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National Geographic : 1915 Mar
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Photo by the American Colony at Jerusaleir A SECTION OF THE GREAT MOSAIC MAP OF PALESTINE In 1880 a Christian settlement was founded about the mound of ancient Madeba. Ten years later the Greek patriarch at Jerusalem heard of a mosaic map at that place and promptly sent a master mason there to preserve it. The mosaic was nearly complete at that time. Instead of preserving it, the mason almost destroyed it, reporting back to Jerusalem that it did not possess the importance which had been attributed to it. In 1897 the librarian of the Greek patriarchate went down to Madeba and found the map one of the greatest archeolog ical discoveries of modern times. It is thought that originally it included all of the country from Constantinople to Egypt. Jerusalem is plainly seen with a colonnaded street running through it, past the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Jordan River is shown with fish in it and emptying into the Dead Sea. DOMINION OF THE PAST Caves and tombs, ruins and battle fields, and ancient seats of worship are the visible signs of that dominion of the past, overweighting and almost effacing the present, which one feels constantly and everywhere in Palestine. For us English-speaking men and women, who read the Bible in our youth and followed the stream of history down through an tiquity and the Middle Ages, no country is so steeped in historical associations. It could not be otherwise, for in no other country (save Egypt) did history begin so early; none has seen such an un- ending clash of races and creeds; none has been the theater of so many events touching the mind of so large a part of mankind. The interest which Nature, taken alone, fails to give is given in un equaled profusion by history, and by legend even more than by history. THE ATMOSPHERE OF LEGEND AND MARVEL The Holy Land is steeped also in an atmosphere of legend and marvel. As the traveler steps ashore at Jaffa he is shown the rock to which Andromeda was chained when Perseus rescued her from the sea monster. (It is the only
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