[4] "English readers may be interested to know that it was by the intercession of the Bishop of Salisbury that Salah ed-din in 1192 permitted the restoration of divine worship in this church. The bishop himself selected the priests and deacons for this office.—"Michaud, "Croisades" II. p. 724.
[5] See "Le Mont Thabor: Notices Historiques et Descriptives." Paris, 1900.
CHAPTER VI
THE SEA OF GALILEE
"We go to the Sea of Galilee ... and although they call it a sea, it is neither a sea nor arm of the sea; for it is but a stank of fresh water ... and it hath in it great plenty of good fish, and the River Jordan runs through it."—Sir John Maundeville, 1322
It was a glorious ride from Tabor to Tiberias. The rain clouds hastened westward, and, as we heard later, gratified the thirsty souls at Nazareth, and left us to a thorough enjoyment of our day. We were delighted to find ourselves off the beaten track, for the carriage road to Tiberias was considerably to our north. We had been told, to our satisfaction, that the alternative road by way of Tabor, as it lay a little low, did not give us such frequent glimpses of parts of the lake, but that we should come upon the glorious prospect all at once, and the expectation kept us constantly on the watch. Our road lay for the most part through well-cultivated country, belonging partly to the Bedu and partly to the Circassians, and the wide fields, in which the corn was springing, were a delightful and refreshing sight. We pictured what it would be later in the year to ride, as we were assured we might, through vegetation up to the saddle—barley, maize, sesame, doura, with yellow marguerite and blue eryngo, and campanulas of every shade, raising proud heads above the golden wealth. We were, however, quite content with the garden which had been prepared for us—such an one would be, indeed, difficult to find anywhere else, in such combination, and in the first week of January. Perhaps one great charm of it all was that it was just such a day, and such a spectacle, as one might enjoy, three months later in parks and gardens at home—only glorified as to colour, size, and fragrance, and that here all the flowers were the wild children of Mother Nature. Capers, fennel, asparagus, and scores of balsamic herbs, in which the bees were gaily humming, took us, in thought, into the kitchen gardens of home, now lying under a white coverlet in winter sleep. Here all was so warm in the sunshine that lizards, and even chameleons and tortoises, had wakened up to greet the glad new year.
We passed the immense ruins of a fine khan of fifteenth-century workmanship, and those of an Arab castle on a height beyond, both now serving only as refuge to the flocks of the Bedu, who, on account of the presence of an excellent spring, seek shelter about its walls. Circassian and Bedawy cultivation we had seen, wide tracts in possession of the Jews were pointed out to us at a distance, and at Kafr Sabt we found a village of peasantry from Algeria. Somewhat to the north, the twin peaks of Karn Hattîn looked down upon this aggregation of race and creed—the scene, according to a tradition (not, however, older than the sixteenth century), of the Sermon on the Mount. The same mountain has another association, that of the battle in July 1187, in which Salah ed-din totally defeated the Franks, and gave the death-blow to their power in Palestine. King Guy de Lusignan was taken prisoner, the knights were sold as slaves, the Templars and Hospitallers executed, on the very site where, perhaps, the Master, looking down the avenue of centuries, had said: "Blessed are the merciful, the peacemakers, the pure in heart." Whether the blessings were any more applicable to the Christian Crusader than to the Moslem conqueror is a point upon which the testimony of history leaves one somewhat in doubt.
At the bottom of the valley, into which we soon descended, followed close by a family party of Jews, who seemed glad of the protection of our presence, we found ourselves upon a wide, fertile plain bounded by a water-course;—that we noted the water-courses is a sign that we have been living in arid Judæa;—and then we rose once more, and for the last time, reaching the plateau of Ard el Hammâ, when the promised view burst upon us. Our Jews were actually alarmed by our simultaneous shout of delight: Khalil only smiled sardonically, quite inured to the unaccountable pleasure which the Frenjys exhibited over what not even an Armenian or a Government official could turn into so much as a bishlik (value 6d.).
The Sea of Tiberias is about thirteen miles long by five to eight wide; its proportions much those of Windermere; its form an irregular oval; indeed, it is said that its ancient name of Kinnerôt is derived from Kinnor, a lute, in allusion to its shape. It lies 681 feet below the Mediterranean, so that it has an almost subtropical, and very abundant, vegetation. The steep hills are of moderate height; but great Hermon, looking over their shoulders at the northern end, dwarfs all else into insignificance. There is, for the most part, but a ribbon of coast, green with herbage and trees, and bordered with glistening sand and shells. It is like a bonnie Highland loch, not wooded like Loch Lomond, nor, on the other hand, bare like Coruisk, but smiling, peaceful, inviting to repose. The very sight of such a quantity of water was refreshing to us, coming, as we did, from a city where it is often cheaper to drink a bottle, or even two, of wine, than to take a bath. In little villages dotted along the shore we could fancy that we might hear the kindly Gaelic instead of the Arabic, which has, however, many similar sounds; the laddie herding on yonder hill is playing an instrument "own brother" to the chanters, and snow-crowned Hermon dominates his world like Cruachan or Schiehallion. The extreme southern end is hidden from us, and we must advance to the very edge of the cliff to see Tiberias lying at our feet—a long line of houses, varied by palms and minarets. At this distance, and before bettering our acquaintance with details, it is not difficult to reconstruct in imagination the city which must have been, in the time of Jesus, one of the many glories of Galilee. To realise the sheen and consistency of its beauty we have to remember that the whole had been newly built by Herod upon a long-deserted site; that palace and race-course and citadel and forum, a great synagogue for the Jews (who refused, however, to enter the city), a wall three miles long, were all new, and all part of an artistic plan. We must remember that this was only one of nine cities, all more or less Greek in architecture and customs, said to have contained each, at least, fifteen thousand inhabitants—an almost unbroken chain around the lake, now so solitary that one's eye finds with difficulty traces of humanity otherwhere than in and about Tiberias, now a squalid townlet of four thousand inhabitants. As Sebaste was called after Augustus, so the name of Tiberius was given to this city—perhaps the old Rakkath. When the foundations were laid, quantities of human bones were laid bare, and the Jews refused to dwell in a city ceremonially unclean, so that Herod was driven to populate his new possession with the scum of the country. To judge from our later acquaintance with the manners and customs of the inhabitants their descendants are still in possession, reinforced by a still larger number of Jews, of whom, indeed, two-thirds of the population now consists. Rich gardens once existed where now are only swamps, beautiful to the eye, but breathing out malarial fever; and fleets of sails met the eyes of Jesus and His fishermen friends where now we can discover but two little rowing-boats. Khalil pointed out the spot where, as he said, Jesus had made forty loaves of bread, and was much hurt that we did not take a note of the story, as we had done of other traditions. The story was true, he affirmed, and the company had eaten them with their fish.
Our horses were in good mood to-day, and we made them descend the steep hillside above Tiberias, by which we not only cut short the tortuous windings of the road but obtained a quick series of points of view, which furnished a panorama wonderful in colour and outline. The approach has still a certain grandeur. The wall and gateway, probably entirely ineffective as such, are picturesque in their decay. They are, indeed, of no great age, and may even belong only to the eighteenth-century restoration, when the town was refortified, to be again destroyed by an earthquake in 1837. We passed some modern European buildings, including a small but inviting little German hotel, and the hospital and manse of the mission of the Free Church of Scotland, and, still descending, paused before the gate of the Franciscan hospice. The rain which we had seen ahead of us in the morning had fallen in Tiberias, and the streets were simply ditches of dirty water, with occasional islands, upon one of which we descended, and then, with a spring, found ourselves in the orderly courtyard.