Identifier: throughbibleland00scha (find matches)
Title: Through Bible lands : notes of travel in Egypt, the desert, and Palestine
Year: 1878 (1870s)
Authors: Schaff, Philip, 1819-1893
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : American Tract Society
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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of the soil thatit rejects no plant, and so genial is the climate that itsuits every variety ; the walnut, which delights in a win-try climate, grows here luxuriantly, together with thepalm-tree which is nourished by heat, and near to thoseare figs and olives to which a milder atmosphere hasbeen assigned. One might style this an ambitious effortof nature, doing violence to herself in bringing togetherplants of discordant habits, and an amiable rivalry of theseasons, each as it were asserting its right to the soil ;for it not only possesses the extraordinary virtue of nour-ishing fruits of opposite climes, but also maintains a con-tinual supply of them. Thus it produces those mostroyal of all, the grape and the fig, during ten months,without intermission, while the other varieties ripen theyear round ; for besides being favored by the genial tem-perature of the air, it is irrigated by a highly fertilizingspring, called Capharnaum by the people of the country.^ * Bell. Jud. III. 10, 8.
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THE LAKE OF GALILEE, 341 This description reads like irony when comparedwith the present condition. No roads, no houses, nogardens, no cultivated farms meet the eye along theshore, but wild grass, briers, and thistles in abundance. And yet nature in its beauty is still there, notwith-standing the vandalism of men. There is the lake withits clear blue waters; there the hills in the light of thesun ; there the plain of Gennesaret with its tropical fer-tility. The bright red magnolias grow luxuriantly amongthistles and thorns, and occasionally even the fig, theolive, the pomegranate, the date-palm, the sugar-cane maystill be found there. The lake district presents a beautifulpicture, not indeed so grand and sublime as the lakes ofSwitzerland, nor so lovely and charming as the lakes ofNorthern Italy, but with a richer history, a warmer cli-mate, and a better soil. It might be made an earthly par-adise under a good government and with an industriouspeople. If it were not for the utter abse

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