The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-01-25
AROUND THE HOME OF OUR
SAVIOUR.

visit Nazareth and Galilee, carries
away precious memories of his pill
grimage; while for others it is a
sweet and wholesome exercise to
dwell in imagination on the details of
the place where the Saviour lived and
lahored.
Nazareth lies nearly twelve hun
dred feet above the sea, and some OF
the hills which cluster round, shut
ting it in, rise, about five hundred
feet higher, writes Cunningham Geikie
in his Life of Christ. 1t is mountain
village, only to be reached from the
plain by tedious climb.
One characteristic of the hills round
Nazareth existing already in Christs
day, and, indeed, much earlier, is
striking proof of the denseness OF the
population of Palestine in former
times, and of it's restless industry and
energy. Many of them are honey
combed with countless excavations OF
various kinds. Cemeteries of over two
hundred tombs cut in the soft rock,
some of them large tunnelled vaults
with separate hollows for twelve bodies;
large numbers of cisterns, grape
and olive presses, store or dwelling
caves, wells and quarries, are every
where abundant, as, indeed, they are
over the whole country, but espe-
cially in the Shephelah Philistine plain.
The cisterns are from twenty to thirty
feet deep, shaped like a church bell
or inverted funnel, about two and
half feet across at the mouth, and
fifteen to twenty-five at the bottom,
the whole cut out of the solid lime
stone, showing that Palestine must
always have been, for good part OF
the year, a waterless country, need
ing to store up the rains OF autumn
and spring. 1t is not uncommon to
find groups of from three to ten, or
even more, of these fine excavations
together. What must have been the
density of the population, what its
civilization and industry, to leave such
remains in such numbers?
The view from Nazareth itself is
limited, as might be expected from its
nesting in an amphitheatre OF hills
that shut in the little valley, except
to the west, where it opens on Esdrae-
Ion. From the top of the hill at
the back of the village, to the
north. however, it is very different.
Galilee lies spread out like map at
ones feet. The eye wanders over the
plain of Esdraelon in it's broad west
ern sweep. Three hours to the east,
II rests on the round outline of Tabor,
with it's woods of oaks and pistach1os,
and, beyond it, on the swelling mass
of Jebel ell Daily, or Little Hermon,
which closes in the plain, at about the
same height as Tabor. Ranging south
wards, the mountains of Gilboa, four
or FIVE hundred feet lower, shut in
the lowlands; while far beyond them,
across the hidden course of the Jor-
dan. rise the mountains of Gilead.
Looking to the south, across Esdrae-
lon, the hills of Samaria are seen,
through the openings of the wooded
heights of the Carmel range, reaching
northward to join it. Turning slow
ly towards the west, the whole length
of the Carmel hills, running thirty
miles northwest, to the coast, seem,
in the pure air of these parts, as If
close at hand About twenty miles
off, almost directly west, rises the
head land of Carmel; it's top crowned
with woods of oak and fig trees, it's
slopes varied with orchards, laurels,
and olives, and it's seaward face sink
ing abruptly into the Mediterranean
waters. Nesting at the northern base
of the hill, on the sea shore, the
white houses of Haifa arrest the eye.
The blue waters specked with sails,
stretch far away, beyond, to the dis
tant horizon. The whole Bay of Acre
is seen, though Acre itself lies too
low to be visible. The brown sandy
shores, sweeping far to the north, are
hidden only here and there, by in
tervening hills. Leaving the coast,
and looking from northwest to north,
the panorama shows a sea of hills
the highlands of Galilee-broken by
the fertile upland plain of Battauf,
close at hand, with the ruins of the
once famous Sepphoris, on a solitary
hill at it's southern edge, and beyond,
on it's northern slope, the cottages of
Cana of Galilee In the background,
twenty miles away, tower the hills
of Safed, 2,770 feet above the sea, ris-
ing over the ever-heightening sum-
mits of the highlands of Upper Cali
lee. But Safed itself is only midway
in the landscape. Mountains rise be-
yond mountains, to the north, till they
o,,1ro;Dofo moro than sixty miles off
as the crow flies, in the highest peaks
of Hermon, ten thousand feet above
the sea-level. AS the eye wanders
round from the point from which it
began it's survey, hills beyond hills
still meet the view, stretching away
with rounded tops, towards the Sea
of Galilee, and rising again, beyond
it, to a greater height on is eastern
shores.
In the town of Nazareth, then doubt
less much larger, Jesus spent most OF
His life. Amidst these hills, in these
streets, He was brought up as child
and grew" as a boy, Gin wisdom
and age and grace" Here for many
years. He labored as a man for His
daily bread. This was the landscape on
which He daily gazed, and it was
along these mountain peaks He
walked. He must often have stood
on. the hilltop from which the whole
country is seen. and the little bay