But the railway! If therefore any sketcher or botanist be tempted to Rügen, let him not delay, for the state of things I have described will in a few years inevitably be of the remote past.

M. B.-E.

From The Sunday Magazine.
MOUNT CARMEL.

BY LAURENCE OLIPHANT.

SECOND PAPER.

modified. Travellers who visit Rügen a | Carmel the Khurbet Semmaka. The few years hence will no longer find a little interest lies in the fact that the remains Arcadia of guilelessness and poetry. I were discovered here by the officers of have mentioned elsewhere the splendid the Palestine Exploration Fund of an physique of the people, reminding us, ancient Jewish synagogue. Throughout except at Mönchgut, of our own south- the whole of Palestine eleven other ruins country yeomen; doubtless the general of ancient synagogues have been found. robustness is partly to be accounted for A striking characteristic of these buildin the sobriety of life. Public-houses or ings is their similarity in plan and detail cabarets, properly speaking, do not exist, of ornamentation. From this it may be and of drunkenness, brawls, and riot, we inferred that they were all built at nearly saw not a trace. These descendants of the same time, and under the influence of sea-kings and pirates have subsided into the architectural taste then prevalent in quietude and repose, and in no corner of the country, which was Roman; and it is Europe is the traveller more secure alike probable from the method of their conas regards his purse or his person. struction, and especially from the localities in which they have been discovered, that they do not date from an earlier period than the second century after Christ. It was at this period that the Jewish patriarch at Tiberas was the spiritual head of a community comprehending all of Israelitish descent who inhabited the Roman Empire, and it is only in Galilee, and more especially in the neighborhood of Tiberias, that these remains of syna. gogues are to be found. We know that under the reign of Antoninus Pius, A.D. 138-161, the Jewish colony round Tiberias became very powerful, and that many synagogues were erected in the villages beFROM the edge of the cliff which pro-longing to that colony, most probably in jects into the sea a fine view is obtained over the old fortifications, with the sea beating through arches of the old sea-wall below, and in the distance, four miles to the south, somewhat similarly placed, we perceive on its promontory Tantûra, where ruins still remain to indicate the site of the Biblical Dor. But this is beyond the limit of Carmel, and if we are to continue our examination of that mountain we must recross the plain for about five miles to the village of Isjim, situated at its south-western extremity, thus making the entire western side of the mountain fourteen miles long. From here a deep valley called the Wady-el-Milh, eight miles long, cuts right through to the plain of Esdraelon, thus separating the hills of Samaria from the south-eastern flank of Carmel. Isjim itself is a village situated on the site of an ancient town, and in the immediate neighborhood are many tombs of interest, rock-cut cisterns, and remains of ancient buildings, which would doubtless repay a full investigation. It is situated on the last spur of Carmel, about four hundred feet above the sea-level, and if we follow a romantic wady for about two miles in a north-westerly direction we reach one of the most interesting ruins in

imitation of the great works of the Roman emperor in Syria. Indeed, it has been stated that Simon Jochai built with his own money twenty-four synagogues in this part of the country. The fact that one should have existed in Carmel, comparatively detached from the others, shows that at this date, and perhaps for three or four hundred years after Christ, a Jewish community must have lived in Carmel, and that Semmaka may have been a Jewish town up to the fifth century, when the patriarchate became extinct, and with it the Jewish colony gradually declined, and the villages dependent on it were abandoned. It was interesting to stand on this spot, the last one probably inhabited by Jews on Carinel, and investi gate the last remaining evidences of their occupation. These are, unfortunately, rapidly disappearing. The principal door of the synagogue, a sketch of which exists, happily, in the memoirs of the Palestine Exploration Fund, has since the visit of the survey nearly all been carried away, together with large portions of the walls of the building, the foundations in many places alone remaining. For the last ten years it has been used as a quarry by the neighboring villages of Isjim and Mum

es-Zeinat, and in a few years not a trace | And he said, Go again seven times."

will be left of the last Jewish town in Carmel.

Now there would have been no occasion for Elijah to have given any such directions to his servant had the altar been at the place supposed, for the sea is in full view of it, from Athlit to Cæsarea; it is evident, therefore, from the words "Go

The late Dean Stanley has conjectured that the spot might have been on a plateau a little lower down, where there is a well on the south slope of the mountain; but it has seemed to me more likely that it was in a sort of low amphitheatre, which, on account of its greater area, would have been far better adapted for so great a multitude as that which was assembled to witness the discomfiture of the false prophets, and which lies to the west a little below Mahkraka, and completely concealed from the sea view. There is a point within a few minutes of what would be the centre of this plain from which the sea is clearly visible. And curiously enough, hidden away in the brushwood, I came here upon a massive erection of square slabs of stone, each averaging eighteen inches square and eight or nine inches thick, which, placed on one another without cement, make a rude table about twelve feet long and four feet high.

One of the wildest and most romantic valleys in the mountain, called the Valley of the Bees, leads from the plateau on which this interesting ruin stands, to the road leading from Dahlieh to the Mah-up," that the altar was at a lower elevation. kraka, or Place of Burning. It deserves its name, for we observe hives of wild bees thickly clustered on the precipitous walls of rock which bound the valley on one side. Here I discovered some of the most perfect and beautifully arranged rock-cut tombs which I have seen in the country. As we debouch from the valley our path leads over a fertile upland, which gives us quite a new idea of the agricultural capabilities of Carmel, and enables us to account for the phenomenon of so large a population finding sustenance in the mountain as must once have inhabited it. Indeed, the popular conception of this highland region, probably derived from the misleading word Mount, is entirely erroneous, and as we ride over these copse-grown plateaus and observe the numerous indications of former cultivation and civilization, we can well understand how the beauty of Carmel was in old time a proverb, and how its inhabitants should have considered themselves I do not, of course, pretend that this favored above all other dwellers in Pales was the original altar, which it is recorded tine. For the path along which we are was destroyed at the time, but I am at a now riding takes us through what was loss to conjecture what purpose it could formerly the richest and most populous have served; and its position was so exsection of the mountain. It was probably actly that which might have suited the here, and not in the traditional cave im occasion, that the idea was suggested to puted to him, that Elijah had his resi- me by finding it here, that it may be the dence; for we are approaching that spot remains of some erection put up in Jewish celebrated in Bible story where he sacri- times to commemorate the event. There ficed before the prophets of Baal, and is a path leading from it directly to the where tradition has placed the altar where Kishon, at the point where the Tel-elhe called down the divine fire, and which Kussis, or Hill of the Priests, rises from commands one of the most extensive and the margin of the brook, and which owes interesting panoramic views in Palestine, its name to the tradition that it was the including almost every point of note in scene of the execution of the false proph. Galilee. Within the last year the Car-ets. This portion of the mountain was melites have erected a church on the lofty bluff where this event is supposed to have occurred, and which, rising abruptly above the plain of Esdraelon to a height of one thousand six hundred feet, forms the south-east angle of the mountain, and is a conspicuous object from far and wide. But a moment's reflection will convince us that tradition is not correct in assigning this lofty pinnacle as the scene of the occurrence, for we are told that the prophet" said to his servant, Go up now, look towards the sea. And he went up and looked, and said, There is nothing.

evidently the most populous and most richly cultivated in former times, as it is to this day the most beautiful. The rocky gorges which cleave it on three sides are densely covered with brushwood of the scindianah (oak), pine, Lauristinus Caroli, and many other trees, which, although attaining no great height, clothe the hillsides with the brightest green, except where precipitous walls of grey limestone rock rise above the foliage. The undulating plateaus and the broad valleys are waving with the spring crops, though, ow. ing to the scarcity of population, not a

twentieth part of the mountain which is | sites of ancient towns upon this mountain,

six of which were formerly unknown, and this by no means exhausts the list; and that of these no fewer than twelve were situated within a radius of two miles and a half from the spot where I found the altar-shaped erection near the Mahkraka. If we include the ruins of others of which I have heard but have not yet visited, and estimate the whole population by the extent of those already examined, it cannot have been less than fifty thousand in the days when Carmel was in the zenith of its wealth and beauty. This period may pos sibly have continued until the conquest of this province from the Romans by the Saracens in the seventh century - for many of the ruins are clearly Byzantinewhen the Moslem rule desolated the country, when the whole habitations which remained in Carmel were its caves, and its only occupants hermits and anchorites. During the crusading occupation, fortresses were built upon the mountain, and its wildernesses were again made to a limited extent to yield of their abundance; but this gleam of civilization was only of short duration, and it is probable that from the end of the thirteenth century until the beginning of the seventeenth, when the Druse warrior Fakr ed din included it in his conquest, it was again aban

available for agriculture is tilled. We ride for miles over the rich red loam, through what, in the spring of the year, is a flow ering shrubbery. The landscape glows with flowers of bright colors, and there is scarcely a leaf we pluck and rub between our fingers that does not emit some fragrant aromatic odor. Many of the rounded summits in this sweet-scented wilderness are crowned with the blocks of drafted stone, with carved capitals, still standing in places one above another, and with fragments of columns showing now and then among the bushes, to mark the spots where a civilized and industrious population once lived; while in the valleys we are constantly stumbling upon the gigantic circular millstones used by the ancients. Many of these are eight or nine feet in diameter, two feet in thickness, and with a circular rim nine or ten inches high, to keep the oil from running out, while their centres are pierced with a hole a foot square. Hewn out of the solid rock are the wine-vats, ten or twelve feet long, and four or five wide, like huge sarcophagi, with receptacles below, also rock-hewn, for the juice to run into. Then we are amazed at the quantities of tombs and cisterns; the hillsides in places are almost honeycombed with these; the cisterns sometimes bell-shaped, with a circular ori-doned. The Druses tell me that when fice eighteen inches in diameter, swell ing below so as to give them a capacity for holding an immense amount of water, and sometimes open reservoirs cut to a depth of twenty feet or more into the rock, and measuring forty or fifty feet on each side; the tombs, with the loculi often still perfect, with infinite variety of plan and dimension, sometimes containing as many We have now merely to ride along the as ten or twelve receptacles for the dead. backbone of the ridge from the place of In some cases, these latter are tunnel- sacrifice to the Monastery of Mount Carshaped, when they are called kokin; some-mel to complete our circuit of the mountimes they are sarcophagus-shaped; some- tain. It is a distance of fourteen miles; times there is more than one chamber; on our right, nearly the whole way, we sometimes they are closed by a rolling look from a height of from sixteen hunstone which still stands in its groove, sometimes by an oblong slab, on which the carved devices still remain. The entrance is generally down two or three steps, through a doorway under an arch, and the chambers are often twenty feet square. To investigate these ancient tombs and ruins, and copy the devices which are still to be found upon them, is an occupation of endless interest to the modern dweller upon Carmel. Some idea of the extent of these remains may be gathered from the fact that during last summer I visited no fewer than twenty

their first settlers came here it was a desert, and it is a curious fact that, so far as I have been able to discover, no Moslem village has ever existed upon the mountain proper. To that extent Carmel has remained uncontaminated, perhaps await ing a new religious epoch for its restoration to new and better conditions.

dred to seventeen hundred feet sheer down steep defiles upon the plain of the Kishon, across to the mountains of northern Galilee, with Hermon, and here and there a snow-tipped point of the Lebanon range, rising behind, and the sweeping curve of the Bay of Acre almost at our feet; on our left the eye follows more gently sloping valleys to the plain of Sharon and the Mediterranean. At every turn we come upon new beauties, and finally reach, at the head of the rocky gorge that enters the mountain behind Haifa, the old Crusading fortress of Rush

From Catherine Gordon Byron to J. Hanson, Murray is I believe gone to Lisbon, when he

Newstead Abbey, 11th June, 1809. DEAR SIR,-I received yours a few days ago. On the 23rd of April last on his way to town it was agreed between Lord Byron and myself that he was to take Mrs. George Byron and the Miss Parkyn's debt of eight hundred pounds on himself that is to give proper security for the money before he left England, 12. In another letter (dated Newstead and that he was to pay Wylde the two hundred | Abbey, June 27th, 1809) to Mr. Hanson,

Mrs. Byron "protests against "" expences to, as you may be sure this business is known now incurred uselessly at Newstead. and will doubtless be the talk of the country. The postscript of the epistle gives the I remain, Sir, &c. &c., C. G. BYRGn. following schedule:

From Catherine Gordon Byron to J. Hanson, styled pitifully in the letter, died whilst Catherine Gordon Byron's troubles were thickening about her:

Newstead Abbey, 5th Feb., 1810.

DEAR SIR, I forgot to mention in my last that the two Bailiffs that brought the paper here that I sent to you on the 3rd, stuck up another on the outside of the great Hall Door exactly the same, May I take it off? I dare not do it without advise, but it is extremely disagreeable to me as you may suppose.

What am I to do, in case of an Execution in the House, concerning my own property, as I have a good deal here, Plate, Linen, Wardrobe, and some furniture from my late house at Southwell. I would not answer for what may happen from others that Byron is in debt |