I give you to-day some bits of Palestine out of doors. Within the past few weeks, keeping away from the cities and towns, I have watched the shepherds and farmers. I have seen the real Palestine, with the same sky, the same rocks and hills, and the same carpet of wild flowers as in the days of our Lord. I have talked with the farmers in the fields, have ridden side by side with the modern Balaam as he climbed the hills on his ass, and have even put my hand to ploughs such as were used in the times of the Scriptures, and with a goad have pricked on the bullocks and donkeys as they turned up the sod.

The Palestine of the Bible was a land of the farmer. The Children of Israel and their leaders were brought up or worked on the farm. Abraham had numerous sheep and so had Isaac and Jacob. Saul was the son of old Farmer Kish, and he was hunting his father’s asses when he was met by Samuel, the prophet, who gave him a kingdom. David was watching the sheep when Farmer Jesse, his father, sent him to the battle, where with his sling he killed the mighty Goliath. Lot was one of the richest farmers the Jordan Valley has known, and as for Job, who lived in old Uz, he was the cattle king of his time, owning seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses. It was in one farm village, Bethlehem, that our Saviour was born, and in another farming settlement, Nazareth, that He grew up to manhood. A great part of His life was spent in going about among the shepherds and farmers, and in His preaching most of the examples and figures in His parables were drawn from things of the soil.

The most common sight out of doors in the Holy Land is the sheep. They are everywhere. You find them on the rich plains where the Philistines lived; they feed among the rocks on the slopes of the Judean mountains, and spot the wilderness all the way down to Jericho; they graze on every part of Samaria and Galilee and almost everywhere on the plain of Esdraelon. They are always watched over by shepherds who often drive them to new feeding grounds. The greater part of this country is mountainous. Limestone rocks cover the soil, which is so thin that if you could pare it off for a depth of eight inches there would be nothing but stone. It is different in the plains and the valleys, but the hills are terraces of rock covered with boulders and sprinkled here and there with patches of earth. Yet the least bit of soil will grow luxuriant grass, and the sheep seem to grow fat on the stones.

I remember some flocks I saw on my way to the Jordan. They were composed of heavy-wooled animals with tails of fat hanging down like aprons behind them. The best of them weighed two hundred pounds each, and the average was fatter and finer than the best sheep of America. Some were white-wooled and some brown, and some had brown heads and white bodies. I have tasted the mutton; it is excellent, being the choicest meat to be had at the hotels.

The shepherds are about the same all over Palestine, kindly eyed men with fair faces bronzed by the sun. They stay out all day on the hills with the sheep, driving them into the villages at night. Each shepherd has his staff and his scrip, a little bag of dried skin. He uses a sling as David did to send a pebble just in front of any straying sheep so as to turn it back. The strings of the slings are of goat hair, and the pad for the stone is of the same material, often made with a slit in the middle so that when a pebble is put in the sling fits close like a bag. Such slings are now used in fights between the boys of the villages, who practise to see who can throw stones the farthest.

The wool of the Palestine sheep is especially fine. It brings a higher price than that of Damascus, and something like a million dollars’ worth of it is exported a year. The shearing is done by hand, and much of the wool is sold unwashed. Some is washed after shearing, the work being done by women.

Nearly every flock of sheep has its goats. They are usually black so they can be picked out from the sheep at a great distance. Some of the goats produce excellent milk, the best as much as three quarts a day.

There is a great deal in the Bible about the sheepfolds. These are common in Palestine. In the villages they are often corrals and sometimes they are caves on the hills. The village folds are closed at night, and the shepherds keep the keys. Those of the mountains are usually open and the sheep go in and out as they will.

In some parts of the country the shepherds pasture their flocks separately by day, but at evening several of them often bring their sheep together in a large open field or a spot sheltered from the winds. Then each of the four or five men will take turns at keeping watch while the others sleep, curled up in their sheepskins. The shepherds to whom the “glad tidings” came on the first Christmas Eve were thus guarding their flocks by night. In the morning each shepherd calls out to his sheep, and they, knowing his voice, come to him until he has his whole flock around him again. They will pay no heed to the same call if it is uttered by a stranger or another shepherd. Often to make sure his sheep are all there and also to see that they are all right the shepherd causes them to pass under his rod between him and a rock. He can thus count them, and if one is limping or sickly he can pull it out of line with the crook of his staff and give it special care.

The Palestine shepherd does not use his staff to drive his charges, for he always goes before with the sheep following him. The club or crook he carries is for protection and defence of his flock. If they are frightened the sight of the crook on his shoulder calms their panic. One is reminded of the words of the Psalmist: “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

One of the most important duties of the shepherd is to water the flock. He does this at streams or wells. At the wells the women draw the water for the sheep as they did in Bible times. They use bags of goatskin untanned. The skin is taken almost whole from the goats, and the legs and other openings are tied up so that it will hold water. One hole is left at the throat into which the water is poured. The water for the household is carried in such bags, a network of ropes being wrapped around a skin so that it can be rested upon the back, the bag being supported by a rope around the forehead. The water-bag of the ordinary size, when filled, weighs at least fifty pounds. The women go along with their heads bent far over, carrying water to their village homes. They do this day after day all their lives long. This is one of the most common sights of the Holy Land.

Indeed these Palestine peasants are strong men and women. The men bear astonishing weights, and nobody thinks anything of walking twenty miles and more in a day. One naturally asks as to their diet. This is largely rice, vegetables, nuts, and the whole-meal unleavened bread of the country baked in flat cakes as in Bible days. Meat is a rare luxury. The Arabic name for bread is aish, which means life, and to the peasants of the Holy Land it is the staff of life. They have even a sort of reverence for it. No one will trample a fallen crumb into the dust, and even the smallest bit dropped or thrown away by a careless child will be picked up and lodged in a crack of a stone or wall so the birds may get it. Tomatoes, squash, cabbage, cauliflower, onions, and eggplant are common vegetables. There is a saying of the eggplant that there are so many different ways of preparing it that if during the eggplant season a woman says to her husband, “I know not what to provide for dinner,” he has sufficient cause for divorcing her.

Grapes not quite ripe are much relished when eaten with salt. Cucumbers take much the place of apples with us. Coffee is considered a necessity. It is bought in the raw berry and a housekeeper is judged by her skill in roasting and preparing it. Even if a family cannot afford it for every day it must be on hand for guests. Men often carry some coffee berries in their pockets for use at friendly gatherings, and wherever men meet for business or ceremony coffee is expected.

The Palestine of to-day is a land of donkeys and camels. I suppose the latter are about the same as those owned by Job. They are raised in Beersheba, where the people live largely on their milk. The camel is the freight car of Palestine. In going over the country I have seen many caravans of them. On the way to Zammarin we passed some camels which the Bedouin drivers were shearing. They were clipping the wool from the kneeling beasts, which cried and moaned and now and then uttered shrieks as the shears nipped off bits of their flesh. Not a few actually shed tears. The wool of these camels is woven into a coarse cloth used for making the coverings of the Bedouin tents.

As far as I can see the camels of the Holy Land have no easy job. They carry loads of three or four hundred pounds each, and on short trips their packs are left on day and night. They begin to work at three years, and often last until they are twenty-five years of age.

The donkeys are much cheaper than camels. They are the draft animals of the poor, and are used by the farmers for carrying vegetables and wood into market. I see them loaded with olive roots on their way to Jerusalem, and now and then pass a donkey caravan, every animal carrying a bag of grain which has been balanced upon his back and which the driver holds there as he goes up the steep hills.

Palestine is often called “the land of milk and honey.” This it was in the past, and this, so far at least as the honey is concerned, it may be again. I have already referred to the delicious honey served at the hotel in Jerusalem. Modern bee-keeping was started in Palestine by an enterprising Swiss in one of the Jewish colonies. His bees were kept in hives made of terra-cotta jars, which were moved to different pastures several times during a season so as to get the benefit of different kinds of flowers. The average yield of honey per hive is about one hundred pounds, and the product is delicious.

As to the Palestine flowers, I cannot describe them. There are said to be more than three thousand varieties. Crossing the upper plains of Sharon I rode through great fields of daisies as yellow as buttercups. There were greenish-white flowers carpeting the roadside, and among them poppies, gladioli, and lilies. In the gardens at Zammarin are geraniums as large as rose bushes and on the sides of the hills wild flowers of every description. There are yellow violets, and pink and blue blossoms whose names I know not. There is also a red flower called “the blood drop of Christ.” It is said to have sprung up on the spots where dropped the blood of our Saviour as He carried the cross. In a single day’s travel over the Samaritan mountains I counted thirty-five different wild flowers. At one place I saw what looked like piles of Bermuda onions pulled up along the roadside. There were bushels of them, and I supposed they had been spilled out by a broken-down caravan. “Those are lily bulbs which the farmers have dug out of the fields,” said my guide, and farther on I saw the men digging. The lilies are yellow and white and grow wild. “They toil not, neither do they spin,” but they cause the farmer to toil and are one of the pests he has to get rid of.

There are but few farms of large size in the Holy Land. The chief cultivated patches on the mountains are those which have been cleared of stones. They are often no bigger than a parlour rug and seldom contain more than three or four acres. Such fields frequently have stone walls about them. Down in the valleys and on the plains of the Philistines the farms are not separated by fences and are much larger. They are planted to wheat, beans, and barley, and grow luxuriant crops. One of the interesting scenes of the wheat fields is often referred to in the Bible. This is pulling the tares, the seeds of which, if left, will make the flour bitter. Gangs of girls are engaged in this business all over Palestine. Each gang works under an overseer, and the girls bend half double as they pull the weeds from the wheat. It is said that a farmer’s enemies even to-day sometimes sow tares in his wheat, just as in the parable.

Speaking of wheat, it is claimed that Palestine is one of the places in which that grain originated. There is wild wheat here to-day, and the agricultural experts are investigating to find out what can be done with the other wild grains found in different parts of this country.

The ploughs of the Holy Land are about the same now as those used in the days of the Bible. They are crude affairs, made of wood tipped with iron, to which oxen and bullocks are yoked with a rough piece of wood fastened to the necks of the animals. Sometimes the yoke is tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees, reaching from the neck of a camel down to that of a donkey. Donkeys and cows are also harnessed together, and bullocks and camels. The plough ends in a point like that of a pickaxe. It only scratches the soil, and nowhere goes very deep. The furrows are so narrow that many ploughs are required for large fields. The ploughmen wear long gowns, and on their heads are cloths bound round with rope. They wear rough shoes or go barefoot.

Much of the land in the mountainous parts is so rocky that ploughs are not used. The earth is broken up with mattocks or hoes and all the crops are cultivated by hand. Nevertheless, this limestone soil is so rich that it will often produce several crops in one year. Figs, olives, and other fruits flourish. There are olive orchards everywhere. They cover the sides of the hills and are near every farm village. I was hardly out of sight of them on my way from Shechem to Mount Carmel. A great quantity of oil is exported.

The curse of the Palestine farmer has long been the Mohammedan tax gatherer and assessor. These men have squeezed the heart out of both the farmer and his crop. The tax assessors have gone out over the country in the blossom time of the olive orchards and levied on each tree the cash tax to be paid no matter how the crop finally turned out. The olive harvest often fails in Palestine, so rather than pay unjust and excessive taxes the discouraged farmers have sometimes simply cut down trees and sold both wood and roots.

It is not only the olive orchards that have suffered from this kind of taxation. One eighth of the annual yield of every crop has been taken from the people. The custom of selling to the highest bidder the right to collect the taxes in a given district has, of course, made things worse. In their determination to get back the money they paid the government and a handsome profit for themselves besides, these men have had no mercy on the farmer. The bundles of grain brought to the village threshing-floors and put up in stacks of eight have been closely watched by the tax gatherers and their agents.

Besides these farm taxes, the people have suffered from a head tax of two dollars on every male member of the community from birth to death, from the salt tax, from taxes on imports, and on everything that a man eats, drinks, or wears.

Once freed from oppressive taxation and its farmers given a fair chance, there is no doubt that Palestine will produce many times what it has done under Turkish rule.