Just before we came to Joseph's Pit, we had "raised" a hill, and there, a

few miles before us, with not a tree or a shrub to interrupt the view,

lay a vision which millions of worshipers in the far lands of the earth

would give half their possessions to see--the sacred Sea of Galilee!

Therefore we tarried only a short time at the pit. We rested the horses

and ourselves, and felt for a few minutes the blessed shade of the

ancient buildings. We were out of water, but the two or three scowling

Arabs, with their long guns, who were idling about the place, said they

had none and that there was none in the vicinity. They knew there was a

little brackish water in the pit, but they venerated a place made sacred

by their ancestor's imprisonment too much to be willing to see Christian

dogs drink from it. But Ferguson tied rags and handkerchiefs together

till he made a rope long enough to lower a vessel to the bottom, and we

drank and then rode on; and in a short time we dismounted on those shores

which the feet of the Saviour have made holy ground.

At noon we took a swim in the Sea of Galilee--a blessed privilege in this

roasting climate--and then lunched under a neglected old fig-tree at the

fountain they call Ain-et-Tin, a hundred yards from ruined Capernaum.

Every rivulet that gurgles out of the rocks and sands of this part of the

world is dubbed with the title of "fountain," and people familiar with

the Hudson, the great lakes and the Mississippi fall into transports of

admiration over them, and exhaust their powers of composition in writing

their praises. If all the poetry and nonsense that have been discharged

560

The Innocents Abroad