14

A FEUD.-A RUNNING FIGHT.

from Jerusalem, we came to a village on our left, upon the housetops of which the men were collected and vociferating furiously. A few hundred yards distant were other men equally excited. Presently a shot was fired, and a running fight began. It was on the high hills on our left, and the battle advanced northward as we came up. Every minute or so was heard the random shot; and occasionally, behind a crag or a tree on the rocky heights, we saw a wild savage driving home his ball in hot haste. The fight thickened as the combatants approached another village inhabited by one of the parties. At some distance to the right was a large village, from which the whole population, men, women, and children, had come out in mass, and were ascending the hills to the scene of action, headed by their sheikh on a fine steed richly caparisoned. Though the men were armed, we judged from their movements that their intention was to make peace; but we did not wait to see the issue, fearing that after settling their own quarrels they might fall on us; so we hastened forward, and as we passed near the second hostile village on our left, it was in a state of siege. The besieged were posted in and about their houses, while the assailants took shelter in the olive-groves at hand. Our road lay near enough to the village to enable us not only to hear the reports, but also to see the flashes of the guns. Upon inquiry afterward we learned that the feud was of long standing, and that such fights are not unfrequent since the pressure of Mehemet Ali's government has been removed, and arms are again possessed by the people. The present government seems not to concern itself about these matters.

Early in the afternoon we gained a height which overlooked the beautiful little vale of Lubban, with its vil

MOUNTAINS OF SAMARIA.

15

lage of the same name, the Lebonah of Scripture. A little to the right, up a retired side-valley on an insulated hill, lay the ruins of Silun, the Shiloh of Scripture, according to Dr. Robinson. There the tabernacle was set up after the conquest of Canaan, and the ark rested there from Joshua to Samuel. So sacred was the spot, that the name was given to the Messiah. "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, till Shiloh come."

But that which delighted us most was the swelling form and snowy summit of Gebel es-Sheik, or the Mount Hermon of Scripture, crowning the range of Ante-Lebanon far to the north. It lay above the dark mountain masses like a purer and brighter world, and might well have been the source of poetic imagery to the divine prophets. We saw it first from the brow of the high ridge on the south of the vale of Lubban.

Hastening through the paradisiacal little vale, and attaining the high ridge an hour to the north of it, the great valley of the Mukhna expanded northward before us, rich in grain and flocks, and studded with villages situated on the spurs of the mountains on either side. I began to feel reconciled to the Promised Land. The mountains of Samaria were in full view, and conspicuous among them was Mount Gerizim, the rival of Mount Moriah in more than one respect. Standing on the edge of this valley, at the base of Gerizim, the Samaritan woman had said to our Saviour, "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place (Mount Moriah) where men ought to worship."-(John, iv., 20.) Now a fresh-looking Moslem tomb crowns the summit of Gerizim, and the magnifjcent Mosque of Omar that of Moriah. Immediately beyond Mount Gerizim rises Mount Ebal, and in the

narrow valley which divides them lies Nablous, the Shechem of the Old Testament, the Sychar of the New, and the Neapolis of the Romans. In an hour and a half we were at the entrance of this side-valley on our left, up which, perhaps a mile and a half distant, was the city. At its junction with the Mukhna is Jacob's Well, whose position could be determined within a hundred yards, from the geological features of the district, if not a vestige of it remained; for the great highway from Judea to Galilee lay up the valley of the Mukhna, along which our Lord and his disciples were passing. When they arrived at the mouth of the side valley before the city, Jesus, being "weary with his journey, sat down by it," while "his disciples went away into the city to buy meat," intending to rejoin him and pursue their journey. Besides, as the vicinity is abundantly watered, and copious fountains are at hand just within the mouth of the valley, the question arises, Why should a well be sunk here at all? The answer is, Here was the "parcel of ground, before the city, which Jacob had bought of Hamor, the father of Shechem," who gave name to the city, and it was desirable that he should have water on his own premises, so as to be independent of his powerful neighbours; and the more so, as there was deep cause of private grief to both parties, to Jacob and his sons, because Shechem had defiled Dinah; and to the inhabitants of the city, because Simeon and Levi had revenged the dishonour of their sister by putting many of the inhabtants to the sword, and carrying away captives and flocks. (Gen., xxxiv.) To this proof may be added the concurrent tradition of Jews, Samaritans, Moslems, and Christians, and the testimony of history from the third century to our own times.

Calling to my aid two or three Arab shepherds, who

were with their flocks at the mouth of the valley, I hastened to the well, situated on the lowest part of the northeast spur of Mount Gerizim, and found it in the midst of the ruins of a magnificent building that once covered and adorned it. Hewn stones, blocks of marble, and fragments of granite columns were to be seen amid the general wreck. The narrow mouth of the well was stopped up with large loose stones, at which we all tugged until I nearly broke my back; but one of them defied our utmost endeavours. I kneeled down and peeped into the arched chamber, from the floor of which the well proper is sunk into the living rock some hundred feet or more. A little, gray-headed old Arab held my horse; the younger men stood around and looked on, while I sat down at the indubitable well of the patriarch, and read, "Jesus, therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, give me to drink" (for his disciples had gone away unto the city to buy meat). "Then saith the woman unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, who am a woman of Samaria?" (for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans). "Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; from whence, then, hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh of the water that

I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." Here I closed the book, and with a gush of unutterable joy, exclaimed,

Spring up, O well! I ever cry,

Spring up within My Soul!*

Mounting my horse, I was about to ride directly to the city, when the patriarchal Moslem reminded me of the sepulchre of Joseph, a common Turkish tomb in the mouth of the valley, a little to the north of the well, and nearer to the base of Mount Ebal than Gerizim. That the tomb was in the vicinity of the well there can be no doubt, as it was on the same parcel of ground which Jacob purchased of Hamor. But if the well at the base of Gerizim be on the parcel of ground, and the tomb also, near the base of Ebal, then Jacob possessed wellnigh the whole mouth of the valley which led up to the city, an advantage which one would think Hamor would not have sold at any price, and much less for one hundred pieces of silver. Besides, in this limestone region, bordered by precipitous cliffs, it is natural to suppose that Jacob would have sought a cave, as Abraham did, for his family sepulchre, or, as was the custom in

* Some have considered the distance of the well from the city to be an objection, as it is generally supposed the woman came from the city. But, as Dr. Robinson has well remarked, the history does not say she came from the city, but simply that she was a Samaritan, and came to draw water. She may have resided in a village at hand. A greater difficulty is supposed in the existence of copious fountains of water between the well and the city. This is partly removed by the necessity Jacob felt to have water on his own ground; but I suggest that the fountains now between the well and the city are artificial, much more modern than the well, and are made by conducting the water under ground from the fountains farther west, which supply the city in the same way. This is nearly proved by the fact that, at the little hamlet of Belat, about half way between the well and the fountains, is a subterranean fountain, to which I descended by a flight of six or eight stone steps, and found the water running from west to east through an artificial subterranean conduit. Flocks and shepherds were around it procuring water.