C. R. Conder

“ The silence of the desert surrounds it, and only the shrill note of the golden grackle, or the howl of a jackal, breaks this solemn stillness. Not a tree or shrub is in sight, walls of white chalk and sharp ridges shut out the western breeze, and the sigh of the wind in the trees is a sound never heard in the solitude. The place seems dead. The convent and its valley have a fossilised appearance. Scarcely less dead and fossil are its wretched inmates, monks exiled for crimes or heresy, and placed in charge of a few poor lunatics. ”

“ First we cross the flat sea plain, in part sandy and barren, scattered with the black tents or reed cabins of the small encampments of Bedawin, a pastoral race gradually losing ground before the peasantry; in part a cultivated and very rich corn land, with wretched villages of mud perched on eminences whence the breeze is better felt. To the new comer these hamlets, most of which represent sites older than the time of Joshua, have a deserted appearance. The eye misses the contrast between roof and wall, and the glazed windows and wooden doors seen in Europe. ”

“ Shechem is a fine well-watered city. Damascus is bedded in gardens, and bristles with minarets, but there is nothing in the site or architecture of Jerusalem, as a whole, which can save it from the imputation of ugliness.
Going down David Street and through the fruit bazaar, with its background of arches, wooden balconies, marble portals brown with age, and fragments of Crusading architecture, you come at length through a bye-lane to the Jews’ wailing-place—a narrow street with the high Temple rampart rising on the east. All along the narrow court the Jews are crowded on Friday. ”

“ Descending from our mountain camp, we rode north-west, over the well-watered plain, with its long rows of poplars, narrow strips of green turf beside the streams, and long vineyards, with vines trained into little bushes, as in Burgundy. Thence we ascended a rugged path over the grey rocky slopes of Anti-Lebanon, and our view extended over the broad brown Bukei’a, and as far as the long gleaming ridge of Lebanon, “the milk-white mountain,” the outline of which is broken by cones and rounded tops, whilst below a dusky fringe of brushwood creeps up the slopes. ”

“ Not less affecting was the aspect of the congregation, many with sad pale faces telling of no common histories. One man especially used to draw my attention; light haired, pale, gaunt, and shabby, kneeling with his little taper in one hand, the other held out in an attitude of entreaty; his wild eyes were fixed on the marble Tomb, as though he could hardly believe that, after many miles of journey, he at last really beheld the Holy Sepulchre. In him one might fancy a penitent of the old Crusading times, sent on pilgrimage to expiate some great crime ”

“ Their bugles blow a monotonous tune, to which the drums keep time, and the men tread, not in step, but in good cadence to the music. If it be Easter, the native crowd is mingled with the hosts of Armenian and Russian pilgrims, the first ruddy and stalwart, their women handsome and black-eyed, the men fierce and dark; the Russians, yet stronger in build and more barbarian in air, distinguished from every other nationality by their unkempt beards, their long locks, their great fur caps, and boots. ”

“ Situate at the end of the ridge, five hundred feet above the sea, reached by a steep ascent of steps, and guarded by a carefully-constructed entrance to the courtyard and by savage dogs, the old monastery stands facing the fresh breeze, and surrounded by vineyards and gardens, among which small chapels are dedicated to the Virgin, to St. John Baptist, and to St. Theresa, patroness of the bare-footed or reformed Carmelites. The huge pile, square and lofty, with a dome to its chapel and a broad flat roof, looks more like a castle than a house of devotion. ”

“ Long trains of camels came in, and the swarthy Bedawîn wrangled with the soldiers at the gate. The market-girls from Bethlehem appeared under David’s Tower, and, as the crowd thickened, black priests in saucepan-like hats jostled sickly Jews, with fur caps, long lovelocks, and dirty gabardines. The heavily-shod, unkempt Russian pilgrims mingled with sleek Rabbis, with Europeans, and German residents; Armenians with apple-cheeks and broad red sashes, and fierce Kurds with long moustachios and swords, were also numerous. ”

“ Our camp was west of the place, and looked out on the white mosque of ’Azz ed Dîn with its minaret, the great threshing-floor with its heaps of yellow grain, the beautiful gardens of palms, oranges, and tamarisks set in cactus hedges, while behind, on the east, was the stony range of Gilboa, on the north the brown plain, the blue Nazareth hills, the volcanic cone of Jebel Dŭhy, and the shoulder of Carmel towards the west. ”

“ Immutability is the most striking law of Eastern life. The Bible becomes a living record to those who have heard in men{198}’s mouths the very phrases of the Bible characters. The name of every village almost is Hebrew, each stands on the great dust-heap into which the ancient buildings beneath its present cabins have crumbled, and the old necropolis is cut in rock, near the modern site. For thousands of years the people have gone on living in the same way and in the same place, venerating (perhaps in ignorance) the same shrines, building their fortresses on the same vantage-ground. ”

“ A Christian basilica once stood close to the Sun Temple; but its dimensions are dwarfed by the huge columns, which seem to bear witness to the grandeur of the genius of their Roman founder, dwarfing the puny attempts of Byzantine art and intellect. The church is all gone, except the foundations. The great pillars of the Sun Temple have fallen one by one; but six weather-beaten survivors still resist the fury of the winter and the constant eating away of the frost, though their bases have all been sapped by the natives, in seeking for the metal cores run into the joints. ”

“ All is bare and treeless, as at Mar Saba. The wild pigeon makes its nest in the “secret places of the stairs” of rock; the black grackle suns its golden wings above them; the eagle soars higher still, and over the caves by the deep pools the African kingfisher flutters; the ibex also still haunts the rocks. Even in autumn the murmuring of water is heard beneath, and the stream was one day swelled by a thunderstorm in a quarter of an hour, until it became a raging torrent, in some places eight or ten feet deep.
The mouth of the pass is also remarkable ”

“ A steep slope of débris lay at their feet, and beneath this was a second line of white terrace—the Siddim cliffs, which are shores of a former lake. A dark, square, rocky promontory was capped by a building conspicuous against the sky-line, being part of the fortress of Masada, and yet farther off the salt mountain of Usdûm, and the blue range of the Arabah closed the view, but were half hidden by the smoke of burning reeds in the marshes south of the lake. ”

“ Jerusalem is a very ugly city. It is badly built of mean stone houses perched on the slope of the watershed, and seems in constant danger of sliding into the Kedron Valley. Beautiful bits of architecture are to be admired in its interior—the Gothic façade of the Holy Sepulchre, the grand walls of the Temple, the glowing interior of the mosque; the view towards the east is also very fine, a long wall of far-off mountains, with a foreground of embattled parapets and slender minarets standing out against the distance. ”

“ I have attended many religious services, Christian, Jewish, and Moslem, but none more remarkable for barbaric grandeur and pomp. The songs of Latin monks, the shrill nasal clamour of the Armenians, the Jewish gesticulation, are all far less dignified than the solemn chants of the Russian cathedral. The fanaticism of the pilgrims, drawn from the lowest and most ignorant peasant class, surpasses anything in Christendom, and is only equalled by that of the Moslems. ”

“ The miserable fields are fenced in with stone walls, the hovels are rudely built of stone, the hill to the east is of hard rock, with only a few scattered fig-gardens, the ancient sepulchres are cut in a low cliff, and a great reservoir south of the village is excavated in rock. The place seems as it were turned to stone, and we can well imagine that the lonely patriarch found nothing softer than a stone for the pillow under his head, when on the bare hill side he slept, and dreamed of angels. ”

“ The Zerka is a deep perennial stream, fringed with rushes and full of Syrian papyrus, forming a blue pool in one place where it is dammed across to collect its waters, and thence rushing down, even in autumn, in a strong stream to the sea; its mouth is guarded by a Crusading fort, and near it are the remains of a Crusading bridge. North and south of the stream there are large marshes, full of tamarisk and of tall canes. The clear springs, under the hills, are perennial, and by them are remains of a Roman theatre at Mâmâs, which has been converted later into a fortress. ”

“ At Nazareth, in 1872, we witnessed two of these wedding processions, or Zeffehs—one Christian, one Moslem.
First came a group of women clapping their hands in time, and uttering the Zaghârît, or shrill ululations, commonly used as a mark either of joy or of sorrow. Most of them wore over their heads the black cloak with an embroidered border; their palms were dyed with henna, and they had the moon-shaped tire as above described, and tight-fitting bodices of silk, gleaming with red, green, yellow, blue, and purple, in stripes and patches. ”

“ Such a valley, with its cool brook and clear springs, its broad cornfields and patches of turf, its flocks and herds, we may suppose David to have in remembrance in the twenty-third Psalm. On either side the slopes are covered by the oak-forest, and innumerable wild doves find shelter for their nests among the branches. For quiet beauty we saw nothing in Palestine equal to this valley, up which in 1875 we ran the levels, thus visiting it day after day for more than a week. ”

“ The ridge of Gilboa appears farther south, cliff above cliff, tilted eastwards and shelving down gently to the plain on the west. Turn-to the right the eye follows the broken outline of mountains rising into the volcanic cone of Sheikh Iskander, and farther on, the whole range of Carmel, in its length of twelve miles, is stretched dark and wooded from the Peak of the Sacrifice to the Convent{78} promontory where Haifa nestles at its feet. Over the ridge far south the gleaming sea appears; to the north is the hollow bay of Acre with its white circle of surf, the town itself not visible ”

“ They erected a magnificent church over a spring in the valley north of the village, dedicated to Saint Jeremiah of Anathoth, and this structure remains almost intact. On its walls the dim shadows of former frescoed paintings can be traced, and over these the names of pilgrims rudely scrawled like those of the modern tourists. The church is peculiar from the careless manner in which it has been constructed, the walls not being at right angles; thus the east wall is two and a half feet longer than the west, as we found in making the plan. ”

“ Ascending the steep and slippery track, we reached the soft white chalk which forms the upper portion of the range, and which produces all round Nazareth a neighbourhood of bare, white, rolling hills, quite distinct from the bold mountains of Upper Galilee and from the oak-clad downs near Carmel. Here in the valley which we were{72} following is a beautiful garden or orchard; oranges, figs, nuts, lemons, and pomegranates grow beside a spring, the rich green contrasting with the glaring white of the chalk and the brown of the burnt grass between the ledges. ”

“ Northwards the conical point of Neby Samwîl, crowned with its minaret, is a conspicuous object, and in the evening when the long shadows steal up the rugged hillsides, and the western slopes are ruddy in the setting sun, the breadth and grandeur of the colouring of the wild shapeless mountains is extremely striking, and grows upon one every time the scene opens before one’s eyes.
The first approach to Jerusalem from the west is decidedly disappointing. From the east, north, and south, the aged walls, the mosque, and Holy Sepulchre, come into view at some distance, and the scene is striking ”

“ In the conformation of the Judean hills the secret of the immense vitality of the Jewish nationality is probably to be found. Had the capital of Judea been placed at Cæsarea, on the high-road from Greece to Egypt—had it even been permanently fixed at Shechem, accessible through the open valley of Samaria, it cannot be doubted that Greek or Egyptian influence would have affected far more the manners and religion of the Jews. Remote and inaccessible in its rugged mountains, Jerusalem was removed from the highway by which the hosts of the Pharaohs advanced on Assyria. ”