Haifa, March 20.—When we had sufficiently satisfied our curiosity with
regard to the dolmens, which I described in my last letter, the sheik
who was our guide disappeared suddenly over the edge of the plateau on
which they stood, down what seemed to be a precipice of black basalt.
His reply to our anxious inquiry as to whither he was leading us—“to
very old stones, with writing on them”—was a talismanic utterance which
at once overcame all hesitation. On such occasions there rises in the
mind of the cold and weary and half-starving traveller (and I answered
to this description at the moment) visions of possible Moabite stones,
trilingual inscriptions, and all the other prizes which reward
successful Palestine research. I felt, therefore, ready to make any
plunge into unknown depths that he might choose to suggest, but
certainly this was a bad one. Some two thousand feet below us, distant
not more than seven miles, gleamed the still waters of the Sea of
Galilee. We stood on the upper edge of one of the branches of the Wady
Samak, which leads down to it. To our left, scarce a mile off, we could
see the old crusading ruin of the Kasr Berdawil, or Baldwin's Castle,
perched on a promontory the sides of which are sheer precipices, thus
offering to the old warriors a position of magnificent strength. It is
one of the least known of the Crusading strongholds, but I was assured
by a friend, who, so far as I know, is the only traveller who has
visited it, that beyond a few crumbling walls there was absolutely
nothing to be seen, so, as I had better game in prospect, I did not turn
aside to it, as I had originally intended, but resolutely prepared to
risk my neck amid the basalt blocks of the cliff down which the sheik
was now disappearing. Fortunately, though it was a bad descent, it was
not a long one. I never could understand how my horse managed it, for I
had left him to take care of himself, finding my own legs a safer method
of descent; but in these lonely regions the instinct of not getting
separated from the rest of the party is as strong with animals as with
men, and they may generally be trusted to follow their companions.
After scrambling down about five hundred feet we came to a sort of bench
or narrow plateau, on the flank of the ravine, and on turning round a
huge rock of black basalt came suddenly upon one of the most delightful
scenic surprises which it was possible to imagine. Here in this wild,
inaccessible spot, in ages long gone by, the ancients had evidently
contrived a secure and enchanting retreat, for it was provided with the
first requisite of beauty and of pleasure—a copious fountain of water.
It lay in crystal purity in a still, oblong pool, beneath the
perpendicular black rock. Against the rock, and projecting from it, were
two large arches which had been constructed of solid masonry, with
blocks of stone of immense size. One of these arches was almost
destroyed, but the other was still in perfect preservation. It measured
twenty-three feet in breadth, sixteen feet in height, and six feet six
inches in depth, this being therefore the width of the fountain, which
was also twenty-three feet long and about two feet deep. To my
astonishment it contained numbers of small fish, which was the more
surprising as it possessed no apparent outlet; but it was too cold and
fresh and sparkling to be anything but a living stream, and probably
disappeared by a subterranean passage through a large crevice which I
observed in the rock.
The wide-spreading branches of a venerable oak which grew directly in
front of the arch threw a delightful shade over it, while delicate ferns
clothed the sides of the grotto, which seemed to woo us to a repose and
indolence which was, alas, under the circumstances, denied to us. On the
keystone of the arch there was a partially effaced inscription. Though
it was sixteen feet overhead, and therefore inaccessible, I should not
have abandoned some attempt to decipher it had I not felt sure that,
even if I were close to it, it was too much defaced by the storms of
ages to be legible. I feel little doubt, however, about its having been
in the Greek character; while on a slab of stone at the side of the
spring I found carved the figure of a lion, which was in good
preservation, and of which I made a sketch.
The sheik was so impatient to take me somewhere else that he scarcely
allowed me time to avail myself of this tempting spot to take the
refreshment of which I stood much in need. He told me the name of the
place was Umm el-Kanatar, or, being interpreted, “the place of arches,”
a name evidently derived from its most striking feature, and he said
there was a ruin close by. This turned out to be not a hundred yards
distant, and consisted of walls still standing to a height of about
seven feet, composed of three courses of stone, the blocks averaging
about two feet one way by two feet six the other, but being in some
instances much larger. These walls enclosed an area of about fifty feet
by thirty-five, which was covered by a mass of ruins which had been
tossed about in the wildest confusion. It was quite evident that it had
been the work of an earthquake. Six columns, varying from ten to twelve
feet in height, rose from the tumbled masses of building-stone at every
angle. It was impossible without moving the huge blocks which encumbered
their bases and hid their pedestals, and balanced them in all sorts of
positions, to tell whether they were _in situ_ or not. The huge moulded
stones which formed the sides of the entrance, though still one above
the other, had been shaken out of position, but they bore all the
character of carving which is peculiar to Jewish architecture, and at
once led me to conclude that here, as at Eddikke, I had discovered the
ruins of an ancient Jewish synagogue, dating probably from the first or
second century A.D. This impression was confirmed as I came to examine
the ruin more narrowly. Here was the large stone cut in the shape of an
arch, which had probably stood upon the lintel of the principal
entrance; and here was a fragment of a handsome cornice of the same
peculiar pattern I had found at Eddikke, resembling the egg-and-dart
pattern of modern ornamentation. Here were the columns inside the walls
of the building instead of outside, which would have been the case had
it been a Greek temple, and here were the massive stones, not set in
mortar, which would have been the case if it had been an early Christian
basilica or church. Here, too, was a stone on which was carved the
representation of an eagle, in deference to the prejudices of the Roman
conquerors under whose auspices these synagogues appertaining to the
Jewish Patriarchate of Tiberias were built, the work having evidently
been executed by Roman workmen.
I could find no inscription, but it would take days to examine all the
stones thoroughly, and it is most probable that a careful investigation
of them would reveal something which would throw a still more definite
light on the character and period of the building, though I confess I
entertain very little doubt in respect to either. Altogether I regard
these ruins of Umm el-Kanatar as the most interesting discovery I have
yet made, and as being well worthy another visit and a more minute
examination than I was able to bestow upon them.
The sheik now appeared to think he had done his duty, and expressed his
intention of returning to his village and of leaving me to find my way
down the Wady Samak by myself. This I did not object to, as there was
still plenty of daylight, and I could, in fact, make out from where I
was now standing the position of the ruins of Kersa on the margin of the
lake, whither I had despatched my servants and baggage animals direct
from my last night's quarters, with orders to await my arrival there.
It was up the branch of the wady that I was descending that the
projected railway from Haifa to Damascus would have to be led, and it
was some satisfaction to see that it offered facilities for the ascent
of the line. The scenery was in the highest degree picturesque, the
sides of the valley sometimes sloping back for some distance to the foot
of the basalt precipices which formed its upper wall; at others these
approached and formed projecting and overhanging promontories, like that
on which the Kasr Berdawil was situated. We scrambled down by a rugged
path to the small stream at the bottom with the view of following it, if
possible, to its outlet on the lake, but this we soon found to be
impracticable, and were assured by a Bedouin, whose hut we finally
reached on its margin, that we must cross it, and make an ascent on the
opposite side. This led us by a roundabout, hilly, but picturesque route
across numerous and intersecting wadys, and past one ruin, of which
nothing remained but the black blocks of hewn basalt. I was fortunate
enough, however, to meet a man who told me the name, which I added to my
list of unknown ruins, and so, after much scrambling, we reached at last
the white limestone strata, and the purling brook again with its fringe
of oleanders, and could see in the distance the one large solitary tree
which we had given as our rendezvous, and beneath which our servants
were standing, that marks the site of the ruins of Kersa, or the Gergesa
of the Bible, where Christ healed the two men possessed with devils, and
suffered those malignant spirits to enter into the herd of swine.
There is a discrepancy in the accounts of the Evangelists in their
narrative of the incident. Mark and Luke, in our version, locate it in
the country of the Gadarenes, but Matthew states it to have taken place
in the country of the Gergesenes. The Vulgate, Arabic, and others that
follow the Vulgate read Gergesa in all the Evangelists, and there can be
no doubt that this is the correct reading, for the simple reason that
the miracles could not have taken place in the country of the Gadarenes,
a district which lies south of the Yarmuk, and at a long distance from
the lake, the principal town, Gadara, the modern Um Keis, about the
identification of which there can be no doubt, being at least eight
miles from it. Now the account says that “when he came out of the ship
immediately there met him a man,” also that the herd ran down a steep
place violently into the sea. To do this, if the incident had taken
place at Gadara, they must have descended twelve hundred feet to the
Yarmuk, swam across that river, clambered up the opposite bank, and then
raced for about six miles across the plain before they could reach the
nearest margin of the lake. Scarcely any amount of insanity on the part
of the devils would account for such a mad career, but in point of fact
it does not tally with the Scripture record, according to which they
rushed down a steep place into the sea. This is exactly what they could
do at Kersa. The margin of the lake is here within a few rods of the
base of the cliff, where there are ancient tombs, out of which may have
issued the men who met Christ on the plateau above; and it is easy to
suppose that the swine, rushing down the sloping cliff, would have
enough impetus to carry them across the narrow slip of shore at its
base. The remains now only consist of long lines of wall, which may
easily be traced, and of a considerable area strewn with
building-stones, which show that it must in old time have contained a
considerable population. This is the more likely to be the case as it
was the chief town of a district which was called after it. In fact,
this picturesque and interesting Wady Samak, with its evidences of a
former civilization, and its “place of arches” and handsome synagogue,
was, in fact, “the country of the Gergesenes;” and there can be little
doubt that to Christ and his disciples the remote corners of it, which I
had been one of the first to explore, were intimately known.^[3]
The ruins of Kersa are a good deal overgrown, and in the cover which is
thus afforded I put up a wild boar. He dashed away so suddenly, however,
that a bullet from a revolver, which was sent after him, failed to
produce any result. I have little doubt that the old Roman road turned
from the lake at this point up the Wady Samak, as there are traces here
and there indicating such a probability. It will be a singular
commentary on the progress of events if it turns out that it has taken
the best gradient, and if, upon its ancient track, the scream of the
locomotive may in the near future be heard waking up the long-silent
echoes of the country of the Gergesenes.
[3] The greater part of the Wady Samak and the surrounding country had,
immediately prior to my visit, been most accurately surveyed by Mr.
Gottlieb Schumacher, the son of the American vice-consul at Haifa, whose
admirable and exhaustive surveys are embodied in the proceedings of the
English and German Palestine Exploration Societies, and who was my
companion on the occasion of our discovery of the ruins of Umm
el-Kanatar.