The Brookhaven leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1883-1891, 1890-11-27
AMONG THE BEDOUINS.
lev. T. Dewitt Talmage Among
tho Children of the Desert.
tent Life In Northern Palestine and the
Historic Incidents it Recallsd-A
Land Where Customs Do
Not Change.

Below we give the eighth discourse
4 the series on.the Holy Land delivered
BY Rev. 7. Dewitt Talmage in Brook
yn and New York City. The text was:
ForasmVch as thou knowest how we are
o encamp in the wilderness.-Sumbers, K,
J.
Night after night we have slept in
ent in Palestine. There are large viii
ages of Bedouins without house, and
or three thousand years the people of
hose places have lived in black tents,
made out Of dyed skins, and when the
Einds and storms wore out and tore
Dose these coverings, others of the
lame kind took their places. Noah
lived in o tent; Abraham in a tent
Jacob pitched his tent on a mountain.
isaac pitched his tent in the valley.
Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom. In
! tent the woman Jael nailed Sisera,
he General, to the ground, first
having given him sour milk called
1eben" as a soporific to make him
oundly sleep, that being the effect of
uch nutrition, as modern travellers can
estify. The Syrian army in tent
| The ancient battle-shout was: ITO
rour tents, o Israeli" Paul was tent
maker. Indeed, Isaiah, magnifcently
poetic, indicates that all the human
ace live under a blne tent when he
ays that God ''stretcheth out the
loavens as a curtain and spreadeth
hem out as tent to dwell in," and
| Hezekiah compares death to the strik-
ng of tent, saying: my age is re-
moved from me as shepherds tent"
| In our tent in Palestine tonight
hear something 1 never heard before
md hope never to hear again. 1t is the
roice of hyena amid the rocks near
~. When you may have seen this
monster putting his mouth between the
ron bars of menagerie he is captive
md he gives a humiliated and sup
pressed cry. But yonder in the mid
| iight on a throne of rocks he has moth
| ng to fear and he utters himself in a
| oud, resounding, terrific, almost super
natural sound, splitting up the dark
hess into deeper midnight. 1t begins
with howl and ends with sound
lone thing like horses whining. In
The hyena's voice are defiance and
strength and blood-thirstine and
runch of broken bones and death.
l am glad to say that for the most
part Palestine is clear of beasts of prey.
The leopards, which Jeremiah says can
lot change their spots, have all disap-
,eared, and the lions that once were
common all through this land and used
BY all the prophets for illustrations of
ruelty and wrath, have retreated be-
lore the discharges of gunpowder of
which they have an indescriba BILE fear
But for the most part Palestine is what
| It originally was. With the one excep-
.ion of a wire thread reaching from
Joppa to Jerusalem and from Jerusalem
10 Nazareth and from Nazareth to
Nberias and from Tiberias to Damas-
ms that one nerve of civilization the
Geographic wire (for we found ourselves
,nly q few minutes off from Brooklyn
md New York while standing by Lake
Galilee), with that one exception, Pales-
| line is Just as it always was.
Nothing surprised me so much as the
persistence of every thing. A sheep or
horse falls dead and, though the sky
nay one minute before be clear of all
wings, in five minutes after the skies
ire black with eagles cawing, scream
ng, plunging, fighting for room, con-
Iending for largest morsels of the ex
inct quadruped. All, now understand
;he force of Christs illustration when
lie said: "Wheresoeyer the carcass is
there will the eagles be gathered to-
yether." The longevity of those eagles
s wonderful. They live fifty or sixty,
md sometimes hundred years.
All, that explains what David
meant when he says: ''Thy youth is
renewed like the eagles" I saw a
,hepherd with the folds of his coat far
bent outward and l wondered what was
contained in that amplitude of apparel.
md said to the dragoman: "What has
he shepherd got under his coat?' And
ne dragoman said: at is very young
amb he is carrying; it is too young and
90 weak and too cold to keep up with
he flock" At that moment / saw the
amb put its head out from the shep-
lerd's bosom, and l said: There it is
low, Isaiah's description of the tender
less of God-He shall gather the lambs
With His arm and carry them in His
,osom."
But here we found ourselves at Ja-
obs we'll, the most famous we'll in his
ory, most distinguished for two things,
because it belonged to the old patri-
lrch after whom it was named, and for
he wonderful things which Christ said,
eated on this we'll curb, to the Sama-
itan woman. We dismount from our
iorses in adrizzling rain, and our drago-
nan climbing up to the we'll over the
iippery stones, stumbles and frightens
Is all by nearly falling into it l meas
lred the well at the top and found 1t
TX feet from enge to edge. Some grass
nd weeds and thorny growths over
lang it In one place the roof
broken through. Large stones en-
,ank the walls on all sides. Our
lragoman took pebbles and dropped
hem in, and from the time they left
lis hand to the instant they clicked on
he bottom you could hear it was deep,
hough not as deep as once, for every
lsY travellers are applying the same
est and though in the time Of Maun-
lrell, the traveller, the well was one
hundred and sixty-five feet deep. and
low 1t is only seventy-fve. So great is
he curiosity Of the world to know about
hat well that during the dry season
Captain Anderson descended into this
iad to put his hands over his head in
1