NATIVE PASTORATE FUND, FOR THE DIOCESE OF
CALCUTTA.

INSTITUTED IN 1858 IN MEMORY OF BISHOP WILSON.

Trustees.-The Bishop and Archdeacon. Board of Management.— The Bishop; the Archdeacon; the Hon. H. B. Harington; the Rev. Dr. Kay; the Rev. G. G. Cuthbert; Colonel Scott; Baboo G. M. Tagore. Corresponding Members of the Board.-W. Muir, Esq. C. S.; the Rev. T. V. French.

1. The Object of the Fund is to promote the establishment of a Native Pastorate in the Missions of the Church of England throughout the Diocese of Calcutta.

2. As Native congregations are formed, it is expected that they will contribute according to their means towards the maintenance of their Pastor, and this Fund is designed to aid such local efforts by payments out of the interest accruing from it.

3. The Bishop and Archdeacon are Trustees of the Fund, and all sums received will be invested in their name in Government Securities, which will be deposited in the Bank of Bengal for the realization of interest.

4. Each case of application will be considered and dealt with, according to its merits and the capabilities of the Fund, by a Board of Management, consisting of the Bishop and Archdeacon ex-officio, a clerical representative of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, one of the Church Missionary Society, and four lay gentlemen, members of the Church of England. Vacancies are to be filled up as soon as practicable after they are made known. Corresponding Members of the Board, not resident in Calcutta, may be chosen, who will be likely to aid the Board by their advice and assistance.

5. As a general rule, fifty rupees a month is considered to be a proper standard for the Native Pastor's income. To assist in raising this sum, the Board will make Grants in aid equal to the amount subscribed monthly by the congregation, or as nearly so as the Fund will allow. Should a larger sum than fifty rupees be thought necessary, owing to any special circumstances, the addition must be provided for from local resources.

6. Should any persons wish to commence an Endowment for some particular place, and the Board concur in the proposal, the Board will gladly take charge of the funds raised for that purpose.

7. As the Endowment Fund thus appropriated to any particular place increases, the demand upon the congregation and the Board will diminish, and, when the endowment is completed, will altogether cease in which event the Pastor will no longer be dependent on his flock for any part of his support, and any collections they continue to raise among themselves may go towards the support of Schools or other parish objects, according to arrangements made by them in concurrence with their Pastor.

8. In the event of a division of the Diocese, the Fund will be divided according to some equitable arrangement, to be determined upon at the time by the Board, having reference to the proportion of the subscriptions then raised, and of the number of Native Pastors then on the Fund, within the limits of the respective Dioceses so settled. Each part of the divided Fund will be placed under the management of a Board constituted as in paragraph 4 above.

N. B. Any communications for the consideration of the Board, regarding the Fund and its object, may be forwarded to Archdeacon Pratt, by whom, as well as by any Member of the Board, subscriptions will be thankfully received.

The amount at present collected and advertized is Co.'s Rs. 12,069-11-2. This sum has been invested in 5 per cent. Government Securities to the amount of Co.'s Rs. 12,700, with a cash balance of Co.'s Rs. 376-6-0.

Calcutta, 30th July, 1859.

JOHN H. PRATT, Archdeacon.

EXCURSIONS IN PALESTINE AND SOUTHERN SYRIA.

PART II. No. 3.

TANTURA, ANCIENT DOR---ATLÎT AND ITS RUINS, PROBABLY MAGDEL-EL--ROCKY

-MOUNT CARMEL-CONVENT-PLACE OF SACRIFICE-INTERESTING
CAIPHA-ACRE.

PASS

DISCOVERY

Thursday, May 4th.-Tantûra is the modern name and site of ancient Dor, the capital of a district of the same name. In the old Canaanitish times it boasted a king of its own, who joined the confederacy of the other petty states, under the hegemony of Jabin, to oppose the progress of Joshua and the Israelites in Palestine. He was involved in the disastrous defeat at the waters of Merom (Joshua xi. 2, &c., xii. 23), and the district was assigned to the children of Manasseh on this side Jordan, who, however, did not succeed in dispossessing the Canaanites (xvii. 11, 12). It was one of Solomon's twelve commissariat districts, administered by a son-in-law of his own (1 Kings iv. 11), and was in later times distinguished by the proud appellations of Sacred and Autonomus, on coins from its own mint. But already in the time of the elder Pliny nothing but its memory remained, excepting the ruins, which nearly three centuries later excited the admiration of S. Paula. It is correctly described in the Onomasticon as a deserted town, nine miles from Cæsareia, on the road to Ptolemais. This once most powerful city, as St. Jerome calls it, has retained no vestiges whatever of its ancient importance; and it is difficult to discover on this bare promontory the faintest evidences of the existence of an old city; its only relic of antiquity being a tall fragment of a medieval tower, situated on an artificial mound near the point of the promontory; from which ruin the place is said to derive its modern name, Tantûra, which describes the horn

of the Druse women of Lebanon. The modern village is even more squalid and wretched in its appearance than its neighbours.

Having exhausted the lions of Dor, we proceeded on our way, and at 9.15 A.M. we reached 'Atlît, one of the most remarkable places on this coast, and not the least perplexing, owing to the difficulty of identifying it with any ancient town, while its situation and its remains both indicate a much earlier origin than that which history has assigned it.

James de Vitry, in his Oriental History, gives a detailed account of the foundation of the Pilgrims' Castle on this promontory, in A.D. 1217, where a tower had formerly been erected for the protection of this part of the coast from the robbers who molested the pilgrims on the road between Caipha and Cæsareia. The Knights Templar, aided by the Teutonic Knights, undertook the work; and in excavating for stones, they discovered the foundations of an ancient wall, long and massive, wherein they found a quantity of ancient coins. In front of this they discovered another shorter wall, and copious fountains of sweet water between the two. On these substructions they built their new walls and bulwarks, flanked by two towers of massive masonry, measuring 100 feet long by 74 wide. The promontory is accurately described as large and broad, overhanging the sea, naturally fortified by rocks on the south and west, while the old tower lay on the east. The second wall, a little in rear of the towers, extended from one side of the promontory to the other, which was also surrounded by a strong wall of its own. This permanent castrum included an oratory with a palace and many houses, and had a harbour naturally good and capable of improvement by art.

This description of James de Vitry will enable us to identify the ruins without difficulty. Its two walls, running parallel to each other across the neck of the peninsula, are still distinctly to be traced; and the existence of many large bevelled stones, varying from four to ten feet in length, fully corroborates the description of the chronicler, and argues the existence of an ancient town on this site. It appeared as if the trench between the first and second wall had been formerly flooded by the sea. The remains of the gateway on the south still showed the groove for the portcullis. Within the second wall was a passage to the spring; and west of this, again, we traced a third wall, with a chamber in its thickness. This wall is partly cut in the native rock, and scooped into niches.

The promontory itself is covered with ruins, conspicuous among which towers the wall of the oratory, as it is modestly styled by James de Vitry, being, in fact, a beautiful specimen of an Early Pointed church, consisting of nave and side aisles, the rich decoration of which may still be traced in fragments of the trefoiled corbel-table supporting the parapet, and in the foliated capitals of the pillars and shafts which supported the groining of the roof, some part of which still remains in the apsidal termination of the church. Attached to the church was the palace and hospice, the crypts and vaults of which alone remain, and seemed to have scrved as magazines for stores and

cisterns for water; for although there were several fountains within the walls, the supply was supplemented, in times of peace, by extraneous supplies conveyed from the neighbouring hills by means of aqueducts, large fragments of which may still be seen. We could trace among the ruins the ground-plan of several large rooms, apparently connected by a cloister; and among them we thought we could identify the refectory, great part of which had fallen only seven days before our visit, as we were informed by the villagers, who further added, that a large part of the church had been shaken down ten years ago by an earthquake. The modern village is situated among the ruins, and in the space between the first and second wall. It consists of about forty squalid cabins, inhabited by a people of evil aspect and of worse repute, who regard with suspicious jealousy the explorations of the curious traveller, whom they always imagine to be in search for hidden treasure. The view of Mount Carmel from this promontory is very striking, as it may be seen along its whole length, commencing in the bold bluff cape which forms the southern horn of the Bay of Acre, and running in a south-easterly direction to a point of peculiar interest, which we shall explore to-morrow. Viewed from this point it appears to attain its greatest altitude a little to the south-east of the great convent.

Antiquarians are at fault concerning the original designation of this ancient site, which had wholly vanished from the geography of Palestine for centuries before its recovery by the crusaders in the thirteenth century, as it is passed by unnoticed by Pliny, Ptolemy, and in the Antonine Itinerary. Its site is doubtless included in the general description of this part of the coast, between Ptolemais and Tunis Stratonis, given by Strabo, as names of small towns, and nothing else;" and it is possible that it may be Bucolon, the only place named by him between Sycaminon (Caipha) and Crowdeilon. It has, however, been recently identified, apparently with good reason, with Migdal-el, one of the fenced cities of Naphthali; the Madiel of Eusebius, described by him in the Onomasticon, as a large village, nine miles from Dora, on the road to Ptolemais; corrected in the Latin version of St. Jerome to Magdihel, a small village, five miles from Dora, &c.-the actual distance of 'Atlît from Tantûra; and Ritter supposes it to be identical with the "Mutatio Certa" of the Burgundian Itinerary,-eight miles from Mount Carmel and the same distance from Cæsareia of Palestine.

The land side of the promontory is now a marsh, except in the part by which we approached and quitted it; but it is probable that this was formerly the site of the city of which the promontory formed the acropolis, as fragments of ancient construction may be seen among the tamarisks and other shrubs with which the marsh is covered, and the ruins of a wall may be traced at intervals on the south and east of the medieval castrum.

Leaving the ruins at 11 A.M., we soon came to a narrow pass cut artificially in the native rock, the natural pavement of which was deeply marked by chariot wheels, like the streets of an ancient Roman

city. The roadway is only about eight feet wide, and justifies the appellation given to this locality before the erection of the Pilgrims' Castle, when it figures in the chronicles of the crusades as Via Stricta, or Districtum, or Petra Incisa, or Angustæ Viæ. The pass is about half-a-mile in length, and appears to have served, at some remote period, the purpose of a stone-quarry. It was strengthened at its farther end by a gate and tower, the ruins of which may still be seen, and must have been a formidable position when defended by a few steel-clad warriors, even had the overhanging cliffs not been provided, as they were, with strongly fortified towers.

At one o'clock we passed El-Tîreh on our right, pleasantly situated in an olive grove, and saw a ruined church, from which doubtless the adjoining hamlet on our left derived its name El-Kenîseh (the church), in which recent conjecture has found the Capharnaum which the chroniclers of the crusades mention in these parts. We were now skirting the western base of Mount Carmel, and at two P.M. we saw considerable ruins of an ancient town on the right of our path, marked but not named in the Ordnance Survey, for which we obtained the names of Kufr es-Sammim. Proceeding onward, we soon turned the point of Mount Carmel, and had beneath us a wide and fruitful plain, which was said to belong to the Governor of Acre. We now ascended steeply to the convent, which we reached at a quarter past three, and found the most luxurious accommodation of any in Palestine, in the very commodious hospice erected only a few years ago by Padre Giovanni Baptista, in place of the ancient house which had been destroyed by Abdullah Pasha, after having been converted into a plague hospital by Napoleon during the siege of Acre.

Were I here to attempt to trace the history of the Carmelite fraternity to its source, I should have to investigate the claims of Pythagoras to be its second founder, and to endeavour to recover the connecting links between him and the prophet Elijah. But I gladly relinquish such a task to more experienced genealogists, unless indeed it should be considered that any of the able advocates of the order have already succeeded in demonstrating the venerable antiquity and prophetic origin which they claim for their White Friars. I know it was a great refreshment to hear the deep voices of the small brotherhood chanting the vesper psalms in their private chapel, and to find that God had not left Himself without a witness in this ancient mountain, where He so wonderfully displayed His presence in the darkest day of Israel's idolatry. I witnessed from the terrace of the convent the most gorgeous sunset I ever remember to have seen, and as it sank into the burning bed of the Mediterranean, it marked out a radiant pathway to the "darling west," along which I swept on wings "as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love," to the home I still must love the best.

Friday, May 5th.-Having learnt that the Maharakah, or traditionary place of Elijah's sacrifice, was situated at the farther extremity of the mountain, and that Tell El-Kasis was on the banks of the Kishon hard by the altar, I resolved to visit it. One of my companions only joined the expedition; and having provided ourselves with a guide from the convent, and fresh horses, for the place was said