0f Wvc jf . PRINCETON, N. J. Hh % Shelf. Division . . Do.l.Q? Section , Number . L.O..0. ...... *N _ THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. “ Really a masterpiece ” HOURS WITH THE BIBLE ; or, The Scriptures in the Light of Modern Discovery and Knowledge. “Oh! for a true, comprehensive, popular Handbook of the Bible, keeping back none of the counsel of God, lowering no truth, chilling no lofty or spiritual sentiment.” — Dr. Arnold. Author’s Popular Edition. Complete in three volumes, 1,000 pages each* Price, $4.50, or $1.50 per volume. Author’s Standard Edition. Complete in six volumes, 500 pages each. Price, $7.50, or $1.25 per volume. “ To the student of the Bible these volumes are indispensable.” — Ecclesiastical Gazette. “A work beyond criticism. Is in itself a whole library.” — Churchman. “These sketches show the master hand of the author.” THE OLD TESTAMENT CHARACTERS. With 21 Illus¬ trations, Chronological Tables, and Index. l2mo, cloth, 483 pages, $1.50. “We welcome it as tending to an increased study of the Scriptures and as promoting an intelligent conception of the men who, in the providence of God, filled important places in God’s economy of the salvation of man.” — Lutheran Visitor. _ “ Rich and Poetical.” PRECIOUS PROMISES ; or. Light from Beyond. i6mo, cloth, red edges, 75 cents. This is a volume of choice Daily Readings with a short Prayer and Hymn. “The thought earnest, strong and practical; the love deeply spiritual.” — Review. “ Deep and touching in its reverence for holy things, and sweet and solemn in its appeal.” — English Churchman. ENTERING ON LIFE. A Book for Young Men. 298 pages, i2mo, cloth, $1.00. Tenth Edition. Youth, Success, Reading, Character, Christianity, Dreams, Companions, Helps, Farewell. “We earnestly recommend young men to read what has been to ourselves a truly delightful work.” — Dean Alford. “ Deserves to be read again and again.” — Review. JAMES POTT & CO., Publishers, NEW YORK. THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. A BOOK OF SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS GATHERED IN PALESTINE. BY CUNNINGHAM GEIKIE, D.D., Vicar oj St. Martin’s at Palace, Norwich. Voi, II. NEW YORK : JAMES POTT & CO., PUBLISHERS. 1888. I Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from * Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/holylandbiblebyj02geik CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXV. Gethsemane and Calvary . • • PAGE 1 CHAPTER XXVI. Jerusalem and Bethany . • • . 25 CHAPTER XXVII. Still Round Jerusalem . • • . 48 CHAPTER XXVIII. The Plain oe Jericho . • • . 66 CHAPTER XXIX. The Jordan . • • . 86 CHAPTER XXX. The Dead Sea . . 105 CHAPTER XXXI. Mar Saba . • • . 122 CHAPTER XXXII. To Emmaus and Kirjath Jearim .... • • . 133 CHAPTER XXXIII. Northwards . * 0 . 155 CHAPTER XXXIV. Bethhoron, Bethel, Shiloh . • • . 178 VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXXV. To Gerizim CHAPTER XXXVI. The City of Samaria CHAPTER XXXVII. Dothan, Gilboa, Shunem CHAPTER XXXVIII. Beisan, Jezreel, Nain Nazareth CHAPTER XXXIX. • • CHAPTER XL. Tabor, El-Mahbakah, Carmel CHAPTER XLI. Haifa and Acre CHAPTER XLII. El-Buttauf, Cana, The Mount of Beatitudes CHAPTER XLIII. Tiberias CHAPTER XLIV. The Sea of Galilee CHAPTER XLV. Khan Minieh, Khersa, Chorazin. CHAPTER XLVI. Safed, Giscala, Kadesh .... CHAPTER XL VII. •» 0 PARE 203 231 241 255 267 277 293 300 315 324 344 363 380 Merom, Dan, Belfort CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER XLVIIT. ~ PAGE C^jSaeea Philippi . 393 CHAPTER XLIX. The Lebanon Mountains ..... 400 CHAPTER T. Damascus . ^ CHAPTER LI. Baalbek and the Cedars of Lebanon ..... 437 CHAPTER LII. Beieout . . CHAPTER LIII. SlD0N . 476 CHAPTER LIY. Sarepta and Tyre . 491 CHAPTER LV. Conclusion . 502 Index . 507 List of Scripture References . 537 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. \ - ♦<>« - CHAPTER XXV. GETHSEMANE AND CALYAHY. Erom the Virgin’s Fountain towards tlie north the valley contracts still more, and the sides become steeper. On the right hand especially, as yon advance, the hill is very wild ; sheets of rock, rough outcrops of the horizontal strata, and hare walls of limestone, making the path as wild as that of a Highland glen. Indeed, steps have been cut in more than one place, to help man and beast in their laborious progress. In this, the narrowest part of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the Jews of to-day have the ceme¬ tery dearest of all to their race, for here the dead lie, under the, shadow of the Temple Hill, in the sacred ground on which the great Judgment will, in their opinion, be held. Numberless flat stones mark the graves on both sides of the waterless bed of the Kedron, especially on the eastern. Above them, a little to the north, the eye catches a succession of funeral monuments which offer, in their imposing size and style, a strong contrast to the humble stones that pave the side of the hill close at hand. They are four in number, and have all been cut out of the rock, which remains in its roughness on each side of them. The first is that of Zechariah, a miniature temple about b 2 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. eighteen feet square, with two Ionic pillars and two half¬ pillars on each side, and a square pillar at each corner. Over these are a moulded architrave and a cornice, the pattern of which is purely Assyrian. From these there rises a pyramidal top — the whole monument being hewn, in one great mass, out of the rocky ledge, without any apparent entrance, though one may possibly be hidden under the rubbish accumulated during the course of ages in the broad passage which runs round the tomb. The wrhole structure is about thirty feet high. From the As¬ syrian cornice it might be thought to be as old as the early Jewish kings, but traces of Eoman influence in the volutes and in the moulding beneath make it probable that it is not older than the second century before Christ, who doubtless often passed by it. The tradition of the Jews, current in our Lord’s day, associated with this monument the Prophet Zechariah, who wras stoned, by command of King Joash, “ in the court of the house of the Lord ; ” 1 and it may well be that Christ was looking down upon it from the Temple courts close above, on the opposite side of the valley, when He ad¬ dressed the Pharisees, with whom He had been disputing, in the bitter words : “Woe unto you, scribes and Phari¬ sees, hypocrites ! because ye build the tombs of the pro¬ phets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.” 2 I noticed square holes in the rock on the south side, probably the sockets in which the masons rested the beams of the scaffold while they were cutting out the tomb. The so-called Tomb of Absalom is the most stately of the four monuments. It is forty-seven feet high, and nearly twenty feet square ; hewn, like that of Zechariah, 1 2 Cliron. xxiv. 20 — 22. 2 Matt, xxiii. 29 — 31. XXV.] GETHSEMANE AND CALVARY. 3 out of the rock, and separated from it, at the sides, by a passage eight or nine feet broad, hut not detached from the hill at the hack. The natural rock has, in fact, simply been hewn away on three sides, to form the body of it ; hut the upper part, which is in the form of a low spire, with a top like an opening flower, is built of large stones. The solid body is about twenty feet high, so that the upper part rises twenty-seven feet over it, but the height of the whole must have been originally greater, as there is much rubbish lying round the base, and cover¬ ing the entrance. The sides are ornamented with Ionic pillars, over which is a Doric frieze and architrave. Wild plants grow out of the chinks between the stones of the spire, and on the base from which it springs, and a chaos of stones lies on the ground below. A hole in the north side, large enough to creep through, is the only way to get inside, hut there is now nothing to be seen, except an empty space about eight feet square, vrith tenantless shelf- graves on two sides, cut in the rock. In the Second Book of Samuel we read that “ Absalom, in his lifetime, had taken and reared up for himself a pillar which is in the king’s dale, for he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance ; and he called the pillar after his own name; and it is called, to this day, Absalom’s place.”1 The Grecian ornaments on the present monument show, however, that it could not, in its present form, have come down from a period so early ; but the solid base may have been more complete long ago, and the adornments may have been added to it later. A recent traveller standing on the Temple wall above, on the other side of the ravine, saw two children throw stones at it, and heard them utter curses as they did so ; and it is to this custom, followed for ages, that much of the rubbish at the base is 1 2 Sam. xviii. 18. For “place,” read “ monument.” b 2 4 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. due. Tlie Rabbis from early ages have enjoined that *'c if any one in Jerusalem has a disobedient child, he shall take him out to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, to Absalom’s Monument, and force him, by words or stripes, to hurl stones at it, and to curse Absalom ; meanwhile telling him the life and fate of that rebellious son.” To heap stones over the graves of the unworthy, or on a spot infamous for some wicked deed, has been a Jewish custom in all ages. On the way to Gaza I passed a cairn thus raised on the spot where a murder had been committed some time before, and I saw one at Damascus of enormous size, every passer-by, for generations, having added a stone. So, the Hebrews “ raised a great heap of stones unto this day,” over A chan, near Ai,1 and this was done also over the body of the King of Ai, “ at the entering of the gate/’ when Joshua took the city.2 Thus, also, when Absalom had been killed in the wood by Joab, they took his corpse and cc cast him into a great pit in the wood, and laid a very great heap of stones upon him.” 3 The traditional Tomb of Jehoshaphat, close to that of Absalom, is a portal cut in the rock, leading down to a subterranean tomb, with a number of chambers ; how old, no one can tell. Exactly opposite the south-east corner of the Temple enclosure is “ the Grotto of St. James,” with a Doric front, leading to an extensive series of sepulchral chambers, spreading far into the body of the hill. The name of the family — the Beni Hezir — is on the facade, in early Hebrew characters ; but the structure is connected with St. James by a monkish tradition that he lay con¬ cealed in it during the interval between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, though this venerable association has not saved it in later times from being used as a fold for sheep and goats. 1 Josli. vii. 26. 2 Josh. viii. 29. 3 2 Sam. xviii. 17. XXV.] GETHSEMA1STE AND CALVARY. 5 Near Absalom’s Pillar, a small stone bridge, of one low arch, leads over the narrow ravine to the Temple Hill. A rough channel has been torn in the valley beneath it by the rain-floods of past times, but of a channel beyond there are no signs a short distance above or below it, the upper reaches of the valley being walled across, here and there, with loose stones to form grain-plots. The Ivedron used in olden da}^s to flow here, but there is no stream now, even after the heaviest rain, the loose rubbish which has poured from the ruin of the walls and buildings of the city above, during many sieges, having so filled the old bed that any water there may be now percolates through the soil and disappears. At least seventy-five feet of such wreckage lies over the bottom of the upper part of the valley and on the slopes of the Temple Hill leading down to it ; but even this is far less than what has been tumbled into the Tyropceon, on the other side of the hill. There 100 feet of rubbish hides the stones of the old Temple walls, thrown into it after the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar’s soldiery. In the steep, rocky part of the Ivedron valley, near the tombs of the Jewish cemetery, there are no olive- trees to be seen, but they begin to be numerous on the upper side of the little bridge, and there are some almond -trees on Mount Moriah. The walls of the Temple enclosure proudly crown the eastern side of the hill, their colossal size still exciting the same astonish¬ ment as it once roused in the disciples, when they called aloud, “ Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings ! ”* On the bridge, or near it, some lepers were standing or sitting on the ground, begging ; hideous in their looks and their poverty. A water-seller or two, also, were standing at the wall, offering their doubtful 1 Mark xiii. 1. 6 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. beverage to passers-by. The bridge is the one passage from the east side of Jerusalem to Mount Olivet and Siloam, so that there are always some people passing. Sheep graze on the wretched growth near the tombs ; their guardians, picturesque in their poverty, resting in some shady spot near. Asses with burdens of all kinds jog along over the sheets of rock, their drivers walking quietly behind the last one. The creatures never think of run¬ ning, and there is only one possible path, so that it is not necessary to lead them. A church, known as the Chapel of the Tomb of the Virgin, stands within white walls on the eastern side of the bridge, and a short way down from it is a garden, to name which is enough : Gethsemane — “ the Oil Press ; 5J the spot to which, or to some place near, our Lord betook Himself after the institution of the Last Supper on the night of His be¬ trayal. Here, in the shadow of the Trees of Peace, amidst stillness, loneliness, and darkness, except for the light of the Passover moon, His soul was troubled even unto death. Here He endured His more than mortal agony, till calmness returned with the holy submission that once and again rose from His inmost heart — “ Father, not My will, but Thine, be done ! ” Ho Christian can visit the spot without being deeply affected. Numerous olive- trees still grow on the slopes and in the hollow, and of these the Franciscans have enclosed seven within a high wall, in the belief that they are the very trees under which our Saviour prayed. But within a few decades after He had been crucified, the Poman general Titus ordered all the trees, in eveiypart around Jerusalem, to be cut down ; and when, in later times, others had taken their places, there is little doubt that they, too, perished, to supply the timber or fuel needed for some of the many sieges Jerusalem has borne since. It is, hence, impos- XXV.] GETHSEMANE AND CALVARY. 7 sible to tell the exact site of the ancient Getlisemane, nor is it essential that we should. Superstition may crave to note the very scene of a sacred event, but the vagueness of doubt as to the precise spot only heightens the emotion of a healthy mind, by leaving the imagination free. That the Betrayal, with all its antecedent agony, took place somewhere near the small Kedron bridge, there can however be no doubt, for the flight of steps which for¬ merly led from St. Stephen’s Gate to the valley was the natural exit from the city in Christ’s day. These, how¬ ever, are now buried beneath 100 feet of rubbish, and no one would venture, in the night, down the rocky descent which begins a short distance below the bridge. While, moreover, the present olive-trees cannot be those beneath which our Lord kneeled, the fact that such trees still grow on the spot shows that it was just the place for the garden of our Saviour’s time to have been, though it may have lain above the bridge instead of below it. The spot now called Gethsemane seems to have been fixed upon during the visit of the Empress Helena to Jeru¬ salem, in a.d. 326, when the places of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection were supposed to have been identified. But 300 years is a long interval; as long, indeed, as the period from Queen Elizabeth’s day till now, and any identification made after such a time must be doubtful. Yet the site that can boast recognition of nearly 1,600 years has deep claims on our respect, though other similar enclosures exist near it, and other olive-trees equally ancient are seen in them. At one time the garden was larger than at present, and contained several churches and chapels. The scene of the arrest of Christ was pointed out, in the Middle Ages, in what is now called “ the Chapel of the Sweat,” and the traditions respecting other spots connected with the last hours of our Lord have also 8 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. varied, but only witliin narrow limits, for since the fourth century, at all events, the garden has always remained the same. The wall of Gethsemane, facing Jerusalem, is con¬ tinuous, the entrance to the garden being by a small door at the eastern, or Mount of Olives, side. Immediately outside this you are shown the spot where Peter, James, and John are said to have slept during the Agony ; and the fragment of a pillar, a few paces to the south, hut still outside the garden, is pointed to as the place where Judas betrayed his Master with a kiss. The garden itself is an irregular square, 160 feet long, and ten feet narrower, divided into flower-beds and protected by hedges ; alto¬ gether, so artificial, trim, and modern that one is staggered by the difference between the reality and what might be expected. The seven olive-trees are evidently very old ; their trunks, in some cases, burst from age, and shored up with stones ; the branches growing like thin rods from the massive stems, one of which measures nineteen feet in circumference. Poses, pinks, and other flowers blossom in the borders of the enclosure, and here also are some young olive-trees and cypresses. Olive oil from the trees of the garden is sold at a high price, and rosaries made from stones of the olives are in great request. I wish, however, there were less of art and more of nature in such a spot, for it is easier to abandon one’s self to the tender memories of Gethsemane under the olives on the slope outside the wall, than amidst the neat walks and edgings and flower-beds within it. The Chapel of the Tomb of the Virgin, over the tra¬ ditional spot where the Mother of our Lord was buried by the Apostles, is about fifty steps east of the little bridge, and is mostly underground. Three flights of steps lead down to the space in front of it, so that nothing is XXV.] GETHSEMANE AND CALYARY. 9 seen above ground but the porch. But even after you have gone down the three flights of stairs, you are only at the entrance to the church, amidst marble pillars, flying buttresses, aud Pointed arches. Forty-seven additional marble steps, descending in a broad flight nineteen feet wide, lead down a further depth of thirty-five feet, and here you are surrounded by monkish sites and sacred spots. The whole place is, in fact, two distinct natural caves, enlarged and turned to their present uses with infinite care ; curious from the locality, and perhaps no less so as an illustration of the length to which supersti¬ tion may go in destroying the true sacredness of a spiritual religion like Christianity. Far below the ground, you find a church thirty-one }utrds long, and nearly seven wide, lighted by many lamps, and are shown the tomb of the father and mother of the Virgin, and that of Joseph and the Virgin herself ; and as if this were not enough, a long subterranean gallery leads, down six steps more, to a cave eighteen yards long, half as broad, and about twelve feet high, which you are told is “ the Cavern of the Agony ” ! Of course, sacred places so august could not be left in the hands of any single communion, so that portions be¬ long respectively to the Greeks, Armenians, Abyssinians, and Mahommedans. Yet the whole is very interesting, for the beautiful architecture of marble steps, pillars, arches, and vaulted roof, owes its present perfection to the beneficence of Queen Melesind or Millicent, in the twelfth century, and is perhaps the most perfectly pre¬ served specimen of the work of the Crusading church - builders now extant in Palestine. Gethsemane and the Chapel of the Tomb of the Virgin are at the foot of the Mount of Olives, which can o easily be ascended from them, for its summit lies only about 350 feet higher, and is reached by a gentle incline. 10 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. up which one may walk pleasantly in about a quarter of an hour. A pilgrim was reverently kissing the rocks be¬ hind Gethsemane ; flocks of black goats and white sheep nibbled the hill plants or scanty grass ; the rubbish- slopes of Mount Moriah rose, sprinkled with bushes and a few fruit-trees, making them look greener than the comparatively barren and yellow surface of the Mount of Olives. Yet the olives scattered in clumps or singly over all the ascent, made it easy enough to realise how the hill got its name from being once covered with their white -green foliage, refreshing the eye, and softening the pale }^ellow of the soil. A woman and child, ascending the hill to the village at its top, or going round to Bethany, were leading along a single sheep — perhaps all their wealth, for there are still, as in the time of Nathan and David, rich men who own “ exceeding many flocks and herds/’ and many a poor man who has only u one little ewe lamb,” which grows up together with him and with his children, and eats of his own morsel, and drinks of his own cup, and lies at night in his bosom, and is unto him as a daughter.1 In the mud hovels of the peasantry such creatures walk freely about the little mud-walled court, and in and out of the doorless hut, on the floor of which the family lie down at night to sleep. The whole slope of Olivet is seamed with loose stone walls, dividing the property of different owners, and is partly ploughed and sown, but there is a path leading unobstructedly from behind Gethsemane to the top of the hill. Many of the enclosures are carefully banked into terraces from which the stones have been laboriously gathered into heaps, or used to heighten and strengthen the walls ; and when I visited the place there were some orchards in which olive, pomegranate, fig, almond, and 1 2 Sam. xii. 2, 3. XXV.] GETHSEMANE AND CALVARY. 11 other trees showed their fresh spring leaves, or swelling buds. Nor is any part of the slope without its flowers : anemones and other blossoms were springing even in the clefts of the rocks. There may be said to he three summits : the centre one slightly higher than the others, like a low head be¬ tween two shoulders. This middle height is covered on the top with buildings, among which is the Church of the Ascension, though it is certain that Christ did not ascend from the summit of Olivet, for it is expressly said that He led His disciples “ out, as far as to Bethany,” and, moreover, the top of the hill was covered with buildings in Christ’s day. From a very early date, however, it has been supposed to he the scene of the great event, for Constantine built upon it a church without a roof, to mark the spot. Since then, one church has succeeded another, the one before the present dating from a.d. 1130, when it was built by the Crusaders; hut this in turn having become ruinous, it was rebuilt in 1834, after the old plan. It stands in a large walled space entered by a fine gate, hut is itself very small, measur¬ ing only twenty feet in diameter ; a small dome over a space ^n the centre marking, it is asserted, the exact spot from which our Lord ascended. This specially holy spot belongs to the Mahommedans, who show a mark in the rock which, they tell you, is a footprint of Christ. Christians have to content themselves with having mass in the chapel on some of the great Church feasts. The church stands in the centre of the enclosure. The minaret of a dervish monastery, just outside the wall, on the left, in front of a miserable village, affords the finest view to be had around Jerusalem. No one hindered my ascending it by the stairs inside, though some children and men watched me, that I might not 12 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap get away without an effort on their part to get bakshish. On the west lay Jerusalem, 200 feet below the ground I had left. The valley of the Ivedron was at my feet, and above it the great Temple area, now sacred to the Aksa Mosque, and to that of Omar, which rose glitter¬ ing in its splendour in the bright sunshine. Beyond, the city stretched out in three directions ; slender minarets shooting up from amidst the hundreds of flat roofs which reached away at every possible level, and were varied by the low domes swelling up from each of them over the stone arch of the chamber beneath ; the great dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the towers of the citadel standing proudly aloft over all. The high city walls, yellow and worn with age, showed many a green field inside the battlements. Turning to the north, a rich olive-garden spread away from before the Damascus Gate, and the long slope of Hebi Samwil or Mizpeh closed the view, in the distance, like a queen among the hills around, with its command¬ ing height of nearly 3,000 feet 1 above the sea-level. Close at hand was the upper part of the Kedron valley, beautiful with spring flowers ; and overlooking Jerusalem rose Mount Scopus, once the head- quarters of Titus, when its sides were covered with the tents of his legionaries. On the south were the flat-topped cone of the Frank Mountain, where Herod the Great was buried ; .» the wilderness hills of Judah; the heights of Tekoa and of Bethlehem, which itself is out of sight, though the neighbouring villages, clinging to richly- wooded slopes, are visible ; the hills bounding the Plain of Bephaim or the Giants ; and the Monastery of Mar Elias, looking across from its eminence towards Jerusalem. But the most striking view is towards the east. It is impossible to 1 2,935 feet. XXV.] GrETHSEMANE AND CALVARY. 13 realise, till one lias seen it, Low the landscape sinks, down, and ever down, from beyond the Mount of Olives to the valley of the Jordan. It is only about thirteen miles, in a straight line, to the Dead Sea, but in that distance the hills fall in gigantic steps till the blue waters are actually 3,900 feet below the spot on which I stood. It seemed incredible tbat they should be even so far off, for the pure transparent air confounds all idea of distance, and one could only correct the deception of the senses by remembering that these waters could be reached only after a seven hours’ ride through many gloomy, deep-cut ravines, and fearfully desolate waterless heights and hills, over which even the foot of a Bedouin seldom passes. Nor are the 3,900 feet the limit of this unique depression of the earth’s surface, for the Dead Sea is itself, in some places, 1,300 feet deep, so that the bottom of the chasm in which it lies is 5,200 feet below the top of Mount Olivet. The colour of the bills adds to the effect. Dull greenish-grey till they reach nearly to the Jordan valley, they are then stopped, at right angles, by a range of flat-topped bills of mingled pink, yellow, and white. The hills of Judah, on the right, looked like crumpled waves of light-brown paper, more or less strewn with dark sand — the ideal of a wilderness ; those before me w7ere cultivated in the nearer valleys and on the slopes beyond. Behind the pinkish hills on which I looked down, lay the ruins of Jericho and the famous circle of the Jordan, beneath the mud-slant of which lies the wreck of the Cities of the Plain : then came the deep- blue waters of the Dead Sea, and beyond them the pink, flat-topped mountains of Moab, rising as high as my stand¬ ing-place. To the far south of these mountains, on a small eminence, lay the town of Kerak, once the capital of King Mesba, the Kir Haresh, Kir Hareseth, Kir Ileres, 14 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. and Kir Moab of the prophets.1 There, when Israel pressed their siege against his capital, King Mesh a offered up on the brick city walls to the national god, Che- mosh, his eldest son, “ who should have reigned in his stead.” Nearer at hand, in the same range, but hidden from view, frowning over a wild gorge below, lay the black walls of Machserus, within which John the Baptist pined in the dungeons of Herod Antipas, till the sword of “ the fox’s ” headsman set his great soul free to rise to a foremost place in heaven. And at the mouth of that deep chasm, amongst rushing waters, veiled by oleanders, lay Callirhoe, with its famous hot springs, where Herod the Great nearly died when carried over to try the baths, and whence he had to be got back as best might be to Jericho, to breathe his last there a few days after. South of this lay the wide opening in the hills which marked the entrance of the Arnon into the Head Sea, once the northern boundary of Moab.2 To the north, across the Jordan, rose the mountains of Gilead, from Gerasa, beyond the Jabbok, where Jacob divided his herds and flocks, and sent them forward in separate droves, for fear of his brother Esau, and near which, at Peniel, he wrestled with the angel through a long night.3 Then, sweeping south¬ wards, still beyond the Jordan, which flowed, unseen, in its deep sunken bed, one saw Baal Peor, where the Israelites sinned, and Mount Pisgali, whence Moses looked over the Promised Land he was not to enter, and Mount Nebo, where he died, though we know not what special peaks to associate with these memories. Where the Jordan valley opens, the course of the stream was shown by a winding green line threading a white border of silt and 1 Isa. xv. 1 ; xvi. 11 ; Jer. xlviii. 31, 36 ; Isa. xvi. 7 ; 2 Kings iii. 25. 2 Num. xxi. 13, 26 ; Deut. iii. 8 ; Josh. xii. 1 ; Isa. xvi. 2 ; Jer. xlviii. 20. 3 Gen. xxxii. 16, 24 XXV.] GETHSEMANE AND CALYARY. 15 stones. At its broadest part, before reaching the Dead Sea, now lying so peacefully and in such surpassing beauty below me, the valley becomes a wide plain, green with spring grain and groves of fruit-trees, including palms. Such a view, so rich in hallowed associations, can be seen only in Palestine. The Mount of Olives has been holy ground from the almost immemorial past. On its top David was cc wor¬ shipping God ” on his flight from J erusalem to escape from Absalom’s revolt, his eyes in tears, his head covered with his mantle, his feet bare, when Hushai, his friend, came, as if in answer to the prayers even then just rising, and undertook to return to the city and undo the counsel of Ahithophel.1 In Ezekiel’s vision the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city and stood upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city — that is, on the Mount of Olives;2 and it was on it, also, that Zechariah, in spirit, saw the Lord standing to hold judg¬ ment on His enemies ; and it was this hill which His almighty power was, one day, to cleave “ toward the east and toward the west,” so that there would be “a very great valley ” through which His people might have a broad path for flight.3 It was while standing, or resting, on this hill that our Lord foretold the doom impending over Jerusalem ; 4 and it was from some part of it, near Bethany, that He ascended to heaven.5 Making my way down again to Gethsemane, I crossed the little stone bridge over what represents the old channel of the Kedron, when that torrent was a reality, and rode up a path to the St. Stephen’s Gate. Erom this point the comparatively level ground, extending along the 1 2 Sam. XV. 32. 3 Zecli. xiv. 4 ff. 2 Ezek. xi. 23. 4 Matt. xxiv. 2 ; Mark xiii. 2 ; Luke xix. 41. 6 Acts i. 0, 12 ; Luke xxiv. 50. 16 , THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. eastern wall of the Temple enclosure, is a Mahommedan cemetery ; each grave with some superstructure, necessary from the shallowness of the resting-place beneath. Over the richer dead a parallelogram of squared stones, or of stone or brick plastered over, hut in every case with head and foot stones jutting out high above the rest, is the com¬ monest form. The poorer dead have over them simply a half-circle of plastered bricks or small stones, the length of the grave, with the two stones rising at the head and feet. No care whatever is taken of the ground, over which man and beast walk at pleasure, nor does there seem to be any thought of keeping the graves in repair. Coarse herbage, weeds, and great bunches of broad-leaved plants of the lily kind, grow where they like amidst the utterly ne¬ glected dead. On the north side of Jerusalem, the natural rock, cut into perpendicular scarps of greater or less height, forms at different points the foundation of the city walls. At other parts, the rock juts out below the walls in its natural roughness, lifting up the weather-stained, many¬ angled masonry into the most picturesque outline. On most of the northern aspects of the walls, cultivated strips run, here and there, between them and the road, the counterparts of similar belts and patches along their inner side. Near the Damascus Gate, the remains of an old moat heighten the effect of the walls, while a mound of rubbish on the other side of the road, thrown down during the building of the Austrian Hospice, has helped to con¬ fuse the ancient appearance of the spot. About 100 yards east of the gate, in the rock, nineteen feet below the wall, you come on the entrance to the so-called Cotton Grotto, which is in reality an extensive quarry, of great antiqufty, stretching far below the houses of the city. The opening was discovered in 1852, but is so filled with XXV.] GETHSEMANE AND CALYARY. 17 masses of rubbish that it can only be entered by stooping very low, or by going in backwards and letting one’s self down some five feet to the floor of the quarry. From this black mouth the gulf stretches away, at first over a great bed of earth from the outside, then over rough stones. The roof, about thirty feet high, is coarsely hewn out, and the ground underfoot, as you go on for 645 feet, in a south-easterly direction, under the houses and lanes of Bezetha, is littered with great mounds of chips, or heaped with masses of stone, in part fallen from the roof. The excavations slope pretty steeply from the very entrance to a depth of 100 feet at their far end. Some boys were playing in the road as I approached, and clamoured to guide me, hurrying away to buy candles and matches with money I gave them on accepting their service. At one place, deep in the heart of the quarry, was a small, round basin, with some water in it; the hollow worn by the slow dripping of some broken cistern in the town overhead. The lime dissolved by the water hung here, and at some other parts, in long stalactites from the roof, and rose in white mounds of stalagmite from the ground. It was hard work to follow my active guides, who often gave me less light than was pleasant, as they tripped lightly over the masons’ rubbish, lying just as the workmen had left it. But a word brought them back, and they were very careful in holding their candles down at specially difficult places, where huge stones, cut thousands of years ago, but never used, lay in dire confusion. The roof was supported, at intervals, by very rough masses of rock. This great excavation dates from no one can tell what period, and lay forgotten and unknown for centuries. You still see clearly the size and form of the masons’ and hewers’ tools, for the marks of the chisel and the pick are as fresh as if the quarriers and the stone-cutters had just c 18 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. left tlieir work. They appear to have been associated in gangs of five or six ; each man making a cutting in the rock perpendicularly, four inches broad, till he had reached the required depth; after which, wedges of timber, driven in and wetted, forced oh the mass of stone by their swelling. It is touching to notice that some blocks have been only half cut away from their bed, like the great stone at the quarry of Baalbek, or the enormous obelisk in the granite quarries of Assouan. In all probability it was from these quarries that Solo¬ mon obtained the huge stones which we see built into what remains of the Temple walls, and of its area. They were evidently dressed before being removed, so as to be ready to be laid at once, one on another, for otherwise it would be impossible to account for the vast quantities of chips and fragments on the bottom of the quarry. We can thus understand the words of the sacred writer who tells us that “ the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready at the quarry ; and there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in building.5’1 But what can we think of a man who could doom his wretched subjects — render¬ ing, we may assume, forced, unpaid labour in this case as in his other great undertakings— to toil in the dark¬ ness and dampness of these subterranean wastes, not only in cutting out the stone from the rock, but in squar¬ ing and finishing it, for a temple to Jehovah? How many lives must have been worn out in these gloomy abysses ! Shards of pottery — perhaps the vessels in which they once put their humble meals — with fragments of charcoal, and of long-decayed wood, and the skeletons of men and animals, were found in the quarries when they were re-discovered, some thirty-five years ago. Niches in 1 1 Kino-s vi. 7. XXV.] GETHSEMANE AND CALVARY. 19 tlie rock, and spots black with the smoke of lamps or candles, show where, thousands of 3Tears ago, a feeble light shone out on the pinched features and worn frames of the lonely toilers, the equals, after a few years, of Solomon in the dusty commonwealth of death, in spite of all his glory while he lived, and of all their sweat and misery at his hand. Opposite this stupendous quarry, but a little to the east, there is a smaller one, known as the Grotto of Jeremiah, from the fancy of the Rabbis that the prophet lived in this cavern after the fall of Jerusalem, and wrote the Book of Lamentations with the ruins of the city thus before him. It is a vast excavation, though dwarfed by comparison with its rival close at hand. TV hat appears cannot, however, give any idea of what has been removed, for it is evident that the rock at one time joined that on which the wall stands, and has been cleared away, in the course of ages, till we have the slow ascent that now begins from the Damascus Gate. The quarry extends for about 100 feet into the rock, and underneath it are vast cisterns, the roof of the largest of which is borne up by great square pillars of stone ; both the roof and the sides being plastered over. There was excellent water in the cistern, at the depth of nearly forty feet from the top : an illustration of the universal presence of huge reservoirs for collecting surface water, where springs are so rare. In front of the cave is a garden, planted with different kinds of fruit-trees, and separated from the road by a stone wall of no great height. In the garden, the remains of a build¬ ing of large size, of the time of the Crusaders, were laid bare in 1873; a range of stone mangers showing that it had been the old hostelry of the Templars, which was just outside the Damascus Gate, then known as that of St. Stephen. The spade and pickaxe have still much to c 2 20 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. unearth, at every step round the city. In the month of the cave a Mahomrnedan family has a cottage, and thus, as the ground over the cavern is a Mahomrnedan burial- place, this household sleep nightly underneath the dead, from whom they are divided by only a thin strip of rock. This spot, according to Rabbinical tradition, was once “the House of Stoning,” that is, the place of public execution under the Jewish law. This is noteworthy, in connection with the question of the site of Calvary. There is little in the New Testament to fix the exact position of the “ mount ” on which our Lord was crucified, though the statement that He “ suffered without the gate ” 1 is enough to prove that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not on the true site. The name Golgotha, “ the Place of a Skull,” may well have referred rather to the shape of the ground than to the place so called being that of public execution, and, if this be so, a spot reminding one of a skull by its form must be sought, outside the city. It must, besides, be near one of the great roads, for those who were “ passing by ” are expressly noticed in the Gospels.2 That Joseph of Arimathsea carried the body to his own new tomb, hewn out in the rock, and standing in the midst of a garden, outside the city,3 requires, further, that Calvary should he found near the great Jewish ceme¬ tery of the time of our Lord. This lay on the north side of Jerusalem, stretching from close to the gates, along the different ravines, and up the low slopes which rise on all sides. The sepulchre of Simon the Just, dating from the third century before Christ, is in this part, and so also is the noble tomb of Helena, Queen of Adiabene, hewn out in the first century of our era, and still fitted with a rolling stone, to close its entrance, as was that of our Lord. Ancient tombs abound, moreover, close at hand, 1 Heb. xiii. 12. 2 Mark xv. 29. 3 Matt, xxvii. 60 ; John xx. 15. XXV.] GETHSEMANE AND CALVARY. 21 showing themselves amidst the low hilly ground wherever we turn on the roadside. EverjJhing thus tends to show that this cemetery was that which was in use in the days of our Lord. In connection with this, it has been found, by a com¬ parison of many hundred Jewish tombs in Palestine, that the earlier mode of constructing them was to cut a narrow, deep hole for each body in the sides of the rock, the breadth and length of the human figure ; the dead being put into it with the feet towards the outside. At the time of Christ, however, this arrangement had given place to another, in which a receptacle for each body was cut out lengthwise, along the side of the tomb, like a sarco¬ phagus, or grave. The tomb of our Lord must have been of this class, since two angels are described as sitting, “the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain/’1 which could not have happened if it had been one of the ancient deep holes in the rock, into which the body had been put. The rolling stone, moreover, such as was used in the case of our Lord’s tomb, to close the entrance, was introduced shortly before His day, and is found only in connection with tombs of the later kind. But this kind of tomb, with this mode of closing the entrance, is not found at Jerusalem, except in the tombs outside the Damascus Gate. On these grounds it has been urged with much force that Calvary must be sought near the city, but outside the ancient gate, on the north approach, close to a main road, and these requirements the knoll or swell over the Grotto of Jeremiah remarkably fulfils.2 Bising gently towards the north, its slowly- rounded top might easily have obtained, from its shape, the name of “ a Skull ” — in Latin, Calvaria; in Aramaic, Golgotha. This spot has been 1 John xx. 12. 2 Pal. Fund Memoirs. 22 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. associated from the earliest times with the martyrdom of St. Stephen, to whom a church was dedicated near it before the fifth century, and who could only have been stoned at the usual place of public execution. And this, as Captain Conder shows, is fixed by local tradition at the spot which is still pointed out by the Jews of Jeru¬ salem as “the Place of Stoning,” where offenders were not only put to death, but hung up by the hands till sun¬ set, after execution. As if to make the identification still more complete, the busy road which has led to the north in all ages passes close by the knoll, branching off, a little further on, to Gibeon, Damascus, and Bamah. It was the custom of the Bomans to crucify transgressors at the sides of the busiest public roads, and thus, as we have seen, they treated our Saviour when they subjected Him to this most shameful of deaths.1 Here then, apparently, on this bare rounded knoll, rising about thirty feet above the road, with no building on it, but covered in part with Mahommedan graves, the low yellow cliff of the Grotto of Jeremiah looking out from its southern end, the Saviour of the world appears to have passed away, with that great cry which has been held to betoken cardiac rupture — for it would seem that He literally died of a broken heart. Before Him lay outspread the guilty city which had clamoured for His blood ; beyond it, the pale slopes of Olivet, from which He was shortly to ascend in triumph to the right hand of the Majesty on High ; and in the distance, but clear and seemingly near, the pinkish -yellow mountains of Moab, lighting up, it may be, the fading eyes of the Innocent One with the remembrance that His death would one day bring back lost mankind — not Israel alone — from the east, and the west, and the north, and the south, to the kingdom of God. 1 Luke xxiii. 35. XXV.] GETHSEMANE AND CALVARY. 23 The tomb in which our Lord was buried will be, per¬ haps, for ever unknown, but it was some one of those, we may be sure, still found in the neighbourhood of “ the Place of Stoning. ” Among these, one has been specially noticed by Captain Conder, as possibly the very tomb of Joseph of Arimathsea, thus greatly honoured. It is cut in the face of a curious rock platform, measuring seventy paces each way, and situated about 200 yards west of the Grotto of Jeremiah. The platform is roughly scarped on all sides, apparently by human art, and on the west there is a higher piece of rock, the sides of which are also rudely scarped. The rest of the space is fairly level, but there seem to be traces of the foundations of a surrounding wall, in some low mounds near the edge of the platform. In this low bank of rock is an ancient tomb, rudely cut, with its entrance to the east. The doorway is much broken, and there is a loophole, or window, four feet wide, on both sides of it. An outer space, seven feet square, has been cut in the rock, and two stones, placed in this, give the idea that they may have been intended to hold in its proper position a rolling stone with which the tomb was closed. On the north is a side entrance, leading into a chamber, with a single stone grave cut along its side, and thence into a cavern about eight paces square and ten feet high, with a well- mouth in its roof. Another chamber, within this, is reached by a descent of two steps, and measures six feet by nine. On each side of it, an entrance, twenty inches broad, and about five and a half feet high, has been opened into another chamber beyond; the passages, which are four and a half feet long, having a ledge or bench of rock at the side. Two bodies could thus be laid in each of the three chambers, which, in turn, lead to two other chambers about five feet square, with narrow entrances. Their floors 24 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. XXV. were still tliinly strewn with human bones when Captain Conder explored them.1 “ It would be bold/' says that careful student of Bible archaeology, “ to hazard the suggestion that the single Jewish sepulchre thus found, which dates from about the time of Christ, is indeed the tomb in the garden, nigh unto the place called Golgotha, which belonged to the rich Joseph of Arimathaea. Yet its appearance, so near the old place of execution, and so far from the other old cemeteries of the city, is extremely remarkable/' I am sorry to say that a group of Jewish houses is growing up round the spot. The rock is being blasted for building- stone, and the tomb, unless special measures are taken for its preservation, may soon be entirely destroyed. 1 Pal. Fund Rept., 1881, pp. 203 — 4. CHAPTEB XXVI. JERUSALEM AND BETHANY. A few steps from wliat seems so reasonably to be identified as Calvary bring you to the Damascus Gate, which lies at the bottom of a slope. There is of course only the natural surface for travel ; made roads being virtually unknown where the Crescent reigns. A short distance from the gate large hewn stones lie at the side of the track, the remains of some fine building of past ages, now, like so many others, utterly gone. On one side, the road has a steep bank, several feet deep, with no protection ; on the other, ledges of rock now and then crop out. Balloon-like swellings from the flat roofs, beneath which only a few small windows are to be seen ; the tall mosque of the dervishes, east of the gate ; some minarets ; the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and that of the Mosque of Omar,1 fill up the foreground ; the yellow, bare slopes of the Mount of Olives, dotted still with the tree from which it takes its name, and the pink mountains of Moab, with the lights and shadows of their heights and hollows, close in the horizon. The gate itself is a fine, deep, Pointed arch, with slender pillars on each side, and an inscription above stating that it was rebuilt in the year a.d. 1504. The front, on each side, is in a line with the walls, though a little higher, but a square crenellated tower of the height 1 Tlie popular name is used in these pages, as being- better known than the new one, “ the Dome of the Rock.” 26 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. QChap. of the centre juts out on either side, with a projecting stone look-out near the top, at the corner of both, in shape like a small house. Excavations show that there has always been a gate at this spot. A reservoir and a fragment of an ancient wall have been brought to light close by ; and underneath the present gate there still exist subterranean chambers, of unknown age, the surface level having been greatly altered in the course of time. The masonry of the gate is very fine, some of the stones measuring seven feet long and four feet broad : the remains, doubtless, of earlier structures. Facing the north, this, the finest gate of Jerusalem, has derived its name from the trade between the city and the distant Syrian capital. Situated at the weakest part of the town, where alone an enemy can approach without natural difficulties in his way, it has always been strongly fortified. It was, almost without doubt, through the gate which stood on this spot that our Lord bore His cross ; 1 and it was through this, also, that St. Paul at a later date was led away, in the night, to Caesarea ; 3 for, as I have said, the great military road to the north must, in all ages, have begun at this point. The ground rises very gradually towards the west from the gate ; the wall running along very imposingly over the rough heights and hollows of the natural rock. A long train of camels, tied one behind another, with huge hales of goods on each, and a man riding the first and the last, two or three travellers on asses, and one or two on horses, all of them thoroughly Oriental in dress and fea¬ tures, paced northwards as I turned from the dried mud which does duty for a road, with its immemorial neglect on all sides, and rode on towards the Joppa Grate. With a few short intervals, some fields of no great breadth run along the outer face of the walls in this part, the remains 1 Heb. xiii. 12. 2 Acts xxiii. 31. XXVI.] JERUSALEM AND BETHANY. 27 of tlie fosse stopping them on the one side, and a low wall of dry stone, alongside the road, on the other. The rock coming in flat sheets to the surface here, at different points, made the track more like a civilised highway; and, on the country side of it, gardens, within stone walls, brightened the route. Until recently the wide space be¬ tween the olive-groves, farther north, and the city wall, was a naked stretch of broken rock, or a mere waste, thinly sprinkled with grass, which withered into hay after the brief spring. Of late years, however, the ground has fallen into the hands of Christians, and this, explain it how we may, accounts for the change, which is just as marked, in similar cases, everywhere in Palestine. Industry — the industry which always in this land characterises our re¬ ligion — has made the wilderness blossom like the rose. In early times this suburb was diligently utilised, as the remains of numerous cisterns and tanks sufficiently prove. Each Jews had their fine country-houses here, under the shadow of their olive and fig trees, and wealthy Homan officials and residents doubtless followed their example, for the shallow shares of the Eastern plough constantly turn up fragments of polished marble and cubes of mosaic flooring. It must, indeed, have been the same all round Jerusalem, for at two different places on the Mount of Olives, where excavations have recently been made, the mosaic floors of baths and rooms have been laid bare, with portions of the columns and delicately finished walls of the mansions to which they belonged. Even now, those who can afford to do it leave the city in the hot months, to enjoy the coolness of the orchards out¬ side, and no foreign resident then lives within the gates who can manage to get a house beyond them. That it has been always the same, admits of no question ; in fact, the whole upper Kedron valley was so overgrown with 28 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. dwellings in the generation before the destruction of the city by Titus, that the Jews enclosed it within a new city wall. But it is idle to look for any notable remains of mansions, or of public buildings, in this part, any more than in the city itself, for every hostile force has in turn encamped on the north side of Jerusalem, and signalised its presence by widespread destruction. How much blood of the most widely separate races has this soil drunk in ! Here perished thousands of Bo man legionaries and auxili¬ aries drawn from half a world ; here fell thousands of turbaned Saracens ; here the Crusaders from the West sang their Frankish songs round their watch-fires ; and since then, rocks and walls have echoed with the war-cries of the rough hordes of Central Asia, now ossified into the modern Turk. Such human associations, lighting up the darkness of the past writh the memory of great events, give even so poor and commonplace a scene an interest which no mere natural beauty could excite. At the north-west corner of the walls the ground sinks, southwards, to the Joppa Gate, and rises slowly towards the north-west. Going west, we reach the eastern slope of the Yalley of Hinnom, from which we first set out in our circuit of the Holy City. The top of the valley is covered with an extensive Mahommedan cemetery, in the middle of which lies the broad, flat sweep of a shallow pool — the Birket-el-Mamilla — which is fed, in winter and spring, by the rains. It is from this that the water found in Heze- ki all’s Pool, in the city, flows, after the rains, through a small aqueduct which is open at different points. Cross¬ ing the sadly-neglected city of the dead, with its forest of head and foot stones, rising higher than the perpendicular slabs of our churchyards though generally narrower than these, one is surprised to reach, on the farther side, where a noble terebinth stands as outpost, an actually XXVI.] JERUSALEM AND BETHANY. 29 good piece of road leading to tlie Joppa Gate. As there is hardly such a thing as a made road in the whole country, from Dan to Beersheba, the existence of this short frag:- ment seems inexplicable. It was the beneficial result of a very curious impulse to diligence. A widespread tradi¬ tion affirmed that a great treasure had, in some past age, been buried not far from the Joppa Gate, and in order to secure this, some adventurers gave out that they wished to make the road, and got permission to do so. This apparently wild venture had, however, more justification in the East than it would have had with us, for it has often happened that in time of war, or to escape the ex¬ tortion of pashas, men have hidden their money or jewels in the ground, and have died without revealing the place, so that their wealth has been lost to their heirs. It is, indeed, still common to do so in troublous times all over the East, the experiences of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 showing many examples, so that, as in the days of Christ, it is nothing unusual to find treasure hidden in a field.1 The road from the terebinth-tree to the Joppa Gate is nearly level, opening on the wide vacant space sacred to loungers, to the stalls of small dealers, to asses waiting for hire, and to camels awaiting their burdens. This spot is generally very hustling, but especially so as the noon of Friday, the Mahommedan Sunday, approaches. Everyone then strives to get into the city, some on horses, asses, or camels, but the great majority on foot ; young and old, men and women, rich and poor, in all the parti-coloured brightness of Oriental costume ; for at twelve on the sacred day the gates are shut for an hour, and all the faithful think it right to hurry at that time to the Temple area, to pray before the Mosque of Omar, the holiest spot in the Mahommedan world, except the Ixaabah at Mecca. 1 Matt. xiii. 44. 30 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Just so it must have been in ancient times, at nine each morning, and at three each afternoon, the hour of morn¬ ing and evening prayer among the ancient Jews, when men “went up into the temple, to pray/’ 1 And just as, in our time, a Mahommedan stops and prays wherever the fixed moment for doing so may find him, his face towards Mecca, so the Jew, if unable to get to the Temple Hill before the horns of the Levites, now superseded by the cry of the muezzin, summoned him to devotion, turned his face towards the Holy of Holies, wherever he might be, and re¬ peated the prescribed prayers, still heard in the synagogues, for, even then, forms of prayer were universally used by the Chosen People. The shutting of the city gate has its origin in a belief among the Moslem that the Christians would, at some time, take the Holy City during the great hour of prayer, if this precaution were neglected. Except the Joppa Gate, all the entrances to Jerusalem are, further, closed each night at sunset : a custom as old, at least, as the days of Joshua, for Eahab tells the King of Jericho that the two Jewish spies went out of the city “about the time of shutting of the gate, when it was dark.” 2 To realise the daily life of ancient Jerusalem, it is necessary to have before us not only the character of the streets, narrow, rough, and sometimes sunk in the middle at once for a gutter and a track for animals ; the flat-roofed houses, with their balloon swellings to cover the stone arches of the rooms ; the strange, dark-arched bazaars, like long narrow tunnels, with the booths of the traders on each side ; the dress of the people ; the character of the shops and the articles exposed for sale ; but also the configuration of the ground, the source of the ancient water-supply, and much else. 1 Lnke xviii. 10. 2 Josh. ii. 5. XXVI.] JERUSALEM AND BETHANY. 31 At present, Jerusalem receives water, so essential in any country, so pressingly vital in a hot climate, from springs, wells, cisterns, pools or reservoirs, and rivulets led by conduits into the city. The Fountain of the Virgin, in the valley of the Kedron, or of Jehoshaphat, is the only true spring known to exist in Jerusalem, rising, it appears, from a living source beneath the great Temple vaults, and supplying the many fountains flowing from of old in the Temple area, and now sparkling round the Mosque of Omar, as well as maintaining the Fountain of the Virgin and the Pool of Siloam. Such a provision of ever fresh and lim¬ pid water was an essential in ancient worship, which in every religion, at least in warm climates, required copious supplies, both for ablution and to wash away the blood of the sacrifices. Without such a provision, indeed, the Temple could hardly have been raised on Mount Moriah. This local water-supply was also the very life of the city itself, in times of siege ; Hezekiah taking the precaution, as we have seen,1 to bring its stream, by a subterranean tunnel from the Virgin’s Fountain, which was carefully covered up, to a point within the walls to which access was at all times easy by a rock- cut staircase, a long gallery in the limestone, and a deep shaft. Milton speaks of it as the “ - brook that flowed Fast by the oracle of God : ” a holy association which frequently occurs in the Sacred Writings. “ There is a [perennial] river/’ chants the Psalmist, “ the streams whereof make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High.”2 “ All my springs [my sources of delight] are in thee,” 1 See Yol. I., p. 550. 2 Ps. xlvi. 4 32 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. says another of the sacred odes.1 At the Feast of Taber¬ nacles a golden vessel, holding about a pint and a half, was filled daily from Siloam, and carried np to the Temple, amidst music and jubilation ; so that the Rabbis say, “ He who has not seen the joy of the water-drawing has never seen joy in his life.” To this Isaiah alludes when he writes, “With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salva¬ tion;’53 thinking of the exiles from all lands resuming the solemnities of the Temple worship. In Ezekiel’s vision, moreover, the sacred spring in the Temple rock is to swell into a mighty river, flowing eastward and west¬ ward into the glens of Hinnom and Kedron, and pouring down in fertilising streams to the Dead Sea, whose waters it is to turn to a living flood. On the west side of the wall of the old Temple en¬ closure there is a well which seems to tap an old water¬ course discovered far below the ancient surface, on which, as we have seen, lay the huge stones of Robinson’s Arch, thirty feet below the present one. The shaft, which is eighty feet deep, passes entirely through rubbish into the old rock-hewn conduit which runs somewhere to the south : a relic, perhaps, of the great works undertaken by Ilezekiah, to supply the city with water.3 There may be a secret spring, now unknown, from which this stream flows, but part of it must come from the infiltration of rain. Permeating such a mass of foul rubbish, it is, however, unfit for drinking, though freely used for that purpose by the inhabitants. The oldest cisterns in Jerusalem have been made bv 1/ * hewing out in the rock a bottle-shaped excavation at the bottom of a deep shaft. The surface-rains, and the per¬ colation of water between the layers of rock, are sufficient to keep a small supply in these reservoirs even in the 1 Ps. lxxxvii. 7. 2 Isa. xii. 3. 3 2 Cliron. xxxii. 30. XXVI.] JERUSALEM AND BETHANY. 33 driest weather. Many of them must he of great anti¬ quity, and it is quite possible that, among others, that in which Jeremiah was for a time confined1 may still be in use. Besides these there are great subterranean tanks, from forty to sixty feefc deep, hewn out of the soft lime¬ stone, which in Jerusalem underlies a harder bed of the same stone. The roofs of flat rock are thus strong enough to support themselves, where the tank is of moderate size, hut where the space hollowed out is large, they are upheld by pillars of stone left by the hewers. Small holes through the upper hard limestone afforded access to the softer rock for these gigantic quarryings, but the labour of passing through such narrow apertures all the stones and chips removed must have been immense ; nor is it too much to believe that the laborious plan of leaving the native rock as a roof shows that these tanks were dug before the use of the arch was known. In any case, they restore one feature of ancient Jerusalem. A third form of cistern is that of a simple excavation in the rock, with an arch thrown over as a roof. This kind of reservoir, and the great rock tanks, were supplied in ancient times by aqueducts, hut now depend on impure surface drainage. Still a fourth class of cisterns has been built, in modern times, in the rubbish over the ancient city, depending entirely, of course, on the rains. In the hands of Europeans, these, being carefully cemented and cleaned out each year, supply clear and good water, hut those in the native houses are sadly different. In their keenness to gather all the water they can, the owners guide all that falls on the roof, or into the court¬ yard, to the cistern, and even collect it from the streets, which are habitually foul with every form of abomination. Hence, as the year advances, and the supply of water gets 1 Jer. xxxviii. 6. d 34 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. low, the hideous deposits in the bottom of the cisterns are stirred in drawing for daily wants, with a painful result, alike in the horrible mixture drunk by the popula¬ tion and in the smell given off. Fever, widely spread, inevitably follows, with numerous deaths, but no penalty seems to rouse the population to the most elementary regard for the commonest laws of cleanliness and health. A city in itself so strangely unprovided with living springs could not, however, depend in its prosperous days simply on rain-water tanks or cisterns, or on the flow from the Virgin’s Fountain ; and, hence, large pools, fed by aqueducts, were added, outside the city and within. There are two, as we have seen, in the Valley of Hinnom ; then there are the two pools of Siloam, and one north of the city; while traditions exist of others, now buried be¬ neath rubbish, at three different points outside the walls. Within the walls were the so-called Pools of Hezekiah and Betliesda, now virtually useless. I have spoken of all except the pool north of the city, once the largest of the whole, but now almost filled up with soil washed into it by the rains. Situated at the head of the Kedron valley, it was admirably placed for catching the drainage of the uplands around it, the supply doubtless being brought into the city by a conduit, though no traces of one have yet been discovered. f Besides the well on the rubbish of the Tyropceon, there is only that known as Job’s Well, at the lower side of the junction of the Kedron and Hinnom valleys. Con¬ nected with this is a tunnel, about six feet high, and from two to three feet wide, cut for more than eighteen hundred feet along the bed of the Hinnom Valley, to the west, at a depth of from seventy to ninety feet below the ground, and reached, at intervals, by flights of steps hewn XXVI.] JERUSALEM AND BETHANY. 35 in the rock. Slick a work, dating from Bible times, shows the spirit and enterprise of the ancient population, hut it also proves that the supply of water for the city has always been a pressing question. It must have been felt that the supply from all other sources was insufficient, or not always secure, else an undertaking so serious, at a level so greatly below the city, would not have been pro¬ jected or carried out. Its object seems to have been to collect the water which flowed over the lower hard lime¬ stone strata after percolating through the softer beds above them. To realise the vigorous life of the ancient Jewish citizens, as shown in their arrangements for a copious water-supply, we must, moreover, restore in fancy the provision they made for bringing it from a distance by aqueducts. Thus, from the Pools of Solomon, beyond the ridge^ on the south, the water was led along a conduit to Bethlehem ; then carried under that town bv a rock-hewn tunnel, and brought on in another conduit to the Temple aTea, into the huge reservoirs of which it emptied itself. The length of this gigantic work, in all its windings, is over thirteen miles 1 ; an amazing triumph of engineering for the days of Solomon, or even of Hezekiali, during whose reign the first rude beginnings of Borne were founded. Indeed, when we trace it, as it entered and passed through Jerusalem, wonder is even heightened, so great are the difficulties overcome. Crossing the Valley of Hinnom a little above the Sultan’s Pool, on pointed arches sunk to the level of the ground, it winds round the southern slope of Mount Zion, and enters the city at the west side of the old Tyropoeon Valley, crossing which by the help of Wilson’s Arch, it poured its waters into the Temple cisterns. Pipes from it supplied numerous fountains in 1 70,000 feet. 36 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. the lower part of the city ; and inside the Temple area there was an elaborate system of reservoirs, regulating the flow of the stream, and providing for the discharge of the waste into the great drain that ran down the east side of Mount Moriah to the Kedron valley. This vast arrange¬ ment, however, has long ago been allowed to fall into disrepair, and though occasionally patched up so as to work, in part, for a time, it is so rarely of any use that we may regard it only as a magnificent relic of “ the glory of Solomon,” whose greatness it vividly brings before us. For since a large supply of water must have been required at the Temple from the very first, it seems natural to accept the tradition that this huge aqueduct, with the pools from which it flows, and the amazing system of reservoirs under the Temple area into which its waters were poured, are a memorial of the achievements of the son of David. But even this elaborate work is thrown into compara¬ tive shade by the “ high-level ” aqueduct which brought water at such a height as to supply the lofty streets of Mount Zion. South of Solomon’s Pools, in a glen called Wady Byar, a flight of rock-hewn steps leads down to a chamber sixty feet below the ground at its upper end, and seventy at its lower. From this, a tunnel, frorh five to twenty-five feet high, stretches up the valley, away from Jerusalem, ending at a natural cleft in the rocks, from which water freely comes. From the lower end, a similar tunnel runs for nearly five miles through hard limestone, reaching day, at last, on the under side of a great dam of masonry, which crosses the whole valley. Shafts, sixty to seventy feet deep, have been sunk in the rock, in the course of this long excavation, to facilitate the work ; the dam being intended, as it seems, to keep back the surface-water till it soaked down to the XXVI.] JERUSALEM AND BETHANY. 37 channel opened for it beneath. About three furlongs below the dam, the channel, for this space running above ground, enters another tunnel a third of a mile in length, and a hundred and fifteen feet beneath the surface, and in some parts fourteen feet high. A masonry channel then winds round the hill, and, sinking below the ground again, crosses the valley at the head of which lie the Pools of Solomon, tapping the so-called “ Sealed Fountain,” and running along the side of the Valley of Urtas, till, near Bethlehem, it flowed, anciently, into a great tank. From this the water was carried, by means of an inverted syphon two miles long, over the valley in which is Bachel’s tomb. This part of the great work is itself an extraordinary illustration of the skill of the ancient en¬ gineers who contrived it. The tube for the water is fifteen inches in diameter, the joints, which seem to have been ground or turned, being connected by an exceedingly hard cement, and set on a frame of blocks of stone, bedded in rubble masonry all round to the thickness of three feet. Unfortunately, we cannot trace the last section of the undertaking, which has been so completely destroyed that it is not known where the aqueduct finally entered Jeru¬ salem. One fact, however, and that an astonishing one, has been discovered, viz., that it delivered water at a point twenty feet higher than the sill of the Joppa Gate, for it seems beyond question to have been the source from which the bronze statues in Herod’s palace gardens, spoken of by Josephus as pouring water into the fountains, obtained their supply ; and the palace stood on the top of Mount Zion. The glory of this great aqueduct appears due to the genius of Herod, and it must, therefore, in the days of our Lord, have been one of the recent wonders of his reign. Or was it, in part at least, clue to Pontius Pilate? though his aqueduct may more probably have been one 38 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. on an even greater scale, traces of which have recently been discovered, and by which water was brought from Hebron. It is strange to think that a city distinguished by such gigantic provision for its well-being should have come into prominence at so late a period in the history of Israel. Till the close of David’s reign at Hebron it was still in the hands of the Jebusites, who seem only to have occupied Mount Zion ; Moriah being still left to the husbandman.1 Ezekiel might say with truth, “ Thy birth and thy na¬ tivity is of the land of Canaan ; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite.” 2 Here only, so far as we know, the original inhabitants of Palestine kept their footing in the hills for centuries after the Hebrew conquest, thanks to the almost impregnable position of their stronghold. Built on a summit of the central ridge of the country, it was isolated by deep valleys on all sides but the north, and hence, when once secured for Israel, it was the main guarantee of prolonged national life. Mount Zion rises no less than 2,550 feet above the sea, and is reached on all sides by a steady ascent, differing in this from Hebron, which, though the hills immediately north of it are nearly 1,000 feet higher,3 itself lies in a valley, and is easy of approach from all sides. Jerusalem, on the contrary, is pre-eminently a mountain city, alike in its climate and in its military strength. As such, it is sung in inspired lyrics and imaged by prophets: “Plis foundation is on the holy mountains.” 4 It is “ the mountain of His holiness. Beautiful for situa¬ tion, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion,”5 “ which cannot be removed, but abidetli for ever.” It is God’s 1 This is shown by the story of Araunah the Jebnsite. 2 Ezek. xvi. 3, 4, 5. 3 3,500 feet above sea-level. (Concler Handbook, p. 210). 4 Ps. lxxxvii. 1. 6 Ps. xlviii. 1. 6 Ps. cxxv. 2. XXVI.] JERUSALEM AND BETHANY. 39 “ lioly hill.” 1 Jerusalem was “ Ariel/’ “ the Lion of God,” <£ the city where David dwelt ; ” 2 its rocky height, the lion’s lair. “ In Judah is God known ; His name is great in Israel ; in Salem also is His tent, and His dwelling place in Zion.” 3 Cut off by the deep ravines around it from the possibility of wide extension, Jerusalem was noted in the earliest times for its compactness : it was “ huilded as a city that is compact together,” 4 though the sloping sides of Hinnom and Olivet on the south and east, and the nearly level ground on the north of the city, permitted the growth of noble suburbs, as wealth increased. But even where these had been laid out in gardens round the mansions of the rich, the hills swelled up on every side as a natural defence, recalling the verse of the Psalm, “ As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from henceforth even for jj 5 ever. As at present, so in the past, Jerusalem was de¬ fended by a circuit of walls. In recent years it has extended slightly beyond its fortifications, and they would he of no real value against artillery, if ever it should be, with infinite labour, dragged up from the coast plains. But in ancient times its walls were a vital neces¬ sity, and hence they constantly figure in the sacred writings. “ Walk about Zion, and go round about her : tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks.” 6 It was through the gates in these ramparts that Jehovah was to enter His city, when the Ark, as His emblem, was carried up in triumph through them by David, from the house of Obededom, and it may have been at this high event in the religious history of the nation that choirs of 1 Ps. xliii. 3. 4 Ps. cxxii. 3. 2 Isa. xxix. 1, 2. 5 Ps. cxxv\ 2. 3 Ps. lxxvi. 1, 2. 6 Ps. xlviii. 12, 13. 40 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Levites sang, when the Palladium of Israel was thus slowly ascending to its mountain sanctuary, “ Lift up your heads, 0 ye gates ; and be ye lift up, ye ancient doors, and the King of Glory shall come in ! ” 1 And it is “ out of Zion,” His stronghold, that Jehovah will raise His thunder-like war-cry, and lead down the warriors of Israel against the heathen, in the day when He shall tread them down in the valley of Jehosliaphat as men tread the vint¬ age grapes.2 Among the different localities around the city, none is more worthy of a thoughtful visit than Bethany. Start¬ ing from the Joppa Gate with a friend, on two hired asses, we passed slowly round to the path that slants down from the Temple walls and the Mahommedan cemetery, to the bridge over the long- vanished Kedron. Crossing it, perhaps at the spot where our Lord often crossed it nearly nineteen hundred years ago, we passed in front of Gethsemane, southwards ; our beasts keeping up their pattering walk, for it is always to he remembered that no one ever rides faster than a walking pace in a country utterly without roads, like Palestine. Gradually the track bent to the east, when we were opposite Ophel, on the other side of the valley, and climbed the south-west slope of the Mount of Olives, the lower part of which we had been skirting since leaving Gethsemane. There was no pretence of a road — simply a track worn by the traffic of ages, the rock cropping out at intervals in broken layers on the upper and under sides, and even on the path itself. The Mount of Offence lay on our right hand, rising from the hollow below. At the bend of the road, where we turned our faces almost east, the huge swell of Olivet rose in an easy slope 300 feet above us on the one hand, while, on the other, a little wa}^ off, was the 1 Ps. xxiv. 7. 2 Joel iii. 16, 12. XXVI.] JERUSALEM AND BETHANY. 41 Mount of Offence, bare and yellow, about a hundred feet lower : Bethany itself lies 400 feet lower than the top of the Mount of Olives, but our Lord no doubt, as a rule, when on foot, took the path which still goes over the summit, and is used habitually by the peasants from its being much shorter than the circuit taken by us as more easy for riding. Passing the saddle between the Mount of Olives and the Mount of Offence, a small but delightful valley opened out on the lower side, adorned with fig, almond, and olive trees, the road continuing comparatively broad, though here and there roughly cut out of the slopes of rock. As we neared Bethany, which is about two miles from Jerusalem by the winding road we had taken, the ground sank very slowly on the right, with outcrops of the flat limestone beds, showing themselves like steps amidst the thin grass, on which goats and sheep were feeding. Turning aside in search of rock tombs, I was greatly affected by finding several, a short way from the road, at just such a distance from Bethany as seemed to suit the Gospel account of the tomb of Lazarus. They were simply chambers, entered by going down two or three steps to a small level space before the face of the rock, which has been hewn perpendicularly, and then hollowed out to receive the dead. Entering the largest, which was the size of a very small low room, I found it thick with maidenhair fern ; but the stone had long ago disappeared from the door, and there was no sign of burial. Indeed, if it were the tomb of Lazarus there would be no such sign. That it, or one of the others around, was that in which the brother of Martha and Mary had lain, appeared very probable, since there seemed to be no others between them and Bethany. The tomb, 42 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. moreover, was outside the village,1 and it was on the Jerusalem side of it,2 Jesus having travelled by way of the Holy City, which would lie in His route in coming from the north. It may well he, therefore, that I stood on the very ground made sacred by His footsteps, and that this was the very spot that heard the words, “ Lazarus ! come forth ! ” Here, it may be, Martha and Mary, and the friends and neighbours who had come to console them, had seen the eyes and cheeks of the Holy One wet with tears of love for His friend, and of grief over the reign of sin and death in so fair a world. Bethany, “ the house of poverty/’ or as it is now called, El Azariyeli, a corruption from “ Lazarus,” 3 lies on one of the eastern spurs of the Mount of Olives. Its New Testament name may have risen from its being on the borders of the Wilderness of Judaea, though it is itself surrounded by gardens and orchards on a small scale ; or, with more probability, from its having been a place fre¬ quented by lepers, who were popularly called “ the poor; ” the case of Simon the leper, who lived here, showing that it was a refuge for his unfortunate class,4 who were per¬ mitted by the rabbis to live in open villages like Bethany, though they could not remain within the gates of walled towns or cities. 5 Some have thought the word means “house of dates,” hut, as it seems to me, on insufficient grounds, for the root from which this derivation is sought means, at best, only “ unripe dates,” 6 and the palm is as unfruitful at Bethany as in other parts of the hill country of Judaea. Over the highest part of the village rise the 1 John xi. 30 — 31. 2 John xi. 18 — 20. 3 The “ L ” has been taken as an article by the Arabs. 4 Mark xiv. 3. 6 Delitzsch, Burch Krankheit , p. 60. 6 Buxtorff ’s Lex., p. 38. XXVI.] JERUSALEM AND BETHANY. 43 fragments of a tower built by the famous Queen Millicent, wife of Fulke, fourth king of Jerusalem, to protect a cloister of black nuns which she founded in Bethany in a.d. 1138, beside the then existing church of St. Lazarus. The village consists now of about forty flat-roofed mud hovels, unspeakably wretched in their squalor, and the population is exclusively Mahommedan. The children, half naked, and miserably dirty, ran about us begging. There is excellent water, which enables the poor creatures to grow numerous fig, olive, almond, and carob trees, in little orchards enclosed within loose wTalls, built of the stones cleared off the soil within, and running up and across the stony slope. Naturally, a “ tomb of Lazarus ” is shown, to which one descends by no fewer than twenty-six steps, only to find a poor chamber, which is very unlike a Jewish tomb. A church was built over the spot as early as the fifth century. The so-called site of the house of Martha and Mary is also pointed out ; but as their home has been assigned to many different places at different times, no value whatever is to be set upon the claim. Nothing certain, in fact, is known, except that our Lord must have gone to and from Jericho by way of this village. In this sequestered spot, on the edge of the wilderness, our Saviour spent many peaceful hours. Surrounded and tended by deep and faithful love, He often refreshed Him¬ self here, after His weary and disturbing conflicts with the pettiness and bigotry of the orthodox theologians of His people in Jerusalem. At home in the bosom of one of its families, and well known in the hamlets around, He could send His disciples before Him, without pre-intima¬ tion, to ask for the use of the ass on which He was about to ride into the city. 1 Hither He came, every 1 Matt. xxi. 2. 44 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Char niglit, in the last week of His life, till He was be¬ trayed, taking the footpath, one may suppose, over the top of Olivet, rather than the camel road round its south slope, by which I had ridden. He had no such true friends in Jerusalem as those on this spot. Bethany remains for ever sacred as the home of tender ideal friend¬ ship, realised in that of Martha and Mary for our Lord. One could linger, even amidst its present misery, to drink in the landscape around, on which the eyes of the Redeemer must so often have rested, — the blossoming trees round the huts ; the green hollow, near at hand, below ; the reddish- brown slopes of the Mount of Olives behind, and, on the south-east, as one looks over a large tract of olive-trees helow, the table -land of the Moab hills, pink and grey, beyond the Dead Sea ; the rough, barren, brown waste of slopes and peaks of the wilderness of Judaea ; the flat- topped cone of the Drank Mountain, and the pink hills of Quarantania, far down in the depression towards Jericho. Up from that dejith of nearly 3,000 feet below Bethany joyous multitudes of Galilean pilgrims, journey¬ ing to the Deast, came, and accompanied the Saviour on His last ascent to Jerusalem. Joy filled all hearts but His, for not only was the Passover at- hand, but as Galileans they were proud of “ Jesus the prophet,” from their own Galilean town of Nazareth, and were ready to hail Him as the long-expected Messiah. On His side, it was becoming that now, on the eve of His self-sacrifice, He should solemnly assume the headship of the new king¬ dom of God, soon to be founded by His atoning death, and by a formal act, clearly understood when men came to reflect, claim the mysterious dignity of the Christ, or Anointed, of God. From Beth an y, therefore, with its heights of wild uplands over it and the long ridge of Olivet shutting out the troubles of the tumultuous city XXVI.] JERUSALEM AND BETHANY. 45 on its western side, He set forth, on the opening morning of His Passion Week, after resting the night before in the peaceful cottage of IPis friends. The road He took wras undoubtedly that by which I had come ; the creature He rode, an ass, the symbol of early Jewish royalty, and then even more the usual creature for riding than now, though it is still used by all ranks. “ Two streams of people met as He advanced. 1 2 The one poured out from the city, and as they came through the gardens, whose clusters of palms rose on the south-eastern corner of Olivet, they cut down the long branches, as was their wont at the Feast of Tabernacles, and moved upwards towards Bethany, with loud shouts of welcome. From Bethany streamed forth the crowds who had assembled there on the previous night, and who came testifying to the great event at the sepulchre of Lazarus.3 The road soon loses sight of Bethany. It is now a rough but still broad and well-defined mountain track, winding over rock and loose stones ; a steep declivity below, on the left • the sloping shoulder of Olivet above it, on the right ; fig-trees, below and above, here and there growing out of the rocky soil. Along the road the multitudes threw down the branches which they cut as they went along, or spread out a rude matting, formed of the palm branches they had already cut as they came out. The larger por¬ tion — those, perhaps, who escorted Him from Bethany — unwrapped their loose cloaks from their shoulders, and stretched them along the rough path, to form a momentary carpet as He approached.3 The two streams met midway. Half of the vast mass, turning round, preceded ; the other half followed.4 Gradually, the long procession swept up 1 I quote the exquisite description of Dean Stanley in Sinai and Pales¬ tine, p. 187. 2 John xii. 7. 8 Matt. xxi. 8. 4 Mark xi. 8. 46 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. and over the ridge, where first begins ‘ the descent of the Mount of Olives’ towards Jerusalem. At this point the first view is caught of the south-eastern corner of the city. The Temple and the more northern portions are hid by the slope of Olivet on the right ; what is seen is only Mount Zion, now, for the most part, a rough field, crowned with the Mosque of David, and the angle of the western walls, but then covered with houses to its base, sur¬ mounted by the Castle of Herod, on the supposed site of the Palace of David, from which that portion of Jerusalem, emphatically ‘ The City of David/ derived its name. It was at this precise point, ‘ as He drew near, at the descent of the Mount of Olives ’ 1 (may it not have been from the sight thus opening upon them ?) that the shout of triumph burst forth from the multitude, ‘ Hosanna to the Son of David ! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the Kingdom that cometh of our father David. Hosanna — peace — glory in the highest / 2 There was a pause, as the shout rang through the long defile ; and as the Pharisees who stood by in the crowd complained,3 He pointed to the stones which, strewn be¬ neath their feet, would immediately ‘ cry out ’ if ‘ these held their peace/ “ Again the procession advanced. The road descends a slight declivity, and the glimpse of the city is again withdrawn behind the intervening ridge of Olivet. A few moments, and the path mounts again, it climbs a rugged ascent, it reaches a ledge of smooth rock, and, in an instant, the whole city bursts into view. As now the Mosque of El Aksa rises, like a ghost, from the earth, before the traveller stands on the ledge, so then must have risen 1 Luke xix. 37. 2 Matt. xxi. 9 ; Mark xi. 9 ; J ohn xii. 13 ; Luke xix. 37. 3 Luke xix. 39. XXVI.] JERUSALEM AND BETHANY. 47 tlie Temple tower ; as now tlie vast enclosure of tlie Mussulman sanctuary, so then must have spread the Temple courts ; as now the grey city on its broken hills, so then the magnificent city, with its background — long since vanished away — of gardens and suburbs on the western plateau behind. Immediately below was the valley of the Kedron, here seen in its greatest depth, as it joins the Valley of Hinnom, and thus giving full effect to the great peculiarity of Jerusalem, seen only on its eastern side — its situation as of a city rising out of a deep abyss. It is hardly possible to doubt that this rise and turn of the road — this rocky ledge — was the exact point where the multitude paused again, and He, when He beheld the city, wept over it.” CHAPTER XXVII. STILL ROUND JERUSALEM. As I returned from Bethany I left the mountain road at this point and guided my beast down the steep bridle path that leads to the village of Siloam, reaching the valley at the north end of it, after a descent in some parts steep and unpleasant. The position of the Potters’ Gate, to which Jeremiah “ went down ” from his house on Mount Zion,1 and saw “ the vessel marred in the hand of the potter,” and where, after this, he bought a potter’s earthen bottle, has been thought by some to have been over against Siloam, the water of which was favour¬ able to the trades of potters, tanners, and fullers, and has attracted them to this spot in almost all ages. In our version, the gate is called the “ eastern,” but it ought to he “ the potsherd ” or “ Potters’ Gate.” There appears, however, to have once been a gate at the south-west of the city, near the Sultan’s Pool, and it is striking to find that the heaps of rubbish in that part, below the walls, consist largely of fragments of very ancient pottery, as if thrown out in early ages at the gate where the potters had their works. It is very interesting to watch the art of these clever craftsmen in any of the citiesof the East. I have stood beside them in Asia Minor, in Cairo, and in different Jer. xviii. 2 ; xix. 1. Chap. XXVII.] STILL ROUND JERUSALEM. 49 towns of Palestine, and have never wearied of noticing the illustrations of Scripture metaphors and language they unconsciously supplied. Nothing could he more rude than their workshops : indeed, no stable in England is half so wretched as some of them. A coarse wooden bench, behind which the potter sits at his wheel — a thick disc of wood, from the centre of which stands up an axle, surmounted by another small disc ; both turning horizon¬ tally when the lower one is put into swift revolution by the foot. On the upper wooden circle he throws down from a heap lying on his bench a lump of clay duly softened beforehand; the circle is made to spin round; he shapes the clay into a low sugarloaf cone with both hands, makes a hole in the top of the whirling mass with his thumb, and^opens it till he can put his left hand in¬ side ; sprinkles it, as needed, with water, from a vessel beside him; a small piece of wood in his right hand smooth¬ ing the outside as it turns, while the other hand smooths and shapes the inside : both hands assisting to give what¬ ever shape is desired to the whole. One is reminded of the words of Jeremiah, as he looks on, “ 0 house of Israel, cannot I do with you as the potter ? saitli the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hands, so are ye in ^ my hand, 0 house of Israel.” 1 Often, from some defect in the lump, or from some misadventure, there is a failure : the clay has been made too thin, or there is some other fault. The vessel is then abruptly marred, by squeezing the mass together again into a cone ; and beginning afresh, the potter makes it, perhaps, into something quite different. So it was in the case of the prophet. “ The vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter ; so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.” 2 It is to this that Isaiah also 1 Jer. xviii. 6. 2 Jer. xviii. 4. e 50 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. refers, when he asks, “ Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What raakest thou ? or thy work, He hath no hands ? ” 1 So, also, St. Paul demands, “ Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus ? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? ”2 The pottery of the East, as I have before remarked, is amazingly brittle, even when the vessel is large and seems strong. None of it is now glazed, for the art of glazing appears to he lost among Eastern potters, and this may increase its fragility. No one who has speculated in deli¬ cate cups or bottles, or small jars of red or black clay, at any great pottery centre in Syria or Palestine, can have failed to realise how readily it goes to pieces. I have be¬ fore remarked that a momentary forgetfulness in putting it down too quickly, frequently causes “ the pitcher to be broken at the fountain,”3 so that the poor peasant girl who came to draw water has to go disconsolate home, without her supply. There is much greater force, there¬ fore, in Isaiah’s words than there would be if Eastern pottery were as strong as ours, when he threatens Judah that God “ shall break it as the breaking of the potter’s vessel that is broken in pieces : He shall not spare, so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the pit.”4 Even the largest jar is broken into pieces by a comparatively slight blow, and hence, when destruc¬ tion is intentional, the ruin is very complete. The image of the Psalmist is thus very terrible when he says that the Lord will “ dash his enemies in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”5 Wherever an Oriental turns, he can 1 Isa. xlv. 9 ; xxix. 16. 2 Rom. ix. 20, 21. 3 Eccles. xii. 6. 4 Isa. xxx. 14. 6 Ps. ii. 9. XXVII.] STILL ROUND JERUSALEM. 51 lealise this as we cannot. The ground about ancient Memphis, as I have said, is largely composed of bits of pottery, and the quantity round some of the ruined cities of Bashan is equally wonderful. It might be raked out in heaps from many of the mounds, in different parts of the country, on which towns or villages formerly stood. Wherever deep excavations are made round any city, the wreck of its past is found to consist, in great part, of broken pottery. Still, when accident has caused the breaking of a large vessel, there are naturally some frag¬ ments comparatively large, and these are still of some use. A hollow piece serves as a cup in which to lift water from the spring, either to drink or to fill a jar. But Judah is to be destroyed so utterly that it will be like the wreck of a potter’s vessel, of which no sherd is left for this humble use. Nothing is more common, moreover, than for neigh¬ bours to borrow a few lighted coals in a hollow potsherd from each other, to kindle their fire, or for a poor man to come, in the evening, to the baker’s oven with his lowly fire-pan and get from it a few glowing embers, to boil his tin of coffee, or heat his simple food. But Judah would perish so completely that it would be like the shivered atoms of a vessel no piece of which could “take fire from the hearth.” Jeremiah’s symbolical acts, how¬ ever, gain still another illustration from Eastern habits. He was commanded “to go forth into the Valley of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the Potters’ Gate,” and break the bottle in the sight of the men that went with him, and say, “ Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again.”1 The unchanging East would understand this to-day as vividly as in the time of the prophet, for it is still the custom to 1 Jer. xix. 2, 10, 11. 52 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap, dash down a piece of pottery when one desires to show the min he wishes to overtake the object of his fierce anger. Running up to him, he hurls it to the ground, as a scenic imprecation of like ruin on him and his. The ride up the slope of Moriah, over the hundred feet of rubbish under which the natural rock is buried, is by a bridle path, in places uncomfortably steep, but you get to the top at last, near the south-east corner of the Temple area. Riding slowly along to St. Stephen’s Gate, one is greatly impressed by the size of the stones and the strength of the wall. It is from ten to fifteen feet thick, and about forty feet high at this place, though, at others, where the rock is high, it is only twenty-five feet above it. This eastern side is especially venerable ; rows of immense stones, beautifully cut and set, running along a short distance above the ground, and, of course, for a great depth below it. The effect of the walls altogether, as they now stand, is very picturesque. To form a con¬ ception of the appearance of Jerusalem, seen from without, one has to imagine a circuit of nearly two and a half miles of fortifications, yellow with age, and looking stronger, perhaps, than in a military sense they really are ; their outline broken by salient angles and square towers, sur¬ mounted by battlements and pierced with loopholes. North of the city are some grand old tombs, which interested me greatly. The most famous of these, known popularly as the Tombs of the Kings, lie about half a mile straight north from the Damascus Gate, past the great northern olive-grove, a few yards east of the road to Nablus, the ancient Shechem. The rocks in the valley leading to them are full of ordinary sepulchres. A slope, thirty-two feet wide, cut in the solid rock, leads down eighteen feet to a great court, also hewn out of the rock to the size of more than ninety feet long and nearly XXVII.] STILL ROUND JERUSALEM. 53 ninety feet broad.1 Originally, the floor of tbis great excavation must have been considerably lower, as there is a deep bed of rubbish over it. The sides are perpendicular, and hewn smooth. Before reaching the incline, however, to enter this great open hall, as I may call it, you go down a flight of broad, high steps, cut in the rock, and pass across a large, square ante- chamber, between which and the great hall below, the rock has been left four and a half feet thick, to serve as a wall, where not cut away to allow of the incline. As you turn to the west, the portico of the tombs faces you — a chamber thirty-nine feet long, seventeen wide, and fifteen high, with a richly ornamented front, once adorned with four pillars, two of which are gone, while the other two are broken down. The rock above is beautifully sculptured in the later Bo man style, with wreaths, fruit, and foliage, which extend quite across the whole breadth of nearly thirty feet, and hang down the sides. The entrance to the tombs is on the south side of this portico, and was intensely interesting from the fact that beside the entrance stood a great round stone, which was intended to be rolled forward, as a door, to close it ; such a stone as might have been “ rolled away from the door of the sepulchre.”2 Lighting candles and going inside, we found that one chamber led to another — four in all, each branching off into numerous tombs, so that there is space, in the whole, for a large number of burials ; the excavations extending about seventy-five feet from north to south, and fifty from east to west, all in the depth of the hill and independent of the great outer courts. Mr. Fergusson3 thinks that this wonderful mau¬ soleum was that of Herod the Great, contraiy to the generally accepted belief that he was buried at the Frank 1 92f by 87, Robiiiaon’s measurement. 2 Mark xvi. 3. 3 Diet, of the Bible : art. “ Tombs.” 54 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Mountain ; but it seems more probable tbat it is tbe tomb of Queen Helena of Adiabene, which, according to Josephus, was situated here. Having embraced Judaism in her own country, a province of what had been the original kingdom of Assyria, she came to Jerusalem in a.d. 48, with her son Izates, after the death of her husband. Ultimately returning home, her body was brought back to Jerusalem for burial. The fact that Izates had twenty-four sons perhaps accounts for the extent of the tomb. About a mile to the north-west of this wonderful burial-place are the traditional Tombs of the Judges, the true history of which is quite unknown : the name having been given, apparently, from the fact that the number of receptacles for bodies corresponds roughly with the reputed number of those composing the so-called Great Synagogue, which is said to have consisted of seventy members, though its ever having existed at all is now called in question. The tombs have at least an historical value, besides being inter¬ esting in themselves, as showing the wealth and prosperity of Jerusalem before it finally rose against Home. As in the tomb of Helena, there is a portico in front of them, but the ornamentation is quite different. From this porch a door opens into a chamber about twenty feet long and eight high, cut in the rock ; its sides hewn into receptacles for the dead, one over the other, while side openings lead to other chambers, the walls of which are hollowed into narrow, deep recesses, into which bodies could be thrust, with the feet pointing, from all sides, to the central open space. There are three entrances, all from the west, to three different tombs, which, in all, provide places for about sixty corpses. Another striking tomb lies in the rocks east of the Nablus road, some distance from the Tombs of the XXVII.] STILL ROUND JERUSALEM. 55 Judges, which, by the way, are called by the Jews “ The Tomb of the Seventy,” for the reason mentioned in the previous paragraph. This other tomb is held in still greater honour as the traditional resting-place of Simon the Just, one of the most famous successors of Ezra, and high priest for forty years ; a greatly venerated Jewish worthy, whose praise is the subject of a beautiful passage of Jesus the son of Sirach : “ Simon, the high priest, the son of Onias, in his life fortified the house of the Lord, and in his days repaired the Temple. By him was the foundation wall of the Temple raised to double its former height, and the lofty rampart of the wall restored round it. In his days the cistern was hewn out, which in its size was like the brazen sea. He cared for the people, to keep them from calamity, and fortified the city with a wall. “ How gloriously did he shine forth when the people wrere round him, when he came forth from behind the curtain of the Holy of Holies ! He was like the morning star shining through the clouds ; like the moon at the full ! As the sun shines back from the Temple of the Most High, as the glorious rainbow shines between the showers ! As the blooming rose in the days of spring, as lilies beside the springs of water, as the branches of the frankincense-tree in the days of summer, as glowing incense in the censer, as a vessel of beaten gold, set with all manner of precious stones, as a fair olive-tree budding forth fruit, and as a cypress-tree growing up even to the clouds ! ”1 The tomb is cut into the rock, but a wall has been built in recent times across the entrance to the porch, an iron door, however, with a small barred window at the side of it, giving access. The front of the tomb is carefully * Ecclus. 1. 1-10. The English ve.sion is amended in this quotation. 56 TIIE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. whitewashed, just as, in old times, the sepulchres were “whited,”1 to prevent passers-by coming near them and being defiled. Anyone who was thus rendered unclean had to remain so for seven days, and had to go through a tedious and expensive purification, while, if it happened as he was going up to a feast, it disqualified him from taking part in it.2 Nor was this all : to refuse to purify oneself was followed by being “ cut off from Israel.” The Jews with their children visit this reputed tomb of Simon on the thirty -third day after the Passover — a day sacred to his memory, and when inside, light wicks which float in a basin of oil, in honour of him. Charity is dispensed by them on this occasion in a strange way. Many cut or shave off part of their hair and of that of their children, or even the whole of it, and give away as much silver as the hair weighs ! The origin of this strange custom I do not know, but it is always connected with a vow. Like everything Jewish, it is very ancient, since Paul is men¬ tioned as “ having shorn his head in Cenclirea : for he had made a vow ; ” 3 and the four men in Jerusalem mentioned in the Acts as having a vow were required, as part of it, to shave their heads.4 Perhaps the prac¬ tice arose from some association with the vow of the Nazarites, who were required to shave their heads if they came near a dead body.5 This would account for the usage in those who visit the tomb of Simon, hut, of course, it does not explain it in the cases quoted in the Acts. Lying 2,500 feet above the sea, Jerusalem has a climate in some respects very different from what might he expected so far to the south, but characteristic, more or less, of the whole of the ancient territory of Israel 1 Matt, xxiii. 27. 2 Num. xix. 11. 3 Acts xviii. 13. 4 Acts xxi. 23, 21. 5 Num. vi. 6, 9, 18. XXVII.] STILL HOUND JERUSALEM. 57 west of tlie Jordan, from the fact that it, too, lay high above the sea-level. Rain is mentioned in the Old Testament more than ninety, times, but incidental notices show that the seasons in their vicissitudes of moisture and dryness have been the same in all ages. It is still as rare as in the days of Samuel that there should be thunder and rain in the wheat harvest, and the occurrence would be as disturbing to the minds of the peasants now as when the great prophet fore¬ told it.1 It would, moreover, be as appalling a calamity in our day as it was in that of Aliab, that there should be no dew nor rain during three years and a half.2 Great storms of wind and rain, like that through which Elijah ran before the chariot of the king to Jezreel,3 still burst on the land in the rainy season, and those who have then to be abroad may sometimes be seen, in their cotton clothes, “ trembling for the great rain ” like the people gathered to hear the law in the days of Ezra.4 One half of the year, in Palestine, is well-nigh cloud¬ less sunshine ; the other half is more or less rainy ; the result of observations continued for twenty-two years 5 showing that the average number of days on which rain falls in the moist season is 188; exactly, one may say, half of the 805 days of the whole year. In some years, however, wet days may be comparatively few, while in others there may be even a hundred more than this minimum. It does not rain every day for any length of time, in any part of the year, intervals of fine weather occurring, with rare exceptions, after a day or two of moisture. Whole weeks, indeed, may pass without a shower at the time when rains are most expected, and 1 1 Sam. xii. 18. 3 1 Kings xviii. 45, 46. 3 1 Kings xvii. 1 ; Jamos v. 17. 4 Ezra x. 9. 6 Pal. Explor. Fund Report, 1883, p. 8 if. 58 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. these bright days or weeks, in winter and early spring, are among the most delightful in the year. There are, never¬ theless, continuous periods of rain, but they seldom last more than seven or eight days, though in rare cases it rains and snows for thirteen or fourteen days together. The rainy season, as I have had occasion to say elsewhere, divides it¬ self into three stages : first, the early rain, which moistens the land after the heat of summer, and fits it for plough¬ ing and sowing ; then, the abundant winter rains, which soak the ground, fill the pools and cisterns, and replenish the springs ; and last of all, the latter, or spring rain, which swells the growing ears, and pours a supply of moisture down to their roots, enabling them to withstand the dry heat of summer. Between each of these rains, however, there is a bright and joyful interval, often of considerable length, so that in some years one may travel over all the land in February or March without suspecting that the latter rains have yet to fall. Snow covers the streets of Jerusalem two winters in three, but it generally comes in small quantities, and soon disappears. Yet there are sometimes very snowy winters. That of 1879, for example, left behind it seven¬ teen inches of snow, even where there was no drift, and the strange spectacle of snow lying unmelted for two or three weeks was seen in the hollows on the hill¬ sides. Thousands of years have wrought no change in this aspect of the winter months, for Benaiah, one of David’ s mighty men, “ slew a lion in the midst of a pit, in the time of snow ; ” 1 and it is noted in Proverbs as one of the virtues of the good wife that “ she is not afraid of the snow/’2 The time of the beginning of the autumn or winter rains is very uncertain, October, in some years, being more 1 2 Sam. xxiii. 20. 2 Prov. xxxi. 21. XXVII.] STILL ROUND JERUSALEM. 59 or less rainy, wliile in others no rain falls till November. The time of the cessation of the spring or “ latter ” rains is equally doubtful : varying, in different seasons, from the end of April to the end of May. There is some¬ times, moreover, an interval of several weeks, occasionally as many as five, between the first rains of October and the heavy winter rains in December ; a passing shower or two in the long succession of bright days alone asserting the rights of the season. So, also, the latter rains sometimes virtually end in the middle of April, with perhaps only three or four rainy days for a month or more afterwards, when the last grateful spring shower makes way for the waterless months of summer. The harvest, of course, depends entirely on the rainfall ; but, while too little moisture is fatal, too much is almost as hurtful. The peasant looks forward with most confidence to abundant crops when plentiful winter showers fall on a large number of days, without any long break of fine weather, and when there is a copious fall of rain in spring. The lowest temperature noticed in Jerusalem during twenty-one years was on the 20tli of January, 1804, when the mercury sank seven degrees below freezing, but it occasionally reaches the freezing point in February and October also, and once it did so even in April. You may count on five or six frosty nights in the course of a winter, but the sun melts the thin ice before noon, except in places out of its reach, though on the open hills the temperature must necessarily be lower than in the city. The heat of a brazier is hence often very agreeable during the months in which, after the heat of a Palestine sum¬ mer, the register thus drops once and again to the verge of freezing, and for days together the air is most disagree¬ ably cold. It was in such biting weather that Jehoiakim sat in the winter house — that part of the Palace of David 60 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap on Zion which faced south — in the ninth, or cold month, Ivislew (corresponding nearly to our December), glad of the heat of a charcoal fire in a brazier in the middle of the chamber, the windows of which, it must be re¬ membered, had no glass — when he cut up the roll of Jeremiah’s prophecy with the scribe’s knife, and burnt it.1 It was in this cold month, also, that the people sat trembling for cold in the great rain, when gathered at the summons of Ezra ; 2 and it was in the next or tenth month — our January — that Esther was first brought be¬ fore King Aliasuerus, both of them, no doubt, arrayed in the richest winter costume of Persia.3 The wind plays a great part in the comfort of the population in Palestine, and in the returns of the soil, for the north wind is cold, the south warm, the east dry, and the west moist. Winds, lighter or stronger, from some point of the north seem to be the most common, for they blow, perhaps only in a zephyr, on almost half the days of the year : 4 creating the cold in winter, but in summer bringing chills which are much dreaded by the lightly dressed natives, especially those of the mari¬ time plain, as producing sore throats, fevers, and dysen¬ teries. “ Cold cometli out of the north ; ” 5 but so does “ fair weather,” G for “ the north wind driveth away rain : ” 7 a characteristic recognised in its native name, “ the heavenly,” apparently from the glorious blue sky which marks it. A few calm days in summer, with no wind, is sufficient to make the heat very unpleasant in Jerusalem. The air becomes dry, and almost as destitute of ozone as a 1 Jer. xxxvi. 22, 23. 4 182 days. 2 Ezra x. 9. 5 Job xxxvii. 9. 3 Esther ii. 16. 6 Job xxxvii. 22. 7 Prov. xxv. 23. XXVII.] STILL BOUND JERUSALEM. 61 sirocco. A delightful mitigation of this state of things is usually found, however, in a strong west wind from the sea, blowing over the city in the afternoon. The Hebrews distinguished winds only as blowing from the four cardinal points, and hence when we read, “Awake, 0 north wind, and come, thou south, and blow upon my garden,” 1 the north-west or south-west wind is meant, since it rarely blows directly from the north or the south. This wind, from some point of the west, is felt at Joppa as early as nine or ten in the morning, hut, as becomes the East, it travels leisurely, reaching Jerusalem, generally, only about two or three in the afternoon ; sometimes, indeed, not till much later. Subsiding after sunset, it soon rises again, and continues for most of the night, bathing and renewing the parched face of nature with the refreshing vapours it has brought from the ocean, and constituting “ the dew ” of the sacred writings. Should it not reach the hills, as sometimes happens, Jerusalem suffers greatly, but near the sea its moist coolness is a daily visitor. When the weather is very hot on the hills, and this relief fails, the languor and oppression become almost insupportable. Easterly winds are common all round the year, but are especially frequent in the latter half of May and of October, and most unusual in summer. Dry, stimulating, and very agreeable, during the cold months, if not too strong, they are dreaded in the hot months from their suffocating heat and dryness, and from the haze and sand which at times come with them. In the summer they are known as the sirocco, 2 which, when intense, is a veritable calamity. It dries the throat, bringing on catarrh and bronchial affections ; while its lack of ozone makes one unwilling to work with either mind or body ; it 1 Cant. iv. 16. 2 Lit. “south-east wind.” 62 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. creates violent headache and oppression of the chest, causes general restlessness and depression of spirits, sleepless nights or had dreams, thirst, quickened pulse, burning heat in the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, and sometimes even fever. Such effects are vividly painted in the story of Jonah, whose spirit this overpowering wind so utterly broke for the time that he thought it better to die than to live. 1 Man and beast alike feel weak and sick while it blows. Furniture dries and cracks, paper curls up, vegetation withers. Though it is usually gentle, it at times comes in fierce storms, laden with the fine sand of the eastern or south-eastern desert and waterless regions over which it has passed ; blinding and paining those who encounter it, and raising the temperature to over 100° Fahrenheit, so that it burns the skin like the dry air of an oven. I myself have felt it painfully oppressive, although I never had to endure its more severe effects. In a violent sirocco the sky is veiled in yellow obscurity, through which the sun, shorn of its beams, looks like a smoking ball of fire, while dancing pillars of sand raised by whirlwinds, and looking from afar like pillars of smoke, often mark it, and threaten at times to overwhelm both man and beast. The terrible imagery of the prophet Joel presents these phenomena heightened to suit the great crisis he foretells, for the heavens in such a storm seem to show “blood and fire and pillars of smoke.”2 How the east wind dries up the springs and fountains ; how it withers the flowers, and turns the tinder-like leaves to dust, so that they disappear ; how it destroys the bloom of nature as with a fiery stream, and takes away the hope of harvest when it sweeps over a field before the time of ripening; how it scorches the vine}uird, and shrivels the grape in the cluster ; and how, after it has passed away, 1 Jonah iv. 8. 2 Joel ii. 30 ; Acts ii. 19. XXVII.] STILL ROUND JERUSALEM. 63 the dew and rain, at times, refresh and revivify the thirsty earth, is painted by the Hebrew poets and prophets with the force of personal observation.1 In this storm-wind of the desert, Israel beheld an illustration of the awful power of Jehovah, and thought of it as the very “ breath ” of His anger. 2 Its swift and utter withering of grass and flowers, so that they disappear before it like the stubble it burns up,3 is constantly used by the sacred writers to illustrate the sudden disappearance of man from his wonted place, when he dies. Recognising in the sirocco the most irresistible force of the air in motion, the Israelite, moreover, gave the name to any violent wind, from what¬ ever quarter. Thus, speaking of the great ships which of old made a port of Eziongeber, at the head of the gulf of Akaba,4 the Psalmist says, “ Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind ” 5 — though the storms that wreck shipping there come from the north. In the same way, the wind which blows back the Red Sea at Suez is from the north, but is called an east or sirocco wind in Exodus. 6 It is striking to notice, from the various metaphorical uses of the phenomena of this terrible wind, how closely the sacred writers watched nature, and studied its moral analogies. In Job passionate violence of speech is compared to a man filled with the east wind.7 Ephraim is said to “ feed on wind and follow after the east wind,”8 in reference to the lying and deceit of her relations with Egypt and Assyria ; seeking advantages from them which, on the one hand, would be empty as the wind, and, 1 Gen. xli. 6 — 23 ; Ps. ciii. 16 ; Job xxvii. 21 ; Isa. xl. 7 ; xxvii. 8 ; Ezek. xvii. 10 ; xix. 12 ; Hos. xiii. 15 ; Ecclus. xliii. 21. 2 Isa. xl. 7 ; Hos. xiii. 15. 3 Isa. xl. 7 ; Ps. ciii. 16 ; Job xxi. 18 ; Jer. xiii. 24. 4 1 Kings xxii. 48, 49. 6 Ps. xlviii. 7. e xiv 21. 7 Job xv. 2. 8 Hos. xii. 1. 64 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. on the other, would be as impossible to secure as it would be to follow and overtake the swiftly passing gusts of the sirocco. As I have said, the east wind is rare in summer, seldom blowing more than two or three days in a month, but it is much more frequent in winter, and then, strangely, brings with it cold so penetrating that the thinly dressed natives sometimes die from its effects. It is frequent also in spring, shrivelling up the young vegetation if it be long continued, and thus destroying the hope of a good year. No wonder the people of Lebanon call it “ the poison wind.” It has, indeed, become the proverbial name for whatever is hateful or disagreeable. If a calamity befall one, be will say the east wind blows on him. The corn on the threshing-floor, though ready for winnowing, must lie under whatever protection can be heaped over it, till the east wind ceases. The north wind is too violent for threshing, and the east wind comes in gusts, which, as the people of the Hauran say, “ carry away both corn and straw.” The whirlwinds which sometimes accompany a sirocco seem to rise from the encounter of the east wind with an air- current from the west, and often scatter the grain lying in summer on the threshing-floor or in the swathe, unless it be kept down by stones. How violent they may be is shown by an extract given by Wetzstein from an Arab chronicle : — “ On the third Adar rose a storm- wind which broke down and uprooted trees, tore down dwellings, and did incalculable damage. It blew from the east, and lasted about fifteen hours.” 1 Such a “ great wind from the wilderness smote the four corners of the house ” in which Job’s family were gathered, when it fell upon all within. 2 October, November, and nearly the whole of December, 1 Delitzsch, lob, 351. 2 Job i. 19. XXVII.] STILL ROUND JERUSALEM. 65 are very mild and agreeable in Palestine, and any rain falling in tliese months revives the soil, after the scorch¬ ing of the summer heat, and refreshes man and beast, creating, in fact, a temporary spring. The weather be¬ gins to be unpleasant about the end of December, but the winter, with its cold, storms, rain, and snow, only commences in January, continuing, with fine days inter¬ spersed, till February, when bright weather becomes more frequent, and sometimes lasts for weeks. About the end of the month, however, a second winter begins, with heavy rains, the cold and stormy days and nights being keenly felt by the population, since their houses give little protection against such an evil. For old people, especially, this after- winter is particularly dangerous, the rough weather that has preceded having already lessened their powers of resistance. It lasts, generally, about a week, from the 25th of February to the 3rd of March, and this interval is called in Syria and Palestine “ the death-days of old folks.” It closes the season in which the over-ripe fruit is shaken from the tree of life, a time lasting in all, one may say, from thirty-five to forty days. During these, the almond-tree blossoms, and the grasshopper creeps out, thus apparently giving us the correct translation of the words in our version, “ The almond-tree shall flourish and the grasshopper shall be a burden.”1 The blossoming of the almond, however, may not only be taken as marking the days most fatal to old age, but as itself a beautiful emblem of the end of life, for the white flowers completely cover the tree, at the foot of which they presently fall like a shower of snow. 1 Eccles. xii. 5. Welzstein gives multiplied proofs of the time at which the almond blossoms and the grasshopper appear: Delitzsch’s Koheleth, p. 446. / CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PLAIN OF JERICHO. The road to Jericho goes past Bethany, beyond which the ground rises into a new height. This surmounted, a steep descent leads to a deep valley shut in by hills. A well with a small basin, in which leeches are abundant, stands at the side of the track ; the only one between Bethany and the Jordan Valley. Very probably this was the “ Spring of the Sun,” En Shemesh, mentioned as one of the boundaries of Judah,1 and it may once have been a stirring spot, from the excellence of the water, and its being necessarily a halting place for all travellers, to quench their thirst. From this point the road stretches on for a considerable distance over level ground, between high hills, absolutely desolate, and with no sign of human habitation anywhere. The slopes are covered with thorny bushes and beds of stones, fallen from above. The silence of death reigns on all sides. Yet even in this desolate and wretched tract small flocks of sheep and goats find, here and there, scanty pasture on the hill-sides. Gnarled and stunted trees occasionally dot the plain. Was it through this barren tract that the grey- haired David rode, when fleeing to the Jordan, from Absalom ? It must have been either through this or some parallel valley north of it, and one can easily fancy how Shimei 1 Josh. xv. 7. Chap. XXVIII.] THE PLAIN OF JERICHO. 67 could run along tlie top of tlie hills, at the side, and hurl stones down the steep at the fugitive king and his attendants, mingling with his violence showers of curses : “ Out with you, out with you, thou bloody man, thou man of Belial ; the Lord hath returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose stead thou hast reigned.”1 Somewhere here, also, lay the village of Bahurim, where the king’s spies were so dexterously hidden in the empty cistern.2 A small valley on the right, and a low hill on the track, lay between us and the Yalley of the Sidr-tree — the Spina Christi — where lie the ruins of the old Hathrur Khan. These may not themselves be ancient, but it is quite probable that there may have been a khan here in olden times for the benefit of travellers. There are now only some tumble-down buildings, quite uninhabited. The whole region is painfully desolate, and the water in the cisterns, from the surface and from rain, is bad, but the position is a three hours’ journey from Jerusalem, and thus half way to Jericho, so that a shelter for wayfarers may well have stood here in all ages. The road from the Jordan to the capital was a very busy one in the days of our Lord, since the Jews from Galilee usually took this road to the Holy City. The khan to which the good Samaritan guided the wounded Jew may very possibly, therefore, have stood on this spot. There is seldom a caretaker of caravanserais in desolate places in the East, but some offer this advantage, as did the one on this road in the time of Christ, which had a “ host,” who could even be trusted with the care of the sick.3 It is touching to think that our Lord must Himself often have rested for the mid-day hour at the Khan Hathrur, on His journeys to and from Jerusalem ; above all, that He rested here for the last time when on His way to the 1 2 Sam. xvi. 3, 7. 2 2 Sam. xvii. 19. See also Yol. I., p. 557. 3 Luke x. 35. / 2 68 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Holy City, on the Friday before His death. What thoughts must have tilled His soul, as He thus paused to revive wearied nature, before beginning the last three hours’ journey towards Calvary ! The road from this point was for a time tolerably level, hut its framework of wild, desolate hills, ever more bare and stony, grew increasingly repulsive in its gloom and sternness. At one part, the road climbed forward by a narrow path hewn in the rock, and the view, till close to the plains of the Jordan, was simply that of a dark moun¬ tain gorge. At times, the track led along the edge of sheer precipices ; at others, down rocks so steep and rough that it needed every care to prevent a fall. Yet, as a whole, it is not perhaps worse than the camel track from Joppa to Jerusalem. The last spur of the mountains was, however, after a while, left behind, and then the scene changed in a moment ; a magnificent view over the plains of the J ordan lying at our feet, and the mountains surrounding them, bursting on the sight. The Wady Kelt had surfeited us with its gloomy horrors, and made the open landscape so much the more charming. Through the deep clefts past which we had ridden, a winter torrent foams wildly in its season, though there is no water in its bed in summer. This gully has been supposed to be identical with that of the brook Cherith of Elijah.1 But the words used respect¬ ing that famous torrent — the name of which means “the cutter into ” (the hills) — preclude this idea, for it is said that Elijah was to go from Samaria, where he was, east¬ ward, and hide himself in the brook Cherith ; the ex¬ pression2 translated “ brook ” in our version being that used elsewhere for the streams in the deep gorges of the Amun and Jabbok, and for wadys or valleys worn bv rain- 1 1 Kings xvii. 2 Nalial, XXVIII.] THE PLAIN OF JERICHO. 69 floods. Yet it is impossible to determine from the Hebrew text whether it laj “ towards ” the Jordan, or “ east ” of it, though the latter is the more probable sense ; and if this be accepted, the Wady Ajlun, on the other side of the river, almost exactly east of Samaria, appears to have special claims, as its lower course is still called Fakarith, which sounds very like Cherith, or, to write the name more in accordance with the Hebrew — Crith. The whole of Wady Kelt is singularly wild and romantic, for it is simply a deep rent in the mountains, scarcely twenty yards across at the bottom, filled with tall canes and beds of rushes, to which you look down over high perpendicular walls of rock. Its cliffs are full of caves of ancient hermits ; and the ruins of the small Monastery of St. John nestle beneath a lofty dark precipice on its north side. At this place, a fine aqueduct, leading off the waters of a great spring, crosses the wady by what has been a splendid bridge seventy feet high, and runs on for three miles and three-quarters to the opening of the Jericho plain. White chalk hills rise in the wildest shapes on each side, forming strange peaks, sharp rough sierras, and fanciful pyramid-like cones ; the whole seamed in all directions by deep torrent beds. Not a tree is to be seen on the bare slopes. Nor is the end of the pass less striking, for it is guarded, as it were, by two tall sloping peaks of white chalk, with each of which special traditions and legends are connected. Looking away from the gloomy gorge beneath, and the forbidding hills on each side, the view of the Jordan plains was very pleasant. Their apparently level surface stretched for miles north and south, dry and barren, but amidst the uninviting yellow, treeless waste, there rose, im¬ mediately in front, a delightful oasis of the richest green. The banks of the Jordan are fringed, for the most part, 70 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. with beds of tall reeds, oleanders, and other luxuriant growths, and only here and there is a rift in the verdure to be seen. It was this green border to which Jeremiah gave the name of the “ glory ” of Jordan, mistranslated “ swell¬ ing; ” in our version.1 The attack of the assailants from Edom, and afterwards of those from Babylon, is painted by the prophet — a native of Anatlioth, in the tribe of Benjamin, near Jerusalem — with the graphic force of one who knew the locality, as like that of the lion “ for¬ saking his covert,” 2 and “ coming up from his thicket,” — the jungle which was the “glory” of Jordan, against the perennial pastures 3 of the hills ; where the flocks awaited his hunger. On the east of the plains were the Moabite hills, cut into numberless ravines and clefts ; and at the southern end of the oasis rose a tower, for the protection of a hamlet whose wretched eartli-roofed huts were hard to recognise in the distance. The last part of the way was very steep and tiresome, though occasional traces showed that it had been the road to Jerusalem for thousands of years. At this part water flowed down the dark gorge of the Wady Kelt, apparently in a permanent stream. Two ruined castle-like buildings stood at the sides of the way, perhaps marking the sites of the ancient castles of Thrax and Tauros, which once defended the pass, and of the towers of the later times of the Khalifs, or of the Christian kings of Jerusalem, when the plains of the Jordan, under their protection, enjoyed a rich and varied prosperity. We were now in the “circle” of the Jordan, known as the “ghor,” or hollow, nearly four hundred feet below the level of the Mediter¬ ranean, so that we had descended nearly three thousand 1 Jer. xii. 5 ; xlix. 19 ; 1. 44. Translated “pride” in B.V. 8 Jer. iv. 7 ; xxv. 38. 8 Translated “permanent pastures” in B.Y, XXVIII.] THE PLAIN OF JERICHO. 71 feet since leaving Jerusalem. We were still, however, nearly seven miles, in a straight line, from the Jordan, which lay more than eight hundred feet still lower down,1 so that we had a constant slope before us. About half a mile to the right, and a little farther than that from the mountains we had left, lay what is known as “The Pool of Moses”; an ancient reservoir, 188 yards long and 157 broad, constructed, it may be, by Herod, in connection with his great palace and gardens at Jericho. If, however, it be not the work of the great Edomite, it at least shows, in the remains of an aqueduct from th# hills, by which it was fed, and by its own great size, how perfect the arrangements for the irrigation of the place must have been in antiquity, and fully explains how the desert around us had once been an earthly paradise. Remains of aqueducts, indeed, run across the whole region in all directions, indicating that water was once distributed freely to all parts of it, thus everywhere securing the vital condition of its fer¬ tility. The Sultan’s Spring, which is also known as the Spring of Elisha, a mile and a half north of the road from Jeru¬ salem, is the usual place for travellers to pitch their tents ; affording in the abundant water and pleasant verdure a much more agreeable site than the dirty modern village of Jericho. Many small brooks flowing from it, and giving life to some patches of grain and dark-green bean-fields, had to be crossed to reach it ; the Judyean hills, running along on the left hand, in long broken walls of bare rock, frightfully desolate and barren, and seamed and cut into by deep clefts and ravines, offering a striking contrast to the living forces of nature around. The climate is so hot that when water 1 Depth at the foot of the hills, 385 feet; at the Jordan, 1,187 to 1,251 feet ( Great Map of Palestine), 72 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. is abundant, as it is here, we have the luxuriance of the tropics. The harvest ripens at this level some weeks earlier than in the hill-valleys, and hence the first-fruits needed for the Temple altar, at the Passover, could be obtained from this plain.1 At its source, the fountain is full and strong* ; and it is to rivulets flowing from it and from the still larger Duk Fountain, a mile and a half further north, at the foot of the mountains, that the ground as far as the village on the south owes its strong vegetation, while all the rest of the plain for miles in every direction is utterly barren. Yet Josephus tells us that in his day the whole was “ a divine region, covered with beautiful gardens, and groves of palms of different kinds, for seventy stadia north and south, and twenty from east to west ; the whole watered by this fountain.” 2 It springs from under rocks, and at once forms, at the foot of the hill from which it bursts, a large pool, surrounded by thickets of nubk-thorn or sidr, ole¬ anders, and tall reeds. The nubk-tree ( Spina Cliristi) is found round Jeru¬ salem and in all the warmer parts of Palestine, especially along the sides of the narrow bed of the Jordan, much of which it has converted into an impenetrable thicket. It gets its Latin name from the belief that from it was made the crown of thorns forced on the brow of our Lord; and the flexible twigs, with their tremendous spines, which bend backwards, are assuredly well fitted to make an awful instrument of torture if twisted into a mock diadem. Small round Jerusalem, it becomes a fine tree in hotter places ; one or two at the fountains in the plain of the Jordan being especially large. The leaves are bright green and oval, the boughs crooked, the blossom white and small; and it bears, from December to June, 2 J os., Bell. Jud., iv. 8, 3. 1 Lev. xxiii. 10. XXVIII.] THE PLAIN OF JERICHO. 73 a yellow fruit, like a very small apple, or, rather, like a gooseberry. This is eaten by the Arabs under the name of “ dliom,” or jujubes, and is very agreeable, either fresh or dried, especially when mixed with “ leben,” or sour milk. Fences of the nubk are to be seen round all the grain or bean patches of the Arabs, in the Jordan depression ; a few branches laid one on the other, to the height of about a yard, forming a protection through which no animal ventures to break, and soon getting so inter¬ laced by the thorns, that they become virtually one solid whole. Palestine is, indeed,, pre-eminently the land of thorns, the dry heat arresting the development of the leaves in almost all plants, and making them merely the abortive growths which we call spines or prickles. The bramble which was summoned by the trees in Jotham’s parable to be their king,1 seems to have been the rliamnus, a thorny bush found in all parts of the country, and often used for hedges, like our hawthorn, which it some¬ what resembles. Another plant, translated in our version ‘‘bramble,” “thistle,” and “thicket,” 3 is different from the rhamnus in Hebrew, but it is not known what is particularly intended by it. It must have been a com¬ paratively weak shrub or plant, however — perhaps a thistle — for the wild beast in Lebanon is said to have passed by and trodden it down. The thistles of Palestine are very numerous, and in some places, for instance on the plain of Esdraelon, threaten, at many spots, to choke the crops. But to quote a text or two in which different thistly or thorny plants of Scripture are named will give a better idea of their number than any mere attempt at describing 1 Judg. xix. 14. 2 Isa. xxxiv. 13 ; I Sam. xiii. 6 ; 2 Kings xiv. 9 ; Prov. xxvi. 9 ; Cant, ii. 2. 74 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. them singly. “ Do men gather figs of thistles ? ” asks our Lord.1 In this text we can identify the plant meant, by its name in the Greek Testament — the “ tribolos ” — from which an iron ball, used in warfare, got its name, spikes protruding from it, like those of the plant, in four directions, so that whichever way it fell, when thrown on to the ground, one spike stood upright, and thus stopped the advance of cavalry. The centaurea, or star thistle, is exactly like this, and is sadly abundant in the fields and open ground of Northern Palestine, forming barriers through which neither man nor beast can force a path. “ The way of the slothful man is a hedge of thorns,” says Proverbs,2 using a word which refers, it is thought, to a class of plants the name of one of which at least, the miscalled “ apple of Sodom,” 3 is well known in poetry, and as a proverbial expression for anything which promises fair but utterly disappoints on trial. This plant, which is really a kind of potato, grows everywhere in the warmer parts of Palestine, rising to a widely branching shrub from three to five feet high ; the wood thickly set with spines ; the flower like that of the potato, and the fruit, which is larger than a potato apple, perfectly round, and changing from yellow to bri ght red as it ripens. That it is filled with ashes is merely a fable ; its seeds are black, like those of a potato. Still another kind of thorn is mentioned as that with which Gideon proposed “ to tear the flesh ” of the men of Succoth, who refused to help him against the Midianites.4 But it is needless to show at greater length what every traveller in the Holy Land knows only too well — that wherever you turn, “ brambles,” “briers,” “thorns,” “thistles,” and “ pricks ” of all kinds abound.5 1 Matt. vii. 16. 2 Prov. xv. 19. 3 See post, p. 117. 4 Judg\ viii. 7, 16. 8 Six Hebrew words are translated “ briers ; ” two, “ brambles ; ” twelve, XXVIII.] THE PLAIN OE JERICHO. 75 The Sultan’s Spring is the only one in the plain of Jericho, except that at Duk, and hence it was very prob¬ ably the scene of the miracle of Elisha, when he cast salt into the water and cured its previous bitterness.1 Separated into many rills, it now serves, as I have said, to water the patches of maize, millet, indigo, wheat, barley, or beans, grown by the Arabs. The waters of the still more copious Duk Fountain are brought along the base of the Judsean hills, to the top of the slope behind the Sultan’s Spring, from which point they were formerly distributed to several mills and used for irrigating the upper part of the plain ; an aqueduct carrying them over a gully towards the south. The mills, however, are all gone, except the ruins of one for grinding sugar¬ cane, which still look down from the steep side of the hill. The top of the mound above the Sultan’s Spring com¬ mands a fine view over the plain, which needs only water and industry to become again one of the most fruitful spots in the world. The ever-flowing waters of the two fountains spread rich fertility for several miles in every direction, hut almost all this verdure is nothing more than useless shrubs and hushes. Nature is ready, but man is idle and neglectful. Desolation reigns when the water ceases to moisten the soil ; and when it rains the showers feed only worthless rankness. Once, however, it was very different. When our Saviour journeyed through these parts, groves of palms covered the plain far and near. The Bible, indeed, calls Jericho “ the city of palm trees ; ” 2 and Josephus speaks of those graceful trees as growing to a large size, and as very numerous, even along the banks “ thorns ; ” two, “ thistles ; ” and one, “ pricks ; ” most of them being ren¬ dered by more than one of these English words. 1 2 Kings ii. 19 — 22. 2 Deut. xxxiv. 3 ; Judg. i. 16. 76 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. of the Jordan.1 Cotton also was grown here as early as the days of Joshua,2 if Thenius he right, though that is doubtful. Jericho, moreover, was famous for its honey ; and its balsam was a highly prized article of commerce. So valuable, indeed, were the groves from which the latter was made, that Herod farmed them from Cleopatra, when they had been handed over to her as a present by Mark Antony ; Arabia and the plain of Jericho being trans¬ ferred together to her, as if they had been a trifle for such a mistress ! The tree from which henna is ob¬ tained — the dye still used by the women of the East to stain their nails — also grew here. The Son of Sirach makes Wisdom say that she is lofty as the palm trees of Engedi, and like the roses of Jericho.3 Sycamores formed alleys alongside the roads, as they now do in the suburbs of Cairo.4 Even yet, the zukkum, a small, thorny tree, yields from the minute kernels of its nuts an oil which is highly prized by the Arabs and pilgrims, as a cure for wounds and bruises. The few feeble and lazy inhabitants of the plain trouble themselves little with the cultivation of the soil. Fig-trees grow luxuriantly and need little care, but any large fields of grain there may be are sown and reaped by strangers ; peasants who come down from the hills for the purpose receiving half the produce for their own share, and paying the other half to the villagers and the Government, for rent of the land, and taxes. A few patches of tobacco, cucumbers, or millet seemed all the local population could stir them¬ selves to raise. Yet maize is said to be here a biennial plant, yielding two crops from the same roots. Cotton flourishes well, but is rarely planted ; and indigo, though very little grown now, was raised freely so long ago as 1 Jos.: Ant., iv. 6, 1 ; xiv. 4, 1 ; xy. 4, 2 ; Bell. Jud., i. 6, 6 ; iv. 8, 2, 3. 2 Josli. ii. 6. 3 Ecclus. xxiv. 14. 4 Luke xix. 4. XXVIII.] THE PLAIN OF JERICHO. 77 tlie twelfth century, in the time of the Crusades ; while the sugar-cane was not only cultivated widely round Jericho in those days, but grew over large tracts on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, from Tripolis to Tyre. Sugar was then unknown in Europe, hut the Crusaders, naturally liking the sweet juice and other products of the cane, adopted the word zuccara, which is now our word “sugar.” The Saracens, in fact, in the centuries before the Crusades, had introduced the growth and manufacture of sugar on a large scale, and it was they, apparently, who built at least some of the large aqueducts round Jericho, for irrigation, and raised the sugar mills of which the remains are still seen on the slope above the Sultan’s Spring. From the time Ave reached the level of the Medi¬ terranean, in descending from Jerusalem, a notable change had been visible in the flora around, all the plants being new and strange; and the same change was noticeable in the fauna. Almost every creature has the tawny colour of the soil ; the only exceptions being a few parti-coloured birds, and the beetles. The desert sand-partridge takes the place of its more strongly marked counterpart of the hills ; the hare is tamed down to the prevailing russet, and the foxes, larks, and, indeed, all forms of animal life, are of a light brown colour. The very foliage, and most of the blossoms, are brownish-yellow or yellowish- white. The Sultan’s Spring has a special interest, since it marks the site of the Jericho of our Lord’s day. It bursts out, in a volume of clear and delightful water, from the shingle at the foot of a great mound, under which lie the remains of part of the once famous city. A large fig-tree shades the pool, which has a temperature of 84° Fahrenheit, and swarms with fish. The hill above is simply the rubbish of old houses, temples, and palaces, full of bits of pottery and glass. The ruins of a small Eoman shrine still rise 78 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. behind the Spring, like part of an old enclosing wall ; and fragments of pillars and capitals lie around. From tliis point Jericho stretched away to the south and north, tapping, by aqueducts, the great Duk Fountain, to which, the water of a third, far off in the uplands, was brought in con¬ duits. As the town lay close to the hills, it is easy to see how the spies of Joshua could have escaped up the hollow of the ravine leading to the Duk Fountain, and thence to the hills,1 though there may not have been the same wild cover of jungle and corn-brake to hide them that there is now. Of ancient Jericho we know nothing, except that it was a walled city, with gates shut at sundown,2 and houses on the line of the town walls, over which some of the windows projected.3 It could not, however, have been a very large place, since the Hebrew ark was carried round it seven times in one day.4 Finally, it stood on rising ground, for when the walls fell, the assailants had to “ascend ” to the town. Like other Eastern cities, it had numbers of oxen, sheep, and asses within the walls ; 5 and the population, in its different grades, had not only the pottery common to all ages, but vessels of brass, iron, silver, and gold.6 Not¬ withstanding the curse denounced on anyone who rebuilt it, it soon rose from its ashes ; the prohibition appearing only to have been against its being restored as a fortified place, for it was assigned by Joshua himself to the tribe of Benjamin7 — certainly not to lie a heap of ruins. Hence we find it flourishing in the time of the Judges, under Eglon, the King of Moab,8 and it was still pros¬ perous in the time of David, who ordered his ambassadors to stay in it after they had been outraged by the Ammonites.9 The curse of Joshua was fulfilled, for the first time, in 1 Josh. ii. 22. 4 Josh. vi. 4. 7 Josh, xviii. 21. 2 Josh. ii. 5. 5 Josh. vi. 21. 8 Judg. iii. 12, 13. 3 Josh. ii. 15. 6 Josh. vi. 24. 9 2 Sam. x. 5. XXVIII.] THE PLAIN OF JERICHO. 79 the reign of Ahab, when JEIiel of Bethel fortified the city.1 It was here that poor Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, was seized in his flight by the Chaldieans, to he taken to Biblali and blinded by Nebuchadnezzar.2 After the return from Babylon a new settlement was begun by 345 men, no doubt with their families — children or descendants of captives taken from Jericho ; 3 but they did not attempt to fortify it, for this was first done by the Syrian general Bacchides in the Maccabsean wars.4 Herod the Great, in his Earlier career, assaulted and sacked it, but at a later time, when he had bought it from Cleopatra,5 he lavished wealth on its defences and embellishment. To command it, he built the fortress ICypros on the height behind, erected different palaces which he called after various friends, and built a great circus for horse racing and heathen games.6 It was at Jericho that this splendid but unfortunate and bad man ended his life, in terrible agony, passing away with a command, worthy of his worse nature, that his sister Salome, as soon as he was dead, should massacre all the chief men of the Jews, whom he had previously summoned to Jericho and shut up in the circus. He would make his death to be lamented by the people in some way, he said . — for their own sakes if not for his. Salome was prudent enough, however, to leave the savage injunction unful¬ filled. The great 'palace in which Herod had so often resided was burnt down a few years after his death, in one of the fanatical risings of the population, led by a fancied Messiah, but Arclielaus restored it with more than its former splendour. It was to this city that our Lord came, when He was 1 1 Kings xvi. 34. 4 1 Mace. ix. 50. 2 2 Kings xxv. 7 ; Jer. xxxix. 7 ; lii. 11. 6 See p. 76. 3 Ezra ii. 34; Nell. vii. 36; iii. 2. 0 Jos., Ant., xvi. 5, 2; 6, 5. so THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. received by Zaccliseus, and healed the blind man.1 The branches of one of the sycamores lining the road, easily reached from their bending horizontally near the ground, had formed a look-out from which the publican could see over the heads of the crowd, and from this he was called to escort Christ to his house. Very different from this city of palaces is its present successor Eriha, one of the foulest and most wretched villages of Palestine. Itude walls of stone, often dilapidated, with roofs of earth heaped on layers of reeds, maize stalks, or brushwood ; no windows ; one room for all purposes ; the wreck of old huts breaking the rude line of those still inhabited, — these are the features of modern Jericho. The four walls of the hovels are mere loosely piled stones, taken from ancient ruins, and stand quite irregularly, with great gaps between them, each having a yard fenced with the thorny boughs of the nubk.2 Open sheds, with roofs like the hovels themselves, held up by poles bent at every angle, provide a shelter by night for the sheep and goats, which make them unspeakably filthy. A stronger hedge, of the same impenetrable thorns, sur¬ rounds the whole village ; for what purpose it is hard to say, as they would be poor indeed who sought plunder in such a place. The few bits of cultivated ground near the huts seem mainly given to tobacco and cucumbers, for no provisions of any kind were to be had, except some wheat. They had not even lentils. As if to point the contrast with the past, a solitary palm-tree rose from amidst the squalor. The villagers bear a very bad character, especi¬ ally the women, who are worthy, for morals, of their ancestors of Sodom and Gomorrah, once the cities of this very plain. There are about sixty families in Eriha. The wheat harvest here is ripe early in May, three 1 Luke xviii. 35 ; xix. 1 — 7 ; Matt. xx. 29 ; Mark x. 46. 2 See p. 72. XXVIII.] THE PLAIH OF JERICHO. 81 weeks after the barley harvest, while the cornfields at Hebron and Carmel are still green ; and it is reaped, as I have said, by hands of peasants from the hills, who also sow the grain. There is no need of its lying in the field to dry, for the snn is so hot that the sheaves can be car¬ ried at once to the threshing-floor, on camels, or on small asses, which look like mounds of moving grain beneath great loads that well-nigh hide them. The earth on a round spot about fifty feet across has already been trodden and beaten hard, as a threshing-floor. On this the grain is thrown, and trodden out by oxen or cows, which are often driven round it five abreast. No sledges are used on the plains of the Jordan, the feet of the animals sufficing to tread out the corn and break the straw into “teben”; the whole contents of the floor being frequently turned over by a long wooden fork with two prongs, to bring all, in turn, to the top. When trodden enough, it is winnowed by being thrown against the wind with the fork which is alluded to by the Baptist, when he says of the coming Messiah that “ His fan is in His hand, and He will throughly cleanse His threshing- floor.” 1 The waste in this primitive husbandry is very great, much of the corn falling from the backs of the asses or camels, much getting trodden into the cracks of the ground, and not a little of the straw, with all the chaff, flying off before the wind. Elsewhere, the process varies in some features, though everywhere the same in its lead¬ ing* characteristics. The oxen or cows used to tread out O the grain are still unmuzzled on the plains of the Jordan,2 especially among the Mahommedans. Some Christians, I regret to say, are not so humane. Our co-religionists, as a whole, have not, indeed, a very high reputation in the East, as may he judged from a story told mo by the steamship 1 Matt. iii. 12. 2 Deut. xxv. k // 82 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. captain on my first trip np the Mediterranean many years ago. Wishing to land some goods at a spot on the Red Sea, where there was no provision for putting them under lock and key, he hesitated to leave them on the naked shore. “ You don’t need to fear,” said a turbaned functionary : “ there is not a Christian within fifty miles ! ” Between the fountain and the village there is a wady in which a streamlet flows through a thicket of nubk and other trees, entering, at last, the court of the old tower which looks down on the huts, and filling its reservoir. Some large fig-trees rise here and there, and the Palma C/irisli, from which castor oil is extracted, is common, rising in this locality into a large perennial tree, from the moist heat of the climate. A great block of red Egyptian granite, from Assouan, lay at one spot, partly buried ; the fragment of a stone which had been from eight to ten feet long. It must have been landed at Acre or Tyre, and brought down the side of the Jordan channel, from the north — but when, or by whom? The heat of the Jordan plains is very great in summer, and oppressive even in spring, while in autumn it becomes very unhealthy for strangers. In May, the thermometer ranges from about 86° in the early forenoon to over 100° in the beginning of afternoon, standing, even in the shade, at over 90°. The delight of sitting under one’s own vine and fig-tree in such a land can he imagined. A band of Turkish soldiers, encamped near the village to keep the wandering Arabs in awe, enlivened the land¬ scape by their moving life. As the sun sank in the west, long shadows lay on the plain, while the hills beyond the river were dyed in the richest purple. North of the village and fountain, the mountains of Judsea stretched, north and south, in a huge arc, contrasted with which the XXVIII.] THE PLAIN OF JERICHO. 83 Moabite hills seemed a straight line. The bold, pic¬ turesque form of Jebel Quarantania, the mountain of the Forty Days’ Temptation,1 rose a mile behind the Sultan’s Spring, more marked than any other. Numerous hermits made themselves cells in the steep sides of this height in the early Christian centuries, and a church once stood on its barren top, but the whole region has been forsaken by man for ages. Now that Easter was approaching, the plains, however, were for a time alive with visitors. The trumpets of the Turks blew unmelodious signals. Horsemen moved hither and thither. Natives were busy pitching tents for some tra¬ vellers. Bedouins were kindling a fire of thorns. Bands of pilgrims set up their tents, lighted blazing fires, and amused themselves by firing off guns, listening to gossip, or making sport — for they were of all ages. Oxen, horses, sheep, and goats fed as they could, around. Yet beyond the immediate neighbourhood, and especially to the south, stretched out a dismal wilderness. When night fell, the stars shone out with a lustre peculiar to such regions, but sleep, when found, was not any the sounder for the yelping and barking of the village dogs and the screams of the jackals. The Bedouins lay down round their fire in their thick “ abbas,” for without such a protection the night is dangerous. It was the same in Bible times, as we learn from the kindly words of the old Mosaic law : “ If thy debtor be poor, thou shalt not sleep with his pledge : in any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun goetli down, that he may sleep in his own upper garment and bless thee.”2 It is surprising how men can sleep without injury in the open air, as the natives very often do, for the dew, or, rather, sea- moisture, frequently falls so heavily as to soak the canvas 1 Matt. iv. 1. 2 Deut. xxiv. 12, 13. a *> y ~ 84 THE HOLY LA HD AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. of tents like rain. Perhaps their safety lies in the fact that Orientals always cover the head in sleeping. I have frequently seen such copious moisture on everything, in the early morning, that one can readily picture to himself how the Beloved, in Canticles, wandering through the night, could say, “ My head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.” 1 The ride from Erilia to the Jordan is about five miles over a stony plain, which swells, at intervals, into flat mounds of salt marl, on which there is no vegetation. Year by year the winter-rains sweep down the slope, and wash away a layer of the wide surface, carrying it to the Jordan, there being little to check them but copses of the zukkum tree and Spina Christi. Yet seven monas¬ teries once stood on this now desolate tract ; three of them still to be identified by their ruins. Till we reach tlie edge of the Jordan, only the stunted bushes I have mentioned,- unworthy of the name of trees, and a few shrubs with dwarfed leaves, are to be seen after leaving the moisture of the Sultan’s Spring. Not a blade of grass softens the dull yellow prospect around, and yet the whole region needs only water to make it blossom like a garden. The track ran along- the last miles of the Wadv Kelt as it stretches on to the Jordan — a broad watercourse, strewn with water worn boulders and shingles, with banks twenty to thirty feet high, and from fifty to a hundred yards apart, fringed with straggling, stunted, thorny bushes, kept in life by the evaporation from what water may flow in the torrent bed below during the year, and boasting in one spot a solitary cluster of palm-trees. The way led to the site of the ancient Beth-Hogla — “ the home of part¬ ridges ” — which belonged to Benjamin, and marked the division between its territory and that of Judah.2 Names 1 Cant. y. 2. 2 J osh. xy. 6 ; xviii. 19, 21. XXVIII. THE PLAIN OF JERICHO. 85 cling to localities with strange tenaciousness in the East, and that of Beth-Hogla still remains in the modern Arabic form of Ain Hajlah — the Fountain of Hoglah. This spring, the water of which is reputed the finest in the whole “ ghor,” bubbles up in a clear ] ool, almost tepid, enclosed by an old wall about five feet round and only a little above the ground ; the sparkling stream flowing over it, and carrying life wherever it goes. A grove of willows skirts it for a good distance in its course ; hut, after all, this is only a spot of verdure in the wide desolation. Offering the means of gaining rich harvests far and wide, the fountain is, nevertheless, utterly unused by man ; the birds and wild creatures alone frequent it. That the plain to the west, which lies higher, was once richly fertile, is certain, hut it might he difficult to realise how this was possible, did we not find the wreck of an aqueduct which stretched all the way from the Sultan’s Spring to Ain Hoglah. Nearlv two miles from this “ living water ” there was till lately a ruin called Kusr Hajlah — the House or Tower of Hoglah — the remains of one of the monasteries, once filled by fugitives from the busy world. Some figures of Greek saints, some patches of fresco, and some inscriptions, used to be Ausible on its roofless and crumbling walls; but in 1882 these ancient remains were destroyed, to make room for a new monastery. How long ago it is since the first matins and evensong rose from this spot no one can tell, but it seems probable that they were heard in these solitudes fifteen hundred years ago ; and from that remote day till about the time of our Henry the Eighth, monks of the order of St. Basil offered a refuge here to the pilgrims who visited the hanks of the Jordan. CHAPTEB XXIX. THE JORDAN. The first sight of the Jordan, rushing swiftly on its way, fills the heart with uncontrollable emotion. Sometimes, for a short distance, straight, it continually bends into new courses which hinder a lengthened view, yet add to the picturesque effect. On both sides, it is deeply bordered by rich vegetation. Stretches of reeds, ten or twelve feet high, shaken in the wind,1 as such slender shafts well may be, alternate with little woods of tamarisks, acacias, oleanders, pistachios, and other trees, in which “ the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, and sing among the branches.”2 Nightingales, bulbuls, and countless turtle doves, find here a delightful shade and abundant food. But though a paradise for birds, these thickets hide the view of the river, except from some high point on the upper bank, till vegetation ceases two or three miles from the Dead Sea. As it runs through the open plain, the stream has at different times had many banks, which rise above each other in terraces. Its waters once washed the foot of the mountains behind Jericho, 630 feet above the Dead Sea, as shown by the mud terrace and gravel deposits they threw down on the lower slopes of these hills when they rolled past them in a stream nearly sixteen miles wide. A second terrace of gravel, 1 Matt. xi. 7 ; Luke vii. 24. 2 Ps. ciy. 12. Chap. XXIX.] THE JORDAN. 87 520 feet above tlie Dead Sea, stretches from the Sultan’s Spring, for several miles, towards the Jordan. In this plateau, freshwater shells of the river and its tributary streams are found bedded in layers of silt. At about a mile from the present banks there is a third terrace of white marl crusted with salt, a little over two hundred feet above the Dead Sea, and to this succeeds a fourth, which is liable, though rarely, to floods, and forms the alluvial plain bordering the river. At its upper end this bank has a height of ninety feet above the Dead Sea, but it gradually sinks to the level of the surrounding flat as the river approaches its mouth.1 The surface is covered with thin herbage and scattered shrubs, and runs like a bluff close to the bank of the river. Descending its steep face to a depth of over fifty feet, we are in the midst of the bird-paradise of tama¬ risks, acacias, silver poplars, willows, terebinths, and other trees of which I have spoken ; a dense undergrowth of reeds and plants fond of moisture filling up the intervals between the higher vegetation. This, I may repeat, is the “swelling” or “glory” of the Jordan; once the haunt of the lion, and still of the leopard, traces of which are constantly to be seen, especially on the eastern side. Wild swine, also, swarm in this jungle, which is pierced in every direction by their runs. Below this narrow belt of green, the Jordan rushes on, twisting from side to side in its crooked channel ; its waters, generally not more than fifty yards across, discoloured by the earth they have received from their banks, or from tributaries, and in most places too deep to ford. When the stream is low, inner banks are visible, about five or six feet high, but when it is in flood, the waters sweep up to the terrace above, driving out the wild beasts in terror for their lives. O 1 Prof, Hull's Mount Seir, &c., 1(52. 88 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. it was during this inundation that the Israelites crossed, under Joshua. The time of their passage was four days before the Passover,1 which has always been held during the full April moon, and then, as now, the harvest was ripe in the Jordan valley from April to early in May ; the ripening of barley preceding that of wheat by two or three weeks. Then also, as now, there was a slight annual rise of the waters from the melting of the snows in Lebanon, and from the spring rains, so that the river flowed “ with full banks ” 2 when the Hebrews came to it. It cannot, however, rise above the sunken terrace on which its border of jungle grows, and thus, since the waters shrank to their present level, can never have flooded the upper plain, as the Nile does Egypt. But even within the limits of its present rise, a great stream pours along, in wheeling eddies, when the flood is at its height ; so great, that the bravery of the lion-faced men of Gad, who ventured to swim across it when thus full, to join David, has been thought worthy of notice in the sacred records.3 How stupendous, then, the miracle by which Israel went over dry-shod ! 4 Somewhere near the mouth of the Jordan, perhaps at the ford two miles above it, John the Baptist drew to his preaching vast multitudes from every part of the country, including not only Judaea, but even distant Galilee; our blessed Lord among others. Eor it was here that, at His baptism, the heavens were opened, and the Spirit of God descended upon Him, “ and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is My beloved Son.” 5 But though John may have baptised at the ford, it is a mistake to suppose that the Israelites crossed at this point, for the words are, “The 1 Josh. iv. 19; y. 10. 2 Josh. iii. 15 ; 1 Cliron. xii. 15; Ecclus. xxiv. 26. 3 1 Chron. xii. 15. 4 Josli. iii. 17. 5 Matt. iii. 17. XXIX.] THE JORDAN. 89 waters that came down from above stood and rose up upon a heap . . . and those that came down toward the sea . . . failed, and were cut off; and the people passed over right against Jericho.” 1 Thus, the waters being held hack, those below flowed off, and left the channel dry towards the Dead Sea ; so that the people, who numbered more than two millions, were not confined to a single point, hut could pass over at any part of the empty channel. From the site of Beth-Hogla to the mouth of the Jordan is a ride of about three miles, the last part of which is over a forbidding grey flat, impregnated with salt, and utterly destitute of living trees, though the bleached trunks and houghs of many, uprooted by floods, stick up from the soft mud. Here and there, indeed, a sandy hillock, rising above the level, gives a home to some desert shrubs, but such a break in the dulness is com¬ paratively rare. The jerboa, a creature doubtless well known to the Israelites, is often seen on these hillocks, which are filled with its burrows — their safe hiding-places on the approach of danger ; the least alarm causing them to disappear into them as if by magic, for they leap off to them over the sand with wonderful speed, like minia¬ ture kangaroos. Beautiful creatures they are, with their soft, chinchilla-like fur, their great eyes and mouse-like ears ; and singular in their structure, with their almost nominal fore-legs, and hind-legs as long as their body, while the tail is still longer. It seems as if, what with the tail and great hind-legs, they flew rather than leaped. Banked by the Jews among mice, the jerboa was “ un¬ clean,” and could not be eaten, but the Arabs have no such scruples; though it is only very small game, since its body measures no more than six or seven inches in 1 Josh. ii. 16. 90 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. length. There are, in all, twenty -three species of small rodents in Palestine, and of these not a few contribute to the kitchen comfort of the Bedouins, when caught. One singular mouse, which abounds in the ravines and barrens round the Dead Sea, is exactly like a small porcu¬ pine ; sharp bristles, like those of a hedgehog, standing out from the upper half of its back, wonderfully long for a creature about the size of our home mouse. I must not forget to notice another animal that abounds in the gorge of the Kedron, and along the foot of the mountains west of the Dead Sea — the cony of Scrip¬ ture. It is the size of a rabbit, but belongs to a very different order of animals, being placed by naturalists between the hippopotamus and the rhinoceros. Its soft fur is brownish -grey over the back, with long black hairs rising through this lighter coat, and is almost white on the stomach ; the tail is very short. The Jews, who were not scientific, deceived by the motion of its jaws in eat¬ ing, which is exactly like that of ruminant animals, fancied it chewed the cud, though it “ did not divide the hoof,” and so they put its flesh amidst that wliich was forbidden.1 It lives in companies, and chooses a ready-made cleft in the rocks for its home, so that, though the conies are but “ a feeble folk,” their refuge in the rocks 2 gives them a security beyond that of stronger creatures. They are, moreover, “ exceeding wise,” so that it is very hard to capture one. Indeed, they are said, on high authority, to have sentries, regularly placed on the look-out while the rest are feeding ; a squeak from the watchman sufficing to send the flock scudding to their holes like rabbits. The cony is found in many parts of Palestine, from Lebanon to the Dead Sea, and in this latter re'gion the Arabs eagerly try to kill it, as choice eating. 1 Lev. xi. 5 ; Deut. xiv. 7. 2 Ps. civ. 18 ; Prov. xxx. 24, 26. XXIX.] THE JORDAN. 91 The Jordan was regarded by the Israelites as the glory of their country, for it is the only river in Palestine which alwa}Ts flows in a copious stream, though its sunken, tumultuous, twisted course, which, between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, winds for some 200 miles over a space only about sixty miles in direct length, has made it useless for navigation, or as an attraction to human communities, except at the plain of Jericho. The great miracle when the Hebrews passed over made it sacred to them, so that its waters were already regarded with rever¬ ence when Elisha commanded Naaman to wash in them as a cure for his leprosy.1 Hallowed still more by the preaching of John and the baptism of Christ, the Jordan has been the favourite goal of all pilgrimages to the Holy Land, in every age since the first Christian centuries. As early as the days of Constantine, to be baptised in its waters was deemed a great privilege, while in the sixth century Antoninus relates that marble steps led down into the water on both sides at the spot where it was believed our Lord had been baptised, while a wooden cross rose in the middle of the stream. Upon the eve of the Epiphany, he adds, “ great vigils are held here, a vast crowd of people is collected, and after the cock has crowed for the fourth or fifth time, matins begin. Then, as the day commences to dawn, the deacons begin the holy mysteries, and celebrate them in the open air ; the priest descends into the river, and all who are to be baptised go to him A Holy water was even in that earl y age carried away by masters of vessels who visited it as pilgrims, to sprinkle their ships before a voyage; and we are told that all pilgrims alike went into the water wearing a linen garment, which they sacredly preserved as a winding sheet to be wrapped round them at their death.2 The scene of the yearly bathing . 1 2 Kings v. 6 £0. 2 Antoninus * Pal. Explor. Fund ed., p. 11. 92 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. of pilgrims now is near tlie ford, about two miles above the Dead Sea, each sect having its own particular spot, which it fondly believes to be exactly that at which our Saviour was baptised. The season of baptism has been changed from the colder time of Epiphany to that of Easter, and as the date of the latter feast differs in the Boman and Greek Churches, no collisions take place. Each Easter Monday thousands of pilgrims start, in a great caravan, from Jerusalem, under the protection of the Turkish Govern¬ ment ; a white flag and loud music going before them, while Turkish soldiers, with the green standard of the prophet, close the long procession. On the Greek Easter Monday the same spectacle is repeated, four or five thousand pilgrims joining in this second caravan. Form¬ erly, the numbers going to Jordan each year were much greater, from fifteen to twenty thousand visiting it even fifty years ago. 1 The streets of Jerusalem are, for the time, deserted, to see the vast cavalcade set out ; women in long white dresses and veils, men in flowing robes and turbans, covering the space outside the walls and the slopes and hollow of the Valley of Jehoshaphat in a parti-coloured crowd, eager to see the start. At last the procession streams from the gate and pours along the camel-track, towards Bethany and the Jordan ; some on foot ; others on horseback, or on asses, mules, or camels. Some companies travel with tents and provisions, to make everything comfortable on the journey. Here, a woman on horseback, with a child on each arm, is to be seen ; there, in a pannier on one side of a mule, is a woman, in another on the opposite side is a man ; or a dromedary, with a great frame across its hump, bears a family with all their coverlets and utensils. The Bussian jDilgrims, men, 1 Stephen, Incidents, 2, 228. XXIX.] THE JORDAN-. 93 women, and priests, if it be the Greek Easter, are afoot in heavy boots, fur caps, and clothing more fitted for Archangel than for the Jordan valley. Midway comes a body of Turkish horse, with drawn swords, clearing the way for the governor; then pilgrims again. Drawn from every land, they have travelled thousands of miles, in the belief that to see the holy places , and to bathe in the Jordan will tell on their eternal happiness. In these wonderful gatherings there are as many women as men. The Turkish soldiers are not merely ornamental, or a compliment to Christianity, but an in¬ dispensable protection from the robbers or thieves who have frequented the road since long before the story of the good Samaritan, and from the Bedouin at the Jordan itself. The broad space between the Sultan’s Spring and Eriha is soon an extemporised town, tents of all sizes rising as by magic, wdiile at night the plain is lighted up by the flames of countless fires. Next morning they start from this resting-place before sunrise, and march or ride by the light of the Passover moon towards the brink of the Jordan, but the pace of such a confused throng is slow. To help them on the first stages of their way, multitudinous torches blaze in the van, and huge watch- fires, kindled at the sides of the road, guard them past the worst places, till, as daylight breaks, the first of the throng reach the sacred river. Before long, the high bank, above the trees and reeds, is crowded with horses, mules, asses, and camels, in terrible confusion ; old, young, men, women, and children, of many nationalities, all press¬ ing together, in seemingly inextricable disorder. Yet they manage to clear themselves after a time, and then, dismounting, rush into the water with the most business-like quiet ; too earnest and practical to express much emotion. Some strip themselves naked, but most 94 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. of them plunge in clad in a white gown, which is to serve hereafter as a shroud, consecrated by its present use. Families bathe together, the father immersing the infant o ‘ o and his other children, that they may not need to make the pilgrimage in later life. Most of them keep near the shore, but some strike out boldly into the current ; some choose one spot, some another, for their hath. In little more than two hours the banks are once more deserted, the pilgrims remounting their motley army of beasts with the same grave quiet as they had shown on leaving them for a time ; and before noon they are back again at their encampment. They now sleep till the middle of the night, when, roused by the kettledrums of the Turks, they once more, by the light of the moon, torches, and bonfires, turn their faces to the steep pass up to Jerusalem, in such silence that they might all be gone without waking you, if you slept near them. It was thus with a great caravan of pilgrims who encamped a few yards from my tent near the Lake of Galilee. Noisy enough by night, with firing of pistols and guns, they struck their tents and moved off in the morning without breaking my sleep. The ancient Gilgal, where the Israelites erected a circle of twelve stones, to commemorate the passage of the Jordan, and where they renewed the rite of circum¬ cision,1 has been rediscovered, of late years, by a German traveller,2 whose ear fortunately caught from the lips of the Arabs the words Tell Jiljal and Birket Jiljalia ; the former a mound over the ancient town, and the latter its pond. They lie about three miles south-east of the Sultan’s Spring, close to the track leading to the Ford of the Jordan, and a little more than a mile nearly east from Eriha, but beyond the verdure which surrounds it. The 1 Josh. iv. 19, 20 ; v. 2. 2 Zschotte, Hector of the Austrian Ho-pice at Jerusalem, 1865. XXIX.] THE JORDAN. 95 pool is of stone, without mortar, about forty yards in diameter, and witliin a mile of it are about a dozen mounds, three or four feet high, which maybe the remains of the fortified camp of the Israelites. Ancient Canaan- itish houses were very probably built of mud, and would disappear very soon, if deserted ; and it is perhaps on ac¬ count of this that so few vestiges are now to he found of either Gil gal or Jericho. Captain Conder supposes that the twelve stones set up by Joshua were something like a Druidical circle ; a kind of rude sanctuary, of the form of the numerous rings of huge stones still found in Moab, and more or less in many countries, over a great part of the world. It may have been so, hut one can hardly believe that all traces of it would have perished, had it been thus a miniature Stonehenge. There are several “ Gfilgals ” in the Bible, hut this, on the plain of the Jordan, was the most important. It was doubtless from it that the “ angel,” or, rather, “ messen¬ ger,” of Jehovah came up, from the sunken “ghor,” to Bochim, in the hill-country, to rebuke the people, in the early days of the Judges, for their relations to the heathen inhabitants, and for their heathenism.1 Gilgal must thus, even then, it would seem, have been a religious centre, from which priests could be sent on spiritual errands to other parts of the land. It was to this Gilgal, also, that the representatives of the tribe of Judah came, to invite David to return to Jerusalem, after the death of Absalom ;2 such a venerable sanctuary appearing the best place fora solemn act of kingly restoration. What services were performed at Gilgal, or in what the sanctuary consisted, is not dis¬ coverable, unless there be a hint in the twelve stones of Joshua, or in the statement that there were Pesilim “by Gil gal.”3 This word means, in twenty out of the 1 Judg. ii. 1. 2 2 Sam. xix. 15 3 Juclg. iii. 19. 96 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. twenty-one cases in which it occurs, carved images of idols ; and though the Targum translates it in this one instance by “ quarries,” it very probably does so to save the early Israelites from an imputation of idolatry. If “ carved images ” be really meant, the inclination of the ancient Hebrews to idolatry must have early shown itself after their first arrival in Palestine. It is not certain, how¬ ever, that this passage refers to the Gilgal of the Jericho plain ; it may allude to another, in the hills of* Ephraim.1 A Gilgal is mentioned “ beside the oaks of Moreh,” 2 that is, near Shechem, the present Nablus. From this, or from still another Gilgal, Elijah went doivn to Bethel, and then, farther down, to Jericho, so that it must have been either north of Bethel, or must have lain higher than that place, the Gilgal of the Jordan being excluded in either case.3 In this third Gilgal there was a community of prophets, for whom Elisha made wholesome the pottage of deadly gourds.4 It was, however, at the Gilgal in the Jordan plains that Joshua so long had bis headquarters, after the taking of Jericho and Ai ;5 that the tabernacle stood before it was transferred to Shiloh;6 and that Samuel held yearly circuit as a judge,7 and solemnly inaugurated the kingdom of Saul, and that that unfortunate chief more than once assembled the people around him.8 And it is this Gilgal which the prophets Ilosea and Amos denounced as, along with Bethel, a chief seat of the wmrship of the calf by the northern kingdom.9 Besides these three Gilgals, there was a fourth, apparently in the plains of 1 Judg. iii. 27. 5 Josh. ix. 6 ; x. 6, 15, 43; xiv. 6. 2 Dent. xi. 30. 6 Josh, xviii. I. 3 2 King’s ii. 1, 2. 7 1 Sam. vii. 16 ; xi. 15. 4 2 Kings iv. 38. 8 1 Sam. xiii. 4; xv. 12, 21, 33. 9 Hos. iv. 15 ; ix. 15 ; xii. 11 ; Am. iv. 4 ; v. 5. From Ramah Samuel goes down to Gilgal. So does Saul from Carmel in Judah, but he goes up from Gilgal to Gibeah (1 Sam. x. 8 ; xv. 1°, 34} XXIX. 1 THE JORDAN. 97 Sharon;1 the frequent repetition of the name perhaps implying that in the early ages of Israelitisli history, the setting up of stone circles, to which it seems to refer, was a frequent custom with the people. It assuredly was so with their neighbours of Moab, as is still shown by the numerous stone monuments, in circles and other shapes, preserved to our day.2 The Jordan, for much the greater part of its course, flows far below the level of the sea ; its mouth being about thirteen hundred feet below the Mediterranean. It can never have run into the Gulf of Akabah, at the head of the Red Sea, for the very good reason that the watershed which lies in the way is more than eight hundred feet above the Mediterranean. South of the Dead Sea, the continuation of the Valley of the Jordan is known as the Arabah, that is, the “Waste,’’ or “Steppe;” while the valley through which the river actually flows is known as the “ ghor,” or “ depression.” The Jordan formed the eastern boundary of the Promised Land ; any territory to the east of it being spoken of as “ on the farther side ” of the river. Its strange channel, sinking so deep, from step to step, gained it the name of Jordan, or “ descender,” while its numerous fords, rapids, eddies, sandbanks, and its sharp reefs, past which it often shoots wildly, Lave in all ages prevented its being used for boats or other vessels. Shut out from cooling winds, the valley is insufferably hot for most of the year, and hence is little inhabited. No town has ever risen on its banks, those near it standing upon heights some distance from it. No road ever ran through its gorges, though many crossed at its fords, but even these were very difficult of approach, from the steep¬ ness and roughness of the wadys on either side. The most noteworthy source of the Jordan, near 1 Josh. xii. 23. 2 Cornier, Heth and Moab , passim. h 98 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Hasbeya, in Lebanon, is about 2,200 feet above the sea. But it has two others — a spring, as large as a small river, which flows from under a low height at Dan ; and a great flow of waters issuing from a cave at the foot of the hills at Banias, or Caesarea Philippi, a thousand feet above the Mediterranean. These, after rushing swiftly and often tumultuously on their separate courses, unite in the little Lake of Huleh, four miles long, the ancient Sea of Merom, which lies about ninety feet above the ocean. A short distance below Huleh the river is crossed by the ancient but still used “ Bridge of the Daughters of Jacob,” and is still slightly above the sea-level ; but from this point it rapidly sinks. Bush¬ ing and foaming through narrow clefts in the rocks, it hurries on to the Lake of Galilee, ten miles and a half from Lake Huleh ; entering it through a green, marshy plain, at a level of 682 feet below the Mediterranean. Its course from the Lake southwards is a continued and sometimes rapid descent. In the twenty-six and a half miles from Banias, it has already fallen 1,682 feet, and it has yet to sink 610 feet lower, before it reaches the Dead Sea, sixty-five miles in a straight line from the Sea of Galilee, but three times as far by the bends of the river channel. The total length of the Jordan, from Banias, is thus, in a straight line, only about a hundred and four miles, or one-half the length of the Thames. Inside the deep sunken “ghor,” alongside the stream, a terrace runs from forty to 150 feet above the water, and on this alone luxuriant vegetation is found, the land over the “ ghor ” being very barren. An old Saracen bridge, five or six miles below the Lake of Galilee, marks the spot where probably Naaman crossed when he re¬ turned from Samaria to Damascus.1 The Syrians, under 1 2 Kings y. 14. XXIX.] THE JORDAN. 99 Benhadad, fled by tbe same wa}^,1 and liere, too, Judas Maccabams crossed when returning from Gilead.2 Very pissibly David used the same ford when be invaded Syria,3 for it is still the road from Jerusalem and Shechem, by way of Beisan, to Gilead and Bashan. Near the mouth of the Jabbok, on the east side of the river, another bridge, built by the Bomans, marks the ford where so many Ephraimites were slain by Jephtha;4 and it was apparently by this bridge that Galilean pilgrims, in the time of Christ, ended the roundabout journey they had made down the east bank of the Jordan, to avoid Samaria; crossing the Jordan to the eastern side a little below the Lake of Galilee, and recrossing here to go on to Jericho, and thence to Jerusalem. Here, also, the Christians must have crossed who fled to Pella at the fall of Jerusalem. Five or six miles from the river, west of this passage, travellers or fugitives in these old times had the great hill of Surtabeh standing up isolated more than two thousand feet above the Jordan5 as their landmark; a height famous in the land, for it was from its summit that the appearance of the new moon was flashed by signal fires over the country, till the Samaritans kindled false lights on other hills, so that couriers had to take the place of beacon flames. It is probable that Zartlian, where Solomon had the brazen vessels made for his Temple, lay near Surtabeh, as the soil of this part of the “ ghor is said to be specially fitted for founders’ moulds. In the lower stages of the course of the Jordan the mountains on the western side are very rugged and barren, in contrast to those on the eastern, but at the 1 2 Kings vii. 15. 3 2 Sam. x. 17. 2 1 Macc. y. 52. 4 Judg. xii. 5. 6 It is 2,368 feet above the Jordan, and 1,241 feet above the Mediterranean. h 2 100 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. mouths of the valleys, where the water is low, there are a number of fords used from of old by all who crossed either east or west. From the foot of Hermon to Lake Huleh, the river descends, in a very short distance, 1,434 feet; thence to the Lake of Galilee it falls 897 feet; and from that Lake to the Dead Sea, 618 feet more ; in all, 2,949 feet. At Lake Huleh, the charming open ground is fertile ; and there are many green oases in the deep cleft from the Lake of Galilee, southwards ; but as a whole the deeply sunken inner banks of the river deserve the name given them by the Hebrews — the Arabah, or Waste. Nor is the wildness relieved by peaceful tributaries on either side, for though several perennial streams join the main current from the east, and many winter torrents rush downwards to it from the west, they pour on both sides through ravines so steep and rugged that it is laborious to reach the level of the stream at any part. The common means of crossing: in Bible times seems to O have been by fords, though David is said to have been taken over with Barzillai in a ferry boat ; but there are many shallow places in the long chasm through which the waters seek their way before reaching the plain of Jericho. A river so unique* may well demand our attention, not only for its strange descent beneath the level of the sea, or for the historical associations of its borders, but also for other features, which supply the key to its past physical history. Between Banias and Huleh the valley is about five miles broad, with steep cliffs on each side, about two thousand feet high, and more or less marshy ground be¬ tween, the river flowing in the middle of the plain. After leaving Lake Huleh, however, the stream turns to the foot of the eastern hills, running about four miles from the XXIX.] THE JORDAN. 101 western range, which towers up, in the neighbourhood of Sated, to more than 3,500 feet above the Lake of Galilee, the bed of which is the first sign of the great chasm in which the river henceforth flows. For thirteen miles south of the Lake, to Beisan, the valley is about four and a half miles wide, some of the cliffs on its western side rising eighteen hundred feet above the stream. In the next twelve miles it is still broader, expanding to a width of six miles, its sides showing a very curious succession of terraces. Beisan, for example, stands on a plateau about three hundred feet below the Mediterranean; the “ ghor ” itself is four hundred feet lower ; while the narrow trench, from a quarter to half a mile broad, in which the river- actually flows, is a hundred and fifty feet lower still. This open part of the valley is full of springs, and hence remarkably fertile. After it is passed, the width contracts to two or three miles, with hills rising, on the western side, about five hundred feet above the sea. After running twelve miles through this glen, the stream again has an open course for a time through a valley eight miles broad, till we reach Surtabeh, which rises 2,400 feet above the river, as I have said. From this point to the plain of Jericho, the “ ghor ” is about ten miles broad, the river flowing, here as elsewhere, in a deeply sunken channel worn out in the valley. Finally, there is the Jericho plain, which the Palestine Survey reports as measuring more than eight miles from north to south, and more than fourteen across, with the Jordan in about the middle. The actual river-bed is, in this sec¬ tion, including its successive terraces, about a mile wide, and two hundred feet, or thereabouts, below the broad valley. It helps to explain the saltness of the Dead Sea to find that from Beisan southwards numbers of salt springs flow into the river. 102 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. It would appear from this sketch of the course of the river that a great lake once stretched to the foot of Lebanon, and that after it had begun to dry up, a chain of lakes, filling the broad parts of the valley, for a time took the place of the still larger lake, gradually shrinking, however, till we have only Huleh, the Lake of Galilee, and the Dead Sea, and the dry beds of two other lakes, represented by the plain of Beisan and that of Jericho. The only boat, so far as is known, that ever descended the whole course of the Jordan, was that of Lieutenant Lynch, of the American Navy, whose description of the “ glior ?? is necessarily the most complete we possess ; his account of the lower part of its course bringing it before us with a vividness only possible to personal observation. “ The boats had little need to propel them,” says he, “ for the current carried us along at the rate of from four to six knots an hour, the river, from its eccentric course, scarcely permitting a correct sketch of its topo¬ graphy to be taken. It curved and twisted north, south, east, and west, turning, in the short space of half an hour, to every quarter of the compass. “For hours, in their swift descent, the boats floated down in silence, the silence of the wilderness. Here and there were spots of solemn beauty. The numerous birds sang with a music strange and manifold ; the willow branches floated from the trees like tresses, and creep¬ ing mosses and clambering weeds, with a multitude of white and silvery little flowers, looked out from among them ; and the cliff swallow wheeled over the falls, or went at his own wild will, darting through the arched vistas, shadowed and shaped by the meeting foliage on the banks ; and, ^bove all, yet attuned to all, was the music of the river, gushing with a sound like that of shawms and cymbals. XXIX.] THE JORDAN. 103 “The stream sometimes waslied tlie bases of tbe sandy bills, and at other times meandered between low banks, generally fringed with trees and fragrant with blossoms. Some points presented views exceedingly picturesque — the mad rushing of a mountain torrent, the song and sight of birds, the overhanging foliage, and glimpses of the moun¬ tains, far over the plain, and here and there a gurgling rivulet, pouring its tribute of crystal water into the now muddy Jordan. The western shore was peculiar, from the high limestone hills, . . . while the left, or eastern bank, was low, and fringed with tamarisk and willow, and occasionally a thicket of lofty cane, and tangled masses of shrubs and creeping plants, giving it the character of a jungle. At one place we saw the fresh track of a tiger [leopard] on the low clayey margin, where he had come to drink. At another time, as we passed his lair, a wild boar started with a savage grunt, and dashed into the thicket, but for some moments we traced his pathway by the bending canes and the crashing sound of broken branches. “ The birds were numerous, and at times, when we issued from the silence and shadow of a narrow and verdure-tinted part of the stream into an open bend, where the rapids rattled and the light burst in, and the birds sang their wildwood song, it was, to use a simile of Mr. Bedlow, like a sudden transition from the cold, dull- lighted hall, where the gentlemen hang their hats, into the white and golden saloon, where the music rings and the dance goes on. The hawk, upon the topmost branch of a blighted tree, moved not at our approach, and the veritable nightingale ceased not her song, for she made day into night in her covert among the leaves ; and the bulbul, whose sacred haunts we disturbed when the current swept us among the overhanging boughs, but 104 THE HOLY LA HD AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. XXIX. chirruped her surprise, calmly winged her flight to another sprig, and continued her interrupted melodies. “Our course down the stream was with varied rapidity. At times we were going at the rate of from three to four knots an hour, and again we would be swept and hurried away, dashing and whirling onward with the furious speed of a torrent. At such moments there was excitement, for we knew not but that the next turn of the stream would plunge us down some fearful cataract, or dash us on the sharp rocks which might lurk beneath the surface. Many islands — some fairy-like, and covered with a luxuriant vegetation, others, mere sand-banks and sedimentary deposits, intercepted the course of the river, but were beautiful features in the monotony of the shores. The regular and almost unvaried scene, of high banks of al¬ luvial deposit and sand-hills on the one hand, and the low shore, covered to the water’s edge with tamarisk, the willow, and the thick, high cane, would have been fatiguing without the frequent occurrence of sand-banks and verdant islands. High up on the sand-bluffs, the cliff-swallow chattered from her nest in the hollow, or darted about in the bright sunshine, in pursuit of the gnat and the water-fly.” 1 1 Lynch, Narrative, 211 — 215. CHAPTER XXX. THE DEAD SEA. How vast is the interval between tlie present day and tbe time of tlie earlier of those events which have given the Dead Sea and the Jordan an interest so imperishable ! The ancient world has passed away, and the modern world has grown old since then. And yet, though the hosts of Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Rome, the swift squadrons of the Saracens, and the mailed battalions of the Crusaders, who played their part in those remote events, have disap¬ peared, with all the generations they represent, the Jordan still flows in its bed as it did on the day when Joshua led the Hebrew tribes over it ; and the clear blue waters of the Dead Sea fill the same hollow as when they reflected the lightnings on that dreadful day when fire and brimstone from the Lord rained down from heaven on the Cities of the Plain. The peaks and rounded tops of the mountains of Moab and Judsea have been unchanged since the waters of the Delude. Nature lives, but what a shadow is man, and what shadows he pursues ! On that bank, yonder, stood John the Baptist, in his camel’s-hair “ abba 1 lean, and fiery-eyed, like one of the Bedouins of to-day ; full of glowing zeal to prepare his nation for the expected Messiah. Round him stood a crowd of men, of all classes, baptised and not yet baptised, in whose faces one could read the intense longing of their hearts. Sighing 1 Matt. iii. 4. 106 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. for a Redeemer who should deliver them from the deep misery of the times and the still deeper misery of sin, they little dreamed that He stood unrecognised in their midst.1 I did not bathe in the Jordan, but others did so, though it is not very easy of approach. In one place reeds and rushes stood in the way1, at another, a bed of deep mud bars access, especially in the little bends ; at a third, the hank was so steep that one could not get down to the water. The ride to the Dead Sea from Beth-Hoglah varies in features as one is near the river or at a short distance from it. The bushy terrace at the side of the stream is, as I have said, far below the upper banks, and more than twenty feet lower than this the water flows between upright sides, with constant twists and turnings. Leaving the banks, the soil was soft and earthy, with numerous furrows and seams left by the rains ; but no vegetation was to be seen as we came nearer the Dead Sea, except in the beds of small flat wadys, which had a sprinkling of stunted herbage. Close to the sea, the view was a little more kindly, herbage of different sorts and small flowers dotting the ground, in some places almost to the edge of the water. The northern bank rises only a few feet above the lake, and small waves played, in slow dimples and murmurs, against the level strand. For the most part, however, the shore was a shingly slope of about fifteen feet, strewn with a large quantity of driftwood, crusted over with the salt of the water. As a whole, the north shore is barren and treeless, with a delta of soft mud and marsh, from which spring a few rushes. In some places, the rocks come very near the water, and the beach is strewn with huge boulders and stones, fallen from the cliffs. No one could 1 Matt. iii. 1. XXX.] THE DEAD SEA. 107 cross the Jordan just where it enters the lake, soft mud flats, with plentiful driftwood embedded in them, forbidding the passage of either man or beast. The view around was very fine. East and west, lofty ridges seemed to spring from the water, their fronts cut into deep clefts by the winter torrents. Near at hand was a small island composed entirely of stones. One would not have supposed that the beautifully clear water was impregnated with salt to the extent' of no less than from twenty-four to twenty-six per cent, of its weight ; seven per cent, of this being common salt, while the rest consists of the salts of various metals. The lake stretched away to the south in placid beauty, be¬ tween its yellow mountain hanks, under the deep-blue sky, itself almost as blue. It is forty-six miles long, and ten miles broad where widest. Two or three friends ventured to bathe, and those who did so seemed to enjoy it, though it was necessary to rub the skin and hair well on coming out, as otherwise small crystals of salt were formed when the water dried, and an oily feeling was left on the body. To open the mouth when swimming ensures a gulp of water more bitter than agreeable, almost taking away the breath by its taste. To float, it is only necessary to lie back ; you cannot sink. Cloths wetted with the water seemed, when dry, to have been dipped in some oily fluid, but no evil consequences follow a bathe, beyond swollen and chapped lips. The saltness may be imagined from the fact that drops falling on one’s clothes leave a white mark behind on drying, as if wax had fallen on them instead of water. It is a mistake to think that there is no life round the sea, though there is certainly none in it. Fish brought down by the Jordan die on entering the lake, and there are no shell-fish ; but the oases, here and there on both sides, are filled with life of all forms, nor is 108 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap, it unfrequent to see divers and ducks flying over the " waters or swimming joyfully on their bosom. The basin of the lake is a huge cup or bowl, sinking nine hundred feet sheer down close to the Moab shore, and in its deepest part 1,310 feet below the surface of the water, which makes it in its darkest depths nearly four thous¬ and feet below the streets of Jerusalem. The southern part, however, is - a mere flat, covered with about twelve feet of water, and in great measure divided from the deeper portion by a tongue of land, which runs out from the eastern shore. Besides the Jordan, which pours into it about six million tons of water daily, the lake receives the flow of three permanent streams on its eastern side, one of them the Arnon of the Bible. There is, besides, a tributary stream on the south, and another, that at Engedi, on the west. These vary in their force, hut always flow more or less strongly. The ravines, more¬ over, become torrent beds after the rains, and, together, must pour a large quantity of water into the lake in winter. There are, besides, many springs, fresh, warm, or salt, which run into it, all helping to increase its volume, for it has no outlet. Yet, notwithstanding this huge accumulation of water, the level of the lake in winter is only a few feet above its height in summer; not more, apparently, in the wettest years, than fifteen feet.1 This is enough, however, to cover several miles of the low, sloping shallow at the south which are bare in summer, the water apparently extending sometimes even eight to ten miles farther in the one season than in the other. That the sea does not fill up the framework of hills and wadys around it with a spreading and accumulating 1 Canon Tristram thinks the rise and fall not more than four feet (Piet. Pal., i. 157). Dr. Robinson and others estimate it as in the text. The Survey Party found it in 1874 to be fifteen feet. XXX.] THE DEAD SEA. 109 flood, is due solely to the great evaporation, at a depth so far below the level of the sea. Shut in by hills on all sides from any cooling breezes, the tropical heat of the “ ghor ” raises from the surface of the lake a greater amount of water, in vapour, than is poured into it from the Jordan and all other sources. 1 A thick mist, from this cause, lies over the surface when the sun is under the horizon, and the air is at all times full of steaming moisture. It is the constant separation from the lake of vast quantities of absolutely fresh water, all saline particles being left behind, that causes the exceeding salt¬ ness of what remains, just as in the case of the Salt Lake of Utah. Saline particles, moreover, are being constantly poured into it from the tributaries of the Jordan, and there are, besides, several small streams which flow into it at its south end from a vast salt deposit that rises into a series of low hills several miles long, and which bring constant additions of brine. Yet, wherever a stream of fresh water flows, the warmth an I moisture, together, create charming nooks, where the palm-tree grows almost to the edge of the lake. The extraordinary depth of the water on the eastern side — nine hundred feet, perpendicular, from the shore — is due to the great geological convulsions that formed the whole Jordan valley as it at present exists. At some epoch very remote, though comparatively recent in geological chronology, the present bed of the valley, through its whole length, from Beisan to the watershed 1 It lias been calculated that while the average quantity of water received daily by the Dead Sea cannot be more than 20,000,000 cubic feet, the evapora¬ tion may be taken at 24,000,000 cubic feet daily. Journal fur Praht. Chemie, Leipzig, 1849, 371. In apparent contradiction to this, however, the Arabs say that the lake is now deeper than it was fifty years ago, fords once pass¬ able on donkeys being no longor so. These fords are at the shallow, southern end. 110 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. between it and the Red Sea, and even further north and south, must have sunk by a sudden and tremendous cleaving of the whole crust of the earth, the crack running along the eastern edge. The rocks corresponding' to those that now form that side were buried, on the western side, in the chasm, so that they have disappeared. Hence, on the east we have lofty hills consisting, at the base, of sandstone, on which rest beds of hard limestone ; while at the south-western end of the lake the limestone is wanting, and beds of rock-salt tower up, apparently over the sandstone. These speak of distant geological eras, but on the west side we have, instead of them, approxim¬ ately recent soft beds of chalk and allied rocks, broken and dislocated from west to east, and often strangely twisted. The fact that these strata slope to the east, and the cracks and shifting of level at different places, prove that the}^ must have been deposited before the great cleavage took place, while beds rich in fossils lying above them show the tremendous height of the waters in those early days. The lake must, till that time, have stood nearly fourteen hundred feet higher than it does at present, 1 so that it must have extended from Lebanon to the Akabah ridge north of the Red Sea — a length of nearly two hundred miles from north to south. Its shrinking, however, was very gradual, for, as we shall see, there are raised beach terraces of various heights above the present level. This strange difference in the state of things in Pales¬ tine in these remote ages is in part explained by the fact that for a very long period the country was very rainy. Proofs of this are found in the remains of ancient lake-beds, in the existence of terraces left by streams on the hill-sides, far above their present level, and in the great 1 Hull, Mount Seir> 180 — 181. XXX.] THE DEAD SEA. Ill size and width of many valleys and gorges, now waterless except after rain-storms. This watery time, it is believed, extended from the era of the latest rocks in the geological sj^stem, through the glacial period, to recent times. Perennial snow and glaciers existed in Lebanon during the Great Ice Age, and this probably gave Palestine a climate something like that of Britain at the present day, involving an abundant rainfall in a country many parts of which are more than two thousand feet above the sea. And even when the snows and glaciers of the Lebanon had disappeared, the rainy character of the climate must have only gradually passed away, so that vegetation would be comparatively luxuriant as late as the period of human habitation. 1 Volcanic action on a great scale took place in Palestine in those remote ages. In Lebanon, on the Sea of Galilee, in the Hauran, at different points in the Jordan valley, and all along both sides of the Dead Sea, rocks occur which were poured forth as lava from burning moun¬ tains. These outbursts are of various ages, hut for the most part seem to date from the period when the lake stretched as far north as the small lake Huleh, the ancient Merom, and the great glens of Moab and Western Pales¬ tine were so many fiords or bays. The huge crack which had dislocated the strata in the Jordan valley, letting down those on the western side to a great depth below their former position, while those on the eastern side remained unaffected, seems to have permitted the water, then so very deep, to force its way into the glowing abyss, under the thin solid crust of the earth, and thus to create a vast body of vapour, or steam, which caused the volcanic explosions, and the outpourings of melted rocks ; for water is now recognised as necessary to volcanic 1 Hull, Mount Seir, 182. 112 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. activity. Or it may have been that the filtration of water through the bottom of the great ancient sea may have caused this vast dislocation, or “ fault.” The pres¬ sure of the water diminishing as the inland sea shrank lower and lower and the fissure through which its waters had filtered into the subterranean fires closed up, these volcanic forces gradually died out ; no signs of activity being known in the historical period, or, indeed, for ages before it, though earthquakes are still, unhappily, too common. The shrinking of the Dead Sea to its present size wTas, however, as has been already said, very gradual. On the eastern side, the mountains rise too steeply from the water to allow traces of ancient beaches to have gathered on them, but on the gentler western slopes the story of the subsidence of the waters is written by their own hand, if I may say so, as far north as the “ Horn of Surtabeh,” half way to the Lake of Galilee. Raised beaches of chalky marl and very salt gypsum, on which no vege¬ tation can live, run along the hill-sides, at six hundred, four hundred, three hundred, one hundred, seventy, and thirty feet above the present level of the waters : a long pause in the shrinking up of the lake intervening at each of the periods marked by these ancient coast-lines. But the present limits must have been those of the earliest historical age, else the sites inhabited in the plain of the Jordan in Joshua’s day would have been then sub¬ merged. The great size of the ravines and valleys at the sides of the lake, and, indeed, throughout Palestine, is less astonishing when we notice the violence of winter storms, even now, when the rainfall has so greatly diminished. In the Wady Kelt a violent rain fills the upper and narrower parts of the gorge, in half an hour, to a depth XXX.] THE DEAD SEA. 113 of from eight to ten feet, and the lower, broader parts, to a depth of three or four feet, so that the wady is at times entirely dry, and at others impassable. The question, however, often forced itself on me, how there could be such a vast quantity of broken rock and boulders in every torrent bed, and over all the hill-slopes throughout the country ; for the whole land appears as if it Were buried beneath a universal rain of ballast, large and small. There is' less stone on the maritime plain than elsewhere, but all through the hill -country, from Beersheba to Baalbek, it is hardly too much to say that you can see very little of the soil for the stones upon it, and that the hills are cased in a thick bed of fragments from their own surface. It does not matter whether the mountain, hill, or cliff be of hard or soft rock ; its outer coat is generally rotten, whether it be granite, basalt, or limestone. The sides, as you climb them, seem like the rubbish of a quarry, even your horse having difficulty in choosing where to put his feet securely. The explanation of this strange peculiarity is to be found in the heat of the sun. The mountains of South- Equatorial Africa are spoken of by Mr. Stanley as “ skeletons,” and the splitting up of their surface, he tells us, is so extensive, that the cracking may be heard as one passes over them. It is the same in India and in Palestine. During the day, the rays of a nearly vertical sun raise the temperature of the rocks to an ex¬ traordinary degree, so that all moisture is expelled, and the stone is unnaturally expanded. After sunset, when this excessive heat rapidly passes off into tlm air, their temperature is necessarily lowered very quickly, till, through the night, it falls from 90° Fahrenheit in the shade, and 120° in the sun, to 45° or 50°. Benewed daily, this expansion and contraction splits up the layers and 114 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. joints, all over the surface, reducing it to a vast heap of loose fragments. A heavy rainstorm falling on these hare stones, protected by no coating of turf as in England, completes the wreck. The deluge rushes down every hill- slope as our storms pour down the roof of a house, and sweeps away the loosened rock with incredible violence into the wadys and over the plains, far and near, leaving the hills clear for a repetition of the same process of breaking up and subsequent washing away. * Perhaps the finest view of the Dead Sea is that from the lofty cliffs on the western side, where the Jordan enters. The eye sweeps southwards nearly as far as Engedi. On / the east, the yellowish -red mountains of Moab, extend¬ ing beyond the southern horizon, pass northwards into those of Gilead, which trend on, in a sea of rounded tops, till the view is closed. Light and shade throw one part into brightness and cover another with purple, varied by the deeper obscurity of great ravines, like those of the Callir- rhoe and the Arnon. A line of tall reeds fringes the plain, twelve hundred feet below, beyond which the lake lies blue and shining, with the long peninsula of the Lisan, or “ Tongue,” at the southern end, and many small spits of shore, sparkling in the light like silver. Nor is the landscape less striking from the shore itself, though in some respects different. The lofty cliffs of the western side, rising above the long slope of wreck fallen from them, and hiding them from sight far up their height; the blue waters ; the rich verdure of every spot reached by moisture ; and the bright colours of the sandstone on the eastern shore, showing every colour but green, make a picture one can never forget. The chalk hills on the western side are marked by the presence of bitumen in them, both liquid and in a solid form, and in some places by layers of rock-salt. Between XXX.] THE DEAD SEA. 115 the mouth of the lake and Engedi, indeed, the marl is so strongly impregnated with bitumen at some points that it burns like our bituminous shale, and a strong odour of bitumen is given off by the hills. The cliffs run alongside the lake at a distance, in some parts, of half a mile, though they often come very near it ; but it is a weary and desolate ride to reach Engedi — now called Ain Jidy — - “ the Kids’ Fountain ” — half way down the coast. About three miles north of it, however, a momentary break is made in the oppressive desolation by coming on strong sulphur springs, which bubble up from the gravel, at a temperature of 95° Fahrenheit, blackening the hands and covering the boots with yellow as you scoop out a hollow. The temperature of the spring is so high that it raises that of the lake, where it flows into it, nearly twenty degrees, and one may easily imagine that mineral waters so strong, and of a kind so much valued in different ailments, must have been utilised for baths in the prosperous days of the country. Kow, however, the water runs to waste. A very rough track, or rather scramble without a track, brings one to the plain of Engedi, which slopes upwards from the lake to the foot of the cliffs, about half a mile behind. Two small streamlets cross it, but neither is the true Engedi, which springs down the cliffs in silver threads from its fountain some hundreds of feet up the hill-side. In the centre of the plain, which is about a mile and a half from north to south, but of no great width, are some ruins built of square stones, not very large, and much eaten into by time : all that remains of the old-world city of Hazazon-Tamar — “ the Felling of the Palm,” “ which is Engedi.”1 Thousands of years ago a town stood here, when Abraham was a wanderer in the land, and Lot dwelt in Sodom, and it was near it that the i 2 1 2 Cliron. xx. 2. 116 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. petty kings of Sodom and G-omorrah, with their allies, attacked the host under Chedorlaomer, as it returned laden with the spoils of the Negeb and descended to the Salt Sea by the precipitous path which still leads to this spot from the lofty table-land above.1 It was in the nu¬ merous caverns on the face of the precipice of Engedi that David hid himself when Saul took with him “three thous¬ and men, and went to seek him and his men, upon the rocks of the wild goats/’ Still later, it was up the steep path on the face of these rocks that the forces of Moab and Ammon climbed to invade Judah, though their confidence was turned into panic by a battle among themselves in the Valley of Berachah.2 Strange to say, this is the very route still taken by any band from Moah desirous of making a raid on Southern Palestine. Passing round the south of the Dead Sea, they make for Engedi, and then mount to the table-land, twelve hundred feet above the lake, as their best road to Hebron, Tekoa, or Jerusalem, whichever they may think most likely to yield plunder. The plain is now desolate, though once famous for its palm groves, and the slopes behind it, once a proverb for their vineyards,3 know nothing of them now, though the terraces on which they grew are still to be seen, step above step, up all the hills around, as high as the Fountain. But the henna shrub in those vineyards, to which the Beloved is compared, is still found on this spot ; in vivid illustra¬ tion of the sacred text. For it is not “ a cluster of cam- phire,” but of henna, which the Hebrew poet introduces ; a plant eight or ten feet high, with clusters of yellow and white blossoms, highly esteemed for their fragrance. A paste, moreover, is made from its pounded leaves, and used by women of every class, and by rich or luxurious men, to dye the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet, 1 Gen. xiv. 7. 2 2 Cliron. xx. 2. 3 Cant. i. 14 ; iv. 13. XXX.] THE DEAD SEA. 117 and tlie nails, which it makes of a reddish colour. Instead of palms and vines, there are only a few acacia-trees, a tamarisk, a few hushes, and, now and then, the “ osher ” of the Arab, which is the true apple of Sodom.1 A very tropical-looking plant, its fruit is like a large smooth apple, or orange, and hangs in clusters of three or four together. When ripe, it is yellow, and looks fair and attractive, and is soft to the touch, but if pressed, it bursts with a crack, and only the broken shell and a row of small seeds in a half-open pod, with a few dry filaments, remain in the hand. Close round the Fountain, and on the edge of the two springs north and south of it, Engedi can be seen at the best, and even then the reeds and verdure that line the course of the springs are not visible till one reaches their sunken beds. The Fountain itself gushes from under the rock, high up on the slope of the cliff, at a temperature of 79° Fahrenheit, and broadening out over a patch of gravelly sand, presently begins its course down -hill, marked, as it descends, by a winding fringe of green, till it is lost in the soil beyond. Freshwater crabs, and some other small shell¬ fish, are the only living creatures found in its basin. Traffic is still carried on by the path climbing past the Fountain ; salt being thus carried from the south of the lake to Bethlehem on files of donkeys, by Arabs who wisely travel well armed, to guard against the dangers of the route. There are still many wild goats on the face of the lofty cliffs, but pursuit of them is hopeless, except for a hunter accustomed to perilous work in such places. North of the Fountain is found the source of the spring seen on the plain below ; a very delight for its rich luxuriance of all kinds of foliage. In long-past ages, a spot like this, utilised as it would be, must have been thought a very 1 See ante, p. 74. 118 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. paradise in such surroundings. Could it be that this delightful nook, concealed within almost impenetrable jungle, was known to David when he hid in this neigh¬ bourhood ? No place could be conceived more suited for a soul like his, so full of poetry and devotion. Who can tell but that some of his sacred lyrics may have been prompted by its inspirations ? From the Fountain to the top of the mountains the path is almost a ladder, impassable to any horse or other beast of burden not used to such terrible climbing. To have ascended it, the Moabites and Ammonites must have had little to carry, for it is hard enough for man or beast to get up, even almost unencumbered. The Cities of the Plain stood on some part of the plain of Jericho, which in Abraham’s day was much the same as it is now. The shape of the basin of the sea, and its geological history, make it impossible that any towns could have existed except at its northern or southern end, but those which perished are expressly called the Cities of the Plain , or “ Circle ” of the Jordan ; an expression used only of the slopes reaching, on both sides, from the hills to the river, immediately before it enters the lake. Abraham and Lot, moreover, could see the fertile region of Sodom and Gomorrah from the hill-top on which they stood, between Bethel and Ai, but intervening hills shut out the southern end of the sea, which is sixty miles off, from any point near that from which the patriarchs looked down into the great depression, while they could see the plain of Jericho and the rich green of the Sultan’s Spring, as if at their feet. Nor could Abraham, as he stood at his tent door at Mamre, have seen, as he did, “ the smoke of the country rising like the smoke of a furnace,” as he looked “towards Sodom and Gomorrah,” had they been at the south end of the lake ; whereas the openings between XXX.] THE DEAD SEA. 119 the hills are such that, though the plain itself is not visible from near Hebron, the clouds of smoke ascending from the doomed cities must have been seen in all their grandeur. That Chedorlaomer, on his way north from Mount Seir, after smiting the Amorites at Engedi, should have fallen upon the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah in the plains of Siddim, continuing his march northwards towards home after defeating them, so that in his turn he was overcome by Abraham near the sources of the Jordan, further implies that the Cities of the Plain were north of the Head Sea. Still more, the fact that Moses, from his lofty outlook on Mount Pisgah, “ beheld the Negeb and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm-trees, unto Zoar,” requires that this landscape should have been that of the northern end of the sea, for the other end cannot be seen from the neighbourhood from which Moses surveyed the landscape. Sodom and Go¬ morrah must therefore, apparently, have stood either on the eastern or western side of the Jordan, just above the lake; probably on the eastern. Both sides of the river are remarkable for the number of mounds which dot them — silent monuments of ancient towns or cities, for excavations in any of them bring to light fragments of pottery, and burnt or sun-dried bricks, and even fragments of pillars, and stones squared by the mason. In all probability, some of these indicate the true sites of the long-lost cities. There is no reason, from the language of Scripture, to think of these cities as submerged, nor is the mode of their destruction difficult to understand. The whole region is full of the materials for such a catastrophe as overtook them. Wells of liquid bitumen, or, as we may call it, petroleum, abounded in the neighbourhood, and vast quantities of it ooze through the chalky rocks, while the bottom of the lake is bedded with it, vast masses rising to 120 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. the surface after any convulsion, as in the case of the great earthquake of 1837. Indeed, huge cakes float up, at times, even when there is no seismal disturbance, and are seized by the Bedouins, who carry what they can gather to Jerusalem for sale. Sulphur abounds, in layers and fragments, over the plains and along the shores of the lake. We have only, therefore, to imagine a terrific storm, in which the lightning kindled this vast accumula¬ tion of combustibles, aided, perhaps, by an earthquake setting free additional stores from the hill-sides and the lake depths, fo have a conflagration, the fiery sulphurous sparks and flames of which would in very deed be fire and brimstone out of heaven, burning up the whole dis¬ trict, with all the towns or cities on it. The .fullest and only reliable account of this stupendous judgment is that given in Scripture, but it is the subject of local traditions, and ancient Assyria has left us a striking legend which seems to have sprung from it.1 No one appears to have passed along the eastern shore of the lake since the famous traveller Seetzen did so, in 1807. The whole journey is over a region in vivid keep¬ ing with the story of the destruction of the doomed cities. It was only with the greatest difficulty that any progress could be made, so rough and almost impassable was the track. The rocks stand up in a succession of huge terraces, on the lowest of which, but still far above the water, lies the path, if path it can be called which leaves one to climb and force himself through and over a chaos of enormous blocks of limestone, sandstone, and basalt, fallen from the cliffs above, or brings him abruptly to a stand before wild clefts in the solid walls of the precipice. The range of salt hills at the south, known as Jehel Usdum, is no less worthy of its place as a boundary of the 1 Goikio, Hours with the Bible, i. 392. XXX.] THE DEAD SEA. 121 Sea of Death. Mr. Holman Hunt resided here for several days in 1854, and has given us in his terrible picture of “The Scapegoat” an embodiment of the land¬ scape of that portion of the Head Sea at sunset ; a vision of the most appalling desolation. The salt hills run for several miles nearly east and west, at a height of from three hundred to four hundred feet, level atop, and not very broad the mass being a body of rock-salt, capped with a bed of gypsum and chalk. Dislocated, shattered, furrowed into deep clefts by the rains, or standing out in narrow, ragged buttresses, they add to the weird associations of all around. Here and there, harder portions of the salt, withstanding the weather while all around them melts and wears off, rise up as isolated pillars, one of which bears, among the Arabs, the name of Lot’s wife.1 In front of the ridge, the ground is strewn with lumps and masses of salt, through, which streamlets of brine run across the long muddy flat towards the beach, which itself sparkles in the sun with a crust of salt, shining as if the earth had been sown with diamonds. Everywhere, except at the very few spots where fresh springs, or streams, enter it, the lake deserves the evil name it has borne for ages. The stillness of death reigns. Here and there, indeed, birds sing and twitter on its banks, and in favoured spots rich vegetation covers the rocks; Bedouins, pilgrims, and travellers visit its shores ; hut these gleams of life only deepen the impression of its unutterable lone¬ liness. In connection with the awful story of Sodom and Gomorrah, it seems written over with a curse and blighted by the judgment of Heaven, and this seems to have been the feeling even in Bible times, for in the blissful days of the Messiah, as painted by ’Ezekiel, the salt sea is to give place to a wide expanse of living and cheerful waters. 2 1 Gen. xix. 26. 2 Ezek. xlvii. 8. CHAPTER XXXI. MAR SABA. It would be unpardonable in anjmne wlio visits tbe Jordan valley not to make liis way to tlie strange old- world monastery of Mar Saba, named after “ Saint Sabas,” wlio was born so long ago as a.d. 439, in Cappadocia, and at the age of eighteen turned hermit and founded this monastery in the wild hills over the Dead Sea. The easiest route to this strange community, which offers such a link with early Christianity, is by a track leading west¬ wards from the shore of the Dead Sea, up the Wady Eeshkliah. It runs at first across the border of the lake, through scattered weeds and gaunt shrubs, which break the utter barrenness of the undulating chalky ground, aided in some spots by a few patches of reeds and flowers. After little more than a mile, these earth-waves begin to swell into low hills, white, like the soil of the plain. No rocks are visible, however, till the mountains are reached, but the scene around is still very bare and un¬ inviting. Among the upper hills, grass shoots out here and there from the clefts of the rocks, as the way con¬ tinues in successive easy upward and downward slopes; at one time through a narrow wady, which shuts out the view except of its rough sides ; at another, up the moun¬ tains, to a small plain above ; then, presently, down to a valley; all alike desolate. A little more than a mile before reaching: Mar Saba o Chap. XXXI.] MAR SABA. 123 the path leads to a tremendous gorge, which is part of the Valley Kedron, or, in Arabic, the Wady en Var. Perpendicular precipices rise more than six hundred feet above the abyss from which they spring, but a well-built road, guarded by a strong stone fence, leads one safely high up the west side of the chasm, and brings the monastery in sight. Its lofty, massive towers are seen clinging to the almost plumb-line sides of bare rocks rising up wildly above it, and sinking beneath it into frightful depths, with great walls of rock, hundreds of feet up and down, forming the other side of the wady, and the only view before the monks on the eastern side of the valley. Fearful desolation and loneliness reign around. You seek in vain for a blade or leaf of green, to relieve the bareness of the shattered and weathered rocks. In summer the heat reflected from the naked precipices is almost unendurable, and in winter the rains stream in torrents from the heights, checked by no soil or herbage. In an age like the fifth century, when the Homan Empire was breaking up, and the world itself seemed sink¬ ing into ruin, the craving after retirement from universal commotion and storm drove multitudes to seek a retreat in the loneliest spots they could find. Among these, few could realise the ideal of entire banishment from mankind more than Mar Saba. Early known from its nearness to the holy places of the faith, it was natural that in such a troubled age it should attract numerous hermits. A passion for desert life had seized almost every earnest soul. Hither, therefore, came an army of eremites, who hewed out for themselves small caves in these rocks, and used them for dwellings. Multitudes of such cells are to be seen on both sides of the awful gorge, for there were in this part at one time as many as 10,000 of these re¬ nounces of the world. From among these, the anchorite 124 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Sabas, about the middle of the fifth century, collected a number who agreed to live together, and thereupon he laid the foundation of the cloister which bears his name. Many storms have passed over it in the fourteen centuries since his day, for it has often been plundered and laid waste, and hundreds of monks have perished by the sword or spear of the foe. Indeed, even in this century it has been once more surprised and plundered by a Bedouin horde, so that its defenceless loneliness, in the wild hills, has from the earliest times made fortifications a necessity. The famous Emperor Justinian contributed to these a watch-tower, which rises imposingly on the north side of the monastery, and still shows its high antiquity by remnants of peculiar masonry, though it has been in great measure rebuilt, with its connecting walls, within the last fifty years. How the stones were ever brought to such a place, or built up into the castle -like wall which rises, step over step, from the precipitous ab}7ss, clinging to the nearly upright slope till it joins the tower above the monastery, is a mystery. Fortu¬ nately, such a defence was needed only on one side, for a 37awning chasm effectually protects the other. Steps cut out from the dry torrent bed below lead, in one di¬ rection, to a carefully fortified postern, and, in another, to the flat shelf above, from which the tower rises. To secure space for the monastery, huge buttresses have been piled up on a slight bend in the rocks and filFd in behind, so that the main buildings can rest against them. Above this rise the cells of the monks, clinging to the mountain, one over the other, like swallows’ nests, rude balconies of many patterns projecting from before them, over the dizzy chasm, and forming a picture as romantic as can be imagined. To obtain admission, it is necessary to have with you XXXI.] MAR SABA. 125 an order from the Greek monastery at Jerusalem, and this you must put into a basket, let down from the watch- tower by the monk who is on duty there for the time. If, after being carefully examined, it prove satisfactory, a little iron -barred door is opened, and you are admitted. No Bedouin or woman is allowed to enter on any account, but a tower outside has been set apart for their lodging, and they are supplied with the simple fare of the monks. Inside the iron door, a second gate, at the bottom of some steps, admits to a second flight. At the foot of this we- reach a small courtyard, with a still smaller garden, from which a third flight of stairs leads to the guest- chamber. All this masonry, and, indeed, every part of the stonework throughout the monastery, is admirably substantial, as if intended to serve many generations of inmates. The whole scene presents a confusion of small courts, chapels, churches, cells, projecting windows or terraces, and microscopic gardens, for every spot that will hold soil is utilised to redeem the savagery of the land¬ scape by refreshing green. A solitary palm rises at the very edge of the monastery plateau, waving over the deeps below, and fig-trees send out their branches at every corner. The holiest part of the establishment is a low cave which has been made into a double chapel, where you are shown the grave of St. Sabas, and the skulls of some hundreds of monks, who are said to have fallen before the Persian invader Chosroes, in the beginning of the seventh century. East of this cave, on the very edge of the abyss, stands a roomy church, renovated of late years by the Emperor of Russia, who has fitted up its interior richly with gold and silver, hut also with hateful paintings, in the style of the Greek Church. In the tower over the church are three small bells, whose sound is heard as far as the west side of the Dead Sea, 12t> THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. where it falls on the ear of the Christian traveller with a wonderful impressiveness in these regions lonely as the grave. From the terrace on the roof of the church yon look sheer down into the awful depths. Underneath the church is the cistern from which the monks draw their best water. The cave in which St. Sabas lived and died is also within the walls — a grotto of two chambers, only fit for a dwelling to one resolute in self-denial. The library of the monastery formerly contained about a thousand manuscripts in Greek, and several of parts of the Old Testament, but the monks are not literary, and these treasures have wisely been removed to a monastery near Jerusalem. The community, indeed, are profoundly ignorant, as they well may be, since they attend seven services every twenty-four hours, between four in the morning and midnight. They never taste fresh meat, and eggs only on Sundays ; a small brown loaf, some cabbage broth, some olives, an onion, half an orange, quarter of a lemon, six figs, and half a pint of weak wine, being their daily allowance through the week. But with all this apparent self-denial there is no religious activity. The monks, who are drawn from Turkey, Greece, the Archi¬ pelago, or Russia, content themselves with barren idleness, so far as the advancement of their Church is concerned. It is very pleasant, in such a place, to see the small, well-tended gardens in which these recluses cultivate vege¬ tables and flowers. Some vines, growing where possible, form refreshing flecks of shade in the blinding sunshine by being trained over rude frames of poles standing out from the doorways or walls ; but even with their help there is very little shelter from the light and heat. Nor can it be easy for novices to accustom themselves to some of the cells, which are close to the precipice, with no protection before them, so that even to see their inmates sitting on XXXI.] MAR SABA 127 places so dangerous makes one involuntarily shudder. The solitary palm tells its own tale of the situation, for it is secured with chains, to prevent its toppling into the abyss below. The birds and wild animals which frequent the neighbourhood are the only companions the monks can he said to have. Here man and the humbler creatures live on the friendliest footing with each other. Canon Tristram noticed a wolf which came every evening, as the bell tolled six, to get a piece of bread dipped in oil and dropped over the wall to him by a monk at that hour. A whole pack of jackals also came regularly to b3 fed, and a small troop of foxes. Even the timid grackles, which are found only round the Dead Sea, perch in flocks at Mar Saba, catch berries as they are thrown into the air by some recluse, sit on the shoulders of their human friends, eat out of their hands, and allow themselves to be played with and stroked ; a wonderful illustration of the power of human love over lower nature, carrying one back to the old days of Paradise, or forward to the Millennium. An evening at Mar Saba is an experience one cannot forget. There are nearly always travellers of different nationalities visiting so curious a place during the season. As they arrive, their tents are set up in the little glen on the west, the crowd of mules and horses attending them being picketed before the monastery, which, for the time, is turned into a hospice on a large scale. Peasants offer memorials of Mar Saba — sticks, rosaries, and the like, at wonderfully low prices for the locality ; Arab guides, mule- drivers, Greek monks, and travellers, perhaps from France, Germany, England, and America, talk, each in his own lan¬ guage, till it seems like a reproduction of the noisy con¬ fusion of the gift of tongues. In the refectory, long tables are covered with pleasant white cloths, and wax candles in tasteful holders light up the shining plates and 128 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. dark wine- flasks, as in some European inn of modest pre¬ tensions. The men connected with the tents bake their bread outside the cloister, in the hot ashes of the fires, turning the dough carefully and often, that it may not burn ; just as Sarah did when she “ made [round] cakes on the hearth,” that is, on the wood ashes, for the three mys¬ terious visitors to her husband’s tent.1 This is the common way of preparing bread among Orientals at the present day when they are in haste or on a journey, but it has been practised from the earliest times. The bread baked by the Israelites on the night of their departure from Egypt was made thus.2 Even their manna-bread seems to have been cooked by them under the ashes, into which it was put in earthenware dishes.3 The cake prepared for Elijah by the widow of Sarepta, and that which he found near the “ retem ” bush in the wilderness, were both from this primitive oven.4 Hosea compares Ephraim to such a cake burnt, and yet only half baked, because the necessary turning had been neglected : ° that is, to interpret the comparison, scorched by the judgments of God, hut not benefited by them, as it would have been if they had been rightly used. Ezekiel also tells us, incidentally, that even in Babylon his countrymen baked their cakes of barley meal in the same fashion.6 But the entertain¬ ment in Mar Saha must not be supposed to be very elabor¬ ate. Hospitable it certainly is, but it is of course limited to the simple fare which the monks can give, in a place so out of tlm world, and in such an abstinent community. It is hard to realise a stranger spot than this lonely dwelling of men. Its huge flying buttresses, castellated 1 Gen. xviii. 6. The word “ ugah ” means a round cake of bread. The Septuagint and the Yulgate both translate the Hebrew word by “ cakes baked in the ashes.” 4 1 Kings xvii. 13 ; xix. 6. 2 Ex. xii. 39. 5 Hos. vii. 8 3 Num. xi. 8. 6 Ezek. iv. 12. XXXI.] MAR SABA. 129 walls, liigh towers, and steep ascent of churches, cells, guest¬ house, and offices, hard to he distinguished from the colour of the rocks to which they cling ; the awful precipice of nearly four hundred feet, above and below, aptly called the Valley of Fire, hare and tawny, and falling sheer down, as if the hills had been violently rent apart by some terrible earthquake, — can never be forgotten. Nor is the silence less impressive, for no sounds ever disturb it hut the bell¬ like notes of the grackle, the howl of the jackal or wolf, or the twittering of the swallow. The heat, moreover, is terrible in summer, for walls of chalk and high ridges shut out the refreshing western breeze, and there is no cooling green to temper the burning noon and soothe the imagination. Even in the caves of the old hermits, so numerous around, there is no relief, for they seem hotter than the open air. Yet this hideous desert has, from the earliest times, even before Christianity, been a favourite retreat of ascetics. Colonies of Essenes flourished here in the time of Christ. Scattered over the land, more than four thousand members of this strange community lived apart, in the villages and even in the towns, but their chief settlement was in this ghastly “ Wilderness of Judaea,” fitly called in Scripture “ Jeshimon ” — “ The Solitude.” They lived together like monks, wearing a white upper garment as their distinctive badge, and had rules as strict as those of any modern cloister ; indeed, more so, from their supreme anxiety to observe all the ten thousand require¬ ments of the Rabbinical law. In this wilderness, again, lived the hermit Banus, mentioned by Josephus, and it was in these frightful gorges that John the Baptist spent his years of meditation and prayer, before he made his appearance on the Jordan, calling his nation to repentance in preparation for the Messiah. The mountains of this region, though still high above 130 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. the level of the Dead Sea, are very little above that of the Mediterranean, and consequently are far below the height of those to the west, towards Jerusalem and Bethlehem, from which one looks down on the locality of Mar Saba. The stratified limestone of these loftier hills no longer appears in the region of the monastery, but instead of it we have a soft white chalk, worn by the winter storms into long, sharp ridges, standing up high and rough between narrow gorges, the bottom of which is a mass of stones and boulders. A thin sprinkling of grass and howlers softens this forbidding landscape in spring, but that soon withers, and leaves, for nearly the whole year, only a bewilderment of strange knolls, peaks, rugged spurs, and knife-like ridges, utterly treeless and waterless, to reflect the glare of the sun from the universal whiteness. Behind the monastery, to the west, there is a wall of lofty hills, while to the east a table-land of water- worn marl, cut into innumerable ridges, knolls, peaks, ravines, and crags, stretches slowly downwards to the precipices, twelve hundred feet high, that overhang the Dead Sea. Among the mountain-tops to the west of Mar Saba, the highest is that of El Muntar, “ The Watch Tower,” brown and barren, and marked by the steep slope, un¬ broken except by precipices, with which it descends to the plateau beneath. This hill, in Captain Conder’s opinion, is famous as the scene of a yearly peculiarity of great interest in the old Jewish religious economy. 1 Moses had ordered the scapegoat to be led to the wilderness and set free, but one having found its way back to Jerusalem in later times, it was felt that, to pre¬ vent the recurrence of an event so ominous, the creature should henceforth be led to the top of a high mountain, 1 Tent Work in Palestine, 155. XXXI.] MAR SABA. 131 from whicli there was a steep rolling slope, and pushed over, so that it might be killed before it reached the bottom. Sabbath was the day on which it was driven out from Jerusalem, and as the law forbidding a journey of more than two thousand cubits on that day hindered the new arrangement, means were found to evade it. At the limit of each legally permissible advance, a booth was erected to represent the home of the person in charge of the goat, and he had thus only to eat and drink in it, however slightly, to be able to flatter himself that he was setting out each time from his own house on a lawful journey. It required ten such booths between the hill selected and the Temple — a distance of about six and a half miles. This distance is just that of the lofty El Muntar, at which, beside the old road from Jerusalem, is a well called Suk, the name given by the Hebrews to the hill of the scapegoat, while the district, which they called Hidoodim, is still known as Hadeidun. It thus seems very reasonable to look on this moun¬ tain as that from the summit of which a poor goat was each year hurled into the gorge far below, in accord¬ ance with the letter of the command that it was to be let go into the wilderness,1 for Jeshimon is seen from the top of El Muntar, sinking, in all its hideous desolation, to the east. It was only by a succession of legal fictions, however, that the goat-slayer could reach the fatal spot on the Sabbath, and the casuistry of the Rabbis could stretch conscience no farther. Having thrown the un¬ fortunate animal down the steep, the messenger fell back on the usual Sabbath-day law for his return, and had to wait until sundown, when the Sabbath was over, before starting* again for Jerusalem. o o The reputation of the Mar Saba monks does not 1 Lev. xvi. 8 — 10. / 2 132 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. XXXI. support tlie belief that either multiplicity of devotional services, or a life of seclusion and external simplicity, can secure the highest ideal of religious life. They are mostly old men, but their faces speak more of ignorance, or even of evil, not seldom dashed with abiding sadness, than of lofty enthusiasm or a noble striving for heaven. In their long black gowns and black hats — like our hateful stiff cylinders, though with the rim at the top instead of the bottom — they seem almost dead while they live. Hopeless and aimless, they vegetate in their strange home, half of them unable to read the manuscripts in their library, which they nevertheless carefully guard from the eyes of heretics. They may neither smoke nor eat meat inside the walls, but they manage occasionally to get raw spirits from travellers. Than theirs, no life could well be more pitiable. CHAPTER XXXII. ' TO EMMAUS AND KIEJATH JEARIM. So many places famous in the Bible lie near Jerusalem that it seemed best to make a short excursion to some which were rather out of the way, before starting for the north. Leaving the city, therefore, by the Joppa Gate, and going westward, past a number of orchards belonging to Greek Christians, a quarter of an hour brought us to a height from which we had our last look, for the time, at the city of “the Great King.” It had been raining, and the way was not only muddy, but crossed by large pools, so that our progress was neither rapid nor pleasant. Thanks to the Christians, a fresh valley showed flourishing orchards of mulberry-trees, where a few years ago all was desolation; and in a little side glen to the right, we passed a lofty, well-built structure reared by the Greek Patriarch, through the aid of Russia, as an upper school for both sexes, and also as a hospice for travellers. A monastery was erected on the site more than a thousand years ago, in the belief that the wood of Christ’s cross was hewn from a tree on this spot, and even that it grew on the grave of Adam, our Saviour thus being linked in the most touching way, as the second Adam, with the first. From very early times myriads of pilgrims, accepting both legends, have streamed to this Convent of the Holy Cross to kiss the spot where the tree was supposed to have once stood. Simple they may be, but, let us hope, none 134 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. the less sincere and earnestly humble in their devotion to the Blessed One. The old church is still standing, though now surmounted by a clock-tower built in the Russian style, which sounds out its invitation to prayer over the villages around, with little effect on their Mahommedan inhabitants. Beyond the monastery the valley broadens, and is varied by rounded heights and side openings. Ere long the village of Malliah came in sight on a fairly green hill, nearly 2,500 feet above the sea, hut not very much above the surrounding country. South of it, Sherafat, another hamlet of mud houses, crowned another height a little more elevated — for here, as elsewhere, the villages are on hill-tops, for safety. Gardens of roses cheered the way from time to time, and fine olive groves were fre¬ quent. The roses were most numerous near a spring called Yalo, where the wady was hemmed in by high, steep walls of rock, about a mile south from Malhah. The fountain bubbles from the southern side of the glen, the water flowing in a stone tunnel, over a low stone wall. There were men, women, and children at it, with jars and skins, and other women washing very sorry linen, singing, I am glad to say, as they beat it with stones. Near at hand was a rain-pool with some water in it, the spring gliding past down the glen on its way to fructify gardens. Figs and olives covered the slope, over which the rocks shot up abruptly to a great height. The spot is naturally a favourite watering-place for the flocks of the surrounding hills. The little valley was green with the spring crops, but one could not even here forget mortality, for tombs, cut in the rocks, preached their quiet sermon as we passed. Fertility, moreover, was confined to the spots reached by the water, the hills being wretchedly barren and stony where there was none. This district is, however, rich in XXXII.] TO EMMAUS AND KIRJATH JEARIM. 135 springs, one — Ain Hanniyeh, about a mile beyond Ain Yalo — especially attracting attention by a structure over it, adorned with Corinthian pillars and a niclie. From this the waters flowed at a height of about ten feet, in del ightful fulness, forming a small pool below, from which a copious brook streamed pleasantly down the valley. A long wall ran along from both sides of the spring,, about twenty feet above the path, to lead off water to irrigate terraces on the slope. Close to each other, an ass was drinking and a woman filling her water-jar at the pool. Fig-trees grew on the banks, and were just putting out their leaves ; vines blending with them, as in the old Bible times when the vine and the fig-tree were o planted together. Tulips, lilies, ranunculi, and cyclamens lighted up the borders of the grain-patches beside the waters of the fountain, as these flowed dimpling on to water the gardens of the valley through which the road to Gaza ran in early times. With this fact as its ground¬ work, legend has very naturally created a story of this rich spring being that at which St. Philip baptised the eunuch. But though there is no basis for such a fancy, the road itself, which is at this place broad, and was once well made, may have been that by which the Chamber- lain of Queen Candace rode homewards from Jerusalem.1 A slight descent leads from this spot to the hamlet of El Welejeh, which lies in the midst of cultivated ground high on the western side of a deep but short valley. Shepherds and peasants, with their flocks or at their work, enlivened the way, though our track was again impeded by the pools left by the late rains. About a mile beyond Welejeh lay the village of Bittir, on the south-west, high on a slope pleasantly banked with fine green terraces ; a sparkling rivulet flowing down from it towards us, while 1 Acts viii. 36 — 39. 136 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. the ancient road to Gaza ran up the hill through the village street. Nothing could be more inviting than this quiet nook, with its richly irrigated grain-patches and gardens, dotted with olive- and fig-trees, and fitted beyond many for the vine and mulberry. We may readily sup¬ pose that in ancient times its charms made it attractive, but now the hills around are left to nature, are rough with the stunted trees and bushes familiar in Palestine, and are haunted only by birds and wild beasts. They may, however, have been the same in early days, for the sacred poet in Canticles cries, “ Turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Betlier.”1 But there are other memories of the place. It was the scene of the final destruction of the Jewish power in the Holy Land, by the Bomans, in the reign of Hadrian. Surrounded on every side except the south by deep and rugged gorges, and supplied with water by a spring rising in ground above it, Betlier was a position immensely strong. The north side especially, with its steep cliffs springing from the bottom of the ravine, was virtually impreg¬ nable. At a quarter of a mile to the south of the present village, a shapeless mass of ruin preserves the memory of the great struggle, in its name, Khurbet el Yejiud — “ Bum of the Jews.” Perhaps it is a part of the strong citadel of the town. The leader in this tremendous struggle2 was the pretended Messiah, Bar Cocliba, who had at least the merit of tenacity, whatever his other shortcomings. The Babbis, with their usual exaggeration, tell us that Bether was so large that it had four hundred synagogues and as many schools, each with four hundred children, but it is at least certain that it was a considerable place, even be¬ fore the fall of Jerusalem, and rose to great prosperity after that event ; not, perhaps, without a secret comfort in the 1 Cant, ii. 17. 2 See Yol. I., p. 91. XXXII.] TO EMMAUS AND KIBJATH JEABIM. 137 thought that the destruction of the capital was the fortune of the rival community. Rabbi Akaba, the standard- bearer of Bar Cochba, was taken prisoner and flayed alive when the city fell, repeating, as he died, the grand words of the morning prayer of the Temple, “Hear, 0 Israel ! the Lord our God is one Lord.” Eighty thousand men are said to have fallen when Hadrian’s soldiers rushed through the breaches of the walls, and the extinction of Jewish hope by the catastrophe was so complete — for the nation had been decimated in the revolt — that those who had hitherto hailed the leader of the insurrection as Bar Cochba — “ the Son of a Star” — henceforth reviled him as Bar Cosiba — “the son of a lie.”1 Bat, discarding all legendary matter, there is something unspeakably touch¬ ing in the presence of such a memorial of the death of an ancient nationality. For here, undoubtedly, in the year 136 of our era — sixty -four years after the destruction of Jerusalem — Israel fought its last despairing battle with its giant foe, and its last band of heroes perished with their leader, the Star-son, after having resisted the legions of Borne for three years and a half. It is wonderful how little remains of a place so important, but there are many similar cases in the Holy Land; the common houses, built only of mud, soon vanishing, while the cut stones of public buildings or mansions have heen carried off for building material to modern towns. It was pathetic in the extreme to notice the frequent ruins in this neighbourhood. Every hill had its own pile, speaking of a dense population in happier times, ages ago. The stream from Bittir ran for a time joy¬ ously over a broad bed down the little valley, but ere Ions* sank below the stones which filled its course. There were no signs of human industry on the slopes or in the 1 Hamburger, ii. 107. 138 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. hollow : all was overgrown with thorns and worthless bushes and weeds. The whole landscape, indeed, was now wild and uninhabited. Nowhere was a village or house to he seen in the glens and valleys, and a couple of patches of green on one of the slopes were the only sign that human beings were at all near. Rough bushes and scrub, mixed with beds of sage and thyme, dotted the chalky rocks, multitudinous fragments of which covered the path and made progress far from pleasant. It is from such places in the hills that the people get their fagots and charcoal for fuel. There are no trees, but only dwarfed brushwood, netting the hill-sides in wild brakes. The smoke of charcoal-burners’ fires frequently rose, marking one great cause of the absence of trees, for these c‘ hewers of wood,” still poor landless creatures as of old,1 do not content themselves with lopping off branches, but dig up even the roots of what wood there is. Two miles and a half west from Bittir, the village of Er Ras broke the monotonous desolation, though it ap¬ peared that we had passed one small mud hamlet, on the south, without seeing it. The rounded summits, all alike grey and barren, were still about 2,400 feet above the sea, but valleys of all sizes ran in every direction among them, and the terraces on the slopes near the village showed that only labour was needed to make the desert break into fruitfulness. Cattle and goats fed on the slopes ; and in the hamlet old and young gathered round to look at the rare sight of a stranger from the West. Outside the houses, or rather hovels, was a broad open space covered with smooth sheets of rock, the resting-place of the camels, cattle, sheep, and goats of the peasants, as was only too clear from the difficulty I found in getting a clean spot on which to sit down. No doubt 1 Dent. xxix. 11 ; Josli. ix. 21, 27. XXXII.] TO EMMAUS AND KIEJATH JEARIM. 139 sucli a wide stony platform is used in autumn as a thresh¬ ing floor, exposed as it is to tlie free sweep of the wind. Close to the hamlet, a miniature glen showed how strangely barrenness and fertility elbow each other in Palestine. Clear springs flowed in two places over the rocks into the hollow, and along their course among the stones, hemmed in by the yellow boulders, were some flne lemon-trees in their glory of green and gold, with a number of vines and fig-trees, and underneath there was a carpet of soft green. In vivid contrast with this delightful spot, the hill south¬ west from it rose utterly barren and desolate, nothing but thorns growing from amongst the stones with which it was thickly strewn. Yet there had once been a dense population in this region, for I counted no fewer than fourteen heaps of ruins in the neighbourhood, and when these were all inhabited, even the hills now washed so hare of soil, from the want of terraces to retain it, must have been more or less fertile. Passing first west and then north, the track led up a long wady, to which a number of carob-trees lent a rare charm ; but there were no human habitations near them. A spring flowing to the north was the secret of their pre¬ sence, and, indeed, springs are numerous in all these Judsean highlands. They are, as Deuteronomy says, “a land of hills and valleys, that drinketh water of the rain of heaven : ” 1 a land, as the Psalmist tells us, in which God “ sendetli the springs into valleys, which run among the hills.” 2 But the hills themselves still rose grey and barren as ever, though, as the road fell towards the next village of Deir-esli-Sheikh, there were some grain and bean patches in the valley, with silver -leaved olives rising beside them. The huts stand near each other, surrounded by green, but they were as rude as others 1 Deut. xi. 11. 2 Ps. civ. 10. 140 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. elsewhere, the smoke of the household fires, kindled in some, having no egress except by the door. The houses of the poor must have been just like this in our Lord’s day, for if there has been no improvement in such matters since He lived, there cannot well have been any actual retrogression. The Wady Ismain, which is the name of this part of the great Wady Surar, or Sorek,1 opened before us, after an ascent of about two hundred feet from Deir-esh- Sheikli, showing a stream, fed by the late rains, whirl¬ ing on, grey and brown, some hundreds of feet below, between high walls of rock. Following this, though on the heights above it, a bend to the south brought in view the village of Beit Atab, which crowns an isolated hill rising some hundreds of feet above those around. The ridge along which our track lay, seamed with larger and smaller wadys, was a picture of desolation. Great lizards darted out and in among the stones : partridges flew up from among the bushes of Spina Christi and scrub of all kinds with which the white stony hill was thickly sprinkled. A shepherd in one of the wadys watched his sheep and goats, attended by his dog ; mallows and other plants on the slopes giving a kind of thin pasture. About two miles east of Deir-esh-Sheikh lay the village of El Hawa, on the top of a hill 2,100 feet above the sea, looking far and wide over the frontier hills of Judah, and down into the great Philistine plain. Descending by very rough and often steep tracks, we reached Wady Najil, which runs north and south across the great Wady Surar. Hedges of prickly pear surrounded the gardens of Deir Aban, a small village. It was pleasant to see Zorali once more, its sweeping length and broad bosom rich with tender green. Nearly the whole width 1 See Yol. I., p. 98. XXXII.] TO EMMAUS AND KIRJATH JEARIM. 141 of tlie valley was covered wTitli rising crops of grain, through which the almost dry bed of the winter torrent twisted, serpent-like, hither and thither, in a deep white trench, looking from a distance like some grand military highway. The hills on the south of the wady sloped gently down ; those on the north of it rose steep and high. Shepherds were driving home numerous herds of cattle as it drew near sunset ; peasants, carrying home their light ploughs on their backs, wended their way to their village, some of them singing in their own nasal manner as they plodded on. All Orientals seem to sing thus, through the nose. Did David do so ? Most likely, for manners never change in the East. I was once more on the borders of Samson’s country. There were the grey houses of Sura, on the steep hill¬ top where the hero was born and grew up, with the great valley winding down to the Shephelah at his feet. Bethshemesh, 250 feet below it, lay on the other side of the wady, about two miles off. It was here that King Amaziah of Judah was beaten by Jehoash, the King of the Ten Tribes, who thus justified the con¬ temptuous message he had sent his foolhardy foe — “The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife : and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trod down the thistle.”1 About three miles rather south-east from Bethshemesh, lay Timnath, famous in Samson’s story,2 and three miles and a half due south from it was the Ashkelon where he slew the thirty Philistines, to get their “ abbas,” in payment for the riddle treacherously revealed by his Philistine wife. 3 Captain Conder thinks he has identified in this neigh¬ bourhood another spot famous in Bible story, the rock 1 2 Kings xivr. 8 — 14. 2 Judg. xiv. 5 11. 3 Judg. xiv. 19. 142 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Etam, in a* cleft or cliasm of which — not on its “ top ” — Samson “hid himself”1 when hotly pursued by the Philis¬ tines. The substitution of B for M by the modern population of Palestine, as in Tibneh for Timneh — is so common, that the name Atab — a hamlet about five miles south-west of Betlishemesh — is thought to be, very prob- abhr, a corruption of Etam, especially as the locality exactly suits the details of the Old Testament narrative. Etam means the “ Eagle’s Nest,” and this even the village might well be called, as it lies more than two thousand feet above the sea. There is, besides, a tall cliff of hard limestone, without a handful of arable soil on it, rising up from amidst three ravines, and marked by three small springs bubbling from its foot. In this hill there is a long narrow cavern into which Samson might naturally have “ gone down,” and which bears the significant name of Hasuta, or “ Befuge,” the word being Hebrew, not Arabic. 2 It is 250 feet long, eighteen feet wide, and five to eight feet high, with its one end under the centre of the modern village, and its other within sixty yards of the principal spring ; the entrance, here, being by a hole in the rock, ten feet deep. In such close proximity to other places associated with Samson’s name, such a spot seems to have strong claims to be added to their number. Half way between Atab and Betlishemesh is another site, very interesting, if Christian tradition dating .from the fourth century can be trusted — that of Ebenezer, where Samuel called back the Hebrews from their pursuit of the Philistines, and set up a memorial stone, com¬ memorating the help vouchsafed them by God. 3 Captain Conder thinks it also probable that the Emmaus of the New Testament has been identified by him in this district, 1 *Tudg. xv. 8. 2 Tent Worh, 142. 3 1 Sam. vii. 12. XXXII.] TO EMMAUS AND KIRJATH JEARIM. 143 in the ruin called Kliaraasa, about three miles and a half south-east of Atab. This spot has certainly the advantage of being nearly “threescore furlongs from Jerusalem/’ as Emmaus is said to have been, both by St. Luke and Josephus,1 and the name is not unlike Emmaus, if the first letter be dropped. The narrow valley in which the ruin lies has copious springs, and gardens shady with the dark green and gold of orange and lemon trees; and the remains of an old Roman road from Jerusalem passes close by. On the western slope stands a modern village, the hill behind which rises bare and rocky, showing ancient tombs cut in it, now used as storehouses. Vespasian, when he left Judsea, settled eight hundred veterans at Emmaus, and if this were the place, it must have been a grateful retreat from the dangers and exposures of war. Other sites, however, have been regarded as having claims to the dignity of representing Emmaus. The village of Am was, for example, slightly north-west from Jerusalem, has been thus honoured from a very early period, but it is a hundred and sixty furlongs from Jeru¬ salem, which would make the journey to and from it on the same day quite beyond the distance usually walked at one time by the ancient Jews, the two ways making between them no less than forty miles, which would require at least sixteen hours’ walking at the ordinary rate of the country. That it is called Am was is no proof of its claim, for the name may easily have fol¬ lowed the erroneous identification. “ Emmaus ” is a cor¬ ruption of the ancient Hebrew word “ Hammath,” implying the presence of a hot spring, as Josephus notices, for he says — “ How Emmaus, if it be interpreted, may be ren¬ dered ‘ a warm bath ’ useful for healing,” 2 and Am was has 1 Luke xxiv. 13 ; Jos., Bell. Jud. vii. 6, 6. 2 Jos., Bell. Jud. iv. 1 — 3 ; Ant. xviii. 2, 3. 144 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. in its favour the fact of having been celebrated, in early Christian times, for its healing spring ; a local feature still perhaps recognised in the name, “Well of the Plague/’ applied to a well in the village. But Amwas and Khamasa may fairly claim equal nearness to the Hebrew “ Hammath,” so that little rests on this detail. But there is a third site for which strong claims have been urged — the village of Kulonieh, which fulfils the condition of being sixty furlongs from Jerusalem. I shall notice it hereafter. In this region, so thickly sown with Scripture memories, the Palestine Surveyors suppose that they have discovered another site famous in Bible history — Kirjath Jearim, which Captain Conder identifies with a heap of ruins called Khurbet Erma.1 It is about four miles nearly east of Bethshemesh, but a thousand feet higher above the sea. Approaching it from the east, by the great gorge which, under different names, runs from near Gibeon to Beth¬ shemesh, and ascending the slopes on which is the little ruined village of Deir-esh-Sheikh, you see the white bed of a torrent far beneath, twisting in wide bends beneath steep hills, which rise fully a thousand feet above it. The slopes on both sides are stony and seamed with outcrops of rock, and both, but especially the southern, are covered with a dense brushwood of dwarfed oak, hawthorn, carob, and other trees, no higher than well-grown shrubs ; every vacant space adding to the pleasantness of the view by a carpet of thyme, sage, and other aromatic plants. On a bold spur running out from the southern slope, and marked by a curious platform of rock which rises in the centre, above the olive-trees round, lie the ruins of Erma, built up against scarps, natural or artificial. They have all the appearances of the site of an ancient town, some of 1 Palestine Memoirs , 4to, iii. 43. XXXII.] TO EMMAUS AND KIRJATH JEARIM. 145 the walls showing traces of mortar; others being only rude blocks piled on each other. There is a fine rock-cut wine¬ press to the east, and on the south a great cistern covered with a large hollowed stone which forms the well- mouth, and looks so old and weathered that it may easily have lain there since the time when David came to the town to bring up the Ark to Jerusalem. There are also rude caves ; and the ground is strewn with fragments of ancient pottery. The platform of rock, which is fifty feet one way and thirty the other, rises about ten feet above the ground at its sides, and looks as if it had been artificially levelled ; perhaps as the floor of some ancient high place or shrine, once enclosed by walls, of which some large stones still remain, clinging to the scarped sides. Kirjath Jearim was anciently known also as Kirjath Baal : 1 may this raised floor have been that of the high place where the Sun- god was worshipped ? David is said to have found the Ark “in Gibeah”- — the Hill or Knoll: was this smooth rock the floor of the sanctuary in which it was kept ? 2 Cer¬ tainly it stands on a knoll, and “ the house of Abinadab ” may have been that of the guardian of the holy place. “Erma” does not seem very like Arim or Jearim, but the consonants — for the vowels are late additions — are the same in both,3 while the “thickets” or “ yaars ” from which the town got its name, “Jearim,” still clothe the slopes around to a degree rare in Palestine. There are other grounds of identification, but they require too much acquaintance with local details to be useful for popular statement, though their concurrent weight speaks strongly in favour of the site having really been here. In this quiet nook, then, we may think of the Ark as sacredly guarded for twenty years, after the destruction of the men of Bethshemesh for daring to look into it.4 On 1 Josh. xv. 60. 2 1 Sain. vii. 1. k 4 1 Sam. vi. 19. 3 146 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. this platform we may fancy David standing as the sacred chest was brought oub from its long seclusion, amidst chants of Levites and the shouts of the multitude. The view from the ruins is very striking. The valley winds, hither and thither, six or seven hundred feet below ; its northern side hollow with caves and scarped into cliffs. Beyond these caves and cliffs the great corn vale of Sorek, in ancient times “ The Camp of Dan,” reaches away to the west, past all the sites famous in the border history of Judah. From the top of the lofty hill on the north, moreover, one can see how natural^ the Ark might have been sent up from the lowlands of Bethsliemesh to a place so strongly posted, high in the rough hills. From Bethshemesh to Artuf, down the slope of Wady Surar and up the side of the opposite Wady Muttuk, the soil varied greatly in its fertility. In one place the grain was thin and stunted'; in another, so close and high that it was wearisome to make one’s way through it by the narrow path. Near Artuf, indeed, it was more than two feet above the ground, though the season was only the end of March, and we were more than nine hundred feet above the Mediterranean. Yet the soil here was very stony, so that the only explanation of the difference in the crops must have been the later or earlier sowing. There is little system among the peasants, as much as a month, in some cases, intervening between the seed-time of one man and that of his neighbour. There was no water in the deep trench of Wady Sorek, though the late rains had not only filled but overflowed the channel, as might he expected from the great number of side valleys that open on this great central glen. A few days before, the water had been rushing on its way down the upper part of this very strath, and now it was gone ; the very ideal of “ a deceitful brook,” so often used by the prophets as an image XXXII.] TO EMMAUS AND KIRJATH JEARIM. 147 of inconstancy. So Jeremiah thought when, in his de¬ spairing weakness, he cried out, “ Why is my pain per¬ petual, and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed ? Wilt thou indeed be unto me as a deceitful brook, as waters that fail P ” 1 So, too, J ob lamented, “ My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, as the channels of brooks that pass away ; what time they wax warm, they vanish ; when it is hot they are consumed out of their place.” 2 Artuf lies on a hill at the mouth of two wadys, north and south of it, that wind with countless side openings throughout Judsea — for it is impossible to say where any wady really ends, so entirely is the country made up of hills and glens, running in every possible direction, like the lines in a brain coral. The hill-sides were very stony, though here and there sown ; a few thorn-bushes holding their ground on spots where the rain had not been able to wash awaj all the soil. The country to the east was very desolate, but many heaps of ruins spoke of thick population in former times. Hills cleft into a wild, rough chaos of peaks rose, in many cases, well-nigh a thousand feet above the narrow ravines between them, offering a very different landscape from the rounded outlines usual in Judaea. From one point, indeed, the eye looked down on the plains, where the high tower of Eamleh was clearly visible. On a hill three hundred feet lower than Zorah, # on the other side of a wady, above a grove of olives, lay Esliuah,3 Samson’s home at one time ; about a mile from Zorah and Artuf, respectively. The hills on all sides of us were rough with stuuted “ bush,” and abounded in partridges, while the home-like voice of the cuckoo sounded near at hand. At one place some black swine broke 1 Jer. XV. 18 (R.V.). 2 Job vi. 15—17. 3 The modern name of the ancient Eshtaol. k 2 148 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. out of the cover on the slope, and ran hastily off, for safer shelter, whence, it may be, they sallied, after a time, to seek what they could get in any cultivated land in the neighbourhood, as in the days when “ the boar out of the wood wasted the vineyard of Israel, and the wild beast of the field devoured it.”1 The hill-sides as we passed were utterly stony, and could never have been tilled, though occasionally a small island of green showed itself in some hollow, as when we came to the hamlet of Akur, seated in just such a fertile nook, entirely surrounded by high hills. It lies a little off the line of the long Wady Surar, which runs behind it, as a narrow ravine, to the east, still vin¬ dicating its name for fruitfulness by a long grove of olives belonging to the village and stretching southwards from it, on the other side of its hill. There was even some rude tillage round the houses, and a few goats browsed on the bare hill-side. Some water still remained in the wady, and there were signs of the stream having recently been from four to six feet deep, and even of its covering the whole bottom of the narrow glen at times. Woe to the traveller caught in such a place in heavy rains. “ The waves of death ” would soon compass him about.2 It was often necessary to cross the torrent bed, and as the path must in all ages have been the same in such places, the words of our Lord, “ Pray that your flight be not in the winter,” came forcibly to mind.3 Stones, many of them of great- size, filled the channel, so that it was hard to get across, while it would have been impossible to advance any distance in the bed itself without great difficulty. Many women and girls passed, carrying on their heads huge bundles of thorns and fagots, for fuel, having come miles to gather them, just as women and girls used to do in ancient times.4 1 Ps. lxxx. 13. 2 Ps. xviii. 5. 3 Mark xiii. 18. 4 Isa. xxvii. 11 ; Jer. vii. 18. XXXII.] TO EMMAUS AND KIKJATH JEARIM. 149 The strip of country across which we had passed was barren enough, but to the north, over the hills, it was much better, very large olive plantations covering the slopes of not a few valleys. The belt of comparative fruitfulness stretched down to the next village on our course — Ain Karim — which lies beside a confluence of valleys, the hills over which were crowned with hamlets, while the valleys themselves were green with crops, and their slopes fair with waving olive-trees. The exceptional fertility around was, we found, a tribute to Western energy, for a colony of Franciscan monks had long been established at this spot, in the belief that the parents of J ohn the Baptist lived here ; and it was their industry, and that which they had roused or paid for in others, that had made things as they were. There is a fine spring, the Spring of the Blessed Mary, to which one goes down by two flights of stone steps, through the roofless arches of an old church. Bound it a number of women were gathered, beside an underground arch, washing, or draw¬ ing water. There is also a well dedicated to Zacharias and Elizabeth, the water of which is raised by the un¬ usual aid of a rope and pulley. Old walls and arches mark this spot also, but in the village new houses were actually being built ; a strange sight in Palestine. The large monastery built in honour of John the Baptist has a very fine position on a low, isolated hill, surrounded by others much higher. From the west it looks like a mediaeval castle ; its strong, castellated wall, enclosing a wide circuit, supports the illusion, though, outside, everything is of the ordinary local type. For centuries the church built over the place where tradition alleges the Baptist to have been born, had been used by the Mahommedans as a cowshed and sheepfold, but it was regained by that pious monarch, Louis XIV. of France, 150 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. for the Franciscans, and has since then been elaborately restored. The Greek Church sends its pilgrims to Jutta, near Hebron, as the place where St. John saw the light ; the Latin Church patronises Ain Karim. But the Greek locality has far the better claims to honour. Climbing the hill on which the village lies, we saw the white domes of the Russian Hospice at Jerusalem rising unexpectedly before us, though the city itself was still hidden by intervening hills. To the west, the eye ranges down valley bejmnd valley, to the Mediterranean, for Ain Karim is more than two thousand feet above the sea, and thus from the same point one could see to the gates of Jerusalem on the one hand, and to the great sea on the other. The village of Kolonieh, which lies about two miles north of Ain Karim, is reached through a charm¬ ing valley sprinkled with olives, the gift of springs flowing from the hill-sides. It has been thought by some to be the Emmaus of the Hew Testament, the name, as is sup¬ posed, having been changed to Colonia after Vespasian had settled a number of his veterans in the neighbourhood, though the Talmud simply tells us that it was a “colonia,” or place free from taxes. It lies on the treeless side of a hill, but has, for Judaea, a very beautiful appearance, amidst the sweet refreshment of green patches of grain that sur¬ round it. The windings of the wady prevent any distant views, but heighten so much the more a feeling of happy seclusion. The slopes and bottom of the little valley on which the village looks down are planted with olive-trees, for, though the wady is dry as a whole in summer, a spring of clear water bubbles up from among the rocks at one spot, and runs all the year, spreading rich vegetation around. Thick clusters of almond, pomegranate, fig, and orange, with rich shade and delightful fragrance, attract one to it, as it ripples over its stony bed. Fig-trees, with XXX1L] TO EMMAUS AND KIRJATH JEARIM. 151 vines growing through tlieir brandies, are not wanting, and must make delightful arbours in summer, when the shoots stretch from tree to tree. No wonder that a place so attractive is said to have been the scene of a strange festival on the Day of Atonement ; the girls of Jerusalem coming out to meet the young men who were celebrating their absolution from the sins of the past year, and re¬ joicing before them in merry dances, not without a view, one may suppose, to subsequent matrimonial results. No wonder that such a meeting was so pleasant as to be re¬ newed half-yearly, the twelve months’ delay for the “atone¬ ment ” taxing patience too severely. Remains of strong walls of large bevelled stones, one of them more than five feet long and two feet broad, are found in the little glen, and part of the channel of the spring, made into a plastered tank, which still holds water, had the top of a pillar lying near it. No place near Jerusalem has charms which were more likely to have made it a favourite haunt of the citizens from the earliest times. The spring, the watered gardens, the orchards, with their varied green and their different blossoms, the terraces along the slopes, with their vines and their alleys of olives, unite to make it an idyllic home. Was it to this place that the two disciples came, accompanied by their unrecognised Master, and could it be that in some humble room in the village, as it then was, He made Himself known to them, and then vanished from their sight P 1 So some think ; yet Kolonieli does not meet the requirements of distance from Jerusalem, from which it is less than four miles off, while Emmaus was nearly eight. It seems, therefore, as if Captain Conder’s identification of Khamasa as the site has more to be said in its favour. An old, almost ruinous, bridge of four arches, the 1 Luke xxiv. 31. 152 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. centre ones a patchwork of beams, the masonry having long fallen, spans the channel in which the winter rains flow off* ; showing a great bed of stones for most of the year, hut wild enough when the “ rains descend, and the floods come, and the winds blow/’ 1 Leaving the village, the road towards Jerusalem is, as hitherto, a continual climbing and descent, for the country is nothing hut a succession of great land- waves ; the view from the higher summits showing hill beyond hill, nearly all frightfully barren and stony, though nearer the city tillage is more frequent. In such spots of cultivation, as at Hebron and elsewhere, a part of the thousands of tons of loose stones, strewn everywhere, is gathered into dry walls, which protect the enclosures thus redeemed from desolation. The land round Jerusalem, and in the south of Palestine generally, except on the plains, is held in permanent owner¬ ship ; but in the north, and in the Philistine country, each cultivator has so much land assigned him, at fixed inter¬ vals of a year or two, the amount being measured by a cord of a certain length, and determined by the size of his family and the acreage he can work. This system must be very ancient, for it was thus that the land was distributed at first among the Hebrews, their “inherit¬ ance ” being then “ divided to them by line ; ” 2 and it was the custom also of other nations, for the kingdom of Samaria was to be “ divided by line ” among the Assyrians,3 and the ruin of Judah is painted in its deepest colour by Micah, in the fatal words, “ Thou shalt have none that shall cast a cord by lot [for thee] in the con¬ gregation of the Lord/’ 4 In such a subdivision it is of great moment where one’s ground may be assigned, the 1 Matt. vii. 25. 2 Ps. lxxviii. 55. 3 Amos vii. 17. 4 Micali ii. 5 ; Geikie, Hours with the Bible , iv. 355. XXXII.] TO EMMAUS AND KIRJATH JEARIM. 153 change of temporary ownership leaving everything un¬ decided in each case. The “ lines may fall ” to him in a place far from his dwelling, so that it will take hours to reach it in the .morning, or return from it at night; or they may fall on a hare, rocky spot, where his utmost toil will be unproductive. To secure fairness, all is decided by lot, and thus, if unlucky one year, the peasant hears his disappointment, in the hope that the next drawing may he more fortunate. The Psalmist speaks of the happiness of his position in words he must often have heard from those who, in the division of the ground, had been so favoured : he rejoices that “ his lines have fallen to him in pleasant places ” 1 2 — perhaps on a gentle slope of rich soil, near the well or fountain, and not far from his home. Landmarks to indicate the limits of each man’s ground are very simple matters in the East. In Galilee I have seen portion after portion marked by an ordinary stone of moderate size, laid at each corner ; nor will anyone think of removing even so slight a boundary. To do so would not only be unlucky, but the most abhorred of crimes.3 It is interesting, however, to notice the strange way in which the land is divided in some places. Frontage on the road being especially desirable, only a small breadth of it can be allowed to each man — a half -line, or per¬ haps two lines — while the strip seems to run back almost indefinitely, so that a farm may be a rod or two wide, and two or three miles deep ; very much as it is in America, where a small piece of river frontage has a great stretch of land behind it to make up the “lot.” But, narrow as the strips are, especially in northern Palestine 1 Ps. xvi. t>. 2 Deut. xix. 14 ; xxvii. 17 ; Job xxiv. 2 ; Prov. xxii. 28 ; xxiii. 10. The word translated “ landmark ” in the A. Y. means in Hebrew the cord by which the land is measured. 154 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. XXXII. and Syria, they are religiously honoured ; the peasant, in ploughing time, starting in the old furrow with the greatest care, along his line of a mile or two. How long it is, in any given case, few but the man himself know, for it is a sore trial to patience to wait till the small, slow oxen have gone to the end of the almost interminable furrow. A friend in Beyrout, indeed, told me that he had never been able to wait till the cattle turned, though he could not help admiring the straightness of the lines for so great a distance. In the rich plains of Lebanon it matters little where one’s lines may fall, hut it was very different with David in a district like that round Beth¬ lehem, where he might either have a strip of the fertile valley, or a belt of stony hill-side. I was reminded in Jerusalem, by the use of salt in the baptismal service of the Greek church, of the wonderful tenacity with which Orientals continue the customs of their ancestors, even in trifling details. Ezekiel, it will be remembered, speaks of Jerusalem as an infant that “ was not salted at all ; ” 1 an expression not easily understood till it is known that in Syria and Palestine it is still the custom to “ salt ” infants. Common coarse salt is pul¬ verised in a mortar when the child is born ; and as soon as the poor little creature is washed, it is covered all over with it and wrapped up, like a mummy, in swaddling clothes. This process is repeated daily for three days. In some places, they are humane enough to melt the salt and bathe the infant with the brine. After the third day the child is bathed in oil, and then washed and dressed as usual. A native mother cannot imagine how European children are not thus favoured. “ Poor thing,” she will say, “ it was not salted at all ! 1 Ezek. xvi. 4. CHAPTER XXXIII. NORTHWARDS. Before finally leaving Jerusalem I was glad to find tliat Protestant energy was doing so much for the community. Besides the English school for boys, with its sixty child¬ ren and thirteen lads, there is, as I have said, an English school for girls, with seventy names on the books. The German Orphanage, moreover, cares for a hundred boys, and the Kaiserwerth Deaconesses have two hundred girls under their wise and loving charge. In addition to these, the Latin, Greek, and Armenian communities have schools of their own. It must he difficult, however, to spread Christianity under a government which prohibits Moslem children from attending foreign instruction. The Turk, indeed, wherever he can, tries, under one pretext or another, to hinder all English evangelical work, though the firmer attitude of France and Germany forces him to be more chary of interfering with the religious or bene¬ volent enterprises undertaken by members of these nation¬ alities. But alike at Joppa, Gaza, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, everything English is virtually proscribed by the govern¬ ment; and I have found, since my return, that it seems hopeless to expect such energetic action from our officials at the Foreign Office as marks the Foreign Offices of Berlin and Paris, and secures their missions and hospitals in the Holy Land from the vexatious opposition encountered at every step by ours. We may talk of our greatness abroad, 156 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. but it is only in our own dependencies. In the Turkish. Empire, at least, our Government is a byword for pusil¬ lanimous and unmanly neglect of its subjects and their interests. The road to Anatlioth, or, as it is now called, Anata, starts at the Damascus Gate, from which you go under the shadow of the city walls to the north-east corner, at St. Stephen’s Gate, and descend to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Peasants and townsfolk were already astir when we set out, for Orientals begin the day early. On the road up Mount Scopus there were quarries on the left, in which men were working. Ploughs were going slowly in the hollow of the valley, and women with great baskets of cauliflowers on their heads were coming down the hills from the villages heyond, to market. Looking around from the lofty vantage-ground of the summit, a mag¬ nificent panorama presents itself. To the east, on6 sees the deep blue of the Dead Sea, the pink mountains of Moab — in many shades, lighter and darker, along their deeply furrowed range, which stretches on like a table-land — and the “ circle ” of the Jordan, with its patches of green; then, sweeping northward, the Valley of the Acacias, where Israel encamped, the waters of Nimrim, the gorge of the Jabbok, and the hills of Gilead, are seen. The top of Scopus is famous as the point from which invaders have again and again looked down on the Holy City. It was ap¬ parently on this broad summit that Alexander the Great, coming up from Antipatris in the plains of Sharon, was met by the high priest Jaddua, clad in his pontifical robes, and advancing at the head of a long procession of Jewish dignitaries. It was from this point, also, that Titus looked down on the great walls and glittering splendour of the Temple ; and it was on this bare brow of stone that the first Crusaders sank on their knees to bless God XXXIII.] NORTHWARDS. 157 tliat tlie}r were so close to Jerusalem, though they were so nearly spent by the fierce heat and the want of supplies that men and beasts died in multitudes from the dearth of food and water. The yellow hills of Quarantania — the supposed scene of our Lord’s forty days’ fast — stand far below, shutting out the sight of Jericho, which lies behind them, while at right angles to them the brown valleys of Judah rise in a constant ascent to those around the hill on which we stand. To the south, the white domes of Jerusalem shine in the light, and the long grey line of battlemented wall holds, as in a girdle, the open space of Omar, the houses of the city, and the high dome of its great church, beyond which the cone of Herodium, and the wild, confused hills of the wilderness of Judsea, rise as a background. The slopes of Scopus, and the hills around, were green with patches of barley, hut as a whole the country maintains its character of desolation, for there are no trees, and the hill-sides are mostly bare grey stone, split by the sun and rain of ages. A mile and a quarter, or thereabouts, from Jerusalem, hidden in a narrow, fruitful valley, lay the hamlet of Isawiyeh, wheat and corn covering the slopes above it, and pricldy-pear hedges fencing its large beds of cauli¬ flower. Here and there the white-red blossom of the almond shone out between the silver-grey leaves of the olive and the darker green of the carob-tree, clumps of which grew at different points. Hills, with many rock cisterns in them, rose all around, except to the east, through an opening in which direction the Head Sea was visible, so that it was not surprising to find that a path led from the hamlet to the Jordan, the ^peasants speaking of the river as five hours distant. “ Isawiyeh ” means “ The Village of Jesus ” ; and it is quite likely that our Lord often stopped at it on His 153 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. journeys to Jerusalem. It lias, further, been thought to be the ancient Nob, where the Tabernacle was pitched for a long time, but opinion is very undecided on the matter. “ Nob ” means “ a high place/’ and was, apparently, in sight of Jerusalem; 1 but Isawiyeh is shut out from the view of the city by intervening hills, and it does not answer to a “high place,” for it is in a valley. A rival to Isawiyeh has been found by some in the village of Shafat, about a mile and a half to the north-west, owing its name to a contraction of Jehoshaphat, which was used in full so late as the fourteenth century. Its features are simple. A ruined saint’s tomb, with a low dome still rising over falling walls, and a few pieces of ancient buildings, are the only notable things, unless it be two or three fig- and other fruit-trees growing at the tomb. Bare sheets of rock, scanty pasture for goats, and stony uplands, complete the picture. Dean Stanley fancied that Nob might have stood on the northernmost of the three summits of the Mount of Olives,2 while Professor Miihlau transfers it to the village of Beit Nuba, about fourteen miles almost west of Jerusalem, the most improbable site of all. Supposing Nob to have been either at Shafat or at Isawiyeh, memories of great interest cling to these spots, for at Nob, the priest’s city,3 the Tabernacle, though the Ark was not with it, stood in the time of Saul, with Abi- raelech for high priest.4 Hither David came in his flight from Saul, and received the shewbread from the friendly priest to sustain him, nothing else being within his reach in the fierce haste, and was girt with the sword of Goliath, which had been preserved in the holy place as a sacred national relic. The ruin of Nob dated, it would seem, from this time, Saul taking a fierce revenge on both town and 1 Isa x. 32. 3 1 Sam. xxii. 19. 2 Sinai and Palestine, 184. 4 1 Sam. xxi. 1 ; Matt. xii. 3; Luke vi. 3. XXXIII.] NORTHWARDS. 159 priests for the kindness shown to his rival. Jerome ex¬ pressly saj^s that Jerusalem could he seen from Nob; and in this respect Shafat suits as to position. The road to Anatliotli from Isawiyeh is over rough hills and valleys, wild and desolate. Black goats browsed on the scanty herbage growing between the thickly sown stones. A sheplierd-boy guided them, and recalled any that strayed by well-aimed pebbles from his sling, as, no doubt, had often been done by David. 1 The life of a herd- hoy is a hard one on these bare hills and in these barren valleys, where no shade can be found. “ In the da}f the heat consumes him, and the frost by night,” as Jacob said of a similar life in Mesopotamia.2 Jeremiah must often have passed over this hare track after his nation had been swept away to Babylon, when the sheep, cattle, and goats had been driven with them from the hills ; and he must have felt the bitterness of the change when the pipe of the shepherd no longer sounded from the field, and no life cheered him where it had formerly abounded. How natural that in his anticipations of the happy days after the Return, he should picture in his mind that “ again in this place, which is desolate, without man and without beast, and in all the cities thereof, shall be an habitation of shepherds causing their flocks to lie down, or pass again under the hands of him that telleth them.”3 Anathoth, the birthplace of Jeremiah, is a small village lying on the top of a low hill, which is fretted over, in part, with loose stone walls protecting little or nothing, and of course in a very poor condition, like everything in Palestine, so far as I- have seen, except the buildings of Bethlehem and its neighbourhood, which are Christian. A few olive-trees grow in scattered clumps on the plain below the village, but otherwise there are no 1 1 Sam. xvii. 40. 2 Gen. xxxi. 4°. 3 Jer. xxxiii. 12, 13. 160 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. trees in the landscape. It was a “ town ” of Benjamin, and was resettled after the Captivity, so that the solitude which grieved the prophet passed away after his death. Pillar- shafts, built into some of the walls, speak of mediaeval structures — probably churches and other ecclesiastical buildings ; indeed, the tesselated pavement of a church was recently discovered on the western side of the hamlet. The view from any of the housetops is wonderfully in¬ teresting in historical memories. The famous heights of Benjamin, Gibeah of Saul, Bamah, Geba, and others, rise in a lovely panorama round the prophet’s home. Here he spent his youth and the first two years of his great office, till the hostility of his fellow-villagers threatened his life and forced him to betake himself to Jerusalem.1 The Holy City is hidden by the rising ground on the south and west, but to the east and north long sharp ridges of chalk, dotted with knolls which fleck the slopes with shadow, stretch away into the distance. To the west the hills are rounded instead of sharp ; their harder limestone weather¬ ing thus under the sky and rain, instead of being washed away into sierras like the softer beds. Jeremiah must often have looked down the long ravines which sink one below another to the plains of the Jordan, beyond which the mountains of Moab, east of the river, stand up against the sky, and over the blue Sea of Death, washing the foot of these hills, and brightening the whole landscape by its contrast with the prevailing yellow or brown. He had before him, also, close at hand, a soft green hollow between his village and the high northern side of Wady Saleim, to refresh his eyes and heart in the midst of the dry and rocky prospect around. The neighbourhood must have been equally familiar to Jeremiah’s great predecessor Isaiah, for no one who did not know the ground thoroughly 1 Jer. i. 1; xxix. 27; xi. 21. XXXIII.] NORTHWARDS. 1G1 could have painted the advance of the Assyrian army against Jerusalem with the local touches which he gives. “ He is come to Aiath [or Ai] ; he is passed through Migron ; at Michmash he layeth up his baggage ; they are gone through the pass ; they have taken up their lodging at Geba ; Hamah trembleth ; Gibeali of Saul is fled. Cry aloud with thy voice, 0 daughter of Gallim ! hearken, 0 Laishah ! 0 thou poor Anathoth ! Madmenah is a fugi¬ tive ; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee. This very day shall he halt at Nob ; he shaketh his hand at the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jeru¬ salem/' 1 Two women were busy in a cottage at the household mill, which attracted me by its sound.2 I have previously described the simple stones with which the flour of the family is daily prepared, but it was striking to see so vivid an illustration of the words of our Lord, that at His sudden ■v and unexpected appearance, when He comes again, “ two women shall be grinding at the mill ; the one shall be taken, and the other left.” 3 To grind is very exhaust¬ ing work, so that, where possible, one woman sits opposite the other, to divide the strain, though in a poor man’s house his wife has to do this drudgery unaided. It is pleasant to remember that under the humane law of Moses the millstones of a household could not be seized by a creditor ; the doing so was to take “ a man’s life in pledge.”4 Anathoth is 2,225 feet above the sea. Shafat, which may be the site of Nob, lies, as I have said, between two and three miles west of Anathoth, over a rough, up-and-down country, but there is a stretch of flat land to the south of it. The strange conical hill Tell el Ful, 2,750 feet high, rises behind this level, with a 1 Isa. x. 31—32 (R.Y.). 2 Jer. xxv. 10; Rev. xviii. 22; Eccles. xii. 1. I 3 Matt. xxiv. 41. 4 I'eut. xxiv. (j. 162 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. mysterious mound on its top, wliicli excavation has shown to have been originally an artificial platform, supported by rough walls with steps leading up to it, or, perhaps, by a lower platform surrounding it. When it was raised no one knows, but as it is visible from Jerusalem and all the villages far and near, it may have been used for a beacon, to give the alarm in war, or to announce the rise of the new moon in times of peace. There are no traces of any other buildings. The eye ranges over Anatlioth and Isawiyeh, and down to the deep gorge of the Jordan, which looks specially beau¬ tiful from this point. On the south-east lie the waters of the Dead Sea, apparently as calm, in their deep blue, as the heaven above ; and beyond them, of course, are the mountains of Moah. To the north lie Ramah and the hill of Geba, while to the west and south are, successively, Gibeon, the stately height of Mizpeh or Neby Samwil — the queen among ih; heights of Benjamin — and, in all its romantic beauty, the Holy City, with its roofs and domes, its towers and minarets. Tell el Ful has been very generally believed to be the site of the ancient town known as Gibeah of Benjamin,1 from its tying in the territory of that tribe, or as Gibeah of Saul, because that king belonged to it,2 or as Gibeah of God, probably from an old sacrificial high place being near or on it.3 Captain Conder supposes that the name of Gibeah was attached to a small district reaching towards Mich- mash, but the town itself would certainty be on a height. If this be so, Tell el Ful is associated with a very dark chapter of Old Testament history. Just as, at this time, many travellers, men and women, riding or on foot, pass 1 1 Sam. xiii. 2 ; xiv. 16. 2 1 Sam. xv. 34 ; 2 Sam. xxi. 6 ; 1 Sam. xi. 4. ? 1 Sam. x. 5, 13. XXXIII.] NORTHWARDS. 163 to and fro along the road immediately beneath it, a poor Levite journeyed on from Bethlehem with his wife three thousand years ago, late in the evening. He was making for the hill -country of Ephraim, hut turned aside to rest in Gibeah for the night, as the sun was nearly setting. No one appeared, however, to give them shelter, so that the two sat down in the open space in the middle of the town, to spend the night in the open air, if hospitality were finally refused them. “ And, behold, there came an old man from his work, out of the field, at even, and he lifted up his eyes, and saw the wayfaring man in the open place of the city ; and the old man said, Whither goest thou ? and whence comest thou? And he said unto him, We are passing from Bethlehem- Judah into the farther side of the hill -country of Ephraim ; from thence I am,* and I vrent to Bethlehem- Judah, and I am now going home,1 and there is no man that taketh me into his house. Yet there is both straw and provender for our asses, and there is bread and wine also for me, and for thy handmaid, and for the young man which is with thy servants : there is no want of anything. And the old man said, Peace be unto tbee ; howsoever, let all thy wants lie upon me ; only lodge not in the street. So he brought him into his house, and gave the asses fodder, and they washed their feet and did eat and drink.”2 But in the night the worthless ones of Gibeah committed a frightful crime against the defenceless strangers, the terrible punishment of which, by the trib?s at large, nearly exterminated the whole clan of Benjamin.3 Here, in later times, the peasant king, Saul, had his dwelling, near which rose a tamarisk, under whose shade he used to rest.4 Here also, sitting by the wall of this rude palace, he held a feast l 2 3 Judg. xx. 35. 4 1 Sam. xxii. 6. 1 Sept. 2 Judg. xix. 16 — 21. 164 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. every new moon, with his favourite companions in arms.1 But the spot is memorable, besides, as the place where David gave up to the Gibeonites, to be put to death, the two sons of Saul, whom Bizpah, one of the dead king’s wives, had borne to him, and the five sons of Saul’s daughter, Merab, borne to Adriel, the husband to whom she was given by her father after having been promised to David ; 2 and the Gibeonites “hanged them on the hill before the Lord,” or, rather, stuck up their bodies on posts, after the poor men had been put to death. “ Then,” we are told, the unfor¬ tunate “ Bizpah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water was poured upon them from heaven ” — from the end of May till late in the year — and she suffered neither the birds of the air — the hateful vultures — to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field [to devour them] by night ; 3 till, at last, David heard of her broken-hearted love, and had the bones gathered and laid honourably in the rock tomb of the family, along with the bones of Saul and Jonathan, brought from their grave at Jabesh Gilead for interment in the ancestral resting-place. Across the plain stretching for some miles north and south, on the west side of Tell el Ful, and about a mile in breadth,, with rolling land in its centre, lies the village of Bet Hannina, at the foot of Neby Samwil, which is the loftiest hill in Central Palestine, and, apparently, famous as the Mizpeh of ancient Hebrew story. It is a long, slow ascent to its top, over a succession of swells dotted with olives after passing Bet Hannina, a loose stone wail appearing now and then, though, for the most part, the hill is in a state of nature, with so little green that one may call it treeless and untouched by man. A path, at times, between stone walls, neglected 1 1 Sam. xx. 5 — 25. 2 1 Sam. xviii. 19. 3 2 Sam. xxi. 9. XXXIII.] JSTORTHWAEDS. 165 for who knows liow many generations, leads to the summit. Though the soil is exceptionally fertile, the district has so few inhabitants that even the choicest spots lie desolate. The top of the hill is 2,935 feet above the sea, and is seen from every part of the neighbouring country,, towering over a host of lower summits. A mosque with a slender minaret — once a church of the Crusaders, and still showing the form of a cross — crowns its utmost height, covering the supposed tomb of the prophet Samuel. A number of olive-trees grow beside it, but there is also an abundance of huge stones — remains of ancient walls — and a plentiful display of the worthless thorns and rank weeds everywhere so common. Captain Conder thinks that Mizpeli has yet to be identified, and Sir George Grove would recognise it in Mount Scopus, close to Jerusalem; but tradition and general consent assign it to the top of this commanding hill. The word means a “ watch - height,” and Neby Samwil, so named after the “ prophet Samuel,” is such a “look-out” as cannot be found elsewhere in Palestine. A beacon fire on it would be seen over a very wide dis¬ trict. The view is, indeed, the most extensive in the country. Pugged valleys, roughened still more by scrub, with olives rising at some clear spots, and patches of corn looking out in soft green between stretches of thorns or loose stones, lay sinking, wave beyond wave, at my feet ; the very picture of such places as our Lord had in His thoughts when He spoke the parable of the sower, with its good soil, its paths through the corn, its rocky stretches, and its tangles of thorns.1 A mile off, on the north, rose the hill El Jib — the ancient Gibeon of Benjamin ; its limestone beds jutting out horizontally, in broad bauds up 1 Matt. xiii. 2—8. 166 THE HOLY LANE AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. to the top ; the softer material between each layer having, more or less, been washed away. Five miles further off, in the same direction, high on its hill, rose El Bireh — the ancient Beeroth — 2,820 feet above the sea, and beyond it, Piummon, east of Bethel — the ancient “ Bock Bimmon ” — 2,500 feet above the sea-level. Lifting your eyes still farther northwards and westwards, the top of Mount Gerizim and the shoulder of Carmel are seen. Er Bam — the Bamah of Benjamin — and Jeba — the ancient Geba — lie three or four miles off, almost to the east, though a little north as well. Looking down the depths of the ever-descending western wadys, and through the opening in the hills, the plains of Sharon and Philistia were visible, with the sea beyond them. To the south, beyond a waiter of grey hills, I had another sight of the Mount of Olives and Jerusalem, with its mosques and domes, far below the height from which I looked at them. Eastward, beyond the gorge of the Jordan, which lies too low to be seen, rose the mountains of Gilead and Moab. A glass showed the distant fortress of Kerak — the ancient Kir Moab — and the hill of Sihn, the hi ghest in Moab, and the distant mountains of Gilead. The hills immediately round Neby Samwil are all softly rounded, not steep, rising gently for the most part, and offering every facility for terrace cultivation, to their very tops. In the valleys to the north-west were a few vine¬ yards, with ruinous watch-towers among them. A shepherd lad was leading out his flock of black goats from the village of a dozen poor huts, close by, on the hill-top, using the peculiar cry of his craft. The mosque beside us was in ruins, and served, in part, for a granary ; its pointed arches reminding one that it had once been a Christian church. Outside the huts were two tanks hewn in the * rock, one with, the other without, water ; memorials of a large community, long since passed away. A hollow in XXXIII.] NORTHWARDS. 167 the rocks a short distance below me was filled with a clear flowing spring ; but instead of the old well-to-do Mizpeh, only some wretched hovels made in holes in the limestone were to be seen, with a few others built up, in part, of the materials of fine ancient structures. The ground was very stony and barren, but on the left, in the valley deep below, were fair olive -groves and green fields. A steep footpath led down to Bet Hannina, shaded by vines and fig-trees, mingled with olives and almond-trees. Towards Jerusalem, the prospect over the hills was frightfully barren, as if the curse which the Israelites once inflicted on Moab had fallen on this part of their own land, where “ they beat down the cities, and on every good piece of land cast every man his stone, and filled it, and stopped all the wells of water, and felled all the good trees.” 1 On this lofty hill the tribes of Israel assembled in their thousands to determine what punishment should be meted out to the Benjamites for their hideous wickedness towards the wife of the Levite.2 Here also they gathered, at the summons of Samuel, during the worst times of Philistine oppression, and after a public confession of their sins, were sent forth to victory and deliverance.3 It was on Mizpeh that they met, once more, for the momentous choice of a king, ending in tl e election of Saul to the great office, amidst loud cries, then first heard in the nation, of “ God save the king ! ”4 One of the three holy cities 5 which Samuel visited in turn, as judge, stood on its now deserted slopes, or on its summit. Here Jeremiah lived, with the small body of his people who had escaped from being led off to Babylon, after the destruction of 1 2 Kings iii. 25. 2 Judg. xxi. 1, 3, 5, 8. See p. 162. 5 Sept. 3 1 Sam. vii. 5 — 13. 4 1 Sam. x. 17—25. 1G8 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Jerusalem.1 During the Captivity it was the seat of the Chaldean governor. Here the Crusaders caught their first sight of the Holy City, calling the hill Mount Joy, “ be¬ cause it gives joy to pilgrims’ hearts, for from that place men first see Jerusalem. ” On this very height, in fine, Diehard the Lionhearted fell on his knees, and, covering his face with his hands, refused to gaze on the city of his Lord’s humiliation and death, desecrated as it was by the infidel, crying out, “Ah, Lord God, I pray that I may never see the Holy City if I may not rescue it from the hands of Thine enemies.” El Jib — the ancient Gibeon — is reached by a path leading- down from Hebv Samwil. Watercourses run, apparently, in every direction, but they all, in the end, find their way to the plain of Sharon, for El Jib, like Neby Samwil, stands on the west side of the watershed of the country. The flat, natural terraces, formed tier above tier by the ring-like beds of limestone which jut out, were fairly tilled, and sprinkled with figs, pomegranates, and olives, but the village on the top had only from forty to fifty scattered hovels. Yet no spot is more clearly identi¬ fied with stirring incidents in Bible history. It was once a great Amorite or Hivite city,2 and its people were the only part of the old inhabitants left alive by Joshua. That they were spared was due to their skilful diplomacy,3 though they were made slaves of the Tabernacle and afterwards of the Temple, drawing water and hewing wood, under the name of Netliinim — “The Given,” or “Devoted.” In later times, Saul’s half-heathen zeal led him to massacre many of this pagan remnant, but his children had to suffer a bloody reprisal, seven of his sons being given over to the Gibeonites by David, to put to death in atonement for their father’s crime, as the story of Bizpah has reminded us.4 On the 1 Jer. xl. 6. 2 Josli. ix. 7 ; xi. 19 ; 2 Sam. xxi. 2. 3 Josh. ix. 4 2 Sam. xxi. XXXIII.] NORTHWARDS. 169 waste stretch between Gibeon and Ram ah, the battle was fought in which Joshua broke the power of the allied kings of the Amorites, or “hill-men,” and secured possession of Central Palestine.1 The “ Pool of Gibeon,” where David and his men faced Abner and the adherents of Ishboslieth, in the very heart of Saul’s own district, is still to be seen below the east end of the hill — a great, right-angled tank of strong masonry, twenty-four paces long and fourteen broad, lying mostly in ruins, and no longer holding water. Indeed, its bottom is sown with grain, for the noble spring which once fed it, rushing from a deep pool in the rock, now runs past unused. On the opposite sides of this sat the two bands, facing each other, till twelve from each side rose to prove their mettle, and began a fight in which the whole twenty-four fell dead. Here, beside this old tank, they lay in their blood that after¬ noon, giving to the spot the name of “The Field of the Strong Men;”2 still virtually preserved in that by which it is now known, “The Valley of the Fighters.” Hear this, “by the great stone that was in Gibeon,” Joab, ever faith¬ ful to David, but faithless to all others, basely murdered Amasa, his rival, who “ wallowed in his blood, in the midst of the highway;” his murderer standing by, red with blood from the girdle to the sandals.3 On this hill stood the “ great high place ” — that is, the Old Tabernacle — at which Solomon offered huge sacrifices, and had his famous vision,4 and here he caused Joab to be killed as the poor grey-headed veteran, justly overtaken by vengeance at last, clung to the horns of the altar.5 Beside the “ great waters ” of this tank, moreover, Jeremiah and the band with him were set free from the chains of the 1 Josh. x. 3 2 Sam. xx. 10; 1 Kings ii. 5. 2 2 Sam. ii. 16. 4 1 Kings iii. 4, 5 if. 5 1 Kings ii. 28. 170 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Chaldeans ; and here, also, Johan an overtook Ishmael, the murderer of Gredaliali and, through this insane piece of villainy, the final destroyer of Judah.1 Strange events these solitary slopes have seen ! Uninviting though the prospect around may now be, but for a few gnarled and twisted olive-trees, the marks of ancient terraces on every height speak of long-past days, when a teeming popula¬ tion redeemed the landscape from barrenness, and filled it with the hum of busy life. From the top of the fill, the ridge on which stood Earn ah and Gribeali of Saul rises a few miles off. An olive plantation covers the south-west slope, and the broad wadys north, east, and west were fairly tilled, black patches of newly ploughed land alternating with the green of rising crops. The eastern slope, which boasts of some vines, figs, and olives, is watered by several springs, one of them the abundant stream that once filled the great tank. To get to Er Earn you cross a tract of rolling land, about three miles broad, to the east of this point, passing a heap which marks Adaseh, one of the battle-fields of Judas Maccabseus, where he defeated Nicanor. The hills on the way are low, and gentle in their swell, like the waves of the sea when it is sinking to rest after a storm. In the hollows between them, green sometimes relieved the yellow monotony of the landscape, but the view as a whole was tame and dull. Before we reached Er Earn, two Eoman milestones, still in position, showed us that this was the old military highway towards the pass of Michmash, the key of Central Palestine. The road to Nablus runs a little west of Er Earn, in the plain below the hills, but must have been commanded by any fortress erected at Earn ah. It was for this reason, doubtless, that 1 Jer. xli. 12. XXXIII. NORTHWARDS. 171 the truculent Baasha, king of Israel, fortified that post, causing such danger to Jerusalem by doing so that Asa was glad to invoke the aid of Syria to force him to retire from it, and proceeded at once to dismantle the stronghold of his enemy when it was captured, carrying olf the stones and timber to fortify his own frontier towns or villages of Geba and Mizpeh.1 The hill rises high in isolation above the neighbouring ground, but has now only a wretched village on it, with the ruins of an old Crusaders’ church, and of a tower, the foundations of which may he very ancient. Half way up the ascent were the remains of a small temple, or perhaps khan, beside a dry tank, the roof of which had once been supported by six pillars, with plain capitals. The hovels of the village itself spoke of better days in the past, for bevelled stones looked out from tlie walls of some, and in the little yard of another was a short, slender pillar. Bums abounded in the neighbour¬ hood, as you east your eye over it, and everything spoke of a glory long departed. It was here — at the frontier town of Benjamin — that the Chaldeans collected their prisoners, before marching them off through the pass of Michmash to Babylon ; a circumstance used by Jeremiah with the finest effect, when he supposes the spirit of Bachel, the mother of the tribe, to have left her tomb by the wayside, near Bethel, to grieve in mid-air over the unreturning throng. “A voice was heard in Bamah, lamentation and bitter weeping ; Bachel, weeping for her children, refused to he comforted for her children, because they were not.”2 Geba lies about two miles nearly east of Bamah, on a separate hill of the same small chain ; a poor, half -ruinous village, once a town of the priests;3 now, having nothing 1 1 Kiugs xv. 17 — 22 ; 2 Chron. xvi. 1 ff. 3 Josh, xviii. 24 ; xxi. 17. 2 Jer. xxxi. 15. 172 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. sacred but a saint’s tomb, as ruined as all else. From this, the way rose very steep, up a stony, desolate ascent; not too barren, however, for some sheep and goats to browse among the stones. About half way between Jeba, or Geba, and Muklimas, the ancient Michmash, but to the east of a straight line from one to the other, the famous pass begins, through the Wady Suweinit, “The Valley of the Little Thorn-tree, or Acacia,” to Jericho ; in ancient times the main road from the east to the hill-country of Central Palestine. Michmash, which is famous in one of the most romantic episodes of Old Testament history, lay less than a mile due north from the point where the wady, running south-east, contracts into a fissure through the hills, the sides in some places precipitous, and very near each other ; in most parts eaten away above, so that the cliffs form slightly receding slopes instead of preci¬ pices, with a comparatively broad bottom below; the wady, however, still preserving its character of a gorge, rather than of a valley. The whole way, from near Michmash till it opens on the Jordan plains, behind the modern Jericho, where it is known as the Wady Kelt, is thus a narrow sunken pass, with towering walls or grim rough¬ ened slopes of rock on each side, in some places 800 feet high, and, throughout, only far enough asunder at any part below to allow of the passage of a small body of men abreast. The whole length of this gorge, including its doublings and windings, is about twelve miles, but in that distance it sinks from a height of 2,040 feet above the sea, near Michmash, to about 400 feet below it, where it opens on the Jordan slope — a fall of more than 2,400 feet. The village of Muklimas lies on a broad saddle, more than 600 feet below Pa mail, and 230 feet below Geba, which is about a mile and a half west of the chasm of XXXIII. ] NORTHWARDS. 173 El Suweinit. The ground, sloping gently from Mich- masli towards Ai and Bethel, is still very generally used for growing barley, and was anciently so famous for this grain that the Jewish equivalent of our proverb, “ to take coals to Newcastle,” is “ to take barley to Mich¬ mash.” A fine brook flows down the valley on the north, bordered by numbers of small hut well-propor¬ tioned oak - trees, from which I had the pleasure of gathering some mistletoe, the branches being richly fes¬ tooned with it. A chasm to the south of the village, though less than a mile off, is not seen from it, and, indeed, only a very small glimpse of it is to he had from any part till you are close on the brink; a narrow spur of the hills concealing it on the north, and flat ground reaching to its edge on the south. I was greatly interested in the locality, as that of the adventure of Jonathan and his armour-bearer,1 which not only charms by its audacity, but was of vital importance in Hebrew history. The identification of its scene is fortunately easy. Josephus describes very minutely the position of the Philistine camp which Jonathan assailed. It was, he says, a cliff with three heads, ending in a long, sharp tongue, and protected by surrounding precipices ; and such a natural stronghold is found close to Michmash, on the east; the peasantry giving it, even now, the name of “The Fort.” A ridge stands up in three round knolls, over a perpendicular crag, ending in a narrow tongue to the east, with cliffs below it ; the slope of the valley falling off behind, and the ground rising, to the west, towards Michmash. Opposite this “ fort,” to the south, a crag rises up to about the same height — from fifty to sixty feet — so steep as, apparently, to forbid an attempt to climb it ; the two sides answering exactly to the description in 1 1 Sam. xiv. 174 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Samuel : “ a rocky crag on the one side, and a rocky crag on the other side.”1 These two crags, in the Hebrew Bible, are called Bozez and Seneh — “ The Shining,” and “ The Thorn” or “Acacia,” respectively 2 — names still applicable when we see them. Seneh, “ The Thorn,” survives in “ Suweinit,” the name of the wady ; Bozez, “The Shining,” explains itself at once on the spot. The two crags face each other, from the east and west respectively, so that one is nearly always in shade, while the other is equally favoured by sunshine. Even the colour of the cliffs has been affected by this ; the shady side being dark, while that which has always been exposed to the glare of the light is tawny beneath and white towards the top. The growth of a thorn-tree cn the one side, and the beating of the sun on the other, were doubtless the origin of the names by which Jonathan knew them three thousand years ago. That he could really climb the northern cliff, though with no small difficulty, has been proved by a repetition of the feat in our days. But then there was no Philistine picket overhead ! Strange to say, on the precipitous height, the lowest courses of a square tower are still to be seen, so that an outpost must clearly have been stationed here in ancient times. It was up the face of this cliff, then, that Jonathan and his armour-bearer clambered that day, the Philistine soldiers above mocking them, as they tried to ascend, with the cry, to each other, and to the two braves — “ The Hebrews come forth out of the holes where they have hid themselves ! ” “ Come up to us, and we will show you something ! ” 3 But on the heroes went, climbing up with hand and foot, Jonathan first, the armour- bearer after, the two falling upon the outpost as soon as they had reached the top, and cutting down 2 1 Sam. xiv. 4. 3 1 Sam. xiv. 11, 12. 1 R.V. XXXIII.] NORTHWARDS. 175 twenty men within the space of half an acre. The warders of Saul, looking out from the hill of Geba, two miles off, to the south-west, must have seen the stir from the first, and the spread of general panic among the garrison that followed, as “they melted away, and went hither and thither.”1 A path leads down from Geba to Michmash ; and, this distance once passed by their enemies, the Philistin es would have been cut off from their retreat, if they had not flown quickly. Away, therefore, they sped, down the valley leading past Ai to Bethel, then south-west across the watershed to Upper Betlihoron, then down the steep descent to Lower Betlihoron, and across the broad corn valley of Ajalon, to the Philistine country. The pass by which they thus fled was that in which Joshua had consummated the great victory over the Canaanites in the first days of the nation, and where Judas Maccabaeus was to defeat and drive hack the in¬ vaders of his country. It was by the Wady Suweinit that the Assyrian army entered the land in the invasion so magnificently brought before the imagination by Isaiah. They have already, in his picture of their advance, climbed through the pass from Jericho, and “ have taken up night quarters at Geba ; Bamah trembles ; Giheah of Saul is fled ! ” Every local touch is given ; and it is even added how the baggage has been sent beforehand, by a side wady, to Mich¬ mash, that the army might press on straight towards Jerusalem 2 Michmash itself is a very poor village, but its houses show traces of a very different state of things in former ages. Old pillars lie about, and some of the dwellings are wholly built of large squared stones, from ancient ruins. Others have great dressed stones for lintels and 1 Sam. xiv. 16 CR.V.) 2 Isa x. 28, 29. See also p. 161. 176 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. doorposts to their little courts ; and in one spot lies the carved head of a freestone column. Under the Romans, as under the Philistines, a military post was stationed at the pass close by, one memorial of which I bought from a peasant : a small bronze statuette of Diana with her quiver, hut the feet gone, which had been found in ploughing. How long had it lain since its first owner lost it or threw it away ? Tombs and caves are found in the neighbourhood, and in the village are the remains of a vaulted building used as a granary, from the top of which I looked out over the landscape. To the east and north the hills rose, as it seemed, almost as high as Neby Samwil ; on the west was a very deep, broad ravine, with bare, grey, rounded hills at its sides, and a background of higher ascents close at hand ; on the south there was a sea of hills to the horizon. Men, women, and children clamoured, of course, for bak¬ shish, but they were very civil, greeting us courteously, though without uncovering the head ; for to bare the head is contrary to Oriental ideas of respect. According to immemorial custom the hours are numbered from the rising of the sun, and we thus happened to arrive about the sixth hour, a special time of devotion among Mahom- medaris. Turning their faces to Mecca, the men, led by a venerable functionary with flowing white beard, prayed with exceeding reverence, as if no one had been present; generally standing erect, but often bowing the head, and from time to time kneeling, and touching the ground with their foreheads. Their lowly prostrations reminded one of the words of Abraham — “ Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes.” 1 Before leaving, I had a refreshing drink of curdled goat’s milk, deliciously sour in weather so hot : 1 Geii. xviii. 27. XXXIII.] NORTHWARDS. 177 the very drink which Abraham gave to the angels.1 A few horses were feeding in the thin pastures east of the village, and it was noticeable that the deep, broad valley between Geba and Michmasli was, in reality, furrowed into a number of smaller valleys and plains, separated by lower or higher undulations, till they merged into one close to the entrance to the pass. On a number of the roofs of the village huts, stoneware hives spoke of the care of bees, which cannot but thrive in such a neighbour¬ hood as this. 1 G-en. xviii. 8. f m CHAPTER XXXIV. BETHHORON, BETHEL, SHILOH. The ride from Michmasli to Bethel was, as usual, only to be done at a slow walk, the horses picking their steps, at one time over smooth sheets of rock, at another over heaps of boulders ; now up a steep rough hill ; then down its farther side, with the occasional delight of level ground in the stony bottom of a valley. I bade farewell to the village with regret, for it had for the moment lighted up long-dead centuries, from the days of Joshua to those of the Maccabees — one of whom, Jonathan, had his home in it for years.1 The track lay nearly north, passing a cave below the village which was used as a dwelling, the wife busy at the entrance making butter, by swinging to and fro a skin full of milk, hung from three props, she pushing it with a stick. We followed the old Roman road, now traceable only here and there, but the way was very desolate and barren alike uphill and along the hollows, and nobody passed us. Below, on the right, a deep wady with steep rocky sides reached far down through the hills, which frequently offered sheets of bare rock for the smooth feet of the horses. Nearing the village of Deir Dewan, attractive on its hill from the new look of its houses, agriculture once more began, some of the peasants being still busy ploughing with small oxen, though most of the land, wherever possible, had already been ploughed and 1 1 Macc. ix. 73. Chap. XXXIV.] BETHHOROH, BETHEL, SHILOH. 179 sown A mile before we reached the village, fig- and olive- trees brightened the valley, which began to broaden as we advanced. A well at the side of the track was covered with a great stone, like that which Jacob rolled away from the mouth of the well at Haran.1 Ruins here, as almost everywhere, lay at various points — the tombstones of cities, towns, and villages of the past. Still following the direction of the old Roman road — the line taken by which had probably been a highway for thousands of years before these great road-makers utilised it — we rode along the side of an isolated hill, two miles from Bethel, which lay north-west from us. The broad, flat top was surmounted by a great mound, such as might mark the ruins of some ancient fortress It was the site of Ai,2 “ The Heap,” now called “ El Tell,” which has the same meaning ; the huge mound being the cairn raised over the burnt and desolate city by Joshua. The capture of this stronghold by that chieftain was the turning-point in the Hebrew invasion. Jericho having fallen, the way was opened for the conquest of the mountain country above it. Spies were accordingly sent up the Wadys Kelt and Suweinit — which are dry in the hot summer weather — past Michmash, to Ai, and on receiving their report a strong force climbed the same defile, with its towering crags and rough footing. But, just as the first attempt of the Israelites forty years before at Hormah, on the southern side of the country, to force their way through opposition, had been disastrously repulsed, so here at Ai a strong position enabled the inhabitants to repel the invasion of Joshua, and to hurl his force back “ from before the gate,” in sad confusion, many of his men being killed by their pursuers as they fled down the steep wadys by which they had ascended. Achan’s death in 1 Gen. xxix. 3. 2 Josh. vii. 2 ft. 180 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. the valley of Achor — that part of the Wady Kelt where it opens on the plains of the Jordan — followed, and then came the second attempt. They felt that they must not fail again, and be sent back once more for forty years to the Wilderness, as after Hormah. An ambush was laid by night in the valley between Ai and Bethel, on the north, while Joshua drew up the rest of his men, in sight of the town, on the north side of the ravine of Deir Diwan. Prom this, however, they presently descended into the flat bottom of the wady, as if from faintheartedness they pro¬ posed once more to retreat. Deceived by the stratagem, the King of Ai left his stronghold and rushed down to destroy his enemies as they fled to Michmash, but when he was fairly out of the fortress, and away far down the slopes, Joshua, who had remained behind on some emi¬ nence where his men in ambush could see him, gave the signal by uplifting his spear, and forthwith the city was taken by a rush, and set on fire ; the pillars of smoke serv¬ ing to stay the pretended flight down the pass, and place the men of Ai between the forces in rear and in front; every man of them perishing in the massacre that followed. The rout of the Philistines at Michmash after the great deed of Jonathan and his armour-bearer was followed by a heady flight up the very track by which we had come — that of the first invaders — past Bethel, through the wood, now long vanished, where Jonathan, almost spent, rekindled his spirit with the wild honey dropping from the trees to the ground.1 Thence the rush of men swept on across the plain from which rises Gibeon, and away down the pass of Bethlioron, to the wide corn-land of Ajalon, the gate to their own land — the maritime plain. The Pass of Bethhoron, that is, “ The House of Caves,” 1 1 Sam. xiv. 25 — 26. XXXIV.] BETHHORON, BETHEL, SHILOH. 181 has a famous history in the wars of Israel. Beginning about twelve miles south-west from Bethel, it runs slightly north-west, for nearly two miles, down towards the plains, opening at the foot of the hills on the broad expanse of Ajalon, whence the lowlands can be easily reached. There is another pass up the hills from the sea- coast, beginning at Latron, about fifteen miles east of Jerusalem. Latron lies eight hundred feet above the sea, and was once the seat of a crusading fortress, known as “The Castle of the Penitent Thief;”1 and the track winds up towards the Holy City between rounded hills and deep open valleys. But in ancient times that of Bethhoron was most in use. The wadys which run down from the mountains to the sea in the west are very different from those on the other side of the country, which lead from the high lands to the Jordan. Rounded hills and an open landscape take the place of the tre¬ mendous gorges of the eastern slope ; but though there are these differences, the fact that travel is pent up in one narrow hollow, on the west as well as on the east, has in all ages made both sides almost equally perilous in a military sense. A broad, undulating expanse of corn¬ growing land forms the valley of “ Ajalon,” or the “ Gazelles,” still recognised in the name of one of its villages, “ Yalo.” In those old days, the country seems to have abounded in game, for not only “ gazelles,” but their natural enemies as well, must have been numerous, since this locality had villages known, respectively, as Shaal- bim, “ Foxes ” or “ Jackals,” and Zeboim, “ Hj^senas.” Rising gradually, in slow ridges, from an elevation of about nine hundred feet above the sea, this charming open landscape climbs nearly four hundred feet higher, through a steadily narrowing valley to the lower Bethhoron. This A Castellum Boni Latronis. 182 THE HOLY LAND AHD THE BIBLE. [Chap. lies more than seven hundred feet below Upper Beth- horon, two miles off, at the head of the ravine There is no gorge or dark glen, with high walls of rock ; rounded hills, bulging up like huge bubbles, with side valleys be¬ tween, line the track, presenting little difficulty of ascent at hardly any point. The lower village stands on a swell, almost at the foot of the mountains ; a path, thick with stones, leading past it, across some level ground, to the foot of the pass. From this point, the ascent is very rough ; at times over wide sheets of bare rocks ; at others, up steps rudely hacked out of the rock. It takes an hour to get to the upper village, and, by such a road, one feels that the ascent of an invader, in the face of brave resist¬ ance, would be as arduous as flight downwards from the mountains, before victorious pursuers, would be hopelessly disastrous. In all ages the two Beth borons seem to have been strongly fortified ; remains of a castle still crown the hill at the lower village ; 1 the foundations of some post mark the middle of the ascent, and other ruins guard the top. Looking down from the upper village, one sees the track first winding down the hill as an open path, then round the side of the swell below, with a gentle slope above and beneath; and only after leaving a broad open valley, dotted with olives, below this, does it enter on its course towards the sea. Dry stone dykes, enclosing fruit trees — shapeless masses of prickly pear serving as fences — and small plains between soft slopes — growing stones, how¬ ever, instead of grass, and thorns instead of corn — stretch away before you ; the track twisting hither and thither, like a stream, till the last bend of the hills conceals its entrance on the wide expanse of Ajalon. Beyond these hills, however, the eye ranges over the plains and the belt 1 Hetlier Betlihoron was fortified by Solomon (1 Kings ix. 17). XXXIV.] BETHHORON, BETHEL, SHILOH. 183 of yellow barren sand at the shore, to the deep bine sea, reaching illimitably away. Behind, between the top of the pass and Gibeon, lies a country almost as difficult : wild and rocky mountains, where the paths are scarcely worthy of the name, and cannot be threaded without a guide. It was across this track, and through Betlilioron, that the defeated alliance of the chiefs of Southern Palestine lied before Joshua, in his next great battle after the taking of Ai. He had marched to Ebal and Gerizim after that town had been destroyed, the headquarters of the Hebrews still remaining, however, at Gilgal in the Jordan plain. There two deputations, in succession, came to him from Gibeon ; the first overreaching him into an alliance with them ; the second announcing that a great league of the kings of the Negeb and the sea plains were assail¬ ing their town for having made peace with the Hebrews. An appeal for instant aid was urged and at once heard.1 The peril, indeed, was quite as great for the invaders as for the people of Gibeon. Joshua had the fine mili¬ tary virtue of swift as well as wise decision, supported by splendid energy. A forced march up the Wady Kelt, with its grey, mountain-high cliffs, through the Wady Suweinit, past Geba and Ram ah, brought him in one night to the more open but still mountainous track in which Gibeon stood, perched on its lofty hill, more than 2,500 feet above the sea, and some hundreds of feet above the surrounding country. The sudden appearance of his force at sunrise, where the night before all had been security, with no dream of this counter-attack, at once threw the “ Amorite ” host into the wild panic of a surprise. The remembrance of Jericho and Ai, with the exterminating massacres that followed ; the ominous vigour which had made this surprise possible ; the haughty 1 Josh. x. 184 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. bearing of a force confident of victory, and, withal, the terrible shout with which it rushed to battle, at once decided the day. “ Not a man could stand before ” the Hebrews, still in the full flood of their first enthusiasm and spirit Through the defiles leading westward ; up the steep ascent to Bethhoron the higher ; then down the back of the ridge to Bethhoron the lower, the flight was ever faster and more confused. To add to the misery of the rout, one of the terrible storms that from time to time sweep over the hills of Palestine burst on the dismayed fugitives ; great hailstones smiting them as their dis¬ ordered crowd fled down the pass.1 Meanwhile, Joshua had taken his stand, for the moment, at the head of the pass, with its long windings between the rounded hills be¬ neath him ; the broad, heaving plain of Ajalon beyond its southern end, and the blue waters of the sea apparent^ close behind, telling of the nearness of safety from further pursuit. Lofty hills concealed Gibeon, at his back, but the sun was still high above them 2 on its course to the west, and the pale disc of the moon, then in its third quarter,3 showed white and faint through the hailstorm. Darkness, it was to be feared, would come all too soon and stop the pursuit ; the foe would escape to the lowlands, and the victory come short of being decisive and final. It was felt by Joshua, above all in his host, to be a supreme moment in the story of Israel, and, as a quotation in Scripture from an ancient record of the heroic deeds of the Tribes — the Book of Jasher — informs us, the excitement found utterance with him, as it always does with men of such puritan spirit, in an appeal to God. “ Sun,” cried he, doubtless lifting up his hand to the great orb, “stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.” “And the sun stood still and the moon stayed, 1 Josh. x. 11. 2 Josh. x. 13. 3 Conder, Pal. Fund Reports, 1881, 258. XXXIV.] BETHHOROH, BETHEL, SHILOH. 185 until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.” 1 From Ai the way to Bethel is over stony hills. To the west of the great mound is an open valley which sweeps slowly round to the track by which we had come ; the road made use of by Joshua when he ascended from Jericho; and, on the north, another larger ravine, where the ambush lay hidden, ends in a narrow, rough pass lead¬ ing up to Bethel. Bock-cut tombs, ancient cisterns, and three great reservoirs hewn out of the hard limestone at Ai, speak of the importance of this place in days before the Hebrew conquest. But life has for ages forsaken it. ass- ing Yabrud we reached the Spring of the Pobbers — Ain Haramiyeh — a most picturesque spot ; water trickling freely from the foot of a wall of rock twenty or thirty feet high, covered with delightful green of all shades, while the steep hill above is terraced and planted with olives. The valley is contracted at this part into a mere lane, thickly littered with stones of all sizes, the narrowness shutting out any view to a distance ; and this, with the 1 The charge made by the Tourist Office for myself and a companion was three pounds ten a day, which was exceptionally cheap, thanks to a local friend. Five pounds a day is the ordinary charge. XXXIV.] BETHHOROH, BETHEL, SHILOH. 195 loneliness around — so favourable to the thieves from neighbouring villages — has probably given the place the evil name it bears. An old Crusading fort or hostelry, once eighty feet in length, stands south of the outflow of water from the rocks, but it is in ruins ; there are also the remains of an old, finely vaulted cistern. The grass, nourished by refreshing moisture, was unusually thick and green close to the rocks, and with the ver¬ dure around, and the picturesque ruins, made a rest at this spot very agreeable. Some have fancied this valley to be that of Baca, througli which pilgrims were wont to pass on the way to Jerusalem,1 but this is based on a mistake, for Baca must have been some barren glen, which the joy anticipated by those about to appear before Grod in Zion made as beautiful in their eyes as if it were “ a place of springs,” and as if “the early rain had covered it with blessings.” The narrow pass of Ain Haramiyeh is one of the wildest parts of the road between Nablus and Jerusalem. A great hill rises about eleven hundred feet above the pass on the right, very steep, but terraced in some parts, bare cliffs of horizontal limestone jutting out in bands round it at others. But this lofty summit is dwarfed by another, a mile to the south — Tell Asur — two hundred feet higher.2 A ruined Crusading fort looks down from the top of the lower hill, built as a look-out by the mail- clad warriors of the Christian kingdom of Palestine. The summit of the higher commands a magnificent view ; the white cloud of snow on Mount Hermon, far away to the north, being clearly visible from it. The grandeur of the Crusading period is not to be realised except by visiting the East ; most of us forget, indeed, that Christian princes reigned for two centuries in the Holy Land. Every part 1 Ps. lxxxiv. 6. 2 3,318 feet above the sea. n 2 196 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. of tlie country bears witness to the gigantic energy of the Western nations, great forts, churches, hostelries, and cloisters, built as if to Jast for era:, still remaining wherever one turns, to witness to the mighty enthusiasm which so lonsf animated Christendom. Even at this secluded spot, besides the stronghold on the hill to the right, an old Crusading fortress, known as Baldwin’s Tower, its name derived from that of one of the Latin kings of Jerusalem, crowns the top of a hill, six hundred feet above the pass and about a mile to the south ; it, and its neighbour to the right, standing as grim sentinels to watch the road from the north in the old troublous times. Three miles north of this, the road brought us by a steep ascent to the village of Sinjil, which is only a variation of the name of the Count de Saint-Grilles, who rested here on his way to Jerusalem during the first Crusade. It was then an open village of about a hundred houses, but there are not nearly so many now. Traces of the old Homan road are still visible as you climb towards this hamlet ; kerbs of large stone enclose a causeway, rough enough to-day, but no doubt smooth and level when first made, though the narrowness of the track excites one’s wonder. The country from Bethel had been not only more fertile than that nearer Jerusalem, but different in its features. The hills were steeper and more rocky ; the valleys deeper; not seldom opening into plains, as at Turmus Aya on the right, below the hill on which Sinjil stands. A little over two miles to the west, on a height a little lower than that of Sinjil, gleamed the houses of an Ephraimitish Gilgal, now Jiljilieh, probably the place from which Elijah set out with Elisha on the way to the Jordan, just before the great prophet was taken up into heaven.1 The drain¬ age of this side of the watershed is effected by watercourses XXXIV.] BETHHOROH, BETHEL, SHILOH. 197 running irregularly to tlie west, through valleys too steep and rough to be passable on horseback, at least as they sink down towards the sea plains. We were now close to Shiloh — the modern Seilun — to reach which we turned off and went along the side of the hill, to avoid passing near the village of Turmus Ay a, the inhabitants of which have a bad reputation as thieves, or worse. The plain at our feet was in part under cultiva¬ tion ; in part covered with orchards of figs and olives ; and here, as elsewhere in Ephraim, there were many vine¬ yards on the slopes, with watch-towers in each. We had camped for the night on the hill near Sinjil, to keep away from dangerous neighbours, and were on our road betimes, but while the tents were packing, numbers of women and children gathered to look for any scraps, so poor are the people, even in this paid of the land. On the roadside I was interested by noticing a scarabseus beetle, the very creature so common on the sculptures of Egypt, rolling before it a ball of moist cow-dung, in which its eggs were to be secreted. It is a broad, strong creature, with a shovel-like head, but its whole length is not much over an inch, while the ball it pushes before it is half as much more in diameter. How it contrives to dig a hole large enough to bury this egg-ball is hard to imagine, yet the feat is less wonderful than that of our own common burying beetles, who play the sexton even to the bodies of little birds, sinking them into the earth and covering them in a very short time. Among the Egyptians, the scarabseus was a symbol of the sun and of creation, ap¬ parently because its ball is round and life comes from it. The roundabout we had to make brought us across the plain a mile or so north of Turmus Aya ; the village of El Lubban, hard to distinguish from the hill¬ side to which it clung, straggling over the slope on our 198 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. left : a poor place, with a few fruit-trees, stone walls, a ruined khan, a fine spring, and very hare stony ground above and around it. The ruins of Shiloh stand on a low hill covered all over with a deep bed of loose stones. Belts of the chalky rock girdled the surrounding hills to the top, the strata lying horizontally, and boulders strewing the rounded summits. The natural terraces formed by the rock-beds were here and there planted with fruit-trees, but often left to thorns and scrub. In a short side valle}^ closed by a hill, numbers of rock tombs had been cut in the thicker bands. Biding to the end of this, over a track thick with stones and boulders, we found a fine spring at the roadside, with a pool. A broken trough lay at the side, and a peasant was busy washing himself in the beck, though it was the only drinking-supply. Stones around, hollowed to contain water, served for the wants of flocks. A number of country people were beside the fountain, the intelligent faces of the children very pleasant to see, though here, as elsewhere, many were suffering from affections of the eye. Some gardens of young fig-trees had been planted at the top of the valley, and were enclosed within loose stone walls, but most of the little glen was lying wild on both sides of the white torrent bed, now dry, that wound through it. Two rock tombs, once part of the low brow of rock beside the spring, had become detached from the hill ; one slipping forward in a great mass, with a deeply hollowed round roof, and a cavity within ; the other broken in pieces. Strange to say, there were rock-cut steps still joined to the unbroken one, at the side. The hill opposite was terraced ; fig-trees were growing on the ledges, some fringing the swelling at its top. Biding back to the ruins themselves, we found them XXXIV. BETHHOROH, BETHEL, SHILOH. 199 on the breast of a low swell, beside the poor modern village. An oak, though of course not like those of England for size, gave dignity to the spot, and threw a shadow over *a small, half-ruined Mahommedan mosque. Not higher than fifteen or twenty feet, the inner space had once been vaulted. Two chambers, supported on short pillars, with a prayer-niche to the south, filled up the thirty-seven feet of its length. Part of it was evidently very old ; the rest spoke of different dates, and of materials gathered from various sources. The capital of one of the pillars rested on a disproportionately thick shaft, and two fairly carved pieces of marble, each about a yard loug, had been built into one of the walls. The flat lintel over the doorway bore signs by its ornaments of having form¬ erly done service in an ancient synagogue, or rock tomb. A stair led up, inside, to the roof, which was overgrown with rank weeds, among which were many bright flowers. The walls were, in parts, not less than four feet thick ; elsewhere, only half as thick. This strange place may have been originally a Jewish masonry tomb : certainly it cannot have been a Christian church. The crown of the low hill was specially interesting, for it is covered with very old low walls, divided as though into the basements of many chambers of different sizes. Some of the stones were hewn, others unhewn, and some of these latter were very large. The outline of the whole was an irregular square of, say, about eighty feet, with projections on two sides ; the walls being everywhere very thick. Could it be that these were the stone foundations on which, as we know, the ancient Tabernacle was raised? Had the pillars in the mosque near at hand been taken from these ruins ? Were those low walls within, remains of the chambers where Eli and Samuel had once lived ? Were those rock-hewn sepulchres we had seen in the small 200 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. valley to the east the ancient resting-places of the family of the ill-fated high priest P No spot in Central Palestine could be more secluded than this early sanctuary ; nothing more featureless than the landscape around ; so featureless, indeed, the land¬ scape, and so secluded the spot, that from the time of St. Jerome till its re-discovery by Dr. Robinson in 1838, the very site of Shiloh was forgotten and unknown. The Philistines seem to have destroyed the whole place after the defeat of Eli’s sons and the loss of the Ark, though the coverings of the Tabernacle were saved and carried to Nob, where they continued for a time. Before its glory was thus eclipsed, this place was evidently as near an approach to a national sanctuary as Israel then had. “ Behold,” we are told, “ there is a feast of the Lord in Shiloh yearly, in a place which is on the north of Bethel, on the east of the highway that goetli up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah.” 1 This annual gathering of young and old to the religious festival honoured by all the tribes reminds us of a strange incident of ancient life enacted in this quiet centre. There were great dances of the Jewish maidens, it appears, at this festivity, the fairest of the land trooping to the scene of so much gladness, and joining in it decked in their best holiday attire. The vineyards then covering the slopes and plain were thick with foliage at the time, though leaving open spaces on which the bright-eyed girls disported themselves to the sound of the timbrel and the clapping of hands, as one sees done among Eastern peasant women to-day. Sud¬ denly, however, on this occasion, by pre-arrangement, from the green covert of the vines there sprang out a host of young men, who each seized a maiden and hurried her off 1 Judg. xxi. 19. XXXIV.] BETHHOROH, BETHEL, SHILOH. 201 to the south to the hills of Benjamin — sadly in want of the fair sex since the dreadful massacre of the tribe by united Israel, after the crime against the Levite and his wife.1 “The children of Benjamin, ” we are told, “took them wives, according to the number of them that danced, whom, they caught;” some, perhaps, not sorry to find homes of their own, even thus strangely. A part of the plain to the south of the village is still called “ The Meadow of the Feast,” perhaps a reminiscence of the old festival, unless, indeed, this took place beside the fountain east of the village. The vine has long ago disappeared from the locality, which, however, is undoubtedly well suited to its growth. A number of men and hoys gathered round us while we were examining the ruins, their clothing only a blue shirt, with a thin strip of leather round the waist to keep it close to the body, and make the upper part into a kind of bag; the “bosom ”2 in which the peasant stows away what we put in our pockets. The number of blind or half-blind among them was most pitiable. Acute inflammation of the eye is allowed to go on from stage to stage, till the whole organ is destroyed by ulceration. My companion, a doctor in the army, examined two or three hoys, and found that a slight ailment which, in more favoured lands, might have been cured at once by a simple “ wash,” had been neglected till the sight was gone. One can understand why blindness is mentioned in Scripture about sixty times, from noticing its prevalence in any knot of peasants, all over Palestine. The sight of any gather¬ ing of either sex, shows how natural it is to find it said that our Lord, at a single place, “ gave sight to many 1 See p. 162. 2 Isa. lx\r. 6, 7 ; Jer. xxxii. 18 ; Luke vi. 38 ; Ps. lxxix. 12 ; Prov. xvii. 23 ; xxi. 14. 202 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. XXXIV. blind,” and that “ a great multitude of blind ” lay at the side of the pool in Jerusalem ; and it helps one at once to understand, also, how it came to be specially given forth, centuries before, that the Messiah would give recovery of sight to the blind.1 Of course the requests for back¬ shish were continuous ; but the poor creatures were quite prepared, it seemed, to give as well as to receive, for on my repeating the word, and holding out my hand as if I wanted something, a boy, in all simplicity, put his hand inside the breast of his shirt and pulled out some shrivelled figs to give to me. It was all he had, but it was at my service. I need hardly say that personal cleanliness was not carried to excess at Shiloh, more than elsewhere in Palestine. Washing the face well would probably have saved some of the peasants from blindness, but they have no soap, I presume, and undoubtedly no towels ; while as to water, a bath at rare intervals in the village pond or fountain seems the utmost of which anyone thinks. 1 Luke iv. 18 ; vii. 21 ; John v. 3. CHAPTER XXXV. TO GERIZIM. Leaving this venerable place, which had long been a de¬ serted ruin, even in the days of Jeremiah,1 we rode over the open plain along the side of the Wady Seilun — the Valley of Shiloh ; the ground lying for the time idle, hut covered with the stubble of a crop of Indian corn, which it had borne the year before. There were a few olives here and th ere, and rolling land broke the level around ; for ground without hills is a rarity in Palestine. Red anemones and white cyclamens abounded, intermixed with other flowers ; among them, if it can be called a flower, a curious variety of the pitcher plant, with a bag on each stalk to secrete water, as a reservoir from which to quench its thirst in the dry, burning heat that was approaching. An hour’s ride, of course at the usual walking pace, brought us close to Lebonah, now Lubban, which we had already seen from a distance. The hill is extremely barren ; but a little green was brightening the patch before the mud- coloured huts, and a few olives were growing around. There were also a few lean cattle about. From this point, the plain is surrounded by hills. Lebonah was a village as long ago as the time of the old Hebrew Judges,2 and it was also one of the places from which the wine used in the Temple services was procured, though its nearness to the frontier of Samaria raised a doubt in later times respecting the absolute ceremonial cleanness of anything 2 Judg. xxi. 19. 1 Jer. vii. 12. 204 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. brought from it, for might not the north wind blow some polluting dust on the grapes, or into the wine-presses, from the hated territory of the “ foolish people of Shechem”? Climbing up a rough slope, amidst rocks and thorny growth that made progress extremely laborious, the road soon bent downwards again, between stony, barren hills, though occasionally crowned by villages on both sides of the track, while groves of olives and figs enlivened the view at short intervals. Close by the road, just after jmssing the village of Sawieh, stood a very large khan, built of hewn stones, and fairly tenantable, though only as Orientals understand the phrase. There were snch public hospices in the oldest times on the chief roads ; mere shelters for man and beast— with a supply of water at hand — such as the prophet sighed after : “lodging places of wayfaring men in the wilderness.”1 Jewish travellers would not sleep in Samaritan territory if it were possible to avoid doing so, and hence this khan was built on the border, which ran past the village of Berkit, almost exactly in a line with the hospice. At Sawieh, therefore, we stood on the edge of Samaria, the stony valley north of it being the first piece of Samaritan ground. There is a fine evergreen oak-tree at this place ; a great rarity in the land, which, as I have often said, possesses hardly any large trees at all. There is another species of oak which grows about twenty feet high, and a third which forms a large part of the stunted growth of the hills, rising only from eight to twelve feet in height ; but even a single tree which is respectable ac¬ cording to our ideas, like Abraham’s Oak at Hebron or this one at Sawieh, is to be seen only at very few places indeed in the Holy Land. Towards noon, a very steep ascent over step above step 1 Jer. ix. 2. XXXV.] TO GERIZIM. 205 of rock, up which our horses had to find a practicable path as they best could, brought us to the top of a ridge from which the view to the north was magnificent. Straight before us, beyond a succession of lower hill-tops, rose the massy forms of Mounts Ebal and Gerizim, marking the Yalley of Shecliem, where Abraham raised his first altar in the land; and then, far away to the north, high up in the skies, shone a dazzling white cloud — the snowy crown of Mount Hermon. At our feet was the noble plain called El Mukhnali — about nine miles from north to south, and four from east to west — and on the slopes at its farther side, the village of Howarali. We were entering a region hallowed by the earliest traditions of Israel, dating from a time far earlier than the wretched feuds between them and the Samaritans. In the days of Joshua this had justly been the most famous part of the country not only for its fertility and beauty, but as being consecrated by the presence of Gerizim, the Mount of Blessings, before which the Tribes had held their first great national as¬ sembly, and made a formal covenant with Jehovah, leaving the twelve stones inscribed with the law, and buried on the top of the Mount, as an abiding witness to their vows.1 In those days Shiloh alone shared with Shecliem the glory of being a central meeting-place of the nation for public affairs;2 but Shecliem had the special honour of seeing the people gathered in its valley a second time, just before the death of Joshua, to renew the covenant with God made in the same place long years before.3 In this region the heroes of that age lived, and here they were buried. Five miles to the east of us, as we crossed the ridge, lay Kefr Haris — the village of Haris — recalling at once “ Heres,” where Joshua was buried.4 The claims of Tibneli, which were first brought forward by Captain 1 Josh. viii. 34 2 Josh, xviii. 1. 3 Josh. xxlv. 25. 4 Judg. ii. 9. 206 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Conder, have already been stated;1 those of Kefr Haris are these — that the Samaritans think it the right spot, and that Jewish pilgrims, seven hundred years ago, spoke of the tombs of Joshua, Caleb, and Hun as being here. Thi ^ee hundred years ago one of the Rabbis wrote of the monuments over the tombs, and of the carob and pomegranate trees beside them; another gave a sketch showing three domed buildings, with two trees, and lights burning inside the domes. Descending from the steep and stony ridge to a grassy slope, with some caves in its rocky side, in which two or three cattle had found coolness and shade, we spread our mats on the ground and had lunch, screening ourselves from the brightness as well as we could in the shadow of the rocks. Had we known it, a fine carob-tree, a little way farther on, would have given us a much more satisfactory resting-place ; for, soon afterwards, we came upon one, from the thick boughs of which fluttered a great many bits of rags, it being regarded by Mahom- medans as a holy tree. Some think that the “ green trees ” mentioned in Scripture as associated with idolatry among the Jews were of this kind — the carob — its thick, dark green foliage distinguishing it from all others in Palestine.2 As we went across the beautiful plain, rich crops were rising in every direction. Women in their long blue cotton dresses, one or two with babies, were busy pulling out weeds, to carry them home as fodder. Children played about near their mothers, and at some places cattle and calves wTere tethered by short ropes, and allowed to eat what was within their reach. A little later, about three in the afternoon, other groups of women and children, who had been busy at the same task, were resting in the field ; the women, doubtless, tired out with constant stooping. 1 See Yol. I., p. 47. 2 Judg. vi. 25 ; Jer. ii. 20 ; iii. 6. XXX Y.] TO GERIZIM. 207 The hills around, forming a girdle to the valley on all sides, rose in green terraces, step above step, in the spaces between the horizontal beds of limestone which were jutting out, many of these little plateaus showing long plantations of olive- and fig-trees. A string of camels stalked slowly past with long, ungainly strides, and, as evening drew on, the women, with their children, were to he seen slowly wending their way homewards, with large bundles of green-stuff on their heads. Near Howarah we came on a natural pond, or hollow, of rain-water, brown with mud. Peasants hearing their ploughs on their shoulders had stopped at it, and after washing themselves, they turned towards Mecca and reverently said their evening prayer. The road to the village rose and fell slowly, in long waves, to the west, hut there was nothing to detain us in the village itself. Much more interesting was the village of Awerta, in the middle of the plain, about two miles nearly east of Howarah, for in it is a domed monument which concurrent tradition, both Jewish and Mahommedan, asserts to be the tomb of Phinehas, son of the Eleazar who succeeded his father Aaron in the great office of the higlr-priesthood. Not far from this another domed tomb, in a paved courtyard, and under the shadow of a great terebinth, is said to he that of Eleazar, who, in his turn, was succeeded as high priest by his son Phinehas. There seems little doubt, indeed, that we have, in these tombs, the true memorials of the resting-places of the family of Aaron, and, if so, how venerable is the antiquity to which they carry us back ! The great plain of Mukhnah, across part of which we pass to reach Awerta, is an undulating expanse, with villages cresting the successive elevations, wide cornfields stretch¬ ing between them, and olive plantations running along the slopes. I know few finer sights than this great 208 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. breadth of fertile land, but perhaps its attractiveness is due in part to contrast with the general barrenness of Palestine. Three or four miles farther on, to the north-west, a valley opens to the west from the plain — that of Shechem, memorable in many ways. Just at the corner where you turn into it from the open ground, and close to the foot of Gerizim, is the hamlet of Balata, the name of which among the Samaritans is “ The Holy Oak ” or “ The Tree of Grace.” This name strengthens the force of the identification of this site by St. Jerome with that of the Oak of Shechem or of Moreh1 — under which Abraham pitched his tent and built his altar — the first sanctuary of Jehovah in the Land of Promise. It was under that tree, long since gone, that Jacob buried the terapliim of Bach el and the idolatrous amulets of his household, and under, or near it, he, too, built an altar, which he dedicated to El Elohe Israel — God, the God of Israel ; 2 his habitual caution being shown in his first buying the land on which he £C spread his tent,” and which he consecrated to Jehovah.3 At a later date, Joshua, also, recognised this ancient holy place of his nation, by “ set¬ ting up a great stone under an oak that was by the sanctuary of God,” as a witness which had “ heard all the words of the Lord which He spake ; ” 4 as if in very deed the great commander had thought that the stone consecrated by him to Jehovah was in some sense connected with the Deity from that time. The belief that conse¬ crated stones become in some way habitations of the Being to whom they are dedicated, has been held in every age by men at a particular stage of intellectual or religious development, as we see in the “ holy stones ” of our own country, which have enjoyed the superstitious 1 Gen. xii. 6, oak, not plain. 2 Gen. xxxiii. 20. 3 Gen. xxxiii. 19. 4 Josh. xxiv. 27. XXXV.] TO GERIZ1M. 209 reverence of the peasantry almost to the present day. In the same spirit, Arnobius, a teacher of rhetoric in the Homan province of Africa, and after a time a Christian Father, confesses, in the fourth century, that before becoming a Christian, “ whenever he espied an anointed stone, or one bedaubed with oil, he worshipped it, as though some person dwelt in it, and, addressing himself to it, begged blessings from a senseless stock.” The oak in Joshua’s narrative was doubtless that under which Abraham and Jacob had raised their altar, and that altar was Joshua’s “ Sanctuary of God.” At a later time, when the primitive tradition of the spot had become corrupted, an oak at some distance from Shechem was spoken of as “ The Oak of the Meonenim,” 1 or Soothsayers; but that of Abraham and Jacob was here, or very close by. Close to this site of the earliest sanctuary in the land is still to be seen the well which Jacob caused to be dug. As it is near magnificent springs gushing from the roots of Gerizim, and liowing to the east, his undertaking so heavy a task as sinking so deep a well and building a wall round the excavation can only be explained by the jealousy with which the Canaanites, like all Eastern peoples, no doubt regarded their own springs. To have trusted to these, would have been to invite trouble in the future : it was therefore very much better for the patriarch to have a well on his own property, so as to be independent of his neighbours. This Well of Samaria lies a little off the road, on the right hand ; the track skirt¬ ing the left slope of the valley. Turning my horse down the rough side of the road, it was a very short way, over stony, unused ground, to the sacred spot. There is nothing visible now, above ground. A little chapel, about twenty feet long, once built over the well, has long ago fallen, 1 Judg. ix. 67. O 210 THE HOLY LAND AHD THE BIBLE. [Chap. its stones lying in rough heaps outside and around the opening below; not a few of them, I fear, at the bottom, helping to fill up the shaft. The ground slopes up to the fragments of the broken-down wall, and you have to let yourself down as you best can to reach the wrell itself. The church dates from the fifth century, hut, except the e stones, the only traces of it are some remains of tesselated pavements and carved stones, which are hidden beneath rubbish, but were seen by the Palestine Surveyors. Over the well is a great stone with a round hole in the middle, large enough for the skin buckets of the peasantry to pass down. How old this covering is no one can say,1 but the well itself, beyond the possibility of doubt, is that at the side of which, perhaps on some masonry long since gone, our blessed Lord sat, nearly nineteen hundred years ago, while the disciples had gone up the little valley to Shechem, a mile to the west.2 The woman whom He met, and with whom He held dis¬ course, came from Sychar, a little village now called Askar, just round the north corner of the valley, on the slope of Ebal, not half as far off as Shechem. The well is seven feet and a half across, and its depth, which some centuries ago wras 105 feet, is still about seventy-five feet, though, for ages, every visitor has thrown down stones, to hear the echo when they strike the bottom. Thus the well is still £‘ deep,” and it must have been much deeper in the time of our Lord. It is cut through a thick bed of soil, swept down in the course of ages by the rains from the hills on each side ; and beneath this great deposit, it passes through soft rock ; the water filtering in through the sides, to the depth, occasionally, of about twelve feet, even yet, though it is now dry in 1 Captain Conder thinks it certainly not older than the 12th Century A.D. * John iv. 5 — 30. XXXV.] TO GERIZIM. 211 summer, and sometimes for years together. It is thus ^rather a “beer,” or rain pit, than a spring well, so that when our Lord told the woman that, if she had asked Him, He would have given her, not rain-water, such as she gave Him, but “ living water,” it must have struck her greatly. Over forty years ago, a boy was induced to allow himself to be let down for the apparently hopeless purpose of find¬ ing and bringing up again a Bible, dropped into the well accidentally three years before, and, strange to say, he found it, the bottom being quite dry at the time. The depth was then said to be exactly seventy-five feet. Captain Anderson also went down, in 1866, but had a perilous descent, for after passing through the round hole in the covering stone, and through a narrow neck, four feet long, requiring him to raise his arms over his head, he fainted away, and only recovered consciousness after lying for a time insensible on the stones below. The mouth and upper part of the well he found to be of masonry, with which, indeed, the whole of it had the appearance of having been lined. To sink such a shaft, seven and a half feet broad, through perhaps a hundred and fifty feet of earth and rock, was an undertaking involving no little skill, as well as a large outlay, and its existence is a proof both of the enterprise and of the wealth of the patriarch. Our Lord must have sat with His face to the south¬ west, since He speaks of Grerizim as “ this mountain.” He may have pointed to it by a movement of the head, or with His finger, as He uttered the words which pro¬ claimed the cessation of all great local centres of worship as exclusively holy. “Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither on this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father,” but true worshippers were to “worship the Father in spirit and in truth.”1 1 Jolm iv. 21, 23. o 2 212 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Around Him were the same sights as are before the visitor of to-day — the rich side valley running up westward, to Shechem, with a rippling streamlet in its centre ; the groves that border the town, hiding the houses themselves from view; the heights of Gerizim, towering in rounded masses one over another, to a great height, close before Him on the south. Mount Ebal, steep, but terraced almost to the top into gardens of prickly pear, which is grown for its fruit, lay behind Him, the little hamlet of Balata, where Abraham’s altar once stood under the sacred tree, the mud-huts of Sychar and the dome of Joseph’s tomb being at its foot. To the east stretched away the great plain, which for miles each way was then “white already to harvest;” beyond it were the hallowed site of Salem, near to Enon, where His herald the Baptist had preached, and the wooded hill of Phinehas, with the tomb of the once fiery High Priest. The traditional tomb of Joseph lies about six hundred yards north of the well, beside a little mosque with a low dome. Jews, Samaritans, and Christians alike accept it as the actual place of the burial of the patriarch, and it is quite possible that if it could be opened we should find his mummy below, for we read that the children of Israel brought the hones of J oseph from Egypt and buried them in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought, and that it became the inheritance of the sons of Joseph.1 The tomb stands in a little yard close to the mosque, at the end of a fine row of olive- and fig-trees, and enclosed by a low stone wall. Two low pillars stand at the head and 'foot of the tomb, their tops hollowed out and blackened by fire; the Jews making a practice of burning small articles, such as gold lace, shawls, or handkerchiefs, in these saucer-like cups, in memory of the patriarch who sleeps beneath. 1 Josh. xxiv. 32. XXXV.] TO GERIZIM. 213 The V alley of Shechem is one of the most beautiful places in the Holy Land. Flowing water, lofty mount¬ ains, rich vegetation, and even the singing of birds among the hill-side copses or the rich olive-groves, unite to make it delightful. There are three large springs in the valley, running in a broad stream past the Turkish barracks, which are on the left hand, commanding the approach to Shechem, or Nablus as it is now called, by a contraction of the Roman name Neapolis, which means, like Naples, “The New City.” On the open space east of this large building, a great number of Armenian pilgrims had pitched their tents beneath the olive-trees, their horses and mules hobbling round with feet tied together, while the owners rested and enjoyed themselves — for a merry set they appeared to be. Beyond the barracks, great numbers of the townspeople were amusing tilt mselves in the staid fashion of Orientals, it being Friday, the Mahommedan Sunday. The women were all hidden by long white veils descending io the ground, before and behind; the men were in all colours. Passing round the town on the underside, to the east, and mounting through some very dilapidated roads to higher ground on the farther side, we found our tents pitched among olive-trees, just below the Mahom¬ medan cemetery, with the pleasant prospect of having no water to drink but from a spring which bubbled out close to us on the slope, after percolating through some acres of graves. Such a situation never strikes an Oriental as undesirable for an encampment : indeed, it seems the rule to choose graveyards for this purpose, and it was only by great efforts that I could get water brought from above the cemetery to cook our dinner. Nablus at last lay before us, a town of domes and minarets, more attractive from without, as it proved, than from within. To the right, looking down the valley, rose n lJ n 214 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Gerizim, in bold, angular masses of rock ; on tlie left, Ebal, witli its many terraces of prickly pear. Nablus has twenty- seven soap and olive-oil works, and great mounds of soap asbes rose near us like low bills, numbers of masterless dogs basking on tliem, or wandering about till night set them free to roam tbe town, from wbicb tbey are quite aware tbey must keep away during tbe day. So it is to be in tbe New Jerusalem : dogs, despised and unclean creatures in tbe East, are there to be “ without.”1 Beyond tbe town tbe valley was so narrow that a few olive and fig plantations filled it from bill to bill. There were no town walls worth mention, and tbe town gates seem long ago to have been removed, or to stand open permanently. Inside tbe town, tbe streets were much like those of Jerusalem, though a great proportion of them were vaulted over, making them both dark and dirty. Tbe houses were of stone, with few windows, small projecting lattices — nicely carved in many cases — and low doors, here and there adorned with texts from tbe Koran, as a sign that tbe owner bad been to Mecca. Some were several storeys high, and of an imposing appearance, but tbe great ma¬ jority were low and mean. Tbe town is very small, but it extends a considerable distance from east to west, in wbicb direction tbe two principal streets run. One of these was full of moving life, wbicb one could see, as there was no arch overhead, but tbe side lanes were mostly built over, and many bad a filthy sunken path for beasts in tbe middle. No place could be more easily made clean and sweet, for water is to be bad in any quantity from tbe high slopes behind, and, indeed, streams run down tbe western streets, but tbe others are left in their foulness, with dogs for tbe only scavengers, except in winter, when they are well scoured by wild torrents of rain. 1 Hev. xxii. 15. XXXV.] TO GERIZIM. 215 It is only witliin the last few years that Christians have been able to move about free7y in Nablus, except in the sunken middle of the streets ; but the Mahommedans are less ferocious now than they used to be. In the east of the town, a great mosque, once a church dedicated by the Crusaders to St. John, speaks of the ancient strength of their garrison. It is touching to see it, with the finely carved, deep gate, of three recessed arches and delicate side pillars, in the hands of the barbarian, and one can only hope that the Cross may some day again take the place of the Crescent. The house of the Protestant missionary was natur¬ ally an attraction, but it was not easy to reach it through the labyrinth of cross alleys and lanes. In Europe, the variety in the look of the streets helps one to remember a route, but it is no easy matter to make one’s way in an Eastern town, between rows of blank walls often darkened by vaulted aread( s. The view from the parsonage, when I reached it, was, however, very attractive. Itich green rose everywhere among the yellow buildings. Gerizim towered on the south, and on the north the still higher Ebal lifted its great bulk to the heavens. The former hill is much more cut into clefts and distinct parts than the latter, and the Hebrews were justified in regard¬ ing it as the Mount of Blessings, apart from special reli¬ gious causes, because of the abundant streams which pour forth out of its depths and make the valley the richest in the land. The slope of the strata being to the north, Ebal is prevented from contributing in the same way to the local fertility. Evening spread its shadows over the valley long before the glorious hills faded into dark masses — for in their outlines they were still visible under the stars. Nablus is one of the towns in the East where the practice, familiar in the days of our Lord, of 216 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. celebrating marriages and bringing home tbe bride during the night, is still observed. Drums, fifes, shouts, and rejoicings break the stillness as late as ten o’clock ; old and young pouring out to see the procession — the maidens in their best, the bridegroom and his companions, the bride deeply veiled, the musicians, the crowd, and above all, the flaming lights, which give animation to the whole.1 The ascent of Gerizim is made on horseback, but a good part of the way is so steep that it seems wonderful that the beasts can keep their footing among the loose stones. Passing up behind the town, you come very soon to a magnificent fountain, the water of which is led east¬ wards by an open watercourse. At this copious source some women were drawing for their households, others were washing their unsavoury linen; men were enjoying their ablutions, and boys were playing in the water. Gardens climbed the hill on the left of the track, beautiful with every fruit-tree that grows in Palestine ; and at some places grain was springing up vigorously on terraces raised upon slopes so steep that it seemed impossible their walls could permanently stand. Vines, olives, and figs filled stray nooks ; but the part of the hill up which our horses had to toil was too stony for any cultivation whatever. At several places the limestone stood out in bold cliffs which seemed to overhang the town, several of them forming natural pulpits, from any one of which Jotham may have delivered his famous parable, the earliest of which we know.2 When about to utter it, this surviving member of the family of Gideon had suddenly shown himself on one of these projecting shelves of rock, inaccessible from below, but open for escape to the mount¬ ain behind. The olive, the fig-tree, the vine, the brier, J Matt. xxv. 1 if. 2 Judg. ix. 7 ffi. XXXV.] TO GERIZIM. 217 the bramble, and the thorn, introduced by him as the speakers in his parable, were all within view around, orna¬ menting the valley or the terraces with their silver- grey or green foliage, or flinging festoons from tree to tree, or creeping over the barren side of the mountain. To compare Abimelech to the worthless bramble, used then, doubtless, as now, for the quickly kindled, fiercely up-blazing, but speedily burnt-out fires of the tent, the household, or the local altar, was no less vigorous than true, and we cannot wonder that Jotham, the mo¬ ment words so scathing had ended, fled into distant security. After a weary climb we reached the top of the mount¬ ain, but had a long way to ride before we arrived at the farther end. The narrow plateau, now sloping upwards, now undulating, now consisting of rough shelves of rock, was partly ploughed for grain, partly sown ; stone walls separated some of the patches, and a terraced road at one point stretched for a good distance. The spot where the Samaritans still sacrifice seven Paschal lambs is very near the east end of the ridge, and thus close to the true peak of Gierizim. A pit, or “tannur,” in which the lambs are roasted, was all that appeared of last year’s solemnity, and Easter was not to return till the twenty-ninth of April. A loose stone wall enclosed a space in which the prepara¬ tion of the carcases for roasting takes place ; the wool being* removed with water boiled over a huge fire of brambles. A raised bank in this enclosure further marked where the priests stand during the ceremony, while a shallow trench showed where the sheep are fleeced. Near this sacred spot the whole community spend the night of the Passover in tents, eating the lamb at sundown, with bread and bitter herbs, after the old Hebrew mode.1 1 Ex. xii. 8. 218 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Bejrnnd this, to the east, the highest part of the mountain is crowned with the ruins of a castle and a church ; a Greek cross remaining over one of the gateways of the former. It dates from the early age of the Greek emperors, having been built apparently by Justinian, or at a yet earlier period. The ruins show that it must have been a very strong fortress, for its walls are nine feet thick, and extend 180 feet north and south, by 230 feet east and west, with four corner towers and one in the centre, each about thirty feet square ; and there is a huge reser¬ voir for water, measuring 120 feet east and west, by sixty feet north and south. The church has been quite levelled with the ground, but some courses of the castle walls are still standing. To raise such buildings on such a spot, more than twelve hundred feet above the plain below, must have involved immense labour. I confess, however, that I was more interested in the Samaritan than in the Christian ruins, carrying back the mind, as the former do, to a period before the Captivity of Judah. A rock is pointed out — merely a sloping shelf of limestone — on which Joshua is said to have reared the Tabernacle ; and a little rock-sunk trench is dignified as the scene of Abraham’s sacrifice, though it appears to be as certain as anything can well be that the patriarch went to Mount Moriah at Jerusalem, not to Gerizim.1 Joshua, as w^e know, after having “ placed the blessings and the cursings ” on Gerizim and Ebal, wrote the whole law on stones which he set up on Ebal;2 coating them with the almost imperishable cement of the country, and writing on it, either with paint or with an iron style or pen, while it was soft. Such a mode of preserving writing was common in antiquity, and in so dry a climate would last almost for ever. The Samaritans believe that “ the twelve stones ” 1 See Yol. I., p. 454. 2 Deut. xxvii. 2 — 8. XXXV.] TO GERIZIM. 219 thus inscribed are still in existence on tlie top of Mount Gerizim, but Sir Charles Wilson and Major Anderson excavated the large masses of rudely hewn stone supposed to be those of Joshua, and found them to be little better than mere natural slabs. Underneath them were two other courses of stones, rudely dressed and unsquared, but there was nothing on them, and the whole appeared to be nothing more than part of one of the many terraces, or paths, which surround the early Christian ruins ; or they may, with some similar remains, be the last fragments of the temple built by Sanballat on Gerizim, in opposition to that of Jerusalem;1 or, again, part of the fortress of Justinian. The natural amphitheatre formed by the receding of Mounts Ebal and Gerizim at the same point in the valley below, is wonderfully suited to such an incident as that of reading the law to the Hebrews, at the great assembly of the nation after the taking of Ai by Joshua.2 The curse was to be put on Mount Ebal and the blessing on Mount Gerizim, half of the tribes standing on Gerizim, responding to blessings and affirming them ; half on Ebal, taking the same part with the curses; while both blessings and curses were pronounced by the Levites, who were grouped round the Ark in the centre of the valley. At this, its widest point, the open ground, elsewhere for the most part only a furlong broad, is about half a mile across, but the tops of the two mountains are two miles asunder, while Gerizim rises 1,250 feet, and Ebal nearly 1,500 feet, above the plain.3 Ho sight could well have been grander than this singular spectacle ; the Levites in their white 1 Palestine Memoirs, ii. 188. 2 Deufc. xxvii. 12 ££.; Josh. viii. 34. 3 Gerizim, 1,249 feet; Ebal, 1,477 feet. Gerizim is 2,849 feet above the sea; Ebal, 3,077. 220 THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. robes, guarding the sacred Ark on the gentle rise — the Shechem, or shoulder, which parts the waters flowing to the Dead Sea from those running* towards the Mediter- ranean — and “ all Israel, and their elders, and officers, and their judges,” in two vast companies, lining the sides of the two mountains, tribe by tribe, in ascending ranks, from the valley to the utmost height ; the glorious sky over them as the only fitting roof of such a temple. That all the assembled myriads could easily hear the words of the Levites admits of no question, for the air of Palestine is so clear and dry that the voice can be heard at distances much greater than the residents in other countries would suppose. Sir Charles Wilson tells us, for example, that the Arab workmen on the top of Gerizim often conversed without effort with men pass¬ ing along the valley beneath. Besides, the Blessings and Curses of the Law would be as familiar to Israel as the Litany or the Ten Commandments are to us, so that the responses would be instinctively ready as the reader finished each clause. The view from the top of Mount Gerizim is of amazing extent and interest — the bare and desolate slopes of Ebal, watered only by rain from cisterns on the successive terraces that have been raised with much labour on its sides, since all the springs run through the strata, to the north side of the mountain ; the cactus gardens on the lower terraces ; the corn rising on many of those higher up, but the great bare mass of the hill swelling to the sky above ; the valley below, with its gardens and orchards, the mosque at Joseph’s Tomb, the Well of Samaria, and, just outside on the plain, the village of Sychar — a poor hamlet on the rocky slope of Ebal, which swells up in slow waves behind it ; the glorious plain of Mukhnah — “the Encampment” — with its fields of XXXV.] TO GERIZIM. 221 rich brown tilth ; stray villages on its low nndulations ; clumps of olives beside them; and, on the other side, to the east, a long succession of round-topped hills, cultivated in terraces wherever there is a shelf for soil ; while the distant landscape is sprinkled with olives, their grey inter¬ mixed with the green of the cornfields. On the west we could see Joppa, thirty-six miles off, at the sea ; to the east, the chasm of the Jordan, eighteen miles distant ; while at our feet, as if to bring us hack from poetry to prose, the poles of the telegraph from Joppa stood up in their bareness along the valley, running past Jacob’s Well, and then south to Jerusalem and Egypt, and east to Gilead. The view from Ebal, however, is even finer. On the north you see Safed, “the city set on a hill,”1 and the snowy head of Mount Hermon, with “ Tliirza,” once the capital of the northern kingdom, famed for its beauty,2 shining out on a very steep hill a little way beyond the plain : on the west, Joppa, and Ramleli, and the sea ; on the south, the hills over Bethel ; and on the east, the great plain of the Hauran, beyond the Jordan. A striking ruin on the summit of the mountain gives romance even to the Hill of Curses. The enclosure is over ninety feet square, and the walls are no less than twenty feet thick, strongly built of selected unhewn stones, without mortar, with the remains of chambers ten feet square inside. Within the building, moreover, is a cistern, and round it are heaps of stones and ruins. Excavation has thrown no light on the history of the structure. It is too small for a church, for there is only a space fifty feet square inside the amazing walls, and there is no trace of any plaster or cement, such as is associated with the incident of the great stones which Joshua set up, or with any altar that he may have raised on the mountain. Strange to say, some 1 Matt. y. 14. 2 Cant. vi. 4 ; 1 Kings xiv. 17 ; xv. 2], 33 ; xvi. 8 £f. 222 THE HOLT LAND A HI) THE BIBLE. [Chap. peasant had carried his plough up to the top of the mountain, and had raised a fine crop of lentils, perhaps in the hope that, at such a height, they might escape the greedy eyes of the Turkish officials. Guided to their quarter by the excellent missionary, I was able to pay a lengthened visit to the remnant of Samaritans still living in Nablus. To find the way to them alone would be, I should think, impossible, so numerous were the dark arches, cross lanes, and slums through which the road lay. This most interesting com¬ munity has increased of late years from 135 to 160 souls, so that it is not actually dying out, nor does it seem likely to do so, the young men being very tall, strong, and handsome. The calamity of ignorance weighs upon them all, however, even physically, for there are several cases of imperfect sight, and of other troubles which a little knowledge might have averted. The synagogue was a very modest room, of small size, and in no respect fitted up ecclesiastically, though for courtesy we took off our boots on entering. In a recess at one side were the famous manuscripts of the Pentateuch, two of which were brought out and shown us, though there is a third of still greater age, seen by Mr. Drake and others, and said to be written on the skins of about twenty rams, slain as thank-offerings, the writing being on the side where the hair originally was. It is small and irregular, with the lines far apart, the ink faded and purplish, the parchment much torn, very yellow, and patched ; the edges bound with green silk. Down the centre of the scroll, on the back, is said to run a curious feat of skill. By thickening one or two letters of a vertical column this inscription is alleged to have been created : “ I, Abishua, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest — the favour of Jehovah be upon them — for His glory I have XXXV.] TO GERIZIM. 223 Vvritten this Holy Torah [law] in the entrance of the Tabernacle on Mount Gerizim, near Bethel, in the thir¬ teenth year of the possession by the Children of Israel of the Land of Canaan and all its boundaries ; I thank the Lord.” Unfortunately for the authenticity of this amazing inscription, there are great numbers of Samaritan rolls on which it appears, the same name, place, and date of com¬ position being given in each case. The two venerable documents which I saw are on rolls, with silk covers, embroidered on the outside with gold letters as a title. The writing is very old, and, of course, illegible to any¬ one who does not know Samaritan. The form of the letters is said by Captain Conder to be not older than the seventh century of our era. The High Priest, a young man, had his portrait to sell, after he had previously secured a gratuity. He is tall and thin, with a long, oval face, light complexion, and good features of a strictly Jewish type; but this by no means implies that he is of pure Jewish blood, since the immi¬ grants sent to Samaria to colonise the country, after the Ten Tribes had as a body been carried off, were them¬ selves Semitic, and, to judge from the monuments, must have been practically undistinguishable from Hebrews. There was no attempt at official dignity, but the friendliest equality amongst all, though it is very different when the priestly robes have invested the leader with his eccle¬ siastical dignity. Most of the conversation I had with them was on the theme about which they were most concerned — - their earnest desire to have an English teacher who should content himself with lessons from the five books of Moses, which alone are canonical with them. “ We have no one,” said the High Priest, pathetically, “ who can teach the common branches of education, and we want an English as well as an Arabic training. We should like 224 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. to know geography, writing, grammar, and history. We have tried your societies, hut they will not send anyone to us if we do not let him teach the whole of the Old and the New Testament.” I could not help thinking that to refuse an overture to teach from the Pentateuch alone was a great mistake, for it is part of the Word of God, and even where the whole Scripture is nominally the reading- book, teaching is practically confined to a part of it. The Samaritans, moreover, are bright, and easily taught ; in¬ deed, they are said to have been in such repute before the time of Ibrahim Pasha, fifty years ago, as to hold a special firman, entitling them to exclusive employment in Sy ria as scribes.1 The Protestant Mission has a school at which I found thirty-four girls and thirty-nine boys, of course in separate buildings, to suit the ideas of the East, but the teachers seemed exclusively natives, which I could not help think¬ ing a great mistake. The school, in missions generally, is the supreme hope ; and in my opinion, until British missionaries, like the American, enter on their work duly trained to be themselves teachers, day by day, in their own schools, and faithfully give themselves to this work, the results will be very far from justifying the great expenditure involved. A missionary’s life in Palestine, if he be not a schoolmaster, is as nearly as possible a sinecure. At Nablus, for example, the only congrega¬ tion consists of the few Greek Christians in the town. Mahommedans can only be reached by the school, which is attended by some of their children. But of what use can a poor native teacher be, with a varnish of know¬ ledge over hereditary ignorance, in comparison with a European, born in the faith, and full of light and intelli¬ gence ? The books used by the scholars were, I found, 1 Palestine Memoirs, ii. 219. XXXV.] TO GERIZIM. 225 from the American Arabic printing-press at Beyrout, as are all the school books of every kind, not only in Syria and Palestine, bnt in the valley of the Nile, along the North of Africa, and over every part of Western Asia. But I must not leave the Samaritans without a few words about the last survivors of a people so venerable. Following the same customs and religious usages as their forefathers for at least 2,500 years, and, like them, marrying only amongst themselves, they offer a pheno¬ menon perhaps unique, for it was not every Jew, even in St. Paul’s day, who could say that he was of pure Hebrew blood.1 Not that the Samaritans are pure Jews ; they are descended from Jews of the Ten Tribes who escaped deportation to Babylon and probably inter¬ married with the Semitic settlers sent into their coun¬ try from the East by the Assyrian kings, after Samaria had fallen.2 The Jewish element, however, won the less earnest religiousness of the heathen immigrants to its side, with the result of creating in the end a zealous wor¬ ship of Jehovah and repudiation of idolatry. Proud of their descent from the Ten Tribes, and unwilling to admit that it was tainted, their national spirit had already made them intensely Jewish in their feelings before the return of Judah from its captivity in Babylon, and there can be no doubt that but for the narrow policy of Ezra in secluding his community from all relations with them, they would have joined him with all loyalty, and accepted Jerusalem as their religious centre. But the spirit of Pabbinism, with its fierce exclusiveness and hatreds, was dominant in the great Reformer, and Jew and Samaritan became mortal enemies. The Five Books of Moses were adopted as their only sacred writings, but it is not easy to say whence they got their earliest copy of the Pentateuch. 1 Phil. iii. 5. 2 2 Kings xvii. 24. V 226 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Most probably it was procured from the Jews at Jerusalem, on their return from Babylon, and before the two races finally quarrelled. The oldest manuscript now in their possession was written, apparently, as long ago as the time of Christ, though some give it a later origin ; but in any case it is the oldest copy, by centuries, of any part of the Scriptures. When refused by Ezra any share in the building of the Temple at Jerusalem, the Samaritans, in their rage and hatred, built a rival sanctuary on Mount Grerizim ; Manasseh, brother of the Jewish High Priest, and son-in-law of Sanballat, being its first High Priest. Two hundred years later, in the second century before Christ, this hated building was razed to the ground by John Hju'canus — an act of destruction which increased, if possible, the terrible bitterness between the two peoples. A broad, flat surface of rock on the summit of Mount Grerizim is still revered by the Samaritans of to-day as the spot where their temple once stood : a spot so holy to them that they would deem it a sin to step upon it with shod feet. Whenever they pray, more¬ over, they turn their faces to this point, as the Mahom- medans turn towards Mecca, and as the Jews in Babylon and elsewhere turned towards Jerusalem.1 Nothing could be more bitter than the hostility which existed, genera¬ tion after generation, between Shechem and the Holy City. “ The foolish people that dwell at Shechem,’' says the Son of Sirach ; 2 and even our Lord, to prevent His message being at once rejected by the Jews, had to com¬ mand His disciples not to enter into any city of the Samaritans, who were classed with the heathen.3 St. John, indeed, appears as if he wished almost to apologise for his Master’s presence at Jacob’s Well, by telling us that 1 Dan. vi. 10 ; 2 Chron. vi. 34 ; 1 Kings viii. 44 ; Ps. v. 7 ; J onali ii. 4. 2 Ecclus. 1. 26. 3 Matt. x. 5. XXXV.] TO GrEBJZIM. 227 “He must needs go through Samaria.”1 Since the fall of Jerusalem the history of the Samaritans is that of gradual extinction. Thousands at a time were put to death under the Roman emperors because of their political restlessness, and, as we have seen, they have now dwindled to fewer than 200, old and young. It was impossible to leave a place so charming as the valley of Sliechem without a final stroll down the plain. A fresh, glorious spring morning invited it. Nature was in all her beauty. Fine walnut-trees rose over thick groves of almond, pomegranate, orange, olive, pear, and plum trees, from wdiose branches came the music of birds. Thousands of cyclamens, red anemones, and dwarf tulips looked up from amidst the green. The blessings of J oseph indeed prevailed “ unto the utmost bounds of the ever¬ lasting hills.” 2 Wherever the rich streams could be led, fertility was luxuriant; but high up on the far-off shelves and cliffs of the mountains, scorched and split as they are by the sun, the Israelite long ago learned to look to the heavens, knowing that, to obtain a harvest in that lofty and arid region, the clouds must give their rain and dew. South of the great mass of the Lebanon Mountains, Palestine has no central chain, with offshoots east and west, but, in place of it, a lower range, running south¬ wards half-way between the Mediterranean and the Head Sea, at an elevation so closely corresponding to that of the nearly level summits all over the land that the watershed of the country is often hard to recognise, ex¬ cept from the direction in which streams are flowing. In the valley of Shechem, the point at which water parts to the Head Sea on the one hand, and the Ocean on the other, is in the middle of the town of Nablus. 1 John iv. 4. 2 Gen. xlix. 26 ; Deut. xxxiii. 13 — 15. p 2 228 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Some of its brooks flow east, others west, and it is from this, as I have intimated, that the old name Shechem — a “ Shoulder ” — is derived. To walk by the side of gently murmuring or silent waters is so rare a pleasure in such a land that one can realise the force of the words uttered by David — “ The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want ; He maketh me to lie down in green pastures ; He leadeth me beside the still waters/’1 What a long history crowded on my mind as I looked around ! Before Shechem was built, Abraham and Lot had pitched their black* tents on the plain through which I had walked ; their long-eared, great-tailed sheep, and black goats, their tall solemn camels, and their small-sized oxen, had here nibbled the grass or twigs, the cactus or flowers ; Sarah and her women-slaves, of course duly veiled, had glided about over these very risings and sinkings of the valley, and the stal¬ wart herdsmen had watered their charge out of the rippling brook, still flowing over its bed of shining white stones as it did in the bright mornings nearly four thousand years ago. Here lived Jacob and his wives — poor Leah and favoured Rachel — and the slave-mothers of so many of his sons ; and all his children except Benjamin, who was not yet born, ran over these slopes and waded in this stream. Here, the Tribes had often gathered, from Dan on the north and Beersheba on the south, after that first great assembly in Joshua’s day ; their great attraction to this spot being not only its beauty, but the altar of their fore¬ fathers under the sacred oak, the first, simple approach to a national sanctuary. Here the great assembly of the nation, after the death of Solomon, had been held, with results disastrous to Israel, through the wrongheadedness and folly of the wise man’s son. Jeroboam, the fugi¬ tive, returned from Egypt — the man who had the fortunes 1 Ps. xxiii. 1, 2. XXXV.] TO GERIZIM. 229 of his country in his hand — raised his tents somewhere near. Temperate and shrewd, but firm, he here made his proposal of reform on behalf of the Ten Tribes ; and the insulting reception that was given to it was followed by the wild cry, from ten thousand voices — “ What portion have we in David P Neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse ! To your tents, 0 Israel ; now, see to thine own house, David ! ” 1 “ Then Jeroboam built Sliechem ; ” 2 that is, I suppose, changed it from a poor hamlet or village to a fine town. Here, too, centuries later, came a Descendant of Rehoboam, in simple dress ; Claimant of a throne, like His ancestor, but a throne in the souls of men ; and here He sat, weary, by Jacob’s Well, leaving us im¬ mortal words spoken to a humble woman, perhaps a distant offspring of some one of those who, in the long past, had turned their backs on the line of David. Three miles east of Shechem, at the head of the great Wady Farah, which has in all ages been the highway from the Damieh ford of the Jordan to Shechem, there are great springs, marking the spot where lay Salem, the scene of the later work of John the Baptist, “near to Enon,” “because there was much water there.” 3 The springs rise in open ground amidst bare and unattractive hills, and flow down the slope, through a skirting of oleanders, in a strong brook which grows deeper on its way from the addition of numerous small streams. The village of Salem is a wretched col¬ lection of stone huts, square and flat-roofed, with a tree, large for Palestine, near them, enclosed within a stone wall for preservation, and with a few olives dotting the bare slopes. Looking westward, the eye crosses the great plain and travels up the valley of Shechem, but around Salem itself there is nothiug at all attractive. To make the 2 1 King’s xii. 25. 3 Jelm iii. 23. 1 1 Kings xii. 16. 230 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. XXXV. identification with John’s Salem complete, there is a vil¬ lage called Ainun four miles north of the principal stream. With abundant water flowing all the year round, a central position, free space for the crowds, and a situation on the edge of the descent to the Jordan, of which the waters of the neighbourhood are, south of the plain of Esdraelon, the main tributary on the west, no position more favour¬ able in every way could have been chosen by the Baptist for his work. That he once raised his earnest voice in regions now so silent and forlorn, casts an interest over the landscape more powerful than it could otherwise have had, even had it possessed great natural attractions. CHAPTEE XXXVI. THE CITY OF SAMAEIA. Breaking up our encampment at Shechem, where, by tbe way, we had a formal visit from the commandant of the garrison, with its usual accompaniment of coffee and idle talk, we took the road to the town of Samaria, up the valley to the west. As we left, some weavers were busy at their looms, flinging the shuttle hither and thither, as they did when Job spoke of his days being swifter than its restless flight.1 Some fig-trees were in full leaf, although it was so early as the 14th of March ; others were not yet green, but the olives were arrayed in all their beauty, for they keep their foliage all the year round. A little way out of Shechem the water in the centre of the very narrow glen ran to the west, driving a mill. The slopes on each side were beautifully green ; and, as we ad¬ vanced, streams from the hills swelled that in the valley till the mills became so frequent that one might fancy they were there to mark the miles. After a time our way turned nearly north, up a gentle slope which had no brook, and for some distance the ground was covered with stones and thorny bushes. Tillages on the rounded hill-tops, bedded in green fields and groves of olives, looked down on us from the south before we left the valley, but there was less beauty around those on its northern side. The broad bald ridge was ere long 1 Job vil 6. 232 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. passed, and we descended, once more, to a fertile valley, watered by gurgling brooks. A fine mill and orchards of pear-trees marked the village nearest Samaria, and for a long time before we reached our destination all the hill¬ sides were clad with fig and olive orchards. It took us about two hours to go from Shechem to the old capital of the northern kingdom. The beauty of the country round the city of Samaria abundantly justifies Omri’s choice. It is lovely on all sides, but especially towards the south. In every direc¬ tion hills of soft velvet-green, terraced step above step to the top, give the eye a delightful feast. The hill of Samaria rises from 400 to 500 feet above the valley, and is isolated on all sides except the east, where it sinks into a narrow ridge about 200 feet below the general level, and running towards Ebal. A circle of green hills looks down upon it, but it must have been almost impregnable in the early ages, for it stands up apart like a great boss on a buckler, with steep ascents affording easy defence from any attack. To starve the population into submission must have been the only way to take it, if it resolved to hold out. Ascending by a rather steep path through the modern village, a poor collection of ill-built huts, we pitched our tents on a flat space on the top of the hill, used as the threshing-floor by the villagers, and proceeded to walk round the sum¬ mit, and also to visit the ruined Church of St. John, at the entrance to the place. This fine relic is a striking memorial of Crusading genius and energy, though a por¬ tion of it is now degraded into a mosque. A palm was growing in its courtyard, and on the edge of the hill were fragments of an old wall of squared stones. The church, of which the south-eastern portion is the best preserved, lay immediately to the right of this wall. Admission into XXXVI.] THE CITY OF SAMARIA. 233 tlie once sacred enclosure was easily obtained. Slabs of marble still paved the ground, and others, with effaced crosses, were at many places built into the walls. The very doorsill was marble. Pillars of marble stood along the court, half their circle projecting out of the walls, with capitals carved into palm-leaves. The mosque is built inside the shell of the church, and is in no way worth notice for its own sake, though the marble slabs in the walls with their sacred emblems obliterated can¬ not fail to speak to the heart of a Christian. A dark stair of twenty-one steps leads down to a cave in which there are five modern tombs, three of them with holes in the plaster to let one look in, with the help of a light, although there is nothing whatever to be seen inside. St. John the Baptist and Obadiah are said to have been buried here, but the tradition has no reliable foundation. The building was the creation of the Knights of St. John, in honour of their patron the Baptist, whom they, at any rate, believed to lie here ; and they evidently set them¬ selves to rear an edifice which should be half fortalice and half temple. It was touching to observe the fine arches falling to pieces, and to see decay on every side, even the mosque which has risen like a fungus within not escaping the ravages of time : a picture, one might have said, of death glorying in its triumph over once vigorous life ! The constant recurrence of such splendid ruins in every part of the country shows that during the two hundred years of the Crusades — a time as long as from the Revolu¬ tion of 1G88 to the present day — Palestine must have been almost as thickly covered with churches as England is now, and in very many cases the structures were as line in architecture, and often as large, as our noblest eccle¬ siastical edifices — the cathedrals alone excepted. The 234 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. Holy Land, in fact, like Egypt, Northern Africa, and Asia Minor, is a province which has been lost to Christ, after having once been won for Him by the zeal of His followers : lost, and when to be won back ? The bounds of Christendom have often been changed since the apostles died, and not always in the right direction ; for though the Romans took care, in their grand heathen pride, that their god Terminus should never draw back from a spot once pressed b}^ his foot, the Church has not honoured its Lord in Heaven by as resolutely maintaining His con¬ quests. The mud huts which compose the village cling to the slope facing the church ; traces of the glory of old times appearing among them, here and there, in pillar-shafts, marble pedestals, and fragments of carved marble mould¬ ings. The terrace on which our tents were pitched had evidently been artificially levelled — when, by whom, or for what purpose, who can tell P There could hardly, however, be a finer threshing-floor ; and for this purpose it is accordingly used. Here the great temple of Baal, so famous in Jezebel’s time, mav once have stood, huge in size — for it was served by 450 priests — and so fortified in its Holy of holies, where stood the glittering image of the god, that that part was spoken of as his castle.1 On the west edge of the hill, in some ploughed land, stand fifteen weathered limestone pillars, without capitals or architrave, perhaps the last relics of the temple built by Herod in honour of Augustus. They form, as a whole, an oblong, gaunt and spectral now that they are robbed of all their ornament, but once the glory of the city. “ In the middle of the town,” says Josephus, “Herod left an open space of a stadium2 and a half in [circuit], 1 1 Kings xvi. 32 ; xviii. 19, 22 ; 2 Kings x. 17 ft. ; x. 25 (“ the city 55 = the castle) ; Jer. xxiii. 13. 2 A stadium = a furlong. XXX YI.] THE CITY OF SAMARIA. 235 and here he built a temple to the honour of Augustus, which was famous for its size and beauty.55 To the south, the edge of the plateau and the slopes were overshadowed by thick groves of figs and olives, which reached far away down the valley of Nakurah and up the hills on its farther side. Among these, ploughs wrere in many .places busy, while in others the earth was green with rising crops ; the soil everywhere inviting industry. Pillars, or broken fragments of pillars, and cut stones lay around, and there were fragments of pottery over the whole surface of the hill. Beyond the temple site, the ground rose, without trees, in a wide terrace which was everywhere tilled ; but this, the eastern, being the weakest side, the whole slope had been made into three steep embankments, one below the other ; hard to climb at any time, terrible to surmount in the face of an enemy defending them from behind walls. The neighbouring hills, like the one I have been de¬ scribing, were soft and rounded, with glimpses of peaceful valleys between. I was standing at an elevation of 1,450 feet above the sea, but a few miles off, to the east, was a summit 790 feet higher, wdiile two miles off, to the north, was one 925 feet above me. These, however, were the giants of the circle ; the others are either slightly lower than the hill of Samaria, or very little higher ; but all alike, with the valleys at their feet, are covered with the softest green. On the south lay Nakurah, embosomed among figs and olives, and more than ten other villages crowned various heights -around, while on the west the horizon was girt by a long gleaming strip of “ the Great Sea.55 Isaiah had looked on the same landscape when Samaria was in its glory, and had carried away the recol¬ lection of its hill as “ the glorious crown of Ephraim, the flower of its winning beauty, standing up over its rich 236 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. valley;”1 but its glory has long disappeared. Where kings once lived in palaces faced with ivory, and nobles in mansions of squared stones ; 2 where the royal tombs raised their proud heads over the successors of Omri ; 3 where grew a grove of Astarte, and a great temple to her rose at the will of Jezebel ; 4 where the huge fane of Baal was the cathedral of idolatry for the apostate tribes ; where Elisha lived at the foot of the hill, but inside the fortifications ; 5 where Hosea preached year after year through his long and faithful career — there was now only a ploughed field. As I returned from my walk round the broad top of the hill, the sheikh and ten or twelve of the chief men of the village came up, and, sitting down on the ground beside an old dry stone wall, on the edge of the great threshing-floor, asked me to tell them the his¬ tory of the place. In turbans, and in flowing “ abbas ” with green, red, or blue stripes — for the inhabitants of the ancient site affect bright colours — they listened with the greatest interest while I repeated the story of their hill from the days of Omri to the fall of the city. The founder of Samaria must have been a man of genius, to give up the fair but defenceless Thirza and choose such a position as this for his capital, so much more fertile and so much stronger ; a fair-dealing man withal, for he bought the site honestly ; 6 a man given to the Hebrew custom of playing on words, as seen by his cliangiug the name of the city from that of its former owner, Sliemer, to “ Shomeron,” “ the Wartburg,” or “ Watch Eort,” commanding as it did the roads from 1 Isa. xxviii. 1. Miililau’s translation. 2 Isa ix. 10 ; Amos iii. 15 ; Ps. xlv. 8 ; 1 Kings xxii. 39 ; 2 Kings xv. 25 (“ castle of tlie king’s palace ”). 3 1 Kings xvi. 28 ; xxii. 37 ; 2 Kings x. 35 ; xiii. 9, 13 ; xiv. 16. 4 2 Kings xiii. 6 (<: grove ”). 6 2 Kings v. 9 ; vi. 32 ; xiii. 14. c 1 Kings xvi. 24. XXXVI.] THE CITY OF SAMARIA. 237 the north. But it had to stand many a siege. Alread}^, in Omri’s day, the jealous Syrian king, Benhadad I., com¬ pelled the surrender of some of its bazaars to his Damascus traders.1 Under Alrab, it was beleaguered by Benhadad II., and only delivered by a brave sally, when, fortunately for Israel, Benhadad and his high officers were “ drinking themselves drunk in their tents ”2 — an early lesson in favour of total abstinence. But it was under Joram that it had its sorest trial, at the hands of Benhadad III., so dire a famine resulting that men were glad to buy the head of an ass — the part of an animal which no Oriental would touch in ordinary times — for eighty pieces of silver, or more than £8 ; while the fourth part of a u cab,” about half a pint, of dove’s dung — used perhaps, as Josephus suggests, in lieu of salt for seasoning, unless, as seems more probable, the name was applied to some inferior kind of vegetable food, a bean perhaps, since the Arabs now call one seed they eat “ sparrow’s dung ” 3 — sold for over ten shillings ; 4 and mothers, in despair, killed their own children and boiled them for food. And who can tell what this hill must have seen of agony in the three years’ siege, before the Assyrians under Sargon forced their way in, to carry off into captivity the survivors of the assault ? 5 Founded as a military despotism, the northern king¬ dom, like all communities, had remained true to the spirit of its origin. Devolution had been a passion from the beginning, and with it every element of social degeneracy and decay had kept pace. The sway of a rough soldiery alternated with the luxury of a heathen court, until vio¬ lence, lawlessness, immorality, and self-indulgence brought all to ruin. A few were possessed of great wealth, often 1 1 Kings xx. 34. 2 1 Kings xx. 16. 3 Gesenins, Lex.y Ste Auf. 4 2 Kings vi. 25, 29. 6 2 Kings xvii. 5. 238 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. secured by foul means, and the mass of the people were at once vicious and in misery, so that the State was left help¬ less, in spite of a superficial air of prosperity maintained by the upper class to the last. Samaria grew sick unto death long before it fell, and the prophets only proclaimed what must have been patent to all thinking men when they foretold its overthrow at the hand of Assyria, then striding on to universal empire in Western Asia.1 But their words have had a wonderfully literal fulfilment, especially those of Micah, when he says, in his prophetic vision, “ I will make Samaria a mire-heap of the field : I will turn it into vineyard plantations : I will roll down its stones into the valley beneath, and make bare its founda¬ tions. All its carved images of stone will be shattered to pieces, all the wealth in its temples, got by its temple- harlots, will be burned with fire, and the site of its idol statues will I make desolate.” 2 It seems, indeed, as though a special curse rested on the city once desecrated by idola¬ try. Its splendid position ever invited rebuilding afresh, and all things seemed to promise a vigorous restoration of its prosperity, but each time the annihilating blow came, and that before long. The Maccabsean, John Hyr- canus, destroyed the city utterly, as he had destroyed the temple on Gerizim. But even after that it was speedily rebuilt, and in Herod’s day was specially favoured. Besides rearing the temple of which we have spoken, he restored its fortifications, and it owes to him its present name — Sebastieh — for he called it Sebaste, “the August,” in servile flattery of his imperial patron at Borne. In the valley around there are still the remains of his grand colonnade of stately pillars, which were once shaded, doubtless, by figs and olives, and perhaps linked by 1 Amos iii. 12 ; Hos. xiv. 1 ; Isa. viii. 4 ; Micali i. 6. 2 Micali i. 6, 7. Translation in Geikie’s Hours with the BibL\ iv. 353. XXX YI. ] THE CITY OF SAMARIA. 239 wreaths, and which lined both sides of a raised terrace apparently encircling the hill, thus forming a stately walk and drive from fifty to a hundred feet broad. Of all this glory, only lines of weathered columns at intervals remain, many standing, but some fallen. For centuries Samaria has been a poor peasant- village. Under the smiling green around lies buried its great past, so romantic, so sad ! Descending the hill at the south side, I came upon the remains of two round towers, evidently marking the de¬ fences of a gateway which stood high above the valley. A fine road led to them, and on both sides of this road were to he seen remains of the great colonnade. This southern slope is even steeper than those on the north and west. Walking on, I found patches of wilderness amidst the strips of sown land, as is everywhere the case in Palestine ; the population not being numerous enough to use more than a small proportion of the soil. Stretches of Christ- thorn and other worthless growths flourished up to the very edge of spots from the black soil of which were springing vigorous grain crops. In such a region if the wretched Turkish Grovernment, instead of caring for nothing but itself, were thoughtful and public-spirited, it might soon attract people enough to turn the wilderness into a fruitful field. But where there is no public con¬ science in the rulers, what can be done for a country? The peasants, though they bear an indifferent name, are strong, well -grown, industrious people, full of energy and life — the raw material of a prosperous nation, if they only had a chance of showing of what they are capable. Under such a rule as that 'of England in India, they would soon restore Palestine to all its former glory. Meanwhile, Samaria, with all its natural fertility, brings before one vividly, 'in its half-tilled and half-waste condition, the threatenings of the prophet : “ All the land shall become 240 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. XXXVI briers and thorns, and on all the bills, that should be dug with the mattock, thou shalt not go, for fear of the briers and thorns.”1 Leprosy, it appears, is still common in this neighbour¬ hood, as it was in the days of Elisha, when there were “many lepers in Israel;”2 and it is still common, also, in Damascus, whence Naaman came to this place to be healed by the prophet. The practice of shutting lepers outside a city, though now modified at Jerusalem so far as to allow them to live just inside one of the gates, seems to have been in force in ancient times, if we may judge from the story of the great siege by Benliadad III. 1 Isa. vii. 24, 25. 2 Luke iv. 27. j CHAPTER XXXVII. DOTHAN, GILBOA, SHTJNEM. The first village north of Samaria was Burka, the road to which lay across the valley and np the slope between two of the hills beyond. The morning was bright and warm, and amid snch fertile scenery it was easy to understand the love which Ephraim had for his native soil. As we rode slowly up the ascent great flocks of vultures sailed overhead, on the look-out for carrion — a dead animal, or offal. The number of birds of prey in the East and in Southern Europe is quite surprising. I have seen five or six sparrowr-hawks at a time hover¬ ing over the Acropolis at Athens, ready to pounce upon some of the little birds ; and here at Samaria the vultures were past my counting. It was the same in Bible times, for we find no fewer than fifteen Hebrew names of predaceous birds : some applied to the whole class ; others the names of particular species. The power of sight in all of them is amazing. If an animal die or be slaughtered after sunrise, a vulture is sure to make its appearance in a few minutes, though there was no sign of one in the heavens before, and in rapid succession another and another will arrive, till the air is darkened with the multitude of griffon and other vultures, eagles, kites, buz¬ zards, and ravens. It is still true that “ wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”1 9 1 Matt. xxiy. 28 ; Luke xvii. 37. 212 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. The sight of one vulture in downward flight seems to be the signal to others, who come on in endless succession, some of them from vast distances, so that we can easily believe the statement that during a war all the vultures of widely remote provinces are gathered, to wait for their horrible banquets. When Micah says to the people of Judah, “Make thee bald, and poll thee for thy delicate children ; enlarge thy baldness as the eagle/’1 he refers to the griffon-vulture, the head and neck of which are bare of all but down. It is to this bird that the rapacious invader of Babylon is compared when he is spoken of as “a ravenous bird from the east:”2 a simile especially apt when we remember that the griffon-vulture was the emblem of Persia, emblazoned on its standard. The age to which the whole class of carrion-feeders lives is very great ; instances having been known of an eagle sur¬ viving in captivity for over 100 years. It was natural, therefore, that the Psalmist should say, “ Thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”3 The strength of wing and swiftness of flight of the eagle often supply meta¬ phors to the sacred writers,4 but no passage is more striking than that in Deuteronomy which alludes to the tenderness with which they care for their young : “ As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, heareth them on her wings; so the Lord alone did lead him.”5 Sir Humphry Davy, speaking of a pair of golden eagles which he watched while they were thus employed, says, “ I once saw a very interesting sight above the crags of Ben Nevis. Two parent eagles were teaching their off¬ spring, two young birds, the manoeuvres of flight. They 1 Mic. i. 16. 2 Isa. xlvi. 11. 3 Ps. ciii. 5. 4 Ezek. xvii. 3; Isa. xl. 31; Job ix. 26; Deut. xxviii. 49; Lam. iv. 19; 2 Sam. i. 23. 6 Deut. xxxii. 11, 12. XXXVII.] DOTHAN, GILBOA, SHUNEM. 243 began by rising from the top of the mountain, in the eye of the sun. It was about midday, and bright for the climate. They at first made small circles, and the young birds imitated them. They paused on their wings, wait¬ ing till they had made their flight, and then took a second and larger gyration, always rising towards the sun, and enlarging their circle of flight, so as to make a gradually ascending spiral. The young ones still slowly followed, apparently flying better as they mounted, and they con¬ tinued this sublime exercise, always rising, till they became mere points in the air, and the young ones were lost, and afterwards their parents, to our aching sight/’ For a time, the hills which we passed were covered with olives, the stems of some showing them to be very old — perhaps the growth of centuries. In Judsea to some extent, but nearly everywhere here, in the territory of Ephraim, the words of Scripture were still vindicated : “Thou shalt have olive-trees throughout all thy coasts.”1 Up hill and down, the road wound on to Jeba, a village well built of stone on a hill-side, the houses rising row above row, so that the flat roofs of the line below seemed to form a street before those above. It stands in the midst of countless olives, with hills rising on all sides, except to the north-east, where there was a broad valley covered with rising grain. Many villages were to be seen on high points, for they are very rarely found in the insecure plains. While we were crossing the higher parts of the route the Mediterranean was in sight, but a wild confusion of hills concealed the maritime lowlands ; in the parts nearer to us, however, there were openings into various fruitful valleys. The tops of the hills on our road were lonely and wholly untilled, but there was a 1 Deufc. xxviii. 40. 9 2 214 THE HOLY LAND AND THE BIBLE. [Chap. great deal of succulent green about, showing that the soil was naturally fertile. Sanur, the next village on the journey, is a strong place on a steep and rocky hill, which guards the entrance to a considerable plain, known as “ the Meadow of Drown¬ ing,” the want of natural drainage turning it into a swamp in May or June. In the green fields men, women, and children were weeding the grain, such of the weeds as were of use being carried home for fodder, while the rest were gathered together into bundles and burnt.1 The hill of Sanur is very steep on the east, but on the west sinks gradually towards the hills in that direction. A little O */ fortress crowns the top, and stone walls run along the slope outside the houses ; only one door offering entrance. At the top of the slow ascent through rich vineyards, orchards of olives and figs, and fields of grain, a fountain was flowing from below an arch, the water in part run¬ ning to waste down the hill. Numbers of women were busy cleaning linen with wooden mallets ; others were getting water, some of them passing us with their jars on their shoulders or heads. A string of camels, with great bales sticking out on each side, stalked down the hill beyond, taking up all the track, which the water has washed into great roughness, though here and there the Roman pave¬ ment was still in position — for this was an old Roman road. Approaching the village of Kabatiyeh, we passed over part of the plain of Dothan, the scene of the sale of Joseph to the Midianites. At one place was a well called “the Well of the Pit,” perhaps a memorial of the poor lad’s fate, and not very far from it a second, with a water- trough, the two accounting for the name Dothan, which means “ the Two Wells.” Above them, to the north, rose a green hill, overlooking the wide plain in which the sons x Matt. xiii. 30. XXX YII.] DOTHAN", GILBOA, SHUHEM. 245 of Jacob pastured tlieir flocks/ while to the west stretched out the dark-coloured plain of Arrabeh, and beyond it the road to Egypt, aloug which the Midianite caravan led their newly-bought young Syrian slave. A gazelle broke away on our left as we passed, and was chased by our dragoman, but he might as well have followed the wind. The tiny creature was up a neighbouring slope and out of sight, as it were in a moment. Hermon had been visible in all its radiant whiteness from the high points of the day’s travel. Daisies, broom, and hawthorn dotted the untilled parts of the valleys. Another string of camels, laden with charcoal, going to Nablus, crossed Dothan while we were passing over its green and black breadth, picturesquely shut in by low verdant hills. To the east, as we approached the village of Kabatiyeh, a thick wood of olives, many of them very old trees, covered the hollow plains and the slopes on each side, while before us a narrow opening in the hills led to the great plain of Esdraelon, soon to come partially in sight, with the hills of Galilee beyond it. The defile to the plain was, how¬ ever, longer than one could have wished, over such a road. The hills, now close to us on both sides, were rough, though not high, and the track was often very broken. In two or tli ree miles of constant descent we went down nearly, or quite, 1,000 feet. It was, apparently, by this pass that Azariah of Judah fled before the men sent by Jehu to kill him, for though we do not know “ the going up to Gur,” it is said to have been “by Ibleam,”2 which was in all likelihood identical with the Wady Belameh, the very gorge through which we were slowly descending. Two strong brooks flowed down to Esdraelon at different points on the way, and the slopes, rough and broken, were yellow with the flowers of the broom. 1 Gen. xxxvii. 17. 2 2 Kings ix. 27. 246 [Chap. THE HOLT LAND AND THE BIBLE. Jenin, the ancient Engannim —