Part 3

The united population of these four colonies amounts to about one thousand souls, besides which a few families are also established at Beyrout and Nazareth. But the largest settlement is at Haifa, where the society numbers over three hundred. These now, after fourteen years of vicissitudes, appear to be entering upon a period of comparative prosperity. They have not long since completed a twelve years' struggle with the government for the legalization of the titles to their land, which the authorities endeavoured to prevent by throwing every possible obstacle in the way; and while the question was pending they were compelled to pay their taxes through the nominal native owners, who assessed the lands at four times their actual value, putting the balance into their own pockets. All these difficulties have, however, at last been surmounted. They now hold their seven hundred acres of fine arable and vine land free of all encumbrance, and their well-cultivated fields, trim gardens, and substantial white stone mansions form a most agreeable and unexpected picture of civilization upon this semi-barbarous coast.

Meanwhile, the influence of three hundred industrious, simple, honest farmers and artificers has already made its mark upon the surrounding Arab population, who have adopted their improved methods of agriculture, and whose own industries have received a stimulus which bids fair to make Haifa one of the most prosperous towns on the coast. Already, since the advent of the Germans, the native population has largely increased. New stone houses have sprung up in all directions, and many are in course of construction. The value of land has increased threefold, and the statistics of the port show a large increase in the exports and imports. Perhaps the most remarkable innovation is the introduction of wheeled vehicles. Fifteen years ago a cart had never been seen by the inhabitants of Haifa. Omnibuses, owned and driven by natives, now run four or five times a day between Haifa and Acre, the capital of the province, distant about ten miles. It is true that the road is the smooth sea beach, and that its excellence varies according to the state of the tide, but in this country carts come before roads, and fortunately its topographical features have been favourable to the employment of wheeled vehicles. On one side of Carmel, extending southward, is the plain of Sharon, and over this one may drive to Jaffa without the necessity of road-making, so level and free from natural obstacle is it. On the other we may cross with equal ease the plain of Esdraelon to the Sea of Tiberias—the experiment having been made recently—and a road has been constructed to Nazareth, distant about twenty-two miles. This involved an expenditure on the part of the colonists of about one thousand dollars. It is used largely by the Arabs, who have contributed nothing towards it; but the effect on their minds, as they drive over it in their own carts, and remember that they owe both cart and road to the colonists, whom at first they mistrusted and disliked, is a sound moral investment, and bears its fruit in many ways.

Fifteen years ago no one could venture outside the town gates to the westward after nightfall, for fear of being waylaid and robbed by the lawless inhabitants of Tireh—a village noted for its bad character, about seven miles distant—who used to come marauding up to the outskirts of Haifa. Now one can ride and walk with safety in all directions and at all hours. The Germans have most of them learned to talk Arabic, and many an Arab that one meets salutes you with a _guten morgen_ or _guten abend_, though that is probably the limit of their linguistic accomplishments; but they respect and like the colonists, and a good deal of land is now cultivated on shares by Germans and Arabs, who seem to arrange their business and agricultural operations to their mutual satisfaction and in perfect harmony. When we remember that the Carmelite monks have held the mountain for seven hundred years, and compare their influence over the native population with that which these honest Germans have acquired by simple example during less than fifteen, we have a striking illustration of the superiority of practice to preaching, for it should be remarked that any attempt at proselytism is entirely foreign to their principles. Their whole effort has been to commend their Christianity by scrupulous honesty in their dealings, by the harmony and simplicity of their conduct, and by the active industry of their lives.

THE TEMPLE COLONIES IN PALESTINE.

Haifa, Jan. 20, 1883.—In a former letter I gave you a sketch of the origin of the Temple Society and of the religious motives which have led to the establishment of four agricultural colonies in the Holy Land by emigrants from Germany, America, Russia, and Switzerland. As I have taken up my winter residence in the principal one of these, situated beneath the shadow of Mount Carmel, some description of the place and its resources may not be without interest for your readers. I know of no locality in the East which offers greater attractions of position, climate, and association than this spot. Thanks to the efforts of the colonists, it has become an oasis of civilization in the wilderness of Oriental barbarism, where the invalid in search of health, or the tourist on the lookout for a comfortable resting-place on his travels, will find good accommodation, and all the necessaries, if not the luxuries, of civilized life.

Throughout the whole length of the coast of Palestine from Tyre to Gaza, only one deep indentation occurs. This is where it sweeps in a curve around the old fortress of St. Jean d'Acre, and terminates in the projecting precipice upon whose ledge the monastery of Carmel is situated. The bay thus formed is nine miles across from Acre to Carmel, and about four miles broad. It is bordered the whole distance by a smooth, hard beach, at the southeastern and most sheltered extremity of which is situated the town of Haifa, a modern native town, squeezed in between an overhanging bluff, on which are the ruins of an old castle, and the sea. It owes its origin to the arbitrary act of a pacha who, about a century ago, had rendered himself quasi-independent of the Porte, and established the seat of his government at Acre. The population of old Haifa, situated near the point, having rebelled against him, he punished them by razing it to the ground, and transported the inhabitants to the edge of the bay under the rock, on which he put a castle, while he surrounded them with a wall, thus keeping them prisoners. When he died, his successor was suppressed, the garrison of the castle was removed, and the wall was allowed to fall into disrepair. The inhabitants, who thus were restored to liberty, accustomed to their new location, began to cultivate the surrounding land and to increase in wealth and prosperity. Their gardens spread to the eastward, where the brook Kishon, winding through a fertile plain, struggles to debouch into the sea, but only succeeds at certain seasons, owing to the huge sand-bars which form at its month. These dam it back into small lakes, which are surrounded by date-groves, thus forming a most agreeable feature in the scenery. Behind the plain rises the low, wooded range which is traversed by the road leading to Nazareth.

Though Haifa is comparatively modern, there are some traces of old ruins in the town, the walls of an old crusading castle, one or two caverns, which bear marks of having been inhabited in the rocks immediately behind them, and the crumbling remains of an archway, dating, probably, from a period anterior to the crusades. Prior to the arrival of the colonists of the Temple Society, Haifa was as dirty as most Arab villages. It is now well paved throughout. The houses, all constructed of white limestone, quarries of which abound in the immediate vicinity, give it a clean and substantial appearance, and contain a bustling and thriving population of about six thousand inhabitants. Under the high cactus hedges at its eastern gateway are usually to be seen, squatting amid sacks of grain, hundreds of camels, which, attended by wild-looking Arabs, have arrived with their loads of cereals from the Hauran, on the other side of the Jordan; for Haifa is gradually becoming one of the great grain-exporting ports of the country, and one or two steamers are generally to be seen loading in the harbour.

Leaving the town by the western gateway, we ride for about a mile parallel to the seashore between high cactus hedges, and suddenly find ourselves apparently transported into the heart of Europe. Running straight back from the beach for about half a mile, and sloping upward for about a hundred feet in that distance, to the base of the rocky sides of Carmel, runs the village street. On each side of it is a path-way, with a double row of shade-trees, and behind them a series of white stone houses, of one and two stories, generally with tiled roofs, each surrounded with its garden, and each with a text in German engraved over the doorway. There is another, smaller, parallel street. The whole settlement contains about sixty houses and three hundred inhabitants. The English, American, and German vice-consuls are all colonists. There is a skilled physician, an architect, and engineer in the colony, an excellent hotel, a school, and meeting-house. The German government subscribes two thirds and the colonists one third of the funds required for the school. Some of the colonists are in business, and have stores in Haifa. There is also a good store in the colony, where all the most important trades are represented. There is one wind grist, and one steam mill, the latter in process of erection. There is a manufactory of olive-oil soap, the export of which to America is yearly increasing, and now amounts to 50,000 pounds, and which may be purchased in New York by such of your readers as have a fancy to wash their hands with soap direct from the Holy Land, made from the oil of the olives of Carmel, at F. B. Nichols's, 62 William Street. There is also a factory for the manufacture of articles from olive wood.

Where Carmel rises abruptly from the upper end of the street, its rocky sides have been terraced to the summit, and about a hundred acres are devoted to the cultivation of the vine. Unfortunately, the varieties which have been imported from Germany all suffer severely from mildew. I have therefore sent to the United States for Concords and some of the hardier American varieties. Along the lower slopes are thick groves of olives. Scarped along the rugged mountain-side leads the road to the monastery, distant about a mile and a half. Situated about five hundred feet above the sea, it forms a conspicuous object in the landscape as seen from the colony.

The views from the house in which I am living are a never-ending source of delight. To the east I look over the native town and harbour, with the date-groves and the plain of the Kishon beyond, backed by the wooded range which separates it from the plain of Esdraelon. To the northeast the eye rests on the picturesque outline of the mountains of northern Palestine, with the rounded top of Jebel Jernink rising to a height of 4000 feet in the middle distance, and snow-clad Hermon towering behind to a height of 9000 feet. Immediately to the north, across the blue waters of the bay, the white walls and minarets of Acre rise from the margin of the sea, and beyond it the coastline, terminating in the white projecting cliff known as “The Ladder of Tyre.” To the northwestward we look across a plain about a mile wide, containing the colony lands, and beyond is the sea horizon, till we turn sufficiently to meet Carmel bluff and monastery. Behind us the mountain rises precipitously, throwing us at this time of the year into shade by three in the afternoon. But even on New-Year's Day we do not grudge the early absence of the sun, for as I write the thermometer is standing at 66° in the shade. It is not, however, the features of the scenery which constitute its chief beauty, but the wonderful variations of light and shade, and the atmospheric effects peculiar to the climate, which invest it with a special charm. On the plain to the west of the colony, which is bounded on two sides by the sea, on one by the mountain, and on one by the colony, are the traces of the old town of Haifa, mentioned in the Talmud, but not in the Bible, which was besieged and taken by storm by Tancred, the crusader, in 1100, with a massive ruin of sea-wall and other remains, from which I have already dug out fragments of glass and pottery. Behind are the almost obliterated remains of an old fort, with here and there a piece of limestone cropping up, bearing the marks of man's handiwork.

Everywhere in Palestine we come upon the evidences of its antiquity. This plain, now made to yield of its abundance under the skilful labour of the German colonists, is no exception, for in the time of the Romans it was the site of the city of Sycaminum, and in the groovings of rocks upon which the sea now breaks we see the traces of what were its baths; in the mounds we find fragments of old masonry and cement; in the depressions we see signs of wells, and in the rock cuttings of tombs. Only the other day I found, while digging in the garden for the prosaic purpose of planting cabbages, a fragment of polished agate which probably formed a part of the tessellated pavement of some Roman villa.

So the process of decay and reconstruction goes on, and man is ever trying to rear something new on the ruins of the old. Let us hope that the sixty or seventy substantial houses of the new colony are but the outward and visible signs of that moral edifice which these good people have come to Palestine to erect, and that from the ruins of a crumbling ecclesiasticism they may build a temple worthy the worship of the future.

EXPLORING MOUNT CARMEL.

Haifa, Feb. 7.—It was my fate as a child to live in a country-house in Scotland, of which one half was some centuries old, with stone walls several feet thick, and circular stone steps leading up into a mysterious tower, which was supposed to be haunted, and in which it was rumoured that a secret chamber existed, built in the wall, and I remember perfectly that certain places seemed to sound hollow to blows of a crowbar, which as I got older, I used to apply to suspected localities. It is more years than I care to think of since those days, but I can trace a resemblance to that childish feeling in the sensations by which I am animated when I wander over the gloomiest recesses of Carmel alone in search of caverns.

It is called in some ancient Jewish record “the mountain of the thousand caves,” and has been inhabited from time immemorial by hermits and religious devotees. Independently of the Biblical record, we have historical traces of its holy character. According to the most ancient Persian traditions, sacred fire burned at the extreme western point of Carmel. Suetonius speaks of the oracles of the god of Carmel, and Alexander the Great repeats the saying. The Syrian city, Ecbatana, alluded to by Pliny, was situated on this mountain. Pythagoras lived here in retreat for some time because it had a reputation for superior sanctity, but Strabo mentions the caves as being haunts of pirates. They were doubtless used as places of refuge for bad characters, as well as of seclusion for pious ones. Others were used for tombs, others for crusaders' sentry-boxes, and now they are the retreat of flocks and herds, and in some instances storehouses for grain.

Those, however, thus utilized are comparatively few in number; I believe many to be unknown even to the natives, while others are invested by them with a mysterious character, and their dimensions are probably exaggerated. I have received accounts of some, which I hope to visit, which are said to extend beyond any known exploration, of others which bear traces of carving and inscriptions, but nothing can be more uncertain or unsatisfactory than native accounts upon all matters where definite information is required. I have tried exploring with guides and exploring alone, and have been almost as successful one way as the other.

One of my first visits was to a ruin which I had observed crowning a summit of the range, but which was only visible from certain points, so shut in was it by the intervening mountain-tops. I started on horseback, determined to find my way alone, and struck into a valley where the narrow path followed a ledge of limestone rock, often not more than two feet wide. I soon found myself diving into a sombre gorge, the precipitous sides of which rose abruptly from the bed of the winter torrent. As I proceeded it became more and more uncanny; the path was so narrow I could no longer venture to risk my horse's footing, as a slip would have involved a fall of at least two hundred feet. My ruin disappeared, and my gorge seemed to trend away from it, the sun sank behind the range, and the deep gloom of the solitary valley, hemmed in on all sides by terraces of limestone, with here and there a fissure indicating some cavernous recess, was becoming depressing.

I tried to turn, but the ledge was too narrow, so I was obliged to creep cautiously on in the wrong direction. I began now rather to fear lest I should meet some one, not merely because passing would have been impossible, but because the spot was eminently well calculated for an act of violence, and, while I always go about unarmed, I find that my neighbours seldom go out riding alone without carrying revolvers. The aspect of a wild-looking Arab, with a gun slung behind him, suddenly turning a corner and coming straight towards me, was, under these circumstances, not reassuring. Fortunately, at the moment I saw him I had reached a spot where a huge rock had been displaced, and had left a vacant space large enough to enable me to turn comfortably, and I retraced my steps, amply repaid for my failure in not reaching the ruin, by the solemn grandeur of the part of the mountain into which I had been penetrating, and by finding my Arab, when he overtook me, to be a communicative and harmless individual, who was on his way home from a cave in which he stored his grain, and which he assured me I should have reached if I had continued a few hundred yards farther. Beyond this, he said, the path led nowhere.

My next attempt was made with a friend who knew the way, and who led me along a corresponding ledge upon the opposite side of the valley, into a side gorge, which we followed past a wall of rock, in which were two or three small caverns, which I entered, the largest not more than twelve or fourteen feet square, and showing no signs of having been inhabited. A huge rock detached from the mountain-side, and hollowed into a sort of gallery, is so celebrated among the natives that it has a name of its own. Just behind it we turned to scramble almost straight up the mountain-side, covered with a scrub composed of camelthorn, odoriferous thyme, sage, marjoram, and arbutus, and then found we were at the foot of seven clearly defined terraces, completely encircling the rounded hill, upon the top of which stood the crumbling walls of an old fort, and which formed portions of its defences. On one of these stood a shepherd's hut, and inside the enclosure made of bushes was the entrance to a cavern, about thirty yards long, four feet high, and twenty or thirty feet across. In it, when they were not out feeding, the shepherd kept his flock of long-eared goats.

Ascending to the ruin, I found it to consist of the remains of what had evidently been a fort, the walls of which, enclosing a space of about sixty yards long by forty broad, were standing to a height of eight or ten feet, and were composed of blocks of limestone. At one angle a portion of the fortress had at a later period been converted into a church, the apse, with its arches, being in a tolerable state of preservation. The name of this ruin is Rushmea, and according to the most reliable sources of information to which I have had access, it was used by Saladin to watch the progress of the siege of Acre when that place was held by the crusaders. Prior to the crusades and the formation of the order of the Carmelite monks, the mountain was inhabited by anchorites, some of whom claimed to have inherited the sacred character of Elijah and Elisha. For some time seven of them seem to have divided the claim between them, and one of them is reported to have lived in a cave at Rushmea, which is said to contain carving and inscriptions. It was for this cave I was especially in search; but though I have visited the locality three times in all, twice with guides, and have found some seven or eight caves, one of which had a carved limestone entrance, none of them seemed of sufficient importance to answer the traditional description. A magnificent view is obtained from the ruin over the Bay of Acre, with the town in the distance and the plain of Kishon beneath, and plainly visible the famous well for the possession of which Saladin and Richard Cœur de Lion fought. I have visited this celebrated source, with its massive masonry and crumbling cistern, in the centre of which there is now a flourishing fig-tree. During the siege which Haifa then withstood, the town was completely destroyed, so that the crusading army had to remain in tents, and here it was that the lion-hearted king caught that severe fever which gave rise to reports of his death, and which resulted in his remaining for four weeks at Haifa to recover his health. That plain is as unhealthy now as it was then, and the date-groves, which are its most striking feature, must have existed then, for they are mentioned in the records of the year 1230, when King Amalrich II. died of a surfeit of sea-fish, for which the place is celebrated.

To return to Rushmea. The whole hill-top is covered with the traces of remains far anterior to the ruins of crusading times. Everywhere we come upon the solid limestone foundations of what must have been large buildings; there are flights of steps hewn in the rock, large square cuttings from which blocks have been taken, places where circular holes have been drilled, grooves, niches, and excavations. On a plateau about a hundred yards to the west is a series of massive stone arches in a very fair state of preservation. I found the elevation of Rushmea, by my aneroid, to be as nearly as possible seven hundred feet above the sea. In a valley behind it, and a hundred feet below it, are a dozen olive-trees of immense age, and near them a celebrated spring, called the Well of Elisha. It is not above twelve feet deep, and, on descending into it, I found that it was in fact not a spring, but a subterranean stream which enters a receptacle formed for it in the rock, from a cave at the side, and from which it disappears again. Instead of returning from Rushmea by the way I had come, I pushed up to the head of the valley in which the spring is situated. On two of the hills which rise from it I found terraces and the foundations of stone edifices. Indeed, wherever one wanders in Carmel, one is apt to stumble upon these substantial records of its bygone history. As the mountain is about thirteen miles long and nine miles wide at its southeastern extremity, and as every valley and hillside and plateau has at one time or other been inhabited, and as many of these remain still to be explored for the first time, there is abundant field for investigation, and it is impossible to take a ride or a scramble in any direction without coming upon some object of interest. Nor is it possible to lose one's way when alone, except to a limited extent, for the nearest hill-top, if you can get to it, is sure to let you know where you are.