The home resources gave us among the fruit trees, goldfinches, bee-eaters in blue or green and gold, and beccaficas, the latter for food, but so tame that they would stay upon the branches while the gun was levelled at them; in fact, little Alexander, returning one day with several of them that he had shot, complained of want of sport, quoting the lines of his namesake Selkirk in Cowper,—“Their tameness is shocking to me.”
Occasionally we got water-hens or coots that had been shot upon the Pools of Solomon; only
sometimes it was not possible to fish them out as they fell into the water, and so became entangled among the gigantic weeds that grow up from the bottom to the level of the surface, and among which the men were afraid to venture their swimming. Pelicans we did not see, although one had been previously brought from thence to Jerusalem, and was stuffed for the Museum. Then we had water-cresses from the aqueduct, at a place where its side was partly broken between the upper and the second pool. Often for a treat we had water particularly light for drinking brought from the spring of Etam, (2 Chron. xi. 6.) Figs and grapes were furnished from the ground itself, and at the end of August the Shaikh Jad Allah sent us a present of fresh honeycomb, according to the custom on opening a hive at the end of summer, (in that country the bees are never destroyed for the sake of the honey;) presents thereof are sent round to neighbours, and of course presents of some other produce are given in return. Palestine is still a land abounding in honey.
Occasional incidents occurred on the plain at the foot of the hill,—such as a long line of camels kneeling and growling upon the high road, while their drivers were swimming during the blaze of noontide in the parts of the large pool free from weeds; or military expeditions passing on to Hebron during the night, and called up by bugle after resting a couple of hours at the castle-gate;
or camel-loads of pine-branches swinging in stately procession from the southern hills beyond Hebron towards Jerusalem, to furnish tabernacles for the Jewish festival; or an immense party of Kerak people from beyond the Dead Sea, with their camels, asses, mules, besides flocks, for sale, conveying butter and wheat to Jerusalem, encamped below us and singing at their watch-fires by night.
Large fires were sometimes visible upon the Moab mountains at the distance of thirty or forty miles in a straight line. These may have arisen from carelessness, or accidental circumstances, among either standing corn or the heaps of harvest in the open air; or they may even have been wilful conflagrations made by hostile tribes in their raids upon each other. In any case they showed that wherever such things occurred in ancient times, Ruth the Moabitess, when settled in Bethlehem, might still have been reminded in that way of her native country, which lay before her view.
At the Bakoosh we heard the single gun-fire at sunrise or sunset while the Pasha had his camp at Hebron; and from the highest part of our hill could see the flash of the guns in the castle of Jerusalem when saluting the birthday of Mohammed.
For domestic incidents we had the children pelting each other with acorns by moonlight; bonfires made by them and the servants on the terrace to show us the way when returning at a late hour from Jerusalem; large bunches of grapes from
the adjoining vineyard, the Karaweesh, suspended against the wall, reserved to become raisins. Then family presents upon a birthday, all derived from the ground itself,—one person bringing a bunch of wild thyme in purple blossom,—another some sprigs from a terebinth tree, with the reviving odour of its gum that was exuding from the bark,—and another a newly-caught chameleon.
The latter was for several days afterwards indulged with a fresh bough of a tree for his residence, changed about, one day of oak, next of terebinth, then of sumach, or of pine, etc.