IMPRESSIONS OF PALESTINE 



By James Bryce 



British Ambassador to the; United States, 1906-1913 



NO COUNTRY has been so often 

 described or so minutely described 

 by travelers of all sorts of tastes 

 and interests as Palestine has been ; and 

 this is natural, for none has excited so 

 keen an interest for so long a time and 

 in so many nations. 



As we have all at some time or other 

 read much about the country, it may well 

 be thought that nothing now remains to 

 be said about Palestine, except by arche- 

 ologists,- whose explorations of the sites 

 of ancient cities are always bringing 

 fresh facts to light. But if all of us have 

 read a good deal about the Holy Land, 

 most of us have also forgotten a good 

 deal, and our ideas of the country — ideas 

 colored by sentiments of reverence and 

 romance — are often vague and not always 

 correct. 



It may therefore be worth while to set 

 down in a plain and brief way the salient 

 impressions which the country makes on 

 a Western traveler who passes quickly 

 through it. The broad impressions are 

 the things that remain in memory when 

 most of the details have vanished, and 

 broad impressions are just what an elabo- 

 rate description sometimes fails to con- 

 vey, because they are smothered under 

 an infinitude of details. 



A SAIAEL COUNTRY 



Palestine is a tiny little country. 

 Though the traveler's handbooks prepare 

 him to find it small, it surprises him by 

 being smaller than he expected. Taking 

 it as the region between the Mediter- 

 ranean on the west and the Jordan and 

 Dead Sea on the east, from the spurs of 

 Lebanon and Hermon on the north to the 

 desert at Beersheba on the south, it is 

 only no miles long and from 50 to 60 

 broad — that is to say, it is smaller than 

 New Jersey, whose area is 7,500 square 

 miles. 



Of this region large parts did not really 

 belong to ancient Israel. Their hold on 

 the southern and northern districts was 



but slight, while in the southwest a wide 

 and rich plain along the Mediterranean 

 was occupied by the warlike Philistines, 

 who were sometimes more than a match 

 for the Hebrew armies. Israel had, in 

 fact, little more than the hill country, 

 which lay between the Jordan on the east 

 and the maritime plain on the west. King 

 David, in the days of his power, looked 

 down from the hill cities of Benjamin, 

 just north of Jerusalem, upon Philistine 

 enemies only 25 miles ov£, on the one 

 side, and looked across the Jordan to 

 Aloabite enemies about as far off, on the 

 other. 



Nearly all the events in the history of 

 Israel that are recorded in the Old Testa- 

 ment happened within a territory no big- 

 ger than the State of Connecticut, whose 

 area is 4,800 square miles ; and into 

 hardly any other country has there been 

 crowded from the days of Abraham till 

 our own so much history — that is to say, 

 so many events that have been recorded 

 and deserve to be recorded in the annals 

 of mankind. To history, however, I shall 

 return later. 



FEELING PALESTINE'S SMALLNESS 



Nor is it only that Palestine is really 

 a small country. The traveler constantly 

 feels as he moves about that it is a small 

 country. From the heights a few miles 

 north of Jerusalem he sees, looking north- 

 ward, a far-off summit carrying snow for 

 eight months in the year. It is Hermon, 

 nearly 10,000 feet high — Hermon, whose 

 fountains feed the rivers of Damascus. 



But Hermon is outside the territory of 

 Israel altogether, standing in the land of 

 the Syrians ; so, too, it is of Lebanon. 

 We are apt to think of that mountain 

 mass as within the country, because it 

 also is frequently mentioned in the 

 Psalms and the Prophets ; but the two 

 ranges of Lebanon also rise beyond the 

 frontiers of Israel, lying between the Syr- 

 ians of Damascus and the Phoenicians of 

 the West. 



293 



