I remember some flocks I saw on my way to the Jordan. They were composed of heavy-wooled animals with tails of fat hanging down like aprons behind them. The best of them weighed two hundred pounds each, and the average was fatter and finer than the best sheep of America. Some were white-wooled and some brown, and some had brown heads and white bodies. I have tasted the mutton; it is excellent, being the choicest meat to be had at the hotels.
The colonists terrace the hillsides to hold back the soil with stones cleared from the fields, once thought too rocky for cultivation. Many neglected and treeless hills have been utterly denuded of earth by the rains of centuries
Almonds have proved a paying proposition for Jewish colonists in Palestine, where they have long been cultivated. When Jacob desired his sons to take into Egypt of the best fruits of Canaan, he mentioned the almond
The shepherds are about the same all over Palestine, kindly eyed men with fair faces bronzed by the sun. They stay out all day on the hills with the sheep, driving them into the villages at night. Each shepherd has his staff and his scrip, a little bag of dried skin. He uses a sling as David did to send a pebble just in front of any straying sheep so as to turn it back. The strings of the slings are of goat hair, and the pad for the stone is of the same material, often made with a slit in the middle so that when a pebble is put in the sling fits close like a bag. Such slings are now used in fights between the boys of the villages, who practise to see who can throw stones the farthest.
The wool of the Palestine sheep is especially fine. It brings a higher price than that of Damascus, and something like a million dollars’ worth of it is exported a year. The shearing is done by hand, and much of the wool is sold unwashed. Some is washed after shearing, the work being done by women.
Nearly every flock of sheep has its goats. They are usually black so they can be picked out from the sheep at a great distance. Some of the goats produce excellent milk, the best as much as three quarts a day.
There is a great deal in the Bible about the sheepfolds. These are common in Palestine. In the villages they are often corrals and sometimes they are caves on the hills. The village folds are closed at night, and the shepherds keep the keys. Those of the mountains are usually open and the sheep go in and out as they will.