Italy · Summer 1867Part of: The Quaker City excursion · 26 of 39
26 · Tiberias · 15 – 19 Sept
The price of a boat on Galilee
Trip details
- When
- 8 Jun – 19 Nov 1867
- How long
- 165 days
- Who went
- Me, sixty-odd pilgrims, and the Doctor, Jack and Dan
- Stops
- 39
- Getting around
- The Quaker City, trains, a great many horses and one donkey
From Beirut we went overland, on horseback, eight of us and a dragoman and a herd of horses who had been chosen for the work by somebody who disliked Americans. We rode for three weeks, by Baalbek and Damascus and down through the hills, and every day the pilgrims grew quieter and more solemn, because every day we were nearer Galilee.
We came down to the lake in the afternoon, and there it was, blue and still and smaller than anybody had expected, as everything in the Holy Land is, because everybody has carried it about in his head since childhood and it has grown there. The pilgrims got off their horses and some of them cried. And then one of them saw a boat drawn up on the shore, with a man beside it, and called out to ask what it would cost to sail across.
| Round | The boatman asked | The pilgrims offered | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | Eight dollars | Four dollars | He laughed. |
| Second | Six dollars | Four dollars | He pushed the boat a little way into the water. |
| Third | Five dollars | Four and a half | He was a dot on the lake, still laughing. |
| Fourth | Nothing | Eight dollars, shouted | Too late. The lake was empty. |
So the pilgrims who had crossed the ocean and the desert to sail where the disciples sailed, and had dreamed of it for forty years, stood on the shore and watched a Galilean fisherman row away from them over a matter of four dollars. I said it was no wonder our Lord walked. Nobody laughed. Nobody spoke to me until Nazareth.
Eight dollars to cross the Sea of Galilee. It is no wonder that He walked.
The one evening I did not make jokes
That night I went down to the water alone. The tents were pitched behind me and the horses were quiet and the stars were out over the lake, close and thick, the way they are in the desert, and the hills on the far side were black against them. It came to me that this was the place. Not the shrines, which are mostly guesses, and not the churches, which are mostly gilt. This water, and these hills, and these same stars. He had stood here and looked at them.
I am not a religious man, as the pilgrims would be the first to tell you, and the second, and the hundredth. But I sat on the shore of that small lake for an hour, and I did not think of a single joke, and I have never been able to say that of any other hour of my life. I put it down here so it is on the record. In the morning I was myself again, and I bought a piece of the true lake in a bottle, for a dollar, from a man who had filled it from his well.
Read nextThe tomb of AdamJerusalem, a week later, and what I was shown there.
Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee