, is seldom
full-sized ; but many of the younger women are decidedly
pretty, a few lovely, and a habitual look of smiUng good-nature
goes far to render pleasing the less nature-favoured faces.
Their complexion is a clear brown, sometimes hardly darker
than that of an ordinary South European brunette. CMldren,
absolutely naked, or -with a light and scanty shirt for sole
covering, mix fearlessly but qmetly in the throng ; early trained
by precept and example to good manners, they show less
disposition to noise and miscMef than is ordinary elsewhere at
their age.
Such are the festival-makers. The church-bmldings, including
a spacious presbytery, are generally the design and construction
of the parish priest Mmself, who has in them maintained a
traditional adaptation of the " renaissance " style of Ms own
Spanish peninsula. The frequency of earthquakes in this
volcanic region counsels low side waUs, flanked by ponderous
buttresses ; a massive octangular bell-tower, with indications of
good taste and architectural feeUng in its proportions and
details, is usually the best feature of the whole.
Within the church the rites and ceremonies of the day — a
Malay sermon deUvered by one or other of the officiating priests
excepted^ — are much what they might be in any small provincial
town of Spain itself. But the music, contributed by a native
brass band, is not European merely, but, the most of it, operatic.
The " Gloria " is accompanied by an inspiriting air of the
" Trovatore," the " Credo " cheered by a melodious adaptation
from the " Barbiere," and the host elevated to a passionate
outburst of the " Traviata." But whatever may be thought of
the suitableness of the music to the occasion and place, it meets
beyond a doubt all the sesthetic requfrements of the worsMppers,
and is well executed besides. Not a viUage of any importance
throughout the length and breadth of the PMlippines but has

MALA Y LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. l\7
its band of carefully selected and expensive brass instruments,
and skUled players to match ; for, next to his fighting-cock, of
which more anon, music is the dearest solace of the PhUippine
Malay ; and the ex-bandmasters of the numerous native regi
ments here maintained by the Spaniards are always ready to
hire out thefr- services as professors of the art wherever wanted.
Of the original native music, prior in date to the Spanish
conquest, Uttle now remains ; its connection with an older
Paganism, perhaps patriotism, having caused it to be proscribed
and carefuUy put do-wn by the later clergy ; two such airs I
had however a chance opportumty of hearing ; they were of a
sentimental and somewhat pathetic character.
Inside and -vrithout the church decorations testify to Mari
olatry, Hagiolatry, and the entire system habitually branded by
those who -wish to give it a bad name as "idolatry," "man-
worsMp," " creature-worsMp," and the Uke, here carried out to
its extremest Umits, and constituting in practice nine-tenths,
or rather more, of the religion of the land. It is a reUgion
admfrably adapted . to the requfrements of the people, and pro
portionately beneficial. Ancestor- worship in one form or other
has ever been, as Mr. Fergusson correctly remarks, and yet is,
the favourite expression of reUgious feeUng among Turaman
races ; and the Malays, themselves the southernmost branch of the
great ethmcal tree, are no exceptions to the rule. Here in the
PMUppines they have, ¦with the easy pliancy in such matters
that once covered the equatorial island-group ¦with Brahminical
temples, and facilitated the spread of Buddhism among their
cousins of China and Japan, adopted ¦vrithout questioning the
CathoUc-CMistian system, and placed its mythico-Mstorical
virgins, saints, and martyrs at the head of the unseen Mngdom
already tenanted by their own proper ancestors and relatives,
tUl they now rejoice in the possession of a weU-stocked Olympian
Valhalla, sufficient to their sympathies and hopes. Engrafted
thus on a genuine indigenous stem, the more recent and exotic
reUgion, while retaining much of its own pecuUar form in
fiower and fruit, derives its local energy and development from
the unfaiUng sap of the national mind ; no longer foreign but
L 2

ULYSSES.

native, believed in sooner than taught, an integral part of daily
life, not a plastered-on addition, it affords so far an absolute
contrast to the " musical bank currency " of the European
Erewhons of our age, and is itself a not inconsiderable part of
the genmne circulating medium of PMUppine society. Hence as
a social bond, a humanising influence, an effective sanction, a
promoter of friendly intercourse, of right, of love even, a poetry
amid life's commonplace, a balm — ideal perhaps, but not
inefficacious — of the wounds and bruises of fact, Christianity
has, it would seem, rarely been more advantageous to its fol
lowers than here, where it can scarce be distingmshed from a
weU-regulated, genial Asiatic Paganism ; a riddle harder to read
in appearance than in reaUty.
This is not the place for me to enter on the perilous field of
the strange abnormal practices and beliefs, survivals of a much
older creed, that subsist and smoulder on tMoughout the ArcM
pelago, and even ¦within the immediate neighbourhood of ManUa
itseK, its convents and cathedral, beneath the CMistianised
surface, though rarely obtruding themselves on European
observation ; Cybelian priesthoods, Cotyttian rites, repressed but
not obliterated, and to which the past Mstory of other nations,
perhaps the present, offers many a parallel. Enough that such
things are ; their investigation, though of deep anthropological
interest, is foreign to my present scope, wMch extends only over
the usual, not the exceptional, the recognised, not the concealed
and disavowed phases of Philippine society and Ufe.
Mass is ended ; the " Eoyal March " of Spanish celebrity has
dismissed the congregation ; and while we stand a little apart
and watch the bright-coloured crowds issmng dense but orderly
from the church portal, the native " Gubernadorcillo," or
" Capitan," the Headman of the village community, observes
and approaches us. The ensigns of Ms office are few, and those
chiefly Spanish; a short jacket of black cloth, worn, unbe
comingly enough, over the indispensable blouse, a tMn staff
tipped vrith silver or gold, sometimes — though, heaven be praised,
rarely — a European hat, distinguish the great man. Probably
he Mmself is forty years old or more, but his general appearance,

MALA Y LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. \ 149
features, form, and bearing, would designate Mm at first sight
for a lad of barely twenty ; and indeed the closest inspection
may not rarely fail in determining Ms real age. This extra
ordinary semblance of juveniUty, prolonged far into middle life,
is not merely due to the beardless face, where a sUght mustachio
is commonly enough the only hair-growth even up to advanced
Ufe, but more to the smooth, smUing, unworn features, where
neither care nor passion seem to have left a trace, and partly to
the uprightness of stature and well-proportioned roundness of
Umb maintained to the very confines of senility — a fitting
exterior to the calm, unexcitable, moderated character -within,
and not unparalleled among the CMnese, Japanese, and other
Turanian tribes. It is almost a pity that early and frequently
recurring matermty too generally deprives — though not uncom
pensating after a fashion for what it takes — the Malay women
of a physical advantage more to the purpose in their sex than in
the male.
Every vUlage, large or small, is headed by its " Capitan," a
native of the place or district, elected in accordance -with
immemorial custom for two years' office by the villagers them
selves, subject, of course, to the approbation, seldom -witMield,
of the "Alcalde," or Spanish Provincial Governor. For the
Spaniards -wisely enough preferred at their conquest to maintain
and continue in most matters of detail the already existing
vUlage, or " Barangai " organisation, rather than to supersede it
by novel systems ,of their own ; a matter in wMch they showed
themselves to be better colonisers, than, for instance, the French.
But the post of " Capitan," however important, is scarcely an
object of rural ambition, as its responsibilities are at least equal
to its digmty; wMle the expenses wMch custom or duty has
rendered obligatory on its holder are too often in excess of its
emoluments, legal or not. Hence the not unfrequent ;" nolo
episcopari" — that is, its Tagale quivalent — of a newly-elected
" Capfran." Of even higher authority in every vUlage than the " Capitan "
himself is the " Cura," or parish priest. He is in most instances
a Spaniard by birth, and enrolled in one or other of the three

I50 ULYSSES.

great religious orders, Augustiman, Franciscan, or Domimcan,
established by the conquerors in these islands. But Ms bfr-th-
place, complexion, and habit apart, he is ordinarUy as much,
sometimes in a manner more, of a native in his sympatMes and
turn of mind than the natives themselves. TMs is qmte natural.
Bound for life to the land of his adoption, -vrith no social, no
domestic tie, no anticipated home-retm-n to hold Mm back from
identifying MmseK -with those amongst whom his days are
henceforth to be passed, Ms bones at last to rest, having every
interest, the Mghest as the lowest, in common with the sheep of
his pasture, whose fleeces he cannot but desire to guard against
aU other shears but Ms own — and, to do him justice, Ms own do
not shear very close — he commonly becomes, and that in the
truest and best sense of the term, a very father to his people, and
finds in thefr reverence and affection motive enough to encourage
him in continuing to deserve the title. To clerical government,
paradoxical as the statement may sound in Modern European
ears, the PMUppine islands owe, more than to anytMng else,
their internal prosperity, the Malay population its sufficiency
and happiness. TMs it is that again and again has stood a
barrier of mercy and justice between the weaker and the stronger
race, the vanquished and the victor ; this has been the steady
protector of the native inhabitants, this their faithful benefactor,
their sufficient leader and guide. With the " Cura " for father,
and the " Capitan " for his adjutant, a PhUippine hamlet feels
and knows little of the vexations inseparable from direct and
foreign official administration ; and if under such a rule " pro
gress," as we love to term it, be rare, disaffection and want are
rarer still.
Occasionally the " Cura " is a native by birth, for though
excluded by invariable custom and monastic disciplinarianism
from the " regular," Malays are admitted readily enough into
the ranks of the " secular," or parochial priesthood. But, whUe
pointedly rejecting as the figments of a malevolent imagination
the calumnies of Jagor and his Uke against the morals of the
, PMUppine clergy in general, and the native portion of it in
particular, I must admit that the results of Malay ordination are

MALAY LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. 151
seldom as satisfactory as could be desired. The Malays have, in
their authentic condition, no regular priesthood, as we under
stand the word, of their o-wn, nor is their temperament suited
to it. The office is accordingly best filled among them by
foreigners, such at least as religious orders and monasticism, nor
least those of the Spanish type, can supply.
But we have almost forgotten our "Capitan," who, with
genuine Malay courtesy and self-restraint, has been all this
wlule awaiting in silence and respectful expectation the oppor
tumty of addressing us. TMs he now does, placing Ms house at
our disposal for the day, and pressingly inviting us to take share
in the promised festivities of the evening. Knowing as we do
that the house he so UberaUy offers us will be crowded -with
visitants of all kinds, on ceremonious compUments or indirect
business, we decline the first half of his offer, and request for
ourselves some qmeter shelter tiU the evening hour. He
complies, and passes us over to one of Ms wealthier friends, who
immediately proceeds to take on Mmself the duties of host, by
vacating tn our favour all the best rooms of Ms own abode, and
converting himseK and Ms famUy into extemporised cooks and
servants during our stay.
The house, though ranged in what constitutes the main street
of the viUage, stands by itself; no Malay who can possibly
avoid it ever constructing his home in immediate contact with
that of another family. The garden which surrounds it, fenced
in with wattle, and tMck-set -with dragon's-blood plants, purple-
blossomed creepers, red coral-plants, and white star-like flowerets,
makes a pretty show;! betel-palms and giant bananas shade the
enclosure. Eaised on thick pieces of stone or wood to a height
of six or eight feet from the ground, the house enjoys an almost
free circulation of the outside air beneath its inhabited apart
ments on the first floor ; an arrangement which may possibly
be a survival of lacustrine constructions and delta-inhabiting
ancestors, but wMch, now observed tMoughout the PMUppines
in the driest up-country heights not less than among the
dampest marsh-lands, contributes not a little to popular cleanli
ness and health, The house itself, that is, the upper story, is

152 ULYSSES.

entered by a wide staircase leading into a broad sort of open
passage, caUed the " caMda," facing the street; its -windows are
composed of small square panes of thin mother-of-pearl, produce
of the Sooloo seas, arranged in lattice-work horizontaUy or
diagonaUy ; in this cool verandah-Uke passage the famUy usually
enjoy thefr leisure, receive visitors, and exchange gossip with
the neighbom-s. BeMnd it is a large square central room, aU
doors and -windows, the latter also of mother-of-pearl in sUding
frames ; here are massed together the costUest articles of furni
ture o-wned by the household — chairs, tables, wardrobes, and the
rest. As might be expected of a people whose principal
constructive material is wood, the Malays display considerable
skin and taste in carved work : even the outside decorations
round and between the windows and along the string-courses of
their buUdings are often of much beauty ; while indoors their
cabinets and sideboards, weU-proportioned and elaborately in
tricate in decorative finish, might not rarely furnish models to
be copied or envied by the upholsterers of Europe. The narrow
interspaces along the walls of the principal room are decorated
with coloured prints, generaUy Spamsh, devotional or historical,
as the case may be ; and not rarely boast of famUy portraits,
executed by native artists, with aU the detail accuracy and aU
the stiffness and want of perspective that a Chinese painter
can accomplish. Glass globes, red and blue, mixed with gay
lamps, and perhaps a European chandelier, hang from the ceiling,
and a smaU tinsel-decorated altar or oratory, the Penates of the
famUy, commonly occupies a corner of the apartment. The
doors around open into bedrooms, and a bamboo-made passage
leads off to the bathroom and kitchen, which is also on the first
floor, but at a Uttle distance from the rest of the house.
Abundance of light, though tempered by the semi-opacity of
the pearl-sheU windows, plenty of fresh air, as much bright
colour and ornament as can be had, and scrupulous cleanliness,
the broad floor planks being daily scrubbed -with plaintain-
leaves to a mirror-like poUsh, and everything dusted twice in
the day, such are the chief characteristics of the interior of a
Malayo-Philippine house ; and amid conditions of the sort, the

MALAY LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. 153
general health and longevity of the inhabitants cease to excite
surprise. Outside, the appearance of the many-gabled palm-
thatched roofs at every variety of pitch, the widely-projecting
eaves, the bamboo-interlacements, and carved timber-work of
the walls, the chequered panes and little balconies here and
there, are very picturesque, and make up a kind of S-wiss-cottage
ensemble that harmonises well with the local background of MU
and forest.
I pass over the ceremonies of reception, and the hospitaUty
that follows ; both are in the main identical -with those
practised elsewhere in the non-Europeanised East, with the
difference that here the women of the house take a more
prominent part in welcome and entertainment than is customary
in Syria, Arabia, or Western Asia generally. When not under
Mahometan infiuences, Malays draw the line of demarcation
between the sexes but slightly ; and Christianity natm-aUy
tends to efface rather than to deepen the division. To this
circumstance, more perhaps than to any other, I am inclined to
attribute the manifest superiority in mind, and even in body, of
the average Philippine Malay over his Mahometan kinsmen, as
the latter are found in Sumatra, the Peninsula, the Sooloo
Archipelago, and adjoining regions.
That the adoption of Islam may be, and in fact is, a real
benefit and an upUfting to savage tribes, amongst whom the
lowest and most brutalising forms of fetichism would else
predominate, does not admit of doubt. Anthropophagy, human
sacrifices, and other kindred horrors, have thus been banished
by Mahometan teaching from whole tracts of Africa ; and so
far is well. But not less does experience show that, sooner or
later, the tribe, the nation that casts in its lot vrith Islam, is
stricken as by a blight; its freshness, its plasticity disappear
first, then its vigour, then its reparative and reproductive power,
and it petrifies or perishes. With the abstract and theoretical
merits of Monotheism or Polytheism, Islam or CMistianity, I
have notMng to do ; but this much is certain, that within
the circle of the PMUppine ArcMpelago itseK — not to seek
examples further away — the contrast between the Mahometan

IS4 ULYSSES.

vUlages of the southernmost islands and the CMistian ones
elsewhere, is very remarkable, nor by any means favourable to
the former.
For a satisfactory explanation of the problem before us, there
is no need for recurring to causes, if such there be, hid in the
extra-mundane and unkno-wm. The reason is near to seek.
Family life, famUy ties, family affections, these form the only
true, stable, and at the same time expansive basis for com
munities, states, empires even ; and that these may, and actuaUy
do, coexist after a fasMon -with a vigorous profession of
Mahometanism no one who has experimental knowledge of
Turkish or Arab population can possibly deny. They exist;
but even when at their best and strongest are always cramped,
stunted, and hindered from their full growth and development
by the forced demarcation between the sexes, the sanctioned
polygamy, the over-faciUty of divorce, and the other social
mistakes interwoven whether by the hand of the Prophet
himseK, or rather, as with Sprengel I incline to beUeve, by that
of the narrow-minded and ascetic Omar, into the very texture
of Islam. Nowhere are family bonds closer drawn, family
affections more enduring than among the Malay races, and
nowhere, in consequence, is whatever weakens or distorts them
more injurious. Hence a Malay Mahometan is a contradiction,
an anomaly, a failure, much as a Hindoo Christian or a
European BuddMst might be. The system does not suit Mm,
nor he the system. Not so the Malay of the PhiUppino-
Christian type. His famUy, as that of his CMnese or Japanese
cousins, moderate polytheists Uke MmseK, is a pleasing sight,
much subordination and Uttle constraint, umson in gradation,
liberty not Ucense. Orderly cMldren, respected parents, women
subject but not suppressed, men ruling but not despotic,
reverence with kindness, obedience in affection, these form a
loveable picture, nor by any means a rare one in the viUages of
the Eastern Isles.
Our mid-day meal, the components of wMch differ Uttle from
those of a West Indian or a Bombay up-country, menu, with
cookery to match, is over. Follows, for those who desire it, a

MALAY LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. *> 155
dreamy half-siesta of cigars and the green coolness of rustling
bamboo-sprays outside the window, with glimpses of a shining
river and light outrigger canoes gliding over it just seen betwixt
the leaves ; a purple volcano-peak and a faint blue mountain
range beyond. And now the white perpendicular glare of noon
is slanting into mellowmess, and we stroll out of doors for a
survey of the village, keeping whenever we can under the shade
of the thick-planted garden trees, mango, palm, orange, lanzon,
santol, medlar, fifty more, each -with its own pecuUar foliage
and fruit, pleasant to the eye and good to eat, a surrival of
Eden. The viUagers' houses, some large, some small, wood or
bamboo, two-storied or one, mere huts or spacious dwellings,
according to the fortunes of the inmates, are jotted here and
there in an unsymmetrical row among the trees with utter
disregard of proportionate dimensions ; but all have a comfort
able, a cosy look, suggestive of sufficiency ; many of them,
wMte painted with stripes green or blue, rarely red, and
occasionally a flower pattern or fanciful scroll-work to enliven
them more, show an attempt at decoration ; others are content
¦with the pale yellow of the split and interlaced bamboo that
forms their waUs ; the roofing is grey palm -thatch. On tMs
festival-day lamps are placed ready for Ughting at every
¦window, and over every doorway, flower-garlands hang between,
and frequent arches of cane, festooned with wMte or red cloth,
and hung with lanterns of more colours than Joseph's coat,
span the road. We have left beMnd us the white church and
" convents," the Capitan's many-windowed house, the guard-
station, where a couple of brown young policemen, natives, of
comse, but attired in Spanish miUtary uniform, languidly keep
what courtesy may name watch, and now we have before us a
large wattled bmlding, surrounded by a -wide enclosure, and
-vrith extensive galleries in front and on the sides ; the central
thatch roof towers dome-Uke above the rest. Several natives
clad, for the day is yet hot, in the gauziest and most transparent
of hemp blouses, or absolutely naked to the waist, are entering !
the crowded gateway, others are issuing from it, Uke bees about
the mouth of a hive; all is animation, almost — so far as the

156 \ ULYSSES.

word is compatible -with Malay composure — excitement. It is
the viUage cock-pit, the great afternoon resort of Sundays and
holidays as observed tMoughout this entire region of the world,
from Penang to the confines of New Guinea ; in the Philippines
most of all.
Whether the Malays, as some -writers assert, learnt cock-
fighting from the Spaniards, or the Spaniards, as others opine,
from the Malays, I -will not attempt to decide, the historical
problem is too complicated. But from whichever the origin of
the sport, it is certain that the zeal for it that nowadays glows
in every native breast from Luzon to Mindanao, let alone the
rest of Malaysia, is such as might rejoice the soul of a Windham
MmseK. Eich or poor, it would be hard to find a Malay house
holder, Ilocan, Tagal, Visaian, or whatever his tribe and island
in the great Spain-governed Archipelago, who does not rear at
least as many fighting-cocks as his means permit, and too often
rather more ; nor is it wholly a calumny which asserts that the
owner is wont to tend his bfrd better and love it dearer than
any other living object of his household belongings, -wife and
chUdren not excepted. Stories are current of a respectable
Malay paterfamilias escaping from amid the ruins of his
burning home — no rare occurrence in these villages of wood and
thatch, especiaUy during the dry season — and bearing carefully
shielded in his arms his favourite, scarce-rescued bfrd, while his
yni& and children are left beMnd to shift for themselves un
heeded as best they may. Exaggerations, I am bound to say,
but, I also fear, " founded on fact."
We enter the precincts — the admission fee is a mere trifie,
and a cheap cigar, K no coin be at hand, is current payment for
this and for many other minor costs, to see the sport. It has
been often described ; the chief tMng worthy of remark is that
a heel of either fighting bird is armed with a sharp razor-Uke
steel blade, near two inches in length ; a deadly weapon, that
materially abridges the duration of the combat between the
feathered rivals. Once, at close quarters, the rest is an affair of
seconds rather than of minutes ; at least I never saw it other-
•vrise. It is a somewhat brutal amusement after all, and so far

MALAY LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. 157
lowers the Malays to the devel of our own ancestors some three
or fom- generations ago. But the really worst picture of a
Philippine cock-fight is the betting univ^ersal among the
spectators of the game ; the sums staked are often vei-y Mgh,
and thefr payment, wMch is rarely shirked, not uncommonly
involves the rmn of the loser. Thus the cock-pit too frequently
proves the first step in an Avernian descent leading down to
prison and crime. Here we have m truth before us the Malay
" tm-f," though Malay cirilisation has not yet widened enough
to include within its circle " welchers " and thefr- km, nor, I
tMnk, ever -wiU. SeK-respect, a feeling hardly ever absent
from the national character, would alone suifice to forbid it.
The same self-respect displays itself too, even on occasions like
the present, when, if ever, it might be supposed weak or
wanting, in other ways. Look round the crowded circles,
where several hundreds of haK-naked spectators of every age
are close packed together in the broiling afternoon heat, and
acted on by aU the combined influences of gambling, emulation,
and the sport itseK ; not a word, not a sound is to be heard, not
a gesture to be seen approacMng to " rowdyism ; " not a Mnt of
disorder or disturbance. Passions, strong ones too, certainly,
are at work ; -rice in many forms can hardly fail to be present
and busy tn gatherings of the kmd ; but no vulgarity, no
visible or audible coarseness are there. TMs is partly due to
the comparative absence of intoxication ; for " tuba," the
fermented palm-jmce that does almost umversal duty for beer
or spfrits among the PMUppine " natives," is rarely drunk in
excess, and even were it, could hardly prove more effective
than, in Dr. Johnson's estimation, claret itself. But the cMef
order preserver is the stable equUibrium of the native mind, the
decorum born of moderation. A Malay may be a profligate, a
gambler, a tMef, a robber, a murderer ; he is never a " cad ; "
that type, as weU as the " rough " — the death-bed abhorrence of
the great Queen of England's Eenaissance — ^is a development of
the "higher," that is, of the more muscular, more energetic,
more pushing, more compUcated races ; and the absence of that
worst of PMUstines from amid the equable diffusion of comtesy

158 - ULYSSES.

and self-restraint that stamp tho average Turaman, is alone no
small compensation for the inferiority, if inferiority there be, of
the gentler, calmer, less aggressive, also less progressive tribes.
The adjuncts of an Epsom grand stand, or a Dutch " kermes,"
may make one occasionally regret the less civUised but better-
mannered crowd of a PhiUppine " fiesta."
Quitting the equivocal attractions of the cock-pit, we engage
a " caramata," one of the light covered jaunting-cars before
described ; the slim, scantily attired jarvey, sun-sheltered by Ms
mushroom-like straw hat, and -with somewhat of the professional
humour of the Wellers of the earth on his boyish face, flogs
into a canter the rough grass-fed ponies of the veMcle, and
away we go, passing under a Mghly decorated bamboo gateway,
buUt up right across the -rillage entry, with side-doors for foot-
farers, the whole extemporised for the day's festival with a
prodigality of material and labour, seemingly out of all pro
portion -with the means of the constructors. And now we are
on the high road, where the ditches on either side, and the
spreading trees planted at short intervals for welcome shade,
are almost the only indications that it is a road at all in the
European sense of the term. Uneven, irregular, now rock, now
mere soil rising in unmanageable hummocks, or deep-scored
into ruts and holes, a day's rain, as rain is in the tropics, would
render it next to impassable. But we wUl suppose our
excursion to be made in the dry or the half-dry season, that is
at any date between October and July, best K in February
or March before the summer heats, too intense for average
European endurance, have set in. Be our way then tMough
the lowlands, rice districts, sugar districts ; or be it, K more
varied scenery attract us, amid the plantations of coffee, cacao,
or " abaca," of the hilly grounds. The rice-fields are weU
watered with careful distribution ; Mr. Fergusson does not err
in assigning the palm of irrigative skill to the Turanian races ;
the cane patches, though smaU in individual extent, wave dense
and yellow ; the coffee-bushes, unUke the cruelly mutilated
stumps that do duty for them in Ceylon, spread far their
straggling boughs berry -laden ; the broad leaves of the shapely

MALAY LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. ! i59
" abaca " plantain gUsten emerald tn the sun. But ito aU one
feature is common, or rather aU are distinguished by the
pecuUar absence of one featm-e, rarely imssed elsewhere in the
colonial tropics, namely, large estates. Eice lands, cane lands,
coffee lands, hemp lands alike, aU are divided and subdirided ;
and however vast the green carpet of cultivation may be in its
total extent, the frregular patches that make it up are not
less infimte in number than capricious in shape. EquaUy
remarkable is the absence of large agricultural estabUshments,
buUdings, factories, store-houses, and the like. Is that diminu-
tive shed, with a few low heaps of crushed cane refuse about it
a sugar-miU 1 Can that narrow thatch covering be a coffee
depot? that rudely-constructed hand-worked contrivance just
seen tMough the plantain stems a hemp-prepartng machine?
Yet such in truth it is, such they are ; and though specimens of
somewhat more dignified dimensions may occasionaUy be found,
they are rare exceptions, and may be counted, the ArcMpelago
tMough, on the fingers; wMle the grandest of them would
sink into mere insignificance K transferred to Demerara or
Martimque, AusteaUa or Ceylon.
Large proprietors, in the accepted signification of the pMase,
are rare in the PMUppines, where " every rood of groimd mam-
tains its man ; " and Uttle room accordmgly is left for the
expansion of single estates. Little room, and, luckUy, as we
shaU see, for the prosperity no less than for the happiness of the
" natives," Uttle agglomerated capital. Spamsh capitalists here
are none ; and other European proprietors of land and field,
from a v^ariety of causes useless here to discuss, none worth men
tionmg also. Mestizos, that is haK-breeds, generaUy of Chino-
Malay origin, are the most bulky estate-owners ; and the lands
and fortunes they not rarely amass into one seldom hold
together beyond a Ufe-time, but some obey the Eastern law of
subdi-vision between hefrs, and faU asunder. The whUe far the
greater part of the soU is in the hand of the Malays themselves,
who, easUy contented, and not much given to anxieties about
fortune-making and the future, tUl each his Uttle plot, and
make thefr bargains for disposing of the produce -with the

i6o- ULYSSES.

CMnese or semi-CMnese middlemen ; by whom again it is
transferred wholesale to European, cMefiy British merchants,
and so reaches the coast and the cargo ships.
Votaries, if such yet there be, of the " Manila cheroots," so
sadly deteriorated of late years, may wonder here that no
tobacco-growing district has been brought under our retro
spective view. But these districts are almost wholly restricted
to the northernmost region of the Archipelago, and are besides
so exceptional in every respect that they ought to be treated of,
if at all, apart from any others. Their landscape is, I regret to
say, a gloomy one, and I willingly refrain from the contrast of
its sombre tints with the bright and cheerful hues around us
to-day ; they are proper to nine-tenths at least of Philippine
territory, and peculiar to it.
In most, if not aU other intertropical colonies — the West
Indies for example — the administration and enterprise aUke are
both of them essentially European, the labour alone native. In
these "Eastern Isles," on the contrary, the Spamards, content
with administration, -have left enterprise no less than labour to
the natives themselves. The result is a very remarkable one ;
we have already to a certain extent seen it exemplified in detail,
and shaU see more ; let us now pause a moment to gather it up
in one comprehensive view.
Eight mUlion natives, more or less, inhabit the PhUippines ;
and of tMs vast aggregate the principal, almost the only sus
tenance, morning, noon, and eve is rice. And what famine
is, how frequent, how disastrous, how overwhelming among
a rice-subsisting population, the annals of Madras, Orissa,
Ceylon, Bengal, have too often taught us. A calamity that, it
would seem, no foresight can avert, to wMch no remedy can
suffice. And yet, in the PMUppine ArcMpelago, scarcity even
is of rare occurrence, famine unknown ; in the worst of years
hardly a sack of grain has to be imported ; in average seasons
the land has enough for her cMldren, all swarming as they are,
and to spare. More still, after deducting the entfre vast extent
of soil and amount of labour devoted exclusively to this one
staff of local life, enough remains of both to supply the export

MALAY LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. ' i6t
trade -vrith a yearly equivalent of four to six million sterling in
sugar, coffee, hemp, tobacco, and all the other varied products of I
tropical agriculture. " Enough and over, enough for ourselves,
and over and above for our neighbours," is the fact-spoken
motto of the colony ; and of how many other European colonies
can this be said- — of any ?
Whence then this abiding sufficiency ? What is the want-
repelUng charm ? Is it a better climate ? a richer soil ? a more
regular and abundant rainfall than other island-groups can
boast ? To some extent, perhaps ; but such advantages, though
they may contribute towards weU-being, cannot of themselves
effect it. Or is it greater skill, greater energy, greater aptitude
for labour in the natives themselves ? The Malay, like other
children of the tropics, limits Ms labour by the measure of his j
requirements, and that measure is narrow indeed. Not so much j
what they have, but rather what they have not, makes the good \
fortune of the PhUippines, the absence of European enterprise, i
the absence of European capital. A few European capitalist '
settlers, a few giant estates, a few central factories, a few i
colossal money-making combinations of organised labour and \
gainful produce, and all the equable balance of property and
production, of ownership and labour, that now leaves to the \
poorest cottager enough, and yet to the total colony abundance
to spare, would be disorganised, displaced, upset; to be suc
ceeded by day-labour, pauperism, government relief, sub- ,
scriptions, starvation. Em-ope, gainful insatiate Europe, would
reap the harvest; but to the now happy, contented, satiate '
PMUppine Archipelago, what would remain but the stubble, but /
leanness, want, unrest, misery ? The garden was the garden |
of Eden ; its indweilers must needs hearken to the serpent !
counsel, develop its resources, and be themselves cast forth from'
sufficient, unappreciated happiness, never to regain it, never-
return. 0 balmy IKe-giving breezes of the wide Pacific, -with enjoy
ment in every flutter of your vrings ! 0 golden glories of the
evening sun-god, ere yet he withdraws" from riew within his
cloud-built palace of amber and crimson, reared on the deep
M

\.^i62j ULYSSES.

inmensity of blue ! long be yours to range and reign over
the waving emerald of the parceUed rice-fleld, the unpruned
freedom of the frmt-clustered bough, the bannered flaglets of the
yello^wing cane-patch, the green gUster of the plantain-gi'ove,
the triumph of the stately garden-palm, wMle frequent amid
them, each sheltering its contented o-wmer-peasant and the
chUdren-inheritors of the land, rise the Uttle thatched cottages,
undwarfed by the vast constructions of overshado-wing capital,
unsmfrched by Western smoke and enginery ; whUe the frmt-
bearing land smUes her bounty on her unorphaned chUdren, and
the chUdren yet claim for thefr own the native bosom of their
proper land. Birthright iU sold for any counter-exchange of
elusive gain ; Eden unequaUy bartered for the whole world of
unrest and striving that seethes and struggles without the
island bounds. Long may those bounds remain, long may they
keep at bay the gods of the stranger, the price of the aUen, the
progress that is retrocession, the science that strips to naked
ness, the energy that consumes and destroys, the greed of
aU-organising, aU-devom-ing capital, the skUled force insatiate
of its slaves, the fron and the gold. And thou, cherished -sision
of southern piety, Vfrgin-goddess of crowded shrmes, Guadaloupe
or Eosario, Lady of Eefuge, Mother and Queen of men, revive
tn tMs encroaching, aU-absorbing age thy ancient legends of
danger repeUed, mvaders baffled, protected island-sMines ; and
shroud in thy own mystic veU from the profane gaze of enter
prise, from the intruding crews of progress, that fatal gift of
beauty, fatal to so many of her sisters, the beauty of the Eastern
sea-nymph who cUngs to thy knees, nestles at thy feet, secure
in thy shelter, happy beyond desfre tn herseK and thee.
A few minutes of briefest tvriUght and already the warm star-
spangled mght has caUed forth the entfre -vUlage, together -with
the flockmg crowds who have come from the adjoining hamlets,
iu whatever they can muster of gayest ornament, sUver or silk,
to take thefr share tn the " Fiesta " of the district. From the
pUlared church front and the massive octangular beU-tower
close by, now Uluminated by countless lamps from base to
summit, the graceful bamboo-constructed arches, fiung at short

MALA Y LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. 163
intervals across the main roadway of the viUage, and round by |
a complete circuit to the church porch again, form a glowing
avenue of coloured lanterns and transparent patterns and,
devices, beneath which the patronal procession is to pass. And
here it comes, in two endless streams, men and boys in their
fiuttering blouses on one side of the road, women and girls in
close-girded silks on the other, all bareheaded, and with Ughted',
tapers in their hands, talking, laughing, and merry, but great :
or smaU aUke orderly and decorous in word and gesture. The •
foremost are a good way already ahead ; and now behold a
painted tinsel-crowned image, the Baptist it may be, attired in
half-mUitary uniform, or S. Francis in his religious garb, or a
Virgin-Martyr, diademed and bedizened, with real jewels of
price, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, gUttering amid the colom-ed
libbons and rags, borne along the midway between the files,
Mgh on a bedecked bamboo litter, amid a blaze of tapers that
lights up as it passes the deep foUage on either side and over
head into a semblance of day. Then more processiomsts ; and
after a moderate interval a second demi-god, S. Michael it may
be, or S. Peter perhaps, or any other worshipped ideal of the
Christian Pantheon, comes swaying along, more gorgeous than
its predecessor ; and yet a third, and a fourth ; and aU the
while, vrith occasional halts for gathering up stragglers, or
clearing the way ahead, the procession moves on, a double
serpent of brilUancy, and thickens as it moves ; wMle from amid
the Uluminated houses, and dense gardens off the road, rockets
shoot up thefr- irregular greetings far into the starry sUence
overhead. But now the crowd is at its closest, and the black
official jackets of the village dignitaries on one side, and the
brightest silks of thefr- long-tressed helpmates on the other,
usher in a gigantic Utter, slow borne on the shoulders of the
stoutest, stateUest devotees ; where, throned amid a blazing
pyramid of tapers, herseK a blaze of tinsel and diamonds.
Our Lady comes smiling and smart
With a pink gauze gown over spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart ;
or some other avatar likeness of Heaven's Queen; while all
M 2

1 64 ULYSSES.

around sweUs the devout murmur of venerative triumph ; close
follows the vUlage band, reinforced from the nearer hamlets, as
it blares out its 'liveliest march ; and " 0 Dea certe," in its
Malay equivalent, fiUs every heart, and bursts from every
tongue. " Idolatry ! " say you. And if so, what then ? And
what, I would fain know, in any worship, any rite man can
offer to the Unknown Majesty, the Unknown Love but idolatry,
whatever the symbol, whatever the expression ? Image, picture,
statue, book, wood, stone, word, written scroll, printed paper,
idea, thought itself, what are they all in the great God-poised
balance but symbols, but idols ? Be content then, my friend,
-vrith your own favomite idol, the image of your choice ; bow
before it, set it up never so high on the tMone of your own
making, it is well ; but sneer not at, seek not to pull down the
idols of your bretMen ; perhaps they are no further from the
Infinite Truth they purport to symbolise - than your own, like
them finite too. Eespect, though you participate not ; give
honour, though you refuse worship.
The procession winds on ; and all the while a desultory firing
of rockets and bursting of crackers detains not a few of the
faithful at its starting point, the village centre, the green before
the church, till, after an hour and more of slow circuit, the
crowd, tapers, images, band and aU, have re-entered the temple ;
and a solemn benediction, bestowed \rith aU the efficacy that
beUs, books, candles, music, vestments, and unquestioning belief
can give, dismisses the worshippers to festi-rity and amusement ;
wMch, for the wealtMer householders, means several hours of
supper and dancing, song and cigars in their own dwellings, or
those of their friends. Copious the supper, lavish the hospi
taUty. What the night's entertainment wiU cost our worthy
" Capitan," whose brUliantly illuminated " sala " is crowded
-with at least sixty hungry Malay guests, and thrice the number
of uninrited spectators, come to admire the chandeliers, the
decorations, the musicians, and the dancers, often to join
company vrith the last, and to partake in the unUmited refresh
ments set forth on the sideboards, I shudder to think. Perhaps
so does he ; but at any rate, no outward sign of disquiet mars

MALA Y LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. \ 165
his composure, as vrith an unvarying smUe of gratified hospi
taUty he goes tMough the endless courtesies of a reception-mght.
But the cMef attraction of tMs period of the evening, and one
to wMch even supper and dancing, roast pig and polka must
yield in Malay estimation, is to be found out of doors, on the
viUage square, not far from the church and the Capitan's own
house. It is a spacious booth, the framework of bamboo, gaUy
draped and festooned -with cloth wMte and red, and surmounted
by fiags ; -witMn is a raised stage, side-scenes, and curtains, the
-vvhole briUiantly Ughted up, and open in front to the admiring
crowd that vriU stand here and gaze for hom-s ; on either side,
reaching to some distance, rows of improvised boxes and seats,
tier above tier, theatre-fashion, and hung -with bright colours,
give the more " fashionable " spectators view on the central
stage. But boxes, seats, standing-room, all are gratis to-night,
when the vUlage itseK defrays the expenses of the conimon
amusement. The drama is a Malay one, and the characters
numerous ; kings, queens, cMeftains, damsels, grave counsellors,
nobles, soldiers, and so forth, all in the gayest dresses of
Malayan type. The plot is generally an adaptation of some
BibUcal story, that of Darid and Jonathan being the most often
selected; sometimes it is taken from the Hagiology; occasionaUy
from semi-Mstorical records of wars and reigns. The dialogue
is commonly in verse ; the acting more energetic than Hamlet
might have approved; the music, abundantly bestowed as
accompamment, tolerable. But whatever the theme, two
characters, pecuUar in their mode of adaptation to the Malay
drama, are never wanting. One is a quaintly attfred buffoon,
who the whole play tMoughout, and in the midst of the most
serious or pathetic scenes, suddenly cuts in from time to time,
now addressing the actors and actresses — the latter are most
often, as on the old EngUsh stage, lads in female dress — -with
some absurd counterfeit of their own speeches and gestm-es, now
numicMng them in a sort of stage-aside for the benefit of the
audience; and thus, in a rude fasMon, supplying that side
current of the comedy of human Ufe, keeping pace -with its
tragedy, wMch the sMU of Shakespeare never faUs to present

1 66 ULYSSES.

' personified in the Stephanos and Pompeys, the nurses and clowns
I of Ms noblest dramas. I should add that the Malay buffoon is
i very rarely coarse, never indecent, in his licence. The other
'¦ character is the prompter, not studiously unseen and unheard by
the audience, as with us, but patent to all on the mid-stage, and
reciting in a loud voice every sentence of the play, to be repeated
after him with appropriate action by the characters themselves.
The length of the performance, never under three hours, some
times extends over as many successive nights, nor seems to tire
the spectators. MeanwhUe, roadside sheds, offering to Malay
palates a tempting display of sweetmeats and refreshments,
; booths for bUUard-players, and other minor amusements or
¦ attractions, abound on aU sides ; drunkenness and disorder are
conspicuous by their absence only.
Thus pass the hours till the approach of midnight is announced
by a sudden glare of light and a noise like that of a weU-
sustained musketry discharge, summoning aU who have not
already by anticipation mustered on the spot, to the field outside
/ the village, where the " Castel " crowns in fire the rejoicings
; of and glories of the festival.
It is, if not in general conception, yet certainly in detail, a
genuine Philippine toy. A tower of two, three, or even four
stages, is constructed of bamboos close interlaced and tied
together, with turrets and battlements ad libitum, till the whole
reaches twenty-five or thirty feet in height ; above, below, and
to every part of the framework, squibs, crackers, Catherine
wheels, Eoman candles, and rockets innumerable are made fast,
ready for firing ; and all about the " Castel " itself, but at some
little distance, rise outworks, also twined of bamboo, and densely
covered with fireworks of every description. For weeks before
hand preparations have been going on, and the yet unkindled
edifice, festooned with white or coloured cloth, and bravely
bedecked with streamer and fiag, has been the favo.urite resort of
afternoon crowds, a constant centre of joyful anticipation. Now^
its hour is come; midnight draws on, and the waning moon
yet hangs low in the dark Eastern sky ; when suddenly a pre
liminary up-burst of some scores of rockets, grouped clusterwise.

MALAY LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. 167
and filling the night air as they explode vvith floating showers
of soft-faUing stars, green, red, wMte, purple, blue, ushers in
the grand act of the " Castel." From every side, every angle
of barricade and tov^'er, the fire rushes simultaneously forth,
crackUng, Mssing, exploding, a fairy pandemonium, lighting up
the tall trees and bamboo clusters in the fields around far and
-wide, and ev^ery face in the tMck-gathered crowd beneath ; for
not a man, woman, or child of aU who have attended the
" fiesta " would for any human consideration miss the spectacle,
the very bourne and utmost goal of thefr inventive delight ; and
at each fresh explosion the rapturous applause rises higlier till it
reaches the utmost pitch of excitement consistent with the
habitual impassive calm of the Malay character. Sometimes
this excitement is intensified by the added sport of a fiery bull,
that is, a -vricker framework more or less representing the animal,
and well protected by tMck hides, outside of wMcli squibs and
crackers are fastened in plenty, while a couple of men concealed
-witMn the hollow,, and protected from the blaze without by the
Mde covering, make the burning, crackUng monster rush hither
and thither among the spectators, who scurry away on all sides
in real or simulated alarm, amid sMieks and laughter. Thus
midnight passes, and the merry tumult is at its loudest and
maddest, when, all too soon, the " Castel " fires wane and
dwindle, the explosions cease, the last rockets shed their sinking
stars, and a few minutes latter all is darkness and silence over
the trampled field; noiselessly, rapidly the crowd has melted
away and dispersed, each to his resting-place to sleep out the
brief space left tUl dawn, and the moon, left sole queen of the
mght, casts her white veil in a semblance of thin snow over
grove and garden, church and home-roof, where a few expiring
lamps yet twinkle amid a stillness Uke the stillness of the dead.
We return to the room prepared for us by our host of the day
before ; and the bright morning sun wakes us to find the
husbandmen already gone to early mass, or out with thefr
buffaloes in the fields, the women moving to and fro -with their
water jars, or washing clothes in the neighbouring stream ;
streets and roads are all alive with slight-clad wayfarers and

1 68 ULYSSES.

creaking carts ; and the daily current of viUage Ufe is flowing
calmly in its wonted channels ; as, escorted to the outer gate by
the " Capitan " and Ms attendants, we take our leave, and fare
forth on our journey by sun and shade, mountain and river,
hamlet and field, back to ManUa.
To ManUa ? I lean over the low bulwarks of the Leite, as
the Uttle craft cleaves her south-western way towards the Straits
of Singapore, and now see nothing around but the green
heavings of the tepid CMna Sea ; the last dim outline of Mgh
Mindoro and wild Palawan, westernmost island of the Spain-
ruled ArcMpelago, has faded into sky ; and the swarthy, active,
boyish-seeming crew of sailors and firemen is aU that remains
in presence yet for four voyage-days more of the Philippines
and their inhabitants. The fifth day will see us at Singapore ;
and these too wUl be things of the past. But of all tropical
lands, all tropical races that it has been my lot to visit, none
will have left a pleasanter, a more heart-satisfying memory than
the PhUippine Archipelago, the home of the half-civUised
Malay. Is wholly-civilised Europe, is England herself, a better
home to her children, a happier ? Compare and judge.

( i69 )

PHEA-BAT.
" That the significance of this world is a merely physical, nowise a moral
one, is the greatest, the most injurious, the deepiest of errors, the most absolute
perversion of thought ; and is itself the essence of that which Christian BeUef
has personified as Antichrist."
Thus far Schopenhauer, and rightly. Yet this very error is the basis of
whatever the entire school of modem physicists, — I hate controversy, and
accordingly abstain from names, — have in part assumed, in part striven to
demonstrate in their handling of history, society, and man ; the assumption,
namely, that mankind is in its origin and development the outcome of physical
luck, chance, accident ; the reasoned deduction of whatever goes under the
names of moraUty, conscience, belief, veneration, duty, from physical need,
physical desire, physical infiuence, physical hope or fear.
Such teaching is indeed only possible by those and to those who have
passed their days in practical ignorance of men and nations ; the book-phi
losopher in his study, the salaried professor at his desk, the theorist in his
self-made isolation. He who has Uved a man among men, has taken part in
the aotuaUties of social and national existence, has studied the unfolded tapestry
of many colom-s and designs out of which history, present or past, is woven,
wiU come to a very different conclusion, and will soon know that not the
kingdom of God only but of Man is within him ; that the root, the Ufe of
every people, as of every individual that composes it, is not in having but in
being, not in acquirement but in beUef, not in culture but in wiU. Hence the
value of the studies of which the present Essay is a sample ; they strike the
keynote on which the entire symphony is based. In this instance the keynote
is Buddhism ; and Buddhism with less admixture of extraneous elements than
is coinmon among the many nationaUties that have adopted the teachings of
Gotama ; here the ultimate meaning, the heart, the soul of Siamese nation
ality. Three years, from 1880 to 1888, of residence in the land, to give it its
correct name, of Thai, enabled me to learn more, here barely hinted at, of a
system, much overlaid and distorted in Chinese and Japanese, perhaps also
(but here personal knowledge fails me) in Thibetan or Tartar acceptance, but
in itself, rightly understood, the most beneficent, the most humanising, and,
at aU events, not the most irrational of those promulgated among mankind.
Soul, spfrit, -rital principle, or by whatever other name it may
be called (the formula matters little), there is in whatever lives

170 ULYSSES.

a sometMng, real though unexplained, which determines its life,
growth and duration ; a something, itself a part, yet having
action on the whole, and without which the rest is nothing but
decay more or less speedy, and dissolution. Nations too, like
other organisations, have each its own vital principle, in virtue
of which they grow and live, and on which they proportion and
shape themselves ; while its loss implies the similar loss at no
distant period of the national type and vigour, followed by the
resolution of the whole into an incoherent mass of selfish in
dividualities, and ultimate obUteration. TMs is nothing else
than the idea, the system, the master-thought, connatural or
adopted, with which the nation has identified itseK, and in which
it has found the principle of its life and growth, the secret of its
strength, the augury of its future. This too it is that men love
to embody in some national watchword, some name, usage, or
symbol, and often enshrine in some special site, some peculiar
sanctuary chosen out and consecrated to its honour. Very
generaUy, though not always, the spot thus selected is Unked
one way or other with the individual memory of some hero or
demi-god, some protective power, identified with personal act or
IKe. Eome indeed, cosmic in the forecast as in the realisation
of her greatness, limited the mystery of her tutelary Capitol by
no recognised name, or veiled it by the vague but Mgh-sounding
titles of the Father of gods and men ; but the AcropoUs of
Athens, the city of self-government and intellect, was conse
crated to Minerva ; the Ka'abeh of the Arabs, when the Arabs
first knew themselves a nation, to the memory of Abraham ;
Incarnate wisdom lent its name to the Byzantine Palladium in
the capital where the son of God first received, and may yet
again receive, imperial worship ; France, whUe yet the France
that claimed to herself the vanguard of Christian Europe,
revered the sainted royalty of St. Denis ; Spamsh gloom
imagined a patron and type in the ascetic St. James and the cave
of Compostella ; Bulgarian hardihood stiU affects the mountain
hermitage of Eilo; sociable Eussia bows before the hundred
shrines of holy Moscow. The list might easily be drawn out to
ten times the length ; for the name is not more intimately

PHRA-BAT. 171

connected with the individual, nor the device with the flag, than
are the sanctuary and the patron, most often both, but at all
events one or other of them, vvith the nationality. For they are
the abridgment of its meaning, the symbol and token of its
IKe ; and the nation that has not these, however abundant in
mechanical inventions, and the grosser forms of ungraceful
wealth, is a mere association of ignoble aims and deeds, a banded
rabble of vulgar enterprise and selfish adventurers, nothing more.
It is not indeed generaUy till the growing nation has definitely
emerged from that early and half-formed condition in which,
Uke the human infant, it " has never thought that ' this is I,' "
has arrived at self-consciousness, and the knowledge of its own
strength and purport, that the selection of patron or sanctuary is
made ; and hence we find their appearance coincident most often
¦with the opening cycle of the national greatness itself Some
successful leader, some orator-saint, some chieftainship of hand
or mind, some victory won, some glorious vision presenting to
beholders the idea of the time — one or more of these combined
gives the occasion of the national choice, and in so doing indi
cates the centre round wMch whatever is great and noble in the
race rapidly gathers itself, till it becomes the very heart and
core of the Uving nation. So it was, and so we read in the
annals of the old Jewish kingdom, of the Arabian empire, of the
Byzantine dominion ; so it was with Athens, so with Bulgaria,
so, in a word, with all the instances already cited, or that might
have been as readUy cited, Eome the Eternal alone excepted ;
her Capitol was eqmseval with ^her birth. But in this, as in
almost everything else, she has no like or second. And thus it
was that when the tribe caUed Thai, in its southward move
ment from Yunnan down the great Meinam vaUey, after long
years of uncertain rule, wars that were mere forays, and all
the capricious fluctuations of a clannish and semi-barbarous
existence, had consolidated and shaped itself into the ruling
race and hereditary dynasty of Siam, then, nor till then, was
the revelation made that consecrated Phra-Bat as the symbol
and embodiment of the national ideal, of Buddha and the world-
famous system that bears his name.

172 ULYSSES.

The half-dozen Siamese scholars, if so many there be, among
my EngUsh readers, will at once recognise in the compound
word Phra-Bat the nature and character of the symbol it denotes.
" PMa," or " lord," is a title of honour vride in its application as
our o-wn " lord," but cMefly applied by custom to holy tMngs or
persons, as monks, priests, and the like. Neither in itself, nor
in composition, does it ordinarUy indicate anytMng, in the fuU
sense of the word, divine ; when prefixed to the name of Buddha
or religious objects, it might be suitably rendered by " vener
able " or — only the precise idea we Christians connect -vrith the
word is scarcely Siamese — " holy." " Bat " is " foot," or " foot
step," but in this particular case means " footprint." If
accordingly we divest the phrase, as we ought, from all notion of
impUed divinity, "' The footprint of the Lord " will be its plain
and correct rendering. In popular use the name of " Phra-Bat "
is now extended to the mountain, nay, to the entire range, on
which the footprint in question is found.
The footprint symbol is, from whatever cause, a favourite one
in Buddhist lands, though by no means peculiar to them or to
the religion they have housed, since Christianity and Moham
medanism alike claim veneration for the footmarks of their
respective founders at Jerusalem, Damascus, and Eome ; wMle
like memorials of less celebrated and less authentic personages
are pointed out by local tradition in many other regions.
Various, too, and fanciful are the explanations of the token
assigned by writers of different schools ; some seeking to derive
the symbol and the honour paid to it from I know not what
utUitarian consideration ascribed to that rather apocryphal
personage, pr£e-historic man ; others calling in to aid the yet
more apocryphal craft of imaginary priests and kings, and the
ready credulity of nations submitting to deliberate imposture for
the benefit of a ruling caste. But all special hypothesis apart,
the idea that the great and powerful benefactor, hero, or saint,
or demi-god, might, when quitting some spot of predilection,
some favoured haunt, or perhaps the world altogether, have left
behind Mm in this manner a token of the sensible presence he
was even then about to withdraw from men, is a very natural

PHRA-BA T. 173

one, nor least so when, as happens to nations in the heyday of
their prime, imagination and poetry are at thefr liveliest and
best. At such a time, the boyhood or youtli of a people, fancy,
no longer cMldish and incoherent in her imagery, sketches out
with a firmer hand than heretofore the outlines of her best
efforts, and plants the pedestal on wMch may be reared a statue
to endure for ages. Like their near cousins of Japan, the
Siamese, though wanting in the Mgh poetical strain which
distingmshes — my readers will aUow me the use of a convenient
K not over accurate nomenclature — the Aryan and Semitic
races, are yet more fancy-gifted than the majority of the great
MongoUan famUy to wMch they belong ; more so indeed than
thefr cousins, the cleverer but more prosaic Chinese, or perhaps
than any other inhabitants of Central and Eastern Asia. Nor
need we grudge them the moderate amount of imaginative
faculty reqmsite for the shaping out the footprint of their patron
saint ; though we may not unreasonably envy them the stead
fastness of purpose that has so long kept them, and still keeps
them, faitMul to its honom-.
History, K Fergusson's assertion be correct, has never risen
-with any Turanian people above the level of annals, and those
in general of the most meagre and unsatisfactory character. To
tMs rule Siamese records make no exjception. Where, however,
the marveUous is concerned, the hS^ative is apt to become
suddenly copious in an unwonted decree; though possibly
-without a proportionate increase of accuracy in detail. Omitting
accordingly much that is chUdish and irrelevant, the tale of the
discovery of Phra-Bat runs as foUows. It was in the year a.d.
1606, during the reign of PMa-Chao-Song-Tam, one of the
earUer Mngs of that powerful dynasty which extended Siamese
domimon over the Malay peninsula to the south, and the Laos
provinces to the north, and laid Cambodia prostrate never more
to rise, that a simple huntsman, by name Phran-Bun, whUe
foUo^wing the chase among the dense woodlands a few leagues
south-east of the then Siamese capital, Loph-buri, discovered on
a lonely rock — fit station for a meditative anchoret — a mark of
unusual form, the impress it seemed of a human, though gigantic

174 ULYSSES.

foot. Now the forest region where this discovery was made
belonged to the province of wMch Sala-buri, a town on the
eastern branch of the Meinam, was capital; and thither the
fortunate huntsman repaired to report the wonder. The
governor of SaU-buri immediately referred the matter, as one of
high import, to the king. Now the monarch had passed many
years of Ms early life in a monastery, where he had attained
great proficiency in sacred lore, and was consequently weU aware
not only what the print of Buddha's foot should resemble,
but also that such a footprint certainly existed, though Mtherto
unrevealed, in Siam. Eager to verify his expectations, he set
out at once to visit the forest and revelation, with the huntsman
for gmde, and a whole company of learned monks, skiUed in
traditional symboUsm, and thoroughly quaUfied to pronounce
authoritatively on the genuineness of the prodigy, in his train.
To such a quest there could be only one result. King,
priests, huntsman, and aU besides, recognised in the rock-print
before them the correct Ukeness of the hundred and eight weU-
known symbols supernaturaUy engraven on the sole of the
master's foot, and revered the sacred " Chakr " or wheel, great
Buddha's own mark and proper token. A temporary sMine was
at once erected on the spot, and four years later a gorgeous
paviUon or "Maha-Dop," with all the adjuncts of Siamese
worship had been compl^d and consecrated, with seven days
of Mgh festivity to the yearly recurring pilgrimage.
Succeeding kings ampUfied and adorned the shrine, ttU the
treasures it contained attracted in 1766 a band of robbers, who,
availing themselves of the general confusion prevaUing tMough
out the land after the successful Burmese invasion of the epoch,
and the downfaU of Ayuthia and of the Siamese monarchy
together, stormed the place, slew the priests, stripped the sacred
footprint of the gold -with wMch it had been tMckly plated, and
burnt the plundered temple.
A temporary shed was a few years later erected over the
desecrated relic by order of the brave but unfortunate Chao-Tak-
Sin, the expeller of the Burmese from Siam. His own untimely
death prevented however the complete restoration of the slirine

PHRA-BAT. 175

during his reign ; but his successor, Phra-Putta-Yot-Fa, the
founder of the present dynasty, took up the work in 1787, and
constructed the " Maha-Dop " that now covers the footprint ;
wMle following kings, down to the ruler of Siam, have each in
turn -risited, and by their pious liberality contributed to the
adornment of the place.
The period for the yearly pilgrimage of Siamese votaries to
the national shrine is on or about the full moon of the tMrd
month, a lunation corresponding more or less to our own
February ; just as the cool, dry weather of December and
January is beginning to yield to the approach of the hot season,
wMch here attains its height in AprU. Fortunately for tra
vellers in a country where anything that could by the utmost
stretch of courtesy be termed a road is a rare luxury, the sacred
spot can be approached from the direction of the capital by
water -witMn fourteen or fifteen miles — thanks to one of the
many river-branches of the great Meinam system, that intersect
in all directions the low-lying delta of Siam. The plain,
evidently sea-bed at no very remote geological epoch, slopes
down in a gentle, unKorm, and almost imperceptible decline
from the foot of the inland mountain chains on the north, to the
mangrove swamps of the mosquito-haunted coast that advances
southward year by year on the retiring sea. The general level
is monotonous as that of the NUe delta itseK; but here and
there dark limestone rocks, belonging — I speak under correction
— to the Permian formation, start abrupt and precipitous from
the plain ; islands of an earlier date, and except in being
surrounded by earth instead of water, resembling in every
respect those wMch yet stud the shallow surface of the upper
Gulf of Siam. Sometimes these rocks cluster in groups of
several miles in extent ; their summits are weather-worn into
fantastic peaks and pinnacles ; their sides formed by buttresses
of detached blocks pUed up against the precipices whence they
have fallen, or hollowed out by deep crevasses and winding
caverns often penetrating far into the central mass. Trees and
shrubs of every tropical species, among wMoh the bright green
foliage of the sacred " Bo " tree, the " Pipul " of India, is con-

176 ULYSSES.

spicuous, find root, thanks to plentiful heat and moisture, in the
clefts of the rock ; the topmost pinnacles generally stand out
bare and black under the blazing sun. All around is dense
jungle, dwarf bamboo, thorny shrubs, and here and there a lofty
tree of pr£e-Eaphaelitic slenderness and grace, not iU-suited to
the MU outlines which much resemble those we see in the back
grounds of the works of early Italian painters. Amongst tMs
-wilderness at wide spaces of interval a patch of land has been
occasionally cleared for rice-fields or garden ground, fringed by
the russet-coloured thatch-roofs of peasant huts.
The Phra-Bat group of hills, one of those just described, rises
at a distance of twenty miles or thereabouts from the mountain
ranges of Loph-buri, the northern limit of the Meinam delta,
and as far or a little more from the range of Korat, here the
easterly limit of the plain. The Mghest peaks do not, I think,
exceed twelve hundred feet, though their capricious abruptness
gives them a delusive appearance of a much greater attitude.
Just where the westernmost spur of the rocky ridge starts from
the level, the forest has been cleared away to some distance ;
and the pilgrim of Phra-Bat, who up to the moment of his
actual arrival at the mountain foot has scarcely been able to
obtain tMough the dense foliage around Ms pathway so much as
a glimpse of the wished-for goal, now suddenly finds Mmself in
presence of the shrine.
The nearest object, however, that presents itself to the visitor
on arrival is, not the sMine itself, but a large straggUng palace,
brick-built and plastered, but -with no pretensions whatever to
beauty of construction, surrounded by a wide extent of very
dilapidated garden wall ; the whole the work of the late king,
an excellent monarch, but whom the gods had certainly not
made architectural, as too many ugly edifices remain to testify.
Here the king himself, and, by his permission, the great of the
land find lodging when visiting the sacred spot ; at other times
the structure remains empty, uncared for, and even in part
ruinous ; it being too much the Siamese custom, like the Turkish,
to build much, but little or never to repair. Two other bio-
brick and plaster houses, in even worse condition than the

PHRA-BAT. \T1

palace, stand or faU fmther on ; they have been erected as
resting-places for the principal Siamese state officials when on
a visit to PMa-Bat. Nearer the rock itseK, but stiU on the
plam, several long wooden dwelUngs, raised to some height
abov^e the ground on piers, give shelter to priests, whether
resident or pUgrim ; the muster-roU of the former, as I was told,
shows about two hundi-ed in all ; but there are rarely more than
thfrty of them here present at a time ; the name of the latter
durmg the pUgrim season is legion. Close by are the two
buUdings of the kind caUed tn Siamese " Bawt," a word that
may be indifferently rendered by " temple " or " chm-ch ; " their
form outside is sometMng between that of an ordinary chapel
and a barn, -vrith a Mgh-pitched tiled roof, or rather roofs, two
or even tMee stages being often reared one abov^e another ;
wMle at each end a gable, tMckly charged -with carved or
plaster ornaments, and ricMy gUt and coloured, surmounts the
two doors wMch, in aU genmne Siamese places of worsMp,
constitute the entrance. Within, a large, sometimes gigantic,
statue of Buddlia, seated on a lotus tMone, and commonly
surrounded by a whole crowd of smaUer Buddhas, the offerings
of indiridual piety, constitutes the most notable object ; the
walls are sometimes painted -vrith scenes, not rarely grotesque
enough, from the very mythological story of the holy man's
career ; occasionaUy the torments of the infernal region, depicted
in a minuteness of physical detaU that Dante nught have enried,
terrKy or amuse sinners; not seldom the interior is merely
wMtewashed or bare. A raised platform for the preacher, who
deUvers his sermons sitting, is generaUy placed on one side, a
Uttle in front of the altar. TMs class of buUding comprises
what Europeans commonly but maccurately term " Wats ; " the
Siamese word " Wat " denoting in fact the entfre sacred enclosm-e,
often very extensive, and containing many other objects besides
the temple itseK. In connection vrith the two " Bawts " just
mentioned are several " Senlas," or lecture-rooms, large open
sheds, each contaimng a MgUy ornamented tMone for the
preacher ; " Vihans," or resting-places for pUgrim priests ;
"Salas," or lodging-houses, totaUy unfurmshed, of com-se, for
N

178 ULYSSES.

laymen ; and two or tMee " Phra-chedis," constructions of wMch
more hereafter. The rest of the cleared space is, at tMs epoch
of the year, close crowded by an extemporised market, made up
of long rows of bamboo-sheds, hastily run up at need with a few
mats for shade. Here eatables of aU kinds, Siamese kinds,
mostly of a sweetly insipid taste, may be had at smaU price ;
alongside of sundry other articles of travelUng reqmrements,
such as pots, pans, cloths, rope, and the like ; doves too, which
the Siamese much affect as house-pets, and fighting-cocks ; the
last scarce less prized here for popular amusement than in the
PhiUppines, though steel spurs are not in use as in the " Eastern
Isles," and the achievements of the feathered combatants are in
consequence comparatively bloodless. Everywhere groups of
pUgrims, whole famUies, often babies included, sit camped under
the trees or close nestUng against the shadowy side of some rest-
house ; the priests, numerous and easUy distinguished by thefr
yellow dress amid the crowd, are not seldom pro-rided -with large
wMte or yeUow-fringed umbreUas ; these they set up tent- wise
in the ground, several of them side by side, tiU the effect pro
duced at a Uttle distance is that of a gigantic crop of mushrooms
sprung up somehow among the bushes. At the time of our
visit it wants yet ten days to the fuU moon appointed for the
festival; but the entire neighbourhood, plain and hiUside, is
already crowded with pUgrfrns, men of every rank from the
governor of a province -with Ms numerous retinue of attendants
down to the poorest day-labourer, with Ms -wKe and haK-a-dozen
naked chUdren ; a Uvely, but not disorderly scene, thanks to the
total, or almost total, absence of drunkenness and its consequent
vices, which, though only too largely naturaUsed by foreign
importation at Bangkok, have as yet spread Uttle beyond the
capital and the immediate sea-coast.
From the ground level a flight of granite steps imbedded in
the limestone rock leads up, after some windings, to a smaU
ledge or plateau in the MU side, where, under the shade of the
lofty "Bo" trees that spread thefr green canopy far aloft,
Buddha, had he ever visited Siam — which it is absolutely cer
tain he never did — might well have sat or stood in meditation.

PHRA-BAT. 179

Here, at aU events, is the sacred footprint. The buUding that
now shelters it, called the " Maha-Dop," or " great," i.e. " august
dome," is of comparatively recent date ; haring been, as we have
already seen, constructed by order of the King PMa-Putta-Yot-
Fa, founder of the present dynasty, in the year 1787, only
ninety-four years since. The older buUding, of the same date
as the discovery of the footprint itself, was utterly destroyed, so
runs the chronicle, by the band of CMnese freebooters, four
hundred in number, of whom mention was made above in the
summary of the fortunes of PMa-Bat. The edifice now before
us is square, about tMrty feet in dimension each way, vrithout
comprising the outer colonnade ; but the pointed roof and spire
above give it a total height of near a hundred feet. Eound the
waUs outside, and supporting the wide-projecting roof, runs a
portico of square-shafted pillars, fiuted, and -with lotus capitals ;
and outside these again and the basement on which they stand,
is an open space, fifteen or sixteen feet wide, flagged with
coloured marble, and bordered by a highly-poUshed granite
balustrade that overhangs the native rock. This balustrade is
curiously carved in fantastic open work, where the CMnese
dragon finds frequent place ; for stone and workmanship are
alike from China, as are also the gUstening marbles of the pave
ment and of the steps that lead up to the level of the colonnade
and to the temple gates. These are four in number, two on the
north side and two on the south, taU narrow entrances -vrith an
inward slope from tMeshold to Untel ; and are provided vrith
hea-vy folding-doors of solid teak, lacquered black, and inlaid
-with exquisite flower designs in mother-of-pearl. The columns
of the outer portico are richly gilt, and their shallow flutings
deepened by lines of red and blue ; the outer waU of the temple
is entfrely covered by a gilt diaper of innumerable contemplative
little Buddhas, each attended by an angel — or what is meant for
one, haK-bird, haK- woman — in a respectful attitude, on a ground
of bright red. Eound the windows wMch admit the Ught from
the east and west, oblong apertmes with the same Egyptian-Uke
slope as the doors, run raised border mouldings of flowers, aU
gilt, as are also the deep ogive niches that surmount them,
N 2

i8o ULYSSES.

though patches of dark blue are skilfuUy inserted here and there
to increase the effect, for the sense of colour and its application
is not less developed among the Siamese than among the
CMnese themselves. The roof, pyramidical in its general out
line, is encircled tier above tier -with seven crown-Uke bands of
gilded pinnacles, glittering like little flames against the duUer
hues, red, yellow, green, and blue of the upward slope, wMch
after rising thus for about thirty feet from the caves, tapers into
a graceful spire, at first four-sided, but with deep retreating
angles, that give it an almost octangular effect, the whole being
painted in bright vertical stripes of colour, tMice bound together
like a bundle of reed-stalks by horizontal bands of gold and
purple. Higher up yet the spfre moulds itseK into a succession
of nine lessening rings, one above the other ; then changes into
a slender gUded shaft, surmounted by seven lotus-flowers, and
above these again seven golden coronets of open work, tUl the
Mghest and smallest is surmoimted by a gUded spike or lance-
head, at a hundred feet or thereabouts from the ground. An
exquisite structure, and of a type, I beUeve, peculiar to Siam ;
wMle the body of the main buUding itseK, -with its Mgh narrow
portals, and pier-like columns surmounted by lotus-shaped
capitals, bears a somewhat Egyptian character, though less
marked here than in many of the colossal bmldings and giant
statues so frequent throughout Siam.
Whether a resemblance amounting almost to a community of
art betokens also a community of ethnical origin, or whether it
be merely a result of simUar local conditions, and an example,
nor at all a solitary one, of the efficacy of such conditions in
moulding men to mutual likeness, is a matter for research, and
hard to decide. But thus much is certain, that the simUarity
between Egypt and Siam is by no means a merely superficial
one, nor confined to the uses of form and colour in either land ;
and that the two great river tracts of the NUe and the Meinam
resemble each other in the type and character of their inhabi
tants, thefr customs, their institutions, thefr arts, their disposi
tions, thefr reUgions even, more than the mere analogies of land.
water, and cUmate would seem sufficiently to account for. It

PHRA-BAT. i8i

would be easy, were tMs the occasion for it, to indicate the
paraUeUsm in every one of these, and to show how Siam is in
many and important respects a very Egypt, only -with the base
of its delta turned to the south instead of the north, and the
entire country brought some fifteen degrees nearer the Equator —
an Egypt however as yet, for its better luck, -without a foreign
loan, as also -without the results, good or bad, of serious foreign
interference. A people, too, less laborious and less intelligent
than the hard-worked servants of the Egyptian taskmaster,
Pharaoh, Khedive, or Oppenheim ; but on the other hand with
the advantage — an inestimable one in the East — of never having
been cramped and stunted by the worse than Procrustean mould
of the Islamitic system, so surely fatal to the growth and de
velopment of a people, whatever its native energy. Happier in
these regards, Siam is, after its fashion, a kind of prse-Moham-
medan, nay, indeed, pr£e-Ptolemaic Egypt ; an indirect survival
of the ages when Denderah and PMlae were yet unbuilt, and
liker to the ruled and the rulers of Thebes or MempMs than
to those of HeUenised Alexandria or Islamitic Cairo. But in
notMng is the simUarity more evident — and let this be enough
for our present pm-pose — than in the arcMtecture of the two
kingdoms. The same massive tree-like columns, close placed to
supply the deficiency of arch or vault, the same lotus-petaled
capitals, the same slope of the Mgh portals, and not unfrequently
of the -windows, the same frequency of the obelisk-monument,
distinct from, yet adjoimng, the temple or the palace, the same
just use and appreciation of size as an essential constituent of
constructive exceUence — such is the type dominant and repeated
everywhere, at Bangkok, at AyutMa, at Loph-buri, at Nakon-
sawan, aU tMoughout the land. Pity that the inferiority of
bmlding materials, and the almost universal employment of
brick, and that too often ill baked and crumbly, should have
rendered the greater part of the monuments of Siam at once less
shapely and less endming than those of Egypt.
Nor is it in arcMtecture only, but in imagery, sculptured or
painted, that the same resemblance may be observed. The free
use of colom- as an auxiliary or supplement of constructional

ULYSSES.

detail, to deepen shadow or to bring out relief, was, by the not
doubtful evidence of what ages have spared, practised in the
audience halls of Thebes and the temples of Luxor, exactly
as it now is in the " Maha Prasat " of Bangkok, and the
sanctuaries of " Wat Po " ; while the outlines and attitudes of
the portraitures that adorn, or are intended to adorn, the walls
of the Siamese shrines might, where free from the too prevalent
taint of Hindoo mythological extravagance, be readUy imagmed
the work of Egyptian artists. But most of all the huge statues
of Buddha, seated or recUning, the former often measuring sixty
or seventy feet in height, the latter, extended over a hundred
and twenty or thfrty feet in length, yet comely and weU-
proportioned, though made of brickwork only, fasMoned over
¦with plaster, claim near kindred vrith Memnon and Eameses,
and even reproduce in posture and expression the same fulness
of repose and calm dignity, not without a hint of quiet scorn,
that stamps the caste of their giant bretMen adown the NUe
valley. Indeed in Siam these features of sculpture and arcM
tecture are aU the more marked by the abrupt contrast offered
in the grotesque figures and fantastic ornamentations of Chinese
workmanship mixed up capriciously among these very temples
and statues, and representing a whoUy different phase of
Turanian art and mind ; one which, more than any other
influence from without, has penetrated, though not assimilated
Siam. But it is time that we return to Phra-Bat, and having
surveyed the outside, let us now enter the building. The floor
from wall to wall is covered by a mat of silver, plaited in tMn
slips, the offering of the piety of the late king ; a monarch said
to have entertained strange theories in matter of dogma, but
who, happily for himself and his people, abstained from entering
on the dangerous path of religious reform, and steadily upheld
in practice the traditional forms and usages of Siamese Budd-
Msm. The walls of the shrine are painted inside of a Ught red,
-with a gilded pattern resembUng that on the outside, and are
further decorated by some MgMy-varnished CMnese pictures,
devotional gifts, but of no particular significance that I could

PHRA-BAT. 183

discover. The ceiUng, which rises into a lofty cone, is a com
plicated stagework of carving and gUding ; but its details are
lost in the insufficient light afforded by the side windows of
the sMine. Towards the south waU of the bmlding a low dais,
gilded and lotus-bordered, supports a sitting figm-e of the
anchoret-king ; smaU pasttUes of sandal-wood, candles of a very
ordinary description, and dim lamps of cocoa-nut oil burn
ceaselessly before it, amid heaps of fresh flowers renewed
hom-ly, and a heterogeneous coUection of offerings denoting more
devotion than good taste.
But these are mere accessories. Under the centre of the
cupola is the sacred object of pilgrimage and shrine alike, the
supposed impress of the holy foot. I trust that my Siamese
readers, should I have any, -wiU not quarrel -with me for the
epithet " supposed," when I subjoin that the cavity wMch does
duty for footprmt is nearly five feet in length by two in
breadth, and it bears no resemblance whatever to the mark of a
human foot, not even in the proportions of its shape, unless it
be that the end wMch does duty for heel is rather narrower
than the other, and that some well-intentioned but unskilful
chisel has indicated at the larger end some scratches typical, it
seems, of toe-marks, aU equal in length, as indeed tradition
affirms were in Ufe the toes of the holy man, but the one on
the left rather broader than the rest — the great toe, no doubt.
According to these indications the impress is that of the right
foot, and was made by a person who stood facing the north. Of
the hundred and eight distinctive marks to which the footprint,
as we are told, owed its first recognition, and even of the central
and most significant " Chakr," or wheel, not a trace remains ;
they disappeared, it is said, when the sMine was plundered and
burnt in 1766 ; an unsatisfactory explanation. The depth of
the hollow in the rock surface is about ten inches ; but all
round it a raised border, brickwork I tMnk, but very thickly
gilt, and decorated vrith the Ukeness of a lotus-fiower garland,
protects the miraculous impress, wMch is further guarded by an
iron grating, though tMs last during the pUgrimage season is
removed.

1 84 ULYSSES.

Arrived at the goal of Ms journey, the Siamese pUgrim,
layman or priest, sits do-wn on the sUver-matted floor beside
the sacred symbol, and after raising his joined hands and
bo-wing Ms head thrice or more often in pious veneration,
remains a wMle in Ms place, reciting in a low voice some
devout PaU formula, and meditatmg on the exceUences of him
who, for a thfrd part — so statisticians affirm — of the human race
represents the Mghest perfection to wMch man can attain ; the
great monarch who having weighed rank, bfrth, power, riches,
pleasure, aU that men desire, in the balance of reason, found aU
Ught as vanity, and abandoned all to find in abnegation that
which satiety could not give, and to open by renouncement the
unerring path from changeful death to changeless IKe — change
less and eternal ; for such indeed is, when rightly understood,
the true significance of Buddha's " Nfrvana," however obscm-ed
by the over-subtlety of Asiatic metaphysics or misapprehended
by the grosser minds of European scholars, French, EngUsh,
or German, some prejudiced, but aU unable to distinguish
through the dense atmosphere of Western materiaUsm and
selfish individuaUty the clear colourless ray of truth, visible
only to the unclouded eye of a pm-e heart. Yet the teacMng
was not in substance new, nor taught by Buddha only, nor
learnt in Ms school alone ; nor have there ever wanted since
man was man -witnesses to the one supreme truth, the solution
of the enigma, the answer to the spMnx of existence, that in the
annihUation of the individual self is the perfection of being, the
consummation of love, IKe absolute and eternal. Known to the
great Teacher of GalUee, known, so their memorials assure us,
to the disciples of the word of His power, Semite or Gentile, to
the ascetics of Egypt, to the anchorets of Calabria, to the mystics
of Damascus and Cufa, to the love-bard of Cairo ; known too to
Gerson, to Lallement, to Surin and thefr foUo-wing, but known as
the one pearl of great price for which the all that is bartered is
as notMng ; the absolute, changeless, boundless, Uving love, in
exchange for the narrowness, the Umitations, the mutabUities of
self and death. This goal Buddha saw, to this he pointed, towards
tMs he endeavoured, nor wholly without success, to trace out

PHRA-BAT. 1 85

the path by wMch those who walk, though at the outset with yet
unpurged eyesight, might arrive in time, first to the vision, then
at last the attainment of the true life. That every act, good or
e-ril, has its reward proportioned accordingly without fail or
flaw, that the evU done in time must be compensated and
cancelled in time ; that the good must ultimately clear off and
thrust out the evil, tiU through long continued succession of
change, in wMch each phase is determined by and evolved from
the preceding, eril and seK-love ; then lastly the self-conscious
ness wMch is the root and element of all evil, be gradually
aboUshed and effaced, tiU existence reach the perfeot, the
absolute good, where self and individuality are no more. Such
were the main Unes of his track ; and along these he placed
the lesser and imperfect, but needful waymarks of special
precept and observance by which the many might guide them
selves in the right direction, though yet far from, nor even
conscious of, the ultimate term. Few indeed — and how could
it be otherwise ? — are they among the miUions who profess the
observance of the Five Precepts, who hold in view, or even
consciously tend towards the Nfrvana of Buddha. But fewer
stiU, those at least among the average Siamese, who do not
cUng with tolerable persistence to the prescribed rites and
observances of the BuddMst code, or lose from sight the theory,
and even in the main, the practice of the pathway of merit, or
forget the certainty of its consequence and effect beyond the
phase caUed death, through long succeeding ages of happiness
or grief, according to the works done and the merits or demerits
acqufred day by day. And hence to define the BuddMst
system as mere pessimistic positivism, or atheistic materialism,
and Buddha Mmself as a teacher of hopeless anniMlation, is
sheer misrepresentation and calumny ; nor indeed is it Ms-
torically possible that by such preachments he or any one
else could ever have earned the gratitude and secured the
devoted adherence of countless multitudes and long succeeding
generations. Not death, but Ufe, " more Ufe and fuUer," that is what men,
Asiatics no less than Europeans, want ! With tMs deep

i86 ULYSSES.

longing, this inextinguished desire, divergences of race, Aryan
or Turaman, and differences of cUmate, tropical or temperate,
have notMng to do; and if the Siamese are of opinion that
Buddha taught them the best and securest way to this, who
shaU blame them for their veneration of Ms memory, and of the
symbols which betoken his actual presence among men ?
When the short prayer or meditation is over, a few flowers,
should the worsMpper have them ready to hand, are offered, and
a pastUle or two lighted and left to burn ; after wMch devotional
acts our pUgrim is free to apply MmseK to the business most
grateful to the genmne Siamese, body and mmd, that, namely,
of looking about him and doing notMng in particular. For
occupations Uke these the place is admirably suited ; the moist
warmth of the forest afr, the clear, pale, blue sky, the bright
sunUght on rock and tree ; the gay hoUday groups of men and
women, -with flowers wMte and yellow in their black hair ; the
orange-coloured robes of the priests sprinkled frequent among
the haK-naked lay pUgrims, reUeving the ruddy brown, else the
prevaiUng tone of a Siamese crowd ; while gold, at least gUding,
marble, and purple — the tMee constituents of classic splendour,
the triple ideal of TheophUe Gautier and Imperial Eome, —
make up the foreground in a scene where men, women, children,
dress, flowers, leaves, sky, sunsMne, all umte in one bright
smUe, and harmomse in one festival of colom-, form, and Ught.
Nor is sound wanting; for close at the entrance door of the
sMine, between the portico and the outer balustrade, a band of
musicians, provided by the UberaUty of some wealtMer pilgrims,
have taken place, tMrty performers or more, on the polished
pavement, and seated there among a deUghted crowd, keep up
on thefr various instruments, some harmonious enough, an
untiring succession of tunes, or rather of notes, by no means
devoid of melody, accompanied from time to time by the: voice
of some trained singer; the whole producing a pleasant, and,
above aU, a very cheerful effect. Of all Asiatic music the
Siamese is generaUy held the besi^ — a moderate praise, as those
who have attended Persian, Arabian, Hindoo, or Malay, not
to say CMnese performances, will testify. However, in the

PHRA-BAT. 187

opinion of the pUgrim audiencS the Phra-Bat concert is
eridently perfection itself; and does undoubtedly, especially
when heard at a moderate distance in the open air, cMme in
-with, and in a manner complete the holiday character of the
scene. But whether Ustening to the music or other-wise intent,
the multitude of worshippers without the temple and witMn
are mardfestly of the mmd that religion and pleasure, merriment
and devotion, are not only by no means incompatible terms,
but are rather closely connected with and auxiliary to each
other. Here aU is ornament and glitter, mirth, music, and
laughter, notMng solemn, notMng mysterious, notMng awful, no
" dim reUgious light," no sacred gloom, no fear-inspiring rites.
The bloody sacrifices of Greece and Eome, the monster-peopled
t-vriUght of Hindoo worsMp, the melancholy symbols of pain
and death so frequent in Catholic sanctuaries, the dull, weary
decorum of a Protestant church — none of these have place in
Phra-Bat, where, on the contrary, all combines to announce that
religion is sometMng joyful, sometMng belonging to the bright
side of Ufe, and to be approached accordingly. Eight or -vsrrong,
it is anyhow a pleasant view of tMngs, and one that so far
does credit to the good sense of those who take it. And even
were BuddMsm the pessimist theory that some have, though
erroneously, imagined it to be, it is unquestionably optimism in
practice. Besides the actual footprint, or, to speak more closely in
accordance with general beUef, the rock-cavity wMch betokens
it, there is yet within the " Maha-Dop " another object
intimately connected with the peculiar purport of the shrine.
This is a gilt plate of copper, in dimensions corresponding
exactly vrith the miraculous hoUow itself, but bearing in relief
facsimUes of the various symbols said to have been originally
impressed on the stone ; and of which a minute description is
given m Mr. H. Alabaster's 'Modern BuddMst,' a work
pubUshed ten years ago. According to this author, the number,
and for the most part the character, of the emblems tally with
those found in the reputed footmarks of BuddMst Burmali and
Ceylon. In the Phra-Bat itself some of the mystic types are

ULYSSES.

essentially Siamese or, I rather think, Cambodian ; but far the
greater part have reference to the compUcated absurdities of
Hindoo mythology, those incrustations of later BuddMsm, and
as such scarcely merit notice here. Nor do the Siamese them
selves, for aught I could discover, attach much importance to
any of the hundred and eight grotesques, the sacred wheel or
" Chakr " alone excepted. The gUt plate itself is placed leaning
against the inner wall, opposite the footprint, and is for the
pilgrims an object of some curiosity, but of no veneration.
>- Like copies of the PMa-Bat, -with its array of emblems, some
in stone, some in plaster, gilt or plain, are to be met with in
many other temples tMoughout Siam ; these are often the
objects of supplementary pilgrimages, made at the same time of
year as that to the original. A few of these are, curiously
enough, smrounded by four distinct outlines, each three or four
inches wider and longer than the other, neatly traced out on the
indented surface. The most remarkable of the kind that it has
been my luck to visit was at Pamok, a place of some note in
Siamese annals, not far from the ancient capital, Khrung-Khao,
or AyutMa ; and here an old and learned monk informed me
that the qmntuple engravement referred to five different
appearances of Buddha, in each of which the stature of the holy
man was proportioned to one or other of these gigantic foot
marks, a tradition of wMch no other record appears to exist.
The only Siainese image of Buddha Mmself, said to be an exact
likeness of the saint, and indeed to be of supernatural make, is
a standing figure about fourteen feet high; the two feet are
planted firmly close together on the ground ; the left hand
hangs down open by the side ; the right is raised as though in
admonition or benediction, and bears a smaU " Chakr " or efrcle,
surrounded by a lotus border, displayed on the palm. This
statue — a plaster one — occupies a* very pretty temple on the
wooded rocks of Ta-ra-mamoun, a long way north up the great
Meinam river ; it was held in great esteem by the late king,
and is still much resorted to by pUgrims. Ancient it certaiMy
is not, nor has it any claim in beauty of form or featme, let
alone size, to be a correct likeness of one whom all annaUsts

PHRA-BAT. 189

agree in describing as exceptionally handsome. But it is
remarkable that of aU monumental statues of Buddha through
out Siam, tMs alone is in a standing attitude, the rest are
seated or reclining ; and of these two postures CMnese devotion
affects by preference the former, Siamese, characteristicaUy
enough, the latter.
Without the "Maha-Dop," but on the same level and close
beside it, are two handsome " Phra-chedis," or, as Fergusson
would style them, topes ; broad-based cones, surrounded by
deep mouldings, and tapering upwards into spfres, often of
great height. The lower stages of the "Phra-chedi" are not
unfrequently square ; the central part has a beU-like form ; the
buUding itself is invariably soUd. A reUc, a smaU; image of
some costly material, or some Uke object, is said to be
commonly concealed in the centre of the mass, but is honoured
by no particular reverence distinct from that allowed to the
" PMa-chedi " itself Hardly any temple in Siam but has one
or more of these pyramid spires in attendance on it, and often
out-topping it greatly ; that, for instance, reared not many years
since amid the marsh-lands of PMa-pathom, east of Bangkok,
faUs little short of four hundred feet in height from base to
gUded summit, but the design is unfortunately not worthy of
the giant proportions of the edifice, and the general effect
clumsy and poor. Another frequent, and by no means un
graceful adjunct of a Buddhist temple is the "PMa-prang."
Its significance is much the same as that of the " Phra-chedi,"
but the form is that of a stout obelisk, deeply fluted, and
brought by a succession of re-entering angles from a square
into an octangular shape ; intricate mouldings divide it into
stages graduaUy dimimshing as they ascend, tiU all the lines of
bmlding are gathered together into a point at top. Like the
" PMa-chedi," the " PMa-prang " is solid ; but four steep flights
of steps often lead up the sides for about one-tMrd of the
height, where each gives access to a smaU Buddha-tenanted
sMine hoUowed out in the body of the pUe. On no form of
sacred buUding do the Siamese larish more arcMtectural and
decorative ornament, and in none is the general result more

I90 ULYSSES.

thoroughly satisfactory — thanks to the skilful combination of
vertical and horizontal lines, wMch give the fuUest possible
effect to height and size, whUe affording in their intersections
fair scope for any amount of ornamental detaU to complete
without compUcating or overloading the outUne. A good
specimen of this sort of monument is the " PMa-prang," kno-wn
as that of " Wat Chang " at Bangkok, which, though not two
hundred feet high, looks not only infinitely grander, but even
loftier than the ungainly edifice of PMa-pathom. Both Mnds
of buUding, the one holding the place of the Egyptian pyramid,
the other of the obeUsk, here however on the smaU scale
befitting the broken character of the scenery around them,
cluster round the "Maha-Dop" of Phra-Bat, and show their
slender and weU-proportioned outlmes tMough the green shades
of bamboo, palm, and forest-tree, Uke wMte specks jotted at
random aU over the sides of the hUl and up to its very summit ;
whither the pUgrim ascends for the greater part of the distance
by a stone causeway, soUdly and skiKuUy constructed amid the
wUd confusion of rock and boulder, but now neglected and in
many places broken down. Tradition ascribes— but I doubt
-vrith what correctness — the construction of tMs work to Phya
Vichaien, the notorious Constantine Falcon, a Greek renegade,
who, from the rank of a common saUor, rose, by sheer cleverness
and audacity, two centuries since, to be prime minister of Siam ;
and about whose Mstory both French and Siamese legends have
clustered tMckly, crediting Mm, like the Solomon of the East
and the Charlemagne or Barbarossa of the West, with much in
wMch he had probably little or no share. Anyhow, as the
principal and immediate cause of this adventurer's downfaU was
Ms too open patronage of the French missionaries, those normal
precursors of French mUitary occupation, and Ms rash en
deavour to subvert in their favour the BuddMst priesthood and
reUgion, it is scarcely probable that he should have contributed
to an undertaMng in honour of that chiefest and central symbol
of BuddMsm, the PMa-Bat. About half-way up the mountam
there is a smaU natural cave, much frequented by bats and
pUgrims ; but neither tMs nor a much larger cave at the foot of

PHRA-BAT. 191

an adjoining MU offer any object of much interest. Caves of
tins sort, some of them, however, Uke that of Pechaburi, near
the western sea-coast, beautifully adorned with pendent stalac
tites, are common enough throughout the calcareous rocks of
Southern Siam ; and some of them are of great extent. The
topmost ascent to the pretty miniature copy of the " Maha-
Dop'' that crowns the hill is difficult and proportionately
meritorious, besides offering the immediate and welcome reward
of a noble view far over forest, rice-field, and winding river, tUl
the blue mountain-ranges close it in to the north and east;
wMle southward a smaU cluster of dark rocks, starting abrupt
and island-like from the green plain at about thfrty mUes'
distance, marks the second bourne of the Siamese yearly'
pUgrimage, namely, the Phra-Chai, which, space permitting, we
wUl -risit also.
Before however we take leave of the PMa-Bat, I ought to
make mention of a curious groUp of statues, said to represent
the celebrated Siamese monarch, PMa-Narai, conqueror of
Cambodia, and two of Ms cMef ministers. These figures, made
of plaster thickly gUt, stand under a shed near the " Maha-
Dop," the Mng, as befitting, in the centre. Portrait or not, the
coarse but powerful features of the image, the rounded eyes,
-vride nostrUs, and heavy jaw, well become the fierce warrior
who accompUshed Ms war- vow by UteraUy washing his feet in
the blood of his captive Cambodian rival. The statue, if taken
from the Ufe, must be about three centuries old ; I myself
incline to tMnk it a copy of some lost original. The tMee
figures are all dressed in the old Siamese two-cloth fasMon ; the
crown on the monarch's head resembles in design that stUl in
use, but is less ornate, and smaUer. The ampUtude of court
decorations is apt to be in inverse proportion to their real
significance. A second statue, also said to represent Phra-Narai,
stands by itseK in a mche beside the rock-steps that lead up to
the sMine ; but from the distorted ferocity of its features, and
the fantastic weapon grasped in its hand, I am incUned to
tMnk that it is reaUy designed for the Ukeness of Chao-Khao-
Tok, the tutelary spirit of the mountain, an angel demon of

192 ULYSSES.

great power, and venerated accordingly. The principal shrine,
however, of tMs prseternatural potentate is not here, but at the
southernmost spur of the Mil, a mUe or so distant, on the main
road leading from AyutMa to PMa-Bat; where every pilgrim,
the king MmseK, should he come tMs way, not excepted, must
needs dismount before it, and offer respectable homage to the
Ul-favoured figure, where it scowls and tMeatens with axe and
dagger the passers by. Comfort may however be derived from
the re-assuring effigy of a " Thevada," or Siamese angel, half
woman, half bfrd, that stands -with a drawn sword immediately
behind the iU-natured " Chao," as though to keep him witMn
due bounds of moderation.
Here we come across a stratum of ideas much older in Siam,
nor in Siam only, than either Buddhism or any other reasoned
worship or creed whatever ; and which holds its own, partly in
spite of, and defiance of, the official beUef, partly as incorporated
into it. Every place, but more especiaUy every mountain or hiU,
every river, ev^ery lake, every well, every forest, has in Siamese
popular opinion its guardian "Chao," literaUy "master" or "lord,"
a sort of local genius, spirit, influence, or demon, sometimes
benevolent — that is, if approached with proper respect — but more
often spiteful and capricious, inflicting illness, insanity, and
other woes on whoever thoughtlessly offends Mm, or even leaves
him unacknowledged and unhonoured. Earely visible, the
" Chao " is not the less believed in, and claims to MmseK a
large share of Siamese veneration, though the offerings and
ceremonies by which he is propitiated are fortunately of a very
harmless, often chUdish character ; unUke the dark and cruel
superstitions attendant in some parts of India, Africa, and too
many other lands on such Uke beUef. Akin to the idea of the
local " Chao," — an idea, under one form or other, scarce less
ancient and less universal than the human race itself — is the
fancy of a household famUiar or spirit, attached to every dweUing
large or smaU ; and in whose honour a little model house may
often be seen raised on posts, and decorated -with coloured rags or
flowers, close by the real cottage. Emned bmldings, of wMch
there is no lack in Siam, old towers, deserted temples, each of

PHRA-BAT. 193

these has its " Chao," generally a dangerous one ; so too have
villages and towns every one, but of a more benevolent and
protective character. That ghosts, phantoms, spectres, and all
the goblin crew that make night hideous, even an occasional
vampire included, swarm in Siamese no less than in Servian,
Eussian, or Albanian darkness, need scarce be said. But I
spare the details, which may be found copiously enough in the
laborious and, in most respects, accurate work, of Adolf Bastian,
the best, if not indeed the only trustworthy European source of
information regarding the Siam of our days. What has already
been said may suffice to show that here, as elsewhere, religion
has a two-fold aspect, the official, logical, and avowed one,
and the popular, instinctive, and unavowed, each of which has
its influence, but the former more over the upper, the latter over
the lower classes, though neither are altogether outside of the
two-fold range. For indeed both orders of belief, rightly under
stood, even if distinct from each other, are not opposed, but
rather parallel, and both may consistently find place, though
not on a footing of absolute equality, in the same mind. Here
at Phra-Bat the miraculous footprint of the great teacher and
ascetic may appropriately serve as type of the former ; while the
mountain " Chao," with his scowl and hatchet, exemplifies the
latter. Yet one more gaze at Phra-Bat before our horses' heads are
finally turned from it, and the dense interlacement of the
bamboo tMcket has hidden it, as soon it must, from our eyes.
The sight is one of peculiar beauty. Central in the view stands
the gracefuUy proportioned " Maha-Dop," with its range of
stately columns, its pyramidical roof of innumerable flame-
points, its lofty spire, its justly harmonised tints of purple,
crimson, and gold, the whole set off to perfection by a fantastic
background of piled-up rocks, wMte shrines and spirelets, yellow-
flowered sMubs, plumy bamboo-tufts, taU fan-palms, -wide-
brancMng trees, and a confusion of gold green leaves glittering
under the pale bright sky and dazzling sun of the tropics — a
fairy structure in a fairy land; itself incorpsed and deminia-
tured, like Shakespeare's good horseman, into that on and amid
0

194 ULYSSES.

which it is placed. Architecture and scenery, art and nature
are here at one. Perfect harmony with its surroundings, or
rather that the building should be itself a compendium and
perfectioning of those surroundings, such is the first, but, un
fortunately for modern Europe, now the most often forgotten
condition of architectural success. An evil day was it for Siam
when the mania of pseudo-European imitation, that bane of
Asiatic art, first invaded Siam, where in the capital especially,
and its neighbourhood, mean copies of third-rate European
models, vile in themselves, and viler yet from the incongruity
of their placement, or misplacement rather, too often insult the
eye. When will men learn — that is, the men of our day, for
the men of past years seem to have scarce needed such a lesson
— that architecture can no more be imported from without than
climate, nor art than mind ? Saddest of all when a nation like
the Siamese, birth-endowed with a style thoroughly suited to
the land, and capable of indefinite development and improve
ment from within, throws away its own proper jewel for the
false paste and sham brilliants of what it can neither adapt, nor
even rationaUy copy. For not more surely does the blight
shrivel the leaf, nor the evening gloom the day, than does the
taint of European mimicry make to vanish every trace of
inborn Asiatic art — form, colour, proportion, grace, dignity, the
very soul itself Whether Siam throughout her length and
breadth is to add one more instance to the over many that Asia
has already to show, I know not, but fear it much ; the prece
dent is but too wide, the example too contagious.
A footprint is an easUy-imagined symbol of a departed
presence, and as such is common to many countries and many
memories. A shadow is a more refined, a subtler emblem, and
one more rarely employed. Though realised nowadays after a
fashion by science, and embodied in the sufficiently vulgar and
vulgarising form of photography, the idea in itself would seem
to belong to the region of poetry rather than of fact ; and the
direct permanence of such a token to be a matter of fancy or
miracle, not of ordinary sense. The Siamese imagination,

PHRA-BA T. 195

however, wMch, although tn most respects a very limited one, is
vivid enough within a certain range, has, tn its veneration for
its great lawgiver, added the shadow to the footprint, and
claims for the land the honom- of possessing not the more
material only, but the more spirituaUsed token of the holy
memory. And thus it comes to pass that the greater number
of the yearly pilgrims, after accompUshing thefr visit to PMa-
Bat, regain the main road, that is, the riv^er, and foUow it up for
a considerable distance among shoals and rapids, till they reach
on its banks the Uttle viUage of Ta-Oi, whence a path leads
for seven or eight mUes across country south, to the lulls of
PMa-Chai, the " shadow " or " refiection of the lord." After
traversmg an open expanse of rice-fields and meadows, the road
for its latter haK Ues tMough a forest of great beauty, where
stately trees, towering often to fifty or sixty feet of massive
trunk before they tMow out the lowest of thefr giant branches,
overshadow the dense perplexity of dwarf palm, garlanded
creepers, glossy undergrowth, and whatever the tropics - produce
of most luxuriant and loveUest m flower and leaf. Emerging
from the wood, the path suddenly opens on a smaU haK-cleared
space, overhung by a huge precipice, the side of a mass of lime
stone-rock that rises sheer fuU tMee hundred feet above the
plata. A steep flight of gramte steps, here, as at PMa-Bat,
dexterously let into the ]DUed-up boulders on one side, leads to
a narrow ledge running along the face of the otherwise perpen
dicular cliff, at least seventy feet from the gi'ound. Here
nestles a Uttle group of muiiatme sMtnes, pyramidical Phra-
chedis and quaint monuments, foUo-wing the Une of the rock
ttU, just where its vridth is greatest, the whole breadth up to the
very marge is taken up by a quadrangular inclosure; tMee
sides of the buUding are formed by a columnar arcade, closed by
windowless waUs -without, but open inwards to the central and
unroofed comt; the fourth side is the overhanging preciiice
itseK, a mass of grey rock going up to the sky overhead.
Here, on the smooth stone sm-face, devotion of fancy attempts
•with various success, to discern the faintly-limned outUne of a
human foi-m — the form of Buddha, who certainly could not,
0 2

196 ULYSSES.

throughout all Southern Siam have chosen a fitter spot than this
almost inaccessible shelf of rock for undisturbed meditation.
This is the celebrated " Phra-Chai," the holy shadow or likeness,
said to have been first revealed to the same fortunate huntsman
who discovered the yet more celebrated Phra-Bat, and about the
same time. The visibility of the likeness is, however, so says
the popular voice, proportioned to the merits of the beholder :
wMle the favour of discermng it is wholly refused to the un
beUeving and the vricked, and is only partially accorded to any
virtue except the Mghest. My Siamese companions, of whom
there was a round dozen, and myseK, would seem according to
tMs test to have occupied a medium or average post on the scale
of goodness ; for all of us, by dint of hard staring, managed to
make out a kind of shadow-tracing on the rock before us, though
no two of us agreed as to its exact resemblance. Thus, while I
described a sitting figure, another beholder pronounced it to be
in a standing position; some said it was colossal, others of
ordinary human size. When I add that the face of the rock is
weather-stained, and marked with intersecting Unes of cleavage
and stratification, I think that I have given as satisfactory an
explanation of any freaks imagination may play in ffincied
combinations and likenesses as need be asked.
Much seen, however, or little — and I never yet met a Siamese
who had the moral courage to say that he had seen notMng at
all — this shadow-haunted scarer is in great honour; and the
open area of the temple was already, at the time of my visit,
though a full fortnight before the appointed term of pUgrimage,
full of devout worshippers, whUe the air was thick with pastille
smoke wreatMng upwards against the wondrous rock. The
building itself with its light arcade, and lotus ornaments lavishly
bestowed on cornice and capital, is a pretty specimen of Siamese
arcMtecture at its best ; graceful tm-ret-like pinnacles crown the
angles, and the portals, with their quasi-Egyptian outUne,
flanked by well-proportioned columns, are models of their Mnd.
A facsimile of the sacred footprint, carved and gUt, occupies the
centre floor of the court. The remainder of the rock-ledge,
wMch continues in an irregular and break-neck fasMon some

PHRA-BAT. 197

way further along the mountain-side, is left free to groups of
pilgrims, perched here and there, perhaps as much to enjoy the
pure air and lovely riew over the tree-tops as for any other
reason. Another flight of steps winding far in its difficult ascent
conducts to a small temple on the very summit of the mountain.
The buUding is a copy, so far as I could make out by the style
and period to wMch it appears to belong, not of the present, but
of the original and more ancient " Maha-Dop " of PMa-Bat.
Indeed, all the principal constructions at the Phra-Chai seem of
comparatively ancient date; and their secluded position may
well have saved them from the ravages of Burmese invaders, and
Chinese or Peguan bandits, so fatal to many of the noblest
Siamese monuments during the last century. But it is a real
misfortune that the use of carved inscriptions, commemorative
of names, events, and dates, so frequent, however difficult to
decipher, in the valleys of the Nile and the Tigris, shoidd be
wholly unknown in the region of the Meinam ; while the palm-
leaf records, deposited, a prey to damp, wMte ants, and neglect,
in the recesses of the " Wats," are for the most part as little
valuable in their significance as durable in their substance. The
noble, often colossal, monuments of Siam, its temples, its
palaces, its spires, its obelisks, its giant statues, stand or crumble
on plain and mountain side, mute survivors of a speechless past,
tottering boulders on the cliff-edge of the dark secular ocean that
year by year washes them down into its immemorial depths, tUl
the buUdings themselves shall have followed the builders, the
monuments the memories, and of either not a trace remains.
The customary season for performing the PMa-Chai pilgrimage
follows immediately on that of Phra-Bat, falling consequently
in the latter part of the same lunar month ; nor is the concourse
much inferior in numbers. Already at the date of my visit an
extempore bamboo village, with its usual adjuncts of a market,
a cockpit, resting-places, preacMng-sheds, booths, and even a
few tolerable houses had sprung up ; and groups of saffron-robed
priests -with great umbrellas sauntered about, and a mixed
multitude of Siamese, Laos, and CMnese not a few, roamed at
large, or rested under the shade of the giant trees ; while buying

1 93 ULYSSES.

and selling, music and sport, gambling too on a small scale, and
other amusements were going on not less briskly than at PMa-
Bat itseK. Whatever the occasion, wherever the shrine, reUgion
and merry-making, worship and festivity, are inseparable in the
Siamese idea. As to the priests, or monks rather — for their
attributions would seem to bring them more correctly under
the latter heading than the former — they are much given to
pilgrimage ; and frequent were the bands of them already on
the road, attended by whole retinues of young scholars or
disciples, also in yellow, all invariably travelling on foot, and
setting a truly edifying example of voluntary poverty and
simplicity of life. For so it is, that of all the priesthoods or
monkhoods throughout the world, none has been so persistently
faithful to the ideal proposed by its founder as the Buddhist ;
none so closely, for the outward manner of life, at any rate,
followed the master's example ; none so steadily resisted the
allurements, not of pleasure merely, but a much rarer achieve
ment for monks and priests, if history tells true, of wealth and
ambition ; none so honestly refrained from whatever they pro
fessed to have renounced aUke in pubUc and private life. A
proof among many others that whatever may be the defects of
BuddMsm it is a system thoroughly well adapted to the character
of the nations that have adopted it, and not least among such of
the Siamese.
A thing worthy of note. The great world-famous pilgrimages
of Eome and Jerusalem have long since been matters of Mstory ;
Benares no more gathers as of old her millions of Hindoo
votaries ; the Meccan concourse is but a feeble remnant of the
past ; the lesser shrines of Loretto or Compostella, of Kerbela
and Meshed Ali, of the Indian or the South American peninsula,
have well nigh lapsed into forgetfulness ; while the spasmodic
efforts to revive the like in France or elsewhere collapse in
speedy indifference and neglect. Not so in this strange survival
of past ages, this land forgotten by the years, this land of Siam.
Here, to judge by appearances at least, there is no abandonment
nor falling-off in the national reverence paid to the great East-
Asian ascetic and teacher, or to his memorials, footmark, or

PHRA-BAT. 199

Ukeness. Visited duly with aU honour and ceremony both by
the late and by the present king, indeed by every monarch in
turn of the reigmng dynasty, the shrines are in good repair, the
offerings abundant, and the multitude of yearly pilgrims to each
attests that the popular dev^otion keeps at least even pace with
the royal. Esto perpetua. It was by adopting the religion, and
obeying the precepts of Buddha, that Siam raised herself from
mere barbarism, took a place among the kingdoms, and attained
whatever power and prosperity she has possessed or is ever
likely to possess ; and the best vrish of her friends may rightly
be that she may long continue faithful as ever to the memory of
her first law-giver, and to the system symbolised at Phra-Bat
and Phra-Chai.

ULYSSES.

THE THEEE CITIES.
To this Essay, first pubUshed in the ' CornhiU ' for March 1878, I have left
its title, though one of unfulfilled promise ; as of the Three Cities one only,
and that one in many respects the least interesting of the three, is described ;
the other two receiving but slight and passing notice. This curtailment was
due to want partly of space, partly of time ; of space, as it soon became
evident to the writer that not one but three distinct essays, if indeed three
might suffice, would|be needed to complete the programme ; of time, because
even while I prepared to undertake the triple work, events which no anticipa
tion short of prophetic could have forecast removed me for half a convex
globe from regions I had but then learnt to appreciate and to love. Would it
were otherwise !
On the island-fringed shore of the far Asiatic East, witMn a
geographical circle of less than sixty miles in diameter, built on
almost identical soil, bathed by the same waters, canopied by the
same sky, rise the Three Cities, three nationalities, three civili
sations, tMee histories, three destinies ; united in the closest
juxtaposition of circumstance and site ; sundered by divergence
wide as the extremest limits of human mind and race. Hong
Kong, Canton, Macao ; three monuments respectively raised by
England, China, Portugal ; three embodiments of as many most
dissimUar energies, distinct in their starting-point, concurrent in
their course, divergent in their goal.
Not sisters, though Unked together by the closest ties of
mutual adoption ; not strangers, though aliens in language, in
institutions, in blood ; not hostile, though confronting each other
-vrith the bitterest antipathy of caste ; not friendly, though
compelled to union by Unks intimate as existence itseK; rivals,
yet associated in common interest; associates, yet necessary,
unreconciled rivals; leagued, but unloving; repellent, yet

THE THREE CITIES.

allied ; essentially three, accidentally one. Three tall trees from
three most different seeds, uiiUke in flower, in foliage, in fnut ;
nor unlike only, but antagonistic, yet planted close side by side,
expanding to the same atmosphere, nourished by the same
elements, above, beneath. One of them a natural, indigenous
growth, two with branches of indigenous Ufe grafted into them,
but exotic in root, in stem, in type ; for, in spite of the busy,
yellow-complexioned, long-haired population, that swarms almost
equaUy in the streets of all tMee, Canton is scarcely more
CMnese tMoughout than Macao is truly Portuguese, and Hong
Kong EngUsh.
Hong Kong, genuine offspring of British energy, and whose
every feature bears the unmistakable impress of the great parent.
The granite quays fringing the lake-like harbour, the tall
merchant offices and cavernous warerooms beyond, the solidly-
constructed buildings, where artistic taste and architectural
beauty are not, but comfort, usefulness, and stabiUty are,
cUmbing tier over tier far up the steep hillside, that hill mere
barren rock scarce forty years since ; the skilful windings of the
flood-defying roads, triumphantly secure amid precipices down
wMcli a goat might look with justified diffidence; the dense,
often exotic, foUage of the tree-planted gardens, frequent among
the trim dwelUngs, the costly public buildings and huge works
of associated enterprise, reaching from the wharves and docks
below to the white signal-station and flagstaff that crown the
gramte peak mgh two thousand feet in perpendicular height
above : these are — and whose else could they be ? — the marks of
England, the impress of her seal, the bold firm Une stamped on
earth's face by her, and by her alone.
Not a character of those in wMch England writes herself on
the world's great page but is here plainly legible. Her liberal
welcome is seen in the countless saUs of all merchant-flags,
European, Asiatic, American, Australasian, native, foreign,
dragon-bannered, crossed, three-coloured, striped, chequered,
starred, sMp and steamer of every size, every construction, every
colour, not scattered over, but UteraUy covering, conceaUng, the

202 ULYSSES.

still harbour waters. Seen too is her watchfulness — may it
never fail her ' — over her own rights and over the rights of those
she shelters — may these too never be forgotten or Ughtly dis
carded amid the giddiness of fanatical clamour, and the calculated
bigotry of party !— in the cruisers, the gun-boats, the war-ships
and their discipUned crews, the white flag and the black metal,
the protection and menace of the seas. Nor less is her mercan
tUe supremacy feebly foreshadowed by the Tyres of antiquity,
and the Genoas and Venices of later days, proclaimed in the
long ranges of warehouses, piled with goods and thronged with
dealers along the quay; nor her provident care of health, and
that love of fresh air and the enjoyment of nature in wMch so
few even of her European sisters share, in the broad Mghways,
the tree-planted walks, the public gardens, the wide spaces for
popular gathering and amusement, freely allotted where the
sacrifice of every inch of ground means a sacrifice of golden
wealth. Seen is England's imperial munificence in the size and
solidity of the public bmldings, the Town Hall, the Palace, the
Club, the Barracks, the Hospitals ; seen, too, is her poverty of
artistic feeling in not so much the absence as the contra
diction of arcMtectural proportion and grace that characterises
the exterior of almost every edifice ; seen is her vrise toleration
of men's varied fancies in the close proximity of weU-nigh every
known fane, where each sect adores its own proper representative
symbol of the One unknown Truth; seen, too, her cMldish
toying -vrith the puerilities of a dead past, in the GotMc structures
that rear their incongruous pinnacles against a background of
tropical rock and sky. What infiuence but the law-abiding rule
of England could at a word call together and maintain in
mutual security and orderly peace the motley, nor seldom
faction-nurtured, crowd of the Hong Kong thorougMares, with
^U their antipatlues, their rivalries, thefr hereditary feuds, their
daily jarrings ? What even-handed justice but hers could so
smoothe away in the level of caste-ignoring administration every
local separation of race, and abolishing the jealous distinctions,
too manifest elsewhere, of assigned " wards " and " quarters,"
bring Asiatic and European, white, dark, and yellow, hat, turban.

THE THREE CITIES. 203
and braided queue, Chinese, Parsee, Briton, Portuguese, Malay,
Australian — -wdiom not? — to dwell side by side in the same
street, on the same level ? Truly Hong Kong is a compendium
of the British Empire, as the British Empire of the world.
Every town, every village even, attentively considered, has
its special characteristic, its proper epithet, the keynote of its
expression, the air-tint of its landscape, the formula of its
existence. Anglo-Chino-cosmopolitanism (I apologise, but a
complex object demands a complex word) is the characteristic of
Hong Kong. A British seaport, but on a CMnese coast, it has
necessarily much of the CMnese, much of the cosmopoUtan about
it ; its residents belonging cMefiy to the former, its fluctuating
population to the latter category. Were, indeed, the inhabitants
of Hong Kong polled at any given moment, the English,
numerically taken, would show for but a meagre figure on the
Ust. A Uttle leaven, yet potent not to leaven merely, but in a
manner to assimUate the whole mass ; a drop, but one that has
diffused its o-wn pecuUar tint tMough aU the waters, many-
coloured else, of the entire pool.
Many-coloured indeed, and many-formed as is the inner life
of Hong Kong, its outer aspect, as we gaze on it near at hand
from the harbour in front, is essentially, undemably English.
Before us, it may be, is the deep-eaved, low-fronted Chinese
temple, the large barn-Uke Portuguese church, the Arabo-Malay
mosque, the Parsee Tower of Silence ; but these, and whatever
other typical bmldings of public or private use attest the
presence of the subject or protected races, modestly elude the
eye, and Mde themselves unobserved among the larger con
structions and symmetrical masses proper to the English
colonists. Ungraceful enough many of the constructions, heavy
the masses ; and yet a very lovely sight is Hong Kong as a
whole. Close to the sparkling water's edge, curving with the
Uttle promontories and indentations of the mountain-base, run
the town houses in a long white wa^vy strip, much narrow^er in
appearance when looked at thus from a somewhat lower level
than it really is, wMle the inevitable unsightlinesses of a large
and crowded city are hidden from view by the stately warehouse

204 ULYSSES.

frontage. Next abov^e tMs rises, in seemingly perpendicular
steepness, a broad belt of dark and glossy green, the tree-shaded
gardens, luxuriant though trim, that for five or six hundred feet
upward from the sea, clothe the nakedness of the old granite
slopes, and almost conceal the wMte dwelUngs nestled amid the
pleasing shade, where forty years since — no more — existed
neither house nor tree. Higher yet, towering to the violet-blue
sky, rise the giant crags, the precipitous torrent-furrowed slopes,
the massive mountain ridges, here grass-clad in bright emerald,
there again naked boulders tinted red or grey ; there dark with
brushwood and low gnarled trees ado-wn the track of some deep-
cleft ra-rine ; and amid grass and rock gleam out countiess
specks of liveUest yeUow, blue, purple and red, tokens that
ev^en these comparatively barren shelves belong to the region
emphatically and not undeservedly called the " Flowery Land."
CUnging to the steepest slopes, Uke a red-tinted ribbon unroUed
and let hang from mountain-crest to base, vrinds the weU-
constructed path for horse or foot from the to-wn below to the
Peak above ; other tracks, each one a triumph of engineering
skill, lead right and left amid gorge and precipice to remote
vUlages and Uttle anchorages on the further side of the central
heights. Small Swiss-Uke cottages, the summer retreats of
Hong Kong rank or wealth, glitter in the sun among the topmost
crags ; and from two thousand feet above land and sea towers
England's fiagstaff over all.
Such is the southward view : turning from it north, west, or
east, the ship-peopled harbour shows as though closed in by the
fantastic forms of high yellow-streaked mountains, the Chinese
mainland chain, nor less by the countless peaks and crags of
innumerable islands, some large, some small, some massive,
some mere reefs; a labyrinth of land and water, of rock and
shining inlet, of which the centre and heart is Hong Kong.
On every side fisher hamlets, pretty enough at a distance, and
dense Chinese trading-stations fringe the bay-indented coast;
whUe here a white light-tower, there a fantastic dark outUne of
rocky pinnacle, breaks the larger landscape lines. Showered
down over all, penetrating all, is the violet daylight known to

THE THREE CITIES. 205
West-Indian skies, also on the tropical verge, but nowhere so
pure, so delicate, so transparent as here in Eastern Asia, along
the coasts of the furthermost, world-encircling sea.
A town built against steep hillsides, rising right from the
water's edge, can hardly fail of being picturesque ; and even
where, owing to cUmate, material, soil, or local cause, the en-
livenments of colour are wanting, beauty at least of outline will
not be absent. Thus, for instance, Trebizond, Samsoon, Sinope,
Cherasond, that ancient sisterhood of Mstory and decay, dingy-
tinted as they are, and overshaded besides by the murky Black
Sea atmosphere, yet attract the eye by the grandeur of their
outlines and position ; dank dark ruins with broad spread lines
of dense forest and cloud- veiled mountains for their background,
they suit weU with the gloomy waters of the Euxine below.
But in the bright tropical, and in the yet brighter sub-tropical
zone, grandeur, even where most present, is in a manner hidden
under the exceeding charms of colour and light. From the
countless towms and villages, each lovely to gaze on from the
deck of tlie by-saUing yacht, of the Mediterranean coast, on to
West Indian latitudes and Brazilian shores, seaports present an
almost monotonous beauty ; every voyager has the tale by heart.
A known example, and one to wMch Hong Kong in some of its
features offers a certain resemblance, is the much-risited port of
St. Thomas in the West Indies ; the first appearance and general
outUne of each have, to him who sees them entering either bay,
a great deal in common. But the difference is in fact more
than the likeness. For while the stateliness of its buildings
and the verdure of its surroundings are what most distinguish
Hong Kong, St. Thomas, though to the imaginative view of a
Kingsley bosomed in orange-groves, displays in truth neither
orange-groves nor any others round and amid its white dwellings
to the average human eye, wMcli ranges instead over a brown
expanse of stunted " bush " ; whUe the smallness of its dwelUng-
places gives the town somewhat of the appearance of a children's
toy-box turned out at random adown the hills ; the Mils, them
selves, too, are wanting in height, and commonplace in outline.
What, however, St. Thomas lacks Hong Kong possesses, offering

2o6 ULYSSES.

to view just the right combination of brightness, tint, and colour,
along with solidity, dignity, and size in the perfected propor-
tionateness of all.
Again, " from the sea, charming, on shore, detestable," is the
often-repeated verdict of the British voyager who first visits
some Levantine Jaffa or Brazilian Eio ; and, all due allowance
made for British fastidiousness, there is only too often in the
untidiness of a sub-tropical seaport interior wherewithal to
justify the sentence. But it does not apply to Hong Kong.
The town-streets, the principal thoroughfares at any rate, are
broad and clean; the tree-shaded roads that wind among the
gardens and residences higher up are of park-like trimness ;
nothing neglected, nothing dilapidated, offends the view. No
quality, in fact, commends itself so much to the pleased visitor,
especially if recent from the slovenly, tumble-down, patched-up
cities too common in less favoured spots of the Asiatic tropics,
than the neatness, the spruceness, the completeness of Hong
Kong ; all praiseworthy qualities, but especially the last, con
sidering the frequent, and indeed, as it here happens, by no
means remote, ravages of tempest and fiood in this cyclone-
swept region.
Towns, like men, age quickly in the tropics ; and thirty years,
though of little account for the change they bring in temperate
Europe, are in Indo-Chinese latitudes more than enough, unless
constant attention and repair prevent, to confer an air of
decrepitude and decay on the buildings no less than on the
builders. But no blotched and crevassed wall, no bush-grown
ruin, no broken pavement, no grass-mantled court, announces
the decrepitude of Hong Kong ; energy, not the unsteady, often
misdirected, energy of a colony's first youth, but the enduring,
judicious energy of vigorous manhood, is her very type, her
characteristic, her keynote, not less so than art of Florence,
enjoyment of Vienna, majesty of Eome.
Energy is but another name for life ; and of human Ufe
scarcely any of its Old World varieties, and not many from
among those of the New, are absent from Hong Kong. The
predominant ones, of course, are the EngUsh and the CMnese,

THE THREE CITIES. 207

Of the latter, though, numerically taken, the most abundant,
and, next to the EngUsh, the most infiuential in the colony,
Uttle need here be said ; we shaU have a much better opportunity
of studying it in its nativ^e home, in Canton, where it attains its
complete development. But, be it much or be it httle in
quantity and importance, essentially it is the same everywhere ;
of all nations in the world, the Jews themselves not excepted,
the Chinese, whUe the readiest to expatriate themselves, are the
least modified by expatriation. How many ages of cUmatic
and local infiuences, how many generations traversed under
foreign nde, amid foreign institutions, might by the slow
operation of natural selection, struggle for life, sm-vival of the
fittest, and so forth, suffice to bring them into somewliat of even
approximate conformity with the dominant races among wMcli
they settle, in CaUfornia say, in Queensland, in the streets of
Calcutta or the woods of Borneo, Darvrin himself might, in the
absence of so much as a Mnt, let alone a fact, to guide him, be
puzzled to conjecture. But here, on their own soU, in daily
intercourse with thefr feUow-countrymen of the great Empire,
the Celestials are doubly proof against aU influences of change.
And hence the Chinese denizens of Hong Kong diff'er little or
notMng, outwardly or inwardly, in dress, customs, or ideas, from
their brethren of similar rank or occupation at Canton. When
arrived there we may study them at our leisure. Enough for
the present to say that tn British Hong Kong the Chinese Club,
known from the profession of its first founders as that of the
" compradores " or " middle-men " ; their Hospital, worthy in its
orderly neatness and studious care to rank with many EngUsh
hospitals, or even German ; their large theatre, their quaint
temples, and the other results of their combined and communal
action, exhibit Chinese munificence, good taste, and methodical
accuracy in a most favourable light.
As it is -vrith the CMnese, so it is, after a manner, -with the
English. An EngUshman self-exiled to the tropics dons a solar
hat fearful and wonderful to behold, patronises Ught flannels,
and occasionaUy wMte shoes, doubles and trebles hia afready
frequent national ablutions, and even at times dines, greatly

2o8 ULYSSES.

daring, in a white jacket. More yet, he may, when absolutely
compelled thereto by the fitness of things, exchange his favourite
mode of locomotion, pedestrian or equestrian, for others peculiar
to the land of Ms adoption, may recline in an Indian palanquin,
or, as here in CMna, take seat in the uncomfortable sedan-chair.
Never surely was a contrivance so thoroughly adapted for
making, in appearance at least, slaves of your fellow-creatures
and an invalid of yourself; and yet to invent anything else
equally well suited to the precipitous inclines of Hong Kong, or
the narrow lanes of a Chinese city, would, all agree, be a task
beyond the inventive genius of man born of woman. But to
return to our Englishman. Despite the modifications just
indicated in his outer self, he is yet, for aU essential charac
teristics, the same identical man who rode to hounds in the
county, or sat on a high stool at a City desk, who dined in a
dress-coat at a quarter past eight, and went, mayhap, in a
cyUnder hat to church on the Sabbath morn ; unchanged, un
changeable, as Byron's ocean, or Shakespeare's " northern star."
For the rest, Ms works declare him ; by these he is best known ;
and of these, as here displayed on the furthest Eastern marge, I
have spoken, cursorily indeed, yet I tMnk sufficiently already.
Next in local importance and mercantile wealth to the British
community ranks the German ; that nationality destined, it
would seem, to become in no distant future our rival on equal
terms, perhaps even our supplanter in the world's commerce.
Like the EngUsh on the one hand, and the Chinese on the
other, the Germans have their own social centre, their own club,
and, I believe, their own appropriate place of worship ; a thriving,
thrifty race. Like Englishmen, too, a hundred and more degrees
of longtitude or latitude make little difference in Germans ; not
indeed so absolutely unplastic as ourselves, yet slow to adopt
the usages of others, reluctant to modify their own.
The Portuguese, rarely of genuine European origin, mostly of
mixed or Asiatic strain, are as much superior in numbers as
inferior in weight to the English. A few merchants lead the
van of the Lusitanian host ; its bulk is a " mixed multitude " of
clerks, accountants, -writers, apothecaries, and the like. Intelli-

THE THREE CITIES. 209
gent, good-natured, sociable, but with somewhat of Eeuben's
doom upon them, they lack the backbone of the Teutonic — I use
the word -with beeommg diffidence — races, and the elastic energy
of the genuine Celt. But their minuter delineation is best
reserved for a survey of their neighbouring headquarters, Macao.
To complete the Em-opean, or quasi-European, catalogue, come a
few French, ItaUans, Spaniards, and Milanese ; some Danes
also. These last excepted, those now briefly catalogued form
the bulk of the CathoUc population, which includes a small
number of the CMnese themselves ; and is supplemented by a
whole army of clergy, regular and secular, congregationists,
nuns, and missionaries of various orders and robes ; aU, like
their Protestant rivals, who are also numerous in the field,
intent on the well-meant but infructuous task of pom-ing very
new -wine into very old bottles — task which for three centuries
and more baffled the skUl of the old-society Jesuits themselves,
though masters the Uke of whom the world has never seen of
the soul-winning craft, and with a Xavier or a Eicci at their
head. Where such have failed who can hope success ? How
ever, the result, real, though diminutive, which yet attends
missionary efforts, and sustains the labourers in an ungrateful
vineyard by the ever-delusive hope of greater things and a more
abundant vintage to come, here faUs, as at Singapore, and indeed
elsewhere generaUy, to the share of the Catholic apostles rather
than the Protestant — a circumstance the reasons of which are
sufficiently well known to all.
Jews, at least those distinctively such, are few at Hong Kong ;
nor, indeed, as I am told, do they dwell numerously in any of
the tents of the Celestial Empire, whether those tents belong, as
is commonly supposed, to the Japhetic camp or not. Jacob and
Laban together would not, if the truth be told, make much
profit out of a contract with a Chinaman. But the "highly
respectable" Parsee in his quasi-episcopal garb, the turbaned
Arabo-Malay trader, the dusky Hindoo, the energetic Japanese,
and many other Asiatic types of less note have their repre
sentatives here. Towering amid all, the grim Sikhs, from
amongst whom the strong and well-organised police force of the
p

ULYSSES.

place is mostly recruited, slowly stalk past in moustached
majesty, offering the completest contrast that fancy could devise
to the sleek, smooth-faced, smiling, briskly-moving Chinese.
Such is Hong Kong ; a picture chequered to minuteness in
detail, uniform in general colouring, and that colouring English.
Examined, however, more closely, and with the eye of a resident
rather than of a traveller, a further characteristic, hardly per^
ceptible indeed on the surface, but existent immediately below
it, and extending downwards to the lowermost layers of colonial
life, comes to view. It is the deep demarcation line that sunders
the entire community into two parts, a Une not less real because
at first sight unapparent, a gulf all the more impassable because
not dug by law and ordinance, but by custom and instinct. On
the one' side of this social gulf are the English, with a few,
I might say, a very few, of their European compeers; on the
other almost all those included in the general designation of
¦"foreigners"; but especially the Asio-Portuguese and the
Chinese natives of the land. Years of a common home,
common pursuits, common interests, have not for social mtimacy
and domestic intercourse, hardly even for mutual knowledge of
each other's characters, habits, and modes of thought, brought
the Briton and the Chinaman one step nearer to each otiier than
they were when the flag of British sovereignty first waved over
the island tMrty-five years ago. Between EngUsh and other
nationalities the division is not quite so rigorous, yet the
barrier-fence exists, and as yet gives no sign of weakening at
any point. Something of the kind may be observed m many
other British colonies of the Old World and of the New ; but in
none, I beUeve, is exclusiveness carried so far as in Hong Kono-,
where circumstances, many of them beyond the control of the
colonists themselves, have promoted, and in a manner rendered
inevitable, a condition uot otherwise wholly uncongenial to the
British mind. There is sometMng to be said in its favour,
something also in blame.
AVithin, however, its comparatively narrow Umits, necessary
or self-imposed. Hong Kong society— the English section of it,
I mean — is remarkable for its cordial geniaUty, and UveUness.

THE THREE CITIES.

tempered by refinement and education. Many are the Britisli
colomes, if settlements be not the corrector title, deservedly
commended for simUar qualities in the far East ; but in none,
so at least I am told, can the National Club boast a better
reading-room and library than those at Hong Kong ; no Public
Hall show choicer diversions, gayer dances, or sprightlier
amateur performances; no race-course is the scene of better
contested emulation, no tennis-lawns more frequented, no saloons
brighter than hers. Without depreciation of her half-sisters, let
England's eldest-born daughter in the Celestial Empire have
her due.
A goodly city, a goodly colony, tMs Hong Kong of the
present. But the forward-stretching link of real, surely, yet
undefined significance that will not let us rest in acquiescent
stability on the firm ground of what is, because dragging us ever
on to the uncertain cloud-land of what is to be, compels us even
here to Uft up our eyes beyond the pleasing Hong Kong of the
day to the possible Hong Kong of coming years in the fore
shadowed destinies of Asio-British dominion.
Commanding as it does the main entry, the portal of the
South Chinese Empire, and through it of the central provinces
and inner sanctuary of the ancient shrine, as strong in position
as secure in sheltered anchorage, alike .easy of access to friends,
and difficidt of approach, if not impossible, to foes, Hong Kong
can then only lose its nature-ensured importance wlien the
power that now grasps it loses its own. Till then — a far distant
day — it is the easternmost extremity of the mighty imperial
lever, reaching from the far European West to the Chinese shore,
and ever ready to move, it might be absolutely to overturn, the
entire Middle Kingdom. Such it already is in English eyes,
more so in the wakeful eyes of Continental jealousy : what then
in the eyes of the CMnese themselves ?
Very different indeed from the aspect of tMngs to the fevered
speculator of irritable Europe is that they assume in the quiet
common-sense gaze of the placid Chinese. NotMng, in European
estimate, frritates national antipathies more than territorial
ojicupation; it is a thorn that, abiding in the wound, keeps it
P 2

ULYSSES.

ever festering ; a centre-point round wMoh gathers every worst
feeling of contempt in the stronger power, hatred and desire of
revenge in the weaker, aversion in both. Two centuries have
not reconciled Spain to our presence in Gibraltar ; the hostility
of the Arabs is not less bitter now than forty years agone to the
French settlers of Algiers; Ceuta maintains the Moorish and
Christian feud. CoiUd any EngUshman endure for an instant
the bare thought of a foreign flag, whatever its nationaUty,
floating over the Portland heights ? We occupy Hong Kong, a
few hom-s distant, no more, from one of the greatest, the most
important, the most national of Chinese cities ; and the CMnese
look on with not a frown on their smooth faces, not a thought
but of quiet accommodation to circumstances, with a feeling not
practically distinguishable from great indifference. Within the
narrow but densely-peopled island, without it, along the
vUlage-fringed shores that stretch back to the wharves of
Whampoa and the gates of Canton, the Chinese population
shows itself, aU due allowance made for the prejudices of mutual
ignorance and difference of blood, friendly, kindly even, to the
EngUsh — their first frays over, the Chinese dragon has no further
misUking for St. George ; rather seeks amicably to share with
the stranger champion the favours of the Golden Princess and
the treasures of her store.
Nations may, though rarely, be friends, thefr- officials hardly
or never ; and it would be a miUennium, or rather a very Utopia
on earth, did no grudges, no complaints, no grievances exist
between Chinese Hoppos and British harbour-masters, the
retinue of the yellow flag and that of the Union Jack. Yet,
considering the war of 1842, and the storming of Canton, -with
aU that preceded and followed it, in 1857, remembering what
passed at Tien-tsin in 1858, and what at Pekin in 1860, all
recent dates, and, the first alone in a measm-e excepted, belonging
to the Uving generation rather than the past, we must admit
that the Chinese mind would have been justified in entertaining
a far greater degree of alienation from us than exists at the
present day. And if to these we add the daily bickerings kept
up — with how much of blame on the one side, how much on the

THE THREE CITIES. it3
other, is not here the place to inquire — of the smuggling trade ;
the shocks, of little consequence perhaps in themselves, but
irritating from their frequency, between Chinese formalism and
British roughhandedness, the vagaries of tourists, the intrusive
bigotry of missionaries ; and last, not least, the easily-made
confusion in Chinese apprehension between EngUsh and other
less law-abiding nationaUties, European or New World, our
wonder at CMnese tolerance, even good nature, even courtesy,
may well increase to admiration. True that a diversity of ideas,
of customs, wide enough to make the one race at first sight the
seeming antipodes of the other, separates the Briton and the
Chinaman ; nor can we wish it done away. Little, indeed, does
a nation gain — much, incalculably much, does it ever lose — by
abandoning its ways for the ways of the aUen, its usages for his
usages, its fashions for Ms fashions, its gods for his gods.
History in tMs, through all her pages, reads us only one lesson,
and its latest illustration is no further from China than is
Japan. But the fusion of mutual advantage, of good feeling,
and of kindly intercourse is not less possible than beneficial ;
the more so that the glaring but superficial unlikeness between
the British and the Chinese types covers much of deeply-seated
real resemblance, nay, in some regards, identity of character.
And in tMs fusion it is for us, the uninvited intruders on
CMnese territory, to lead the way. Manchester goods and
opium are excellent tMngs of their kind, but honour, justice,
good faith, and good government are more ; of these, unless
England be indeed untrue to her imagined self, we have plenty
and to spare ; these too we can in our measure communicate by
a policy not whoUy summed up in " Vm victis " and " Gunboats
to the fore."
And of this wider poUcy what better basis could be found
than in the British city that guards the entry of Southern CMna,
the friendly though foreign Pirseus of Canton ? " Hong Kong
for the merchants " has long been the colonial motto, and
though, K taken absolutely, a narrow one, I would not say that
at the outset it may not have been adequate to the requirements
of the day. But its time has gone by, or rather it has been, in

214 ULYSSES.

its complete meaning, transferred to Shanghai and the busy Free
Ports, situated indeed on Chinese soil, but dedicated by British
protection to trade, and trade alone. This is their one obligation :
well they fulfil it, and with it they may be content. But on
our own national soil, within our own waters, " Hong Kong for
the Empire " should now be our device. Elsewhere, even more
abundantly than here, we have mercantile relations, mercantile
interchange, mercantile duties, with China ; why not, here af
least, Imperial also ? Why should not the " Flowery Land " be
to us, in due process of time, not merely a market for our goods,
but a recruiting ground for our nationaUty, for our armies, our
navies, our enterprise, our manifold life ? Wide range for our
imperial growth ; and its starting point, so we know its true
bearing, is already made, is no other than Hong Kong. Born
on British ground, or preferring it by exchange of permanent
residence to their own, what Mnders the extension of British
national rights, the equalisation of British law, the privileges of
British citizenship to the Chinese indweilers of the colony ?
Better surely subjects than aliens, union than division. Is
England too weak a mother to nurse other children than those
of her own island- womb ? Are her means too restricted to
adopt ? Do the cords of her tent admit of no lengthening ?
Can her heart only fear, nor be enlarged to the gathering of the
abundance of the sea ? Idle fear ! Unison of sympathy, of feel
ing, of thought, of purpose will follow close on unity of national
existence ; and Hong Kong may — we have but to will it — prove
the first Unk in the golden band to bind in one the vastest
energies of the East and of the West, CMna and England.
By such policy did ancient Eome consolidate that Empire
which for five hundred years summed up the world in one
citizenship, one name ; this is
The Seal of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over destruction's strength.
More than inheritor of Eome's Empire, Prometheus of the age,
England touches that Seal already by her world-wide colonies ;
why not grasp it, and make it her own ?

THE THREE CITIES. :J15
Such is the youngest-born of the three sister-rivals, emblem
of progressive energy, of expansive strength. Elder by un
counted centuries, her birth-date lost in the mists of fable.
Canton is not less emblem also of strength, but more of stability,
of energy, but energy linked to repose.
There are cities that once desolated have never risen again ;
there are others that ravaged not once but often ever renew
their interrupted life, changed, it may be, somewhat in outward
style, essentiaUy the same. Babylon, Palmyra, Aventicum, are
examples of the former ; of the latter Damascus, Eome, Canton ;
hill-bandit, Tartar-French, English, each in turn has wasted
land and town -with sword and fire ; to-day you pass tMough the
gaily-decorated streets, amid smiling peace, prosperity, abun
dance, and, unless taught from history, you would never guess
the ruin and horrors of scarce twenty years since. Hong Kong
may fade, as Macao has already faded ; not so Canton ; her
roots are those of the great Empire itself, her life its life— a Ufe
that has outlasted the birth, increase, decline, death of countless
Mngdoms, and may well yet outlast countless more.
Of Canton then, and of that third city, once a vigorous growth,
now a withered memory, yet beautiful in decay, fallen Macao,
there would be much to say ; but time and circumstance, the
boundary-marks of our little day, have traced nie too narrow
a line to admit of its enclosing, even in miniature, the vast
dimensions of Mstory, description, and thought that open out
-with the gateways of the Middle Kingdom, the Celestial Empire.
But he who would reaUse, by analogy at least, what Egypt was
in her earlier better days, before Hyksos. or Persian, Greek or
Eoman, Arab or Turk, had dwarfed her down to the measure
of their own lesser stature, let him visit Canton, Even there
and without pursuing his path further into the wonders out
stretched for thousands of leagues beyond, throughout the vastest
as the most enduring of earth's kingdoms, he may form a not
inadequate idea of the entire Empire, as he who has seen the
pylons of the Ehamession or Edfou, and them only, may judge,
nor hesitatingly, what were the glories of the Nile-Pharaohs, and
what the greatness of their sway. Further investigation may

2i6 ULYSSSS.
complete the detaUs, but wiU not add much to the proportions
of the first view.
Let Mm visit Canton. There he may study the results of a
government based on reverence, on Uterature, on guarded rank,
on respected age ; of a priesthood kept within its proper limits
of ceremonial observances and national rites, nor permitted to
arrogate overweening dictation to the minds and souls of men ',
of administrative -wisdom, -wisely limiting itself to the good
order, sufficiency, and happiness of man's actual life, without
pretension or preoccupation for what may come after. There too
he may see, what m Europe he will hardly see, in America
never, how well it is with a nation that knows when it is weU
off, and knovring this prefers to enjoy in quiet the steady if not
dazzling light of its own tried and hereditary lamp, to running
after bright wills-of-the--wisp, delusive imitations, fancied pro
gress, hoped improvement, and all the promise-phantoms of a
restless vision. What particular " fifty years of Europe " those
may be that the poet of our age pronounces "better than a cycle
of Cathay " I know not ; but should hardly fancy he intended
the quinquagesimal that includes the Commune of 1871, or that
of the chaos of 1793, any more than those Ughted up by the
hell-fires of the Inquisition, or the blood-stained days of the
barons, first or last. Doubtless there is much that CMna might
advantageously learn from Europe ; but Europe too, unquiet,
disintegrating Europe, might with at least equal advantage to
herseK take more than one lesson from Cathay. In Canton, in
China, there are many wonders for the tourist ; there are Mnts
for the statesman also.

( 217 )

KIOTO.
Under a title which, though not misleading, is yet in some measure inade
quate, this Essay is in substance at once a summary and an explanation of the
mythical system that by the name of " Shinto " appears coojval with the first
dawn of Japanese history, adds lustre to its brUliant noon, and blends even
yet with the rays of its decUning day. Its interest chiefly consists in the
Ught which it incidentally throws on the so-called " Paganism " of HeUas, and,
though less vividly, on that of Latium, to each of which, but most to the
former, it is a counterpart, a translation from dead to yet living speech. Or
it may not inaptly be described as the metaphysical complement of the ^fjv
Kara (f>i(riv which the Japanese, Uke the Hellenes, once proposed to themselves
as the true standard and highest excellence of existence. But rightly to
appreciate the value as the defects of Shinto it is, I think, necessary to have
studied in practice and on the spot, not the system merely, — ^if system be a
fitting name for what professes to be and in great measure is a mere exposition
of fact, — but even more the habits of mind, thought, and character from
which it originally emanated, and which it stiU in some degree maintains and
fosters among its votaries.
This Essay was pubUshed in the ' Fortnightly Eeview ' of December 1881 ;
since which date a progressive change has, I am told (I fain would hope
inaccurately), come over the spirit of the Japanese dream, and " Shinto " has
fallen into the cold shade of Imperial, or at least official, disfavour. If so,
may the shade be but a transient one, to be followed by renewed splendour of
tte ancestral light. National beUef is not a thing to be set aside -vyith
impunity ; and the wronged gods may indeed defer the penalty of neglect,
but -wiU surely exact it at the last. " Absit omen."
Buddhism as taught and practised in Japan is too deeply tinged with
sacerdotaUsm not to be injurious; and any Em'opean or North- American
system or mode of thought would be of yet more pernicious introduction.
Exotic growths are apt to tum into poisonous ones in the land of their trans
plantation. Let us hope for better things : let us trust that the last and
latest sur-yivors of the Olympian Idnship may not be driven out from their
last refuge amid the hiUs and forests of Japan.
He who would study and understand Japan must yet, in spite
of all that has been written about the country, go there in

2i8 ULYSSES.

person, and read not the chapters of French or English, or even
of painstaking German authors, but those of Japanese actuality
and life. Many and various are these chapters ; and not one of
them but the attentive reader may derive from its perusal much
to instruct and interest; though from none -wiU he learn so
much and at so little cost of time and labour as from that of
" Kioto," the city of the Mikados, the ex-capital of Japan.
Among many cities Of high fame, Kioto stands alone in the
universality of its memories. Kamakura, the city of Yoritomo
and the ill-famed Hojos ; Osaka and its Cyclopean citadel, the,
burial-mounds of Sakai, and the pleasure temples of Enoshima ;
Nikko, with its stately mausoleums and stateUer pinegroves, the
mountain-shrines of Minobu, the peerless slopes of Fuji ; these,
and scores of other spots that might be added to the list, have
one and all their spirit-stirring memories and their surviving
beauties wherewith to rew^ard the visitor ; each one is indeed a
picture where a scene, fascinating in itself, is rendered yet more'
so by the skilful touches of a first-rate artist, till the beholder
knows not which most to admire — the subject selected for the
painting, or the execution of the painting itself. But Kioto,
like some all-comprehending panorama wrought out by a
cunning hand, sums up in itself at once the past and the
present, the beauty and the decay, the glory, the eclipse, the
resurrection, all the changeful history, all the varying thought,
all the elaborate art, the whole body and soul of Japan ; itseK
the faithful mirror of the great Empire centred there.
" The living robe of the Deity," to borrow the magnificent
metaphor of Goethe's World-Spirit, is woven of many tMeads,
each thread , a people, a nation ; nor among all these many
threads of life is there any of closer texture or stronger fibre
than the Japanese. Yet this, too, when carefully examined,
will be found to be made up of many subordinate strands, finely
intertwined, and at times almost identified, then again differ
entiated into distinctness ; each one a master-idea, a national
fact : while, among the rest, two, more marked in their texture,
more important than the rest, demand special notice. Oldest in
time and strongest in substance is " Shinto," the first and most

KIOTO. 219
vigorous expression of the purely Japanese mind ; its formula,
the well-known " Kojiki," is even yet to Japan what Homer
was to classic, Virgil to mediteval, tiie Bible to Protestant
England, Darwin to the Europe of an hour of our day. Alone
and undisputed it swayed Japan for at least a thousand years,
till its rival power. Buddhism, entered on the scene some
thirteen centmies ago, and while itself strangely modified by the
primal Japanese influence, modified in its turn that infiuence
still more. To these two main strands in the Japanese thread a
third, best designated by the vague but convenient, because
readily understood, phrase of "European civilisation," has
recently been superadded ; in what degree, however, and to wdiat
result, is still uncertain ; for the present it is an ungraceful
incongrmty, from which we willingly avert our eyes.
And what is " Shinto ? " A Chinese compound word,
adopted in general use as a curt equivalent of the Japanese
" Kami no inicM," or "Way of the Deities," the original phrase ;
it is in what it implies a religious system, vvhich, like religions
in general, is made up of two parts, the one mythology, the
other precept. The dominant idea on wMch both these are
based is the correlation, ,if not the absolute identity, of all
natural and external forms, man included, with spiritual or
divine powers. This idea again is limited, and rendered in a
manner definite, by a mythological scheme in which Japan
figures as the centre of the entire system, the apex of its per
fection, holding thus in " Shinto " both in regard of the country
and of its inhabitants much the same position that is occupied
by Greece and her islands in the Homeric, or rather the pre-
Homeric system of the Aohteans and their kindred tribes.
Lastly, while the entire Japanese race is assumed to be akin to
and intimately connected with the cosmic deities, their i direct
descendant and representative among men is no other than
the reigning Mikado himseK. So much for the mythology of
" Shinto " ; its precepts follow in logical sequence, and are
summed up in reverent conformity to the laws of nature,
intense patriotism, and obedience to the Mikado.
Such being in its ultimate analysis the " Way of the Deities,"

22& ULYSSES.

it is no wonder that its true significance and the influence it
has exerted should have proved an enigma, not merely to the
shaUow bigotry of narrow-minded " missionaries " and tlieir
half-educated associates, but even to men of considerable
research in Japanese and oriental scholarship, the mental
attitude habitual to either class precluding them from seeing
in its true perspective the object of their consideration, in which
the former sought wliat they are pleased to call a religion, the
latter an elaborate mythos. In the precise sense attached by
modern European thought to each of these words, Sliinto is
neither ; it is less in a manner than the former, and more than
the latter. The solution of the riddle of the universal, the
dogmatic answer to the endless questionings of " Whence ? "
and " Whither ? " an all-mighty, all-creative, all-ruling Deity,
a rigid "code of moral and religious observances and duties, a
conscience of sin, a " thou shalt not " writ up over every door,
a future of exceeding great promises and yet greater threats,
none of these are its portion ; no teacher, divine or otherwise,
has summed it up in his person ; no author-deity set it forth in
a book ; no images tenant its shrines, no mediators its heaven,
no everlasting burnings its hell. Of all these Shinto has no
need. It is by its own showing a mere setting forth of facts,
some existent, some handed down by record, but none locaUy
external to this visible universe, and an injunction of obedience
to the laws that govern and to the lessons taught by them,
the whole having special reference to Japan. These facts are,
according to its traditions, the formation and governance of the
Japanese island-group by spiritual powers, partly gods and
goddesses, of fire, water, earth, air, food, the sun, the moon, and
so forth, partly deified heroes or heroines from among the
Japanese themselves, and, as a natural consequence, the pre
eminent dignity Of the Mikado, who is the lineal descendant
of the sun-goddess herseK. Beyond this all is but slightly
touched on or absolutely ignored by " Shinto " as not to its
purpose. Its direct conclusions or precepts we have already seen ; the
indfrect ones, whether positive or negative, are alike in their

KIOTO. 221
sequence. There is no room in " Shinto " for idols, the gods
themselves being ever present in their embodiments or their
works, the sun, the moon, the elements, or in the person of the
Mikado, and, by communicated right, of his relatives and
officials. Nor is there any need of a written revelation where
nature herself, " without, within, above us and around," is the
ever-open book wherein the will of the gods and the gods
themselves are to be read ; nor needs there any definite code,
preceptive or proliibitory, where man's own nature, maintained
in harmony -with the nature around him, is man's own all-
sufficing law ; nor a redeemer or mediator, where everything
is divine and right of itself; nor of dogma, where the appeal is
not to assertion, but experience, not to theory, but to fact.
SMnto temples and Shinto festivals do indeed abound through
out Japan ; but the latter are mainly commemorative, the
former mere locaUsations of reverence and of spiritual power ;
SMnto priests, too, in numbers sufficient, though not excessive,
for the temple service, but they vow no ceUbacy, form no caste
apart from a people which is not less akin to the gods than
they ; no blood-shedding, no sacrifices are needed to reconcile
in one those who have never been sundered ; only offerings of
devotion and respect, emblematic maiden-dances, types of
purity imaged to view in wMte strips of paper dependent from
the temple eaves, and a few other symbols of Uke simplicity in
character, which I will describe together with the temples
themselves further on. To sum up, " SMnto " is Japanese
nature- worship in its most absolute form ; patriotism its first
duty, the laws of nature and the high deeds of Japanese
ancestors its moral code, the Mikado its centre and embodiment,
a noble IKe and admission among the demi-gods its reward.
Such is its plan.
More than a thousand years had passed over what may be not
unreasonably caUed Mstorical Japan, when the second strand
was added to the thread of national Ufe. TMs was BuddMsm,
that mighty influence which had drawn at least half the
Turanian world under its sway, and having reduced CMna, now
in the seventh century of our era, invaded Japan. Unfortunately

ULYSSES.

it came not in its original singleness of purity, but in its
gorgeous Chinese travesty of pomp and ceremony, hagiology and
legend, formula and spell, attended by a crowd of saints, hermits,
monks, angels, demons innumerable, and the whole Hindoo
Pantheon in its train, Buddha Mmself, Amida Butsufor the
Japanese, was now, in his true semblance at least, as completely
eclipsed by his retinue as ever the Supreme Deity could be by
Virgin or Saint in a Calabrian village. But though the central
figure of the system had well-nigh disappeared, the central idea
of Aryan or Indianized Buddhism, the inherent depravity of
man's nature, and his need of supernatural renovation and
redemption, remained in full force; nor were its deleterious
effects long unmanifested. Weakening at once the self-reliance
and self-respect of the Japanese, weakening too their old straight
forward trust in the good gods of the nature around them ;
undermining even their loyalty to his heaven-sent ruler, nay
more, that ruler's own belief in his own self, it contributed more
than any other cause to the decline of the Mikado's authority,
and the consequent anarchy, with its evil but necessary out
growth of organised feudalism and military despotism, in the
end. With the knowledge of sin too came the law of multipUed
and onerous precept, a caste priesthood, and a social hierarchy
of Indo-Chinese pattern. Yet for two full centmies Shinto,
though betrayed and abandoned by Imperial folly, retained its
hold on the comnion people, wiser in their day than their rulers,
throughout the greater part of Japan, till Chinese-taught craft
invented that strange compromise by which Shinto itself appeared
to blend with and merge in Buddhism ; and the two systems
thus confused gave birth to a monstrous compound that retained
-yvhatever was childish or injurious of each, omitted whatever
was reasonable and beneficial. Fortunate it may truly be said
to have been for Japan when the bitter bigotry of the priest
Nichiren in the thirteenth century violently dissolved the unholy
alliance, and the inherent antagonism of priesthood and caste to
patriotism and nature stood revealed beyond all possibiUty
of future compromise or reconciliation. And in very truth
Buddhism as received in Japan nev;er was and never could be

KIOTO. 223

otherwise than antagonistic to Shinto, always in principle, often
in fact. But trees are best known by their fruits, and the most
perspicuous commentary on the two rivals who yet dispute tlie
religious and, to a certain degree, the political allegiance of
Japan, is to be read in the city and the palace, the castle and
the temples of Kioto. Let us study it there.
The versifier — who he was I know not, but he must have been
a poor creature to my thinking — who after comparing the world
to an inn, proceeds to say —
" Many I hear, and some I see,
I naught to them, they naught to me,"
can hardly have numbered a Japanese inn among his travelUng
experiences.. .The provident care of the worthy Governor of
Kioto has mstalled myself and my companion, a young Englishr
speaking Japanese official of the " Gaimusho," or Foreign Office,
in a comfortable hostelry, where we occupy a suite of small
rooms, opening the one into the other by the ordinary sliding-
sci-eens, and looking out through an open verandah across the
clear rapid waters of the Kumo-Gawa torrent where it traverses
this quarter of the town. But we are by no means solitary ;
some three or four Japanese wayfarers, guests in the same inn
and lodged m the neighboming apartments, have already at this
early hour, after the country custom, begged and obtained the
honour, as they elect to term it, of -srishing us a good morning.
Seated together we enjoy the view of gardens and temples
clustering half-way up the slopes of the wood-clad hills that
separate between the Kioto valley and Lake Biw^a famed in
song, and help each other by turns to diminutive cups of that
most refreshing of all drinks ever invented by man, fresh
Japanese tea. Next a visitor of quaUty is announced ; and the
Governor's chief secretary presents himself at the opening of the
screen ; and after much exchange of ceremonious courtesy on
either side, befitting the gentry or " Samurai " class to which he,
in common with most of Ms rank, belongs, takes a place in our
little circle squatted round the tea-things, and offers his services
on the Governor's behaK as guide to tlie sights of Kioto, For

224 ULYSSES.

five days he will be our constant attendant, and -will leave
nothing unsuggested or undone that can contribute to our per
sonal comfort and to the ends of our journey. And here let me
remark once for aU, that though the prescriptions of Japanese
etiquette are many, and even onerous at times, it is not in these
formalities that the much talked-of Japanese courtesy essentially
consists, but in the modest self-restraint of demeanour, the
promptness to obUge, the unsleeping care to a-void whatever
might by any possibUity annoy or off'end, and the pecuUar
gentleness of tone and manner which render the Japanese,
whatever his rank or position in society may be, so truly a
model " gentle " man, in the proper and authentic sense of the
word. No less completely is the Japanese woman, Mgh or low,
lady or serving-maid, a gentle woman even after the exacting
PetrucMo's own heart. But to continue.
Quaint little folding maps, such as abound for sale in every
Japanese town, have been produced for inspection, and Kioto
and its envfrons carefuUy studied, tUl the plan of our daUy
campaign having been accurately determined, we descend,
escorted honoris causa by the landlord and an mdefinite number
of foUowers, mostly housemaids, to the street door. Here six
sturdy fellows are in waiting to pull, two apiece, our "jin-riki-
shas," veMcles of recent introduction, but now universal through
out Japan, and which, for the benefit of those who have not
seen or sat in them, may be described as exaggerated perambu
lators of the hansom-cab type with shafts, and dra-wn for short
distances by one, for longer by two, and occasionaUy tMee men,
tandem-yoked, at a pace averaging, and not rarely exceeding,
five or six miles an hour.
Of all their surface quaUties — I use the word " surface " not
as excluding the underlying " substance," but rather implymg
it— none is more noteworthy among the Japanese than their
cheerfulness at work. It is a quality shared by all classes, and
common to aU employments. The Japanese statesman dictates
a dispatch or discusses a cabinet question with a smile on his
face; the financier, more astonishing yet, smiles over the
intricacies of a deficient budget; the preacher smiles during

KIOTO. 225
every pause in his sermon ; the writer at Ms desk ; the shop
keeper smiles wliile chaff'ering vrith his customer, the servant
on receiving Ms master's orders, the smith while forging the
metal, the potter manipulating the clay, the husbandman as he
wades knee-deep in mud across the rice-fields, the bargeman
propeUing Ms clumsy boat against wind and tide, the coolie
straining to lift the heaviest load, nay, even the convict at his
forced labour by the roadside. And what is more, a very slight
occasion vrill broaden the smUe into a hearty laugh. All tMs
is true and genuine good humour, based firstly, no doubt, on a
good digestion, but also on a remarkably elastic temperament,
great courage, and the sound good sense that everywhere and
everyhow makes the best of things. Had Mark Tapley been,
what Ms creator's imagination never compassed, somewhat more
of a gentleman in manners, he might have passed for an average
Japanese. In the quaUties just touched on, as in whatever else pertains
to Japanese gentility and refinement, the inhabitants of Kioto
are, on all hands, allowed to excel. Of the town itself, through
the long, -wide, straight, weU-paved streets of which we are now
passing at such a pace as the busy marketing crowd of morning
permits, neatness, cleanliness, and what may, by a slight abuse
of terms, be called " quietness " in arcMtectural style and
decoration, are the cMef features. What between the great
•breadth of the roadways, and the unwUUngness of the Japanese
to allow their earthquake-shaken houses more than one story
over the ground-floor, nor always that, the extent of a city wMch
even now, however shrunken from its old grandem-, numbers a
quarter of a million of inhabitants, is sufficiently great ; and we
have at least two miles of street to traverse before we reach our
first destination, the Mikado's Palace. The centre of the toWn
is almost exclusively devoted to shops, warehouses, tea-houses,
inns, and the Uke ; public buildings and institutions, together
with the private houses of the nobiUty and the upper classes,
are more frequent in the outer quarters ; whUe most of the
temples, SMnto or BuddMst, famed as the cMefest adornment
of Kioto, are placed on the outskirts of the houses, beside the

226 ULYSSES.

many tree-margined embranchments of the swift Kamo-Gawa,
or on the green slopes of the hills that encfrcle tMs loveliest of
plams. Familiar by hearsay, or by the specimens which may now be
seen in abundance everywhere, -with Japanese art, and aware
that Kioto is pre-eminently the artistic city of Japan, the visitor
cannot but wonder, as he traverses the business quarters of the
mid-town, at the want of display of any kind. In size and
style one shop-front much resembles another, and except, the
c[uaint Japanese or occasionally Chinese characters fantastically
inscribed on the lintel or door-posts, there is little to proclaim
the nature of the wares within. These treasm-es, embroidery,
porcelain, lacquer-work, enamel, metallurgy, painting, than
which none choicer are to be found throughout the island
Empire, are stowed away for the most part in the unostentatious
background of small apartments. Coleridge's devil " did grin "
when he passed a genteel cottage, knowing its apparent humility
to be merely the aping of pride. But then the devil was in
Scotland ; had his morning walk been through Kioto his grin
would have missed its meaning ; for vain as the Japanese may
be, with or without cause needs not to discuss at present, of his
nationality — no man in the world is freer from individual vanity,
none more averse from showing off' and pretentiousness, wliich
indeed he vvould look upon as that w^orst of all offences
stigmatised by the Japanese code, a breach of good manners.
To say that the snob is whoUy absent from among the social
fauna of Japan would be perhaps, human nature considered, an
over-bold assertion, but certainly the specimens of that kind are
very rare.
Issuing at last from tiiese the most crowded and busiest
quarters of the town, from the almost democratic equality of
shops and houses, tea-rooms, bath-rooms, refreshment-rooms, and
the rest, we enter on a quieter region, interspersed with gardens,
the entrance-gates of private residences, or public offices, tUl we
come on a long, low whitewashed wall of brick and plaster,
topped by a plain tile coping, one side of a paraUelogram wliich
encloses in its circuit a space of about thirty aoreS; Within

KIOTO. 227
these walls, on tliis spot of enclosed ground, dwelt for one
thousand and seventy-five years of uninterrupted succession, the
Mikado, Emperor of Japan, dfr-ect descendant of the Sun goddess,
Mgh priest, or rather himself the ever-present pattern and deity
of Sliinto, absolute lord and ruler, unquestioning obedience to
whose every wUl is the first duty of every one, male or female,
Mgh or low, great or small, of the three-and-tlnrty milUon
inhabitants of Japan. What evidences of despotic power, what
caprices of despotic fancy, what traces of despotic cruelty, what
treasures of despotic greed, what extravagances of despotic luxury
may we not expect to find witMn these walls ?
Leaving om- veMcles at the unadorned outer gate, but accom
panied by the men who have been dragging them, we give our
names as visitors to the writer or clerk at the old porter's lodge,
where not a soldier, not a policemen even keeps guard, and enter
the spacious courtyard, where full in front stands the palace.
And what do we see ? A one-storied assemblage of small
apartments, exactly similar to those of any ordinary Japanese
dweUmg, only somewhat more extensive, united by long, low^
open corridors, the waUs composed of unpainted timber, with the
usual sUding screens of paper and bamboo for doors and windows,
the piUai-s plain, unadorned, unpainted though poUshed timber ;
the projectmg roof, part tile, part thatch. Withm we walk over
simple wooden floors of pine, laid down vritli the identical close-
woven mats, scrupulously clean Uke everything else, but other-
-wise neither better nor worse than those of a private house ; the
ceiling above is plain as the rest, and as neat. One, and one
only, apartment is there to betoken state ; a kind of public hall,
or rather open shed, on smooth wood pillars, over-roofed vvith
wood; a simple raised seat with the portraits of the Emperor
and Empress above indicates that the place does duty for an
audience-hall. The sliding screens which separate the haU from
the passage beMnd are figmed .with the supposed portraits of
Chinese sages; the front is open to a garden walk. Neither
here, nor anywhere else throughout the palace, is any ornament
displayed except it be the paintings, many of them by the best
Japanese artists, and representing chiefiy landscape scenes, birds,
Q 2

228 ULYSSES.

flowers, studies of trees, and the Uke, wluch diversify the wall-
sUdes between one room and another ; nor, mats excepted, have
the Uttle closet-like rooms themselves any fm-niture or decoration
beyond an occasional piece of quaint bronze-work, or some
carved utensil for tea-maMng or food. A small, ungilt, unpainted,
imageless Shinto sMine denotes the Mikado's personal form of
worsMp; wMle witMn a closet, shut off by liea-y}'' lacquered
screens from the adjoining apartment, is said to be the original
stone of sovereignty, round and polished, bestowed by the Sun
goddess Ama-terasu on her descendants, together -with a copy of
the sword, conjoint symbol of rule, and also divinely given ; the
sword itself is preserved at the still more ancient shrine of the
mythical Yamato-Dake, queller of the barbarous aborigines of
Eastern Japan. Nor is the heaven-sent mirror, cMef emblem of
the Mikado's great ancestress, withm these walls, but at the
sacred temple in the adjoining province of Tse; the Mikado
contenting Mmself with a copy, now deposited in the Uttle
SMnto shrine mentioned before. But to none of these objects,
nor even to the private apartments and sleeping room of the
Mikado Mmself, is the approach in any way guarded other than
by the customary sliding screens ; no preparation for defence,
indeed no possibility of it exists anywhere within the palace,
not even privacy sufficient to ordinary European requirements ;
no vestige of luxury, none even of any but the most moderate
expenditure, but simplicity everywhere ; such is the Imperial
abode. The very garden amid which it stands, though laid out
-with the best of that horticultural art in which Japan has no
rival, is equally unpretentious, quiet, almost homely ; no wide
walks, no stately avenues, no giant fountains, no statues, no
arches, no balustraded terraces, no calculated approaches, no
regal vistas ; such a garden as might be the recreation ground of
a weU-to-do gentieman, or qmet-loving author or poet ; barely a
Twickenham, much less a Pembroke Lodge; in nothino- a
Belvedere or a Versailles.
And these are the authentic head-quarters of the most ancient
dynasty that yet lives and reigns on earth's surface amid the
ruins of so many sceptics, so many thrones ; this is the palace.

KIOTO. 229
tMs the residence of the most absolute autocrat vvho ever claimed
not merely the " right divine of kings to govern -wi'ong," but
almost divinity itself; this the dwelUng, the shrine of the
goddess-descended demi-god, the heir of the war spirit Jimmo-
Tenno, of the civUiser and organiser Sujin, of the heroic Jingu-
Kojo, rictress of Corea, of the heaven-ascended Yamato-Dak^ of
the people's father Nintoku-Tenno, of three thousand years of
worshipped sovereignty ; tliis buUding, not distinguished in type,
scarce distingmshed in size and detaUs from a private house ;
these qmet groves, this unguarded enclosure ! And rightly is it
thus. Here, as in the sacred mirror itself, we see the inmost
natm-e of the Mikado's sway, the true position of the sun-born
Emperor amid Ms kindred people. Secure in Ms own congenital
and inherent right, raised above all around him by dignity of
nature and birth, a demi-god among men, he owns no need of
the two props that most uphold the tottering weakness of
artificial rulers, the iron and the gold, military strength and
pompous display. Such accessories would not set off, they could
only obscm-e the purity of his glory, as clouds the sun ; more
yet, the Uving head of a religion that teaches by existent fact,
not by written precept, of a system accordmg to which man is a
law to Mmself, and nature's own simpUcity the standard
measure of the Mghest great and good, he is in Ms own self the
embodiment, the supreme illustration, the perfection of that
simplicity, of that law, he the archetypal fact of Sliinto, the
personification of the god-governed Empire. And such, as no
uncertain history tells, were the Emperors of Japan for nigh two
thousand years, tUl the " tMck, sweet, stupefymg incense
smoke " of a corrupt Buddhism, and the fatal caste-avatar of
Southern Asia, overshadowed the clear heavens of SMnto. Let
the foremost Uvmg Japanese scholar, the most accurate critic,
Ernest Satow, tell the tale, — it is one among many such, — of
Nintoku-Tenno, Mikado in the tMrd centm-y, contemporary of
the European despot Constantine, of the Asiatic tyrant Sapor.
"The Mikado, having climbed a MU, looked all around, and
observing the absence of smoke from the cottages of the people,
decreed that for the space of three years no taxes or forced

230 ULYSSES.

labom- should be imposed on Ms subjects. His own palace, for
want of funds to repair it, was allowed to become so dUapidated
that the roof admitted the rain. TMee years later he again
ascended the MU, and beheld smoke arising from every dwelling.
The people were now rich enough to bear taxation vrithout
feeling the burden, and voluntarily offered to contribute towards
the rebuilding of the palace." Legendary in form the story may
be, but it is history in fact ; nor unaptly illustrated by Mm who
so lately on the removal of the seat of Empire from Kioto to
Tokio, refused to have a palace of Ms own erected to Mm in his
new capital, till such time as the finances of the Empire might
be able easily and without prejudice to other national interests
to bear the outlay. May that time soon come ! Meantime the
Emperor, inheritor and restorer of the secular throne, Mutsu-
Hito, true Mikado, and worthy descendant of worthy ancestors,
inhabits not a palace but a private dwelUng, not the less
honoured, but more, for his faithful adherence to the principles
of SMnto and Japan.
To these very principles, as the learned Japanese scholar
Motoori, the most authentic exponent of Shinto in the last
century, informs us, was due the ready access and the famiUarity
of daily mtercourse allowed by the Mikados in their earlier and
better days to their subjects at large, when the Japanese
Emperors were not only among their people but of them, their
leaders and fellow-soldiers in war, their instructors and fellow-
workmen in the arts of peace ; hence the absence of all vain
parade, aU idle pomp, splendour, and luxury in their personal
and immediate surroundings; they exemplified in themselves
the simple conformity to nature in wMch consists the Mghest
Japanese perfection ; fitting models, rulers, high priests, gods
of the nation to which they belonged, and of which they were
the head by right, alike natural and divine, the existent unchal
lenged fact of birth.
Nor less truly with the unerring instinct of genius does
Motoori ascribe the eclipse, and, for nigh ten centuries, the
practical obliteration of the Mikado's rule, to the violation of
these very prescriptions of Shinto, to their supersession by

KIOTO. 231
Asiatic court ceremony and cumbrous pomp, to luxury and
artificialism, to seclusion, partly voluntary, partly enforced, and
separation from the people ; in a word to the Chino-Buddhist
system and caste-government that for an entire millennium
brooded, as clouds do over a cholera-stricken land, over the
length and breadth of Japan ; wlule the immm-ement, cere
monial in form, compulsory in fact, of the true Sovereign of
Nipon had, under the heavy shadow of the Toku-gawa usurpation,
become so absolute, that the v^ery existence of the Sun-descended
was, for the majority of his own subjects, a matter of speculation,
of scepticism ev^eu. And hence the first remedy that the great
patriot -writer had to suggest for the evils of the times was to
urge that the Mikado should once more re-appear, a Japanese
among Japanese, m personal and daily contact with Ms subjects,
living amidst them and after their fasMon, as in the times of old.
Nothing could to all appearance liav^e been further from
realisation than tins advice, wise and well-grounded as it was,
when given in the days of the too-powerful Bakufu and the
family of Kii. But in Japan, as elsewhere, the whirligig of time
brought in its revenges ; and the history of 1868 and the
succeeding years has amply proved and illustrated the soundness
of Motoori's counsel. There in the Palace of Kioto itself, though
no longer honoured by the actual presence of Japanese majesty,
I see a curious exemplification of the recent change, or rather of
reversion to the ancient and normal condition of things, in the
numerous groups of Japanese, most of them, as their dress
indicates, belonging to the middle, not a few to the lower classes,
whom I meet strolUng about in respectful curiosity through the
rooms and corridors of the Imperial dwelling. The entrance of
the Mikado's Mstorical palace, whence the jealous tyranny of the
Shoguns so long excluded aU visits, except their own, is now
practically open to all the Mikado's subjects alike, whatever
their condition, and the eagerness with which they avail them
selves of the permission bears witness no less than their orderly
and subdued demeanour to the loyalty of their devotion. Well
grounded in national self-respect, there is no fear lest a Japanese
crowd, though made up of roughs and street-arabs, or rather of

232 ULYSSES.

those who by prescription would be such, were they natives of
Western Europe or the United States, should for a moment
forget in word, deed, or even gesture, what is due to the nation
and the nation's sovereign, lest " princely privilege " should be
compromised by " vile participation," or famiUarity lapse into
contempt. How far the same may hold good where others than
Japanese are concerned might not be so easy to determine ; and
I myself personally incline to think that the extreme limit of
condescension has been already reached, if not overpassed in that
direction. European race-stands, circus performances, the decks
of foreign frigates, and the Uke are, to say the least, questionable
places for the presence of the Mikado of Dai-Nihon, the heir of
Jimmo-Tenno, the descendant of Ama-terasu, goddess of the sun.
Among his own kinsman-subjects the case is -widely different,
the precedent honourable and safe.
Such is the writing and such the reading of it on the walls
of the Kioto Palace. But the more fuUy to apprehend its
meaning, let us pay a brief visit to the favourite recreation
grounds of the Japanese Emperor without the city circmt. So,
turning to the right, we cross the pebbly bed of the Kamo-gawa
where it flows not far from the palace Umits, and traverse a
level haK mUe or more of gardens, fields, and Uttle peasant
cottages, till at the base of the pine-clad hills that border to the
east the plain of Kioto, we reach a very unpretentious garden
wall and an unomamented gate. Here we give in our names
to the old door-keeper, and without further preliminary are
admitted — as indeed is any person of respectable appearance,
and some, if European toilette ideas be taken as standard, of
very disrespectable — to the pleasure grounds of Shu-gaku, the
resort by preference of the later Mikados when tired, as they
often must have been, of their half-seclusion, half-imprisonment
in thefr city abode. Terrace above terrace the grassy slopes run
up the MU-side, traversed by narrow serpentine walks, and
dotted here and there by little thatched garden houses, wood
and bamboo, where the Mikado and Ms attendants might take
tea, and enjoy the different points of -riew across this Japanese
Val d'Arno with its Eastern Florence Ughted up, tower and

KIOTO. 233
temple, castle and palace, by the morning sun. Cherry-trees
and maples, the former deUghting the Japanese eye by the
delicate tints of their abundant fiowers in the spring-time
(when, indeed, it was my good fortune to visit Shu-gaku),
the latter by the gorgeous crimson of the unfolding leaves,
are thick planted everywhere, but mostly in avenues by the
winding margin of an artificial lake, where miniature bridges
and rock-work islands give somewhat of a Chinese character
to the scene. On the highest ledge of the garden grounds a
wooden pavilion, plain and unadorned like the other con
structions here, has been skilfully placed so as to command
through an opening between the giant pine trunks a complete
bird's-eye view of the city and plain of Kioto, girt in with its
wooded amphitheatre of MUs, except where it opens southward
far away to the level lands of Osaka and the distant sea coast.
So lovely, so ideally perfect is the view that a slight sketch of
it, made by myself on the spot, was eagerly begged for by a
Kioto artist to serve as a model for design on screen oi lacquer.
The day is fine, an ItaUan spring morning, and holiday-makers,
shopmen apparently, artisans, day-labourers, and country-folk
are strolUng about at leisure through the imperial enclosures,
admiring the flowers, gazing on the lovely prospect, or grouped
by the water's edge feeding certain huge golden carp, favoured
pets of the Japanese populace, vrith rice pellets purchased at
a booth close by. Others are respectfully bowing their heads
before an imageless shrine bosomed among the shrubs, and
commemorative of some Japanese demi-god of the Mikado's
famUy. Gardens, walks, ponds, temples, pav^Uions, all are
such for size and style as might be owned by any quiet-loving
gentleman-proprietor of orderly habits and good taste ; anything
less royal, less imperial, in the vulgar Asiatic or, only too
frequently, European sense of the word, it would be difficult to
imagine. The recreation grounds of the "people's Emperor,"
for such the Mikado truly is, are as characteristicaUy simple, as
devoid of adventitious parade and circumstance, as are the
official headquarters, the palace itseK.
But if content to pass the days of his mortal sojourn after

234 ULYSSES.

tMs homely and, to use the stereotyped pMase, patriarchal
fasMon, the SMnto demi-god -will surely at least, when de
parting to take his place aniong his deified ancestors, the
tutelary Powers of Japan, leave to earth as memorial of his
reign some gorgeous monument, some starry pointing pyramid,
some pillared mausoleum, some giant wonder of labour and art
in long enduring vritness of his greatness and virtues. Lesser
rulers by far than the Mikado of Japan do and have done so ;
and here in Dai-Nihon itself the tombs of the Shoguns, mere
mUitary chiefs of usurped authority, and they themselves not
sovereigns, but subjects by title, have made famous the burial-
grounds of Nikko, of Shiba, and Nyeno -with some of the
choicest, if not, indeed, the very choicest marvels of arcMtecture
and skUl. Not so the lords of the Shoguns. At the town of
Nara, capital of the Yamato province, about tMrty mileS to the
south of Kioto, and in its vicinity, is the favourite resting-place
of the Emperors ; let us visit them there. Unfrequented by the
sight-seeing tourist, some of them, indeed, almost unknown to
his research, their graves are for the most part amid the fields,
under the forest trees of the vride land ; but of one, the great
ruler, Kai-kwa Tenuo, fourth of the sun-descended line, and
numbered among the demi-gods more than two thousand years
ago, the tomb is yet to be seen just outside the town gates of
Nara ; and now, leaving the street lines behind us, we stand
before it. An uncarved gateway of smooth, unpainted timber,
a small gravel-strewm space, wherein to offer up commemorative
prayer, two taU lanterns of hewn but undecorated stone on
either side, and beyond these a little earth-mound, thickly
planted round with bamboo for screen, and on its summit a
lofty pine-tree, overshado-wing a single upright cube of uncarved,
uninscribed, unomamented stone; no other memorial is there,
no other needed. Si momimcntum requiris, circumspice; the
heaven and the earth of Japan are the monument of the
Mikado. We have seen SMnto in its imperial and political, let us now
see it in its more strictly religious aspect ; and from among the
many .shrines of Kioto let us select for our purpose that of

KIOTO. 235
"Inari no YasMro," on the eastern hiU slopes that adjoin the
town. "TMs popular Shinto temple," as we are informed by
Mr, E. Satow in his excellent handbook, " the prototype of the
thousand of Inari temples scattered all over the country, was
founded in A.D, 711, when the Goddess of Food is said to have
first manifested herself on the hill behind. The first temple
consisted of three small chapels on the three peaks of the hill,
whence the worsMp of the goddess and her companion deities
was removed to its present site in 1246," These two associated
deities are, by Mr. Satow's account, Omiyanome, a personifica
tion of the Mikado's palace, and another courtly god who met
Ninigi no mikoto, the grandson of the Sun goddess, when
descending from heaven with the emblematic regalia, the
mirror, the sword, and the stone, to inaugurate the imperial
dynasty at Japan. To this divine trio, the Harvest god, who
here revealed himself in the locally appropriate form of a crane
carrymg a grain of rice in Ms bill, and another deity, Oyashima
no kami by name, in whom all the islands of Japan are col
lectively persomfied, have for five hundred years past been
added. The existing structure, a wooden one, like all Shinto
-and most Buddhist temples in Japan, is about sixty years old ;
for except where fortresses are concerned, stone is rarely used
as constructive material in tMs earthquake-shaken country.
Such- is the history in brief of Inari no YasMro, or the " Temple
of the Eice-bearer," whither, retm-ning townwards from the
Imperial Gardens, we now direct our way,
Eunning as though their very lives depended on it, and
exchanging words of banter vrith each other and -vrith those they
meet on the road, our " jin-riki-sha " men have cleared the long
wooden bridge across the straggling river-bed, and traversed
about two mUes of suburb ; the streets are not less broad and
straight than those in the town itself, but the houses are lower
and poorer looking, the shops, among which I remark an extra
ordinary proportion of toy-staUs, indicating the neighbourhood
of a temple (for to purchase something where-withal to amuse
Ms cMldren seems to be an essential part of every Japanese
father's piety), are small, and the people who throng the way

236 ULYSSES.

poorly clad, — many indeed, after the hardy Japanese ifasMon
that so -riridly recaUs memories of old Greece, are nearly naked.
Yet for all this there is no dirt, no squalor, no gloom, no hint
of discomfort or discontent. At last we arrive opposite to a
tree-flanked opening between the shops on the left-hand side of
the road, and a -wide path spanned by a colossal " torU " leading
upward to the temple grounds beyond.
A " torU " is a structure composed of a large cylindrical
cross beam, placed athwart two rounded wooden piUars slightly
incUned inwards, -with its ends projecting beyond theni ; a
similar but smaller piece of wood, parallel -with the upper
one, unites the side-posts not far below the top cross-work.
Originally these " torU " were always of uncarved wood,
though carefully smoothed, unpainted, and without any metal
joinings ; but in later times, when the simplicity of SMnto
had been corrupted by OMno-BuddMst mnovation, they were
frequently made of stone, and even of brass ; thefr dimensions
vary from those of an ordinary gateway for foot-passengers to
thirty feet in height, with proportional width. No SMnto
temple is without one, and they have often many "torii" in
front ; their purpose being, it is said, but whether rightly I
know not, to serve as perches for the birds wMch tenant the
sacred enclosure ; for myself I never once saw a bird of any
description, not even a crow, make such use of them. Groups
of little "torii" painted red, are often to be found arranged
consecutively in avenues leading up to some retired SMnto
shrine among the trees ; indeed an idea of sacredness seems to
attach itself to the form, though rather as a matter of sentiment
than precisely of worship.
Leaving om- " jin-riki-shas " outside, we pass on foot under
the entrance " torii " and walk up a gently sloping pathway,
broad and clean swept, among the magnificent Japanese pmes — ¦
" cryptomeria " the learned call them — that are invariably
planted round every Shinto sMine, be it small or great. Soon
we reach the foot of a lofty flight of stone steps, also weU kept
and clean swept ; at the top of these a second " torU " admits us
in due course on to a grand plateau, where we are fronted by a

KIOTO.

spacious raised wooden shed, open on all sides, roofed with
thatch — your only SMnto wear for roofage — and adorned, if
adornment it can be called, by a bulky straw rope wound about
the pillars, and by notched slips of white paper, pendent and
fluttering from the eaves. There on high days and holidays is
held the " Kagura " dance, an ancient choragic performance,
executed by two or more virgins, who, crowned with flowers and
waring paper-festooned wands in their hands, Uke modest (if
the adjective be not incongruous) columbines in a baUet, move
in slow time alone the stage, or weave mazy measures around
each other m mystic convolutions; how far, -with reference to
planetary cycles and epicycles, the investigators of myths, solar
or stellar, may decide. Enough for the present that the dance
is alike decorous and pretty. Beyond tMs shed are two temples,
each dedicated by the same quinary of deities ; the foremost
one, on a level vrith the " Kagura " stage, being the less charac
teristic, we wUl pass it by m favour of the other sMme, placed
rather higher up, and wMch shall be described in due com-se.
On either side of the temple front are two stone foxes, the
special emblems of the " Inari," seated aloft, each on a Mgh
pedestal, sacred but unworsMpped symbols, pecuUar to the
presiding deity of the place. More ordinary guardians of the
shrine are two great stone dogs, of fanciful and rather leonine
cut ; m strict SMnto practice these, like everytMng else belong
ing to the temple, should be unpamted ; in the instances before
us, however, the Ucense of blue and green colom-mg has been
admitted. One of these Lombardic-looking monsters, which
does duty for a male, has its mouth open, the other, supposed
to be a female, has hers close shut; a manifest anomaly, and
intended, I suppose, to indicate what should be, rather than what
is, in the ordinary com-se of nature. An ex-voto shed, and
another wherem are kept certam sacred cars used in yearly
processions, flank the temple. All about, sometimes ranged in
Unes plantation-Uke, sometimes grouped in clusters, stand
innumerable stone lamps, offerings of the devout, each raised
on a neat stone pillar varying from five to eight or ten feet in
height ; the four-sided opening of the lantern is occasionally

238 ULYSSES.

fasMoned into a efrcle on the one side and a crescent on the
other, doubtless to denote the sun and the moon; I have also
observed, but much more rarely, a star-like aperture. It may
be worth notice, because a characteristic cfrcumstance, that
Shinto, as befits a teachmg concerned exclusively vrith the
powers and infiuence that act on the human, and more par
ticularly the Japanese race, takes but little account of the stars,
perhaps because too distant for the cognisance of such a system.
Outside the temple, but close to it, are a few thatched sheds.
In one of them sits a priest in ordinary secular dress ; near Mm
are several neat Uttle piles of very inartistic views of the place,
where everytMng is explained, at good need, by Japanese
superscriptions -written all about the sketch, wMch is printed on
the thinnest of paper, and a heap of tiny scrolls, whereon the
names of the temple and of the guardian deity are mscribed ;
these he seUs for a microscopic sum to whoever vriUs, as re
membrances of the place, and at the same time as titles to a
continuance of the divine favour. For Japanese devotion, not
in SMnto merely, but under whatever other form it may
assume, is notMng if not local. In another shed refreshments,
mostly sweets, are to be purchased, and more quaint ex-voto
pictures, contemptuous of perspective, and commemorative of
wondrous deliverances from sickness or danger, are hung up;
but witMn the temple nothing of all this is permitted.
What, then, does the shrine itself contain ? What is it that
these crowds of worshippers, many of them pilgrims from a
considerable distance, have come to visit ? Strictly, nay literally,
the Inrisible. We have mounted a few more stone steps, and
are now before the sanctuary of the Five, It is a small wooden,
thatch-covered bmlding; the floor within is raised, and fully
open to yiew, but its actual access is barred by a low raUing and
gate in front of the inner flight of stairs. Once a year, or more
often if cfrcumstances demand, this gate is opened to aU. Shreds
of wMte paper in alternate notches and vrisps of clean straw
fringe the eaves ; a straw rope, so placed as when shaken to
sound a gong, hangs down from the Untel over the entrance.
The apartment — for it has no other appearance — within is laid

KIOTO. 239

down with the customary spotless wMte matting of a Japanese
interior ; two or three small square cushions lie about for the
priests to sit on during serrice-time ; two or three wooden wands
— " gohei " is their proper designation — bearing at one extremity
pendants of notched paper, commonly white, but sometimes
distmgmshed with green, blue, yellow, and red, are placed on
the floor close by ; on one side a small gong is suspended in a
lacquered framework. At the farther end of the room is a kind
of altar, or cupboard, rather plain, unpainted wood Uke the rest ;
and on tMs are sometimes, but by no means invariably, placed
two small sprigs of the " Sakaki " tree, a kind of cypress, known,
I believe, to botanists by the name of " Cleyera Japonica," and
held appropriate to divine worsMp as a symbol of purity ; the
tree itself is somewhat rare, and thence it may be esteemed tho
more. Between these, on a simple wooden stand, is often to be
seen a circular metal mirror, of a foot or more in diameter, an
important, mdeed, the most important, emblem of Shinto, but
the extra significance of which is matter of controversy ; the
back of the mfrror is not rarely covered by a map, in metal
reUef, of some one or other Japanese province. Such a mirror
is, I am told, kept m every Shmto temple, but is by no means
always exposed to view. Two, three, or more " gohei " wands
are also laid on the shelf at the top. Within the hollow of the
altar-cupboard — which is, however, at no time opened to the
pubUc, very rarely even to sacerdotal inspection — are the objects,
whatever they may be, in wMch the sacredness of the entire
place is supposed to be incorporated and centred. But as none
but the priests, nor they even except on the most solemn
occasions, ever so much as pretend to see them, their nature, not
to say their very existence, is uncertain ; nor according to pure
and unadulterated Shinto theory, is it by any means essential to
worsMp. TMs is all ; and the hoUest SMnto shrine in all Japan,
those of Tse itself not excepted, has nothing more to show.
Nor are the rites of Shinto worship less unpretentious than
the temples where they are celebrated. One, two, or three
priests in long white or slightly fiowered robes, -with square
black biretta-like caps of tMn gauze on their heads, each

240 ULYSSES.

morning take their place on the cushions in front of the altar,
and there, wand in hand, recite a few formulas of prayer, accom
panied by an occasional note of the gong, after which they
worsMp, bowing their heads, and disrobe themselves. Some
times, though not often, a " Kagura " dance is performed, the
priests taking on themselves the musical accompaniment, if
"musical" be not a misnomer where a European ear could
detect nothing in the least worthy of that adjective. MeanwMle
the laity stand outside the paling; each man having first
performed the slight ablutions required by the ritual, rubs his
hands togethei- — an act of respect due to a superior presence —
bows Ms head, strikes with the knotted straw rope twice or thrice
on the gong suspended above, casts some trifling offering into a
large open chest before the temple entrance,' and puts up, most
often in silence, a short extempore prayer for whatever may
happen to be the object of his desires ; after wMch, bowing
again, he steps aside to purchase a -written amulet-paper, such as
I have described already ; or loiters awMle beneath the shade of
the sacred grove, as though to bring himself more completely
under the influence of the local deity ; or, if so disposed, retires
from the precincts altogether. Nor, even if he should be, as
often happens, a pilgrim from the farthest corner of Japan, and
have measured many hundred miles from Ms home to the shrine,
is any other act or form of devotion incumbent on Mm, nor does
he, secm-e in the efficacy of Ms once proffered petition, twice
repeat the rite. Whatever may be true of other heathens (or
Christians either, for the nonce), these certainly do not tMnk to
be heard by their much speaking.
We, too, vrill now quit the principal shrine, and stroll at
leisure among the many lesser temples jotted over the sacred
enclosure, which extends for about half a mile square in every
direction from the road-level up to the mountain-tops, a thousand
feet high or thereabouts, overlooking the plain of Kioto.
Footpaths, ingeniously and solidly constructed, and kept -with a
neatness that might do honour to an English gentleman's park,
vrind to right and left among the trees, connecting -with each
other the various spots which popular tradition delights to point

KIOTO. 241
out, and popular devotion to honour. Of these the most ancient
are the three chapels already mentioned on the hill summit ;
but many others, of great though not equal antiquity, have
perched themselves on the steep slopes, some shyly embosomed
in narrow deUs by the side of cool fountains, while others have
taken up more conspicuous positions, whence through tree and
shrub they overlook the plain and the river ; but no one without
its own peculiar beauty of site. On all sides violets stud the
tufted grass, great azalea clusters of scented pink burn like stray
bonfires among the jutting rocks ; far in heaven overhead arches
the enlaced canopy of twisted pine branches; little rivulets,
crystal pure, come tumbling down from the heights ; and cool
breezes, Ught and Ufe-giving as those of the Tuscan Apennines,
rustle tMough the wood, and temper the heat of sunny May, else
almost excessive in this southerly cUriie. Sometimes, according
as the fancy of Inari's worshippers may have willed it so, we
pass under whole avenues of red-painted wooden " torii," thick
placed side by side ; then, turnmg a path corner, we suddenly
find ourselves in presence of a neatly kept oratory, with a priest
in his Uttle hut on guard close by. After many windings among
the ravines, and meeting or passing many a merry band of
laugMng pilgrims — for the Japanese look on a visit to their
gods much as they would on one to their yet flesh-invested
friends, and are equally of a mind for fun in either case — we
stand on a commanding height by the shrine of Kami no Jinga,
" the Oku no In, or Holy of Holies," says Mr, Satow, " where a
huge boulder marks the spot where the goddess made her first
appearance in the year 711." The boulder itself, a mass of
volcanic tufa, forms the apex of the hill ; it is protected by a
neat stone paling, and further honoured by a straw rope wound
about it, and a liberal allowance of notched paper streamers, aU
white ; while the special personality of the goddess who first
selected it is announced by two stone foxes keeping guard on
either side of the smooth wooden " torii " at the entrance. Two
stone lanterns also fiank the shrine, and a white banner fiutters
over it and guides visitors to the spot. Close by a bamboo
framework, shaped Uke a screen, and divided by several cross-
B

242 ULYSSES.

lines, bears suspended from it long. rows of paper tickets, each
inscribed with the name of a worshipper ; memoranda left with
the deity to keep the petitions offered fresh tn her mind. Besides
this, which may appropriately be called the -risiting-book of the
goddess, an infinity of thin wooden slips, pointed at the lower
end, are stuck into the ground near the shrine, alongside the
path leading to it, and indeed everywhere all over the hillside,
vritli shreds of writing attached to them, denoting the names of
the deity whose good- will has been sought, and of the petitioner
himself; their frequency combines, with the extreme neatness
of the grounds, to give the entire enclosure somewhat of the
appearance of a carefully-kept botanical garden on a large scale,
with the names of the plants on tickets. How many anxious
petitions are here recorded, how many answered, how many
frustrate of reply; what a tale of fears and hopes, of desires, of
sorrows, of expectation, of disappointment, of gratitude, of life,
of death, is registered here !
Many, far too many, writers about Japan, either from want
of observation, or incapability to understand what they observed,
have repeated parrot-like, one after another, the phrase, that
" Shinto has no hold on the Japanese mind." So far as I can
judge, the crowds that daily worship at these temples, the
countless petitions offered up there, the numerous monthly or
yearly recurring pilgrimages, the local memorials purchased and
treasured up in almost every house of Japan, appear to teU a
very difierent tale. " But the Japanese do not look as if they took
their religion in eamest," says some Western traveller, as he or
she, standing by, watches vrith half-amused contempt the men
and women of the land approach the open shrine amid talk and
laughter, and after one or two inclinations of the head, rubbings
of the hands, and a composed silence of a couple of minutes at
the most, turn away to resume their scarce interrupted conver
sation and jest, with no trace of seriousness iu manner or
countenance to indicate where they have been, or what they
have done. Can, then, a reUgion exert much influence over its
followers, that claims of them and receives no more outward
observance than this ?

KIOTO. 243
Precisely so, and in that very meagreness of outward ritual
and observance is found the best proof that Shinto is even now
as of old a Uring power in Japan. Where a belief is so
thoroughly incorporated into the nature of those wlio hold it as
to be identified vrith that nature itself, but little is needed of set
form or countenance, of studied preparation or prolonged rite.
AU these things are, rightly understood, mere appliances for the
make-beUeve, or at best " vritli much pain attain to half-believe,"
of those to whose inner heart the belief is external ; the props
and adjuncts of a confessedly feeble faith ; the artificial ap
pliances to bring about that wiuch of itself would not be.
This test, applicable in its measure to every creed, is to none
more appUcable than to SMnto, which, it should be borne in
mind, is in its ultimate expression notMng but the worship of
existent nature, and is then best exemplified when nature herself
at her best is best expressed. Simple ideas require but simple
symbols; that whicli is natural asks not much help from the
artificial ; plain wood, white paper, straw bands, these and their
like are enough wliere the creed is not so much written on the
heart as it is the heart itself Few and simple indeed -w^ere the
symbols of Christianity m the days of its strength ; the birth and
growth of Christian decoration and art has kept steady pace
with the decline of Christian belief as a living power aniong
Western nations. Nor does the history of Islam, though in a
field widely apart, teach a different lesson.
For the results of Shinto we need only look on Japan herself ;
and on the wonderfully high degree of true civilisation, that is of
honour, of courage, of social self-respect, of regard for others, of
reverence for authority, age, and learning, of delicate artistic
sense and practice, of subordination, of organised govemment, of
courtesy, of cleanliness, of industry, that she has in long ages,
guiltless of Europe and all its works, developed for herself and
out of herself; look also on the ready flexibility vrith which she
takes up from other nations whatever may profit her, not
crudely, not unintelligently, but modifying, altering, improving,
to suit her o-wn circumstances and requirements. And this
civilisation of her own, not indeed the cirilisation of railroads
E 2

244 ULYSSES.
and macMnes, nor that of speculators and stock-exchanges, nor
that even of capitalists and paupers, of luxurious ostentation at
one end of the scale, and brutaUsing degradation at the other,
but the civUisation of mind and morals, of art and beauty, of
industry and content, of subordination and labour, of mutual
kindUness , forbearance and help, vrith its results many and
great ones, pace even Sir Harry Parkes, she owes in all essentials
not to Em-ope or America, but to herseK and SMnto. True, that
to her innate capacity for developing that very civiUsation, to
the qualities that rendered her by birthright what she is,
she owes Shinto itself; its aspects, political and religious, are but
the outcomings of the Japanese nature, the spontaneous growth
of the soil, Japanese nationality and Shinto are tn truth one
thing — nay, the latter is to all intents the summed-up expression,
the concentrated essence of the former, Uving with its Ufe,
decaying with its decay, not to be divided from it but by death,
the death of both. Born together, they will perish, if perish
they must, together ; the death-note, as the bfrth-note, of SMnto
and Japan is one.
To the still stranger assertion that " Shinto has been com
pletely superseded by Buddhism," the one hundred and twenty-
eight thousand one hundred and twenty-three Shinto temples
and shrines, in none of which BuddMsm has art or part, scattered
broadcast over Japan, together with what has been described, and
can any day be verified by the most ordinary observation, of the
popularity, nay, almost universaUty of the modes of worship
connected with those shrines, may weU be considered a suflficient
and conclusive reply. BuddMst temples, many of them
magnificent in size, and gorgeous in decoration, and Buddhist
priests with holy vows and shaven heads, do indeed abound in
the land, but Shinto is so far from being superseded by them,
that it gives many signs of probably superseding them itself in
great measure before long. That Buddhism has in past times
partly corrupted, partly, by an assumed and deceptive likeness,
supplanted Shinto in Japanese practice, that it has largely
contributed to the introduction of a caste-system, of priestcraft,
of superstition, -with the mental and moral deterioration con-

KIOTO. 245
sequent on these tMngs, and more especially among the foolish-
minded and unwise of the upper and ruUng classes in days gone
by, is unhappUy true ; nor less so that even now it continues to
exert, though with diminished power, and on a more restricted
scale, the same injurious influence that it exerted in the days of
Kobe DaisM, Nichiren, and the other great leaders of bigotry and
fanaticism in their day. This too is, however, a daily lessening
harm. Nor has the wrong wrought to Japan by CMno-BuddMsm
been -without some compensating adv^antages, greater certainly
than could be looked for from the inweaving of any other foreign
strand of thought or life into the national texture.

246 ULYSSES.

FEOM MONTEVIDEO TO PAEAGUAY,
So little is currently known in Europe, in England even, of the La Plata
region, so little interest does it command, that I almost feel as though an
apology were due for an Essay on such a subject. Yet though the land has,
I admit, little Past, its Present is one not unworthy of notice, and promises a
great, though stiU undefined. Future, To predict that Putm-e, were it even
possible to do so, is no business of mine ; yet I will venture on a not un-
groimded hope that the venturesome Confederations and Republics of the
American South may have before them a nobler destiny than has yet been
apportioned to their counterpart on the Northern Continent, higher aims, and
wider fulfilment.
In Paraguay however, and in Paraguay alone does not the present only,
though by no means unattractive, not the future with its remoter possibiUties
of fear or hope, fix our attention ; the past too, if events included within the
days of a yet living generation may be so entitled, has its own proper glories :
the glory of a loyalty rare in the annals of mankind, the glory of a patriotism
unsurpassed, I had almost said unrivaUed, in the records of Sparta or Eome.
And terrible as is the price that a nation is at times caUed on to pay for
worthiness, that nation does well to pay it, rather than forfeit what alone
makes existence worth the whUe.
" Summum crede uefas animam prseferre pudori,
Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas."
A Eoman penned these Unes ; but their meaning was never better understood,
uever more faithfuUy acted on, than by Paraguay in her long six years of
agony, from Paso la Patria to Aquidaban.
It was a clear, mild evening of spring m the latter part of the
month designated in almanacks as October, but in Nature's
annuary the AprU of tMs inverted antarctic world, when the
BraziUan mail steamer Bio Apa was making her way cautiously
up against the shallow and tm-bid waters of the Eiver Plate,
bound -with cargo and a full complement of passengers, mostly
BrazUians, some Argentines or Uruguayans, a few Germans — •

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. iXl
where are not Germans to be met now ? — and myself as a
soUtary specimen of the British sub-variety, from Montevideo
to Asuncion, capital of Paraguay, and, indeed, further north
yet, to the Brazilian capital of Mata-Gi-osso ; but with that
ultimate destination the present narrative has no concern.
Viewed from anywhere the prospect of Montevideo is a lovely
one, but most so from the harbour-waters. However ill-advised
the old Spaniards may generally have shown themselves in
their selection of sites for towns or sea-ports in South America,
they, or their great captain, Don Bruno Mauricio de Zabala,
chose vA'cU, could not, indeed, have chosen better, when, in 1726,
they laid, after two centuries of inexplicable neglect, the first
foundations of Montevideo. As a town it is perfect; as a
harbour nearly so. With the lofty conical MU known as the
"cerro," and the adjoining high lands on the west, and the bold
jutting promontory — itself a ridge of no inconsiderable elevation
— on wMch the bulk of the town is built, to the east, the noble
semicircular bay, deeply recessed in the rising background on
the north, is well sheltered from every -wmd and sea, the south
and the south-west — this last, unluckily, the worst "of a' the
afrts " — being none other than the dreaded " pampero," or
pampaS'-wind of these regions — excepted; at least untU the
long-projected breakwater, wluch is to keep out tMs enemy also,
be constructed. But pamperos, like many other Uls of this best
of all possible worlds, are exceptions, and for most days of the
year few harbours afford a safer or a more commodious
anchorage than Montevideo ; while landward a prettier sight
than that presented by the wMte houses of the smokeless to-wn,
covering the entire eastern promontory down to the water's
edge on either side, intermixed vrith large warehouses, pubUc
buUdings, and theatres, and crowned by the conspicuous dome
and towers of the massive and, pace Captain — now Sir Eichard
— Burton, fairly well-proportioned cathedral, would be hard to
find anywhere else. Beyond, and all round the curve of the
bay, countless villas of Hispano-Italian construction, one-storied
the majority, and recalUng in general form and arrangement the
Baian or Pompeian pleasure residences of the Augustan age.

248 ULYSSES.

not unfrequently distinguished by lofty " miradores," or look
outs, gleam many- coloured from betw^een thickly planted
orchards and gardens, in which the orange-tree, the lemon, the
acacia, the beech, the fig, the cherry-tree, the medlar, the vine,
blend with the Australian eucalyptus, the bamboo, the banana,
the palm, and other imported growths of the outer world, and
shelter a perennial profusion of lovely flowers, and pre
eminently of luxuriant roses, worthy of the gardens of ancient
Pffistum or of modern Damascus or Salerno. Shipping of every
calibre and fiag, steam and sail, makes an apt foreground to
the prosperous life implied by the landward prospect ; and a
bright sky, stainless sunUght, and pure, healthful air, supply
those conditions of enjoyment so essential, yet so often
wanting, one or all, from the nebulous sea-side of northern
Europe, or the treacherous beauty of equatorial coasts.
But Montevideo and the " Banda Oriental," or " East river-
bank," to give the vigorous little republic of wluch it is the
capital its prsedilect name, must not detain us now. Already
the intervening mass of the " cerro " has Md them from our
view, and we are far out on the monotonous waters of the
sea-like Plate estuary. Night sets in calm and clear ; and 1
look for the four-fold stars, first visioned to the Florentine seer,
when " Goder pareva '1 ciel di lor fiamelle,
0 settentrional vedovo sito,
Poiche privato se' di mirar queUe ! "
But the Cross, partly veiled, is just skirting the southern
horizon, and will not be visible in its full beauty till near
midnight ; so that those strange, uncanny-looking nebulae,
known, I believe, to British seafaring vulgarity as the " Coal-
sacks," but more truly resembUng, if anything, gigantic glow
worms, alone denote, by their proximity, the starless pole of the
Austral heavens. Truly, in more senses than one, a pole-star is
yet to seek in the southern hemisphere, alike of the west or
east — a fixed fulcrum, a central idea, a controlling and co
ordinating force. Such a star the slow procession of the
eqmnoxes may in time supply to the courses of the concave

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 249
above ; but wlio or wliat shall give it to the seething, ever-
restless conv^ex below ? South America has her Bucolics, nor
least the First ; but the Fourth Eclogue is wanting from among
the chaunted lays of Martin Fierro and the poetry of the Plate,
Does it bide a future era? Let us be content with the
present; and trust, "feebly" or not, as our temperament may
dispose, the " larger hope."
And now, after ten hours, or thereabouts, of upward course,
morning dawns for us on the world-famed New York of South
America, the memorial and honour of Don Juan de Garay — the
residence for more than two centuries of Spanish vice-royalty,
and now the political and, to a great extent, commercial capital
of that southern reflex of the Northern Union, 'the vast
Argentine Confederation, the city of Buenos Ayres. I re
member an Irish mate, when questioned on board a China-
bound steamer, on which I happened to be a passenger, as to
what was the first land vve should sight of the Chinese coast,
answering — and he could not have answered more appositely —
" Faith ! the first land ye will sight is a junk ! " Were he now
replymg to a similar inquiry on board the Bio Apa, he might
not less aptly say, " Faith ! the first ye vriU see of Buenos Ayres
is that ye will not see it at all ! " So low is the coast, so great
the distance from shore at wMch the shallowness of the river
waters compels us to anchor, that a long low line of confused
bmldings, and behind them the confused summits, no more, of
cupolas, turrets, and towers, seen at intervals over the warehouse
fronts along the edge, is all Buenos Ayres presents to our eyes
on first beholding. The view, or non-view, of A^'enice herself
when approached by rail from Padua is not more unsatisfactory.
I long to land, and resolve the illusion in the opposite sense to
that by which earth's illusions generally are dispelled, by
finding, as I know I shall, the reality of the Argentine capital
better than its introductory show. But the earliness of the
hour, and the shortness of the time allotted for stay, do not on
this occasion permit a nearer acquaintance with the most
populous, the wealthiest, and in many or most ways the most
important city of Eepublican South America. And, in fact.

250 ULYSSES.

v^ilat knowledge worth the liaving could be acquired by an hour
of hurried driving through square and street? So I resign
myself to circumstances, and defer the accompUshment of my
desfres till the promised opportunity of the return voyage ; —
though the courtesy of^ the Argentine " Capitan del Puerto," or
harbour master, has hastened to place at my cUsposal the means
of convenient landing, moved thereto by the sight of the
distinctive flag that notifies the presence of a British official —
rank and name, of course, unkno-wn, nor to my readers worth the
knowmg — on board the Bio Apa. It is a courtesy wMch -will
be repeated, vrith scarce even a casual exception, at every
Argentine or Paraguayan river station we halt at during the
seven days of up-stream voyage yet before us.
There exists widely diffused in the Old World, nor least in
England, an opinion, the origin of wiuch, correctly estimated or
otherwise, is not perhaps far to seek, that a distinct want or
even refusal of every-day courtesy, an ostentatious "I am as
good as you, and better," bearing, a disregard of the social
claims, or what are held to be such, of rank, office, station, age,
and the like, are the habitual characteristics of the citizens of
non-monarchical states ; that, e.g. a repubUcan boatman is
more rudely extortionate, a republican porter more importu
nately aggressive, a republican official more neglectful of
politeness than their monarcMcal counterparts elsewhere ; and so
on to the end of the chapter. How far this may reaUy be the
case in some repubUcs, the United States for instance, I cannot
say, never having had the fortune to visit them, nor trustmg
much to " Notes " where accounts vary so widely. Thus
much I can say, that, in my own Umited experience of men and
things, when a trav^eller loudly and habituaUy complains of
inciriUty met -vrith on Ms wanderings, the probability is that the
traveller himself has been, to say the least, deficient in courtesy
towards those he has come across. In Eepublican South
America my o-wn witness m these regards is, so far as it goes, of
the most favomable kind. Certainly I had much sooner, if
desirous of obliging civiUty, have to do -with an Uruguayan or
Argentine, not boatman or porter merely, but policeman,

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 251
official, or any chance acquaintance whatever, low or high, than
-\vith his like in many a Euro]-)ean land that I could, but will
not, name.
jVgain -\vc are on our up-stream way, but \ww obliquely
crossing o^-er towards the north side of the mighty estuary, till
what seems at first sight a continuous shore-line of swamp and
brushwood, but ^v•hat is in reality an aggregate of island banks,
only just raised aboA'e the water-lexel, and covered vvith scrub,
stretches across our path. These islands are, in fact, the secular
bar at the mouth of the Parana Eiver, before it broadens into
the wider Plate, We shape our course to the right, where, at a
little distance from the mainland shore of Uruguay — here a
continuous succession of undulating downs, grazing-ground the
most — the Uttle granite island-rock knowm, Uke Cape Palinurus
of Virgilian fame, by the name of a pUot, Martin Garcia, guards
the only avaUable entry from Eio de la Plata and the sea to
the aU-important navigation of the Parana and Uruguay rivers.
Itself geograpMcally, no less than geologically, a fragment of
Uruguay, it belongs territorially to the Argentme Confederation
by right of — weU — the right of the stronger ; a right too
generaUy admitted for dispute or appeal. The channel on
either side of it, deep enough for all mercantUe navigation, is
sufficiently commanded by the guns and forts of the place to
make a hostile passage no easy matter.
As we leave Martin Garcia ; behind us, a broad wedge-like
streak of darker colour, driven far into the muddy waters of the
Plata, from its left or eastern bank, teUs where the Uruguay,
itseK a mighty stream, merges in the great estuary, and marks
the limit between the Argentine Confederation, amid whose
lands more than eight hundred mUes of river-navigation lie
before us, and the Banda Oriental, or eastern shore, of wMcli we
now take our definite leave. Soon we have entered the
Guazu, or great passage, one of the many that thread between
shoal and island the Parana delta, and are by nightfall on the
main river, here often whole mUes m width ; though its real
breadth can rarely be taken in by the eye, partly ovring to the ,
general lowness of its reedy banks, partly to the countless

252 ULYSSES.

islands, which, for its entire course, line at brief intervals now
one shore, now the other. They, and the shores too, often
disappear for weeks together during the yearly fioods, and, thus
veiled, add not a little to the difficulties and dangers of the
route. At present the water is at its lowest ; but even now the
stream is rapid and strong ; its colour is turbid yellow ; its
surface often specked with masses of tangled weed and fioating
drift-wood from forests yet far away.
For five days more we journey up the Parana ; passing, and
occasionally stopping for cargo or passengers at many places
of South American note — each one the outcome of some special
activity or enterprise proper to the young and vigorous Con
federation, between whose provmces the river fiows. And first,
Eosario, the city-capital, if commg fact fiU up the outUnes of
forecast, of the Argentine commercial futm-e ; and already the
principal focus and dividing point of the -widest-spread raUroad
system existent south of the Isthmus of Panama. Next we
salute the memory of the able but ill-fated Urquiza, deUverer
of his country from the tyrant Eosas, to fall himself a victim to
treachery base as any imbedded in the ice of Dante's Tolomea ;
as we sight the city of Parana, conspicuous by the ambitious
dimensions of its pubUc buildings, and the nme-years' memory
of its transitory dignity, when raised by Urquiza to the rank of
capital over the entire Argentine Confederation. Further up,
" Bella Vista," or " Fair Prospect," sMnes out on us worthy of
its name, where its wMte houses crown the Mgh white cliffs that
here overlook the mighty river ; and many other are the places
of provincial or even national note, till we reach the confluents
or Corrientes of the Argentine-Paraguayan frontier. But it
may, mdeed must, be here enough for us to note that during
these ume hundred miles of up-stream voyage, south to north,
the scenery of either bank, while remaining essentially the same
in its mam geographical features all the way, is yet gradually
modified by the progressive approach to the tropics into ev^er-
increasing beauty and interest. The eastern length of shore,
along the fertile provinces of Entre-Eios and Corrientes, gently
rising from the river level into a succession of green uplands.

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 253
studded with tree clumps, and brightened by white groups of
cottages and farmhouses, with a tall church tower here and there,
passes by degrees from pasture-land into agriculture, fields
of maize, orange-groves, tobacco-plantations, and even sugar
cane ; a landscape wiiich, allowance made for brighter colour
and glossier v^egetation, not without dwarf palms and Japanese-
looking bamboo clusters here and there, often reminded me in
its general, and even in its detailed, features of the noble back
grounds painted by Eubens, of which an example may be seen
in the Judgment of Paris in our own National Gallery. There
is something Flemish, almost English, in their fertile repose ;
but here the scale is grander. In this southern Mesopotamia
— as " Entre-Eios " may be literally translated — nature has
bestowed without stint whatever goes to make up those two
solid and enduring bases of national prosperity — agriculture,
and pasture; the third foundation, indicated by our Laureate
in Ms exquisite EngUsh landscape scene, "Ancient Peace," is
wanting here as yet. A few years, indeed, of comparative
security and quiet have already done much, as the glimpses of
cattle-stocked meadows, and the dark green patches of Indian
corn show us, wlule our steamer rapidly glides past the gully-
indented banks ; but the peaceful years that have given these
good tMngs are, as yet, of recent date, and a very different
condition, one of tumult, insecurity, and not infrequent war,
prevaUed here at a very short distance back from the present
epoch. These evils are past, yet not so wiioUy as absolutely to
bar the danger of their possible renewal, or to grant a desirable
immunity from the agitations and vicissitudes consequent on
the frequent and abrupt political changes of Buenos Ayres
itself — communicated thence like earthquake waves to the
furthest provinces of the Confederation. Still, enough adv^ance
on the path of lavv and order has been made to give reasonable
assurance that the days of Oribe and Eosas, of gaucho-leaders
and partisan plunderers are, year by year — as the settled popu
lation of the land increases steadily in numbers, wealth, and
strengtii — less, and ever less, likely to recur; while the tale
of those who have a vested interest in the tranquillity of

254 ULYSSES.

the country continues to grow, and with it grows the best '
probability and pledge of that tranquillity itself MeanwMle,
many detail inventions, some of them undoubted improvements,
of recent introduction, such as the mcreased use of machinery
on the farms, the network of strong -wire fences, now spread
over the face of the pasture-land ; the extension of railway
lines, and whatever other appliances tend to the faciUtation of
orderly communication, to the safeguarding of property, and
to the substitution of methodised labour for the once over-
numerous troops of half-wild horsemen and cattle-drivers —
ready allies in the cause of riot and plunder — all lead up to the
same result. It whould be difficult now for a " caudillo," or an
adventurer-chief, however popular his name or cause, to gather
round his standard the formidable gaucho bands, all ready armed
and mounted for march or fray, that were, scarce a quarter of a
centm-y ago, the terror of farmers and proprietors, of lando-wners
and peasants, nay, even of townsmen and towns, of place-holdmg
professionals and city officials through the regions of La Plata
and La Banda Oriental. But the surest guarantee of national
stability is to be sought and found in the extension of agricul
ture, and in the yearly encroachment of peasant, or small farmer,
proprietorsMp on the too scantUy-peopled pasture-grounds and
cattle-breeding lands.
Thus much for the east bank of the river. But on its western
side a very different range of scenery, Uttle modified by man
and his works, yet more clearly shows the gradual transition
from cool to almost tropical climes. For here stretches back
for hundreds of miles from the water's edge, up to the first
outlying bulwarks of the great Andes CorderiUa, the vast plain,
level as the sea, of which it must have been the bed m times
almost recent by geological computation, and known for the
" Grand Chaco," the " Sahara " or Flat of South America, like
in relative position and- telluric formation to its African counter
part, yet most unUke in the all-important attributes of moisture
and fertiUty. For tMs, the Chaco, is a land of streams and
springs, of marsh even and swamp, vrith abundant growth of
grass, plant, and tree, especiaUy towards the north; its total

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY.

IS

extent is roughly estimated as that of the British islands
fourfold. Nominally included, though not witiiout rival claims
on the part of Paraguay and of Boli^ia, in the Argentine Con
federation, it is practically independent of all these, or of any
other European-founded rule, being still, as of old times, the
territory and dwelling-place of nati^-e Indian tribes, warlike the
most part, tenaciously attached — and small blame — to their own
autonomous existence, and resistent to the last — a " last " which
can hardly now be far distant — against every xirgentine attempt
at civUising — that is, in plain language, suljjugating and ulti
mately effacing them. Passively strong in their unencumbered
activity for escape even more than for attack, and protected by
the vastness of the open space over which they wander at mil,
they have thus far not only succeeded in baffling the organised
military expeditions, successively directed against them by the
Buenos Ayres Government, but have ev^en negatived all but the
narrowest encroachments of settlement and colonial proprietor
ship on their borders. Known, or rather designated by various
names — Tobas, Mbayas, Lenguas, Abipones, Payaguas, and others
— the tribes, with a certain general simiUtude of features and
habits, much Uke that existing, say, betw^een the various sub
divisions of Teutonic or Slavonic origins in Europe, yet differ
widely iu character, dispositions, and language ; some are pacific,
and not unacquainted vvith agriculture and settled life ; others,
more warlike, subsist, it is said, almost wholly on the chase and
foray ; some are exclusively fishermen, others herdsmen or
shepherds. Their dialects, equally diversified, for each tribe
has its own, can all, it seems, be without exception referred to
the two great mother tongues of South America, the Quinchua,
language of Peru and BoUvia, and the Guarani, spoken m one
form or other over the entire eastern half of the continent, and
of which more anon.
Such are, summarily taken, the inhabitants of the Chaco,
Extending from the populous province of Santa Fe, opposite
to that of Entre-Eios, northward and up to and beyond the
furthest limits of Paraguay, its level surface, seldom modified,
however slight, by diff'erence of elevation or by the hand of

256 ULYSSES.

man, presents in its changing vegetation a kind of scale by
which to measure, not incorrectly, the ever-ascending range of
its thermometric temperature. The solitary, oak-lUie ombu-tree,
and the dwarfish willow and light-leaved poplar of the neigh
bourhood of Eosario and Santa Fe, all nations of a cool, though
temperate, climate, gradually associate themselves further up
-with more varied and vigorous South-American growths, and
the tall outUnes of forest-trees, worthy the name, trace them
selves more and more frequently on the low sky-line ; till, as we
approach about half-way to Corrientes, palms, at first sparse and
stunted in structure, then loftier and grouped in clusters and
groves, give evidence of a more genial temperature ; while the
bamboo, not, indeed, the feathery giant of the Philippines or
Siam, but liker in size and fashion to the Chinese or Japanese
variety, bends over the doubtful margin of river and swamp,
often tangled -with large-leaved water-plants and creepers, the
shelter and perch of gay kingfishers and fiocks of parti-coloured
aquatic birds, the only visible inhabitants of this lone region,
for the Indian tribes, shy, nor unreasonably so, of contact with
the white races, keep aloof from the riv^er coast, or, if they visit
it, leave no trace of thefr having been there.
At last, on the sixth noon since we left Montevideo, we are
off the shelving banks and scattered houses of Corrientes, a
large town, whose importance and future growth are sufficiently
assured by its position close to the junction of the two chiefest
rivers of central and eastern South America, the Parana and
the Paraguay. Of these the former, now subdividing itself into
a network of countless and ever-shifting channels and islands,
now united in one mighty stream of turbid yellow, here, a few
miles north of the town, makes a stately bend, that half
sm-rounds the fertile grazing-lands of Corrientes, and passes
upwards to the north-east, where the eye loses sight of it among
the dense forests of either bank ; while from the north, exactly
on the Une thus far occupied by the Parana, descend the darker-
coloured waters of the Paraguay, itself a noble riv^er, here over
• half a mile in width, with an open, well-defined channel, few
islands, and a current strong even now, at the lowest water-time

PROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 257
of the year. At this junction of the three great streams, a
scene surpassing in beauty and calm grandeur any other of the
kind that it has been my lot to look on elsewhere, we reach the
southernmost Umits of the Paraguayan territory, separated from
the Argentine, and in great part from the Brazilian, to the south
and east by the Parana, while on the west the Paraguay divides
it from the Grand Chaco, and northward the Apa, itself a
tributary stream of the Paraguay, forms the boundary of the
little but compact dominion. Thus surrounded, the land of
Paraguay enjoys the advantages of an almost insular position, a
circumstance which has, no doubt, considerably influenced alike
its Mstory and the character of its inhabitants in all times.
Seen under the dazzling brilliancy of a South American sun,
an adjunct rarely wanting here to the landscape, whatever the
season of the year, Corrientes and its surroundings make up a
panorama of rare loveliness and interest. To the east of us the
glittering slope rises from the water upwards, with a foreground
of small steamers, sailing-vessels, and countless boats moored
along its margin, and above, a long succession of white, flat-
roofed buildings, varied by tall church towers and the high
fronts of public edifices — ^aniong them the spacious government
house, once a Jesuit college; mixed with these are bright
fiower-gardens, dark green orange-groves and over-topping
palms ; beyond Ue long ranges of tilled land and rich pasture
meadows, bordered by strips and patches of forest ; till, north
east, the majestic curve of the shining river, reaching miles and
miles away into the distance, rests on and blends with the pale
horizon line. North the sight rests on the cool, dense forests of
Paraguay, and, breaking forth from among them, the mighty '
river of that land, sweeping down to merge its name and itself
in the Parana ; while eastward extends the boundless green of
the fertUe though scarce tenanted Chaco. And to the south
flow and mingle the -wide-spread meshes of the Argentine Eiver,
a net of silver cast over a plain of emerald. A region as yet
only the cradle of nations ; worthy to be one day their abode
and palace. Already, signs are not wanting of hopeful meaning
for the future ; such are the crowds of boatmen, sailors, cattle-

258 ULYSSES.
drivers, waggoners, peasants, townsmen, who give Ufe to the
wharves ; the ceaseless loading and unloading as cargoes of
hides, wool, maize, flour, wood, frmts, &c., are shipped or
transferred from one hold to another : the herds of large, sleek,
long-horned cattle grazmg ; the rich pasture-lands by the river ;
the troops of half -tamed horses, a spirited and endm-mg breed,
excellent for all kinds of work ; the many specks and patches of
sMning white, that tell of farm-houses and dwelUngs, scattered
frequent over the uplands beyond ; these and much more denote
at once the energy and the rising fortunes of the " Corrientinos,"
as the inhabitants of the land are called, and who, though
yearly recruited more and more vritli immigrants of various
nationalities, yet form the bulk of the resident population and
give their tone to the rest. A tall, sinewy, hard-featured, manly
race, of north Spanish origin mostly, but vrith a frequent dash
of Indian or " Guarani " blood — evidenced by the darkness of
their hair, their complexion, and their eyes ; they make a not
unpicturesque appearance in their striped iDonchos — how it
comes that these most convenient articles of out-of-door dress,
manufactm-ed the greater part nowadays in England, are not
generaUy adopted by horsemen m-Europaria a riddle to me —
their slouched, broad-brimmed hats of felt or straw, and their
-wide boots, often adorned, after the traditional South American
fashion with huge silver-plated spurs, though these last are
falling into gradual disuse, and bearmg similarly adorned wMps
of cowhide in their hands. Hardy and enterprising m no
ordinary degree, they are not always amenable to the restraints
of law and government ; yet not of themselves wantonly
turbulent or disposed to acts of violence ; they make an
excellent substratum and material for a state that cannot fail
to hold high rank among those of the south equatorial world,
whether it remain a component factor of the over-composite
Argentine Confederation, or claim, as it is not wholly improbable
it may, independence on its own account. The prevalent or, so
to call it, official language throughout Corrientes is Spanish, but
in the interior of the household, and out in the fields, Guarani
is widely spoken ; a link, among many others, of unity between

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 259
these provmcials and the neighbourmg Paraguayans. The
Chaco opposite is also, as to the tribes that roam over it and
the dialects they employ, in gi-eat measm-e a Guarani country ;
and, m spite of an expedition, actuaUy sent thither m view of
subjugation by the central Argentine Government, whose
transports were lymg moored alongside of the right bank as
we passed — ^likely to remam so for some years to come ; nor
have even the narrow encroacliments of settlement and colomal
proprietorsMp on its borders much success to boast of as yet.
" Here it was," said an Argentine passenger to me, as we stood
together on the paddle-box of our steamer, gazmg on the magm
ficent -riew before us, " here it was that the mam army of the
alUes forced an entrance mto Paraguay." He pomted to a strip
of sUghtly rismg ground on the northern bank of the Parana,
just beyond its easterly bend ; the spot he mdicated was backed
seemmgly by dense forest, and fianked by swamp and morass on
either side. TMs is m fact Paso la Patria, the only avaUable
landmg pomt for troops crossmg the stream from Corrientes;
and here it was that a united army of BraziUans, Argentines,
and Uruguayans, more than 60,000 men m aU, weU-tramed
soldiers, suppUed -with the best of modern artUlery, arms, and
ammumtion, and commanded by the best generals thefr re
spective countries could supply, were held for six long months
at bay by considerably less than haK thefr number of badly-
armed, badly-clothed, worse fed Paraguayan recrmts ; and only
at last succeeded ta forcing the river passage at an immense loss,
thanks not so much to their own courage .or skiU as to the rash
over-daring of the Paraguayans themselves, who, agam and
agam, abandoned the shelter of thefr defences to assume an
offensive action, for wMch neither thefr number nor thefr means
were m any degree sufficient.
There is no need here to recount, even m abstract, the tragic
story of the great Paraguayan war of 1865-70. Six disastrous
years, wMch so nearly accompUshed the avowed aim of Para
guay's bitterest enemy, BrazU — for the Argentme and the
Oriental EepubUcs were merely the mstrmnents of BraziUan
poUcy tMoughout, and shared less m the mtentions than m the
s 2

26o UL YSSES.

acts of the empire — that, namely, of wiping out of existence the
most heroic, and, in many respects, the most hope-affording
nationaUty of South' America. Nor shall I recapitulate the
almost incredible follies and crimes of the selfish and parricidal
madman, on whose behalf, simply because he was their lord and
chief, the Paraguayans poured out their blood like water on the
battle field, whUe their wives and children perished by thousands
in the mountains and forests, till scarce a third of what had been
so lately a prosperous and rapidly increasing population was
left, naked, starving, houseless, witMn the diminished limits of a
land six years before a garden of Eden — now a desolate -wilder
ness. Whoever wishes to know the details of that ruin may
find them told, clumsily indeed, and in writings devoid of
literary merit, yet bearing sufficient evidence of general truth, by
Thomson, Masterman, and others of their class, actors themselves
or sufferers in what they describe. Enough at present to say
that from the Paraguayan officer, who, when borne wounded and
senseless from the mad fray on board a Brazilian steamer, only
regained consciousness to tear off the bandages, applied by
pitying enemies to his wounds, and chose to bleed to death then
and there rather than live an hour as a prisoner, do-wm to the
meanest private who, lying mangled and helpless on the field,
had no answer for the offered quarter but a defiance or an
attempted blow, one spirit only, that of devoted, all-absorbing
patriotism, of a determination to dare everything in the country's
defence, and an equally firm resolution not to survive its down
fall, was the spirit of the entire Paraguayan nation ; the spirit
of Saguntum and Numantia, of Spartan Thermopylse and Theban
ChEeronea in one.
But not the Paraguay of the pasi: — if indeed events that
occurred within the last twenty years only can historically be
termed past — but the Paraguay of the present is our theme.
Keeping straight on to the north we have left the -wide expanse
of the defiected Parana behind us on our right, and are now
between the comparatively high and densely wooded banks of
the Paraguay Eiver, hereabouts turbid and swollen by the dis
coloured waters of the Vermejo, or " Eed " Eiver, its tributary

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 261
from the Western Chaco, and the Bolivian Mils far away. With
a stream seldom subdivided, and a width equaUing on an average
that of the Lower Danube at Widdin or Eoustchouk, the
Paraguay has, at least to a European eye, much more of the
appearance of a river than the seemingly shoreless Plata, or the
indefinitely ramified Parana. The banks too are much more
varied in character than those of the last-named stream : clay,
rock, sandstone, limestone, basalt, succeeding each other in
abrupt alternation ; the vegetation is also more abundant and
diversified ; forest trees of great height and extent of branch,
attestmg the toughness of their wood fibre, and among them palms
of every Mnd, some feathery, as the coco, some fan-leafed, some
densely tufted, tall bamboos, tree ferns, resembUng those of the
Antilles, and a close undergrowth of shrub and plant, now
starred with spring fiowers, among wMch white and pink pre
dominate, as yellow in many districts of China and blue in
European uplands. Along the banks, among weed and drift
wood, half in, half out of the water, lie huge, mud-coloured
alligators ; I am told that they are not alUgators but crocodiles ;
it may be so, though in what precisely an alligator differs from a
crocodile I do not know ; anyhow these ampMbia of the Paraguay
are, in outward appearance, the very counterparts of their con
geners in Siam. They watch us with dull, heavy eyes ; every
now and then a pig-Uke " carpincho," a sort of would-be-hip
popotamus, dives out of sight at our approach; and we hear
much of tigers, or rather panthers, said to abound hereabouts
and to be good swimmers, but we do not meet any. To make
up we see abundance of water-snakes, ugly speckled things, said
to be poisonous ; and birds of every size, description, and colour.
Frequent too, on either side of the river, but most so on the eastern,
are the signs of human habitation; pot-herb gardens, where
gourds abound, fruit-trees, orange groves, now more golden than
green in the lavish abundance of their sweet frmt ; Uttle, almost
country-English looking, cottages, singly or in smaU groups,
with neighbouring inclosures for cattle, perched on the upper
banks at safe distance from the yearly water-rise, while, moored
under the shade of overhanging brushwood and creepers lie

262 ULYSSES.

boats with mast or oar ; canoes too with paddles, Indian fashion,
are not rare. Such for a hundred miles and more upward from
its junction with the Parana is the general aspect of the
Paraguay and its shores. Of the war that raged so fiercely over
and along this very river district in 1856-68, of the terrible
combat of Bellaco, when the flower of the Paraguayan nation
aUty, and indeed, whatever was yet avaUable of the Paraguayan
army, pitted in utter defiance, alike of strategy and of tactics,
against an enemy thrice over their superior in numbers, and ten
tinies so in arms and ev^ery appUance of war, with all the
advantage too of a strongly mtrenched position, perished in its
reckless daring' — refusing quarter or surrender almost to a man.
Of the battle of Curupati, a little higher up, and the fierce
onslaught of Tuyuti, where some eight thousand Paraguayan
recruits, the half of them mere boys of twelve to sixteen years,
drove before them, panic-stricken, the best of the alUed armies,
burnt and sacked their camp, and reduced them to an inaction
of months before they ventured on further advance, and of the
countless skirmishes, ambuscades, surprises, bombardments,
land-fights, river-fights, wliich, in league vrith famine, fire, and
plague, made of these fair valleys one vast charnel house for at
least a hundred and fifty thousand corpses, not a visible trace
now remains. "A thousand battles have assailed thy banks.
But these and half their fame have passed away;
And slaughter heaped on high his weltering ranks;
Their very graves are gone, and what are they?
Thy tide washed down the blood of yesterday.
And all was stainless, and on thy clear stream
Glassed with its dancing light the sunny ray."
So sang Byron of the EMne ; so might he, -with scarce the change
of a word, have sung of the lower Paraguay. Nature's " work
of gladness," an hour interrupted by man's equally appropriate
w^ork of destruction and misery, is soon resumed ; with real or
feigned indifference the mother-sphinx smiles on whatever betide
the wayfarers of her domain.
Soon, however, we come on a break in the scene. The river

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 263
hemmed in to narrowness by high banks on either side, makes a
sharp bend, or, rather, folds round upon itself, changing its
direction from north to south-east, then south, then due east,
then by west to the north again ; and amid these windings each
shore, but principally the Paraguayan, is scarred by the traces
of ruined batteries, range above range; wliile some ruins of
broken walls, that once were barracks and storehouses, amid dis
mantled field-lines and earthworks, are overtopped by the tall
ruins of a stately church — now a shattered shell of brick and
stone. This is all that remains of Humaita, the important
river-position fortified by Lopez to be the Cronstadt or Chatham
of Paraguay, the outermost and strongest bulwark of the interior
and of its capital, Asuncion. Nor could a better site have
been chosen, had the means of defence been proportionate by
land or water to the natural advantages of the position itseK.
Here, in 1868, a native garrison, scarce three thousand strong
held out, not by the strength of the outworks, wliich they were
numerically insufficient to man, nor by strength of artillery, of
which, as of ammunition, they had little at command, and that of
the worst quality, but by sheer dogged resolution and hand-to-
hand fighting for four months of continual bombardment,
carried on by a besieging force of at least twenty thousand men,
backed from the river by a numerous fleet of ironclads and
monitors, Brazilian and Argentine, well suppUed with whatever
modern ingenuity has supplied to destructiveness, nor yielded
till starvation compelled the surrender of the survivors, now less
than a third of their original number, and who, at the time of
their capitulation, had been four days without food of any sort.
Never was a ruler, a chief, better served by his subjects than
Solano Francisco Lopez, second of the family name ; and never
did any one personally less deserve such devotedness and fidelity.
While the Paraguayans, whom his reckless and disproportioned
ambition, or vanity alone had involved in a war with half, and
more than half, the South American continent, a war of one to
twenty, in wluch defeat and ruin might well from the outset
have seemed foregone conclusions, were perishing for him by
battalions in the field, or starving in the forest, men, w^omen, and

264 ULYSSES.

children, during the six long years of a nation's agony, preferring
death in its worst forms to foreign rule, or to any conditions of
peace -vrith the invaders of their land ; Lopez himself, sole cause
and origmator of the war, weU provided not merely vrith the
necessaries, but even with the luxuries of life, lay hid behind
the securest defences, or remamed absent at a safe distance from
the scene of actual combat : nay, worse yet, exercised on those
withm his immediate reach, on the best and most faithful of Ms
o-wn officers and servants, and ultimately on his nearest kinsmen,
on Ms brothers, his sisters, his very mother, cruelties to wMch
history, fortunately, supplies few parallels — I might almost say^
taken in their totality, none. And yet it was for tMs man,
sensualist, coward, tyrant, fratricide, matricide, that Paraguay
lavished -with scarce a murmur three-fourths of her life-blood ;
saw her men, women, and children exterminated by war, by
disease, by famine, by misery of every kind, or carried off as slaves
into distant bondage ; saw her to-wns destroyed, her villages and
fields wasted, her cattle harried, her wealth plundered to absolute
bareness, nor even then submitted ; only ceased to strive when
she had practically, and for aU national purposes, ceased to exist.
More yet, were Lopez himseK, in the worst anger of the infernal
gods, to revive to-morrow, a living man, on Paraguayan territory,
Ms reappearance would, there is every reason to believe, at
once rally round him the obedience and the devotion of a vast
majority among the yet surviving inhabitants of the land,
Eare even in Asia, rarer in Europe, rarest of all in the loosely-
constituted, half-cemented societies of the New World, such
fideUty as that of the Paraguayans stands out in history as a
phenomenon hard to explam, an insoluble riddle, an enigma,
almost a scandal to those around. Many and far-fetched
enough in aU conscience have been the conjectures. Thus, for
instance, I have heard Paraguayan loyalty to this last and most
unworthy of cMefs, no less than the submission shown to his far
better and abler father. Carlo Lopez, and to the talented but half
insane Francia of earlier years, attributed to — stupete gentes ! —
Jesuit training; and referred to ancestral education in the
celebrated but greatly exaggerated " missions," situated, for the

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 265
most part, outside of the Paraguayan territory, of the sons of
Loyola, long since overthrown by Spanish jealousy, dead for
more than half a century before the first appearance of Francia,
and buried beneath the ponderous verse of Southey, and the
" Tale of Paraguay." A supposition, betraymg no small
ignorance as of the merits, so also of the defects of Jesuit teach
ing, and a yet greater ignorance of chronology and of the local
facts themselves. The much talked-of " missions," or " reduc
tions," were almost wholly either in extra-Paraguayan territory,
that namely even now entitled " Misiones," south of the Parana,
or in Uruguay, or, further off yet, in Patagonia ; and numbered
at the most, taken conjointly, 170,000 souls. Besides, the
disciples of the Jesuit Fathers were wholly and solely Indian, of
Guarani race indeed the most, and so far identical with the
Aborigines of Paraguay proper, but absolutely without, indeed
carefuUy kept apart from, the Spanish element, which not only
blends with but greatly preponderates over the "native" or
Guarani in the Paraguay of later history and of our own times.
True the order of the Jesmts had, Uke other religious orders, its
representatives in Spanish Paraguay, that is, down to the sup
pression of 1767; but their infiuence there, as elsewhere, could
have been at the most corrective, not formative of the national
character. Other theorists again, somewhat better, perhaps, acquainted
-vrith the history of these lands, " account for " Paraguayan
patriotism and loyalty, by attributing them to a kind of brutali-
sation supposed to have been induced by the tyranny of Francia
and of the Lopez family ; a psychological paradox that Godwin's
self might have admfred, but hardly surpassed : to state is to
refute it. Besides, the form of government voluntarily adopted
by an independent state, such as was the EepubUc of Paraguay
ever since its final emancipation from the Buenos Ayres yoke
in 1811, is not nor can, of its very nature be an extraneous
influence, a moulding force introduced from without, but, on the
contrary, a self-consistent development, an expression of the
national idea from within. It is the nation that creates the
government, not the government the nation. The foUies, the

266 ULYSSES.

crimes of a Francia, a Solano Lopez are personal and their own ;
the position they hold, the power they use or abuse, the honour
paid, the obedience are the people's. Patriotism, loyalty,
devotion to a cause, to a leader, may indeed be fostered, be
encouraged, they cannot be given by rulers, however skilful, far
less can they be enforced ; they are not things taught, but innate,
not acquired, but connatural to the race.
And thus it was -with the Paraguayan nation. Half Basque,
for such was the greater part of the original Spanish immigration
in these regions, half Guarani-Indian, it united in itseK the
tenacious courage, the unconquerable fidelity of the countrymen
of Pelayo, to the indifference to life, the dread of dishonour, and
the unhesitating obedience to their chief that have at all times
and in all lands distinguished the Turanian, and, among the
many off-shoots of that great stock, the Guarani race. And
when, during the September of 1877, at the distance of half the
globe, the Japanese Saigo, and his five hundred warriors of
Satzuma, defended the heights of Shira-yama against fifteen
thousand men, nor surrendered tiU death, they did but reproduce
the heroism of their far-off Paraguayan half-cousins, alike out
numbered, alike unyielding to the last, at Humaita, at Yoati, at
Cerro-Cora, eight years before. Nor is there any need to search
further after the causes, the origin of that indomitable, more
than Spartan, spirit : it is the undoubted heritage of a twofold
race moulded into one, nor to be extinguished but with the race
itself Enough of this ; pleasanter scenes, suggestive of more cheerful
thoughts and anticipations, await us in Paraguay. The Humaita
ruins are already lost to sight among the graceful palms and
dense orange-groves of the country around ; the narrow river-
bend vridens out again into a broad and easy water-way, with
abundant evidence of reviving happiness and prosperity along
the green banks and meadows by its margin. Our next anchor
age, for a few hours only, is off the flourishing Uttle town of
Pilar, the " neembuin," or " loud voice " of Guarani nomenclature,
prettily situated on its small lull, yet almost Md from river view
by the dense orchard screen intervening : it numbers, with its

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 267
outlying hamlets, over 10,000 inhabitants, many of them settlers
from not-distant Corrientes, and gives us, in the aspect of its
cottage-like houses and clean-kept streets and square, a foretaste
of .the neatness proper to Paraguayan villages and homes. No
South American race has cleanUer instincts in person, dress, and
dwelUng than the Paraguayan ; though indeed, so far as ray
experience goes, cleanliness is the rule, not the exception,
throughout South America, Brazil, perhaps, m part, excepted.
Pilar, at present the entrance harbour and commerce-gate of the
EepubUc, was, in days not very far back, the only point of
immediate contact between Paraguay and the outer world per
mitted by the jealous policy of Francia ; and is even now, wlien
the navigation and traffic of the Paraguay river are free from
any exceptional restraints, an important wharf, thanks to its
exceUent position.
Doctor Francia's proliibitory system, by wMch he for many
years isolated Paraguayan territory from what Carlyle has,
grapMcally enough, more suo, K not exhaustively, designated as
a " bewildered gaucho world," has been made a favourite theme
for wordy abuse by a troop of superficial soi-disant liberal writers
and interested assailants, from the Eobertsons downwards. Nor
would I for a moment vrish even to palUate, much less to
defend, the arbitrary and often cruel measures by wMch he
carried out or supplemented his design. Yet in the main, and
considering the isolation of the country as merely a temporary
measure of protection against the fatal disintegration vv'hich
must necessarUy have ensued had Paraguay, -with its yet un-
consoUdated and defenceless nationality, been left open to the
irruption of the seething and surging deluge around, the Francian
policy was right, and found ample justification in the astonishing
vigour and concentrated patriotism of the little state, as displayed
in the foUowing generation ; a vigour not even yet, after the
unparalleled disasters of the late war, wholly exhausted.
For about one hundred and fifty miles more we continue our
up-stream way by the noble river, somewhat lessened in bulk
above the confiuence pf the Vermejo, and now in breadth
and volume of water equalUng, in its yearly average of fulness.

368 ULYSSES.

the Danube at Orsova ; whUe in beauty of banks and scenery it
much resembles the same river in its course from Eegenswerth
to Vienna, only that here the sub-tropical luxmiance of palms,
bamboos, cacti, ferns, and broad-leaved undergrowths of glossy
green — for here the predominance of leaf over flower, so correctly
noted by A. Wallace, as characteristic of the tropics, begms to
make itself felt — impart to the Guarani landscape a special
charm denied to the land of the southern Teutons. Several
smaU towns, each with its nucleus of tMrty or forty houses, the
remaining dwelUngs being widely scattered around among
gardens and orchards, peep, at safe distance from the annual
floods, over the wooded banks. Of all these centres of re-ri-ring
life none is prettier or Uvelier than VUleta, not far below the
capital, Asuncion, and famous for its orange-groves, whose
produce suffices for the markets of Buenos Ayres and Monte
video both. It is a pleasant sight to see the frmt brought on
board, as it always is, by long files of women, talkmg, laughing,
singing as they trip along the planks that lead a considerable
distance from the shore to the steamer, in their long wMte
sacques, girt round the waist, and wMte cloths arranged
mantUla-fasMon over their heads — the mvariable dress of the
vUlage daughters of the land. I had the good luck to be witness
of the scene by torchUght, when dropping do-wn the river on my
return several weeks later.
Above VUleta the east bank sinks to the water-level and
opens out to view a scene of exquisite loveUness. Far inland,
across the plains, that here stretch to twenty and tMrty miles
distant from the river, lie field and orchard, farmhouse and
cottage, with silvery glimpses of countless streams, tributaries of
the Paraguay, and darker patches of forest : beyond, the blue
serrated ranges of Mount Akai close in the -riew on the east ; to
the north the quaint, conical MU of Lambari, covered with
bright green brushwood from base to summit, rises isolated from
the water's edge and Mdes from view the town of Asuncion close
beyond it. TMs region is described, some years before the war,
by Commander Page, of the well-known United States' expe
dition some thirty years since up these rivers, as one densely

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 269
peopled in proportion to its fertility ; and though terribly wasted
during the later years of the great conflict and the BraziUan
occupation that followed, it gives, in the frequency of its restored
cottages, and the wide extent of its cultivation, clear evidence of
returning prosperity and, if not wealth, at least sufficiency.
Hour by hour, as we advance, the dwelUngs stand more frequent
among the trees, the fruit or wood-laden boats and gliding
canoes more and more enUven the river, tUl, rounding the basalt
mass of Lambari, we come full in view of the Paraguayan
capital ; and, making our way with caution — for the water is at
tMs time of the year at its lowest, the Mghest being in AprU or
thereabouts — among the shoals that here beset the -vridened
channel, we cast anchor opposite the Custom-house landing-
place, at the western extremity of the town, wluch, following a
sudden bend in the river, lies west and east.
The scene before us makes a striking contrast to that we have
so lately witnessed. Nature soon repairs or conceals the traces
of evU done by the wantonness of man ; fields, corpse-strewn
and blackened vrith fire one year, may be waving in all the
golden luxuriance of harvest the next; orchard trees, though
hewn and shattered, are not long in putting forth new boughs,
clothed with fresh foliage and fruit ; more yet, peasant cottages
and even viUages are speedUy rebuUt; a few added years of
peace, and the deficiency in the rustic population will have
made itself good and disappeared. And thus it is with the
country surroundings of Asuncion. Not so with the town ; its
spacious edifices, churches, or public buildings, some disused and
deserted, others, m their half neglect, evidently all too wide for
the. shrunken requirements of a diminished state and people ;
others, sad monuments of ambitious and premature vanity, now
shattered and shamefuUy defaced; everywhere empty shells of
what once were happy dweUings, streets broken by vride gaps of
ruin, and every token of havoc and spoil — these are wounds slow
to heal, mutilations not easily replaced by fresh growth. But
saddest of aU sights in Asuncion is the very first and most
conspicuous object seen from the river : the enormous palace of
Francisco Solano Lopez, barely completed before its lord's own

270 ULYSSES.

downfall, now an empty shell, frontmg the stream in long rows
of dismantled portals and windows, black, ragged holes, like the
eye-sockets of a skull. Its shattered turrets, sMvered cornices,
and broken parapets announce only too faithfully the absolute
devastation of the lone and dismantled interior, whence the
BrazUian plunderers carried off whatever they could lay hands
on, even to the timber of the fioors and the steps of the stair
cases, besides hacking and defacing whatever, from its nature,
could not be carried away. Thus the palace has remamed in
appearance and condition, much resembUng the TuiUeries as I
remember seeing them as late as '77, and, Uke them, the
wretched memorial of a sham ImperiaUsm, cemented by im
morality, and based on violence and fraud. For Lopez was one
nor the least, of the many foolish moths, lured on to their
destruction by the false gUtter of the second empire ; and the
same year of 1870 that witnessed the overtMow of that colossal
imposture at Sedan, witnessed, too, its new-world copy, Para
guayan pseudo-Imperialism, laid prostrate with its dymg chief
on the bloody banks of the Aquidaban ; more fortunate indeed
than its French prototype, because iUumined at the close by
one bright ray of honour in the warrior-death of Lopez, who, in
that last moment, showed himseK worthy of the hero-race he
had too long misgoverned, while nothing but shame attends on
the memories of Sedan,
Within the town itself, the roofiess walls of a spacious but
unfinished theatre, and the rough sketch, wMch, however, it
would be a pity to leave as such, for the proportions are good, of
a domed oratory, near the centre of the city, are also memorials
of the vaulting ambition that o'erleapt itseK and fell. The
cathedral, and the yet older church called of Encarnacion, where
Francia sought but did not find a final resting-place, are heavy,
ungraceful constructions of Spanish times. Nor have the
Government buUdmgs, one of wMch was not the but a house of
the terrible Dictator (for he had many, and continually shKted
from one to another, for fear, it is said, of assassination), any
pretension to beauty hardly to show. Nor are the remams of
the old Jesuit college, now converted into barracks, any way

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 271
remarkable. The streets, wide and regular, are ill-paved and
deep in sand ; the pubUc squares undecorated and bare. On
the other hand, the dwelling houses, at least such of them as are
constructed on the old Hispano-American plan, so admirably
adapted to the requirements of the cUmate, are solidly built and
not devoid of that beauty wMch domestic architecture never
fails to have when in accordance with domestic feeling and life ;
cool courts, tMck walls, deeply recessed doors and windows,
projectmg eaves, heavy and protective roofs; the furniture, of
native woodwork, solid and tastefully carved, the pavement not
rarely of marble, local or imported. I may here remark, in a
passing way, that hard forest woods, often ornamental, and
susceptible of high polish and deUcate work, and marbles of
various kinds and colom-s, some not mferior m beauty of marking
to any that Italy herseK can boast, wUl, when Paraguay is herseK
once more, take high place on the lists of her productions and
merchandise. Needless to say that the houses are all of them, as
houses should be, in a healthy but hot situation, one-storied,
except where a mania for European imitation, encouraged by
Lopez, among other shams of Parisian origin, has reared a few
uncomfortable and iU-seeming dwelUngs of two or even three
stories, flimsey, pretentious, and at variance aUke with the
cUmate and the habits of Paraguay. To these unlucky anomalies
may be added the huge, Ul-buUt, unshapely railway station (the
raUway Une itself runs to the town of Paraguari, about forty-five
miles south-east, and is the earliest m date among South
American lines) at the east end of the town; though tMs con
struction fortunately possesses one good quaUty wMch may
avail to remedy aU its many bad ones — the quaUty of evident
non-durabiUty. As to the railway itself, it is, Uke most tMngs
involving compUcated machinery and capital in South America,
a foreign undertaMng, under foreign management; vrith what
benefit to the managers themselves and the shareholders I know
not ; a mmimum of convenience and utility to the country and its
inhabitants is, at present, anyhow, the most evident result. Nor
is this either new or strange. " You must scratch your own head
with your own nails," says the homely Arab proverb ; and if the

272 UL YSSES.

resources of a land do not suffice to its public enterprises, even
the most urgently needed ones not excepted, without caUing in
the capital and aid of foreigners — well — it had better wait till
they do suffice. In this particular instance, however, amendment
is promised ; let us hope it vrill be effected.
Pleasantest and cheerfuUest of all out-door sights to the visitor
of Asuncion is the market-place, situated, as near as may be, in
the centre of the town. It is a large square block of open
arcades and pillared roof, whither the villagers from around
daily bring their produce, intermixed with other wares of cheap
price and habitual consumption ; the vendors are almost exclu
sively women. Maize, water-melons, gourds, pumpMns, oranges,
manioca flour, sweet potatoes, and with these half-baked bread,
cakes, biscmts, and sweets, such are the cMef comestibles ;
tobacco, of dark colour and strong flavour, " and yerva," the dried
and pulverised leaf often spoken of as " Paraguayan tea," may
be added to the list. Alongside of these a medley of cheap
articles, for use or ornament, mostly of European manufacture,
matches, combs, cigarette paper, pots and pans, water-jars, rope
knives, hatchets, small looking-glasses, handkerchiefs, ponchos,
native saddles, much resembling Turkish ones, and very commo
dious for riding in, coarse silver ornaments — I might fill a page
more, at least, with the list — are exposed for sale. But the chief
interest of the scene is the study of the buyers and sellers
themselves. The men, who mostly belong to the former class,
and are from the villages round about, arrive mounted on small
rough-coated horses, undipped of mane or tail. The rider's
dress consists of a pair of loose cotton drawers, coarsely em
broidered, and over them and round the waist a many-folded
loin-cloth, generally white; or else in a pair of loose, baggy
trousers, much like those worn by Turkish peasants in Anatolia,
and girt by a broad leather belt, almost an apron for -vridth.
These, with a white shfrt, and over aU a striped or flowered
poncho, complete the dress ; boots are rarely worn, though the bare
feet are sometimes, but rarely, equipped with silver-plated spurs.
The features and build of the riders present every gradation of
type from the light-complexioned, brown-haired, red-bearded.

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 273
honest manUness of the ancestral Basque, to the copper hue,
straight black hair, narrow dark eyes, obUquely set, beardless
cMn, flattened nose, and small wiry frame of the aboriginal
Guarani. But it is not with the Spanish as with the Lusitanian
breed. For whUe the latter when crossed with Turanian, Aryo-
Asiatic, or African blood passes at once into an inferior type of
physical degeneration, as Goa, Macao, Timor, and Brazil, unfor
tunately prove beyond question, the Spanish seems, when
simUarly blended, to result generally in a progeny no way
inferior m corporal strength and comeliness to the Iberian stock,
and occasionaUy superior. The fact is one continually noticed,
and much commented on ; yet I have never either heard or been
able myseK to supply any plausible conjecture of its cause.
Nor again among the Creole descendants of Hispano-Indian
parents is the trite, and, in too many other instances, over-true
remark, that the " mestizo '' or half-blood generaUy exhibits in
Mmself the good of neither stock, the evU of both, m the least
verified ; far more often the exact reverse, as here in Paraguay,
where Vascon honour, truthfulness, darmg, and generosity, have
blended with Guarani gentleness, endurance, and unquestioning
loyalty, even to the death, into a type that is not the exception,
but the rule.
Such are the Paraguayans of the country. In Asuncion
itseK, under the combmed influence of a large number of
foreign residents, of a river-traffic that gives the town some
what of the character of a sea-port, and of the evils, physical
and social, mseparable, it seems, from large towns and capitals,
the national type is, necessarily, not so unKorm or pure. In
fact, to judge of Paraguay in general by the sights and ex
periences of Asuncion, would be no less unjust than to take
Southampton, Liverpool, or even London, whereupon to form an
exhaustive estimate of England and its inhabitants. Here, too,
at the capital, the depression, or prostration rather, consequent
on the late war, has been deepest, and is even now most
persistent. Yet of the courtesy, the hospitality, the sociabUity,
the cheerfulness, the music, the dancing, for aU wMch Paraguay
has long been celebrated, nor wrongly so, the risitor wUl even

274 ULYSSES.
now find plenty to greet him in Asuncion, where, among the
officials especially, he will meet the most highly endowed by
birth and education that the nation can show. Still after aU,
it is not here, but in the country districts that the distinctive
patterns of Paraguayan Ufe are clearest drawn ; and it is there
accordingly that my readers, if they care to accompany me
so far, must seek them ; quitting the capital, where in the
chief resort of traffic and strangers, as is but too general,
the fatal contagion of a mimic Europeanism, the mania for
discarding whatever is not in accordance -vrith the stereotyped
monotony and tasteless conventionalism of Boulevard or Fifth
Avenue existence, the bUght that, like Tennyson's "vapour,
heavy, hueless, formless, cold " creeps on with Western-European
intercourse over land after land, withering up and obliterating
in its advance all individual or local colour, form, beauty, Ufe;
this pseudo-civiUsation or progress, by whatever name it be
called, has done most to obUterate the national and charac
teristic features of the Paraguayan race, and to substitute for
them the servile imitation of affected cosmopolitanism and
denationalised uniformity. Happily the evil has but partially
and superficially infected Asuncion itseK as yet ; wMle beyond
its radius, and the actual line of the Paraguari railway, life in
the bulk of Paraguay, and life's accessories, differ but Uttle, if
at all, from what they were and have ever been from the first
days of the compound nationality, down to the constituent
assembly of 1870. Long may they remain so.
But an up-country journey in Paraguay, let us own, has its
difficulties ; many of them, indeed, relative merely, or imagmary
— others real and positive enough. The latter are to be summed
up chiefly, if not wholly, in the want of organised inter-com
munication, both in regard of roads and conveyances, between
district and district ; a terrible want, which the vigorous
administration of the Lopez dynasty has afready done something
to remedy, but wMch long war and succeeding desolation have
renewed and intensified by destroymg whatever that Ul-fated
family had organised or constructed. Bad inns, or none, and
tn thefr- defect a copious and freely offered hospitality, wMch,

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 275
however, of necessity, supposes m those who accept it a readi
ness to be content with Paraguayan fare and lodging such
as is rarely found among the "fat and greasy citizens" of
European or even South American towns ; hot suns, frequent
thunder-showers, rough way-tracks, streams to be swum or
forded, mosquitoes, foot-perforating chigoes, here caUed " piques "
— though these are of such rare occurrence as to belong rather
to the purely imagmary catalogue of disagreeables — and other
insects ; and last, not least, difficulty of converse with a popu
lation to wMch Guarani, or " Indian," is much more famUiar
than Spanish. Such are what may be caUed " relative "
obstacles, tMngs to be accounted or disregarded by the traveller
according to Ms own mdividual acquirements and idiosyn
crasies ; wMle Uons, tigers, alUgators, wUd Indians, poisoned
arrows, &c., however terrible in the Uvely fancy of many
narrators, may be safely classed among imaginary perils.
lions, that is pumas ; tigers, that is leopards ; Indians more or
less -wUd, poisoned arrows too, exist, doubtless, in the mountains
and among the deep forests of Paraguay, but of these, and such
as these, the traveUer, so long as he keeps to the inhabited
districts, or, K beyond thefr- Umits, to the ordinary routes of
transit -wiU hear Uttle, and see less.
StiU the negative difficulties — want of means of conveyance,
want of roads, want of occasional mterpreters, want of sufficient
lodgmg — have, each m some measure and degree, to be taken
mto account ; and against these the Asuncion administration,
-vrith the true com-tesy and hospitable UberaUty of Paraguayan
tradition, hastened to provide on my behalf An officer, well
acquainted vrith the country, a soldier for attendant, and tMee
good horses, were placed at my disposition for the proposed
journey, and a programme, or carte de voyage, was supplied, of a
nature calculated to make me acquamted vrith as much as
time and cfrcumstances might aUow of vUlage Ufe and land.
Having but a short leisure, barely fom- weeks m fact, at my
disposal, I determmed, at the adrice of my Mnd hosts, to select
for my risit what I may best summarUy designate as the south-
centre of the country; a district of lull and dale, rivers and
T 2

276 ULYSSES.

lakes, thickly — for Paraguay, that is — set with villages, and
having on its east the high forest-clad mountain ranges, beyond
which fiows the Parana, here the frontier of BrazU; on the
south the rich plains and reedy marsh-lands of the Argentine
province of Misiones, so named from the well-known Jesuit
missions of former times, which here attained their fullest
development; northward the successive MU ranges and wide
mate plantations of Upper Paraguay; west, a low screen of
broken ground and copse, beMnd wMch fiows the great river
that gives its name to all the rest. After which geograpMcal
outUne, I wiU only add, by way of general description, that if
any of my readers have had the good fortune to -risit beautKul
Auvergne, in Central France, and the scarce less beautiful Eifel
district by the Moselle, they may, by blending the chief
topograpMcal characteristics of these two, clothmg the surface
of Mil and dale -with the graceful yet vigorous growihs of a
half-tropical vegetation, and over-arching the whole -with a sky
borrowed from Titian's ' Bacchus and Ariadne ' — a sky, pace even
Mr. Euskin, by no means " impossible " in Paraguay, though I
can weU believe it so in Western Europe, — having done this, I
say, they -vriU have before their mmd's eye at aU events a
tolerable Ukeness of the country I would gladly sketch, though
I cannot worthily paint.
One name, judiciously selected from among the rest, may
occasionally serve as a peg whereon to hang a whole chain of
ideas, or, if the comparison be preferred, as a centre round
wMch the vagueness of general description may crystallise into
definite form, A secret of mental chemistry well-known to
poets; few readers of the 'Paradise Lost' have, probably,
hunted out "Imaus" on the map, yet aU have the picture of
MUton's mountain-dweUing vulture distinct in their imagina
tion; nor is it for notMng that the "sons of Eden" were
inhabfrants of "Telassar," though I have not been able to
discover its whereabouts in any atlas-mdex as yet. But we all
feel that a place with such a name must have been worthy of
the race. For us, wanderers in an else unlocaUsed region, the
mountain of Akdi shall serve om turn.

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 277
The word itself, in aboriginal Guarani, means " burning " or
"conflagration;" and the mountain that bears it is a castle-
formed mass of comparatively recent volcanic debris, situated in
the midst of a region studded with at least a dozen smaller
lava-cones, over which Akai towers to a height of 2,000 feet and
more. Its abrupt sides, partly clothed with patches of thorny
brushwood, partly bare, are made up of loose masses of laterite
and volcamc tufa, among wMch huge angles of harder lava
project far out, rendering the ascent of the slope very difficult,
indeed almost impracticable ; whUe the few points at which an
upward path, though no easier than " Tra Lerici a Turhia, la
piil diserta, La piii ruinita via " of Dante's experience, is yet
possible, are guarded by colonies of wasps, the " Spanish
soldiers " of the AntUles, long, gaunt, bronzed, vicious-looking
creatures, of a tenaciously spiteful disposition, who have, for
reasons best known to themselves, made of these rocky guUies
thefr- favourite homes, and resent intrusion. The peasants of
the neighbourhood are, as a matter of course, Uttle disposed to
the labour — from their point of view a very unprofitable one — of
scrambUng up barren heights ; but some German tourists had, I
was informed, about two years before climbed the mountain,
and, on their re-descent, reported a large and well-defined crater
at the summit, long smce, it seemed, quiescent, and strewed at
the bottom -vrith a heavy metalUc-looking kind of sand, whereof
they brought back with them a sample. This, for whatever
cause, they left in a house of the village, close by, where I saw
and, so far as I could, examined it; finding it in the result
identical with the SicUian Palagonite described by Lyell m Ms
' Elements of Geology.' That volcanic energy is stUl at work
witMn, or, more probably, at some depth below the mountain,
though of active eruption no precise record survives in that
most brief and inaccurate chronicle termed " human memory,''
tMs narrative as it proceeds -will sufficiently show.
Eound Akai the soil, deep furrowed with rain-torrents, is
almost exclusively composed of volcanic ash and decomposed
lava, reminding me not a little of the neighbourhood of " Aghri
Dagh," or Mount Argseus, in Csesarea, of Asia Minor, Uke that

278 ULYSSES.

region too in its wonderful fertiUty, almost, though not quite
rivalUng the prodigal luxuriance of plantation, field and grove
at the base of the ever-burning Mayon pyramid in PhiUppine
Albay, Most of the ground-springs hereabouts — and if each of
them has a naiad of its own, the country must be thickly
peopled with the daughters of Zeus — are ferruginous, some
strongly so ; thermal springs too were reported to me, but with
the true vagueness of locaUsation proper to the Hodges of every
land and country, nor did I myself come across any.
It is just a short half-hour before sunset, and a large yellow
moon, nearly full — for it is the thirteenth or fourteenth day of
the lunation — balances on the east the yet larger orb of clear
gold now near the westem margin, while our party, some seven
in all, myseK, my military escort, and four chance companions
of the road-side, ride our unkempt, but clean-limbed, spirited,
and much-enduring Paraguayan nags into the viUage of ... .
I have my motives for not giving the name. We are all of
us, the riders at least, well tired, for the afternoon has been
intensely hot, and we have come from far. Paraguayan villages,
or country towns, if you choose, though perhaps the title of
"town" should be reserved to such as are the residence of a
" Jefe Politico," or sheiiff of the county, are all, large or small,
much of a pattern ; and that, in its general outUnes, a Spanish
one. Central is a, large open grass-plot or square, and in the
midst of that again the church, a barn-like building, utterly
plain outside ; the ornament -vrithin is of woodwork, sometimes
very old and curiously carved ; painting — if there be any — is of
the crudest ; occasionally reUeved by dingy silver ornament,
recalling Byzantine or Armenian reminiscences, an unartistic
whole. Whatever may have been the case in the days of clerical
or Jesuitical leadership, religion has long since ceased to be
the central occupation of the Paraguayan mind. It is, now at
all events, an accessory, rather than a principle, of life, nor, I
am inclmed to think, was it ever, in spite of outward, and to a
certain extent constrained appearances, anytMng more among
the Guaranis. Yet so far as it goes it is quite genmne, and
its influence beneficial, much in the same degree, and to the

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 279
same result, as BuddMsm in Burmah or Siam. HappUy too it
is here, as there, practically undisturbed either by missionary
meddling on the one hand, or anti-clerical fanaticism on the
other. Close by the church is the bell-tower, square, and with its
cage-Uke wooden upper story, twice the height of the building
or more. In tMs land of electricity, for such is the entire
Paraguay, Parana, and La Plata valley from Asuncion to
Montevideo, that belfries should be often struck by Ughtning
need excite no surprise. Jove of old had a noted predUection
for thus demoUsMng his own temples ; perhaps he remembered
Semele. Next to a belfry, the most frequent victim — sadly
frequent indeed— of a thunderbolt in Paraguay is a grey horse,
its rider included ; not only did I hear of many such catastrophes,
but one actuaUy happened, the human -rictim being a -widow's
son of eighteen or thereabouts, close by a viUage where I was
takmg shelter during the storm. Should a dog, as is very
generaUy the case, be of the party, it escapes unhurt. Of all
wMch I can suggest no explanation; doubtless it is "for the
best," nor do the Paraguayans, a very practical race, greatly vex
their souls about that over which they have no control.
The houses that make up the square itself, are all one -storied
cottages, in English nomenclature, but -vrith several rooms inside,
and almost invariably fronted by a verandah — good shelter
against sun or rain ; the roof is of thatch ; the fiooring of
trodden earth, and scrupulously clean. Cleanliness is the rule
in Paraguay, and it extends to everything, dwellings, furniture,
clothes, and person, nor are the poorer classes in tMs respect a
wMt behind the richer. Above aU, the white sacques and
mantillas of the women, and the lace-fringed sMrts and drawers
of the men, are scrupulously clean ; nor is any one article in
greater demand, though fortunately in proportional supply,
throughout the country than soap. But to return to the -viUage
itseK. Each house has beMnd it a garden, smaU or large, as the
case may be, in wluch fiowers are sedulously cultivated : they
are a decoration that a Paraguayan gfrl or woman is rarely
vrithout, and one that becomes the wearer well. Without pre-

28o ULYSSES.

tentions to what is caUed classical or, ethnologicaUy taken
Aryan beauty, the female type here is very rarely plain, generally
pretty, often handsome, occasionaUy bewitcMng. Dark eyes,
long, wavy, dark hair, and a brunette complexion do most
prevaU ; but a blonde type, -with blue eyes and golden curls,
mdicative of Basque descent, are by no means rare. Hands and
feet are, almost universally, deUcate and smaU; the general
form, at least tUl frequent maternity has sacrificed beauty to
usefulness, simply perfect; as to the dispositions that dwell
in so excellent an outside, they are worthy of it ; and Shake
speare's " Is she kind as she is fair ? " might here find unhesi
tating answer in the affirmation that foUows : " Beauty dwells
with kindness." A brighter, kinder, truer, more affectionate,
more devotedly faithful girl than the Paraguayan exists nowhere.
Alas that the -wretched experiences of but a few years since
should have also proved, in bitter earnest, that no braver, no
more enduring, no more self-sacrificing wife or mother than the
Paraguayan is to be found either !
My readers -will, I am sure, pardon tMs digression. Let us
back to our village; and first of all, as in duty bound, to the
"Jefatura," or government house; in general appearance and
architecture no way differing from the dwelUngs to its right
and left, except that it is less subdivided internally, and consists
of only one or two large apartments, to which sometimes a
lock-up -vrith a pair of stocks in it for minor offenders is added.
Criminals are sent under guard to Asuncion. But crime is rare
in Paraguay ; though petty larcenies, and some trifling offences
against village decorum and law are not infrequent. The
authority of the "Jefe" or sheriff, is chiefly that of a police
magistrate; though a general superintendence of roads and
bridges, or, to speak more exactly, of where roads and bridges
were or ought to be, but in the present poverty of the land are
not, falls also -within Ms department. " Evidently these Guarani-
Vasco Paraguayans have, like thefr Malay half-cousins, a
wonderful talent for qmet self-government, and Uttle need of
state machinery or official direction and control," was a reflection
forced on me by what I heard or saw at "every step of my journey.

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 281

but not least when risiting the sanctuaries themselves of
provincial authority or law.
Prefect, commissioner, judge, and so forth, have each of them
Ms private and famUy dwelUng somewhere else in the square.
An omnium-gatherum, shop or store, combining fronmongery,
drapery, grocery, liquor, dry goods, toys, everytMng useful or, in
its degree, ornamental, is sure to occupy a much-frequented
corner — it is certain to be kept, not by a Paraguayan, but a
foreigner; generaUy an ItaUan, sometimes a Spaniard or a
Corrientino, Indeed, of such shops the larger villages boast up
to tMee or more. Adjoimng the principal square may be a
second, of wMch the central object is an open wood-supported shed
-vrith a raised floor, domg duty as market-place, wMther meat,
fish, vegetables, and so forth, are brought for sale ; or tMs useful
construction may be situated in a straggUng, irregular street,
wMch m such case forms the backbone of the -viUage, Some
where m the neighbom-hood is the pubUc burying-ground,
surrounded by a waU, and with a large wooden cross in the
centre ; monuments or mscriptions denoting the stories of the
several dead are, I think, unknown.
We have made for the prefect or sheriffs house, and have, by
Ms readUy-given in-ritation, aUghted in front of the door. A
further in-ritation, to enter the house, is temporarily decUned m
favour of the lovely evenmg outside ; and we seat ourselves in
the verandah, lookmg out on the open square before us, and over
its low roof-Unes on a fringe of palm and orange-groves, above
wMch, in the dark purple shadows of a deepenmg twiUght, rises
the serrated range of Akai, some fifteen or twenty miles distant.
But our attention is first claimed for the Alpha, though by no
means the Omega, of Paraguayan hospitaUty, the national mate.
What coffee is among the Arabs, tea, among the Japanese, that
or more is mate to the Paraguayans, and, I may add from my
experience of all tMee, to thefr guests.
True, the word mate though commonly used by Europeans,
and even occasionally by South Americans, to designate the
drink itseK, is a misnomer ; its proper signification being the
small, tough, oblong gourd, generally dyed black, and sometimes

282 ULYSSES.

compelled by bandaging, whUe yet green, to assume a fantastic
shape, out of wMch the infusion of the " yerva " itself, or
" Paraguayan tea " is taken. The leaves of this tea-plant, if an
ilex may so be denominated, are gathered amid the wide planta
tions of its growth on the borders of, or- within the tropics of.
Northern Paraguay, and having been dried by a careful and
elaborate process, of wMch, not ha-ring myself witnessed it, I
omit the description, are reduced to a coarse, light-green powder.
With this the gourd, or mate, is more than half-filled, and hot or
boiling water poured in upon it. Almost immediately after
wards, vrith as Uttle time left for " standing " as may be, it is
presented to the drinker, who imbibes it through a silver tube,
plain or ornamented, from eight to ten inches in length ; one
extremity is somewhat fiattened for convenience of suction, the
other expands into a bulb, or iombilla, pierced with small holes,
wMch acts as a strainer to the Uquid in which it is immersed.
The servant who has brought it stands by waitmg tiU the
infusion has been drawn out, when he goes to refill it, and
returns to present the apparatus to the next of the company in
turn, and so on, tiU after two or three rounds a "Basta,"
" enough," or " Gracias," " thanks," gives the signal for its final
removal. Taken by itseK and unsweetened — for those who add sugar to
it, or, yet worse profanation, mUk, put themselves merely out of
court, as incapable of appreciating its merits — this drink is of all
Ught and refreshing tonics that I know, Arabian coffee itself hardly
excepted, the pleasantest and the most effective. The taste is
aromatic and slightly bitter, not much unUke good Japanese tea.
But rightly to esteem and enjoy it, one should have earned it by
a long day's ride, in a sub-tropical sun, and drink it reposing in
the cool shade, to feel fatigue pass into memory only, and vigom-
return with rest to every limb.
MeanwhUe, others of the village magnates have come up to
salute the new arrivals, and talk, occasionaUy in Spanish for the
benefit of the strangers, more often in Guaram when between
the Paraguayans themselves, is freely entered on. Though
cautious, and wonderfully secretive where secrecy befits, a

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 283
Paraguayan is by nature cheerful and even open, fond of a jest, a
laugh ; free, in a degree I have seldom met among the natives of
any other land, European or not, from prejudice or antecedent
iU opinion ; free too from shyness or any constraint except that
of inbred courtesy and manly self-respect ; slow to give his
entire trust ; slow to distrust also. Hence Ms acquaintance is
easUy made, and often ripens into real friendship. The expansive
part of Ms nature may, probably, be due to Vasconian, Asturian,
or Cantabrian descent, the more cautious and seK-contained to
Indian ; Ms courage and endurance to both.
SUght as is my knowledge of the Guarani language, my
readers may perhaps care to hear the Uttle I have been able to
ascertain about it, more by practice than by set study, by ear
than by books. Spoken in one dialect or another over the entfre
eastern half of South America, Uruguay, whence every vestige
of its Indian occupants, the brave Charruas, has unfortunately
disappeared, being the only territorial exception, Guarani belongs
to the yet vrider-spread polysynthetic language-system, common
to every indigenous American race, north, central, or south from
Alaska to Patagonia. How far this system, with the almost
countless dialects comprehended in it, stands out, in Mr, Keane's
words, as "radically distinct from all other forms of speech," I
cannot say. In Guarani, at aU events, the amount of permuta
tion, eUmination, or agglutination of consonants or syUables,
affixes and particles, is not more irregular, hardly even more
complex than in old-Turkish, or Japanese. Where no native
system of written characters exists, it is of course free to a
stranger, employing Ms own alphabetic symbols, to run together
as many words as he pleases into one ; in pronunciation Guarani
words are distinct enough and strongly accentuated, most often
on the last syUable. Of gutturals there is a moderate, of nasals
a more liberal aUowance; in copiousness of vowels Guarani
hardly yields to Italian itself Lastly it is a pleasant language
to the ear, and easUy picked up, as the faciUty with which
EngUsh, Germans, and other strangers acqmre it sufficiently
proves. Whether, however, the speech itself be autocthonous, as Mr.

204 ULYSSES.

Keane opines, or derive a trans-oceanic origin from some far
back MongoUan or Turanian stock, no one acquainted -with
Kalmuk or Nogai Tartars, or Tagal Malays on the one hand, and
-vrith pm-e-blooded Guai-ani-Indians on the other, can an instant
doubt thefr- community of race. It is not the complexion, the
hair, the eyes, the general form of body and Umb only that bear
-witness to as near an approach to identity, as long ages of
diversity in cUmate and surroundings can admit, but, more yet
the sameness of mind, of moral standard, of dispositions and
tendencies individual or collective, of family and social organisa
tion, of ideas and beUefs, all of these strictly in accordance -with
those of the MongoUan branch of what Mr. Ferguson, -with
sufficient accuracy at least for our present purpose, denominates
the " Turanian " division of the human race. How the first
MongoUans — parents of the manifold " Eed-Indian " famiUes by
whom the New World was overspread — came to emigrate hither,
at what epoch, by what route, in one band or in many, are
questions Uttle Ukely ever to be solved ; monuments and tradi
tion afford but confused and contradictory hints at most ; and
conjecture is not less idle than easy, to make. Nor, agam, would
a solution, even if absolutely negative, much affect the existing
facts. Identity of nature is one thing, community of origin is
another ; the beginnmgs of human existence are unknown, nor is
the Darwinian theory of descent better supported by proof than
the mythological ; nor does it apppear why the same cause or
cases, whatever it or they may be, wliich originated the Mon
goUan race in Asia should not, simultaneously or at a different
period of our planet's existence, have originated another race of
mankmd m America, identical or nearly so -vrith the first, yet
whoUy independent of it in genealogical descent. Anyhow the
resemblance is a certainty, though the " how " and " why " may
be, and are likely ever to remain, uncertain and unkno-wn.
Seated as we are in the verandah, and, by tMs time, a group
of a dozen or more, including the head authorities of the district,
besides others who are not authorities at aU, but merely small
farmers or peasants, the talk turns chiefly on local interests,
agricultural topics, and the like ; the events of the capital and

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 285
poUtics, generaUy so favourite a topic in many others of the
South American EepubUcs, being here seldom discussed. The
right to be well governed, the right to cultivate Ms own land,
tend Ms own cattle, and to enjoy in peace the fruits of his labour,
is the only right the Paraguayan greatly cares for ; what form of
administration, what government, what party, what policy assure
Mm these, he heeds very Uttle. There is no content like that of
a land-owning population; and such from the highest to the
lowest is the country population of Paraguay. Large estates are
rare, and where they exist are ciUtivated by tenants whose fixity
of possession is not less undisputed than the general proprietor
sMp of the o-wner in chief ; rent is paid in produce ; and the
share retained by the actual cultivator of the land is in the
fuUest sense his own. It is a state of things in which wealth, as
understood in Europe, is rare ; destitution, like that too frequent
in many parts of Europe, unknowm. The capitalist is absent ;
but Ms train, Mred labour, eviction, landlessness, homelessness,
destitution, discontent, rebeUion, revolution, are absent too.
Politics, the occupation of the idle or the dissatisfied, bemg
thus ignored, we have free leisure for the far more profitable,
as also pleasanter topics of agriculture, its resources, its develop
ment, its prospects. I may as weU here remark, once for aU,
that although both horses and cattle are reared to a considerable
extent -vritMn the Paraguayan territory, yet the country neither
ought to, nor can ever, become a cattle-breeding one in the
sense of the vast pasture-lands of the South Argentine Confe
deration, or even of Southern and Western Uruguay, Here,
between degrees 27''-22° of latitude, with an average yearly
temperature somewhat above 70° F, ; and with pasture copious
enough, but rank and overgro-wn — the consequence of a wmter-
less cUmate — ^horned cattle can never attam, either in size or
quality, to a successful competition with those reared m cooler
lands; wMle sheep, for whatever reason — the presence of a
poisonous herb, caUed "mio-mio" among the grass, is often
assigned as the cause, but it does not seem to me a whoUy
sufficient one — are as complete a faUure here as in the PhUip-
pmes or Japan. Horses breed weU; but except for local use

286 ULYSSES.

are in little request ; besides, these too are better reared in the
south. Meanwhile, the agricultural capabUities even of those
districts hitherto in some measure set apart for pasture, are
infinite, and the produce less liable to preponderant competition.
Putting aU wMch together, it is clear that the Georgio of
Paraguay must always be the first rather than the tMrd of the
Virgilian series.
In this Georgio tMee different Mnds of cultivation take
precedence as capable of yielding the largest and most advan
tageous results : the sugar-cane, tobacco, and the " yerva " or
Paraguayan tea. Of these the first is gro-wn extensively ; but,
in the absence of fit machinery for extracting and refining the
sugar, " cana " or an inferior kind of rum, obtamed by a coarse
distUlation of the unrefined molasses, is the prmcipal result.
The sugar-mills in use are smaU, and of the roughest Mnd,
worked by hand or cattle, after a fashion that may stUl be seen
in the small negro holdings of Dommica; the boiUng and
cooUng — for crystallisation is, of course, out of the question —
are equally primitive. Yet from the vigorous gro-wth of the
cane, and the amount of saccharine yielded, it is evident that
the material exists for more profitable purposes ; and if the
highly-perfected and costly sugar-factories of Martinique, of
Demerara, be for the present beyond the means of Paraguay,
there is no reason why the simpler yet sufficient methods
successfuUy adopted m Barbados should not meet -with equaUy
good results here. The experiment would be worth the makmg ;
the project is one I have often heard discussed among the
peasantry, vrith much desfre for its reaUsation.
But no subject is more popular, none more readily entered
on, than the cultivation of tobacco. Much indeed is actuaUy
gro-wn in Paraguay, and the quality of the leaf is exceUent, by
no means, in my judgment, inferior to that of Cagayan, or, to
give it its commercial title, of ManUa itself But the art of
drying and preparing the leaf, no less than that of makmg it
up, when prepared, into proper form, has yet to be learnt in
Paraguay ; both processes are at present conducted in a very
unsatisfactory and hap-hazard manner; and the result is

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. iZ-j
defective in proportion. Unseasoned, unprepared, unselected,
badly dried, worse rolled, Paraguayan cigars only avail to
tantalise the smoker with the suggested contrast of what they
might be and what they are. I myself, for many decades of
years a habitual smoker, could easily recognise at once the
innate superiority of the wisp-like tobacco roll that no
care availed to keep steadily alight for five minutes, over the
elegant-looMng BrazUian — labelled "Havana" — cigar in my
pocket-case ; whUe painfully made aware at the same time of
the artifical advantages that rendered the latter preferable for
use to the former. The Government that shall introduce a few
skUled operatives of the Arroceros factory and the Cagayan
tobacco plantations to teach, by example and practice, the arts
of tobacco growing and cigar making to Paraguay wUl deserve
a public memorial and a marble statue of the handsomest in
Asuncion, as a true benefactor primarily of his country, and
indirectly of South America, and the world at large. For what
blessing can equal a good cigar ?
At present, of all the " mystery," to use an old phrase, of
tobacco grovring, no less than that of cigar making, the Para
guayans, whose education in this really important regard has
been sadly neglected, are practically ignorant ; and many were
the questions asked me about the cultivation of the plant, the
proper manuring of the soU, the harvesting and drying of the
leaf, and so forth. For attached, and most justly so, as they
are to their own country and its usages, they are by no means
incurious as to what is done elsewhere, nor averse to adopt or
copy what may be suited to their requirements. Nor are the
Japanese themselves apter scholars to useful teaching ; though,
happily for the Paraguayans, the greater steadiness of their
national character would hardly admit of the cMldish imita-
tiveness and unwise parody that has so much damaged and
perverted Japanese improvement of late years.
Of the " yerva " cultivation, for many generations the prin
cipal, almost the exclusive, source of Paraguayan revenue, my
village friends in the Akai district have not much to say. The
Bex Paraguayensis is a shrub of tropical growth, and we are at

288 ULYSSES.

present Uttle north of lat. 25°, But I may here remark that
the article itself, though still inconsiderable, is not in increasing
request, rather the reverse ; partly because of the Europeanising
mania widely diffused through the adjoining states, and which
has included the use, once universal, of mate in its anathema of
" uncivilised " pronounced on whatever is South American and
is not Parisian, be it dress, usage, amusement, dance, music, or
whatever else; and partly from the competition of Argentine
and Brazilian "yerva," both much inferior in strength and
flavour to the Paraguayan, but also cheaper in their respective
markets. For my own part I do not see — cUmate, soil, and local
conditions taken into account — why tea, so successfully culti
vated in Northern India and, to a certain extent, in Japan,
should not be introduced into, and tMive in, Paraguay also.
Every favourable condition, every requisite, seems, to the best
of my observation, to be present; and were the experiment
made, the chances of success are, I think, far greater than those
of failure. I should recommend the hill-ranges — now covered
with mere forest — towards the BrazUian frontier as fit ground
for a first attempt. The ultimate result would probably be the
substitution of tea plantation for that of " yerva " to a consider
able extent, to the permanent advantage of the Paraguayan
market at all events ; the ilex continmng to maintain itseK, but
on a diminished scale.
Maize, here no longer the stunted, small-eared plant that we
see it in Italy or Southern Uruguay, but rivalUng in luxuriance
and produce the vigorous growths of the Trans-Caucasus and
Asia Minor, is a favourite crop ; rice also, both the irrigated
and the upland variety. Both are pleasing to the eye, the dark
glossy green of the Indian corn plant making an effective set-off
to the bright emerald of the rice fields. But more graceful than
either in form and shape of leaf, though duller in tint, is the
"manioca," or, to give it the name best kno-wn to European
commerce, "tapioca" herb, -with its countless Uttle domes of
delicate leaves, each on its slender stalk ; the root, reduced into
flour, is the staple food of the peasants, who make it up -vrith

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 289
sugar and yolk of egg into cakes and rolls, very nutritious, but
somewhat cloying to a foreign taste. A wider range of cultiva
tion, such as, however, is at present beyond the reach of the
half-repeopled land, and a judicious use of the faciUties given
for washing the pulp by the lavish copiousness of pure running
water in sources and streams throughout Paraguay, might easily
make of tapioca an important item on the national export Ust,
But orange trees and palms, both native growths, valuable for
thefr produce, though requiring hardly any care on the part of
man, are of all others the distinctive features, the ornaments
too, of a Paraguayan country landscape, which, taken altogether,
comes nearer to the ideal of a habitable Eden, a paradise
adapted to man as he is, in this working-day existence of our
race, than any other region it has been my fortune to visit in the
old world or the new.
Much might be added to'the agricultural Ust just given, but
those mentioned are the foremost in interest to the children of
the soU. Or perhaps our conversation— for supper is not yet
ready, and the tempered coolness of the evening invites us to
prolong our out-of-doors soiree — wanders to the minerals of the
land, unexplored as yet to any serious purpose, though the fre
quency of chalybeate waters testifies to the abundance of fron
in the soil ; copper, too, is often met -with ; gold and silver are
talked of, but, fortunately perhaps for the country, Uttle verified.
Marbles of every kind, the pure wMte excepted, could be, but
seldom are, quarried in the Mils ; porcelain clay abounds, and
finds a restricted use.
The best product, however, of Paraguay, and that without
wluch all the rest, however varied and precious, would be of
little avaU, is, to borrow Blake's strangely significant phrase,
the " human abstract." That " the Paraguayans are a lazy
lot ; " that " the men in Paraguay do nothing — aU the work is
done by women ; " that the said men " pass their time in
drinking ma€e, smoking cigars, eating, and sleeping ; " nay, that
"there are hardly any men in Paraguay, nine-tenths of the
population being female," with the not illogical corollary, that
everything everywhere " in this unfortunate country " is in " a
u

290 ULYSSES.

state of complete demoralisation," I had heard repeated usque
ad satietatem by Europeans and Americans alike — both, in most
instances, absolutely guiltless of any personal experience of
Paraguay, or having passed a few days in a hotel at Asuncion
at most — before I made my own visit to that country. Hearmg,
I, as is my wont, neither believed nor disbeUeved, but waited
the surer e-ridence of presence and sight. How far this evidence
confirmed or contradicted the eril report brought up by others
on the land, my readers will, if I have written to any purpose,
sufficiently apprehend. In few words, then, the men and
women, both of them, and either class -witMn its proper Umits
of occupation, throughout Paraguay, are as industrious, hard
working, diligent, painstaking, persevering a folk as any I know
of; nor are the women more so than the men, nor the men than
the women. Of course the traveller -will, when visiting the
viUages during the day hom-s, see more of the female than of
the male sex, because the former, very naturally, stays more at
home, the latter is more scattered abroad. That, when resting
men, and women too, drink a good deal of 7nate, or " yerva "
rather, I quite admit, but not so much by iiear as North
Europeans do beer and gin, or South Europeans -wine ; and the
Paraguayan drink is, at any rate, not the most harmful on, the
Ust. In eating they are assuredly very moderate and simple ;
that they often take a nap at noon is the necessary result of
very early rising, a hot sun by day, and late hours— these, too,
the consequence of climate and the deUcious night temperature
to follow. As to " complete demoraUsation," what the pMase
may mean in a country where crime is almost unknown,
violence unheard of, where the sacredness of a plighted word
habituaUy dispenses with the necessity or even the thought of. a
written bond, where the conjugal fidelity of the women is such
as to be in a manner proverbial, and famUy ties are as bindino-
as m China itself, where sedition does not exist, vendetta has no
place, and every one in general minds his own business and
that of his famUy without interfering with his neighbours or the
public order and lavv, I am at an utter loss to comprehend. But
if tiiis state of things — and it i.s that of Paraguay at large  ^be

G

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 29!
" demoralisation," I can only wish that many other countries that
I know of, not to mention my o^v^l, were equally demoralised too.
Not, however, that all is the Byronic " old Saturn's reign of
sugar-candy," even in Paraguay. For though politics, in the
generally accepted sense of the word, rarely find place among
the preoccupations of a Paraguayan landowner — and all the
inhabitants here are landowners, some greater, some less — it
cannot be supposed that past revolutions, changes of rulers and
governments, a wasting war, a hostile occupation, years of such
utter desolation that the nation seemed not prostrate merely but
destroyed, have not left behind them memories of bitterness,
local and family feuds, party watchwords, party hates. To
define or explain these would be to retrace the entire history of
the state for at least a century back, a task far beyond the scope
of the present writmg. Enough for the present, that the t\vo
weU-known colours wMch have from prte-Islamitic times down
wards ranged the rival elements of Arabia under the red bannei'
of Yemen and the white standard of Nejed, which counter-
distmgmshed the symbolical roses of the longest and most fatal
of our own civil wars, and which are yet recognised as badges of
civU dissension and war in many South American states, have
also, though with special and local significancies omitted here,
di-rided the Paraguayans into " Blancos " or WMtes, and " Colo-
rados " or Eeds, for aims, primarily and originally ethmco-
poUtical, now embodied in famUy feuds or personal wrongs.
Cmiously enough in tMs remote oasis of the world's desert, no
less than in the Arabian penuisula, in the Albion of the
fifteenth century, and in the sub-littoral America of the present,
the red flag has mustered under itseK what may best be defined
as the distinctively national or patriotic party, while the wMte
has been a signal for extra-national sympatMes and aUiances—
a merely accidental coincidence, yet a remarkable one. Happily
for Paraguay, the patriotism of her cMldren, thefr loyalty to
thefr mother-country is so general, so fervent, that any less
national feeUng, however symboUsed, however disguised, has
comparatively but few to represent it, or support ; fewest of all
in the purely comitry districts, for example, in Akai. u 2

292 ULYSSES.
The last pale streak of sunset has faded in the west, and a
silvery gauze of moonUght spreads unstained over the purple
darkness of the deep sky, just pierced by the steel blue point of
Sirius, or the orange glow of Canopus, now high in mid-heaven,
lord of the southern hemisphere. Before us, touched by the
deceptive Ught, the " luee maligna," as Virgil -vrith deep meaning
calls it, of the large moon, the sharp peaks of Akai stand out in
jagged reUef against the sky, part black, part edged in glittering
silver, as though they were immediately behind and above the
village roofs ; a startling contrast to the palm and orange groves
of the hamlet, really near at hand, but almost lost to view in
black shadow. No. one is by us now but the " Jefe Politico " or
sheriff of the village-town and district ; lights glimmer here and
there in the house-windows before us ; but the grassy square,
with its ghostly white church and spectral beU-tower, is lonely
as a desert, as silent too.
" That mountain," said om- host, and pomted to the strange
ridges of Akai, "that mountain bears an evil name throughout
the neighbourhood. Goblins of malignant will, shapes as of
men, but prteter-human in size and horrible to sight, are said to
frequent its slopes, and fires that leav'e no trace by day are seen
there at night." And he went on to recount, as having lately
occurred, a ghastly story ; how a party of benighted wayfarers
had, only a short time before, taken up their quarters in a copse
on the mountain side ; how after midnight they were awakened
by a near glare through the trees ; how two or three — I am not
sure of the numbei- — from among them boldly ventured to find
out the cause, and after threading their way through the thicket
came on a small stony depression, bare, but girt by brushwood,
and in the midst of it a great fire, fiercely burning, and tended
by giant figures, black and Mdeous, who warned them off with
threatening gestures from nearer approach ; how when they on
their return told the tale to their companions in the wood, one of
the band, a lad of eighteen or so, seized as it appeared by a
sudden madness, declared he would go whatever might betide
and fetch fire from the blaze; how the others tried to detain
him in vain ; he broke from them and disappeared in the

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 293
brushwood: how after a wMle they heard Ms screams, and
forced their way with difficulty tMough the thicket to the little
rock-strewn hollow just as the first dawn was breaking ; how
they found no trace of fire on the ground, nor any living
semblance or thing, only their unfortunate comrade, horribly
disfigured and bmnt in body and Umbs, who told how the
goblms had seized Mm, tMown Mm into the mid-blaze, and
held him there ; and having told this, died in agony before the
sun rose.
Stories, of this kind especiaUy, lose nothing in the telling;
the adventure was referred to wayfarers from a distance and to
a date of some months back ; and to inqufre into the accuracy
of the narrative, in whole or in detail, would have been very
superfluous labour. Still it is notable that the tale should be, so
our friend said, one of many similar in kind, and all relating to
the same neighbourhood and region. Can these strange tales be
the distorted and transformed traditions of volcanic outbursts,
long smce quiescent ? Or may they be due to some phenomena
of inflammable vapours escaping from time to time, and
burstmg into Ught, or even fire, as^ atmospheric conditions may
determine ? That subterraneous heat is stUl actively, though
mvisibly, at work here was evidenced this very year, when, on
the 18th October last, just a month or so before my visit to the
place, a loud rumbling noise was heard from underground about
ten o'clock in the morning, and aU the viUages of the district, to
a distance of ten to fifteen miles round the mountain of Akai,
from wMch — that is, of course, from under wMch — all agreed
that both the noise and the shock proceeded, were suddenly
and violently shaken ; some said, by a single concussion, as if
artillery had been discharged close by, others told of a longer
continued and vibrating movement, but all assigned the same
hour and instant ; all too heard the noise, though, it seems, with
some difference of clearness and duration. Nothing of the kind,
said our informant, had ever withm man's memory occurred
before. However, m the fact of the earthquake shock, and the
sensation that it proceeded from Akai as a centre, everyone
agreed ; it did not reach beyond this seemingly volcanic Eifel-

294 UL YSSES.

Uke region, nor was anytMng of the kind observed in Asuncion
then or later. But that in the fact itself may lie an indication
of what the weird tales of Akai and its night fires point to,
seems to me not impossible, not improbable perhaps.
The teller of the tale was himself a remarkable man ; one of
-those who are in a manner the type and compendium of the
nation they belong to, summing up in themselves alike its
physical and its mental characteristics, its merits and its
defects. Spanish, like the greater number of Paraguayans by
name, and in part by origin, he bore in Ms dark complexion,
nearly beardless features, and sUght frame, evidence of a
considerable admixture, more than half, probably, of Guarani
blood. A mere boy, almost a chUd in years, he had joined the
national army soon after the outbreak of the unequal war in
1865, and had been present in almost every one of the land
battles where his countrymen, victors or vanqmshed, in life or
death, held their own without thought of flight or quarter
against the triple alliance of their foes. Not even then, when
Humaita was lost, Angostura taken, Asuncion sacked, and the
last army — the few fighters whom what yet survived of
Paraguay could muster — had been surrounded and slaughtered
almost to a man, did the lad abandon his cause and his leader,
but accompanied the ill-fated and, by this time, half-insane
despot during the whole of those miserable months, when
gradually driven towards the northem frontier he carried on an
obstinate but useless guerilla war against the invaders of his
country, till, hemmed in and at bay, he turned on his BrazUian
pursuers on the banks of the Aqmdaban, and, fighting to the
last, died, -with his eldest son Pancliito at his side, more nobly
than he had lived. Such of Ms few companions— they were
not above three hundred in all — as had yet physical strength
enough left to make any kind of resistance, died almost to a
man like their chief; a few, unable either to fight or to fly,
were made prisoners by the enemy; but otliers, disarmed
though not wholly disabled, and resolved not to submit them
selves as captives to the abhorred Brazilians, escaped to the
woods and the yet uncivilised Indian tribes of the further

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 295
mountains, where they remained sharing the huts and leading
the life of their half-barbarous but faithful hosts and protectors,
till another year had seen what remained of Paraguay — after
her conquerors had partitioned the spoils — free of foreign
occupation, and aUowed them to retum to where their homes
had been, and to the fortunes of their country, then seem
ingly at its last gasp. Of these refugees, of Cerro-Cora and
Aquidaban, was my friend the narrator of the tale. Well
aware, and often eye-vritness of the cruelties and crimes that
stained the latter days of Salano Lopez, he yet spoke of him
vvith loyal respect, almost with affection, as the head and
representative of the national cause ; and would gladly, he said,
yet give his blood and his life for his former leader; though
unable to share, contrary to the evidence of his senses, in the
still extant popular belief that refuses to admit the reality of
Lopez's death, and hopefully awaits his reappearance from some
hiding-place in the mountains even now.
From talk like this we are summoned by the mistress of the
house, who is, also, like Milton's Eve, ex-officio chief cook,
to our dinner, in the materials of which vegetables, maize,
pumpkin, sweet potatoes, beans, &c., bear a larger proportion
than they would in the almost exclusively carnivorous regions
further South. Table service, cooking, and so forth, are all
more or less after Spanish fashion ; the wines are Spanish too,
and good. But Paraguayan appetite is not nice as to delicacy
of food : and the gastronomic skill attributed by' our great poet
to Ms Eden hostess is decidedly wanting in the ministrations of
tMs earthly paradise ; — a want, it may be, preferable where
health is concerned, to the observance. Anyhow, there is
plenty on the board, and of sound quality too. In the country
districts the women, as a rule, take their meals apart from the
men, not on any compulsion, but because they themselves
prefer it so ; in Asuncion a more European style prevails.
Dinner, or supper, over, our host proposes that we should
adjourn to a haile, or baU, the one favourite diversion of Para
guay, wMch has been got up to do honour to our arrival in one
or other of the most spacious houses of the village, or, very

296 ULYSSES.

possibly, in the " Jefatura," or government offices themselves.
We cross the square, and find a large gathering of men, women
and chUdren — for early hours are no part of childhood's diurnal
discipUne here, any more than elaborate dress — some, as direct
participators in the amusement -vritMn, others, as lookers on,
without the brightly Ughted-up buUding, and the band — no
Paraguayan viUage is -vrithout its musical band, aU much of a
pattern — consisting of a harp, a clarionet, a -rioUn or guitar, a
fife, a drum, and very Ukely a tambourine or a triangle, in a
group near the entrance, already engaged m tuning up and pre
luding to the music of the dance. The room, or rooms, -vritMn
are or are not laid dowm -with mats, as the case may be, and are
weU iUuminated ; chairs and benches are ranged against the
waUs, and doors and -windows all -wide open to the night msure
coolness, spite of the flarmg lamps and gathered crowd.
The women, dressed in Paraguayan fashion, vrith the long
white " tupoi," or sacque, deeply embroidered round the borders,
and often fringed with the beautKul home-made lace of the
country, vrith silk skirts, or brightly-coloured petticoats, and a
broad coloured sash, some of them wearing sUppers, others bare
footed — no harm where feet are so pretty as theirs — are seated
around, waiting each her tum of the dance. Their stock of
Spanish is apt to be limited ; and any fine speeches which you
naturaUy wish to make them had best, for fear of misapprehen
sion, be made tn Guarani ; the smUe -with wMch you -wiU be
rewarded wiU quite repay the trouble of learning a pMase or
two. The men are, some of them, especiaUy if anyhow " official,"
in European afternoon or evening dress, wMch, I need hardly
remark, is no advantage; some, however, are attired more
becommgly in country style— ponchos, gfrdles, loose trousers,
silver chainlets, and so on ; the Unen of aU is scrupulously clean
and wMte. The assembly is almost exclusively made up of
small farmers, graziers, and peasants from the -rillage and its
neighbourhood, with thefr famiUes ; but rich or poor, official or
private, whatever be the social class they belong to, no differ
ence is perceptible in manner or bearing ; the same easy, though
deferential poUteness, the same freedom aUke from obtrusive

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 297
for\vardness or awlcward shyness, characterises each and every
one, whatever be the rank or sex, in speech and intercourse ; at
least they are gentlemen and ladies aU in the fullest sense of
those so often misappropriated terms.
The dances are either merely of the pan-European kind — -
quadriUes, waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, and lancers — or of, I think,
Andalusian origin, though sometimes denominated " Para
guayan " ; the cielo, the media caria (a great favourite, and very
lively), the Montenero, and some variations mtroduced into the
contre- dansa, belong apparently to this class. Whether the
aboriginal Indians or Guaranis had any dances or music, properly
speaking, of their o-wn, and antecedent to the Spanish conquest,
I do not know ; but from the entire absence of any traces of such
among the Paraguayans, I should think not.
Cigars, cigarettes, sweets, refreshments, drinks, among which
last cana, the rum of the country, comes foremost, are freely
distributed in the intervals of the dances, and the ball is
kept up tiU morning Ught. Of all social amusements, for a
minimum of expense and trouble, and a maximum of real
enjoyment, commend me to a Paraguayan village ball. The
cynicism of Prosper Merimee himself could not have stood
proof against it, and must have for once admitted that even
for a desillusione society may still have some attractions, Ufe
some pleasures.
Beautiful rather than grand, continually varying, but without
violent or sudden contrasts, the scenery which I traversed from
village to rillage and day by day was of a kind better adapted
to sight than to description ; besides, the account already given
of its general character and products may serve, at all events to
those who have ever visited sub-tropical lands, to fill up the
outlines of my sketch more truly than direct word-painting
could do. Yet there are two features rarely wanting m a Para
guayan landscape that reqmre some more special, though brief,
mention : the forests and the lakes. The former, dispersed in
patches amid the cultivated lands, and thickly gathered on the
MU-ranges to the east, are of singular beauty; and the trees.

298 UL YSSES.

though inferior in dimensions and height to the giants of the
tropical zone, have the advantage over them in greater variety of
foliage and form of growth — now resembUng the oak, now the
beech, now the ash, with interspaces between them of bright
greensward, unchoked by the rank bush of hotter cUmates ; whUe
a sufficient admixture of palms, some fan-leaved, others feathery,
with bamboos, twining creepers, and orchids, give what a
European might call an exotic tint to the picture. Many of
these trees supply timber of great value : such is that of the
mahogany and cedar, red or yellow; of the lapacho and que-
hracho, both hard as iron, and more durable ; of the timho, a tall,
straight trunk, much used for canoe-building; of the urundei,
good for house-timbers and ships ; of the jacarundd, with its
ornamental yeUow gram ; of the palo di rosa, or rosewood, and
fifty more, all destined to no unimportant part in the commerce
of the future — whenever that shall be. The boughs of many of
these trees are Aride-spreading and fantastically contorted, the
leafage generally small, prettily serrated, and of a dark glossy
green, agreeable to the eye.
As to the lakes, they are liberally distributed over the whole
of Paraguay, and vary in size and character from small marshy
pools of Uttle depth, to the wide water-sheets of Ipoa and
Ipecarai, each considerably exceeding in size any of our own
English lakes, and proportionately deep ; both belong to the
central district through which I travelled. Each of them has, m
popular tradition, a story attached to it, tellmg of its origm ;
that of Lake Ipoa, as related to me, was not dissimilar to the
tradition memoriaUsed m the Dead Sea, though fortunately the
waters of Ipoa are not salt, but sweet and abounding in fish.
The Ipecarai lake is, on the contrary, said to be brackish. But
the shores of both are lovely, gently shelving in most places, and
clothed with alternating wood and meadow down to the silvery
mirror's edge. These lakes are the favourite resorts of water
fowl — wUd-duck, and teal in particular — ^in shoals resembUng
fioating islands from a distance. Partridges and snipe are the
principal winged game by land ; I heard of bustards too, but
saw none ; ostriches, or, more properly, emus, abound everywhere.

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 299
Of four-footed game there is plenty too by plain and forest, from
Uons, tigers, panthers, and deer, down to hares and rabbits,
besides other South American quadrupeds — all declared by the
peasants " good to eat," but tastes differ.
How far the varied and ever-lovely country in which they
live, the "pleasure situate in hill and dale," nowhere more
lavisMy bestowed by nature than here — the abundance of wood-
flowers and fruits, the fern-margined fountains and sparkling
streams, the stately trees and deep wavmg meadows, and all the
perennial beauties that make of Paraguay the wonder and the
deUght of aU who visit it, how far, I say, these things may have
contributed towards makmg up the peculiarly cheerful, contented,
genial character of those who live among them, I cannot tell ;
theories of the kind are the veriest card-houses, Ughtly set up, as
Ughtly thrown down. Yet I have noticed, not once, but often,
and in many regions wide apart, how much more serious, more
unexpansive, more sombre, in fact, more unamiable a type of
dweller is generally found in open, treeless, objectless lands of
monotonous downs or vride level, whether such be under an
Asian, an African, or a European sky — whether the denizens or
the landscape be agricidtural, as m Lower Egypt, or pastoral, as
in the Dobruja and_the Eastern Steppes, or mixed, as in Holland ;
the absence in man of what may be termed the ornamental side
of human nature is stUl the same. For the habitual sight of
beauty in some form or other, and its frequent contact seem to
be necessary to the development of the beautiful in man's nature
itself ; and where the surroundings are bare and dull, the inner
life is apt to share in the bareness and dulness of its dwelling-
place. It is not only exceptional natures, as a Giorgione or a
Turner, that grow incorporate -with, and reproduce in themselves,
the scenes of their childhood and youth — all men, I think, do it
more or less ; and the advantages enjoyed by a high-born child,
carefuUy brought up, and supplied vrith every opportunity for
the fulfilment of every innate power, over the poverty-hampered,
stunted, starved child of destitute parents, are not more than
those which the native of a fair land, a bright sky, and a genial
climate possesses over the offsprmg of a harsh heaven and an

30O ULYSSES.

unlovely earth. Nature, like too many other mothers, has her
favourite chUdren, and the Paraguayans are in tMs respect, the
Benjamms of her family.
My riding-tour, during wMch I visited four out of the twenty-
three districts into which Paraguay is now divided, being over, I
returned, not vrithout some regret, to Asuncion ; and thence,
after a short interval aUowed to the kindness of my hospitable
entertainers, re-embarked on the main river for an up-stream
voyage of about two hundred miles more to Concepcion, the
chief town of northern Paraguay, situated just witMn the tropic
of Capricorn, and the principal centre and depot of the mate or
" yerva " traffic. But of this section of the river, its -rillages and
its scenery, also of the " yerva " groves, or forests rather, I must
defer the description tiU another opportunity.
Much too I have omitted, even m what concerns that section
of the country which I have to a certain extent described, not
because unimportant or wanting in interest, but as reaching too
far beyond the Umits of my present scope, and fitter for a com
plete work on Paraguay as it was, or is, than for a slight sketch
of the superficial impressions made by a few weeks passed
witMn the territory. The form -and tenure of the actual govern
ment, as estabUshed in 1870, and maintained, at any rate, to the
letter, since then ; the condition of the army — ^that army wMch
not many years since, alone and unassisted, held the invading
forces of half South America at bay ; of the na-vy, whose small
wooden steamers so long made good the river defence against
nearly double the number of gunboats and ironclads ; the newly-
created judicial organisation and legal tribunals ; the position of
the clergy; the system of popular education, the elementary
schools established throughout the country; aU these are, I
tMnk, better here passed over altogether, than touched on after a
slight and possibly misleading fasMon. Nor have I, for similar
reasons, said anything about the various co-operative enterprises
— agricultural, pastoral, or industrial — undertaken of late years,
chiefly by foreigners, -within the Paraguayan territory, with
varying failure or success ; nor about the yet " unciviUsed," that
is un-Europeanised or neo-Americanised Indian tribes, some

FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. 301
scattered through the riverine districts and the adjoining
viUages, " among them, but not of them ; " others keeping more
apart, and tenantmg the mountains and forests of the east and
north towards the JBrazUian frontier ; but all on good terms with
the Paraguayans as such, though little inclined, it seems, to
modify their own ancestral habits or occupations.
Learing these tMngs aside for the present, enough has, I tMnk,
been written here to show that Paraguay, no less than her sister
EepubUcs of the south, is a country with a future ; that the
Paraguayan nationality, though reduced to scarce a third of its
original numbers, and left houseless and homesteadless on a
desolated land, has yet, in a few years of comparative peace and
quiet, afready sufficiently, thanks to its mtense and inherent
vitaUty, recovered itself enough to bring a large portion of its
territory under cultivation, to restock its pastm-es with cattle,
and, best of aU, its villages -with contented, happy, and increasing
famUies — the surest pledge of complete restoration and lasting
prosperity in time to come. Assertions like those, made and
repeated but fifteen years ago, by writers of the kind alluded to
in the earlier part of this Essay, that the Paraguayans " exist no
longer," that " their destruction was inevitable " that they were
" the tree wMch will brmg forth no frmt," and should accordingly
be in due course " hewn down and cast into the fire ; " they
bemg " incapable of civiUsation ; " -vrindmg up -with the Cassandra
predictions that, "the foreigners whom they distrusted and
despised -wUl tUl the ground which they abandoned to tares and
brambles, and enjoy the fafr heritage which they were unworthy
to possess ; " that, " the Teuton and the Anglo-Saxon will soon
fill the void," or, more wonderful yet, that the Paraguayans
themselves wUl " perforce ask Brazil to take the Uttle she has
left of thefr habitable territory, and annex it as the smallest
pro-rince of the empfre," show very little knowledge in those who
have uttered them either of the country or of its inhabitants.
That the Paraguayan nation has by no means ceased to exist,
that neither its past, that of a state wMch, weighed in the
balance of a six years' struggle, proved almost a counterpoise for
the greatest empire and the greatest Eepublic of the south con-

302 ULYSSES.

jointly, nor its present -with its vigorous outcome of new energy,
new Ufe, bear either of them the most distant resemblance to
barren fig-trees, tares, brambles, or any other combustibles of the
bibUcal Ust, are facts that whoever cares to -risit the land as I
visited it may easUy assure MmseK no less completely than I
did. As to Paraguayan civiUsation, he vrill find it what I found
and have described it ; and he must be hard to satisfy if it does
not content Mm. With regard to "Teuton " and " Anglo-Saxon "
immigrants, by whom I conjecture Germans and Englishmen
to be meant, they and their labours are, and always will be,
welcomed, protected, encouraged in Paraguay ; but I do not fore
see any likelihood of their superseding the vigorous race that
forms the bulk of the existent nationaUty, nor would it be
desfrable that they should. Far better, as far more -witMn the
compass of probabUity, that they should, by identifying thefr-
interests with those of the land of their adoption, contribute a
fresh and most valuable element of industry and perseverance to
the born children of the soil. As to Brazil, in particular, the
only favour Paraguay has to ask of her is to be a just and
friendly neighbour; more than that neither she nor any other
state -wiU, I trust, have the unvrisdom to attempt, uor would the
Paraguayans, betide what might, for an instant allow. Paraguay
is yet herself; and her sons and daughters are yet, as they ever
have been, true to themselves and to her. Esto perpetua !

( 303 )

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STOEY OF NEJD.
Unlike the preceding Essays, this story, originally pubUshed in ' Macmillan's
Magazine,' 1874-5, and the substance of which I picked up from Arab
recitals whilst myself an Arab among Arabs, is not in form a narration of my
own personal experiences, but of those of others. Yet as it was in course of
my own wanderings that I obtained so intimate a knowledge of the Arabian
Peninsula and its inhabitants as to be able to pronoimce with assurance on
the representative genuineness of the story and its facts, both in the main and
in detail, I think " Ulysses " fairly entitled to include it among the results of
his own diversified sojoui-nings ; and for this reason I republish it here. And
should any one arnong my readers question the generosity of sentiment and
self-sacrifice of deed here recorded as excessive or improbable, I can only say
that he knows Uttle of Arab character or Arab Ufe.
Paet I.
It has been remarked, and, I beUeve, correctly so, that the
music of semi-barbarous, or, to put it more courteously, semi-
ci-vUized races, is more often sad than cheerful in its character :
Welsh and Irish melodies are sometimes cited in proof But it
is equally observable that, of the romance-stories in vogue at
tMs stage of society, those stories that, taken in conjunction
-with music and -with reUgious legend, constitute the poetical
expression of the national mind, the greater number by far are
melancholy m thefr- course, or thefr endmg, or both. And,
whatever may be the law elsewhere, this is at least undoubtedly
the case vrith the tales that from time immemorial have helped
to wMle away Arab evenmgs, sometimes by the encampment
fire, sometimes by the household hearth.
Not but that we occasionaUy come across — and it is qmte a
consolation when it occurs — a genuine Arab narrative, vrindino-
up in the approved three-volume novel fashion ; aU the bad

304 ULYSSES.
people bemg kUled off, or otherwise got rid of, and aU the good
ones rewarded, more or less, -with the conventional sugar-plums
of fiction; whUe the hero and heroine marry, and, in spite of
polygamy (which is mostly ignored in these stories), Uve happy
ever after. But romance of tMs roseate hue is the exception ;
much oftener the sombre tints predominate. As to the well-
known "Thousand and one Nights," in which melancholy is
rare, and catastropMc mishap still rarer, they belong to a wholly
different state of society, namely to the town and 'court of
Bagdad, at that time an Imperial capital, and the centre of an
organized civilization. But the genuine imaginings of the
popular Arab mind, not on the semi-Persian shores of the Tigris,
but in its own native lands, Nejd, Hejaz, or Yemen, are mostly
not those of cheerfuMess and success, but of sadness and mis
fortune. This is a psychological phenomenon for which many
reasons might doubtless be assigned, but to discuss them would
lead too far ; suffice for the present that the fact is so.
In the very heart of Arabia, among the rugged sierras of
Yemamah, south of Nejd, there exists a smaU and qmet vaUey,
so shut in on every side by precipitous walls of rock that those
who have threaded the long vrinding gulley that leads to it may
wonder, as they stand witMn the enclosure, how they ever got-
in, and how they are to get out again. Black spUntered crags
hem in the view all round ; and the deep blue of the sky over
head looks as hopeless as the vault of a prison. The soU that
forms the valley floor is sandy, thinly sprinkled with pale grass
and thorny shrubs ; the rocks around are absolutely bare. At
the further end of the glen, where the ground-slope leans some
what up agamst the sheer black cUff, there opens in its side a
dark overarching hoUow, that gives entrance to a spacious
cavern within the crag. It is untenanted by man, yet no wUd
beast has made its lair there ; for the spot, though seemingly
destined by nature for utter loneUness, is in fact often visfred,
and many a traveller in Yemamah turns aside from his road to
visit the vaUey and the cavern of which he has heard teU in
story as the Cave of Alkamah.

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 305
He who gave the place its name' came from far to seek it.
Alkamah was born and bred, not in this mountainous region of
Arabia, but among the open lands full two hundred miles
distant to the north, in the little town of Eoweydah, where Ms
family, who belonged to the celebrated Howazin tribe, had, it
was said, lived for centuries before. But in countries where
there is no social change, chronology is apt to be imperfect or
wlioUy deficient. Eoweydah, like most of the isolated villages
of Nejd that do not lie near any of the main caravan tracks —
though it is, of course, so far as its inhabitants are concerned, a
Uttle heart of ever-beating and ever-varying life — is in its
general features and aspect not more altered from its original
self than are, for instance, the dry skeletons of the Pyramids
or Luxor, from which Ufe and mov^ement have so long since
departed. With them time has stood still ; here it has continued
to fiow, but in a circle.
The town, for it is dignified with the name, though the sum
total of its inhabitants, great and small, does not quite come up
to 4,000 souls, looks as if it had grown spontaneously out of the
ground :on which it stands : or as K it were itself an original
formation and natural part of the landscape about it, nor could
any more vary than the plain and the hill. A deep, but dry,
ditch, crossed here and there by broad earthen causeways,
leading to the town gates ; and within its circle grey fortress
walls of brick, unbaked, except by the daily fire of the fierce
sun streaming down them ; round half-towers fianking the gates,
or placed at intervals along the walls ; the whole resembling a
schoolboy's imaginary Troy or Antium, as drawn on the page
margin of a Livy or a Homer, rather than a real fortification.
Inside these quaint defences, a maze of houses, grey and earth-
buUt also, most of them only one story high, a few tw^o, with
square outUnes, and fiat parapeted roofs, scattered in purposeless
irregularity among Mgh-walled court-yards, and intervening
clusters of orchard trees and palms, with dark foliage, all
glistening and sleeping in the sun. Something like a gap
among the roof-lines indicates the situation of the market-place,
and the tortuous course of the two or three principal streets.
X

&

3o5 UL YSSES.

Such has Eoweydah been, ever since the first hands, long since
crumbled with their very memory into forgotten dust, traced its
rough outlines ; and such it probably will be, when the hand
that now transfers those outlmes to description, is wasted to
dust also. Nor are they more changed than their surroundings
from what they were in past times. The tall, white-garmented,
brown-cloaked figures that, switch in hand, stroll slowly and
gravely along the streets ; nor has any freak of fashion varied
the traiUng dark-blue dresses of the women, and their v^eUs half
drawn over thefr faces, more often to be met with inside the
to-wn circuit than the men ; nor the brown half or whoUy naked
children that play in the sand before the doors.
One of these children was, in his day, Alkamah. His father's
house — a spacious one for Eoweydah, since it contained four
private apartments, three up stairs and one on the ground-floor,
besides a g-uest-room of dimensions befitting the noble birth and
corresponding hospitaUty of its owner, vrith a courtyard in front
— stood near to, but within, the town waUs, by one of the gates.
To Alkamah's father, too, belonged the large garden, with its
five hundred palm-trees, on the further side of the town ditch.
In the centre of tMs garden was a weU, out of which a pair of
bullocks, slowly pacing up and down an mclined slope, drew the
brimming leathern buckets that splashed their contents half
into the wooden trough that distributed the waters to the
inclosure, half back again into the cool dark hollow of the
cistern. With this well young Alkamah's first chUdish remembrances
had much to do. At its edge he used to sit for hours, watcMng
the sparkling drops as they fell, and listening to their tinkUng
plash in the water below ; tUl, much to his disgust, the one or
the other of his elder brothers, for he had two, would come up,
swinging his stick, and send the little fellow off' to make himself
useful by looking after the sheep on the hiU-side beMnd the
garden, or fetching something for the household from one of the
twenty-tMee shops that composed the entire market-place of
Eoweydah. But among the playmates of his own age in the back streets.

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 307
or -with the shouting crowds of dusky imps, who on a warm
moony night would leap, run, dance, fight, and make uproar of
aU kinds on the pebbly plain outside the town, young Alkamah
¦was seldom to be found. A serious, sUent child, he cared little
for the society of other children, and took slight interest in their
games. But he was an unwearied listener to tales of vrild
adventure, of love and war, especiaUy if accompanied by poetical
recitals, whenever the elder townsmen who assembled thus to
pass their time in the market-place or the guest-room allowed
him — a favour not always accorded to one so young — to take a
place in their circle.
His father, Aamir, -was an active, though now an elderly man,
for he was somewhat on the wrong side of sixty, rough and
ready, whose principal occupation when not looking after his
camel herds and flocks, or, more rarely, Ms gardens, was the
harrymg of his neighbours after the good old Arab fashion. His
two elder sons, Sa'ad and Sa'eed, were growing up dutiful
imitators of the paternal ways and doings ; but old Aamir whould
often speak depreciatingly of his youngest born, whom he opined
to be little better than a girl, a mere article of house furniture,
and Uke enough to grow up a milksop. Nor did Alkamah rank
much Mgher in his brothers' estimate. Only his mother,
Naileh, who saw Uttle of her two other boys, and who had no
daughter of her own m the house to keep her company, was less
disposed to find fault vrith the lad's qmet demeanour and love
of home, quaUties very unusual for his sex and age, and which
served to keep him away from out-of-doors associates, and
consequently more with her. Besides Alkamah was a dutKul
son, and really fond of Ms mother; though to other women,
even the prettiest and the youngest, he appeared, at tMs period
of his life, strangely indifferent.
It is true that — to advance matters a Uttle — he made no open
objection when, at fifteen years of age, he was betrothed by his
parents in due form to a fourth cousin of his, Fareedah by
name, a good-looMng gfrl m the opinion of all the neighbours,
and, wMch was even more to the point in the judgment of the
same tribunal, with a goodly portion to her dower. But though
X 2

3o8 ULYSSES.
the pre-ordained couple had repeatedly met, both within the
town waUs and without them, and though Fareedah had more
than once ingeniously manoeuvred her destined bridegroom into
lending her a hand at milking, or carrying a water-pitcher for
her, and the like, yet she had never had the satisfaction of
seeing him, if but once, turn back his head to look after her
when they had separated. The fact was that Alkamah, though
by no means bearish or unsociable so long as he was actually in
his cousin's company, was in the habit of forgettmg everything
about her the moment she was out of his sight.
Love, however, although a desirable, is by no means an
indispensable prerequisite for marriage in Arabia, any more
than in other countries. Hence the families .on either side in
this affair did not look on the matter as the less a settled one,
because the two principals in it, or one of them at least, showed
no very particular eagerness for ratifying the bargain.
MeanwhUe, time went on, and Alkamah, as he advanced in
years, falsified to a great extent his father's uncomplimentary
predictions, by proving Mmself active and energetic enough,
though it w^as still after a fashion of Ms own. Already, when
turned of sixteen, he was a first-rate horseman ; and by eighteen
he could use both spear and sword with a dexterity not inferior
to the best of his clan ; while in patient endurance of heat, cold,
thirst, hunger, and fatigue, he equalled or surpassed his elders,
in whose distant, and sometimes dangerous, excursions after
stray camels and the like, on doubtful, or even hostile ground,
he was always ready, when called on, to take a share. And yet
by these accomplishments, however Mghly valued by others, he
himself seemed to set little store ; nor had he ever sought an
opportunity to make the ordinary, and, in Arab opinion, the
proper use of them, in marauding, wounding, or killing Ms
fellows ; or, though of undoubted courage, shown any partiality to
fighting for fighting's sake. His greatest pleasure was to be alone ;
he would often absent Mmself for days together from the town,
without giving any one notice as to where he was gomg ; and
when he returned home again, it was not easy to learn from Mm
either where he had been, or what he had been about. Indeed,

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 309
there would have been little to tell, for he had been nowhere,
and done notMng in particular, only enjoyed his solitude. " He
will become a poet," said some of his tribesmen ; while others
incUned to the idea that he was under some infiuence from the
" Jann," or spirits of the waste. His habitual taciturnity might
afford ground for the latter conjecture, and his remarkable
eloquence, nearly allied to poetry, when he did speak, for the
former. His mother, however — for Ms father, occupied -vrith his owm
affairs, and comparatively seldom witMn the walls of the town,
still seldomer at home, troubled himself very little about the
matter — divined -vrith truer instinct that the tall, handsome,
dark-eyed, long-haired, silent lad either was already in love, or-
would soon be so. But with whom ? Not with poor Fareedah
certainly; nor, for whatever signs and tokens could indicate,
with any other special maiden of the town or clan. Hence arose
' in the maternal breast a justifiable apprehension lest the existing
or ppssible object of his first affections might be found among
the girls of some strange, perhaps unfriendly tribe, a tMng to be
deprecated on aU accounts, yet occasionally taking place, and
thus giving rise to many and complicated difficulties, and even
sometimes to bloodshed among the susceptible and purse-proud
Arabs. To anticipate some entanglement of this sort, the best plan
was undoubtedly to hasten on the fainily match which had been
previously determined, and to which Alkamah for his part had
as yet manifested no distinct repugnance ; marriage, being,- as
old Naileh observed, perhaps from her own bygone experience,
the surest cure for capricious love, and children a weighty
counterbalance to an unsettled disposition.
Unfortunately, as the result proved, both for her son and
herseK, Alkamah's mother delayed the execution of her prudent
project from week to week, and from month to month, chiefly
owino- to her own misplaced fondness, that shrank back when
the moment came from carrying out a measure which could not
but in some degree separate her from the son in whose company
she found her chiefest pleasure. And while she hesitated and

3IO ULYSSES.

temporized, fate, as it often vrill do when trifled -with overlong,
took the matter out of her hands and into its o-wn.
It was yet early summer in Nejd, but the more southerly
lands of Yemen were already parched by the increasing heat ;
and their pastoral inhabitants began, according to their im
memorial usage, to move northwards towards regions stUl com
paratively cool and green, bringing -with them thefr numerous
herds of camels and flocks of brindled sheep, to pasture wherever
either some old inter-tribal treaty or alUance, or custom, assigned
them space. Among these nomad clans of the south, that of
Morad had always been on terms of special friendship with the
Howazin brotherhood, whether townsmen or Bedouins ; and this
year particular circumstances, needless to recount here, connected
vrith the preliminaries of the annual migration north, directed
a large detachment of the Morad wanderers to the grazing
grounds which belonged to and lay in the immediate vicimty
of Eoweydah.
They came, a movmg village, 200 tents at least, men, women,
children, and camels, the last between 2,000 and 3,000 in
number, besides a large drove of sheep, and about 150 horses,
for the clan was a w^ealthy one. The elders of Howazin and the
principal inhabitants of Eoweydah went out to meet their new
guests while yet at a couple of days' distance from the town,
partly the better to make sure of the friendUness of their
intentions, and partly to assign them the Umits -witMn which
thefr- flocks and herds might pasture unmolested.
After much bargaining and parley, everything was settled to
the satisfaction of both parties. The camels were turned loose
to browse their fill on bush and grass, wMle the horses were
picketed and the tents pitched in frregular Unes at the foot of a
slope, a mile or rather more south of the town, near a group of
little weUs in the hollow. Before a week was over there had
sprung up too in front of the tents a kind of fair, where bread,
dates, cheese, milk, butter, and sometimes meat, besides a few
weapons, some articles of dress, travelUng gear, wooden bowls
curiously carved, and other implements for use or ornament
were bought and sold, Hither many of the townspeople resorted

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 311
daily ; while the new arrivals, for their part, paid frequent visits
of curiosity, idleness, or, in their loitering fashion, of business to
Eoweydah. Thus the space that lay between the gardens and
the camp was constantly speckled by comers and goers, amongst
them, as was natural, the women from either side, some for
purposes of sale or barter, others for sheer gossip's sake, were
not the least numerous, nor the least noisy.
One of these visitants to the camp was Alkamah's mother,
NaUeh, who, being of a sociable turn, had soon formed an
acquaintance vrith several, and a friendsMp with some of the
women of Morad, till the result was an almost daUy intercourse
between them. The distance from the one place to the other
was inconsiderable, but the way was in one or two places so
much shut in by the rounded hillocks between which it wound,
as not to be wholly secure for a solitary woman, in case she
shoidd thereabouts fall in with any of the camp or town
stragglers, whom the seclusion of the spot might possibly tempt
to impfertmence in one form or other. Accordingly Naileh
generally took the precaution of providing herself for the road
vrith two or more companions of her own sex, and usually of
her owm kindred.
But one mornmg it so happened that none of these v\-ere
available; and the good lady was sitting alone within doors,
disappomted of her excursion, and somewhat out of humour,
when Alkamah entered the house. His mother had soon told
Mm the reason of her solitude and annoyance, and he at once
offered to remove it by taking on Mmself the duty of escort.
His proposal was in every way welcome ; she hastened to put
on her over-dress and sandals, he gfrt himself with a light sword,
and the two set out together from the town.
The sun had been up a couple of hours, but the air was still
cool and pleasant wlien they reached the tent where Naileh
designed visiting. It was a large one, pitched not far from the
centre of the encampment. The door curtain was closed, a sign
that no one of the male sex was witMn ; but as Naileh stood
without, and clapped her hands, her friend, the mistress of the
dwelling, came out to receive and welcome her, She was herself

312 ULYSSES.

a stout middle-aged woman, of a cheerful eye, and who, judging
by the general turn of her features, and the delicacy of her hands
and feet, must once have been a beauty, before advancing years
and frequent exposure to the hot sun and wind had deprived
her of her claims to that title. Taking Alkamah's mother by
the hand she led her in ; Alkamah himself would have willingly
remained outside, and indeed had already turned to go, but to
allow a visitor to depart -without partaking of some refreshment
would have been a reproach on Morad hospitaUty, and he too,
after a little hesitation, entered the tent.
A light reed mat, platted in red and wMte, was soon spread
on the dry sand that constituted the floor, and here Alkamah
and his mother placed themselves, whUe their hostess, as soon
as the first customary greetings had passed, made a sign to her
daughter, the only other person in the tent, and who, when the
strangers came in, had remained seemingly without noticing
them, seated in a farther corner, and engaged in some household
work or other. The girl now rose, and went into an inner
compartment, whence she soon reappeared, bearing vrith her a
large bowl of fresh camel's milk, which she set down on the mat
before them. Next she fetched from the same recess a dish of
pressed dates, those of last year's crop, for the fruit of the
present season had not as yet come in. WMle she thus per
formed her part, she threw her veil aside from her face, partly
the better to see to what she was about, partly, it might be, to
obtain a clearer view of the young man, their guest, whose
presence, however, she in a manner ignored, by paying apparently
her entire attention to his mother,
Alkamah looked up, and saw before Mm a bright-eyed graceful
gill, with a smiling face and long black hair, but he was not
just then particularly struck or affected by the sight — a pretty
girl is no rarity in Nejd, Besides, his attention was soon, it
must be said, occupied by the bowl of milk, from which, when
Ms mother had taken her share, he drained a full draught : and
next by the dish of clotted sweetness set before Mm, for the
dates were of Nejran growth, and much superior in flavour to
the ordinary produce of Eoweydah.

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 313
According to Arab usage, the girl herself stood by and waited
on the strangers during their short meal, but said nothing.
When the extemporised breakfast was over, Selma — for that
was her name — began to remove the dishes, and lightly swept
the mat where they had been placed. Alkamah rose to go ; at
tMs movement of Ms Selma naturally looked at him : but
neither she nor — which would have been more to the purpose—
her mother gave either sign or hint to imply that they wished
Mm to remain longer. Only Naileh begged her son to return to
the tent on the morning of the third day, in order to escort her
back to town, for she intended to stay not that night only, but
the following one also, in the camp.
WMle on his way home, Alkamah met some men of the
Morad clan, acquaintances of his own. They asked him from
whence he was coming ; he told them, and inquired in return
the name and circumstances of the owner of the tent he had
just left ; for filial respect had hindered him from putting any
questions on the subject to his mother ; and she, whose mind
had been then somewhat preoccupied, had not thought of telling
Mm. He now learnt that the elderly dame, his hostess, was the
wHq of one Malik, a man wealthy, as wealth is reckoned among
Bedomns, and high born, being of the purest Yemenee, or
Kahtanee descent. Also that he had four sons, aU pretty men,
and of fightmg celebrity, and three daughters, two of whom were
absent, married to householders on the confines of Yemen.
From all -vvMch Alkamah might, if he cared, without the trouble
of any compromising questions, conjecture for himself that the
girl he had just seen was the third and youngest daughter ; her
name he had already learnt incidentally from her mother when
addressing her.
Details of knowledge, communicated shortly after a meeting,
often serve to fix in the mind an image that would else have
soon been effaced ; and Alkamah, who was then on the point of
more than half forgetting the morning's incidents at the camp,
now, after this conversation, recalled them every one -vrith
singular distinctness. He walked on; but before entering the
town, turned aside into Ms father's palm-garden, to rest a little

314 ULYSSES.
by the weU. It was noon ; neither buUocks nor gardener were
at work ; and Alkamah had the place, Ms favomite haunt, aU to
himseK. Not, however, entfrely so ; for, as he laid himseK do-wn m the
cool shade, mtending to doze, the likeness of Selma presented
itseK again and again before htm -vrith a strange and automatic
persistence. There was no cause; a pretty face, certainly, a
weU-balanced form ; that was all ; he had seen fifty such before
and none of them had impressed itseK on his memory for an
hour ; why should tMs one now ? Yet somehow, and almost to
Ms annoyance, it did so. To divert Ms thoughts he gazed mto
the weU ; and the face of Selma seemed to look at him out of
the dark mfrror ; he turned his eyes on the palm-trees aromid,
and it was as though she was somewhere close by peepmg from
between them. He was puzzled, and could not understand it.
Had he analyzed Ms o-wn feeUngs, he might perhaps have
discovered a cause ; and have learnt that the deepest impressions
are not always those wMch are the most consciously received.
But Alkamah was an Arab, and not much given to seK-analysis ;
besides, few youths are so, whether Arab or other, at eighteen.
So he resigned MmseK, and let Ms fancyings run on, vrithout
troubling himseK about the mystery of thefr whence and whither,
more than about Ms own or that of mankind m general, tUl the
change m the dfrection of the chequered shadows around warned
him that noon had long past. Then he got up, and went into
the market-place ; and before mghtfaU had almost rid MmseK of
the haunting memory, though it risited Mm again faintly just
as he was droppmg off to sleep.
On the mornmg of the thfrd day he returned, according to the
appomtment with Ms mother, to the Morad camp. As he
approached the tents he observed an unusual crowd in front of
and amongst them ; the space was fuU of men and women, aU
in thefr hoUday dresses ; sUver and gold gUttered, here on a
sword-scabbard, there on a rich head-ornament ; embroidered
cloaks, striped silks, gay and voluminous gfr-dles, bright and
sMnmg hues, came and went Uke the colom-s on a fiower-field
waved by the wind, But -vvhen from amidst aU tMs medley he

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 315
heard the reedy sound of pipes, and the twang of the two-stringed
gmtar in wMch the Arab ear—but probably no other in creation
— deUghts, "It must be a wedding they are about," thought
Alkamah; and, his conjecture was true.
Makmg his way tMough the crowd to the tent, he found his
mother there, as before ; with her was the hostess, MaUk's wife,
decked out in all her best, and around them a whole assemblage
of women, talMng, laugMng, and admiring each the other's
finery, and each her own. From thefr conversation Alkamah
soon understood who were the bride and bridegroom of the day ;
and from their names recognized the importance of their
respective families.
His mother had perceived Mm coming wMle yet at some
distance, and was ready to return with him to to-wn. Only to
let a guest depart vrithout eating and drinking would be as
great a solecism m Arab manners as to omit the same kind of
welcome on arrival ; and Alkamah had accordingly to sit dowm
agam for a few minutes, whUe Selma, under her mother's
directions, brought in refreshments as before. But though what
was brought was the same, the bringer was not so, at least in
some respects. Selma, Uke the other girls of the encampment,
had on that mornmg her best and gayest attfr-e, as weU as her
brightest and most attractive looks ; her gown was of wMte silk,
embroidered round with gold ; a rich gold- worked girdle clasped
her waist ; her thick black tresses hung down her back from
under a costly head-dress ; and her eyes sparkled through their
long dark lashes like lamps Ughted for a feast.
As she stood before them, dish in hand, she smUed on
Alkamah — a smUe merely of simple recognition ; there was no
further purpose in it. But when he returned the look, a shock
ran through Mm, as K a glowing spark had suddenly fallen on a
heap of dry fuel and set it aU ablaze ; Ms face glowed, and Ms
eyes remained fixed, as K in a trance. Instinctively, Selma felt
their meaning, ahd blushed in her turn till her very neck was
ruddy; then hastened to set down the dish, and drew a little
back into the darker portion of the tent.
The women around, occupied in their chat ^nd merriment,

3i6 ULYSSES.

took no notice of these symptoms ; and it was lucky for Alka
mah that they did not, else the too-evident failure of his sorry
pretext at eating might have aroused comment. Only his
mother noticed Ms want of appetite; but he put her remark
aside with some readily-invented pretext. However, he could
not restrain Ms eyes, any more than K they had not been
Ms owm, from glancing agam and again towards the corner
where Selma stood; she saw, and did not tum away. Had
she done so the after fate of both might have been different, and
happier. A few minutes — minutes that bore years -within them — went
by, and old Naileh arose to take her leave. Alkamah started ;
gave one more look with a meaning well understood, and not
unanswered or unaccepted by her to whom it was addressed;
and with a brief salutation to the rest, foUowed Ms mother into
the open afr. She, when they were once out of the crowd, began
talkmg about the marriage, and its accompanying festivities;
but her son paid no attention, indeed he did not even hear what
she said.
The path back to the town was now qmet enough, for all
ordinary loiterers were that day collected in the camp, whence
the sounds of music and rejoicing could stiU be heard, gradually
fading away as the distance increased. Alkamah and his mother
soon reached the low hills about halfway, on which a few acacia
shrubs were growing, a thin tuft of light green network against
the hazy sky. Just as they passed beneath, a fawn, one of a
troop of deer that had during the past night sought the neigh
bourhood of the camp, as these animals often do, on the chance
of picking up something to eat, came forward from among the
trees, and stood gazing curiously at them with its gentle face
and large liquid eyes. Alkamah watched it awMle in silence ;
then turning towards his mother, to whom he had not before
addressed a single word, said suddenly, " But her eyes are
brighter." " She ! Who ? " asked Naileh, thus suddenly inter
rupted in her gossip, and not at once recognizing the direction
wMch her son's thoughts had taken. He made no answer.
" Nonsense ; " said his mother, who now guessed whom he had

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 317
meant ; " what have we to do -with the girls of Morad, or they
with us ? " But Alkamah did not reply.
They went on slowly, for the air was still, and the heat, even
for summer, unusuaUy oppressive. Hardly, however, had the
palm-groves of the town risen in sight, when a swirl of cool
wind blew up sudden and sharp to meet them from the north,
and m less than a couple of minutes a long low drift of smoke
like cloud, that had been hanging along the horizon m front,
came swiftly on, driven in wreaths below the darkened sky,
whUe large heavy splashes, rather than rain-drops, drenched the
plain. Fortunately for the wayfarers a small shed, abandoned
but stUl roofed in part, was not far off, and there they took
refuge. When they were comfortably under shelter, Naileh
resumed her observations on the wedding they had left beMnd
them in the camp ; and her son, who was much annoyed vrith
MmseK for Ms involuntary betrayal of Ms own secret, did Ms
best to seem interested in her talk ; though the patter of the
rain on the leaf-thatch might have almost sufficed as an excuse
for mattention.
However, showers of tMs kind, though not uncommon in the
Arab highlands durmg the first months of summer, are generally
of short duration ; and in a quarter of an hour the heavens were
clear again, only of a purer blue, and the sun's rays more
brUUant than before : the air was Ufe-giving and cool.
Once more Alkamah and Ms mother resumed thefr road, which
soon led them among the gardens that, for a circuit of three or
four hundred yards, girded the town. Their path here was
overhung by the trees, now fresh washed from the summer dust,
and in thefr brightest green ; from every leaf hung a glittering
crystal gem, and through all came the scent of newly-moistened
herbs, mint, thyme, marjoram, and a hundred sweet smells ; a
close-grovring wayside plant was hung with spikes of blue
flowers, that looked out from among the sMning foliage. The
lad, who had again relapsed into silence, raised Ms head, and
after a pause, as if speaking rather to Ms own thoughts than to
another person, exclaimed, " Lovely ! but not so lovely as she."
"Now, tMs is too bad; what folly vriU you be after next.

3i8 ULYSSES.

chUd ? " said Ms mother. " And aU tMs about a girl of Morad !
and not haK so handsome either as any one of your own Howazm
cousms. Besides " — for now she had no doubt as to the person
in her son's thoughts — " MaUk's daughter is afready betrothed
to a man of her o-wn clan."
" To whom is she betrothed ? " qmckly asked Alkamah, on
whom the rest of Ms mother's speech had produced Uttle effect.
" Why, to her cousm, of course, Okeyl," said Naileh, and went
on to describe the pedigree and expatiate on the wealth of the
future bridegroom, " They are to be married," she concluded,
"at the end of tMs very summer, before the tribe retm-ns to
Yemen." She expected an answer, but none came ; nor did Alkamah,
whatever hints or aUusions she might afterwards make, again
utter a smgle word on the subject, either to her or to any one
else of the famUy or townsmen. Naileh, too, for her part,
thought it best not to mention the matter to her husband or to
others at home, hoping that an attachment so suddenly formed,
and, for aught she knew, unreturned, might, if not fostered by
opposition, come of itseK to as speedy an end. She calculated
not altogether unvrisely, yet, as it happened, -wrongly.
Not that for some time after there appeared anytMng special
on Alkamah's o-wn side to excite suspicion. With Ms father,
Ms mother — every one, m short, Ms manner was just the same
as it always had been; nor was there any perceptible change
in Ms occupations and pursuits. To be sure, he was often absent
from home, no one knew exactly where ; but that had been Ms
way before. Besides, few men or lads who could help it
remained long either by day or mght within the hot city waUs
during the summer months. And K by chance he was asked
what he had been domg, he would answer frankly enough that
he had been lookmg after the sheep or camels, as the case might
be, -withm the pasture grounds. True, that these pasture-grounds
lay to the south, and consequently m the same dfrection as the
Morad encampment ; but then they were much further off— half
a day's ride distant at least. All tMs wlule Ms brothers, Sa'ad
and Sa'eed, were absent on a long journey northwards to the

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 319
confines of Syria, whither they were in the habit of going every
year -with a trading caravan ; Ms father, who had been absent
for a few weeks, had lately returned.
Two months, or nearly so, had passed thus, when some herds
men of the Yemenee clan, returning at nightfall to the camp,
reported that they had more than once seen in the neighbom-hood
of the tents the figure of a man, who, as they judged, did not
belong to their o-wn people, and whose manner was that of one
on the look-out for sometMng or somebody. Under the dusk of
twiUght they could not, they said, distinguish more. But tMs
was enough to cause some not unnatural uneasiness in the
Morad camp ; and for a whUe a careful look-out was kept in the
quarter where the figure had, by the men's account, been seen,
but with no result.
One night, however, it came about that Selma was missed
from her father's tent ; it was not long after dark — hardly an
hour, in fact, and she had often before been away from home at
that time of evening, or near it, as was then first remarked ; only
the fact had somehow hitherto passed unnoticed. But tMs night
attention was drawn, for it so chanced that two of her brothers
had arrived, just about sunset, from a distant journey — in fact
from thefr homes in Nejran, at the entry of Yemen. They came
wholly unexpected, and so long as every one was occupied with
the first hurry of preparations for their reception, nothing
particular was asked or said. But when these were over, and
supper had taken off the edge of hunger, and given them leisure,
so to speak, to look about them, they, very naturaUy, inqmred
after their sister. Then it was that, to her parents' surprise, no
less than that of the rest, she was nowhere to be found ; nor did
any reason suggest itself to account for her being away at that
hour. Everybody felt the circumstance to be unpleasant, though no
one liked to say so. A few minutes later Selma herself entered,
her manner somewhat fiurried and hasty, her colour heightened,
and her breath quick ; there were traces of damp sand on the
sMrts of her traUing over-dress. These indications, however,
she partly accounted for, or tried to do so, by saying at once.

320 ULYSSES.

before any one had had time to inqufre, that she had been out
on a visit to another gfrl, a friend of hers, in such and such a
tent, naming it, near a weU at the further end of the camp, and
that she had only just then heard of her brothers' arrival.
Havmg given these explanations, and -without aUo-wing leisure
for comment, she began asMng her brothers a multitude of
questions : when they had set out ? how had they left her sisters
in Yemen ? how matters went vrith them and the rest of the
famUy ? and so on, thus prescribmg to those present the channel
of conversation at least, K not of thought. Her brothers with
entfre readiness foUowed the lead, the others jomed, and the
conversation continued between them and the neighbours who
kept dropping in tUl midnight, -vrithout any sign of unpleasant
ness or even curiosity as to what had immediately preceded it.
" All is right — they have suspected nothing," thought Selma.
They had suspected very much. But most of aU her brothers,
who next morning apart on a shrubby knoU outside the camp,
talked the matter over between themselves, and deterMined to
make further inquiries into its meaning.
Persevermgly, though warUy, they set to work foUovring up
every clue in camp and town, and skUfuUy avroiding whatever
might awake in the mmds of others the surmises wMch before
long had become certainty in their own. One mdication led to
another, and before a fortnight was over they had succeeded in
arriving at the mortfrying conclusion that their sister had a
lover ; that she had met Mm by appointment more than once,
and that the lover was one, not of their o-wn tribe, but of the
stranger Howazin — was young Alkamah himseK. Yet vehement
as vvas their indignation at tMs discovery, they repressed it for a
whUe, and, with Arab prudence, aUowed some days more to pass
before committmg themselves to action of any kmd.
Selma, who knew notMng of aU this, yet saw in her relatives'
arrival cause enough for extra caution, soon contrived to apprise
her lover of the fact, and to recommend Mm greater warmess m
Ms movements. For some time accordingly they by mutual
consent broke off the interriews wMch had commenced not long
after their first acquamtance, and had been kept up -with toler-

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 321
able frequency ever since. But when time went by, and the
watchers, K there were any, made no sign, Alkamah's passion
and the girl's own light-heartedness again prevailed ; and by
means of a shepherd lad, a foster-brother of Alkamah's, and the
only but faithful sharer of Ms secret, a meeting was agreed on
in the Uttle hollow of Batn-Darih, on the edge of a patch of wild
and broken ground, on the east of the Morad tents.
It was about midnight; and Alkamah, wrapped in a dark
cloak, had been waiting at Batn-Darih an hour or more, en
sconced in the double shade of the hiUock-side and of a cluster
of dwarf palm-trees that grew at the bottom of the dell, and
watcMng the rim of the valley, which, though really near,
loomed m the night Uke a far-off range of black heights. The
moon had not yet risen ; only the countless stars, blue, yellow,
white, and red, were sparkling down to the very edge of the
narrow horizon. Suddenly a moring outUne blotted some of
them out; it was she, Selma, covered from head to foot in a
black veU ; then the outUne became again invisible, or at least
would have been so to any eyes except those of an expectant
lover, as it cautiously descended the inner slope. Soon Alkamah
and she were seated almost side by side ; each had a long story,
above a fortnight, of love, fear, hope, expectation, to tell ; and
each told it to a wUUng Ustener, with an eloquence not more of
the tongue than of the heart, and without the least fear that any
eye but their own was there to see, or ear to hear them in their
talk. And meanwhUe, screened from observation by the darkness of
the night, as well as by a thorny tuft that grew on the MU edge
above and behind the lovers, two watchers whom they little
thought of vritnessed aU. They were Selma's own brothers,
Dahir and Serhan, who, from signs slight in themselves, but
sufficient where jealousy was on the alert, had divined their
sister's intention that evening, and had followed her unperceived
to the appointed spot. There, stretched on the sandy margin,
they peered down into the depth below -with straining eyes, to
wMch hate suppUed the clearness of rision wMch the night-
gloom domed. Y

322 ULYSSES.
" By God, I must MU Mm here and now," muttered the elder
brother, as, without -withdra-wing Ms gaze for an mstant from
the group beneath, he half instmctively slipped back Ms hand
to the Mit of Ms sword.
" Hold, DaMr, are you mad ? " eagerly wMspered m Ms ear
the other, laying Ms hand as he spoke on that of the other.
"Would you that we ourselves should make pubUc om o-wn
disgrace ? — the disgrace of the whole tribe ? "
Dahfr set Ms teeth. " If not now, another day. But, by the
honour of our km, I vriU do it tMs very mght, if he draws but
an inch nearer to her," he contmued, in a low growl of mtense
hate. " Gently, gently ; wait tUl they have separated— they must
soon separate, for the moon is about to rise — and I -vriU tell you
somethmg more to the purpose than aU that, and -vrith less risk
of compromismg our good name and hers," repUed Serhan, also
under Ms breath ; then added qmckly, " Back a Uttle — ^Ue qmte
sttU ; they are movmg."
'WhUe tins dialogue had been gomg on a famt yeUovrish gleam
had begun to spread upwards from the desert horizon-Une before
them to the east, where the wanmg moon was at last about to
appear. Alkamah and Selma had also perceived it, but Ungered.
Hurriedly they now rose; and after a brief leave-taking, the
words of wMch were inaudible to the Ustenmg spies above,
separated, each learing the hoUow by a separate way ; Selma's
took her unsuspectmgly close by her brothers' Mding-place.
They continued flat and motionless, tUl some minutes had
elapsed; then first one, next the other, raised Ms head and
looked around ; the level moonUght was just touchmg the stones
scattered on the plam. Perceiving that no human bemg was
now in sight, they sat up.
" A curse on them both ! " groaned Dahfr, as he drew in a
long breath.
" It is a bad busmess ; she is as fond of Mm as he of her,"
said Serhan, in a matter-of-fact voice ; " and as long as they
remain in each other's neighbourhood matters -wiU only get
worse and worse. They must be separated; only it must be

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 323
managed quietly, for violence would be of no use; indeed it
would cause a frightful scandal, by which we and everyone else
in the tribe would be put to shame ; besides a long reckoning to
settle with the Howazin."
" I should Uke to eat their fiesh raw and to drink their blood
— Ms and every one of them," was Dahir's very unpromising
answer. " Let that talk alone," rejoined his brother ; " we must set
about it in qmte a different way. We will tell our father what
we have seen ; he vriU talk the affair over with old Aamir ; and
depend upon it neither of them wUl Uke it any better than we
do. What means they wiU next take is for them to determine ;
though I can guess fairly weU. But of one thing you may be
sure, there wiU be no more love-makings and meetings, either at
Batn-DarUi or anywhere else. And now let us get back into
the camp before the moon is Mgh."
But on the way he had some difficulty in keeping Ms more
fiery, though, at heart, not more mdignant brother, from
executing that very night some less prudent resolution, which
might, and indeed certainly would, have been not less fatal to
his Q-wn sister's reputation than to her lover's Ufe.
Next day, before the sun was well past the mid-heavens,
Alkamah's father knew aU.
Clandestme meetings, passion distinctly, and, above aU,
mutually avowed before betrothal, are, in the Arab code of
famUy honour, offences of so deep a dye as wholly to preclude
all possibiUty of future marriage between the indiscreet lovers,
or even of alliance between their respective famiUes, for ever
after. Indeed the rule is so absolute, the penalty so inexorable,
that it is strange how the wildest imprudence of youth can ever
bUnd those who break it to the extremity of the risk they meur.
Yet here, as in other tMngs, love wUl from time to time defy
reason, and Ughtly mem- consequences wMch later on are found
too heavy to be borne. Alkamah and Selma were destmed to
have their names inscribed in the long Ust of those who broke
the law, and paid the forfeit.
Neither the brothers of the one nor the father of the other
Y 2

324 ULYSSES.

were Ukely to hesitate for an instant as to the course to be
pursued, or to experience the smallest compunction for the pain
they were about to infiict : all pity for the culprits was lost in
the enormity of the offence. The intercourse must be broken
off, and that immediately ; its renewal must be prevented, and
that at any cost, not of feeUngs only but, if need were, of Ufe
itself The only question was, how could tMs most surely be
done without betraying to outside knowledge that wMcli the
paternal elder of Howazin on his side, and the youths of Morad
on theirs, from analogous, though in some respects opposite
motives, looked on with absolute, uncompromising disfavour.
Unluckily for the two whose fate was under discussion, their
separation was a tMng of only too easy management. A select
band of fighting men from Eoweydah and from other settlements
of the Howazin tribe was at that very time on the point of
setting out for the western, or Hejaz, frontier ; there to take part
in the oft-renewed struggle between their Arab kmsmen and the
encroacMng Egyptian power, with its numerous Bedouin allies.
That young Alkamah should be sent on an enterprise in wMch
his time of Ufe so evidently fitted Mm to bear a part would be
looked on as a matter of course ; and whUe he was absent at a
distance that would certainly not admit of his return before the
winter, possibly not tUl the ensuing spring, Selma might be
taken back by her family to her native Yemen, and be there
safely married, out of the reach and, it did not seem unreasonable
to hope, out of the memory or even thought of her mdiscreet
admirer. The plan was too simple a one not to succeed. It
was agreed on ; and the two elders parted, both satisfied with it,
and, to a certain extent, with each other.
The evemng of the day that foUowed this conference, Alka
mah, who after receiving Selma's warning had at first kept
somewhat out of the way, but now began to fear lest a too
prolonged absence from town and home should give rise to
dangerous comments, was seated, in company with his father
and mother, in the back room of the ground-fioor in their house.
The grey gloaming from without, scantUy admitted through two
small windows high up in the wall, was now fast yielding place

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 325

to the flickering glare cast by a few brands of the Arab larch, or
Ithel, that had been Mndled in the little pit-like fireplace on the
floor, more to make up after a fasMon for the absence of lamp or
candle than for any other purpose. The light played on the
hard features and grizzled beard of old Aamir, who had seated
Mmself at the upper end of the room, where two silk-covered
cusMons and a narrow strip of home-made carpet ministered
aUke to Ms digmty and comfort ; it Uluminated too, but less
distinctly, because further off, the once handsome, but now worn
and wrmkled face of Ms wife Naileh, who leaned her back
against the opposite wall lower down, and occupied her hands,
but not her thoughts, m spinning. Though she had not been
taken into her husband's latest counsel, she had a tolerable guess
both of what had been really going on, and of what topics were
likely to be discussed that very night ; and her sympathies were
already enUsted, in part at least, in her son's behalf Still,
being well aware from her husband's character that any inter
ference of her own would, K volunteered, be not merely useless
but positively injurious, she had made up her nfrnd to reserve it
tUl it should be absolutely necessary, and, in appearance at least,
to follow, not attempt to lead, the talk.
Alkamah himself, though trying to look unconcerned, was in
reality very far from comfortable. He had been summoned by
Ms father on an eridently trifling pretence, and while on his
way from the pastures had incidentally learnt that Selma's two
brothers had been seen returning from the town ; what errand
had brought them thither Ms conscience, though it could not
absolutely tell, might easUy suggest. And Ms father's silence,
wMch had now been prolonged for a fuU half-hour since his first
coming in, helped only to confirm the ominous presage. With
these tMngs on his mind, he also, and wisely, determined to be
passive as far as possible, and to avoid giring any sign by word
or gestm-e that he was aware of being suspected of anything ;
unconsciously, however, but not the less really, he was resolved,
K pushed to it, to avow all unreservedly, and to take the
consequences. MeanwMle Ms father remained half-recUned in
apparent ease, but inwardly anxious ; unwiUing to begin a

326 ULYSSES.

discussion of wMch he foresaw the difficulties, yet fully de
termined to carry Ms point, without avovring in so many words
Ms true motive, K it could be so managed, but ready, if cfrcum
stances reqmred it, for the plainest speaMng out. He would
infinitely prefer the former, but would not, should that prove
insufficient, shrmk from the latter.
The customary row of half-a-dozen curiously wrought copper
coffee-pots, ranged accordmg to thefr respective sizes from the
biggest to the smaUest, like chUdren in a file, stood along tfie
edge of the fire-place in front of Alkamah. Almost mechamcaUy
he occupied Mmself with pouring out the contents of one into
another; then bethought MmseK, and, in the hope that by so
doing he might somehow put an end to the prolonged sUence
wMch to anxiety Uke Ms was becoming insupportable, he filled
a cup and handed it unasked to Ms father,
Aamir took it and drank ; then threw it gently from Mm — it
feU upright on the mat and remamed so. The half-jesting omen,
one in common use among Arabs, was not much, but it sufficed
to encourage Mm,
" Alek," he said, addressing Ms son, " I expect your brothers
back in a few days ; some of the caravan people came m yester
day, and they told me that the others -wiU soon foUow." He
paused : Alkamah gave no answer ; for tMs beginning was
ambiguous, and he preferred to wait to see what would come
next. " Either Sa'ad or Sa'eed when here can look after the camels
and the house during the -winter," contmued Ms father, " These
two years past they have been out on forays ; and it is Mgh
time now that you too, chUd, should take your turn, and let
people see that you can do as well as your brothers,"
" So, they have found it out in good earnest, and want to get
me out of the way; that is the meaning," said Alkamah to
MmseK, Then aloud, " Father, it is not my fault that I have
not been out before; I have been ready long since; but you
never sent me, or said anytMng about it. And besides,  "
here he stopped short,
Naileh looked up from her work, " He is very young yet,"

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 327
said she, " a mere chUd ; and had better remain to take care of
the herds and the garden for a couple of years yet, before going
on raids and fighting. Time enough for all that when he is
grown up ; meanwlule I want somebody to stay vrith me m the
town; and you and Ms brothers are never qmet for a week
together." Aamfr ignored tMs speech, as well as Ms son's ; and continued,
exactly as K no objection had been made or could be. " So-and-
So," — naming a townsman of some importance, — " wUl set out
to-morrow vrith tMrty or forty of our young men for the Hejaz,
to help our alUes, the Benoo-Harb, against the Egyptian troops.
You, boy, shaU go with them. When I was your age," he went
on, now replying indirectly to what his wife had said, " I had
afready given wounds in fafr fight, and received them too ; and
it is no credit to the famUy that a son of mine should pass his
time always witMn fom- waUs, Uke a girl, or an old woman."
His wife understood the taunt, but as she had no incUnation
to provoke more, she kept silence, and only regretted that she
had spoken at aU. Alkamah grew angry ; and looking doggedly
before Mm, said, " When next spring comes I wiU go, but not
sooner." With tMs he began arranging the bm-ning ends of
wood on the dog-irons, -with an air of, "I have made up my
mmd, and do not mean to change, come what may."
Aamir sat in silence a minute or two; he knew Ms son's
temper, and was unvrilUng to drive Mm to open rupture and
revolt. He looked towards Ms -wife ; but she had resumed her
knittmg, and seemed to have no further intention of mixing in
the talk either one way or other. He must take it on himself
then to speak out ; but could he trust Mmself to measure his
words on so disagreeable a subject ? On the other hand he was
no tyrant, — household tyrants are rare in Arabia, — and he
admitted to MmseK that both Ms son and Ms wife had a right to
be told the real motive of Ms command ; only he was ashamed
to do so. Just then the last piece of wood, that had been
flaming brightly Uke a candle and Ughting up the whole room,
suddenly snapped and coUapsed among the embers, learing all
in darkness, but for the dull red glow from the fire-place, barely

328 ULYSSES.

sufficient to show the general outlines, not however the features
of those seated around. The obscurity was convement ; and he
avaUed himseK of it.
" Alek," he said, addressmg Ms son briskly, and in the famUiar
tone of former years.
" At your serrice," answered the lad, lookmg up.
"What makes you -wish to remain at home," continued Ms
father, " is, I know, that gfrl of Morad, the daughter of MaUk :
and that is precisely the very reason why you must be off.
Listen, both of you," for Alkamah and Ms mother each gave
signs of interrupting, " it is for your good ; I know everytMng
that has happened ; so do her people too. As for you, boy, you
have acted like a fool, and have got yourseK and the girl talked
of aU over the town. How m God's name do you expect to
marry her, after this gossip has been set on foot ? or do you-
want to disgrace the whole famUy, and to brmg us into a quarrel
which God alone can teU how it may end ? "
This was not pleasant to hear ; but the tone in wMch it was
spoken was far from unkindly ; and Alkamah felt that he had
deserved and might have received worse. So he only hung down
his head, and said nothmg.
"Besides, you are only a child, as one can see by your
conduct," continued his father, foUo-wing up the advantage he
had gained, " and a cMld you -wiU remain tiU you have seen
something of the world, and learnt the use of arms Uke a man.
No one would dream of giring Ms daughter to a mere lad, who
has never gone further than the garden-waUs and the town
pastures ; least of all a man of Morad, one of the hardest fighting
tribes in the whole of Yemen."
" I am as much a man as any sheep-driver or horseman either
of Yemen," muttered Alkamah, stUl looMng do-wn ; " and K any
one desires to try, he may soon find out that."
"Very good," repUed Aamir; "perhaps you are, Alek; but
the plain fact is that tiU you have done sometMng to prove your
manhood, you can never hope to get the girl you -wish for, or
any other. Do as I teU you ; and when you return we -wiU see
about the matter. Else  "

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 329
" He wiU obey you," eagerly interrupted Naileh, fearing the
evU effects of a direct threat ; " he will do aU you wish — will
you not, Alek ? " turning to her son. " Only," to her husband,
" do not send him away too far, let Mm come back soon, and all
wUl be weU."
Alkamah saw that further resistance on his part would be
useless, and did not attempt it. Some conversation followed,
cMefly about the expedition wMch he was to accompany, and
Ms own preparations for it ; after wMcli Ms father got up, girt
on Ms sword, threw Ms cloak over his shoulders, and left the
house. The lad followed Mm into the street and to the town
gate ; then returned to his mother, whom he found where he had
left her, but with her head on her hands, crying bitterly. He
sat down by her, and tried to comfort her, but she drew away
from him, and contmued sobbing.
" What have you done ? " said she ; " why did you not take
my ad-rice at flrst ? Ah ! it is all my own fault ; it is I who am
to blame for taking you to the camp ! And now I shall lose
you ; you vrill go to the war, and God knows when you wUl
come back ; and I, — oh, what shall I do ? "
He Mssed her hands and her forehead ; but it was long before
she had recovered sufficient composure to speak connectedly.
When she did, it was to use every argument, every persuasion in
her power to induce Mm to give up Ms profitless attachment for
Selma, " that Yemenee girl," as she called her ; and to turn his
affections mstead on Fareedah, or indeed any maiden of his own
town and tribe.
But tMs was a point on wMch Alkamah was not to be moved,
not even by his mother. Besides, of a confiding temperament,
he had taken Ms father's simulated compUance for genuine ; and
believed that to the ultimate success of Ms smt nothing more
was wanted than Ms o-wn fulfilment of the conditions just
imposed upon him. Anyhow, her he would have, and no other ;
death itself, he said, should not change him. His mother sighed ;
but considering in her turn that her son's hope of obtaining
Selma was after aU the best pledge for Ms speedy return ; wMle,
on the contrary, if he despaired of her, he might not improbably

330 ULYSSES.

be hurried into some wUd resolution, resulting in perpetual
absence or worse, she too took the part of apparently consenting
to the mam object of his -vrishes; tUl poor Alkamah reaUy
thought he had gamed over both father and mother to his side.
The fighting-party of wMch Ms father had spoken was in
eamest to have set out on the next day. But " half the journey
is to cross the tMeshold," says the Arab proverb ; and K
punctuaUty be a virtue it is one Uttle practised m this country,
where, on occasions of the sort, somebody is always waitmg for
somebody else; and everybody has at the very last moment
something missing that nobody can do -vrithout. And thus it
now happened, -vrithout the need of any manceu-vring on Alka
mah's part, that a fuU week elapsed before he or any of Ms
comrades left Eoweydah. During this mterval, m spite of the
counter-vigUance kept by a mutual understanding between the
relatives,- — Clove's natm-al enemies, — on either side, the lovers
managed one more secret mter-riew — the last.
Alkamah certainly protested much, but not more than he had
it in him to perform ; Selma, it might be, protested too much ;
but not more than she then meant and thought herseK equal to
perform. As they rose to separate they held each the other's
hand ; there was a signet ring on Alkamah's ; by some gfrlish
fancy Selma kept playing -with it as they talked, tuming it
round and round on his finger.
; " Take it, love," he said.
" Your ring mdeed ! why, what should I do ^rith it ? a pretty
fuss there would be K my people saw your signet m my
keepmg!" laughed she. "No; leave it where it is, ttU the
time comes when you can openly lend it me, or when I can use
it as my own also."
" So I wiU," he answered. They kissed, and parted.
Two days after, at noon, — it was a glorious noon, brisk afr
and spotless blue sky, — ^thirty-four riders -vrith spear and sword,
mounted on dromedaries, and taking with them about haK the
number of led horses, issued from the westerly gate of Eoweydah,
crossed a graveUy plain, then a Uttle range of Mils, and were
goon out of sight of the town, and on thefr way for the Hejaz.

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 331
One of the riders was Alkamah. A crowd of relations, friends,
-vrives, daughters, cousins, had stood outside the town-gate
watcMng their departm-e. Among that crowd was Fareedah,
Alkamah's betrothed, and Ms mother Naileh. She had seen her
son for the last time.

Part IL
The Howazin contmgent had bad luck. After a long and toil
some jom-ney across two-thirds of the broadest breadth of the
Arabian Penmsula, in the hottest and droughtiest season of the
year, -vrith many incidental discomforts, such as sometimes an
unexpected deficiency of water in the wells on their Une of route,
sometimes an unfriendly encounter with a rival Bedoum clan,
they arrived at last within the territory of the Benoo-Harb, and
found their friends not prosperous, but on the contrary, hard
pressed, and much in need even of the slight succour that so
small an auxiUary band as their own could afford.
Some weeks passed in desultory skirmishing rather than
fightmg -vrith thefr hereditary enemies, the tribesmen of Oteybah
and Hodeyl, who were now under arms in the Egyptian cause.
For a wMle notMng serious occurred on either side, tiU one
mornmg early, Alkamah, and about twenty of Ms companions
from Eoweydah, who, in their ignorance of the locaUties, had
advanced dangerously far on the hostile ground, were surprised
and surrounded by at least double their own number of the
enemy's horsemen. So sudden and unexpected was the attack,
that many of the Howazin were overpowered and kUled before
they had even had time to think of defence ; the remainder, with
a few warriors of Benoo-Harb, who chanced to come up during
the fray, behaved themselves Uke men. But it was no use, the
odds were too many for them ; and after half an hour of fierce
contest they gave way and fied, leaving behmd them more than
a dozen dead or disabled on the field ; and amongst the number
Alkamah, who after receiving several sabre-cuts had fallen
bleeding and senseless from Ms horse. Thus the Oteybah

332 ULYSSES.

remained masters of the day ; while the vanqmshed, as was only
natural, spread everywhere in their flight the most exaggerated
accounts both of the number of their opponents and of their own
losses. And thus it happened that when the report of the fray
reached Eoweydah a month later, it included the name of
Alkamah in the list of the dead.
Dead, however, he was not; but, which was next bad, a
prisoner. His dress, the goodness of his armour and horse, and
the rich ornaments of Ms sword-hilt, led the victorious Oteybah
while they busied themselves in spoiling the slam and the
wounded, to conclude that he must be a person of some conse
quence, probably belonging to a wealthy famUy, and for whose
liberation accordingly a heavy ransom might in due time be
demanded and obtained, according to Bedouin custom. Under
this impression they neither gave him, as they did to two or
three others of Ms less fortunate comrades lying beside him, the
finishing stroke, nor left Mm where he was at the disposal of the
viUtures, which were already hovering impatient over the blood
stained plain. On the contrary, they Ufted him up -with a
care that a looker-on, unacquainted -with the real motive, might
have taken for tenderness, and conveyed him, still insensible, to
a neighbouring village, where the women of the tribe gave him
the benefit of what nursing their experience, a pretty large one,
of like cases, and their own compassionate feelings, certainly not
diminished by the youth and good looks of their helpless charge,
suggested. Fresh air, a sound constitution, and the absence of over much
medical interference, are excellent conditions for a cure ; and it
was not long before Alkamah's wounds, wMch, Uke most sabre-
cuts, were rather -wide than deep, began to heal; so that a
surgeon, had such been present, would have pronounced Mm not
only out of danger, but progressing favourably towards conva
lescence. This Ms captors, without being surgeons, observed,
and lost no time in inqmrmg of him his name, his birthplace,
Ms family, and the Uke.
But their calculations were deceived ; for Alkamah had, -with
a certain foreboding, determined long before what his conduct

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 333
should be under such cfrcumstances, did they occm-, and had
even taken Ms measiues accordingly. How could he ever look
Selma, and yet more her relations, the warUke Benoo-Murad, in
the face, K he came before them as a ransomed prisoner, o-wing
Ms Ufe to the contemptuous pity or greed of Ms enemies, and
the forced liberaUty of Ms own people ? Loss of Uberty, loss of
Ufe, anytMng vvould be preferable to this ; he would return to
Eoweydah, K not successful, at least unshamed, or not retm-n
at aU.
With this intention he had, the very day that he left Ms
native to-wn, taken off his signet rmg, the same wMch Selma's
fingers had touched, and, -with a sigh, buried it out of the way,
m a lonely place, where no eyes but Ms o-wn were Ukely to
search for it again. And as he was now the only prisoner of Ms
clan aUve m the hands of the Oteybah, nothmg remamed that
could possibly identKy liim except Ms o-wn avowal, and that he
was resolved nev^er should. So question Mm as they might, they
obtamed no answer.
TMs sUence of Ms they were at fu-st mcUned to attribute to
the moodmess consequent on pain, extreme weakness, and recent
captirity ; and in tMs beUef desisted for a few days from thefr
questionmgs, not doubttng that vrith the return of strength and
the renewed longings after freedom that could not faU to accom
pany it, thefr prisoner would prove less reticent. But when in
due com-se of time his wounds had healed over, and Ms recovery
was complete, or nearly so, Ms interrogators, much to thefr annoy
ance, found Mm not a wMt more commumcativ'e than he had
been before. Severity was then brought to bear ; he was treated
-with mcreastng harshness ; Ms aUowance of food was cmtaUed,
and his bonds tightened; wMle tMeats and even blows alter
nated daUy with promises and fafr speeches; aU dfrected to
obtafri from Mm the declaration of Ms name and fanuly. But
Alkamah held Ms own ; tMeats and blandishments, blows and
Ul-usage, were alike tMo-wn away ; and at last it became clear
to his captors themselves that Ms resolution was not to be over
come, even by the fear of death itseK.
KUling htm was, however, no part of thefr plan. The Oteybah,

334 ULYSSES.

though half barbarous in their habits, were not wantonly cruel ;
like other Bedouins, they would, except under special provocation,
have recoiled from putting a prisoner to death in cold blood;
and besides, they were much too prudent to throw away with his
life their only chance of turning him sooner or later into profit.
But their expectations by bemg deferred became less keen ; new
incidents of foray and plunder drew away their interest from the
old ; by degrees they almost ceased to watch over the captive, or
rather made over that duty in great part to the women of the
viUage. By their compassion Ms bonds, though not absolutely
taken off, were slacked to such an extent that he was able to
move about; he was even occasionaUy allowed to leave the
narrow hut, so long Ms prison, and stretch his cramped Umbs,
for a short distance, and under guard, in the open afr. At last,
he came to be employed, along -with others, in fetching water, in
collecting firewood, in milMng the camels, and so forth: all
occasions of wMch he availed MmseK to look about him as much
as possible, tUl he ended by getting into his head a fafrly
accurate idea of the place itself, as also of the dfrection in wMch
he conjectured that his own regions of Nejd and the town of
Eoweydah must lie, and to what point of the. compass lay the
route that might if followed take Mm back thither.
Long he waited, till in the early spring of the year a night
unusually dark vrith clouds, vrind, and rain, coinciding with the
temporary absence on some business or other of those to whose
particular keeping he had been intrusted, gave Mm the -vrished-
for opportumty. Cautiously he rid himself of the cords that
still, though loosely, bound Ms limbs ; more cautiously yet he
made Ms way out of the house ; most cautiously of all, lest alarm
should be given by dogs or men, he tMeaded the precincts of the
viUage by paths that he had observed and marked out for Mmself
in the daytime ; and then, eastward ho !
The adventm-es that befeU Mm on Ms long and difficult
jomney across the wide tract that lay between the Hejaz and
Eoweydah need not here be narrated in detaU. For the first
tMee days he was foUowed, and only escaped recapture by
plungmg into the -wUdest and most friaccessible regions of the

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 335
rocky Teyma desert. He met -vrith many dangers, sometimes
from -wild beasts, sometimes from roving Bedouins ; of hunger,
thfrst, cold, heat, watchfulness, fatigue, he had fuU share. Even
when comparatively safe from pursuit prudence compelled him
to avoid the more frequented tracts, and instead to make -vride
circuits wMch often prolonged what would have been the journey
of one day to that of two or more; not rarely, too, he was
compeUed to halt where he might from sheer weariness and
exhaustion. But harder to bear than aU the rest was that the
thought of Selma, once his only but sufficient support, now no
longer cheered Mm but tormented. Night and day her image
moved before Mm ; she was the goal towards wMcli he must
strive, though hopeless to attain ; for he felt sure, though why
he could not say, that on his arrival at home he would not find
her there ; and tMs gloomy presentiment from which, do what
he might, he could not free Mmself, not merely depressed his
spirits, but unnerved Ms limbs, and rendered every privation,
every suffering, doubly pamful.
In fact, he must have broken down altogether, and ended his
labours and Ms love alike by the side of some stony lullock,
or under the thorn-bushes of some torrent bed, had not the
hospitable generosity -of a Bedomn cMef near the frontier of
Nejd, m whose encampment he sought a couple of days' repose
and food, pro-rided Mm -with a camel ; mounted on wMch he
was able to continue Ms jom-ney. With tMs seasonable help
he went on for ten more days, not quite certam of Ms direction ;
tiU one afternoon he suddenly found Mmself among well-known
landmarks that assured him of Ms near approach to his native
town, wMch he had left almost a year before in very different
pUght. Having fuUy ascertained Ms whereabouts, he halted Ms camel
m the most secluded spot he could find, and remained there
tUl evening, as the aftemoon was of all times of day the most
likely for falUng in -with some chance acquaintance among the
shepherds or herdsmen -without the waUs ; and he -wished to
avoid tMs sort of prematme recognition before entering the
to-wn. There was indeed less risk of it than he thought ; for he

336 ULYSSES.

Mmself was only half aware of the change wrought in Ms
appearance by the last few months. His face was now lean,
weather-worn, and almost black; his dress scanty, of the
coarsest quaUty, and aU in rags ; there was neither lance in Ms
hand nor sword by his side; nothing, in a word, to announce
the son of the wealthy Aamir, the prosperous Alkamah of former
days. A relation or intimate friend might just have recognized
him ; an acquaintance scarcely.
The first half of the night he passed alone under the starUght,
wrapped in the tattered cloak which was now almost his only
covering ; but he did not attempt to sleep, Ms eyes were open,
gazing up at the spangled heaven overhead. The stars seemed
to have been caught in the sky and stood stUl; would they
never slope westwards ? Midnight came : there was some
distance to go ; and it was not till about halfway between dawn
and noon that he halted a second time on the summit of a long
ascent, whence he could distinctly see the well-known palm-tops
of the Eoweydah gardens across a further ridge ; while immedi
ately in front of him was the hollow where the Morad camp
had been the year before.
Where the camp had been. It was there no longer. Only
the shaUow lines traced on the ground where the tents had
stood, and the marks of some small water-channels that had
been dug out leading tMther from the weUs, remained to indicate
its former position. No life, no movement, was there now.
And Selma? Alkamah knew that his forebodings had been
verified, one way or other, and Ms eyes filled with tears that
dimmed his sight but did not fall.
He felt as if he could wilUngly have lain down there and
then, and never risen again, so entirely had aU energy for going
further, all desire of the future, left him. But this would not
do, he must learn more; and that could only be within the
town and from those of his own family. So, after a time, he
again s-witched his lean beast into movement, and followed the
same path that a twelvemonth before he had traversed — -with
what different feelings ! — in Ms mother's company, tiU he saw
the town gate open in front. Here a second time Ms resolution

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 337
faded Mm, and like one who hesitates before taldng a plunge
into deep water, though he knows there is no' good in deferring
it, he turned aside from the road, and sought a respite from the
ineritable among the old haunts of quiet in Ms father's garden.
He made his camel crouch down on the sand near the hedge
outside, and entered. Much to Ms satisfaction he found no one
there to distm-b the soUtude he -wished for tn his favourite place
by the well. But no likeness of Selma now looked up at Mm
from its depths; no girUsh form peeped out from behind the
palm-trees. WitMn, without, aU was blank. Tired and out of
heart, Alkamah stretched himself by the margin, half in shade,
half in sun, and remained there -without stirring, vrithout even
thinking what he should do or where he should go next,
A rustUng noise was heard; some one was approacMng by
the narrow path wMch led up to the well, Alkamah tumed Ms
face that way, and at once started to his feet ; it was his brother
Sa'ad. Eecognition was easy on the one side, though not
equaUy so on the other ; for Sa'ad, taken by surprise, had to
look hard and inqufringly for several seconds before he became
sme of Ms brother in the gaunt and ragged figure there. He
then embraced Mm as one returned from the dead.
The first greetmgs were soon exchanged, and the first questions
asked and answered. Alkamah in a few words gave a summary
account of what had happened in the Hejaz, of Ms own capture
and subsequent escape ; and learnt in return the principal facts
relating to Ms own townsmen and famUy. His father and Ms
brother Sa'eed were both absent just then ; they had gone on a
journey in the direction of Basrah, and would probably soon
return: Sa'ad was the only one actually m town. And Ms
mother, NaUeh ? "May God have mercy on her!" was the
answer that announced her death. It was a melancholy story.
When the report teUing of the unfortunate end of the Eoweydah
expedition, and— though falsely— of her son's being among the
slam, first reached her, she had famted away, and remamed
insensible for many hours. Consciousness at last returned ; but
her grief, embittered doubtless— Sa'ad did not understand tMs,
but Alkamah thought it— by self-reproach, and the remembrance

338 ULYSSES.

of the share she herseK had taken in sending her favourite child
away on that Ul-omened journey, retm-ned -vrith it, and proved
too much for her ; she drooped rapidly away, and before many
weeks were over was in her grave.
" How wUl he bear to be told about Malik's daughter ? " was
Sa'ad's reflection when he saw the sUent but intense grief with
wMch Ms brother heard the sad news already given. "And
what had I best tell Mm about her ? And how ? " But he was
spared for the time the necessity of coming to any decision on
that subject; for neither by question nor allusion even did
Alkamah give any outward sign of so much as remembering her
existence, neither then, whUe they yet remained conversmg in
the garden, nor afterwards, when they entered the town together,
nor when, later in the evenmg, aU his relatives and kindred to
the eighth degree of cousinsMp assembled in the guest-room to
hear his story, and to congratulate him on Ms safe return.
Sa'ad waited with much uneasiness for the next day, and
the inqufries wMch Alkamah would, smely, not longer defer
beyond it.
But that very mght the reaction of rest and disappointment
combined manifested itself in a sort of low fever lasting nearly a
month ; and for an even longer time Alkamah showed no desire
to learn more, nor even once stfrred out beyond the walls of Ms
own courtyard ; perhaps he would hardly have had the strength
to do so had he vrished it. But the truth was that he did not
wish it; on the contrary, he sMank back from the fuUer
knowledge wMch sooner or later must meet Mm when once he
mixed in the crowd outside, certain that it could brmg Mm no
happiness, and wiUing to stave off the evU day.
During tMs mterval many tMngs happened. Alkamah's father,
old Aamfr, and his elder brother, Sa'eed, returned from Basrah,
and a famUy council, to wMch Alkamah, of course, was not
caUed, took place. After much deUberation, it was resolved
that the deception, contemplated, it must be aUowed, from the
first, should now be defimtely carried out. Selma was, for her
lover, to be dead ; her very tomb, or rather a smaU mound of
stones professing to indicate it, was got ready, not far from the

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 339
place where the tent of her fanuly had been pitched the prerious
summer. She had died — so the story was to run — a natural
death of fever or sometMng m the faU of the year, just when her
people were makmg ready for thefr- retm-n to Yemen. " He -will
be very sad about it," Alkamah's relatives thus argued for Mm,
"but he -wiU end by getting over it much sooner than K he knew
how matters reaUy are. When he tMnks of her as dead, he vriU
lose hope, and his regrets -wiU m consequence pass off aU the
speedier, and then before long a new attachment may easUy,
in the natural course of thmgs, take the place of the old, and
aU -wiU be forgotten." Thus they reasoned, meamng not unkindly
by the lad.
But falsehood, even -with the best-tntentioned and the most
reasonable of motives, is a bad foundation to buUd on ; and its
superstructure is apt either to crumble to pieces all at once, or,
K it remams, to remain for evU only, not for good. " The thmg
that is " cannot come of " the thmg that is not."
And where, in fact, was Selma ? And what was she domg in
the meanwhUe ?
Lost she certainly was, so far as Alkamah was concerned;
neither dead nor bmied, but lost. After so many vows and
protestations, after so many pledges of unchangeable fideUty
given and accepted, after declarations that no power on earth,
neither kmdred, nor parents, nor force, nor death itseK should
ever mduce or compel her to acknowledge any suitor, any
other love but her first love, her Alkamah, she was afready
betrothed to another — married to another. So it was, not
indeed tMough pmposed faitMessness on her part, it was weak
ness only, and weakness for AvMch much nught be pleaded m
excuse. For hardly had Alkamah left the neighbomhood than her
parents, who were now m the secret, her brothers, her kmsfolk
— and they were many and powerful, accustomed to command
and to be obeyed — ^began thefr attack, resolved to break off her
unauthorized, and, tn thefr opimon, disgraceful attachment to
the Howazin interloper, and to substitute m its place the unex
ceptionable claims of Selma's previously betrothed cousm, the
z 2

340 ULYSSES.

young Okeyl. ^ TMoughout the striiggle a certam discretion on
thefr side, and modesty on hers, kept indeed the name and
existence of Alkamah m the background, a motive consciously
felt by both parties, and avowed by neither. But persuasion,
entreaty, prayers, menaces, duty, obedience, pride of clan, shame,
honour, vamty, every deterrent, every incentive, were brought
into action. Hmts, too, broad enough to adnUt of no mismter-
pretation, were thrown out that, marriage or no marriage, come
what might, no stranger alUance, no aUen from the Arabs of the
north, should ever be admitted to tarmsh the southern purity of
the blood of Morad. And when to aU tMs was added the
presence of Okeyl Mmself, young, handsome, Mgh-spfrited, and
wealthy, wMle Alkamah was not only absent, but, before long,
reported and beUeved dead, what wonder K the cause that had
everytMng to support it except love, prevaUed over, the cause
that had nothing to support it but love, and K Selma's resistance,
at first vehement, gradUaUy subsided into melancholy, melancholy
into resignation, resignation mto consent ? To do her justice,
the last was deferred ttU what seemed certam tidmgs came of
her Howazm lover's death on the field of battle. But when a
month later the Morad encampment broke up, and among the
rest Selma, mounted on a led dromedary, amid aU the protection
of curtams and attendants, departed for Yemen, she was the
re-affianced, and, vritMn six more months, the bride of Okeyl.
Thefr marriage, wMch was celebrated with much pomp and
rejoicing, music, gun-firmg, and feasting of the tribe, must have
taken place exactly about the time that Alkamah returned to
Eoweydah, and found m Ms native to-wn that worst soUtude, the
soUtude of the heart.
MeanwMle, of false or true, he, poor youth, knew notMng,
beyond the fact that Selma and her Mndred had left the neigh
bourhood; of tMs much Ms own eyes had afready assmed
him the morning he approached the to-wn. At last a day
came when m answer to the inqufries wMch he could no longer
repress, the daughter of Malik was mentioned in Ms hearmg;
but it was to announce her death, according to the story invented
and agreed upon by Ms Mnsmen. He heard with apparent

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 341

calm, so that the narrators at first congratulated themselves not
a Uttle on the success of their scheme ; but that very evening he
had already found Ms way out of the town to the tomb where he
supposed her laid.
It was a Uttle mound pUed up -with a few large and several
smaUer stones, close by the t-wisted roots of a spreading thorn-
bush, and not far from the very spot where they last had met.
From morning tiU noon the sun blazed hot upon it ; but after
mid-day the shadow of the thorn-bush turned by degrees, and
lengthened over the place.
Here Alkamah would go daUy, and sit for hours in the thorn-
shade, Ms eyes fixed On the ground, speaMng to no one, and
even aUovring no one to approach, his whole soul concentrated
in one intense longmg for but a moment's intercourse vrith her
whom he beUeved to be buried below. Sometimes, in very
despafr of meetmg her agam m the world of wakmg, he would
Ue down on the mound and try to go to sleep, in the vague hope
that she might perhaps visit him in his dreams. But whether
he waked or slept, he always left the place -vrith the same un
satisfied craring at his heart, to return tMther in spite of it the
next day, and meet -with the same result. Then he would go
and busy Mmself in the pursuits of every-day Arab Ufe, m the
gardens, in the palm-tree plantations, -with the sheep or the
camels ; but it was no better, Ms heart had no share in it aU.
He mounted Ms horse and went out more than once with the
bands of Ms feUow-townsmen on cattle-drivmg or foray among
the neighbourmg tribes, and after weeks of riding and skfrmisMng,
in wMch he showed himself outwardly the Alkamah of former
years, active and daring as ever, would return just as he had
left, -vrith no consciousness of haring obtained a single moment's
change of feeUng or thought. Whether he went or stayed, it was
aU one. Even the memory of Ms mother faUed to touch Mm,
With the dead, one alone excepted, as with the U-ving, he felt
Uke one who had notMng to do ; he neither thought of them nor
-wished to think. From his father and brothers he was abso
lutely estranged. They had helped — tMs much at least he knew
— to separate Mm from Selma ; they had united m sending him

342 ULYSSES.

away from her, and whether intending it or not, he cared hot
now to inqufre, in partmg between Mm and her for ever. : . The
work of destiny — ^yes; but he could cherish no affection or even
goodwUl for those who had made themselves the instruments of
that destiny, and of Ms loss.
Of' others, townsmen or relatives, he took no heed. He met
Fareedah, Ms o-wn betrothed cousin, now fast blooming into the
fuU beauty of womanhood, and hardly recogmsed her; K she
herseK or her parents had entertamed tUl then any hopes of
attractmg Ms fancy that way, they were compeUed from that
moment to give them up altogether. So it was -with the rest ;
he neither sought company nor avoided it ; when spoken to he
answered, else he kept silence ; he took due share in the Ufe and
action around him, and seemed to forget it the instant after.
NotMng from without affected Mm with either joy or sorrow,
fear or hope ; he was Uke one from another world, moring in,
but unconnected with this. Only Ms risits to the mound by
the thorn-bush continued as frequent as ever ; and when there
and alone his feelings would break forth, not changed, but with
constantly renewed freshness, and more vehement, though ever
unsatisfied, longmgs. Two years passed thus, two summers and
winters; and he was stUl as far from nearmg the repose of
forgetfulness as the first day.
One afternoon, in the spring of the tMrd year, he sat by the
stone-heap nursing his iUusions, and thmking of her whom he
imagined to Mmself separated from Mm by only a few feet of
earth and pebbles, and faithful to Mm even in death ; his face
was covered by Ms hands, and sUent tears were runnmg down
between Ms fingers to the ground ; when he felt the shadow of
the thorn-bush deepened by sometMng else between Mm and the
sun. Not caring to see what it was, he waited tUl it should
move off of itself; but it did not; and he raised Ms head with
some impatience. Then he perceived, standing near beside Mm,
a herdsman, the same who had formerly served as messenger
between himself and Selma, a young man of four or five and
twenty, by name Shebeeb, and his o-wn foster-brother. Alkamah
haring recognised Mm, and answered Ms salutation, again bent

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 343
forward -with Ms face on Ms hands, as a sign that he wished to
be alone.
Shebeeb, however, whose foster connection, a close one from
the Ai-ab point of -riew, warranted a certain amount of boldness,
instead of complying with the hint given, took Ms place on the
gromid by Alkamah, and said, " Brother."
" Leave me alone," was the answer, given un-vrilUngly, and
-without even looMng up.
But Shebeeb continued, "My brother, I have sometMng to
teU you, wMch it concerns you to hear ; and wMch," he added,
after a pause, " I would have told you long ago, but that I was
afraid to speak."
" What is it ? " asked Alkamah, m a tone that impUed great
indifference as to what might come next.
"It is," said the other, distinctly articulating every word,
" that you are deceived ; you tMnk this," striking it with Ms
foot, " a tomb ; it is not so ; it is only an empty pUe of stones,
with notMng under them; and wMle you are sitting here,
wasting your life, and eating your heart to no purpose, MaUk's
daughter is aUve, and far away from hence, in her own country,
in Yemen."
Before he had finished speaMng, Alkamah was sittmg bolt
upright, and staring in the other's face like one mazed, unable
' at first fuUy to take in Ms meaning, so utterly unexpected, and
so sudden.
" What is it ? " was all he could utter,
Shebeeb repeated Ms words,
" But how can it be ? Where is she ? They told me, every
one said that she was dead, and buried under this grave ; can
she reaUy be alive ? Speak ! "
His face was flushed, Ms voice eager ; his eyes bright as they
had not been for years,
Shebeeb looking round, to make sure that no one else was
near; and then, drawing closer to Alkamah, told his story
distmctly and fully from first to last. It was the true account
of Selma's departure from Nejd, and of the deception practised
on her lover by Ms own family. But of Selma's subsequent

344 ULYSSES.

marriage he, of course, knew notMng, though, considering the
cfrcumstances under wMch she left Eoweydah, he could not
but conjecture its probabUity ; and so might Alkamah also have
done, had he not been too much in the habit of judging others,
those at least whom he loved, by MmseK.
" They did very wrong to deceive you so ; and I would have
told you the truth long ago, but that at first I hoped you would
not have taken it so much to heart ; and afterwards, when I saw
how matters went with you, I was afraid. But now, for some
time past I have been waiting for an opportunity of speaking,"
concluded Shebeeb, fearful lest his foster-brother should break
out into a not unjustifiable explosion of anger against Mm for
having been sUent so long. Nor was he vrithout apprehension
that Alkamah's indignation might prompt him to some rash
measure regarding those who had origmated the plot ; or, again,
that the violent revulsion of Ms feeUngs might be too much for
Ms reason, or even Ms Ufe.
But his fear was without cause ; Alkamah was too happy m
the knowledge of the simple fact that she whom he had -so long
mourned for dead, was reaUy aUve, to be for the moment
accessible to any other idea, or to remember any other person or
thing except her. Even the likeUhood of her ha-vmg already
passed into the possession of another did not then cross Ms inind.
It was only the change of one aU-absorbing thought for another
equaUy engrossing ; of " I shaU never see her more," into " We
shaU meet agam."
No more Ustlessness now, no more inaction ; he would foUow
her, wherever she might be ; claim her, whoever should oppose.
Of difficulties, of the enmity of either tribe, hers or Ms, kinsmen
or strangers, he took no account. Howazin and Morad, banded
in one with aU the spearsmen of Nejd, and aU the swordsmen of
Yemen, should not bar Ms way. He would find her, -vrin her, or
die in the attempt. His enthusiasm communicated itself to his
foster-brother, who declared that be the dangers what they might,
by jomney or camp, m desert or in field, he would share them to
the end.
The sun had almost set, and the distant sand-edge between

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 345
them and the town was dotted here and there with homeward-
moving figm-es, black against the yeUow ground, when Alkamah
and Shebeeb, after sev^eral hours of earnest talk, left the mound ;
and before they reached the gardens and separated for the night,
their plan had been fully arranged. Shebeeb was to pick out
two of the Ughtest-footed and most enduring dromedaries, to
prepare a couple of small water-sMns, and a few simple dried
provisions for the journey ; and, vrith these, to wait Ms brother-
in-law next evening beMnd a neighbouring liiU. Meanwhile,
Alkamah returned into the town, and passed the day that was
to be the last for Mm -witMn its walls, making Ms own prepara
tions also, but of course giring no one any Mnt of Ms intentions.
The signet ring he had afready searched after, and found m the
place where he had Mdden it, and, with many sighs and
memories, replaced it on Ms finger. Now he looked at it -vrith
complacency ; it was token no longer of despair, but of hope — a
link not -with the past only, but the future.
Again the sun set, and evenmg closed in. Alkamah took no
farewell of Ms father and his brothers ; his alienation from
them, after what he had learnt the day before, was no longer
passive, but active ; they were not even strangers to him now,
they were enemies. Only under the brief t-wiUght he went to
his mother's grave ; she had taken no part in that long coil of
deceit — she, so he thought, would have been true to Mm had
she Uved. Bitterly weeping, he caUed on her, as though she
could have heard Ms voice, to forgive and to help Mm ; then,
with a sudden eff'ort, rose up and walked away, feeUng at every
step as if Ms very heart-strings were being torn asunder. The
remembrances of many years, the images of chUdhood and
boyhood, the inwoven attachment to home and famUy, all in
Mm that was not the love of Selma was at that moment centred
and bound. up for him in the tomb from which he turned; it
was -wrencMng himself from haK of Ms Ufe— a bitter pang.
Then, without re-entering the to-wn gates, he went round outside
the waUs to the pit-Uke hoUow behind the ridge, where the
dromedaries were in waiting, and Shebeeb ready with them.
Beyond, to the west, lay the path, or rather the great open

346 • ULYSSES.

desert; the low horizon glowed. with the comtag light of the
moon; Alkamah recaUed to mtnd Batn^-Darih, and hastened, to
mount.. All night they journeyed on at a rapid pace, and
mormng da-wned on them full thirty mUes distant from
Eoweydah,, where, to thefr good fortune, they were not missed
till two days later ; they then were tracked, but in vam.
Yemen and the Nejrah vaUey, the territory of the Benoo-
Morad, and the goal of their way, lay to the south, or nearly so.
But Alkamah and his companion did not venture to keep the
dfrect and well-kno-wn track, by wMch they might easUy have
been followed, and which i would, besides, have bl them by
se-veral -vUlages and customary halting-places that they, no-w
naturally desired to avoid; so, instead, they made a -wide cfrcuit
west, among the trackless sands of the much-dreaded Nefood.
TMs was the very region that Alkamah had crossed two years
bygone, on Ms fiight from the Hejaz, but m a widely distant
part of it ; so that Ms former wanderings gave no clue of any
use for their present track. Shebeeb, however, had often ex
plored these wastes, in different dfrections ; and his experience
was of more avaU. When that was at a loss, the position of the
sun by day, and of the stars at night, became their only gmde,
one sufficient m the main. At noon they crouched for the
hottest hours of the day, scarce less intolerable to the, camels
than to thefr riders, under the shade of some jutting rock, such
as often crops out abrupt and black through the sandy covering of
the waste, or of some lonely bush, tamarisk, or thorn ; towards
evenmg they resumed their monotonous way, and continued it
with hardly any mterruption tMough the night and morning.
Only when thefr smaU supply of water began to fail them,
Shebeeb's knowledge of the locaUties was tasked to discover
some brackish well, such as stray Bedomns of the smaUer and
less noble clans frequent, and where there was no probabiUty of
their meeting any of thefr own townsmen or tribe. But not
till a week or more after leavmg Eoweydah did they aUow
themselves a single real halt that could be said to bear' any
proportion to the length of their traveUing stages and the fatigue
of the way.

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 347
Alkamah,- eager if not exactly hopeful, was at first too
much preoccupied vrith the thought of what lay before him to
pay attention either to the scenes they traversed, or to what
they themselves endm-ed; nor ever complained, unless it was
that thefr dromedaries did not go fast enough, or that thefr daUy
period of rest was too prolonged, Shebeeb, with no strong
passion of his own to entrance Mm, and whose only motive for
so difficult and even dangerous an undertaking was Ms attach
ment for Ms foster-brother, wondered, but did no remonstrate.
A.ccustomed as shepherd or herdsman from his chUdhood up
wards to every form of hardsMp incidental to an Arab out-of-
doors Ufe, he was confident that Ms o-wn strength, though
severely taxed, would not give way altogether ; and, moreover,
guessed that the overwrought impetuosity of Ms companion
would not be long in yielding to the privations and toil of a
midsummer journey across the Nefood. Come what might, he
would not be the first to cry, " Enough ! " or hang back when
the other gave the signal of forward,
MeanwhUe, Alkamah was overdoing both Ms work and
Mmself. The sufferings of his Hejaz captirity and venturous
escape, followed by a long period of constant depression of mind,
and hopeless longing, had long smce lowered Ms natural rigour
to a degree unnoticed, because gradually brought on by those
around Mm, and utterly unsuspected by himseK. He was no
longer the Alkamah of three years before, though he thought
MmseK such when settmg out from Eoweydah, Then the
vehemence of unpetuous love, reviring as it were from that
fictitious tomb where it had so long been bmied m despairmg
hopelessness, suppUed him -with an unreal strength, wMch
deceived himseK, and m some measure his compamon. And
even when tMs began to yield to days of devouring heat, and
sleepless nights of march, its place was taken and the delusion
kept up by a restless impatience, growing every hour as the
distance increased behind them and lessened before ; so that he
took no account of weariness, either in Mmself, or Ms foster-
brother, or,— what is usuaUy the uppermost care in an Arab
wayfarer's mind, — ^in the beasts that carried them ; but pressed

348 ULYSSES.

on as if dra-wn — and so in truth he was — by an attraction all
the more frresistible because its influence had been suspended
so long.
: , So they went on together, crossing red sandslope after sand-
slope, heated .sheets of rock, and dry flint-sprinkled plain,
uncheered by the sight of a single habitation, even a Bedoum
tent, and unrefreshed by a gUmpse, though distant, of watered
gi:ove or green pasture. If any vegetation rustled beneath their
.camels' feet, it was only, an occasional tuft of lank parched
grass, that the spring rains had deluded tMee months before into
misplaced existence, "or the long, dry, siiake-Uke creepers of the
bitter colorynth; more rarely they sighted a lonely taniarisk, or
a gnarled and stunted acacia shrub ; here ahd there a bewUdered
locust on a hot stone, cMrping madly after its missing com
panions, and once a couple of grey gaunt vultures, watching the
traveUers ominously from an overhanging ledge of rock, such
were the only forms of Ufe around. But from hour to hour,
from heat to heat, the mfrage spread before them the likeness of
a vast and tranquU lake ; at noon they seemed to be treading on
its very shore, and about to enter its waters ; towards evening
it receded, shrunk away m shaUow pools and was gone^
StUl they held on, and now, after twelve days of dreary
desert, they entered a more cheerful zone, the mner borderland
between the Hejaz and the populous Kaseem, Here they found
themselves traversing large tracts of pasture-ground, dotted -with
frequent clusters of black Bedomn tents and straggUng . droves
of camels ; Uttle -riUages too appeared, each set off by its green
patch of garden and date-grove, sloping down the hiUock side,
or extending : in a narrow strip along some short-Uved water
course, wMch, after doing its Uttle work of fr-rigation, hastened
to lose itself in the porous soU, Pleasant resting-places to
wanderers just escaped from the shelterless Nefood ; but wliich
Shebeeb and Alkamah, however much in need of repose and
refreshment, generally passed by unrisited; for there was no
friendUness to spare between the inhabitants of tMs country,
the Southern Kaseem, and the natives of Nejd ; and thefr recep
tion, K not absolutely inhospitable, -would have been at least

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 349
ungracious. They were accordingly obliged to keep to the open
country, or, occasionaUy and with circumspection, the neigh
bourhood of the tents.
Shebeeb, however, enjoyed and benefited by the cooler breezes,
and the refresMng mfluences of growth and Ufe around ; besides
the advantages of pmer water, and sometimes a draught of milk
obtained from the herdsmen, with fresh lotus frmt and dates, all
of wMch when opportunity offered, he took care to procure.
But from these comparative comforts Alkamah derived no
benefit, he hardly appeared so much as to notice them ; and the
only effect they produced on Mm was to heighten his impatience
for pressing onward by night and by day. In vain Ms com
panion represented that they were now far beyond aU danger
of pursmt, and that a moderate degree of rest was necessary
both for themselves and thefr camels ; Alkamah, though reaUy
the one who most had need of it, paid no attention.
At last, on the fourteenth afternoon, there stood out, far away
against the western horizon, a square grey outline; its real
height was not above sixty feet, but it looked at least double as
much in the refractive heat-haze; a dark streak on the blue
ridge near it mdicated the presence of a considerable extent of
houses, or palm-trees, or both. Shebeeb, who had crossed this
Une of route before, though from a different direction, at once
recognised the old fortress of Derey', the frontier stronghold of
Kaseem. " Courage ! " he said to Ms companion, " that is
Derey' ; more than half our journey is done ; to-morrow we
shaU enter the Umits of Kora', and a few days further wiU bring
us to the vaUey of Nejaran."
' It was more than time, for Alkamah's fictitious strength had,
ever smce they left the Nefood, and what was reaUy the most
difficult part of their task, beMnd them, given way to prolonged
fatigue and privation, and now visibly diminished every hour.
Long before noon he began to look around Mm restlessly for
the "soUtary tree, or the hoUow fringed vrith brushwood, wMch
might indicate a smtable place for makmg the noontide halt;
and when once lain down, he seemed almost unable to rise. Too
weary for appetite, he turned from the food wluch Ms companion

3SO ULYSSES.

sedulously set before Mm, and instead of eating, drank recklessly
large draughts of discoloured and unwholesome water from the
nearest pooL on the way, however tainted; for summer was now
at its height, and the supply of water furnished by the sprfrig-
rams was half-dried and fuU of impurities. Then, unrefreshed
and unmrigorated, he would pamfuUy remount, his pulse
burnmg and Ms limbs trembUng -vrith fever, tUl he could
scarcely keep Ms seat in the saddle. Symptoms wMch Shebeeb
knew the import of, and observed with anxiety, and whUe doing
Ms utmost — though mdeed Uttle could be done in circumstances
Uke theirs-^to support and cheer him up, he began seriously to
fear lest Ms foster-brother should end Ms road and Ms Ufe
together before reaching the goal he sought.
One day, the seventeenth or eighteenth after thefr departure
from Eoweydah, the east -vrind blew by fits, the noon was
burnmg tn hot haze, and the sun glowed fiercer than ever
tMough a tMn red veU of mist; Alkamah, drowsy from. ex
haustion, reeled from side to side m Ms saddle ; and Shebeeb,
whUe keeping near Mm, and speaMng to him to rouse and
encourage from time to time, haK expected every mmute to see
Mm faU from Ms dromedary to the ground, a faU that for^ one so
wom and weak would very probably have been fatal. : Looking
about in every direction for any place where they could aUght
and rest sheltered from the heat, he perceived — ^for Alkamah was
too far gone to observe anytMng — on a low ridge of rising
ground near them to the right, traces of sometMng Uke a path,
faintly indicated m the graveUy sand, and leading Up to a small
soUtary hut, framed with sticks interwoven with dried palm-
leaves, "a fortunate chance," he thought, as he turned off the
road in that direction. Alkamah, or Ms camel rather, for its
rider had ceased to guide it, mechanically foUowed. On
reacMng the place, Shebeeb made the animals couch down,
wMch they did readUy enough, for they were almost as tfred
as thefr masters, though as uncomplaining, and advanced to
the entrance of the hut. It was closed by a strip of cloth
hung across it Uke a curtain -within. Shebeeb stood vrithout,
and called, " Is any one here ? " A woman's voice answered

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 351
from behind the cm-tain, "Who are you, and what do you
want ? "
" TraveUers," answered Shebeeb, " in want of shelter." As he
spoke the hanging was pushed aside, and an old woman, taU,
meagre, upright, and poorly dressed, came out. The expression
of her face was strange, almost wild, but not unpleasant. She
repeated her question.
"NotMng, mother, but a couple of hom-s' shelter from the
heat," rejomed Shebeeb, "and a Uttle drmk and food, K you
have any by you, for my feUow-traveUer." He pointed as he
spoke to Alkamah, who, almost unconscious of what he did, had
sUpped rather than dismounted from the saddle, and had now
lain do-wn, regardless of the blazmg sun, tn the heated sand
outside the door.
" In God's name, come in and welcome," said the mistress of
the tent ; " you are both of you my guests."
With much difficulty Shebeeb roused his foster-brother in
some measure from the torpor that had afready come over Mm,
and ha-vmg got him on Ms feet, supported him as he staggered
like a drunken man mto the hut. Once mside he seemed
completely dazed by the cool and darkness, and vrithout a word
of salutation, or any notice of place or persons, would at once
have stretched himseK agam as he was upon the floor. But Ms
hostess was beforehand -with him ; making a sign to Shebeeb to
hold him up for a mmute, she qmckly unroUed a piece of
mattmg, caught down from where it was hangmg a long strip of
blue cloth, that was in fact an upper gai-ment of her own ; and
ha-vmg spread it on the mat, m the innermost comer of the hut,
she made Alkamah Ue do-wn on it, and covered him over -vrith
Ms cloak. This done, she tm-ned to Shebeeb.
"Welcome, my guests," she said; "I was waitmg for you.
That one lying in the corner there is Alkamah, son of old Aamfr
of Howazm, and you are Shebeeb, Ms foster-brother, son of
FaU ; you have come from Eoweydah in Nejd m search of the
daughter of MaUk, Sefrna, of the Benoo-Morad. But you vriU
not find her, neither m Nejran nor yet m Yemen ; she is there
no longer, but tn Yemamah, by the mountains of Hareek,

352 ULYSSES.

wMther her husband, Okeyl, took her more than a year ago ;
they both are Uving there now."
" She is married to Okeyl ! What, what is to be done now ? "
exclaimed Shebeeb, with an instinctive look towards the slum
bering Alkamah, and, in Ms distress at learning as a certainty
what he had feared all along, forgetting to wonder at Ms own
and Ms companion's recognition by tMs old crone in so far
distant a part of the country.
" So it is," continued the woman, glancing also at Alkamah ;
" your brother is too late for what he hopes, but in time for Ms
destiny and hers. Go on ; you wiU find her in Yemamah,
and  " she stopped, Ustening to sometMng outside.
" But who are you, mother, and where are you from ? and how
do you come to know aU about us and our affairs ? Were you
in Nejd ? " asked Shebeeb, who had now sufficiently recovered
Ms presence of mind to feel curious, and even somewhat alarmed
at so strange a recognition where it could least have been
anticipated, and a knowledge eridently overpassmg the limits of
ordinary Ufe.
The old woman made no answer, but pointed to the door of
the hut, wMch at tMs moment was darkened by an entering
figure, Shebeeb looked that way and saw in the entrance a girl,
or a woman rather, for her age, judging by her appearance, must
have been about twenty ; her dress was that usual amongst the
very poorest classes — a common dark-blue wrapper, cast over
clothes of equally coarse materials ; her hands and her ankles
were adomed — if adornment it could be caUed — with tMck
clumsy rmgs of blackish glass, the cheapest of the cheap ; no
veil covered her head or face; her arms and feet were bare.
But her form, though somewhat stout and muscular-looking for
her sex and age, was graceful, and her bearing dignified; her
complexion brUUant, her features perfect in thefr regularity, and
glowing -with health and vigour; while her large dark eyes,
always lustrous, seemed from time to time to shoot out absolute
sparks of fire. In her hand she carried a long tMn switch of
tamarisk. Coming in, she went straight up to her mother and kissed her

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 353
hand, then turning to Shebeeb, greeted Mm by name, " You are
here at last," she said ; it is now three days since they told me
that you and the other would come, and I have been looking out
for you."
Shebeeb was about to ask wlio w-ere the " they " alluded to,
but without giving Mm time for question she went quickly up
to the back part of the hut where Alkamah was tossing and
turning in uneasy sleep ; he had thrown the cloak from off Mm,
his right arm was stretched out flat, and the fingers clutched
vaguely at the sand. " Poor fellow ! " she said, bending over
Mm, " he has journeyed far and suffered much, but he has not
far now to go." She spoke in a low voice, and to herself ; but
the sleeper tm-ned over on his side, with his face to the wall, as
if avoiding her gaze, though Ms eyes remained closed. Quietly
she drew the cloak again over him, and left him.
Alkamah's foster-brother remained where he was, and silent,
unable to speak or interfere; for there was sometMng in the
girl's manner that repressed question or remark. She for her
part took no further notice of him, but sitting down by her
mother, conversed with her for some time in an undertone. Then
she rose, and bringing out from a corner of the hut some dried
lotus-fruit m a wooden dish, vrith a few freshly baked pieces of
unleavened bread, set them before Shebeeb, mviting him to eat.
Next she roused up Alkamah, and gave Mm to drink out of a
vessel contaming water cooled and made pleasantly acid by a
sUght mixture of whey ; he drank, and then, evidently refreshed,
sat up and took Ms share of the food, whUst the old woman and
her daughter, whom she called Jandeb, looked on.
After a sUght meal and a few commonplace words exchanged
with Ms hostess, Alkamah betook Mmself again to sleep ; and
Shebeeb, who was thoroughly tfred, stretched MmseK out also for
a Uttle rest. Then Jandeb and her mother, rising noiselessly,
went outside the hut, wliere they lighted a fire of sticks, and for
two or three hours busied themselves with preparing a substantial
supper for thefr guests. By the time everything was ready, the
sun had neared the low horizon line, the east wind had given
over and a cool breeze blew from the north, Jandeb went into
2 A

354 ULYSSES.

the hut, and wakening Shebeeb, beckoned Mm to come out with
her into the open air.
She led him behind the hovel to the top of the red ridge, and
pointed to a low and half -withered bush that grew at the bottom
of the further slope, " Do you see that ? " she wMspered. On
a dead, barkless twig of the bush was perched a mottled crow,
croaking continuously, and plucking madly at its own feathers,
tiU they strewed the ground beneath — a Mdeous sight. Shebeeb
flung a pebble at it ; the creature fluttered and croaked more
than ever, but did not qmt the bough. Shuddering, he turned to
Jandeb, " What does it mean ? " he asked,
" Separation and untimely death."
Her eyes were fixed on the bird, wMch just then, with a
choMng cry, fell from its perch, and after a moment of con-vul-
sive fiuttering, lay still and dead on the sand.
" Go hack wlule you can," she eontinued to Shebeeb, " and do
not mix yourself up with the bad luck of others. They cannot
escape what has been written for them, but you have no need to
share in it, as you may if you go on."
Shebeeb Ustened thoughtfully, then turned and gave a look
towards the tent where Alkamah was lying,
" I cannot leave him now," he said ; " he is my brother, and I
have promised him to go with him to the end,"
Once and again Jandeb repeated her warning, and once and
again Shebeeb gave the same answer. The girl stood sUent for
a few minutes, searching Ms face vrith her eyes, then made Mm
a sign to come nearer to her, and taking the two long curls which
after the fasMon of Nejd hung down on each side of Ms neck,
stroked them out carefuUy in the palm of her hand, and knotted
them afterwards.
" There," she said, " now do as you choose ; you have nothing
to fear, and he wiU want your help. I am grieved for Mm," she
continued ; " it is a hard fate, and he so young. But what can
be done for him ? Every man niUst reap the crop he has
sown." And with this she turned, as if about to re-enter the hut,
" In God's name, who are you ? Are you a human being, or

ALKAMAH'S. CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 355
a spirit ? " exclaimed Shebeeb, afraid to question, but unable to
restrain the words.
" Here," said the girl, and laughed, as she took his hand iu
hers, " that is a human hand of mine, is it not ? If you want
to know more, ask my mother— not that I expect she wiU tell
you much ; but that is her affair, not mine. For all that," she
added quietly, " it wiU be as you have seen and heard ; but you
are safe."
Darkness was now coming on ; she led the way back to the
hut, Ufted the hanging cm-tain, and went in. Shebeeb followed.
They found Alkamah awake, and sitting up, with scarcely a
trace of iUness. The old woman was getting the supper ready ;
they aU partook of it together, and then went and sat on the
bank outside in the moonlight.
WhUe there, Jandeb pointed out to them the direction of the
path they were to take next day ; instead of going further south,
they were to turn nearly due west, and keep so. There was
notMng to fear, she said ; they would meet none but friends on
the way ; they might take their leisure, and rest themselves by
the weUs and in the riUages as much as they chose. Lastly, she
indicated the precise spot in Yemamah where Okeyl and Ms
bride were to be found; and having done this, suddenly left
them, and w^as gone, though where or how they could not
imagine. In fact, she had already disappeared before they were
well aware of her being no longer by their side.
Not less strange than these circumstances was Alkamah's
indifference to them ; nothing seemed to arouse in him either
curiosity or surprise. It was as K from the first moment of Ms
entering the tent a speU had been cast over Mm, which, whUe it
calmed and restored Mm, duUed Ms mind and even his senses to
everything around, WhUe Jandeb described the journey that
yet lay before them, he Ustened, but hardly ever questioned;
and no sooner had she qmtted them than he returned into the
hut to sleep.
Shebeeb, left alone with the old woman, now entreated her
to give Mm some explanation of the events of the day; and
iu particular of the sources whence her daughter derived her
2 A 2

35 6 ULYSSES.

extraordinary, and, he supposed, preternatural knowledge. The
answer, made reluctantly, and only after repeated urgency on
Shebeeb's part, was in substance as follows. Jandeb was her
only child, by her husband, an Arab of Hodeyl, and up to seven
years old had presented no special difference from other children
of the same age, except that she was rather weak and sickly.
One day her father went out alone into the desert to look after a
stray camel, and was last seen by some Arabs in the neighbour
hood of a deep and lonely valley, hemmed in by barren rocks,
and commonly believed to be haunted by evil and malicious
spirits. Anyhow, he never returned; he had disappeared
without a trace ; not even an article of his clothing, or a foot-
IDiint, was found to indicate his fate. But it was reported that
Ms voice had long after been heard at night, caUing out among
the rocks ; and hence he was supposed to ha^'e been carried off
by the spirits of the place. Shortly after this event, Ms daughter
Jandeb, who was sleeping in the tent at noon, started up, saying
that her father called her, and went out, no one knew whither.
Next day, about the same hour she retumed, changed in appear
ance, healthy, laugMng, and strong, but refused to tell where she
had been, or what had happened to her, Eeports of her being in
frequent communication with unseen beings soon spread abroad,
till both she and her mother found it impossible to remain in
comfort amid their own tribes : hence the isolation in which
they had now lived for several years, though well off, thanks to
the possession of a large flock of sheep, which, with the help of a
shepherd, they tended in a pasture close by.
More than tMs, she could not, or would not tell. The night
passed over in its quiet beauty ; and early the next morning
Alkamah, much reinvigorated, with his companion, took leave
of their old hostess, and set out, with a certainty the more, and a
hope the less, on the path which Jandeb had the evening before
indicated to them. The girl herself was not present when they
mounted in the dawn, or, at any rate, did not appear; her
mother alone was by. But that same day, at noon, when they
were already far advanced on their easterly route, Shebeeb saw,
though Ms companion did not, a figure, bearmg the semblance of

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 357

Jandeb herself, and of more than human size, standing on an
isolated rock by the left of the way, and pointing with a rod in
its hand towards Yemamah, The camels started, and became
almost unmanageable, then hurried on. When Shebeeb looked
back, there was no living thing m sight.

Part III,
After leaving the hut, Alkamah and Ms companion, or rather
guide, continued their journey for twelve days more, going to the
East, They were now in a poor, but by no means uninhabited
region ; and seldom found themselves for many hours together
out of sight of either a plantation, or a garden, or a group
of huts, occasionally even a walled village. Nor had they any
thing here to apprehend from positive iU-will on the part of the
inhabitants, between whom and those of upper Nejd there was
habituaUy too little intercourse for either friendliness or enmity.
Shelter from the heat, whether under trees or beneath cottage
roofs, was easily to be had ; wlule of water, though tepid and
somewliat brackish, there was seldom a deficiency, for there are
many wells, and at short inter^'als, in this sandy tract. Unfor
tunately, the tribes of these ^•alleys, the Arabs, of Bishr and
Dowasir, at all times a niggardly and uncourteous race, though
not absolutely refusing the necessary hospitality, supplied it
grudgingly ; and showed themselves always readier to .speed the
partmg than to welcome the coming guest.
Both the travellers' condition, since their halt in Jandeb and
her mother's cabin, had undergone a great change, alike in body
and mind. Shebeeb had become and remained henceforth
stronger, more cheerful, more ready for exertion every way than
before ; his spiiits were raised ; from time to time he even sang
— if that most inharmonious of all noises that an Arab herdsman
makes, when he imagines Mmself musical, can be called singing
— above aU, he w^as more sedulously alive to every want of Ms
foster-brother's, and assumed a constant care of him, amounting
almost to authority.

358 ULYSSES.

Alkamah's state warranted tMs, for the sudden renovation of
Ms strengtii and health consequent on Jandeb's mfluence wMle
present, had, vrith distance passed away almost as suddenly, and
was succeeded by a weakness and exhaustion that grew on him
and increased every hour. His courage too was broken; the
certainty of Selma's marriage, hardly reaUsed when first heard
of, now sank by degrees deeper and deeper into his mind, and,
while it did not calm his intense longmg for meeting her again,
took away all hopeful prospects from the idea of that meeting,
" I am dying," he would often say to Shebeeb, " and I desire
nothing else ; only die I cannot tiU I have seen her, she herself
must set me free, and the sooner the better, would it were
to-day. Death perhaps may reunite what life has parted ; she
-will not, I feel, long remain separated from me." And in this
mood he pressed forward with redoubled impatience, as if
fearmg to be too late, his mental excitement increasing whUe
the term of Ms journey drew nearer. Sustamed by this alone,
he no longer faltered, but sat firm and upright on his camel,
though each day more gaunt and shadow-Uke; looking neither
right nor left, but straight before Mm, and indifferently aban
doning aU care of food or rest to his companion's arrangement.
Twelve days of road, along the broad bush-sprinkled guUey
that crosses more than half the peninsula ; on their left the
mountain ranges of Nejd, and low undulating slopes of pasture-
land, subsiding into desert, on their right. But on the afternoon
of the tMrteenth day they saw before them, low down in the
far haze, a jagged blue Une, with purple stains of shadow ; the
rocky Mils of Hareek ; at their base, though hidden as yet from
sight, stretched — this Shebeeb knew. — the pastures, the fertUe
plains, the groves, gardens, and populous villages of Yemamah.
Gladly he pointed out the fantastic horizon-fringe to his foster-
brother, and told him that there lay their goal.
But next morning they had again lost sight of it, for now
they entered the intervening region, an intricate labyrinth of
narrow valleys and smaU abrupt lulls, with frequent groves,
which might almost by courtesy be called forests, of acacia and
tamarisk ; puzzUng to travellers, but affording welcome shadow

ALKAMAH'S CAVE ^ A STORY OF NEJD. 359
from the midday sun. Here were no human habitations, large
or small ; not e^'en a chance shepherd or Bedouin, from whom
they could enquire whether they were on the right track or not ;
had Alkamah been alone, it would have gone hard with him to
find Ms way. Shebeeb, however, knew that not far from them
on the left, though concealed from view by a close succession of
steep hills, commenced the lev^el grounds of Yemamah ; but he
kept Ms knowledge to himself, lest his comrade's impatience
on learning it should urge their entering abruptly on the open
country, where they could not fail to be recognised for strangers,
and would thus naturally become the objects of a curiosity
wMch might endanger the attainment of the scope of their
journey, and even their lives. Never coidd they less afford to
be incautious than now.
In tMs manner at a .slackened pace, and often stopping to
consider thefr dfrection, they wandered on among the hUls for
three days ; by the morning of the fourth they had reached the
verge of the broken country, which here changed its character,
passing mto the bare sheer rocks of Hareek, They had, in their
ignorance of the precise localities, approached much nearer than
they thought to the villages behind tMs dreary screen; but
Shebeeb was growing anxious, for their slight supply of food
and water had almost faded. Nor did he see, among the crags
overhead and the dry sand under their feet, any prospect of
replenishing their store. All at once, looking round at Alkamah,
he perceived from his face and manner that a deadly faintness
had come 'over him, so that he was evidently incapable of pro
ceedmg any further. What was": to be done ? Lmgering where
they were was out of the question : advancing equally so. Then
Shebeeb noticed on their right the entrance of a narrow gorge,
wMch Ms eye, accustomed to the pecuUarities of scenery like
tMs, knew must in aU probabUity lead to some secluded spot,
where Ms foster-brother could rest a whUe without risk of being
discovered tUl Ms faintness might have passed off and Ms
strength ralUed. It was mdeed, though he knew it not,
Alkamah's predestined resting-place, but one he was never to
leave more. Hither Shebeeb led the unresisting camels ; a chUl

i i

36o ULYSSES.

came over him as they passed into the shadow of the over
hanging crag, and he shivered. On the sand near the entry, a
whitened skull lay in a corner of the rock. Alkamah saw it,
and smiled. " A companion," he said, " he wUl not refuse me a
share of his resting-place."
They w^ere now fairly vrithin the valley, shut in on every side
by iron brown crags, and in front of them the cavern at the
fm-ther end. At its mouth they halted their camels and dis
mounted. " This is just the place," thought Shebeeb, but, before
going into the cave himself, he prudently took up a stone from
the many lying about, and threw it in as far as he could, to
rouse any wild beast or dangerous snake that might have made
its lair in the cool darkness. But when the rmging echoes had
died away, aU was sUent again; nothing came out or stfrred.
He tried a second, the result was the same. Then, though still
cautiously, he entered, a knife m hand, and e:^ploi-ed the hollow.
When his sight, at first baffled, became accustomed to the gloom,
he found that he was in an expanding vault, of more width
than depth, Mgh enough to aUow of standing upright, and, to
his great satisfaction, without any crevasses or smaller openings
that he could discover leading further into the rock. Within
the cav^e itself there was hiding room enough, a dozen men at
least might eaisUy have concealed themselves in its dark recess.
Having made sure of all this, he came out and found Alkamah
half-seated, half-leaning against the rock close by, but helpless,
and Uke one at his last gasp. With some difficulty he Ufted
Mm up in Ms arms and carried him into the cavem. There he
laid him as best he could out of sight from the entrance, and
bringing in the saddles, placed one of them for a pillow under
Ms companion's head. Next he fetched the nearly empty water-
skins, and poured what little water remained, a muddy draught
into a wooden cup which Jandeb's mother had given him, this
he put by Alkamah's side, and within his reach, along with a
few dry dates, the only remnants of their provisions for the way.
Having done this, he left the cave, intending without loss of
time to explore the neighbourhood, in view of help, or at least,
of information.

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 361
Keeping his steps on rock and stone wlierever possiljle, and
carefully effacing all traces of his own or the camel's footprints
in the patches of light sand between, he stole forth, and once
again in the main vaUey gazed anxiously about him in every
direction ; but no sign of man or beast w^as discoverable any
where. Hardly knowing whether to be pleased or disappointed
at tMs loneUness, he bethought him of climbing the rocks on
the Mgher side, the left, whence he expected to command a more
extensive view. They were weU-nigh precipitous ; but sure of
hand and foot, he had soon reached the summit, and looked ov^er.
To Ms surprise, his eye rested on a green plain immediately
below, coming up to the very foot of the mountain, and
stretcMng far away north, almost to the horizon verge. Here
and there its gently undulating lines were broken by dark
masses of palm-groves ; and not very far oft' on one side stood a
group of tents, the very ones perhaps, so he thought, that they
had travelled so far to reach. Nearer, however, in view was a
good-sized viUage, girdled with gardens and watered fields, and
this he determined first to visit, as offering Mm the best chance
of procurmg some kind of refreshment for his helpless and
stricken companion ; here too he did not doubt to learn the truth
or otherwise of what Jandeb had told them ; and to gain some
notion of the means they had best adopt, should the encampment
in sight prove to be really that of Okeyl,
While Shebeeb was thus employed, Alkamah, who had
returned to consciousness, lay stiU in the cave, too feeble to
rise, and well aware that he had reached the halting-place that
was to be Ms last. His thoughts, meanwhile, wandered back to
Batn-Darih, and the camp of Benoo-Morad by the walls of
Eoweydah, However much the knowledge of Selma's after-
marriage had grieved, it had not surprised him ; it had not even
weakened his conviction that she was, in heart and soul at least,
faitMul to him now as then ; the Selma of three years back.
He caUed to mind the love of those past days, past, yet ever
present— the look, the smUe, the meetings, the promises, the
endearments, the mutual pledge, the embrace at parting; and
could not now, even had he striven to do so, picture her to

b

362 ULYSSES.

himself other than she then had been. If in after days she had
indeed conferred her hand on another, it must, it could only
have been, under the conviction that Ms own was no longer able
to clasp it ; she might be the wife of Okeyl, but not for that
could she have ceased to be the love, the only love, of Alkamah,
So Ms fancy imaged her. Nor was the image wholly, or in the
main untrue. For in truth wliile hope had yet been hers, she
had resisted every attack on her plighted constancy, and nothing
but the certitude, it seemed, that her hope had perished with her
lov^er's life had reconcUed her to admit her cousin's urgent smt.
While thus thinking, Ms gaze wandered at random round the
rock-walls of the cave, now dimly visible in the gloom to which
he had become m a measure accustomed ; then rested on the
metallic glimmer of his silv^er signet-ring. It was the same -with
which she had toyed at their last meeting ; the same she had
jestingly promised to reclaim some future day. The same — but
now, lest it should sUp off the emaciated finger for which it was
all too large, he had been obliged to vrind it tightly round and
fasten it with a twist of thread. Would her fingers ever touch
it again ? they must — they should ! As he looked at it he gained
strange hope and strength from the sight of tMs unfulfilled yet
unbroken Unk between him and her ; soon he thought the mean
ing would be accomplished — the promise redeemed. Patiently
he awaited the evening and the return of his foster-brother,
through hours that seemed neither long nor short, few nor many ;
too much under the dominion of one unchanging idea to keep
account of event or time.
Meanwhile, the sunlight, wMch only for a short interval at
noon could find its way to illuminate the sand-floor of the
narrow valley, had vrithdrawn upwards from rock to rock, tUl it
lingered on the Mghest spUnters alone, then left them. Dark
ness was about to set in when Shebeeb re-entered the cave,
bringing with Mm from the vUlage provisions that by contrast
might half be reckoned delicacies, and, what Alkamah most
desired, a supply of fresh cool water. But of the food he was
scarcely able to take any share, and it remained almost entirely
for Shebeeb, who, ha-ring rendered Ms companion every serrice

ALKAMAH'S CAVE. A STORY OF NEJD. 363
in his power, now sat down by his side to eat, and to give his
tidings. They were good ones on the whole. From the actual place of
half-concealment to the nearest viUage, that of Jorf, was a
distance of less than two hours ; and the pasture-grounds occupied
by Okeyl the Yemenee, as the vUlagers called him, were not
much further off, in fact the herdsmen vvere in the habit of
coming to Jorf, for barter or purchase. Okeyl was well known
to all ; they described him as wealthy, generous, and, though a
stranger, popular. He had arrived, they said, more than a year
before, with a large retinue of followers, shepherds, and the like ;
besides camels and flocks in great abundance, and had settled on
a piece of land assigned Mm by the native chiefs of Benoo-
Tameem, vrith whom he was on the most friendly terms. What
had been the precise reason for his quitting Yemen, and
estabUsMng Mmself in Yemamah, was not generaUy known,
probably some dispute with Ms own kin.smen about marriage
matters, for he had brought with him, they said, a wife of his
own, that is the Morad, tribe, but no children. It was also said
that he had often been urged to divorce his wife, and marry
another, but that he had always refused to do so, perhaps this
had something to do with his departure from Nejran, Lastly,
they said that Ms -vrife was renowned for her beauty, and that all
spoke weU both of him and her.
Alkamah listened, and his imagination filled up the outUnes
of the story with much that was unconjectured by Shebeeb.
But now came the main question, difficult to answer, what was
to be done next ? They had in one sense reached the goal, yet
in another seemed further from it than before. While in the
vigour of unimpaired strength and youth, Alkamah had planned
many plans, dreamed many dreams, and might, not unlikely,
have carried them into effect too ; for many a lover in Arabia,
denied Ms wish by family opposition, has carried off triumphantly
the loved one by force of arms, or died at her feet in the attempt ;
and Alkamah, whose courage and passion were well equal to
either result, would have had precedents in plenty for both.
But now, unable not only to mount a horse and -wield a sword.

364 ULYSSES.

but even to move a limb or rise from the ground, and with his
life itself at the ebb, which he well knew has no fiow after it,
these were mere imaginings, and must as such be abandoned,
AU that could practicaUy be effected would be to acquaint Selma
with the fact of Ms bemg m the neighbourhood, a weary dying
man, and to leave the rest to woman's ingeniuty and woman's
love. But it must be done quickly.
Midnight came, and as notMng could be attempted before
mornmg, they must needs wait its breaking; Shebeeb in the
deep sleep that foUows fatigue. Alkamah would fain have slept
too, but the fever returned ; and when dawn came, it found him
weaker than before. Shebeeb saw, -vrith alarm, the change in Ms
companion's face, and when he had tended Mm to the best of
Ms abilities for a little wMle, hastened to set out without loss of
time on fresh research, justly thmkmg that there was danger in
delay. Nor was he long absent ; chance or destiny favoured Ms
endeavours, and shortly after noonday he returned, and with Mm
another. TMs was a somewhat undersized man, Ughtly buUt,
and of dnsky, almost negro complexion, wliich, with the striped
mantle hanging down over Ms shoiUders, announced him at first
sight for a native of Nejran or Yemen. It was in fact one of
Okeyl's own herdsmen, whom Shebeeb had faUen in with just as
he was entering the vUlage of Jorf, and had persuaded to turn
back and accompany Mm to the cav^e.
WitMn it Alkamah was lying in miserable pUght, drowsy and
wandering in mind, heedless of everything. But the approach
of footsteps roused Mm a little; and when his dim eyes had
distingmshed the unaccustomed form that stood by Shebeeb, he
conjectured what had happened, and at once came to himseK.
Eager to learn more, he even managed to lift Mmself on his
elbow from the ground ; while the herdsman stared m surprise,
almost terror, at the wUd and ghastly appearance of the death-
stricken man before him.
" You, brother, are one of Okeyl the Yemenee's retainers, of
Benoo-Morad, are you not ? " asked Alkamah, in a faint though
distinct voice. The herdsman answered in the affirmative.
A minute's sUence followed, wMle Alkamah collected his

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 365
strength for further questioning ; and Shelieeb, taking up the
vUscourse, related the circumstances under which he had met the
man wlio had that very moming seen Okeyl at the door of the
tent, where was his family, meaning Ms wife. This the herdsman
confirmed. " Do you ever," ..Vlkamah again asked, articulating the words
with difficulty, " come near " — he could not say " your master's
wife," but — ."the daughter of Malik, so as to be able to speak
with her ? "
¦" Often," replied the man. Had so strange a question been
put under any other circumstances, he would certainly have been
startled by it, and either would have hesitated to answer it, or
not have answered at aU. But there was in Alkamah's appear
ance, fri Ms manner, his look, Ms tone, something of authority — ¦
the authority that earnestness combined with much suffering
never faU to gi\'e — that admitted neither of dalliance nor bargain.
So feeling himself in a manner constrained not barely to answer,
but to explain fully, he went on. " I have at present charge of
the milch-goats belonging to the camp ; and it is my duty every
evening at sunset to bring a bowl of fresh niUk for my master's
famUy to her tent. If any of the servants happen to be by, I
give it them to take in ; but very often I find her outside the
tent by herself, and then, if she asks me, I fill a cup and hand it
her to drink."
Without putting any further question, or saying a word,
Alkamah slowly unwound the thread t\\'isted round his finger,
and drew off the signet ring. Beckoning the herdsman to come
close to Ms side, he put the ring into Ms open hand, and said,
" Brother, when next she asks you for a draught of mUk, slip
this ring into the bowl first ; it wiU bring good to you and to
her. I charge you do it," And having thus spoken, he laid
Ms head back upon the saddle that served it for piUow, and
closed his eyes.
The herdsman remained standing, turning the silver circlet
round and round in the palm of his hand, and looking uneasUy
at it ; for he was at a loss to understand what might be the
meanino- of such a commission, and more than half afraid lest

ULYSSES.

some harm or treachery might be intended byit, to wMch.Ms
compUance would give effect.
He would have inqufred of the giver, but from him he soon
perceived no further explanation was to be had; he therefore
looked instead towards Shebeeb, who, perceiving what was in his
mind, said whatever might tend to reassure Mm ; carefuUy con
firmmg in particular Alkamah's hint as to the handsome reward
he might expect for Mmself, and insistmg that no mischief of any
kind could possibly foUow, either to his mistress or to others,
only good. But when the man went on to ask what was the
sick man's name, who he was, whence he came, what had brought
him here, what was the hidden meaning of the ring, and so forth,
Shebeeb, after a few evasive answers, cut Mm short; enjoinmg
him to take the first opportunity of fulfiUing what he had been
told to do, and in the meantime to say not a word to any person
whatever, either where he had been, or what he had seen or
heard. Of all this he exacted and obtained a solemn promise ;
and then, with a " God speed," sent the simple feUow away.
This over, he tm-ned to Ms brother-in-law, intending to talk
the matter over with him, by way of comfort and encouragement.
But on approacMng him, he perceived by the calm and regular
breatMng that Alkamah had faUen into a quiet sleep, from which
it would be a pity to rouse Mm. So he sat down at his side,
thoughtful, and waiting what the events of the day might bring
forth, till night came, and all was dark.
Without, on the plams of Yemamah, it was the full-aged year ;
dates hung in ripe clusters from the dusty trees ; great melons
were yellow in the gardens, grain of every sort had already been
gathered in, and the shrubs and grass, except, it might be, m the
• immediate neighbourhood of some fiowing watercourse, already
wore the brown and dried-up tints that told of the summer
season advanced to its hottest. No one now, except those whose
occupations compelled them to be continuaUy out of doors,
remained in the fields wMle the blazing sun rode high in heaven,
and even those most inured to its beams sought to protect them
selves as much as possible from them, under some overhanoino-
rock or sheltering tree, not venturing out of their shelter unless

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 367

when it became absolutely necessary to do so. The very viUage
roofs and waUs, always baked and dry, looked doubly so in the
wMte glare ; the gates stood wide open, but for hours together
no figure passed them, entering or issuing out. Meanwhile the
tents — there were about twenty of theni, large and small —
pitched by Okeyl of Morad for Mmself and his followers, stood
in their places, black, silent, and seenungly deserted almost all
the day through; no Uving creature was to be seen moving
about amongst them ; the men were for the most part away,
either with the herds on the grazing-grounds, or under cover of
house or garden in one or other of the neighbouring viUages ;
whUe the women remained within the canvas shelter of the
camp, occupied in household duties, or idle, chattering, or drowsy,
as the case might be.
Then the daily scene would change, and as the decUning sun
hurried downwards to the jagged Unes of fantastic rock and
mountain on the west, and the palm-groves dotted over the
surface of the level lands cast each its streak of shadow long and
broad across the plain, while the still air was thick with the
golden motes of the summer evening, the life that had lurked
concealed from the terrible heat would re-assert itself and come
forth, at first timidly, as it were, then more boldly, in proportion
as its oppressor weakened and withdrew. Comers and goers
studded the paths, denser towards the village gates; the open
lands were cheerfid with herds, flocks, and men moving across
them ; and between the tents many forms, some male, some
female, the latter more numerous just before sunset, the former
after it, might be seen passing in and out, Mther and thither ; or
seated about the encampment in groups, talking, laugMng,
and watcMng the day go down.
That evening, on a carpet spread close by the entrance of the
principal tent, distinguished from the rest by its greater size, as
well as by the ornamental red fringes about its hangings, sat
Selma, the daughter of Malik, the first love of Alkamah, the
wife of Okeyl. No longer a girl, but in the full perfection of
married womanly beauty ; the beauty that confers and justifies
the completeness of repose in every part, every feature — in the

368 ULYSSES.

dark eye, the heavy tresses, the rounded outlines, the shapely
form. Three years had added much to her loveliness, all that
the hours add to the bud when they expand it into the flower ;
yet they had taken away something too, for now, in place of the
sportive cheerfulness that had once sparkled in her every look
and even gesture, they had cast over her, it seemed, the veil of a
certain seriousness, almost sadness, which again did not become
her beauty less than the garment of her girUsh joyousness had
done, perhaps even more.
TMs seriousness, sadness it coidd hardly be called, was due to
several causes, but cMefly to three, not equaUy depressing in
character, but none of them ever wholly absent from her mind.
First, though least in weight, was her separation from the home
of her birth, and the companions of her childhood, now left far
away in Nejran, and from whom she was parted by what, in a
land where means of communication are rare and casual, might
seem an almost immeasurable distance. And though there had
been much of wliich she might justly have complained in the
conduct of her parents and relatives towards her, and even the
ultimate sundrance from them had been principally brought
about by their own unkindness, yet they were her parents still,
and she could not wholly cease to regret them. Next, and
heavier to bear, came the apprehension, the anxiety that rose
with her early every morning and lay down last with her at
night, lest her want of children, — for two years of married life
had passed, and stiU there was no sign, and, by this time, hardly
an expectation, of offspring, — should sooner or later alienate
from her the affection of her husband, now her only stay.
But under and besides all this, always present, though not
always consciously felt, was a third and deeper melancholy ; the
self -accusing regret for the tall, handsome, brave, true-souled lad
she had loved and left in Nejd. She thought of him indeed as
of one dead : and yet, even while thus thinking, she reproached
herself for having yielded to those who had persuaded her to
think of Mm and to act as if he were so, and to accept another
in his stead ; she felt that by so doing she had been in a manner
faithless to her first love; and when the recurring thought

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 369

" Perhaps he is stUl aUve, stiU loves me," from time to time
came over her, she did not know whether to wish to beUeve it
true or not. How far too his love for her had been the cause of
whatever misadventure had smce befallen Mm, of Ms joining the
Hejaz foray, and its fatal results, she did not distinctly know-
on these topics her relatives had of course carefuUy kept her in
the dark; but she could not othervrise than conjecture much of
what reaUy had been, and tMs conjecture led her to blame
herseK and to regret Mm the more. Then the fancy would cross
her that had Aamfr's son been reaUy, as reported, dead, his
image must by this time have faded from her memory, or at
least gro-wn mdistmct : now, on the contrary, it haunted her day
and night, increasingly fresh and vivid, yet gave her no comfort ;
how should it, and she another man's wife ? MeanwMle her
husband, who loved her fondly, observ^ed -with pain that her
melancholy, wMch at first had not whoUy surprised Mm, did
not, as he had hoped, wear off -vrith time ; and, unsuspecting the
persistence of the tMrd cause, attributed it mentaUy to the first,
and especiaUy the second. So to remove the effect of these, he
did aU that steady kmdness and affection could suggest to
remove her anxieties and regrets, and succeeded m rendering
her, not indeed absolutely happy, but, unless in a few moments
of capricious depression, calm and resigned.
They had been now for more than a year settled in Yemamah,
on the lands belonging to the community and town of Wadih,
one of the principal centres m tMs neighbourhood ; and Okeyl,
who was generous, prudent, helpful, and brave, had been speedUy
admitted among themselves by the cMefs of Benoo Tameem, the
lords of Yemamah, almost as K he had been a born-brother of
thefr race. They might hope also, and not unreasonably from
an Arab point of -riew, that the want of cMldren from Ms
first wKe, might ultimately induce him to look out for a second
from amongst the daughters of thefr own tribe. The girls of
Nejd were not, they said, inferior m beauty or other merits to
those of Yemen ; and few parents but were ready to court an
aUiance in every respect advantageous both to themselves and to
the land at large. Thefr hopes remained unfulfiUed; to aU
2 B

370 ULYSSES.

hints, proposals even, whether conveyed by the mustachioed Ups
of grave fathers or the coquettish glances of vrilUng maidens,
Okeyl continued impassive ; he loved his wKe, and not even
the prospect of an hefr could prevaU on him to grieve her -with
the mfiiction that of all others she most dreaded, a rival or a
successor. It was not however the thought of these thmgs, nor of her
home in Yemen, nor, m any distinct form at least, of love past
and gone, that rendered the wKe of Okeyl more pensive than
usual, as this evening she sat, alone and sUent, by the entry
of her tent ; which, at her desire, had been arranged facing
north, to receive the cooler breeze, she said, — perhaps it blew
from Nejd. A maid approached, and began to speak ; Selma,
oppressed with vague melancholy, and utterly undesirous of con
versation, hastened to send the girl away on some trifling errand
to another tent in the camp. Again alone she raised her head,
looked around, and sighed, she could not have said why. A
little later, and the sun's edge rested on the horizon Une, when
she saw a figure coming towards her, black in the level rays ;
and recognised her husband's herdsman, bringing the customary
tribute of mUk for the evening. He was bringing somethiag
else too ; but of that no foreboding warned her. In a few
minutes more he had reached the tent, and seeing none of
the servants by stood hesitatmg for an instant. It was an
opportunity ; should he take it, and at once fulfil Ms com
mission? Unknowingly Selma herself decided the question;
she felt thirsty, and beckoned him towards her ; he drew near
and stood before her ; then, at a second sign, he poured out some
of the mUk from the goatskm that contained it into a little
black-wood vessel, prettily inlaid vrith sUver ornaments, and
held it towards her. But while doing this he had sUpped,
unperceived by her, — for her thoughts were elsewhere, and she
took no account of Mm or of Ms movements, — the signet rmg
wMch Alkamah had given Mm, into the fuU cup, and ha-ring
done tMs stood by, with as much cmiosity as Ms stoUd natme
was susceptible of, to watch the result.
Selma stretched out her hand, took the cup, and almost

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. yii
drained it, but at the moment of removing it from her Ups, she
thought she heard something sUp back with a slight cMnking
noise to the bottom of the bowi ; and examining what it could be,
she perceived the gUtter of metal through the shallow remnant
of mUk. Surprised, she drew it out, looked attentively at it,
and mspected the signet closely, once, twice ; and knew the
token. She turned deadly pale ; a faintness came over her, and for an
instant aU was blank. Yet she did not lose her presence of
mind, though the effort she made to rally herself, and to conceal
every outward sign of what she felt, made her tremble violently
from head to foot. Then, forcing herself to look steadUy up, she
said, in a voice meant to be calm, but wMch sounded strangely
hoarse and unUke her own, " How did you come by tMs ? You
put it in the cup ; who gave it you ? "
Had the man been other than what he was, sometMng very
much on a level for inteUigence -with the animals he had the
charge of, he might there on the spot have guessed all, or nearly
aU, from Ms mistress's fixed look, her altered voice, her strained
composm-e. But being what he was, he surmised nothing,
except that there was sometMng serious in the matter, and that
he had best teU the truth. So he answered by relating, not
over clearly at first, how that morning, outside the vUlage under
the western MU, he had met -with a stranger, apparently a
traveller from the Upper Nejd, who had talked with Mm and
taken Mm to a cave in the mountain near, where he had found a
sick man aU alone. That from tMs latter he had received the
ring, the same now in her hand, -with directions how he was
to give it her, and promises. These he had by no means for
gotten, but on the contrary ampUfied in the telUng of substantial
reward K he succeeded in domg so.
Thus he told Ms story, lamely and confusedly enough. But
Selma, though certain in the main from the first,. was determined
to know aU, the worst as the best, without leaving the possi
bUity of a doubt or error, and questioned the man repeatedly,
tUl she had learnt every particular that he could relate; and
Alkamah lay before her, worn and weary in the cave, distinctly
2 B 2

372 ULYSSES.

imaged to her mind, with Shebeeb by him, soon recognised for
the messenger and confidant of three summers before. And
now! To hear was torture; yet she compeUed herself, and
would hear all. Only whUe the discourse lasted she kept
glancing nervously round, in fear lest anyone should come up and
put an end to her inquiries before she had had time to learn the
whole ; but chance favoured her, and for several minutes nobody-
approached that way. At last, among a group of figures slowly
mo-vmg towards them she distinguished her husband — yes, it
was certainly her husband — though stUl far off, and -with a sign,
for speaMng had now grown almost impossible to her, she
dismissed the puzzled herdsman, by no means satisfied -with the
result of Ms day's adventure. When Ms back was tumed Selma
took the ring, kissed it again and again, and Md it in her
breast ; then rising slowly, for she felt stiff and hea-vy in every
limb, re-entered the tent. There she Ughted a lamp, sent away
the servants, who, as is always the case, seemed to be more than
usually attentive when least wanted, and sat by herself, one
moment benumbed and dazed, the next aU impatience, waiting
tUl her husband should come in.
From the distance where her anxious eyes had perceived him
to the tent it was not a quarter of an hour's walk. Why then
was he so long m coming ? an hour, two hours surely had
passed, and she was stiU alone. A horrible dread came over
her. Could it be that he had met the shepherd by the way,
have questioned Mm ? have learnt something — everytMng ?
Perhaps at tMs very moment he had gone full of deadly
jealousy to the cave — perhaps — she shook the thought from
her, rose, went to the door of the tent, and looked out. The fuU
moon had risen in splendour : how qmetly it was shining over
the plain, how sUent! Nothing stirred. Not far away on the
glistering level she saw a broad black patch with wMte specks
at intervals gUmmering through ; they were the roofs of the
viUage of Jorf Behind it rose the mountain waU, gigantic in
the deceptive light and shadow. Lifeless, unfeeling rock ; was
indeed he, he from Nejd, lying helpless, hopeless, behind that
rugged screen ? and all for her ! Was he thinking of her ? was

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 373

he not perhaps beyond aU thought? dying? already dead?
What should she do? She longed, longed -with a torturing
intensity that might have atoned for any past want of faitMul-
ness — that would, had Alkamah known it, have effaced from his
mind every thought of Ms own sufferings for her sake — to
hasten to Mm that instant, to be with Mm, to support his head
in her arms, to comfort him with words of love ; but no, it could
not be, she must wait her husband ; would he then never come ?
She looked to right, to left, eagerly over the silvered plain,
fearfuUy to the mountain, not a moving speck was there. An
age seemed to pass over her ; higher and higher rose the moon,
smaU, wMte, and dazzUng in the east, yet no sign.
At last — after how long ? — a group of figures came into sight
from beMnd a smaU rising ground, where, out of her view,
though not far off, they had, it seemed, been seated talkmg
together. Now, as they separated from each other, everyone
gomg Ms way home, she strained her gaze to distinguish them
m the uncertain moonlight. Her husband was among them ;
soon he had disentangled Mmself from the rest, and was slowly
approacMng the tent. One horror at least was off her mind,
that leisurely step betokened no knowledge of anything unusual
on Ms part. She dreaded, though she had made up her mind to
do it, telUng him the tale ; but infinitely more did she dread Ms
learning it from any other lips than her own. If the first to
speak she could, and would, throw herself on Ms tried generosity
of heart ; it was her only chance, liis only chance ; but the
avowal must be of her own free making. She was not mistaken
in her calculation. Eesolute now, she hastened back into the
inner tent to await her husband there.
The summer nights about the full moon, bright, warm, and
stUl, are speciaUy devoted by Arab custom to sociable con
versation, and Okeyl, not m the least suspecting what awaited
Mm on Ms retum home, had on tMs occasion Ungered even
later than usual in talk, tiU it was almost nudnight. Sauntering
along, and stopping now and then to enjoy the pleasant air, he
reached the tent, where he expected to find his wKe long smce
gone to rest. But when he put aside the curtain he found her.

374 ULYSSES.

to Ms astonishment, seated on the fioor in the streaks of moon
light that entered between the joinings of the canvas, for the
lamp had been extingmshed some time before. She was
crouched together, her head bowed do-wn on her knees, her face
Mdden in her hands. She neither moved nor uttered a word
when he came m ; only he thought, and was not mistaken, that
he saw a shiver run over her as he entered.
He went up to her, and stood a moment at her side ; she
raised her face, and looked half vacantly at Mm, but said
notMng, Doubting whether she was reaUy awake, or under the
influence of some strange night-mare, he laid his hand on hers.
It was cold, icy-cold ; but wMle he pressed it, a tear of scalding
heat feU on Ms fingers. Now he knew that she was awake, but
unhappy. Something must have happened. " Selma, dearest,
what is the matter with you ? " he anxiously asked. " Who —
what has been grieving you ? "
Strongly constituted in body and mind, he was a man of more
than ordinary seK-possession. Yet he started back in sometMng
not far from terror, when she sprung up suddenly, as though she
had been struck through -with a knife, and seized Ms arm.
"Oh, Okeyl — oh, my cousin," she exclaimed, "you do not
know ; but you must know. Listen to me," — and her grasp
tightened convulsively on Ms shoulder — " he — he of Eoweydah
is here, is close by us ; he is djing, and it is I who have kUled
Mm. He did not perish, as they said, m the Hejaz ; he escaped
aUve ; he returned home, and they told Mm Ues ; they told Mm
that I was dead, I am sure they did. I knew they would. And
now he has learned the truth ; and he has come here all the way
from Nejd to seek me, and he is lying in a cave of these
mountains — Ul, dying ; and, 0 God ! " — Here she broke down
-with a hysterical gasp, and feU, writhing and sobbmg on the
ground. She had not mentioned Alkamah's name; but her husband
had at once understood whom she meant — who "was near ; and
Ms face, at first pale, graduaUy grew dark in the moonUght.
Her words, and stiU more her tears, her gestures, her sobs, her
agony of grief, not only told of an event, startUng and em-

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 375
barrassing enough in itself, but further — -there was no disguising
it from MmseK — nor had she so much as attempted to conceal
it — impUed, or, rather, clearly showed in the speaker all the
vehemence of a passion long smothered, but never extingmshed ;
and now, flaring up m full force and heat. And tMs was his
vrife; and he, to whom this revelation was made, was her
husband I Yet, whatever the promptings of Ms first impulse
may have been, he speedUy mastered them ; resolved, even
before she had done speaking, that neither word nor sign
should escape Mm that might add to her misery, not though
the cause of that misery was her love for another. He saw the
woman he MmseK had loved so long, so truly — his wife,
¦wretched, prostrate at Ms feet ; and he saw, would see, nothing
else. What, however, to say he could not so quickly determine
— so merely uttering her name in a tone of more than usual
tenderness and affection, he stooped over her, to raise her up
from where she lay.
But before he had yet clasped her, she half rose, unaided, and
thro-wing her arms round Ms knees, cried out, " Forgive me,
forgive me, Okeyl, my husband, or do to me as you vrill; I
deserve the worst ; but have mercy on the poor lad, who has
come, kno-wing notMng of you, nothing of my marriage, so far ;
and who has suffered so much— is stiU suffering. Oh, for God's
sake, do not deny me ; let me go and speak to Mm, see him this
once only — only tMs once — I must, I owe it to Mm — is it not I
who have been the cause of all Ms misery ? It wUl not be for
long-^once only."
And here her voice caught, and a burst of passionate sobbing
again overpowered her. But her hold did not unclasp, and she
looked earnestly up in her husband's face ; her own was now
flushed and swoUen, and her eyes drowned in tears.
Gently he unloosed her hands, raised her up, held her a
moment to his breast, and kissed her. Then, gently still, he
placed her on a cushion leanmg against a side-pole of the tent ;
and, after soothing her with word and caress aU he could, and
Mmself drying her tears, caUed for water. One of the maids,
who had been roused from sleep by her mistress's waiUng sobs.

376 ULYSSES.

and was lymg with eyes open, wondermg what it meant, brought
it in a cup, and would have remamed by waitmg, had not Okeyl
immediately ordered her off, telUng her to go outside the tent
and watch at some Uttle distance, lest any curious passer by
might loiter about to pry or Usten. The maid gone, he took the
bowl and gave Ms vrife to drmk, holdmg it to her Ups, for her
own hands shook too much to grasp it. GraduaUy her agitation
caUned ; she smUed famtly tn her husband's face, took Ms hand,
and kissed it.
Seemg that the first violence of excitement had subsided,
Okeyl judged the moment favom-able for putting the questions
that he coidd not other-wise than ask ; his voice was serious, but
there was no trace of harshness in its tone.
" He whom you were speakmg of, dearest, is the youth, the
son of Aamfr- of Howazm — Alkamah, is it not ? "
" Yes," was the scarcely audible answer, uttered with her
face Md on her husband's shoulder ; he was now seated by her,
holdmg one of her hands in Ms.
" But how do you know that he is really here ? TeU me aU
about it. Do not be afraid. I wUl not refuse you anytMng
that you may ask, only teU me aU," contmued Okeyl.
Without looking up, but claspmg Ms fingers tightly m her
own, Selma began her story, vrith much difficulty at first, but
gathermg strength and clearness as she went on.
Okeyl heard -without mterruptmg, only makmg from time to
time some sUght sign or gesture to encourage her in the
narration. When she had concluded it, —
" Selma," he said — and there was sometMng in the earnestness
of his voice that made her start, and raise her eyes for a moment,
then qmckly cast them down — "Selma, I pity you from my
heart ; I pity him too ; yet would to God that these thmgs had
not happened. However, neither you nor he have anytMng to
fear. I wUl do my best for Mm, for yom- sake, as though he
were my brother. And, after a short pause, " Dearest Selma,"
he added, in a haK-enqufring tone, as K expectmg her to speak.
But of tMs she vvas at the moment incapable ; her tears were
faUing fast, but they were no longer the tears of mere unmixed

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 377
pain ; shame, gratitude, affection even, had a share in them ;
they were tears almost of relief Yet she could not find heart to
look her husband in the face, or at once to answer him.
" Dearest," contmued Okeyl, " my sister, we are in the hands
of God ; he has ordamed it thus, and I will not blame either of
you. Do not go on crying thus ; be comforted. Come what
may, you shall see him, and speak to Mm to-morrow. He is
your guest, and under your protection, and you are under mine.
God guard us aU." Then, attributing her continued sUence to
exhaustion — natural after such extreme excitement — for that it
was the generosity of Ms .own conduct which now overpowered
her mind and voice had not entered Ms thoughts, " But mid
mght is now past," he said, " and you must have need of rest.
Lie down, dearest, and sleep quietly, and without care, tUl
mornmg ; you wUl break down else."
She tm-ned right towards him, and casting herseK on his
breast, passionately embraced Mm.
" 0 thanks ! thanks ! my dear, my noble husband," she cried
out ; " may God reward you ! " Then a sudden fear seized her,
and dra-wing back, she caught hold of Ms dress. " You wUl be
gentle with him, Okeyl ? you wiU not threaten Mm ? you will
not do Mm any harm ? Promise me ! " she exclaimed.
Her husband smUed sUghtly, a painful smile.
"I swear to you, by God Most High, I wUl treat him as
though he were my own brother," he answered. " From me he
shall hear nothmg but good. Now do you Ue down and rest
yourseK ; morning is near."
Then, without summonmg any of the servants, he himself
spread a mattress on the floor, arranged the bed, and carefuUy
laid her on it, where, wearied out as she was, by aU she had gone
through smce sunset, she was in a few minutes fast asleep.
No sooner was Okeyl sure of tMs, than he stole sUently out of
the tent; and going to where several of Ms retainers slept,
waked up one of them, and sent Mm off in quest of the
herdsman who was m charge of the mUch-goats belonging to
the household. The man was soon found. When he came his
master took Mm aside, and made Mm repeat the whole story

378 ULYSSES.

Not a shadow of a doubt remained. It was
Alkamah, the son of Aamir, and no other. TMs point made
Sure of, Okeyl ordered the herdsman to return at once, vrith all
possible speed, to the cave, and to bring thence Alkamah's
companion back vrith him, but as secretly as he could, and
avoiding any oue who might happen, even at that hour of night,
to be on the way. He was also to take care not to alarm those
in the cave ; on the contrary, to give them every assurance of
his master's good wiU and protection. He Mmself should be
handsomely rewarded afterwards.
The man went on his errand, and Okeyl remained alone in
the moonlight. He turned his steps back to the tent, but did
not at once enter it, and, instead, remained a considerable time
outside, tMnking. Eepellant as the reaUty was, he must face it.
Long before, indeed, he had, in spite of himself, been in a
measure aware how matters stood between Ms -wife and the
memory of her first lover ; but, again and again he had said to
himself it was only a memory, a fancy, a notMng ; and it would
be alike unworthy of him, and needlessly harsh to her, were he
ever to make her any reproach on the subject, even so much as
would be employed by his showing that he was aware of it.
The son of Aamir was gone, and dead ; of that he, Uke most
others, was fully persuaded ; and his remembrance, however
cherished whUe fresh, would, m the natural course of tMngs,
gradually fade away and disappear; whUe it was tolerably
certain that any allusion made by others, and more especially
by a husband, would go further to confirm what he considered a
mere idle imagination, than to efface it from a woman's mind.
Time, and a husband's constant affection, would best do that.
Thus he argued, and not unreasonably.
She, on her side, was stUl less incUned to speak, ashamed at
heart, though enslaved. So, by a tacit compromise, a veil was
drawn across what each believed, though with opposite feeUngs,
to be an empty shadow of the past, devoid of act or purpose ;
and their mutual confidence, entire as beseemed husband and
-wife, on every other topic of daUy occurrence, except this one,
threw this particular reserve so far into the background of life as

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 379
to render it indistinct, and, both beUeved, unimportant. Now^
however, on tMs unhappy night, not only had the veU long and
carefully maintained, been suddenly and riolently torn away,
but there appeared distmct behmd the rent, not an unsubstantial
memory, an ineffective fancy, a fadmg dream, but a present and
terrible fact. Unwelcome to him ; but was it equally unwel
come to her ?
Much he thought it over, but found no satisfactory conclusion
to Ms thoughts. Deeply, crueUy -wronged though he felt MmseK
to have been, there was no redress to be had ; no reparation was
possible now. Jealous ? of what ? Of an affection that had
never been his ? Freely, unquestioned, Ms -wKe had herself
made the avowal. Anger ? — rev^enge ? But she had tMown not
herself only, but his riv^al — Ms successful rival, so far as love
was concerned — on Ms mercy. True, -wife, or whatever else in
name, Selma could henceforth be notMng to Mm. She was not
Ms, but Alkamah's. Not even the latter's death could restore —
restore what ? She had ne-y-er been Ms.
But Okeyl sttU loved Ms ynS.&, more than he MmseK knew ;
and love, whatever some have asserted, though it may be gradu
aUy weakened, and so at last destroyed, cannot be ktUed and
drop down dead in an instant. And from tMs love, joined to
Ms o-wn natural generosity of character, sprung a great pity; pity
extendmg not over her only, but even over Ms rival, and leadmg
him to blame not them, but destiny ; or rather to acquiesce in
what seemed to Mm the working of a Mgher decree, from wMch
none could escape, neither he nor they. And thus the only
result he reached was to confirm MmseK more strongly than ever
m the resolution he had first made. He would act as though
they were strangers to him; — no, not strangers, but kmsfolk,
brother and sister, in Ms tenderness towards them, and leave the
rest to fate. " Come of it what may," he said to Mmself, " I
shaU not then be to blame ; and as for them, they must abide by
the consequences of their own dofrigs ; I wiU not mterfere. But
I -wish — weU, there is no good in wisMug this or that now : God
help us aU." In^ tMs disposition he turned from the night,
already in the dead stUlness that precedes the first gleam of

38o ULYSSES.

dawn, and went into the tent. Selma lay there, moaning in
deep sleep ; he looked at her for a mmute or two, then sought a
distant corner of the tent and lay do-wn also, but did not close
Ms eyes.
The da-wn had broke, but a few of the larger stars were yet tn
the sky, when the herdsman retm-ned from Ms message, and -vrith
Mm Shebeeb. From this last Okeyl learnt every particular of
Alkamah's story, from first to last: how the lad, after bemg
wounded and made prisoner m the Hejaz, had escaped thence
and returned to Eoweydah ; how Ms own family, hopmg to cure
him of Ms attachment for Selma, had attempted to convince him
of her death, and for a whUe succeeded ; how after two years he
had become aware that she was yet aUve — only at tMs pomt of
Ms tale Shebeeb made no mention of the part he had taken m
undeceiving Ms kinsman ; how, kno-wing notMng as to Malik's
daughter except that she had returned to her o-wn land, they had
set out m search of her, tUl they had come Mther. But by what
chance they had been led to look for her no longer m Nejran, but
Yemamah, he did not say, nor would Okeyl, whatever thoughts
may have crossed Ms mind, condescend to ask.
Was it, however, vrithout some secret pleasure that Okeyl heard
how much Ms rival had suffered — that recovery from the con
dition in wMch he now lay was hopeless — that Ms days, nay, Ms
hours, were numbered ? To have vrished it other-vrise he must
have been more than man, or less. Yet more fuUy, perhaps,
more bitterly than before, he felt, as Shebeeb proceeded in Ms
recital, that Ms rival's death, however speedy, must needs come
too late ; that Selma as she had been could never more be Ms.
Broken glass, broken troth, broken love : death, thefrs or his,
nught sweep the fragments away, but could not mend them.
The sun was just rismg when Selma awoke, pale and weak ;
she trembled as she stood up. Her husband took her in his
arms, and Mssed her — for the last time. "Come," he said.
Shebeeb was waiting outside.
Closely veUed from head to foot, and supported between two
of her maidservants — for she tottered at every step, and -vrithout
assistance must have faUen — she left the tent; and, never

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 381

speaking a word or asking a question, unconscious seemingly of
whither they were going, or why, followed her husband. Shebeeb
led the way. In this order they passed, without meeting anyone,
beyond the limits of the camp ; crossed the valley, keeping at
some distance, from the village, till they reached the abrupt
mountain foot, and entered a deep winding gorge, which at last
brought them to the lonely valley and cave, till then almost
unknown and nameless : it received a name that day.
While these things were going on, Alkamah had remained all
that night in the heavy trance of fever and extreme weakness ;
asleep, though seeming to himself awake, and totally unaware
either of the herdsman's second visit or of his own companion's
movements, coming or going of evening, night, or morning. But
in his sleep he was conscious, not of weariness or pain, but of an
exqmsite happiness ; happiness such as Ms waking hours had
not known for years — the fulness of love and life. Now he
wandered with Selma under the green, transparent shade of a
sprmg orchard, leaf and blossom, where birds sang sweet on the
boughs around them, and cool crystal waters went flowing at
their feet ; her face was turned to him, a sweet girl's face, one
smile ; their talk was all of love. Then they were again together
in another place, where he could not tell : it seemed a dwelling,
yet there were neither waUs, nor roof, nor any bound ; nothing
was distinct, not even her form or face, nor movement, nor v^oice ;
only her presence encompassed him in great love and peace-
¦ This too passed, and he was alone, as in days long before, when
a child m the quiet noonday solitude of his father's garden by
the well ; not a care in his mind, not an ache in his limbs, not a
want in Ms heart, happy in the consciousness of youth without
the sense of years ; full of the life that is unUmited by within or
around, beyond all distance or horizon, season or time. It had
been Ms then, it was his once more ; the life known to some, if
not to many, in early boyhood, when the mind first realises
individuality, before the soul has yet di-rided itself by the later
limitations of thought and act from the universe of which it is
part ; known more often when those limitations are vanisMng

ULYSSES.

away -with the phase of existence to wMch they properly
belong. Thus passed the feveri,sh hours of mght, tUl the secret influ
ences of the mornmg roused him from dreams to wakefidness,
though not at once to any distinct idea ; only he was aware of
intense but by no means painful lassitude, and of a carelessness
of Ufe such as he had never before experienced. Where he was,
how he came to be there, what was to happen next, he felt no
interest m; he did not even miss Shebeeb fr-om the cave, or
conjecture where he might have gone, and on what errand. How
qmet everythmg was ! Perhaps he was afready dead and buried.
Could this be death ? this the tomb ? He could not have -vrished
it otherwise. Then, in a flash of thought, the image of Selma
retumed, and -with a pang like that of a haK-dro-wned man when
dra-wn out of the water and laid on the bank he returns to con
sciousness. Alkamah knew that he was stiU aUve, and not yet
free to die. One link, though only one, of the Ufe-chain remained
to break, but he felt that the touch of the hand wMch would
seem to reuMte it mdissolubly -with the past, would by that
very act snap it for ever; that she, the angel of Ufe, was also the
appomted angel of death to him. The thought was comfort. So
he lay there and waited, the fingers of one hand clasped over those
of the other, where the signet-ring had been, as K to assure that
it was absent on its message now, and to prepare for replacing it
when its work should be over, not to be removed agam. It
was otherwise ordamed.
He would not, so duUed were Ms senses, have noticed or even
heard the footsteps approacMng the cavem, had there not been
among them the tread for wMch he had so often in days gone by
watched eagerly, as for the bringer of aU Ms happiness ; then it
had been light, firm, and qmck ; now it was uncertain, slow, and
faltermg ; but changed as that step was, and dying as were Ms
own ear,8, they caught the sound and mstantly recogmsed it ;
notMng short of actual death could have disguised it from them.
With an mstmctive effort, wMch would have been beyond
whatever deUberate strength remained Mm, he half raised

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 383
liimseK from the ground where he was lying ; he would have
risen and gone to meet her, but Ms feet and knees were
paralysed and powerless now. Leaning forward, he strained his
dim gaze, fixed on the entrance of the cave.
It was darkened by the group without. Shebeeb, and Okeyl
vvith him, would have been the first to enter ; but Selma, who
dm-ing the way tMther had appeared like one entranced, scarcely
able to move but for the help of her maids, and every moment
on the point of sinMng down between them, now by a quick
effort shook herself loose of them, threw aside her veU, and
forced her way to the front. Self-respect, the presence of
strangers, of her husband, present shame, after reproach, aU
had vamshed, except the remorseful love that urged her on,
regardless of everything besides. With a staggering eagerness
that stumbled over its own haste, she went straight towards Mm
who in that moment was all the world to her ; the others
astomshed, awestruck even, stood aside : they felt they had no
part nor right m such a meeting.
Alkamah strove once more to rise, but could not. He
stretched out Ms arms to her as she came forward; Ms lips
moved, but uttered no audible sound. " Alkamah ! my love, I
am here," said Selma, as she stooped over Mm. He caught her
hands and gazed upwards earnestly, searcMngly, into her face ;
then his own was transfigured by a smUe that gave back all the
radiance of youth and happy love; an mstant more and the
snule settled into fixed, peaceful calm, Ms eyes grew dark, Ms
hold slackened, his head feU on her breast.
Terrified, despafr-ing, " Alkamah, my love, my own ! " she
exclaimed, " look at me, speak to me but once — speak ; say you
have forgiven me." There was no voice nor answer from the
dead ; she feU beside Mm hea-vUy on the cavern floor.
At first they thought that she too was dead, but it was not so.
With care they IKted her up, carried her outside the cave, and
laid her where the air blew cool in the mountain shadow ; it was
a long swoon, but in time she re-rived. Thus much they knew
by her opening her eyes, but she soon closed them agam, and
neither moved nor stirred, tUl after a whUe they brought her

384 ULYSSES.
lover's dead body out of the cavern, and prepared to bury it
in the sandy soU near the entrance. Then she sat up in her
place ; and while they arranged and wrapped the limbs and
recited the last prayers that commended the dead to his Maker,
she looked fixedly on with dry eyes that never flickered or
tumed aside, tUl the earth had closed over Mm whom she had
thus seen again, after long separation, to die. When aU was
over, she hid her face m her hands and wept in sUence. But
soon she rose. "It has been," she said; and -without a word
more, or even turning back as she left the valley, she made sign
to her maids to foUow her, and unsupported returned vrith her
husband to the tent.
There for tMee days she remained, never once leaving the
dwelling, but constantly occupying herself in ordinary household
duties, as if nothing had been. Nor did she during aU that
time make any allusion, either in word or manner, to what had
happened ; nor even, at least in the presence of others, once
shed a tear. On the fourth morning she was gone. They
missed her, but waited till noon ; she did not return. Then
they searched for her, first in the neighbouring tents, afterwards
in the riUage and its gardens ; she was not there. But towards
evening they found her in the valley of the cave, stretched on
the earth by Alkamah's grav^e, Ufeless. The signet-ring was
clasped in her hand.
" May God have mercy on her and on Mm ; they were true
lovers," said Okeyl, as the grave they dug for her side by side
with that of Alkamah, hid for ever from Mm what he once had
called his wife. " I loved her, and would have loved and
cherished her to the end ; but she was not mine, she never had
been mine. She was his, and could not remam separated from
him. It was the decree of God."
The event was soon known abroad ; and the chiefs of Yemen,
who showed every sign of sympathy with Okeyl, sought to
retain Mm amongst them, and more than ever renewed their
offers of family alliance. But Yemamah, with its reminiscences
was insupportable to him, and before many weeks were over he
had struck his tents and returned to his own country. There he

ALKAMAH'S CAVE: A STORY OF NEJD. 385
married again, and his wife bore Mm many cMldren. He loved
them and her well; yet to the last he felt the longings of
unavaUing regret for her who, separated from Mm by more than
death, umted to another, shared, no more to part, the resting-
place of Alkamah.
Shebeeb too left Yemamah a few days after Ms foster-brother's
death, and retraced the path by wMch they had journeyed
before. EeacMng the hut where they had halted, he found it
stUl standing, but open and deserted. Of its weird tenants,
Jandeb and her mother, notMng was ever seen or heard again.
He returned to Eoweydah, and died there.

THE END,

2 c

LONDON :
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
BTAMFOKD STBEEI AND CHAKINO CUOSS.

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Library of
PROFESSOR F. WELLS WILLIAMS
Yak iSyg
Permanently deposited hy
Yale-in-China