The inhabitants come out of their squalid dwellings and beg for anything we choose to give. Money, old clothes, defaulted railway bonds, State bonds, shares in a petroleum company, cold meat, bound volumes of newspaper files, and anything else can be included in the word “backsheesh.” It is a generic, not a specific, term, and those who continually din into your ears the supplication, “Backsheesh, O Howadji!” are not at all particular about what they receive.
It is a good dodge to get the first innings on them once in a while. When you catch sight of a native approaching you, it is morally certain that he intends to beg. Take the bull by the horns, approach him and ask for “backsheesh.” He will generally see the point, though he does not always do so.
We have time to take a little run to some curious caves that lie in a cliff about half an hour’s ride from Magdala. A steep and narrow path leads to them, and while we are climbing it we see how easily the caves could be defended. Their origin and history are unknown, and they were evidently the work, not of one, but of several, generations. They are mentioned by Josephus as fortified caverns, belonging to the city of Arbela, whose ruins are close at hand. At various periods they have been the resort of bandits, and probably would be so at present if the bandit business was at all profitable. Herod the Great had an unpleasantness with some free-booting gentlemen who dwelt in these caves. They made things disagreeable for travellers and others, and would not divide with the King, and so he sent an army to teach them better manners and bring their heads home in carpet-sacks. But the fellows defended their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor so desperately, and had so good a place to defend them in, that the army couldn’t gain a point on them.
But Gen. Herod knew a thing or two, and after scratching his head awhile over the problem, he sent for his carpenters and blacksmiths and ordered them to get their tools ready and then come before him at five o’clock the next morning.
They came, they saw, (each carpenter had one,) and they concurred with him.
“Go,” said the general to the carpenters, “and make some boxes of strong plank, about six feet square and four feet high. Make them as strong as you would a travelling trunk for a thousand-mile journey on an American railway.”
Then turning to the blacksmiths he said: