I have said that the cliff near the village of Mharrem overhung the sea. A fissure in it, abreast of the village, afforded a small path down to the shore, where, in the sand, was the well from which came the fresh water for the supply of the inhabitants. The building over the tomb enclosed within its walls a mosque, four or five rooms for lodging pilgrims, and commodious vaults for stabling, besides a well of tolerable water, where two blind shaykhs sat and wound up the bucket by turns. The situation is wonderfully pretty, exceedingly cool, and must be very healthy. The coast, for about two miles to the north of Jaffa, is flat; it then rises in a bold but not very high cliff, which continues, with little interruption, as far as the eye can see, from the village of Mharrem to the north.
The inhabitants of Galilee, as far as we had opportunities of observing them, both male and female, were not handsome. In the colour of their skin they differed very little from the Egyptians. The dress of the men was a cotton shirt, buckled round the waist with a leathern belt; over which they threw a long woollen cloak, called an abah or meshlah, without sleeves. The dress of the women consists likewise of a coarse shift and of the same kind of cloak, with a white veil of coarse cotton. Both sexes go for the most part barefooted; and, as their village lanes and the courtyards of their cottages are covered with dung, their persons become filthy in the extreme.
The village of Mharrem is not of very ancient date. Formerly the shrine stood by itself, until the government, desirous of affording some protection to travellers on the road as well as accommodation, caused a certain number of peasants to establish themselves here, giving them exemptions from all taxes upon the consideration of supplying travellers and their horses (if furnished with a buyûrdy) with food and lodging. These peasants were all Moslems. Probably this was the site of Erbuf, a place mentioned by Abulfeda as being six miles from Jaffa, twelve from Ramlah, and eighteen from Cæsarea, a distance which seems to agree likewise with the site of Apollonius (See Abulfeda, p. 81).
We obliged the shaykh to place guards round the tents during the night, at the suggestion of Selim, whose prudence often seemed overdone, but who might know whether there was danger better than we did. His object was not so much to prevent robbers from coming as to make the shaykh of the village responsible for our losses if they did come. In the morning, the guards were well paid for their pains. Just before going to sleep, when sitting on my bed, I found a scorpion under my pillow. Having killed it, I put it into a bottle of sweet oil, in order to have by me a supposed antidote for its bite: for although I felt somewhat incredulous as to its efficacy, I had had experience enough of the natives to know that, when they apply to a doctor for a remedy, it is not for the remedy which he considers adapted to their case, but for that which is in repute among them. I had likewise the misfortune, in entering a cave, to be bitten by a species of vermin, which in Syria is so venemous as by its bite to cause severe indisposition. It is a bug, called in Arabic dellem, resembling to my eye a common sheep-tick, and which infests all places occasionally frequented by men and cattle, when left uncleansed of their filth. Yusef, the Mameluke, alarmed me, but I afterwards found without foundation, by his asseverations that many persons had died of the venemous bite of these dellems. A kind of black beetle was to be seen everywhere on the road, rolling before him round pieces of dung:—the scarabæus pillularius.
In quitting Mharrem the following morning, we went along the edge of the cliff; and, about a furlong or two from the village, our guide pointed out to us several fragments of spar, lying scattered about, of the colour of emeralds; which renders it probable that spars of this kind are abundant near the spot. The face of the country resembled for some distance that through which we had passed on the preceding day, until we came to a pool of stagnant water, about a quarter of a mile long, covered with the nymphæa palustris, and at the farthest extremity of which is a building like a mill. At the other end, where we passed, its waters ran off by a shallow stream of a yard or two broad. Here began a tract of country, composed of sand hills; which, together with the stream, was named by the guides Abu Zaburra.[35] This sandy tract lasted for about half an hour, when we entered upon a scattered forest of oaks (Strabo, xvi. 758), of a very stunted kind, none being larger than a full grown codling-tree, and so distant from each other that the soil was everywhere cultivated between them. We traversed this forest for an hour and a half; and, at its termination, we found ourselves near a village, called Um Khaled;[36] where, at the foot of a large sycamore, and within about one hundred yards of the cottages, our little encampment was placed. Our conductor, Mâlem Yusef, charged himself with procuring provisions and corn for the cattle: and, whether by his eloquence or by other means, he soon returned, followed by several men and women, bearing a supply of everything we wanted, besides that they were satisfied at a less cost than those of Mharrem.
The village of Um Khaled is the site of some ancient place, as shafts of white marble pillars are to be seen lying about. Its present state is miserable. Cattle and human beings lie in the same stall. The ways are obstructed with ordure and rubbish, and no man seems to care for anything outside his own walls. Much inconvenience is experienced by travellers in these villages in the day-time from the dust which flies about. Hence, soreness of the eyes is a reigning malady; for those who have once the misfortune to be attacked with it stand little chance of ever recovering entirely, since the dust keeps the organ of vision in a constant state of irritation. But the plain around is in high cultivation, and seemingly very fertile. Um Khaled is about a mile from the sea. Guards were planted, and the order of this night was the same as that of the preceding.
Our conductor, Yusef, fell sick of a fever, and was so ill that he could no longer sit up; but, as there was not a possibility of leaving him behind, or of stopping so many persons on his account, he was put on his horse, and we proceeded the next morning on our journey. The road being considered somewhat insecure, we marched all in a body; for the mountaineers of Gebel Khalýl and Gebel Nablûs, (the chain which runs parallel to the sea-coast from abreast of Jaffa northward, to a distance short of Mount Carmel,) have been known, when in dispute with the pasha of Acre, to cut off all communication between that city and Jaffa, or at least to render the intercourse between the two places very difficult. Our road lay this day by the seashore, which, upon quitting Um Khaled, soon becomes flat: and, thereabouts, we met with a party of these mountaineers. They were decently mounted, and their dress was the same as that of the people of Mharrem, already described. They had broad tongue-shaped daggers in their girdles, called khanjars, and spears in their hands. They naturally stared at us, but quietly rode on. After four hours’ march, we arrived at the ruins of Cæsarea, and encamped near to one of the gateways on the outside, to the south, close to the seashore. At a short distance from Cæsarea is a stream called Nahr Kudâra.
Cæsarea is a city of Roman origin, since its Arabic name, Kysaréah, is evidently a corruption of its Latin one; whereas Jaffa, Sidon, and most of the others along the coast, are corruptions of the Arabic or of languages anterior to the Arabic. The great mass of ruins, which was to be seen here at the beginning of the last century, exists no longer. The celebrated pasha, El Gezzàr, carried off whatever was removeable to beautify his favourite fortress of Acre. Many of the granite and marble columns that adorn the edifices which he built were taken from this place. The city was of an oblong form, with its outer sides, from north to south, surrounded with walls thicker at their base than their summit, and defended at equal distances by square bastions. These walls were built by the crusaders under Louis the Ninth, of France.[37]
To the south-east angle, towards the sea, are the remains of a castle that defended the port, a small and shallow harbour, since it never could have been broader than the distance which separates the two jetties that formed it, and which distance corresponds with the base of the city.[38]
Within the walls two or three indistinct fragments of buildings are still upright, and the vaults which abound throughout serve by turns to shelter travellers or robbers, according as the vigilance of the reigning pasha represses crime with a vigorous hand, or is remiss in the punishment of it.