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OUT-OF-DOORS IN THE HOLY LAND
* * * * *
BOOKS BY HENRY VAN DYKE
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+THE RULING PASSION.+ Illustrated in color. $1.50
+THE BLUE FLOWER.+ Illustrated in color. $1.50
* * * * *
+OUTDOORS IN THE HOLY LAND.+ Illustrated in
color _net_ $1.50
+DAYS OFF.+ Illustrated in color. $1.50
+LITTLE RIVERS.+ Illustrated in color. $1.50
+FISHERMAN'S LUCK.+ Illustrated in color. $1.50
* * * * *
+THE BUILDERS, AND OTHER POEMS.+ $1.00
+MUSIC, AND OTHER POEMS.+ _net_ $1.00
+THE TOILING OF FELIX, AND OTHER POEMS.+ $1.00
* * * * *
[Illustration: The Gate of David, Jerusalem.]
OUT-OF-DOORS IN THE HOLY LAND
Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit
by
HENRY VAN DYKE
Illustrated
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
MDCCCCVIII
Copyright, 1908, by Charles Scribner's Sons
Published November, 1908
To
HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER
MASTER OF MERWICK
PROFESSOR OF ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY
WHO WAS A FRIEND TO THIS JOURNEY
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
BY HIS FRIEND
THE AUTHOR
PREFACE
For a long time, in the hopefulness and confidence of youth, I dreamed
of going to Palestine. But that dream was denied, for want of money and
leisure.
Then, for a long time, in the hardening strain of early manhood, I was
afraid to go to Palestine, lest the journey should prove a
disenchantment, and some of my religious beliefs be rudely shaken,
perhaps destroyed. But that fear was removed by a little voyage to the
gates of death, where it was made clear to me that no belief is worth
keeping unless it can bear the touch of reality.
In that year of pain and sorrow, through a full surrender to the Divine
Will, the hopefulness and confidence of youth came back to me. Since
then it has been possible once more to wake in the morning with the
feeling that the day might bring something new and wonderful and
welcome, and to travel into the future with a whole and happy heart.
This is what I call growing younger; though the years increase, yet the
burden of them is lessened, and the fear that life will some day lead
into an empty prison-house has been cast out by the incoming of the
Perfect Love.
So it came to pass that when a friend offered me, at last, the
opportunity of going to Palestine if I would give him my impressions of
travel for his magazine, I was glad to go. Partly because there was a
piece of work,--a drama whose scene lies in Damascus and among the
mountains of Samaria,--that I wanted to finish there; partly because of
the expectancy that on such a journey any of the days might indeed bring
something new and wonderful and welcome; but most of all because I
greatly desired to live for a little while in the country of Jesus,
hoping to learn more of the meaning of His life in the land where it was
spent, and lost, and forever saved.
Here, then, you have the history of this little book, reader: and if it
pleases you to look further into its pages, you can see for yourself how
far my dreams and hopes were realised.
It is the record of a long journey in the spirit and a short voyage in
the body. If you find here impressions that are lighter, mingled with
those that are deeper, that is because life itself is really woven of
such contrasted threads. Even on a pilgrimage small adventures happen.
Of the elders of Israel on Sinai it is written, "They saw God and did
eat and drink"; and the Apostle Paul was not too much engrossed with his
mission to send for the cloak and books and parchments that he left
behind at Troas.
If what you read here makes you wish to go to the Holy Land, I shall be
glad; and if you go in the right way, you surely will not be
disappointed.
But there are two things in the book which I would not have you miss.
The first is the new conviction,--new at least to me,--that Christianity
is an out-of-doors religion. From the birth in the grotto at Bethlehem
(where Joseph and Mary took refuge because there was no room for them in
the inn) to the crowning death on the hill of Calvary outside the city
wall, all of its important events took place out-of-doors. Except the
discourse in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, all of its great words,
from the sermon on the mount to the last commission to the disciples,
were spoken in the open air. How shall we understand it unless we carry
it under the free sky and interpret it in the companionship of nature?
The second thing that I would have you find here is the deepened sense
that Jesus Himself is the great, the imperishable miracle. His words are
spirit and life. His character is the revelation of the Perfect Love.
This was the something new and wonderful and welcome that came to me in
Palestine: a simpler, clearer, surer view of the human life of God.
HENRY VAN DYKE.
Avalon,
June 10, 1908.
CONTENTS
I. _Travellers' Joy_ 1
II. _Going up to Jerusalem_ 23
III. _The Gates of Zion_ 45
IV. _Mizpah and the Mount of Olives_ 67
V. _An Excursion to Bethlehem and Hebron_ 83
VI. _The Temple and the Sepulchre_ 105
VII. _Jericho and Jordan_ 125
VIII. _A Journey to Jerash_ 151
IX. _The Mountains of Samaria_ 191
X. _Galilee and the Lake_ 217
XI. _The Springs of Jordan_ 259
XII. _The Road to Damascus_ 291
ILLUSTRATIONS
_The Gate of David, Jerusalem_ Frontispiece
_Jaffa_ Facing page 14
_The port where King Solomon landed his cedar beams
from Lebanon for the building of the Temple_
_The Tall Tower of the Forty Martyrs at Ramleh_ 28
_A Street in Jerusalem_ 60
_A Street in Bethlehem_ 86
_The Market-place, Bethlehem_ 90
_Great Monastery of St. George_ 136
_Ruins of Jerash, Looking West_ 184
_Propyloeum and Temple terrace_
_The Virgin's Fountain, Nazareth_ 232
_The Approach to Baniyas_ 276
_Bridge Over the River Litani_ 282
_A Small Bazaar in Damascus_ 316
I
TRAVELLERS' JOY
I
INVITATION
Who would not go to Palestine?
To look upon that little stage where the drama of humanity has centred
in such unforgetable scenes; to trace the rugged paths and ancient
highways along which so many heroic and pathetic figures have travelled;
above all, to see with the eyes as well as with the heart
"Those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
Which, nineteen hundred years ago, were nail'd
For our advantage on the bitter cross"--
for the sake of these things who would not travel far and endure many
hardships?
It is easy to find Palestine. It lies in the south-east corner of the
Mediterranean coast, where the "sea in the midst of the nations," makes
a great elbow between Asia Minor and Egypt. A tiny land, about a hundred
and fifty miles long and sixty miles wide, stretching in a fourfold
band from the foot of snowy Hermon and the Lebanons to the fulvous crags
of Sinai: a green strip of fertile plain beside the sea, a blue strip of
lofty and broken highlands, a gray-and-yellow strip of sunken
river-valley, a purple strip of high mountains rolling away to the
Arabian desert. There are a dozen lines of steamships to carry you
thither; a score of well-equipped agencies to conduct you on what they
call "a _de luxe_ religious expedition to Palestine."
But how to find the Holy Land--ah, that is another question.
Fierce and mighty nations, hundreds of human tribes, have trampled
through that coveted corner of the earth, contending for its possession:
and the fury of their fighting has swept the fields as with fire.
Temples and palaces have vanished like tents from the hillside. The
ploughshare of havoc has been driven through the gardens of luxury.
Cities have risen and crumbled upon the ruins of older cities. Crust
after crust of pious legend has formed over the deep valleys; and
tradition has set up its altars "upon every high hill and under every
green tree." The rival claims of sacred places are fiercely disputed by
churchmen and scholars. It is a poor prophet that has but one birthplace
and one tomb.
And now, to complete the confusion, the hurried, nervous, comfort-loving
spirit of modern curiosity has broken into Palestine, with railways from
Jaffa to Jerusalem, from Mount Carmel to the Sea of Galilee, from Beirut
to Damascus,--with macadamized roads to Shechem and Nazareth and
Tiberias,--with hotels at all the "principal points of interest,"--and
with every facility for doing Palestine in ten days, without getting
away from the market-reports, the gossip of the _table d'hote_, and all
that queer little complex of distracting habits which we call
civilization.
But the Holy Land which I desire to see can be found only by escaping
from these things. I want to get away from them; to return into the long
past, which is also the hidden present, and to lose myself a little
there, to the end that I may find myself again. I want to make
acquaintance with the soul of that land where so much that is strange
and memorable and for ever beautiful has come to pass: to walk quietly
and humbly, without much disputation or talk, in fellowship with the
spirit that haunts those hills and vales, under the influence of that
deep and lucent sky. I want to feel that ineffable charm which breathes
from its mountains, meadows and streams: that charm which made the
children of Israel in the desert long for it as a land flowing with milk
and honey; and the great Prince Joseph in Egypt require an oath of his
brethren that they would lay his bones in the quiet vale of Shechem
where he had fed his father's sheep; and the daughters of Jacob beside
the rivers of Babylon mingle tears with their music when they remembered
Zion.
There was something in that land, surely, some personal and indefinable
spirit of place, which was known and loved by prophet and psalmist, and
most of all by Him who spread His table on the green grass, and taught
His disciples while they walked the narrow paths waist-deep in rustling
wheat, and spoke His messages of love from a little boat rocking on the
lake, and found His asylum of prayer high on the mountainside, and kept
His parting-hour with His friends in the moon-silvered quiet of the
garden of olives. That spirit of place, that soul of the Holy Land, is
what I fain would meet on my pilgrimage,--for the sake of Him who
interprets it in love. And I know well where to find it,--out-of-doors.
I will not sleep under a roof in Palestine, but nightly pitch my
wandering tent beside some fountain, in some grove or garden, on some
vacant threshing-floor, beneath the Syrian stars. I will not join myself
to any company of labelled tourists hurrying with much discussion on
their appointed itinerary, but take into fellowship three tried and
trusty comrades, that we may enjoy solitude together. I will not seek to
make any archaeological discovery, nor to prove any theological theory,
but simply to ride through the highlands of Judea, and the valley of
Jordan, and the mountains of Gilead, and the rich plains of Samaria, and
the grassy hills of Galilee, looking upon the faces and the ways of the
common folk, the labours of the husbandman in the field, the vigils of
the shepherd on the hillside, the games of the children in the
market-place, and reaping
"The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart."
Four things, I know, are unchanged amid all the changes that have passed
over the troubled and bewildered land. The cities have sunken into dust:
the trees of the forest have fallen: the nations have dissolved. But the
mountains keep their immutable outline: the liquid stars shine with the
same light, move on the same pathways: and between the mountains and the
stars, two other changeless things, frail and imperishable,--the flowers
that flood the earth in every springtide, and the human heart where
hopes and longings and affections and desires blossom immortally.
Chiefly of these things, and of Him who gave them a new meaning, I will
speak to you, reader, if you care to go with me out-of-doors in the Holy
Land.
II
MOVING PICTURES
Of the voyage, made with all the swiftness and directness of one who
seeks the shortest distance between two points, little remains in memory
except a few moving pictures, vivid and half-real, as in a
kinematograph.
First comes a long, swift ship, the _Deutschland_, quivering and rolling
over the dull March waves of the Atlantic. Then the morning sunlight
streams on the jagged rocks of the Lizard, where two wrecked steamships
are hanging, and on the green headlands and gray fortresses of Plymouth.
Then a soft, rosy sunset over the mole, the dingy houses, the tiled
roofs, the cliffs, the misty-budded trees of Cherbourg. Then Paris at
two in the morning: the lower quarters still stirring with
somnambulistic life, the lines of lights twinkling placidly on the empty
boulevards. Then a whirl through the _Bois_ in a motor-car, a breakfast
at Versailles with a merry little party of friends, a lazy walk through
miles of picture-galleries without a guide-book or a care. Then the
night express for Italy, a glimpse of the Alps at sunrise, snow all
around us, the thick darkness of the Mount Cenis tunnel, the bright
sunshine of Italian spring, terraced hillsides, clipped and pollarded
trees, waking vineyards and gardens, Turin, Genoa, Rome, arches of
ruined aqueducts, snow upon the Southern Apennines, the blooming fields
of Capua, umbrella-pines and silvery poplars, and at last, from my
balcony at the hotel, the glorious curving panorama of the bay of
Naples, Vesuvius without a cloud, and Capri like an azure lion couchant
on the broad shield of the sea. So ends the first series of films, ten
days from home.
* * * * *
After an intermission of twenty-four hours, the second series begins on
the white ship _Oceana_, an immense yacht, ploughing through the
tranquil, sapphire Mediterranean, with ten passengers on board, and the
band playing three times a day just as usual. Then comes the low line of
the African coast, the lighthouse of Alexandria, the top of Pompey's
Pillar showing over the white, modern city.
Half a dozen little rowboats meet us, well out at sea, buffeted and
tossed by the waves: they are fishing: see! one of the men has a strike,
he pulls in his trolling-line, hand over hand, very slowly, it seems, as
the steamship rushes by. I lean over the side, run to the stern of the
ship to watch,--hurrah, he pulls in a silvery fish nearly three feet
long. Good luck to you, my Egyptian brother of the angle!
Now a glimpse of the crowded, busy harbour of Alexandria, (recalling
memories of fourteen years ago,) and a leisurely trans-shipment to the
little Khedivial steamer, _Prince Abbas_, with her Scotch officers,
Italian stewards, Maltese doctor, Turkish sailors, and freight-handlers
who come from whatever places it has pleased Heaven they should be born
in. The freight is variegated, and the third-class passengers are a
motley crowd.
A glance at the forward main-deck shows Egyptians in white cotton, and
Turks in the red fez, and Arabs in white and brown, and coal-black
Soudanese, and nondescript Levantines, and Russians in fur coats and
lamb's-wool caps, and Greeks in blue embroidered jackets, and women in
baggy trousers and black veils, and babies, and cats, and parrots. Here
is a tall, venerable grandfather, with spectacles and a long gray beard,
dressed in a black robe with a hood and a yellow scarf; grave,
patriarchal, imperturbable: his little granddaughter, a pretty elf of a
child, with flower-like face and shining eyes, dances hither and yon
among the chaos of freight and luggage; but as the chill of evening
descends she takes shelter between his knees, under the folds of his
long robe, and, while he feeds her with bread and sweetmeats, keeps up a
running comment of remarks and laughter at all around her, and the
unspeakable solemnity of old Father Abraham's face is lit up, now and
then, with the flicker of a resistless smile.
Here are two bronzed Arabs of the desert, in striped burnoose and white
kaftan, stretched out for the night upon their rugs of many colours.
Between them lies their latest purchase, a brand-new patent
carpet-sweeper, made in Ohio, and going, who knows where among the hills
of Bashan.
A child dies in the night, on the voyage; in the morning, at anchor in
the mouth of the Suez Canal, we hear the carpenter hammering together a
little pine coffin. All day Sunday the indescribable traffic of Port
Said passes around us; ships of all nations coming and going; a big
German Lloyd boat just home from India crowded with troops in khaki,
band playing, flags flying; huge dredgers, sombre, oxlike-looking
things, with lines of incredibly dirty men in fluttering rags running up
the gang-planks with bags of coal on their backs; rowboats shuttling to
and fro between the ships and the huddled, transient, modern town, which
is made up of curiosity shops, hotels, business houses and dens of
iniquity; a row of Egyptian sail boats, with high prows, low sides, long
lateen yards, ranged along the entrance to the canal. At sunset we steam
past the big statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, standing far out on the
break-water and pointing back with a dramatic gesture to his
world-transforming ditch. Then we go dancing over the yellow waves into
the full moonlight toward Palestine.
* * * * *
In the early morning I clamber on deck into a thunderstorm: wild west
wind, rolling billows, flying gusts of rain, low clouds hanging over the
sand-hills of the coast: a harbourless shore, far as eye can see, a
land that makes no concession to the ocean with bay or inlet, but cries,
"Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther; and here shall thy proud
waves be stayed." There are the flat-roofed houses, and the orange
groves, and the minaret, and the lighthouse of Jaffa, crowning its
rounded hill of rock. We are tossing at anchor a mile from the shore.
Will the boats come out to meet us in this storm, or must we go on to
Haifa, fifty miles beyond? Rumour says that the police have refused to
permit the boats to put out. But look, here they come, half a dozen open
whale-boats, each manned by a dozen lusty, bare-legged, brown rowers,
buffeting their way between the scattered rocks, leaping high on the
crested waves. The chiefs of the crews scramble on board the steamer,
identify the passengers consigned to the different tourist-agencies,
sort out the baggage and lower it into the boats.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Jaffa. The port where King Solomon landed his cedar beams
from Lebanon for the building of the Temple.]
My tickets, thus far, have been provided by the great Cook, and I fall
to the charge of his head boatman, a dusky demon of energy. A slippery
climb down the swaying ladder, a leap into the arms of two sturdy
rowers, a stumble over the wet thwarts, and I find myself in the
stern sheets of the boat. A young Dutchman follows with stolid
suddenness. Two Italian gentlemen, weeping, refuse to descend more than
half-way, climb back, and are carried on to Haifa. A German lady with a
parrot in a cage comes next, and her anxiety for the parrot makes her
forget to be afraid. Then comes a little Polish lady, evidently a bride;
she shuts her eyes tight and drops into the boat, pale, silent, resolved
that she will not scream: her husband follows, equally pale, and she
clings indifferently to his hand and to mine, her eyes still shut, a
pretty image of white courage. The boat pushes off; the rowers smite the
waves with their long oars and sing "Halli--yallah--yah hallah"; the
steersman high in the stern shouts unintelligible (and, I fear, profane)
directions; we are swept along on the tops of the waves, between the
foaming rocks, drenched by spray and flying showers: at last we bump
alongside the little quay, and climb out on the wet, gliddery stones.
The kinematograph pictures are ended, for I am in Palestine, on the
first of April, just fifteen days from home.
III
RENDEZVOUS
Will my friends be here to meet me, I wonder? This is the question which
presses upon me more closely than anything else, I must confess, as I
set foot for the first time upon the sacred soil of Palestine. I know
that this is not as it should be. All the conventions of travel require
the pilgrim to experience a strange curiosity and excitement, a profound
emotion, "a supreme anguish," as an Italian writer describes it, "in
approaching this land long dreamed about, long waited for, and almost
despaired of."
But the conventions of travel do not always correspond to the realities
of the heart. Your first sight of a place may not be your first
perception of it: that may come afterward, in some quiet, unexpected
moment. Emotions do not follow a time-table; and I propose to tell no
lies in this book. My strongest feeling as I enter Jaffa is the desire
to know whether my chosen comrades have come to the rendezvous at the
appointed time, to begin our long ride together.
It is a remote and uncertain combination, I grant you. The Patriarch, a
tall, slender youth of seventy years, whose home is beside the Golden
Gate of California, was wandering among the ruins of Sicily when I last
heard from him. The Pastor and his wife, the Lady of Walla Walla, who
live on the shores of Puget Sound, were riding camels across the
peninsula of Sinai and steamboating up the Nile. Have the letters, the
cablegrams that were sent to them been safely delivered? Have the
hundreds of unknown elements upon which our combination depended been
working secretly together for its success? Has our proposal been
according to the supreme disposal, and have all the roads been kept
clear by which we were hastening from three continents to meet on the
first day of April at the _Hotel du Parc_ in Jaffa?
Yes, here are my three friends, in the quaint little garden of the
hotel, with its purple-flowering vines of Bougainvillea, fragrant
orange-trees, drooping palms, and long-tailed cockatoos drowsing on
their perches. When people really know each other an unfamiliar
meeting-place lends a singular intimacy and joy to the meeting. There
is a surprise in it, no matter how long and carefully it has been
planned. There are a thousand things to talk of, but at first nothing
will come except the wonder of getting together. The sight of the
desired faces, unchanged beneath their new coats of tan, is a happy
assurance that personality is not a dream. The touch of warm hands is a
sudden proof that friendship is a reality.
Presently it begins to dawn upon us that there is something wonderful in
the place of our conjunction, and we realise dimly,--very dimly, I am
sure, and yet with a certain vague emotion of reverence,--where we are.
"We came yesterday," says the Lady, "and in the afternoon we went to see
the House of Simon the Tanner, where they say the Apostle Peter lodged."
"Did it look like the real house?"
"Ah," she answers smilingly, "how do I know? They say there are two of
them. But what do I care? It is certain that we are here. And I think
that St. Peter was here once, too, whether the house he lived in is
standing yet, or not."
Yes, that is reasonably certain; and this is the place where he had his
strange vision of a religion meant for all sorts and conditions of men.
It is certain, also, that this is the port where Solomon landed his
beams of cedar from Lebanon for the building of the Temple, and that the
Emperor Vespasian sacked the town, and that Richard Lionheart planted
the banner of the crusade upon its citadel. But how far away and
dreamlike it all seems, on this spring morning, when the wind is tossing
the fronds of the palm-trees, and the gleams of sunshine are flying
across the garden, and the last clouds of the broken thunderstorm are
racing westward through the blue toward the highlands of Judea.
Here is our new friend, the dragoman George Cavalcanty, known as
"Telhami," the Bethlehemite, standing beside us in the shelter of the
orange-trees: a trim, alert figure, in his belted suit of khaki and his
riding-boots of brown leather.
"Is everything ready for the journey, George?"
"Everything is prepared, according to the instructions you sent from
Avalon. The tents are pitched a little beyond Latrun, twenty miles away.
The horses are waiting at Ramleh. After you have had your mid-day
breakfast, we will drive there in carriages, and get into the saddle,
and ride to our own camp before the night falls."
_A PSALM OF THE DISTANT ROAD_
_Happy is the man that seeth the face of a friend in a far country:
The darkness of his heart is melted in the rising of an inward joy._
_It is like the sound of music heard long ago and half forgotten:
It is like the coming back of birds to a wood that winter hath made bare._
_I knew not the sweetness of the fountain till I found it flowing in
the desert:
Nor the value of a friend till the meeting in a lonely land._
_The multitude of mankind had bewildered me and oppressed me:
And I said to God, Why hast thou made the world so wide?_
_But when my friend came the wideness of the world had no more terror:
Because we were glad together among men who knew us not._
_I was slowly reading a book that was written in a strange language:
And suddenly I came upon a page in mine own familiar tongue._
_This was the heart of my friend that quietly understood me:
The open heart whose meaning was clear without a word._
_O my God whose love followeth all thy pilgrims and strangers:
I praise thee for the comfort of comrades on a distant road._
II
GOING UP TO JERUSALEM
I
"THE EXCELLENCY OF SHARON"
You understand that what we had before us in this first stage of our
journey was a very simple proposition. The distance from Jaffa to
Jerusalem is fifty miles by railway and forty miles by carriage-road.
Thousands of pilgrims and tourists travel it every year; and most of
them now go by the train in about four hours, with advertised stoppages
of three minutes at Lydda, eight minutes at Ramleh, ten minutes at
Sejed, and unadvertised delays at the convenience of the engine. But we
did not wish to get our earliest glimpse of Palestine from a car-window,
nor to begin our travels in a mechanical way. The first taste of a
journey often flavours it to the very end.
The old highroad, which is now much less frequented than formerly, is
very fair as far as Ramleh; and beyond that it is still navigable for
vehicles, though somewhat broken and billowy. Our plan, therefore, was
to drive the first ten miles, where the road was flat and
uninteresting, and then ride the rest of the way. This would enable us
to avoid the advertised rapidity and the uncertain delays of the
railway, and bring us quietly through the hills, about the close of the
second day, to the gates of Jerusalem.
The two victorias rattled through the streets of Jaffa, past the low,
flat-topped Oriental houses, the queer little open shops, the
orange-groves in full bloom, the palm-trees waving their plumes over
garden-walls, and rolled out upon the broad highroad across the fertile,
gently undulating Plain of Sharon. On each side were the neat,
well-cultivated fields and vegetable-gardens of the German colonists
belonging to the sect of the Templers. They are a people of antique
theology and modern agriculture. Believing that the real Christianity is
to be found in the Old Testament rather than in the New, they propose to
begin the social and religious reformation of the world by a return to
the programme of the Minor Prophets. But meantime they conduct their
farming operations in a very profitable way. Their grain-fields, their
fruit-orchards, their vegetable-gardens are trim and orderly, and they
make an excellent wine, which they call "The Treasure of Zion." Their
effect upon the landscape, however, is conventional.
But in spite of the presence and prosperity of the Templers, the spirit
of the scene through which we passed was essentially Oriental. The
straggling hedges of enormous cactus, the rows of plumy
eucalyptus-trees, the budding figs and mulberries, gave it a
semi-tropical touch and along the highway we encountered fragments of
the leisurely, dishevelled, dignified East: grotesque camels, pensive
donkeys carrying incredible loads, flocks of fat-tailed sheep and
lop-eared goats, bronzed peasants in flowing garments, and white-robed
women with veiled faces.
Beneath the tall tower of the forty martyrs at Ramleh (Mohammedan or
Christian, their names are forgotten) we left the carriages, loaded our
luggage on the three pack-mules, mounted our saddle-horses, and rode on
across the plain, one of the fruitful gardens and historic battle-fields
of the world. Here the hosts of the Israelites and the Philistines, the
Egyptians and the Romans, the Persians and the Arabs, the Crusaders and
the Saracens, have marched and contended. But as we passed through the
sun-showers and rain-showers of an April afternoon, all was tranquillity
and beauty on every side. The rolling fields were embroidered with
innumerable flowers. The narcissus, the "rose of Sharon," had faded. But
the little blue "lilies-of-the-valley" were there, and the pink and
saffron mallows, and the yellow and white daisies, and the violet and
snow of the drooping cyclamen, and the gold of the genesta, and the
orange-red of the pimpernel, and, most beautiful of all, the glowing
scarlet of the numberless anemones. Wide acres of young wheat and barley
glistened in the light, as the wind-waves rippled through their short,
silken blades. There were few trees, except now and then an
olive-orchard or a round-topped carob with its withered pods.
[Illustration: The Tall Tower of the Forty Martyrs at Ramleh.]
The highlands of Judea lay stretched out along the eastern horizon, a
line of azure and amethystine heights, changing colour and seeming
almost to breathe and move as the cloud shadows fleeted over them, and
reaching away northward and southward as far as eye could see. Rugged
and treeless, save for a clump of oaks or terebinths planted here or
there around some Mohammedan saint's tomb, they would have seemed
forbidding but that their slopes were clothed with the tender herbage of
spring, their outlines varied with deep valleys and blue gorges, and all
their mighty bulwarks jewelled right royally with the opalescence of
sunset.
In a hollow of the green plain to the left we could see the white houses
and the yellow church tower of Lydda, the supposed burial-place of Saint
George of Cappadocia, who killed the dragon and became the patron saint
of England. On a conical hill to the right shone the tents of the Scotch
explorer who is excavating the ancient city of Gezer, which was the
dowry of Pharaoh's daughter when she married King Solomon. City, did I
say? At least four cities are packed one upon another in that grassy
mound, the oldest going back to the flint age; and yet if you should
examine their site and measure their ruins, you would feel sure that
none of them could ever have amounted to anything more than what we
should call a poor little town.
It came upon us gently but irresistibly that afternoon, as we rode
easily across the land of the Philistines in a few hours, that we had
never really read the Old Testament as it ought to be read,--as a book
written in an Oriental atmosphere, filled with the glamour, the imagery,
the magniloquence of the East. Unconsciously we had been reading it as
if it were a collection of documents produced in Heidelberg, Germany, or
in Boston, Massachusetts: precise, literal, scientific.
We had been imagining the Philistines as a mighty nation, and their land
as a vast territory filled with splendid cities and ruled by powerful
monarchs. We had been trying to understand and interpret the stories of
their conflict with Israel as if they had been written by a Western
war-correspondent, careful to verify all his statistics and meticulous
in the exact description of all his events. This view of things melted
from us with a gradual surprise as we realised that the more deeply we
entered into the poetry, the closer we should come to the truth, of the
narrative. Its moral and religious meaning is firm and steadfast as the
mountains round about Jerusalem; but even as those mountains rose before
us glorified, uplifted, and bejewelled by the vague splendours of the
sunset, so the form of the history was enlarged and its colours
irradiated by the figurative spirit of the East.
There at our feet, bathed in the beauty of the evening air, lay the
Valley of Aijalon, where Joshua fought with the "five kings of the
Amorites," and broke them and chased them. The "kings" were head-men of
scattered villages, chiefs of fierce and ragged tribes. But the fighting
was hard, and as Joshua led his wild clansmen down upon them from the
ascent of Beth-horon, he feared the day might be too short to win the
victory. So he cheered the hearts of his men with an old war-song from
the Book of Jasher.
"Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon;
And thou, moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed,
Until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies."
Does any one suppose that this is intended to teach us that the sun
moves and that on this day his course was arrested? Must we believe that
the whole solar system was dislocated for the sake of this battle? To
understand the story thus is to misunderstand its vital spirit. It is
poetry, imagination, heroism. By the new courage that came into the
hearts of Israel with their leader's song, the Lord shortened the
conflict to fit the day, and the sunset and the moonrise saw the Valley
of Aijalon swept clean of Israel's foes.
As we passed through the wretched, mud-built village of Latrun (said to
be the birthplace of the Penitent Thief), a dozen long-robed Arabs were
earnestly discussing some question of municipal interest in the grassy
market-place. They were as grave as the storks, in their solemn plumage
of black and white, which were parading philosophically along the edge
of a marsh to our right. A couple of jackals slunk furtively across the
road ahead of us in the dusk. A _kafila_ of long-necked camels undulated
over the plain. The shadows fell more heavily over cactus-hedge and
olive-orchard as we turned down the hill.
In the valley night had come. The large, trembling stars were strewn
through the vault above us, and rested on the dim ridges of the
mountains, and shone reflected in the puddles of the long road like
fallen jewels. The lights of Latrun, if it had any, were already out of
sight behind us. Our horses were weary and began to stumble. Where was
the camp?
Look, there is a light, bobbing along the road toward us. It is
Youssouf, our faithful major-domo, come out with a lantern to meet us. A
few rods farther through the mud, and we turn a corner beside an acacia
hedge and the ruined arch of an ancient well. There, in a little field
of flowers, close to the tiniest of brooks, our tents are waiting for us
with open doors. The candles are burning on the table. The rugs are
spread and the beds are made. The dinner-table is laid for four, and
there is a bright bunch of flowers in the middle of it. We have seen the
excellency of Sharon and the moon is shining for us on the Valley of
Aijalon.
II
"THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS"
It is no hardship to rise early in camp. At the windows of a house the
daylight often knocks as an unwelcome messenger, rousing the sleeper
with a sudden call. But through the roof and the sides of a tent it
enters gently and irresistibly, embracing you with soft arms, laying
rosy touches on your eyelids; and while your dream fades you know that
you are awake and it is already day.
As we lift the canvas curtains and come out of our pavilions, the sun is
just topping the eastern hills, and all the field around us glittering
with immense drops of dew. On the top of the ruined arch beside the camp
our Arab watchman, hired from the village of Latrun as we passed, is
still perched motionless, wrapped in his flowing rags, holding his long
gun across his knees.
"_Salam 'aleikum, ya ghafir!_" I say, and though my Arabic is doubtless
astonishingly bad, he knows my meaning; for he answers gravely,
"_'Aleikum essalam!_--And with you be peace!"
It is indeed a peaceful day in which our journey to Jerusalem is
completed. Leaving the tents and impedimenta in charge of Youssouf and
Shukari the cook, and the muleteers, we are in the saddle by seven
o'clock, and riding into the narrow entrance of the Wadi 'Ali. It is a
long, steep valley leading into the heart of the hills. The sides are
ribbed with rocks, among which the cyclamens grow in profusion. A few
olives are scattered along the bottom of the vale, and at the tomb of
the Imam 'Ali there is a grove of large trees. At the summit of the pass
we rest for half an hour, to give our horses a breathing-space, and to
refresh our eyes with the glorious view westward over the tumbled
country of the Shephelah, the opalescent Plain of Sharon, the sand-hills
of the coast, and the broad blue of the Mediterranean. Northward and
southward and eastward the rocky summits and ridges of Judea roll away.
Now we understand what the Psalmist means by ascribing "the strength of
the hills" to Jehovah; and a new light comes into the song:
"As the mountains are round about Jerusalem,
So Jehovah is round about his people."
These natural walls and terraces of gray limestone have the air of
antique fortifications and watch-towers of the border. They are truly
"munitions of rocks." Chariots and horsemen could find no field for
their manoeuvres in this broken and perpendicular country. Entangled
in these deep and winding valleys by which they must climb up from the
plain, the invaders would be at the mercy of the light infantry of the
highlands, who would roll great stones upon them as they passed through
the narrow defiles, and break their ranks by fierce and sudden downward
rushes as they toiled panting up the steep hillsides. It was this
strength of the hills that the children of Israel used for the defence
of Jerusalem, and by this they were able to resist and defy the
Philistines, whom they could never wholly conquer.
Yonder on the hillside, as we ride onward, we see a reminder of that old
tribal warfare between the people of the highlands and the people of the
plains. That gray village, perched upon a rocky ridge above thick
olive-orchards and a deliciously green valley, is the ancient
Kirjath-Jearim, where the Ark of Jehovah was hidden for twenty years,
after the Philistines had sent back this perilous trophy of their
victory over the sons of Eli, being terrified by the pestilence and
disaster that followed its possession. The men of Beth-shemesh, to whom
it was first returned, were afraid to keep it, because they also had
been smitten with death when they dared to peep into this dreadful box.
But the men of Kirjath-Jearim were at once bolder and wiser, so they
"came and fetched up the Ark of Jehovah, and brought it into the house
of Abinadab in the hill, and set apart Eleazar, his son, to keep the Ark
of Jehovah."
What strange vigils in that little hilltop cottage where the young man
watches over this precious, dangerous, gilded coffer, while Saul is
winning and losing his kingdom in a turmoil of blood and sorrow and
madness, forgetful of Israel's covenant with the Most High! At last
comes King David, from his newly won stronghold of Zion, seeking eagerly
for this lost symbol of the people's faith. "Lo, we heard of it at
Ephratah; we found it in the field of the wood." So the gray stone
cottage on the hilltop gave up its sacred treasure, and David carried it
away with festal music and dancing. But was Eleazar glad, I wonder, or
sorry, that his long vigil was ended?
To part from a care is sometimes like losing a friend.
I confess that it is difficult to make these ancient stories of peril
and adventure, (or even the modern history of Abu Ghosh the robber-chief
of this village a hundred years ago), seem real to us to-day.
Everything around us is so safe and tranquil, and, in spite of its
novelty, so familiar. The road descends steeply with long curves and
windings into the Wadi Beit Hanina. We meet and greet many travellers,
on horseback, in carriages and afoot, natives and pilgrims, German
colonists, French priests, Italian monks, English tourists and
explorers. It is a pleasant game to guess from an approaching pilgrim's
looks whether you should salute him with "_Guten Morgen_," or "_Buon'
Giorno_," or "_Bon jour_, _m'sieur_." The country people answer your
salutation with a pretty phrase: "_Neharak said umubarak_--May your day
be happy and blessed."
At Kaloniyeh, in the bottom of the valley, there is a prosperous
settlement of German Jews; and the gardens and orchards are flourishing.
There is also a little wayside inn, a rude stone building, with a
terrace around it; and there, with apricots and plums blossoming beside
us, we eat our lunch _al fresco_, and watch our long pack-train, with
the camp and baggage, come winding down the hill and go tinkling past us
toward Jerusalem.
The place is very friendly; we are in no haste to leave it. A few miles
to the southward, sheltered in the lap of a rounding hill, we can see
the tall cypress-trees and quiet gardens of 'Ain Karim, the village
where John the Baptist was born. It has a singular air of attraction,
seen from a distance, and one of the sweetest stories in the world is
associated with it. For it was there that the young bride Mary visited
her older cousin Elizabeth,--you remember the exquisite picture of the
"Visitation" by Albertinelli in the Uffizi at Florence,--and the joy of
coming motherhood in these two women's hearts spoke from each to each
like a bell and its echo. Would the birth of Jesus, the character of
Jesus, have been possible unless there had been the virginal and
expectant soul of such a woman as Mary, ready to welcome His coming with
her song? "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in
God my Saviour." Does not the advent of a higher manhood always wait for
the hope and longing of a nobler womanhood?
The chiming of the bells of St. John floats faintly and silverly across
the valley as we leave the shelter of the wayside rest-house and mount
for the last stage of our upward journey. The road ascends steeply.
Nestled in the ravine to our left is the grizzled and dilapidated
village of Lifta, a town with an evil reputation.
"These people sold all their land," says George the dragoman, "twenty
years ago, sold all the fields, gardens, olive-groves. Now they are
dirty and lazy in that village,--all thieves!"
Over the crest of the hill the red-tiled roofs of the first houses of
Jerusalem are beginning to appear. They are houses of mercy, it seems:
one an asylum for the insane, the other a home for the aged poor.
Passing them, we come upon schools and hospital buildings and other
evidences of the charity of the Rothschilds toward their own people. All
around us are villas and consulates, and rows of freshly built houses
for Jewish colonists.
This is not at all the way that we had imagined to ourselves the first
sight of the Holy City. All here is half-European, unromantic, not very
picturesque. It may not be "the New Jerusalem," but it is certainly a
modern Jerusalem. Here, in these comfortably commonplace dwellings, is
almost half the present population of the city; and rows of new houses
are rising on every side.
But look down the southward-sloping road. There is the sight that you
have imagined and longed to see: the brown battlements, the white-washed
houses, the flat roofs, the slender minarets, the many-coloured domes of
the ancient city of David, and Solomon, and Hezekiah, and Herod, and
Omar, and Godfrey, and Saladin,--but never of Christ. That great black
dome is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The one beyond it is the
Mosque of Omar. Those golden bulbs and pinnacles beyond the city are the
Greek Church of Saint Mary Magdalen on the side of the Mount of Olives;
and on the top of the lofty ridge rises the great pointed tower of the
Russians from which a huge bell booms out a deep-toned note of welcome.
On every side we see the hospices and convents and churches and palaces
of the different sects of Christendom. The streets are full of people
and carriages and beasts of burden. The dust rises around us. We are
tired with the trab, trab, trab of our horses' feet upon the hard
highroad. Let us not go into the confusion of the city, but ride quietly
down to the left into a great olive-grove, outside the Damascus Gate.
Here our white tents are pitched among the trees, with the dear flag of
our home flying over them. Here we shall find leisure and peace to unite
our hearts, and bring our thoughts into tranquil harmony, before we go
into the bewildering city. Here the big stars will look kindly down upon
us through the silvery leaves, and the sounds of human turmoil and
contention will not trouble us. The distant booming of the bell on the
Mount of Olives will mark the night-hours for us, and the long-drawn
plaintive call of the muezzin from the minaret of the little mosque at
the edge of the grove will wake us to the sunrise.
_A PSALM OF THE WELCOME TENT_
_This is the thanksgiving of the weary:
The song of him that is ready to rest._
_It is good to be glad when the day is declining:
And the setting of the sun is like a word of peace._
_The stars look kindly on the close of a journey:
The tent says welcome when the day's march is done._
_For now is the time of the laying down of burdens:
And the cool hour cometh to them that have borne the heat._
_I have rejoiced greatly in labour and adventure:
My heart hath been enlarged in the spending of my strength._
_Now it is all gone yet I am not impoverished:
For thus only may I inherit the treasure of repose._
_Blessed be the Lord that teacheth my hands to unclose and my fingers
to loosen:
He also giveth comfort to the feet that are washed from the dust of
the way._
_Blessed be the Lord that maketh my meat at nightfall savoury:
And filleth my evening cup with the wine of good cheer._
_Blessed be the Lord that maketh me happy to be quiet:
Even as a child that cometh softly to his mother's lap._
_O God thou faintest not neither is thy strength worn away with labour:
But it is good for us to be weary that we may obtain thy gift of rest._
III
THE GATES OF ZION
I
A CITY THAT IS SET ON A HILL
Out of the medley of our first impressions of Jerusalem one fact emerges
like an island from the sea: it is a city that is lifted up. No river;
no harbour; no encircling groves and gardens; a site so lonely and so
lofty that it breathes the very spirit of isolation and proud
self-reliance.
"Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth
Is Mount Zion, on the sides of the north
The city of the great King."
Thus sang the Hebrew poet; and his song, like all true poetry, has the
accuracy of the clearest vision. For this is precisely the one beauty
that crowns Jerusalem: the beauty of a high place and all that belongs
to it: clear sky, refreshing air, a fine outlook, and that indefinable
sense of exultation that comes into the heart of man when he climbs a
little nearer to the stars.
Twenty-five hundred feet above the level of the sea is not a great
height; but I can think of no other ancient and world-famous city that
stands as high. Along the mountainous plateau of Judea, between the
sea-coast plain of Philistia and the sunken valley of the Jordan, there
is a line of sacred sites,--Beersheba, Hebron, Bethlehem, Bethel,
Shiloh, Shechem. Each of them marks the place where a town grew up
around an altar. The central link in this chain of shrine-cities is
Jerusalem. Her form and outline, her relation to the landscape and to
the land, are unchanged from the days of her greatest glory. The
splendours of her Temple and her palaces, the glitter of her armies, the
rich colour and glow of her abounding wealth, have vanished. But though
her garments are frayed and weather-worn, though she is an impoverished
and dusty queen, she still keeps her proud position and bearing; and as
you approach her by the ancient road along the ridges of Judea you see
substantially what Sennacherib, and Nebuchadnezzar, and the Roman Titus
must have seen.