Part 17

The villages here are small, few, and far between, and there is room for a large population; but the most tempting land of all is the tract between Umm-el-Fahm and the sea, where the oak-trees which are scattered over the pastures and cornfields attain a large growth, and the country presents the appearance of an immense park. From an artistic point of view the woods and the farm lands are so combined as to form the most perfectly diversified scenery, just where the rolling hills slope gently down into the plain of Sharon. It was across this country that our road lay to Cæsarea, which was our objective point, first, through the thick copse of the upper valleys, and so out upon the park-like uplands, where the whole population was out in the fields gathering the crops, which strings of camels were conveying to the village threshing-floors. Here and there was a money-lender from Acre or Beyrout, squatting under an umbrella, to see that the peasantry did not rob him of his share. This is a busy time with these gentry, who are the bloodsuckers of the fellahin, to whom they advance money at exorbitant rates of interest, while the latter, in revenge, resort to every conceivable device to conceal from them the real extent of the crop, and to make the proportion coming to them as small as possible.

At one village called Arareh I found three old Roman arches, a fine fragment of a column, and some rock-cut tombs, which seem hitherto to have escaped observation. The remains indicate that it must have been a place of considerable importance, but I have not yet been able to identify it. The plain of Sharon, where we struck it, is being by degrees brought into cultivation, partly by colonists, Circassian and Bosnian, and partly by native capitalists. The peasantry themselves are rapidly losing all proprietorship in the soil, unable to contend against the exactions of the government tax-gatherer, on the one hand, and of the usurious money-lender, on the other; but while they are yearly becoming more impoverished and dependent, the wealth of the country is steadily increasing, and its development must follow as a matter of course, though, in accordance with the tendencies of modern civilization, it will be at the expense of the masses.

I went to lunch with the largest of these local magnates. He was a Turk, and spoke Turkish in preference to Arabic. He had, as may be supposed, little sympathy with the Arab peasantry, who were practically his serfs, and their condition was by no means improved by their lands having fallen into his hands. On the other hand, they never would have introduced the civilized iron ploughs with which he was bringing land into cultivation. His farm-house was a large, straggling, isolated building, which stood on a hillock in the plain, with extensive outhouses and dependencies, not unlike the residence of a Southern planter, while, curiously enough, a large proportion of his farm hands consisted of African negroes located in a village hard by—but he had none of the lavish hospitality which characterized the landed proprietors of the South.

A ride of an hour over a part of the plain which, from the peculiar quality of its soil, is exclusively devoted to the growth of water-melons, hitherto the sole export of the little haven of Cæsarea, brought me to that spot. Although the remains of the old port have been used as a harbour for coasting craft, these ruins have not been inhabited since they were evacuated by the crusaders at the end of the thirteenth century. Indeed, there is a curious prediction connected with them, to the effect that the rebuilding of a town here would immediately precede a great disaster to Islam. It has been in consequence of this, as I have understood, that while villages have sprung up on all the other crusading ruins on the coast, this one alone has remained untenanted. However this may be, the spell is broken now, for about six months ago the first instalment of a band of refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina arrived here, having been allotted this ruin and the lands surrounding it by the government, as the nucleus of a new colony.

Apart from the great interest which these extensive ruins must ever have from an antiquarian point of view, I was anxious to visit Cæsarea to judge for myself of the prospects of this embryo colony, and make personal acquaintance with this new and interesting class of immigrants. Moreover, as the new town is to be built upon the ruins of the old, it was evident that I should never have another chance of seeing what these were like. They have already during the last twenty years served as a quarry from whence the magnificent building-stones, cut originally by Herod the Great when he built the town, have been transported in thousands of boat-loads to Acre and Jaffa. The ruins have therefore lost much of the pristine grandeur which is described in the records of travellers in the early part of the present century. In a few years more they will probably have disappeared altogether. The subterranean treasures, whatever they may be, will, however, remain untouched, and the Schliemann of a future age will find here the traces of five successive epochs of civilization. On the top he will find the ruins of the stone houses of the Bosnians and Herzegovinians, now in process of erection; below them the foundations of the great Crusading fortress, and below them again the remains of the first Mohammedan period; beneath them, traces of the Byzantine period, and, at the bottom, the tessellated pavements, the fragments of carved marble, the statuary, and the coins of the Roman period.

Meantime it is a singular fact that the strip of coast from Haifa to Cæsarea seems to have become a centre of influx of colonists and strangers of the most diverse races. The new immigrants to Cæsarea are Slavs. Some of them speak a little Turkish. Arabic is an unknown tongue to them, which they are learning. Their own language is a Slav dialect. When the troubles in the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina first broke out, which led to the Russo-Turkish war, a howl of indignation went up from the philanthropists on both sides of the Atlantic, but especially from the Radical party in England, against the Turkish government, for its persecution of the Slav population of the Danubian provinces. Nor do I think that the general public have yet realized the fact that of these Slavs more than half were Moslem, and that the Turkish government was not persecuting them more than it was persecuting any other of its subjects, but that the persecutors of the Slav peasantry, who were Christian, were the Slav aristocracy, who were Moslem. It was, in fact, not a question of an oppressed nationality, but a strictly agrarian question between people of the same race. When it was settled by handing over the provinces to Austria, the Slav-Moslem aristocracy, finding themselves in their turn persecuted by their former peasants and the Christian power which protected them, migrated to the more congenial rule of the sultan. So the curious spectacle is presented of a Slav population migrating from Austrian rule to Asia, in order to be under a Moslem government.

Close beside the new Bosnian colony there are planted in the plain of Sharon two or three colonies of Circassians. These are the people who committed the Bulgarian atrocities. The irony of fate has now placed them within three or four miles of colonists belonging to the very race they massacred. They, too, fleeing from government by Christians, have sought refuge under the sheltering wing of the sultan, where, I regret to say, as I described in a former letter, they still indulge in their predatory propensities. In immediate proximity to them are the black tents of a tribe of Turcomans. They belong to the old Seljuk stock, and the cradle of their tribe gave birth to the present rulers of the Turkish Empire. They have been here for about three hundred years, and have forgotten the Turkish language, but a few months ago a new migration arrived from the mountains of Mesopotamia. These nomads spoke nothing but Turkish, and hoped to find a warm welcome from their old tribesmen on the plain of Sharon. In this they were disappointed, and they have now, to my disgust, pitched their tents on some of the spurs of Carmel, where their great hairy camels and their own baggy breeches contrast curiously with the camels and costumes of the Bedouins with whom we are familiar.

Besides the Slavs, the Circassians, and the Turcomans, we have the Jewish colony of Zimmarin, distant about ten miles from Cæsarea; the German colony at Haifa, and the Druse villages on Carmel, making, with the Bedouins, the negroes, and the native fellahin, no fewer than nine different races engaged in the cultivation of the soil in this neighbourhood.

CÆSAREA.

Daliet-el-Carmel, Oct. 2.—The habit of tourists of visiting only those spots in Palestine called holy places, or to which some striking Biblical association is attached, causes them to neglect ruins of the highest historical interest, and which are often as well worth seeing from a picturesque as from an archæological point of view. They make an effort to go to Nazareth, which differs in no respect from an ordinary Syrian town, and which does not boast a single object of antiquarian interest, while they omit from their programme, because it is not included in the books, a ruin like Cæsarea, a city unsurpassed for grandeur and magnificence by anything in Palestine when Herod raised it to the dignity of a metropolis, and the scene of many important events, both Biblical and historical. Here Peter baptized the first Gentile convert to Christianity; here Philip lived with his four daughters, engaged in missionary work; here Paul preached before Felix, and “almost persuaded” Agrippa to become a Christian. It was in the theatre, the remains of which are still to be seen, that Herod made his oration to the multitude when “the angel of the Lord smote him, and he was eaten of worms and gave up the ghost.” It was in the streets of Cæsarea that, on the occasion of a quarrel between the Greek and Jewish population, twenty thousand Jews were massacred. Here the celebrated historians Eusebius and Procopius were born, and here was found, when the city was taken by the crusaders, the hexagonal vase of green crystal which was supposed to contain the Holy Grail.

The old Roman wall can be traced for a mile and a half, enclosing an area strewn with the remains of a theatre, hippodrome, temple, aqueducts, and mole; while a second line of fortification, still in admirable preservation, and over half a mile in extent, marks the _enceinte_ of the old Crusading fortress, with its castle and donjon keep, its cathedral, its Northern church, and harbour. This tendency on the part of travellers is the more to be regretted as the opportunity of examining these extensive ruins is now about to pass away, never again to return.

The Slav colonists, whose immigration I described in my last letter, are laying out broad streets right across the most interesting ruins, using the old foundations, appropriating the beautiful masonry, the white stones which formed the temple built by Herod, and the brown limestone blocks of the cathedral of the crusaders, quarrying into ancient buildings beneath the surface of the ground, levelling down the ruins at one place, levelling them up in another, and so utterly transforming the whole picturesque area that it will soon be no longer recognizable. Within five months over twenty good stone houses have been built, some of three stories high, others with vaults for merchandise and storing grain; in some cases the old Crusading vaults, evidently used for the same purpose, have been made available. The dwellings are being built on the plan which renders the towns of the Moslem Slavs of European Turkey so dull and uninteresting; they are all enclosed with courtyards, the high stone walls of which jealously guard the harems of the proprietors. In this respect these western Mohammedans are far more particular than the Arabs, who allow their women comparative freedom; but during the period of my stay in Cæsarea I did not see one of the female colonists.

Their male belongings, however, were most hospitable, especially when they found that I knew their country and was familiar with Mostar and Cognitza, in the neighbourhood of which towns had been their former homes. They were the landed aristocracy of their own country, and have, therefore, brought a considerable amount of wealth with them. A large tract of the most fertile land of the plain of Sharon has been donated to them by the Turkish government, and there can be no doubt that the country will gain by their settlement in it. In manners and costume they form a marked contrast to the natives, who are evidently much impressed by their wealth and dignity.

The lower or peasant class of Bosnia and Herzegovina were not obliged, when the country was conquered by the Moslems, to change their religion, and they have continued Christians; while the descendants of their masters, who remained the proprietors of the soil, became bigoted Mussulmans. The consequence has been that now that the country has been handed over to the Austrians, the Christian peasantry have naturally found protection from the authorities against the oppression of their former masters, who, unable to endure the humiliation of seeing the tables turned, and their old servants enabled to defy them with impunity, have sold all their possessions and migrated to the dominions of the sultan, rather than endure the indignities to which they declare they were exposed from their new Christian rulers and their old Christian serfs—very much on the same principle that the Southern States became intolerable to some of the landed proprietors after the emancipation of their slaves. Whether they will agree with their Circassian neighbours remains yet to be seen. They form the _avant garde_ of a much larger migration which is to follow as soon as arrangements can be made to receive them. One of the leading men, who has opened a store, assigned me an unfinished house as a lodging, and said that he intended to enlarge it into a hotel for travellers.

It is worthy of the notice of intending travellers in Palestine next season that they can now drive the whole way, if they wish, in wagons belonging to the German colonists, from Jerusalem to Nazareth, in four easy days, instead of having to ride, and camp in tents as heretofore. There are excellent hotels at Jaffa. The next stopping-place would, now that accommodation is promised there, be Cæsarea, the next day to Haifa, where the hotel is being enlarged and put on a thoroughly comfortable and European basis, and the next day to Nazareth, where good quarters can be obtained at the convent, but where, if this route comes to be adopted, a hotel will doubtless shortly be built. As soon as travellers give up their present expensive habit of travelling through Palestine with tents, the hotel accommodation will be increased, and the existing carriage roads, as well as the vehicles which traverse them, be improved. The government has recently determined to construct a carriage road along the coast from Acre to Beyrout and Tripoli, which, if it is carried out, will alter all the existing conditions of travel.

The most striking features of the ruins of Cæsarea are the Crusading castle and the old Roman mole. The former is built upon a long, narrow reef or breakwater, partly artificial, which runs out into the sea for one hundred and sixty yards, forming the southern side of the harbour, while the northern side is formed by a sort of mole or jetty more than two hundred feet long, which is composed of some sixty or seventy prostrate columns lying side by side in the water like rows of stranded logs. They are from five to twenty feet in length, and average about eighteen inches in diameter. I never in my life before saw such an array of granite pillars so closely piled together or used for such a purpose. Indeed, to judge by those which remain, Cæsarea must have been a city of columns. The crusaders used them to thorough-bind their walls, from which the butts project like rows of cannon from the side of a man-of-war. They must have built many hundreds of old Roman columns thus into their fortification.

The Crusading wall enclosing the town rises from a moat which is about forty feet wide, but, being much filled in with rubbish, is not more than five or six feet deep. The wall itself is about nine feet thick, with buttresses at intervals which are from thirty to fifty feet long and project from twenty to twenty-six feet; but it is especially in the castle and donjon, which is built out into the sea on the projecting reef, that the columns are used as thorough-bonds. Some of these are of red granite, others of gray. The Bosnian colonists are perching a _café_ on the ruins of the old donjon, immediately above two magnificent prostrate columns of red granite, nine feet long and four in diameter. I observed here also a finely polished block of red granite over six feet square and three feet six inches thick. There is also a curious double tessellated pavement, evidently of two periods, as the upper tesseræ are at least six inches above the lower ones. I am afraid, as the masons are working immediately above them, they will soon disappear, as will also a beautiful carved capital in white marble. I scrambled up to the top of this picturesque ruin, where the rib of the groined roof of the upper chamber still remains supported on a corbel in the form of a human head, and looked out of the pointed, arched window sheer down seventy feet on the sea, beating against the base of the sea wall. The mouth of the small artificial harbour is about two hundred yards across, but the latter is too much exposed and too small ever to be of much value.

Among the Roman remains, the hippodrome, the theatre, and the aqueduct are the most interesting. The first is a sunken level space about three hundred yards long by one hundred wide, surrounded by a mound, and in the middle are three truncated blocks of red granite, which, when standing on each other, must have formed a conical pillar about nine feet high and seven feet diameter at the base. There is also another fine block of red granite nearly forty feet long and four feet in diameter, which has been broken. The theatre is a semicircular building of masonry in an immense artificial mound, surrounded by a trench near the sea. It is mentioned by Josephus as capable of containing a large number of persons. Indeed, the account by this historian of the building of this city by Herod the Great, which I have just been reading, is most interesting. It occupied twelve years, and was finished thirteen years before Christ. He says that the stones of which the sea wall was built were fifty feet in length, eighteen in breadth, and nine in depth.

For nearly six hundred years it was a Christian city and the seat of an archbishop, then for five hundred years it fell under Moslem rule, and an Arab traveller in A.D. 1035 describes it as “an agreeable city, irrigated with running water and planted with date palms and oranges, surrounded by a strong wall pierced by an iron gate, and containing a fine mosque.” Then for one hundred and fifty years it remained a Crusading stronghold, while its final and complete destruction by the Sultan Bibars took place in 1265 A.D., since which time it has remained a howling wilderness. I have dwelt somewhat fully on the present aspect of the ruins, as the transformation they are undergoing will soon be complete.

From Cæsarea I followed the coast northward with the high-level aqueduct, which in places is still in tolerably good preservation, on my right. This aqueduct was the chief source of the water supply for the inhabitants. It was eight miles long, and at one point tunnels the rock for a quarter of a mile, thirty feet below its surface. There was also a low-level aqueduct, three miles long, which drew its water supply from the Crocodile River. At some seasons this is a dangerous stream to ford, though I experienced no difficulty. That it is not misnamed I possess indisputable proof, for a few weeks ago an Arab acquaintance presented me with a piece of crocodile skin about a foot square, cut from the hide of a crocodile which he himself helped to kill in this river. Passing Tantura, which also contains some Crusading ruins and rock-cut tombs, I reached the Jewish colony of Zimmarin, which I had not visited for eighteen months, and where I was pleased to find the colony in a thriving condition, the colonists hopeful, industrious, and contented, the crops promising fairly, and their progress only checked by the refusal of the government to allow them to build permanent dwellings, a difficulty which it is hoped may be overcome by a judicious display of firmness and patience.

VILLAGE FEUDS.

Daliet-el-Carmel, Oct. 15.—In order to really understand this country, to become acquainted with the inner life of its inhabitants, to familiarize one's self with their manners and customs, their necessities, and their aspirations, such as they are, and to arrive at a true estimate of the national character, it is needful to remove one's self from any centre of so-called civilization, however crude, and to live among them, as I have been doing for the last three months and a half, not as a stranger, but as a villager owning property, identified with their local interests, and with a will to afford them such practical counsel and aid as may lie in one's power. People wonder what I can find to do in a remote Druse village in the back parts of Carmel; but in practice the days are not long enough to deal with the varied interests that crowd into them.

Scarcely a day passes that visitors do not arrive from some of the surrounding villages—sheiks of high or low degree, as the case may be—generally with polite invitations that I should return their visits, which I know from experience means a financial proposition of some sort in reserve, for all the villages are more or less embarrassed in their pecuniary circumstances, and have been so victimized by the native money-lenders of Haifa that they eagerly turn towards any one who they think possesses bowels of compassion.

The return visits which these invitations involve are often highly characteristic in their attendant circumstances, and in the varied incidents which accompany them; and, besides, they give one an opportunity of becoming minutely acquainted with the neighbourhood, and afford one an insight into the motives by which Oriental human nature is actuated. There is, for instance, a village about four miles from here, so beautifully situated among its olive groves, as seen from a distance, that I had long intended paying it a visit, and wondered why its sheik had never come to make my acquaintance. The mystery was explained one day by an old woman whose extreme poverty had induced me to employ her as a water-carrier. On asking how she had become so destitute, she said that she was a widow, and that her only son and support had been waylaid and murdered some months previously by some of the young men of the village in question. All her efforts to obtain justice had been unavailing, and since then the two villages had not been on visiting terms.