It is on the regular falls of rain that the fertility out to me other villages at a little distance, to of this country entirely depends-the early and the which they prefixed this word; distinguishing latter rains, in their season: that is, the early about these second villages from the first by the names October, cheering the soil after the extreme heats of Ain el Ainep, and Ain el Yabroud: probably of summer; and the latter, in January and Febru- this may be the case with many other names of ary, swelling the raising crops with which the places; and it may be useful to travellers to be valleys are covered. From these bountiful show-aware of this distinction. In the Old Testament, ers of heaven, indeed, the fertility of every land springs but how dreadful, in this country, would be such a three years' drought as was inflicted upon Israel in the days of Ahab, may easily be conceived, when it is remembered that in summer the richest soil is burnt to dust; so that a traveller, riding through the plain of Esdraelon in July or August, would imagine himself to be crossing a desert.

such names have been translated with the prefix En; as Endor, Enrogel, Engedi, &c. From the passage in Joshua xvii. 11, the distinction of places, with and without this prefix, seems to have existed from ancient times. "Manasseh had..... the inhabitants of Dor and her towns, and the inhabitants of Endor and her towns."*

proper

As the general result of my remarks on PalesWith regard to water, some parts of the Holy tine, in respect of its natural state, I cannot but Land appeared, in the months of October and own, that a peculiarly melancholy impression is November, to labor under great privation; yet, made on the feelings, by seeing so much land left even in this respect, art might furnish a remedy, desolate, and so few people scattered over the in the tanks and cisterns, which a little industry face of the country. Yet there is no fair reason would form and preserve. The cities and villages for pronouncing this land naturally unproductive. have such supplies; and, in every stage of seven Its present barren state, while it is to be regarded or eight hours, there are usually found, once or as, in the strictest sense, denoting a judicial curse, twice at least, either cisterns or muddy wells. In is nevertheless such as may be traced, generally, some places, a person at the well claimed pay- to the operation of natural causes. A righteous ment for the water, which he drew for us and our God has turned, in the fulfilment of his long susanimals; but this was probably an imposition, pended threatenings, a fruitful land into barrenalthough by us willingly paid. Generally, we ness, for the wickedness of them that dwelt therein: found this want of water to be a source of great but it has been through the instrumentality of inconvenience in our journeys; for, even in Octo- this very wickedness-the increasing wickedness ber, the mid-day heat is intense, and the moisture of the inhabitants-that the awful change has of the body is soon exhausted. In many spots, been effected. Were good government, good however, as if to remind us of what Palestine faith, and good manners to flourish in this land once was, a beautiful strip of verdure is seen-ex- for half a century, it would literally become again tending sometimes for the short space of a hun- a land flowing with milk and honey: the dred yards, at other places for seven or eight fruits of the mountains, honey and wax, would be hundred-denoting the presence of water; and collected by the industrious bee from myriads of here would be found a small native spring bubbling fragrant plants: the plains, the valleys, and the up, which, after winding its simple course, and upland slopes, would yield corn for man, and pasblessing the land on either side, is re-absorbed by turage to innumerable flocks and herds. Such a the soil. At such places, the husbandman has stupendous and delightful change might well glad. often planted a few fruit-trees and vegetables; as den, not only every child of Israel, but the heart may be seen mid-way in the valley leading from of every Christian. Nazareth to the plain of Esdraelon; exactly answering to the expression in Isaiah (lviii. 11)— "Thou shalt be like a watered garden; and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not." Here, CIVIL STATE OF SYRIA AND THE too, the flocks are brought to drink, before they are driven in for the night; or groupes of females and children (as we saw them at Sephoury) hasten, at even-tide, with their pitchers, to take in their supply of water. Such short-lived streamlets I observed at Sychem, at Khan Leban, and in various places; they just serve, by their appearance, though not by their number, to illustrate the expressions, describing to the Israelites the land of Canaan before they entered it-"The Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of vallies and hills." (Deut. viii. 7.) Similar, and equally exact in description, is the language of the civth Psalm-" He sendeth the springs into the vallies, which run among the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses quench their thirst." The word “Ain" (Fountain) denotes the existence of such spots at two places (Ainep near Deir el Kamr, and Yabroud near Jerusalem) the guides pointed

HOLY LAND.

As to the CIVIL condition of this region, it is almost reflected, as in a mirror, in its natural tic life, all speak one unvarying tale of degrada. staté. Commerce, and government, and domes.

tion.

COMMERCE.

In reference to commerce, it is in my province

The distance between Dor and En-dor was, however, very considerable-Dor having been a town on the sea-coast, a little south of Acre; while town at the foot of Mount Tabor; which may be a En-dor is represented by Eusebius as a considerable distance of about twenty miles. There is also a slight difference in the Hebrew spelling of the two words. See Reland's Pales, pp. 738, 762.

to say but little. Damascus is the mart of Syria. Aleppo was rich; but suffered greatly by the earthquake of 1822. All the sea-coast towns have more or less trade with Cyprus, Alexandria, Smyrna, and, occasionally, with even more distant ports. Generally, however, from want of stability in their respective governments, affairs move languidly: and who, that has read the records of ancient times, but must sigh over that peculiar depression which seems to characterize the trade, if such it may be called, of the southern parts of Palestine!

It has been remarked, that Jerusalem is, by its very situation, calculated to become the centre of the earth;* central to the three continents of the old world but at present, the idea is a mere fiction, and has no practical bearing. We might almost exclaim with the weeping prophet, "Who shall have pity upon thee, O Jerusalem? or who shall bemoan thee? or who shall go aside, to ask how thou doest?" (Jeremiah xv. 5.)

And where is now the commercial greatness of Tyre? Probably, no national tariff of the present day exhibits a more interesting variety of produce and manufacture, than that recorded with such minuteness in the twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel. And yet who, that now looks upon the desolate isle of Tyre, would suppose that she had once been the mistress of commerce and the parent of colonies? The prize of national wealth has passed from hand to hand, among four great nations, which seem to have drawn almost a circle round her, close to her very borders-from Ethiopia and Egypt, the cradle of nations, to Assyria: thence to Persia: thence again to Greece. In the centre of them all, Tyre, long after her first ruin, continued to maintain a splendid rank. But the glitter of gold has now for ages fled westward. The over-land trade of Asia has gradually, during three centuries, been crippled by the discovery of the passage by the Cape of Good Hope: other nations, other continents, have now the commerce of the earth in their hands; and probably few busy and great merchants of the present generation have ever heard much more of Tyre than the name.

All these circumstances merit notice, in delineating the civil degradation of modern Palestine,

GOVERNMENT.

With regard to the government of the country, the Pachas are so frequently changed, or so often

In accordance with this idea, the Christians of Jerusalem take a pride in pointing out a particular spot in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, which they entitle, in Arabic, Nofs ed-dinya; that is, "the centre of the world:" it is marked by an ornamented piece of marble. The first person who noticed it to me was the Abyssinian priest, as we were walking in the Abyssinian convent, which is contiguous to that side of the church: he repeated several times, pointing in the direction of this spot, "Nofs ed-dinya, Nofs ed-dinya "-as if in ecstacy at the thought of being near a place so venerable. The ancient Greeks had the same notions about Delphi-as plausible and unmeaning a conceit as could well be devised to amuse the common people, or furnish the poet with matter for high sounding words.

at war,* the jurisdiction of the inferior governors of cities is so undefined, and the hereditary or assumed rights of the sheiks of particular districts are so various, that to a person making diligent inquiry, it might be difficult to discover any settled rule by which government is directed; and, certainly, to a passer-by in Turkey, there appears to be none. It is thus that Turkey is generally regarded by travellers. The whole empire, it may be said, in the words of Homer, ezi župov istutaL axun (Illiad. x.)-and it has the appearance of being so fortuitously balanced "on the edge of the razor," that the slightest movement seems likely to overturn it. Still it stands-not flourishing, not stable, not tolerable to an intelligent lover of mankind-yet existing! As it exhibits at the fountain-head the form of absolute despotism,† so all the subordinate institutions of the country, down

* Burckhardt ("Travels in Syria," pp. 169-171,) gives an account of the vicissitudes of the pachalic of Tripoli, during a period comprising nearly fifty years in modern times. From his statement it ap pears, that the average period of the reign of those Pachas was about four years; their government being continually interrupted, and sometimes terminated, by feuds, wars, and murders.

in a striking light, the state of insecurity in which + The following extract from Burckhardt, places, the subjects of the despotic rulers of these countries live:

"A few years ago, Djebail was the residence of the Christian, Abd el Ahad: he and his brother Georgios Bas were the head men of the Emir Bechir; and, in fact, were more potent than their master. Georgios Bas resided at Deir el Kamr. The district of Djebail was under the command of Abd el Ahad, who built a very good house here. But the two brothers shared the fate of all Christians who attempt to rise above their sphere: they were both put to death in the same hour by the Emir's orders. Indeed there is scarcely an instance, in the modern history of Syria, of a Christian or Jew having long enjoyed the power or riches which he may have acquired: these persons are always taken off in the moment of their greatest apparent glory. Abd el Hak, at Antioch; Hanna Kubbe, at Ladaike; Karaly, at Aleppo; are all examples of this remark. But, as in the most trifling, so in the most serious concerns, the Levantine enjoys the present moment, without ever reflecting on future consequences." (Burckhardt's Syria, pp. 179, 189.)

At p. 43 of the preceding Journal, the death of Haiim, the Jew prime-minister of Djezzar, Pacha of Acre, was mentioned. The following almost prophetic language of Burckhardt (Travels p. 180,) was thus fulfilled in reference to this very man: not, indeed, that it requires any thing more than an ordinary measure of sagacity to foresee what will one day be the fate of any tool or favorite of a Turkish ruler:

"The house of Hayne (Haiim,) the Jew Seraf, or banker, at Damascus and Acre, whose family may be said to be the real governors of Syria, and whose property, at the most moderate calculation, amounts to three hundred thousand pounds sterling, are daily exposed to the same fate. The head of the family, a man of great talents, has lost his nose, his ears, and one of his eyes, in the service of Djezzar: yet his ambition is still unabated; and he prefers a most precarious existence, with power, in Syria, to the ease and security he might enjoy by emigrating to Europe."

to the sheik of the most insignificant village, take their character from the source.

when, at each journey of a day or two days' distance, a prince, or a judge, and not unfrequently It were superfluous to dwell at length on this a king, was to be met with. In the short distance topic. The general state of things in Turkey is from Jerusalem by way of Nablous to Sanoor, the this: absolute power, often stretching beyond the three governors of those cities were represented reach of control, finds, nevertheless, a counteract- to me as perfectly independent of one another, ing principle, in that extreme degree of acuteness each a king in his own district; all, indeed, reto which, in individuals, the instinct of self-preser-sponsible to the Pacha of Damascus, and removavation is sharpened by the constant apprehension ble at pleasure, but probably not one of them of wrong.* * Hence springs that conflict, not knowing the limits of his own jurisdiction. always visible, but always operating, between force and fraud, between man blinded by authority and the cunning sufferer, which characterizes the civil relations of society here. A less enlightened, or a more demoralizing state, can hardly be conceived but it exists at every step of public and private life, and is the key to most proceedings either at the court or before the tribunal.

In the allotment of authority-divided and subdivided as it is, yet always nominally, and often really, absolute-there is something which forcibly reminds a traveller of patriarchal times;

"It has been before stated (see p. 46) that civil protection can be obtained in these countries only by purchase. As an illustration of the mode in which this is effected, and the burden of taxation divided by different religious bodies, the following account from the Jesuits, when in Syria, is remarkably in point: which must serve as an apology for the length of this note.

The subordinate sheiks of the villages, aware of the precarious tenure by which these their temporary superiors remain in office, are very apt to be troublesome and unmanageable; endeavoring to sustain regal importance, each in his own petty sphere. They will often tell the Frank traveller, that they respect neither Mootselim, Bey, Pacha, nor Sultan: to hear them speak, one would suppose that the governor of a place possessed authority no further than the walls of his own city: and in the remoter parts of a pachalic, this is not unlikely to be the case; and the traveller is liable to feel the effects of their assumed

independence, by the presents which they will demand-payment of which they endeavor to exact, or otherwise in some manner put the stranger to inconvenience.

In the southern parts of the Holy Land the annoying spirit of these characters was more apparent to me than in the northern; but probably it exists in both.*

"The kind of persecution," observes one of their correspondents, "which the Turks exercise on the Christians, consists not so much in torments and death, as in pecuniary fines, called Avanis. The usage here is, that when any one accuses any of the Christians on the ground of religion, they seize the principal individuals of the nation of the accused person; and, after having bastinadoed them, they de-kings. Thus, in Joshua xii. 9-24, for a space mand a contribution, which is levied on the whole nation, Greek, Syria, or which ever it may be. Some years since, the Pacha being gone to Mecca, the Catholics were accused of having become Franks, and of praying with the Franks, in consequence of which a heavy Avania was imposed on them, which reduced them to a state of poverty worse than death. To remedy so great an evil, I had the honor to write to our French Ambassador at Constantinople, to request his protection in favor of the persecuted Catholics; and that he would use his influence at the Porte to obtain a firman, which should subject all the Christians without distinction, and not the Catholics alone, to the Avanis that might be imposed. In the reply with which his excellency honored me, he promised to leave nothing untried with the Pacha, in order to procure the execution of my design, and that he would accompany his request with a present. Some time after, the Schismatics having, according to their custom, accused the Catholics of being Franks, a tax of many purses (a purse is five hundred piastres) was laid upon them. Following up my project, I engaged the principal persons to request that this Avania should be levied on all the Christians without exception: urging, that, after all, with the Turks, there was no distinction between one Christian and another Christian, whether Frank or not, Catholic or not. Their plea was heard and admitted: and we have thus taken from the Schismatics the handle which they had so often, and with success, employed to annoy the Catholics. We hope that this law will remain in force; at least that it will continue as long as the reign of the present governor." (Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses, Vol. I. pp. 272–274.)

Imagination is often led to picture with how much greater inconvenience, in the earlier times of Scripture history, a stranger must have moved from place to place, when every petty district had its sovereign; Edom her dukes, and Canaan her

not larger, perhaps, than the principality of Wales, are enumerated not fewer than thirty-one kings. The extent of dominion possessed by some of them would probably not exceed that of many an English nobleman during the feudal times. In similar style, Benhadad, king of Syria, musters in his train two-and-thirty kings; 1 Kings xx. 1: and, at the 14th verse, we find Ahab, king of the northern half of the Holy Land, with princes of the provinces under him; provinces, no doubt, very small, yet their title princely. The terms KING and KINGDOM are often thus applied, both in the Old and New Testaments, to a very small portion of authority; they may occasionally denote nothing more than the governor of a single city, and of the land immediately surrounding it. Thus, in St. Luke (chap. xix. 12,) the nobleman who went into a far country, and left with his ten servants a puted to be between thirty and forty pounds stersum which, in the margin of our Bibles, is comling, (conveying no great idea of his wealth,) is, represented as going to receive for himself a king . dom, and to return; that is, possibly, to be invest ed with authority, for a limited period, over som

* Strabo has summed up the character of these people in one very pithy expression. Speaking of the Ituræns and Arabs, as being in possession of the mountainous parts he concisely adds-ovoyo Tavres-an expression which will rest long on the memory and imagination of every traveller in the Levant. (Strabo, Book xvi. "Syria.")