CORRESPONDENCE.

NOTES OF A PILGRIMAGE.

V.-GALILEE.

IT was from the little Latin hospice built in commemoration of Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal on one of the peaks of Carmel, that we caught our first sight of Galilee. Coming suddenly upon the landscape as we do, there is some- thing very striking in the aspect of the great plain of Esdraelon below us. There is an air of peace and prosperity about the broad, level expanse, chequered with the various colours of the different crops, with the little river Kishon winding its way through the midst of it. Yet it has been known as a battle- field for more than three thousand years, and all its memories are of blood. It was from that queer round hill of Tabor over against us, that Barak and his host dashed down upon the army of Sisera as they laboured through the partly inundated plain, which made their dreaded chariots a mere encumbrance; here, many centuries later, was the scene of one of the last combats of Christian and Moslem ; and here too, after a lapse of five hundred years more, the Mahommedans had to encounter a very different enemy in the rough French heroes, who questioned each other on the march (as one of their number relates),—" Qu'est-ce-que &est que la.

Terre Sainte ? Pourquoi ce P" The steep slope down which we have to make our way to the plain is probably the scene of the desperate flight of the priests of Baal, pursued by the mob of Israelites in all the ardour of a very new conversion, burning to expiate their backslidings by the slaughter of somebody else. The country where the new Gospel of peace and love has left its traditions lies among the hills beyond. The glimpse of white on the two-peaked hill to the east of Mount Tabor is the end of the village of Nain, and another white building to the west is said to be above Nazareth ; it seems discouragingly far off.

The road across the plain is not an interesting one, except for the as yet novel incident of fording the Kishon ; but when we get among the small hills about Nazareth, the scenery becomes less monotonous. We are rather late on the road, having started late, and are constantly coming upon groups of picturesquely attired country people returning from their work in the fields to one of the many villages we pass on the way. Nazareth itself is reached just before nightfall. Turning the corner of one of the hills, we come suddenly upon it, a rather ghostly-looking mass of white buildings staring out in the waning light from their background of dark trees. Lights are beginning to flash out at various points along the hill-side, and at one place a broad glare marks the scene of a wedding-feast, which is carried on to a late hour with much shouting and discharging of guns, the usual sign of rejoicing in these parts. It is quite dark by the time we arrive at our camp, and there is nothing to be seen for that night but the stores of a few merchants of native metal ornaments, who make their way to our tents; while our dragoman, who is a Nazarene by birth, gives audience to flocks of cousins outside. In the morning we

make the little round of visits to the various spots connected with the sacred story. They are not very striking; the sanctity of the house of the Virgin and the scene of the Annunciation, in the crypt of the Latin church, is somewhat spoilt for us by the appendage of the Loretto legend ; but the kind of cave-dwellings shown to us might possibly have been what they pretend to be. In another Latin church we are shown a great block of stone supposed to have served as a table for our Lord and his disciples, which is perhaps also within the bounds of possibility. I am not learned enough to say more than that I was by no means inclined to believe it. The so- called " carpenter's shop," where a late tradition says that our Lord and St. Joseph worked, we did not feel equal to visiting; there was a kind of atmosphere of banal relic-worship about all these sights that only a very strong faith could stand. It is more interesting to know that on the rocky eminence above the quaint little Maronite church, probably stood the synagogue of the Gospel days, and the place from which the exasperated Jews would have thrown our Lord down. I have always had a fancy that that famous scene must have been the occasion on which St. Luke first saw Him ; the story is evidently told by an eye-witness, and the details are so minutely described, that they must have been very deeply impressed upon the mind of the evangelist. Another place of real interest is the Virgin's Fountain, a spring of great anti- quity, to which the women of Nazareth still come to fill their pitchers. They make a very pretty group there, with their bright-coloured dresses, but hardly a peaceful one, for bickerings are constantly going on between the Christian and Moslem women,—as, indeed, seems generally to be the ease where the former are preponderant. When the Mahom- medans are in the majority, their contempt for the Christians produces a certain tolerance.

The next day's journey, to Tiberias, lay in great part over a fiat, cultivated plain, with few incidents beyond the village of Kefr-Kenna--which may perhaps be Cana of Galilee—and the meeting of some wonderful long strings of camels, bringing 'probably the grain and other produce of the Hauran down to the sea at Haifa. It is sad to think how the vested interests of the poor camels and camel-owners may soon be affected when the railway from Haifa to Damascus through the Hauran comes to be constructed. However, as the negotiations with the Government about the railway have only been going on now for some seven years, there is little to fear for the present century at least. In the afternoon, it is proposed to vary the route by ascending the curious two-peaked hill called the Horns of Hattin, where the Sermon on the Mount is believed to have been delivered. It is a pleasant-looking green hill, but really very stony, the stones being concealed by the long rank grass which grows all over it, and thus made more dangerous. The summit is covered with grass too, and a few wild flowers, but only of the commonest kinds, nothing to compare with the hollyhocks of Carmel, or the cyclamen of the plain of Sharon. The depression between the two peaks is very slight, and they are themselves fiat- topped ; so that it is conceivable that a considerable crowd might have accompanied our Lord to the very top—it is not very high—and sat round Him to hear the discourse. Or a

greater number could have found place rather lower down, and have been addressed from the rock at the corner of the southern and higher platform. From the only piece of internal evidence, I should incline to the former theory, which would make the Preacher face towards the city of Safed, the extra- ordinarily prominent position of which, on a higher hill to the

north, is supposed to have suggested to Him the illustration, A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid." The view from the summit is most beautiful. At our feet lies the Lake of

Tiberias, like a sheet of dark-blue glass, without a ripple to stir its surface, backed by bare, desolate hills, with no sign of life of any kind upon them. In the foreground we have a lower hill, or rather plateau, terminating in a grand ravine, the Wady Hammam, or Valley of Pigeons, the gates of which are two towering masses of rock seeming almost to meet at the top. At the northern end of the lake we catch a glimpse of a low, white house, which we afterwards find to be the first step towards a new German colony. Further north, a deep

gorge runs up towards Safed, and the holy city itself shines out on the dark hillside with an extraordinary lustre; and still further to the north-east, the view is closed in by the wild desert maintains of Naphtali.

The descent upon Tiberias is as beautiful as everything must be that is connected with that lovely lake. Our camp is pitched on its shores some hundreds of yards south of Tiberias itself.

Of this little town, the only collection of houses which we ever saw on the lake,—though I believe there is a village at Medjdel, the ancient Magdala,—I can say little, for I was never inside it ; but, especially as seen from the water, it appeared to be one of the most beautiful places we had yet come across. Perhaps it was the illusion of the lake which made us think so, for some camping neighbours who visited the interior did not seem to be extraordinarily delighted. It is very dirty, I believe, and, is inhabited chiefly by Jews; indeed, it is, like Safed, one of their holy cities. Other sects generally speak of it as the residence of the king of the fleas, who should certainly be a great potentate in Palestine. We did not seek audience of. his majesty, having already made acquaintance with too many of his subjects, but leaving Tiberias, took boat for the upper end of the lake. There is a kind of glamour about all the surroundings here. I have so far kept up a stolid belief in appearances, and had no doubts that I really saw Jerusalem or Bethlehem, or what- ever the spot might be; but it seems much harder to realise the fact that we are actually rowing across the Sea of Galilee, and it requires all the discomfort of a cramped position in a not very roomy boat to prove to us that we are not dreaming. Our rowers are doing their utmost, for the dreaded west wind is said to be coming, and against it we can make little way. But, for the present, nothing can be more delightful than the tranquil progress over the calm, solitary sea. Far away, towards the part where the Jordan flows into the lake, we can catch sight of one white sail, probably a fishing- boat ; but there is no sign of any living creature on sea or land as we make for the northern shore by the ruins of Tell Houm. It is strange to think that in the days of the history which gives life and interest to all these scenes, this northern coast was a centre of bustling life and commerce with the four cities of Capernaum, Bethsaida, Chorazin, and that other unknown one whose ruins are to be found at Tell Houm or Khan Minyeh—whichever is not the site of Capernaum—looking down upon waters covered with fishing and pleasure boats.

I have never yet seen anything so awful as the desolation of Tell Houm. Here, whether it was Capernaum or not, stood a great city, with evidently a magnificent synagogue. There are yet lying on the ground, half-distinguishable amidst the long grass, broken columns, and great capitals and pediments, and carved stone-work, as they have lain for ages undisturbed, unless by the careless footstep of some passing Arab. A rude but has been erected near the shore, partly with great stones from the ruins, to form a temporary shelter for some wandering herdsman or his flock ; bat, except for this, for miles around there is not so much as a fisherman's cottage or a peasant's barn,—only the prostrate bones of the dead city mouldering away in the midst of that hideous solitude.

The west wind has come at last, and the progress of the boat when we have left Tell Houm becomes so very slow, that we resolve to land, and walk the rest of the way. Our path over a green and flowery hillside brings us shortly to another very strange sight, at the spot where the town of Bethsaida is supposed to have stood. The only remains visible, to us at least, are those of a great aqueduct coming down from the hills ; a number of stately arches are still standing, and water is still running plentifully in the channel, but it has burst the limits in which it was enclosed, and, forcing its way through many a cleft, leaps down in a perfectly lawless manner to the deserted plain, and runs down to the lake in countless little independent rivulets. On an island in the midst of all these little streams, is a small Bedouin encampment, from which a few wild, stalwart fellows come forward to carry the ladies of the party over the water for an infinitesimal gratuity. There is something in the mean, black tents of these wanderers which seems to give a yet more desolate appearance to the spot; yet here too may have been a flourishing city. Higher up on the hills overlooking the lake, a few scattered ruins are supposed to mark the site of Chorazin; the whole of the prosperous community that filled these coasts is utterly gone, brushed away off the face of the earth, so that it is difficult to tell even where they once lived. There is some- thing more terrible in the solitude here than in the sandy wastes around the Dead Sea ; —there, one may feel that some

awful visitation has come upon the country, and its effects are still more or less visible; but here, looking over the smiling landscape, with the pleasant, grassy hills, and the sun shining on the lake, it is appalling to think that such utter destruction has come upon all these great centres of life and activity,—and that it makes no difference. The grass is as green now, the sea and sky as blue, as in the days of their prosperity ; their history is simply a closed page, turned over and done with; they are gone, and the place thereof knoweth them no more.

A singular contrast is presented when we turn the corner of the next headland, and come upon a neat little white house, with a well-ordered garden and a pleasant little trellised porch, under which a table is being spread for us. It is the property of the pioneer of the German colony which is to be founded here, a hospitable, friendly Badener, from the shores of the Lake of Constance. His delight at the arrival of strangers who can speak his language more or less, and who have come from his brethren of the Temple at Haifa, is great, and he insists on making gratuitous additions to our store, of native and European delicacies, wine of Safed, and liqueur from far-away Interlaken. The arrangements for the German settlement are progressing slowly, it appears ; but some difficulty may be expected in a land where, though foreigners are permitted by law to buy land from the natives, the natives are not allowed to sell it to them. The establishment of the colony, however, is a certainty, and may have great consequences to the country round, where a little energy and enterprise may completely change the face of affairs, and bring back prosperity to the shores of the lake. We take a cordial leave of our host, and a short walk along a beautiful path cut in the rock just above the water brings us to our camping-ground by the Fountain of the Fig-tree, in a corner of the plain of Gennesareth.