Part 3

some of its bazaars like tunnels, into which scarcely any light could enter. Here in the gloom we met insolent-looking Moslems and spectral Jews, their strongly-contrasted figures and faces appearing for a moment in the twilight as they passed us. And outside it was blinding noontide sunlight. We went all round the huge mosque that guards the precious tombs of the patriarchs, but had we attempted to enter we should have had a bad quarter of an hour from the Mahometans. These sons of the Bondwoman would stone any son of the Free who would attempt an entry. There is a little black hole in the wall, which I am sure does not pierce it through, which we are told we can look through and see the tombs from outside, but I saw nothing in the hole but the beady eye of a lizard. We do not feel as though we would care to revisit Hebron.

We drove back to the German khan which was full of exhausted Americans who had also returned from the oven of Hebron. Most of them had been trying to combine botany with Biblical research, and near many of the figures that lay prone on the divans I saw Bibles and limp flora on the floor.

Towards evening we drove from this place of rest a long way back on the road to Jerusalem, but not far short of Bethlehem we came in sight of our camp! How charming and inspiriting that sight was--three snowy tents pitched by the Pools of Solomon under the walls of a Crusader Castle, with some fifteen saddle and baggage animals picketed close by, and the dear old Union Jack flying from the central tent! I was delighted at the fact that our camp life was to begin that night. Everything struck us as in excellent order, our horses, saddles and bridles, the tents, the servants and all. Those Pools of Solomon are three immense reservoirs of water which the Wise King made to supply the Temple at Jerusalem. Myriads of frogs were enlivening the evening air with their multitudinous croakings which increased to deafening proportions as night closed in. I took a hasty sketch. Much hyssop grows here, "Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo et mundabor."

_14th April._

I was greatly pleased with my first night under canvas. To have grass and stones and little aromatic herbs for a bedroom carpet was a

new and delightful sensation to me. We started this morning at sunrise, my sketching things handily strapped to my saddle by W.'s directions, in a flat straw _aumonière_. Isaac had swathed his tarboush in a magnificent "cufia," and our retinue wore the baggy garb of Syria. W. rode a steel-grey Arab, I a silver-grey, Isaac a roan-grey, and the man, whom we call the "flying column," because he is to accompany us with the lunch bags, while the heavy column with baggage, tents, etc., goes on ahead by short-cuts, rode a chestnut. We passed through Bethlehem and down to the Field of the Shepherds, where I completed, as well as I could in the heat and glare, my sketch begun the other day. A group of some twenty Russian pilgrims arrived as we did, and we saw them in the grotto of the sheepfold, each holding a lighted taper and responding to the chant of their old priest, who had a head which would do admirably for a picture of Abraham. These poor men were in fur coats and high clumsy boots, and one told us he had come from Tobolsk, and had been two years on that tramp. He assured us he could manage his return journey in no time, only ten months or so. Their devotion was profound, as it always is, and was utterly un-self-conscious. I think we English are too apt to suppose that because devotion is demonstrative it is not deep. Great pedestrians as we are, how many Englishmen would walk for two years to visit this sheepfold? That two years' test borne by the Russian peasant must have gone very deep.

I remember reading with much approval, when a child, with a child's narrow-mindedness, Miss Martineau's shocked description of the demonstrative piety of a noble Russian lady on Calvary, who repeatedly laid her head in the hole where the Cross had been, weeping and praying and behaving altogether in a most un-English manner. The memory of that passage came back to me to-day as I saw these rough peasants, so supremely unconscious of our presence, throwing themselves heart and soul into their adoration of God, and I thought of Mary Magdalene and _her_ prostrations and tears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Wednesday, 15th April 189-._

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

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

_Thursday, 16th April._

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Friday, 17th April._

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

_Saturday, 18th April._

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

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

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