HAIFA. (continued 3)

Prior to that time, this historic locality was a terra incognita. The tourists who visited the mountain, like the pilgrims who journeyed thither for devotional reasons, satisfied themselves with a short stay at the convent, and even then did not understand that they were only on one mountain spur of a highland region thirty-five miles in circumference, where almost every hilltop was crowned with a ruin, and every gorge might open up new and unexpected beauties of scenery.

It is only after so exhaustive an examination as I have just accomplished that any idea can be formed of the extent of the population by which Carmel was once inhabited, of the high state of civilization which must have prevailed here, and of the extent to which its lovely hills and valleys were cultivated. These ruins bear a great resemblance to each other; and although none of them covers a very great extent of ground, they were built of most solid materials, and, to judge by some of the architectural remains, and the elaborate carvings and devices, they must have contained some handsome buildings.

The houses were built of blocks of drafted stone, usually four feet long by two and a half high, and two thick. The door-jambs and lintels, which in some instances are still in situ, were often seven or eight feet long by two feet six by two feet. In these were holes or sockets, in which the pivots worked. Some of the lintels over the doors were ornamented with devices; these were usually hexagons and circles, in the centre of which were ovals or other ornamental scrolls. Sometimes there was a bird or an animal, such as an eagle or a leopard, or seven-branched candlesticks, or raised bosses or crosses; here and there was a cornice with a florid carving, evidently of the Roman period, with fragments of columns or capitals. But some of these ruins have been inhabited by later inhabitants, who used the old stones for their modern constructions, and too often chipped off the carving. Indeed, they are the ready-made quarries of the country people of the present day, who come and carry off the stones to build their houses.

A notable and melancholy instance of this has occurred in the case of a place called Khurbet Semmaka. This was the most interesting ruin in Carmel, and was discovered ten years ago by the officers of the Palestine Exploration Survey. Here they found the portal of what once had been an ancient Jewish synagogue still standing, its door-jambs and lintels elaborately carved; part of the walls and fragments of the columns which formed an enclosing colonnade were in position, and formed the subject of much speculation, as it was the only specimen of Jewish architecture in this part of the country, and presented some features which were different from anything hitherto discovered; and it was therefore suggested that the building must have been built at a different period from any of those the remains of which still exist. Judge of my disappointment on visiting this spot to find that, with the exception of three feet of one door-jamb, all had disappeared; there was scarcely a stone left. The inhabitants of a Moslem village about two miles distant had within the last decade made a clean sweep of all these most interesting remains. Fortunately they still exist in the Palestine Society's Memoirs in the shape of most elaborate drawings and measurements, which were made by the Survey and have since been published.

Apart from the actual stones themselves and the carvings which are to be found upon them, the objects of interest which mainly characterize all these Carmel ruins are ancient olive-mills and wine-presses, often in a very perfect state of preservation, tombs and cisterns. First, in regard to the olive-mills. I found more than a dozen of these. On two occasions they were hewn out of the living rock. The lower stone, which was circular, had usually a diameter of eight feet, with a raised rim outside nine or ten inches high, and a raised socket in the centre, in which was a hole a foot square, where the upright was fitted to hold the lateral beam which worked the upper stone. This was usually five feet in diameter and eighteen inches thick, and had a hole pierced through the centre. Through this the long beam was passed, to which, as it extended far beyond the circumference of the lower stone, the horse was attached which worked the mill, the upper stone travelling on its broad edge around the lower stone, over the olives. From the lower stone a gutter was carved into the vat, also hewn out of the living rock, into which trickled the oil. I often found near these mills huge limestone rollers about three feet in diameter and seven feet long. On the sides of these were four vertical lines of sunk grooves, four or five grooves in each line. Taking 2.7 as the specific gravity of the stone, they must have weighed about two tons each. What their functions were, or whether they had anything to do with the olive-crushing process, I am at a loss to conjecture. The wine-presses were nothing more than huge vats, also hewn out of the living rock, sometimes above ground, in the shape of sarcophagi, sometimes pits eight or nine feet square and the same in depth.

The limestone hillsides in the neighbourhood of these ruins were almost invariably honeycombed with cave tombs, whose doorways were often rudely ornamented with devices, and in one instance I found an inscription in Greek characters so much defaced that I could not decipher it. They usually consisted of only one chamber, eight or ten feet square, but were sometimes larger, and contained either kokim or loculi under arcosolia, sometimes both. The kokim are tunnel-shaped excavations, usually seven feet long, two feet six wide, and the same in height—in other words, just large enough to contain a corpse. The loculus is an oblong tomb, with sides about two feet high, also large enough conveniently to contain a body. It is cut out of the living rock, as well as the arch which overspans it. Sometimes there is a large, arched recess opening out of the central chamber, containing several loculi. On more than one occasion I found a circular stone like a millstone in a groove in the doorway, which only required to be rolled a couple of feet to close the tomb completely, but the tombs are generally closed by an oblong stone slab, not unfrequently ornamented with devices. I also found several sarcophagi.

The cisterns are of two kinds, bell-mouthed and of demijohn shape, or open rock-hewn reservoirs or tanks. At one ruin I found an extensive system of these latter. There were no fewer than six, of which the largest was forty feet square, all close together, divided only by narrow ledges of the solid rock out of which they had been hewn. They were from fifteen to twenty feet to the soil at the bottom, now overgrown with shrubs, so that in reality they are probably much deeper. In some cases stone steps lead to the bottom, and on the sides were deep niches from which evidently sprang arches to form the roof, for there can be little doubt that the most of them were originally covered. From the great number and extent of these cisterns it is manifest that the inhabitants were, in some instances, entirely dependent upon them for their water supply.

At the southeastern extremity of the mountain is the spot known as “the place of burning,” or sacrifice, because tradition assigns it as the locality where Elijah had his controversy with the prophets of Baal, and in commemoration thereof the Carmelite monks are at this moment building a church there, and using, by the way, some of the carved stones of a neighbouring ruin, regardless of all antiquarian considerations. I feel, therefore, a malignant satisfaction in the conviction at which I have arrived that they are building their church on a spot which is indisputably not the place on which the altar of Elijah was erected, if we are to believe the Biblical record, for it is in full view of the Mediterranean, and it would have been quite unnecessary for Elijah to tell his servant to “go up and look toward the sea,” for there is no higher point to go up to, and he could see the sea himself. But about a mile from this spot there stands, curiously enough, a pile of stones in a locality which would exactly fulfil the required conditions. I came upon it unexpectedly, almost concealed in a thicket of underwood. The stones are placed one upon the other without cement, and average eighteen inches square and eight or nine thick, forming a rude altar about twelve feet long and four high. The breadth varies, as they have been broken away, but there is a large artificial slab, six feet square, lying at the base. Though I do not for a moment mean to imply that this was the original altar, the unusual shape and position of this pile suggests that it may have been the result of some sacred tradition connected with the Biblical event, or it may be the remains of an ancient vineyard watch-tower. From it the ground swells back and upward in every direction, so that a vast host might have been assembled around and witnessed whatever was going forward, which would have been impossible at the traditional locality. A ten minutes' walk would have taken Elijah's servant to a neighbouring summit which commanded a full view of the sea, and the twelve barrels of water required to drench the altar could have been obtained from some rock-hewn tanks in the immediate vicinity, while the path that passes the pile leads straight down to the hill on the bank of the Kishon, where tradition has it that the priests were massacred. Moreover, it was in the centre of the most populous part of the mountain. Within a radius of two miles and a half from this pile of stones there are no fewer than twelve ruins of ancient towns and villages on the various hill-tops and mountain-spurs which surround it.

No fact could give a better idea than this of the populous character of Carmel in the days of the prophet. Not very far from this I discovered, half-way down the steep flank of the mountain, a fortress of a most ancient race, the stones which were piled one above another three high to form the rampart being immense natural unhewn boulders weighing from two to three tons each. I am not aware of anything of the kind having yet been found in Palestine, and as carrying one back to a period probably anterior to Jewish occupation, I regard it as the most interesting discovery I have made on Carmel.

A PLACE FAMOUS IN HISTORY.

St. Jean d'Acre, Oct. 14.—Of all the towns on the Syrian coast, from Antioch to Gaza, none has had a more eventful history than Acre, or one which more directly affected the fortunes of the rest of the country at large. Napoleon I. called it the key of Palestine, and it is doubtless owing to its important strategical position that it has undergone so many vicissitudes, and been the scene of so many sanguinary battles. There is, indeed, probably no similar area on the face of the globe on which so much blood has been shed.

I was at some trouble the other day to add up the list of sieges it has undergone, and the total was fifteen, not counting doubtful ones in the earliest history of the country, when it was invaded and conquered by the ancient Egyptians; but beginning with the siege of Acre by Shalmaneser, 721 B.C., when the fortress belonged to the Tyrians, and ending with its bombardment, in A.D. 1840, by the English Admiral Sir Charles Napier, the list is one which suggests a record of blood unparalleled in history. Its worst time was undoubtedly during the two hundred years when it was taken and retaken several times by Crusaders and Saracens successively. On one of these occasions when, after a two years' siege, the town fell into the hands of the Saracens, sixty thousand Christians are said to have fallen by the sword. The place is still shown, at the northeast salient of the outer wall, where stood the English tower, which was guarded by the troops of Richard Cœur de Lion.

The town now contains only about nine thousand inhabitants, cooped up by the fortifications in the very limited area of about fifty acres; and it is more picturesque than agreeable to live in. There is no more characteristic bazaar in the East than that of Acre, with its motley crowd of wild Bedouins from the desert, Persian devotees gathering around a Persian holy man who has taken up his residence here, Turkish soldiers who form its garrison, Druses, with their white turbans and striped abeihs, or overcoats, Metawalis, who are wild and gipsy-looking Moslem schismatics, Syrian Christians, and Moslem peasantry; add to these veiled women, long strings of camels, with an occasional foreigner, or sailor from a merchant-ship in the harbour, and you get a population as varied as any town in the country can show. Acre, therefore, is a most interesting place to spend a day in, apart from any antiquarian attraction it may possess, or monuments of more modern architecture which are worthy of attention.

There are few finer mosques in Syria than that of Jezzar Pacha, which stands within a large rectangular area, where there are vaulted galleries, supported by ancient columns ornamented by capitals brought from the ruins of Tyre and Cæsarea. Along these galleries have been built cells, destined for the people employed at the mosque, or the pilgrims who came to visit it. They surround a magnificent court, under which are cisterns, and upon which are palms, cypress, and other trees. Among them are white marble tombs, notably those of Jezzar and Suleiman Pacha. The town contains three other mosques, the columns in which and the pavement have certainly belonged to more ancient buildings. There are four Christian churches in the city, which belong to the Roman Catholics, the Schismatic Greeks, the Maronites, and the United Greeks respectively. Under the house of the Sisters of Nazareth and the neighbouring houses extend vast vaulted cellars which are now divided by walls of separation, and belong to different proprietors; they are doubtless of crusading origin. Deep cisterns also date from that period. Of the same date also are certain remains of walls and vaults near the convent, which are the ruins of a church almost completely destroyed. The most remarkable khan is near the port, called the Khan el Aurid on account of its columns, the galleries surrounding it being built on pillars of gray or red granite, covered by capitals of different orders, brought from more ancient monuments.

The citadel, as may be imagined, has often been destroyed and rebuilt. On one side is the military hospital, the lower part of which belongs entirely to crusaders' work, and consists of large subterranean magazines. In the middle is a great court, shaded by fig, palm, and other trees, under which are vaulted galleries and cisterns. Under the ramparts also extend immense ogival vaults, many of which belong to the time of the crusades. These have furnished magazines for later defenders of the fortress, and, during the bombardment by the English in 1840, the principal one exploded, with a loss to the defenders of 1600 men, 30 camels, 50 asses, besides horses, cows, and a great store of arms. Some of the guns lying about the ramparts are of old French manufacture, with the dates 1785, '86, '87. They are those which were sent by sea, for the use of Napoleon, but were captured by Sir Sydney Smith, and brought here to serve for the defence of the city. About half a mile from the city walls is an artificial hill or tumulus, called Napoleon's Hill, from the fact that he used it as his headquarters during one of the sieges of Acre. It was occupied for the same purpose six hundred years before by Richard Cœur de Lion.

In ancient times Acre was the most populous and flourishing port on the sea-coast after the decline of Tyre and Sidon, and contained an immense population; the town must have extended over the plain to the east of the city, which is still rich in ancient débris, fragments of pottery, and marble carvings. A great part of the modern fortification has been built from the ruins of Athlit, which I have described in a former letter, and which, before it was thus despoiled at the beginning of this century, must have been an ancient crusading fortress in almost perfect condition. When one thinks how lately it has been destroyed, one is all the more inclined to regret the disappearance of a monument which would have been the most interesting relic of its kind in existence. Acre possesses little Biblical interest. It is only mentioned once in the Old Testament, where it is alluded to as being a town from which the tribe of Asher, in whose territory it was situated, did not succeed in driving the Canaanites, but seemed to have lived with them in it upon friendly terms; and once in the New Testament, where, under the name of Ptolemais, it was visited by Paul on his way from Greece to Jerusalem.

There are many old people now in Acre who tell thrilling stories of the episodes which occurred here during the years when it was occupied by the Egyptians, between 1830 and 1840, and when it became necessary not merely to conciliate the conquerors, but to play a double game of keeping on good terms with the Turks, to whom it was ultimately, and, as it now turns out, foolishly, restored by the British; but none so thrilling as those which they have heard from their fathers, of the incidents which marked the reigns of Jezzar and Abdullah Pacha, especially the former. The following story was told me by the son of the man who was the confidential secretary of this fiend in human shape, who gloried in the name of “The Butcher.” In youth he sold himself to a slave-merchant in Constantinople, and, being purchased by Ali Bey of Egypt, he rose from the humble station of a mameluke to be Governor of Cairo. In 1773 he was placed by the Emir of the Druses in command at Beyrout. There his first act was to seize 50,000 piastres, the property of the emir, and the second to declare that he acknowledged no superior but the sultan. The emir, by the aid of a Russian fleet, drove Jezzar from Beyrout, but he was soon after made Pacha of Acre and Sidon. Under his vigorous rule the pachalik extended from Baalbec on the north to Jerusalem on the south. My informant told me that he was not originally a cruel man, but that one day he was playing with a little daughter who pulled his beard. “This is very wrong,” he said; “how did you learn to play with men's beards?” “Oh,” she replied, “I always play with the beards of the mamelukes when they visit the ladies of the harem in your absence.” This excited a fit of frenzied jealousy. Taking an escort, he announced that he was going on an official visit to a distant part of his pachalik. When he was a stage out of Acre, he told his escort to remain where they were, disguised himself, and returned rapidly and secretly to his harem. Here he found all his favourite wives disporting themselves with his mamelukes or military body-guard. Instantly he drew his cimeter and fell, not upon the men, but upon the women. Fifteen of these he is said to have killed with his own hand, and then, growing tired of the effort, he called in some soldiers to complete the massacre, not leaving one alive. My informant did not remember the total number slain. The mamelukes rushed to the great magazines, and swore they would blow themselves up and the whole town if a hair of their heads was touched. They were allowed, therefore, to saddle their horses and ride of in peace; but from that day the whole character of Jezzar Pacha was changed, and he made it a rule never to allow a week to pass without executions. His Jew banker was a handsome man. One day Jezzar complimented him on his looks, and then, calling a servant, ordered him to put out one of the Jew's eyes. Some time after Jezzar observed that the banker had arranged his turban so as almost to hide the lost eye, and he then, without a moment's hesitation, had his nose cut off. The poor Jew finally lost his head. The family of this man are still among the chief bankers of Damascus.

This butcher also employed his own leisure moments in unexpectedly drawing his sword and cutting off the ears and noses of his favourites and the people about him, and sometimes their heads, with his own hand. This was the man whom Napoleon besieged in Acre, and with whom British troops were unfortunately compelled to ally themselves to prevent the fortress from falling into French hands. My informant told me that during the latter years of Jezzar Pacha's life his character again changed for the better, and he gradually gave up his cruel practices. In fact, he described his cruelty as a monomania produced by a fit of jealousy, which it took him some years to get over.

THE BABS AND THEIR PROPHET.

Haifa, Nov. 7.—The Nahr N'aman, called by the ancients the river Belus, rises in a large marsh at the base of a mound in the plain of Acre called the Tell Kurdany, and, after a short course of four miles, fed by the swampy ground through which it passes, it attains considerable dimensions. Before falling into the sea it winds through an extensive date-grove, and then, twisting its way between banks of fine sand, falls into the ocean scarcely two miles from the walls of Acre. Pliny tells us that glass was first made by the ancients from the sands of this river, and the numerous specimens of old glass which I found in grubbing bear testimony to the extensive usage of this material in the neighbourhood. The beach at its mouth was also celebrated as a locality where the shells which yielded the Tyrian purple were to be found in great abundance, and I have succeeded in extracting the dye from some of those I have collected here. It was also renowned for a colossal statue of Memnon, which, according to Pliny, was upon its banks, but the site of this has not been accurately identified. The only point of attraction now upon its waters is a garden belonging to an eminent Persian, whose residence at Acre is invested with such peculiar interest that I made an expedition to his pleasure-ground on the chance of discovering something more in regard to him than it was possible to do at Haifa.

Turning sharply to the right before reaching Acre, and passing beneath the mound upon which Napoleon planted his batteries in 1799, we enter a grove of date-trees by a road bordered with high cactus hedges, and finally reach a causeway which traverses a small lake formed by the waters of the Belus, and which, crossing one arm of the river, lands us upon an island which it encircles. This island, which is about two hundred yards long by scarcely a hundred wide, is all laid out in flower-beds and planted with ornamental shrubs and with fruit-trees. Coming upon it suddenly it is like a scene in fairy land. In the centre is a plashing fountain from which the water is conveyed to all parts of the garden. The flower-beds are all bordered with neat edges of stone-work, and are sunk below the irrigating channels. Over a marble bed the waters from the fountain come rippling down in a broad stream to a bower of bliss, where two immense and venerable mulberry-trees cast an impenetrable shade over a platform with seats along the entire length of one side, protected by a balustrade projecting over the waters of the Belus, which here runs in a clear stream, fourteen or fifteen feet wide and two or three deep, over a pebbly bottom, where fish of considerable size, and evidently preserved, are darting fearlessly about, or coming up to the steps to be fed. The stream is fringed with weeping willows, and the spot, with its wealth of water, its thick shade, and air fragrant with jasmine and orange blossoms, forms an ideal retreat from the heats of summer. The sights and sounds are all suggestive of languor and dolce far niente, of that peculiar condition known to Orientals as kief, when the senses are lulled by the sounds of murmuring water, the odours of fragrant plants, the flickering shadows of foliage, or the gorgeous tints of flowers and the fumes of the narghileh.

The gardener, a sedate Persian in a tall cap, who kept the place in scrupulous order, gave us a dignified welcome. His master, he said, would not come till the afternoon, and if we disappeared before his arrival we were welcome to spread our luncheon on his table under the mulberry-trees, and sit round it on his chairs; nay, further, he even extended his hospitality to providing us with hot water.

Thus it was that we took possession of Abbas Effendi's garden before I had the honour of making that gentleman's acquaintance, an act of no little audacity, when I inform you that he claims to be the eldest son of the last incarnation of the Deity. As his father is alive and resident at Acre—if one may venture to talk of such a being as resident anywhere—my anxiety to see the son was only exceeded by my curiosity to investigate the father. But this, as I shall presently explain, seems a hope that is not likely to be realized. Meantime I shall proceed to give you, so far as I have been able to learn, an account of who Abbas Effendi's father is, and all that I know about him, premising always that I only do so subject to any modification which further investigation may suggest.

It is now forty-eight years since a young man of three-and-twenty appeared at the shrine of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet, who was made a martyr at Kerbela. He was said to have been born at Shiraz, the son of a merchant there, and his name was Ali Mohammed. It is supposed that he derived his religious opinions from a certain Indian Mussulman, called Achsai, who instituted a system of reform, and made many disciples. Whether this is so or not, the young Persian soon acquired a pre-eminent reputation for sanctity, and the boldness and enthusiasm of his preaching and the revolutionary sentiments he uttered attracted many to his teaching. So far as I have been able to judge, he preached a pure morality of the loftiest character, denouncing the abuses of existing Islam as Christ did the Judaism of his day, and fearlessly incurring the hostility of Persian Phariseeism. A member himself of the Shiite sect of Moslems, he sought to reform it, as being the state religion of Persia, and finally went so far as to proclaim himself at Kufa the bab, or door, through which alone man could approach God. At the same time he announced that he was the Mahdi, or last Imaum, who was descended from Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, and whom the Shiites believe to have been an incarnation of the Deity. Mahdi is supposed by all Persian Moslems not to have died, but to be awaiting in concealment the coming of the last day.

As may be imagined, the sudden appearance after so many centuries of a reformer who claimed to be none other than the long-expected divine manifestation, created no little consternation throughout Persia, more especially as, according to tradition, the time had arrived when such a manifestation was to be looked for, and men's minds were prepared for the event. The Persian enthusiast, as soon as his preaching became popular and his pretensions vast, roused the most violent hostility, and he was executed at Tabriz in 1849, after a brief career of fourteen years, at the early age of thirty-seven. The tragic circumstances attending his death enhanced his glory, for he was repeatedly offered his life if he would consent to abate his claims, or even leave the country. He preferred, however, a martyr's crown, and was executed in the presence of a vast multitude, leaving behind him a numerous and fanatic sect, who have since then been known as the Babs, and whose belief in the founder subsequent persecutions on the part of the government have only served to confirm.

The Bab before his execution gave it to be understood that though he was apparently about to die, he, or rather the divine incarnation of which he was the subject, would shortly reappear in the person of his successor, whom, I believe, he named secretly. I do not exactly know when the present claimant first made known his pretensions to be that successor, but, at all events, he was universally acknowledged by the Bab sect, now numbering some hundreds of thousands, and became so formidable a personage, being a man of high lineage—indeed, it is whispered that he is a relative of the Shah himself—that he was made prisoner by the government and sent into exile. The Sultan of Turkey kindly undertook to provide for his incarceration, and for some years he was a state prisoner at Adrianople. Finally he was transported from that place to Acre, on giving his parole to remain quietly there and not return to Persia, and here he has been living ever since, an object of adoration to his countrymen, who flock hither to visit him, who load him with gifts, and over two hundred of whom remain here as a sort of permanent body-guard.

He is visible only to women or men of the poorest class, and obstinately refuses to let his face be seen by any man above the rank of a fellah or peasant. Indeed, his own disciples who visit him are only allowed a glimpse of his august back, and in retiring from that they have to back out with their faces towards it. I have seen a lady who has been honoured with an interview, during which he said nothing beyond giving her his blessing, and after about three minutes motioned to her to retire. She describes him as a man of probably about seventy years of age, but much younger-looking, as he dyes both his hair and his beard black, but of a very mild and benevolent cast of countenance. He lives at a villa in the plain, about two miles beyond Acre, which he has rented from a Syrian gentleman of my acquaintance, who tells me that once or twice he has seen him walking in his garden, but that he always turns away so that his face shall not be seen. Indeed, the most profound secrecy is maintained in regard to him and the religious tenets of his sect.

Not long ago, however, public curiosity was gratified, for one of his Persian followers stabbed another for having been unworthy of some religious trust, and the great man himself was summoned as a witness.

“Will you tell the court who and what you are?” was the first question put.

“I will begin,” he replied, “by telling you who I am not. I am not a camel driver”—this was an allusion to the Prophet Mohammed—“nor am I the son of a carpenter”—this in allusion to Christ. “This is as much as I can tell you to-day. If you will now let me retire, I will tell you to-morrow who I am.”

Upon this promise he was let go; but the morrow never came. With an enormous bribe he had in the interval purchased an exemption from all further attendance at court.

That his wealth is fabulous may be gathered from the fact that not long since a Persian emir or prince, possessing large estates, came and offered them all, if in return he would only allow him to fill his water-jars. The offer was considered worthy of acceptance, and the emir is at this moment a gardener in the grounds which I saw over the wall of my friend's villa. This is only one instance of the devotion with which he is regarded, and of the honours which are paid to him: indeed, when we remember that he is believed to possess the attributes of Deity, this is not to be wondered at. Meantime his disciples are patiently waiting for his turn to come, which will be on the last day, when his divine character will be recognized by unbelievers.

AN ANCIENT JEWISH COMMUNITY.

Haifa, Nov. 25.—In one of the most remote and secluded valleys in the mountains of northern Galilee lies a village, the small population of which possesses an interest altogether unique. As I looked down upon it from the precipitous and dangerous path by means of which I was skirting the flank of the mountain, I thought I had rarely seen a spot of such ideal beauty. It was an oasis, not actually in a desert—for the rocky mountain ranges were covered with wild herbage—but in a savage wilderness of desolation, in the midst of which the village nestled in a forest of orange, almond, fig, and pomegranate trees, the tiny rills of water by which they were irrigated glistening like silver threads in the sunlight, and the yellow crops beyond contrasting with the dull green of the hill verdure, long deprived of water, and the gray rocks which reared their craggy pinnacles above it.

The name of this village was Bukeia. I had heard vaguely of the existence of a spot in Galilee where a community of Jews lived who claimed to be the descendants of families who had tilled the land in this same locality prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent dispersion of the race; as it had never been suspected that any remnant of the nation had clung to the soil of their fathers from time immemorial, and as it is certain that this is the only remnant that has, I took some trouble to ascertain the name of the village, and felt that it was worth a pilgrimage to visit it. Although hitherto unknown to Europeans and tourists, it has been for many years a spot much frequented by the Jews of Safed and Tiberias, and this summer especially, when the cholera panic prevailed in the country, there was a perfect rush of the wealthier Jews and rabbis of those towns to its pure air and bracing climate. In a small way it is a sort of Jewish sanatorium.

But the village does not consist altogether of Jews. In fact, they form the minority of the population, which is composed of eighty Druse, forty Greek-Christian, and twenty Jewish families, the latter numbering about one hundred and twenty souls in all. Refusing the invitation of the Druse and Christian sheiks to accept their hospitality, I listened rather to the solicitations of the elderly Hebrew who eagerly placed his house at my disposal, and was the patriarch of his coreligionists, his local title being, like those of the heads of the other communities, that of sheik. His house was a stone erection with a court-yard, and contained a single large room, which, as is common in Arab houses, afforded eating and sleeping accommodation for the whole family. On this occasion it soon became crowded to excess.

First appeared the Druse sheik, with white turban, and composed and dignified bearing. Then the sheik of the Christians, a man in no way to be distinguished from the ordinary type of native fellahin; then the Greek priest, in his high, round-topped black hat and long black coat, reaching nearly to his feet; then the Jewish rabbi, who officiates at the synagogue, in flowing Eastern robe; then some village notables of all three religions, who all squatted on mats, forming a semicircle, of which my friends and I were the centre, and which involved a large demand upon our host for coffee, for on these occasions it is a great breach of politeness not to furnish all the uninvited guests who flock in to see distinguished strangers with that invariable beverage. When one or two Moslems, who were temporary visitors to the village, dropped in from curiosity, I could not fail to be struck with the singular ethnological and theological compound by which I was surrounded. Here, in these Christian and Moslem peasants, were the descendants of those ancient Canaanites whom the conquering Jews failed to drive out of the country during the entire period of their occupation of it, though they doubtless served their conquerors as hewers of wood and drawers of water, and as farm-servants generally; for the result of the most recent and exhaustive research proves, I think, incontestably that the fellahin of Palestine, taken as a whole, are the modern representatives of those old tribes which the Israelites found settled in the country, such as the Canaanites, Hivites, Jebusites, Amorites, Philistines, Edomites. In what proportion these various tribes are now represented, whether they were preceded by a still older autochthonous population, namely, the Anakim, Horites, and so forth, are questions which have so far been beyond the reach of scientific research. But though this race, or rather conglomeration of races, which may be designated for want of a better by the vague title of pre-Israelite, still survives beneath the Mohammedan or Christian exterior, it has not remained uninfluenced during the lapse of centuries by the many events and circumstances that have happened in Palestine.

Each successive change in the social and political condition of the country has more or less affected it in various ways, and we must not be surprised when studying the fellahin at finding Jewish, Hellenic, Rabbinic, Christian, and Mussulman reminiscences mingled pell-mell, and in the quaintest combinations, with traits which may bring us back to the most remote and obscure periods of pre-Israelite existence. Indeed, for anything one could say to the contrary, the Christian fellahin of this village, though they had resisted the proselytizing efforts of the Saracen conquest in the sixth century, may, before they were converted to Christianity, have worshipped the gods of the Græco-Roman period; before that they may have been Jews, for there can be little question that the aboriginal population, to some extent, adopted the Jewish faith after the conquest, and before that were worshippers of the Syro-Phœnician deities, Baal and Ashtaroth. They may in those old times, when Jewish power was supreme, have been in this very village the servants of the ancestors of these very Jews who now share its land with them, as they had, according to their traditions, done from the most ancient period; and this means, in a country where genealogies are preserved for centuries upon centuries, a very long time ago. I have a friend at Haifa who says he can trace his ancestry back to the crusades, when his family was resident at the old town of the same name; and, as a grotesque illustration of their pretensions, a story is told of a Bedouin sheik who, being asked whether he was descended from Abraham, said that he could trace further back, and that, in fact, Abraham was not a sheik of a very good family.

The only really modern intruders in the group by which I was surrounded were the Druses, who only settled in the village about three hundred years ago, and whose origin prior to nine hundred years ago, when we know that they were settled at Aleppo, is rather obscure; but it is generally believed that they were originally a tribe inhabiting the province of Yemen. Here, too, in this small group of Arabic-speaking people, were represented four of the most widely divergent religions. There were the two Moslems, whose ancestors, probably, prior to the conquest of Palestine by the Saracens, had been Christians, but had then adopted the faith of the Prophet. There was the priest of the Greek Church, still clinging to the dogmas which he inherited from the first Christians—the descendant, possibly, of one who had actually listened to the words of Christ and his disciples, in the country which their posterity has never left. And indeed it is a curious reflection in looking at these fellahin to think that they may be the direct descendants of some of those thousands who were influenced at the time by the teaching which has since swayed the moral sentiment of civilized humanity. Then there were the Jews—the only group of Jews existing in the world whose ancestors have clung to the soil ever since that Teacher's tragic death, and whose fathers may have shared in the general hostility to him at the time—representing still the faith which was the repository of the highest moral teaching prior to Christianity, prior to Mohammedanism. Lastly, there were the Druses, in whose esoteric religion is to be found the most extraordinary confusion of metaphysical notions, gnostic and pagan, the outcome of a mystical interweaving of ideas derived from the most divergent faiths, with a Magian or Zoroastrian basis, upon which Hindoo and Buddhist, Jewish and Platonic, Christian and Moslem dogmas have been successively grafted, forming a system so recondite and abstruse that only the initiated can comprehend it, if indeed they can.

Such were the mixed religious and race conditions by which I was surrounded, and I was much struck by the apparent tolerance and amiability with which all the members of these different religions regarded each other. The Jewish rabbi told me privately that he much preferred Druses to Christians; but he lived on good terms with all. And when I went to see the synagogue the Greek priest strolled round with me, and the rabbi returned the compliment by accompanying us when I went to visit the little Greek church. Meantime, the Hebrew sheik had summoned all the Jewish population, and they came trooping in to perform the usual Eastern salutation of kissing the hand. Old men and maidens, young men and married women and children, I saw them all, nor, so far as dress and facial type were concerned, was it possible to distinguish them from the fellahin of the country generally. These twenty families seemed all to have descended from one stock, they all had the same name, Cohen, and they have never intermarried either with the people of the country or even with other Jews. I afterwards had some conversation with the Christian and Druse sheiks in regard to them. They said that formerly more of the village lands belonged to them, but owing to the wars, pestilences, and other misfortunes which had overtaken the country at various times, their property had become diminished; indeed, there can be little doubt that the Druses themselves, when Fakr Eddin conquered this part of the country, appropriated some of it; so that now, so far as their worldly circumstances go, the Jews are badly off. Nevertheless they do not complain, and are skilful, hard-working, and persevering agriculturists, to my mind more deserving of sympathy than many of their coreligionists who have come to settle in the country as colonists, depending more upon the assistance which they derive from without than upon their own efforts. The experience and example of their coreligionists at Bukeia would make the neighbourhood of that place a desirable locality for a colony.

From Bukeia I followed a northwesterly direction, by a most picturesque mountain path, and in a few hours reached the romantically situated town of Tershiha, where I was most hospitably entertained by the Cadi, a dignified Arab gentleman of a true old Oriental type which is now becoming rare. This place contains about two thousand inhabitants. They are nearly all the adherents of a certain sheik, Ali el-Mograbi, a Moslem reformer, who emigrated to this place from the north of Africa many years ago, and whose preaching has been attended with remarkable success. As his fame grew he moved to Acre, where he exercises an extraordinary influence. The tenets of the sect of which he is the head are kept a profound secret, though there is nothing to distinguish the worship of the initiated from that of any ordinary sect of howling dervishes, to the outside observer, except the sparing use of the name of Mohammed. It is said, however, that their views are latitudinarian, and, that, so far from being exclusive or fanatic, are rather in the sense of extreme toleration for other religions. Whatever be the nature of their heterodoxy, it is not now interfered with. Indeed, it is hinted that the sheik counts among his followers some of the most highly placed officials in the empire, and there can be little doubt that his doctrines are spreading rapidly among Moslems, while even Christians have joined the society. A large new mosque is now in progress of erection at Haifa. The sheik himself, whose acquaintance I made subsequently, is now a very old man, regarded with the most extreme veneration by his followers, and the results of his teaching prove that he must be endowed with gifts of a very high order.

DOMESTIC LIFE AMONG THE SYRIANS.

Haifa, March 1, 1884.—The ordinary tourists in Palestine who write books of their experience have so little opportunity of knowing the conditions which surround the daily life of a resident in a small country town, that a few details of domestic existence here, as contrasted with those of more civilized countries, may not be uninteresting. As a general rule, the foreigner who comes to a native town to settle down as a permanent inhabitant finds himself compelled more or less to adopt the manners and customs of the richer class of Syrians, which gives him an opportunity of becoming acquainted with their home life. Some of these are wealthy merchants or large landed proprietors, with incomes varying from $5000 to $15,000, though a man whose yearly revenue reached the latter amount, of which he would not spend half, would be considered a millionaire, and few small towns can boast of so great a capitalist. As, owing to the march of civilization, the richer classes have of late years taken to travel and the study of languages, persons occupying this position generally speak either French or Italian, have visited Paris, Constantinople, or Alexandria, and have a thin varnish of European civilization overlaying their native barbarism.

The rich families of the Syrian aristocracy are almost invariably Christians, but they have only recently shaken off the manners of their Mohammedan neighbours and conquerors. The women associate far more freely than they used to do with the men. They now no longer cover their faces, and although they still wear the “fustan,” or white winding-sheet, which serves as cloak and head-dress in one, it nearly always conceals a dress of European make, while, instead of bare feet thrust into slippers, they have Paris bottines and stockings. The men of this class also dress in European garments, wearing, however, the red fez cap.

The domestic arrangements of a family of this description are by no means so refined in character as the external aspect of the house and its proprietor, when he is taking his exercise on a gorgeously caparisoned Arab horse, would suggest. If we are on sufficiently intimate terms with him to stay as a guest in his house, we find that his pretty wife, with her Paris dress and dainty chaussure, walks about in the privacy of the domestic home with bare, or at best stockinged, feet, thrust into high wooden pattens, with which she clatters over the handsome marble hall that forms the central chamber of the house, slipping out her feet and leaving the pattens at the door of any of the rooms she may be about to enter. She wears a loose morning-wrapper, which she is not particular about buttoning, but in this respect she is outdone by sundry dishevelled maid-servants, who also clatter about the house in pattens and in light garments that seem to require very little fastening in front. As for the husband, who, when he called upon you, might have come off the boulevards of Paris, barring always the red cap, he has now reverted absolutely into the Oriental. He wears a long white and not unbecoming garment that reaches from his throat to his heels, and his feet are thrust into red slippers. As he sips his matutinal cup of coffee and smokes his first narghileh of the day, there is nothing about him to remind you that he knows a word of any other language than Arabic, or has ever worn any other costume than that of his Eastern ancestors. He is sitting in his own little den, with his feet tucked under him on the divan which runs around the room, and with his wife in close proximity, her feet tucked under her, and also smoking a narghileh and sipping coffee.

Yet, if you call upon this worthy couple as a distinguished foreigner, in the afternoon, accompanied by your wife, and are not on intimate terms, you are received in a room which they never enter, except upon such state occasions, by the same gentleman, in a perfectly fitting black frock-coat and trousers, varnished boots, and a white waistcoat, and by the same lady, in a dress which has been made in Paris.

The furniture consists of massive tables with marble tops, and handsome arm-chairs and couches covered with costly satins. The walls are resplendent with gilt mirrors and with heavy hanging curtains. The floors are covered with rich carpets. There is a three-hundred-dollar piano, on which the lady never plays; and there are pictures, of which the frames are more artistic than the subjects—the whole having the air of a show repository of some sort. Indeed, if your host is at all taken by surprise, the first thing he does is to open all the shutters, as, except upon such occasions, the apartment is one of silent and absolute gloom. He has a guest-chamber, also furnished after a civilized style, in which he puts you, if you are going to stay with him, and he has so far adopted civilized habits that he sleeps on a bed himself, and not on mats on the floor, like his forefathers. His dinner is served on a table, which is spread as he has seen it spread in the houses of foreigners, but he retains the native cooking, the huge pillaw of rice, the chicken stew with rich and greasy gravy, the lamb stuffed with pistachio nuts, the leben or sour milk, the indescribable sweet dishes, crisp, sticky, and nutty, the delicious preserves of citrons, dates, and figs, the flat bread and the goat cheese, and the wine of the country.

Altogether, he gives you plenty to eat, drink, and smoke, but his conversational powers and ideas are limited, which is not to be wondered at, considering that there is not a book in the house. He tells you that the house cost him $9000, which does not seem likely to be an exaggeration when we look at the handsome marble floors and staircase, massive arches, and the extent of ground which is covered by spacious halls and ample courts.

The kitchen and offices, if you have the curiosity to look into them, are filthy in the extreme, and the process of cooking the dinner, performed by a slovenly female, had better not be too closely examined. His domestic establishment probably consists of four women and two or three men who look after the stables, in which are three or four handsome horses, and a garden requiring constant attention. He has no wheeled vehicle, for there are no roads. The women rarely take any other exercise than that of waddling on gossiping visits to each other, when their conversation turns entirely on domestic subjects, on the marital traits of their respective husbands, on congratulations on the arrival of children, if they are boys, and condolences if they are girls, and on hopeful speculation and encouragement if there are none at all; for of all misfortunes which can befall a Syrian lady, to be childless is the greatest. If there are grown-up daughters they are carefully protected from intimacy with young men, and marriages are arranged by the parents. The chances of making a good match depend more on the amount of the marriage-settlement than on their looks. If the family happens to be a large one it is not uncommon to see a young lady who has been brought up in what, in Syria, is considered luxury, married to some poor and distant connection, whose family live in the humblest manner. In such a case the contrast is greater than can be imagined in our country. She is transferred from the palatial residence I have described to a one-storied house which probably does not consist of more than two rooms, and where her husband's family live in the old style. Here she is received, perhaps, by his mother and sister, with whom she is to live; who wear the pure native costume; who have never had a shoe or stocking on in their lives; who sleep on mats on the floor, for there are no bedsteads; who partake of their meals squatting on their heels, for there are no chairs or tables; and who eat with their fingers, for there are no knives and forks.

If the newly married couple do not occupy the same room with the rest of the family, they share the other one with the domestic animals. These probably consist of a horse, a cow, and a donkey. For the sake of security they are stabled in the room of the master of the house. Their manger is on a level with the floor on which he and his bride sleep. I have before now shared such a room with a young married couple—she, the daughter of a wealthy man who lived in civilized style—and all night I have been disturbed by the crunching of the animals feeding within a few feet of where I was lying; with their constant rising up and lying down; with the movements of my host and hostess, who would get up constantly in the night, sometimes to feed the animals, which were required for work before sunrise, sometimes to replenish the charcoal fire, sometimes to attend to the baby, or to open the door and hold a whispered conference with some nocturnal visitor. As there is no undressing on going to bed, among these people, and as they indulge in long snoozes during the day, the night does not seem to be so especially devoted to sleep as with us. They appear to think that, as going to bed simply consists in lying down on the floor in your clothes, one part of the twenty-four hours will do as well for sleep as another, and their nights are restless accordingly. As a general rule, for persons who have not been long enough in the country to get used to insects, the nights are made restless from other causes.

It is curious, in the case of such a marriage as I have described, to see the change which takes place when the young wife leaves the retired village to which she has been banished, owing to the impoverished circumstances of her husband, to pay a visit to her own family. I scarcely recognize her when I meet her again. When last I saw her in her humble home her costume consisted of a thin sort of chemisette, a pair of full, baggy trousers fastened at the knee, leaving the legs and feet bare, and over these a skirt, and we were dipping our fingers amicably into the same dish of rice. Now I would walk down Broadway with her on my arm, and be rather proud of her fashionable “get up” than otherwise; and she handles her knife and fork with far greater dexterity than I did my fingers.

The wave of civilization is, however, rapidly encroaching upon these humbler classes. It is only natural that a girl brought up in this way should endeavour to introduce innovations into her husband's home. Within the last few years there has been a marked change in this respect, particularly in a town like Haifa, where the Christian population largely predominates. A veiled face is rarely to be seen, while women, even of the poorer classes, are introducing the fashion of wearing gowns, adding a table and a few chairs to their domestic furniture, and have even gone the length of sleeping on bedsteads, though I have not yet pried sufficiently into nocturnal mysteries to know whether, when they go to bed, they have progressed in civilization so far as to undress.

FISHING ON LAKE TIBERIAS.

Haifa, April 2.—I have just returned from a trip into the interior, during which I have been exploring some new and interesting country. Instead of following the usual road to the eastward by way of the valley of Esdraelon, I struck in a northeasterly direction across the fertile plain of Acre, fording the Kishon at the point of its debouchure into the sea, where, after the winter rains, we are generally obliged to swim the horses, while we cross ourselves in a ferry-boat. In two hours from this point we strike the first low range of the Galilee hills, at a depression from which, in the times of the crusaders, the armies of Saladin used to issue forth to give them battle. Indeed, the whole ground over which we ride has been from time immemorial the scene of bloody warfare, and it is not impossible, considering how events are shaping themselves in the East, that it may become so again. Rising gently, by grassy vales carpeted with wild flowers, to a height of about five hundred feet, we shortly reach the picturesquely situated town of Shefr Amr, dominated by the extensive walls of its ruined castle.

This has been a place of considerable importance ever since, shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem, it was the seat of the Jewish sanhedrim. It was then called Shefaram, and is probably identical with the Kefraim which Eusebius says was six miles north of Legio, and with Hapraim, which we read in the Bible was assigned to the tribe of Issachar. Since then its name has been changed to Shefr Amr, or “the healing of Omar,” from a tradition that Daher el-Amr, a prince who governed this country about a hundred and sixty years ago, recovered here from a severe illness. The fortress is said to have been built by his son Othman in 1761, and it does not appear to be older, though probably it occupies the site of a much more ancient castle. It covers a very extensive area of ground, with crenellated battlements, and contains stalls for four hundred horses. It is now partly ruined, but a portion of it is still sufficiently well preserved to be the residence of the Mudir, or local governor.

I scrambled by a most dilapidated stone stair to the top of the walls, and had a magnificent view over the surrounding country. The position is so commanding that I could well understand why Saladin chose it as a point from which he could harass the Franks who were besieging Acre, which town was plainly visible in the distance. I was informed that the whole of this extensive fortress was offered by the government for sale for $1500. The stones alone would be worth more than this amount, if it were not for the cost of transport, to say nothing of the area of land which they cover. But, as a matter of speculation, Barnum's pink-and-white elephant would be about as convenient a possession for a private individual. It is no wonder that it has been for some time in the market, or that the town itself, when capital is so scarce, should be a sleepy looking, stagnant place. Still, it is better built than the average; the houses are generally constructed of stone—many of them are of two stories—there is a fair bazaar, and a population of about two thousand five hundred inhabitants, of which fifteen hundred are Greek Christians, three hundred Moslems, six hundred Druses, and the remainder Jews. Some thirty families of Morocco Jews settled here as agriculturists about the year 1850, but after struggling against extortion for twenty years they had to give it up, and the colony is now extinct, the Jews now here being natives of the country. The Druse population is also rapidly diminishing from the same cause; a slow but steady migration takes place annually to the Druse mountains to the east of the Hauran, where they are practically independent of government control; there are also a few Protestants here, with a schoolhouse, besides a convent and church of the Roman Catholic nuns (Dames de Nazareth), built in 1866, with a girls' school.

The only other interesting building at Shefr Amr is the Greek church, which has been rebuilt on old foundations. The remains were evidently Byzantine work, dating probably from the fifth or sixth century. Many interesting tombs are to be found both north and south of the town. The most noteworthy has a handsome façade, covered with a design of a vine with grapes in bold relief, and with small figures of birds introduced. Each vine-plant grows out of a pot. On each side of the door is an effaced Greek inscription, with rosettes in lozenges below and birds above. Here, also, are fragments of Greek inscriptions, and on the left side-wall of the vestibule is a bas-relief of a lion and a small animal, perhaps a cub; on the right a lion, a cub, and a bird. The drawing is very primitive, and has a Byzantine appearance. Inside this tomb, which contains three loculi, there are mouldings round the principal arch, with tracery of vines and carvings of birds. These tombs are interesting because both the inscriptions and ornamentation belong to the Byzantine period, thus proving that the mode of sepulture practised by the Jews from the most remote date was continued by the Christians up to the fifth or sixth century after Christ.

Our way from Shefr Amr led through the beautiful oak woods which belong to that town, but which seem doomed to destruction, for I observed that many of the handsomest trees were girdled near the base, while numerous stumps bore testimony to this lamentable work of denudation. In a country where wood is becoming so rare it was heartbreaking to ride through this beautiful, park-like scenery and witness the work of destruction going on in spite of the government prohibition against felling timber. Emerging from these grassy glades we descend into the magnificent plain of the Buttauf, now a sheet of emerald green, as the young crops extend before us as far as the eye can reach. Traversing this fertile country one is more and more impressed with the incorrectness of the judgment of the ordinary tourist, who, confining himself to the route prescribed by Cook, is taken through the barren hills of Judea, and to one or two holy places in Galilee, and then goes home and talks about the waste and desolation of Palestine. The trite saying recurred to my mind as I looked on this wealth of grain: “I pity the man who can go from Dan to Beersheba and say that all is barren;” or, as my travelling-companion, who was an American, more forcibly put it: “If ever I meet a tourist who tells me that Palestine is barren, I'll lick him.”

But we were not on the tourist track, and it was not till we reached Tiberias that we found specimens, and they were too discreet; in their remarks to give my friend an opportunity of expressing his views in the manner contemplated. Here we took a boat and crossed the lake. I wanted to investigate the present fishing capabilities of these waters, but I soon found that I had not the appropriate tackle. The natives either fish with circular hand-nets, which they throw with great dexterity, or with long hand-lines, which they bait with small dead fish and haul in, thus trawling in a rough way. They have no idea of fishing with a rod, and mine came to grief, so that I had no opportunity of casting a fly, but I think it not unlikely, from the way I saw the fish jumping towards evening, that they would rise to it. The natives catch their bait by poisoning the water with pinches of a powder which they throw in near the margin. In a few moments the minnows and small fish are to be seen swimming lazily along the surface, completely stupefied, and one has only to put one's hand in and take them out. The fish we caught were principally of the bass or perch species, averaging half a pound or more each. One of the boatmen caught a dozen with two or three casts of the hand-net, but it was useless to try with a rod without proper tackle. I am convinced that a spinning artificial minnow, or a copper spoon, would be very killing; so, of course, would be trawling live bait, but the natives know only their own primitive style of fishing, and the idea of a rod and line, even with the common angle-worm at one end and a fool at the other, was entirely new to them. Indeed, scarcely any fish are taken from the lake. There are only four boats on it, but these are used more for transport than fishing purposes, and the population is so sparse on the shores that there is no demand. We were assured by our boatmen, however, that they occasionally took fish over five feet in length, and I have seen enough of what may be done to decide me to go there again some day properly provided, instead of relying on native appliances.

The spot at which we were moored on the eastern shore of the lake was immediately under a precipitous conical-shaped hill, which rose abruptly to a height of twelve hundred feet from the waters. Its summit was crowned with the ruins of the ancient city of Gamala. The modern name for it is Kalat el-Hosn, but it owes its ancient appellation to its shape, which is exactly that of a camel's hump. It is interesting as having been a purely Jewish fortification, the last that was sacked by Vespasian and Titus before the siege of Jerusalem, and it has remained to this day exactly as they left it. Josephus gives a very graphic account of the siege, which took place in the last days of September, sixty-nine years after the birth of Christ. Owing to the precipices by which it was surrounded it was supposed to be impregnable, and when, at last, after a twenty-nine days' siege, it was found not to be so, the whole population who had survived its horrors, consisting of five thousand men, women, and children, flung themselves into the yawning gulf below the ramparts, thus perishing by their own act. Of the entire population only two women escaped alive.

When we compare the fighting of those days with the siege of Paris, for instance, where the population surrendered because there was a little too much sawdust in the bread, the results of modern as contrasted with ancient civilization suggest some curious reflections. That the civilization of those days was of a high order is attested by the magnificent remains which still exist in Gamala. Here are to be found, strewn over the ground, some thirty huge granite columns, which must have been transported from Egypt to this giddy height by engineering contrivances which would puzzle the science of these days, and Corinthian capitals neatly cut in hard, black basalt, and sarcophagi and other monuments, all evidencing a high state of art.

These ruins have hitherto been only superficially examined, and there can be no doubt that the investigations of the Palestine Exploration Fund, when the society is permitted by the Turkish government to prosecute their researches to the east of the Jordan, will bring many interesting treasures to light. I only regretted that I had no time to give to these ruins, as my objective point lay farther to the south and east.

A VISIT TO THE SULPHUR SPRINGS OF AMATHA.

Haifa, April 15.—At the spot where the Jordan issues from Lake Tiberias there are two large mounds, a fragment of sea-wall, and a causeway on arches which projects into the river, dividing it from the waters of the lake, and suggesting that it may possibly, in ancient times, have formed the approach to a bridge. There is no bridge there now. The river swirls round the arches, which are choked with ruins and reeds, and in a broad, swift stream winds its way to the Dead Sea. Here, in old time, stood the Roman city of Tarichæa, built on the site of a Phœnician fortress of still older date. Nothing remains but heaps of rubbish covered with broken pottery, and fragments of sculpture; but it offers, probably, a rich field for future excavation. The modern name Kerak signifies in Syriac “fortress,” and its natural position was remarkably strong, as the Jordan, after leaving the lake, takes a sharp bend to the westward and flows almost parallel with it, thus leaving an intervening peninsula on which the town was situated. It was defended on the westward by a broad ditch, traces of which still remain, connecting the Jordan with the lake, thus making the peninsula an island approached only by a causeway.

Josephus mentions Tarichæa as having been an important military post in the wars of his time. When I visited it the lake was unusually high, and the Jordan was unfordable, so we were obliged to ferry over, swimming our horses and mules a distance of seventy or eighty yards across the rapid current. Then we mounted, and galloped in a southeasterly direction, over a fertile plain, waving at this season of the year with luxuriant crops. I was so much struck with the fertility and agricultural capacity of this region that I made inquiry as to its ownership, and found that it had been presented by a former sultan to one of the principal Bedouin sheiks of this Eastern country, and that he was exempt from all taxation. His lands extend to the foothills, where the Yarmuk issues from the mountains of Gilead and Jaulan, which we were now approaching. We had ascended these but a little way when a scene burst upon us which surprised and delighted us by its wild and unexpected grandeur. The Yarmuk here enters the plain of the Jordan on its way to join that river, with a volume of water fully equal to the latter, pouring its swollen torrent between two perfectly perpendicular precipices of basalt, which are about two hundred yards apart, and look like some majestic gateway expressly designed by nature to afford the river a fitting outlet to the plain after its wild course through the mountains.

On each side of these cliffs the country swells back abruptly to a height of seventeen hundred feet above the stream. At their base, here and there, the limestone or basalt rock, for the two formations are curiously intermixed, crops out sharply, forming terraces with precipitous sides. The more distant summits are fringed with oak forests. The general effect of the landscape, as you first burst upon it after leaving the Jordan valley, is in the highest degree impressive. The path, gradually ascending, winds along the edge of cliffs, rising to a sheer height of three hundred feet from the torrent which foams beneath. We are so close to their margin on the right that it makes us giddy to look down, while on the left hand grassy slopes, covered with wild flowers, rise to the base of other cliffs above us. For an hour we wind along these dizzy ledges. In one place I observed a hundred feet of limestone superimposed upon two hundred of basalt, the whole forming a black-and-white precipice very remarkable to look upon. In fact, my further investigations of this valley of the Yarmuk, some portion of which, I believe, we were the first to explore, have convinced me that it affords finer scenery than is to be found in any other part of Palestine. It is astonishing that it should have remained until now almost entirely unknown. Where the valley opened a little we saw beneath us a small plain, almost encircled by the river, and on it about twenty Bedouin tents. Our unexpected and novel appearance on the cliff above evidently caused some little stir and amazement, but they were too far below us to communicate with, so we pushed on to a point where the path suddenly plunged down by a series of steps between walls of black basalt, making a very steep descent for loaded mules, and one not altogether pleasant for mounted men. It had the advantage of bringing us soon to the bottom, however, but not before my eyes were gladdened by the sight of one of the objects for which I had undertaken the trip.

At my feet, and separated from the river by a narrow strip of land covered with bushes, was a long pool of bluish-gray water, in marked contrast with the yellow stream. Above it floated a very light mist, or, rather, haze. Following with the eye a little stream of the same coloured water which entered it, past a primitive mill, I saw that it debouched from another pond similar in colour, and evidently its source, and to this our path was conducting us. It was the first of the hot sulphur springs of Amatha, celebrated by Eusebius as being much frequented in the time of the Romans, and famous for their healing qualities. We soon reached its margin, and, dismounting, tethered our horses under the shade of a large tree, and stretched ourselves for a rest after our ride, preparatory to a slight repast and a more minute investigation of the springs and the ruins by which they are surrounded. Our nostrils were regaled by a strong odour of rotten eggs, which left no doubt in our minds as to the quality of the water in the immediate neighborhood. We were here at a depression of five hundred and fifty feet below the surface of the sea, but the climate, which must be intolerably hot in summer, was at this time of year delightful. We were soon sufficiently rested to scramble down to the pool, only a few yards below us, which was about fifty yards long by thirty broad, and apparently five or six feet deep. The temperature was 98°, and the taste of the water very strongly sulphurous. Then we ascended a mound behind, covered with ruins, consisting principally of fragments of columns, carved stone seats, and drafted blocks which had been used for building purposes. Immediately behind this mound was an extensive ruin, consisting of three arches in a fair state of preservation. Two of the arches were fifteen or twenty feet high, and enclosed a semicircular space or hall for bathers. On the other side was a vaulted building which partly enclosed what is at this day the only frequented spring. This is a circular pool. Part of the old masonry which enclosed it still remains. The pool is about twenty-five feet wide, with a temperature so high that I found it impossible to keep my hand in it. To my great astonishment, and to theirs also when they saw me suddenly appear, four or five Arabs were bathing in it. How their bodies could support the heat was to me a mystery. They did not support it long. They were no sooner in than out, their bodies looking as much like lobsters as the complexion of their skins would permit. They laughed, and invited me to join them. One or two were stretched full length on the identical stone slabs under the building on which, doubtless, two thousand years ago, the bathers of that date used to repose after having been half boiled alive.

This spring must be of immense volume, to judge by the size of the torrent which gushed from it, and which was crossed on stepping-stones, flowing away in what would be considered a good-sized trout stream, to mingle its waters with the Yarmuk after a course of a few hundred yards. We determined, when our tents arrived, to pitch them near this spring, on the brink of another stream which flowed in from the eastward, and which, though slightly sulphurous, was drinkable. Indeed, we did not object to taking a moderate amount of this wholesome medicament into our organisms. We found another strong spring, not quite so hot as the one in use, a little above our tents, so that there is no lack of water. Indeed, I doubt whether sulphur springs of so much volume exist anywhere else in the world. Not far from this, with its back to another mound, were the ruins of an old Roman theatre, some of the rows of seats still clearly discernible.

These springs are situated on a plain about a mile long and half a mile broad, semicircular in shape, the chord of the arc consisting of a line of basalt precipices, from which it slopes gradually to the river, which forms the bow. It is watered by a good fresh-water spring, which rushes from the base of the cliffs. The hot sulphur stream which issues from the pool we first visited turns a mill and then flows into the long, oblong pond I first saw from above. Here, after the exertions of the day, I determined to bathe. I never enjoyed a swim more than the one in this soft sulphur water, with a temperature of 95°. The pool was about one hundred yards long and ten wide, and out of my depth nearly throughout its length. The rocks, upon which I could sit comfortably up to my neck, where the stream entered the pool were covered with a heavy white deposit. The sensation afterwards was one of delicious languor; but my full enjoyment of the bath was a little marred by the fact that I had to walk a quarter of a mile back to the tents afterwards. I had a long talk on my way, to the miller, the solitary resident of this lonely but enchanting spot, and tried to induce him to desert the mill, of which he was the guardian, and act as my guide up the river on the following day; but he was either too conscientious, too lazy, or too ignorant—I suspect the latter, as I found by experience that all the information he gave me of a topographical nature was utterly erroneous. It was, therefore, with a pleasing sense of anticipation that we retired to rest, determined to trust to our own geographical instincts alone for our proposed exploration.

EXPLORATION OF THE VALLEY OF THE YARMUK.

Haifa, April 30.—In my last letter I described the little-known hot sulphur springs of Amatha, with their extensive ruins, which indicate the celebrity they must have acquired in the days of the Romans. As the river Yarmuk above this point had, so far as I know, never been explored, I determined to push up the gorges through which it cleaves its way from the highlands of the Hauran to the valley of the Jordan.

Some years ago I had crossed it about thirty miles higher up, where it flows across a plateau at an elevation of 1800 feet above the sea. I was now standing on its margin, 550 feet below the sea. In the course of this thirty miles, therefore, it has a fall of 2350 feet. In other words, it was a fair presumption that there was a waterfall somewhere between those two points which had never been visited. The inquiries which I made from the natives on the point were unsatisfactory in their result. They seemed unable to discriminate between a rapid and a waterfall, and although they told me of many places where the water rushed with great violence, they seemed to know of none where it was precipitous. Upon one point they were, unfortunately, all agreed, which was that there was no path up the river-side, and that it would be found impossible at this time of year, when the stream was flooded, to force a way up. However, we determined to try. We thought we should be more free in our movements if we were unhampered by a guide, and directed only by our topographical instincts.

We therefore left our tents standing, as a sort of home on which to retreat in case of need, and struck across the small plain upon which the springs are situated, to a ford, which four days previously had been impracticable, but which we were assured we might now risk with safety. The stream was here a hundred yards broad, full of large rocks, and with a swift, turbid current that was by no means reassuring. The water came high up on our saddle-flaps, but we reached the other bank without mishap, and found ourselves skirting a dense thicket of tropical underwood, above which a grove of at least three hundred date-trees reared their tufted crests. It was a spot unlike any other to be found in Palestine, for, although the heat in the valley of the Jordan, owing to its depression below the sea, is as great as this, and at its southern extremity greater, nowhere throughout its length is to be found a spot where the vegetation is so dense and luxuriant. Here were wild orange, lemon, fig, almond, and mulberry trees, oleanders growing to a gigantic size, besides butm, sidr, carob, and other trees peculiar to the country, and thickets of cane twenty feet high, forming a splendid cover for the wild boars with which we were assured this jungle abounds.

The Arabs come here at certain seasons to gather the dates, weave mats from the reeds, and harvest the crops of the slopes behind, which were now all waving with young grain. During that time they live in mud hovels, partly excavated in the ground, which were now deserted. There was only one inhabitant, and he ran a small mill, picturesquely situated under some date-trees, which was turned by a stream of hot sulphur water issuing from a copious spring, with a temperature of 112°. The Yarmuk, which flows beneath a cliff of black basalt three hundred feet high, half encircles this unique spot, and I regretted that I had not time to explore it thoroughly; but the jungle was so impenetrable that it was impossible to make any impression upon it without an axe, and then it would have been a work of time.

We now followed a track which approached the river bank. The hills, fortunately, on our side sloped back gradually. Midway up the sheer face of the cliff opposite we saw here and there caves, which, from their regular shape, appear at one time to have been inhabited, but if so, the only approach could have been from above, by baskets lowered to the mouths, similar to the method used by the robbers who inhabited the Wady Hamam, behind the plain of Gennesareth, in days of old. Now, instead of robbers in baskets, we saw immense eagles sailing in front of the cliff, in the crevices of which they had placed their nests. Crossing a spur which jutted into the river from the mountains on our right, and which prevented our following it closely, we obtained a splendid view of its course for some miles. To our left were basalt and limestone cliffs, and above them steep, sloping grass lands, now carpeted with wild flowers. Above them again were more crags and cliffs, and then the rim which marked the edge of the plateau, fifteen hundred feet above us. To the right the hills sloped back more slowly, cleft here and there by wild, rocky valleys, while their summits were fringed with oak forests. Here and there the river foamed between precipices on both sides, and we began to perceive that the task of exploration was by no means easy. But it was perhaps all the more interesting. We made our horses scramble where only goats had been before, now along the base of the cliff over huge boulders, now half-way up its precipitous side, when prudence suggested that horse and rider should separate, and each be responsible for his own life and limbs. Now we forced our way through tangled thickets of flowering shrubs that clung to the rocky sides where they were less steep, and now, utterly baffled, diverging from the river and toiling up a steep grassy slope, only to slip and scramble down it again on the other side so as to regain the margin of the stream.

Our progress was necessarily slow, not only owing to the natural obstacles we encountered, but to the fact that we were mapping the country as we advanced; but the scenery by which we were surrounded was too romantic to be hurried over, and too interesting, from its novelty, not to be carefully noted. At last we reached a point where there had been a land-slide, leaving bare one precipice a thousand feet high, while it formed another above the stream, which it had displaced. Nothing remained for it but to attempt another ford, and try our luck on the opposite bank. This, to the amazement of some Bedouins, who watched us from it and waved us back, we succeeded in accomplishing, not without a narrow escape on the part of one of our party who, boldly leading the way, got entangled among the rocks and eddies. We were cordially welcomed by an Arab sheik, as we scrambled like half-drowned rats up the bank. He invited us to his tents, which were pitched a few hundred yards back from the stream, on a small plain. Here mats were spread for us, coffee roasted, pounded, and prepared, and, the young men gathering around, we proceeded, under the influence of an abundant distribution of cigarettes on my part, to exchange ideas. They told us they belonged to a village two and a half hours distant, and were therefore not nomads. They came hither at this season of the year to pasture their herds and look after their crops. I hardly like to report the conversation of these poor people as they came to confide their grievances to us, without our in any way inviting their confidence. Suffice it to say that the recent measure of the government by which it has been decided to substitute for the dime, which has heretofore been the share of the government in the entire produce of every village, an assessment based on the highest five years' average, has produced the greatest discontent among the rural population, whose poverty and distress, already extreme, owing to the extortion of the tax-gatherers even under the old system, and the withdrawal of the bone and sinew of the country by conscription, especially during the recent Russo-Turkish war, will thus be intensified. In fact, these poor people were driven to such desperation that they were most unreserved in their language, and although they are the most long-suffering and much-enduring of races, there is a point where the crushed worm will turn. However great the financial exigencies of the empire may be, they would better be met by a thorough reorganization and reform in the whole system of tax-collecting, than in adding to the burdens of the people, which are already greater than they can bear.

Our hosts assured us that we should find any further attempt to ascend the river impracticable, and that there was a place where the water fell for a considerable height, but we could only reach it by making a circuit, which would take a day. However, we determined to judge for ourselves, and succeeded in getting about a mile farther, when we found the river shut in by precipices on both sides. It was impossible to descend to it from the brow of the cliff on which we stood, much less to ford it afterwards, or to scramble up the precipice on the other side. There was nothing for it but to make an ascent of at least fifteen hundred feet, either to the high plateau of Jaulan, on the right, or to recross the river where we had already forded it, and scramble up the steep, wooded hillsides of Ajlun until we could find a path leading in the desired direction. This latter course we determined to adopt; so we returned to the Arabs tents, crossed the river more successfully than before, warned by our previous experience, and braced ourselves for a twelve-hundred-feet climb up the best track we could find, under the guidance of one of our recent Arab acquaintances. I had been on the lookout all through the day for ruins, and I was now cheered by the intelligence that I should find some on the summit of the hill we were climbing. Such proved to be the case. The situation, at an elevation by my aneroid of about eleven hundred feet above the sea, would indicate that in old time it was a fortress. It was supplied with water by cisterns, the remains of which still exist, some of them demijohn-shaped, and one about ten feet square and twenty feet to the bottom, which, however, was much filled up. There were many piles of huge blocks of drafted stone, but I did not observe any columns or carving, and I think the remains date from a period anterior to the Roman occupation. The modern name of the place is Tel el-Hösn, but its existence has heretofore been unknown, except to the Arabs of the neighborhood, and its discovery was some compensation to me for the effort I had made to reach it.

EXPLORATION ON THE YARMUK.

Haifa, May 15.—From the ancient fortress of El-Hösn we crossed a spur to a high projecting point, from which we could look down a sheer precipice one thousand feet high, which had been formed by a land-slip, to the bed of the river. Forcing their way impetuously through a gorge opposite, the tributary waters of the Rukkad mingled their clear stream with the turbid Yarmuk, after a rapid course from their source in the highlands of Jaulan, from which elevated plateau they are precipitated in a magnificent waterfall eight hundred feet high. All this scenery is as yet absolutely unknown and unexplored, this fall having only recently been discovered, by my travelling companion on this occasion. I regretted being unable to visit it, but we were limited for time, and although it was only hidden from view by a projecting spur of the valley, so broken up is this country by precipitous ravines and gorges, that it would have taken us a day's hard riding to reach it.

It was with regret that we found ourselves compelled to leave the elevated position on which we now stood, and which commanded an extensive view, limited in the extreme east by the lofty mountains of the Jebel Druze; and, steering our way by compass, struck a southeasterly direction, over a park-like, undulating country, covered with oak forest, with occasional patches of cultivation. This part of the country to the east of the Jordan, which is called the Keferat, is thinly inhabited, the villages being very small, squalid, and far apart, but it is a country all waiting to yield of its abundance to some future race who may turn its magnificent resources to good account. In many places the trees were festooned with vines, the grapes of this district being celebrated, but the population pay little heed to their cultivation, for it is impossible to protect them from robbers. The Bedouins consider the sedentary inhabitants as lawful spoil, and raid over these lands at will, practically almost unchecked by the authorities, whose administrative hold on the country is of the slenderest description. It is, in fact, chiefly exercised at those times when it is necessary to send the mounted police into the villages to collect the taxes, and they clear up all that the Bedouins may have left, so that these poor people are engaged in a perpetual struggle to keep body and soul together, and although they are surrounded by a fertile country which, if it were properly cultivated, would make them wealthy, they only cultivate enough for their barest necessities, and have not the heart to attempt to accumulate wealth which they would not be permitted to keep. Situated at an elevation of about eighteen hundred feet above the sea, these high, wooded, fertile table-lands form a district which, should this country ever come to be occupied under more favourable conditions than now exist, will certainly be among the first to attract an agricultural population. The wild, rocky gorges by which it is intersected render the task of exploration, without a guide, one attended with some uncertainty. We take our bearings by compass, gallop under the vine-trellised trees, over green, level slopes, or along inviting glades, till we are suddenly brought up by a precipice down which it is impossible to scramble, which opens unexpectedly in a gulf at our feet. The spot we are making for is not half a mile distant, but we have to follow the edge of the gorge in the opposite direction. Then we come upon another at right angles, which forces us to double back still farther; so at last we wind round the head, first of one ravine and then of another, till we find two hours have elapsed since we were driven back on our tracks; the half-mile has now extended over five or six, the sun is declining with a rapidity which seems accelerated because the daylight has become so precious to us that we cannot bear to anticipate the prospect of its vanishing. At last we reach the head of the valley which has baffled us so long, and are compensated by discovering a ruin. Here are sarcophagi, rock tombs and cisterns, and carved fragments. Fortunately we come across a peasant, the only one we have seen since leaving the river, and he tells us that its name is Haleebna. We write it down and take its bearings as well as we can, for it is unknown heretofore, but the day is too far spent for us to linger for minute examination. The peasant tells us that the best thing we can do, if we would get back to our tents, is to go down the valley we had intended to cross. We follow his advice and have no reason to regret it. It is a Viâ Mala of grandeur and beauty, though on a small scale. We pass between curved limestone cliffs, the fissures in which are filled with underwood, the shrubs cling to the rocks, from which at one place gushes a copious stream of water, by the side of which we hurry with it down the valley, till we get back to the Yarmuk once more, and, wearied and exhausted, reach our tents in the gathering darkness. Here we find a picturesque-looking Kurd waiting to receive us; he is an old soldier, and shows us the scars of five wounds—not all, however, received in military service, but for the most part in Arab skirmishes. He is the agent of the government in these parts, and also of the native capitalist who is the practical owner of the land, which is cultivated by an Arab tribe whose tents are pitched near us; they are heavily indebted to the capitalist aforesaid, who allows them enough of the crops to keep them from starving and takes all the rest himself. And our Kurdish visitor is his collector of revenue. He seems to have some difficulty in protecting his employer's interests, and tells us triumphantly that only a few nights before he has shot an Arab whom he caught plundering. He says that during the bathing season as many as a hundred tents may be seen pitched round the sulphur springs of Amatha, and that their fame is so great that they are visited by invalids from Aleppo and Damascus. The fact, however, that Tiberias, which is five hours distant, is the nearest place in which supplies of any sort can be procured, and that the only accommodation to be obtained is the patient's own tent, must operate as a serious obstacle to the use of these springs, about whose curative value, however, there can be no doubt.