Complete Tales & Poems

by Edgar Allan Poe

  Of late days, the immense stores of biblical elucidation derivable from the East have been rapidly accumulating in the hands of the student. When the “Observations” of Harmer were given to the public, he had access to few other works than the travels of Chardin, Pococke, Shaw, Maundrell, Pitts, and D’Arvieux, with perhaps those of Nau and Troilo, and Russell’s “Natural History of Aleppo.” We have now a vast accession to our knowledge of Oriental regions. Intelligent and observing men, impelled by the various motives of Christian zeal, military adventure, the love of gain, and the love of science, have made their way, often at imminent risk, into every land rendered holy by the words of revelation. Through the medium of the pencil, as well as of the pen, we are even familiarly acquainted with the territories of the Bible. Valuable books of eastern travel are abundant—of which the travels of Niebuhr, Mariti, Volney, Porter, Clarke, Chateaubriand, Burckhardt, Buckingham, Morier, Seetzen, De Lamartine, Laborde, Tournefort, Madden, Maddox, Wilkinson, Arundell, Mangles, Leigh, and Hogg, besides those already mentioned, are merely the principal, or the most extensively known. As we have said, however, the work before us is not to be lightly regarded; highly agreeable, interesting, and instructive, in a general view, it also has, in the connection now adverted to, claims to public attention possessed by no other book of its kind.

  In an article prepared for this journal some months ago, we had traced the route of Mr. Stephens with a degree of minuteness not desirable now, when the work has been so long in the hands of the public. At this late day we must be content with saying, briefly, in regard to the earlier portion of the narrative, that, arriving at Alexandria in December, 1835, he thence passed up the Nile as far as the Lower Cataracts. One or two passages from this part of the tour may still be noted for observation. The annexed speculations, in regard to the present city of Alexandria are well worth attention.

  “The present city of Alexandria, even after the dreadful ravages made by the plague last year, is still supposed to contain more than 50,000 inhabitants, and is decidedly growing. It stands outside the Delta in the Libyan Desert, and as Volney remarks: ‘It is only by the canal which conducts the waters of the Nile into the reservoirs in the time of inundation, that Alexandria can be considered as connected with Egypt.’ Founded by the great Alexander, to secure his conquests in the East, being the only safe harbor along the coast of Syria or Africa, and possessing peculiar commercial advantages, it soon grew into a giant city. Fifteen miles in circumference, containing a population of 300,000 citizens and as many slaves, one magnificent street, 2,000 feet broad, ran the whole length of the city, from the Gate of the Sea to the Canopic Gate, commanding a view at each end, of the shipping, either in the Mediterranean or in the Mareotic Lake, and another of equal length intersected it at right angles; a spacious circus without the Canopic Gate, for chariot-races, and on the east a splendid gymnasium more than six hundred feet in length, with theatres, baths, and all that could make it a desirable residence for a luxurious people. When it fell into the hands of the Saracens, according to the report of the Saracen general to the Caliph Omar, ‘it was impossible to enumerate the variety of its riches and beauties’; and it is said to ‘have contained four thousand palaces, four thousand baths, four hundred theatres or public edifices, twelve thousand shops, and forty thousand tributary Jews.’ From that time, like every thing else which falls into the hands of the Mussulman, it has been going to ruin, and the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope gave the death-blow to its commercial greatness. At present it stands a phenomenon in the history of a Turkish dominion. It appears once more to be raising its head from the dust. It remains to be seen whether this rise is the legitimate and permanent effect of a wise and politic government, combined with natural advantages, or whether the pacha is not forcing it to an unnatural elevation, at the expense, if not upon the ruins, of the rest of Egypt. It is almost presumptuous, on the threshold of my entrance into Egypt, to speculate upon the future condition of this interesting country; but it is clear that the pacha is determined to build up the city of Alexandria, if he can: his fleet is here, his army, his arsenal, and his forts are here; and he has forced and centred here a commerce that was before divided between several places. Rosetta has lost more than two thirds of its population. Damietta has become a mere nothing, and even Cairo the Grand has become tributary to what is called the regenerated city.”—Vol. I., pp. 21, 22.

  We see no presumption in this attempt to speculate upon the future condition of Egypt. Its destinies are matter for the attentive consideration of every reader of the Bible. No words can be more definitive, more utterly free from ambiguity, than the prophecies concerning this region. No events could be more wonderful in their nature, or more impossible to have been foreseen by the eye of man, than the events foretold concerning it. With the earliest ages of the world its line of monarchs began, and the annihilation of the entire dynasty was predicted during the zenith of that dynasty’s power. One of the must lucid of the biblical commentators has justly observed that the very attempt once made by infidels to show, from the recorded number of its monarchs and the duration of their reigns, that Egypt was a kingdom previous to the Mosaic era of the deluge, places in the most striking view the extraordinary character of the prophecies regarding it. During two thousand years prior to these predictions Egypt had never been without a prince of its own; and how oppressive was its tyranny over Judea and the neighboring nations! It, however, was distinctly foretold that this country of kings should no longer have one of its own—that it should be laid waste by the hand of strangers—that it should be a base kingdom, the basest of the base—that it should never again exalt itself among the nations—that it should be a desolation surrounded by desolation. Two thousand years have now afforded their testimony to the infallibility of the Divine Word, and the evidence is still accumulative. “Its past and present degeneracy bears not a more remote resemblance to the former greatness and pride of its power, than the frailty of its mud-walled fabric now bears to the stability of its imperishable pyramids.” But it should be remembered that there are other prophecies concerning it which still await their fulfilment. “The whole earth shall rejoice, and Egypt shall not be for ever base. The Lord shall smite Egypt; he shall smite and heal it; and they shall return to the Lord, and he shall be entreated of them, and shall heal them. In that day shall Isaac be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land.” Isa. xix., 19–25. In regard to the present degree of political power and importance to which the country has certainly arisen under Mohammed Aly (an importance unknown for many centuries), the fact, as Mr. Keith observes in his valuable “Evidences of Prophecy,” may possibly serve, at no distant period, to illustrate the prediction which implies that, however base and degraded it might be throughout many generations, it would, notwithstanding, have strength sufficient to be looked to for aid or protection, even at the time of the restoration of the Jews to Judea, who will seek “to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and trust in the shadow of Egypt.” How emphatically her present feeble prosperity is, after all, but the shadow of the Egypt of the Pharaohs, we leave to the explorer of her pyramids, the wanderer among the tombs of her kings or the fragments of her Luxor and her Carnac.

  At Djiddeh, formerly the capital of Upper Egypt and the largest town on the Nile, Mr. Stephens encountered two large boat-loads of slaves—probably five or six hundred—collected at Dongola and Sennaar. “In the East,” he writes, “slavery exists now, precisely as it did in the days of the patriarchs. The slave is received into the family of a Turk, in a relation more confidential and respectable than that of an ordinary domestic; and when liberated, which very often happens, stands upon the same footing with a freeman. The curse does not rest upon him for ever; he may sit at the same board, dip his hand in the same dish, and, if there are no other impediments, may marry his master’s daughter.”

  Morier says, in his “Journey through Persia”: “The manners of the E
ast, amidst all the changes of government and religion, are still the same. They are living impressions from an original mould; and, at every step, some object, some idiom, some dress, or some custom of common life, reminds the traveller of ancient times, and confirms, above all, the beauty, the accuracy, and the propriety of the language and the history of the Bible.”

  Sir John Chardin, also, in the preface to his “Travels in Persia,” employs similar language: “And the learned, to whom I communicated my design, encouraged me very much by their commendations to proceed in it; and more especially when I informed them that it is not in Asia, as in our Europe, where there are frequent changes, more or less, in the form of things, as the habits, buildings, gardens, and the like. In the East they are constant in all things. The habits are at this day in the same manner as in the precedent ages; so that one may reasonably believe that, in that part of the world, the exterior forms of things (as their manners and customs) are the same now as they were two thousand years since, except in such changes as have been introduced by religion, which are, nevertheless, very inconsiderable.”

  Nor is such striking testimony unsupported. From all sources we derive evidence of the conformity, almost of the identity, of the modern with the ancient usages of the East. This steadfast resistance to innovation is a trait remarkably confined to the regions of biblical history, and (it should not be doubted) will remain in force until it shall have fulfilled all the important purposes of biblical elucidation. Hereafter, when the ends of Providence shall be thoroughly answered, it will not fail to give way before the influence of that very Word it has been instrumental in establishing; and the tide of civilization, which has hitherto flowed continuously, from the rising to the setting sun, will be driven back, with a partial ebb, into its original channels.

  Returning from the cataracts, Mr. Stephens found himself safely at Cairo, where terminated his journeyings upon the Nile. He had passed “from Migdol to Syene, even unto the borders of Ethiopia.” In regard to the facilities, comforts, and minor enjoyments of the voyage, he speaks of them in a manner so favorable, that many of our young countrymen will be induced to follow his example. It is an amusement, he says, even ridiculously cheap, and attended with no degree of danger. A boat with ten men is procured for thirty or forty dollars a month, fowls for three piastres a pair, a sheep for a half or three quarters of a dollar, and eggs for the asking. “You sail under your own country’s banner; and when you walk along the river, if the Arabs look particularly black and truculent, you proudly feel that there is safety in its folds.”

  We now approach what is by far the most interesting and the most important portion of his tour. Mr. S. had resolved to visit Mount Sinai, proceeding thence to the Holy Land. If he should return to Suez, and thus cross the desert to El Arich and Gaza, he would be subjected to a quarantine of fourteen days, on account of the plague in Egypt; and this difficulty might be avoided by striking through the heart of the desert lying between Mount Sinai and the frontier of Palestine. This route was beset with danger; but, apart from the matter of avoiding quarantine, it had other strong temptations for the enterprise and enthusiasm of the traveller—temptations not to be resisted. “The route,” says Mr. Stephens, “was hitherto untravelled”; and, moreover, it lay through a region upon which has long rested, and still rests, a remarkable curse of the Divinity, issued through the voices of his prophets. We allude to the land of Idumea—the Edom of the Scriptures. Some English friends, who first suggested this route to Mr. Stephens, referred him for information concerning it, to Keith on the Prophecies. Mr. Keith, as our readers are aware, contends for the literal fulfilment of prophecy, and in the treatise in question brings forward a mass of evidence, and a world of argument, which we, at least, are constrained to consider, as a whole, irrefutable. We look upon the literalness of the understanding of the Bible predictions as an essential feature in prophecy—conceiving minuteness of detail to have been but a portion of the providential plan of the Deity for bringing more visibly to light, in after-ages, the evidence of the fulfilment of his word. No general meaning attached to a prediction, no general fulfilment of such prediction, could carry, to the reason of mankind, inferences so unquestionable, as its particular and minutely incidental accomplishment. General statements, except in rare instances, are susceptible of misinterpretation or misapplication; details admit no shadow of ambiguity. That, in many striking cases, the words of the prophets have been brought to pass in every particular of a series of minutiæ, whose very meaning was unintelligible before the period of fulfilment, is a truth that few are so utterly stubborn as to deny. We mean to say that, in all instances, the most strictly literal interpretation will apply. There is, no doubt, much unbelief founded upon the obscurity of the prophetic expression; and the question is frequently demanded: “Wherein lies the use of this obscurity?—why are not the prophecies distinct?” These words, it is said, are incoherent, unintelligible, and should be therefore regarded as untrue. That many prophecies are absolutely unintelligible should not be denied; it is a part of their essence that they should be. The obscurity, like the apparently irrelevant detail, has its object in the providence of God. Were the words of inspiration, affording insight into the events of futurity, at all times so pointedly clear that he who runs might read, they would in many cases, even when fulfilled, afford a rational ground for unbelief in the inspiration of their authors, and consequently in the whole truth of revelation; for it would be supposed that these distinct words, exciting union and emulation among Christians, had thus been merely the means of working out their own accomplishment. It is for this reason that the most of the predictions become intelligible only when viewed from the proper point of observation—the period of fulfilment. Perceiving this, the philosophical thinker, and the Christian, will draw no argument from the obscurity, against the verity of prophecy. Having seen palpably, incontrovertibly fulfilled, even one of these many wonderful predictions, of whose meaning, until the day of accomplishment, he could form no conception; and having thoroughly satisfied himself that no human foresight could have been equal to such amount of foreknowledge, he will await, in confident expectation, that moment certainly to come when the darkness of the veil shall be uplifted from the others.2

  Having expressed our belief in the literal fulfilment of prophecy in all cases,3 and having suggested, as one reason for the non-prevalence of this belief, the improper point of view from which we are accustomed to regard it, it remains to be seen what were the principal predictions in respect to Idumea.

  “From generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever. But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it; and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness. They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing. And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof; and it shall be a habitation for dragons and a court for owls. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech-owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest. There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay and hatch, and gather under her shadow; there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one with her mate. Seek ye out of the Book of the Lord and read; no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate; for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them. And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath divided it unto them by line; they shall possess it for ever and ever, from generation to generation shall they dwell therein.” Isaiah: xxxiv., 5, 10–17. “Thus will I make Mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth.” Ezekiel: xxxv., 7.

  In regard to such of the passages here quoted as are not printed in italics, we must be content with referring to the treatise of Keith already mentioned, wherein the evidences of the fulfilment of the pr
edictions in their most minute particulars are gathered into one view. We may as well, however, present here the substance of his observations respecting the words: “None shall pass through it for ever and ever”; and “Thus will I make Mount Seir desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth.”

  He says that Volney, Burckhardt, Joliffe, Henniker, and Captains Irby and Mangles, adduce a variety of circumstances, all conspiring to prove that Idumea, which was long resorted to from every quarter, is so beset on every side with dangers to the traveller, that literally none pass through it; that even the Arabs of the neighboring regions, whose home is the desert, and whose occupation is wandering, are afraid to enter it, or to conduct any within its borders. He says, too, that amid all this manifold testimony to its truth, there is not, in any single instance, the most distant allusion to the prediction—that the evidence is unsuspicious and undesigned.

  A Roman road passed directly through Idumea from Jerusalem to Akaba, and another from Akaba to Moab; and when these roads were made, at a time long posterior to the date of the predictions, the conception could not have been formed, or held credible by man, that the period would ever arrive when none should pass through it. Indeed, seven hundred years after the date of the prophecy, we are informed by Strabo that the roads were actually in use. The prediction is yet more surprising, he says, when viewed in conjunction with that which implies that travellers should pass by Idumea—“every one that goeth by shall be astonished.” The routes of the pilgrims from Damascus, and from Cairo to Mecca, the one on the east and the other toward the south of Edom, along the whole of its extent, go by it, or touch partially on its borders, without going through it.