The Holy Land

by John Kelman

There was a beautiful poetry of Hermon which from earliest times made it a sacrament of sweet thoughts to Israel. Perhaps the sweetest thought it gave her was that of dew. In every part of that land of clear skies, a heavy dew lies upon the ground at sunrise. Poetic feeling, undertaking the work of science, interpreted this dew as Hermon’s gift, so that “the dew that descended on the mountains of Zion” was “the dew of Hermon” (Psalm cxxxiii. 3). The meteorology is faulty, but the larger idea is true. The cool and glistening snow-field, more than a hundred miles away from Zion, does indeed send out and receive again the waters that refresh the land in an endless round. “The Abana dies in the marsh of Ateibeh, yielding its spirit to the sun, as Jordan dies in the Dead Sea, and, rising into clouds again, both of them wafted to the snow-peaks where they were born, they pour down their old waters in a current ever new, in that circuit of life and death which God has ordained for all.”[8]

So conspicuous are these two rivers that we almost need to remind ourselves that they are not the only waters of Israel. There are several perennial streams in Syria, of which something will be said presently; but the list of these by no means exhausts the stores of water in the land. Great stretches of the country are apparently waterless, especially in the south, and yet water is almost everywhere, underground. In many parts the soil and surface-rock are soft, lying on a hard bed-rock at various depths below. Accordingly we find that one of the most mysterious and characteristic features of the south country is its underground waters.[9] Springs and streamlets find their way through fissures or filter through porous stone to the harder rock below, and flow along subterranean channels there. Zangwill quotes an older authority for the somewhat startling statement that “the entire plain of Sharon seems to cover a vast subterranean river, and this inexhaustible source of wealth underlies the whole territory of the Philistines.” Putting the ear to any crack in the sunburnt clay of the surface, in certain parts, one may hear the subdued growl and murmur of the waters underneath. Trees flourish in places where there is no water apparent, their roots bathing in unseen streams, and drawing life and freshness from them. One can well understand the feelings of awe with which primitive people regarded these mysterious nether springs. They did not connect them with the idea of rain from above, as modern science does, but believed that they had forced their way up from “the Great Deep,” which was supposed to underlie the earth, and into which the roots of the mountains were thrust far down like gigantic anchors of the world. Some of the rivers of Damascus are also underground, “and may often be seen and heard through holes in the surface.”[10] Jerusalem is a waterless city, whose famous pools are tanks for rain-water. Its one spring is that strange intermittent one which overflows from the Well of the Virgin through Hezekiah’s aqueduct to the Pool of Siloam. Yet there are legends that beneath the sacred rock which the mosque of Omar covers there is a subterranean torrent; and that the rushing of hidden waters has been heard at times below the massive stones of the Damascus Gate of the city.

These underground waters have given to Palestine a still more interesting feature at the points where her greatest rivers rise. This is the sudden emergence of full-bodied streams from the ground. These rivers have, so to speak, no infancy. Their springs are not little toy fountains with trickling rivulets. They bound into the world full-grown, with a rush and fury which is perhaps unparalleled in any other land. This inspiring and suggestive phenomenon has not been without its effect on the national thought and imagination. In the midst of one of the most gloriously forceful passages of Isaiah (chap. xxxv.) the vigour and impetuousness of the prophecy finds its climax in the sudden leap of waters which “break out” in the wilderness, and which are described in the same breath as the first glad leap of the restored lame man, leaping “as an hart.” When Moses in his blessing of the tribes speaks of Dan “leaping from Bashan,” he refers to that wonderful spot where Jordan, in the tribe of Dan, leaps up from below Hermon. Matthew Arnold, had he chanced to think of it, might have seen in his delight in full and rushing streams another link connecting him with the Hebrew race with which he so quaintly claims affinity.

The south country keeps its rivers for the most part below ground, though even there considerable streams suddenly break out. Conder describes deep blue pools of fresh water near Antipatris which “well up close beneath the hillock surrounded by tall canes and willows, rushes and grass.”[11] Yet the greatest outbursts are in the north. One traveller describes a river-source in Lebanon as an abyss of seething black waters, into which he rolled large stones, only to see them presently reappear, flung up like corks from the depths. At one of its sources the Abana bursts from the masonry of some ancient temples “a pure and copious river, rushing into light at once as if free.”

It is at Hermon that we find the true centre of the water supply of Palestine. Parts of it are under snow all the year round, and it gives off some thirty streams flowing in every direction. Not one of these streams reaches the Mediterranean. They flow forth only to evaporate sooner or later in some inland morass or sea, and to return in vapour that will be condensed again by the snows of Hermon. Conder describes one of these in the north, whose water “rushes out suddenly with a roaring noise from a cavern” in winter, and transforms the plain below into a lake. But the great work of Hermon is the Jordan, two of whose three sources leap up from its roots. The most striking of these is that of Banias, which Jewish tradition names as one of the three springs of Palestine which “remained not closed up after the Flood.” On the crest of a spur of Hermon stands the ruined castle of Subeibeh, one of the noblest ruins in the world. From the castle you descend 1400 feet to the village of Banias, the ancient Caesarea Philippi. The descent, over basalt boulders whose interstices are filled for the most part with thorn-bushes, is said in the guide-books to be practicable for horses. One wonders how long the horses are supposed to survive the journey! The view across and down the Jordan valley is indescribably grand. Near the foot the path curves round the top of a precipice and doubles back on a lower level to a white-washed Mohammedan weli, or praying-house. Just below, as you look down from the weli, a large cavern is seen, with niches beautifully carved in the rocks beside it. On one of these niches is the inscription “To Pan and the Nymphs,” and on another the names “Augustus and Augustina.” Here, most likely on the site of a prehistoric holy place of the Semites, stood the Roman temple which Herod built in honour of Augustus. Nor is it wonderful that these and so many other faiths have counted this a sacred place; for Jordan used to pour forth from that cavern, clear and full-bodied. Now the old cave-channel is choked up with debris, and Jordan forces its way to light in many smaller fountains among the stones and earth of the open space below, which is coloured by long trails of slime. Within a few yards the streams unite in a rich green pool, with reeds and luxuriant water-growth. The second source of Jordan is even more impressive. It is at Tell-el-Kadi, some two miles west from Banias. On the western side of this Tell, on which there are traces and ruins of an ancient city, there is a thicket of rank undergrowth, from beneath whose lowest branches and creepers the river suddenly appears, spreads immediately into a wide pool, and within a hundred yards is racing violently south in foaming rapids. The pool was reported to be bottomless, but the irrepressible little canoe Rob Roy was launched upon its boiling waters, and the depth proved to be but five feet!

Jordan is a river worth much study, interesting from

THE GOLDEN, OR BEAUTIFUL, GATE, FROM THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE.

The well is in the upper part of the Garden of Gethsemane.