Having made arrangements for a carriage the evening I arrived in Nazareth, before daylight the next morning I started to drive to Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee.  When I went down stairs, at about half-past three o’clock, I found a covered rig with two seats, and three horses hitched to it side by side.  I filed no objection to the size of the carriage, nor to the manner in which the horses were hitched.  As the driver could not speak English and the passenger could not speak Arabic, there was no conversation on the way.  As we drove out of Nazareth, I observed a large number of women at the Virgin’s Fountain, filling their jars with water.  At a distance of a little more than three miles we passed through Kefr Kenna, the “Cana of Galilee,” where Jesus performed his first miracle. (John 2:1-11.) The road to Tiberias is not all smooth, but is better than might be supposed.  With three horses and a light load, we were able to move along in the cool of the morning at a lively gait, passing a camel train, an occasional village, olive orchard, or mulberry grove.  After a while the light of the moon grew pale, and about six o’clock the great round sun came above the horizon in front of us, and it was not long until a beautiful sheet of water six miles long—­the Sea of Galilee—­came suddenly into view.  We rolled along the winding curves of the carriage road, down the slope of the hill, and through a gateway in the old wall, to Tiberias, on the west shore of “Blue Galilee.”

According to Josephus, Herod Antipas began to build a new capital city about sixteen years before the birth of Jesus, and completed it in A.D. 22.  He named this new city Tiberias, in honor of the emperor, but it does not appear to have been a popular place with the Jews, and but little is said of it in the New Testament (John 21:1), yet it was not an insignificant place.  The Sanhedrin was transferred from Sepphoris, the old capital, to the new city, and here the school of the Talmud was developed against the gospel system.  The ancient traditional law, called the “Mishna,” is said to have been published here in A.D. 200, and the Palestinian Gemara (the so-called Jerusalem Talmud) came into existence at this place more than a century later.  The Tiberian pointing of the Hebrew Bible began here.  The present population is largely composed of Jews, about two-thirds of the inhabitants being descendants of Abraham.  They wear large black hats or fur caps, and leave a long lock of hair hanging down in front of each ear.  There is little in Tiberias to interest the traveler who has seen the ruins of Rome, Athens and Ephesus.  The seashore bounds it on one side and an old stone wall runs along at the other side.  I walked past some of the bazaars, and saw the mosque and ruined castle.  About a mile down the shore are the hot springs, which, for many centuries, have been thought to possess medicinal properties.  I tried the temperature of one of the springs, and found it too hot to be comfortable