HAIFA. (continued 5)

Apart from the great interest which these extensive ruins must ever have from an antiquarian point of view, I was anxious to visit Cæsarea to judge for myself of the prospects of this embryo colony, and make personal acquaintance with this new and interesting class of immigrants. Moreover, as the new town is to be built upon the ruins of the old, it was evident that I should never have another chance of seeing what these were like. They have already during the last twenty years served as a quarry from whence the magnificent building-stones, cut originally by Herod the Great when he built the town, have been transported in thousands of boat-loads to Acre and Jaffa. The ruins have therefore lost much of the pristine grandeur which is described in the records of travellers in the early part of the present century. In a few years more they will probably have disappeared altogether. The subterranean treasures, whatever they may be, will, however, remain untouched, and the Schliemann of a future age will find here the traces of five successive epochs of civilization. On the top he will find the ruins of the stone houses of the Bosnians and Herzegovinians, now in process of erection; below them the foundations of the great Crusading fortress, and below them again the remains of the first Mohammedan period; beneath them, traces of the Byzantine period, and, at the bottom, the tessellated pavements, the fragments of carved marble, the statuary, and the coins of the Roman period.

Meantime it is a singular fact that the strip of coast from Haifa to Cæsarea seems to have become a centre of influx of colonists and strangers of the most diverse races. The new immigrants to Cæsarea are Slavs. Some of them speak a little Turkish. Arabic is an unknown tongue to them, which they are learning. Their own language is a Slav dialect. When the troubles in the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina first broke out, which led to the Russo-Turkish war, a howl of indignation went up from the philanthropists on both sides of the Atlantic, but especially from the Radical party in England, against the Turkish government, for its persecution of the Slav population of the Danubian provinces. Nor do I think that the general public have yet realized the fact that of these Slavs more than half were Moslem, and that the Turkish government was not persecuting them more than it was persecuting any other of its subjects, but that the persecutors of the Slav peasantry, who were Christian, were the Slav aristocracy, who were Moslem. It was, in fact, not a question of an oppressed nationality, but a strictly agrarian question between people of the same race. When it was settled by handing over the provinces to Austria, the Slav-Moslem aristocracy, finding themselves in their turn persecuted by their former peasants and the Christian power which protected them, migrated to the more congenial rule of the sultan. So the curious spectacle is presented of a Slav population migrating from Austrian rule to Asia, in order to be under a Moslem government.

Close beside the new Bosnian colony there are planted in the plain of Sharon two or three colonies of Circassians. These are the people who committed the Bulgarian atrocities. The irony of fate has now placed them within three or four miles of colonists belonging to the very race they massacred. They, too, fleeing from government by Christians, have sought refuge under the sheltering wing of the sultan, where, I regret to say, as I described in a former letter, they still indulge in their predatory propensities. In immediate proximity to them are the black tents of a tribe of Turcomans. They belong to the old Seljuk stock, and the cradle of their tribe gave birth to the present rulers of the Turkish Empire. They have been here for about three hundred years, and have forgotten the Turkish language, but a few months ago a new migration arrived from the mountains of Mesopotamia. These nomads spoke nothing but Turkish, and hoped to find a warm welcome from their old tribesmen on the plain of Sharon. In this they were disappointed, and they have now, to my disgust, pitched their tents on some of the spurs of Carmel, where their great hairy camels and their own baggy breeches contrast curiously with the camels and costumes of the Bedouins with whom we are familiar.

Besides the Slavs, the Circassians, and the Turcomans, we have the Jewish colony of Zimmarin, distant about ten miles from Cæsarea; the German colony at Haifa, and the Druse villages on Carmel, making, with the Bedouins, the negroes, and the native fellahin, no fewer than nine different races engaged in the cultivation of the soil in this neighbourhood.

CÆSAREA.

Daliet-el-Carmel, Oct. 2.—The habit of tourists of visiting only those spots in Palestine called holy places, or to which some striking Biblical association is attached, causes them to neglect ruins of the highest historical interest, and which are often as well worth seeing from a picturesque as from an archæological point of view. They make an effort to go to Nazareth, which differs in no respect from an ordinary Syrian town, and which does not boast a single object of antiquarian interest, while they omit from their programme, because it is not included in the books, a ruin like Cæsarea, a city unsurpassed for grandeur and magnificence by anything in Palestine when Herod raised it to the dignity of a metropolis, and the scene of many important events, both Biblical and historical. Here Peter baptized the first Gentile convert to Christianity; here Philip lived with his four daughters, engaged in missionary work; here Paul preached before Felix, and “almost persuaded” Agrippa to become a Christian. It was in the theatre, the remains of which are still to be seen, that Herod made his oration to the multitude when “the angel of the Lord smote him, and he was eaten of worms and gave up the ghost.” It was in the streets of Cæsarea that, on the occasion of a quarrel between the Greek and Jewish population, twenty thousand Jews were massacred. Here the celebrated historians Eusebius and Procopius were born, and here was found, when the city was taken by the crusaders, the hexagonal vase of green crystal which was supposed to contain the Holy Grail.

The old Roman wall can be traced for a mile and a half, enclosing an area strewn with the remains of a theatre, hippodrome, temple, aqueducts, and mole; while a second line of fortification, still in admirable preservation, and over half a mile in extent, marks the enceinte of the old Crusading fortress, with its castle and donjon keep, its cathedral, its Northern church, and harbour. This tendency on the part of travellers is the more to be regretted as the opportunity of examining these extensive ruins is now about to pass away, never again to return.

The Slav colonists, whose immigration I described in my last letter, are laying out broad streets right across the most interesting ruins, using the old foundations, appropriating the beautiful masonry, the white stones which formed the temple built by Herod, and the brown limestone blocks of the cathedral of the crusaders, quarrying into ancient buildings beneath the surface of the ground, levelling down the ruins at one place, levelling them up in another, and so utterly transforming the whole picturesque area that it will soon be no longer recognizable. Within five months over twenty good stone houses have been built, some of three stories high, others with vaults for merchandise and storing grain; in some cases the old Crusading vaults, evidently used for the same purpose, have been made available. The dwellings are being built on the plan which renders the towns of the Moslem Slavs of European Turkey so dull and uninteresting; they are all enclosed with courtyards, the high stone walls of which jealously guard the harems of the proprietors. In this respect these western Mohammedans are far more particular than the Arabs, who allow their women comparative freedom; but during the period of my stay in Cæsarea I did not see one of the female colonists.

Their male belongings, however, were most hospitable, especially when they found that I knew their country and was familiar with Mostar and Cognitza, in the neighbourhood of which towns had been their former homes. They were the landed aristocracy of their own country, and have, therefore, brought a considerable amount of wealth with them. A large tract of the most fertile land of the plain of Sharon has been donated to them by the Turkish government, and there can be no doubt that the country will gain by their settlement in it. In manners and costume they form a marked contrast to the natives, who are evidently much impressed by their wealth and dignity.

The lower or peasant class of Bosnia and Herzegovina were not obliged, when the country was conquered by the Moslems, to change their religion, and they have continued Christians; while the descendants of their masters, who remained the proprietors of the soil, became bigoted Mussulmans. The consequence has been that now that the country has been handed over to the Austrians, the Christian peasantry have naturally found protection from the authorities against the oppression of their former masters, who, unable to endure the humiliation of seeing the tables turned, and their old servants enabled to defy them with impunity, have sold all their possessions and migrated to the dominions of the sultan, rather than endure the indignities to which they declare they were exposed from their new Christian rulers and their old Christian serfs—very much on the same principle that the Southern States became intolerable to some of the landed proprietors after the emancipation of their slaves. Whether they will agree with their Circassian neighbours remains yet to be seen. They form the avant garde of a much larger migration which is to follow as soon as arrangements can be made to receive them. One of the leading men, who has opened a store, assigned me an unfinished house as a lodging, and said that he intended to enlarge it into a hotel for travellers.

It is worthy of the notice of intending travellers in Palestine next season that they can now drive the whole way, if they wish, in wagons belonging to the German colonists, from Jerusalem to Nazareth, in four easy days, instead of having to ride, and camp in tents as heretofore. There are excellent hotels at Jaffa. The next stopping-place would, now that accommodation is promised there, be Cæsarea, the next day to Haifa, where the hotel is being enlarged and put on a thoroughly comfortable and European basis, and the next day to Nazareth, where good quarters can be obtained at the convent, but where, if this route comes to be adopted, a hotel will doubtless shortly be built. As soon as travellers give up their present expensive habit of travelling through Palestine with tents, the hotel accommodation will be increased, and the existing carriage roads, as well as the vehicles which traverse them, be improved. The government has recently determined to construct a carriage road along the coast from Acre to Beyrout and Tripoli, which, if it is carried out, will alter all the existing conditions of travel.

The most striking features of the ruins of Cæsarea are the Crusading castle and the old Roman mole. The former is built upon a long, narrow reef or breakwater, partly artificial, which runs out into the sea for one hundred and sixty yards, forming the southern side of the harbour, while the northern side is formed by a sort of mole or jetty more than two hundred feet long, which is composed of some sixty or seventy prostrate columns lying side by side in the water like rows of stranded logs. They are from five to twenty feet in length, and average about eighteen inches in diameter. I never in my life before saw such an array of granite pillars so closely piled together or used for such a purpose. Indeed, to judge by those which remain, Cæsarea must have been a city of columns. The crusaders used them to thorough-bind their walls, from which the butts project like rows of cannon from the side of a man-of-war. They must have built many hundreds of old Roman columns thus into their fortification.

The Crusading wall enclosing the town rises from a moat which is about forty feet wide, but, being much filled in with rubbish, is not more than five or six feet deep. The wall itself is about nine feet thick, with buttresses at intervals which are from thirty to fifty feet long and project from twenty to twenty-six feet; but it is especially in the castle and donjon, which is built out into the sea on the projecting reef, that the columns are used as thorough-bonds. Some of these are of red granite, others of gray. The Bosnian colonists are perching a café on the ruins of the old donjon, immediately above two magnificent prostrate columns of red granite, nine feet long and four in diameter. I observed here also a finely polished block of red granite over six feet square and three feet six inches thick. There is also a curious double tessellated pavement, evidently of two periods, as the upper tesseræ are at least six inches above the lower ones. I am afraid, as the masons are working immediately above them, they will soon disappear, as will also a beautiful carved capital in white marble. I scrambled up to the top of this picturesque ruin, where the rib of the groined roof of the upper chamber still remains supported on a corbel in the form of a human head, and looked out of the pointed, arched window sheer down seventy feet on the sea, beating against the base of the sea wall. The mouth of the small artificial harbour is about two hundred yards across, but the latter is too much exposed and too small ever to be of much value.

Among the Roman remains, the hippodrome, the theatre, and the aqueduct are the most interesting. The first is a sunken level space about three hundred yards long by one hundred wide, surrounded by a mound, and in the middle are three truncated blocks of red granite, which, when standing on each other, must have formed a conical pillar about nine feet high and seven feet diameter at the base. There is also another fine block of red granite nearly forty feet long and four feet in diameter, which has been broken. The theatre is a semicircular building of masonry in an immense artificial mound, surrounded by a trench near the sea. It is mentioned by Josephus as capable of containing a large number of persons. Indeed, the account by this historian of the building of this city by Herod the Great, which I have just been reading, is most interesting. It occupied twelve years, and was finished thirteen years before Christ. He says that the stones of which the sea wall was built were fifty feet in length, eighteen in breadth, and nine in depth.

For nearly six hundred years it was a Christian city and the seat of an archbishop, then for five hundred years it fell under Moslem rule, and an Arab traveller in A.D. 1035 describes it as “an agreeable city, irrigated with running water and planted with date palms and oranges, surrounded by a strong wall pierced by an iron gate, and containing a fine mosque.” Then for one hundred and fifty years it remained a Crusading stronghold, while its final and complete destruction by the Sultan Bibars took place in 1265 A.D., since which time it has remained a howling wilderness. I have dwelt somewhat fully on the present aspect of the ruins, as the transformation they are undergoing will soon be complete.

From Cæsarea I followed the coast northward with the high-level aqueduct, which in places is still in tolerably good preservation, on my right. This aqueduct was the chief source of the water supply for the inhabitants. It was eight miles long, and at one point tunnels the rock for a quarter of a mile, thirty feet below its surface. There was also a low-level aqueduct, three miles long, which drew its water supply from the Crocodile River. At some seasons this is a dangerous stream to ford, though I experienced no difficulty. That it is not misnamed I possess indisputable proof, for a few weeks ago an Arab acquaintance presented me with a piece of crocodile skin about a foot square, cut from the hide of a crocodile which he himself helped to kill in this river. Passing Tantura, which also contains some Crusading ruins and rock-cut tombs, I reached the Jewish colony of Zimmarin, which I had not visited for eighteen months, and where I was pleased to find the colony in a thriving condition, the colonists hopeful, industrious, and contented, the crops promising fairly, and their progress only checked by the refusal of the government to allow them to build permanent dwellings, a difficulty which it is hoped may be overcome by a judicious display of firmness and patience.

VILLAGE FEUDS.

Daliet-el-Carmel, Oct. 15.—In order to really understand this country, to become acquainted with the inner life of its inhabitants, to familiarize one's self with their manners and customs, their necessities, and their aspirations, such as they are, and to arrive at a true estimate of the national character, it is needful to remove one's self from any centre of so-called civilization, however crude, and to live among them, as I have been doing for the last three months and a half, not as a stranger, but as a villager owning property, identified with their local interests, and with a will to afford them such practical counsel and aid as may lie in one's power. People wonder what I can find to do in a remote Druse village in the back parts of Carmel; but in practice the days are not long enough to deal with the varied interests that crowd into them.

Scarcely a day passes that visitors do not arrive from some of the surrounding villages—sheiks of high or low degree, as the case may be—generally with polite invitations that I should return their visits, which I know from experience means a financial proposition of some sort in reserve, for all the villages are more or less embarrassed in their pecuniary circumstances, and have been so victimized by the native money-lenders of Haifa that they eagerly turn towards any one who they think possesses bowels of compassion.

The return visits which these invitations involve are often highly characteristic in their attendant circumstances, and in the varied incidents which accompany them; and, besides, they give one an opportunity of becoming minutely acquainted with the neighbourhood, and afford one an insight into the motives by which Oriental human nature is actuated. There is, for instance, a village about four miles from here, so beautifully situated among its olive groves, as seen from a distance, that I had long intended paying it a visit, and wondered why its sheik had never come to make my acquaintance. The mystery was explained one day by an old woman whose extreme poverty had induced me to employ her as a water-carrier. On asking how she had become so destitute, she said that she was a widow, and that her only son and support had been waylaid and murdered some months previously by some of the young men of the village in question. All her efforts to obtain justice had been unavailing, and since then the two villages had not been on visiting terms.

As none of the inhabitants of Dalieh would accompany me, I found my own way one day to the village, to try and discover the rights of the story. I was received with great politeness by a tall, gentlemanlike man, whom I supposed to be the sheik, but who turned out to be the very individual who had been accused of the murder. Soon the sheik and a number of village notables arrived, and, seated around the neatly-matted guest-chamber, we exchanged compliments and discussed the topics of the day. These all turn upon the payment of the new government taxes; and the price of wheat this year has been so low that the unhappy peasantry are driven to their wits' end, and finally to usurious money-lenders, to obtain the necessary cash. In this emergency I am appealed to in every direction for assistance, and I was well aware that our interview on this occasion would not terminate without the usual demand.

When it came, I saw my chance for alluding to the delicate subject of the murder, and the objections I entertained to lending money to people who were in the habit of murdering their neighbours. They admitted the murder, which had been attended with robbery, but my host denied that he had been in any way implicated, though he had unjustly suffered several months' imprisonment on suspicion, and had only been finally released on payment of a heavy sum as backsheesh. It seems that the evidence as to who the culprit really was rested on the dying deposition of the victim, who had been attacked by four men, all of whom he named on his deathbed. On the other hand, my host had succeeded in proving an alibi. The real culprit had, he said, escaped, and had never ventured back to the village.

Under these circumstances I refused any loan of money, unless the notables of the village would come to Dalieh, tender their humble apologies, offer a money indemnity to the mother of the murdered man, and effect a complete reconciliation. This, according to Arab custom, is a solemn ceremony, which must be performed in the presence of the notables of neighbouring villages; but it yet remained to be seen whether the indemnity question could be arranged at Dalieh, as the man who said he had been unjustly accused declared that he had already suffered so much, in person and in purse, that he was indisposed to do much in that line. The poor widow, in spite of her destitution, was still more intractable; she thirsted for vengeance, for which she said no money could compensate. However, I have hopes of bringing them both to reason, and so healing the feud which extends to all the population of both villages. Meantime the loan stands in abeyance.

There would, indeed, be a good opening for a professional peacemaker in these villages, where feuds are bitter and prevalent, not merely between different villages, but between rival sheiks in the same locality. There are almost always two, and sometimes three, of these in each village who are not on speaking terms, and who each have their partisans, so that the opposing factions keep themselves entirely aloof from each other. More than once I have had occasion to call on the same day on two rival sheiks. In that case one escorts me until he sees his enemy in the distance. He then takes leave of me, and I stand still until the other comes up to take me in charge. These sheiks, I am sorry to say, often combine with the money-lenders against the interests of their own fellow-villagers. The mode by which a money-lender obtains possession of a village is simple; he goes to the sheik, and says: “You and your village are unable to meet the government demands; if you will persuade your village to borrow from me at forty per cent., I will give you so much commission, and if at the end of three years you can manage irretrievably to ruin your villagers, so that I can come down upon them and obtain possession of the village in satisfaction of my debt for half its value, your profit shall be so much, and you shall retain such a share of the village lands.” As the sheiks wield an unbounded influence over their own faction, this would be an easy operation were it not for the rival sheik, who is in negotiation with a rival money-lender. When two money-lenders take to fighting over a village there is some chance for the villagers, and from this point of view the feuds of their sheiks are not an unmixed evil.

Where a sheik is supreme, as at Dalieh, he has practically the fortunes of the villagers in his hands, and he must be watched to see that he uses his influence and authority justly. The only man in a position to watch him is the person upon whom he depends for assistance to meet the government demands. If this individual happens to be content with a moderate rate of interest, and to have no ulterior designs upon the village itself, it is evident that he may have it in his power to do a great deal of good. The villagers are quite astonished if one comes to them and says, “I do not want your village, I only want your good-will. I desire to help you out of your financial scrape, and I am willing to lend you money at the legal rate of interest if you will furnish me with the necessary security.” Any one saying this finds at once that he has arrayed against him the money-lenders, who take three times the legal rate of interest; the government officials, who go shares with the money-lenders; and, in many instances, the village sheiks themselves, who, of course, find their interest lies rather with these two classes than with the unhappy villagers. These latter, accustomed to be plundered all around, naturally do not know whom to trust, and are apt to look with suspicion on a new proposal, however favourable and disinterested it may seem. The obstacles, therefore, to the working-out of improved conditions by any single man, even in the case of one village, seem almost insuperable, and can only be overcome by much personal intercourse with the villagers themselves.

The Druses are sensitive to kindness, and grateful for it, and as there are generally some sick in the village, and quack doctoring, provided one treads cautiously, is better than none, we do a good deal of empirical practice, and our efforts have met with such success that we are obtaining a somewhat alarming reputation. Of course, we come across difficult cases, as, for instance, the sheik's daughter. She is rather a nice-looking girl of eighteen, with a crick in her neck and an asthmatic affection. On asking how long she had been ill, we were informed that her mother, on the occasion of her birth, was so angry at finding the child was a girl and not a boy, that she threw her out of the window, and she had never been well since. Cases of this sort we don't attempt to grapple with, but I have ceased to wonder at the sheik having taken a dislike to the old lady. Indeed, my own feelings towards her have entirely changed since hearing of this episode, and, although it happened eighteen years ago, I treat her with comparative coolness.

Why the sheik hesitates so long about divorcing her I fail to understand, more especially as he is anxious to marry a young and handsome girl. I have discovered, by the way, that divorced people are never allowed to meet again, even in the street, after the separation has finally taken place. I saw a young friend of mine, in a fit of passion, divorce his wife last year. She was young and pretty. He married again, but has already repented, and wants to divorce his present and remarry his first wife, whom he has never seen since; but Druse law is inexorable on this point. There was a meeting of elders on the subject, but they decided that it was impossible. So now, when this rash young man sees the former partner of his life at the other end of the street, he is obliged hurriedly to turn around and walk the other way, with a sadly beating heart and repentant spirit.

Some weeks ago we opened a boys' school at Dalieh, where English and Arabic were taught. In a few days we had an average attendance of over fifty children, while we received applications from more than twenty girls, which we were making arrangements to satisfy, as the desire which the parents manifested to have their children educated was so strong that we felt it should be encouraged in every possible way. One day, however, a summons arrived for the sheik to appear before the authorities, when he was informed that a fine of $250 would be levied on every child who ventured to go to school; a threat which, to my great regret, most effectually extinguished that humble institution.

THE ARISTOCRACY OF MOUNT CARMEL.

Daliet-el-Carmel, Oct. 30.—I have been making acquaintance with some of my neighbours, and will take you with me to call upon what in England would be called the leading members of the county aristocracy. They are the blue blood of this region of country, the families which in the early part of the present century exercised power of life and death, and supreme control, over the inhabitants for many miles around; who thought nothing of calling out their retainers and resisting the constituted authority, whether it was that exercised by the various pachas of Acre, who, though nominally Turkish governors, were themselves quasi-independent, or the more iron rule of the Egyptian conqueror, Ibrahim Pacha, to which, however, they were eventually forced to succumb.

One of these families lives at a village about two hours' ride from here. In response to a letter couched in the most flowery Oriental hyperbole, in which my rank is exalted, my virtues are exaggerated, and the beneficent warmth which my presence is supposed to radiate is dwelt upon, I determine to shed it upon the writer of the letter; in other words, to pay him a visit in the gardens to which he has invited me. Our way lies down a wild, romantic gorge which leads to a valley situated among the lower spurs of Carmel, beyond the confines of the mountain proper, where the country is broken up by volcanic action into chasms and precipices, well adapted for defensive purposes, and admirably calculated to be the stronghold of a not over-scrupulous tribal chief. The village itself is situated upon a high conical mound, rising some three hundred feet above the plain; and towering above the surrounding houses is the high, two-storied, half-castellated mansion. It is not thither that I am at present bound, but to a narrow valley about a mile distant from it, which is wedged in between frowning precipices, and is a bright green strip, in delightful contrast to the gray, overhanging crags, for it is a dense mass of orange, lemon, fig, pomegranate, olive, quince, and other fruit-trees, the result of a crystal fountain which gushes from the rock and fertilizes this fairy-like scene.

These are the summer gardens of my host, and from them, as he sees me approach, he issues, with several of his retainers, and leads me to an arbour of overhanging trees, whose dense foliage forms an impenetrable shade against the noonday sun. Here carpets have been spread, cushions arranged, narghiles and coffee have been prepared, and the circle is formed and the compliments interchanged which are the invariable prelude to an Eastern entertainment. Soon appear, on prancing horses, a picturesque group of men in white flowing abbayes, or transparent summer robes, which flutter gracefully in the wind. They are richly embroidered, and the horses are gayly comparisoned; these are the brothers, nephews, and other members of my host's family. One of them is a holy man, who has studied theology in the celebrated seat of Moslem learning, the College of El-Ahzar, in Cairo, and he is much respected and looked up to in consequence.

Knowing that I cannot introduce a more grateful topic, and anxious to stave off as long as possible the financial one, which I suspect is in the background, I ask the dignified group of narghile smokers by which I am surrounded to tell me something of their family history. About four hundred years ago, they say, their ancestors came from the Hedjaz, being a branch of the tribe of Beni Ab Arabs, whose home were the deserts near Mecca, and who were closely related to the family of Mohammed. It is this ancestral connection with the Prophet which has always given the family the great prestige and consideration which it has enjoyed. In those days they came into the country as conquerors, and, settling themselves in their present village, soon reduced the surrounding district to subjection, and continued to rule it, nominally subject to the Pacha of Acre, but really independently, until the invasion of Palestine by Ibrahim Pacha, when, after a sturdy resistance, they were overcome, and the grandfather of my host was executed and the greater part of their lands taken from them. From that time the fortunes of the family began to decline. On the restoration of the country to the sultan, by means of the intervention of England, they derived no benefit. The Turkish government took care not to re-establish an influence which in former times had proved so formidable, and, indeed, one of my hosts had spent two years in prison. Some say it was because he had manifested a spirit of too great independence, but others allege that it was for the more prosaic reason of an inability or refusal to pay his debts.

At all events, when the money-lending question came up, not then, but on the occasion of a return visit which they afterwards paid me, I was assured by those who ought to know that my picturesque, hospitable, dignified, and aristocratic hosts were—well, I won't exactly repeat what it was said they were, but they were not just the kind of people that one would select to lend money to. This grieved me exceedingly, not because I wanted to lend them any, but because they were such gentlemen; in fact, I have been there since, and been very royally entertained in the old castle—where the guests' room is gorgeously furnished, for this part of the world—in order to make my peace for not lending them money; for it is considered an insult, after you have been a man's guest and he asks you to accommodate him financially, if you refuse—which is perplexing when he has no satisfactory security to offer. Now, I want to keep on good terms with this powerful and fascinating and somewhat scampish family without losing my money to them, and the problem I am engaged in solving is how to do it. I have a horrible suspicion that it will yet be solved rather to their satisfaction than to mine.

Under these circumstances, paying aristocratic visits does not seem likely to be an altogether profitable occupation; but they are not always attended with embarrassments of this nature. I have other aristocratic friends, who live about five hours distant from here. They are also originally from the Hedjaz; they also claim kinship with the Prophet, and they also once ruled a large tract of country. In fact, the two families divided the whole of this country between them, and their history has been almost identical.

My visit to this family was in some respects highly characteristic. My way led across the Ruhah, or “Breezy-land,” across open, rolling downs, fairly watered, and covered with the remains of what was once a magnificent oak forest. The trees are now dotted singly over it, in park-like fashion. The village itself was beautifully situated at an elevation of about seven hundred feet above the sea, on the side of a thickly wooded mountain, twelve hundred feet high. On this occasion my host, who came out to meet me, led me to an elevated platform in front of the village mosque, an unusually imposing edifice. Here, under the shade of a spreading mulberry-tree, were collected seven brothers, who represented the family, and about fifty other members of it. They were in the act of prayer when I arrived—indeed, they are renowned for their piety. Along the front of the terrace was a row of water-bottles for ablutions, behind them mats on which the praying was going forward, and behind the worshippers a confused mass of slippers. When they had done praying, they all got into their slippers. It was a marvel to me how each knew his own.

They led me to what I supposed was a place of honour, where soft coverlets had been spread near the door of the mosque. We formed the usual squatting circle, and were sipping coffee, when suddenly every one started to his feet; a dark, active little man seemed to dart into the midst of us. Everybody struggled frantically to kiss his hand, and he passed through us like a flash to the other end of the platform, followed by a tall negro, whose hand everybody, including my aristocratic host, seemed also anxious to kiss. I had not recovered from my astonishment at this proceeding, when I received a message from the new-comer to take a place by his side. I now found that he was on the seat of honour, and it became a question, until I knew who he was, whether I should admit his right to invite me to it, thus acknowledging his superiority in rank—etiquette in these matters being a point which has to be attended to in the East, however absurd it may seem among ourselves. I therefore for the moment ignored his invitation, and asked my host, in an off-hand way, who he was. He informed me that he was a mollah, held in the highest consideration for his learning and piety all through the country, upon which he, in fact, levied a sort of religious tax; that he was here on a visit, and that in his own home he was in the habit of entertaining two hundred guests a night, no one being refused hospitality. His father was a dervish, celebrated for his miraculous powers, and the mantle thereof had fallen upon the negro, who had been his servant, and who also was much venerated, because it was his habit to go to sleep in the mosque, and be spirited away, no one knew whither, in the night; in fact, he could become invisible almost at will.

Under these circumstances, and seeing that I should seriously embarrass my host if I stood any longer on my dignity, I determined to waive it, and joined the saint. He received me with supercilious condescension, and we exchanged compliments till dinner was announced, when my host asked whether I wished to dine alone or with the world at large. As the saint had been too patronizing to be strictly polite, I thought I would assert my right to be exclusive, and said I would dine alone, on which he, with a polite sneer, remarked that it would be better so, as he had an objection to eating with any one who drank wine, to which I retorted that I had an equal objection to dining with those who ate with their fingers. From this it will appear that my relations with the holy man were getting somewhat strained.

I was, therefore, supplied with a pyramid of rice and six or seven elaborately cooked dishes all to myself, and squatted on one mat, while a few yards off the saint, my host, and all his brothers squatted on another. When they had finished their repast their places were occupied by others, and I counted altogether more than fifty persons feeding on the mosque terrace at my host's expense. Dinner over, they all trooped in to pray, and I listened to the monotonous chanting of the Koran till it was time to go to bed. My host offered me a mat in the mosque, where I should have a chance of seeing the miraculous disappearance of the negro; but as I had no faith in this, and a great deal in the snoring by which I should be disturbed, I slept in a room apart, as exclusively as I had dined.

I was surprised next morning to observe a total change in the saint's demeanour. All the supercilious pride of the previous evening had vanished, and we soon became most amiable to each other. That he was a fanatic hater of the Giaour I felt no doubt, but for some reason he had deemed it politic to adopt an entirely altered demeanour. It was another illustration of the somewhat painful lesson which one has to learn in one's intercourse with Orientals. They must never be allowed to outswagger you.

THE JORDAN VALLEY CANAL.

Haifa, Nov. 10.—In one of my former letters I described the nature of the concession which had been obtained by some capitalists at Beyrout for the construction of a railway from Haifa to Damascus, and of the survey of the line, which had already been completed half-way to the latter city. The matter has been the subject of a good deal of financial intrigue, and the capital which was sought for in London has not been forthcoming in consequence. A new element of uncertainty has just been imported into the project by the agitation created by the proposal to connect the Red Sea with the Mediterranean by means of a ship canal, which, commencing at Haifa, should be cut through the plain of Esdraelon to the valley of the Jordan, letting the waters of the Mediterranean into the Ghor, as that valley is called, and connecting the lower end of the Dead Sea with the Red Sea by a canal which should debouch at Akaba.

This project originated principally among British shipowners and capitalists, who have hoped in this way to destroy the monopoly which M. de Lesseps claims to possess of water communication between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea across the Isthmus of Suez. As the proposed canal does not touch the isthmus, the French company would have no ground of complaint. As, however, great uncertainty still exists as to the practicability of the scheme, a sum of £10,000 has been subscribed by the promoters of the proposed company to make the preliminary surveys, and to obtain the necessary permission from the sultan to do so. According to the first accounts, his majesty set his face against any survey of the kind proposed, but the latest advices would go to show that he has changed his mind, and it would seem not only that the requisite permission has been granted, but that the surveying party are actually on their way to Port Said.

It will now be interesting to consider, by the light of our present information, what are the chances of success, what is the nature of the obstacles the scheme will have to encounter, and how it proposes to overcome them, so far as they are known. In the first place, it does not follow, because the sultan has granted permission for the survey, that he will afterwards, supposing it to be found practicable, grant a firman for the accomplishment of the work. The advantages he will derive from it are: Easy access to his dominions in Arabia, which extend as far south as Aden; an enormous sum of money, which will be paid to him in compensation for about fifteen hundred square miles of land submerged, chiefly government property, and a large annual income to be derived from tolls on the canal, and the development of extensive tracts of fertile country, especially to the east of the Jordan, which are now inaccessible and unproductive. That such a canal would add immensely to the resources of the empire, and be a source of great profit, there can be no doubt. On the other hand, it would almost amount to the virtual annexation of Palestine by England, whose influence in that country, backed by the enormous expenditure of capital which would be involved, would be supreme. It is a question, therefore, whether the sultan would consider that the pecuniary advantage which he would gain would be compensated by the political sacrifice which would have to be incurred.

In regard to the engineering difficulties, so far as they are known, the only records of levels which we have of the elevation of the land between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea are those made at different times by three Frenchmen—Mons. Lartet, Mons. Vigne, and Mons. Luynes. These only differ nineteen feet—the lowest being seven hundred and eighty-one feet, the highest eight hundred; but it must be remembered that these are not the result of actual survey, but of rough estimates, and there may be depressions in the dividing ridge which may have escaped these gentlemen's observation.^[2] The dividing ridge is said to be calcareous rock—the summit level distant fifty-two miles from the Red Sea and fifty-eight from the Dead Sea, which is nearly thirteen hundred feet lower than the level of the ocean—and it is assumed that the engineering work would be facilitated by the scour which would be caused by the sea rushing down such a steep incline in a distance of one hundred miles. It is not, however, proposed to let the full force of the ocean in from this end. The operation of flooding the Jordan valley would be commenced at Haifa; from this point to the sea-level in the Ghor is only twenty-five miles. The highest point in the plain of Esdraelon is one hundred and fifty-seven feet above the sea. Through this it is proposed to cut a canal two hundred feet wide and forty feet deep. The volume of water thus let in, it is calculated, would be regulated to an inflow which would equal about twenty Jordans, and, allowing for evaporation, it is estimated that in five years the Dead Sea and the whole valley of the Jordan would be submerged to the sea-level.

The effect of this submergence would be, of course, to bury the Dead Sea under twelve hundred feet of ocean, and to create an inland sea about ninety miles long and from four to six wide. Jericho, Beisan (the ancient Bethshean), and Tiberias would be the principal places submerged, besides a few small villages. With the exception of Tiberias, none of these are, however, of any importance. Tiberias contains a population of over three thousand, chiefly Jews, and a Latin and Greek monastery. Apart from the question of compensating this population, and paying for the fertile lands which they occupy, a very important political question enters into consideration. The French have been the protectors of the Latin monastery at Tiberias from time immemorial, and the Russians occupy the same position with regard to the Greek monastery. Are these two powers, whose interests would be in different ways vitally affected by the success of the scheme, likely to be induced to consent to it by any proposal of pecuniary indemnification? Its success would utterly ruin the Suez Canal and almost extinguish French influence in Syria, while Russia, which now aims at the annexation of Palestine and the occupation of Jerusalem, where her influence is at this moment greater than that of any other European nation, would find herself practically cut off from it by an inland sea, the private property of her traditional enemy. In both countries the governments could appeal to the religious sentiment of the people to support them in resisting, even to a war if necessary, the flooding of the holy places at Tiberias which they have guarded for so many centuries.

Nor would this sentimental feeling be confined to France and Russia. Even in England and America there would be a strong objection to the Lake of Tiberias, with the historic sites of Capernaum and the other cities on its margin, which were the scenes of some of the most remarkable ministrations of our Lord, being buried five hundred feet deep beneath the sea. Curiously enough, the project is no less keenly supported by one set of religionists than it is condemned by the other. The former pin their faith to the prophecy contained in the forty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, eighth to tenth verses, where it is predicted that “fishers shall stand upon the sea from En-gedi even unto En-eglaim,” but even this would not be the case if the scheme were carried out, for then En-gedi would be several hundred feet below the surface of the sea.

The sanguine supporters of the scheme maintain that it can be accomplished for eight millions sterling, while its opponents have entered upon an elaborate calculation to prove that the lowest figure is £225,573,648 and some odd shillings. Supposing, as seems not impossible, that the one set prove too little, and the other too much, if it could be done for fifty millions sterling it would pay a fair interest. The last year's receipts of the Suez Canal, which cost twenty millions, were £4,800,000. The whole length of the canal would be two hundred and fifty miles, of which, however, only about one hundred and twenty would be actual cutting, but cutting of a nature unparalleled in the history of engineering. My own impression is that, both from a political and an engineering point of view, it will be found to be impracticable; but who can say in these days what science may not accomplish or what combinations of the Eastern question may not arise to remove political difficulties?

LOCAL POLITICS AND PROGRESS.

Haifa, Nov. 27.—The native population here is in a high state of excitement at news which has just reached us. The government, it is reported, intends transferring the seat of the provincial government from Acre to this place. This change has been recommended on the grounds of the superior excellence of the harbour of Haifa, of its increasing export trade and rapidly growing population, and, above all, of the constantly augmenting influence of foreigners, which is the natural result of the inflow of their capital and of their industry and enterprise.

The old fortress of Acre, at present the residence of the governor, or mutessarif, contains a population of about nine thousand, pent up within the walls of the fort and crowded into an area of little more than fifty acres. They are for the most part fanatic Moslems, which means a state of stagnation in industry and commercial pursuits; and in consequence of the military rule which prohibits any extension of the town outside of the walls of the fortress within range of the guns, no expansion is possible to the inhabitants. The population of Haifa, on the other hand, is increasing with great rapidity, and the place seems to resound from one end to the other with the clink of the stone-mason's chisel, as new houses spring up in all directions. These considerations would not alone, however, account for the resolution at which the government seems to have arrived.

Three fourths of the population of Haifa are either Roman or Greek Catholics; in other words, they are under the protection of the French Consul when religious questions are concerned; and the policy of the French government in Syria has been to extend its religious protectorate into political and secular matters, to a degree which is constantly giving rise to awkward questions and complications not devoid of danger.

A great part of the house property in the town of Haifa is owned by the monks of Mount Carmel, who consider the whole of Carmel, from the monastery at the western extremity of the mountain, to their chapel at the Place of Elijah's Sacrifice at the other end, as a sort of private preserve, and push their religious pretensions to such an extreme that they look with the utmost jealousy upon any foreigner who attempts to buy land in the mountain, and oppose any such proceeding with all their energy.

The policy of the Turkish government, on the other hand, is to prevent any foreigners buying land there, or, indeed, anywhere else in Palestine, although they are entitled to do so by treaty; and in pursuit of this policy the local authorities are instructed to throw every obstacle in the way of foreign enterprise of all descriptions, but especially to render it impossible for persons not subjects of Turkey to acquire landed property. They have, on these grounds, used their utmost endeavors to ruin the Jewish colony of Zimmarin, which is also in the neighborhood of Haifa, by prohibiting the colonists from building houses for themselves, on the ground that they have no right to the land. They have based this claim on the allegation that the proprietor of the property, who was an Austrian Jew, in whose name it was bought for the colonists, died childless, and, according to Turkish law, landed property reverts to the Turkish government under these circumstances; and the government therefore claimed the property. It so happened, however, that the owner did not die childless. Indeed, I know his son myself, but the government refused to admit the evidence of any but Moslems as to whether he had a son or not, a demand which, as the deceased proprietor did not live in Turkey, it was naturally impossible to comply with. The question has therefore been pending between Baron Rothschild, who took over the property on the death of its nominal proprietor, and the Turkish government for nearly two years; but I understand that permission has at last been obtained for the erection of houses by the colonists, and the affair has been arranged.

The fact, however, that foreign questions are constantly arising at Haifa, either out of French pretensions or the claims of the German or Jewish colonists, and that no such questions are possible at Acre, where there is but a limited Christian or foreign population, has rendered it desirable in the eyes of the Governor-general of Syria to suggest the removal of the governor of the district to this place. The change has not yet been sanctioned at Constantinople, and the inhabitants of Acre, where property will suffer an immediate depreciation, have been pouring petitions into Constantinople to protest against the change, urging as a reason that they, who were loyal and devoted subjects of his majesty, will suffer; while the population of Haifa, composed principally of Christians and foreigners, will benefit. It is just possible, however, that the government may consider that the loyalty and devotion of the petitioners form the best reasons why the governor should be moved to a place where the loyalty and devotion of the people are not so assured, and should therefore be watched. At all events, there can be no doubt that the change, should it take place, will cause an immediate rise in the value of property here, and that there will be a considerable influx of people from Acre to this town, which has the advantage in summer of being a much cooler and more agreeable place of residence.

Meantime, advantage has been taken of this opportunity to remove the present governor and replace him by a more intelligent and active functionary, a change which has caused great satisfaction, both to Moslems and Christians, as, in spite of his fanaticism, he had contrived to make himself very unpopular with the former, while he altogether failed to keep the peace at Acre between the rival sects of the latter, who, though very limited in number, were constantly engaged in broils. Moreover, it is not the habit of the Turkish government to retain its functionaries, under any circumstances, long at the same post.

The only drawback to Haifa as the new seat of government is its limited water supply. At present the town depends entirely upon its wells, and although an abundance of water can be found at a trifling depth, it is usually a little too brackish to be altogether palatable. Under these circumstances it became of the utmost importance, in view of the proposed change, to try and find a spring, sufficiently copious and near the town to be utilized, and it occurred to a friend and myself that such a one might exist at Rushmea, where are the ruins of an old Crusading fort, which I have described in a former letter, distant about an hour's ride from the town, at an elevation of about seven hundred feet above the level of the sea. There is a well here called the Well of Elias, into which I once descended, and found that it was supplied with water which entered through a tunnel in the rock, but had no outlet; and the shepherds told me that, however much they watered their flocks, the water always remained at the same height, while in winter, although the well was eight feet deep, the water rose in it so high as to overflow the mouth. Under these circumstances it was evident that the well was, in fact, a sort of back-water of some underground stream or rivulet, which found a subterranean channel for itself. This we determined, by excavation, to try and discover.

We therefore commenced digging near the well, and about two feet from the surface struck the roof of a subterranean aqueduct. Uncovering this, we found that the channel had become silted up with mud, which required to be removed. We then found that we were in an arched tunnel, the sides of which were roughly built with stone, while the floor was paved with the same material, in which a channel had been cut, but it was four inches higher than the water in the well. We were therefore obliged to take it up, cutting, altogether, a trench thirty yards long and eight feet deep. On drawing the water off by means of this channel, we uncovered the mouth of the tunnel, by which it entered, sufficiently to send in a man with a light. After wading through the mud for a few paces, he came upon a vault beautifully cemented, thus proving that in ancient times the stream had been utilized. It would have involved a greater expense, however, to clear out than I was prepared to incur, unaided by the community for whose benefit it would have inured. As it was, the stream thus discovered was almost sufficient in volume to be worth conveying to Haifa, a distance of three miles, and could doubtless be much increased. In the course of our excavations we came upon several large blocks of square stone, which had formed part of the ancient tunnel.

The project of the railway from Haifa to Damascus, the concession for which had lapsed in consequence of the combined greed and apathy of the first grantees, is now revived under more favorable auspices, and I have little doubt that the change of the seat of the government to this place will give it a renewed impetus, so that before long it will be carried out.

Meantime, unwonted energy is displayed by the government in improving our communications. Having occasion a few weeks ago to ride to Beyrout, I saw the surveyors at work tracing out a line for a carriage road to connect that important city with Haifa. The distance is about eighty miles, and there are no serious engineering difficulties in the way. This road is sadly needed, especially now, when, owing to the cholera in Europe, no steamer touches here on its way to Beyrout, although we are visited once a fortnight by one coming from that place after it has performed there a quarantine of five days. The habit, unfortunately, of the government of making the road, and postponing to an indefinite period the construction of the bridges, goes far to neutralize its good intentions. The towns through which the road passes are heavily taxed, and then, owing to the want of bridges, it is useless for a great part of the year. Should this road be completed, Beyrout, Damascus, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Haifa, Tyre, and Sidon will all be connected by roads over which stages could run; and this would go far to facilitate travel in Palestine, and enable tourists to dispense with that system of tenting which now renders it so slow and expensive.

THE IDENTIFICATION OF ANCIENT SITES.

Haifa, Dec. 13.—The researches which I have been making into the oldest authorities, with the view of identifying the sites of the numerous ancient towns that once formed the homes of the extensive population which in ages long gone by inhabited this coast, have only served to reveal to me the enormous difficulty of the task. This difficulty is created partly by the confusion introduced by the crusading nomenclature and traditions, partly by the inaccuracy of the itineraries of early pilgrims and travellers, and to the discrepancies existing in the most primitive maps, and the contradictions in historical records. Thus between this place and Tantura, a distance of fifteen miles, I have visited the ruins of no fewer than nine ancient towns or villages, some of them of considerable size, not one of which, with the exception of Tantura, which is the Biblical Dor, has been positively identified. I do not include in these the ruins of towns a mile or more inland, which would double the number and convey some idea of the denseness of the population which once inhabited this section of the country. At the same time it is possible, from the varied character of these ruins, that some were far more ancient than the others, and that they may have existed as traces of a still more early people, when other cities, also now in ruin, were rich and flourishing. Thus we have on this coast remains of the early Phœenician period, of the Greek period, of the Roman or Byzantine period, and, lastly, of the crusading period—the latter too modern to be of any archæological interest. They consist merely of constructions built from the materials of the civilizations which had preceded it. Not content with using up these materials, the crusaders gave the towns and forts which they built wrong names, refusing to adopt the Saracen nomenclature, which was generally a corruption of the original Canaanitish or Hebrew, and attempting to identify them according to their own ideas of Biblical topography, or reading of Roman history, thereby introducing inextricable confusion. Thus we have William of Tyre, one of the crusading historiographers, gravely informing us that “Duke Godfrey de Bouillon awarded, with his usual magnanimity, to the generous and noble Tancred the city of Tiberias, on the Lake of Genasereth, as well as of the whole of Galilee and the sea-town of Kaypha (or Haifa), which is otherwise called Porphyria.”

The Carmelite monks still cling to this tradition, although modern research has proved beyond a doubt that the site, at all events of one Roman city of Porphyrion, was at Khan-Yunis, a ruin, eight miles north of Sidon, and at least seventy miles from Haifa. To escape this difficulty some have supposed there were two Porphyrions, and that one was here, basing their argument on the fact that in the Onomasticon of Eusebius and Jerome there is a city marked at the point of Carmel, called Chilzon, and that Chilzon is the Hebrew for the murex, or shellfish which produced the purple dye found there in great quantities; hence Porphyrion, or the purple city.

In carefully examining these ruins, and remarking the great quantity of carved porphyry which is peculiar to them, I have thought it furnished a stronger argument in favor of what would seem an appropriate appellation. The crusaders even confounded the Sea of Galilee with the Mediterranean; thus they supposed a connection to exist between the town of Caiapha, or Caiaphas (the modern Haifa), which Benjamin of Tudela asserts to have been founded by Caiaphas, the high-priest, and Cephas, the Greek name of Simon Peter. Hence near Haifa the crusading clergy showed the rock where Simon Peter fished, called to this day Tell el-Samak, or the Mound of the Fish. Laboring under a similar confusion of idea, they built a fort out of the ruins of a place called at the present day Kefr Lam, a name which, no doubt, dates back before the times of the crusaders, and which they twisted into Capernaum, that place being, as we all know, on the Sea of Galilee. The Capernaum of the crusaders, however, is a village on the Mediterranean shore, thirteen miles down the coast from here.

The itineraries of the pilgrims and early travellers are scarcely less perplexing. They are generally careful to record the distances between the various places they visit, but rarely with accuracy. Their remarks, however, are naïve and amusing. I have just been reading the journal of a certain Antoninus, the Martyr, who travelled in Palestine about the year A.D. 530. Writing of Tyre, he says:

“The city of Tyre contains influential men; the life there is very wicked; the luxury such as cannot be described. There are public brothels, and silk and other kinds of clothing are woven.”

We do not altogether see the connection in this last sentence. Going on, he remarks:

“Thence we came to Ptolemais (the modern Acre), a respectable city, where we found good monasteries. Opposite Ptolemais, six miles off, is a city which is named Sycaminus, under Mount Carmel. A mile from Sycaminus are the hamlets of the Samaritans, and above the hamlets, a mile and a half away, is the Monastery of Heliseus (or Elijah), the prophet, at the place where the woman met him whose child he raised from the dead. On Mount Carmel is found a stone, of small size and round, which, when struck, rings because it is solid. This is the virtue of the stone—if it be hung on to a woman, or to any animal, they will never miscarry. About six or seven miles off is the city of Porphyrion.”

Now there are as many mistakes as there are sentences in this quaint account by the holy man. It is a matter of dispute which are the ruins of Sycaminus. Two ruins claim that honor, and one of these it undoubtedly is. They are only two miles apart, but the nearest is thirteen miles from Acre, instead of six, and the other fifteen. A mile from Sycaminus, he says, are the hamlets of the Samaritans. These have been identified beyond all doubt as a ruin called Kefr es Samir, two miles and a half beyond one of the abovementioned ruins, and four miles and a half beyond the other. The Monastery of Heliseus, the prophet, “a mile and a half away,” I have described in a former letter. It is the picturesque gorge and ruin called Ain Siah, but the place where Elijah met the woman of Sarepta was, if we are to believe the Bible, “at the gate of that city,” at least fifty miles distant from Carmel. There is no doubt as to its site, between Tyre and Sidon. As to “the stone of small size, which, when struck, rings because it is solid,” it happens to ring because it is hollow. I have an interesting collection of these geodes, found near Ain Siah, their peculiar shapes having given rise to the legend that they were melons and other fruits which the proprietor refused the prophet when he was hungry, and which the latter therefore blasted with petrifaction. And then comes the final statement about the unhappy Porphyrion, which he puts six miles off, thus probably identifying it with Athlit, and making confusion worse confounded. First we have the Jerusalem Itinerary, distinctly placing it to the north of Sidon, a position confirmed by other authorities; then we have William of Tyre identifying it with Haifa, and now we have Antoninus putting it six miles off.

I will not inflict upon you all my reasons for coming to the conclusion that the ruin at Tell el-Samak, the Mound of the Fish already alluded to, is the site of Sycaminum, though I doubt whether a larger population did not inhabit the city two miles nearer Haifa, where the porphyry fragments abound. To judge by the fine carvings at both places, they must have been wealthy as well as populous, and their most prosperous period was in all probability during the first three or four centuries of our era. The coins which I have found so far are of that epoch. Exploring the ruins of what must have been the upper tower of Sycaminus, distant about four hundred yards from the Fish Mound, and two hundred feet above it, a few days ago, I came upon a cistern with four circular apertures. Upon being let down into it I found it was seventy feet long, hewn out of the solid rock, twenty feet broad, and twelve feet high from the débris at the bottom, but in reality much deeper. The roof was supported by three columns, four feet square, also hewn from the living rock. The cement was still in some places perfect, and the cistern must have been capable of containing a vast supply of water. It was about fifteen yards from an angle of a wall composed of rubble, from which the ashlar had been removed, about four feet thick, and still standing in places to a height of four feet. In others the foundations of this wall were easily traceable. As the whole ruin seems to have escaped the observation of the Palestine Exploration Survey, I measured it, and found the east wall to be one hundred and twelve yards long, the south wall sixty-five, the west wall seventy, and an intersecting wall forty. I could find no traces of a north wall. It was probably a fortress, which was supplied by the cistern already mentioned. In the neighborhood were some fine rock-cut tombs, two with six loculi, each in a good state of preservation. I also picked up a piece of white marble on which was an inscription in early Arabic characters, but only the word “Allah” and two or three more letters remained on the fragment.

At Kefr Lam, the crusaders' Capernaum, which I had occasion recently to visit, I discovered two very remarkable vaults, each forty feet long by twelve broad and seven high. The roof was supported by five arches, each arch composed of a single stone four feet broad, on the top of which huge flat stones had been laid. I have never seen any constructions like these vaults, and think they probably dated from a very ancient period. In the immediate neighborhood the peasantry had recently opened an ancient well, thirty-five feet deep, the water being approached by a flight of steps round two sides of the well, the shaft of which was about thirty feet square. There were no fewer than seventeen handsome rock-cut tombs in the neighborhood of the village, and I regretted that I had not time to prolong my investigations, as I feel convinced that the vicinity would repay examination. As it is, I have obtained from the villagers several good specimens of terra-cotta lamps, two curious alabaster saucers, some coins, and other antiquities.

THE SEA OF GALILEE IN THE TIME OF CHRIST.

Haifa, Dec. 26.—In reading the works of Dr. Kitto and other writers who have endeavoured to present a picture of the manners and customs of the population which inhabited Palestine in ancient times, I have been much struck by the erroneous impressions which the descriptions of those writers are calculated to convey in many important respects. This has arisen from the fact that while they have portrayed, with tolerable accuracy, the rude civilization of the original inhabitants and the subsequent civilization grafted upon it by their Jewish conquerors, they have left out of consideration the changes worked upon, and the modifications introduced into, the social conditions thus produced by that still higher and later civilization which resulted from Greek and Roman invasions. Thus while they carefully trace back the habits of the modern fellahin, and show that they differ slightly from those of the peasantry of the country in the time of Christ, and invoke the testimony of modern Bedouins as evidence of a mode of life which has undergone no perceptible alteration since the days of Abraham, they leave out of account altogether that magnificent Roman and Byzantine civilization, traces of which still exist in such abundance as to astound the traveller with its splendor and its richness, but which has passed away like a dream, leaving nothing behind but the coarse barbarism which has succeeded it, and which is almost identical in character with what it supplanted. Hence it is that these writers have found those resemblances between the modern and ancient manners and customs of the inhabitants of this country by which they were so much struck, and which they have given to the public as furnishing an accurate picture of what ancient Palestine was like.

We are so much in the habit of confining our interest in this country to its history before the time of Christ that it will probably strike many with surprise to learn that the most flourishing epoch of its history was subsequent to that time; that never before had the arts and sciences reached so high a pitch; that never before had its population been so wealthy and luxurious, its architecture so grand, its commerce so flourishing, and its civilization generally so advanced. It is true it had lost its independence, and was only a Roman province, but it is just because it was one, and not a Jewish kingdom, that our impression of its actual condition at the time of Christ is apt to be so erroneous.

This fact has been very forcibly brought to my notice in a recent trip which I have made along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, more especially along its little-explored northern and eastern coasts, where the evidences of the wealth and luxury of the former inhabitants still remain in unexampled profusion. In reading in the Gospels the narrative of the works and life of Christ, so much of which was spent upon the shores of the lake, in one of the cities of which he for some time took up his abode, most of us have endeavoured, probably, to picture him to ourselves amid purely Jewish surroundings and conditions closely resembling those which we have been in the habit of associating with that previous period of Jewish history with which we are familiar in the books of the Old Testament. So far from that being the case, the part of the country in which his ministrations were principally exercised, was beyond all others a centre of Roman life, with all its luxurious accompaniments. Nowhere else in Palestine was there such a congeries of rich and populous cities as were crowded round the shores of this small lake. Nowhere else could the Jewish reformer come into closer contact with the rites of a worship alien to his own.

On the shores of this lake might be seen temple after temple rearing their vast colonnades of graceful columns, their courts ornamented with faultlessly carved statues to the deities of a heathen cult. Here were the palaces of the Roman high functionaries, the tastefully decorated villas of rich citizens, with semi-tropical gardens irrigated by the copious streams which have their sources in the plain of Genesareth and the neighbouring hills. Here were broad avenues and populous thoroughfares, thronged with the motley concourse which so much wealth and magnificence had attracted—rich merchants from Antioch, then the most gorgeous city of the East, and from the Greek islands, traders and visitors from Damascus, Palmyra, and the rich cities of the Decapolis; caravans from Egypt and Persia, Jewish rabbis jostling priests of the worship of the sun, and Roman soldiers swaggering across the marketplaces, where the peasantry were exposing the produce of their fields and gardens for sale, and where fish was displayed by the hardy toilers of the lake, among whom were those whom the Great Teacher selected to be the first recipients of his message and the channels for its communication to after ages.

Thus it was, as I rode along the margin of the sea the other day, that I was enabled to repeople its shores in imagination by the light of the remains with which they are still strewn, and, overtaken in its desolation by the shades of night, to fancy its now gloomy shores ablaze with the scintillations proceeding from the lamps of at least a dozen large cities, and the almost continuous street of habitations which connected them, and to illuminate its now dark and silent waters with countless brilliantly-lighted boats, skimming over its smooth surface, containing noble ladies and gallants on their way to or from scenes of nocturnal festivity, or indulging in moonlight picnics, with the accompaniments of wine and song and music. That life in these cities was profligate and dissipated in a high degree we may gather from Christ's denunciation of Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Capernaum, which he declared to be so much more wicked than Tyre or Sidon, or even Sodom, that it would be more tolerable in the day of judgment for those cities than for the three he was denouncing. That among these Capernaum was the one of the greatest splendor, and was puffed up therefore with the pride of its own pomp and magnificence, we may gather from the indignant apostrophe: “And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven.” It may have been because he considered this city the wickedest, as it appears to have been the largest on the lake, and therefore the most in need of his ministrations, that he chose it for some time as his residence. Hence it came to be called “his own city.” This circumstance invests it with a special interest in our eyes.

Unfortunately, a violent contest rages between Palestinologists, if I may be allowed to coin the word, as to the exact site of Capernaum. The two places which claim this honor are now called Khan Minieh and Tell Hum respectively. Until lately the weight of opinion was in favor of the former site; latterly the researches of Sir Charles Wilson, on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund, have convinced that accomplished archæologist and careful explorer that the true site of this celebrated city is to be found at Tell Hum. It would weary my readers if I were to quote all the texts relied upon by the disputants to maintain each hypothesis, supported by calculations of distance, the accounts of Josephus, and of early pilgrim or Arab travellers. The subject has been pretty well thrashed out, but I doubt whether it is even yet exhausted. I incline strongly to the Tell Hum theory, but as Khan Minieh comes first on our way as we glide from Tiberias to the head of the lake, as it is unquestionably the site of what was once a city, and as it is a highly picturesque spot, and one, moreover, full of Biblical interest as being, if not Capernaum itself, within three miles of that city, and therefore a spot which must have been the scene of some of Christ's labours, will begin by describing it.

The plain of Genesareth, the unrivalled fertility and luxuriance of which, though it is now uncultivated, I described in a former letter, when I crossed it eighteen months ago on my way to Safed, is terminated at its northern extremity by a mountain range, which projects in a lofty and precipitous crag into the lake, and renders any passage round it by land extremely difficult. This projection forms a little bay, or rather rush-grown lagoon, running back into the head of the plain. Into it falls a small stream, powerful enough, however, to turn a mill. It is this building and the ruins of an ancient khan near it, which was itself constructed from the remains of an ancient city about three hundred yards distant, which is now called Khan Minieh. The true site of the old city is not, however, where the khan now stands, but not far from a fountain, shaded by an old fig-tree, from which the fountain takes its name—Ain el-Tin, or the Fountain of the Fig-tree, which suggests the idea that either the name is very new or the fig-tree very old. A plentiful supply of water flows from it, slightly brackish, with a temperature of 82° Fahrenheit. The water is crowded with fish and surrounded with green turf. It appears to be one of the seven fountains mentioned by Theodorus, A.D. 530, as being two miles from Magdala, the city of Mary Magdalene, in the direction of Capernaum.

Near this fountain are some old foundations and traces of ruins, but these for the most part cover a series of mounds where a few walls are visible, but no traces of columns, capitals, or handsome blocks of stone, and much smaller in extent than those of Tell Hum. Indeed, the whole area is not more than two hundred yards long by one hundred broad, and this is one reason for supposing that it cannot be the site of that important city. The khan itself is at least as old as the twelfth century, being mentioned by Bohaeddin in his life of Saladin. A road from here leads up the steep hillside to Safed. The view from it, as we ascend to some elevation above the plain, is very beautiful. That fertile expanse which Josephus calls “the ambition of nature,” lies stretched at our feet, with the waters of the lake rippling upon its pebbly beach, while we look right up the gorge of Hammam, its beetling cliffs on both sides towering in rugged cave-perforated precipices to a height of twelve hundred feet above the tiny stream which, compressed between these lofty walls of limestone and basalt, winds its way to the lake.

But it is not up the wild mountain-side that our present way lies; so, taking our last look at the crumbling walls of the old khan, at the picturesque water-mill, the ruin-strewn mounds, and the grassy lagoon, we prepare to skirt the rocky flank of the ledge which here dips into the waters of the Sea of Genesareth, and by which we hope to reach the ruins of Bethsaida.

THE SCENE OF THE MIRACLE OF THE FIVE LOAVES AND TWO SMALL FISHES.

Haifa, Jan. 6, 1885.—If, as I stated in my last letter, students of Biblical topography have been much exercised in their minds as to the identification of the ruins on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, which indicate the site of the once famous city of Capernaum, and have applied not only a great amount of antiquarian research and of time in the way of minute local examination and literary labor in the hope of definitely settling this knotty point, there is another upon which they have no less anxiously expended their ingenuity. This is to solve the vexed question as to whether there were, in the time of Christ, two Bethsaidas or one. This question would never have arisen but for the confusion introduced into the scriptural narrative by the puzzling accounts given in all the four gospels of the miracle of the feeding of the multitude with five loaves and two fishes, the scene of which the four evangelists are unanimous in describing as having been in a desert spot which must have been on the eastern side of the lake, for immediately afterwards “they crossed over to the other side,” arriving at Capernaum, which was on the western side. But according to one (Luke) this desert place (on the eastern side) belonged to a city called Bethsaida; and according to another (Mark) Christ, after the miracle, “constrained his disciples to get into the ship and go to the other (or western) side before, unto Bethsaida, while he sent away the people.” Hence the confusion; starting from the western side, they take ship, cross over to a desert place belonging to Bethsaida; the miracle is performed there, and the disciples are constrained by their Master to take ship and cross the lake back again to what must be another Bethsaida. Then the storm arises, he comes to them on the waters, and they finally reach Capernaum in safety.

Reland, the learned geographer of the last century, was the first to invent the second Bethsaida on the western side, which is not mentioned by either Josephus or Pliny, the latter of whom distinctly puts it on the eastern side; and I have not been able exactly to discover upon what authority Reland hit upon this easy solution of the problem. The only historical Bethsaida of which we have any certain record was a place at the northeastern extremity, originally a village, but rebuilt and adorned by Philip the Tetrarch, and raised to the dignity of a town under the name of Julias, after the daughter of the emperor. Here, in a magnificent tomb, Philip was himself buried. On the other hand, we have indications of the existence of another Bethsaida in the mention of a Bethsaida which was the birthplace of Peter and Andrew and Philip, which Mark tells us was “in the land of Genesareth,” and therefore on the west shore of the lake. Supposing Tell Hum to be Capernaum, and the western Bethsaida to be on the site usually assigned to it, this hypothesis would give us two Bethsaidas only six miles apart, not a very probable supposition; or else we have to suppose that the land of Genesareth extended across the Jordan to the east side, which we know to have had another name, and to have been in another province; or to suppose, as Dr. Thomson—who resolutely refuses to have two Bethsaidas—does, that half the town was on one side of the Jordan and half on the other, and that the half on the west side was called Bethsaida in the land of Genesareth, though the plain of that name is five miles distant. Moreover, there are no ruins conveniently placed to support the presumption, which is very strained. Altogether the subject is one which has puzzled every Biblical geographer hitherto, and, after a careful examination of all their arguments, I find myself just as much in the dark about it as when I entered upon the investigation. As, therefore, after visiting all the disputed localities, I do not feel any the more competent to enlighten your readers, I will confine myself to describing the different places which have been suggested as the sites of these cities, as well as of others which I visited in the section of country to the east of the Jordan, some of which I was the first to discover, and none of which have been positively identified.

Meantime, the scene, which the tradition of many centuries located erroneously as the spot upon which the miracle took place, is exactly above us as we wind along a rocky path cut in the precipice which overhangs the Sea of Galilee. This huge impending crag is crowned by an artificial plateau, which is two hundred feet long by one hundred broad, and in the northwest angle are the remains of a wall and the ruins of a building, probably a fortress of some sort. This spot was known in the middle ages as the Mensa Christi, or Table of Christ. In olden time the great Damascus high-road ran just below, and the fort above doubtless commanded this pass; but it has become impassable, and the path now follows the channel of an aqueduct hewn out of the living rock. For about two hundred yards we find ourselves riding along the narrow floor of this ancient watercourse. On our left the smooth rock rises precipitously, and on our right it forms a wall from three to four feet high, over which we could drop a stone perpendicularly into the waters of the lake. The aqueduct which thus forms our singular roadway is about three feet wide; emerging from it, after we turn the angle of the rock, we find ourselves overlooking a little bay, into which rushes a brawling torrent, the largest which enters the lake excepting the Jordan, and which here turns a mill. It is, however, only a few yards long, as it bursts from the ground in great force, in what is by far the most powerful spring in Galilee, and is, without doubt, the celebrated Fountain of Capernaum mentioned by Josephus as watering the plain of Genesareth. This it did by means of the aqueduct which we had already traversed, the distance from the fountain to the plain not being above a mile. Besides the principal fountain, which is estimated as being more than half the size of the celebrated source of the Jordan at Banias, there are four smaller fountains, all more or less brackish, and varying in temperature from 73° to 86°.

One of the special subjects of interest connected with these fountains is the presence in them of the remarkable fish called the coracinus. The only known habitats of this fish in the world are in the Nile, in a fountain which I have also visited in the plain of Genesareth, called Mudawara, and in this spring. Josephus accounts for its existence here, as well as in the Nile, by a hypothetical subterranean water communication with the great river of Egypt. Modern geologists point to it as an evidence of the fact that in some long bygone period Palestine might have been included in a great Ethiopian basin. However the circumstance is to be accounted for, it is most remarkable, and was doubted until Canon Tristram verified it twenty years ago by a somewhat singular experience. Crossing the little stream which issues from the fountain of Mudawara and flows into the lake, and which happened to be very low at the time, he was surprised to observe a quantity of fish wriggling along in single file, and so close together that the mouth of one touched the tail of the one before it. In places there was so little water that they had to flop across intervals of almost dry land; here he caught them easily with his hand, and, as many averaged three feet in length, he was not long in making a good bag. What surprised him most, however, was to find that as soon as he laid hold of one it began hissing and screaming like a cat. Making a bag of his cloak, he carried them off in triumph to his camp, which was three hours distant, and could hear them hissing and caterwauling in it all the way. He describes them as being a most delicious fish to eat, something like an eel in flavor, and possessed of extraordinary vitality, as some of them were still living after they had been two days out of the water. The last volume just issued by the Palestine Exploration Fund contains a print of this extraordinary creature, which has a long, slender body, apparently not much thicker than that of a good-sized eel, with two long fins, one on the back and one on the belly. The mouth, with its long, cartilaginous streamers (I do not know the ichthyological term for them), somewhat resembles that of a catfish. I unfortunately had no means of fishing for them on the occasion of my visit, and they did not happen to be migrating to their spawning grounds, which they were evidently doing when Tristram caught them; but my late experiences on the shores of the lake have been so full of interest that I propose to make another visit in the spring, when I hope to go supplied with tackle, and to give you my own piscatory experiences.

There is a small tract of fertile land in the rear of the mill, but no ruins except those connected with mills or water-works. Nevertheless, it is impossible almost to conceive that a position so favored by nature should not have been the site of a town, and it is on this spot that many geographers place the western Bethsaida. There are no apparent grounds for their doing so beyond the necessity of finding a spot somewhere which should support their hypothesis. If, however, they must have a second Bethsaida, I should rather put it a mile farther off, at Khan Minieh, instead of so very close to Capernaum as this would be, always supposing Tell Hum to be Capernaum, which is only two miles distant from this spot. Dr. Thomson's theory that El-Tabghah, the modern name of this place, was the grand manufacturing suburb of that large city, from which its fountain took its name, seems to me rational. Here were the mills, not only for it, but for all the neighbourhood; so also the potteries, tanneries, and other operations of this sort would be clustered around these great fountains, a theory somewhat borne out by the name, Tabghah, which resembles the Arabic word Dabbaga, meaning tannery.

There is no doubt that in this neighbourhood somewhere, probably on the plain of Genesareth, was the location of a town far older than any of those whose sites we are now discussing, and this is the Chinneroth mentioned in the Old Testament, from which the lake, in days long anterior to those of Christ, took its name, and which the Talmud renders Ginizer, which is therefore doubtless identical with Genesareth. Indeed, it may be noted as a curious fact, which has been forced upon me by these investigations, that the towns noticed in the Gospels, excluding the large cities, such as Jerusalem, Tyre, and Sidon, are almost all places not mentioned in the Old Testament. Nazareth and Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin and Tiberias are names never occurring in the Hebrew Scriptures; and the scenery of the life of Christ lies, as a rule, apart from the centres, religious or political, which reappear again and again in the earlier episodes of Jewish history.

CAPERNAUM AND CHORAZIN.

Haifa, Jan. 20.—Perhaps the most interesting spot in the world to those deeply under the influence of that charm which association lends to places hallowed by the ministrations of the Founder of Christianity is to be found in a desert, rock-strewn promontory on the northwest shore of the Lake of Tiberias; for among these piles of hewn blocks of black basalt still remain the ruins of a great synagogue, within whose walls, the foundations of which may still be distinctly traced, were collected the multitudes who flocked to hear the teaching of Christ. While modern tourists resort in crowds to Jerusalem to visit the mythical sites which are supposed, upon the vague basis of ecclesiastical tradition, to be identified with episodes in the life of the great Teacher, scarcely one ever finds his way to this remote locality lying just out of the beaten track along which Cook leads his herds of sightseers; and yet it is probable that the greater part of that period in the life of Christ, the record of which is contained in the four Gospels, was spent at Capernaum, which the most careful investigation, by the highest authorities in such matters, has identified with these ruins of Tell Hum, amid which I was just now standing. Here it was that Christ cured Peter's mother-in-law, restored the paralytic, called Matthew, cured the centurion's servant, raised Jairus's daughter from the dead, and obtained the tribute of money from the mouth of a fish. It was here that he spoke the parables of the sower, the tares, the treasure hid in the field, the merchant seeking goodly pearls, and the net cast into the sea. Sir Charles Wilson, whose researches on this spot led him to identify it as being the site of the city of Capernaum, believes this synagogue was, “without doubt, the one built by the Roman centurion (Luke vii. 51), and, therefore, one of the most sacred spots on earth.” It was in this building, if that be the case, that the well-known discourse contained in the sixth chapter of John was delivered; and it was not without a strange feeling, says the same explorer, “that, on turning over a large block, we found the pot of manna engraved on its face, and remembered the words: “I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead.”