Morning journal and courier., 1884-07-30

great host, with horses and chariots take him, because he revealed unto tn king of Israel even the bed-chambe thoughts of the Syrian monarch. Poor Ge
 haz1, who seems to me to have been some
 thing of a clown, then had dreadful
 scare; but recovered a little when he say
 how his master had the people smittel
 with blindness and led them back to Sa
 maria like so many sheepi
 We pushed on to Jenin, village inter
 esting only as being mentioned in Joshu,
 1921 and 21:29, where we were to Iodg
 for the rest of the day and that night Je
 min is the bugbear of those who do not tray
 el through Palestine in tents There is nC
 convent there, and none near enough so as tC
 divide the journey equally between Nablou
 and Tabor. Accordingly we had to lodge il
 the house of native, as many hundreds hay,
 done before us in the same despicable town | We selected one of the most decent place.
 and then concluded to sleep outdoors in tho yardl Never shall forget that night in Je min. It was as thrilling an experience as was
 ever any encounter with wild Indians on the
 American frontier. Among the long cata | logue of our enemies were cats, dogs, bray: 1 ing donkeys, Heas, mosquitoes, gnats, sand | flies and nameless other tormentors too hu 1 merous to mention. The place fairly swarmed | with cats, which seemed determined to keeI | the rats away from us at least, as I was re- minded score oi times when some indig, | nA11t Tabby eantered across my face in pur. l suit of fleeing rodent. The f1eas, and es
 pecially the invisible sandf1ies, were pestifer-
 ous in the extreme. Every twenty minutes
 a famished dog would hobble in on three
 legs, sniff at our countenances, and then
 hold his nose meditatively aside, as if actu-
 ally sampling us. Overhead through the l lowering clouds of virulent mosquitoes we
 could occasionally catch glimpses of the calm | blue sky.
 The next morning we were glad to arise l early, for we had big days work before us.
 With difficulty we tore ourselves away from
 our hospitable host, who was earnestly ar
 guing the proposition that I ought to give | him my watch and chain or at least few l gold sovereigns as bucksheesh, and five min 1 utes later debouched into the plain of Es- | draelon. Away in the remote distance ahead | of us loomed up Little Hermon, Tabor and l Gilboa. To the left was the Carmel range, l extending clear to the German colony of 1 Haifa on the seacoast. On the top of one of | the peaks we could see the convent said to be l erected on the site of the Place of Sacrifice | where Elijah wrought nightly. In the
 same range MT, Floyd pointed out to me To- | anach and Megiddo, mentioned in Judges ire | quently. This plain is the battle ground of Palestine. It might be made to support a l large population and yield most abundantly but for Bedouin invasions. We passed through 1 many wheat fields that did honor to the soil; l but the major part of the plain is uncultiva- ted for the reason that no man feels sure of his crop when it is grown. We saw the black skin tents of these arrant thieves pitched in several places. Alas, when oh when will Palestine be freed from the oppres- sion of Turks and the cupidity of wandering tribes? To add to the confusion the families, particularly of Jenin, are always wrangling and squabbling among themselves.
 I shall always remember Jezreel with grat- itude, for the reason that there the monotony Q yaS NV n exciting rooster fight on the top of one of the mud houses. The modern village is a most wretched aggregation of filthy novels of mud situated on an eminence in the midst of the plain. Several large fields of tobacco and great piles of decaying manure alone served to make the place otherwise memorable. In stead of enriching the sterile soil with this manure, the natives pile it up in their door yards to breed disease. Yet once there must have been some tolerably decent buildings there, for we read that the fastidious Ahab and his ambitious and interruptions queen Jezebel used to live here. Thither rode that daring rebel Jehu along the valley to the north, and audaciously smote Jehoram with his full strength, commanded the death of Ahaziah, king of Judah, and finally trod un- der foot the mangled body of painted Jeze- bel, which had been cast down from an up- per window by. the eunuchs." This course of Jehu, well his subsequent conduct at Samaria, prove him to have been one of the most recklessly courageous of revolutionists. 1 could easily understand how several mes sengers might have been sent successively to meet the furious driver as he came across the plain; and their every motion could have been distinctly watched by the watchman
 After several readings of the twenty-frst chapter of First Kings, and other passages bearing upon the subject, I find myself in ineXtricable perpleXity as to where Naboth s vineyard was that Ahab coveted and finally procured through the Jezreelites death. Un- fortunately have no commentaries at hand in this out-of-the-way place, and am at a loss | to understand whether the field was in Jez- reel or Samaria. The latter part of the | twenty second chapter seems to be directly at variance with the twenty first. God post poned the full weight of the curse for one generation. It is possible, therefore, that Naboth was slain near the pool of Samaria, and that chapter xxi, verse 3S, is a fulfill ment, chapter xxi, verse 19, in which event Second Kings, ix, 25, is complete fulfill ment of the deferred sentence: This would put the vineyard near Jezreel, and would in volve two ''repentances" on the part of Je- hovah. Evidently either view may be ''proved" from the Bible.
 To Jezreel it was that Elijah came after his memorable sacrifice on Carmel, being pursued by Ahab all the way. So, also, scores of other interesting facts are recorded of this now shabby town.
 Standing on the hilltop and looking off over the Plain of Jezreel to the north the landscape was the most remarkable one his torically which I have viewed since descend ing the great pyramid To the right were the mountains of Gilboa, the highest peak being covered with a rank growth of cactus, enclosing mud-village, and the sides being wholly destitute of vegetation. Some peo- pie love to regard this as a fulfllment of Da- vids lament: ''Ye mountains of Gilboa, let IL 1,o RhD,. lat thara ho in upon you, nor fields of offerings; for there the shields of the mighty were vilely cast away" As dew and rain fall as of yore on Gilboa, the fulillment is at best only par tial Davids lament was purely poetical, to my mind, like many other similar pas sages in the Bible which many good peo- pie strive to make unnecessarily significant. To the right, glistening in the morning sun just north of Gilboa, was Gideons Fountain, where the three hundred Tapped water What remarkable campaign that was against the thieving Midianites! The 'Fchildren of the East" were even more troublesome then than now, so that the peo pie had to dwell in caves for security. Oh for some modern Gideon!
 Directly across the plain to the north was Shunem, where the Philistines were encamped in that last melancholy engagement in which the beauty of Israel was slain upon the high places" Saul was over there at the base of Gilboa, but so nervously apprehensive was he that he took his horse and rode past Shu- nem around the corner of yonder mountain to Endor, there to consult the i'll ll-divining witch. It was, of course, hazardous in the extreme to ride thus across an open plain; but suppose his disguise and the intensity of the darkness protected him from observation, although he rode so near the enemy's camp. An, he must have been still more apprehensive as he rode back pondering over the awful oracle which had been declared unto him by the shade of Samuel How painful the contrast between this wretched apostate Saul and the tinid lad who had hid himself ''in the stuff'' on his coronation day! The battle went against him as the spirit of Samuel had prophesied, and retreating up the mountain, F'upon the high places" as David puts it, he fell upon his own sword, and ended his miserable career!
 In the distance down the valley toward the Jordan, could just discern Bethshan, whith- CT the remains of Saul and his three sons were ignobly dragged. (First Samuel, 31:10-13) There are the ruins of an ancient amphitheatre there Mr Floyd says, with dens of wild beasts. The Greeks designate the place as Scythopolis.
 We crossed this several miles of plain that lay between us and Shunem, whereupon we found the place to be a repetition of the filth and mud novels of Jezreel, with the addition of a bountiful growth of cactus hedges.