The Talisman | Page 8

two sous were found upon any one, he
was instantly expelled the society of his tribe, the king bidding him
contemptuously buy arms and fight.
"This troop, so far from being cumbersome to the army, was infinitely
serviceable, carrying burdens, bringing in forage, provisions, and
tribute; working the machines in the sieges; and, above all, spreading
consternation among the Turks, who feared death from the lances of the
knights less than that further consummation they heard of under the
teeth of the Thafurs." [James's "History of Chivalry."]
It is easy to conceive that an ignorant minstrel, finding the taste and
ferocity of the Thafurs commemorated in the historical accounts of the
Holy Wars, has ascribed their practices and propensities to the Monarch
of England, whose ferocity was considered as an object of exaggeration
as legitimate as his valour.
ABBOTSFORD, 1st July, 1832.
*

TALES OF THE CRUSADERS. TALE II.--THE TALISMAN.

*

CHAPTER I
.
They, too, retired To the wilderness, but 'twas with arms. PARADISE
REGAINED.
The burning sun of Syria had not yet attained its highest point in the
horizon, when a knight of the Red Cross, who had left his distant
northern home and joined the host of the Crusaders in Palestine, was
pacing slowly along the sandy deserts which lie in the vicinity of the
Dead Sea, or, as it is called, the Lake Asphaltites, where the waves of
the Jordan pour themselves into an inland sea, from which there is no
discharge of waters.
The warlike pilgrim had toiled among cliffs and precipices during the
earlier part of the morning. More lately, issuing from those rocky and
dangerous defiles, he had entered upon that great plain, where the
accursed cities provoked, in ancient days, the direct and dreadful
vengeance of the Omnipotent.
The toil, the thirst, the dangers of the way, were forgotten, as the
traveller recalled the fearful catastrophe which had converted into an
arid and dismal wilderness the fair and fertile valley of Siddim, once
well watered, even as the Garden of the Lord, now a parched and
blighted waste, condemned to eternal sterility.
Crossing himself, as he viewed the dark mass of rolling waters, in
colour as in duality unlike those of any other lake, the traveller
shuddered as he remembered that beneath these sluggish waves lay the
once proud cities of the plain, whose grave was dug by the thunder of
the heavens, or the eruption of subterraneous fire, and whose remains
were hid, even by that sea which holds no living fish in its bosom,
bears no skiff on its surface, and, as if its own dreadful bed were the
only fit receptacle for its sullen waters, sends not, like other lakes, a
tribute to the ocean. The whole land around, as in the days of Moses,
was "brimstone and salt; it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass
groweth thereon." The land as well as the lake might be termed dead, as
producing nothing having resemblance to vegetation, and even the very
air was entirely devoid of its ordinary winged inhabitants, deterred

probably by the odour of bitumen and sulphur which the burning sun
exhaled from the waters of the lake in steaming clouds, frequently
assuming the appearance of waterspouts. Masses of the slimy and
sulphureous substance called naphtha, which floated idly on the
sluggish and sullen waves, supplied those rolling clouds with new
vapours, and afforded awful testimony to the truth of the Mosaic
history.
Upon this scene of desolation the sun shone with almost intolerable
splendour, and all living nature seemed to have hidden itself from the
rays, excepting the solitary figure which moved through the flitting
sand at a foot's pace, and appeared the sole breathing thing on the wide
surface of the plain. The dress of the rider and the accoutrements of his
horse were peculiarly unfit for the traveller in such a country. A coat of
linked mail, with long sleeves, plated gauntlets, and a steel breastplate,
had not been esteemed a sufficient weight of armour; there were also
his triangular shield suspended round his neck, and his barred helmet of
steel, over which he had a hood and collar of mail, which was drawn
around the warrior's shoulders and throat, and filled up the vacancy
between the hauberk and the headpiece. His lower limbs were sheathed,
like his body, in flexible mail, securing the legs and thighs, while the
feet rested in plated shoes, which corresponded with the gauntlets. A
long, broad, straight-shaped, double-edged falchion, with a handle
formed like a cross, corresponded with a stout poniard on the other side.
The knight also bore, secured to his saddle, with one end resting on his
stirrup, the long steel-headed lance, his own proper weapon, which, as
he rode, projected backwards, and displayed its