Volume 2

Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, forming the completion of her memoirs, narrated by her physician.

  • Meryon, Charles Lewis, 1783-1877.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, forming the completion of her memoirs, narrated by her physician. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    which employs a great many persons in Syria, where no such things as letter-mails exist: it is that of foot- messenger to carry letters. These foot-messengers will, for a stated sum, half generally paid in advance, and half on their return with an answer, go to any distance. They travel with a good thick stick, light trowsers and a jacket, bare-legged, and sometimes without shoes. Their food on the road is often bread and water only, sometimes with the addition of fruit, if in season, or of leben, if to be had. They thus escape being plundered by carrying nothing to excite cupidity; for a simple letter is not an object to tempt robbers. I have said above that the village of Meshmushy was surrounded with vineyards. The grapes ripened under our eye, and we could eat to satiety : so could the meanest peasant; and in this respect it must be allowed that the lot of the poor in hot climates is pre- ferable to that of the like class of people in cold ones. I counted no fewer than twenty-one sorts of grapes. The vineyards at Meshmushy, and elsewhere on the mountain, were planted in rows ; and the inequality of the ground, from the preference that was always given to the sides of the hills, rendered it necessary to sup- port the soil at the foot of each row by a stone wall; and thus a vineyard became a succession of steps or terraces, rising one above another. The vines were planted among the stones of the walls, which were not