The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

As we begin to ascend the hills of Judea, we come into the real land of the Israelites. Our railroad winds in and out among little mountains and we can see that in the past the whole country was terraced and that not a bit of land went to waste. What is now the grazing ground for sheep and cattle was once a garden.

Palestine reminds us of other parts of the world. The rich fruit of the orange groves of Jaffa makes us think of Florida. Were it not for the lack of fences and barns, the plains of Sharon might be a slice out of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, or the rich fields of the Scioto Valley in Ohio. These hills are very like Italy near Genoa, or south France about Nice and Monte Carlo. The terraces are planted with olive trees and we see gray-green olive orchards everywhere.

As we rise the air becomes purer and fresher. We pass the spot on which David is said to have killed Goliath, and see in the distance the town of Mizpah, where the Prophet anointed Saul king when the latter was out hunting his father’s asses. When we see an old bearded and turbaned Syrian riding along on his donkey, we wonder if he may not be a second Balaam, and we almost expect his donkey to open its mouth and speak to its master.

But let me tell you something about the railroad up to Jerusalem. The track is narrow gauge, and the coaches are much like street cars, with little racks for baggage along each side under the roof. Each carriage is divided into compartments the sides of which are walled with windows. The road has no tunnels, and it winds its way in and out as it climbs the hills. There are five stations between Jaffa and Jerusalem.

The total cost of the railroad was two million dollars, or a little less than forty thousand dollars per mile. The idea of the road was originated by an American, a civil engineer named Zimpel, who came to Palestine as a pedlar of a patent medicine which he called “Sunlight Pills.” He brought the scheme before the Sultan at Constantinople, but failed to get the concession to build it. After his death the matter was taken up by the French, who put the line through.

This was the first railroad built in Syria, and it is the father of a system which is now opening up a great part of the country. One section is the road building from Damascus toward Mecca, and connected with it are others which will eventually join the Holy Land to the valley of the Euphrates, as well as to Asia Minor and Turkey. The rates for both passengers and freight are much higher than in the United States.

As it goes up the mountains, the railway twists this way and that. It crawls along the sides of the hills with horseshoe curves here and there. The whole journey is over historic ground. We cross the plains where Samson fought with the Philistines, slaying a thousand of them with the jawbone of an ass. We see the place where he tied the firebrands to the tails of three hundred foxes and let them loose to burn up the harvest. A little farther on we enter the valley of Sorek, where the wicked Delilah cut off the hair of the strong man as he lay asleep in her lap, and away up on the side of the hill we can see the town of Zorah, where Samson was born. At the station of Deir Aban, where Samuel raised his Ebenezer, a crowd of children comes to the trains with bouquets of wild flowers. The boys whine for baksheesh. We wonder whether there may not be an infant Samson among them.

It was in Zorah that Samson was buried, and the guides will show you his tomb. Farther along the road we pass through a great gorge in the cliffs, on the north side of which, near the top, is a cave, where Samson lived, and I verily believe if we should offer the guides sufficient reward they would find us his bones or some pieces of brass from the gates of the city of Gaza, which, you remember, he carried away on his shoulders.

In our ride up to Jerusalem we go by the ancient city of Gezer. It is marked by a mound which has several buildings upon it, including the dome of a Mohammedan mosque. The ground about it has been dug over and over, and the ruins discovered have excited the religious and scientific world.

The excavations made by the Palestine Exploration Fund show it to be one of the oldest of cities. The scientists have gone down into the earth at this point, finding one city built upon the ruins of another, down to the seventh city, which seems to have been occupied by the cave dwellers of the Flint or Stone Age, a period before recorded history began. In these cave dwellings pottery and flint instruments were discovered. A burial place of that ancient race was opened up and remains were found which show that the cave dwellers practised cremation. In one of the six other cities, higher up, bronze tools were discovered, and higher still the relics of an ancient Egyptian civilization. In one of the caves were found large jars containing the skeletons of infants that had been sacrificed to some pagan idol, probably during the Canaanite period. In another was a cistern, the mouth of which was guarded by the skulls of two young girls, and inside which were fourteen skeletons, one that of a girl of sixteen who had been sawn asunder.