Haifa, Jan. 20, 1883.—In a former letter I gave you a sketch of the
origin of the Temple Society and of the religious motives which have led
to the establishment of four agricultural colonies in the Holy Land by
emigrants from Germany, America, Russia, and Switzerland. As I have
taken up my winter residence in the principal one of these, situated
beneath the shadow of Mount Carmel, some description of the place and
its resources may not be without interest for your readers. I know of no
locality in the East which offers greater attractions of position,
climate, and association than this spot. Thanks to the efforts of the
colonists, it has become an oasis of civilization in the wilderness of
Oriental barbarism, where the invalid in search of health, or the
tourist on the lookout for a comfortable resting-place on his travels,
will find good accommodation, and all the necessaries, if not the
luxuries, of civilized life.
Throughout the whole length of the coast of Palestine from Tyre to Gaza,
only one deep indentation occurs. This is where it sweeps in a curve
around the old fortress of St. Jean d'Acre, and terminates in the
projecting precipice upon whose ledge the monastery of Carmel is
situated. The bay thus formed is nine miles across from Acre to Carmel,
and about four miles broad. It is bordered the whole distance by a
smooth, hard beach, at the southeastern and most sheltered extremity of
which is situated the town of Haifa, a modern native town, squeezed in
between an overhanging bluff, on which are the ruins of an old castle,
and the sea. It owes its origin to the arbitrary act of a pacha who,
about a century ago, had rendered himself quasi-independent of the
Porte, and established the seat of his government at Acre. The
population of old Haifa, situated near the point, having rebelled
against him, he punished them by razing it to the ground, and
transported the inhabitants to the edge of the bay under the rock, on
which he put a castle, while he surrounded them with a wall, thus
keeping them prisoners. When he died, his successor was suppressed, the
garrison of the castle was removed, and the wall was allowed to fall
into disrepair. The inhabitants, who thus were restored to liberty,
accustomed to their new location, began to cultivate the surrounding
land and to increase in wealth and prosperity. Their gardens spread to
the eastward, where the brook Kishon, winding through a fertile plain,
struggles to debouch into the sea, but only succeeds at certain seasons,
owing to the huge sand-bars which form at its month. These dam it back
into small lakes, which are surrounded by date-groves, thus forming a
most agreeable feature in the scenery. Behind the plain rises the low,
wooded range which is traversed by the road leading to Nazareth.
Though Haifa is comparatively modern, there are some traces of old ruins
in the town, the walls of an old crusading castle, one or two caverns,
which bear marks of having been inhabited in the rocks immediately
behind them, and the crumbling remains of an archway, dating, probably,
from a period anterior to the crusades. Prior to the arrival of the
colonists of the Temple Society, Haifa was as dirty as most Arab
villages. It is now well paved throughout. The houses, all constructed
of white limestone, quarries of which abound in the immediate vicinity,
give it a clean and substantial appearance, and contain a bustling and
thriving population of about six thousand inhabitants. Under the high
cactus hedges at its eastern gateway are usually to be seen, squatting
amid sacks of grain, hundreds of camels, which, attended by wild-looking
Arabs, have arrived with their loads of cereals from the Hauran, on the
other side of the Jordan; for Haifa is gradually becoming one of the
great grain-exporting ports of the country, and one or two steamers are
generally to be seen loading in the harbour.
Leaving the town by the western gateway, we ride for about a mile
parallel to the seashore between high cactus hedges, and suddenly find
ourselves apparently transported into the heart of Europe. Running
straight back from the beach for about half a mile, and sloping upward
for about a hundred feet in that distance, to the base of the rocky
sides of Carmel, runs the village street. On each side of it is a
path-way, with a double row of shade-trees, and behind them a series of
white stone houses, of one and two stories, generally with tiled roofs,
each surrounded with its garden, and each with a text in German engraved
over the doorway. There is another, smaller, parallel street. The whole
settlement contains about sixty houses and three hundred inhabitants.
The English, American, and German vice-consuls are all colonists. There
is a skilled physician, an architect, and engineer in the colony, an
excellent hotel, a school, and meeting-house. The German government
subscribes two thirds and the colonists one third of the funds required
for the school. Some of the colonists are in business, and have stores
in Haifa. There is also a good store in the colony, where all the most
important trades are represented. There is one wind grist, and one steam
mill, the latter in process of erection. There is a manufactory of
olive-oil soap, the export of which to America is yearly increasing, and
now amounts to 50,000 pounds, and which may be purchased in New York by
such of your readers as have a fancy to wash their hands with soap
direct from the Holy Land, made from the oil of the olives of Carmel, at
F. B. Nichols's, 62 William Street. There is also a factory for the
manufacture of articles from olive wood.
Where Carmel rises abruptly from the upper end of the street, its rocky
sides have been terraced to the summit, and about a hundred acres are
devoted to the cultivation of the vine. Unfortunately, the varieties
which have been imported from Germany all suffer severely from mildew. I
have therefore sent to the United States for Concords and some of the
hardier American varieties. Along the lower slopes are thick groves of
olives. Scarped along the rugged mountain-side leads the road to the
monastery, distant about a mile and a half. Situated about five hundred
feet above the sea, it forms a conspicuous object in the landscape as
seen from the colony.
The views from the house in which I am living are a never-ending source
of delight. To the east I look over the native town and harbour, with
the date-groves and the plain of the Kishon beyond, backed by the wooded
range which separates it from the plain of Esdraelon. To the northeast
the eye rests on the picturesque outline of the mountains of northern
Palestine, with the rounded top of Jebel Jernink rising to a height of
4000 feet in the middle distance, and snow-clad Hermon towering behind
to a height of 9000 feet. Immediately to the north, across the blue
waters of the bay, the white walls and minarets of Acre rise from the
margin of the sea, and beyond it the coastline, terminating in the white
projecting cliff known as “The Ladder of Tyre.” To the northwestward we
look across a plain about a mile wide, containing the colony lands, and
beyond is the sea horizon, till we turn sufficiently to meet Carmel
bluff and monastery. Behind us the mountain rises precipitously,
throwing us at this time of the year into shade by three in the
afternoon. But even on New-Year's Day we do not grudge the early absence
of the sun, for as I write the thermometer is standing at 66° in the
shade. It is not, however, the features of the scenery which constitute
its chief beauty, but the wonderful variations of light and shade, and
the atmospheric effects peculiar to the climate, which invest it with a
special charm. On the plain to the west of the colony, which is bounded
on two sides by the sea, on one by the mountain, and on one by the
colony, are the traces of the old town of Haifa, mentioned in the
Talmud, but not in the Bible, which was besieged and taken by storm by
Tancred, the crusader, in 1100, with a massive ruin of sea-wall and
other remains, from which I have already dug out fragments of glass and
pottery. Behind are the almost obliterated remains of an old fort, with
here and there a piece of limestone cropping up, bearing the marks of
man's handiwork.
Everywhere in Palestine we come upon the evidences of its antiquity.
This plain, now made to yield of its abundance under the skilful labour
of the German colonists, is no exception, for in the time of the Romans
it was the site of the city of Sycaminum, and in the groovings of rocks
upon which the sea now breaks we see the traces of what were its baths;
in the mounds we find fragments of old masonry and cement; in the
depressions we see signs of wells, and in the rock cuttings of tombs.
Only the other day I found, while digging in the garden for the prosaic
purpose of planting cabbages, a fragment of polished agate which
probably formed a part of the tessellated pavement of some Roman villa.
So the process of decay and reconstruction goes on, and man is ever
trying to rear something new on the ruins of the old. Let us hope that
the sixty or seventy substantial houses of the new colony are but the
outward and visible signs of that moral edifice which these good people
have come to Palestine to erect, and that from the ruins of a crumbling
ecclesiasticism they may build a temple worthy the worship of the
future.