from five to seven feet high, and all built upon one
arbitrary plan—the ungraceful form of a
dry-goods box. The sides are daubed with a smooth
white plaster, and tastefully frescoed aloft and alow
with disks of camel-dung placed there to dry.
This gives the edifice the romantic appearance of
having been riddled with cannon-balls, and imparts
to it a very warlike aspect. When the artist
has arranged his materials with an eye to just proportion
—the small and the large flakes in alternate
rows, and separated by carefully-considered intervals—I
know of nothing more cheerful to look upon than a
spirited Syrian fresco. The flat, plastered roof
is garnished by picturesque stacks of fresco materials,
which, having become thoroughly dried and cured, are
placed there where it will be convenient. It
is used for fuel. There is no timber of any consequence
in Palestine—none at all to waste upon fires—and
neither are there any mines of coal. If my description
has been intelligible, you will perceive, now, that
a square, flat-roofed hovel, neatly frescoed, with
its wall-tops gallantly bastioned and turreted with
dried camel-refuse, gives to a landscape a feature
that is exceedingly festive and picturesque, especially
if one is careful to remember to stick in a cat wherever,
about the premises, there is room for a cat to sit.
There are no windows to a Syrian hut, and no chimneys.
When I used to read that they let a bed-ridden man
down through the roof of a house in Capernaum to get
him into the presence of the Saviour, I generally had
a three-story brick in my mind, and marveled that
they did not break his neck with the strange experiment.
I perceive now, however, that they might have taken
him by the heels and thrown him clear over the house
without discommoding him very much. Palestine
is not changed any since those days, in manners, customs,
architecture, or people.
As we rode into Magdala not a soul was visible.
But the ring of the horses’ hoofs roused the
stupid population, and they all came trooping out—old
men and old women, boys and girls, the blind, the crazy,
and the crippled, all in ragged, soiled and scanty
raiment, and all abject beggars by nature, instinct
and education. How the vermin-tortured vagabonds
did swarm! How they showed their scars and sores,
and piteously pointed to their maimed and crooked
limbs, and begged with their pleading eyes for charity!
We had invoked a spirit we could not lay. They
hung to the horses’s tails, clung to their manes
and the stirrups, closed in on every aide in scorn
of dangerous hoofs—and out of their infidel
throats, with one accord, burst an agonizing and most
infernal chorus: “Howajji, bucksheesh! howajji,
bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh! bucksheesh! bucksheesh!”
I never was in a storm like that before.