BEIGE AND PINK

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 252, 15 June 1932, Page 8

BEIGE AND PINK

VISCOUNTESS ERLEIGH TELLS OF PALESTINE IN THE SPRING. MOST BEAUTIFUL SIGHT. Palestine in spring-time is certainly one of the most beautiful sights in the world; the delicacy and variety oi eolouring are amazing, writes Viscountess Erleigh. The earth here seems to be capable of producing every shade of beige and pink. In the distance the hills seem so delicately tinted that one can give the colour no name as one approaches. The fields are sometimes deep sienna red or rich darlc brown skirted by the gfey green of olive trees, the white and pink blossoms of almonds, or the silver grey of eucalyptus. Where the hills are uncultivated they are starred with wild flowers, glowing spots of pure scarlet where the anemones bloom, a blue mist of tiny wild iris, or scattered clumps of pale mauve cyclamen. Every day new flowers come out, the fig trees seem to explode into little bunches of the finest green leaves, the sun shines yet more brightly, and the sky is yet more blue. The drive from Haifa to TiberiaS' over the hills -and plains and past the little town of Nazareth, which seems built into the very hill it stands on in a positive froth of almond blossom, is an unforgettable experience. Suddenly, at a turn of the road, the blue lake glistens in the sun far below in the hollow of the mountains. One drives down, down, 600 feet below the sea level, and with every turn the lake takes on a new beauty, now a silver mirror for the mountains, now a pool of jade green and vivid blue ruffled by the winds from Mount Hermon, whose snowy peaks can just be seen above the highest hills. I motored by its side through the town of Tiberias to where the Jordan flows and wends its way to the great Palestine electric works that stand at the junction of the Yarmuk and Jordan and supply all Palestine with light and power. Just here, where the Jordan flows from the lake, is the new Imperial Airways flying station, receiving weekly passengers from and to India, and just opposite this station stands the Jewish settlement of Dagania and Kfar Gun. An Old Settlement and a New. Dagania is an old settlement as these things go in Palestine, for it was begun in 1909. It is now flourishing and self-supporting, and has grown so large that it has divided itself into two, Dagania A and Dagania B. It possesses a fine avenue of eypress trees and a grove of tall eucalyptus; there are little gardens round the houses and purple bougainvillaea on the walls. About two hundred fat, sleek, well-cared-for cattle graze in the fields, and the bananas and orange plantations are large and well grown, and the fields just beginning to be green with a crop of barley. An excellent little school which serves the whole district stands in its midst. The children have their own garden and vegetable plot, for from the beginning they learn to work on the land and to take some share and pride in the growth of the settlement. It was very interesting to see a fully developed settlement capable of exporting vegetables to Damascus, Syria and Greece, and then to go a little farther on and see the new settlement of Kfar Gun. Kfar Gun is on the first rung of the ladder; it is composed of German and CzechoSlovakian Jews, all young people mostly in their early twenties, educated up to university standard. But instead of going on to universities they all severally spent two or three yearfe at agricultural colleges to fit themselves for work in Palestine. They live in Spartan simplicity, have benches for ehairs, simple boards for tables, but on the walls there are a few reproductions of Van Gogh's most famous pictures — the "Sun Flowers," the "Bridge" — and on the rough bookshelves I saw the works of Goethe, Shakespeare, Immanuel Kant, and a small beginning of a library of modera authors thranslated into Hebre\k. It was amusing to find the much-loved "Dr. Dolittle" had been translated into Hebrew, and is a great favourite with the children. They still need much to consolidate their settlement, these young people of Kfar Gun, more cows, more agricultural implements, and more buildings to replace temporary wooden shacks. But in a life that to one from England seems hard and austere, with no ready-made amusements, no imaginable luxury, they are very happy. A young upstanding man of not more than twenty-two years told me he had visited his mother in Germanv last year and been pressed to stay, but that his one thought had been to return to Palestine; that he would rather plough tbe ftcids here and create something new, reclahn i portion of the soil to fertility, than practise at the bar in Berlin. There is vhe irresistible energy and growth of spring in the minds and hearts of these young people in Palestine; Kfar Gun is only one of many, and very typical both of the corditions and spirit of those workers who are determined once more to make "the desert bloom lilce the rose."