The Lands of the Saracen: Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and SpainTaylor, Bayard
History
The Lands of the Saracen: Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain
Taylor, Bayard
Middle East -- Description and travel; Spain -- Description and travel
of them blew, I judged they were taking a pastoral holiday. We kept our
pistols beside us; for we did not like their looks. Before leaving, they
told us that the country was full of robbers, and advised us to be on the
lookout. We rode more carefully, after this, and kept with our baggage on
reaching it, An hour after leaving the bridge, we came to a large
circular, or rather annular mound, overgrown with knee-deep grass and
clumps of oak-trees. A large stream, of a bright blue color, gushed down
the north side, and after half embracing the mound swept off across the
meadows to the Waters of Merom. There could be no doubt that this was Tell
el-Kadi, the site of Dan, the most northern town of ancient Israel. The
mound on which it was built is the crater of an extinct volcano. The
Hebrew word _Dan_ signifies "judge," and Tell el-Kadi, in Arabic, is "The
Hill of the Judge."
The Anti-Lebanon now rose near us, its northern and western slopes green
with trees and grass. The first range, perhaps 5,000 feet in height, shut
out the snowy head of Hermon; but still the view was sublime in its large
and harmonious outlines. Our road was through a country resembling
Arcadia--the earth hidden by a dense bed of grass and flowers; thickets of
blossoming shrubs; old, old oaks, with the most gnarled of trunks, the
most picturesque of boughs, and the glossiest of green leaves; olive-trees
of amazing antiquity; and, threading and enlivening all, the clear-cold
floods of Lebanon. This was the true haunt of Pan, whose altars are now
before me, graven on the marble crags of Hermon. Looking on those altars,
and on the landscape, lovely as a Grecian dream, I forget that the lament
has long been sung:
"Pan, Pan is dead!"
In another hour, we reached this place, the ancient Cæsarea Philippi, now
a poor village, embowered in magnificent trees, and washed by glorious
waters. There are abundant remains of the old city: fragments of immense
walls; broken granite columns; traces of pavements; great blocks of hewn
stone; marble pedestals, and the like. In the rock at the foot of the
mountain, there are several elegant niches, with Greek inscriptions,
besides a large natural grotto. Below them, the water gushes up through
the stones, in a hundred streams, forming a flood of considerable size. We
have made our camp in an olive grove near the end of the village, beside
an immense terebinth tree, which is inclosed in an open court, paved with
stone. This is the town-hall of Banias, where the Shekh dispenses justice,
and at the same time, the resort of all the idlers of the place. We went
up among them, soon after our arrival, and were given seats of honor near
the Shekh, who talked with me a long time about America. The people
exhibit a very sensible curiosity, desiring to know the extent of our
country, the number of inhabitants, the amount of taxation, the price of
grain, and other solid information.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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