Part 4

We went, W. and I, for a pleasant stroll towards sundown, and had a perfectly exquisite view of Nablous, the ancient Shechem, lying between those two mountains whose names rang so sonorously to us all in childhood--the terrible Ebal and the smiling Gerizim. A most perfect, typical Eastern town, this, embowered in orange and pomegranate trees--the home of the nightingale, whose music blends with that of the multitudinous cascades echoing from the over-hanging cliffs. A Turkish sentry came and lit his fire close to our tents, and was suffered to mount his quite unnecessary guard over us all night, with an eye to backsheesh at sunrise.

_Sunday, 19th April._

The Day of Rest. No travel to-day. Exquisite Nablous, what a Paradise to rest in! But all was not perfection. We went to Church too early, by mistake, and had to wait an hour before Mass began, passing the time in French small-talk (indeed reduced to a minimum of smallness on my part, for it dwindled away almost to nothing) with the courteous ecclesiastics and the nuns in the garden of the little presbytery. As I was fasting I was not fortified against the subsequent performance on the harmonium during Mass, by a Syrian. On nearing our tent, cheered by the prospect of breakfast, I had another set-back by Isaac's announcing the imminent arrival of what sounded like "the Rev. Vulture," the Lutheran minister. Had that individual really been on the swoop I must have fled, but happily that morning call never took place. It is all very well to laugh, but I felt "in the Pit of Tophet." I have spent the rest of the day in sleep, and in writing to you, and in fascinating strolls through the town with W., and in returning calls. I am nicely burnt by the sun and wind, for nothing could induce me to let a veil blur or dim one single glimpse of the Holy Land.

_Monday, 20th April._

Glorious breezy weather with flying cloud shadows. Again eight hours in the saddle, but the Sunday rest has made me quite fresh again. We passed to-day through the hill country of Manasseh. After riding a mile or two out of Nablous our "flying column" came running up on foot to the dragoman in front to ask what was to be done with a poor little stowaway who had begged him to let him ride the baggage horse to escape from his unhappy home. "His mother was dead and his stepmother beat him." He looked so piteous perched up on the bags, but, of course, we could not kidnap him, and after receiving some money he was put gently down on the roadside. As we rode on we got a last sight of him on the green bank swaying to and fro in his desolate grief, his gown making a little pink dot in the vast landscape. Our mid-day halt was at a fountain in a fig country, and there we talked to the women and girls who were filling their pitchers. One showed me by signs how the figs were a failure this year, the young figs all falling off their stalks before ripening. Her patient acceptance of the inevitable reminded me of the Italian peasants and their "_Pazienza, è la volontà di Dio!_"

Then we deflected to the left on our journey to visit Sebaste, where St. John is supposed to have been beheaded, and with great probability. The Crusaders built a magnificent Church to his memory there, the ruins of which are very grand. We rode to the site of the gates of the city, along a path lined with classic pillars, and at the end of this avenue we saw the sea, and where Cæsarea, the harbour of Sebaste, once stood. Our camp that evening was at Ain Jenin, an ideal Eastern town. I was not prepared for anything so beautiful as it looked in the evening light, when we emerged in sight of it from a defile between hills. We were well in the Plain of Jezreel, and lo! Hermon at last! In the light of the after-glow we beheld his hoary head from our tents, to the north. Tender moonlight succeeded the after-glow. All the mosques and minarets were lighted up with delicate golden lamps at sunset (for it is Ramadan), as at Jerusalem and Nablous. This place is full of pomegranate trees, with their scarlet blossoms, and of flowering tamarisk.

_Tuesday, 21st April._

Off at sunrise, the larks singing over the face of the land. We had a glorious ride through the Plain of Jezreel or Esdraelon, often coming upon the brook Kishon and its little trickling tributaries in their multitudinous windings, and fording the same. What a vast space is here, how Biblical in its majesty, and how troubled too with recollections of battle from remotest ages of Israelitish history down to Napoleon's time. Deflecting to the right we climbed up to Naim for our halt, memorable for the raising of the widow's son. There was an immense view from this little bunch of mud houses towards Tabor and Galilee, with a foreground of purple iris. Then descending again into the plain we rode to the foot of Mount Tabor, where, in an olive-wood, and on ploughed land, our camp was pitched. How refreshing it is never to be told we are trespassing in this country.

On arriving I chose to remain and make a sunset sketch of distant Naim on its hill, whilst W. rode up to the top of Tabor.

_Wednesday, 22nd April._

Off again at sunrise over the saddle of Mount Tabor. Very rough riding through dells of oak, where the honeysuckle hung in masses and scented the air. Tabor itself is scarcely beautiful in outline, and like the magnified mounds that the old masters intended for mountains. In their pictures of the Transfiguration their Tabors are very like the original. This was our most glorious day's journey, for it took us to the shores of the Lake of Galilee. Hermon in distant Lebanon was visible ahead of us throughout. We rode up to near the top of the "Mount of Beatitudes," and then on foot reached the very top, and had our first view of the Sacred Sea from that immense height. Here Christ preached the Sermon on the Mount, and down there, intensely blue, lay that dear lake whose shores were so often trodden by His feet. Hermon rose above the majestic landscape, and a warm, palpitating light vibrated over all. In a scrap of shade from a rock we made our halt, and I had an hour and a half for a sketch. Then we rode down to Tiberias, descending into a furnace, though when once on the shore the breeze was sweet off the water. Tiberias is a dreadful little town, and we were glad to thread its alleys as quickly as possible. Our camp was on a pebbly strand about half a mile south of this, the only, town on these shores that once held such brilliant cities. I made an evening sketch, and before retiring for the night we strolled a long time by those sacred waters in the light of the full moon. The waves were strong, and sounded loud in that great stillness. At such times as this the sense of Our Lord's Presence is almost more than one's mortal heart can hold.

We picked up hundreds of shells, which will make appropriate rosaries, mounted in silver, the cross made out of olive wood which I have brought from Gethsemane. I will send you one.

_Thursday, 23rd April._

We went by boat three hours' row to near the mouth of the Jordan, at the north end of the lake, where the grassy slopes are supposed to

be the scene of the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. It is very difficult to describe to you my enchantment at seeing one after another these places I have longed to see from early childhood, when our beloved father used to read us the Bible every Sunday. The lake was pale and calm, delicately tinted, and there was a heat-haze over everything in the early part of the day. We disembarked under some thorny acacias which gave a deep shade, and I had the delight of making a sketch there of the coast, looking westward, whilst W. went on by boat to the Jordan. Rosy oleanders fringe the water as far as the eye can reach; the "Mount of Beatitudes" and top of Tabor are in the distance, and the site of Capernaum in the middle distance. God has trodden these scenes with human feet; the feeling of sketching them is scarcely to be put before you in words.

The boatmen were very angry at being kept, whilst I finished the sketch, from returning at the right time, for they told us that if the west wind sprang up we should never be able to get home that night. Surely enough we were only able to get as far as Capernaum with hard pulling against a strong west wind, which suddenly changed the whole face of the lake.

Its pale blue was now dirty green and the choppy waves lashed with foam, and so wild did the waves become that the progress of the boat was almost impossible. These sudden and violent gusts that come through the gullies between the mountains are dreaded by the fishermen of to-day as they were in Peter's time. Fortunately W. had in the morning ordered that our horses should be sent round to meet us here in case the wind arose, and we gladly got on them at this point, having an enchanting ride back and being able at many places to canter our horses. We heard afterwards that the boatmen did not get in till one in the morning. At Capernaum are seen some rich Roman ruins lying tumbled about as though by an earthquake. We rode through the supposed site of Bethsaida, and passed through a portion of the old Roman roadway for chariots, cut through the rock. No accumulation of earth has buried the original surface as elsewhere, so that this lane, with its polished floor of rock, must have undoubtedly been trodden by Our Lord as He passed from city to city. Here are the remains

of a Roman aqueduct, in one place pouring a huge volume of clearest water over a ledge where, no doubt, in the city's time, a fountain stood. Now the flood from the northern hills disperses itself in abundant streams that rush through dense herbage to the lake. We counted six of these little rivers on our way to Magdala, the birthplace of the Magdalen. We looked down from our mountain lanes to the milk-white strands of the little inlets that border the northern end of Gennesaret, and I wondered at which of them the various episodes of the Gospel took place--Our Lord preaching from the ship pushed out a little way to be free from the jostling crowd on shore--the embarkation for the miraculous draught of fishes----. Besides oleanders the pomegranates grow all along this shore in dense masses half embedded in teeming vegetation.

Magdala is a tiny mud hamlet with a single palm. There are splendid fig-trees here. Herds of oxen and goats and flocks of sheep browse knee-deep in the rich grass.

Our dragoman took us this time through the whole length of the town of Tiberias. It happened to be a great Jewish festival, and the men had all freshly oiled and curled their side locks, which dangled from under immense round fur caps, and the women wore artificial flowers in their hair and were clothed in velvets of splendid hue. It was strange to see them thus attired, coming upon them so suddenly when entering the town from the wilderness. The lanes were stifling and unwholesome, the children pale and sickly, and all had that same blighted look I noticed at Jerusalem. None of them were tanned, but remained white under such a sun! It was a relief to come out at the other end and canter back along the margin of the "Sea" to our camp, for that ride through Tiberias had oppressed and saddened me.

_Friday, 24th April._

An early start as the sun rose over those dark cliffs of the country of the Gadarenes down which the possessed swine careered to the abyss. Good-bye, blessed Sea of Galilee! We had our last look from the immense height near the "Mount of Beatitudes," and thence we turned south-west on our way to Nazareth over the hills of Zebulon.

Young shepherds were piping on little fifes on the hills. The country became uninteresting

(comparatively!) after we left the immediate surroundings of the lake till we came to Cana of Galilee, where we halted, and where I made my only "failure" sketch.

It was a dear, holy, lovable landscape, but hillocky and green and impossible in that flat noontide light. At Cana is the fountain from which undoubtedly was drawn the water for the marriage feast, since there is absolutely no other spring in the place. It was a long journey to Nazareth. That holy town is very lovely, and so much superior in its buildings to the others--quite well-to-do and exquisitely situated on the slope of a cypress-topped hill, in terraces, like a tiny Genoa. Here culminated my disappointment in the faces of the women of Palestine, for the tattooing is simply outrageous, worse than anywhere else in the East. How can they be beautiful with blue lips and the mouth surrounded with blue trees, animals and birds? This spoilt my pleasure in coming upon the "Fountain of the Virgin," where these maids and matrons were filling their pitchers amid a great chattering, at the entrance to the town. We walked, after arriving, to the Church of the Annunciation. There, in the "Holy House" (the front of which is at Loretto), far below the present surface of the earth, on the very spot where the angel saluted Mary, one can say the Angelus. This is the portion of the house which (as is the custom here) is excavated out of the rock; the fronts only are of masonry. We visited the "Mensa Christi," which interested us but little, as it savours too much of the "pious fraud," and then the site of Joseph's workshop.

We were disappointed in the position of our camp, as other travellers had forestalled us in getting better places, and the best of all was bespoken for the great French pilgrimage expected on the morrow.

On this account we settled not to tarry at Nazareth and to send the heavy column back to Jerusalem in the morning. We are only one day's journey from Caïfa, our place of embarkation. As I was looking at the town from our tent door at the time of the Angelus, the bells of the Church over Mary's house suddenly rang out a carillon, and the tune was that very one we used to hear when A. and I were five and six years old on our dear Genoese Riviera! I had not heard that tune since those days. Later on I watched the full

moon rising over those mountain outlines which Our Lord looked on every day of His hidden life at Nazareth, and then turned and saw the town white in the moonbeams on its dark hillside.

_Saturday, 25th April._

We started later than usual, as W. had to close accounts with the "heavy column" and send a telegram to Alexandria to warn them of our impending return. There was a heavy dew. I made a sunrise sketch of the town. A glorious ride we had to Carmel, steeped in the poetry of the Old Testament. Carmel is one mass of oak-trees. There we met the vast host of the French pilgrims coming from Caïfa and beginning their experiences of Palestine. We met amicably at the shady halting-place and exchanged a few words of _camaraderie_, and we watched them depart towards Nazareth, each company headed by a banner. On our way to Caïfa we crossed the Kishon again, now near its mouth, flowing through a lovely plain, bordered, near the sandhills that skirt the sea, with date-palms. Over the hills to our right towered Lebanon against the blue. As we came in sight of the bay the town of St. Jean d'Acre looked beautiful on the opposite side, and Caïfa appeared a bright little town at the foot of Carmel. There we put up at the German inn, and I parted with my dear little horse "Shiloh," and W. with his nimble "Kishon," our good little steeds that brought us so well through the Holy Land.

_Sunday, 26th April._

A great rest and much letter-writing. The congregation at Mass was large, for there is a considerable Christian colony here. We shall make this our headquarters till Friday, when we must leave for Egypt.

CAÏFA, _Monday, 27th April 189-_.

My....--We had a very enjoyable expedition to Acre, driving the whole way there and back _in the sea_. Where the waves break the sand is hard, whereas higher up the beach no wheeled vehicle could get through in the soft sand. We were often covered with spray, and the lean horses splashed along knee-deep in the surf. At the ferry across the Kishon, where it flows into the sea, our horses were unharnessed and swam alongside our punt, together with a string of camels that looked very comical swimming. The shivering horses were reharnessed on the farther shore, and away we went tearing through the waves. The poor beasts seemed to enjoy their oats at the end, if enjoyment is possible to such wretched, ill-treated creatures. I made a sketch as well as I could with the sun in my eyes from our shandrydan, about a quarter of a mile outside the one gate of Acre, on the white sandy strand, whilst W. went exploring all over the town. The military authorities molested us not at all, and the commandant only asked W. for backsheesh, although I was conspicuously sketching the fortifications and W. was scanning everything in a place so saturated with Napoleonic reminiscences. The same amphibious drive in the gloaming back to Caïfa.

_Tuesday, 28th April 189-._

To-day we drove to remote Athlit, a long way down the coast to the south, and spent quiet hours amid the Gothic Crusader ruins on the wave-lashed rocks beyond Carmel. Acre and Athlit steep one's mind in Crusader sentiment, which feels almost modern after so long a sojourn in the regions of the Bible. The majestic fragments of Northern Gothic we saw to-day seem strange to the eye in this Oriental land, but to the intellect they are full of touching meaning, for this was the point of departure for most of the Crusaders. Baffled, haggard, heart-broken, they took ship again from here.

Wednesday we spent in visiting the Carmelite Monastery, a perfect place to stay at instead of the rather dubious German inn. It is a fortress-like building commanding a sweeping view of the sea, south and west and north, and of the grand landscape eastward and south again. The whitewashed rooms are filled with the reflection from the light off the water and the land. The Abbot and monks, in the well-known white cloak and brown habit, are, as everywhere, kindly and hospitable, and glad to see you. What a place for study and for painting; what a place for a Retreat, where everything reminds you of Religion and not one single mundane, worrying, or ugly object comes within your ken! By "ugly" I always mean some modern eyesore; it is not a word applicable to the poor and the diseased who humbly mount the steep path for the daily alms and food the monastery has ready for them.

Somewhere amongst this series of oak-clad hills that forms Mount Carmel, Elijah built his altar to the True God, whereon the burnt-offering was consumed by fire from heaven in sight of the prophets of Baal. "Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the holocaust, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench," III Kings xviii. 38. This was the scene of that mighty episode which is one of the most salient and impressive in one's memory of the Old Testament, and look! down below rushes that same Kishon on whose banks Elijah, after the great drama on the mountain, slew the prophets of Baal in sight of all the children of Israel. A thrill runs through one when recalling such scenes as one stands on the very spot where they took place.

After seeing specimens of the ancient tombs in this country one can fully understand the words of St. Luke and St. John alluding to the new sepulchre of Joseph of Arimathea "wherein no man had yet been laid." These tombs contain triple receptacles for the dead, as I showed you in the sketch plan at Jerusalem, and some I believe have more than three. Had the sepulchre at the foot of Calvary contained but one, the words of the Evangelists would be puzzling. This is an instance of the illumination that dispels certain obscurities in one's mind as one journeys across the theatre of Bible history.

It seems a strange paradox, but it is a very weighty fact, that the possession of the Holy Land by the conservative Turk preserves all such tokens of the past for the elucidation of the Christian's Bible. Were this land in possession of a "Christian" Power, I fear that the service of Mammon would soon necessitate the obliteration of these tokens so precious to our Faith. Railways, factories, mines and new towns "run" by greedy syndicates, would very soon make an end of them all. There was a Christian proposal a little while ago, I believe, to flood the whole of Palestine for commercial purposes. My ideal would be (oh, vain dream!) that some great confederation of earnest people whose God is not the Dollar, belonging to the various European Powers and America, should purchase the little Holy Land as a possession "for ever" for Christendom--_real_ Christendom.

To-day, Thursday, we saw the "School of the Prophets," a curious and awesome cavern in the side of the mountain. These have been quiet days, wherein I have been able to write much and assimilate the events of our glorious journey.

Looking back along these days of travel, many flitting thoughts that came and went as we journeyed on, return to one's mind in the stillness of repose. One of the facts that have struck us most in this ancient land which is yet so fresh--so fresh in its surprises and in its stirrings of the heart--is the fact that no book of human authorship dealing with the subject is readable on the spot. You may take with you Dean Stanley, Dr. Thomson (_The Land and the Book_), Miss Martineau, or any of the delightful works on Palestine that have fascinated you in times gone by: you will open them once but not again. _The Bible is the only book you can read here!_ All the others are inadequate: no man can measure himself with the Infinite. (Such books as Père Didon's sublime _Jésus Christ_ or Father Gallwey's _Watches of the Passion_ I do not consider as being of human authorship, because they are illustrative accompaniments of the Scriptures.)

The feeling I have when on the point of leaving the Holy Land is one difficult to describe worthily. We seem to have been allowed a glimpse into the other world through this sacred portal. To have stood on the summit of Olivet whence Our Redeemer ascended into heaven in the form He reigns in now at the right hand of the Father, is as though one had touched heaven itself. And then the force with which one realises certain episodes of His revealed life on earth makes one see the Incarnation so vividly that the human mind bends beneath the might of the revelation.