As we drove to the little German inn in the outskirts of the town, we noticed the air getting richer with the scent of orange-flowers, and soon we passed into the region of the orange-orchards. The trees were creamy white with dense blossom, and the ripe fruit was dotted about in the masses of white. The honey they gave us at breakfast was from these orange-flowers. Here our dragoman, Isaac, met us. I made my first sketch – the first, I trust, of a series I marked down before leaving Alexandria. It was of Jaffa, seen over the orange-trees from the inn garden, and charming it was to sit there in the cool shade, with birds singing overhead as never one hears them in Egypt. Fragments of classical pillars stood about and served as seats under the chequered shade of flowering fruit-trees along the garden paths. The Mediterranean appeared to my right, and overhead sailed great pearly clouds in the vibrating blue of the fresh spring sky. I must say I felt very happy at the reality of my presence on the soil of Palestine!
At 2 P.M. we started in a carriage like our dear old friend, the “Vetturino,” for Ramleh, our halting-place for the night. How can I put before you the scenes of loveliness we passed through? The country was a vast plain of rolling wheat, bordered in the blue distance with the tender hills of Judea. This land of the Philistines far surpassed my expectations in its extent, its grand sweep of line, its breadth of colour and light and shade. It was some time before we came out on the Plain of Sharon, and we drove first a long way between orange-orchards bordered along the road by gigantic hedges of prickly pear. Our Vetturino was drawn by three horses abreast, all with bells, and it was exhilarating to set out at a fast trot along the easy road in company with other jingling and whip-cracking vehicles, and escorted by horsemen in brilliant Syrian costumes dashing along on their little Arabs, and carrying their long ornamental guns slung across their backs. I had just one horrible glimpse (of which I said nothing, as of some guilty thing), just as we started, of a railway engine under some palm-trees. It is waiting there the completion of the line to Jerusalem to puff and whistle its beauty-marring career to the Holy City. I am thankful my good luck has brought me here just in time to escape the sight of a railway and its attendant eyesores in this sacred land. Why rush through this little country, every yard of which is precious? An express train could run in two hours “from Dan to Beersheba” – and what then?
Before emerging on the Plain we passed a white mosque-like building placed between two cypresses by the roadside, which is supposed to stand on the site of the place where Peter raised Dorcas to life. Be that as it may, the white dome and the black-green cypresses are charming. The soil of the country, now being ploughed in all directions between the green wheat-fields, is of a rich golden colour, like that I noticed with such pleasure around Sienna, and makes a pleasing harmony with the vivid green. The dear olive-tree, beloved of my childhood, is here in its very home. I hailed its pinky-grey foliage and its hoary old gnarled trunk. And now for those wildflowers that all travellers who are so well advised as to come here in spring have told us of. Well may they speak of them with rapture! As we proceeded they increased in variety, and so abundant were they that they made tracts and wide regions of colour over the land. Come here in spring, O traveller! and not in the arid, dusty, burnt-up autumn. On entering the Plain of Sharon we saw to our left the town of Lydda, with St. George’s Church gleaming in the sunshine. Never have I seen, even in Ireland, fresher effects of cloud shadow and sunlight over rolling spaces of waving green corn, and even the sky was typically West of Ireland. Yet lo! in the foreground strings of camels, mules, and wild Bedouins and caracoling Bashi-Bazouks! The ploughing was done by tiny oxen, two abreast, and sometimes a tall camel stalked as leader. On arriving at Ramleh we walked to the great tower, some distance out of the town, from the top of which I had my long-looked-for view of the whole of Philistia – northward to Carmel, westward to the sea, eastward to the mountains of Judah. As the sun sank the tints deepened on that lovely plain, and nothing on earth could be more beautiful than that immense view. I made a hasty water-colour sketch up there, but what can one do in a few minutes with such a scene? A sad spectacle awaited us as we reached the German inn. As we walked I had become absorbed in the contemplation of the limpid sky, where the last lark was carolling to the sinking sun, and of the mountains whose rosy flush was fading into the cool greys that already veiled the plain, when my eyes sinking lower, I beheld in the cold grey of the narrow street, ranged along a stone wall, a row of lepers waiting for alms. Life has no sadder detail than the leper. As I approached them with a coin the nearest of these poor creatures put out a fingerless palm on which I placed the money, and having only hollow sockets in the place of eyes it handed it to its neighbour, who, being also eyeless, passed it on to one in whose fleshless face there lingered the remnant of an eye. This one’s hand lifted the coin to its fragment of eye to see its value, and deposited it in the recesses of its fluttering rags that only half veiled the decaying body. A low wail passed along the line, and bony arms were stretched out in gratitude. And then we go to our table d’hôte and comfortable beds, and they – where do they sleep? Do they lie down on those bare bones?
My… – We left Ramleh early this brisk, fresh morning, the air full of scent from the wildflowers. Frère Benoît, the Flemish Franciscan who met us on board the steamer, came with us, and an English lady who had all but broken down the day before through the jolting of a shandrydan that had been palmed off on her and her husband at Jaffa. So with the friar and Mrs. G – inside, W. on the box, and Mr. G – following in the aforesaid shandrydan with Isaac, we set off in the usual whip-cracking, shouting, and prancing manner for
The first point of interest I was looking for was Ajalon. As we dipped down from one of the hills traversed by the road in steep zigzags it unfolded its fresh loveliness on our left, but we could not see the actual site of Joshua’s battle, as it was too deep in the folds of the hills. This view was, perhaps, the loveliest of all, and nothing could be fresher than those cornfields and rich spaces of ploughed earth in the light that streamed down from so pure a sky. Now and then a single horseman with the well-known long gun inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and with his Arab all over tassels, dashed past us, doing “fantasia” to impress us strangers. The proceeding was never without success as far as I was concerned.
At 9.30 we left the plain and at once entered the hills of Judea, which are much more uniformly stony than one would suppose them to be from a distance. We soon stopped at a wayside khan, about half-a-dozen Vetturinos being assembled in the yard, and all the horses were rested. We then began the ascent of the dear Hill Country, fragrant with memories of Mary on her journey made in haste from Nazareth. I did not expect such a long and high ascent, having failed to realise from description the immense altitude of the height of land that holds Jerusalem. “Things seen are mightier than things heard.” The wildflowers increased in beauty and variety, chief, I think, amongst them being the crimson anemones with black centre which tossed their gay heads everywhere in the mountain breeze. Olives and stones, stones and olives on all sides. Here and there a carob tree or a clump of tamarisk at a tomb. As we crested the first pass and looked back we saw the plains of Philistia, with Ramleh white in the sunshine and the sea beyond shining in a long flash of silver. Before us to the right soon loomed against the clouds the great tombs of the Maccabees, and away to our left on a high cone appeared, remote and awful, the “Tomb of Samuel,” a dominating feature over all the land.
As we descended on the other side of the pass we came in sight of Ain Kareem, the reputed birthplace of John the Baptist, on the side of a high hill. The words of the Magnificat sounded in one’s mind’s ear. It is a grand situation and most striking as seen from the road. At the bottom of the valley formed by the hill we were descending and the hill of Ain Kareem runs the dry bed of the brook from which David chose his smooth stone for Goliath. W. went down and selected just such a smooth white stone as a memento. At the bottom of the valley we halted at a Russian khan and I took a little sketch of a bit of hillside and a pear-tree in blossom. You must have seen this land with “second sight,” for you have always seen a flowering fruit-tree in your mental pictures of it at Eastertide and Lady Day. Palestine is essentially the land of little