The Boy Travellers in the Far East, Part Fourth: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Egypt and the Holy LandKnox, Thomas Wallace
General
The Boy Travellers in the Far East, Part Fourth: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Egypt and the Holy Land
Knox, Thomas Wallace
Egypt -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature; Palestine -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature
"Down and down we went, and from Tabor to Tiberias it was a descending
road the most of the way. We passed the _Khan el-Tujar_, or Caravansary
of the Merchants, which is very much in ruins, but was evidently a
strong place at the time of its erection, three hundred years ago. It
was built by the Pacha of Damascus for the protection of the merchants
from the robbers, who frequently plundered the caravans and made the
road dangerous. A market is held here once a week, and the people from
Tiberias, Nazareth, and other places in the neighborhood come to sell
their wares, but we could not learn that they had much to sell.
[Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF KEFR KENNA.]
"Cana of Galilee, where the water was turned into wine, is off our road,
and we had to be satisfied with the indication of its position. It is
now called Kefr Kenna, and has a population of five or six hundred, half
of whom are Moslems and the rest Greek Christians. The Greeks have a
church in which they show one of the jars or water-pots in which the
miracle was performed. There is another Kenna or Cana between Nazareth
and Mount Carmel, and some authorities think it was the scene of the
miracle, and not the one we have been talking about.
[Illustration: THE CITY AND LAKE OF TIBERIAS.]
"As we rode down the hills we had a full view of the sea or lake of
Tiberias, which is also called the Sea of Galilee, and the sea or lake
of Gennesaret, and known to the Arabs as _Bahr Tabariyeh_. It is smaller
than you might suppose from its importance in history; it is thirteen
miles long and less than seven in width, and in the midst of a region
with very few inhabitants. As we looked at it, it seemed little more
than a pond, and the hills beyond it were bare and desolate. The
fertility of the region must be far less now than it was in the time of
our Saviour, and it is the general opinion that the country has
undergone many changes. We passed the ruins of several villages and
towns, and for nearly all the time of our journey the evidences were all
around us that a great many people once lived here.
"The most populous town on the banks of the lake is Tiberias, but it has
not more than two thousand inhabitants, and the majority of them have a
poverty-stricken appearance. Like all the people of Palestine, they
begged persistently for backsheesh, and would not leave us till we
threatened to appeal to the Governor and ask for a guard to protect us.
We noticed that a great number of them were Jews, and several spoke to
us in German; this roused our curiosity, and we asked the Doctor what it
all meant. He explained it to us in this way:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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