THE FAMINE IN PALESTINE.

Thames Advertiser, Volume VII, Issue 1849, 4 September 1874, Page 3

THE FAMINE IN PALESTINE.

Colonel Gaoler, keeper of the regalia at the Tower of Loadoa, has addressed a deeply interesting as well as eminently practical letter to Bir Moses Montefiore,Hart., on the subject of the promotion of agriculture in the Holy Land, and the industrial occupation of its indigent populace. The worst distress is, as it always has been, at Jerusalem, where at times water itself is dear. Of the 10,000 Jews in that city, who, calculating from the rate of increasing in the past few years, may at no distant date be 20,000, the greater number have to be fed by bounty, which is neither a certain nor a satisfactory system of aid. Oolouel Gawler submits as a question worthy consideration whether it would not be a wiser employment of funds to benefit the sufferers substantially by forestalling the periods of distress and endeavouring in the intervals to raise the people above the fear of privation. Difficulties in the way of land tenure, which were formerly cast in the way of foreigners, have since yielded, to amendments in the Ottomau law, and Englishmen may now acquire real property ia Turkey. Another stumbling block, the deh'ency of protection against the Arabs, has been eutirely removed; Palestine is in telegraphic communication with all parts of the world, and is within a few days' journey by regular steam communication of the chief cities in Kurope; and in short, all conditions seem favourable to the realisation of hi* project for making the Holy Land what it undoubtedly has been "a land of vineyards and olive-trees," and what it unquestionably should be, a field for agriculturalists from the British Isles, from Germany, and iiussia, for cotton-growers from America, aad for tillers of the olive and vine from France, Italy, and other parts of the European continent. On this hopeful basis, Colonel Gawler counsels the formation of a society for promoting agriculture in the Holy laud.