When After Nine Days Of Sailing, Or Trying To Sail, We Found
Ourselves Still Hanging By The Mainland To The North Of The Isle Of
Cyprus, We Determined To Disembark At Satalieh, And To Go On Thence
By Land.
A light breeze favoured our purpose, and it was with
great delight that we neared the fragrant land, and saw our anchor
go down in the bay of Satalieh, within two or three hundred yards
of the shore.
The town of Satalieh {48} is the chief place of the Pashalic in
which it is situate, and its citadel is the residence of the Pasha.
We had scarcely dropped our anchor when a boat from the shore came
alongside with officers on board, who announced that the strictest
orders had been received for maintaining a quarantine of three
weeks against all vessels coming from Syria, and directed
accordingly that no one from the vessel should disembark. In reply
we sent a message to the Pasha, setting forth the rank and titles
of the General, and requiring permission to go ashore. After a
while the boat came again alongside, and the officers declaring
that the orders received from Constantinople were imperative and
unexceptional, formally enjoined us in the name of the Pasha to
abstain from any attempt to land.
I had been hitherto much less impatient of our slow voyage than my
gallant friend, but this opposition made the smooth sea seem to me
like a prison, from which I must and would break out. I had an
unbounded faith in the feebleness of Asiatic potentates, and I
proposed that we should set the Pasha at defiance. The General had
been worked up to a state of most painful agitation by the idea of
being driven from the shore which smiled so pleasantly before his
eyes, and he adopted my suggestion with rapture.
We determined to land.
To approach the sweet shore after a tedious voyage, and then to be
suddenly and unexpectedly prohibited from landing - this is so
maddening to the temper, that no one who had ever experienced the
trial would say that even the most violent impatience of such
restraint is wholly inexcusable. I am not going to pretend,
however, that the course which we chose to adopt on the occasion
can be perfectly justified. The impropriety of a traveller's
setting at naught the regulations of a foreign State is clear
enough, and the bad taste of compassing such a purpose by mere
gasconading is still more glaringly plain. I knew perfectly well
that if the Pasha understood his duty, and had energy enough to
perform it, he would order out a file of soldiers the moment we
landed, and cause us both to be shot upon the beach, without
allowing more contact than might be absolutely necessary for the
purpose of making us stand fire; but I also firmly believed that
the Pasha would not see the befitting line of conduct nearly so
well as I did, and that even if he did know his duty, he would
hardly succeed in finding resolution enough to perform it.
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