h, _Joma_, vii.
1.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. vii. 28, xiii. 54; Mark i. 22, vi. 1; Luke iv. 22,
32.]

The authority of the young master thus continued increasing every day,
and, naturally, the more people believed in him, the more he believed
in himself. His sphere of action was very limited. It was confined to
the valley in which the Lake of Tiberias is situated, and even in this
valley there was one region which he preferred. The lake is five or
six leagues long and three or four broad; although it presents the
appearance of an almost perfect oval, it forms, commencing from
Tiberias up to the entrance of the Jordan, a sort of gulf, the curve
of which measures about three leagues. Such is the field in which the
seed sown by Jesus found at last a well-prepared soil. Let us run
over it step by step, and endeavor to raise the mantle of aridity and
mourning with which it has been covered by the demon of Islamism.

On leaving Tiberias, we find at first steep rocks, like a mountain
which seems to roll into the sea. Then the mountains gradually recede;
a plain (_El Ghoueir_) opens almost at the level of the lake. It is a
delightful copse of rich verdure, furrowed by abundant streams which
proceed partly from a great round basin of ancient construction
(_Ain-Medawara_). At the entrance of this plain, which is, properly
speaking, the country of Gennesareth, there is the miserable village
of _Medjdel_. At the other extremity of the plain (always following
the sea), we come to the site of a town (_Khan-Minyeh_), with very
beautiful streams (_Ain-et-Tin_), a pretty road, narrow and deep, cut
out of the rock, which Jesus often traversed, and which serves as a
passage between the plain of Gennesareth and the northern slopes of
the lake. A quarter of an hour's journey from this place, we cross a
stream of salt water (_Ain-Tabiga_), issuing from the earth by several
large springs at a little distance from the lake, and entering it in
the midst of a dense mass of verdure. At last, after a journey of
forty minutes further, upon the arid declivity which extends from
Ain-Tabiga to the mouth of the Jordan, we find a few huts and a
collection of monumental ruins, called _Tell-Houm_.

Five small towns, the names of which mankind will remember as long as
those of Rome and Athens, were, in the time of Jesus, scattered in the
space which extends from the village of Medjdel to Tell-Houm. Of these
five towns, Magdala, Dalmanutha, Capernaum, Beths