BOOK S.
CANON STANLEY'S SINAI AND PALESTINE.` AN ascent of the Nile, with a pilgrimage to Mount Sinai and the Holy Land, are subjects too exhausted to seem of much promise. Mr. Stanley, however, has given oharacter and feature to the results of so common a journey, by a definite and indeed a novel purpose. He examines the natural features of the coun- tries and their existing remains, less with the view of iden- tifying particular "holy places" than of tracing the effects of the country upon the history and manners of the chosen people. Descriptions, and often very striking and characteristic descrip- tions of landscape and its ruins, will be found in the volume ; traits rather than incidents indicative of the peoples among whom the traveller journeyed will occasionally be met; there are references to history, and discussions as to the truth of traditions which profess to point out particular spots as the ex- act scenes of remarkable Bible events. But the great object of the author—that which gives form and flavour to his book— is to exhibit and illustrate life and history by connecting the appearances of external nature with the enduring character of formation, soil, and climate, showing how their influence not only affected the customs but the very life itself of the ple. Not that the traveller means to assert that Palestine is un ged since the days of .the. Patriarchs or the Apostles. On the con- trary, he frequently points out many changes caused by war, de- population, and neglect of culture. Still, from the structure of Palestine there are certain features which cannot be changed, while others admit of little modification and_that only in particu- lar situations. The remarks on wells. are of the first class.
"The geological structure of Palestine, as of Greece, is almost entirely limestone. The few exceptionsare in the Valley of Jordan ; which must be considered in its own place. This rocky character of the whole country has not been without its historical results.
"Not only does the thirsty character of the whole East give a peculiar expression to any places where water may be had, but the rocky soil pre- serves their identity and the wells of Palestine serve as the links by which each successive age is bound to the other, in a manner whioh at first eight would be thought almost incredible. The name by which they are called of itself indicates their permanent character. The well' of the Hebrew and the Arab is carefully distinguished from the 'spring.' The spring ('ain) is the bright, open source—the eye' of the landscape—such as bubbles up amongst the crags of Sinai, or rushes forth in a copious stream from En-gedi or from Jericho. but the well (beer) is the deep hole bored far under the rocky surface by the art of man—the earliest traces of that art which these regions exhibit. By these orifices at the foot of the hills, surrounded by their broad margin of smooth stone or marble—a rough mass of stone covering the top—have always been gathered whatever signs of animation or civilization the neighbourhood afforded. They were the sconce of the earliest contentions of the shepherd-patriarchs with the inhabitants of the land ; the places of meeting with the women who came down to draw water from their rocky depths—of Eliezer with Rebecca, of Jacob with Rachel, of Moses with Zipporah, of Christ with the woman of Samaria. They were the natural halting-places of great caravans, or wayfaring men, as when Moses gathered together the people to the well of Moab, which the princes dug with their sceptered staves, and therefore the resort of the plunderers of the Desert, of 'the noise of archers in the places of drawing water.' What they were ages ago in each of these respects they are still. The shepherds may still be seen leading their flocks of sheep and goats to their margin ; the women still come with their pitchers and talk to those who sit by the well' ; the traveller still looks forward to it as his resting-place for the night, if it be in a place of safety or, if it be in the neighbourhood of the wilder Bedouins, is hurried on by his dragoman or his escort without halting a moment ; and thus, by their means, not only is the image of the ancient life of the country preserved, but the scenes of sacred events are identified, which under any other circumstances would have perished. The wells of Beersheba in the wide frontier-valley of Palestine are indisputable witnesses of the life of Abraham. The well of Jacob, at Shethem, is a monument of the earliest and of the latest events of sacred history, of the caution of the prudent patriarch, no less than of the freedom of the gospel there proclaimed by Christ.'
The plan of the work embraces Egypt, Sinai and the Desert, and Palestine with some of the conterminous regions ; the subdi- visions of Palestine being numerous, and exhaustive of its geogra- phical distribution. This nojm. body of the book is introduced by remarks on the connexion of sacred history and geography ; in which the nature and utility of the author' a. undertaking, are pointed out. The geogaipplical and historical cliscussions and de- scriptions are closed by a chapter on the modern show—the tradi- tional " holy " places of Jerusalem, in which criticism is softened by a tolerant spirit; and another chapter on the gospel teaching viewed in connexion with the localities of Palestine. In this sec- tion, the Object is not to fix upon special spots as the exact place of some particular incident, but to point out the most likely re- gion where a parable, for instance, was delivered, from the evidence of its scenery or productions : thus, vineyards were almost con- fined to Judea. The best illustration of the author's mode of treatment, however, is to exhibit a specimen; and the scene of the Good Samaritan will answer the purpose. ".The previous context of 'the Good Samaritan' would probably, lead us to connect its delivery with Galilee. But the immediately succeeding con- text naturally brings us into Bethany. In this case, the story may have been spoken on the spot which must certainly have suggested it. There we see the long descent of three thousand feet, by which the traveller ' went down ' from Jerusalem on its high table-land, to Jericho in the Jordan valley. There the last traces of cultivation and habitation, after leaving Bethany, vanish away, and leave him in a wilderness as bare and as solitary as the Desert of Arabia. Up from the valley of the Jordan below, or from the caves in the overhanging mountains around him, issue the Bedouin robbers, who from a very early time gave this road a proverbial celebrity its deeds of blood, and who now make it impossible for even the vast • ,Sinai and Palestine in oonsezion with their History. By Arthur Pen**, Stanky, M.A., Canon of Canterbury. With Maps and Platte. Published by /tunas. host of pilgrims to descend to the Jordan without a Turkish guard. Sharp turns of the road, projecting spurs of rock, everywhere facilitate the attack and escape of the plunderers. They seize upon the traveller and strip him, as is still the custom of their descendants in like case ; they beat him severely, and leave him, naked and bleeding under the fierce sun reflected from the white glaring mountain, to die, unless some unexpected aid ar- rives. By chance,' by a coincidence of circumstances' that could hardly be looked for, the solitude of the road is on the day of this adventure broken by three successive travellers ascending or descending the toilsome height. The first who came was, like the previous traveller' on his way from the capital, a priest,—probably going from the great sacerdotal station in Jericho. The road, as it winds amongst the rocky hills where the traveller is thus exposed, rises usually into a higher pathway, immediately above the precipitous descent on the left hand. The priest saw '—no one on that long descent could fail to see, even from a distance—the wounded man lying by the rocky roadside ; and he turned up on the high pathway and passed him by. The next was a Levite, coming or going between the two priestly cities ; and he, when he reached the spot, also east a momentary glance of compassion at the stranger, and climbed the pathway and went forward. The third was one of the hated race, who was not more solitary here in this wild desert than he would have been in the crowded streets of Jerusalem. He too, mounted on his ass or mule, came close to the fatal spot, saw the stranger, bound up the wounds, placed him on his own beast, and brought him before evening to a caravanserai,--such a one as still exists like a rude hospice on the mountain-side, about half-way between Jerusalem and Jericho,—and on the morning left him there to be cared for till he should himself return to Jerusalem. Such is the outward story, truly the product of one of the most peculiar scenes of Judaea, yet which has now spread through a range as vast as its own wide scope the consolation of the wanderer and the sufferer, of the outcast and the heretic, in every age and in every country."
Most of the chapters contain a twofold division : the first part, consisting of topographical discussion and illustration, is followed by extracts from the author's letters or journals, descriptive of the actual scenery of particular places, and of the personal im- pression made upon himself. Egypt especially contains some very graphic and interesting passages of this kind. As a single scene, Damascus is among the most striking.
"Damascus should be approached only one way, and that is from the West. The traveller who comes from that quarter passes over the great chain of Anti-Libanus; he crosses the watershed, and he finds himself fol- lowing the course of a little stream flowing through a richly-cultivated valley. This stream is the Barada. It flows on, and the cultivation which at its rise spreads far and wide along its banks, nourished by the rills which feed it, gradually is contracted within the limits of its single channel. The mountains rise round it absolutely bare. The peaks of Mount Sinai are not more sterile than these Syrian ranges But the river winds through them visible everywhere by its mass of vegetation—willow, poplars, haw- thorn, walnut, hanging over a rushing volume of crystal water,—the more striking from the contrast of the naked desert in which it is found.
"One of the strongest impressions left by the East is the connexion—ob- vious enough in itself, but little thought of in Europe—between verdure and running water. But never—not even in the close juxtaposition of the Nile valley. and the sands of Africa—have I seen so wonderful a witness to this life-giving power as the view on which we are now entering. The further we advance the contrast becomes more and more forcible ; the mountains more bare, the green of the river-bed more deep and rich. At last a cleft opens in the rocky hills between two precipitous cliffs ; up the side of one of these cliffs the road winds ; on the summit of the cliff there stands a ruined chapel. Through the arches of that chapel, from the very edge of the moun- tain-range, you look down on the plain of Damascus. It is here seen in its widest and fullest perfection, with the visible explanation of the whole se- cret of its great and enduring charm, that which it must have had when it was the solitary seat of civilization in Syria, and which it will have as long as the world lasts. The river is visible at the bottom, with its green banks, rushing through the cleft ; it bursts forth, and as if in a moment scatters over the plain, through a circle of thirty miles the same verdure which had hitherto been confined to its single channel. It is like the bursting of a shell—the eruption of a volcano—but an eruption not of death but of life. Far and wide in front extends the wide plain, its horizon bare, its lines of surrounding hills bare, all bare far away on the road to Pahnyra and Bag- dad. In the midst of this plain lies at your feet the vast lake or island of deep verduret walnuts and apricots waving above, corn and grass below; and in the midst of this mass of foliage rises, striking out its white arms of streets hither and thither, and its white minarets above the trees which em- bosom them, the city of Damascus. On the right towers the snowy height of Hermon, overlooking the whole scene. Close behind are the sterile lime- stone mountains : so that you stand literally between the living and the dead. And the ruined arches of the ancient chapel, which serve as a centre and framework to the prospect and retrospect, still preserve the magnificent story which, whether truth or fiction, is well worthy of this sublime view. Here hard by the sacred heights of Salehiyeh—consecrated by the caverns and iambs of a thousand Mussulman saints—the Prophet is said to have stood, whilst yet a camel-driver from Mecca, and after gazing on the scene below, to have turned away without entering the city. Man,' he said, can have but one paradise—and my paradise is fixed above.' . . . . "One other traditional view there is on the opposite side of Damascus, which, though nearer at hand and only seen from the level ground, is, if correct, yet more memorable—the most memorable, indeed, which even this world-old city has presented to mortal eyes. A quarter of an hour from the walls of the city on the Eastern side, the Christian burial-ground, and a rude mass of conglomerate stone, mark the reputed scene of the con- version of St. Paul. We were there at noon.' There was the cloudless blue sky overhead ; close in front the city-walk, in part still ancient ,• around it, the green mass of groves and orchards ; and beyond them, and' deeply contrasted with them on the South, the white top of Hermon, on the North the grey hills of Saalyah. Such, according to the local belief, was St. Paul's view when the light became darkness before him, and he heard the voice which turned the fortunes of mankind."
Sinai and Palestine is the result of a journey, performed in 1852-'63 ; but the preparations to profit by the pilgrimage must have been made long before. Mr. Stanley shows himself tho- roughly familiar with the general history as well as with the tra- vellers and topographers of the lands he visited. This enables him to compare the present with the past, not only at extreme dis- tances of time, as the Scriptural and present ages, but at frequent intervening intervals. He is also able to enrich his work by various and appropriate illustrations, as well as touch upon topics which if they can have no immediate result still have a practical bearing. One of these is the effect of cultivation upon climate. We know that all the middle portions of Europe, and even Italy, have become much milder than in the days of Julius Ctesar : it is said that the climate of Canada and the United States is greatly ameliorated. This has been effected by clearing woods, exposing the earth to the sun, and the draining which all culti- vation more or less effects. Equally great changes seem to have taken place in the East, but of an opposite kind, though caused most probably by the same process—felling trees or shrubs. We all know how Greece has altered for the worse by the destruction of her woods. Captain Whittingham, on his return voyage from China, observed bills now bare and parched that were formerly covered by wood, as he sailed through the Straits of Malacca ; and the sight induced him to number up many places in the Tropics which had been denuded of vegetation. Mr. Stanley conceives it possible that tracts of Arabia itself, especially the vicinity of Sinai, formerly maintained a larger population than at present. He may, however, be somewhat biased by his argument on the Jewish wanderings in the wilderness.
From the disquisitional character of the work, the essential sameness of the subject, and the perhaps unavoidable tendency to accumulate particulars, it is of necessity rather heavy as a whole ; though this objection does not apply to sections, and it is well adapted for separate perusal. It is a very extraordinary production ; the combination of great learning and continual ob- servation, felicitously directed to a particular object, sustained by unceasing attention and energy, and relieved from mere theo- logical pedantry by lofty aims and a practical knowledge of life.
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