Los Angeles herald., 1910-01-02
THE HOLY LAND
XIl-CARMEL BY THE SEA
Bv Frederic j. Haskin

9, MOUNTAIN ALTAR to the
INsGE al worship of the true God,
lkH u I'll hallowed by centuries upon
I& "A nj centuries as the home of
IME MI holy men, Carmel-by-the-
lezssgAgzMI Sea is the most remarkable
and most beautiful natural feature of
the coast line of Palestine. 1t is a
mountain eight miles long, about 1900
feet high at its inland peak and 500
feet high where it juts into the sea,
dividing the plains of Esdraelon, on the
north, and Sharon, on the south. The
Arabs call it now label Mar Elyas, be-
cause in Jewish, Christian and Mo-
hammedan sacred tradition carmel Is
connected with the story of the
Prophet Elijah. 1t was here that he
lived in the caves of the prophets and
this was the scene of his triumph as
the prophet of Jehovah over all the
priests of Baal.
The excellency of Carmel, which was
synonym for all beauty in the days
of the kingdom of Israel no longer eX-
lists as it did when Solomon sang of it,
for the forests have been destroyed
and new trees have not been planted.
The heavily wooded slopes of the Car
mel of old can be seen only in the inn
agination, for today the greater part
of the mountain is a bare and desolate
expanse of rocks. But Carmel at the
point where 1t stretches into the sea
has been reclaimed from the desert by
the religious order of the Carmelites,
and it is now a delihgt to every Vis-
itor to the Holy Land. 4.
An excellent road cut into the noun
tain side, it's terraces built up with
heavy masonry, leads from the port
city of Haifa up to the convent on
the brow of the hill overlooking the
sea. Visitors are kindly received and
Hospitality entertained at the monas-
terry, which is one of the most inter-
esting in Palestine.
Carmel has been a sacred place from
the earliest times. The most ancient
records of the Hittite peoples indicate
that Carmel was a mountain dedicated
to the worship of the gods of that
time. 1t comes into Christian, Jewish
and Mohammedan lore as the abiding
place Of the Prophets Elijah and
Elisha. 1t was here that Obadiah hid
IAN hundred men of the Lords proph-
cts by fifty in a cave and fed them
with bread and water" The sons OF
the prophets dwelt on this mountain,
in caves and in low dark tents, from
the time of Elijah until their conver-
sion to Christianity. In the third and
fourth centuries Greek hermits re-
sorted in great numbers to Mornt Car
mel and took up their abode in its
caves. They and their successors kept
watch here before this great altar un-
til the crusades, when, in 1lI0, the
Latin Order of Carmelites was founded
here and the monastery was begun.
The monks were massacred by the
Mamelukes in 1891 when the Christians
were finally expelled from Palestine
but there were still a few hermits VINO
kept the faith until the fifteenth centu-
ry, when the monastery was re-estab-
lished under its present constitution:
When Napoleon Bonaparte besleged
Acre in 1893 the monastery was utnlzed
as a hospital, and upon the retreat OF
the French the buildings were de-
stroyed by the Turks.
Early in. the nineteenth century a
monk named Clan Battista came ON a
pilgrimage to Carmel as an act OF PEN
ance. He made a vow to rebuild the
monastery, and the present edifice IS
the result of the fourteen years of MS
travels and begging, But even he,
when he reached Carmel, found an al
tar and an archway, and someone on
the mountain to keep UP the worship
of the God to whom it so long had been
devoted.
GARNER dlSO was SL COlloCNlehtSQ ol1OS
in Asiatic mythology. In the time of
Tacitus it was so holy that there was
no temple or image there, but only an
altar to all the gods. 1t was then that
the pagans unwittingly worshiped the
Jewish God Jehovah, even as the
Greeks of Athens later had an altar to
the Unknown God. Pliny says that
Carmel was the name both of the
shrine and the god who was worshiped
there. That great historian declares
that the oracle which promised the Ro-
man empire to Vespasian resounded
from the summit of this sacred noun
tain.
From the cliff at the top of the noun
tain where the monastery buildings are
set one looks down a sheer preclplee
500 feet to the narrow plain, perhaps q
half mile wide, which separates the foot
of the mountain from the sea. The
greater part of the mountain is owned
and governed by the Carmelite monks,
and their boundary line is marked by
high stone wall, effectually keeping out
all trespassers. Just outside this wall,
at the foot of the mountain, is the Ger
man colony. These thrifty people have
established a prosperous fruit growing
community and their village is in every
A little farther away to the north,
respect a copy of village of the
Rhine.