Part 19

In regard to the engineering difficulties, so far as they are known, the only records of levels which we have of the elevation of the land between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea are those made at different times by three Frenchmen—Mons. Lartet, Mons. Vigne, and Mons. Luynes. These only differ nineteen feet—the lowest being seven hundred and eighty-one feet, the highest eight hundred; but it must be remembered that these are not the result of actual survey, but of rough estimates, and there may be depressions in the dividing ridge which may have escaped these gentlemen's observation.^[2] The dividing ridge is said to be calcareous rock—the summit level distant fifty-two miles from the Red Sea and fifty-eight from the Dead Sea, which is nearly thirteen hundred feet lower than the level of the ocean—and it is assumed that the engineering work would be facilitated by the scour which would be caused by the sea rushing down such a steep incline in a distance of one hundred miles. It is not, however, proposed to let the full force of the ocean in from this end. The operation of flooding the Jordan valley would be commenced at Haifa; from this point to the sea-level in the Ghor is only twenty-five miles. The highest point in the plain of Esdraelon is one hundred and fifty-seven feet above the sea. Through this it is proposed to cut a canal two hundred feet wide and forty feet deep. The volume of water thus let in, it is calculated, would be regulated to an inflow which would equal about twenty Jordans, and, allowing for evaporation, it is estimated that in five years the Dead Sea and the whole valley of the Jordan would be submerged to the sea-level.

The effect of this submergence would be, of course, to bury the Dead Sea under twelve hundred feet of ocean, and to create an inland sea about ninety miles long and from four to six wide. Jericho, Beisan (the ancient Bethshean), and Tiberias would be the principal places submerged, besides a few small villages. With the exception of Tiberias, none of these are, however, of any importance. Tiberias contains a population of over three thousand, chiefly Jews, and a Latin and Greek monastery. Apart from the question of compensating this population, and paying for the fertile lands which they occupy, a very important political question enters into consideration. The French have been the protectors of the Latin monastery at Tiberias from time immemorial, and the Russians occupy the same position with regard to the Greek monastery. Are these two powers, whose interests would be in different ways vitally affected by the success of the scheme, likely to be induced to consent to it by any proposal of pecuniary indemnification? Its success would utterly ruin the Suez Canal and almost extinguish French influence in Syria, while Russia, which now aims at the annexation of Palestine and the occupation of Jerusalem, where her influence is at this moment greater than that of any other European nation, would find herself practically cut off from it by an inland sea, the private property of her traditional enemy. In both countries the governments could appeal to the religious sentiment of the people to support them in resisting, even to a war if necessary, the flooding of the holy places at Tiberias which they have guarded for so many centuries.

Nor would this sentimental feeling be confined to France and Russia. Even in England and America there would be a strong objection to the Lake of Tiberias, with the historic sites of Capernaum and the other cities on its margin, which were the scenes of some of the most remarkable ministrations of our Lord, being buried five hundred feet deep beneath the sea. Curiously enough, the project is no less keenly supported by one set of religionists than it is condemned by the other. The former pin their faith to the prophecy contained in the forty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, eighth to tenth verses, where it is predicted that “fishers shall stand upon the sea from En-gedi even unto En-eglaim,” but even this would not be the case if the scheme were carried out, for then En-gedi would be several hundred feet below the surface of the sea.

The sanguine supporters of the scheme maintain that it can be accomplished for eight millions sterling, while its opponents have entered upon an elaborate calculation to prove that the lowest figure is £225,573,648 and some odd shillings. Supposing, as seems not impossible, that the one set prove too little, and the other too much, if it could be done for fifty millions sterling it would pay a fair interest. The last year's receipts of the Suez Canal, which cost twenty millions, were £4,800,000. The whole length of the canal would be two hundred and fifty miles, of which, however, only about one hundred and twenty would be actual cutting, but cutting of a nature unparalleled in the history of engineering. My own impression is that, both from a political and an engineering point of view, it will be found to be impracticable; but who can say in these days what science may not accomplish or what combinations of the Eastern question may not arise to remove political difficulties?

[2] Since the above was written the dividing range has been carefully surveyed, and the lowest part found to be between six and seven hundred feet above the level of the Red Sea.

LOCAL POLITICS AND PROGRESS.

Haifa, Nov. 27.—The native population here is in a high state of excitement at news which has just reached us. The government, it is reported, intends transferring the seat of the provincial government from Acre to this place. This change has been recommended on the grounds of the superior excellence of the harbour of Haifa, of its increasing export trade and rapidly growing population, and, above all, of the constantly augmenting influence of foreigners, which is the natural result of the inflow of their capital and of their industry and enterprise.

The old fortress of Acre, at present the residence of the governor, or mutessarif, contains a population of about nine thousand, pent up within the walls of the fort and crowded into an area of little more than fifty acres. They are for the most part fanatic Moslems, which means a state of stagnation in industry and commercial pursuits; and in consequence of the military rule which prohibits any extension of the town outside of the walls of the fortress within range of the guns, no expansion is possible to the inhabitants. The population of Haifa, on the other hand, is increasing with great rapidity, and the place seems to resound from one end to the other with the clink of the stone-mason's chisel, as new houses spring up in all directions. These considerations would not alone, however, account for the resolution at which the government seems to have arrived.

Three fourths of the population of Haifa are either Roman or Greek Catholics; in other words, they are under the protection of the French Consul when religious questions are concerned; and the policy of the French government in Syria has been to extend its religious protectorate into political and secular matters, to a degree which is constantly giving rise to awkward questions and complications not devoid of danger.

A great part of the house property in the town of Haifa is owned by the monks of Mount Carmel, who consider the whole of Carmel, from the monastery at the western extremity of the mountain, to their chapel at the Place of Elijah's Sacrifice at the other end, as a sort of private preserve, and push their religious pretensions to such an extreme that they look with the utmost jealousy upon any foreigner who attempts to buy land in the mountain, and oppose any such proceeding with all their energy.

The policy of the Turkish government, on the other hand, is to prevent any foreigners buying land there, or, indeed, anywhere else in Palestine, although they are entitled to do so by treaty; and in pursuit of this policy the local authorities are instructed to throw every obstacle in the way of foreign enterprise of all descriptions, but especially to render it impossible for persons not subjects of Turkey to acquire landed property. They have, on these grounds, used their utmost endeavors to ruin the Jewish colony of Zimmarin, which is also in the neighborhood of Haifa, by prohibiting the colonists from building houses for themselves, on the ground that they have no right to the land. They have based this claim on the allegation that the proprietor of the property, who was an Austrian Jew, in whose name it was bought for the colonists, died childless, and, according to Turkish law, landed property reverts to the Turkish government under these circumstances; and the government therefore claimed the property. It so happened, however, that the owner did not die childless. Indeed, I know his son myself, but the government refused to admit the evidence of any but Moslems as to whether he had a son or not, a demand which, as the deceased proprietor did not live in Turkey, it was naturally impossible to comply with. The question has therefore been pending between Baron Rothschild, who took over the property on the death of its nominal proprietor, and the Turkish government for nearly two years; but I understand that permission has at last been obtained for the erection of houses by the colonists, and the affair has been arranged.

The fact, however, that foreign questions are constantly arising at Haifa, either out of French pretensions or the claims of the German or Jewish colonists, and that no such questions are possible at Acre, where there is but a limited Christian or foreign population, has rendered it desirable in the eyes of the Governor-general of Syria to suggest the removal of the governor of the district to this place. The change has not yet been sanctioned at Constantinople, and the inhabitants of Acre, where property will suffer an immediate depreciation, have been pouring petitions into Constantinople to protest against the change, urging as a reason that they, who were loyal and devoted subjects of his majesty, will suffer; while the population of Haifa, composed principally of Christians and foreigners, will benefit. It is just possible, however, that the government may consider that the loyalty and devotion of the petitioners form the best reasons why the governor should be moved to a place where the loyalty and devotion of the people are not so assured, and should therefore be watched. At all events, there can be no doubt that the change, should it take place, will cause an immediate rise in the value of property here, and that there will be a considerable influx of people from Acre to this town, which has the advantage in summer of being a much cooler and more agreeable place of residence.

Meantime, advantage has been taken of this opportunity to remove the present governor and replace him by a more intelligent and active functionary, a change which has caused great satisfaction, both to Moslems and Christians, as, in spite of his fanaticism, he had contrived to make himself very unpopular with the former, while he altogether failed to keep the peace at Acre between the rival sects of the latter, who, though very limited in number, were constantly engaged in broils. Moreover, it is not the habit of the Turkish government to retain its functionaries, under any circumstances, long at the same post.

The only drawback to Haifa as the new seat of government is its limited water supply. At present the town depends entirely upon its wells, and although an abundance of water can be found at a trifling depth, it is usually a little too brackish to be altogether palatable. Under these circumstances it became of the utmost importance, in view of the proposed change, to try and find a spring, sufficiently copious and near the town to be utilized, and it occurred to a friend and myself that such a one might exist at Rushmea, where are the ruins of an old Crusading fort, which I have described in a former letter, distant about an hour's ride from the town, at an elevation of about seven hundred feet above the level of the sea. There is a well here called the Well of Elias, into which I once descended, and found that it was supplied with water which entered through a tunnel in the rock, but had no outlet; and the shepherds told me that, however much they watered their flocks, the water always remained at the same height, while in winter, although the well was eight feet deep, the water rose in it so high as to overflow the mouth. Under these circumstances it was evident that the well was, in fact, a sort of back-water of some underground stream or rivulet, which found a subterranean channel for itself. This we determined, by excavation, to try and discover.

We therefore commenced digging near the well, and about two feet from the surface struck the roof of a subterranean aqueduct. Uncovering this, we found that the channel had become silted up with mud, which required to be removed. We then found that we were in an arched tunnel, the sides of which were roughly built with stone, while the floor was paved with the same material, in which a channel had been cut, but it was four inches higher than the water in the well. We were therefore obliged to take it up, cutting, altogether, a trench thirty yards long and eight feet deep. On drawing the water off by means of this channel, we uncovered the mouth of the tunnel, by which it entered, sufficiently to send in a man with a light. After wading through the mud for a few paces, he came upon a vault beautifully cemented, thus proving that in ancient times the stream had been utilized. It would have involved a greater expense, however, to clear out than I was prepared to incur, unaided by the community for whose benefit it would have inured. As it was, the stream thus discovered was almost sufficient in volume to be worth conveying to Haifa, a distance of three miles, and could doubtless be much increased. In the course of our excavations we came upon several large blocks of square stone, which had formed part of the ancient tunnel.

The project of the railway from Haifa to Damascus, the concession for which had lapsed in consequence of the combined greed and apathy of the first grantees, is now revived under more favorable auspices, and I have little doubt that the change of the seat of the government to this place will give it a renewed impetus, so that before long it will be carried out.

Meantime, unwonted energy is displayed by the government in improving our communications. Having occasion a few weeks ago to ride to Beyrout, I saw the surveyors at work tracing out a line for a carriage road to connect that important city with Haifa. The distance is about eighty miles, and there are no serious engineering difficulties in the way. This road is sadly needed, especially now, when, owing to the cholera in Europe, no steamer touches here on its way to Beyrout, although we are visited once a fortnight by one coming from that place after it has performed there a quarantine of five days. The habit, unfortunately, of the government of making the road, and postponing to an indefinite period the construction of the bridges, goes far to neutralize its good intentions. The towns through which the road passes are heavily taxed, and then, owing to the want of bridges, it is useless for a great part of the year. Should this road be completed, Beyrout, Damascus, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Haifa, Tyre, and Sidon will all be connected by roads over which stages could run; and this would go far to facilitate travel in Palestine, and enable tourists to dispense with that system of tenting which now renders it so slow and expensive.

THE IDENTIFICATION OF ANCIENT SITES.

Haifa, Dec. 13.—The researches which I have been making into the oldest authorities, with the view of identifying the sites of the numerous ancient towns that once formed the homes of the extensive population which in ages long gone by inhabited this coast, have only served to reveal to me the enormous difficulty of the task. This difficulty is created partly by the confusion introduced by the crusading nomenclature and traditions, partly by the inaccuracy of the itineraries of early pilgrims and travellers, and to the discrepancies existing in the most primitive maps, and the contradictions in historical records. Thus between this place and Tantura, a distance of fifteen miles, I have visited the ruins of no fewer than nine ancient towns or villages, some of them of considerable size, not one of which, with the exception of Tantura, which is the Biblical Dor, has been positively identified. I do not include in these the ruins of towns a mile or more inland, which would double the number and convey some idea of the denseness of the population which once inhabited this section of the country. At the same time it is possible, from the varied character of these ruins, that some were far more ancient than the others, and that they may have existed as traces of a still more early people, when other cities, also now in ruin, were rich and flourishing. Thus we have on this coast remains of the early Phœenician period, of the Greek period, of the Roman or Byzantine period, and, lastly, of the crusading period—the latter too modern to be of any archæological interest. They consist merely of constructions built from the materials of the civilizations which had preceded it. Not content with using up these materials, the crusaders gave the towns and forts which they built wrong names, refusing to adopt the Saracen nomenclature, which was generally a corruption of the original Canaanitish or Hebrew, and attempting to identify them according to their own ideas of Biblical topography, or reading of Roman history, thereby introducing inextricable confusion. Thus we have William of Tyre, one of the crusading historiographers, gravely informing us that “Duke Godfrey de Bouillon awarded, with his usual magnanimity, to the generous and noble Tancred the city of Tiberias, on the Lake of Genasereth, as well as of the whole of Galilee and the sea-town of Kaypha (or Haifa), which is otherwise called Porphyria.”

The Carmelite monks still cling to this tradition, although modern research has proved beyond a doubt that the site, at all events of one Roman city of Porphyrion, was at Khan-Yunis, a ruin, eight miles north of Sidon, and at least seventy miles from Haifa. To escape this difficulty some have supposed there were two Porphyrions, and that one was here, basing their argument on the fact that in the Onomasticon of Eusebius and Jerome there is a city marked at the point of Carmel, called Chilzon, and that Chilzon is the Hebrew for the murex, or shellfish which produced the purple dye found there in great quantities; hence Porphyrion, or the purple city.

In carefully examining these ruins, and remarking the great quantity of carved porphyry which is peculiar to them, I have thought it furnished a stronger argument in favor of what would seem an appropriate appellation. The crusaders even confounded the Sea of Galilee with the Mediterranean; thus they supposed a connection to exist between the town of Caiapha, or Caiaphas (the modern Haifa), which Benjamin of Tudela asserts to have been founded by Caiaphas, the high-priest, and Cephas, the Greek name of Simon Peter. Hence near Haifa the crusading clergy showed the rock where Simon Peter fished, called to this day Tell el-Samak, or the Mound of the Fish. Laboring under a similar confusion of idea, they built a fort out of the ruins of a place called at the present day Kefr Lam, a name which, no doubt, dates back before the times of the crusaders, and which they twisted into Capernaum, that place being, as we all know, on the Sea of Galilee. The Capernaum of the crusaders, however, is a village on the Mediterranean shore, thirteen miles down the coast from here.

The itineraries of the pilgrims and early travellers are scarcely less perplexing. They are generally careful to record the distances between the various places they visit, but rarely with accuracy. Their remarks, however, are naïve and amusing. I have just been reading the journal of a certain Antoninus, the Martyr, who travelled in Palestine about the year A.D. 530. Writing of Tyre, he says:

“The city of Tyre contains influential men; the life there is very wicked; the luxury such as cannot be described. There are public brothels, and silk and other kinds of clothing are woven.”

We do not altogether see the connection in this last sentence. Going on, he remarks:

“Thence we came to Ptolemais (the modern Acre), a respectable city, where we found good monasteries. Opposite Ptolemais, six miles off, is a city which is named Sycaminus, under Mount Carmel. A mile from Sycaminus are the hamlets of the Samaritans, and above the hamlets, a mile and a half away, is the Monastery of Heliseus (or Elijah), the prophet, at the place where the woman met him whose child he raised from the dead. On Mount Carmel is found a stone, of small size and round, which, when struck, rings because it is solid. This is the virtue of the stone—if it be hung on to a woman, or to any animal, they will never miscarry. About six or seven miles off is the city of Porphyrion.”

Now there are as many mistakes as there are sentences in this quaint account by the holy man. It is a matter of dispute which are the ruins of Sycaminus. Two ruins claim that honor, and one of these it undoubtedly is. They are only two miles apart, but the nearest is thirteen miles from Acre, instead of six, and the other fifteen. A mile from Sycaminus, he says, are the hamlets of the Samaritans. These have been identified beyond all doubt as a ruin called Kefr es Samir, two miles and a half beyond one of the abovementioned ruins, and four miles and a half beyond the other. The Monastery of Heliseus, the prophet, “a mile and a half away,” I have described in a former letter. It is the picturesque gorge and ruin called Ain Siah, but the place where Elijah met the woman of Sarepta was, if we are to believe the Bible, “at the gate of that city,” at least fifty miles distant from Carmel. There is no doubt as to its site, between Tyre and Sidon. As to “the stone of small size, which, when struck, rings because it is solid,” it happens to ring because it is hollow. I have an interesting collection of these geodes, found near Ain Siah, their peculiar shapes having given rise to the legend that they were melons and other fruits which the proprietor refused the prophet when he was hungry, and which the latter therefore blasted with petrifaction. And then comes the final statement about the unhappy Porphyrion, which he puts six miles off, thus probably identifying it with Athlit, and making confusion worse confounded. First we have the Jerusalem Itinerary, distinctly placing it to the north of Sidon, a position confirmed by other authorities; then we have William of Tyre identifying it with Haifa, and now we have Antoninus putting it six miles off.