10 September 1867 • Beirut, Syria (MS: NPV, UCCL 00148)
Beirut, Syria, Sept. 11.
We are here, eight of us, making a contract with a dragoman for to take us to Baalbek, then to Damascus, Nazareth, &c, then to Lake Genassareth (Sea of Tiberias,) then south through all the celebrated Scriptural localities, to Jerusalem—then to the Dead Sea, the Cave of Macpelah & up to Joppa where the ship will be. We shall be in the saddle three weeks—we have horses, tents, provisions, arms, a dragoman & 2 other servants, & we pay five dollars a day apiece in gold.1explanatory note
Yrs
We leave tomorrow tonight at 2 oclock in the morning.2explanatory note
letter docketed: Rec’d in St. Louis Oct. 11. P. A. M.
The eight were Clemens, Slote, Van Nostrand, Moulton, Davis, Birch, Church, and Denny. Clemens must have written this letter on 10 (not 11) September, for he implies that the contract had not yet been settled, and Denny’s journal shows that negotiations for the trip were completed on 10 September, when a “committee” of three (Church, Birch, and Denny himself), acting for the party, paid the dragoman “in the presence of our Consul one half the cost.” The total cost of the expedition was “one pound sterling each per. day for twenty days,” or $800, the remaining half of which was due on arrival in Jaffa. On 11 September Clemens wrote in his notebook:
Abraham, of Malta, is Chief Dragoman, & Mohamed —— of Alexandria, Egypt is 1st Assistant.
Camp Equipage: 3 sleeping tents; 1 kitchen tent, & 1 eating tent—all large, finely furnished & handsome.
Our caravan numbers 24 mules & horses, & 14 serving men—28 men all told.
The United States consul general in Beirut was J. A. Johnson ( N&J1 , 416–17; Denny, entry for 10 Sept; Interior Department, 8).
MS, Jean Webster McKinney Family Papers, Vassar College Library (NPV).
L2 , 93–94; MTL , 1:136.
see McKinney Family Papers, pp. 512–14.