: r plain of Esdraelon, naturally most fertile, its soil consisting of fine rich black mould,” level like a lake, except where Mount Ephraim rises in its centre, bounded by Mount Hermon, Carmel, and Mount Tabor, and so extensive as to cover about three hundred square miles, is a solitude, "almost entirely deserted the country is a complete desert."s Even the vale of Sharon is a waste. In the valley of Canaan, formerly a beautiful, delicious, and fertile valley, there is not a mark or vestige of cultivation. The country is continually overrun with rebel tribes; the Arabs pasture their cattle upon the spontaneous produce of the rich plains with which it abounds. u Every ancient landmark is removed. Law there is none. Lives and property are alike unprotected. The valleys are untilled, the mountains have lost their verdure, the rivers flow through a desert and cheer-. less land. All the beauty of Tabor that man could disfigure is defaced; immense ruins on the top of it are now the only remains of a once magnificent city; and Carmel is the habitation of wild beasts.* "The art of cultivation," says Volney, "is in the most deplorable state, and the countryman must sow with the musket in his hand; and no more is sown than is necessary for subsistence." Every day I found fields abandoned by the plough." In describing his journey through Galilee, Dr. Clarke remarks, that the earth was covered with such a variety of thistles, that a complete collection of them would be a valua 4 General Straton's MS. Travels. 66 r Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 497. Maundrell's Travels, p. 95. s Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, pp. 334, 342. t General Straton's MS. u Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 484, 491. x Mariti, vol. ii. p. 140. y Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 413. Volney's Ruins, c. xi. p. 7. ble acquisition to botany. Six new species of that plant, so significant of wildness, were discovered by himself in a scanty selection. "From Kane-Leban to Beer, amidst the ruins of cities, the country, as far as the eye of the traveller can reach, presents nothing to his view but naked rocks, mountains and precipices, at the sight of which pilgrims are astonished, balked in their expectations, and almost startled in their faith."a "From the centre of the neighbouring elevations (around Jerusalem) is seen a wild, rugged, and mountainous desert; no herds depasturing on the summit, no forests clothing the acclivities, no waters flowing through the valleys; but one rude scene of savage melancholy waste, in the midst of which the ancient glory of Judea bows her head in widowed desolation." It is needless to multiply quotations to prove the desolation of a country which the Turks have possessed, and which the Arabs have plundered for ages. Enough has been said to prove that the land mourns and is laid waste, and has become as a desolate wilderness. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return and shall be eaten; as a teil-tree and an oak whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves. Though the cities be waste, and the land be desolate, it is not from the poverty of the soil that the fields are abandoned by the plough, nor from any diminution of its ancient and natural fertility that the land has rested for so many generations. Judea was not forced only by artificial means, or from local and temporary causes, into a luxuriant cultivation, such as a barren country might have been, concerning which it would not have needed a prophet to tell, that if once devastated and Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 451. a Maundrell's Travels, p. 168. b Joliffe's Letters from Palestine, vol. i. p. 104. abandoned it would ultimately and permanently revert into its original sterility. Phenicia at all times held a far different rank among the richest countries of the world; and it was not a bleak and sterile portion of the earth, nor a land which even many ages of desolation and neglect could impoverish, that God gave, in possession and by covenant, to the seed of Abraham. No longer cultivated as a garden, but left like a wilderness, Judea is indeed greatly changed from what it was; all that human ingenuity and labour did devise, erect, or cultivate, men have laid waste and desolate ; all the "plenteous goods," with which it was enriched, adorned, and blessed, have fallen like seared and withered leaves, when their greenness is gone; and stripped of its "ancient splendour," it is left as an oak whose leaf fadeth: but its inherent sources of fertility are not dried up; the natural richness of the soil is unblighted; the substance is in it, strong as that of the teil-tree or the solid oak, which retain their substance when they cast their leaves. And as the leafless oak waits throughout winter for the genial warmth of returning spring, to be clothed with renewed foliage, so the once glorious land of Judea is yet full of latent vigour, or of vegetative power strong as ever, ready to shoot forth, even "better than at the beginning," whenever the sun of heaven shall shine on it again, and the "holy seed" be prepared for being finally "the substance thereof." The substance that is in it, which alone has here to be proved, is, in few words, thus described by an enemy: The land in the plains is fat and loamy, and exhibits every sign of the greatest fecundity. - Were nature assisted by art, the fruits of the most distant countries might be produced within the distance of twenty leagues."c "Galilee," says Malte-Brun, "would be a paradise, were Volney's Travels, vol. i. pp. 308, 317. it inhabited by an industrious people, under an enlightened government. Vine-stocks are to be seen here a foot and a half in diameter."d I will give it into the hands of STRANGERS for a prey, and unto the wicked of the earth for a SPOIL. The ROBBERS shall enter into it and defile it. Instead of abiding under a settled and enlightened government, Judea has been the scene of frequent invasions, “which have introduced a succession of foreign nations (des peuples étrangers").e "When the Ottomans took Syria from the Mamelouks, they considered it as the spoil of a vanquished enemy. According to this law, the life and property of the vanquished belong to the conqueror. The government is far from disapproving of a system of robbery and plunder which it finds so profitable."f Many PASTORS have destroyed my vineyard, they have TRODDEN my portion under foot. The ravages committed even by hosts of enemies are in general only temporary: or if an invader settle in a conquered country, on becoming the possessor, he cultivates and defends it. And it is the proper And it is the proper office of government to render life and property secure. In neither case has it fared thus with Judea. But besides successive invasions by foreign nations, and the systematic spoliation exercised by a despotic government, other causes have conspired to perpetuate its desolation, and to render abortive the substance that is in it. Among these has chiefly to be numbered, its being literally trodden under foot by many pastors. Volney devotes a chapter, fifty pages in length, to a description, as he entitles it," of the pastoral or wandering tribes of Syria," chiefly of the Bedouin Arabs, by whom, espe 4 Schulze, in Pallas, cited by Malte-Brun, Geogr. vol. ii. p. 148. e Volney's Travels, vol. i. p. 356. f Ibid. vol. ii. 370, 381. cially, Judea is incessantly traversed. "The pachalics of Aleppo and Damascus may be computed to contain about thirty thousand wandering Turkmen (Turkomans). All their property consists in cattle." In the same pachalics, the number of the Curds "exceeds twenty thousand tents and huts," or an equal number of armed men. "The Curds are almost everywhere looked upon as robbers. Like the Turkmen, these Curds are pastors and wanderers. A third wandering people in Syria are the Bedouin Arabs.”h "It often happens that even individuals, turned robbers in order to withdraw themselves from the laws or from tyranny, unite and form a little camp, which maintain themselves by arms, and increasing, become new hordes and new tribes. We may pronounce, that in cultivable countries the wandering life originates in the injustice or want of policy of the government; and that the sedentary and the cultivating state is that to which mankind is most naturally inclined." "It is evident that agriculture must be very precarious in such a country, and that, under a government like that of the Turks, it is safer to lead a wandering life, than to choose a settled habitation, and rely for subsistence on agriculture."k "The Turkmen, the Curds, and the Bedouins, have no fixed habitations, but keep perpetually wandering with their tents and herds, in limited districts, of which they look upon themselves as the proprietors. The Arabs spread over the whole frontier of Syria, and even the plains of Palestine." -Thus, contrary to their natural inclination, the peasants, often forced to abandon a settled life, and pastoral tribes in great numbers, or many, and without fixed habitations, divide the country, as it were by mutual consent, and apportion it in limited districts 8 Volney's Travels, ii. 370; i. 4, 5. i Ibid. p. 383. k Ibid. p. 387. h Ibid. i. 377. 1 Ibid. pp. 367, 368. |