Part 4

Thus leaving Rushmea without a guide, and soon without a path, I pushed through the scrub, now dismounting and driving my horse before me, now forcing him, much to his discomfort, through the prickly bushes. Even at this time of year the hills are bright with scarlet anemones, and the delicate pink or white cyclamen, and fragrant with aromatic odours as we crush through the shrubs. Suddenly I came upon the foundations of a wall, which I followed for about a hundred yards, and which was about four feet in thickness. Near it, half hidden by the bushes, was a circular block of limestone about five feet high and the same in diameter, in the centre of which had been drilled a hole. It looked like the section of some gigantic column such as we see in some of the temples of Upper Egypt; but it stood alone, and I fail to imagine its design. Possibly it may have been used for sacrificial purposes. Shortly after I found myself on a high, level plateau, where the soil was so excellent, and the rocks had so far disappeared, that it would do admirably for farming purposes. It seemed to extend over some hundreds of acres. Formerly, the whole of these fertile tracts of Carmel were covered with magnificent forests—even in the memory of man—but of late years the demand for charcoal has so much increased that the mountain has been almost completely denuded of trees, and although a strict order has been issued by the government against the felling of timber, it still continues, and, thanks to the system of backsheesh, the export of charcoal from Haifa last year exceeded that of any previous year. Keeping westward by my compass I soon after struck a path, and finally dropped down upon the German colony near Haifa, after a day's ramble through the most delightful scenery, every step of which was replete with historical association and antiquarian interest.

THE VALLEY OF THE MARTYRS.

Haifa, Feb. 12.—A more thorough examination of the rocky hillsides of the Carmel promontory in the vicinity of the celebrated monastery than I have been hitherto able to give it, has revealed many spots of interest, and one in particular, which seems to have escaped the observation of the Palestine Exploration Fund Survey. About two miles and a half from Haifa the road to Jaffa passes between a projecting spur of the range and a mound about a hundred feet high, which formed the centre of the ancient city of Sycaminum, and which probably conceals some interesting remains, which I hope some day to be able to unearth.

It projects out into the sea, and on the flat rocks at its base, over which the waves break in stormy weather, there is a large circular bath excavated by the Romans, about twenty feet in circumference, with a channel cut through the rock, which admits the rising tide. All round this mound are fragments of columns, carved capitals, and blocks of polished marble, some of the lightest of which I have carried away; but it is upon the unknown contents of the mound itself that my imagination is prone to speculate. On the left of the road are caverns and rock-cut tombs, some containing the remains of loculi; and the surface of the smooth limestone rock leaves traces of ancient steps, and cuttings, showing that in old times the hand of man had been actively employed upon it. I had often examined these, and thought I had reached their limit, when, pushing my exploration farther up the steep hillside a few days ago, through the low brush by which it is covered, I unexpectedly came upon a plateau eight or ten acres in area, and about two hundred feet above the level of the sea, covered with the débris of ancient ruins. It was evidently the upper part of the old city of Sycaminum, and commanded a magnificent view of the coast-line southward, and of what was formerly the lower town, which has heretofore been supposed to be all that there was of the city.

This upper town, from its cool and delightful position, was probably the residence of the wealthier inhabitants; here, too, were fragments of marble columns and carved capitals, and conspicuous among them two gigantic old olive millstones, one about eight feet in diameter and two feet thick, and the other of less diameter, but of more than three feet in thickness. There were, moreover, many rock tombs with loculi, the foundations of ancient walls of immense thickness, and here and there fragments of the wall itself standing, in one place to a height of about five feet. But the most interesting find was a triangular piece of marble, on which was an inscription in a character which may possibly be ancient Syriac. It is certainly not Greek, Roman, or Hebrew, though at the first glance I thought it was the former. Unfortunately, the stone has been cut since the inscription was engraved, and there are only a few letters of each word, one below the other, but it was evidently originally a long one, consisting of many lines. I also discovered here a cistern, with four circular apertures; causing myself to be lowered into it, I found it to be seventy feet long, supported by four pillars hewn from the living rock, lined with cement, and twenty feet high, from the débris with which it was partially choked. Altogether the place is well worth a fuller and more careful investigation, which I hope to give it.

About an hour's ride further south is an interesting spot called the Valley of the Martyrs, which, though rarely visited, is well worth an excursion, not merely on account of its peculiar geological features and its great scenic attractions, but from the historical associations which attach to it. It was towards the close of the twelfth century that Father Brocard was elected vicar-general of the order “of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel,” whose sanctuary had been long established upon the mountain, though the members of the order had their homes in its numerous caverns, resorting to the shrine only for purposes of worship, while they lived as scattered ascetics in the surrounding valleys. Father Brocard conceived the idea of collecting them in a monastery, and placing them under certain fixed regulations, which have ever since been the rules of the order, and which were sanctioned in A.D. 1207 by Saint Albert, Patriarch at Jerusalem, Pope's Legate, and then resident at Acre.

It was in this gorge, which subsequently became known as the Valley of the Martyrs, that Father Brocard decided to build the first monastery, attracted thither, probably, by its beauty of situation and the copiousness of its springs, one of which is called after Elijah, as tradition has it that the inhabitants in his time complained of a lack of water, and he touched the rock and caused the present stream to gush forth. It wells up from under the limestone rock, and flows through a channel cut for it, for a few yards, into a basin hollowed out of the solid rock, about twelve feet square and six feet deep; from here it flows down the narrow gorge, and speedily expends itself in fertilizing some small gardens of figs, oranges, and pomegranates, which are wedged in between the rocky hillsides, and are tended by one or two poor families who live in caves. These gardens are now claimed by the present monastery, but there seems much doubt as to the validity of their title.

It is safer to dismount after passing this spring, as we now have to cross the smooth surface of the limestone rock as we follow the steep path that leads up to the ruin of the old monastery, the position of which is indicated by the remains of an enormous wall which nearly reaches across the gorge, looking from below like some huge dam, and which must have concealed the monastery itself from public gaze, except from the hills above. We are now struck by the extraordinary petrifactions over which we are passing. The path is worn deep by centuries into the soft limestone, in the sides of which appear layers of petrified twigs and branches of the bushes of a bygone period. They are perfectly white, except where fractures exhibit the black flint core; but in some instances the form of the branch is perfect with all its twigs. Passing under the projecting buttress of the dam-like wall, we suddenly open on a terrace covered with vines and fruit-trees on one side, and find ourselves at the mouth of a large cave on the other. Entering this, if we are willing to brave the fleas—for, as it is generally inhabited by an Arab family, they abound—we find that we are in a spacious apartment supported by a column of solid rock, while all around are mangers for horses, cut out of the stone. Of these we count fourteen, which will give some idea of the size of the cave. Probably in crusading times it was a cavalry outpost, affording, from its strong natural position and proximity to the plain of Sharon, a splendid point of vantage from which to pounce upon an unsuspecting enemy.

Ascending from the cave by some steps to the terrace, we come unexpectedly upon a delicious spring overshadowed by spreading fig-trees, which fills with crystal water a basin that has been hollowed out of the overhanging rock; from this it trickles into another stone-cut reservoir, from whence it is led by a stone channel, hollowed by the monks, to the monastery itself, one small room of which is still standing. The rock rises perpendicularly behind, and is scooped here and there into recesses, which were formerly, doubtless, the cells of monks, while the cool shade of spreading fruit-trees, the beauty of the view, the presence of running water, and the ever-blowing southwest wind, of which they got the full benefit, must have modified to a considerable extent the austerities of their existence.

There came a day, however, when their peaceful solitude was rudely disturbed. In 1238 the Saracens came upon them unexpectedly, and massacred them all, not leaving one to tell the bloody tale. There seems to be no record of the actual number who fell victims upon this occasion, but they must have been very numerous, as the Monastery of St. Brocard had become a refuge for monks from all parts of Palestine, who fled hither to escape the persecution to which they were being subjected in other parts of the country. Not content with putting them to death, the Saracens dragged their bodies down to the Spring of Elijah, and flung them into the square reservoir there, which I have already described. According to the pious chronicler of this tragic event, the spring immediately refused to flow, and when the Christians of Acre, hearing the news, came to bury their coreligionists, they found it dry. When they had completed their melancholy task, they prayed that the water might commence to run once more, which it immediately did, and has never ceased since.

The result of this tragedy was the practical expulsion of the order of the Carmelites from Palestine. The Monastery of St. Brocard, after its short-lived existence, fell into ruins, and more than four hundred years elapsed before the order once more secured a footing on Mount Carmel, and built a monastery upon it at the end of the promontory, which served as a hospital for the French soldiers during Napoleon's occupation of this part of the country. His hurried evacuation of Palestine involved the destruction of the monastery and the massacre of all the wounded, to whose memory a monument has since been erected in the garden attached to the present edifice. But there can be no doubt that both for picturesqueness and historical association the old ruin of the Monastery of Saint Brocard, which altogether escapes the attention of the tourist and the pilgrim, is far more interesting than the modern monastery, which is not fifty years old, and which is about two miles distant from this old site.

On the top of the hill above the ruins of the Monastery of St. Brocard is a plateau, called the Garden of Elijah, or the field of melons, which is abundantly strewn with geodes, or fragments of calcareous stone, having all the shape and appearance in many cases of petrified fruit, the crystallization of the centres when they are split open having confirmed this idea, thus doubtless giving rise to the legend that Elijah on one occasion, passing through the gardens which were once situated here, asked the proprietor for some fruit. He replied, not wishing to comply with the request, that they were stones, on which the prophet, apparently in a fit of temper, said, “Well, stones let them remain,” and stones they have remained ever since. I found some curious specimens so like small melons that one can well understand how this fable may have originated among an ignorant population.

THE ROCK-HEWN CEMETERY OF SHEIK ABREIK.

Nazareth, Feb. 18.—There is a low range of hills, about five hundred feet above the sea-level, half-way between Haifa and Nazareth. It is beautifully timbered with oak-trees, and cut up into the most charming valleys. Running almost due north and south, it divides the plain of Esdraelon from that of Acre. Its southern extremity, terminating abruptly, forms a small gorge with the Carmel range, through which the Kishon forces its way to the sea. It was during a heavy rain-storm a week ago that I approached the ford of this river from Haifa. It was not without trepidation, for the stream had been so swollen by recent rains that communication with the interior had been interrupted. It was doubtful whether the passage of this river, which almost dries up in summer, would not involve a ducking. I therefore prudently requested my companion to precede me into the yellow, swirling stream, and although the water came up to our saddle-bags, the horses managed to get across without losing their footing. Then we galloped into the oak-woods. The sun broke out from behind the clouds, and we determined to prosecute our search for certain caves, of the existence of which we had heard, and which, owing to the state of the weather, we had almost decided to abandon.

Leaving the high-road to Nazareth to the right, we followed a path for about half an hour which took us to the village of Sheik Abreik. It was a miserable collection of mud hovels, in the muddiest of which dwelt the sheik. After much palaver and promises of abundant backsheesh we got him to admit the existence of the caverns of which we were in search, and persuaded him to be our guide to them. The first was called by the Arabs “The Cave of Hell.” Its entrance seemed to justify the ill-omened appellation. It was a steep, sloping tunnel into the bowels of the earth, just large enough to admit the passage of a man's body. To slide into this feet foremost after a heavy rain involved a coating of mud from top to toe. After going down a few yards we found a chamber in which we could stand erect. Here we lighted our candle and looked about us. We found that it was the first of a series of similar chambers opening one into another. Each contained loculi, hewn out of the solid rock. The entrances to these chambers were arched. The pilasters on each side of the entrance were in some cases ornamented with rude sculptures and decorated with designs in a yellow pigment. These were in the form of curves, scrolls, and circles, and were carried over the roof. Each chamber was about ten feet long by six feet wide, and on an average contained three tombs or loculi, one across the chamber, facing the entrance, and one on each side. There do not seem ever to have been lids to these stone receptacles for the corpses.

The bodies were embalmed, wrapped in cloths, as we read in Scriptural accounts of burials, notably in that of our Saviour. “Each in his narrow cell forever laid,” they remained undisturbed until rude hands, ages afterwards, “rolled away the stone from the mouth of the cave” and rifled the contents.

Some of the entrances to the chambers had been completely filled up. In such cases the partition wall of rock had been broken through. Some of the chambers were larger than others, and there were two tiers of loculi. In order to get from one chamber to another it was often necessary to drag yourself along at full length upon the ground. In one case the roof had been broken through into a chamber above, and this probably led to more.

I had not time fully to explore this most curious and interesting spot. Examinations of this sort in the middle of a long day's ride are very fatiguing. The effort of scrambling about on all fours, or after the fashion of the serpent, is very great, and makes you very dirty. In the absence of a string you are haunted by the idea of not being able to find your way back, to say nothing of the chance of sticking in one of these narrow passages. Altogether, I entered about fifteen different chambers, and doubtless the others did not differ in any important particulars. I am afraid, however, that I was not the first to discover them, but that this honour rests with Captain Conder, Royal Engineers, of the Palestine Exploration Fund. The sheik told us he had once before guided a foreigner to this locality, and on the next cave we visited we found the letters R. E. scratched in red paint on the rock, which under these circumstances can only mean Royal Engineers.

The next cave was a much more comfortable one to examine, though not nearly so interesting. You could walk about it comfortably, but there was no ornamentation. The chambers were larger, but there were only five or six of them. The stone coffins had, in many instances, been completely destroyed, but the massive stone columns, or rather blocks, of living rock which supported the roof were finer than those in the “Cave of Hell.” Perhaps it owed its more dilapidated condition to the largeness of its entry, and its proximity to another huge cave which had evidently in crusading times been converted into a Christian place of worship. According to a rough measurement obtained by pacing it, the nave was seventy feet by thirty, the apse eighteen by twenty-one, and two apse-shaped transepts about twenty by eighteen; but these were very much filled with rubbish. The height of the cave was about thirty feet. The whole formed a subterranean church, which, in its perfect condition, when entered from the hillside, must have presented a very imposing appearance. On the slope of the hill, not far from this cave, was the carved pedestal of a granite column, and near it a handsome stone sarcophagus.

Instead of going back to the Nazareth road after finishing our examination of this interesting spot, we made for a hill on the summit of which we saw some large blocks of stone betokening ruins. Here we came upon a native excavation, evidently very recent. Indeed, we heard later that it had only been abandoned the week before. The natives occasionally find an unopened tomb, and dig into it for treasure. It was useless to attempt to disabuse their minds of the idea that we were treasure-hunters. On asking them what they had found, they said, some red glass bottles, which they had broken to discover what they contained. They had also found three jars, one containing ashes, one earth, and one was empty. These they had also smashed. It was enough to make one's mouth water to hear of the destruction of these curiosities so very recently. I implored them if they found any more not to break them, but to bring them to me. They laughed, and promised to do so, saying, at the same time, “They are so very old that they are not worth anything.” This cave was evidently an important one, but the natives, finding nothing but the glass and the jars, had blocked up the entrance again, and I had to put off the examination of it to some future time. On the top of the hill there were several sarcophagi, some coffins hewn out of the living rock on the surface, with the stone lid at the side. At one place I saw a huge stone lid about eight feet long, two feet six inches broad at its base, and the same in height, but coming up to a ridge, which was evidently still covering the mortal remains which had originally been placed beneath it. The position of this I have also marked, and propose, at some future time, to remove it by gunpowder and see what is below.

Had it not been necessary to push on in order to reach Nazareth before night, I would have lingered longer at these ruins, which are called Zebda by the natives. They are worthy of a full examination. The whole rocky summit of the hill is evidently honeycombed with cave tombs, many of which had not yet been opened. One of these, some miles farther on towards Nazareth, especially attracted my attention. A huge circular stone about two feet in diameter had been rolled into the carved stone entrance to the cave, and become tightly wedged. All the efforts of the natives to remove it, and the marks of such efforts were visible, had evidently been unavailing. It needed a very small charge of dynamite to remove the obstacle which had so successfully resisted the barbarian ingenuity of ages. This I had arranged to do, but on the day fixed for the purpose persistent rain disappointed me. However, it is a treat in store.

The first entrance into one of these old Jewish tomb-caverns will be an exciting episode, but there is an amount of suspicion and jealousy on the part of the natives which will render prudence and circumspection necessary if any attempt of this sort is to be carried out with success.

The whole plain of Esdraelon, on the verge of which this ruin is situated, as well as part of the hills behind, is now all owned by one rich firm of Syrian bankers, who draw an annual income of about $200,000 a year from it. They own practically about five thousand human beings as well, who form the population of thirty villages, which are in their hands. I found no more potent talisman in inducing the natives to comply with my request; than to mention the name of “Sursuk,” and imply that I had the honour of his acquaintance. No despot exercises a more autocratic power over the liberties or the lives of his subjects than does this millionaire landed proprietor, who continues annually to add to his territory till the whole of Galilee seems in danger of falling into his hands. This part of the country, however, is at present beginning to attract the attention of foreigners, and it is to be hoped that before long he may find rivals in the field who will do more to improve the condition of the peasantry, and introduce methods of agriculture which may make them more independent of the money-lenders who now make their profit by sucking their very life-blood.

EASTER AMONG THE MELCHITES.