In a recoat number of the Spectator "GAS."—not the "GAS." as the editor had curiously enough to explain in the sul ut number—wrote a long letter on "The Levant of To-Day." the Levant is a large subject for one letter, even though it extend over more than three pages, and the writer accordingly only touched on Egypt and Cyprus, and devoted himself chiefly to! Palestine, that little bit of the world whose smallness we never realised at, school, because it used to have a map to itself in our atlases, and looked there remedy it a few years hence,—the Goas large as Africa. In passing on to Palestine, we come across a happy figure employed by the writer to illustrate the increased energy which contact with western civilisation has inspired even in the urk. "Even the sit-still Turk has progress to show in among the medley of civilisations so his own queer fashion of keeping order
mysteriously committed to his charge. He sits as still as ever, but his stick reaches farther round him than it used todo." The writer then tells us of the English cemeteries that dot the Levant as they do the Far East, and of the memorial at Cairo to Gordon. "More frequent than all the crowned heads of Europe that adorn the walls of hotels and catts are prints of his clear English face." In the cemeteries the order of dates is a little different from what i in English cemeteries in China "First, consuls, traders, agents of companies, soldiers, sailors, and (but not till the beginning of this century) missionaries—all these earliest toups are of men only. And then, within the last forty years, you trace their inevitable cousequences—stones with sweet Enylish names of women and children, If the missionary himself was by no means the pioneer of the British invasion, it was clearly he who first took his family with him, and sought to found a home in these dangerous climates where doctors are so few and summers so fierce. On the coasts of the Levant, there is hardly a Christian cemetery without the names of English or American clergymen's wives and children. Une is sometimes surprised, too, by the strange bed-fellows which travel and research have given to the Eastern dead. came upon Buckle's grave in the cemetery outside the eastern gate of 3 Damascus,—the author of the History of Civilisation laid to rest on civilisation's utmost border. No wonder the Frenchman said: How you English Jeave your dead about the world."
The writer notices how the British occupation of Exypt has impressed the imagination of the tribes of Syria. The favourite subjects of the cly oleographs that are sold in the Syrian cities are the battles of fel-el-Kebir and El-Neb, and the dragomans and muleteers Overawe the sceptical Bedouins by stories of the beating Britain gave three times over to the Arabs of the Soudan. As the French have always looked upon Syria as their heritage, this niust help to make them anxious to see us dispossessed of Exypt. Cairo is fall of English soldiers, factory chimneys, and Greek and French shops, and is being abominably vulgarised. ''here is one serious matter the writer notices in which we should do better if we imitated our French predecessors in Exypt more closely "Tu the undoubted success of Britis organisation in Egypt there exists one bounding the Mediterranean on the east, great defect,—the more glaring that it that he parts with." Seems so easy to remedy it uow, and that it will certainly be impos vernment do not keep the peasants' hands off the ancient mouuments. injurious is their neglect, that this winter, when Mr. Flinders Petrie had laboriously excavated the Temple of Seuefru, the oldest building in the world, he must needs fill all the rubbish in again and cover up the place, which otherwise would have been used as a quarry for the neighbouring villages. If it is want of money that prevents the authorities from fulfilling their duty to history and science, why do they not double the present tax upon tourists Surely no visitor to the Valley of would object to pay £2 instead of £1, for the proper custody of the tombs and temples. It is ove of the glories of the French occupation of the Delta, nearly century ago, that science owes to it the beginnings of Ezyptology: it would be an equal glory of the British connection with the land, if once for all our authorities arrested the ruin of those ancient monuments, which the climate would never spoil, if only barbarous wen's hands were kept away."
In Palestine, oppressed as it is by Turkish misrule, is the most remarkable transformation." On our first morning in Jala we were wakened by the screech of a railway whistle; there electric light just outside the Gate at Jerusalem; the sh telegraph post falls upon J: near Sychar: and a steam will pulls day and night hard by the ancient well of Nazareth." Lhe railway from Jaffa is slowly reaching Jerusalem. "It is open as far as Ramleh for goods, it crosses Sharon and passes up the broad vale of Sorek, by Zorah, Eshtaol, and the Camp of Dan, Samson's birthplace, and up the way the kine of Bethshemesh brought the ark from Ekron." Fancy a railway terminus under the walls of Jerusalem, with omnibuses running from it to the hotels in the Sacred City A still more important railway is being built from Haifa to the Hauran and Damascus. Its commercial success is certain; it opens up the great wheat field of the Hauran, some sixty miles long by thirty broad, whence endless strings of camels now take the wheat to Damascus. It will serve a numerous and prosperous population, much above the average of Syrians, able to pay fof considerable imports. "In fact; there is no sign of change more ominous in Syria than this uew railway, ove of whose termini will be under the shadow of Carmel, and the other by the Gates of Damascus, whose whistle will be heard in Nazareth and on the shores of Galilee, and whose bridges will be flung over the Kishon, the Jordan, and the Pharpar." Frankish boots and shoes are being worn everywhere, for "in his borrowing of our clothes, an Oriental invariably begins with the shoes, The transformation of Eastern to a Western is ever from the feet up, and his head-gear the last he writer has evidently not gone to the extreme East, where he would find European head-gear as popular as European boots; he would find thousands of So Japanese considering themselves handsomely dressed in a pot hat, a pair of side-spring boots, and a kimono.
Years ago American kerosene oil displaced the native vegetable oils and their feeble light; it has been now in its turn displaced by Batoum oil:
"Mfo-day the fellalin and the shopmen of the rural bazaars knock up their rude shelves from wooden cases stamped "Batoum Trading Company," and the square tins in which the oil is carried from the Caspian are used by the shepherds of Judica in place of the goatskin buckets to water their flocks, These tins serve innumerable purposes besides. On the East of Jordan we fouud every domestic vessel made out of them, doors plated and huts roofed with them; and in the Hauran and at Rabbath-Amman little schoolboys using them with ink, as slates to do their suns."
Palestine is being re-populated chiefly by German and Jews, lhe Germans are industrious and eminently pious, but they make no attempt at proselytizing, "What religions advice do you give to the Mahommedans assied a pastor, tell them to be good Mahommedans" 'This might be dangerous advice in one sense, If it were carried out, 'The Germans dv not separate themselves from the Fatherland, and the recruits go home annually' for their period of service. The Jews have been increasing in numbers and in prosperity, but there are still in Syria not more than 70,000 of them out of a population of 2,000,000; and orders had come from Constantinople that no more land be sold to Jews. "GAS." writes wannly of the good work done by the missions, both Catholic and Protestant, but he writes somewhat strongly of the indecent competition between the Greeks and Latins over the holy places. He says "Every one knows that for many centuries Greeks and Latins have struggled for the possession of the holy places but in the last teu years this struggle seems to have been pursued with an unscrupulousness and vulgarity, which have defaced some of the most beautiful scenes in the laud, and built high before
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.