Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/139

 History of the Israelites and their Religion. 121 times, indeed, it is the work of a few years ; but where the condi- tions of the soil are unfavourable, it is the reverse that takes place. In this case the herdsman, wishing to pasture his flocks in the green islands that he descries from afar, suddenly appears invading gardens and corn fields. Sharp affrays ensue ; but as the intruder, though worsted, can burn down and otherwise destroy the toil of years, the settlers find it to their advantage to give up some fallow tracts, where the herds can be turned in, but which ere long are converted into ploughed fields. To trace the fluctuating fortunes of the wandering Arab on one side, and the more peaceful settler on the other, in their constant hostility to each other, would be to write their history from the earliest days of their existence. The result of this perpetual strife is seen in the inward shifting of the line and the narrowing of the district under cultivation, south and eastward of Palestine. Under the Roman dominion the vast expanse interposed between Arabia, Petrsea, Idumaea, and Palmyra was instinct with life — with villages and cities that testified to the thrift of their inhabitants. This region, where now man avoids the approach of man as his deadliest foe, was teeming with a population, whose wants were supplied by a rich soil. The tracts that the ploughshare had spared grazed numerous flocks, and the hum of many voices was heard where now solitude and silence reign supreme. The land was rich in wine and corn ; in groves of palms, lentiscs, tamarisks, and laurestini ; in towns astir with commerce and industry. Turkish rule, like a withering blast, has swept over the scene and destroyed that ancient civilization, leaving it more desolate than it was before the advent of the Asmonsean princes or Roman praetors, or in the time of the Amalekites and Ammonites. The voiceless waste is now the terror of the few travellers attracted thither by the remains of its mighty past. I myself witnessed the Bedawîn sheik, Akil- Agha, pitch his black tents to allow his herds to roam over the rich Plain of Esdraelon and the pleasant slopes of Galilee, where in former days rose a golden sea of waving corn. The occupation of Palestine by the Hebrews was but one among the many conflicts waged in those regions between the tiller or "fellah," peasant (a term applied alike to Moslems and Christians), and the Bedawîn or herdsman. In itself it is but an insignificant episode, rendered important by Hebrew bards, who, in recounting the events of their early history, clothed them with the fervid