CHAPTER XI—­GALILEE

Neither old “sacred” {25} himself, nor any of his helpers, knew the road which I meant to take from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee and from thence to Jerusalem, so I was forced to add another to my party by hiring a guide.  The associations of Nazareth, as well as my kind feeling towards the hospitable monks, whose guest I had been, inclined me to set at naught the advice which I had received against employing Christians.  I accordingly engaged a lithe, active young Nazarene, who was recommended to me by the monks, and who affected to be familiar with the line of country through which I intended to pass.  My disregard of the popular prejudices against Christians was not justified in this particular instance by the result of my choice.  This you will see by-and-by.

I passed by Cana and the house in which the water had been turned into wine; I came to the field in which our Saviour had rebuked the Scotch Sabbath-keepers of that period, by suffering His disciples to pluck corn on the Lord’s day; I rode over the ground on which the fainting multitude had been fed, and they showed me some massive fragments—­the relics, they said, of that wondrous banquet, now turned into stone.  The petrifaction was most complete.

I ascended the height on which our Lord was standing when He wrought the miracle.  The hill was lofty enough to show me the fairness of the land on all sides, but I have an ancient love for the mere features of a lake, and so forgetting all else when I reached the summit, I looked away eagerly to the eastward.  There she lay, the Sea of Galilee.  Less stern than Wast Water, less fair than gentle Windermere, she had still the winning ways of an English lake; she caught from the smiling heavens unceasing light and changeful phases of beauty, and with all this brightness on her face, she yet clung so fondly to the dull he-looking mountain at her side, as though she would

“Soothe him with her finer fancies,
Touch him with her lighter thought.” {26}

If one might judge of men’s real thoughts by their writings, it would seem that there are people who can visit an interesting locality and follow up continuously the exact train of thought that ought to be suggested by the historical associations of the place.  A person of this sort can go to Athens and think of nothing later than the age of Pericles; can live with the Scipios as long as he stays in Rome; can go up in a balloon, and think how resplendently in former times the now vacant and desolate air was peopled with angels, how prettily it was crossed at intervals by the rounds of Jacob’s ladder!  I don’t possess this power at all; it is only by snatches, and for few moments together, that I can really associate a place with its proper history.