it needs no manure. Cotton is cultivated. Sugar-canes also grow, from which sugar of the finest quality is made. I ingenuously confess, that apples and pears, and similar fruits, do not grow in the Holy Land, but they are brought from Damascus, though from the heat they cannot be long preserved. But instead of them, they have other fruits which are preserved on the trees throughout the year, for you often at the same time see the same tree bearing both blossom and ripe fruit. From these the inhabitants make various preserves, &c., with which they enrich their food, whether of bread, flesh, fish, or other meats. They have also large citrons, from which they make the finest confections. They have also other excellent and wonderful apples, called the apples of paradise, which grow in clusters like grapes, so that frequently a hundred apples may be seen on a single bunch, (simul conglobata.) There are many vines in the Holy Land, and there would be more, if the Saracens were not prohibited from the use of wine. Holding the greater part of Palestine in subjection, they root out the vines wherever they find them. The best vines are grown in the valley of Bethlehem, and in Nehel-Eschol, and also near Sidon, Antaradus, and under Mount Lebanon; and as the inhabitants of Antaradus told me, they collect wine from the same vine three times a-year, that is, they have in one year three gatherings of grapes. For when the vine has brought forth the accustomed clusters in March, the wood which is without fruit is cut off, and then from the stem that is left, new shoots bearing fruit-buds sprout forth, which, being cut off, produce new branches in May that bear late grapes. By this art, the ripe grapes in August require three gatherings. The second, that blossomed in April, are gleaned in September, and the third in October. Hence it is, that in the Holy Land, grapes are sold from the day of John the Baptist to the day of St Martin, (from the 24th of June to the 11th of November.) In that land they have also figs, pomegranates, honey, olive-oil, cucumbers, melons, citrons, and many other fruits. The corn is also very fine, so that I never ate better bread than in Jerusalem. Deer, hares, partridges, wild boars, quails, &c., abound in the Holy Land, and camels are most numerous." (A. D. 1283.) In the fourteenth century, Syria had not lost its title to be reckoned in fact as a goodly land. It was in that age briefly described by Ibn Ol Wardi, in the first words of the geographical extract affixed, in the Leipsic edition, (A.D. 1756), to Abulfeda's Syria, as "an extensive region abounding with all good things, having gardens, paradises, woods, meadows, delicious valleys, varieties of fruits, and abundance of cattle. It then contained thirty fortresses."2 The curses of a broken covenant had not then all fallen with their utmost weight upon the land, nor had the time then come when the fortress should finally cease from Ephraim, and the land be utterly desolate, and the cities desolate without inhabitants, and the houses without man. And reduced as it was from what it had been, yet in population and in produce, far more than a tenth was left; and the time was not come when they who laid the land desolate should go forth out of it, and the wanderers among the nations for many centuries should find at last a home as Jacob's children in Jacob's heritage. The second woe had first to do all its work; and the land of Israel had to be subjected for centuries to Ottoman government and Arab spoliation. Terræ Sanctæ Descriptio. Brocardo. Orbis Novus, pp. 281, 282. 2 Tabula Syriæ, p. 169. CHAPTER VI. PROGRESSIVE DESOLATION OF SYRIA. Before proceeding to the melancholy review of the ruins which now overspread Syria, even as it was for ages overspread with ancient and flourishing cities, towns and villages, and unfolding the record which the judgment-stricken land does bear, and thereby showing their number and their names more fully than any Scriptural or other historical record has borne, it may be worth a moment's pause to glance at a few illustrations of the last stage of a long course of desolation, and to note the difference between what was, when Edrisi, Abulfeda, and Ibn Ol Wardi wrote, and what is, as every modern traveller, in altered terms from theirs, repeats the tale concerning cities that now "rejoice" not, and fortresses that boast no more. 66 From Zebdeni there were continuous gardens even to Damascus." "The plain of Zebdeni," which lies between it and Damascus, "is about three quarters of an hour in breadth, and three hours in length. It is watered by the Barada, one of whose sources is in the midst of it. We followed it from one end to the other. Its cultivable ground is waste till near the village of Beroudj, where I saw plantations of mulberry trees, which seemed to be well taken care of. Half an hour from Beroudj is the village of Zebdeni, and between them the ruined. Khan Benduk." "Zebdeni to Damascus.-The valley of Zebdeni appeared quite uncultivated, though the soil 1 Burckhardt's Syria, p. 3. is good, and it is watered by the Barada and several other streams." "Antioch," five centuries ago," surrounded by huge walls, was a great city, next to Damascus the most delightful city in Syria." "The present town, which is a miserable one, does not occupy more than one-eighth part of the space included in the old walls, which have a fine venerable appearance." 3 Majaf, (which lies more than midway between Emesa and the sea,) is a famous city, with meandering streams, flowing from fountains, from which the gardens are irrigated." "The town of Maszyad, (or, as it is written in the books of the Miri, Meszyadf,) surrounded by a modern wall, is upwards of half an hour (two miles) in circumference, but the houses are in ruins, and there is not a single well-built dwelling in the town, although stone is the only material used. It is, (A. D. 1810,) inhabited by 280 families. The castle, built upon a high and almost perpendicular rock, commands the wild moor in every direction, presenting a gloomy romantic landscape."4 Baalbec was 66 a beautiful city, solidly built, and rich in the choicest luxuries," &c. "The walls of the ancient city may still be traced, and include a larger space than the present town ever occupied, even in its most flourishing state." The ruined town of Baalbec contained, when visited by Burckhardt, about seventy Metaweli families, and twenty-five of catholic Christians. The earth is extremely fertile. "Even so late as twelve years ago," as he relates, "the plain, and a part of the mountain, to the distance of a league and a half round the town, were covered with grape plantations; the op 1 Travels in Syria, by G. Robinson, Esq., 1830. Irby and Mangles, p. 229. 3 Abul. Tab. Syriæ, p. 20. pressions of the governors and their satellites have now entirely destroyed them; and the inhabitants of Baalbec, instead of eating their own grapes, which were renowned for their superior flavour, are obliged to import them from Fursul and Zahle." The progress of desolation did not then cease over the ruins of the city of Baal. In 1830, or twenty years thereafter, Mr Robinson thus writes. On entering Baalbec, "a sad scene of ruin and desolation presented itself on every side, a solitary house or two on each street alone remaining, and even these tenantless, or only temporarily occupied by Arab shepherds and their flocks."2 Kuat, Saramain, and Maarat Mesrin, situated a day's journey south of Aleppo, were three cities worthy to be ranked among the celebrated towns of Syria. Their territory, which lay in the vicinity of that of the ancient Colchis, could still boast, in the fourteenth century, a multitude of olives, figs, and a variety of other trees. Sarmin, situated in a fruitful soil, embraced in its prefecture many villages." We went," says Pococke, "to see several fine ruins of ancient towns and villages, south of Sarmin. In Rany, Magnesia, and Ashy, we saw ruins of villages built of hewn stones." Kuph, (the · only name he mentions which at all resembles Kuat,) is a ruined village of such extent, that it looked like the remains of a large town. Marrah, from being a populous city, was then reduced to a poor little town, and is now a "poor little village." Remarkable as it is for the great number of ancient cisterns and wells hewn in the rock which it still exhibits, Sarmin, no longer the chief city of a rich district, has now sunk into a "village ;" and where the olive, the fig, and other trees, adorned the city and the surrounding region, "a few 1 Burckhardt's Travels, pp. 10, 13, 15. 2 Robinson's Travels, p. 93. 3 Abulfeda, pp. 21, 23, 111, 115 |