CHAPTER II RESIGNED TRAVELERS Traveling by the "Twentieth Century, Limited," is fast transit; but, excepting in case of a wreck, the trip is devoid of incident. The mechanical perfection of the conveyance, and the infallibility of the time-table reduce journeying to transportation. There is no girding of the loins, no pilgrim's staff, no salutations by the way and no wayfarer's song. The journey is not humanized by the tender care for the camel, the mule, and the ass, nor are the hunger and thirst satisfied by the breaking of bread beside the lonely springs of water. The terrors and triumphs of St. Paul in his "journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, ... in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, ... in cold and nakedness,"[1] are all to the {247} modern Western traveler echoes of a remote past. But such are still the common experiences of the sons of the East. One of the heroic wedding songs which was much in vogue in my boyhood days was this (addressed to the bride): "Thy father, O beauteous one, journeyed to Damascus alone!" Previous to the introduction of the railway train, which now runs between Beyrout and Damascus, the journey from my home town to the latter city consumed two days. In those days, as is still the case in many parts of Syria, men traveled in large groups for mutual protection from the "hidden dangers of the way," and he who journeyed to the ancient city alone was proclaimed hero. My memories of the tales of adventure which I heard the men relate are very thrilling. Tales of encounters with robbers, battles with snakes and wild beasts, suffering from the insufficiency of "the food for the way" (_zad_) and the thirst occasioned by the early "failure," that is, the {248} drying up, of springs of water which had been thought to be still flowing. Only those who have traveled under such circumstances can fully appreciate the promise given in the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, the eleventh verse, "And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat[2] thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, _whose waters fail not_."