We next visited the spring encampment of Sheikh Jemîl, and, after the coffee, we were treated to a repast consisting of a sort of omelette and a dish of sweet rice, both very good, as was also the thin wafer-like bread just baked. From the tent-door we looked out on the flowery slopes and the gleaming lake, on the children, camels and donkeys, goats and kids, and lambs with speckled fleeces, such as Jacob chose from Laban’s flocks. Here and there a female figure stole out, robed in the dark green and indigo-coloured sweeping garments peculiar to the Bedawîn women; and inside the black camel’s-hair tent, on bright cushions and carpets, our friends sat round—Jemîl, the educated chief, who could read and write; Jedû’a, his brother, the great hunter of the ibex; the young flaxen-haired Sheikh who had been one of our principal guides; and many others with faces then quite familiar to me.
On Tuesday the 26th of February we struck camp, and marched north to Fusâil, the ancient Phasaelis founded by Herod. Our procession was spread over a quarter of a mile as I reviewed it from a hillock beside the road. Five Englishmen on horseback came first, eight mules, and eight camels followed, we had four Bedawîn guides, seven muleteers, six servants, and a Bashi-Bazouk, three donkeys, and Sheikh Jemîl’s dromedary—in all, twenty-seven individuals and thirty-four animals, including six dogs.
The new camp was not in the territory of Sheikh Jemîl, and I had procured letters to the Emir of the Mes’aid Arabs. Our old friends left us, and Jemîl seemed disappointed by the present I gave him, though it was worth five pounds, but was radiant on the receipt of another five shillings.
About two p.m., on the 28th, the Emîr was announced; he was seen coming across the plain, with ten horsemen armed with long lances, and swords, and with guns which they kept firing off. They dismounted with much ceremony, and coffee was served; the Emîr was rather a handsome man, with delicate features and very small hands and feet. He left his son and nephew with us, but was very anxious we should come on to the Fâr’ah Valley where his camp was pitched. We had intended to give him a dinner, but the provisions did not arrive, and he intimated, through the servants, that money would be more acceptable, so I had two half-sovereigns wrapped up in paper, and slipped one into his hand and one into that of his cousin; I also sent out to him a black abba, and the great prince rode off happily. I suppose that had I offered such a present during the troublous year 1877, when Fendi-el-Faiz took £300 from Tiberias, the Emir would not have been so contented with the amount.
We found it very difficult to keep any Arabs at Fusâil; some said it was not their country, others that the fever was always bad there, others again that they were afraid of a ghoul in the ruins. In reality the country here belongs to the Fellahîn, and I imagine no Arabs had a right to camp there. We were much hindered by weather; rain and snow fell, and though the latter never came into the valley it lay thick on the hills; and on the summit of the Kurn Sûrtûbeh we were caught in a fall of sleet. Corporal Brophy had to ride up 3000 feet every morning before he got to his work, and the transitions of temperature were far from improving our health.
We were now almost at the foot of the Sûrtûbeh block, one of the finest features of the valley; and I surveyed the detail on the mountain myself; for ever since 1873 I had been in the habit of taking part in the survey of detail. In addition to this I had my duties as commander, and the writing of notes and reports, studies of archæological and antiquarian questions, plan-making, hill-shading, accounts, and general provisioning, all of which duties fell upon me personally.
The Sŭrtŭbeh is a block of chalk which has slid down the face of the tilted dolomitic limestone of the watershed hills. Its summit, two thousand four hundred feet above the valley, is capped by a cone two hundred and seventy feet high, with steep smooth sides like those of the so-called Frank Mountain (Herodium) near Bethlehem. The building on the top appears to be the foundation of a Crusading fort with large drafted stones; beneath are caves all round the hill, and lower still a sort of terrace like a garden. An aqueduct follows the contour of the mountain, collecting surface-drainage and leading to some large reservoirs cut in rock. A wall, enclosing a space some thirty yards by ninety, surrounds the foundations of the tower, which are about eighteen feet in height.
This mountain, under which we lived for just a month, has so remarkable an appearance, and yet so slight a history, that one could not help imagining a mystery about it. We asked the Arabs, but they said that Sŭrtŭbeh was a king who built a castle on the top. It has by some been supposed to be the Tower of Alexandrium near Corea, noticed more than once by Josephus; but Corea was on the boundary of the lands of Judea and Samaria, and near the watershed, as Josephus expressly tells us.
The name Surtuba occurs in the Talmud, as that of a beacon-station on the way from Jerusalem to the Hauran, which was lighted when the new moon appeared. This fact is, no doubt, connected with the title Dalûk, applied, not to the conical summit, but to one close to it on the chain, and meaning “burning” in Hebrew; and also perhaps with the name “Mother of the New Moon” applied to a prominent point on the mountain. Sŭrtŭbeh means, as Dr. Chaplin pointed out to me, neither more nor less than “Bellevue,” and is certainly a title very appropriate to this fine point. I have only been able to find one later reference to the place, Marino Sanuto speaking of it as the fortress of Docus where Simon the Hasmonean was murdered; but this is a mistake, and other mediæval writers point out the true site near ’Ain Dûk.
In 1874 I proposed to identify the Kurn with the place where the great monumental altar of Ed was erected, by the children of Gad, Reuben and Manasseh. The site seems wonderfully appropriate for a monument intended to show that the trans-Jordanic tribes were not cast out from their participation in the religious rites of the western tribes. The place stands above the great ford, by which they perhaps crossed in going from Shiloh to the land of Gilead, and the name Ed is perhaps recognisable in the Tal’at Abu ’Aid on the side of the mountain. There are, however, objections to the theory; first that the tribes crossed by the “passage of the children of Israel” (Josh. xxii. 11) after leaving Shiloh, and this seems to point, not to the Dâmieh, but to the Jericho ford; secondly, Josephus says that the altar was east of Jordan; thirdly, Abu ’Aid, “father of the feast,” may be (as it sometimes is) a proper name of a person born on a feast-day. The idea is therefore merely a conjecture, and far from being an identification.