Oriental Encounters | Page 2

and advice.
But, as it chanced, on board the ship which took me to Port Said from Naples I met a man
who knew those people intimately--had been, indeed, for years an inmate of their
house--and he assumed the office of my mentor. I stayed in Cairo, merely because he did,
for some weeks, and went with him on the same boat to Jaffa. He, for some unknown
reason--I suspect insanity--did not want me in Jerusalem just then; and, when we landed,
spun me a strange yarn of how the people I had thought to visit were exceedingly
eccentric and uncertain in their moods; and how it would be best for me to stop in Jaffa
until he sent me word that I was sure of welcome. His story was entirely false, I found out
later, a libel on a very hospitable house. But I believed it at the time, as I did all his
statements, having no other means of information on the subject.
So I remained at Jaffa, in a little gasthaus in the German colony, which had the charms of
cleanliness and cheapness, and there I might have stayed till now had I awaited the
tidings promised by my counsellor. There for the first two weeks I found life very dull.
Then Mr. Hanauer, the English chaplain, and a famous antiquarian, took pity on my
solitary state, walked me about, and taught me words of Arabic. He was a native of
Jerusalem, and loved the country. My sneaking wish to fraternise with Orientals, when I
avowed it after hesitations, appeared good to him. And then I made acquaintance with a
clever dragoman and one of the most famous jokers in all Syria, who happened to be
lodging at my little hostelry, with nothing in the world to do but stare about him. He
helped me to throw off the European and plunge into the native way of living. With him I
rode about the plain of Sharon, sojourning among the fellâhîn, and sitting in the
coffee-shops of Ramleh, Lydda, Gaza, meeting all sorts of people, and acquiring the
vernacular without an effort, in the manner of amusement. From dawn to sunset we were
in the saddle. We went on pilgrimage to Nebi Rubîn, the mosque upon the edge of
marshes by the sea, half-way to Gaza; we rode up northward to the foot of Carmel;

explored the gorges of the mountains of Judæa; frequented Turkish baths; ate native
meals and slept in native houses--following the customs of the people of the land in all
respects. And I was amazed at the immense relief I found in such a life. In all my
previous years I had not seen happy people. These were happy. Poor they might be, but
they had no dream of wealth; the very thought of competition was unknown to them, and
rivalry was still a matter of the horse and spear. Wages and rent were troubles they had
never heard of. Class distinctions, as we understand them, were not. Everybody talked to
everybody. With inequality they had a true fraternity. People complained that they were
badly governed, which merely meant that they were left to their devices save on great
occasions. A Government which touches every individual and interferes with him to
some extent in daily life, though much esteemed by Europeans, seems intolerable to the
Oriental. I had a vision of the tortured peoples of the earth impelled by their own misery
to desolate the happy peoples, a vision which grew clearer in the after years. But in that
easy-going Eastern life there is a power of resistance, as everybody knows who tries to
change it, which may yet defeat the hosts of joyless drudgery.
My Syrian friend--the Suleymân of the following sketches--introduced me to the only
Europeans who espoused that life--a French Alsatian family, the Baldenspergers,
renowned as pioneers of scientific bee-keeping in Palestine, who hospitably took a share
in my initiation. They had innumerable hives in different parts of the country--I have seen
them near the Jaffa gardens and among the mountains south of Hebron--which they
transported in due season, on the backs of camels, seeking a new growth of flowers. For a
long while the Government ignored their industry, until the rumour grew that it was very
profitable. Then a high tax was imposed. The Baldenspergers would not pay it. They said
the Government might take the hives if it desired to do so. Soldiers were sent to carry out
the seizure. But the bee-keepers had taken out the bottom of each hive, and when the
soldiers lifted them, out swarmed the angry bees. The soldiers fled; and after that
experience the Government agreed to compromise. I remember well a long day's ride
with Emile and Samuel Baldensperger, round by Askelon