Two miles farther south-west are the remains of another large town, at the place called Tell es Semak. There can scarcely be a doubt that this is the ancient Sycaminon, often confused with Haifa, but a place distinct and named from its sycamine fig-trees—a stunted specimen of which still stands near, with its little figs growing out of the stem.
The appearance of the bay in winter was very fine. In calm weather we looked northwards to the long ridge of Galilean mountains, with the strong walls and white minaret of Acre beneath, and the snowy dome of Hermon above. For five minutes every evening a glorious crimson flush spread over the mountains, gradually dying out as the cold blue shadow crept up the slopes. In the morning the long curve of the bay, the misty hills, the beautiful line of palms along the dunes, with the sun rising behind, made a subject fit for Turner’s pencil. The town itself, backed by the Carmel bluff, was equally picturesque, with the old tower above its walls, riddled by English shot and shell in 1840, yet still mounting one gun. As the winter went on, the heavy seas came rolling in round the promontory, and a cormorant, or a Mother Carey’s chicken, might be seen hovering over the waves, or a flight of wild duck bobbing on the rollers. Great shoals of fish came in, and were caught with the primitive cast-nets of the naked fishermen; and, after the storm, the beach would be found strewn with shells, amongst which the Murex trunculus was common, from which the Tyrian purple was derived.
The Khilzon, or murex, is, indeed, closely connected with Carmel. The Rabbis understood the expression, “riches of the deep,” to refer to the Khilzon, and to be promised to the tribe of Zebulon as an inheritance. The Khilzon was fished at a place called after it, and as far north as Phœnicia. Its name still exists in the modern Wâdy Halzûn, a valley tributary to the Belus River, near Acre, in which river the murex was found. The expression in the Song of Songs, “thine head ... like Carmel ... the hair of thine head like purple” (vii. 5), was also understood by the Jews to refer to the Khilzon, and, by a natural elision, to its being found under Carmel.
The murex gave many colours, from green and deep blue to red, but the Tyrian purple was the dark blood-colour, like the darkest of “black roses” as the ancients called them, and only one drop of the dye was found in the vein of the mollusk, which circumstance accounted for the expensiveness of the Tyrian garments.
The Kishon, as noticed in a former chapter, enters the plain of Acre by a narrow gorge under the cliffs of Carmel, on the north side of the ridge. From this point it gradually works away north-west, and is fed by fine springs from the foot of the mountain, and also from near the low hills on the right bank. Most of these springs, but especially ’Ain S’adeh and the ’Ayûn el Werd, flowing from among the rocks near the foot of Carmel, are perennial. Thus, beneath the main ford, west of El Harathîyeh (Harosheth of the Gentiles), the river is full of water even in autumn. Above this point its stony bed is hidden by the oleander bushes, but below it flows slowly through a barren, marshy plain, between banks some ten feet high—an impassable stream, having a fall of eighty feet in the last five miles of its course.
The mouth is curious; the prevailing winds blow from the south-west, and the dunes are gradually heaping up and advancing on this side, so that the river is always forming new mouths farther north. The lagoons now existing behind the dunes on the left bank are perhaps results of the former course. The river breaks through the sand and flows to the sea when the wind is from the east; but, even in wet years, a bar is formed whenever the wind is in the west, blowing on shore. Thus I have found it almost impassable in September, before the rains, but quite dry in January, after they had fallen, according to the wind.
Few scenes more picturesque and more thoroughly Oriental are to be found in Palestine than that at the mouth of the Kishon. The palms, which flourish only on the coast, where water and sand occur together and frost is never experienced, are here found all along the dunes and round the lagoons; the banks, some thirty yards apart, are fringed with rushes and a sort of pink, fleshy-leaved plant. Along the sides stand the grey herons, watching for fish, whilst here and there a white egret steps daintily about, and on the sand the Kentish dottrell runs hastily seawards as the waves ebb out, and the red-shanks and sandpipers skim along in large flocks. Behind all rises the dark steep slope of Carmel, with white piles of cloud above, and a foreground of palms sets the scene in an appropriate frame.
The birds are very numerous. Wild-duck and snipe are found in the marshes, the African king-fisher hovers over the stream, and various species of gulls flit along the shore. The crabs swarm along the line of the bay, and occasionally a great number of rays and skates. In the deeper water a porpoise is sometimes to be seen, and many species of good edible fish are caught.
Acre is a walled town, with a single gate on the south-east. Its trade is now much reduced, and the bazaars are deserted; the richest inhabitant is not worth £1000. The ramparts, blown up by the English in 1840, remain in ruins, and the whole place has a desolate appearance. The port was filled up in the seventeenth century, by Fakhr ed Din, and, in the whole space between the walls and the old Crusading pier—a breadth of 700 yards east and west, by 350 north and south—the greatest depth of water is only six feet, the average being two or three. The appearance of the town outside is picturesque; with brown walls, a tower on a rock in the sea, called, from the fourteenth century downwards (and perhaps earlier) El Manâra, yellow stone houses, with two higher buildings, roofed with red tiles, and with green shutters; above all, the large white mosque of Jezzar Pacha, a square building, with a dome and a graceful minaret, surrounded by palms, and with chambers for the students, covered by rows of little round domes; behind this, the modern barrack, on the site of the old Crusading castle.
Entering the town, I found many of the bazaars turned into cavalry stables, and only about one shop in ten inhabited. In the southern part, however, a busier scene may be witnessed.