Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

ited than otherwise it would have been.
Descending the sides of Jebel Mousa a lit-
tle, three of the valleys that insulate Sinai
may be traced the plain Er-Râhah being
shut out by Râs Sufsâfeh, as also part of
Wady El-Deir.
We were chiefly interested
in the Wâdy Sebâyeh, - the place, as some
think, of the encampment of the people
while the Law was proclaimed from Jebel
Mousa. This we saw in all its extent; but
it only deepened our conviction concerning
the claims of Er-Râhah.

vial débris, or the side of a natural valley -are around the base of the mountain; the Hill of Aaron, where he cast the golden calf, is just beyond.

If the view from below was impressive, not the less was the view from above. The riven peaks around us were stern and awful in their grandeur. Could they but have testified what they had seen! Their character is in striking harmony with the associations of the place.

And yet it was not without its discord. On a mountain to the left, over against Râs Sŭfsâfeh, — the Jebel Tînia is an unfinished modern palace of Abbas Pasha, glittering like the last new house in the Boulevards; a monument of folly and bad taste.

Most remarkable of all was the view, northward, of the interior summits of Sinai itself, —a Titanic wilderness of weatherbeaten masses of granite, shaping themselves into the most fantastic forms, and overhanging with indescribable sublimity the ravines that separated them. After It is impossible to convey mere impresspending about an hour upon the summit, sions to others, and of course their subjectand reading the sacred history associated ive value depends upon their recipient: with it, we descended to the little plain; but having traversed the summits of this but instead of leaving it through the arch- vast pile of Sinai from one end to the other, way leading down to the convent, three of having looked down into each of the us started for the summit of Râs Sŭfsâfeh, four valleys which isolate it, having looked about two miles distant. Our path wound up to it from various points below, and through narrow valleys and over rugged having a distinct and vivid conception of it passes of granite. Never have I been in its entireness, we all felt, first, its unique so impressed with huge forms of moun- grandeur - grand in the approaches to it, tain magnificence and grotesqueness: they are as overwhelming from their own awful grandeur as from their inseparable associations. The bottoms of these internal valleys are covered with odoriferous plants; each, indeed, is a perfect garden of herbs,' most of them unknown to me. In one or two places are little chapels - one dedicated to John the Baptist, another dedicated to the 'Virgin of the Zone;' the latter is the most northern, and is at the foot of the precipice of Sulsâfeh. Two willows grow near it, which give its name, 'Mountain of the Willow,' to the peak. From this chapel the ascent of about 500 feet to the summit is very steep and arduous; it is, indeed, a rough scramble up an almost perpendicular ravine, over huge detached blocks of granite. We accomplished it in about twenty minutes; and then we stood upon Horeb, the mount of God,' on the very summit of the central peak, once covered with clouds and darkness, and refulgent with the glory of the Lord

[ocr errors]

'Where all around, on mountain, sand, and sky, God's chariot-wheels have left distinctest trace.'

Er-Rahah in its entireness lies stretched before us; the wide entrance to Wâdy Sheikh opens on the right; the boundaries which kept off the people—either an allu

grand in itself, the adytum of a great temple of Nature consecrated by God to himself; and next, the wonderful harmony between the place and the history, -a harmony to be found nowhere else in equal perfection. We could not doubt that this was the scene of the law-giving, and that the two summits, Jebel Mousa and Râs Sufsâfeh, were the mountains of Divine manifestation to Moses and the people respectively. On this supposition there is not a requirement of the narrative that is not perfectly fulfilled. No place or conditions can be conceived of more suitable for such a manifestation.

For a while we surrendered ourselves to its almost overpowering associations and solemnities. We could almost fancy that the mountains still felt the awe of His presence; that the atmosphere still thrilled with His voice; that all around still bore the impress of His touch.

Every traveller has remarked the distinctness with which, in the region of Sinai, sounds can be heard at an almost incredible distance. The exaggerations of the Arabs one of whom told Carsten Niebuhr that their shout could be heard from Jebel Mousa to the Gulf of 'Akabah, — as well as the sober testimony of travellers who have made experiments, attests this. According to Mr. Sandie, ordinary conver

sation on the plain Er-Rahah can be heard nearly half a mile. A thunderstorm, which he heard on Sinai, is described by Dr. Stewart as stupendously grand. This may possibly be attributed in part to the structure of the mountains, and in part to absence of vegetation. This has an interesting bearing upon the utterance of the Law. There is no reason to think that the voice from the holy mount was loud and reverberating like thunder: the impression which the narrative makes is of a voice distinct and clear, rather than overwhelmingly grand. Philo says: The Law was uttered with such calmness and distinctness that the people seemed to be seeing rather than hearing it.'

most interesting and most sacred regions of the earth; and hardly a fact, from the time of their first foundation to the present time, has been contributed by them to the geography, the geology, or the history of a country which in all its aspects has been submitted to their investigation for thirteen centuries.'

The scene of our departure was strange enough. Some of our camels and men, according to the regulations of the Arabs, had to be exchanged for others. Every Arab in the district who possessed a camel was eager to be employed. As many as fifty or sixty men beset our encampment, and scrambled for our things. The confusion and violence were indescribable. Every little bag was seized by four or five Arabs

We rapidly descended to our tents by one of the ravines on the eastern side of simultaneously struggling, vociferating, the mountain, an almost perpendicular water-course, which it would be well-nigh impossible to climb. The descensus' was anything but facilis.' It brought us into the valley just by Jethro's well and our tents; the rest of the latter was very wel

come.

6

On the morning of Tuesday we prepared to leave Sinai. It is impossible to avoid a feeling of melancholy at the almost barbarous and utterly irreligious condition of the district. A greater destitution of religious feeling, and even idea, than that which characterises the Towâra Arabs, cannot be imagined: they may be gentle in blood, but we should scarcely do them an injustice were we, in religious respects, to place them on the level of the lowest African savage. In Mussulman cities nothing is more common than to see Arabs pray: we never saw a Towâra pray; nor, as far as we could learn, have they any ordinances of religious worship or instraction. And yet the district of Sinai has been inhabited by as many as 6,000 monks at a time: traces of monasteries and convents are to be found everywhere. Unlike the self-sacrificing monks and missionaries of the Latin Church, the Greek monks of the Convent of the Transfiguration never think of teaching the Arabs either the arts of civilization or the glad tidings of the Gospel. It is hard,' says Dean Stanley, to recall another institution with such opportunities so signally wasted. It is a colony of Christian pastors planted among heathens, who wait on them for their daily bread, and for their rain from heaven; and hardly a spark of civilization or of Christianity, as far as history records, has been imparted to a single tribe or family in that wide wilderness. It is a colony of Greeks, of Europeans, of ecclesiastics, in one of the

gesticulating to the utmost of their power. Hassan and his servants were powerless. He and 'Abishai, his chief lieutenant, armed themselves, therefore, with the stoutest sticks that they could find, and with both hands laid about them most lustily, running from one group to another, and belabouring the hands and arms that were struggling at a portmanteau. Finding this ineffectual, Hassan would occasionally dash his fist into the face of an Arab, and by a kind of sustained push, back him out of the mêlée. The clamour of European porters and commissionaires is bad enough, but it is gentleness itself compared with that of the Arabs. Choose your porter, and the rest fall off. You cannot choose your Arab. He has no idea of a verbal engagement; and so long as you are within reach he will attempt to transfer you and your baggage to his own camels. The entire property of an Arab consists of his camel; and all its produce is the very occasional employment for it that he can obtain. Blood is frequently shed on such occasions. Happily it was not so in this instance, although the struggle continued for two hours. We could do nothing but stand by, infinitely amused-compelled to admire the perfect forms, the manly grace, and the picturesque attitudes of many of the vociferating Arabs.

We did not get off until nine o'clock, and for some miles we were escorted by a number of disappointed men with their unemployed camels. It was an irreverent and even painful departure from such a place. I did, however, in the confusion manage to get apart for a short time, and my last look of the Holy Mount was a quiet and, silent one. Shortly after, however, two or three Arabs seized my camel, and with the peculiar guttural which brings a camel to his

knees, they thrice arrested my progress, you are fairly up; and all this was aggravociferating and shouting, trying to induce vated in this instance by the further disme to dismount and transfer myself to turbance of a pull at one leg or the other. another beast, until I was in danger of be- I was, however, by this time, a tolerably exing treated like a portmanteau my legs pert camel rider, and kept my seat. Hapand arms pulled in opposite directions. pily 'Abishai came up, and, seeing my preHassan, according to his custom, had re- dicament, put a stout stick into my hand, mained behind, to see everything cleared with the wholesome advice, 'If they touch from the encampment, and, except by phys- you again, beat them.' I was not again ical resistance, I had no means of remon- molested; but for some hours the disapstrating. As I had a good camel, I did not pointed candidates for the honour of carrychoose to part with it; so, as often as it was ing us accompanied our caravan, maintainbrought to its knees, I made it rise again; ing a fierce and almost deafening controverthe chief inconvenience being the violent sy with their more fortunate companions. shuttlecock motion caused by a camel's rising, the first pitch of which almost sends you over its head, the second almost breaks your back, the third propels you forward again, and it is not until the fourth that

Our way lay down the Wâdy Sheikh; our destination was Gaza, by the Khan Nûkhl, which we reached fourteen days afterwards.

Н. А

[blocks in formation]

From the Sunday Magazine. THE PASTOR'S WIDOW.

[ocr errors]

A FEW years ago our market was daily attended unless, indeed, the weather was desperate by an elderly woman, remarkable neither in face, attire, nor anything else. Her dress was always simplicity itself; she was middle-sized, had rather a commonplace face at the first glance, but what drew my attention to her was the regularity of her attendance, for which there seemed no adequate reason, since she had, generally speaking, only a very small basket on her arm, and sometimes none at all. When she had made her purchase she did not go straight home like other people, but regularly made the circuit of the whole market; and when the weather was fine and the stalls full, often visited some of them two or three times over. Unconsciously I took to observing what she was looking for, and what it was she bought; she had never come in my way as a bargainer, never snapped up a pigeon or fowl I happened to want. Indeed, her purchases seemed all on a small scale; belonging not to the animal but vegetable world, and even of vegetables she chose the cheapest and soonest cooked, and with them almost always a little fruit. At times too she would ask the price of flowers, a little rose-bush or pot of pansies, and I noticed that very often the market-women would give her a few lettuce leaves unasked, whence I concluded that she kept a litle bird, and in all probability lived alone. Now, purchases to this amount need not have detained her two minutes; there must have been some other attraction in the market-place, and when once I began fairly to observe her, I soon discovered what it was.

Evidently, she took an infinite delight in the vegetables and fruits themselves, apart from any idea of eating them. But it was orchard-fruit that most fascinated her eyes and heart. Mere bush-fruit she seemed scarcely to notice, but apples and pears were her supreme delight, there was a new exclamation at every kind she discovered. When the new ones came in, and new and old lay in the basket together, her new year seemed to begin, and she noted and named every fresh appearance, just as a field-marshal reviews his regiment.

--

I began, too, to notice how well the market-women knew her tastes. They would beckon to her to show her new kinds, and ask their names. There was, in short, a quite peculiar tie between this good woman and the market-wives, and a very

friendly one. The interest that she took in their stalls, her admiration of fine fruit, her judicious discrimination of the relative merits of different kinds, and useful hints as to storing them, &c., were all pleasant to the sellers, who evidently liked to see her and to exchange a few good-humoured words, as a variety in the monotony of marketing.

One winter day, when it was bitter cold and slippery, it so happened that she fell down in going out of the market, and hurt her leg and arms very badly. She was soon raised up and set on her feet. No limb was broken. With great suffering she could contrive to walk, but not alone. Although I had very little acquaintance with her, I could not do less than offer her my arm, which she took gratefully, but with all sorts of excuses and apologies, such as were customary in my day, when every silly person had not yet got to believing that the world was created expressly for him, and that his fellow-creatures were in it to wait upon his convenience. It seems to be considered old-fashioned now-a-days for one man to thank another; but what would you have? If people have left off graditude to God, why not to each other?

I can tell you it was no easy matter to get the poor creature, who was in terrible pain, back to her own part of the town.

Her lowly room was indescribably clean and neat, and as I had rightly surmised, there was a bird in the window, who greeted us with cheerful chirps and twittering.

"You poor dear," she said, "you think you are going to get your salad, and I have none for you to-day."

[ocr errors]

Quite exhausted, she sank down on a chair. My Heavenly Father!" she murmured, "what am I to do now?"

It seemed that she was quite alone in the world. Only a charwoman came in once a day with wood and water. She did everything else for herself. She rented this one little room, but had nothing to do with any one of the other inhabitants of the house, no acquaintanceship with them, except a mutual bow if they chanced to meet in the doorway. Such complete isolation as this may go on pretty well for a time, but earlier or later something is sure to happen, and the question "What next?" often gets forced upon the lonely with a suddenness that takes away their very breath.

On this occasion it was I who put it, and not the half-fainting sufferer. What next, indeed? There I was, all alone; the charwoman would not come till six,- it was only ten now. Had I been at home I could

have sent for help; but I was afraid of leaving her alone, and then, whom was I to call in this strange house? There was not even a bell in the room. In the midst of my perplexity, however, there was a knock at the door, and a merry childish face peeped in and said

"Mamma sent me to see if she could be of any use to the old lady. She heard that she had come back poorly."

Here was an angel in time of need. She came in, and in the most compassionate way began to stroke the poor sufferer, who could not reply for coughing.

"Could your mamma come here herself?" said I, not noticing the shaking of the old lady's head, and the child was off before she could get out a word.

"Dear me !" she said at last, "what can you be thinking of! Such a distinguished lady!"

But the lady herself soon entered, distinguished no doubt, but a sweet-looking creature as well, who approached the invalid in the most sympathising manner, but bowed very stiffly to me. I set it down for pride, and thought to myself," Ay, ay, they are all alike;" but later I found out it was shyness.

And now, what next? Why, first of all we decided that we must get her to bed, and then I would go and fetch my own doctor. The lady said she would have sent for hers, only he was rather too much run after, and when once he had laid out the order of his day, nothing could get him to depart from it: if they ran after him with the intelligence that his own wife was dying, she believed he was capable of saying, "She must wait, for I have still four patients down on my list." Meanwhile I fully expected the lady to send for her maid; but no, she took the matter in hand herself, to the inexpressible confusion of the worthy widow.

66

'Impossible-out of the question-the sheriff's lady-Madam, I beg, I entreatI shall die of shame."

And when we came to her left foot we were nearly the death of her, for as the lady tried to draw off the stocking, she in the intensity of her distress and anxiety to prevent it, lost her balance and nearly fell off the chair. To be sure I caught her and broke the fall, but still the wrench she gave herself made her scream, and brought tears into her eyes. We had the greatest difficulty to get her into bed, but at last it was done, and she might have rested quietly but for her politeness and her scruples.

"And if I only knew what to do,- and she is not put out with me. She can do everything for me that I want."

Upon which the lady explained that the allusion was to the charwoman who came once a day, and that the widow thought that would be attendance enough. But this the doctor would not hear of. The case required far more treatment, and he proposed to have the patient carried at once to the hospital, where all the townspeople had a right to be received gratis. He was physician there, he said, and he could promise that she would be perfectly well cared for. But, to our great astonishment, the pastor's widow positively refused; she could not venture into such a large house, could not endure to be amidst numbers; it was impossible to live in a large room where there was no rest or sleep day or night; a little room was such a comfort in sickness. We all tried to overcome her objections, told her a few hours would reconcile her to the change, and vaunted the comforts of the institution; even Lisette, the lady's maid, taking a lively part in the argument, for she feared her mistress's kindness would give her some trouble.

The good soul knew and felt that this repugnance of hers must strike us all as childish and unreasonable, and therefore her agitation became very great, when all at once the sheriff's lady interposed :

"Never mind, my dear madam, don't distress yourself; there is no necessity for anything of the kind. I can easily understand your liking better to be alone than with a dozen others: when you want to sleep, somebody else is sure to begin coughing. should feel just the same. We shall be sure to find a good nurse."

The doctor was not one of those who are incapable of placing themselves in another person's situation, and get angry at the least difference of opinion.

66

Very well, my good lady," he said, "I have not another word to say. If only we get Mrs. X. (he meant me) to look about for us, depend upon it we shall get a suitable nurse.'

"Thank you for your confidence in me," said I; and the thing was settled. I went off to seek a nurse, who was, in the first instance, to call upon the doctor for further instructions, and the lady undertook to sit with the patient in the meantime.

Thus, then, a so-called accident had brought together, and into friendly relations, persons who else would never have known each other; and but for it I should have been poorer in kindly memories and richer in prejudices.

The consequences of the accident were far more serious than the good woman at first anticipated. The human frame is pret

« VorigeDoorgaan »