cruising about far out at sea. A tall palm-tree on one side, and an oak and a seared, white-branched fig-tree on the other, inclose this coup d'oeil.
The bridle-path across the foreground was enlivened by passers-by, such as troops of barefooted boys, driving donkeys laden with hewn stones, which had been taken from the ruins of the fortress, and were about to be used in Hâifa, where many new houses were in progress, and still more were planned. Camels laden with grain and melons jolted by, and a few townspeople passed backward and forward as if to peep at our tents. At sunset there came large numbers of goats and cattle, led toward the town to be secured there for the night, for it is not safe to leave them in the open country, even in the care of the well-armed herdsmen.
Hâifa is a walled town, in the form of a parallelogram, pleasantly situated close to the sea, on a gently-rising slope. A steep hill, a spur of Mount Carmel, rises immediately behind it, and is crowned by a small castle, to which I climbed with Mr. Finn, and thence looked down into the town. The houses are distributed irregularly. Those occupied by consuls and merchants are large, substantial buildings of hewn stone, with central courts and broad terraces. The poorer class of houses are of earth and rough stone, and have no upper chambers. All the roofs are flat. On each side of the little town there are fine fruit gardens, where the pomegranates and figs especially flourish. A grove of palm-trees borders the sandy shore on the east of the town.[1]
I returned to the convent to sleep, and after spending the next day, Sunday, with Mr. Finn at the tents, I prepared to enter Hâifa for the first time, by moonlight.
- ↑ The town of Haifa was built where it now stands, by the famous Dhâher, governor of Acre, in the middle of the last century. The ruins of the old town of Ἠφἀ, Sycaminum, are still to be seen on the sea-shore just below the head of Mount Carmel, which site Dháher found to be too much exposed to the incursions of the nomadic tribes in the plain of Athlite. Some of the elder residents remember their fathers having pointed out the position of their former residences in the old town.—E.T.R.
