The map-like appearance of the wide panorama suggested to memory the song of Deborah the prophetess, with her recapitulation of the succours furnished or omitted by the several tribes of Israel at the battle of the Kishon and Harosheth of the Gentiles. From such a site she would turn to the
left hand for expostulation with Reuben, and to the right for rebuking Dan and Asher upon the sea-coast, after that the Lord had defeated the national foe without them, and sold Sisera into the hands of a woman.
Our descent was by a narrow path of zig-zags, veering alternately towards Acre or Tiberias, although those towns were soon concealed by intervening hills; the plain below was a large dark patch of olive plantation.
In an hour and ten minutes of wearisome toil in leading the horses down, with no possible interval of rest, we came to the village of Rama; having long before lost sight of the Mediterranean.
We took refuge from the sun in the house of a Christian named Ibrahim Hhanna, and after an hour’s sleep rose up to a feast of eggs, olives, bread, and cream cheese, after sharing in which our guides from Rumaish took their leave, with kindly wishes on both sides.
Next we hired a guide for our crossing the plain to ’Arâbeh el Battoof on the way to Nazareth, and travelled over alternate corn stubble and balloot underwood. In one short valley that we crossed there were six jeldeh or short aqueducts to water-mills.
The weather was still extremely hot.
Passed near Dair Hhanna, a large ruin of a fortification upon a hill rising out of the plain; probably, as the name would seem to intimate, an old
castle of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem. A few poor people here have built huts for themselves within the great walls, in the manner of the Italian peasants in Goldsmith’s “Traveller,” who do the same within the confines of a Cæsar’s palace—
“And wondering man can want the larger pile,
Exult and own their cottage with a smile.”