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Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land; Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit, a non-fiction book by Henry Van Dyke |
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Chapter 11. The Springs Of Jordan |
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_ CHAPTER XI. THE SPRINGS OF JORDAN I THE HILL-COUNTRY OF NAPHTALI Naphtali was the northernmost of the tribes of Israel, a bold and free highland clan, inhabiting a country of rugged hills and steep mountainsides, with fertile vales and little plains between. "Naphtali is a hind let loose," said the old song of the Sons of Jacob (Genesis xlix: 21); and as we ride up from the Lake of Galilee on our way northward, we feel the meaning of the poet's words. A people dwelling among these rock-strewn heights, building their fortress-towns on sharp pinnacles, and climbing these steep paths to the open fields of tillage or of war, would be like wild deer in their spirit of liberty, and they would need to be as nimble and sure-footed. Our good little horses are shod with round plates of iron, and they clatter noisily among the loose stones and slip on the rocky ledges, as we strike over the hills from Capernaum, without a path, to join the main trail at Khan Yubb Yusuf. We are skirting fields of waving wheat and barley, but there are no houses to be seen. Far and wide the sea of verdure rolls around us, broken only by ridges of grayish rock and scarped cliffs of reddish basalt. We wade saddle-deep in herbage; broad-leaved fennel and trembling reeds; wild asparagus and artichokes; a hundred kinds of flowering weeds; acres of last year's thistles, standing blanched and ghostlike in the summer sunshine. The phantom city of Safed gleams white from its far-away hilltop,--the latest and perhaps the last of the famous seats of rabbinical learning. It is one of the sacred places of modern Judaism. No Hebrew pilgrim fails to visit it. Here, they say, the Messiah will one day reveal himself, and after establishing His kingdom, will set out to conquer the world. But it is not to the city, shining like a flake of mica from the greenness of the distant mountain, that our looks and thoughts are turning. It is backward to the lucent sapphire of the Lake of Galilee, upon whose shores our hearts have seen the secret vision, heard the inward message of the Man of Nazareth. Ridge after ridge reveals new outlooks toward its tranquil loveliness. Turn after turn, our winding way leads us to what we think must be the parting view. Sleeping in still, forsaken beauty among the sheltering hills, and open to the cloudless sky which makes its water like a little heaven, it seems to silently return our farewell looks with pleading for remembrance. Now, after one more round among the inclosing ridges, another vista opens, the widest and the most serene of all. Farewell, dear Lake of Jesus! Our eyes may never rest on thee again; but surely they will not forget thee. For now, as often we come to some fair water in the Western mountains, or unfold the tent by some lone lakeside in the forests of the North, the lapping of thy waves will murmur through our thoughts; thy peaceful brightness will arise before us; we shall see the rose-flush of thy oleanders, and the waving of thy reeds; the sweet, faint smell of thy gold-flowered acacias will return to us from purple orchids and white lilies. Let the blessing that is thine go with us everywhere in God's great out-of-doors, and our hearts never lose the comradeship of Him who made thee holiest among all the waters of the world! * * * * * The Khan of Joseph's Pit is a ruin; a huge and broken building deserted by the caravans which used to throng this highway from Damascus to the cities of the lake, and to the ports of Acre and Joppa, and to the metropolis of Egypt. It is hard to realize that this wild moorland path by which we are travelling was once a busy road, filled with camels, horses, chariots, foot-passengers, clanking companies of soldiers; that these crumbling, cavernous walls, overgrown with thorny capers and wild marjoram and mandragora, were once crowded every night with a motley mob of travellers and merchants; that this pool of muddy water, gloomily reflecting the ruins, was once surrounded by flocks and herds and beasts of burden; that only a few hours to the southward there was once a ring of splendid, thriving, bustling towns around the shores of Galilee, out of which and into which the multitudes were forever journeying. Now they are all gone from the road, and the vast wayside caravanserai is sleeping into decay--a dormitory for bats and serpents. What is it that makes the wreck of an inn more lonely and forbidding than any other ruin? A few miles more of riding along the flanks of the mountains bring us to a place where we turn a corner suddenly, and come upon the full view of the upper basin of the Jordan; a vast oval green cup, with the little Lake of Huleh lying in it like a blue jewel, and the giant bulk of Mount Hermon towering beyond it, crowned and cloaked with silver snows. Up the steep and slippery village street of Rosh Pinnah, a modern Jewish colony founded by the Rothschilds in 1882, we scramble wearily to our camping-ground for the night. Above us on a hilltop is the old Arab village of Jauneh, brown, picturesque, and filthy. Around us are the colonists' new houses, with their red-tiled roofs and white walls. Two straight streets running in parallel lines up the hillside are roughly paved with cobble-stones and lined with trees; mulberries, white-flowered acacias, eucalyptus, feathery pepper-trees, and rose-bushes. Water runs down through pipes from a copious spring on the mountain, and flows abundantly into every house, plashing into covered reservoirs and open stone basins for watering the cattle. Below us the long avenues of eucalyptus, the broad vineyards filled with low, bushy vines, the immense orchards of pale-green almond-trees, the smiling wheat-fields, slope to the lake and encircle its lower end. The children who come to visit our camp on the terrace wear shoes and stockings, carry school-books in their bags, and bring us offerings of little bunches of sweet-smelling garden roses and pendulous locust-blooms. We are a thousand years away from the Khan of Joseph's Pit; but we can still see the old mud village on the height against the sunset, and the camp-fires gleaming in front of the black Bedouin tents far below, along the edge of the marshes. We are perched between the old and the new, between the nomad and the civilized man, and the unchanging white head of Hermon looks down upon us all. In the morning, on the way down, I stop at the door of a house and fall into talk with an intelligent, schoolmasterish sort of man, a Roumanian, who speaks a little weird German. Is the colony prospering? Yes, but not so fast that it makes them giddy. What are they raising? Wheat and barley, a few vegetables, a great deal of almonds and grapes. Good harvests? Some years good, some years bad; the Arabs bad every year, terrible thieves; but the crops are plentiful most of the time. Are the colonists happy, contented? A thin smile wrinkles around the man's lips as he answers with the statement of a world-wide truth, "_Ach, Herr, der Ackerbauer ist nie zufrieden._" ("Ah, Sir, the farmer is never contented.")
THE WATERS OF MEROM All day we ride along the hills skirting the marshy plain of Huleh. Here the springs and parent streams of Jordan are gathered, behind the mountains of Naphtali and at the foot of Hermon, as in a great green basin about the level of the ocean, for the long, swift rush down the sunken trench which leads to the deep, sterile bitterness of the Dead Sea. Was there ever a river that began so fair and ended in such waste and desolation? Here in this broad, level, well-watered valley, along the borders of these vast beds of papyrus and rushes intersected by winding, hidden streams, Joshua and his fierce clans of fighting men met the Kings of the north with their horses and chariots, "at the waters of Merom," in the last great battle for the possession of the Promised Land. It was a furious conflict, the hordes of footmen against the squadrons of horsemen; but the shrewd command that came from Joshua decided it: "Hough their horses and burn their chariots with fire." The Canaanites and the Amorites and the Hittites and the Hivites were swept from the field, driven over the western mountains, and the Israelites held the Jordan from Jericho to Hermon. (Joshua xi:1-15.) The springs that burst from the hills to the left of our path and run down to the sluggish channels of the marsh on our right are abundant and beautiful. Here is 'Ain Mellaha, a crystal pool a hundred yards wide, with wild mint and watercress growing around it, white and yellow lilies floating on its surface, and great fish showing themselves in the transparent open spaces among the weeds, where the water bubbles up from the bottom through dancing hillocks of clean, white sand and shining pebbles. Here is 'Ain el-Belata, a copious stream breaking forth from the rocks beneath a spreading terebinth-tree, and rippling down with merry rapids toward the jungle of rustling reeds and plumed papyrus. While luncheon is preparing in the shade of the terebinth, I wade into the brook and cast my fly along the ripples. A couple of ragged, laughing, bare-legged Bedouin boys follow close behind me, watching the new sport with wonder. The fish are here, as lively and gamesome as brook trout, plump, golden-sided fellows ten or twelve inches long. The feathered hooks tempt them, and they rise freely to the lure. My tattered pages are greatly excited, and make impromptu pouches in the breast of their robes, stuffing in the fish until they look quite fat. The catch is enough for a good supper for their whole family, and a dozen more for a delicious fish-salad at our camp that night. What kind of fish are they? I do not know: doubtless something Scriptural and Oriental. But they taste good; and so far as there is any record, they are the first fish ever taken with the artificial fly in the sources of the Jordan. The plain of Huleh is full of life. Flocks of waterfowl and solemn companies of storks circle over the swamps. The wet meadows are covered with herds of black buffaloes, wallowing in the ditches, or staring at us sullenly under their drooping horns. Little bunches of horses, and brood mares followed by their long-legged, awkward foals, gallop beside our cavalcade, whinnying and kicking up their heels in the joy of freedom. Flocks of black goats clamber up the rocky hillsides, following the goatherd who plays upon his rustic pipe quavering and fantastic music, softened by distance into a wild sweetness. Small black cattle with white faces march in long files across the pastures, or wander through the thickets of bulrushes and papyrus and giant fennel, appearing and disappearing as the screen of broad leaves and trembling plumes close behind them. A few groups of huts made out of wattled reeds stand beside the sluggish watercourses, just as they did when Macgregor in his Rob Roy canoe attempted to explore this impenetrable morass forty years ago. Along the higher ground are lines of black Bedouin tents, arranged in transitory villages. These flitting habitations of the nomads, who come down from the hills and lofty deserts to fatten their flocks and herds among unfailing pasturage, are all of one pattern. The low, flat roof of black goats' hair is lifted by the sticks which support it, into half a dozen little peaks, perhaps five or six feet from the ground. Between these peaks the cloth sags down, and is made fast along the edges by intricate and confusing guy-ropes. The tent is shallow, not more than six feet deep, and from twelve to thirty feet long, according to the wealth of the owner and the size of his family,--two things which usually correspond. The sides and the partitions are sometimes made of woven reeds, like coarse matting. Within there is an apartment (if you can call it so) for the family, a pen for the chickens, and room for dogs, cats, calves and other creatures to find shelter. The fireplace of flat stones is in the centre, and the smoke oozes out through the roof and sides. The Bedouin men, in flowing _burnous_ and _keffiyeh_, with the _'agal_ of dark twisted camel's hair like a crown upon their heads, are almost all handsome: clean-cut, haughty faces, bold in youth and dignified in old age. The women look weatherbeaten and withered beside them. Even when you see a fine face in the dark blue mantle or under the white head-dress, it is almost always disfigured by purplish tattooing around the lips and chin. Some of the younger girls are beautiful, and most of the children are entrancing. They play games in a ring, with songs and clapping hands; the boys charge up and down among the tents with wild shouts, driving a round bone or a donkey's hoof with their shinny-sticks; the girls chase one another and hide among the bushes in some primeval form of "tag" or "hide-and-seek." A merry little mob pursues us as we ride through each encampment, with outstretched hands and half-jesting, half-plaintive cries of "_Bakhshish! bakhshish!_" They do not really expect anything. It is only a part of the game. And when the Lady holds out her open hand to them and smiles as she repeats, "_Bakhshish! bakhshish!_" they take the joke quickly, and run away, laughing, to their sports. At one village, in the dusk, there is an open-air wedding: a row of men dancing; a ring of women and girls looking on; musicians playing the shepherd's pipe and the drum; maidens running beside us to beg a present for the invisible bride: a rude charcoal sketch of human society, primitive, irrepressible, confident, encamped for a moment on the shadowy border of the fecund and unconquerable marsh. Thus we traverse the strange country of Bedouinia, travelling all day in the presence of the Great Sheikh of Mountains, and sleep at night on the edge of a little village whose name we shall never know. A dozen times we ask George for the real name of that place, and a dozen times he repeats it for us with painstaking courtesy; it sounds like a compromise between a cough and a sneeze.
WHERE JORDAN RISES The Jordan is assembled in the northern end of the basin of Huleh under a mysterious curtain of tall, tangled water-plants. Into that ancient and impenetrable place of hiding and blending enter many little springs and brooks, but the main sources of the river are three. The first and the longest is the Hasbani, a strong, foaming stream that comes down with a roar from the western slope of Hermon. We cross it by the double arch of a dilapidated Saracen bridge, looking down upon thickets of oleander, willow, tamarisk and woodbine. The second and largest source springs from the rounded hill of Tel el-Kadi, the supposed site of the ancient city of Dan, the northern border of Israel. Here the wandering, landless Danites, finding a country to their taste, put the too fortunate inhabitants of Leshem to the sword and took possession. And here King Jereboam set up one of his idols of the golden calf. There is no vestige of the city, no trace of the idolatrous shrine, on the huge mound which rises thirty or forty feet above the plain. But it is thickly covered with trees: poplars and oaks and wild figs and acacias and wild olives. A pair of enormous veterans, a valonia oak and a terebinth, make a broad bower of shade above the tomb of an unknown Mohammedan saint, and there we eat our midday meal, with the murmur of running waters all around us, a clear rivulet singing at our feet, and the chant of innumerable birds filling the vault of foliage above our heads. After lunch, instead of sleeping, two of us wander into the dense grove that spreads over the mound. Tiny streams of water trickle through it: blackberry-vines and wild grapes are twisted in the undergrowth; ferns and flowery nettles and mint grow waist-high. The main spring is at the western base of the mound. The water comes bubbling and whirling out from under a screen of wild figs and vines, forming a pool of palest, clearest blue, a hundred feet in diameter. Out of this pool the new-born river rushes, foaming and shouting down the hillside, through lines of flowering styrax and hawthorn and willows trembling over its wild joy. The third and most impressive of the sources of Jordan is at Baniyas, on one of the foothills of Hermon. Our path thither leads us up from Dan, through high green meadows, shaded by oak-trees, sprinkled with innumerable blossoming shrubs and bushes, and looking down upon the lower fields blue with lupins and vetches, or golden with yellow chrysanthemums beneath which the red glow of the clover is dimly burning like a secret fire. Presently we come, by way of a broad, natural terrace where the white encampment of the Moslem dead lies gleaming beneath the shade of mighty oaks and terebinths, and past the friendly olive-grove where our own tents are standing, to a deep ravine filled to the brim with luxuriant verdure of trees and vines and ferns. Into this green cleft a little river, dancing and singing, suddenly plunges and disappears, and from beneath the veil of moist and trembling leaves we hear the sound of its wild joy, a fracas of leaping, laughing waters. *** An old Roman bridge spans the stream on the brink of its downward leap. Crossing over, we ride through the ruined gateway of the town of Baniyas, turn to right and left among its dirty, narrow streets, pass into a leafy lane, and come out in front of a cliff of ruddy limestone, with niches and shrines carved on its face, and a huge, dark cavern gaping in the centre. A tumbled mass of broken rocks lies below the mouth of the cave. From this slope of debris, sixty or seventy feet long, a line of springs gush forth in singing foam. Under the shadow of trembling poplars and broad-boughed sycamores, amid the lush greenery of wild figs and grapes, bracken and briony and morning-glory, drooping maidenhair and flower-laden styrax, the hundred rills swiftly run together and flow away with one impulse, a full-grown little river. There is an immemorial charm about the place. Mysteries of grove and fountain, of cave and hilltop, bewitch it with the magic of Nature's life, ever springing and passing, flowering and fading, basking in the open sunlight and hiding in the secret places of the earth. It is such a place as Claude Lorraine might have imagined and painted as the scene of one of his mythical visions of Arcadia; such a place as antique fancy might have chosen and decked with altars for the worship of unseen dryads and nymphs, oreads and naiads. And so, indeed, it was chosen, and so it was decked. Here, in all probability, was Baal-Gad, where the Canaanites paid their reverence to the waters that spring from underground. Here, certainly, was Paneas of the Greeks, where the rites of Pan and all the nymphs were celebrated. Here Herod the Great built a marble temple to Augustus the Tolerant, on this terrace of rock above the cave. Here, no doubt, the statue of the Emperor looked down upon a strange confusion of revelries and wild offerings in honour of the unknown powers of Nature. All these things have withered, crumbled, vanished. There are no more statues, altars, priests, revels and sacrifices at Baniyas--only the fragment of an inscription around one of the votive niches carved on the cliff, which records the fact that the niche was made by a certain person who at that time was "Priest of Pan." _But the name of this_ _person who wished to be remembered is precisely the part of the carving which is illegible._ Ironical inscription! Still the fountains gush from the rocks, the poplars tremble in the breeze, the sweet incense rises from the orange-flowered styrax, the birds chant the joy of living, the sunlight and the moonlight fall upon the sparkling waters, and the liquid starlight drips through the glistening leaves. But the Priest of Pan is forgotten, and all that old interpretation and adoration of Nature, sensuous, passionate, full of mingled cruelty and ecstasy, has melted like a mist from her face, and left her serene and pure and lovely as ever. Here at Paneas, after the city had been rebuilt by Philip the Tetrarch and renamed after him and his Imperial master, there came one day a Peasant of Galilee who taught His disciples to draw near to Nature, not with fierce revelry and superstitious awe, but with tranquil confidence and calm joy. The goatfoot god, the god of panic, the great god Pan, reigns no more beside the upper springs of Jordan. The name that we remember here, the name that makes the message of flowing stream and sheltering tree and singing bird more clear and cool and sweet to our hearts, is the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
CAESAREA PHILIPPI Yes, this little Mohammedan town of Baniyas, with its twoscore wretched houses built of stones from the ancient ruins and huddled within the broken walls of the citadel, is the ancient site of Caesarea Philippi. In the happy days that we spend here, rejoicing in the most beautiful of all our camps in the Holy Land, and yielding ourselves to the full charm of the out-of-doors more perfectly expressed than we had ever thought to find it in Palestine,--in this little paradise of friendly trees and fragrant flowers,
* * * * * We climb to the top of the peaked hill, a thousand feet above the town, and explore the great Crusaders' Castle of Subeibeh, a ruin vaster in extent and nobler in situation than the famous _Schloss_ of Heidelberg. It not only crowns but completely covers the summit of the steep ridge with the huge drafted stones of its foundations. The immense round towers, the double-vaulted gateways, are still standing. Long flights of steps lead down to subterranean reservoirs of water. Spacious courtyards, where the knights and men-at-arms once exercised, are transformed into vegetable gardens, and the passageways between the north citadel and the south citadel are travelled by flocks of lop-eared goats. From room to room we clamber by slopes of crumbling stone, discovering now a guard-chamber with loopholes for the archers, and now an arched chapel with the plaster intact and faint touches of colour still showing upon it. Perched on the high battlements we look across the valley of Huleh and the springs of Jordan to Kal'at Hunin on the mountains of Naphtali, and to Kal'at esh-Shakif above the gorge of the River Litani. From these three great fortresses, in the time of the Crusaders, flashed and answered the signal-fires of the chivalry of Europe fighting for possession of Palestine. What noble companies of knights and ladies inhabited these castles, what rich festivals were celebrated within these walls, what desperate struggles defended them, until at last the swarthy hordes of Saracens stormed the gates and poured over the defences and planted the standard of the crescent on the towers and lit the signal-fires of Islam from citadel to citadel. All the fires have gone out now. The yellow whin blazes upon the hillsides. The wild fig-tree splits the masonry. The scorpion lodges in the deserted chambers. On the fallen stone of the Crusaders' gate, where the Moslem victor has carved his Arabic inscription, a green-gray lizard poises motionless, like a bronze figure on a paper-weight. *** We pass through the southern entrance of the village of Baniyas, a massive square portal, rebuilt by some Arab ruler, and go out on the old Roman bridge which spans the ravine. The aqueduct carried by the bridge is still full of flowing water, and the drops which fall from it in a fine mist make a little rainbow as the afternoon sun shines through the archway draped with maidenhair fern. On the stone pavement of the bridge we trace the ruts worn two thousand years ago by the chariots of the men who conquered the world. The chariots have all rolled by. On the broken edge of the tower above the gateway sits a ragged Bedouin boy, making shrill, plaintive music with his pipe of reeds. * * * * * We repose in front of our tents among the olive-trees at the close of the day. The cool sound of running streams and rustling poplars is on the moving air, and the orange-golden sunset enchants the orchard with mystical light. All the swift visions of striving Saracens and Crusaders, of conquering Greeks and Romans, fade away from us, and we see the figure of the Man of Nazareth with His little company of friends and disciples coming up from Galilee. It was here that Jesus retreated with His few faithful followers from the opposition of the Scribes and Pharisees. This was the northernmost spot of earth ever trodden by His feet, the longest distance from Jerusalem that He ever travelled. Here in this exquisite garden of Nature, in a region of the Gentiles, within sight of the shrines devoted to those Greek and Roman rites which were so luxurious and so tolerant, four of the most beautiful and significant events of His life and ministry took place. He asked His disciples plainly to tell their secret thought of Him--whom they believed their Master to be. And when Peter answered simply: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," Jesus blessed him for the answer, and declared that He would build His church upon that rock. Then He took Peter and James and John with Him and climbed one of the high and lonely slopes of Hermon. There He was transfigured before them, His face shining like the sun and His garments glistening like the snow on the mountain-peaks. But when they begged to stay there with Him, He led them down to the valley again, among the sinning and suffering children of men. At the foot of the mount of transfiguration He healed the demoniac boy whom his father had brought to the other disciples, but for whom they had been unable to do anything; and He taught them that the power to help men comes from faith and prayer. And then, at last, He turned His steps from this safe and lovely refuge, (where He might surely have lived in peace, or from which He might have gone out unmolested into the wide Gentile world), backward to His own country, His own people, the great, turbulent, hard-hearted Jewish city, and the fate which was not to be evaded by One who loved sinners and came to save them. He went down into Galilee, down through Samaria and Perea, down to Jerusalem, down to Gethsemane and to Golgotha,--fearless, calm,--sustained and nourished by that secret food which satisfied His heart in doing the will of God. * * * * * It was in the quest of this Jesus, in the hope of somehow drawing nearer to Him, that we made our pilgrimage to the Holy Land. And now, in the cool of the evening at Caesarea Philippi, we ask ourselves whether our desire has been granted, our hope fulfilled? Yes, more richly, more wonderfully than we dared to dream. For we have found a new vision of Christ, simpler, clearer, more satisfying, in the freedom and reality of God's out-of-doors. Not through the mists and shadows of an infinite regret, the sadness of sweet, faded dreams and hopes that must be resigned, as Pierre Loti saw the phantom of a Christ whose irrevocable disappearance has left the world darker than ever! Not amid strange portents and mysterious rites, crowned with I know not what aureole of traditionary splendours, founder of elaborate ceremonies and centre of lamplit shrines, as Matilde Serao saw the image of that Christ whom the legends of men have honoured and obscured! The Jesus whom we have found is the Child of Nazareth playing among the flowers; the Man of Galilee walking beside the lake, healing the sick, comforting the sorrowful, cheering the lonely and despondent; the well-beloved Son of God transfigured in the sunset glow of snowy Hermon, weeping by the sepulchre in Bethany, agonizing in the moonlit garden of Gethsemane, giving His life for those who did not understand Him, though they loved Him, and for those who did not love Him because they did not understand Him, and rising at last triumphant over death,--such a Saviour as all men need and as no man could ever have imagined if He had not been real. His message has not died away, nor will it ever die. For confidence and calm joy He tells us to turn to Nature. For love and sacrifice He bids us live close to our fellowmen. For comfort and immortal hope He asks us to believe in Him and in our Father, God. That is all. But the bringing of that heavenly message made the country to which it came the Holy Land. And the believing of that message, to-day, will lead any child of man into the kingdom of heaven. And the keeping of that faith, the following of that Life, will transfigure any country beneath the blue sky into a holy land. Thou hast taken me into the tent of the world, O God: Naked and poor I arrived at the door before sunset: I have loved the daily delights of thy dwelling: Surely thou wilt not send me away in the darkness? Then the Lord of the tent of the world made answer: Yet hearken to me since thou fearest the foe in the dark: Poor and needy will I come that thou mayest entertain me: Therefore open the door of thy heart and bid me welcome: Then my soul rested in the word of the Lord: |
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