By-paths in Hebraic bookland

by Israel Abrahams

CONDER’S “TENT WORK IN PALESTINE”

He used the Bible too much to please some of the continentals. Compare, for instance, Gautier with Conder. The Frenchman employed the Bible to illustrate the country, the Englishman the country to illustrate the Bible. Which procedure is preferable? The answer is another question. Why does every inch of Palestine interest the modern explorer? No Parthenon is to be seen within its boundaries, no Sphinx. Neither is the Attic beautiful there to charm, nor the Egyptian colossal to provide a thrill. When Thomson (in 1859) called his work “The Land and the Book,” he put the seal on the English way of regarding the relation between the geography and the history of the Holy Land. Englishmen have been among the keenest geographers of Palestine because they respond best to its history.

Hence Conder’s defect, as some have termed it, is, in truth, his merit. Apart, however, from the pietism of his motives, he deserved well of all who love Palestine. He gave some of his best years to its survey, and that operation did much to revivify the country. His services must always have a value because he, more than any other modern, put an end to a sort of thing formerly common. I mean the sort of thing which a pious old dame is said once to have remarked: “I knew these places were in the Bible, but I did not know they were in Palestine.” Jews in particular owe a good deal to him. I doubt whether I, for one, would ever have visited Medyeh—probably Modin, the home of the Maccabæans—but for Conder. I think I could quote by heart his description how the ancient road from Jerusalem to Lydda emerged from the rocky Beth-horon defiles and “ran along a mountain spur towards the plain”; how, a mile or so to the north of this main road, the village of Modin was built upon the southern slopes of the valley; how the gentle hills of the lowlands (Shephelah) could be seen from the Modin Knoll, stretching westwards. “At their feet, amid dark groves of olive, lay the white town of Lydda, and behind it the broad plain of Sharon extended to a breadth of ten miles. Furthest of all, the yellow-gleaming sand-dunes bounded the rich arable land, and the waters of the Great Sea (the Mediterranean) shone brightly under the afternoon sun.”

This description comes from one of Conder’s other books, his Judas Maccabæus. But his earlier Tent Work in Palestine (1878) is full of passages just as vivid. It is even more interesting because it shows us the explorer groping for the results, at which he has not yet arrived. Aptly enough, the title-page presents, from a sketch by the author, a theodolite-party at work, for the survey of Western Palestine was conducted on serious trigonometrical methods. That the narrative is so picturesque must not blind us to the truth that the operations were severely scientific. We are now, however, concerned with the pictorial effects. Read, as a parallel to the Modin description, Conder’s account of his first visit to Samaria. Taking the north road from Jerusalem, he passes the ranges about Neby Samuel (probably the ancient Mizpah), and sees the hills of Benjamin, “black against a sky of most delicate blush-rose tint, and the contrast was perhaps the finest in a land where fine effects are common at sunset.” Then he descends into the rough gorge of the Robbers’ Fountain. “The road is not improved by the habit of clearing the stones off the surrounding gardens into the public path.” In the east, roads are often thus made the common dumping-ground for rubbish, and I remember how the walk round the outside of the Jerusalem walls was much spoilt by the heaps of vegetable and other refuse which had been flung over the ramparts. (General Allenby’s campaign has already changed all that for the better.) Proceeding, “the short twilight gave place to almost total darkness as we began to climb the watershed which separates the plain from the valley coming down from Shiloh, and the moon had risen when the great shoulder of Gerizim became dimly visible some ten miles away, with a silvery wreath of cloud on its summit.” The right time to appreciate Palestinian scenes is usually just after sunset. And so, on this night march, Conder describes how, “creeping beneath the shadow of Gerizim, we gained the narrow valley of Shechem, and followed a stony lane between walnut trees under a steep hillside. The barking of dogs was now heard, and the lights in camp came into view. My poor terrier was tired and sleepy, and was set upon at once by Drake’s larger bull-terriers, Jack and Jill, rather a rude reception after a thirty-mile journey.” Mr. C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake—who died soon afterwards—had gone on in advance and had placed the camp close to the beautiful fountain of Ras el-Ain.

Such extended journeys could not be accomplished without paying the price. Thus, after the survey of Samaria, Carmel, and Sharon, operations had to be suspended for a time, simply because the party had reached the limit of endurance. “The fatigue of the campaign had been very great. My eyes were quite pink all over, with the effects of the glare of white chalk, my clothes were in rags, my boots had no soles. The men were no better off, and the horses also were all much exhausted, suffering from soreback, due to the grass diet.” But the spirit was stronger than the flesh. “The rest soon restored our energies, and autumn found us once more impatient to be in the fields.”

Thence Conder was off to Damascus, Baalbek and Hermon, away from Palestine itself. The ascent of the 9,000 feet of mount Hermon was begun at 10.30 a. m., and at 2 o’clock the summit was reached. But we must pass over the glowing description of the panorama that unfolded itself to the gaze of the explorers. After three months in the north, tents were struck, and the party marched out of their pleasant mountain-camp, bound for Jerusalem and the hills of Judah. Of the many pen-pictures which Conder draws, we will stay only to regard one—the description of Bethar, where Bar Cochba made his great effort at recovering Jewish independence (about the year 135 of the present era). Conder locates the fortress at the modern village Bittîr (at which there is now a railway station). It is about thirty-five miles from the sea, and about five from Jerusalem. “On every side, except the south, it is surrounded by deep and rugged gorges, and it is supplied with fresh water from a spring above the village. On the north the position would have been impregnable, as steep cliffs rise from the bottom of the ravine, upon which the houses are perched. The name (Bittîr) exactly represents the Hebrew (Bethar), and the distances agree with those noticed by Eusebius and the Talmud. Nor must the curious title be forgotten, which is applied to a shapeless mass of ruin on the hill, immediately west of Bittîr, for the name Khurbet el Yehûd—Ruin of the Jews—may be well thought to hand down traditionally among the natives of the neighbourhood the memory of the great catastrophe of Bethar.” Whether this place is the true site of Bar Cochba’s Bethar may be seriously questioned, but no other view can claim to be more certain. “The site of Bethar must still be considered doubtful,” says that good authority, S. Krauss, who himself is inclined to the theory which places the fortress much further north, near Sepphoris.

We should like to linger over the rest of Conder’s journey, but the few lines that remain must be devoted to his final remarks. Conder, it must ever be remembered, was one of the first to dispute the then current belief that the Holy Land had lost its old character for fertility, and that changes in climate had induced an irreparable barrenness. He maintained in particular that the supposed dearth of water had been much exaggerated by recent tourists. “With respect to the annual rainfall, it is only necessary to note that, with the old cisterns cleaned and mended, and the beautiful tanks and aqueducts repaired, the ordinary fall would be quite sufficient for the wants of the inhabitants and for irrigation.” (Here, too, recent events have effected an agreeable transformation.) And, in general “the change in productiveness which has really occurred in Palestine, is due to decay of cultivation, to decrease of population, and to bad government. It is Man and not Nature, who has ruined the good land in which was ‘no lack,’ and it is, therefore, within the power of human industry to restore the old country to its old condition of agricultural prosperity.” Construct roads, raise irrigation works, promote afforestation—those were the measures Conder suggested, after the three strenuous years of his survey (1872 to 1875). Such optimistic opinions are now quite common; and, we may hope, are tending towards realization, if only men’s hopes are not set too high. But let us not forget that among the first moderns to formulate such opinions, on the basis of exact knowledge, was the author of Tent Work in Palestine.