Mussulman
reaction against the Crusades, which has withered as with a blast of
death the district preferred by Jesus. The beautiful country of
Gennesareth never suspected that beneath the brow of this peaceful
wayfarer its highest destinies lay hidden.

[Footnote 1: This is the estimate of Captain Lynch (in Ritter,
_Erdkunde_ xv., 1st part, p. 20.) It nearly agrees with that of M. de
Bertou (_Bulletin de la Soc. de Geogr._, 2d series, xii., p. 146.)]

[Footnote 2: The depression of the Dead Sea is twice as much.]

[Footnote 3: _B.J._, III. x. 7 and 8.]

Dangerous countryman! Jesus has been fatal to the country which had
the formidable honor of bearing him. Having become a universal object
of love or of hate, coveted by two rival fanaticisms, Galilee, as the
price of its glory, has been changed to a desert. But who would say
that Jesus would have been happier, if he had lived obscure in his
village to the full age of man? And who would think of these
ungrateful Nazarenes, if one of them had not, at the risk of
compromising the future of their town, recognized his Father, and
proclaimed himself the Son of God?

Four or five large villages, situated at half an hour's journey from
one another, formed the little world of Jesus at the time of which we
speak. He appears never to have visited Tiberias, a city inhabited for
most part by Pagans, and the habitual residence of Antipas.[1]
Sometimes, however, he wandered from his favorite region. He went by
boat to the eastern shore, to Gergesa, for instance.[2] Toward the
north we see him at Paneas or Caesarea Philippi,[3] at the foot of
Mount Hermon. Lastly, he journeyed once in the direction of Tyre and
Sidon,[4] a country which must have been marvellously flourishing at
that time. In all these countries he was in the midst of Paganism.[5]
At Caesarea, he saw the celebrated grotto of _Panium_, thought to be
the source of the Jordan, and with which the popular belief had
associated strange legends;[6] he could admire the marble temple which
Herod had erected near there in honor of Augustus;[7] he probably
stopped before the numerous votive statues to Pan, to the Nymphs, to
the Echo of the Grotto, which piety had already begun to accumulate in
this beautiful place.[8]

[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. ii. 3; _Vita_, 12, 13, 64.]

[Footnote 2: I adopt the opinion of Dr. Thomson (_The Land and the
Book_, ii. 34, and following), according to which the Gergesa of
Matthew vii