I have just had an interview with a lineal descendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses. I refer to Jacob, the high priest of the Samaritans. He belongs to the tribe of the Levites, who in ancient times were at the head of the priesthood, and he claims a genealogical tree reaching from that day to this. His family has lived in Palestine for more than three thousand years, and high priest has succeeded high priest until this man took the position at the age of fifteen, succeeding his childless uncle. He is now almost eighty, and he looks, I imagine, as Aaron and Moses may have looked in the latter part of their lives. Over six feet tall, he has the face and form of a prophet. His long beard falls down upon his chest and his scholarly face is refined and spiritual looking.

I met Jacob here at Nablus on the site of old Shechem, within a stone’s throw of the well where Christ talked with the woman of Samaria. It is not far from a farm which Abraham owned, and about on the spot where Joshua gathered together the tribes of Israel and read them the law of Moses.

Our conversation took place in the heart of the city in the synagogue of the Samaritans. I had to go through vaulted passageways and cave-like streets to reach it. I had an interpreter with me, and as we talked the high priest showed me what he said were the original parchments of the five books of Moses as they were written by Abou, the son of Ben Hassan, the son of Eleazar, who, you remember, was one of the two sons of Aaron by Elisheba, his wife. The high priest tells me that these five manuscripts were written only twelve years after the Israelites came into the Promised Land, and that they are now nearly four thousand years old. They are the oldest Bible manuscripts in existence. They are written in the Hebrew of the times of Moses, upon long sheets of parchment about two feet in width. The scrolls are rolled upon three rods each tipped with a silver knob as big as a teacup, and they can be rolled and unrolled as they are read. The ink is still clear and the letters are distinct although the parchment is yellow with age. The manuscript is treasured by the Samaritans, being kept in a brass case inlaid with gold. It is said to have been dug up about three hundred years ago, and has formed a subject of controversy among oriental scholars. The Samaritans believe that it was written by the grandson of Aaron, as the high priest here claims; but the Jews reject it as false, denouncing the Samaritans as pagan outcasts from the tribes of the Children of Israel.

I was surprised to find that there were any Samaritans living. I had supposed that they had been swallowed up by the people of other faiths. I find, however, that there are about two hundred in Nablus, and that they practise the same religion as they did when Christ came.

They annually celebrate the feasts of the Passover and Pentecost on Mount Gerizim. These feasts are different from those of the latter-day Jews. At the time of Jesus the Feast of the Passover was eaten reclining and as though at the end of a journey rather than at the beginning. The Samaritans eat their Passover with their shoes bound upon their feet and staves in their hand as though ready to start out on their wanderings in the wilderness.

They do this on the top of the mountain, going up there en masse and camping in tents. They smear the blood of the sacrifice upon the tents to commemorate the passage of the angel of death over the houses of Israel. They dress in white garments and kill the animals which are burnt according to the methods in use when Aaron lived. The sacrifice consists of buck lambs each of which is carefully examined that it may be without wound or blemish. At a given signal the throats of the lambs are cut, and at the same time some of the blood is caught in tin tubs and smeared over the tents. As the blood flows the people shout out again and again the words “There is but one God.” At the same time there is a service, beginning with a hymn praising Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and followed by a prayer of thanksgiving.

The meat for the sacrifice is cooked over a fire in the earth. As soon as the animals are killed they are scalded and the wool is pulled off. The entrails are removed and salted. A pole is thrust through each lamb, and it is laid on the hot coals of a fire made in a trench. The meat is then covered with brush and earth. As it cooks, the people continue to pray, and keep on praying until the sunset approaches. At ten minutes after sunset they begin to eat the meat, throwing the bones into the fire without breaking them.

In my talk with the high priest he contended that the Samaritans were the only true Israelites, and spoke of the prophet Samuel as a sorcerer. He paid his respects to the Jews in no measured terms. He gave me a little book he had written concerning the religion of the Samaritans, and at the close was by no means averse to a present of silver for which he thanked me in a dignified way. After I returned to my camp on the outside of Nablus some of his followers brought me his photograph and a model of the five books of Moses which they offered to sell for a song. The Samaritans are exceedingly poor and are despised by both Moslems and Jews.

It was at Jacob’s Well, not far from Nablus, that Christ met the Samaritan woman and told her of the water of which, if one drinketh, he shall never thirst, but there “shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” You will find the story in the fourth chapter of St. John. This well is one of the holy sites of Palestine about which there can be no doubt. The village of Sychar corresponds to the village of Askar, which stands on Mount Ebal, perhaps a thousand feet away from the well where the Samaritan woman lived. The well itself lies just below the road from Jerusalem. I went through an olive orchard to reach it. It is surrounded by a wall and is in the middle of a garden now owned by the Greek Church, which has made it a resting place for pilgrims. Over it they have built a stone chapel where services are held several times every day.

Some of the priests went with us down the steps to the well. It lies right in the floor of the chapel and is about three feet in diameter, built up with stones. One of the monks brought a pan tied to a rope in such a way that it remained level. Upon this he placed a lighted candle and then slowly lowered it into the well. It descended perhaps sixty feet before it came to the water. The sill of the well is of marble and shows the marks of the ropes which for ages have been let down into it. It is some distance above the floor and may have been the original stone upon which Christ sat at that weary hour of noon.

Jacob’s Well has been known and visited by pilgrims for many years. It probably used to be even with the surface of the earth, but the débris and earth-washings from the mountains near by have filled up the valley, and it is now considerably below the present ground level. Excavations have uncovered in the garden the remains of a church which was built over the well some fifteen hundred years ago. I found immense granite columns lying in the garden as well as many pieces of the stone wall of the church.

While I was here a party of travellers conducted by one of the great tourist agencies arrived. They were Americans “doing” the Holy Land at so much per day, and they were bound to get the worth of their money. One I shall never forget. He had such a gigantic frame that I shall call him Goliath. When the party went down to the well the services in the chapel had just begun, and after pointing out the hole in the floor, the guide brought them out. As they came into the churchyard I heard Goliath remark:

“I ain’t satisfied.”

“About what?” said the guide.

“I ain’t satisfied about that well. How do I know there’s a well there?”

“You saw it,” said the guide.

“Naw, I only saw a hole in the floor. How do I know there’s a well? How do I know it has water? I tell you I ain’t satisfied. Here I come five thousand miles to see Jacob’s Well, and how can I prove that I’ve saw it?”

The man protested so much that the guide took him back, stopped the service, and had them let down the candle. Further than that, he brought up some of the water which Goliath drank at a gulp. I have run across this huge doubting Thomas before on the trip. He would not believe in the spot where our Lord was baptized in the Jordan, saying that the banks were too steep, and that if he couldn’t crawl down them no one, not even John the Baptist, could do so.

It took me just one day to come from Jerusalem to Shechem. My outfit was a three-horse team harnessed to an American wagon. The horses were good, and we drove up hill and down on the trot. We started at Jaffa Gate, passed the Place of the Skull, where General Gordon thought the Saviour was crucified, and then crossed the valley of Kedron. We climbed Mount Scopus, which joins Olivet, and rode under the hill on top of which was Mizpah, where Samuel was buried and Saul was publicly chosen King of the Jews. There is a mosque on that spot and the place is holy to Jews, Christians, and Moslems alike, all of whom worship at Samuel’s tomb. Mizpah lies on a peak about three thousand feet above the Mediterranean, and on one of the highest of the Judean mountains. Here an army of crusaders stood with Richard the Lion-Hearted and got their first sight of Jerusalem. As they looked King Richard knelt down and thus prayed:

“O Lord God, I pray Thee that I may never again see Thy Holy City if I may not recover it from the hands of thine enemies.”

That prayer was uttered seven centuries ago when Jerusalem had already been in the hands of the Mohammedans for about six hundred years.

The road we took to Samaria was the one over which came the boy Christ and the Holy Family when they travelled up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. It is one of the highways of the Holy Land, and is still travelled by thousands. About ten miles beyond Mount Scopus we stopped at Beeroth, a stone village surrounded by green orchards of figs and pomegranates. Tradition says that Nablus is the place where Joseph and Mary as they were returning to Nazareth discovered that their twelve-year-old boy was not with them and went back to find Him teaching the wise men in the temple.

A little farther on we came to Bethel where the Benjamites lived, where Abraham reared an altar and called on the name of the Lord, and where Jacob took stones for his pillow and dreamed that he saw the ladder extending to heaven and the angels ascending and descending thereon. The name Bethel, which means the House of God, has been changed to Beitin. It is a poor stone village of about five hundred people, with a ruined tower and a church.

Shiloh, just off the road a little farther on toward Samaria, is now called Seilun, and, as Jeremiah prophesied, it is nothing but ruins. Where it stood is a mound covered with débris, broken columns, and rubbish, so that one is reminded of the passage: “But go ye now unto ... Shiloh ... and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.”

Nevertheless, Shiloh is one of the most interesting spots of the country. Here Eli dwelt and here Hannah came every year with a new coat for her little son Samuel, whom she had given up to the Lord. It was here that Joshua divided the land and the Philistines stole the Ark of the Covenant.

I am surprised at the caravans which are continually crossing these Palestine mountains. There seems to be a great trade north and south, and the roads are full of odd-looking people. On my way here I saw crowds of men and women on donkeys coming up to Jerusalem. Some were from Galilee, others from Damascus, and not a few from the mountains of Lebanon. One crowd told us that its people were Mohammedans, and that they were making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the tomb of Moses. There were many women among them. They sat astride upon donkeys and some of them carried babies in their arms.

We passed many camels. Some were loaded with white building stone slung in a network of rope on each side of their humps. They were carrying the stone to Jerusalem. Others were ridden by women and men. I saw one with two veiled women clad all in black on its back and two boxes below them, each box holding a baby.

Another party was composed of Samaritan women on their way to a Moslem festival. They were red haired and as straight as royal palm trees. They carried their baggage in bundles on top of their heads and walked single file. Behind them were women from Lebanon walking barefooted and singing in Arabic. They were tattooed on lips, chin, and cheeks, and their bare heads were frowsy and dusty. They were clad in long cotton gowns embroidered with red. Only a few were good looking and all seemed prematurely old.

I am now living in my tents outside this old town of Shechem. My camp faces Mount Ebal, and above me is Gerizim, the holy hill of the Samaritans. It is very near the spot where the laws of Moses were read by Joshua to the assembled Children of Israel. The country is in the shape of a great amphitheatre of which the hills form the walls. These hills are, it is said, a natural sounding board, so that one can talk on one mountain and be heard on the other, and for this reason the place was chosen for reading the laws.

Shechem, or Nablus, is one of the oldest towns in history. It was founded long before Jerusalem was built and even before Jacob’s time. It is within about six miles of the city of Samaria, where Ahab had his ivory palace and where Herod the Great owned a royal mansion. Here, so it is said, he gave that birthday party at which his stepdaughter Salome danced. You remember the story. Her dancing, which I doubt not was that of the nautch girl, so delighted King Herod that he told her she should have whatever she asked, even to the half of his kingdom. She thereupon, as her mother insisted, demanded the head of John the Baptist, who was lying in prison near by, and this bloody gift was brought in on a great plate or charger.

There is a Spanish legend that Salome, as divine punishment for causing the murder of John the Baptist, was herself beheaded some years later. According to the story, she married a Roman general and went to live in Spain. While skating on a river there she fell in, and her body is said to have struck the edge of the ice with such force as to sever her neck, and her head went skidding over the frozen surface.

The old town of Samaria has long since fallen to ruin. Its site is a mound with some broken pillars and other débris lying near it and an olive orchard not far away in which more of the columns are still to be seen.

As for Nablus, it thrives, and is one of the liveliest towns in the Holy Land. It is the chief commercial centre between Damascus and Jerusalem, and its population of thirty thousand is almost entirely Mohammedan. There are some Jewish merchants, but neither Jews nor Christians are much welcomed. I have been told to watch out as I go through its narrow, filthy streets and to take care not to provoke any one. Several times the boys have thrown stones at our party, and men spit as we pass them. People yell out “Nazarenes” at us, and my guide refuses to let me photograph them, saying picture-taking would surely get us into trouble. The city is so fanatical that even the Christian women go about with veils over their faces. The English nurse who is working here in the Charity Hospital is veiled like a Mohammedan when she goes out on the street. Otherwise she would cause much comment, and her reputation and work would be ruined.