The Land That Is Desolate; an Account of a Tour in Palestine
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THE LAND THAT IS DESOLATE AN ACCOUNT OF A TOUR IN PALESTINE BY SIR FREDERICK TREVES, Bart. G.G.V.O., C.B., LL.D. SERJEANT-SURGEON TO H.M. THE KING SURGEON IN ORDINARY TO H.M. QUEEN ALEXANDRA AUTHOR OF ' THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LANTERN ' THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP ' ETC. WITH FORTY-THREE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR AND A MAP NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 1912 CONTENTS PAGE I. The Landing at Jaffa .... I II. The Way to Jerusalem .... 20 III. The First View of the Holy City • 38 IV. The City of Sorrows .... • 42 V. Within the Walls 47 VI. of The Cult the Beggar .... • 57 VII. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre . 66 VIII. The Thief's Chapel and Calvary 81 IX. The Roof of the Church . ... • • 85 X. The Summit of Mount Moriah . 90 XI. Olivet and the Garden .... 102 XII. Tombs and Pools ..... 108 XIII. The Moaning by the Wall • 113 XIV. Bethlehem . ..... 117 XV. The Country of Ruth .... 127 XVI. The Plain of Jericho .... • 13° XVII. The Jordan and the Dead Sea . 146 XVIII. Round about Haifa ..... 155 XIX. Acre ........ 167 XX. The Road to Nazareth .... 172 XXI. Nazareth ....... 179 vi CONTENTS PAGE XXII. From Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee . 187 XXIII. The Sea of Galilee 192 XXIV. The Ascent to Damascus 198 XXV. The City from the Hill 208 XXVI. Naaman's River 216 XXVII. The Streets of the 'Arabian Nights' City . .221 XXVIII. The Bazaars 231 XXIX. The Crowd . ... 243 XXX. Attar of Roses . .... 256 XXXI. The Great Mosque ....... 260 XXXII. A Tragic Journey 267 Index 285 I Frontispiece ILLUSTRATIONS The Dome of the Rock Frontispiece Port Said To face page 2 / Jaffa : from Roof of House of Simon the Tanner ....... ,,,,,, 12 Jaffa : from Garden of the Monastery of the House of . Tabitha . ,,,,,, 16 The Train from Jaffa to Jerusalem . t> 22 The First View of Jerusalem ... „ 40 The Golden Gate, : from Jerusalem the inside „ ,, ,, 50 A Street in Jerusalem . „ „ ,, 50 Street in A Jerusalem ..... ,,,,,, 54 A Street in Jerusalem . „ 60. Church of the Holy Sepulchre ... 72 Jerusalem : View from Roof of Church of the Holy Sepulchre . ,,,,,, 86 Houses in the Temple Area, Jerusalem . ,, ft 94 The Dome of the Rock . 98 Mount of Olives ...... 100, Mount of Olives ...... „ 102, Corner of the Garden of Gethsemane . ,, „ 106 Walls of Jerusalem near the Jaffa Gate, SHOWING THE DlTCH . Io6 Jerusalem : from the Mount of Olives, showing the Golden Gate and Dome of the Rock „ ,, ,, 108 View from Inside the Walls of Jerusalem, showing the Dome of the Rock . „ ,, ,, no The Tombs of the Kings, Jerusalem . ,,,, ,, 112, Bethlehem : the Church of the Nativity . „ „ 120 viii ILLUSTRATIONS Bethany To face page 130 v The Road to Jericho ..... ,,,,,, 134 - Doubting Castle, on the Road to Jericho . „ ,, 134 The Valley of Achor, on the Way to Jericho, SHOWING THE MONASTERY OF St. GEORGE . ,, ,, ,, I36. Excavations of Ancient Jericho ,, ,, 140 , Walls of Ancient Jericho .... 144 The Jordan ....... ,,,,,, 148 The Dead Sea . ,> ,,,, 152 Acre, as approached from Haifa . ,, ,, ,,168 Walls of Acre ...... ,,,,,, 170 Nazareth ....... „ „ „ 177" A Street in Nazareth ..... ,,,,,, 180 Mary's Well at Nazareth . ,, ,,184 Distant View of Tiberias and Sea of Galilee ,, ,, ,, 190 Tiberias ........ •>,,,, 196 Damascus: from the Hill . ,,,,,, 208, Abraham's Oak, Damascus .... ,,,,,, 216 The River Abana : just beyond Damascus . ,, ,, „ 220 A Street in Damascus . ,,,,,, 222 Damascus; the Old City Wall . ,,,,,, 226 The East Gate of Damascus .... ,,,,,, 232 . MAP The Holy Land ...... „ „ 284 THE LAND THAT IS DESOLATE i THE LANDING AT JAFFA ' In the name of God glorious and Almighty. He that will pass over the Sea to the City of Jerusalem may go many ways, both by sea and land, according to the country that he cometh from.' Thus wrote Sir John Maundeville, Knight, a native of St. Albans in England. It was one of the few truths that he disclosed and may on that account be treasured. Now although it is common knowledge that Jerusalem is in Palestine, there are persons of some enlightenment who are a little doubtful as to the precise situation of the country itself. They are familiar with the isolated map of the Holy Land and know that it is shaped like a slice of bread, whereof the straight crust stands for the coast- line, and the soft, gnawed edge for the inland boundaries. This familiarity is possibly due to the fact that when a schoolboy is set to draw a map, as a holiday task, he always selects Palestine, partly because of its extreme ease of outline, and partly because the selection may B 2 THE LAND THAT IS DESOLATE carry with it a beneficial suggestion of early piety and therefore count for righteousness. Where to place the territory is another matter, and I believe I am conveying information when I say that the Holy Land forms the blind end of the Mediterranean and that its shores are washed by the same waters that break beneath the gambling-rooms at Monte Carlo and make delectable the promenade at Nice. To return to the shrewd saying of Sir John. It is the custom of most to reach Palestine by taking ship at Port Said and going to Jaffa, a port described in the Bible dictionaries as being on the border of Dan. It is a passage that appeals as much to the imagination as does any the Knight of St. Albans ventured upon. From Port Said to the land of Canaan ! From the very new to the very old ! Among towns of any pretence in the world Port Said is probably the newest and rawest. It was called into being by a very modern engineering enterprise. Not only is every building of it new, but the actual land upon which it is founded may claim to be of yesterday, since it has been, for the most part, gathered in from the sea. Dig beneath the bricks and stones of any town of note and the spade unearths remains of pre- existing men, but dig beneath the foundations of Port Said and there is nothing but the Nile mud of seasons still remembered, the sand still salt from the sea, the shells still bright with the colours that even now mark the drift on the beach. Across a bight of the sea, north-east from the Canal Port, is the land of the ancient Israelites, the land that first crept out of the darkness at the dawn of the history THE LANDING AT JAFFA 3 of mankind. Port Said is a by-product of the Suez Canal Company, while Jaffa was a settlement that the Phoeni- cians founded in the land of the Philistines. The journey between the two places occupies some twelve hours and is appropriately made at night, so that the traveller, whose last sight of the new world takes the form of a turbine- driven liner, ablaze with electric lights, may sleep and dream and on awakening come upon that port in the old world from which Jonah started on his journey to Tarshish by boat. He must be dull who does not look eagerly at sunrise for the first sight of this venerable country. As the horizon brightens there will appear the Holy Land, the land about which he read when he was first able to read, the place where the Bible was written and where the great religion of the world arose. It seems a land as remote from the world of to-day as that land of once- upon-a-time where the children's tales commenced. What does he expect to see emerge from the dull shadow far ahead of the ship's prow ? What will he behold that will make this land unlike any other land in the world ? He can hardly expect to find a company of armed Philis- tines patrolling the beach, or to hear from city walls the sound of sackbut and psaltery, or to see the smoke of a burnt -offering rising to the skies. He expects something uncommon, but unless his mood be very matter-of-fact he must prepare for a great disillusion. There are few first glimpses of famous spots that are not disappointing. The first sight of Niagara, for example, arouses a feeling of actual resentment in that the view is so tamely like the pictures and photographs which B 2 THE LAND THAT IS DESOLATE have been for years familiar. I can, for my own part, only recall three occasions when the actual view far ex- ceeded the anticipation of it. These were the first glimpse of Venice as seen from a ship's deck at the dawn of a summer's day, the first sight of the Grand Canon of the Colorado from the brink at Bright Angle, and the first sudden view of the Taj Mahal at Agra. On nearing Jaffa in the early morning what is there in sight ? Merely a low line of bare coast, not only treeless and blank but also colourless, for the sun is rising behind it. It is a land so stripped of every feature or characteristic as to be merely an antithesis to the sea. It is a coast—nothing more—a coast reduced to the simplest possibilities, so that it is as lacking in individuality as a coastline on a map. As the light increases the rudi- mental bank becomes rose-coloured, while a line of white foam marks it off from the leaden sea. Of this new earth indeed it is possible to say little more than that it is not water.