Byeways in Palestine — A Closer Reading

CHAPTER IV. HEBRON TO BEERSHEBA, AND HEBRON TO JAFFA.

In August 1849 I left my large family encampment under the branches of the great oak of Sibta, commonly called Abraham's oak by most people except the Jews, who do not believe in any Abraham's oak there. The great patriarch planted, indeed, a grove at Beersheba; but the "_Elone Mamre_" they declare to have been "plains," not "oaks," (which would be _Allone Mamre_,) and to have been situated northwards instead of westwards from the present Hebron. With a couple of attendants I was bound for Beersheba. The chief of the quarantine, not having a soldier at home, gave us a peasant to walk with us as far as the _Boorj_, (Tower,) with a letter of _our own_ handwriting in his name, addressed to the guard there, directing them to escort us further.

Scrambling up a steep rough lane, due south from the tree, with vineyards on either side richly laden with fruit, and occasional sumach-trees bearing bright red berries, we were rewarded on the summit by a vast prospect of country, hilly before us in the south, Moab and Edom mountains to the left, and Philistia plains with the Mediterranean on the right.

All nature was revived by the evening sea-breeze, and the sun in undiminished grandeur was retiring towards his rest.

On a summit like this, with a wide expanse laid out for survey, there are large and lively ideas to be conceived in matters of Scriptural geography. Consider, for instance, on that spot Psalm cviii., with its detail of territories one after another. That "psalm of David" declares that God in His holiness had decreed the future dispensations of _Shechem_, (there is its position, Nabloos, in the north of the circular landscape;) then the _valley of Succoth_, (there it is, the Ghor, or vale of the Jordan,) coasting between _Gilead_, _Manasseh_, and _Ephraim_; also _Moab_, with its springs of water, where He would (speaking in human poetic language) wash His feet, at the period of treading with His shoe over _Edom_: that remarkable event paralleled in the Prophecy of Isaiah lxiii., when, in apparel dyed red from Bozrah, the conqueror tramples down the people in his anger. The Psalmist then has to triumph over _Philistia_, that large Shephelah stretched between us and the sea--concluding with the exclamation, "Who will bring me into the strong city (Petra)? who will lead me into Edom?"

All this was accomplished by the providence of God in the history of David, that shepherd boy of Bethlehem, at whose coronation all Israel was gathered together at Hebron, just behind the spectator on this eminence.

To return, however, from the solemnity of these historical meditations to the commonplace transactions of the journey, we had to carry on a considerable amount of wrangling with the muleteers, who were continually allowing their animals to stumble, and the ropes of the luggage to come loose, so that the things fell to the ground; I sent them back, and we proceeded without tents or bedding, only two blankets and our cloaks. The true reason of the men's behaviour lay in their dread of being attacked by wild Arabs, and having their animals carried off.

It was about sunset, and our track lay over plains of arable land, between hills clothed with the usual dwarf evergreens, of baloot, arbutus, etc., then over eminences with tall fragrant pines, and the evening breeze sighing among their branches, such as I had only once heard since leaving Scotland, and that was in the Lebanon. Old stumps and half trunks of large trees standing among myriads of infantile sprouts of pines attested the devastation that was going on, by means of the peasantry, for making of charcoal, and for supplying logs to the furnaces of Hebron, where very rude manufactures of glass are carried on.

Along a glen which opened into an arable plain with stubble of millet (durrah) remaining, but no village near. There we met a party of Arab women, and after them a boy mounted on a camel, who informed us that he was coming from _Merj-ed-Dom_, lying between us and _Samua'_, where there are remains of antiquity, such as large doorways, cisterns, etc.

The country was all level enough for carriages; and it is probable that all the way in the south is practicable in like manner, for we know that Joseph sent carriages from Egypt to his father at Beersheba.

The _Boorj_ is simply a look-out tower, now used for quarantine purposes, ridiculous as they may be in the pure air of the desert.