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PLEASE SEE:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Exploration_Fund
The witness I call, British Major-General Sir Charles Wilson (1836-1905), was chairman of the Palestine Exploration Fund (its website is here), with which he had been long involved, for the last few years of his life.
In July 1899, as reported in the Jewish Chronicle (14 July 1899), he addressed the Fund’s Annual General Meeting in London, regarding his recent travels in the Holy Land:
“The lecturer said that the face of Palestine was changing very rapidly, and the change was due to various causes. The tomb-hunter, who had done such infinite harm in Egypt, was abroad in Palestine and destroying its antiquities. Another change was brought about by a revival of medievalism, which showed itself in a scrambling for holy places. The amount of building of monasteries which had gone on in the Holy Land during the past twenty years was extraordinary. There was scarcely an eminence which was not occupied. Great harm had also been done to the antiquities of the country in this way. Thus the foundations of a synagogue which he had disclosed at Tel Hum [Capernaum], in 1865, had been covered up again. A great change had also been brought about in the landscape of the country, which was due to the Jewish colonies. He was quite unprepared for the extraordinary improvement that the Jewish colonies had effected, turning deserts into gardens and waste places into cultivated fields. Ekron, especially, furnished a fine example of what was done by proper cultivation. [Emphasis added.] As colonists, the Jews showed themselves to be the equal of any people in the world (loud applause).
His visit to Moab and Edom had been a short one, but it enabled him to realise the main features of the country and its description in the Bible. He ascended Mount Pisgah, but, unfortunately, it had been raining, and the valley of the Jordan had been filled with steam, which obscured the view. The river Arnon, the northrn boundary of Moab, was the modern Wady-el-Mojib, which empties itself into the Dead Sea, about twenty-five miles south of Jericho. A journey along the high plateau brought them after a time to a plain, which must be “The Field of Moab,” mentioned in the Bible. One of the most interesting places in Moab was Kerak, where he came across an instance of the little care that the people of those parts evince for their dead. They let them lie about in the open to putrefy and be eaten by jackals. The Tomb of Noah, close to Kerak, was a place of pilgrimage much esteemed in the south of Palestine. Coming to the Biblical Tophel, the view of the Dead [Sea] from there was very beautiful. From the edge of the plateau they got an extraordinarily fine view of Mount Hor,in Edom. They entered Petra through the celebrated defile known as the Sik. They lodged in the Khasneh Phar’aun, the famous structure in which travellers sleep. From Petra they visited Mount Hor. Sir Charles exhibited on the screen a view of the interior of Aaron’s Tomb, this being the first photograph of the tomb that had ever been taken. They found a fragment of a Greek inscription in this tomb. The Turkish Pacha [sic] had mended the road all the way up to Mount Hor.”
On 14 December1899, Sir Charles spoke on the topic “Palestine of Today” to members of London’s Camera Club at their premises in Charing Cross Road.