Many, many times must Jesus have crossed this hill, and the most memorable time was when the people came running beside Him, singing Hosannas and cutting down palm branches, and even spreading their clothes for Him to pa.s.s over, on that first Palm Sunday so long ago. The a.s.sociation, which is the most sacred and heart-stirring, is of that night before the crucifixion, when He came out here with His disciples and, kneeling, prayed earnestly while they slept. That was in what is called the Garden of Gethsemane. There is more than one place on the Mount which claims to be that garden. The monks have fenced one in and planted it with gay flowers, and there is a good deal of reason to believe this may be actually right. In the country, places cannot be utterly swept away as they are in towns under an avalanche of brick and stone. We can look down from the hill into this garden, even though it is surrounded by high walls. In the middle is a very ancient olive tree, said to have been growing in Christ"s time. Rosaries are made from the stones of the olives which it bears. There are little round flower-beds carefully tended in the garden, and between them you can see a monk walking in his long coa.r.s.e gown.
The hill is not very high, and the country is barren and stony and would be rather dull were it not for the thought of all the wonderful scenes that have happened here. Let us climb on to the very top. From there, away to the east, we see a long line of high blue hills, the mountains of Moab, and nearer, in a deep hole in the ground, we catch just a glimpse of the water of the Dead Sea. It is a strange name and a strange place! It lies deep, deep down, far below the level of the ocean, and though many rivers and streams run into it none run out. You would think it must always be getting larger, but no. The water evaporates very quickly. You know if there is a drop of water or a wet mark on your hand and you wave it about in the air, presently the water disappears, that is because of evaporation. The dampness has not really gone but turned into another form and made the surrounding air a little more damp. If that drop had been salt, the salt would not have entered into the air, but stayed on your hand, so when the air drinks up the water from the surface of the Dead Sea, the salt remains behind and the sea gets more and more salty; it is many times more salt than the water of an ordinary sea.
The sandy sh.o.r.es all round are full of this salt and nothing can grow there, so all is desolate and dreary, and thus it is that the name Dead Sea is so appropriate. If you tried to swim in that sea you would find it impossible to sink, for just as sea-water holds you up more than fresh, so the Dead Sea water holds you up more than that of the ordinary sea. All the same, though you could not sink to the bottom you might drown, because the head and chest being heavier than the legs go down naturally, and a man might not be able to recover himself but be drowned legs upward, as many have been through not knowing how to manage a lifebelt.
The sacred river Jordan runs into the Dead Sea. We have met one of the sacred rivers of history already--the Nile,--and the Jordan, though very small, is another. It is almost absurdly small in contrast with the Nile, being only one hundred miles long! From all over the world people send to get water from the Jordan with which to baptize their babies; they have a feeling that it is different from ordinary water because Christ Himself was baptized in it. As you have heard, the Russian pilgrims go down in crowds to bathe in the Jordan in their shrouds, for they too look on the river as sacred.
About six miles to the south of where we are sitting is Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, and where the shepherds and Wise Men found Him. Much nearer is Bethany, where He often stayed.
To-day something of the wonder of the Holy Land has come upon us. We have got out of the narrow crowded lanes and away from the jostling people into the country; so the Bible story has become more real than it ever was before. Here is the hillside over which He pa.s.sed. There are the olive trees, exactly like those He saw.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ABOUT SIX MILES TO THE SOUTH IS BETHLEHEM.]
We have visited Him in His daily life. It is now only left for us to go to Nazareth, where He spent all His life up to the time when He announced Himself as the Christ, the Messiah, and began His Mission. But Nazareth is a long way off. It will take us about three days to get there. We can ride or drive, whichever you like. You prefer to ride? All right, but don"t expect a sleek, home-fed pony, or a fine horse champing the bit, or even a well-grown, well-fed Egyptian donkey; wait and you will see what riding means here!
[Ill.u.s.tration: WOMEN AT A WELL IN NAZARETH.]
CHAPTER XI
THE COUNTRY OF CHRIST"S CHILDHOOD
If you only knew how funny you look! Perched up on a dirty, thin, white horse which scrambles along somehow, while the great iron stirrups, shaped like shovels, dangle far below your feet. Aha! I thought so, one has fallen off. I try to pull up quickly to dismount and help you, and my bridle, which is made of worsted, like the toy reins children play with, breaks suddenly and my n.o.ble steed comes a cropper!
By the time I recover and get to you I find our guide, who looks more like a bundle of rags than anything else, tying up your stirrups with a crazy bit of string full of knots and quite rotten. This is the way we journey in the Holy Land in the present year! This is the third day of it, and these little accidents don"t affect us; the harness must have been broken in at least two dozen different places since we started, and, as an Irishman might say, most of it is made of gaps.
To-day we ought to reach Nazareth while it is still light, though, as it is dull and grey, the evening will close in sooner than if the sky were clear. What a pity we could not manage to come here in the spring when the fields of blue lupins look like a strip of summer sky fallen to earth and fill the air with their scent for miles around. There are anemones too, purple and red and white, and lilies, but I think nothing would strike us so much as the homely little daisies which grow here just as they do at home. There is something strange and yet familiar in this country, where so many different sorts of trees and plants grow, that a man coming from almost anywhere in the world will find something that carries his heart back home. Besides the daisies we have the sparrows, just as pert and neat as our own sparrows, yet other things are odd. Yesterday we saw a man carrying a sheep on his shoulders; he wore a striped garment hanging down on each side of his neck, and even the sheep did not seem quite the same as ours. It was some time before we discovered why, and then we found out that the long flapping ears hung down, while the ears of our sheep are small and upright. It is a most difficult thing to remember how an animal"s ears grow. Nine people out of ten, on being told to draw a pig, will give him small, pointed, upright ears, instead of making the flaps fall over!
The rest of the flock of sheep quietly followed the shepherd who carried the hurt one, for in the East sheep are used to being led, instead of being driven by a dog, as in Britain, and that is why so often we hear in the Bible of the sheep being led. Jesus took almost all His parables from natural things around Him--the cornfields, the lilies growing, the sparrows, and the vineyards.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A MAN CARRYING A SHEEP ON HIS SHOULDERS.]
We have been steadily rising for long past, now we mount a steeper bit of rising ground and suddenly there comes into view a tiny valley from which the hills rise again, and on the opposite slope, spread out before us, is Nazareth. We pull up and look at it in silence. The little, flat-roofed, white houses are dotted about among gardens and trees, and resemble the square white dice one throws out of a box. Very much as it appears to us now must this little hill-village have looked to Jesus when He lived here, except that the slopes of the hills were more cultivated, and there were more houses. Jesus came here as a small child and lived here until He was thirty. _You_ know, of course, every tree and hole and stream and almost every stone and bird"s nest about your own home in the country; you will never get to know any other place so well again in your life, for when one is grown up one can"t climb trees and dabble in streams and build huts and root about in the earth. Jesus was just a natural boy; He grew to know all the byways between the little gardens, all the trees which bore figs or pomegranates or olives or oranges, and He climbed the hills around with other lads when He had a holiday--no other place would ever be to Him what Nazareth was.
[Ill.u.s.tration: NAZARETH.]
One or two tall buildings stand out prominently, these are the churches, and they, of course, were not there in His time. None of the houses can be the same after nineteen hundred years, but many of them are probably exactly like those that existed then.
As we go down toward the village at a foot"s pace we see grave, brown-faced, bright-eyed boys, who stand and stare but do not bother us for coppers, as the Jerusalem children did. We pa.s.s in among the houses and come to the well where both men and women are standing, for it is just the time that they come to draw water in the evening. This well is one of the most interesting things in Nazareth, for it is the only one, and has been known for generations. It is almost certain that it must have been here when Jesus lived in the village. Now it has a stone arch over it, and as the water gushes out the women fill hand-made earthenware jars with narrow necks and curving sides, and having filled them they put them on their heads and walk gracefully away. Just so must Mary, the mother of Jesus, have filled her jar in the ages long ago, and the child Jesus may have clung to her skirts as that tiny brown boy is doing, shyly hiding at the sight of us. The women are very good looking, and dress in a great variety of colours, many wearing striped clothes.
One or two have chains or bands of silver coins across their foreheads, very many have bright red head coverings falling down over blue dresses.
There are some swarthy-looking men too, in sheepskins, and one is waiting to water his camel. On one side is a very handsome lad of sixteen with a flock of black goats. They all look at us with interest, but they are quite accustomed to strangers and are not at all embarra.s.sed.
We go on between the houses by the widest road, which is now slippery with mud, and after our guide has asked permission of a man standing in a doorway, we dismount and get a chance of seeing inside one of these little dark houses. The only light comes from the doorway, for there is no window; it shines into one room with a mud floor, beaten hard by many feet. There are a few mats laid about, a few stools, and on one side a kind of shelf with more mats and some cushions--this is where the family sleep at night. In a corner are some of the earthenware jars and some pots and pans. That is all. There is no reason to think that the house Jesus lived in was at all more luxurious than this.
As we turn to go out we hear a flutter of wings, and a flock of white doves rise from the ground and alight on the roof, cooing softly.
In this village are a good many shops, but they are not the sort we are accustomed to. Picture the village shop at home with its small gla.s.s panes and the post-office on one side. The window crammed with marbles and liquorice and peppermint, and slates and b.a.l.l.s and copybooks and hoops and everything that the owner thinks anyone would be in the least likely to buy. In Nazareth the shops sell only one sort of thing, and those that sell the same sort of thing have a general inclination to come together. In one little street, for instance, are the saddlers"
shops.
The front of the house is open, but there is no gla.s.s to fill it in, and we can see the men working at their trade inside. The harness is extremely gay, painted in all colours, red and blue and yellow, and made up with bits of tinsel and glitter. The more decorated he can afford to have his harness the prouder is the rider. As we stand watching, a number of women steal gently up behind us and offer some embroidery they have made; they do not push or scramble, and when we shake our heads they melt away again.
As we turn a corner, there, right in front of us, is a carpenter"s shop with the front quite open to the street, as in the harness-makers"
shops. The bearded man who leans over a cart-wheel and handles it with long brown hands might have been Joseph himself. In just such a workshop as this Jesus learnt His trade.
[Ill.u.s.tration: IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN JOSEPH HIMSELF.]
The life of a little Jewish boy of those days was carefully ordered, and in his life there was much more saying of prayers and going to church--that is, the synagogue--than you have in yours. At school there was a great deal to be learnt by heart, and what with that and the churchgoing and the workshop there cannot have been much spare time.
We go slowly on to the inn, where we are to pa.s.s the night. To-morrow we will go down to the Sea of Galilee and watch the fishermen drawing in their nets as they did in Christ"s time when He called them to be fishers of men.
After that we will come back, pa.s.s Nazareth once more, and make our way to a port called Haifa, where we can get a steamer to take us down to Jaffa instead of returning to Jerusalem again by three days" journey on horseback.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THERE IT WILL STAY TILL IT ROTS.]
CHAPTER XII
AN ADVENTURE
We are late, very late, the moon is rising and I must confess I am just a wee bit uneasy. When we reached Haifa safely last night, coming from Nazareth, and found we couldn"t get a steamer till to-morrow it seemed the best thing to drive across the bay and get a look at Acre, that celebrated town which has spent its existence in the turmoil of sieges and a.s.saults. It is a great fort built out into the sea, and nearly everyone who wanted to get possession of the Holy Land has tried first to take Acre as the key to it. One of the most memorable sieges was that of two years in the reign of our own King Richard I., who ended it by arriving with fresh troops and helping his allies the French; but it is reckoned the two countries, between them, lost 100,000 men, one way and another, before they took the stubborn town. After that it remained in English hands for a century.
The Turks held it in much later times against Buonaparte; they were helped by an Englishman, Sir Sydney Smith, and if Acre is celebrated for nothing else it should be celebrated for the fact that it held out for sixty-one days against Buonaparte, who was in the end obliged to give up and go away!
[Ill.u.s.tration: WOMEN WITH BUNDLES, WHICH THEY ALWAYS THINK NECESSARY TO DRAG ABOUT WITH THEM.]
We drove this morning, with three horses abreast, across the twelve miles of sandy bay between Haifa and Acre, in one of the ramshackle waggonettes that take the place of omnibuses and carry any pa.s.sengers who want to go. We came with numbers of natives, chiefly women, and innumerable bundles and bags, which they always think it necessary to drag about with them. We did not get here till midday, and after spending a few hours we had seen all we cared to of the place, and were ready to go back. But in the East things are not done like that. So we waited and waited long after the hour the omnibus was said to return, and when at last the driver did saunter up, the scarecrow horses had to be sought for, and then the harness, of course, had to be mended with string, and that wasn"t nearly the end, because, after waiting again a long time for nothing at all that anyone could see, a Turkish woman who was evidently of some consequence, attended by a maid and quant.i.ties of baggage, came up, and everyone had to turn out until all her things were stowed away. So it was nearly nightfall before we got off.
The sands are in most places firm and make good going, but a couple of rivers run down across them to the sea; one of these is that "ancient river, the river Kishon," mentioned in Deborah"s song of triumph when the Israelites had overcome their enemies. These rivers have to be crossed with care, and, not so long ago, some people got bogged and were set upon by robbers and stripped, and one was drowned by the incoming tide; but I ought not to tell you these things. We are half across now, and the moon is getting high, so we shall have more light presently.
b.u.mp! The horse on the off-side runs out of his traces suddenly and stands facing the other one in a sort of mild amazement. The harness has given way once more. Grumbling and growling the driver climbs down and pulls him back and goes on muttering to himself. Far off the lapping of the water is heard out at sea; it wouldn"t do to be caught by the tide in this situation, but they tell us the tide has not turned yet. The moon sheds a curious unearthly light that fills the air with mystery.
The long low sandhills on the sh.o.r.e show up plainly, and nearer there are countless wrecks which have been piled up on this desolate coast.
That large one, nearest of all, looks just like the huge up-curving ribs of some mammoth that has had the flesh picked clean from his bones.
Look! There is something moving close to it, in the shadow; what is it?
It comes out a little way into the light, it is a furtive-looking little four-footed creature whose fur shines with a reddish tinge; there is another, peeping out from the sandhills, and another and another!
They are all over, but so silent and light-footed are they that it is difficult to believe them to be anything but shadows. A wave of the hand and they have disappeared! They are jackals, inquisitively watching us with their bright eyes. Nothing to be afraid of. They dare not attack a man if he is alive, though they would gleefully devour him dead. They are much more frightened of you than you are of them. Weird, shy, furtive little beasts. One can imagine them on a night like this playing games and chasing one another in and out of the ribs of the drowned ship in a sort of witches" dance.
Heigho! Well, we"re on again at last.
We journey at a foot"s pace for another mile or so and the lights of Haifa begin to shine out clearly ahead, when all of a sudden the carriage seems to be going down on one side. The two Turkish women, who are on the high side, roll violently down on to us, screaming and sobbing hysterically. I don"t know what you feel like, but I am nearly smothered by the flowing shawls and the strong smell of scent; when I manage to get free I find that you have disappeared altogether till I get hold of a leg and jerk you forth.
The carriage has gone further and further over; the horses are splashing and struggling; and as we stand up the middle one goes down and disappears altogether. The water must be deep and we are evidently in the river.