by Mary Morris
My camp was pitched in a field outside the town at the eastern foot of the castle hill. The slopes to the north were deep in snow up to the ruined walls of the fortress, and even where we lay there were a few detached snowdrifts glittering under the full moon. I had just finished dinner, and was debating whether it were too cold to write my diary, when a sound of savage singing broke upon the night, and from the topmost walls of the castle a great flame leapt up into the sky. It was a beacon kindled to tell the news of the coming raid to the many Druze villages scattered over the plain below, and the song was a call to arms. There was a Druze zaptieh sitting by my camp fire; he jumped up and gazed first at me and then at the red blaze above us. I said: “Is there permission to my going up?”
He answered: “There is no refusal. Honour us.”
We climbed together over the half frozen mud, and by the snowy northern side of the volcano, edged our way in the darkness round the castle walls where the lava ashes gave beneath our feet, and came out into the full moonlight upon the wildest scene that eyes could see. A crowd of Druzes, young men and boys, stood at the edge of the moat on a narrow shoulder of the hill. They were all armed with swords and knives and they were shouting phrase by phrase a terrible song. Each line of it was repeated twenty times or more until it seemed to the listener that it had been bitten, as an acid bites the brass, onto the intimate recesses of the mind.
Upon them, upon them! oh Lord our God! that the foe may fall in swathes before our swords!
Upon them, upon them! that our spears may drink at their hearts!
Let the babe leave his mother’s breast!
Let the young man arise and be gone!
Upon them, upon them! oh Lord our God! that our swords may drink at their hearts.…
So they sang, and it was as though the fury of their anger would never end, as though the castle walls would never cease from echoing their interminable rage and the night never again know silence, when suddenly the chant stopped and the singers drew apart and formed themselves into a circle, every man holding his neighbours by the hand. Into the circle stepped three young Druzes with bare swords, and strode round the ring of eager boys that enclosed them. Before each in turn they stopped and shook their swords and cried:
“Are you a good man? Are you a true man?”
And each one answered with a shout:
“Ha! ha!”
The moonlight fell on the dark faces and glittered on the quivering blades, the thrill of martial ardour passed from hand to clasped hand, and earth cried to heaven: War! red war!
And then one of the three saw me standing in the circle, and strode up and raised his sword above his head, as though nation saluted nation.
“Lady!” he said, “the English and the Druze are one.”
I said: “Thank God! we, too, are a fighting race.”
Indeed, at that moment there seemed no finer thing than to go out and kill your enemy.
And when this swearing in of warriors was over, we ran down the hill under the moon, still holding hands, and I, seeing that some were only children not yet full grown, said to the companion whose hand chance had put in mine:
“Do all these go out with you?”
He answered: “By God! not all. The ungrown boys must stay at home and pray to God that their day may soon come.”
When they reached the entrance of the town, the Druzes leapt on to a flat house roof, and took up their devilish song. The fire had burnt out on the castle walls, the night struck suddenly cold, and I began to doubt whether if Milhēm and the Vāli of Damascus could see me taking part in a demonstration against the Sukhur they would believe in the innocence of my journey; so I turned away into the shadow and ran down to my tents and became a European again, bent on peaceful pursuits and unacquainted with the naked primitive passions of mankind.
KATE MARSDEN
(1859–1931)
Despite its awkward title, On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers is one of the finest accounts of a missionary journey ever written. It has all of the enchantment of an adventure yarn, with none of the melodrama and the attending false distance from the narrator. In February 1891, Marsden drove sled dogs two thousand miles into the tundra to find an herb that purportedly cured leprosy. Eleven months later she returned, and as Isabella Bird had done before her, spoke before the Royal Geographical Society, which granted her a fellowship. She never found the herb and later wrote My Mission to Siberia: A Vindication in 1921 to answer critics who had wrongly asserted that the whole trip had been an elaborate hoax. Marsden’s health, never robust but damaged by her Siberian trip, worsened, and she spent the remaining thirty years of her life in England as an invalid.
from ON SLEDGE AND HORSEBACK TO OUTCAST SIBERIAN LEPERS
We pushed our way through the usual dense forest, along the track which had been cleared for me by the kind natives, as I have already mentioned, and which otherwise would have been impassable. Halting at the leper settlement of Hatignach, a scene met my eyes too horrible to describe fully. Twelve men, women, and children, scantily and filthily clothed, were huddled together in two small yourtas, covered with vermin. The stench was dreadful; one man was dying, two men had lost their toes and half of their feet; they had tied boards from their knees to the ground, so that by this help they could contrive to drag themselves along. One man had no fingers; and the poor stumps, raised to make the sign of the cross, were enough to bring tears to the eyes of the most callous. On my approaching them they all crouched on the ground, as if almost terror-struck at the very idea of any one coming near to help them. I gave them all the help possible, and then, with a smile on their faces, they looked and pointed heavenwards, trying to make me understand that they were praying for blessings on those who had considered their wants. In some cases the fur of the tattered clothes had stuck to the sores, thus causing intense irritation.
During the eight or nine months of winter, these people huddled together with the cattle as closely as possible in their dreadful hovels, in order to keep warm. They, too, had been attacked by typhus fever and smallpox. I said farewell, and, mounting my horse, heard angry words behind me. Turning round I found that some of the lepers wanted to come near to speak to me, and the Yakuts were driving them away in horror, fearful lest they might catch the disease. Of course, I quickly went to them. They pleaded hard that the hospitals might be built speedily, and that they might be supplied with bread, because the food brought to them was generally putrid.
Then we set off for the next settlement, which was a hundred and fifty miles farther on. We travelled all night—in fact, the greater part of this journey had to be done by night on account of the intense heat during the day, and the incessant attacks of large horse-flies, as well as the myriads of other insects. We halted at Sredni Viluisk, which, although marked as a town on the map, is only a collection of a few dirty yourtas and one Government office. A man suspected of being a leper was brought to me, and, after examination by the doctor, the suspicion was soon confirmed. It was arranged that he should have a new yourta, and live at a leper settlement about fifty miles away.
“How is he to get there?” I asked; for I saw how deformed he was, and that parts of his feet and hands were gone.
“He is to walk,” was the reply.
This walking meant that the poor fellow would have to crawl or drag himself along fifty miles of forest. At last, it was suggested that he should be tied to the back of a bull, and the bull to be led by a boy (the man’s brother) with a long cord. After a deal of persuasion I got the people to provide a sledge, with plenty of straw, and a bull to draw it, as there were no horses to spare. This is only a typical example of how some of the lepers, almost unable to walk at all, are left to get as best they can into the far-off forest. If a woman becomes a leper, she, too, is sometimes placed or tied on a bare-backed bull, which is led by a man with a long rope. If the animal sinks into the marshes or bogs, it must struggle out without help, and if the woman falls off, the man would ra
ther die than go and touch her in giving assistance. Such sufferings as these, I try to refer to calmly; but it is hard to do so. The reader can imagine, without my help, all that such outcasts are compelled to endure. What a difference the bare-backed bullock presents to the merciful contrivances for removing the wounded from the battle-field and the victims of accidents in our streets!
Another dreadful instance of what they had to endure was related to me. A leper woman was placed in a yourta with another leper, a man, who, soon after her arrival, became insane. For four years this poor woman had to live with a madman in the depth of the forest, away from every human being, never sure from one hour to another of her life. Just picture the constant dread she must have lived in—at night, hardly daring to close her eyes to sleep; during the day, ever on the watch for each movement the man made, knowing well that, should he attack her, there was no hand to protect her, no ear to attend to her cries for help—for miles and miles around nothing but the dense forest to echo back her voice. As, bit by bit, this information was translated to me, a tremor went through my whole being; whilst, deep in my heart, I thanked God for sending me here to these helpless, forsaken ones.
Our midnight march from Sredni Viluisk was beset with dangers. We heard that bears were in the neighbourhood, and the horses kept on starting, and then darting to one side and the other. The trees loomed above us against the sky, the rotten roots and holes were under our feet, and on every hand was a dead silence.
After a long ride we came to nine more lepers, whose condition was worse than any I had seen. Two women, one man of about forty, and two children were naked, having no clothes whatever; and, with the exception of a few rags, they are in the same state in the winter. During the months of biting frost, all the covering they had was hay and rags. As I sat there amongst them, the flies were tormenting their festering wounds, and some of the outcasts writhed in agony. I do not wonder at being told that it was impossible to reach the lepers, for this was another settlement hidden away in the forest, with no path or communication of any kind to other places. There were traces of a bear here, and I began to wonder why some of these lepers did not, in their desperation, throw themselves in the way of the bears, and so end their miseries.
As we again mounted our horses, the Yakuts, who had kept far off from the lepers for fear of contagion, hurried on the animals in order to get away from the place as quickly as possible. As we rode forward in the darkness, the faces of those poor creatures haunted me; whilst now and then an owl hooted, or a savage rat darted at my horse, making him plunge and struggle. We kept struggling into holes and over roots of trees, and it was as much as a tired, aching woman could do to keep her seat. Then two of the horses took fright; and, all the horses being tied in single file by tail and bridle, the whole cavalcade rushed along full tilt into the darkness, and we were simply at God’s mercy. When we went steadily again, and silence reigned around, how my full heart was lifted up to God! When going at full speed, the horses would suddenly stop; then a wild goose would screech and flutter his wings, and on we would tear again.
At another place I found a yourta, too small even for one man, containing a man, two women, and a child. One of the women had been afflicted with leprosy in all its worst aspects for years; she was almost naked, having only a dirty strip of leather over her. By her side was her husband, who, although free from leprosy, nobly determined to share his wife’s exile. Her child, too, preferred to accompany her mother rather than remain with the tribe. Neither husband nor child will ever be allowed to enter the community again. Close by was a woman who had just been confined. And there were also two children here, born of lepers, born to live amongst lepers, and doomed most likely to become lepers, either from contagion or hereditary taint. Surely some definite steps ought to be taken to alter this state of things. According to Medical Inspector Smirnoffs report, who had visited the lepers three months before me, he had ordered the separation of the men and women to be carried out. But, however, when I was there, I found them all together again.
The next night, as we proceeded on our journey, a scene occurred which will never be effaced from my memory. A more graphic pen than mine is required to paint it in all its weird and alarming details. We had been travelling for about twenty miles since leaving the last place, when I noticed how strangely the horses’ tread sounded—just as if they were walking over a tunnel, with only a shallow roof to it. The tchinovnick explained that this was one of the places were the earth was in a state of combustion. The fire begins a long way below the surface, and burns slowly, still more slowly when there is no vent for the smoke. The burnt earth creates great hollows, and there is always danger of a horse breaking the crust and sinking into the fire. I thought little more about the matter except speculating on the causes of this alarming phenomenon in the bosom of Mother Earth.
Night came on, and all was gloom around us. By and by I thought I saw in the distance several lights; going on a little farther the lights became a glare, and then my horse grew restive and almost unmanageable. We emerged from the forest and stood in an open space. What an unearthly scene met my eyes! The whole earth, not the forest, for miles around seemed full of little flickers of fire; flames of many colours—red, gold, blue, and purple—darted up on every hand, some forked and jagged, some straight as a javelin, rising here and there above the earth, and, in places, seeming to lick the dust, and then, having gained fresh energy, springing as high as the others.… Coming, full of nervous apprehension, out of the dark forest on to such a scene, I half fancied that those flames were endowed with life. The lurid spectacle looked like a high carnival of curious creatures, let loose for a time from their prison-house, careering about in fantastic shapes. Blinding clouds of smoke every now and then swept into our eyes, and the hot stifling air almost choked us.
We had to go through the fire; there was no escaping it, unless we chose to turn back. After looking on, aghast, for some time, and trying to prevent our terrified horses from bolting, we moved slowly forward, picking our way as best we could in and out of the flames. I prepared, as well as I was able, for any emergency, slipping my feet to the edge of the stirrups in order to release myself in case of an accident, then tightened the reins, and followed my guide. I never expected to get through that fire alive; but death was better than turning back. Slowly and cautiously we picked our way, whilst the horses snorted, hesitated, and trembled.
All went well for about three miles. Suddenly we heard an ominous, crashing noise behind, and then a loud cry, which was instantly taken up by the whole cavalcade. We stopped our horses and waited for the worst to happen. In a few minutes there came, dashing at full speed into the midst of us, a poor frightened baggage horse, which, stepping into a hole, had taken fright and darted away, the baggage boxes getting loose and thumping against its hind legs as it tore along. It made straight for us, and, in another moment, would have thrown me and my horse to the ground, had not the tchinovnick deftly turned the mad creature aside. Then the poor thing bounded on and went far ahead, and we heard the boxes crashing against half-burnt trunks of trees. All our horses were straining at the rein, and seemed bent on starting off wildly after the one that had disappeared; but we gradually soothed them, and then pushed on. The smoke was still blinding us; and, not being able to see in the least where I was going, I loosened the reins and just let the horse go where he liked.
Soon we entered a splendid forest; and, coming from vivid light into darkness, the darkness to me was blackness indeed. My horse kept stumbling, and first one branch and then another hit me in the face. I again dropped the reins on to the horse’s neck, put up my arms to shield my face, and left all in God’s hands. As my eyes grew accustomed to the pitchy gloom I could see the white tip of my dog’s tail. I quite forgot to mention this faithful friend before. He was an ordinary sized black collie, with a white tail. I knew that he always followed the Yakut guide, who rode in front of me; so I kept my eyes fixed on that little bit of white, and felt that, as lo
ng as I could see it, I was tolerably safe; if the white spot disappeared I knew we were near a hole, and so must be prepared for an accident.
EDITH WHARTON
(1862–1937)
Until quite recently, Edith Wharton has too often been dismissed as an aristocratic grand dame who divided her time between the glittering high societies of New York and the Continent, and an author whose work didn’t measure up to that of her friend and literary companion, Henry James. Quite to the contrary, though, her fiction—The House of Mirth, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Innocence, and the acclaimed novella Ethan Frome—are masterworks of psychological insight and social nuance. But Wharton also had an exacting eye as a traveler and wrote some of her most luminous descriptive prose while abroad. A prose classic—almost an extended poem—In Morocco is a haunting mix: the exotic, infinite beauty of Marrakech and the restrained prose of Wharton. Her selection of detail (“sunlight through the thatch flames on round flanks of beaten copper”) catches the spirit of the place.
