Chapter C: A. Dana (11)

We were just bracing ourselves to this unpleasant prospect, when, in a southwesterly direction, we suddenly saw a gleam of light; it lasted for a moment, then seemed to go out. But that one ray was one of hope, and we steered cautiously for it. We had been scrambling by compass in the dark for about half an hour, and were just beginning to despair, when the bark of a distant dog put new energy into us, and not long after, around the shoulder of a hill, we came upon an encampment, and were greeted by the furious yells of the mob of noisy curs which infest the tents of the Bedouins. It was a startling apparition to burst upon these nomads in their remote retreat—horsemen of a type they had never seen before, and an armed soldier. Such children as were awake set up a dismal squalling, the women cowered tremblingly over their camp-fires under the pent roof of black camels' hair. All the side of the tent being open, its whole internal economy was exposed to view, and enabled us to judge of the slight protection in the way of bedding or clothing or covering of any sort which was provided against the inclemency of the season.

Meantime the men had gathered round us, half timidly, half threateningly. The presence of the soldier suggested fear and suspicion, while the smallness of our party encouraged the bolder ones to look defiant. As far as I could make out in the darkness there were about a dozen tents here in all—apparently the fag end of an insignificant tribe whose name I forget. It was at first impossible to induce any one at that late hour to act as guide. Even abundant offers of backshish failed to shake their suspicion, which was to the effect that we wished to decoy one into durance to act as a hostage until some arrears of taxes which they owed the government should be paid up.

The other alternative was that we should take up our quarters in the sheik's tent, whether he liked it or not, which, with a piercing wind blowing, accompanied by sleet, was not a very pleasant prospect. He seemed to relish it as little as we did, and finally consented to be our guide as we made some silver gleam in the firelight. As he seized his eighteen-foot lance and mounted his ragged steed he looked like some Arab Don Quixote; and as the camp-fire threw its ruddy glow upon a group of wild-looking women, with dishevelled hair and tattooed chins, crooning over a pot like the witches of “Macbeth,” and upon barelegged men, as they flitted to and fro between the black tents, I thought I had seldom gazed upon a more weird and unreal-looking scene.

How our guide could find his way up the rocky hillside and across the prairie remained a mystery during the long two hours that we followed him. Of this I feel sure, that we scrambled up places in the dark that we should never have thought of facing by daylight. The very horses seemed to have become desperate, and to have abandoned themselves to their fate. At last we dismounted and scaled the rocks like goats, every one, man or beast, doing the best he could for himself on his own account, and so at last, wearied and half-starved, for we had fasted for about ten hours, we reached the goal of our endeavour, too tired to see what an utterly miserable hole it was.

I passed a wretched night in a room in the middle of which a fire had been built, which filled it with smoke, for it had no other exit but the door, which it was too cold to keep open. Around the fire were stretched fifteen Arabs, who quarrelled with a government official, whom they were compelled to entertain, about their taxes, until they exhausted themselves, and then they exchanged their discordant wrangling for no less discordant snoring. After replenishing exhausted nature with the eggs which was all that my host could provide me with, and a tin of canned meat, I vainly tried to follow their example, but was too busily occupied in scratching to think of anything but fleas, and so tossed and tumbled and longed for the morning, when I proposed to enter upon a new field of exploration, for this was the village of El-Al, where I had heard that ruins existed; and as I had every reason to believe that in ancient times this neighbourhood had been the centre of a large population, I felt sure that they had left interesting traces, which were yet to be discovered.

KHISFIN.

Haifa, March 15.—There is no part of ancient Palestine which offers a more fertile field for antiquarian research than that portion lying to the east of the Jordan, which fell to the share of the half-tribe of Manasseh. In Biblical times a part of it was called Golan, and its modern name of Jaulan is almost identical with its ancient appellation. It is to this day the finest grazing land in all Palestine, as it was in the days of old, when Job fed his vast flocks and herds upon its more eastern pastures, but it is now very sparsely inhabited. The sedentary population has all been driven away by the wandering tribes of Bedouins who have appropriated the country; the very few villages that remain are squalid and miserable, and the inhabitants live in terror for their lives, for they never know what day, or rather night, the Arabs may not be down upon them, and carry off their stock. They surround their houses, therefore, with large yards enclosed by stone walls, and it was in one of these that I found a lodging on the night that I had so nearly been obliged to spend in the wilds of the Wady Samak. Attached to these yards are large stone vaults, capable of containing great herds of cattle, and some of them apparently of great antiquity. In the one in which I staked my horses I found, on examining it in the morning, part of a Corinthian column, still _in situ_, standing to a height of about six feet. I failed to discover any more, but the vault was so dark that my examination was carried on with difficulty, and I had no time to spend over it. The sheik's house in which I lodged, and to which this vault belonged, was evidently, however, built on the site of what had formerly been a building of some importance, for in the yard, to my surprise and delight, I came upon a prostrate statue of a woman, life size. The head was severed from the body, and the feet had been broken off at the ankles, but it was a fine specimen of Greek statuary. Both the features and the drapery were beautifully executed. The feet I found _in situ_, the ankles just appearing on a level with the ground. On clearing this away I laid bare the feet, which were still firmly fixed on the original pedestal, which it would have required a great deal of labour to disinter. It is not improbable that the pedestal is covered with carving in _basso-rilievo_, and I promise myself at some future time to dig it up. In the meantime both feet and pedestal cannot be safer than where they are, more especially as my companions secured the head. This the sheik was induced to part with for $3. The body was too cumbersome to carry away now, as a camel would have been needed for its transport, and, as it is not of much value without the head, it may be considered secured by the possession of that portion.

The statue apparently represented Artemis, as the left arm clasped what seemed to be a quiver for arrows. The right arm was unfortunately broken away, otherwise the statue would be perfect when put together. The pedestal, without doubt, contains an inscription describing the statue and the goddess represented upon it. I was sorely tempted to devote a day to its examination, but, in that case, I should have been compelled to give up visiting some other spots of interest which had never before been investigated, and the hardships and discomforts of these preliminary dashes into the wilds, more especially in the depth of winter, are so great that one is not tempted to prolong them—my present object being rather to know where to go at some future time, when the conditions, political and otherwise, may be more favourable than they are now. I therefore did not linger longer than was absolutely necessary at this place. I had seen enough to prove to me that it would, in all probability, amply repay a fuller investigation, and I determined without delay to push on to a village called Khisfin, which I was extremely anxious to examine, as it has hitherto escaped the careful attention of all former travellers. And yet, from the records which I have been able to examine in regard to it, it must have been a place of considerable importance in mediæval history, though hitherto my efforts to trace it back to an earlier date than the beginning of the tenth century or to identify it with any Biblical site have been in vain. Yakubi, an Arab geographer, who lived about the year 900 A.D., mentions it as one of the chief towns of the province of the Jordan. In his day Syria was divided into three provinces, namely: The province of Damascus, the province of the Jordan, and the province of Palestine. Yakut, in the thirteenth century, mentions it as a town of the Hauran district, below Nawa on the Damascus road, between Nawa and the Jordan. Khisfin was also at one time a fortress of the Saracens, as it is further mentioned as the place to which Al Melek Al Adil, Saladin's son and successor, fled after having been routed at the battle of Beisan by the Crusaders, who advanced upon him from Acre. As it is mentioned as being one of the chief towns of the province, so long ago as 900 A.D., it is probable that its importance dates from a much older period, as indeed was indicated by some of the ornamentation which I found there.

Securing my host, the sheik, as a guide to a locality which promised to be so full of interest, we started at a brisk pace across the plateau, in the teeth of a bitterly cold east wind and driving sleet, and, after riding an hour, came to the ruins of Nab, situated on a small mound. They consist of blocks of basalt building-stone, some traces of foundations, some fragments of columns and capitals, and a tank, dry at the time of my visit, but which evidently held water at some time of the year. It had, apparently, been much deeper at a former period, only the two upper courses of masonry being new visible. It was oval in shape, and measured sixty yards by thirty. This place does not appear to have been previously visited or described. Shortly after leaving it I observed masses of black stone, which, on nearer approach, proved to be the walls of a fortress that, my guide told me, was Khisfin itself. It loomed strikingly up from the grassy plain, and gave rise to pleasing anticipations as I galloped impatiently up to the base of the walls, and, jumping off my horse without even waiting to tether him, in my excitement, scrambled up a breach to see what was inside. I looked down upon a ruin-strewn area, but, alas, no columns, nor capitals, nor signs of Roman remains. This had evidently been in turn a Saracen and a Crusading construction. The outer walls measured sixty-eight yards one way by fifty-four the other. They are nine feet in thickness, and are eight courses of stone in height, the stones being from one foot to one foot six inches square; but some are much larger. Within the fort are the traces of a second or inner wall, forming a sort of keep in the centre; but the whole area was too much encumbered with ruin for any accurate plan to be possible in the limited time at my disposal.

A little beyond the fort stood the village itself. All the intervening and surrounding fields were thickly strewn with the large hewn blocks of black basalt of which the houses of the former population had been constructed, and which, to judge from the area which they covered, quite justified the description of Yakubi, that in his day this was one of the chief towns of the province, and the centre of a very large population. The present squalid inhabitants, few in number, seemed to live in a perfect quarry of these old building-blocks. No difficulty had they in finding material wherewith to build their houses, their large cattle vaults, and enclosing yards. They simply piled the tumbled masses of stone in a little more regular order, one above another, to make walls of any height or thickness they chose, without mortar or cement, and had houses that would last forever. As all the stones were beautifully squared and shaped, they had far more symmetrical walls, thanks to the ancients, than if they had been left to themselves. These black, massive huts all jumbled together with their vaults and yards, without regular streets or lanes, formed one of the strangest looking villages I ever saw. In some cases the walls were formed of stones placed diagonally, in others horizontally, in others perpendicularly. The very roofs were of stone, with earth on the top of them to fill up the cracks. Where hewn stone is so abundant and wood almost impossible to obtain, it is astonishing what uses the former can be put to. And now came a search which I would willingly have protracted over days instead of over minutes, which were all I had to give to it. To “do” Khisfin thoroughly one ought to examine carefully every stone in every house, besides the acres of stones by which the present village is surrounded. As it was, I went into as many houses as I had time for, and made sketches of what ornamentation I found. The natives had evidently used as lintels for their doorways the stones which had served the ancients for the same purpose. These were usually four or even five feet long, and many of them were ornamented with curious devices. They were in part Crusading and in part Saracenic. There were the tablets with half-effaced escutcheons, rosettes, bosses, crosses, and other Crusading emblems, which left no doubt in my mind that this must have been at one time an important Crusading fortress, though in the only book relating to the crusades which I happen to have by me no mention is made of it. There were several of those curious carvings, difficult to describe, which characterize Saracenic architecture as an evidence that the Moslem conquerors of the crusaders had also had a hand in its adornment; but what was more interesting, there were floral wreaths and carved devices which are a feature in Byzantine art, which gave clear evidence that before the conquest of this province from the Byzantine empire in the seventh century it had been an important city of that civilization which immediately succeeded the Roman.

The important question which I could not determine was whether, in the old Roman times, it had been a place of note. There can be little doubt that a future examination, of a more minute character than I was able to give, would determine this point, and it is not at all impossible that upon the old stones might be found seven-branched candlesticks, pots of manna, or emblems of a still older date, which would carry it back to Jewish times. Meanwhile I looked anxiously, but in vain, for an inscription which might throw some light on the subject, and it is certain that amid such a mass of ruin such are to be found. All my inquiries for old coins only tended to alarm the villagers, who looked on my proceedings with their usual suspicion, and associated my visit and my desire for old money with their taxes, which is the only idea that the fellah of Palestine seems able to connect with the visit of a prying and inquisitive stranger. The whole of the country which surrounds Khisfin is susceptible of the highest degree of cultivation; the land is eminently fertile and almost a dead level, capable of producing abundant crops, if there were any people to cultivate it. As it is, it is allowed to run to waste. It affords pasture to their flocks, but these are scanty, through fear of the Arabs, and the people, unable to rely upon the government for protection, and, indeed, being only aware that there is a government through its tax-gatherers, are sullen and suspicious and discouraged, and utterly without energy to do more than provide themselves with the barest necessaries of life.

FURTHER EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY.

Haifa, March 31.—From Khisfin, the ruins of which I described in my last letter, I struck off in a westerly direction under the guidance of the sheik who had been my host the night before, and who, now that he was convinced that I had nothing to do with tax-gathering, and was only possessed by what must have seemed to him an insane desire to find old stones and make pictures of them, took an evident pleasure in ministering to such a harmless form of insanity; in fact he became quite a bore on the subject. As he was naturally unable to appreciate any distinction between one old stone and another, he was constantly making me ride out of my way to look at some weather-beaten piece of basalt which had a fancied resemblance to a wild animal; or to a mound, the ruins on which belonged to a village that had been deserted within the last twenty years. Still I never could afford to treat his assurances with indifference, as there was always the possibility, until I satisfied myself to the contrary, that the stones to which he was guiding me might possess interest; and indeed on one occasion they did, for they turned out to be the ruins of a Roman town, where a few fragments of columns and capitals still remained to bear testimony to the particular civilization to which they belonged, and which, although they did not present any striking architectural features—indeed, the remains were somewhat insignificant—it was always a satisfaction to have been the first to discover. The name of these ruins was Esfera.

Near them a very singular and unpleasant accident occurred to me. I rode my horse to drink at what seemed a muddy puddle, which was about ten or twelve feet in diameter. Instead of being content to drink at the margin, he took two steps into it, and suddenly disappeared head first; that is, his head disappeared, his hind-quarters remained for a moment poised above the water just long enough to enable me to throw myself off backward into about two feet of puddle. We had walked into an overflowed well. When his hind-quarters at last went down into it his head came up, or, at all events, as much of it as was required for breathing and snorting, which he did prodigiously, evidently in a panic of terror, while I stood drenched and shivering on the bank in the cold east wind and sleet, wondering how we were ever to get him out. The poor beast was out of his depth, but the dimensions of the well were too limited to enable him to swim, or even to scramble freely. Fortunately I had sent on my saddlebags by my servant, or the animal would have been hopelessly weighted down. As it was, it was only by the united efforts of the party tugging at the bridle and stirrup-leathers that, after many futile efforts, at the end of each of which he fell back and for a moment disappeared altogether, we ultimately succeeded in extricating him. Meantime my own plight was in the last degree unenviable, the more especially as I was not in very good health at the time, a consideration which induced my companion, with a truly commendable devotion, to take off his nether garments and insist on my wearing them instead of my own, while he performed the remainder of the day's journey in the slight protection which he wore beneath them.

It was in this guise, and while still discussing my strange mishap, that our attention was suddenly arrested by finding ourselves surrounded by what are perhaps the most interesting of antiquarian objects, a number of dolmens. In a very limited area—none of them were over two hundred yards apart—I counted twenty. The subject of these rude stone monuments of a prehistoric age is so interesting that I will venture on a few words in regard to them.

The most remarkable point about Syrian dolmens is, that while they have been found in numbers to the east of the Jordan, not one has been discovered in Judea or Samaria, and only two or three in Galilee; and those are doubtful specimens. Indeed, it is only of late years that they have attracted the notice of explorers east of the Jordan; but since attention has been specially directed to the subject, we have constantly been having new discoveries. Six years ago I found one of the first at a spot not more than twenty miles from the hitherto unknown field I had now come upon. That dolmen stood alone, and being previously unaware of their existence in this part of the world, I examined it with the greatest interest. Since then Captain Conder, during his hurried survey in Moab, has found above seven hundred in that part of the country, and the result has been that the controversy as to the purpose for which they were designed has been reopened with renewed vigor.

The dolmen, which usually consists of three perpendicular stones forming three sides of a small chamber, with a single huge covering slab as its roof, is found in almost every part of the world except America, though I saw a notice in a paper the other day of one having been discovered in Missouri. There are stone monuments in Central America, I believe, somewhat resembling them, but I am not aware that the point has been satisfactorily determined, and it is of the highest interest that it should be, as it would establish the existence of general contact between the universal families of that ancient stock which preceded both the Aryan and Semitic races, and which belonged, therefore, to the illiterate and prehistoric age of the use of bronze and of flint.

Dolmens have been found in almost every country in Europe. They are numerous in the British Isles, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Prussia, and the south of Russia. I have myself found them in the mountains of Circassia, and they exist in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, in great numbers in Algeria and the north coast of Africa, in Asia Minor and India, and we have recently heard of them in Japan! Wherever they exist are generally to be found menhirs, or single monolithic stones, and stone circles, such as Stonehenge in England, or long rows of standing stones, such as those to be found at Carnac in Brittany, or smaller stone circles, such as are common to the east of the Jordan. Those found in Syria are generally placed in a position commanding an extensive view and in close proximity to water. They are either “free standing,” that is, quite alone and isolated, or they are covered by cairns of stones; or they are, as the majority were in this instance, perched upon piles of stones.

It has been hitherto supposed that in all these cases they were sepulchral monuments, but it has been recently suggested that those alone beneath the cairns may have served this purpose, and those which were free standing or on cairns may have been used as altars. The basis for this conjecture consists in the fact that the flat covering stones of the Syrian dolmens are very often provided with cups or hollows, which may have served to hold sacrificial oil; and, moreover, the free standing dolmens are often on smooth rock, so that it would not be possible to inter a body beneath them. I have seen the covering slab to be as large as eleven feet long by five wide, though those in the field I was now examining were much smaller, some of the covering stones not being above five feet by three or four; this was probably owing to their being of basalt, which is much heavier than ordinary stone. Nearly all were trilithons, the covering slab being sometimes held in position by pebbles inserted under it; and in many instances they appeared to have a slight slant which was not the result of accident.

The natives here call them “Jews' burial-grounds,” showing that the local tradition is in favor of their being sepulchral monuments, though it is very certain they date from a period long anterior to the Jews. Indeed, the probability is that the disappearance of these monuments from western Palestine, where they no doubt existed, is due to the command to destroy heathen monuments. Thus, in Deuteronomy, we find again and again repeated injunctions to overthrow the Canaanite altars, and to break or smash their pillars. These exhortations we find carried into practice by Hezekiah and Josiah in Judea, and as the Book of Deuteronomy was held sacred by the ten tribes as well as by the two, we are justified in supposing that they carried out the order in Samaria and Galilee. But the land to the east of the Jordan always contained a mixed population, over which the kings of Israel and Judah exercised but little control. Baal worship was rife in Bashan, Gilead, and Moab in the days of Jeremiah, and the reforming zeal of Hezekiah did not affect the land where Chemosh and Ishtar, Baal, Peor, Nebo, and Meni yet continued to be worshipped. This accounts for dolmens not having been found, except with a few doubtful specimens, in Galilee to the west of the Jordan.

With the exception of the roughly excavated hollows in the covering slab, these rude stone monuments of Syria have, so far as is known, neither ornamentation nor rune nor other mark of the engraver's tool. In comparatively few instances they are made of hewn stone, very roughly cut, but generally they are of natural blocks and slabs entirely unformed. Thus, if there be any comparative scale of antiquity on which we can rely connected with the finish of the monument, the Syrian dolmens may claim to be considered among the oldest of their kind.

The word “dolmen,” usually rendered table-stone, should, according to Max Müller, be more properly translated “holed” stone, implying either a gateway, such as is formed by the trilithon, or else applying to menhirs and dolmens pierced with a hole, as in the case of the Ring stone, the Odin stone, and a peculiar class of holed dolmens. The one I saw in Circassia was of this latter category. Instead of three stones supporting the covering slab, as is almost invariably the case in Syria, there were four, and in the centre of the fourth was a circular hole, about eighteen inches in diameter, or just large enough to allow a thin man to squeeze through. Some have supposed these holes to be connected with some sacrificial rite, others to be due to the superstition that the dead could not rest in peace in tombs without an inlet for air. But the whole subject is encompassed with mystery, and affords material for endless conjecture.

So also do the sacred stone circles, of which I have seen several to the east of the Jordan. They are held in the greatest veneration by the Arabs, who can give no rational explanation of the sacred character they possess, except that they have been sacred from immemorial time. Here, again, these may either have originally had a sepulchral character, or they may have had reference to that peculiar and most ancient worship of which the menhir or monolith was the emblem, for in some instances menhirs are placed in certain fixed positions in regard to the circles, or they may have had an astronomical significance. It is singular that to this day the reverential attitude of the Arab is outside of the circle with his face to the rising sun, while in India the same circles are to be found among the Khonds in connection with the worship of the rising sun, the tallest member of the circle being towards the east.

The conclusions at which we may proximately arrive with reference to these interesting monuments are—according to Captain Conder, to whose researches I am indebted for many of the foregoing remarks—that the menhir is the emblem of the earliest religious idea suggested by the creative potency; that the circle may either have a sacred significance connected therewith, or be a sepulchral enclosure; that the dolmen, when free standing, is more likely to have been an altar than a tomb, but when buried beneath a cairn it may have been sepulchral; that the cairn is not always sepulchral, being sometimes a memorial heap; and that all are relics of a long-buried past.

THE DISCOVERY OF UMM EL-KANATAR.

Haifa, March 20.—When we had sufficiently satisfied our curiosity with regard to the dolmens, which I described in my last letter, the sheik who was our guide disappeared suddenly over the edge of the plateau on which they stood, down what seemed to be a precipice of black basalt. His reply to our anxious inquiry as to whither he was leading us—“to very old stones, with writing on them”—was a talismanic utterance which at once overcame all hesitation. On such occasions there rises in the mind of the cold and weary and half-starving traveller (and I answered to this description at the moment) visions of possible Moabite stones, trilingual inscriptions, and all the other prizes which reward successful Palestine research. I felt, therefore, ready to make any plunge into unknown depths that he might choose to suggest, but certainly this was a bad one. Some two thousand feet below us, distant not more than seven miles, gleamed the still waters of the Sea of Galilee. We stood on the upper edge of one of the branches of the Wady Samak, which leads down to it. To our left, scarce a mile off, we could see the old crusading ruin of the Kasr Berdawil, or Baldwin's Castle, perched on a promontory the sides of which are sheer precipices, thus offering to the old warriors a position of magnificent strength. It is one of the least known of the Crusading strongholds, but I was assured by a friend, who, so far as I know, is the only traveller who has visited it, that beyond a few crumbling walls there was absolutely nothing to be seen, so, as I had better game in prospect, I did not turn aside to it, as I had originally intended, but resolutely prepared to risk my neck amid the basalt blocks of the cliff down which the sheik was now disappearing. Fortunately, though it was a bad descent, it was not a long one. I never could understand how my horse managed it, for I had left him to take care of himself, finding my own legs a safer method of descent; but in these lonely regions the instinct of not getting separated from the rest of the party is as strong with animals as with men, and they may generally be trusted to follow their companions.

After scrambling down about five hundred feet we came to a sort of bench or narrow plateau, on the flank of the ravine, and on turning round a huge rock of black basalt came suddenly upon one of the most delightful scenic surprises which it was possible to imagine. Here in this wild, inaccessible spot, in ages long gone by, the ancients had evidently contrived a secure and enchanting retreat, for it was provided with the first requisite of beauty and of pleasure—a copious fountain of water. It lay in crystal purity in a still, oblong pool, beneath the perpendicular black rock. Against the rock, and projecting from it, were two large arches which had been constructed of solid masonry, with blocks of stone of immense size. One of these arches was almost destroyed, but the other was still in perfect preservation. It measured twenty-three feet in breadth, sixteen feet in height, and six feet six inches in depth, this being therefore the width of the fountain, which was also twenty-three feet long and about two feet deep. To my astonishment it contained numbers of small fish, which was the more surprising as it possessed no apparent outlet; but it was too cold and fresh and sparkling to be anything but a living stream, and probably disappeared by a subterranean passage through a large crevice which I observed in the rock.

The wide-spreading branches of a venerable oak which grew directly in front of the arch threw a delightful shade over it, while delicate ferns clothed the sides of the grotto, which seemed to woo us to a repose and indolence which was, alas, under the circumstances, denied to us. On the keystone of the arch there was a partially effaced inscription. Though it was sixteen feet overhead, and therefore inaccessible, I should not have abandoned some attempt to decipher it had I not felt sure that, even if I were close to it, it was too much defaced by the storms of ages to be legible. I feel little doubt, however, about its having been in the Greek character; while on a slab of stone at the side of the spring I found carved the figure of a lion, which was in good preservation, and of which I made a sketch.

The sheik was so impatient to take me somewhere else that he scarcely allowed me time to avail myself of this tempting spot to take the refreshment of which I stood much in need. He told me the name of the place was Umm el-Kanatar, or, being interpreted, “the place of arches,” a name evidently derived from its most striking feature, and he said there was a ruin close by. This turned out to be not a hundred yards distant, and consisted of walls still standing to a height of about seven feet, composed of three courses of stone, the blocks averaging about two feet one way by two feet six the other, but being in some instances much larger. These walls enclosed an area of about fifty feet by thirty-five, which was covered by a mass of ruins which had been tossed about in the wildest confusion. It was quite evident that it had been the work of an earthquake. Six columns, varying from ten to twelve feet in height, rose from the tumbled masses of building-stone at every angle. It was impossible without moving the huge blocks which encumbered their bases and hid their pedestals, and balanced them in all sorts of positions, to tell whether they were _in situ_ or not. The huge moulded stones which formed the sides of the entrance, though still one above the other, had been shaken out of position, but they bore all the character of carving which is peculiar to Jewish architecture, and at once led me to conclude that here, as at Eddikke, I had discovered the ruins of an ancient Jewish synagogue, dating probably from the first or second century A.D. This impression was confirmed as I came to examine the ruin more narrowly. Here was the large stone cut in the shape of an arch, which had probably stood upon the lintel of the principal entrance; and here was a fragment of a handsome cornice of the same peculiar pattern I had found at Eddikke, resembling the egg-and-dart pattern of modern ornamentation. Here were the columns inside the walls of the building instead of outside, which would have been the case had it been a Greek temple, and here were the massive stones, not set in mortar, which would have been the case if it had been an early Christian basilica or church. Here, too, was a stone on which was carved the representation of an eagle, in deference to the prejudices of the Roman conquerors under whose auspices these synagogues appertaining to the Jewish Patriarchate of Tiberias were built, the work having evidently been executed by Roman workmen.

I could find no inscription, but it would take days to examine all the stones thoroughly, and it is most probable that a careful investigation of them would reveal something which would throw a still more definite light on the character and period of the building, though I confess I entertain very little doubt in respect to either. Altogether I regard these ruins of Umm el-Kanatar as the most interesting discovery I have yet made, and as being well worthy another visit and a more minute examination than I was able to bestow upon them.

The sheik now appeared to think he had done his duty, and expressed his intention of returning to his village and of leaving me to find my way down the Wady Samak by myself. This I did not object to, as there was still plenty of daylight, and I could, in fact, make out from where I was now standing the position of the ruins of Kersa on the margin of the lake, whither I had despatched my servants and baggage animals direct from my last night's quarters, with orders to await my arrival there.

It was up the branch of the wady that I was descending that the projected railway from Haifa to Damascus would have to be led, and it was some satisfaction to see that it offered facilities for the ascent of the line. The scenery was in the highest degree picturesque, the sides of the valley sometimes sloping back for some distance to the foot of the basalt precipices which formed its upper wall; at others these approached and formed projecting and overhanging promontories, like that on which the Kasr Berdawil was situated. We scrambled down by a rugged path to the small stream at the bottom with the view of following it, if possible, to its outlet on the lake, but this we soon found to be impracticable, and were assured by a Bedouin, whose hut we finally reached on its margin, that we must cross it, and make an ascent on the opposite side. This led us by a roundabout, hilly, but picturesque route across numerous and intersecting wadys, and past one ruin, of which nothing remained but the black blocks of hewn basalt. I was fortunate enough, however, to meet a man who told me the name, which I added to my list of unknown ruins, and so, after much scrambling, we reached at last the white limestone strata, and the purling brook again with its fringe of oleanders, and could see in the distance the one large solitary tree which we had given as our rendezvous, and beneath which our servants were standing, that marks the site of the ruins of Kersa, or the Gergesa of the Bible, where Christ healed the two men possessed with devils, and suffered those malignant spirits to enter into the herd of swine.

There is a discrepancy in the accounts of the Evangelists in their narrative of the incident. Mark and Luke, in our version, locate it in the country of the Gadarenes, but Matthew states it to have taken place in the country of the Gergesenes. The Vulgate, Arabic, and others that follow the Vulgate read Gergesa in all the Evangelists, and there can be no doubt that this is the correct reading, for the simple reason that the miracles could not have taken place in the country of the Gadarenes, a district which lies south of the Yarmuk, and at a long distance from the lake, the principal town, Gadara, the modern Um Keis, about the identification of which there can be no doubt, being at least eight miles from it. Now the account says that “when he came out of the ship immediately there met him a man,” also that the herd ran down a steep place violently into the sea. To do this, if the incident had taken place at Gadara, they must have descended twelve hundred feet to the Yarmuk, swam across that river, clambered up the opposite bank, and then raced for about six miles across the plain before they could reach the nearest margin of the lake. Scarcely any amount of insanity on the part of the devils would account for such a mad career, but in point of fact it does not tally with the Scripture record, according to which they rushed down a steep place into the sea. This is exactly what they could do at Kersa. The margin of the lake is here within a few rods of the base of the cliff, where there are ancient tombs, out of which may have issued the men who met Christ on the plateau above; and it is easy to suppose that the swine, rushing down the sloping cliff, would have enough impetus to carry them across the narrow slip of shore at its base. The remains now only consist of long lines of wall, which may easily be traced, and of a considerable area strewn with building-stones, which show that it must in old time have contained a considerable population. This is the more likely to be the case as it was the chief town of a district which was called after it. In fact, this picturesque and interesting Wady Samak, with its evidences of a former civilization, and its “place of arches” and handsome synagogue, was, in fact, “the country of the Gergesenes;” and there can be little doubt that to Christ and his disciples the remote corners of it, which I had been one of the first to explore, were intimately known.^[3]

The ruins of Kersa are a good deal overgrown, and in the cover which is thus afforded I put up a wild boar. He dashed away so suddenly, however, that a bullet from a revolver, which was sent after him, failed to produce any result. I have little doubt that the old Roman road turned from the lake at this point up the Wady Samak, as there are traces here and there indicating such a probability. It will be a singular commentary on the progress of events if it turns out that it has taken the best gradient, and if, upon its ancient track, the scream of the locomotive may in the near future be heard waking up the long-silent echoes of the country of the Gergesenes.

[3] The greater part of the Wady Samak and the surrounding country had, immediately prior to my visit, been most accurately surveyed by Mr. Gottlieb Schumacher, the son of the American vice-consul at Haifa, whose admirable and exhaustive surveys are embodied in the proceedings of the English and German Palestine Exploration Societies, and who was my companion on the occasion of our discovery of the ruins of Umm el-Kanatar.

THE ROCK TOMBS OF PALESTINE.

Haifa, April 26.—The fact that I am laboring under a peculiar phase of insanity, which takes the form of descending with a light into the bowels of the earth with a measuring tape, and writing down cabalistic signs of what I find there, whether it be in a cistern or a tomb, or a natural cavern, has become pretty widely known among the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, and the consequence is that from time to time I receive information which may minister to this harmless monomania. The other day, for instance, a stonecutter whom I had employed on some building operations came to me with the intelligence that while he and some villagers had been getting out stone for a house at a place about twenty miles distant they had unexpectedly come upon a series of subterranean chambers. His account was so tempting that, though prepared by experience for disappointment when acting upon purely native information, I nevertheless thought the possible results worth an effort, and proceeded therefore to the village in question, which was situated in the centre of the Plain of Esdraelon. The sheik was at first somewhat reluctant to show me the spot, as the fellahin have an inherent suspicion of all investigations of this nature, believing them to be mysteriously connected with the discovery of treasure, which, when found, they will be accused of having concealed, and punished for it. He finally consented, however, to lead the way, and brought me to an opening in the earth, from the surface of which a flight of nine stone steps led down to a small paved court, about six feet square, which had now been emptied of the soil which had previously concealed its existence. The sides of this court, which were about twelve feet high, were formed of massive masonry, the blocks of stone being each from eighteen inches to two feet square, set in mortar. A short vaulted passage, three feet long, two feet six wide, and five feet high, led from it into a subterranean chamber of fine workmanship, and in such a high state of preservation that it was difficult to realize that from fifteen hundred to two thousand years had elapsed since its stone floor had been trodden by the foot of man. It was fourteen feet long, eight broad, and eight feet six in height, with a vaulted roof, the walls consisting of plain chiselled stones set in mortar, in courses of from two feet to two feet six inches in height. On the left of this chamber was a single koka, or tunnel, hewn in the rock for the reception of a dead body. The roof was vaulted and of solid masonry. On the side opposite the entrance was another vaulted passage, which was seven feet six in length, and led into a chamber hewn out of the solid rock, twelve feet by ten feet six, and six feet six in height. This contained three kokim and a loculus under an arcosolium; but the side of the loculus, as well as those of the kokim, had been much injured. The villagers, who had opened these tombs for the first time only a few weeks before, told us they had only found human bones in them, but I strongly suspect they had found ornaments which they were afraid to exhibit, though I offered them money. One or two glass bottles and earthenware jars they also said they had found and broken.

Not far from these tombs was another smaller excavation, the entrance to which presented the appearance of an ordinary cave, but on entering it we found ourselves in a small, circular, rock-hewn chamber, the floor so covered with rubble that it was not possible to stand upright. In the centre of the roof was an aperture eighteen inches square, opening to the sky, carefully hewn, and from it led a passage of masonry, the stones also set in mortar, two feet six broad, and about five feet to the point where it was completely choked with earth. Had I had time to excavate I should no doubt have found that it led into a tomb. The entrance to this passage was almost completely blocked by the capital of a handsome Ionic column; the column itself was eighteen inches in diameter. How it ever came to be wedged down in this underground passage I cannot conceive. Among the stones in the vicinity which had been unearthed by the natives I found one on which was carved a seven-branched candlestick, another of Jewish moulding, a sarcophagus, several fragments of columns, and a monolith standing ten feet from the _débris_ at its base, with grooves and slots similar to others which I have seen on Carmel, but taller. I can only imagine it to have formed part of some olive-pressing machinery. In the neighbouring rocks were hewn vats and wine-presses.

The discovery of this tomb, with the peculiar characteristics which marked its construction, and the objects which surrounded it, afforded a fertile subject of conjecture. In order that my readers may understand the considerations to which it gave rise, I must enter a little more fully than I have hitherto done into the subject of the ancient Jewish methods of sepulture. These consist of sundry varieties, and it has been attempted to fix their dates from the variations which have been observed, as well as to discriminate by them between Christian and Jewish tombs. So far as my own investigation goes, I have been unable to fix any positive rule in the matter, my experience being that one no sooner forms a theory based upon observation, than one makes some new discovery which upsets it. Roughly, the tombs which I have investigated may be divided into the following categories: 1. Rock-hewn tombs containing nothing but loculi; 2. Rock-hewn tombs containing nothing but kokim; 3. Rock-hewn tombs containing both; 4. Masonry tombs containing either loculi or kokim, or both together; 5. Sarcophagi; 6. Rock-sunk tombs. A rock-hewn tomb is an excavation made in the solid rock (advantage generally has been taken of a natural cavern), and round the sides of the chambers so formed, which vary in dimensions, are ranged the receptacles for the dead. In some cases these are more than one chamber. In Sheik Abreikh, for instance, I counted fifteen opening one into another. Sometimes these are one above another, and one has to enter them from below through a hole in the stone roof which forms the floor of the upper chamber. A koka is a rectangular sloping space cut into the rock, tunnel fashion, extending six feet horizontally, sufficiently wide and high to admit of a corpse being pushed into it. A loculus is a trough cut laterally into the rock, which is arched above so as to form what is called an arcosolium. This trough is generally about six feet long, two feet six broad, and two feet deep. It is thus separated from the chamber by a wall of rock two feet high. A large tomb will contain as many as twelve loculi ranged around it.

At first it was supposed that the kokim tombs were the oldest; then it was found that loculi and kokim were sometimes found in the same tomb; and, indeed, there seems now to be no reason to suppose that one kind is older than the other. That the Christians used both is certain from the fact that Greek inscriptions with Christian ornaments are to be found over the doors of tombs containing kokim as well as loculi. Masonry tombs are only found in Galilee, where they are very rare. Indeed, so far as I am aware, this is only the sixth that has been discovered; but what gave it a special interest in my eyes is the fact that the stones were set in mortar, which is not the case with any of the others, ancient Jewish synagogues, as well as their masonry tombs, being built without cement. I therefore had made up my mind that this was a Christian tomb, the early Christians having evidently continued the Jewish method of sepulture, more especially as it is oriented, which is not the case with Jewish tombs; and, indeed, the character of the masonry and the fragments of columns and capitals lying about induced me to place it in the Byzantine period, possibly as late even as the fourth or fifth century A.D. But then I stumbled upon the stone with the seven-branched candlestick, an unmistakably Jewish emblem, which threw the date back. It is true that this stone was not built into the tomb, and might have formed part of a building of a date long anterior to it. Indeed, we know that on this spot, which is now called Jebata, and which is undoubtedly the Biblical Gabatha, was formerly a Jewish town of some importance, and its remains have doubtless got mixed up with those of a later Byzantine period, to which I still think it probable that the tomb which I discovered belongs.