In a Syrian Saddle

by A. Goodrich-Freer

That they should take who have the power

And they should keep who can."

It was the rule of David, of Solomon, of the nomadic Israelites wandering like the Bedu in the desert.

"Then rents and factors, rights of chase,

Sheriffs, and lairds and their domains,

Would all have seemed but paltry things,

Not worth a moment's pains."

But, of course, this is quite another matter from the oppression of the poor, the rack-renting, the evictions, the unequal taxation, the results of free trade, the hunger and misery of great cities, the depopulation of villages, which are carried on in an orderly and properly organised fashion farther West.

We would have gladly lingered in this beautiful spot, surely the garden of Palestine, so great a contrast to the aridity of Judæa, which Mark Twain has somewhat severely described as "leagues of blighted, blasted, sandy, rocky, sunburnt, ugly, dreary, infamous country." We are apt to look upon the Jews as a utilitarian and money-loving people. Surely, however, nowhere on earth can we find a race whom sentiment and religion have so influenced in the choice and love of home. We Europeans do not realise that the great King Solomon, who reigned over a people "like the dust of the earth in multitude," and whose wealth made "silver to be nothing accounted of," had for empire part of a kingdom the size of Wales; and that, allowing all that one may for change of agricultural conditions, his capital was situated in its most unprofitable and one of its least attractive districts—six hours' ride from the nearest river, of which the average width was eighty feet; a district without a harbour, on the way to nowhere, out of reach of all the great roads of commerce and intercommunication of nations. Jerusalem owes her origin and continuance entirely to the heart and not the brain of man. She is the creation of the prophet, the priest, the dreamer. The mere statesman, agriculturist, sanitarian—humanitarian, even—would have none of her. Even to-day she survives only as a matter of sacred association. Take away her sanctuaries, her convents, and her tourists, and nothing would be left but the German colony—which could not remain without customers for its shops, or even maintain its institutions—and the Jews, who live mainly on the charity of Europe. Agriculture, Jewish and German, would continue in the plains; philanthropy, Scottish and American, in Galilee and Syria; education and culture, American and Jesuit, in Beirut; commerce, German and Jewish, in Jaffa and Haifa; but all these exist independently of, almost in spite of, Jerusalem, and have been created for the advantage of mankind.