The Land and The Book - Volume I

[Resource Manager]

 

III. BEIRUT—Continued.

 

January 26th.

 

The roofs of these houses afford such a delightful prom­enade, and the prospect is so beautiful, that I can scarcely keep away from them, day or night. So absorbed was I just now in gazing about, that, if it had not been for the parapet, I should have walked quite off, and then have found my­self on the ground with a broken limb or neck, I suppose. As it was, I made a desperate stumble, and was excessively frightened.

 

A very practical illustration, that, of the wisdom and hu­manity of the command in Deut. 22:8, When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house if any man fall from thence. This ordinance ought still to be enforced by law wherever the roofs are flat, and resorted to for busi­ness, relaxation, or for sleeping. In Syrian cities the roofs are a great comfort. The ordinary houses have no other place where the inmates can either see the sun, “smell the air,” dry their clothes, set out their flower-pots, or do numberless other things essential to their health and comfort. This is particularly true within the city walls; but even in villages the roof is very useful. There the farmer suns his wheat for the mill, and the flour when brought home, and dries his figs, raisins, etc., etc., in safety both from animals and from thieves.

 

 

During a large part of the year the roof is the most agree­able place about the establishment, especially in the morn­ing and evening. There multitudes sleep during the sum­mer, in all places where malaria does not render it danger­ous. This custom is very ancient. Though, according to our translation of 1 Samuel 9:25,26, Samuel calls Saul to the top of the house, that he might send him away, in­stead of from it, yet, taking the whole passage together, there can be no doubt but that the process should be reversed. The Arabic has it thus: “And Samuel conversed with Saul upon the top of the house, and spread his bed for him, and he slept on the roof; and very early in the morning Sam­uel called Saul from the top of the house,” etc., etc. This is natural, and doubtless the correct history of the case. Saul, young, vigorous, but weary with his long search, would de­sire no better place to sleep than on the roof. But there should always be battlements, and commissioners should be appointed to see that they are kept in proper repair. The Moslems generally build very high parapets, in order to screen their women from observation; but the Christians are very negligent, and often bring blood upon their houses by a sinful disregard of this law of Moses.

 

 

[Resource Manager]

Your remark about the Moslems suggests the thought that if Uriah’s house had been thus protected, David might have been saved from a long series of dismal crimes, and Israel from dreadful calamity.

 

True; but then the roof of David’s palace was probably so high that he could look directly down into the courts of the neighboring houses. There are such in all cities, and you can scarcely commit a greater offense than to frequent a terrace which thus commands the interior of your neigh­bor’s dwelling.

 

Isaiah has a reference to the house-tops in the 22d chap­ter which I do not quite understand. He says, verse 1st, What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the house-tops? For what purpose did the inhabitants of Jeru­salem thus go thither?

 

This is a remarkable passage. Verse 2d goes on to say, Thou art full of stirs, a tumultuous city, a joyous city; from which one might suppose that the people had gone to the roofs to eat, drink, clap hands, and sing, as the Arabs at this day delight to do in the mild summer evenings. But, from verses 4th and 5th, it is plain that it was a time of trouble, and of treading down, and of perplexity; which naturally suggests the idea that the inhabitants had rushed to the tops of the houses to get a sight of those chariots and horsemen of Elam and Kir, with whom their choice valleys were full, and who were thundering against the gates of the city. And, as Oriental houses generally have no windows looking outward into the streets, or, if there are such, they are close­ly latticed, there is no place but the roofs from whence one can obtain a view of what is going on without. Hence, when any thing extraordinary occurs in the streets, all class­es rush to the roof and look over the battlements. The in­habitants of Jerusalem, at the time of this Persian invasion, were probably seized with phrensy and madness, as they were long after, at the siege of Titus. According to Jose­phus, some reveled in drunken feasts, and kept the city in alarm by their stirs and tumults; some were engaged in plunder and murder, when the slain were not dead in battle; some wept bitterly, like Isaiah, and refused to be com­forted because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people; in a word, it was a day of universal and utter confu­sion. Nobody could sit still, but all hurried to the house­tops, either to join in untimely riots of fanaticism and drunken despair, or to watch with fear and trembling the dreadful assault upon their walls and gates; no wonder they had wholly gone up to the house-tops.

 

Was it customary in the time of our Saviour to make public proclamations from the tops of the houses?

 

Such an inference may fairly be drawn from Matthew 10:27, and Luke 12:3. Our Lord spent most of his life in villages, and accordingly the reference here is to a custom observed only in such places, never in cities. At the pres­ent day, local governors in country districts cause their com­mands thus to be published. Their proclamations are gen­erally made in the evening, after the people have returned from their labors in the field. The public crier ascends the highest roof at hand, and lifts up his voice in a long-drawn call upon all faithful subjects to give ear and obey. He then proceeds to announce, in a set form, the will of their master, and demand obedience thereto.

 

It is plain that the roofs were resorted to for worship, both true and idolatrous. We read, in Zeph. 1:5, of those who worshiped the hosts of heaven on the house-tops; and from Acts 10:9, we learn that Peter at Joppa went up to the roof to pray about the sixth hour.

[Resource Manager]

All this is very natural. The Sabeans of Chaldea and Persia could find no more appropriate place for the perform­ance of their idolatrous worship of the heavenly bodies than these open terraces, with the stars shining down upon them so kindly. And, as very few Oriental dwellings have closets into which the devout can retire for prayer, I suppose Peter was obliged to resort to the roof of Simon’s house for this purpose; and when surrounded with battlements, and shaded by vines trained over them, they afford a very agreeable re­treat, even at the sixth hour of the day—the time when Peter was favored with that singular vision, by which the kingdom of heaven was thrown open to the Gentile world.

 

 

Our Lord says, Let him that is on the house-top not come down to take any thing out of his house.¹ Is it a correct in­ference from this that the stairway landed on the outside of the house?

 

Outside of the house, but within the exterior court. It would not be either agreeable or safe to have the stairs land outside the inclosure altogether, and it is rarely done, ex­cept in mountain villages, and where roofs are but little used. They not unfrequently end in the lewan, but more commonly in some part of the lower court. The urgency of the flight recommended by our Lord is enhanced by the fact that the stairs do lead down into the court or lewan. He in effect says, though you must pass by the very door of your room, do not enter; escape for your life, without a moment’s delay.

 

No traveler in Syria will long need an introduction to the sparrow on the house-top. There are countless num­bers of them about you.

 

 

They are a tame, troublesome, and impertinent genera­tion, and nestle just where you don’t want them. They stop up your stove and water pipes with their rubbish, build in the windows and under the beams of the roof, and would stuff your hat full of stubble in half a day if they found it hanging in a place to suit them. They are ex­tremely pertinacious in asserting their right of possession, and have not the least reverence for any place or thing. David alludes to these characteristics of the sparrow in the 84th Psalm, when he complains that they had appropriated even the altars of God for their nests. Concerning him­self, he says, I watch, and am as a sparrow upon the house-top.² When one of them has lost its mate—a matter of ev­ery-day occurrence—he will sit on the house-top alone, and lament by the hour his sad bereavement. These birds are snared and caught in great numbers, but, as they are small and not much relished for food, five sparrows may still be sold for two farthings; and when we see their countless numbers, and the eagerness with which they are destroyed as a worthless nuisance, we can better appreciate the as­surance that our heavenly Father, who takes care of them, so that not one can fall to the ground without His notice, will surely take care of us, who are of more value than many sparrows.³

 

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¹ Matt. 24:17

² Psalm 102:7

³ Matt. 10:29 and Luke 12:7

[Resource Manager]

 

IV. DOG RIVER.

 

January 27th.

 

Safely back, and welcome! How have you enjoyed this first excursion in the East?

 

Perfectly. It has been a day of unmingled pleasure; company agreeable, air soft and bland, horses lively, and the path through the mulberry orchards, and around the sandy Bay of St. George, quite delightful. Then the scenery at Dog River, what can surpass it? I was so enchanted with the grand, wild gorge, that I could scarcely tear myself away to examine the remains of antiquity for which the spot is celebrated; but I did look at them all, and at some with a feeling of awe and reverence quite new in my experience.

 

 

It is an assemblage of ancient mementoes to be found no where else in a single group, so far as I know. That old road, climbing the rocky pass, along which the Phœnician, Egyptian, Persian, Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Frank, Turk, and Arab have marched their countless hosts for four thousand years, have much to tell the student of man’s past his­tory, could we hut break the seal, and read the long roll of revelations. Those faintly-cut emblems of Sesostris, those stem, cold soldiers of Chaldea, those inscriptions in Persian, Greek, Latin, and Arabic, each embodies a history of itself, or rather tells of one written elsewhere, which we long to possess. I have drawings of these figures, and copies of the inscriptions, which you may study at your leisure. They, of course, imply much more than they directly reveal.

 

 

[Resource Manager]

I was told that a large part of the river issues from a cave some six miles above the sea. Have you ever visited the spot?

 

Several times; and it is worth the ride. The scenery, also, around the sources of the river, high up under Sŭnnȋn, is very romantic. As this is the Lycus of the ancients, with a history and a myth of its own, we may spend a few more moments upon it without growing weary of the subject. No one who has eyes, or deserves to have them, will pass up the river from its mouth without stopping again and again to admire the gray cliffs towering up to the sky on either side. The aqueduct will also attract attention, clinging to the per­pendicular rock, and dressed out in drooping festoons of ivy, and other creepers, whose every twig and leaf sparkle with big drops of brightest crystal. Where the river turns to the south, the ravine becomes too narrow, wild, and rocky for any but a goat-path, and the road leads thence over the steep shoulder of the mountain for an hour and a half. It then descends by a very slippery track to the river, in the immediate vicinity of the caves. There are three of them, and all in the cliffs on the north side of the ravine. Out of the first rushes a large part of the river, but without a boat it can not be explored. A few rods farther up the valley is the second cave. It runs under the mountain in a straight line for eighty paces, and then descends into an abyss of water. Several smaller aisles lead in different di­rections down to the same abyss. On the west side of the main entrance is a parallel passage of about the same di­mensions as the other, with which it communicates by a large doorway. This second tunnel leads round to the west, and unites with the lower cave at its mouth. Strike or jump on the floor, and you are startled by a dull hollow sound be­neath, and feel inclined to walk softly over such unknown depths.

 

About forty rods higher up the ravine is the third and largest cave. The entrance to this is concealed by huge rocks, and a stranger might pass within a few feet of it with­out suspecting its existence. Creep carefully over the rocks, let yourself down some ten feet, and you find a wide, low opening. Soon the passage becomes high enough to walk erect, and turns round toward the west. You must now light your torches, for the interior is utterly dark. A sort of gallery, or corridor, runs round three sides of this immense room. Descending to the lower part, you again come to the river, which crosses the cave, and disappears at the north­west corner with a loud noise. At the northeast, where it enters the room, there is a pool of water, clear and smooth as a mirror, and deliciously cool. How far it extends under the mountains I had no means of ascertaining. I fired a gun up it; the echoes were loud and oft-repeated. This cave abounds in stalagmites and stalactites, some of which are of enormous size, reaching from the roof to the floor, and are grooved like fluted columns. They also hang like long wax candles from the roof of the interior pool. I long­ed for a boat, not only to gather them, but also to explore the mysteries of those dark and watery labyrinths. There is much said in the Bible about caves; and ecclesiastical tradition has located many of the events recorded in the New Testament in these subterraneous abodes. We shall have abundant opportunities to examine them hereafter.

 

The river above the caves comes from two vast fountains, which burst out directly under the snow of Sŭnnȋn—intensely cold—icy, in fact, even in summer, and clear as though running liquid diamonds. They, with their young rivers, bear names rather poetical—agreeable, at least, to Arab taste. The northern is the Fountain of Honey (Neb’a el Asil); the southern is the Fountain of Milk (Neb’a el Lebn). Over the deep ravine of the latter stream, and not far from its birth, nature has thrown, or has left, a gigantic arch, which to this day is the bridge for the public highway, the highest in the land, creeping cautiously along the very uppermost shelf of Lebanon. I have visited it several times, but have mislaid my measurements, and must give you those of a friend. The arch is ninety feet thick; the span one hundred and fifty-seven; the breadth from eighty to one hundred and forty; and the height on the lower side nearly two hund­red feet. These figures may be rather large; but, without any exaggeration, it is a grand and impressive natural cu­riosity.

 

Let me now inform you, for your satisfaction, that, while you have been enjoying Dog River, I have completed our traveling apparatus and equipage, and our departure is def­initely fixed for to-morrow morning.

 

 

 

[Resource Manager]

V. BEIRUT TO THE DAMUR.

 

January 28th.

 

Are we to have such a tedious and noisy scene every morning with the muleteers?

 

I hope not. It is generally thus, however, the first day; but, after each one has ascertained his proper load, they pro­ceed more quietly, and with greater expedition.

 

Now we are fairly on the road, let us remember to com­mit our way unto the Lord. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.¹ This has been my traveling motto, roving or at rest, ever since I left the banks of our own bright Ohio for this “Land of Promise.”

 

No sentiment can be more appropriate. We shall need the admonition at every step, and the promise thereto an­nexed as well. But the royal preacher has given another piece of advice to travelers. Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Turn not to the right hand or to the left; remove thy foot from evil.² Do so now, lest you commence our journey with a practical “illustration” which will associate your name with Balaam and his much-abused ass. His path, like ours, had a wall on this side and a wall on that; the angel with drawn sword was in front, and the poor beast thrust herself against the wall and crushed the prophet’s foot.³ Now this file of don­keys, with rough stone from the quarries on their backs, completely blocks up this narrow way, and if you attempt to force your horse past them, either on the right or the left, you will also meet with a crushed foot.

 

That is a fact so obvious that the dumb ass, if it could speak with man’s voice, as Balaam’s did, might rebuke the madness of the attempt. But what are we to do?

 

Retreat to the next side alley, and let them pass. These stone-carrying donkeys are a great nuisance; but we are free from them at last, and you will not encounter a similar an­noyance in all Syria, nor meet an equally patent illustration of Balaam’s misfortune.

 

I shall not soon forget it. These crooked, narrow paths through the gardens of Beirût do indeed require one to ob­serve the wise man’s directions most closely. Only a few feet wide, with high walls on either side, and overshadowed by the rough arms and thorny palms of the prickly pear, the rider must keep wide awake, or he will find his face transfixed with the sharp spikes of the one, or his foot crush­ed against the other. I was stooping to avoid the first, when your timely warning saved me from the second.

 

The almanac tells me that this is the 28th of January, and yet the air is warm and bland as May. This old world and her ways are to me emphatically new. Those tall pines, with their parasol canopies spread out along the sky, are both new and beautiful; and how surpassingly glorious and majestic does Lebanon appear through and beyond them!

 

Those old trees were planted by Fakhr et Deen, and there are but few of them left. I saw that pretty wood beneath them sowed by Mahmood Beg, the governor of Beirût, twenty years ago. The smallest are only two years old. Half a century hence, the tourist will here find the fairest grove in Syria. This low, flat-roofed house on our right is a native khân—inn, or, if you please, hotel—much like those of ancient times, I suppose. We shall have some future occasion to test the accommodation which these Arab institu­tions offer to man and beast. Here is the guard of the custom-house, and you may as well return his polite salâm. These gentlemen are obliging or otherwise, according to cir­cumstances. On a former occasion, one of them seized my bridle, and rudely demanded my passport. I replied that it was not customary for residents in the country to carry such documents, and that I had it not with me. This did not satisfy him. He ordered me back, swearing roundly that he would not let the Grand Vizier himself pass with-out his tazcara. After he had swaggered himself tired, I told him I had lived twenty years in this country, and knew the regulations of government better than he did; that no order applicable to Franks was ever issued without official notice of the same being communicated to the consuls; and that, as no such notification in regard to passports had been made, I would not conform to it except by force. If he turned me back, I should lodge a complaint against him with the consul, who would hold him responsible for all damages. He immediately lowered his tone, bade me go in peace, and say nothing more about the matter. I did so, and have never been annoyed with a similar demand from that day to this. He had mistaken me for a stranger, and expected to extort a bakshȋsh.

 

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¹ Prov. 3:6

² Prov. 4:25, 27

³ Numb. 22:22-33

[Resource Manager]

It is nine hours, you say, from Beirût to Sidon?

 

About twenty-seven miles, and takes six, eight, or ten hours, according to the rate of travel. But, as our object is to study the land and its customs, or, rather, to peruse the Word of God by the light which these shed upon it, we shall pay very little attention to the hours, stages, and stations of ordinary tourists.

 

This suits the main purpose of my visit precisely. I have no great fondness for mere sight-seeing, and much prefer to gather instruction from the works and ways, the manners and customs of the living, than to grope for it amid the rot­ten ruins of the dead. 

 

Doubtless the former is the richer field, at least in Pales­tine, but both should be carefully explored. In the mean while, turn a little to the left. The direct road to Sidon leads over a sandy desert, fatiguing to both the horse and his rider. The path we take lies along the eastern margin of it, through mulberry orchards and olive groves, with which we may hold pleasant and profitable converse as we pass. This broad track through the centre of the pine forest is the sultan’s highway to Damascus. You can see it yon­der to the southeast, winding up the face of Lebanon. When but a few days old in the country, I made trial of it, and was astonished beyond measure to find that such a villainous path was a road to any where, and, most of all, that it was the road par excellence between Beirût and Syria’s celebrated capital.

 

Look now at those stately palm-trees, which stand here and there on the plain, like military sentinels, with feathery plumes nodding gracefully on their proud heads. The stem, tall, slender, and erect as Rectitude herself, suggests to the Arab poets many a symbol for their lady-love; and Solomon, long before them, has sung, How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love! for delights; this thy stature is like the palm-tree.¹

 

Yes; and Solomon’s father says, The righteous shall flour­ish like the palm-tree. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall bring forth fruit in old age.²

 

The royal poet has derived more than one figure from the customs of men, and the habits of this noble tree, with which to adorn his sacred ode. The palm grows slowly, but steadily, from century to century, uninfluenced by those alternations of the seasons which affect other trees. It does not rejoice overmuch in winter’s copious rain, nor does it droop under the drought and the burning sun of summer. Neither heavy weights which men place upon its head, nor the importunate urgency of the wind, can sway it aside from perfect uprightness. There it stands, looking calmly down upon the world below, and patiently yielding its large clus­ters of golden fruit from generation to generation. They bring forth fruit in old age. The allusion to being planted in the house of the Lord is probably drawn from the custom of planting beautiful and long-lived trees in the courts of temples and palaces, and in all “high places” used for worship. This is still common; nearly every palace, and mosque, and convent in the country has such trees in the courts, and, being well protected there, they flourish exceedingly. Solomon covered all the walls of the “Holy of Holies”³ round about with palm-trees. They were thus planted, as it were, within the very house of the Lord; and their presence there was not only ornamental, but appropriate and highly suggestive. The very best emblem, not only of patience in well-doing, but of the rewards of the righteous—a fat and flourishing old age—a peaceful end—a glorious immortality. The Jews used palm-branches as emblems of victory in their seasons of rejoicing,⁴ and Christians do the same on Palm Sunday, in commemoration of our Saviour’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. They are often woven into an arch, and placed over the head of the bier which carries man to his “long home,” and speak sweetly of victory and eternal life. We shall meet this striking and beautiful tree all along our journey, every where repeating, as an old friend, the same lessons of piety and encouragement.

 

 

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¹ 1 Kings 6:29

² Levit. 23:40

³ Song 7:6, 7

⁴ Psalm 92:12-14

 

[Resource Manager]

What large black birds are those which fly furiously across the horizon, as if driven by some interior impulse of despair?

 

 

The raven. Austere bird of ill omen! I never hear its harsh croak, or see it hurrying hither and thither, as if it could not rest, with­out thinking of Noah and the ark on Ararat. He sent forth this uneasy bird, which went to and fro until the waters were dried up, and never again sought safety or re­pose by returning to the ark. Sad emblem of those who fly from the true ark, and only refuge against that other deluge which shall drown the un­godly in everlasting destruction!

 

 

And now we are entering the vast olive-orchards of Shwoifat. See! our noisy approach has frightened a timid dove from the midst of that fine old tree.

 

 

 

 

The dove and the olive! an­other association to remind us of the ark, and the second father of mankind. Who can see the dove sitting in this tree without think­ing of that evening when she re­turned to the ark, and lo! in her mouth was an olive-leaf plucked off?¹ Mute messenger from the world below, by which Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.

 

The olive-tree, its fruit, and oil must have been known before the deluge, but whether the dove and the branch were emblems of peace and good-will by previous custom, or whether the hint was taken from this transaction, I shall not attempt to determine. The tradition among the Greeks that the first olive-branch that reached their country was carried by a dove from Phœnicia to the temple of Jupiter in Epirus, is certainly very remarkable. The connection of the dove with the olive, however, is quite natural. These groves are their favorite resort. In them they build their nests and rear their young, and there may be heard all day long their low, soft cooing, in sweet unison with the breeze which whis­pers peace to the troubled and repose to the weary.

 

It seems a fair deduction from the narrative in Genesis, that the flood must have risen in such a quiet way as not to destroy the trees, and must also have remained but a short time universal, else the olive would have perished.

 

We may at least conclude that lands sufficiently low and warm for the olive had been for some time uncovered when the dove went forth, or it could not have found young leaves upon them. This tree does not flourish in Syria more than three thousand feet above the sea, and in the interior not so high. Indeed, it is scarcely found at all in countries adja­cent to Ararat, and the dove had probably to make a long flight for its leaf, which it could easily do before “evening.” And the objection to the literal meaning or strict veracity of this statement has no solid foundation, in the fact that the olive is not an inhabitant of the cold mountains of Ar­menia.

 

Have you ever met with any certain traces of the flood in this country?

 

There are myriads of fossil shells on Lebanon and else­where, even on the tops of the highest ranges, but no geolo­gist would appeal to them in proof of the Noahic deluge. That was an event wholly miraculous, and the evidence of the fact is to be found in the sacred record, not in geological researches. I would by no means intimate, however, that future investigation may not uncover many well-ascertained footprints of that mighty catastrophe. But it is altogether foreign to our purpose to wander off into geological specula­tions, and we are not yet done with the olive-tree.

 

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¹ Gen. 8:11

 

[Resource Manager]

Far from it. There are many references to it in the Bible, some of which I am not able yet to appreciate. Thus Hosea says, His beauty shall be as the olive-tree.¹ It does not strike me as very beautiful, but perhaps one’s eye needs to be educated before it can distinguish properly and decide correctly on such questions in new and strange circum­stances.

 

No doubt. To me this noble grove, spreading like a sil­ver sea along the base of the hills, and climbing their ascend­ing terraces, is perfectly charming; and it speaks of peace and plenty, food and gladness. The olive-tree and its fruit make the face of man to shine in more senses than one. To a stranger it is necessarily destitute of these pleasing asso­ciations; but to me it is at all times both charming and re­freshing to ride through such a grove when clothed with flowers, or when bowed down with fat and oily berries.

 

Moses, in that last ode which he taught the children of Israel, speaks of oil out of the flinty rock;² and until now I had supposed that this tree delighted in hard, rocky soil; but this vast grove spreads over a soft and sandy plain.

 

You were not mistaken—only misled by appearances. The substratum of this plain is chalky marl, abounding in flint, and the sand is merely an intruder blown in from this desert on our right. In such soil our tree flourishes best, both in the plains and upon the mountains. It delights to insinuate its roots into the clefts of the rocks and crevices of this flinty marl, and from thence it draws its richest stores of oil. If the overlying mould is so deep that its roots can not reach the rock beneath, I am told that the tree lan­guishes, and its berries are small and sapless. There is, how­ever, another explanation of this figure of Moses. In an­cient times generally (and in many places at the present day) the olives were ground to a pulp in huge stone basins, by rolling a heavy stone wheel over them, and the oil was then expressed in stone presses established near by. Frequently these presses, with their floors, gutters, troughs, and cisterns, were all hewn out of solid rock, and thus it literally poured out rivers of oil,³ as Job hath it in his parable. There is a ruin above Tyre, near Kânâh, called Im-il-’Awa-mȋd, where scores of such presses are still standing, almost as perfect as they were twenty centuries ago, although every vestige of the groves which supplied the oil has long since disappeared.

 

I notice that the branches of some trees have been cut off, and then grafted; why is this done?

 

Simply because the olive, in its natural wild state, bears no berries, or but few, and these small and destitute of oil.

 

St. Paul has an extended reference to this matter. Stay till I turn to the passage, for there are some things in it which I have never understood. Here it is: If some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive-tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive-tree, boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.⁴ And then, in the 24th verse, For if thou wert cut out of the olive-tree, which is wild by nature, and wert grafted, contrary to nature, into a good olive-tree, etc., etc. Now here is my difficulty, and the exact point of in­quiry. The olive, you say (and so says the Apostle), is wild by nature, and it must be grafted by the good before it will bear fruit; but here the Apostle speaks of grafting the wild into the good, not the good upon the wild.

 

True, he does; but observe, he says expressly that this is contrary to nature, as it really is. I have made particular inquiries on this point, and find that in the kingdom, of na­ture generally, certainly in the case of the olive, the process referred to by the Apostle never succeeds. Graft the good upon the wild, and, as the Arabs say, it will conquer the wild, but you can not reverse the process with success. If you insert a wild graft into a good tree, it will conquer the good. It is only in the kingdom of grace that a process thus contrary to nature can be successful; and it is this circumstance which the Apostle has seized upon, and with admirable tact, to magnify the mercy shown to the Gentiles by grafting them, a wild race, contrary to the nature of such operations, into the good olive-tree of the Church, and causing them to flourish there, and bring forth fruit unto eternal life. The Apostle lived in the land of the olive, and was in no dan­ger of falling into a blunder in founding his argument upon such a circumstance in its cultivation.

 

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¹ Hos. 14:6

² Deut. 32:13

³ Job 29:6

⁴ Rom. 11:17, 18, 24

[Resource Manager]

But have all the trees in this vast grove been reclaimed from a wild state by grafting?

 

Certainly not. The Apostle himself speaks of the root of the good olive, implying that, by some means or other, it had been changed. The process by which this result is reached is quite simple. You observe certain knobs, or large warts, so to speak, on the body of this tree. Cut off one of these which has a branch growing out of it, above the place where it has been grafted; plant it in good soil, water it carefully, and it will strike out roots and grow. It is now a good tree from the root, and all scions taken from it are also “good by nature.” But if the knob, or branch, be taken below the grafting, your tree comes wild again. The great­er part of this grove is now “good” from the root. I am told, however, by olive-growers, that there is a tendency to degenerate, and that it is often a great improvement to graft even a good tree with one that is still better.

 

Job says, He shall cast off his flower as the olive.¹ What is there in the casting off of olive-flowers which can illus­trate the rejection and ruin of those who trust in vanity, for which purpose the patriarch employs the figure?

 

The olive is the most prodigal of all fruit-bearing trees in flowers. It literally bends under the load of them. But then not one in a hundred comes to maturity. The tree casts them off by millions, as if they were of no more value than flakes of snow, which they closely resemble. So it will be with those who put their trust in vanity. Cast off, they melt away, and no one takes the trouble to ask after such empty, useless things, just as our olive seems to throw off in contempt the myriads of flowers that signify nothing, and turns all her fatness to those which will mature into fruit.

 

This tree is of slow growth, and the husbandman must have long patience. Except under circumstances peculiarly favorable, it bears no berries until the seventh year, nor is the crop worth much until the tree is ten or fifteen years old; but then “the labor of the olive” is extremely profita­ble, and it will continue to yield its fruit to extreme old age, like the excellent of the earth. So long as there is a frag­ment remaining, though externally the tree looks dry as a post, yet does it continue to yield its load of oily berries, and for twenty generations the owners gather fruit from the faithful old patriarch. This tree also requires but little la­bor or care of any kind, and, if long neglected, will revive again when the ground is dug or plowed, and begin afresh to yield as before. Vineyards forsaken die out almost immediately, and mulberry orchards neglected run rapidly to ruin, but not so the olive. I saw the desolate hills of Jebel-el-’Alâh, above Antioch, covered with these groves, although no one had paid attention to them for half a century. If the olive bore every year, its value would be incalculable; but, like most other trees, it yields only every other year. Even with this deduction it is the most valuable species of property in the country. Large trees, in a good season, will yield from ten to fifteen gallons of oil, and an acre of them gives a crop worth at least one hundred dollars. No won­der it is so highly prized.

 

 

The value of this tree is enhanced by the fact that its fruit is indispensable for the comfort, and even the existence of the mass of the community. The Biblical references to this matter are not at all exaggerated. The berry, pickled, forms the general relish to the farmer’s dry bread. He goes forth to his work in the field at early dawn, or sets out on a jour­ney, with no other provision than olives wrapped up in a quantity of his paper-like loaves, and with this he is con­tented. Then almost every kind of dish is cooked in oil, and without it the good wife is utterly confounded; and when the oil fails, the lamp in the dwelling of the poor expires. Moreover, the entire supply of soap in this coun­try is from the produce of the olive. Habakkuk, therefore, gives a very striking attestation of his faith in God when he says, Although the labor of the olive should fail, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.²

 

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¹ Job 15:33

2 Hab. 3:18

 

[Resource Manager]

Isaiah refers to the gathering of the olive thus: Yet glean­ing grapes shall be in it, as the shaking of an olive-tree; two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outermost fruitful branches thereof.¹ Have you noticed the circumstances alluded to by the prophet?

 

Very often; and it is the language of familiar acquaint­ance with the subject. As you may never have an oppor­tunity to watch the process, I will describe it as it occurs in such places as Hasbeiya, where I have studied it to best ad­vantage. Early in autumn the berries begin to drop of themselves, or are shaken off by the wind. They are al­lowed to remain under the trees for some time, guarded by the watchman of the town—a very familiar Biblical charac­ter. Then a proclamation is made by the governor that all who have trees go out and pick what has fallen. Previ­ous to this, not even the owners are allowed to gather olives in the groves. This proclamation is repeated once or twice, according to the season. In November comes the general and final summons, which sends forth all Hasbeiya. No olives are now safe unless the owner looks after them, for the watchmen are removed, and the orchards are alive with men, women, and children. It is a merry time, and the laugh and the song echo far and wide. Every where the people are in the trees “shaking” them with all their might to bring down the fruit. This is what the prophet had in mind. The effort is to make a clear sweep of all the crop; but, in spite of shaking and beating, there is always a glean­ing left; two or three berries in the top of the uppermost boughs, four or five in the outermost fruitful branches. These are afterward gleaned up by the very poor, who have no trees of their own;² and by industry they gather enough to keep a lamp in their habitation during the dismal nights of winter, and to cook their mess of pottage and bitter herbs. I have often seen these miserable outcasts gleaning among the groves, and shivering in winter’s biting cold. In fact, the “shaking of the olive” is the severest operation in Syr­ian husbandry, particularly in such mountainous regions as Hasbeiya. When the proclamation goes forth to “shake,” there can be no postponement. The rainy season has al­ready set in; the trees are dripping with the last shower, or bowing under a load of moist snow; but shake, shake you must, drenching yourself and those below in an artificial storm of rain, snow, and olives. No matter how piercing the wind, how biting the frost, this work must go on from early dawn to dark night; and then the weary laborer must carry on his aching back a heavy load of dripping berries two or three miles up the mountain to his home. To comprehend the necessity of all this, you must remember that the olive-groves are in common—not owned in common, but planted on the same general tract of land, and are without fences, walls, or hedges of any kind, mingled together like the trees in a natural forest. This tree belongs to Zeid, that to ‘Abeid, as they say, and so on through the whole planta­tion. Such, at least, is the case with the groves we are de­scribing. This vast orchard of Shwoifat, through which we have been riding for the last hour, has a thousand owners, and in “shaking time” every one must look sharply after his own, or he loses all. There is an utter confounding of the meum and tuum in the general conscience of olive-gatherers.

 

To what particular circumstance does David refer in the 128th Psalm, where he says, Thy children shall be like olive-plants round about thy table?

 

Follow me into the grove, and I will show you what may have suggested the comparison. Here we have hit upon a beautiful illustration. This aged and decayed tree is sur­rounded, as you see, by several young and thrifty shoots, which spring from the root of the venerable parent. They seem to uphold, protect, and embrace it. We may even fancy that they now bear that load of fruit which would otherwise be demanded of the feeble parent. Thus do good and affectionate children gather round the table of the right­eous. Each contributes something to the common wealth and welfare of the whole—a beautiful sight, with which may God refresh the eyes of every friend of mine.

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¹ Is. 17:6

² Deut. 24:20

[Resource Manager]

But here we must leave our pleasant grove for this sin­gular sea of sand, which rolls quite back to the gardens of Beirût. Geologists tell us that this sand has traveled long and far before it reached its present resting-place. That, in fact, its original home was in the great African desert, and, during the countless ages of the past, it has been drifted first by the wind into the sea, and then by the current along the northern coast past Egypt, and around the head of the sea, until, stopped by the Cape of Beirût, it has been thrown out by the waves on to this plain. Others say that it is the sand which is just ahead of us, brings down a vast amount of sand during the winter rains, which is also thrown on shore by the sea. But enough of speculation. The fact is only too certain and too sad. This sand is continually driven in upon these gardens like another deluge. Entire mulberry orchards about Beirût, with all their trees and houses, have been thus overwhelmed since I came to the country; and the day is not distant when it will have swept over the whole cape to the bay on the north of the city, unless its course can be arrested. I never take this ride without watching, with weary sadness, this ever-changing desert. Upon the great sand-waves, which swell up from twenty to fifty feet high, the west wind wakes up small but well-de­fined wavelets, the counterpart in miniature of those on yon­der noisy sea. Should these ripples be caught and fixed by some tranquillizing and indurating agency, we should here have a vast formation of as wavy sandstone as ever puzzled the student of earth’s rocky mysteries.

 

 

These sandy invasions are not found to any injurious ex­tent north of Beirût, but as you go south they become broad­er and more continuous. They spread far inland round the Bay of Acre. They begin again at Cesarea, and reach to the River ‘Aujeh; and then south of Joppa, past Askelon and Gaza, they roll in their desolating waves wider and still wider, until they subside in the great desert that lies be­tween Arabia and Africa. Let us ride up to the crest of that bold sand-wave, and take a farewell look at this prospect, so eminently Syrian. Ibrahim Pacha told the Emeer of Shwoifat that he had three different seas beneath his feet—the blue Mediterranean, this yellow Kŭllâbât, and the silvery sea of this olive Sahrâh. Though we may not admire the poetry of the pacha, we will the scene that inspired it. All he saw is before us; and with the noble Lebanon for back­ground, receding and rising, range over range, up to where Sŭnnîn leans his snowy head against the marble vault of heaven. Picturesque villages by the hundred sleep at his feet, cling to his side, hide in his bosom, or stand out in bold relief upon his ample shoulders, giving life and animation to the scene.

[Resource Manager]

We will now rest and lunch at this khan Khŭldeh. It has taken three hours to reach it. Though you have hut little relish for rotten ruins, there is something hereabouts will surely interest you. This broken tower, crowning the top of a half-natural, half-artificial mound, the guide-books will tell you, is one of those telegraphic beacons which St. Helen built along the road from Jerusalem to Constanti­nople, to convey to her royal son the very first tidings of the discovery of the true cross, for which she was then ransack­ing the rubbish of the Holy City. You may accept that, or else suppose that it was one of a system of watch-towers for the defense of the coast, such as are still kept up along the shores of Spain and Algiers. The hill itself, however, speaks of remote antiquity. But by far the most remark­able relics of past ages are those sarcophagi on the side of the mountain. Their number is surprising, since for ages the inhabitants have been breaking them up for building-stone, and burning them into lime, and still there are hund­reds of them lying about on the face of the hill. They are of all sizes; some eight feet long, and in fair proportion, the resting-place of giants; others were made for small children. Many are hewn in the live rock; others are single coffins cut out of separate blocks. All had heavy lids, of various shapes, approaching to that of an American coffin, but with the comers raised. They are, no doubt, very ancient. Lift the lid, and the dust within differs not from the surrounding soil from which grows the corn of the current year. And so it was twenty centuries ago, I suppose. They are with­out inscriptions, and have nothing about them to determine their age or origin. Here is a cherub on one, with wings expanded, as if about to fly away to the “better land yon­der is another with a palm branch, emblem of immortality; while that large one has three warlike figures, the chosen companions, perhaps, of some ancient hero. But on none of them is there a single mark or scratch which might indi­cate that those who made them had an alphabet. Who were they? Certainly neither Greeks nor Romans. I find no mention of this place, unless it be the Heldua, which, according to the Jerusalem Itinerary, was twelve miles south of Beirût. This distance, however, would take us to the next khan, Ghŭfer en Naamy, and there was an ancient town near it. Mark Antony spent some time at a fort between Beirût and Sidon, called Dukekome, waiting for Cleopatra. Perhaps this tower-crowned hill marks the spot where these mighty revelers met and feasted. However that may be, we must now leave it. An hour’s easy, or, rather, uneasy ride through the deep sand of the shore, will bring us to our tent on the green bank of the Damûr.

 

 

Here, on the brow of this rocky hill, we have the lime­kilns you spoke of, and men in the very act of breaking up sarcophagi to feed them. It is unpardonable sacrilege thus to destroy these venerable antiquities. It is outrageous Vandalism.

 

Instead of hurling anathemas at these barbarians, we had better drop a tear of compassion over such ignorance, and then see if we can not draw some lesson of instruction from even these destructive kilns. You see an immense quan­tity of this low, matted thorn-bush collected around them. That is the fuel with which the lime is burned. And thus it was in the days of Isaiah. The people, says he, shall be as the burnings of lime: as thorns cut up shall they be burned in the fire.¹ Those people among the rocks yonder are cut­ting up thorns with their mattocks and pruning-hooks, and gathering them into bundles to be burned in these burnings of lime. It is a curious fidelity to real life, that, when the thorns are merely to be destroyed, they are never cut up, but set on fire where they grow. They are only cut up for the lime-kiln.

 

And here is the Damûr, with our tent pitched among ole­anders and willows—a picturesque position for our first en­campment. Permit me to introduce you to the house of your pilgrimage. Salȋm has placed your cot and luggage on the right, and mine on the left. We will pursue this arrange­ment hereafter, and thereby avoid much confusion.

 

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¹ Is. 33:12

 

 

 

[Resource Manager]

It looks very inviting, and promises well for future com­fort. This sojourning in tents, in the land where the patriarchs tabernacled so many centuries ago, not only takes my fancy captive, but is in beautiful unison with our object.

 

It is. A coach or car, with its bustle and hurry, would be intolerable here; and even a fussy, fashionable hotel would be a nuisance. Let us enjoy the luxury of liberty, and, while dinner is preparing, take a stroll at our leisure up this fine wady.

 

This name—Damûr—is it a mere variation of the Tamyras of Strabo, the Damura of Polybius?

 

Yes, if the variation is not that of the Greek and Roman. I suspect that Damûr is the true original. The main source of this river is near ‘Ain Zehalteh, a village five hours to the east, under the lofty ridge of Lebanon. Other streams from the mountain farther north unite with this at Jisr el Kâdy, on the road from Beirût to Deir el Kamar. Below this the river turns westward, and falls into the sea just south of this long, straggling village of Mûallakah. Though not more than twenty-five miles long, yet, from the vast extent of lofty mountains which pour their winter floods into its channel, it rises suddenly into a furious, unfordable river. Many people are carried away by it, and perish at this ford. This broken bridge was built by the Emeer Beshîr Shehâb, some thirty-five years ago, but it soon gave way before the violence of the stream. From the nature of the bottom, it has always been difficult to establish a bridge at this place. The emeer erected his on the ruins of one more ancient, built probably by the Romans, and with no better success than they. The river frequently changes its channel, and the Romans constructed this heavy wall running up the stream to confine it to its proper bed, but in winter it sets all bounds at defiance. During a great flood last year it spread through these gardens of Mûallakah, tore up the mulberry-trees, and swept them off to the sea. The scenery around the head of this river is not so wild as in many other places; but the basins of the different tributaries expand on an immense scale, spreading up the declivities of Lebanon, and opening out prospects which, for depth and height, vastness and va­riety, are rarely surpassed. The view from Mûtyar Abeih, to which I directed your eye as we came along the shore, is particularly impressive. The wady of ‘Ain Zehalteh abounds in remarkable cliffs of blue argillaceous marl, which are subject to slides and avalanches on a terrific scale. The Emeer Hyder, in his history of Lebanon, says that about ninety-five years ago a projecting terrace at Kefr Nabrûkh, which had a small village on it, parted from the main mount­ain, and plunged with prodigious uproar into the wady be­low, carrying houses, gardens, and trees with it in horrid con­fusion. It completely stopped the river for seven days. Re­peatedly have I stood on the awful precipice, and gazed upon the wrecks of this avalanche with terror. Few heads are steady enough for the giddy perch; and no one breathes freely there, or looks without a shudder into the gulf which opens fifteen hundred feet deep directly below him. The Emeer relates that one man who was on the sliding mass es­caped unhurt, but was ever after a raving maniac. The catastrophe occurred during the life of the historian, and not far from his home, and we may therefore give full credit to his narrative. I have seen many similar slides on Lebanon. Indeed, they occur every winter, but rarely on so gigantic a scale, or accompanied by circumstances so romantic and tragical.

 

Such avalanches appear to have been known even in the days of Job, and he refers to them to illustrate the over­throw of vain man’s hope and confidence. Surely, says he, the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is moved out of his place;¹ and he connects this with the wa­ters which wear the stones, when, as now, they were occa­sioned by the great rains of winter.

 

They were, perhaps, more common in ancient days than at present. But there comes the call for dinner, and we must return to the tent.

 

What an abundant table the Lord, by the ministration of this lively cook of ours, has spread for us here in the wilderness! Neatly got up, too, and nothing seems wanting. Do you know, I looked on during those days of preparation at Beirût with wonder and alarm at the hundred and one things which you were gathering around you. I could not conceive where they were to be stowed away, or how they were to be carried on the mules. Now I find that every thing has a place, and an office to discharge. It is said that Bonaparte never spent more than fifteen minutes at the ta­ble. However that may be, I have no inclination to devote much time at present to this “vulgar function of eating.” Dinner over, I can not abide the tent; for, though it has somewhat the shape, it has none of the glory of this starry canopy above. As to sleep, the very idea seems absurd. Could one sleep on the golden streets of the New Jerusalem the first night? You shake your head reprovingly, and the allusion is extravagant, but all my present surroundings seem equally so. Boyhood’s possible and impossible fancies are gathering thick about me in living realities. I was ever given to reverie, and many a day, beneath the leafy canopy of maple-trees on the banks of our own Ohio, have lain at ease, and dreamed of this land of the sun, its mys­teries and its miracles, and longed to be there, and wondered if I ever should. And now I am here, on the shore of this great and wide sea, with its everlasting anthem going up to the listening stars. Here am I— but you smile, and I do not choose just now to furnish food for your mirth.

 

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¹ Job 14:18

[Resource Manager]

Better stop. Why, you have been dreaming, with that Longfellow, who

 

“Used to lie And gaze into the summer sky,

Where the sailing clouds went by Like ships upon the sea.”

 

All this is a quarter of a century behind my experience. At that remote date I might have understood you, but not now. From this, on, waste no more breath in rhapsodies.  A pilgrimage to Palestine has too much of the real in it to permit us to expire in the romantic. We had better pre­pare to imitate this muleteer, that we may be ready for the early dawn, and the bustle of a new day.

 

The fellow is sound asleep on the bare ground, and, like Jacob at Bethel, he has actually got a stone for his pillow.

 

You will often see that in this country. I have tried it myself, but could never bring sleep and stone pillows to­gether. I suspect Jacob was not used to it, for he was dis­turbed with extraordinary dreams; but to Ahmed, with his hard head and stuffed cap, this stone is soft as a cushion of down.

 

You do not mean that he will sleep all night on this sand, and with no covering but his old cloak?

 

Certainly; and if he were at home he would do the same, at least as to covering. This custom of sleeping in their or­dinary clothes is the basis of that humane law of Moses for the protection of the poor. If thou at all take thy neigh­bor’s raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down; for that is his covering only, it is his raiment for his skin: wherein shall he sleep?¹ I envy him his slumbers; they are the sweet ones of the laboring man. And now come in; let us consult the “best of books,” and then commend ourselves and all we love to that good Shepherd who slumbers not nor sleeps.

 

 

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¹ Exod. 22:26, 27

 

[Resource Manager]

VI. DAMUR TO SIDON.

 

January 29th.

 

We are favored with another bright morning, which you have been improving, as I see, by an early ramble over the hills; but come down to the river. There is something going forward worth seeing. Yon shepherd is about to lead his flock across; and—as our Lord says of the good shepherd—you observe that he goes before, and the sheep fol­low. Not all in the same manner, however. Some enter boldly, and come straight across. These are the loved ones of the flock, who keep hard by the footsteps of the shepherd, whether sauntering through green meadows, by the still wa­ters, feeding upon the mountains, or resting at noon beneath the shadow of great rocks. And now others enter, but in doubt and alarm. Far from their guide, they miss the ford, and are carried down the river, some more, some less, and yet, one by one, they all struggle over and make good their landing. Notice those little lambs. They refuse to enter, and must be driven into the stream by the shepherd’s dog, mentioned by Job in his “parable.” Poor things! how they leap, and plunge, and bleat in terror! That weak one yonder will be swept quite away, and perish in the sea. But no; the shepherd himself leaps into the stream, lifts it into his bosom, and bears it trembling to the shore. All safely over, how happy they appear. The lambs frisk and gambol about in high spirits, while the older ones gather round their faithful guide, and look up to him in subdued but expressive thankfulness.

 

Now, can you watch such a scene, and not think of that Shepherd who leadeth Joseph like a flock, and of another river which ·all his sheep must cross? He, too, goes before, and, as in the case of this flock, they who keep near him fear no evil. They hear his sweet voice saying, When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the floods they shall not overflow thee.¹ With eye fasten­ed on him, they scarcely see the stream, or feel its cold and threatening waves. The great majority, however, “linger, shivering on the brink, and fear to launch away.” They lag behind, look down upon the dark river, and, like Peter on stormy Gennesaret, when faith failed, they begin to sink. Then they cry for help, and not in vain. The good Shep­herd hastens to their rescue, and none of all His flock can ever perish. Even the weakest lambkins are carried safely over. I once saw flocks crossing the Jordan “to Canaan’s fair and happy land,” and there the scene was even more striking and impressive. The river was broader, the cur­rent stronger, and the flocks larger, while the shepherds were more picturesque and Biblical. The catastrophe, too, with which many poor sheep were threatened—of being swept down into that mysterious sea of death which swal­lows up the Jordan itself—was more solemn and suggestive.

 

But it is eight o’clock—high time to be on our way. We must be more expeditious in the morning, or our progress will be slow indeed. The road leads along and over this rocky headland, called Nukkâr es S’adîat, which answers to the Platoneum mentioned by Polybius as the battle-field be­tween Antiochus the Great and the army of Ptolemy under Nicolaus.

 

It is an ugly pass to force against an enemy holding these rugged heights. My horse can scarcely keep his feet on this detestable pavement.

 

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¹ Ex. 23:5

[Resource Manager]

Now take the advice of an old traveler, and learn to pos­sess your soul in patience, even when blundering over such paths as this. Wearied, perplexed, and disgusted, many tourists tear through this most interesting country having eyes that see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that can not understand. Better take for granted that we have gone through, these annoyances from Dan to Beersheba—have de­clined every case, direct and oblique, of bad roads, bûkrah, and bukshîsh, and thrown them aside as having nothing to do with our daily journeyings. It is only thus that one can preserve an even temper, a joyous heart, and a mind awake to the scenes and scenery along the way. “We can not af­ford to have our peace disturbed by such trifles. It would seriously interfere with the main purpose of our pilgrimage, which we must never forget. For example, this very path, so rocky and so slippery, furnishes a commentary on another of those humane precepts which distinguish the Mosaic code. See those men lifting a poor donkey that has fallen under its load. Moses says, If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldst forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him.¹ Now the people lift­ing this donkey are bitter enemies—Maronites and Druses— quite recently engaged in a bloody social war, and ready to begin again on the very first opportunity, and yet they help to lift the ass that is lying under his burden, as though they were the best friends in the world. We have in this simple incident the identical occasion for the precept, and its most literal fulfillment. Nor is this all. It is fair to infer, from the peculiar specification made by Moses, that the people in his day were divided into inimical parties and clans, just as they now are in these mountains. Moses would not have mentioned the ass of an enemy if enemies were not so common that the case specified was likely to occur. So, also, we may conclude that the donkeys were half starved, and then overloaded by their cruel masters, for such are now the conditions in which these poor slaves of all work or­dinarily fall under their burdens, and that then, as now, it required the united strength of at least two persons lifting, one on either side, to enable the ass to rise out of his pain­ful and often dangerous predicament. The plan is to lift the beast to its feet without taking off the load, which is a tedious business. And, once more, we may infer with cer­tainty that the roads were then as rough and slippery as this which has upset your patience and our unfortunate don­key. All these deductions I believe to be very near the truth. Manners and customs, men and things, roads and loads, continue very much what they were three thousand years ago.

 

The truth of that becomes more and more evident the farther we advance. Voices address the ear from all sides, and signals hang out on every hill-top to catch the eye. The stone cries out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber will answer.² We only need to know how to put them to the question.

 

 

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¹ Ex. 23:5

² Hab. 2:11

 

[Resource Manager]

Without being responsible for your accommodation of Habakkŭk, the idea is correct enough, and should be re­membered and acted upon continually in our travels. Let us try the experiment with this man that comes to meet us. Ask him the time of day, and he will infallibly reply that it is about the third hour. If it were near noon, he would say the sixth. Inquire the day of the week, he will tell you it is the fourth day, just as Moses wrote.¹ Question him farther on the point, and he will inform you that last night and this morning make up the fourth day. They count from sunset to sunset, as Adam did, and the coming evening be­longs to to-morrow. But here is something else to claim attention, whether we will or not—Arabs watering their flocks at this ancient well. They are adroit thieves and most importunate beggars. One of them stole my water-jug, from which I had just slaked his real or pretended thirst; so let your purse lie at the bottom of your pocket, and look to your handkerchief and every loose article about you. Do you notice that the women are all tattooed?

 

Is it that which gives such a blue tinge to their lips?

 

Yes; and those marks on the forehead, chin, breast, arms, hands, and feet, are all various patterns and figures of this most ancient art. The effect is any thing but agreeable to our taste. All Orientals, however, have a passion for it. Moses either instituted some such custom, or appropriated one already existing to a religious purpose. He says, And thou shalt show thy son in that day, saying, this is done be­cause of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt; and it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thy hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes; (or 16th) for a token upon thy hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes.2 This practice of marking religious tokens upon the hands and arms is almost universal among the Arabs, of all sects and classes. Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem have the operation performed there, as the most holy place known to their religion. I have watched the process of imprinting them, and it is not a little painful. A number of needles are bound tightly together in the shape of the desired fig­ure, or so that the figure can be marked out by them. The skin being punctured in the required pattern, certain mix­tures of coloring matter are rubbed in, and the place bound with a tight bandage. Gunpowder, variously prepared, is very commonly employed, and it is that which gives to the tattooing of these Bedawîn its bluish tinge. Mr. Lane tells us that in Egypt smoke-black mixed with the milk of a woman is used, and subsequently a paste of fresh-pounded leaves of clover, or white beet, is applied, so as to give a greenish blue color to the marks. It is well ascertained that this tattooing prevailed in Egypt even before the time of Moses. If he appropriated it to sacred purposes, the patterns may have been so devised as to commemorate the deliverance of the children of Israel from bondage. Possi­bly the figure of the Paschal Lamb, whose blood on the door­posts caused the Angel of Death to pass over their houses, was wrought into these tokens and frontlets. The com­mand to have the great acts of the Lord as signs upon the hand, etc., may appear to contradict the prohibition in Le­viticus, where the people are forbidden not only to make any cuttings for the dead, but also to print any marks upon themselves.³ But the direction in Ex. 8:9, 16, specifies certain purposes for which such signs and frontlets were to be used, and this in Leviticus mentions others for which they were made by the heathen, and which Moses forbade the Jews to imitate. No doubt these cuttings and prints had an idolatrous or superstitious signification which Moses desired to condemn. In the last song which he taught the children of Israel, he upbraids the foolish people and un­wise, because their spot was not the spot of God’s children.⁴ It is probable that the worshipers of the true God had pe­culiar marks to distinguish them from idolaters, which these “corrupters” refused to wear, imprinting others used by the heathen. In the Revelation, allusions to such religious marks are too numerous to be specified. Isaiah, however, has a most beautiful reference to them, which we may quote, to strengthen our trust in the watchful providence of our heavenly Father. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will not I forget thee.

 

 

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¹ Gen. 1:19

² Exod. 13:9,16

³ Levit. 19:28

⁴ Deut. 32:5

 

[Resource Manager]

Behold, I have graven thee on the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.¹ As to these Arabs, whose blue lips started us off upon this digression, we shall have many occasions to notice their strange ways and singular customs. Those dingy brown things peeping out of the bushes on the mountain side are their tents, and they are found spread over the whole country, from Egypt to Mount Taurus.

 

Here are men on our left digging stone out of this sand­hill, and you may be certain that they are uncovering the remains of some ancient town. The Jerusalem Itinerary places Porphyreon in this neighborhood, and I suppose that these sand-covered ruins mark the exact site of that city. This whole neighborhood is now called Jȋyeh.

 

What place is this to which we are coming?

 

 

Neby Yûnas—the prophet Jonah—or, rather, his tomb.

 

Indeed! That starts inquiries which I have long had on hand in reference to some of the incidents in the experience of that very remarkable prophet. Is this low building on our left the tomb?

 

The first is a khân; that south of it contains the grave, or mausoleum. It has rooms attached for the keeper, and also for the accommodation of pilgrims—mostly Moslems and Druses—who come to discharge certain vows made to the shrine. It is in the hands of Moslems, and this crooked, club-footed anatomy, hobbling toward us for a bŭkshîsh, is the keeper. I have repeatedly spent the night here, and listened again and again to his exaggerated account of Jonah’s awkward cruise with the whale. He devoutly be­lieves that the prophet was safely landed on this sandy beach; and, for aught I know, he may be correct, though several other places claim the honor; and Josephus says he was landed on the shores of the Euxine—far enough from this, certainly.

 

I care very little about these discrepancies as to the place. There are other questions, however, which I wish to have answered. The Bible says that the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up the prophet;² but in Matthew³ it is called a whale by our Saviour. Now, if I am correctly in­formed, there are no whales in the Mediterranean. How do you explain this?

 

Simply by the fact that the multiplication of ships in this sea, after the time of Jonah, frightened them out of it, as other causes have driven all lions out of Palestine, where they were once numerous. It is well known that some of the best fishing stations, even in the great oceans, have been abandoned by the whales because of the multitude of whal­ers that visited them. This sea would, of course, be for­saken. If you could stock it thoroughly with these mon­sters to-day, there would be none left a year hence. But, up to the time of Jonah, navigation was in its infancy, ships were few and small, and they kept mostly along the shores, leaving the interior undisturbed. Whales may therefore have been common in the Mediterranean. And there are instances on record of the appearance of huge marine crea­tures in this sea in ancient days. Some of these may have been whales. The Hebrew word dâg, it is true, means sim­ply any great fish; but nothing is gained by resorting to such a solution of the difficulty. Our Lord calls it a whale, and I am contented with his translation; and whale it was, not a shark or lamia, as some critics maintain. In a word, the whole affair was miraculous, and, as such, is taken out of the category of difficulties. If a whale had never before been in the Mediterranean, God could bring one to the exact spot needed as easily as he brought the ram to the place where Abraham was coming to sacrifice Isaac. He could also furnish the necessary capacity to accomplish the end intended. It is idle, and worse—cowardly, to withhold our faith in a Bible miracle until we can find or invent some way in which the thing might have happened without any great miracle after all.

 

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¹ Is. 49:15,16

² Jonah 1:17

³ Matt. 12:40