Chapter II: Part 2

After the service for the Russian pilgrims "father Abraham" fell asleep under an olive-tree, with his hoary head on a stone which he had cushioned with dock leaves, and the younger priest who had taken part in the service went back to his ploughing, which he had left on the approach of the pilgrims. They both had their Fellaheen clothes under their cassocks, and they wore the tall Greek sacerdotal cap. They were natives of Bethlehem. "Abraham" blessed our meal, but refused to partake of it, except the fruit, as this is the Greek Lent. We had a long talk with him through Isaac, and a lively theological argument, which had the usual success of such undertakings, enhanced by its filtration through a Mahometan interpreter converted to Protestantism by the American Baptist Mission at Jaffa. That old patriarch was a magnificent study as he sat, pointing heavenwards under the olive-trees and discoursing of his Faith, with Bethlehem rising in the distance behind his most venerable head. He made some coffee for us, a return civility for the fruit, and as we rode off many were the parting salutations between us and the group of people who had been the audience of our theological arguments, made unintelligible by Isaac. Among the crowd was an ex-Papal Zouave who turned out to have been orderly to a friend of ours in the old days at Rome.

We rode along a track in the field of Boaz, now knee-deep in corn, a cavalry soldier, who had been sent to escort us through the "dangerous" region, leading the way. His escorting seems to consist of periodical "fantasia" manoeuvres, when he shakes his horse out at full gallop, picking a flower in mid-career and circling back to present it to me,--a picturesque proceeding in that floating caftan and white and brown striped burnous. I am pleased to see this figure in our foreground caracoling, curveting, and careering. He is in such pleasing harmony with his native landscape. He and Isaac are all over pistols and weapons of various sorts, but W. says that the necessity for arms in Palestine is now a thing of the past, and only a bogey.

Our course lay south-east, as we wished to visit the far-famed Greek monastery of Mar Saba on our way to our camp. Formerly there was great danger and difficulty in going to this extraordinary place, owing to the fierce robber Bedouins that haunted these regions, and in many accounts of Palestine travel I have read of the disappointment of the writers at the impossibility of making this visit. It is an awe-inspiring place. The

The town is shown on a hill. The Convent of the Nativity stands to the extreme left. Field of Boaz with green wheat in middle distance, enclosure of sheepfold in foreground.]

monks have even denied themselves that great earthly consolation of natural beauty which our monasteries, as a rule, are so well situated to enjoy. On the edge of an abyss of rock, through which the now dry Cedron once rushed to the Dead Sea, and facing the opposite rock pierced with the caves of former hermits, it is so placed as to have not one beautiful thing within sight, and as little of even the light of the sky above to give a ray of cheerfulness. We saw pigeons and paddy birds arriving in flocks to the rock ledges, and had glimpses of furtive furry things coming round corners. We marvelled at the presence of the paddy birds so far from water till we were told the pleasing fact that all these wild things since time immemorial have been in the habit of congregating here to the sound of the bugle, to be fed by those Greek monks. They were waiting for their dinner-bell!

I soon had enough of Mar Saba, but W. thought a month there with two camel-loads of books would be very pleasant. We espied our camp after leaving this dread place a long way below us in a hot hole, amongst most desolate mountains, whose cinder-coloured sides neither distance nor atmosphere could turn purple, and some of these were pale yellow, spotted at the top and half-way down with black shrubs, conveying an irresistible impression of mountains covered with titanic leopard-skins. The deadness of the Dead Sea was beginning to be felt.

A great wind arose in the night, and had not W. seen himself to the tent ropes and pegs our tent would certainly have been blown down, and we should have been smothered in a mass of flapping canvas. As it was, the tent shook and heaved at its moorings and cracked like pistol-shots, some of the furniture coming down with a crash. All night the pistol-shots, the flappings, and the creakings went on, so that I was rather disconcerted at losing my night's rest, for the morrow was, as W. said, to be my "test day." If I stood it well--it being the hardest we should have--I would do the journey.

_Wednesday, 15th April 189-._

We were off at sunrise on a tremendous ride, down to the Dead Sea, up the Jordan and round to Jericho--about eight hours in the saddle, exclusive of dismounted halts. We were very fortunate, for the wind which had so troubled our slumbers kept away the heat, which in these regions is most trying. We descended to 1300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and not a tree was to be seen till we gained the green banks of Jordan, where we made our halt after half an hour's rest on the beach of the Dead Sea. All my expectations of the desolation of "Lake Asphaltites" were fulfilled, but the bitter burning of its salt far surpassed what I expected. I could realise how Lot's wife, lingering in her flight from the doomed Sodom to look back till the fringe of the destruction that engulfed the Cities of the Plain covered her, remained stiffened into the semblance of a pillar of salt ("statue" of salt in our version) when my hand in drying, after I had but dipped it into the crystal-clear water that now fills the hollow delved by the swirl of the great cataclysm, was stiff and white with the plaster-like brine. The wan look of the blue shrubs that grow here was like something in a dream, and the air was full of huge locusts, brilliant yellow, tossed by a high hot wind. The earth was cracked by the heat into deep chasms, and the treeless mountains round the sea were lost at its farther end in a mist of hot air. There was great beauty with this desolation, but the mind felt oppressed as well as the body. The blue of the sea was exquisitely delicate, and gave no idea in its soft beauty of the fierce bitterness of its waters. I felt deep emotion on sighting Jordan's swift-rolling stream--a touching and unspeakably dear river--but beautiful only for its holiness, for the water is thick with grey mud, and the banks are tangled with the shaggy _débris_ that the over-hanging trees have caught as the winter flood brought them swirling down. The heat there was great, and the flies made it absolutely impossible to take a sketch of the place tradition says saw the baptism of Our Lord. I was much disappointed, for the flies fairly drove us away, and in the burning heat we turned our horses' heads towards Jericho, unable to bear these tormentors any longer. We were to camp at "new Jericho"--a huddled group of mud-pie houses situated in a garden of lovely trees and shrubs and flowers, which, owing to the abundance of water flowing through this region, grow in tropical luxuriance. In the far western distance, above all the mountain-tops intervening, we kept the Mount of Olives in view, with that tall landmark on the top, the tower of the Russian "Church of the Ascension," and only lost it as we neared our camping-place. Before us, to our right, a beautiful mountain of more stately lines than those of the weird crags around it rose solemnly against the west--it was the Mountain of Temptation, where Our Lord was tempted after His forty days' fast. Immediately on reaching our camp I made a sketch of the plain, looking towards Mount Pisgah in the land of Moab to the east. I was just in time to save the sunset. Would that we could include Pisgah in our pilgrimage, and receive on our retinæ the same image of the Promised Land that Moses received on his!

In spite of the baying of dogs, the braying of donkeys, and other camp noises sleep came swiftly and soundly that night.

_Thursday, 16th April._

We set out at six for Jerusalem, the sun rising over the mountains of Moab. We passed over the site of "old Jericho," and saw what a magnificent site they chose for it, backed by mountains in a majestic semicircle, and looking on the Plain of the Jordan.

The Bible speaks of a "rose plant in Jericho" as of something superlatively lovely amongst roses, and one may ask why particularly in Jericho? Here one can answer the question, for one sees how richly the flowers grow in this land of many streams, which is all the more conspicuous for its exuberance as contrasted with the aridity of the surrounding regions. I can best describe the fascinating quality of our journey by saying that it is like riding through the Bible. At every turn some text in the Old or New Testament which alludes to the natural features of the land, springs before one's mind illumined with a light it could not have before. I know many devout Christians shrink from a visit to the Holy Places for fear of--what? Do not fear! The reality simply intensifies, gives substance and colour to, the ineffable poetry of the Bible. It is simply rapture to see at last the originals of our childhood's imaginings, and, believe me, the reality becomes more precious in one's memory even than the cherished illusion. Our ride through this land of little brooks, running clear over pebbly beds under cool foliage, was

Wild vegetation in the plain. Mountains of Moab in distance. The slight eminence in their straight sky-line to extreme left is Mount Pisgah. Sunset.]

refreshing after my "test ride" of yesterday in the dry glare. We soon left this zone of verdure, however, and began the ascent to Jerusalem through that gloomy pass which Our Lord chose for the parable of the Good Samaritan. They are making a road here, but, being as yet bridgeless at the ravines, it is not open to carriages. Our halting-place was Bethany,--most lowly hamlet--and I made a sketch of it at our mid-day halt. We then proceeded to our camping-ground, which W. had selected outside the north wall of Jerusalem, and in skirting the base of Olivet we had again that great view of the city that artists love (and I must say have often exaggerated as regards the height of its rocky pedestal). For the first time there was a "hitch" in the arrangements for the camp. On reaching the north wall no camp was there, and we rode in and out of olive-woods and ugly new roads and dusty building _débris_ in search of it, Isaac _appearing_, at least, to be quite at sea. At last, after sending him _ventre-à-terre_ successively in several directions, we saw him returning and calling out that he had found it. To our horror we found the people in charge of the baggage had selected the only really hideous and repulsive spot in all Jerusalem, of all places, the Jewish extra-mural colony! There were our white tents pitched down in a hollow full of the back-door refuse from the houses of this unsavoury population, surrounded by youths and bedraggled women who might have just come out of Houndsditch to look on at the preparations of the camp. The idea of a night on this ground was impossible. On catching sight of this state of things W. pushed forward at a gallop at the whole assemblage of servants, muleteers and cook, and the whole amalgamated crowd, and with an unmistakable twirl of his stick told them to "be out of that"; and the muleteers, servants, and cook fell on their knees and with joined hands called out "Pardon! pardon!" In the twinkling of an eye tents were struck and reloaded, dinner preparations bundled away and an instant movement made to the place behind the north wall on Mount Moriah, which W. had fixed upon in the morning. He suspects that he was disobeyed on account of the ease with which the servants knew they would obtain drink from the Jews.

Certainly our final encampment was enchanting, overlooking Gethsemane deep down to the east, with the battlemented walls of Jerusalem before us to the south, and tall pines waving above our tents. The moon was now waxing bright, and never can I forget that evening, as by its light I looked upon these things.

What a change in the temperature here! It is quite cold. My kit is proving well devised for this country. You must be prepared for these very marked changes of temperature in a land which rises so high and sinks to such abnormal depths below the level of the sea in such a small space.

I shall post this in Jerusalem, for to-morrow we set out on a journey during which no post-offices will be found for many days.

_Friday, 17th April._

My....--I continue my letter in diary form from notes taken on the march. This morning we left rather late, as the weather was so cool, and after making some purchases in Jerusalem we set out with our faces due north on our long ride into Galilee. It was again an eight-hours-in-the-saddle day, but over such rolling stones that our horses seemed to me to be going at about three miles an hour. It was a relief at the almost impassable places to dismount and lead one's horse. As W. said, these paths of Palestine seem to have been rather worn by the people's feet than made by their hands. These bare hills of Benjamin were weary and sad, but what a thrilling view was our last one of Jerusalem from a high point overlooking the ocean of mountains that bore afar off the island of the Holy City and its domes. Good-bye, Jerusalem! good-bye, Olivet! We sat many minutes on our horses looking back at that centre of the world, and then resuming our way a turn in the rocky track shut out the Holy City from thenceforth. We overtook a large wedding party, the men armed with long flintlocks, and the women wearing brilliant dresses. We all moved forward together as far as Bethel. How powerfully this assemblage of men and women and children journeying northward from Jerusalem represented that large company in which were Mary and Joseph, who came along this way, a day's journey, to the evening halting-place at Beeroth, and found there that the little Jesus was missing. As I was thinking over this and watching the people, we passed a little goatherd who had evidently been out on the hills many days "on duty." His mother, who was amongst the wedding party, catching sight of her son--about twelve years old--snatched a moment to leave the line of march and ran up to him and kissed him and wept over him, then returning hurried forward to rejoin her companions. That meeting of mother and son, the bending form of the woman in her red and blue drapery, which concealed at that moment the rich dress worn underneath, the little goatherd held close in her arms, formed a group that startled me, with my mind engaged as it was. On reaching the village the men all let off their guns and were met by the people who had remained at home. We made our halt at Bethel. What a place of hard, gritty, arid desolation! Beth-el, "the House of God." From this great height Lot looked down on the plain of Sodom, then the acme of fertile beauty, where now lowers the Dead Sea! There are now only the dry bones of Bethel left. The goats eat up every green sprout that appears above ground. I could not sketch such blinding nothingness at our halt there. Towards evening the land grew more beautiful as we journeyed on, but so much struggling over boulders and jagged rock ledges made me very glad indeed to perceive the daily signal that we were nearing our camp. That signal is the dashing forward of Isaac at full gallop and the pushing forward of the "flying column" (the man on the chestnut horse with the bags), whose place is at other times in the rear. The staff in camp being warned by these cavaliers of our approach tea is got ready, and very welcome it is on our arrival. W. was on ahead as we scrambled up a higher hill than ever, and when I saw him wave his helmet to cheer me on for a final spurt I knew rest was close at hand. Our camp looked very lovely just at sunset on a plateau overlooking the hills and valleys of green Samaria and the far-off mountain-tops of Galilee! The moon shone brightly and the air felt quite frosty as we went to rest. I always take a little meditative walk before going to bed, a sweet ten minutes each evening. The hurried start in the morning and the rough riding all day leave one little time for quiet thought, and at our mid-day halts, when circumstances permit, I sketch with concentrated intensity against time.

_Saturday, 18th April._

To-day was breezy and the country less stony. Waving corn as in Philistia refreshes the eye. We are now in the goodly land of Ephraim, which deepens in richness as we advance. We passed through Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant rested so long, and the little Samuel heard the call of God. The place is marked by some old ruins--Roman or Crusader? and a forlorn dead tree lies athwart them. A glorious cultivated plain opened out before we reached our halting-place, Jacob's Well. How I had longed to see this well, where Our Lord conversed with the Samaritan woman. But I was disappointed at being unable to make the sketch of it I hoped for so much. The well is about five feet below the surface of a mass of ruins. An early Christian chapel once enclosed it, but this has fallen in and all but buried the well. But you can imagine one's feelings as one rests one's hand on its edge and realises that Our Saviour sat there as He spoke to the woman who had come to draw water. You remember that it was at this well that He told His disciples to look up at the fields "already white unto harvest." There they are, those fields, filling the valley of Sychar. But you cannot see them from the well now, in the pit enclosed by ruins, nor the town to which the disciples went "to buy meats," nor even the two great mountains of Ebal and Gerizim that rise so high quite close by.

This well is like the Cave of Machpelah,--accepted by all as authentic beyond question.

I cantered my horse all the way up to our camp, high up in an olive-wood on the other side of the town, for I must say I was longing to get the ride over and have a good rest. But Society duties awaited me! The ministers of various denominations came to call on us, and when later on the Catholic priest (an Italian) honoured us with a visit I was called upon to take over Isaac's duties as interpreter.

We went, W. and I, for a pleasant stroll towards sundown, and had a perfectly exquisite view of Nablous, the ancient Shechem, lying between those two mountains whose names rang so sonorously to us all in childhood--the terrible Ebal and the smiling Gerizim. A most perfect, typical Eastern town, this, embowered in orange and pomegranate trees--the home of the nightingale, whose music blends with that of the multitudinous cascades echoing from the over-hanging cliffs. A Turkish sentry came and lit his fire close to our tents, and was suffered to mount his quite unnecessary guard over us all night, with an eye to backsheesh at sunrise.

_Sunday, 19th April._

The Day of Rest. No travel to-day. Exquisite Nablous, what a Paradise to rest in! But all was not perfection. We went to Church too early, by mistake, and had to wait an hour before Mass began, passing the time in French small-talk (indeed reduced to a minimum of smallness on my part, for it dwindled away almost to nothing) with the courteous ecclesiastics and the nuns in the garden of the little presbytery. As I was fasting I was not fortified against the subsequent performance on the harmonium during Mass, by a Syrian. On nearing our tent, cheered by the prospect of breakfast, I had another set-back by Isaac's announcing the imminent arrival of what sounded like "the Rev. Vulture," the Lutheran minister. Had that individual really been on the swoop I must have fled, but happily that morning call never took place. It is all very well to laugh, but I felt "in the Pit of Tophet." I have spent the rest of the day in sleep, and in writing to you, and in fascinating strolls through the town with W., and in returning calls. I am nicely burnt by the sun and wind, for nothing could induce me to let a veil blur or dim one single glimpse of the Holy Land.

_Monday, 20th April._

Glorious breezy weather with flying cloud shadows. Again eight hours in the saddle, but the Sunday rest has made me quite fresh again. We passed to-day through the hill country of Manasseh. After riding a mile or two out of Nablous our "flying column" came running up on foot to the dragoman in front to ask what was to be done with a poor little stowaway who had begged him to let him ride the baggage horse to escape from his unhappy home. "His mother was dead and his stepmother beat him." He looked so piteous perched up on the bags, but, of course, we could not kidnap him, and after receiving some money he was put gently down on the roadside. As we rode on we got a last sight of him on the green bank swaying to and fro in his desolate grief, his gown making a little pink dot in the vast landscape. Our mid-day halt was at a fountain in a fig country, and there we talked to the women and girls who were filling their pitchers. One showed me by signs how the figs were a failure this year, the young figs all falling off their stalks before ripening. Her patient acceptance of the inevitable reminded me of the Italian peasants and their "_Pazienza, è la volontà di Dio!_"

Then we deflected to the left on our journey to visit Sebaste, where St. John is supposed to have been beheaded, and with great probability. The Crusaders built a magnificent Church to his memory there, the ruins of which are very grand. We rode to the site of the gates of the city, along a path lined with classic pillars, and at the end of this avenue we saw the sea, and where Cæsarea, the harbour of Sebaste, once stood. Our camp that evening was at Ain Jenin, an ideal Eastern town. I was not prepared for anything so beautiful as it looked in the evening light, when we emerged in sight of it from a defile between hills. We were well in the Plain of Jezreel, and lo! Hermon at last! In the light of the after-glow we beheld his hoary head from our tents, to the north. Tender moonlight succeeded the after-glow. All the mosques and minarets were lighted up with delicate golden lamps at sunset (for it is Ramadan), as at Jerusalem and Nablous. This place is full of pomegranate trees, with their scarlet blossoms, and of flowering tamarisk.

_Tuesday, 21st April._

Off at sunrise, the larks singing over the face of the land. We had a glorious ride through the Plain of Jezreel or Esdraelon, often coming upon the brook Kishon and its little trickling tributaries in their multitudinous windings, and fording the same. What a vast space is here, how Biblical in its majesty, and how troubled too with recollections of battle from remotest ages of Israelitish history down to Napoleon's time. Deflecting to the right we climbed up to Naim for our halt, memorable for the raising of the widow's son. There was an immense view from this little bunch of mud houses towards Tabor and Galilee, with a foreground of purple iris. Then descending again into the plain we rode to the foot of Mount Tabor, where, in an olive-wood, and on ploughed land, our camp was pitched. How refreshing it is never to be told we are trespassing in this country.

Plain full of green wheat. Mountain to left is "Little Hermon," on which the village of Naim stands. Towards sunset.]

On arriving I chose to remain and make a sunset sketch of distant Naim on its hill, whilst W. rode up to the top of Tabor.

_Wednesday, 22nd April._

Off again at sunrise over the saddle of Mount Tabor. Very rough riding through dells of oak, where the honeysuckle hung in masses and scented the air. Tabor itself is scarcely beautiful in outline, and like the magnified mounds that the old masters intended for mountains. In their pictures of the Transfiguration their Tabors are very like the original. This was our most glorious day's journey, for it took us to the shores of the Lake of Galilee. Hermon in distant Lebanon was visible ahead of us throughout. We rode up to near the top of the "Mount of Beatitudes," and then on foot reached the very top, and had our first view of the Sacred Sea from that immense height. Here Christ preached the Sermon on the Mount, and down there, intensely blue, lay that dear lake whose shores were so often trodden by His feet. Hermon rose above the majestic landscape, and a warm, palpitating light vibrated over all. In a scrap of shade from a rock we made our halt, and I had an hour and a half for a sketch. Then we rode down to Tiberias, descending into a furnace, though when once on the shore the breeze was sweet off the water. Tiberias is a dreadful little town, and we were glad to thread its alleys as quickly as possible. Our camp was on a pebbly strand about half a mile south of this, the only, town on these shores that once held such brilliant cities. I made an evening sketch, and before retiring for the night we strolled a long time by those sacred waters in the light of the full moon. The waves were strong, and sounded loud in that great stillness. At such times as this the sense of Our Lord's Presence is almost more than one's mortal heart can hold.

We picked up hundreds of shells, which will make appropriate rosaries, mounted in silver, the cross made out of olive wood which I have brought from Gethsemane. I will send you one.

_Thursday, 23rd April._

We went by boat three hours' row to near the mouth of the Jordan, at the north end of the lake, where the grassy slopes are supposed to

The snowy mountain is Mount Hermon. Northern edge of the lake shown. Tall fennel plants amongst rocks in foreground. Early afternoon.]

be the scene of the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. It is very difficult to describe to you my enchantment at seeing one after another these places I have longed to see from early childhood, when our beloved father used to read us the Bible every Sunday. The lake was pale and calm, delicately tinted, and there was a heat-haze over everything in the early part of the day. We disembarked under some thorny acacias which gave a deep shade, and I had the delight of making a sketch there of the coast, looking westward, whilst W. went on by boat to the Jordan. Rosy oleanders fringe the water as far as the eye can reach; the "Mount of Beatitudes" and top of Tabor are in the distance, and the site of Capernaum in the middle distance. God has trodden these scenes with human feet; the feeling of sketching them is scarcely to be put before you in words.

The boatmen were very angry at being kept, whilst I finished the sketch, from returning at the right time, for they told us that if the west wind sprang up we should never be able to get home that night. Surely enough we were only able to get as far as Capernaum with hard pulling against a strong west wind, which suddenly changed the whole face of the lake.

Its pale blue was now dirty green and the choppy waves lashed with foam, and so wild did the waves become that the progress of the boat was almost impossible. These sudden and violent gusts that come through the gullies between the mountains are dreaded by the fishermen of to-day as they were in Peter's time. Fortunately W. had in the morning ordered that our horses should be sent round to meet us here in case the wind arose, and we gladly got on them at this point, having an enchanting ride back and being able at many places to canter our horses. We heard afterwards that the boatmen did not get in till one in the morning. At Capernaum are seen some rich Roman ruins lying tumbled about as though by an earthquake. We rode through the supposed site of Bethsaida, and passed through a portion of the old Roman roadway for chariots, cut through the rock. No accumulation of earth has buried the original surface as elsewhere, so that this lane, with its polished floor of rock, must have undoubtedly been trodden by Our Lord as He passed from city to city. Here are the remains

Mount Hermon snow-capped in distance. Town of Tiberias on shore in middle distance to left.]

of a Roman aqueduct, in one place pouring a huge volume of clearest water over a ledge where, no doubt, in the city's time, a fountain stood. Now the flood from the northern hills disperses itself in abundant streams that rush through dense herbage to the lake. We counted six of these little rivers on our way to Magdala, the birthplace of the Magdalen. We looked down from our mountain lanes to the milk-white strands of the little inlets that border the northern end of Gennesaret, and I wondered at which of them the various episodes of the Gospel took place--Our Lord preaching from the ship pushed out a little way to be free from the jostling crowd on shore--the embarkation for the miraculous draught of fishes----. Besides oleanders the pomegranates grow all along this shore in dense masses half embedded in teeming vegetation.

Magdala is a tiny mud hamlet with a single palm. There are splendid fig-trees here. Herds of oxen and goats and flocks of sheep browse knee-deep in the rich grass.

Our dragoman took us this time through the whole length of the town of Tiberias. It happened to be a great Jewish festival, and the men had all freshly oiled and curled their side locks, which dangled from under immense round fur caps, and the women wore artificial flowers in their hair and were clothed in velvets of splendid hue. It was strange to see them thus attired, coming upon them so suddenly when entering the town from the wilderness. The lanes were stifling and unwholesome, the children pale and sickly, and all had that same blighted look I noticed at Jerusalem. None of them were tanned, but remained white under such a sun! It was a relief to come out at the other end and canter back along the margin of the "Sea" to our camp, for that ride through Tiberias had oppressed and saddened me.

_Friday, 24th April._

An early start as the sun rose over those dark cliffs of the country of the Gadarenes down which the possessed swine careered to the abyss. Good-bye, blessed Sea of Galilee! We had our last look from the immense height near the "Mount of Beatitudes," and thence we turned south-west on our way to Nazareth over the hills of Zebulon.

Young shepherds were piping on little fifes on the hills. The country became uninteresting

OLEANDERS in flower skirting shore in foreground. Top of Mount Tabor showing over nearer mountains in distance.]

(comparatively!) after we left the immediate surroundings of the lake till we came to Cana of Galilee, where we halted, and where I made my only "failure" sketch.

It was a dear, holy, lovable landscape, but hillocky and green and impossible in that flat noontide light. At Cana is the fountain from which undoubtedly was drawn the water for the marriage feast, since there is absolutely no other spring in the place. It was a long journey to Nazareth. That holy town is very lovely, and so much superior in its buildings to the others--quite well-to-do and exquisitely situated on the slope of a cypress-topped hill, in terraces, like a tiny Genoa. Here culminated my disappointment in the faces of the women of Palestine, for the tattooing is simply outrageous, worse than anywhere else in the East. How can they be beautiful with blue lips and the mouth surrounded with blue trees, animals and birds? This spoilt my pleasure in coming upon the "Fountain of the Virgin," where these maids and matrons were filling their pitchers amid a great chattering, at the entrance to the town. We walked, after arriving, to the Church of the Annunciation. There, in the "Holy House" (the front of which is at Loretto), far below the present surface of the earth, on the very spot where the angel saluted Mary, one can say the Angelus. This is the portion of the house which (as is the custom here) is excavated out of the rock; the fronts only are of masonry. We visited the "Mensa Christi," which interested us but little, as it savours too much of the "pious fraud," and then the site of Joseph's workshop.

We were disappointed in the position of our camp, as other travellers had forestalled us in getting better places, and the best of all was bespoken for the great French pilgrimage expected on the morrow.

On this account we settled not to tarry at Nazareth and to send the heavy column back to Jerusalem in the morning. We are only one day's journey from Caïfa, our place of embarkation. As I was looking at the town from our tent door at the time of the Angelus, the bells of the Church over Mary's house suddenly rang out a carillon, and the tune was that very one we used to hear when A. and I were five and six years old on our dear Genoese Riviera! I had not heard that tune since those days. Later on I watched the full

THE church with spire to the left stands over the site of Joseph's workshop, and near Mary's house.]

moon rising over those mountain outlines which Our Lord looked on every day of His hidden life at Nazareth, and then turned and saw the town white in the moonbeams on its dark hillside.

_Saturday, 25th April._

We started later than usual, as W. had to close accounts with the "heavy column" and send a telegram to Alexandria to warn them of our impending return. There was a heavy dew. I made a sunrise sketch of the town. A glorious ride we had to Carmel, steeped in the poetry of the Old Testament. Carmel is one mass of oak-trees. There we met the vast host of the French pilgrims coming from Caïfa and beginning their experiences of Palestine. We met amicably at the shady halting-place and exchanged a few words of _camaraderie_, and we watched them depart towards Nazareth, each company headed by a banner. On our way to Caïfa we crossed the Kishon again, now near its mouth, flowing through a lovely plain, bordered, near the sandhills that skirt the sea, with date-palms. Over the hills to our right towered Lebanon against the blue. As we came in sight of the bay the town of St. Jean d'Acre looked beautiful on the opposite side, and Caïfa appeared a bright little town at the foot of Carmel. There we put up at the German inn, and I parted with my dear little horse "Shiloh," and W. with his nimble "Kishon," our good little steeds that brought us so well through the Holy Land.

_Sunday, 26th April._

A great rest and much letter-writing. The congregation at Mass was large, for there is a considerable Christian colony here. We shall make this our headquarters till Friday, when we must leave for Egypt.

CAÏFA, _Monday, 27th April 189-_.

My....--We had a very enjoyable expedition to Acre, driving the whole way there and back _in the sea_. Where the waves break the sand is hard, whereas higher up the beach no wheeled vehicle could get through in the soft sand. We were often covered with spray, and the lean horses splashed along knee-deep in the surf. At the ferry across the Kishon, where it flows into the sea, our horses were unharnessed and swam alongside our punt, together with a string of camels that looked very comical swimming. The shivering horses were reharnessed on the farther shore, and away we went tearing through the waves. The poor beasts seemed to enjoy their oats at the end, if enjoyment is possible to such wretched, ill-treated creatures. I made a sketch as well as I could with the sun in my eyes from our shandrydan, about a quarter of a mile outside the one gate of Acre, on the white sandy strand, whilst W. went exploring all over the town. The military authorities molested us not at all, and the commandant only asked W. for backsheesh, although I was conspicuously sketching the fortifications and W. was scanning everything in a place so saturated with Napoleonic reminiscences. The same amphibious drive in the gloaming back to Caïfa.

_Tuesday, 28th April 189-._

To-day we drove to remote Athlit, a long way down the coast to the south, and spent quiet hours amid the Gothic Crusader ruins on the wave-lashed rocks beyond Carmel. Acre and Athlit steep one's mind in Crusader sentiment, which feels almost modern after so long a sojourn in the regions of the Bible. The majestic fragments of Northern Gothic we saw to-day seem strange to the eye in this Oriental land, but to the intellect they are full of touching meaning, for this was the point of departure for most of the Crusaders. Baffled, haggard, heart-broken, they took ship again from here.

Wednesday we spent in visiting the Carmelite Monastery, a perfect place to stay at instead of the rather dubious German inn. It is a fortress-like building commanding a sweeping view of the sea, south and west and north, and of the grand landscape eastward and south again. The whitewashed rooms are filled with the reflection from the light off the water and the land. The Abbot and monks, in the well-known white cloak and brown habit, are, as everywhere, kindly and hospitable, and glad to see you. What a place for study and for painting; what a place for a Retreat, where everything reminds you of Religion and not one single mundane, worrying, or ugly object comes within your ken! By "ugly" I always mean some modern eyesore; it is not a word applicable to the poor and the diseased who humbly mount the steep path for the daily alms and food the monastery has ready for them.

THE roadstead is seen to the left. A sandy shore. City surrounded by walls and fortifications.]

Somewhere amongst this series of oak-clad hills that forms Mount Carmel, Elijah built his altar to the True God, whereon the burnt-offering was consumed by fire from heaven in sight of the prophets of Baal. "Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the holocaust, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench," III Kings xviii. 38. This was the scene of that mighty episode which is one of the most salient and impressive in one's memory of the Old Testament, and look! down below rushes that same Kishon on whose banks Elijah, after the great drama on the mountain, slew the prophets of Baal in sight of all the children of Israel. A thrill runs through one when recalling such scenes as one stands on the very spot where they took place.

After seeing specimens of the ancient tombs in this country one can fully understand the words of St. Luke and St. John alluding to the new sepulchre of Joseph of Arimathea "wherein no man had yet been laid." These tombs contain triple receptacles for the dead, as I showed you in the sketch plan at Jerusalem, and some I believe have more than three. Had the sepulchre at the foot of Calvary contained but one, the words of the Evangelists would be puzzling. This is an instance of the illumination that dispels certain obscurities in one's mind as one journeys across the theatre of Bible history.

It seems a strange paradox, but it is a very weighty fact, that the possession of the Holy Land by the conservative Turk preserves all such tokens of the past for the elucidation of the Christian's Bible. Were this land in possession of a "Christian" Power, I fear that the service of Mammon would soon necessitate the obliteration of these tokens so precious to our Faith. Railways, factories, mines and new towns "run" by greedy syndicates, would very soon make an end of them all. There was a Christian proposal a little while ago, I believe, to flood the whole of Palestine for commercial purposes. My ideal would be (oh, vain dream!) that some great confederation of earnest people whose God is not the Dollar, belonging to the various European Powers and America, should purchase the little Holy Land as a possession "for ever" for Christendom--_real_ Christendom.

To-day, Thursday, we saw the "School of the Prophets," a curious and awesome cavern in the side of the mountain. These have been quiet days, wherein I have been able to write much and assimilate the events of our glorious journey.

Looking back along these days of travel, many flitting thoughts that came and went as we journeyed on, return to one's mind in the stillness of repose. One of the facts that have struck us most in this ancient land which is yet so fresh--so fresh in its surprises and in its stirrings of the heart--is the fact that no book of human authorship dealing with the subject is readable on the spot. You may take with you Dean Stanley, Dr. Thomson (_The Land and the Book_), Miss Martineau, or any of the delightful works on Palestine that have fascinated you in times gone by: you will open them once but not again. _The Bible is the only book you can read here!_ All the others are inadequate: no man can measure himself with the Infinite. (Such books as Père Didon's sublime _Jésus Christ_ or Father Gallwey's _Watches of the Passion_ I do not consider as being of human authorship, because they are illustrative accompaniments of the Scriptures.)

The feeling I have when on the point of leaving the Holy Land is one difficult to describe worthily. We seem to have been allowed a glimpse into the other world through this sacred portal. To have stood on the summit of Olivet whence Our Redeemer ascended into heaven in the form He reigns in now at the right hand of the Father, is as though one had touched heaven itself. And then the force with which one realises certain episodes of His revealed life on earth makes one see the Incarnation so vividly that the human mind bends beneath the might of the revelation.

When I saw our boatmen the other day on Galilee pulling with all their might, but in vain, against the sudden west wind, so peculiar to that particular lake, I saw before me the fishermen of Peter's type, dressed in the same loose garments, going through the same dangerous work that he and his fellows had to face habitually. How easy it was, with that living illustration before me, to see the struggling boat's crew on the night that Jesus, remaining to pray alone on the mountain on the eastern shore, sent them forward to Capernaum without Him, and how easy to see them trying to make their way as described in Matthew xiv. 24. "But the boat in the midst of the sea was tossed with the waves: for the wind was contrary." And then the divine Figure following them, moving over those tossing waves, can be imagined, approaching, full of calm reassurance, to still their fears at His apparition--"It is I, be not afraid." The direction in which the boat was steered, the mountain whence the divine Figure came forward and overtook the boat--all now appears to the mind's eye in powerful vividness, in the setting of land and water that one has seen.

Again, the poor demoniacs that lived in the tombs that are cut out of the sides of those same mountains "over against Galilee" (there are outcast maniacs like them to-day in the deserts, if not "possessed" as these men were),--I fancy I can see the look of the wild animal in their faces as they met our Lord, and hear the quick, wild cry of one of them: "What have I to do with thee, Jesus, Son of the most high God?"--and the hoarse answer to Christ's question, "My name is Legion!" I have before me the recollection of a strange creature I saw running out of a sepulchral chamber in a ruined temple on the Upper Nile, like the incarnation of Satan in some of the Old Masters' pictures: the head bald, and of the same cinder-coloured hue as the evil face, with its large pointed ears, and the muscular body. I do not mean that the possessed man of the Gospel might have been like this dweller in tombs, but one sees strange beings in the deserts whose shelters are the resting-places of the dead.

I continue to be haunted by the feeling that the sight of the Holy Places is too easily and too unceremoniously obtained nowadays. I hope we do not feel less devoutly with regard to them than in the "Ages of Faith," and that it is only our modern way to take these things as we do. Do you remember how history tells us that Richard Coeur de Lion, after his defeat by the Saracens some distance short of Jerusalem, falling back towards the coast, baffled in his heroic efforts to redeem the Holy Sepulchre from the Infidel, refused to look on the city which came in sight in the rear of his line of march as he and his knights crested a high hill near Emmaus? He would not look; he had failed; his eyes were too unworthy to rest upon the City of the Lord. And to-day, with the Infidel still in possession, the Christian tourist, nothing doubting, takes a good look through his binocular on sighting the same Jerusalem. I remember hearing that as some friends of ours, forming part of a mixed company,

The springs of the Gothic arches can be traced on the high brick wall. The hills to the right form the lower western slopes of Mount Carmel, covered with oak woods.]

came in sight of the city, one of their number dropped on his knees in as unobtrusive a manner as was possible under the circumstances. "I did not know your brother was a _fanatic_," whispered an American to his sister.

As regards certain details of life in this country that so much embarrass and disappoint some travellers, do not imagine that I affectedly ignore their existence; but I do feel grateful that in my view of the whole scene they have everywhere kept their proper place. I know how disappointed some people are on their account, and I should be sorry if I was thought intolerant in my self-satisfaction at being so fortunate.

One lady, in a little book I once read, describing her journey, takes for her text: "He is not here, but is risen." In bitter chagrin she acknowledges the fact that nowhere in Jerusalem could she see Our Lord through her surroundings. I asked a friend once if she would like to see the Holy Land: "Certainly not!" she exclaimed; "I have read Mark Twain's book." I inquired of an English traveller at Jaffa the other day, who was on his way home, how the Holy Places had impressed him. His answers were dispirited: the dirt, the flies, etc., etc., had annoyed him. His ears were still ringing with the ubiquitous "Baksheesh!"; the lepers had spoilt some of the best views--and so on. How much better it would have been for him not to come here, like the Mark Twain lady, and to have preserved his Oxford impressions of the Bible uncontaminated!

In Our Lord's time, although the cities were splendid, the poor and the diseased were just as much _en évidence_ as now, and where He was His poor clustered thickest. Yet who thinks of the merely squalid details of those crowds when reading the Gospel narrative? Why, then, dwell on them so much here to-day as we follow His footsteps on the very soil He trod? I must say any danger of distractions I may have felt has not come from what I have seen of the _native_ element here. Not long ago a party of Christian (?) European trippers (I will not define their nationality) reaching the Jews' Wailing Place at Jerusalem, charged with their donkeys all along the line of those preoccupied figures standing praying with their faces buried in their Testaments or pressed against the stones of the great wall, and knocked them over.

But "Many men many minds," and as no country stirs the sincere heart as this one does, one must accept each thoughtful traveller's account of his experiences as being genuinely felt.

I would warn intending tourists who are earnest and sensitive about this sacred land against forming large parties for the journey. Amongst the group of fellow-travellers there is sure to be at least one discordant unit. Facetious remarks, ignorant questions, thoughtless exclamations, are harder to bear here than elsewhere. Of course, if the party forms a religious pilgrimage these warnings do not apply; but even a pilgrimage in company has drawbacks, if the time is limited, and many inevitable distractions. Select as few companions as is practicable--one only, if possible, entirely one with you in faith and feeling. Also, any one in delicate health should not attempt the entire journey. I have seen more than one sad procession of returning tourists escorting a litter containing some poor collapsed lady, depending on the fore-and-aft mules that carried her for a smooth transit back to Jerusalem and the carriage road. Woe betide her if either of the beasts came down or even stumbled!

When I wrote to you from Jerusalem I told you how convincing one feels the traditional sites of Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre to be in spite of modern scepticism. But more modern still is the verification of their authenticity. It has lately been proved, by that "research" which we seem to require nowadays, that they stand _outside_ the line of the city walls of our Lord's time. The great stumbling-block to those who could not accept the word of Tradition consisted in the idea that those sites had always been within the city as now, for it is known that the Jewish law forbade places of execution and of burial within the walls. To show you how the shape of Jerusalem, marked out by its fortifications, has changed during its long history, I may mention that, whereas the house of the Last Supper stood within the lines in Our Lord's time, it stands far outside the walls of to-day.

* * * * *

And now the last sunset we shall see from the Land of Promise is steeping Lebanon in rose and violet, and the slender shadows of the palms are lengthening across the sandy spaces of the plain. The sea has not a sail upon it, and the sky not even a cloud "the size of a man's hand," such as Elijah's servant saw from the top of this Carmel which overshadows us.

Undisturbed by wind or cloud, the mind can dwell upon thoughts which the approaching hour of leave-taking renders more poignant.

* * * * *