Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and AdventureConder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
History
Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure
Conder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
Palestine -- Description and travel
Whilst at Jenîn we had the unusual honour of a visit from a lady, who
came to ask for medical advice. Peasants suffering from ophthalmia, or
from indigestion, which they explained by saying “the head of my heart
hurts me,” we had to doctor every day, and one poor old gentleman, at
Mujeidil, we afterwards treated with carbolic acid and nearly cured of a
skin disease; but he had many other ailments which we could not treat,
and he consequently became a decided nuisance. The lady came attended by
her slave, a little girl in white with large dark eyes, one of which,
for some unknown reason, she kept steadily shut. The mistress was
dressed in yellow and white striped cotton, with the izâr or white veil
above; her face-veil she was obliged to remove to show her tongue, and
her eyes had a deep fringe of blue kohel all round, the eyebrows painted
to meet, whilst on her chin, forehead, and upper lip, were small dots
tattooed in blue in a sort of trefoil pattern; her hands had bands of
blue paint and dots on the knuckles. She wore heavy rings and a blue
glass bracelet; the sleeves were tight to the wrist, and under her frock
she wore the gay-coloured trousers as we call them, which are in reality
a petticoat sewn up, and the prettiest article of Syrian costume. Her
nails and the palms of her hands were dyed orange colour with henna, and
on her feet she wore the red curly-toed slippers used in walking out of
doors. She described her symptoms with the usual high querulous tone and
rapid chatter peculiar to the native women, and was made happy by a
couple of pills.
The places visited from this camp lay principally east of the plain. We
ascended the high conical peak of Jebel Dŭhy, so-called after Neby
Dŭhy (“the leader or general”), a prophet whose sacred place is on
the summit. Who this prophet was I am unable to say, nor can we with any
certainty apply a Biblical name to the mountain. The Crusaders called it
sometimes Mount Endor, and generally Little Hermon, a title still known
to the Nazareth Christians. The latter name was given in consequence of
the expression, “Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in Thy name,” whence
they seemed to have argued that Hermon was to be sought close to Tabor.
They can never have looked northwards from the neighbourhood of Endor,
or they would have seen the rounded, isolated mound, like a huge
mole-hill, which is Tabor, and behind it far away the magnificent, snowy
dome of the second sacred mountain of the text--the true Hermon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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