PART II. Tibnin. And now we have gained the summit of this long ravine, let me inform you that it is but one of many which cut down, in all directions, from the high plateaus of Naphtali. We shall be obliged to regulate our march in all cases according to their dictation. Yonder is Tibnîn, crowning the top of a lofty Tell, partly natural and partly artificial. It rises like a huge hay stalk at least two hundred feet above all its surroundings. The present buildings are comparatively modern, but it figured in the wars of the Crusaders, by whom it was called Toron. No doubt those mailed champions of the Cross often dashed up Wady Habis in a style very different from our peaceful and pleasant saunter, and on a very different errand, for they had to encounter the victorious squadrons of the terrible Saladin. Toron is not, probably, the most ancient The castle. name of this castle. A place so conspicuous, so strong, and so central, must have always been occupied, as it is now, by the family that governed the province around it; and there are not wanting traces of that more ancient castle. The top of the Tell is perforated like a honey-comb with old cisterns; and on the east side are heavy foundations, the stones of which have the Phoenician bevel. They may have been there at the time of Joshua, and Tibnîn probably represents some one of the places given to Naphtali, though what one it is impossible to determine. The Beg informed me that Jezzar Pasha of Acre destroyed this castle, broke down the wall, and filled up the ditch, which ran quite round the Tell. He did the same to Hûnîn, and, indeed, to all the castles in these mountains, and killed or expelled the native chiefs. If the Butcher had done nothing worse, he would have deserved praise rather than censure. After his death, howewer, the feudal lords returned more greedy and tyrannical than ever. The present head of the house of Aly es Sughîr pretends that his ancestors were made governors of Belad Bsharah by the great Saladin himself. This may be fairly doubted, though I do not know when they actually rose to power in the country. Shall we call on this governor in the castle? By no means. There would be no getting away until to-morrow. Two years ago I spent the night there with my family, and that will last me all my life. I had no intention of doing such a foolish thing then, but began to pitch the tents in some threshing-floors which overlook the wady on the north of the castle. The Beg had seen us pass, and despatched a messenger to invite us to his palace. I sent an apology. Then came a deputation "more honourable," his secretary and a near relative, with a note from the Beg, urging the invitation so earnestly that I felt obliged to comply. This sending honourable princes to press the request reminded me at the time of the way in which Balak overcame the real or pretended reluctance of Balaam. "He sent again princes, more, and more honourable than they; and they said to him, Let nothing, I pray thee, hinder thee from coming unto me.' This is a very 1 Num. xxii. 15, 16. XV. ancient and very common custom. Everything is done by mediation. Thus CHAPTER the centurion sent unto Jesus elders, beseeching him that he would come and heal his servant.1 In a hundred instances I have been pressed and annoyed Mediators by these mediating ambassadors. Their importunity takes no denial. To save ourselves from such a siege, we will keep quite clear of the castle, and go on about half an hour to a well at the bottom of that wady east of us, and there take our lunch. In the meantime, I will give you an account of that visit, as the cheapest way into the interior of a Metawely governor's palace. The old Beg received me with the utmost politeness,-descended from his divan, kissed me on both cheeks, and insisted on my sharing his elevated seat. A divan. To the best of my knowledge, it was the first time I ever saw him, but he insisted that he had been at my house in Beirût some fifteen years before, and that I had done him a very important service by speaking a word in his behalf in the right quarter. It may have been so; at any rate, he was as kind as he knew how to be-gave me a Metawely dinner, and kept me up till late, talking about all sorts of topics before a full divan of his relatives and retainers, and then had my bed spread on the same divan. According to court etiquette at Tibnîn, the ladies of my party had their own apartment, and, after being served with dinner, they called on the great sit, or lady of the Beg, whose apartments were in another section of the castle. It would be tedious to detail all they saw and heard; but they were much pleased with some of the harem," who appeared modest, lady-like, and pretty. Others, however, were coarse and ill-bred enough. fleas. I was greatly disappointed in the Beg. His conversation was incessant, loud, and often utterly absurd. We fell at last into a rambling and useless discussion about religion, in which Mohammed's character and prophetic claims were handled rudely enough, to the great scandal of the dervishes present; and at midnight I was glad to break up the divan, and try to sleep-no easy task, A sleepless or, rather, it was impossible. The visitors had filled the divan with fleas, and nightthe wind, which began to blow hard before we left our tents, proved to be one of those siroccos which make all sorts of vermin doubly active and man excessively nervous. The whole night was passed in fruitless skirmishes with these contemptible enemies, and the suffocating wind whistled and piped most doleful tunes through every chink and cranny of the old castle. The ladies had fared even worse than myself, and the morning found us dejected, headachy, and quite discouraged. Having with difficulty achieved a breakfast, in the midst of confusion which reminded me of Scott's Highland stories, we took a guide from the Beg and started for Hunîn, where we expect to get to-night. I shall never forget the experience of that dismal night, nor the charming Romantic ride of that day through these romantic wadies of old Naphtali. We filled our wadies of Naphtali. water-bottles at these very wells where we are now quietly taking lunch, and Luke vii. 3. II. PART then rode over that hill east of us. Beyond it our guide turned suddenly to the left down a shallow ravine, but one that deepened every moment, until we were completely shut in between lofty walls of grey rock. Deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth we dived for more than an hour, to where two other wadies joined ours-one from the south, the other from the east. The three in one trend off toward the north, and, under the name of Hajeîr, descend to the Litany at Jisr K'ak'aîyeh. The one from the south passes by an ancient castle called Dubay, about which nothing need be, and very little can be said. We took the castern ravine, called Hûla (from a village at the head of it)— strange, wild, romantic. For miles the path was literally roofed over with a dense canopy of trees and bushes, forming, with the bed of the brook whose windings we had to follow, a sort of tunnel wholly peculiar. We were often obliged to lie flat on the necks of our horses, and be drawn through this verdant vault by main force. At the end of two hours we emerged from this labyrinth, and climbed a steep and lofty hill to the village of Hûla-the same name, nearly, as that of the lake below Hunîn. We intended to rest a while there; but such a mob of rude Metawelies, of every age and sex, beset us, clamorous to see the seigniorât-as they call Frank ladies—that we were compelled to decamp immediately, and, after another hour's pleasant ride, we pitched our tents among the oaks, olives, and terebinths on the western margin of the vale of Hunîn. Beth- And now, lunch over, let us ride, and to the south-east for half an hour, to avoid the wady in which our story has been entangled. We are passing through the very heart of Naphtali, wild and savage, just fitted to be the home of that warlike tribe. No European, and but very few native travellers, ever venture along this desolate road. We shall soon get down to an old guardhouse, called Beer en Nukkar, erected for the protection of the traveller through this dangerous district. Off yonder to the south-west is 'Ainʼata, supAnatha or posed to be the Anatha or Beth-Anath given to Naphtali; and half an hour farther south is Bint Jebail-daughter of a little mountain (to translate), and the capital of this region. To the left of us, in the woods, is a ruin with columns, and foundations of old temples, called Kubrîkha, and the entire neighbourhood is crowded with ancient but deserted sites. A long, rocky ascent eastward now leads us to Neby Mûhaîbeeb-a celebrated saint of the Metawelies-picturesquely perched upon a bold promontory. We pass north of it on the direct road to Mais el Jebel, which is just visible yonder to the north-east of us. Let me call your attention to this very unromantic, nonpoetic pool. Every village in this region has one or more of them for their herds and flocks. In very dry seasons they entirely fail; and there are frequent allusions to such a calamity in the Bible. It is among the threatened judgments upon unbelieving Israel that the Lord will dry up al! their pools.1 Water pouls. Isa. xliii. 15. MAGNIFICENT VIEW IN NAPHTALI. 213 Do the people drink this composition of nastiness? CHAPTER Many do, and all use this water for culinary and other household purposes. XV. Nothing is more common than to see flocks and herds standing up to their Bad water. bellies in these pools, and the people filling their jars in the midst of them. I have been obliged to drink it myself when of the colour of soap-suds, full of living animalculæ, and with a strong smell of the barn-yard. I once gave five piastres to get a jar of good water at this Hunîn where we are to spend the night, was cheated at last, and compelled to drink this abominable decoction. The Jews of all this region must have been supplied with water in the same way. Natural fountains are very rare, nor can wells be dug with success. The ancient inhabitants, however, depended greatly upon cisterns, and there are countless numbers of them about these old sites; but the water, even in these, is filthy and full of vermin, unless great care be taken to keep them clean and sweet. That is quite sufficient on this topic. There seems to be a castle here. Has the place any historic name? Not that I know of. The castle, at least in its present form, is comparatively modern. There are traces, however, of genuine antiquity about this Mais, and I doubt not there was once a Jewish town here. But we must pass on to our camp-ground at Hunîn, which is still an hour and a half to the north-east of us. How charming these hills, clothed with evergreen oaks, terebinth, and bay trees! This may be my twentieth visit, and yet they appear as lovely now as on the Beauty of day I first saw them. Such beauty never wearies the eye-always rejoices the the hills. heart. Let the muleteers go on and pitch the tent, while we turn up to this ruin on our right, called Munârâh. Step out now upon this rocky platform, and enjoy at your leisure, and in silence, a panorama more beautiful and as vast as that which Moses saw from the top of Pisgah. Well! I have never seen any prospect to equal that. I presume not. The declivity sinks beneath our feet down-down, sheer down fifteen hundred feet and more, to the plain of the Hûleh; and when you can withdraw your gaze from this scene of utmost loveliness, turn to that which Magnifisurrounds it. Lofty Lebanon stretches northward to the snowy summit of cent view Sunnîn, which looks down on Colo-Syria and the ruins of Baalbek. Before us Hermon lifts his head to heaven in solemn and solitary majesty. Those sugar-loaf hills on that vast plateau to the east and south-east are so many landmarks in the misty and mysterious Hauran, with the Great Desert of Arabia behind and beyond. Those shadowy lines that bound the hazy horizon to the south are Gilead and Bashan, the territories of old Sihon and Og, kings of the Amorites. On our right are the mountains of the Galilees and Samaria, while behind us the hills of Naphtali and Asher sink, by successive terraces, down to the sea-coast of Acre, Tyre, and Sidon. What countless thoughts cluster around such a group of things and names as this! Not to confuse the mind with dim distances and immeasurable magnitudes, let us study a while this noble vale beneath us. It is the basin of the Jordan, PART Vale of Upper Jordan. the birth-place of that sacred river in which the Son of God was baptized. During the rainy months of winter it receives a hundred little tributaries from those snowy ravines around the north end of Hermon. From thence it cuts its way through dark beds of lava, some twenty miles, to the great fountain of Fuarr, below Hasbeiya, which is its most distant permanent source. With the name of Hasbany it passes southward to this plain and marsh of the Hûleh, receiving on its way the stream from Shib'ah, the great fountain of Sureîd, beneath Kefr Shûb'ah, and the Luisany at El Ghŭjar. Thus augmented, it penetrates the marsh about five miles, when it is joined by the Leddan, from Tell el Kady, and the Baniasy, from Banias, united a short half mile north of Sources of the Tell called Sheikh Yusuf. Of these main branches of the Jordan, the Hasbany is the longest by forty miles, the Leddan is much the largest, and the Baniasy the most beautiful. Besides these, a considerable stream comes from the plain of Ijon, the joint contribution of the Derdarah and Ruahîny, west of Abel. Several immense fountains also burst out along the base of this mountain on which we are standing, and send their streams through the marsh to the river and the lake. The largest are those of Blât and El Mellahah. The lake itself may be eight miles long, and six broad across the north end, but it runs to a point southward, where the Jordan leaves it. This is the Merom of Joshua, the Samechonitis of the Greeks, the Hûleh of the Arabs. The plain and marsh above it are about ten miles square. The eastern half is sufficiently dry for cultivation, and is, in fact, the great granary of the surrounding country, and the boast of the Arabs. The climate is warm, the soil fat as that of Egypt, and the whole is irrigated by innumerable canals from the Hashāny, the Leddan, and the Baniasy. The Hûleh. Abra ham's battle at Dan. In the centre rises the Leddan, at the base of that circular mound, which you can trace by the line of trees around its cuter margin. It marks the site of the Sidonian Laish, the Dan of the Bible. Often have I sat under its great oak, and gazed in dreamy delight upon the luxuriant plain of the Hûleh. No wonder the spies exclaimed, "We have seen the land, and, behold, it is very good: a place where there is no want of anything that is in the earth."1 -a We have spread out before us one of the great battle-fields of the Bible -vast theatre built by the Architect of the universe; and upon its splendid stage has many a bloody tragedy been played out in downright earnest. In the opening scene the chief actor is no less a personage than the "Father of the Faithful," scattering to the winds those hard-named confederates who conquered Sodom, and carried away righteous Lot, with his family, captive. Abraham was sitting in his tent-door, under the great oak of Mamre, when a fugitive from the vale of Siddim brought the tidings of his nephew's captivity. This was no time for rending of garments and fruitless lamentations. Arming his own servants-three hundred and eighteen-and sending a hasty summons to Mamre, and his brothers Eshcol and Aner, to join him, he set off in hot pur Judges xviii. 9, 10. |