Haifa, June 22.—While my two days' experiences at the Neby Schaib, described in my last two letters, were in the highest degree novel and picturesque, and enabled me to obtain an unusual insight into the manners and customs and religious observances of the Druse nation, my stay at this celebrated shrine of their pilgrimage was by no means destitute of archæological interest. The village of Hattin, which is in the immediate neighbourhood of the tomb of the prophet, forms the centre of many sacred and historical associations, while it is in itself a place of unusual beauty of situation.
In the overhanging rocks on the other side of the gorge, immediately opposite my tent, were several sepulchral chambers, all traditional burying-places of persons more or less historical. Some of these I examined. The largest was one entered by a doorway, which had recently been inhabited, for the framework of a wooden door to it still remained. It was supposed to be the burial-place of one of Jethro's daughters. We are told by Josephus that his family followed the Israelites out of Midian. Its last occupant was an Indian hermit, who had lived here in solitude for three years, when, getting tired of his seclusion, he had gone to Tiberias about a year ago, married there, and immediately disappeared with his wife, no one knew whither.
About a hundred yards from the Neby there issues from the mouth of the gorge a copious spring which, in fact, forms the source of a brook, that ultimately finds its way into the Sea of Galilee. It commences its beneficent course, however, by fertilizing a large area immediately surrounding the village, where flourishing gardens of oranges, lemons, figs, apricots, pomegranates, and other fruit-trees impart an air of luxuriant fertility to the landscape not common in these parts. Among these gardens is one which was purchased a few years ago by Sir Moses Montefiore, and presented by him to the Jews of Tiberias. Here I went, at the invitation of the overseer, and, seated on mats under the spreading arms of a fig-tree, I listened, while I sipped his coffee, to his tale of woe: how last year he had resisted what he considered an exorbitant charge for taxes, how his garden had in consequence been invaded and despoiled by the tax-gatherers; how, being a British-protected subject, and the garden being the property of British subjects, he had appealed to the British consul for redress; how he had spent £50 in the effort to obtain it, and had found British protection not only a broken, but an expensive reed to trust to; and how he was driven, by the refusal of the British government to protect its subjects, to try and protect himself by the plentiful expenditure of backsheesh. I explained to him that it was not the habit of the British government to protect its subjects, but rather to abandon them, even though they might be of exalted rank, and their lives might be at stake; and then I went in search of ruins.