The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1891-01-22
AMONG THE BEDOUINS.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage Among
the Children of the Desert.
Tent Life In Northern Palestine and the
Historic Incidents it RecaIled-A
Land Where Customs Do
Not Change.

lyn and New York City. The text was:
Forasmuch as thou knowest how we are
to encamp in the Wilderness Numbers, x,
e.
Night after night we have slept in
tent in Palestine. There are large viii
lagos of Bedouins without house, and
for three thousand years the people of
those places have lived in black tents,
made out of dyed skins, and when the
winds and storms wore out and tore
loose these coverings, others of the
same kind took their places Noah
lived in a tent; Abraham in a tent
Jacob pitched his tent on mountain.
Isaac pitched his tent in the valley.
Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom. In
tent the woman Jael nailed Sisera,
the General, to the ground, first
having given him sour milk called
'1eben" as soporific to make him
soundly Sleep that being the effect of
such nutrition, as modern travellers can
testify. Tho Syrian army in tent
The ancient battle-shout was: ITO
your tents, o Israeli" Paul was tent
maker. Indeed, Isaiah, magnifcently
poetic, indicates that all the human
race live under a blue tent when he
says that God ''stretcheth out the
heavens as curtain and spreadeth
them out as tent to dwell in" and
Hezekiah compares death to the strik
ing of tent, saying: my age is re-
moved from me as shepherds tent"
am glad to say that for the most
part Palestine is clear of beasts of prey.
The leopards, which Jeremiah says can
not change their spots, have all disap-
peared, and the lions that once were
common all through this land and used
by all the prophets for illustrations of
cruelty and wrath, have retreated be-
fore the discharges of gunpowder of
which they have an indescribable fear.
But for the most part Palestine is what
it originally was. With the one excep-
ton of wire thread reaching from
Joppa to Jerusalem and from Jerusalem
to Nazareth and from Nazareth to
Tiberias and from Tiberias to Damas-
Gus, that one nerve of civilization the
Geographic wire flor we found ourselves
only few minutes off from Brooklyn
and New York while standing by Lake
Galilee), with that one exception, Pales-
tine 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
may one minute before be clear of all
wings, in five minutes after the skies
are black with eagles cawing, scream
ing, plunging, fighting for room, SON
tending for largest morsels of the ex-
tinct quadruped. All, now l understand
the force of Christ's illustration when
He said: "Wheresoever the carcass is
there will the eagles be gathered to-
gether." The longevity of those eagles
is wonderful. They i've fifty or sixty,
and sometimes a hundred years.
All, that explains what David
meant when he says: ''Thy youth is
renewed like the eagles" l saw a
shepherd with the folds of his coat far
bent outward and l wondered what was
contained in that amplitude of apparel,
and said to the dragoman: "What has
the shepherd got under his coat?'' And
the. dragoman said: sit is very young
lamb he Is carrying; it is too young and
too weak and too cold to keep up with
the flock" At that moment l saw the
lamb put its head out from the shep-
herds bosom, and / said: There it is
now, Isaiah's description of the tender
ness of God-He shall gather the lambs
with His arm and carry them in Els
BOSOM
Passing by a village home in the
Holy Land about noon, l saw great
crowd in and around private house,
and said to the dragoman: David,
what is going on there?" He said:
Somebody has recently died there,
and their neighbors go in for several
days after to sit down and weep with
the bereaved." There it is, said, the
old scriptural custom: "And many of
the Jews came to Martha and Mary to
comfort them concerning their brother"
Early in the morning, passing by a
cemetery in the Holy Land, l saw
among the graves about fifty women
dressed in black, and they were crying:
'Oh, my cLildr' ''Oh, my husbandr'
''Oh, my fatherw '0h. my motherl'
Our dragoman told US that every morn
ing very early for three mornings after
burial the women go to the sepulcher,
and after that every week very early
for year. AS l saw this group lust
after daybreak, said: There it is
again. the same old custom referred to
In Luke, the evangelist, where he saws:
'Certain women which were early at
tho sepulcher.'
But here we found ourselves at ia
Sob's we'll, the most famous we'll in his
tory, most distinguished for two things,
because it belonged to the old patri-
arch after whom it was named, and for
the wonderful things which Christ said,
seated on this well curb, to the Sama-
ritan woman. We dismount from our
horses in adrizzling rain, and our drago-
man climbing up to the we'll over tho
slippery stones. stumbles and frightens
Us all by nearly falling into it meas
ured the well a&the top and found it
six feet from enge to edge. Some grass
and weeds and thorny growths over
hang it In one place the roof
is broken through. Large stones en-
bank the walls on all sides. Our