Recent Travel

THE Soudan has lately acquired notoriety and interest as a battle-ground of the False Prophet; but if any one should consult the volume¹ in which Mr. James has narrated his adventures, with the expectation of obtaining much information regarding this little-known region, he would waste his time; not because the author has written either uninterestingly or untruthfully, but for the reason that the range of his subject is narrower than his attractive title indicates. To the party of which he was apparently the head, the Soudan was a hunting-field ; the object of the journey was sport, and such knowledge as might be gained concerning the inhabitants and geography of the land was an entirely secondary consideration. Indeed, although the expedition was into a district previously unexplored, the hunters did not traverse the Soudan proper, but merely its eastern borders. In particular, they penetrated into the hill-country, about the banks of the stream variously designated in different parts of its course as the Gash, Sonah, and Mareb; and, after striking across the desert to the Settite, followed up that river as far as their guides and servants could be persuaded to venture. The wild tribes they encountered were the Basé, who, although they murdered an Englishman and his wife and child some years since, were pacific toward this large and well-armed caravan, which brought them substantial benefit in the shape of freely distributed cotton cloth, knives, beads, etc., conciliated them by unlimited supplies of game, and abstained from any injurious or suspicious treatment. The province held by these people is the frontier between the Egyptian and Abyssinian powers, and on the east of the waste of jungle, river, and desert known as the true Soudan.

Mr. James writes, in the main, for hunters. He tempts them by an enthusiastic love of the chase, a minute record of the game, and an exact description of the field from a sportsman’s point of view; while he gives all necessary directions and warnings for any who may follow on his trail, as many might be led to do, since he has opened up for the rifle a new haunt of large animals, buffalo, elephants, lions, rhinoceri, giraffes, hippopotami, as well as panthers, ostriches, seven or eight varieties of antelope, and multitudes of small game, such as quail and partridges, besides discovering excellent fishing-grounds. To the general reader, however, since the hunting was not particularly adventurous (no elephants, rhinoceri, or giraffes were shot), and since the author has not cared to exaggerate its salient incidents by the Usual romantic coloring, the principal interest of his journal-like chapters lies in the description of the natural features and the aspect of human life as he saw and noted them ; for he seems to be an exceptionally cautious and keen observer, when his attention is once diverted from tracking buffalo and ambushing lions.

From the time the party left Souakim and crossed the desert to Cassala until, on their return, they arrived at the port of Massawa, Nature wore usually a repulsive appearance. The country was hilly, intersected by dry channels, the beds of the rapid floods of the rainy season ; the heat by day was extreme, and at night the cold was frequently so great as to make blankets a necessity, the thermometer ranging in the Basé country from 37° F. at dawn to 164° F. on the same day ; the soil was but little cultivated ; the natural growth was chiefly high jungle grass, or leafless, sharpthorned trees not more than from fourteen to sixteen feet high. Occasionally there were heavy dews, sometimes a thick fog; but as there was generally no water except in the wells hollowed out in the sandy beds of streams by the natives, the desert was for the most part barren and without verdure. Along the Settite, however, which was a running river, instead of being an intermittent torrent like the Gash, there were green fields; but even there, although the inhabitants were of a higher type than the Basé, agriculture was but little pursued. The flocks of wild birds cause great injury, so that boys are perched on platforms all day long to scare them off with slings or by their cries ; likewise the hippopotami are guarded against and frightened back to the water by the ringing of numerous bells strung on a long rope. The principal wealth of the country is in flocks and herds, which in the richest portions number many thousand head.

The Basé, the poorest and most uncivilized of the various tribes met by the hunters, live in scattered villages on the tops of hills that rise at a short distance from the bed of the Gash. They are scantily clothed, if at all, and have no arms but spear and shield; they dig with their hands ; they have, apparently, no art except that of weaving a basketlike bottle for carrying water; they feed voraciously, when they are so fortunate as to get meat, and like vultures spare no portion of the carcass, and devour it raw. The prey alternately of the fiercer and better armed tribes to the north and south, they are cowardly, and live in terror of their enemies. Religion they have none, but they observe the widespread barbarian rite of leaving food at the grave of their relatives. Their government is similarly backward; for, although they recognize a tribal unity, village fights against village, and man against man. Mr. James, who throughout the journey showed great kindness of heart and active benevolence, as did his companions also, won the confidence of these poor people, and went among them without any fear of disturbance ; at least until after the rather ridiculous rencontre of some of the party with a crowd of Abyssinians, who, by capturing their rifles and fatally wounding a servant, proved the Englishmen to be vulnerable to treachery, if not to attack. Only once was there any prospect of a hostile meeting with the Basé, and fortunately it did not occur. They would probably have plundered the caravan, if they had dared. Of the other tribes there is nothing distinctive to report. The ethnological result of the trip was, as is seen, slight.

The volume purports to be an account of three expeditions,— in 1878, 1881, 1882, respectively; but the last alone is described in detail, the former two being mentioned merely illustratively. In one of these earlier journeys the author was so fortunate as to make the ascent of Tchad-Amba, a mountain in the neighborhood of Sanheit, at the summit of which is an Abyssinian monastery, which no European had been allowed to visit. The party was guided by a renegade monk, who concealed his real character. The consequence was that when they neared the top, stones were rolled down the perilous descent by the fathers above, who took them for Turks ; but they kept on, and at last, making their friendliness known, they were allowed to climb unimpeded. At the summit was a huge fig-tree, some conical huts, where eight aged monks lived, and the church, a round building, thatched with straw, divided into three sections, the inner one of which the high priest alone was allowed to enter. The monks wore yellow gowns and caps, went barefoot, and supported life on figs and unleavened bread. Several of them had not descended the mountain for forty years, yet they did not relish the sight of these intruding visitors, the first who had ever been up to their retreat. They possessed some manuscripts, which they held in great veneration, and would not sell. The whole number of the company living there was twelve or fourteen, some of whom were absent on a mission to the King of Abyssinia. To read of this carries one back to the days of Hypatia. The maps which accompany the text are prepared from careful daily observations, and are an addition of value to our geographical knowledge ; but the illustrations, of which there are an unusual number, all full-page, engraved after photographs taken on the spot, are almost without exception very poor work. The author promises to make a new excursion to the northern region of Abyssinia. Should he write an account of it, his book would be much improved by avoiding the repetition, which is a great blemish to his first effort in literature.

In all volumes of travel in the East one finds great complaint of the falsehoods of the Arab guides. In that which has just been reviewed the chief difficulties sprang from this cause. Indeed, there is a proverb which might well be inscribed once for all on the brow of the Arab, as it is found frequently on his tongue: “ Lying is the salt of a man.” Their attachment to this article of the desert creed seems to be the main reason why the information given by Dr. Trumbull in his learned volume² has been so long concealed, to the darkening of biblical geography, and the sharpening of the odium theologicum between rival explorers in Palestine and the Negeb. Kadesh-Barnea, as everybody knows, is the holy camp in the wilderness where Moses struck the rock for the living waters to flow forth, and whence he sent the spies into Canaan and the messengers to Edom. It was here that the people rebelled, and, on going forward to fight for the Promised Land before the time, were turned back to wander forty years, during which period this oasis or mountain fastness was their headquarters, the home of the tabernacle when it was not on its sacred progress through the various encampments. Here, at the conclusion of that long probation, the people gathered to make their descent on Canaan; and, on being refused a passage through the region of the Edomites, from this spot they started on the long detour by which they finally arrived at the Jordan. Geographically, it marks the western limit of the kingdom of Edom, and the southernmost point of the Holy Land ; it helps, furthermore, to locate the wilderness of Paran, Zin, and the Negeb, the sites of Mount Hor and Mount Halak, of Tamar, and the route of Kedor-la’omer, which Dr. Trumbull designates as the “ first really great military campaign of history.” In short, its situation is the principal geographical problem of the Pentateuch, and is so involved in conjecture, and has such bearings on biblical themes of the scholarly sort, as to afford matter for the liveliest controversy.

The discussion has not been unfruitful. It appears that for Kadesh-Barnea there are eighteen distinct suggested sites, each with its adherents, living or dead. In this confusion it is gratifying to learn that, “ whatever uncertainty there is concerning the geographical position of Kadesh, there need be no doubt as to its typical or illustrative signification : ” it means, we are told, the Land of Training, as it lay between Egypt, the Land of Bondage, and Canaan, the Land of Rest. There is no need to follow Dr. Trumbull through the learned examination of the Bible text, the Egyptian records, the Apocrypha, the Rabbinical writings, and the Christian namelists for indication of the exact locality of the sanctuary-stronghold; or to review the entire history of the exploration and cartography of the Holy Land, as he does. The question has long laid between Dr. Robinson’s identification of its site with ’Ayn el-Waybeh at the upper end of the ’Arabah, the depression running from the Gulf of ’Aquabah to the Dead Sea, and Rev. John Rowland’s identification of its site with ’Ayn Qadees, some distance to the southwest, on the north of the Desert et-Teeh, but on its level, a thousand feet above the ’Arabah. These two authorities divided the theologians; but as time went on, one great objection to Rowland’s view arose in the fact that no later traveler could find the spot described by him. In answer to all inquiries, for forty years the Arab sheiks and guides denied that any such place as ’Ayn Qadees existed, except once, when another place, ’Ayn Qasaymeh, was shown to President Bartlett as the one sought for.

This was the state of the case when, in 1881, Dr. Trumbull was so fortunate as to be allowed to take the unusual Hebron route northward through the desert, and by some finessing and good luck duped the Arabs into guiding him to the jealously guarded desert spring of the old Israelitish sojourning in the land. Happily, one of the two sheiks who had hitherto done the requisite lying was absent, and the other was ill, and consequently Dr. Trumbull was dispatched under the care of the latter’s two young sons, who were solemnly charged to oblige him, on account of some hoped-for favor at Jerusalem which the sheik had much at heart. An experienced dragoman, who wished to be put in a book, and a skilled guide also accompanied him. When he thought he was near the place, he first broached the subject of visiting ’Ayn Qadees, and received the customary denial that there was any spring of that name. By further questioning regarding known points, he was convinced that he was being lied to, and, becoming indignant, said that he knew more of the country than they did, and described how to go to the place shown to Bartlett as ’Ayn Qadees. This Christian book-knowledge startled the Arabs, and, being sensitive to their reputation for acquaintance with their own country, they confessed that there was such a place, but it was ’Ayn Qasaymeh, not ’Ayn Qadees; the latter was elsewhere. Having thus surprised their secret, by great efforts he and the dragoman, who had the influence of a Mohammedan preacher and was overcome by his desire to be put in a book, persuaded the guide and the sheik’s sons to take them to the spot, which lay outside the tract that, by desert law, they were allowed to roam over, and within the territory of a rival tribe, who, they said, would rob and might murder them, if found on their land. This fear is probably one reason why the guides on this route, always of the same tribe, have at all times refused to take travelers to ’Ayn Qadees. It required much management and persistence to carry through the undertaking, even after the Btart was made ; but at last Dr. Trumbull saw with his own eyes the beautiful oasis described by Rowland, as well as ’Ayn Qasaymeh, by which Bartlett was deceived, and ’Ayn el-Qadayrât, which has also been mistaken for the true ’Ayn Qadees. There was the plain where an army might encamp, and beyond it the springs under the rock, surrounded by fig-trees, grass, and flowers, and alive with quail and bees, — a spot beautiful, he says, as a summer nook in New England ; there was the Way of the Spies northward: and so he goes on to enumerate once more the reasons for believing this the actual Holy Camp of the old host. After concluding this brief account of the locality, he sums up the literary evidence carefully, and has clearly made out his case. In fact, all that was lacking to his argument was the verification of Rowland’s discovery, and this he happily accomplished.

Dr. Trumbull concludes with an extensive special study of the route of the Children of Israel from their start until they passed the Red Sea. In this essay he opposes the theory of Brugsch very vigorously, and even accuses that scholar of having “ rearranged sites, changed directions, and misstated distances as if for the purpose of conforming the facts to a preconceived theory of the exodus.” This is a grave charge to prefer against so eminent an authority, but not extraordinary in the annals of such discussion. Dr. Trumbull himself finds the key to the Egyptian route of the chosen people in the identification of Shur with the fortified wall which then extended across the isthmus as the barrier of Egypt. He gives a very clear and intelligible account of the journey northward, and there are even gleams of rationalizing in his remarks, as at the outset in the very curious statement that “ the primary barrier to the exodus was not the Red Sea, but the Great Wall ; and the Red Sea was opened because the Great Wall was closed.” Briefly, he supposes that the Israelites were ready to leave Egypt whenever, on receiving Pharaoh’s permission, Moses should give the signal, and therefore, after taking what he calls “ bakhsheesh ” for their masters, easily gathered from all quarters of Goshen at the rendezvous, Succoth, a tenting ground to the north of their province, whence they moved upward and encamped just inside the Great Wall, intending to pass through by the westernmost desert route, by which they would arrive at Canaan in three days, as they innocently thought, and take possession. The Lord, however (we follow the narrative here given), unwilling to risk this untrained and servile multitude in a battle with the Philistines, “ lest, peradventure, the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt,” ordered Moses to lead them southward the whole length of the Wall, and at the lower end of it, when Pharaoh came up in pursuit, brought them through the Red Sea, thus flanking the Wall, and conducted them on by the easternmost way, the Red Sea road, to Kadesh-Barnea around by Sinai. Between Kadesh and Shur (the Great Wall) they were doomed to wander for forty years, until a new generation grew up, hardened by desert life and freedom into a nation strong enough to conquer the land of promise. The argument by which this theory is supported is exhaustive, and in the present state of our knowledge must be regarded as conclusive. Taken in its entire range, the volume is the most important contribution to biblical geography made for many a day, and is an honor to the country. It is well furnished with maps, indexes, and copious notes, and its material is very lucidly and conveniently arranged.

Dr. Field’s small book³ takes us at once into Palestine. In the last issue of the series in which he is narrating his travels around the world he described the desert of the wanderings, and now begins at once with Jerusalem, where he made his headquarters in a hotel on Mount Zion. The tedium of a decayed Oriental town, destitute of clubs, theatres, resorts, or a newspaper in any living language, was enlivened by the exercises of Holy Week, which gave him an unfavorable impression of Greek Christianity, even in comparison with the Moslem faith ; and indeed it must have been pitiful to hear the people celebrate the victory of their hopes in the Resurrection by singing, “ We are happy, but the Jews are miserable,” and by shouting, in their wild foot-race about the Holy Sepulchre, “ O Jews! Jews! your feast is a feast of devils or of murderers, but our feast is the feast of Christ! ” Miserable, too, it was to watch the observance of the Jewish Passover, frugal in food but abundant in potations, which leads the author to quote the saying of the devout Irishman : “ Blessin’s on the Council o’ Trint, that it put the fastin’ on the mate, an’ not on the dhrink ! ” At Jerusalem there are many religious sects, but among them all the faith of Mahomet seemed to Dr. Field the most worthy of men.

The ground of Palestine has been so often described that the author need not be followed in his excursion to Carmel and Lebanon and about Galilee. He found the country, as all do, a desert, except where the water makes it blossom into a beauty the more attractive by contrast. As a whole, the region did not please him. It is a miniature Colorado, he says; but he adds as his last word, “ In riding over its rugged hills, I have asked myself again and again, Can this be the Promised Land? and inwardly thanked God that it was not the land promised to our fathers.” For the Jews he has an almost unadulterated contempt, which he expresses most naively in the remark that the divinity of Christ is less of a miracle than his being a Jew. Much of his text is naturally occupied with what he himself styles moods of sentimental devotion, interrupted somewhat by the unromantic reality of the scenes. He was especially disappointed at finding the Mount of the Beatitudes only a little hill, and he wished the Transfiguration had taken place on Mount Tabor instead of Mount Hermon, as offering a more beautiful background of woods and grass to the scene. Sometimes, it must be confessed, the touch meant for light humor is unseasonable; but otherwise the book may be welcomed to its undistinguished place in the library already written on the same outworn subject.

Unlike Dr. Field, Mr. Warner seems to be a lover of the Orient. In the present narrative⁴ he does not trespass on the ground already covered by his delightful sketches of the Levant, but not the least interesting portion of the new work is the description of Tangier, best known in English literature through Pepys, and the chapter humorously entitled Across Africa. As was the case with all the travelers noticed above, he had to submit to be lied to by the Arabs, but the necessity did not greatly disturb him. The picturesqueness, the bright atmosphere, and the repose of the Arab scene, the wise inborn philosophy of the people,

“ To take things easily, and let them go,” evidently attract him as an American, with a quick eye for color and freshness and novelty, and with a humorist’s distrust of so boring a bête-noir as work. Even on the borders of that realm of indolence which has suffered the strange change of the Arabian touch, in Malta and Sicily, and on the French coast where the half-Saracenic myths of the Middle Ages still linger, he puts more poetic charm in his pages than he can accomplish in the description of other scenes. The quality of his work is too well known to require definition now : it has the vividness, the detail, the artistic keeping, that make condensation impossible, — the fragrance of a garden is not in any one flower. It is unfortunate that he had bad luck in his Spanish journey, for the narrative itself has thereby caught something of the disagreeableness that he experienced. We stay at home in order to avoid all that. In Spain scarcely anything was to his taste that did not date from the Moors. As for bull-fights, of course he was horrified at their barbarity ; but how long is it since his ancestors and ours kept bulls for “baiting”? Nay, it is not a long age ago that an English village would sell the parish Bible to replace the dead bull. The country itself is finely described, but the people are certainly painted with a realism not flattering to themselves, and, we cannot but think, of limited application. The romance of Spain, like its courtesy, has always been characterized by a certain externality that might well prepare the traveler for unwelcome revelations of the nature of the inner man. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the volume is the most entertaining book of travels that has come before us. Parts of it — such as the account of the packed skeletons at Palermo and the description of the gypsy dance at Seville — are equal to the best of Mr. Warner’s work.

Mr. James, as he very well knows, and is not slow to state, is a cosmopolite ; but, as old Professor Sophocles would have said, he is a cosmopolite only of the West. He has gathered in this volume ⁵ scattered travel sketches, really correspondent’s letters, of the last fourteen years of his peregrinations; but although he has ranged over many countries he has never passed beyond the circle of European civilization. Niagara is his Pillars of Hercules on the west, and Venice is the easternmost spot whence his sun rises ; the unexplored wilderness, the fine Arabian glow, are equally beyond his horizon. The only Oriental suggestion in his book is that it is written backwards, like Hebrew : he begins with Venice in 1882, and ends with Niagara in 1870. All this, in his own phrase, implies a limitation, but one with a distinct charm in an American; for if he has, like Mr. James, quick perceptions, it makes him almost involuntarily a dilettante in Western civilization. He learns to distinguish the highest bred sort, at least; and our author gives himself to the enjoyment of it with the abandon of an epicure at Greenwich, whether he finds it in the oak-studded parks and warm winter interiors of English countryseats and at the private dinners of college Fellows nested in privilege, or discovers it in the educated palate of the French nation and the conversibility of French laundresses, or comes upon it in the felicity with which the Italian poor make the best of small pleasures. On the other hand, defects of civilization — it may be in the Derby day, or bedroom furniture in France, or the rigid and exclusive insistence on one point of view, as in Ruskin’s tracts on Florence — bore Mr. James; indeed, in the last instance, if the Tartar within himself is not penetrated, his cuticle is certainly much irritated. In reading these sketches, consequently, one is sure to find the agreeable in life described with the warmth of a richly sensuous temperament. We use the highly colored phrase advisedly. He is, it is true, an exceptionally keen observer : in the milieu of society this makes him a novelist, in that of nature it makes him a tourist; for he travels principally to see things. But as these papers abundantly indicate, he is an observer with an artistic sense; or, to use a bad word, he is an impressionist. The perusal of this book is more like turning over a portfolio of water-colors than reading pages of black print. Those elements which do not compose well, as painters say, are left out; landscapes which cannot be described by tones and effects hardly attract the author’s pen ; if his eye sees them, it does not dwell on them. Perhaps this selection of the components, or it may be the happy memory which records only the finely combined impressions of sense, gives his brief sketches their grace, which does not proceed only from felicities of language and mere literary point. Grace, definiteness, full light, are the artistic qualities here shown, just as amiableness and a high regard for the agreeable are the social traits. Any volume so characterized has, independent of its contents, a distinct charm, and one, as has been said, peculiarly delightful in an American, because it supplements in our literature the lambent humor, the light wit, the romantic suggestiveness, which especially distinguish our better work. The borderland which is abolished in Mr. James’ geography, both physical and mental, is not far to seek with us ; on the other hand, within the liberties (not to say the walls) of modern civilization he is a delightful dispenser of the laws of good living, and, as a traveled man, full of the pleasantest reminiscences.

Max O’Rell’s observations1 on English character are meant to be piquant; in fact, they are more distinguished by point than by truthfulness. As in all such caricatures of English manners, the Sabbath-going, philanthropy, seriousness, etc., of the upper and middle classes are set off by the glaring contrasts of the drunkenness, wife-beating, and obscene or brutal amusements of the lower class. It is, the author remarks, “ Bible or beer, gospel or gin ; . . . as M. Taine says, ‘ Paradise or Hell; no Purgatory in England.’ ” By this easy method of searching for violent contrasts, and seeking out striking if not illustrative facts, a book has been made that must affect any reader strongly ; for, although it is a monstrous parody of the truth, it exhibits certain phases and incidents of English life that make the flesh creep, particularly in its portraiture of low life. A vein of humor runs through it, and Occasionally there is a good story from literary sources ; some will find it readable, in consequence; but its main interest lies only in its eccentricity. Evidently, the author has seen English life almost wholly in the city, and there generally ab extra. Being unsympathetic by nature, he is thus able to set forth the coarsenesses of the metropolis with revolting realism, and is incapacitated from doing justice to the finer aspects of the national life, which he can treat only in a vulgarly satirical way. These very limitations, however, serve to enforce impression of the brutalized poor and hypocritic rich, the demoniac and the lying elements in modern society. Without believing England to be either a theatre for the Saturnalia of vice, a shop for universal duping, or the parade-ground of the Salvation Army, one can find much innocent food for reflection in this prejudiced, narrow, and uncandid work.