3-066-001 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches from Palestine: the Sea of Galilee, 1874. Engraving of a sketch by Lieut. Conder. 'Few indeed are the views or paintings that give a true and unidealised representation of a spot so deeply interesting. The Sea of Galilee can boast of but little beauty. It is a volcanic crater, surrounded with rolling slopes of basaltic country and steep cliffs of white marl. A great plateau stretches away on the east, broken only by two mounds, being the summits of hills more than one hundred miles distant. It has not the wild and desolate grandeur of the Dead Sea, and from many points of view it is tame and ordinary in appearance...[Our engraving] shows the lake on a stormy day at the time of the first rains. The thunderstorms which sweep over the lake, with bright gleams of the warm sun lingering on isolated spots, give a grandeur to the scene which is wanting in calmer weather. The middle distance shows a long slope and curious square top of basaltic formation - the Horns of Hattin, where the power of Christianity and Western civilisation was broken in Palestine by that disastrous battle in which the flower of crusading chivalry fell before the superior numbers and skill of the great Saladin'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.