Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

An amphitheatre, still remaining, was also built, to the south by the sea, capable of holding, as Josephus says, a vast number, for its diameter is 560 feet, and it could contain 20,000 persons. The theatre appears to have been within its circuit, where it still remains, but the hippodrome, over 1000 feet long, seems unnoticed by the historian. It is to the east, and in it are the remains of a goal post of granite, a magnificent truncated cone seven feet six inches high, once standing apparently on a base, a single block of red granite thirty-four feet long. How such blocks were moved it is difficult to imagine; nor was the material to be obtained in Palestine, being a fine kind of granite, so hard that the peasantry endeavouring to cut the stele into millstones, have only penetrated a few inches into the stone.

The wall of the Roman town was traced, and found to embrace an area of four hundred acres; but Crusading Cæsarea was much smaller, being only about thirty acres, within a rectangle of six hundred yards by two hundred and fifty.

Cæsarea was considered, after the fall of Jerusalem, to be the capital of Palestine. Sometimes it was spoken of as part of the “land” by the Jews, sometimes it was excluded. Jews, Syrians, and Samaritans dwelt in it, and the place was the scene of many bloody feuds between them. In the Talmud the port (Leminah), and the famous promenade along the mole are noticed, but I find no ancient account of the great aqueducts which brought water to the city, otherwise supplied only by a single well. One of these is carried from springs on the Carmel hills, a distance of eight miles, on arches with a double channel, and is perhaps the finest engineering work in the country, evidently of Roman origin; the second, or low level, brings water from the pool above the dam in the Crocodile River. The manner in which the rocky ridge along the coast is pierced, and long rock-staircases cut down to the tunnel, with the separation of the two channels when crossing the great marshes, are indications of high scientific education in the builders. The native tradition says that the two aqueducts were made, by two daughters of a king, for a wager as to who should first convey water to the capital.

The history of Cæsarea is one of many vicissitudes. It became a bishopric in 200 A.D., and was the home of Origen and of Eusebius. The Franks took it in 1001, when the green glass dish, called “the Holy Grail,” was found by the Genoese. Saladin conquered it in the fatal year 1187; but its walls were again erected by Gautier d’Avesnes, in 1218, and the place was taken back by the Moslems the same year. Ten years later it was again taken, and again fell. In 1251 it was re-fortified by St. Louis; but the invincible Bibars destroyed it in 1265. The restorations of St. Louis are still plainly distinguishable from the older work of Gautier.

On the south side of the town the Crusading towers project into the sea along the great mole, and stand probably on the site of Herod’s tower Drusus. On the north the pillars of the Roman town have been used up to form a long jetty, running parallel with the reefs; and other shafts have, as at Ascalon, been built into the walls. On the top of the southern hill, within the Crusading walls, are the foundations of the fine cathedral, and to the north is a second smaller church. These are the only public buildings which remain distinguishable, and the whole extent, within the Roman enceinte, is now but a mass of fallen masonry, excepting the dark, dismantled towers and scarps of the thirteenth-century fortress, and the shapeless tower on the mole.

In our rides to and from Cæsarea, we constantly had reason to admire the faint, harmonious colouring of the wild flowers on the untilled plain. Cæsarea was surrounded by fields of the yellow marigold, which produced a bad kind of hay-fever, and gilded our legs in riding. Ancient ruins in Palestine are, in spring, easily distinguished, by the growth of this plant, and of the marsh-mallow. Other flowers were also conspicuous—the red pheasant’s eye, in some cases as big as a poppy; blue pimpernels, moon-daisies, the lovely phlox, gladioles, and huge hollyhocks. Swarms of “painted-lady” butterflies fluttered over the mallows; the hoopoes had just arrived, and were fanning their crests up and down in the oak boughs; the storks were solemnly marching over the plain; and the air was full of the white-footed lesser kestrel, also a migratory bird.

Early in April the corn was ripening under the oaks; but a great portion of the plain is covered with marshes, among which the Ghawarni Arabs, who are almost independent, have their camps. The tracks through the boggy land are known only by themselves, and the government is thus unable to do more than inflict a poll-tax on them. Here the shaggy brown buffaloes might often be seen sunk, like hippopotami, in the deep, muddy stream, the nose and horns only visible—for the peculiar set of the neck allows the head to be extended quite horizontally, the nose, ears, and eyes in line, as in the hippopotamus.

We made diligent inquiry as to the crocodiles, and visited Abu Nûr, the miller on the river. He took us up a ladder into the loft above the mill, where we sat in state on carpets, as he prepared coffee, our eyes blinded with wood-smoke, and our ears deafened with the whirl of the mill-wheel. The old man promised to do all in his power—“Inshallah,” he would get us a crocodile. He also criticised my riding-whip, which he pronounced good, but not equal to one he had seen, which could also be used as a chair and umbrella, with a sword-blade inside.

The Arabs and Turkomans of the plain are rich in flocks and herds. Long lines of the Syrian fat-tailed sheep, black goats, and small red oxen covered the plain. The rich people in the hills had sent down their horses for spring grazing, and camps were pitched, round which forty or fifty fine horses were picketed, feeding on the grass and flowers. Here also I noticed the peculiar fashion of sewing the ears of donkey colts together, to make them stand up, and of splitting the cows’ ears, so that they appear to have two pairs of horns as well as ears.

On the 8th of April we moved south to Zeita, on the edge of the hills. From this camp no discoveries of much importance were made; but we visited two Crusading towers which formed fine stations in the plain—one at Kâkôn, a place mentioned, in 1160, by Benjamin of Tudela, as being the ancient Keilah; the second at Kŭlŭnsaweh (which means “mitred”), where is a beautiful hall, probably part of the Castle of Plans, built by the Templars in 1191.