Daliet-el-Carmel, July 12.—Those readers who may have read my letters
from Palestine, may remember that last year I took refuge from the
summer heats at the village of Esfia, on the highest point of Mount
Carmel, where I established a temporary camp. The disadvantage of living
under canvas is that, though it may secure you cool nights, it affords
but insufficient shelter from the noonday sun. I therefore determined to
build myself something more substantial. My experiences of
house-building on Carmel have been both characteristic and instructive.
When I announced my intention to the villagers of Esfia, they professed
the greatest enthusiasm, and the owners of the land which I had chosen
for a site expressed their desire to make me a present of it, so anxious
did they pretend to be that I should settle among them. I absolutely
refused, however, to receive anything as a gift, and told them to name
their price. This they modestly put at $650. As the most trustworthy
estimate I could obtain put its value at $50, I said I would reconsider
my original decision and accept it as a gift. This seemed to afford them
intense amusement. Offers of this sort were merely complimentary, they
said, and meant nothing. I replied that the joke of offering me the land
for nothing was only equalled by their asking me twelve times its value,
which I should also consider meant nothing. They came down at a bound to
$250, provided I would pay the costs of the transfer. This I found to
mean procuring them a valid title to the land, which they admitted they
had not got, and which it would cost $50, expended in bribes to the
government, to obtain. I suggested that I might in that case expend the
$50 in procuring a valid title from the government in my own name, and
pay them nothing, seeing that, though theoretically, they were not
practically, the owners of the land. This, though it might possibly have
been accomplished, would have placed me in open warfare with the
village. Rather than live there under such conditions, I declined to
have anything more to do with people who had shown such dishonest and
grasping propensities. I will say, however, that these were confined
exclusively to the Christian section of the population, who claimed the
ownership of the site, and that the Druses held themselves aloof and
repudiated all participation in the negotiations, expressing great
indignation at the conduct of the Christians, and offering me sites
elsewhere.
I was too disgusted with these latter, however, to be tempted to live
near them, and was casting about in despair for an alternative, when one
day I received a visit from the Druse sheik of Dalieh, the only other
village on Carmel, and distant about thirteen miles from Haifa, who
arrived in great distress to tell me that his only son had just been
drawn as a conscript for the army, and that the whole family, including
his son's wife, whom I had remarked on the occasion of a former visit as
one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen, were thrown into the
greatest grief, as they were unable to pay the $250 which was required
to buy a substitute. I rode up to the village to inquire into the
matter, and, in return for the required sum, which I paid, received a
vineyard and garden of fruit-trees, with a good title, and a site far
surpassing in loveliness of situation that which I had failed to secure
at Esfia. The whole village turned out _en masse_ to express their
gratitude and make professions of service. As the village is exclusively
Druse, and does not contain a single Christian inhabitant, I felt that
these were to be relied upon; nor, so far, has this confidence turned
out misplaced. The sheik to whom I had thus been able opportunely to
render assistance, was the spiritual head of the village. Its temporal
affairs are managed by another sheik. The site for my house was only
divided by a terrace from the little Druse place of worship, where,
however, the services are conducted under the strictest secrecy. The
whole hillside here is terraced with vines, pomegranates, and
wide-spreading fig-trees, at an altitude of thirteen hundred feet above
the sea, which is distant as the crow flies about five miles. It
commands a magnificent view of it and of the picturesque ruin of Athlit
on its projecting promontory, while a smiling valley, the sloping hills
of which are partially cultivated and partially covered with copse-wood,
winds down to a wild gorge between whose precipitous cliffs one enters
the plain of Sharon.
The difficulty in placing the house was to do so without having to cut
down any of the fig-trees that formed a sort of bower in which we had to
nestle, and which secures us abundant thick shade. No sooner did we
begin to excavate for the foundations than we came upon huge, massive
cut blocks of stone, which evidenced the existence of some previous
building of great antiquity. Soon there turned up a beautifully carved
cornice, then a coin of one of the Constantines of the period of the
Byzantine Empire, then about a dozen iron rings about two and a half
inches in diameter, attached to iron staples, and a quantity of nails
about four inches long, all heavily encrusted with rust. These were dug
up about two feet beneath the surface. Then came handles of jars and
fragments of pottery, some pieces of old glass, one apparently the stem
of a vase, and quantities of tesseræ, showing the existence of a
tessellated pavement somewhere beneath. I was sorely tempted to diverge
from building into excavating, but I should have destroyed my site,
indefinitely postponed the erection of the house when time was of the
utmost value, and forfeited my contract with the builder. So I have had
to do the barbarous thing of building on the top of what may be a most
interesting ruin, and of actually using the old foundations and some of
the stone which composed this house of the ancients.
The most of the stones of which the house is built come, however, from
the ruins of Dubil, the extensive remains of which are about a mile
distant. Here is the finest collection of rock-cut tombs on Carmel;
while the number and size of the cisterns, the huge circular stones of
the old olive-presses, the basins carved in the solid rock as wine vats,
the fragments of columns, and the area over which the solid foundations
of the former town extend, prove that it contained, in the most ancient
times, a larger population than any other spot on the mountain. I am
able to say this with the more confidence as I have visited over twenty
other sites of ancient towns on Carmel. From this almost inexhaustible
quarry of old dwellings is my new one mainly constructed, and thus do I
live and move and have my being amid the relics of a most remote past.
One of the most puzzling of these is an immense roller, which I came
upon in making a terrace for the veranda, from which it now projects as
a conspicuous ornament. It is eight feet long, but one end has been a
good deal broken, and it may have been longer. It tapers very slightly
at both extremities, and is nine feet in circumference around the
centre, the ends being about two feet six in diameter. It has four
parallel lines of slots a little over two feet apart, each slot about
eight inches long and three deep, and two wide at the top. There are
four of these slots in each line, and they are about eight inches apart.
The whole mass weighs probably from three to four tons. We had quite a
force of men to move it into its present position. I leave it to the
wise in such matters to conjecture what its possible use may have been.
I have seen others scattered about in some of the ruins on the mountain,
generally near olive-presses. I think they had some reference to the
crushing apparatus.
But by far the most important find—and this was not made until after the
house was finished and we were clearing up the débris—was an ancient
cistern; and, as luck would have it, it was just in the position in
which I would have put a cistern had this not appeared ready to hand,
thus saving me an expenditure of about $200. The aperture, cut in the
solid rock, is two feet three inches square. It is then hollowed,
demijohn shape, out of the rock to a depth of fourteen feet, with an
average breadth at the bottom of twelve feet. In the bottom is a
circular hole five feet in diameter by three deep. This is evidently for
cleaning out the cistern, and is a good idea, which I should suggest be
adopted by us moderns. It is plain that if, instead of having a flat
bottom to a cistern, you have a hole in the bottom into which you can
sweep all the dirt, the process of cleaning is simplified. It took four
men several days to clean out this old cistern. It contained a great
quantity of fine mould, some broken earthenware jars, a good many large
stones, and a rather good fragment of a glass cup. The old cement is
still visible, about half an inch thick.
Besides the cistern, I have found a cave, formerly a tomb, close to the
house, which I shall use as a cellar, and store away my wine in the
stone coffins, or loculi, in which the bones of some ancient characters
have reposed. From all which it will appear that house-building in
Palestine, if it is attended with the inconveniences arising from the
backward state of civilization, may nevertheless possess a charm of its
own.
If some of our appliances are rough-and-ready, they often possess the
merit of cheapness. Plastering, for instance, is an expensive luxury;
but the natives have a way of plastering the walls which is nearly as
good, and by no means costly. This is entirely done by the women, who
come and sift soil, which they mix with cut straw and water, and knead
into a paste. When they have plastered the walls and floor with this,
they make another with a peculiar, fine white clay, which they dig from
certain places in the hillsides, and, mixing this also with finely
chopped straw, lay it on as an outer covering. It makes a very pale
yellow coating for the walls, which is by no means unsightly. It is not
so good, however, for the floors, as it is said to give a better harbour
for fleas than another and more expensive cement which is made with
lime, and is called barbarica. This is better also for the flat roofs,
as it is more impervious to water in the rainy season.
These roofs enable us to double our accommodations in a most economical
fashion. For instance, we have a guest coming, and if the house is full,
we build him a leaf hut on the roof at the extravagant rate of 75 cents.
These charming little leaf huts, which can be made most snug and
comfortable when lined with mats, can be multiplied at will over the
whole roof, and the occupants have a cooler time and a more extensive
view than the dwellers in the stone chambers beneath. As, however, in
these climates air and room add materially to comfort, our principal
living-room is thirty feet by twenty, and fifteen feet high, though I
have not aspired to anything but a summer cottage, and the whole cost
has not exceeded $800.
In the eyes of the natives, this modest erection has seemed something
palatial. The people of Esfia have come over, green with envy of their
Dalieh rivals, and bitterly reproaching themselves with the
short-sighted cupidity which has deprived them of the prestige which now
attaches to Dalieh, and filled with regret at the loss of the money
which would otherwise have been spent among them, while to the Dalieh
villagers it is a source of pride and delight. Whenever any Druse sheik
comes from a neighbouring village, he is at once brought to see the
sight. The consequence is that I have no lack of visitors, and,
foreseeing this, took care to have a special apartment called a “liwan,”
exclusively devoted to their reception. They are thus barricaded from
the rest of the house. Otherwise, with the prying curiosity which
characterizes the race, privacy would be impossible. As it is, from
morning to night there is always a group round the kitchen, much to the
detriment of culinary operations and the annoyance of the servants
engaged in them. Still, in order to keep on good terms, we have to make
concessions, to waste time over much drinking of coffee out of minute
cups, to hear their gossip on local politics, and, what is still more
difficult, to try and give them some larger ideas than the very narrow
ones which they have acquired upon these wild hillsides.
Altogether, although their defects are of a somewhat trying kind, and
their essential insincerity makes them arrant humbugs, they are rather
pleasant humbugs, and, provided they do not test one's affection by too
many invitations to dinner, which involves squatting on your heels and
eating with your fingers, the Druses are, taking them altogether, by far
the most agreeable class of people to live among in Palestine.