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OLIVE-GATHERING-GLEANING.

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themselves, or are shaken off by the wind. They are allowed to remain under the trees for some time, guarded by the watchman of the town-a very familiar Biblical character. Then a proclamation is made by the governor that all who have trees go out and pick what has fallen. Previous to this, not even the owners are allowed to gather olives in the groves. This proclamation is repeated once or twice, according to the season. In November comes the general and final summons, which sends forth all Hasbeiya. No olives are now safe unless the owner looks after them, for the watchmen are removed, and the orchards are alive with men, women, and children. It is a merry time, and the laugh and the song echo far and wide. Every where the people are in the trees "shaking" them with all their might to bring down the fruit. This is what the prophet had in mind. The effort is to make a clear sweep of all the crop; but, in spite of shaking and beating, there is always a gleaning left; two or three berries in the top of the uppermost boughs, four or five in the outermost fruitful branches. These are afterward gleaned up by the very poor, who have no trees of their own; and by industry they gather enough to keep a lamp in their habitation during the dismal nights of winter, and to cook their mess of pottage and bitter herbs. I have often seen these miserable outcasts gleaning among the groves, and shivering in winter's biting cold. In fact, the "shaking of the olive" is the severest operation in Syrian husbandry, particularly in such mountainous regions as Hasbeiya. When the proclamation goes forth to “shake,” there can be no postponement. The rainy season has already set in; the trees are dripping with the last shower, or bowing under a load of moist snow; but shake, shake you must, drenching yourself and those below in an artificial storm of rain, snow, and olives. No matter how piercing the wind, how biting the frost, this work must go on from early dawn to dark night; and then the weary laborer must carry on his aching back a heavy load of dripping berries two or three miles up the mountain to his home. To com

1 Deut. xxiv. 20.

prehend the necessity of all this, you must remember that the olive-groves are in common-not owned in common, but planted on the same general tract of land, and are without fences, walls, or hedges of any kind, mingled together like the trees in a natural forest. This tree belongs to Zeid, that to 'Abeid, as they say, and so on through the whole plantation. Such, at least, is the case with the groves we are describing. This vast orchard of Shwoifat, through which we have been riding for the last hour, has a thousand owners, and in "shaking time" every one must look sharply afterhis own, or he loses all. There is an utter confounding of the meum and tuum in the general conscience of olive-gath

erers.

To what particular circumstance does David refer in the 128th Psalm, where he says, Thy children shall be like oliveplants round about thy table?

Follow me into the grove, and I will show you what may have suggested the comparison. Here we have hit upon a beautiful illustration. This aged and decayed tree is sur rounded, as you see, by several young and thrifty shoots, which spring from the root of the venerable parent. They seem to uphold, protect, and embrace it. We may even fancy that they now bear that load of fruit which would otherwise be demanded of the feeble parent. Thus do good and affectionate children gather round the table of the rightEach contributes something to the common wealth and welfare of the whole-a beautiful sight, with which may God refresh the eyes of every friend of mine.

eous.

But here we must leave our pleasant grove for this singular sea of sand, which rolls quite back to the gardens of Beirût. Geologists tell us that this sand has traveled long and far before it reached its present resting-place. That, in fact, its original home was in the great African desert, and, during the countless ages of the past, it has been drifted first by the wind into the sea, and then by the current along the northern coast past Egypt, and around the head of the sea, until, stopped by the Cape of Beirût, it has been thrown out by the waves on to this plain. Others say that it is the sand

SAND-DESERT-ORIGIN OF.

AGED TREE SURROUNDED BY YOUNG ONES.

of the Nile transported hither by the northern current in this part of the Mediterranean. It would lead us too far from our path and our purpose to discuss these theories. My own opinion is, that we need look no farther than this immediate neighborhood for the origin of this desert. The rock on the shore is a soft sandstone, which is continually disintegrating by the action of wind and wave. The loose sand is cast up upon the beach, and the strong southwest winds which blow across the plain are constantly spreading it inward under our very eyes. No doubt the River Damûr,

[blocks in formation]
[graphic]

which is just ahead of us, brings down a vast amount of sand during the winter rains, which are also thrown on shore by the sea. But enough of speculation. The fact is only too certain and too sad. This sand is continually driven in upon these gardens like another deluge. Entire mulberry orchards about Beirût, with all their trees and houses, have been thus overwhelmed since I came to the country; and the day is not distant when it will have swept over the whole cape to the bay on the north of the city, unless its course can be arrested. I never take this ride without watching, with weary sadness, this ever-changing desert. Upon the great sand-waves, which swell up from twenty to fifty feet high, the west wind wakes up small but well-defined wavelets, the counterpart in miniature of those on yonder noisy sea. Should these ripples be caught and fixed by some tranquillizing and indurating agency, we should here have a vast formation of as wavy sandstone as ever puzzled the student of earth's rocky mysteries.

These sandy invasions are not found to any injurious extent north of Beirût, but as you go south they become broader and more continuous. They spread far inland round the Bay of Acre. They begin again at Cesarea, and reach to the River 'Aujeh; and then south of Joppa, past Askelon and Gaza, they roll in their desolating waves wider and still wider, until they subside in the great desert that lies between Arabia and Africa. Let us ride up to the crest of that bold sand-wave, and take a farewell look at this prospect, so eminently Syrian. Ibrahim Pacha told the Emeer of Shwoifat that he had three different seas beneath his feet-the blue Mediterranean, this yellow Kullâbât, and the silvery sea of this olive Sahrâh. Though we may not admire the poetry of the pacha, we will the scene that inspired it. All he saw is before us; and with the noble Lebanon for background, receding and rising, range over range, up to where Sunnîn leans his snowy head against the marble vault of heaven. Picturesque villages by the hundred sleep at his feet, cling to his side, hide in his bosom, or stand out in bold relief upon his ample shoulders, giving life and animation the scene.

KHULDEH-SARCOPHAGI.

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It

We will now rest and lunch at this khan Khuldeh. has taken three hours to reach it. Though you have but little relish for rotten ruins, there is something hereabouts will surely interest you. This broken tower, crowning the top of a half-natural, half-artificial mound, the guide-books will tell you, is one of those telegraphic beacons which St. Helen built along the road from Jerusalem to Constantinople, to convey to her royal son the very first tidings of the discovery of the true cross, for which she was then ransacking the rubbish of the Holy City. You may accept that, or else suppose that it was one of a system of watch-towers for the defense of the coast, such as are still kept up along the shores of Spain and Algiers. The hill itself, however, speaks of remote antiquity. But by far the most remarkable relics of past ages are those sarcophagi on the side of the mountain. Their number is surprising, since for ages the inhabitants have been breaking them up for buildingstone, and burning them into lime, and still there are hundreds of them lying about on the face of the hill. They are of all sizes; some eight feet long, and in fair proportion, the resting-place of giants; others were made for small children. Many are hewn in the live rock; others are single coffins cut out of separate blocks. All had heavy lids, of various shapes, approaching to that of an American coffin, but with the corners raised. They are, no doubt, very ancient. Lift the lid, and the dust within differs not from the surrounding soil from which grows the corn of the current year. so it was twenty centuries ago, I suppose. They are without inscriptions, and have nothing about them to determine their age or origin. Here is a cherub on one, with wings expanded, as if about to fly away to the "better land;" yonder is another with a palm branch, emblem of immortality; while that large one has three warlike figures, the chosen companions, perhaps, of some ancient hero. But on none of them is there a single mark or scratch which might indicate that those who made them had an alphabet. Who were they? Certainly neither Greeks nor Romans. I find no mention of this place, unless it be the Heldua, which, ac

And

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