Читать книгу Haifa; or, Life in modern Palestine - Laurence Oliphant - Страница 10

Table of Contents

Haifa, Feb. 7.—It was my fate as a child to live in a country-house in Scotland, of which one half was some centuries old, with stone walls several feet thick, and circular stone steps leading up into a mysterious tower, which was supposed to be haunted, and in which it was rumoured that a secret chamber existed, built in the wall, and I remember perfectly that certain places seemed to sound hollow to blows of a crowbar, which as I got older, I used to apply to suspected localities. It is more years than I care to think of since those days, but I can trace a resemblance to that childish feeling in the sensations by which I am animated when I wander over the gloomiest recesses of Carmel alone in search of caverns.

It is called in some ancient Jewish record “the mountain of the thousand caves,” and has been inhabited from time immemorial by hermits and religious devotees. Independently of the Biblical record, we have historical traces of its holy character. According to the most ancient Persian traditions, sacred fire burned at the extreme western point of Carmel. Suetonius speaks of the oracles of the god of Carmel, and Alexander the Great repeats the saying. The Syrian city, Ecbatana, alluded to by Pliny, was situated on this mountain. Pythagoras lived here in retreat for some time because it had a reputation for superior sanctity, but Strabo mentions the caves as being haunts of pirates. They were doubtless used as places of refuge for bad characters, as well as of seclusion for pious ones. Others were used for tombs, others for crusaders' sentry-boxes, and now they are the retreat of flocks and herds, and in some instances storehouses for grain.

Those, however, thus utilized are comparatively few in number; I believe many to be unknown even to the natives, while others are invested by them with a mysterious character, and their dimensions are probably exaggerated. I have received accounts of some, which I hope to visit, which are said to extend beyond any known exploration, of others which bear traces of carving and inscriptions, but nothing can be more uncertain or unsatisfactory than native accounts upon all matters where definite information is required. I have tried exploring with guides and exploring alone, and have been almost as successful one way as the other.

One of my first visits was to a ruin which I had observed crowning a summit of the range, but which was only visible from certain points, so shut in was it by the intervening mountain-tops. I started on horseback, determined to find my way alone, and struck into a valley where the narrow path followed a ledge of limestone rock, often not more than two feet wide. I soon found myself diving into a sombre gorge, the precipitous sides of which rose abruptly from the bed of the winter torrent. As I proceeded it became more and more uncanny; the path was so narrow I could no longer venture to risk my horse's footing, as a slip would have involved a fall of at least two hundred feet. My ruin disappeared, and my gorge seemed to trend away from it, the sun sank behind the range, and the deep gloom of the solitary valley, hemmed in on all sides by terraces of limestone, with here and there a fissure indicating some cavernous recess, was becoming depressing.

I tried to turn, but the ledge was too narrow, so I was obliged to creep cautiously on in the wrong direction. I began now rather to fear lest I should meet some one, not merely because passing would have been impossible, but because the spot was eminently well calculated for an act of violence, and, while I always go about unarmed, I find that my neighbours seldom go out riding alone without carrying revolvers. The aspect of a wild-looking Arab, with a gun slung behind him, suddenly turning a corner and coming straight towards me, was, under these circumstances, not reassuring. Fortunately, at the moment I saw him I had reached a spot where a huge rock had been displaced, and had left a vacant space large enough to enable me to turn comfortably, and I retraced my steps, amply repaid for my failure in not reaching the ruin, by the solemn grandeur of the part of the mountain into which I had been penetrating, and by finding my Arab, when he overtook me, to be a communicative and harmless individual, who was on his way home from a cave in which he stored his grain, and which he assured me I should have reached if I had continued a few hundred yards farther. Beyond this, he said, the path led nowhere.

My next attempt was made with a friend who knew the way, and who led me along a corresponding ledge upon the opposite side of the valley, into a side gorge, which we followed past a wall of rock, in which were two or three small caverns, which I entered, the largest not more than twelve or fourteen feet square, and showing no signs of having been inhabited. A huge rock detached from the mountain-side, and hollowed into a sort of gallery, is so celebrated among the natives that it has a name of its own. Just behind it we turned to scramble almost straight up the mountain-side, covered with a scrub composed of camelthorn, odoriferous thyme, sage, marjoram, and arbutus, and then found we were at the foot of seven clearly defined terraces, completely encircling the rounded hill, upon the top of which stood the crumbling walls of an old fort, and which formed portions of its defences. On one of these stood a shepherd's hut, and inside the enclosure made of bushes was the entrance to a cavern, about thirty yards long, four feet high, and twenty or thirty feet across. In it, when they were not out feeding, the shepherd kept his flock of long-eared goats.

Ascending to the ruin, I found it to consist of the remains of what had evidently been a fort, the walls of which, enclosing a space of about sixty yards long by forty broad, were standing to a height of eight or ten feet, and were composed of blocks of limestone. At one angle a portion of the fortress had at a later period been converted into a church, the apse, with its arches, being in a tolerable state of preservation. The name of this ruin is Rushmea, and according to the most reliable sources of information to which I have had access, it was used by Saladin to watch the progress of the siege of Acre when that place was held by the crusaders. Prior to the crusades and the formation of the order of the Carmelite monks, the mountain was inhabited by anchorites, some of whom claimed to have inherited the sacred character of Elijah and Elisha. For some time seven of them seem to have divided the claim between them, and one of them is reported to have lived in a cave at Rushmea, which is said to contain carving and inscriptions. It was for this cave I was especially in search; but though I have visited the locality three times in all, twice with guides, and have found some seven or eight caves, one of which had a carved limestone entrance, none of them seemed of sufficient importance to answer the traditional description. A magnificent view is obtained from the ruin over the Bay of Acre, with the town in the distance and the plain of Kishon beneath, and plainly visible the famous well for the possession of which Saladin and Richard Cœur de Lion fought. I have visited this celebrated source, with its massive masonry and crumbling cistern, in the centre of which there is now a flourishing fig-tree. During the siege which Haifa then withstood, the town was completely destroyed, so that the crusading army had to remain in tents, and here it was that the lion-hearted king caught that severe fever which gave rise to reports of his death, and which resulted in his remaining for four weeks at Haifa to recover his health. That plain is as unhealthy now as it was then, and the date-groves, which are its most striking feature, must have existed then, for they are mentioned in the records of the year 1230, when King Amalrich II. died of a surfeit of sea-fish, for which the place is celebrated.

To return to Rushmea. The whole hill-top is covered with the traces of remains far anterior to the ruins of crusading times. Everywhere we come upon the solid limestone foundations of what must have been large buildings; there are flights of steps hewn in the rock, large square cuttings from which blocks have been taken, places where circular holes have been drilled, grooves, niches, and excavations. On a plateau about a hundred yards to the west is a series of massive stone arches in a very fair state of preservation. I found the elevation of Rushmea, by my aneroid, to be as nearly as possible seven hundred feet above the sea. In a valley behind it, and a hundred feet below it, are a dozen olive-trees of immense age, and near them a celebrated spring, called the Well of Elisha. It is not above twelve feet deep, and, on descending into it, I found that it was in fact not a spring, but a subterranean stream which enters a receptacle formed for it in the rock, from a cave at the side, and from which it disappears again. Instead of returning from Rushmea by the way I had come, I pushed up to the head of the valley in which the spring is situated. On two of the hills which rise from it I found terraces and the foundations of stone edifices. Indeed, wherever one wanders in Carmel, one is apt to stumble upon these substantial records of its bygone history. As the mountain is about thirteen miles long and nine miles wide at its southeastern extremity, and as every valley and hillside and plateau has at one time or other been inhabited, and as many of these remain still to be explored for the first time, there is abundant field for investigation, and it is impossible to take a ride or a scramble in any direction without coming upon some object of interest. Nor is it possible to lose one's way when alone, except to a limited extent, for the nearest hill-top, if you can get to it, is sure to let you know where you are.

Thus leaving Rushmea without a guide, and soon without a path, I pushed through the scrub, now dismounting and driving my horse before me, now forcing him, much to his discomfort, through the prickly bushes. Even at this time of year the hills are bright with scarlet anemones, and the delicate pink or white cyclamen, and fragrant with aromatic odours as we crush through the shrubs. Suddenly I came upon the foundations of a wall, which I followed for about a hundred yards, and which was about four feet in thickness. Near it, half hidden by the bushes, was a circular block of limestone about five feet high and the same in diameter, in the centre of which had been drilled a hole. It looked like the section of some gigantic column such as we see in some of the temples of Upper Egypt; but it stood alone, and I fail to imagine its design. Possibly it may have been used for sacrificial purposes. Shortly after I found myself on a high, level plateau, where the soil was so excellent, and the rocks had so far disappeared, that it would do admirably for farming purposes. It seemed to extend over some hundreds of acres. Formerly, the whole of these fertile tracts of Carmel were covered with magnificent forests—even in the memory of man—but of late years the demand for charcoal has so much increased that the mountain has been almost completely denuded of trees, and although a strict order has been issued by the government against the felling of timber, it still continues, and, thanks to the system of backsheesh, the export of charcoal from Haifa last year exceeded that of any previous year. Keeping westward by my compass I soon after struck a path, and finally dropped down upon the German colony near Haifa, after a day's ramble through the most delightful scenery, every step of which was replete with historical association and antiquarian interest.