The geography of genius

Front matter

Class Jx^^^

CopyrigM0

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Foreword

IN the midst of a very busy life, as pastor and presiding elder of various churches, I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity granted me by my people to travel extensively to different parts of the world. In my travels I have sought to establish the principle that no places are of importance or value on this earth except such as have been made significant by association with great people, great battles or great events of some kind. So I have included in my description only cities or rivers or villages that have not been illuminated and magnetized by some great person or historic deed.

The whole idea appeals to me very deeply, and has led me to the recognition of the truth that this earth is a mere mass of inert matter except those parts of it that have been rendered important and attractive through relation to some great personal spirit. Very few people ever visit the Andes because the Andes is made up of rock and earth alone. Humboldt spent a short while in the neighborhood making scientific investigations, and he is about the only great man that has ever touched this vast range of rock

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and wood and earth with any significance. But the Alps, made famous in poetry, in song, in history and literature, is visited by thousands and thousands of tourists every year.

No one would ever visit Ayr, Scotland, but for Burns. No one would have any particular interest in Concord, Massachusetts, but for Emerson and Hawthorne and other great spirits who have been associated with it. Many villages and country places are kept alive by the influence of people who have lived there, and who continue to draw admirers after they have passed away. St. Francis has given to Assisi spiritual value worth far more than millions of money, and he never had a dollar in his life after his conversion. His gift was that of his beautiful life. He has been supporting a mountain town of three thousand inhabitants through the contributions of tourists and sightseers in sufficient numbers to actually maintain the people of his native place.

Thousands of descriptions such as these will occur to most anyone, but to me it has been an endless source of inspiration. The general title of my book of travels develops the aims I have followed in the whole book.

James W. Lee.

St Louis, Sept. 15, 1919.

Contents

I. The Geography of Genius 9

II. From St. Louis to Palestine and Back . . 15

III. The Oldest City in the World 29

Chapter I The Geography Of Genius

THE publishers of Everyman's Library brought out a series of historical geographies, in which only the places, cities, towns of each country were put down that stand out above the dead level of terrestrial monotony, because of their connection with decisive battles, heroic deeds, literary triumphs or other extraordinary achievements. In these books the patches of territory on the earth's surface, that have not been saturated with the personality of some great saint or hero are not considered at all Railroads, warehouses, vast fields of wheat, pork and beef plants, add in themselves alone nothing of permanent value to these countries, which are being mapped and geographically described from the standpoint of historic people and historic deeds. The Andes would not be down in any of these historical geographies but for the fact that Alexander von Humboldt climbed Chimborazo, one of its peaks, and made observations.

If the geographical method of treating personalities were applied to all the great people who have ever lived, we would find that instead of a few countries, such as we now know by the name of England or Germany or Egypt or Palestine, we would have thousands of them, such as we know by the name of Moses, Isaiah, St. Paul, Philo Judaeus, Plato, Sir Walter Scott, Burns, and on through the list of all those, who, by living or thinking or singing or serving, have lifted the places and things with which they were associated, from the realm of time to that of eternity, from the domain of matter to that of spirit.

Like immortal ships, the spirits of great men sail the Ocean of Time, bearing the treasures and archives of the civilizations which gave them birth, and also the names of places with which they were associated on earth. They outride the fury of all the storms and will sail on till

' ' The stars grow old, The sun grows cold; And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold. "

The nation is unfortunate beyond expression that has no son with genius wide and universal enough to convey to coming ages her history. Whatever may be her wealth and her commercial importance, she is without a future.

It was the misfortune of ancient Tyre in Phenicia that she had no son among all her merchant princes, with genius universal and deep enough to bear distant ages a record of her inner life.

Life in Tyre took the form of sails which were spread to every breeze, and the strokes of oars heard in the waters of every sea. Her life stood in many storied houses, rustled in the silk of Tyrian purple, and uttered itself in the ears of all the world. But what the people of Tyre thought about death, or immortality, or duty, or righteousness, or religion, or philosophy, or poetry, or literature, or farming, or plowing, or cooking, or even sea-faring or trade, we can never know. Her life simply lifted itself into the mammoth and unparalleled products of the merchandise of ancient times. It took the form of wharves, of ships, of purple awnings, of revelry, of eating, of drinking, of low sensual pleasure; hence it has been utterly swept away. It stood only in masts, shipboards, ivory benches, sails, pilots, mariners, towers, silver, iron, tin, lead, brass, horses, mules broidered work fine linen, coral, agate, honey, oil, balm, wool, cassia, calamus, precious clothes, chariots, lambs, spices, chests, riches, sardius, topaz, diamond, beryl, onyx, jasper, sapphire, emerald, carbuncle, tabrets and pipes.

Of Tyre we know something from Ezekiel, and something from Strabo, and something from the Bible and historians among surrounding nations. But as far as the people of Tyre themselves are concerned, they have mingled with the dust or gone to the depths of the sea, without leaving a single record that enables us to know the history of that splendid, wealthy, thundering commercial city.

Tyre was so busy eating and dressing and drinking and trading and reveling that she failed to produce a son with soul large enough to be used as a ship in which to pack away her merchandise of thought or religion or aspiration for the future.

On the other hand, how secure is the Greece stored up in her great men! She has been despoiled of her art treasures, her temples have fallen, the Parthenon is in ruins, but the years of her life, she deposited in her great people, are immortal. No tooth of time, no war's bloody hand, no devastation of the years, can take from her the glory which she lifted and locked in the genius of her artists, her statesmen and her philosophers.

Plato and Aristotle still interpret her problems of destiny. Sophocles and Pindar still sing her glories. Herodotus and Thucydides still keep the record of her victories. Demosthenes and Aeschines still declare her matchless eloquence. Appelles still gives expression to her conceptions of beauty. Her riches were sent to the future in the spirits of great men. The unfolding centuries may look in upon them and enjoy them, but their passage through the years cannot be arrested.

No nation under the sun ever sent so many ships from her intellectual shores laden with the merchandise of her spiritual life as sailed from Greece to all ages. These great vessels have ridden the storms of more than 2,000 years and will continue to voyage down the stream of the years forever. Think of their names, in addition to those mentioned above: Socrates, Pericles, Themistocles, Lysicrates, Xenophon, Epaminondas, Isocrates, Thucydides, Phidias, Aristides, Alcibiades, Aeschylus, Hesiod, Euripides, Anacreon, Theocritus, Epicurus, Epimenides, Pythagoras, Democritus, Empedocles, Carneades, Pherecrates, Hypocrates, Archimedes and Aristophanes.

The fact that Shakespeare lived at Stratford-on-Avon is worth more annually to the little English town than all the wheat produced year by year in the County of Warwickshire.

The Palace of the Caesars does not occupy as much space in the Geography of Genius as the cottage at Chalfont St. Giles, in which Milton finished Paradise Lost and began Paradise Regained. The County of Hampshire, England, where John Keble preached in Hursley twenty-five years, and where Gilbert White preached in Selborne twenty years, and where Charles Kingsley preached in Eversley thirty years, is given more attention than to all Kansas, with area enough to make more than a hundred counties as large as Hampshire.

Concord, Mass., with its thousand inhabitants multiplied by Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne, occupies a larger place in the Geography of Genius than Buenos Ayres multiplied by more than a million of the common run of South American mortals.

Chapter II

FROM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE AND BACK

ON the 24th of March, 1894, in company with Mr. R. E. M. Bain, I left St. Lonis to visit the countries made sacred by the lives and deeds, the record of which is given in the Bible. We were invited to make this trip by an enterprising publishing firm.

The publishers desired fresh and firsthand views of the monuments, cities, villages, mountains, rivers, valleys, plains, and flowers made memorable by the lives of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob; Moses, Joshua, and Samuel; Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel, and most of all by the lives of Christ and the apostles. In no other age of the world would such a journey, with such happy advantages for fulfilling the purpose of it, been possible.

We left with photography up-to-date on the New York, one of the greatest steamers ever built. We were going to the oldest regions on the earth to bring back pictures to gladden the eyes of the people who live in the newest. We were going from the midst of civilization large, rich, robust, and grown to get representations of the sky lines and landscapes which surrounded its humble birthplace and childhood. We were going to see and to get copies of that land.

"Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed For our advantage on the bitter cross. ' '

In going back to Palestine, even if we only go through a picture or a book, we are returning to the place of our birth and childhood. We are all copies and reproductions of the civilization in which we live, and Palestine and the countries about the Mediterranean Sea constitute the cradle of our civilization. Here we were rocked in the infancy of our ancestors by the blue waves of the "uttermost sea." Here bent above us, in the years of our weakness and innocence, the deep kindly face of the Syrian sky. Here bloomed about us, when we were learning to stand alone and to walk on the earth, the flowers which make Palestine a paradise. But for these lands and the lives which transfigure them, we would not be what we are, we would not have the names we bear nor the calendars we use, nor the history we know, nor the songs we sing, nor the books we read, nor the paintings we see, nor the homes we love, nor the religion which guides and blesses us from the cradle to the grave.

FROM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE 17

Hence Bible countries, as the homes of our fathers, belong to us. The heroism that blest them we have inherited. The virtues that grew in beauty there, have come to live and bloom in our lives. The laws that were ordained and honored there, regulate our comfort. The hopes that were known and rejoiced in there, refresh our spirits. The Psalms that were felt and uttered there, feed our devotions. The prayers that arose from burdened hearts there, pass our lips and hush our sorrows. Upon the moral and spiritual production of the Bible lands we have fed for 2,000 years. The polar bear, by living in the arctic regions, copies its snow in his white skin, and thus gets a kinship and title to his cold abode by becoming like it. Spending all our lives in the presence of the inspirations and hopes and hymns and ideas of the people who wrote the Bible, we copy and reproduce by an unconscious process the color and texture of their spirits. In this way we come into ownership of all they loved and hoped for.

We crossed the Atlantic in seven days, landing at Southampton. From thence to London, where we waited three days for the Peninsular and Oriental express train. This magnificent dining and sleeping car goes from London through England France, and Italy to Brindisi, a distance of 1,600 miles. At Brindisi we took the steamer that runs between London and India and landed at Port Said, April 11, just fourteen days from the time we left New York. Leaving Port Said, where the great steamers pass from the Mediterranean into the Suez Canal and out into the Red Sea, we proceeded to Cairo. Here we remained eight days, visiting in the meantime Heliopolis, where Joseph married, and Memphis, where Moses lived, and the Pyramids, built fifty centuries ago. We then went to Alexandria, the city built by Alexander the Great, and for a long time the home of Cleopatra, the beautiful Queen of Egypt. Here we took the Mediterranean steamer again and made our way to Joppa, landing there on Sunday morning, April 22.

Joppa is on a stormy and rock-bound coast, and unless the weather is good it is impossible to reach the shore here at all. There is no harbor, and ships anchor far out at sea. If the waves are high the passengers are carried to some port further north. Between the place where the ships anchor and the beach there stretches a long line of rock rising just to the surface of the water. Through this ridge of rock there is a narrow opening wide enough for small boats to pass.

But when the wind is strong the danger is that the small boat will miss the narrow passage and be thrown and broken into fragments upon the

FEOM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE 19

rocks. More people have found a watery grave here than at any other place in the world.

The morning we came in sight of this famous sea town, however, the sea was perfectly smooth and quiet. No sooner was the great iron anchor cast out to hold us in place than seemingly a hundred row boats started from the shore to meet us. They came at the top of their speed, as if a large reward was to be secured by the one that reached us first. The noise and confusion and jabbering beggar description. It did not seem possible that we could ever get our glass plates through that wild scene of Arab confusion without breaking every one of them, but we finally succeeded in getting every box, together with ourselves, down into one of the little vessels, when two strong Arabs rowed us to the shore.

At Joppa we were introduced to our dragoman, Abraham Lyons, a native of Jerusalem, but a Hungarian by descent. Before leaving London, we had arranged with Thomas Cook & Son for a month's camping expedition in the Holy Land. They furnished us with an outfit consisting of thirteen mules and horses, four muleteers, a sleeping tent, a cook tent, a lunch tent, a first-class cook, a waiter, and the best dragoman in the East. All this array of people and animals, and cooking utensils and appliances for camping and traveling was notified to meet us at Joppa.

There they took charge of us with all our belongings and appurtenances.

A railroad runs from Joppa to Jerusalem, and a train passes to and from these cities daily, drawn by an American engine. But as our business was to take pictures and make observations; we had to go slow. Besides, it did not seem quite proper to rush through the plains of Sharon and by the village of Emmaus in an American railway train. We were to pass along the road over which Solomon hauled the timbers from Lebanon which the King of Tyre had shipped to Joppa with which to construct the first temple in Jerusalem. We were to pass through some of the great battlefields of the world, and by many places celebrated in Bible history.

It was our first experience in the real land of the East, the clime of the sun. Every spot and every object in our novel and strange surroundings was interesting from associations which had been gathering about it for thousands of years.

After a good night's rest in Joppa our tents, beds, baggage, and glass plates were strapped on the backs of mules, and with the muleteers to guard and guide them, were sent ahead to Jerusalem. With our dragoman we remained in Joppa until 12 o'clock on Monday, as we were to make this part of our journey by carriage. Leaving our hotel, we passed through the gardens

FROM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE 21

and by the house of Tabitha, out into the open country.

We were astonished to find that every step of the way to Jerusalem was surrounded by wild flowers. They stood in rows and squares and diamonds. They ran up the mountains, they illuminated the valleys, they peeped out from the crevices in the rocks; they contested with the wheat for standing ground in the fields, they seemed to be bent on claiming everything and occupying with their beauty every inch of soil that appeared in sight. I had read that flowers were the alphabet of angels, and it occurred to me, if this were true, that surely all the little angels in heaven must come to Palestine to learn their letters.

The goodness of God, turned from the heart of man, here finds a place for expression in the fair bloom of the flowers. Eden here unable to reproduce itself in its legitimate home, the life of man, spreads itself out in pristine beauty over the hills and the plains. It is as if heaven were determined, in spite of the meanness of man, to keep here witnesses in countless array of the glory of paradise. So about the forty-two miles of roadway between Joppa and Jerusalem the flowers bloom as fair and as fresh every spring as they did when Adam and Eve moved among them in the first garden of the world.

The traveler who makes this journey in the spring of the year passes literally through a wilderness of beauty — beauty in all conceivable shapes and sizes; beauty in ridge, fold, valley and mountain; beauty in square, cube, triangle, and straight line; beauty in red, green, scarlet, and blue; beauty single, double, manifold, and multitudinous. Is it any wonder that Palestine was the home of song and parable and vision and great idea? Heaven there by mountain, waterfall, bird, and flower invites men to be great and holy. One cannot live there without being mean by resisting or good by yielding to appeals of the Most High.

In addition to the flowers which beguiled the tedium of our way to Jerusalem, every mile of the road was historic. We passed through Ramleh, the Plains of Sharon, the Valley of Adjalon, Emmaus, and in sight of the birthplace of John the Baptist. At two o'clock on Tuesday, April 24, we came to Jerusalem, the home of the pilgrim and the capital of Christendom. Here we made headquarters for a week, and using the Holy City as a base, made short journeys to Bethany, Jericho, the Dead Sea, the Jordan, Bethlehem, and Solomon's Pools.

On May 1 our baggage and muleteers were sent ahead from Jerusalem and instructed to camp at Singil. We followed on May 2. Leaving the

FKOM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE 23

City of David, we pass on horseback the tombs of the kings, and soon come to the hill where we take the last sight of Jerusalem. We meet camels and donkeys coming in, loaded with roots to sell. The natives use roots for fuel. To secure this firewood they dig up the trees, but being destructive and thriftless, they do not plant any to take the places of the ones dug up.

We soon enter upon a most rocky and difficult road to travel. We follow single file. Sometimes the narrow path, the same historic way over which our Saviour passed, is so rough and filled with so many round rocks and cut by so many deep gullies that we get down and walk, leading our horses.

We passed Nob, where the whole family of the high priest was massacred by Saul. We came to Hainan, where Samuel was born and was buried. We saw Beeroth, where Joseph and Mary missed Jesus and turned back to look for Him. At length we reached Bethel. Here we pitched our lunch tent and stopped for a two hours' rest. When our tent was raised and rugs spread on the ground to carpet it, our dragoman, on a white tablecloth, placed before us a bountiful repast, consisting of cold broiled chicken, sardines, eggs, and tongue. For dessert, lemonade, dried grapes, figs, oranges, and nuts. The meal was closed with small cups of black coffee, which the dragoman made before our eyes.

After lunch, while resting on our rugs in the tent, the dragoman told us all about Bethel. Here Jacob dreamed as the ladder reach in his vision up to heaven. Here he saw the angels ascending and descending. Between this place and Ai Abraham built an altar to the Lord, when he came up from Ur of the Chaldees. Bethel is a small village containing only about forty families. These are very poor, being taxed almost to the point of starvation by the government.

Our way in the afternoon led through the valley of the figs. Hundreds of acres we found here in fig trees. The natives make brandy of this fruit, which is said to be fearfully intoxicating. About five o'clock we reached Singil, where we were to spend the night. Our tents were already up and the American flag was over them, streaming in the breezes which came from the Mediterranean Sea, thirty miles to the west In our main tent we had a sitting room and bed room, table for writing, chairs and lamp. It was carpeted by some Oriental fabric, and the inner walls of the tent were made picturesque by highly-colored strips of oil calico, which were put together and sewed to them in various figures and patterns.

At six o'clock we were called to a regular table d'hote dinner. We began with soup, then mutton, then artichokes, then chicken and salad, then

FEOM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE 25

dessert, then oranges, dried grapes and nnts. We closed with small cups of black coffee made after the Turkish fashion. Our baggage, glass plates and photographic outfit were placed by the muleteers in our tent. After dark two policemen came to guard us while we slept.

This is the history of one day from Jerusalem to Singil. Thus we passed day after day as we made our way through the interior of Palestine. We will not speak of Shiloh, Samaria, Shunem, Nain, Nazareth, Cana of Galilee, Tiberias, Magdala, Bethsaida, Chorazin, Capernaum, Dan, and Csesarea-Philippi, all of which we visited on our way to Damascus.

In Damascus, which rises up out of the desert like a vision from heaven, we spent five days. Upon arriving here we dismissed our cook, waiter, muleteers, and camping outfit, but kept our dragoman, who remained with us until we bade him good-bye on the wharf at Beyrout.

On Friday, May 18, we left Damascus by diligence at 4 o'clock in the morning and rode to Beyrout, a distance of seventy miles, by 6 o'clock in the afternoon. Six horses were hitched to our conveyance and were changed every hour. This kept us in fresh horses all the time, and much of the way was made in a sweeping gallop.

Sunday, May 20, we left Beyrout by French steamer. But before getting to our ship we encountered another serious trouble with reference to our glass plates. The custom-house officials insisted upon looking into our boxes again. It became necessary to enter into another conflict of words, which we did through our dragoman.

After lengthy discussion a price was named, upon payment of which consent would be given to pass our boxes. At this point we never hesitated, we paid the sum demanded, and left the Turks with thanks that we were rid of them. The American consul at Beyrout accompanied us to our steamer, and bade us adieu, after assuring us that the American flag would be flying from the United States consulate in our honor as we left the shores of Syria.

Our steamer sailed by Cypress, Patmos, and touched for a day at a time at different places on the coast of Asia Minor. We spent two days at Smyrna and a day at Thessalonica. We were for two days in sight of Mount Olympus, and reached Athens Sunday morning, May 27. Here we remained, visiting Corinth and places of interest, until Friday, June 1, when we left at 2 o'clock by Italian steamer for Italy, reaching Brindisi Monday, June 4. This place we immediately left on the morning train for Naples, arriving there the evening of June 4.

From here we visited Puteoli, where St. Paul landed on his last journey to Rome and Herculaneum and Pompeii, in sight of the boiling

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Vesuvius. On June 7 we left Naples by early morning train for Kome, arriving there the afternoon of the same day. We remained in the city of the Caesars for a week, after which we left for London and New York, arriving safely at the metropolis of our own country on June 29, just three months and one day from the time we left.

On Thursday, July 5, we had all our plates back in the factory of the dry plate works in St. Louis, where for us they were specially manufactured, and where Mr. Bain by the proprietors was kindly invited to develop them.

We can never express the sense of relief and gratitude we felt at sight of our seventy-pound white boxes of glass plates safe in the photographer's dark room in the city of our homes. Think of it, these boxes of fragile glass had traveled 15,000 miles, more than half way around the globe. They passed through the great historic cities of the world. They had been carried from place to place by railway cars, by express wagons, by carriages, by steamboats, by rowboats, by porters, by Americans, by Englishmen, by Frenchmen, by Italians, by Egyptians, by Arabs, by Turks, by Greeks. They had been in the holds of ships, they had been piled on the decks of steamers, they had been strapped on the backs of mules, they had been to the pyramids, they had been on the road traveled by our Saviour and the apostles, they had followed in the footsteps of Paul in his missionary journeys, they had been in the city of Plato and Aristotle, and in the home of the Caesars.

We had watched over them and slept by them and protected them throughout the ups and downs of a unique and wondrous journey. Now they were safe at home out of peril and secure from danger. They contained the record of our journey; but this record was unseen and invisible. They had to be developed. The chemicals of the photographer had to be poured over them in the darkroom to bring out the pictures they contained. So suspense was not over until they were developed. We had to see what objects the sun had painted on them.

Good luck did not fail us. Each plate, as one by one Mr. Bain poured the developing fluid over it, revealed a scene of beauty. Just after our return the National Photographers Convention met in St. Louis. A dozen of the first were entered to contest for a prize and they won it, and beside the additional declaration from leading photographers of the convention that they were the finest photographs that ever came from the East.

CHAPTEE III THE OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD

ON the 13th of May, 1894, our caravan passed through the gateway in the western wall of Damascus, and we found ourselves in the midst of this most remarkable city. For hours before we reached it we saw its gleaming glory in the distance; the tall, graceful minarets rising from her more than three hundred mosques.

Perhaps one of the reasons why travelers praise Damascus so unstintedly is because of the delightful contrast it furnishes to the treeless, hot and verdureless country through which they pass on their approach to it. After a horseback ride from Jerusalem over one of the roughest roads on earth, through a country with few trees, one would be in condition to praise any city in which gardens, orchards and abundance of water were to be found ; but when the contrast is presented between such a desert journey and the surpassing beauty of Damascus, one is justified for a measure of extravagance in his terms of commendation. We see its gardens, canals, fountains, deep and abundant, shadows cast from long, spreading branches of most charming trees.