For the Lord is very patient with his slow scholar;
He will wait awhile for my weakness,
He will help me to read the truth through tears._
_Surely thou wilt enlighten me daily by joy and by sorrow:
And lead me at last, O Lord, to the perfect knowledge of thee._
XI
THE SPRINGS OF JORDAN
I
THE HILL-COUNTRY OF NAPHTALI
Naphtali was the northernmost of the tribes of Israel, a bold and free
highland clan, inhabiting a country of rugged hills and steep
mountainsides, with fertile vales and little plains between.
"Naphtali is a hind let loose," said the old song of the Sons of Jacob
(Genesis xlix: 21); and as we ride up from the Lake of Galilee on our
way northward, we feel the meaning of the poet's words. A people
dwelling among these rock-strewn heights, building their fortress-towns
on sharp pinnacles, and climbing these steep paths to the open fields of
tillage or of war, would be like wild deer in their spirit of liberty,
and they would need to be as nimble and sure-footed.
Our good little horses are shod with round plates of iron, and they
clatter noisily among the loose stones and slip on the rocky ledges, as
we strike over the hills from Capernaum, without a path, to join the
main trail at Khan Yubb Yusuf.
We are skirting fields of waving wheat and barley, but there are no
houses to be seen. Far and wide the sea of verdure rolls around us,
broken only by ridges of grayish rock and scarped cliffs of reddish
basalt. We wade saddle-deep in herbage; broad-leaved fennel and
trembling reeds; wild asparagus and artichokes; a hundred kinds of
flowering weeds; acres of last year's thistles, standing blanched and
ghostlike in the summer sunshine.
The phantom city of Safed gleams white from its far-away hilltop,--the
latest and perhaps the last of the famous seats of rabbinical learning.
It is one of the sacred places of modern Judaism. No Hebrew pilgrim
fails to visit it. Here, they say, the Messiah will one day reveal
himself, and after establishing His kingdom, will set out to conquer the
world.
But it is not to the city, shining like a flake of mica from the
greenness of the distant mountain, that our looks and thoughts are
turning. It is backward to the lucent sapphire of the Lake of Galilee,
upon whose shores our hearts have seen the secret vision, heard the
inward message of the Man of Nazareth.
Ridge after ridge reveals new outlooks toward its tranquil loveliness.
Turn after turn, our winding way leads us to what we think must be the
parting view. Sleeping in still, forsaken beauty among the sheltering
hills, and open to the cloudless sky which makes its water like a little
heaven, it seems to silently return our farewell looks with pleading for
remembrance. Now, after one more round among the inclosing ridges,
another vista opens, the widest and the most serene of all.
Farewell, dear Lake of Jesus! Our eyes may never rest on thee again; but
surely they will not forget thee. For now, as often we come to some fair
water in the Western mountains, or unfold the tent by some lone lakeside
in the forests of the North, the lapping of thy waves will murmur
through our thoughts; thy peaceful brightness will arise before us; we
shall see the rose-flush of thy oleanders, and the waving of thy reeds;
the sweet, faint smell of thy gold-flowered acacias will return to us
from purple orchids and white lilies. Let the blessing that is thine go
with us everywhere in God's great out-of-doors, and our hearts never
lose the comradeship of Him who made thee holiest among all the waters
of the world!
* * * * *
The Khan of Joseph's Pit is a ruin; a huge and broken building deserted
by the caravans which used to throng this highway from Damascus to the
cities of the lake, and to the ports of Acre and Joppa, and to the
metropolis of Egypt. It is hard to realize that this wild moorland path
by which we are travelling was once a busy road, filled with camels,
horses, chariots, foot-passengers, clanking companies of soldiers; that
these crumbling, cavernous walls, overgrown with thorny capers and wild
marjoram and mandragora, were once crowded every night with a motley mob
of travellers and merchants; that this pool of muddy water, gloomily
reflecting the ruins, was once surrounded by flocks and herds and beasts
of burden; that only a few hours to the southward there was once a ring
of splendid, thriving, bustling towns around the shores of Galilee, out
of which and into which the multitudes were forever journeying. Now they
are all gone from the road, and the vast wayside caravanserai is
sleeping into decay--a dormitory for bats and serpents.
What is it that makes the wreck of an inn more lonely and forbidding
than any other ruin?
A few miles more of riding along the flanks of the mountains bring us to
a place where we turn a corner suddenly, and come upon the full view of
the upper basin of the Jordan; a vast oval green cup, with the little
Lake of Huleh lying in it like a blue jewel, and the giant bulk of Mount
Hermon towering beyond it, crowned and cloaked with silver snows.
Up the steep and slippery village street of Rosh Pinnah, a modern Jewish
colony founded by the Rothschilds in 1882, we scramble wearily to our
camping-ground for the night. Above us on a hilltop is the old Arab
village of Jauneh, brown, picturesque, and filthy. Around us are the
colonists' new houses, with their red-tiled roofs and white walls. Two
straight streets running in parallel lines up the hillside are roughly
paved with cobble-stones and lined with trees; mulberries,
white-flowered acacias, eucalyptus, feathery pepper-trees, and
rose-bushes. Water runs down through pipes from a copious spring on the
mountain, and flows abundantly into every house, plashing into covered
reservoirs and open stone basins for watering the cattle. Below us the
long avenues of eucalyptus, the broad vineyards filled with low, bushy
vines, the immense orchards of pale-green almond-trees, the smiling
wheat-fields, slope to the lake and encircle its lower end.
The children who come to visit our camp on the terrace wear shoes and
stockings, carry school-books in their bags, and bring us offerings of
little bunches of sweet-smelling garden roses and pendulous
locust-blooms. We are a thousand years away from the Khan of Joseph's
Pit; but we can still see the old mud village on the height against the
sunset, and the camp-fires gleaming in front of the black Bedouin tents
far below, along the edge of the marshes. We are perched between the old
and the new, between the nomad and the civilized man, and the unchanging
white head of Hermon looks down upon us all.
In the morning, on the way down, I stop at the door of a house and fall
into talk with an intelligent, schoolmasterish sort of man, a Roumanian,
who speaks a little weird German. Is the colony prospering? Yes, but
not so fast that it makes them giddy. What are they raising? Wheat and
barley, a few vegetables, a great deal of almonds and grapes. Good
harvests? Some years good, some years bad; the Arabs bad every year,
terrible thieves; but the crops are plentiful most of the time. Are the
colonists happy, contented? A thin smile wrinkles around the man's lips
as he answers with the statement of a world-wide truth, "_Ach, Herr, der
Ackerbauer ist nie zufrieden._" ("Ah, Sir, the farmer is never
contented.")
II
THE WATERS OF MEROM
All day we ride along the hills skirting the marshy plain of Huleh. Here
the springs and parent streams of Jordan are gathered, behind the
mountains of Naphtali and at the foot of Hermon, as in a great green
basin about the level of the ocean, for the long, swift rush down the
sunken trench which leads to the deep, sterile bitterness of the Dead
Sea. Was there ever a river that began so fair and ended in such waste
and desolation?
Here in this broad, level, well-watered valley, along the borders of
these vast beds of papyrus and rushes intersected by winding, hidden
streams, Joshua and his fierce clans of fighting men met the Kings of
the north with their horses and chariots, "at the waters of Merom," in
the last great battle for the possession of the Promised Land. It was a
furious conflict, the hordes of footmen against the squadrons of
horsemen; but the shrewd command that came from Joshua decided it:
"Hough their horses and burn their chariots with fire." The Canaanites
and the Amorites and the Hittites and the Hivites were swept from the
field, driven over the western mountains, and the Israelites held the
Jordan from Jericho to Hermon. (Joshua xi:1-15.)
The springs that burst from the hills to the left of our path and run
down to the sluggish channels of the marsh on our right are abundant and
beautiful.
Here is 'Ain Mellaha, a crystal pool a hundred yards wide, with wild
mint and watercress growing around it, white and yellow lilies floating
on its surface, and great fish showing themselves in the transparent
open spaces among the weeds, where the water bubbles up from the bottom
through dancing hillocks of clean, white sand and shining pebbles.
Here is 'Ain el-Belata, a copious stream breaking forth from the rocks
beneath a spreading terebinth-tree, and rippling down with merry rapids
toward the jungle of rustling reeds and plumed papyrus.
While luncheon is preparing in the shade of the terebinth, I wade into
the brook and cast my fly along the ripples. A couple of ragged,
laughing, bare-legged Bedouin boys follow close behind me, watching the
new sport with wonder. The fish are here, as lively and gamesome as
brook trout, plump, golden-sided fellows ten or twelve inches long. The
feathered hooks tempt them, and they rise freely to the lure. My
tattered pages are greatly excited, and make impromptu pouches in the
breast of their robes, stuffing in the fish until they look quite fat.
The catch is enough for a good supper for their whole family, and a
dozen more for a delicious fish-salad at our camp that night. What kind
of fish are they? I do not know: doubtless something Scriptural and
Oriental. But they taste good; and so far as there is any record, they
are the first fish ever taken with the artificial fly in the sources of
the Jordan.
The plain of Huleh is full of life. Flocks of waterfowl and solemn
companies of storks circle over the swamps. The wet meadows are covered
with herds of black buffaloes, wallowing in the ditches, or staring at
us sullenly under their drooping horns. Little bunches of horses, and
brood mares followed by their long-legged, awkward foals, gallop beside
our cavalcade, whinnying and kicking up their heels in the joy of
freedom. Flocks of black goats clamber up the rocky hillsides, following
the goatherd who plays upon his rustic pipe quavering and fantastic
music, softened by distance into a wild sweetness. Small black cattle
with white faces march in long files across the pastures, or wander
through the thickets of bulrushes and papyrus and giant fennel,
appearing and disappearing as the screen of broad leaves and trembling
plumes close behind them.
A few groups of huts made out of wattled reeds stand beside the sluggish
watercourses, just as they did when Macgregor in his Rob Roy canoe
attempted to explore this impenetrable morass forty years ago. Along the
higher ground are lines of black Bedouin tents, arranged in transitory
villages.
These flitting habitations of the nomads, who come down from the hills
and lofty deserts to fatten their flocks and herds among unfailing
pasturage, are all of one pattern. The low, flat roof of black goats'
hair is lifted by the sticks which support it, into half a dozen little
peaks, perhaps five or six feet from the ground. Between these peaks the
cloth sags down, and is made fast along the edges by intricate and
confusing guy-ropes. The tent is shallow, not more than six feet deep,
and from twelve to thirty feet long, according to the wealth of the
owner and the size of his family,--two things which usually correspond.
The sides and the partitions are sometimes made of woven reeds, like
coarse matting. Within there is an apartment (if you can call it so) for
the family, a pen for the chickens, and room for dogs, cats, calves and
other creatures to find shelter. The fireplace of flat stones is in the
centre, and the smoke oozes out through the roof and sides.
The Bedouin men, in flowing _burnous_ and _keffiyeh_, with the _'agal_
of dark twisted camel's hair like a crown upon their heads, are almost
all handsome: clean-cut, haughty faces, bold in youth and dignified in
old age. The women look weatherbeaten and withered beside them. Even
when you see a fine face in the dark blue mantle or under the white
head-dress, it is almost always disfigured by purplish tattooing around
the lips and chin. Some of the younger girls are beautiful, and most of
the children are entrancing.
They play games in a ring, with songs and clapping hands; the boys
charge up and down among the tents with wild shouts, driving a round
bone or a donkey's hoof with their shinny-sticks; the girls chase one
another and hide among the bushes in some primeval form of "tag" or
"hide-and-seek."
A merry little mob pursues us as we ride through each encampment, with
outstretched hands and half-jesting, half-plaintive cries of
"_Bakhshish! bakhshish!_" They do not really expect anything. It is only
a part of the game. And when the Lady holds out her open hand to them
and smiles as she repeats, "_Bakhshish! bakhshish!_" they take the joke
quickly, and run away, laughing, to their sports.
At one village, in the dusk, there is an open-air wedding: a row of men
dancing; a ring of women and girls looking on; musicians playing the
shepherd's pipe and the drum; maidens running beside us to beg a present
for the invisible bride: a rude charcoal sketch of human society,
primitive, irrepressible, confident, encamped for a moment on the
shadowy border of the fecund and unconquerable marsh.
Thus we traverse the strange country of Bedouinia, travelling all day in
the presence of the Great Sheikh of Mountains, and sleep at night on the
edge of a little village whose name we shall never know. A dozen times
we ask George for the real name of that place, and a dozen times he
repeats it for us with painstaking courtesy; it sounds like a compromise
between a cough and a sneeze.
III
WHERE JORDAN RISES
The Jordan is assembled in the northern end of the basin of Huleh under
a mysterious curtain of tall, tangled water-plants. Into that ancient
and impenetrable place of hiding and blending enter many little springs
and brooks, but the main sources of the river are three.
The first and the longest is the Hasbani, a strong, foaming stream that
comes down with a roar from the western slope of Hermon. We cross it by
the double arch of a dilapidated Saracen bridge, looking down upon
thickets of oleander, willow, tamarisk and woodbine.
The second and largest source springs from the rounded hill of Tel
el-Kadi, the supposed site of the ancient city of Dan, the northern
border of Israel. Here the wandering, landless Danites, finding a
country to their taste, put the too fortunate inhabitants of Leshem to
the sword and took possession. And here King Jereboam set up one of his
idols of the golden calf.
There is no vestige of the city, no trace of the idolatrous shrine, on
the huge mound which rises thirty or forty feet above the plain. But it
is thickly covered with trees: poplars and oaks and wild figs and
acacias and wild olives. A pair of enormous veterans, a valonia oak and
a terebinth, make a broad bower of shade above the tomb of an unknown
Mohammedan saint, and there we eat our midday meal, with the murmur of
running waters all around us, a clear rivulet singing at our feet, and
the chant of innumerable birds filling the vault of foliage above our
heads.
After lunch, instead of sleeping, two of us wander into the dense grove
that spreads over the mound. Tiny streams of water trickle through it:
blackberry-vines and wild grapes are twisted in the undergrowth; ferns
and flowery nettles and mint grow waist-high. The main spring is at the
western base of the mound. The water comes bubbling and whirling out
from under a screen of wild figs and vines, forming a pool of palest,
clearest blue, a hundred feet in diameter. Out of this pool the new-born
river rushes, foaming and shouting down the hillside, through lines of
flowering styrax and hawthorn and willows trembling over its wild joy.
The third and most impressive of the sources of Jordan is at Baniyas, on
one of the foothills of Hermon. Our path thither leads us up from Dan,
through high green meadows, shaded by oak-trees, sprinkled with
innumerable blossoming shrubs and bushes, and looking down upon the
lower fields blue with lupins and vetches, or golden with yellow
chrysanthemums beneath which the red glow of the clover is dimly burning
like a secret fire.
Presently we come, by way of a broad, natural terrace where the white
encampment of the Moslem dead lies gleaming beneath the shade of mighty
oaks and terebinths, and past the friendly olive-grove where our own
tents are standing, to a deep ravine filled to the brim with luxuriant
verdure of trees and vines and ferns. Into this green cleft a little
river, dancing and singing, suddenly plunges and disappears, and from
beneath the veil of moist and trembling leaves we hear the sound of its
wild joy, a fracas of leaping, laughing waters.
[Illustration: The Approach to Baniyas.]
An old Roman bridge spans the stream on the brink of its downward
leap. Crossing over, we ride through the ruined gateway of the town of
Baniyas, turn to right and left among its dirty, narrow streets, pass
into a leafy lane, and come out in front of a cliff of ruddy limestone,
with niches and shrines carved on its face, and a huge, dark cavern
gaping in the centre.
A tumbled mass of broken rocks lies below the mouth of the cave. From
this slope of debris, sixty or seventy feet long, a line of springs gush
forth in singing foam. Under the shadow of trembling poplars and
broad-boughed sycamores, amid the lush greenery of wild figs and grapes,
bracken and briony and morning-glory, drooping maidenhair and
flower-laden styrax, the hundred rills swiftly run together and flow
away with one impulse, a full-grown little river.
There is an immemorial charm about the place. Mysteries of grove and
fountain, of cave and hilltop, bewitch it with the magic of Nature's
life, ever springing and passing, flowering and fading, basking in the
open sunlight and hiding in the secret places of the earth. It is such a
place as Claude Lorraine might have imagined and painted as the scene
of one of his mythical visions of Arcadia; such a place as antique fancy
might have chosen and decked with altars for the worship of unseen
dryads and nymphs, oreads and naiads. And so, indeed, it was chosen, and
so it was decked.
Here, in all probability, was Baal-Gad, where the Canaanites paid their
reverence to the waters that spring from underground. Here, certainly,
was Paneas of the Greeks, where the rites of Pan and all the nymphs were
celebrated. Here Herod the Great built a marble temple to Augustus the
Tolerant, on this terrace of rock above the cave. Here, no doubt, the
statue of the Emperor looked down upon a strange confusion of revelries
and wild offerings in honour of the unknown powers of Nature.
All these things have withered, crumbled, vanished. There are no more
statues, altars, priests, revels and sacrifices at Baniyas--only the
fragment of an inscription around one of the votive niches carved on the
cliff, which records the fact that the niche was made by a certain
person who at that time was "Priest of Pan." _But the name of this_
_person who wished to be remembered is precisely the part of the carving
which is illegible._
Ironical inscription! Still the fountains gush from the rocks, the
poplars tremble in the breeze, the sweet incense rises from the
orange-flowered styrax, the birds chant the joy of living, the sunlight
and the moonlight fall upon the sparkling waters, and the liquid
starlight drips through the glistening leaves. But the Priest of Pan is
forgotten, and all that old interpretation and adoration of Nature,
sensuous, passionate, full of mingled cruelty and ecstasy, has melted
like a mist from her face, and left her serene and pure and lovely as
ever.
Here at Paneas, after the city had been rebuilt by Philip the Tetrarch
and renamed after him and his Imperial master, there came one day a
Peasant of Galilee who taught His disciples to draw near to Nature, not
with fierce revelry and superstitious awe, but with tranquil confidence
and calm joy. The goatfoot god, the god of panic, the great god Pan,
reigns no more beside the upper springs of Jordan. The name that we
remember here, the name that makes the message of flowing stream and
sheltering tree and singing bird more clear and cool and sweet to our
hearts, is the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
IV
CAESAREA PHILIPPI
Yes, this little Mohammedan town of Baniyas, with its twoscore wretched
houses built of stones from the ancient ruins and huddled within the
broken walls of the citadel, is the ancient site of Caesarea Philippi. In
the happy days that we spend here, rejoicing in the most beautiful of
all our camps in the Holy Land, and yielding ourselves to the full charm
of the out-of-doors more perfectly expressed than we had ever thought to
find it in Palestine,--in this little paradise of friendly trees and
fragrant flowers,
"at snowy Hermon's foot,
Amid the music of his waterfalls,"--
the thought of Jesus is like the presence of a comrade, while the
memories of human grandeur and transience, of man's long toil, unceasing
conflict, vain pride and futile despair, visit us only as flickering
ghosts.
* * * * *
We climb to the top of the peaked hill, a thousand feet above the town,
and explore the great Crusaders' Castle of Subeibeh, a ruin vaster in
extent and nobler in situation than the famous _Schloss_ of Heidelberg.
It not only crowns but completely covers the summit of the steep ridge
with the huge drafted stones of its foundations. The immense round
towers, the double-vaulted gateways, are still standing. Long flights of
steps lead down to subterranean reservoirs of water. Spacious
courtyards, where the knights and men-at-arms once exercised, are
transformed into vegetable gardens, and the passageways between the
north citadel and the south citadel are travelled by flocks of lop-eared
goats.
From room to room we clamber by slopes of crumbling stone, discovering
now a guard-chamber with loopholes for the archers, and now an arched
chapel with the plaster intact and faint touches of colour still showing
upon it. Perched on the high battlements we look across the valley of
Huleh and the springs of Jordan to Kal'at Hunin on the mountains of
Naphtali, and to Kal'at esh-Shakif above the gorge of the River Litani.
From these three great fortresses, in the time of the Crusaders, flashed
and answered the signal-fires of the chivalry of Europe fighting for
possession of Palestine. What noble companies of knights and ladies
inhabited these castles, what rich festivals were celebrated within
these walls, what desperate struggles defended them, until at last the
swarthy hordes of Saracens stormed the gates and poured over the
defences and planted the standard of the crescent on the towers and lit
the signal-fires of Islam from citadel to citadel.
All the fires have gone out now. The yellow whin blazes upon the
hillsides. The wild fig-tree splits the masonry. The scorpion lodges in
the deserted chambers. On the fallen stone of the Crusaders' gate, where
the Moslem victor has carved his Arabic inscription, a green-gray lizard
poises motionless, like a bronze figure on a paper-weight.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Bridge Over the River Litani.]