HAYEL.*
THIS is incomparably the best book of travels, and we are almost inclined to add the best book of any kind, produced this year. A grand opportunity has been most worthily used by a competent man, and the result is a work in which, while every sentence pleases the ear, every paragraph adds something to the reservoir of Western knowledge. To men wearied with heaps of volumes filled with well-worn facts and copied ideas, knowledge beaten out like gold leaf, and thought which it is as difficult and as unpleasant to recall as the taste of yesterday's dinner, a book like this is a real luxury, one which revives their recollection of that glorious pleasure so frequent in youth, so rare in manhood, intellectual absorption. Mr. Gifford Palgrave, son of the historian of Normandy, scholar and Orientalist by hereditary right, first an Oxford graduate, then an officer in the Bombay Army, then member of the Company of Jesus, in 1862, accepted, as we gather from hints scattered throughout his book, a secret mission from the Emperor Napoleon which involved the duty of penetrating into the interior of Arabia. Thoroughly acquainted with Arabic, familiar with every form of Semitic life, and pliant by double right as Jesuit and Anglo-Indian, Mr. Palgrave resolved to travel as a Syrian mer- chant and physician, subordinating, however, the first capacity to the second. In this disguise he penetrated Arabia, seeing it, its people, and its rulers as probably no European ever saw it before, living in its towns, talking familiarly with its sheikhs, gathering a fund of knowledge which he has now poured out in that style, half reflective, half colloquial, which best befits the observant traveller, and in words, as we shall show, of singular clearness and felicity. Of course under such circumstances his book is studded with descriptions of places utterly unknown to the West, of cities barely indicated in the map, of people who are great, but whose names have never crossed the desert which isolates the true Arabian life from the outer world, and of generalizations which will seem to all but a few of his readers as original as the one we are about to quote. That one is not original, the facts it con- tains having been known before to a few inquirers, but we would just ask any average reader to compare his impressions of Arabia as they are with the impressions which this paragraph will pro- duce :—" The general type of Arabia is that of a central table-laud, surrounded by a desert ring, sandy to the south, west, and east, and stony to the north. This outlying circle is in its turn girt by a line of mountains, low and sterile for the most, but attaining in Yemen and 'Omiin considerable height, breadth, and fertility,
• Central and Eastern Arabia. By Gifford Palgrave. London: Macmillan.
while beyond these a narrow rim of coast is bordered by the sea. The surface of the midmost table-land equals somewhat less than one-half of the entire pensinsula, and its special demarcations are much affected, nay, often absolutely fixed, by the windings and in- ,runnings of the Nefood (sand-river). If to these central highlands, or Nejed, taking that word in its wider sense, we add the Djowf, the
Djebel 'Aaseer, Yemen, 'Oman, and Hasa, in short, what- ever spots of fertility belong to the outer circles, we shall find that Arabia contains about two-thirds of cultivated, or at least of cul- tivable land, with. a remaining third of irreclaimable desert, chiefly to the south. In most other directbas the great blank spaces often left in maps of this country are quite as frequently indica- tions of non-information as of real non-inhabitation." Most Englishmen think Arabia is elflike that belt of desert, or those Nefoods or frightful rivers of sand which run into the culturable
districts, and of one of which Mr. Palgrave gives us this powerful description:— "We wore now traversing an immense ocean of loose reddish sand, un- limited to the eye, and heaped up in enormous ridges running parallel to each other from north to south, undulation after undulation, each swell two or three hundred feet in average height, with slant sides and rounded crests furrowed in every direction by the capricious gales of the desert. In the depths between the traveller finds himself as it were imprisoned in a suffocating sand-pit, hemmed in by burning walls on every side; while at other times, while labouring up the slope, he over- looks what seems a vast sea of fire, swelling under a heavy monsoon wind, and ruffled by a cross-blast into little red-hot waves. Neither shelter nor rest for eye or limb amid torrents of light and heat poured from above on an answering glare reflected below.
' Tale scendeva oternale ardore ; Onde la rena a' accendea cow' esca Sotto focile, a doppiar lo dolore.'
Add to this the weariness of long summer days of toiling—I might bet- ter say wading—through the loose and scorching soil, on drooping half- stupefied beasts, with few and interrupted hours of sleep at night, and no rest by day because no shelter, little to eat and less to drink, while the tepid and discoloured water in the skins rapidly diminishes even more by evaporation than by use, and it vertical sun, such a sun ! strikes blazing down till clothes, baggage, and housings all take the smell of burning, and scarce permit the touch. Were this eternal it were hell,' said I to my comrade, who, drooping on his camel, gave no answer. The boisterous gaiety of the Bedouins was soon expended, and scattered, one to front, another behind, each pursued his way in a silence only broken by the angry snarl of the camels when struck, as they often were, to improve their pace."
Mr. Palgrave's first goal was Hayel, the capital of a powerful and, in practice, independent State, ruled by an Arab King, and there- fore marked by an original and, for the East, a high civilization. Did any of our readers ever hear of Hayel, or imagine that it could by possibility be a city like this?—
" The sun was yet two hours' distance above the western horizon, when we threaded the narrow and winding defile, till we arrived at its further end. Here we found ourselves on the verge of a large plain, many miles in length and breadth, and girt on every side by a high mountain rampart, while right in front of us, at scarce a quarter of an hour's march, lay the town of Hugel, surrounded by fortifications of about twenty feet in height, with bastion towers, some round, some square, and large folding gates at intervals ; it offered the same show of fresh- ness and even of something like irregular elegance that had before struck us in the villages on our way. But this was a full-grown town, and its area might readily hold three hundred thousand inhabitants or more, were its streets and houses close packed like those of Brussels or Paris. But the number of citizens does not, in fact, exceed twenty or twenty-two thousand, thanks to tho many large gardens, open spaces, and even plantation; included within the outer walls, while the immense palace of the monarch alone, with its pleasure-grounds annexed, occu- pies about one-tenth of the entire city. Our attention was attracted by a lofty tower, some seventy feet in height, of recent construction and oval form, belonging to the Royal residence. The plain all around the town is studded with isolated houses and gardens, the property of wealthy citizens, or of members of the kingly family, and on the far-off skirts of the plain appear the groves belonging to Kafar, 'Adwah, and other villages, placed at the openings of the mountain gorges that con- duct to the capital. The town walls and buildings shone yellow in the evening sun, and the whole prospect was one of thriving security, delightful to view, though wanting in the peculiar luxuriance of vegeta- tion offered by the valley of Djowf. A few Bedouin tents lay clustered close by the ramparts, and the groat number of horsemen, footmen, camels, asses, peasant; townsmen, boys, women, and other like, all pass- ing to and fro on their various avocations, gave cheerfulness and anima- tion to the scene."
Hayel is the capital of a country in the centre of North Arabia, the extreme south of the Great Syrian Desert, called by its in- habitants Shomer, from the name of a tribe who are descended from the mixture of the great Yemenite clan of Tai with certain nomad Arabs, and who settled (circa 500 X.D.) in the Djebel, or Valley of Shouter. They were all (circa 600) nominal Christians, and though they glided slowly into Mahometanism, they are still among the least bigoted of the strong Arab tribes, the tendency to absolute scepticism, total disbelief in the invisible, which under- lies all Asiatic society, being in parts of Shomer rampant. The citizens when at ease sing songs with high applause which openly East. Like the Englishman, he is impatient of interference;
cal of authority, willing to emigrate, and capable of strong and continuous industrial effort, in short the being who conquered and re-organized Western Asia, Northern Africa, and Southern Europe, and who, whenever Turkish rule is broken, will again take the lead among the populations of Asia. Ile has a peculiar apti- tude for city life, which polishes him, and sometimes imparts that character of sprightliness which in the desert Arab is overlaid by ceaseless suspicion. This picture, for example, is more like that of a German city than of any city in the East, except indeed Benares :—
"Mixed with the city crowd, swordsmen and gaily-dressed negroes, for the negro is always a dandy when he can afford it, belonging mostly to the palace, are now going about their affairs, and claim a certain amount of deference from the vulgar cits, though we see nothing here of the Agha and Basha style of the overbearing and despotic Turk. Nor do these Government men ever dream of taking aught without purchase, or of compelling those they can lay hold of to gratuitous labour, Ottoman fashion; such proceedings, also, being repugnant to that independent high-mindedness which stamps the genuine Arab caste. The well- dressed chieftain and noble jostles on amid the plebeian crowd on terms of astounding familiarity, and elbows or is elbowed by the artizan and the porter, while the Court officers themselves meet with that degree of respect alone which indicates deference rather than inferiority in those who pay it. A gay and busy scene ; the morning air in the streets yet retains just sufficient coolness to render tolerable the bright rays of the sun, and everywhere is that atmosphere of peace, security, and thriving known to the visitors of inner Arabia, and almost or wholly unknown to the Syrian or Anatolian traveller. Should you listen to the hum of discourse around, you will never hear a curse, an imprecation, or a quarrel, but much business, repartee, and laughter."
We have confined ourselves to Mr. Palgrave's account of Hayel, because we intend to revert to the remainder of the book, but even about Hayel we have given no idea of the wealth of anecdote and adventure and incisive remark with which our traveller enlivens his narrative, of the historic episodes with which it is weighted, or of the strangely-suggestive paragraphs like that describing the Solibah, the white-skinned, blue-3yed Christian wanderers found in every part of Arabia, everywhere separate, and everywhere credited with European skill in surgery and medicine. For these the reader must consult the book itself, which, unless hopelessly demoralized by sensation novels, will most amply reward him.
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