A Winter Pilgrimage (1901) by H. Rider Haggard

Author:H. Rider Haggard [Haggard, H. Rider]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Delphi Main Series
Publisher: Delphi Classics
Published: 2020-12-20T15:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIV

BEYROUT, TYRE, AND SIDON

OUR JOURNEYINGS IN Cyprus finished, we sailed from Limasol at night. Next morning when I woke up early, our ship, a Messagerie boat, was already anchoring in the waters of St. George’s Bay, and before us lay the busy city of Beyrout, the Berytus of the Phoenicians. Presently an emissary of the Beyrout branch of the house of Cook arrived on board and asked us if we had any revolvers, or cigarettes. We had both.

“Give them to me,” he said, “and I’ll see you through.”

Then it transpired that in this matter of revolvers there is little difference between the Turkish and the Cyprian governments. In a country where every peasant goes about his business with a double-barrelled gun slung across his shoulders, the respectable traveller may not pass a pocket-pistol through the customs.

We left the ship with our belongings, and rowed to the landing-quay. Then the fun began. Such shouting, such gesticulating, such struggles! First we were marched through a room where sat an aged Turk who stared at us sleepily. To him we protested that we had nothing, nothing! with such vigour that the least experienced might have guessed that we prevaricated. Then a minor Cook and his myrmidons hustled us through passages and gateways into the open street, and whispering mysteriously, “There is something wrong,” left us and vanished.

In due course it transpired the “something” was that our sleepy-eyed Turk, who was by no means so simple as he appeared, had caught sight of the large revolver projecting from between the folds of a coat gracefully arranged to hide it by the artifice of Cook. Further, he had impounded that revolver, but as Cook, with admirable promptitude and disregard of facts, informed him that we were sailing for Egypt in a day or two, he was so good as to promise that we could have it when we left. After this, thankful to escape so cheaply, we started for our hotel.

That afternoon I hired a carriage to drive out to a spot about ten miles away, called the Dog River, and by the ancient Greeks, Lykos, or Wolf River. Here, in the days of fable, a huge stone dog sat upon a rock and barked loudly whenever an enemy drew near. Perhaps — this is but a suggestion — the statue was so constructed that the wind rushing down his throat made a noise like to that of a hound which bays. At the least he did in truth sit there, since lying prone in shallow water I myself saw his gigantic, headless shape, large as that of an ox or a horse. Now he barks no longer, but whenever the sea rises its waves moan over him. Henry Maundrell saw him also in 1697, for he says: —

“In an hour or more, spent upon a very rugged way, close by the sea, we came to the river Lycus, called also, sometimes, Canis, and by the Turks, at this day, Nahr Kelp. It derives

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