ANCIENT PALESTINE

"Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies . Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plains, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists--over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead --about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn, about the ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, today, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation , have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Savior's presence; the hallowed spot where shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where angels sang Peace on earth, goodwill to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye. Renown Jerusalem itself , the stateliness name in history , has lost all its ancient grandeur and become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and glory of Israel is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot where, on the most memorable day in the annals of the world, they reared the Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets one rode at anchor and the disciples of the Savior sailed in their ships was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazim have vanished from the earth, and the 'desert places' round about them where thousands of men once listened to the Savior 's voice, and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes . "Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the 'curse' of a Deity beautify a land? "Palestine is no more of this work-day world . It is sacred to poetry and tradition --it is dream land." P. 485-486, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD OR THE NEW PILGRIMS' PROGRESS by Mark Twain (1984)