I went to lunch with the largest of these local magnates. He was a Turk, and spoke Turkish in preference to Arabic. He had, as may be supposed, little sympathy with the Arab peasantry, who were practically his serfs, and their condition was by no means improved by their lands having fallen into his hands. On the other hand, they never would have introduced the civilized iron ploughs with which he was bringing land into cultivation. His farm-house was a large, straggling, isolated building, which stood on a hillock in the plain, with extensive outhouses and dependencies, not unlike the residence of a Southern planter, while, curiously enough, a large proportion of his farm hands consisted of African negroes located in a village hard by—but he had none of the lavish hospitality which characterized the landed proprietors of the South.
A ride of an hour over a part of the plain which, from the peculiar quality of its soil, is exclusively devoted to the growth of water-melons, hitherto the sole export of the little haven of Cæsarea, brought me to that spot. Although the remains of the old port have been used as a harbour for coasting craft, these ruins have not been inhabited since they were evacuated by the crusaders at the end of the thirteenth century. Indeed, there is a curious prediction connected with them, to the effect that the rebuilding of a town here would immediately precede a great disaster to Islam. It has been in consequence of this, as I have understood, that while villages have sprung up on all the other crusading ruins on the coast, this one alone has remained untenanted. However this may be, the spell is broken now, for about six months ago the first instalment of a band of refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina arrived here, having been allotted this ruin and the lands surrounding it by the government, as the nucleus of a new colony.
Apart from the great interest which these extensive ruins must ever have from an antiquarian point of view, I was anxious to visit Cæsarea to judge for myself of the prospects of this embryo colony, and make personal acquaintance with this new and interesting class of immigrants. Moreover, as the new town is to be built upon the ruins of the old, it was evident that I should never have another chance of seeing what these were like. They have already during the last twenty years served as a quarry from whence the magnificent building-stones, cut originally by Herod the Great when he built the town, have been transported in thousands of boat-loads to Acre and Jaffa. The ruins have therefore lost much of the pristine grandeur which is described in the records of travellers in the early part of the present century. In a few years more they will probably have disappeared altogether. The subterranean treasures, whatever they may be, will, however, remain untouched, and the Schliemann of a future age will find here the traces of five successive epochs of civilization. On the top he will find the ruins of the stone houses of the Bosnians and Herzegovinians, now in process of erection; below them the foundations of the great Crusading fortress, and below them again the remains of the first Mohammedan period; beneath them, traces of the Byzantine period, and, at the bottom, the tessellated pavements, the fragments of carved marble, the statuary, and the coins of the Roman period.