by Count Wenceslaus Rzewusky.
Originally published in The New Monthly Magazine (S.&R. Bentley) vol.1 #1 (Jan 1821).
Palmyra, or Tadmor, situated in the arid and burning Desert of Arabia (the province of Hauran), is too interesting not to excite the curiosity of every traveller who loves to carry back his imagination to the remotest periods of antiquity, and to contemplate, among majestic ruins, the vicissitudes of fortune. Once splendid, and celebrated fox its luxury and its commerce, interesting from the misfortunes of the warlike and proud Zenobia, Palmyra, whose temple rivalled in riches the most magnificent edifices, the number of whose columns seemed to equal that of the stars, is now only a heap of overthrown columns, of insulated colonnades, of broken capitals, and decayed porticoes. Koehla and Ada, two mountains at the foot of which Palmyra is situated, and which the Bedouins often celebrate in their poetry, no more re-echo to the cheerful songs of an industrious and prosperous people. Gloomy Silence, the presiding genius of the waste, has succeeded to the hymns and songs of joy; and the Arab alone, armed with his lance, and mounted on his spirited mare, sometimes animates this solitude. There leaving on the tombs which cover the heights, he meditates the commission of some crime; he watches the favourable moment; or endeavours to surprise the ostrich for the sake of its feathers. The statues which adorned the temples and the galleries, are buried under deep sand, which the winds have been amassing for centuries. The sanctuary of the Sun has become a wretched hamlet, and its fine remains serve as vaults, or as walls to the miserable sheds which some poor inhabitants have fixed to them, and who daily abandon them, never to return. It is in the midst of these ruins that the eye of the philosopher is struck with the unequal combat between Time and Industry. It is on these precious remains that History and Tradition found their triumph; before them, Time is compelled to humble his destroying scythe. It is through them that a single fragment rebuilds an entire space, that a single name re-animates whole nations. Time thus yields his sceptre to Memory, and Antiquity receives the homage which is its due.
There are travellers who prefer Balbec to Palmyra; but I am not of this opinion. Situated in the rich and fruitful valley of the Bequaa, enclosed in a more confined space, circumscribed within narrower limits, Balbec offers ruins, the ensemble of which is more easily embraced. Palmyra engages both the mind and the heart: they dwell, by turns, on the immensity of these ruins; on the romantic history of a warlike and unfortunate princess; on periods of glory and humiliation; on the mysteries of an ancient and natural religion. Balbec was the work of the Romans only. Sacred history, its own, with which we are unhappily too little acquainted, and that also of the Romans, are connected with Palmyra. At Balbec, all is great; at Palmyra, all is immense. A valley sufficed for Balbec; the Desert, that solid ocean, was reserved for Palmyra.
It was on the 17th of June 1819, that I set out from Aleppo by the Desert to visit Tadmor. This route, according to the accounts of the people of Aleppo, has not been taken by any one except Scheik Ibrahim (Mr. Burckhardt). I incurred great dangers during the twenty-three days that I remained in the Desert, in the hands of Quazé guides. I bore the name of the Emir Tage ol Fakhr (crown of glory), the translation of my Polish Christian name, Wiencryslau. I owed this danger to the great celebrity which I had acquired among the Bedouins, on the various occasions when I visited them. I was considered by them as the great Emir of the Bedouin tribes of the North. My hardy and active mode of life, my manner of ridiag on horseback, the management of the lance and the sabre, which exercises are familiar to all true Poles from their childhood; some acts of generosity, a great knowledge of the races of horses of the Nedjed, and of their distinguishing characteristics, proved by examinations which I was obliged to undergo among the tribes of Hosueh, of Weled-Aly, of Sebah, and of the Fidanes—every thing, in short, caused me to be compared with the favourite hero of the Arabs, the celebrated Antar. Verses were sung in my praise among the tribes, and thus my name was spread in the Desert; and, as I afterwards learnt, it penetrated to the remotest part of Arabia. At the time when I determined to leave Aleppo, the Desert was in combustion. The tribe of Weled-Aly had just cut to pieces a body of Delibaches of the Pacha of Damascus. The Wechabites had begun again to act offensively; many Sheiks had been arrested and detained by the Pacha of Bagdad, and their tribes roamed about without guides. My appearance in the Desert put all these tribes in motion to seize me. I had been betrayed at Aleppo, and they were informed of my departure from that city before I had quitted it. They desired to make themselves masters of my person, in order to obtain their Sheiks in exchange. The merchants of Bagdad, and Mess. Picciotto, the consuls, informed me of all this. However, I resolved to set out, depending on my good fortune, which has never deserted me. I was accompanied by M. Antoine Rossel, my interpreter, an active and intelligent young man, who was connected with the first families of Aleppo, and whose conduct I cannot sufficiently praise. I took some dromedaries, and repaired to the encampment of Auazés Fidanes, at Tal el Sultan; which I left two days after at nine o'clock in the evening, the night being very dark, directing my course by the stars. The time which I had chosen for this journey was so dangerous, that some Englishmen, notwithstanding the assistance afforded them by the Pacha of Damascus, and the Mutesellims, could not execute their plan, were plundered, even wounded, and turned back without having seen Palmyra. These same Mutesellims could hardly believe that I had been there; and when they were convinced of it, they found my expedition so bold, that they gave me the name of El Fiddavi; i.e. the Devoted.
My journey through the Desert from the gates of Aleppo had more than one purpose. The following are my reasons for choosing that direction: Palmyra being the principal object, it enabled me to observe the Desert in a direction which it was necessary for me to know in a geographical point of view; I wished to see several Bedouin encampments, to obtain a sight of their horses; and, lastly, to learn the nature of the celebrated wind called the Samieli. It was, in fact, the season when it is prevalent. I do not intend to speak here of the ruins of Palmyra. I refer the reader to the work of Mr. R. Wood, which I have found correct in every particular, as well as his engravings, with the exception of some differences which time has occasioned. That traveller visited Palmyra in 1751. Since his time, the sand having accumulated, the general aspect of the proportions has partly changed; there are also several columns marked in the plates, which now no louger exist. I reserve for another memoir my observations on the profile of the Desert. A separate notice also will be dedicated to the Arabian horses; I have brought back four of, the first races. Here I shall speak only of the Desert-wind called Samieli.
This pestilential wind which is felt in the deserts of Arabia, and which causes the death of so many pilgrims going to Mecca, is called in literal Arabic, sammoum, which means burning wind blowing at intervals and by night. It is likewise called harrour, the burning night-wind. The ditierence between the denominations sammoum and harrour is, that the former includes an idea of poison. In fact, the root of samum, is sammu, to administer poison; Sammon means poison, saammon poisoned. The Arabs of the Desert call it sumbuli, which appears to me to be a compound of sam, poison, and of bullaton, humidity, moisture; or ballaton, humid wind, which excites moisture. Such I take to be the origin of the word sumbuli, I think we should say saam ballaton, that is, poisoned wind, humid, and causing moisture. By humid we are not to understand aqueous, bringing rain, but loaded with vapour. The Turks call it samieli.
The Samieli, or Sumbuli, is felt in the Desert from about the middle of June to the 21st of September. It is experienced with a very violent south-west wind, and on those days when the heat of the sun is the most ardent. It is burning; it comes in gusts, more or less scorching, of more or less duration; each of them, however, even the shortest, exceeds the time that a man can hold his breath. This wind consists in a succession of burning and cool gusts. In the first, there is frequently a double degree of heat and impetuosity. The difference between the hot and the cold gusts, according to my observation, is from 7 to 10 degrees. The highest degree of the hot gusts was 63° of Reaumur; the temperature in the sun, without the samieli, having been constantly from 43° to 47°. I thought I could observe that when this wind blows, a yellowish tinge, inclining to livid, is diffused through the atmosphere; and that, in its most violent periods, the sun becomes of a deep red. Its odour is infectious and sulphureous; it is thick and heavy, and when its heat increases, it almost causes suffocation. It occasions a pretty copious perspiration, partly excited by the uneasiness which one feels, and the difficulty with which one breathes on account of its fœtid quality. This perspiration appeared to me more dense and viscous than the natural perspiration: the wind itself deposits an unctuous fluid. The better to examine its qualities and its. nature, I opened my mouth to inhale it: the palate and throat were instantly parched. It produces the same effect when inhaled through the nostrils, but more slowly. To preserve one's self from it, and keep the respiration more free, it is usual to wrap up the face with a handkerchief. In passing through the tissue it loses a part of its action and of its destructive principle; and besides, the breath keeps up a degree of humidity, and hinders the burning air from suddenly penetrating into the mouth and lungs. The Arabs, therefore, are accustomed, whatever the heat may be, even in the shade, to wrap the whole body, not excepting the head, in their mesehlah (cloak), if they desire to sleep. This wind causes, by the rarefaction that attends it, a pretty strong agitation in the blood; and this increased movement soon brings on weakness. It in general produces on man two effects distinctly characterized. It strikes him mortally with a kind of asphixy, or causes him a great debility. In the first case nature sometimes comes to the relief of the sufferer by a discharge of blood with the urine. The corpse of a person so suffocated has this peculiarity, that in a few days, or even hours, as some Arabs aflirm, the limbs separate at the joints with the slightest effort; so powerful is the action of the poison even on the muscular parts, giving an astonishing activity to the progress of putrefaction. Such a corpse is reputed contagious. I know nothing so terrible as this wind: I felt it almost constantly in the Desert, bating some interruptions, one of which was for three days and three nights successively. My interpreter, Mr. Rossel, was struck by it, but escaped death by a discharge of blood. That which confirms what I have said of the separation of the limbs, is, that, having been struck by this air, I was affected for some weeks with an extreme weakness; and whenever the least warm wind blew on me, I felt a great faintness, and perceived in my joints a relaxation of the muscles.
The dangers of this wind are guarded against by inhaling the fumes of good vinegar, and by covering the face with the handkerchief. I asked the Arabs if lying down on the ground was a preservative against it: they assured me it was not. I should be inclined myself to think it prejudicial. The description which M. Volney gives of the samieli, called in Egypt khamsin (the wind of fifty days), does not seem to me exact. What Niebuhr says of it did not strike me sufficiently to relate it here. The observations which I have now made are founded on my own experience.
The period at which the samieli is felt, is between the middle of June and the 2Ist of September. It blows sometimes one, two, or three days and nights successively, and never exceeds the number of seven. Between its appearances there are sometimes intervals of from three to ten days, and even fifteen; not that the wind ceases to blow, but because having been carried in different directions, it is felt in one place after having visited another. The epoch of the samieli coincides with the extraordinary variation of the Nile, namely, between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox.
During six months, from the autumnal to the vernal equinox, the sun traverses the ecliptic between the equator and the tropic of Capricorn; that is to say, he visits the part of the globe where there are great masses of water. His action then increases in the southern hemisphere, in proportion as, on account of its obliquity, it diminishes in the solid northern hemisphere. It is natural that the evaporations occasioned by the solar orb in this liquid hemisphere shoald produce that immense succession of clouds, which dissolves in rain into the upper bason of the plateau of Africa, or is preserved in snows deposited on the heights which surround that bason, of which the Niger is the last receptacle. These accumulated rains, and the melting of the snows, are the cause of the rise of the Nile; and at the same time make the Niger communicate with that river.
It is bold in me to express, as ea results of my geographical labours before I have submitted my whole work to the public, and awaited its fate. Requesting the patience and indulgence of my reader, I, however, venture to declare my opinions.
"The interior of every continent is a vast plateau, elevated, concave, containing by its nature many marshes and sulphureous springs, having a proclivity towards one of its sides, and the contour of which corresponds with the contours actually known of that continent. The profile of this continent is composed of as many principal terraces as there have been principal epochs in the successive subsiding of the seas." The examination of Europe and Asia has furnished me with this result. I laid it before my uncle, Count John Potocki, who approved it, and that emboldens me to publish it here.
The superior plateau of Africa, then, is a bason surrounded with eminences, the bottom of which is traversed from west to east by the Niger, and the proclivity of which is consequently in the same direction. The valley of the Nile is lateral to this direction ; that is, the course of the Niger is at right angles to that of the Nile. There is between both a tract of ground, the elevation of which is such as, at the time of low water, to hinder the Niger from flowing into the Nile. The Wangara is the lake in which all the waters of the bason unite, where they stagnate and corrupt for want of a vent.
When the sun, after the autumnal equinox, sends towards this plateau the great rains and snows, the mass of the waters augmented by the rains only, is not sufficient to rise above the level. Thus this bason is filled towards the Wangara with an immense quantity of water. The season, as well as the great elevation of the plateau, then, hinder these waters, though stagnant, from corrupting and emitting their mephitic gas. After the vernal equinox, the melting of the snows being completed between the beginning of May and the summer solstice, the mass of waters rises above the level, and opens the communication between the two rivers; and it is about the summer solstice that the Nile begins to rise. This evacuation of the Wangara into the Nile would, perhaps, be more prompt but for the north winds, which retard it by driving back the waters of the Nile. It is, however, effected: the Nile receives the greenish tinge of the stagnant waters; and in the neighbourhood of the Wangara, this evacuation uncovers immense marshes, which were just before submerged.
The sun, returning towards the Line, occasions a great evaporation of mephitic gasses, in the bason of Africa, which had been heated and prepared for this great evaporation by the passage of that luminary from the equinox to the solstice, and then by its return from the solstice to the equinox. Amidst these causes of corruption, how many insects, reptiles, and animals are there in all this marshy bason which daily perish! We know from Herodotus, that the three brothers Nasamones, after having ascended the northern rampart of this bason, had large marshes to cross, in order to reach the Niger. In the environs of the Wangara, there is formed an atmospherical stratum, heavy, offensive to the smell, and pestiferous, which is renewed in proportion as the wind has carried it away. It is a continual developement of mephitic gas and noxious exhalations. Timbuctoo, and the Upper Niger, being on a higher level, the putrefied gas formed there would sink in consequence of its specific gravity, and be drawn by the current of the river, or be simply carried away by the west wind, and increase the mass which awe over the Wangara, and would leave that city free from the scourge.
I cannot concur in the opinion of Captain Maxwell, who supposes that the Niger, after having traversed the Wangara, empties itself into the Atlantic Ocean, in the 6th degree of south latitude, by the name of the Congo or Zaire, or between the 5th and 6th degrees of north latitude, into the Gulf of Guinea. If this were so, the upper bason having a regular evacuation, the increase of the Nile and the samieli would be inexplicable.
Such, then, is the state of the interior of this bason, when sometimes the south, sometimes the west wind, begins to reign there. A high wind arriving at the superior plateau of Africa, carries away, and drives before it, the air heated by the sun, and infected by the foetid exhalations, and bears it sometimes to Arabia, into the Hegias, where it destroys the pilgrims of Mecca, or into Syria, where I felt it. This air, thus impelled by a strong wind, either passes over the mountainous chain of Syria, or striking it at some point of its elevation, and being compressed on one side by the mountains, on the other by a column of wind, flies off at a tangent, and rises above the mountains. By its specific gravity, it would tend to fall on the reverse of the obstacle surmounted; but still impelled by the same wind, it describes a curve, and does not strike the Desert till it reaches a point at the distance of a day and a half's journey. What proves this correct is, that the coast of Syria feels only a hot wind, but never the offensive samieli; and that the whole tract along the foot of Libanus, and Anti-Libanus, of a breadth of from fifteen to twenty leagues, is also exempt from it. Hama, Homs, Damascus, &c. know nothing of the samieli. The mixture of burning and cool gusts is caused by the heated mephitic gas passing first, and because the wind which impels it has not become heated. The marshes of the Wangara instantly reproduce an ardent mass of mephitic gas, which a new gust of wind takes and impels before it.
Such, I presume, is the origin of the famous samieh. It is, I think, on the marshes of the Wangara, on the immense plateau of Africa, that its true source is to be sought.
At Bagdad this wind, coming from the north, strikes against the chain of mountains which pass near Sohneh, and which go obliquely from the north to the south-west, and meet the Euphrates to the north of that city, at the distance of three days' journey. Bagdad is at the bottom of the valley of the Euphrates, the ridge which separates that river from the Orontes, is of a great elevation; the wind cannot come there but by surmounting, gliding over the eastern slope of the valley of the Orontes, and having struck the chain in question, taking a direction analogous to its course.