The Holy Land and the Bible; . ges, peaches, pomegranates, and other fruit-trees. The memorable site of Sarepta lies only a short way fartheron, and is reached through a pleasant and comparatively fertile neigh-borhood. Herds of oxen and flocks of goats pasture here and there,and the soil is more or less fertile with crops. But agriculture at thisspot, as elsewhere in the East, is very primitive. The only processbefore sowing is the ploughing of the ground with the wretched imple-ments characteristic of the wiiole of Western Asia, half an acre a daybeing the most that ordinary labor can scratc
The Holy Land and the Bible; . ges, peaches, pomegranates, and other fruit-trees. The memorable site of Sarepta lies only a short way fartheron, and is reached through a pleasant and comparatively fertile neigh-borhood. Herds of oxen and flocks of goats pasture here and there,and the soil is more or less fertile with crops. But agriculture at thisspot, as elsewhere in the East, is very primitive. The only processbefore sowing is the ploughing of the ground with the wretched imple-ments characteristic of the wiiole of Western Asia, half an acre a daybeing the most that ordinary labor can scratch into nominal furrowsand then sow over. There is no harrowing, nor does it seem thereever has been, for the word rendered to harrow, in the Bible, seemsrather to mean a breaking of the clods with mallets, as is still occa-sionally done. The plough covers the seed, which is then left to Provi-dence. The weakness of the coulter and other parts of the ploughrequires, moreover, that advantage be taken, in all but the most friable. Mount Hermon, From the North. (See page 650.) LTV.] . SAREPTA AND TYRE. 649 soils, of the softening of the surface by the winter or spring rains; sothat the peasant, if industrious, has to plough in the winter,^ thoughsluggards still shrink from its cold, and have to beg in the harvest. The ruins of Sarepta are scattered over the plain, at intervals, formore than a mile: one group is on the coast, and may be the remainsof the ancient harbor. These lie on a tongue of land which forms asmall bay and pleasantly varies the monotony of the otherwiseunbroken coast-line. Fine crops brighten part of the plain around,though only the small village of Surafend, the modern representativeof the an(;ient town, is actually surrounded by green. Sarepta wasfamous for its wine in the early Christian centuries, but it got its namein the Hebrew Bible—Zarpath—from its being in still older days achief centre of the glass-works of Phoenicia—the word meaningmelting-houses
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