DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12665#0168
152
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
with very precise directions for its use; and I
afterward learned that, during its operation, his
wrath had waxed warm against me, but in the
morning he was so much better that he was ready
to do me any kindness.
This over, I followed the janizary, who con-
ducted me around outside the walls and through
the burying-ground, where the women were scat-
tered in groups among the tombs, to a distant and
separate quarter of the city. I had no idea where
he was taking me; but I had not advanced a
horse's length in the narrow streets, before their
peculiar costume and physiognomies told me that
I was among the unhappy remnant of a fallen peo-
ple, the persecuted and despised Israelites. They
were removed from the Turkish quarter, as if the
slightest contact with this once favoured people
would contaminate the bigoted follower of the
Prophet. The governor, in the haughty spirit of
a Turk, probably thought that the house of a Jew
was a fit place for the repose of a Christian ; and
following the janizary through a low range of nar-
now, dark, and filthy lanes, mountings and turn*
ings, of which it is impossible to give any idea,
with the whole Jewish population turning out to
review us, and the sheik and all his attendants
with their long swords clattering at my heels, I
was conducted to the house of the chief Rabbi of
Hebron.
If I had had my choice, these were the very
persons I would have selected for my first ae*
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
with very precise directions for its use; and I
afterward learned that, during its operation, his
wrath had waxed warm against me, but in the
morning he was so much better that he was ready
to do me any kindness.
This over, I followed the janizary, who con-
ducted me around outside the walls and through
the burying-ground, where the women were scat-
tered in groups among the tombs, to a distant and
separate quarter of the city. I had no idea where
he was taking me; but I had not advanced a
horse's length in the narrow streets, before their
peculiar costume and physiognomies told me that
I was among the unhappy remnant of a fallen peo-
ple, the persecuted and despised Israelites. They
were removed from the Turkish quarter, as if the
slightest contact with this once favoured people
would contaminate the bigoted follower of the
Prophet. The governor, in the haughty spirit of
a Turk, probably thought that the house of a Jew
was a fit place for the repose of a Christian ; and
following the janizary through a low range of nar-
now, dark, and filthy lanes, mountings and turn*
ings, of which it is impossible to give any idea,
with the whole Jewish population turning out to
review us, and the sheik and all his attendants
with their long swords clattering at my heels, I
was conducted to the house of the chief Rabbi of
Hebron.
If I had had my choice, these were the very
persons I would have selected for my first ae*