Coming into Galilee, we find ourselves at once in a beautiful valley lying between two mountain ridges running north and south. The valley is apparently ten miles wide and fifteen to eighteen miles long. The soil is as black as a crow and fertile as the alluvial deposits of the Nile. It is so rich that it looks as if it would sprout a shadow—I am afraid to stand still long in a place. Only small patches of this fertile valley are cultivated and these in the most primitive and imperfect manner. The land is scratched over with wooden plows, drawn, as I have sometimes seen, by a donkey and a skeleton of a milk cow yoked together, or by a camel and an ox harnessed side by side. Thus they tickle the soil which in turn smiles with a sickly, sentimental harvest, and the people live in filth, penury, and poverty; whereas, if they had western vim and push and shove and energy, if they had improved implements of agriculture and would send them deep into the ground and turn up the soil, “the desert would blossom as the rose,” and these trifling sons of want would soon have to “pull down their old barns and build greater ones.” Peace and plenty would usurp the place now held by pinching poverty, and Jerusalem once more would stand
“Girt by her theatre of hills, and would reap Her corn, and wine, and oil; and plenty would leap To laughing life, with her redundant horn.”
Here and there, scattered over the plain, we see a Bedouin village. Village did I say? Yes, a village; though there is not a log or a plank, or a board, or a shingle, or a stone to be seen. One of these villages consists of 300 to 500 Bedouins, living in 75 to 100 tents huddled together without law or order. The Bedouins take the bark of the papyrus plant and plait or weave it (by hand of course) into a coarse, rough matting with which they make their houses. The same material serves as roof, walls and floor. These sons of the desert hide their nakedness with robes made of camel’s hair, and their children dress as did Adam or Eve before fig-leaf dresses came into fashion.
In the southern part of the valley is Lake Huleh, or the waters of Merom. Some years ago the plain surrounding this lake was a bloody battle field. Six or eight kings “went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people, even as the sand that is upon the sea shore in multitude, with horses and chariots very many. And when all these kings were met together, they came and pitched their tents at the waters of Merom to fight against Israel. And the Lord said unto Joshua, be not afraid because of them; for to-morrow I will deliver them up all slain before Israel; thou shalt hough their horses and burn their chariots with fire. So Joshua came, and all the people of war with him, against them by the waters of Merom suddenly and they fell upon them. And the Lord delivered them into the hand of Israel.” Lest some people should suppose that I witnessed that battle, I will state that Joshua lived some 1400 years before Christ.