Haifa, Feb. 12.—A more thorough examination of the rocky hillsides of
the Carmel promontory in the vicinity of the celebrated monastery than I
have been hitherto able to give it, has revealed many spots of interest,
and one in particular, which seems to have escaped the observation of
the Palestine Exploration Fund Survey. About two miles and a half from
Haifa the road to Jaffa passes between a projecting spur of the range
and a mound about a hundred feet high, which formed the centre of the
ancient city of Sycaminum, and which probably conceals some interesting
remains, which I hope some day to be able to unearth.
It projects out into the sea, and on the flat rocks at its base, over
which the waves break in stormy weather, there is a large circular bath
excavated by the Romans, about twenty feet in circumference, with a
channel cut through the rock, which admits the rising tide. All round
this mound are fragments of columns, carved capitals, and blocks of
polished marble, some of the lightest of which I have carried away; but
it is upon the unknown contents of the mound itself that my imagination
is prone to speculate. On the left of the road are caverns and rock-cut
tombs, some containing the remains of loculi; and the surface of the
smooth limestone rock leaves traces of ancient steps, and cuttings,
showing that in old times the hand of man had been actively employed
upon it. I had often examined these, and thought I had reached their
limit, when, pushing my exploration farther up the steep hillside a few
days ago, through the low brush by which it is covered, I unexpectedly
came upon a plateau eight or ten acres in area, and about two hundred
feet above the level of the sea, covered with the débris of ancient
ruins. It was evidently the upper part of the old city of Sycaminum, and
commanded a magnificent view of the coast-line southward, and of what
was formerly the lower town, which has heretofore been supposed to be
all that there was of the city.
This upper town, from its cool and delightful position, was probably the
residence of the wealthier inhabitants; here, too, were fragments of
marble columns and carved capitals, and conspicuous among them two
gigantic old olive millstones, one about eight feet in diameter and two
feet thick, and the other of less diameter, but of more than three feet
in thickness. There were, moreover, many rock tombs with loculi, the
foundations of ancient walls of immense thickness, and here and there
fragments of the wall itself standing, in one place to a height of about
five feet. But the most interesting find was a triangular piece of
marble, on which was an inscription in a character which may possibly be
ancient Syriac. It is certainly not Greek, Roman, or Hebrew, though at
the first glance I thought it was the former. Unfortunately, the stone
has been cut since the inscription was engraved, and there are only a
few letters of each word, one below the other, but it was evidently
originally a long one, consisting of many lines. I also discovered here
a cistern, with four circular apertures; causing myself to be lowered
into it, I found it to be seventy feet long, supported by four pillars
hewn from the living rock, lined with cement, and twenty feet high, from
the débris with which it was partially choked. Altogether the place is
well worth a fuller and more careful investigation, which I hope to give
it.
About an hour's ride further south is an interesting spot called the
Valley of the Martyrs, which, though rarely visited, is well worth an
excursion, not merely on account of its peculiar geological features and
its great scenic attractions, but from the historical associations which
attach to it. It was towards the close of the twelfth century that
Father Brocard was elected vicar-general of the order “of the Blessed
Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel,” whose sanctuary had been long established
upon the mountain, though the members of the order had their homes in
its numerous caverns, resorting to the shrine only for purposes of
worship, while they lived as scattered ascetics in the surrounding
valleys. Father Brocard conceived the idea of collecting them in a
monastery, and placing them under certain fixed regulations, which have
ever since been the rules of the order, and which were sanctioned in
A.D. 1207 by Saint Albert, Patriarch at Jerusalem, Pope's Legate, and
then resident at Acre.
It was in this gorge, which subsequently became known as the Valley of
the Martyrs, that Father Brocard decided to build the first monastery,
attracted thither, probably, by its beauty of situation and the
copiousness of its springs, one of which is called after Elijah, as
tradition has it that the inhabitants in his time complained of a lack
of water, and he touched the rock and caused the present stream to gush
forth. It wells up from under the limestone rock, and flows through a
channel cut for it, for a few yards, into a basin hollowed out of the
solid rock, about twelve feet square and six feet deep; from here it
flows down the narrow gorge, and speedily expends itself in fertilizing
some small gardens of figs, oranges, and pomegranates, which are wedged
in between the rocky hillsides, and are tended by one or two poor
families who live in caves. These gardens are now claimed by the present
monastery, but there seems much doubt as to the validity of their title.
It is safer to dismount after passing this spring, as we now have to
cross the smooth surface of the limestone rock as we follow the steep
path that leads up to the ruin of the old monastery, the position of
which is indicated by the remains of an enormous wall which nearly
reaches across the gorge, looking from below like some huge dam, and
which must have concealed the monastery itself from public gaze, except
from the hills above. We are now struck by the extraordinary
petrifactions over which we are passing. The path is worn deep by
centuries into the soft limestone, in the sides of which appear layers
of petrified twigs and branches of the bushes of a bygone period. They
are perfectly white, except where fractures exhibit the black flint
core; but in some instances the form of the branch is perfect with all
its twigs. Passing under the projecting buttress of the dam-like wall,
we suddenly open on a terrace covered with vines and fruit-trees on one
side, and find ourselves at the mouth of a large cave on the other.
Entering this, if we are willing to brave the fleas—for, as it is
generally inhabited by an Arab family, they abound—we find that we are
in a spacious apartment supported by a column of solid rock, while all
around are mangers for horses, cut out of the stone. Of these we count
fourteen, which will give some idea of the size of the cave. Probably in
crusading times it was a cavalry outpost, affording, from its strong
natural position and proximity to the plain of Sharon, a splendid point
of vantage from which to pounce upon an unsuspecting enemy.
Ascending from the cave by some steps to the terrace, we come
unexpectedly upon a delicious spring overshadowed by spreading
fig-trees, which fills with crystal water a basin that has been hollowed
out of the overhanging rock; from this it trickles into another
stone-cut reservoir, from whence it is led by a stone channel, hollowed
by the monks, to the monastery itself, one small room of which is still
standing. The rock rises perpendicularly behind, and is scooped here and
there into recesses, which were formerly, doubtless, the cells of monks,
while the cool shade of spreading fruit-trees, the beauty of the view,
the presence of running water, and the ever-blowing southwest wind, of
which they got the full benefit, must have modified to a considerable
extent the austerities of their existence.
There came a day, however, when their peaceful solitude was rudely
disturbed. In 1238 the Saracens came upon them unexpectedly, and
massacred them all, not leaving one to tell the bloody tale. There seems
to be no record of the actual number who fell victims upon this
occasion, but they must have been very numerous, as the Monastery of St.
Brocard had become a refuge for monks from all parts of Palestine, who
fled hither to escape the persecution to which they were being subjected
in other parts of the country. Not content with putting them to death,
the Saracens dragged their bodies down to the Spring of Elijah, and
flung them into the square reservoir there, which I have already
described. According to the pious chronicler of this tragic event, the
spring immediately refused to flow, and when the Christians of Acre,
hearing the news, came to bury their coreligionists, they found it dry.
When they had completed their melancholy task, they prayed that the
water might commence to run once more, which it immediately did, and has
never ceased since.
The result of this tragedy was the practical expulsion of the order of
the Carmelites from Palestine. The Monastery of St. Brocard, after its
short-lived existence, fell into ruins, and more than four hundred years
elapsed before the order once more secured a footing on Mount Carmel,
and built a monastery upon it at the end of the promontory, which served
as a hospital for the French soldiers during Napoleon's occupation of
this part of the country. His hurried evacuation of Palestine involved
the destruction of the monastery and the massacre of all the wounded, to
whose memory a monument has since been erected in the garden attached to
the present edifice. But there can be no doubt that both for
picturesqueness and historical association the old ruin of the Monastery
of Saint Brocard, which altogether escapes the attention of the tourist
and the pilgrim, is far more interesting than the modern monastery,
which is not fifty years old, and which is about two miles distant from
this old site.
On the top of the hill above the ruins of the Monastery of St. Brocard
is a plateau, called the Garden of Elijah, or the field of melons, which
is abundantly strewn with geodes, or fragments of calcareous stone,
having all the shape and appearance in many cases of petrified fruit,
the crystallization of the centres when they are split open having
confirmed this idea, thus doubtless giving rise to the legend that
Elijah on one occasion, passing through the gardens which were once
situated here, asked the proprietor for some fruit. He replied, not
wishing to comply with the request, that they were stones, on which the
prophet, apparently in a fit of temper, said, “Well, stones let them
remain,” and stones they have remained ever since. I found some curious
specimens so like small melons that one can well understand how this
fable may have originated among an ignorant population.