Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

Gali

ART. V. Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petræa, and the Holy Land. By GEORGE STEPHENS. gnani. Paris: August, 1838. 2 vols. 12mo.

MANY editions of this work in the United States, two at least in England, and one in France, attest the favor, with which it has been received by the reading public; a favor honestly earned and worthily bestowed. We can speak of a large portion of the route pursued by the author, from actual observation; and, after following his footsteps in his pilgrimage, we have accompanied him in his book, among the same scenes, renewing, from his vivid description, almost the freshness of first impressions. He has admirable qualities for a traveller, and for a writer of travels. He possesses just enthusiasm enough to desire to see every thing; and, while he surveys the scenes of ancient story, sacred and profane, with those kindling emotions, which Providence in its wisdom has given to us to feel, when we stand on a spot renowned for the great events of which it has been the theatre, he does not yield to that morbid sensibility, which forgets, that change is not the accidental lot of this state of being, but a part of the constitution of nature, "still educing good" from decrepitude, as from manhood, and preparing the bud of spring to replace the autumnal leaf, fallen, because made to fall.

This precious gift of association is one of the most enviable powers, with which Providence has endowed us; and an inhabitant of the new world can well appreciate its full intensity. If his lot has been cast upon a continent, whose early revolutions are for ever shrouded from human view, and where no ancient monument exists to mark the trials and triumphs and disasters of man, we find, amidst all this, but another proof of that system of compensation, which pervades the universe, in the strength of the impressions he experiences, in the Eastern world, from the first view of scenes hallowed by the recollection of the persons and the events, that have rendered them memorable. We cross the ocean, bearing in our memory the treasures of ancient history, and deeply fraught with the lessons it teaches; but as yet untouched by that magic fire of association, to be kindled only when we stand where those have stood, whose deeds will be immortal. In every part of Europe, there is some battle-field, with its appropriate

story, and with its succession of events, prosperous or adverse; some spot identified with the life or death of a soldier, a statesman, a patriot, or a writer, whose name is as "familiar in our mouths as household words." They, who are conversant with these scenes from their infancy, can never fully estimate the sensations of the transatlantic pilgrim, who comes for the first time to deposite his tribute of gratitude to the memory of those who have ennobled human nature, when he finds himself covered by the same sky, and surrounded by the same unchanging objects, hill, valley, plain, rock, and river.

Our author has also a spirit of perseverance, which seems to have surmounted many serious difficulties, even when he was depressed by sickness. He exhibits, too, a power of observation, without which a traveller will always find a country barren, from Dan to Beersheba. There is, perhaps, no mental faculty more unequally distributed than this. To have eyes, but to see not, is an infliction far more common than is usually supposed. If we glance rapidly over the various Tours, Journals, and Voyages, which the press is continually giving forth, we shall not fail to be struck with the difference they present in this characteristic. Some men seem to seize, as if by a species of intuition, the true points of observation, moral and physical, offered by the regions they traverse, and to have the faculty of spreading them before their readers, almost visibly and tangibly. And this, too, whether they survey the works of nature or of man. While others are equally crude in their remarks, and unfortunate in the subjects of their selection. It is not the mere beauty of style, or the novelty of the route, or the "hairbreadth 'scapes," which leave the most permanent impression upon the reader; but it is the power to catch those features, which reveal the true character, animate and inanimate, of a country, and which gave such a charm to the travels of Moore and Clarke.

Luckily, Mr. Stephens lays no claim to the character of an architectural antiquarian, and speaks of his attainments in that respect with equal good sense and good humor. "I have avoided," he says, "description of ruins, when I could. The fact is, I know nothing of architecture, and never measured any thing in my life; before I came to Egypt, I could not tell the difference between a dromos and a propylon, and

my whole knowledge of Egyptian antiquities was little more than enough to enable me to distinguish between a mummy and a pyramid." The purchaser of his book, therefore, is not bored with that eternal affectation of knowledge and taste, which led Eustace in his "Classical Tour," and his predecessors and successors in that most fatiguing of all the departments of learning, to record the feet and inches of every building they entered, of every statue they examined, and of every ruin they explored; to fill page after page with long, prosing dissertations upon the comparative merits of pictures and other works of art, apparently utterly ignorant of the slight impression, which mere description can make, of the most interesting monuments of human genius. Their minute details are beyond the reach of written description.

But we could have wished, that Mr. Stephens had given us more information upon the natural history of the regions he visited, and particularly of the interesting country between the Red Sea and Palestine; and also upon its geographical features, with a view not merely to its actual condition, but to enable us to identify the sites of ancient places, recorded in biblical history. We have in vain endeavoured to follow the author, upon the best charts, during his journey from Suez to Hebron, and could trace him only by reference to a few well-known and well-established places.

Mr. Stephens is fortunate in the relation of his personal adventures. They are not, indeed, of a very thrilling character; but they are sufficiently interesting to command the attention of the reader, and to prove, not only, that his journey was often a perilous one, but that he bore himself with great fortitude and presence of mind, when perhaps his safety, certainly the successful result of his enterprise, depended upon his own resources, physical and mental. The writer of a book of travels should always endeavour to preserve a just medium, between the description of his personal adventures, and his remarks. A bond of union is necessary; but the narrative should avoid the appearance on the one hand of a series of undigested incidents, and on the other of a scientific treatise. Perhaps Mr. Stephens is a little prolix in his account of his disputes and conversations with his Arab guides; but we readily pardon him, for they are illustrative of Eastern manners, and are sketched with great spirit.

The author writes in a pleasant, lively style, which is well suited to the nature of his topics, and at times rises into eleva

scenes,

tion, as he indulges in reflections, appropriate to the solemn in which he finds himself placed. As we must, of course, pick a fault with him somewhere, and, by the by, this is no easy task, and are disposed to close that side of the account as speedily as a just regard to critical impartiality will permit, we will tell him, that he is sometimes a little given to conceits; that he indulges too often in antitheses; that his tables of contents, at the head of his chapters, which cost him so much trouble to arrange satisfactorily, with their quaint oppositions, are too labored and in bad taste; and that the description of the dinner he gave his friends in his boat upon the Nile, is abominable, and those four pages are utterly unworthy of their author's good taste and good sense.

The retrospect of a travelling dinner is at best dangerous ground for an author, after Smollett's piquant description of that meal, in one of his coarse but admirable sea novels. And though we should have preferred the faithful Paul's stew," and "mutton," and "maccaroni," and "potatoes," to the classical dishes in Smollett's bill of fare, still we must own our preference for the picture painted by the Scottish artist.

[ocr errors]

Mr. Stephens visited a quarter of the world, where comparatively few of his countrymen have travelled, but where we anticipate they will soon penetrate, with all their characteristic ardor and enterprise. The annihilation of space, occasioned by the introduction of steam into navigation, is in nothing more wonderfully exemplified, than in the time, within which it is possible to travel from New York to Jerusalem. The fact may be startling to our readers, but it is nevertheless true, that a person favored by circumstances, may_reach Mount Calvary within thirty-three days after leaving Broadway. Thirteen days may take him to Bristol, two to Paris, three to Marseilles, ten to Syra, four to Jaffa, and one from there to Jerusalem. And the French steamboats, plying upon the Mediterranean to Syra, to Alexandria, to Greece, to Smyrna, and to Constantinople, are safe and pleasant vessels, and well found, in all respects..

Mr. Stephens directed his course to Africa, of which the great geographical characteristic is its sandy deserts. From the Cape of Good Hope to the Mediterranean, and from the mouth of the Senegal to the Straits of Babelmandel, a sterile sand covers the surface. Sometimes stationary, and some

times in motion, it presents alternately to the traveller the spectacle of silent desolation, and of sudden and terrible. storms, where the sandy atmosphere approaches the caravan with a rapidity, which no human power can escape, foretelling its effects by its appalling magnificence, and involving the passenger, and his faithful "ship of the desert," in one common ruin. But to this general picture there are many exceptions. Wherever water is found, there is found fertility, and a fertility unknown to more equable regions. The course of the African rivers is marked by an exuberance, for which we may in vain seek a parallel even in other tropical climates, and the population is principally collected along the streams. But there are springs to be found, occasionally, even in the most sterile part of the desert; and round these are small belts of fertile land, islands in an ocean of sand, yielding, with little cultivation, what is necessary to human subsistence. They are the oases of the ancients; and it was upon one of these insulated spots, that the celebrated Temple of Jupiter Ammon was situated.

This great sandy desert extends along the Mediterranean, at a short distance from its shores, and reaches to the Red Sea. It obtains, very soon, a considerable elevation, and then presents the aspect of an irregular plane, varied by hills and hollows. A traveller in this region would see before him a chain of sand hills, extending across the line of his route, and, on attaining their summit would see beneath him an immense valley. Whether approaching by the Libyan or the Arabian desert, the aspect would be the same. He would stand upon a sandy ridge, with all that the imagination could conceive most desolate behind him, and before him one of the most magnificent prospects ever presented to human eyes. He would survey a deep valley, bright with vegetation, and teeming with a depressed but laborious population, engaged in the various labors of agriculture. He would see opposite to him another eternal rampart, which, with the one he stands upon, shuts in this valley, and between them a mighty river, flowing in a winding course, from the foot of one chain to the other, furnishing lateral canals, which become fountains, whence the water is elevated by wheels and buckets of the rudest structure, worked sometimes by men and sometimes by cattle, and no doubt identical with the process in use in the days of SesosVOL. XLVIII. No. 102.

24

« AnteriorContinuar »