Haggard Anthology Vol 16, page 81
The Turkish custom-house has a particular aversion to maps, considering them doubtful and dangerous inventions of the Frank. One of the mission societies, not long ago, tried to import some charts of Judaea, as it was in the time of Solomon. They were impounded. Thereupon a missionary attended and explained that this map showed the country as it had been when the kings of Israel ruled. The Turk listened and answered impassively—
"Your words cannot be true, for in those days they drew no maps, and therefore cannot have made these. For the rest, this land is ruled by the Sultan, and to speak of any other king who had dominion over it is treason. Let the picture writings be destroyed."
It seems to be the same with everything. Before any good work is carried out, a colossal ignorance and prejudice must be conquered. This can only be done in one way, by the scientific distribution of baksheesh. Thus, even to build a hospital necessitates a firman from the Sultan, and all dwellers in the East know the cost and infinite labour involved in procuring such a document. Nor must the officials, being what they are by blood, tradition, and upbringing, be too severely blamed, since, according to Mr. Soutar, they are all regularly discharged every two years, and by this simple method forced to repurchase their places at a great price. Sometimes, also, a decree is issued that they shall receive no pay for four months, and sometimes the post must support itself out of incidental and irregular profits; that is, by bribery and blackmail. With a family to feed, under such circumstances, most of us would become corrupt.
Turning to another subject, Mr. Soutar informed me that the Jews of Tiberias expect that their Messiah, a great and powerful king, will rise bodily out of the Sea of Galilee. I asked him also of his work, and he informed me that Jewish converts are very rare and much oppressed; indeed, their existence is made almost unbearable. He quoted a case in which his own father and relatives had utterly disowned a man who became a Christian, refusing to know him when they met. Happily, however, after some incident which I forget, in this instance, a reconciliation was effected.
The matron also told me of her hospital, which, unfortunately, I was unable to visit, as we were leaving Tiberias so early on the next morning. One of her chief difficulties lay in dealing with the Bedouins, a tribe which furnishes many patients. These people, until some desperate sickness brings them to the charitable Christian doors, have very frequently never slept under a roof. From year to year they wander according to the immemorial custom of their people, resting beneath the stars in summer and crowding into the black camel-hair tents in winter. The result is that any building stifles them, especially at night. This I can quite understand, for as a young man I remember similar experiences when, after camping on the African veld for weeks, I first returned to civilised abodes. One of their patients, the matron said, absolutely refused to climb the stairs. When at length he was persuaded to the attempt he ascended them upon his hands and knees, scrambling along as we might do in crossing some terrible and precipitous place. These Arabs, however, are very thankful for the skill and kindness that is lavished on them; indeed those who are cured show their gratitude in many touching and simple ways. Nor is this sentiment lacking in the relatives to whom they tell their wondrous tale of the compassion of the Frank.
At length, much edified and instructed, we bade farewell to our kind hosts, with whom in their merciful work be all good fortune, and returned to the inn. Here we found the tortoise, as uncomfortable as any wild Bedouin in a hospital ward, engaged in waddling round and round the room with an activity surprising in a creature so ungainly. My subsequent mosquito-haunted dreams of him and of his far-reaching past are, I regret to say, too fantastic to be set down in a sober chronicle of facts.
On the following morning we departed from Tiberias for Tabor. The day was dull, and a coverlet of mist hid the broad surface of the lake, while above, patches of cloud hung upon the mountain foreboding wet. Reaching the higher level we rode over a plain, where in places the road, that, like everything else, had been prepared for the disappointing German Emperor, was actually ploughed up by industrious husbandmen, who grudged the few feet of ground it covered. Further on, however, the turf became so sound and good that we could actually canter over it without fear of falling, a rare circumstance in Palestine.
On our way we met a procession of a hundred or more Russian Christians making a pilgrimage round the Holy Land. These people, collected from the vast interior of the Russian Empire, land at Jaffa, and for the rest of that long journey trust to their legs. They walked with tall staves mounted in real or imitation silver, were clad in rough frieze, and carried kettles and packs, their only baggage, strung about their bodies. Nearly all of them seemed elderly, grey-bearded men, and women who were past the age of child-bearing, although here and there I noticed a young woman, perhaps unmarried or a widow. I believe that these persons, who if they be fanatical certainly deserve the respect of all right-thinking people, belong for the most part to the peasant class, and by many years of self-denial save up enough money, some £10 or £15 a head, to enable them to make the desired pilgrimage. The women are very plain and short in stature, but somehow their lack of favour is redeemed by the kindliness of their faces. Their husbands and brothers also are homely in appearance, but in this respect seem to improve with age, for both here and in other places I saw old men among them who might be called handsome. At least their white hair and earnest eyes gave them dignity. They appeared to be fond of flowers; at any rate we noticed that, notwithstanding their oppressive burdens, many of them carried bunches of anemones in their hands. Moreover, they had decorated the horses of their mounted guides with wreaths and coronals. As we went by they greeted us with courteous gestures, and in words which we could not understand. I could not help contrasting the conduct of these simple, pious folk with that of the troop of tourists whom we had met a few days before, and comparing their bows and gentle salutations with the hands outstretched in imitation of Arab beggars and the jocose cries for baksheesh, which to my fancy, perhaps over-nice, amidst these hallowed scenes, seemed to strangely out of place.
I have spoken before of the flowers of Palestine, but never in any other spot did I see their equal for loveliness and frequency. It is scarcely too much to say that here for whole miles it would have been difficult to throw a shilling at hazard without its falling on some beauteous bloom. Everywhere the turf was carpeted with them, in a pattern of glorious colours such as no man could design or execute. Over this starry plain wandered flocks of hundreds of storks. David drew his revolver and fired a shot, whereupon they rose like thunder, making the air white with their wings, to wheel round and round in circles and settle again far away. Where they nest I know not, if they do nest here. Perhaps they pass northward for this purpose. Perhaps even they are the fowls that I have seen building upon the roof-tops in Holland. Who can tell? I wonder, by the way, why these birds confine themselves to the other side of the Channel. There is little difference in climate between the Netherlands and the flats of eastern England, and to them a few more miles of sea would be no matter. Yet Nature says to them—Thus far shalt thou go and no further.
We halted to lunch in a most imposing ruin of vast extent, called Kahn-el-Tujar. This building is said to have been constructed in 1487, and was a caravanserai for the accommodation of merchants journeying to Damascus and elsewhere. All about are the remains of the chambers where they slept, with eating-halls and open courts, perhaps for the picketing of their camels and other beasts of burden. A quarter of a mile away on an opposing hill is another ruin, that of a Saracen castle, whose garrison, I suppose, protected—or plundered—the caravanserai. I do not know when these places were deserted or destroyed, but until recently a fair was held here. Indeed it was the site of a cattle sale only two years ago.
Our meal finished we saddled up, and started somewhat hurriedly, hoping to reach the top of Tabor before the threatening rain came down in earnest. The mountain rose immediately above us, a round majestic mass, of old the landmark on the frontiers of Issachar and Zebulun. Here it was, too, that Deborah the prophetess commanded Barak to gather his host for the smiting of Sisera, saying, "Hath not the Lord God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw toward Mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali, and of the children of Zebulun." Here also, according to the earliest and best Christian tradition, confirmed by Origen little more than two centuries after the birth of Christ, and St. Jerome, who wrote in the fourth century, but questioned by Baedeker and by the Rev. John Lightfoot, the Hebrew scholar, who died in 1675, took place the Transfiguration of the Saviour in the presence of St. Peter, St. James, and St. John. On this point, however, I shall have more to say.
The slopes of the holy mountain are thickly clothed with oaks, other trees, and various kinds of scrub. Strangely enough, Tabor has always been considered holy; by the early Jews, the Christians of all ages, the Saracens, and the people of Palestine of to-day. This reputation, moreover, is quite independent of the circumstance of the Transfiguration, except of course in the case of Christians. As we rode upwards we passed the tents of an encampment of Bedouins, who have the reputation of being the most lawless of their turbulent race, but they did nothing more than stare at us. Scrambling along the steep zig-zag path, a ride of about an hour brought us to the summit of the mountain, which is said to be three kilometres in circumference. Passing beneath the ancient gateway we rode to the Latin monastery, known as Residence de la Transfiguration, now in charge of the learned Père Barnabé, O.F.M., Missionaire Apostolique, and an assistant brother. The Father had not returned from some expedition when we arrived, but, upon presenting our introduction, his subordinate entertained us kindly.
We inquired at once for the fresh horses that our American friend had so generally promised to send to meet us here. Our chagrin may be imagined when we learned that these horses arrived on the previous day, but, as we were not there, had returned to Nazareth, or, for aught we knew, to Jerusalem. Indeed this was nothing short of a blow to us, since to attempt the journey across the plain of Esdraelon and the mountains beyond upon our weary crocks would be a bold undertaking. What made the disappointment more tiresome also, was the certainty that it had not been brought about by chance since, to our knowledge, the dragoman in charge of the horses had received strict and full orders from his employer as to when and where he was to meet us. Unfortunately, however, the American gentleman, in his forethought and generosity, had impressed upon us that we were to pay nothing for these horses, an injunction which, of course, we intended to disregard. Without doubt he had told the dragoman, or owner, the same thing, whereon that astute Eastern, not knowing our intentions, fulfilled the letter of the law, but broke its spirit. That is to say, he came to meet us, but on the wrong day, and forthwith vanished, so far as we are concerned, for ever.
XVII. TABOR, CARMEL, AND ACRE
Lacking other consolations in our sad circumstances, we took such comfort as we could from tea and the old saying about tears and spilt milk, after which we set out to see the ruins. Both that afternoon and for three hours on the following morning in the company of Father Barnabé, I examined these various and fascinating relics very closely. I do not, however, propose to attempt any detailed description of them; first because it would occupy too much space, and secondly, for the reason that this has already been done in a fashion which I could not hope to rival, by Father Barnabé himself, in his work Le Mont Thabor (J. Mersch, Paris).
These ruins, that are surrounded first by the remains of the encircling and ancient wall built by Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian of the Roman wars, which protected the whole top of the mountain, and, secondly, with the broken fortifications reared by the Saracens and destroyed by them also between 1211 and 1217, may for the present purpose be roughly divided into two parts, that lying to the west of the modern Latin monastery, and that which extends to the east. To the west, at the foot of the garden and beyond it, are caves which at some period probably served as tombs, but were afterwards, doubtless during the first few centuries of the Christian era, used as the habitations of hermits. In certain of these can still be seen benches hollowed in the rock, where year by year some long departed saint rested his weary bones, and other little hollows outside, which the rain filled to serve him with drinking water.
It is strange to look at these wretched places and reflect upon the passionate prayers, the nightly vigils, the pious but in my view mistaken purposes that hallow them. What a life it must have been which the old devotees endured for decades in those damp holes. There is something pitiable in that tale of useless sacrifice. Yet in their way, how good they were, these men who deserted the real, if fleeting and uncertain, pleasures that the world has to offer to its sons, in order to wear out their lives thus, like lichens withering upon an inhospitable wall, till at length some brother anchorite found them stiff in their self-appointed tombs. When they were dead others took their places, and so at intervals of ten, or twenty, or fifty years, others and yet others till the custom perished, and its scant memorials writ in stone were covered with the dust of generations, in due season to be reopened and read by us to-day. God rest them all, poor men, whom the bitterness of life, the fear of death, and a hope of some ultimate transcendent remedy drove to such spiritual, and physical, expedients.
Beyond, or rather between, these hermit cells lies an ancient cemetery whereof Father Barnabé has excavated many of the graves. These are very curious, and, as he believes, contain the remains of some of the 50,000 people who took refuge here from the Romans in the time of Josephus. They are dug out to about the depth of six feet, and lined with rough stones, among which have been found a few fragments of skeletons and some coins of the Roman period. Another very curious relic is a sloping cement slab in what evidently has been a chamber with conveniences for the heating of water, which the Père Barnabé surmises—and after examination I agree with him—was used for the ceremonial washing of corpses before they were consigned to earth. What sights and sorrows must this place have seen.
Then there are what appear to have been wine-presses, with hollows at a lower level for the collection of the must, and great cemented cisterns where rainwater was, and is still, gathered, dating, it is thought, from the time of the Saracens. Beyond all these lie the wrecks of a Levitical settlement.
So much for the western side.
Passing through a kind of gateway to the east the visitor finds himself among whole acres of tumbled ruins. Here was the fortress built by the Benedictines during the twelfth century—I think that Saladin massacred them all. Here, too, were the monasteries of various orders, with their refectories, kitchens, sleeping-rooms, and baths built on the Turkish plan. One can even see where they warmed the water; indeed it is on record that the frequent use of this luxurious form of bath by these monks caused something of a scandal. Especially noticeable are the remains of a great and lofty hall, believed to have been the chapter-room of the Benedictines, and a chapel which I suppose belonged to this order, found to be floored with beautiful mosaic. This, however, has been covered up again to prevent the Russian pilgrims, who are very troublesome in such respects, from carrying it away piecemeal.
Many are the far mementoes of the past which I omit, as I despair of describing them in a clear and satisfactory fashion. Let us go on to the great basilica, first built by order of the Empress Helena, with its sister but inferior chapels on either side, supposed to have been dedicated to Moses and Elias. It is a long building with a round apse, which has been disinterred in recent years. At the eastern extremity of this apse stands an altar built up again of the rough original stones and surmounted by a plain, iron cross. This altar, placed upon the extreme verge of the mountain, is by immemorial report believed to mark the spot where our Saviour stood during the occurrence of the ineffable event of the Transfiguration. Who can look at it unmoved? Anciently it was roofed in, now in its simple loneliness it stands open to the heavens, and thus, to my mind, gains in dignity and suggestiveness. The tendency in the Holy Land is to cover every sacred shrine with some tawdry dome. I prefer the infinite arc of the skies, and for decoration the wild flowers and creeping ferns and grasses which grow amid the mouldering stones. Once the southern walls of this basilica were heaped with Saracenic towers and fortifications. Now it and these have come to an equal ruin.
At the fall of night, through the midst of torrential rain driven in sheets by a violent gale of wind, I went out and stood alone upon the broken wall of one of these ancient towers, till darkness overtook me, and the gusts became so fierce that on that narrow, perilous place, I grew afraid to match my strength against their fury. Beneath me stretched the vast plain of Esdraelon looking extraordinarily grand and gloomy in the dull lights of that rushing storm. There to the right was the territory of Zebulun; to the left the land of Issachar; behind the country of Naphtali; yonder soared the point of little Hermon, and beyond all rose the crest of Mount Gilboa. Suddenly revealed in swift glimpses to be as suddenly lost to sight, it was indeed a majestic prospect, but nothing there moved me so much as that desolate altar and the iron cross which stood in the dim apse beneath. It would be hard for any man to set down the thoughts that strike him in such a scene and hour. I will not attempt the task further than to say that this one lonely experience repaid me for all the toil and difficulties of my visit to Syria.
Two falcons were nesting, or preparing to nest, among the stones of the tower. My advent disturbed them. With wild screams they swept around me, and the presence of these creatures seemed as it were to complete, even to accentuate, the solemn conditions of the place, as the great eagles that always hover about the crest of Tabor complete and accentuate its storied and eternal solitude. If ever there was a spot where God in His power might manifest Himself upon an earth He loved, and was pleased to redeem, surely this one is fitting. So at least I thought, who was happy in the occasion and circumstances of my visit. Seen in the glare of day, and crowded with hundreds of Russian pilgrims, perhaps it would have impressed me differently.
