Mount of Olives

“ OLIVES, MOUNT OF, or Mount Olivet (Ὄρος Ἐλαιῶνος or τῶν Ἐλαιῶν; mod. Jebel-eṭ-Ṭur) , the ridge facing the Temple Mount at Jerusalem on the east, and separated from it by the Kidron. A basis of hard cretaceous limestone is topped with softer deposits of the same, quaternary deposits forming the summit. ”

“ The olive-tree attains to a great age: some specimens on the Mount of Olives are estimated to have been 2,000 years in existence. Olives, commonly pickled in brine, are chiefly used in England for dessert or between courses, to remove the flavour of the viands previously eaten. ”

“ We cast our eyes back frequently from the top of every hill which we passed on this mournful and desolate region, and at length we saw for the last time, the crown of olives which surmounts the Mount of the same name, and which long rises above the horizon after you have lost sight of the town itself. ”

“ Even men without a gospel have their Mount of Olives. And one must not fall asleep on theirs either. ”

“ The watershed between the Mediterranean and the deep cleft of the Jordan Valley runs roughly north and south, through the Mount of Olives. Some description of the difficulties of the country on the west of the watershed has already been given. On the east side they are very much greater. The streams that run down from the mountains to the plain have cut gorges through the rock, often many hundreds of feet deep, which divide the eastern portion of the range into a series of parallel ridges running east and west. ”

“ All along outside this wall the ground falls away into the southern valley; and upon the dreary and stony steep opposite is the place called Acaldama. Wall and valley turn together round the corner of the great temple platform, and confronting the eastern wall, across the ravine, is the mighty wall of the Mount of Olives. ”

“ Farther up the slopes of Neapolis and Epipolai straggle great rocky groves of uncanny, fantastically shaped old olives, the most disreputable-looking tenants of the soil imaginable. They are whorled like an oak, knobbed like an apple tree, split full of holes, leaning at all angles ”

“ Then, far down the valley, and clothing an amphitheatre of hills and mountains, are groves of olives, with their soft velvet folds, mass overlapping mass of tender, dim green, shimmering all over with silver touches, as the air stirred the branches, and turned upwards the inner lining of the leaves—after which all other foliage is apt to look crude and hard. The blue sea lies beyond, and the sharp, purple outline of the Estrelle; while to the right the mountains fade off further and further, ending in snow-capt heights. ”

“ The sun climbs the sky till its rays are so hot that even Riviera men and women are fain to fly from it for an hour or so, while they eat the merenda, and sleep [86] their own calm sleep beneath the shadows of rock or fig-tree. The olives shine silver-white in the fair beams that ripen their fruit; aloes and palms flourish, broad pines are darkly green and perfumed; in bays and upon burning rocks the colour-laden water ebbs quietly. ”

“ In Spain it may be said to be the favorite olive, but in some of the northern provinces where the tree is out of its element it gives no fruit at all but only attains a colossal size and hence is classed by the country people as a wild tree. But as we shall proceed to show it has none of the attributes of the wild tree, so far from it that it is one of the "oil press olives," one of the varieties most highly domesticated and cultivated that the world knows. ”

“ Wandering there, and seeing the pale flowers, stars white and pink and odorous, we dream of Olivet, or the grave Garden of the Agony, and the trees seem always whispering of sacred things. How people can blaspheme against the olives, and call them imitations of the willow, or complain that they are shabby shrubs, I do not know. ”

“ The blossom of the olive groves was succeeded by tiny green olives which swelled in the heat until they were ready to yield their rich oil which was so welcome to the people of other lands. Artists worked happily on the plaster walls, laying on their colours to delight the eye, potters kneaded their clay until it was as butter under the ball of the thumb. ”

“ But the cultivation is of a desultory nature, and the olives are its best harvest, of which the small, sturdy trees stand over the terraces with gnarled trunks and twisted branches. Following the path that leads up to the flat of a ridge, you can reach pine-plantations, where dark and widely-spreading trees stand in the soft earth on the cliffs’ edge and on the side also where inland scenery comes in sight, with church-steeples and houses dotted [128] over a valley’s expanse. ”

“ Yet it is mid-winter, and we are going to witness a thoroughly winter occupation; the making of the olive-oil in a villa at a little distance out of Florence.
Leaving the tram at the foot of the hill, we climb for about three-quarters of an hour through vineyards in which the fresh green of the springing wheat contrasts hopefully with the knotted, bare vine branches. The slopes around us are clothed with olives, whose grey-green is thrown into relief by the austere rows of cypresses in the distance, and the spreading tops of the pine-trees on the further hills. ”

“ There are great plantations of olives, each tree clipped and pruned like a rare shrub in a conservatory, every branch and almost every twig at an even distance from the next, so as to get the maximum of air and sun to the buds and the fruit. ”

“ If I follow on southward to Provence, whither I am borne upon the scuds of rain over Turner's pictures, and the pretty Bourbonnois, and the green mountains of Auvergne, I find all the characteristic literature of that land of olives is only of love or war: the vines, the olive-orchards, and the yellow hill-sides pass for nothing. ”

“ This, of a reddish tinge tipped with bright light, looked like a mass of porphyry against the amethyst colour of the mountain shadows.
When olives are plentiful the gathering lasts for several months, beginning in October nor ending till February, and it is a charmingly picturesque sight. Men standing round a tree beat down the fruit with long wands, then they climb up to beat and shake the branches, till all the berries have fallen. ”

“ In Rome and Tuscany, the superstitious peasants imagine that no witch or sorcerer will enter a house where an Olive-branch that has been blessed is kept, and in order to ascertain whether they are suffering from the dire effects of an Evil Eye, they drop some Olive-oil in water, and from the appearance satisfy themselves on the point.——To dream of Olive-trees or Olives is considered a good omen, denoting happiness, prosperity, and success, and a speedy marriage to the lover ”

“ The only thing that I can remember against the landscape is the prevalence of olive orchards. I hailed as a relief the stubble-fields immeasurably spread at times, and I did not always resent the roadside planting of some sort of tall hedges which now and then hid the olives. But olive orchards may vary their monotony by the spectacle of peasants on ladders gathering their fruit into wide-mouthed sacks, and occasionally their ranks of symmetrical green may be broken by the yellow and red of poplars and pomegranates around the pleasant farmsteads. ”

“ On the heights the soil is rocky, but nevertheless planted with olive-trees wherever there is the smallest patch of soil to receive them. Next we drove over a plain covered with olive-trees, and then through a small town. We here noticed altars, ancient tombstones, and fragments of every kind built up in the walls of the pleasure-houses in the gardens. Then the lower stories of ancient villas, once excellently built, but now filled up with earth, and overgrown with olives. At last we caught a sight of Vesuvius, with a cloud of smoke resting on its brow. ”

“ He would report that the climate was mild; the hills were limestone; there was plenty of good marble; more pasture land than at first survey might have been expected, sufficient certainly for sheep and goats; fisheries productive; silver mines once, but long since worked out; figs fair; oil first-rate; olives in profusion. But what he would not think of noting down, was, that that olive tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it excited a religious veneration ”

“ Olives are around her dwelling, for it stands on the nether slopes, where the fir’s fragrance from above scarce reaches; their fine branches and crooked stems rest traced upon the sky, and into their grey tones fig-trees bring brighter green for contrast, though brightest of all are the vines that twine beneath. The blue-grey smoke curls above the green-grey trees, to show where the lace-weaver lives; a rough spring flows freshly out of the earth beside her cottage, with wooden trough to guide its stream into the brick basin, and thence into the beans and potatoes of her garden ”

“ The Mediterranean is the home of the Myrtle and Olive, of Oranges and Lemons, of Figs and Vines, of Almonds and 116 Raisins, as well as of many other important and interesting plants.
The olive crop in Italy yields about ninety millions of gallons of olive-oil every year. The olives are collected as soon as they become ripe, and are crushed in circular stone troughs with a perpendicular millstone. ”

“ The plain is not an illimitable expanse over which the weary eye ranges in vain in quest of some resting-place, but is so small as to be embraced in its whole contour in a single view, while its separate features—the broad, dense belt of olives which marks the bed of its principal stream, the ancient Cephisus, the vineyards, the grain-fields, and the sunny hill-side pastures—are made to produce their full impression. The mountains are not near enough to be obtrusive, much less oppressive ”

“ At the foot of the hill is the garden kept by the Franciscans on the alleged site of Gethsemane, and containing the hoary olive that is supposed to be the terrible tree of the agony of Christ. Given the great age and slow growth of the olives, the tradition is not so unreasonable as some may suppose. But whether or not it is historically right, it is not artistically wrong. The instinct, if it was only an instinct, that made men fix upon this strange growth of grey and twisted wood, was a true imaginative instinct. ”

“ I learnt from him and other Greek merchants here, the following particulars respecting the cultivation of the olive-tree in Mytilene.
It appears that the natives are so ignorant and indolent that they take little pains to improve what nature has bestowed so abundantly, for the olive-tree grows wild all over the island. The cultivated tree is usually grafted on a young vigorous wild stock. Olives like a rich clay; they flourish on the sides of hills and in valleys formed by the alluvial deposit from mountains; but there should always be a free circulation of air. ”

“ Every olive tree here is worth from fifteen to twenty piastres. The soil in which the trees grow is regularly ploughed, but nothing is sown between the trees, as it is found that any other vegetation diminishes the quantity of olives. The ground round the stem is covered to the height of two or three feet with earth, to prevent the sun from hurting the roots, and to give it the full benefit of the rains. We met with a few tents of Arabs Zereykat and El Hayb, who were pasturing their sheep upon the wild herbs by the road side. ”

“ Well, I also, in my life’s experience, have planted olives and watched them grow; and if I were to return to the spot, doubtless by this time I might reap some of the fruit of my labour. Who knows? perhaps the contents of this jar were gathered from those very identical trees! The thought is a pleasant one to myself, and will impart an extra relish to the flavour. That was in a large oil district in Syria, where the whole of the high land was devoted to the cultivation of the olive tree, both for the sake of the fruit and the oil it yields ”

“ To temper too warm a climate water seems to be resorted to. In the Island of Candia in the Mediterranean on the thirty-fourth parallel the olives fruit regularly when watered, if they receive no water it is quite doubtful if the flowers set or not. ”

“ Consociation offers the great advantage of getting some return from the soil during the lengthened youth of this tree, which when it has grown to a sufficient size, the vine plot commences to age, and, disappearing by degrees, leaves the olive sole occupant of the soil. When the olives grow to a large size, and are planted near to each other, or in places where the ground is poor, other crops are not usually grown. With these two exceptions, the ground under the trees is generally utilized. At Grasse and Nice, they associate together the olive and the fig, and other fruit trees ”

“ On the slopes of the northern Apennines, olives are the usual forest timber; the whole of the Val d’Arno is wooded with them, every one of its gardens is filled with them, and they grow in orchard-like ranks out of its fields of maize, or corn, or vine; so that it is physically impossible, in most parts of the neighborhood of Florence, Pistoja, Lucca, or Pisa, to choose any site of landscape which shall not owe its leading character to the foliage of these trees. What the elm and oak are to England, the olive is to Italy ”

“ The happy dreamer imagines olive oil the Philosopher’s stone, and is sure that now, with these olive trees of Dungeness, and the young ones he is planting at Fernandina, the future of Florida is secure. And, indeed, so far as being able to grow olives and make oil is concerned, it is. The orchard here has received no attention since the flight of the Rebel owners, but the olive crop this year, in spite of the neglect, will be good, and the trees look vigorous and hardy. ”

“ This will give a far better result than crowding an acre with over a hundred olives trees. The olive under favorable conditions is a prolific bearer but too much crowding stunts the trees and exhausts the soil. The result is seen in weak and puny trees that bear no fruit. ”