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1843.
HOME BY CAIRO, SINAI, JERUSALEM, DAMASCUS, CONSTANTINOPLE AND PESTH.
Reluctant Farewell to India for a time—Address from Non-Christian
Students —Parsee and Abyssinian Youths, his Companions—Makulla and its
Slave Atrocities—Aden and the Jews of Yemen—Cairo—Lepsius—Dr. Wilson’s
Caravan of forty-seven Camels—Jebel Musa and the true Sinai—The first
snow seen for fifteen years—The Petra Excavations and the Rock-cut
Temples of India—Hebron and a Jewish Greeting—Damascus—The Samaritans
and their Pentateuch—Jacob’s Well and Dr. A. Bonar’s Bible— Smyrna and
Polycarp—Constantinople and St. Sophia—Guest of Sir Stratford
Canning—Turks, Bulgariaus and Servians—A Police Welcome to Christendom—Pesth—Rabbi
Duncan, Saphir and the Free Church Mission —Interpreting the Gypsies—Presburg
and the Prince Palatine—Colonel Sykes—Edinburgh at last.
For fourteen years Dr.
Wilson had been doing a work which, in its variety, permanence, and,
above all, unselfish energy, had made him, while still under forty years
of age, the most prominent public man in Western India. Governors,
commanders-in-chief, and judges, had come and gone from Bombay.
Governors-General and members of Council' had, one after the other,
striven to leave their mark at Calcutta on the progress of the empire
politically and territorially. The brief span of the five years’ term of
office, however, allowed to all, then as still more perniciously now,
broke the continuity of progress, and silently fostered that disbelief
in the inevitable growth and stability of British rule, the outburst of
which took civilisation by surprise in 1857. But Wilson, like Carey
before him and Duff on the other side of India, had gone on steadily
mapping out the decaying fields of anti-Christian and non-Christian
error, and, in the exercise of a faith which was strong in proportion to
his own labours, taking possession of them for his Master. Not with him,
as with successive Viceroys, Presidents of the Board of Control, and
occupants of the Directors’ chairs, did the pendulum swing from side to
side, now violently and again at rest altogether. Coorg conquests,
Afghan wars and Sindh robberies, might go on; the far-seeing
philanthropy of a Bentinck might be neutralised by the stupid reaction
of an Auckland, or imperilled by the meteor-like madness of an
Ellenborough, till massacre, debt, and unrighteousness stained the
annals of England as no event in her foreign history had done. But the
missionary, master of the literature, the languages, the history, and
therefore the heart, of the peoples of different faiths, and fired with
a divine enthusiasm which no policy of man however exalted can give, had
laid the foundations of the Church of Western India; had grappled with
Brahmanism, Muhammadanism, and Parseeism on their chosen ground; had
added to his own direct work in the Konkan, Poona, and Bombay, the Irish
Mission in Goojarat and the beginnings of the Free Church Mission in
Central India and Gondwana ; had prepared the means of evangelising the
Jews and the Arabs, the Armenians and the Nestorians, the Abyssinians
and the Negroes around the Arabian Sea; had^proved as salt to the
English society of his own province, and had set in motion spiritual and
social, forces which continue to work with increasing momentum. Can we
wonder that, when the hour came to leave it all, though only for a time,
there was more than the regret which every true worker for and lover of
the people of India experiences, in spite of the attractions of home and
the pains of exile 1 The conviction that he was only continuing his work
on a wider area was required to second the commands of the physicians
whose warnings had been long unheeded. There were showered on the
departing philanthropist the farewells of loving and respectful
admiration from public and private friends, in a land where the
Anglo-Indian has more than caught the brotherhood-hospitality of the
Oriental. Every community, not excepting individual Parsees, vied with
the other in its demonstrations, while the Government of Sir George
Arthur supplied letters to the authorities of the countries through
which the traveller wished to pass. Among many others, Mr. Frere begged
his distinguished uncle at Malta to show him all honour.
More highly even than the address of the Asiatic Society, did Dr. Wilson
value that of the native and non-Christian students of the Institution
which he had established in 1832 as an English school. They had again
increased in number from 155 in 1841 to 203, of whom 98 were Hindoos, 8
Muhammadans, 28 Parsees, Israelites, and Jews, and 68 Christians, while
675 boys and 479 girls attended the vernacular schools.
The first day of 1843 was Sunday, when Dr. Wilson concluded his
ministrations “ by beseeching the little flock of converts from
Hindooism, Zoroastrianism, and Muhammadanism, which had been gathered
together through my own ministry and that of my fellow-labourers, to let
their conversation be as it becometh the Gospel of Christ, that whether
I might come and see them, or else be absent, I might hear of their
affairs.” His own countrymen present he called on “to anticipate the
glorious era of the moral renovation of India, when ‘ all the ends of
the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of
the nations shall worship before Him.’ ”Sunset of the next day saw him
accompanied to the Palawa or Apollo pier, and on to the deck of the East
India Company’s steamer ‘ Cleopatra,’ by a regretful crowd of Native and
European friends, among them Professor Westergaard, who had been his
guest for months. In the infancy of the Overland Eoute, before the
Peninsular and Oriental Company had reduced the distance between Bombay
and London to eighteen days, a monthly steamer was run to Aden and Suez
by the Indian Navy. So late as 1854 the mail was only fortnightty, and
the Bombay portion of it was even then carried by an East India
Company’s steamer between Aden and Bombay. Among the natives who
lingered last on the deck were two who had so far overcome Brahmanical
and caste prejudice as to express a desire to travel with Dr. Wilson.
These were Atmaram Pandurang, a Brahman gentleman who is still respected
as the head of the Prarthna Samaj, corresponding to Baboo Keshub Chunder
Sen’s Brahmo theists; and Gunput Lukshmun, of the Prabhoo or writer
caste.
Dr. Wilson had prepared for and planned his expedition with a care
which, in some degree, every traveller would do well to show. His object
was to visit Egypt, Syria, especially the Holy Land and Eastern Europe,
not merely for purposes of scholarly and biblical research, but to
report to his Church on the condition of the Jews, the Samaritans, and
the Eastern Christians. He had accumulated and mastered a library of all
the early travellers in, and writers on, Syria, such as few public
collections possessed at that time, and much of this he took with him.
He had devoted himself anew to Arabic, and to familiarity with that he
gave up all the leisure of the fortnight’s voyage to Suez. Not only by
letters to the Political Residents and Consuls, but by despatching
Mordecai, a Jew, a month or two before him, he found information
awaiting him at Aden and at Cairo. The friend who was specially his
companion in travel, the late John Smith, Esq., had also gone before him
to recruit his strength by a voyage up the Nile, and to prepare at Cairo
the expedition for the Desert and Syria. All that intelligence,
foresight, and learning could do, aided by 'willing friends, was done to
perfect the success of the expedition. The Church of Scotland, through
both the Foreign and Jewish Committees, intended it to complete the
inquiry carried out a few years before by Drs. Keith and Black, Mr. M£Cheyne,
and Dr. Andrew Bonar.
Dr. Wilson was accompanied, first of all, by Dhunjeebhoy Nourojee, whose
affection and fidelity he had tested in more than one of his Indian
tours. It was desirable that the first Parsee convert to Christianity
should complete at college in Scotland those eight years’ studies for
the office of preacher which the Scottish Churches wisely demand, that
their ministers may have a theological as well as literary education,
and which he had been pursuing in Bombay. Dr. Wilson also contemplated
the publication of a translation into Goojaratee of his Par si Pieligion,
and he proposed that Dhunjeebhoy should write that on the lithographic
stones in Edinburgh. Next came the two Abyssinian students, Gabru and
Maricha, who had sat at his table for nearly five years, and were now
returning to their native land to introduce into it the blessings of a
pure Christianity and political wisdom. They parted from their spiritual
father at Aden, who prayed <£ that to their benighted countrymen they
might be the instruments of great spiritual good, even as Frumentius and
HMesius, the tender Tyrian youths through whom the Gospel was first
introduced into their native land.” We shall see how effectually, but
differently from Dr. Wilson’s expectations, the prayer was answered.
Finally, the Government Surveyor, Colonel Dickinson, had recommended as
draftsman a Mr. O’Brien, who did his part of the mission well.
As the ‘Cleopatra’ skirted the southern coast of Arabia, Makulla came in
sight, recalling the horrors of the slave trade, of which it continued
to be an infamous emporium till 1873. There Captain Haines had seen
seven hundred Nubian girls at a time, subjected in its slave-market to
the disgusting inspection of the Mussulman sensualist, to be smuggled
into the native states of Kathiawar. Off Makulla it was that, a few
years before, two boats, laden chiefly with negro children shipped from
Zanzibar, had been seized by the Indian Navy, and the freed youths were
distributed among the Christian Missions of Western India. At Aden,
first of our conquests in the reign of the young Queen Victoria, Captain
Haines, the first Governor, became Dr. Wilson’s host, and aided him in
his census and study of the Jewish community. Of 19,938 inhabitants of
that extinct volcano, in 1843 there were 590 Jews, 480 Jewesses, and 857
Europeans, the last chiefly the troops of the garrison. The geological
structure of the vast cinder which was once forced up through the
limestone, so interested Dr. Wilson that, as he collected specimens of
zeolite, chalcedonies, obsidian and vesicular lava, the simple Somalees
who crowded round him declared he must be searching for gold or hid
treasure by magical arts. His scientific conclusions were confirmed by
Dr. Buist, who had not long before begun his bright literary career in
India, and whom Dr. Wilson described at that time as “one of the most
accomplished mineralogists and geologists in the East.” At Aden the
president of the Asiatic Society discussed with Captain Haines those
Himyaritic inscriptions which had begun to attract the attention of the
learned. To complete his study of the Jews, whose settlement in Yemen
had taken place long before the Christian era, Dr. Wilson was anxious
that the steamer should stop at Jeddah on its way up the Red Sea that he
might attempt to reach Mecca. He had been encouraged to believe that he
might report on the capital of Islam in safety, by Lieutenant
Christopher, I. N., who had been assured by its governor that a European
traveller quietly proceeding from the coast would find no obstacle. At
Suez the governor showed a keen interest in our disasters in
Afghanistan, in conversation with Dr. Wilson, who also was surprised
when addressed in excellent English by an Arab, one of the young
Fellaheen who had been sent by Muhammad Ali to Glasgow for education,
and had been there baptized.
At Cairo, after the old and not unpleasant passage of the desert in
vans, Dr. Wilson found the first and greatest of the present dynasty of
Egyptian rulers building his mosque and palace on the platform of the
citadel which overlooks the Nile valley and the pyramids. He formed a
hopeful idea of the tolerant but firm rule of the quondam tobacco-seller
of Roumelia, whom—perhaps in an evil hour —we prevented from remaining
master of all Syria and Arabia. The Jews, the Copts, the mission of good
Mr. Lieder, the mosques, the tombs, and the pyramids, absorbed Dr.
Wilson’s attention for days. He found himself already known to the small
band of Egyptologists, with some of whom he had corresponded. He was
unanimously elected an Honorary Member of the Egyptian Society. M.
Linant de Bellefonds, in officially communicating the fact, begged him “
to accept this title as the best tribute of respect which the Society
can offer to one so eminently distinguished as yourself in Oriental
researches.” Dr. Wilson especially enjoyed learned intercourse with the
great scholar Lepsius, the head of the commission sent by the King of
Prussia to report on the antiquities of Egypt. M. Linant, who had
accompanied M. L6on de Laborde to Petra, gave him much information for
his journey to the same place. With Lepsius he explored the pyramids and
the half-disentombed sphinx. “When we were there the body of a child was
exhumed. The coffin had upon it the cartouche of ‘Psammatik’ or
Psammitichus. I carried part of its contents with me to Cairo, and
afterwards to England, without attributing any great importance to the
possession.” He made considerable purchases of the most important
Arabic, Persian, and Turkish works, published by Muhammad Ali’s press,
including the three folios of the Kamils or Ocean, the famous Dictionary
translated into Turkish; of the Persian Burhdn-i-Kcitia in Turkish he
had the beautiful edition lithographed at Bombay. His account of the
publications and of the educational system of Egypt at that time is most
favourable to Muhammad Ali. The latter may be contrasted with that since
developed by Mr. Rogers, formerly H.M. Consul at Cairo. That he might
have free intercourse with the native inhabitants of Cairo, Dr. Wilson
lodged with one Hassan Effendi, teacher of geology in the Bulak
Polytechnic School, who had become a Christian when in England, and had
married an English wife. Cairo is now as much a French as it is an
Oriental city, but the record of Dr. Wilson’s experience correctly
describes the impressions which the capital of Muhammad Ali used to
leave on the Anglo-Indian visitor.
From Cairo Dr. Wilson’s expedition made its final start on the 7th of
February 1843. Consisting of nine persons besides servants, and
forty-seven camels, it formed an imposing caravan. Dr. Wilson himself
was unanimously installed as quartermaster-general and interpreter,
after the Indian fashion—that is, he settled arbitrarily all questions
connected with the route and the times of marching and halting. The
whole had been arranged and provisioned by the Bombay merchant prince,
Mr. J. Smith, who, having been already two months on the Nile, relieved
his companions of all care on this head. Throughout he was
paymaster-general, charged to keep a faithful account of the expenses
due by each. The Rev. H. Sherlock, and Messrs. Allan and Parke, from
England, were their companions through the whole of the desert journey.
Mr. O’Brien the artist, Dhunjeebhoy, Mordecai the Jew, and his little
son Abraham, completed the party. Abdool Futteh, known in Arabia as the
“man of the convent,” from his frequent visits to the abodes of the
monks, and valued by Colonel Howard Yyse, was Dr. Wilson’s servant. Mr.
J. Smith engaged Waters, an educated African who had come from Bombay.
The others secured the services of two assistants, one of whom was
Ibraheem, once employed by Dr. Robinson in his Biblical Researches, and
again by the Scottish Mission.
For the first stage, by the Derb El-Basatin and the “valley of the
wanderings” to Sinai, the party had engaged, as its guide and protector,
Mateir, sheikh of the same Aleikat branch of the Tawarah Arabs who had
helped Niebuhr in his explorations in stony Arabia. Guided by local
traditions Dr. Wilson sought to trace the route of the Israelites from
the Nile to the
Gulf of Suez, by a track which he believed to harmonise more easily with
the narrative of the Exodus than that followed by other travellers. The
inscriptions in the Wadi Mukatteb, or valley of the writings, had for
him a peculiar interest. He examined the exhausted Pharaonic mines to
the northward, and visited Wadi Feiran, “the most beautiful valley in
the wilderness, in which the Christianity of the Arabian desert long
found a refuge.” A careful study of the whole Jebel Musa range led him
to hold by the traditional peak as the very “heaven” from which God
“talked” with men, in opposition to that of Sufsafah, which Dr.
Robinson, and the Ordnance Survey recently, consider to have been the
spot where the Lord descended in fire and proclaimed the Law. To a
careful examination of both Musa and Sufsafah Mr. J. Smith specially
devoted himself. From the top of Musa he ran down to the chapel of
Elijah in twelve minutes, and in three-quarters of an hour scrambled up
to the top of Sufsafah, climbing the pinnacle on all fours in a
serpentine line. He and the Musa party could distinctly hear the call of
one another, being at a distance of not more than one geographical mile.
The top of Musa was found covered in some places with snow, which Dr.
Wilson had not seen since he left the Lammermoors fifteen years before,
and the Parsee Dhunjeebhoy beheld and tasted for the first time.
From this point the party crossed the Tih range into the desert, along
the course of Jabal Ajmeh to the Ghadir al Guf. Three of the party went
on to Hebron, while Dr. Wilson and Mr. J. Smith made a new arrangement
with the Badaween to march to Petra. Having managed, without opposition,
to ascend Mount Hor and examine the tomb of Aaron, they “descended into
the fearful chasm of Petra by moonlight, and we there found our humble
tents and servants ready for our reception.” After a quotation from The
Lands of the Bible, contrasting the rock-cut temples of India with the
excavations of Petra, we must send our readers to that elaborate book—
in the preparation of which Dr. Wilson spent all his home leisure up to
May 1847, when it was published in Edinburgh in two volumes—and turn to
his letters to India for a summary of the rest of the tour. That work,
dedicated to Dr. Chalmers who showed a keen interest in its preparation,
has still a special value in the literature of travel in Bible lands for
four reasons : It records the impressions of a learned and observant
traveller who approached Syria from the East with a knowledge of many
Oriental languages and peoples. It describes several places not
previously visited by Europeans. It devotes careful attention to all
tribes of Jewish descent or faith, from the Beni-Israel of Bombay and
the White and Black Jews of Southern India, to Yemen, Cairo, and Syria.
And the work is, to this day, a high authority on many points relating
to the Eastern Christian Churches and communities, and should be studied
in the light of the great Turkish collapse and Russian extension. Dr.
Wilson had undertaken the duty of meeting two Presbyterian missionaries
to the Jews, Mr. now Dr. Graham, and Mr. Allan; and it will be seen that
with them he fixed on Damascus as the centre of their labours.
“As efforts of architectural skill the excavations of Petra undoubtedly
excel those of the Hindoos, which they also exceed in point of general
extent, if we except the wonderful works at Verula or Elora. In
individual magnitude they fall short of many of the cave temples,
collegiate halls, and monastic cells of the farther East. Their
interest, too, is wholly exterior; while that of those of India, with
the exception of the great Brahmanical temple of Kailas, and the
porticoes of the Buddhist Vihars of Sashti and Karli, is principally in
the multitudinous decorations and fixtures, and gigantic mythological
figures of the interior. The sculptures and excavations of Petra have
been principally made by individuals, in their private capacity, for
private purposes, and the comparatively limited amount of workmanship
about them has permitted this to be the case; while most of those of
India, intended for public purposes, and requiring an enormous
expenditure of labour and wealth, have mostly been begun and finished by
sovereign princes and religions communities. At Petra we have
principally the beauty of art applied often legitimately to subdue the
terrors of nature in perhaps the most singular locality on the face of
the globe, and the cunning of life stamping its own similitude on the
mouth of the grave, to conceal its loathsomeness ; but in India we have
debasing superstition enshrining itself in gloom, and darkness, and
mystery, in order to overawe its votaries, and to secure their reverence
and prostration. The moralist, on looking into the empty vaults and
tombs of Idumea, and seeing that the very names of ‘ the kings and
counsellors of the earth which constructed these desolate places for
themselves ’ are forgotten, exclaims, ‘ They are destroyed from morning
to evening; they perish for ever without any regarding it. Doth not
their excellency in them go away? they die even without wisdom.’ In
entering into the dreary and decaying temples and shrines of India, he
thinks of that day when ‘ a man shall cast his idols of silver and his
idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the
moles and to the bats ; to go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the
tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord and for the glory of His
majesty, when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth.’ ”
“Beyrut, 30th June.—The Lord has greatly prospered me both in my
researches and labours in the Holy Land and Syria. I have an outline of
our movements preparing for the youth of our Institution. We have fixed
on
Damascus as the headquarters of the Presbyterian mission. It is within
the bounds of the Holy Land as drawn by Ezekiel and Zechariah. It has a
Jewish population of 5000 souls, many of whom gave us a most cordial
welcome. Other places are either already occupied by missionaries or are
unsuitable as stations. The Jewish ladies at Damascus say that our
ladies must be ‘their sisters.’ My Oriental dress is that of a Badawee
Shaikh, but I seldom wear it. The word England is the grand passport
both in the wilderness and in the city. Through its might, or rather
through the gracious protection of the Lord of hosts, Mr. Graham and I
passed about three weeks ago through an encampment of the Badaween,
extending over a space of 30,000 camels, after the Turkish authorities
at the Jisr Banat Yakab had declared that we should be certainly robbed
or destroyed. The appearance of these Badaween, within a day’s march of
Damascus, has greatly frightened the Pasha there. They are from the
great Bariah. They brought vividly to our mind the promise, ‘The
multitude of camels shall cover thee,’ etc. You may tell---that — is
quite full of the project of having a mission established among them and
the other Ishmaelitish tribes.
“I have been very busy since our return from Ccele Syria in putting my
notes into order. I have gone over all my Arabic collections with a
learned man here. I have interesting material for a large volume. The
Armenians everywhere are in a most hopeful state. I have been greatly
delighted with what I have seen of them.”
“Beyrut, May 4.—At the commencement of last month I forwarded to you a
few lines from Jerusalem. I omitted to mention in them that, with my
fellow-traveller Mr. Smith, I had made a short excursion from the Holy
City to Jericho, the Jordan, and the Dead Sea. It afforded us much
personal gratification, as well as an opportunity of comparing the
present appearance of these and other interesting localities with the
sacred narrative, and of making such observations connected with the
geography and geology of the country as will enable us, when they are
compared with our notes on the Wadi Arabia to the south of the Dead Sea,
to hazard an opinion respecting different theories which have been
advanced upon the destination of the Jordan previous to the destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah. Since leaving Jerusalem we have more than
completed the inland tour of the Holy Land. Every step of our progress
has been attended with the most solemn and hallowed associations, and
almost inexpressible interest.
“At Nablus or Shechem, we took up our abode with the remnant of the
Samaritans, which is now reduced to one hundred and fifty souls ; and we
received from them much useful information respecting their belief and
religious rites and ceremonies. The old priest showed us not only the
ancient manuscripts of the Pentateuch, which he is accustomed to exhibit
to travellers, but that which is reckoned to be of the highest
antiquity, and which he declared had only once been previously unfolded
before the eyes of the Goim. His eldest son walked with us to the summit
of Mount Gerizim, and pointed out to us all its loca sancta agreeably to
the traditions of his sect. An assembly of all the male adults and of
most of the youth convened to meet us. We examined them respecting the
views entertained of the Messiah. It was urged by them that the Shiloh
of Genesis xlix. 10, was Solomon, to whom all nations either yielded
obedience or reverence, and after whose reign the sceptre immediately
departed from Judah ; and that it is of Joseph that there is to spring
the Messiah, ‘the shepherd, the stone of Israel.’ The son of the priest
was much more candid than the father in admitting the force of
objections to their method of interpreting the books of Moses; and I am
far mistaken if he is not convinced that his people are involved in
gross error.
As the Samaritans have preserved the ancient Hebrew character, and have
never used the Masoretic points, I was particularly anxious to learn
from them their method of reading Hebrew, which, as far as I am aware,
has never been inquired into in modern times; and I carefully noted the
peculiarities of their pronunciation, which does not essentially differ
from that of the Hebrew Chair of the University of Edinburgh. They are
preparing a letter to the Beni-Israel of Bombay, respecting whom they
were most minute in their inquiries ; and one of themselves has most
strenuously urged me to take him to England, along with his copy of the
Pentateuch. I doubt whether he will be permitted to leave his native
place. He is an individual of great enterprise; and, attached to a rope
and with a candle in his hand, he descended, under our direction and
with our assistance, into Jacob’s Well, and recovered from it all that
remains of Mr. Bonar’s Bible which was dropped into it nearly four years
ago. We had a fire kindled in the well, the particular examination of
which was the object of our visit to it, and we had it thus lighted
throughout. It is exactly seventy-five feet deep, and about three yards
in diameter. It is cut out of the solid rock, and has marks about it of
the highest antiquity. I have no doubt that it is the well of which the
Patriarch drank, and his children, and his cattle; and at which our Lord
held his remarkable interview with the woman of Samaria.”
Dr. Wilson paid two visits to Jerusalem, of sixteen days together. Here,
as wherever he went, his letters to the British Consuls from the
Governor of Bombay opened to him every circle. With Mr. Finn, then our
Consul at Jerusalem, he began an intercourse which was long fruitful in
good to the Jews of the Holy Land. He was made an honorary member of the
Jerusalem Literary Society on its institution a few years after. Very
close and beneficial to both was his intimacy with the American
missionaries, who have done and are doing so noble a work all over the
Turkish dominion. On the 30th June he and Dhunjeebhoy left Beyrut for
Constantinople by Smyrna, where, in quarantine, he preached of the
church and of Poly carp, and beguiled the week in studying modern Greek.
During a fortnight’s residence at Constantinople he continued his
researches regarding the Eastern Christians, and the Jewish community
among whom Mr. Schwartz was the Free Church missionary. To its first
fruits, two converts from Judaism, he “simply administered the ordinance
of baptism, and pronounced the benediction through the medium of
Hebrew.” On a visit to St. Sophia he was allowed to walk through the
mosque with his boots on and without a covering, though challenged by
one of the Moolahs, four words in Persian—“but they are clean
”—sufficing to stop opposition. In truth he was under the auspices of
the British embassy, being for a time the guest of Sir Stratford Canning
at Buyukdereh. Among the foreign diplomatists, he wrote, even at that
time, the now venerable Lord Stratford de Bedcliffe “was allowed to he
the foremost for ability, influence, and philanthropy. His attaches,
among whom was a young nobleman, the name of whose house, that of
Napier, is indissolubly associated with the science and literature of
Scotland, commanded much respect.” There Dr. Wilson received letters
from Professor Westergaard, detailing his visit to the Gabars of Persia,
the tombs of Darius and Xerxes, and other antiquities. At Buyukdereh he
joined the Austrian steamer for Varna and Constandjeh, whence, in
transit-vans to Czernavoda for the river steamer, the course lay up the
Danube to Pesth in those pre-railway days. At Rustchuk “ we observed
horses drawing carts, a sight to Dhunjeebhoy entirely novel, and which I
myself had last seen at the Cape of Good Hope fifteen years ago.” Turks
and Bulgarians alike repelled the observer by their ignorance and filth
; Servia was pronounced “the smallest State of Turkey in Europe, but the
most advanced in enlightenment and civilisation.”
“14th August 1843.—At noon we were as far as Cladova, "where the Danube
makes its exit from the Carpathian mountains, through the passage which
it has cut for itself by the might of its waters, as the great drain of
central Europe. Here we landed, and walked along the right bank of the
river, while the steamer was being dragged up the rapids by oxen. "We
had a delightful romp of it along the mountainous pass ; and I had the
satisfaction of pointing out to my Parsee friend from the far East the
different bushes and trees of the European jungle clothing the
precipitous bank—the hazel, the brier, the willow, and the beech, all of
which was entirely new to him, and of directing his attention to the
remains of the great road constructed of old by the Romans, and which
formed one of their grandest and most useful works. We crossed over to
Orsova, after a three hours’ walk, and we were welcomed to Christendom,
after having passed through the empire of Muhammadanism from the straits
of Bab el-Mandeb to the rapids of the Iron Bar, by being put into
durance vile, under the farcical name of sanatory guardianship. Our
restraint lasted, however, only for a few hours; and it soon became
evident that it was intended more for political than medical objects.
When the examination of our passports showed that I was no fugitive
Italian outlaw but a person recognised as a sober subject by a
respectable Government, and that Dhunjeebhoy was not the pioneer of some
horde of barbarians from the plains of central Asia, seeking fresh and
green pasturage for their flocks and herds in the parching months of
summer ; and when our deposition had been taken as to the contents of
our boxes, and all our books, with the exception of a Bible, a Medical
Dictionary, and a volume of German Dialogues—which last work we had much
need of studying—had, as was thought, been put by seal and signet alike
beyond our use and that of the public, till their inspection by the
censor at Vienna, eager to peruse a chapter or two of Rabbi Saadi Gaon’s
dim manuscript of the Pentateuch, or to peep into the secrets of a
Samaritan marriage covenant, and above all to have the satisfaction of
repeating, in the original
Zand, a Parsee Nirang for the expulsion of the devil Nesosh from a
putrid corpse, we were set at liberty. On this occasion Dhunjeebhoy was,
as a matter of course, raised to the rank of an Indian prince, and I
degraded to that of his dragoman or valet, by the intelligent and
observant police.”
“Pesth, Sabbath, 20th August—We were conducted by a young friend, on the
look-out for us, to the house of the Rev. Dr. John Duncan, now Professor
of Oriental Languages in the New College of Edinburgh, and his
associates Messrs. Smith and Wingate, in which we got a most cordial and
affectionate welcome. We stayed with our friends till the end of the
month, enjoying most delightful fellowship, and witnessing the result of
their endeavours to bring the lost sheep of the house of Israel to the
fold of the Good Shepherd. We fouud with them, what we so much wished to
see in the different regions through which we had passed in the East, a
living Christianity shedding its light and love around it, to the
enlightenment and quickening, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, of the
souls both of Jews and Gentiles. Our Scottish friends had been there
resident only for a few years, and they had been instrumental in the
instruction and conversion of upwards of a score of individuals
belonging to the Jewish community, including Mr. Saphir, a person of
excellent education and extensive influence, and all the members of his
family, male and female, old and young. All this had occurred without
the usual appliances and machinery of modern missions, in connection
with the school, the press, and the pulpit, to which the circumstances
of the country did not permit a resort, and simply by earnest
conference, conversation, and occasional addresses and devotional
exercises, animated by sincere piety, illustrated by distinguished
biblical learning, and impressed by a holy walk and conversation. As the
missionaries had not, and sought not, any personal standing in the
country, the converts had been received into the communion of the
Reformed Church of Hungary, the creed of which, as embodied in the
Helvetic Confession, is quite accordant with that of the Protestant
Churches of Britain, and especially of those of the north of the island,
approved by the Presbyterian missionaries themselves, already the agents
of the Free Church of Scotland.
“From several of the inhabitants of Pesth we received much kindness
during our short residence there. Tasner Antal, the secretary and friend
of the eminently patriotic and liberal nobleman the Count Szechenyi,
gave us much of his time, and effectively aided us in all the inquiries
in which we sought to engage. He is a gentleman of high literary
attainments; and some of the institutions of the place have originated
in his public spirit. We were much interested in a meeting of the
Hungarian National Literary Society— which has a considerable body of
active members—to which he introduced us. The language of the
Gypsies—some of whom, attending the fair at Pesth, he had previously
brought to us for examination to Dr. Duncan’s—was on that occasion one
of the subjects of our conversation. It was known to all present that
that language is of Indiau origin ; but direct testimony on the subject
was received with much interest. The governor of Transylvania, who was
in the chair, invited us to visit him, that we might see some of these
wanderers in his province, but our time did not permit us to accept his
invitation. Reference was made to the death in the East of their
distinguished member, Korose Csoma Sandor, who had there wandered far
and wide in the fruitless search for the parent stock of the Magyars,
and traces of their language ; to his unrivalled acquisitions connected
with the literature and religion of the Buddhists ; to his Tibetan
grammar and dictionary ; and to the kindness which he had experienced
from the Asiatic Society and the Government in India. Mr. Kiss, one of
the members resident at Buda, a day or two after the meeting, exhibited
to us his collection of ancient coins and medals, which is rich in the
Asiatic department.
“More than one gracious invitation reached us from the palace at Buda,
the residence of distinguished goodness as well as greatness. On one
occasion, Dhunjeebhoy and I appeared there, by particular request, in
our oriental costume, to the great amusement of the young princes and
princesses. We bade adieu to Pesth on the 31st of August. Next morning
we arrived at Presburg, where the Diet of Hungary was holding its
sessions. In the evening we were presented to his Imperial Highness the
Archduke Joseph, the Prince Palatine of Hungary. He conversed with us in
Latin, the language which he was accustomed to use while presiding over
the Diet, and put many questions to us respecting India and the Holy
Land, and other countries of the East, with which, it was evident, he
had a very extensive and accurate acquaintance, as far as both their
sacred and profane history and geography are concerned. He expressed the
warm interest which he felt in the progress which Christianity is making
in different regions of the earth, and congratulated Dhunjeebhoy on his
embracement of the truth. He also spoke in high terms of our friends at
Pesth, and of what he had heard of their prudent procedure. He entrusted
me with a message to their constituents in Scotland. We formed a high
opinion of his intellectual powers and moral feeling, of which his
countenance and demeanour, as well as language, were the expression.
“Our onward journey to Britain included in Germany, Vienna, Linz, Ischl,
Salzburg, Munich, Augsburg, Stuttgardt, and Carlsruhe. When we got upon
the Rhine we were almost at home among the number of countrymen whom we
met on board the steamer. Among these was a distinguished officer of the
Bombay Presidency, who has reflected the highest honour upon it by his
literary and scientific efforts and antiquarian research, and by his
wise and liberal counsels in the governing body of India—Colonel Sykes.
We stopped with him and his family a night at Mayence, to talk over
matters connected with the distant East. From Mayence we went to England
by Cologne and Antwerp. We arrived in London on the 23d of September,
and in the capital! of Scotland on the 4th of November, in my case after
an absence of fifteen years from my native land, and a journey of nine
months from my adopted home in India. You can imagine the emotions which
I experienced, when, after the perils and vicissitudes of a long
residence and labour in foreign climes, and a pilgrimage through many
lands, both holy and unholy, I found my journeyings for a season brought
to a close at the home of Christian affection and love. Only the
language of inspiration, as in the hundred and seventh Psalm, can form
their expression.”
“Any news about the Church of Scotland1?” had been his first question to
the boatmen who rowed him ashore at Dover. “They’re all out, Sir,” was
the reply, which Dr. Wilson often afterwards quoted, adding, “My mind
was made up. I would have gone out although I had had only half-a-dozen
associates.” |
