The appearance of the bay in winter was very fine. In calm weather we looked northwards to the long ridge of Galilean mountains, with the strong walls and white minaret of Acre beneath, and the snowy dome of Hermon above. For five minutes every evening a glorious crimson flush spread over the mountains, gradually dying out as the cold blue shadow crept up the slopes. In the morning the long curve of the bay, the misty hills, the beautiful line of palms along the dunes, with the sun rising behind, made a subject fit for Turner's pencil. The town itself, backed by the Carmel bluff, was equally picturesque, with the old tower above its walls, riddled by English shot and shell in 1840, yet still mounting one gun. As the winter went on, the heavy seas came rolling in round the promontory, and a cormorant, or a Mother Carey's chicken, might be seen hovering over the waves, or a flight of wild duck bobbing on the rollers. Great shoals of fish came in, and were caught with the primitive cast-nets of the naked fishermen; and, after the storm, the beach would be found strewn with shells, amongst which the _Murex trunculus_ was common, from which the Tyrian purple was derived.
The Khilzon, or murex, is, indeed, closely connected with Carmel. The Rabbis understood the expression, "riches of the deep,â to refer to the Khilzon, and to be promised to the tribe of Zebulon as an inheritance. The Khilzon was fished at a place called after it, and as far north as Phoenicia. Its name still exists in the modern Wâdy Halzûn, a valley tributary to the Belus River, near Acre, in which river the murex was found. The expression in the Song of Songs, "thine head ... like Carmel ... the hair of thine head like purpleâ (vii. 5), was also understood by the Jews to refer to the Khilzon, and, by a natural elision, to its being found under Carmel.
The murex gave many colours, from green and deep blue to red, but the Tyrian purple was the dark blood-colour, like the darkest of "black rosesâ as the ancients called them, and only one drop of the dye was found in the vein of the mollusk, which circumstance accounted for the expensiveness of the Tyrian garments.
The Kishon, as noticed in a former chapter, enters the plain of Acre by a narrow gorge under the cliffs of Carmel, on the north side of the ridge. From this point it gradually works away north-west, and is fed by fine springs from the foot of the mountain, and also from near the low hills on the right bank. Most of these springs, but especially 'Ain S'adeh and the 'Ayûn el Werd, flowing from among the rocks near the foot of Carmel, are perennial. Thus, beneath the main ford, west of El Harathîyeh (Harosheth of the Gentiles), the river is full of water even in autumn. Above this point its stony bed is hidden by the oleander bushes, but below it flows slowly through a barren, marshy plain, between banks some ten feet high--an impassable stream, having a fall of eighty feet in the last five miles of its course.