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A SILOAM WOMAN, HER INFANT ON HER BACK AND PRODUCE ON HER HEAD

BIBLE LANDS AND PEOPLES—MODERN

BEING A COMPANION VOLUME TO “THE ORIENT IN BIBLE TIMES”

THE PEOPLE
OF PALESTINE

AN ENLARGED EDITION OF

“THE PEASANTRY OF PALESTINE, LIFE,

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE VILLAGE”

BY

ELIHU GRANT

PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE IN HAVERFORD COLLEGE

ILLUSTRATED

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY ELIHU GRANT

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS

PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.

TO THE MEMORY OF

HINCKLEY GILBERT MITCHELL

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

We thought that Palestine had passed into ancient history, but it has been a centre of modern events. No country in the world has a more continuously interesting and profitable story. Its present population is made of sturdy and able people. Three great religions call it Holy Land. It presents to view three distinct types of human society, the desert nomad who dwells in the tented encampment, the peasant villager who reminds us in so many ways of the people of the Bible, and the more foreign looking and mingled folk of the large cities.

We have picked the village life as most suggestive of the quaint customs of the past. It has been gratifying to have those who know this life best, including villagers themselves, praise the accuracy and sympathy of the descriptions.

The volume has not been compiled from books, but drawn from life. An additional chapter seeks to sum present conditions.

Life has changed even in the East but much remained in Palestine, especially under the Turkish régime, that is suggestive of Bible Times. We trust that we have provided here a cross-section of a most interesting period. We hope for even more, that the reader with dramatic imagination may be able to fill the places and figures of the biblical past with life.

E. G.

Haverford, Pa.,

February 24, 1921.

A few words that are pretty well fixed in popular usage, as Beirut, Jaffa, Jerusalem, etc., are not changed in spelling, but for most Arabic words the following alphabet has been used in transliteration:

The use of y final and of ô as aids to pronunciation will be of obvious import. When a foreign word occurs in the book for the first time it is put in italics.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

The PEASANTRY of

PALESTINE

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY. THE COUNTRY OF WESTERN PALESTINE. GENERAL FEATURES

This little book will make no attempt to tell all that could be said of its subject, but we hope that its selection of things to tell will be gratifying to you. Our wish is that not many of its pages may be condemned as dry, but that most of them may have interest and refreshment. If sometime when you are tired you can sit down and be pleased with some of these pages, here or there, you will know a little of how the trudging peasant of the village feels as, going over hill after hill, from each top he gazes off towards the west and sees the evening mists thickening and looking like good, cool mountains in the sea. It is pleasant to see the face of the native light up as he catches sight of the clouds heavy with blessings of moisture. Perhaps fierce sirocco days have followed one another for some time, longer than usual. Such days are usually looked for in trios at least, but often they hold for a longer time. Their peculiarly enervating heat is very trying, and when they have passed one welcomes eagerly an evening that brings the heavy mist. This announces that the succession of hot days is broken and that some days of respite are coming. The welcome moisture blesses the vineyards, the fig orchards, the tomatoes, squashes and melons, and it is sure to bring out ejaculations of blessing from the fervent peasant, praising the Father of all, whose favoring mercy he feels.

Look out on a morning early and you will see the mists[^[1]] scudding, drifting, veiling and dissevering like masses of gauze, like streamers of truant hair. Perhaps some near mountain may be cut off from the little hill half-way down by a moat filled with billowing fog. Soon the sun cuts it and scatters it away and the hot, dry day sets in. The roads and rocks are powdered with lime dust, the somber morning tones on the hills are touched with whitening brightness. Here and there is the dusty gray of an olive-orchard or the bright green of vineyards. Overhead, the brightest blue is set with one yellow gem of fire that creeps up and up until noon, and then the toiling peasantry, who have watched this timepiece of the heavens, sit down in the nearest shade to eat their food and chat. That done, they roll over for the luxury of a nap and forget a hot, dry hour in a healthy doze. The click of the chisel in the quarry ceases, the hoe is cast aside, the driver is lying on his face, fast asleep, while the donkey nibbles and rolls his load-sore back deliciously in the dust. The camel sits like a salamander, apparently minding no change of weather. Little birds pant for breath. All is very still and hot.

But work-time comes again before the heat goes, and the workmen half sit up, looking around, perhaps playfully tossing a stick or clod on the head of a lazier comrade. The work-saddles are roped on the backs of the animals. The camel, long habituated to complaining, whether made to kneel or rise again, utters grating gutturals from his long throat. He is the Oriental striker, objecting, vocally, at least, to every new demand upon him. Well waked, the countryside begins to be busy again and work goes on until sundown. As the afternoon slips into the evening you will see traveling peasants hastening to make their villages. The hills are touched with pinks and purples that shade into dark blue. The gray owl calls, the foxes reconnoiter the fields, the village dogs bark, lights straggle out from the settlements. One may hear the song of a watcher in a vineyard or the bang of his musket as he shoots at a dog or fox meddling with the vines. As we hastened one evening through a village two hours distance from our own, the people, sitting about the doors and in the alleys, seemed astonished and urged us to stop overnight, not understanding our preference to travel on in the growing dusk. But we went on, passing possible sites for Ai, then Bethel and Beeroth, and so to our own Râm Allâh. The way was precarious and stony, with only the starlight to help us, and the evening was chilly.

We might call Palestine, even the western part of it, which is more familiar to us, a world in little, so much has been packed into this little space between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Sometimes it has been a kingdom and sometimes kingdoms. As a province or provinces it has acknowledged masters on the south, east, north and west.

Far back in time the country was the range of numerous unruly tribes. To-day it contains several districts within the Asiatic holdings of the Turkish Empire. As one looks inland from the Mediterranean on the Judean country, first comes the straight unindented coast line of sand, then a fertile strip of land parallel to it in which the orange and the grains flourish. Next comes the secondary ridge of Judean hills; then its primary ridge of mountains. These latter are thirty-five miles from the sea and three fifths of a mile above its level. Now, as we stand on the mountain range, we have only twenty miles between us and the country of the Dead Sea, but a rapid fall in levels which, in so short a distance, makes the sand-hills seem to drop down and away from us in a precipitous stairway to one of the lowest spots on earth, the basin in which the Jordan River and the Dead Sea lie, the so-called Ghôr. This depression is a quarter of a mile below sea-level and hence three quarters of a mile below the high country in the neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Western Palestine is a limestone country that is, geologically speaking, new. Faulting, erosion and earthquake as well have been hard at work in comparatively recent geological times to make a most diversified surface in a land of short distances. Its rocks are peppered with nodules of flint. The weather wear on the country rocks of some districts allows the flint nodules to drop out, thus leaving a peculiar worm-eaten look in the stones and cliffs. In other localities the cherty material runs in ribbon-like bands within the limestone. The lime rock is often beautified by geode-like recesses of lime crystal, and the slabs of lamellar stone so much used for flooring, window-seats and roofing are frequently penciled with exquisite dendritic markings. Often the face of cleavage between blocks of building material is glazed with a native pink. There are a few houses in the villages whose external walls are constructed of regular blocks so arranged as to alternate in a manner resembling checkerwork of pink and white squares.

One thought that may occur to an American or European as he looks at the numerous hills and mountains up and down the middle and back of Western Palestine is that never before has he had such a fine opportunity to see the shapes of hills and valleys. For at home he seldom sees the whole, real shape of a hill or a mountain, so covered is it with trees or smaller growth. But here there is very little clothing on the hills. Their knobs and shoulders, cliffs and ribs, are almost as naked of trees as the blue skies above them. The rock layers stand out at the worn edges very plainly. Some hills are banded round and round horizontally with successive layers of rock. Others are made up of layers slightly inclined, and some look like giant clam-shells set down on the land. In yet other hills the twistings and heavings have given the sedimentary layers a vertical position up and down over the mountains, as if they had been tipped over. These bands of rock are usually of limestone interspersed with chunks of chert. Ordinarily the tops of the hills assume a long, sloping, rounded shape because of the soft nature of the rock and the wearing power of the deluging rains.

All around the highland country of Western Palestine are mellow plains and fertile valleys. Up and down the western border between the highlands and the Mediterranean is the Maritime Plain, from eight to fifteen miles wide. Along the eastern edge is the great depression of the Ghôr, the low fertile basin that separates Western from Eastern Palestine and provides a bed for the plunging current of the Jordan and a sink for the Dead Sea. These two fertile strips are barely connected toward the north by an arm of the Ghôr, formerly called the Valley of Jezreel, that reaches to the site of ancient Jezreel, and a succession of plains formerly called the Plain of Esdraelon, that touch the Maritime Plain around the nose of Carmel. The highland country is pierced by many a cut called, in the language of the country, wâd, or wâdy, the equivalent ordinarily of our valley, though the climate of Palestine is such as to make it almost always the case that a wâdy is a brook in the rainy weather of winter and a dry gully during the rest of the year.[^[2]] Some of these wâdys are of considerable breadth and offer arable lands; others are narrow, deep gorges. Into some of these gorges the débris from the hillsides has tumbled so as to make it impossible to use the valley bed as a road even in dry weather.

Many of the passes mentioned in the literature of Palestine are really highland paths. Valleys must often be avoided as impassable during the winter rains and as stiflingly hot in summer. Invading armies would seldom risk using narrow valleys for their approach, as they would be easily assailable from the hillsides.

The limestone is full of holes and caves varying in size from a pocket to a palace. The caves may be near the surface or far in the secret places of the deep-chested mountains. They make reservoirs for the catching of the rain from the surface and hold it through the long dry season, giving some of it in springs[^[3]] and probably losing floods of it in lower and lower caverns. Sometimes the caves are like small rooms,[^[4]] let into the sides of the cliffs, as at ‛Ayn Fâra in the Wâdy Fâra, a few hours northeast of Jerusalem, where there is a suite of four connecting rooms in the side wall of the valley, thirty feet above the path. In front of the rooms is a narrow ledge overhanging the path, and up through this natural platform is a manhole which offers the one way of access from below. All up and down this wâdy are caves, some having been improved, probably for purposes of hermit dwelling. In Wâdy es-Suwaynîṭ, that is, the valley of Michmash, there are a good many such cliff dwellings[^[5]] which seem to be approachable only by a rope let down from the top of the precipice above. All through the wild gorges of the country one is apt to come upon these caves with signs of use in some previous age by troglodytes and hermits. When possible they are now used as goat-pens, and thus offer unclean but dry quarters to any one caught in a rain. At the cave near Kharayṭûn the entrance is difficult to reach, up in the side of a precipitous mountain. It is a narrow passage leading to a large, high, vaulted room, a sort of natural cathedral, with a large side chamber. Thence one may go through a low, tortuous passage to other smaller rooms as far as most of the adventurous care to go, the natives say to Hebron, but the guide-books, something over five hundred feet. About Jeba‛, east of er-Râm, the ground sounds hollow under foot because of caves to which one may descend, in some cases by cut stairs, to find that the caves have been enlarged and cemented. About two thirds of the way from el-Bîreh to Baytîn, on the left of the path, is a cave which has been made to do service as a catch-basin for the water from the spring above. The mouth of the spring has been enlarged artificially and connected by a rock-cut channel with the cave. This channel has little grooves branching from it and there seem to be here the conveniences of an ancient laundering or fulling place. In the cave are two supporting columns cut from the rock. The interior is well adorned to-day with a pretty growth of delicate maidenhair ferns.

There are many caves in the hillsides of what is called the Samson Country,[^[6]] through which the railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem passes. In and about Jerusalem are caves the discussion of which does not belong here, though they can hardly have failed, in their long association with the history of that city, of having much significant connection with the political and religious history of the people of the country. Such are the caves about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the little one under the great rock beneath the Dome of the Rock, the artificially enlarged caves on the south side of the Valley of Hinnom, the huge cave of Jeremiah, north of the city, under the hill where the Moslems have a cemetery, not to mention its counterpart across the road and under the city, called Solomon’s Quarry or the Cotton Grotto.

Near the village of Ḳubâb, but nearer the tiny village of Abu Shûsheh, is a large cave now used as a sheep and goat pen. It is called by the neighboring Moslems Noah’s Cave. The top of it has evidently at some time fallen in, thus diminishing its size, but giving it an immense mouth, quite conspicuous all about the neighboring country to the north. The peasantry, in their double desire to account for it and also to say something against the Jews, tell this story about the cave. They say that Noah was making war against the Jews who, being hard pressed, ran into this cave for shelter. Thereupon Noah brought up his heavy guns and bombarded the cave with such effect as to crush in the top, which fell on the Jews, killing them all.

In connection with caves the peasants tell certain stories of hyenas. To the peasant any story that has to do with these creatures is gruesome. The hyena, they say, will accost a lone pedestrian, rub up against him and cast a spell over him until, in a dazed way, the man follows the animal to its cave, where the hyena will despatch him. The tale is continued to describe how the hyena is captured. They say that a man strips himself naked and crawls into the cave of the hyena, carrying one end of a rope which is held by his companions outside. Once inside, his condition deceives the hyena, as does also a cajoling tone which he uses until the creature, quite unsuspecting, begins to fawn and roll over. The man at once secures a leg of the hyena with his rope, whereupon the men outside draw out the beast and kill it with their clubs.

New graves are usually loaded with heavy stones and watched at night to prevent the hyenas from exhuming the dead bodies.

As the rock of the country is of a quickly dissolving kind, the torrential force of the winter rains greatly facilitates soil-making. The ground is strewn with loose stones, in some places so thickly that the soil cannot be seen a few rods away. Soil is carried rapidly about, so that where there are no terraces or pockets to catch it the shelving rock is soon denuded and the only deep earth is found in the valleys or hollow plains.

The Jordan and the ‛Aujâ (Crooked) are the two largest rivers of Palestine; Ḥûleh (Merom), Tiberias (Galilee) and Baḥret Lût (the Dead Sea), its three lakes. There are many streams, brooks and winter ponds that disappear with the rainy season. In a few deep-cut beds, where strong springs supply the brooks, water flows in a current all the year.

The watershed of Western Palestine is considerably nearer to the Jordan than to the Mediterranean, being about thirty-five or forty miles from the Sea, but scarcely more than twenty miles on the average from the river. The valley courses of the streams generally take a southeasterly direction from the watershed to the Jordan basin, and a northwesterly direction towards the Mediterranean Sea. Those on the east are narrower and more precipitous, since they have on that side of the country the shorter distance and the more remarkable fall in levels.

Fertility and population have generally favored the western side of the watershed, with some notable exceptions. This western slope is flanked by the low-lying hills of the Shephelah and comes gradually down to the Maritime Plain. The hills and plain on this side have very great historical interest and have formed the bridge of the civilizations to the north and to the south of Palestine. At the present time, when travel comes by sea from the Western world, this country is a threshold to the shrines and ancient sites of Syria and the East.

The only ponds in the country are the winter ponds called by the native name, balû‛a. These are formed by the winter rains. They stand for about five months in low places, and then disappear until the next rainy season.[^[7]] Robinson, in 1838, passed by one of these on his way from el-Bîreh to Jifnâ. As his journey that way was on June 13, the pond was then dry. But this same pond may now be seen every winter and spring full of water. The new carriage road cuts the eastern end of it at a point a little over a mile north of el-Bîreh. Another of these ponds may be seen just under the village of Baytûnyeh, towards Râm Allâh. Were it not for such short-lived ponds many of the country people would have little idea of any body of water larger than a rainwater cistern. The Dead Sea may be seen from the high hills to the east of these ponds and the Mediterranean from those to the west, but only a small proportion of the peasantry ever get to see either one of them. A distant view gives the unexperienced no adequate notion of their size. People living in Jaffa, on the sea, have been known to poke fun at the upland folk and bewilder them with yarns about the sea. One story that they impose on the credulous countryman is that every night, at dark, a cover is put over the sea, as one would cover over a jar of water, or a bowl of dough. One man, on reaching Jaffa late in the afternoon for his first visit, hastened down to the beach in order to see the water before the cover should be put on for the night. Perhaps the best known winter ponds are in the extensive sunken meadows of the Plain of Esdraelon, athwart the way from Jenîn to Nazareth.

The springs of Palestine are its eyes, as the Arabs put it, and when they are sparkling with life the whole face of the country lights up with a wholesome expression.[^[8]] In places where the springs are remote from the present settlements, and now used only for the flocks or by travelers, there are often to be seen remains of former buildings. Sometimes villas or even villages may be traced; old aqueducts also, and ruined reservoirs, showing how great pains were once taken to utilize the water supply. At ‛Ayn Fâra is a copious supply of water forming one of the few perennial brooks. In its deeper pools the herdsmen water and wash their flocks.[^[9]] There is a very feeble attempt at gardening in the vicinity, but for the most part the precious treasure flows away unused. The valley sides show ancient masonry belonging to more thrifty times. On the hill ‛Aṭâra, a mile south of el-Bîreh, are ruined reservoirs to which the waters of the spring now called ‛Ayn en-Nuṣbeh were carried by stone conduits, of which only small pieces remain. So may similar indications be seen at ‛Ayn Ṣôba, at ‛Ayn Jeriyût, ‛Ayn Kefrîyeh, all of which are west of Râm Allâh. Present-day villages are often a considerable distance from the spring on which they depend for drinking water. Many large places are provided with but one spring. Nazareth and Jerusalem are thus limited to one good spring each. Around the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are warm, even hot, springs once much prized as watering-places. They are generally sulphurous in character. Those at Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, are used now as baths.

RIVER AUJA NORTH OF JAFFA

Of wells Palestine has but few. Some of those mentioned in the Bible still remain, though not all are in use.[^[10]] It comes more naturally to the mind of an Oriental to devote the labor and expense that it would take to dig a well to the construction of something in which to catch a portion of the rainfall. It is quite essential to the prosperity of Palestine that its water resources be husbanded through the long dry season.[^[11]] As has been suggested, there is plenty of evidence that formerly this was done in a very painstaking manner, but at the present time far less care is given to this very important matter. Numerous cisterns and reservoirs were made to catch rain-water and the overflow of the fountains. The large number of these ancient devices for saving water, in contrast with the few made and used in these days, offers one basis for a comparison of the condition of the country in old and new Palestine. Rain-water was caught in cemented pits not very unlike huge pear-shaped bottles. Such water was used for all household purposes where spring water failed; also for watering the animals. It was drawn up as from a well. Occasionally these old cemented cisterns are still in use. But all through the country there are vast numbers of them that are no longer used. All about Jerusalem, especially north of the city, among the olives, they may be seen; also about the district of Râm Allâh, at Teḳû‛a and at Jânyeh.

The overflow of springs was provided for by more pretentious structures,—the great rectangular box pools built of solid masonry. The most noteworthy of these reservoirs are the so-called Pools of Solomon, three in number, south of Bethlehem, by the road that leads to Hebron. These three immense reservoirs, each of which, when full, would float a battleship, have a combined capacity of over forty million gallons. Formerly stone aqueducts conveyed the waters to Jerusalem. Remains of these are still to be seen. The water is conveyed now through iron pipes, fully eight miles, to the city. Jerusalem itself has the famous Pool of Siloam,[^[12]] the Sultan’s Pool and the Pool of Mâmilla. The last one mentioned feeds a large reservoir within the city walls, sometimes called the Patriarch’s Pool and sometimes Hezekiah’s Pool.[^[13]] At Bethel (Baytîn) the spring is surrounded by an old reservoir larger than the Pool of Mâmilla. It is now dry and its bottom is used as a threshing-floor. And so all about the country are found the remains of costly works designed for the saving and proper use of the water supply. With such means of irrigation the productiveness of the country must have been much greater than at the present day.

Sometimes, in speaking of the seasons in Palestine, we say summer and winter,[^[14]] and sometimes we mention the four seasons. Perhaps if we should say wet season and dry season it would be less misleading, but even then one would have to bear in mind that the wet season is not a time of general downpour but simply the season in which the rains of the year come.

The wet season, or winter,[^[15]] as it is more generally called, ought to provide, for the welfare of the country, from twenty-five to thirty inches of rainfall in the highlands. Sometimes it is as low as sixteen inches, and it occasionally exceeds thirty-five or even forty inches. Roughly speaking, the wet season claims the five months, November to March. In a very wet winter, perhaps, the rains will reach over a period of nearly six months, but, on the other hand, the rainy period may shrink to four. The most frequent and heavy falls of rain in an ordinary season are looked for near the beginning and at the close of the wet season. Many pleasant days,[^[16]] and even some entire weeks of rainless weather, may be expected during this wet season. Now and then there may be a winter during which the water will be glazed over in the puddles a few times, or there may be several falls of snow.[^[17]] Driving, raw, chilling rains and winds may prevail for a week at a time, or longer, and be less easy to bear than the stronger cold of a more northerly climate.[^[18]]

The dry season is more in keeping with its name throughout its control of nearly seven months, although rain in May has been experienced and a slip in one of the summer months is not unknown. At the end of September or at the beginning of October a slight shower is expected. One scarcely expects rain, however, until well into November. Despite the very hot days in the dry summer season, the nights in the Palestine highlands are generally cool. The Syrian sun is a synonym for piercing, intense heat, and foreigners are more apt to be thoughtless of its power than to overdo caution. During the midsummer months it is hard to take photographs except very early or very late, or with very slow-acting lenses and plates. Then, too, the poorest light for distant views may be in summer, when the intense heat fills the air with a haze. Those who have seen the dead, brown look that comes on a district of country which has suffered an unusual period of drought may partly imagine the appearance of Palestine after a six months’ absence of rain unrelieved except for the night-mists that may prevail during some of that time.

After the drought the peasant, like the country, is pantingly ready for the first rains of the autumn. He never hesitates to choose between rain and sunshine. It is always the former. Even if rain comes in destructive abundance he has only to think of the terrors of a scanty rainfall to repress all complaints. As we say in a complimentary way to a guest, “You have brought pleasant weather,” so the Syrian will say, “Your foot is green,” that is, “Your coming is accompanied by the benedictions of rain.” Rains usually begin with an appearance of reluctance,[^[19]] but sometime in November or December they ought to come down heavily for most of a fortnight. Sometimes there are several weeks of delightfully balmy weather between the drenching rains. During an unusually dry winter, when the rainfall is below twenty inches, much of the winter will be pleasant, at the expense of the crops and of the general welfare. At such times the price of wheat goes up and the scantily supplied cisterns give no promise of holding out through the succeeding summer. Springs dry down until the best of them offer but a tiny stream, and hours must be spent at some of the fountains to fill a few jars. Much of January is apt to be rainy. February is strange and fickle, and because it is especially trying to the vital forces of the aged and weak is called Old Woman’s Month. We remember a very pleasant February, but such are rare. Honest March is pretty much its boisterous self even in Palestine. April is sunny and a charming month for a journey. If the latter rains have been delayed they may come even in April, though that is late. But the needed rain has been known to come as late as middle May, with unusually cold weather. Then the peasants deemed such weather portentous.[^[20]] The latter rains—how familiar a phrase to the ears of many who may not know just why they are so called![^[21]] The downpour of November or December washed out the ground, made the heat flee, brought back health to the succulent plants, hastened the ripening of the oranges and did pretty well for the cisterns, but this latter rain is the key of the situation. If it does not come, wheat may sell at famine prices and all the pains of a drought take hold of the land.[^[22]] But if it only will come, then wealth and comfort and a healthy summer.[^[23]]

Harvest begins in the springtime. May brings the yellow heads on the grain, and it must be gathered or soon the summer will be ended and the harvest past.[^[24]] The grain on the hills is a few weeks later than that in the valleys and plains. A little donkey coming in from the hill terraces with a back-load of sheaves looks very porcupiny. The reaper grasps the stalks of wheat or barley with one hand and cuts a long straw with the sickle in the other hand. If he is hungry he starts a little fire and holds some of the wheat heads over it until well parched, and then, rubbing off the husks between his palms, he has a feast of the new corn of the land. Thus treated, new wheat is called frîky (rubbed).

During the time of ripening wheat one may see in the fields, close to the ground, the heavy green leaves and yellow, shiny apples of the mandrake.[^[25]] The natives say that if one eats the seeds of the fruit they will make him crazy. The pulp has a pleasant, sweetish flavor and an agreeable smell.[^[26]]

The only dreadful wind in Palestine is the east wind,[^[27]] because it blows from the inland desert and brings excessive heat. The Arabic word for east is sherḳ, and so for east wind the Arab says Sherḳ-îyeh. From this we get, by corruption, our word sirocco (or sherokkoh), which has come to mean simply a hot, enervating blast from any direction. To the Arab it is that wearing east wind whose coming can be felt in the early morning before a breath of air seems stirring. There is a certain chemical effect on the nervous system of those who are particularly sensitive to the blighting touch of the Sherḳîyeh. Sometimes this wind goes away suddenly after a short day, but almost always its coming means that it will run three days at least, and often more. There is a similar wind in Egypt known to residents of Cairo as the Khumsûn (fifty), from the likelihood that it will remain fifty days. Such an unbroken period of hot winds must be exceedingly rare in Palestine, though in the early autumn of 1902 there was an almost continuous Sherḳîyeh for five weeks. The east wind of winter is usually as disagreeably cold as its relative in summer is hot and suffocating. The only good thing that I ever knew the summer sirocco to do was to cure quickly the raisin grapes spread on the ground in September.

The west wind prevails a generous share of the time and brings mists and coolness from the sea during the summer. In the rainy season a northwest wind brings rain.[^[28]] The showers are often presaged by high winds from the west and north.

September, with its trying siroccos, is often hotter than May. The pomegranates ripen in this month. In the country districts it is very hard to get goats’ milk from this time onward for several months. The flocks are too far distant, having been driven away to find pasture and water, and a little later on the milk is all needed for the young. During these days, too, it is not thought good to weaken the goats by milking them any more than is quite necessary. In the cities milk is always to be had.

The Greek Feast of the Cross, about the end of September, is looked forward to as marking the date for an early shower which may be sufficiently strong to cleanse the roofs. After that the rain may come in a month, or it may wait two. The people notice a period of general unhealthiness just preceding the autumn rains. Their advent usually puts an end to it, bringing healthier conditions. Sometime along in the autumn there is often noticed a warm spell of weather which the natives call Ṣayf Ṣaghîr, or Ṣayf Rummân, that is, Little Summer, or Pomegranate Summer.

The cement in the paved roofs cracks under the fierce heat of summer and the early showers help to discover the bad places which must be patched before the heavy winter rains. In the case of earth-covered roofs the first shower ought to be followed by a good rolling, the owners going over and over them with stone rollers rigged with wooden handles that creak out upon the clear air after the rain as they work in the sockets. From the peculiar noise thus made the Râm Allâh people have a local name of zukzâkeh for the wooden handles of these stone rollers. In the northern part of the country the name nâ‛uṣ is given to the roller handles for a similar reason. The roofs of rolled earth can be kept very tight. The covering of such roofs is made by mixing sandy soil with clay and with the finest grade of chaff, called mûṣ, from the threshing-floor. On old earth roofs patches of grass[^[29]] grow, and even grain has been seen springing up in such places.

The Syrian peasant divides trees into classes by pairs. There are those that are good to sit under and those that are not. Then there are those that yield food and those that do not. Finally there are those that are holy, and therefore cannot be cut for charcoal or fuel, and those that are not thus tabooed.

The fig-tree is a very useful food producer and is much cultivated. As elsewhere mentioned, the irritating effect of the juices of the broken fig branch or leaf makes it less desirable as a shade tree, but because of its dense shade it must be resorted to in hot weather. The olive-tree gives rather a thin shade. The carob-tree is a fine shade-giver. The pine is a favorite in this respect, though few pines are left. The needly cypress shades only its own central mast. One might as well snuggle up to one’s own shadow for protection as to expect it from a cypress. Pomegranate, lemon and orange-trees, when large enough, afford shade, but they are often in low, miasmatic places. The apple-tree does not do well except in parts of northern Syria, as at Zebedâny, near Damascus. Some fine pear-trees are to be seen above Bîr ez-Zayt, though as a rule they are as difficult to cultivate as apple-trees. At ‛Ayn Sînyâ are flourishing mulberry-trees of great size. The opinion is held that the mulberry and the silk culture usually associated with it would thrive peculiarly well in Palestine. Mount Tabor is thinly studded with trees except on the southeast side. Mount Carmel also has yet some remains of its one-time forest. The oak is found in a number of varieties, but is a great temptation to the charcoal burner, as it affords the most desirable coal. The zinzilakt is a favorite for shade. The best substitute for a shade tree in the land is a large rock, the cool side of which helps one to forget the burning glare of the noon sun.[^[30]]

We shall have to call winter the season of rain, flowers and travel. Rain ushers in the winter and also closes it. To the middle and latter part of that season is due the bursting of the blossoms and a push that sends flowers scattering into the first months of the dry season.[^[31]] Travel might find a better time than much of the winter, but then it is cool and if it rains, why, that is the way of the country, and this explanation often suffices.

DONKEY AT THE THRESHING FLOOR WITH A LOAD OF WHEAT

On the flowers of the country Dr. Post’s book offers a mine of information for those skilled enough in the elements of botany to make use of it. The little booklets of pressed specimens offered for sale, when fresh, give an excellent idea of the variety of wild-flower life in Palestine. Mrs. Hannah Zeller, a daughter of former Bishop Gobat of Jerusalem, and the wife of the late Rev. John Zeller of Nazareth and Jerusalem, has been most successful in reproducing in color many of the flowers of Palestine. Mrs. Zeller’s book of color plates, published some years ago, is now hard to secure. She still has the originals and an even larger collection which awaits a publisher. Until some such publication in color is attempted it will be difficult to describe in writing the unusual splendor and variety of Palestine’s wild flowers.

The flower season really begins in what we should call midautumn with the little lavender-colored crocus called by the natives the serâj el-ghûleh or the lamp of the ghoul. A better name for it would be serâj esh-shugâ‛ which would mean the lamp of courage, as it thrusts its dainty head up through the calcined earth, scarcely waiting for a drop of moisture. After this brave little color-bearer of Flora’s troop there follow the narcissus, heavily sweet, and the cyclamen, clinging with its ample bulb in rocky cracks as well as nestling in moist beds. But of all the flowers the general favorite is the wild anemone, especially in its rarer varieties, white, pink, salmon, blue and purple. The most common is the red anemone, which is seen everywhere and sometimes measures four or five inches across. Near Dayr Dîwân we once rode through an orchard where the ground was covered with a cloud of these red ones, so voluptuous, so prodigally spread in a carpet of crimson beauty that one almost held one’s breath at the charming scene. The red ranunculus, which comes later, is almost as large, but it looks thick and heavy in comparison, and the flaunting red poppy, which comes still later, looks weak and characterless beside the anemone. Even the wild red tulip suffers beside it. The colors of the anemone other than red are more rare, but usually come earlier. About Jaffa they appear shortly after Christmas. White ones and some of delicate shades are found between there and the river ‛Aujâ. White ones abound near Jifnâ, and are found east of Ḳubâb and east of Sejed station. Purple, pink and blue ones are plentiful in Wâdy el-Kelb and the Khullet el-‛Adas near Râm Allâh. The large red ranunculus mentioned is found in large patches between Jericho and the Dead Sea in early February. Considerably later there is an acre-patch east of Dayr Dîwân near the cliff descent towards eṭ-Ṭayyibeh. The red tulip is rarer and follows soon. The red poppy is very abundant. It has the delicacy of crêpe. It is scarcely welcome as it betokens the close of the flower season. But one may for some time yet gather flowers that blaze forth as brilliantly in middle spring as do the autumn flowers in America: the adonis, gorse, flax, mustard, bachelor’s button, anise, vetch, everlasting, wild mignonette and geranium. In the vineyards, about pruning time, the ground is covered with a rich purple glow. The sweet-scented gorse abounds in the valleys towards Ṭayyibeh. The vetches come in many colors, and there are scores of other scarcely noticed little blossoms.

When the season has been especially rainy, as may occur about every fifth or sixth year, the valleys such as ‛Ayn Fâra will be knee-deep with the abundant flowering herbs and weeds. The scented jasmine and the tall waving reeds over the watercourse will add their charm to this favored spot. Later, yellow thistles abound.

One of the oddities of the flower family is the black lily of the calla order, which the natives call calf (leg) of the negro.

In the moist, shady caves, and sometimes in old cisterns, masses of maidenhair fern grow in the cool shelter throughout the year.

On the shores of Tiberias (Galilee) oleanders and blue thistles are seen in May.

In speaking of the wild animals of Palestine one is almost led to include the dog and the cat. They are, however, on the edge of domesticity and may fairly be omitted. Wolves, hyenas, jackals and foxes are the troublesome wild beasts. The last two are often about vineyards seeking to feed on the grapes.[^[32]] The jackal cry at night is very mournful and sure to start up the barking of the dogs, who are themselves often grape thieves.

The beautiful little gazels are started up in the wilderness and go bounding off like thistle-down in a breeze, turning every now and then, however, to look with wonder at the traveler. Once, near eṭ-Ṭayyibeh we saw four together, and once, east of Jeba‛, we saw a herd of nine gazels.

Among the smaller creatures met with are the mole-rat, the big horny-headed lizard, called by the natives ḥirdhôn, the ordinary lizard about the color of the gray-brown rocks among which it speeds, the little green lizard that darts about, and the pallid gecko, climbing on house-walls. The beautiful and odd chameleon must also be mentioned. Snakes are not commonly seen by the traveler. Scorpions, black beetles, mosquitoes, fleas and a diabolical little sand-fly, called by the natives ḥisḥis, are among the less agreeable creatures noticed.

At Haifa, in the house of the Spanish vice-consul, we saw the skin of a crocodile caught in the river Zerḳâ in 1902. They spoke also of one which had been caught fourteen years before in the same waters.

One of the showiest birds of Palestine is the stork, which is mostly white, but has black wings, a red bill and red legs. Its eyes, too, have a border of the latter color. The natives call it abu sa‛d. Flocks of them may be seen frequently. Now and then a solitary bird is seen in a wheat-field. Crows with gray bodies and black wings are plentiful. Ravens, vultures, hawks and sparrows are common. Twice I saw the capture of a sparrow by a hawk. Once, after having started his victim from a flock, the hawk dashed after him and caught him in a small tree but six feet from my head. It was done with such terrific quickness as to surprise the spectator out of all action. Gray owls (bûmeh), partridges (shunnar), wild pigeons (ḥamâm) and quails (furri) are seen. It seemed quite appropriate to see doves on the shores of Galilee. On the surface of the same lake water-fowls were observed. At Jericho we saw the robin redbreast; in the gorge at Mâr Sâbâ, the grackle. Starlings in clouds haunt the wheat-fields in harvest. Meadow-larks, crested, are very common. Goldfinches, bulbuls, thrushes and wagtails are also noticed.

WILD ANEMONES FROM WADY EL-KELB

The scenery of Western Palestine lacks the charm that woods and water provide. Yet one grows to like it. The early and late parts of the day are best for the most pleasing effects. Then the views out across the vineyards and off on the hills are very restful. The rolling coast plain backed by the distant hills of the Judean highlands makes a pleasing prospect, especially when decked with the herbage that follows the rains. Quiet tastes are satisfied with such pastoral scenes as those in the valley at Lubban or in the plain of Makhna. Excellent distant views are afforded from the hills near Nazareth, from which are seen the rich plains of Esdraelon, Haifa, Mount Carmel and the Mediterranean. The Sea of Galilee is delightfully satisfying. From Tabor one gets a glorious sight of Hermon, snow-white, whence the natives call it Jebel esh-Shaykh (Old Man Mountain). The views from Mount Carmel of sea and coast-line and much of the interior, the glimpse of the Mediterranean from the hill of Samaria and the sweeping prospect from Gerizim are all good. An easily attained and little known view-point is Jebel Ṭawîl (Long Mountain) east of el-Bîreh. From here of a late afternoon the country lies open in sharp, clear lines throughout the central region. Jerusalem is seen lying due south in beautiful silhouette; the Mount of Olives is a little east of it. The Dead Sea is southeast, eṭ-Ṭayyibeh north of east, Bethel (Baytîn) northeast, Gibeon southwest, near which is Neby Samwîl. Near at hand, to the south, are el-Bîreh and Râm Allâh. Only one thing is lacking in this view; that is the Mediterranean Sea. But this can be seen, as well as Jaffa, Ramleh and Ludd from Râm Allâh. The mountain east of the Jordan is plainly visible from all the high points up and down the middle of the country. Other good view-points are Neby Samwîl, Jeba‛, Mukhmâs, the hills about Jerusalem, especially from the tower on the Mount of Olives and from Herodium. Heroic scenery may be found in the so-called Samson Country through which the railroad from Jaffa to Jerusalem runs, in the Mukhmâs Valley, the Wâdy Ḳelt and gorges around Mâr Sâbâ. Crag, ravine, precipice and cave make such places memorable.

The approach to cities and villages is as characteristic as any other aspect of them. There is a look from afar peculiar to the settlements of different countries. As seen from a distance American settlements are chiefly noticeable for the chimneys, the sharp spires of churches, the long, monotonous lines of factory buildings and mills and often the pointed shape of house roofs. Add to these enormous bridges, miles of railroad yards and cars, a nimbus of smoke and you have the elements from which to make a view of any good-sized town. For the smaller, sweeter, country places you must subtract some of the above features and substitute some woodsy and meadowy effects. In Syria the contrasts with our more familiar scenes are plain to us in the distant view of its cities and villages. Instead of the triangular shape is the square look of the buildings. Instead of chimneys and spires are the huge domes resting on square substructures, and the pencil-like minarets rising up among them. The distant view of Jerusalem is one of the most pleasing in the entire country. It has been one of the standard charms of Palestine, delighting warrior, poet and pilgrim, and more lately student, missionary and tourist. There she sits with her feet in deep valleys, her royal waist girdled with the crenelated wall and her head crowned with the altar sites of ancient time. There are about her the things that charm the poetic sense,—age, chivalry, religion. Not even eternal Rome can be so rich in these and so equally possessed of them all.

Though it is not always the case, yet the greater number of Syrian cities and villages seek hilly sites.[^[33]] The ports cannot always do this, though Jaffa does. Damascus spreads out over a low flat area. Ramleh and Ludd, being plain dwellers, must live in lowlands. But defense is very commonly sought by settling on the sides or top of a hill and building the houses close together, if not one above another, as if in steps.

Garden plots and vineyards are fenced in with hastily-constructed walls of the loose stone picked up on the inside.[^[34]] Between these curving walls run sinuous lanes[^[35]] into the villages from the paths and roads outside.

It would be very easy to make a pocket-edition of a book of all the roads in the country, no matter how small the pocket. Some roads are planned for, taxed for and looked for a great many years before the semblance of road-making begins. But never mind that; Orientals enjoy a road in prospect and in retrospect much longer than in fact. Where the government does put through a road it is usually good traveling. The highlands afford the best of road-making materials and, if often enough repaired, no better roads could be asked for. Many carriageways are over favoring bits of country where the frequent passing has marked out the only road. The Romans were the greatest road-makers in Palestine. The remains of their work may even now be seen in various places. Many of their old roads are indicated on the best maps. Roman roads at this day of decay do not, as a rule, offer easy travel. The washings of a millennium or two of rain have made them of the corduroy order.

Of paths one may make as many as one pleases in a country where no barbed wire and few walls prevent. The permanency of the old well-worn paths[^[36]] is very noticeable, the best one always leading to a village or to a spring. There is such a thing as the tyranny of the path. It is very evident where railroads rule, and even in a country where the travel must be on the backs of animals, the little bridle-paths impose on one and, taking advantage of the inertia of human mentality, mark out one’s way with arbitrary exclusiveness. When one’s time is limited to just a sufficient number of days to allow one to see all the more notable places in the country, it is scarcely to be expected that one will sacrifice the surety of seeing a noted place for the chance of stumbling on a place of less popular interest. The paths and time required for seeing most places are almost as clearly indicated as any schedule of trips in countries possessed of time-tables. This accounts for the fact that, although thousands of travelers pass over the beaten paths, and scores of students go over the rarer paths, not one in the twenty or the thousand is likely to get off the paths.

One of the bits of country thus scantily known to foreigners is northern Judea, especially to the northwest of Jerusalem. Most travelers passing through it on the way to Jerusalem are in haste to reach the city, and once there, the fact that any place is a few hours farther distant than a day’s trip would allow forbids easy investigation.

One does not have to go far to reach the wilderness.[^[37]] It is any uncultivated place. It is the pasture for flocks,[^[38]] the wild of rocks and short, thorny bushes. The thorns[^[39]] are gathered every other year to build fires in the lime-kilns, where the abundant lime-rock of the country is burned. When the men gather them for the lime-kilns the thorns are piled in great heaps with heavy stones on them to hold them down. When needed the heap is pierced with a long pole and carried over the shoulder as on a huge pitchfork. During the late winter and in spring only may one see green fields in anything like a Western sense. The Plain of el-Makhna presents a very lovely prospect from the height above it. Something like a small prairie effect is had in the Maritime and Esdraelon plains. Pasture privilege is commonly had anywhere if the land be not under actual cultivation. In the uplands the custom of leaving great tracts idle in alternate years[^[40]] in lieu of dressing the ground permits wide pasturage. As the dry season advances the herdsmen seek the deep valleys with their flocks. There is little opportunity for new trees or shrubs to survive this universal browsing. So it comes about that, except where orchards are set out or scraps of ancient woods remain, trees are seldom seen.

A VINEYARD AT RÂM ALLÂH

Summer is the time of fierce heat, and yet through it all the grape-vines keep green and the luscious clusters grow larger and ripen under their heavy armor-plate of leaves. The peasants enjoy the tart taste of green fruit. Half-grown grapes are sometimes eaten with salt on them. Green almonds are eaten in the same way. Often it is hard to get ripe peaches, melons and other fruits because of the tendency of the peasants to pick them before they are ripe. But the time of the ripe grapes is the glad time of the year. Instead of saying “August” the peasants often use the expression “In grapes.” It is a season by itself to them. The vineyard owners build summer booths among the vines and sleep there through the season. In large vineyards it is common to employ a black man, perhaps a Moroccan, as a watcher. The Syrian peasant stands in peculiar awe of the black stranger. The watchers are provided with shotguns, for foxes and dogs like to eat grapes. All fruit must be guarded against thievishly disposed neighbors. One who knows his vineyard watches the progress of the choicest clusters, having covered some of them early to keep them from drying and to allow them to develop unplucked. Should any grapes be stolen he quickly notices the loss. He sets a thin row of fine stones along the top of his wall in such a way that a night marauder must necessarily rattle them down and thus awaken him. One of the heartless bits of meanness that a hostile peasant can perpetrate in order to pay a grudge is to cut the vine stocks of his enemy’s vineyard. Since it takes three years for a new vineyard to bear, such an act is a serious damage.

The finest grapes within reach of Jerusalem are those from Hebron and Râm Allâh. Large white clusters similar to the Malaga grapes are the favorites, though purple grapes are also grown. At Râm Allâh the vines lie flat on the ground. The vine is pruned back to leave three joints on every small branch that is spared in the rigorous treatment.[^[41]] At Jifnâ the vines may be seen trained on stakes. At Zaḥleh, in the Lebanon, the growers have a way of propping up the main vine a few inches above the ground, so that a vineyard has the look of waves of green. In Jerusalem some of the grapes at the Greek Hospital and at the White Fathers’ near St. Stephen’s Gate are raised on arbors, and the clusters are covered with little bags. Thus protected the grapes ripen slowly and are enjoyed until late in the season. Vast quantities of fresh grapes are consumed as an article of daily food during August, September and October. The price, when cheap, is a cent a pound, and it gradually creeps up to the fancy price of six cents a pound late in the season. Grapes have been provided from the country vineyards as late as the first of December.

Trees need considerable soil, but the grape-vine will thrive with very little and will penetrate with its rootlets all the fissures of the lime-rock for yards about. Then, too, the luscious bunches lying on a pebbled ground do better than those on clear soil. Most of the grass and wild, weedy growth of the country is bulbous and clings in scanty soil, gathering as in a reservoir all the available moisture.

When the crop demands clear ground the native farmer piles the stones into walls, watch-towers or a huge heap in a less fertile spot of the field.[^[42]] It is often a problem to find room for the waste stones. They may be tossed out into the roads and paths. A stranger says, “I don’t see why these people don’t clear these paths of stone; surely it would pay.” But the farmers prefer stones in the paths to stones in the garden patch. With their bare feet, or on their donkeys, they are able by a lifetime of practise to pick their way over such paths. Moreover, peasants are not nervous in Palestine. Stones always furnish a handy weapon,[^[43]] or a reminder on the heels of a slow donkey. In going about through the country one often sees piles of little stones set up one on another. Sometimes these little piles are meant for scarecrows; sometimes they are used to mark a boundary; but there is a wider and more constant use for such loosely built little columns. They are set up in sight of holy spots. Apparently they are not only set up in the vicinity of shrines, wilys, etc., but also in places whence a distant view may be had of some holy place, as Jerusalem, which the natives call “el-Ḳuds esh-Sharîf” (The Noble Holy) or, for short, el-Ḳuds, which is practically equivalent to our expression “The Holy City.”[^[44]] These little columnar piles may also be met in sight of the hill or mount called Neby Samwîl, which we usually identify with the Mizpeh of Samuel.[^[45]]

RÂM ALLÂH MAN AND A BASKET OF OLIVES

STRETCH OF OLIVE TREES ON ROAD TO AYN SÎNYÂ

The terrace is a thing of great utility to the hill farmer of Palestine. To the traveler it is a thing of beauty as it climbs the hills with its artistically irregular breaks in what would be otherwise a rather monotonous slope. But with terraces and some water the earth is caught and filled with many possibilities of fruit and vegetables. A hill well terraced and well watered looks like a hanging garden. Much of the farming in Judea is on the sides of hills. The little iron-shod wooden plow is run scratching along the terraces. Sometimes one of the oxen will be on a lower level than the other. To go forward without slipping down the hillside is not easy. What cannot be plowed is dug up with the pickax, and wheat or barley will find lodgment in every pocket of soil. As all the reaping is done by hand it offers no especial difficulty, and the monotony of which some people complain on prairie land is never experienced on such a pitched-roof farm. Even where the made terrace is allowed to decay there are many natural terraces where the horizontal layers outcrop from the hillsides. Were the country well kept up, all these terraces would be guarded artificially, for in time a natural terrace loses its protecting edge and the soil and rain come down cascading over the hill stairs until the bed of the stream is reached.

Of food trees the olive is probably the most valuable. It takes ten or fifteen years to bring it to the state of bearing much fruit, but it may go on bearing heavy crops for a century. The oil is freely used in cooking, for salads, for lighting and for anointing. A hard-pressed peasant will occasionally yield to the temptation to cut down some of his olive-trees, selling the finest pieces of wood to the makers of the olive-wood articles[^[46]] which are prized by tourists, and disposing of the rest as fire-wood.[^[47]] A hundredweight of such fire-wood sells for from twelve to twenty-five cents, according to the season and the market, the city price being considerably higher than the country price. A good olive-orchard is a sure source of income, unless the taxes are too harshly and arbitrarily imposed. The cutting them down is a real calamity to the country, but it is done only too frequently in a poor year to avoid taxes. The trunk of an aged olive-tree attains a great girth and a gnarled, knobby look. Sometimes a large part of one of these huge trunks will be quite hollowed out by decay, in which case the peasants often fill up the cavities with a core of stones. The tree goes on bearing with chief dependence on the state of the bark for its healthy condition. The heavy crops and light crops follow each other in somewhat the same relation as the apple crops in our New England country. Women and children gather up those olive berries that fall to the ground early in the season. Whenever it is desired to gather the crop of a tree or orchard the men beat the branches with very long light poles and the women and the children pick up the fallen fruit from the ground. Of course this is a poor way to gather the best olives, but inasmuch as the chief use of the olive in Palestine is to express the oil, it makes less difference. The berries do not ordinarily grow to the larger sizes so often seen in our markets. Perhaps one of the very handsomest stretches of olive-orchards in the East is at what is called the Ṣaḥrâ, near Beirut, between that city and Shwayfât. Other smaller but excellent orchards are to be seen between Bethlehem and Bayt Jâlâ, at Mâr Elyâs, Bîr ez-Zayt and to the south of eṭ-Ṭayyibeh.

The fig in Judea ripens in August and its fruit may be had for several months, as new fruit keeps maturing. There are several varieties of this valuable tree. A few ripe figs are often found as early as June and are luxuries.[^[48]] The natives sometimes hasten the ripening of a few early figs by touching the ends with honey. The natives declare that the fig-tree will not thrive near houses but will become wormy. The action of the milk of fig branches and leaves on the tissues of the eyes, lips and mouth is very disagreeable, sometimes making them very sore. The eyes of children in the fig season are often very repulsive. For this reason the people prefer other shade, if obtainable, than that of fig-trees. Most fig-trees are small, about the size of an ordinary plum-tree, but the large green varieties may grow to a considerable size. When small fig-trees have sent up two pliable trunk-shoots these are usually twisted together to strengthen each other. They look like a suggestion of that ugly taste in architecture that delighted in twisted columns. The appearance of the branches of a leafless fig-tree is not unlike that of the horse-chestnut in winter time. Large quantities of the black figs and some of the white figs are dried in the orchards, being spread out on the ground under the strong sun-rays.

The pomegranate-tree looks more like an unkempt shrub. The beautiful red bell-like blossoms are very attractive. Lemons and oranges grown for profit are often small trees. The sour marmalade orange grows into a larger, statelier tree.

At Urṭâs, near Solomon’s Pools, the largest and most beautifully colored apricots grow. Peaches, plums, quinces and almonds are plentiful, and the cherry, mulberry and walnut thrive.

Concerning trees about the shrines and wilys and all the so-called sacred trees there will be a more appropriate place to speak later on.

In a land where fruit grows and flourishes one may have far less fruit than in some fruitless city in a colder climate but favored with ample facilities for transportation. Right here within a few miles of the finest orange groves in the land, near the vineyards, under the olive and fig-trees, with peaches, pomegranates, apricots and plums, we probably find shorter seasons for each than is the case in some Anglo-Saxon city of the middle temperatures. Here fruit will be much cheaper while it lasts, and some fruits, which must be found near the trees, if enjoyed at all, such as the fig, will be available nowhere else as here. The peach, plum, orange, apricot and grape go to the London, Liverpool, New York, Chicago and Boston markets from the place producing the earliest crops, and the trains and steamships continue bringing from various markets as the season shifts from one garden spot to another. But right here, under this particular orange-tree or by this grape-vine, we usually wait for the ripening of the local crop, knowing that lack of carrying facilities forbids us eating from a tree that yields earlier fruit some hundred miles away, or from a tree that yields when our tree is bare. And so while people who never saw an orange-tree may buy oranges ten months in the year, we who have an orange-tree in sight may have to be content with the orange season of our district. But they will be cheap while they last. Fifty cents is a very ordinary price for a hundred of the best oranges, and one dollar a hundred is pretty dear.

The large raised map of Palestine in fibrous plaster, over seven feet by four, published by the Palestine Exploration Fund, London, and the smaller one help in the study of the physical features of the country.

An excellent small Relief Map of Palestine is edited by Ernest D. Burton and published by the Atlas Relief Map Co., Chicago.

READING LIST

• Wilson, C. T.: “Peasant Life in the Holy Land.” (Dutton.)
• Van Lennep: “Bible Lands.”[Lands.”] (Harper, 1875.)
• Smith, G. A.: “Historical Geography of the Holy Land.”
• Huntington, Ellsworth: “Palestine and Its Transformation.”
• The Annual of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, 1919–20.
• Bell, Gertrude L.: “The Desert and the Sown.”
• See Arts. on Crocodiles in the Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly, 1920 (p. 167), 1921 (p. 19). (Gray and Masterman.)
• Stereoscopic Views of Palestine by Underwood and Underwood, and lantern slides sold by the Palestine Exploration Fund.

(The statement on page 13, line 20, needs change in the light of recent history.)

A BEDAWY HOUSE

BEDAWY DRINKING

[1]. Hosea 13: 3.

[2]. 1 Kings 17: 7; Job 6: 15, 17.

[3]. Psalm 104: 10.

[4]. 1 Kings 18: 4; 19: 9, 13; Judges 6: 2.

[5]. 1 Sam. 13: 5, 6; 14: 11, 22.

[6]. Judges 13–15.

[7]. Isa. 35: 7; 41: 18; 42: 15.

[8]. Cf. Joshua 15: 19.

[9]. Song 4: 2; 6: 6.

[10]. John 4: 6.

[11]. Cf. Eccles. 2: 6.

[12]. John 9: 7.

[13]. 2 Kings 20: 20.

[14]. Gen. 8: 22.

[15]. Song 2: 11.

[16]. 2 Sam. 23: 4.

[17]. 2 Sam. 23: 20.

[18]. Matt. 24: 20; Mark 13: 18.

[19]. Cf. 1 Kings 18: 43–45.

[20]. Cf. Prov. 26: 1.

[21]. Cf. Deut. 11: 14; Job 29: 23; Prov. 16: 15; Jer. 3: 3; 5: 24; Hosea 6: 3; Joel 2: 23; Zech. 10: 1; James 5: 7.

[22]. Amos 4: 7.

[23]. Cf. Psalm 65: 9–13.

[24]. Jer. 8: 20.

[25]. Gen. 30: 14.

[26]. Song 7: 13.

[27]. Jer. 18: 17; Ezek. 17: 10; 19: 12; Hosea 13: 15; Jonah 4: 8.

[28]. Prov. 25: 23.

[29]. Psalm 129: 6.

[30]. Isa. 32: 2.

[31]. Song 2: 12.

[32]. Song 2: 15.

[33]. Matt. 5: 14.

[34]. Isa. 5: 2.

[35]. Num. 22: 24.

[36]. Jer. 6: 16.

[37]. Psalm 107: 4–7.

[38]. Ezek. 34: 14.

[39]. Isa. 33: 12.

[40]. Jer. 4: 3; Hosea 10: 12.

[41]. Cf. John 15.

[42]. Isa. 5: 2.

[43]. 1 Sam. 30: 6; 1 Kings 12: 18; 2 Kings 3: 25; cf. Matt. 23: 37; John 8: 59; 10: 31.

[44]. Cf. Matt. 4: 5; 27: 53.

[45]. 1 Sam. 7: 5.

[46]. 1 Kings 6: 23, 31–33.

[47]. Matt. 7: 19.

[48]. Isa. 28: 4.

CHAPTER II
THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE

The population of Palestine is divided into three parts, desert, village and city. The desert population is the original Arab stock of pastoral nomads.[^[49]] The village population is the agricultural society of the country, and the cities are the meeting places of these two with the population of other countries. The Bedawy population of the desert is the subject of much praise on the part of all writers. All who speak of the Bedawîn use a certain tone of respect, even though occasion is taken to poke fun at them for their rude ways as viewed by the dwellers in towns. The religion of the Bedawîn is a simplified Islâm, or, as it may perhaps be styled, a Moslemized simplicity. The encampment and the march, herding and the raid, mark the features of a roving life over some thousands of square miles of wild land. The different tribes have their general boundaries in the great Syrian and Arabian deserts in about the same way that the North American Indian once kept within certain regions of the continent according to nations.

The cities and villages of Palestine, so far as appearance is concerned, vary in size merely. The houses of a small village are oftentimes just as closely packed as the buildings in a city, so that a village will look like a fragment knocked off a city. With us Westerners a village may have as much land area as some cities, only the dwellings will be far apart, the difference being in comparative density as well as in size. In Palestine the density is about the same and the difference is in the area. This compactness of the village became a fashion in times of insecurity, when feuds between villages led to raids and reprisals. The village was built as solidly as possible on rising ground. In the middle of the core of original houses was the chief’s house, with a lofty roof from which watch could be kept of all the surrounding country and approaches.[^[50]] If you wish to trace the growth of a village, inquire for the burj, and probably you will be directed to the highest spot in the village, at least to the highest house, around which the early village clustered. If this be on top of a hill, as is frequently the case, the growing village creeps down the slopes, the roof of one house being the dooryard of the house above it, until the effect of a pyramidal structure of children’s building-blocks results. In troublesome times a watcher on the burj of the village could warn his fellows working in the outlying fields of the approach of an enemy by the firing of a musket or by a shrill cry. All fled to the nest on the height, and a successful attack was difficult against the heavy stone houses and narrow lanes of the village.

Just as among the cities there are those mostly or altogether Moslem and others mostly or altogether Christian, so with the villages. While the Moslem population greatly outnumbers the Christian, yet there is a very considerable Christian population. Râm Allâh, Bayt Jâlâ, eṭ-Ṭayyibeh and Jifnâ are Christian villages. In Bîr ez-Zayt, ‛Ayn ‛Arîk and ‛Âbûd the Christians exceed the Moslems. In el-Bîreh and Ludd the Christians are comparatively few. A Christian village is known from afar by its more prosperous look, and the Christian quarters of a mixed village are also distinguishable by the same favorable marks.

PEASANTS ON WAY TO MARKET WITH PRODUCE

BEDAWÎN HORSEMAN

Christian villages have powerful ecclesiastical establishments behind them which work energetically to secure rights for their constituents. Church life in the country is political life, and church dignitaries are adepts in politics. The wealth and cleverness of the church are employed to hold fast all traditions and all concessions which favor the Communion and to hinder excessive injustice from overtaking the members. There results a firm bond of union between the native membership and the ecclesiastical establishment. The Communion is a religious nation, as it were.

The Christian native is not subject to army service, as only Moslems are thus eligible. This disability works to the industrial advantage of the Christians, who pay an extra tax or tribute in lieu of service. Centuries of this condition of things have developed the industrial abilities of the Christian population in spite of discriminations against them in the courts and in administration. A kind of religious status is now recognized in the relations between the Moslem and the Christian peasants. The Moslem stands hard by his faith and the Christian of the Greek Orthodox Church will scorn the thought that Christ and the Bible may be for Moslems.

Religious sects in the East remind one of volcanic islands; they are either ablaze with the fierce fires of an eruption or else they are overlaid with the ashes of an extinct fire. Between crazy fanaticism and cold inanition there are no warm impulses of unselfish evangelism.

The Semitic peasant has always been a conservative. In many ways he is to-day much like what the Canaanite occupier of the land must have been. Each wave of conquest or shower of civilization has left its effect, but underneath the Palestine peasant is a primitive Semite. Until within a few score years religion of one sort or another has usually come to him at the point of the sword. He has often adopted the veneer of a new faith in order to escape death. So it was when Joshua and the Hebrew host swept into the land, Bedawy fashion; so when Maccabean, Roman, Moslem, Crusader, and Moslem again took control. The Palestine peasant has worshiped the Baalim, Yahweh, Moloch, the God of Israel, the Son of God, the God of Islâm. All the time he has kept a certain core of Semitic custom and superstition, a sort of basic religion that has been much the same all through these changes. But it is ofttimes impossible to distinguish between a survival of the old and a reversion or degeneration.

The native Christian is a shrewd business man. He is courteous even to self-effacement. He can work hard, bargain shrewdly, save much, take disappointment and persist. He loves his family dearly. He is humorous, philosophic, a voluble fellow, non-secretive. He respects the Western style of education, largely perhaps because it seems to lift people into an easy life. Ease and grace are Eastern ideals of superiority.

If the Moslem and the Christian could be put on the same political footing and justice done to each impartially in court practise and taxation, I firmly believe that they would draw together, that Palestine would in time be a country with a people and that it would be well equipped from among its own with men of ability, competent to do its political and social work.

In general it may be said that where the Palestine peasant has not come into relationship with the tourist business in any form, and where he is some little distance from any city, he is naturally simple in his tastes and requirements, interested in novelty, sociable, hospitable, fun-loving, hard-working, though not steady in effort.

A lone walker on the road will often sing. Whistling is almost unknown. Peasants make a twenty-mile journey on foot with considerable ease, and half that distance is done very commonly. Distances are always reckoned by them in hours or days, never in miles. They often walk behind their laden animals. Sometimes it is a donkey, bearing the plow and seed-bag or loaded with fagots, grain, sheaves, dried figs or grapes, according to the season. Or it may be a camel similarly laded or carrying stone; or a mule. Seldom are horses used, except by a village shaykh or a city official on the highway. When groups of peasants are on the road there is much talk, often laughter, horse-play, joking, chaffing; sometimes bickering and quarreling.

The peasant stands in awe of learning, especially of learning in the Arabic language. He is sensitive to ridicule, and therefore loath to make such a change in customs as would bring it on him. He is eager in discussion, inquisitive, strong in memory and at imitating, but slow to adopt strange ways not tested by the conditions of life to which he is accustomed. You seldom or never find him nervous, fretful or discontented. He never questions the wisdom of Providence. He seldom mentions weather probabilities. He, like his Old Testament countryman, refers all things to a First Cause. Divine cause or permission is prominent in his explanation of any phenomena.

The personal appearance of the villagers and the look of their houses vary with the country level at which they live. In the plains and lowlands, where thatch and earth are more commonly used in building, there is a population noticeably different from the dwellers in the stone villages in the highlands. The inhabitants lower down are darker and smaller than the hill villagers. These latter are often of good size and development and, especially among the Christians, are frequently of lighter color. It is not very uncommon to see sandy complexions among them.[^[51]] The women and girls in the best villages are often handsome. The men are lithe of body and finely formed. Both men and women are usually supple, slow-motioned, strong. They have dark, expressive eyes, neutral mouths, medium foreheads, heavy features with curving lines, browned skins and black hair. Fair complexions are admired, especially the so-called wheat-colored complexion (ḳumḥeh). Eyes are distinguished by the epithets ‛asaliyeh (honey-colored), koḥli (kohl-colored), ghuz-laniyeh (gazel-like) and so on.

Different villages and their inhabitants get reputations for doing one or another kind of work especially well. Or they are distinguished according to disposition, as harsh and fanatical, or as courteous and reasonable. Some villages get a name for dulness and others for sharpness. The villagers are known about the country by slight variation in dress, by differing casts of countenance and peculiarities of speech.[^[52]]

We must not magnify too much the differences between civilizations and peoples, or between this people of whom we speak and our own people. The difference is often but quantitative. They emphasize some qualities which we possess, though in quieter color or in less distinctive marking. Oftentimes the differences would not be apparent except that, as we have passed rapidly from place to place, our eyes have synchronized phenomena of different stages of culture. We see really among these strangers many practises and notions of our own distant forebears.

WOMAN’S WORK
1. At the Cistern. 2. In the Market. 3. Bringing Brush.

Western people are so in the habit of pitying all the women of Asia that they will probably go on doing so until the end of time in spite of the facts. To our Western idea woman in the East is a pitiable, miserable abstraction. The Turkish harem, the Indian child-widow and the deformed Chinese foot stand for all Asia to many of us. There is probably a large, free area of life open to thousands of the women of Asia that does not seem cramped by comparison with the total civilization of which they are a part. The Bedawy woman would not change places with any of us, and the village peasant woman of Palestine enjoys life fully as well as the male villagers. She is not supposed to enter the field marked out by custom for male members of society, nor will the field she occupies be intruded upon by them. She shares with the man a preference for male children. Her position in this regard is only an exaggeration of the condition that prevails in all modern society. She, like her brothers and sisters the world over, is influenced by customs to which she yields obedience a little more gracefully than do many of us. She goes about her work cheerfully if she is well. Too often she is not well, and in a few years drudging toil and frequent childbearing age her. Like her sisters in other countries, she is sometimes tidy and sometimes not. She loves her children. Whether she loves her husband or not is not easy to discover, but she pays him proper respect and, if kind, she probably cherishes real esteem for him. The marriage was probably not of her choosing, and very likely not of his. Marriage is a state entered into dutifully by all sons and daughters. It builds the tribe or great family which is at bottom the object of a Syrian’s greatest devotion next to himself, and often before himself.

If you awake in the early hours of morning you will hear the monotonous rumble of the stone mills, telling that the day’s work for the women has begun. When the spring is very small or low, and it takes a long time to fill a jar, the women and young girls will sometimes go out before it is light to get the first turn at the trickling stream. Long journeys are made into the waste places to secure headloads of brush or grass-fodder. A woman usually wears a dark blue crash dress while at work. Her legs and feet are bare; perhaps she carries a rough pair of shoes such as the men wear, but they are for the briers and stones outside the village. Should she put them on within the village the other women would laugh at her and call her proud or citified.

Unmarried women are very scarce among the peasantry. Marriage usually comes at an early age for girls. One of the owners of a house that we had to hire for the work of the new boys’ training school had as wife such a mere slip of a girl that we were curious to know her age. She couldn’t tell us how old she was, but said that she had been married five years. A companion with her ventured the guess that her age was thirteen years. The little wife seemed happy and was the only peasant wife I ever saw receiving any affectionate attentions from her husband. She was a pretty girl and seemed to be a pet in the family. She had her own little ways of enjoying her little life. One day, when some much poorer women from el-Bîreh were toiling on the house which her husband’s family was building, bringing stone and mortar on their heads, Mrs. Thirteen-years put on her best dress of blue with some Bethlehem needlework on the breast, adorned her fingers with the rings of cheap nickel and glass, commonly worn, and taking a piece of embroidery, stood thus, plying her needle genteelly, where the other women were toiling at their severer task. Many were the glances they threw at her, but when they looked her eyes were on her handiwork.

Several statements on page [45] f., especially the one on army service, need modification now. See Chapter [XII]. The classical work in English on the modern life of the Bedawin is Charles M. Doughty’s Arabia Deserta which has recently come out in a new and expensive edition.

[49]. Cf. Job 1: 1–3.

[50]. 2 Kings 9: 17.

[51]. 1 Sam. 16: 12; Song 5: 10.

[52]. Matt. 26: 73.

CHAPTER III
FAMILY LIFE

When our sons shall be as plants grown up in their youth,

And our daughters as corner-stones hewn after the fashion of a palace;

When our garners are full, affording all manner of store,

And our sheep bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields;

When our oxen are well laden;

When there is no breaking in, and no going forth,

And no outcry in our streets:

Happy is the people that is in such a case;

Yea, happy is the people whose God is Jehovah.

Psalm 144: 12–15.

The above bit of ancient expression would describe the ideal of happiness of a village people in Palestine to-day.

In a village there may be few or many tribes. In a village tribe there may be scores of families. The tribe is a great family and goes by the Arabic name Dâr (court or house). In el-Bîreh, for instance, there are four tribes among its eight hundred Moslems and one tribe of Christians numbering less than a hundred. The Moslem tribes are Dâr Ṭawîl, Dâr Ḳurân, Dâr Hamayil and Dâr ‛Abid. The Christian tribe goes by the name Rafîdya, because originally the members came from a village of that name, near Nâblus. Dâr Ṭawîl is by far the most influential and supplies two of the three shaykhs of the village recognized by the general government. The other shaykh comes from Dâr Ḳurân. These three shaykhs are the intermediaries between the general government and the village. Sometimes the tribe will become so large as to have subordinate divisions within it. In Râm Allâh there are five original tribes, the Ḥadadeh, the Dâr Ibrahîm, the Dâr Jurjus, the Ḥasâsineh and the Shaḳara. But the tribe of Ḥadadeh is nearly the equal in numbers of the other four, and has been divided into four sub-tribes, the Sharaḳa, the Dâr Awâd, the Dâr Yûsuf and the Dâr Abu Jaghab. The result is that there are practically eight tribes in the village. The four branches of the Ḥadadeh feel a kinship and importance from their common source and present size. The other four tribes go by the common designation of the Hamayil.

Birth is the usual mode of entering a tribe, but outsiders are sometimes admitted. A man from another part of Syria had occasion to live in one of the large Christian villages of Palestine and wished to be counted as a citizen there. He decided to join a certain tribe in that village. As much as he was permitted, he fellowshipped[fellowshipped] with that tribe, went to their guest-house occasionally and contributed to expenses by sharing in their provision of food for visiting strangers and soldiers. He then had the government at Jerusalem change his kushan or paper of residence and citizenship so that it should now declare him a resident of such and such a village. When he had spoken to the elders of the tribe that he sought to join, and they in turn to the members of the tribe, he was admitted to membership with them by common consent. Thenceforth he paid his military tribute through the chief men of this tribe. The elders mentioned are the heads of families and are called the ukhtiyarîyeh. They are the tribal chiefs and representatives.

Ordinarily friendship is confined to this tribal relationship, and marriage is usually restricted to its limits. As an Arabic proverb expresses it, “I am against my cousin, but my cousin and I are against the world.” People outside this tribal family are strangers and possible foes.[^[53]] If, contrary to what they expect of outsiders, we should show ourselves kindly disposed to them by continual helpful acts, very likely they might set up a hypothetical relationship between themselves and us, at least in conversation, in order to gloss over the anomaly.

Closer yet is the relationship within the immediate family. As long as the size of the family permits, it occupies the one house, or extensions of it, but if it is prosperous and growing, new households are set up and by such a process the tribe develops. Where friendship is practically confined to the family and tribe the importance of family membership and numerous family connections will be appreciated.[^[54]] The larger and more influential one’s family, the more secure are its fortunes.[^[55]] And influence depends on the number of the men.

A Moslem was killed and it was several months before his slayers were detected and brought to punishment. The family of the deceased was large and worked together to ferret out the secret. A smaller family might never have been able to accomplish the object. Outsiders or the government would have made no such persistent effort.[^[56]]

Marriages in the country are usually with some kindred family.[^[57]] Marrying outside one’s tribe is comparatively rare. Marriage is the one important subject among parents of boys and girls. Girls are sometimes married as early as seven years. They are betrothed at much tenderer ages. A mother brought a little child in arms to one of the village day-schools and urged its acceptance, doubtless to have relief from the care of it for a part of the day. The child was a girl, and the teacher of the girls’ school refused to take her, exclaiming, “Why, she’s a mere baby. We cannot teach her to read now.” The mother argued and finally said, “If you don’t take her now she will be betrothed soon.” The introduction of school privileges into the country, for girls as well as for boys, has resulted, in many cases, in lengthening the childhood of those who otherwise would have been betrothed and married early in life. Parents are generally unwilling to allow a younger daughter to be married before an elder daughter.[^[58]]

A marriage settlement in money is expected from the bridegroom and paid to the father of the bride. Parents often attempt to avoid cash payments by an exchange of brothers and sisters. A family with a boy and a girl make overtures to an eligible family having a girl and a boy, and the young people are paired off at more advantageous terms all round than would be the case if the families were strangers, that is, if they were out of tribal relations with each other. Sometimes, of course, this matter of exchange causes people of very different ages to be joined, but then the years heal that, and the theory is that if the bride is considerably younger than the groom the husband as he comes to old age will have a comparatively strong and able housekeeper and caretaker in his wife.

The usual wedding payment to the father of the bride is about two hundred twenty-five dollars in this village. From this sum the father may make his daughter such presents as he pleases of jewels and head-coins. The wedding costume of the bride is the gift of the groom’s family.

Where a widowed woman is remarried, the marriage portion paid her father is less than in the case of a first marriage, and she is apt to receive a larger share of it in presents from her father, since she cannot, in this case, be made to marry except by her own consent.

To get the business of marriage settled at the earliest date and in the most advantageous way possible is the aim of guardians and parents. The wife will have done her part well if she bears children, mostly boys,[^[59]] sees that no unnecessary losses of money or food occur in the house and holds her tongue. If she fails in any of these points she may dim the felicities of the married state, that is, of her husband and his father and brothers.

BRINGING HOME THE BRIDAL TROUSSEAU

GIRLS AT PLAY. CARRYING HEADLOADS OF GRASS IN IMITATION OF THE WOMEN

There are three occasions preceding the actual marriage of the man and woman on which public celebration is made. The first is the engagement. This is arranged between the fathers of the young people. The initiative is taken by the father of the young man working through friends, who approach the father of the girl and make a proposition of betrothal. If all is favorable the bargain may be bound by money paid to the father of the young woman. A betrothal party is arranged for friends of both the contracting young people at the home of the prospective bride. The young man prepares a feast for the invited guests, a sheep is killed, a priest may be present and the betrothal made public. The agreement is but a little less strong than the marriage contract itself.[^[60]] The second public manifestation is the purchase by the groom of the marriage outfit of garments, including the bridal trousseau, and the procession that carries the articles home. The bridegroom’s party goes to some large near-by village or the nearest city for these purchases. One day we were apprised of such a trousseau party by shouting and the firing of arms, and later a procession of women went by on their way to their own village, carrying with them the bundle of wedding garments. One of their village chiefs was with them. At another time a group returning from Jerusalem on a similar errand was met by a crowd of women on the outskirts of the village and accompanied into it with singing and dancing. This time the women had a stick dressed up with the bridal costume. There was the red striped dress and gay jacket on a cross-stick frame to hold out the sleeves. There were also a girdle, the heavy coin head-dress and three small mirrors, one on each arm and one on the breast. The Bethlehem costume is very commonly used for gala occasions by people of other sections, as it is one of the showiest costumes of the country. The bridegroom is expected to provide wedding garments for relatives of the bride, though they in turn may be expected to return a wedding gift of equal value to him. The third celebration may last two or three days. Towards the close of it the wedding itself takes place.

We went one Saturday evening to see the jollification that preceded a wedding to be solemnized the next day. Outside the house of the groom there were two lines of young men, their number varying from forty to sixty as they shifted places, some dropping out and others falling into line from time to time. These two lines were facing each other and a bright brush fire was blazing in the middle. As more men crowded in to participate a line was formed at one end, thus making a third side of a parallelogram. The men on either side were singing back and forth to each other, in antiphonal fashion, while they kept up a sort of swaying dance in line called the mil‛ab. By pressing their shoulders, neighbor to neighbor, the line moved as one mass. The left foot was made the base of movement for each singer. The right foot was swayed and then lifted high and forward until the whole body swung forward in a sweeping bow or duck. The hands were also keeping time, rubbing up and down the forearms from the elbows to the finger-tips, the head meanwhile swaying from side to side, all to the native peasant singing of the same simple tune over and over again. Certain fixed verses were made the basis and were finished out with impromptu verses for the occasion. Some of these were, “We are glad to see your faces.” “We have come to you; if it were not for love we should not be here.” “Love is sweet.” “We hope for good large dishes.” “Did you see any Bedawîn coming up from the East?” “Such and such (naming them) villages will help you against the enemy.” “Fear not, delicate young women, our young men will protect you,” and so on, passing compliments, singing the praises of love and acknowledging its power in bringing them together, or mingling snatches of war sentiment, anticipation of generous servings of the wedding-feast and assurances of alliance, friendship, defense and security in the strength and equipment of their young men. The bridegroom mingled joyfully with the others, sometimes performing in the line and sometimes replenishing the brush fire. All around, on the roofs of the neighboring houses, in the darkness that was black by contrast with the brilliant fire, the women of the tribe were seated. Every now and then, at any seeming lull in the excitement, some woman would set up the peculiar trilling cry called the zaghârût or zaghârît, at which the men would fairly leap into a renewal of the dance and song. Pistols and muskets were shot off occasionally. Although this was all taking place in a Christian village, a good number of Moslem youths from a neighboring village came over to join in the fun. They had brought two sheep which had been slaughtered and were now simmering in immense kettles for a feast. The father of the groom acted as an overseer of the gayeties and was trying, apparently, to curb the zeal of those who had firearms to discharge.

On the wedding-day in a Christian village the bride and groom with their attendant friends form two parties and approach the church from different quarters. If obtainable, horses are provided for the bride and groom to ride on and she is completely covered over with a mantle,[^[61]] a feather being stuck in the top of it over her head. Inside the church the bridal party, consisting of groom, bride, best man, bridesmaid, the mothers and some other relatives, stand in the middle of the church facing the altar. The groom stands at the bride’s right hand; she is heavily veiled. Guests and spectators, in the case of the wedding mentioned above, filled the church on either side of the bridal party and a large concourse filled the yard outside. Four priests and a censer boy entered the church. Tapers were provided for those guests nearest the young people, while candles were given to the bride and groom. These were lighted. The censer was swung. The ritual, hymns and Scripture were read or intoned, partly in Arabic and partly in Greek. The head priest, who was a Greek by blood, read the Greek portions, while his assistants, natives of the village, read the Arabic parts. Rings which had been touched on the head and lips of bride and groom were placed on their hands and afterwards changed about. Wreaths of artificial flowers were placed on their heads. The book to which most respect had been shown, the Bible, was brought down between them, dividing their joined fingers. Then, headed by the priests, the bridal party marched around in a circling course with all the attendant relatives. Some old women, following closely behind the bride and groom, caught at their robes and, joining them, went through the motions of sewing them with threadless needles. After this the final pronouncement was made by the head priest and the ceremony was over. Immediately the best man grabbed the groom in a sort of ecstasy of congratulation and lifted him into the air twice, and would have done so a third time had not the priest interfered, probably thinking that these demonstrations were out of place in the church. A gun was fired outside the church as soon as it was known that the ceremony was complete. After some hearty felicitations the party moved off in procession with priests and guests.

WASHING A CHILD

A SWADDLED INFANT

The groom, with the men, went to the guest-room[^[62]] of the tribe, where they enjoyed conversation, coffee and cigarettes. The bride and her party of women went to the home of the groom. As she was about to enter the house a water-jar was placed on her head and her hand was assisted to plaster a piece of bread-dough on the jamb of the doorway. These signs were in token of good housewifely qualities. After the bride had been seated for some time inside the house her women friends were granted their entreaty and she allowed them to uncover her face. Then she consented to exhibit her jewelry,[^[63]] silver bracelets, bangles, head-coins, ear-jewels, etc. She seemed very sad, as is expected when a young girl leaves her mother, and quite exhausted. Her hands and nails were stained with ḥennâ. It is said that the hands, wrists and lower limbs are always stained thus on the night before the wedding. Outside the house five kettles filled with mutton were set on stones over wood fires. They were seething and bubbling, getting into readiness for the wedding-feast in the evening.[^[64]]

At the guest-house assembly, where the groom and his men friends are gathered, some one calls out the names of those who have given money presents to the bridegroom and the amount in each case.

If there are reasons for a less public wedding celebration than usual, the ceremony is performed on a week-day. Such is the case when some near relative has died recently, where haste is desired, or where the man or the woman has been married previously.

One Sunday we saw a double wedding celebration. But one was in the Greek Orthodox Church and the other was in the United Greek Church, which is papal in allegiance. The contracting families were so closely related as to allow of but one of the marriages planned between them, according to Greek Church law. But as each family had a son and daughter to marry off to the daughter and son of the other family and considered their own interests in the matter as of more importance than church law, one bridal party was sent to one church and one to the other.

The party of one of the bridegrooms was provided with sword dancers, and as they reached any open place of sufficient size, as at the street corners, a space was cleared and a dancer with a short curved sword in one hand and a waving cloth in the other, went through the graceful movements, leaping and crouching.

AN INTRODUCTION TO A WEDDING-SONG

This bride is clothed with silk from Damascus:

Her hair is perfumed sweetly.

When the bridegroom goes to greet her,

Goes to press on her forehead the golden coin,[^[65]]

He finds her as a fragrant branch;

Praise be unto God.

O comrades, when I saw her,

Three silver rings were on her little finger.

Foolish one! did I not tell thee “heed her”?

This good girl bears the key of relief.

THE BRIDE’S GOOD-BYE TO HER FAMILY[^[66]]

O mother mine, fill for me my pillows;

I left the house without a farewell to my friends.

O mother mine, fill them for me;

I left the house without a thought for my gospels.

O one possessed of rosy cheeks,

Thou’rt worth of gold a deal.

May God shield those who reared thee;

Never a day did’st thou go out alone.

O one possessed of rosy cheeks,

Thou’rt worth of gold a closet full.

May God shield those who trained thee;

Not a day didst thou go out angry.

Thou art a branch of willow, my daughter,

Thou art a branch of willow, thou.

On thy strands thou puttest the coins,

Dangling the coins from thy head.

Thou’rt a branch of riḥân,[^[67]] O daughter,

A branch of riḥân art thou.

On the braids thou puttest silver dollars,

On the braids the coins, O thou!

Do not go from my house, my pet,

Thou who repairest my house in its borders.

Thou wentest forth from my house, O pet,

And there wast none other like thee.

Going out of the house of the good to the house of a prince,

Wearing anklets on her feet and dressed in a robe of silk.

Going from the house of the good to that of a prince,

Anklets on her feet and dressed in a silken robe.

WHEN THE BRIDEGROOM TAKES PART IN THE PROCESSION[^[68]]

Where is the bridegroom, where? Let us amuse him.

May he be preserved for us and long life to his brother.