my sketching things handily strapped to my saddle by W.'s directions, in
a flat straw _aumonière_. Isaac had swathed his tarboush in a
magnificent "cufia," and our retinue wore the baggy garb of Syria. W.
rode a steel-grey Arab, I a silver-grey, Isaac a roan-grey, and the man,
whom we call the "flying column," because he is to accompany us with the
lunch bags, while the heavy column with baggage, tents, etc., goes on
ahead by short-cuts, rode a chestnut. We passed through Bethlehem and
down to the Field of the Shepherds, where I completed, as well as I
could in the heat and glare, my sketch begun the other day. A group of
some twenty Russian pilgrims arrived as we did, and we saw them in the
grotto of the sheepfold, each holding a lighted taper and responding to
the chant of their old priest, who had a head which would do admirably
for a picture of Abraham. These poor men were in fur coats and high
clumsy boots, and one told us he had come from Tobolsk, and had been two
years on that tramp. He assured us he could manage his return journey in
no time, only ten months or so. Their devotion was profound, as it
always is, and was utterly un-self-conscious. I think we English are too
apt to suppose that because devotion is demonstrative it is not deep.
Great pedestrians as we are, how many Englishmen would walk for two
years to visit this sheepfold? That two years' test borne by the Russian
peasant must have gone very deep.
I remember reading with much approval, when a child, with a child's
narrow-mindedness, Miss Martineau's shocked description of the
demonstrative piety of a noble Russian lady on Calvary, who repeatedly
laid her head in the hole where the Cross had been, weeping and praying
and behaving altogether in a most un-English manner. The memory of that
passage came back to me to-day as I saw these rough peasants, so
supremely unconscious of our presence, throwing themselves heart and
soul into their adoration of God, and I thought of Mary Magdalene and
_her_ prostrations and tears.
After the service for the Russian pilgrims "father Abraham" fell asleep
under an olive-tree, with his hoary head on a stone which he had
cushioned with dock leaves, and the younger priest who had taken part in
the service went back to his ploughing, which he had left on the
approach of the pilgrims. They both had their Fellaheen clothes under
their cassocks, and they wore the tall Greek sacerdotal cap. They were
natives of Bethlehem. "Abraham" blessed our meal, but refused to partake
of it, except the fruit, as this is the Greek Lent. We had a long talk
with him through Isaac, and a lively theological argument, which had the
usual success of such undertakings, enhanced by its filtration through a
Mahometan interpreter converted to Protestantism by the American Baptist
Mission at Jaffa. That old patriarch was a magnificent study as he sat,
pointing heavenwards under the olive-trees and discoursing of his Faith,
with Bethlehem rising in the distance behind his most venerable head. He
made some coffee for us, a return civility for the fruit, and as we rode
off many were the parting salutations between us and the group of people
who had been the audience of our theological arguments, made
unintelligible by Isaac. Among the crowd was an ex-Papal Zouave who
turned out to have been orderly to a friend of ours in the old days at
Rome.
We rode along a track in the field of Boaz, now knee-deep in corn, a
cavalry soldier, who had been sent to escort us through the "dangerous"
region, leading the way. His escorting seems to consist of periodical
"fantasia" manoeuvres, when he shakes his horse out at full gallop,
picking a flower in mid-career and circling back to present it to me,--a
picturesque proceeding in that floating caftan and white and brown
striped burnous. I am pleased to see this figure in our foreground
caracoling, curveting, and careering. He is in such pleasing harmony
with his native landscape. He and Isaac are all over pistols and weapons
of various sorts, but W. says that the necessity for arms in Palestine
is now a thing of the past, and only a bogey.
Our course lay south-east, as we wished to visit the far-famed Greek
monastery of Mar Saba on our way to our camp. Formerly there was great
danger and difficulty in going to this extraordinary place, owing to the
fierce robber Bedouins that haunted these regions, and in many accounts
of Palestine travel I have read of the disappointment of the writers at
the impossibility of making this visit. It is an awe-inspiring place.
The
[Illustration: BETHLEHEM FROM THE SHEEPFOLD, FIELD OF BOAZ
The town is shown on a hill. The Convent of the Nativity stands to the
extreme left. Field of Boaz with green wheat in middle distance,
enclosure of sheepfold in foreground.]
monks have even denied themselves that great earthly consolation of
natural beauty which our monasteries, as a rule, are so well situated to
enjoy. On the edge of an abyss of rock, through which the now dry Cedron
once rushed to the Dead Sea, and facing the opposite rock pierced with
the caves of former hermits, it is so placed as to have not one
beautiful thing within sight, and as little of even the light of the sky
above to give a ray of cheerfulness. We saw pigeons and paddy birds
arriving in flocks to the rock ledges, and had glimpses of furtive furry
things coming round corners. We marvelled at the presence of the paddy
birds so far from water till we were told the pleasing fact that all
these wild things since time immemorial have been in the habit of
congregating here to the sound of the bugle, to be fed by those Greek
monks. They were waiting for their dinner-bell!
I soon had enough of Mar Saba, but W. thought a month there with two
camel-loads of books would be very pleasant. We espied our camp after
leaving this dread place a long way below us in a hot hole, amongst most
desolate mountains, whose cinder-coloured sides neither distance nor
atmosphere could turn purple, and some of these were pale yellow,
spotted at the top and half-way down with black shrubs, conveying an
irresistible impression of mountains covered with titanic leopard-skins.
The deadness of the Dead Sea was beginning to be felt.
A great wind arose in the night, and had not W. seen himself to the tent
ropes and pegs our tent would certainly have been blown down, and we
should have been smothered in a mass of flapping canvas. As it was, the
tent shook and heaved at its moorings and cracked like pistol-shots,
some of the furniture coming down with a crash. All night the
pistol-shots, the flappings, and the creakings went on, so that I was
rather disconcerted at losing my night's rest, for the morrow was, as W.
said, to be my "test day." If I stood it well--it being the hardest we
should have--I would do the journey.
_Wednesday, 15th April 189-._
We were off at sunrise on a tremendous ride, down to the Dead Sea, up
the Jordan and round to Jericho--about eight hours in the saddle,
exclusive of dismounted halts. We were very fortunate, for the wind
which had so troubled our slumbers kept away the heat, which in these
regions is most trying. We descended to 1300 feet below the level of the
Mediterranean, and not a tree was to be seen till we gained the green
banks of Jordan, where we made our halt after half an hour's rest on the
beach of the Dead Sea. All my expectations of the desolation of "Lake
Asphaltites" were fulfilled, but the bitter burning of its salt far
surpassed what I expected. I could realise how Lot's wife, lingering in
her flight from the doomed Sodom to look back till the fringe of the
destruction that engulfed the Cities of the Plain covered her, remained
stiffened into the semblance of a pillar of salt ("statue" of salt in
our version) when my hand in drying, after I had but dipped it into the
crystal-clear water that now fills the hollow delved by the swirl of the
great cataclysm, was stiff and white with the plaster-like brine. The
wan look of the blue shrubs that grow here was like something in a
dream, and the air was full of huge locusts, brilliant yellow, tossed by
a high hot wind. The earth was cracked by the heat into deep chasms, and
the treeless mountains round the sea were lost at its farther end in a
mist of hot air. There was great beauty with this desolation, but the
mind felt oppressed as well as the body. The blue of the sea was
exquisitely delicate, and gave no idea in its soft beauty of the fierce
bitterness of its waters. I felt deep emotion on sighting Jordan's
swift-rolling stream--a touching and unspeakably dear river--but
beautiful only for its holiness, for the water is thick with grey mud,
and the banks are tangled with the shaggy _débris_ that the over-hanging
trees have caught as the winter flood brought them swirling down. The
heat there was great, and the flies made it absolutely impossible to
take a sketch of the place tradition says saw the baptism of Our Lord. I
was much disappointed, for the flies fairly drove us away, and in the
burning heat we turned our horses' heads towards Jericho, unable to bear
these tormentors any longer. We were to camp at "new Jericho"--a huddled
group of mud-pie houses situated in a garden of lovely trees and shrubs
and flowers, which, owing to the abundance of water flowing through this
region, grow in tropical luxuriance. In the far western distance, above
all the mountain-tops intervening, we kept the Mount of Olives in view,
with that tall landmark on the top, the tower of the Russian "Church of
the Ascension," and only lost it as we neared our camping-place. Before
us, to our right, a beautiful mountain of more stately lines than those
of the weird crags around it rose solemnly against the west--it was the
Mountain of Temptation, where Our Lord was tempted after His forty days'
fast. Immediately on reaching our camp I made a sketch of the plain,
looking towards Mount Pisgah in the land of Moab to the east. I was just
in time to save the sunset. Would that we could include Pisgah in our
pilgrimage, and receive on our retinæ the same image of the Promised
Land that Moses received on his!
In spite of the baying of dogs, the braying of donkeys, and other camp
noises sleep came swiftly and soundly that night.
_Thursday, 16th April._
We set out at six for Jerusalem, the sun rising over the mountains of
Moab. We passed over the site of "old Jericho," and saw what a
magnificent site they chose for it, backed by mountains in a majestic
semicircle, and looking on the Plain of the Jordan.
The Bible speaks of a "rose plant in Jericho" as of something
superlatively lovely amongst roses, and one may ask why particularly in
Jericho? Here one can answer the question, for one sees how richly the
flowers grow in this land of many streams, which is all the more
conspicuous for its exuberance as contrasted with the aridity of the
surrounding regions. I can best describe the fascinating quality of our
journey by saying that it is like riding through the Bible. At every
turn some text in the Old or New Testament which alludes to the natural
features of the land, springs before one's mind illumined with a light
it could not have before. I know many devout Christians shrink from a
visit to the Holy Places for fear of--what? Do not fear! The reality
simply intensifies, gives substance and colour to, the ineffable poetry
of the Bible. It is simply rapture to see at last the originals of our
childhood's imaginings, and, believe me, the reality becomes more
precious in one's memory even than the cherished illusion. Our ride
through this land of little brooks, running clear over pebbly beds under
cool foliage, was
[Illustration: THE PLAIN OF THE JORDAN, LOOKING FROM "NEW JERICHO"
TOWARDS MOUNT PISGAH
Wild vegetation in the plain. Mountains of Moab in distance. The slight
eminence in their straight sky-line to extreme left is Mount Pisgah.
Sunset.]
refreshing after my "test ride" of yesterday in the dry glare. We soon
left this zone of verdure, however, and began the ascent to Jerusalem
through that gloomy pass which Our Lord chose for the parable of the
Good Samaritan. They are making a road here, but, being as yet
bridgeless at the ravines, it is not open to carriages. Our
halting-place was Bethany,--most lowly hamlet--and I made a sketch of it
at our mid-day halt. We then proceeded to our camping-ground, which W.
had selected outside the north wall of Jerusalem, and in skirting the
base of Olivet we had again that great view of the city that artists
love (and I must say have often exaggerated as regards the height of its
rocky pedestal). For the first time there was a "hitch" in the
arrangements for the camp. On reaching the north wall no camp was there,
and we rode in and out of olive-woods and ugly new roads and dusty
building _débris_ in search of it, Isaac _appearing_, at least, to be
quite at sea. At last, after sending him _ventre-à-terre_ successively
in several directions, we saw him returning and calling out that he had
found it. To our horror we found the people in charge of the baggage had
selected the only really hideous and repulsive spot in all Jerusalem,
of all places, the Jewish extra-mural colony! There were our white tents
pitched down in a hollow full of the back-door refuse from the houses of
this unsavoury population, surrounded by youths and bedraggled women who
might have just come out of Houndsditch to look on at the preparations
of the camp. The idea of a night on this ground was impossible. On
catching sight of this state of things W. pushed forward at a gallop at
the whole assemblage of servants, muleteers and cook, and the whole
amalgamated crowd, and with an unmistakable twirl of his stick told them
to "be out of that"; and the muleteers, servants, and cook fell on their
knees and with joined hands called out "Pardon! pardon!" In the
twinkling of an eye tents were struck and reloaded, dinner preparations
bundled away and an instant movement made to the place behind the north
wall on Mount Moriah, which W. had fixed upon in the morning. He
suspects that he was disobeyed on account of the ease with which the
servants knew they would obtain drink from the Jews.
Certainly our final encampment was enchanting, overlooking Gethsemane
deep down to the east, with the battlemented walls of Jerusalem before
us to the south, and tall pines waving above our tents. The moon was now
waxing bright, and never can I forget that evening, as by its light I
looked upon these things.
What a change in the temperature here! It is quite cold. My kit is
proving well devised for this country. You must be prepared for these
very marked changes of temperature in a land which rises so high and
sinks to such abnormal depths below the level of the sea in such a small
space.
I shall post this in Jerusalem, for to-morrow we set out on a journey
during which no post-offices will be found for many days.
_Friday, 17th April._
My....--I continue my letter in diary form from notes taken on the march.
This morning we left rather late, as the weather was so cool, and after
making some purchases in Jerusalem we set out with our faces due north
on our long ride into Galilee. It was again an eight-hours-in-the-saddle
day, but over such rolling stones that our horses seemed to me to be
going at about three miles an hour. It was a relief at the almost
impassable places to dismount and lead one's horse. As W. said, these
paths of Palestine seem to have been rather worn by the people's feet
than made by their hands. These bare hills of Benjamin were weary and
sad, but what a thrilling view was our last one of Jerusalem from a high
point overlooking the ocean of mountains that bore afar off the island
of the Holy City and its domes. Good-bye, Jerusalem! good-bye, Olivet!
We sat many minutes on our horses looking back at that centre of the
world, and then resuming our way a turn in the rocky track shut out the
Holy City from thenceforth. We overtook a large wedding party, the men
armed with long flintlocks, and the women wearing brilliant dresses. We
all moved forward together as far as Bethel. How powerfully this
assemblage of men and women and children journeying northward from
Jerusalem represented that large company in which were Mary and Joseph,
who came along this way, a day's journey, to the evening halting-place
at Beeroth, and found there that the little Jesus was missing. As I was
thinking over this and watching the people, we passed a little goatherd
who had evidently been out on the hills many days "on duty." His mother,
who was amongst the wedding party, catching sight of her son--about
twelve years old--snatched a moment to leave the line of march and ran
up to him and kissed him and wept over him, then returning hurried
forward to rejoin her companions. That meeting of mother and son, the
bending form of the woman in her red and blue drapery, which concealed
at that moment the rich dress worn underneath, the little goatherd held
close in her arms, formed a group that startled me, with my mind engaged
as it was. On reaching the village the men all let off their guns and
were met by the people who had remained at home. We made our halt at
Bethel. What a place of hard, gritty, arid desolation! Beth-el, "the
House of God." From this great height Lot looked down on the plain of
Sodom, then the acme of fertile beauty, where now lowers the Dead Sea!
There are now only the dry bones of Bethel left. The goats eat up every
green sprout that appears above ground. I could not sketch such blinding
nothingness at our halt there. Towards evening the land grew more
beautiful as we journeyed on, but so much struggling over boulders and
jagged rock ledges made me very glad indeed to perceive the daily signal
that we were nearing our camp. That signal is the dashing forward of
Isaac at full gallop and the pushing forward of the "flying column" (the
man on the chestnut horse with the bags), whose place is at other times
in the rear. The staff in camp being warned by these cavaliers of our
approach tea is got ready, and very welcome it is on our arrival. W. was
on ahead as we scrambled up a higher hill than ever, and when I saw him
wave his helmet to cheer me on for a final spurt I knew rest was close
at hand. Our camp looked very lovely just at sunset on a plateau
overlooking the hills and valleys of green Samaria and the far-off
mountain-tops of Galilee! The moon shone brightly and the air felt quite
frosty as we went to rest. I always take a little meditative walk before
going to bed, a sweet ten minutes each evening. The hurried start in the
morning and the rough riding all day leave one little time for quiet
thought, and at our mid-day halts, when circumstances permit, I sketch
with concentrated intensity against time.
_Saturday, 18th April._
To-day was breezy and the country less stony. Waving corn as in
Philistia refreshes the eye. We are now in the goodly land of Ephraim,
which deepens in richness as we advance. We passed through Shiloh, where
the Ark of the Covenant rested so long, and the little Samuel heard the
call of God. The place is marked by some old ruins--Roman or Crusader?
and a forlorn dead tree lies athwart them. A glorious cultivated plain
opened out before we reached our halting-place, Jacob's Well. How I had
longed to see this well, where Our Lord conversed with the Samaritan
woman. But I was disappointed at being unable to make the sketch of it I
hoped for so much. The well is about five feet below the surface of a
mass of ruins. An early Christian chapel once enclosed it, but this has
fallen in and all but buried the well. But you can imagine one's
feelings as one rests one's hand on its edge and realises that Our
Saviour sat there as He spoke to the woman who had come to draw water.
You remember that it was at this well that He told His disciples to look
up at the fields "already white unto harvest." There they are, those
fields, filling the valley of Sychar. But you cannot see them from the
well now, in the pit enclosed by ruins, nor the town to which the
disciples went "to buy meats," nor even the two great mountains of Ebal
and Gerizim that rise so high quite close by.
This well is like the Cave of Machpelah,--accepted by all as authentic
beyond question.
I cantered my horse all the way up to our camp, high up in an olive-wood
on the other side of the town, for I must say I was longing to get the
ride over and have a good rest. But Society duties awaited me! The
ministers of various denominations came to call on us, and when later on
the Catholic priest (an Italian) honoured us with a visit I was called
upon to take over Isaac's duties as interpreter.
We went, W. and I, for a pleasant stroll towards sundown, and had a
perfectly exquisite view of Nablous, the ancient Shechem, lying between
those two mountains whose names rang so sonorously to us all in
childhood--the terrible Ebal and the smiling Gerizim. A most perfect,
typical Eastern town, this, embowered in orange and pomegranate
trees--the home of the nightingale, whose music blends with that of the
multitudinous cascades echoing from the over-hanging cliffs. A Turkish
sentry came and lit his fire close to our tents, and was suffered to
mount his quite unnecessary guard over us all night, with an eye to
backsheesh at sunrise.
_Sunday, 19th April._
The Day of Rest. No travel to-day. Exquisite Nablous, what a Paradise to
rest in! But all was not perfection. We went to Church too early, by
mistake, and had to wait an hour before Mass began, passing the time in
French small-talk (indeed reduced to a minimum of smallness on my part,
for it dwindled away almost to nothing) with the courteous ecclesiastics
and the nuns in the garden of the little presbytery. As I was fasting I
was not fortified against the subsequent performance on the harmonium
during Mass, by a Syrian. On nearing our tent, cheered by the prospect
of breakfast, I had another set-back by Isaac's announcing the imminent
arrival of what sounded like "the Rev. Vulture," the Lutheran minister.
Had that individual really been on the swoop I must have fled, but
happily that morning call never took place. It is all very well to
laugh, but I felt "in the Pit of Tophet." I have spent the rest of the
day in sleep, and in writing to you, and in fascinating strolls through
the town with W., and in returning calls. I am nicely burnt by the sun
and wind, for nothing could induce me to let a veil blur or dim one
single glimpse of the Holy Land.
_Monday, 20th April._
Glorious breezy weather with flying cloud shadows. Again eight hours in
the saddle, but the Sunday rest has made me quite fresh again. We passed
to-day through the hill country of Manasseh. After riding a mile or two
out of Nablous our "flying column" came running up on foot to the
dragoman in front to ask what was to be done with a poor little stowaway
who had begged him to let him ride the baggage horse to escape from his
unhappy home. "His mother was dead and his stepmother beat him." He
looked so piteous perched up on the bags, but, of course, we could not
kidnap him, and after receiving some money he was put gently down on the
roadside. As we rode on we got a last sight of him on the green bank
swaying to and fro in his desolate grief, his gown making a little pink
dot in the vast landscape. Our mid-day halt was at a fountain in a fig
country, and there we talked to the women and girls who were filling
their pitchers. One showed me by signs how the figs were a failure this
year, the young figs all falling off their stalks before ripening. Her
patient acceptance of the inevitable reminded me of the Italian peasants
and their "_Pazienza, è la volontà di Dio!_"
Then we deflected to the left on our journey to visit Sebaste, where St.
John is supposed to have been beheaded, and with great probability. The
Crusaders built a magnificent Church to his memory there, the ruins of
which are very grand. We rode to the site of the gates of the city,
along a path lined with classic pillars, and at the end of this avenue
we saw the sea, and where Cæsarea, the harbour of Sebaste, once stood.
Our camp that evening was at Ain Jenin, an ideal Eastern town. I was not
prepared for anything so beautiful as it looked in the evening light,
when we emerged in sight of it from a defile between hills. We were well
in the Plain of Jezreel, and lo! Hermon at last! In the light of the
after-glow we beheld his hoary head from our tents, to the north. Tender
moonlight succeeded the after-glow. All the mosques and minarets were
lighted up with delicate golden lamps at sunset (for it is Ramadan), as
at Jerusalem and Nablous. This place is full of pomegranate trees, with
their scarlet blossoms, and of flowering tamarisk.
_Tuesday, 21st April._