Syrians Under Ottoman Rule

scott 28 November 2021

If ever an oppressed race existed, it is this one we see fettered around us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire. I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little—not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell. The Syrians are very poor, and yet they are ground down by a system of taxation that would drive any other nation frantic.

Comments on the First Day's Route

scott 28 November 2021
For those concerned with chronology, as provided by Twain, the pilgrims camped out on the first night (Chapter XLI) - probably at/or near Dahr El Baydar, about 19 miles from Beirut.  They woke up at Temnin el  Foka (Chapter XLII).  It would seem that he was mistaken about place names and not chronology as he continued with narrative on the leg to Temnin el Foka but not naming it such.

Holy Land on the Brain

scott 28 November 2021

"The fact is, we find here, and not elsewhere, a complaint which may be called `Holy Land on the Brain.' It is no obscure cerebral disorder, like the morbid delusions of the poisoner it rather delights to announce its presence, to flaunt itself in the face of fact.  This perversion of allowable sentiment is the calenture which makes patients babble of hanging gardens and parterres of flowers, when all they beheld was sere and barren.

Richard Burton on Syria and Palestine, 1869-1871

scott 28 November 2021
In these regions we find hardly a mile without a ruin, hardly a ruin that would not be held deeply interesting between Hudson's Bay and the Ticrra del Fuego; and, in places, mile after mile and square mile upon square mile of ruin. It is a luxuriance of ruin; and there is not a large ruin in the country which does not prove upon examination to be the composition of ruins more ancient still. The whole becomes somewhat depressing, even to the most ardent worker; whilst everywhere the certainty that the mere surface of the antiquarian mine has been only scratched, and that years and long years must roll by before the country can be considered explored — before even Jerusalem can be called 'recovered' suggests that the task must be undertaken by Societies, not by the individual.

Yalta

scott 28 November 2021

We anchored here at Yalta, Russia, two or three days ago. To me the place was a vision of the Sierras. The tall, gray mountains that back it, their sides bristling with pines—cloven with ravines—here and there a hoary rock towering into view—long, straight streaks sweeping down from the summit to the sea, marking the passage of some avalanche of former times—all these were as like what one sees in the Sierras as if the one were a portrait of the other.

Subscribe to
© 2026 Twain's Geography, All rights reserved.