· Pennsylvania Gazette · Philadelphia · page 1
Sketch of Palestine
Sketch of Palestine
M. de Chateaubriand
“Villages, laid waste by fire and sword, present themselves in every direction, and in the cities, as at Mistra for instance, entire suburbs are abandoned… The whole route from Athens to Jerusalem offers a most distressing picture to the eye of a traveller. Egypt exhibits a spectacle than which nothing can be imagined more horribly disgusting. It is there that we saw five bands of robbers contending in arms for the possession of deserts and ruins. We saw there the Albanian levelling his piece at groups of famished children, who, as if familiarized to this terrible sport, ran to hide themselves behind the ruins of their cabins. Of one hundred and fifty villages, which we counted on the banks of the Nile in ascending from Rosetta to Cairo, but one remains entire… Most of the Fellahs have been massacred, and the survivors have gone into Upper Egypt. The natives, who could not prevail upon themselves to abandon their fields, have desisted from the attempt of raising families. A man born in the decline of empires, and who sees in history no other prospect but that of disastrous revolutions, has, indeed, little reason to rejoice at the growth of children, whose inheritance is to be misery… The houses of Jerusalem are heavy square masses, built low, without chimneys or windows… The whole city resembles a cemetery in midst of a desert.”
The second-oldest clipping in this archive, and the earliest instance of the empty-land description it collects. The people are in it, but as fellahs massacred, children hiding behind ruins, and natives who have stopped having children.
Correction: {'note': 'arrived captioned Salem Weekly Advocate 1844; the masthead reads Pennsylvania Gazette, Wednesday, May 20, 1812'}