406 SKETCHES OF PALESTINE. 



though that which has heen taken for the remains of a theatre, ap- 

 pears rather to have been the choir of an early Christian church. 

 Among them all, there is nothing, however, either interesting or 

 definite. We quitted this spot to return to the town, and in our 

 way by the bath, saw a party of Jewish women just coming out 

 from the female apartment. Their conversation was in German : 

 and, on inquiry, they said that they had come from Vienna with 

 their husbands, to end their days in the land of their fathers. In 

 our way back from hence, we were met by a party of Moslems, 

 who conceiving me from my dress and white turban, to be of their 

 faith, gave us the usual salute, which 1 returned without scruple ; 

 but our guide was so shocked at the interchange of forbidden salu- 

 tations between a Christian and a Mohammedan, that he expressed 

 his confidence in its ending in some unlucky accident to us. To 

 avert this, however, from his own head, he took a large stone from 

 the road, and after spitting on it, turned that part towards the north, 

 repeating a short Arabic prayer at the same time. Besides the pres- 

 ent incident, 1 had observed on several occasions, that, in this coun- 

 try, set forms of expressions are regarded as appropriate to men of 

 different faiths, and even different ranks in life ; and that nothing is 

 moie necessary for a traveller, than to acquaint himself with those mi- 

 nute shades of difference ; as they serve, like the watchword of an 

 army, to distinguish friends from foes; and any errors therein might 

 produce the most alarming consequences. 



' On our way we met a Jewish funeral, attended by a party of 

 about fifty persons, all male. A group of half a dozen walked be- 

 fore, but without any apparent regard to order, and all seemed en- 

 gaged in humming indistinctly hymns, or prayers, or lamentations ; 

 for they might have been either, as far as we could distinguish by 

 the tone and the manner of their utterance. The corpse followed, 

 wrapped in linen, without a coffin, and slung on cords between two 

 poles borne on men's shoulders, with its feet foremost. A funeral 

 service was said over it at the grave, and it was sunk into its mo- 

 ther earth in peace.' 



This traveller notices some ancient baths, to the north of Tiberias 

 also, which appear to have escaped the observation of preceding 

 travellers. About an hour from Tiberias, pursuing a northward 

 course along the border of the lake, became to the remains of three, 

 close to the water's edge, which he describes as so many large cir- 

 cular cisterns, quite open, and not appearing to have ever been in- 

 closed in a covered building. ' They were all,' he continues, ' near- 

 ly of the same size ; the one around the edge of which I walked, 

 being eighty paces in circumference, and from twelve to fifteen feet 

 deep. Each of these was distant from the other about one hun- 

 dred yards, ranging along the beach of the lake, and each was sup- 

 plied by a separate spring, rising also near the sea. The water was 

 in all of them beautifully transparent, of a slightly sulphureous 

 taste, and of a light-green color, as at the bath near Oom Kais ; but 

 the heat of the stream here was scarcely greater than that of the at- 



