Palestine

by C. R. Conder

East of Shechem, and to the south, there are mountains more rugged than any south of Galilee. The border of Samaria, which divided it from Judea, ran through these mountains, following the line of the principal valley bed. It had never been laid down with any attempt at exactness before the Survey, but now that the position of the border towns is correctly fixed, it becomes possible to trace it throughout. The Judean outpost on the north-east was the extraordinary conical mountain called Sartaba, which rises from the Jordan Valley. This little-visited peak was thoroughly explored. On the summit a square foundation was discovered, surrounded by an oval rampart. The cone has been artificially cut in places, and is some 270 feet high. The remains may be those of the fourteenth-century fortress, but the site has a much earlier history.

On their return from exile the Jews were accustomed to fix the first day of each month by actual observation of the new moon, and according to the Mishna, the announcement was made throughout the Holy Land by means of bonfires on the mountains. One of these bonfire stations was Sartaba, and it is not impossible that the remains of extensive ash-deposits observed on the mountain were traces of such beacons. The practice was open to mistake, for the Jews assert that the Samaritans used to light fires on neighbouring heights with the malicious intention of confusing the Jewish calendar, and making the Passover feast to fall on the wrong day. Whether we are to credit the statement that this chain of beacons extended even to Mesopotamia is doubtful, but the Jews certainly long kept up intercourse with their brethren in Babylonia.

On the south of Shechem rises the great rounded top of Gerizim, whence the eye ranges from Gilead to the Mediterranean, and on the north to dusky Carmel and snowy Hermon. On the south side of the mountain is Kefr Hâris, where, according to the Samaritans, Joshua was buried—a tradition nowise discordant with the statements of the Old Testament, and which can be traced back at least to the fourth century. Here also the peasants show the tomb of his father, Nun. On the mountain-side, near the summit, the Passover is still eaten, and here, as the Samaritans say, once stood their temple. There are no remains of any great building, but a sacred slab of rock, in which is one of those curious “cup hollows” so frequently found in connection with prehistoric monuments. On the west, the Sharon plain extends beyond the olive groves of the foot-hills to the dark ruined ramparts of Cæsarea—a region which was surveyed in the spring of 1873, and many interesting ruins were then explored. It is one of the most lawless parts of the country, and was then but little cultivated. Scattered oak woods, sandy dunes, marshes, and boggy streams occupy great part of its extent; and on the north is the Crocodile River, still the dwelling of these monsters, who are not found in other streams, but lie in the muddy river under the papyrus or amid the reeds as comfortably as in the Nile.

The crocodiles of this region are mentioned by many writers, from Pliny downwards. A curious story was told in the thirteenth century, according to which they were imported from Egypt by a lord of Cæsarea, in order that his brother might become their victim. The brothers went to bathe in the river, but the wicked lord went in first and was eaten, while his innocent brother escaped.

This part of the plain of Sharon and the west side of the Esdraelon plain are the only places in Palestine, so far as I have been able to ascertain, where Turkoman encampments are found. In Northern Syria the Turkoman camps are more numerous. I have visited their tents in the plains near Kadesh on Orontes, and in the oak-dotted vale where the Eleutherus rises. To the casual visitor they seem to be Bedu, and indeed those in the Sharon plain have almost forgotten their original language. We know historically that a horde of the followers of Ghazan Khan in 1295 A.D., consisting, it is said, of 18,000 tents, came down to Damascus and settled on the coasts of Palestine. Probably the existing Turkoman tribes are the last relics of this horde; but in this mixture of Tartars with the Semitic race of Syria we see still surviving a condition of population as old as the days of Abraham. It is now the general opinion of competent scholars that the non-Semitic population which the Egyptians in the sixteenth century B.C. found in Syria—more especially in the north—was a Mongolic race. The monuments show that in feature they were Mongolian and that they wore the Tartar pigtail, and the names of their chiefs and towns tell the same tale. The Turkomans are degraded representatives of a kindred race. The Turkish masters of Palestine hold now the same position which the Hittite princes held in the days of Abraham and Solomon as over-lords in a country whose inhabitants were mainly of another race.

The greater part of the Jordan Valley lies within the boundaries of Samaria, and it was for this reason that Galilean Jews travelling to Jerusalem crossed the Jordan and journeyed down the left bank to Jericho, where they crossed again without having approached the country of heresy. As regards the western borders of Samaria, there is less certainty perhaps, but such information as we possess seems to show that the limits of this province must be extended to the sea-shore.[39] Indeed, had it been otherwise, the journey from Galilee along the coast would always have been preferable to that along the east side of the Jordan Valley. It must be confessed that the Samaritans possessed some of the best land in Palestine.

Since the greater part of the Jordan Valley thus belonged to Samaria, the exploration of the valley may be here noticed. The survey of the plains of Jericho has been recorded in the preceding chapter. From Jericho in the early spring of 1874 the party proceeded northwards, and by April, in spite of very bad weather, the work was finished within a few miles of the Sea of Galilee.

The total length of the valley is about a hundred miles from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. The level of the latter Sir Charles Wilson has determined as 1292 feet below the Mediterranean. The former, as determined by the line of levels which, under a grant from the British Association, I commenced in 1875, and which was completed in 1877, is 682 feet below the same datum. Thus the average fall of the river is 600 feet in a hundred miles, but the upper part of the course is the more rapid, falling about 400 feet in fifty miles. The width is pretty constant along the whole course, the evaporation counterbalancing the additional flow of the Jabbok and other affluents. The volume of water brought down by the Jordan, and evaporated during the summer months in the Dead Sea, makes a difference of fifteen feet between the summer and winter surface of that sea over an area of about 400 square miles. The flow is greatest when the snows on Hermon begin to melt, about the time of Passover, when “Jordan overfloweth its banks all the time of harvest;” for harvest in this deep valley is much earlier than even in the Sharon plains. The river flows in a narrow bed between banks of marl, and the Zor, or depressed channel on either side, averages about a mile across, flanked by white cliffs and steep slopes fifty feet high. In high flood this channel is at times all under water, and the river becomes about a mile wide, but soon sinks within its natural borders. The Zor is filled with brushwood of tamarisk, agnus-castus, and other vegetation, and in places the river is hidden between the bushes and cane beds. Near the fords it is seen as a brown swirling stream with a rapid current. In the upper part of its course there are numerous fords and small rapids. No less than forty crossing places, nearly all of which were previously unknown, were marked by the surveyors.