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as the Turkish officials are not always educated men, or instructed in the laws and regulations of their country, they would be apt to involve their superiors in questions with the foreign embassies. This reluctance on the part of the Turkish government to see foreigners become owners of real estate, grows out of the fact that foreigners in the Levant are subject to the laws of their own country, and not to those of the country in which they reside. The consuls are not, as in Christian countries, mere commercial agents, but are invested with judicial powers, and wherever there is a consul there is also a consular court, having both civil and criminal jurisdiction over his countrymen. It is with the utmost care that a conflict of laws and jurisdiction, under this anomalous state of things, can be avoided, even as regards the persons and personal property of foreigners. To add to the complications growing out of real estate, is to increase the probabilities of friction and disagreement between consuls and cadis, and disturbed relations between the legations and the Porte.

to the place which Dr. Thomson has call-
ed by that name. Dr. Robinson was of
the opinion that Ain Tineh, where we
lunched, is the real Capernaum, but there
are no ruins there except those of a mod-
ern khan, and, 200 yards further south,
some rubble work, not more than 20 feet
high and 20 feet square. While at Tell
Hûm, as it is now called by the Arabs,
which runs out a little cape into the lake,
nearly an hour south of the inlet of the
Jordan, is covered with ruins. Pushing
through a thick growth of thistle and
mustard, higher than our heads, we rode
up to a ruin about 20 feet high, not very
ancient, and evidently built from material
found among the ruins of the old town.
Columns and capitals were mixed in with
the stone of the side walls. The rock
here is all trap. We tied our horses, and
by standing on tiptoes on the highest
part of the ruin we could see the Jordan
flowing into the lake, after its 15 mile
excursion from the Huleh. With some
effort we wedged our way through the
jungle in search of ruins, and we were
amply rewarded, for we found pedestals
still standing, prostrate columns, archi-
traves with the cup and egg pattern, and
another design in marble showing either
a pot of flowers or an urn of incense. In
an old hovel, now used as a sheepfold, we
saw what were evidently foundation
stones, probably of the synagogue. The
weather was stiflingly hot, and we moved
about with great difficulty on account of
the tangled thistle and shrubs; we soon
became exhausted, and turning to our
horses for relief, were forcibly reminded
of the condemnation passed by our Lord
on the place:
"And thou Capernaum,
which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be
cast down to hell! "

But we must attend to our lunch at the fountain. The road above it runs from the Huleh, by Jib Yusef (Joseph's pit) to Tiberias over the spur of the hill, and runs parallel with the Jordan in its course to the lake. This entire district is most attractive at this season, and is agreeable at all times. It has ever been high in favor with both native and foreigner, and was always peopled by a mixture of races, the Greek, the Arab and the Jew, who never ceased, however, to maintain a separate existence. Never fusing, intermarrying or even dwelling together, they were distinct in blood, in appearance, and in creed. And this is true The controversy about the site of Caof the present inhabitants-the Moslem, pernaum, which includes already a list of Druse, Maronite, Metowali, Armenian and learned biblical and scientific men, will the Frank. The Arabs then, as now, soon receive an additional impetus from lived in their tents; the Jews, into whose the explorations of Mr. McGregor, the houses a Syrian could not enter, occuLondon barrister, who proposes to exampied open towns, while the Greeks lived ine the shores of the lake from the water in walled cities, in which a Jew was not side. Having already made three famous allowed to sleep. voyages in his "Rob Roy canoe" in the After lunch we went to Capernaum, or rivers of Europe, he is now in Syria, with

the view of paddling over and sounding is no doubt the Chorasin of the New Tesall the water deep enough to float his lit- tament. Night was coming on, and we tle craft. After examining the rivers of hastened toward Tiberias, where we were Damascus and verifying the sources of to find our tents. The ride along the the Jordan, he proposes to find all that is beautiful sandy shore of the lake in the concealed by the "waters of Merom," twilight was full of the deepest interest. which has not hitherto been explored, We soon passed Magdala, an hour north and then go down the Jordan to the Sea of Tiberias, the home of that Mary, to of Galilee, and by inspecting closely that whom our Lord showed a charity not part of Tell Him that lies under water, often imitated in our day. A score of he thinks he will be able to throw some hovels now occupy the site, and the misnew light on the subject. erable Magdalens, who passed us to get water from the lake, looked as if they had never been pardoned.

Mounting our horses we hastened on to pick up the artist and his train. He had taken a good photograph of the cape and its disputed ruins. We were greatly impressed with the beauty of the little inlets or creeks, in one of which our Lord must have thrust out in a little boat to speak to the people on the shore. One might easily address 5,000 or 10,000 people from such a position as the boat would have occupied in yonder little bay.

On our road to Tiberias we passed Tabiga, supposed by Robinson to be the ancient Bethsaida, where we saw many old birkehs 20 feet high, in which the water from the stream was raised up to overflow into a canal, and ran along parallel with their tops, for the irrigation of the plain of Genesareth. Part of this canal was cut through the solid rock, on the road to Tiberias. There is a flour mill at Tabiga and a cluster of fountains, whose water is brackish and tepid, but there was no inhabitant of any kind at Am et Teen or at Tell Hûm-not even an animal to shoot at. An old Sheik whom we met coming from the eastern side of the lake, told us of Massada, or the place of fishing near the entrance of the Jordan into the lake. This may be the real Bethsaida, or house of fishing,* but this name is not known among the people. About twenty minutes back and north of Tabiga, is a ruin and a small hamlet called Karasia, (Chorasin being the dual form) and

*If the Bethsaida of Robinson be correctly located, the one mentioned by the Sheik is probably the Bethsaida-also called Julias, on the east bank of the Jordan, two miles above the lake.

As we crossed the rocky promontory north of the walled city of Tiberias we had an opportunity of enjoying the calm beauty of the lake in shadow, while the Jaulan slopes on the eastern side were basking in the golden light of the declining sun. This scenery has been called tame by certain travelers. In good weather, it is calm; but the lake can be very rough, as Peter found to his cost. Snow-capped Hermon looks down from his airy height, an ever-watchful sentinel over this mimic sea; and Safed, with her many hills, keeps guard on the western side, while Jaulan, the country of Job, with its grand outlines embracing the sky, stretches away to the east. The castle of Tiberias, the plain of Genesareth, the hot baths and the horns of Huttin beautify the shore, from the inlet of the Jordan to its outgo, where the river skips over the threshold of the lake into the valley below. All nature seems to pet this inland sea: the hills look fondly down, and their shadows lovingly rest upon it. There she lies, the jewel-a sacred cameo upon the breast of the Promised Land!

We reached our tents at dusk, and found them within the walls between the old castle and the shore, about fifty feet above the beach. The view from the tent door attracted my attention. The slope to the water's edge was so rapid, that from my bed, it seemed as if the lake came to the door; but the two graceful palms that drooped their long branches, as the sunset breeze subsided, indicated the shore line, and stood like twin sisters

in placid meditation. The palm tree, unlike the twinkling, glistening olive, whose silver foliage suggests the aged willow, represents meditation and repose. Differing from every other tree in Syria, in appearance and effect, it affords no shelter from the sun or rain; and though of the earth, earthy, it seems to have as little to do with earth as possible. The tallest of trees, its contribution of dates is given in its own peculiarly lofty style from the summit of its columnar trunk, while the branches droop toward the ground from their airy height, as if weary with their effort to reach the skies. The palm in groves produces in the beholder a sensation of delight-the immense palm groves seven miles long which once environed Jericho must have been a beautiful sight-but singly, or in twos, they predispose the mind to pensive thoughts. Like the village spire in New England towns, they point upward and suggest the Creator; and several localities in the lands of the Bible have not been inappropriately named, as Phenicia, "the land of palms," Palmyra, the city of palms, and Bethany, "the house of dates." Palm branches afe still used in the East on Palm Sunday and at funerals, where they suggest victory and immortality. The righteous are said to "flourish like the palm tree." The character of the tree is therefore worthy of remark.

The date-palm, called the Phenix dactylifera in the Linnean system, is an evergreen and sometimes rises to the height of 100 feet; it is in its greatest vigor 30 years after transplantation, and continues so for 70 years, when it begins gradually to decay, falling usually at the close of its second century. When the old trunk dies, one or more young shoots spring up, so that the tree enjoys a kind of immortality. It is propagated chiefly from young shoots taken from the roots of full-grown trees, which, if well transplanted and nursed, yield their fruit in the 6th or 7th year, while those from the stone will not bear till the 16th year. The trunk rises from the ground of a thickness which is never increased, and

yet it grows so rapidly that it rises to the height of a man in five or six years. As it ascends new leaves are sent out and the former ones decay, and fall down on the trunk, and when the tree is under cultivation they are cut off. The leaves are from 10 to 12 feet in length and when cut from the tree they are macerated in water and become supple, after which they are manufactured into mats, and are applied to many other useful purposes. The palm requires a hot climate with a soil sandy, yet humid and somewhat nitreous; hence it is often found beside wells in the desert, having sprung from date-stones thrown away by travelers who have rested there for refreshment. In fact, it is pre-eminently the tree of the desert, and is spoken, of in Rabbinical writings as a tree of the valleys, not of the mountains. It was deemed characteristic of Judea, and on the coins of her Roman conquerors, we find the words Judea capta, and the Jews are represented by a weeping female sitting under a palm tree.

The castle in ruins behind our tents brought up thoughts of the Crusaders, who held Tiberias for a time, and suggested the warlike exploits of the Jews as related by Josephus. The town on the right slope of the hill twinkled with its hundred lights below us, and the tents of Englishmen were illuminated on one side, while our muleteers were chatting and making the night hideous with their horse-laughs on the other, when we sat down to dine on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Next morning, during a walk through. the bazaars, I noted some improvement in the business of the town-the Jewish population having nearly doubled since my former visit in 1859. The Jews are no cleaner here, although water is at hand, than in the other holy cities. Their bazaars, like those at Safed, were amply stored with meat, vegetables, dry goods and hardware; fish from the lake is found at every corner, and Syrian cotton, then a drug in the market, was sold in bags. I bought a saddle-girth in a Moslem shop, and turned back satisfied with my ex

plorations into the dirt of Tiberias. We passed an old Greek church, which had been purchased by some Latin monks, for a convent a branch of the community at Nazareth. From an open space we could see the city wall and the extent of the town, which has a population of more than 2,000 souls. One half of these are Jews, and the other half Moslems and Christians. The Jews regard this town with veneration as one of their holy cities, and are said to believe that their long expected Messiah will rise from the waters of the lake, land in this city and establish his throne at Safed. Their quarter of the town contains several synagogues and schools, in which rabbinical lore has been kept up as a branch of learning. They are not closely united, being different in sect and in origin-the Sephardim being chiefly from Northern Africa and Spain, whose language is a corrupt Spanish, while the Askenazim are from Russia. The wall and towers of the town are much dilapidated, and show traces of the earthquake of 1837.*

The old city wall ran lower than the modern and into the water in places. I shook off the dust of the town, and plunged into the water from the old rampart, and ten yards from the shore found no bottom. The waves were about two feet high, and yet the boatmen had refused to venture out in the old sail boat. This was my only experience on the lake, and my only bath in a volcanic basin.t The *The history of Tiberias may be summed up in a few words. Built by Herod the murderer of John the Baptist, in honor of the Emperor Tiberias, it was endowed with many immunities and became the capital city of Galilee, and subsequently the chief residence of the Jews in Palestine, who for three centuries made it their metropolis. Conspicuous in the war that attended the seige of Jerusalem, it was captured by the Persians, (A.D. 614) by the Arabs, (A.D. 637) and by the Crusaders under Tancred. About 100 years ago, Dahebel Omer, an Arab sheik, built the present walls. Jerome thinks it was the Chinnereth-at which Dr. Thomson demurs, while the Rabbins say that the old city of Rakkath, mentioned in Joshua, stood on this site.

The volcanic nature of the basin of this lake (the Sea of Galilee) and of the surround ing region is not to be mistaken. The hot

Jezzar Pacha

purpose, but

clear and gravelly bottom shelves down very gradually and is strewed with pebbles. During the rainy season the waters rise to the level of the courtyards of the houses on the shore at Tiberias. The lake is full of fish, and Hasslequist the naturalist, notes the remarkable fact that some of the same species of fish are met with here as in the Nile; the Siluries and Mugil, (chub) and a species of bream. The right to fish is farmed out by the government, and is carried on from the shore with hand nets, and not with boats. Boats are not always found here, and travelers have given various reports: Irby and Mangles found none in 1818, in 1822 and '29 there was none. Pococke in 1738 made an excursion on the lake in a boat which was kept, in order to bring wood from the other side. had a boat built for this Burchart in 1812 says it had fallen to pieces the year before. The United States Expedition to the Dead Sea under Capt. Lynch launched its boats from Tiberias April 8, 1848, and began a series of investigations which have formed the basis of much that has been written by subsequent travelers. Lynch had not time to survey the lake, but he speaks of its bottom as a concave basin, and of its greatest depth as 165 feet, though fluctuating from copious rains, melting snows and rapid evaporation. The water is cool and sweet, and the inhabitants say that it possesses medicinal properties. The surface of the lake was found by barometrical measurement to be 653.3 below that of the Mediterranean. Its length is stated to be 11 geographical miles by a breadth of about 6 miles across the middle; and its distance from the Dead Sea 56 miles. It is about 660 feet below the Mediterranear.

I was struck with the tidy appear

springs near Tiberias, S. E. of the lake, as also the lukewarm springs along its western shore, the frequent and violent earthquakes, and the black basaltic stones which thickly strew the ground, all leave no room for doubt on this point. Robinson ii. 416. S. Crowe, Geographisch-historische Beschreibung des Landes Palästina, Pt. i. p. 34. Lange, Life of Christ, p. 312, vol. i.

ance of the Jewish women, some of whom were dressed in white. One carried on her head a basket platter of clean yellow bread, and the artist, a young Frenchman, followed and begged her to sell a loaf, for the sake of charity, of Allah, just one loaf, but the Jewess was obdurate and referred him to the market where we had already purchased a villainous gritty preparation which the Arabs call bread, of the consistency of a soiled blanket soaked in dishwater. On asking the reason of the woman's refusal to part with her bread, of a Jew mending shoes outside the gate, we learned that this was religious bread, destined for use in the church feast of the following daySaturday. The Jewess who sold the artist some tobacco was more amiable and did not seem unwilling to handle his Christian silver.

We reached the hot baths in less than a half-hour's easy ride, passing groups of Jews with white beards, and boys, but no men of middle age, or women. Stricken with palsy and other infirmities, these children of Israel presented the most singular types of the human countenance I ever witnessed. Holding on to life with intense eagerness, they had barely enough of the vital spark in their exhausted frames to drag them from the city to these famous medicinal baths. Whatever of efficacy they may contain for cases of rheumatism and nervous complaints, they certainly fail to restore youth and beauty, for every face that passed us exhibited a great degree of physical and mental suffering, which, together with their soiled and disordered clothing, gave to their countenances an expression bordering on the hideous, and reminded one of Michael Angelo's painting of the souls in purgatory. The pallor of the boys was ghastly; and the contrast between infirm old age and imbecile youth, added nothing to the beauty of either. To enjoy the benefit of these sulphurous baths, and the fancied benefits arising from a residence in this, their sacred city, these "children of the wandering foot" will endure a summer of stifling heat, in a town of infinite dirt, and under the contempt of

rulers and neighbors of a faith more modern, if not more liberal than their own. There is one tie, however, between the Moslem and the Eastern Jew-both are Unitarians, both Orientals, and in sympathy in their dislike of the Christians.

We did not gain access to the baths, several Moslem hareems having possession. In 1859 I found them hot, dirty, and uninviting; I could not hold my hand in the water a moment, it being at 144° F. The taste is very salt and bitter, and smells of sulphur, and an analysis has shown carbonate of lime, with a small proportion of muriatic salts, like that of the Dead Sea. Pococke found in a bottle of this water a considerable quantity of gross fixed vitriol, some alum and a salt which is probably the chloride of sodium mentioned by Dr. Anderson. There is nothing ancient in the buildings or surroundings, and nothing to suggest the fortified camp of Vespasian, or the Crusaders. The present buildings were erected by Ibrahim Pasha in 1833, and cover the four fountains, which are visited chiefly in July by Syrians who have faith to believe that they may free themselves from their rheumatism and debility in these seething waters. These hot springs are mentioned by Pliny and Josephus, the latter calling the place Ammaus, or warm baths"

A short ride along the border of the lake brought us to the outgo of the Jordan, where we found a boat, and, after some patient waiting, a boatman to ferry us to the other side. I longed to tarry and spend the day just at this spot. On these tells of Kerak were the fortified places of the Jews, and this was their great naval station, where Josephus collected 230 ships to attack Tiberius, and where occurred the only sea fight between them and the Romans. My friend the Doctor, saw a storm raging here, years ago, for thirty consecutive hours, that would have wrecked a hundred fleets like those of Josephus, unless harbored just at this point. My bath in the swift torrent at the Pilgrim's Ford, six years before, had not satisfied my desire to linger upon the banks of this

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