Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/573



HE charm of travel in the Orient is felt by every one who has been fortunate enough to have had a taste of it,—by every one, at all events, except the utter philistine. A few years ago a lady whose soul had been attuned to lofty ideals by communion with the poets, historians, philosophers, and tragedians of Greece wrote her name in the guest-book at Delphi, and beneath it she spoke in terms of praise of the entertainment of mine host of Delphi, and added that she accounted as an epoch in her life the fact that she had been permitted to look upon one of the holy places of the earth. The person who entered his name below hers was a Mr. S, of America, who travelled with a dragoman as his mouthpiece. Beneath his name the American wrote, "The above is O. K. as to the grub, but am still in search of the holy features." The Orient is not for philistines of the type of Mr. S.

Travel in the Orient is delightful, though difficult; the holy features, too, are there, but they may be recognized only by one who has quaffed the waters of Pieria, and travel there may be enjoyed only by the enthusiast, or by the searcher after health who can bear with patient serenity inconveniences, discomforts, and conditions unknown and almost inconceivable in this country. But he who has once braved the well-known discomforts of travel in the vermin-ridden antediluvian Orient will return to Philistia, in spite of it all, his soul aglow with the romance of having trod the hallowed ground which gave light to the nations; and the chains that enshackle him and bind him to the Orient will be tempered into bonds of smithied steel if he tread that ground "for the sake of ages," and in search of the footprints of those who have helped to make the world a place worth living in.

But, alas for the philistine! the American hotel is not found in the Orient,—nay, even the fellow of the European hotel does not exist away from the beaten track of tourist travel. The Pullman sleeper and the Pullman porter alike are absent; and indeed, except in the region of the western seaboard, the screech of the locomotive disturbs not the Epimenidean repose of mortal gods, nymphs, and satyrs once held high in honor by immortal men.

The modern traveller, however strenuous otherwise, insists upon taking his ease in his inn, with its wasteful cuisine, its barbers, bootblacks, its "tubs," its lobby, lounging-rooms, and so forth. He will, therefore, hardly be persuaded to penetrate far into a country distinguished for the entire absence of all these accessories of latter-day luxury.

It is true that there are khans, or caravansaries, in the larger towns of the Orient, but the traveller carefully shuns them, because they are literally mobile with vermin of various kinds and kidney. Cities, too, are few and far between, and many are the intervening villages where one must stop for food and sleep. The Oriental is an animal hospitable by tradition and precept; he takes delight in the exercise of hospitality, because the coming of the wayfarer breaks the dull monotony of his secluded existence. One would, therefore, rarely want for food and shelter for man and beast, should one travel in sole reliance on the hospitality of the villagers.

Now, owing to the fact that Moslem women are secluded, theoretically at least, in the women's apartments, the Oriental house, even in villages, is divided into separate quarters, the one for the women (hanümlik, or harem), the other for the men (selamlik, or men's quarters). Almost always the stranger, of whatever station in life, religion, or nationality, is welcomed to the selamlik of the villager. The religious fanatic who cannot endure the presence of the giaour in his