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In fact, it means nothing more than that our Lord and his three disciples betook themselves to a private place for the purpose of devotion. The view from Mount Tabor is extolled by every traveller. "It is impossible," says Maundrell, "for man's eyes to behold a higher gratification of this nature."
He was succeeded by Doubdan, Cheron, Thevenot, Gonzales, Morison, Maundrell, and Pococke, all of whom have contributed many valuable materials towards a complete knowledge of the localities, government, and actual condition of modern Palestine.
Maundrell could discern no sign or probability of such overflowings; for although he was there on the 30th of March, the proper season of the inundation, the river was running two yards at least under the level of its banks.
On the side of the hill they show a church in a grot, were they say Christ charged his disciples not to tell what things they had seen till he should be glorified. It is very doubtful, however, whether this tradition be well founded, or whether it has not, as Mr. Maundrell and other writers suspect, originated in the misinterpretation of a very common Greek phrase.
Maundrell visited Jerusalem, when he witnessed the annual service performed by the monks; rather too minutely descriptive, perhaps, of the great event to which it refers.
The first object that now presents itself to the traveller who approaches this forlorn place, is a castle of mean architecture and uncertain origin, about half an hour's walk from it, on the north side. "From thence," says Mr. Maundrell, "we descry Tadmor, enclosed on three sides, by long ridges of mountains; but to the south is a vast plain which bounds the visible horizon.
Maundrell himself was not so fortunate, owing, he supposes, to the height of the water; but he relates that the Father Guardian and Procurator of Jerusalem, both men of sense and probity, declared that they had once actually seen one of these ruins; that it was so near the shore, and the lake so shallow, that they, together with some Frenchmen, went to it, and found there several pillars and other fragments of buildings.
"Something like this," says Maundrell, "we saw actually come to pass; for the water was stained to a surprising redness, and, as we had observed in travelling, had discoloured the sea a great way into a reddish hue, occasioned doubtless by a sort of minium, or red earth, washed into the river by the violence of the rain, and not by any stain from Adonis's blood."
Maundrell and Sandys, who in 1697 visited all the holy places in and around Jerusalem, state that the entire city, but especially the sites of Moriah, Zion, and suburbs were hotbeds of fire and phallic worship as usually developed still in the East.
Maundrell was not less observant than the author just quoted, although he does not so openly expose the deception. "It touches the roof above, and is probably hanged upon that; unless you had rather take the friars' account of it, namely, that it is supported by a miracle."
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