The people of ‛Ayn ‛Arîk are greatly favored with the natural conditions of prosperity and ought to develop considerably. The most helpful influence exerted in the village is that of the day-school for children maintained as an out-station of the Râm Allâh Friends’ Mission and taught by one of their trained native women.
From el-Bîreh to Baytîn (Bethel) the distance is about two miles. The path leaves the carriage road a little north of the former village and strikes off to the right through a small patch of boulders, stirrup high, to a level stretch of ground that rises a little as one comes to an interesting group of remains clustered about a spring, ‛Ayn el-Kusa‛.[[203]] Some well-worn rock-cut steps lead up to a rock-platform seven or eight feet above and alongside the bridle-path. The spring starts from the hillside, a little distance away, the outlet being artificially improved and a connection made with a system of trenches and pan-shaped hollows cut in different places over the top of the rock platform. Down by the path-side, under this platform, is a rock-cut chamber or cave with two heavy supporting columns hewn from the rock. The water system above is connected with it. All around the interior walls and clustering at the foot of the columns are beautiful maidenhair ferns growing out of the ooze in the bottom of the cave. A few yards farther on is another smaller cavelike room or reservoir which was never finished or connected with the spring and chamber above. Between these two caves there is a connection by a sort of trough cut in the wall-side. The intention may have been to connect the two caves as catch-reservoirs with a lower cistern or pool. This latter is suggested by a circular-shaped line of dressed stone in the very path. Many have asked what it was, whether a former pool, the top of a cistern or a shallow basin trough. The path must once have avoided it, though it now stumbles over it. Below the path little gardens catch the drainings of the spring.
A few rods beyond this the bridle-path to Dayr Dîwân and Jericho diverges to the right (east) from the main caravan road to Baytîn and Nâblus. This main road continues to the ‛Ayn el-‛Aḳabeh (The Spring of the Descent, or, of the Steep Place) and on up the steep path to the top of the hill before Baytîn (Bethel). There are small gardens near the spring and a few old tombs in the vicinity. The people of Baytîn are Moslems. They are apt to be rude to small parties of foreigners. Though few, about half as many as in el-Bîreh, they have a name among the near-by villages for strength and fearlessness. In going into the village one passes the cemetery and the large ancient pool. North of the village is a field of large rocks that have never lacked notice since the records of history began. Shortly beyond the big rocks, which lie in the road to Nâblus, a branching path takes one towards eṭ-Ṭayyibeh, seen at good advantage from this fork in the paths on a prominent hill a little north of east. Due east from Baytîn is Burj Baytîn, five minutes away, a picturesque ruin among some fig-trees.
From Burj Baytîn we may bear to the right to Dayr Dîwân, going through the extensive fig-orchards of the latter or take a straighter road which leads one by a very rocky hill Tell el-Ḥajar (right) and another (left) that looks like a rampart of pebble with flattened top, called et-Tell and identified by some with ancient Ai. West of Dayr Dîwân are a lot of boulders with flat table tops that would be the delight of picnickers desirous of a place to spread a cloth. The distinguishing thing about the appearance of Dayr Dîwân is that the houses stand quite apart from each other, one story high, each with its own little space about it. The entrance to the village from the west is a little precarious for horses because of the slippery rock surface that abounds. The people of the place are Moslems. They are quiet folk. A while ago a Râm Allâh man (Christian) kept a grocery shop in the village.
From Jifnâ to eṭ-Ṭayyibeh the way leads by Dûrah and through ‛Ayn Yebrûd. Part of the route is low and hot, so that the natives have dubbed it the Ghôr. Dûrah is a small, healthfully located Moslem village. Its inhabitants have a good reputation for peaceful relations with the Jifnâ Christians. The Dûrah people raise many vegetables. A little beyond Dûrah the path goes by the sacred oak-trees, Umm Barakât. Here one turns to the left (north),—in the distance are the brown cliffs and cave holes of the Wâdy Khulleh; also the village of ‛Ayn Sînyâ,—then up a steep hill path to ‛Ayn Yebrûd (a Moslem village) and past the little mosk and more big ballûṭ (oak) trees to the Nâblus-Jerusalem road.
From the south side of the village ‛Ayn Yebrûd, near its spring, there is a way through the Wâdy ‛Arâḳ el-Kharûf (Valley of the Sheep Rocks) which comes out on the Bîreh-Baytîn path just a little southwest of the pillared cave mentioned on page 217. The end of the valley nearer ‛Ayn Yebrûd has ancient tombs. The deepest part of the valley is bordered with pinnacled cliffs. Where the way broadens out toward the south we once saw a mile of dhurah (millet) under cultivation. Thence the path leads over a little tableland to the road from el-Bîreh.
As we proceed easterly from ‛Ayn Yebrûd across the Nâblus road we go through a very stony, sunken, basin-like piece of ground called Wastîyeh, between the stones of which some rich soil seems to lie. The path through here may be easily lost. There are some old cisterns along the way. Into the big one north of the path they say that a murdered man was once thrown, and so a fear has been cast over the neighborhood. Beyond the Wastîyeh the road goes across the Wâdy Sha‛b el-Ḳassîs. Thereafter one is soon at eṭ-Ṭayyibeh.
The path from Dayr Dîwân to eṭ-Ṭayyibeh takes one out through the northeast part of the former village and then in about ten minutes to one of the sheerest descents attempted by a Palestinian bridle-path. It zigzags down into a deep valley, faced by Wâdy el-‛Ayn, which leads up towards eṭ-Ṭayyibeh, and is crossed (left to right) by the long wâdy that comes down from the north of Baytîn and extends towards the Ghôr (Jordan and Dead Sea region). Going up or down this steep hill one usually prefers to walk, seeing to it that one’s animal takes no unnecessary risks, for there are many little deviations from the plainer path which a donkey may attempt but a horse had better leave untried. The natives sometimes help a loaded donkey going down such paths as this by holding on to the animal’s tail and allowing it to balance itself by the help of the caudal tug. But beware of offering such help to Palestine mules. I believe they could kick at any angle.
Once at the bottom of this hill one goes right on up the valley facing northward, past the little spring, crossing the brook bed again and again to keep the path. There is one corner where one had better walk if on a horse which is afraid of smooth rock. Sometimes this part of the valley is called Wâd eḍ-Ḍab‛a (the valley of the hyena). Half-way up the valley there joins it on the left (west) another valley, with a path which is the more usual one from Râm Allâh or Baytîn to eṭ-Ṭayyibeh, and which may be used in returning. Just at the junction of these valleys we saw once on the hillside four gazels together. On up the valley to its head one goes under some sheer straight cliffs. Arrived at the head of the valley, eṭ-Ṭayyibeh is at the right.
