Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/299

Rh wheat and barley, which stretch away in the distance. As soon as we are fairly in the country, we find it the same as that over which we passed in coming up from the South — not a plain, but a succession of gentle undulations. This South Country is the richest part of Palestine, unless it be the Plains of Sharon and Esdraelon. The soil itself is fitted to yield abundant harvests. Think of a land without a stone! Scarcely a pebble can be picked cut of the soft, warm earth. It is only as we approach the hills that the stone begins to crop out. For hours we pursued our way through this richly-cultivated country. Great numbers of the people were abroad in the fields, engaged in the husbandry of the Spring. Farmers were plowing their land, sometimes with a single beast, and often with a camel and an ass, or an ox and an ass, yoked together, in disregard of the Hebrew law. The plow was always of wood, pointed with iron, and had but a single handle, so that there was a special force in the singular number "hand" — not "hands" — being put to the plow.

Yet rude as were the implements of agriculture, there were on every side signs of the industry which the earth repays with abundant fruit. In one respect the people show a more careful husbandry than ours; they weed out their fields of grain, as we weed out our gardens. This afternoon, all round us, as far as the eye could reach, the country was of the purest emerald green. One drawback only there was to the beauty of the landscape — the absence of trees. This is caused by the accursed Turkish Government, which blights whatever it touches, and which virtually prohibits tree-culture by imposing a tax on every tree, not when it is grown and bearing fruit, but as soon as it is planted. But even despotism cannot destroy the natural fertility of the earth, and it yields such increase as makes this truly a land flowing with milk and honey. The best