The plain of Esdraelon—“the battle-field
of the nations”—only sets one to
dreaming of Joshua, and Benhadad, and Saul, and Gideon;
Tamerlane, Tancred, Coeur de Lion, and Saladin; the
warrior Kings of Persia, Egypt’s heroes, and
Napoleon—for they all fought here.
If the magic of the moonlight could summon from the
graves of forgotten centuries and many lands the countless
myriads that have battled on this wide, far-reaching
floor, and array them in the thousand strange Costumes
of their hundred nationalities, and send the vast
host sweeping down the plain, splendid with plumes
and banners and glittering lances, I could stay here
an age to see the phantom pageant. But the magic
of the moonlight is a vanity and a fraud; and whoso
putteth his trust in it shall suffer sorrow and disappointment.
Down at the foot of Tabor, and just at the edge of
the storied Plain of Esdraelon, is the insignificant
village of Deburieh, where Deborah, prophetess of
Israel, lived. It is just like Magdala.
We descended from Mount Tabor, crossed a deep ravine,
followed a hilly, rocky road to Nazareth—distant
two hours. All distances in the East are measured
by hours, not miles. A good horse will walk three
miles an hour over nearly any kind of a road; therefore,
an hour, here, always stands for three miles.
This method of computation is bothersome and annoying;
and until one gets thoroughly accustomed to it, it
carries no intelligence to his mind until he has stopped
and translated the pagan hours into Christian miles,
just as people do with the spoken words of a foreign
language they are acquainted with, but not familiarly
enough to catch the meaning in a moment. Distances
traveled by human feet are also estimated by hours
and minutes, though I do not know what the base of
the calculation is. In Constantinople you ask,
“How far is it to the Consulate?” and
they answer, “About ten minutes.”
“How far is it to the Lloyds’ Agency?”
“Quarter of an hour.” “How
far is it to the lower bridge?” “Four
minutes.” I can not be positive about it,
but I think that there, when a man orders a pair of
pantaloons, he says he wants them a quarter of a minute
in the legs and nine seconds around the waist.
Two hours from Tabor to Nazareth—and as
it was an uncommonly narrow, crooked trail, we necessarily
met all the camel trains and jackass caravans between
Jericho and Jacksonville in that particular place and
nowhere else. The donkeys do not matter so much,
because they are so small that you can jump your horse
over them if he is an animal of spirit, but a camel
is not jumpable. A camel is as tall as any ordinary
dwelling-house in Syria—which is to say
a camel is from one to two, and sometimes nearly three
feet taller than a good-sized man. In this part
of the country his load is oftenest in the shape of
colossal sacks—one on each side.
He and his cargo take up as much room as a carriage.
