There are many valleys in this country that are as rich and fertile as the alluvial deposits of the Nile. Such, for instance, is the plain of Esdraelon and the valley around Lake Huleh. These garden spots are annually sown in wheat. To be sure, the yield is not large. We can not expect it to be large when we remember that these sons of idleness use the same rude implements of agriculture that their fathers used three thousand years ago. A camel, or a yoke of oxen, a forked stick, and a half-naked Arab, make a first class plow team for Palestine.
The fact that these people are primitive in their mode and manner of life, makes it all the more delightful to the equestrian pilgrims to be here. The student of history, especially of sacred history, finds the same pleasure in traveling through the Holy Land that a miner does in traversing a rich gold field. The shining dust glittering in the light of the sun stirs every faculty of his being; and now and then, when he finds a nugget of the precious metal, his soul is all aglow with emotion.
Palestine is more than a gold mine, it is a diamond field, to the student of Biblical history. New truths are constantly discovered, and old ones are seen in a new light. Each additional ray gives more beauty, and adds new lustre, to the already resplendent gem.
To those who like novelty, and love Nature, nothing can be more interesting than “tent life in the East.” Here one is introduced into a world of novelties. True, the country is old; but its very age becomes a novelty. The mountains, though shorn of their pristine beauty, though “rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun,” have an interest all their own. If the valleys were lakes, and the hills clothed with verdure, Syria would be only a repetition of the highlands of Scotland. If the purple hills of Judea towered to the skies, if they were covered with snow, and studded with waving forest trees, the Palestine world would be another Switzerland. If these people were Christianized, civilized, and cultivated, they would differ but little from Europeans and Americans.
But such is not the case. The lakes were never here, and the primeval forests disappeared a thousand years ago. Here the snow scarcely ever falls, and the mountains are only hills, Hermon and Tabor being the only exceptions. As for the people, they are mostly Mohammedans and Jews. Many of them never heard of Christ, nor do they want to hear of Him. Nineteen-twentieths of them are so illiterate that, if they were to see a daily newspaper printed in their own language, they could not read it. Not one in fifty could write his name on paper if it would save his neck from the halter.
