The ploughs of the Holy Land are about the same now as those used in the days of the Bible. They are crude affairs, made of wood tipped with iron, to which oxen and bullocks are yoked with a rough piece of wood fastened to the necks of the animals. Sometimes the yoke is tilted at an angle of forty-five degrees, reaching from the neck of a camel down to that of a donkey. Donkeys and cows are also harnessed together, and bullocks and camels. The plough ends in a point like that of a pickaxe. It only scratches the soil, and nowhere goes very deep. The furrows are so narrow that many ploughs are required for large fields. The ploughmen wear long gowns, and on their heads are cloths bound round with rope. They wear rough shoes or go barefoot. Much of the land in the mountainous parts is so rocky that ploughs are not used. The earth is broken up with mattocks or hoes and all the crops are cultivated by hand. Nevertheless, this limestone soil is so rich that it will often produce several crops in one year. Figs, olives, and other fruits flourish. There are olive orchards everywhere. They cover the sides of the hills and are near every farm village. I was hardly out of sight of them on my way from Shechem to Mount Carmel. A great quantity of oil is exported. The curse of the Palestine farmer has long been the Mohammedan tax gatherer and assessor. These men have squeezed the heart out of both the farmer and his crop. The tax assessors have gone out over the country in the blossom time of the olive orchards and levied on each tree the cash tax to be paid no matter how the crop finally turned out. The olive harvest often fails in Palestine, so rather than pay unjust and excessive taxes the discouraged farmers have sometimes simply cut down trees and sold both wood and roots. It is not only the olive orchards that have suffered from this kind of taxation. One eighth of the annual yield of every crop has been taken from the people. The custom of selling to the highest bidder the right to collect the taxes in a given district has, of course, made things worse. In their determination to get back the money they paid the government and a handsome profit for themselves besides, these men have had no mercy on the farmer. The bundles of grain brought to the village threshing-floors and put up in stacks of eight have been closely watched by the tax gatherers and their agents. Besides these farm taxes, the people have suffered from a head tax of two dollars on every male member of the community from birth to death, from the salt tax, from taxes on imports, and on everything that a man eats, drinks, or wears. Once freed from oppressive taxation and its farmers given a fair chance, there is no doubt that Palestine will produce many times what it has done under Turkish rule. CHAPTER XXI THE COLONIES AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT