Every traveller is impressed by the very meagre remains of a material kind which Israel has left for curious eyes. In a museum at Jerusalem many of these have been gathered—fragments of pottery and glass, coins, and other relics,—but the total number of them is surprisingly small. There are, of course, those huge stones to which reference has been already made, cut in a style which experts used to regard as distinctive enough to enable them to identify it as Jewish work.[16] But inscriptions are extremely rare. Ph?nicia and Israel seem to have purposely avoided the habit of Assyrian and Egyptian kings, who wrote upon everything they built. There is, of course, the Moabite stone, whose characters are closely allied to Hebrew writing. But with that exception there is hardly any certain Hebrew inscription extant except one. That is indeed a writing of romantic fame. There is a tunnel known as Hezekiah’s Aqueduct, connecting the Fountain of the Virgin with the Pool of Siloam at Jerusalem. Its length is rather more than the third of a mile; its{89}

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THE LAKE OF GALILEE, LOOKING SOUTH FROM TIBERIAS.

Two of the circular towers and wall which defended the ancient Tiberias are seen in the foreground.

height varies from five or six feet to one foot four inches. Its course bends in a wide sweep which adds greatly to the distance, and is said to have been taken in order to avoid tombs. There are a number of culs de sac, where the workmen had evidently lost their way. The flow of water is intermittent, so that Sir Charles Warren and his friends took their lives in their hands when they first explored it. Their mouths were often under water, “and a breath of air could only be obtained by twisting their faces up. To keep a light burning, to take measurements, and make observations under these circumstances was a work of no little difficulty; and yet, after crawling through mud and water for four hours, the honour of finding the inscription was reserved for a naked urchin of the town, who, some years after, announced that he had seen writing on the wall, whereupon Professor Sayce, and Herr Schick, and Dr. Guthe plunge naked into the muddy tunnel with acid solutions, and blotting-paper, and everything necessary to make squeezes, and emerge shivering and triumphant with the most interesting Hebrew inscription that has ever been found in Palestine.”[17] The inscription describes the meeting of the two parties of miners, who, like the engineers of modern tunnels, began to bore simultaneously at opposite ends.

Failing any wealth of such material remains, we must seek for Israel in the human life of the land. Jews are there in abundance, gathered, for the most part, within their four holy cities of Jerusalem, Tiberias,{90} Hebron, and Safed. In Hebron they are a persecuted minority; in Safed they form about half the population; in Jerusalem, where there are more than seventy synagogues, it was estimated in 1898 that out of the 60,000 inhabitants 41,000 were Jews, nearly six times the number of the Mohammedans; while in Tiberias also they form about two-thirds of the population. Besides the Jews resident in these cities there are others both in the older colonies and in the new settlements of the Zionist movement, which have been created by the generosity of Jewish millionaires. Reports differ as to the success of these interesting experiments, and the knowledge of them which can be obtained from a passing visit is a quite inadequate ground for forming any judgment. Mr. Zangwill eloquently pleads for the restoration of the land to its ancient people; Colonel Conder assures us that the Jew is incapable of becoming a thoroughly successful agriculturist, though as a shopkeeper, a money-changer, or, in some cases, as a craftsman, he prospers in his native land. Certain it is that Jews are gathering to it from Russia, Poland, Germany, Spain, Arabia, and many other countries, with what ultimate result the future alone can shew.

It would be unfair and misleading to take the present Jewish population of Syria as the representative of ancient Israel. It still perpetuates, indeed, the sects of Pharisees and Sadducees, and it still holds aloof from the surrounding population with that independence and tenacity which has marked Israel from of old. Crucified{91} by Romans, butchered and tortured by Crusaders, oppressed and driven forth by Moslems, this marvellous people lives yet and will live on. In Europe the lot of the Jew has been and still is a bitter one. In Syria to-day the lowest and most insulting term of abuse among the Fellahin is to call each other Jews. Yet the spirit of the people is not broken by oppression, as is the spirit of the Fellahin. The Jew takes what comes and says little; but he believes in himself, his past and his future, with a faith indomitable as it is daring. Still it must be confessed that the Jew of Palestine is generally repulsive. Mark Twain’s description of them as he saw them at Tiberias is hardly overdrawn—“long-nosed, lanky, dyspeptic-looking ghouls with the indescribable hats on, and a long curl dangling down in front of each ear.” The hats are circular black felt plates, giving to their wearers a peculiar air of conscious rectitude and semi-clerical superiority; the curls are grown for the convenience of the archangel in the resurrection! The younger men and lads of Tiberias impress one as the most unpleasant-looking of all the inhabitants of the land. They are so neurotic and effeminate, and at the same time so monstrously supercilious. The Jewish quarters are famous for their excessive dirt. In the visitors’ book of the hotel at Tiberias, Captain MacGregor wrote “that the Rob Roy and myself had stopped there two nights, and that the canoe was not devoured.” This is not encouraging, and in part it is the result of mistaken methods. Many of these Jews are subsidised, and a{92} subsidised religion is inevitably degrading. A man who receives an income for no other service to his kind than that he is a Jew is not likely to do credit to his ancestors.

In the Samaritans we have better representatives of the ancient days. No people in the land have a more pathetic quaintness about them than these few survivors of antiquity who are still met with in the streets of Nablus. They preserve the old type of features, for their blood has been unmixed for more than 2000 years. But they are fast dying out, and only a remnant of less than 200 individuals is now alive. Difficult of access, reserved, mysterious, they are the ghosts of ancient Israel, who seem to haunt rather than to enjoy their former heritage.

In the manners and customs of Syria a still more interesting memorial of Israel is found. Many of these were not peculiar to Israel, nor was she the first to cherish them. They are the forms of the general Semitic stock, of which she was but one people. But the words and ways of Israel are the only form of Semitic life with which the world is familiar, and every student of the Bible finds in these the greatest source both of devout and of scientific interest. In the towns and in Jerusalem there is still much to remind one of the life so matchlessly delineated in Scripture. Lean and mangy dogs still sniff around Lazarus at the very door of Dives. The windows of houses generally face the interior courts, and the outer walls are blank, so that every door opened after nightfall contrasts the vivid light of the interior with the “outer darkness”{93} of the street. Still more in the country, among the Fellahin and the wandering Arabs, does one seem to live in B............