Byeways in Palestine

by James Finn

In the afternoon of the next day we passed on to Banias. How different a matter is travelling in that country from merely drawing a pencil line across the map from one point to another, and measuring the distance of that line. By such a method of making a journey it is but a trifle of thirty miles from Soor to Hhasbeya, and less than a hundred and twenty from the latter to Jerusalem. (I mention these places because they belong to the journey here described,) and it may be said by stay-at-home travellers in a carpeted saloon, at a mahogany table, that these distances can be covered on horseback in a determinate number of hours, allowing so many miles to an hour; but Palestine is not so smooth as the greater part of England, and the ways (one cannot well call them roads) are not drawn in direct lines; climate also counts for something; and unforeseen incidents will occur to mar the plans of even those habituated to the country.

To-day’s progress, however, was tolerably plain, though not level, and it occupied six or seven hours.

In an hour and a half we caught first sight of the lake Hhooleh (the Semechonitis of Josephus) in the due south, and at this point we entered upon a district strewn with volcanic basalt, in dark-brown pieces, porous and rounded at the edges. A

peasant directed us forwards to the Tell el Kâdi, which at length we reached—an eminence rising from the plain, out of which issues a river all formed at once, gushing from the hill over a stony bed. This is one of the heads of the Jordan, and the place is that of Dan, which Josephus erroneously supposed to supply the last syllable of that river’s name.

But beyond all question it is the site of the city Dan known throughout Scripture history for many ages, and under a variety of circumstances: among the rest for the forcible invasion of it by a number of colonists from the tribe of Dan in the south of Palestine, where they found their allotted district too strait for their possession; and being established here, they gave the city the name of their patriarchal chief.

That history of their migration reads with peculiar interest and force on the spot, and strange to say that Tell el Kâdi seems to retain their tribal name, inasmuch as Tell signifies “a hill,” and Kâdi is but the Arabic for the Hebrew word Dan, “a judge,” (Gen. xlix. 16.) It is not however common, very much the contrary, for names to be transmitted in this way according to their signification through the lapse of ages—they are usually perpetuated through their orthography.

The Amorite or Sidonian people living here “at ease” were worshippers of Baal and Ashtaroth, or Astarte. Suddenly they were assailed by the

Danites, who “smote them with the edge of the sword, and burned their city with fire;” and the newcomers set up “the graven image, and the molten image, and the teraphim,” which they had stolen on their way thither over Mount Ephraim, appointing the young Levite, the owner of the images, to be priest of their idolatry. In later times it was a station of the golden calf of Jeroboam’s institution, that is to say, the revived emblem of Baal, going back to the practice of the Leshemites; and there is yet an idea prevailing in our days that the Druses of the neighbourhood retain that emblem or idol among them—a remarkable instance of the perpetuity of idolatry, and one form of idolatry under different names, modified only by circumstances in the same locality. I forbear to pursue further the reflections that can be evolved at large from that idea, as they might bring us into other countries than Syria or Palestine.

Riding our horses up the full stream for a short distance, we forded it, and entered into the shade upon the hill, where we reposed under a large evergreen oak, decorated with rags as votive offerings to an Arab shaikh buried beside it. Near this tree is an extraordinary jungle of brambles and gigantic flowering shrubs, through which it seemed impossible to penetrate, but out of which tangled mass the copious stream issues, as also a minor current, which after some deflection meets the other, and forms one stream on leaving the hill,

and this, when joined by the waters of Banias, to which we were now going, combines into one river, Jordan, then enters and passes through the Lake Hhooleh. For the present I omit the consideration of the Hhasbâni and its spring, which not only helps to form the Jordan, but actually commences further beyond the springs of Dan and Banias.