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CHAPTER XXXYI.
A strange Armenian—His story by the Antioch gate—Leaving Aleppo
The posting -house at Termanin— St Simon Stylites—Hamraam
The Kentish motto—Lying perdu in a bank of asphodel— Plain of
Antioch—Broken soldiers on the road—Scenes at Kirk Khan.
During the forenoon of the day on which I reached
Aleppo an araba overtook me, and the solitary passenger,
leaning out as he passed, had said something
of which I could make no sense. It did not sound
like Turkish, and I supposed it to be Armenian,
for the speaker had the appearance of one of that
race. But in Aleppo, the next day, when I was
looking at the Antioch gate, the same man came out
of the crowd, uttered the same sounds, and then by
some greater readiness of perception I understood
that he said " Good-day, sir," in English. He spoke
so strangely, however, and ran the words so much
together, and with such an odd intonation, that any
one might have failed to understand him.
In his next remarks he did better, and made
it evident that he was an Americanised Armenian.
There are many such ; they live awhile in the States,
pick up American idioms with astonishing readiness,
and on being drawn back to their native land use
real American whenever occasion offers. This man
was Jewish in features, tall, dark, intelligent, in age
between thirty-five and forty, and wore a fez and
long black coat. It grated on me to hear American
slang from an oriental figure in Aleppo, and I