Rames, Jerusalem, and numerous hordes of Arabs, who encamp in the plains of Gaza.

"Damietta receives in exchange, glass-ware, fabricated at Ebron, raw cottons, cummin, and especially soap of Jaff. This article has enjoyed, from time immemorial, the privilege of only paying, in Egypt, half the usual duties." h

OBSERVATION XIV.

Eastern Gardens not remarkably well stored with Fruit Trees.

THE representation Dr. Chandler gives of the garden of the governor of Eleûs, a Turkish town on the western border of the Hellespont, may be considered, I apprehend, as the description of most of the ancient gardens of the Jewish people.

66

When the heat was abated a little, we were informed that the governor gave us permission to refresh in his garden. We dismissed hi messenger with a bac-shish, or a present of three piasters, and an excuse, that we were just going away; but this was not accepted; and we paid another piaster for seeing a very small spot of ground, walled in, and containing nothing, except two vines, a fig, and a pomegranate-tree, and a well of excellent water."”;

Memoirs, part 4, p. 94, 95.

Travels in Asia Minor, p. 16.

Other fruit-trees were certainly known, even in the patriarchal times, though we have reason to believe, that there have been great additions made to the knowledge of the people of the East, in this respect, since those times; but if a few vines, a fig, and a pomegranate, were all the fruit-trees now found in an Eastern garden, belonging to a person of some figure, we may believe the number of the trees of an ancient Jewish garden, in common, were not more numerous, or composed of a greater variety.

Accordingly we find grapes, figs, and pomegranates mentioned, while other kinds of fruit are passed over in silence, excepting the olive, Numb. xiii. 23, xx. 5, Deut. viii. 8, and Hag. ii. 19.

When then the transactions of Nathaniel under a fig-tree are mentioned, John i, 48, we may believe they were the devotional exercises of a retired garden, walled in and concealed from the eyes of men; and when King Saul is said to have tarried under a pomegranate-tree in Migron, 1 Sam. xiv. 2, it is probable he was taking the refreshment of the air in a garden. Certainly when Israel are said to have dwelt, every man under his own vine and his own figtree, those passages refer to the Eastern people's spending a good part of their time in their gardens.

k

It is to be remembered, the gardens spoken of in the book of Canticles, filled with such a variety of productions, were royal gardens, and

* 1 Kings vi. 25, &c.

the gardens of a prince remarkable both for curiosity, for knowledge of natural history, and for magnificence.

These royal gardens seem to have been at a distance from the palace; the miniature gardens of the ancient Jews, in common life, adjoining to their houses.

OBSERVATION XV.

Ancient Method of gathering the Olives.

THE sacred writings sometimes represent olives as beaten off the trees, and at other times as shaken this does not indicate, I should apprehend, an improvement made in after-times on the original mode of gathering them; or different methods of procedure by different people, in the same age and country, who possessed olive-yards; but rather expresses, the difference between the gathering the main crop by the owners, and the way in which the poor collected the few olive-berries that were left, and which by the law of Moses, they were to be permitted to take.

The beating of the olives is mentioned Deut. xxiv. 20: When thou beatest thine olive-tree, thou shalt not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. The shaking the olive-trees is mentioned, Is. xvii. 6, and xxiv. 13, as being then the practice, or used at least on some occasions.

The Abbot Fortis, in his account of Dalmatia, praises the care of the inhabitants of a certain island there, in the management of their olives, in not suffering them to ferment before they express the oil; and complains of the "stupid and absurd method of gathering in many other places. In the kingdom of Naples and in several other parts of Italy, they use to beat the branches with long poles, in order to make the fruit fall. This foolish method, besides hurting the plant, and spoiling many branches that would bear the year following, makes the ripe and unripe fruit fall indiscriminately, and bruises a great deal of both kinds, whereby they become rancid in the heaps, and give an ill flavoured oil."

However hurtful beating down the olives with long poles may be, philosophically considered, if it has continued, down to our times, to be the custom in Naples and other parts of Italy, it is no wonder, that in the more early and unimproved state of things in the time of Moses, this should have been the common way of gathering them by the owners, who were willing to leave, we may believe, as few as possible on their trees, and were forbidden by their law to brush them over a second time.

But shaking them was sufficient when they had hung so much longer as to be fully ripe, and therefore, it was used by the poor or by strangers, who might not have such long poles in their possession as the owners kept; not to

I P. 412.

say that the owners might not be insensible that beating the trees was injurious, and therefore might require the poor not to make use of that mode of gathering them, though they might not suppose it was so hurtful as to counterbalance the advantages derived from beating them, when they proposed to gather the main crop themselves.

Accordingly, if we examine the places that speak of the shaking the olive-trees, we shall find the mean crop had been gathered at that time, and consequently that it was only made use of to come at the olive-berries that were left, the words of Isaiah," As the shaking of an olive-tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, &c. being to be understood as signifying, As in the time when men come to an olive-tree to shake it, after the crop is gathered, there appear only a few here and there; not as meaning, As after the shaking of the olive-tree, &c. And thus, with great judgment, has the Bishop of London translated the passage,

“A gleaning shall be left in it, as in the shaking of the olive-tree."

Answerable to this, the olives of the Holy Land continue to be beaten down to this time; at least they were so gathered in the

year 1774