Five centuries later ’Akka became the royal city of one of the most infamous characters in history, whose name is to be mentioned only with that of Herod, and whose cruelties constitute him the Nero of modern times. Rising by theft and perjury from the servitude of a common slave to the dignity of a pasha, Jezzâr—“the Butcher,” dishonored his pashalic with the most inhuman deeds, perpetrated without cause upon eminent citizens and upon the beautiful slave-girls of his harem.
But the city was destined to witness the exploits of the greatest warrior of our age. To the east of the town is a low mound,where, in 1799, the great Napoleon planted his batteries, and from the summit of which, after eight successive assaults, he witnessed the defeat of his army, and with that defeat disappeared forever all his bright visions of an Eastern empire.
The distance from Acre to ancient Tyre is 25 miles, and the journey is replete with interest. Mounting our horses at 11 A.M., our path lay along the western border of the Plain of Phœnicia. In less than half an hour we passed beneath the Aqueduct of Jezzâr, supported by 100 arches. Through the neglect of a people who are indifferent to works of art, it is now a ruin, and in part overgrown with weeds. Two miles beyond is the summer palace of the late Abdallah Pasha. Sixty cypresses line the road-side, and within an inclosed garden, in the midst of orange and lemon trees, is the charming residence.Passing the site of Achzib, a town allotted to Asher,[643] we reached, in an hour, the Scala Tyriorum, or “Tyrian Ladder,” forming the boundary-line between Phœnicia and the Holy Land. A bold promontory, with a white base dipping into the sea, it is the most southern root of Lebanon, and is the counterpart of Carmel. Sprinkled with shrubs and dotted with tufts of grass, its sides are broken and stony. The path over it is zigzag, and not unlike a flight of winding steps. The descent down the opposite side is exceedingly rough, now over low mountain spurs, and again through a narrow defile leading to a plain below. Passing over sections of an old Roman road, we came to the village of Nâkûrah, and to the east of it, high up in the mountain ravines, was a company of French soldiers excavating a buried city which has neither name nor story. They had succeeded in uncovering one temple and a number of elegant sarcophagi, but no inscriptions had been discovered by which to ascertain the origin of the unknown town. Two miles to the north we came to the white cliffs of Ras el-Abyad, or the Promontorium Album of the ancients. This is one of the wildest, and, at times, the most dangerous passes on the Phœnician coast. The sides of the bluff are perpendicular, and the waves dash wildly against its base. The path is cut in the white limestone rocks 500 feet above the level of the sea, and in places it skirts the very verge of the precipice. Huge boulders have fallen from the cliffs above, and others seem ready to follow. Excited by the grandeur of the scene and the dangerof the moment, we successfully cleared the pass in half an hour, when we gained our first view of the plain and peninsula of Tyre. Descending rapidly to the plain below, the dreariness of the journey was relieved by the glorious appearance of Hermon, whose snow-capped summits were bright in the evening light, while the plain over which we rode was darkened by the shadows of the adjacent mountains. Traveling on for hours over the deep sandy beach, we reached Ras el-’Ain in the dusk of the evening, and an hour after entered the solitary gate of the renowned city of the ancient Tyrians.
LADDER OF TYRE.
Few cities can boast of a higher antiquity, of grander edifices, and of greater renown than Tyre. Founded by the Phœnicians, rebuilt by the Romans, and again restored by the Christians, there have been three Tyres, the history of each of which would fill a volume.Called by Isaiah the “daughter of Sidon,”[644]it was a “strong city” in the days of Joshua;[645]it was the ally of Solomon;[646] and it was a prize coveted by Shalmanezer, Nebuchadnezzar, and Alexander the Great. The cradle of commerce, Tyre became the mistress of the seas; her merchantmen traded in every port in the known world, and from her thriving shores she sent forth her sons, dotting the coasts of Europe and Africa with flourishing colonies. Nothing can excel the accuracy of detail and the elegance of graphic description contained in the 27th chapter of Ezekiel on the wealth and glory of Tyre; and now, after the lapse of twenty-five centuries, her scattered ruins attest the truth of prophecy. Her walls are destroyed, her towers broken down, her stones and timber are in the midst of the water, her ancient site is “a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea,” and the remains of her marble castles, gorgeous palaces, triple gateways, lofty towers, and spacious harbors are now seen half buried beneath the drifting sand or washed by the restless waves. Entering a small boat, and passing out of the inner basin into the larger harbor, we saw immense columns of red granite lying prostrate beneath the surface of the clear water, and others imbedded in the solid rock, or cemented together by some powerful agent.
TYRE.
The Sidonian colonists who founded Phœnician or Continental Tyre evidently settled on the main land, three miles to the south from the modern city, and a quarter of a mile from theshore. Here, at Ras el-’Ain, “the Fountain-head,” are the most stupendous water-works of ancient times. They consist of four immense fountains, the water of which descends through the mountains on the east, and, rising to the surface here, is collected into separate reservoirs, from which it was originally distributed to irrigate the plain. The most southern of these fountains is the largest. Octagonal in form, it is 66 feet in diameter and 25 high. The lateral walls are eight feet thick, and gently slope to their base. Three hundred feet to the eastward are the other cisterns, one 36 and two 60 feet square, constructed of well-dressed stones, joined by a fine cement, and built directly over the places where the water gushes up from the earth. Formerly the stream was carried from the lower to the upper pools by an aqueduct which is now a ruin; and from the upper reservoirs there can now be traced an old Roman aqueduct, resting on arches, to a mound two miles distant, crowned with the remains of a massive building, from which point it turns westward toward the city. Amid a thicket of willows and groves of mulberry-trees are a few wretched huts, and the only use to which this great water-power is now applied is to drive a single mill and slake the thirst of the transient traveler.
