IMPRESSIONS OF PALESTINE 



305 



this brooding shadow of death gives is 

 heightened by the abundance of ruins. 

 From very early times men built here in 

 stone because there were, even then, few 

 large trees, and though the dwellings of 

 the poor were mostly of sun-baked mud 

 and have long since vanished, the ease 

 with which the limestone could be quar- 

 ried and used for building made those 

 who sought defense surround even small 

 towns with walls, whose foundations at 

 least have remained. The larger among 

 the surviving ruins date from Roman or 

 from Crusading times. These are still 

 numerous, though Muslim vandalism and 

 the habit of finding in the old erections 

 material for new have left comparatively 

 little of architectural interest. 



GRECO-ROMAN RUINS 



The best preserved remains are those 

 of the Greco-Roman towns east of the 

 Jordan, and these cities, singularly good 

 specimens of the work of their age, are 

 being rapidly destroyed by the Circas- 

 sians whom the Turks have placed in that 

 region. Be the ruins great or small, they 

 are so numerous that in a course of a 

 day's ride one is everywhere sure to pass 

 far more of them than the traveler could 

 find in even those parts of Europe that 

 have been longest inhabited, and of many 

 the ancient names are lost. 



One is amazed at the energy the Cru- 

 saders showed in building castles, not a 

 few of them large and all of them solid 

 strongholds, as well as churches. But 

 none of the fortresses are perfect, and 

 of the churches only four or five have 

 been spared sufficiently to show their 

 beauty. Several, among these the most 

 beautiful and best preserved, have been 

 turned into mosques. Of these ruins few 

 are cared for except by the archeologist 

 and the historian. 



RELIGIOUS MEMORIALS 



But there are other memorials of the 

 past that have lived on into the present. 

 In no country are there so many shrines 

 of ancient worship, so many spots held 

 sacred — some sacred to Jews, some to 

 Christians, some to Mussulmans. Neither 

 has any other country spots that still 

 draw a multitude of pilgrims, not even 

 Belgium and Lombardy, each a profusion 



of battlefields. It is a land of ancient 

 strife and seldom-interrupted slaughter. 



Before Isarel came, the tribes of 

 Canaan warred with one another, and 

 against those tribes Israel had to fight 

 for its life. Along its western border 

 ran the great line of march from Egypt 

 to northern Syria and Mesopotamia, the 

 highway of war trodden by the armies 

 of Assyria and Babylon when they passed 

 south to attack Egypt, and by the armies 

 of Egypt when the great Pharaohs, 

 Rameses, Thothmes, and Necho, led them 

 north against Assyria. 



In later days the Seleucid kings of 

 Babylon and Antioch had fight after fight 

 for the possession of the country with the 

 Egyptian Ptolemies. Then appeared the 

 legions of Rome, first under Pompey, 

 then many a campaign to quell the revolt 

 of the Jews. Still later came those fiercest 

 enemies of Rome, the Sassanid kings of 

 Persia, whose great invasion of A. D. 614 

 laid waste Jerusalem and spread ruin 

 over the land. 



THE ARAB INVASION 



Just after that invasion the Arabs, then 

 in the first flush of their swift conquest, 

 descended on the enfeebled province and 

 set up that Muslim rule which has often 

 changed hands from race to race and 

 dynasty to dynasty, but has never disap- 

 peared. When the Mohammedan princes 

 had fought among themselves for four 

 centuries they were suddenly attacked by 

 a host of Crusaders from western Eu- 

 rope, and the soil of Palestine was 

 drenched afresh with blood. The chron- 

 icle of more recent wars, which includes 

 Napoleon's irruption, stopped at Acre in 

 1799, comes down to the Egyptian inva- 

 sion in the days of Mehemet AH. 



From the top of Mount Tabor one 

 looks down on six famous battlefields — 

 the first, that of the victory of Deborah 

 and Barak over Sisera, commemorated 

 in the oldest of Hebrew war songs 

 (Judges, Chapters IV-V) , and the latest, 

 that of the victory of the French over the 

 Turks in 1799. And in this plain, near 

 the spot where Barak overcame vSisera 

 and Pharaoh Necho overcame Josiah, is 

 to be fought the mysterious Armageddon 

 (Revelation, Chapter XVI). 



