Truly, the tribe of Ephraim had a beautiful inheritance! All the way we go are signs of a rich abundance such as our eyes are little accustomed to; fig-trees, whose wide-spreading branches sweep the ground; olive-trees, whereof the young shoots, the biblical "olive branches," have grown into veritable individual trees, and each hoary veteran stands king in a little grove of his own kindred. In a narrow valley, where there is only just room for the new road above the bed of what must be at times a torrent, we noticed many Jewish tombs cut into the rocks on our left, and stopped to examine one, of more elaborate workmanship than the others, having the seven-branched candlestick sharply cut into the rock to the left of the entrance, three pairs of branches turning upward and four downward.

Two of the party turned aside to visit the village of Seilun, lying about half-an-hour east of the road—a scene of manifold interest. The view alone is worth the détour, affording the first glimpse of Hermon, the great landmark of Palestine and Syria—a chain extending for about twenty miles, and averaging over 9000 feet in height. The identification of Seilun with Shiloh,[1] at once brings to the mind a crowd of associations—the resting-place, from the time of Joshua to that of Solomon, of the Ark of the Covenant; the scene of the prayer of Hannah, and of the dedication of Samuel; of the life and tragic death of Eli; of the visit, in disguise, of the wife of Jeroboam.

Nothing is more tiresome than the conventionality which obliges a tourist, at sight of a bat or an owl, to recall some quotation or apply a prophecy, as if bats and owls were never found unannounced by the minor prophets; but the utter desolation of Seilun, ruined even in the time of St Jerome, can hardly fail to remind the spectator of the words in Jeremiah, although we do not know the nature of the catastrophe referred to: "Go ye now unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I set My name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people Israel." The mound is covered with débris of buildings, hewn stones, broken columns, and fragments of carving. One of the more complete among the ruins is evidently built of fragments from some earlier structure, the lintel of the door, now fallen, being a monolith covered with beautiful sculpture. The main building, a mediæval fortress church, is some 33 feet square, the roof having been supported by four columns with Corinthian capitals. A small mosque has been added on the east side at some later period, and is known as Jâmi' el Arba' in—the forty companions of the Prophet. These forty saints turn up in various forms in Palestine—Jewish, Christian, and Moslem; and at Ramleh (Arimathea, probably) the same tower has done service in honour both of the forty Christian martyrs and of the forty companions of the Prophet. An exceedingly realistic picture in the Armenian cathedral at Jerusalem supplies full details of the martyrdom. Upon Mount Carmel we have a sacred grove known as "the trees of the forty" (i.e. martyrs), and near Nablûs we passed a chapel known as Rijal el-'Amud—"Men of the Columns"—the burial-place of forty Jewish prophets. The new road came to an end at the thirty-fifth kilometre, just after the separation of our party. It had passed through various stages illustrative of the history of road-making, and had lately been reduced to the merest anatomy, wholly destitute of covering. It now reverted to the piles of rocks which, under the name of roads, are to be so carefully avoided in the East—at best resembling the bed of a mountain torrent, but more often the wreck of a Yorkshire wall. The riders naturally made their way across the nearest ploughed fields, and finally, by a precipitous descent, found themselves in the small plain or wide valley of the Lubban, where a busy scene presented itself. In a corner of the triangular plain, or at the mouth of the valley, as one prefers to regard it, an abundant spring takes its rise beside the ruins of an ancient khan, and here large numbers of fellahin and Bedu had paused to water their cattle, horses, and camels. Here our party reunited once more, and here we lunched, to the great amusement of a large audience, who were particularly entertained with our spirit-lamps. A testimony to the greater fertility of this district was afforded by the immense flocks of birds passing over our heads eastwards, probably to the newly-sown fields, and by the rooks following the plough.

It was after three o'clock before we were again on our way, and the twilight soon overtook us, although we did our best to push on, warned of a very bad descent before we should reach the great plain framed by the hills of Samaria. Just below this descent, and before coming into the Plain of El-Makhna, we met the other end of the new road coming out from Nablûs to meet that from Jerusalem. We avoided it with much care, grateful to the whiteness of its newly-macadamised surface for warning us, in the darkness, where not to go. For something like three hours the great hills of Ebal and Gerizim loomed vast before us; while far away we knew the great snow crown of Hermon must be looking down upon us; but we had little pleasure in our ride, for the darkness had already descended, and from lack of interest we were all tired. Even the Arab servants, Khalil and Abdallah, did not talk, and only from time to time broke out into song. So many persons of all kinds must traverse this road from Jerusalem to Nablûs, and so few but tourists must trouble themselves to carry tents, that one wonders someone does not establish a decent khan to serve as half-way house in the twelve or thirteen hours' ride—though it might be difficult to say where, as the Christian villages of Bir es Zet and Jifna occur too early in the day's march from Jerusalem. However, when the new road is once opened, some of the neighbouring villages, El Lubban, for instance, may send out feelers in the direction of the highway of commerce.

The stars, of a brightness of which we know nothing in the West, came out suddenly, as if a curtain had been withdrawn, not piercing the darkness one by one, as with us; and soon a radiant moon looked over the top of the great screen of mountains on our left; and when, by-and-bye, we turned, somewhat suddenly, west, we had sufficient light to be conscious of the great hills of Ebal and Gerizim on either hand, and to catch a glimpse of the enclosure around Joseph's Tomb and, a little farther on, Jacob's Well. Our horses, who had been dejected and uninterested all day, seemed to be aware that the worst was over, and, suddenly reviving, were soon clattering over the cobble-stones of Nablûs. At every turn we expected to be stopped by a demand for our teskerys (passports), or some other formality, as in no town in Palestine is the traveller so subject to demands for backsheesh as here, and it was with some surprise, as well as relief, that we found ourselves in the spacious reception-room of the convent. By a kindly provision of the patriarchate in Jerusalem, here and at certain other places, one can obtain very comfortable sleeping accommodation and the means of preparing food.

[1] One can hardly feel doubt as to the identification, the biblical description being so very exact: "Shiloh, which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem [i.e. Nablûs] and on the south of Lebonah [i.e. Lubban]."

CHAPTER II
TO SAMARIA

"What these rites [i.e. of the Samaritans] are, I could not certainly learn, but that their religion consists in the adoration of a calf, as the Jews give out, seems to have more of spite than of truth in it."—Henry Maundrell, 1697

We rose early next morning, in order to view the sights of Nablûs, and returned in a couple of hours, in entire sympathy with the desire of the Jews to have no dealings with the Samaritans—not that we found the Jews themselves particularly attractive, for they are here of that type of feature, so rarely seen in the East, which we habitually associate with a Cockney accent.