and the land between it and the Mediterranean near Turan, a little village about ten miles west of the town of Tiberias, is fifteen hundred and twenty-five feet, making a very perceptible descent from Nazareth to the lake, as the descent in ten miles would be eight hundred and seventy-two feet to the level of the lake. Hence the appropriateness of the expression used by St. John in the description of the centurion's importunity: "he besought him that he would come down," "and as he was going down," that is, from Cana to Capernaum, which were on the line of descent given above (John iv. 47, 49, 51).

At ten minutes after twelve we arrive at Tell Hum, and lunch as usual on cold chicken and bread, made delicious by keen appetites. Near the water are the ruins of a tower, having a side thirty-four feet long by twelve feet high. A little tent of Arabs is not far off; and I get permission to sketch a plough.

Having exhibited the drawing to one of my Bedouin visitors, who himself is a fine specimen of these prowling sons of the desert, he seemed pleased, and I asked permission to try my pencil upon him. He was ashamed of his fears; and yet such is the superstition of the evil eye that he evidently would have preferred exemption from my looks and pencil. More is feared from this cause among this people than from any other, even death. Strange tales are told of the effects of this fascination, and of the ascendency it has everywhere in the East.

We have frequently met children and women wearing little figures attached to cords and hung round the neck. These are charms; and, having seen them also in Egypt, our thoughts are carried back to the past, when talismans had so strange a power and so great an ascendency in this land. These little images-sometimes of utensils, scissors, animals, portions of the human body, of various sorts, sometimes even obscene, and either concealed or exposed-take us back to days long gone by.

Shortly before one o'clock we leave for Tiberias, occa

144

FLOWERS AND SHELLS.

sionally passing fragments of scoria on the shore. Passing at twenty-five minutes after one o'clock under an arch with stalactite formations, which seem to have been increasing of late years, we come to a mill and a fine stream. There are cranes and ducks, and over the lake one solitary bird, similar in appearance and flight to the sea-gull. There are the cane and oleander, with a variety of the water-willow, and a plant growing near the edge of the water, with leaves like the water-willow in colour, but only about one inch in length, bearing small flowers resembling lilac-flowers in shape and size, but growing on the stem among the leaves and near the termination of the branch. The small flowers are yellow within, grey without, and have five serrated petals. For some time no shells are seen on the shore, but only smooth flint-pebbles and stones; but suddenly we meet with great quantities of little conchoidal specimens, together with spiral forms and several bivalves of the unio variety, having unusually thick shells, and capable of being cut and polished until the pearl appears with a most-beautiful iridescence. Along this shore have been found fragments of native gold. This we did not learn till afterward, and saw nothing which indicated it. At a quarter before two o'clock we rode up on a road cut in an overhanging cliff, six feet wide, and in some places five feet deep, in the rock, and evidently once paved with rock of a material different from that in which it was cut. At ten minutes before two o'clock we pass Khan Minyeh, where Capernaum is thought to have been located. It was visited in the sixth century by Antoninus the martyr, who speaks of a church erected in this vicinity on what was considered the site of Peter's house. There are ruins of a building apparently eighty to one hundred feet in length, and twenty feet high; but other ruins are not apparent. Yet this does not make it improbable that Capernaum was located here; for how many places have had their ruins completely carried away to erect neighbouring villages, especially where there was a scarcity of building material! Among these scattered

modern villages are to be found the ruins of Capernaum, not on its former site.

We are now on the plain of Gennesaret, plentifully watered, as will be seen by the following mention of the rivulets we passed. The plain appears to be half a mile wide, and one mile and a half long. We are travelling at a regular walk along the shore, and at fifteen minutes after two o'clock meet a little water-course, where the shore is so much like a quicksand that my companion's horse sinks suddenly up to his haunches. Fifteen minutes more, and our guide cautiously sends my friend ahead to ford another creek. Twenty minutes more, and again we ford a little creek; and near this creek, on the shore, there is a crab as large as a man's hand, of a singular form. Here a rock distinctly shows that the lake is twenty inches lower than it has been at some previous time. At three o'clock we pass from the plain at El Mejdel, or MAGDALA, a few yards from the shore. It is the town of Mary Magdalene, a small place, and of no special interest otherwise than by scriptural association. Above us the rocks are lofty and the scenery exceedingly interesting. Herds are browsing on the cliffs, and not far off are the mouths of caverns and places once occupied as tombs, and frequently referred to in the Gospels (Matt. viii. 28; Mark v. 2, 3, 5; Luke viii. 27). Some of these caves were also used as strongholds in the time of the Jewish wars; and no doubt there are interesting relics yet to be found in some of them if any one would be at the pains to explore them. They are found in many of the hills, and on the opposite side of the lake also. But west of Mejdel are caverns noted in the time of Josephus as the fortified dens of robbers who were with great difficulty dislodged by Herod the Great, and not till parties of soldiers were let down from the overhanging cliffs in boxes sustained by chains, who fought the inhabitants with fire and sword, dragging them out with hooks. This happened near the present ruins of Irbid, the probable Arbela, and not far from the ruins of Kulat (or castle) Ibn

T

146

A MOHAMMEDAN'S GRAVE.

Ma'an, about two miles from the shore and north-west of Irbid.

with a

He ex

In thirty-six minutes after leaving MAGDALA we reach a spring running from under a bank, near which is a tree over a Mohammedan's grave-our guide says a saintand attached to the branches are fragments of white, red, and blue cloth, to which any one passing may add, according to the reverence he has for the saint who is supposed to lie buried beneath. We ride on to Tiberias, and dismount at the hotel at twenty-two minutes after four o'clock. Our host, who is a German Jew, furnishes us bed apiece, and our cook presides in the kitchen. hibited to me a book which he asserts is one thousand years old; and yet it is printed in Hebrew and RabbinicHebrew characters. The scenery about the lake, as the long shadows of evening are thrown upon it, seems deeply and strangely interesting. There is so much wildness about it, so much that is unusual and unlike those tame pictures of scenic beauty that even good painters produce, it is so surrounded with weird-like ruins and caverns, and visited by such remarkable birds and coasted with such shells and flowers and plants, together with the association of volcanic agencies which seem still to be in operation in the vicinity, all these facts, united to its sacred and classic histories, give to this lake an interest which cannot be found in connexion with any other in the world.

CHAPTER XII.

TIBERIAS AND THE ROUTE TO NAZARETH.

TIBERIAS, perhaps, was only rebuilt by Herod,* on a spot previously memorable as the site of another city. The very fact that anterior to the founding of the city by Herod, "there were here many ancient sepulchres," affords reason to conclude that there must have been some motive for the burial of the dead at this place similar to that which suggests burial near Jerusalem, Safed, Meiron, and even Tiberias, where the tombs and sepulchres are erected near the walls. These sepulchres therefore indicated an ancient settlement before the time at which they were noticed by Herod, who founded the present town and named it Tiberias, after the Emperor, his friend and patron. That ancient city, as Jerome affirms, might have been Chinneroth. Tiberias was the principal city of the Jews in all matters appertaining to their literature; and men lived and died here who, had their studies been classic instead of Jewish, would have ranked high among the most learned of the world. There are several still remaining whose knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures is remarkable; but it has more intimate connexion with the mere readings and variations of the text than with the history of the nation or of its literature. Among one class of Jews in the town the custom described

*Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, and the one who took Herodias, "his brother Philip's wife" (Matt. xiv. 1). Josephus's Antiquities, xviii. 2. 3; Wars of the Jews, ii. 9. 1. He afterward suffered in consequence of a suggestion by Herodias, and died with his wife in exile at Lyons, in Gaul.