The World’s Great Explorers
and Explorations.

Edited by J. Scott Keltie, Librarian, Royal Geographical Society; H. J. Mackinder, M.A., Reader in Geography at the University of Oxford; and E. G. Ravenstein, F.R.G.S.

PALESTINE.

A PICTORIAL MAP OF JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY LAND, FOR THE USE OF PILGRIMS.
(From a MS. of the 13th Century in the Burgundian Library at Brussels.)

Frontispiece.

P A L E S T I N E.

BY
MAJOR C. R. CONDER, D.C.L., R.E.
LEADER OF THE PALESTINE EXPLORING
EXPEDITION.
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
Publishers

PREFACE.

THE Editors of the present series having done me the honour to ask me briefly to relate the story of Palestine Exploration, and especially of the expeditions which I commanded; and having stipulated that the book should contain not only an account of the more interesting results of that work, but also something of the personal adventures of those employed, I have endeavoured to record what seems of most interest in both respects.

Many things here said will be found at greater length in previous works which I have written, scattered through several volumes amid more special subjects. I hope, however, that the reader will discover also a good deal that is not noticed in those volumes; for the sources of information concerning ancient Palestine are constantly increasing; and, among others, I may mention, that the series of Palestine Pilgrim Texts, edited by Sir Charles Wilson, has added greatly to our knowledge, and has enabled me to understand many things which were previously doubtful.

The full story of the dangers and difficulties through which the work was brought to a successful conclusion cannot be given in these pages, and no one recognises more than I do the imperfections which—as in all human work—have caused it here and there to fall short of the ideal which we set before us. What can, however, be claimed for Palestine exploration is, that the ideal was always as high as modern scientific demands require. The explorations were conducted without reference to preconceived theory, or to any consideration other than the discovery of facts. The conclusions which different minds may draw from the facts must inevitably differ, but the facts will always remain as a scientific basis on which the study of Palestine in all ages must be henceforth founded.

I fear that even now, after so much has been written, the facts are not always well known—certainly they have often been misrepresented. It is my desire, as far as possible, in these pages to summarise those facts which seem most important, while giving a sketch of the mode of research whereby they were brought to light.

C. R. C.

Note.—The maps illustrating this volume have been revised by Major Conder, who is more especially responsible for those of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and of Modern Palestine. The geological sketch-map embodies Major Conder’s researches, as also the important explorations of Dr. K. Diener in the Lebanon.—Ed.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS.

P A L E S T I N E.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

THE long narrow strip of country on the east shore of the Mediterranean, which in a manner was the centre of the ancient world, has in all ages been a land of pilgrimage. For five hundred miles it stretches from the deserts of Sinai to the rugged Taurus, and its width, shut in between the Syrian deserts and the sea, is rarely more than fifty miles. It can never be quite the same to us as other lands, bound up as it is with our earliest memories, with the Bible and the story of the faith; and it is to the credit of our native land that we have been the first to gather that complete account of the country, of its ancient remains, and of its present inhabitants, which (if we except India) does not exist in equal exactness for any other Eastern land.

The oldest explorer of Palestine—if we do not reckon Abraham—was the brave King Thothmes III., who marched his armies throughout its whole length on his way towards Euphrates. Many are the pilgrims and conquerors who have followed the same great highways along which he went. When, in the early Christian ages, the land became sacred to Europe, the patient pilgrims of Italy, and even of Gaul, journeyed along the shores of Asia Minor, and sometimes were able to reach the Holy City, and to bring back to their homes some account of the country; while in later ages the pilgrims came not singly, but in hosts continually increasing, and finally as crusaders, colonists, and traders.

The literature of Palestine exploration begins, therefore, with the establishment of Christianity. Before that date we have very little outside the Bible except in the works of Josephus, whose descriptions, though at times unreliable as regards measurement, are invaluable as the accounts of an eye-witness of the state of the country before the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. We have scattered notes in the Talmud, in Pliny, in Ptolemy,[1] in Strabo, and in other classic works, which have been collected by the care of Reland and of later writers; but it was only when the Holy Land became a land of pilgrimage for Christians that itineraries and detailed accounts of its towns and holy places began to be penned.

The Bordeaux pilgrim[2] actually visited Jerusalem while Constantine’s basilica was being built over the supposed site of the Holy Sepulchre, and in Palestine his brief record of stations and distances is expanded into notes on the places which he found most revered by Syrian Christians. In the same reign, Eusebius, the historian of the Church, constructed an Onomasticon, which answered roughly to the modern geographical gazetteer. His aim—and that of Jerome, who rather later rendered this work from Greek into Latin, adding notes of his own—was to identify as far as possible the places mentioned in the Old and New Testaments with places existing in the country as known to themselves. This work is both scholarly and honest in intention, but the traditions on which Eusebius and Jerome relied have not in all cases proved to be reconcilable with the Biblical requirements as studied by modern science. The Onomasticon is, however, of great importance as regards the topography of Palestine in the fourth century, and has often led to the recovery of yet more ancient sites, which might otherwise have been lost. Jerome had an intimate personal knowledge, not only of the country round Jerusalem and Bethlehem, where he lived so long, but also of the whole of Western Palestine. Places east of Jordan are noticed in the Onomasticon, but that region was less perfectly known to the Christian co-authors of this work. In the fourth century the Roman roads were marked by milestones, and thus the distances given by Eusebius and Jerome are actual, and not computed distances. Measurement on the Survey map, which shows these milestones whereever they remain by the roadside, proves that for the most part the Onomasticon distances are very correct, and the sites of places so described can, as a rule, be recovered with little difficulty.

The Peutinger Tables, representing the Roman map of Palestine about 393 A.D., give us also the distances along these roads; but the knowledge of the map-maker as to the region east of Jordan was most imperfect, and the map, which presents no latitudes or longitudes, is much distorted. To the same century belongs Jerome’s elegant letter on the travels of his pious friend Paula, which is, however, but a slight sketch, more remarkable for its eloquence and fanciful illustration of Scripture than for topographical description.[3]

A short tract—very valuable, however, to the student of Jerusalem topography—was penned by Eucherius in the fifth century; and in the sixth we have the account by Theodorus (or Theodosius) of the Holy Land in the days of Justinian.[4] The eulogistic record by Procopius of the buildings of Justinian also gives accounts and references to the names of his monasteries and churches in Palestine, which are of considerable use.[5] In the same reign also (about 530 A.D.) Antoninus Martyr[6] set forth from Piacenza, and journeyed to Constantinople, Cyprus, Syria, and Palestine. He even crossed the Jordan and went through the Sinaitic desert to Egypt. Like the Bordeaux pilgrim, Antoninus was a firm believer in the apocryphal Gospels, which already began to be held in high estimation. The former pilgrim repeats stories from the Gospel of the Hebrews; the latter, in addition, refers to the Gospel of the Infancy; but, in spite of the superstitious tone of the narrative of Antoninus, his itinerary is valuable, because it covers the whole region west of Jordan, and contains notes of contemporary custom and belief which are of great antiquarian interest.

The conquest of Palestine by Omar did not by any means lead to the closing of the country to Christians. One of the best known and most detailed accounts of the Holy Land written up to that time was taken down from the lips of the French Bishop Arculphus[7] by Adamnan, Bishop of Iona, about 680 A.D., in the monastery of Hy. It appears that Arculph was in Palestine during the reign of Mu’awîyeh, the first independent Khalif of Syria ruling in Damascus, and the same policy of toleration and peace which was inaugurated by this ruler enabled St. Willibald in 722 A.D.[8] to journey through the whole length of the land. These writers are concerned chiefly in description of the holy places, which increased in number and in celebrity from century to century. Arculphus constantly interrupts his narrative with pious legends, much resembling those of the modern Roman Catholic guide-books to Palestine, though some of the sites which were correctly identified by these early Christian pilgrims were transferred by the Latin priests of the twelfth century to impossible localities, where they are still in some cases shown to Latins, while the older tradition survives among the Greek Christians. We often encounter an interesting note in these pilgrim diaries, such as Arculphus’ description of the pine-wood north of Hebron, now represented by but a few scattered trees. St. Willibald seems to have been regarded as a harmless hermit, who, when once the object of his journey was understood, was allowed by the “Commander of the Faithful” to travel in peace throughout the land.

In the reign of Charlemagne good political relations existed between that monarch and the Khalif of Baghdad, Harûn er Rashîd. The keys of Jerusalem were presented to the Western monarch, who founded a hospice for the Latins in that city. About half a century later, at the time when Baghdad was at the height of its glory as a centre of literature and civilisation, Bernard, called the Wise,[9] with two other monks, one Italian, the other Spanish, visited the Holy Land from Egypt, and they were able to obtain permits which were respected by the local governors.

The rise of the Fatemites in Egypt altered materially the status of the Christians in Syria. We have no known Christian account of Palestine between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Hakem, the mad Khalif of Egypt, destroyed the Christian churches in Jerusalem in 1010 A.D., and the country seems to have been then closed to pilgrims.

During this period, however, we have at least two important works, namely, that of El Mukaddasi (about 985 A.D.), and the journey of Nasir i Khusrau in 1047 A.D.[10] El Mukaddasi (“the man of Jerusalem”) was so named from his native town, his real name being Shems ed Dîn. He describes the whole of Syria, its towns and holy places (or Moslem sanctuaries), its climate, religion, commerce, manners and customs, and local marvellous sights. The legends are no less wonderful than those of his monkish predecessors, but his notes are often of great historical interest, and he is the earliest writer as yet known who plainly ascribes the building of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to its real author, the Khalif ’Abd el Melek. It is remarkable that he speaks of the Syrian Moslems as living in constant terror of the Greek pirates, who descended on the coasts and made slaves of the inhabitants, whom they carried off to Constantinople. The Christians were still, he says, numerous in Jerusalem, and “unmannerly in public places.” The power of the Khalifs was indeed at this time greatly shaken by the schisms of Islam, and the Greek galleys invaded the ports, which had to be closed by iron chains. The Samaritans appear to have flourished at this time as well as the Jews, and the Samaritan Chronicle, which commences in the twelfth century, speaks of this sect as very widely spread even earlier, in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D.

Abu Muin Nâsir, son of Khusrau, was born near Balkh, and journeyed through Media and Armenia by Palestine to Cairo, thence to Mecca and Basrah, and back through Persia to Merv and Balkh, the whole time spent being seven years. He gives good general accounts of Jerusalem, Hebron, and other places, though his description does not materially add to our information.

The rise of the Seljuks boded little good to Syria. Melek Shah in 1073 A.D. conquered Damascus, and by the end of the century Jerusalem groaned under the Turkish tyranny. It was at this time—just before the conquest of the Holy City, which had been wrested from the Turks by the Egyptians—that Foucher of Chartres began his chronicle of the first Crusade, which contains useful topographical notes. The great history of the Latin Kingdom by William of Tyre is full of interesting information as to the condition of the country under its Norman rulers (1182-85 A.D.), and to this we must add the Chronicles of Raymond d’Agiles and Albert of Aix, which belong to the time of the first Crusade.[11]

Two other early works of the Crusading period are of special value. Sæwulf[12] visited the Holy Land in 1102 A.D., before the building of most of the Norman castles and cathedrals; and the Russian Abbot Daniel, whose account has only recently been translated into English,[13] is believed to have arrived as early as 1106 A.D. From Ephesus he went to Patmos and Cyprus, and thence to Jerusalem and all over Western Palestine. His account is one of the fullest that we possess for the earliest Crusading period. In the middle of the twelfth century we have the topographical account by Fetellus,[14] which refers to places not generally described; and rather later we have the valuable descriptions by Theodoricus and John of Wirzburg,[15] while only two years before Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem, John Phocas[16] wrote a shorter account in Greek upon silk, which is interesting as the work of a Greek ecclesiastic at a time when the Latins were the dominant sect. The names of monasteries in the Jordan Valley, otherwise unnoticed, are recoverable in his account.

Much interesting topographical information of this period is to be found in the Cartulary of the Holy Sepulchre,[17] which gives striking evidence of the rapidly increasing possessions of the Latin Church, due to the gifts and legacies of kings and barons. The cartularies of the great orders and the laws contained in the Assizes of Jerusalem are equally important to an understanding of Palestine under the rule of its feudal monarchs. It is possible to reconstruct the map of the country at this period in a very complete manner from such material.[18]

The Jews were not encouraged in Syria by the Normans. Benjamin of Tudela, however, made his famous journey from Saragossa in 1160, and returned in 1173 after visiting Palestine, Persia, Sinai, and Egypt; he was interested in the “lost tribes,” whom the mediæval Jews recognised in the Jewish kingdom of the Khozars in the Caucasus, and his account of Palestine is a valuable set-off to those of the Christian visitors.[19] We have pilgrimages by Rabbis in later centuries, viz., Rabbi Bar Simson in 1210 A.D., Rabbi Isaac Chelo of Aragon in 1334, and others of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.[20] These refer chiefly to the holy cities of the Jews, especially to Tiberias and Safed in Galilee, and record visits to the tombs of celebrated Rabbis, many of which are still preserved, and some yet visited by the Jews of Palestine. Several important points regarding early Christian and Talmudic topography are cleared up by these works.

One of the favourite accounts of the Holy City and of Palestine at the time of its conquest by Saladin was written by an unknown author, and was reproduced in the thirteenth century in the Chronicle of Ernoul.[21] There are many manuscripts of this, as of earlier works, which were preserved in the monasteries of Europe, and recopied by students who seem to have had little idea of the importance of preserving the original purity of their text. Some of the versions are mere abstracts, some are supplemented by paraphrases from Scripture. The original work known as the Citez de Jherusalem was evidently penned by one who had long lived in the Holy City, and knew every street, church, and monastery. He gives us the Frankish names for the streets, and the topography is easily traced in the modern city. There are perhaps few towns which are better known than Jerusalem in the latter part of the twelfth century A.D., and the varying manuscripts throw an interesting light on the way in which errors and variations crept into a popular work before the invention of printing.

The vivid and spirited chronicle of the campaigns of Richard Lion-Heart by Geoffrey de Vinsauf (1189-1192 A.D.) informs us of the condition of the maritime region, and describes a part of Palestine which few have visited, between Haifa and Jaffa, as well as the region east of Ascalon and as far south as the border of Egypt. The topography of this chronicle I studied on the ground with great care in 1873-75. The charming pages of Joinville, though of great interest as describing the unfortunate Crusade of St. Louis in 1256 A.D., contain much less of geographical value than the preceding.[22]

In the fourteenth century men’s minds were often occupied with schemes for the recovery of the Holy Places. Marino Sanuto, a Venetian noble, who is said to have travelled in the East, wrote an elaborate work on the subject, which he presented to Pope John in 1321. The greater part is taken up with his views as to the military steps necessary for an expedition against the Saracens, but a very full gazetteer of Palestine, with a map, is also introduced into the work. Some have doubted whether Marino Sanuto ever visited Palestine. His information is, however, very correct on the whole, and his account of roads, springs, and other features appears to be founded on reliable observation.

During the transition period of the struggle between Christendom and Islam, Palestine had narrowly escaped the horrors of a Mongol invasion. Mangu Khan, to whom St. Louis had sent the mild and pious William de Rubruquis at his distant capital of Karakorum (in Mongolia) in 1253, was defeated by the Egyptian Sultan Kelaun, successor of the terrible Bibars, in 1280, and had already been defeated in 1276 by Bibars himself near La Chamelle (now Homs) in Northern Syria. A very interesting letter has lately been published by Mr. Basevi Sanders from Sir Joseph de Cancy in Palestine to Edward the First in England,[23] written in 1281, and describing the later defeat near Le Lagon (the Lake of Homs), which saved the country from the cruelty from which other lands were then suffering. The Mameluk Sultans ruled in Palestine down to 1516 A.D., when the Turkish Selim overthrew their power at Aleppo, since which time Palestine has been a Turkish province. During the three centuries of Mameluk rule there are many descriptions, Christian and Moslem, of the country, and the well-known Travels of Sir John Mandeville are among the earliest. He was a contemporary of Marino Sanuto, and although those portions of the work (with which he consoled his rheumatic old age) that refer to more distant lands are made up from various sources, going back to the fables of Pliny and Solinus, still the account of Palestine itself appears to be original, and contains passages (such as that which relates to the fair held near Banias) which show special knowledge of the country. In 1432 Sir Bertrandon de la Brocquiere, with other knights, made an adventurous journey through the whole length of the country, and through Northern Syria and Asia Minor to Constantinople.[24] To the same period belongs John Poloner’s description, which shows us how tenaciously the Latin monks held to their possessions in the Holy Land.[25]

In the fifteenth century we have Moslem accounts by Kemâl ed Dîn and Mejr ed Dîn, which are of value in tracing the architectural history of Jerusalem. Mejr ed Dîn was Kady of the city, and his topographical account, though brief, is minutely detailed.[26] Among other Christian travellers of this century, Felix Fabri (1483-84), a Dominican monk, has left one of the best accounts. But how little these later Christian pilgrims contributed to enlarging our exact knowledge of Palestine may be judged of from such a map as that contributed by Christian Schrot to the Atlas of Ortelius, a map very decidedly inferior to that supplied more than two centuries earlier by Marino Sanuto.

Of travellers who visited Palestine during the early Turkish period, the first in importance is the shrewd and moderate Maundrell (1697 A.D.).[27] He was chaplain of the English factory at Aleppo, which dated back to the time of Elizabeth, and the account of his travels shows that it was more difficult to traverse Palestine in his days than to penetrate into Eastern Mongolia in the days of Rubruquis and Marco Polo. Among the tyrannical chiefs of various small districts who robbed and annoyed him was Sheikh Shibleh near Jenin, whose tomb is now a sacred shrine on the hill above Kefr Kud. Of this holy man he records that “he eased us in a very courteous manner of some of our coats, which now (the heat both of the climate and season increasing upon us) began to grow not only superfluous but burdensome.”

In these early days travelling was perilous, and, as a rule, only possible in disguise. In 1803 the journey of Seetzen was specially valuable, and the travels of the celebrated Burckhardt followed soon after in 1809-16. Both these explorers died in the East before their self-allotted tasks were complete. In 1816 Buckingham (still remembered by the elder generation as a gallant explorer) visited Palestine, and in 1817 Irby and Mangles made an adventurous journey in the country east of the Jordan. Their account is still valuable for this region. From that time forward the accounts of personal visits to the country become too numerous to be here recorded. The names of Bartlett, Wilson, Töbler, Thomson, Lynch, De Saulcy, Van de Velde, Williams, and Porter are among the better known of those who preceded or were contemporary with the celebrated Robinson.

But it was only in 1838 that really scientific exploration of Palestine began with the journey of the famous American (Dr. Robinson), whose works long continued to be the standard authority on Palestine geography, and whose bold and original researches have been so fully confirmed by the excavations and explorations of the last twenty years.

To this same period, preceding actual surveys, belongs the work of De Vogüé, whose monographs on the Temple, the Dome of the Rock, the churches of Palestine, and his splendid volume of plates for Northern Syrian architecture, together with his collection and decipherment of various early inscriptions in the country, give him the highest rank as an Orientalist. With his name must be coupled that of Waddington, who first attempted to form a corpus of Greek texts from inscriptions found in Palestine, while the standard authority on Phœnician and Hebrew texts is the recently published corpus of Semitic inscriptions by Renan.

Sir C. W. Wilson’s survey of Jerusalem and travels in Palestine in 1864-66, and his subsequent exploration of the Sinaitic desert in 1867, roused public attention to the neglected state of Palestine geography, leading to the execution for the Palestine Exploration Fund of the wonderful excavations by Sir C. Warren at Jerusalem. These excavations round the walls of the old Temple area, carried out in the teeth of fanatic and political obstruction, have enabled us to replace the weary controversies of half a century ago by the actual results of measurement and scientific exploration. Sir Charles Wilson’s already published survey of the Holy City, his reconnaissances throughout the length of the Palestine watershed, preceding his Sinai Expedition, his survey of the Sea of Galilee, and his exact determination of the level of the Dead Sea, 1292 feet below the Mediterranean, were the first efforts of modern science to supply really valuable statistics concerning Palestine itself. The shafts and tunnels of Sir Charles Warren were the first serious attempts of the engineer to place our knowledge of Jerusalem on an equal footing with that which had been in like manner attained at Nineveh and Babylon some twenty years before.

It was by the advice of these experienced explorers that the survey of Palestine from Dan to Beersheba, and from the Jordan to the Great Sea, was undertaken, a work which commenced in 1872, was completed in the field in 1877, but not fully published till 1882. It is with this work that the present volume is chiefly concerned, since it was my good fortune to conduct the parties almost from the first, and to carry out the publication of the maps and memoirs. It had first been intended that Captain Stewart, R.E., should have commanded the party, but that officer was unfortunate in falling ill almost at once on reaching the field of work; and it was through the kindness of the late Major Anderson, R.E., the comrade of Sir Charles Wilson in Palestine, that my name was brought forward as one who had been deeply interested in the work of previous explorers, and who desired to act as Captain Stewart’s assistant. By the sudden illness of that officer, the non-commissioned officers were left in Palestine without a military superior; and as my military education at Chatham had just been completed, I was fortunate in being selected, at the age of not quite twenty-four years, to the command of the Survey Expedition.

Since the completion of the survey of Western Palestine, the survey of Moab, Gilead, and Bashan has been commenced. In 1881 I set out in charge of a small party, hoping to finish this new enterprise in about three years’ time. But alas! I found much change in Syria during the interval of my absence. The suspicions of the Sultan were aroused; the Turkish Government refused to believe in the genuineness of our desire to obtain antiquarian knowledge. Political intrigues were rife, and after struggling against these difficulties for fifteen months, after surveying secretly about five hundred square miles of the most interesting country east of the Dead Sea, and after vainly attempting to obtain the consent of the Sultan to further work, it became necessary to recall the party in the same year in which the researches of Mr. Rassam in Chaldea were suspended and a general veto placed on all systematic exploration.

Since that year, however, a little work has been done from time to time by residents in communication with the Home Society. Herr Schumacher, a young German colonist, has made some excellent maps of parts of Bashan, and Dr. Hull has explored the geology of the district south of the Dead Sea, while further discoveries have even been made in Jerusalem by Herr Konrad Schick, who has recovered part of the second wall and one of the important pools (the Piscina Interior) in the north-east corner of the city.

The most interesting result of Herr Schumacher’s journeys have been the discovery of the sites of Hippos and Kokaba east of the Sea of Galilee, and of dolmen centres like those which I found in Moab.

The task with which I am charged is, however, to give a general account of the exploration of Palestine conducted by the parties under my command; and taking the subject roughly in the order of date of survey, I hope to show that not only in a geographical sense, but also as a contribution to the true understanding of the ancient history of the East, our labours were not in vain, and our method was such as to give exhaustive results.

In concluding this introductory sketch, I should wish to point out that the Palestine of 1889 is not the Palestine which I entered in 1872. Partly on account of the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund, partly because of political changes, the number of travellers has enormously increased. In 1873 it was possible to visit villages where the face of a Frank had never been seen, but now even the Arabs beyond Jordan are often brought in contact with Europeans. Such a chance of studying the archaic manners of the peasantry and the natural condition of the nomadic Arabs as we enjoyed cannot now recur. For six years I lived entirely among the peasantry, but since then war, cruel taxation, and the rapacity of usurers has broken up and ruined the peasant society as it existed fifteen years ago. In 1882 I saw only too plainly the change that had come over the land. The Palestine of the early years of the Survey hardly now exists. The country is a Levantine land, where Western fabrics, Western ideas, and even Western languages, meet the traveller at every point. In the present pages I have attempted to give some idea of the country as it was in the last years of its truly Oriental condition, with a peasantry as yet hardly quite tamed by the Turk, and regions as yet hardly traversed by the European explorer.

CHAPTER I.
EXPLORATIONS IN JUDEA.

NEARLY every tourist in Palestine lands at Jaffa, and thence travels to Jerusalem. The open roadstead, the yellow dunes, the distant shadowy mountains, the brown town on its hillock, the palms, the orange-gardens and the picturesque crowd are familiar to very many of my readers. So are the paths over the plain, the mud villages and cactus hedges, the great minaret tower of Ramleh, and the rough mountains, with scattered copses of mastic and oak, with stone hamlets and terraced olive groves, through which lies the way to the Holy City.

When first I traversed this road in July 1872, it was less frequented than it is now. The long rows of Jewish cottages which first meet the eye on reaching the plateau west of the city were not then built, and Mr. Cook’s signboard was not fixed to the ancient walls of Jerusalem. The increase of the population by the arrival of 15,000 European Jews had not commenced, and what has now been gained in prosperity has been lost in picturesque antiquity of appearance. Jerusalem was then still an Oriental, but has now become what is known as a Levantine town.

The winters of 1873, of 1874, and of 1881 I spent within the walls, and many other visits were necessary from time to time; but our work lay in the country, and it was only here and there that we were able to add new details to the exhaustive and scientific records of Sir Charles Wilson and Sir Charles Warren in Jerusalem itself. My first impression was one of disappointment. The city is small, the hills are stony, barren, and shapeless. One seemed always to be traversing bylanes, so narrow were the steep streets, which afterwards became so familiar. But Jerusalem is a city which to the student becomes more interesting the longer he explores the remains of a past stretching back through the proud days of the Crusading kingdom to the glories of the Arab Khalifate, to the quaint superstitions of the Byzantines, to the greatness of the Herodians, to the earlier civilisation of the Hebrews. Relics still remain of the works of every age, from the time when David first fixed his throne on Sion; and even after fifteen years of exploration a great discovery remained to be made in the finding of the only Hebrew inscription, as yet known in Western Palestine, which dates back to the times of the kings of Judah.

Space will not allow of a complete account of Jerusalem, which may be found in the publications of the Palestine Exploration Fund.[28] Few scenes in the East remain more distinctly printed on the memory than do those connected with life in Jerusalem. The motley crowd in its lanes, where every race of Europe and of Western Asia meets; the gloomy churches; the beauty of the Arab chapel of the Rock; the strange fanaticism of the Greek festival of the Holy Fire; the dervish processions issuing from the old Temple area; the pathetic wailing at the Temple wall; the Jewish Passover; the horns blown at the feast of Tabernacles; Russian, Armenian, Greek, and Georgian pilgrims; the Christ crucified by Franciscan monks in the gilded chapel of Calvary; the poor whose feet are washed by a crowned bishop—all remain in the memory with the mighty ramparts of the city as seen by Christ and His disciples, and the blue goggles of the tourist from the West. No other town presents such an epitome of history, or gathers a crowd so representative of East and West.

There are only two discoveries to which I propose to refer, as being the most important since the closing of Sir Charles Warren’s mines. These are the discovery of the Temple rampart and that of the Siloam inscription. The extent of the Temple area, as rebuilt by Herod the Great, was defined by the excavations which Sir Charles Warren carried down to the rock foundations, in some parts by mines 70 to 100 feet deep,[29] but in no part did he find the ancient walls rising above the level of the inner court. The north-west corner of the area is occupied by barracks, standing on the cliff which was once crowned by the citadel of Antonia; and outside this cliff is the rock-cut trench, converted later into a covered double pool, which the Christians of the fourth century regarded as Bethesda. From this pool a narrow lofty tunnel leads southwards through the cliff. It is an ancient aqueduct, which was stopped up by the building of the Temple wall. Sir Charles Warren explored it with great difficulty on a raft on the sewage with which it was filled; but in 1873 was cleared out by the city authorities, and I was able to explore it at leisure. At the very end, through a hole in the floor, it was possible to reach a chamber over this rocky passage, built against the Temple wall and lighted by a window which looks into the north-west part of the Temple court. The east wall of the chamber is the ancient wall built by Herod, and here I found the same great drafted stones which occur in the foundations. I also found that the wall was adorned outside above the ground-level by projecting buttresses, just like those of the enclosure at Hebron, to be mentioned immediately. We are thus able to picture the appearance of the great ramparts of Herod’s Temple enclosure, with such buttresses running round the walls and capped by a boldly corbelled cornice, presenting the same simple and massive appearance which may still be seen in the smaller enclosure round the tombs of the Patriarchs at Hebron.

The discovery of the Siloam inscription was an instance of the accidental manner in which important monuments are often recovered; yet, as in other cases, it was due to the education which the native population receives from the scientific explorer. Had the importance of such discoveries not been impressed on the minds of natives, it is possible that the Jewish boy who, falling down in the water of the narrow aqueduct, first observed the only known relic of the writing of his ancestors in King Hezekiah’s days, would not have been conscious how valuable a discovery he had made on a spot visited by more than one eager explorer who passed unconscious by the silent text.

On the east side of Jerusalem runs the deep Kedron gorge; under the Temple walls on its western slope a rock chamber contains the one spring of Jerusalem, known as the Virgin’s Fountain to Christians, and as the “Mother of Steps” to Moslems, because of the stairs which lead down into the vault from the present surface of the valley, as raised by the accumulated rubbish of twenty-five centuries of stormy history. This spring, with its intermittent rush of waters welling up under the steps, is the En Rogel of the Old Testament, and I believe the Bethesda or “House of the Stream,” the troubling of whose waters is mentioned in the fourth Gospel. From the back of the rock chamber a passage, also rock-cut, and scarcely large enough in places for a grown man to squeeze through, runs south under the Ophel hill for about a third of a mile, to the reservoir which is the undisputed site of the ancient Pool of Siloam. The course of the channel is serpentine, and the farther end near the Pool of Siloam enlarges into a passage of considerable height. Down this channel the waters of the spring rush to the pool whenever the sudden flow takes place. In autumn there is an interval of several days; in winter the sudden flow takes place sometimes twice in a day. A natural syphon from an underground basin accounts for this flow, as also for that of the “Sabbatic river” in North Syria. When it occurs, the narrow parts of the passage are filled to the roof with water.

This passage was explored by Dr. Robinson, Sir Charles Wilson, Sir Charles Warren, and others, but the inscription on the rock close to the mouth of the tunnel was not seen, being then under water. When it was found in 1880 by a boy who entered from the Siloam end of the passage, it was almost obliterated by the deposit of lime crystals on the letters. Professor Sayce, then in Palestine, made a copy, and was able to find out the general meaning of the text. In 1881 Dr. Guthe, a German explorer, cleaned the text with a weak acid solution, and I was then able, with the aid of Lieutenant Mantell, R.E., to take a proper “squeeze.” It was a work of labour and requiring patience, for on two occasions we sat for three or four hours cramped up in the water in order to obtain a perfect copy of every letter, and afterwards to verify these copies by examining each letter with the candle placed so as to throw the light from right, left, top and bottom. Only by such labour can reliable copies be made. We were rewarded by sending home the first accurate copy published in Europe, and were able to settle many disputed points raised by the imperfect copy of the text before it was cleaned. An excellent cast was afterwards made.

The contents of the text, which now ranks as one of the most valuable found in the East, are not of historic importance. The six lines of beautifully chiselled letters record only the making of the tunnel, which seems to have been regarded as a triumph of Hebrew engineering skill. It was begun from both ends, and the workmen heard the sound of the picks of the other party in the bowels of the hill, and called to their fellows. Thus guided, they advanced and broke through; the two tunnels proving to be only a few feet out of line. No date, no royal name, or other means of ascertaining the age of the text exist; yet our knowledge is enough to fix very closely, from the forms of the letters, the century in which it must have been written. It is probably to this tunnel that the Bible refers in noting the water-works of King Hezekiah (2 Chron. xxxii. 30); and the text shows us that monumental writing was in use among the Hebrews about 700 B.C. The differences between these Hebrew letters and those used by the Phœnicians of the same age also show us that writing must have been familiar to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for many centuries before the time when this text was engraved; and it thus becomes the first monumental proof of the early civilisation of the Hebrews which has been drawn from their own records on the rock.

Being aware of the contents of the text, we determined to re-explore and survey the whole length of the tunnel, in order to see if any other texts could be found, and to discover if possible the exact place where the two parties of workmen met, on that day 2580 years before, when they heard each others’ voices through the rock. Followed by Lieutenant Mantell and Mr. G. Armstrong, I crawled over the mud and sharp pebbles for the whole distance, dragging with us a chain, and taking compass angles, which were entered in a wet note-book by the light of a candle often put out by the water. We also suffered from the bites of the leeches and from the want of air; but our chief danger was the sudden rise of the water, which might have caught us in that narrow part of the passage, where, crawling flat, we were hardly able to squeeze through and to keep our lights burning. We noted, however, two shafts to which we might retire if the water rose, and which were perhaps made in order to allow the workmen to stand upright at times and rest. It is almost impossible to suppose that the narrowest parts were excavated by grown men; at all events, they must have been narrower in the shoulders than the explorers; but I believe that boys were probably employed. In this narrow part no inscription could have been cut, nor did we find any tablets on the rock in other parts like that already noticed. On the first occasion, after five hours, we reached the Virgin’s Pool safely; but we found a second visit necessary, and in order to make the danger less, we determined to pass down the tunnel from the spring, where I stationed a servant to warn us if the water began to rise. Hardly had we got a hundred yards down the passage when we heard his shouts, and at once began to canter on all fours to the spring chamber over the pebbles and mud. We had crossed the pool with the water only up to our knees, but when we again reached it from the tunnel at the back, it was well up to the arm-pits; and hardly were we safe on the landing of the steps, when we heard the water gurgling in the tunnel, and knew that it must in the narrow part be full to the roof. In a short time the flow subsided, and we were able to go back safely, knowing that it would not rise again that day. We were astonished, however, on emerging at Siloam, to find the stars shining, for we had again spent five hours in the dark, with the mud, stones, and leeches, and considered ourselves lucky in escaping an attack of fever, which generally follows such exposure to wet and cold in Palestine. We were rewarded by finding the place where the two parties, working from either end of the tunnel, met nearly half-way.

From the fourth century to the present day the sites of Calvary and of the Holy Sepulchre have been shown within the precincts of the Crusading cathedral, standing where Constantine’s basilica was raised. The discovery of part of the “second wall” in 1886 shows pretty clearly that the line which—guided by the rock-levels—I drew in 1878, nearly coinciding with Dr. Robinson’s line, is correct, and that the traditional site was thus in the time of our Lord within the city walls. For the last half century this view has been very generally held, but there was no agreement as to the true site. I was enabled, however, through the help of Dr. Chaplin, the resident physician, to investigate the ancient Jewish tradition, still extant among the older resident Jews, which places the site of the “House of Stoning” or place of execution at the remarkable knoll just outside the Damascus gate, north of the city. There are several reasons, which I have detailed in other publications, for thinking that this hillock is the probable site of Calvary. When General Gordon was residing at Jerusalem, he adopted this idea very strongly, and it has thus become familiar to many in England.[30] The bare and stony swell breaks down on the south side into a precipice, over which, according to the Talmud, those doomed to be stoned were thrown, and on the summit they were afterwards crucified, according to the same account. The hillock stands conspicuous in a sort of natural amphitheatre, being thus fitted for a spectacle seen by great multitudes. The neighbourhood has always apparently been regarded as of evil omen, and a Moslem writer says that men may not pass over the plateau beside it at night for fear of evil spirits. Close to this same spot, also, the earliest Christian tradition pointed out the scene of the stoning of Stephen.

When first I reached Palestine in 1872, the Survey party were at work at Shechem, thirty miles north of Jerusalem. Sergeant Black and Sergeant Armstrong, whose names should be specially recorded among those who worked at the survey, because they were longest employed, and because their ability was conspicuous in framing a plan of operations suited to the peculiar requirements, had made good progress, with the aid of Mr. C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake, left in charge when Captain Stewart came home ill. They had carried the work from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and thence along the mountains to Shechem, in six months, and the hill country of Benjamin, which I afterwards examined, was thus surveyed before I reached Palestine. This part of Judea, though presenting immense difficulties to the surveyor, which had been overcome by patience and toil, did not yield much of great interest beyond Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake’s discovery of a Jewish tomb-inscription, and the identification of several lost Hebrew cities. The site of Bethel, famous as it is in Bible history, is only that of a small village, on a ridge which, even for Judea, is remarkably barren and rocky. Here truly the wanderer who dreamed of angels could find nought save a stone for his pillow; but the long vista of the Jericho plain, seen over the peaks and ridges of the desert of Judah, might even now, by some modern Lot, be likened to the “garden of the Lord,” so green do its pastures look in spring, set in the stony ring of barren hills.

Not far thence we one day crossed the great gorge of Michmash, where was the fortress of the Philistines that Jonathan assaulted. We were able to lead our horses down from ledge to ledge, following the strata, to the bottom of the valley on its south side; but on the north towered the cliff of Bozez (“the shining”), which the Hebrew hero scaled. Here no horse could find a footing, and climbing up to visit the hermit’s caves, I was able to judge the effort which would be necessary to scale the whole height and then to fight at the top. No doubt the garrison must have regarded Jonathan’s feat as practically impossible.

The ridge on which Jerusalem stands, 2500 feet above the Mediterranean, runs southwards, gradually rising to 3000 feet in the neighbourhood of Hebron, where the open valley of vineyards forms one of the heads of the great Beersheba watercourse. This difficult region was surveyed in the autumn of 1874, and many ancient sites and ruins were discovered. We were not, however, at that time able to enter the Hebron Sanctuary, which had never been fully explored, and which is one of the most interesting places in Palestine. In 1882, however, I accompanied the Princes Albert Victor and George of Wales, who, under the guidance of Sir Charles Wilson, explored this zealously-guarded mosque, of which I then made the only complete plan in existence. The Haram (or “Sanctuary”) at Hebron is an oblong enclosure, repeating that of the Temple of Jerusalem on a smaller scale. It is not mentioned by early writers, yet there can be little doubt that it must be the work of Herod the Great, or of one of his immediate successors. It already existed in 333 A.D., and the walls are so exactly like those of the Jerusalem Haram, that they cannot be supposed the work of the Byzantine emperors.

The ramparts enclose a mediæval church and a courtyard, built over an ancient rock-cut cave, which in all ages has been regarded as the sepulchre purchased by Abraham from the sons of Heth, where Sarah first is said to have been buried, and afterwards Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Rebecca and Leah. Six cenotaphs, like Moslem tombs, covered with rich embroidered cloths, stand in the enclosure—two inside the church (now a mosque), two in chapels beside the porch of the same, and two in buildings against the opposite rampart walls. It is not however supposed, even by Moslems, that these are the real tombs; they only mark supposed sites of tombs beneath the floor. These lower tombs, which Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveller of the twelfth century, claims to have seen, are now inaccessible, and it is impossible to say how far his account can be trusted.[31] In the floor of the mosque there are two entrances closed by flagstones, which are said to lead down by steps into the rock-cut cave. No Moslem would dare to enter this sacred cavern, where, as they say, Isaac would await and slay them, while Jewish legends tell that Eliezer of Damascus stands at the door to watch the repose of Abraham asleep in the arms of Sarah. There is, however, a hole in the floor which pierces the roof of a square chamber, lighted by a silver lamp suspended from the mouth of the hole.

Into this well-mouth we thrust our heads, and the lamp was lowered almost to the floor. Here I saw clearly that in one wall of the chamber a small square door exists, just like those of rock-cut tombs all through Palestine. There is thus probably a real tomb under the mosque, and the chamber is apparently an outer porch to this tomb. The floor was covered to some depth with sheets of paper, evidently the accumulations of many years. These papers are petitions to Abraham, which the pious Moslems drop through the hole, and thus leave lying at the door of his sepulchre.

Another opportunity of so thoroughly exploring this interesting site may not speedily occur; and so long as the mosque remains a mosque, it is doubtful if any one will succeed in entering the tomb itself, though it might perhaps be reached by the stairs said to exist on the south side of the building, if permission could be obtained to force up the flagstones.[32]

As regards the identity of this sepulchre with that of the Patriarchs, all that can be said is that tradition is unvarying on the subject, and the site nowise improbable; but the Hebrews never appear to have embalmed the dead, and if any inscriptions existed (inscriptions of early date on Hebrew tombs being almost unknown), they would probably belong to a very recent period.

THE PLAIN OF JERICHO, AS SEEN FROM AI.

To face page 35.

In an account like the present it is difficult to follow either a geographical or a chronological order. The geography of Palestine is, however, very generally understood, and the regions next to each other are here mentioned in order. The Survey was extended from a central band along the watershed, the reason being that the plains could only be visited, with due regard to the health and comfort of the party, in the spring and early summer, while the mountains were our refuge in the great heats of August and September, and in the sickly autumn, when the climate of the lower regions becomes almost pestilential. Only once was this system disregarded, and the result was an outbreak of virulent fever in the camp, which threatened for a time to put an end to the expedition.

East of the Hebron and of the Jerusalem hills stretches the desert of Judah, a plateau broken by ridges and ravines reaching to the tall cliffs which rise from the shores of the Dead Sea. Beyond this desert the plains of Jericho, through which the Jordan flows, stretch along the north shores of the sea, and are about 1000 feet lower than the surface of the Mediterranean. On the west of the Judean mountains there are foot-hills (the region called Shephelah in the Bible), and west of these again the broad plains of Sharon and of Philistia extend to the sandhills of the Mediterranean coast, which presents no natural harbour south of Mount Carmel.

The Judean desert I surveyed with a very small party in the early spring of 1875. The Jericho plains we unfortunately visited too soon in December 1873. The Shephelah and the plain of Philistia were completed in the spring of 1875 without any difficulty, save a small part near Beersheba, which was finished in 1877. Beersheba itself was visited in the autumn of 1874. These regions were all more or less wild, and inhabited by nomadic Arabs, so that the adventures of the party were more numerous than when our work lay near the civilised centres and among the settled villagers. The four regions above mentioned may be briefly mentioned in order.

The Judean desert is without exception the wildest and most desolate district in Syria. It seems hardly possible that man or beast can find a living in such a land. Yet, as David found pasture for those “few poor sheep in the wilderness,” so do the desert Arabs find food for their goats among the rocks. It is none the less a desert indeed, riven by narrow ravines leading to deep gorges, and rising between the stony gullies into narrow ridges of dark brown limestone, capped with gleaming white chalk, full of cone-like hillocks and fantastic peaks. Here sitting on the edge of the great cliffs, which drop down a sheer height of some two thousand feet to the rock-strewn shore, gazing on the shining waters of that salt blue lake, watching the ibex herds scudding silently over the plateau, the tawny partridges running in the valley, hearing the clear note of the black grackle as it soars among the rocks where the hyrax (or coney) is hiding, I have felt the sense of true solitude such as is rarely known elsewhere. There is no stirring of the grass by the breeze, no rustling of leaves, no murmur of water, no sound of life save the grackle’s note or the jackal’s cry, re-echoed from the rocks. The sun beats down from a cloudless sky; the white glare of the chalk, the smooth face of the sea, are broad stretches of colour unbroken by variety, save where the tamarisk with its feathery leaves makes a dark line among the boulders of the torrent course. Here really out of the world the solitary hermits sate in the rocky cells which were their tombs; here in the awful prison of the Marsaba monastery men are still buried, as it were, alive, without future, without hope, without employment, with no comradeship save that of equally embittered lives. The chance traveller alone connects them with the world. The grackles, to whom, on the wing, they toss the dried currants, the jackals, who gather beneath the precipice for the daily dole of bread, these are almost the only living things they see. Many are monks disgraced by crime, and what wonder, too, that some are maniacs or idiots? Few sadder scenes can be witnessed than that of a mass sung in the chapel of Marsaba, where John of Damascus (once the minister of a Moslem Khalif) sleeps in the odour of sanctity.

I think it is General Gordon who has somewhere said that for a man to understand the world he should for a time leave the life of busy cities and think out his thoughts alone in the wilderness. Often have I thought that could the critic leave his comfortable study and dwell for a time in this desert of Judah, under the starry sky at night and the hot glare of the sun by day, in a land which men once thought to have been burned by fire, cursed, and sown with salt, and in the great stillness of a world almost without life, he would be able better to understand what Hebrew poets, prophets, and historians have written, and we should perhaps not see Solomon in the garb of a German Grand Duke, or Isaiah in the robes of an University Don.

The north part of this desert is inhabited by scattered groups of the Taamireh tribe, the southern part by the Jahalin Arabs. The Taamireh, or “cultivators,” are not true Arabs, but villagers who have taken to desert life. They wear turbans, and resemble the villagers in type more closely than the Bedu. The Jahalin, whose name means “those ignorant of the Moslem faith,” are a wild and degraded tribe, the poorer being almost naked, while the chiefs have an evil name. I went into this desert without either guide or interpreter, and the party depended throughout on such knowledge of Arabic as I possessed in communicating with natives. I was not then aware how exact are the border divisions between nomadic tribes, and was surprised to find the Taamireh chief one day very unwilling to follow me. As we returned home the reason became evident. We had crossed the boundary valley into Jahalin country, and a number of wild half-clad figures sprang up from behind the rocks on the hillside armed with ancient matchlocks. The Sheikh’s influence was enough to prevent their robbing me, but they guarded us for some distance to the border valley, only asking how soon I was going to cover the land with vineyards. They believe that the Franks control the rain, and that they once grew vines in the desert. It is perhaps a dim memory of the days when the Crusaders had sugar-mills at Engedi, on the shores of the Dead Sea, as mentioned in the chronicles of the twelfth century, of which mills the ruins are still to be seen.

At Engedi the Taamireh left us, and a few days later I rode with my scribe to the camp of the Jahalin, where we sat down and made ourselves guests of the chief. The Arabs were at first surly, but soon came to see that money was to be earned, and finally asked us to recommend their country to tourists. To those who choose to venture into this wild corner, there is an attraction in the wonderful fortress of Masada, on the shores of the Dead Sea, one of the most remarkable places in Palestine, and one which has been little visited.

Masada (now called Sebbeh) was the stronghold built by Herod the Great which held out against the Romans after the terrible destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 A.D. A people less determined than the Romans might well have been content to leave the surviving Jewish zealots in so remote and inaccessible a fortress. But not so the Romans. After the death of Bassus the procurator, his successor, Flavius Silva, in the spring of 74 A.D., gathered his forces against this last refuge of the fanatical robbers called Sicarii or Zealots, who were enemies alike of Jews and Romans. The difficulty of the task was immense. Water had to be brought by Jewish captives from a distance of eleven miles: the nearest supplies of corn were twenty miles away; and only in spring could an army have endured the great heats in the valleys, 1200 feet below sea-level. The fortress is a lozenge-shaped plateau, with precipices 1500 feet high all round; walls and towers, now in ruins, surrounded it on all sides; and while on the east a narrow path called the “Serpent” wound up the cliffs, the only vulnerable point was on the west, where a chalky undercliff 1000 feet high lies against the rocky walls. Opposite this undercliff Silva placed his camp on a low hill, and round the fortress he drew a wall like that which Titus had built round Jerusalem, with small posts at intervals, and a second larger camp on the east. The Romans then piled a great mound 300 feet high on the top of the undercliff, and built a wall on the mound, from the top of which they fought in a siege-tower plated with iron, and battered the fortress wall with a ram.

The besieged were not in want of food or water. There were rain-water tanks, and corn was grown on the plateau. It is even said that the stores of wine, oil, pulse, and dates laid in by Herod a hundred years before were still edible, because of the dryness of the desert air. Within the ramparts was Herod’s old palace, towards the north-west part of the plateau, and until the walls fell to the battering-ram the courage of the Zealots was unabated. Even then they made an inner stockade of beams and earth, and still continued their fierce fight for freedom when this was in flames.

But when the dawn of the Passover came, the Romans put on their armour and shot out their bridges from the siege-tower, yet met with no resistance, and heard no sound save that of the flames in the burning palace: “A terrible solitude,” says Josephus, “on every side, with a fire in the place as well as perfect silence.” In the night 960 persons had been slain; first the women and children by their own husbands and fathers, then the men each by his neighbour. Only one old woman with five children hidden in a cavern had escaped.

Such was the wonderful history of the fortress which we explored and planned. From the plateau one looks down on the Roman wall which crosses the plain and runs up the hills to south and north. One can see Silva’s camp and the guard-towers almost as he left them 1800 years ago. The Roman mound, the wall upon it, the ruins of Herod’s palace and of the fortress walls, the towers on the cliff-side to the north, the empty tanks, the narrow “serpent” path, all attest the truth of Josephus’ account (VII. Wars, viii., ix.), and remain as silent witnesses of one of the most desperate struggles perhaps ever carried to success by Roman determination, and of one of the most fanatical resistances in history. On the east is the gleaming Sea of Salt; the dark precipices of Moab rise beyond, and the strong towers of Crusading Kerak. On all sides are brown precipices and tawny slopes of marl, torrent beds strewn with boulders, and utterly barren shores. There has been nothing to efface the evidence of the tragedy, nor was Masada ever again held as a fortress. Yet even here the hermits found their way, and built a little chapel from the stones of Herod’s house; while in a cave—perhaps the one in which the poor Jewish matron hid—I discovered on the dark walls a single word, Kuriakos, flanked by crosses and written in mediæval letters—evidence of some peaceful anchorite’s last rest among the ghosts of the Zealots.

The survey of this wilderness was completed in ten days, and the party, having no food for beast or man, were forced to march to Hebron in one of the great spring storms. Sleet and hail, a biting wind, and a rocky road made this one of our most toilsome journeys, and when, half frozen, we reached the fanatical town, we were greeted only with curses, and owed shelter, food, clothing, and fire to the hospitality of a Jewish family in the despised suburb to the north of the Haram.

The desert of Judah was no doubt as much a desert in David’s time as it is now. Here he wandered with his brigand companions as a “partridge on the mountains.” Here he may have learned that the coney makes its dwelling in the hard rock. Here, in earlier days, he tended the sheep, descending from Bethlehem, as the village shepherds of the present day still come down, by virtue of a compact with the lawless nomads, and just as Nabal’s sheep came down from the highlands under agreement with the wild followers of the outlaw born to be a king. I do not know any part of the Old Testament more instinct with life than are the early chapters of Samuel which recount the wanderings of David. His life should only be written by one who has followed those wanderings on the spot, and the critic who would embue himself with a right understanding of that ancient chronicle should first with his own eyes gaze on the “rocks of the wild goats” and the “junipers” of the desert.

North of the Dead Sea, the wide plain of Jericho lies beneath the wilderness where the Jordan Valley broadens between the Moab mountains and the western precipices. This region we first entered in the November of 1873, and pushed the survey rapidly over the plain. Our camp was by the clear spring of “Elisha’s Fountain,” well known to tourists; and here, emerging from the glaring chalk hills and barren precipices of Marsaba, we enjoyed greatly the greenness of the plain, the song of the bulbuls in the thorn trees, and the murmur of the stream. Unfortunately, this very greenness was a sign of deadly climate, especially in the autumn months. No sooner had the first thunderstorm swept over us, turning the Brook of Cherith (as it is traditionally called) into a torrent ten feet deep or more, than fever suddenly attacked the party, then numbering five Europeans and fifteen natives. Even the Nuseir Arabs, who were our guides, lay round the tents shaking with ague; and for a time the life of my companion, Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake, was in danger. In fact, though his zeal and fortitude prevented his leaving the work, he never really recovered from this terrible Jericho typhoid, and the hardships of the following spring, which we again passed in the Jordan Valley, proved too much for his shaken health. It is only after the soil in such malarious regions has been purified by a winter’s rain that it is safe to remain, even for a night, in the low ground or near water; and the premature visit to Jericho threatened at one time to bring our small party entirely to a standstill.

THE DEAD SEA (VIEW S.E. OF TAIYIBEH).

To face page 43.

The region round Jericho is well known. The tall cliff burrowed with hermit’s caves, and supposed to be the place where Christ fasted forty days in the desert; the flat marshy valley sprinkled with alkali plants and with lotus trees and feathery tamarisks; the eastern mountain ridge which we afterwards explored; the strange white peak of Kurn Sartaba on the north; the oily Dead Sea on the south, must have been seen by many who may read these lines. In clear weather in spring, the snowy dome of Hermon can be seen from near the mud village of Jericho, marking the north end of the Jordan Valley; but the Lake of Tiberias is hidden even from the higher ground near the plain.

In this Jericho region also new discoveries were made. A solitary tamarisk marks the site where, at least in early Christian times, it was believed that the Gilgal camp was set up by Joshua. The surveyors verified the existence of the name, even now known to the Jericho peasants. Here also we copied the curious mediæval frescoes, which still remained on the ruined walls of two monasteries, and several hermit caves. In the twelfth century there were many monasteries in the desert and round Jericho, and the memory of the monks has not died out. The Bedu point to a curious chalk hill called the “Raven’s Nest” as the “place where the Lord Jesus ascended;” and in studying the mediæval accounts of Palestine, I found that this very place, although the top is below sea-level, was pointed out to Crusading pilgrims as “the exceeding high mountain” whence, as we read in the Gospel, Christ surveyed the kingdoms of the world. This is but one instance out of many in which the teaching of the monks and hermits still lingers among the Moslem population in many parts of Palestine.

In England a fresco of the twelfth century is to us a rare and ancient thing. In Palestine, so far back are we carried by history, that Crusading remains rank among the latest. But the explorer has no right to confine himself to any one period. His duty is to bring home everything he can find, and without such exhaustive work the sifting out of the most valuable and most ancient results cannot with safety be undertaken. I spent several days in the hermits’ caves and in the ruined monasteries, copying such frescoes as were distinguishable, and reading the various titles above them. In the middle of the Jericho plain lies Kusr Hajlah, then a Crusading ruin with frescoes bearing the names of Sylvester Pope of Rome, Sophronius of Jerusalem, and John Eleemon. By the character of the writing I was able to fix these paintings as twelfth-century work. When in 1881 I revisited the spot, I found that not a single trace remained of any one of the pictures. Russian monks from Marsaba had settled there, and had rebuilt the monastery. Every fresco had been scraped from the walls, in order, they said, that new and better might replace them. Judging from the existing paintings at Marsaba, it is hardly to be expected that much advance will be made on the quaint style of the figures which represented the Last Supper, or the Apostles robed by angels in resurrection garments of white. I think rather that the monks suspected that the frescoes were of Latin origin; yet, in destroying them, they had obliterated the names of two of the most famous Greek Patriarchs of Jerusalem; but then they also destroyed the representation of Sylvester Pope of Rome. This single instance shows that the systematic exploration of Palestine was undertaken none too soon.

Not only in monasteries and hermits’ caves were these pictures painted. On the north side of the Kelt ravine (the traditional Brook Cherith) there is a ruined monastery of St. John of Choseboth. Here I copied many texts and pictures; and outside the gate there is a wall of rock eighty feet in length, once covered with very large figures, like those which I have seen on the outer walls of Italian churches. The weather had long since destroyed them, but at Mar Marrina, near Tripoli, I afterwards found another cliff cemented and painted in like style. In this case the Greeks had come after the Latins, and instead of scraping off the old work, had begun to paint over it huge figures of the throned Christ and of the Mother of God, beneath which—as though on a palimpsest—I was able to copy a set of pictures representing the miracles performed by some Latin saint or abbot.[33]

Such are the remains preserved by the dryness of the desert air in the vicinity of Jericho. We must now cross to the west side of the watershed, where the country presents a very different aspect. Looking down from the heights of the Judean mountains, you see beneath a strip of low hills, covered in some places with brushwood, but full of villages, and with olive yards along the valley courses and round the stone or mud houses of the hamlets, so many of which preserve the old names of the Book of Joshua. Beyond these foot-hills is the broad plain, here and there rising into sandy downs, but, as a rule, brown in autumn with rich ploughlands, and yellow in summer with ripening grain. In spring the delicate tinge of green, the wide stretches of pink flush from the phlox blossoms, and the great variety of flowers and flowering shrubs, present a strong contrast to the grimness of the desert.

The Shephelah or foot-hills form a district full of interesting sites, and of ruins from the twelfth century A.D. back to the times of Hebrew dominion. Here our discoveries were numerous and important, but I will only refer to two periods of special interest—the time of the Jewish revolt under Judas Maccabæus, and the time of the first establishment of the Crusading kingdom in Jerusalem.

The history of the heroic brothers who recovered the religious freedom of the Jews by revolting from the Greek kings of Antioch in the second century B.C., is as easy to follow in detail on the ground as is that of David’s wanderings. I have already devoted a short volume to the subject,[34] and have tried to show how the attacks on Jerusalem were made successively by the Greek armies along the roads from the north-west, the west, and the south; how Judas met the foe on each occasion at the top of the narrow passes; how he hurled them back, as Joshua did the Canaanites on the same battle-fields; and how not even the elephants dismayed him. The native town of Judas, Modin—now called Medyeh—is a little village in the foot-hills, where, however, the reported tomb of the Maccabee and his family turned out to be merely a Byzantine monument. The scene of the death of Judas, while he was defending a fourth mountain pass leading from Shechem to Jerusalem, was not known; but we have, I think, been able to identify this important battle-field, where for a time the hopes of the national party seemed for ever to have been crushed.

It is an instructive fact that so long as the Greeks strove to prevail by arms, the puritan movement was never stamped out. When at length the native princes were allowed to reign and to coin money in the native tongue, they became in a few generations as Greek as the Greeks themselves, and finally as hateful to the extreme party of the orthodox as any Greek oppressor.

At the border between the foot-hills and the Philistine plains three Norman castles were built to protect the kingdom of Godfrey and Baldwin against their Egyptian enemies. A little later (in 1153 A.D.) Ascalon was taken, and long remained the great Christian bulwark on the south. Still later, when Richard Lion-Heart was striving to prop up the Latin kingdom, ruined even more by vice and degeneracy than by the fierce attacks of Saladin, the English conqueror spent many months in this region. I had with me in Palestine the chronicle of his expedition, written by Geoffrey de Vinsauf, which is one of the most vivid monographs of the age. It was thus possible to trace every point in his travels; and very few places remain, among the many mentioned in the Philistine plains, which cannot be found on the Survey map. The lists of property of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, and other documents of like kind, were compared, and thus what is to us an early chapter of our history could be worked out on the spot in Palestine. The difficulties and dangers of Richard’s army, how they were troubled by the wind, rain, and hail, which blew down the tents and spoiled the biscuit and the bacon, how the flies, “which flew about like sparks of fire, and were called cincenelles” (mosquitoes), stung the Englishmen till they looked like lepers, and how they suffered from fever and fatigue, we could well understand; and even of the attacks of Saracens we had some experience when one day a party of Bedu on the war-path, mistaking us for their enemies, charged down upon us with flying cloaks and lances fifteen feet in length quivering like reeds.

The walls of Ascalon, so often built, and which Richard raised again from the foundations, we surveyed with difficulty, clambering over the fallen masses of the towers, all of which are mentioned by name in the chronicle—such as the Maiden’s Tower, the Admiral’s, the Bedouin’s, and the Bloody Tower, and Tower of Shields. Yet farther south we explored the little fortress of Darum, which Richard rebuilt, with many others, as garrisons against the Moslems. North of Jaffa, in the Sharon plain, we found the oak wood through which the English in 1191 A.D. marched down from Acre, sorely harassed by the rain of arrows on their armour. Every river and every tower mentioned on that toilsome march are now identified, and the fort of Habacuc, where fell the brave knight Renier of Marun, who was, I believe, an ancestor.

Yet earlier scenes belong to this region, which was the theatre of Samson’s exploits. In the low hills, Zoreah and Eshtaol and the valley of Sorek were already known, but to these we added the site of the rock Etam, where the strong man hid in a cave, which we explored. The tracing of this topography gave us, however, experience of the great caution which the explorer must exercise in sifting the evidence of natives. It had been supposed that the memory of Samson’s history still survived among the peasants of Zoreah. Certainly they all were able to repeat a garbled version of the story, and this excited the greater interest because such tales are extremely rare in occurrence among the villagers, though the Arabs have a fancy for wonderful legends, as we afterwards found in Moab. I was anxious to ascertain if the Samson legend was a truly ancient one, but soon discovered that it was quite modern. The village lands had recently been purchased by a Christian Sheikh from Bethlehem, and it was from him that his tenants learned the Bible story, which they were unable to repeat without converting all the characters into good Moslems and wicked Christians.

In these same foot-hills lies the site of the celebrated Cave of Adullam, on the side of the Valley of Elah, the scene of David’s meeting with Goliah. It was first discovered by M. Clermont Ganneau, whose views were fully borne out by our researches. The cave itself is a small one, blackened by the smoke of many fires, and scooped in the side of a low hill, on which are remains of a former town or village. Beneath the slope is a wide valley, which was full of corn; and the spot is marked by a group of ancient terebinths, like those which gave the name Elah, or “terebinth,” to this important Wâdy. There are other caverns opposite to the Adullam hill, and these are used as stables, while in the cave itself we found a poor family actually living. The name is now corrupted to the form ’Aidelmîa, but the position fully agrees with the Bible accounts, and with the distance from Eleutheropolis (now Beit Jibrîn) noted by Eusebius.

The Philistine plain from Jaffa to Gaza is one of the best corn districts in Palestine. It grows steadily wider to the south, and sweeps round the base of the Hebron hills to Beersheba. The celebrated cities of the Philistine lords are now, with the exception of Gaza, no longer important places. Ekron and Ashdod are villages with a few cactus hedges; Ascalon lies in ruins by the sea; Gath is so much forgotten that its name has disappeared, and the site is still not quite certain. Gaza is, however, a large place, with some trade, and with extensive olive groves. Along this whole coast the sand from the high dunes, which, as seen from the hills, form a yellow wall between the ploughlands and the sea, is always steadily encroaching. It has covered up a great part of the gardens within the walls of Ascalon, and has swept over the little port of Majuma, west of Gaza; but beyond the line of its advance the soil is everywhere fertile, and the villages are numerous.

The Philistine plain seems never to have been long held by the Hebrews. Joshua, Samuel, or Simon the Hasmonean may have conquered its cities, as Richard Lion-Heart afterwards did, but the Egyptian power in Syria in all ages has been first felt in this plain. The natives indeed, in dress and appearance, are more like the peasantry of Egypt than they are like the sturdy villagers of the other parts of Palestine. In times of trouble this region is now much exposed to the attacks of the southern Arabs. Egyptian records show us that the Philistine plain was long held by the Pharaohs, and we have a representation of the siege of Ascalon by Rameses II. In Hezekiah’s reign we learn, from the cuneiform records, that each of the Philistine towns had its own king, and these princes allied themselves with Sennacherib against Jerusalem.

These facts agree with the account of David’s struggles with the Philistines, and give the reason why Israel did not enter Palestine “by the way of the Philistines,” as probably at that time the plain was actually garrisoned by Egyptians.

It is clear from monumental accounts that there was a Semitic population in Philistia at a very early period, but it is not certain that the Philistine race was of this stock. We have Egyptian portraits of Philistines—a beardless people wearing a peculiar sort of cap or tiara. Many scholars believe that the Philistines were of the same stock with the Hittites (who were a Mongolian people), and this may account for the curious fact that the Assyrians speak of the Philistine town of Ashdod as a “city of the Hittites.” In Philistia the name of the Hittites is also probably still preserved in the villages of Hatta and Kefr Hatta. Among the peasantry there are several legends of the Fenish king and his daughter, of his garden, and of the place where she used to spin. I think it is probable that the Fenish was a Philistine, rather than a Phœnician, legendary monarch.

The town of Gaza, standing on a mound above its olive groves, surrounded by the crumbling traces of its former walls, contains several good mosques, one of which is the fine Crusading Church of St. John. Near Gaza, on the south, is a mound called Tell ’Ajjûl, “hillock of the calf,” from a legend of a phantom calf said to have been here seen by a benighted peasant. At this place was discovered a fine statue of Jupiter, 15 feet high, which now stands at the entrance of the Constantinople Museum, where I drew it in 1882. This discovery reminds us that Palestine had also its age of classic paganism, when statues like those of Roman temples were erected. We have, indeed, an account of the temples of Gaza, which existed as late as the fifth century, when the Christians overthrew them and built a church. Venus had here a statue, much adored by the women, and the Cretan Jupiter was known under the name Marnas, which is thought to mean “our lord.” It is probably the statue of Marnas himself that has now been discovered, one of the very few statues of any importance as yet found in Palestine.

The Philistine plain merges on the south in the plateau called Negeb, or “dry,” in the Old Testament. This is the scene of Isaac’s wanderings as described in Genesis, where lie Gerar the city of Abimelech, and Rehoboth and Beersheba. The region was visited late in 1874, when it was at its driest, the spring herbage being all long since burnt up. The Beersheba plains consist of a soft white marl, rising in low ridges, and not unlike some parts of the Veldt or open grazing-land of Bechuanaland, in South Africa. The Negeb still supports a considerable nomad population, and their flocks and herds are numerous. On the east it sinks to the Judean desert, and on the south descends by bold steps to the Wilderness of Sinai. The view from the spurs of the Judean hills near Dhaherîyeh (identified with Debir) is very extensive, ridge beyond ridge of rolling down stretching to the high points on the horizon which mark the passes by which ascents lead from the south.

This region, though generally without water on the surface, possesses several groups of deep and abundant wells, where the herdsmen gather to water the flocks. Among the most renowned are the Beersheba wells, of which there are three, each a round shaft lined with masonry; one is dry. The principal supply is from the largest well, 12 feet 3 inches in diameter, and 38 feet deep to the water in autumn. The smaller dry well is 5 feet in diameter and 40 feet deep. Round these wells, which have no parapet, rude stone troughs are placed, into which the water, drawn up in skin bags, is poured. The water-drawing, to the sounds of Arab shepherd songs, is one of the most picturesque of sights. It used to be thought that the masonry was very ancient, but it only extends to a depth of 28 feet in the largest well, and on one of the stones I found the words, “505 ... Allah Muhammad,” showing apparently that the stonework was at least renewed in the fourteenth century A.D.

Any student who desires really to be able to judge of the social life of the Hebrew Patriarchs should visit the plains of Beersheba. It was here, we are told, that Isaac passed his life. Here Abraham settled after long wanderings through the length of Palestine. Here Jacob was born, and hence he descended into Egypt. It is very notable that Palestine appears in Genesis as a country already full of cities, and in which land could only be obtained by the Hebrew immigrants by purchase from landowners already settled—the Hivites of Shechem and the Hittites of Hebron. In the pastoral plains of Beersheba, however, the wanderers ranged undisturbed even by the Philistines of Gerar. So it is to the present day. The Jordan Valley, to which Lot is related to have taken his flocks, the desert of Judah, where David fed his sheep, the plains near Dothan, and the pastures of Beersheba, are still the grazing-lands of Palestine, where nomadic shepherds range, while the higher lands are held by a settled population. Although we have no monumental records sufficiently early to compare with the narrative of Genesis, we find that the country presented the same aspect when the conquering Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties invaded it. There were then regions held by the nomads, and other regions full of fortresses and open towns.

In the history of the Patriarchs we find described a mode of life just like that of the modern Arab. The great chief or Emir dwelt in his tent among his followers, led them out to war, and allied himself to the neighbouring townsmen, with whose families, however, he scorned to intermarry. The sons of the Emir and his daughters (like Leah and Rachel) tended the flocks and herds, and strove at the wells, where countless beasts awaited their turn. The relation which the Hebrew chiefs bore to the distant paternal tribe beyond the Euphrates reminds us how Syrian Arabs still trace their descent from distant families, with the same tribal name, far off in the Nejed. The stone memorial is still raised by the Bedawi, as Jacob reared his stone of Bethel; and the covenant is still sealed by the eating of bread. Still, too, the Arab hunter brings back savoury venison to the camp, like Esau; and by the wells of Beersheba you look northwards to the same low hills which were before Isaac’s eyes when he went forth to pray in the open field—as the Arab still prays outside his camp—and “beheld the camels coming.” In the early morning, by the light of the rising sun, I have seen the camels, preceded by their giant shadows, coming in troops to the wells, guided by the shepherd-boys, whose music is the same rude pipe on which the ancient shepherds played. I have seen, too, the dark gipsy-like girls, with elf locks, blue robes, and tattooed faces, who tend the sheep as Rachel and Leah (still children) tended those of Laban before they were old enough to be restricted to the women’s side of the curtain, and to follow their mothers to the well.

The visit to Beersheba was not without its adventures. This was the only occasion on which a thief—of many who tried but were discovered by our terriers—succeeded in making his way into the tents. He took with him all our food, and we had to depend on the wild sand-grouse and plovers for our dinner. It was during the fast of Ramadan that this journey was undertaken, and the Moslem guides suffered greatly in consequence; for fasting among the Moslems in Ramadan is a very serious matter, and especially so among the primitive villagers of Judea. Not a scrap of food, not a drop of water, not a whiff of tobacco will then pass the lips of the strict Moslem between sunrise and sundown. I have seen the wrath of the spectators roused when an old man of eighty washed his mouth with water on a day of scorching east wind. We had gone down to explore an underground tank in Hebron, and as he stooped to the water we heard a voice shouting, “Ah! Hamzeh, God sees you!” and the unfortunate elder rose at once in confusion. When the sun sets, a cry goes up throughout the town or village—a shout from the men and a shrill tremulous note from the women—for then it is lawful to break the trying fast. Even children are induced by pious parents to keep Ramadan, and some zealots will continue fasting for ten days beyond the prescribed time. The Moslem year being lunar, and thus never the same year by year in relation to the seasons, it is especially at those times when Ramadan falls in September that this privation is most felt.

Not that I would lead the reader to suppose that all Moslems are thus strict in religious duty. In Islam there is as much scepticism, indifference, outright rejection of religious belief as in Christendom; and history reveals that this has always been so since Islam became a religion.

Among the antiquities of the Beersheba desert there are several rude buildings of undressed chert blocks, which may be almost of any age. It was, however, in the early centuries of Christianity that this region was apparently most fully inhabited.

The hermits who, like Hilarion, came from Egypt and settled in the Holy Land, soon gathered disciples round them; and even against their will monasteries rose by their cells, and a village round the monastery. Pious pilgrims like Antoninus, not content with seeing Palestine, ventured far into the deserts, and down to the miraculous tomb of St. Catherine in Sinai. Thus, in the fourth century, Jerome found the land full of monks and nuns, even in the wilderness; and stories which may have been told to the Arabs by these eremites still linger among them. We have early Christian accounts of Pagan rites among the natives of the Negeb, who still in the seventh century were worshipping Venus at Elusa, and the stone menhirs on Mount Sinai. There is no part of Syria in which the anchorites’ cells are not found, though in modern times they are only represented by the Jericho hermits—Abyssinians and Georgians, who, I believe, only retire to the wilderness during Lent.

Glancing back over this sketch of exploration in Judea, I only note one place of primary interest which has not been mentioned, namely, Bethlehem. It is, however, familiar to every tourist, and nothing new was added by the surveyors to what was already known concerning this city, except that the crests which Crusading knights drew upon the pillars of Constantine’s great basilica were carefully copied.

Bethlehem is a long white town on a ridge, with terraced olive groves. The population is chiefly Christian, and thrives on the manufacture of carved mother-of-pearl shells, and objects made from the bituminous shale of the desert, which pilgrims purchase. The peculiar (and probably very ancient) head-dress of the women, adorned with rows of silver coins, has often been represented in illustrated works.

The main antiquity of the place is the great basilica of Constantine, with its thirteenth-century mosaics and wooden roof. Beneath the choir is the traditional site of the “manger,” which has been constantly shown in the same place for nearly eighteen centuries. The church itself is one of the oldest in the world; and Justin Martyr, in the second century, mentions the cave. Origen also says that “there is shown in Bethlehem the cave where He was born, and the manger in the cave” (Against Celsus, I. li.), so that the Bethlehem cave-stable is noticed earlier than any other site connected with New Testament history. It is the only sacred place, as far as I know, which is mentioned before the establishment of Christianity by Constantine, yet it is remarkable that Jerome found it no longer in possession of the Christians. “Bethlehem,” he says, “is now overshadowed by the grove of Tammuz, who is Adonis; and in the cave where Christ wailed as a babe the paramour of Venus now is mourned.”

CHAPTER II.
THE SURVEY OF SAMARIA.

MY first experiences of Palestine survey were from the camp at Nâblus,[35] the ancient Shechem. The method which we then employed was very little varied throughout the whole period of our labours. The camp, consisting of three or four tents, was pitched in some convenient central position by a town or village. Thence we were able to ride eight or ten miles all round, and first visited a few of the highest hill-tops, where, when the observations with the theodolites were complete, we built great cairns of stone. The survey was trigonometrical, depending on two bases, one near Ramleh, east of Jaffa, the other in the plain of Esdraelon, north of Jenin. In 1881 I measured a third base on the Moab plateau, south of Heshbon. All these were connected by triangulation, the stations being from five to fifteen miles apart. The heights of these stations were also fixed by theodolite angles, and thus the elevations above the sea of every great mountain from Dan to Beersheba, and of those east of Jordan between the Jabbok and the Arnon, are known within a limit of four or five feet at least.

The triangles having been calculated in camp, the surveyors separated, and each with his prismatic compass worked in the detail of roads, valley beds, villages, ruins, towers, and all that is usually shown on maps of this scale by Ordnance surveyors. He took the aneroid heights of all important points, which I regard as reliable within ten or twenty feet. He was invariably accompanied by a local guide, who gave the names of the various features shown. The surveyor was never responsible for the spelling of these names. A native scribe was employed to catalogue them in Arabic letters, and thus the errors which might have been caused by the difficulty of distinguishing the sounds of Arab letters were avoided. Without such precaution it would have been impossible to make any scientific comparison with the Hebrew names of the Old Testament.

This work being complete and penned in, we were ready to move the camp. There are parts of the map which I executed to assist my staff, but, as a rule, when the triangulation was complete, I was free to spend much of my time in exploring the important sites within reach, of which I made special surveys on a larger scale.

The explorer is, however, not his own master until he becomes practically acquainted with the language of the natives; and although I had learned French in France and Italian in Italy, the acquisition of a Semitic tongue was only so far rendered easy, that no one who has learned one foreign language grammatically and idiomatically is likely to be content with any other kind of knowledge of other tongues. At the same time, those who have had the advantage of studying foreign languages on the spot know how much easier and more agreeable it is to learn them, as a child learns his mother tongue, first by practice, afterwards by the rules of the grammarian. In the East, the spoken dialects, such as those of Arabic and Turkish, differ greatly from the literary languages. In speaking, simplicity and brevity take the place of the high-flown and artificial refinements of the modern grammarian. The vernacular grammar is simplicity itself compared with the literary style, which only schoolmasters or pedants affect in everyday speech. Nor, indeed, is such indifference to strict grammar unknown even in our own land, though in a less degree, in spoken as compared with written phrase.

At first there was only time to obtain a very superficial smattering, for everyday uses, of the Fellah dialect, which is archaic and rude as compared with the Nahu or “correct” language; but it appeared to me absolutely necessary, not only to understand the Arabic alphabet, but also to become acquainted with the elements at least of grammatical structure; and for this I found leisure during the winters, and the summer holiday of 1873, when a native teacher could be obtained from Damascus. When once the unfamiliar principles of Semitic grammar are understood in one language of the small group (including Hebrew, Arabic, and the Aramean dialects), the student should be able to learn other tongues of the group by the aid of books; but my first lessons in Hebrew I owe to the kind interest of a friend since dead, who devoted time to my education in Jerusalem itself. So unlike in structure are these tongues to either Aryan or Turanian languages, that the idiom is at first hard to catch; and I doubt if any European, until he has lived in the East some time, is ever likely correctly to pronounce the gutturals of the Arabic, unless he is gifted with an ear much more sensitive than usual.

After many years’ study of the native dialect, it appears to me that its further investigation would be of great value to scholars. There can be no doubt that ordinary conversation of the peasantry preserves archaisms of sound, of idiom, and of expression which recall rather the Aramaic spoken in Palestine in the days of Christ than the pure Arabic of southern Arabia. The Syrian dialect (which is much less degraded than Egyptian) is acknowledged, even in dictionaries, to have its peculiarities. The Lebanon servants in my employ were almost unable to understand the speech of the Beni Sakhr Arabs in the Moab desert. The dialect of the towns differs, again, especially in pronunciation, from that of the peasants. The convenient auxiliaries used in daily speech are not recognised in standard grammars, and not a few familiar words of the Fellah dialect I have been unable to discover in the standard dictionaries of Lane and Freytag.[36] The Hebrew goran, “a threshing floor,” and moreg, “a threshing-sledge,” are still words used by the peasants, as is the Assyrian sada, for a “mountain,” and many other ancient words which a good Hebrew scholar will recognise. The peasantry, in short, are not, properly speaking, Arabs, but descendants, in part at least, of the old population to which the Phœnicians belonged, mingled with colonists imported by the Assyrians from Aram, and with the Nabathean and Arab tribes from the south-east. To one acquainted with such a race, the narratives of Genesis and Samuel must always read as though falling from the lips of a modern Syrian, speaking with the same terse vigorous idiom in which his fathers wrote. The Fellahin have been called “modern Canaanites,” and if by this is meant descendants of the Semitic race which the Egyptians found in Palestine before the time of the Hebrew conquest under Joshua—akin to those whose language is represented by the Moabite Stone, and the Phœnician texts from the north coast—the term seems justified by what is known; but, as we shall see a little later, there has always been another population in Syria side by side with the Semitic, of which a few traces are yet discoverable not far north of Shechem.

Ancient Shechem stood very nearly on the same site occupied by the large stone town of Nâblus, in the well-watered gorge, full of gardens of mulberry and walnut, with vineyards and olive-yards and fig trees, above which rise the barren slopes, of Ebal on the north and Gerizim on the south. About one and a half miles to the east, where the vale opens into the small plain of Moreh, is the undisputed site of Jacob’s Well; and north of this, at the foot of Ebal, the little village of Askar, among its cactus hedges, preserves the site of Sychar, mentioned in the fourth Gospel, below which is the tomb of Joseph.

It is curious that Josephus believed Joseph to have been buried at Hebron, for the Book of Joshua places his tomb at Shechem. The monument now shown is an ordinary Syrian tomb in an open-air enclosure by a little ruined mosque. The peculiar feature consists in two pedestals with shallow cups in their tops, placed one at the head, the other at the foot of the grave. I have been told that both Jews and Samaritans offer burnt-offerings at this shrine on these pillar altars, the offerings consisting of shawls, silks, and such fabrics. The same practice is observed by Jews annually at the tomb of the celebrated Simeon Bar Jochai at Meirûn, in Upper Galilee. The substitution of fabrics for animal sacrifices recalls the paper figures which the Chinese burn, representing the various sacrifices, animal or human, which in earlier ages were burned at tombs.

Shechem has long been a place of special interest, because it is the last refuge of the few survivors of the old Samaritan sect, which, according to their own records, once inhabited every part of Galilee and Samaria, and whose synagogues down to quite recent times existed in Damascus and Alexandria. Although almost every traveller visits their synagogue at Nâblus, it is very difficult to become intimately acquainted with this proud and reserved people; and there are very few persons living who have really seen the oldest of the manuscripts of the Pentateuch which they possess. Scholars, it is true, no longer attach the exaggerated value to this document which it was thought to possess when first attention was called to its existence, and before science was able to show its comparatively modern date, as indicated by the character in which it is written. Yet this venerable roll is perhaps the oldest copy of the Bible in the world, and until it has been read by a competent scholar, it is impossible to say what light it may throw on the study of the Pentateuch.

The Samaritans, according to the latest accounts which I have been able to obtain, number about 160 persons. I had opportunities not only of visiting their synagogue, but of holding a long conversation with the high priest, and questioning him concerning their traditions and literature. They claim to know not only the real tombs of Joseph and Joshua, and of the sons and grandsons of Aaron, sites which are now identified, but also the burial-places of all the sons of Jacob, of which tombs many are also revered by Moslems; but the reliability of such traditions is not very certain. The Samaritan chronicles are not traceable beyond the Middle Ages; but one of these (to be distinguished from their “Book of Joshua,” with its wild legends of Alexander the Great) is a very sober work, to which successive high priests are said to have added brief notes of the chief events of their age.[37] Of this chronicle I made careful study, and found that, as regards its geography at least, it is possible to obtain a very clear idea, and many interesting notices are included of places otherwise very little known in all parts of Palestine. This practice of extending a historic journal from time to time is worthy the attention of students of other ancient literatures; and although the chronicle only claims to have been started by Eleazar ben Amran in 1149 A.D., it has been carried down to 1859 by successive authors. This chronicle presents, as above noted, a great contrast to their “Book of Joshua,” which is full of Samaritan folk-lore tales, and consists of two parts, one penned in 1362 A.D., and the second in 1513 A.D. Of their copies of the Pentateuch, kept in the Synagogue, the oldest of those usually shown dates only from 1456 A.D.; the date of the oldest of all, called “Abishuah’s Roll,” is not yet known, but it is certainly very ancient, the ink being much faded and the parchment decayed. The fact that a Samaritan text of the sixth century is built into a tower near the Synagogue, and preserves letters of the peculiar character employed by this people, seems to show that not impossibly Abishuah’s Roll may be as old as the sixth or seventh century of our era.

The Samaritans are a fine race, above the average of Orientals in stature, and possessing a beauty of feature and complexion very like the best type of south European Jews. Even in the peculiar crinkle of the hair they resemble the Jews, and there can, to my mind, be no doubt that they are more closely allied by blood to their great rivals than they are to any other Oriental people. It is impossible here to inquire into the details of their history, which are very generally known, but the inquiries made by us at various times agree with former researches in indicating that, in many particulars, the pietists of Nâblus have preserved the letter of their law in more primitive degree than have even the Karaites or other puritan Jewish sects which discard Talmudic teaching. So great is their terror of defilement, that they will not even close the eyes of their dead, and employ Moslems to prepare them for burial. In this extreme observance they resemble the Falashas or Abyssinian Jewish converts, who even take the sick out of their houses before death. One very curious custom is observed when, on the eighth day, the Samaritan boys are circumcised. An ancient hymn is sung, which includes a prayer for a certain Roman soldier named German, because he connived at circumcision when forbidden by the Romans, and refused to accept any reward for so doing, asking only to be remembered in their prayers; which desire has been respected for perhaps sixteen hundred years.

Shechem, the home of the Samaritans, has often, from the twelfth century to the present day, been confounded with the city of Samaria, five miles farther to the north-west; but at the latter site there are, I believe, no Samaritans living. The peasant population of Palestine in this central district differs somewhat, however, from that of either Galilee or Judea. It was here that we found the peculiar head-dress which recalls the “round tires like the moon” that roused the Hebrew prophet’s wrath (Isa. iii. 18). These horse-shoe head-dresses, made up of large silver coins laid overlapping, are worn only by married women, often with a crimson head-veil. Some of the little terra-cotta statues of Ashtoreth which are found in Cyprus and in Phœnicia, representing a naked goddess, have just the same crescent-shaped bonnet, and it was perhaps originally connected with the worship of this deity, and therefore hateful to the servant of Jehovah.

The site of Samaria is that of a considerable town, upon an isolated hill, with springs in the valley and olives climbing the terraced slopes. On the summit a colonnade, probably of the age of Herod the Great, runs round a long quadrangle, enclosing the site of the temple built in honour of Augustus by Herodian servility; and on one side are the ruins of the great Crusading Church of St. John, in the crypt of which was shown his tomb. It was believed in the Middle Ages that the head of the Baptist was here preserved. St. John had apparently two heads, since another was shown in Damascus.

There is no doubt that the tomb in question is an ancient Hebrew sepulchre. Perhaps it may be that of the “Kings of Israel.” At least eleven bodies could have been here interred, and there were only thirteen Kings of Israel between Omri and the fall of Samaria.[38] An ancient stone door once closed this tomb, carved in panels like other doors of tombs in Palestine belonging to an early age. One which was found farther south was adorned with the heads of lions and bulls, like those found in Phœnician sarcophagi. The date of these monuments is uncertain. In Lycia, Sir Charles Fellows found doors sculptured with exactly the same ornamental details, which may be as old at least as 500 B.C.

East of Shechem, and to the south, there are mountains more rugged than any south of Galilee. The border of Samaria, which divided it from Judea, ran through these mountains, following the line of the principal valley bed. It had never been laid down with any attempt at exactness before the Survey, but now that the position of the border towns is correctly fixed, it becomes possible to trace it throughout. The Judean outpost on the north-east was the extraordinary conical mountain called Sartaba, which rises from the Jordan Valley. This little-visited peak was thoroughly explored. On the summit a square foundation was discovered, surrounded by an oval rampart. The cone has been artificially cut in places, and is some 270 feet high. The remains may be those of the fourteenth-century fortress, but the site has a much earlier history.

On their return from exile the Jews were accustomed to fix the first day of each month by actual observation of the new moon, and according to the Mishna, the announcement was made throughout the Holy Land by means of bonfires on the mountains. One of these bonfire stations was Sartaba, and it is not impossible that the remains of extensive ash-deposits observed on the mountain were traces of such beacons. The practice was open to mistake, for the Jews assert that the Samaritans used to light fires on neighbouring heights with the malicious intention of confusing the Jewish calendar, and making the Passover feast to fall on the wrong day. Whether we are to credit the statement that this chain of beacons extended even to Mesopotamia is doubtful, but the Jews certainly long kept up intercourse with their brethren in Babylonia.

On the south of Shechem rises the great rounded top of Gerizim, whence the eye ranges from Gilead to the Mediterranean, and on the north to dusky Carmel and snowy Hermon. On the south side of the mountain is Kefr Hâris, where, according to the Samaritans, Joshua was buried—a tradition nowise discordant with the statements of the Old Testament, and which can be traced back at least to the fourth century. Here also the peasants show the tomb of his father, Nun. On the mountain-side, near the summit, the Passover is still eaten, and here, as the Samaritans say, once stood their temple. There are no remains of any great building, but a sacred slab of rock, in which is one of those curious “cup hollows” so frequently found in connection with prehistoric monuments. On the west, the Sharon plain extends beyond the olive groves of the foot-hills to the dark ruined ramparts of Cæsarea—a region which was surveyed in the spring of 1873, and many interesting ruins were then explored. It is one of the most lawless parts of the country, and was then but little cultivated. Scattered oak woods, sandy dunes, marshes, and boggy streams occupy great part of its extent; and on the north is the Crocodile River, still the dwelling of these monsters, who are not found in other streams, but lie in the muddy river under the papyrus or amid the reeds as comfortably as in the Nile.

The crocodiles of this region are mentioned by many writers, from Pliny downwards. A curious story was told in the thirteenth century, according to which they were imported from Egypt by a lord of Cæsarea, in order that his brother might become their victim. The brothers went to bathe in the river, but the wicked lord went in first and was eaten, while his innocent brother escaped.

This part of the plain of Sharon and the west side of the Esdraelon plain are the only places in Palestine, so far as I have been able to ascertain, where Turkoman encampments are found. In Northern Syria the Turkoman camps are more numerous. I have visited their tents in the plains near Kadesh on Orontes, and in the oak-dotted vale where the Eleutherus rises. To the casual visitor they seem to be Bedu, and indeed those in the Sharon plain have almost forgotten their original language. We know historically that a horde of the followers of Ghazan Khan in 1295 A.D., consisting, it is said, of 18,000 tents, came down to Damascus and settled on the coasts of Palestine. Probably the existing Turkoman tribes are the last relics of this horde; but in this mixture of Tartars with the Semitic race of Syria we see still surviving a condition of population as old as the days of Abraham. It is now the general opinion of competent scholars that the non-Semitic population which the Egyptians in the sixteenth century B.C. found in Syria—more especially in the north—was a Mongolic race. The monuments show that in feature they were Mongolian and that they wore the Tartar pigtail, and the names of their chiefs and towns tell the same tale. The Turkomans are degraded representatives of a kindred race. The Turkish masters of Palestine hold now the same position which the Hittite princes held in the days of Abraham and Solomon as over-lords in a country whose inhabitants were mainly of another race.

The greater part of the Jordan Valley lies within the boundaries of Samaria, and it was for this reason that Galilean Jews travelling to Jerusalem crossed the Jordan and journeyed down the left bank to Jericho, where they crossed again without having approached the country of heresy. As regards the western borders of Samaria, there is less certainty perhaps, but such information as we possess seems to show that the limits of this province must be extended to the sea-shore.[39] Indeed, had it been otherwise, the journey from Galilee along the coast would always have been preferable to that along the east side of the Jordan Valley. It must be confessed that the Samaritans possessed some of the best land in Palestine.

Since the greater part of the Jordan Valley thus belonged to Samaria, the exploration of the valley may be here noticed. The survey of the plains of Jericho has been recorded in the preceding chapter. From Jericho in the early spring of 1874 the party proceeded northwards, and by April, in spite of very bad weather, the work was finished within a few miles of the Sea of Galilee.

The total length of the valley is about a hundred miles from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. The level of the latter Sir Charles Wilson has determined as 1292 feet below the Mediterranean. The former, as determined by the line of levels which, under a grant from the British Association, I commenced in 1875, and which was completed in 1877, is 682 feet below the same datum. Thus the average fall of the river is 600 feet in a hundred miles, but the upper part of the course is the more rapid, falling about 400 feet in fifty miles. The width is pretty constant along the whole course, the evaporation counterbalancing the additional flow of the Jabbok and other affluents. The volume of water brought down by the Jordan, and evaporated during the summer months in the Dead Sea, makes a difference of fifteen feet between the summer and winter surface of that sea over an area of about 400 square miles. The flow is greatest when the snows on Hermon begin to melt, about the time of Passover, when “Jordan overfloweth its banks all the time of harvest;” for harvest in this deep valley is much earlier than even in the Sharon plains. The river flows in a narrow bed between banks of marl, and the Zor, or depressed channel on either side, averages about a mile across, flanked by white cliffs and steep slopes fifty feet high. In high flood this channel is at times all under water, and the river becomes about a mile wide, but soon sinks within its natural borders. The Zor is filled with brushwood of tamarisk, agnus-castus, and other vegetation, and in places the river is hidden between the bushes and cane beds. Near the fords it is seen as a brown swirling stream with a rapid current. In the upper part of its course there are numerous fords and small rapids. No less than forty crossing places, nearly all of which were previously unknown, were marked by the surveyors.

The most interesting discovery in connection with the river was that of the ford called ’Abârah. The name was found in one place only, and does not recur in the ten thousand names collected during the survey. It was applied by the Arabs to one of the chief fords leading over to Bashan, in the vicinity of Bethshean, where the road from Galilee comes down the tributary valley of Jezreel. ’Abârah means “ferry” or “crossing,” and there is no doubt that it is the same word which occurs in Beth Abârah, “the house of the crossing,” mentioned (John i. 28) as a place where John preached, and where, according to the usual opinion, Christ was Himself baptized.

The traditional site of the Baptism, from the fourth century down to the present day, lies much farther south, at the ford east of Jericho, where Israel crossed from Moab to Gilgal; but the distance from this spot to Cana of Galilee is so great, that it is impossible to reconcile this tradition with the New Testament account. Nor is there anything in that account which points to this southern site. The visit yearly paid by Greek pilgrims to the traditional spot, near Justinian’s old monastery of St. John on Jordan, has often been described. In the sixth century Antoninus speaks of the vast crowd which used there to assemble at the Feast of Epiphany, when it was believed that Jordan yearly rolled itself back and stood still till the baptisms were ended. “And all the men of Alexandria who have ships, with their crews, holding baskets full of spices and balsams, at the hour when the priest blesses the water, before they begin to baptize, throw those baskets into the river, and take thence holy water, with which they sprinkle their ships before they leave port for a voyage.”

It must be confessed that these offerings to the Jordan savour of paganism rather than of Christianity. Sennacherib, before he crossed the river-mouths at the Persian Gulf, threw gold and silver fishes into the water. Alexander the Great, in like manner, according to Arrian, offered a golden goblet to the Indus. In Etruria the Lake of Ciliegeto was found full of bronze ex votos, with coins and other objects, thrown by pious visitors into the water, and other instances are known in India. Nor is this a solitary example in which the practices of Byzantine Christians in Palestine are intimately connected with the older pagan rites of the country.

There is, as before said, no strong reason for accepting this traditional site for Bethabara. Some of the earliest MSS. of the Gospel read Bethania for Bethabara; but Origen disputed this reading, and Bethania is probably the later form of the Hebrew word Bashan. Bethabara is found at least in the Codex Ephraemi (C²), and Origen says that nearly all copies of the Gospel in his time had this reading. It would seem then probable that the scene is to be laid, not in the lower, but in the upper part of the Jordan Valley, where the highway from Galilee crosses over to Bashan, where, gay with flowers and carpeted with grass, the plain, dotted with stunted palms, extends between the basalt heights crowned by the Crusading Castle of Beauvoir and the long slopes round Pella, the home of the early Ebionites, who fled from the destruction of Jerusalem, and formed a quiet Christian community in the wilderness where John had baptized.

Few more beautiful scenes can be desired than that which the Jordan Valley presents in spring, when the grass has grown long, and the eye looks down from the hill on the wide stretches of varied colour which fields of wild-flowers present. The pale pink of the phlox, of the wild geranium and cistus, the yellow of the St. John’s wort and of the marigold, the deep red of the pheasant’s-eye and anemone, the lavender of the wild stock are mingled with white and purple clover, white garlic and purple salvia, snapdragons, star-daisies, and the earlier narcissus. The retem, or white broom—the juniper of Scripture—is then in blossom; the long wreaths of vapour cling to the stony mountains of Gilead, and hide its oak glades and firs. The stork pilgrims have come from the south, bringing the spring-time, and rest their weary wings by the marshy brooks round Bethshean, where the chorus of frogs day and night invites their own destruction.

But towards the south the saltness of the soil is too great for such vegetation. For five or six miles north of the Dead Sea the marl flats support only the low bushes of the alkali plant. Even half-way up the valley there are salt springs and tracts of barren salt marl; and one of our camps in the narrow gorge called Wâdy Mâleh (“the Valley of Salt”) was placed beside a hot sulphurous spring too brackish to drink. For several days we experienced much discomfort in this volcanic ravine, and had to fetch water from a considerable distance. These traces of volcanic action occur from north to south on both sides of the Jordan Valley. Beds of lava and basalt occur both west and east of the Sea of Galilee, and again east of the Dead Sea. Hot springs are found on either shore of that sea, and again at the famous Baths of Gadara, and at those of Hammath near Tiberias. Even in times long after the great fault had rent this mighty gorge from north to south, tearing asunder the sandstone beds, and bending down the chalk strata on the west, forming the chain of lakes between Hermon and the Arabah of which the Dead Sea and Sea of Galilee are the last relics, and of which we traced the raised beaches far up the valley—long after all these convulsions, fiery streams of lava flowed over the plains of Bashan, and reached the shores of Tiberias, and covered the cliffs to the west with black volcanic rocks, which form rolling downs of treeless land. Nor was this energy spent even in late historic times, when the great earthquake of 1837 overthrew the town of Safed, and raised the temperature of the hot springs in the valley.

Among the curious delusions which seem destined again and again to recover from the ridicule cast upon them by practical knowledge is the famous fallacy of a Jordan Valley Canal. Leaving aside the question of an expenditure to which that of the Panama Canal cannot compare, the theorists who have proposed this wild scheme do not seem to reflect that the whole volume of the Jordan never suffices permanently to alter the Dead Sea level. The canal then must let in much more water than the river. If it were possible to fill this valley to sea-level—as no doubt it may once have been filled by Nature herself—not only would the crops of the inhabitants be overwhelmed, with the villages of Jericho and Delhemiyeh and the town of Tiberias, but the sea so formed would extend to a breadth of from ten to twenty miles, covering all the villages and corn-lands of the valley of Jezreel. It is almost incredible that this chimera should have received serious support from influential and monied believers in the unlimited powers of modern engineering. A very simple calculation shows that were the sea admitted by such a canal as was proposed in 1883, it might pour into the valley, but could never make headway against the enormous power of evaporation in this burning gulf. Even on the higher plateau near Damascus the rushing stream of the Abana is unable to penetrate far into the desert, and sinks in the marshes of the Birket ’Ateibeh.[40]

The exploration of the valley was one of the most trying periods of the Survey. At first a constant downpour of rain, with clouds scudding along below sea-level, and storms of snow and hail interrupting the observations from the hill stations, delayed our progress. Afterwards the want of fresh water at Wâdy Mâleh proved very trying; then the marshy land round Bethshean brought fever into the camp; lastly, the intense heat obliged us to work in the very early hours of dawning light, and nearly cost me a sunstroke.

There was also great difficulty in obtaining supplies and transport. Our party was by this time so well organised that no time, as a rule, was lost in changing camp. But in the valley we waited day after day in the wet, suffering some of us from rheumatism, and unable to move the sodden and heavy tents. Our first camp was at Wâdy Fusail, near the site of the ancient Phasaelis; and here we found it almost impossible to get any of the Bedu to stay with us. The reason, true or not, which they gave for avoiding the place was, that it is haunted by a ghoul,—that evil and corpse-eating demon whose haunts are shown all over Syria. More than once, while exploring a dark cavern or descending a rock-cut tunnel, we have heard the frightened guide shouting outside, and found him astonished to see us emerge in safety from the ghoul’s den. The ghoul lives also in the great dolmens and in hermits’ caves; but though I have felt on one occasion, in a tunnel where it was necessary to crawl flat, the frightened bats creeping in my hair, I have never been privileged to see or hear a ghoul.

The Wâdy Fusail ghoul, however, was the cause of much delay, and when at last we induced the Arabs to come by daylight with camels, we found that they never used saddles, and their camels were, indeed, almost untrained and very small. We missed the sturdy beasts used by the peasantry, and had very great difficulty in loading the desert dromedaries at all.

It was a pleasure, in the times when the party was well provided with transport, to watch the expedition on the march. The horsemen, on trusty Arab ponies, never sick or sorry, never baffled by the stoniest bridle-path, came first, with our breed of white terriers, which were hardly recognised as dogs by the natives, and which often, night after night, saved us from the depredations of determined horse-thieves. Behind the horsemen came our own baggage-mules, carrying all that was needful for the first founding of the new camp; behind these, again, the camels with heavy stores swung slowly along, while the Maronites, on their donkeys, the Bedu guides on horses and dromedaries, formed a picturesque straggling band, which, as reviewed from a low hill, sometimes extended over half a mile of road. It is pleasant to reflect that, in the years we worked together, there was no dissension, no desertion, and no grumbling in the camp. We suffered together in seasons of sickness, but we stuck together as long as health lasted, and till the work, was done.

One of the most picturesque incidents of the Survey was a night-raid which occurred at Sulem (the ancient Shunem), where, with Sergeant Black, I was for a few days at a detached camp. At this time the difficulties of transport obliged us to separate from the rest of the party, and to remain without meat, and with very little other food, for three days. In the darkness, after a fatiguing day’s work, we were roused by the shouts of the villagers, and hastily loading our shot-guns, we turned out to witness a skirmish with the Bedu. Whether the raid was intended to capture our horses or to drive off cattle from the village was uncertain; but the dogs discovered a robber just about to cut the halters, and the hillside was for some time illumined by the flashes from the old matchlocks of the villagers, while the war-song of the retreating Arabs faded in the distance. Failing to surprise, the raiders quickly gave up their enterprise, but drove off a stray cow in the darkness. With such night-attacks we became more familiar afterwards in the wilder parts of the Moabite deserts.

The hardships of this campaign cost us dear. They were severe for the strongest, and for my comrade, Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake, they were fatal. As already stated, the terrible Jericho fever had undermined his strength; and though he was successfully nursed through that attack, I have always regretted that he would not hear advice, tendered with the most friendly intention, that he should leave Palestine at least for a time. During the months we spent in the valley he suffered constantly from ague, asthma, and the terrible fever sores, from which no member of the party escaped. Finally, he was almost unable to ride, and when we reached the higher lands, rest was absolutely necessary. I left him with anxious foreboding; and as he wished during my absence in England to make a tour in Northern Syria, I wrote to friends at Damascus, begging them not to let him travel alone. Hardly, however, had he reached Jerusalem when the fever again seized him, and his grave is now marked by a simple monument in the Protestant cemetery on Sion. There can be no doubt that he fell a victim to his own earnest desire to continue his work after his powers of endurance were exhausted.

The share which he took in Palestine exploration has been fully acknowledged in more than one publication. In many respects he was peculiarly fitted for an explorer’s work. Of tall and commanding appearance, with a grave and reserved manner, such as most impresses the Oriental, with a kindliness for man and beast, which made the natives who had long served him much attached to his person, with a power of silent endurance, which made him scorn to utter a single complaint in the midst of trial and suffering constantly endured—especially in frequent attacks of asthma, Mr. Drake was a pattern of that class of Englishmen of whom we are proudest. Had he lived, his name would have been widely known as a bold and trained explorer. I have heard a French traveller, after talking with him, exclaim, “If we had such men among the youths of France, it would be better for our country.” I am happy to be able to reflect that, during those three years of constant intimacy, in the trying isolation of our camp-life, we never fell out; that our last hand-shake was that of comrades who had suffered and worked with single purpose; and that he trusted me to represent at home, at its proper value, the share which he had contributed to our common work.

CHAPTER III.
RESEARCHES IN GALILEE.

THE third province of Western Palestine is divided into two regions—Upper and Lower Galilee. Lower Galilee was surveyed in 1872 and 1875. Upper Galilee was completed in 1877 under the direction of my companion, Lieutenant Kitchener, R.E., who joined the party in the autumn of 1875. During this year, when the field party was engaged in Upper Galilee, I was employed in London in charge of the drawing of the map, executed by Ordnance Survey draughtsmen, and writing the Memoirs of the country already surveyed, consisting of five-sixths of the total area. Upper Galilee, however, I visited in 1873, and again in 1882, and have thus had occasion to explore almost every important site within its limits.

The boundaries of Lower Galilee include the great plain of Esdraelon and the Nazareth hills, with the smaller plains to the north and east, which stretch to the mountains of Naphtali. No part of Palestine is fuller of interesting sites, and several important discoveries were here made, including a synagogue in ruins on Mount Carmel, and the probable remains of the city of Megiddo.

Before the survey was made, Megiddo—one of the most important places in Palestine—was supposed to be identical with the Roman city of Legio. The reason which induced Dr. Robinson to make this suggestion seems to have been that Megiddo is several times mentioned in the Old Testament with Taanach, a ruined town near Legio. In other passages, however, Megiddo is noticed with Bethshean and Ibleam, places east of the great plain, so that the argument has no great force. There is only one place in Palestine where a name at all like that of Megiddo exists, namely, at the large ruin of Mujedd’a, a well-watered site at the foot of Mount Gilboa, just where the valley of Jezreel opens into the Jordan plain south-west of Bethshean.

Megiddo appears as an important place very early in history. Thothmes III. here fought a great battle against the allied Canaanites on his way to Damascus, and has left us a catalogue of his spoils, which gives a most vivid picture of Canaanite civilisation. Chariots of silver and gold, precious stones, bronze armour, Phœnician arms, gold and silver currency, statues and tables of precious metal, ivory, and cedar, are mentioned as Canaanite trophies, with wine, incense, corn, sycamore wood, goats and oxen, mulberries, figs, and “green wood of their fair forests,”—perhaps referring to the oaks of Mount Tabor. Such, according to the Egyptian monuments, were the products of Palestine in the sixteenth century B.C., before the Hebrew invasion under Joshua.

About two centuries later, an Egyptian traveller records how he came down from the shores of the Sea of Galilee to the “fords of Jordan” and to the “passage of Megiddo.” In the Bible we find Megiddo to be the place where Josiah awaited Necho, the Egyptian king, then on his way to Carchemish, on the Euphrates. In every case this point appears to have been that where Egyptian invaders fought for the passage of Jordan on their way to Assyria. There is little now to be seen at Mujedd’a beyond a mound such as marks the site of many another famous city, but the spot is one well fitted for a great town, on account of the fine supply of water from the springs below.[41] The site has a further interest, because from Megiddo was named the Har-Mageddon, or “Mountain of Megiddo,” better known as Armageddon (Rev. xvi. 16)—the author of the Apocalypse evidently referring to the old battle-field of Canaan, which is also noticed in the Book of Zechariah (xii. 11), in connection with the mourning of Hadadrimmon.

Above Megiddo on the west are the barren ridges of Gilboa, where Saul fell in battle, and between this and the Carmel range is the V-shaped corn plain of Esdraelon. In the north-east corner of this plain is the volcanic cone of Nebi Dhahy, and beyond this, on the north, the mole-hill form of Tabor. Nebi Dhahy is named from a little white saint-house on its summit, sacred to a Moslem hero, whose bones are said to have been carried hither from the Kishon by his dog. Probably he is to be connected with Dhahya el Kelbi (Dhahya of the Dog), who was converted before the Battle of the Ditch, according to Moslem chronicles. It is curious that sacred dogs occur more than once in Palestine folk-tales, for the dog is an unclean beast to the Moslem, while, on the other hand, to the Persians it was amongst the most sacred of animals. The Tyrian Hercules was accompanied by a dog, and a sculpture which perhaps represents this group is still to be seen on the rocks not far from Tyre.

Mount Tabor is one of the few places in Western Palestine where the oak grows as a forest tree in abundance. There is an oak wood also west of Nazareth, and an open forest of scattered oak trees in the Sharon plain, but east of Jordan it is found in Mount Gilead in greater luxuriance. In the glades of Tabor it is said that the fallow-deer still lingers, but we never came across one of them. On Carmel, on the other hand, the roebuck is still hunted, and this species—the existence of which in Palestine was quite unknown before—we found to bear the name Yahmûr, which occurs in the Bible as the Hebrew word for a species of deer. I afterwards found that the Yahmûr was known to the Arabs east of Jordan, no doubt as a denizen of the oak woods of Mount Gilead.

Tabor has been pointed out from the time when the heretical “Gospel of the Hebrews” was penned as the site of the Transfiguration. There are ruins of a great Crusading Church on its summit, dedicated to this event; but the New Testament clearly points to some part of Hermon as the site intended. This is not the only instance in which traditions, dating back even earlier than the fourth century A.D., are in conflict with the plain reading of the Bible narratives.

The chain of Carmel, a region little visited by tourists, presents one of the most picturesque districts in Galilee. At one time it seems to have been fully populated, and traces of vineyards were discovered in many places. The main ridge runs for fifteen miles, and rises at the highest point 1700 feet above the Mediterranean. The north slopes are steep, and in parts precipitous, but on the south-west long spurs run out towards the sea. A dense brushwood of oak, mastic, and arbutus covers the greater part of the chain; and of the former villages, only two are now inhabited by Druze families from the north. The generally accepted view places the scene of Elijah’s sacrifice on the highest part of the crest, still called “the place of burning,” but the tradition represented by a large monastery above the promontory which juts into the Mediterranean, points to the opposite end of the ridge.

The most interesting discoveries on Carmel were made in 1872, including the ruins of a small Jewish synagogue and a tomb with a Hebrew inscription. Inscribed tombs in Palestine are almost unknown, three of the five as yet discovered being found by my party. That near Ain Sinia (the ancient Jeshanah), found by Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake, has been already noticed. The text is probably of about the first century B.C., and includes the name of “Moses bar Eleazar ... the priest.” A second was in the Jordan Valley; the third, on the south side of Carmel, records the name of Eleazar bar Azariah. The forms of the letters are ancient and peculiar; the name recalls that of a very celebrated Rabbi who died in Galilee in 135 A.D. There are many gravestones and inscribed sarcophagi in early square Hebrew characters, both at Jerusalem and at Jaffa, but no such archaic text has elsewhere been found on a rock-cut tomb. The letters are rudely cut over the tomb-door, and were originally painted red to increase their distinctness.

A very unpleasant adventure occurred to me in connection with the exploration of the group of tombs where this inscription was found. As before said, the region was lawless. I have been stalked by the “club-bearing” brigand Arabs in the plains to the west, and in many of the tombs we found skulls of recent date, often with marks of violence. The rock cemetery near Umm ez Zeinât, to which I now refer, was remarkable, because the tomb-doors were roughly closed with piled-up stones. I did not pay much attention to this, or to a skeleton which I found in one tomb, but I retreated somewhat rapidly from another when, striking a light, I found myself kneeling in a large chamber, and surrounded with quite fresh corpses of both sexes. As Moslems are buried east and west, with the face to Mecca, whereas these bodies lay in various directions on the floor, it seemed probable that they were those of murdered persons, or of the victims of some epidemic disease.

The Galilean synagogues are among the most interesting ruins in Palestine. They were known before the Survey, many having being visited, and even excavated, by Sir Charles Wilson. The Carmel example was the only one added to the list, and was much less perfect than some examples in Upper Galilee. Synagogues are indeed mentioned in the New Testament, but in Palestine they seem to have become important chiefly after the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. Synagogues are noted in one of the Psalms (lxxiv. 8) in the English version, but the Hebrew word in this passage (properly “meeting-places”) is not the same usually applied to the buildings of a later age in the Talmud. The architectural style of the synagogues is a curious imitation of Roman architecture of the Antonine period, and it is to this age that Jewish tradition refers the building of the Galilean synagogues. It appears to me very doubtful if any one of these structures was in existence in the time of Christ. The Hebrew text which occurs on the gateway of the Kefr Bir’im synagogue is ascribed by competent authority (from the forms of the letters) to the second or third century of our era. The text runs in a single line under the semi-classic mouldings of the lintel stone, consisting, as read by Renan, of the words, “Peace be to this place, and upon all the places of God. Joseph the Levite, the son of Levi, put up this lintel. A blessing rest upon his work.”

It is easy for those who think only of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus and of the persecution of the Jews by Christian emperors to forget how peaceful and prosperous was the life of the Galilean Rabbis in the second century under the tolerant Antonines. After the fatal revolt of Bar Cochebas, the Sanhedrim sat for a while at Jamnia in Philistia, but gradually the centre was shifted to Galilee, and soon Tiberias became the central focus of Judaism in Palestine. It was here that the Mishna was written, and many are the famous teachers of the Talmud whose graves were made in the Galilean mountains or on the shores of Gennesareth. To this period of toleration it is therefore natural to attribute the execution of works as ambitious as are the synagogues still standing in ruins.

One of the most curious facts connected with these buildings is the frequent representation of animal forms. In one case I copied two well-designed lions flanking a vase, and on Carmel a rude repetition of the same design occurs. In other instances rams’ heads and a hare are represented in relief; yet there was perhaps no period when the commands of the Law, which forbade the representation of the likeness of any living thing, were more rigorously observed. In Moslem art, also, it has always been considered impious to carve the figures of beasts and birds; yet I have found on the walls of towns and castles representations of lions clearly due to Moslem sculptors. In this case there is less difficulty, because the newly converted Mongols and Turks very probably rebelled against such restrictions, having long been accustomed to the use of heraldic crests; but it is hard to reconcile the ornamentation of the synagogues with the letter of the Law, so strictly enforced by the Rabbis.

The synagogues are long buildings, divided into walks by rows of pillars, and having generally the entrance doors on the south; perhaps because, as we learn from Rabbinical writers, the north side was considered unlucky. At the doorway end of the building are generally found two double columns, fitted to give extra support. It was suggested to me by a gentleman, whose name unfortunately escapes my memory, that these pillars must have been intended to carry the gallery for the women; for it was a custom in Israel, even when the Temple was still standing, to separate the sexes, the women being placed in an upper balcony, where they could not be seen by the men, just as we find the mosques of the present day to be arranged, or as the great church of St. Sophia at Constantinople is built with spacious galleries for women.

Perhaps the best-known spot in Galilee is the brow of the hill above Nazareth, whence the traveller commands a view of the greater part of the province. On the north is the high rough chain where Safed stands; on the east, the plain where the Crusading kingdom was crushed by Saladin; on the south, Tabor and Gilboa, and Ebal blue in the distance; on the west, the dark outline of bushy Carmel, the round bay, and the city of St. Jean d’Acre; in the nearer mid-distance, the great plain of Issachar and the oak woods of Zebulon. On every side the memory of great battles rises to the mind. By the springs of Kishon, under Tabor, Barak defeated the iron chariots of Canaan, which sank in the boggy stream; farther south, the Philistines defeated Saul; up the valley of Jezreel came Jehu, driving furiously to Jezreel; and farther down the two battles of Megiddo were fought. Round Acre the traces of Napoleon’s siege-works may still be seen; and it was at the battle of Tabor that the simple-minded Junot won his fame, driving the Turks into the same swamps in which the forces of Sisera perished. Near Seffurieh, on the north, the Christian host gathered when it went forth to meet the Moslems coming up from Tiberias on the fatal day of the battle of Hattin. There is no region in Syria where great hosts have so frequently met in great and decisive combats.

When first we look at the map of a country, it is hard to realise how few are the points where armies can meet; but the student of history and of geography knows well that simple physical causes, ever present, so narrow the lines of advance that famous battles constantly recur in the same places—whether at some mountain pass, by the fords of some considerable river, or beside the springs on which an army depends for water. Thus not only have the battle-fields of Palestine proved to be the same in all ages, but, even with our somewhat changed methods and new tactics, it is certain that future battles, if they take place in Syria, must be on the same fields, by Tabor at Megiddo, or farther north, where the main road crosses the Euphrates, at the old battle-field of Carchemish.

There are other memories which this famous view calls up to the mind. The little town of Nain, where the widow’s son was brought out to meet the Saviour and His followers; the long road from Shunem to the wilds of Carmel, pursued by the mother who went to seek Elisha; the paths leading to Cana and to Bethabarah; the many chapels which recall episodes in the life of the Christ. These spots have all become sacred within the last nineteen centuries, and their associations mingle strangely with those of battle and disaster; but Galilee always holds a different place in our minds from any other part of Palestine, because it is the cradle of Christianity and the chief scene of the Gospel narratives.

Of Nazareth itself there is little to be said. It was always a secluded and unimportant place, and probably at the present day is larger and more important than even when it was the see of a Latin bishop. The cave-cisterns, which have been traditionally regarded for many centuries as the “Holy House,” of which part was carried by angels to Loretto, are enclosed in a modern church on the foundations of a Byzantine chapel, converted later into a Crusading cathedral. The Greek church farther north, over the spring head, is the reputed site of the Annunciation, according to the Eastern belief. Another Christian sect was busy, when I first visited Nazareth, in consecrating a round table of rock, which seemed to be newly hewn, but which was to be revered as the Mensa Christi, where Jesus had once sat with His disciples. Such sites have little claim to attention, since no hint is to be found in the Gospels of their locality or preservation. Nor are the mediæval legends connected with the “Leap of our Lord,” at the cliff where the road runs up to Nazareth from the great plain, of interest, save to the student of the curious Crusading chronicles. Antoninus, the pious pilgrim of the time of Justinian, says that “in this city the beauty of the Hebrew women is so great that no more beautiful women are found among the Hebrews, and this, they say, was granted them by the Blessed Mary, who they say was their mother.” The same is said in our own times of the Christian women of the town, and of those in Bethlehem also. Certainly their type of beauty is very superior to that of the peasant women of Moslem villages. The Nazareth girls are more Italian than Arab in feature, and often very comely; but there are many ways of explaining this besides the theory of Crusading ancestry. We must not forget that in Syria mixed types, half Aryan, have long existed, due to Greek, or Italian, or Frankish forefathers, and the blue eyes sometimes seen in Syria may be due to yet later admixture of European blood. More weight is, I think, to be given to such facts than to a comparison with blue and green eyes in the faded pictures at Karnak, which represent the Canaanites. The fairness of the Nazareth women is denied by Père Lievin’s orthodox guide-book, and by the Franciscan fathers—mainly Italians—who have monasteries at Nazareth and at Bethlehem.

North of Nazareth lie the two sites which have at various times been regarded as representing Cana of Galilee. It is curious that Robinson, usually so careful, has confused them together. The one is the Christian village of Kefr Kenna, which was certainly regarded, before the Crusaders arrived, as the true site. Thus Antoninus places it three miles from Sepphoris, which can only apply to Kefr Kenna. The other site is the ruin of Kânah, four miles farther north. The distances given by writers of the twelfth century show most clearly that this was the supposed site in Crusading times. Robinson has twisted the earlier traditions, making them to apply to the more distant ruin; but the reader can measure the distances on the map for himself. This is not the only case in which the views of the Frankish monks of the Latin kingdom differed from the earlier traditions of the Eastern Church, but it is hard to say which is in this case the more reliable, though the opinion of most writers is in favour of Kefr Kenna.[42]

The Buttauf plain is for the most part arable land, well cultivated, but towards the north there is a pestilent swamp surrounded by reeds—whence the name Kânah, from the “canes.” Camping on the borders of this unhealthy morass, we suffered from the inevitable fever, as well as from the most notable mosquitoes in Palestine. The delay at this spot was, however, unavoidable, since the line of levels had to be carried across this plain from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee, and accurate levelling is not rapidly completed in any country. Here also we examined, more closely than our predecessors, one of the smaller synagogues, and I was interested to find that its dimensions were multiples of a cubit of sixteen inches, as are also many dimensions of the Jerusalem Temple. The researches of the great Jewish writer Maimonides point to this length for the Jewish unit of measurement, which was not the same as the Egyptian cubit of about twenty-one inches—a question which is of no little importance in the study of Jewish antiquities.

On the east side of the Buttauf plain, not far north of the curious cromlech now shown as the scene of “Feeding the Multitude,” rises the dark crag of the “Horns of Hattin”—a place celebrated for its connection with the great battle in which Saladin defeated the forces of Christendom. The story of that battle, of the fatal dissensions among the Christians, and their lack of strategical skill, their vacillation and rashness, forms one of the most remarkable incidents in mediæval history. The unhappy King Guy of Lusignan had lain with his hosts by the fountains of Sepphoris for many months, awaiting the attack which it was foreseen would follow the loss of the Castle of Banias and the defeat of the Grand Master of the Templars near Tiberias. Whether through evil fortune or because of hidden designs, the Templars seem always to have been responsible for the great failures of the Latin kingdom. Raymond of Tripoli gave good and disinterested advice, for though his lady was besieged in Tiberias, he was willing to lose all, seeing that the only chance of victory lay in the choice of a battle-field close to the springs of Sepphoris. “Between this place and Tiberias,” he said, “there is not a drop of water. We shall all die of thirst before we get there.” But the Templars prevailed, and on the night of the 1st of July 1187, in the hottest season of the year, the army moved out over a plain which, east of Kefr Kenna, is entirely waterless.

The Saracens had, therefore, the advantage, for there were several springs behind their position. The Arab and Kurdish horsemen harassed the heavy-armed knights and set fire to the dry grass and stubble, which, in 1875, I saw in flames sweeping over this plain and destroying great part of a village by our camp. There was no water for the Franks, but a hot sun, with clouds of dust, smoke, and flames. The issue of the day was not long doubtful, and the army melted away as the deserters threw down their arms and begged for water from their enemies. Only 150 knights gathered round the royal standard on the rocky Horns of Hattin, and here the chiefs and princes of the kingdom were taken alive. The Holy Cross was lost, and with it went the Latin kingdom. Only Raymond, with Balian of Ibelin and his followers, were able to fight their way from the scene of this great disaster, and thus escaped to Tyre.

Renaud of Chatillon, the proud and treacherous lord of Kerak—his great castle by the Dead Sea—whose misdeeds were among the chief causes of the destruction of Crusading power, was the only prisoner whom Saladin slew, having first offered him his life if he would become a Moslem. Iced sherbet was ordered for King Guy in the conqueror’s tent, and the King handed the cup to Renaud. “Thou hast given him drink, not I,” said Saladin, and so pronounced the doom of a foe more feared by Islam than any other Christian in the kingdom; for he had sailed with his men almost to Mecca, and threatened the very centre of Mohammedan faith.

From the neighbourhood of Hattin the eye glances over nearly the whole of the Sea of Galilee, and the scene, which is unlike any other in Palestine, is not easily forgotten. Yet familiar though it is from many descriptions and pictures, it is difficult to bring to the mind of those who have not seen it. The scenery has not the wild and barren grandeur of the Dead Sea precipices, nor has it the rich wooded beauty of English lakes. It is quiet and simple in both outline and colour, and the finest effects depend on the passing shadow of the thunderstorm or the long shades of the sunset. The first view is generally from the top of the steep slope above Tiberias, with the flat plateau of the Hauran above the cliffs to the east, and the peak of the “Hill of Bashan” in the far distance. On the north-east are the volcanic cones of the Jaulân; on the north-west a long slope rises to the Safed ridge. The shore is here indented with tiny bays and strewn with black basalt stones. The cliffs of Wady Hamâm above Magdala, and those south of Tiberias on the west shore, extending to Kerak (Taricheæ) at the Jordan outlet, are among the boldest features of the scene. The lake itself is pear-shaped, twelve miles long and eight at its broadest measurement, east and west. The placid waves reflect the water-worn gullies of the eastern cliffs, save when tossed by the gusts that sweep down Wady Hamâm before the heavy thunder-showers which are here frequent in autumn.

The shores of the Sea of Galilee had been surveyed and thoroughly explored by Sir Charles Wilson before the Survey reached this region, and no important discovery was added to his exhaustive account. The sites of several important places, such as Magdala, Chorazin, Tiberias, Taricheæ, and Sinnabris, with Gamala on the east, are certainly fixed. Hippos (now Susieh) may now be added to these, with Hammath and Rakkath.[43]

The three sites on the shore of the lake which are most discussed represent three conditions of our knowledge of ancient Palestine topography. Bethsaida is practically unknown. Capernaum is the subject of controversy, and Chorazin is certain. In the latter case the name survives at Kerâzeh; in the other two the modern ruins do not preserve in recognisable form the Hebrew titles.

As regards Bethsaida, a city of that name existed at the mouth where the Jordan entered the lake; and the point which struck me most on visiting the ground was that this spot cannot be supposed to be the same at which the river now opens into the Sea of Galilee. Most rivers, and especially those like the Jordan, which flow through soft soil, have within historic times lengthened themselves by the formation of deltas at their mouths. There is a Jordan delta in the Dead Sea very distinctly marked, and the north shore of the Sea of Galilee must also have been widened by Jordan river deposits. Since the time of Ptolemy the Nile Delta has grown considerably, and since the days of Sennacherib the Euphrates has become nearly one hundred miles longer. For this reason Bethsaida Julias must be sought somewhere, as placed by Robinson, near Et Tell.

As regards Capernaum, Sir Charles Wilson has clearly shown that the site of Tell Hûm has been regarded by all the pilgrims, from the fourth century downwards, as representing the celebrated city of the Gospels. Yet, as we have had occasion to remark on previous pages, Christian tradition is not invariably a safe guide; and, after reading all the chief discussions of the question, and visiting all the sites, it seems to me impossible to fix on Tell Hûm as being the place intended by Josephus or by the Evangelists. I think, rather, that Robinson’s view is correct, and that the ruin of Minieh not only represents Capernaum, but preserves the contemptuous Jewish appellation for that town, “The city of the Minai” or “heretics”—a term by which the Christians were intended. Within the limits of this volume it is, however, impossible to detail the reasons which have led me to this view, and which I have fully explained in previous works.

A very curious legend may be noticed in connection with the Sea of Galilee. According to some Jewish and Moslem writers, the Messiah is first to appear in the future, rising from the waters of the lake. This idea appears to be of Persian origin. At all events, it is found in very early Persian literature, and it is not recognisable in the Bible. In one of the Yashts or hymns of the Zendavesta, we read of the lake in the far east, out of which Saoshyant, the Zoroastrian Messiah, will rise in the last days. Such recurrence of Persian legends is not uncommon, both in the Talmud and in the Korân, which borrowed largely from the Zoroastrian literature.

Before entering Upper Galilee there is one famous site which should be described, and which is very rarely visited, namely, the mountain fortress of Gotapata, which Josephus, the celebrated historian, defended against Vespasian and Titus for forty-seven days during the revolt in Galilee before the fall of Jerusalem. The ruin stands on a high spur in the mountains, north of the Buttauf plain, surrounded by deep valleys and rugged ridges clothed with brushwood. I reached the spot by a bridle-path from the north-wes in the autumn of 1875, and found that the various features agreed very closely with Josephus’ description, although an exaggeration, pardonable in one who wrote at a distance and many years later, seems to have crept into his account both of the place and of the events. He speaks of giddy precipices where only rugged slopes can be found, and one would certainly have expected the site to have been larger. The hill, over half a mile to the north, where Vespasian camped, is, however, easily recognised, and the statement that the city was only approachable on this side agrees with fact.

The Roman energy is well shown by the nature of the mountain up which they dragged their heavy battering-rams and the iron casings for their siege towers. The rocky knoll of the fortress of Gotapata is now bare of ruins, but there are foundations of a tower on the north, where Josephus built his wall, and cisterns (some still holding water), recalling the straits of the besieged during the summer, due to the absence of any supply save that from rain-water.

No soldier reading Josephus’ account can fail to see that it was penned by one who had experienced war, and in whose memory certain awful incidents were for ever imprinted. He remembers the terrible fire from the catapults, the gleam of the Roman spears in the sunlight, the darts of the Arab and Syrian auxiliary archers, the thud “which the dead bodies made when they were dashed against the wall” (III. Wars, vii. 23). He delights in recalling his own stratagems and inventions, and has no scruple in telling how he feared and despaired. Banks were raised in due form by the Romans, and screens of raw hide by the defenders to catch the stones and arrows. The spies sent by Josephus crept out in the dusk among the woods towards the west, covered with sheep-skins, so as to be taken when seen for straying beasts. At one time the Jewish general meant to desert his post, but he was overcome by the entreaties of the poor peasants, who wept and kissed his feet. The heavy armour of the Romans proved a disadvantage against the sudden attacks of the Jews, who sallied out even as far as their camp. The silent valleys re-echoed the cries of the women and of the combatants. “Nor was there anything of terror wanting.” When, on the fortieth day of the siege, the trumpets of the legions sounded a general assault, the enemy were met with streams of boiling oil, which flowed inside the armour, and made the scaling ladders slippery, Josephus held out yet another week, and Gotapata was finally surprised at night by Titus himself. The caves, in one of which Josephus hid, are still to be seen in the rock, recalling his curious account of many hairbreadth escapes; for those who sought refuge in the caves cast lots to kill each other, and the lot left Josephus and one other to the last. These two alone surrendered to Nicanor, a Roman friend of the historian’s, and but for the throw of a die (if we may trust his account) we should never have possessed that stirring story of the wars against Rome which Josephus lived to write, and should have depended solely on the curt and cynical chronicles of the Jew-hating Tacitus.

The survey of Upper Galilee was interrupted in the autumn of 1875 by an attack on the party at Safed. This was our only serious collision with natives, and it was due to the fanatical intolerance of the Algerine Moslems, who formed a foreign colony in the town, and held the unfortunate Jewish population in daily terror.

Our relations with natives of all creeds and races had always been excellent, and so remained afterwards. A little rigour was occasionally necessary when my men were pelted with stones, or when the muleteers in camp fought with knives; but our actions were always legal, and a Turkish policeman attached to the party was employed to take offenders before the local magistrates. There were no complaints against any of the party; and indeed, as we spent money, employed labour, and bought provisions at a good price, the Survey was always popular in Palestine. But at Safed a Christian was then rarely seen, and fanaticism always lives longest in the mountains. It is possible that some imprudent speech of the dragoman may have enraged the Emir who attacked us. Certainly a pistol belonging to our party was stolen, and was the immediate cause of the quarrel; but I never expected it to become serious until the furious Algerine attacked me with a knife. Few readers will blame me for knocking him down, and breaking his tooth; but the result was an attack by his followers with stones, and swords, and aged guns. Several shots were fired at us, but no one was hit. They, however, broke my head badly with a club, and I was defended by Lieutenant Kitchener, while I lay for a few moments stunned. I fear that I broke the head of the clubman afterwards even worse, but the party was never out of hand. We were armed with shot-guns and pistols, but we never fired a shot, and defended our tents without bloodshed until the police arrived. The enraged Algerines threatened to kill us during the night, but we kept watch with our guns loaded with ball-cartridge, hastily made up, and only in the morning did we march off the field in good order. The worst hurt was that of my groom, who was an old soldier. His head was laid open with a sword-cut, and had to be sewn up; but he accompanied us for several years after; and except a cook and a scribe little accustomed to such scenes, none of the natives in our party showed any signs of fear in face of the howling mob.

When the Emir was afterwards tried and sentenced to eighteen months’ hard labour, he was asked how the quarrel began. He said that he was taking an evening walk when we set upon him and beat him. It was represented to him by the Kadi that this was scarcely credible, as we were only fifteen in all, in a city where he had hundreds of retainers; and to this he had no answer. It was to his own furious temper that he owed the punishment inflicted for breaking the peace with law-abiding explorers working by express permission of the Sultan.

The negotiations which followed this riot were extremely tedious, and interfered with our progress. In addition to this, I had caught a serious attack of fever in the Buttauf marshes, and at one time the whole expedition was down with fever in the Carmel Monastery, except Sergeant Armstrong, who nursed us all. My health was so much shaken that I was unfit for further field work for several years, and, indeed, was not expected by the doctors to live through the attack of fever, aggravated by the injuries to my head.

The Turks at first did nothing, for the Emir was a relation of the venerable and respected Abd-el-Kader, whose acquaintance I was happy to have made, though this was unknown to his cousin. Afterwards they dispatched a commission, which adjudicated in our absence, and only inflicted nominal punishment; finally, my representations at home, backed by the Foreign Office, led to a proper inquiry, with the result that several of our assailants underwent terms of imprisonment, including the Emir, Aly Agha. The Palestine Exploration Fund Committee were paid the sum of £270 for our broken heads.

The mountains of Upper Galilee rise to a height of 4000 feet above the Mediterranean at Meirûn, the Jewish town where a wild torchlight dance of Jews occurs yearly round the tomb of Bar Jochai, the Cabbalist—a ceremony which I regret never to have witnessed or to have seen fully described. The ridges of these mountains are crowned by several important castles, which defended the kingdom of Jerusalem against the Sultans of Damascus. Toron (now Tibnin) was built as early as 1107 A.D., and Belfort (now Kal’at esh Shukif) in or before 1179 A.D. The great castle above the Jordan springs at Banias was held from 1130 to 1165, and after its loss the line was protected along the Jordan side of Galilee by Chateau Neuf, now Hunin, and Belvoir (Kaukab el Hawa), south of the Sea of Galilee, with another strong fort, built in 1178 A.D., at the Jordan bridge south of the Huleh Lake. This place William of Tyre calls “the Ford of Jacob,” and its modern name is Kasr’Atra, near the “Bridge of Jacob’s Daughters.” The chain of castles ran through Gilead to Kerak, and thence south to Montreal, which was built in 1115, and thence to Ahamant and Taphilah; while on the south-west of the kingdom there were many other forts, such as Blancheward, Chateau Ernuald, the Castle of the Baths, Darum (near Gaza), Ibelin, Gibilin, and Mirabel, all of which are marked on the map. Another similar line of strongholds also protected the county of Tripoli against the Sultan of Aleppo, including Mont Pelerin at Tripoli, Chastel Blanc, Krak des Chevaliers, Mont Ferrand, Margat, and Saone, in Northern Syria. In Galilee other castles were also built in the thirteenth century by the Teutonic Order, who owned much property between Acre and the Sea of Galilee, acquired by treaty with the Saracens. Among these later castles Safed was one, and Chateau du Roi (Malia), with Chateau Judin farther west. The large castle of Montfort (el Kurein) is also not noticed before 1229 A.D.

M. E. Rey, the French explorer, who has specially studied Crusading castles, points out a difference between those built by the Templars and those built by the Hospitallers, for most of these strongholds belonged to the great military orders, and very few were held by the King. The Templars had eighteen castles in all, including Chateau Pelerin (now Athlit), built in 1291 A.D. south of Carmel, and Tortosa. The Hospitallers in the twelfth century had only five great castles, Margat, Krak des Chevaliers, Chateau Rouge, Gibelin and Beauvoir. The Templar castles contain polygonal chapels, like the Templum Domini or Dome of the Rock, whence the Order was named, while the chapels in castles of the Hospitallers are of the usual form, with nave and aisles. The latter builders also did not generally make a donjon tower as an inner citadel, but often had a double line of ramparts with several important towers, as at Krak des Chevaliers, one of the finest and best preserved of the castles, which I visited in 1881, or that at Banias, which I explored in the following year. Krak quite recalls the Norman castles of our own country, or the early French castles, as it towers above the hamlet on the rugged slope. In its courtyard the whole population of that hamlet might have taken refuge in time of war. The proud humility of the Hospitallers is brought to mind by the text carved in Gothic letters by the door of the chapel in the inner court—

Sit tibi copia
Sit sapientia
Formaque detur
Inquinat omnia
Sola superbia
Si cometetur.

There is, however, another text on the outer wall at Krak in ornamental Arabic characters and in another style. “In the name of God, merciful and gracious, the rebuilding of this most favoured castle was ordered in the reign of our master the Sultan Melek edh Dhaher, the wise, the just, champion of the holy war, the pious, the defender of frontiers, the victorious, the pillar of the land and of the faith, the father of victory, Bibars.” And such indeed was the history of nearly all these castles, which Bibars took, and afterwards restored and held. The name of that famous champion of Islam, Melek edh Dhaher, “the victorious king,” is even now not forgotten by the peasantry of Palestine.

From the mountains of Upper Galilee you look down to the narrow shore-line of the coast of Phœnicia. In the later Jewish times the Holy Land was only reckoned to extend along the shore as far as Ecdippa (ez Zib), north of Acre. From that point it passed over the spurs along a line which I have traced in detail from the names of places mentioned in the Talmud, leaving a broad strip of country reckoned as Phœnician. It is very remarkable that immediately beyond this line we begin to meet with carvings on the rocks representing human beings. One of these near Tyre I copied in 1881, and another which I have not seen is reported to exist near Kanah. It cannot be accidental that no such sculptures have been found within the borders of the Holy Land, whereas they occur in Northern Syria near Merash, and in Assyria and Asia Minor. The explanation is, I believe, to be found in the Hebrew law which forbade the representation of living things.

If any carved idols of the Canaanites existed on the rocks in Palestine, they were probably destroyed at some period or other by the pious Hebrews or Jews. The distinction is, however, one of race, for the Arab hates carved images as much as did the Jew, while the Turanian Canaanites were fond of such arts, just as the Turanians of other parts of Western Asia were the first to adorn temples and houses with sculpture and painting.

The moment we cross the border into Phœnicia, we also find Phœnician inscriptions, though not of very great age. At Umm el Amed, Renan discovered three texts, of which the longest is a dedication to Baal Shemim, “That I may be remembered and my name good beneath the feet of my Lord Baal of the Heavens for ever.” The ruins among which these texts were found include a city (probably the Biblical Hammon) and a temple. Here I found sculptured sarcophagi and altars still lying on the hill side, where the French explorers left them, and the foundations and pillars of a Phœnician temple.

The exploration of Tyre itself was conducted in 1874, in 1877, and in 1881. The famous city is still a fair-sized town, having a few modern houses with tiled roofs. The population is reckoned at about 5000 souls, half at least being Metâwileh or Persian schismatics—some of the most fanatical Moslems in Syria. It was by these new colonists that the town was raised from its ruins in the eighteenth century.

The old Phœnician capital stood on reefs or islands in the sea, which together formed an area of about 200 acres. It had two ports, the Sidonian on the north and the Egyptian on the south, each about twelve acres in extent, or half the area of the port at Sidon. It is a curious fact that until 1881 recent explorers have spoken of the Egyptian harbour as no longer existing. With Lieutenant Mantell’s assistance, I was able to recover the site of this harbour, but the exploration had to be conducted in a novel manner by swimming. There are reefs, which seem to have been regarded as unconnected with any artificial structure, about 200 yards from the rocky shore of the island. On reaching these, we found that the rock had been carefully levelled, and in some places was still covered with remains of cement and concrete. We know that the Phœnicians used concrete at Carthage, and there was probably at one time a wall on this reef, which was thrown down when the harbour, like that of Acre, was filled up with stones, and thus rendered useless. We were able with some little trouble, walking naked in the sun over the sharp rocks, to discover the entrance to the harbour at its west end, and I can only suppose that no one had previously done more than look at the reefs from the shore.

Another important discovery, which may yet lead to more valuable finds, was the recovery of the probable site of the old cemetery on the island, which may, I believe, exist under the present Moslem graveyard. We squeezed through a narrow fissure in the rocks on the shore, and found ourselves in a Phœnician tomb of the peculiar character found at both Tyre and Sidon—a chamber at the bottom of a deep shaft from the surface. Unfortunately this tomb has been rifled, and the sarcophagus which it once held now lies on the ground outside the shaft. There may be other tombs not far off of the same kind which remain to be discovered, but excavation in a modern cemetery would present considerable difficulties.

Tyre was already a city on an island in the sea in the fourteenth century B.C., as we learn from an Egyptian papyrus of that date. Enumerating the coast towns of Beirût, Sidon, and Sarepta, the Egyptian traveller adds, “They are nigh to another city on the sea. Tyre, the double port, is its name; water is carried to it in boats; it is richer in fish than in sands.” The reference to the want of water is of interest, for this has always been the weakness of Tyre, which was somewhat later supplied by an aqueduct from the fine springs on the shore at Ras el Ain. The joining of the island to the mainland appears to have been first effected when Alexander the Great besieged the city and made a causeway to it from the shore, which causeway is now broadened by the constant drifting of the sands. The so-called “spring of Tyre” on the causeway is fed, I believe, by the ancient aqueduct, which we carefully traced. The work seems in great part to be probably Roman, but I found that in one part “false arches,” like those in Etruscan and early Greek vaults, occur in this aqueduct, which can only be attributed to the Phœnicians. The aqueduct probably existed in the time of Shalmanezer IV., for the inhabitants in 724 B.C. dug cisterns when the water-supply from the land was cut off.

Although Tyre is perhaps more celebrated than any other Phœnician city, it is from Sidon that the finest Phœnician remains as yet found have been recovered, including the celebrated sarcophagus of Esmunazar—the date of which is still disputed within several centuries—and the recent large find of sarcophagi and art objects which remain in the Constantinople Museum, unpublished and only very vaguely described. These remains are not older, apparently, than the Greek period, or in some cases, perhaps, of the Persian age. It is sincerely to be hoped that good accounts of them will be soon forthcoming.

It is still very doubtful what we mean when speaking of Phœnicians. The alphabet and the language of the Phœnician monuments are Semitic, and are traced perhaps as early as the time of Solomon. The representation of the Fenekhu or Phœnicians on Egyptian pictures of the time of Thothmes III. also presents us with a Semitic type of bearded aquiline profile. These Semitic people were certainly the Phœnicians known to the Greeks, and there is no good reason for doubting the statement of Herodotus that they were emigrants from the Persian Gulf.

There are, however, many things in Phœnician antiquity which are not easily explained by the aid of Semitic studies. Thus, for instance, the gods Tammuz and Nergal were adored in Phœnicia. Even Gesenius is unable to give a Semitic derivation for these names, and they are very well known to be Akkadian words, meaning “The spirit of the rising sun” and “The great lord.” Both these deities were adored in Chaldea, and their presence in Phœnicia indicates a population of like character to the Akkadian on the shores of Palestine. Nor is this the only indication of the kind. The Hebrew language itself contains foreign words of the same derivation, including a good many of what are known as “culture words,” relating to architecture, agriculture, and settled life, indicating the influence of that settled non-Semitic population which the Hebrews found dwelling in walled cities and tilling the land when they invaded Canaan.

It is not possible here to enlarge on this subject, though it is one of very great interest. No scholar who has carefully studied the early Phœnician seals and cylinders can fail to observe how like they are to the art of Mesopotamia, not only in general character, but in subject and in the details of symbolism. Rude monosyllabic words constantly meet the eye in Phœnician nomenclature, in the names of gods and in short inscriptions on seals, which it is very difficult to explain as Semitic. The conclusion at which it seems to me we must arrive is, that in Phœnicia, as in other parts of Syria, there was from a very early period a mixed population. The traders and rulers of the cities were of a race akin to the Hebrews, and spoke a language which is only a Hebrew dialect; but there must have been also an old element of population existing perhaps, in this case, chiefly among the lower class, which was quite distinct, and which belonged to that ancient and wide-spread “Turanian” race to which the Medes, the Akkadians, and the Hittites also belonged. It was from this race originally that the Phœnicians acquired their knowledge of metal-work, of seal-engraving, of sculpture; and I believe that it was from the syllabaries and older hieroglyphics of the Hittites that they developed their great invention, the alphabet, which they bequeathed as a practical benefit to all engaged in commerce and literature throughout the world; for it is from the Phœnician alphabet that every other alphabet of Europe or of Asia has sprung.

The number of Phœnician gems with carved emblems, and of small Phœnician pottery figures of the gods which fill our museums contrasts in a very remarkable way with the absence of such remains in Palestine proper. The only places where such pottery figures have been found in the south are at Gaza and at Gezer, as far as I can ascertain. The Jerusalem seals, generally speaking, have only an engraved name, though a few, said to be Hebrew, have emblems like those of Phœnicia. There is no apparent reason why these pottery images and other idols should exist undiscovered in Palestine, for collectors are just as eager in the south as in the north of Syria, and the tombs have been rifled equally in all parts. In the Palestine tombs glass tear-bottles are found, and coins occasionally occur; but the pottery statuettes are absent. The explanation seems to be that there was a difference of religion between the Hebrews and their neighbours; that the Phœnicians, like the Chaldeans or Egyptians, believed in the efficacy of such figures, symbolic of their many gods, while the Hebrews were forbidden by the Law to make any such image. The same sort of conclusion may, as we shall see in a later chapter, be drawn from the absence of rude stone monuments in Palestine, such monuments being very abundant in parts of Syria not reached by the zeal of Hezekiah and of Josiah.

The course of our investigation now carries us into the extreme north-east corner of the Holy Land, to Banias, under the slopes of Hermon, where the Jordan springs forth a full-grown stream, joining the Hasbâny river, which geographically, but not historically, is the true head-water. The fastnesses of this lofty mountain, which forms a conspicuous background to many a view in Galilee, in Samaria, and even in Judea, have always formed a remote and isolated region. It was here that the men of Dan, according to the Book of Judges, came to Laish, “unto a people that were quiet and secure, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and burned the city with fire; and there was no deliverer because it was far from Sidon, and they had no business with any man” (Judges xviii. 27, 28); and in later ages this mountain was the cradle of the Druze religion, which at one time had its missionaries in Afghanistan and in India, as well as in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt.

The Druze race inhabiting Hermon, and now existing in great numbers in the Hauran, to which some of the chief families have migrated from the Lebanon since the establishment of Christian rule in that province, represents one of the finest elements of population in Syria.

Tall, stalwart men, and women with features more delicate than any of the Arab or Fellahah females, seem to belong to a Persian rather than a Semitic race, although the language of their literature and of daily life is Arabic.[44] It is not hard to become acquainted with Druzes of every class, but to penetrate beneath the surface which they present to those of other creeds is far more difficult, and our knowledge of their creed is derived, not from any communications made by themselves, but from the capture of their sacred books; although even these probably only reveal the outer aspect of their belief, with one exception.