Byeways in Palestine Part 24

Low hills bounded the view on every side, over which some peaks of the Moab mountains showed themselves in the east.

When fairly started on the march at 10 past 6 A.M., we went along very cheerily, accompanied by Hadji Daif Allah and the three strangers, till, on a sudden, the latter wheeled about, and required from us the ghuf'r, or toll, for our future pa.s.sage through their country. The shaikh recommended us to make them a present of a couple of dollars, as they were neighbours of Petra, and without their good-will we should not be able to succeed in the expedition.

We complied, and they rode off southwards, Abu Dahook returning to his camp.

Wearisome indeed is travelling with camels; but what would it have been had we been mounted upon them, as is generally the case with travellers from Sinai and 'Akabah! We hors.e.m.e.n frequently imitated the practice of old Fadladeen in _Lalla Rookh_, when he rode ahead of his caravan, and alighted now and then to enjoy the spectacle of the procession coming up and pa.s.sing, then mounted again to repeat the pleasure.

The strongest and worst tempered one of our camels having the barrels of water to carry, suddenly lay down and rolled them from him. Had his burden been the skins of water instead, they would have burst, and we should have lost their precious contents. Our Arabs not being accustomed to the convoy of travellers, were as yet unskilful in loading the camels, or in poising the burdens in equal divisions; and most extraordinary noises did they make in urging the beasts forward,--sounds utterly indescribable in European writing, or even by any combinations of the Arabic alphabet!

We had about half a dozen men, mostly trudging on foot, and but slightly armed, commanded by Selameh; and one of them, named Salem, was the merry-andrew of the party, full of verbal and practical jokes. The ride was exhilarating,--over a level plain, green with thin gra.s.s or weeds, and low shrubs, whose roots extended to surprising distances, mostly above the surface of the ground; the morning breeze delicious, with larks trilling high above us in the sky, and smaller birds that sang among the bushes.

Sometimes we caught distant views of innumerable storks devouring the infant locusts upon the hill-sides.

Pa.s.sed _'Ain Mel'hh_, (Salt-fountain,) which Robinson identifies with the Moladah of Joshua xix. 2, by means of the transition name of Malatha in Greek. The only building now remaining is a square weli, surmounted by a dome. Here we were not far from Beersheba, upon our right, and fell in with the common route from Gaza and Hebron to Ma'an. Finding a flock of goats, we got new milk from the shepherd; when diluted with water, this is a refreshing beverage.

On coming up to a camp of Saadeen Arabs, our cook, a vain-glorious Maronite from the Lebanon, and ignorant of Arab customs, attempted to fire upon a watch-dog at the tents for barking at him; and it was judged necessary to deprive him of his pistols for the rest of the journey. Had he succeeded in his folly, we should have got into considerable trouble; for an Arab watch-dog is accounted so valuable, that to kill one of them might have entailed upon us a long delay, and a formal trial in a council of elders of different tribes, collected for the purpose; followed by the penalty awarded by the unwritten laws which obtain in the desert, namely, a payment of as much fine wheat as would entirely cover the dog when held up by his tail, and the nose touching the ground, and this is no small quant.i.ty; such delay would have probably thwarted our whole journey.

At a narrow pa.s.s, called _Daiket 'Arar_, was the sh.e.l.l of an old building, now roofless. Near this, and by the wayside, as we advanced, were considerable remains of foundations of houses. There must have been a town of note at that place, it is the 'Aroer of 1 Sam. x.x.x. 28. Our course now suddenly trended towards the east, instead of southwards.

In less than another hour we came to _Kubbet el Baul_, merely the foundation of a small weli. Selameh told us that this had belonged to a tribe called Bali, (or Baul in the plural.) I have no doubt that this is the site of _Balah_ of Joshua xix. 3; and that from it the Arabs, settling near it afterwards, derived their appellation.

We soon afterwards, 3 P.M., pa.s.sed _Curnub_, a ruined place on the right, and descended the slope of _Muzaikah_.

In another hour and a half, namely, at half-past four, we halted for the night, after a journey of ten hours. It was on a smooth, pebbly plain, dotted with shrubs, having lines of chalky hills to the south-west, for which our people had no other name than _Jebel el Ghurb_, or the "western mountain." The whole scene was that of a mere desert; no creatures were to be seen or heard but ourselves. No Turkish authorities ever intrude into this purely Arab wilderness; still less was the landscape spoiled by the smoke of European factories. No speck of cloud had we seen the whole day through.

Not far from this must have transpired the incidents recorded of Hagar and Ishmael,--incidents that might have occurred yesterday, or last week; for a few thousand years count but little in so primitive a region.

Our ragged fellows ran about singing, in search of thorns or long roots, or even the straggling plants of bitter colocynth, as fuel for our cooking-fire.

Stars arose, but such stars! not like the spangles of the English poet's conception, those "patines of bright gold," though that idea is beautiful; but one could see that they were round orbs that flashed streams of diamond light from out their bigness.

So luxurious a bed as that spread upon the desert sand, amid such pure air for breathing, is scarcely to be obtained but in exactly similar circ.u.mstances; and we were undisturbed by cries of any wild beasts, although jackals and hyenas are common at night in the more cultivated parts of Palestine.

_April_ 4.--Thermometer, Fahrenheit, 53.75 degrees at sunrise. We had our breakfast, and were off again by sunrise. It is said that

"Early to bed, and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

It remained to be seen what the effect would be upon us.

The groom being left behind a short time for packing up the kitchen utensils, allowed us to get out of sight without his observing the direction we had taken; and, when mounted, he took a wrong course. It was therefore necessary to give chase towards the hills to recover him.

In an hour we reached two tul'hh (acacia or mimosa) trees, from which, I believe, the gum-arabic is obtained, and the stump of a third. These were the first that we had seen. Then descended, during about half an hour, to the broken walls of a town called _Sufah_, below which commenced the very remarkable nuk'beh, or precipitous slope into the great Wadi 'Arabah. Before commencing this, however, we paused to survey the savage scenery around us, and the glorious expanse of the plain, which extends from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea, and is bounded on one side by the hills of Judaea, and on the other by the mountains of Edom,--on an average of 3500 feet above the level,--including Mount Hor, the most conspicuous peak among them. At that time, however, the range was capped with rolling mists of the morning.

This _Sufah_ is most likely the _Zephath_ of Judges i. 17,--the frontier town of King Arad the Canaanite, which the tribes of Judah and Simeon destroyed, and called the site Hormah, (_i.e._, "devoted to destruction.") If so, it is strange that the Canaanitish name should outlive the one intentionally given by the early Israelites. Probably, the surrounding tribes never adopted the Hebrew name, and preserved the original one.

We were standing among creva.s.ses of shivered mountains, whose strata are tossed about in fantastic contortions; and what we had yet to traverse below this, was something like a thousand feet of very slippery rock, lying in flakes, and sloping two ways at once. The greater length forms a rough line, at an angle of what seemed to the eye to be one of forty-five degrees,--not so steep as the Terabeh that we came to afterwards, but longer and more perilous. Yet this is the only approach to Jud_ae_a from the desert for many leagues around. Was it here that King Amaziah destroyed his Edomite prisoners after his victory in the "valley of salt?" (2 Chron. xxv. 12.)

Half way down, one of our barrels of water slipped off a camel, and rolled into a chasm with noise and echoes like thunder. Wonderful to relate, it was not broken, and we were thankful for its preservation.

At the bottom of the precipice, just beyond the shingle or debris of the mountain, the captain and I rested, and drank some camels' milk. This the Bedaween consider very strengthening. There were several tul'hh-trees in a torrent-bed beside us, and some neb'k. With some twine that we gave him, and a stout thorn of tul'hh, one of our Arabs mended his sandal, which was in need of repair. We, having preceded the beasts of burthen over the slippery rock, sat watching them and the men creeping slowly down, in curved lines, like moving dots, towards us.

Upon the ground we found some dried palm-branches and slips of vine, which must have belonged to some former travellers, pa.s.sing from the western towns to Ma'an, for neither palm nor vine grows in this wilderness, of which it may be truly said, "It is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates," (Num. xx. 5;) and it is now become like a past dream, that Virgil and Lucan mentioned the palm-trees of Idumaea. {301}

So at length we were upon the great 'Arabah, or "wilderness of Zin," of the Israelitish wanderings; and our path was to be diagonally across this, pointed direct at Mount Hor in the south-east.

On crossing a shallow wadi named _Fik'r_, they told us of a spring of water to be found in it, at a good distance to the north-east.

After some hours, we came to _Wadi Jaib_, sometimes styled the Jeshimon, as well as its corresponding plain on the north of the Dead Sea, and in Arabic both are called "the Ghor," in the shallow bed of which were receptacles for water, concealed by canes and brushwood laid in the utmost disorder, so as to produce the appearance of mere random drift of winter storms. Without the Arabs, of course, we should never have suspected the existence of such valuable stores. Probably also the Bedaween from a distance would not be aware of such resources there. The covering would, besides, serve to prevent a speedy evaporation of the water by the sun's heat. These spots were shaded likewise by tul'hh, sunt, and neb'k-trees. There we watered the cattle and filled our vessels. {302} In another half hour we rested for the night, having made a march of nearly twelve hours, over more tiring ground than that of yesterday.

_'Ain Weibeh_ was to our right, which Robinson conjectured to be Kadesh Barnea.

We perceived footprints of gazelles and of hyenas.

_April_ 5. Sunrise, Fahrenheit, 62.25 degrees. Our Jerusalem bread being now exhausted, we took to that of the desert-baking, which is very good while fresh and hot from the stones on which the improvisation of baking is performed, but not otherwise for a European digestion: and our servants, with the Bedaween, had to chase the chickens every morning.

The survivors of those brought from Jerusalem being humanely let out of their cages for feeding every evening, the scene of running after them, or flinging cloaks in the air when they took short flights, not to mention the shouts of the men and the screams of the birds, was very ludicrous, but annoying, when time is precious. The merry little Salem enjoyed all this, as well as the amus.e.m.e.nts of our people, during the monotony of daily travelling: as, for instance, the captain rolling oranges along the ground, as prizes for running, or his mounting a camel himself, or riding backwards, etc.--anything for variety.

The desert may be described as a dried pudding of sand and pebbles, in different proportions in different places,--sometimes the sand predominating, and sometimes the pebbles,--with occasionally an abundance of very small fragments of flint, serving to give a firmer consistency to the sand. Round boulders are also met with on approaching the hill-sides. In one place large drifts of soft yellow sand were wrinkled by the wind, as a smooth sea-beach is by the ripples of a receding tide.

These wrinkles, together with the glare of a burning sun upon them, affected the eyes, so as to make the head giddy in pa.s.sing over them.

Wild flowers and shrubs are not wanting; and the former are often very fragrant. I observed among those that are so, a prevalence in their names of the letter [Arabic letter] (gh); as Ghurrah, Ghubbeh, Ghurkud, Ghuraim, etc. They brought me a handful of _meijainineh_, which was said to be good for pains in the stomach; and the starry flower, called _dibbaihh_, not unlike a wild pink, is eaten by the people, both petals, calyx, and stalk.

The tul'hh, or mimosa-tree, has a strange appearance, very like an open fan, or the letter V filled up.

The green foliage of it is particularly vivid at the season when we saw it, and the thorns long and sharp. {304}

Distances are hard to judge of in such extensive plains and in so clear an atmosphere. We had been nearly two days in sight of Mount Hor, straight before us; yet the mountain only grew in size as we approached it, not in distinctness.

[Picture: Tul'hh Trees]

As we came nearer to the eastern mountains, we found innumerable and huge blocks of porphyry rock scattered over the ground. The Arabs called the range of Seir by the name of _Jebel Sherreh_.

At about eight hours from our last night's station, we turned off the Wadi 'Arabah by the narrow _Wadi Tayibeh_ into the heart of the mountains, at the foot of Hor.

Ascended a series of precipices, and, at some elevation, met two young English gentlemen, with a pair of double-barrelled pistols shared between them, and their fingers ready on the triggers. They had a tale to relate of grievous exactions made by the Fellahheen of Petra,--which, however, seemed to me, by their account, to have been brought on unconsciously by themselves, in having taken an escort of Tiyahah Arabs from Nukh'l instead of the Alaween; and they informed me that a clergyman from Cambridge was still detained there, as he refused to comply with the excessive demands of the people.

On what a stupendous scale is geology to be studied in Mount Seir, where you have ma.s.ses of red sandstone 1500 feet in depth; yellow sandstone extending miles away in ranges of hills, and the sandy desert beneath; all of this incapable of cultivation; and inspiring a sensation of deep sadness, in connexion with the denunciations of G.o.d's prophecies!

At a quarter before four we caught the first glimpse of the Mezar of Aaron's tomb, and at five pitched our tents on the rugged side of Hor, among crags and scented plants, enlivened by numerous cuckoos, and the sweet warbling of one little bird. What reminiscences of dear old England the song of the cuckoos awakened! Now, however, from henceforth, being in England, their song will infallibly recall the memory to large bare mountains, extreme heat of climate, and the fragrance of Elijah's ret'm plant.

During the last hour we had seen some blue pigeons, one partridge, and, separately, two large eagles, to which our attention had been drawn by their shadows moving on the ground before us; then, on looking upwards, the royal birds were seen sailing along, silently and slowly, against the blue vault of ether.

This had been the hottest day of our whole journey; and the atmosphere became thick as the evening stole over the hills.

_April_ 6_th_.--Sunrise, Fahrenheit 77 degrees. In the morning we advanced upwards towards Aaron's tomb. Walking in front of the luggage, we met the clergyman of whom we had heard the day before. He had been allowed to leave Petra on suffering the people to take money out of his pockets,--reserving to himself the intention of complaining against them officially to the consul in Jerusalem.

He had been to the summit of Hor, and p.r.o.nounced the view from it to be more grand and striking than that from Sinai. On bidding him farewell, we took Selameh and one kawwas, for clambering on our hands and knees to the summit, leaving the luggage to proceed and wait for us farther on; but had to rest occasionally in the shade of large trees of 'Arar, which Robinson considered to be the true juniper, and not the ret'm. The latter (the _rothem_ of the Hebrew Bible, under which the Prophet Elijah reposed) was very abundant, and covered with white blossom, shedding the richest perfume. Is it possible that all this fragrance, and the warbling of the birds, is but "wasted in the desert air?"

The mountain is all of dark-red colour; and the higher we ascended, the more difficult we found the progress to be. At length all farther advance seemed impossible, till, on looking round, we observed an excavation for a well, with masonry around it; and beyond this were steps cut into the rock, which rock was sloped at an angle of between fifty and sixty degrees. This encouraged us to persevere.