CHAPTER IV.
THE GREAT PLAIN OF ESDRAELON.
OUR new camp was fixed at Jenîn, the ancient Engannim or “Spring of Gardens,” at the southern extremity of the Great Plain, a border city of Galilee according to Josephus, now a picturesque town of three thousand inhabitants, with a bazaar and a mosque, surrounded by groves of olives, through which a little stream finds its way in spring. Our camp was west of the place, and looked out on the white mosque of ’Azz ed Dîn with its minaret, the great threshing-floor with its heaps of yellow grain, the beautiful gardens of palms, oranges, and tamarisks set in cactus hedges, while behind, on the east, was the stony range of Gilboa, on the north the brown plain, the blue Nazareth hills, the volcanic cone of Jebel Dŭhy, and the shoulder of Carmel towards the west.
The Great Plain extends northwards fourteen miles from Jenîn, to Junjâr at the foot of the Nazareth chain, whilst from Jezreel on the east, to Legio on the west, is about nine miles. The elevation is about 200 to 250 feet above the sea, and a Y-shaped double range of hills bounds it east and west, with an average elevation of 1500 feet above the plain. On the north-east are the two detached blocks of Neby Dŭhy and Tabor, and on the north-west a narrow gorge is formed by the river Kishon, which springs from beneath Tabor and collecting the whole drainage of this large basin, passes from the Great Plain to that of Acre. On the east of the plain the broad valley of Jezreel gradually slopes down towards Jordan, and Jezreel itself (the modern Zer’in) stands on the side of Gilboa above it. On the west are the scarcely less famous sites of Legio, Taanach, and Jokneam, while the picturesque conical hill of Dŭhy, just north of the Jezreel valley, has Shunem on its south slope, and Nain and Endor on the north. Thus seven places of interest lie at the foot of the hills east and west, but no important town was ever situate in the plain itself—a flat expanse of arable land, the loose basaltic soil of which is extremely fertile.
The Great Plain was once the favourite resort of the Bedawin when driven by war or famine across Jordan. At times it used to be covered with camels “like the sand which is by the sea-shore innumerable.” The Ruwalla (a branch of the great Arab nation called ’Anazeh), the Sukr and other important tribes came over to pasture their camels, and like the Midianites whom Gideon encountered advancing by the same great highway—the valley of Jezreel, they oppressed the native population settled in the villages. Thus in 1870 only about a sixth of the beautiful corn-land was tilled, and the plain was black with Arab “houses of hair.” But the Turks wrought a great and sudden change; they armed their cavalry with the Remington breech-loading rifle, and the Bedawin disappeared as though by magic. It was of course to be expected that when external troubles had weakened the Government, the lawless nomads would again encroach and levy toll and tribute as before; for the history of Palestine seems constantly to repeat itself from the earliest period recorded, in a recurring struggle between the settled population and the nomads, Midianites, Shasu, Bedawin, or whatever other name you may call them; thus during the year 1877 Fendi el Faiz and the Sukr again invaded the plain and levied black-mail on the luckless peasantry. In 1872 no less than nine-tenths of the plain was cultivated, nearly half with corn, the rest with millet, sesame, cotton, tobacco, and the castor-oil plant. The springs on the west are copious; from near Legio a considerable affluent flows north to join the Kishon, and even in August the streams are running to waste at the foot of the hills. The Great Plain is indeed one of the richest natural fields of cultivation in Palestine—perhaps one might say in the world.
The night came down on our newly-erected camp before even a hasty glance could be obtained of all this interesting scenery. There is something peculiarly soothing in the Syrian starlight; the planets are brighter than in the north, the milky way looks like a long white cloud, the moon, as she rises, is often accompanied by a silvery vapour floating over the mountain-tops. The silence is broken by the sigh of the night wind among the olives which form a black lattice-work overhead. In the village at intervals one hears the barking of the troops of savage dogs, and in the open plain the shrill gamut of the jackals, rising note by note, and ending in a sort of shake or quavering sound. The cicalas are asleep, but the piping of the black mole-crickets continues all night. Occasionally a horse wakes with a snort, or the English terriers hear a strange step and give the short sharp warning bark, so different from the mongrel howls of the native dogs; then once more all is still but the wind, and the silence becomes almost oppressive.
The Great Plain was the place chosen for the measurement of our second base to check the accuracy of the triangulation carried up some sixty miles from its starting-point in the Jaffa plain. On the 2nd of September we laid out the line for a distance of four and a half miles, directing it on the white dome of Neby S’ain above Nazareth, and thus obtaining a prolongation for calculation of nearly six miles. The high hills east and west gave us a second line of fifteen miles almost at right angles, and from this, large well-shaped triangles were carried away to the north. The check was perfectly satisfactory, and the closing line, when calculated in 1876 at Southampton, had a margin of only twenty feet, which is an invisible distance on the one inch scale.
One of our trigonometrical stations was placed on a high hill above the smaller plain of ’Arrâbeh in which Dothan stands just south-west of the Great Plain. Here there is a chapel dedicated to Sheikh Shibleh, a famous Emir who in 1697 waylaid the traveller Maundrell. This writer remarks drily that after extorting black-mail, “he eased us in a very courteous manner of some of our coats, which now began to grow not only superfluous but burdensome.” The Emir died, and was canonised, and his tomb looks down from the stony hill-top on the scene of his former prowess; but he is not the only sainted bandit in the Syrian pantheon.
In returning from this ride we passed through the little Christian village of Burkîn, where we were hailed with a pleasure very different from the hollow courtesy of the Moslem natives. The old Khûri or curé hastened down to show us his church on the hillside, a small whitewashed room, with a stone screen on the east shutting off the apses, as in all Greek churches in the country, and with three entrances guarded by curtains. The silver plate and ewer were kept in the north apse, the altar stood in the central one; the church was very rudely built, about fifty feet square, with a dome some twenty feet high. Two stone lecterns held the books near the screen, and a stone chair on the south side had arms with rude dogs’ heads carved on them. The pictures were all painted on wood in a stiff pre-Raffaelite style, with gaudy colouring dimmed by age. One represented the ascent of Elijah in a chariot with a red cloud beneath, and four winged horses harnessed to it, with traces looking like white tapes attached to the spokes of the wheels. Elisha below receives the mantle, and is again represented as at a greater distance striking Jordan with it, whilst a group of sons of the prophets stand like a shock of corn in a square block with gilded glories on their heads. Other pictures represented St. George, the Virgin, the Baptist with red wings and a title in Russian and Arabic characters, St. Nicholas, and the Saviour enthroned.