Part 24

While thus indulging in airy imaginings of the future, darkness gradually closed in, and I became suddenly aware, as so often happens in this world, that all my calculations would have been sound in regard to my finding my way if they had not been based upon thoroughly delusive premises. The cause of my error may be summed up in the one word, basalt. I had forgotten one of the most remarkable geological features of this part of the country, and this is, that only the lower stratum of the range which rises from the east shore of Lake Tiberias is of limestone. All the rest is basaltic, and this formation is of vast thickness. The whole of this district is, indeed, an immense volcanic field, consisting of irregular heaps of amorphous lava and disintegrating scoriæ, with mounds of globular basalt. So that when darkness came on everything below me, as well as all above, seemed suddenly to have become as black as night. The path had disappeared as if by magic, and I called a halt, and we found ourselves on a patch of black rock, with exactly similar patches of black rock all around us. The outlines of the hills had vanished, the path had led us up from the bed of the torrent, so we no longer had that to guide us. To attempt to descend to it would have been madness, as we might have fallen over a precipice in the darkness; indeed, we were afraid to move, except with extreme caution, in any direction. We had a compass and matches, and knew that by keeping due south we might, if no accident befell us, and the rocks permitted a passage, ultimately reach the plateau; but we also knew that the direction of our night-quarters was due cast; but here we ran the greater risk of tumbling into unknown transverse gorges with precipitous cliffs. We cautiously worked south, but our progress soon became barred by thorny brushwood, and we had to face the alternative of a night out-of-doors without water or anything to drink, and a very limited supply of food.

We were just bracing ourselves to this unpleasant prospect, when, in a southwesterly direction, we suddenly saw a gleam of light; it lasted for a moment, then seemed to go out. But that one ray was one of hope, and we steered cautiously for it. We had been scrambling by compass in the dark for about half an hour, and were just beginning to despair, when the bark of a distant dog put new energy into us, and not long after, around the shoulder of a hill, we came upon an encampment, and were greeted by the furious yells of the mob of noisy curs which infest the tents of the Bedouins. It was a startling apparition to burst upon these nomads in their remote retreat—horsemen of a type they had never seen before, and an armed soldier. Such children as were awake set up a dismal squalling, the women cowered tremblingly over their camp-fires under the pent roof of black camels' hair. All the side of the tent being open, its whole internal economy was exposed to view, and enabled us to judge of the slight protection in the way of bedding or clothing or covering of any sort which was provided against the inclemency of the season.

Meantime the men had gathered round us, half timidly, half threateningly. The presence of the soldier suggested fear and suspicion, while the smallness of our party encouraged the bolder ones to look defiant. As far as I could make out in the darkness there were about a dozen tents here in all—apparently the fag end of an insignificant tribe whose name I forget. It was at first impossible to induce any one at that late hour to act as guide. Even abundant offers of backshish failed to shake their suspicion, which was to the effect that we wished to decoy one into durance to act as a hostage until some arrears of taxes which they owed the government should be paid up.

The other alternative was that we should take up our quarters in the sheik's tent, whether he liked it or not, which, with a piercing wind blowing, accompanied by sleet, was not a very pleasant prospect. He seemed to relish it as little as we did, and finally consented to be our guide as we made some silver gleam in the firelight. As he seized his eighteen-foot lance and mounted his ragged steed he looked like some Arab Don Quixote; and as the camp-fire threw its ruddy glow upon a group of wild-looking women, with dishevelled hair and tattooed chins, crooning over a pot like the witches of “Macbeth,” and upon barelegged men, as they flitted to and fro between the black tents, I thought I had seldom gazed upon a more weird and unreal-looking scene.

How our guide could find his way up the rocky hillside and across the prairie remained a mystery during the long two hours that we followed him. Of this I feel sure, that we scrambled up places in the dark that we should never have thought of facing by daylight. The very horses seemed to have become desperate, and to have abandoned themselves to their fate. At last we dismounted and scaled the rocks like goats, every one, man or beast, doing the best he could for himself on his own account, and so at last, wearied and half-starved, for we had fasted for about ten hours, we reached the goal of our endeavour, too tired to see what an utterly miserable hole it was.

I passed a wretched night in a room in the middle of which a fire had been built, which filled it with smoke, for it had no other exit but the door, which it was too cold to keep open. Around the fire were stretched fifteen Arabs, who quarrelled with a government official, whom they were compelled to entertain, about their taxes, until they exhausted themselves, and then they exchanged their discordant wrangling for no less discordant snoring. After replenishing exhausted nature with the eggs which was all that my host could provide me with, and a tin of canned meat, I vainly tried to follow their example, but was too busily occupied in scratching to think of anything but fleas, and so tossed and tumbled and longed for the morning, when I proposed to enter upon a new field of exploration, for this was the village of El-Al, where I had heard that ruins existed; and as I had every reason to believe that in ancient times this neighbourhood had been the centre of a large population, I felt sure that they had left interesting traces, which were yet to be discovered.

KHISFIN.

Haifa, March 15.—There is no part of ancient Palestine which offers a more fertile field for antiquarian research than that portion lying to the east of the Jordan, which fell to the share of the half-tribe of Manasseh. In Biblical times a part of it was called Golan, and its modern name of Jaulan is almost identical with its ancient appellation. It is to this day the finest grazing land in all Palestine, as it was in the days of old, when Job fed his vast flocks and herds upon its more eastern pastures, but it is now very sparsely inhabited. The sedentary population has all been driven away by the wandering tribes of Bedouins who have appropriated the country; the very few villages that remain are squalid and miserable, and the inhabitants live in terror for their lives, for they never know what day, or rather night, the Arabs may not be down upon them, and carry off their stock. They surround their houses, therefore, with large yards enclosed by stone walls, and it was in one of these that I found a lodging on the night that I had so nearly been obliged to spend in the wilds of the Wady Samak. Attached to these yards are large stone vaults, capable of containing great herds of cattle, and some of them apparently of great antiquity. In the one in which I staked my horses I found, on examining it in the morning, part of a Corinthian column, still _in situ_, standing to a height of about six feet. I failed to discover any more, but the vault was so dark that my examination was carried on with difficulty, and I had no time to spend over it. The sheik's house in which I lodged, and to which this vault belonged, was evidently, however, built on the site of what had formerly been a building of some importance, for in the yard, to my surprise and delight, I came upon a prostrate statue of a woman, life size. The head was severed from the body, and the feet had been broken off at the ankles, but it was a fine specimen of Greek statuary. Both the features and the drapery were beautifully executed. The feet I found _in situ_, the ankles just appearing on a level with the ground. On clearing this away I laid bare the feet, which were still firmly fixed on the original pedestal, which it would have required a great deal of labour to disinter. It is not improbable that the pedestal is covered with carving in _basso-rilievo_, and I promise myself at some future time to dig it up. In the meantime both feet and pedestal cannot be safer than where they are, more especially as my companions secured the head. This the sheik was induced to part with for $3. The body was too cumbersome to carry away now, as a camel would have been needed for its transport, and, as it is not of much value without the head, it may be considered secured by the possession of that portion.

The statue apparently represented Artemis, as the left arm clasped what seemed to be a quiver for arrows. The right arm was unfortunately broken away, otherwise the statue would be perfect when put together. The pedestal, without doubt, contains an inscription describing the statue and the goddess represented upon it. I was sorely tempted to devote a day to its examination, but, in that case, I should have been compelled to give up visiting some other spots of interest which had never before been investigated, and the hardships and discomforts of these preliminary dashes into the wilds, more especially in the depth of winter, are so great that one is not tempted to prolong them—my present object being rather to know where to go at some future time, when the conditions, political and otherwise, may be more favourable than they are now. I therefore did not linger longer than was absolutely necessary at this place. I had seen enough to prove to me that it would, in all probability, amply repay a fuller investigation, and I determined without delay to push on to a village called Khisfin, which I was extremely anxious to examine, as it has hitherto escaped the careful attention of all former travellers. And yet, from the records which I have been able to examine in regard to it, it must have been a place of considerable importance in mediæval history, though hitherto my efforts to trace it back to an earlier date than the beginning of the tenth century or to identify it with any Biblical site have been in vain. Yakubi, an Arab geographer, who lived about the year 900 A.D., mentions it as one of the chief towns of the province of the Jordan. In his day Syria was divided into three provinces, namely: The province of Damascus, the province of the Jordan, and the province of Palestine. Yakut, in the thirteenth century, mentions it as a town of the Hauran district, below Nawa on the Damascus road, between Nawa and the Jordan. Khisfin was also at one time a fortress of the Saracens, as it is further mentioned as the place to which Al Melek Al Adil, Saladin's son and successor, fled after having been routed at the battle of Beisan by the Crusaders, who advanced upon him from Acre. As it is mentioned as being one of the chief towns of the province, so long ago as 900 A.D., it is probable that its importance dates from a much older period, as indeed was indicated by some of the ornamentation which I found there.

Securing my host, the sheik, as a guide to a locality which promised to be so full of interest, we started at a brisk pace across the plateau, in the teeth of a bitterly cold east wind and driving sleet, and, after riding an hour, came to the ruins of Nab, situated on a small mound. They consist of blocks of basalt building-stone, some traces of foundations, some fragments of columns and capitals, and a tank, dry at the time of my visit, but which evidently held water at some time of the year. It had, apparently, been much deeper at a former period, only the two upper courses of masonry being new visible. It was oval in shape, and measured sixty yards by thirty. This place does not appear to have been previously visited or described. Shortly after leaving it I observed masses of black stone, which, on nearer approach, proved to be the walls of a fortress that, my guide told me, was Khisfin itself. It loomed strikingly up from the grassy plain, and gave rise to pleasing anticipations as I galloped impatiently up to the base of the walls, and, jumping off my horse without even waiting to tether him, in my excitement, scrambled up a breach to see what was inside. I looked down upon a ruin-strewn area, but, alas, no columns, nor capitals, nor signs of Roman remains. This had evidently been in turn a Saracen and a Crusading construction. The outer walls measured sixty-eight yards one way by fifty-four the other. They are nine feet in thickness, and are eight courses of stone in height, the stones being from one foot to one foot six inches square; but some are much larger. Within the fort are the traces of a second or inner wall, forming a sort of keep in the centre; but the whole area was too much encumbered with ruin for any accurate plan to be possible in the limited time at my disposal.

A little beyond the fort stood the village itself. All the intervening and surrounding fields were thickly strewn with the large hewn blocks of black basalt of which the houses of the former population had been constructed, and which, to judge from the area which they covered, quite justified the description of Yakubi, that in his day this was one of the chief towns of the province, and the centre of a very large population. The present squalid inhabitants, few in number, seemed to live in a perfect quarry of these old building-blocks. No difficulty had they in finding material wherewith to build their houses, their large cattle vaults, and enclosing yards. They simply piled the tumbled masses of stone in a little more regular order, one above another, to make walls of any height or thickness they chose, without mortar or cement, and had houses that would last forever. As all the stones were beautifully squared and shaped, they had far more symmetrical walls, thanks to the ancients, than if they had been left to themselves. These black, massive huts all jumbled together with their vaults and yards, without regular streets or lanes, formed one of the strangest looking villages I ever saw. In some cases the walls were formed of stones placed diagonally, in others horizontally, in others perpendicularly. The very roofs were of stone, with earth on the top of them to fill up the cracks. Where hewn stone is so abundant and wood almost impossible to obtain, it is astonishing what uses the former can be put to. And now came a search which I would willingly have protracted over days instead of over minutes, which were all I had to give to it. To “do” Khisfin thoroughly one ought to examine carefully every stone in every house, besides the acres of stones by which the present village is surrounded. As it was, I went into as many houses as I had time for, and made sketches of what ornamentation I found. The natives had evidently used as lintels for their doorways the stones which had served the ancients for the same purpose. These were usually four or even five feet long, and many of them were ornamented with curious devices. They were in part Crusading and in part Saracenic. There were the tablets with half-effaced escutcheons, rosettes, bosses, crosses, and other Crusading emblems, which left no doubt in my mind that this must have been at one time an important Crusading fortress, though in the only book relating to the crusades which I happen to have by me no mention is made of it. There were several of those curious carvings, difficult to describe, which characterize Saracenic architecture as an evidence that the Moslem conquerors of the crusaders had also had a hand in its adornment; but what was more interesting, there were floral wreaths and carved devices which are a feature in Byzantine art, which gave clear evidence that before the conquest of this province from the Byzantine empire in the seventh century it had been an important city of that civilization which immediately succeeded the Roman.

The important question which I could not determine was whether, in the old Roman times, it had been a place of note. There can be little doubt that a future examination, of a more minute character than I was able to give, would determine this point, and it is not at all impossible that upon the old stones might be found seven-branched candlesticks, pots of manna, or emblems of a still older date, which would carry it back to Jewish times. Meanwhile I looked anxiously, but in vain, for an inscription which might throw some light on the subject, and it is certain that amid such a mass of ruin such are to be found. All my inquiries for old coins only tended to alarm the villagers, who looked on my proceedings with their usual suspicion, and associated my visit and my desire for old money with their taxes, which is the only idea that the fellah of Palestine seems able to connect with the visit of a prying and inquisitive stranger. The whole of the country which surrounds Khisfin is susceptible of the highest degree of cultivation; the land is eminently fertile and almost a dead level, capable of producing abundant crops, if there were any people to cultivate it. As it is, it is allowed to run to waste. It affords pasture to their flocks, but these are scanty, through fear of the Arabs, and the people, unable to rely upon the government for protection, and, indeed, being only aware that there is a government through its tax-gatherers, are sullen and suspicious and discouraged, and utterly without energy to do more than provide themselves with the barest necessaries of life.

FURTHER EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY.

Haifa, March 31.—From Khisfin, the ruins of which I described in my last letter, I struck off in a westerly direction under the guidance of the sheik who had been my host the night before, and who, now that he was convinced that I had nothing to do with tax-gathering, and was only possessed by what must have seemed to him an insane desire to find old stones and make pictures of them, took an evident pleasure in ministering to such a harmless form of insanity; in fact he became quite a bore on the subject. As he was naturally unable to appreciate any distinction between one old stone and another, he was constantly making me ride out of my way to look at some weather-beaten piece of basalt which had a fancied resemblance to a wild animal; or to a mound, the ruins on which belonged to a village that had been deserted within the last twenty years. Still I never could afford to treat his assurances with indifference, as there was always the possibility, until I satisfied myself to the contrary, that the stones to which he was guiding me might possess interest; and indeed on one occasion they did, for they turned out to be the ruins of a Roman town, where a few fragments of columns and capitals still remained to bear testimony to the particular civilization to which they belonged, and which, although they did not present any striking architectural features—indeed, the remains were somewhat insignificant—it was always a satisfaction to have been the first to discover. The name of these ruins was Esfera.

Near them a very singular and unpleasant accident occurred to me. I rode my horse to drink at what seemed a muddy puddle, which was about ten or twelve feet in diameter. Instead of being content to drink at the margin, he took two steps into it, and suddenly disappeared head first; that is, his head disappeared, his hind-quarters remained for a moment poised above the water just long enough to enable me to throw myself off backward into about two feet of puddle. We had walked into an overflowed well. When his hind-quarters at last went down into it his head came up, or, at all events, as much of it as was required for breathing and snorting, which he did prodigiously, evidently in a panic of terror, while I stood drenched and shivering on the bank in the cold east wind and sleet, wondering how we were ever to get him out. The poor beast was out of his depth, but the dimensions of the well were too limited to enable him to swim, or even to scramble freely. Fortunately I had sent on my saddlebags by my servant, or the animal would have been hopelessly weighted down. As it was, it was only by the united efforts of the party tugging at the bridle and stirrup-leathers that, after many futile efforts, at the end of each of which he fell back and for a moment disappeared altogether, we ultimately succeeded in extricating him. Meantime my own plight was in the last degree unenviable, the more especially as I was not in very good health at the time, a consideration which induced my companion, with a truly commendable devotion, to take off his nether garments and insist on my wearing them instead of my own, while he performed the remainder of the day's journey in the slight protection which he wore beneath them.

It was in this guise, and while still discussing my strange mishap, that our attention was suddenly arrested by finding ourselves surrounded by what are perhaps the most interesting of antiquarian objects, a number of dolmens. In a very limited area—none of them were over two hundred yards apart—I counted twenty. The subject of these rude stone monuments of a prehistoric age is so interesting that I will venture on a few words in regard to them.