THE HOLY LAND.[1]
Strong and many are the claims made upon us by our mother Earth; the love of locality—the charm and attraction which some one homely landscape possesses to us, surpassing all stranger beauties, is a remarkable feature in the human heart. We who are not ethereal creatures, but of a mixed and diverse nature—we who, when we look our clearest towards the skies, must still have our standing-ground of earth secure—it is strange what relations of personal love we enter into with the scenes of this lower sphere. How we delight to build our recollections upon some basis of reality—a place, a country, a local habitation—how the events of life, as we look back upon them, have grown into the well-remembered background of the places where they fell upon us;—here is some sunny garden or summer lane, beatified and canonised for ever with the flood of a great joy; and here are dim and silent places, rooms always shadowed and dark to us, whatever they may be to others, where distress or death came once, and since then dwells for evermore. As little as we can deprive ourselves of the human frame, can we divest our individual history of its graceful garment of place and scene. Such a thing happened, we say; but memory is no bare chronicler of facts and events, and as we say the words, the time starts up before us, with all its silent witnesses;—leaves that were shed years ago, trees cut down and gone, yet they live in our thoughts with the joy or the sorrow of which they were silent attendants. We have caught and appropriated these bits of still life—they are a part of our history, and belong to us for ever.
In some degree every mind must have its own private gallery of pictures, impossible to be revealed to the vision of another,—from the homely imagination which cherishes that one bit of sunshine on its walls, “the house where I was born,” the old childish paradise and ideal, rich with such flowers and verdure as can be found in no other place, to the stately and well-furnished recollection which can roam at will through all the brightest countries in the world; but wherever we go, we weave ourselves into the landscape, and make every milestone a historical monument in the chronicle of our life.
And so it comes that natives of a country never expatriated from their home-soil, grow into a passionate veneration and love for their own land. The hills which are radiant for ever with their dreams of youth—the rivers whose familiar voices have chimed into every sound of theirlamentation and their joy—the roads that echo to their daily footsteps, and all the silent accessories upon which, as on so many props and pillars, their thoughts for years are hung—the very sight of which recall a hundred fleeting fancies—the very name of which spreads pictures lovelier than reality before closed eyes—the “kindly” country, which seems to respond with a voice borrowed from our own past thoughts to the thoughts of to-day, suggesting ancient comforts, ancient blessings, silently speaking hope from experience, solace present from solace past, lays claims upon us, the most intimate of our confidants, the nearest to our bosom; and Nature lavish in her demands upon our sympathy—perpetually calling upon us to weep with her and to rejoice with her—makes liberal recompense, and softens around us with a visible embrace our mother country, our sympathetic and consolatory home.
And scarcely less are we moved by localities sacred to the heroes of our race—storied ground, peopled with names and persons historic in the national annals, or consecrated to other lives than ours. It is natural for us to seek those spots with eager interest, to believe ourselves brought nearer to the great Spirit whose habitation made them famous, and to linger with visionary satisfaction, looking at things whichhemust have looked at, realising his life where he led it. Pilgrimages many grow out of this natural sentiment. The cottage of Shakespeare—the palace of Scott—the “warm study of deals,” where the Scottish Reformer belaboured Satan—and the dark-browed rooms where hapless Mary accomplished her fate. From these shrines we come no wiser—not a whit better acquainted with the saint of each—notwithstanding we stand in the same space, we look upon the same walls, we have over us the hallowed roof, and the instinctive superstition is satisfied with this limited result of our faith.
But places sacred to one nation are indifferent to another—one class of men exult over a monument, which to their neighbours is but a block of stone. Yet there is one holy place where all the nations of the earth come together to worship—one country rich with a perpetual attraction. The soil thrills to the consecrating touch of love and grief; the ages of the past dwell in it as in a sanctuary. Making no account of the wandering handful of wild Asiatics who surround him, the traveller there seeks not scenes of to-day, but cities of the dead. The place has a solemn array of lofty inhabitants, undying fathers of the soil; generation after generation, conquerors, defenders, devotees, have come and gone and departed. But we do not search this country for traces of the Saracen or the Crusader; passing beyond them as modern visitors, a more ancient race claims the universal awe. It is not the city of Godfrey of Bouillon, but of David of Bethlehem, which shines on yonder cluster of hills; and these are not the knightly names of romance which sanctify the tombs. The brave Crusaders claim memories in other countries, but they have no memory here where their blood watered the sacred soil. Turk and Christian, creatures of to-day, stand on the same platform as we do,—beyond the earliest of them are the true monuments and memories of this country—
“Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailedFor our redemption to the bitter cross.”
“Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailedFor our redemption to the bitter cross.”
“Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailedFor our redemption to the bitter cross.”
“Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,
Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailed
For our redemption to the bitter cross.”
The story begins and ends in this great figure appearing visibly before our eyes, and we bow our head to acknowledge Jerusalem, the universal centre of pilgrimage—Judea, Galilee, the Holy Land.
A land which, if it could be possible to sweep it altogether out of earthly knowledge, would still live in the pages of one wonderful Book, and to the readers of that Book be of all countries the most familiar and well known. Many an untutored peasant, who knows no more of the road to our own capital than the half-mile of dusty highway under his own eyes, knows of the way to Bethany, signalised by many wonders—knows of the road to Gaza which is desert—knows of that road to Damascus where the traveller was solemnly arrested on his way; and is better aware of the wayside grave where her heart-stricken husband buriedRachel, “sweet Syrian shepherdess,” and of Absalom’s tomb which he built to preserve his name, than of where the royal ashes lie in our own land. Many a humble scholar, untaught in other history, is learned in the ancient wars of Israel, and apprehends Moab, and Edom, and Assyria with a stronger sense of reality than he can apprehend the Russian hordes embattled against ourselves; and sees Pi-ha-hiroth shut in with its mountains, Egypt behind and the sea before, as no description, however vivid, will ever make him see the marshes of the Danube, though he have a son or a brother militant on that disastrous shore to-day. Strong security has God taken for the universal remembrance of that beloved country, blessed by His own Divine preference: while there is a Bible, there must be a Judea; the landscape in all its glorious tints is associated for ever with the wonderful artist’s name; and neither its wretched population nor its heathen rulers, nor all its melancholy meanness and desolation, existing now, can make Christendom forget that this discrowned city is the city over which fell the tears of the Lord.
We have no Crusaders in these days; all that remains of our ancient chivalry finds holier work at home than that impossible redemption of the Holy Land, which God reserves for His own time, and His own hands; nor do we need to depend on the vagabond saint of antique times, the hero of scallop-shell and pilgrim-staff, for our knowledge of Palestine. Neither travellers nor reports are wanting, and we are by no means afflicted with monotony of tone or sameness of aspect in the revelations of our modern pilgrimages. The weary man of fashion who loiters over Palestine in search of a new sensation—the curt and business-like Divine who goes thither professionally on a mission of verification and proof—the wanderinglitterateurwho has a book to make—the accomplishedsavantand man of science, follow each other in rapid succession. Dreamy speculation—decisions of bold rapidity, made at a glance—accurate topography, slow and careful—each do their devoir in making known to us this country of universal interest. Nor does even the lighter portraiture of fiction shrink from the Holy Land, though here our novelist is a statesman, as much beyond the range of ordinary novelists, as the locality of that last brilliant romance which it has pleased him “to leave half told,” differs from the English village or Scottish glen of common story-telling. To follow Disraeli and Warburton is no easy task, neither is it quite holiday work to go over the ground after Robinson and De Saulcy. Lieut. C. W. N. Van de Velde, the latest traveller of this storied soil, is neither a born poet, nor an accomplished bookmaker, nor a great divine; but whosoever receives his book into their household, receives a social visitor, distinct and tangible—a real man. It is impossible not to clothe the historian with an imagined person—not to see him sitting down to his extempore writingtable compounding his letters—not to form a good guess of the measures of his paces, of perhaps now and then a little puff of Dutch impatience, curiously wrought into a large amount of phlegm. From his first offset he comes clearly out from among the shadows—we are at no loss to keep the thread of personal identity, and are never dubious, in picture number two, about the hero of picture number one. A most recognisable and characteristic personage, we yet stand in no dread of our pilgrim. He makes nothing of his cockle-hat and staff, or his sandal shoon. Instead of calling to his reverent disciples to follow, he offers his arm to any good neighbour who will make the tour with him. You may help to set up the Aneroid, or level the telescope, if you will, but you cannot doubt for a moment that Lieut. Van de Velde takes the angle of yonder nameless villages as a conscientious duty, and when he makes his survey of a bare hillside or Arab desert, does it with the full-hearted and devout conviction that this is his highest capability of serving God; for you ascertain immediately that this is not an expedition of the pleasure-seeker, or a pilgrimage of the devotee. Surveying Palestine is theworkof the traveller—his special end and object—and he setsabout it simply as his vocation, an enterprise which gives consistence and necessity to all his travel.
One disadvantage of this accurate survey, as indeed of all scientific expeditions, is the bare chronicle of unknown villages, a confusion of barren names, and brief descriptions which take the life out of many pages of this narrative. Lieut. Van de Velde has a very pretty talent for making pictures in words, but to make a map in words is one of the driest and least profitable operations of literature. Toil after him as we may, it is impossible to keep in mind this long course which finds no track, and leaves none—a mere piece of elaborate geography, with only the point, here and there, of a hospitable sheikh, or a hastily-sketched interior, to reward us for the toilsome interval of road. This, however, is not a fault peculiar to M. Van de Velde, but belongs alike to all the more serious explorers of Palestine, to whom every fallen stone has, or ought to have, its separate history.
And notwithstanding this, which, indeed, is a necessary feature of the conscientious and painstaking mind visible in these pages, there is much of the picturesque in the travels of Lieut. Van de Velde. If his sketches are as graphic and clear as his descriptions, it is very much to be regretted that they are not added to this work, for we have nowhere seen more rapid and vivid landscapes with so little pretension on the part of the artist. We speak much of the poetic merit of transferring one’s own mind and individuality into the scenery described, and it is a poetic necessity—nevertheless, once in a way, remembering that the real poet who can do this is not a very common tourist, it is a refreshment to have the landscape without the traveller—the hills and the valleys as they lie, without Mr Brown in the corner taking their likeness. In these volumes our honest traveller offers to your view what he saw, sometimes in an honest fervour of admiration; but you cannot fail to be aware that his eye is on the landscape as he draws it, and not upon the central figure I which overshadows the scene. From first to last, indeed, Lieut. Van de Velde never sees his own shadow between himself and the sunshine, never is oppressed by his own claims to be looked at—in fact, is not troubled whether you look at him at all, but demands of you, most distinctly, to look at his picture, and claims from you an interest in it equal to his own. With strong religious feelings, and a mind deeply leavened with Gospel truths, and the Gospel history of which this soil is redolent, our pilgrim travels onward, not without perturbations, yet full of confidence in the special protection of God, and everywhere, a single-hearted Christian, seeks his own “edification,” and to promote the edification of others. We have said that his is not the pilgrimage of a devotee, yet it is undeniable that though too orthodox to expect any miraculous influence from these holy places, he yet looks for “impressions,” for a more vivid realisation of those great events to which our faith looks back, and a brighter apprehension of the Divine teachings which were first delivered in this favoured land. Here is an instance of one profane interruption of his devout meditations;—he is seated by Jacob’s well:—
“I placed myself in the same position, and could well figure to myself the woman with her pitcher on her head coming down out of the valley. He who knows all things, and whose free sovereign love has chosen His own to eternal life from the foundation of the world—He beheld her, the poor sinner, for whose preservation He had come down from heaven. He saw her as she came along under the olive trees, long before she was aware of His being there. And when she saw Him, she hesitated, perhaps whether she should approach Him, perceiving that he was a Jew. But what should she be afraid of, she the lost, who had lost all, for whom there seemed to be nothing but despair? Therefore she came on, and——
“Thus was I musing with myself, as I sat alone at the side of the well, and had just begun to read the fourth chapter of John, when I was suddenly roused by the blustering voice of a gigantic Arab, who had come up without my observing him, and addressed me thus, with all the characteristic repulsiveness and loathsomeness of the Arabs:
“‘Marhhabah chawadja! baksheesh, baksheesh!’
“This disturbance was most unwelcome. Think what a contrast: To be lost, as it were, in heavenly thoughts, and then all at once to be aroused by such a thief-like clamour for baksheesh. He was a fellow with a face enough to frighten one, filthy and disgusting—so filthy and disgusting as none but an Arab can be. I replied to his salutation, and begged him to leave me alone.
“But no—he had no idea of doing that.
“‘Baksheesh, baksheesh!’ he roared, and sat himself down at the well-side, opposite me, at the same time taking out his pipe and lighting it with such composure as to convince me that he had not the smallest intention to leave me for some time at least.
“And before five minutes had elapsed, half-a-dozen of his fellows appeared, who forthwith placed themselves all round me in a very social circle, so that I had to abandon all thoughts of proceeding with my meditations on the favourite chapter.
“A chorus of ‘baksheesh!’ with all sorts of variations on the same theme, was now raised about my ears. I asked them through Philip on what pretence they wanted a baksheesh, begging at the same time that they would withdraw. Their answer was to this effect: ‘The land and the well belong to us, and no foreigner has any right to come here without paying us a baksheesh. Would you like to go down into the well? Here is a rope that we have brought with that view. We will let you safely down; you can see the well from within, and on coming up again pay us a baksheesh.’
“‘But what makes you suppose that I want to examine your well? I know quite the appearance of the well from within, and thus have no need to go down into it. Be, then, so good as to take your rope home again, and leave me alone.’
“I had almost added, ‘then I will give you a baksheesh;’ but I thought if these rogues see that a baksheesh is earned by merely allowing a stranger to be left alone at the well, then there is every chance that, as soon as they are gone, another similar party will come down to me, and give me still more molestation than these.
“‘If the Chawadja will not go down into the well, then will we go down instead of him, and tell him how it looks on our return; but anyhow, we must have a baksheesh.’”
A sore trial to the righteous soul of our traveller is at all times this demand for “baksheesh;” and he complains feelingly of the extravagant example of former travellers who have encouraged the Arab, only too willing to be encouraged, in his shameless exactions. No small grievance this for the pilgrim of duty or science who must economise; but, from railway porters to Bedouin chiefs, human nature is the same. We suspect the London cabman, compelled to take his legal fare, would turn out as troublesome as Abu Dahuk, if it were not for the terror of the police magistrate; and where there is no such heaven-appointed institution—no guardian angel in blue coat and leaden buttons—no Mr Commissioner Mayne—it is scarcely to be expected that your master of conveyances in the desert—your grand representative of railway and public roads for the district of the Dead Sea—should content himself with the polite information of what “a real gentleman” would offer, as your cabman must be content to do.
Reaching by Smyrna and Beyrout the land of his destination, and rising with serious enthusiasm to hail the first glimpse of Lebanon, Lieutenant Van de Velde wanders for some time along “the coasts of Tyre and Sidon,” stepping aside now and then to a mission station on the skirts of Lebanon, or to a native village, where, among discordant patches of Roman Catholics, of Greek Catholics, and of Mahommedans, he finds nothing but strife and bitter animosities, with not so much as a shadow of the religion for whose name, a vain badge, they hold each other in the direst hatred. Druse and Maronite and Moslem, Greek and Latin and unbeliever, every village hates its neighbour heartily and with a will; and though the Druse patronises the English Protestant, and the Maronite takes the French Catholic under his protection, Christianity vainly seeks a resting-place with either: but, where all cherish the natural intolerance of another faith than their own, the Greek Church, ignorant and bigoted, carries this evil principle farthest. Brutal violence and legal injury are alike the fate of every unfortunate convertite who ventures to embrace the somewhat different gospel preached by the missionaries of the Evangelicalchurches in these coasts, so long the habitation of the Gentiles. The first instance which strikes the traveller is the state of the persecuted missionary churches at Hâsbeiya, whose history he thus relates:—
“Hâsbeiya has a population of 6000 souls, of whom about three-fourths belong to the Greek Church: of the remainder, 1500 are Druses, about 500 Maronites, about 100 Jews of the class called Sephardim, and as many Mahommedans belonging to the court of the EmirSad-Ed-Din-Shepebi, with some few Anzairies. Mr Bird, one of the American missionaries, was the first who attempted, twenty-five years ago, to diffuse the gospel here. He established a school, and obtained a native teacher; but his effort met with no success, and the school dwindled away. In 1842 the brethren sent a colporteur from Beirût to Hâsbeiya with tracts; and it was from this man that the people first learned to attach to the name Protestant the meaning it bears among them—a true Christian. The books he left behind him would perhaps have had a good effect, if the Greek priests—like all priests who dispute with the only High Priest, Jesus Christ, his right to supremacy over the souls of men—had not found means, in their hatred of the gospel, to get possession of the books and burn them.
“It was about this time that the Emir imposed certain new taxes, which caused great dissatisfaction. These taxes fell particularly hard upon the poor, who had no protector; and the thought occurred to them, ‘We may possibly find protection from the missionaries; they are merciful men.’ In this hope, forty-five of them went to the brethren at Beirût, to enrol themselves, as Protestants, under their protection.
“The missionaries did not, of course, interfere with regard to the tax, but they ‘expounded to them the way of God more perfectly;’ showing them, at the same time, how much true faith in the Son of God differs from such nominal Protestantism as has its origin in mere secular motives. The brethren then sent them back to Hâsbeiya with bibles and tracts, promising to give them spiritual help, if their future conduct should attest the sincerity of their wishes. Shortly after the missionaries found an opportunity of sending two native teachers to Hâsbeiya, who had, in a few days, a hundred and fifty people in attendance on them, desirous of receiving instruction. This was too much for the priests. The bishop threatened to excommunicate all who should adopt the Protestant heresies; but, seeing that this threat had no effect, he had recourse to that powerful weapon, by which, in the East, justice and right are so constantly assailed.
“The head of the Greeks of Hâsbeiya is the Patriarch of Damascus, a certain Mathodios, who, as also the Emir of Hâsbeiya, is subject to the Pasha of Damascus. The Bishop of Hâsbeiya had no difficulty, through his superior in Damascus, in purchasing from the Pasha an order to the Emir, to the effect that the heretics should be brought back by force to the Greek Church. The Emir obeyed but too willingly. The new converts had to endure the bitterest persecutions. They were pelted with stones, and spit upon in the bazaars; they were beaten and insulted in their houses, as well as in the public places; they were no longer safe anywhere, and were debarred all social intercourse. Many attempts were made even upon their lives; and so severe was the persecution to which they were exposed, that, at one time, all but three, who remained faithful, drew back; but around those three, forty others soon gathered. After consultation, they agreed that it was best to disperse, and quitted Hâsbeiya to take up their residence at Abeyh, or elsewhere in Lebanon. In this attempt, however, they failed; the means of earning their bread were wanting, and, after a few months, they were compelled to return to Hâsbeiya. Then arose, in the silent night, from their closed dwellings, many a heartfelt and united prayer to the Lord of the Church; eagerly and trustfully His promises were sought out from His holy Word; and, like the phœnix rising from the flames, the youthful Christian congregation lifted its head anew. Persecution had no longer any terrors for them. At the request of the Patriarch, the Emir ordered his janissaries to drive them with scourges to the church; but his wrath was unable to compel them to kiss or worship the images. A certain Chalîl-Chouri, himself the son of a priest, but now converted to Christ, was sent by his family to Constantinople; here, by the help of the American consul, he obtained a firman from the Sultan, granting freedom to the Protestants of Hâsbeiya. Some amelioration in their lot was the happy result, but only to a certain degree; for the artful Mathodios managed, during five weary years, to bribe the Pasha of Damascus to assail them with all kinds of secret social persecutions.”
While this is the state of the Greek Church, and these the difficulties which all the labours of a purer faithmust encounter among our so-called Christian brethren in the East, Lieutenant Van de Velde does not share in the popular idea of the greater liberality of the dominant religion. “Mahommedans,” he says, “have been hitherto, by the very laws of the Koran, inaccessible to the gospel. The Sultan is the faithful assertor of these laws, and punishes with decapitation every Mussulman who abandons the doctrines of the Prophet. It is not three years since a respectable young man was beheaded in the streets of Constantinople for having abjured Islamism. Think, then, what is implied in a Mahommedan’s even giving an attentive ear to the gospel.” If this statement is correct, as we presume it to be, it throws rather a singular romance of disinterestedness upon the present services of the most prominent nations in Christendom to this empire of heathenesse.
Notwithstanding the discouragements, almost amounting to impossibilities, which beset him on every hand, M. Van de Velde’s friend and travelling companion, Dr Kalley, does not fail, with unceasing devotion, to proclaim to the thronging hosts of invalids who surround the Hakim at every resting-place, the unchanged faith which, eighteen hundred years ago, proceeded from this very soil. The scene is thoroughly Oriental, and strangely reminds us of many a sacred scene. Crowds of the sick and helpless throng to the door where the wandering physician sits with his medicine-chest. A high compliment to the beneficent science of healing is in the eagerness of these mendicant patients. They believe in a man who goes from village to village for no other purpose than to alleviate their pains and heal their distresses, but they find it extremely hard to believe in one who comes with no medicine-chest, but only with outlandish instruments of science, and have no faith in topography. It may be that the popular imagination has a far-off traditionary remembrance of that sublime Traveller, under whose touch and at whose voice the very dead arose; but it is certain, that while they do not understand travelling for pleasure, nor travelling for discovery, nor any other kind of expeditionary enterprise, the wandering hakim has but to disclose his errand to secure their perfect faith and most respectful welcome. Poor children of Ishmael, materialism is too strong for spirituality with them. They may gape at the antiquary with the scorn of ignorance, but the physician, to those who have so much need of him, is half divine.
At Hâsbeiya an untoward accident arrests our traveller. During a short excursion, the house which he had taken there is robbed, and all his valuables lost. Appeal to the Emir proves fruitless, and M. Van de Velde almost resigns himself to returning home. This, however, is fortunately prevented by letters of encouragement and promises of help; and with a less ambitious retinue he sets forth again undismayed, keeping his way along the coast of the Mediterranean from the Lebanon towards Carmel, from which place he strikes farther inland through the fallen remains of royal Samaria to Jerusalem.
It is not possible to follow our author through his course—this unknown country, sprinkled with names that are familiar to us as household words—nor can we pause to point out how many pictures he makes by the way, how fine an eye this unostentatious artist has for colour, and how even these pale pen-and-ink sketches brighten and glow with the rich tints of Oriental landscape; neither can we do justice to his interiors, with their smoky haze, and wild Arab figures, and primitive hospitality. These are by the way—but as he comes into a country which is distinctly historical, and not only hazy, like one of these same desert castles, with a mist of antiquity, the results of his careful examination become more apparent. Your charlatan is your most universal cosmopolitan, and with an indefatigable hand has he dotted over this sacred territory. Not disposed, however, to receive with blind faith the spot pointed out by the Carmelites (whose monastic order was instituted by Elijah!) as the true scene of Elijah’s sacrifice, M. Van de Velde and Dr Kalley set about examining for themselves, and the very interesting result of their examination, guided by the traditions of the Arabs and not of the Church, is as follows:—
“Here, then, are the details of what we observed on ‘the burnt place.’
“Having seated ourselves beneath the shade of a huge oak, we once more opened our Bibles at chap. xviii. of 1st Kings, and examined what was required in the place of sacrifice, in order to its agreement with the account given in the Bible. According to verses 18th and 19th, it must have been ample enough in size to contain a very numerous multitude. El-Mohhraka must at that time have been quite fitted for this, although now covered with a rough dense jungle. Indeed, one can scarcely imagine a spot better adapted for the thousands of Israel to have stood drawn up on than the gentle slopes. The rock shoots up in an almost perpendicular wall of more than two hundred feet in height on the side of the plain of Esdraelon. On this side, therefore, there was no room for the gazing multitude; but, on the other hand, this wall made it visible over the whole plain, and from all the surrounding heights, so that even those left behind, and who had not ascended Carmel, would still have been able to witness, at no great distance, the fire from heaven that descended upon the altar. According to verse 30th, there must have been an altar there before, for Elijah repaired ‘the altar of the Lord that was broken down.’ It is well known that such altars were uniformly built on very conspicuous eminences. Now, there is not a more conspicuous spot on all Carmel than the abrupt rocky height of Mohhraka, shooting up so suddenly on the east. Verses 31st and 32d point to a rocky soil, in which stones were to be found to serve for the construction of the altar, and yet where the stones must have been so loose or so covered with a thick bed of earth, that ‘a trench’ could have been made round the altar, whilst not of so loose a composition of sand and earth as that the water poured into it would have been absorbed. The place we were examining met these requisitions in every respect; it showed a rocky surface, with a sufficiency of large fragments of rock lying around, and, besides, well fitted for the rapid digging of a trench. But now comes the grand difficulty of both believers and unbelievers, who have not seen this place: Whence could Elijah have procured so much water as to have it to pour over the offering and the altar in barrelfuls, so that he filled the trench also with water, at a time when, after three years of drought, all the rivers and brooks were dried up, and the king in person, and the governor of his house, divided the land between them to pass through it, to see if, peradventure, any fountains of water might be found, and grass to save the horses and mules alive?—(Verses 1–6). To get rid of this difficulty, some pious travellers, with imaginations stronger than their judgments, have said, ‘O, as for that water, the thing speaks for itself; it must evidently have been got from the sea.’ But less religious persons, who were sharp enough to perceive that the place where Elijah made the offering could not have been at the seaside, have rightly remarked, that it must have been impossible, from every other point of Carmel lying more inland, on account of the great distance from the sea, to go thither and return on an afternoon, much more to do this three several times, as is expressly stated in the 34th verse. Such persons, therefore, have rejected altogether this absurd explanation, without, however, themselves arriving at any better solution of the difficulty; and this has led unbelievers, in their prejudiced haste, to assert that the Bible narrative is a mere fiction, that being the view which, best suited their purpose. Dr Kalley and I felt our mouths shut in the presence of this difficulty. We saw no spring, yet here we were certain the place must have been; for it is the only point of all Carmel where Elijah could have been so close to the brook Kishon, then dried up, as to take down thither the priests of Baal and slay them, return again to the mountain and pray for rain, all in the short space of the same afternoon after the Lord had shown, by His fire from heaven, that He, and He alone, was God (see verses 40–44). El-Mohhraka is 1635 feet above the sea, and perhaps 1000 feet above the Kishon. This height can be gone up and down in the short time allowed by the Scripture. But the farther one goes towards the middle of the mountain, the higher he ascends above the Kishon, because Carmel rises higher then, and the plain through which the river flows runs lower down. Add to this that the Kishon takes a course more and more diverging from the mountain, and the ravine by which people descend to the river’s bed is exceedingly difficult to pass through, so that three full hours are thought necessary for traversing the distance from Esfiëh to the stream. Nowhere does the Kishon run so close to Mount Carmel as just beneath El-Mohhraka. Pious expositors, who would transfer the scene to the seaward side of the mountain, seem quite to have left out of sight the required condition—that it must be near the brook Kishon.
“Well, then, we went down to the Kishon through a steep ravine, and, behold, right below the steep rocky walls of the heighton which we stood—250 feet, it might be, beneath the altar plateau—a vaulted and very abundant fountain, built in the form of a tank, with a few steps leading down into it, just as one finds elsewhere in the old walls or springs of the Jewish times. Possibly the neighbourhood of this spring may have been the inducement that led to that altar which Elijah repaired, having been built to the Lord in former times. Possibly, too, the water of this spring may have been consecrated to the Lord, so as not to be generally accessible to the people, even in times of fearful drought. In such springs the water remains always cool, under the shade of a vaulted roof, and with no hot atmosphere to evaporate it. While all other fountains were dried up, I can well understand that there might have been found here that superabundance of water which Elijah poured so profusely over the altar. Yes, the more I consider the matter, the more am I convinced, that fromsucha fountain alone could Elijah have procured so much waterat that time. And as for the distance between this spring and the supposed site of the altar, it was every way possible for men to go thrice thither and back to obtain the necessary supply.
“Further, the place of Elijah’s offering—the same, probably, where he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees, in offering thanks to the Lord for the divine power He had hitherto displayed, to beseech Him for the further fulfilment of His promises, that of rain for the parched-up ground—the place of Elijah’s offering, I say, behoves to have been so screened by a rising ground on the west or north-west side as to intercept a view of the sea; for he said to his servant, ‘Go up now, and look toward the sea.’ Moreover, the distance to that height must not have been great; for the passage runs—‘Go again seven times,’ (verses 42–44). Now, such is the position of El-Mohhraka, that these circumstances might all quite well have been united there. On its west and north-west side the view of the sea is quite intercepted by an adjacent height. That height may be ascended, however, in a few minutes, and a full view of the sea obtained from the top.”
There is nothing we hear of more frequently than of the great additional light thrown upon the Bible by modern researches; and with Scripture geography and Scripture botany, with Eastern usages and ancient customs, this modern time professes a much clearer apprehension of the Bible than did the elder age, which was ignorant of all this minutiæ of illustration. But the science is overdone. The illustration smothers the text, and we become suspicious of every new attempt of that over-explanatory teaching which toils to bring the material and framework of the sacred record down to “the meanest capacity,” almost wearying us into incredulity where, if left alone, we could not choose but believe. Holy Writ, by far the truest and most life-like picture of its own time, explains itself with small assistance—but we are glad always to light on such an illustration as this, which brings before us, in all its striking features, the locality of one of the most striking scenes of the old dispensation.
Like every other traveller in this singular country, M. Van de Velde is struck by the evident tokens everywhere of long-restrained and dormant fertility. The land is still a land of milk and honey. Folded into the unseen recesses of Carmel, where there is scarcely an eye to look on it, the soil is lavish of the richest vegetation, matted with plants and flowers; and everywhere the same teeming fruitfulness peers through the uncultivated waste, which notwithstanding is a barren waste bound with the visible restrictions of Providence, forbidden and interdicted to spread forth its riches, and waiting solemnly, with the life pent up in its great bosom, till the call of God shall wake it into the luxuriance of old.
A grand romance is in the position of this desolate but unexhausted land—ruled by strangers, inhabited by an alien race, and desecrated by an idolatrous worship, yet with all its rich faculties hidden in its heart, and its heirs, scattered yet indestructible, waiting for return to it as it waits for them. M. Van de Velde cannot restrain his impatience with Turkish rule in Palestine. Disgusted with the universal corruption, universal mismanagement and oppression, he chafes at the idea of the Christian Powers upholding theeffeteand tyrannical government of the Porte, under whose sway, he says, everything withers, from commercial enterprise to family comfort, and in whose hands everything becomes a failure. Setting political motives aside, it isindisputably a singular position which England and France hold in this contest. A few hundred years ago, Christendom resisted with desperation on these very boundaries the invasion of the Turk, and it is strange to see the leading powers of Christendom crossing the very same line in these days to fight under the banner of the Crescent, and mingle the knightly symbols, whose fame has been dearly won in the battles of the faith, with the ensigns of the unbeliever. Well, letting alone the balance of power and such imperial considerations, show us the Englishman who will stand by and see the poor heathen Hindoo, whose pathetic silence craves alms upon our streets, fall into the hands of some big Saxon bully, without lifting hand or voice for the rescue of the weak, and we will say that such a man, but no other, has a right to stigmatise this crusade of right against might, and condemn the Christian nation for defence of the Infidel. But for our ally, with his magnificent indifference, his passive fatalism, his misgovernment, and all his sins, let us be thankful that we do not need to adopt his faults when we vindicate his right—rather that our vindication of his rights, our association with himself, our help and brotherliness, are better modes of vanquishing the Oriental, who has proved his mettle in these days, than a new crusade, such as M. Van de Velde longs for, to restore to the Hebrews their old inheritance. With God, and not with us, does it remain to decide when the Jew is ready for his new existence—when the time of prophecy shall be accomplished, and that revolution begun which is to call out of all lands and places the wandering nation, the great pilgrim of centuries, and bring Israel home. It is not easy to realise the possibility of such an event, and there is no wonder in all past history equal to what this will be—but the work is manifestly out of man’s hands. At this moment, find him where you will, the qualities for which the Jew is distinguished are not those which win the respect or admiration of his neighbours—he is barren and desolate like his country, and has no beauty in him. Harsh sounds and unmelodious—at the best, a wail of blind inquiry, and long suspense—are all the harp of Judah is capable of now; and till the hand of the Divine musician touch the strings, it is a vain hope that any human finger can wake them to the measure of David or of Solomon, the lofty strains of old.
One thing these modern times, with all their fairy works of science and mighty rush of “progress,” ought to do for both Mahommedan and Jew—to convince them that there is but one faith, which never becomes obsolete—one religion, which, all independent of climate or temperature, is from God, and embraces all mankind—which is abashed by no discovery, and thrown into the shade by no improvement. The creed of Mahomet is antiquated, and in its dotage. To live a Jew in these days is to live among the tombs. Paganism is dead and gone long centuries ago. Only Christianity, in its sublime unfailing youth, is never out of date, but works as handily with the instruments of to-day as with those of a thousand years ago, and, knowing neither culmination nor decadence, is perpetually the same.
But to M. Van de Velde, the charm of attraction which binds the devout mind to the children of Abraham, the chosen people, is very strong. He cannot sufficiently execrate the Turkish occupancy, which gives this historic country to the race of all others most indifferent to its holiest memories, and when he sees the soil itself indicating, by many evidences, its inherent riches, yet lying scorched and barren under the eye of heaven—when he sees a government which discourages every exertion, a people who have no heart to make any, conscious, as he says, of the usurpation of these lands, which are not their own—our fervent pilgrim burns with natural impatience to accelerate the slow course of events, and can scarcely bring himself to tolerate the support given to this “Empire of Turkey,” which he apostrophises, with all its tyranny at home and impotence abroad. Far better service, as he thinks, these same victorious European arms would render, if they expelled the Crescent from Palestine, and established the Hebrew in hisimmemorial fatherland; but it is a hard thing for a man to set about accomplishing prophecy—the work is above his hand. M. Van de Velde mentions, however, almost with enthusiasm, the enterprise of a small American colony which, established at Bethlehem, professed an intention to prepare the soil, to “break up the fallow-ground,” in preparation for the return of the banished Israelites. The idea gratifies his eager mind; but the colonists, after all, turn out but indifferently, and the enterprise is found to fail.
The presentquestio vexataof these sacred localities occupies some space in the journals of M. Van de Velde. This controversy, originating in the real or alleged discoveries of M. de Saulcy, calls up one of the most remote and mysterious events ever brought under human discussion—the destruction of the cities of the plain, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim. The original idea, touching these guilty objects of the Divine wrath, wrapt in awe and mystery as their fate was, seems to have been, that the Dead Sea, itself the gloomiest and most appalling object in creation, had been called into existence by the same miracle which annihilated the condemned cities, and that its deadly waters swept every trace of them out of sight for ever. But modern travel has taken from the Dead Sea much of its mysterious desolation; it is found that sweet fountains spring, and luxuriant vegetation flourishes, within sight of its waters, and that itself bears no evident trace of its deadly qualities, but appears, as one and another of its visitors say, only a “splendid lake,” an inland sea, mirroring clear skies and picturesque mountains, sublime, but not terrible. Traces of the most frightful convulsions of nature surround it on every side; extinct volcanoes and tremendous chasms, mountains dislocated and shattered in pieces, and tracts of unparalleled desolation; but still it is impossible to regard the lake itself as the fatal object which former ideas held it to be. As the subject clears from the superstitious veneration of less informed times, a new theory is propounded. Near the end of the present Dead Sea, a peninsula strikes into the water, almost cutting off into a separate lake the southmost portion of the sea. This portion, beyond the promontory El-Lisan, is found to be extremely shallow, and in more than one spot fordable, presenting a striking contrast, in this particular, to the main body of the water, which reaches the depth of 1300 feet. This shallow end of the lake, guarded by its broad peninsula, Dr Robinson, the eminent American traveller, takes to be an inundated plain; in other words, the vale of Siddim, the ancient site of the condemned cities. According to the Scripture narrative, the soil of this fertile valley was “full of slime-pits,” a bituminous underground to the surface of tropical luxuriance; and Dr Robinson’s theory holds, that the fire which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah broke up the superficial soil, ignited the bitumen, and lowered the surface of the plain below the level of the lake, which immediately flooded over the sunken valley, and formed the shallow piece of water at the south end of the Dead Sea. A glance at the map will show how the form of the lake justifies this theory, in which many travellers, and among them Lieutenant Van de Velde, fully concur.
On the other hand, M. de Saulcy affirms positively to finding extensive ruins at a place called Kharbet Sdoum (ruins of Sodom), at the foot of Djebel Sdoum, or Mountain of Sodom; and on the edge of this submerged plain he finds also other ruins bearing the name of Sebaan, which he concludes to be Zeboim, and still others called by the Arabs Zouera, or Zuweirah, which he reckons Zoar. These consist of walls, of now and then a distinct building, and of masses of fallen stones, to such extent as to merit the term “stupendous ruins.” Here the reader, who can only compare testimony, is put completely at fault; for, as confidently as M. de Saulcy affirms his discovery of these ruins, does M. Van de Velde deny the existence of any such. No former traveller has lighted upon them; no after traveller has confirmed the story; but what shall we make of the distinct assertion of M. de Saulcy, with his little band of companions, who declared themselves to have twice visited and examined these extraordinary remains,and to be perfectly convinced of their authenticity? Limestone rocks, corrugated and channelled by winter torrents, and worn into the resemblance of layers of building, explains M. Van de Velde—stupendous ruins, veritable remains of the cities of the Pentapolis, says his adversary: both produce battalions of testimony—which is right?
In real locality, we apprehend, the controversy makes little difference, since both sides of the question mutually agree in choosing this southern end of the Asphaltic Lake for the position of the destroyed cities. M. De Saulcy places Zoar on the western side; Dr Robinson and M. Van de Velde, and all preceding travellers, settle its position on the eastern coast, upon the peninsula. The Frenchman finds his tangible memorials of Sodom, and the wonderful event which destroyed it, his large burned stones, and destroyed buildings, recognised by Arab tradition, on the still remaining soil; the American and the Netherlander cover these awful remnants of Almighty vengeance with the bitter waters wherein no life can be. The former proposition may admit of proof palpable to the senses, since “stupendous ruins” are not things to be ignored by an honest examination; but the waters of the lake, if they contain it, will not open to disclosetheirsecret;—so all the advantages of proof are on M. de Saulcy’s side. As it is, however, the question does not seem to us a question for ordinary discussion, but simply one of comparative credibility of testimony—are there ruins, or are there not? Has there been glamour in M. de Saulcy’s eyes, or has obstinate scepticism obscured the vision of M. Van de Velde? The question is not one on which we are prepared to give a judgment. Our impetuous Gallic champion stands alone, defying the civilised Bedouin Criticism, as he defied the Ishmael of the desert; but an army of heavy artillery fights on the side espoused by M. Van de Velde. What shall we say?—in prospect of a magnificent duel pending between the head of the one party and the sole and indivisible representative of the other, only that our present author boldly throws himself into the discussion, flings his glove manfully in the face of the Frenchman, denies his premises, scouts his conclusions, and is thoroughly convinced in his own mind that not a vestige remains above ground of the submerged cities of the plain.
M. Van de Velde, who travels economically, without thinking it necessary to secure the attendance of sheikhs of half a dozen tribes, seems to meet with a very much less degree of annoyance and obstruction than is common to travellers in Palestine. We cannot fail to observe, in the midst of many complaints of the rapacity and perpetual exactions imposed by the tribes of the desert upon wandering pilgrims, that every traveller has at least one faithful Arab, who, if not entirely superior to baksheesh, does yet deport himself with exemplary conscientiousness, and gain the entire confidence and friendship of the party he conducts. A good omen this, for a race so completely beyond the rules of ordinary law. There are some cases, too, where, cast almost upon their charity, sick, exhausted, and undefended, with no greater retinue than two unwarlike servants and one Bedouin guide, M. Van de Velde meets with unexpected kindness and hospitality from these children of Ishmael, and in his experience the Bedouins seem to contrast rather favourably with the resident villagers through whose domains his former course had been. Notwithstanding, though the unobtrusive traveller, who trusts himself without a guard among them, may meet with less annoyance than the richly-equipped expedition, prodigal of piastres, one does not see how controversies, historical or geographical, touching this mysterious territory, can ever be rightly determined so long as the investigators are compelled to hurry from point to point, and are kept in terror of the least divergence from their projected course, lest an enemy pounce upon them in the wilds where no help is. A railway to the shores of the Dead Sea is scarcely to be feared or hoped for these few centuries, but there surely might be an expeditionary band, strong enough to disregard the wild inhabitants of this land, which piques and tantalises with imperfect revelations the curiosity of science.An expedition which should dare to take time, which should venture into deliberate and careful examinations, and which was sufficiently strong to overawe the lawless lords of the soil, might do much to settle the jars of opinion, and reveal to the general knowledge this terrible country, scarred and marked for ages by the chastising hand of God.
A minor difficulty in the way of reconciling one traveller’s experience with another’s, is the perpetual variation of proper names. Taken down as these must be from the guide of the moment, it is easy to account for the orthographical vicissitudes through which they pass; but it were surely well even to sacrifice a point and take our predecessor’s spelling instead of our own, rather than throw this mist of perplexity over the whole scene. Many a learned puzzle has come out of this peculiarity in the sacred records themselves, the shifting of names, and subtracting of syllables; and we are like, as it seems, to find the same difficulty continuing with us. But it is not necessary, surely, that every new traveller should set up an orthography of his own: with submission, it appears to us that accuracy of place is of much more importance than originality of name, and that he is to be the most commended who enables you at once, and without perplexity, to recognise the spot where, in his predecessor’s company, you have been before.
In taking leave of these pleasant volumes, we cannot help regretting once more that the sketches to which such frequent reference is made are not added to the text. Lieut. Van de Velde’s friend to whom his book is addressed, seems to have rather an unfair advantage over the public in this respect; and without detracting anything from the value of the pen-and-ink sketches, which are admirable of their kind, it is impossible not to feel a degree of injury, or to resist being provoked and tantalised by such a sentence as this—“If my short description of the vale of Shechem, with its mountains of Blessing and Curse, can in any way elucidate to you the narratives of Scripture, I shall be very glad. I hope my sketch will come in aid of my pen.”
And why, then, does not the sketch come in aid of the pen? The worshipful public who read his book claims to be the dearest of dear friends to an author, and suffers no such successful rivalry of its pretensions. We trust to see M. Van de Velde rectify this mistake in his second edition. A very animated book, full of life and motion, atmosphere and reality, he has added to our store—agoodbook, which the best of us may read “of Sundays,” but which the gayest of us will not find too dry for every day; and we will be glad to see Lieut. Van de Velde complete, by the addition of his sketches, so worthy a contribution to the little library of science, speculation, and adventure, which treats of the Holy Land.