Part 7

So far there has only been a rise from the sea-level in twenty miles of two hundred and ten feet, so that the grade is imperceptible. It now crosses the watershed, and commences to descend across the plain of Jezreel to the valley of the Jordan. Here the Wady Jalud offers an easy incline as far as Beisan, the ancient Bethshean, and every mile of the country it has traversed so far is private property, and fairly cultivated. At Beisan it enters upon a region which has, partly owing to malaria and partly to its insecurity, been abandoned to the Arabs, but it is the tract of all others which the passage of a railway is likely to transfigure, for the abundance of the water, which is now allowed to stagnate in marshes, and which causes its unhealthiness, is destined to attract attention to its great fertility and natural advantages, which would, with proper drainage, render it the most profitable region in Palestine. Owing to the elevation of the springs, which send their copious streams across the site of Beisan, the rich plain which descends to the Jordan, five hundred feet below, can be abundantly irrigated. “In fact,” says Dr. Thomson, describing this place in his “Land and the Book,” “few spots on earth, and none in this country, possess greater agricultural and manufacturing advantages than this valley, and yet it is utterly desolate.”

It needs only a more satisfactory administration on the part of the government, and the connection of this district with the sea by rail, to make Beisan an important commercial and manufacturing centre. All kinds of machinery might be driven at small expense by its abounding brooks, and then the lovely valley of Jezreel above it, irrigated by the Jalud, and the Ghor Beisan below, watered in every part by many fertilizing streams, are capable of sustaining a little nation in and of themselves. There is a little bit of engineering required to carry the line down to the valley of the Jordan, here eight hundred feet below the level of the sea, which it then follows north as far as the Djisr el-Medjamieh. Near this ancient Roman bridge of three arches, which is used to this day by the caravans of camels which bring the produce of the Hauran to the coast, the new railway bridge will cross the Jordan, probably the only one in the world which will have for its neighbour an actual bridge in use which was built by the Romans, thus, in this now semi-barbarous country, bringing into close contact an ancient and a modern civilization. After crossing the Jordan, the line will still follow the banks of that river to its junction with the Yarmuk, which it will also cross, and then traverse a fertile plain of rich alluvium, about five miles long by four wide, to the base of the ridge which overlooks the eastern margin of the Sea of Tiberias.

This is the extent to which the survey has been completed. It is not decided whether to rise from the valley by the shoulder of the ridge which overlooks the Yarmuk, or to follow the east shore of the Lake of Tiberias to the Wady Semakh, which offers great advantages for a grade by which to ascend nearly three thousand feet in about fifteen miles. This is the toughest bit of engineering on the line, and is in close proximity to the steep place down which the swine possessed by devils are said to have rushed into the sea. Once on the plateau it will traverse the magnificent pasture-lands of Jaulan, across which I rode four years ago in the spring, when the numerous streams by which it was watered were flowing copiously, and the tall, waving grass reached nearly up to my horse's belly.

This rich tract was the one on which it is probable that Job pastured his flocks and herds—at least, all the local tradition points to this. It was well populated until comparatively recent times, but the sedentary inhabitants, the ruins of whose villages dot the country, were driven out by the Arabs, who now pasture vast herds of cattle upon it, and droves of horses which are fattened here after their journey from Mesopotamia previous to being exported to Egypt. The course of the line across this region has not been definitely fixed, but it will probably take as southern a direction as possible, so as to tap the grain-growing country of the Hauran. There may possibly be a short branch to Mezrib, which is the principal grain emporium, and one of the most important halting-places on the great pilgrimage road from Damascus to Mecca. It is calculated that the transport of grain alone from this region to the coast will suffice to pay a large dividend upon the capital required for the construction of the road, which will be about one hundred and thirty miles in length. I do not remember the number of tons annually conveyed on the backs of camels to Acre and Haifa, but I have seen thousands of these ungainly animals collected at the gates of both those towns during the season, and the amount must be something enormous. This does not include the whole of the Damascus trade, which now finds its way by the French carriage road across the Lebanon to Beyrout, and which will all be diverted to the railway, or the produce of the rich country it traverses between the sea-coast and the Jordan.

The grantees have also secured the right to put steam-tugs upon the Lake of Tiberias, and under the influence of this new means of transportation the desolate shores will undergo transformation. The great plain of Genesareth, across which I rode a month ago, is now a waste of the most luxuriant wild vegetation, watered by three fine streams, besides being well supplied with springs. It was celebrated of old for the amount and variety of its produce, and I have no doubt is again destined to be so. The plains in which Bethsaida and Capernaum stood formerly are all covered with heavy vegetation which conceals the extensive ruins of the cities which once adorned them; and there is a fine back country within easy reach of the lake which will send its produce to it as soon as means of transportation are provided. At present there are only half a dozen sailing-boats on the lake, rather a contrast from the time when Josephus collected no fewer than two hundred and thirty war-ships with which to attack Tiberius in the war against the Romans; and the fish with which it abounded in the days of the miraculous draught are more miraculously numerous than ever, for fishing as an industry has almost ceased to exist, and the finny tribe are left undisturbed. There are some celebrated sulphur baths also on the shores of the lake and within two miles of the town, which are visited annually by thousands of patients. I was there during the bathing season, and found them camped in tents on the margin of the lake, or sweltering in the fetid atmosphere of the one large bathing-room, in which a crowd of naked and more or less cutaneous patients were disporting themselves.

The surveying party tell me that they received the greatest kindness and hospitality from the Arabs in the Jordan valley, who were of a sedentary tribe, and cultivated the land, and who looked forward with pleasure to the advent of a railway, and to the chances of employment which it afforded them. Indeed, both natives and foreigners are not a little excited at the prospect which is now being opened to them, and which promises to be the dawn of a new era of prosperity for the country.

NOTE.—Since the above was written, the concession has lapsed in consequence of difficulties which arose at the last moment in the formation of the company for carrying out the enterprise; but it is again in process of renewal, and I have little doubt but that it will be ultimately accomplished.

SAFED.

Haifa, July 10.—Next to Jerusalem, the city most highly venerated by the Jews in Palestine is Safed. I had occasion to visit it a few weeks ago on my way to a colony of Russian and Roumanian Jews which has been established in the neighbourhood. Perched on the summit of a mountain nearly three thousand feet high, it is one of the most picturesquely situated towns in the country; and there is a tradition to the effect that it was alluded to by Christ as “the city that is set on a hill, and cannot be hid,” when he preached the Sermon on the Mount, the mount being supposed to be one of the Horns of Hattin, a remarkably shaped hill.

The whole of this district is indeed full of romantic scenery. It is a country of wild gorges and huge precipices, which escape the attention of the traveller following the beaten routes, and to most of them associations are attached, investing them with an interest beyond that of a mere scenic character. There is, for instance, the Wady Hammam, where the bluffs are about twelve hundred feet high, perforated with caves, communicating with each other by passages concealed in the rock, once the abode of bands of robbers who lived like eagles in their eyries. Looking up at these holes in the cliff some seven or eight hundred feet above me, I tried to picture the terrible battle which was once fought in mid-air between the denizens of these caves and the soldiers whom Herod let down the face of the cliff in baskets to attack them. The desperate nature of the struggle, as the soldiers strove to make good their foothold on the edge of the caves, and the frenzy with which the robbers, who had no loophole of escape, must have defended themselves as they endeavoured to hurl their assailants from their baskets, suggested a scene which was quite in keeping with the gloomy character of the surroundings. Some of the more accessible of these caves have been occupied at a later period by hermits, and they may have been utilized for military purposes at the time of the crusades, but they have never been thoroughly explored.

Just before reaching Safed there is a rock called Akhbera, which rises five hundred feet sheer up from the path, and is also full of similar caves. Josephus mentions having fortified it. However prepossessing Safed may look from a distance, it does not bear a close acquaintance. Down the centre of every street runs an open sewer, which renders it the most odoriferous and pestiferous place that it has ever been my fate to sleep in. The aspect of the population is in keeping with the general smell. One seems transported into the ghetto of some Roumanian or Russian town, with a few Eastern disagreeables added. The population here have not adopted the Oriental costume as they have at Tiberias, but wear the high hats, greasy gabardines, and ear-curls of the Jews of Europe. Instead of Arabic, one hears nothing in the streets but “jargon,” as the dialect used by the Jews in eastern Europe is called. The total population of _Ashkenazim_, or German Jews, who are hived in this unenviable locality, is between five and six thousand; besides these there are about twelve hundred _Sephardim_, or Spanish Jews, who wear Oriental costumes, and in the other quarter of the town from six to seven thousand Moslems, making the total number of inhabitants about fourteen thousand.

As there is nothing approaching to a hotel or boarding-house in the place, I was of course dependent on the native hospitality for board and lodging, and thus able to acquire an insight into the mode of life of rather a curious section of the human family. The majority of the Jews here are supported by a charitable fund called the Haluka, which is subscribed to by pious Jews all over the world as a sacred duty, for the purpose of providing support to those of their coreligionists who come here or to Jerusalem to pass the last years of their lives in devotional exercises, and to die on the sacred soil. The practical result of this system is to maintain in idleness and mendicancy a set of useless bigots, who combine superstitious observance with immoral practice, and who, as a rule, are opposed to every project which has for its object the real progress of the Jewish nation. Hence they regard with alarm the establishment of agricultural colonies, or the inauguration of an era of any kind of labour by Jews in Palestine. They are bitterly hostile to schools in which any secular teaching is carried on, and agree with those Western Jews who consider that any scheme for developing the material resources of Palestine by means of Jewish industry is fantastic and visionary. It is due to the Jewish population of Safed to say that this spirit does not prevail among the younger members of it. There are about a hundred young Safed Jews who actually work as day-labourers on the farms of Moslems and Christians, and I was informed by one of the most liberal of the rabbis, the only one, in fact, who was inclined to promote Jewish agriculture, that about two hundred families in Safed were desirous of being established on farms, while several had owned land and cultivated it, and only abandoned it at last for want of protection against the extortionate demands of Turkish tax-gatherers. It is true that most of the Jews at Safed are under the protection of some European power, but until lately no power has taken sufficient interest in the race to raise a Jewish question with the Turkish government. Now that important political interests are to be subserved by doing so, and the destiny of Palestine is likely to become a crucial point in the Eastern question, both Russia and France are seizing every excuse for interference and complaint, and the questions which are constantly arising in regard to their Jewish _protégés_, both in Tiberias and Safed, are likely to furnish them with the pretexts they desire.

When I was in Safed, Russia was actively espousing the cause of a young Jew who had accidentally shot a Moslem, and over whom the Turkish government claimed jurisdiction, on the ground that, though a Russian, he had repudiated his allegiance to Russia. As the youth was not of age at the time, the Russian government still claimed the right to protect him in Turkey, though it had not exercised this right in Russia itself, from which country he had been compelled to flee for his life. As I rode through the village where the accident had taken place, in company with some Jews, we were pelted by the Moslem population, and, although the release of the boy is now certain, he will probably be compelled to leave the country, unless the relatives of the deceased Moslem can be pacified with the blood-money that has been offered them.

Jauna, which was the name of the village to which I was bound, was situated about three miles from Safed, in a gorge, from which, as we descended it, a magnificent view was obtained over the Jordan valley, with the Lake of Tiberias lying three thousand feet below us on the right, and the waters of Merom, or the Lake of Huleh, on the left. The intervening plain was a rich expanse of country, only waiting development. The new colony had been established about eight months, the land having been purchased from the Moslem villagers, of whom twenty families remained, who lived on terms of perfect amity with the Jews. These consisted of twenty-three Roumanian and four Russian families, numbering in all one hundred and forty souls. The greater number were hard at work on their potato-patches when I arrived, and I was pleased to find evidences of thrift and industry. A row of sixteen neat little houses had been built, and more were in process of erection. Altogether this is the most hopeful attempt at a colony which I have seen in Palestine. The colonists own about a thousand acres of excellent land, which they were able to purchase at from three to four dollars an acre. The Russians are establishing themselves about half a mile from the Roumanians, as Jews of different nationalities easily get on well together. They call the colony Rosch Pina, or “Head of the Corner,” the word occurring in the verse, “The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.”

MEIRON.

Haifa, July 20.—One of the most interesting and little-known spots in Palestine is the famous shrine of Jewish pilgrimage called Meiron. Hither, in the latter part of the month of May, Hebrews resort in vast numbers from all parts, especially of the East, and as many as two thousand are often encamped there at a time. It is situated in a wild part of the mountains of central Galilee, on the edge of the most fertile plateau in the whole district, where the villages are surrounded by the most luxuriant gardens and groves, and the peasantry are in a more prosperous condition than I have seen elsewhere. Meiron itself is a wonderfully romantic spot; perched at an elevation of twenty five hundred feet above the sea, upon the northeastern flank of a high spur of the Jebel Jermuk range, it commands a magnificent view of the surrounding country, with the town of Safed, towering on its mountain-top, distant about five miles. A clear, brawling stream tumbles in a series of small cascades down the narrow gorge, which expands just here sufficiently to allow of some orchards of apricots, figs, and pomegranates; and near a spreading weeping-willow there is a picturesque old flour-mill, which turns to advantage so unusual a supply of water-power. A hundred yards or so above it is the spot sacred to Jewish devotees. A large, oblong courtyard, around which runs a broad stone balcony, upon which open chambers crowned with domes, marks the site of the burial-places of some of the most celebrated rabbis of Jewish history, and forms a sort of caravansary for the pilgrims. It was not the moment of the pilgrimage at the time of my visit, and I had a choice of chambers. Two of these had been fitted up most comfortably for my benefit, with beds and tables, by the Safed Jews who accompanied me, and who did the honours of the place. It was no doubt the sacredness of the tombs at Meiron which was the cause of Safed being constituted a Jewish colony and a holy city. Here are situated the tombs of the Rabbi Jochanan Sandelar, of the celebrated Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai, the reputed author of the book of the Sohar, and the Father of the Cabalists. Here repose the remains of his son, the Rabbi Eleazer; but more celebrated than all are the sepulchres of the great saints and doctors, Shammai and Hillel. The thirty-six pupils of the latter were buried with him. He founded a school of morals immediately prior to the birth of Christ; and, indeed, it is maintained by Jews that all the ethics of Christianity are to be found in the teaching of Hillel, to which Christ simply gave a more forcible expression than it had hitherto received.

Of all the tombs that of Hillel is the most remarkable. It is a huge cavern on the steep hillside, situated about half-way between the Courtyard of Shrines above, and the stream below. We first enter a chamber with loculi hewn out of the solid rock on each side. Passing through a doorway cut in the rock, we enter a chamber eighteen feet by twenty-five, with seven loculi in recess on the right, and the same number on the left, while facing us is a recess eighteen feet deep and seven wide, containing four sarcophagi hewn out of the rock. On each side of this recess is a smaller one, each containing four loculi. Most of them are covered by stone lids with raised corners, making in all thirty-six rock tombs in this one cave. The rocks all around are much cut in places into steps, cisterns, and olive-presses. There are also three dolmens on the north side of Meiron; they are not far apart, and are quite distinct, though of small dimensions; there are no traces or marks of any kind on the stones. In the shrine above these are chambers which are pointed out as traditional tombs. Near one of these was the synagogue, in which, when I visited it, there were an old man and his son engaged in their devotions. The old man had never left the room day or night for seven years, having lived the whole of that time on one meal a day of bread and water, while he slept on a mat on the stones. He had thus become invested with the odour of sanctity in the eyes of my Jewish companions. His son, a boy of fifteen, was rapidly praying himself into the state of imbecility at which his venerable parent, by dint of swaying his body to and fro, and his unceasing chanting, had already arrived. He reminded me of the Buddhist hermits whom I have seen in China on their way to Nirvana, and was a sight more painful than edifying. At the corners of the courtyard are stone erections like fonts, and some of these are also near the rock tombs; these, when the Jewish festival of “the burning” takes place, are filled with oil, which is set on fire, and rich Jews, desirous of showing their devotion, offer to the flames the most costly articles in their possession. The richest shawls, scarfs, handkerchiefs, and the rarest books are dipped in oil and consumed, and when any article of special value is burned, the spectators, who are already intoxicated with wine and excitement, burst forth with frantic plaudits of delight. Such was the account given to me by eye-witnesses, but possibly next year I may be able to give you a description of this unique and little-known festival from personal observation.

About fifty yards higher up the hill is one of the most interesting Jewish ruins existing in Palestine. It is the remains of a synagogue, which, according to Jewish tradition, dates from fifty years after the destruction of Jerusalem.