Hill of Saris
Leaving the scene described on the Jerusalem road, Joseph and Mary would next pass the Hill of Sarîs. The village of Sarîs lies on the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem on a plateau with numerous olive trees. Winding up the side of another valley we ascend the hill on which lie the ruins of the ancient Sarîs. From the top of this hill a beautiful view of the tree-crowned, flower-decked plains may be seen, while beyond lies the silent sea shining in the sunlight. The hill wears a crown of wild olives, which graciously spread their protecting arms as if to shut out the very memory of the desolate ruins at their feet. “I have often tried,” says Thomson, “to realize the appearance of these valleys and hills around Jerusalem during the great feasts. Covered with olive groves, fruit orchards and terraced vineyards, beneath whose friendly bowers many a happy family and neighborhood group assembled, rising rank over rank to the very top of the mountains; I marvel that no artist has thought of reproducing the scene.” On the hills in this region the carob-tree (Locust), with its gnarled branches and dense foliage may often be seen. A wonderful profusion of flowering shrubs are found here, which in their season are masses of perfumed blossoms. Tristram, who visited this region in the right season for observing the full display of bloom, says: “Then the ground, wherever there was a fragment of open space, was covered with tall, red hollyhocks, pink convolvulus, valerians, a beautiful large, red limum, a gladiolus, a gigantic mottled arum, red tulips, tufts of exquisite cyclamen, a mass of bloom under every tree. * * * It was the Garden of Eden run wild; yet all this beauty scarcely lasts a month.”
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