Syria and the Holy Land : their scenery and their people : incidents of travel, &cfrom the best and most recent authorities . themwent his way. There is here no intimation that his escape was favouredby the exertion of any miraculous power; but he made his way fearlessly * Stephens. Skinner. Dr. 324 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND. through the crowd; and probably eluded their pursuit by availing himselfof the narrow and crooked streets of the city. The monks have chosen for the scene of this event the Mount of Precipita-tion, so called ; a precipice overlooking the plain of Esdraelon, near
Syria and the Holy Land : their scenery and their people : incidents of travel, &cfrom the best and most recent authorities . themwent his way. There is here no intimation that his escape was favouredby the exertion of any miraculous power; but he made his way fearlessly * Stephens. Skinner. Dr. 324 SYRIA AND THE HOLY LAND. through the crowd; and probably eluded their pursuit by availing himselfof the narrow and crooked streets of the city. The monks have chosen for the scene of this event the Mount of Precipita-tion, so called ; a precipice overlooking the plain of Esdraelon, nearly twomiles S. by E. of Nazareth. It appears to be seventy or eighty feet to thefirst shelving place, but to the very bottom three hundred. A stone fourfeet and a half high stands on the edge of it as a parapet, in which are somesmall round cavities, believed to be the marks of our Lords fingers when hestruggled against those who would have thrown him over. A little altarbelow cut in the rock, formerly stood within a chapel built by Saint Helena,the foundations of which remain, together with two cisterns of great S*^ Mount of Precipitation. Among all the legends that have been fastened on the Holy Land I knowof no one more clumsy than this; which pre-supposes that in a popular andmomentary tumult they should have had the patience to lead off their victimto an hours distance, in order to do what there was an equal facility fordoing near at hand. Indeed such is the intrinsic absurdity of the legend,that the monks themselves now-a-days, in order to avoid it, make theancient Nazareth to have stood on the summit of the precipice in the good fathers forget the dilemma into which they thus bring them-selves ; for upon that supposition what becomes a£ the holy places nowshown in the present town ? * The inhabitants of Nazareth differ somewhat in features and colour fromthe northern Syrians; their physiognomy approaches that of the Egyptians,while their dialect and
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