{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_29314/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_29314","id":"gutenberg_29314","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29314","summary":null,"tags":["Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Category: Travel Writing","Palestine -- Description and travel","Van Dyke, Henry, 1852-1933 -- Travel -- Palestine"],"text":"E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Marius Borror, and the Project\nGutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this\n      file which includes the original illustrations.\n      See 29314-h.htm or 29314-h.zip:\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/29314/pg29314-images.html)\n      or\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29314/29314-h.zip)\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\n      Text enclosed between plus signs was in bold face in the\n      original (example: +bold+).\n\n      A few typographical errors have been corrected; they are\n      listed at the end of the text.\n\n\n\n\n\nOUT-OF-DOORS IN THE HOLY LAND\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n                       BOOKS BY HENRY VAN DYKE\n\n   PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS\n\n   +THE RULING PASSION.+ Illustrated in color.      $1.50\n\n   +THE BLUE FLOWER.+ Illustrated in color.         $1.50\n\n          *       *       *       *       *\n\n   +OUTDOORS IN THE HOLY LAND.+ Illustrated in\n   color                                      _net_ $1.50\n\n   +DAYS OFF.+ Illustrated in color.                $1.50\n\n   +LITTLE RIVERS.+ Illustrated in color.           $1.50\n\n   +FISHERMAN'S LUCK.+ Illustrated in color.        $1.50\n\n          *       *       *       *       *\n\n   +THE BUILDERS, AND OTHER POEMS.+                 $1.00\n\n   +MUSIC, AND OTHER POEMS.+                  _net_ $1.00\n\n   +THE TOILING OF FELIX, AND OTHER POEMS.+         $1.00\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n[Illustration: The Gate of David, Jerusalem.]\n\n\nOUT-OF-DOORS IN THE HOLY LAND\n\nImpressions of Travel in Body and Spirit\n\nby\n\nHENRY VAN DYKE\n\nIllustrated\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNew York\nCharles Scribner's Sons\nMDCCCCVIII\n\nCopyright, 1908, by Charles Scribner's Sons\nPublished November, 1908\n\n\n\n                               To\n\n                      HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER\n\n                        MASTER OF MERWICK\n\n                   PROFESSOR OF ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY\n\n                  WHO WAS A FRIEND TO THIS JOURNEY\n\n                      THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED\n\n                          BY HIS FRIEND\n\n                           THE AUTHOR\n\n\n\n\n                            PREFACE\n\n\nFor a long time, in the hopefulness and confidence of youth, I dreamed\nof going to Palestine. But that dream was denied, for want of money and\nleisure.\n\nThen, for a long time, in the hardening strain of early manhood, I was\nafraid to go to Palestine, lest the journey should prove a\ndisenchantment, and some of my religious beliefs be rudely shaken,\nperhaps destroyed. But that fear was removed by a little voyage to the\ngates of death, where it was made clear to me that no belief is worth\nkeeping unless it can bear the touch of reality.\n\nIn that year of pain and sorrow, through a full surrender to the Divine\nWill, the hopefulness and confidence of youth came back to me. Since\nthen it has been possible once more to wake in the morning with the\nfeeling that the day might bring something new and wonderful and\nwelcome, and to travel into the future with a whole and happy heart.\n\nThis is what I call growing younger; though the years increase, yet the\nburden of them is lessened, and the fear that life will some day lead\ninto an empty prison-house has been cast out by the incoming of the\nPerfect Love.\n\nSo it came to pass that when a friend offered me, at last, the\nopportunity of going to Palestine if I would give him my impressions of\ntravel for his magazine, I was glad to go. Partly because there was a\npiece of work,--a drama whose scene lies in Damascus and among the\nmountains of Samaria,--that I wanted to finish there; partly because of\nthe expectancy that on such a journey any of the days might indeed bring\nsomething new and wonderful and welcome; but most of all because I\ngreatly desired to live for a little while in the country of Jesus,\nhoping to learn more of the meaning of His life in the land where it was\nspent, and lost, and forever saved.\n\nHere, then, you have the history of this little book, reader: and if it\npleases you to look further into its pages, you can see for yourself how\nfar my dreams and hopes were realised.\n\nIt is the record of a long journey in the spirit and a short voyage in\nthe body. If you find here impressions that are lighter, mingled with\nthose that are deeper, that is because life itself is really woven of\nsuch contrasted threads. Even on a pilgrimage small adventures happen.\nOf the elders of Israel on Sinai it is written, \"They saw God and did\neat and drink\"; and the Apostle Paul was not too much engrossed with his\nmission to send for the cloak and books and parchments that he left\nbehind at Troas.\n\nIf what you read here makes you wish to go to the Holy Land, I shall be\nglad; and if you go in the right way, you surely will not be\ndisappointed.\n\nBut there are two things in the book which I would not have you miss.\n\nThe first is the new conviction,--new at least to me,--that Christianity\nis an out-of-doors religion. From the birth in the grotto at Bethlehem\n(where Joseph and Mary took refuge because there was no room for them in\nthe inn) to the crowning death on the hill of Calvary outside the city\nwall, all of its important events took place out-of-doors. Except the\ndiscourse in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, all of its great words,\nfrom the sermon on the mount to the last commission to the disciples,\nwere spoken in the open air. How shall we understand it unless we carry\nit under the free sky and interpret it in the companionship of nature?\n\nThe second thing that I would have you find here is the deepened sense\nthat Jesus Himself is the great, the imperishable miracle. His words are\nspirit and life. His character is the revelation of the Perfect Love.\nThis was the something new and wonderful and welcome that came to me in\nPalestine: a simpler, clearer, surer view of the human life of God.\n\n                                                   HENRY VAN DYKE.\n\nAvalon,\nJune 10, 1908.\n\n\n\n\n                        CONTENTS\n\n\n   I. _Travellers' Joy_                          1\n\n  II. _Going up to Jerusalem_                   23\n\n III. _The Gates of Zion_                       45\n\n  IV. _Mizpah and the Mount of Olives_          67\n\n   V. _An Excursion to Bethlehem and Hebron_    83\n\n  VI. _The Temple and the Sepulchre_           105\n\n VII. _Jericho and Jordan_                     125\n\nVIII. _A Journey to Jerash_                    151\n\n  IX. _The Mountains of Samaria_               191\n\n   X. _Galilee and the Lake_                   217\n\n  XI. _The Springs of Jordan_                  259\n\n XII. _The Road to Damascus_                   291\n\n\n\n\n                      ILLUSTRATIONS\n\n\n_The Gate of David, Jerusalem_             Frontispiece\n\n_Jaffa_                               Facing page    14\n_The port where King Solomon landed his cedar beams\nfrom Lebanon for the building of the Temple_\n\n_The Tall Tower of the Forty Martyrs at Ramleh_      28\n\n_A Street in Jerusalem_                              60\n\n_A Street in Bethlehem_                              86\n\n_The Market-place, Bethlehem_                        90\n\n_Great Monastery of St. George_                     136\n\n_Ruins of Jerash, Looking West_                     184\n  _Propyloeum and Temple terrace_\n\n_The Virgin's Fountain, Nazareth_                   232\n\n_The Approach to Baniyas_                           276\n\n_Bridge Over the River Litani_                      282\n\n_A Small Bazaar in Damascus_                        316\n\n\n\n\n                                      I\n\n\n                               TRAVELLERS' JOY\n\n\nI\n\nINVITATION\n\n\nWho would not go to Palestine?\n\nTo look upon that little stage where the drama of humanity has centred\nin such unforgetable scenes; to trace the rugged paths and ancient\nhighways along which so many heroic and pathetic figures have travelled;\nabove all, to see with the eyes as well as with the heart\n\n                 \"Those holy fields\n  Over whose acres walked those blessed feet\n  Which, nineteen hundred years ago, were nail'd\n  For our advantage on the bitter cross\"--\n\nfor the sake of these things who would not travel far and endure many\nhardships?\n\nIt is easy to find Palestine. It lies in the south-east corner of the\nMediterranean coast, where the \"sea in the midst of the nations,\" makes\na great elbow between Asia Minor and Egypt. A tiny land, about a hundred\nand fifty miles long and sixty miles wide, stretching in a fourfold\nband from the foot of snowy Hermon and the Lebanons to the fulvous crags\nof Sinai: a green strip of fertile plain beside the sea, a blue strip of\nlofty and broken highlands, a gray-and-yellow strip of sunken\nriver-valley, a purple strip of high mountains rolling away to the\nArabian desert. There are a dozen lines of steamships to carry you\nthither; a score of well-equipped agencies to conduct you on what they\ncall \"a _de luxe_ religious expedition to Palestine.\"\n\nBut how to find the Holy Land--ah, that is another question.\n\nFierce and mighty nations, hundreds of human tribes, have trampled\nthrough that coveted corner of the earth, contending for its possession:\nand the fury of their fighting has swept the fields as with fire.\nTemples and palaces have vanished like tents from the hillside. The\nploughshare of havoc has been driven through the gardens of luxury.\nCities have risen and crumbled upon the ruins of older cities. Crust\nafter crust of pious legend has formed over the deep valleys; and\ntradition has set up its altars \"upon every high hill and under every\ngreen tree.\" The rival claims of sacred places are fiercely disputed by\nchurchmen and scholars. It is a poor prophet that has but one birthplace\nand one tomb.\n\nAnd now, to complete the confusion, the hurried, nervous, comfort-loving\nspirit of modern curiosity has broken into Palestine, with railways from\nJaffa to Jerusalem, from Mount Carmel to the Sea of Galilee, from Beirut\nto Damascus,--with macadamized roads to Shechem and Nazareth and\nTiberias,--with hotels at all the \"principal points of interest,\"--and\nwith every facility for doing Palestine in ten days, without getting\naway from the market-reports, the gossip of the _table d'hote_, and all\nthat queer little complex of distracting habits which we call\ncivilization.\n\nBut the Holy Land which I desire to see can be found only by escaping\nfrom these things. I want to get away from them; to return into the long\npast, which is also the hidden present, and to lose myself a little\nthere, to the end that I may find myself again. I want to make\nacquaintance with the soul of that land where so much that is strange\nand memorable and for ever beautiful has come to pass: to walk quietly\nand humbly, without much disputation or talk, in fellowship with the\nspirit that haunts those hills and vales, under the influence of that\ndeep and lucent sky. I want to feel that ineffable charm which breathes\nfrom its mountains, meadows and streams: that charm which made the\nchildren of Israel in the desert long for it as a land flowing with milk\nand honey; and the great Prince Joseph in Egypt require an oath of his\nbrethren that they would lay his bones in the quiet vale of Shechem\nwhere he had fed his father's sheep; and the daughters of Jacob beside\nthe rivers of Babylon mingle tears with their music when they remembered\nZion.\n\nThere was something in that land, surely, some personal and indefinable\nspirit of place, which was known and loved by prophet and psalmist, and\nmost of all by Him who spread His table on the green grass, and taught\nHis disciples while they walked the narrow paths waist-deep in rustling\nwheat, and spoke His messages of love from a little boat rocking on the\nlake, and found His asylum of prayer high on the mountainside, and kept\nHis parting-hour with His friends in the moon-silvered quiet of the\ngarden of olives. That spirit of place, that soul of the Holy Land, is\nwhat I fain would meet on my pilgrimage,--for the sake of Him who\ninterprets it in love. And I know well where to find it,--out-of-doors.\n\nI will not sleep under a roof in Palestine, but nightly pitch my\nwandering tent beside some fountain, in some grove or garden, on some\nvacant threshing-floor, beneath the Syrian stars. I will not join myself\nto any company of labelled tourists hurrying with much discussion on\ntheir appointed itinerary, but take into fellowship three tried and\ntrusty comrades, that we may enjoy solitude together. I will not seek to\nmake any archaeological discovery, nor to prove any theological theory,\nbut simply to ride through the highlands of Judea, and the valley of\nJordan, and the mountains of Gilead, and the rich plains of Samaria, and\nthe grassy hills of Galilee, looking upon the faces and the ways of the\ncommon folk, the labours of the husbandman in the field, the vigils of\nthe shepherd on the hillside, the games of the children in the\nmarket-place, and reaping\n\n  \"The harvest of a quiet eye\n  That broods and sleeps on his own heart.\"\n\nFour things, I know, are unchanged amid all the changes that have passed\nover the troubled and bewildered land. The cities have sunken into dust:\nthe trees of the forest have fallen: the nations have dissolved. But the\nmountains keep their immutable outline: the liquid stars shine with the\nsame light, move on the same pathways: and between the mountains and the\nstars, two other changeless things, frail and imperishable,--the flowers\nthat flood the earth in every springtide, and the human heart where\nhopes and longings and affections and desires blossom immortally.\nChiefly of these things, and of Him who gave them a new meaning, I will\nspeak to you, reader, if you care to go with me out-of-doors in the Holy\nLand.\n\n\nII\n\nMOVING PICTURES\n\nOf the voyage, made with all the swiftness and directness of one who\nseeks the shortest distance between two points, little remains in memory\nexcept a few moving pictures, vivid and half-real, as in a\nkinematograph.\n\nFirst comes a long, swift ship, the _Deutschland_, quivering and rolling\nover the dull March waves of the Atlantic. Then the morning sunlight\nstreams on the jagged rocks of the Lizard, where two wrecked steamships\nare hanging, and on the green headlands and gray fortresses of Plymouth.\nThen a soft, rosy sunset over the mole, the dingy houses, the tiled\nroofs, the cliffs, the misty-budded trees of Cherbourg. Then Paris at\ntwo in the morning: the lower quarters still stirring with\nsomnambulistic life, the lines of lights twinkling placidly on the empty\nboulevards. Then a whirl through the _Bois_ in a motor-car, a breakfast\nat Versailles with a merry little party of friends, a lazy walk through\nmiles of picture-galleries without a guide-book or a care. Then the\nnight express for Italy, a glimpse of the Alps at sunrise, snow all\naround us, the thick darkness of the Mount Cenis tunnel, the bright\nsunshine of Italian spring, terraced hillsides, clipped and pollarded\ntrees, waking vineyards and gardens, Turin, Genoa, Rome, arches of\nruined aqueducts, snow upon the Southern Apennines, the blooming fields\nof Capua, umbrella-pines and silvery poplars, and at last, from my\nbalcony at the hotel, the glorious curving panorama of the bay of\nNaples, Vesuvius without a cloud, and Capri like an azure lion couchant\non the broad shield of the sea. So ends the first series of films, ten\ndays from home.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAfter an intermission of twenty-four hours, the second series begins on\nthe white ship _Oceana_, an immense yacht, ploughing through the\ntranquil, sapphire Mediterranean, with ten passengers on board, and the\nband playing three times a day just as usual. Then comes the low line of\nthe African coast, the lighthouse of Alexandria, the top of Pompey's\nPillar showing over the white, modern city.\n\nHalf a dozen little rowboats meet us, well out at sea, buffeted and\ntossed by the waves: they are fishing: see! one of the men has a strike,\nhe pulls in his trolling-line, hand over hand, very slowly, it seems, as\nthe steamship rushes by. I lean over the side, run to the stern of the\nship to watch,--hurrah, he pulls in a silvery fish nearly three feet\nlong. Good luck to you, my Egyptian brother of the angle!\n\nNow a glimpse of the crowded, busy harbour of Alexandria, (recalling\nmemories of fourteen years ago,) and a leisurely trans-shipment to the\nlittle Khedivial steamer, _Prince Abbas_, with her Scotch officers,\nItalian stewards, Maltese doctor, Turkish sailors, and freight-handlers\nwho come from whatever places it has pleased Heaven they should be born\nin. The freight is variegated, and the third-class passengers are a\nmotley crowd.\n\nA glance at the forward main-deck shows Egyptians in white cotton, and\nTurks in the red fez, and Arabs in white and brown, and coal-black\nSoudanese, and nondescript Levantines, and Russians in fur coats and\nlamb's-wool caps, and Greeks in blue embroidered jackets, and women in\nbaggy trousers and black veils, and babies, and cats, and parrots. Here\nis a tall, venerable grandfather, with spectacles and a long gray beard,\ndressed in a black robe with a hood and a yellow scarf; grave,\npatriarchal, imperturbable: his little granddaughter, a pretty elf of a\nchild, with flower-like face and shining eyes, dances hither and yon\namong the chaos of freight and luggage; but as the chill of evening\ndescends she takes shelter between his knees, under the folds of his\nlong robe, and, while he feeds her with bread and sweetmeats, keeps up a\nrunning comment of remarks and laughter at all around her, and the\nunspeakable solemnity of old Father Abraham's face is lit up, now and\nthen, with the flicker of a resistless smile.\n\nHere are two bronzed Arabs of the desert, in striped burnoose and white\nkaftan, stretched out for the night upon their rugs of many colours.\nBetween them lies their latest purchase, a brand-new patent\ncarpet-sweeper, made in Ohio, and going, who knows where among the hills\nof Bashan.\n\nA child dies in the night, on the voyage; in the morning, at anchor in\nthe mouth of the Suez Canal, we hear the carpenter hammering together a\nlittle pine coffin. All day Sunday the indescribable traffic of Port\nSaid passes around us; ships of all nations coming and going; a big\nGerman Lloyd boat just home from India crowded with troops in khaki,\nband playing, flags flying; huge dredgers, sombre, oxlike-looking\nthings, with lines of incredibly dirty men in fluttering rags running up\nthe gang-planks with bags of coal on their backs; rowboats shuttling to\nand fro between the ships and the huddled, transient, modern town, which\nis made up of curiosity shops, hotels, business houses and dens of\niniquity; a row of Egyptian sail boats, with high prows, low sides, long\nlateen yards, ranged along the entrance to the canal. At sunset we steam\npast the big statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, standing far out on the\nbreak-water and pointing back with a dramatic gesture to his\nworld-transforming ditch. Then we go dancing over the yellow waves into\nthe full moonlight toward Palestine.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn the early morning I clamber on deck into a thunderstorm: wild west\nwind, rolling billows, flying gusts of rain, low clouds hanging over the\nsand-hills of the coast: a harbourless shore, far as eye can see, a\nland that makes no concession to the ocean with bay or inlet, but cries,\n\"Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther; and here shall thy proud\nwaves be stayed.\" There are the flat-roofed houses, and the orange\ngroves, and the minaret, and the lighthouse of Jaffa, crowning its\nrounded hill of rock. We are tossing at anchor a mile from the shore.\nWill the boats come out to meet us in this storm, or must we go on to\nHaifa, fifty miles beyond? Rumour says that the police have refused to\npermit the boats to put out. But look, here they come, half a dozen open\nwhale-boats, each manned by a dozen lusty, bare-legged, brown rowers,\nbuffeting their way between the scattered rocks, leaping high on the\ncrested waves. The chiefs of the crews scramble on board the steamer,\nidentify the passengers consigned to the different tourist-agencies,\nsort out the baggage and lower it into the boats.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[Illustration: Jaffa. The port where King Solomon landed his cedar beams\nfrom Lebanon for the building of the Temple.]\n\nMy tickets, thus far, have been provided by the great Cook, and I fall\nto the charge of his head boatman, a dusky demon of energy. A slippery\nclimb down the swaying ladder, a leap into the arms of two sturdy\nrowers, a stumble over the wet thwarts, and I find myself in the\nstern sheets of the boat. A young Dutchman follows with stolid\nsuddenness. Two Italian gentlemen, weeping, refuse to descend more than\nhalf-way, climb back, and are carried on to Haifa. A German lady with a\nparrot in a cage comes next, and her anxiety for the parrot makes her\nforget to be afraid. Then comes a little Polish lady, evidently a bride;\nshe shuts her eyes tight and drops into the boat, pale, silent, resolved\nthat she will not scream: her husband follows, equally pale, and she\nclings indifferently to his hand and to mine, her eyes still shut, a\npretty image of white courage. The boat pushes off; the rowers smite the\nwaves with their long oars and sing \"Halli--yallah--yah hallah\"; the\nsteersman high in the stern shouts unintelligible (and, I fear, profane)\ndirections; we are swept along on the tops of the waves, between the\nfoaming rocks, drenched by spray and flying showers: at last we bump\nalongside the little quay, and climb out on the wet, gliddery stones.\n\nThe kinematograph pictures are ended, for I am in Palestine, on the\nfirst of April, just fifteen days from home.\n\n\nIII\n\nRENDEZVOUS\n\nWill my friends be here to meet me, I wonder? This is the question which\npresses upon me more closely than anything else, I must confess, as I\nset foot for the first time upon the sacred soil of Palestine. I know\nthat this is not as it should be. All the conventions of travel require\nthe pilgrim to experience a strange curiosity and excitement, a profound\nemotion, \"a supreme anguish,\" as an Italian writer describes it, \"in\napproaching this land long dreamed about, long waited for, and almost\ndespaired of.\"\n\nBut the conventions of travel do not always correspond to the realities\nof the heart. Your first sight of a place may not be your first\nperception of it: that may come afterward, in some quiet, unexpected\nmoment. Emotions do not follow a time-table; and I propose to tell no\nlies in this book. My strongest feeling as I enter Jaffa is the desire\nto know whether my chosen comrades have come to the rendezvous at the\nappointed time, to begin our long ride together.\n\nIt is a remote and uncertain combination, I grant you. The Patriarch, a\ntall, slender youth of seventy years, whose home is beside the Golden\nGate of California, was wandering among the ruins of Sicily when I last\nheard from him. The Pastor and his wife, the Lady of Walla Walla, who\nlive on the shores of Puget Sound, were riding camels across the\npeninsula of Sinai and steamboating up the Nile. Have the letters, the\ncablegrams that were sent to them been safely delivered? Have the\nhundreds of unknown elements upon which our combination depended been\nworking secretly together for its success? Has our proposal been\naccording to the supreme disposal, and have all the roads been kept\nclear by which we were hastening from three continents to meet on the\nfirst day of April at the _Hotel du Parc_ in Jaffa?\n\nYes, here are my three friends, in the quaint little garden of the\nhotel, with its purple-flowering vines of Bougainvillea, fragrant\norange-trees, drooping palms, and long-tailed cockatoos drowsing on\ntheir perches. When people really know each other an unfamiliar\nmeeting-place lends a singular intimacy and joy to the meeting. There\nis a surprise in it, no matter how long and carefully it has been\nplanned. There are a thousand things to talk of, but at first nothing\nwill come except the wonder of getting together. The sight of the\ndesired faces, unchanged beneath their new coats of tan, is a happy\nassurance that personality is not a dream. The touch of warm hands is a\nsudden proof that friendship is a reality.\n\nPresently it begins to dawn upon us that there is something wonderful in\nthe place of our conjunction, and we realise dimly,--very dimly, I am\nsure, and yet with a certain vague emotion of reverence,--where we are.\n\n\"We came yesterday,\" says the Lady, \"and in the afternoon we went to see\nthe House of Simon the Tanner, where they say the Apostle Peter lodged.\"\n\n\"Did it look like the real house?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" she answers smilingly, \"how do I know? They say there are two of\nthem. But what do I care? It is certain that we are here. And I think\nthat St. Peter was here once, too, whether the house he lived in is\nstanding yet, or not.\"\n\nYes, that is reasonably certain; and this is the place where he had his\nstrange vision of a religion meant for all sorts and conditions of men.\nIt is certain, also, that this is the port where Solomon landed his\nbeams of cedar from Lebanon for the building of the Temple, and that the\nEmperor Vespasian sacked the town, and that Richard Lionheart planted\nthe banner of the crusade upon its citadel. But how far away and\ndreamlike it all seems, on this spring morning, when the wind is tossing\nthe fronds of the palm-trees, and the gleams of sunshine are flying\nacross the garden, and the last clouds of the broken thunderstorm are\nracing westward through the blue toward the highlands of Judea.\n\nHere is our new friend, the dragoman George Cavalcanty, known as\n\"Telhami,\" the Bethlehemite, standing beside us in the shelter of the\norange-trees: a trim, alert figure, in his belted suit of khaki and his\nriding-boots of brown leather.\n\n\"Is everything ready for the journey, George?\"\n\n\"Everything is prepared, according to the instructions you sent from\nAvalon. The tents are pitched a little beyond Latrun, twenty miles away.\nThe horses are waiting at Ramleh. After you have had your mid-day\nbreakfast, we will drive there in carriages, and get into the saddle,\nand ride to our own camp before the night falls.\"\n\n\n_A PSALM OF THE DISTANT ROAD_\n\n_Happy is the man that seeth the face of a friend in a far country:\nThe darkness of his heart is melted in the rising of an inward joy._\n\n_It is like the sound of music heard long ago and half forgotten:\nIt is like the coming back of birds to a wood that winter hath made bare._\n\n_I knew not the sweetness of the fountain till I found it flowing in\n          the desert:\nNor the value of a friend till the meeting in a lonely land._\n\n_The multitude of mankind had bewildered me and oppressed me:\nAnd I said to God, Why hast thou made the world so wide?_\n\n_But when my friend came the wideness of the world had no more terror:\nBecause we were glad together among men who knew us not._\n\n_I was slowly reading a book that was written in a strange language:\nAnd suddenly I came upon a page in mine own familiar tongue._\n\n_This was the heart of my friend that quietly understood me:\nThe open heart whose meaning was clear without a word._\n\n_O my God whose love followeth all thy pilgrims and strangers:\nI praise thee for the comfort of comrades on a distant road._\n\n\n\n\n                                  II\n\n                         GOING UP TO JERUSALEM\n\n\nI\n\n\"THE EXCELLENCY OF SHARON\"\n\nYou understand that what we had before us in this first stage of our\njourney was a very simple proposition. The distance from Jaffa to\nJerusalem is fifty miles by railway and forty miles by carriage-road.\nThousands of pilgrims and tourists travel it every year; and most of\nthem now go by the train in about four hours, with advertised stoppages\nof three minutes at Lydda, eight minutes at Ramleh, ten minutes at\nSejed, and unadvertised delays at the convenience of the engine. But we\ndid not wish to get our earliest glimpse of Palestine from a car-window,\nnor to begin our travels in a mechanical way. The first taste of a\njourney often flavours it to the very end.\n\nThe old highroad, which is now much less frequented than formerly, is\nvery fair as far as Ramleh; and beyond that it is still navigable for\nvehicles, though somewhat broken and billowy. Our plan, therefore, was\nto drive the first ten miles, where the road was flat and\nuninteresting, and then ride the rest of the way. This would enable us\nto avoid the advertised rapidity and the uncertain delays of the\nrailway, and bring us quietly through the hills, about the close of the\nsecond day, to the gates of Jerusalem.\n\nThe two victorias rattled through the streets of Jaffa, past the low,\nflat-topped Oriental houses, the queer little open shops, the\norange-groves in full bloom, the palm-trees waving their plumes over\ngarden-walls, and rolled out upon the broad highroad across the fertile,\ngently undulating Plain of Sharon. On each side were the neat,\nwell-cultivated fields and vegetable-gardens of the German colonists\nbelonging to the sect of the Templers. They are a people of antique\ntheology and modern agriculture. Believing that the real Christianity is\nto be found in the Old Testament rather than in the New, they propose to\nbegin the social and religious reformation of the world by a return to\nthe programme of the Minor Prophets. But meantime they conduct their\nfarming operations in a very profitable way. Their grain-fields, their\nfruit-orchards, their vegetable-gardens are trim and orderly, and they\nmake an excellent wine, which they call \"The Treasure of Zion.\" Their\neffect upon the landscape, however, is conventional.\n\nBut in spite of the presence and prosperity of the Templers, the spirit\nof the scene through which we passed was essentially Oriental. The\nstraggling hedges of enormous cactus, the rows of plumy\neucalyptus-trees, the budding figs and mulberries, gave it a\nsemi-tropical touch and along the highway we encountered fragments of\nthe leisurely, dishevelled, dignified East: grotesque camels, pensive\ndonkeys carrying incredible loads, flocks of fat-tailed sheep and\nlop-eared goats, bronzed peasants in flowing garments, and white-robed\nwomen with veiled faces.\n\nBeneath the tall tower of the forty martyrs at Ramleh (Mohammedan or\nChristian, their names are forgotten) we left the carriages, loaded our\nluggage on the three pack-mules, mounted our saddle-horses, and rode on\nacross the plain, one of the fruitful gardens and historic battle-fields\nof the world. Here the hosts of the Israelites and the Philistines, the\nEgyptians and the Romans, the Persians and the Arabs, the Crusaders and\nthe Saracens, have marched and contended. But as we passed through the\nsun-showers and rain-showers of an April afternoon, all was tranquillity\nand beauty on every side. The rolling fields were embroidered with\ninnumerable flowers. The narcissus, the \"rose of Sharon,\" had faded. But\nthe little blue \"lilies-of-the-valley\" were there, and the pink and\nsaffron mallows, and the yellow and white daisies, and the violet and\nsnow of the drooping cyclamen, and the gold of the genesta, and the\norange-red of the pimpernel, and, most beautiful of all, the glowing\nscarlet of the numberless anemones. Wide acres of young wheat and barley\nglistened in the light, as the wind-waves rippled through their short,\nsilken blades. There were few trees, except now and then an\nolive-orchard or a round-topped carob with its withered pods.\n\n[Illustration: The Tall Tower of the Forty Martyrs at Ramleh.]\n\nThe highlands of Judea lay stretched out along the eastern horizon, a\nline of azure and amethystine heights, changing colour and seeming\nalmost to breathe and move as the cloud shadows fleeted over them, and\nreaching away northward and southward as far as eye could see. Rugged\nand treeless, save for a clump of oaks or terebinths planted here or\nthere around some Mohammedan saint's tomb, they would have seemed\nforbidding but that their slopes were clothed with the tender herbage of\nspring, their outlines varied with deep valleys and blue gorges, and all\ntheir mighty bulwarks jewelled right royally with the opalescence of\nsunset.\n\nIn a hollow of the green plain to the left we could see the white houses\nand the yellow church tower of Lydda, the supposed burial-place of Saint\nGeorge of Cappadocia, who killed the dragon and became the patron saint\nof England. On a conical hill to the right shone the tents of the Scotch\nexplorer who is excavating the ancient city of Gezer, which was the\ndowry of Pharaoh's daughter when she married King Solomon. City, did I\nsay? At least four cities are packed one upon another in that grassy\nmound, the oldest going back to the flint age; and yet if you should\nexamine their site and measure their ruins, you would feel sure that\nnone of them could ever have amounted to anything more than what we\nshould call a poor little town.\n\nIt came upon us gently but irresistibly that afternoon, as we rode\neasily across the land of the Philistines in a few hours, that we had\nnever really read the Old Testament as it ought to be read,--as a book\nwritten in an Oriental atmosphere, filled with the glamour, the imagery,\nthe magniloquence of the East. Unconsciously we had been reading it as\nif it were a collection of documents produced in Heidelberg, Germany, or\nin Boston, Massachusetts: precise, literal, scientific.\n\nWe had been imagining the Philistines as a mighty nation, and their land\nas a vast territory filled with splendid cities and ruled by powerful\nmonarchs. We had been trying to understand and interpret the stories of\ntheir conflict with Israel as if they had been written by a Western\nwar-correspondent, careful to verify all his statistics and meticulous\nin the exact description of all his events. This view of things melted\nfrom us with a gradual surprise as we realised that the more deeply we\nentered into the poetry, the closer we should come to the truth, of the\nnarrative. Its moral and religious meaning is firm and steadfast as the\nmountains round about Jerusalem; but even as those mountains rose before\nus glorified, uplifted, and bejewelled by the vague splendours of the\nsunset, so the form of the history was enlarged and its colours\nirradiated by the figurative spirit of the East.\n\nThere at our feet, bathed in the beauty of the evening air, lay the\nValley of Aijalon, where Joshua fought with the \"five kings of the\nAmorites,\" and broke them and chased them. The \"kings\" were head-men of\nscattered villages, chiefs of fierce and ragged tribes. But the fighting\nwas hard, and as Joshua led his wild clansmen down upon them from the\nascent of Beth-horon, he feared the day might be too short to win the\nvictory. So he cheered the hearts of his men with an old war-song from\nthe Book of Jasher.\n\n  \"Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon;\n  And thou, moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.\n  And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed,\n  Until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies.\"\n\nDoes any one suppose that this is intended to teach us that the sun\nmoves and that on this day his course was arrested? Must we believe that\nthe whole solar system was dislocated for the sake of this battle? To\nunderstand the story thus is to misunderstand its vital spirit. It is\npoetry, imagination, heroism. By the new courage that came into the\nhearts of Israel with their leader's song, the Lord shortened the\nconflict to fit the day, and the sunset and the moonrise saw the Valley\nof Aijalon swept clean of Israel's foes.\n\nAs we passed through the wretched, mud-built village of Latrun (said to\nbe the birthplace of the Penitent Thief), a dozen long-robed Arabs were\nearnestly discussing some question of municipal interest in the grassy\nmarket-place. They were as grave as the storks, in their solemn plumage\nof black and white, which were parading philosophically along the edge\nof a marsh to our right. A couple of jackals slunk furtively across the\nroad ahead of us in the dusk. A _kafila_ of long-necked camels undulated\nover the plain. The shadows fell more heavily over cactus-hedge and\nolive-orchard as we turned down the hill.\n\nIn the valley night had come. The large, trembling stars were strewn\nthrough the vault above us, and rested on the dim ridges of the\nmountains, and shone reflected in the puddles of the long road like\nfallen jewels. The lights of Latrun, if it had any, were already out of\nsight behind us. Our horses were weary and began to stumble. Where was\nthe camp?\n\nLook, there is a light, bobbing along the road toward us. It is\nYoussouf, our faithful major-domo, come out with a lantern to meet us. A\nfew rods farther through the mud, and we turn a corner beside an acacia\nhedge and the ruined arch of an ancient well. There, in a little field\nof flowers, close to the tiniest of brooks, our tents are waiting for us\nwith open doors. The candles are burning on the table. The rugs are\nspread and the beds are made. The dinner-table is laid for four, and\nthere is a bright bunch of flowers in the middle of it. We have seen the\nexcellency of Sharon and the moon is shining for us on the Valley of\nAijalon.\n\n\nII\n\n\"THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS\"\n\nIt is no hardship to rise early in camp. At the windows of a house the\ndaylight often knocks as an unwelcome messenger, rousing the sleeper\nwith a sudden call. But through the roof and the sides of a tent it\nenters gently and irresistibly, embracing you with soft arms, laying\nrosy touches on your eyelids; and while your dream fades you know that\nyou are awake and it is already day.\n\nAs we lift the canvas curtains and come out of our pavilions, the sun is\njust topping the eastern hills, and all the field around us glittering\nwith immense drops of dew. On the top of the ruined arch beside the camp\nour Arab watchman, hired from the village of Latrun as we passed, is\nstill perched motionless, wrapped in his flowing rags, holding his long\ngun across his knees.\n\n\"_Salam 'aleikum, ya ghafir!_\" I say, and though my Arabic is doubtless\nastonishingly bad, he knows my meaning; for he answers gravely,\n\"_'Aleikum essalam!_--And with you be peace!\"\n\nIt is indeed a peaceful day in which our journey to Jerusalem is\ncompleted. Leaving the tents and impedimenta in charge of Youssouf and\nShukari the cook, and the muleteers, we are in the saddle by seven\no'clock, and riding into the narrow entrance of the Wadi 'Ali. It is a\nlong, steep valley leading into the heart of the hills. The sides are\nribbed with rocks, among which the cyclamens grow in profusion. A few\nolives are scattered along the bottom of the vale, and at the tomb of\nthe Imam 'Ali there is a grove of large trees. At the summit of the pass\nwe rest for half an hour, to give our horses a breathing-space, and to\nrefresh our eyes with the glorious view westward over the tumbled\ncountry of the Shephelah, the opalescent Plain of Sharon, the sand-hills\nof the coast, and the broad blue of the Mediterranean. Northward and\nsouthward and eastward the rocky summits and ridges of Judea roll away.\n\nNow we understand what the Psalmist means by ascribing \"the strength of\nthe hills\" to Jehovah; and a new light comes into the song:\n\n  \"As the mountains are round about Jerusalem,\n  So Jehovah is round about his people.\"\n\nThese natural walls and terraces of gray limestone have the air of\nantique fortifications and watch-towers of the border. They are truly\n\"munitions of rocks.\" Chariots and horsemen could find no field for\ntheir manoeuvres in this broken and perpendicular country. Entangled\nin these deep and winding valleys by which they must climb up from the\nplain, the invaders would be at the mercy of the light infantry of the\nhighlands, who would roll great stones upon them as they passed through\nthe narrow defiles, and break their ranks by fierce and sudden downward\nrushes as they toiled panting up the steep hillsides. It was this\nstrength of the hills that the children of Israel used for the defence\nof Jerusalem, and by this they were able to resist and defy the\nPhilistines, whom they could never wholly conquer.\n\nYonder on the hillside, as we ride onward, we see a reminder of that old\ntribal warfare between the people of the highlands and the people of the\nplains. That gray village, perched upon a rocky ridge above thick\nolive-orchards and a deliciously green valley, is the ancient\nKirjath-Jearim, where the Ark of Jehovah was hidden for twenty years,\nafter the Philistines had sent back this perilous trophy of their\nvictory over the sons of Eli, being terrified by the pestilence and\ndisaster that followed its possession. The men of Beth-shemesh, to whom\nit was first returned, were afraid to keep it, because they also had\nbeen smitten with death when they dared to peep into this dreadful box.\nBut the men of Kirjath-Jearim were at once bolder and wiser, so they\n\"came and fetched up the Ark of Jehovah, and brought it into the house\nof Abinadab in the hill, and set apart Eleazar, his son, to keep the Ark\nof Jehovah.\"\n\nWhat strange vigils in that little hilltop cottage where the young man\nwatches over this precious, dangerous, gilded coffer, while Saul is\nwinning and losing his kingdom in a turmoil of blood and sorrow and\nmadness, forgetful of Israel's covenant with the Most High! At last\ncomes King David, from his newly won stronghold of Zion, seeking eagerly\nfor this lost symbol of the people's faith. \"Lo, we heard of it at\nEphratah; we found it in the field of the wood.\" So the gray stone\ncottage on the hilltop gave up its sacred treasure, and David carried it\naway with festal music and dancing. But was Eleazar glad, I wonder, or\nsorry, that his long vigil was ended?\n\nTo part from a care is sometimes like losing a friend.\n\nI confess that it is difficult to make these ancient stories of peril\nand adventure, (or even the modern history of Abu Ghosh the robber-chief\nof this village a hundred years ago), seem real to us to-day.\nEverything around us is so safe and tranquil, and, in spite of its\nnovelty, so familiar. The road descends steeply with long curves and\nwindings into the Wadi Beit Hanina. We meet and greet many travellers,\non horseback, in carriages and afoot, natives and pilgrims, German\ncolonists, French priests, Italian monks, English tourists and\nexplorers. It is a pleasant game to guess from an approaching pilgrim's\nlooks whether you should salute him with \"_Guten Morgen_,\" or \"_Buon'\nGiorno_,\" or \"_Bon jour_, _m'sieur_.\" The country people answer your\nsalutation with a pretty phrase: \"_Neharak said umubarak_--May your day\nbe happy and blessed.\"\n\nAt Kaloniyeh, in the bottom of the valley, there is a prosperous\nsettlement of German Jews; and the gardens and orchards are flourishing.\nThere is also a little wayside inn, a rude stone building, with a\nterrace around it; and there, with apricots and plums blossoming beside\nus, we eat our lunch _al fresco_, and watch our long pack-train, with\nthe camp and baggage, come winding down the hill and go tinkling past us\ntoward Jerusalem.\n\nThe place is very friendly; we are in no haste to leave it. A few miles\nto the southward, sheltered in the lap of a rounding hill, we can see\nthe tall cypress-trees and quiet gardens of 'Ain Karim, the village\nwhere John the Baptist was born. It has a singular air of attraction,\nseen from a distance, and one of the sweetest stories in the world is\nassociated with it. For it was there that the young bride Mary visited\nher older cousin Elizabeth,--you remember the exquisite picture of the\n\"Visitation\" by Albertinelli in the Uffizi at Florence,--and the joy of\ncoming motherhood in these two women's hearts spoke from each to each\nlike a bell and its echo. Would the birth of Jesus, the character of\nJesus, have been possible unless there had been the virginal and\nexpectant soul of such a woman as Mary, ready to welcome His coming with\nher song? \"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in\nGod my Saviour.\" Does not the advent of a higher manhood always wait for\nthe hope and longing of a nobler womanhood?\n\nThe chiming of the bells of St. John floats faintly and silverly across\nthe valley as we leave the shelter of the wayside rest-house and mount\nfor the last stage of our upward journey. The road ascends steeply.\nNestled in the ravine to our left is the grizzled and dilapidated\nvillage of Lifta, a town with an evil reputation.\n\n\"These people sold all their land,\" says George the dragoman, \"twenty\nyears ago, sold all the fields, gardens, olive-groves. Now they are\ndirty and lazy in that village,--all thieves!\"\n\nOver the crest of the hill the red-tiled roofs of the first houses of\nJerusalem are beginning to appear. They are houses of mercy, it seems:\none an asylum for the insane, the other a home for the aged poor.\nPassing them, we come upon schools and hospital buildings and other\nevidences of the charity of the Rothschilds toward their own people. All\naround us are villas and consulates, and rows of freshly built houses\nfor Jewish colonists.\n\nThis is not at all the way that we had imagined to ourselves the first\nsight of the Holy City. All here is half-European, unromantic, not very\npicturesque. It may not be \"the New Jerusalem,\" but it is certainly a\nmodern Jerusalem. Here, in these comfortably commonplace dwellings, is\nalmost half the present population of the city; and rows of new houses\nare rising on every side.\n\nBut look down the southward-sloping road. There is the sight that you\nhave imagined and longed to see: the brown battlements, the white-washed\nhouses, the flat roofs, the slender minarets, the many-coloured domes of\nthe ancient city of David, and Solomon, and Hezekiah, and Herod, and\nOmar, and Godfrey, and Saladin,--but never of Christ. That great black\ndome is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The one beyond it is the\nMosque of Omar. Those golden bulbs and pinnacles beyond the city are the\nGreek Church of Saint Mary Magdalen on the side of the Mount of Olives;\nand on the top of the lofty ridge rises the great pointed tower of the\nRussians from which a huge bell booms out a deep-toned note of welcome.\n\nOn every side we see the hospices and convents and churches and palaces\nof the different sects of Christendom. The streets are full of people\nand carriages and beasts of burden. The dust rises around us. We are\ntired with the trab, trab, trab of our horses' feet upon the hard\nhighroad. Let us not go into the confusion of the city, but ride quietly\ndown to the left into a great olive-grove, outside the Damascus Gate.\n\nHere our white tents are pitched among the trees, with the dear flag of\nour home flying over them. Here we shall find leisure and peace to unite\nour hearts, and bring our thoughts into tranquil harmony, before we go\ninto the bewildering city. Here the big stars will look kindly down upon\nus through the silvery leaves, and the sounds of human turmoil and\ncontention will not trouble us. The distant booming of the bell on the\nMount of Olives will mark the night-hours for us, and the long-drawn\nplaintive call of the muezzin from the minaret of the little mosque at\nthe edge of the grove will wake us to the sunrise.\n\n\n_A PSALM OF THE WELCOME TENT_\n\n_This is the thanksgiving of the weary:\nThe song of him that is ready to rest._\n\n_It is good to be glad when the day is declining:\nAnd the setting of the sun is like a word of peace._\n\n_The stars look kindly on the close of a journey:\nThe tent says welcome when the day's march is done._\n\n_For now is the time of the laying down of burdens:\nAnd the cool hour cometh to them that have borne the heat._\n\n_I have rejoiced greatly in labour and adventure:\nMy heart hath been enlarged in the spending of my strength._\n\n_Now it is all gone yet I am not impoverished:\nFor thus only may I inherit the treasure of repose._\n\n_Blessed be the Lord that teacheth my hands to unclose and my fingers\n          to loosen:\nHe also giveth comfort to the feet that are washed from the dust of\n          the way._\n\n_Blessed be the Lord that maketh my meat at nightfall savoury:\nAnd filleth my evening cup with the wine of good cheer._\n\n_Blessed be the Lord that maketh me happy to be quiet:\nEven as a child that cometh softly to his mother's lap._\n\n_O God thou faintest not neither is thy strength worn away with labour:\nBut it is good for us to be weary that we may obtain thy gift of rest._\n\n\n\n\n                                    III\n\n                             THE GATES OF ZION\n\n\nI\n\nA CITY THAT IS SET ON A HILL\n\nOut of the medley of our first impressions of Jerusalem one fact emerges\nlike an island from the sea: it is a city that is lifted up. No river;\nno harbour; no encircling groves and gardens; a site so lonely and so\nlofty that it breathes the very spirit of isolation and proud\nself-reliance.\n\n  \"Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth\n  Is Mount Zion, on the sides of the north\n  The city of the great King.\"\n\nThus sang the Hebrew poet; and his song, like all true poetry, has the\naccuracy of the clearest vision. For this is precisely the one beauty\nthat crowns Jerusalem: the beauty of a high place and all that belongs\nto it: clear sky, refreshing air, a fine outlook, and that indefinable\nsense of exultation that comes into the heart of man when he climbs a\nlittle nearer to the stars.\n\nTwenty-five hundred feet above the level of the sea is not a great\nheight; but I can think of no other ancient and world-famous city that\nstands as high. Along the mountainous plateau of Judea, between the\nsea-coast plain of Philistia and the sunken valley of the Jordan, there\nis a line of sacred sites,--Beersheba, Hebron, Bethlehem, Bethel,\nShiloh, Shechem. Each of them marks the place where a town grew up\naround an altar. The central link in this chain of shrine-cities is\nJerusalem. Her form and outline, her relation to the landscape and to\nthe land, are unchanged from the days of her greatest glory. The\nsplendours of her Temple and her palaces, the glitter of her armies, the\nrich colour and glow of her abounding wealth, have vanished. But though\nher garments are frayed and weather-worn, though she is an impoverished\nand dusty queen, she still keeps her proud position and bearing; and as\nyou approach her by the ancient road along the ridges of Judea you see\nsubstantially what Sennacherib, and Nebuchadnezzar, and the Roman Titus\nmust have seen.\n\n\"The sides of the north\" slope gently down to the huge gray wall of the\ncity, with its many towers and gates. Within those bulwarks, which are\nthirty-eight feet high and two and a half miles in circumference,\n\"Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together,\" covering with\nher huddled houses and crooked, narrow streets, the two or three rounded\nhills and shallow depressions in which the northern plateau terminates.\nSouth and east and west, the valley of the Brook Kidron and the Valley\nof Himmon surround the city wall with a dry moat three or four hundred\nfeet deep.\n\nImagine the knuckles of a clenched fist, extended toward the south: that\nis the site of Jerusalem, impregnable, (at least in ancient warfare),\nfrom all sides except the north, where the wrist joins it to the higher\ntableland. This northern approach, open to Assyria, and Babylon, and\nDamascus, and Persia, and Greece, and Rome, has always been the weak\npoint of Jerusalem. She was no unassailable fortress of natural\nstrength, but a city lifted up, a lofty shrine, whose refuge and\nsalvation were in Jehovah,--in the faith, the loyalty, the courage which\nflowed into the heart of her people from their religion. When these\nfailed, she fell.\n\nJerusalem is no longer, and never again will be, the capital of an\nearthly kingdom. But she is still one of the high places of the world,\nexalted in the imagination and the memory of Jews and Christians and\nMohammedans, a metropolis of infinite human hopes and longings and\ndevotions. Hither come the innumerable companies of foot-weary pilgrims,\nclimbing the steep roads from the sea-coast, from the Jordan, from\nBethlehem,--pilgrims who seek the place of the Crucifixion, pilgrims who\nwould weep beside the walls of their vanished Temple, pilgrims who\ndesire to pray where Mohammed prayed. Century after century these human\nthrongs have assembled from far countries and toiled upward to this\nopen, lofty plateau, where the ancient city rests upon the top of the\nclosed hand, and where the ever-changing winds from the desert and the\nsea sweep and shift over the rocky hilltops, the mute, gray battlements,\nand the domes crowned with the cross, the crescent, and the star.\n\n\"The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but\nknowest not whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth; so is every one that\nis born of the Spirit.\"\n\nThe mystery of the heart of mankind, the spiritual airs that breathe\nthrough it, the desires and aspirations that impel men in their\njourneyings, the common hopes that bind them together in companies, the\nfears and hatreds that array them in warring hosts,--there is no place\nin the world to-day where you can feel all this so deeply, so\ninevitably, so overwhelmingly, as at the Gates of Zion.\n\nIt is a feeling of confusion, at first: a bewildering sense of something\nvast and old and secret, speaking many tongues, taking many forms, yet\nnever fully revealing its source and its meaning. The Jews, Mohammedans,\nand Christians who flock to those gates are alike in their sincerity, in\ntheir devotion, in the spirit of sacrifice that leads them on their\npilgrimage. Among them all there are hypocrites and bigots, doubtless,\nbut there are also earnest and devout souls, seeking something that is\nhigher than themselves, \"a city set upon a hill.\" Why do they not\nunderstand one another? Why do they fight and curse one another? Do they\nnot all come to humble themselves, to pray, to seek the light?\n\nDark walls that embrace so many tear-stained, blood-stained, holy and\ndishonoured shrines! And you, narrow and gloomy gates, through whose\nportals so many myriads of mankind have passed with their swords, their\nstaves, their burdens and their palm-branches! What songs of triumph you\nhave heard, what yells of battle-rage, what moanings of despair, what\nmurmurs of hopes and gratitude, what cries of anguish, what bursts of\ncareless, happy laughter,--all borne upon the wind that bloweth where it\nwill across these bare and rugged heights. We will not seek to enter yet\ninto the mysteries that you hide. We will tarry here for a while in the\nopen sunlight, where the cool breeze of April stirs the olive-groves\noutside the Damascus Gate. We will tranquillize our thoughts,--perhaps\nwe may even find them growing clearer and surer,--among the simple cares\nand pleasures that belong to the life of every day; the life which must\nhave food when it is hungry, and rest when it is weary, and a shelter\nfrom the storm and the night; the life of those who are all strangers\nand sojourners upon the earth, and whose richest houses and strongest\ncities are, after all, but a little longer-lasting tents and camps.\n\n\nII\n\nTHE CAMP IN THE OLIVE-GROVE\n\nThe place of our encampment is peaceful and friendly, without being\nremote or secluded. The grove is large and free from all undergrowth:\nthe trunks of the ancient olive-trees are gnarled and massive, the\nfoliage soft and tremulous. The corner that George has chosen for us is\nraised above the road by a kind of terrace, so that it is not too easily\naccessible to the curious passer-by. Across the road we see a gray stone\nwall, and above it the roof of the Anglican Bishop's house, and the\nschools, from which a sound of shrill young voices shouting in play or\nchanting in unison rises at intervals through the day. The ground on\nwhich we stand is slightly furrowed with the little ridges of last\nyear's ploughing: but it has not yet been broken this spring, and it is\ncovered with millions of infinitesimal flowers, blue and purple and\nyellow and white, like tiny pansies run wild.\n\nThe four tents, each circular and about fifteen feet in diameter, are\narranged in a crescent. The one nearest to the road is for the kitchen\nand service; there Shukari, our Maronite _chef_, in his white cap and\napron, turns out an admirable six-course dinner on a portable charcoal\nrange not three feet square. Around the door of this tent there is much\ncoming and going: edibles of all kinds are brought for sale; visitors\nsquat in sociable conversation; curious children hang about, watching\nthe proceedings, or waiting for the favours which a good cook can\nbestow.\n\nThe next tent is the dining-room; the huge wooden chests of the canteen,\nfull of glass and china and table-linen and new Britannia-ware, which\nshines like silver, are placed one on each side of the entrance; behind\nthe central tent-pole stands the dining-table, with two chairs at the\nback and one at each end, so that we can all enjoy the view through the\nopen door. The tent is lofty and lined with many-coloured cotton cloth,\narranged in elaborate patterns, scarlet and green and yellow and blue.\nWhen the four candles are lighted on the well-spread table, and Youssouf\nthe Greek, in his embroidered jacket and baggy blue breeches, comes in\nto serve the dinner, it is quite an Oriental scene. His assistant,\nLittle Youssouf, the Copt, squats outside of the tent, at one side of\nthe door, to wash up the dishes and polish the Britannia-ware.\n\nThe two other tents are of the same pattern and the same gaudy colours\nwithin: each of them contains two little iron bedsteads, two Turkish\nrugs, two washstands, one dressing-table, and such baggage as we had\nimagined necessary for our comfort, piled around the tent-pole,--this by\nway of precaution, lest some misguided hand should be tempted to slip\nunder the canvas at night and abstract an unconsidered trifle lying near\nthe edge of the tent.\n\nOf our own men I must say that we never had a suspicion, either of their\nhonesty or of their good-humour. Not only the four who had most\nimmediately to do with us, but also the two chief muleteers, Mohammed\n'Ali and Mousa, and the songful boy, Mohammed el Nasan, who warbled an\ninterminable Arabian ditty all day long, and Faris and the two other\nassistants, were models of fidelity and willing service. They did not\nquarrel (except once, over the division of the mule-loads, in the\nmountains of Gilead); they got us into no difficulties and subjected us\nto no blackmail from humbugging Bedouin chiefs. They are of a\npicturesque motley in costume and of a bewildering variety in\ncreed--Anglican, Catholic, Coptic, Maronite, Greek, Mohammedan, and one\nof whom the others say that \"he belongs to no religion, but sings\nbeautiful Persian songs.\" Yet, so far as we are concerned, they all do\nthe things they ought to do and leave undone the things they ought not\nto do, and their way with us is peace. Much of this, no doubt, is due to\nthe wisdom, tact, and firmness of George the Bethlehemite, the best of\ndragomans.\n\nWe have many visitors at the camp, but none unwelcome. The American\nConsul, a genial scholar who knows Palestine by heart and has made\nvaluable contributions to the archaeology of Jerusalem, comes with his\nwife to dine with us in the open air. George's gentle wife and his two\nbright little boys, Howard and Robert, are with us often. Missionaries\ncome to tell us of their labours and trials. An Arab hunter, with his\nlong flintlock musket, brings us beautiful gray partridges which he has\nshot among the near-by hills. The stable-master comes day after day\nwith strings of horses galloping through the grove; for our first mounts\nwere not to our liking, and we are determined not to start on our longer\nride until we have found steeds that suit us. Peasants from the country\nround about bring all sorts of things to sell--vegetables, and lambs,\nand pigeons, and old coins, and embroidered caps.\n\nThere are two men ploughing in a vineyard behind the camp, beyond the\nedge of the grove. The plough is a crooked stick of wood which scratches\nthe surface of the earth. The vines are lying flat on the ground, still\nleafless, closely pruned: they look like big black snakes.\n\nWomen of the city, dressed in black and blue silks, with black mantles\nover their heads, come out in the afternoon to picnic among the trees.\nThey sit in little circles on the grass, smoking cigarettes and eating\nsweetmeats. If they see us looking at them they draw the corners of\ntheir mantles across the lower part of their faces; but when they think\nthemselves unobserved they drop their veils and regard us curiously with\nlustrous brown eyes.\n\nOne morning a procession of rustic women and girls, singing with shrill\nvoices, pass the camp on their way to the city to buy the bride's\nclothes for a wedding. At nightfall they return singing yet more loudly,\nand accompanied by men and boys firing guns into the air and shouting.\n\nAnother day a crowd of villagers go by. Their old Sheikh rides in the\nmidst of them, with his white-and-gold turban, his long gray beard, his\nflowing robes of rich silk. He is mounted on a splendid white Arab\nhorse, with arched neck and flaunting tail; and a beautiful, gaily\ndressed little boy rides behind him with both arms clasped around the\nold man's waist. They are going up to the city for the Mohammedan rite\nof circumcision.\n\nLater in the day a Jewish funeral comes hurrying through the grove: some\ntwenty or thirty men in flat caps trimmed with fur and gabardines of\ncotton velvet, purple, or yellow, or pink, chanting psalms as they\nmarch, with the body of the dead man wrapped in linen cloth and carried\non a rude bier on their shoulders. They seem in haste, (because the hour\nis late and the burial must be made before sunset), perhaps a little\nindifferent, or almost joyful. Certainly there is no sign of grief in\ntheir looks or their voices; for among them it is counted a fortunate\nthing to die in the Holy City and to be buried on the southern slope of\nthe Valley of Jehoshaphat, where Gabriel is to blow his trumpet for the\nresurrection.\n\n\nIII\n\nIN THE STREETS OF JERUSALEM\n\nOutside the gates we ride, for the roads which encircle the city wall\nand lead off to the north and south and east and west, are fairly broad\nand smooth. But within the gates we walk, for the streets are narrow,\nsteep and slippery, and to attempt them on horseback is to travel with\nan anxious mind.\n\nThrough the Jaffa Gate, indeed, you may easily ride, or even drive in\nyour carriage: not through the gateway itself, which is a close and\ncrooked alley, but through the great gap in the wall beside it, made for\nthe German Emperor to pass through at the time of his famous imperial\nscouting-expedition in Syria in 1898. Thus following the track of the\ngreat William you come to the entrance of the Grand New Hotel, among\ncuriosity-shops and tourist-agencies, where a multitude of bootblacks\nassure you that you need \"a shine,\" and _valets de place_ press their\nservices upon you, and ingratiating young merchants try to allure you\ninto their establishments to purchase photographs or embroidered scarves\nor olive-wood souvenirs of the Holy Land.\n\n[Illustration: A Street in Jerusalem.]\n\nCome over to Cook's office, where we get our letters, and stand for a\nwhile on the little terrace with the iron railing, looking at the motley\ncrowd which fills the place in front of the citadel. Groups of\nblue-robed peasant women sit on the curbstone, selling firewood and\ngrass and vegetables. Their faces are bare and brown, wrinkled with the\nsun and the wind. Turkish soldiers in dark-green uniform, Greek priests\nin black robes and stove-pipe hats, Bedouins in flowing cloaks of brown\nand white, pale-faced Jews with velvet gabardines and curly ear-locks,\nMoslem women in many-coloured silken garments and half-transparent\nveils, British tourists with cork helmets and white umbrellas, camels,\ndonkeys, goats, and sheep, jostle together in picturesque confusion.\nThere is a water-carrier with his shiny, dripping, bulbous goat-skin\non his shoulders. There is an Arab of the wilderness with a young\ngazelle in his arms.\n\nNow let us go down the greasy, gliddery steps of David Street, between\nthe diminutive dusky shops with open fronts where all kinds of queer\nthings to eat and to wear are sold, and all sorts of craftsmen are at\nwork making shoes, and tin pans, and copper pots, and wooden seats, and\nlittle tables, and clothes of strange pattern. A turn to the left brings\nus into Christian Street and the New Bazaar of the Greeks, with its\nmodern stores.\n\nA turn to the right and a long descent under dark archways and through\ndirty, shadowy alleys brings us to the Place of Lamentations, beside the\nancient foundation wall of the Temple, where the Jews come in the\nafternoon of Fridays and festival-days to lean their heads against the\nhuge stones and murmur forth their wailings over the downfall of\nJerusalem. \"For the majesty that is departed,\" cries the leader, and the\nothers answer: \"We sit in solitude and mourn.\" \"We pray Thee have mercy\non Zion,\" cries the leader, and the others answer: \"Gather the children\nof Jerusalem.\" With most of them it seems a perfunctory mourning; but\nthere are two or three old men with the tears running down their faces\nas they kiss the smooth-worn stones.\n\nWe enter convents and churches, mosques and tombs. We trace the course\nof the traditional _Via Dolorosa_, and try to reconstruct in our\nimagination the probable path of that grievous journey from the\njudgment-hall of injustice to the Calvary of cruelty--a path which now\nlies buried far below the present level of the city.\n\nOne impression deepens in my mind with every hour: this was never\nChrist's city. The confusion, the shallow curiosity, the self-interest,\nthe clashing prejudices, the inaccessibility of the idle and busy\nmultitudes were the same in His day that they are now. It was not here\nthat Jesus found the men and women who believed in Him and loved Him,\nbut in the quiet villages, among the green fields, by the peaceful\nlake-shores. And it is not here that we shall find the clearest traces,\nthe most intimate visions of Him, but away in the big out-of-doors,\nwhere the sky opens free above us, and the landscapes roll away to far\nhorizons.\n\nAs we loiter about the city, now alone, now under the discreet and\nunhampering escort of the Bethlehemite; watching the Mussulmans at their\ndinner in some dingy little restaurant, where kitchen, store-room and\nbanquet-hall are all in the same apartment, level and open to the\nstreet; pausing to bargain with an impassive Arab for a leather belt or\nwith an ingratiating Greek for a string of amber beads; looking in\nthrough the unshuttered windows of the Jewish houses where the families\nare gathered in festal array for the household rites of Passover week;\nturning over the chaplets, and rosaries, and anklets, and bracelets of\ncoloured glass and mother-of-pearl, and variegated stones, and curious\nbeans and seed-pods in the baskets of the street-vendors around the\nChurch of the Holy Sepulchre; stepping back into an archway to avoid a\nbag-footed camel, or a gaily caparisoned horse, or a heavy-laden donkey\npassing through a narrow street; exchanging a smile and an\nunintelligible friendly jest with a sweet-faced, careless child;\nlistening to long disputes between buyers and sellers in that\nresounding Arab tongue which seems full of tragic indignation and wrath,\nwhile the eyes of the handsome brown Bedouins who use it remain\nunsearchable in their Oriental languor and pride; Jerusalem becomes to\nus more and more a symbol and epitome of that which is changeless and\ntransient, capricious and inevitable, necessary and insignificant,\ninteresting and unsatisfying, in the unfinished tragi-comedy of human\nlife. There are times when it fascinates us with its whirling charm.\nThere are other times when we are glad to ride away from it, to seek\ncommunion with the great spirit of some antique prophet, or to find the\nconsoling presence of Him who spake the words of the eternal life.\n\n\n_A PSALM OF GREAT CITIES_\n\n_How wonderful are the cities that man hath builded:\nTheir walls are compacted of heavy stones,\nAnd their lofty towers rise above the tree-tops._\n\n_Rome, Jerusalem, Cairo, Damascus,--\nVenice, Constantinople, Moscow, Pekin,--\nLondon, New York, Berlin, Paris, Vienna,--_\n\n_These are the names of mighty enchantments:\nThey have called to the ends of the earth,\nThey have secretly summoned an host of servants._\n\n_They shine from far sitting beside great waters:\nThey are proudly enthroned upon high hills,\nThey spread out their splendour along the rivers._\n\n_Yet are they all the work of small patient fingers:\nTheir strength is in the hand of man,\nHe hath woven his flesh and blood into their glory._\n\n_The cities are scattered over the world like ant-hills:\nEvery one of them is full of trouble and toil,\nAnd their makers run to and fro within them._\n\n_Abundance of riches is laid up in their store-houses:\nYet they are tormented with the fear of want,\nThe cry of the poor in their streets is exceeding bitter._\n\n_Their inhabitants are driven by blind perturbations:\nThey whirl sadly in the fever of haste,\nSeeking they know not what, they pursue it fiercely._\n\n_The air is heavy-laden with their breathing:\nThe sound of their coming and going is never still,\nEven in the night I hear them whispering and crying._\n\n_Beside every ant-hill I behold a monster crouching:\nThis is the ant-lion Death,\nHe thrusteth forth his tongue and the people perish._\n\n_O God of wisdom thou hast made the country:\nWhy hast thou suffered man to make the town?_\n\n_Then God answered, Surely I am the maker of man:\nAnd in the heart of man I have set the city._\n\n\n\n\n                                  IV\n\n                    MIZPAH AND THE MOUNT OF OLIVES\n\n\nI\n\nTHE JUDGMENT-SEAT OF SAMUEL\n\nMizpah of Benjamin stands to the northwest: the sharpest peak in the\nJudean range, crowned with a ragged, dusty village and a small mosque.\nWe rode to it one morning over the steepest, stoniest bridle-paths that\nwe had ever seen. The country was bleak and rocky, a skeleton of\nlandscape; but between the stones and down the precipitous hillsides and\nalong the hot gorges, the incredible multitude of spring flowers were\nabloom.\n\nIt was a stiff scramble up the conical hill to the little hamlet at the\ntop, built out of and among ruins. The mosque, evidently an old\nChristian church remodelled, was bare, but fairly clean, cool, and\ntranquil. We peered through a grated window, tied with many-coloured\nscraps of rags by the Mohammedan pilgrims, into a whitewashed room\ncontaining a huge sarcophagus said to be the tomb of Samuel. Then we\nclimbed the minaret and lingered on the tiny railed balcony, feeding on\nthe view.\n\nThe peak on which we stood was isolated by deep ravines from the other\nhills of desolate gray and scanty green. Beyond the western range lay\nthe Valley of Aijalon, and beyond that the rich Plain of Sharon with\niridescent hues of green and blue and silver, and beyond that the yellow\nline of the sand-dunes broken by the white spot of Jaffa, and beyond\nthat the azure breadth of the Mediterranean. Northward, at our feet, on\nthe summit of a lower conical hill, ringed with gray rock, lay the\nvillage of El-Jib, the ancient Geba of Benjamin, one of the cities which\nJoshua gave to the Levites.\n\nThis was the place from which Jonathan and his armour-bearer set out,\nwithout Saul's knowledge, on their daring, perilous scouting expedition\nagainst the Philistines. What fighting there was in olden days over that\ntumbled country of hills and gorges, stretching away north to the blue\nmountains of Samaria and the summits of Ebal and Gerizim on the horizon!\n\nThere on the rocky backbone of Benjamin and Ephraim, was Ramallah\n(where we had spent Sunday in the sweet orderliness of the Friends'\nMission School), and Beeroth, and Bethel, and Gilgal, and Shiloh.\nEastward, behind the hills, we could trace the long, vast trench of the\nJordan valley running due north and south, filled with thin violet haze\nand terminating in a glint of the Dead Sea. Beyond that deep line of\ndivision rose the mountains of Gilead and Moab, a lofty, unbroken\nbarrier. To the south-east we could see the red roofs of the new\nJerusalem, and a few domes and minarets of the ancient city. Beyond\nthem, in the south, was the truncated cone of the Frank Mountain, where\nthe crusaders made their last stand against the Saracens; and the hills\naround Bethlehem; and a glimpse, nearer at hand, of the tall cypresses\nand peaceful gardens of 'Ain Karim.\n\nThis terrestrial paradise of vision encircled us with jewel-hues and\nclear, exquisite outlines. Below us were the flat roofs of Nebi Samwil,\nwith a dog barking on every roof; the filthy courtyards and dark\ndoorways, with a woman in one of them making bread; the ruined archways\nand broken cisterns with a pool of green water stagnating in one\ncorner; peasants ploughing their stony little fields, and a string of\ndonkeys winding up the steep path to the hill.\n\nHere, centuries ago, Samuel called all Israel to Mizpah, and offered\nsacrifice before Jehovah, and judged the people. Here he inspired them\nwith new courage and sent them down to discomfit the Philistines. Hither\nhe came as judge and ruler of Israel, making his annual circuit between\nGilgal and Bethel and Mizpah. Here he assembled the tribes again, when\nthey were tired of his rule, and gave them a King according to their\ndesire, even the tall warrior Saul, the son of Kish.\n\nDo the bones of the prophet rest here or at Ramah? I do not know. But\nhere, on this commanding peak, he began and ended his judgeship; from\nthis aerie he looked forth upon the inheritance of the turbulent sons of\nJacob; and here, if you like, today, a pale, clever young Mohammedan\nwill show you what he calls the coffin of Samuel.\n\n\nII\n\nTHE HILL THAT JESUS LOVED\n\nWe had seen from Mizpah the sharp ridge of the Mount of Olives, rising\nbeyond Jerusalem. Our road thither from the camp led us around the city,\npast the Damascus Gate, and the royal grottoes, and Herod's Gate, and\nthe Tower of the Storks, and St. Stephen's Gate, down into the Valley of\nthe Brook Kidron. Here, on the west, rises the precipitous Temple Hill\ncrowned with the wall of the city, and on the east the long ridge of\nOlivet.\n\nThere are several buildings on the side of the steep hill, marking\nsupposed holy places or sacred events--the Church of the Tomb of the\nVirgin, the Latin Chapel of the Agony, the Greek Church of St. Mary\nMagdalen. On top of the ridge are the Russian Buildings, with the Chapel\nof the Ascension, and the Latin Buildings, with the Church of the Creed,\nthe Church of the Paternoster, and a Carmelite Nunnery. Among the walls\nof these inclosures we wound our way, and at last tied our horses\noutside of the Russian garden. We climbed the two hundred and fourteen\nsteps of the lofty Belvidere Tower, and found ourselves in possession of\none of the great views of the world. There is Jerusalem, across the\nKidron, spread out like a raised map below us. The mountains of Judah\nroll away north and south and east and west--the clean-cut pinnacle of\nMizpah, the lofty plain of Rephaim, the dark hills toward Hebron, the\nrounded top of Scopus where Titus camped with his Roman legions, the\nflattened peak of Frank Mountain. Bethlehem is not visible; but there is\nthe tiny village of Bethphage, and the first roof of Bethany peeping\nover the ridge, and the Inn of the Good Samaritan in a red cut of the\nlong serpentine road to Jericho. The dark range of Gilead and Moab seems\nlike a huge wall of lapis-lazuli beyond the furrowed, wrinkled,\nyellowish clay-hills and the wide gray trench of the Jordan Valley,\nwherein the river marks its crooked path with a line of deep green. The\nhundreds of ridges that slope steeply down to that immense depression\nare touched with a thousand hues of amethystine light, and the ravines\nbetween them filled with a thousand tones of azure shadow. At the end\nof the valley glitter the blue waters of the Dead Sea, fifteen miles\naway, four thousand feet below us, yet seeming so near that we almost\nexpect to hear the sound of its waves on the rocky shores of the\nWilderness of Tekoa.\n\nOn this mount Jesus of Nazareth often walked with His disciples. On this\nwidespread landscape His eyes rested as He spoke divinely of the\ninvisible kingdom of peace and love and joy that shall never pass away.\nOver this walled city, sleeping in the sunshine, full of earthly dreams\nand disappointments, battlemented hearts and whited sepulchres of the\nspirit, He wept, and cried: \"O Jerusalem, how often would I have\ngathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her own brood\nunder her wings, and ye would not!\"\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE\n\nCome down, now, from the mount of vision to the grove of olive-trees,\nthe Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus used to take refuge with His\nfriends. It lies on the eastern slope of Olivet, not far above the\nValley of Kidron, over against that city-gate which was called the\nBeautiful, or the Golden, but which is now walled up.\n\nThe grove probably belonged to some friend of Jesus or of one of His\ndisciples, who permitted them to make use of it for their quiet\nmeetings. At that time, no doubt, the whole hillside was covered with\nolive-trees, but most of these have now disappeared. The eight aged\ntrees that still cling to life in Gethsemane have been inclosed with a\nlow wall and an iron railing, and the little garden that blooms around\nthem is cared for by Franciscan monks from Italy.\n\nThe gentle, friendly Fra Giovanni, in bare sandaled feet, coarse brown\nrobe, and broad-brimmed straw hat, is walking among the flowers. He\nopens the gate for us and courteously invites us in, telling us in\nbroken French that we may pick what flowers we like. Presently I fall\ninto discourse with him in broken Italian, telling him of my visit years\nago to the cradle of his Order at Assisi, and to its most beautiful\nshrine at La Verna, high above the Val d'Arno. His old eyes soften into\nyouthful brightness as he speaks of Italy. It was most beautiful, he\nsaid, _bellisima!_ But he is happier here, caring for this garden, it is\nmost holy, _santissima!_\n\nThe bronzed Mohammedan gardener, silent, patient, absorbed in his task,\nmoves with his watering-pot among the beds, quietly refreshing the\nthirsty blossoms. There are wall-flowers, stocks, pansies, baby's\nbreath, pinks, anemones of all colours, rosemary, rue, poppies--all\nsorts of sweet old-fashioned flowers. Among them stand the scattered\nvenerable trees, with enormous trunks, wrinkled and contorted, eaten\naway by age, patched and built up with stones, protected and tended with\npious care, as if they were very old people whose life must be tenderly\nnursed and sheltered. Their boles hardly seem to be of wood; so dark, so\ntwisted, so furrowed are they, of an aspect so enduring that they\nappear to be cast in bronze or carved out of black granite. Above each\nof them spreads a crown of fresh foliage, delicate, abundant, shimmering\nsoftly in the sunlight and the breeze, with silken turnings of the under\nside of the innumerable leaves. In the centre of the garden is a kind of\nopen flower house with a fountain of flowing water, erected in memory of\na young American girl. At each corner a pair of slender cypresses lift\ntheir black-green spires against the blanched azure of the sky.\n\nIt is a place of refuge, of ineffable tranquillity, of unforgetful\ntenderness. The inclosure does not offend. How else could this sacred\nshrine of the out-of-doors be preserved? And what more fitting guardian\nfor it than the Order of that loving Saint Francis, who called the sun\nand the moon his brother and his sister and preached to a joyous\ncongregation of birds as his \"little brothers of the air\"? The flowers\ndo not offend. Their antique fragrance, gracious order, familiar looks,\nare a symbol of what faithful memory does with the sorrows and\nsufferings of those who have loved us best--she treasures and\ntransmutes them into something beautiful, she grows her sweetest flowers\nin the ground that tears have made holy.\n\nIt is here, in this quaint and carefully tended garden, this precious\nplace which has been saved alike from the oblivious trampling of the\ncrowd and from the needless imprisonment of four walls and a roof, it is\nhere in the open air, in the calm glow of the afternoon, under the\nshadow of Mount Zion, that we find for the first time that which we have\ncome so far to seek,--the soul of the Holy Land, the inward sense of the\nreal presence of Jesus.\n\nIt is as clear and vivid as any outward experience. Why should I not\nspeak of it as simply and candidly? Nothing that we have yet seen in\nPalestine, no vision of wide-spread landscape, no sight of ancient ruin\nor famous building or treasured relic, comes as close to our hearts as\nthis little garden sleeping in the sun. Nothing that we have read from\nour Bibles in the new light of this journey has been for us so suddenly\nillumined, so deeply and tenderly brought home to us, as the story of\nGethsemane.\n\nHere, indeed, in the moonlit shadow of these olives--if not of these\nvery branches, yet of others sprung from the same immemorial stems--was\nendured the deepest suffering ever borne for man, the most profound\nsorrow of the greatest Soul that loved all human souls. It was not in\nthe temptation in the wilderness, as Milton imagined, that the crisis of\nthe Divine life was enacted and Paradise was regained. It was in the\nagony in the garden.\n\nHere the love of life wrestled in the heart of Jesus with the purpose of\nsacrifice, and the anguish of that wrestling wrung the drops of blood\nfrom Him like sweat. Here, for the only time, He found the cup of sorrow\nand shame too bitter, and prayed the Father to take it from His lips if\nit were possible--possible without breaking faith, without surrendering\nlove. For that He would not do, though His soul was exceeding sorrowful,\neven unto death. Here He learned the frailty of human friendship, the\nnarrowness and dulness and coldness of the very hearts for whom He had\ndone and suffered most, who could not even watch with Him one hour.\n\nWhat infinite sense of the poverty and feebleness of mankind, the\ninveteracy of selfishness, the uncertainty of human impulses and\naspirations and promises; what poignant questioning of the necessity,\nthe utility of self-immolation must have tortured the soul of Jesus in\nthat hour! It was His black hour. None can imagine the depth of that\ndarkness but those who have themselves passed through some of its outer\nshadows, in the times when love seems vain, and sacrifice futile, and\nfriendship meaningless, and life a failure, and death intolerable.\n\nJesus met the spirit of despair in the Garden of Gethsemane; and after\nthat meeting, the cross had no terrors for Him, because He had already\nendured them; the grave no fear, because He had already conquered it.\nHow calm and gentle was the voice with which He wakened His disciples,\nhow firm the step with which He went to meet Judas! The bitterness of\ndeath was behind Him in the shadow of the olive-trees. The peace of\nHeaven shone above Him in the silent stars.\n\n\n_A PSALM OF SURRENDER_\n\n_Mine enemies have prevailed against me, O God:\nThou hast led me deep into their ambush._\n\n_They surround me with a hedge of spears:\nAnd the sword in my hand is broken._\n\n_My friends also have forsaken my side:\nFrom a safe place they look upon me with pity._\n\n_My heart is like water poured upon the ground:\nI have come alone to the place of surrender._\n\n_To thee, to thee only will I give up my sword:\nThe sword which was broken in thy service._\n\n_Thou hast required me to suffer for thy cause:\nBy my defeat thy will is victorious._\n\n_O my King show me thy face shining in the dark:\nWhile I drink the loving-cup of death to thy glory._\n\n\n\n\n                                    V\n\n                   AN EXCURSION TO BETHLEHEM AND HEBRON\n\n\nI\n\nBETHLEHEM\n\nA sparkling morning followed a showery night, and all the little red and\nwhite and yellow flowers were lifting glad faces to the sun as we took\nthe highroad to Bethlehem. Leaving the Jaffa Gate on the left, we\ncrossed the head of the deep Valley of Hinnom, below the dirty Pool of\nthe Sultan, and rode up the hill on the opposite side of the vale.\n\nThere was much rubbish and filth around us, and the sight of the\nOphthalmic Hospital of the English Knights of Saint John, standing in\nthe beauty of cleanness and order beside the road, did our eyes good.\nBlindness is one of the common afflictions of the people of Palestine.\nNeglect and ignorance and dirt and the plague of crawling flies spread\nthe germs of disease from eye to eye, and the people submit to it with\npathetic and irritating fatalism. It is hard to persuade these poor\nsouls that the will of Allah or Jehovah in this matter ought not to be\naccepted until after it has been questioned. But the light of true and\nhumane religion is spreading a little. We rejoiced to see the\nreception-room of the hospital filled with all sorts and conditions of\nmen, women and children waiting for the good physicians who save and\nrestore sight in the name of Jesus.\n\nTo the right, a little below us, lay the ugly railway station; before\nus, rising gently southward, extended the elevated Plain of Rephaim\nwhere David smote the host of the Philistines after he had heard \"the\nsound of a going in the tops of the mulberry-trees.\" The red soil was\ncultivated in little farms and gardens. The almond-trees were in leaf;\nthe hawthorn in blossom; the fig-trees were putting forth their tender\ngreen.\n\n[Illustration: A Street in Bethlehem.]\n\nA slowly ascending road brought us to the hill of Mar Elyas, and the\nso-called Well of the Magi. Here the legend says the Wise Men halted\nafter they had left Jerusalem, and the star reappeared to guide them on\nto Bethlehem. Certain it is that they must have taken this road; and\ncertain it is that both Bethlehem and Jerusalem, hidden from each other\nby the rising ground, are clearly visible to one who stands in the\nsaddle of this hill.\n\nThere were fine views down the valleys to the east, with blue glimpses\nof the Dead Sea at the end of them. The supposed tomb of Rachel, a dingy\nlittle building with a white dome, interested us less than the broad\nlake of olive-orchards around the distant village of Beit Jala, and the\ngreen fields, pastures and gardens encircling the double hill of\nBethlehem, the ancient \"House of Bread.\" There was an aspect of\nfertility and friendliness about the place that seemed in harmony with\nits name and its poetic memories.\n\nIn a walled kitchen-garden at the entrance of the town was David's Well.\nWe felt no assurance, of course, as we looked down into it, that this\nwas the veritable place. But at all events it served to bring back to us\none of the prettiest bits of romance in the Old Testament. When the bold\nson of Jesse had become a chieftain of outlaws and was besieged by the\nPhilistines in the stronghold of Adullam, his heart grew thirsty for a\ndraught from his father's well, whose sweetness he had known as a boy.\nAnd when his three mighty men went up secretly at the risk of their\nlives, and broke through the host of their enemies, and brought their\ncaptain a vessel of this water, \"he would not drink thereof, but poured\nit out unto Jehovah.\"\n\nThere was a division of opinion in our party in regard to this act. \"It\nwas sheer foolishness,\" said the Patriarch, \"to waste anything that had\ncost so much to get. What must the three mighty men have thought when\nthey saw that for which they had risked their lives poured out upon the\nground?\" \"Ah, no,\" said the Lady. \"It was the highest gratitude, because\nit was touched with poetry. It was the best compliment that David could\nhave given to his friends. Some gifts are too precious to be received in\nany other way than this.\" And in my heart I knew that she was right.\n\nRiding through the narrow streets of the town, which is inhabited almost\nentirely by Christians, we noted the tranquil good looks of the women, a\ndistinct type, rather short of stature, round-faced, placid and kind of\naspect. Not a few of them had blue eyes. They wore dark-blue skirts,\ndark-red jackets, and a white veil over their heads, but not over their\nfaces. Under the veil the married women wore a peculiar cap of stiff,\nembroidered black cloth, about six inches high, and across the front of\nthis cap was strung their dowry of gold or silver coins. Such a dress,\nno doubt, was worn by the Virgin Mary, and such tranquil, friendly\nlooks, I think, were hers, but touched with a rarer light of beauty\nshining from a secret source within.\n\nA crowd of little boys and girls just released from school for their\nrecess shouted and laughed and chased one another, pausing for a moment\nin round-eyed wonder when I pointed my camera at them. Donkeys and\ncamels and sheep made our passage through the town slow, and gave us\noccasion to look to our horses' footing. At one corner a great white sow\nran out of an alley-way, followed by a twinkling litter of pink pigs. In\nthe market-place we left our horses in the shadow of the monastery wall\nand entered, by a low door, the lofty, bare Church of the Nativity.\n\nThe long rows of immense marble pillars had some faded remains of\npainting on them. There were a few battered fragments of mosaic in the\nclerestory, dimly glittering. But the general effect of the whitewashed\nwalls, the ancient brown beams and rafters of the roof, the large, empty\nspace, was one of extreme simplicity.\n\nWhen we came into the choir and apse we found ourselves in the midst of\ncomplexity. The ownership of the different altars with their gilt\nornaments, of the swinging lamps, of the separate doorways of the Greeks\nand the Armenians and the Latins, was bewildering. Dark, winding steps,\nslippery with the drippings from many candles, led us down into the\nGrotto of the Nativity. It was a cavern perhaps forty feet long and ten\nfeet wide, lit by thirty pendent lamps (Greek, Armenian and Latin):\nmarble floor and walls hung with draperies; a silver star in the\npavement before the altar to mark the spot where Christ was born; a\nmarble manger in the corner to mark the cradle in which Christ was laid;\na never-ceasing stream of poor pilgrims, who come kneeling, and kissing\nthe star and the stones and the altar for Christ's sake.\n\n[Illustration: The Market-place, Bethlehem.]\n\nWe paused for a while, after we had come up, to ask ourselves whether\nwhat we had seen was in any way credible. Yes, credible, but not\nconvincing. No doubt the ancient Khan of Bethlehem must have been\nsomewhere near this spot, in the vicinity of the market-place of the\ntown. No doubt it was the custom, when there were natural hollows or\nartificial grottos in the rock near such an inn, to use them as shelters\nand stalls for the cattle. It is quite possible, it is even probable,\nthat this may have been one of the shallow caverns used for such a\npurpose. If so, there is no reason to deny that this may be the place of\nthe wondrous birth, where, as the old French _Noel_ has it:\n\n  \"_Dieu parmy les pastoreaux,\n  Sous la creche des toreaux,\n  Dans les champs a voulu naistre;\n  Et non parmy les arroys\n  Des grands princes et des roys,--\n  Lui des plus grands roys le maistre._\"\n\nBut to the eye, at least, there is no reminder of the scene of the\nNativity in this close and stifling chapel, hung with costly silks and\nembroideries, glittering with rich lamps, filled with the smoke of\nincense and waxen tapers. And to the heart there is little suggestion\nof the lonely night when Joseph found a humble refuge here for his young\nbride to wait in darkness, pain and hope for her hour to come.\n\nIn the church above, the Latins and Armenians and Greeks guard their\nprivileges and prerogatives jealously. There have been fights here about\nthe driving of a nail, the hanging of a picture, the sweeping of a bit\nof the floor. The Crimean War began in a quarrel between the Greeks and\nthe Latins, and a mob-struggle in the Church of the Nativity. Underneath\nthe floor, to the north of the Grotto of the Nativity, is the cave in\nwhich Saint Jerome lived peaceably for many years, translating the Bible\ninto Latin. That was better than fighting.\n\n\nII\n\nON THE ROAD TO HEBRON\n\nWe ate our lunch at Bethlehem in a curiosity-shop. The table was spread\nat the back of the room by the open window. All around us were hanging\ninnumerable chaplets and rosaries of mother-of-pearl, of carnelian, of\ncarved olive-stones, of glass beads; trinkets and souvenirs of all\nimaginable kinds, tiny sheep-bells and inlaid boxes and carved fans\nfilled the cases and cabinets. Through the window came the noise of\npeople busy at Bethlehem's chief industry, the cutting and polishing of\nmother-of-pearl for mementoes. The jingling bells of our pack-train,\npassing the open door, reminded us that our camp was to be pitched miles\naway on the road to Hebron.\n\nWe called for the horses and rode on through the town. Very beautiful\nand peaceful was the view from the southern hill, looking down upon the\npastures of Bethlehem where \"shepherds watched their flocks by night,\"\nand the field of Boaz where Ruth followed the reapers among the corn.\n\nDown dale and up hill we journeyed; bright green of almond-trees, dark\ngreen of carob-trees, snowy blossoms of apricot-trees, rosy blossoms of\npeach-trees, argent verdure of olive-trees, adorning the valleys. Then\nout over the wilder, rockier heights; and past the great empty Pools of\nSolomon, lying at the head of the Wadi Artas, watched by a square ruined\ncastle; and up the winding road and along the lofty flower-sprinkled\nridges; and at last we came to our tents, pitched in the wide, green\nWadi el-'Arrub, beside the bridge.\n\nSprings gushed out of the hillside here and ran down in a little\nlaughing brook through lawns full of tiny pink and white daisies, and\nbroad fields of tangled weeds and flowers, red anemones, blue iris,\npurple mallows, scarlet adonis, with here and there a strip of\ncultivated ground shimmering with silky leeks or dotted with young\ncucumbers. There was a broken aqueduct cut in the rock at the side of\nthe valley, and the brook slipped by a large ruined reservoir.\n\n\"George,\" said I to the Bethlehemite, as he sat meditating on the edge\nof the dry pool, \"what do you think of this valley?\"\n\n\"I think,\" said George, \"that if I had a few thousand dollars to buy the\nland, with all this runaway water I could make it blossom like a\npeach-tree.\"\n\nThe cold, green sunset behind the western hills darkened into night. The\nair grew chilly, dropping nearly to the point of frost. We missed the\nblazing camp-fire of the Canadian forests, and went to bed early,\ntucking in the hot-water bags at our feet and piling on the blankets and\nrugs. All through the night we could hear the passers-by shouting and\nsinging along the Hebron road. There was one unknown traveller whose\nhigh-pitched, quavering Arab song rose far away, and grew louder as he\napproached, and passed us in a whirlwind of lugubrious music, and\ntapered slowly off into distance and silence--a chant a mile long.\n\nThe morning broke through flying clouds, with a bitter, wet, west wind\nrasping the bleak highlands. There were spiteful showers with intervals\nof mocking sunshine; it was a mischievous and prankish bit of weather,\nno day for riding. But the Lady was indomitable, so we left the\nPatriarch in his tent, wrapped ourselves in garments of mackintosh and\ntook the road again.\n\nThe country, at first, was wild and barren, a wilderness of rocks and\nthorn bushes and stunted scrub oaks. Now and then a Greek partridge, in\nits beautiful plumage of fawn-gray, marked with red and black about the\nhead, clucked like a hen on the stony hillside, or whirred away in low,\nstraight flight over the bushes. Flocks of black and brown goats, with\npendulous ears, skipped up and down the steep ridges, standing up on\ntheir hind legs to browse the foliage of the little oak shrubs, or\nshowing themselves off in a butting-match on top of a big rock. Marching\non the highroad they seemed sedate, despondent, pattering along soberly\nwith flapping ears. In the midst of one flock I saw a fierce-looking\ntattered pastor tenderly carrying a little black kid in his bosom--as\ntenderly as if it were a lamb. It seemed like an illustration of a\npicture that I saw long ago in the Catacombs, in which the infant church\nof Christ silently expressed the richness of her love, the breadth of\nher hope:\n\n  \"On those walls subterranean, where she hid\n  Her head 'mid ignominy, death and tombs,\n  She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew--\n  And on His shoulders, not a lamb, a kid.\"\n\nAs we drew nearer to Hebron the region appeared more fertile, and the\nlandscape smiled a little under the gleams of wintry sunshine. There\nwere many vineyards; in most of them the vines trailed along the ground,\nbut in some they were propped up on sticks, like old men leaning on\ncrutches. Almond and apricot-trees flourished. The mulberries, the\nolives, the sycamores were abundant. Peasants were ploughing the fields\nwith their crooked sticks shod with a long iron point. When a man puts\nhis hand to such a plough he dares not look back, else it will surely go\naside. It makes a scratch, not a furrow. (I saw a man in the hospital at\nNazareth who had his thigh pierced clear through by one of these\ndagger-like iron plough points.)\n\nChildren were gathering roots and thorn branches for firewood. Women\nwere carrying huge bundles on their heads. Donkey-boys were urging their\nheavy-laden animals along the road, and cameleers led their deliberate\nstrings of ungainly beasts by a rope or a light chain reaching from one\nnodding head to another.\n\nA camel's load never looks as large as a donkey's, but no doubt he often\nfinds it heavy, and he always looks displeased with it. There is\nsomething about the droop of a camel's lower lip which seems to express\nunalterable disgust with the universe. But the rest of the world around\nHebron appeared to be reasonably happy. In spite of weather and poverty\nand hard work the ploughmen sang in the fields, the children skipped and\nwhistled at their tasks, the passers-by on the road shouted greetings to\nthe labourers in the gardens and vineyards. Somewhere round about here\nis supposed to lie the Valley of Eshcol from which the Hebrew spies\nbrought back the monstrous bunch of grapes, a cluster that reached from\nthe height of a man's shoulder to the ground.\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE TENTING-GROUND OF ABRAHAM\n\nHebron lies three thousand feet above the sea, and is one of the ancient\nmarket-places and shrines of the world. From time immemorial it has been\na holy town, a busy town, and a turbulent town. The Hittites and the\nAmorites dwelt here, and Abraham, a nomadic shepherd whose tents\nfollowed his flocks over the land of Canaan, bought here his only piece\nof real estate, the field and cave of Machpelah. He bought it for a\ntomb,--even a nomad wishes to rest quietly in death,--and here he and\nhis wife Sarah, and his children Isaac and Rebekah, and his\ngrandchildren Jacob and Leah were buried.\n\nThe modern town has about twenty thousand inhabitants, chiefly\nMohammedans of a fanatical temper, and is incredibly dirty. We passed\nthe muddy pool by which King David, when he was reigning here, hanged\nthe murderers of Ishbosheth. We climbed the crooked streets to the\nMosque which covers the supposed site of the cave of Machpelah. But we\ndid not see the tomb of Abraham, for no \"infidel\" is allowed to pass\nbeyond the seventh step in the flight of stairs which leads up to the\ndoorway.\n\nAs we went down through the narrow, dark, crowded Bazaar a violent storm\nof hail broke over the city, pelting into the little open shops and\ncovering the streets half an inch deep with snowy sand and pebbles of\nice. The tempest was a rude joke, which seemed to surprise the surly\ncrowd into a good humour. We laughed with the Moslems as we took shelter\ntogether from our common misery under a stone archway.\n\nAfter the storm had passed we ate our midday meal on a housetop, which\na friend of the dragoman put at our disposal, and rode out in the\nafternoon to the Oak of Abraham on the hill of Mamre. The tree is an\nimmense, battered veteran, with a trunk ten feet in diameter, and\nwide-flung, knotted arms which still bear a few leaves and acorns. It\nhas been inclosed with a railing, patched up with masonry, partially\nprotected by a roof. The Russian monks who live near by have given it\npious care, yet its inevitable end is surely near.\n\nThe death of a great sheltering tree has a kind of dumb pathos. It seems\nlike the passing away of something beneficent and helpless, something\nthat was able to shield others but not itself.\n\nOn this hill, under the oaks of Mamre, Abraham's tents were pitched many\na year, and here he entertained the three angels unawares, and Sarah\nmade pancakes for them, and listened behind the tent-flap while they\nwere talking with her husband, and laughed at what they said. This may\nnot be the very tree that flung its shadow over the tent, but no doubt\nit is a son or a grandson of that tree, and the acorns that still fall\nfrom it may be the seeds of other oaks to shelter future generations of\npilgrims; and so throughout the world, the ancient covenant of\nfriendship is unbroken, and man remains a grateful lover of the big,\nkind trees.\n\nWe got home to our camp in the green meadow of the springs late in the\nafternoon, and on the third day we rode back to Jerusalem, and pitched\nthe tents in a new place, on a hill opposite the Jaffa Gate, with a\nsplendid view of the Valley of Hinnom, the Tower of David, and the\nwestern wall of the city.\n\n\n_A PSALM OF FRIENDLY TREES_\n\n_I will sing of the bounty of the big trees,\nThey are the green tents of the Almighty,\nHe hath set them up for comfort and for shelter._\n\n_Their cords hath he knotted in the earth,\nHe hath driven their stakes securely,\nTheir roots take hold of the rocks like iron._\n\n_He sendeth into their bodies the sap of life,\nThey lift themselves lightly towards the heavens.\nThey rejoice in the broadening of their branches._\n\n_Their leaves drink in the sunlight and the air,\nThey talk softly together when the breeze bloweth,\nTheir shadow in the noonday is full of coolness._\n\n_The tall palm-trees of the plain are rich in fruit,\nWhile the fruit ripeneth the flower unfoldeth,\nThe beauty of their crown is renewed on high forever._\n\n_The cedars of Lebanon are fed by the snow,\nAfar on the mountain they grow like giants,\nIn their layers of shade a thousand years are sighing._\n\n_How fair are the trees that befriend the home of man,\nThe oak, and the terebinth, and the sycamore,\nThe fruitful fig-tree and the silvery olive._\n\n_In them the Lord is loving to his little birds,--\nThe linnets and the finches and the nightingales,--\nThey people his pavilions with nests and with music._\n\n_The cattle are very glad of a great tree,\nThey chew the cud beneath it while the sun is burning,\nThere also the panting sheep lie down around their shepherd._\n\n_He that planteth a tree is a servant of God,\nHe provideth a kindness for many generations,\nAnd faces that he hath not seen shall bless him._\n\n_Lord, when my spirit shall return to thee,\nAt the foot of a friendly tree let my body be buried,\nThat this dust may rise and rejoice among the branches._\n\n\n\n\n                                VI\n\n                   THE TEMPLE AND THE SEPULCHRE\n\n\nI\n\nTHE DOME OF THE ROCK\n\nThere is an upward impulse in man that draws him to a hilltop for his\nplace of devotion and sanctuary of ascending thoughts. The purer air,\nthe wider outlook, the sense of freedom and elevation, help to release\nhis spirit from the weight that bends his forehead to the dust. A\ntraveller in Palestine, if he had wings, could easily pass through the\nwhole land by short flights from the summit of one holy hill to another,\nand look down from a series of mountain-altars upon the wrinkled map of\nsacred history without once descending into the valley or toiling over\nthe plain. But since there are no wings provided in the human outfit,\nour journey from shrine to shrine must follow the common way of\nmen,--which is also a symbol,--the path of up-and-down, and many\nwindings, and weary steps.\n\nThe oldest of the shrines of Jerusalem is the threshing-floor of Araunah\nthe Jebusite, which David bought from him in order that it might be\nmade the site of the Temple of Jehovah. No doubt the King knew of the\ntraditions which connected the place with ancient and famous rites of\nworship. But I think he was moved also by the commanding beauty of the\nsituation, on the very summit of Mount Moriah, looking down into the\ndeep Valley of the Kidron.\n\nOur way to this venerable and sacred hill leads through the crooked\nduskiness of David Street, and across the half-filled depression of the\nTyropoeon Valley which divides the city, and up through the dim,\ndeserted Bazaar of the Cotton Merchants, and so through the central\nwestern gate of the Haram-esh-Sherif, \"the Noble Sanctuary.\"\n\nThis is a great inclosure, clean, spacious, airy, a place of refuge from\nthe foul confusion of the city streets. The wall that shuts us in is\nalmost a mile long, and within this open space, which makes an immediate\neffect of breadth and tranquil order, are some of the most sacred\nbuildings of Islam and some of the most significant landmarks of\nChristianity.\n\nSlender and graceful arcades are outlined against the clear, blue sky:\nlittle domes are poised over praying-places and fountains of ablution:\nwide and easy flights of steps lead from one level to another, in this\npark of prayer.\n\nAt the southern end, beyond the tall cypresses and the plashing fountain\nfed from Solomon's Pools, stands the long Mosque el-Aksa: to\nMohammedans, the place to which Allah brought their prophet from Mecca\nin one night; to Christians, the Basilica which the Emperor Justinian\nerected in honor of the Virgin Mary. At the northern end rises the\nancient wall of the Castle of Antonia, from whose steps Saint Paul,\nprotected by the Roman captain, spoke his defence to the Jerusalem mob.\nThe steps, hewn partly in the solid rock, are still visible; but the\nsite of the castle is occupied by the Turkish barracks, beside which the\ntallest minaret of the Haram lifts its covered gallery high above the\ncorner of the great wall.\n\nYonder to the east is the Golden Gate, above the steep Valley of\nJehoshaphat. It is closed with great stones; because the Moslem\ntradition says that some Friday a Christian conqueror will enter\nJerusalem by that gate. Not far away we see the column in the wall from\nwhich the Mohammedans believe a slender rope, or perhaps a naked sword,\nwill be stretched, in the judgment day, to the Mount of Olives opposite.\nThis, according to them, will be the bridge over which all human souls\nmust walk, while Christ sits at one end, Mohammed at the other, watching\nand judging. The righteous, upheld by angels, will pass safely; the\nwicked, heavy with unbalanced sins, will fall.\n\nDominating all these wide-spread relics and shrines, in the centre of\nthe inclosure, on a raised platform approached through delicate arcades,\nstands the great Dome of the Rock, built by Abd-el-Melik in 688 A.D., on\nthe site of the Jewish Temple. The exterior of the vast octagon, with\nits lower half cased in marble and its upper half incrusted with Persian\ntiles of blue and green, its broad, round lantern and swelling black\ndome surmounted by a glittering crescent, is bathed in full sunlight;\nserene, proud, eloquent of a certain splendid simplicity. Within, the\nlight filters dimly through windows of stained glass and falls on marble\ncolumns, bronzed beams, mosaic walls, screens of wrought iron and carved\nwood. We walk as if through an interlaced forest and undergrowth of\nrich entangled colours. It all seems visionary, unreal, fantastic, until\nwe climb the bench by the end of the inner screen and look upon the Rock\nover which the Dome is built.\n\nThis is the real thing,--a plain gray limestone rock, level and fairly\nsmooth, the unchanged summit of Mount Moriah. Here the priest-king\nMelchizedek offered sacrifice. Here Abraham, in the cruel fervour of his\nfaith, was about to slay his only son Isaac because he thought it would\nplease Jehovah. Here Araunah the Jebusite threshed his corn on the\nsmooth rock and winnowed it in the winds of the hilltop, until King\nDavid stepped over from Mount Zion, and bought the threshing-floor and\nthe oxen of him for fifty shekels of silver, and built in this place an\naltar to the Lord. Here Solomon erected his splendid Temple and the\nChaldeans burned it. Here Zerubbabel built the second Temple after the\nreturn of the Jews from exile, and Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated it,\nand Herod burned part of it and pulled down the rest. Here Herod built\nthe third Temple, larger and more magnificent than the first, and the\nsoldiers of the Emperor Titus burned it. Here the Emperor Hadrian built\na temple to Jupiter and himself, and some one, perhaps the Christians,\nburned it. Here Mohammed came to pray, declaring that one prayer here\nwas worth a thousand elsewhere. Here the Caliph Omar built a little\nwooden mosque, and the Caliph Abd-el-Melik replaced it with this great\none of marble, and the Crusaders changed it into a Christian temple, and\nSaladin changed it back again into a mosque.\n\nThis Haram-esh-Sherif is the second holiest place in the Moslem world.\nHither come the Mohammedan pilgrims by thousands, for the sake of\nMohammed. Hither come the Christian pilgrims by thousands, for the sake\nof Him who said: \"Neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall ye\nworship the Father.\" Hither the Jewish pilgrims never come, for fear\ntheir feet may unwittingly tread upon \"the Holy of Holies,\" and defile\nit; but they creep outside of the great inclosure, in the gloomy trench\nbeside the foundation stones of the wall, mourning and lamenting for the\nmajesty that is departed and the Temple that is ground to powder.\n\nBut amid all these changes and perturbations, here stands the good old\nlimestone rock, the threshing-floor of Araunah, the capstone of the\nhill, waiting for the sun to shine and the dews to fall on it once more,\nas they did when the foundations of the earth were laid.\n\nThe legend says that you can hear the waters of the flood roaring in an\nabyss underneath the rock. I laid my ear against the rugged stone and\nlistened. What sound? Was it the voice of turbulent centuries and the\nlapsing tides of men?\n\n\nII\n\nGOLGOTHA\n\n\"We ought to go again to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,\" said the\nLady in a voice of dutiful reminder, \"we have not half seen it.\" So we\nwent down to the heart of Jerusalem and entered the labyrinthine shrine.\n\nThe motley crowd in the paved quadrangle in front of the double-arched\ndoorway were buying and selling, bickering and chaffering and chattering\nas usual. Within the portal, on a slightly raised platform to the left,\nthe Turkish guardians of the holy places and keepers of the peace\nbetween Christians were seated among their rugs and cushions, impassive,\nindolent, dignified, drinking their coffee or smoking their tobacco,\nconversing gravely or counting the amber beads of their comboloios. The\nSultan owns the Holy Sepulchre; but he is a liberal host and permits all\nfactions of Christendom to visit it and celebrate their rites in turn,\nprovided only they do not beat or kill one another in their devotions.\nWe saw his silent sentinels of tolerance scattered in every part of the\nvast, confused edifice.\n\nThe interior was dim and shadowy. Opposite the entrance was the Stone of\nUnction, a marble slab on which it is said the body of Christ was\nanointed when it was taken down from the cross. Pilgrim after pilgrim\ncame kneeling to this stone, and bending to kiss it, beneath the Latin,\nGreek, Armenian and Coptic lamps which hang above it by silver chains.\n\nThe Chapel of the Crucifixion was on our right, above us, in the second\nstory of the church. We climbed the steep flight of stairs and stood in\na little room, close, obscure, crowded with lamps and icons and\ncandelabra, incrusted with ornaments of gold and silver, full of strange\nodours and glimmerings of mystic light. There, they told us, in front of\nthat rich altar was the silver star which marked the place in the rock\nwhere the Holy Cross stood. And on either side of it were the sockets\nwhich received the crosses of the two thieves. And a few feet away,\ncovered by a brass slide, was the cleft in the rock which was made by\nthe earthquake. It was lined with slabs of reddish marble and looked\nnearly a foot deep.\n\nPriests in black robes and tall, cylindrical hats, and others with brown\nrobes, rope girdles and tonsured heads, were coming and going around us.\nPilgrims were climbing and descending the stairs, kneeling and murmuring\nunintelligible devotions, kissing the star and the cleft in the rock and\nthe icons. Underneath us, though we were supposed to stand on the hill\ncalled Golgotha, were the offices of the Greek clergy and the Chapel of\nAdam.\n\nWe went around from chapel to chapel; into the opulent Greek cathedral\nwhere they show the \"Centre of the World\"; into the bare little Chapel\nof the Syrians where they show the tombs of Nicodemus and Joseph of\nArimathaea; into the Chapel of the Apparition where the Franciscans say\nthat Christ appeared to His mother after the resurrection. There was\nsweet singing in this chapel and a fragrant smell of incense. We went\ninto the Chapel of Saint Helena, underground, which belongs to the\nGreeks; into the Chapel of the Parting of the Raiment which belongs to\nthe Armenians. We were impartial in our visitation, but we did not have\ntime to see the Abyssinian Chapel, the Coptic Chapel of Saint Michael,\nnor the Church of Abraham where the Anglicans are allowed to celebrate\nthe eucharist twice a month.\n\nThe centre of all this maze of creeds, ceremonies and devotions is the\nChapel of the Holy Sepulchre, a little edifice of precious marbles,\ncarved and gilded, standing beneath the great dome of the church, in the\nmiddle of a rotunda surrounded by marble pillars. We bought and lighted\nour waxen tapers and waited for a lull in the stream of pilgrims to\nenter the shrine. First we stood in the vestibule with its tall\ncandelabra; then in the Angels' Chapel, with its fifteen swinging lamps,\nmaking darkness visible; then, stooping through a low doorway, we came\ninto the tiny chamber, six feet square, which is said to contain the\nrock-hewn tomb in which the Saviour of the World was buried.\n\nMass is celebrated here daily by different Christian sects. Pilgrims,\nrich and poor, come hither from all parts of the habitable globe. They\nkneel beneath the three-and-forty pendent lamps of gold and silver. They\nkiss the worn slab of marble which covers the tombstone, some of them\nsmiling with joy, some of them weeping bitterly, some of them with\nquiet, business-like devotion as if they were performing a duty. The\npriest of their faith blesses them, sprinkles the relics which they lay\non the altar with holy water, and one by one the pilgrims retire\nbackward through the low portal.\n\nI saw a Russian peasant, sad-eyed, wrinkled, bent with many sorrows, lay\nhis cheek silently on the tombstone with a look on his face as if he\nwere a child leaning against his mother's breast. I saw a little\nbarefoot boy of Jerusalem, with big, serious eyes, come quickly in, and\ntry to kiss the stone; but it was too high for him, so he kissed his\nhand and laid it upon the altar. I saw a young nun, hardly more than a\ngirl, slender, pale, dark-eyed, with a noble Italian face, shaken with\nsobs, the tears running down her cheeks, as she bent to touch her lips\nto the resting-place of the Friend of Sinners.\n\nThis, then, is the way in which the craving for penitence, for\nreverence, for devotion, for some utterance of the nameless thirst and\npassion of the soul leads these pilgrims. This is the form in which the\ndivine mystery of sacrificial sorrow and death appeals to them, speaks\nto their hearts and comforts them.\n\nCould any Christian of whatever creed, could any son of woman with a\nheart to feel the trouble and longing of humanity, turn his back upon\nthat altar? Must I not go away from that mysterious little room as the\nothers had gone, with my face toward the stone of remembrance, stooping\nthrough the lowly door?\n\nAnd yet--and yet in my deepest heart I was thirsty for the open air,\nthe blue sky, the pure sunlight, the tranquillity of large and silent\nspaces.\n\nThe Lady went with me across the crowded quadrangle into the cool,\nclean, quiet German Church of the Redeemer. We climbed to the top of the\nlofty bell tower.\n\nJerusalem lay at our feet, with its network of streets and lanes,\narchways and convent walls, domes small and great--the black Dome of the\nRock in the centre of its wide inclosure, the red dome and the green\ndome of the Jewish synagogues on Mount Zion, the seven gilded domes of\nthe Russian Church of Saint Mary Magdalen, a hundred tiny domes of\ndwelling-houses, and right in front of us the yellow dome of the Greek\n\"Centre of the World\" and the black dome of the Holy Sepulchre.\n\nThe quadrangle was still full of people buying and selling, but the\nmurmur of their voices was faint and far away, less loud than the\ntwittering of the thousands of swallows that soared and circled, with\nglistening of innumerable blue-black wings and soft sheen of white\nbreasts, in the tender light of sunset above the facade of the gray\nold church.\n\nWestward the long ridge of Olivet was bathed in the rays of the\ndeclining sun.\n\nNorthward, beyond the city-gate, the light fell softly on a little rocky\nhill, shaped like a skull, the ancient place of stoning for those whom\nthe cruel city had despised and rejected and cast out. At the foot of\nthat eminence there is a quiet garden and a tomb hewn in the rock.\nRosemary and rue grow there, roses and lilies; birds sing among the\ntrees. Is not that little rounded hill, still touched with the free\nlight of heaven, still commanding a clear outlook over the city to the\nMount of Olives--is not that the true Golgotha, where Christ was lifted\nup?\n\nAs we were thinking of this we saw a man come out on the roof of the\nGreek \"Centre of the World,\" and climb by a ladder up the side of the\nhuge dome. He went slowly and carefully, yet with confidence, as if the\ntask were familiar. He carried a lantern in one hand. He was going to\nthe top of the dome to light up the great cross for the night. We spoke\nno word, but each knew the thought that was in the other's heart.\n\nWherever the crucifixion took place, it was surely in the open air,\nbeneath the wide sky, and the cross that stood on Golgotha has become\nthe light at the centre of the world's night.\n\n\n_A PSALM OF THE UNSEEN ALTAR_\n\n_Man the maker of cities is also a builder of altars:\nAmong his habitations he setteth tables for his god._\n\n_He bringeth the beauty of the rocks to enrich them:\nMarble and alabaster, porphyry, jasper and jade._\n\n_He cometh with costly gifts to offer an oblation:\nHe would buy favour with the fairest of his flock._\n\n_Around the many altars I hear strange music arising:\nLoud lamentations and shouting and singing and sighs._\n\n_I perceive also the pain and terror of their sacrifices:\nI see the white marble wet with tears and with blood._\n\n_Then I said, These are the altars of ignorance:\nYet they are built by thy children, O God, who know thee not._\n\n_Surely thou wilt have pity upon them and lead them:\nHast thou not prepared for them a table of peace?_\n\n_Then the Lord mercifully sent his angel forth to lead me:\nHe led me through the temples, the holy place that is hidden._\n\n_Lo, there are multitudes kneeling in the silence of the spirit:\nThey are kneeling at the unseen altar of the lowly heart._\n\n_Here is plentiful forgiveness for the souls that are forgiving:\nAnd the joy of life is given unto all who long to give._\n\n_Here a Father's hand upholdeth all who bear each other's burdens:\nAnd the benediction falleth upon all who pray in love._\n\n_Surely this is the altar where the penitent find pardon:\nAnd the priest who hath blessed it forever is the Holy One of God._\n\n\n\n\n                                  VII\n\n                           JERICHO AND JORDAN\n\n\nI\n\n\"GOING DOWN TO JERICHO\"\n\nIn the memory of every visitor to Jerusalem the excursion to Jericho is\na vivid point. For this is the one trip which everybody makes, and it is\na convention of the route to regard it as a perilous and exciting\nadventure. Perhaps it is partly this flavour of a not-too-dangerous\ndanger, this shivering charm of a hazard to be taken without too much\nrisk, that attracts the average tourist, prudently romantic, to make the\njourney to the lowest inhabited town in the world.\n\nJericho has always had an ill name. Weak walls, weak hearts, weak morals\nwere its early marks. Sweltering on the rich plain of the lower Jordan,\neight hundred feet below the sea, at the entrance of the two chief\npasses into the Judean highlands, it was too indolent or cowardly to\nmaintain its own importance. Stanley called it \"the key of Palestine\";\nbut it was only a latch which any bold invader could lift. The people\nof Jericho were famous for light fingers and lively feet, great robbers\nand runners-away. Joshua blotted the city out with a curse; five\ncenturies later Hiel the Bethelite rebuilt it with the bloody sacrifice\nof his two sons. Antony gave it to Cleopatra, and Herod bought it from\nher for a winter palace, where he died. Nothing fine or brave, so far as\nI can remember, is written of any of its inhabitants, except the good\ndeed of Rahab, a harlot, and the honest conduct of Zacchaeus, a publican.\nTo this day, at the _tables d'hote_ of Jerusalem the name of Jericho\nstirs up a little whirlwind of bad stories and warnings.\n\nLast night we were dining with friends at one of the hotels, and the\nusual topic came up for discussion. Imagine what followed.\n\n\"That Jericho road is positively frightful,\" says a British female\ntourist in lace cap, lilac ribbons and a maroon poplin dress, \"the heat\nis most extr'ordinary!\"\n\n\"No food fit to eat at the hotel,\" grumbles her husband, a rosy,\nbald-headed man in plaid knickerbockers, \"no bottled beer; beastly\nlittle hole!\"\n\n\"A voyage of the most fatiguing, of the most perilous, I assure you,\"\nsays a little Frenchman with a forked beard. \"But I rejoice myself of\nthe adventure, of the romance accomplished.\"\n\n\"I want to know,\" piped a lady in a green shirt-waist from Andover,\nMass., \"is there really and truly any danger?\"\n\n\"I guess not for us,\" answers the dominating voice of the conductor of\nher party. \"There's always a bunch of robbers on that road, but I have\nhired the biggest man of the bunch to take care of us. Just wait till\nyou see that dandy Sheikh in his best clothes; he looks like a museum of\nold weapons.\"\n\n\"Have you heard,\" interposed a lady-like clergyman on the other side of\nthe table, with gold-rimmed spectacles gleaming above his high, black\nwaistcoat, \"what happened on the Jericho road, week before last? An\nEnglish gentleman, of very good family, imprudently taking a short cut,\nbecame separated from his companions. The Bedouins fell upon him, beat\nhim quite painfully, deprived him of his watch and several necessary\ngarments, and left him prostrate upon the earth, in an embarrassingly\ndenuded condition. Just fancy! Was it not perfectly shocking?\" (The\nclergyman's voice was full of delicious horror.) \"But, after all,\" he\nresumed with a beaming smile, \"it was most scriptural, you know, quite\nlike a Providential confirmation of Holy Writ!\"\n\n\"Most unpleasant for the Englishman,\" growls the man in knickerbockers.\n\"But what can you expect under this rotten Turkish government?\"\n\n\"I know a story about Jericho,\" begins a gentleman from Colorado, with a\nhay-coloured moustache and a droop in his left eyelid--and then follows\na series of tales about that ill-reputed town and the road thither,\nwhich leave the lady in the lace cap gasping, and the man with the\nforked beard visibly swelling with pride at having made the journey, and\nthe little woman in the green shirt-waist quivering with exquisite fears\nand mentally clinging with both arms to the personal conductor of her\nparty, who looks becomingly virile, and exchanges a surreptitious wink\nwith the gentleman from Colorado.\n\nOf course, I am not willing to make an affidavit to the correctness of\nevery word in this conversation; but I can testify that it fairly\nrepresents the _Jericho-motif_ as you may hear it played almost any\nnight in the Jerusalem hotels. It sounded to us partly like an echo of\nancient legends kept alive by dragomans and officials for purposes of\nrevenue, and partly like an outcrop of the hysterical habit in people\nwho travel in flocks and do nothing without much palaver. In our quiet\ncamp, George the Bethlehemite assured us that the sheikhs were\n\"humbugs,\" and an escort of soldiers a nuisance. So we placidly made our\npreparations to ride on the morrow, with no other safeguards than our\nfriendly dispositions and a couple of excellent American revolvers.\n\nBut it was no brief _Ausflug_ to Jericho and return that we had before\nus: it was the beginning of a long and steady ride, weeks in the saddle,\nfrom six to nine hours a day.\n\nImagine us then, morning after morning, mounting somewhere between six\nand eight o'clock, according to the weather and the length of the\njourney, and jingling out of camp, followed at a discreet distance by\nYoussouf on his white pony with the luncheon, and Paris on his tiny\ndonkey, Tiddly-winks. About noon, sometimes a little earlier, sometimes\na little later, the white pony catches up with us, and the tent and the\nrugs are spread for the midday meal and the _siesta_. It may be in our\ndreams, or while the Lady is reading from some pleasant book, or while\nthe smoke of the afternoon pipe of peace is ascending, that we hear the\nmusical bells of our long baggage-train go by us on the way to our\nnight-quarters.\n\nThe evening ride is always shorter than the morning, sometimes only an\nhour or two in the saddle; and at the end of it there is the surprise of\na new camp ground, the comfortable tents, the refreshing bath tub, the\nquiet dinner by sunset-glow or candle-light. Then a bit of friendly talk\nover the walnuts and the \"Treasure of Zion\"; a cup of fragrant Turkish\ncoffee; and George enters the door of the tent to report on the\ncondition of things in general, and to discuss the plan of the next\nday's journey.\n\n\nII\n\nTHE GOOD SAMARITAN'S ROAD\n\nIt is strange how every day, no matter in what mood of merry jesting or\npractical modernity we set out, an hour of riding in the open air brings\nus back to the mystical charm of the Holy Land and beneath the spell of\nits memories and dreams. The wild hillsides, the flowers of the field,\nthe shimmering olive-groves, the brown villages, the crumbling ruins,\nthe deep-blue sky, subdue us to themselves and speak to us \"rememberable\nthings.\"\n\nWe pass down the Valley of the Brook Kidron, where no water ever flows;\nand through the crowd of beggars and loiterers and pilgrims at the\ncrossroads; and up over the shoulder of the Mount of Olives, past the\nwide-spread Jewish burying-ground, where we take our last look at the\ntowers and domes and minarets and walls of Jerusalem. The road descends\ngently, on the other side of the hill, to Bethany, a disconsolate group\nof hovels. The sweet home of Mary and Martha is gone. It is a waste of\ntime to look at the uncertain ruins which are shown here as sacred\nsites. Look rather at the broad landscape eastward and southward, the\nluminous blue sky, the joyful little flowers on the rocky slopes,--these\nare unchanged.\n\nNot far beyond Bethany, the road begins to drop, with great windings,\ninto a deep, desolate valley, crowded with pilgrims afoot and on\ndonkey-back and in ramshackle carriages,--Russians and Greeks returning\nfrom their sacred bath in the Jordan. Here and there, at first, we can\nsee a shepherd with his flock upon the haggard hillside.\n\n  \"As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair\n          In leprosy.\"\n\nOnce the Patriarch and I, scrambling on foot down a short-cut, think we\nsee a Bedouin waiting for us behind a rock, with his long gun over his\nshoulder; but it turns out to be only a brown little peasant girl,\nragged and smiling, watching her score of lop-eared goats.\n\nAs the valley descends the landscape becomes more and more arid and\nstricken. The heat broods over it like a disease.\n\n                \"I think I never saw\n  Such starved, ignoble nature; nothing throve;\n  For flowers--as well expect a cedar grove!\"\n\nWe might be on the way with Childe Roland to the Dark Tower. But instead\nwe come, about noon, through a savage glen beset with blood-red rocks\nand honeycombed with black caves on the other side of the ravine, to the\nso-called \"Inn of the Good Samaritan.\"\n\nThe local colour of the parable surrounds us. Here is a fitting scene\nfor such a drama of lawless violence, cowardly piety, and unconventional\nmercy. In these caverns robbers could hide securely. On this wild road\ntheir victim might lie and bleed to death. By these paths across the\nglen the priest and the Levite could \"pass by on the other side,\"\ndiscreetly turning their heads away from any interruption to their\nselfish duties. And in some such wayside khan as this, standing like a\nlonely fortress among the sun-baked hills, the friendly half-heathen\nfrom Samaria could safely leave the stranger whom he had rescued,\nprovided he paid at least a part of his lodging in advance.\n\nWe eat our luncheon in one of the three big, disorderly rooms of the\ninn, and go on, in the cool of the afternoon, toward Jericho. The road\nstill descends steeply, among ragged and wrinkled hills. On our left we\nlook down into the Wadi el-Kelt, a gloomy gorge five or six hundred feet\ndeep, with a stream of living water singing between its prison walls.\nTradition calls this the Brook Cherith, where Elijah hid himself from\nAhab, and was fed by Arabs of a tribe called \"the Ravens.\" But the\nprophet's hiding-place was certainly on the other side of the Jordan,\nand this Wadi is probably the Valley of Achor, spoken of in the Book of\nJoshua. On the opposite side of the canyon, half-way down the face of the\nprecipice, clings the monastery of Saint George, one of the pious\npenitentiaries to which the Greek Church assigns unruly and criminal\nmonks.\n\n[Illustration: Great Monastery of St. George.]\n\nAs we emerge from the narrow valley a great view opens before us: to the\nright, the blue waters of the Dead Sea, like a mirror of burnished\nsteel; in front, the immense plain of the Jordan, with the dark-green\nribbon of the river-jungle winding through its length and the purple\nmountains of Gilead and Moab towering beyond it; to the left, the\nfurrowed gray and yellow ridges and peaks of the northern \"wilderness\"\nof Judea, the wild country into which Jesus retired alone after the\nbaptism by John in the Jordan.\n\nOne of these peaks, the Quarantana, is supposed to be the \"high\nmountain\" from which the Tempter showed Jesus the \"kingdoms of the\nworld.\" In the foreground of that view, sweeping from the snowy summits\nof Hermon in the north, past the Greek cities of Pella and Scythopolis,\ndown the vast valley with its wealth of palms and balsams, must have\nstood the Roman city of Jericho, with its imperial farms and the\npalaces, baths and theatres of Herod the Great,--a visible image of what\nChrist might have won for Himself if He had yielded to the temptation\nand turned from the pathway of spiritual light to follow the shadows of\nearthly power and glory.\n\nHerod's Jericho has vanished; there is nothing left of it but the\noutline of one of the great pools which he built to irrigate his\ngardens. The modern Jericho is an unhappy little adobe village, lying a\nmile or so farther to the east. A mile to the north, near a copious\nfountain of pure water, called the Sultan's Spring, is the site of the\noldest Jericho, which Joshua conquered and Hiel rebuilt. The spring,\nwhich is probably the same that Elisha cleansed with salt (II Kings ii:\n19-22), sends forth a merry stream to turn a mill and irrigate a group\nof gardens full of oranges, figs, bananas, grapes, feathery bamboos and\nrosy oleanders. But the ancient city is buried under a great mound of\nearth, which the German _Palaestina-Verein_ is now excavating.\n\nAs we come up to the mound I pull out my little camera and prepare to\ntake a picture of the hundred or so dusty Arabs--men, women and\nchildren--who are at work in the trenches. A German _gelehrter_ in a\nvery excited state rushes up to me and calls upon me to halt, in the\nname of the Emperor. The taking of pictures by persons not imperially\nauthorised is _streng verboten_. He is evidently prepared to be abusive,\nif not actually violent, until I assure him, in the best German that I\ncan command, that I have no political or archaeological intentions, and\nthat if the photographing of his picturesque work-people to him\ndispleasing is, I will my camera immediately in its pocket put. This\nmollifies him, and he politely shows us what he is doing.\n\nA number of ruined houses, and a sort of central temple, with a rude\nflight of steps leading up to it, have been discovered. A portion of\nwhat seems to be the city-wall has just been laid bare. If there are any\ninscriptions or relics of any value they are kept secret; but there is\nplenty of broken pottery of a common kind. It is all very poor and\nbeggarly looking; no carving nor even any hewn stones. The buildings\nseem to be of rubble, and \"the walls of Jericho\" are little better than\nthe stone fences on a Connecticut farm. No wonder they fell down at the\nblast of Joshua's rams' horns and the rush of his fierce tribesmen.\n\nWe ride past the gardens and through the shady lanes to our camp, on the\noutskirts of the modern village. The air is heavy and languid, full of\nrelaxing influence, an air of sloth and luxury, seeming to belong to\nsome strange region below the level of human duty and effort as far as\nit is below the level of the sea. The fragrance of the orange-blossoms,\nlike a subtle incense of indulgence, floats on the evening breeze.\nVeiled figures pass us in the lanes, showing lustrous eyes. A sound of\nOriental music and laughter and clapping hands comes from one of the\nhouses in an inclosure hedged with acacia-trees. We sit in the door of\nour tent at sundown and dream of the vanished palm-groves, the gardens\nof Cleopatra, the palaces of Herod, the soft, ignoble history of that\nregion of fertility and indolence, rich in harvests, poor in manhood.\n\nThen it seems as if some one were saying, \"I will lift up mine eyes unto\nthe hills, from whence cometh my help.\" There they stand, all about us:\neastward, the great purple ranges of Gad and Reuben, from which Elijah\nthe Tishbite descended to rebuke and warn Israel; westward, against the\nsaffron sky, the ridges and peaks of Judea, among which Amos and\nJeremiah saw their lofty visions; northward, the clear-cut pinnacle of\nSartoba, and far away beyond it the dim outlines of the Galilean hills\nfrom which Jesus of Nazareth came down to open blind eyes and to\nshepherd wandering souls. With the fading of the sunset glow a deep blue\ncomes upon all the mountains, a blue which strangely seems to grow\npaler as the sky above them darkens, sinking down upon them through\ninfinite gradations of azure into something mysterious and\nindescribable, not a color, not a shadow, not a light, but a secret\nhyaline illumination which transforms them into aerial battlements and\nramparts, on whose edge the great stars rest and flame, the watch-fires\nof the Eternal.\n\n\nIII\n\n\"PASSING OVER JORDAN\"\n\nI have often wondered why the Jordan, which plays such an important part\nin the history of the Hebrews, receives so little honour and praise in\ntheir literature. Sentimental travellers and poets of other races have\nwoven a good deal of florid prose and verse about the name of this\nriver. There is no doubt that it is the chief stream of Palestine, the\nonly one, in fact, that deserves to be called a river. Yet the Bible has\nno song of loving pride for the Jordan; no tender and beautiful words to\ndescribe it; no record of the longing of exiled Jews to return to the\nbanks of their own river and hear again the voice of its waters. At\nthis strange silence I have wondered much, not knowing the reason of it.\nNow I know.\n\nThe Jordan is not a little river to be loved: it is a barrier to be\npassed over. From its beginning in the marshes of Huleh to its end in\nthe Dead Sea, (excepting only the lovely interval of the Lake of\nGalilee), this river offers nothing to man but danger and difficulty,\nperplexity and trouble. Fierce and sullen and intractable, it flows\nthrough a long depression, at the bottom of which it has dug for itself\na still deeper crooked ditch, along the Eastern border of Galilee and\nSamaria and Judea, as if it wished to cut them off completely. There are\nno pleasant places along its course, no breezy forelands where a man\nmight build a house with a fair outlook over flowing water, no rich and\ntranquil coves where the cattle would love to graze, or stand knee-deep\nin the quiet stream. There is no sense of leisure, of refreshment, of\nkind companionship and friendly music about the Jordan. It is in a hurry\nand a secret rage. Yet there is something powerful, self-reliant,\ninevitable about it. In thousands of years it has changed less than any\nriver in the world. It is a flowing, everlasting symbol of division, of\nseparation: a river of solemn meetings and partings like that of Elijah\nand Elisha, of Jesus and John the Baptist: a type of the narrow stream\nof death. It seems to say to man, \"Cross me if you will, if you can; and\nthen go your way.\"\n\nThe road that leads us from Jericho toward the river is pleasant enough,\nat first, for the early sunlight is gentle and caressing, and there is a\ncool breeze moving across the plain. It is hard to believe that we are\neight hundred feet below the sea this morning, and still travelling\ndownward. The lush fields of barley, watered by many channels from the\nbrook Kelt, are waving and glistening around us. Quails are running\nalong the edge of the road, appearing and disappearing among the thick\ngrain-stalks. The bulbuls warble from the thorn-bushes, and a crested\nhoopoo croons in a jujube-tree. Larks are on the wing, scattering music.\n\nWe are on the upper edge of that great belt of sunken land between the\nmountains of Gilead and the mountains of Ephraim and Judah, which\nreaches from the Lake of Galilee to the Dead Sea, and which the Arabs\ncall _El-Ghor_, the \"Rift.\" It is a huge trench, from three to fourteen\nmiles wide, sinking from six hundred feet below the level of the\nMediterranean, at the northern end, to thirteen hundred feet below, at\nthe southern end. The surface is fairly level, sloping gently from each\nside toward the middle, and the soil is of an inexhaustible fertility,\nyielding abundant crops wherever it is patiently irrigated from the\nstreams which flow out of the mountains east and west, but elsewhere\nlying baked and arid under the heavy, close, feverous air. No strong\nrace has ever inhabited this trench as a home; no great cities have ever\ngrown here, and its civilization, such as it had, was a hot-bed product,\nsoon ripe and quickly rotten.\n\nWe have passed beyond the region of greenness already; the little\nwater-brooks have ceased to gleam through the grain: the wild grasses\nand weeds have a parched and yellow look: the freshness of the early\nmorning has vanished, and we are descending through a desolate land of\nsour and leprous hills of clay and marl, eroded by the floods into\nfantastic shapes, furrowed and scarred and scabbed with mineral refuse.\nThe gullies are steep and narrow: the heat settles on them like a curse.\n\nThrough this battered and crippled region, the centre of the Jordan\nValley, runs the Jordan Bed, twisting like a big green serpent. A dense\nhalf-tropical jungle, haunted by wild beasts and poisonous reptiles and\ninsects, conceals, almost at every point, the down-rushing, swirling,\nyellow flood.\n\nIt has torn and desolated its own shores with sudden spates. The feet of\nthe pilgrims who bathe in it sink into the mud as they wade out\nwaist-deep, and if they venture beyond the shelter of the bank the\nwhirling eddies threaten to sweep them away. The fords are treacherous,\nwith shifting bottom and changing currents. The poets and prophets of\nthe Old Testament give us a true idea of this uninhabitable and\nunlovable river-bed when they speak of \"the pride of Jordan,\" \"the\nswellings of Jordan,\" where the lion hides among the reeds in his secret\nlair, a \"refuge of lies,\" which the \"overflowing scourge\" shall sweep\naway.\n\nNo, it was not because the Jordan was beautiful that John the Baptist\nchose it as the scene of his preaching and ministry, but because it was\nwild and rude, an emblem of violent and sudden change, of irrevocable\nparting, of death itself, and because in its one gift of copious and\nunfailing water, he found the necessary element for his deep baptism of\nrepentance, in which the sinful past of the crowd who followed him was\nto be symbolically immersed and buried and washed away.\n\nAt the place where we reach the water there is an open bit of ground; a\nmiserable hovel gives shelter to two or three Turkish soldiers; an\nungainly latticed bridge, stilted on piles of wood, straddles the river\nwith a single span. The toll is three piastres, (about twelve cents,)\nfor a man and horse.\n\nThe only place from which I can take a photograph of the river is the\nbridge itself, so I thrust the camera through one of the diamond-shaped\nopenings on the lattice-work and try to make a truthful record of the\nlower Jordan at its best. Imagine the dull green of the tangled\nthickets, the ragged clumps of reeds and water-grasses, the sombre and\nsilent flow of the fulvous water sliding and curling down out of the\njungle, and the implacable fervour of the pallid, searching sunlight\nheightening every touch of ugliness and desolation, and you will\nunderstand why the Hebrew poets sang no praise of the Jordan, and why\nNaaman the Syrian thought scorn of it when he remembered the lovely and\nfruitful rivers of Damascus.\n\n\n_A PSALM OF RIVERS_\n\n_The rivers of God are full of water:\nThey are wonderful in the renewal of their strength:\nHe poureth them out from a hidden fountain._\n\n_They are born among the hills in the high places:\nTheir cradle is in the bosom of the rocks:\nThe mountain is their mother and the forest is their father._\n\n_They are nourished among the long grasses:\nThey receive the tribute of a thousand springs:\nThe rain and the snow are a heritage for them._\n\n_They are glad to be gone from their birthplace:\nWith a joyful noise they hasten away:\nThey are going forever and never departed._\n\n_The courses of the rivers are all appointed:\nThey roar loudly but they follow the road:\nThe finger of God hath marked their pathway._\n\n_The rivers of Damascus rejoice among their gardens:\nThe great river of Egypt is proud of his ships:\nThe Jordan is lost in the Lake of Bitterness._\n\n_Surely the Lord guideth them every one in his wisdom:\nIn the end he gathereth all their drops on high:\nHe sendeth them forth again in the clouds of mercy._\n\n_O my God, my life runneth away like a river:\nGuide me, I beseech thee, in a pathway of good:\nLet me flow in blessing to my rest in thee._\n\n\n\n\n                                   VIII\n\n                           A JOURNEY TO JERASH\n\n\nI\n\nTHROUGH THE LAND OF GILEAD\n\nI never heard of Jerash until my friend the Archaeologist told me about\nit, one night when we were sitting beside my study fire at Avalon. \"It\nis the site of the old city of Gerasa,\" said he. \"The most satisfactory\nruins that I have ever seen.\"\n\nThere was something suggestive and potent in that phrase, \"satisfactory\nruins.\" For what is it that weaves the charm of ruins? What do we ask of\nthem to make their magic complete and satisfying? There must be an\nelement of picturesqueness, certainly, to take the eye with pleasure in\nthe contrast between the frailty of man's works and the imperishable\nloveliness of nature. There must also be an element of age; for new\nruins are painful, disquieting, intolerable; they speak of violence and\ndisorder; it is not until the bloom of antiquity gathers upon them that\nthe relics of vast and splendid edifices attract us and subdue us with a\nspell, breathing tranquillity and noble thoughts. There must also be an\nelement of magnificence in decay, of symmetry broken but not destroyed,\na touch of delicate art and workmanship, to quicken the imagination and\nevoke the ghost of beauty haunting her ancient habitations. And beyond\nthese things I think there must be two more qualities in a ruin that\nsatisfies us: a clear connection with the greatness and glory of the\npast, with some fine human achievement, with some heroism of men dead\nand gone; and last of all, a spirit of mystery, the secret of some\nunexplained catastrophe, the lost link of a story never to be fully\ntold.\n\nThis, or something like it, was what the Archaeologist's phrase seemed to\npromise me as we watched the glowing embers on the hearth of Avalon. And\nit is this promise that has drawn me, with my three friends, on this\nApril day into the Land of Gilead, riding to Jerash.\n\nThe grotesque and rickety bridge by which we have crossed the Jordan\nsoon disappears behind us, as we trot along the winding bridle-path\nthrough the river-jungle, in the stifling heat. Coming out on the open\nplain, which rises gently toward the east, we startle great flocks of\nstorks into the air, and they swing away in languid circles, dappling\nthe blaze of morning with their black-tipped wings. Grotesque, ungainly,\ngothic birds, they do not seem to belong to the Orient, but rather to\nhave drifted hither out of some quaint, familiar fairy tale of the\nNorth; and indeed they are only transient visitors here, and will soon\nbe on their way to build their nests on the roofs of German villages and\nclapper their long, yellow bills over the joy of houses full of little\nchildren.\n\nThe rains of spring have spread a thin bloom of green over the plain.\nTender herbs and light grasses partly veil the gray and stony ground.\nThere is a month of scattered feeding for the flocks and herds. Away to\nthe south, where the foot-hills begin to roll up suddenly from the\nJordan, we can see a black line of Bedouin tents quivering through the\nheat.\n\nNow the trail divides, and we take the northern fork, turning soon into\nthe open mouth of the Wadi Shaib, a broad, grassy valley between high\nand treeless hills. The watercourse that winds down the middle of it is\ndry: nothing but a tumbled bed of gray rocks,--the bare bones of a\nlittle river. But as we ascend slowly the flowers increase; wild\nhollyhocks, and morning-glories, and clumps of blue anchusa, and scarlet\nadonis, and tall wands of white asphodel.\n\nThe morning grows hotter and hotter as we plod along. Presently we come\nup with three mounted Arabs, riding leisurely. Salutations are exchanged\nwith gravity. Then the Arabs whisper something to each other and spur\naway at a great pace ahead of us--laughing. Why did they laugh?\n\nAh, now we know. For here is a lofty cliff on one side of the valley,\nhanging over just far enough to make a strip of cool shade at its base,\nwith ferns and deep grass and a glimmer of dripping water. And here our\nwise Arabs are sitting at their ease to eat their mid-day meal under\n\"the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.\"\n\nVainly we search the valley for another rock like that. It is the only\none; and the Arabs laughed because they knew it. We must content\nourselves with this little hill where a few hawthorn bushes offer us\ntiny islets of shade, beset with thorns, and separated by straits of\nintolerable glare. Here we eat a little, but without comfort; and sleep\na little, but without refreshment; and talk a little, but restlessly. As\nsoon as we dare, we get into the saddle again and toil up through the\nvalley, now narrowing into a rugged gorge, crammed with ardent heat. The\nsprinkling of trees and bushes, the multitude of flowers, assure us that\nthere must be moisture underground, along the bed of the stream; but\nabove ground there is not a drop, and not a breath of wind to break the\ndead calm of the smothering air. Why did we come into this heat-trap?\n\nBut presently the ravine leads us, by steep stairs of rock, up to a\nhigh, green table-land. A heavenly breeze from the west is blowing here.\nThe fields are full of flowers--red anemones, white and yellow daisies,\npink flax, little blue bell-flowers--a hundred kinds. One knoll is\ncovered with cyclamens; another with splendid purple iris, immense\nblossoms, so dark that they look almost black against the grass; but\nhold them up to the sun and you will see the imperial colour. We have\nnever found such wild flowers, not even on the Plain of Sharon; the\nhills around Jerusalem were but sparsely adorned in comparison with\nthese highlands of bloom.\n\nAnd here are oak-trees, broad-limbed and friendly, clothed in glistening\ngreen. Let us rest for a while in this cool shade and forget the misery\nof the blazing noon. Below us lies the gray Jordan valley and the\nsteel-blue mirror of the Dead Sea; and across that gulf we see the\nfurrowed mountains of Judea and Samaria, and far to the north the peaks\nof Galilee. Around us is the Land of Gilead, a rolling hill-country,\nwith long ridges and broad summits, a rounded land, a verdurous land, a\nland of rich pasturage. There are deep valleys that cut into it and\ndivide it up. But the main bulk of it is lifted high in the air, and\nspread out nobly to the visitations of the wind. And see--far away\nthere, to the south, across the Wadi Nimrin, a mountainside covered with\nwild trees, a real woodland, almost a forest!\n\nNow we must travel on, for it is still a long way to our night-quarters\nat Es Salt. We pass several Bedouin camps, the only kind of villages in\nthis part of the world. The tents of goat's-hair are swarming with\nlife. A score of ragged Arab boys are playing hockey on the green with\nan old donkey's hoof for a ball. They yell with refreshing vigour, just\nlike universal human boys.\n\nThe trail grows steeper and more rocky, ascending apparently impossible\nplaces, and winding perilously along the cliffs above little vineyards\nand cultivated fields where men are ploughing. Travel and traffic\nincrease along this rude path, which is the only highway: evidently we\nare coming near to some place of importance.\n\nBut where is Es Salt? For nine hours we have been in the saddle, riding\nsteadily toward that mysterious metropolis of the Belka, the only living\ncity in the Land of Gilead; and yet there is no trace of it in sight.\nHave we missed the trail? The mule-train with our tents and baggage\npassed us in the valley while we were sweltering under the hawthorns. It\nseems as if it must have vanished into the pastoral wilderness and left\nus travelling an endless road to nowhere.\n\nAt last we top a rugged ridge and look down upon the solution of the\nmystery. Es Salt is a city that can be hid; for it is not set upon a\nhill, but tucked away in a valley that curves around three sides of a\nrocky eminence, and is sheltered from the view by higher ranges.\n\nWho can tell how this city came here, hidden in this hollow place almost\nthree thousand feet above the sea? Who was its founder? What was its\nancient name? It is a place without traditions, without antiquities,\nwithout a shrine of any kind; just a living town, thriving and\nprospering in its own dirty and dishevelled way, in the midst of a\ncountry of nomads, growing in the last twenty years from six thousand to\nfifteen thousand inhabitants, driving a busy trade with the surrounding\ncountry, exporting famous raisins and dye-stuff made from sumach, the\nseat of the Turkish Government of the Belka, with a garrison and a\ntelegraph office--decidedly a thriving town of to-day; yet without a\nroad by which a carriage can approach it; and old, unmistakably old!\n\nThe castle that crowns the eminence in the centre is a ruin of unknown\ndate. The copious spring that gushes from the castle-hill must have\ninvited men for many centuries to build their habitations around it.\nThe gray houses seem to have slipped and settled down into the curving\nvalley, and to have crowded one another up the opposite slopes, as if\nhundreds of generations had found here a hiding-place and a city of\nrefuge.\n\nWe ride through a Mohammedan graveyard--unfenced, broken, neglected--and\ndown a steep, rain-gulleyed hillside, into the filthy, narrow street.\nThe people all have an Arab look, a touch of the wildness of the desert\nin their eyes and their free bearing. There are many fine figures and\nhandsome faces, some with auburn hair and a reddish hue showing through\nthe bronze of their cheeks. They stare at us with undisguised curiosity\nand wonder, as if we came from a strange world. The swarthy merchants in\nthe doors of their little shops, the half-veiled women in the lanes, the\ngroups of idlers at the corners of the streets, watch us with a gaze\nwhich seems almost defiant. Evidently tourists are a rarity\nhere--perhaps an intrusion to be resented.\n\nWe inquire whether our baggage-train has been seen, where our camp is\npitched. No one knows, no one cares; until at last a ragged, smiling\nurchin, one of those blessed, ubiquitous boys who always know everything\nthat happens in a town, offers to guide us. He trots ahead, full of\nimportance, dodging through the narrow alleys, making the complete\ncircuit of the castle-hill and leading us to the upper end of the\neastern valley. Here, among a few olive-trees beside the road, our white\ntents are standing, so close to an encampment of wandering gypsies that\nthe tent-ropes cross.\n\nDirectly opposite rises a quarter of the town, tier upon tier of\nflat-roofed houses, every roof-top covered with people. A wild-looking\ncrowd of visitors have gathered in the road. Two soldiers, with the\nappearance of partially reformed brigands, are acting as our guard, and\nkeeping the inquisitive spectators at a respectful distance. Our mules\nand donkeys and horses are munching their supper in a row, tethered to a\nlong rope in front of the tents. Shukari, the cook, in his white cap and\napron, is gravely intent upon the operation of his little charcoal\nrange. Youssouf, the major-domo, is setting the table with flowers and\nlighted candles in the dining-tent. After a while he comes to the door\nof our sleeping-tents to inform us, with due ceremony, that dinner is\nserved; and we sit down to our repast in the midst of the swarming\nEdomites and the wandering Zingari as peacefully and properly as if we\nwere dining at the Savoy.\n\nThe night darkens around us. Lights twinkle, one above another, up the\nsteep hillside of houses; above them are the tranquil stars, the lit\nwindows of unknown habitations; and on the hill-top one great planet\nburns in liquid flame.\n\nThe crowd melts away, chattering down the road; it forms again, from\nanother quarter, and again dissolves. Meaningless shouts and cries and\nsongs resound from the hidden city. In the gypsy camp beside us insomnia\nreigns. A little forge is clinking and clanking. Donkeys raise their\nantiphonal lament. Dogs salute the stars in chorus. First a leader, far\naway, lifts a wailing, howling, shrieking note; then the mysterious\nunrest that torments the bosom of Oriental dogdom breaks loose in a\nhundred, a thousand answering voices, swelling into a yapping, growling,\nbarking, yelling discord. A sudden silence cuts the tumult short, until\nonce more the unknown misery, (or is it the secret joy), of the canine\nheart bursts out in long-drawn dissonance.\n\nFrom the road and from the tents of the gypsies various human voices are\nsounding close around us all the night. Through our confused dreams and\nbroken sleep we strangely seem to catch fragments of familiar speech,\nphrases of English or French or German. Then, waking and listening, we\nhear men muttering and disputing, women complaining or soothing their\nbabies, children quarrelling or calling to each other, in Arabic, or\nRomany--not a word that we can understand--voices that tell us only that\nwe are in a strange land, and very far away from home, camping in the\nheart of a wild city.\n\n\nII\n\nOVER THE BROOK JABBOK\n\nAfter such a night the morning is welcome, as it breaks over the eastern\nhill behind us, with rosy light creeping slowly down the opposite slope\nof houses. Before the sunbeams have fairly reached the bottom of the\nvalley we are in the saddle, ready to leave Es Salt without further\nexploration.\n\nThere is a general monotony about this riding through Palestine which\nyet leaves room for a particular variety of the most entrancing kind.\nEvery day is like every other in its main outline, but the details are\ninfinitely uncertain--always there is something new, some touch of a\ndistinct and memorable charm.\n\nTo-day it is the sense of being in the country of the nomads, the\ntent-dwellers, the masters of innumerable flocks and herds, whose wealth\ngoes wandering from pasture to pasture, bleating and lowing and browsing\nand multiplying over the open moorland beneath the blue sky. This is the\nprevailing impression of this day: and the symbol of it is the thin,\nquavering music of the pastoral pipe, following us wherever we go,\ndrifting tremulously and plaintively down from some rock on the\nhillside, or floating up softly from some hidden valley, where a brown\nshepherd or goatherd is minding his flock with music.\n\nWhat quaint and rustic melodies are these! Wild and unfamiliar to our\nears; yet doubtless the same wandering airs that were played by the sons\nand servants of Jacob when he returned from his twenty years of\nprofitable exile in Haran with his rich wages of sheep and goats and\ncattle and wives and maid-servants, the fruit of his hard labour and\nshrewd bargaining with his father-in-law Laban, and passed cautiously\nthrough Gilead on his way to the Promised Land.\n\nOn the highland to the east of Es Salt we see a fine herd of horses,\nbrood-mares and foals. A little farther on, we come to a muddy pond or\ntank at which a drove of asses are drinking. A steep and winding path,\nfull of loose stones, leads us down into a grassy, oval plain, a great\ncup of green, eight or ten miles long and five or six miles wide,\nrimmed with bare hills from five to eight hundred feet high. This, we\nconjecture, is the fertile basin of El Buchaia, or Bekaa.\n\nBedouin farmers are ploughing the rich, reddish soil. Their black\ntent-villages are tucked away against the feet of the surrounding hills.\nThe broad plain itself is without sign of human dwelling, except that\nnear each focus of the ellipse there is a pile of shattered ruins with a\ncrumbling, solitary tower, where a shepherd sits piping to his lop-eared\nflock.\n\nIn one place we pass through a breeding-herd of camels, browsing on the\nshort grass. The old ones are in the process of the spring moulting;\ntheir thick, matted hair is peeling off in large flakes, like fragments\nof a ragged, moth-eaten coat. The young ones are covered with pearl-gray\nwool, soft and almost downy, like gigantic goslings with four legs.\n(What is the word for a young camel, I wonder; is it camelet or\ncamelot?) But young and old have a family resemblance of ugliness.\n\nThe camel is the most ungainly and stupid of God's useful beasts--an\nawkward necessity--the humpbacked ship of the desert. The Arabs have a\nstory which runs thus: \"What did Allah say when He had finished making\nthe camel? He couldn't say anything; He just looked at the camel, and\nlaughed, and laughed!\"\n\nBut in spite of his ridiculous appearance the camel seems satisfied with\nhimself; in fact there is an expression of supreme contempt in his face\nwhen he droops his pendulous lower lip and wrinkles his nose, which has\nled the Arabs to tell another story about him: \"Why does the camel\ndespise his master? Because man knows only the ninety-nine common names\nof Allah; but the hundredth name, the wonderful name, the beautiful\nname, is a secret revealed to the camel alone. Therefore he scorns the\nwhole race of men.\"\n\nThe cattle that feed around the edges of this peaceful plain are small\nand nimble, as if they were used to long, rough journeys. The prevailing\ncolour is black, or rusty brown. They are evidently of a degenerate and\nplayed-out stock. Even the heifers are used for ploughing, and they look\nbut little larger than the donkeys which are often yoked beside them.\nThey come around the grassy knoll when our luncheon-tent is pitched,\nand stare at us very much as the people stared in Es Salt.\n\nIn the afternoon we pass over the rim of the broad vale and descend a\nnarrower ravine, where oaks and terebinths, laurels and balsams,\npistachios and almonds are growing. The grass springs thick and lush,\ntall weeds and trailing vines appear, a murmur of flowing water is heard\nunder the tangled herbage at the bottom of the wadi. Presently we are\nfollowing a bright little brook, crossing and recrossing it as it leads\nus toward our camp-ground.\n\nThere are the tents, standing in a line on the flowery bank of the\nbrook, across the water from the trail. A few steps lower down there is\na well-built stone basin with a copious spring gushing into it from the\nhillside under an arched roof. Here the people of the village, (which is\nsomewhere near us on the mountain, but out of sight), come to fill their\npitchers and water-skins, and to let their cattle and donkeys drink. All\nthrough the late afternoon they are coming and going, plashing through\nthe shallow ford below us, enjoying the cool, clear water, disappearing\nalong the foot-paths that lead among the hills.\n\nThese are very different cattle from the herds we saw among the Bedouins\na couple of hours ago; fine large creatures, well bred and well fed,\nsome cream-coloured, some red, some belted with white. And these men who\nfollow them, on foot or on horseback, truculent looking fellows with\nblue eyes and light hair and broad faces, clad in long, close-fitting\ntunics, with belts around their waists and small black caps of fur, some\nof them with high boots--who are they?\n\nThey are some of the Circassian immigrants who were driven out of Russia\nby the Czar after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, and deported again\nafter the Bulgarian atrocities, and whom the Turkish Government has\ncolonized through eastern Palestine on land given by the Sultan. Nobody\nreally knows to whom the land belongs, I suppose; but the Bedouins have\nhad the habit, for many centuries, of claiming and using it as they\npleased for their roaming flocks and herds. Now these northern invaders\nare taking and holding the most fertile places, the best springs, the\nfields that are well watered through the year.\n\nTherefore the Arab hates the Circassian, though he be of the same\nreligion, far more than he hates the Christian, almost as much as he\nhates the Turk. But the Circassian can take care of himself; he is a\nfierce and hardy fighter; and in his rude way he understands how to make\nfarming and stock-raising pay.\n\nIndeed, this Land of Gilead is a region in which twenty times the\npresent population, if they were industrious and intelligent and had\ngood government, might prosper. No wonder that the tribe of Gad and\nReuben and the half-tribe of Manasseh, on the way to Canaan, \"when they\nsaw the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead, that, behold, the place\nwas a place for cattle,\" (Numbers xxxii) fell in love with it, and\nbesought Moses that they might have their inheritance there, and not\nwestward of the Jordan. No wonder that they recrossed the river after\nthey had helped Joshua to conquer the Canaanites, and settled in this\nhigh country, so much fairer and more fertile than Judea, or even than\nSamaria.\n\nIt was here, in 1880, that Laurence Oliphant, the gifted English\ntraveller and mystic, proposed to establish his fine scheme for the\nbeginning of the restoration of the Jews to Palestine. A territory\nextending from the brook of Jabbok on the north to the brook of Arnon on\nthe south, from the Jordan Valley on the west to the Arabian desert on\nthe east; railways running up from the sea at Haifa, and down from\nDamascus, and southward to the Gulf of Akabah, and across to Ismailia on\nthe Suez Canal; a government of local autonomy guaranteed and protected\nby the Sublime Porte; sufficient capital supplied by the Jewish bankers\nof London and Paris and Berlin and Vienna; and the outcasts of Israel\ngathered from all the countries where they are oppressed, to dwell\ntogether in peace and plenty, tending sheep and cattle, raising fruit\nand grain, pressing out wine and oil, and supplying the world with the\nbalm of Gilead--such was Oliphant's beautiful dream.\n\nBut it did not come true; because Russia did not like it, because Turkey\nwas afraid of it, because the rest of Europe did not care for it,--and\nperhaps because the Jews themselves were not generally enthusiastic over\nit. Perhaps the majority of them would rather stay where they are.\nPerhaps they do not yearn passionately for Palestine and the simple\nlife.\n\nBut it is not of these things that we are thinking, I must confess, as\nthe ruddy sun slowly drops toward the heights of Pennel, and we stroll\nout in the evening glow, along the edge of the wild ravine into which\nour little stream plunges, and look down into the deep, grand valley of\nthe Brook Jabbok.\n\nYonder, on the other side of the great gulf of heliotrope shadow,\nstretches the long bulk of the Jebel Ajlun, shaggy with oak-trees. It\nwas somewhere on the slopes of that wooded mountain that one of the most\ntragic battles of the world was fought. For there the army of Absalom\nwent out to meet the army of his father David. \"And the battle was\nspread over the face of all the country, and the forest devoured more\npeople that day than the sword devoured.\" It was there that the young\nman Absalom rode furiously upon his mule, \"and the mule went under the\nthick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he\nwas taken up between heaven and earth.\" And a man came and told Joab,\nthe captain of David's host, \"Behold I saw Absalom hanging in the midst\nof an oak.\" Then Joab made haste; \"and he took three darts in his hand,\nand thrust them through the heart of Absalom while he was yet alive in\nthe midst of the oak.\" And when the news came to David, sitting in the\ngate of the city of Mahanaim, he went up into the chamber over the gate\nand wept bitterly, crying, \"Would I had died for thee, O Absalom, my\nson!\" (II Samuel xviii.)\n\nTo remember a story like that is to feel the pathos with which man has\ntouched the face of nature. But there is another story, more mystical,\nmore beautiful, which belongs to the scene upon which we are looking.\nDown in the purple valley, where the smooth meadows spread so fair, and\nthe little river curves and gleams through the thickets of oleander,\nsomewhere along that flashing stream is the place where Jacob sent his\nwives and his children, his servants and his cattle, across the water in\nthe darkness, and there remained all night long alone, for \"there\nwrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.\"\n\nWho was this \"man\" with whom the patriarch contended at midnight, and\nto whom he cried, \"I will not let thee go except thou bless me\"? On the\nmorrow Jacob was to meet his fierce and powerful brother Esau, whom he\nhad wronged and outwitted, from whom he had stolen the birthright\nblessing twenty years before. Was it the prospect of this dreaded\nmeeting that brought upon Jacob the night of lonely struggle by the\nBrook Jabbok? Was it the promise of reconciliation with his brother that\nmade him say at dawn, \"I have seen God face to face, and my life is\nsaved\"? Was it the unexpected friendliness and gentleness of that\nbrother in the encounter of the morning that inspired Jacob's cry, \"I\nhave seen _thy face as one seeth the face of God_, and thou wast pleased\nwith me\"?\n\nYes, that _is_ what the old story means, in its Oriental imagery. The\nmidnight wrestling is the pressure of human enmity and strife. The\nmorning peace is the assurance of human forgiveness and love. The face\nof God seen in the face of human kindness--that is the sunrise vision of\nthe Brook Jabbok.\n\nSuch are the thoughts with which we fall asleep in our tents beside the\nmurmuring brook of Er Rumman. Early the next morning we go down, and\ndown, and down, by ledge and terrace and grassy slope, into the Vale of\nJabbok. It is sixty miles long, beginning on the edge of the mountain of\nMoab, and curving eastward, northward, westward, south-westward, between\nGilead and Ajlun, until it opens into the Jordan Valley.\n\nHere is the famous little river, a swift, singing current of gray-blue\nwater--Nahr ez-Zerka \"blue river,\" the Arabs call it--dashing and\nswirling merrily between the thickets of willows and tamaracks and\noleanders that border it. The ford is rather deep, for the spring flood\nis on; but our horses splash through gaily, scattering the water around\nthem in showers which glitter in the sunshine.\n\nIs this the brook beside which a man once met God? Yes--and by many\nanother brook too.\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE RUINS OF GERASA\n\nWe are coming now into the region of the Decapolis, the Greek cities\nwhich sprang up along the eastern border of Palestine after the\nconquests of Alexander the Great.\n\nThey were trading cities, undoubtedly, situated on the great roads which\nled from the east across the desert to the Jordan Valley, and so,\nconverging upon the Plain of Esdraelon, to the Mediterranean Sea and to\nGreece and Italy. Their wealth tempted the Jewish princes of the\nHasmonean line to conquer and plunder them; but the Roman general Pompey\nrestored their civic liberties, B.C. 65, and caused them to be rebuilt\nand strengthened. By the beginning of the Christian era, they were once\nmore rich and flourishing, and a league was formed of ten\nmunicipalities, with certain rights of communal and local government,\nunder the protection and suzerainty of the Roman Empire.\n\nThe ten cities which originally composed this confederacy for mutual\ndefence and the development of their trade, were Scythopolis, Hippos,\nDamascus, Gadara, Raphana, Kanatha, Pella, Dion, Philadelphia and\nGerasa. Their money was stamped with the image of Caesar. Their soldiers\nfollowed the Imperial eagles. Their traditions, their arts, their\nliterature were Greek. But their strength and their new prosperity were\nRoman.\n\nHere in this narrow wadi through which we are climbing up from the Vale\nof Jabbok we find the traces of the presence of the Romans in the\nfragments of a paved military road and an aqueduct. Presently we\nsurmount a rocky hill and look down into the broad, shallow basin of\nJerash. Gently sloping, rock-strewn hills surround it; through the\ncentre flows a stream, with banks bordered by trees; a water-fall is\nflashing opposite to us; on a cluster of rounded knolls about the middle\nof the valley, on the west bank of the stream, are spread the vast,\nincredible, complete ruins of the ancient city of Gerasa.\n\nThey rise like a dream in the desolation of the wilderness, columns and\narches and vaults and amphitheatres and temples, suddenly appearing in\nthe bare and lonely landscape as if by enchantment.\n\nHow came these monuments of splendour and permanence into this country\nof simplicity and transience, this land of shifting shepherds and\ndrovers, this empire of the black tent, this immemorial region that has\nslept away the centuries under the spell of the pastoral pipe? What\nmagical music of another kind, strong, stately and sonorous, music of\nbrazen trumpets and shawms, of silver harps and cymbals, evoked this\nproud and potent city on the border of the desert, and maintained for\ncenturies, amid the sweeping, turbulent floods of untamable tribes of\nrebels and robbers, this lofty landmark of\n\n    \"the glory that was Greece\n  And the grandeur that was Rome\"?\n\nWhat sudden storm of discord and disaster shook it all down again,\nloosened the sinews of majesty and power, stripped away the garments of\nbeauty and luxury, dissolved the lovely body of living joy, and left\nthis skeleton of dead splendour diffused upon the solitary ground?\n\nWho can solve these mysteries? It is all unaccountable,\nunbelievable,--the ghost of the dream of a dream,--yet here it is,\nsurrounded by the green hills, flooded with the frank light of noon,\nneighboured by a dirty, noisy little village of Arabs and Circassians on\nthe east bank of the stream, and with real goats and lean, black cattle\ngrazing between the carved columns and under the broken architraves of\nGerasa the Golden.\n\nLet us go up into the wrecked city.\n\nThis triumphal arch, with its three gates and its lofty Corinthian\ncolumns, stands outside of the city walls: a structure which has no\nother use or meaning than the expression of Imperial pride: thus the\nRoman conquerors adorn and approach their vassal-town.\n\nBehind the arch a broad, paved road leads to the southern gate, perhaps\na thousand feet away. Beside the road, between the arch and the gate,\nlie two buildings of curious interest. The first is a great pool of\nstone, seven hundred feet long by three hundred feet wide. This is the\nNaumachia, which is filled with water by conduits from the neighbouring\nstream, in order that the Greeks may hold their mimic naval combats and\nregattas here in the desert, for they are always at heart a seafaring\npeople. Beyond the pool there is a Circus, with four rows of stone seats\nand an oval arena, for wild-beast shows and gladiatorial combats.\n\nThe city walls have almost entirely disappeared and the South Gate is in\nruins. Entering and turning to the left, we ascend a little hill and\nfind the Temple (perhaps dedicated to Artemis), and close beside it the\ngreat South Theatre. There is hardly a break in the semicircular stone\nbenches, thirty-two rows of seats rising tier above tier, divided into\nan upper and a lower section by a broader row of \"boxes\" or stalls,\nrichly carved, and reserved, no doubt, for magnates of the city and\npersons of importance. The stage, over a hundred feet wide, is backed by\na straight wall adorned with Corinthian columns and decorated niches.\nThe theatre faces due north; and the spectator sitting here, if the play\nwearies him, can lift his eyes and look off beyond the proscenium over\nthe length and breadth of Gerasa.\n\n  \"But he looked upon the city, every side,\n                      Far and wide,\n  All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades\n                      Colonnades,\n  All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,--and then,\n                      All the men!\"\n\nIn the hollow northward from this theatre is the Forum, or the\nMarket-place, or the Hippodrome--I cannot tell what it is, but a\nsplendid oval of Ionic pillars incloses an open space of more than three\nhundred feet in length and two hundred and fifty feet in width, where\nthe Gerasenes may barter or bicker or bet, as they will.\n\nFrom the Forum to the North Gate runs the main street, more than half a\nmile long, lined with a double row of columns, from twenty to thirty\nfeet high, with smooth shafts and acanthus capitals. At the intersection\nof the cross-streets there are tetrapylons, with domes, and pedestals\nfor statues. The pavement of the roadway is worn into ruts by the\nchariot wheels. Under the arcades behind the columns run the sidewalks\nfor foot-passengers. Turn to the right from the main street and you come\nto the Public Baths, an immense building like a palace, supplied with\nhot and cold water, adorned with marble and mosaic. On the left lies the\nTribuna, with its richly decorated facade and its fountain of flowing\nwater. A few yards farther north is the Propylaeum of the Great Temple; a\nsuperb gateway, decorated with columns and garlands and shell niches,\nopening to a wide flight of steps by which we ascend to the temple-area,\na terrace nearly twice the size of Madison Square Garden, surrounded by\ntwo hundred and sixty columns, and standing clear above the level of the\nencircling city.\n\nThe Temple of the Sun rises at the western end of this terrace, facing\nthe dawn. The huge columns of the portico, forty-five feet high and five\nfeet in diameter, with rich Corinthian capitals, are of rosy-yellow\nlimestone, which seems to be saturated with the sunshine of a thousand\nyears. Behind them are the walls of the Cella, or inner shrine, with its\nvaulted apse for the image of the god, and its secret stairs and\npassages in the rear wall for the coming and going of the priests, and\nthe ascent to the roof for the first salutation of the sunrise over the\neastern hills.\n\nSpreading our cloth between two pillars of the portico we celebrate the\nfeast of noontide, and looking out over the wrecked magnificence of the\ncity we try to reconstruct the past.\n\n[Illustration: Ruins of Jerash, Looking West. Propylaeum and Temple\nterrace.]\n\nIt was in the days of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, in the latter\npart of the second century after Christ, that these temples and palaces\nand theatres were rising. Those were the palmy days of Graeco-Roman\ncivilisation in Syria; then the shops along the Colonnade were filled\nwith rich goods, the Forum listened to the voice of world-famous orators\nand teachers, and proud lords and ladies assembled in the Naumachia to\nwatch the sham battles of the miniature galleys. A little later the new\nreligion of Christianity found a foothold here, (see, these are the\nruined outlines of a Christian church below us to the south, and the\nfoundation of a great Basilica), and by the fifth century the pagan\nworship was dying out, and the Bishop of Gerasa had a seat in the\nCouncil of Chalcedon. It was no longer with the comparative merits of\nStoicism and Epicureanism and Neo-Platonism, or with the rival literary\nfame of their own Ariston and Kerykos as against Meleager and Menippus\nand Theodorus of Gadara, that the Gerasenes concerned themselves. They\nwere busy now with the controversies about Homoiousia and Homoousia,\nwith the rivalry of the Eutychians and the Nestorians, with the\nconflicting, not to say combative, claims of such saints as Dioscurus of\nAlexandria and Theodoret of Cyrus. But trade continued brisk, and the\ncity was as rich and as proud as ever. In the seventh century an Arabian\nchronicler named it among the great towns of Palestine, and a poet\npraised its fertile territory and its copious spring.\n\nThen what happened? Earthquake, pestilence, conflagration, pillage,\ndevastation--who knows? A Mohammedan writer of the thirteenth century\nmerely mentions it as \"a great city of ruins\"; and so it lay, deserted\nand forgotten, until a German traveller visited it in 1806; and so it\nlies to-day, with all its dwellings and its walls shattered and\ndissolved beside its flowing stream in the centre of its green valley,\nand only the relics of its temples, its theatres, its colonnades, and\nits triumphal arch remaining to tell us how brave and rich and gay it\nwas in the days of old.\n\nDo you believe it? Does it seem at all real or possible to you? Look up\nat this tall pillar above us. See how the wild marjoram has thrust its\nroots between the joints and hangs like \"the hyssop that springeth out\nof the wall.\" See how the weather has worn deep holes and crevices in\nthe topmost drum, and how the sparrows have made their nests there. Lean\nyour back against the pillar; feel it vibrate like \"a reed shaken with\nthe wind\"; watch that huge capital of acanthus leaves swaying slowly to\nand fro and trembling upon its stalk \"as a flower of the field.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAll the afternoon and all the next morning we wander through the ruins,\ntaking photographs, deciphering inscriptions, discovering new points of\nview to survey the city. We sit on the arch of the old Roman bridge\nwhich spans the stream, and look down into the valley filled with\ngardens and orchards; tall poplars shiver in the breeze; peaches, plums,\nand cherries are in bloom; almonds clad in pale-green foliage; figs\nputting forth their verdant shoots; pomegranates covered with ruddy\nyoung leaves. We go up to see the beautiful spring which bursts from\nthe hillside above the town and supplies it with water. Then we go back\nagain to roam aimlessly and dreamily, like folk bewitched, among the\ntumbled heaps of hewn stones, the broken capitals, and the tall, rosy\ncolumns, soaked with sunbeams.\n\nThe Arabs of Jerash have a bad reputation as robbers and extortionists;\nand in truth they are rather a dangerous-looking lot of fellows, with\nbold, handsome brown faces and inscrutable dark eyes. But although we\nhave paid no tribute to them, they do not molest us. They seem to regard\nus with a contemptuous pity, as harmless idiots who loaf among the\nfallen stones and do not even attempt to make excavations.\n\nOur camp is in the inclosure of the North Theatre, a smaller building\nthan that which stands beside the South Gate, but large enough to hold\nan audience of two or three thousand. The semicircle of seats is still\nunbroken; the arrangements of the stage, the stairways, the entries of\nthe building can all be easily traced.\n\nThere were gay times in the city when these two theatres were filled\nwith people. What comedies of Plautus or Terence or Aristophanes or\nMenander; what tragedies of Seneca, or of the seven dramatists of\nAlexandria who were called the \"Pleias,\" were presented here?\n\nLook up along those lofty tiers of seats in the pale, clear starlight.\nCan you see no shadowy figures sitting there, hear no light whisper of\nghostly laughter, no thin ripple of clapping hands? What flash of wit\namuses them, what nobly tragic word or action stirs them to applause?\nWhat problem of their own life, what reflection of their own heart, does\nthe stage reveal to them? We shall never know. The play at Gerasa is\nended.\n\n\n_A PSALM AMONG THE RUINS_\n\n_The lizard rested on the rock while I sat among the ruins;\nAnd the pride of man was like a vision of the night._\n\n_Lo, the lords of the city have disappeared into darkness;\nThe ancient wilderness hath swallowed up all their work._\n\n_There is nothing left of the city but a heap of fragments;\nThe bones of a carcass that a wild beast hath devoured._\n\n_Behold the desert waiteth hungrily for man's dwellings;\nSurely the tide of desolation returneth upon his toil._\n\n_All that he hath painfully lifted up is shaken down in a moment;\nThe memory of his glory is buried beneath the billows of sand._\n\n_Then a voice said, Look again upon the ruins;\nThese broken arches have taught generations to build._\n\n_Moreover the name of this city shall be remembered;\nHere a poor man spoke a word that shall not die._\n\n_This is the glory that is stronger than the desert;\nFor God hath given eternity to the thought of man._\n\n\n\n\n                                   IX\n\n                        THE MOUNTAINS OF SAMARIA\n\n\nI\n\nJORDAN FERRY\n\nLook down from these tranquil heights of Jebel Osha, above the noiseful,\nsqualid little city of Es Salt, and you see what Moses saw when he\nclimbed Mount Pisgah and looked upon the Promised Land which he was\nnever to enter.\n\n  \"Could we but climb where Moses stood,\n        And view the landscape o'er,\n  Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood,\n        Should fright us from the shore.\"\n\nPisgah was probably a few miles south of the place where we are now\nstanding, but the main features of the view are the same. These broad\nmountain-shoulders, falling steeply away to the west, clad in the\nemerald robe of early spring; this immense gulf at our feet, four\nthousand feet below us, a huge trough of gray and yellow, through which\nthe dark-green ribbon of the Jordan jungle, touched with a few silvery\ngleams of water, winds to the blue basin of the Dead Sea; those scarred\nand wrinkled hills rising on the other side, the knotted brow of\nQuarantana, the sharp cone of Sartoba, the distant peak of Mizpeh, the\nlong line of Judean, Samarian, and Galilean summits, Olivet, and Ebal,\nand Gerizim, and Gilboa, and Tabor, rolling away to the northward,\ngrowing ever fairer with the promise of fertile valleys between them and\nrich plains beyond them, and fading at last into the azure vagueness of\nthe highlands round the Lake of Galilee.\n\nWhy does that country toward which we are looking and travelling seem to\nus so much more familiar and real, so much more a part of the actual\nworld, than this region of forgotten Greek and Roman glory, from which\nwe are returning like those who awake from sleep? The ruined splendours\nof Jerash fade behind us like a dream. Samaria and Galilee, crowded with\nmemories and associations which have been woven into our minds by the\nwonderful Bible story, draw us to them with the convincing touch of\nreality. Yet even while we recognise this strange difference between\nour feelings toward the Holy Land and those toward other parts of the\nancient world, we know that it is not altogether true.\n\nGerasa was as really a part of God's big world as Shechem or Jezreel or\nSychar. It stood in His sight, and He must have regarded the human souls\nthat lived there. He must have cared for them, and watched over them,\nand judged them equitably, dividing the just from the unjust, the\nchildren of love from the children of hate, even as He did with men on\nthe other side of the Jordan, even as He does with all men everywhere\nto-day. If faith in a God who is the Father and Lord of all mankind\nmeans anything it means this: equal care, equal justice, equal mercy for\nall the world. Gerasa has been forgotten of men, but God never forgot\nit.\n\nWhat, then, is the difference? Just this: in the little land between the\nJordan and the sea, things came to pass which have a more enduring\nsignificance than the wars and splendours, the wealth and culture of the\nDecapolis. Conflicts were fought there in which the eternal issues of\ngood and evil were clearly manifest. Ideas were worked out there which\nhave a permanent value to the spiritual life of man. Revelations were\nmade there which have become the guiding stars of succeeding\ngenerations. This is why that country of the Bible seems more real to\nus: because its history is more significant, because it is Divinely\ninspired with a meaning for our faith and hope.\n\nDo you agree with this? I do not know. But at least if you were with us\non this glorious morning, riding down from the heights of Jebel Osha you\nwould feel the vivid beauty, the subduing grandeur of the scene. You\nwould rejoice in the life-renewing air that blows softly around us and\ninvites us to breathe deep,--in the pure morning faces of the flowers\nopening among the rocks,--in the light waving of silken grasses along\nthe slopes by which we steeply descend.\n\nThere is a young Gileadite running beside us, a fine fellow about\neighteen years old, with his white robe girded up about his loins,\nleaving his brown legs bare. His head-dress is encircled with the black\n_'agal_ of camel's hair like a rustic crown. A long gun is slung over\nhis back; a wicked-looking curved knife with a brass sheath sticks in\nhis belt; his silver powder-horn and leather bullet-pouch hang at his\nwaist. He strides along with a free, noble step, or springs lightly from\nrock to rock like a gazelle.\n\nHis story is a short one, and simple,--if true. His younger brother has\nrun away from the family tent among the pastures of Gilead, seeking his\nfortune in the wide world. And now this elder brother has come out to\nlook for the prodigal, at Nablus, at Jaffa, at Jerusalem,--Allah knows\nhow far the quest may lead! But he is afraid of robbers if he crosses\nthe Jordan Valley alone. May he keep company with us and make the\nperilous transit under our august protection? Yes, surely, my brown son\nof Esau; and we will not inquire too closely whether you are really\nrunning after your brother or running away yourself.\n\nThere may be a thousand robbers concealed along the river-bed, but we\ncan see none of them. The valley is heat and emptiness. Even the jackal\nthat slinks across the trail in front of us, droops and drags his tail\nin visible exhaustion. His lolling, red tongue is a signal of distress.\nIn a climate like this one expects nothing from man or beast. Life\ndegenerates, shrivels, stifles; and in the glaring open spaces a sullen\nmadness lurks invisible.\n\nWe are coming to the ancient fording-place of the river, called Adamah,\nwhere an event once happened which was of great consequence to the\nIsraelites and which has often been misunderstood. They were encamped on\nthe east side, opposite Jericho, nearly thirty miles below this point,\nwaiting for their first opportunity to cross the Jordan. Then, says the\nrecord, \"the waters which came down from above stopped, and were piled\nup in a heap, a great way off, at Adam, ... and the people passed over\nright against Jericho.\" (Joshua iii: 14-16.)\n\nLook at these great clay-banks overhanging the river, and you will\nunderstand what it was that opened a dry path for Israel into Canaan.\nOne of these huge masses of clay was undermined, and slipped, and fell\nacross the river, heaping up the waters behind a temporary natural dam,\nand cutting off the supply of the lower stream. It may have taken three\nor four days for the river to carve its way through or around that\nobstruction, and meantime any one could march across to Jericho without\nwetting his feet. I have seen precisely the same thing happen on a\nsalmon river in Canada quite as large as the Jordan.\n\nThe river is more open at this place, and there is a curious\nsix-cornered ferry-boat, pulled to and fro with ropes by a half-dozen\nbare-legged Arabs. If it had been a New England river, the practical\nWestern mind would have built a long boat with a flat board at each\nside, and rigged a couple of running wheels on a single rope. Then the\nferryman would have had nothing to do but let the stern of his craft\nswing down at an angle with the stream, and the swift current would have\npushed him from one side to the other at his will. But these Orientals\nhave been running their ferry in their own way, no doubt, for many\ncenturies; and who are we to break in upon their laborious indolence\nwith new ideas? It is enough that they bring us over safely, with our\ncattle and our stuff, in several bands, with much tugging at the ropes\nand shouting and singing.\n\nWe look in vain on the shore of the Jordan for a pleasant place to eat\nour luncheon. The big trees stand with their feet in the river, and the\nsmaller shrubs are scraggly and spiny. At last we find a little patch of\nshade on a steep bank above the yellow stream, and here we make\nourselves as comfortable as we can, with the thermometer at 110 deg., and\nthe hungry gnats and mosquitoes swarming around us.\n\nEarly in the afternoon we desperately resolve to brave the sun, and ride\nup from the river-bed into the open plain on the west. Here we catch our\nfirst clear view of Mount Hermon, with its mantle of glistening snow,\nhanging like a cloud on the northern horizon, ninety miles away, beyond\nthe Lake of Galilee and the Waters of Merom; a vision of distance and\ncoolness and grandeur.\n\nThe fields, watered by the full streams descending from the Wadi Farah,\nare green with wheat and barley. Along our path are balsam-trees and\nthorny jujubes, from whose branches we pluck the sweet, insipid fruit as\nwe ride beneath them. Herds of cattle are pasturing on the plain, and\nlong rows of black Bedouin tents are stretched at the foot of the\nmountains. We cross a dozen murmuring watercourses embowered in the\ndark, glistening foliage of the oleanders glowing with great soft flames\nof rosy bloom.\n\nAt the Serai on the hill which watches over this Jiftlik, or domain of\nthe Sultan, there are some Turkish soldiers saddling their horses for an\nexpedition; perhaps to collect taxes or to chase robbers. The peasants\nare returning, by the paths among the cornfields, to their huts. The\nlines of camp-fires begin to gleam from the transient Bedouin villages.\nOur white tents are pitched in a flowery meadow, beside a low-voiced\nstream, and as we fall asleep the night air is trembling with the\nshrill, innumerable _brek-ek-ek-coax-coax_ of the frog chorus.\n\n\nII\n\nMOUNT EPHRAIM AND JACOB'S WELL\n\nSamaria is a mountain land, but its characteristic features, as\ndistinguished from Judea, are the easiness of approach through open\ngateways among the hills, and the fertility of the broad vales and level\nplains which lie between them. The Kingdom of Israel, in its brief\nseason of prosperity, was richer, more luxurious, and weaker than the\nKingdom of Judah. The poet Isaiah touched the keynote of the northern\nkingdom when he sang of \"the crown of pride of the drunkards of\nEphraim,\" and \"the fading flower of his glorious beauty which is on the\nhead of the fat valley.\" (Isaiah xxviii: 1-6.)\n\nWe turn aside from the open but roundabout way of the well-tilled Wadi\nFarah and take a shorter, steeper path toward Shechem, through a deep,\nnarrow mountain gorge. The day is hot and hazy, for the Sherkiyeh is\nblowing from the desert across the Jordan Valley: the breath of\nJehovah's displeasure with His people, \"a dry wind of the high places\nof the wilderness toward the daughter of my people, neither to fan nor\nto cleanse.\"\n\nAt times the walls of rock come so close together that we have to wind\nthrough a passage not more than ten feet wide. The air is parched as in\nan oven. Our horses scramble wearily up the stony gallery and the rough\nstairways. One of our company faints under the fervent heat, and falls\nfrom his horse. But fortunately no bones are broken; a half-hour's rest\nin the shadow of a great rock revives him and we ride on.\n\nThe wonderful flowers are blooming wherever they can find a foothold\namong the stones. Now and then we cross the mouth of some little lonely\nside-valley, full of mignonette and cyclamens and tall spires of pink\nhollyhock. Under the huge, dark sides of Eagle's Crag--bare and rugged\nas Ben Nevis--we pass into the fruitful plain of Makhna, where the\nsilken grainfields rustle far and wide, and the rich olive-orchards on\nthe hill-slopes offer us a shelter for our midday meal and siesta. Mount\nEbal and Mount Gerizim now rise before us in their naked bulk; and, as\nwe mount toward the valley which lies between them, we stay for a while\nto rest at Jacob's Well.\n\nThere is a mystery about this ancient cistern on the side of the\nmountain. Why was it dug here, a hundred feet deep, although there are\nsprings and streams of living water flowing down the valley, close at\nhand? Whence came the tradition of the Samaritans that Jacob gave them\nthis well, although the Old Testament says nothing about it? Why did the\nSamaritan woman, in Jesus' time, come hither to draw water when there\nwas a brook, not fifty yards away, which she must cross to get to the\nwell?\n\nWho can tell? Certainly there must have been some use and reason for\nsuch a well, else the men of long ago would never have toiled to make\nit. Perhaps the people of Sychar had some superstition about its water\nwhich made them prefer it. Or perhaps the stream was owned and used for\nother purposes, while the water of the well was free.\n\nIt makes no difference whether a solution of the problem is ever found.\nIts very existence adds to the touch of truth in the narrative of St.\nJohn's Gospel. Certainly this well was here in Jesus' day, close beside\nthe road which He would be most likely to take in going from Jerusalem\nto Galilee. Here He sat, alone and weary, while the disciples went on to\nthe village to buy food. And here, while He waited and thirsted, He\nspoke to an unknown, unfriendly, unhappy woman the words which have been\na spring of living water to the weary and fevered heart of the world:\n\"God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit\nand in truth.\"\n\n\nIII\n\nNABLUS AND SEBASTE\n\nAbout a mile from Jacob's Well, the city of Nablus lies in the hollow\nbetween Mount Gerizim on the south and Mount Ebal on the north. The side\nof Gerizim is precipitous and jagged; Ebal rises more smoothly, but very\nsteeply, and is covered with plantations of thornless cactus, (_Opuntia\ncochinillifera_), cultivated for the sake of the cochineal insects which\nlive upon the plant and from which a red dye is made.\n\nThe valley is well watered, and is about a quarter of a mile wide. A\nlittle east of the city there are two natural bays or amphitheatres\nopposite to each other in the mountains. Here the tribes of Israel may\nhave been gathered while the priests chanted the curses of the law from\nEbal and the blessings from Gerizim. (Joshua viii: 30-35.) The cliffs\nwere sounding-boards and sent the loud voices of blessing and cursing\nout over the multitude so that all could hear.\n\nIt seems as if it were mainly the echo of the cursing of Ebal that\ngreets us as we ride around the fierce little Mohammedan city of Nablus\non Friday afternoon, passing through the open and dilapidated cemeteries\nwhere the veiled women are walking and gossiping away their holiday. The\nlooks of the inhabitants are surly and hostile. The children shout\nmocking ditties at us, reviling the \"Nazarenes.\" We will not ask our\ndragoman to translate the words that we catch now and then; it is easy\nto guess that they are not \"fit to print.\"\n\nOur camp is close beside a cemetery, near the eastern gate of the town.\nThe spectators who watch us from a distance while we dine are numerous;\nand no doubt they are passing unfavourable criticisms on our table\nmanners, and on the Frankish custom of permitting one unveiled lady to\ntravel with three husbands. The population of Nablus is about\ntwenty-five thousand. It has a Turkish governor, a garrison, several\nsoap factories, and a million dogs which howl all night.\n\nAt half-past six the next morning we set out on foot to climb Mount\nEbal, which is three thousand feet high. The view from the rocky summit\nsweeps over all Palestine, from snowy Hermon to the mountains round\nabout Jerusalem, from Carmel to Nebo, from the sapphire expanse of the\nMediterranean to the violet valley of the Jordan and the garnet wall of\nMoab and Gilead beyond.\n\nFor us the view is veiled in mystery by the haze of the south wind. The\nranges and peaks far away fade into cloudlike shadows. The depths below\nus seem to sink unfathomably. Nablus is buried in the gulf. On the\nsummit of Gerizim, a Mohammedan _weli_, shining like a flake of mica,\nmarks the plateau where the Samaritan Temple stood. Hilltop towns,\nAsiret, Talluza, Yasid, emerge like islands from the misty sea. In that\ngreat shadowy hollow to the west lie the ruins of the city of Samaria,\nwhich Caesar Augustus renamed Sebaste, in honour of his wife Augusta. If\nshe could see the village of Sebastiyeh now she would not be proud of\nher namesake town. It is there that we are going to make our midday\ncamp.\n\nKing Omri acted as a wise man when he moved the capital of Israel from\nShechem, an indefensible site, commanded by overhanging mountains and\napproached by two easy vales, to Shomron, the \"watch-hill\" which stands\nin the centre of the broad Vale of Barley.\n\nAs we ride across the smiling corn-fields toward the isolated eminence,\nwe see its strength as well as its beauty. It rises steeply from the\nvalley to a height of more than three hundred feet. The encircling\nmountains are too far away to dominate it under the ancient conditions\nof warfare without cannons, and a good wall must have made it, as its\nname implied, an impregnable \"stronghold,\" watching over a region of\nimmense fertility.\n\nWhat pomps and splendours, what revels and massacres, what joys of\nvictory and horrors of defeat, that round hill rising from the Vale of\nBarley has seen. Now there is nothing left of its crown of pride, but\nthe broken pillars of the marble colonnade a mile long with which Herod\nthe Great girdled the hill, and a few indistinguishable ruins of the\ntemple which he built in honour of the divine Augustus and of the\nhippodrome which he erected for the people. We climb the terraces and\nride through the olive-groves and ploughed fields where the street of\ncolumns once ran. A few of them are standing upright; others leaning or\nfallen, half sunken in the ground; fragments of others built into the\nstone walls which divide the fields. There are many hewn and carven\nstones imbedded in the miserable little modern village which crouches on\nthe north end of the hill, and the mosque into which the Crusaders'\nChurch of Saint John has been transformed is said to contain the tombs\nof Elisha, Obadiah and John the Baptist. This rumour does not concern us\ndeeply and we will leave its truth uninvestigated.\n\nLet us tie our horses among Herod's pillars, and spread the rugs for our\nnoontide rest by the ruined south gate of the city. At our feet lies the\nwide, level, green valley where the mighty host of Ben-hadad, King of\nDamascus, once besieged the starving city and waited for its surrender.\n(II Kings vii.) There in the twilight of long ago a panic terror\nwhispered through the camp, and the Syrians rose and fled, leaving their\ntents and their gear behind them. And there four nameless lepers of\nIsrael, wandering in their despair, found the vast encampment deserted,\nand entered in, and ate and drank, and picked up gold and silver, until\ntheir conscience smote them. Then they climbed up to this gate with the\ngood news that the enemy had vanished, and the city was saved.\n\n\nIV\n\nDOTHAN AND THE GOODNESS OF THE SAMARITAN\n\nOver the steep mountains that fence Samaria to the north, down through\nterraced vales abloom with hawthorns and blood-red poppies, across\nhill-circled plains where the long, silvery wind-waves roll over the sea\nof grain from shore to shore, past little gray towns sleeping on the\nsunny heights, by paths that lead us near flowing springs where the\nvillage girls fill their pitchers, and down stony slopes where the\ngoatherds in bright-coloured raiment tend their flocks, and over broad,\nmoist fields where the path has been obliterated by the plough, and\naround the edge of marshes where the storks rise heavily on long\nflapping wings, we come galloping at sunset to our camp beside the\nlittle green hill of Dothan.\n\nBehind it are the mountains, swelling and softly rounded like breasts.\nIt was among them that the servant of Elisha saw the vision of horses\nand chariots of fire protecting his master. (II Kings vi: 14-19.)\n\nNorth and east of Dothan the plain extends smooth and gently sloping,\nfull of young harvest. There the chariot of Naaman rolled when he came\ndown from Damascus to be healed by the prophet of Israel. (II Kings v:\n9.)\n\nOn top of the hill is a spreading terebinth-tree, with some traces of\nexcavation and rude ruins beneath it. There Joseph's envious brethren\ncast him into one of the dry pits, from which they drew him up again to\nsell him to a caravan of merchants, winding across the plain on their\nway from Midian into Egypt. (Genesis xxxvii.)\n\nTruly, many and wonderful things came to pass of old around this little\ngreen hill. And now, at the foot of it, there is a well-watered garden,\nwith figs, oranges, almonds, vines, and tall, trembling poplars,\nsurrounded by a hedge of prickly pear. Outside of the hedge a big, round\nspring of crystal water is flowing steadily over the rim of its basin of\nstones. There the flocks and herds are gathered, morning and evening, to\ndrink. There the children of the tiny hamlet on the hillside come to\npaddle their feet in the running stream. There a caravan of Greek\npilgrims, on their way from Damascus to Jerusalem for Easter, halt in\nfront of our camp, to refresh themselves with a draught of the cool\nwater.\n\nAs we watch them from our tents there is a sudden commotion among them,\na cry of pain, and then voices of dismay. George and two or three of our\nmen run out to see what is the matter, and come hurrying back to get\nsome cotton cloth and oil and wine. One of the pilgrims, an old woman of\nseventy, has fallen from her horse on the sharp stones beside the\nspring, breaking her wrist and cutting her head.\n\nI do not know whether the way in which they bound up that poor old\nstranger's wounds was surgically wise, but I know that it was humanly\nkind and tender. I do not know which of our various churches were\nrepresented among her helpers, but there must have been at least three,\nand the muleteer from Bagdad who \"had no religion but sang beautiful\nPersian songs\" was also there, and ready to help with the others. And so\nthe parable which lighted our dusty way going down to Jericho is\ninterpreted in our pleasant camp at Dothan.\n\nThe paths of the Creeds are many and winding; they cross and diverge;\nbut on all of them the Good Samaritan is welcome, and I think he travels\nto a happy place.\n\n\n_A PSALM OF THE HELPERS_\n\n_The ways of the world are full of haste and turmoil:\nI will sing of the tribe of helpers who travel in peace._\n\n_He that turneth from the road to rescue another,\nTurneth toward his goal:\nHe shall arrive in due time by the foot-path of mercy,\nGod will be his guide._\n\n_He that taketh up the burden of the fainting,\nLighteneth his own load:\nThe Almighty will put his arms underneath him,\nHe shall lean upon the Lord._\n\n_He that speaketh comfortable words to mourners,\nHealeth his own heart:\nIn his time of grief they will return to remembrance,\nGod will use them for balm._\n\n_He that careth for the sick and wounded,\nWatcheth not alone:\nThere are three in the darkness together,\nAnd the third is the Lord._\n\n_Blessed is the way of the helpers:\nThe companions of the Christ._\n\n\n\n\n                                     X\n\n                            GALILEE AND THE LAKE\n\n\nI\n\nTHE PLAIN OF ESDRAELON\n\nGoing from Samaria into Galilee is like passing from the Old Testament\ninto the New.\n\nThere is indeed little difference in the outward landscape: the same\nbare lines of rolling mountains, green and gray near by, blue or purple\nfar away; the same fertile valleys and emerald plains embosomed among\nthe hills; the same orchards of olive-trees, not quite so large, nor so\nmany, but always softening and shading the outlook with their touches of\nsilvery verdure.\n\nIt is the spirit of the landscape that changes; the inward view; the\natmosphere of memories and associations through which we travel. We have\nbeen riding with fierce warriors and proud kings and fiery prophets of\nIsrael, passing the sites of royal splendour and fields of ancient\nhavoc, retracing the warpaths of the Twelve Tribes. But when we enter\nGalilee the keynote of our thoughts is modulated into peace. Issachar\nand Zebulon and Asher and Naphtali have left no trace or message for us\non the plains and hills where they once lived and fought. We journey\nwith Jesus of Nazareth, the friend of publicans and sinners, the\nshepherd of the lost sheep, the human embodiment of the Divine Love.\n\nThis transition in our journey is marked outwardly by the crossing of\nthe great Plain of Esdraelon, which we enter by the gateway of Jenin.\nThere are a few palm-trees lending a little grace to the disconsolate\nvillage, and the Turkish captain of the military post, a grizzled\nveteran of Plevna, invites us into the guard-room to drink coffee with\nhim, while we wait for a dilatory telegraph operator to send a message.\nThen we push out upon the green sea to a brown island: the village of\nZer'in, the ancient Jezreel.\n\nThe wretched hamlet of adobe huts, with mud beehives plastered against\nthe walls, stands on the lowest bench of the foothills of Mount Gilboa,\nopposite the equally wretched hamlet of Sulem in a corresponding\nposition at the base of a mountain called Little Hermon. The\nwidespread, opulent view is haunted with old stories of battle, murder\nand sudden death.\n\nDown to the east we see the line of brighter green creeping out from the\nflanks of Mount Gilboa, marking the spring where Gideon sifted his band\nof warriors for the night-attack on the camp of Midian. (Judges vii:\n4-23.) Under the brow of the hill are the ancient wine-presses, cut in\nthe rock, which belonged to the vineyard of Naboth, whom Jezebel\nassassinated. (I Kings xxi: 1-16.) From some window of her favourite\npalace on this eminence, that hard, old, painted queen looked down the\nbroad valley of Jezreel, and saw Jehu in his chariot driving furiously\nfrom Gilead to bring vengeance upon her. On those dark ridges to the\nsouth the brave Jonathan was slain by the Philistines and the desperate\nSaul fell upon his own sword. (I Samuel xxxi: 1-6.) Through that open\nvalley, which slopes so gently down to the Jordan at Bethshan, the\nhordes of Midian and the hosts of Damascus marched against Israel. By\nthe pass of Jenin, Holofernes led his army in triumph until he met\nJudith of Bethulia and lost his head. Yonder in the corner to the\nnorthward, at the base of Mount Tabor, Deborah and Barak gathered the\ntribes against the Canaanites under Sisera. (Judges iv: 4-22.) Away to\nthe westward, in the notch of Megiddo, Pharaoh-Necho's archers pierced\nKing Josiah, and there was great mourning for him in Hadad-rimmon. (II\nChronicles xxxv: 24-25; Zechariah xii: 11.) Farther still, where the\nmountain spurs of Galilee approach the long ridge of Carmel, Elijah put\nthe priests of Baal to death by the Brook Kishon. (I Kings xviii:\n20-40.)\n\nAll over that great prairie, which makes a broad break between the\nhighlands of Galilee and the highlands of Samaria and Judea, and opens\nan easy pathway rising no more than three hundred feet between the\nJordan and the Mediterranean--all over that fertile, blooming area and\naround the edges of it are sown the legends\n\n  \"Of old, unhappy, far-off things\n  And battles long ago.\"\n\nBut on this bright April day when we enter the plain of Armageddon,\neverything is tranquil and joyous.\n\nThe fields are full of rustling wheat, and bearded barley, and\nblue-green stalks of beans, and feathery _kirsenneh_, camel-provender.\nThe peasants in their gay-coloured clothing are ploughing the rich,\nred-brown soil for the late crop of _doura_. The newly built railway\nfrom Haifa to Damascus lies like a yellow string across the prairie from\nwest to east; and from north to south a single file of two hundred\ncamels, with merchandise for Egypt, undulate along the ancient road of\nthe caravans, turning their ungainly heads to look at the puffing engine\nwhich creeps toward them from the distance.\n\nLarks singing in the air, storks parading beside the watercourses,\nfalcons poising overhead, poppies and pink gladioluses and blue\ncorn-cockles blooming through the grain,--a little village on a swell of\nrising ground, built for their farm hands by the rich Greeks who have\nbought the land and brought it under cultivation,--an air so pure and\nsoft that it is like a caress,--all seems to speak a language of peace\nand promise, as if one of the old prophets were telling of the day when\nJehovah shall have compassion on His people Israel and restore them.\n\"They that dwell under His shadow shall return; they shall revive as\nthe grain, and blossom as the vine: the scent thereof shall be as the\nwine of Lebanon.\"\n\nIt is, indeed, not impossible that wise methods of colonization, better\nagriculture and gardening, the development of fruit-orchards and\nvineyards, and above all, more rational government and equitable\ntaxation may one day give back to Palestine something of her old\nprosperity and population. If the Jews really want it no doubt they can\nhave it. Their rich men have the money and the influence; and there are\nenough of their poorer folk scattered through Europe to make any land\nblossom like the rose, if they have the will and the patience for the\nslow toil of the husbandman and the vine-dresser and the shepherd and\nthe herdsman.\n\nBut the proud kingdom of David and Solomon will never be restored; not\neven the tributary kingdom of Herod. For the land will never again stand\nat the crossroads, the four-corners of the civilized world. The Suez\nCanal to the south, and the railways through the Lebanon and Asia Minor\nto the north, have settled that. They have left Palestine in a corner,\noff the main-travelled roads. The best that she can hope for is a\nrestoration to quiet fruitfulness, to placid and humble industry, to\nolive-crowned and vine-girdled felicity, never again to power.\n\nAnd if that lowly re-coronation comes to her, it will not be on the\nstony heights around Jerusalem: it will be in the Plain of Sharon, in\nthe outgoings of Mount Ephraim, in the green pastures of Gilead, in the\nlovely region of \"Galilee of the Gentiles.\" It will not be by the sword\nof Gideon nor by the sceptre of Solomon, but by the sign of peace on\nearth and good-will among men.\n\nWith thoughts like these we make our way across the verdurous inland sea\nof Esdraelon, out of the Old Testament into the New. Landmarks of the\ncountry of the Gospel begin to appear: the wooded dome of Mount Tabor,\nthe little village of Nain where Jesus restored the widow's only son.\n(Luke vii: 11-16.) But these lie far to our right. The beacon which\nguides us is a glimpse of white walls and red roofs, high on a shoulder\nof the Galilean hills: the outlying houses of Nazareth, where the boy\nJesus dwelt with His parents after their return from the flight into\nEgypt, and was obedient to them, and grew in wisdom and stature, and in\nfavour with God and men.\n\n\nII\n\nTHEIR OWN CITY NAZARETH\n\nOur camp in Nazareth is on a terrace among the olive-trees, on the\neastern side of a small valley, facing the Mohammedan quarter of the\ntown.\n\nThis is distinctly the most attractive little city that we have seen in\nPalestine. The houses are spread out over a wider area than is usual in\nthe East, covering three sides of a gentle depression high on the side\nof the Jebel es-Sikh, and creeping up the hill-slopes as if to seek a\nlarger view and a purer air. Some of them have gardens, fair white\nwalls, red-tiled roofs, balconies of stone or wrought iron. Even in the\nmore closely built portion of the town the streets seem cleaner, the\nbazaars lighter and less malodorous, the interior courtyards into which\nwe glance in passing more neat and homelike. Many of the doorways and\nliving-rooms of the humbler houses are freshly whitewashed with a\nlight-blue tint which gives them an immaculate air of cleanliness.\n\nThe Nazarene women are generally good looking, and free and dignified in\ntheir bearing. The children, fairer in complexion than is common in\nSyria, are almost all charming with the beauty of youth, and among them\nare some very lovely faces of boys and girls. I do not mean to say that\nNazareth appears to us an earthly paradise; only that it shines by\ncontrast with places like Hebron and Jericho and Nablus, even with\nBethlehem, and that we find here far less of human squalor and misery to\nsadden us with thoughts of\n\n  \"What man has made of man.\"\n\nThe population of the town is about eleven or twelve thousand, a quarter\nof them Mussulmans, and the rest Christians of various sects, including\ntwo or three hundred Protestants. The people used to have rather a bad\nreputation for turbulence; but we see no signs of it, either in the\nappearance of the city or in the demeanour of the inhabitants. The\nchildren and the townsfolk whom we meet in the streets, and of whom we\nask our way now and then, are civil and friendly. The man who comes to\nthe camp to sell us antique coins and lovely vases of iridescent glass\ndug from the tombs of Tyre and Sidon, may be an inveterate humbug, but\nhis manners are good and his prices are low. The soft-voiced women and\nlustrous-eyed girls who hang about the Lady's tent, persuading her to\nbuy their small embroideries and lace-work and trinkets, are gentle and\ningratiating, though persistent.\n\nI am honestly of the opinion that Christian mission-schools and\nhospitals have done a great deal for Nazareth. We go this morning to\nvisit the schools of the English Church Missionary Society, where Miss\nNewton is conducting an admirable and most successful work for the girls\nof Nazareth. She is away on a visit to some of her outlying stations;\nbut the dark-eyed, happy-looking Syrian teacher shows us all the\nclasses. There are five of them, and every room is full and bright and\norderly.\n\nOn the Christian side, the older girls sing a hymn for us, in their high\nvoices and quaint English accent, about Jesus stilling the storm on\nGalilee, and the intermediate girls and the tiny co-educated boys and\ngirls in the kindergarten go through various pretty performances. Then\nthe teacher leads us across the street to the two Moslem classes, and we\ncannot tell the difference between them and the Christian children,\nexcept that now the singing of \"Jesus loves me\" and the recitation of\n\"The Lord is my Shepherd\" are in Arabic. There is one blind girl who\nrecites most perfectly and eagerly. Another girl of about ten years\ncarries her baby-brother in her arms. Two little laggards, (they were\namong the group at our camp early in the morning), arrive late, weeping\nout their excuses to the teacher. She hears them with a kind, humorous\nlook on her face, gives them a soft rebuke and a task, and sends them to\ntheir seats, their tears suddenly transformed to smiles.\n\nFrom the schools we go to the hospital of the British Medical Mission, a\nlittle higher up the hill. We find young Doctor Scrimgeour, who has\nlately come out from Edinburgh University, and his white-uniformed,\ncheerful, busy nurses, tasked to the limit of their strength by the\npressure of their work, but cordial and simple in their welcome. As I\nwalk with the doctor on his rounds I see every ward full, and all kinds\nof calamity and suffering waiting for the relief and help of his kind,\nskilful knife. Here are hernia, and tuberculous glands, and cataract,\nand stone, and bone tuberculosis, and a score of other miseries; and\nthere, on the table, with pale, dark face and mysterious eyes, lies a\nman whose knee has been shattered by a ball from a Martini rifle in an\naffray with robbers.\n\n\"Was he one of the robbers,\" I ask, \"or one of the robbed?\"\n\n\"I really don't know,\" says the doctor, \"but in a few minutes I am going\nto do my best for him.\"\n\nIs not this Christ's work that is still doing in Christ's town, this\nteaching of the children, this helping of the sick and wounded, for His\nsake, and in His name? Yet there are silly folk who say they do not\nbelieve in missions.\n\nThere are a few so-called sacred places and shrines in Nazareth--the\nsupposed scene of the Annunciation; the traditional Workshop of Joseph;\nthe alleged _Mensa Christi_, a flat stone which He is said to have used\nas a table when He ate with His disciples; and so on. But all these\nuncertain relics and memorials, as usual, are inclosed in chapels, belit\nwith lamps, and encircled with ceremonial. The very spring at which the\nVirgin Mary must have often filled her pitcher, (for it is the only\nflowing fountain in the town), now rises beneath the Greek Church of\nSaint Gabriel, and is conducted past the altar in a channel of stone\nwhere the pilgrims bathe their eyes and faces. To us, who are seeking\nour Holy Land out-of-doors, these shut-in shrines and altared memorials\nare less significant than what we find in the open, among the streets\nand on the surrounding hillsides.\n\nThe Virgin's Fountain, issuing from the church, flows into a big, stone\nbasin under a round arch. Here, as often as we pass, we see the maidens\nand the mothers of Nazareth, with great earthern vessels poised upon\ntheir shapely heads, coming with merry talk and laughter, to draw water.\nEven so the mother of Jesus must have come to this fountain many a time,\nperhaps with her wondrous boy running beside her, clasping her hand or a\nfold of her bright-coloured garment. Perhaps, when the child was little\nshe carried Him on her shoulder, as the women carry their children\nto-day.\n\nPassing through a street, we look into the interior of a carpenter-shop,\nwith its simple tools, its little pile of new lumber, its floor littered\nwith chips and shavings, and its air full of the pleasant smell of\nfreshly cut wood. There are a few articles of furniture which the\ncarpenter has made: a couple of chairs, a table, a stool: and he\nhimself, with his leg stretched out and his piece of wood held firmly by\nhis naked toes, is working busily at a tiny bed which needs only a pair\nof rockers to become a cradle. Outside the door of the shop a boy of ten\nor twelve is cutting some boards and slats, and putting them neatly\ntogether. We ask him what he is making. \"A box,\" he answers, \"a box for\nsome doves\"--and then bends his head over his absorbing task. Even so\nJesus must have worked at the shop of Joseph, the carpenter, and learned\nHis handicraft.\n\n[Illustration: The Virgin's Fountain, Nazareth.]\n\nLet us walk up, at eventide, to the top of the hill behind the town.\nHere is one of the loveliest views in all Palestine. The sun is setting\nand the clear-obscure of twilight already rests over the streets and\nhouses, the minarets and spires, the slender cypresses and round\nolive-trees and grotesque hedges of cactus. But on the heights the warm\nradiance from the west pours its full flood, lighting up all the\nflowerets of delicate pink flax and golden chrysanthemum and blue\ncampanula with which the grass is broidered. Far and wide that roseate\nillumination spreads itself; changing the snowy mantle of distant\nHermon, the great Sheikh of Mountains, from ermine to flamingo feathers;\nmaking the high hills of Naphtali and the excellency of Carmel glow as\nif with soft, transfiguring, inward fire; touching the little town of\nSaffuriyeh below us, where they say that the Virgin Mary was born, and\nthe city of Safed, thirty miles away on the lofty shoulder of Jebel\nJermak; suffusing the haze that fills the Valley of the Jordan, and the\nlong bulwarks of the Other-Side, with hues of mauve and purple; and\nbathing the wide expanse of the western sea with indescribable\nsplendours, over which the flaming sun poises for a moment beneath the\nedge of a low-hung cloud.\n\nOn this hilltop, I doubt not, the boy Jesus often filled His hands with\nflowers. Here He could watch the creeping caravans of Arabian merchants,\nand the glittering legions of Roman soldiers, and the slow files of\nJewish pilgrims, coming up from the Valley of Jezreel and stretching out\nacross the Plain of Esdraelon. Hither, at the evening hour, He came as a\nyouth to find the blessing of wide and tranquil thought. Here, when the\nburden of manhood pressed upon Him, He rested after the day's work, free\nfrom that sadness which often touches us in the vision of earth's\ntransient beauty, because He saw far beyond the horizon into the\nspirit-world, where there is no night, nor weariness, nor sin, nor\ndeath.\n\nFor nearly thirty years He must have lived within sight of this hilltop.\nAnd then, one day, He came back from a journey to the Jordan and\nJerusalem, and entered into the little synagogue at the foot of this\nhill, and began to preach to His townsfolk His glad tidings of spiritual\nliberty and brotherhood and eternal life.\n\nBut they were filled with scorn and wrath. His words rebuked them, stung\nthem, inflamed them with hatred. They laid violent hands on Him, and\nled Him out to the brow of the hill,--perhaps it was yonder on that\nsteep, rocky peak to the south of the town, looking back toward the\ncountry of the Old Testament,--to cast Him down headlong.\n\nYet I think there must have been a few friends and lovers of His in that\ndisdainful and ignorant crowd; for He passed through the midst of them\nunharmed, and went His way to the home of Peter and Andrew and John and\nPhilip, beside the Sea of Galilee, never to come back to Nazareth.\n\n\nIII\n\nA WEDDING IN CANA OF GALILEE\n\nWe thought to save a little time on our journey, and perhaps to spare\nourselves a little jolting on the hard high-road, by sending the\nsaddle-horses ahead with the caravan, and taking a carriage for the\nsixteen-mile drive to Tiberias. When we came to the old sarcophagus\nwhich serves as a drinking trough at the spring outside the village of\nCana, a strange thing befell us.\n\nWe had halted for a moment to refresh the horses. Suddenly there was a\nsound of furious galloping on the road behind us. A score of cavaliers\nin Bedouin dress, with guns and swords, came after us in hot haste. The\nleaders dashed across the open space beside the spring, wheeled their\nfoaming horses and dashed back again.\n\n\"Is this our affair with robbers, at last?\" we asked George.\n\nHe laughed a little. \"No,\" said he, \"this is the beginning of a wedding\nin Kafr Kenna. The bridegroom and his friends come over from some other\nvillage where they live, to show off a bit of _fantasia_ to the bride\nand her friends. They carry her back with them after the marriage. We\nwait a while and see how they ride.\"\n\nThe horses were gayly caparisoned with ribbons and tassels and\nembroidered saddle-cloths. The riders were handsome, swarthy fellows\nwith haughty faces. Their eyes glanced sideways at us to see whether we\nwere admiring them, as they shouted their challenges to one another and\nraced wildly up and down the rock-strewn course, with their robes flying\nand their horses' sides bloody with spurring. One of the men was a huge\ncoal-black Nubian who brandished a naked sword as he rode. Others\nwhirled their long muskets in the air and yelled furiously. The riding\nwas cruel, reckless, superb; loose reins and loose stirrups on the\nheadlong gallop; then the sharp curb brought the horse up suddenly, the\nrein on his neck turned him as if on a pivot, and the pressure of the\nheel sent him flying back over the course.\n\nPresently there was a sound of singing and clapping hands behind the\nhigh cactus-hedges to our left, and from a little lane the bridal\nprocession walked up to take the high-road to the village. There were a\ndozen men in front, firing guns and shouting, then came the women, with\nlight veils of gauze over their faces, singing shrilly, and in the midst\nof them, in gay attire, but half-concealed with long, dark mantles, the\nbride and \"the virgins, her companions, in raiment of needlework.\"\n\nAs they saw the photographic camera pointed at them they laughed, and\ncrowded closer together, and drew the ends of their dark mantles over\ntheir heads. So they passed up the road, their shrill song broken a\nlittle by their laughter; and the company of horsemen, the bridegroom\nand his friends, wheeled into line, two by two, and trotted after them\ninto the village.\n\nThis was all that we saw of the wedding at Kafr Kenna--just a vivid,\nmysterious flash of human figures, drawn together by the primal impulse\nand longing of our common nature, garbed and ordered by the social\ncustoms which make different lands and ages seem strange to each other,\nand moving across the narrow stage of Time into the dimness of that Arab\nvillage, where Jesus and His mother and His disciples were guests at a\nwedding long ago.\n\n\nIV\n\nTIBERIAS\n\nIt is one of the ironies of fate that the lake which saw the greater\npart of the ministry of Jesus, should take its modern name from a city\nbuilt by Herod Antipas, and called after one of the most infamous of the\nRoman Emperors,--\"the Sea of Tiberias.\"\n\nOur road to this city of decadence leads gradually downward, through a\nbroad, sinking moorland, covered with weeds and wild flowers--rich,\nmonotonous, desolate. The broidery of pink flax and yellow\nchrysanthemums and white marguerites still follows us; but now the wider\nstretches of thistles and burdocks and daturas and cockleburs and\nwater-plantains seem to be more important. The landscape saddens around\nus, under the deepening haze of the desert-wind, the sombre Sherkiyeh.\nThere are no golden sunbeams, no cool cloud-shadows, only a gray and\nmelancholy illumination growing ever fainter and more nebulous as the\nday declines, and the outlines of the hills fade away from the dim,\nsilent, forsaken plain through which we move.\n\nWe are crossing the battlefield where the soldiers of Napoleon, under\nthe brave Junot, fought desperately against the overwhelming forces of\nthe Turks. Yonder, away to the left, in the mysterious haze, the double\n\"Horns of Hattin\" rise like a shadowy exhalation.\n\nThat is said to be the mountain where Jesus gathered the multitude\naround Him and spoke His new beatitudes on the meek, the merciful, the\npeacemakers, the pure in heart. It is certainly the place where the\nhosts of the Crusaders met the army of Saladin, in the fierce heat of a\nJuly day, seven hundred years ago, and while the burning grass and weeds\nand brush flamed around them, were cut to pieces and trampled and\nutterly consumed. There the new Kingdom of Jerusalem,--the last that was\nwon with the sword,--went down in ruin around the relics of \"the true\ncross,\" which its soldiers carried as their talisman; and Guy de\nLusignan, their King, was captured. The noble prisoners were invited by\nSaladin to his tent, and he offered them sherbets, cooled with snow from\nHermon, to slake their feverish thirst. When they were refreshed, the\nconqueror ordered them to be led out and put to the sword,--just yonder\nat the foot of the Mount of Beatitudes.\n\nFrom terrace to terrace of the falling moor we roll along the winding\nroad through the brumous twilight, until we come within sight of the\nblack, ruined walls, the gloomy towers, the huddled houses of the\nworn-out city of Tiberias. She is like an ancient beggar sitting on a\nrocky cape beside the lake and bathing her feet in the invisible water.\nThe gathering dusk lends a sullen and forlorn aspect to the place.\nBehind us rise the shattered volcanic crags and cliffs of basalt; before\nus glimmer pallid and ghostly touches of light from the hidden waves; a\nfew lamps twinkle here and there in the dormant town.\n\nThis was the city which Herod Antipas built for the capital of his\nProvince of Galilee. He laid its foundations in an ancient graveyard,\nand stretched its walls three miles along the lake, adorning it with a\npalace, a forum, a race-course, and a large synagogue. But to strict\nJews the place was unclean, because it was defiled with Roman idols, and\nbecause its builders had polluted themselves by digging up the bones of\nthe dead. Herod could get few Jews to live in his city, and it became a\ncatch-all for the off-scourings of the land, people of all creeds and\nnone, aliens, mongrels, soldiers of fortune, and citizens of the\nhigh-road. It was the strongest fortress and probably the richest town\nof Galilee in Christ's day, but so far as we know He never entered it.\n\nAfter the fall of Jerusalem, strangely enough, the Jews made it their\nfavourite city, the seat of their Sanhedrim and the centre of\nrabbinical learning. Here the famous Rabbis Jehuda and Akiba and the\nphilosopher Maimonides taught. Here the Mishna and the Gemara were\nwritten. And here, to-day, two-thirds of the five thousand inhabitants\nare Jews, many of them living on the charity of their kindred in Europe,\nand spending their time in the study of the Talmud while they wait for\nthe Messiah who shall restore the kingdom to Israel. You may see their\nflat fur caps, dingy gabardines, long beards and melancholy faces on\nevery street in the drowsy little city, dreaming (among fleas and\nfevers) of I know not what impossible glories to come.\n\nYou may see, also, on the hill near the Serai, the splendid Mission\nHospital of the United Free Church of Scotland, where for twenty-three\nyears Doctor Torrance has been ministering to the body and soul of\nTiberias in the name of Jesus. Do you find the building too large and\nfine, the lovely garden too beautiful with flowers, the homes of the\ndoctors, and teachers, and helpers of the sick and wounded, too clean\nand healthful and orderly? Do you say \"To what purpose is this waste?\"\nThen I know not how to measure your ignorance. For you have failed to\nsee that this is the embassy of the only King who still cares for the\ntrue welfare of this forsaken, bedraggled, broken-down Tiberias.\n\nOn the evening of our arrival, however, all these things are hidden from\nus in the dusk. We drive past the ruined gate of the city, a mile along\nthe southern road toward the famous Hot Baths. Here, on a little terrace\nabove the lake, between the road and the black basalt cliffs, our camp\nis pitched, and through the darkness\n\n  'We hear the water lapping on the crag,\n  And the long ripple washing in the reeds.'\n\nIn the freshness of the early morning the sunrise pours across the lake\ninto our tents. There is a light, cool breeze blowing from the north,\nrippling the clear, green water, (of a hue like the stone called _aqua\nmarina_), with a thousand flaws and wrinkles, which catch the flashing\nlight and reflect the deep blue sky, and change beneath the shadow of\nfloating clouds to innumerable colours of lapis lazuli, and violet, and\npurple, and peacock blue.\n\nThe old comparison of the shape of the lake to a lute, or a harp, is not\nclear to us from the point at which we stand: for the northwestward\nsweep of the bay of Gennesaret, which reaches a breadth of nearly eight\nmiles from the eastern shore, is hidden from us by a promontory, where\nthe dark walls and white houses of Tiberias slope to the water. But we\ncan see the full length of the lake, from the depression of the Jordan\nValley at the southern end, to the shores of Bethsaida and Capernaum at\nthe foot of the northern hills, beyond which the dazzling whiteness of\nHermon is visible.\n\nOpposite rise the eastern heights of the Jaulan, with almost level top\nand steep flanks, furrowed by rocky ravines, descending precipitously to\na strip of smooth, green shore. Behind us the mountains are more broken\nand varied in form, lifted into sharper peaks and sloped into broader\nvalleys. The whole aspect of the scene is like a view in the English\nLake country, say on Windermere or Ullswater; only there are no forests\nor thickets to shade and soften it. Every edge of the hills is like a\nsilhouette against the sky; every curve of the shore clear and distinct.\n\nOf the nine rich cities which once surrounded the lake, none is left\nexcept this ragged old Tiberias. Of the hundreds of fishing boats and\npassenger vessels which once crossed its waters, all have vanished\nexcept half a dozen little pleasure skiffs kept for the use of tourists.\nOf the armies and caravans which once travelled these shores, all have\npassed by into the eternal far-away, except the motley string of\nvisitors to the Hot Springs, who were coming up to bathe in the\nmedicinal waters in the days of Joshua when the place was called\nHammath, and in the time of the Greeks when it was named Emmaus, and who\nare still trotting along the road in front of our camp toward the big,\nwhite dome and dirty bath-houses of Hummam. They come from all parts of\nSyria, from Damascus and the sea-coast, from Judea and the Hauran;\nGreeks and Arabs and Turks and Maronites and Jews; on foot, on\ndonkey-back, and in litters. Now, it is a cavalcade of Druses from the\nLebanon, men, women and children, riding on tired horses. Now, it is a\nprocession of Hebrews walking with a silken canopy over the sacred books\nof their law.\n\nIn the morning we visit Tiberias, buy some bread and fish in the market,\nand go through the Mission Hospital, where one of the gentle nurses\nbinds up a foolish little wound on my wrist.\n\nIn the afternoon we sail on the southern part of the lake. The boatmen\nlaugh at my fruitless fishing with artificial flies, and catch a few\nsmall fish for us with their nets in the shallow, muddy places along the\nshore. The wind is strange and variable, now sweeping down in violent\ngusts that bend the long arm of the lateen sail, now dying away to a\ndead calm through which we row lazily home.\n\nI remember a small purple kingfisher poising in the air over a shoal,\nhis head bent downward, his wings vibrating swiftly. He drops like a\nshot and comes up out of the water with a fish held crosswise in his\nbill. With measured wing-strokes he flits to the top of a rock to eat\nhis supper, and a robber-gull flaps after him to take it away. But the\nindustrious kingfisher is too quick to be robbed. He bolts his fish with\na single gulp. We eat ours in more leisurely fashion, by the light of\nthe candles in our peaceful tent.\n\n\nV\n\nMEMORIES OF THE LAKE\n\nA hundred little points of illumination flash into memory as I look back\nover the hours that we spent beside the Sea of Galilee. How should I\nwrite of them all without being tedious? How, indeed, should I hope to\nmake them visible or significant in the bare words of description?\n\nNever have I passed richer, fuller hours; but most of their wealth was\nin very little things: the personal look of a flower growing by the\nwayside; the intimate message of a bird's song falling through the sunny\nair; the expression of confidence and appeal on the face of a wounded\nman in the hospital, when the good physician stood beside his cot; the\nshadows of the mountains lengthening across the valleys at sunset; the\nlaughter of a little child playing with a broken water pitcher; the\nbronzed profiles and bold, free ways of our sunburned rowers; the sad\neyes of an old Hebrew lifted from the book that he was reading; the\nruffling breezes and sudden squalls that changed the surface of the\nlake; the single palm-tree that waved over the mud hovels of Magdala;\nthe millions of tiny shells that strewed the beach of Capernaum and\nBethsaida; the fertile sweep of the Plain of Gennesaret rising from the\nlake; and the dark precipices of the \"Robbers' Gorge\" running back into\nthe western mountains.\n\nThe written record of these hours is worth little; but in experience and\nin memory they have a mystical meaning and beauty, because they belong\nto the country where Jesus walked with His fishermen-disciples, and took\nthe little children in His arms, and healed the sick, and opened blind\neyes to behold ineffable things.\n\nEvery touch that brings that country nearer to us in our humanity and\nmakes it more real, more simple, more vivid, is precious. For the one\nirreparable loss that could befall us in religion,--a loss that is often\nthreatened by our abstract and theoretical ways of thinking and speaking\nabout Him,--would be to lose Jesus out of the lowly and familiar ways of\nour mortal life. He entered these lowly ways as the Son of Man in order\nto make us sure that we are the children of God.\n\nTherefore I am glad of every hour spent by the Lake of Galilee.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI remember, when we came across in our boat to Tell Hum, where the\nancient city of Capernaum stood, the sun was shining with a fervent heat\nand the air of the lake, six hundred and eighty feet below the level of\nthe sea, was soft and languid. The gray-bearded German monk who came to\nmeet us at the landing and admitted us to the inclosure of his little\nmonastery where he was conducting the excavation of the ruins, wore a\ncork helmet and spectacles. He had been heated, even above the ninety\ndegrees Fahrenheit which the thermometer marked, by the rudeness of a\ncouple of tourists who had just tried to steal a photograph of his work.\nHe had foiled them by opening their camera and blotting the film with\nsunlight, and had then sent them away with fervent words. But as he\nwalked with us among his roses and Pride of India trees, his spirit\ncooled within him, and he showed himself a learned and accomplished man.\n\nHe told us how he had been working there for two or three years,\nkeeping records and drawings and photographs of everything that was\nfound; going back to the Franciscan convent at Jerusalem for his short\nvacation in the heat of mid-summer; putting his notes in order, reading\nand studying, making ready to write his book on Capernaum. He showed us\nthe portable miniature railway which he had made; and the little iron\ncars to carry away the great piles of rubbish and earth; and the rich\ncolumns, carved lintels, marble steps and shell-niches of the splendid\nbuilding which his workmen had uncovered. The outline was clear and\nperfect. We could see how the edifice of fine, white limestone had been\nerected upon an older foundation of basalt, and how an earthquake had\ntwisted it and shaken down its pillars. It was undoubtedly a synagogue,\nperhaps the very same which the rich Roman centurion built for the Jews\nin Capernaum (Luke vii: 5), and where Jesus healed the man who had an\nunclean spirit. (Luke iv: 31-37.) Of all the splendours of that proud\ncity of the lake, once spreading along a mile of the shore, nothing\nremained but these tumbled ruins in a lonely, fragrant garden, where the\npatient father was digging with his Arab workmen and getting ready to\nwrite his book.\n\n\"_Weh dir, Capernaum_\" I quoted. The _padre_ nodded his head gravely.\n\"_Ja, ja,_\" said he, \"_es ist buchstaeblich erfuellt!_\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI remember the cool bath in the lake, at a point between Bethsaida and\nCapernaum, where a tangle of briony and honeysuckle made a shelter\naround a shell-strewn beach, and the rosy oleanders bloomed beside an\ninflowing stream. I swam out a little way and floated, looking up into\nthe deep sky, while the waves plashed gently and caressingly around my\nface.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI remember the old Arab fisherman, who was camped with his family in a\nblack tent on a meadow where several lively brooks came in (one of them\nlarge enough to turn a mill). I persuaded him by gestures to wade out\ninto the shallow part of the lake and cast his bell-net for fish. He\ngathered the net in his hand, and whirled it around his head. The leaden\nweights around the bottom spread out in a wide circle and splashed into\nthe water. He drew the net toward him by the cord, the ring of sinkers\nsweeping the bottom, and lifted it slowly, carefully--but no fish!\n\nThen I rigged up my pocket fly-rod with a gossamer leader and two tiny\ntrout-flies, a Royal Coach-man and a Queen of the Water, and began to\ncast along the crystal pools and rapids of the larger stream. How\nmerrily the fish rose there, and in the ripples where the brooks ran out\ninto the lake. There were half a dozen different kinds of fish, but I\ndid not know the name of any of them. There was one that looked like a\nblack bass, and others like white perch and sunfish; and one kind was\nvery much like a grayling. But they were not really of the _salmo_\nfamily, I knew, for none of them had the soft fin in front of the tail.\nHow surprised the old fisherman was when he saw the fish jumping at\nthose tiny hooks with feathers; and how round the eyes of his children\nwere as they looked on; and how pleased they were with the _bakhshish_\nwhich they received, including a couple of baithooks for the eldest boy!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI remember the place where we ate our lunch in a small grove of\neucalyptus-trees, with sweet-smelling yellow acacias blossoming around\nus. It was near the site which some identify with the ancient Bethsaida,\nbut others say that it was farther to the east, and others again say\nthat Capernaum was really located here. The whole problem of these lake\ncities, where they stood, how they supported such large populations (not\nless than fifteen thousand people in each), is difficult and may never\nbe solved. But it did not trouble us deeply. We were content to be\nbeside the same waters, among the same hills, that Jesus knew and loved.\n\nIt was here, along this shore, that He found Simon and his brother\nAndrew casting their net, and James and his brother John mending theirs,\nand called them to come with Him. These fishermen, with their frank and\nfree hearts unspoiled by the sophistries of the Pharisees, with their\nminds unhampered by social and political ambitions, followers of a\nvocation which kept them out of doors and reminded them daily of their\ndependence on the bounty of God,--these children of nature, and others\nlike them, were the men whom He chose for His disciples, the listeners\nwho had ears to hear His marvellous gospel.\n\nIt was here, on these pale, green waves, that He sat in a little boat,\nnear the shore, and spoke to the multitude who had gathered to hear Him.\n\nHe spoke of the deep and tranquil confidence that man may learn from\nnature, from the birds and the flowers.\n\nHe spoke of the infinite peace of the heart that knows the true meaning\nof love, which is giving and blessing, and the true secret of courage,\nwhich is loyalty to the truth.\n\nHe spoke of the God whom we can trust as a child trusts its father, and\nof the Heaven which waits for all who do good to their fellowmen.\n\nHe spoke of the wisdom whose fruit is not pride but humility, of the\nhonour whose crown is not authority but service, of the purity which is\nnot outward but inward, and of the joy which lasts forever.\n\nHe spoke of forgiveness for the guilty, of compassion for the weak, of\nhope for the desperate.\n\nHe told these poor and lowly folk that their souls were unspeakably\nprecious, and that He had come to save them and make them inheritors of\nan eternal kingdom. He told them that He had brought this message from\nGod, their Father and His Father.\n\nHe spoke with the simplicity of one who knows, with the assurance of one\nwho has seen, with the certainty and clearness of one for whom doubt\ndoes not exist.\n\nHe offered Himself, in His stainless purity, in His supreme love, as the\nproof and evidence of His gospel, the bread of Heaven, the water of\nlife, the Saviour of sinners, the light of the world. \"Come unto Me,\" He\nsaid, \"and I will give you rest.\"\n\nThis was the heavenly music that came into the world by the Lake of\nGalilee. And its voice has spread through the centuries, comforting the\nsorrowful, restoring the penitent, cheering the despondent, and telling\nall who will believe it, that our human life is worth living, because it\ngives each one of us the opportunity to share in the Love which is\nsovereign and immortal.\n\n\n_A PSALM OF THE GOOD TEACHER_\n\n_The Lord is my teacher:\nI shall not lose the way to wisdom._\n\n_He leadeth me in the lowly path of learning,\nHe prepareth a lesson for me every day;\nHe findeth the clear fountains of instruction,\nLittle by little he showeth me the beauty of the truth._\n\n_The world is a great book that he hath written,\nHe turneth the leaves for me slowly;\nThey are all inscribed with images and letters,\nHis face poureth light on the pictures and the words._\n\n_Then am I glad when I perceive his meaning,\nHe taketh me by the hand to the hill-top of vision;\nIn the valley also he walketh beside me,\nAnd in the dark places he whispereth to my heart._\n\n_Yea, though my lesson be hard it is not hopeless,\nFor the Lord is very patient with his slow scholar;\nHe will wait awhile for my weakness,\nHe will help me to read the truth through tears._\n\n_Surely thou wilt enlighten me daily by joy and by sorrow:\nAnd lead me at last, O Lord, to the perfect knowledge of thee._\n\n\n\n\n                                XI\n\n                      THE SPRINGS OF JORDAN\n\n\nI\n\nTHE HILL-COUNTRY OF NAPHTALI\n\nNaphtali was the northernmost of the tribes of Israel, a bold and free\nhighland clan, inhabiting a country of rugged hills and steep\nmountainsides, with fertile vales and little plains between.\n\n\"Naphtali is a hind let loose,\" said the old song of the Sons of Jacob\n(Genesis xlix: 21); and as we ride up from the Lake of Galilee on our\nway northward, we feel the meaning of the poet's words. A people\ndwelling among these rock-strewn heights, building their fortress-towns\non sharp pinnacles, and climbing these steep paths to the open fields of\ntillage or of war, would be like wild deer in their spirit of liberty,\nand they would need to be as nimble and sure-footed.\n\nOur good little horses are shod with round plates of iron, and they\nclatter noisily among the loose stones and slip on the rocky ledges, as\nwe strike over the hills from Capernaum, without a path, to join the\nmain trail at Khan Yubb Yusuf.\n\nWe are skirting fields of waving wheat and barley, but there are no\nhouses to be seen. Far and wide the sea of verdure rolls around us,\nbroken only by ridges of grayish rock and scarped cliffs of reddish\nbasalt. We wade saddle-deep in herbage; broad-leaved fennel and\ntrembling reeds; wild asparagus and artichokes; a hundred kinds of\nflowering weeds; acres of last year's thistles, standing blanched and\nghostlike in the summer sunshine.\n\nThe phantom city of Safed gleams white from its far-away hilltop,--the\nlatest and perhaps the last of the famous seats of rabbinical learning.\nIt is one of the sacred places of modern Judaism. No Hebrew pilgrim\nfails to visit it. Here, they say, the Messiah will one day reveal\nhimself, and after establishing His kingdom, will set out to conquer the\nworld.\n\nBut it is not to the city, shining like a flake of mica from the\ngreenness of the distant mountain, that our looks and thoughts are\nturning. It is backward to the lucent sapphire of the Lake of Galilee,\nupon whose shores our hearts have seen the secret vision, heard the\ninward message of the Man of Nazareth.\n\nRidge after ridge reveals new outlooks toward its tranquil loveliness.\nTurn after turn, our winding way leads us to what we think must be the\nparting view. Sleeping in still, forsaken beauty among the sheltering\nhills, and open to the cloudless sky which makes its water like a little\nheaven, it seems to silently return our farewell looks with pleading for\nremembrance. Now, after one more round among the inclosing ridges,\nanother vista opens, the widest and the most serene of all.\n\nFarewell, dear Lake of Jesus! Our eyes may never rest on thee again; but\nsurely they will not forget thee. For now, as often we come to some fair\nwater in the Western mountains, or unfold the tent by some lone lakeside\nin the forests of the North, the lapping of thy waves will murmur\nthrough our thoughts; thy peaceful brightness will arise before us; we\nshall see the rose-flush of thy oleanders, and the waving of thy reeds;\nthe sweet, faint smell of thy gold-flowered acacias will return to us\nfrom purple orchids and white lilies. Let the blessing that is thine go\nwith us everywhere in God's great out-of-doors, and our hearts never\nlose the comradeship of Him who made thee holiest among all the waters\nof the world!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Khan of Joseph's Pit is a ruin; a huge and broken building deserted\nby the caravans which used to throng this highway from Damascus to the\ncities of the lake, and to the ports of Acre and Joppa, and to the\nmetropolis of Egypt. It is hard to realize that this wild moorland path\nby which we are travelling was once a busy road, filled with camels,\nhorses, chariots, foot-passengers, clanking companies of soldiers; that\nthese crumbling, cavernous walls, overgrown with thorny capers and wild\nmarjoram and mandragora, were once crowded every night with a motley mob\nof travellers and merchants; that this pool of muddy water, gloomily\nreflecting the ruins, was once surrounded by flocks and herds and beasts\nof burden; that only a few hours to the southward there was once a ring\nof splendid, thriving, bustling towns around the shores of Galilee, out\nof which and into which the multitudes were forever journeying. Now they\nare all gone from the road, and the vast wayside caravanserai is\nsleeping into decay--a dormitory for bats and serpents.\n\nWhat is it that makes the wreck of an inn more lonely and forbidding\nthan any other ruin?\n\nA few miles more of riding along the flanks of the mountains bring us to\na place where we turn a corner suddenly, and come upon the full view of\nthe upper basin of the Jordan; a vast oval green cup, with the little\nLake of Huleh lying in it like a blue jewel, and the giant bulk of Mount\nHermon towering beyond it, crowned and cloaked with silver snows.\n\nUp the steep and slippery village street of Rosh Pinnah, a modern Jewish\ncolony founded by the Rothschilds in 1882, we scramble wearily to our\ncamping-ground for the night. Above us on a hilltop is the old Arab\nvillage of Jauneh, brown, picturesque, and filthy. Around us are the\ncolonists' new houses, with their red-tiled roofs and white walls. Two\nstraight streets running in parallel lines up the hillside are roughly\npaved with cobble-stones and lined with trees; mulberries,\nwhite-flowered acacias, eucalyptus, feathery pepper-trees, and\nrose-bushes. Water runs down through pipes from a copious spring on the\nmountain, and flows abundantly into every house, plashing into covered\nreservoirs and open stone basins for watering the cattle. Below us the\nlong avenues of eucalyptus, the broad vineyards filled with low, bushy\nvines, the immense orchards of pale-green almond-trees, the smiling\nwheat-fields, slope to the lake and encircle its lower end.\n\nThe children who come to visit our camp on the terrace wear shoes and\nstockings, carry school-books in their bags, and bring us offerings of\nlittle bunches of sweet-smelling garden roses and pendulous\nlocust-blooms. We are a thousand years away from the Khan of Joseph's\nPit; but we can still see the old mud village on the height against the\nsunset, and the camp-fires gleaming in front of the black Bedouin tents\nfar below, along the edge of the marshes. We are perched between the old\nand the new, between the nomad and the civilized man, and the unchanging\nwhite head of Hermon looks down upon us all.\n\nIn the morning, on the way down, I stop at the door of a house and fall\ninto talk with an intelligent, schoolmasterish sort of man, a Roumanian,\nwho speaks a little weird German. Is the colony prospering? Yes, but\nnot so fast that it makes them giddy. What are they raising? Wheat and\nbarley, a few vegetables, a great deal of almonds and grapes. Good\nharvests? Some years good, some years bad; the Arabs bad every year,\nterrible thieves; but the crops are plentiful most of the time. Are the\ncolonists happy, contented? A thin smile wrinkles around the man's lips\nas he answers with the statement of a world-wide truth, \"_Ach, Herr, der\nAckerbauer ist nie zufrieden._\" (\"Ah, Sir, the farmer is never\ncontented.\")\n\n\nII\n\nTHE WATERS OF MEROM\n\nAll day we ride along the hills skirting the marshy plain of Huleh. Here\nthe springs and parent streams of Jordan are gathered, behind the\nmountains of Naphtali and at the foot of Hermon, as in a great green\nbasin about the level of the ocean, for the long, swift rush down the\nsunken trench which leads to the deep, sterile bitterness of the Dead\nSea. Was there ever a river that began so fair and ended in such waste\nand desolation?\n\nHere in this broad, level, well-watered valley, along the borders of\nthese vast beds of papyrus and rushes intersected by winding, hidden\nstreams, Joshua and his fierce clans of fighting men met the Kings of\nthe north with their horses and chariots, \"at the waters of Merom,\" in\nthe last great battle for the possession of the Promised Land. It was a\nfurious conflict, the hordes of footmen against the squadrons of\nhorsemen; but the shrewd command that came from Joshua decided it:\n\"Hough their horses and burn their chariots with fire.\" The Canaanites\nand the Amorites and the Hittites and the Hivites were swept from the\nfield, driven over the western mountains, and the Israelites held the\nJordan from Jericho to Hermon. (Joshua xi:1-15.)\n\nThe springs that burst from the hills to the left of our path and run\ndown to the sluggish channels of the marsh on our right are abundant and\nbeautiful.\n\nHere is 'Ain Mellaha, a crystal pool a hundred yards wide, with wild\nmint and watercress growing around it, white and yellow lilies floating\non its surface, and great fish showing themselves in the transparent\nopen spaces among the weeds, where the water bubbles up from the bottom\nthrough dancing hillocks of clean, white sand and shining pebbles.\n\nHere is 'Ain el-Belata, a copious stream breaking forth from the rocks\nbeneath a spreading terebinth-tree, and rippling down with merry rapids\ntoward the jungle of rustling reeds and plumed papyrus.\n\nWhile luncheon is preparing in the shade of the terebinth, I wade into\nthe brook and cast my fly along the ripples. A couple of ragged,\nlaughing, bare-legged Bedouin boys follow close behind me, watching the\nnew sport with wonder. The fish are here, as lively and gamesome as\nbrook trout, plump, golden-sided fellows ten or twelve inches long. The\nfeathered hooks tempt them, and they rise freely to the lure. My\ntattered pages are greatly excited, and make impromptu pouches in the\nbreast of their robes, stuffing in the fish until they look quite fat.\nThe catch is enough for a good supper for their whole family, and a\ndozen more for a delicious fish-salad at our camp that night. What kind\nof fish are they? I do not know: doubtless something Scriptural and\nOriental. But they taste good; and so far as there is any record, they\nare the first fish ever taken with the artificial fly in the sources of\nthe Jordan.\n\nThe plain of Huleh is full of life. Flocks of waterfowl and solemn\ncompanies of storks circle over the swamps. The wet meadows are covered\nwith herds of black buffaloes, wallowing in the ditches, or staring at\nus sullenly under their drooping horns. Little bunches of horses, and\nbrood mares followed by their long-legged, awkward foals, gallop beside\nour cavalcade, whinnying and kicking up their heels in the joy of\nfreedom. Flocks of black goats clamber up the rocky hillsides, following\nthe goatherd who plays upon his rustic pipe quavering and fantastic\nmusic, softened by distance into a wild sweetness. Small black cattle\nwith white faces march in long files across the pastures, or wander\nthrough the thickets of bulrushes and papyrus and giant fennel,\nappearing and disappearing as the screen of broad leaves and trembling\nplumes close behind them.\n\nA few groups of huts made out of wattled reeds stand beside the sluggish\nwatercourses, just as they did when Macgregor in his Rob Roy canoe\nattempted to explore this impenetrable morass forty years ago. Along the\nhigher ground are lines of black Bedouin tents, arranged in transitory\nvillages.\n\nThese flitting habitations of the nomads, who come down from the hills\nand lofty deserts to fatten their flocks and herds among unfailing\npasturage, are all of one pattern. The low, flat roof of black goats'\nhair is lifted by the sticks which support it, into half a dozen little\npeaks, perhaps five or six feet from the ground. Between these peaks the\ncloth sags down, and is made fast along the edges by intricate and\nconfusing guy-ropes. The tent is shallow, not more than six feet deep,\nand from twelve to thirty feet long, according to the wealth of the\nowner and the size of his family,--two things which usually correspond.\nThe sides and the partitions are sometimes made of woven reeds, like\ncoarse matting. Within there is an apartment (if you can call it so) for\nthe family, a pen for the chickens, and room for dogs, cats, calves and\nother creatures to find shelter. The fireplace of flat stones is in the\ncentre, and the smoke oozes out through the roof and sides.\n\nThe Bedouin men, in flowing _burnous_ and _keffiyeh_, with the _'agal_\nof dark twisted camel's hair like a crown upon their heads, are almost\nall handsome: clean-cut, haughty faces, bold in youth and dignified in\nold age. The women look weatherbeaten and withered beside them. Even\nwhen you see a fine face in the dark blue mantle or under the white\nhead-dress, it is almost always disfigured by purplish tattooing around\nthe lips and chin. Some of the younger girls are beautiful, and most of\nthe children are entrancing.\n\nThey play games in a ring, with songs and clapping hands; the boys\ncharge up and down among the tents with wild shouts, driving a round\nbone or a donkey's hoof with their shinny-sticks; the girls chase one\nanother and hide among the bushes in some primeval form of \"tag\" or\n\"hide-and-seek.\"\n\nA merry little mob pursues us as we ride through each encampment, with\noutstretched hands and half-jesting, half-plaintive cries of\n\"_Bakhshish! bakhshish!_\" They do not really expect anything. It is only\na part of the game. And when the Lady holds out her open hand to them\nand smiles as she repeats, \"_Bakhshish! bakhshish!_\" they take the joke\nquickly, and run away, laughing, to their sports.\n\nAt one village, in the dusk, there is an open-air wedding: a row of men\ndancing; a ring of women and girls looking on; musicians playing the\nshepherd's pipe and the drum; maidens running beside us to beg a present\nfor the invisible bride: a rude charcoal sketch of human society,\nprimitive, irrepressible, confident, encamped for a moment on the\nshadowy border of the fecund and unconquerable marsh.\n\nThus we traverse the strange country of Bedouinia, travelling all day in\nthe presence of the Great Sheikh of Mountains, and sleep at night on the\nedge of a little village whose name we shall never know. A dozen times\nwe ask George for the real name of that place, and a dozen times he\nrepeats it for us with painstaking courtesy; it sounds like a compromise\nbetween a cough and a sneeze.\n\n\nIII\n\nWHERE JORDAN RISES\n\nThe Jordan is assembled in the northern end of the basin of Huleh under\na mysterious curtain of tall, tangled water-plants. Into that ancient\nand impenetrable place of hiding and blending enter many little springs\nand brooks, but the main sources of the river are three.\n\nThe first and the longest is the Hasbani, a strong, foaming stream that\ncomes down with a roar from the western slope of Hermon. We cross it by\nthe double arch of a dilapidated Saracen bridge, looking down upon\nthickets of oleander, willow, tamarisk and woodbine.\n\nThe second and largest source springs from the rounded hill of Tel\nel-Kadi, the supposed site of the ancient city of Dan, the northern\nborder of Israel. Here the wandering, landless Danites, finding a\ncountry to their taste, put the too fortunate inhabitants of Leshem to\nthe sword and took possession. And here King Jereboam set up one of his\nidols of the golden calf.\n\nThere is no vestige of the city, no trace of the idolatrous shrine, on\nthe huge mound which rises thirty or forty feet above the plain. But it\nis thickly covered with trees: poplars and oaks and wild figs and\nacacias and wild olives. A pair of enormous veterans, a valonia oak and\na terebinth, make a broad bower of shade above the tomb of an unknown\nMohammedan saint, and there we eat our midday meal, with the murmur of\nrunning waters all around us, a clear rivulet singing at our feet, and\nthe chant of innumerable birds filling the vault of foliage above our\nheads.\n\nAfter lunch, instead of sleeping, two of us wander into the dense grove\nthat spreads over the mound. Tiny streams of water trickle through it:\nblackberry-vines and wild grapes are twisted in the undergrowth; ferns\nand flowery nettles and mint grow waist-high. The main spring is at the\nwestern base of the mound. The water comes bubbling and whirling out\nfrom under a screen of wild figs and vines, forming a pool of palest,\nclearest blue, a hundred feet in diameter. Out of this pool the new-born\nriver rushes, foaming and shouting down the hillside, through lines of\nflowering styrax and hawthorn and willows trembling over its wild joy.\n\nThe third and most impressive of the sources of Jordan is at Baniyas, on\none of the foothills of Hermon. Our path thither leads us up from Dan,\nthrough high green meadows, shaded by oak-trees, sprinkled with\ninnumerable blossoming shrubs and bushes, and looking down upon the\nlower fields blue with lupins and vetches, or golden with yellow\nchrysanthemums beneath which the red glow of the clover is dimly burning\nlike a secret fire.\n\nPresently we come, by way of a broad, natural terrace where the white\nencampment of the Moslem dead lies gleaming beneath the shade of mighty\noaks and terebinths, and past the friendly olive-grove where our own\ntents are standing, to a deep ravine filled to the brim with luxuriant\nverdure of trees and vines and ferns. Into this green cleft a little\nriver, dancing and singing, suddenly plunges and disappears, and from\nbeneath the veil of moist and trembling leaves we hear the sound of its\nwild joy, a fracas of leaping, laughing waters.\n\n[Illustration: The Approach to Baniyas.]\n\nAn old Roman bridge spans the stream on the brink of its downward\nleap. Crossing over, we ride through the ruined gateway of the town of\nBaniyas, turn to right and left among its dirty, narrow streets, pass\ninto a leafy lane, and come out in front of a cliff of ruddy limestone,\nwith niches and shrines carved on its face, and a huge, dark cavern\ngaping in the centre.\n\nA tumbled mass of broken rocks lies below the mouth of the cave. From\nthis slope of debris, sixty or seventy feet long, a line of springs gush\nforth in singing foam. Under the shadow of trembling poplars and\nbroad-boughed sycamores, amid the lush greenery of wild figs and grapes,\nbracken and briony and morning-glory, drooping maidenhair and\nflower-laden styrax, the hundred rills swiftly run together and flow\naway with one impulse, a full-grown little river.\n\nThere is an immemorial charm about the place. Mysteries of grove and\nfountain, of cave and hilltop, bewitch it with the magic of Nature's\nlife, ever springing and passing, flowering and fading, basking in the\nopen sunlight and hiding in the secret places of the earth. It is such a\nplace as Claude Lorraine might have imagined and painted as the scene\nof one of his mythical visions of Arcadia; such a place as antique fancy\nmight have chosen and decked with altars for the worship of unseen\ndryads and nymphs, oreads and naiads. And so, indeed, it was chosen, and\nso it was decked.\n\nHere, in all probability, was Baal-Gad, where the Canaanites paid their\nreverence to the waters that spring from underground. Here, certainly,\nwas Paneas of the Greeks, where the rites of Pan and all the nymphs were\ncelebrated. Here Herod the Great built a marble temple to Augustus the\nTolerant, on this terrace of rock above the cave. Here, no doubt, the\nstatue of the Emperor looked down upon a strange confusion of revelries\nand wild offerings in honour of the unknown powers of Nature.\n\nAll these things have withered, crumbled, vanished. There are no more\nstatues, altars, priests, revels and sacrifices at Baniyas--only the\nfragment of an inscription around one of the votive niches carved on the\ncliff, which records the fact that the niche was made by a certain\nperson who at that time was \"Priest of Pan.\" _But the name of this_\n_person who wished to be remembered is precisely the part of the carving\nwhich is illegible._\n\nIronical inscription! Still the fountains gush from the rocks, the\npoplars tremble in the breeze, the sweet incense rises from the\norange-flowered styrax, the birds chant the joy of living, the sunlight\nand the moonlight fall upon the sparkling waters, and the liquid\nstarlight drips through the glistening leaves. But the Priest of Pan is\nforgotten, and all that old interpretation and adoration of Nature,\nsensuous, passionate, full of mingled cruelty and ecstasy, has melted\nlike a mist from her face, and left her serene and pure and lovely as\never.\n\nHere at Paneas, after the city had been rebuilt by Philip the Tetrarch\nand renamed after him and his Imperial master, there came one day a\nPeasant of Galilee who taught His disciples to draw near to Nature, not\nwith fierce revelry and superstitious awe, but with tranquil confidence\nand calm joy. The goatfoot god, the god of panic, the great god Pan,\nreigns no more beside the upper springs of Jordan. The name that we\nremember here, the name that makes the message of flowing stream and\nsheltering tree and singing bird more clear and cool and sweet to our\nhearts, is the name of Jesus of Nazareth.\n\n\nIV\n\nCAESAREA PHILIPPI\n\nYes, this little Mohammedan town of Baniyas, with its twoscore wretched\nhouses built of stones from the ancient ruins and huddled within the\nbroken walls of the citadel, is the ancient site of Caesarea Philippi. In\nthe happy days that we spend here, rejoicing in the most beautiful of\nall our camps in the Holy Land, and yielding ourselves to the full charm\nof the out-of-doors more perfectly expressed than we had ever thought to\nfind it in Palestine,--in this little paradise of friendly trees and\nfragrant flowers,\n\n      \"at snowy Hermon's foot,\n  Amid the music of his waterfalls,\"--\n\nthe thought of Jesus is like the presence of a comrade, while the\nmemories of human grandeur and transience, of man's long toil, unceasing\nconflict, vain pride and futile despair, visit us only as flickering\nghosts.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe climb to the top of the peaked hill, a thousand feet above the town,\nand explore the great Crusaders' Castle of Subeibeh, a ruin vaster in\nextent and nobler in situation than the famous _Schloss_ of Heidelberg.\nIt not only crowns but completely covers the summit of the steep ridge\nwith the huge drafted stones of its foundations. The immense round\ntowers, the double-vaulted gateways, are still standing. Long flights of\nsteps lead down to subterranean reservoirs of water. Spacious\ncourtyards, where the knights and men-at-arms once exercised, are\ntransformed into vegetable gardens, and the passageways between the\nnorth citadel and the south citadel are travelled by flocks of lop-eared\ngoats.\n\nFrom room to room we clamber by slopes of crumbling stone, discovering\nnow a guard-chamber with loopholes for the archers, and now an arched\nchapel with the plaster intact and faint touches of colour still showing\nupon it. Perched on the high battlements we look across the valley of\nHuleh and the springs of Jordan to Kal'at Hunin on the mountains of\nNaphtali, and to Kal'at esh-Shakif above the gorge of the River Litani.\n\nFrom these three great fortresses, in the time of the Crusaders, flashed\nand answered the signal-fires of the chivalry of Europe fighting for\npossession of Palestine. What noble companies of knights and ladies\ninhabited these castles, what rich festivals were celebrated within\nthese walls, what desperate struggles defended them, until at last the\nswarthy hordes of Saracens stormed the gates and poured over the\ndefences and planted the standard of the crescent on the towers and lit\nthe signal-fires of Islam from citadel to citadel.\n\nAll the fires have gone out now. The yellow whin blazes upon the\nhillsides. The wild fig-tree splits the masonry. The scorpion lodges in\nthe deserted chambers. On the fallen stone of the Crusaders' gate, where\nthe Moslem victor has carved his Arabic inscription, a green-gray lizard\npoises motionless, like a bronze figure on a paper-weight.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[Illustration: Bridge Over the River Litani.]\n\nWe pass through the southern entrance of the village of Baniyas, a\nmassive square portal, rebuilt by some Arab ruler, and go out on the\nold Roman bridge which spans the ravine. The aqueduct carried by the\nbridge is still full of flowing water, and the drops which fall from it\nin a fine mist make a little rainbow as the afternoon sun shines through\nthe archway draped with maidenhair fern. On the stone pavement of the\nbridge we trace the ruts worn two thousand years ago by the chariots of\nthe men who conquered the world. The chariots have all rolled by. On the\nbroken edge of the tower above the gateway sits a ragged Bedouin boy,\nmaking shrill, plaintive music with his pipe of reeds.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe repose in front of our tents among the olive-trees at the close of\nthe day. The cool sound of running streams and rustling poplars is on\nthe moving air, and the orange-golden sunset enchants the orchard with\nmystical light. All the swift visions of striving Saracens and\nCrusaders, of conquering Greeks and Romans, fade away from us, and we\nsee the figure of the Man of Nazareth with His little company of friends\nand disciples coming up from Galilee.\n\nIt was here that Jesus retreated with His few faithful followers from\nthe opposition of the Scribes and Pharisees. This was the northernmost\nspot of earth ever trodden by His feet, the longest distance from\nJerusalem that He ever travelled. Here in this exquisite garden of\nNature, in a region of the Gentiles, within sight of the shrines devoted\nto those Greek and Roman rites which were so luxurious and so tolerant,\nfour of the most beautiful and significant events of His life and\nministry took place.\n\nHe asked His disciples plainly to tell their secret thought of Him--whom\nthey believed their Master to be. And when Peter answered simply: \"Thou\nart the Christ, the Son of the living God,\" Jesus blessed him for the\nanswer, and declared that He would build His church upon that rock.\n\nThen He took Peter and James and John with Him and climbed one of the\nhigh and lonely slopes of Hermon. There He was transfigured before them,\nHis face shining like the sun and His garments glistening like the snow\non the mountain-peaks. But when they begged to stay there with Him, He\nled them down to the valley again, among the sinning and suffering\nchildren of men.\n\nAt the foot of the mount of transfiguration He healed the demoniac boy\nwhom his father had brought to the other disciples, but for whom they\nhad been unable to do anything; and He taught them that the power to\nhelp men comes from faith and prayer.\n\nAnd then, at last, He turned His steps from this safe and lovely refuge,\n(where He might surely have lived in peace, or from which He might have\ngone out unmolested into the wide Gentile world), backward to His own\ncountry, His own people, the great, turbulent, hard-hearted Jewish city,\nand the fate which was not to be evaded by One who loved sinners and\ncame to save them. He went down into Galilee, down through Samaria and\nPerea, down to Jerusalem, down to Gethsemane and to Golgotha,--fearless,\ncalm,--sustained and nourished by that secret food which satisfied His\nheart in doing the will of God.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was in the quest of this Jesus, in the hope of somehow drawing nearer\nto Him, that we made our pilgrimage to the Holy Land. And now, in the\ncool of the evening at Caesarea Philippi, we ask ourselves whether our\ndesire has been granted, our hope fulfilled?\n\nYes, more richly, more wonderfully than we dared to dream. For we have\nfound a new vision of Christ, simpler, clearer, more satisfying, in the\nfreedom and reality of God's out-of-doors.\n\nNot through the mists and shadows of an infinite regret, the sadness of\nsweet, faded dreams and hopes that must be resigned, as Pierre Loti saw\nthe phantom of a Christ whose irrevocable disappearance has left the\nworld darker than ever!\n\nNot amid strange portents and mysterious rites, crowned with I know not\nwhat aureole of traditionary splendours, founder of elaborate ceremonies\nand centre of lamplit shrines, as Matilde Serao saw the image of that\nChrist whom the legends of men have honoured and obscured!\n\nThe Jesus whom we have found is the Child of Nazareth playing among the\nflowers; the Man of Galilee walking beside the lake, healing the sick,\ncomforting the sorrowful, cheering the lonely and despondent; the\nwell-beloved Son of God transfigured in the sunset glow of snowy Hermon,\nweeping by the sepulchre in Bethany, agonizing in the moonlit garden of\nGethsemane, giving His life for those who did not understand Him, though\nthey loved Him, and for those who did not love Him because they did not\nunderstand Him, and rising at last triumphant over death,--such a\nSaviour as all men need and as no man could ever have imagined if He had\nnot been real.\n\nHis message has not died away, nor will it ever die. For confidence and\ncalm joy He tells us to turn to Nature. For love and sacrifice He bids\nus live close to our fellowmen. For comfort and immortal hope He asks us\nto believe in Him and in our Father, God.\n\nThat is all.\n\nBut the bringing of that heavenly message made the country to which it\ncame the Holy Land. And the believing of that message, to-day, will lead\nany child of man into the kingdom of heaven. And the keeping of that\nfaith, the following of that Life, will transfigure any country beneath\nthe blue sky into a holy land.\n\n\n_THE PSALM OF A SOJOURNER_\n\n_Thou hast taken me into the tent of the world, O God:\nBeneath thy blue canopy I have found shelter:\nTherefore thou wilt not deny me the right of a guest._\n\n_Naked and poor I arrived at the door before sunset:\nThou hast refreshed me with beautiful bowls of milk:\nAs a great chief thou hast set forth food in abundance._\n\n_I have loved the daily delights of thy dwelling:\nThy moon and thy stars have lighted me to my bed:\nIn the morning I have found joy with thy servants._\n\n_Surely thou wilt not send me away in the darkness?\nThere the enemy Death is lying in wait for my soul:\nThou art the host of my life and I claim thy protection._\n\n_Then the Lord of the tent of the world made answer:\nThe right of a guest endureth but for an appointed time:\nAfter three days and three nights cometh the day of departure._\n\n_Yet hearken to me since thou fearest the foe in the dark:\nI will make with thee a new covenant of everlasting hospitality:\nBehold I will come unto thee as a stranger and be thy guest._\n\n_Poor and needy will I come that thou mayest entertain me:\nMeek and lowly will I come that thou mayest find a friend:\nWith mercy and with truth will I come to give thee comfort._\n\n_Therefore open the door of thy heart and bid me welcome:\nIn this tent of the world I will be thy brother of the bread:\nAnd when thou farest forth I will be thy companion forever._\n\n_Then my soul rested in the word of the Lord:\nAnd I saw that the curtains of the world were shaken,\nBut I looked beyond them to the eternal camp-fires of my friend._\n\n\n\n\n                                XII\n\n                       THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS\n\n\nI\n\nTHROUGH THE LAND OF THE DRUSES\n\nYou may go to Damascus now by rail, if you like, and have a choice\nbetween two rival routes, one under government ownership, the other\nbuilt and managed by a corporation. But to us encamped among the silvery\nolives at Baniyas, beside the springs of Jordan, it seemed a happy\ncircumstance that both railways were so far away that it would have\ntaken longer to reach them than to ride our horses straight into the\ncity. We were delivered from the modern folly of trying to save time by\ntravelling in a conveyance more speedy than picturesque, and left free\nto pursue our journey in a leisurely, independent fashion and by the\nroad that would give us most pleasure. So we chose the longer way, the\nnorthern path around Mount Hermon, through the country of the Druses,\ninstead of the more frequented road to the east by Kafr Hawar.\n\nHow delightful is the morning of such a journey! The fresh face of the\nworld bathed in sparkling dew; the greetings from tent to tent as we\nfour friends make our rendezvous from the far countries of sleep; the\nrelish of breakfast in the open air; the stir of the camp in preparation\nfor a flitting; canvas sinking to the ground, bales and boxes heaped\ntogether, mule-bells tinkling through the grove, horses refreshed by\ntheir long rest whinnying and nipping at each other in play--all these\nare charming variations and accompaniments to the old tune of \"Boots and\nSaddles.\"\n\nThe immediate effect of such a setting out for a day's ride is to renew\nin the heart those \"vital feelings of delight\" which make one simply and\ninexplicably glad to be alive. We are delivered from those morbid\nquestionings and exorbitant demands by which we are so often possessed\nand plagued as by some strange inward malady. We feel a sense of health\nand harmony diffused through body and mind as we ride over the beautiful\nterrace which slopes down from Baniyas to Tel-el Kadi.\n\nWe are glad of the green valonia oaks that spread their shade over us,\nand of the blossoming hawthorns that scatter their flower-snow on the\nhillside. We are glad of the crested larks that rise warbling from the\ngrass, and of the buntings and chaffinches that make their small merry\nmusic in every thicket, and of the black and white chats that shift\ntheir burden of song from stone to stone beside the path, and of the\ncuckoo that tells his name to us from far away, and of the splendid\nbee-eaters that glitter over us like a flock of winged emeralds as we\nclimb the rocky hill toward the north. We are glad of the broom in\ngolden flower, and of the pink and white rock-roses, and of the spicy\nfragrance of mint and pennyroyal that our horses trample out as they\nsplash through the spring holes and little brooks. We are glad of the\nlong, wide views westward over the treeless mountains of Naphtali and\nthe southern ridges of the Lebanon, and of the glimpses of the ruined\ncastles of the Crusaders, Kal'at esh-Shakif and Hunin, perched like\ndilapidated eagles on their distant crags. Everything seems to us like a\npersonal gift. We have the feeling of ownership for this day of all the\nworld's beauty. We could not explain or justify it to any sad\nphilosopher who might reproach us for unreasoning felicity. We should be\ndefenceless before his arguments and indifferent to his scorn. We should\nsimply ride on into the morning, reflecting in our hearts something of\nthe brightness of the birds' plumage, the cheerfulness of the brooks'\nsong, the undimmed hyaline of the sky, and so, perhaps, fulfilling the\nDivine Intention of Nature as well as if we chose to becloud our mirror\nwith melancholy thoughts.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe are following up the valley of the longest and highest, but not the\nlargest, of the sources of the Jordan: the little River Hasbani, a\nstrong and lovely stream, which rises somewhere in the northern end of\nthe Wadi et-Teim, and flows along the western base of Mount Hermon,\nreceiving the tribute of torrents which burst out in foaming springs far\nup the ravines, and are fed underground by the melting of the perpetual\nsnow of the great mountain. Now and then we have to cross one of these\ntorrents, by a rude stone bridge or by wading. All along the way Hermon\nlooks down upon us from his throne, nine thousand feet in air. His head\nis wrapped in a turban of spotless white, like a Druse chieftain, and\nhis snowy winter cloak still hangs down over his shoulders, though its\nlower edges are already fringed and its seams opened by the warm suns of\nApril.\n\nPresently we cross a bridge to the west bank of the Hasbani, and ride up\nthe delightful vale where poplars and mulberries, olives, almonds, vines\nand figs, grow abundantly along the course of the river. There are low\nweirs across the stream for purposes of irrigation, and a larger dam\nsupplies a mill with power. To the left is the sharp barren ridge of the\nJebel ez-Zohr separating us from the gorge of the River Litani. Groups\nof labourers are at work on the watercourses among the groves and\ngardens. Vine-dressers are busy in the vineyards. Ploughmen are driving\ntheir shallow furrows through the stony fields on the hillside. The\nlittle river, here in its friendliest mood, winds merrily among the\nplantations and orchards which it nourishes, making a cheerful noise\nover beds of pebbles, and humming a deeper note where the clear green\nwater plunges over a weir.\n\nWe have now been in the saddle five hours; the sun is ardent; the\ntemperature is above eighty-five degrees in the shade, and along the\nbridle-path there is no shade. We are hungry, thirsty, and tired. As we\ncross the river again, splashing through a ford, our horses drink\neagerly and attempt to lie down in the cool water. We have to use strong\npersuasion not only with them, but also with our own spirits, to pass by\nthe green grass and the sheltering olive-trees on the east bank and push\non up the narrow, rocky defile in which Hasbeiya is hidden. The\nbridle-path is partly paved with rough cobblestones, hard and slippery,\nwhich make the going weariful. The heat presses on us like a burden.\nThings that would have delighted us in the morning now give us no\npleasure. We have made the greedy traveller's mistake of measuring our\nmarch by the extent of our endurance instead of by the limit of our\nenjoyment.\n\nHasbeiya proves to be a rather thriving and picturesque town built\naround the steep sides of a bay or opening in the valley. The\namphitheatre of hills is terraced with olive-orchards and vineyards.\nThere are also many mulberry-trees cultivated for the silkworms, and the\never-present figs and almonds are not wanting. The stone houses of the\ntown rise, on winding paths, one above the other, many of them having\narched porticoes, red-tiled roofs, and green-latticed windows. It is a\nplace of about five thousand population, now more than half Christian,\nbut formerly one of the strongholds and capitals of the mysterious Druse\nreligion.\n\nOur tents are pitched at the western end of the town, on a low terrace\nwhere olive-trees are growing. When we arrive we find the camp\nsurrounded and filled with curious, laughing children. The boys are a\nlittle troublesome at first, but a word from an old man who seems to be\nin charge brings them to order, and at least fifty of them, big and\nlittle, squat in a semicircle on the grass below the terrace, watching\nus with their lustrous brown eyes.\n\nThey look full of fun, those young Druses and Maronites and Greeks and\nMohammedans, so I try a mild joke on them, by pretending that they are\na class and that I am teaching them a lesson. \"A, B, C,\" I chant, and\nwait for them to repeat after me. They promptly take the lesson out of\nmy hands and recite the entire English alphabet in chorus, winding up\nwith shouts of \"Goot mornin'! How you do?\" and merry laughter. They are\nall pupils from the mission schools which have been established since\nthe great Massacre of 1860, and which are helping, I hope, to make\nanother forever impossible.\n\nOne of our objects in coming to Hasbeiya was to ascend Mount Hermon. We\nsend for the Druse guide and the Christian guide; both of them assure us\nthat the adventure is impossible on account of the deep snow, which has\nincreased during the last fortnight. We can not get within a mile of the\nsummit. The snow will be waist-deep in the hollows. The mountain is\ninaccessible until June. So, after exchanging visits with the\nmissionaries and seeing something of their good work, we ride on our way\nthe next morning.\n\n\nII\n\nRASHEIYA AND ITS AMERICANISM\n\nThe journey to Rasheiya is like that of the preceding day, except that\nthe bridle-paths are rougher and more precipitous, and the views wider\nand more splendid. We have crossed the Hasbani again, and leaving the\nDruses' valley, the Wadi et-Teim, behind us, have climbed the high\ntable-land to the west. We did not know why George Cavalcanty led us\naway from the path marked in our Baedeker, but we took it for granted\nthat he had some good reason. It is well not to ask a wise dragoman all\nthe questions that you can think of. Tell him where you want to go, and\nlet him show you how to get there. Certainly we are not inclined to\ncomplain of the longer and steeper route by which he has brought us,\nwhen we sit down at lunch-time among the limestone crags and pinnacles\nof the wild upland and look abroad upon a landscape which offers the\ngrandeur of immense outlines and vast distances, the beauty of a crystal\nclearness in all its infinitely varied forms, and the enchantment of\ngemlike colours, delicate, translucent, vivid, shifting and playing in\nhues of rose and violet and azure and purple and golden brown and bright\ngreen, as if the bosom of Mother Earth were the breast of a dove,\nbreathing softly in the sunlight.\n\nAs we climb toward Rasheiya we find ourselves going back a month or more\ninto early spring. Here are the flowers that we saw in the Plain of\nSharon on the first of April, gorgeous red anemones, fragrant purple and\nwhite cyclamens, delicate blue irises. The fig-tree is putting forth her\ntender leaf. The vines, lying flat on the ground, are bare and dormant.\nThe springing grain, a few inches long, is in its first flush of almost\ndazzling green.\n\nThe town, built in terraces on three sides of a rocky hill, 4,100 feet\nabove the sea, commands an extensive view. Hermon is in full sight;\nsnow-capped Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon face each other for forty miles;\nand the little lake of Kafr Kuk makes a spot of blue light in the\nforeground.\n\nWe are camped on the threshing-floor, a level meadow beyond and below\nthe town; and there the Rasheiyan gilded youth come riding their\nblooded horses in the afternoon, running races over the smooth turf and\nshowing off their horsemanship for our benefit.\n\nThere is something very attractive about these Arabian horses as you see\nthem in their own country. They are spirited, fearless, sure-footed, and\nyet, as a rule, so docile that they may be ridden with a halter. They\nare good for a long journey, or a swift run, or a _fantasia_. The\nprevailing colour among them is gray, but you see many bays and sorrels\nand a few splendid blacks. An Arabian stallion satisfies the romantic\nideal of how a horse ought to look. His arched neck, small head, large\neyes wide apart, short body, round flanks, delicate pasterns, and little\nfeet; the way he tosses his mane and cocks his flowing tail when he is\non parade; the swiftness and spring of his gallop, the dainty grace of\nhis walk--when you see these things you recognise at once the real,\noriginal horse which the painters used to depict in their \"Portraits of\nGeneral X on his Favourite Charger.\"\n\nI asked Calvalcanty what one of these fine creatures would cost. \"A good\nhorse, two or three hundred dollars; an extra-good one, four hundred; a\nfancy one, who knows?\"\n\nWe find Rasheiya full of Americanism. We walk out to take photographs,\nand at almost every street corner some young man who has been in the\nUnited States or Canada salutes us with: \"How are you to-day? You\nfellows come from America? What's the news there? Is Bryan elected yet?\nI voted for McKinley. I got a store in Kankakee. I got one in Jackson,\nMiss.\" A beautiful dark-eyed girl, in a dreadful department-store dress,\nsmiles at us from an open door and says: \"Take my picture? I been at\nAmerica.\"\n\nOne talkative and friendly fellow joins us in our walk; in fact he takes\npossession of us, guiding us up the crooked alleys and out on the\nhousetops which command the best views, and showing us off to his\nfriends,--an old gentleman who is spinning goats' hair for the coarse\nblack tents (St. Paul's trade), and two ladies who are grinding corn in\na hand-mill, one pushing and the other pulling. Our self-elected guide\nhas spent seven years in Illinois and Indiana, peddling and\nstore-keeping. He has returned to Rasheiya as a successful adventurer\nand built a stone house with a red roof and an arched portico. Is he\ngoing to settle down there for life? \"I not know,\" says he. \"Guess I\nwant sell my house now. This country beautiful; I like look at her. But\nAmerica free--good government--good place to live. Gee whiz! I go back\nquick, you bet.\"\n\n\nIII\n\nANTI-LEBANON AND THE RIVER ABANA\n\nOur path the next day leads up to the east over the ridges of the slight\ndepression which lies between Mount Hermon and the rest of the\nAnti-Lebanon range. We pass the disconsolate village and lake of Kafr\nKuk. The water which shone so blue in the distance now confesses itself\na turbid, stagnant pool, locked in among the hills, and breeding fevers\nfor those who live beside it. The landscape grows wild and sullen as we\nascend; the hills are strewn with shattered fragments of rock, or worn\ninto battered and fantastic crags; the bottoms of the ravines are\nsoaked and barren as if the winter floods had just left them. Presently\nwe are riding among great snowdrifts. It is the first day of May. We\nwalk on the snow, and pack a basketful on one of the mules, and pelt\neach other with snowballs.\n\nWe have gone back another month in the calendar and are now at the place\nwhere \"winter lingers in the lap of spring.\" Snowdrops, crocuses, and\nlittle purple grape-hyacinths are blooming at the edge of the drifts.\nThe thorny shrubs and bushes, and spiny herbs like astragalus and\ncousinia, are green-stemmed but leafless, and the birds that flutter\namong them are still in the first rapture of vernal bliss, the gay music\nthat follows mating and precedes nesting. Big dove-coloured partridges,\nbeautifully marked with black and red, are running among the rocks. We\nare at the turn of the year, the surprising season when the tide of\nlight and life and love swiftly begins to rise.\n\nFrom this Alpine region we descend through two months in half a day. It\nis mid-March on a beautiful green plain where herds of horses were\nfeeding around an encampment of black Bedouin tents; the beginning of\nApril at Khan Meithelun, on the post-road, where there are springs, and\npoplar-groves, in one of which we eat our lunch, with lemonade cooled by\nthe snows of Hermon; the end of April at Dimas, where we find our tents\npitched upon the threshing-floor, a levelled terrace of clay looking\ndown upon the flat roofs of the village.\n\nOur camp is 3,600 feet above sea-level, and our morning path follows the\ntelegraph-poles steeply down to the post-road, and so by a more gradual\ndescent along the hard and dusty turnpike toward Damascus. The\nlandscape, at first, is bare and arid: rounded reddish mountains, gray\nhillsides, yellowish plains faintly tinged with a thin green. But at\nEl-Hami the road drops into the valley of the Barada, the far-famed\nRiver Abana, and we find ourselves in a verdant paradise.\n\nTall trees arch above the road; white balconies gleam through the\nfoliage; the murmur and the laughter of flowing streams surround us. The\nrailroad and the carriage-road meet and cross each other down the vale.\nCountry houses and cafes, some dingy and dilapidated, others new and\ntrim, are half hidden among the groves or perched close beside the\nhighway. Poplars and willows, plane-trees and lindens, walnuts and\nmulberries, apricots and almonds, twisted fig-trees and climbing roses,\ngrow joyfully wherever the parcelled water flows in its many channels.\nAbove this line, on the sides of the vale, everything is bare and brown\nand dry. But the depth of the valley is an embroidered sash of bloom\nlaid across the sackcloth of the desert. And in the centre of this long\nverdure runs the parent river, a flood of clear green; rushing, leaping,\ncurling into white foam; filling its channel of thirty or forty feet\nfrom bank to bank, and making the silver-leafed willows and poplars,\nthat stand with their feet in the stream, tremble with the swiftness of\nits cool, strong current. Truly Naaman the Syrian was right in his\nboasting to the prophet Elisha: Abana, the river of Damascus, is better\nthan all the waters of Israel.\n\nThe vale narrows as we descend along the stream, until suddenly we pass\nthrough a gateway of steep cliffs and emerge upon an open plain beset\nwith mountains on three sides. The river, parting into seven branches,\ngoes out to water a hundred and fifty square miles of groves and\ngardens, and we follow the road through the labyrinth of rich and\nluscious green. There are orchards of apricots enclosed with high mud\nwalls; and open gates through which we catch glimpses of crimson\nrose-trees and scarlet pomegranates and little fields of wheat glowing\nwith blood-red poppies; and hedges of white hawthorn and wild brier; and\ntrees, trees, trees, everywhere embowering us and shutting us in.\n\nPresently we see, above the leafy tops, a sharp-pointed minaret with a\ngolden crescent above it. Then we find ourselves again beside the main\ncurrent of the Barada, running swift and merry in a walled channel\nstraight across an open common, where soldiers are exercising their\nhorses, and donkeys and geese are feeding, and children are playing, and\ndyers are sprinkling their long strips of blue cotton cloth laid out\nupon the turf beside the river. The road begins to look like the\ncommencement of a street; domes and minarets rise before us; there are\nglimpses of gray walls and towers, a few shops and open-air cafes, a\ncouple of hotel signs. The river dives under a bridge and disappears by\na hundred channels beneath the city, leaving us at the western entrance\nof Damascus.\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE CITY THAT A LITTLE RIVER MADE\n\nI cannot tell whether the river, the gardens, and the city would have\nseemed so magical and entrancing if we had come upon them in some other\nway or seen them in a different setting. You can never detach an\nexperience from its matrix and weigh it alone. Comparisons with the\nenvirons of Naples or Florence visited in an automobile, or with the\nsuburbs of Boston seen from a trolley-car, are futile and\nunilluminating.\n\nThe point about the Barada is that it springs full-born from the barren\nsides of the Anti-Lebanon, swiftly creates a paradise as it runs, and\nthen disappears absolutely in a wide marsh on the edge of the desert.\n\nThe point about Damascus is that she flourishes on a secluded plain,\nthe Ghutah, seventy miles from the sea and twenty-three hundred feet\nabove it, with no _hinterland_ and no sustaining provinces, no political\nleadership, and no special religious sanctity, with nothing, in fact, to\naccount for her distinction, her splendour, her populous vitality, her\nself-sufficing charm, except her mysterious and enduring quality as a\nmere city, a hive of men. She is the oldest living city in the world; no\none knows her birthday or her founder's name. She has survived the\nempires and kingdoms which conquered her,--Nineveh, Babylon, Samaria,\nGreece, Egypt--their capitals are dust, but Damascus still blooms \"like\na tree planted by the rivers of water.\" She has given her name to the\nreddest of roses, the sweetest of plums, the richest of metalwork, and\nthe most lustrous of silks; her streets have bubbled and eddied with the\ncurrents of\n\n            the multitudinous folk\n  That do inhabit her and make her great.\n\nShe is the typical city, pure and simple, of the Orient, as New York or\nSan Francisco is of the Occident: the open port on the edge of the\ndesert, the trading-booth at the foot of the mountains, the pavilion in\nthe heart of the blossoming bower,--the wonderful child of a little\nriver and an immemorial Spirit of Place.\n\nEvery time we go into the city, (whether from our tents on the terrace\nabove an ancient and dilapidated pleasure-garden, or from our red-tiled\nrooms in the good Hotel d'Orient, to which we had been driven by a\nplague of sand-flies in the camp), we step at once into a chapter of the\n\"Arabian Nights' Entertainments.\"\n\nIt is true, there are electric lights and there is a trolley-car\ncrawling around the city; but they no more make it Western and modern\nthan a bead necklace would change the character of the Venus of Milo.\nThe driver of the trolley-car looks like one of \"The Three Calenders,\"\nand a gayly dressed little boy beside him blows loudly on an instrument\nof discord as the machine tranquilly advances through the crowd. (A man\nwas run over a few months ago; his friends waited for the car to come\naround the next day, pulled the driver from his perch, and stuck a\nnumber of long knives through him in a truly Oriental manner.)\n\nThe crowd itself is of the most indescribable and engaging variety and\nvivacity. The Turkish soldiers in dark uniform and red fez; the\ncheerful, grinning water-carriers with their dripping, bulbous goatskins\non their backs; the white-turbaned Druses with their bold, clean-cut\nfaces; the bronzed, impassive sons of the desert, with their flowing\nmantles and bright head-cloths held on by thick, dark rolls of camel's\nhair; the rich merchants in their silken robes of many colours; the\npicturesquely ragged beggars; the Moslem pilgrims washing their heads\nand feet, with much splashing, at the pools in the marble courtyards of\nthe mosques; the merry children, running on errands or playing with the\nwater that gushes from many a spout at the corner of a street or on the\nwall of a house; the veiled Mohammedan women slipping silently through\nthe throng, or bending over the trinkets or fabrics in some open-fronted\nshop, lifting the veil for a moment to show an olive-tinted cheek and a\npair of long, liquid brown eyes; the bearded Greek priests in their\nblack robes and cylinder hats; the Christian women wrapped in their long\nwhite sheets, but with their pretty faces uncovered, and a red rose or a\nwhite jasmine stuck among their smooth, shining black tresses; the\nseller of lemonade with his gaily decorated glass vessel on his back and\nhis clinking brass cups in his hand, shouting, \"_A remedy for the\nheat_,\"--\"_Cheer up your hearts_,\"--\"_Take care of your teeth_;\" the boy\npeddling bread, with an immense tray of thin, flat loaves on his head,\ncrying continually to Allah to send him customers; the seller of\nturnip-pickle with a huge pink globe upon his shoulder looking like the\ninside of a pale watermelon; the donkeys pattering along between fat\nburdens of grass or charcoal; a much-bedizened horseman with embroidered\nsaddle-cloth and glittering bridle, riding silent and haughty through\nthe crowd as if it did not exist; a victoria dashing along the street at\na trot, with whip cracking like a pack of firecrackers, and shouts of,\n\"_O boy! Look out for your back! your foot! your side!_\"--all these\nfigures are mingled in a passing show of which we never grow weary.\n\nThe long bazaars, covered with a round, wooden archway rising from the\nsecond story of the houses, are filled with a rich brown hue like a\nwell-coloured meerschaum pipe; and through this mellow, brumous\natmosphere beams of golden sunlight slant vividly from holes in the\nroof. An immense number of shops, small and great, shelter themselves in\nthese bazaars, for the most part opening, without any reserve of a front\nwall or a door, in frank invitation to the street. On the earthen\npavement, beaten hard as cement, camels are kneeling, while the\nmerchants let down their corded bales and display their Persian carpets\nor striped silks. The cook-shops show their wares and their processes,\nand send up an appetising smell of lamb _kibabs_ and fried fish and\nstuffed cucumbers and stewed beans and okra, and many other dainties\npreparing on diminutive charcoal grills.\n\nIn the larger and richer shops, arranged in semi-European fashion, there\nare splendid rugs, and embroideries old and new, and delicately\nchiselled brasswork, and furniture of strange patterns lavishly inlaid\nwith mother-of-pearl; and there I go with the Lady to study the art of\nbargaining as practised between the trained skill of the Levant and the\nnative genius of Walla Walla, Washington. In the smaller and poorer\nbazaars the high, arched roofs give place to tattered awnings, and\nsometimes to branches of trees; the brown air changes to an atmosphere\nof brilliant stripes and patches; the tiny shops, (hardly more than open\nbooths), are packed and festooned with all kinds of goods, garments and\nornaments: the chafferers conduct their negotiations from the street,\n(sidewalk there is none), or squat beside the proprietor on the little\nplatform of his stall.\n\n[Illustration: A Small Bazaar in Damascus.]\n\nThe custom of massing the various trades and manufactures adds to the\npicturesque joy of shopping or dawdling in Damascus. It is like passing\nthrough rows of different kinds of strange fruits. There is a region of\ndangling slippers, red and yellow, like cherries; a little farther on we\ncome to a long trellis of clothes, limp and pendulous, like bunches of\ngrapes; then we pass through a patch of saddles, plain and coloured,\ndecorated with all sorts of beads and tinsel, velvet and morocco, lying\non the ground or hung on wooden supports, like big, fantastic melons.\n\nIn the coppersmiths' bazaar there is an incessant clattering of little\nhammers upon hollow metal. The goldsmiths sit silent in their pens\nwithin a vast, dim building, or bend over their miniature furnaces\nmaking gold and silver filigree. Here are the carpenters using their\nbare feet in their work almost as deftly as their fingers; and yonder\nthe dyers festooning their long strips of blue cotton from their windows\nand balconies. Down there, on the way to the Great Mosque, the\nbooksellers hold together: a dwindling tribe, apparently, for of the\nthirty or forty shops which were formerly theirs not more than half a\ndozen remain true to literature: the rest are full of red and yellow\nslippers. Damascus is more inclined to loafing or to dancing than to\nreading. It seems to belong to the gay, smiling, easy-going East of\nScheherazade and Aladdin, not to the sombre and reserved Orient of\nfierce mystics and fanatical fatalists.\n\nYet we feel, or imagine that we feel, the hidden presence of passions\nand possibilities that belong to the tragic side of life underneath\nthis laughing mask of comedy. No longer ago than 1860, in the great\nMassacre, five thousand Christians perished by fire and shot and dagger\nin two days; the streets ran with blood; the churches were piled with\ncorpses; hundreds of Christian women were dragged away to Moslem harems;\nonly the brave Abd-el-Kader, with his body-guard of dauntless Algerine\nveterans, was able to stay the butchery by flinging himself between the\nblood-drunken mob and their helpless victims.\n\nThis was the last wholesale assassination of modern times that a great\ncity has seen, and prosperous, pleasure-loving, insouciant Damascus\nseems to have quite forgotten it. Yet there are still enough wild\nKurdish shepherds, and fierce Bedouins of the desert, and riffraff of\ncamel-drivers and herdsmen and sturdy beggars and homeless men, among\nher three hundred thousand people to make dangerous material if the\ntiger-madness should break loose again. A gay city is not always a safe\ncity. The Lady and I saw a man stabbed to death at noon, not fifty feet\naway from us, in a street beside the Ottoman Bank.\n\nNothing is safe until justice and benevolence and tolerance and mutual\nrespect are diffused in the hearts of men. How far this inward change\nhas gone in Damascus no one can tell. But that some advance has been\nmade, by real reforms in the Turkish government, by the spread of\nintelligence and the enlightenment of self-interest, by the sense of\nnext-doorness to Paris and Berlin and London, which telegraphs,\nrailways, and steamships have produced, above all by the useful work of\nmissionary hospitals and schools, and by the humanizing process which\nhas been going on inside of all the creeds, no careful observer can\ndoubt. I fear that men will still continue to kill each other, for\nvarious causes, privately and publicly. But thank God it is not likely\nto be done often, if ever again, in the name of Religion!\n\nThe medley of things seen and half understood has left patterns\ndamascened upon my memory with intricate clearness: immense droves of\ncamels coming up from the wilderness to be sold in the market; factories\nof inlaid woodwork and wrought brasswork in which hundreds of young\nchildren, with beautiful and seeming-merry faces, are hammering and\nfiling and cutting out the designs traced by the draughtsmen who sit at\ntheir desks like schoolmasters; vast mosques with rows of marble\ncolumns, and floors covered with bright-coloured rugs, and files of men,\nsometimes two hundred in a line, with a leader in front of them, making\ntheir concerted genuflections toward Mecca; costly interiors of private\nhouses which outwardly show bare white-washed walls, but within welcome\nthe stranger to hospitality of fruits, coffee, and sweetmeats, in\nstately rooms ornamented with rich tiles and precious marbles, looking\nupon arcaded courtyards fragrant with blossoming orange-trees and\nmusical with tinkling fountains; tombs of Moslem warriors and\nsaints,--Saladin, the Sultan Beibars, the Sheikh Arslan, the philosopher\nIbn-el-Arabi, great fighters now quiet, and restless thinkers finally\nsatisfied; public gardens full of rose-bushes, traversed by clear, swift\nstreams, where groups of women sit gossiping in the shade of the trees\nor in little kiosques, the Mohammedans with their light veils not\naltogether hiding their olive faces and languid eyes, the Christians\nand Jewesses with bare heads, heavy necklaces of amber, flowers behind\ntheir ears, silken dresses of soft and varied shades; cafes by the\nriver, where grave and important Turks pose for hours on red velvet\ndivans, smoking the successive cigarette or the continuous nargileh. Out\nof these memory-pictures of Damascus I choose three.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Lady and I are climbing up from the great Mosque of the Ommayyades\ninto the Minaret of the Bride, at the hour of 'Asr, or afternoon prayer.\nAs we tread the worn spiral steps in the darkness we hear, far above,\nthe chant of the choir of muezzins, high-pitched, long-drawn, infinitely\nmelancholy, calling the faithful to their devotions.\n\n\"_Allah akbar! Allah akbar! Allah is great! I testify there is no God\nbut Allah, and Mohammed is the prophet of Allah! Come to prayer!_\"\n\nThe plaintive notes float away over the city toward all four quarters of\nthe sky, and quaver into silence. We come out from the gloom of the\nstaircase into the dazzling light of the balcony which runs around the\ntop of the minaret. For a few moments we can see little; but when the\nfirst bewilderment passes, we are conscious that all the charm and\nwonder of Damascus are spread at our feet.\n\nThe oval mass of the city lies like a carving of old ivory, faintly\ntinged with pink, on a huge table of malachite. The setting of groves\nand gardens, luxuriant, interminable, deeply and beautifully green,\ncovers a circuit of sixty miles. Beyond it, in sharpest contrast, rise\nthe bare, fawn-coloured mountains, savage, intractable, desolate; away\nto the west, the snow-crowned bulk of Hermon; away to the east, the\nlow-rolling hills and slumbrous haze of the desert. Under these flat\nroofs and white domes and long black archways of bazaars three hundred\nthousand folk are swarming. And there, half emerging from the huddle of\ndecrepit modern buildings and partly hidden by the rounded shed of a\nbazaar, is the ruined top of a Roman arch of triumph, battered, proud,\nand indomitable.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAn hour later we are scrambling up a long, shaky ladder to the flat\nroofs of the joiners' bazaar, built close against the southern wall of\nthe Mosque. We walk across the roofs and find the ancient south door of\nthe Mosque, now filled up with masonry, and almost completely concealed\nby the shops above which we are standing. Only the entablature is\nvisible, richly carved with garlands. Kneeling down, we read upon the\nlintel the Greek inscription in uncial letters, cut when the Mosque was\na Christian church. The Moslems who are bowing and kneeling and\nstretching out their hands toward Mecca among the marble pillars below,\nknow nothing of this inscription. Few even of the Christian visitors to\nDamascus have ever seen it with their own eyes, for it is difficult to\nfind and read. But there it still endures and waits, the bravest\ninscription in the world: \"_Thy kingdom, O Christ, is a kingdom of all\nages, and Thy dominion lasts throughout all generations._\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFrom this eloquent and forgotten stone my memory turns to the Hospital\nof the Edinburgh Medical Mission. I see the lovely garden full of roses,\ncolumbines, lilies, pansies, sweet-peas, strawberries just in bloom. I\nsee the poor people coming in a steady stream to the neat, orderly\ndispensary; the sweet, clean wards with their spotless beds; the\nmerciful candour and completeness of the operating-room; the patient,\ncheerful, vigorous, healing ways of the great Scotch doctor, who limps\naround on his broken leg to minister to the needs of other folk. I see\nthe little group of nurses and physicians gathered on Sunday evening in\nthe doctor's parlour for an hour of serious, friendly talk, hopeful and\nhappy. And there, amid the murmur of Abana's rills, and close to the\nconfused and glittering mystery of the Orient, I hear the music of a\nsimple hymn:\n\n   \"Dear Lord and Father of mankind,\n     Forgive our foolish ways!\n   Reclothe us in our rightful mind,\n   In purer lives thy service find,\n     In deeper reverence, praise.\n\n   \"O Sabbath rest by Galilee!\n     O calm of hills above,\n   Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee\n   The silence of eternity\n     Interpreted by love!\n\n   \"Drop thy still dews of quietness,\n     Till all our strivings cease;\n   Take from our souls the strain and stress,\n   And let our ordered lives confess\n     The beauty of Thy peace.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nCorrections made to printed original.\n\np. 6, 'Eygpt' corrected to 'Egypt'.\n\np. 167, 'is is camelet' corrected to 'is it camelet'.\n\np. 182, 'acqueducts' corrected to 'aqueducts'.\n\np. 190, added a period after 'generations to build'.\n\np. 277, added a period after 'immemorial charm about the place'.","title":"Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land: Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":54448}