In this area there are in several places cisterns of good water; but those which are most devoutly visited are three contiguous grottos, made to represent the three tabernacles which St. Peter proposed to erect, in the astonishment that possessed him at the glory of the Transfiguration. "Lord," says he, "it is good for us to be here; let us make three tabernacles, one for thee," &c.
I cannot forbear to mention, in this place, an observation which is very obvious to all that visit the Holy Land, viz. that almost all passages and histories related in the Gospel are represented by them that undertake to show where every thing was done, as having been done most of them in grottos, and that even in such cases where the condition and the circumstances of the actions themselves seem to require places of another nature. Thus, if you would see the place where St. Anne was delivered of the blessed Virgin, you are carried to a grotto; if the place of the Annunciation, it is also a grotto; if the place where the blessed Virgin saluted Elizabeth; if that of the Baptist's, or that of our blessed Saviour's Nativity; if that of the Agony, or that of St. Peter's repentance, or that where the Apostles made the Creed, or this of the Transfiguration, all these places are also grottos; and, in a word, wherever you go, you find almost every thing is represented as done under ground. Certainly grottos were anciently held in great esteem, or else they could never have been assigned, in spite of all probability, for the places in which were done so many various actions. Perhaps it was the hermits' way of living in grottos from the fifth or sixth century downward, that has brought them ever since to be in so great reputation.
From the top of Tabor you have a prospect which, if nothing else, well rewards the labour of ascending it. It is impossible for man's eyes to behold a higher gratification of this nature. On the north-west, you discern at a distance the Mediterranean; and all around you have the spacious and beautiful plains of Esdraelon and Galilee, which present you with the view of so many places memorable for the resort and miracles of the Son of God. At the bottom of Tabor westward stands Daberah, a small village, supposed by some to take its name from Deborah, that famous judge and deliverer of Israel. Near this valley is the fountain of Kishon. Not many leagues distant eastward, you see Mount Hermon, at the foot of which is seated Nain, famous for our Lord's raising the widow's son there[614]; and Endor, the place where dwelt the witch consulted by Saul. Turning a little southward, you have in view the high mountains of Gilboa, fatal to Saul and his sons. Due east, you discover the Sea of Tiberias, distant about one day's journey, and close by that sea they show a steep mountain, down which the swine ran, and perished in the waters[615]. A few points towards the north appears that which they call the Mount of the Beatitudes; a small rising, from which our blessed Saviour delivered his sermon in the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St. Matthew. Not far from this little hill is the city of Saphet, supposed to be the ancient Bethulia. It stands upon a very eminent and conspicuous mountain, and is seen far and near. May we not suppose that Christ alludes to this city in those words of his sermon, 'A city set on a hill cannot be hid[616]?' A conjecture which seems the more probable, because our Lord, in several places, affects to illustrate his discourse by comparisons taken from objects that were then present before the eyes of his auditors; as when he bids them "Behold the fowls of the air,"[617] "and the lilies of the field."[618] From Mount Tabor you have likewise the sight of a place which they will tell you was Dotham, where Joseph was sold by his brethren; and of the field where our blessed Saviour fed the multitude with a few loaves and fewer fishes. But whether it was the place where he divided the five loaves and two fishes amongst the five thousand[619], or the seven loaves amongst the four thousand[620], I left them to agree among themselves.
Having received great satisfaction in the sight of this mountain, we returned to the convent the same way that we came. After dinner we made another small excursion, in order to see that which they call the Mountain of the Precipitation; that is, the brow of the hill from which the Nazarites would have thrown down our blessed Saviour, being incensed at his sermon preached to them[621]. This precipice is at least half a league distant from Nazareth southward. In going to it, you cross first over the valley in which Nazareth stands, and then, going down two or three furlongs in a narrow cleft between the rocks, you there clamber up a short but difficult way on the right hand, at the top of which you find a great stone standing on the brink of a precipice, which is said to be the very place where our Lord was destined to be thrown down by his enraged neighbours, had he not made a miraculous escape out of their hands[622]. There are in the stone several little holes, resembling the prints of fingers thrust into it. These, if the friars say truth, are the impresses of Christ's fingers, made in the hard stone, while he resisted the violence that was offered to him. At this place are seen two or three cisterns for saving water, and a few ruins, which are all that now remains of a religious building founded here by the empress Helena.
April 20.—The next morning we took our leave of Nazareth, presenting the guardian five a-piece for his trouble and charge in entertaining us. We directed our course for Acra, in order to which, going at first northward, we crossed the hills that encompassed the vale of Nazareth on that side; after which we turned to the westward, and passed in view of Cana of Galilee, the place signalized with the beginning of Christ's miracles[623]. In an hour and a half more we came to Sepharia, a place reverenced for being the reputed habitation of Joachim and Anna, the parents of the blessed Virgin. It had once the name of Diocesaria, and was a place of good repute; but at present it is reduced to a poor village, showing only here and there a few ruins to testify its ancient better condition. On the west side of the town stands good part of a large church, built on the same place where they say stood the house of Joachim and Anna; it is fifty paces long, and in breadth proportionable.
At Sephira begins the delicious plain of Zebulon. We were an hour and a half in crossing it, and in an hour and a half more passed by a desolate village on the right hand, by name Satyra. In half an hour more we entered the plains of Acra, and in one hour and a half more arrived at that place. Our stage, this day, was somewhat less than seven hours. It lay about west and by north, and through a country very delightful, and fertile beyond imagination.
April 21.—At Acra we were very courteously treated by the French consul and merchants, as we had been when outward-bound. Having staid only one night, we took our leave, and, returning by the same way of the coast that I have described before, came the first night to our old lodgings at Solomon's cisterns, and the second to Sidon.
April 22.—Three hours distant from Sidon, we were carried by the French consul to see a place which we had passed by unregarded in our journey outward, though it very well deserves a traveller's observation.
At about the distance of a mile from the sea, there runs along a high rocky mountain, in the side of which are hewn a multitude of grottos, all very little differing from each other. They have entrances of about two feet square. On the inside you find in most, or all of them, a room of about four yards square, on the one side of which is the door, on the other there are as many little cells, elevated about two feet above the floor. There are of these subterraneous caverns, as I was informed by those who had counted them, two hundred in number. They go by the name of the grottos of.... The great doubt concerning them is, whether they were made for the dead or the living. That which makes me doubt of this is, because, though all the ancient sepulchres in this country very much resemble these grottos, yet they have something peculiar in them, which entices one to believe they might be designed for the reception of the living; for several of the cells within were of a figure not fit for having corpses deposited in them, being some a yard square, some more, and some less, and seeming to be made for family uses. Over the door of every cell there was a channel cut to convey the water away, that it might not annoy the rooms within. And because the cells were cut above each other, some higher, some lower, in the side of the rock, there were convenient stairs cut for the easier communication betwixt the upper and lower regions. At the bottom of the rock were also several old cisterns for storing up water. From all which arguments it may, with probability at least, be concluded, that these places were contrived for the use of the living, and not of the dead. But what sort of people they were that inhabited this subterraneous city, or how long ago they lived, I am not able to resolve. True it is, Strabo describes the habitations of the Troglodyte to have been somewhat of this kind.