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the name of Christ, and live in all filthy and beastly manner, God curseth it, and so it is made barren.' And he sums up his account of it, by saying: To conclude, there is not that sin in the world but is used there among those infidels that now inhabit 'therein; and yet, it is called Terra Sancta, and, in the Arabian tongue, Cuthea, which is the Holy Land, bearing the name only and no more; for all holiness is clean banished from thence by those thieves, filthy Turks, and infidels that inhabit the same.' But, filthy and rapacious as are the Turkish infidels, the Christian population, who appear to be sunk a degree lower in idolatrous ignorance than their Mahommedan masters, fully keep pace with them in profligacy. In fact, the moral superiority of the infidels,' is frequently so glaring as almost to reconcile the mind to their political ascendancy.

But the geography of Palestine is a highly important branch of that knowledge which is necessary to illustrate the language and explain the allusions of the sacred writers; and this consideration stamps a peculiar value on a volume of travels the scene of which is laid in that country. Dry as mere topographical details may be found, they become of real importance when Scripture is concerned. Nor will the site of Dodona or the Troad appear to the Christian a subject more worthy of intense curiosity and laborious investigation, than the situation of Zion, or the

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holy fields

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet

Which, (eighteen) hundred years ago, were nailed,
For our advantage, to the bitter cross.'

The use of such investigations, however, relates purely to Biblical literature. There is no power in the scenes themselves to call up one truly religious feeling; nor is there the slightest affinity between the enthusiasm of the pilgrim and the faith of the Christian. It is mere curiosity that the actual inspection of the sacred places is adapted to gratify, and the effect of such inspection is always disappointment. There is nothing in the present appearance of Jerusalem, to meet the excited expectations of the Traveller; expectations which are seldom reasonable. Dr. Clarke, indeed, speaks of the grandeur of the spectacle which the city exhibited, as approached from the road of Napolose. But Mr. Buckingham's account amply confirms the representation given by Mr. Jolliffe in his "Letters from Palestine," of the violent disruption of every grand or pleasing association by the first view of the modern town.

The appearance' (he says) of this celebrated city, independently of the feelings and recollections which the approach to it

* See Eclectic Review. Vol. XIII. (N. S.) p. 108.

cannot fail to awaken, was greatly inferior to my expectations, and had certainly nothing of grandeur or beauty, of stateliness or magnificence about it. It appeared like a walled town of the third or fourth class, having neither towers, nor domes, nor minarets within it, in sufficient numbers to give even a character to its impressions on the beholder; but shewing chiefly large flat-roofed buildings of the most unornamented kind, seated amid rugged hills, on a stoney and forbidding soil, with scarcely a picturesque object in the whole compass of the surrounding view.'

. Mr. Brown bears a similar testimony, and Chateaubriand, after describing the houses in Jerusalem as wearing the general appearance of prisons or sepulchres, says: At the sight of these houses of stones, enclosed in a country of stones, one is ready to question whether we are not looking on the confused monuments of a cemetery in the midst of a desert.'

Jerusalem is no more. What exists on its site, serves only to preclude or to mislead topographical inquiries. Not a vestige remains of the city of David; not a monument of Jewish times is standing. The very course of the walls is changed, and the boundaries of the ancient city are become doubtful. The supposed mount Calvary' is said to have been levelled, and the brook of Kedron is for the most part dry. Even if the natural advantages of the situation were greater than they are, and the modern town had more architectural grandeur or picturesque beauty to aid its effect on the spectator, it would still be a melancholy, a revolting prospect. For what could reconcile to the feelings, the monstrous incongruity of Turkish domes and minarets towering over the site of the Temple, and the triumphant symbol of the Mahommedan imposture glittering amid the towers of convents and churches given up to a scarcely less infernal apostacy? Neither the Christian, nor the Mahommedan has any business there it belongs not to them. The Roman, to whom the city was given in vengeance, might be allowed to insult its ruins by erecting over them shrines and altars to his fabulous deities; and were any of the edifices of the Elian colony still standing, they would seem to speak a language in unison with the scene. But the monuments of Christian fanaticism and of Saracenic prowess, are alike disgusting; and when one thinks of all the mummeries that have been acted there since the days of the Empress Helena down to the present time, of all the blood that has been shed in the successive crusades for the conquest of Jerusalem, and of all the unutterable abominations which have polluted the once sacred precincts, one can hardly suppress the wish that the earth would up-heave and shake off the paltry burden which encumbers the soil, or ingulf all that usurps the site and holy name of the guilty and devoted city. Jerusalem, utterly waste and untenanted, a sad and savage desert, were

the only state in which it could be viewed by a person of enlightened sensibility, with the appropriate emotion of melancholy complacency.

But we must introduce to our readers the Author. In a long prefatory narrative, Mr. Buckingham challenges the respectful attention of the public, by a detail of the circumstances which peculiarly qualified him for his undertaking. At the age of ten, he was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and marched through the finest parts of Spain and Portugal, which, captive as he was, excited all his youthful enthusiasm. A series of voyages to America, the Bahama Islands, and the West Indies, subsequently strengthened, instead of allaying, his passion for exploring distant regions. The Mediterranean next became the scene of his wanderings; and he now applied himself, with more than common ardour, to the reading of every book within his reach, that was likely to extend his knowledge of the inte resting countries by which he was surrounded. Unfavourable as are the incessant duties and the hardy life of a sailor, to such pursuits, every moment he could spare from the vigilant watch which squalls, and storms, and pirates, and the complicated claims of navigation and commerce, constantly demanded, was given, he says, to these studies. Sicily, Malta, Greece, the is lands of the Archipelago, the coasts of Asia Minor, gave him only a foretaste, but a most delicious one,' of what it was yet reserved for him to enjoy. Alexandria at length received him into her port. He beheld the Pharos, the Catacombs, Cleopatra's Obelisk, and Pompey's Pillar; then, ascending the Nile, he visited the Pyramids, the ruins of Heliopolis, and of Tentyra. At Thebes he remained a week. At Esneh, he met the lamented Burckhardt, and the Travellers spent several days together. They then pursued their journey in different directions; Mr. Burckhardt setting off for the Desert, and our Author continuing his course up the stream. He reached the Cataracts; and bis curiosity being excited by intelligence of the wonderful monuments still beyond, he re-embarked, and penetrated beyond the Nubian frontier. The temples of Daboat, of Taefa, and Galabshee; the quarries and inscriptions of Gartaasy; the stupendous eavern, with its alley of sphinxes and colossal statues, at Garfeeey; and the highly finished sculptures of the beautiful temple of Dukkey, rewarded the undertaking;-monuments which, in his opinion, belong to a higher class of art than even those of Egypt. On his return, attempting to pass through the Desert, he was robbed of money, papers, arms, instruments, and clothes, and had to retrace his steps to Kosseir, naked and barefoot, scorched by day, and frozen by night, and during two days without food or water. This adventure had nearly proved fatal to him. Nothing daunted or tamed, however, by this reverse, on his return

to Cairo, he applied with fresh zeal to the study of Arabic. After making some progress in it, assuming the dress of an Egyptian Fellah, he crossed the desert of Suez to examine its port, returned by a more northern route to explore the traces of the ancient canal which connected the Nile with the Arabian Gulf, visited Bubastis, Tanis, and the Lake of Menzaleh in Lower Egypt, crossed from Damietta along the edge of the Delta to Rosetta, and finally returned to Alexandria.

After spending some time in the prosecution of his Arabic studies, he again left Alexandria for Cairo, from which place he set out, disguised as a Mamlook, in company with a caravan of five thousand camels, for Mecca. The vessel in which they embarked at Suez, upset in a squall, and he again narrowly escaped with the loss of all that he possessed, except his papers. On his arrival at Jedda, he was too ill to prosecute his intended pilgrimage, and was happy in meeting with a ship under English colours from India, on board of which he recovered rapidly. While lying off the coast, he had the high gratification of another interview with Mr. Burckhardt, then at Mecca on pilgrimage, to whom he despatched a messenger: he came down to see him, and remained with him several days. Mr. Buckingham then sailed for Bombay, and after a stay of some months in India, returned again to Egypt. He landed at Mokha, and thence pursuing his passage up the Red Sea in native vessels, touched at every port and creek from Bab-el-Mandeb to Suez. He met Mr. Burckhardt a third time at Cairo, on the point of setting out, as he then thought, for the interior of Africa.' Being then requested to become the bearer of a treaty of commerce on the part of Mahommed Ali Pasha, to his friends in India, the passage of the Red Sea being shut by the prevalence of southerly winds, Mr. Buckingham again embarked with the intention of following the route of Syria and Mesopotamia. At this period, the travels described in the present volume, commence. The Author sailed from Alexandria, on Christmas day, 1815, in a vessel called a shuktoor, peculiar to the navigation of the Syrian coast; about thirty feet in length, its extreme breadth fifteen, and about forty tons burthen. The captain and his crew were Syrian Arabs of the Greek religion, not one of whom appeared to have any knowledge of navigation. A Syrian Turk, a respectable Arab trader from Tunis, some Moors, a Syrian Christian merchant and his servants, were passengers. They had not long been at sea before the wind shifted from the southwest to the opposite quarter, and it continued contrary, with alternate calms, which left them at the mercy of the strong current of the Nile, for nearly ten days. During this time, the crew and the passengers were unanimous for returning to port; but our Author, by dint of bribes and threats, and by inspiring the

sailors with a confidence in his direction, prevailed on them to hold on their course, till at length their situation became extremely perilous, and all his skill and energy were required at the helm, to prevent the ship from foundering. On the 6th of January, at sunrise, to their inexpressible joy, land was seen, which proved to be the high and even range of Ras-el-Nakhora, to the northward of the Bay of Acre. Before noon, the vessel was safely within the haven of Soor, the ancient Tyre, and our Author quitted the shuktoor, determined to prosecute his journey by land.

In the court of the house where he was lodged at Soor, Mr. Buckingham had an opportunity of observing a female divested of her outer robes.

'Her garments then appeared to resemble those of the Jewish women in Turkey and Egypt: the face and bosom were exposed to view, and the waist was girt with a broad girdle fastened by massy silver clasps. This woman, who was a Christian, wore also on her head a hollow silver horn, rearing itself upwards obliquely from her forehead, being four or five inches in diameter at the root, and pointed at its extreme;* and her ears, her neck, and her arms were laden with rings, chains, and bracelets. The first peculiarity very forcibly reminded me of the expression of the Psalmist: "Lift not up thine horn on high, speak not with a stiff neck." "All the horns of the wicked will I cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted." Similar illustrations of which, Bruce had also found in Abyssinia, in the silver horns of warriors and distinguished men. last (peculiarity) recalled to my memory the species of wealth which the chosen Israelites were commanded to borrow from the Egyptians, at the time of their departure from among them, and of the spoils taken in their wars with the Canaanites, whom they dispossessed, when it is stated, that many shekels of silver and gold were produced on melting down the bracelets, the ear-rings, and other ornaments of the women and children whom they had made captive. Most of the women that we saw, wore also silver bells, or other appendages of precious metal, suspended by silken cords to the hair of the head, and large high wooden pattens, which gave them altogether a very singular appearance.' p. 50.

From Soor, our Traveller proceeded to Acre, with a view to obtain the firman of the Pasha to secure a safe passage through his dominions; but, on arriving there, he had the mortification to learn that the Pasha had departed on the morning of the pre

* The women of the sect of Druses, some of whom our Author saw at Caypha, wear a horn pointing backwards from the crown of the head, which distinguishes them from those of other sects, as well as from the Druses of Mount Lebanon, who are stated to wear a similar horn pointing forwards.

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