We approached the city from the south, where, nearly a quarter of a mile from the gate, the road is spanned by a Roman arch of triumph, supposed to be not earlier than the time of Trajan. The ground on the side is strewn in places with violated sarcophagi. On the left of the arch is the great Naumachia basin, surrounded by seats for the spectators, and filled by channels from the brook. On entering the town, a temple is found immediately to the left, and behind this is a theatre with twenty-eight tiers of seats, and capable of holding five thousand persons.
The street of columns from the oval forum consisted of pillars, generally about fifteen feet high and five yards apart. It is divided into three sections by tetrapylons where cross streets intersect. Towards the centre of the street the Corinthian order was found, with Ionic capitals in the northern and southern parts. Near the middle was a basilica to the right, where, no doubt, judgments were pronounced, and on the left a propyleum, behind which flights of steps appear to have led up to the great temple, which stood high on the hillside, having pillars thirty-eight feet high and six feet in diameter. North of this temple was another theatre, with sixteen tiers of seats—not an odeum, like the preceding, which had a stage, but probably intended only for gladiatorial shows. So also at ’Ammân an odeum with stage, quite as complete as that of the southern theatre of Gerasa, stands close to the larger semicircle, before which is the open area with its vomitoria.
To the right of the street of columns, opposite the northern theatre, and close to the stream, are well-preserved remains of the great baths of Gerasa. In the extreme north-east part of the city, not far from a spring is a third temple, well preserved, and by the spring itself there seems to have been a nymphæum with three altars. Ruins farther south, east of the brook, are thought to represent a market-place and its stables. There are two ancient bridges over the stream, one close to the central basilica, and just outside the south-east gate are the ruins of another church or chapel. It was interesting to note how the paving of the bridge was laid diagonally (as in the opus reticulatum), and ruts seemingly cut through it to guide the wheels of carts or of chariots. By the basilica also are remains of four porphyry columns, and since no such stone is found anywhere nearer than Egypt or Sinai, we see here, as at ’Ammân also and at Tyre, that great labour and expense were devoted to the adornment of the town. I also observed some double columns like those of the Galilean synagogues of the same age, or like the huge granite double monolith at Tyre, probably once belonging to the temple of Melcarth.
The most remarkable fact concerning Gerasa is the absence of historical notices of the city. It already existed in 78 B.C., and is mentioned by Josephus and by Pliny. It was still a place of importance in the fourth century, and there are allusions to the name in early Arab works and in Crusading history. Stephen of Byzantium says that Ariston Rhetor came thence. Origen, Jerome, and Epiphanius knew the place, and there were bishops of the city present at some of the Councils; but beyond this we know nothing, save that which we gather from the inscriptions still existing. So numerous and so magnificent were the Roman cities of the second century of our era, that even the fine buildings of a town as large as ancient Tyre excite no particular notice. So imperfectly was it known, that the old Roman map of the fourth century, which makes the Hieromax flow into the Dead Sea direct, appears to put Gerasa opposite Jericho, and the Persian Gulf immediately east of the city. Yet when we visit the ruins, we find that granite pillars were brought from Egypt to adorn its basilica; that its busy population (said to include descendants of some of Alexander’s soldiers) had their baths, their theatres, their public memorials. An Æthlophoros, become Christian, dedicates a church with Homeric hexameter verses, and the names of Antoninus and perhaps of Pertinax are boldly sculptured on public buildings. Few ruined cities so well attest the far-reaching power of imperial Rome.
The Crusading King Baldwin II., in 1121 A.D., made a raid into this country, and overturned a Moslem fortress near Jerash. The Crusaders had other outposts at Tibneh, at Salt, and on the conical hill of Rubud; but the broad plains of the Hauran, which Baldwin III. endeavoured in vain to conquer, were never wrested from the Sultans of Damascus.
The road to Jordan from Gerasa passes along in sight of the distant castle of Rubud and by the ancient village of Reimun, a well-watered place with ancient tombs. Here, I believe, we should probably place the celebrated Ramoth Gilead, which has, for no reason at all, been identified with Es Salt, a town which takes its name from the old episcopal title Saltus Hieraticus, due to the woods on the hill slopes not far off. From Reimun the path winds down into the beautiful “Valley of the Roebuck” (Wâdy Hamûr), full of picturesque glades. The valley was green with young corn when I visited it, and the stream bordered with oleanders. On the hillsides a dense wood of oaks was topped by dark pines on the higher part of the ridge. Lentisk, arbutus, oleaster, formed its underwood, and here, as on Carmel, the blackbird’s song may be heard. The jay, cuckoo, hoopoe, and tomtit I also found in these woods, with the “murmuring of innumerable doves,” as in the Nazareth oaks.
Among the flowers which I saw in spring on the slopes of Gilead are many of our English species. Clover, ragged-robin, red and white cistus, clematis, crow’s-foot, purple lupins, squills, the pink phlox, the red or blue anemone, cyclamen, corn-flowers, pheasant’s eye, salvia, asphodel (both blue and yellow), vetches, wild mustard, marigold, borage, moon-daisies, cytizus, orchids, and the white broom, Star of Bethlehem, poppies, tulips, and buttercups, all grow in the grassy dells. Mock orange, hawthorn, honeysuckle, and antirrhinum, the arbutus and the lauristinus, are among its shrubs. Nowhere else in Palestine save in the Jordan Valley have I seen such fields of flowers; but the ravines and hill-slopes of the beautiful Sorrento scenery near Naples both in fauna and flora very nearly approach the natural history of Gilead.
These scenes were among the last through which it was my lot to pass in Syria. Hurrying back from Damascus to Jerusalem, I rejoined my companions, and we went down to Jaffa, where we took the northern steamer in order to escape Alexandria by a longer sea-route. Rumours had already reached us of the massacres in Egypt, and my reports concerning the unsettled state of the Levant I found to have been already confirmed by the telegrams which were arriving in England when we returned. The steamer was crowded with refugees, and it was not many weeks later that I again stood in the familiar streets of Alexandria, and saw the city of gutted houses, and the ruins which covered the great square with heaps of stone and of plaster. Thus our explorations may be said to have been continued to the last days of peace, before the Levant became the theatre of historic events.
There is only one district of Palestine which has not been described in this volume, namely, the great plains of the Hauran and the volcanic regions of the Lejah and Jaulan. Full as this region is of rude stone monuments, of Roman towns, of Nabathean and Arab texts scrawled on the rock, of Greek temples and Greek inscriptions, it is yet perhaps less unknown and less interesting than the wild deserts of Moab and of Judah, the oak woods of Gilead, the fastnesses of Hermon, the romantic mountains of Northern Syria, which have here been described. Still it remains a matter of regret to me that the work which was so systematically carried out in other parts of Palestine has not yet been extended over the whole of the Hauran plains.
Such, then, is the present condition of exploration east of Jordan. About a quarter of that region has been surveyed and mapped, and nearly the whole region has been visited by modern trained explorers. Much, however, still remains to be done in the future in this interesting country.