But we will leave Nazareth and wend our way southward.
We ride to Endor over a rough and rather dreary road, that winds over hills and through glens where robbers might waylay us, and where men have been waylaid on many occasions. In this part of the country murders are not infrequent, and are caused chiefly by feuds between tribes and families. Some of these feuds date back hundreds of years, and are based on the Scriptural theory of blood-revenge. Centuries ago there may have been a quarrel between two men, about some trivial matter, and the quarrel may have gone on till one of the men killed the other. Then a relative of the murdered man killed the murderer or one of his family, then this killing was avenged, then this, and then this; so it has gone and will go on, until one family is annihilated, and possibly both, and very often the feud extends to the different tribes. It is for this reason so many men go about with guns and pistols and eye each other so cautiously.
Nearly everybody, to use the vernacular of California, is “hunting for a man,” and sooner or later he finds him, or is found. It is rather respectable than otherwise to die with one’s boots on, here, just as it used to be in Arizona; and it is currently reported that when a man thinks he has had about enough of his native Syria, and has no row on his hands, he goes and kills somebody, so that this somebody’s relatives will turn to and kill him. He is thus able to accomplish two things—he can die like a gentleman, with the satisfaction of knowing that he has put somebody else out of the world in an equally gentlemanly way. And moreover, he bequeaths a legacy of blood-revenge to his descendants, that will give them something to occupy their minds with, and prevents the country becoming peopled too densely for comfort.
Endor is an uninteresting village, of not more than twenty-five houses, and it is the same thing over again—dirt, rags, and wretchedness—such as we have seen all the way along. We have had enough of it—let us move on.
