209 



The same fidelity Is found in profane history. Caius Marius, as he 

 fled from the court of Hiempsel of Numidia, uttered the prophetic 

 words, " Go, say to the Roman governor that thou hast seen the exile 

 Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage," and, embarking in a fishing- 

 boat, was borne beyond the reach of his enemies and pursuers. The 

 illustrious Pompey was overthrown on the plains of Pharsalia: shel- 

 tered in the hut of .a fisherman the night which followed his ruin, he 

 set saii on the morrow to meet his wife, Cornelia — and to perish. 



The beautiful Mary of Scotland suffered a decisive defeat from her 

 rebel lords : adopting the resolution of throwing herself on the protec- 

 tion of Ehzabelh of England, she crossed the Frith of Solway in a 

 fishing-bark, and was safe from her own subjects; but the act was 

 fatal to herself, and gave a new and a strange coloring to the subse- 

 Cjhent part of Elizabeth's life and reign. The battle of Worcester was 

 lost to the second Charles, and he fled for his life; and who was more 

 true to him in his hour of need than the fisherman Tattersal, who, as 

 he bore the fallen monarch from the shores of England, exclaimed, 

 <'By the grace of God, I will venture my life and all for him, and set 

 him safe in France, if I can!" So, too, the battle of CuUoden sealed 

 the fate of Prince Charles Edward, the Pretender, and he also fled : 

 thirty thousand pounds was the price which tempted men to betray 

 him; but he sought the huts and boats of the "ignorant, the super- 

 stitious, and the improvident class of men" who had been faithfial to 

 his dynasty, and eluded the vigilance of his enemies.* 



it became the seat of war. The poor Galileeans in their light fishing boats could not withstand 

 the heavy barks of the Romans, aad were overcome, and were slaughtered by thousands. " The 

 blue waters of the whole lake," says a historian of the Jews, " were tinged with blood, and its 

 clear surface exhaled for several days a foetid steam. The shores were strewn with the wrecks 

 of boats and swollen bodies that lay rotting in the sun, and infected the air till the conquerors 

 themselves shrunk from the effects of their own barbarities." 



Sir Thomas Browne, an English physician of great fame in his time, who died in 1682, wrote 

 a tract entitled " A letter on the fishes eaten by our Saviour with his disciples after his resur- 

 rection from the dead." But this treatise, remarks his biographer, " is unsatisfactoiy in its re- 

 sult, as all the information that diligence or learning could supply consists in an enumeration 

 of the fishes produced in the waters of Judea." 



The travels of modem times contain some information which relates to our subject. " In 

 the dirty town of Tiberias," says Elliott, in 1838, "where Christians and Jews are ban- 

 ished to a distance from their mussulman lords, a church, with an arched stoue roof in the 

 form of a tent upside down, perpetuates the memory of the house occupied by St. Peter ; or, 

 ae others maintain, of the spot where the disciples conveyed to the shores the miraculous 

 draught of fishes." Again, says the same traveller, on the shore of Galilee is the village of 

 Majdal, which gave its name to Mary Magdalene, and was the spot whither our Saviour re- 

 tired after the miracle of the loaves and fishes." On the northern extremity of the lake he 

 came to a "mass of ruins called Tabghoorah, which mark the site of an ancient town. The 

 only indications of life are a mill and a few huts made of rushes, occupied,by two or three 

 fishermen. Its position points it out as an eligible fishing place; and such is the import of the 

 word Bethsaida, which city, if not situate on this spot, could not have been veiy far off. Heie 

 we halted, and requested the tenant of one of the huts to throw in his line and let us taste the 

 produce of the sea. In a few minutes each of us was presented with a fish broiled on a plate 

 of iron, according to the custom of the country, and wrapped in a large flat wafer-like cake, a 

 foot in diameter, of which one was spread as a table-cloth, and two others served as napkins. 

 Thus we made a repast, on the banks of the sea of Tiberias, of what was almost literally 'five 

 loaves and two small fishes.' " 



From the villages of Mount Lebanon, and from points far above the bed of the sea, Elliott 

 procured fossil shell-fish, and a box of fish found imbedded in lime. 



* The fishermen, as a class, were, I suppose, loyal to the Stuarts. Headers of English 

 history, and particularly of diaries and letters of the seventeenth century, arrive, probably, 

 at the same conclusion. 



It was said in 1660, afber the Bestoration, by the royalists, that during the time of " Red- 



