Byeways in Palestine

At about seven miles from Jerusalem lie the Pools of Solomon, commonly called the “Burâk,” upon the road to Hebron, which passes by the head of the westernmost of them, on the left hand of the traveller to that city; while immediately on the right hand, stands a hill with some cultivation of vineyards and fig-trees, with a few olive-trees; apparently half-way up that hill is a stone cottage, roughly but well built.  It is of that cottage and its grounds that I am about to speak, for there I resided with my family for some weeks in 1860, and through the summer of 1862.

There is no village close at hand, the nearest one being El Khud’r, (or St George, so named from a small Greek convent in its midst,) which, however, is only visible from the highway for a few minutes at a particular bend of the road before reaching the Pools; the next nearest, but in the opposite or eastern direction, is Urtâs, with its profitable cultivation, nestled in a well-watered valley.

Adjoining the Pools is the shell of a dilapidated khan, of old Saracenic period, the outer enclosure alone being now entire.  Two or three Bashi-bozuk soldiers used to be stationed there, living in wretched hovels inside the enclosure, made of fallen building stones, put together with mud.  On account of this being a government post, the peasantry of the country, ignorant of all the world but themselves, denominate this old square wall, “The Castle,” and that name is repeated by dragomans to their European employers.

These were our nearest neighbours.

Close to the khan-gate and to the Pools is a perennial spring of excellent water, which, of course, is of great value, and considering how several roads meet at that point, and what a diversity of character there is continually passing or halting there, it would seem to form the perfection of an opening scene to some romantic tale.

Thus the Hebron highway lay between the Pools, with the khan on one side, and the Bakoosh hill on the other, and no person or quadruped could pass along it unobserved from our window.

The hill rises very steeply, but being as usual formed into ledges or terraces, upon one of these, in a corner near the wall, the stable was constructed of a small tent, near a big tree, within the shadow of which, and of a bank, the horses were picketed.

Upon the other ledges were arranged the tents for sleeping in at night, and alongside of the cottage a kitchen was made of a wall and a roof made of branches of trees brought from a distance.

Such was our abode in the pure mountain breezes, with unclouded sunshine, and plenty of good spring water within reach.

And whether by evening twilight, or at the rising of the sun out of the Moab mountains, or earlier still, by summer morning starlight, when Sirius and Canopus (the latter unseen in England) vied with each other in sparkling their varied colours to praise their Maker in the firmament, His handiwork; those rambles were sources of delight that cannot be expressed in human language; they were, however, not novelties after so many years’ residence in that Asiatic climate, but had become wrought into our very existence.

Our Sabbaths were happy and conscientiously observed; we kept up the services of the Church of England as far as practicable, and sometimes had a visitor to join us in the same, not omitting the hymn singing.

The two domestic servants were of different Christian communities; for the woman was a Latin, and would sometimes repair to her church-service at Bethlehem, and the Abyssinian lad might be heard morning and evening, or at night in the moonlight—such moonlight as we had there!—reading the Gospels and Psalms in his soft native language, or even singing to a kirâr (or lute) of his own making, hymns with a chorus of “Alleluia, Amen.”

On the higher boundary the land was still in its natural condition of stones, fossil shells, and green shrubs with fragrant herbs.  There might be seen occasionally starting up before the intruding wanderer, partridges, hares, quails, the wild pigeon, the fox, or even

“The wild gazelle on Judah’s hills
  Exultingly would bound,”

and escape also, for I carried no gun with me.

Close at hand upon the mountain on which we thus stand, are vestiges of a monastic house and chapel called “Khirbet el Kasees,” (the priest’s ruins,) and even more interesting objects still, the remains of older edifices, distinguished by ponderous rabbeted stones.

On the mountain top is a large oval space, which has been walled round, fragments of the enclosure are easily traceable, as also some broken columns, gray and weather-beaten.  This has every appearance of having been one of the many sun-temples devoted to Baal by early Syrians.

By temple I here mean a succession of open-air courts, with a central altar for sacrifice; a mound actually exists on the highest spot of elevation, which may well have been the site of the altar.

Sloping westwards from the Dahar-es-Salâhh were agreeable rides over a wilderness of green shrubs with occasional pine and karoobah trees, and rough rocks on the way to Nahhâleen or Bait Ezkâreh, from which we catch a view of the valley of Shocoh, the scene of David’s triumph over Goliath, and beyond that the hill of Santa Anna at Bait Jibreen.  The region there is lonely and silent, with some petty half-depopulated villages in sight, but all far away; sometimes a couple or so of peasants may be met upon the road driving an ass loaded with charcoal or broken old roots of the evergreen oak.  Evening excursions in that direction were not infrequent for the purpose of seeing the sun set into the sea, from which the breeze came up so refreshingly.

The home resources gave us among the fruit trees, goldfinches, bee-eaters in blue or green and gold, and beccaficas, the latter for food, but so tame that they would stay upon the branches while the gun was levelled at them; in fact, little Alexander, returning one day with several of them that he had shot, complained of want of sport, quoting the lines of his namesake Selkirk in Cowper,—“Their tameness is shocking to me.”

Large fires were sometimes visible upon the Moab mountains at the distance of thirty or forty miles in a straight line.  These may have arisen from carelessness, or accidental circumstances, among either standing corn or the heaps of harvest in the open air; or they may even have been wilful conflagrations made by hostile tribes in their raids upon each other.  In any case they showed that wherever such things occurred in ancient times, Ruth the Moabitess, when settled in Bethlehem, might still have been reminded in that way of her native country, which lay before her view.

At the Bakoosh we heard the single gun-fire at sunrise or sunset while the Pasha had his camp at Hebron; and from the highest part of our hill could see the flash of the guns in the castle of Jerusalem when saluting the birthday of Mohammed.

The latter was for several days afterwards indulged with a fresh bough of a tree for his residence, changed about, one day of oak, next of terebinth, then of sumach, or of pine, etc.

Such was our “sweet home” and family life on the Byeways of Palestine.

The old building, whose use we could not discover, was composed, not of ordinary blocks of stone, but of huge flat slabs, unchiselled at edges or corners, laid one over another, but forming decidedly an intentional edifice.  It is well worth further examination.  At the time we had with us no materials for sketching, and never had an opportunity of going thither afterwards.

It lies among the wild green scene west from the Hebron road, near where, on the opposite, or east side, is the opening of the Wadi ’Aroob, with its copious springs.

Then we went to Marseea’, beyond the Dair el Benât—equally unknown to Europeans—and, lastly, to the green slopes and precipices towards Nahhâleen, where, lingering till after sunset, we became in a few minutes enveloped in a cloud of mist tossed and rolled along by gusts of wind, and several large eagles rose screaming from perches among rocks below us into the misty air, as if rejoicing in the boisterous weather.

From one spot on our own grounds we were able to point out as objects in the magnificent prospect—the Moab mountains, the crevasse of the Jabbok into the Ghôr, that of Calirrhoe into the Dead Sea, Hhalhhool near Hebron, El Khud’r below us, Rachel’s sepulchre, Bethlehem, Nebi Samwil, the Scopus, Jerusalem, and our house there, to which we were soon to remove.

Before, however, quitting this subject of the Bakoosh, I may refer to one very special attraction that held us to the place, namely, an agricultural undertaking in its neighbourhood.  A friend, of whom I hope to speak more in another time and place, superintended for me the rebuilding of an ancient Biblical village that lay a heap and a desolation, and cleared out its spring of water, which, by being choked up with rubbish, made its way unseen under ground, it thus became nearly as copious as that alongside of Solomon’s Pools.  I gathered people into the village, vineyards were planted, crops were sown and reaped there, taxes were paid to the government; and the vicinity, which previously had been notorious for robberies on the Hebron road, became perfectly secure.

Purer pleasure have I never experienced than when, in riding over occasionally with our children, we saw the threshing of wheat and barley in progress, and heard the women singing, or the little children shouting at their games.  Sixty cows used to be driven at noon to drink at the spring.

We returned to Jerusalem on the 21st of October, and on the 28th of November that village was again a mass of ruin—the houses demolished—the people dispersed—their newly-sown corn and the vineyards ploughed over—the fine spring of water choked up once more—and my Australian trees planted there torn up by the roots.  All this was allowed to be done within nine miles of Jerusalem, to gratify persons engaged in an intrigue which ended in deeds far worse than this.

Our village was Faghoor, and had been one of the ancient towns of the tribe of Judah.  Its place in the Bible is Joshua xv., where it is found in the Greek Septuagint together with Tekoah, Etham, and Bethlehem, all noted places—neither of which is contained in the Hebrew text, and therefore not in the English translation.

A.—Page 32.

The signs here referred to were guessed by Buckingham (about 1816) to be possibly some distinctive tokens of Arab tribes; but he seemed rather inclined to connect them with marks that are found in Indian caverns, or those on the rocks about Mount Sinai.

He was thus nearer to the truth than the latest of travellers, De Saulcy, who, with all his knowledge of Semitic alphabets, says of some of these graffiti, or scratchings, at ’Ammân, which he copied: “Tout cela, je regrette fort, est lettre close pour moi.  Quelle est cette écriture?  Je l’ignore.”  (Voyage en Terre Sainte.  Tom. i. p.256. Paris, 1865.)

They are characters adopted by Arabs to distinguish one tribe from another, and commonly used for branding the camels on the shoulders and haunches, by which means the animals may be recovered, if straying and found by Arabs not hostile to the owners.

There are some other inscriptions, which are entirely blackened with smoke, in the niches, made perhaps by ancient burning of lamps or of incense there.  This is particularly the case in one large hollow made in the rock, which has almost its whole surface covered with Greek writing.  Within this hollow a niche is cut out, now empty.

N.B.—Names with the asterisk are ancient and not modern.

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