Читать книгу The People of Palestine. An enlarged edition of "The Peasantry of Palestine, Life, Manners and Customs of the Village" онлайн

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Of paths one may make as many as one pleases in a country where no barbed wire and few walls prevent. The permanency of the old well-worn paths^[36] is very noticeable, the best one always leading to a village or to a spring. There is such a thing as the tyranny of the path. It is very evident where railroads rule, and even in a country where the travel must be on the backs of animals, the little bridle-paths impose on one and, taking advantage of the inertia of human mentality, mark out one’s way with arbitrary exclusiveness. When one’s time is limited to just a sufficient number of days to allow one to see all the more notable places in the country, it is scarcely to be expected that one will sacrifice the surety of seeing a noted place for the chance of stumbling on a place of less popular interest. The paths and time required for seeing most places are almost as clearly indicated as any schedule of trips in countries possessed of time-tables. This accounts for the fact that, although thousands of travelers pass over the beaten paths, and scores of students go over the rarer paths, not one in the twenty or the thousand is likely to get off the paths.