We parted from the quarantine soldiers, and took a guide for Hebron. The road was good and direct, through a pleasant country, so that we made quick progress. At an hour and three-quarters from Doherîyeh we arrived at a pretty glen of evergreen oak and pine; and at the entrance of this glen is a fountain, called Afeeri, of beautiful water issuing from a rock.
Shortly after we joined the route by which we had left our encampment yesterday, near the fountain of Dilbeh, where we had drawn water when outward bound. Then came to an ancient well of good masonry, hexagonal in shape, but without water. A cistern for rain-water was close adjoining.
Reached the oak of Sibta in twenty-eight hours after leaving it, well pleased with having been able to
visit Beersheba, the scene of many ancient and holy transactions, in the days when the great patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, walked humbly with their God, and God gave them a faith capable of overthrowing mountains.
In conclusion, I may express my regret that, although residing in the country many years afterwards, I could not get an opportunity of visiting either Beer-la-hai-roi or Isaac’s well of Esek. (Gen. xxvi. 20.) Concerning the former we find some indications in an appendix to Williams’ Holy City; and I have been assured personally that the latter is still held in estimation by the Bedaween tribes, under the name of Esâk, and frequented as a rendezvous for making truces and covenants.
On breaking up our camp at Abraham’s oak, the family took the direct road for Jerusalem, while I struck across the Philistine plain for Jaffa.
With one horseman and a kawwâs, I diverged westwards from the common road just before the descent to ’Ain Dirweh, between it and the ruined town of Bait Soor, (Bethzur of Joshua xv. 58,) leaving Hhalhhool of the same verse on my right hand. Advanced gradually down a woody glen of the usual evergreen oak and pine. The higher part of the valley is in excellent cultivation, with careful walls, and drains to keep off the winter rains that descend from the hills, although no villages were in sight except in one place on an
eminence to the left, where an apparently well-built village was entirely abandoned. It is called Ma’naeen; and the history of it, as I have since learned, is that it was only a few years before built by a colony of refugees from oppression in sundry villages, who concerted to set up on their own account, without regard to the authority of their family connexions, or of the hereditary shaikhs. So daring an innovation upon national customs was resented by a coalition of all the country round, who made war upon them, and dispersed the people once more to their miserable homes. The Turkish Government allowed of this proceeding, on the ground that to suffer the establishment of new villages (which of course implies new shaikhs to rule them) would derange the account-books of the taxes, which had been definitely fixed years before under the Egyptian Government.
Lower down, where the glen became narrow and stony, a large rock has been hewn into a chamber for some ancient hermit, not unlike the one in the Wadi Ahhmed between Rachel’s sepulchre and Batteer (Bether) near Jerusalem, only in this case the entrance is shaded by venerable karoobah-trees, so large as to cover the road also with their branches.
We were met by various camel-parties carrying kali for the glass-works of Hebron during the approaching winter, also fine mats and other goods from Damietta, which, after being landed at Jaffa, are thus conveyed by reliefs of camels to