The Sae of Tiberias, looking towards Bashan. David Roberts. 1855

The Sae of Tiberias, looking towards Bashan

English: This Lake bears also the name of the Sea of Galilee, from the province; of Tiberias,
from the City; and of Gennesareth, from a tract of fertile land extending along its
western shore, from El-Medjel on the south, to Khan Minyeh on the north; its
length, according to Josephus, being thirty stadia, and its breadth twenty. It was
remarkable for the abundance and excellence of its fruits, and was famed for a
fertilising fountain, held by some to be a branch of the Nile, from its producing fish
resembling the Coracinus, found in the lakes round Alexandria. The fountain was
also called Capharnaum, probably from the town, 1 so often mentioned in Scripture
as visited by our Lord.
On the sifht of this Lake, De Lamartine savs, in language which, though ambitious
and poetic, yet conveys the common feeling of mankind : — " I had come to worship
on the very shores, on the very waves which had borne Him ; on the hills where
He had sat, on the stones on which He had rested His head. He had a hundred
times walked on that beach which I now trod with reverential homage. His feet
had trodden the dust which was now under my own. He sailed in the barks of
the fishermen on the Sea of Galilee ; He walked on its waves, stretching His hand
to the Apostle."*
The Artist thus gives his personal impression of the scene : — " Passing through
a beautiful country, in about five hours we came in sight of the Sea of Galilee,
embosomed in surrounding hills ; far on the left lay Mount Hermon, covered with
snow ; and on a nearer hill rests the City of Safed. Here, at a glance, lay before
us the scenes of our Saviour's miracles ; but the population and the boats have
disappeared. Towards the west the River Jordan was seen flowing from the Lake
towards the Dead Sea, and below us lay the Town of Tiberias."
The author of the Biblical Researches thus describes the aspect of the Lake: —
"We reached the brow of the height above Tiberias, where a view of nearly the
whole Sea opened at once upon us. It was a moment of no little interest; for who
can look without interest upon that Lake on whose shores our Saviour lived so
long, and where He performed so many of His mighty works? Yet to me, I must
confess, so long as we continued around the Lake, the attraction lay more in these
associations than in the scenery itself. The Lake presents, indeed, a beautiful sheet
of limpid water, in a deep, depressed basin, from which the shores rise, in general,
steeply and continuously all around, except where a ravine, or sometimes a deep
wady, occasionally interrupts them. The hills are rounded and tame, with little of
the picturesque in their form ; they are decked by no shrubs or forests, and even
the verdure of the grass and herbage, which, earlier in the season, might have given
them a pleasing aspect, was already gone; they were now only naked and drear}'.
One interesting object greeted our eyes, — a little boat with a white sail, gliding over
the waters : the only one, as we afterwards found, upon the Lake. The form of
its basin is not unlike an oval ; but the regular and almost unbroken heights which
enclose it bear no comparison to the vivid and powerful effects which the wild and stem
magnificence of the mountains produces around the Caldron of the Dead Sea. The
position of the Lake of Galilee, embosomed deep in the higher tracts of country, exposes it,
as a matter of course, in summer to gusts of wind, and in the winter to tempests. One
such storm is recorded during the course of our Lord's ministry."
The dimensions of the Lake are variously stated by travellers, but the most
probable calculation makes it about 14 £ miles long, and from 6 to 9 miles wide.
Myriads of birds resort to its shores. Its water is cool and clear, and abounds
with fish, though, for want of boats, few are caught, and those are consequently
sold at a high price — the price of meat. To encourage and aid the inhabitants in
deep-lake fishing would be one of the greatest boons which could be conferred \ipon
them. On looking down upon the Lake, the course of the river, of which it is
only an enlargement, can be distinctly traced through its centre, by the smooth surface
produced by the current of " the River of the Prophets, and the River of the

Gospel " — the Jordan.