Such a Sabbath in the Holy Land is true enjoyment.
VII. ESDRAELON PLAIN AND ITS VICINITY.
May 1851.
From Jeneen, (En-gannim, Josh. xxi. 29,) to Acre, i.e., towards the north-west, and skirting the great plain under the line of the hills of Samaria,—thus following the western coast of Zebulon to the south of Asher.
The road was enlivened by numerous companies of native people travelling from village to village.
In an hour and a half from Jeneen we were at Seeleh, a cheerful and prosperous-looking place; and in three-quarters of an hour more we were abreast of both Ta’annuk and Salim, at equal distances of quarter of an hour from the highway; the former on our left hand, and the latter on the right. These places were at that time tolerably well peopled.
Here we gained the first view of Mount Tabor from a westerly direction, and indeed it was curious all along this line to see in unusual aspects the well-remembered sites that lie eastwards or northwards from Jeneen, such as Zera’een (Jezreel,)
Jilboon (Gilboa,) Solam (Shunem,) or Fooleh and Afooleh. In fact, we overlooked the tribe or inheritance of Zebulon from Carmel to Tabor.
With respect to the circumstance of numerous passengers, whom we met this morning, it was a pleasant exception to the common experience of that district, where it is often as true now as in the days of Shamgar the son of Anath (see Judges v. 6), that the population fluctuates according to the invasions or retiring of tyrannical strangers. That vast plain affords a tempting camping-ground for remote Arabs to visit in huge swarms coming from the East with their flocks for pasture; and in the ancient times this very site between Ta’annuk and Lejjoon, being the opening southwards, gave access to the Philistines or Egyptians arriving in their chariots from the long plain of Sharon, or a passage over this plain to that of the great hosts of Syria under the Ptolemies, with their elephants.
In all ages the poor peasantry here have been the victims of similar incursions, “the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byeways.” Yet though chased away from their homes, the populations returned, whenever possible, with pertinacious attachment to their devastated dwellings, and hence we have still the very names of the towns and villages perpetuated by a resident people after a lapse of almost thirty-three hundred years since the allotment made by Joshua, (xiii.-xxi., etc.,) and the names were not then new.