Haifa, Nov. 27, 1882.—The more you examine the countries most frequented
by tourists, the more you are perplexed to comprehend the reasons which
decide them to confine themselves to certain specified routes, arranged
apparently by guides and dragomans, with a view of concealing from them
the principal objects of interest. There is certainly not one tourist in
a hundred who visits the Holy Land who has ever heard of Athlit, much
less been there, and yet I know of few finer ruins to the west of the
Jordan. To the east the magnificent remains of Jerash, Amman, and
Arak-el Emir are incomparably more interesting, and these, of course,
are also almost ignored by tourists; but that may be accounted for by
the fact that special permission from the government is required to
visit them, while an impression still exists that the journey is
attended with some risk. Practically this is not the case. It takes a
long time to remove an impression of this kind, and it is the interest
of a large class of persons who live on blackmail to keep it up. But in
the case of Athlit there is no such drawback. Probably the neglect with
which it is treated is due largely to the fact that no scriptural
association attaches to the locality, and people would rather go to
Nazareth than examine the majestic remains of Roman civilization, or the
ruder superstructures of crusading warfare.
The easiest way to reach Athlit is to go to it from Carmel. As the
monastery there is a most modern structure, about fifty years old,
tourists often get as far as that, because the guide takes them there;
but they know nothing of the mysteries of this sacred mountain, second
only to Sinai, in the estimation of the modern Jew, in the sanctity of
its reputation, and they turn back when, by riding a few miles down the
coast, they would follow a route full of interest. The road traverses a
plain about two miles in width. On the left, the rugged limestone slopes
of the mountain are perforated with caves—in the earliest ages of
Christianity the resorts of hermits, from whom the order of the
Carmelites subsequently arose. Here tradition still points out the spot
where the crusading king, St. Louis of France, was shipwrecked; and in a
gorge of the mountains may still be seen the foundations of the first
monastery, near a copious spring of clearest water, where the pious
monarch was entertained by the first monks, whom, out of gratitude, he
enabled subsequently to establish themselves upon the site occupied by
the present monastery, and to found an order which has since become
celebrated. Along this line of coast there is an uninterrupted stretch
of sandy beach, upon which the full force of the Mediterranean breaks in
long lines of rollers, and which would afford an interesting field of
study to the conchologist. Among the most curious shells are the _Murex
brandaris_ and the _Murex trunculus_, the prickly shells of the fish
which in ancient times yielded the far-famed Tyrian purple. The
Phoenicians obtained the precious dye from a vessel in the throat of the
fish.
Instead of following closely the line of coast, I kept near the base of
the Carmel range, reaching in about two hours from Carmel the village of
El Tireh, where the mosque is part of an old Benedictine monastery, the
massive walls of which have been utilized for religious purposes by the
Moslems. Their worship has had little effect upon the inhabitants, who
are the most notorious thieves and turbulent rogues in the whole country
side. They are rich enough to indulge their taste for violence with
comparative impunity, as they can always square it with the authorities.
Their village is surrounded with a grove of thirty thousand olive-trees
and the rich plain, extending to the sea, is nearly all owned by them.
Indeed, their evil reputation keeps other would-be proprietors at a
distance. Here the plain begins to slope backward from the sea, so as to
prevent the water from the mountains from finding a natural outlet, and
in summer the country becomes miasmatic and feverish.
From El Tireh, where the inhabitants treated me with great civility, I
crossed the plain, and in an hour more reached an insignificant ruin
called El Dustrey, a corruption of the crusading name “_Les Destroits_,”
or “The Straights,” so called from a gorge in the limestone ridge, which
here separates the plain from the sea. This very remarkable formation
extends for many miles down the coast. It is a rugged ridge, varying
from twenty to fifty feet in height, and completely cutting off the sea
beach from the fertile plain behind. Here and there it is split by
fissures, through which the winter torrents find their way to the sea.
Skirting this ridge, we suddenly come upon an artificial cutting, just
wide enough to allow the passage of a chariot. At the entrance, holes
were cut into the rock on both sides, evidently used in ancient times
for closing and barring a passage-way. The cutting through the rock was
from six to eight feet deep and from sixty to eighty yards in length.
The deep ruts of the chariot-wheels were distinctly visible. Here and
there on the sides steps had been cut leading to the ridge, which had
been fortified.
Passing through this cutting, we debouch upon a sandy plain and a reedy
marsh, in which my companion had the year before killed a wild boar; and
here we were in the presence of a majestic ruin. Immediately facing us
was a fragment of wall, eighty feet high, sixteen feet thick, and
thirty-five yards long. It towers to a height of one hundred and twenty
feet above the sea, and is a conspicuous landmark. It has been partially
stripped of the external layer of carved stone blocks, and has furnished
a quarry to the inhabitants for some centuries. The wall had evidently
once continued across the base of the promontory upon which the ancient
fortress and town were built. Passing up a rocky passage and under an
archway of comparatively modern date, and which could still be closed by
means of massive wooden doors, we enter the _enceinte_, and discover
that the whole promontory is underlaid with huge vaults. It became also
evident that the immense fragment I have described was the outer wall of
a large building, for on the inside were three ribbed, pointed arches,
supported on corbels, representing on the left a bearded head, on the
right a head shaven on the crown, with curling hair on the sides; in the
centre a cantilever, with three lilies in low relief. As the roof had
fallen in, the spring of the arches alone remained. The whole was
constructed of blocks of stone about three feet long, two feet high, and
two feet wide. The promontory upon which all this solid masonry had been
erected was washed on three sides by the sea. It rose above it
precipitously to a height of about fifty feet. The area was occupied by
a miserable population of possibly a hundred squalid, half-clad Arabs,
whose huts were built among the ruins, thus preventing any effectual
examination of them. It would be difficult to conceive a greater
contrast than is presented by these wretched fellahin and their
burrowing habitations with the splendour of the edifices and the
opulence which must have characterized the former inhabitants. Here and
there we see a fragment of a granite column, while, when we reach the
brink of the cliff which forms the sea-face of the promontory, we are
again surprised at the stupendous scale of these ancient works, and of
the sea-wall built out upon a ledge of rocks, exposed to the full fury
of the waves, and still standing to a height of forty or fifty feet.
To the right of the promontory, a wall, the base of which is washed by
the waves, is perforated by three arches. It presents a most picturesque
appearance. The southern face is, however, the most perfect. Here there
were evidently two tiers of walls, one upon the sea-level and one upon
the face of the cliff. Descending into the space between these I
perceived an opening in the side of the rock, and found myself in a
vaulted chamber, which was sufficiently lighted by apertures in the rock
for me to measure it roughly. I estimated the length at a hundred and
twenty feet, the breadth at thirty-six, and the height at thirty. It so
happened that on the occasion of my visit it was blowing half a gale of
wind from the seaward. The breakers were rolling in upon the reefs at
the base of the promontory, throwing their spray high up on the ruined
walls, and producing an effect which, with the grandeur of the
surroundings, was indescribably impressive. This chamber was the
handsomest of a series of vaults, several others of which I have
explored under the guidance of the sheik, by means of candles and
torches. They are altogether six in number, running round a rectangle
measuring about five hundred feet by three hundred. They are of
different sizes, varying from fifty to three hundred feet in length,
from thirty to fifty in breadth, and from twenty-five to thirty in
height.
The name of the town which stood here in ancient times has never been
discovered. This is the more singular as it must evidently have been a
place of considerable importance in the time of the Romans, more
probably as a fortress than as a place of commerce. Its natural
advantages for defence suggest themselves at once. It is important in
the history of the crusades as being the last spot held in Palestine by
the crusaders, who evacuated it in 1291. It was then destroyed by the
Sultan Melik el Ashraf, so that the most modern parts of the ruins are
only six hundred years old. But the crusaders must have entered into
possession of what was then an ancient fortress in a high state of
preservation. When they took it, it became celebrated as Castellum
Peregrinorum, or the Castle of the Pilgrims. It is also spoken of in the
crusading records as Petra Incisa, from the fact that it was entered
through the cutting in the rock which I have described. In 1218 the
Knights Templars restored the castle, and constituted it the chief seat
of their order. They found “a number of strange, unknown coins.” That it
was a place of great strength may be inferred from the fact that it was
chosen by such good judges as the Knights Templars as their chief
stronghold; that it was successfully besieged by one of the sultans of
Egypt, and that it was finally abandoned only because every other
crusading possession in Palestine had succumbed.