3. CAIFFA TO NAZARETH.
Sept. 1857.
By Beled esh Shaikh and Yajoor, where threshing of the harvest was in progress in the Galilean fashion by means of the moraj, (in Hebrew the morag, Isa. xli. 15 and 2 Sam. xxiv. 22,) which is a stout board of wood, with iron teeth or flints on the under surface. The plank turns upward in front, and the man or boy stands upon it in exactly the attitude of a Grecian charioteer: one foot advanced; the head and chest well thrown back; the reins in his left hand, and with a long thonged whip, he drives the horses that are attached to it at a rapid pace in a circle, shouting merrily or singing as they go,—a totally different operation from the drowsy
creeping of the oxen or other animals for threshing in our Southern Palestine.
In due time we crossed the bed of the Kishon, which was quite dry in that part above the Sa’adeh, except where some green stagnant puddles occurred at intervals.
We passed a herd of camels belonging to the Turkomans, walking unburdened, whereas all other animals that we met were laden with grain for the port of Caiffa. At the commencement of the ascent on the opposite hills we rested under the Tell el Hharatheeyeh, beneath a noble tree of the evergreen oak; and near there we passed alongside of a camp of degraded Arabs called Beramki, in a few tattered tents, but they had some capital horses picketed around them. The villagers regard these people with ineffable disdain, as “cousins of the gipsies.” It seems that they subsist by singing songs among real Arab camps, and by letting out their horses as stallions for breeding, with variations of picking and stealing. We saw some of their women and children, filthy in person, painfully employed in scraping away the ground wherever black clay showed itself, in the hope of reaching water, however bad in quality.
There was threshing at Jaida as we passed that village. We halted at the spring of Samooniah, and at Ma’alool; the priest of the village was superintending the parish threshing: his reverence was covered with dust from the operation.
4. CAIFFA TO SHEFA ’AMER.
June 1859.
From Beled esh Shaikh and Yajoor, across the Kishon channel, upon the plain of Acre, and rested a short time at the Weli of Jedro, (very like a Hebrew name,) and then near us, all close together were the three villages of Cuf’r Ita, Ja’arah and Hurbaj. Thence to Shefa ’Amer, first diverging somewhat to ’Ebeleen.