CHAPTER XXV. IN STEPS OF CRUSADERS. No commendation of early rising ever came from the East. The habit there is of the climate, and all folks are early astir, as old folks are everywhere, because no further sleep can be got. As naturally as possible we are all out and about at five a.m., and by half-past six breakfast is over, without a newspaper to help its digestion. Our damp tents and boots and snail and night troubles are told in place of news of the day. The two sleeping-tents are down, and with their contents packed on muleback by time the table is cleared. The cooking-tent had similarly disappeared before we were all in the saddles, and even the breakfast-tent was down and packed before we were clearly on the way. It looked magical work in its expedition, but I recalled that it was done by Arab hands that had packed tents from childhood, as their forefathers had done for all time. These sons of Ishmael have the knowledge of this tent-pitching and removing so ingrained in their nature that, with the requisite number of mules to help them, they would clear away a tent township in half a day, and have it fixed up again twenty miles away by nightfall. After that morning, I sit at breakfast where I can watch their movements, and see how to unpeg a tent, rope it around its pole, and have it strapped on muleback in that shortest of time known as a jiffey. I see now the meaning of a modern poet's metaphor "The cares that oppress the day Shall fold up their tents like the Arabs, And so in a straggling string we leave old Joppa and its steep and narrow streets. In one of these I notice, over a ramshackle-looking building the words "Hotel of the Twelve Tribes," sufficiently reminding me of the land I am in. I don't think I would change tent-life for the probable accommodation there. It looks altogether as if a thirteenth tribe, and perhaps a fourteenth, might be about, that would make up in their activity and attentions for any of the lost twelve. Two tents with their addenda of poles, ropes, and pegs, stuffed out also with all sorts of tent furniture, are carried by one mule. He is quite lost amid the load that so sticks out all around him. Another one carries two heavy chests of two hundredweight swung on each side of him, in which the canteen is packed. Antoine, our cook, has a mule to himself, on which he squats, seemingly crosslegged, with his tent and large array of pots, pans, and kettles all around him. It is something novel to me to see the work that can be got out of a mule. I have now infinite respect for him, as also for his heels, in which there is shown a great reserve of power, neat and small as they are, when he flings them out. A mule fetches in Syria six times the price of a horse. Great strength and sureness of foot are primary recommendations, but his powers of abstinence and endurance are hardly to be called secondary ones. I was about to say that these powers were quite superhuman, and so they are. After fifteen miles of jog-trotting in a hot sun, with four hundredweight on his back and hanging to his sides, I see him cross a brook at full jog-trot, never staying to wet his lips. None of our horses-nor their riders, for the matter of that—are self-denying enough to follow the example. A mule always keeps a shut mouth, and therefore a moist throat. From what I noticed of the scattering power of a mule's heels, he could, I think, be made more useful in warfare than the horse or the elephant. Backed gently but firmly into a mob, however riotous, he would disperse them quicker than policemen or grape-shot. There was a mule with us that-from what I saw of him-looked likely to have kept the Roman bridge as well as Horatius or the dauntless two who aided him. This ignoble animal never falls, be the road ever so bad, and it cannot be worse than in Palestine. He jogs on at a "Chinaman's trot," over sand and shingle, and also boulders that are the size of melons, for mile after mile, at his one unvarying pace, and up and down hill sides, which we, all unburthened, find troublesome. He beats the camel in such work. That "ship of the desert" is good over sand only, and for going long between his drinks. Over stony ground and muddy ways he is nowhere with the mule, and in positive danger for himself. His feet, large as washbowls and spongelike, splay out as he steps, and are only in place on the sand. For that alone Nature made them. He slips down in muddy spots, and his fall is generally final. His legs are too apt to break. His burthen is in that case removed, and he is pierced in the neck as is a sheep, and left for the vultures, who are always hovering in the East, though they may be, as they generally are, out of sight of human eyes. A camel's face is a compound of that of a sheep and of a monkey in spectacles. The effect is mild and comical until one gets used to it. He lets his under-lip hang down in an untidy manner not pleasant to the sight. I never saw a clean-looking camel, and conclude that they are never groomed. Their hair either grows patchy, or is worn off in all sorts of places. The general look of their exterior is that of a worn-out sheepskin mat of ancient date. The young camel has a painful appearance of deformity. He is all hunchback, and has, to western eyes, an unnatural appearance. A stately march is the only pace I ever saw them at. Anything seems to come welcome to the camel in the way of food. He goes beyond the mule and the ass in eating thistles, as he feeds often upon hedgerows fenced with a cactus which pricks through one's boots. The dromedary is the running animal of the camel species. He is trained to that, and kept for saddle and not for burden. Some dromedaries have their hunch divided in youth, as I saw being done, by ligatures bound tightly around it. When so served, there is a space between the divided parts for a saddle -the part of the hump before and behind serving for supports. At a distance a camel or dromedary would, but for his four legs, resemble an emu. His neck is similar, he looks as ragged, and has the walk and movement of that denizen of the Australian desert. As Jerusalem is upwards of forty miles from Joppa, a night's stoppage is made on the journey. We had started in advance of the baggage, piloted by the dragoman, and made but poor progress. It has been Easter week, and we find the road full of pilgrims on the return journey from the Jordan. Camels, mules, and donkeys are packed up with riders and their baggage. The seat for women and girls seems to be a mattress doubled up and laid on the animal's back. It is Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrim procession shifted into the present time. There was no Tabard Inn, unfortunately, to make halt at, which served to show how uncivilized things are here. Camping out under the rocks, and any tree that could be found, had to suffice for Tabard accommodation. One does not need go far in this country to realize the meaning and the blessing of "the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." In respect that I have had no pilgrimage forced upon me by a creed, I am glad that I am of the country whose prevalent faith requires none. These pilgrims that stop our way are of the Greek Church, which requires baptism by thrice immersion, and they prefer the Jordan as sacred water for that purpose. The Catholics, Mohammedans, and Hindoos have also their long pilgrimages “To many a shrine, By faith and ages made divine." Pilgrimages such as these are no rose-water affairs, and require no peas in the shoes to make greater the sufferings of the pilgrim. Other reward than their being accounted unto one for righteousness would be all too slight. The Crusading Spirit. 315 There is much that compels thought in remembering that the ground which we shall tread for the next two days was trodden by most of the crusaders. Of the eight expeditions of those famous church militants, semi-soldiers, and robbers, the majority went this way on their march to Jerusalem. How the world changes! There is the same cause now as there was from 1090 to 1270 for these expeditions to rid the land of the Cross from the curse of the Crescent, but religious enthusiasm does not seem to run to warfare among the present European representatives of Christendom. It is as likely as not that all great movements depend for stimulus on one earnest soul and subduing spirit. Another Peter the Hermit may be all that is wanted for the preaching up of another crusade. That the pen is mightier than the sword is not more true than that the tongue of the enthusiast unsheaths the sword as Peter's did every blade wielded in that long warfare. The movement he so began, which led to a king's leaving the throne of England and forgetting his kingship to join in the third crusade, is but an instance of the prodigious power that religious enthusiasm once exercised in Christendom. Though the rule of the Crescent over the land of the Cross, and over all other lands for the matter of that, should be extinguished, it is perhaps as well for the world that such cannot be again done by religious enthusiasts, or those so calling themselves. What there is of road is too narrow in its practicable path for our going otherwise than in Indian-file fashion. It is just as well, because much attention is needed to get out of the way of the sharp corners of the passing baggage. Calculations had to be nicely made as to that, and the swing of the camel from side to side in his peculiar walk duly included in it, as otherwise our heads and knees got often punished. It is best, I find, to let the horse choose his own path. He seems to know the road well, and has a knack of finding the best parts of it that has been acquired by birthright and perfected by practice. Bridle-tracks are what the roads of Palestine really are, and |