Near ’Ain el Mellâhhah two Arabs rode up to us and planted their spears in the ground near our horses heads as a warning to stop, and I suppose to pay ghuf’r. I kept on, leaving the kawwâs to parley with them.
Not far from the fountain we rested under a terebinth tree (not a favourable specimen) upon a rising ground; beneath us, but at a short distance, the strong stream turns a mill, passing through a house, and escapes to the plain.
The Arabs met us again, and said they were looking for a horse that was lost, and we saw no more of them.
In another hour my companion was taken with a strong fit of ague, which urged us the more to press onward for Safed. From the hills, as we rose higher and higher, the Lake Hhooleh was perceived to be, above one-third of it, choked up with weeds and rushes. Old Hermon showed himself in surpassing grandeur; not a confused mass—as he does from the plain looking upwards from close beneath him—but as one grand “monarch of mountains.”
“On a throne of rocks, with a robe of clouds,
And a diadem of snow.”
The sun was hot and the hills chalky over which we passed. In one place by our wayside, and at considerable elevation, I found squared masonry stones and traces of houses, with fragments of columns.
A poor Arab peasant, driving an ass laden with a wooden box, was groaning with pain, and implored us for a draught of water, but I fear that our people had neglected to bring any with them, as they expected to be so soon in Safed.
Rested under the shade of some large stones, and sent on a message before us to the town. In quarter of an hour, however, some peals of thunder roused us to pursue the journey; the strong wind that arose at the same time was not good for ague patients. Across the great plain as we looked back was a broad faint piece of rainbow, and the huge mountain, mantled with clouds about his shoulders, but bright below, appeared peculiarly fantastic, with flickering shadows of clouds chasing over his sunny sides.
On the outskirts of Safed we found, as customary at that season, (Bairam,) the newly white-washed graves of the Moslems, adorned with bunches of myrtle.
At Safed we lodged in the house of a Russo-British Jew, and letters from Jerusalem that had awaited us came safe to hand, after which followed the necessary reception of visitors, very troublesome to weary and exhausted travellers, and at last a supper which had been long in preparing—at least so it seemed to be.