_The Loss of a Life_
[Sidenote: A Wolf Chase among the Mountains]
We continued ascending through the defiles of the mountain range of
Carmel. The gorges of the hills gave us alternate glimpses of Lower
Galilee, and of the great sea which lay bounding the western horizon with
azure. The morning breezes from the land, now in the full vegetation of
the rapid spring of Palestine, scarcely ceased to fill the heavens with
fragrance, when the sea-wind sprang up and, with the coolness and purity
of a gush of fountain-waters, renewed the spirit of life in the air and
made the whole caravan forget its fatigue. Our bold hunters spurred down
the valleys and up the hills with the wildness of superfluous vigor,
tossed their lances into the air, sang their mountain songs, and shouted
the cries of the chase and the battle.
On one eventful day a wolf was started from its covert, and every rein
was let loose in a moment; nothing could stop the fearlessness of the
riders or exhaust the fire of the steeds. The caravan, coming on slowly
with the women and children and lengthening out among the passes, was
forgotten. I scorned to be left behind, and followed my daring companions
at full speed. The wolf led us a long chase; and on the summit of a
rock, still blazing in the sunlight like a beacon, while the plain was
growing dim, he fought his last fight, and, transfixed with a hundred
lances, died the death of a hero. But the spot which we had reached
supplied statelier contemplations: we were on the summit of Mount Tabor;
the eye wandered over the whole glory of the Land of Promise. To the
south extended the mountains of Samaria, their peaked summits glowing in
the sun with the colored brilliancy of a chain of gems. To the east lay
the lake of Tiberias, a long line of purple. Northward, like a thousand
rainbows, ascended, lit by the western flame, the mountains of Gilboa,
those memorable hills on which the spear of Saul was broken, and the
first curse of our obstinacy was branded upon us in the blood of our
first king. Closing the superb circle, and soaring into the very heavens,
ascended step by step the Antilibanus.
[Sidenote: Salathiel’s View from Mount Tabor]
Of all the sights that nature offers to the eye and mind of man,
mountains have always stirred my strongest feelings. I have seen the
ocean when it was turned up from the bottom by tempest, and noon was
like night with the conflict of the billows and the storm that tore and
scattered them in mist and foam across the sky. I have seen the desert
rise around me, and calmly, in the midst of thousands uttering cries
of horror and paralyzed by fear, have contemplated the sandy pillars
coming like the advance of some gigantic city of conflagration flying
across the wilderness, every column glowing with intense fire and every
blast with death; the sky vaulted with gloom, the earth a furnace. But
with me, the mountain—in tempest or in calm, whether the throne of the
thunder or with the evening sun painting its dells and declivities
in colors dipped in heaven—has been the source of the most absorbing
sensations: _there_ stands magnitude, giving the instant impression of a
power above man—grandeur that defies decay—antiquity that tells of ages
unnumbered—beauty that the touch of time makes only more beautiful—use
exhaustless for the service of man—strength imperishable as the globe;
the monument of eternity—the truest earthly emblem of that ever-living,
unchangeable, irresistible Majesty by whom and for whom all things were
made!
I was gazing on the Antilibanus, and peopling its distant slopes with
figures of other worlds ascending and descending, as in the patriarch’s
dream, when I was roused by the trampling steed of one of my kinsmen
returning with the wolf’s head, the trophy of his superior prowess, at
his saddle-bow.
[Sidenote: Jubal’s Tribal Pride]
“So,” said he, “you disdained to share the last battle of that dog of the
Galilees? But we shall show you something better worth the chase when we
reach home. The first snow that drives the lions down from Lebanon, or
the first hot wind that sends the panthers flying before it from Assyria,
will have all our villages up in arms; every man who can draw a bow or
throw a lance will be on the mountains; and then we shall give you the
honors of a hunter in exchange for your philosophy.” He uttered this with
a jovial laugh, and a hand grasping mine with the grip of a giant. “Yet,”
said he, and a shade passed over his brow, “I wish we had something
better to do; you must not look down upon Jubal, and the tribe of your
brother Eleazar, as mere rovers after wolves and panthers.”[10]
I willingly declared my respect for the intrepidity and dexterity
which the mountain life insured. I applauded its health, activity, and
cheerfulness. “Yet,” interrupted Jubal sternly, “what can be done while
those Romans are everywhere round us?” He stopped short, reined up his
horse with a sudden force that made the animal spring from the ground,
flung his lance high in air, caught it in the fall, and having thus
relieved his indignation, returned to discuss with me the chances of a
Roman war. “Look at those,” said he, pointing to the horsemen who were
now bounding across the declivities to rejoin the caravan; “their horses
are flame, their bodies are iron, and their souls would be both if they
had a leader.” “Eleazar is brave,” I replied. “Brave as his own lance,”
was the answer; “no warmer heart, wiser head, or firmer arm moves at this
hour within the borders of the land. But he despairs.” “He knows,” said
I, “the Roman power and the Jewish weakness.”
“Both—both, too well!” was the reply. “But he forgets the power that is
in the cause of a people fighting for their law and for their rights, in
the midst of glorious remembrances, nay, in the hope of a help greater
than that of the sword. Look at the tract beyond those linden-trees.”
[Sidenote: Jubal, the Jewish Warrior]
He pointed to a broken extent of ground, darkly distinguishable from the
rest of the plain. “On that ground, to this moment wearing the look of a
grave, was drawn up the host of Sisera; under that ground is its grave.
By this stone,” and he struck his lance on a rough pillar defaced by
time, “stood Deborah the prophetess, prophesying against the thousands
and tens of thousands of the heathen below. On this hill were drawn
up the army of Barak, as a drop in the ocean compared with the infidel
multitudes. They were the ancestors of the men whom you now see trooping
before you; the men of Naphtali, with their brothers of Zebulun. On this
spot they gathered their might like the storm of heaven. From this spot
they poured down like its whirlwinds and lightnings upon the taunting
enemy. God was their leader. They rushed upon the nine hundred scythed
chariots, upon the mailed cavalry, upon the countless infantry. Of all,
but one escaped from the plain of Jezreel, and that one only to perish in
his flight by the degradation of a woman’s hand!” He wheeled round his
foaming horse, and appealed to me. “Are the Roman legions more numerous
than that host of the dead? Is Israel now less valiant, less wronged,
or less indignant? Shall no prophet arise among us again? Shall it not
be sung again, as it was then sung to the harps of Israel: ‘Zebulun and
Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the
high places of the field’?”
I looked with involuntary wonder at the change wrought in him by those
proud recollections. The rude and jovial hunter was no more; the Jewish
warrior stood before me, filled with the double impulse of generous scorn
of the oppression and of high dependence on the fate of his nation. His
countenance was ennobled, his form seemed to dilate, his voice grew
sonorous as a trumpet. A sudden burst of the declining sun broke upon
his figure, and threw a sheet of splendor across the scarlet turban,
the glittering tunic, the spear-point lifted in the strenuous hand, the
richly caparisoned front and sanguine nostrils of his impatient charger.
A Gentile would have worshiped him as the tutelar genius of war. I saw
in him but the man that our history and our law were ordained beyond all
others to have made—the native strength of character raised into heroism
by the conviction of a guiding and protecting Providence.
The conversation was not forgotten on either side; and it bore fruit,
fearful fruit, in time.
[Sidenote: Salathiel’s Plunge Down the Precipice]
We had reached on our return a commanding point, from which we looked
into the depths already filling with twilight, and through whose blue
vapors the caravan toiled slowly along, like a wearied fleet in some
billowy sea. Suddenly a tumult was perceived below; shouts of confusion
and terror rose, and the whole caravan was seen scattering in all
directions through the passes. For the first moment we thought that it
had been attacked by the mountain robbers. We grasped our lances, and
galloped down the side of the hill to charge them, when we were stopped
at once by a cry from the ridge which we had just left. It struck through
my heart—the voice was Miriam’s. To my unspeakable horror, I saw her
dromedary, mad with fear and pouring blood, rush along the edge of the
precipice. I saw the figure clinging to his neck. The light forsook my
eyes, and but for the grasp of Jubal, I must have fallen to the ground.
His voice aroused me. When I looked round again, the shouts had died, the
troop had disappeared—it seemed all a dream!
But, again, the shouts came doubling upon the wind, and far as the eye
could pierce through the dusk, I saw the white robe of Miriam flying
along like a vapor. I threw the reins on my horse’s neck—I roused
him with my voice—I rushed with the fearlessness of despair through
the hills—I overtook the troop—I outstripped them—still the vision
flew before me. At length it sank. The dromedary had plunged down the
precipice, a depth of hideous darkness. A torrent roared below. I struck
in the spur to follow. My horse wheeled round on the edge; while I strove
to force him to the leap, my kinsmen came up, with Eleazar at their head.
Bold as they were, they all recoiled from the frightful depth. Even in
that wild moment I had time to feel that this was but the beginning of my
inflictions, and that I was to be the ruin of all that belonged to me. In
consciousness unspeakable, I sprang from my startled steed, and before a
hand could check me I plunged in. A cry of astonishment and horror rang
in my ears as I fell. The roar of waters was then around me. I struggled
with the torrent, gasped, and heard no more.
[Sidenote: The Spring of a Wolf]
This desperate effort saved the life of Miriam. We were found apparently
dead, clasped in each other’s arms, at some distance down the stream.
The plunge had broken the band by which she was fixed on the saddle. She
floated, and we were thrown together by the eddy. After long effort, we
were restored. But the lamentations of my matchless wife were restrained
beside my couch, only to burst forth when she was alone. We had lost our
infant!
The chase of the wolves in the mountain had driven them across the
march of the caravan. One of those savages sprang upon the flank of
the dromedary. The animal, in the agony of its wounds, burst away; its
proverbial fleetness baffled pursuit, and it was almost fortunate that it
at length bounded over the precipice, as, in the mountain country, its
precious burden must have perished by the lion or by famine. Miriam held
her babe with the strong grasp of a mother, but in the torrent that grasp
was dissolved. All our search was in vain. My wife wept; but I had in her
rescued my chief treasure on earth, and was partially consoled by the
same deep feeling which pronounced that I might have been punished by the
loss of all.