THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1951.
A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU FROM
T
HERE is no lovelier place in a Midale
Enst than the appr part of the Jordan valley in the ping
11
I
1!
Dur eady placz 1 know that ari, heart-breaking Fattlegend betre on
breath of his Renae, in
$112 Joses, BuyS r:f Jas, though he came from Nazareth, was always more at home in the Galiler tish
For Nazareth ing villapes
bill-town, bare, slimy, b. abrupt: but the foo! had the fail from the Wes! to the shores of Galilee, only a day's walk from Nazareth, are suave, gentle, and green the right back. for 11 gospel of
ani sun, and sand, in which there
ELTA JN yetlenese
Eik
In
season ground
CE
I sat by the lakeside at Coast an watily vil
lame with 2,000 years of i ry behind it, and
Intre
fering place a
NG mote
2 barren
than Come, a torrent cor a week of the year. a string Trackish tands for a month
for fwo, then dry banks and sandy beil.
mountain
But the great
his
t Tommy thr.ft. and is re
fore- wanderi 1g a green
His cort to bus majesty.
spart from this side is not mulike that of Skildaw, seen from Borrowdale, over Der- wentwater.
a
From Tiberias, I could see 1x - markel de taketon
1 Weih
THE LANDSCAPE
of the
CHRISTIAN STORY
Renan, in his "Life of Jesus says that Jesus, though he came from Nazareth, was always more at home in the Galilee fishing-anllages PATRICK MONKHOUSE agrees with this observation. for he says ...the foothills which fall from the west to the shores of Galilee
are suave, gentle, and green in season-the right background for a gospel of peace
The castern and the western sides of the valley The grave is all on the west- These hills fall in ern side grassy curves to the water's lge; they have shapeliness a dark crag and variety lowers over Magdala (Mary found a Magdalene's village); શ dossa. gotove of trees
Becks the Shore where Andrew and In the troph of the val
kept their ley it is green all the year
reuust. But the grass m the hill-ides hardy outlives May The winter rains be gret it in the sunnier
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en over the water to Moun fteramma. now-capped
head and April, risingg sheulit, ver the northern fouth.. Hermon demi- Pete the taper Jordan, and
for to dest ryolly.
the summer long melting of ha zaow the river owes its perpetual flow.
Without the 9000 feet of Hermon. Jordan might be
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As we talked, three widdiy-clad On the west is a station of the horsemen, with carbines on their Trans-Jordan Frontier Force, shoulders trotted along
and the with the magnificent bay oppos.te band. They are part of chestral Murses,
their Part of frontler guard main equally magnificent hea.gent of
dashia W. Lamed, not by the Syrian govern- black sheep kin. ment. but by the landowner s.arlet; frein this post the car, who holds most of the land on an endless contact with the cross the river. I watched them drug-smugglers from the north. Hide away, across the marshy fat And then, as you drop into the which was once the proud elty valley. comes Rosh Pinnah self. of Bethrurdu.
the oldest, I think. of all the
rodern Jewish settlements 'Woe unto thee, Bethsaila, Palestine, more than fifty years Rail Jesus. For if the mighty ola; it has had time to weather
into werk had been done in Tyre
confrmity with its baZİ: – cun Sizon, which had been done greund, nat prospers unobtu-
in you, they hat a great while sively.
cloth and ashes." But Bethsaida
ogo reperiet, sitting in sack-
And above Bulch again, id not repent, and there is now valley becomes small net stone to show where stood.
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it
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the And in- timate. The river forks into four some of mle n. thin prunks. But the Banias, which as the main stream, springs ala.ost full-grown from a cave the southern stone of Heaney.
en
like the Lathkill in Derbyshire the Shannon on the Leiteing
hills and its course is comely
and various with glades of oaks
rock, and waterfalls.
There is little more of Caper- neum itself. There survives the mosaic floor and the base of the
wall of the Af Pinnah
Syran into the lake. The river here is outer
Bynagogue stop place to run desks profuse that,
perhaps where Jesus first stood forward distance, they make frontier, and leaves on its right a clear, plaris stream,
hilink which makes a premen- Thirts or forty feet across, How-to speak his mind in public: and a hazel, oni shallow gorges of vellow in the
& Roman dev ista the lake.
some fragments of This
ang through green mea towɛ. Are Leriting. A blue flower trallion,
Basilica; a square, squat house the Mount of the
Al the confluence, on the west which the Franciscans have busk In this part of the valley stand like a Canterbury bell corn. Beatitudes. (Blessed are the pode, is an Arah village--fifty or
whore Je, us to watch over these relics; and Cæsarea Philippi, petes with the daisies. A spirit-I think Jesus
tents of black Those who
two or three shepherds' hovels tave Peter his great commission who prefer in their hearts sixty dwellings, you enne closer, these long- to be poor because they do not goatskin, sometimes reinforces of stone and turf. That is all. Cupon the Rock I will build my church'). And up the course of distance effects yield to the are to be rich: not what we w with a buttress of smis or by a
Upward from Khoury's village, the intant Jordan he must have intenser volcar T the men by poor-spirited.") On the streen of matted reels
the more or ings permanent village, the valley is at and marshy, and come, The als bulls. before
few days to analer flowers-the pierc
strene going as far as Lake Feter and James and for there is water all the year. a small domed chapel, and
may ing blue of the gentians, hostel for pilgrims; it is serve
but it still looks like un cramp-ulch, which you
know sable through the chestnut of woons on the flank of: Hormon but the setter by the anvient name ment, of nomads-all Poppies in passionate scar- by Italian nuns.
the the Water of Merom: a house of the hess man of
pale. ap
and to gain the crest, sia per- llage. wonten hul. like an in.it heet of water, shigent with haps, decked with winter show, my hut, with twu rooms ant + 8
It is better on the day when the disciples this shook
as Matthew relates. Tittle thr b pope fold by the high roat, saw him, telephone laid on. His name is
which
les over the shoulder gloriusly transfigured
the And mountain-top.
по they From the chapel, a rough path Nasif Khoury. We calle! on him of the hill above Rosh Pinnah,
their reluctant etaps was walking with the lernt when you have limbed for half turmet ients
hillade Cown the Jower.
lice officer) and found him an hour or so from the lake, you southward and homeward, all The high road the hil Capernaum, aut then follows the
Jure settling aunts with beet a niti e-pard which pro- the green world of Upper Jordan
laims ca level."
smiled up to greet them. here to where the Jordan flows fishermen, Mugdala, making for
it perishes. la the nois ing, it is green and growth
its the
evening il withered and vet down But I have seen nothing like it in the spring.
wiki tulips, anemones. three L four brilliant vetches, n-phodel.
this
jite h master thera to the north. Trans Jordana further south the hills are forlorn and feature less.
di et hul as if the spilled over ints the valley
It is a green shot through The loway proze plaques. tamely to the lak. Grlach with all the calours of the was on that bank, and i do floral palette. There ar
vellow Michaelmas beyond not know where the swine great.
One cal Lurdly step from the path without trampling down
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