tine expired, and Christianity was again prostrated under the power of the Moslem. Below us, on the east, lay the town of Nazareth, on the steep side of the hill, and intersected by a deep ravine, from the precipitous bank of which, near the small Maronite church, Dr. Robinson supposes the Jews endeavoured to throw our Lord headlong, having thrust him out of the synagogue on account of his pungent preaching. Amid this interesting panorama I was sitting at nightfall, impressed with the strong probability that Jesus had often wandered over this hill, gazed on this scene, and perhaps sat on this spot.

As we descended, the full moon came up from behind the Mountains of Gilead, and we entered the village by her light. The poor people were at their evening meals. Here a group of women outside of the door sat around a wooden bowl with rice, which they ate with their fingers, aided by small pieces of bread; there a group of men on a naked rock, upon which lay eight or ten of the thin, elastic cakes which are peculiar to the Arabs. These made up their evening meals: yet the people appeared to be vigorous and happy. We repaired to our rooms, supped, and quickly sunk into profound sleep on the clean, sweet pallets of the convent.

Next morning the full tones of the organ reached my ear at an early hour, and I hastened into the convent and entered the Church of the Annunciation. Half a dozen monks were performing mass, and a hundred persons knelt on the marble pavement with an air of seriousness, but not of devotion. The church is not large, but is gaudily decorated, with mediocre paintings and gay damask hangings on the walls. As you enter, two flights of steps present themselves; by the one you

36

CHURCH OF THE ANNUNCIATION.

ascend to the floor of the church proper, where is the great altar, and by the other descend into a chapel. under the pavement, where are the parlour, chamber, and kitchen of the mother of Jesus. These, together with a little nook in which Christ is said once to have hid himself from his parents, are the great attractions to pilgrims. The apartments are too much modernized and decorated to transport the traveller into the humble dwelling of Joseph the carpenter; but he will cast a glance on two fractured columns which stand at the entrance, and mark the spots where the angel and Mary stood when the annunciation was made. I was about

to examine them more closely, when my attention was called to a circular marble slab under a small table, in the centre of which were some black lines: behind these was an inscription, which I could not read, as the lamps were placed before it. Towards this slab the women crawled on their knees, threw their arms around the small black circles let into its surface, and pressed their lips ardently and repeatedly upon the stone, and fondled over it as a young mother over her first-born when it smiles in the cradle. I could not learn the legend connected with this spot, but supposed it to be the reputed nook in which the infant Jesus hid himself in a playful mood, as already mentioned. The dwelling of Joseph and Mary, which once stood over these apartments, is now shown at Loretto in Italy as the house of Our Lady, having fled thither to escape contamination from the Moslems when they approached the town!

I hastened to pay my respects, before parting, to the superior of the convent. I had been introduced to him the day before, and formed a very favourable opinion of him. He had an air of intellect and purity, a dignity

REMARKABLE OBJECTS.

37

of manner and delicacy of person, that I had rarely seen in his order; and these qualities were set off by a slight tinge of submissive sadness, which gave them greater effect. I could not but think he was born to a higher rank and a better fate, and was there against his will. He was infinitely superior to his eight or ten brethren, whose presence in the convent, together with that of a few servants, was not sufficient to break the solitude of its vast corridors and stairways. As I returned through the court the door of the schoolroom was open, and I stepped in to look upon a group of young Nazarenes learning the history and doctrines of Jesus. They were all boys, and their books were supplied by the noble American missions in the Levant.

Without the convent are several remarkable objects. The first is a small whitewashed chapel, near at hand, in which was originally, according to the tradition, Joseph's workshop. A little farther off is the room in which our Lord went to school; and hard by it is a small chapel, on the site of the synagogue in which he taught so as to offend the Jews. But the most venerable relic in Nazareth is a large flat stone, said to be the table around which our Lord and his disciples sat at meat both before and after his resurrection. It is now covered by a small chapel. We devoted but little time to these venerated objects, as we doubted not but that they were apocryphal.

The town contains, according to Dr. Robinson, 160 Greek, 60 Greek Catholic, 65 Latin Catholic, 40 Maronite, and 120 Mohammedan families, making the population about 2500 Christians and 500 Moslems. There was an appearance of internal trade and prosperity, and the cultivation and pasturage of the valley were good.

VOL. II.-D

38

PLAIN OF ZEBULON.

CHAPTER IV.

NAZARETH TO BEYROUT.

The Plain of Zebulon.-Acre.-Ruins of the Magazine.-Effects of a bombardment.-Mount Carmel.-River Kishon.-Disappointment.-Convent of Elijah.-View from Carmel.-Return to Acre.-Promontorium Album. -Plain of Phoenicia.-Three Remarkable Fountains.-Alexander's Mole. -Tyre.-Fulfilment of Prophecy.-Road to Sidon.-Sarepta.-Sidon.— Road to Beyrout.-Population without the Walls.-Enter Beyrout.

THE distance from Nazareth to Acca (the Acco of Scripture, and the St. Jean d'Acre of the Crusaders) is not quite twenty-five miles. Our course lay northwest over the hill which overhangs Nazareth, from which we descended into the southern portion of the Plain of Zebulon, to the insulated hill on which stood the Diocæsarea of the Romans, the Sephoris of Josephus, and the Sefurieh of the Arabs. Fine columns, rich sarcophagi, and vast subterranean arches attest the dominion of the Cæsars. A strong, ruined castle on the hill, constructed of the materials of former edifices, bears witness to the wars of the Crusaders; and the abject condition of the hamlet, and the decayed state of agriculture, proclaim the desolating sway of the Moslem. Passing from the Plain of Zebulon westward over low, broken hills covered with scrub-oak, we came out upon the Plain of Acre near to an artificial mound, from which Napoleon is said first to have beheld the bulwarks of the town with strong forebodings, on the evening before the battle of Acre (1799), in which his grand project of "attacking Europe in the rear" was frustrated. We were an hour in crossing the plain, and as we approached the gate of the town, had on

our right the high mound which bears the name of Richard the Lion-hearted. Immediately upon passing the portal we stood in the midst of the ruins of the magazine, which had been blown up in 1840 in the bombardment by the British. The cannon balls still lay in the streets, and stuck in the massive walls of the barracks, the mosques, and the fortresses. Above us, the vast dome of the chief mosque was riddled by shot until it looked like the upper part of an oldfashioned pepper-box. The summits of the minarets and towers were broken off, or fractured, or forced from their perpendicular, while everywhere private dwellings were shattered. The whole population was engaged in repairing the damages, and the demand for hands had filled the place as full as a beehive. We could scarcely pass through the streets, and the bazars were crowded as at Cairo. At length we made our way to the vast quadrangle containing the barracks and the convent, in the latter of which we found clean, comfortable rooms.

One cannot think of Acre without recalling all the horrors of war. From the time of Joshua to the bombardment of 1840, it has been the centre of martial operations. The following passage respecting its recent fall is from the London Globe, as quoted by the Westminster Review for January, 1841: "At twentyfive minutes past four, the action being at its height, a terrific explosion took place in the town, which for a time wholly concealed it and the southern division from view; its appearance was truly awful, and I can compare it to nothing but as if a huge yew-tree had suddenly been conjured up from the devoted town. It hung for many minutes a mighty pall over those hundreds it had hurled into eternity, and then slowly, owing to the lightness of the wind, drifted to the south