The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

Carpenters of Nazareth and their shops are much the same to-day as when Joseph plied his trade and the boy Jesus helped him. Nazareth is a mountain village of some eight thousand people—Greeks, Moslems, Maronites, Roman Catholics, and about a hundred Protestants

Palestine is often called “the land of milk and honey.” This it was in the past, and this, so far at least as the honey is concerned, it may be again. I have already referred to the delicious honey served at the hotel in Jerusalem. Modern bee-keeping was started in Palestine by an enterprising Swiss in one of the Jewish colonies. His bees were kept in hives made of terra-cotta jars, which were moved to different pastures several times during a season so as to get the benefit of different kinds of flowers. The average yield of honey per hive is about one hundred pounds, and the product is delicious.

As to the Palestine flowers, I cannot describe them. There are said to be more than three thousand varieties. Crossing the upper plains of Sharon I rode through great fields of daisies as yellow as buttercups. There were greenish-white flowers carpeting the roadside, and among them poppies, gladioli, and lilies. In the gardens at Zammarin are geraniums as large as rose bushes and on the sides of the hills wild flowers of every description. There are yellow violets, and pink and blue blossoms whose names I know not. There is also a red flower called “the blood drop of Christ.” It is said to have sprung up on the spots where dropped the blood of our Saviour as He carried the cross. In a single day’s travel over the Samaritan mountains I counted thirty-five different wild flowers. At one place I saw what looked like piles of Bermuda onions pulled up along the roadside. There were bushels of them, and I supposed they had been spilled out by a broken-down caravan. “Those are lily bulbs which the farmers have dug out of the fields,” said my guide, and farther on I saw the men digging. The lilies are yellow and white and grow wild. “They toil not, neither do they spin,” but they cause the farmer to toil and are one of the pests he has to get rid of.

There are but few farms of large size in the Holy Land. The chief cultivated patches on the mountains are those which have been cleared of stones. They are often no bigger than a parlour rug and seldom contain more than three or four acres. Such fields frequently have stone walls about them. Down in the valleys and on the plains of the Philistines the farms are not separated by fences and are much larger. They are planted to wheat, beans, and barley, and grow luxuriant crops. One of the interesting scenes of the wheat fields is often referred to in the Bible. This is pulling the tares, the seeds of which, if left, will make the flour bitter. Gangs of girls are engaged in this business all over Palestine. Each gang works under an overseer, and the girls bend half double as they pull the weeds from the wheat. It is said that a farmer’s enemies even to-day sometimes sow tares in his wheat, just as in the parable.

Speaking of wheat, it is claimed that Palestine is one of the places in which that grain originated. There is wild wheat here to-day, and the agricultural experts are investigating to find out what can be done with the other wild grains found in different parts of this country.

The ploughs of the Holy Land are about the same now as those used in the days of the Bible. They are crude affairs, made of wood tipped with iron, to which oxen and bullocks are yoked with a rough piece of wood fastened to the necks of the animals. Sometimes the yoke is tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees, reaching from the neck of a camel down to that of a donkey. Donkeys and cows are also harnessed together, and bullocks and camels. The plough ends in a point like that of a pickaxe. It only scratches the soil, and nowhere goes very deep. The furrows are so narrow that many ploughs are required for large fields. The ploughmen wear long gowns, and on their heads are cloths bound round with rope. They wear rough shoes or go barefoot.

Much of the land in the mountainous parts is so rocky that ploughs are not used. The earth is broken up with mattocks or hoes and all the crops are cultivated by hand. Nevertheless, this limestone soil is so rich that it will often produce several crops in one year. Figs, olives, and other fruits flourish. There are olive orchards everywhere. They cover the sides of the hills and are near every farm village. I was hardly out of sight of them on my way from Shechem to Mount Carmel. A great quantity of oil is exported.

The curse of the Palestine farmer has long been the Mohammedan tax gatherer and assessor. These men have squeezed the heart out of both the farmer and his crop. The tax assessors have gone out over the country in the blossom time of the olive orchards and levied on each tree the cash tax to be paid no matter how the crop finally turned out. The olive harvest often fails in Palestine, so rather than pay unjust and excessive taxes the discouraged farmers have sometimes simply cut down trees and sold both wood and roots.

It is not only the olive orchards that have suffered from this kind of taxation. One eighth of the annual yield of every crop has been taken from the people. The custom of selling to the highest bidder the right to collect the taxes in a given district has, of course, made things worse. In their determination to get back the money they paid the government and a handsome profit for themselves besides, these men have had no mercy on the farmer. The bundles of grain brought to the village threshing-floors and put up in stacks of eight have been closely watched by the tax gatherers and their agents.