Haifa; or, Life in modern PalestineOliphant, Laurence
History
Haifa; or, Life in modern Palestine
Oliphant, Laurence
Palestine -- Description and travel
Haifa, May 15.—From the ancient fortress of El-Hösn we crossed a spur to
a high projecting point, from which we could look down a sheer precipice
one thousand feet high, which had been formed by a land-slip, to the bed
of the river. Forcing their way impetuously through a gorge opposite,
the tributary waters of the Rukkad mingled their clear stream with the
turbid Yarmuk, after a rapid course from their source in the highlands
of Jaulan, from which elevated plateau they are precipitated in a
magnificent waterfall eight hundred feet high. All this scenery is as
yet absolutely unknown and unexplored, this fall having only recently
been discovered, by my travelling companion on this occasion. I
regretted being unable to visit it, but we were limited for time, and
although it was only hidden from view by a projecting spur of the
valley, so broken up is this country by precipitous ravines and gorges,
that it would have taken us a day's hard riding to reach it.
It was with regret that we found ourselves compelled to leave the
elevated position on which we now stood, and which commanded an
extensive view, limited in the extreme east by the lofty mountains of
the Jebel Druze; and, steering our way by compass, struck a
southeasterly direction, over a park-like, undulating country, covered
with oak forest, with occasional patches of cultivation. This part of
the country to the east of the Jordan, which is called the Keferat, is
thinly inhabited, the villages being very small, squalid, and far apart,
but it is a country all waiting to yield of its abundance to some future
race who may turn its magnificent resources to good account. In many
places the trees were festooned with vines, the grapes of this district
being celebrated, but the population pay little heed to their
cultivation, for it is impossible to protect them from robbers. The
Bedouins consider the sedentary inhabitants as lawful spoil, and raid
over these lands at will, practically almost unchecked by the
authorities, whose administrative hold on the country is of the
slenderest description. It is, in fact, chiefly exercised at those times
when it is necessary to send the mounted police into the villages to
collect the taxes, and they clear up all that the Bedouins may have
left, so that these poor people are engaged in a perpetual struggle to
keep body and soul together, and although they are surrounded by a
fertile country which, if it were properly cultivated, would make them
wealthy, they only cultivate enough for their barest necessities, and
have not the heart to attempt to accumulate wealth which they would not
be permitted to keep. Situated at an elevation of about eighteen hundred
feet above the sea, these high, wooded, fertile table-lands form a
district which, should this country ever come to be occupied under more
favourable conditions than now exist, will certainly be among the first
to attract an agricultural population. The wild, rocky gorges by which
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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