At the upper end of the lake are the remains of Capernaum, now called Talhewm, or Tel Hoom, situated about ten miles from Tiberias, in a north-easterly direction. This village, although at present nothing more than a station of Bedouins, appears to have been occupied in former times by a settlement of some importance, as the ruins of stately buildings are found scattered over a wide space in the neighbourhood. The foundations of a magnificent edifice can still be traced; but the structure itself is so much dilapidated that it is no longer possible to determine whether it was a temple or a palace. The northern end is sixty-five paces in length, and, as the eastern wall seems to have extended to the edge of the water, its length could not be less than five hundred feet. Within this space are seen large blocks of sculptured stone, in friezes, cornices, and mouldings. The appearance of the Sea of Galilee, as seen from this point of view at Capernaum, is very grand. Its greatest length runs nearly north and south, from fifteen to eighteen miles, while its breadth averages from five to six. The barren aspect of the mountains on each side, and the total absence of wood, give, however, a cast of dulness to the picture; and this is increased even to a feeling of melancholy by the dead calm of its surface, and the silence which reigns throughout its whole extent, where not a boat or vessel of any kind is to be found. No fisherman any longer plies his laborious craft on the bosom of the lake, nor seeks to vary his scanty meal by letting down his net for a draught. Mr. Buckingham observed, from the heights above, shoals of fish darting through the water, and the shore in some places covered with storks and diving-birds, which repair hither in search of food; but when, on one occasion, he suggested that a supper might be procured for his party by exercising a little skill with the rod or net, he discovered that the ignorant barbarians whom he addressed had not yet taken a lesson from the fowls of the air. A circumstance deserving of notice is mentioned by Hasselquist, in regard to the tenants of this lake. He thought it remarkable that the same kind of fish should be here met with as in the Nile,--charmuth, silurus, baenni, mulsil, and sparus Galilaeus. This explains the observations of certain travellers, who speak of the Sea of Tiberias as possessing fish peculiar to itself; not being acquainted perhaps with the produce of the Egyptian river. Josephus was of the same opinion; and yet it is worthy of remark, that in describing the fountain of Capernaum his conjectures tend to confirm the conclusions of the Swedish naturalist:-- "Some consider it," says the Jewish historian, "as a vein of the Nile, because it brings forth fishes resembling the coracinus of the Alexandrian lake."[144]